TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

The Space Thread

Go To

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13426: Aug 18th 2024 at 8:16:04 PM

I left plenty of gaps this week for conversation, so now it's time to seed a bunch more topics into the thread. Also, I saw Alien: Romulus today and I'm mildly annoyed at it for portraying planetary rings as an Asteroid Thicket. I know that physics slides way down the priority list in sci-fi horror, but yeesh. Immersion. Broken.

As before, I'm putting each topic in a folder to keep this post from eating an entire forum page. Let me know if you have any other suggestions.

    Polaris Dawn Coming Soon to a Launch Pad Near You 

With Crew-9 postponed to late September, LC-39A is freed up for Polaris Dawn to lift off no earlier than August 26. As we recall, this was delayed from late July when SpaceX had a mishap on a Falcon 9 second stage that shut down launches for two weeks. The precise launch time is dictated not by the ISS' orbit, as would be the case with other crewed missions, but by the need to avoid MMOD (micrometeorite orbital debris) at high altitude. As such, it is in the wee hours of the morning, so I won't be able to watch. Boo.

Naturally, as the countdown nears, the crew have been giving a lot more interviews and press appearances. One such is by CNBC: The first SpaceX spacewalk: What the Polaris Dawn commander says about the bold upcoming mission.

I'll recap this in greater detail next weekend; don't want to spoil the mega-post. It's important to keep in mind the stakes for the mission: the first humans to travel this far from Earth since Gemini (technically Apollo, but those went to the Moon), the first fully private spaceflight to conduct an EVA, and the opener in a series of missions that is expected to culminate in the first humans to ride on Starship.

    Starliner's Fate to be Decided Soon 

I wasn't clear last week on the details of the plan for the final decision on whether to return astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams on Starliner Calypso or fly them home on a Crew Dragon next year. As I posted earlier, Eric Berger reported that the departure date would be September 2 with crew or September 6 without, the latter because of the need to upload new software parameters to allow the craft to fly fully autonomously.

There's a whole story behind why Starliner doesn't have fully autonomous capability. It does, but it's a matter of NASA and Boeing agreeing to use different parameters for a crewed flight under the assumption that they wouldn't need to run the capsule with nobody on board. Hindsight makes fools of us all.

Anyway, we have learned that the decision gate for whether Starliner is safe to bring its crew home is August 26. Coincidentally, this is the day that Polaris Dawn plans to launch.

Meanwhile, Ars Technica discusses why NASA is so uncertain about the risks of using Starliner. In a nutshell, the thrusters may not have been properly designed for the environment they were used in, and this means it's very difficult to be absolutely certain about the safety of the ones currently in orbit.

Having been burned twice before on safety risks at a cost of fourteen astronauts, the administration is understandably nervous about making a risky call like that. But sending Starliner home without its crew is also risky, since it would leave them only one escape option in a critical emergency: strap themselves to the floor of the Crew-8 Dragon and pray.

    NASA's Budget Problems — Ars Technica Interview with Bill Nelson 

Ars Technica: NASA chief to scientists on budget cuts: “I feel your pain”

Bill Nelson can't make more money appear out of thin air, and so NASA is facing painful cuts, mainly to its science operations. Administrator Nelson discusses this in an interview. There's nothing super new here, although we did learn last week that NASA is trying to get a private bidder to take over its VIPER mission to the Moon. Speaking of...

    VIPER Mission May Be Rescued 

SpaceNews: Intuitive Machines seeks to take over NASA’s VIPER lunar rover

In response to public outcry about the VIPER rover running over budget and facing mandatory cancellation, NASA issued a Request for Information seeking commercial partners to pay the remaining costs to keep its mission going. Intuitive Machines is reported to be putting together such a proposal. It's ironic that it would do this since Astrobotic is the company whose lander it would be riding on, and the two companies are (friendly) competitors in NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services contract.

    The Fate of United Launch Alliance 

United Launch Alliance is hemorrhaging staff, according to Bloomberg, with a lot of its key employees being recruited away by such companies as Blue Origin and SpaceX. Bezos' company reportedly offers higher pay, while Musk's offers a daring vision of a future in space.

It has been known for well over a year that Boeing and Lockheed Martin, the joint owners of ULA, are trying to sell the company. It was reported recently that Blue Origin was considering buying it, which made sense in some ways but not others. Pro: Blue Origin would no longer be "selling" its BE-4 engines for use on Vulcan but could do it all in house. Con: It would be operating three competing orbital rockets at the same time: Atlas V, Vulcan, and New Glenn.

