The Space Thread

Yup.

The problem happens when the solar body gets called after the same observation platform as a fleet of truckloads and a supertanker's worth of other, often very different, solar bodies do.

At least constellation-specific names tell you which bit of the sky you're not going to see the dinky thing in.

Edited by Euodiachloris on Feb 17th 2020 at 1:19:09 PM

SpaceX's Starlink mission was successful; however, the booster failed to land on the drone ship, instead soft-landing in the water nearby. We'll see if there's an explanation forthcoming. This would have been the 50th booster landing for the company. This makes ~290 active satellites in the constellation and 240 of the v1.0 models. Internet service could begin in northern U.S. and Canada after as few as 3-4 more launches.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 20th 2020 at 3:15:15 PM

Fighteer's weekly launch report, courtesy as always of Everyday Astronaut:

• ArianeSpace: Ariane 5 ECA | JCSAT-17 & GEO-KOMPSAT-2B: February 18 22:18 UTC (5:18 PM EST)
  JCSAT is a series of communications satellites and GEO-KOMPSAT is an Earth-observation satellite. Both are being sent to geostationary transfer orbit.
• China: Long March 2D | Unknown payload: February 19 21:05 UTC (4:05 PM EST)
• Russia: Soyuz 2.1a/Fregat-M | Meridian-M No.19L: February 20 08:00 UTC (3:00 AM EST)
  Meridian is a military communications satellite. It is being sent into a "highly eccentric Molniya orbit" (900 km x 39,000 km).

From Twitter, SpaceX has inked an agreement with Space Adventures to launch private citizens on Dragon spacecraft. These trips would not be to the ISS, but rather 2-3 times higher. It is unclear how long they would last (fully orbital or a high suborbital hop) and what the price tag would be. The company's website crashed immediately after the retweet and has been down all morning.

Watch today's Arianespace launch live on YouTube.

Happy Sunday, everyone... at least in most of the world as I type. News and launch updates to follow.

• NASASpaceflight: SpaceX Boca Chica - Starship SN1 Aft/Fwd Tank Section Stacking

What we see in this video is the assembly of the full tank structure of Starship SN01. Earlier this week we saw the mating of the liquid methane tank segment with the liquid oxygen tank segment. Yesterday, these were stacked onto the thrust structure segment which will contain the engines. You can easily see the difference in build quality between this and the fairing section of Starship MK1 that stands nearby.

It seems probable that the next steps would involve transporting this section to the launch pad for pressure testing, much as the MK1 prototype underwent, with particular focus on the quality of the welds between ring segments. If that is successful, we'll see flight hardware added along with the build of the fairing section. The earliest SN01 could attempt its 20 km maiden flight would be mid-March, so we'll see if SpaceX keeps that schedule.

• From many, many sources this morning (but this is the first), Daredevil "Mad Mike" Hughes has died after his self-built steam-powered rocket crashed. Also: CNN, BBC, WaPo...

Trigger Warning: the linked video shows a death, though not graphically.

It's always unfortunate when someone dies like this, but there are so many factors contributing to Mad Mike earning a Darwin Award that I can't bring myself to feel much sadness. This guy builds homemade rockets in his backyard, and glommed onto the Flat Earther movement to get publicity, claiming he'd fly to space (100 km) aboard his little toy to prove once and for all that the Earth is flat.

He had one prior semi-successful launch (meaning he lived), but this time his parachute didn't go up with him, so all he succeeded in doing was making himself flat. RIP.

• From Twitter, it looks like SpaceX Falcon 9 booster B1056 did not make it back to port.

There is still no explanation given for what went wrong with the landing attempt for the booster that flew on SpaceX's Starlink mission last Monday. We watched it barely miss the drone ship and soft-land in the ocean less than 100 meters away. Apparently, the recovery team was not able to save it, so it would have been scuttled and sunk (presumably after retrieving any expensive bits they wanted to save, like the grid fins). The fairings did return home, but not in once piece.

It is not yet known what the loss of this booster means for the company's launch schedule this year, as both SpaceX and Elon have been uncharacteristically quiet. Still, it's remarkable that we are commenting on the failure of a booster to be recovered. It shows how far rocket science has come in the past few years.

• NASASpaceflight: SLS debut slips to April 2021, KSC teams working through launch sims

In SLS news this week, as dry a topic as ever but I want to keep covering it for balance, the NET (No Earlier Than) date for the launch of the first SLS rocket has been moved back to April 18, 2021. The core stage continues to undergo testing at Stennis Space Center and the major effort right now is the team members performing full simulated launches to rehearse procedures.

