It's About Time

This post is going to be about time and some concepts that we come across in life and space travel. Today over lunch, we watched a show on Amazon prime called "Faster Than Light: the Dream of Interstellar Flight." It was 45 minutes long and while dated a few years (it was made in 2017) reasonably well done. As a bonus, it appears to be available on YouTube and watchable there. While it didn't really cover any things that were new to me, it was a pretty decent look at the problems and the concepts.  That's what led to this. 

The nearest star is Proxima centauri - Centaurus is a constellation in the southern hemisphere and the name Proxima literally means "close". It's a way to name it, "the closest start in Centaurus".  An easy web search says that star is 4.2465 light years from us. How far is that? In statute miles, which (I think) most readers will reflexively think of, that's 24,963,000,000,000 or 24.963 trillion miles. 40.175 trillion km.

Voyagers 1 and 2 are the farthest man made objects from us, and have been traveling for 47 years. As I've said before:

Voyager 1 is currently 22 hours, 37 minutes and change away at light speed. I'll call it 22-1/2 light hours away. The nearest stars are just over four light years away. Assuming it's even going in the right direction, it'll take Voyager 1 almost 77,000 years to get to the Alpha/Proxima Centauri star system. 

It's safe to say that there's no way we could mount a mission to the nearest star with any technology we know of. What moving machines do you know of that could work for 77,000 years? If we could go 10x faster than Voyager, it's still 7700 years. We'd have to go a significant portion of the speed of light to even get there in an adult's lifetime. The problems are mind boggling - and this is for the nearest star. Our galaxy is thousands of times bigger than the distance to Proxima centauri; around 88,000 light years in diameter. It's practically impossible to go those distances. Even going 100 times the speed of light it takes far too long to get there. 

Polaris Dawn to Splashdown EARLY Sunday Morning

As I start to write, it's around 8:30 PM ET. Polaris Dawn is scheduled to splashdown just west of the Dry Tortugas - the westernmost extent of the Florida Keys - at 3:36 AM ET. I'm guessing that with the splashdown almost exactly seven hours from now, they'll either soon be waking up to their last few hours in orbit or they just have.

The team put up another video today, a few minutes describing some of the medical tests they've been doing as part of the "36 experiments from 31 partner institutions" they've been completing. The Space.com video ends with a few seconds video of Jared Isaacman's spacewalk.

As this is a mission intended to increase donations to St. Jude Children's Research Hospital for pediatric cancers and other problems, the Hospital is an overarching supporter of the mission and something that drives the force behind the space mission, Jared Isaacman. Because of that, the crew has had video communications with the hospital and patients. I haven't seen links to any of those. 

As they quipped at Space.com, "Like every other major milestone of the Polaris Dawn mission, you're going to have to be awake in the middle of the night to catch the action." For those getting or staying up to watch, SpaceX provides this handy schedule to follow:

While it's difficult to truly know, the mission has seemed completely successful so far and achieved all of their major goals. Meanwhile, SpaceX has kept doing what they do best, launching payloads to orbit. There was a Starlink launch from Vandenberg yesterday, the 13th, and a customer's satellites from Cape Canaveral on the 12th (AST SpaceMobile’s cellphone-compatible Bluebird Block 1).  On Monday, they'll launch two more Galileo navigation satellites for the European Union (the EU's "GPS"). 

A Peripatetic Friday of Musings

While most of the stories I see in the usual sources is about missions with dates months out in the future, there's a few that go together - and one that doesn't really.  

Is Boeing Going Into Collapse?

This is combining a few stories. I'll try to be brief and coherent. 

First story. The return of the Starliner CFT-1 capsule (Crewed Flight Test) isn't news - that was last Saturday.  But it wasn't widely reported that there were new problems on the return flight.

One of 12 control jets on the crew module failed to ignite at any time during Starliner's flight home. These are separate thrusters from the small engines that caused trouble earlier in the Starliner mission. There was also a brief glitch in Starliner's navigation system during reentry.

The fact that these are different thrusters from the ones that caused them to come back without Butch and Suni doesn't sound good. Did the redesign/recertification task just get bigger? 

Second story. Then there's a story that Eric Berger at Ars Technica related on the 11th.  As a senior journalist with many good sources, he gets invited to the big events and passes on a story that doesn't sound good:

Early on Saturday morning, after Starliner successfully landed in New Mexico without its crew on board, I attended a press conference at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. There were six chairs set up at the table for officials. A week before, NASA had sent out a press release announcing this post-landing news conference, noting that two senior officials from Boeing—Mark Nappi and John Shannon—would be in attendance.

But at about 12:20 am, 10 minutes before the news conference was due to start, two of the chairs were removed. I asked a NASA spokesperson what was happening and was told that I'd have to ask Boeing. Shannon and Nappi were no-shows at the news conference.