Well, Reuters now reports that Sierra Space may be the mystery buyer instead. Sierra is working to send its Dream Chaser spaceplane to orbit for the first time, and that launch would be aboard a Vulcan rocket. Indeed, it was supposed to be on the second certification flight before delays made that impossible.

The deal would value ULA at between $2 and $3 billion, but sources claim that its parents want substantially more. The company's launch business has suffered greatly to SpaceX, but it has an ambitious manifest coming up, fueled in large part by Amazon's Project Kuiper. There is also a national security interest in keeping a "captive" launch provider for the US military and not placing all of the government's eggs in the SpaceX basket.

There's no guarantee that the deal goes through, but reporters will be keeping a close eye on it.  

    Fights over Starlink Mobile and Data Limits 

Ars Technica: AT&T and Verizon ask FCC to throw a wrench into Starlink’s mobile plan

Citing interference concerns, AT&T and Verizon are trying to get the Federal Communications Commission to stop SpaceX and T-Mobile's plan to offer emergency cellular coverage using Starlink satellites. Executing this plan requires an FCC waiver for the power density of transmissions from space.

SpaceX, of course, disputes these claims, adding that the FCC's emissions limit is too strict. Separately, PCMag reports that it is petitioning the FCC to update its rules for the power flux density of satellite transmissions. The current rules were adopted in 2000 and SpaceX claims that they are hindering the deployment of modern technology.

One of the reasons for the rules is to protect geostationary satellites from signal interference from satellites operating at lower altitudes.

    Rocket Factory Augsburg Maiden Launch 

SpaceNews: First RFA launch in a “matter of weeks”

Rocket Factory Augsburg's RFA One rocket is being prepared for its maiden launch from SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands. The spaceport has been in development for many years and has faced financial woes but is now ready to support the ambitions of private European launchers.

All components of the rocket are now at the spaceport and ready to go, save for the first stage which needs to complete static fire testing. This is not a trivial test, as we found out recently when both ABL Space Systems and Space Pioneer lost boosters due to different malfunctions.

I will continue to keep track of RFA's progress and provide an update when there is a firmer launch date. Right now, it's anything from "a few weeks" to the end of the year.

    Launch Schedule Updates 

It's a very SpaceX couple of weeks coming up, with the only other launches still on the schedule for August being Chinese. My family is planning a trip down to Florida in a few weeks, where I will hopefully get to see a launch or two in person.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 18th 2024 at 11:40:38 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Troper1138 Since: Dec, 2010
#13427: Aug 19th 2024 at 10:22:34 AM

I haven't seen Alien: Romulus but my understanding is that planetary ring systems really could be as dense as an Empire Strikes Back "asteroid field". They would not, of course, be as chaotic: Trying to go against the flow (like an action hero driving the wrong way on the highway) would be unbelievably suicidal (I don't care how good your reflexes are, you aren't dodging things at orbital speeds) but a spaceship might hypothetically match speeds and orbit in amongst all the other stuff in the ring and not immediately die. Depending on the specifics of the planetary ring system in question (turns out they're actually pretty common, if the Solar System is anything to go by, and all sorts of astronomical objects have rings) it might even provide a somewhat useful hiding spot. Better than trying to hide in the middle of nowhere, anyway.

On to real world space stuff: The Polaris Dawn mission definitely strikes me as one of the more interesting upcoming space launches. Interesting in every sense of the word, including "Oh, I hope they don't all die!" Fingers crossed!

petersohn from Earth, Solar System (Long Runner) Relationship Status: Hiding
#13428: Aug 19th 2024 at 11:11:19 AM

[up]Planetary rings usually consist of much smaller particles than the aforementioned asteroid field. There are larger pieces too, anything that has a substantial amount of gravity influence the other particles near them and are called shepherd moons. If two of those would become too close to each other they would probably crash into each other given time. But yeah, you definitely wouldn't want to navigate through a planetary ring with a spacecraft.