As always, launch previews and schedules are courtesy of Everyday Astronaut, although I want to put in a plug for Next Spaceflight.com, which has web, Android, and iOS apps for tracking launches and launch vehicles.

• AstraSpace: Astra Rocket 3.0 | One of Three: February 26 20:30 UTC (3:30 PM EST)

This will be the first launch of Astra's "Rocket 3.0", a new small lift vehicle, carrying five payloads: four smallsats and a spacecraft identification beacon (SOARS). The launch site is Kodiak, Alaska and the sponsor is DARPA. I don't know if there will be live coverage, as Astra is notoriously secretive about its operations.

---

And that's it for next week. The week after could have up to five launches, including SpaceX CRS-20 on March 2 and another Starlink mission on March 4, plus China, Russia, and India.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 23rd 2020 at 9:51:55 AM

The random post is saying I'm about to "settle this thing". That's comfortable...

IIRC, Mad Mike actually did launch a rocket once - here's the YouTube link. Somehow, despite not learning that the earth wasn't flat, the guy decided to try again. I know people say that "if at first you don't succeed..., but this wasn't the right way to approach it, really.

Fun fact: commercial planes fly at 30,000 feet or thereabouts. He only made it about 1,875. He could have just taken a plane...

I'm not surprised that the SLS is delayed again. I do think that the first crewed flights of Crew Dragon and Starliner will take place this year, which will hopefully put astronauts back into space. It's been too long...

P.S. As I type this, it's Monday afternoon where I live. Timezones are weird...

Edit: By looking at the video, the parachute deployed at the very start and then ripped away. Poor guy didn't stand a chance.

Edited by Dacool1here on Feb 24th 2020 at 5:17:35 PM

Insert lots of Kerbal Space Program "check yo' staging" jokes. For the amount of money he spent on his backyard rocket project, he could probably have saved up and taken a flight on Blue Origin's first manned New Shepard mission when that happens in 2020 or 2021.

And yes, we have confirmation that Crew Dragon will fly this year before Starliner, assuming that Boeing isn't forced to conduct another orbital flight test to prove that it's resolved the software issues.

I saw tweets this morning that NASA has decided to extend the DM-2 (Crew Dragon crewed flight test) from its original two week duration to as long as three months so that the astronauts can assist with critical ISS tasks.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 24th 2020 at 7:21:30 AM

NASA: Katherine Johnson, a NASA mathematician, died today at the age of 101. Johnson was a pioneer in many respects, becoming one of the first black students to attend graduate school in West Virginia in 1936. She joined NACA before it became NASA and was instrumental in performing calculations for orbital flights. She earned the distinction of being the first woman in the Flight Research Division credited on a research report.

Such was her reputation that John Glenn demanded that she be called to double-check the computerized orbital calculations for his Friendship 7 mission in 1962 and would only go when she had verified them by hand. In 2015, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Most of us can only dream of living such a life.

NASA has a whole set of content dedicated to her for those who want more info.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 24th 2020 at 9:54:11 AM

I went to an astronomy camp last year in North America, and they showed us the Hidden Figures film which featured her. She was a true pioneer in helping Gemini and Mercury programs land successfully. There's also a book about her (Hidden Figures) which I may or may not have.

Rest in peace, Katherine.

SpaceNews op-ed: NASA: Need Another Space Assignment?

This article excoriates Congress for H.R. 5666, comparing its attempt to reclaim manned space travel as the exclusive province of prime contractors to the U.S. deciding, in the early 20th century, that civil aviation was not something that should be in the hands of private enterprise. Thankfully that did not happen and we have a robust and commercially successful air transport industry.

It is obscene that we have private companies developing solutions to lunar and interplanetary travel that promise to cost 1/10 or less of what Boeing offers, yet Congress continues to slavishly work away at its balls and get loving mouthfuls of its erect shaft. Meanwhile, for all the promises to get to the Moon by 2024 or 2028 or whatever, 100% of technology investment has gone to the rocket, with zero attention to landers or habitats for eventual long-term human habitation.

In fact, H.R. 5666 would cut all funding for commercial Moon landers and hand that contract to Boeing as well.

I know this is sort of a retread, but I'm still infuriated by it.

For fun, Randy Weber of TX defended the bill in a Twitter thread that got ... well, let's just say a lot of angry responses.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 7:58:22 AM

We are talking about this bill?

