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A blog of this column is available here. If you like to comment on everything you see, go to the blog version.
Today is 12 February 2009 Flash News! Space crash! An Iridium satellite has collided in orbit with a Russian satellite. This appears to be the first such collision in Earth orbit. Both the Russian Cosmos 2251 satellite and the Iridium satellite were destroyed. Debris may slightly increase risk to the space station, though NASA spokes-creature Beth Dickey says the increased risk is within whatever NASA deems acceptable limits. Iridium Satellite LLC is a publicly traded stock company. This event seems unlikely to be good for earnings, though the company has a spare satellite on orbit which can be put in service within 30 days. (Earnings for Iridium have not been at all impressive.)
Russians re-supply the internationalist socialist space station. Meanwhile NASA has opted not to kill another batch of seven astronauts by delaying the launch of the space shuttle at least until 20 February, possibly as late as 22 February based on current info. Assuming they ever get it to fly all the way to orbit, NASA's next shuttle mission would "complete" the space station which Reagan announced in 1984 and asked for within a decade. Hmmm. So, a 2009 completion date minus a 1994 requested completion gives 15 years late. And as I recall the original $8 billion budget (in 1994 dollars) for a 12-crew station has become $150 billion plus (I really have to review the methodology, probably very low) in 2009 dollars for a six-person station. Whee! And NASA stands to eat $1.3 billion more from the "stimuli" package. NASA delenda est
Big telescope project with lots of internationalist socialist partners. The telescope, to be built in Chile, will be composed of seven large mirrors. Six of these will be positioned around the edges of a seventh mirror using technology developed at University of Arizona. The effective size of the structure would be 80 feet (25 meters) across. Arguably, from its site in Chile the new scope would provide images ten times sharper than the Hubble Space Telescope does from orbit. Now that NASA has gotten some astronomical observing mileage out of the Keyhole spy satellite technology, some actual innovation might be needed for a future scope. Perhaps the same techniques developed for the Magellan scope (to be complete 2019) might be used on the far side of the Moon at some future date. Of course, that would require an economically sustainable (that is, profitable) lunar exploration and settlement activity. Clearly not something NASA is ever going to be competent to provide. NASA delenda est
JPL wants to send nearly a ton of rover to Mars. The nuclear powered Mars Science Laboratory would be huge compared to all other roving platforms to date sent to Mars. Plus, NASA is using a whole new landing technology, and generally not building on the Spirittype rover technology. Sad.
Washington Post staff writer Joel Achenbach describes the new landing sequence as a spacecraft dropped by parachute followed by: "At 65 feet above the surface -- the descent slowed almost to a hover by retrorockets -- the spacecraft will lower the rover from its belly using cables. When the rover touches down, explosive charges will cut the cables, and the spacecraft will fly off and crash about 200 meters away. And the rover will send a signal to Earth saying it has landed safely. If history repeats itself, the JPL engineers will have turned purple by that point. Adam Steltzner, one of the inventors of the sky crane system, remembers being unable to breathe during one of the earlier rover landings." NASA delenda est
More evidence of water and ice on Mars makes Mars direct enthusiasts eager. Planetary Science Institute scientists studied Mars Odyssey, Viking Orbiter, Mars Global Surveyor, and Mars Orbiter images to find the ice and evidence of water in the Arabia Terra region in the northern hemisphere, and the Hellas Basin in the southern hemisphere. NASA delenda est
9 February 2009
The bums at NASA are trying to decide when to launch the shuttle, with or without massacring another batch of astronauts. According to Robert Block of the Orlando Sentinel, cited above, work on flow control valves may force a longer delay in the shuttle launch anticipated for later this month. Our view? Delay the flight, or cancel the shuttle program entirely. NASA delenda est.
Jeff Foust of the Space Review says that Virgin Galactic has presented information on its strategic business plans. Feedback from customers paying up to $200K per flight indicated that a larger spaceship would be needed to meet market expectations of a fun suborbital space trip. As a result, Virgin Galactic is looking at the suborbital scientific market as well. They have also evaluated a booster which could deploy from the White Knight 2 and launch small satellites into orbit. Possible per satellite launch cost? $2 million. NASA delenda est.
NASA is planning to launch its Orbiting Carbon Observatory presumably to lie more about climate change than ever before. Contractor Orbital Sciences got the money to build the thing. Curiously, they also got the money to launch the thing, from Vandenburg AFB, so, presumably into a Sun-synchronous orbit. Assuming their solid-fuel Taurus rocket works, the satellite's single point of failure instrument is to measure global atmospheric carbon dioxide. NASA delenda est.
Scientists at the Planetary Science Institute in Arizona say that their studies of water on Mars indicate a higher axial tilt within the last few million years, possibly as much as 60 degrees from its current tilt. NASA delenda est.
Jet Propulsion Lab scientists got Mars rover Spirit rolling again last week. Science Daily reports, from a JPL press release, "Spirit drove about 1 foot Saturday, during the 1,806th Martian day, or sol, of what was originally planned as a 90-day mission." NASA delenda est.
