The thread for space cadets!

[Samson]

Happy Halloween from NASA

 

[Imaus]

The heat flow probe of the Mars Insight lander made some good progress in digging itself into the regolith and then unexpectedly nearly ejected itself from the hole. The probe is the white stick to the left in this image and it should be inside the ground, not above it.

I don't know if they'll be able to save it. It seems that this probe is not fit for function in the Martian environment. There could be a few different problems, either the soil has material properties that were unexpected or perhaps the lower gravity means that the hammering mechanism is not as effective as anticipated.

Meanwhile if you had a team there, they could fix the bot. Or do the Bot's job. Take along a shovel, work eight hours. Hell, take a union - they'll do the job better.

 

[r16]

uh , some very long piece . Well , ı haven't much been able to follow links in recent years so ı do learn a little ; so ı like the blog thing . This time [apparently] introduces the idea he has a friend whose father or grandfather was a big guy in some big company and he like knows people in the industry ; and once again this is not a personal attack or stuff , but he says the research is going on since 1950s . ı know , that's why Ike had his speech on the Military Industrial Complex , the wackos and the backstabbing thieves who would rob the US Treasury dry if the next President blinked and didn't see ...


yeah , like the book page that shows how you make a pyramid of spheres and it will shoot another sphere 620 miles up , which suspiciously equals 1 thousand kilometers and Russians have it and if Ike releases funds on the same level with the Manhattan Project , America will , too . If Mr. President refuses to believe good old Nazis were just about to do it before they were swamped by the Red Army hordes in Prague , the esteemed scientists will show how a pyramid will sharpen the razor blade when placed properly .

of course , when you grab the required type of Dark Matter , it will of course act within known Physics and the bunch to provide anti-gravity and stuff . It so happens that there was still modelling site once tried sort of wikipedia of its own and there were like just two articles in it and one of them discusses how the Chinese invented floating galleys . It only requires rare non-earth magnets . Everything is possible with the right sort of meteor and Peter Parker was bitten by a spider .

won't provide the link and stuff , now that it would be a simple thing to call it Ad Hominem and prove the spheres were in some USAF study from 1972 in the very same picture or something , you can see the beginnings of the Cold Fusion scam . And like if anything is looking like about to fail , always qoute Ben Rich from 1994 , on how they have stuff in the labs that are 20 years old and are still breakthroughs . One can almost imagine Lockmart stocking up for Ahnold to show up in some buble of white light as 3 punks are making a mess while Kyle Reese will end up near a department store ? Amazingly the tech goes backwards or something , blonde falling rather bad when she ended beamed like so high in the sky and like right inside the bridge , disorientation and all that ! People used to end up on the ground 30 years ago !

see , ı was 8 years old myself when some guy in the university in Izmir came up with decreasing weight of stuff with electricity . A kids magazine in perhaps February 1979 had a two page article with how Turkey would soon do flying saucers , 20 times the speed of sound in the atmosphere , 40 in space , going to the moon in hours , not days . Am still waiting for the said saucers ... ı was definitely sold into buying that weekly though , until 1986 or something . ı could spare the money , ı could buy it with what would pass for a beard on the face , too , but their latest comic story had two aliens taking Tengiz , son of Mete han of the Huns to the 20th Century . And as aliens they were the authority on how F-16 was the best plane in the world ; because the Santa Turgut Goverment , supported by the owners of the magazine , was using the glory of the start of the co-production in Mürted as a political thing . ı was okay with the Falcon , still ı am but come on , the best in the world ?

and ı was about 18 when my highschool classmate won the exams and went to some unversity in Istanbul and saw the "Modern Air Combat" , a glorious book if there ever was , in a shopwindow . Phones me , because he knows ı would love to have it . So , my introduction to Bill Gunston , who could be quite decent a chap as long as he wasn't trying to sell the Harrier to you . He was kinda crazy with the Americans and stuff , who had saucers and yet were selling F-14s and 15s and 16s and 18s . You know , the whole electromagnetics in flight , and yet he was very for the Tornado and never tried London to go electro way . Not that the Brits would manage to do a saucer and they are actually known to have run a Project Greenglass , Zero Energy , pointless stuff , that they would manage easily because the Russians would know and they were starving at the time .


nothing personal and everybody loves intel and whatnot and stuff and so , the whole T-Shirt business also "sucks" because "phazers" which would be some sort of re-arranged lazer system , are like stuck into ships to kill ships of their class with a range put about 20 miles , what sort of a missile has a minimum range of 20 miles ? You gotta see how hard 15 year girls laugh at this nonsense ... that people might be outperforming the world in directed energy weaponry ...

