The Space Thread

You did mention it, I was just commenting on the fact that it's got a refueling system at all, when I wouldn't have expected that to be viable.

Edited by NativeJovian on Feb 27th 2020 at 10:07:47 AM

Really from Jupiter, but not an alien.

It's been a while since I read the original article, but I believe there are plans for both. Some satellites can be refueled by using robotic manipulators to unseal the loading ports. Others can't have it done at all. I don't remember which tech MEV-1 uses, but it or spacecraft like it are supposed to be able to service multiple satellites in the course of their missions.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 27th 2020 at 10:11:53 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Here is a relevant video on the subject. It's a few weeks old, but it describes the concept well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBOQSRZSFgs

Edited by petersohn on Feb 27th 2020 at 4:30:49 PM

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.

So according to that video, right now towing the older satellite is considered proven technology, but the are working on refueling for those satellites which can be refueled.

Yes, I apologize if I gave the opposite impression in my earlier post.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

SpaceX Starship update:

• In a flurry of tweets [1] , Elon Musk said that SN01, the tank section build that is currently on the test stand at Boca Chica, will undergo a series of tests including water pressure (leak test), cryo pressure with liquid nitrogen, wet dress rehearsal, and static fire. He very pointedly did not say whether this build would attempt flight, instead telling us that SN02 would mount three Raptor engines. A single Raptor has been spotted at the facility, and it would be technically risky to attempt a full hop with only one engine.
  
  We won't know for sure the fate of SN01 until/unless we see legs and/or fins installed. However, the SN02 build is planned to start very soon and should go even faster than SN01's four weeks. Consensus among the community seems to be that this is the Starship that will fly to 20 km and attempt its insane skydive/landing flip maneuver.
  
  
• At the shipyard, the first new Starship nosecone is in the process of being stacked [2]. It is easy to see in these photos how much cleaner it is than Mk1. The fit of the rings is being adjusted prior to welding, of course, and this is still a very rough cut, to be improved with each successive build. We do not yet know if this will become part of the fairing section for SN01 or SN02.

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• SpaceX has submitted to the FAA updated plans to expand its presence at Kennedy SFC Pad 39A with a vertical integration facility and what appears to be a larger payload fairing on Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy. This is going to be crucial as it seeks to compete for additional military and national security contracts. The full draft is located here.

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• Northrop Grumman has completed a static fire of the second stage of its upcoming OmegA rocket, with apparent success. Unlike the static test fire of a booster last year, in which the nozzle dramatically exploded a few seconds before the end, they didn't stream it. [3]

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• Reminder: The launch window for Astra's "One of Three" mission currently starts February 28 at 20:30 UTC (3:30 PM EST, 11:30 AM Alaskan time). We expect DARPA to livestream the launch from their website here; I will post a Youtube link if one comes up. Succeed or fail, it'll be interesting to watch.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 27th 2020 at 6:28:41 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/mini-moon-2020-cd3-size-of-a-car-is-orbiting-the-earth-astronomers-say/

Earth now has a second mini-moon (2020 CD3), which may be ejected from Earth's orbit in April because its orbit is unstable. The mini-moon is only as big as a car, but at least we can temporarily say that Earth has moons.

Apparently, there was another one in orbit between 2006 and 2007. I guess these things happen occasionally, every few decades or so, but we failed to detect them before.

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.

Makes sense, car-sized things are not easy to see in space.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Unless it's a livestream of the Tesla Roadster.

Edit: Or the actual car itself.

Edited by Dacool1here on Feb 28th 2020 at 2:58:46 PM

https://www.whereisroadster.com/

Of course, it's far too small to see with a telescope, but we do know exactly where it is.

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Anyway, yes, the Earth captures asteroids and gains temporary moons every so often. Other planets do it too. Jupiter in particular has literally hundreds of them due to its gravity and its proximity to the asteroid belt.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 28th 2020 at 6:46:03 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Cross-posting with the military thread: The US Air Force is working with SpaceX for a massive new exercise. [1]

The exercise is going to involve a variety of sea, air, and land assets and will supposedly have a live-fire portion involving shooting down drones and a ballistic missile. It’s testing the military’s new Advanced Battle Management System, a new command and control architecture that is supposed to allow seamless integration across all the branches and battle spaces. SpaceX will be providing communication via their Starlink satellites for the exercise, and possibly for the system as a whole in the future.

I’m guessing they’re interested in Starlink because of how distributed it is. The loss of one or a few satellites is less likely to compromise the overall function of the system, which makes sense given recent advancements in Russian and Chinese anti-satellite technology.

This is actually not the first time SpaceX and the USAF have demonstrated this capability. A few months ago a Starlink satellite fed target data to an AC-130 in a smaller test of the same system.