Yes, that’s the one.

To be honest, I can't see why Congress would keep investing in Boeing besides the faint hope that Boeing will ''somehow'' send astronauts into space before the end of this year. Meanwhile, SpaceX has completed all of their tests (and actually tested their software) and should send an astronaut into space by no later than June.

Why is Congress investing in Boeing anyway?

What.

And as a sidenote, is there anyone in this thread who has seen a Space Shuttle launch live? (By live, I mean at the location or on a video feed.) I wished that I could see one, but I was too young at the time.

I'm old enough to remember the Shuttle well, but I never attended a launch in person.

Edited:

Short answer: Pork. Long answer: Boeing is a political darling of Congress for its long-running role as a sole-source contractor that provides lots of high-paying jobs in important districts. This is not exclusive to the United States; one commonality found in space programs around the world is that they justify themselves in part as jobs programs. It's hard to sell the general public on seemingly abstract scientific benefits, but easy to say, "Look at all the jobs I've brought to you." ^note The European Space Agency intentionally decided not to pursue reusable rockets... not because of any safety or cost concerns but because building rockets gives people jobs. Seriously.

These public contractors in turn take advantage of this by sending out not-so-subtle warnings that any attempt to take away their cushy contracts or make the space programs more efficient by seeking multiple sources would threaten all those politically popular jobs. "Compete my contracts and you won't get reelected" is a powerful message to a politician.

Indeed, Boeing can call on a strong and enduring legacy of spaceflight experience, but we've been seeing over the past decade how that legacy has been tarnished by its transformation to focus on profitability and investor value rather than on the core engineering expertise that put it in its preferred position in the first place. Its lobbying arm is still going strong, though.

FYI, I am not against investing in programs like SLS and Starliner per se. For Commercial Crew, the decision to have multiple contractors was incredibly wise, because this provides redundancy. If Boeing screws up, we still have SpaceX, and if SpaceX screws up, we still have Boeing. For SLS... well, the case is a lot weaker, but the fact that there is a master plan adds some competitive urgency to private companies who are also working on heavy-lift rockets, as well as a backup should they not work out.

It's also completely fair to say that Starship is as yet unproven. From some points of view, it is a dangerous, reckless project with ambitious goals but a tiny chance of achieving them. All SpaceX might accomplish is to crash a few steel cans before running out of money and giving up. Now, I don't believe that, but it's a genuine risk. Pinning the future of manned U.S. space exploration on it would be irresponsible. But then we have Blue Origin and its New Glenn, which offers heavy, manned lift capacity with a much more traditional development process, and even it would be a lot cheaper than SLS, if not as capable.

There are private companies champing at the bit to bid on lunar exploration projects. It is stupid to the point of grotesque malfeasance to shut them out in favor of Boeing.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 9:43:57 AM

I grew up in south Florida, I used to watch shuttle launches live. It was just a little orange flare that you could watch moving from the horizon up into the sky, not super impressive,... except for the fact that it was more than 100 miles away and still easily visible with the naked eye.

Now I live in central Florida, and only about 30 miles from Cape Canaveral. I still watch launches when I can, though nothing currently flying is as big as the space shuttle. There was a brief overlap when I lived in central Florida (in Titusville, in fact, directly across the Indian River lagoon from Cape Canaveral) while the shuttle was still flying, but the last launch happened while I was out of the country, so I never got to watch it from close up.

Edited by NativeJovian on Feb 25th 2020 at 5:05:45 AM

So, do you have a Starship update for me? Yes, sir, I do! It was super easy, barely an inconvenience.

SpaceX has finished transferring Starship SN01's tank section to the launch mount. Elon Musk confirmed on Twitter [1] that this will be used in static fire testing with a Raptor engine that will presumably be delivered soon. Road closures in Boca Chica start Thursday, which might be for pressure testing.

Amid the typical bombardment of questions that every Elon tweet gets, we learned that only one engine will be mounted on this tank, while SN02, which will begin stacking soon, will get the expected three. Whether this means that SN01 will not attempt to fly and SN02 will be the version that attempts a 20 km hop is unclear. In theory, a single Raptor might be able to lift the whole Starship; it is designed for multiple engine-out capability.

LabPadre posted a Youtube video showing the transfer of the tank section to the launch mount via crane. It is astonishing that something like that might eventually fly people to Mars.