 

[r16]

... a century where Talk is King ? Was reading some trawled magazine and it seems there is a call for a faster acquisitions cycle , with two pictures of F-105 thrown in ! A plane USAF didn't want , did everything to cut down the price (when TAC used whatever political clout it had because SAC was becoming oppressive and the commands might have been united and that would have cut down so many billets) so it didn't have a spare hydraulics system but came with a nice ashtray in the cockpit ... Do people miss Republic ? (*) Am amazed at the good press the F-105 gets in these later days , now that the best thing about the Thunderchief was that it was replaced by the Phantom . War is business , that's all and this fact clouds the whole . Even when people are fighting a war or two .

do people miss Republic ? Of course not . Like 40 pages of effort against the new F-15s being built ... USAF wanted 700 odd F-22s , Peace Dividend cut that down to 390 or so . This was then halved to 180 or so , because the timetable said there would be 1100 F-35s already , instead of the 300 there actually is , because F-35 is mighty and all traitors are against it and oh my , it's still in test phase and not in full production ... So , American planes are dropping dead in the air , due to tired old age and new F-15s will "revitalize" US Air Defence , because Evil will once again attack America in Boeings as there is one missing 777 . Allowing old F-15Cs to retire , their pilots simply moved into the new builds . America , or rather , this magazine then wants to re-establish "competition" with expensive fly-offs , 3 year production runs , up to 72 planes contracts . Will anyone give America the damned Thundercat ? Yeah , in your dreams . ı at least get accused of picking anyone ı like , what are you smokin' ? Oh , they do not expect that would happen ! So , look , a good little plane , and also from Boeing , the trainer plane , let that tackle the 777 ! See , how simple , how mighty ! The magazine then also gives a calender and it has an F-14 picture in it ! You know , one of the author guys should have been given a Lockmart medal for his non-stop lambasting of the Tomcat in the 1990s , because had it been '14E , USN would have never bought F-35C ...

there ain't no Thundercat , too . This , once again , was a cover name for the all-purpose , across services warplane that might be done , with Republic never selling to USN and Grumman never selling to USAF and this becoming a symbolic symbol or whatever , naming conventions combined , Thunder something for Air Force and something Cat for the Navy becoming one for all . Naturally it was given to Lockmart ... Like , who else ?

also ı don't get to pick anyone ı like , that's just them jealous Americans who don't have Starships . Like ı have been the official laughing stock of the country for more than a decade , how could ı ever pick anyone ı like ?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The Air Force is continuing to support small launcher development in the US. They recently hosted a 'pitch day' for entrepreneurs to pitch their startups to the USAF. Out of this came a contract for development of a rocket from a company based in Brooklyn.
https://spacenews.com/launcher-af-pitch-award/

Rocket Lab introduced a new piece of factory kit that will dramatically lower fabrication time for their rocket. This is encouraging because they recently announced they were going to try and recover their rockets to offer some relief to their backlog of launches as they ramp up production at the same time. They seem serious about offering weekly launches; we'll have to see if the market can actually sustain those rates. We're not there yet and I think it will take another 3 or 4 years of solid growth on the small sat side of the industry to get to those rates.
https://spacenews.com/rocket-lab-in...uring-system-to-increase-electron-production/

 

[Imaus]

Another 'health risk' - Thrombosis of the Jugular in the Neck. One astronaut got a bad case in just 50 days.

Here's a crazy, radical, totally unthinkable thought: How about you go the extra mile and DON'T HAVE THEM IN WEIGHTLESS, FREE-FALL, 0G ENVIRONMENTS ALREADY?

