The thread for space cadets!

[Imaus]

I really hope an expanded budget, economic upturns, and tech advances start chopping down mission-concept to mission-execution times.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

NASA has its hands in every single satellite lab and rocket start up in the country right now. As much as they're helping the companies, the companies are pushing them to be faster and more agile on technology development and uptake. It's a pretty thrilling time to be in the industry.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Turns out Boeing was paying $9/hour for software development on the 737 MAX. Wonderful. They're also being accused of lying about a design flaw or major fabrication error (unclear which) for at least one 787 delivery. More wonderful. So much capitalist winning I can't even.

 

[uppi]

Turns out Boeing was paying $9/hour for software development on the 737 MAX. Wonderful.

I would say, you get what you pay for if my experience with outsourcing wasn't that you tend to get even less.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

This is a lesson that SpaceX's rivals are not getting. SpaceX aggressively moved to in-house as much of their design and manufacturing process as possible, to the point where they have been credibly accused of stealing supplier IP in the process. Meanwhile, all of their US-based competitors continue to use massive webs of subcontractors for every part and piece of the design and their costs are much higher as a result. I suspect the same is true over in Europe.

The Europeans announced they are doubling-down on the Falcon 9 'clone' with more funding and a path to flight for a full-scale launch vehicle. It would not surprise me if this new rocket completely destroys the business case for Ariane 6. The EU will have to step up their launch-contract guarantees if they want to keep the latter rocket on the market.

 

[uppi]

I suspect the same is true over in Europe.

Yes. In some European countries (especially Germany and France), there is the additional factor that it is very hard to fire a regular employee. As a result, large companies are reluctant to hire new people and it can be much easier to get the funding for a project than to get employees to work on it. So often subcontractors are used even when it is glaringly obvious that they are more expensive than in-house people would be just because they're easier to get.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

It's unfortunate there there is a the lack of really robust support of the satellite and launch sector in Europe. The continent's economy is larger than the US's and supporting industries through generous contracts I would think would be a major priority for the more socialist-leaning states over there. All told, the Europeans order a fraction of the launches of the US in all categories though they do launch a lot of foreign payloads. This latter category is mostly commercial sales to telecom companies and even here the Ariane 5 has lost significant ground.

I think it mostly comes down to politics and a lack of a really integrated military force. In the US, states* jockey to build satellites and to participate in major launch contracts and there are clear winners and losers. Despite the competitive nature of the bidding process, at the end of the day the satellite will get built even if that means some California jobs are lost while Alabama ones are created. In Europe, if Germany and France can't agree on the cut of the work, the project might not happen at all.

This played out for both the Ariane 6 and Vega programs when fighting between Germany, Italy and France delayed and de-stabilized both of those programs and resulted in a lot of waste. Germany was particularly incensed at the original Ariane 6 design which boasted up to 6 French, ICBM-derived boosters per vehicle while neatly removing the German-designed hydrogen-fueled core. On Vega, the Germans fought the Italians over the production of the solid rocket boosters and they compromised with an agreement which would have allowed the Germans to set up a second production line on top of the Italian one, cost and efficiency be damned. This agreement was later modified as the Germans instead chose to deploy funds to set up a design and production effort for the new Falcon 9 clone which is being spearheaded by Germany's space administration called DLR.

The other thing is that the US has one unified military and intelligence system. The various branches all jostle and step on each other's toes but they all share a common purpose and guidance from a single government. In Europe it's obviously not the same and while NATO provides a framework, it does not really substitute for a truly pan-European military and intelligence apparatus.

Europe can't afford as many toys as the US not because Europe is less rich than the US but because the US is richer by far than any of Europe's individual constituents and they don't act in perfect lockstep in the space field. I will say that this does not at all detract from what Europe's capable of as they have for decades built the best rockets and satellites that can be had. There's also been some effort to give large European multi-national corporations more of a say in European aerospace policy and programs in hopes this will unleash competitive energies.


*really corporations - but they geographically diverse so stand in for states

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There were also recent statements from a French space official bemoaning how they can't build a reusable rocket because then they'd only need to build three rockets a year and that would result in job losses. Like wut. Get smart and figure out ways to put more payloads on those cheaper rockets and focus on beating your international rivals on cost while maintaining Europe's stellar quality record. As launch costs continue to drop it's spurred a massive amount of growth on the satellite side. Big banks are taking interest and there's an investment frenzy rivalling what was seen in the 90's when Iridium and other big networks were being built out. This time the fundamentals are much better if for no other reason than that costs have dropped drastically.

The Iridium satellites were a marvel of engineering and cost around $50 million each - after a $3+ billion dollar R&D investment. Today you could re-build Iridium with 12U CubeSats for about a million each with a capital investment of around $100 million up front.