Each successive build of Starship is expected to iterate on the design, yielding significant improvements in welding, fit, and in general providing a ton of data that will be used to automate the production. The fit issues are easy to see with SN01, as the stacking of the various parts resulted in some dimpling of the stainless steel ring segments.

In other news (we're fair and balanced at Fighteer's Rocket Report), Scott Manley posted this video discussing Astra Space's new rocket, which has finally been revealed to the public. It is now scheduled for launch Thursday, I believe, due to weather concerns.

Astra is the sole remaining bidder in a DARPA project to develop a smallsat launch platform that can be deployed on demand, allowing launch within weeks or even hours of the request rather than the months or years it takes with current launch systems. Astra's Rocket (it has no known official name) can be carried in a shipping container and have payloads integrated in the same container. It carries all required launch equipment, including the mount, with it.

Rocket's first stage operates on five electric pump kerolox engines delivering 28 kN of thrust each. The second stage configuration is not known. It can deliver up to 200 kg of payload to low Earth orbit.

Astra has attempted two previous test launches from their Kodiak, Alaska facility, and both failed to achieve their test goals, although the company still called them successful.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 25th 2020 at 6:47:50 AM

Never saw a shuttle launch except videos and NASA's stream of the final launch but I did go down for an Atlas launch (upper end of medium launch vehicles; ~20% of the shuttle's power if I'm remembering right).

Being on the 5 mile limit for that was incredible; visually it's about the same as watching a livestream but there is nothing that comes close to the sound that hits you once it starts the gravity turn.

The closest I can come to even describeing it is that if you've ever been to an airshow, take the sound of an afterburning jet and multiply it by about 100 and you'll be in the neighborhood of the sheer force of the sound. From 5 miles away from the pad you could feel the ground shaking.

If that Astra rocket succeeds, it will be a serious competitor to Rocket Lab's Electron.

I once watched a predawn launch of a satellite from Canavral, and it lit up the ocean all the way to the horizon. It was was weird suddenly seeing fishing boats I hadnt known were there.

I want to attend a launch in person some day. Maybe if I take another vacation to Florida, I'll try to arrange it to coincide with launch schedules. I've seen videos of audience reactions to the Falcon Heavy launch in 2018. It must have been an incredible experience.

Edit: speaking of launch viewing, launch photographer Glenn Davis just posted this image on Twitter of the Atlas V 411 carrying Solar Orbiter. The SRB exhaust is so bright in real life that it's impossible to stare at directly, like looking at the Sun. Cameras filming them have to use special settings and/or filters.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 26th 2020 at 9:56:39 AM

I actually did watch a launch one day. April 2016, or thereabouts. My dad and I went to Cape Canaveral and saw a Falcon 9 launch. It was actually the first launch that led to them successfully landing the booster on the drone ship.

Unfortunately, I just had to screw it up. I fumbled out my camera and ended up videotaping the area to the right of the rocket, so I didn't even see the liftoff. I was still able to take a video of the actual launch, though. I don't know where my camera is - it's been four years since then.

Some more cool news today: Northrop Grumman's Mission Extension Vehicle (MEV-1) has successfully docked with a defunct satellite, specifically INTELSAT IS-901, in orbit [1]. The goal of the MEV is to demonstrate the ability to resupply (and even sometimes repair) other satellites that have been decommissioned.

No orbit is perfect: gravitational perturbations from other planets, atmospheric drag, influence from the Earth's magnetic field, and many other factors cause satellites to drift slightly over time. A satellite ends its useful life when it runs out of the fuel needed to make adjustments to its orbit and/or attitude to remain where it needs to be. When this happens, it is either deorbited or moved to a "graveyard orbit" where it is not at risk of colliding with anything and can be safely shut down.

The MEV can dock with such satellites and refuel them in-orbit, extending their lifespans. If refueling is not possible for technical reasons, it can also deploy its own propulsion module to take over for the original satellite's engines.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 26th 2020 at 4:13:35 AM

Oh, that's neat! Some sort of orbital cleanup system is going to be necessary eventually, and if they can also extend the life of satellites, that's going to help by making it so they don't need to boost another satellite for that much longer.

I wonder how many satellites can be refueled without being explicitly designed for it. Seems like something that would be difficult, but if they built a whole system around doing it, that implies that they think it's worth their while...

Edited by NativeJovian on Feb 26th 2020 at 9:19:14 AM

The other option, as I thought I mentioned, is to bolt an entirely new maneuvering system onto an existing satellite, with its own fuel and propulsion.