The New IPCC Report Is Out

What I wanted to do on Wednesday (when I came down with an odd little sickness) was write the definitive debunking of the IPCC AR6 report that was released on Monday and has been making news this week.  I failed at that because I'm not as far along at a starting point as many other people.  There's too much to read and digest in a couple of days.  Lots of people with big head starts on me have already done much of that heavy lifting.  In a bit of reading around, you can get a good idea of the things wrong with it, if you read the right sources. 

Some good sources are

• Roger Pielke Jr. 
• Steven McIntyre 
• The No Tricks Zone (from Germany in English)  
• And, of course, Watts Up With That 

The report was greeted with media adopting, "Red Flag Warning" and similar strident language.  I don't think it's justified.

Since we're nearing the peak of hurricane season, a tropical storm will pass to our west by Sunday and another is behind it by three or four days following a similar track, the way the paper addresses hurricanes was something I'm sensitive to.  There's a subtle mistake (very likely) here that Roger Pielke spotted since he's the author of one of the papers:

I don't mean to be trite but one of the most downloaded papers in history says most published papers are wrong.  In that paper, John Ioannidis presents a list of factors that are associated with results being wrong.  This one seems to be custom written for IPCC papers.

Corollary 6: The hotter a scientific field (with more scientific teams involved), the less likely the research findings are to be true.

This is one of them.  

 

The Best Laid Plans

I had a post planned for today and then started feeling really whupped.  The cats had me up at 3AM and then through the night.  Whupped enough so that I didn't dig far enough into the stuff I had planned to talk about.  Long time readers know that it happens now and then.

So... attempts at humor. 

 

"They see me meme-ing, they hating,  I know that they're thinking I'm so white n' nerdy" 

Miscellaneous Space News Update

A few small items, none of which is long enough to warrant a full column

Item 1:  Boeing still has not reached a conclusion about what caused the error with "unexpected valve positions" that led to the scrubbing of the Starliner test flight last week. There was an update to Boeing's Starliner Updates site yesterday some time after I last checked it, explaining their progress.  Some quotes from the article:

This weekend, Boeing restored functionality on more of the 13 CST-100 Starliner propulsion system valves that did not open as designed during prelaunch system checks last week.

Boeing has completed physical inspections and chemical sampling on the exterior of a number of the affected valves, which indicated no signs of damage or external corrosion. Test teams are now applying mechanical, electrical and thermal techniques to prompt the valves open. Seven of the 13 valves are now operating as designed, with inspection and remediation of the remaining affected valves to be performed in the days ahead.  [Bold added: SiG]

Frankly, I find that a little alarming.   Seven of 13 are now operating as designed, and all they can report is no signs of damage or external corrosion?  If the valves operate as they're supposed to when connected to hardware that can apply the necessary control signals and voltages, then the problem is in their software.  Which came damned close to dooming their first Starliner.  

Then they go on to state they still haven't determined the root cause of the problem.  Maybe I'm just a fussy old engineer, but I'd prefer to have all of those valves working and it won't fly until the root cause analysis is completed and the cause can be demonstrated.  (Full disclosure: I often thought those meetings filling out the "five whys" forms were an unnecessary pain in the ass, but they're good organizational tools.  Sometimes we fix a problem that's a result of the root cause and not the deeper underlying problem.  Fixing the wrong problem happens regularly.)

Needless to say, they haven't declared victory or scheduled a launch, yet.  I'm just getting the feeling this particular problem should have been found before.  

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Item 2:  The Blue Origin and Dynetics' protest against NASA for selecting SpaceX to provide the Human Landing System (HLS) rather than them has been ruled against by the General Accounting Office (GAO).   The GAO ruled that although NASA had demonstrated a desire to proceed with more than one HLS provider, that they could pick only the best one of the three competitors, however they decided which was best.  

The drawback is that the GAO deliberated on this for 95 of the 100 days it was allowed to decide, and during that time no NASA funds could be delivered to SpaceX and the company was not allowed to work on the HLS.  Since the HLS is derived from Starship, it might be a bit tricky at times to decide if they're working on their Starship or the HLS.  I'm sure that some or even most of the hardware on the Mars and moon versions is identical but that dedicated moon hardware couldn't be worked on.

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Item 3:  NASA has had a program going to develop new Extravehicular Activity (EVA) suits for use on the moon in the Artemis program.  Brace yourself for this shocking news: the program is late and over budget. 

NASA's Inspector General says delays in spacesuit development are another factor making a 2024 astronaut Moon landing impossible.

With $420M spent and another $625M expected, suits won't be "ready for flight until April 2025 at the earliest."

Report Link (pdf)

(Source quote)  

The program has been running since 2007 and the suits are now expected in 2025?  Eighteen years and over a billion dollars to develop a suit?  