Boeing decided, soon after the Starliner mission ended, not to attend this conference? Were there more problems than just the "one of 12 control jets" failing that haven't been reported? Was it the same one that failed to ignite every time or was it a different thruster every time they tried to fire them, but still only one of the 12 at any time?  Eric goes on to suggest, "one possible explanation is that Boeing has decided it will exit the Commercial Crew Program."  

Third story: This one is today. More than 33,000 unionized Boeing workers went on strike today. In doing so, they rejected the deal their union had made with the company. It has (thankfully) been many years since I had any management responsibilities and what I knew about the subject of unions and what's legal has gone through enough half lives of decay that I remember essentially none of it. 

The rejected deal tried and failed to win over workers by offering a 25 percent wage increase and promised to build Boeing's next jet in the Puget Sound region in Washington, which Boeing claimed offered "job security for generations to come."

But after International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers (IAM) District 751 president Jon Holden urged the union to accept the deal—which Boeing said was the "largest-ever general wage increase" in the company's history—hundreds of Boeing employees immediately began resisting ahead of a Thursday vote that ultimately doomed the deal

Taking these three all together, a possible picture emerges of a company in a severe pinch - if not in "life or death" trouble. They're facing big changes to Starliner that has already cost them well over what they can make from it. The cost to redesign and certify the new one has potentially taken a couple of jumps: the new failures on reentry and now the increasing costs of labor.  I know their new CEO has promised to keep going and make it right, but I don't know how long that can hold up and how long they can absorb the higher costs. Can he be overruled by the Board of Directors (or whatever they're called)? 

And now for something completely, radically different.

Back to Polaris Dawn. A look at what was up today led to a totally unexpected treat posted to X. Sarah Gillis, the SpaceX engineer who took part in the EVA or spacewalk yesterday, is also a musician.  Sarah brought a violin into space and played with a handful of groups of musicians around the globe. 

The song in the video, "Rey's Theme," was written by John Williams for "Star Wars: The Force Awakens" and was performed by Gillis aboard the Polaris Dawn mission's Crew Dragon spacecraft. In the video, Gillis can be seen playing the song's solo violin part alongside videos of orchestras performing the song in studios and on soundstages.

"Inspired by the universal language of music and the relentless fight against childhood cancers and diseases, this moment was created with the hope of inspiring the next generation to look towards the stars," the Polaris Program wrote on its website. The video was created in partnership with with St. Jude Children's Research Hospital, for whom the Polaris Program is raising money throughout the mission, and El Sistema USA, a program that aims to promote music education "for positive societal impact."

A still from "Harmony of Resilience," a music video released in space on Sept. 13, 2024 by the Polaris Program during its five-day Polaris Dawn mission. (Image credit: Polaris Program via X)

That's One Small Walk for a Man

Credit where credit is due, that headline is not my creation; rather it belongs to Stephen Green at PJ Media (also known as VodkaPundit), who wrote, “That's One Small Walk for a Man (and a Woman)...”  To further borrow his opening line:

The privately funded Polaris Dawn human space mission just kind of casually reached the highest orbit in more than 50 years on Wednesday and on Thursday conducted the first civilian spacewalks to just as little fanfare.

That's really the most succinct way of summing up the mission to date. To borrow the frequently used line from the old commercials, "but wait! There's more." While the first day of the mission marked the milestone of reaching the highest altitude a crew has been since the last Apollo mission crossed that altitude on the way back to Earth, the last mission to orbit at that altitude for an extended time was Gemini 11 in 1966.  That flight was crewed by Pete Conrad and Dick Gordon - both of whom have passed on. The two would fly together to the moon on Apollo 12. Pete Conrad walked on the moon while Dick Gordon had the job of  being "the loneliest man in the universe" - the Command Module pilot.

These two legends of the astronaut corps had their record broken by four young and newly minted astronauts. The experienced two were commander Jared Isaacman, billionaire tech entrepreneur, and pilot Scott Poteet, U.S. Air Force, retired. The two new astronauts on their first flight were SpaceX engineers Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon. Both Gillis and Menon are on their first flight to orbit, got that altitude record, and Sarah Gillis got to do a spacewalk on her first trip to space! Anna Menon is serving as medical officer for the flight.

Wednesday, as the Polaris Dawn capsule was slowly increasing its orbital apogee, they were also slowly and methodically having their air pressure reduced while increasing the percent oxygen. This is done to reduce the amount of nitrogen dissolved in their blood, to reduce the possibility of decompression sickness. I know they were doing other things and not just sitting there noticing their breathing, but I find no references to what they were doing.

While the walk was supposed to start earlier, 2:23 AM EDT, it didn't start until just about four hours later: 6:12 AM. The start isn't when they open the hatch, it's when they start bleeding the air out of the Dragon while doing some functional checks on their suits. I watched both of them do their spacewalks and they weren't dramatic - a good thing - but were functional tests of different aspects of the suits, while supported by specialized hatch hardware designed just for this mission and known as "Skywalker." Similarly, the EVA wasn't over when Isaacman and Gillis had completed their tests, it was declared over when the cabin had repressurized and returned to the conventional Oxygen/Nitrogen mix used.  According to SpaceX, that was 7:58 AM EDT. 

