With the landing of Blue Ghost and beginning of operations in the Sea of Crises (Mare Crisium), the next landing attempt on the moon moves to Intuitive Machine's IM-2 or Athena lander. Athena, entered her circular lunar orbit on Monday, March 3rd after an engine burn lasting over eight minutes:
The main task in the interval between Monday and Thursday is to verify the
orbit's parameters and the probe's health in preparation for the landing. The "lunar orbit selfies over the next two days" are a bonus, but they're interesting to watch, too. This link should take you to a video that Athena captured over the Moon's south pole region near her intended landing site, Mons Mouton, which is one of NASA's designated human landing sites for the Artemis campaign.
Intuitive Machines expects a landing opportunity on March 6 at 11:32 a.m. CST. Live landing coverage is scheduled to start at 10:30 a.m. CT / 11:30 a.m. ET on the Intuitive Machines IM-2 mission page and NASA+. The content on both streams is identical.
After Thursday, the next lander is looking to be ispace's Resilience, launched alongside Blue Ghost in January. ispace announced today that they're planning their lunar landing for June 6 at 1924 UTC or 3:24 PM EDT in the US. However, at almost three months to the day in the future, no telling what could launch by then.
Almost like its gonna get crowded up there if this next lander succeeds. It will be a kind if turning point and the flood gates open. There are quite a bit of new comoanies getting into commercialization, it should by rights turn into a industrial space revolution, it will have to be, because the number one resource in aerospace even at its lowest ebbs, is skilled and craft workers. With experience being the most important terms of floor production, too of the list is manufacturing engineers and knowledgable specification people, fusion welders is another, radiographic such as level IV and V, non destructive and destructive laboratory people. Ridged tube assembly benders, fitters, and welders are hi value labor, tool and die/R&D machinists are very valuable, can not do without at least a small 2-5 man tool shop, access to 5 and up axis, water/laser milling always a given, what I am pointing to is excellent jobs, decent pay rates, and steady growth of need for the above. I can see it getting highly competitive even pirating skilled labor from other outfits. Lot of job shop work for things like from coatings to precision sheetmetal shops, unique and super high quality valves, sensors and low production but cutting edge digital components and entire custom produced suites. And thats not even touching labor in rocket engine R&D, plus in great demand, floor production labor, with high skilled fusion welders being in high demand, welders with experience in class IV exotic combination welders, because some of the individual componants used together in some ridged tubes and flexible metal hoses there are no qualification specs, there are extremely strict specs for passing various testing regimes, so reliance on a welders skills and experience are a must.
ReplyDeleteI can see some real gravy days coming for craft and hand work for people with those qualifications or potential to become high skilled labor. All this new aerospace industry is gonna need more qualified engineering labor in a era when its lost its heritages, and all this stuff involves quite a bit of either tribal knowledge, broad knowledge in specifications across a gamet of manufacturers, even if everything is done in house you still need those kind people, you can't be re-inventing the wheel with every process and components or device. And maybe, finally after decades of collusion within corporate manufacturing to lower skilled labor pay rates to just above hand to mouth check to check hourly pay rates, into honest pay commiserate within ones abilities and experience. It may be a wage and benefits war between outfits starts, which will tell more than anything the tale of successful operations in commercial space industry. And none of that broaches the coming requirements for labor off planet either on the moon or zero G vacuum operations.
Wish I was in my twenties again, the opportunities arising even now look fantastic...
...Another source of skill that exists in spades is retired older craft workers and engineering disciplines, it is always there kind of in a sense rotting away, and why, only thing comes to mind is most likely todays himan resource leadership and in hose interview people don't even know how mich skills and the kind of experience say a 46 year career welder fitter has, or a large diameter mandrel bending guy has, so much critical perishable knowledge to be tapped, even as consultants and trainers. I can safely predict same for on floor engineering staff. And another facet which that last few decades destroyed wholesale was first the requirement one needed a collage degree to be qualified for any position above floor labor, which resulted in the century plus reliable culture where experience labor moved from floor to lead to foreman, as in singular foreman who had jr foreman under him, he would be the reliable go to between the carpet and floor plus trouble shooting and managing the required tools and machinery in high timely governing atmosphere, people who both sides of the dividing line trust and go to, the ones who really make work flow thru. No college decree or outside consulting approaches the creation and nurturing that manufacturing culture provides.
ReplyDeleteSorry, long rant, near and dear to my heart.
A question comes to mind frequently regards the Mars rovers taking geological samples. First, its understandable the search for signs if alien life, rightfully so, its the penultimate human question, but practical matters are back in the question My question of practicality of exploration, being Mars seems to be the go to destination, shouldn't there be robotic exploration for geological sources of key elements for supporting a sustainable way of living on Mars? You cant eat and breath archeological discovery.
ReplyDeletehttps://www.universetoday.com/articles/perseverance-takes-a-second-look-at-some-ancient-rocks
More landers in as many months? SiG you are a tease :)
ReplyDelete