This report (linked above) was issued by Office of the Inspector General (OIG) today, just a couple of days after the GAO issued their ruling in previous story.  Elon Musk heard about that and said, "SpaceX could do it if need be."  Granted the suits have quite different requirements, but SpaceX developed the suits for the Crew Dragon manned capsules, after all.  It's not that far out of their expertise.  

As it turns out, SpaceX is already one of around two dozen “interested parties” [PDF] active in NASA’s new xEVAS (Exploration Extravehicular Activity Services) program – an effort to commandeer the spectacular success of commercial cargo and crew programs to replace half-century-old spacesuits. xEVAS has currently released a draft Request for Proposal (RFP) and is awaiting responses to that draft until mid-August before releasing the true RFP in mid-September.

Interested parties will then have until mid-October to submit proposals to design and build modern EVA (extravehicular activity) spacesuits capable of supporting astronauts on the lunar surface and on spacewalks in Earth orbit. NASA says it will then take a full five (or seven) months to review those proposals, downselect, and reward at least one or two contracts – hopefully resulting in two redundant EVA systems much like the 2+ redundant providers NASA chose to support its Commercial Crew (CCP) and Cargo Resupply Services (CRS) programs.

Yes, it sounds like a repeat of how the HLS contract was awarded, so we'll have to see what happens.  I think that SpaceX, being driven by the vision of settlements on Mars, is already working on suits for Mars or at least giving it some thought.  Sure the moon is a different environment; Mars doesn't have much of an atmosphere, but it has some, and the sun isn't as intense on Mars.  This isn't a field I've read much of anything on, but it seems like one designed for the moon would work on Mars, but maybe not the other way around.  Maybe they've already started?  Based on this drawing.

SpaceX illustration.  There are some pretty stark differences between this depiction of the HLS lander and the first one from May of '20.  Although it seems like a crop from the one they released in May of this year.

What Was Up With the Starship Stacking Anyway?

As we talked about on Friday, SpaceX transported Starship 20 (S20) to the launch complex and stacked it on top of Booster 4 (B4) for about an hour.  OK, cool.  If it was a fit check or just a gigantic photo opportunity I'm cool with that, but there was nothing even semi-official to judge what was going on.  

Today, we get a couple of interpretations from the two Erics who follow SpaceX (and space exploration) full time: Eric Ralph at Teslarati and Eric Berger at Ars Technica.  Both point out what we really know: for one, brief, shining moment, the tallest rocket in history was standing on the launch pad in Texas.  When it's fired up to launch, it will be the most powerful rocket in history.  

Eric Ralph added a little information I haven't read yet to the picture.

For those that followed the process closely in the days and weeks prior, the fact that Starship’s first full assembly was just a fit check (and, really, more like 50:50 between fit check and photo op) came as no surprise. In the lead-up, it became clear through several reports that CEO Elon Musk had challenged SpaceX to stack Ship 20 and Booster 4 by August 5th and flown in several hundred employees normally stationed elsewhere to accomplish the feat.

SpaceX could have stacked a non-flyable Starship on Booster 3; it's right there on the test stand, close to B4 on the Orbital Launch Pad (OLP).  Instead, they chose the booster and Starship which are the full-up operational prototypes that are expected to fly soon.  

There's still a backlog of things to be done on this pair, what some are calling B4-S20, and they're in line with our speculation in last Friday's post.  Quoting Elon Musk:

4 significant items:

– Final heat shield tiles for ship
– Thermal protection of booster engines
– Ground propellant storage tanks
– QD arm for ship

2 weeks.

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 6, 2021

There's more testing that needs to be done.  S20 is in the high bay waiting for more heat shield tiles, but at some point will be tested as we talked about Friday.  They've never built this configuration of Starship before, with three Raptor Boost and three Raptor Vacuum engines.  That means there's new plumbing and new controls. It's prudent risk reduction to bring S20 back out to the test stand and test it.  Test stand B has been modified specifically for some of these tests:

(Photo Credit: Philip Bottin on Twitter)

The same sort of testing campaign is needed for Booster 4.  The only tests done to a Super Heavy have been the few done on B3; some cryogenic tests and the one brief static firing.  B4 may well be taken down off the OLP and brought to test stand A, but A currently has B3 on it.  Some of the tests can be done on B3, but a static firing of any significant duration isn't happening without a water deluge system and that seems to need the size of the OLP.  Especially if they fire all 29 Raptors!  

The wild card they need to be concerned about isn't in that list: they need the FAA's approval.  Eric Berger over at Ars Technica believes that something that went largely unnoticed by most of us is a poke at the FAA from Musk.  Musk released this photo. 

Berger's theory is that releasing a black and white photo of SpaceX workers building Starship/Super Heavy will cause a nearly reflexive recall of photos like this one:

On Friday, SpaceX founder Elon Musk sent a clear message to the FAA and other federal regulators. One evocative photo, in particular, drove home his message to anyone watching. It showed workers standing beneath Starship, as it was lowered onto the first-stage rocket. In releasing a black-and-white version, Musk knew exactly what he was doing in harkening back to the age of skyscrapers.

