Category Archives: Space

Space

Lunar Landing Challenge Day Two

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Armadillo’s attempt at Level Two (a million dollar purse) starts in a few minutes. Webcast is here.

[Update]

Well, there was a problem. There was a hard start, and the vehicle fell over on its side. Not clear how recoverable it is.

[Afternoon update]

That’s it for this year. They aren’t going to make another attempt today. Clark Lindsey has the story.

That leaves most of the money still on the table, but at least Armadillo didn’t go home empty handed this time.

[Update an hour or so later]

Jeff Foust has a picture of the burned-through nozzle that resulted from the lean fuel mixture.

Space

Lunar Landing Challenge

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First attempts start in an hour and a half. Clark Lindsey is heading out to the site at the Las Cruces Airport. Wish I were there.

Good luck to all the contestants.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Here’s the webcast.

[Update about 10:30 AM EDT]

If you’re watching the webcast (or even if not), it’s about four to five minutes from Armadillo’s first attempt.

[Update a few minutes later]

They had a successful first flight, except it ran short. They didn’t make it to ninety seconds. The judges just gave permission for two more legs within this window, but they have only forty-five minutes left, which includes getting back to the departure point with the vehicle.

[Update a few minutes later]

They’re about to make another attempt at the first successful leg. They’re cleared for flight.

[Update a few minutes later]

They just had a first successful 90-second flight. They have fifteen minutes left before their FAA window closes (though they have longer to get back to the staging area). It’s going to be a tight turnaround.

[Update at 11:30 AM EDT]

Too tight a window. They’re detanking. Level One remains unwon. There are three or four windows left. TrueZero will make the next attempt later today.

[A little before 2 PM EDT]

TrueZero is about to make their attempt. This will be interesting–it’s the first time they’ve ever flown the vehicle untethered…

[Update a few minutes later]

Well, it was interesting. Brief, but interesting. It ascended to altitude, but when it started its translation, it keeled over and dove to the ground, making a little smoking hole in the desert. There’s a small fire, no one was hurt, and the vehicle is lying on its side and vented. Fire department on the way. Do they have other vehicles, or was that their shot?

This is why you do full flight tests. They had no experience with untethered flight. They just got some.

[Update at 4 PM EDT]

Armadillo is going to make their second attempt of the day in half an hour. If they don’t make it, they’ll have at least two more shots tomorrow. Barring a disaster, they should be able to go home with some prize money this year, but there will still be some on the table for next year.

[Update at quarter to five Eastern]

Well, this will be controversial. The judges have allowed them to just do the return flight, picking up where they left off this morning, because they weren’t given the time earlier that the prize allowed, due to the unrelated FAA restriction. While one can understand the sentiment, technically they are not doing what the prize requires in terms of turnaround, and if they win today under the rule waiver, I fear that many will think it tainted.

[Update while listening to all the speechifying]

Clark has the story on what happened with TrueZer0. As noted they had one vehicle, and it was totaled.

[Update after the flight]

Well, they just had a successful flight. If they get back to the staging area in half an hour, they’ll have one first place for Level One, $350K. Congratulations to the Amadillo team.

[Evening update

Clark Lindsey reports that tomorrow could be exciting for Armadillo and the crowd:

This will be the first time they have done the tip and translation with a full 3 minute fuel load on Pixel. Always a chance it will come crashing down like TrueZer0 but with 1500 lbs of propellants

Again, like last year, I can’t understand why they haven’t done a full dress rehearsal.

Philosophy, Political Commentary, Space

A Depressing Comment

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Over at Samizdata, Jonathan Pearce wonders if freedom seekers will be heading the other way after the election:

Occasionally, whenever one of us Samizdata scribes writes about events in the UK, such as loss of civil liberties, or the latest financial disasters perpetrated by the government, or crime, or whatnot, there is sometimes a comment from an expatriate writer, or US citizen in particular, suggesting that we moaners should pack our bags, cancel the mail and come on over to America. Like Brian Micklethwait of this parish, I occasionally find such comments a bit annoying; it is not as if the situation in Jefferson’s Republic is particularly great just now, although a lot depends on where you live (Texas is very different from say, Vermont or for that matter, Colorado).

But considering what might happen if Obama wins the White House and the Dems increase or retain their hold on Congress, I also wonder whether we might encounter the example of enterprising Americans coming to Britain, not the other way round. The dollar is rising against the pound, so any assets that are transferred from the US to Britain go further. Taxes are likely to rise quite a bit if The One gets in, although they are likely to rise in the UK too to pay for the enormous increase in public debt, even if the Tories win the next election in 2010.