A detailed look at getting through the stages to take today's spacewalks. From SpaceX.

I've been looking for links to videos of the two spacewalks themselves, something on the order of the 10 minutes doing tests on Skywalker. There are short videos on SpaceX's page on X.  A minute and change of Isaacman's with his notable quote, "SpaceX, back at home we have a lot of work to do, but from here it looks like a perfect world." Plus a shorter one (that repeats) of Sarah Gillis' walk.  The SpaceX page on X also has a long video (3 hrs 15 minutes) that you could look around in here. 

I watched the NASASpaceflight.com coverage, which was then posted as a 3 hr 19 minute video. They don't even approach opening the hatch until almost 1 hr 54 minutes into the video (01:53:30). 

Returning to where I started, with VodkaPundit's article, I think he ends it really well, on a good note.  All props to him for this perspective.

What Polaris Dawn and other SpaceX missions remind me of is NASA's Mercury and Gemini missions of the 1960s. There were numerous technological [hurdles] to be overcome and skills to be learned before the Apollo program could take its final shape and send men to the moon.
...
NASA also had to learn about known unknowns, like whether radiation in space would sicken or kill our astronauts in higher orbits. The men who performed those Mercury and Gemini missions, from Alan Shepard on Freedom 7 to Jim Lovell and Buzz Aldrin on Gemini 12, were pioneers in every sense of the word. What they accomplished made Apollo possible. Without them, JFK's challenge to land a man on the moon before 1970 would have been a largely forgotten speech by a dead president.

Elon Musk wants to send humans to Mars (eventually including himself), preferably beginning in 2028. SpaceX, like NASA in the '60s, has to learn many lessons before that becomes possible.

SpaceX's genius play is that Musk has figured out how to get other people to help pay for his R&D — and I don't mean your tax dollars. Polaris Dawn was funded by Isaacman. While the billionaire refuses to say how much he paid, I'd be shocked if it was anything less than $200 million, and I wouldn't be too surprised if it turned out to be double that.
...
Isaacman is getting what he wants, and SpaceX is getting the data and experience it needs to keep pushing the boundaries of human space travel.

So if anyone tells you that Polaris Dawn is just some rich man's stunt, you can tell them the truth. It was one small walk for a man and woman, and one giant leap for mankind.

The New SpaceX Suit for Thursday Morning's Spacewalk

By now, everyone has seen the Intravehicular Activity (IVA) suit that SpaceX makes for those who fly to the ISS or other Earth orbit missions that don't require exposure to the harsher conditions outside the controlled environment inside vehicles.  The first view of those happened on Bob and Doug's first Crew Dragon test flight and many have pointed out how different those suits look from the older generation suits we've been used to. This post from a couple of days before the first manned flight shows SpaceX's suit in one picture and NASA suits (from the Space Shuttle days) in the next. 

The new Extravehicular Activity (EVA) suits have been seen here more recently, and SpaceX has released quite a lot of information - including a video - on the suit as the Polaris Dawn EVA is scheduled for 2:23 AM ET on Thursday morning. Never shy about big plans, the video on X has a header that reads: “The EVA suit is a scalable design with the intent to create millions to help make life multiplanetary.” 

"It's kind of like a suit of armor made of fabric," SpaceX principal spacesuit engineer Erik Kraus says in the new video.

New features, including enhanced mobility through new joints, a helmet and visor with a display, and a fabric-based material for ease of manufacturing, are detailed in the video.

While based on the IVA suit, the EVA suit's soft portions become rigid when pressurized, requiring flexure and rotational joints for ease of movement. It also has an added Faraday layer, or a conductive cage, around the suit that shields it from external electric fields.

A reality of any EVA suit is that it will be used in a very hostile environment, and that's the real emphasis of the suit.  An old observation about the moon gives a useful perspective. On the side facing the sun, it can reach over 200 F while on the side facing deep space it could drop to -200 F. A person isn't big enough to support that large a temperature difference but it's worth thinking that's what the environment is trying to do the suit wearer.

"The EVA suit visor is made of polycarbonate and is coated with copper and ITO, or indium tin oxide," said Kraus in the video. "These two coatings together reflect the sun away from the crew, as well as reflecting infrared heat back to the crew when they are facing deep space."

It's worth noting that the suit was designed and built at SpaceX in Hawthorne, California, with the focus on in-house manufacturing, according to Maria Sundeen, manager of spacesuit fabrication, also appearing in the video. And, for ease of manufacturing, the team developed a new, fabric-based material.  

The thing most noteworthy to me is almost a shocking line toward the end of the video. 