The 21st-century skyscrapers are being built right now, the photo screamed, by modern engineers and welders. Such rockets are not to be found in PowerPoints or wooden mockups any longer. They are living, breathing machines nearly ready to breathe fire.

To the FAA, Musk seemed to be saying, federal regulators must do their part to ensure the future arrives on schedule. Just as the 20th-century skyscrapers marked the beginning of a new era and eventually launched America into a prosperous future of finance, communication, marketing, and more, the 21st century now beckons.

By invoking the imagery of building skyscrapers, Musk seems to be saying we're transitioning from the days of building skyscrapers to building Starships. Delaying Starship is the equivalent of delaying the age of skyscrapers and the prosperity that brought.

Clearly, these aren't the earliest days of space programs. For the last 60 years we've been exploring our neighborhood in the solar system, taking our first, tentative steps in the bigger picture. Starship is intended to start extending our presence into the wider solar system and taking the first steps toward building colonies on sterile, uninhabited worlds. Musk is betting that the FAA will want to align with that.  Good luck with that, Elon.

 

 

Weekend Shop Update on the 1 by 1 - part 4

"When we last left the story"  I had shown the derivation of some extra tool paths that the CAM program wouldn't create and showed the cut out of Side 2. 

The other side plate shouldn't be hard, especially with the lessons learned already, right?  Yeah, I had to cut the last few passes around the outline due to the cutter slipping upward in its holder, but that was one time versus the three times on the other piece.  Here's the way it turned out, and I'll show you this before I explain things.

That uncut area on the top around the two bolts is supposed to be 0.124" above the rest of the top surface. That's 4 passes at .031" per pass; the rest of that surface is the right depth.  In the red highlight box where you see the ledge and across the right side, it's .093 - three passes. I ran the file again, just to watch through the first four layers and the cutter just never went there. I was concerned it might have been from my editing the file, but that was just to keep the cutter out of the uncut area. It went into that area on the right to cut it down to -.093, it just didn't go back to cut the last pass. I've been using Deskproto for about 10 years and I can't think of another time it did something like this.

It wasn't hard to use my Logitech Rumblepad controller to cut the rest of that away, but it was odd and therefore unsettling.  After all, the reason we use CAM programs instead of coding everything by hand is they're supposed to make complex shapes easier without making mistakes like this. 

Now it was time to take both pieces off the mill, de-burr them, then bolt them together, smooth them and remount to get ready to drill the holes for the two tooling pins that go into both sides to hold them in the right positions.  That makes it easier to take them apart and put them back together precisely, which I'm going to have to do.  Other than breaking the one fine sanding belt I own before I was fully done with sanding, there were no issues.

This is where I made a silly screw-up and spent a day trying to find it.  The issue centers on the dimensions in red in this drawing. 

The problem showed up when I went to position the centering drill over the hole for one of the tooling pins circled in red.  It looked too close to the top edge, and instead of measuring what's in the red oval, I got more like .150 to .160 instead of .220.  That led to studying it for hours, looking at other measurements and just being confused.  The overall length and width of the plates were right.  The dimensions going left to right looked fine.  The dimensions from the edges of the raised area to the part's edges were also offset.  IIRC, the top one, 0.696 was too small and the 0.625 on the bottom was too big. 

What this would mean was that the CAM program had shifted the centerline X-axis upward in this view.  I couldn't figure out how it could do that and not mess up the whole part. 

Late one night last week, after puzzling over this for hours, I took yet another look at the work and realized my mistake.  I had put the two pieces on mill backwards.  Notice the ~45 degree angle in the drawing is at lower left.  Here you can see it's on upper left.  The top of this stack is side 2.  You can tell it from side 1 by the machining marks

Since the next operation was just positioning the mill and drilling a total of 11 holes of different sizes, it didn't take as much time to finish this phase of the machining as it did to figure out what I did wrong setting up to do it. 

There are five large holes with a counterbore; those had to be done in three steps; the two tooling pin holes had to be prepared in three steps also and tooling pins cut to length.  So it wasn't simply drilling 11 holes, but it wasn't hard just a lot of motions.

These are complex pieces.  The vertical side facing you, the right and the far vertical sides all get drilled and tapped holes.  Two per side on both side plates.  The far side gets a 1.1" diameter hole bored into it, centered on the plane where the two side plates touch.  And lots more.  I'll be working on these for a while, but I think the way most of that should get done is with the machining vise on the mill's table.  

Reading A Graph Between the Lines

This is a recent update to something that we've talked about here over the years: Compounded inflation from Jan. '00 to June '21 in several different categories of goods and services.  I think it's very illustrative. 

