The thing no one says about Crew Dragon is starting to be said

Six years ago this past May, when Doug Hurley and Bob Behnken rode a SpaceX Crew Dragon from pad 39A on the Kennedy Space center, it was the first time that a manned flight took place from the US, since the last Space Shuttle flight in the summer of 2011. With the safe return of Crew Dragon, the US space agency broke a nearly decade-long gap in its ability to put humans into orbit. 

New readers or people who don't follow this closely may not be clear on this, but when the Commercial Crew program's first contracts were cut, the early winner was Boeing, and their Starliner. Nobody really thought the startup small rocket company, SpaceX would be able to do it. After all Boeing had a massive head start on the little guys and had been a supplier to NASA for practically as long as NASA existed. Since that first SpaceX flight in May of 2020, Boeing's Starliner has not completed one mission, and only made it to the space station one time thanks to a combination of luck and the extreme competence of Butch Wilmore, pilot for that mission.  

That mission was later declared a Type A mishap, the worst level in NASA's failure analysis system, and probably won’t fly another crewed mission before 2028. Based on results so far, it's fair to take any date Boeing issues and double the waiting time.

A complication is starting to attract attention to the lack of a second, proven reliable, vehicle to get astronauts into space. The ISS is scheduled to reach end of life in 2030, and whether or not that's a latest or earliest date for the ISS to be deorbited is somewhat like the old jokes about optimists vs. pessimists. A common theme is that each one sees it their way. 

With the International Space Station slated for retirement in the early 2030s, NASA is partnering with several US companies to develop private space stations. As part of that effort, the private companies will have to work with NASA to determine how they will transport astronauts to and from their space stations, some of which could launch as soon as 2030.

And it turns out this is more difficult than it sounds.

Over the last couple of years, we've run articles on these efforts to develop private space stations. We've seen mention of Axiom Space, Vast, Voyager, and Blue Origin. SpaceX is in a bit of strange place right now considering they're pretty much the world leader in spaceflight. They haven't been contracted to work on a new space station now, and there's apparently belief in the contracting group at NASA that SpaceX is pushing everything they do in the direction of using Starship and "it's too big" for these small space stations. Add to that the fact that there's no agreement to keep producing Crew Dragon capsules 

SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell has said the company will fly Crew Dragon and the Falcon 9 rocket for a finite number of years, possibly for less than a decade as the company transitions its launches to Starship.
...
“It’s a disaster waiting to happen,” one industry source told Ars about Crew Dragon availability in the 2030s. [emphasis added - SiG]

Needing a replacement for the Crew Dragon implies that they'd like the new one to be interchangeable with the predecessor and that a well-made copy of the Dragon would be an acceptable alternative. Enter a company we've reported on a few times in the last couple of years, the European startup called The Exploration Company.

Last week, the company hosted an office-opening celebration in Webster, Texas, within a couple of miles of the Johnson Space Flight Center. Founder Hélène Huby said her company was considering making Houston the base of its operations to develop a crewed spacecraft.

The Exploration Company has already won funding from the European Space Agency to develop a cargo vehicle, called Nyx, to carry supplies to the International Space Station. An initial mission may happen in late 2028 or 2029. And Huby has made no secret of her desire to build a crew vehicle.

“It’s very clear that in the United States there is a big need for an additional crew vehicle, and nobody exactly knows if Dragon will continue to serve,” she said. “And even if Dragon continues to serve, which I wish it will because it’s an amazing vehicle, then it’s good to have a bit more competition. And also the path for Boeing is kind of uncertain right now.”

Huby is seeking to attract funding both from the European Space Agency and NASA for the development of a crew vehicle, and then to leverage that money to raise additional private capital for a crew vehicle. The company has already taken preliminary steps toward this, which she estimates will require about eight years and $4 billion.

SpaceX Dragon meets sunrise at launch pad for Crew-10 flight March 10, 2025. Image credit: SpaceX

Eric Berger at Ars Technica adds this good summary to the situation.

If this sounds far-fetched, perhaps it should not. Huby has shown considerable skill in working with European space officials to emerge as a leading contender to build a crew vehicle at a time when leaders there have made their desire for one clear.

A look at SpaceX's plan for orbital data centers

Back on Sunday, in the story about SpaceX's imminent IPO, I mentioned the thing I'd seen about the plan for the new public corporation included data centers in space: "Not one or two - a million AI data centers." It's kind of a mind-boggling concept - and if you're not used to thinking at the scale of the requirements they're facing, it can definitely be off-putting. How do you dissipate the heat your processors generate? How do you get the data down? What do we need that much processing power for? Replacing everything on Earth? 

SpaceX and Elon Musk in particular are the people to listen to because with their Starlink constellation they've put more satellite mass in space than any other company (or country). 

Space.com put up an interview with Elon in a casual setting somewhere in their corporate buildings. It turns out this interview is taken from one SpaceX posted on their X account that's just over a half hour long at 31 minutes. As you can see, this one is half that long. 

I'm not convinced it's a good thing to work toward, probably because I'm not convinced that the future we've glimpsed of how AI will affect everything is a good future. That said, it's worth watching. Is he on to something really important? It's possible. That's a different question than "should I invest in the IPO?" 

---

I should add that the next couple of days could end up being spotty. Tomorrow we're having some electric maintenance done on the house - we're replacing our whole-house backup generator, which died back in March and while I don't expect to be taken down, it's more likely than any other day when they're not working on stuff.  This weekend is the ARRL VHF contest from Saturday at 2PM until Sunday night at 11PM - both in my local Eastern Daylight Time.

Well that didn't take long

Yesterday, NASA announced the crew for the Artemis III mission, along with information on the mission itself and what they will be doing.  

By this morning, the complaints that the crew wasn't diverse enough started surfacing. "They're all men! You can't do that!" OK. I made that line up, so here's a real quote for you.

Isaacman wrote on the social media platform X that “I have seen reactions ranging from disappointment to outrage.” One such response on Reddit called the crew announcement “massively upsetting.”

“Women represent 50 percent of the population,” the post read. “They deserve at least one seat on every mission from a government run agency.”

Although he tried, there's nothing that can be said to people who focus on things like that. Everything that Administrator Isaccman said sounded like when people used to say "I'm not a bigot; some of my best friends are black" (or Hispanic or whatever). 

But Isaacman strongly defended the crew selection, saying he had “personally been to space twice with 50 percent female crews. My closest advisors and some of the smartest engineers I know are women. In our latest NASA leadership organization, nearly 50 percent of the center directors and mission directorate leadership are women.

“The last astronaut candidate class selected under this administration was majority female [six women and four men] because they were the best of the best, including one astronaut [Anna Menon] I previously went to space with.”