"The ultimate goal is that you can put on the spacesuit and go out and get work done anywhere in the solar system and not feel like you're wearing anything more than you normally wear everyday," said Trigg.

I can't work outside here in Florida and be as comfortable working as inside the air conditioned house in any outfit. Maybe I need one of their EVA suits.

Screen capture from an animation of the suit at PolarisProgram.com

FAA Says No Starship Test Flight 5 until After Election

It's hard to say it's just a coincidence that the FAA has said no launch approval will be granted until the end of November.  They didn't say, "we're going to allow the flight after you submit answers to our concerns, A-Z" (or our concerns, #1 to #400).  They simply said, no launch approval until then. On top of that, it's not like they haven't messed with SpaceX and Elon Musk before (just one example). 

Over the course of the last few weeks, I'd seen rumors of something like this many times. The problem was that it seemed that within the next few seconds, I'd see a reference to Integrated Flight Test 5 (IFT-5) launching before the end of the month. None of the news sources I regularly use had touched the story so I didn't know what to make of it. This afternoon, thanks to a tip from reader Chip, I went to ZeroHedge and found their coverage of it, referencing a post from SpaceX I hadn't seen: 

According to a new SpaceX update: 

We recently received a launch license date estimate of late November from the FAA, the government agency responsible for licensing Starship flight tests. This is a more than two-month delay to the previously communicated date of mid-September. This delay was not based on a new safety concern, but instead driven by superfluous environmental analysis. The four open environmental issues are illustrative of the difficulties launch companies face in the current regulatory environment for launch and reentry licensing.

That was time-tagged 2:20 PM and contained this tweet from Elon Musk time-tagged an hour earlier:

The document quoted by Peter Hague (white text on a black background) is the SpaceX Updates website.

My next stop was Ars Technica and they had posted the story at 7:18PM. The Ars article is longer than Zero Hedge's post, but it's a well done summary and very readable.  Since everyone references it, that SpaceX Updates post is probably the best thing to read. ZeroHedge has a good collection of response tweets that Ars doesn't. SpaceX addresses the environmentalist attacks and dismantles each of them. Any one of them has more to say than I could quote here.

A Couple of Mission Updates

Polaris Dawn is go for Tuesday Morning, Sept. 10

Liftoff is scheduled for 0738 UTC, 3:38 AM ET.  As before, there are two additional launch opportunities within the four-hour window at 5:23 AM ET and 7:09 AM ET. If needed, backup opportunities are available on Wednesday, September 11 at the same times.   

The US Space Force weather squadron isn't very optimistic here, citing a 40% chance of acceptable weather - also known as a 60% chance of bad weather.   

Considering the crew has been in isolation on the Cape since August 20, this has to be a hardship for them. Flight commander Jared Isaacman has said that because of the lack of room left on the Crew Dragon with all the things they're bringing that he wanted to make sure the weather for both launch and landing were less of a factor than on conventional missions. He's concerned they don't have enough room for the food and supplies they'd prefer to bring.  All the previous schedule shifts we've seen have been due to weather.

In the wake of scrubbing ESCAPADE 

The next big, interesting, planetary mission is Europa Clipper headed for the Jovian moon Europa to search for conditions favorable to life under the ice surface of the ocean covering the moon. The mission just completed the probe's pre-launch review and is now cleared to prepare for its mission, NET October 10th at 12:31PM ET on a Falcon Heavy from pad 39A on the KSC side. This is where the Polaris Dawn capsule and its Falcon 9 booster are currently waiting for its launch. 

A major issue in the design review was raised about transistors (MOSFETs - or metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors) used in various places on Europa. Other users have reported these transistors have failed under radiation conditions they were certified to work under. Within days, the JPL had verified that samples of the transistors they had used also failed.  

“That led to four months of around-the-clock testing at multiple locations around the country,” said Jordan Evans, Europa Clipper project manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, as engineers sought to understand how various systems on the spacecraft were affected by radiation damage to those transistors. 

“This was a huge lift, and I think ‘huge lift’ is a huge understatement,” said Laurie Leshin, director of JPL, at the briefing. It involved testing not just at JPL but also the Goddard Space Flight Center and Applied Physics Laboratory.

Those tests found that none of the systems on Europa Clipper were impaired by potential damage to those transistors. “Every one of those circuits is different,” Evans said, with different consequences for failures among the 200 circuits studied. “We determined that we have sufficient margin in every one of those circuits to accomplish this mission.”

NASA continued with Europa Clipper launch preparations, like installing its solar panels, while studying if spacecraft transistors could support the planned mission. Image credit: NASA/Kim Shiflett

Starliner's Return Flight Wasn't Exactly Perfect

Something to keep in mind, from the Ars Technica summary of the return flight.