That's US Consumer Price inflation for 15 different things; and some categories are broader than others, but the overall changes in price go from up over 200% to down (guessing) 95%.  

It also shows from top to bottom the things that are highly government regulated (another way of saying there's no free market working) down to consumer goods that are regulated much more lightly (saying the free market if functioning fully).  

College tuition and fees are virtually untouched by the market economy.  The number of real classroom seats to put equally real student butts into is far smaller than the number of those butts.  In a free market, that supply/demand imbalance tends to raise prices but only a small number of students say "that's too much" and looks for other career options.  For those who don't look elsewhere, the fed.gov has guaranteed that grants, scholarships, and loans are available to pay for those seats regardless of the costs.  Or as we've just seen with graduate students, the Fed.gov just guarantees they'll pay back the loan regardless of what the student does, essentially making graduate schools free to anyone who reads their contracts. 

BTW, the leveling off of college textbook prices is surprising and unprecedented.  Nobody knows quite what to make of that other than to point out how remarkable it is.

Hospitalization and medical care services are likewise backed up by government edict as well as government direct payment, both Federal (e.g. Medicare) and state (Medicaid).  The effect of private insurance is harder to pin down because it's susceptible to market forces but only weakly compared to the patient picking the service and provider directly.  The insurance carriers compete to sell to the employers buying coverage, so there is some market there.  (In most instances, health insurance isn't bought directly by the person using it, rather it most often comes as a benefit with employment.)  The problem is that a third party (the contracted insurance company) doesn't have as much at stake as an individual buying their own healthcare. 

The lowest of the rising prices have been tied between Housing and Food and Beverages for the entire time; these are strongly competed for, but government programs for housing low income people affect the market, as does food relief (Food stamps/EBT cards).  

The most free market is for home electronics, and they pick TVs in particular.  I think most people might guess this and the world is full of stories of how much the prices for LED TVs dropped over the years.  In comparison to computers, for example, computers tend to have a harder to evaluate price for some level of performance.  Prices aren't in free fall or dropping in half every couple of years, but the buyer gets more for their money; maybe more processor cores, or more memory, faster solid state drive or other upgrades.   

Since "cellphone services" (I read the word "contracts") are full of government mandatory fees, I'm moderately surprised they say the prices have come down as much as they're saying.  Similarly, the prices of new cars are all affected by government mandates, but there haven't been any major changes going into effect over the period - say like increasing mandatory fuel efficiencies or other high cost demands.

In essence you can read this plot as reflective of the total effect of market intervention.  The higher the inflation, the more the government distorts the free markets, while the lower, the freer the market.  It's not a completely perfect correlation but it's a good one.

SpaceX Stacks and Unstacks Starship

Yesterday, August 5, orbital Starship prototype S20 moved out of high bay and down the mile and a half road to the launch complex at Boca Chica.  

In the latest stage of SpaceX’s continually impressive “Starbase Surge,” the company rolled the first orbital-class Starship prototype’s aft tank section from its birthplace in the factory “midbay” to a much larger “high bay” around noon on August 3rd. Mere hours later, Elon Musk revealed that SpaceX had fitted the Starship with a full six Raptors – a first for any Starship prototype, though Super Heavy Booster 4 technically beat it to the punch with the installation of a staggering 29 Raptor engines hours prior.

The rocket’s conical nose section joined it in the high bay later that evening and SpaceX wasted no time stacking and welding the two Starship halves together early on August 4th, effectively completing the basic structure of Ship 20 (S20). After a day of final integration work, Starship S20 left the high bay around dawn on August 5th and took to the highway for a brief trip from SpaceX’s Boca Chica factory to launch and testing facilities just a mile and a half to the east.

It was a little surprising to see this.  As we were discussing in the comments on the 4th, there were no road closures for the day and a closure is required to move the transporter carrying the Starship - the multi-axled vehicle takes up the entire road.  Early in the morning Thursday, they announced a closure and S20 soon took the road, followed by a piece of ground support equipment also bound for the launch complex.  

By mid-morning, S20 was in the launch complex and eventually moved over near the Orbital Launch Integration Tower, but within a few hours, SpaceX announced over a PA in the area that further stacking operations were cancelled for Thursday due to winds in the area.  

Up early this morning, I was watching the Nerdle Cam by 7:30 EDT - 6:30 CDT and before sunrise in Boca Chica.  S20 was lifted and looked to be almost in place by 9:00 local.  This picture is from nearly an hour later.

Imagine my surprise when I went back to check on progress an hour later and found this: 

Unstacked?  S20 Taken down and put back on the transporter?  What?  Why?

S20 was unceremoniously loaded on the transporter and taken back to high bay.  