Seriously! It seems most of these problems are due to under-powered, under-equipped ships and stations. We know they're bad. We know that they're not optimal.

Maybe if we just dragged ourselves out of the rut and, you know, actually replicated a 1g, or even 0.3, 0.5g environment, a lot of these issues such as bone density loss and thrombosis wouldn't occur, people could have longer missions and actually be expected to do stuff at their destination.

Just a thought.

 

[uppi]

Another 'health risk' - Thrombosis of the Jugular in the Neck. One astronaut got a bad case in just 50 days.

Here's a crazy, radical, totally unthinkable thought: How about you go the extra mile and DON'T HAVE THEM IN WEIGHTLESS, FREE-FALL, 0G ENVIRONMENTS ALREADY?

Seriously! It seems most of these problems are due to under-powered, under-equipped ships and stations. We know they're bad. We know that they're not optimal.

Maybe if we just dragged ourselves out of the rut and, you know, actually replicated a 1g, or even 0.3, 0.5g environment, a lot of these issues such as bone density loss and thrombosis wouldn't occur, people could have longer missions and actually be expected to do stuff at their destination.

Just a thought.

They could have longer missions, but what would they actually do on those missions? The 0g environment is kind of the selling point for a space station. Almost everything else you can do cheaper on earth.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The government accountability office (GAO) sustained parts of a Blue Origin lawsuit over the terms of the Air Force's launch competition. In particular, the GAO seems to agree that the judging criteria are too subjective and unclear. They did side with the USAF on some points, but they have not yet released a full accounting of the ruling. This could be huge as there's been accusations that the contract was structured in such a way as to benefit ULA.

 

[Broken_Erika]

Don't blow your top......too late.

SpaceX Starship prototype blows its top
SpaceX's Starship rocket prototype experienced a major failure during pressurisation testing on Wednesday.

A video from the scene in Texas showed the top part of the vehicle rupture.

Cryogenic propellants that were being loaded at the time dispersed across the Boca Chica facility in a huge cloud.

The US company bills Starship as an all-purpose transportation system of the future. It will be used to ferry people and cargo off Earth, and to destinations around the globe.

The Mk-1 prototype was due to begin practice flights to an altitude of 20km in the coming weeks.

In a tweet, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk said that could no longer happen and the ship would be retired.

Development work is already being directed at another prototype, labelled the Mk-3.

"[Mk-1] had some value as a manufacturing pathfinder, but flight design is quite different," Mr Musk told his legion of fans on social media.

A statement issued by SpaceX read: "The purpose of today's test was to pressurise systems to the max, so the outcome was not completely unexpected."

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-50500980

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The video is pretty cool-

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There is a bit of a scandal brewing over Boeing's contract to bring astronauts to the space station. Allegedly, they were allowed to modify the contract mid-way through and added something like 25% or more cost to it, meaning that in effect seats on Boeing's Starliner capsule will be more expensive than Russia's inflated prices. This undercuts a lot of the rationale behind the program in the first place. Moreover, there are allegations that Boeing threatened or at least heavily implied they would cancel the contract from their side if they didn't get the money. Boeing denies this but it completely fit with their corporate behavior over the last few years.

 

[r16]

my "point" about F-35 was "fixed" in 2011 or 12 . Actually it wasn't , not at all , but the Congregation was failing to infiltrate a specific thing Americans wanted them to , so it was a step to that end . You know , people would be touched that their warnings were paid attention to ! Would make them slow down ...