The article on Spaceflight Now spends its column space talking about how non-discriminatory they are. What do you say to someone who says something like that line, “They deserve at least one seat on every mission from a government run agency.” One seat on a flight with two people, or one seat in a crew of 500 people? What percentage? Does it need to be 50%? What if the ship can only hold five? Do you cut two people in half and sew the halves together? That's how absurd that sounds to me. 

It's a waste of time to worry about such things. Best person for the job, no matter what they look like. If your life is on the line, do you want the best at what they're doing or someone there because they meet someone else's diversity demands? 

NASA announced its 2025 Astronaut Candidate Class on September 22, 2025. The 10 candidates, pictured here at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston are: U.S. Army CW3 Ben Bailey, U.S. Air Force Maj. Cameron Jones, Katherine Spies, Anna Menon, U.S. Navy Lt. Cmdr. Erin Overcash, U.S. Air Force Maj. Adam Fuhrmann, Dr. Lauren Edgar, Yuri Kubo, Rebecca Lawler, and Dr. Imelda Muller. Credit: NASA

Let me point out that of the 10 candidates, six are women and four are men. I should point out that in the left A, posing on the floor, the blonde is Anna Menon, the former SpaceX engineer who flew on Polaris Dawn with NASA administrator Isaacman, and there are many pictures of her here on the blog. 

This week: SpaceX's IPO Hits the markets Friday

Here's one of those news stories that I keep an eye out for but isn't what I consider particularly big and important news. 

By now, I assume most people remotely interested in the launch industry or space industry have heard of and are maybe even tracking that SpaceX is going public and is going to launch an IPO, or Initial Public Offering, of shares of their stock. 

Space.com carried the story that SpaceX is going to start selling shares of their stock, this coming Friday, June 12th, and they're expected to become the 7th most valuable company in the US at $1.77 trillion. 

The company revealed this week that it plans to sell shares at $135 apiece during the IPO, which will occur June 12 when SpaceX begins trading on the Nasdaq under the ticker symbol SPCX.

That share price would give the company a valuation of $1.77 trillion, according to CNBC. Just six American companies are worth more: NVIDIA, Apple, Alphabet (Google), Microsoft, Amazon and semiconductor manufacturer Broadcom. [From 1 to 6 in order - SiG] 

Now I personally don't get involved in trading and I'm not going to play in the IPO, so I don't need to tell you, "dammit, Jim, I'm an engineer, not a daytrader! Don't put any weight on financial stuff I say." That said, the reference link to CNBC has an article that says one of their experts says the IPO is overpriced and he's not buying. Their article is entitled, "‘Dean of Valuation’ Aswath Damodaran is not buying SpaceX: ‘Too richly priced’". They may not be expecting their article to change the results of the IPO, but the market value isn't settled until the people bidding on the prices of shares are settled and SpaceX may well end up being worth more or less than that predicted $1.77 trillion. 

The market has the final word. Just as every launch is on schedule until the weather speaks, we won't know if SPCX is valued at $1.77 trillion until the dust settles on Friday night - NASDAQ time.

My main concern is that this isn't really an IPO for the SpaceX we've come to know and admire.  They have diversified beyond launch and their Starlink telecommunications into artificial intelligence. 

SpaceX recently acquired xAI, the startup that Musk founded in 2023. xAI owns X (the social media platform formerly known as Twitter), built the generative AI chatbot Grok and operates Colossus, a supercomputer cluster in Tennessee. 

You've probably heard that they intend to put AI data centers in space. Not one or two - a million AI data centers. They're undoubtedly better suited to do this than any other launch provider but that doesn't mean it's a given that they'll put it all up and everything will work. 

My bias is that I think the whole AI thing going on is the biggest hype cycle in history. There are things that AI seems to be good at, but too much of what we see/hear/read is pi in the sky, if you'll pardon the John Wilder joke. 

Starship Flight Test 12 takes to the air back on May 22nd. (Image credit: SpaceX)

NASA Cancels Artemis III Return to the Moon

And more. 

In a live video presentation today, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman announced a sweeping reorganization of the Artemis program to return to the moon. The changes include reassigning the Artemis III mission from the first moon landing to a set of tests in Earth Orbit, which instead moves the landing out to Artemis IV - or possibly farther. A goal is to increase the cadence of missions and it includes using funding from the cancellation of an expensive rocket upper stage. 

Isaacman is seeking to revitalize an agency that has moved at a glacial pace on its deep space programs.  

A key message in the talk was the absurdly low pace of the current program to get to the moon, compared to the pace NASA worked at in the Apollo program. 

During past exploration missions, from Mercury through Gemini, Apollo, and the Space Shuttle program, NASA has launched humans on average about once every three months. It has been nearly 3.5 years since Artemis I launched.

“This is just not the right pathway forward,” Isaacman said.

Yes, it actually mentions 3.5 years since Artemis I even though that flight was uncrewed; not one astronaut on board. How do we get a pace from one launch?  Do we count from completely different vehicles, like the Crew-12 launch, or from the last shuttle flight in 2011?   

“NASA must standardize its approach, increase flight rate safely, and execute on the president’s national space policy,” Isaacman said. “With credible competition from our greatest geopolitical adversary increasing by the day, we need to move faster, eliminate delays, and achieve our objectives.” 

Congress pushed an Artemis IV and V onto NASA, can Boeing even build those two in time?  Much like how temporary Administrator Sean Duffy said back in December, "Artemis I, Artemis II, and Artemis III are all $4 billion a launch, $4 billion a launch. At $4 billion a launch, you don’t have a Moon program. It just, I don’t think that exists."

The changes announced today include:

• Cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage and Block IB upgrade for SLS rocket
• Artemis II and Artemis III missions will use the SLS rocket with existing upper stage
• Artemis IV, V (and any additional missions, should there be) will use a “standardized” upper stage
• Artemis III will no longer land on the Moon; rather Orion will launch on SLS and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit
• Artemis IV is now the first lunar landing mission
• NASA will seek to fly Artemis missions annually, starting with Artemis III in “mid” 2027, followed by at least one lunar landing in 2028
• NASA is working with SpaceX and Blue Origin to accelerate their development of commercial lunar landers for Artemis IV and beyond

The goal is to standardize the SLS rocket into a single configuration to make it as reliable as possible and to launch it as frequently as every 10 months. NASA will fly the SLS vehicle until there are commercial alternatives to launch crew to the Moon, perhaps through Artemis V since Congress has mandated a IV and V, or perhaps longer.

As is often the case, Eric Berger at Ars Technica claims inside sources in NASA. He has pretty good record with his predictions, and here says the sources said all of the agency’s key contractors are on board with the change, and senior leaders in Congress have been briefed on the proposed changes.

Which leaves Boeing as the one that has the most to win or lose by cranking the changes to SLS. The first item in that list is the cancellation of the Exploration Upper Stage, which Boeing is contracted to develop. They released a positive-sounding message. 