So what was this all about?  It seems to have simply been a test to see how things fit.  After all, these stages are 9 meters in diameter, about 30 feet.  No matter what sort of measuring instrument you use, it's not trivial to make two mating parts 30 feet in diameter and have them fit exactly.  Since the ultimate plan is to build many boosters and many Starships, all interchangeable, checking that things go together as expected is a good idea.  

Another thing to point out is the thermal tiles on S20.  This is the first time we've seen a Starship fully black like this, but if you look closely around the "flings" (the control surfaces at the front of the rocket) where they meet the body, you'll see unfinished areas.  SpaceX is running into a shortage of these thermal tiles; they've overloaded their suppliers.  It's true that tiles can be installed while on the launch pad, but that's easier with the facilities in the High Bay. 

Stacking Starship onto the booster seemed like a bold move.  They've never flown a Starship without static firing it, and they've changed out more than a couple of Raptor engines over the course of the testing all of the Starship prototypes.  Doing a test fire of S20 seems prudent since this configuration has never been tested.  The three Raptor Vacuum engines have never been tested on a vehicle before, although that doesn't seem particularly risky.  

The same concepts apply to the booster.  They've never tested the hardware to run cryogenics to 29 Raptor engines, and some sort of static test seems like a good idea.  Much as we can say against the SLS, they did their "green run" test firing of the full first stage to qualify it for flight.  A few different static firings, turning on a few engines at a time might be a valid way to test them if they're concerned about lighting up all 29 at the same time with all that other stuff so close to the launch pad.

Blue Origin Expecting to Deliver BE-4 Engines by End of Year

Insiders close to the development of the Blue Origin BE-4 engine are saying that the first two space qualified BE-4 engines are on schedule for delivery before the end of the year, according to an article today on Ars Technica.  The article isn't a press release or some other formal announcement from BO, it's an investigation of why the engines are at least four years late in delivery.  

The company aspires to deliver these two flight engines to United Launch Alliance before the end of this year, although that increasingly appears to be a "stretch" goal. Delivery may slip into early 2022. And in order to make this deadline, Blue Origin plans to take the somewhat risky step of shipping the engines to its customer before completing full qualification testing.

ULA took the risky step of contracting Blue Origin to develop the new engines for their new Vulcan rocket back in 2014.  ULA is an old-space company and they were betting on a new company with very little to show for itself, but promising to deliver an engine comparable in performance to the Space Shuttle Main Engines at a lower cost and deliver them by 2017.  There's much interest in why the program has been delayed so much, but Blue Origin has been silent.  The interest is not just the space program watchers, and not just ULA (we would assume they get regular updates from BO), but also includes the DOD.  ULA is a main supplier of launch services for DOD payloads and it's in their interest, too.  

Despite this widespread interest, however, Blue Origin has said almost nothing publicly about the engine development. Therefore, this story attempts to provide some context for why the BE-4 engines are late. It is based on anonymous sources at the company's headquarters as well as industry officials, some of whom would likely be fired if they were named.

According to his sources, the first two engines (1 and 2) are not assembled but most of their components are built.  BO is embarking on an aggressive and risky approach to completing the certification of the engines.  They've never tested an engine identical to the first two they'll deliver, but they say they have tested an engine close to the configuration of the flight engines, and it has performed well during hot firings that approximate the duty cycle of a Vulcan first stage launch.  I've italicized the words with highest pucker factor in my reading.  

They intend to test two more of these close engines this fall at their facility near Van Horn, Texas and then it gets more dicey. 

After these tests, a fully assembled flight engine no. 1 will be shipped to Texas to undergo a fairly brief round of tests, known as acceptance testing. If this engine passes, as expected, it will be shipped to ULA. Then a virtually identical BE-4 engine will be sent from Kent [Washington] to Texas. This "qual" engine will undergo a much more rigorous series of tests, known as qualification testing. The idea is to push the engine through its paces to find any flaws. Then a similar process will follow with flight engine no. 2, followed by a second "qual" engine.

There's a risk that engine no. 1 or 2 will be installed and undergoing checkouts by ULA, the qual engines will fail some tests, starting design fixes and ULA will have to remove the engines for modification or replacement.  Any testing they have done will have to be repeated as well. 

BE-4 test fire on the stand in Texas.  Blue Origin photo.

Why are the engines late, anyway?  The summary I get out of it is one word: mismanagement.  Aside from the distracted leadership of Jeff Bezos, a consistently reported persistent problem is that the BE-4 engine testing and development program has been relatively "hardware poor" in recent years.  The way I read that, it means if some component wasn't working properly, or just suspected of that, there was no way to swap it out and try another.  Granted that having plenty of hardware is expensive, but saving money that way can be "penny wise but pound foolish" and more expensive.  

