Category Archives: Space

Business, Space, Technology and Society

EXOS Aerospace

14 Comments

It looks like they had a successful suborbital test of SARGE today at Spaceport America (after the earlier successful launch of Crew Dragon early this morning).

[Tuesday noon update]

Russ Blink just posted an explanation of the wobble at Arocket:

The wind picked up as we approached launch and the torque due to the fins at liftoff was getting pretty high, that caused the initial pitch angle and the control PID is pretty close to critically damped, which of course needs to be addressed, however it settled down nicely until we hit a high wind shear which it damped out slowly again after passing through. Still she was heavily influenced by the wind which we are addressing.

The fins on this flight were actually hurting us because of weather-cocking. We intend to remove or reduce them in the future when we have good aero data or modeling to tune the control part of our gnc for that condition.

For those curious in comments…

[Bumped]

Business, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Flight Of Crew Dragon

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The mission seems to have gone flawlessly so far.

But even if it’s a complete success with the recovery on Friday, some will still want to slow walk the first crew flight this year.

[Update a couple minutes later]

[Update a few minutes later]

Lot of links and pics at NASA Spaceflight.

Business, Economics, Media Criticism, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Anti-American Forces At NASA?

40 Comments

Bob Zimmerman is concerned.

If it’s not the intent of this to aid Russia, that’s certainly the effect.

And yes, this is concerning:

But the sources familiar with the matter said the companies must address “most” of those concerns before flying astronauts and, eventually, tourists to space. [emphasis mine]

NASA has no business dictating what standards will be met for private spaceflight participants. Someone needs to stomp on this right now.

[Update a few minutes later]

And just by coincidence, as NASA continues to want to purchase more rides from the Russians, another Fregat upper stage failed today.

[Late-morning update]

Looks like while there may have been an anomaly, the mission was ultimately a success.

[Friday afternoon update]

Well, that piece by Reuters didn’t age well. Seems kind of dumb to have run it when the flight readiness review was scheduled for the very next day.

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