Fjón þvæ ég af mér fjanda minna rán og reiði ríkra manna.
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#13429: Aug 19th 2024 at 11:18:51 AM

Um, Cassini made it through Saturn's rings just fine.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13430: Aug 19th 2024 at 11:21:27 AM

Yeah. The problem with the rings of planet whatever-its-name-is — well, the main problem — is that they are simply too dense to continue existing. Particles in a system like that are not following uniform trajectories. Obeying the laws of entropy, their orbits would randomize over time thanks to collisions, gravity perturbations, and atmospheric drag.

Most importantly, orbits closer to a body are faster than orbits farther away. The ring particles are shown rotating in unison, which is literally physically impossible. The tidal forces that the rings would be subject to would shear them into layers, with slower material deorbiting and faster material kicked into higher, slower orbits.

Even if the rings resulted from the recent breakup of a body, like a moon reaching its Roche limit, they could not possibly be as dense nor as organized as is shown in the movie. And yes, while flying through a ring system could be hazardous, it would not cause a spacecraft to be ground down by a wall of rocks as depicted there.

The rings of Saturn are extremely diffuse. You would be at increased risk of MMOD collision passing through them, but not enough to make it suicidal.

While the planet in question is shown to be under perpetual cloud cover with massive storms (I guess they borrowed the setting from The Matrix), the greatest hazard to anyone living there would in fact be the perpetual bombardment from meteors as the rings broke up.

It's also hard to judge given the lack of scale indicators, but the perspectives shown in the movie make the planet out to be a few hundred kilometers in diameter at most. Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale.

Edit: I suppose it's possible that the rings are artificial structures maintained by Weyland-Yutani, but (a) why? (b) that would indicate the ability to perform orbital engineering on a technological scale that belies the Used Future aesthetic of the film. They're using child labor in the mines at the same time as they can create artificial, physics-defying planetary rings? Pull the other one.

Then again, the setting does have gravity control. That's a singularity technology as I've pointed out many times. Maybe it's all a Potemkin Village sham to befuddle the masses... for some reason.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2024 at 2:40:14 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#13431: Aug 19th 2024 at 11:43:27 AM

Well, that one's actually simple - if you company wants to get something buried deep inside the moon, having it get ripped apart by tides and turned into a ring system is one way to go about it.

And while I am pretty certain that tidal breakup is a process that happens on orbital (read: far less than human lifespan), I don't think that the thinning-out process of a dense ring is that quick.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13432: Aug 19th 2024 at 11:46:35 AM

For rings as dense as shown in the movie, they would break up within a matter of days or weeks unless artificially maintained. It's just not credible. The rocks are literally orbiting in contact with one another, at a uniform angular rate from the inner to outer edge. In other words, they're acting as a solid disc, and a first-year student of astrophysics could explain why that's impossible.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2024 at 2:48:09 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Troper1138 Since: Dec, 2010
#13433: Aug 19th 2024 at 12:27:46 PM

From what I can find, Saturn's rings are made up of particles which "range in size from microns to tens of meters". They are also apparently absurdly thin: Tens of thousands of kilometers wide, but maybe only three hundred meters thick, which I would imagine would look pretty damn surreal if you could get up close.

Someone (not me!) did the math on this and concluded that particle separation might be on the order of a meter. A different page I found (which is from NASA, but is an educational page on "Let's do math IN SPACE!" so take it for what it's worth) implies separation between particles on the order of 12 meters. (But that page also seems to use a higher number for ring thickness; a kilometer rather than 300 meters. If the rings are in fact thinner, but assuming they're as dense and have as much material—and obviously those are assumptions on my part—particle separation should be lower.) No, they wouldn't be grinding up against each other, and they certainly wouldn't be going every which way in a chaotic "asteroid thicket", but I think if you could somehow match velocities and insert your spaceship into the rings without dying, it's plausible you'd look out the porthole and see visible chunks of stuff, seemingly "hovering" right next to you, and with your spaceship either overtaking or being overtaken by stuff as you looked out away from the planet or down towards the planet. (Sort of like driving on a multi-lane superhighway.) Note also that "the rings" are a large and diverse place; in some areas, they might appear (even from up close) to be a sort of diffuse fog (of microscopic particles), but in other parts of the rings, you would have those chunks of ice on the order of "tens of meters" across.