It apparently wasn't always that way.  Back in '17, when the engines were supposed to be delivered, they claimed to be "hardware rich."  Being hardware poor seems to be a result of when Bezos hired Bob Smith formerly of Honeywell to run Blue Origin.  According to the sources, Smith focused more on reorganization of Blue Origin's leadership rather than hardware development. Other programs were prioritized, too, so the BE-4 team didn't get all the resources and freedom it needed to proceed at full speed.  (Everyone who has worked for a big company and been re-organized dozens of times is now identifying.) 

It's not all grim.  About two years ago, BO hired an experienced propulsion engineer, John Vilja as Senior Vice President of Engines.  Over the last 12 to 18 months he has instituted a lot of changes, not the least of which was creating a more hardware rich environment.  

This is not to imply there weren't other problems with the basic BE-4 design and other problems as well.

Blue Origin spent much of 2019 redesigning turbomachinery within the BE-4 engine and then testing those fixes late that year and into 2020. This issue now appears to be largely behind the company. COVID-19 also impacted development and testing, with engineers largely working remotely in 2020. That made it more difficult to be hands-on with the engines alongside the technicians in the factory.

Blue Origin has also had to deal with stringent requirements from United Launch Alliance for aspects such as combustion instability. This potential problem has plagued US rocket engines since the massive F1 engine built for the Saturn V rocket in the 1960s. Combustion instability involves rapid, unexpected pressure changes inside the thrust chamber during ignition of fuel and oxidizer. If this instability propagates, it can destroy an engine.

The challenge for Blue Origin is that in working for ULA, it is essentially dealing with the US military, which has exacting standards for the performance of rocket engines launching its most valuable payloads. And since the BE-4 will be called upon to launch high value satellites for the Department of Defense nearly from the beginning, it must meet those standards up front rather than after a number of test flights. The paperwork and testing required for such certification is lengthy.

For obvious reasons, we don't know that BO is going to deliver these engines, pass qual. test or any other goals talked about here, but I think one of the reasons so many are skeptical of BO is because they're not transparent about what has been going on.  Everyone who follows the space programs knows that engine development is high risk, difficult stuff.  We expect setbacks and problems.  We understand that some development programs are harder than others.  Being as opaque as BO just invites more doubt.  I'm just surprised there haven't been more comic memes about BO besides this one. 

 

Metal-Free, Completely Organic, Fully Biodegradable Batteries

Batteries that don't have metal electrodes, that are completely organic and fully biodegradable exist.  They're still somewhat of a laboratory curiosity in that I can't tell you a name that's on the market.  They're even worse at energy density than batteries that don't check all those squares in your game of Buzzword Bingo.  

I should point out that when they use the term organic, it's in sense that chemistry formally recognizes: it means that they're based on carbon compounds, not that they're grown on hippie farms.  As always, the common word biodegradable translates into normal-speak as "they will rot."

The article I'll refer to first appeared in the June Electronic Design magazine and focuses on work carried out by a team at Texas A&M University headed by Jodie Lutkenhaus, Professor of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering.  In place of inorganic elements or compounds, like Lead and Sulfuric acid or Nickel and Cadmium terminals with a conducting paste, they created a battery using positively and negatively chargeable polypeptides.  Polypeptides are combinations of amino acids by what are referred to as peptide bonds.  The biggest and best known polypeptides are the proteins every living tissue is made from.  The battery polypeptides are only similar to those bigger proteins in the organic chemistry sense.

The process begins with an amino acid called L-Glutamic Acid (L meaning it rotates polarized light to the left; "levorotary").  L-Glutamic Acid is common in foods but not one of the "essential amino acids" that we can't synthesize and thus need to eat.  

Here I'll mercilessly grab part of the original article.  

In basic chemical terms, they started with l-glutamic acid polypeptide chains, then attached 2,2,6,6-tetramethyl-4-piperidine-1-oxyl (biTEMPO) to make the cathode and 4,4′-bipyridine derivatives (viologen) to make the anode (Fig. 2). A radical-based chemical mechanism “shuttled” electrons between the two structures.

Of course, as anyone doing research on batteries will tell you: a battery is more than just making this glop and pouring it somewhere, it has to be packaged properly, too. The packaging is shown in the Electronic Design article, but looks much like (well...) a battery.  Anode and cathode separated (by some filter paper in this case) and connected positive to anode and negative to cathode.  

The big question I had when I first saw this was how the energy density compared to other batteries, assuming it would be lower than existing batteries at this point in development.  

The storage density of this battery, with a terminal voltage between 1.1 and 1.6 V, is about 38 mA-hr/gm and 60 mW-hr/gm, which about one-third that of lithium-based sources. Furthermore, according to their detailed, fully referenced comparison table, it’s in the mid-range of “organic” cells that are non-degradable.

Unless I've gotten too out of practice at converting units, milliWatt*hour/gram are numerically the same as Watt*Hour/kilogram.  60 W*H/kg seems lower than the stated 1/3 of lithium batteries, but not terribly low.  I've read of electric car batteries doing over 400 W*H/kg and some claims of twice that being seen in some lab somewhere.  Gasoline offers 12,000 W*H/kg.

