Space News thread

[Takeovers]

NASA not renewing contracts when they have really nothing in place as an alternative

Indeed. There was a complex powerplay. For one NASA received no money to develop a new system until after the Shuttle was decomissioned.

Then there was the Constellation program that had a manned launch vehicle that was mandated to serve the ISS among other goals. Congress basically dictated the design. Particularly that the manned vehicle would be derived from the Spaceshuttle solid boosters, the Ares I. Behind that support for solid booster manufacturing. The military loves solid boosters. The capsule, the Orion had to be very heavy, it needed to be so heavy that no available booster can lift it, to justify development of Ares I. Unfortunately it turned out they could not build Ares I strong enough to lift Orion either.

That led to Obama canceling the Constellation program. That caused another power struggle between NASA and Congress. NASA insisted on 2 providers, Congress wanted just one provider. Any provider, as long as its name begins with B and ends with g, B....g. NASA contracted Boeing and SpaceX but for 5 years Congress cut the funding needed in half, and was then VERY surprised that this caused delays. In the end Congress finally agreed to fully fund the program. With the not publicly stated requirement that Boeing would launch first. So NASA kept delaying SpaceX until now they no longer have contracts for flying on Soyuz and Boeing is still not ready. SpaceX is ready to fly but lacks stamps of approval from NASA.

There was the incident that a SpaceX Dragon capsule blew up on a test, which does cause delays. But NASA had delayed the timeline leading up to that test by at least half a year. So except for the delays SpaceX could be flying crew by now if NASA only let them.

BTW the US GAO, the Government (Accounting) Accountability Office, blames NASA for much of the delays. At least as much as the providers. For one the contract timelines were based on the assumption that reports by the Contractors are processed by NASA within 2 month, but NASA takes 6 months or more.

[Dragonfly]

what a clusterfuck, but very interesting

[harrybarracuda]

Indeed. There was a complex powerplay. For one NASA received no money to develop a new system until after the Shuttle was decomissioned.

Then there was the Constellation program that had a manned launch vehicle that was mandated to serve the ISS among other goals. Congress basically dictated the design. Particularly that the manned vehicle would be derived from the Spaceshuttle solid boosters, the Ares I. Behind that support for solid booster manufacturing. The military loves solid boosters. The capsule, the Orion had to be very heavy, it needed to be so heavy that no available booster can lift it, to justify development of Ares I. Unfortunately it turned out they could not build Ares I strong enough to lift Orion either.

That led to Obama canceling the Constellation program. That caused another power struggle between NASA and Congress. NASA insisted on 2 providers, Congress wanted just one provider. Any provider, as long as its name begins with B and ends with g, B....g. NASA contracted Boeing and SpaceX but for 5 years Congress cut the funding needed in half, and was then VERY surprised that this caused delays. In the end Congress finally agreed to fully fund the program. With the not publicly stated requirement that Boeing would launch first. So NASA kept delaying SpaceX until now they no longer have contracts for flying on Soyuz and Boeing is still not ready. SpaceX is ready to fly but lacks stamps of approval from NASA.

There was the incident that a SpaceX Dragon capsule blew up on a test, which does cause delays. But NASA had delayed the timeline leading up to that test by at least half a year. So except for the delays SpaceX could be flying crew by now if NASA only let them.

BTW the US GAO, the Government Accounting Office, blames NASA for much of the delays. At least as much as the providers. For one the contract timelines were based on the assumption that reports by the Contractors are processed by NASA within 2 month, but NASA takes 6 months or more.

So Boeing are paying every fucker off then innit.

[Takeovers]

So Boeing are paying every fucker off then innit.

I remember how things went when the final contract was awarded. There were 3 competitors. SpaceX, Boeing and Sierra Nevada with their Dream Chaser spaceplane

Attachment 39330

The grapevine said the winners are Spacex and Sierra Nevada. People at Boeing were already resigned to have lost. Theirs was the least attractive and the most expensive offer. Then there was a delay in the announcement, then another delay, another delay. In the end Sierra Nevada was out and Boeing the winner on being the most experienced offeror.