Edited by archonspeaks on Feb 28th 2020 at 12:36:23 PM

They should have sent a poet.

That is really sexy.

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FYI, Astra's Rocket "1 of 3" launch will be tomorrow instead of today. They had to ship in some replacement parts before wet dress rehearsal could be completed; that pushed everything back a day.

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Boeing held a press conference today to discuss its plans for moving forward with the Starliner program. NASASpaceflight covers it here.

It's a long article so I'll only note the major points: Starliner did better than the baseline expectations in some ways, and they're fixing the ways it didn't go well, including the processes that allowed the software problems to make it through. NASA will ultimately decide when and how Starliner will fly again.

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From NASA: NASA Awards Launch Services Contract for the Psyche Mission... to SpaceX's Falcon Heavy.

Yep, you heard me. FH will perform its first interplanetary exploration mission in July 2022, sending a probe to the asteroid Psyche (the primary mission) and two other spacecraft to Mars and the asteroid belt. The total launch cost is given as $117 million, which is lower than the $148.3 million price of the other Discovery mission, Lucy, aboard Atlas V [1].

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 28th 2020 at 4:38:12 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Starlink is a pretty natural choice for the mission. I wouldn’t be surprised to see it become a centerpiece of US command and control architecture going forward.

Interestingly, SpaceX and the USAF have a very tight relationship. The USAF acquisitions chief described them as one of their top industry partners, and a few years ago SpaceX’s president said at an AF symposium that they’d be willing to launch weapons into space.

They should have sent a poet.

Well, it looks like any question about whether Starship SN01 would be flight-worthy has been rendered moot. In cryogenic pressure testing tonight, the tank section did the thing that hot water heaters do when they pop. It decided to launch itself towards the stars without an engine.

"This is why we test", as they say.

If you want to see a video stream of it, go here. Interestingly, just before the explosion you can see a lot of liquid nitrogen emerge from the base of the tank. If the tank was leaking, it would relieve the pressure and not burst, so I'm not sure what is causing that. Maybe the relief just wasn't enough.

One presumes that the SN02 build will proceed shortly, although they will undoubtedly have to do a lot of repair work at the launch site.

Edited as I found a better video.

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For those interested, Elon Musk appeared today (or yesterday depending on when you're reading this) at the Air Force Association Air Warfare Symposium and had about an hour talk with Lt Gen John F. Thompson. For those who don't want to watch the whole video, SpaceNews summarized the goings-on.

Some highlights:

• Musk pitched reusable rockets again, of course, asking, "How do we make Starfleet real?" He believes that the Air Force needs to stop relying on expendable boosters.
• Musk is fully focused on developing Starship, noting that if the U.S. does not innovate in space, it will lose out to those who do.
• He cast aspersions at the F-35, saying that more competition is needed and that an autonomous drone aircraft could outperform it.

Edited by Fighteer on Feb 28th 2020 at 1:51:05 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

A full analysis of these remarks is perhaps better suited for the military thread but I’ll say that while I don’t always agree with Musk he’s more or less spot on here, with the caveat that the F-35 should be augmenting autonomous tactical aircraft rather than being replaced by them. His vision of the air battlespace of the future being dominated by swarms of locally autonomous fightercraft governed by a minimal man in the loop system is spot on.

They should have sent a poet.

Yes, that would be better for the military thread. FYI, it seems that last night's overpressure test for Starship was again intentional. Elon had tweeted earlier that they had discovered flaws in the welding methods being used — nobody has ever tried to build an orbital rocket out of welded stainless steel, after all — and decided on that basis not to fly SN01.

I would assume that blowing it up provides useful data on the ultimate strength of the material under those conditions, although I wouldn't put it past Elon to blow it up for fun anyway.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Bet you all missed me. All the rocket news and launch schedules that are fit to print, coming right up...

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 2nd 2020 at 9:34:23 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

ArsTechnica: NASA’s large SLS rocket unlikely to fly before at least late 2021

This isn't really new reporting so much as confirmation of many things already believed. "Late 2021" is now an "earliest" date for SLS, and NASA has apparently also said it needs $2 billion more to make that happen.

I can't realistically imagine that a Democratic administration, should we win in this year's election, would keep the unrestricted flow of pork open to the Artemis program.

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Astra Space's Rocket 3.0 launch was scrubbed for today. They had weather issues early in the countdown, followed by GNC (guidance, navigation, and control) problems as they attempted to launch. It seems that they will lose out on the $2 million award from DARPA, as today was the final day for them to achieve that milestone. I don't know where they'll go from here; we'll find out soon enough, I suppose.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 2nd 2020 at 6:03:27 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

Via a series of tweets, Jeff Foust informs us that Astra and DARPA have said that the company failed the challenge, and the cubesats will be removed; however, Astra has commercial payloads lined up and will deliver those once they've resolved the GNC anomaly to their satisfaction. Possibly a matter of weeks.