A couple of fresh technical problems cropped up as Starliner cruised back to Earth. One of 12 control jets on the crew module failed to ignite at any time during Starliner's flight home. These are separate thrusters from the small engines that caused trouble earlier in the Starliner mission. There was also a brief glitch in Starliner's navigation system during reentry.

Starliner fans can't exactly call that flight proof that NASA was too cautious in sending Butch and Suni home by SpaceX.

SpaceX to Start Launching Starships to Mars in 2026

In a Tweet on his X platform Saturday evening, Elon Musk announced unmanned Starship flights to Mars will begin two years from now in the next Mars launch window coming in the 4th quarter of 2026. These will be test flights and test landings to ensure the Starship can land on Martian soil in chosen areas.  

"These will be uncrewed to test the reliability of landing intact on Mars. If those landings go well, then the first crewed flights to Mars will be in 4 years."  

Note the remainder of the quote in the top tweet:

"Flight rate will grow exponentially from there, with the goal of building a self-sustaining city in about 20 years.  Being multiplanetary will vastly increase the probable lifespan of consciousness, as we will no longer have all our eggs, literally and metabolically, on one planet."

Musk went on to say (in the “show more” link at the bottom of the second tweet), “It currently costs about a billion dollars per ton of useful payload to the surface of Mars. That needs to be improved to $100k/ton to build a self-sustaining city there, so the technology needs to be 10,000 times better. Extremely difficult, but not impossible.”

Making it cost 0.0001 times the current price is difficult but not impossible?  Since he has run the effort to get there with the Falcon 9 we have to consider he's sitting on or gets better access to the information than anyone else on Earth. I'm more likely to believe it coming from Elon than from pretty much anyone else.

Where Does Starliner Stand with NASA?

With the successful return of the Starliner CFT-1 (Crewed Flight Test-1) capsule Friday night it's worth taking a look at what we can find to understand the big picture.  A lot of ink has been used  bits have been thrown around over the last three months - and then some. Far more has been said in private, in meetings between the major players: NASA and Boeing at the top level and the various engineering groups and managers at Boeing in private. Naturally we have "zero point zero" access to that.  

On Thursday, Stephen Clark at Ars Technica posted an article that tries to extract a full picture. "After another Boeing letdown, NASA isn’t ready to buy more Starliner missions." The article starts out with an important fact that's easy to lose sight of: this flight was seven years behind Boeing's original schedule. Boeing and SpaceX got their contracts to ferry astronauts to the ISS at the same time - a full ten years ago. Boeing's contract was bigger. The industry "gurus" thought SpaceX didn't have a chance. You probably know that story. 

SpaceX launched its first Dragon spacecraft with astronauts in May 2020, and six months later, NASA cleared SpaceX to begin flying regular six-month space station crew rotation missions.

The short version is that SpaceX is just shy of four years ahead of Boeing. The ISS has (approximately) six years of life left before it gets taken out of orbit.  Boeing is not ready to start flying regularly - they're not accepted and qualified to launch crews.  With crew rotations every six months, there are only 12 flights left and SpaceX has many of them contracted already. How many could they get? The article implies they already have been penciled in for six.

Then there's the work left to be done on Starliner itself. It strikes me as the entire thruster assembly has to be redesigned and proven out - something has to test fly. That means work for Aerojet Rocketdyne as well as Boeing. NASA officials haven't said whether they will require Boeing to launch another Starliner test flight before certifying the spacecraft for the first of those potential six crew rotation flights on Boeing's contract. I can't see why they wouldn't require another full up test flight. 

Before this test flight, and the enduring "fustercluck" we were witnesses to, NASA penciled in Boeing's first mission to the ISS for August of 2025; call it one year. That was before this mission, its problems and the redesign that seems to be hanging out there. One year at most? Fat chance. From everything we've seen, I'm inclined to think this is the Boeing behind SLS and Artemis where nothing is completed on time.

NASA has only given Boeing the "Authority To Proceed" for three of its six potential operational Starliner missions. This milestone, known as ATP, is a decision point in contracting lingo where the customer—in this case, NASA—places a firm order for a deliverable. NASA has previously said it awards these task orders about two to three years prior to a mission's launch.

Josh Finch, a NASA spokesperson, told Ars that the agency hasn't made any decisions on whether to commit to any more operational Starliner missions from Boeing beyond the three already on the books.

"NASA’s goal remains to certify the Starliner system for crew transportation to the International Space Station," Finch said in a written response to questions from Ars. "NASA looks forward to its continued work with Boeing to complete certification efforts after Starliner’s uncrewed return. Decisions and timing on issuing future authorizations are on the work ahead."

The question seems to come down to what NASA's going to do. They have said from the start of the Commercial Crew Program that they wanted more than one reliable ride into space. Do they move more missions from Boeing's side to SpaceX?  

It also depends on what Boeing is going to do. How much is their new CEO Kelly Ortberg willing to pay to try to turn their reputation around?  