Stewart Powell over at Chron.com says NASA has a budget of $17.3 billion per year, which reminds us to ask what do we get for our money? Also, NASA plans to continue wasting money on another "men to the Moon" project to pretend they can get there by 2020 until the new president offers further direction. NASA delenda est.
Alan Bean, one of the astronauts who had the privilege to visit the Moon about 40 years ago, says going back to the Moon should be about going on to Mars. Which does make one wonder, why not just go to Mars Direct? NASA delenda est.
Meanwhile, NASA has issued a request for proposals for a conceptual lunar lander. Maybe it can fly to a conceptual Moon. NASA delenda est.
In a move sure to inspire myocardial infarction in Baker Institute jerk George Abbey, Russia has announced plans to build a separate orbital station for its future lunar and Mars exploration projects. NASA delenda est.
6 February 2009
Several news sites have been brought to our attention, and in our continuing effort to offer the best space news blogging resources to our readers, we are linking to them here.
Space-travel.com purports to carry stories on exploration and tourism. Don't be surprised if there are plenty of NASA cheerleading articles.
Mars Daily has not quite a new article on Mars every day. Some nice coverage here.
Moon Daily as you might expect has a few articles on the Moon each week.
Yes, a MidAtlantic spaceport, formerly the Wallops Flight Facility of NASA. Used to launch the occasional Scout rocket for Ling Tempco Vought (LTV) Aerospace. Briefly the site of the hopes and dreams of Space Services Incorporated of America and its Conestoga launch vehicle with a reusable payload until October 1995 or so when it blew up about 46 seconds after liftoff. Now Orbital Sciences is planning to use the facility as one location for their cargo missions to the Internationalist Socialist Space Station under a huge contract for NASA.
Got 25 million frequent flyer miles? Maybe you should trade them in on a trip into space. Virgin Galactic is offering one of its trips, and Virgin Blue's Velocity frequent flyer program is even giving away 25 million points to a lucky flyer on one of its terrestrial aircraft. No Virgin Blue miles? (Do they show blue films in flight on this airline?) No problem. Simply pay the $200,000 ticket price. Giving away a trip into space isn't what it was like in 1990, I can tell you that.
Iran made headlines, but no worries with the launch of a 60 pound satellite using their Safir multi-stage rocket. Look for terror-scary politicians to use the occasion to push for nuclear first strikes on and invasion of Iran. Meanwhile, space enthusiasts everywhere welcome Iran to the growing list of space satellite launching nations. If India can put a man on the Moon by 2025, Iran can put an Iranian in orbit by 2020. And maybe take some honeymooners to a space hotel.
Yawn, another extra-solar planet has been found. This one is less than twice Earth's diameter, but about 11 times Earth's density. In this case the planet was detected as it transited its star, which it orbits very closely. Its distance to its primary is about one-sixtieth the distance of Earth to the Sun. So, yes it is likely a terrestrial class planet, akin to Mercury, although much closer and much denser. It is among the smallest planets found outside our Solar System, due to the limits of our abilities to detect either the gravitational influence on a star's path through the sky, or the light from a star, using technologies now available. What we do know for certain, though, is that a great many stars in the galaxy have planets. So far over 300 planets around other stars have been identified. There is reason to think that of the hundreds of billions of stars in our galaxy, most have planets. Perhaps 100 billion stars or more have planets, and if the average number of bodies (dwarf planets, planets, large moons) in a given star system is around 20, something like two trillion planets would exist.
If your interest, like mine, is in traveling to planets in the universe which we can make habitable, at least for tourist visits, then the odds of planets in other star systems being "Earth like" aren't especially relevant. Nevertheless, with two trillion to choose from, one would expect hundreds of thousands to millions of such planets are out there waiting to be found.
Ground controllers screw up software, space station shakes like earthquake-prone Los Angeles. The shaking came during a re-boost of the space station by Russian booster rockets. Another re-boost planned for this week was postponed while the software team scratches their collective backsides. Meanwhile, plans continue to put a "full crew" of six on the space station full time later this year. (Make it seven, the traditional number of astronauts to be massacred in a batch when NASA screws up? Nah.) Does anyone remember when Ronald Reagan announced the space station project in 1984?
He said, "Tonight, I am directing NASA to develop a permanently manned space station and to do it within a decade." And NASA's initial design called for a space station within 8 years that would host 12 astronauts. Guess what? They didn't make the schedule. It wasn't until 1998 that the space station up there now began to be ready for crews. Nor did they meet their initial estimate of $8 billion - not by a very, very wide margin. Yet, to make sure it got funded by taxpayers, George Abbey and other evil, sinful NASA people attacked and destroyed, among other projects, the External Tanks company and the Industrial Space Facility. Best estimates by non-NASA sources put the cost at around $150 billion over 30 years, not counting the billions wasted on many false starts.