[1] [2] [3] [4]

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That poor SLS has been delayed so many times it's just a Running Gag by now. Remember when NASA announced the SLS and said it would be set to launch in 2016? Yeah.

NASA should try and help SpaceX out as opposed to Boeing, as SpaceX has a slightly better safety record. And yet, since Boeing is such an important contractor, Congress keeps shoving handfuls of money down Boeing's throat. Despite the fact that Boeing have proven to be... well... not the ''safest'' company.

I fully believe that SpaceX will win the new space race. And as to Astra - just keep trying. One of these days, they can launch a rocket if they believe in themselves.

Edit: formatting update

Edited by Dacool1here on Mar 6th 2020 at 2:05:51 AM

At the current state of the project, SLS will probably launch before Starship. Though sometimes I have doubts about that. Also, if Starship ever launches, it will be a much better rocket than SLS.

The universe is under no obligation to make sense to us.

Yeah, but the SLS wasn't supposed to be competing against Starship, it's supposed to be competing against the crew-carrying version of the Dragon capsule.

The development programs for SLS and Starship are so different that it's hard to meaningfully compare them. The very first SLS rocket that launches will be of final, production hardware and it is expected to work 100% out of the gate. This is because it's the end product of a process in which every single part and system is painstakingly validated. Each rocket is an immense effort, and it shows in how long it takes to build.

Starship, on the other hand, is going to achieve suborbital flight this year and possibly make it to orbit, depending on how rapidly SpaceX can iterate. We're seeing the capability of building a full rocket body in under a month, with the goal of making it less than a week, but this also means we should expect more failures and lessons learned on the fly, as it were.

My belief is that Starship will get to orbit well before SLS, but that Artemis 1 may launch before Starship's design is mature enough to realize its potential.

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I wouldn't say that SLS is competing with Crew Dragon (or Starliner for that matter). While SLS/Orion would be capable, in principle, of delivering astronauts to the ISS, it would be massive overkill. SLS is built for interplanetary missions; anything else would be a horrid waste. It exists in a class all its own, because once Starship matures, SLS will be as obsolete as the Model T.

Note that I'm ignoring Blue Origin for now, as we haven't seen any flight hardware from it. New Glenn, which it's said will fly in 2021, will be in the same general class as Falcon Heavy and Delta IV Heavy, but it will not be meant to take astronauts to the Moon. That will be reserved for New Armstrong, of which we have yet to hear more than a concept.

Nobody else is building anything even comparable. Although China intends its Long March 10 rocket to be capable of interplanetary missions, that's ten years out at minimum.

Edited by Fighteer on Mar 5th 2020 at 11:56:04 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

A couple of launch updates and a news story...

• India: GSLV Mk II | GISAT-1: I never got a launch notification, and it seems to have been scrubbed and is now scheduled for "March" but without a specific date.
• Arianespace: Soyuz STA/Fregat | Falcon Eye 2: Launch is now March 7 01:33 UTC (March 6 8:33 PM EST). Either I got the dates wrong or it was bumped a day.

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Eric Berger just published a long article on Ars Technica about his visit to the SpaceX Starship factory at Boca Chica, where he spoke at length with Elon Musk. The article is really exceptional and I highly recommend reading it, but let me see if I can drill down to the fundamental points.

• In February, Elon visited the site and asked why they weren't keeping up the pace. When he learned they were understaffed, he arranged to double the work force to over 500 in less than a week.
• The SN01 Starship was not expected to blow up. The fault was in the thrust puck: a structure that supports the engines against the fuel tanks. It's one of the most significant elements because literally the entire weight of the rocket rests on it during flight. The engineers knew it was a bad design but didn't tell Musk. He told them that if they think there's a risk, they should tell him. He'll take the responsibility for deciding if it's acceptable. They only get in trouble if they don't pass him the buck.
• The first Starship prototype took 9 months. The second took 1 month. The goal is to be building one per week by the end of the year, and ultimately two per week, with a cost per vehicle of $5 million.
• The team is literally inventing new machines to help them assemble the rockets faster. The domes took a week when everything was done by hand. Now they have a special tool for holding it in place so the seams can be welded, and a new in-house X-ray machine to examine the welds.
• Musk thinks Mars needs a million tons of cargo before it can become self-sustaining. This is the reason for the high volume of Starship production.
• The Hawthorne plant has now built 23 or 24 Raptor engines in total, improving on the design each time. Musk didn't say how many have blown up, but it's at least six or seven.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"