Later Sierra Nevada got a consolation price winning a Commercial Resupply 2 contract, carrying Cargo to the ISS, beginning next year or probably 2021. They have the most development to do, getting their system ready.

To be honest, Sierra Nevada was a cheap offer but a risky one. NASA could afford selecting them because they could be sure SpaceX would deliver. They already had the Cargo Dragon of which the Crew Dragon is a - major - improvement.

[Takeovers]

Things are heating up with commercial crew.

https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1181579173388673025

A tweet by Eric Berger, Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica.

Source says "full panic has ensued" as NASA realizes commercial crew may not be ready in first half of 2020; and Gerstenmeier is no longer around to help the companies along, or negotiate with Russians for more Soyuz seats. Focus on Artemis may put ISS program in real danger.

My comment on Eric Berger. He is probably the most hated person with people involved with the SLS rocket and manned spaceflight at NASA. He has excellent sources and what he writes is almost always correct. If NASA adminstrator Jim Bridenstine comes out with a statement contradicting Eric Berger I still bet on Berger.

As response to this tweet Elon Musk tweeted

For what it’s worth, the SpaceX schedule, which I’ve just reviewed in depth, shows Falcon & Dragon at the Cape & all testing done in ~10 weeks

Big question is, will NASA let SpaceX fly? All the needed fixes have won high praise from NASA technical side. But they are still lacking the official stamp of approval.

[Saint Willy]

I appreciate your informative updates to this thread, Takeovers.

[Backspin]

Nasa should just import its own Soyuz or get a production lic

[Takeovers]

deleted double post.

[Takeovers]

The USA have 2 large launch sites for orbital flights. One is the famous Cape in Florida where all the moon launches happened. The other is Vandenberg Airforce Base in California. Vandenberg has much fewer launches but a lot more red tape. Mostly for 2 reasons. One is the environmental regulations of California, the other Vandenberg is still an active military site for missile tests. The range in Florida is military too however they see themselves as a service unit for spaceflight and do what they can to facilitate the needs of launch companies.

Vandenberg is still needed for some launch trajectories that can not be served from Florida. Some will remain but some, like polar orbits may be served from Florida in the future now that this trajectory has been permitted by the Florida range.



Permission for a flight route depends on calculated risk of human casualties. It does not need to be ZERO, nothing is ZERO, but very close. Decades ago debris from an american rocket came down over Cuba and killed a cow. After a lot of bad blood between the US and Cuba I think $2million were paid as compensation which was a lot at that time. After that there were no more Cuba overflights. But now the range has again permitted that trajectory.

Reason being that flight termination systems increased safety a lot. Rockets are also much safer now. Not enough to permit flight over major population centers. But the path over Cuba is very sparsely populated and it is only a few seconds in flight when an impact is possible. As the rocket is higher than 100km, already in space Cuba can not stop the US from using it.

When it flies over Panama it is already orbital and not a risk for anything on the ground.

[Takeovers]

BTW while I am at it. Did you know that NORAD provides a very necessary and valuable service to all space activities worldwide?

NORAD tracks all satellites, active ones, and dead ones. Also tens of thousands if not over 100,000 of pieces of space debris that could potentially impact any in space assets. That way any satellite operator is informed of collision risks and can do avoidance maneuvers. That service is used by everybody, including Russia and China and it is free. Avoidance maneuvers are actually quite frequent but we usually don't hear of them.

[Latindancer]

They should withhold information from the Chinese because they blew up their own satellite and caused a massive cloud of debris. I wonder how much is still up there, and how much fell to earth already ?

[Saint Willy]

They should withhold information from the Chinese

Because that will really help keep space safe for all assets up there!

[Klondyke]

They should withhold information from the Chinese because they blew up their own satellite and caused a massive cloud of debris. I wonder how much is still up there, and how much fell to earth already ?

Damn Chinese, all this rubbish from them...