Cassini eventually flew between the inner edge of the rings and the planet itself. Pioneer 10 and 11 had to make some careful choices about potentially flying through the most diffuse areas of the outer rings. (It was very unclear how far out those extended.) No space probe has ever just flown through the middle of Saturn's rings . Traveling through hyperspace plotting the trajectory of an interplanetary probe ain't like dusting crops. Flying through the middle of a planetary ring system would end your trip real quick.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13434: Aug 19th 2024 at 12:52:14 PM

Rings as dense as shown in Alien: Romulus would have a noticeable gravitational pull, explaining why ships would be dragged into them... assuming they aren't in equatorial orbit, which all orbits necessarily intersect twice per revolution.

Well, that's not quite true. Any disc fully enclosing a planet would intersect every orbit twice per revolution, no matter its inclination. Assuming Earth-like gravity, that means that the station and anything else up there would collide with a wall of rock every 45 minutes or so.

Shit, should have put that first in my list of objections.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2024 at 4:06:25 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Troper1138 Since: Dec, 2010
#13435: Aug 19th 2024 at 5:14:06 PM

Rocket Factory Augsburg's RFA One rocket is being prepared for its maiden launch from SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands. The spaceport has been in development for many years and has faced financial woes but is now ready to support the ambitions of private European launchers.

All components of the rocket are now at the spaceport and ready to go, save for the first stage which needs to complete static fire testing. This is not a trivial test, as we found out recently when both ABL Space Systems and Space Pioneer lost boosters due to different malfunctions.
Rocket engine explodes during test at Shetland spaceport

Well, shit.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13436: Aug 19th 2024 at 6:47:52 PM

Oof. Well, that'll postpone the first RFA launch. Nobody ever said this stuff was easy.

Edit: Given the lack of detail in the video, it looks like there was a major plumbing failure that caused an uncontrolled leak of ignited propellant from the rocket, which would have destroyed the tank structure and made the whole thing collapse.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 19th 2024 at 9:59:59 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13437: Aug 21st 2024 at 12:38:36 PM

Today, SpaceX posted photos of the two Dragon spacecraft being prepared for Polaris Dawn and Crew-9, respectively. It is a remarkable era in human spaceflight when we can say this. Again, I suppose, since Shuttle was handled in a similar manner. But it feels different, first because one of those missions is completely private and second because it's so much less expensive now.

The post is also a flex at Boeing, intentional or not.

ETA some more mission stuff posted today...

The Polaris account posted photos of the Polaris Dawn crew "signing" their booster. They do this by writing in the soot accumulated from previous launches. It is a practice utterly unique to Falcon 9 and something we may never see in a methane-fueled rocket, since those don't have sooty exhaust.

SpaceX also posted that the launch date has slipped to August 27.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 21st 2024 at 8:51:42 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Troper1138 Since: Dec, 2010
#13438: Aug 22nd 2024 at 2:52:48 PM

That bit about the soot-covered Falcon 9 boosters is a great real life example of Used Future, isn't it?

SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#13439: Aug 23rd 2024 at 6:40:17 AM

The science of interest in astronomy, and how light pollution impacts it: Opportunity to view the starry night sky is linked to human emotion and behavioral interest in astronomy

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13440: Aug 23rd 2024 at 6:49:38 AM

[up][up] I suppose one might see it that way. In my opinion, and going on a slight tangent, the Used Future aesthetic adopted by a lot of science fiction is grossly incompatible with the technical proficiency required for spaceflight.

The people who work on these vehicles are absolutely meticulous because they have to be. Even a single mistake could be fatal. Perhaps in the distant future technology will advance to the point where spacecraft are so redundant and so overbuilt that it doesn't matter if a few things break here and there, but I have doubts.

When the current design of Starship was first shown off, many people said it evoked the Raygun Gothic aesthetic: a shiny steel exterior, fins, that sort of thing. That's very different from Used Future, though.

SpaceX's technicians could clean the soot off of the Falcon boosters if they wanted to, but they leave it on as a deliberate aesthetic choice. The miniscule added mass doesn't affect performance, and it does reduce the processing time for reuse.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 23rd 2024 at 9:50:33 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13441: Aug 23rd 2024 at 10:29:47 PM

Starliner Crewed Flight Test

NASA: NASA, Boeing Chart Course for Starliner Return Review

Rather than include it in my weekly megapost, I'm going to drop this here because NASA has announced that the final decision on Starliner's safety to carry crew home will come tomorrow (Saturday, August 24). NASA administrator Bill Nelson will have the final call on go/no-go. A lot is riding on the outcome, potentially including the continuation of the Starliner program itself.