2013 saw me entirely forgotten and it was my fault that ı was banned in places , but first Iranians conducted an operation in -ı think- Damascus with MiG-29s flying ground attack , because the results to be achieved might result in Israeli intervention , like a dogfight over Damascus itself , because who doesn't love heart eating Sunni beardies ? A surprise , but nothing like Pearl Harbour , so the guys in Washington call guys here and it turns into a polite game of garlic in yogurt , meaning nobody will tell Americans anything , and they are all retired anyhow . Then second , the Gezi Events and the surprising intensity of the infighting ; America were creating competing powers within New Turkey , because it's standart operating thing of theirs everywhere . So , by the year end or so , America needs talks , because they do not know if China or whatever has seen what's coming and is sabotaging the glorious devastation of the Middle East , because when the bloodbath here ends , it will be China's turn ... ı have a couple of saved days' downloads and stuff and from that ı "learn" by November 2013 the entry fee was just about 50 billion US dollars , to be spent on the Qatar's fighter jet , you know , as if Ankara wouldn't pay and the good name had be put forward so that foreign creditors would extend credits . (No , ı don't have 50 billions .) What did people expect me to do , stage a coup , take over the State and pay ? New Turkey dutifully pays everything , especially to London , doesn't it ? And once again , in today's world of finance finding 50 billions od debt is nothing . It becomes a thing only when paying . There's a reason for all , right ? Like , this country is still one of 82 million brothers and sisters and officials still go to Anıtkabir .


2014 is the year of the attack on the Tankograd / Crimea . And the TV series , the result of America telling New Turkey that a new social order was to be created , in which the word Turk was to be no longer worthy of spitting whenever mentioned or the like , you know for the duration , just a couple years more . Naturally , it was instead an ode on how the advisors to the series were so heroic in the 1980s . My name on the tombstone as a worthless father , surname went to the foolish fool that died in the end , rather badly . Nor it was anything "respectful" to the old guard . They actually brought in an Armenian who had "exiled" himself abroad on his own will , to play the advisor -to probably the Prime Minister ... Little Imperialist's Armenian advisor is similarly in "front of the door" these days . So , one must still be nice and good if he wants to play , so November 17th sees me reporting Lockmart expects me to make their fusion reactor work ... Lifelong ban elsewhere corrected to a more lenient "will be checked first" kind of thing , probably at this juncture .

2016 is the Stuntwoman year , curse her reverently ı do . Uhm , a perfect example of "ye kürküm ye" , a folk story of the famed Nasreddin Hoca who gets so much respected when he wears some rich sable fur or something to a dinner , so he dips the tip of his coat into the soup , because it's the fur that causes the respect , not him , so the fur gets to "eat" the food . ı really don't think the Stuntwoman would wear fur , but hey , when the ripples end up overseas and ı don't know , obviously because she is Jewish , ı like even get the right to post freely . Until of course ı name QFX the QFX , the Quantum fighter even , because what will we do with it , when ı have more X-Wings than those that have appeared in all the movies put together ?

ah yeah , finally the point . By now , the corporate America and stuff is like aware of the r16 stuff and his silliness and no one over there will believe the failed tests of Cyberdyne Cybertruck was caused by pressure to get some guy to do something . That A would do so , if A had that kind of power/access/whatever does not actually mean B would . So , ı don't know , how about actually following what Ankara says ? For the unwary , there's never 100% in engineering , it's simply bad luck , even if extremely bad luck to have bulletproof glass penetrated in front of the media , but it can happen , say , without Starfleet interference . There's no wearable fusion reactor afterall . To have a forcefield to accelarate stuff , instead of slowing them down . Actually this is like why the good old USN still keeps "two" battleships afloat , because it still takes some 16 inch rifle or something , each about 108 tons to have that kind of thing , like some 50 years after it was first dreamed of , if the theory is made to work one of these days ... And by the way , what's the point of Cyberdyne Cybertruck ? You Americans need armoured pickup truck to the mall , apart from the thing that you actually might , according to the news like every fortnight ? Like obviously it's growing up to be a Humwee replacement for the US Military , but that's bound to fail : (A) It's not lightsaber-proof (B) Doesn't US Army have a Lockmart of its own ? It should be like it has 80 cupholders and it can take the average America family to an hamburger joint and then CAN bring them back ... (The poster is also fat himself ...)

a being the average guy who is talking about , b being me . The Starfleet Band does play that Shania Twain song , that goes like "So, you're a rocket scientist" in parades ı attend 'cause am like tone deaf and asked one of the Klingon Spacemarine dates and she confirms ... This year's fashion seems to be leather jackets and now that am almost 50 and it was at the Academy , so it's only simple maths that ı have known people longer than the average leather jacket wearer has existed in this world . Nothing will happen by that way either , at most they can be like "What?" and "Really?" at pointless r16 stuff on how Daniel Craig is Bond, James Bond because the British founder of the Syrian White Helmets was also a blond .