“Boeing is a proud partner to the Artemis mission and our team is honored to contribute to NASA’s vision for American space leadership,” said Steve Parker, Boeing Defense, Space & Security president and CEO, in the news release. “The SLS core stage remains the world’s most powerful rocket stage, and the only one that can carry American astronauts directly to the moon and beyond in a single launch. As NASA lays out an accelerated launch schedule, our workforce and supply chain are prepared to meet the increased production needs.”

From our viewpoint, over a half a century past the Apollo years, and many of us having watched the development from Project Mercury forward, the way NASA implemented the first trip to the moon is an excellent lesson in planning to complete something everyone says is impossible. Like a longtime jogger training for their first marathon, they just kept going a step farther every mission. Apollo 7 was a low-Earth orbit test of the Apollo spacecraft, Apollo 8 tested the spacecraft in lunar orbit, Apollo 9 was a LEO rendezvous with the lunar lander as if it had launched from the moon, and Apollo 10 tested the lunar lander descending to the Moon, without touching down, and getting back to the Command Module in lunar orbit.

With its previous Artemis template, NASA skipped the steps taken by Apollo 7, 9, and 10. In the view of many industry officials, this leap from Artemis II—a crewed lunar flyby of the Moon testing only the SLS rocket and Orion spacecraft—to Artemis III and a full-on lunar landing was enormous and risky.

A step too far.  

Isaacman makes reference in his message about not having enough missions to develop muscle memory of all the things they need to do.  Before today, the plan before the landing was one lunar orbital mission. That's it - the next mission was the landing. The new plan adds one mission - for the Orion capsule to rendezvous and dock with Starship and/or Blue Moon landers in low-Earth orbit. Yeah, it's true going from one mission to two is doubling the amount of practice that's possible, it's just the question of whether that's enough; or even if it's worth doing. 

For final words, I bow to Eric Berger: 

Although the changes outlined by NASA on Friday are sweeping, they are not completely out of the blue.

In April 2024, Ars reported that some senior NASA officials were considering an Earth-orbit rendezvous between Orion and Starship as a means to buy down risk for a lunar landing. NASA ultimately punted on the idea before it was revived by Isaacman this month.

Additionally, in October 2024, Ars offered a guide to saving the “floundering” Artemis program by canceling the Block 1B upgrade for the SLS rocket, replacing its upper stage with a Centaur V, and canceling the Lunar Gateway. This would free up an estimated $2 billion annually to focus on accelerating a lunar landing, the publication estimated.

That may be the very course the space agency has embarked upon today.

First-time Milestones for the Artemis III Mission prior to Feb. 27, 2025. (Image credit: NASA Aerospace Advisory Panel)

EDIT 2/25 at 10:30 AM: To correct the error pointed out by commenter Brewer

Vast preparing to launch 1st version of their private space station

Back at the end of September, I did another article on the race to a private space station, this one called "The Other Other Space Race."  The Other Space Race that everyone knows about is the race to start settlements on the moon; what I was referring to was the race to put a private Space Station into orbit.  

In that article, I listed the companies I can easily document working on a replacement Space Station.  Over the life of the blog, I've covered Axiom Space, VAST, and Blue Origin, while that post itself was about a fourth company I wasn't aware of, Voyager and their concept for a space station, Starlab.  

As that post talked about, Vast has been developing a prototype of a space habitat they call Haven-1.  Space.com reported today that they are in the final stages of getting ready to launch the first Haven-1 and NextSpaceflight reports that launch date to be NET May of '26.  According to the article:

In the past couple of weeks, the California-based startup has completed the final weld on the primary structure of Haven-1, followed by painting. Next steps include integrating the flight article's hatch and a domed window as the company moves closer to realizing its vision of a private space station in low Earth orbit (LEO).

Haven-1 is designed to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 and, at around 31,000 pounds (14,000 kilograms), will be the largest spacecraft to lift off atop the rocket. The space station is planned to host up to four short-duration astronaut missions during its three-year lifespan, with crews of four people spending 10 days at a time aboard Haven-1 (or some other combination of missions totaling 160 astronaut days).

Vast lead astronaut Drew Feustel, spoke with Space.com at the 76th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) in Sydney, Australia, in early October.

"If we stick to our plan, we will be the first standalone commercial LEO platform ever in space with Haven-1, and that's an amazing inflection point for human spaceflight," said Feustel, who's a former NASA astronaut.  

Space.com author Andrew Jones comments that Vast's rise has been meteoric.  They were founded in 2021 and now has around 800 employees. 

Nearly all of its hardware is built in-house, with only solar arrays and thrusters outsourced. "When I joined in December 2023, we were still deciding between stainless steel and aluminum." Feustel recalled. "Now, less than two years later, the primary structure is welded."

The Haven-1 flight article has been painted. Next, key components including the hatch and domed window will be integrated ahead of pressure and load testing in Mojave, CA. Image credit to Vast, posted to X.

The company has learned a lot from SpaceX - and hired a few people away from the world's busiest launch provider.  

Haven-1 contrasts with the utilitarian International Space Station and with a more human-centered design. The aesthetics, psychology and "Earth tones" of Haven-1 are designed for comfort and calm. Vast also hired a former Campbell's food developer to rethink astronaut cuisine, and has developed an inflatable sleep system that allows crew members to adjust the pressure to create a sense of simulated gravity for sleeping, rather than the tethered sleeping bag approach on the ISS. Visitors to the Vast exhibit at IAC could try out the new system.

When it launches in 2026, Haven-1 will mark a milestone, but it is also designed as a testbed for bigger plans. Haven-2 is a much more ambitious, modular project that Vast hopes could replace the ISS, which will be deorbited in 2030.

Early on when I first heard of Vast, one of the things that caught my eye is that they're aiming for a station with artificial gravity - by spinning the station. 

Then I see things like this conceptual art of a Space Station made of Haven-2 modules, I don't see how they could rotate that to create the illusion of gravity. It's nothing like the giant wheel designs we've seen in sci-fi movies since the mid-60s.

An illustration of the full configuration of the Haven-2 space station, a proposed replacement for the ISS (Image credit: VAST)

NASA Dumps Dream Chaser

Is this the end of the line for Sierra Space's Dream Chaser? 

Word broke on Thursday that NASA modified its contract with Sierra Space for cargo missions to the ISS cancelling guaranteed cargo flights and replacing them with essentially a single test flight that won't dock with the ISS.  

What began as a hopeful contender in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program has now been relegated to a free-flying test mission targeted for no earlier than late 2026—likely slipping into 2027—leaving its role in space station operations uncertain.

Short (4:22) video from NASASpaceflight.com.

The history of the Dream Chaser goes back to the last years of the Space Shuttle era, and a space plane called the HL-20 lifting body developed in the 1990s.  