Eric Berger writes for Ars Technica: Cards on the table: Are Butch and Suni coming home on Starliner or Crew Dragon?

This article recaps the questions and the stakes. After publication, Eric posted that his sources are telling him that it'll be Crew Dragon taking Butch and Suni home, but it's not official until NASA says so publicly.

I would like to reiterate that, regardless of my opinion on Boeing, I do not want Starliner to fail and nor do most people in the industry. I think that the goal of dissimilar redundancy is a superb one and I want backups in case Crew Dragon should run into problems or Falcon 9 should have another mishap. Nothing is certain in spaceflight, especially with humans on board.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 23rd 2024 at 1:30:13 PM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Smeagol17 (4 Score & 7 Years Ago)
#13442: Aug 24th 2024 at 10:30:38 AM

Well, the decision has been made for a February return on the Dragon. Let’s see how this Starliner works without crew…

Edited by Smeagol17 on Aug 24th 2024 at 10:14:06 PM

Troper1138 Since: Dec, 2010
#13443: Aug 24th 2024 at 1:57:10 PM

Very prominent on the front page of the CNN website right now:

SpaceX capsule will bring Boeing crew down to Earth
In a stunning turn of events, SpaceX will swoop in to bring home the Boeing test flight crew in 2025
Ouch. I think this is the right call, but I bet some people at Boeing PR are chugging booze and/or antacids right now.

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13444: Aug 24th 2024 at 8:44:18 PM

This was hardly unexpected, as I observed earlier. This is obviously a very serious situation and so I shouldn't gloat, but I can't help feeling some schadenfreude toward the people who, back when Commercial Crew was first getting started, believed that Boeing would kick the ass of the cowboy startup, SpaceX.

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 24th 2024 at 11:48:39 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13445: Aug 25th 2024 at 9:23:07 PM

It's late, my time, but I sort of made a promise to myself to do a news megapost every Sunday, and we have quite a bit of stuff coming up, so here goes.

    Polaris Dawn Is Ready 

SpaceX and the Polaris Dawn crew conducted a dry dress rehearsal this weekend, and the Falcon 9 booster performed a successful static fire test. Everything appears nominal for liftoff on August 27 at 07:38 UTC.

I have since learned that that time is just the earliest it can launch: there's a four-hour window with two additional opportunities. If none of those work out, they'll try again Wednesday.

For full details on the mission, see here. Streamers will be lining up to cover it, and I'll post links tomorrow.

    Starliner's Fate Prophesized? 

Investor Steve Jurvetson posted on X about Eric Berger's upcoming book, Reentry. Following up from Liftoff, this sequel discusses the history of the Falcon 9 and Dragon programs at SpaceX and contrasts it with the goings-on at its competitors, such as Boeing.

The attitude of industry professionals was so much different back then. Boeing was seen as the established veteran and SpaceX the "cowboy" upstart. It was an intense struggle to even introduce the idea of adding a second Commercial Crew award. The excerpts from the book describe a company culture at Boeing of smug superiority and laziness. "[T]hey appeared to be working part-time on Starliner."

It wasn't just Boeing. During this early era, ULA employees would "drive up to the SpaceX fence, jeering". We know who had the last laugh there.

    Starlink V1 Replacements Approved 

PC Mag: FCC Clears SpaceX to Upgrade First-Gen Starlink Satellites

The FCC has approved SpaceX to begin replacing its first-generation Starlink satellites with second-generation ones. At the same time, it rejected Dish Network's claim that the narrower, higher-power beams from the newer Starlinks would cause interference for other satellites.

Note that this doesn't mean that all of the V1 satellites will start deorbiting immediately. It merely gives SpaceX permission to upgrade them as they reach end-of-life, rather than replace them with similar, older models.

    Artemis II Could Be Delayed Because of Orion Heat Shield 

Ars Technica: NASA wants clarity on Orion heat shield issue before stacking Artemis II rocket

Engineers have been struggling since the return of Artemis I to understand abnormal ablation patterns that were observed on the Orion capsule's heat shield. We've discussed this in the past, but it's starting to run into a time-critical period during which they have to reach a decision to go ahead with the current schedule or not.

If changes have to be made to the physical structure of the shield, Ars reports that Artemis II could be delayed until 2027. This would be a pretty big setback for the program and would relieve some of the time pressure on SpaceX and Axiom for Artemis III. Of course, this is still uncertain, and they could decide that the mission is acceptable to launch as-is.