like who else in CFC has to refuse involvement ? But then it's those interesting times of the Chinese curse , which actually is not a Chinese curse . Putin says they have weapons that works out of laws of physics , despite the thing they explode on their own and ı like how they didn't have injectors with sedatives around the medal ceremony when the kin of the killed received awards . These weapons , owned by no one else , supposedly will keep Russia safe , like forever . As an answer , the West apparently claims now they have the 5th power of the nature , let me see , gravity , weak something , strong something and some other thing as the fourth . And not exactly sure of the translation , but the fifth is called the power that fears the dark ? Yeah , a very powerful power then ... Apparently discovered by Hungarians . Hungarians can of course discover powers , Edward Teller being Hungarian by origin , if am not mistaken : Father of the Hydrogen Bomb and totally hysterical . Yet am still in no position to judge whether these Hungarians are like in the mindset of Victor Urban , the Little Fascist of Budapest ; if so , unfortunately this might turn out to be something good for the world , now that Nazis totally refused Jewish science to end up with no nukes ...

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There is a bit of a scandal brewing over Boeing's contract to bring astronauts to the space station. Allegedly, they were allowed to modify the contract mid-way through and added something like 25% or more cost to it, meaning that in effect seats on Boeing's Starliner capsule will be more expensive than Russia's inflated prices. This undercuts a lot of the rationale behind the program in the first place. Moreover, there are allegations that Boeing threatened or at least heavily implied they would cancel the contract from their side if they didn't get the money. Boeing denies this but it completely fit with their corporate behavior over the last few years.

So one of the inspector generals of the government did an audit of these contracts and blasted NASA for giving Boeing $200 million to 'speed up' work, without giving SpaceX the same opportunity. Moreover, there is no evidence that the $200 million sped anything up. Nothing changed about how Boeing was running the program and the schedule continues to slip to the right. It's to the point now where NASA is going to yet again have to buy more seats from the Russians to get to the ISS. Effectively, it was another Boeing shakedown of the federal government for more handouts.


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In other news, NASA has agreed to fly a Russian cosmonaut on a cislunar flight, possibly a landing. In return, Russia will provide a docking adapter for the Lunar Gateway space station in 2028. They were originally tasked to do it by 2024 but the Russians asked for schedule relief on that and I think this is NASA low-key acknowledging that the Gateway won't be ready for that particular docking adapter until at least 2028 anyways.


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Northrop is touting their ability to support super-low flight rates for their OmegA rocket. The OmegA is a mostly-solid rocket that Northrop is trying to sell to the Air Force as part of a 4-way competition, of which 2 companies will be picked and be allowed to sell rockets to the Air Force. One of the concerns with the contest is that it is not clear that the military market can support two separate launch vehicle lines indefinitely. Some of the competitors have also been lagging in their efforts to attract commercial business, which makes them even more vulnerable to downturns in government spending. What Northrop is pointing out is that there is so much commonality between OmegA and various other solid-rocket systems they make (ICBM's, boosters for ULA, boosters for the SLS) that they can go down to just 4 flights a year and still make a profit.

This is actually a credible claim, Northrop's launch vehicle division is the old Orbital ATK which did in fact have low launch rates for their vehicles for decades while maintaining profitability. Orbital has always relied heavily on solid rockets (which is why they bought ATK - the company that sold the solid rockets to Orbital) and those are fairly cheap to qualify and manufacture. They are also pretty easy to store long-term so you can set up a production run and then idle the line for months and months and use existing inventory to meet demand.

---------

China had the most launches last year by far and may do so again next year. SpaceX is planning 24(!) launches of the Starlink constellation next year so that may put the US back in the lead. I kind of doubt they'll hit that cadence though to be honest.

 

[r16]

man , there's no letdown in those people . Turns out Disney has asked Boeing for X-Wings to fly at some theme park ... Did ı like bother to report the NaSA report that people should not be fooled by the movies , that there's no current defence against meteor strikes , you know , after the thing of the Tankograd thing ran out of battery power ? My X-Wings pew pew for real , do yours ?