Image of the HL-20. Credit: NASA 

In 2008, Sierra Nevada Corporation (now Sierra Space) acquired the design and pitched it for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, securing funding through phases 1 and 2, as well as the Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap) stage.

Despite these early investments, Dream Chaser was ultimately passed over in 2014 when NASA selected SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner for crewed missions to the ISS. Sierra Nevada protested the decision with the U.S. Government Accountability Office but lost the appeal.

This led to a change of emphasis for Sierra Space, shifting directions when the Commercial Resupply Services-2 (CRS-2) contract to carry cargo to the ISS was opened. This is the program both SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft are operating  under. Sierra Space was awarded a contract under CRS-2 for a minimum of seven ISS resupply flights with Dream Chaser and its companion cargo module, called Shooting Star. Nine years later, however, Dream Chaser has still not reached space and its cargo deal has just been changed.

"After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract, as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026," agency officials said in an emailed statement on Thursday (Sept. 25).

"Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration," they added. "NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions; however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract."

The unavoidable consequence of being late is that the station itself is on its last legs, and while there is no firm, fixed date for taking it out of orbit, it looks to easily be NET (No Earlier Than) 2030, and the latest date I've seen is in 2031.  If the earliest possible launch of a test flight for Dream Chaser is 2026, with 2027 certainly looking possible, coordinating a test flight with the real cargo to be delivered to the ISS could be an issue.

On October 24, 2023, Sierra Space moved the Shooting Star cargo module into position behind the Dream Chaser spaceplane for checkouts before shipment to Ohio for environmental testing. Image credit: Shay Saldana/Sierra Space.  More details here. 

Sierra Space isn't saying they're giving up, but they're absolutely between the proverbial rock and a hard place.  

NASA’s statement emphasized that the shift prioritizes Sierra Space’s development needs, enabling data collection in a lower-risk environment. Potential underlying reasons for the modification, based on industry insights, include:

Ongoing development challenges at Sierra Space are hindering readiness for flight. Concerns over the timely certification processes required for ISS operations. NASA’s reluctance to allow an unproven vehicle near the station, especially given the need for rigorous safety standards in proximity to crewed habitats.

While Sierra Space has not publicly detailed the issues, the company’s determination to fly Dream Chaser for learning purposes may have clashed with NASA’s risk-averse approach to ISS missions.

NASA has been noncommittal about Dream Chaser, saying, ”we might potentially order resupply missions if needed” which doesn't offer much encouragement.  In fairness, it could be that SpaceX and Northrop Grumman have done such a good job getting cargo to the ISS they're not really concerned about Dream Chaser as a last option.  They've been doing it flawlessly since the shuttle fleet was grounded in 2011, (with some contribution from the Russians until the last few years).  Perhaps Sierra is just so late they don't matter any more. 

It's getting to be that time of year

We've had a fairly quiet hurricane season so far this  year.  A few low pressure systems went over Florida north of us, there have been a few storms that went north into the North Atlantic missing Bermuda by large distances, and basically nothing around on September 10th, the peak of the season.  

It looks like we're going to have one get closer than anything this year in the next few days.  Meet Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine. The winds as of this 8PM map were 35 mph; it shows tropical storm status in six hours at 2AM Sunday, when it will be given the name Imelda.

Thankfully, it looks like nothing but a rain event here south of the Cape.  The center of the storm doesn't even look to be a Category I hurricane until it's north of us.  Not that a very rainy, stormy day is idyllically wonderful, but it beats stronger storms. 

One of the moderators (or founders or both) of the Central Florida Hurricane site I use regularly, who calls himself cieldumort (ciel du mort is French for sky of death), posted this graphic of expected IR brightness temperature on Monday at 1500 UTC (11:00 AM).  It's the second to last post on that linked page.

You'll note he says, "parts of the east coast may get some gross weather."  We're in the second highest reflectivity colors on the map.  As of Friday evening, our detailed forecast from our local NOAA service shows our maximum winds to be 20 mph on Monday afternoon.  I'd be less than surprised if that goes up, but it doesn't look like winds to take down the antennas and put up the shutters. 

Something about the plot above it worth noting is how the last spot is 24 hours after the second to last, it has barely moved from the previous position and it drops from hurricane to tropical storm.  Stalling offshore for practically 24 hours is a sign of perfectly balanced forces and at five days out I have a hard time believing the prediction can be that accurate.  

Labor Day 2025

Welcome to Labor day, or as we refer to it this year: August 32nd, the earliest Labor Day there can be. The chances of rain tomorrow are being put at 70% so rather than smoking something, we'll be having a pretty typical meal like we do every day, on our regular keto way of eating.  Since it seems the vast majority of stores are open, I could use to make a run to the nearest Office Supplies store for a printer ink cartridge.  Yeah, I know that's exciting.  

One of the reasons I shifted away from writing about the political/social side of life that so many fellow bloggers talk about all the time is that it's such an odd combination of important, and yet insanely boring to talk about all the time.  I get tired of the same handful of stories all the time, even if "all the time" simply means today or this week.  "Someone somewhere" decides what the story of the week is going to be and we get bombarded with versions and derivatives of that group of stories until the next story of the week gets chosen.  I get bored with seeing them on TV, I get bored with hearing them, and I get bored writing the same things.  

One of the things that's in the pile of stuff that cycles by endlessly are trade unions.  While Florida has been a "right to work" state for my entire working life, both Mrs. Graybeard and I worked in places where union membership might have not been legally required, rather it was more like a necessary evil we had to put up with.  

I know I've written this concept down before and won't bother linking to myself, but I've been involved with specifying components the company I was working for was going to buy long enough to realize that companies don't buy anything without negotiating a price.  You may get an offer for $X dollars and be insulted or you may be grateful, but in things I was involved with, we might buy components that were custom designed for us that both the component sellers and we the buyers would negotiate a price for.  Unions started in negotiating working conditions, classically hours of work versus pay per hour.  It may not seem fully logical at first glance but while I personally don't want to work in a unionized workplace, I can see the argument for having a professional negotiating your pay.  The argument against that is you have to pay the negotiator, too.  

The advent of unions was complicated immediately by violence.  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 the Rep. Capuano reference in that linked article just above - 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 tried to exempt themselves from Obamacare.  This is an exceptionally brief introduction to the history of union violence against anyone they regard as "in their way."  

Unions are progressively more desperate because membership in non-government employee unions has been dropping since the late 1950s.  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 NEA, AFT and the SEIU 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.  Of course an alternate way of saying that is unions only survive where there isn't a free market but the expenses they cause are paid for by the taxpayers or society at large and don't come out of the pockets of the negotiators on the other side of the table.  