For a number of reasons stated over there, it seems unlikely, but this comment stood out:

I think the general message here should be that the whole western world is on the same trajectory, and shopping around for liberty is going to be ultimately futile. In a sense, we all need to be “liberty patriots” and do our best in our own countries to reverse the rot, because wherever you flee to, it’s happening there too, if at a different pace or in in slightly different ways. The anti-liberty movement is operating in every nation, and trans and supra-nationally, and everywhere it is winning. There is nowhere to run.

Well, as I’ve long noted on this blog, that’s what space programs are for.

Space

ISPCS Reporting

Clark Lindsey has his first report up, on this morning’s session on suborbital vehicles. Jeff Foust has a report on one of the talks as well, from Virgin Galactic.

[Thursday afternoon update]

Lots more over at Clark’s place. Just keep scrolling. It’s not a permalink, but I assume that he’ll put together a page of links to the posts when he gets back next week.

(Bumped from yesterday)

Space

Personal Spaceflight Symposium

I’ve attended this event the past two years, but couldn’t make it this year, for lack of time, funds and justification. I also was demotivated by the cancellation of the Lunar Landing Challenge (which was recently reinstated), which was held in conjunction with it.

I’d actually like to go now, and I could afford it now, but I’m busy, and a last-minute ticket would have been pricy. But Clark Lindsey and Jeff Foust are attending, and will no doubt be providing updates over the next couple days.

Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Boo Hoo

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Mike Griffin says that criticism of NASA hurts its morale:

Griffin said critics in the media and on anonymous Internet blogs can “chip away” at the agency by questioning the motives and ethics of engineers designing the new rockets.

Briefing charts used by NASA managers sometimes show up on Web sites without the proper context, he said, and opponents of the agency’s plans to replace the space shuttle with two new rockets have wrongly accused NASA managers of incompetence and worse.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I don’t think that I’ve ever questioned anyone’s motives or ethics. I do question their engineering and political judgment, and fortunately (for now) we live in a country in which I am free to do so. Clark Lindsey has more thoughts:

…just thinking about the Ares monstrosities hurts MY morale…I can’t think of anything more depressing than seeing a one chance in a generation opportunity to build a practical space transportation infrastructure squandered on a repeat of Apollo that consists of nothing but hyper-expensive throwaway systems.

Ditto. It’s a tragedy.

[Update a few minutes later]

There’s more over at NASAWatch:

“…it is incumbent upon us to be able to explain how a decision was reached, why a particular technical approach was chosen, or why a contract was awarded to one bidder instead of another.”

It is indeed. You’ve never really done that with the Ares/ESAS decisions. You just send Steve Cook out to say “we’ve done the trade study–trust us.”

Space

Rapid Propellant Transfer

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John Hare discusses a concept for dumping propellant from a launcher to a LEO depot in a single orbit.

As I note in comments there, I don’t see any need for such a requirement. Once you’re in orbit, there’s not really that big a rush to come back. The depot has to be in a high enough orbit that it doesn’t decay rapidly, so the only cost of staying longer is crew consumables (if there is a crew). Power would presumably come from the depot itself while mated.

But it’s not only an unnecessary requirement, it’s an impossible one, other than in equatorial orbits (unless you want to wait a very long time for opportunities). Any orbit with significant inclination has a narrow launch window (at least from a given launch site–an air-launched system would have more flexibility). The likelihood that, when you get into the right orbit plane, the station will be waiting for you precisely where it needs to be to rendezvous in a single orbit it exceedingly small. That’s why it takes a couple days for Soyuz or Shuttle to rendezvous with ISS. They launch into the right orbit plane, but they have to spend several orbits catching up with it. And the faster they do it, the more propellant it costs.

As I note parenthetically above, though, you can get there directly if you have an air-launched system with significant range for the aircraft (e.g., Quickreach).

Business, Political Commentary, Space

More Margin Problems

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The new littoral ship that Lockheed Martin is building for the Navy is four percent overweight:

The Navy and Lockheed already have a plan to remove nearly all the additional weight from the ship over a period of about six months once the new ship, which is named Freedom, gets to Norfolk, Virginia, in December, said the sources, who asked not to be identified.

As I said, margin, margin, margin. If you miss your weight target by that much on a launch system, it’s bye-bye payload. In this case, it simply puts the ship at risk in combat.

As the emailer who sent this to me asks, “I wonder if Lockheed will remove excess weight from Orion at no additional cost.”