 

[elmurcis]

Somehow by accident run back into place where I had some (fun? yeah, kind of fun as I like to search for stuff) into Planet Hunter (Kepler mission) to see that I have seen through some 350 stars brightness (90 days period I guess) charts (some 5 yrs ago) to try to find some exoplanets (no stats there about if any of these stars have proven exoplanet or anything but I do remember marking some of them in charts for sure).
Question would be - how useful from science point of view these "random people with interest into astronomy" observations could be for entire that kind mission?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Somehow by accident run back into place where I had some (fun? yeah, kind of fun as I like to search for stuff) into Planet Hunter (Kepler mission) to see that I have seen through some 350 stars brightness (90 days period I guess) charts (some 5 yrs ago) to try to find some exoplanets (no stats there about if any of these stars have proven exoplanet or anything but I do remember marking some of them in charts for sure).
Question would be - how useful from science point of view these "random people with interest into astronomy" observations could be for entire that kind mission?

It varies from mission to mission. Sometimes amateurs are extremely helpful - it was an amateur who recently spotted the crashed ISRO lander in NASA photos and that sort of thing is pretty frequent. For optical-based systems, NASA will typically put the data out to the public and intrepid people go dumpster-diving through the data to find interesting stuff.

For data sets which require a lot of sophisticated filtering and computer analysis, I would guess there would be less citizen-scientist contributions as the barrier to entry is higher.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

SpaceX demonstrated a 6 hour coast of the second stage after launching a cargo Dragon to the ISS. After the coast, the second stage completed a 20.1 second burn. This was necessary to demonstrate the ability to deliver satellites directly into geostationary orbit without using the satellite's onboard propulsion. This was one of the last USAF launch categories that SpaceX still had to demonstrate ability in before launching some upcoming missions.


-----

ESA awarded a contract to a NewSpace start up to develop a spacecraft that will go into orbit and catch a discarded part of a Vega rocket and deorbit it. Very cool tech.

I haven't seen when Vega is going to return to flight after their anamoly but I have heard the investigation has been straightforward and I believe was traced to a manufacturing defect.

There is a Japanese company that has opened a US subsidiary to chase US funds for orbital debris removal as well.

 

[Michkov]

Somehow by accident run back into place where I had some (fun? yeah, kind of fun as I like to search for stuff) into Planet Hunter (Kepler mission) to see that I have seen through some 350 stars brightness (90 days period I guess) charts (some 5 yrs ago) to try to find some exoplanets (no stats there about if any of these stars have proven exoplanet or anything but I do remember marking some of them in charts for sure).
Question would be - how useful from science point of view these "random people with interest into astronomy" observations could be for entire that kind mission?

There is the Planet Hunter project, by the looks of it they switched to TESS data since last time I checked in there.

https://www.zooniverse.org/projects/nora-dot-eisner/planet-hunters-tess

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Northrop announced their first commercial customer for their OmegA rocket that the are pitching to the Air Force. They are going to carry two small geostationary satellites on their first launch in 2021 from a startup called Saturn Satellite Networks. Saturn is a Floridian company that just acquired a Californian smallsat manufacturer. They had previously hinted that they would fly on SpaceX's Falcon but I'm sure OmegA is happy to take them instead. It's important for the various companies competing in the USAF launch contract competition to show they are financially viable even without the USAF contract.

https://spacenews.com/saturn-satellite-networks-to-be-first-customer-of-northrop-grummans-omega/

 

[Samson]

I am not saying its aliens, but....

The Vanishing & Appearing Sources during a Century of Observations (VASCO) project have examined 100 red blinking objects in the night sky, and they cannot explain them with standard physics, so it could be aliens. They say "The implications of finding such objects extend from traditional astrophysics fields to the more exotic searches for evidence of technologically advanced civilizations." I am afraid I cannot really follow the paper but look, even the candidate selection graphic has aliens in it, it must be aliens, right?

Paper (paywalled, you can try your favourate scientific publications distributer) El Reg writeup