There’s an interesting new book
Category Archives: Space
Book Bleg
Does anyone know what the plane change would have been between Columbia and the ISS (ballpark, I know it moved during the mission)? I could figure out the RAAN of Columbia from launch time, but I don’t know what it was for the ISS at the time.
[Sunday evening update]
Here’s what I added as a footnote to the chapter, as a result of discussion here:
The difference in orbital planes at the time was about ninety degrees. A sixty-degree plane change requires as much velocity as it takes to get into orbit (ignoring atmospheric drag and gravity losses), and ninety would take about forty percent more than that (or about as much as it would take to escape from earth’s orbit from the earth’s surface, again, ignoring those factors), so even if there had been a full external tank attached to the Columbia in orbit and the main engines could have been restarted, it still wouldn’t have had nearly enough propellant to get to the ISS.
FWIW.
Jesco
The German rocket scientist who was born too young to be part of von Braun’s team has died. Is anyone from von Braun’s team left?
Burt Rutan
He gave a talk on human spaceflight in Jacksonville a few weeks ago, and it was recorded.
Testing Compensating Nozzles
John Hare has a question.
A Death Star
…would make a great stimulus and green energy project.
From my point of view, just think what the demand for that much material lifted from earth would do for launch costs. Unless they used SLS, of course.
The SS2 Drop Test
As Clark Lindsey reports, there was a drop test of SpaceShipTwo, that had some, but apparently not all of the propulsion system installed. I wonder if it was carrying fuel? One of the issues I discuss in my book is its ability to abort with a failed ignition, because while it can dump the oxidizer, it’s not possible to get rid of the rubber slug. Steve Isakowitz told me that it is designed to land with a fuel load, from a CG/weight standpoint, so it would be interesting to see if they demonstrated that ability.
Property Rights In Space
My article has been Slashdotted.
You’ll be as shocked as I was to notice that very few if any of the commenters actually read the piece.
The “Claim The Moon” White House Petition
“Why I did it.”
It’s a dumb reason. He provides reasons why someone might want to claim the moon, but none for why anyone else should pay any heed whatsoever to such a claim.
Even ignoring the fact that it would be a blatant violation of the Outer Space Treaty, there is no traditional or even historical basis on which the nation could claim the entire body, nor is it necessary. Even if we could get an international consensus that off-planet property rights, or even sovereignty claims, are a good thing, we have to establish some criteria for making such claims beyond the fact that we stuck a flag on it four decades ago. Traditional claims, at least in modern times, involve actually occupying and improving the claim. For the U.S. to claim the entire moon without having even bothered to do anything significant on any part of it for almost half a century would rightly be viewed as almost as ludicrous as the Eros claim a few years back. It’s a planet too far.
109 Years Ago
The Wrights had their first controlled flight of a heavier-than-aircraft on this date in 1903. I had three separate pieces on the event back on the hundredth anniversary, which was also the day that SpaceShipOne first flew supersonic.
[Late evening update, after all the kvetching in comments]
Jeez, Looeeze, people.
OK, first controlled flight of a powered heavier-than-aircraft. Happy now?