Despite the rhetoric, the unions aren't trying to make anyone's lives better except for their own.  If members get some crumbs that make their life better, that's nice.  For the non-unionized workers, who have to pay them their higher wages, too bad.  As the saying goes, FUJIGM.  

Well, this is wandering far off the topic of celebrating Labor Day, so I hope you have an enjoyable day no matter how you celebrate or mark the day.   

On the eve of the next big Starship test flight

While they seem a little against the limits here - it's less than 24 hours before the scheduled launch and Ship 37 hasn't been stacked on its booster - it's hard to think of a group that gets more done faster and better in the industry.   

The summary I posted eight days ago (Friday August 15) still seems good.  The big picture converges on a couple of other posts; the first one is here in a piece that focuses on SpaceX's approach to design; Elon Musk's Five Laws of Manufacturing.  I'll edit it aggressively and re-post it here:

1. Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are definitely dumb; it doesn't matter who gave them to you. ... “No matter who you are, everyone is wrong some of the time.” ... “all designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong.”
2. Try very hard to delete the part or process. If parts are not being added back into the design at least 10% of the time, not enough parts are being deleted.
3. Simplify and optimize the design.  Don't optimize something that shouldn't even be there.
4. Accelerate cycle time. 
5. Automate.  If a product is reaching the end of a production line with a high acceptance rate, there is no need for in-process testing.

The other one takes a good look at how SpaceX has implemented these laws, in a provocatively entitled article, "SpaceX has built the machine to build the machine. But what about the machine?"  

It dances around the topic that building the production factory is both more important and more difficult than building the rockets.  Ponder this one for a moment:

The ultimate goal of this factory is to build one Starship rocket a day. This sounds utterly mad. For the entire Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s, NASA built 15 Saturn V rockets. Over the course of more than three decades, NASA built and flew only five different iconic Space Shuttles. SpaceX aims to build 365 vehicles, which are larger, per year. 

You've seen Starships - the current revision is taller than the Saturn V, and has more than twice the thrust.  The next version will be bigger.  The goal with the SuperHeavy isn't just reuse, launching after a month of refurb; it's rapid reusability.   They've talked about using them for transoceanic travel, like an airliner; go anywhere on the globe in less than 90 minutes.  The model is something like a monstrously powerful version of a Boeing 747. 

Naturally with three flights that ended with three mission failures, along with the loss of another ship on the test stand, it's reasonable to ask if the "machine to build the machine" was built correctly.  Berger's response is that his sources in the company think it was.  He goes on to add:

They are frustrated by the run of problems this year, but they believe the fundamental design of Starship is sound and that they have a clear path to resolving the issues. The massive first stage has already been flown, landed, and re-flown. This is a huge step forward. But the sources also believe the upper stage issues can be resolved, especially with a new "Version 3" of Starship due to make its debut late this year or early in 2026.

The acid test will only come with upcoming flights. The vehicle's tenth test flight is scheduled to take place no earlier than Sunday, August 24. It's possible that SpaceX will fly one more "Version 2" Starship later this year before moving to the upgraded vehicle, with more powerful Raptor engines and lots of other changes to (hopefully) improve reliability.

It's an old saying in sports that "winning solves a lot of problems."  SpaceX really needs a win.  They've been unable to progress on any of the other big problems they've been working on, such as orbital refueling, which has to work to enable Starship - AKA the Human Landing System - to even get out of Earth orbit and to the moon.  They need to test the ideas for cryogenic fuel storage in space.  Landing an unmanned Starship on the moon belongs in the list as well.  Quite possibly, the inability to work on these things (and more) is the biggest problem resulting from the months of bad luck this year.  

Starbase at night, with a SuperHeavy booster in transport along the curved road. Image credit: SpaceX

I should mention that within a half hour of my writing that the ship for Sunday Evening's launch hadn't been stacked yet, I went back to the (Lab Padre) live feed and the Starship was in the last few feet of being lifted to stack on the booster.   That was over an hour ago.

"Experts say" China taking the lead in the lunar race

I find this not even slightly surprising, but it's the feature space-related article at Ars Technica today: "After recent tests, China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon."  The article begins by talking about some headlines that the usually secretive Chinese space agency has talked about publicly.  

On August 6, the China Manned Space Agency successfully tested a high-fidelity mockup of its 26-ton "Lanyue" lunar lander. The test, conducted outside of Beijing, used giant tethers to simulate lunar gravity as the vehicle fired main engines and fine control thrusters to land on a cratered surface and take off from there.

"The test," said the agency in an official statement, "represents a key step in the development of China's manned lunar exploration program, and also marks the first time that China has carried out a test of extraterrestrial landing and takeoff capabilities of a manned spacecraft."

As part of the statement, the space agency reconfirmed that it plans to land its astronauts on the Moon "before" 2030.

Let's start with the idea that the issues the Artemis program to return to the moon is having are largely due to the monstrous waste of the Space Launch System.  The Artemis I mission that was the first full-scale test of the system - uncrewed, of course - was in November of '22.  The next mission, Artemis II, will be the first US mission since the end of the Apollo program to circle the moon.  After Artemis I they said it would launch in '24 - one to two years later, depending on exact dates.  As the end of '24 was approaching they said it would be late 2025.  Now that we're approaching the end of 2025, Artemis II is scheduled for 2026.  Will it make it in '26 or get bumped to '27?  It's hard to imagine they could be much faster than the switch to Artemis III after II, and the same four years as from '22 to '26 means the moon landing will be "in" 2030.  Not 'before' as the Chinese say.  All of these are SLS issues.

The next big problem is that it's not just SLS.  The Human Landing System, or HLS, is a version of SpaceX's Starship and the last year has been a big issue for SpaceX.  The other contractor and lunar lander is Blue Origin's Mark 2 lander.  Neither of these seems remotely close to being ready to fly.  Starship's Flight Test 10 is next Sunday evening, currently NET August 24 at 7:30 PM EDT (6:30 Local).  If their fixes to the system perform as simulation and testing have shown, and Starship gets back to where they expected to be back in January, that's the best possible outcome and that could even make path back to where they wanted to be shorter. 

China's Lanyue (which means embracing the moon) lander undergoes tests in early August. Credit: CCTV

Put together, the problem with Artemis is that the program is overly complex, and the reason for that is the "corporate culture" of NASA was not to just recreate Apollo but to create a program that was more likely to help enable long term settlement of the moon.  Just going back to the moon the same way we did over 50 years ago had too much of a "Been There, Done That" feel to it.  Which led to the overly complex look with the Lunar Gateway, Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits, trying to land and settle at the lunar south pole, and more.  

By comparison, China took a much lower risk approach - use a basic system like we used in the Apollo days, one step at a time, carefully.  Minimize risks.  