Just a few years ago I estimated for someone here that I could build and launch a 1U for a million - I think I could do it for $100,000 now.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The 787 has officially been added to the ongoing investigation of Boeing and the 737 Max

 

[r16]

so late , people , Al Crusading last night had a documentary that claims the Egyptair 990 in like 1999 or whatever was the same , as in 767 . And yeah , Mübarek acted in defence of American interests and hushed it , because you know that there are bad Egyptians and good Egyptians and all the good Egyptians are Ihvan , who one of these days will kiss the feet of the Qatari Emir .

 

[Cutlass]

News Release 10-Jul-2019
Pair of supermassive black holes discovered on a collision course
The titanic duo can help astronomers predict when the historic first detection of the background 'hum' of gravitational waves from supermassive black holes will be made and whether there truly is a 'final parsec problem'

Simons Foundation

Astronomers have spotted a distant pair of titanic black holes headed for a collision.

Each black hole's mass is more than 800 million times that of our sun. As the two gradually draw closer together in a death spiral, they will begin sending gravitational waves rippling through space-time. Those cosmic ripples will join the as-yet-undetected background noise of gravitational waves from other supermassive black holes.

Even before the destined collision, the gravitational waves emanating from the supermassive black hole pair will dwarf those previously detected from the mergers of much smaller black holes and neutron stars.

"Supermassive black hole binaries produce the loudest gravitational waves in the universe," says co-discoverer Chiara Mingarelli, an associate research scientist at the Flatiron Institute's Center for Computational Astrophysics in New York City. Gravitational waves from supermassive black hole pairs "are a million times louder than those detected by LIGO."

The study was led by Andy Goulding, an associate research scholar at Princeton University. Goulding, Mingarelli and collaborators from Princeton and the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C., report the discovery July 10 in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

The two supermassive black holes are especially interesting because they are around 2.5 billion light-years away from Earth. Since looking at distant objects in astronomy is like looking back in time, the pair belong to a universe 2.5 billion years younger than our own. Coincidentally, that's roughly the same amount of time the astronomers estimate the black holes will take to begin producing powerful gravitational waves.

In the present-day universe, the black holes are already emitting these gravitational waves, but even at light speed the waves won't reach us for billions of years. The duo is still useful, though. Their discovery can help scientists estimate how many nearby supermassive black holes are emitting gravitational waves that we could detect right now.

Detecting the gravitational wave background will help resolve some of the biggest unknowns in astronomy, such as how often galaxies merge and whether supermassive black hole pairs merge at all or become stuck in a near-endless waltz around each other.

"It's a major embarrassment for astronomy that we don't know if supermassive black holes merge," says study co-author Jenny Greene, a professor of astrophysical sciences at Princeton. "For everyone in black hole physics, observationally this is a long-standing puzzle that we need to solve."

Supermassive black holes contain millions or even billions of suns' worth of mass. Nearly all galaxies, including the Milky Way, contain at least one of the behemoths at their core. When galaxies merge, their supermassive black holes meet up and begin orbiting one another. Over time, this orbit tightens as gas and stars pass between the black holes and steal energy.

Once the supermassive black holes get close enough, though, this energy theft all but stops. Some theoretical studies suggest that black holes then stall at around 1 parsec (roughly 3.2 light-years) apart. This slowdown lasts nearly indefinitely and is known as the final parsec problem. In this scenario, only very rare groups of three or more supermassive black holes result in mergers.

Astronomers can't just look for stalled pairs because long before the black holes are 1 parsec apart, they're too close to distinguish as two separate objects. Moreover, they don't produce strong gravitational waves until they overcome the final-parsec hurdle and get closer together. (Observed as they were 2.5 billion years ago, the newfound supermassive black holes appear about 430 parsecs apart.)

If the final parsec problem doesn't exist, then astronomers expect that the universe is filled with the clamor of gravitational waves from supermassive black hole pairs. "This noise is called the gravitational wave background, and it's a bit like a chaotic chorus of crickets chirping in the night," says Goulding. "You can't discern one cricket from another, but the volume of the noise helps you estimate how many crickets are out there." (When two supermassive black holes finally collide and combine, they send out a thundering chirp that dwarfs all others. Such an event is brief and extraordinarily rare, though, so scientists don't expect to detect one any time soon.)

The gravitational waves generated by supermassive black hole pairs are outside the frequencies currently observable by experiments such as LIGO and Virgo. Instead, gravitational wave hunters rely on arrays of special stars called pulsars that act like metronomes. The rapidly spinning stars send out radio waves in a steady rhythm. If a passing gravitational wave stretches or compresses the space between Earth and the pulsar, the rhythm is slightly thrown off.

Detecting the gravitational wave background using one of these pulsar timing arrays takes patience and plenty of monitored stars. A single pulsar's rhythm might be disrupted by only a few hundred nanoseconds over a decade. The louder the background noise, the bigger the timing disruption and the sooner the first detection will be made.