NASA scum delay another shuttle launch.
Ars Technica scoffs but Singularity University is launching.
Google and NASA team up to waste slightly less taxpayer money than if NASA did the virtual tours of Mars itself. We can count on NASA to let Google get all the ad revenues, though, so that's nice. It always feels nice when taxpayer data collected at great cost in lives and treasure is turned over to some group of yo-yos with an insider deal.
An Ariane 5 rocket is scheduled to liftoff shortly before Valentine's Day.
Judging only by their graphics this "space hotel" company may be some sort of scam. If they really have $3 billion of invested capital, they didn't spend any of it developing their logo, which looks like a child got loose with a blue crayon. They appear to be planning a whole new launch system, a training facility on a Caribbean island to be named, and a huge orbital facility built of various modules. While conceivably feasible within the price tag, it is interesting to wonder if construction on the space station modules actually began in October 2008 as scheduled. Their web site, meanwhile has bloated flash and dismal sound. The four-year time horizon seems aggressive, and we are not the only ones to suppose it might be a hoax.
Our old friend Jim Muncy is the subject of this Facebook group, aimed at getting him to open an account. Log into your FB page to see the lame "closed" group description.
3 February 2009 Times of India reports on plans to place an Indian from the subcontinent on the surface of the Moon by 2025. Yes, India with its own inimitable brand of socialism has its own space program. We can only pray they sell it off to the private sector before it grows.
SpaceX has recently released a video showing their cartoon concept of their Dragon spaceship being launched by one of their rockets. Presumably one that isn't sabotaged by other defense contractor companies on Kwaj. The cartoon shows the payload being snagged by a robotic arm (presumably Canadian in origin) on the Internationalist Socialist Space Station and brought up close for docking. Then the thing re-enters with parachute recovery. The conceptual similarity to a Soyuz or Progress capsule flight is presumably deliberate. As you probably know from their press release the socialists at NASA awarded a $1.6 billion contract to SpaceX for cargo re-supply of the space station. Follow-on flights might screw the taxpayer out of up to $3.1 billion. A similar contract was awarded to Orbital Sciences. Stimulate that.
Arch fiend and worthless space socialist George Abbey among others at the Baker Institute for Public Policy at Rice University have written a stupid report on what President Obama should do to further screw up the space program. The ever witty Mark Carreau of the Houston Chronicle blogs about their blather. Among other things that seem recklessly idiotic about their proposals, the Baker Institute collective would extend shuttle flights to 2015, giving NASA five more years to massacre batches of astronauts seven at a time.
Tariq Malik of Space.com reports on the launch of the Russian Koronas-Foton spacecraft by one of their Tsyklon launchers. The spacecraft studies solar weather.
A comprehensive report on upcoming space launches is available at Space.com.
2 February 2009
A look at the night sky can do wonders for your sense of perspective. Here's a report on what you might see on a clear evening or morning.
The war on drugs is a despicable war on individual liberty. The people involved should be ashamed of themselves. Each police officer, politician, and bureau-rat involved in prosecuting non-violent mala prohibitum drug-related "crimes" (which don't harm people or property, so they aren't properly crimes at all) should crawl over broken glass to the home of each person whose life they willingly destroyed. Here's how some pot growers got caught in Switzerland: Google Earth satellite and aerial surveillance is nearly everywhere - except classified government sites.
Space station astronaut clowns waste taxpayer money, film whenever they bother to broadcast.
Two of the most despicable socialist scum, Gene Roddenberry and wife, are to be kicked off the planet. Or some of their ashes will be sent into space, anyway. Too little, too late if you ask me.
1 February 2009
Virgin Galactic, the frontrunner in the new suborbital space tourism industry, says everything's fine with WhiteKnightTwo. They use WhiteKnightTwo as an airborne platform for launching their suborbital SpaceshipTwo.
Meanwhile, New Mexico has obtained some permits to build a passenger space "port" for Virgin Galactic, among others, to use.
31 January 2009
Florida investigates possible impropriety in sweetheart deal and nest feathering scandal involving space tourism training facility. We are reminded to keep government far from private sector space projects.
Russia terminates space tourism flights. The claim is that the Internationalist Socialist Space Station must have a full flight crew of six astronauts, so no tourists can be accommodated. What do you want to bet that NASA put the death to Russian space tourism with some vexatious and egregious "ruling"? NASA has hated space tourism from the start, and is run by evil men and women who hate freedom. Look what they did to MirCorp? Look what they had the IRS do to Walt Anderson? Jerks.
Mind you, this should increase interest in private space hotels, such as Bigelow's project.
The scum at Rotary couldn't help fawning over out-going NASA Administrator Michael Griffin. Look at this pretty trophy they gave him, for doing not very much to open the space frontier to human settlement. Arguably, he didn't do much to dramatically hold back human settlement, either. We'll have to judge his merits a little later when more of the facts are in place.
A blog of this column is available here. If you like to comment on everything you see, go to the blog version.