The down side to that is when China beats us to the moon, those details of "we built a system better for the long term than theirs" argument won't register with the rest of the world.  It will be the end of being regarded as Exceptional.  I'll close with a comment from Dean Cheng, one of the most respected analysts on China, space policy, and the geopolitical implications of the new space competition, published on Ars:

It means the end of American exceptionalism. One of the hallmarks of the post-1969 era was that only the United States had been able to land someone on the Moon (or any other celestial body). This was bound to end, but the constant American refrain of "We've put a man on the Moon, we can do anything" will certainly no longer resonate.

It means China can do "big" things, and the United States cannot. The US cannot even replicate projects it undertook 50 (or more) years ago. The optics of "the passing of the American age" would be evident—and that in turn would absolutely affect other nations' perceptions of who is winning/losing the broader technological and ideological competition between the US and the PRC.

Is Europe moving to manned spaceflight?

That's what Eric Berger at Ars Technica is thinking, based on a mission we talked about in June when the Exploration Company's first test flight of their Mission Possible capsule was lost during reentry.  

You might recall having read about Mission Possible and founder Hélène Huby because they were featured in a story back in last November.  In an interview then, Huby said Mission Possible was developed at a cost of about $20 million in 2.5 years, in addition to $10 million for the rideshare launch on the Falcon 9 rocket.  The test craft was lost at 26 km above the planet, as the spacecraft slowed to Mach one.  Huby was unsure how this loss would be received back in Europe.  It turned out to not be worth worrying about.

"What was interesting is the feedback I got in Europe," Huby said in an interview this week at the company's offices in Houston. "The German Space Agency, the French space agency, the European Space Agency said, OK, that's a great achievement. For the time and money we spent, performing 80 percent of that mission was a good investment." 

The Mission Possible vehicle is seen during assembly. Image credit: The Exploration Company

While the spacecraft was lost so they couldn't do a postmortem on it, the downlinked data from the flight leaves Huby and staff "99%" sure it was a parachute system problem.  You see, they never did any drop tests of any kind with the parachute system they purchased for Mission Possible.  That would have been a complication adding both mission delay and cost and Hélène Huby's background is in economics.  

"We made a mistake, basically, to underestimate the risks," she said. In retrospect, Huby added, the company could have done more testing on the ground.  

This puts them in a bit of mess figuring out where they go from here.  Do they go with a duplicate of Mission Possible, adding more testing, or do they say that phase of getting started is over and work on their next goal, a considerably bigger spacecraft called Nyx.  

This larger spacecraft is quite ambitious. It is similar in size to SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft, perhaps even a bit bigger. The initial version is intended to fly cargo into low-Earth orbit. Huby said the vehicle is being designed with crew in mind, however. For example, the initial version will use four parachutes, which is overkill for cargo but necessary for astronauts.

One reason Huby was in the United States this week was to work with NASA on requirements. That's because the company aspires to fly Nyx to the International Space Station as early as 2028, two years before the orbiting laboratory is due to be retired. At this point, in talking to Huby, the company seems likely to move directly into Nyx development and flying to the space station on its first mission. 

This leads one to wonder if the Space Station isn't even going to be there much longer than their 2028 goal, what are the chances they make that goal and are able to fly a test mission with a couple of test pilots/astronauts?

One thing that has changed in recent months, Huby said, is that there is increasing support in Europe for the development of a crew spacecraft.

"In Europe, there is additional support to go fast to crew," she said. "One year ago, this was out of the discussion. I think this is clearly a consequence of geopolitics."

Those geopolitics, of course, include the election of Donald Trump to a second term as US President and his attitude toward allies in Europe, proposed budget cuts that would end NASA participation in space programs important to Europe, and the fact that the only way European astronauts can get to space today is on board Dragon vehicles built by SpaceX.

So there is a clear lane for a European company to build both cargo and crew spacecraft. Clear though it may be, however, it is a long and difficult technical lane to traverse. Huby and The Exploration Company have their work cut out for them.

The Exploration Company's bigger idea, their Nyx spacecraft, comparable to SpaceX's Dragon capsule with a cargo and crewed version. Image credit: the Exploration Company

Eric Berger's conclusion that "... it is a long and difficult technical lane to traverse. Huby and The Exploration Company have their work cut out for them" is certainly true.  Given their performance in getting this far, I don't think it's a good idea to count them out. 

Innumeracy

There's something that I've been aware of in modern American life for a rather long time that I simply don't understand.  

People that admit to being unable to read, illiterate, are looked at entirely differently than if they say they're unable to do simple math or innumerate.  People who can't read at some basic level are grouped differently than people who can't do arithmetic.  Society seems to have more resources dedicated to helping the illiterate read - or, at least, to cope better where so much of life is dependent on reading.  I can't say I've ever heard of equivalents for people that can't do simple arithmetic. 

The prompting for this topic comes to mind a few times every week, but credit where credit is due is to McThag for one of the things that drive him nuts, the way relative differences in size are described.

Are fractions really that hard and terrifying?

Because I am sick of reading, "20 times less" when they mean 1/20th.

This is easy math.  Try it at home.

20 x 1 = 20.  Is 20 more or less than 1?

20 x 20 = 400.  Is 400 more or less than 20?

When you multiply it's always MORE not less.  

Of course, I've seen things like that "20 times less" and it always makes my eyes twitch.  Another one is when they say "100% more."  Why is it that saying "twice as much" or "2x the amount" isn't used?  

The stupidest one I see, and I see it regularly for different things, is like this label on a box of almond extract. Out of my cabinet and in front of my coffee pot.

Note the label at the bottom: "NET 2 FL OZ (59mL)"  Now look at the highlighted yellow box at the top.  "2X MORE THAN OUR 1 FL OZ" 

I maintain that anyone who needs to be told 2 ounces is two times 1 ounce shouldn't be out and about freely in the world.  They need adult supervision.  

This is elementary school-level arithmetic.  How about if you can't do high school level math?  The programs for bachelor's degrees in most of the sciences make sure you can do the math you're supposed to have taken to get into college by making you take it for your college degree, and if you need to do that math in a related college class, you'd better know how to do it.  A lot of technical skills, like for machinists, electricians, various types of repair and maintenance skill sets will go much better if you don't need a math refresher for everything.  

The all time top story I've seen is a rather well known lawyer, and former US congressman who now has a weekly show on Fox News.  Trey Gowdy.  One night early in the life of his show, I watched as he explained that on his way to whatever college degree he was working toward, he had to take a math class.  He said he had to go to the department head and argue that because he was at such a disadvantage in math he should be able to take something else instead of math.  The department head agreed.  

I don't recall the story well enough to be able to say if this was his undergrad, "pre-law" degree or if it was in law school, but I think it was college before law school.

What goes up, must come down*

In 1972, the former Soviet Union launched an ambitious mission to Venus called Cosmos 482.   That mission fell apart in Earth orbit.  As I read the story put together, the upper stage failed to complete its mission.  Parts of the payload were left in Earth orbit, specifically the spacecraft's lander module/capsule intended to parachute to the surface of Venus.  

