It’s no surprise, but they finally admitted that they want the BE-4, because they don’t want to continue Atlas. But at least AJR got hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars in cost-plus contracts to develop an engine that no one wants to buy.
Category Archives: Space
Luxembourg
This looks like a potential interesting conference, but the “Agenda” gives one no idea about who will actually be on the program, or what they’d be talking about. You’d think they’d have some speakers confirmed two months before the event. Another issue is that the “Accommodations” section says to grab a room early, because there is a conflicting event and rooms may be in short supply. That may just be to get people to pay $500 a night for a conference that only costs $350.
Japan To The Moon
…privately. Yes, it’s ambitious, but I don’t think this is the problem:
The longer-term goals are laudable, but the company seems to seriously underestimate the difficulty of reaching lunar ice, harvesting it under extremely cold conditions, and producing propellant from ice. These are all significant engineering challenges in unprecedented conditions. Moreover, even under optimistic circumstances, NASA’s plans to return to the Moon wouldn’t put a handful of humans—let alone hundreds—on the lunar surface before the late 2020s, and China doesn’t intend for such landings until the early 2030s.
I don’t think that NASA’s or China’s plans are relevant to private lunar plans.
SpaceX’s Near-Death Experience
Eric Berger has an interesting story, that I remember. It’s hard to believe it’s been a decade.
Informed Consent
Laura Montgomery explains the legal situation with the lunar voyage. It’s a reminder that the regulatory moratorium expires in 2023. I continue to believe that it should have no expiration date, and should remain in place indefinitely, at least until there is a political consensus that regulation is required.
Elon’s Announcement
I didn’t see it, and I couldn’t view it on my notebook because Firefox can’t handle HTML5 (WTF?).
But from what I can glean from my Twitter feed, the plan to send a bunch of artists into space excited a lot of people on Twitter not normally excited about what SpaceX has been doing (we saw a similar effect with the FH launch of the Tesla and rocket man, though some who didn’t like that love this). Anyway, I’ve been saying all weekend, and told people at the conference today that I’d be very surprised if someone booked an entire BFR flight and didn’t take friends along. The other thing that seems clear is that the schedule is slipping (Commercial Crew has slipped from November to December for test flight, and from next April to “second quarter” for first crewed launch).
Only about 5% of SpaceX resources are going to BFR currently, but once development is done on Commercial Crew, that will increase dramatically, but a 2023 lunar mission means no Mars prior to that. His flight, given the amount of the down payment, will be the highest BFR priority. Here’s a link from Business Insider.
[Tuesday-morning update]
Here‘s Eric Berger’s take.
Earth-Departure Orbital Mechanics
An interesting post over at Selenian Boondocks.
I’m heading to the airport in a while to head back to Florida, but this time to Orlando for the annual AIAA space conference (which it looks like will not be wiped out by a hurricane as it was by Irma a year ago).
Delta II
It’s about to make its last flight. Most of the media won’t realize how historical this event, or that rocket is. Somewhere, Max Hunter is smiling.
“The First”
Apparently the Hulu feature series about a mission to Mars fails to lift off. I’ve never been a Sean Penn fan.
BFR News
Among other things, its fins are growing. This happened with X-33, too. Hope BFR has a better fate.
In terms of the passenger announcement, it’s worth noting how different this trip will be from Apollo 8 (whose fiftieth anniversary comes in December), in terms of how spacious the accommodations will be. This is not your grandfather’s moon voyage.
[Update a while later]
Tim Fernholz has some questions. I have one for him: What does “certifying the Falcon Heavy to carry people” mean? Or look like?
[Update late morning]
Scott Manley analyzes.