    Blue Origin Suffers Mishaps with New Glenn Rocket Stages 

Bloomberg: Bezos’ Blue Origin Suffers Fiery Setback Building New Rocket

It wasn't very long ago that I posted a link to Everyday Astronaut's tour of Blue Origin's New Glenn factory. Well, since then, two recent mishaps have come to light, both with the rocket's second stages. In one incident, a stage collapsed while being moved due to a mistake in pressurization. Separately, another stage failed during stress testing at Blue Origin's facility at Cape Canaveral, resulting in a fiery explosion.

No injuries were reported and the hardware for New Glenn's maiden flight was unaffected, meaning that it can still attempt that launch, planned for October 13. The mission has a narrow window because it's sending a payload to Mars. It is unclear what effect the mishaps may have on flights after this one: New Glenn is contracted to begin launching Kuiper satellites for Amazon by the end of the year.

    Rocket Factory Augsburg RFA One Test Anomaly 

Rocket Factory Augsburg posted a video, along with a website news article, explaining the preliminary analysis for the fiery failure of its first RFA One booster on a test stand at SaxaVord Spaceport last week. The video includes additional footage and camera angles that aren't in the BBC article.

The cause of the mishap is believed to be a fire that developed in the liquid oxygen turbopump of one of the nine engines on the stage. That engine had been fired successfully before. The resulting explosion caused critical damage to the propellant manifold, leading to an uncontrollable leak. While the emergency shutdown and fire suppression protocols were activated as intended, they were not designed to deal with an event of this magnitude.

They were lucky that, when it collapsed, the stage fell away from the pad hardware, meaning that the tower and other ground systems did not suffer any serious damage. There is no word on when they will have another stage ready to go, but this is a major setback.

    Wow! Signal Explained? 

Ars Technica: Astronomers think they’ve found a plausible explanation of the Wow! signal

No, this has nothing to do with World of Warcraft. The Wow! signal was found back in 1977 by radiotelescopes looking for signals from alien civilizations. It has been a subject of intrigue ever since, but never fully explained. To briefly summarize, it was a high-power pulse of radio energy that many in popular culture interpreted as a potential message, although this was at best a misunderstanding.

A new paper suggests that the source of the Wow! signal and other high-intensity microwave pulses may be magnetars passing behind clouds of atomic hydrogen. This could stimulate emission much like a microwave laser, or maser.

    Europa Clipper's Radio Silence 

Eric Berger, the journalistic prophet of the space industry, posted yesterday that he believes Europa Clipper will make its October launch window despite concerns raised about the radiation hardening of its electronics.

NASA has been loudly silent about the issue despite the mission being a mere month and a half away.

    Launch Schedule Updates 

Some of this week's Starlink missions got delayed, with the result being that we could have three Falcon 9 launches within an hour and a half of each other on Tuesday morning. That would be sick if it happens.

Blue Origin announced that its next crewed New Shepard flight will take place on August 29. If it occurs as scheduled, that plus Polaris Dawn will set a new record for the greatest number of human beings in space at any one time (although not in orbit).

Edited by Fighteer on Aug 26th 2024 at 9:15:41 AM

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Troper1138 Since: Dec, 2010
#13446: Aug 25th 2024 at 11:25:01 PM

Some of this week's Starlink missions got delayed, with the result being that we could have three Falcon 9 launches within an hour and a half of each other on Tuesday morning. That would be sick if it happens.
Now I'm picturing Jared Isaacman sprinting from SLC-40 to LC-39A. "Dammit! Wrong launchpad! I just hope my luggage doesn't get deployed into LEO as part of a Starlink constellation."

Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Lost in Space
#13447: Aug 26th 2024 at 11:51:54 AM

Well, SpaceX already bumped them, so it's moot. Still a funny image.

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
Fighteer Lost in Space from The Time Vortex (Time Abyss) Relationship Status: TV Tropes ruined my love life
Risa123 Since: Dec, 2021 Relationship Status: Above such petty unnecessities
#13449: Aug 27th 2024 at 4:21:01 AM

Of course when I decide to get up early for a lunch it gets delayed...

Troper1138 Since: Dec, 2010
#13450: Aug 27th 2024 at 10:48:56 AM

Sorry to hear about you missing out on the launch (and sleep) but your typo did make me think of an XKCD.


Total posts: 14,192
Top