It's kind of a slow news day. ULA is still trying to figure out why the nozzle broke off that Solid Rocket Booster on their Cert-2 flight. To summarize that article, "yeah that nozzle broke off and screwed up a lot of stuff, but, boy howdy, that Vulcan sure did correct it out! What a rocket!"
Another good one is that
nuclear rockets could get us to Mars in like half the time, but getting those reactors designed right for space sure is hard! Just
like how they say space is hard? Designing pretty much anything for use in space is
hard, and to be perfectly honest, designing anything that has never been done
in human history is hard. I wonder what they'd think of designing the recovery
system for SuperHeavy we just watched?
Ah, well...
Elon Musk once said a sign of success for him as well as SpaceX is when
launches get boring. You expect them to go smoothly and every step to work the
way it's supposed to. In keeping with that,
SpaceX launched their missions #100 and 101 of 2024 this morning
(Oct. 15). Both were loads of Starlink satellites.
The first was from Cape Canaveral SFS at 2:10 AM EDT. As usual, the booster
successfully landed about 8 minutes later, landing on the drone ship "A
Shortfall of Gravitas" off the Florida coast. This was the 11th flight
for this booster, putting it in that odd position of being unimaginably old to
the rest of the world, but just getting into its prime to SpaceX.
Two hours later, a second Falcon 9 lifted off from Vandenberg SFB's SLC-4E, at 4:21AM EDT (1:21 AM PDT). This was the 19th flight for this booster, which also successfully landed - this time on the drone ship "Of Course I Still Love You" off the California coast. This booster is respectably old to SpaceX, incomprehensibly old to the rest of the world.
Time exposure of this morning's second launch, from Vandenberg Space Force Base. Image credit: SpaceX.
So, let's see... Sunday we saw Starship Flight test 5, Monday we saw Falcon
Heavy launch Europa Clipper, and Tuesday morning we saw two launches of a load
of 23 Starlink Satellites - one from each coast. NextSpaceflight says on
Thursday at 3:55 PM EDT we'll see another Falcon 9 carrying a load of Starlink
satellites from SLC-40 here at CCSFS, and Sunday morning at 1:09 (EDT again) a
load of OneWeb satellites (a direct competitor to Starlink) from Vandenberg
SLC-4E. That will be six launches since Sunday 10/13. Kinda reinforces
that idea that the world's space program is SpaceX and second place is too far
back to bother naming
And now, San Francisco Examiner is reporting that...
ReplyDelete(The Center Square) – The California government denied a U.S. Air Force request to allow Elon Musk’s SpaceX to increase its California rocket launches, citing Musk’s politics.
Perfect.
I wonder if he has the guts to cut access to Starlink for Mexifornia?
DeleteThis incredible launch cadence gives Space Force a huge incentive to ramp up launches of satellites that a few years ago they never would have dreamed possible, and that’s before Starship really gets going with huge payloads. I think they’ll soon be having a quiet word with California and the FAA to back off.
ReplyDeleteRight about now there will be lots of commercial satellite fabrication startups gearing up for the payload boom that is kicking off, indeed, we’re probably approaching the point where payload availability lags launch capability. Starship in particular gives a huge investment incentive in these companies.
I also would anticipate the emergence of standardised and scalable satellite architecture and buses to ramp up production and reduce costs. Space technology is going to get big, thanks to Mr Musk and his incredible team.
Imagine all the ground and control experience created inside SpaceX, is it comes a point where that whole thing combined creates another level never seen of expertise, maintenance in regards to safety and reliability, i mean they are in a realm of operations where they are able to develop an entire scheme of processes and procedures, that will be required once full operations are underway off planet in space. It seems up till now, there is not any much of in space full spectrum operations, there is still the dependence on ground control, resupply and cadence of launches, that are yet to create an "escape velocity", which common sense would indicate is reached only after a certain level of those in space operations, and secondly how much dependence remains on earth based/sourced supply and control.
ReplyDeleteThat is behind my belief in sustained asteroid mining. Where more is sent to earth than earth sends to space. Probably always be certain items only come from earth, vitamins is supposedly one. People, at least for a time, but always will be some. Finding water ice is critical, say astroids which could be comets trapped in the belt, or say in the trojan points around Jupiter, how about fissionables, for producing electricity where its too far out to make use of solar cells a practical method.
What is too complex to manufacture, at least in the early days of human space presence, bases etc. Will it be feasible to say mine an asteroid employing tunnel boring, in hard rock/iron-nickel asteroids, then once mined these interior spaces are converted to living space? So much to think about, what is truly required to make off planet presence sustainable, and profitable.
Imagine a chunk of a planets metal core as an asteroid, potentially thats an incredible resource, imagine concentrations of various metal and minerals there for the taking. Plus you have an incredible heat source thru focusing raw sunlight in a vacuum, that has to make for ideal smelting operations. All that free energy after you set up your operations. Then there is free trajectory down the gravity well thats the sun and inner planets, using say a simple lineal accelerator, again powered by free sunlight derived electricity, give a package a small boost on a Homan orbit and you have a free ride down the chute, takes more time, but once your shooting packages you create a steady pipeline of deliverables. Lot of stable value inherent with which to use on the stick market, use as collateral for expanding operations. Its getting to that start off point I think, that something like the organization of SpaceX has the potential. Which has to come from mostly private enterprise, if its to be profitable and sustainable.
In a Jerry pournelle story,Jerry proposes how engineers use raw asteroid nickel iron and machine it into frames and doors for airlocks as entrances into living space of interior of mined outt asteroids. Pretty slick concept.
ReplyDeleteAnother concept Jerry proposed is you take say a hot dog shaped iron nickel asteroid, spin it on its long axis, focus large mylar mirrors on it, have a core down the axis of rotation, filled with water ice, place a rugged cap on the fill end, as the asteroid heats up, the steam from the water ice expands, and you end up with a big hollow spinning tube, where you have pseudo gravity for better health to counter effects of zero G on people, you can have farming operations, large living spaces, and some things are best done under gravity, employ mirrors on the axis thru large windows for sunlight for your humans and crops. I'm with Jerry, he had grand visage and concepts, where everything was possible because the human race is always got those who think big, think nothing is impossible, where "git er done" is a state of mind.
While Elon Musk has been pretty open about saying he wants to colonize Mars, probably the biggest voice for O'Neill style colonies in space - giant cylinders spinning to induce a gravity-like force on things - is Jeff Bezos at Blue Origin. Maybe I'm too pessimistic but I can't help but think of which one has been more active and more successful at doing relatively simple things like getting to orbit reliably. To really create things like those O'Neill cylinders has to start with getting tons to orbit, and probably to orbits that require more tons of fuel to get there.
DeleteJohn Ringo's "Live Free or Die" series postulates that. Drill a hole into a nickel-iron asteroid, fill the deep part of the hole with a water asteroid, plug it up nice and good, and heat it all up using space mirrors. Once the hard asteroid gets melty enough, internal pressures from the now-gaseous water will expand it.
Delete