Read that date again.  It's 53 years since that launch.  Why is this even a lead-in to a story?  People who track things in orbit say the Cosmos 482 lander is going to come back to Earth soon.  According to Marco Langbroek of SatTrackCam in the Netherlands says:

"As this is a lander that was designed to survive passage through the Venus atmosphere, it is possible that it will survive reentry through the Earth atmosphere intact, and impact intact. There are many uncertain factors in this though, including that this will be a long shallow reentry trajectory and the age of the object," observes Langbroek, who now pegs the current nominal forecast for its reentry on May 10, plus/minus 2.2 days. 

What goes up must come down, right?  Another amateur satellite tracker, also from the Netherlands, goes down a different road and takes photos of satellite.

Meanwhile, a second satellite tracker Ralf Vandebergh, also of the Netherlands, has snagged a first set of images of only the capsule in Earth orbit. "We see a clear compact ball! This set is already fantastic, I think," he said. 

Telescopic images of the Soviet Cosmos 482 Venus descent craft in Earth's orbit taken by satellite tracker Ralf Vandebergh of the Netherlands. (Image credit: Ralf Vandebergh)

If it's too small to read for you, in the lower middle of the picture it says the telescope is a 0.25m Newtonian, or just about a 10" mirror. It doesn't give more details, but that's not a big, observatory-class telescope.  Lots of amateur astronomers have 10" reflectors.  Mine is out in the shop.

Vandebergh notes that the Cosmos 482 is roughly 80 miles (130 kilometers) closer than the Starlink bus which, according to data, is around 1.3 meters by 2.7 meters.  Clearly, the Starlink bus looks bigger than the Cosmos reentry vehicle, despite being farther away. 

"Several frames seems to confirm what I thought to see in the 2014 images, [that] there is a compact ball but several frames show a weak elongated structure at one particular side of the ball," Vandebergh added. He has speculated in the past it was possible that this might be the parachute that came out.
...
"It is not impossible that the object is tumbling," Vandebergh notes, "so the chute would be sometimes visible," assuming that it is the chute. He cautioned that more time is needed to better analyze what’s showing up in the imagery.

That best analysis of the imagery is a work in progress, Vandebergh concluded, so stay tuned!

* - and since I picked a title that's the first words of a very famous song from the late '60s I have to include this.  

The problem with AI hardly being talked about

There's a big problem with AI that just isn't getting talked about enough.  The vast majority of stuff we read about AI is how it's going to help with every problem, or take every job, depending on which way they look at it.  We're all going to have an AI servant, or Master, again depending on which way they look at it.

The real issue, the existential problem is that AI sucks so much power, they're going to black out the rest of humanity.  It will never get to the point of being really useful without truly enormous increases in power generation.  Perhaps you've seen the story at Microsoft has repaired and gotten the Three Mile Island nuclear power station back online for their AI power needs - and will get exclusive access to all the power it can generate.  There have been similar stories around the world.  

Friday, we learned that Eric Schmidt - the former CEO of Google - has bought Relativity space apparently in preliminary design for data centers in orbit, to get access to the solar power.  

We know this because Schmidt appeared before the House Committee on Energy and Commerce during a hearing in April, speaking on the future of AI and US competitiveness. Among the topics raised then was the need for more electricity—both renewable and non-renewable—to power data centers that will facilitate the computing needs for AI development and applications. Schmidt noted that an average nuclear power plant in the United States generates 1 gigawatt of power.

Then he rattled off some numbers that might blow your mind or cause your eyes to bleed. 

"People are planning 10 gigawatt data centers," Schmidt said. "Gives you a sense of how big this crisis is. Many people think that the energy demand for our industry will go from 3 percent to 99 percent of total generation. One of the estimates that I think is most likely is that data centers will require an additional 29 gigawatts of power by 2027, and 67 more gigawatts by 2030. These things are industrial at a scale that I have never seen in my life."

AI applications consume an enormous amount of computing power. A single ChatGPT query consumes approximately 10 times more energy than a Google search does. The US energy industry is not well prepared for this kind of dramatic growth in energy demand, as power consumption over the last decade has increased by about 0.5 percent a year. Data centers also consume significant amounts of water for cooling.

There is no way our society could get 29 gigawatts more power generation from reactors, burning gas, oil or anything built in two years (by '27).  Which says another 67 more gigawatts in three more years just isn't happening, either.  Which raises the reasonable question of how does Eric Schmidt get there?  First off, he doesn't need to.  He needs to power his business, not the entire AI industry.  

If he's going to try to build power plants and data centers in space, that spawns a bunch of other problems, starting with how to get that much stuff into space - which seems to explain why Schmidt bought Relativity Space.  He needs big, reusable rockets and a lot of flights of them.  The biggest rocket, although not yet operational, is Starship.  I think the odds of him buying a huge number of Starship flights aren't very good, but while it's a small number, it's better than the odds of him buying SpaceX itself.  Yeah, no. 

The Blue Origin's New Glenn is smaller, not a whole lot closer to flying lots of missions than Starship and Blue is also owned by a billionaire.  Again, not likely.  ULA's Vulcan rocket is expensive, and it's already behind its predicted launch manifest.  Rocket Lab's Neutron vehicle is coming soon, but it's the smallest of these and may not be large enough for Schmidt's ambitions.

That leaves the Terran R being developed by Relativity Space, which has appeared here a couple of times.

If fully realized, Terran R would be a beastly launch vehicle capable of launching 33.5 metric tons to low-Earth orbit in expendable mode—more than a fully upgraded Vulcan Centaur—and 23.5 tons with a reusable first stage.  If you were a billionaire seeking to put large data centers into space and wanted control of launch, Relativity is probably the only game in town.

I know of no visualization graphics for orbiting power farms that would be powered by photovoltaics and radiate their waste heat into space, although one would be great here.

Solving launch is just one of the challenges this idea faces, of course. How big would these data centers be? Where would they go within an increasingly cluttered low-Earth orbit? Could space-based solar power meet their energy needs? Can all of this heat be radiated away efficiently in space? Economically, would any of this make sense?

These are not simple questions. But Schmidt is correct that the current trajectory of power and environmental demands created by AI data centers is unsustainable. It is good that someone is thinking big about solving big problems.

Relativity Space's current computer rendering of their Terran R, full vehicle and landed booster.  Pretty much impossible to guess the size.  Image Credit: Relativity Space

Small Space News Story Roundup 56

A disjointed couple of stories: they don't really go together, but who says they have to? 