Goulding, Greene and the other observational astronomers on the team detected the two titans with the Hubble Space Telescope. Although supermassive black holes aren't directly visible through an optical telescope, they are surrounded by bright clumps of luminous stars and warm gas drawn in by the powerful gravitational tug. For its time in history, the galaxy harboring the newfound supermassive black hole pair "is basically the most luminous galaxy in the universe," Goulding says. What's more, the galaxy's core is shooting out two unusually colossal plumes of gas. After the researchers pointed the Hubble Space Telescope at the galaxy to uncover the origins of its spectacular gas clouds, they discovered that the system contained not one but two massive black holes.

The observationalists then teamed up with gravitational wave physicists Mingarelli and Princeton graduate student Kris Pardo to interpret the finding in the context of the gravitational wave background. The discovery provides an anchor point for estimating how many supermassive black hole pairs are within detection distance of Earth. Previous estimates relied on computer models of how often galaxies merge, rather than actual observations of supermassive black hole pairs.

Based on the findings, Pardo and Mingarelli predict that in an optimistic scenario there are about 112 nearby supermassive black holes emitting gravitational waves. The first detection of the gravitational wave background from supermassive black holes should therefore come within the next five years or so. If such a detection isn't made, that would be evidence that the final parsec problem may be insurmountable. The team is currently looking at other galaxies similar to the one harboring the newfound supermassive black hole pair. Finding additional pairs will help them further hone their predictions.

https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-07/sf-pos071019.php

 

[Imaus]

A Germano-Russian mission has launched from Baikonur. The Spektr-RG, which is two telescopes in one, was launched on a Proton and is heading for L2. It'll focus on X-rays, Black Holes, and the like.

More here at BBC.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

The European Vega rocket suffered it's first failure in 15 launches. The failure occured during first and second stage separation while they were attempting to Loft a UAE spy satellite into orbit. This is a huge setback for Ariane because not only are they getting their lunch eaten by SpaceX, they also have Blue Origin coming online in Ariane 5/6's market segment while a plethora of small rocket providers like Rocket Lab and Virgin Galactic are edging into Vega's turf with a veritable fleet of new vehicles poised to enter the market. This is also their 2nd major mishap in as many years which are especially unfortunate given how highly reliable they were in the previous decade of operations.

 

[Imaus]

Space Weather Message Code: ALTEF3
Serial Number: 2952
Issue Time: 2019 Jul 13 1046 UTC

CONTINUED ALERT: Electron 2MeV Integral Flux exceeded 1000pfu
Continuation of Serial Number: 2951
Begin Time: 2019 Jul 10 1230 UTC
Yesterday Maximum 2MeV Flux: 6623 pfu

NOAA Space Weather Scale descriptions can be found at
www.swpc.noaa.gov/noaa-scales-explanation

Potential Impacts: Satellite systems may experience significant charging resulting in increased risk to satellite systems

Reported higher levels of radiation in England from 0.9-0.14 uSv to 0.20uSv. Shouldn't be too much of a problem for any sats, new or old?

 

[red_elk]

There are news reports that Galileo is down.

 

[hobbsyoyo]

China is set to do a controlled de-orbit of their last space station. This is a big improvement over the last one which failed and had an uncontrolled re-entry.

 

[Imaus]

China is set to do a controlled de-orbit of their last space station. This is a big improvement over the last one which failed and had an uncontrolled re-entry.

I wish more and more...how do you call them? Prototypes, test beds? Actually got made and used. Tiangong-2 hopefully gave them all it needed to give. Imagine if we ever got hard data on Sea Dragon or the like?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

I wish more and more...how do you call them? Prototypes, test beds? Actually got made and used. Tiangong-2 hopefully gave them all it needed to give. Imagine if we ever got hard data on Sea Dragon or the like?

This is the beauty of CubeSats and small launch vehicles - the costs to get to orbit and do useful things has fallen so much that NASA and private companies are investing in a lot of crazy ideas. Many of them won't pan out but a lot of them will.

 

[Imaus]

William Gerstenmaier, a NASA veteran, was removed Wednesday as head of the agency’s human exploration office, a sudden move that comes as the agency is seeking to restore a human-space-flight program and return astronauts to the moon.

Gerstenmaier, who served at the agency since 1977, had been in charge of some of NASA’s most high-profile programs and is known as a steady and methodical force at the agency’s headquarters. Known as “Gerst,” he was working alongside Boeing and SpaceX as they developed spacecraft capable of ferrying NASA’s astronauts to the International Space Station.


In the email to NASA employees sent Wednesday evening, Bridenstine wrote: “As you know, NASA has been given a bold challenge to put the first woman and the next man on the Moon by 2024, with a focus on the ultimate goal of sending humans to Mars. In an effort to meet this challenge, I have decided to make leadership changes to the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) Mission Directorate.”

-WAPO

 

[hobbsyoyo]

There is an awful lot of rumor milling going on as to why this guy and one of his lieutenants were demoted. I am guessing that SLS is going to slip into 2021 and this is Bridenstine holding his management team accountable.