Boeing has not issued a public statement on its long-term commitment to the Starliner program since NASA's decision to end Starliner's Crew Flight Test (CFT) mission, but we do have second-hand information from Boeing's CEO, Kelly Ortberg, relayed through NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. "He expressed to me an intention that they will continue to work the problem once Starliner is back safely, and that we will have our redundancy and our crewed access to the space station," Nelson told reporters on August 24.

Keep in mind that the way the Fixed Price contracts of the Commercial Crew Program work, Boeing is responsible for costs of Starliner not working as advertised. As of July, Boeing has reported nearly $1.6 billion in losses to pay for delays and fix technical problems on Starliner. More financial losses for the Starliner program are likely in the year ahead to cover fixes for the thruster problems and helium leaks that plagued the test flight. While Boeing's contract was for $4.6 billion, they've only completed program milestones that have resulted in NASA paying them roughly $2.7 billion. Put another way, if Boeing said, "we changed our minds; we're not doing any more of this," they'd be out $1.9 billion income plus being out the nearly $1.6 billion - $3.5 billion total. Their best chance of minimizing losses is staying in the program and, obviously, turning their Starliner performance around.

Boeing's Starliner, apparently named Sea Anchor (visible under the American flag), before the June launch of CFT-1. Image credit: Miguel J. Rodriguez Carrillo/AFP via Getty Images

Busy Day in Space News

Hours after the post about Blue Origin scrambling to launch the Mars Escapade mission in it's rapidly approaching eight day window, NASA announced that the agency and Blue had agreed to drop this launch attempt and try to make the next best launch window. Then they talked about a launch window I haven't heard mentioned. 

While future launch opportunities are under review, the next possible earliest launch date is spring 2025.

A graphic I've had on my computer for a while - obtained from Reddit. This is the current version. The colors of the dots correspond to the Delta V (change in Velocity) with red, orange, yellow being faster than the greens and blues. In all cases the warmer colors reduce the travel time, read from top to bottom, scale on the left. Yup. The faster you go the faster you get there. What a surprise! 

Note the two years between windows. Each launch window is the vertical batch of colored dots, and note there isn't one labeled Q2 2025. 

Starliner has left the ISS and is expected to land in New Mexico early Saturday morning - around 10 PM Friday night local time.  

Undocking from the ISS and drifting slowly away after a few spritzes from the thrusters is obviously the easiest part of the return trip. The part that had everybody nervous is later this evening when the reentry starts. The deorbit burn will start at 11:17 PM EDT (0317 UTC) to target landing at White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico, shortly after midnight EDT.

The return is designed to minimize the hazard to the ISS of misbehaving thrusters on Starliner. After the springs on the docking collar push the capsule away, the thrusters will push it farther out ("above") the Space Station, then safely away from it before positioning itself to reenter safely.  This is not the generally accepted, generally used way to go to or from the ISS. 

Starliner will need to use the RCS thrusters again to point itself in the proper direction to fire four larger rocket engines for the deorbit burn. Once this burn is complete, the RCS thrusters will reorient the spacecraft to jettison the service module to burn up in the atmosphere. The reusable crew module relies on a separate set of thrusters during reentry.

Finally, the capsule will approach the landing zone in New Mexico from the southwest, flying over the Pacific Ocean and Mexico before deploying three main parachutes and airbags to cushion its landing at White Sands. Boeing and NASA teams there will meet the spacecraft and secure it for a road voyage back to Kennedy Space Center in Florida for refurbishment.

Blue Origin Scrambling to Meet New Glenn's Launch Date

I think that's a fair summary although instead of "Scrambling," SpaceNews  used the term "racing to meet".   

This week, the company rolled the upper stage of this rocket to the launch pad on Sept. 3 for a static fire test, and on Sept 4, the Jacklyn, arrived at Port Canaveral. Jacklyn (named after Jeff after Bezos' mother) is a European-built ship that will serve as the landing platform for New Glenn’s first stage, at Port Canaveral. Same task as A Shortfall Of Gravitas, shorter name. Photos here.

The first mission of New Glenn, to launch NASA's two ESCAPADE satellites to Mars is fast approaching with little to no room for failure.  Launch is No Earlier Than October 13 (liftoff time has not been announced). NASA said on Aug. 29 that the window is short and closes Oct. 21. That means if it doesn't launch by the 21st that the mission has to wait two years for the next optimum window. 

The milestone mentioned as "still to be done" that made me wince was this: 

The company said Aug. 27 that it integrated the final section of the first stage, the aft element, to the rest of the booster, but had yet to install the seven BE-4 engines in the stage.

Not having installed the engines in the first stage of New Glenn obviously means they haven't done a static fire test. Which, in turn, means there has been very little testing done on stage 1. With a rocket that has never been static fired, it's more of a concern than with a more mature rocket. It might mean they've never done a cryogenic test; just filling the tanks with super cold liquids to ensure everything is connected properly. 