Stuff in Space

[Klondyke]

Space Debris

As of 5 July 2016, the United States Strategic Command tracked a total of 17,852 artificial objects in orbit above the Earth,[3] including 1,419 operational satellites.[4] However, these are just objects large enough to be tracked. As of January 2019, more than 128 million bits of debris smaller than 1 cm (0.4 in), about 900,000 pieces of debris 1–10 cm, and around 34,000 of pieces larger than 10 cm were estimated to be in orbit around the Earth.[5] Collisions with debris have become a hazard to spacecraft; they cause damage akin to sandblasting, especially to solar panels and optics like telescopes or star trackers that cannot be covered with a ballistic Whipple shield (unless it is transparent).[6]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_debris

[Takeovers]

They should withhold information from the Chinese because they blew up their own satellite and caused a massive cloud of debris. I wonder how much is still up there, and how much fell to earth already ?

Russia and the US did the same kind of test. Though the chinese test was at 865km altitude where debris remains much longer than at 555km of the US test.

A major source of space debris is the US airforce. They insufficiently safed a lot of their sats at the end of their life and they explode many years later, adding to the space debris. The only responsible way is deorbiting sats at the end of their life. Hard with chemical propellant but reasonable to do with more modern sats using ion drives which need a lot less propellant for that purpose. Unfortunately it is common practice to use sats way after the end of their design life until they drop dead and can no longer be deorbited.

[Takeovers]

After many months finally some preliminary good news on the Mars insight experiment. The mole, the device that was supposed to dig itself 5 meter into the ground to do some temperature measurements got stuck near the surface. They examined the evidence for months and came up with a plan to get it to dig itself deeper. The plan seems to work, it is now a few cm deper in the ground. If it gets in a few more cm they are very hopeful it still can reach its target depth.

The purpose of this instrument is to measure the temperature difference in different depth and calculate the heat flow from the planetary core to the surface which would give them valuable data on the planetary internal structure. Especially in combination with data from the extremely sensitive seismometer the insight probe has also deployed.



That metal cylinder on the left of the shovel is the mole. On the newer photo on the right it is a little deeper in.

The seismometer is french, the mole is german, the lander that got them to the surface is NASA. An example of international cooperation.


A gif on twitter that shows quite clearly how it gets in deeper, they say by 3 cm, which gives very high confidence they are on the way to success.

https://twitter.com/DLR_de/status/1183733109096882176

[harrybarracuda]

They parked the thing 225,000,000km away and they're cheering about 3cm.

Surreal.

[Takeovers]

They parked the thing 225,000,000km away and they're cheering about 3cm.

Surreal.

You are not wrong.

[Dragonfly]

they are happy with 3cm when the target is 5m? must have missed something

[Takeovers]

they are happy with 3cm when the target is 5m? must have missed something

The 3cm are a strong indicator that they have solved the problem that stopped them before and the 5m will go smooth from now on.

But before they proceed they check, cross check, and triple check every bit. It is how NASA works.

[David48atTD]

Mysterious space plane lands after 780 days in orbit


Link

The US Air Force has completed its fifth and longest X-37B space plane mission.

Take a look at the secretive program that conducts experiments in orbit.


Watch the video in the link.


Source: CNN Business

Also here ... https://spacenews.com/air-force-x-37...days-in-orbit/

[Dragonfly]

not so secret if the press was invited and video footage was distributed publicly

[Luigi]

Surprised you weren't controlling it with a Win XP hack.

[Dragonfly]

Surprised you weren't controlling it with a Win XP hack.

Russians are probably sitting on that plane without the Americans knowing it,

[Takeovers]

From the NASA Artemis program to land people on the moon by 2024.

BTW Artemis is the sister of Apollo. Also probably there will be a woman on the first crew.

Blue Origin financed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos together with Northrup Grumman and Lockheed Martin have proposed to build a moon lander. It is expected that SpaceX will also bid for the lander.

Here a render of both vehicles on the Moon. Blue-Northrup-Lockheed on the left. SpaceX on the right.



If I had to bet which of the two has a chance to make it by 2024, it would be SpaceX.

The size of the SpaceX vehicle remains the same, the legs and aero surfaces will look different however.