Given that, it's reasonable to ask "so what?  Why should I care about a low capacity battery that doesn't seem to offer any improvements?"  

The standard arguments against Lithium Ion batteries center on their not being recycled as much as people want (it costs too much), and that they use cobalt in their chemistries, a toxic metal that has become the target of human rights protesters - undoubtedly you've seen the pictures of children forced to work in the cobalt mines in horrible conditions.  Both of these objections are being raised in several places and everyone in the battery business is trying to come up with better solutions.    

 

 

And... They Did It

Booster 4 is in the launch complex at Boca Chica.  

Screen capture earlier this evening.  Booster 3 is on the left side of the screen (behind the blue field carrying text) but up on the test stand while B4 is right of center, still on the transporter, and next to the crane likely to lift her onto the Orbital Launch Pad. 

Hoppy flew two years ago this month.  August 27,  2019.  Hoppy is off to the left of this view.  It's mind boggling that we've gone from the "Flying Grain Silo" (formally named Starhopper) to the cusp of an orbital flight of the full Starship Superheavy in two years.  It would be great to see that flight by the 27th of the month.

Over here on the Space Coast, Boeing's Starliner capsule test flight was scrubbed today.  The mission is tentatively scheduled for tomorrow, Wednesday the 4th, at 12:57 PM EDT, but that's far from sure.  From Boeing's Starliner website: 

During pre-launch preparations for the uncrewed test flight of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, Boeing engineers monitoring the health and status of the vehicle detected unexpected valve position indications in the propulsion system. The issue was initially detected during check outs following yesterday’s electrical storms in the region of Kennedy Space Center.

We are in wet pattern on the East Coast of Florida this week, with 60 to 80% chances of thunderstorms every afternoon, at least here south of the Space Center.  It's to be expected.  Since the launch moves a little earlier in the day every day that passes (due to the Space Station Orbit shifting vs. time), and the rain chances go down as the week goes by, it might be more realistic to set the date later in the week.  Of course, there have been lots of launches into gaps between the clouds over the years.

More importantly is that associating the "unexpected valve positions" with the previous day's thunderstorms carries an implication that those two events go together.  That the storms may have somehow caused that issue.  Maybe it's a reach, but that needs to be investigated if they haven't ruled it out. 

EDIT 04 Aug 21 1100 AM EDT:  As of the latest updates, the Starliner test flight is scrubbed with no official word of reschedule.  Official words at Starliner Updates but it still revolves around not understanding why the "unexpected valve position indications in the propulsion system" were seen.

While We Were Having A Weekend, SpaceX Was...

While we were having a weekend SpaceX was doing their version of going "where no man has gone before."  In this case, doing a few things no one has ever done before.  These are absolutely necessary steps for the first attempt at an orbital flight of Starship and the Super Heavy booster.  I don't know which part is most important but they're all important. 

First, they lifted the Orbital Launch Table onto the OLP or Orbital Launch Pad, the six-legged structure that's been in process for almost a year.  The two big cranes, Buucky and Kong, lifted the table into place where the final assembly was worked on.  

I highlighted the structure with a red circle.  I don't think the work on the table is complete, but it's standing on its own, with nothing attached to either crane.  Kong's cables and attachment point are visible above the OLT/OLP and Buucky, the large yellow crane, is pointed in a different direction.  

The other large story is that Booster 4 made a huge leap towards being ready to fly.  In one of what most be the most surprising tasks they've taken on, starting yesterday, all 29 Raptor engines were installed on B4 between Sunday night and this morning, the final two being put in place by the day shift this morning.  

After accepting delivery of five new Raptor engines earlier the same day, Super Heavy Booster 4’s (B4) first Raptor rolled out of one of SpaceX’s Starship factory tents around 6pm CDT to form what would become a line of engines awaiting installation. One by one, Raptors were rolled out of that tent and by 5am CDT, an incredible 25 engines had been spotted and installed on Super Heavy. Come shift handoff around 6am, 27 Raptors had reportedly been installed in 12 hours. The two remaining engines likely joined them an hour or two later, marking 29 high-performance rocket engines installed in just 12-14 hours.

Elon Musk Tweeted this picture

That's a busy looking area!  We don't know what the plans are for how much thrust they're going to try to set for this mission, but it's potentially the most powerful launch in history. 

It's possible that B4 can be transported to the Orbital Launch Pad as early as tomorrow, August 3rd, but that's just based on what appears to be ready and one Tweet by Musk in response to a NASA Spaceflight.com picture of the Table and Orbital Launch Pad being worked on.

Needs to be level & match booster fittings. We will find out on ~Tuesday.