Dave Limp, the chief executive of Blue Origin, admitted the company still had a lot of work ahead to get the vehicle ready for launch. “Still lots to do but progress,” he said on social media Aug. 27 in response to a question about the work remaining to get ready for launch. He cited milestones that included the static-fire test of the second stage, arrival of Jacklyn and engine integration.

“And yes, lots of unique challenges as our first flight, but folks are excited and leaning in big-time,” he added.

The New Glenn second stage on the test stand in Launch Complex 36. Image Credit: Blue Origin

If New Glenn is not ready by the time the ESCAPADE launch window closes Oct. 21, it’s not clear what payload will fly in its place on the rocket’s inaugural launch, or even what will happen to ESCAPADE itself.

All I can think of to conclude with here is to say it's high stakes for Blue Origin. High stakes indeed.

With Friday's Starliner Mission Capturing Headlines

Don't forget Boeing's other big problem: the heat shield on the Orion capsule used on Artemis. The Orion capsule is theirs, too. And I find some similarity between the things we hear in both cases. 

In the case of Starliner, they said over and over at the beginning that Starliner was safe for the crew to come back in. If nothing else, it could be used in case of emergency.  

They said NASA has already cleared Starliner for an emergency return to Earth if astronauts need to evacuate the space station for safety...

In the case of Orion they're saying if the Artemis I mission had been crewed, they would have been safe. 

The spacecraft safely splashed down, and if any astronauts had been aboard, they would have been fine. However, the inspections of the recovered spacecraft showed divots of heat shield material were missing.

Back in May ('24) we relayed that NASA had assembled a team of "outside experts" to look over the design and the data available. 

Initially, this review team's work was due to be completed in June, but its deliberations continued throughout much of the summer, and it only recently concluded.

The team's findings are not public yet, but NASA essentially faces two choices with the heat shield: It can fly Artemis II with a similar heat shield that Orion used on Artemis I, or the agency can revamp the design and construct a new heat shield, likely delaying Artemis II from its September 2025 launch date for multiple years.

As was the case in mid-Summer with Starliner, the insiders that will talk with the press are indicating that they think NASA is going to stick with original design and not a new heat shield. That means flying the original Orion heat shield yet again. Exactly how the mission might be modified to increase the odds of success isn't known. 

Orion's heat shield showing some of the divots and missing heat shield. According to the OIG report, NASA found more than 100 locations on the heat shield where material “chipped away unexpectedly” during the Artemis 1 reentry. 

European Space Agency Stands Down on Tonight's Launch

Tonight (Tuesday night, Sept. 3) was to be the final launch of the ESA's first-generation Vega rocket, essentially opening the way for the next generation Vega-C to take its place. That launch was scrubbed for tonight due to "electrical issues" and rescheduled for tomorrow night, according to a 6:41 PM EDT announcement from the ESA. The mission, dubbed VV24, will carry an Earth-imaging satellite to a sun-synchronous orbit.

“Due to electrical issues on the ground links #VV24 launch chronology was interrupted,” Arianespace wrote on X, formerly Twitter. “Checks are being conducted to confirm a new launch attempt tomorrow, Sept. 4, at 10:50 p.m. local time in Kourou. The launcher and its passenger, Sentinel-2C, are in stable and safe conditions.”

The launch is now set for Wednesday, Sept. 4, at 10:50 PM local, or 9:50 p.m. EDT (0150 UTC) from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. 

The imaging satellite is called the Copernicus Sentinel-2C satellite, and it will be deployed from the launcher about 57 minutes and 20 seconds after liftoff. Officials expect to acquire signal from the spacecraft within 12 minutes of separation. 

“We are really delighted to start the Vega year with the European Union’s flagship program, Copernicus, enhancing life on Earth,” said Stéphane Israël, the CEO of Arianespace, the company which manages the Vega rocket. “This mission really highlights Arianespace’s commitment to space for better life on Earth.”

Israël said the launch campaign, which formally began on July 12, has been “running perfectly well”. He said that the spacecraft began fueling on Aug. 16 and it was integrated with the upper stage on Aug. 27.

The Vega rocket went into service back in 2012 and has launched 21 times since then. The goal was to have a smooth, overlapping transition from Vega to the Vega-C rocket, but an upper-stage issue during the second flight of Vega-C in late 2022 (middle piece in that Christmas-y post) scuttled that plan. 

Sentinel-2 in the Vega launch tower. Image credit: ESA-CNES-ARIANESPACE/Optique vidéo du CSG–T. Leduc

The source article has a lot of information on the satellite program they're adding to with this launch. By all means read around if you're interested.  Conceptually,  the two-satellite constellation is similar in mission goals to NASA’s Landsat program and the French Satellite pour l’Observation de la Terre (SPOT) satellite series, which have been in operation since 1972 and 1986 respectively.  