The Highly Improbable Approach to launching satellites is gone

Remember the SpinLaunch, the company that planned on spinning satellites in a ground-based centrifuge on the order of 330 feet in diameter until they reached a velocity that could fling them into orbit?  The last post I have about them is from October of 2022.  As we talked about a few times back then, their big and fundamental problem was their flings are harder on the payloads than a typical rocket launch.  The quote I can't forget is the one that went, “It’s a very gentle 10,000 g.”  That's an oxymoron! 

It turns out that SpinLaunch sorta went quiet not long after that test.  You could say they disappeared, for all I heard.  This week they've announced a rather complete change in direction.  They're going to go back to regular rockets. 

"The launch market is relatively small compared to the economic potential of satellite communication," [CEO David] Wrenn said. "Launch has generally been more of a cost center than a profit center. Satcom will be a much larger piece of the overall industry."

The source article at Ars Technica goes into a bit of the details.  I have to say I'm not particularly convinced they've set up a good business plan and have a good chance of success.  I didn't think they had much of a chance with their centrifuge-as-launch-vehicle approach, either.  

The SpinLaunch test vehicle at the end of what appears to have been their last flight test.  It's hard to get a good scale from this video, but it appears to be on the order of 6' long - about the height of the men digging it out of the ground. Screen capture from their video (obviously).

A mission to retrieve Vanguard 1 from the orbit it has been in since 1958

That's 67 years ago.  America had just been shocked by the Soviet Union launching Sputnik 1 in October of 1957.  The newborn American space program had been hard at work trying to get to orbit and the frustration from being beaten to orbit by them was palpable.  It hurt more later in the year when the U.S. Navy's Vanguard rocket failed as the booster toppled over and exploded on its first attempt to put a US satellite into orbit. 

Lately, there has been an effort going to design a mission to retrieve the old satellite and bring it back down; there will be examinations of it for various reasons and then it will probably go into a museum.

The space race was just getting started, and the US Army was the first organization to reach orbit with  Explorer 1 on January 31, 1958.  Vanguard 1 reached orbit on March 17, 1958 as the second U.S. satellite.

The US Naval Research Lab is still the owner of the miniature metal ball of Vanguard 1, and while Explorer 1 reentered in 1970, Vanguard 1 is still in orbit. 

Today, the satellite is in an elliptical orbit with its perigee roughly at 410 miles (660 kilometers), swinging out to an apogee of approximately 2,375 miles (3,822 kilometers) from Earth, with a 34.25 degree inclination.

A team that includes aerospace engineers, historians and writers recently proposed "how-to" options for an up-close look and possible retrieval of Vanguard 1.

A mission like this is probably more complicated than it sounds, due to the satellite not having been designed with any thought given to capturing it a later date.  You can be sure there are no features on the little satellite to grab.  Add to that the fact the it's a small satellite at 3 pounds that's a 5.9 inch diameter aluminum sphere with a 36 inch antenna span.  It would be a delicate, 'handle with care' mission.

Vanguard I satellite, a component of the Vanguard Project, is a small aluminum sphere designed to take part in the International Geophysical Year (IGY) — a series of coordinated observations of various geophysical phenomena during solar maximum, spanning July 1957 through December 1958. (Image credit: NASA)

A hearing has been scheduled for the confirmation of Jared Isaacman as NASA Administrator

The committee announced late April 2 that it will hold a confirmation hearing for Isaacman on April 9 at 10 a.m. Eastern. 

How Bad Was Starliner's Flight? I Had No Idea

Eric Berger at Ars Technica has put up a summary of an interview he had with Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams yesterday at Johnson Space Center in Houston.  It's the deepest, most informative thing I've come across about the Starliner Crewed Flight Test mission; the story is both riveting and a high pucker factor.  While the two spent most of the day giving five to ten minute interviews. Berger has a closer relationship with Butch Wilmore and they ended up talking for a half hour.  Berger writes:

I have known Wilmore a bit for more than a decade. I was privileged to see his launch on a Soyuz rocket from Kazakhstan in 2014, alongside his family. We both are about to become empty nesters, with daughters who are seniors in high school, soon to go off to college. Perhaps because of this, Wilmore felt comfortable sharing his experiences and anxieties from the flight.  

The story is definitely worth your time to read, and as I usually do, I'll pass on some excerpts to try to whet your appetite for the story.  

The story starts after launch and their first night in orbit in an unexpectedly cold Starliner capsule.  As they're approaching the Space Station, you'll probably recall they lost some thrusters and the ability to control Starliner.  They knew they should dock with the ISS and felt that they'd be safer there, but they didn't know that their Starliner would hold together or if more failures would come.  As Starliner's thrusters failed, Wilmore lost the ability to move the spacecraft in the direction he wanted to go. 

He and his fellow astronaut, Suni Williams, knew where they wanted to go. Starliner had flown to within a stone's throw of the space station, a safe harbor, if only they could reach it. But already, the failure of so many thrusters violated the mission's flight rules. In such an instance, they were supposed to turn around and come back to Earth. Approaching the station was deemed too risky for Wilmore and Williams, aboard Starliner, as well as for the astronauts on the $100 billion space station.

But what if it wasn't safe to come home, either?

"I don't know that we can come back to Earth at that point," Wilmore said in an interview. "I don't know if we can. And matter of fact, I'm thinking we probably can't."

In the lead-up to this moment, Butch remembered talks he had with Boeing leaders before the mission. 

"Before the flight we had a meeting with a lot of the senior Boeing executives, including the chief engineer. [This was Naveed Hussain, chief engineer for Boeing's Defense, Space, and Security division.] Naveed asked me what is my biggest concern? And I said the thrusters and the valves because we'd had failures on the OFT [uncrewed flight test] missions. You don't get the hardware back. (Starliner's service module is jettisoned before the crew capsule returns from orbit). So you're just looking at data and engineering judgment to say, 'OK, it must've been FOD,' (foreign object debris) or whatever the various issues they had. And I said that's what concerns me the most. Because in my mind, I'm thinking, 'If we lost thrusters, we could be in a situation where we're in space and can't control it.' That's what I was thinking. And oh my, what happened? We lost the first thruster."

The story gets worse from there.  Wilmore adds: "And this is the part I'm sure you haven't heard. We lost the fourth thruster. Now we've lost 6DOF (6 Degrees of Freedom) control. We can't maneuver forward. I still have control, supposedly, on all the other axes."  

Now they simply could not control the Starliner to the degree they needed to.  The two of them realized they were in a very precarious situation, and it literally was just barely good enough to only probably not get them both killed. There was no need to talk about that with each other; they're both experienced enough as astronauts to know what the situation meant.  That's when the mission control in Houston came up with the scariest solution.  

Turn the entire system of thrusters off and back on again.  Really.  And some of them started working again.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams at the docking port entry to the ISS, soon after their June 6th arrival at the ISS. Image credit: NASA

I'll leave it there as it's fairly close to the actual docking with the ISS and the rest of the story.