My interest is I'd like to see Europe get its launch capacity back. SpaceX has been launching payloads  for EU, including two Galileo satellites on Monday evening from SLC-40 on Cape Canaveral. Buying the launches from SpaceX is better than those satellites never getting used, but having their own launch capability is something the EU used to do. Besides, maybe if the EU says members can't use those cheaper, reused boosters, maybe the people will stand up to the leaders and Space 2.0 will get even bigger and stronger.

A Few Little Stories Around

So let's do the one that sounds funnier.  In both senses of the word. It sounds funnier because it's about funny sounds.

Starliner and now Crew-9 Astronaut Butch Wilmore got on the radio link to mission control to ask, "what's that funny sound coming out of Starliner?"  

On Saturday NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore noticed some strange noises emanating from a speaker inside the Starliner spacecraft.

"I've got a question about Starliner," Wilmore radioed down to Mission Control, at Johnson Space Center in Houston. "There's a strange noise coming through the speaker ... I don't know what's making it."

The sound reminded people of a sonar ping, but there's no reason for that on Starliner. Also, astronauts hearing strange sounds in space isn't a new thing. It's usually expansion and contraction of the materials surrounding them.

Sept. 2 Update: NASA issued the following explanation on Monday for the strange noises: "A pulsing sound from a speaker in Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft heard by NASA astronaut Butch Wilmore aboard the International Space Station has stopped. The feedback from the speaker was the result of an audio configuration between the space station and Starliner. The space station audio system is complex, allowing multiple spacecraft and modules to be interconnected, and it is common to experience noise and feedback."

Starliner is scheduled to undock from the ISS this Friday, September 6, to begin its autonomous return home. The undocking is tentatively set for approximately 6:04 pm EDT (2204 UTC) and I assume it will be on one of the many YouTube channels that carry ISS activity. 

Labor Day 2024

Welcome to Labor day, or as we refer to it this year: August 33rd, just about the earliest Labor Day there can be. I'd even call it September 2nd because it has been an exceptionally cool day here today with the high only reaching 82 - thanks to drizzle on and off all day and dense clouds to temper the sun. The chances of rain tomorrow are being put at 70% so rather than smoking something, I'll be trying to duplicate my method of smoking some ribs but using an indoor oven. Since I don't have a backyard pergola to keep the rain off things. 

Since we're celebrating Labor Day in a time when the Teacher's Unions are coming to the forefront of union abuses of power, I thought it would worthwhile to use a "blast from the past" re-post of something I originally posted in 2013.    

The Bloody History of Organized Labor

 I enjoy my extra day off this week as much as anyone, but the history of the American labor movement that led to this day off is a pretty bloody history. Most of us are probably aware of the recent incitements to violence and riot, such as the problems in Wisconsin in 2011, when legislation to attempt to get control of the state budget led to confrontation in the state offices.  Remember this email, sent to several State Senators by a union supporter because lawmakers were going to ask union members to simply contribute to their benefits plan, instead of it being 100% paid for by taxpayers?

Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks.

Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families, then it will save the rights of 300,000 people, and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. ...

We have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes: your house, your car, the state capitol, and well, I won’t tell you all of them because that’s just no fun…

Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones. [W]e will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!

In what world is it acceptable to threaten killing someone and their family, and not expect any negative consequences for it?  Only in the upside down world of labor unions.  Daniel Sayani at the New American puts together a short history of union violence in this country.  The first blood spilled by union activists apparently goes back to the Haymarket Square massacre in 1886, in which:

... striking union workers threw a bomb at Chicago police, killing eight police officers and countless civilians, after being incited to their lethal rampage by socialist Samuel Fielden (not unlike how Marty Lamb was beaten after the crowd of unionists was inflamed to violence by “progressive” Rep. Capuano) [Note: explanation of Rep. Capuano reference in that article from the New American - SiG] 

Because of their enormous influence in the Democratic Party, unions have specifically gotten themselves exempted from laws the rest of society must follow.  You probably know about the exemptions from the anti-trust laws, and extortion laws, and that they're trying to exempt themselves from Obamacare.  (just one example for each of those).  And, of course, you know when unions physically assault conservatives like Kenneth Gladney there never seems to be any consequences for the union thugs.

Unions are progressively more desperate because membership in non-government employee unions is down. Only government workers' unions are growing, where no true negotiation takes place because there are no parties at the table risking anything. Unions like the SEIU and the AFSCME are the beneficiaries of fat government contracts. They get more union dues which they siphon off to contribute to getting Evil Party politicians elected who will negotiate new, fat contracts with them.

(source)

While I could tweak things here and there in text, it's pretty good as it sits. It's showing its age a bit with references to efforts to pass a $15/hr minimum wage and it mentions the SEIU instead of the American Federation of Teachers - which in way just underlines the persistence of this problem.