It's also worth noting that the Grid Fins for B4 were installed over the weekend as well.   These are not cast titanium like the Falcon 9's grid fins, but welded steel.  They aren't retracted down parallel to the booster's body during the mission, but are rotatable for control purposes.  There's a worker visible in the upper right, behind the black crane or lift.  If that guy is in the range of about 6' tall, the grid fins look to be the length and maybe width of a small car.  Those fins are going to support the weight of the booster when it's recovered out of the air during descent after the flight. 

Photo credit to BocaChicaGal at NASASpaceflight.com - as usual.

Back in May, SpaceX had reported they had a goal of completing the first orbital mission of Starship in the "third quarter."  This isn't a government job and they didn't mean the third quarter of the Fed.gov's fiscal year, April through June, but the calendar third quarter: July through September.  July is over and we can sense the urgency to meet their self-imposed schedule of this quarter.  August or September?  Good question.  I'll be watching.

How We Know It's August in Florida

The first indicator isn't the calendar.  The first indicator is when the UV Index says 11 on a scale of 10 and uses the description, "Potentially Fatal."  We know that's aimed at visitors to the area who aren't used to it and don't pay much attention.  

There are many places where folks look forward to summer; it's time to go outside - maybe for the first time in months, enjoy warm, glorious days; garden, bike, picnic; maybe enjoy a book while lounging on the beach.  Songs like Nat King Cole's classic "Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days of Summer" come to mind.

That's not here.  Here, summer is something to be a bit more reserved about.  If you live here, you can keep up with your regular life.  If you were from a moderate place, not used to our heat and humidity, running or other outdoors activity could conceivably kill you.  August marks the Dog Days of Summer; everything outdoors slows.  Fishing slows - sure the fish have to eat, but they become more active after dark.  Animals are more sluggish.  Ordinarily, it can be nasty here from about mid-July to almost the middle of September.  The worst of it is August. 

When we first got an HDTV years ago, Mrs. Graybeard and I naturally spent much of our TV time searching out HD programming.  One of the first movies we watched was "The Chronicles of Riddick".  You have to understand this is not even particularly good scifi.  It's a fun movie to watch, it's a visual treat, it's a fantastic display of special effects perfect for HD, but don't pay too much attention to the story.  To quote a review (long gone from the net), "Furyans, Necromongers, Elementals, The Underverse, the Threshold...it so clearly wants to be epic that it forgets to tie all of these disparate worlds, universes and civilizations into a coherent story. (Director) Twohy clearly makes the mistake of not realizing that there is a huge difference between being grand and being simply confusing and the more ideas that are introduced, the more lumbering it becomes…"   

We still watch it on occasion when we run into it.

A large portion of the movie, and one of the longest action sequences, takes place on the planet Crematoria (many of the names in the movie are that cheesy).  Crematoria is a planet that has a tremendous temperature variation (probably an impossible amount) with daytime temperatures of 700F and night time temperatures 300 below zero.  When the sunrise terminator sweeps through, the force of the heat gales that come with it is literally enough to blow you apart, disintegrating flesh and blowing pieces off until you die.  There's a scene where a character (Purifier), a Furyan like Riddick, sacrifices himself by walking into the sunrise terminator and self-immolating.  That's him trying to stand up to the gales while being set afire and having pieces of burning flesh blown off him.

The first time I saw that scene, it reminded me of the time we decided to do a long bike ride on July 4th (I think it was a hundred mile ride, but for sure it was a virtually all day ride).  I mentioned it to Mrs. Graybeard who said, "sure, we've been out on days like that."  

The National Weather Service publishes charts for heat index that show the amount of danger from the combination of heat and humidity.  This is one of their charts.  I've drawn a box around the typical morning conditions here.  "Extreme caution" conditions are common.  In the afternoon, it pushes farther into the orange, maybe red.  This afternoon, for example, it was 93 with humidity around 75%.

And that's what life here is like for August plus or minus a week or two.  Stay out of the sun.  Do your outdoor activities near sunrise or sunset.  Don't expose bare skin to the sun any longer than necessary - and even then, use sunscreen if you need to be out when the sun is intense, say from 10 AM to 4 PM.  SPF 3 million is adequate.  Without air conditioning and mosquito control, a technological civilization could not exist here.

 

 

Weekend Shop Update on the 1 by 1 - part 3

"When we last left the story..."  I prepared a machining fixture, temporarily mounted the two chunks of metal that will become the side plates and said that tool paths were the next big step.   

As I started working on the tool paths, I saw an area that concerned me.  I planned to cut the part by waterline machining, which is parallel paths around the part as if the part is surrounded by water which is lowered a little bit at a time.  If the part is a simple rectangular or square box, this is simple enough to do by hand.  You just give the program the coordinates of start and stop points and tell it to go from one to the other, lowering the cutter every pass around it.  In a part with complex surfaces like this one, it either becomes a very involved program with dozens or hundreds of points you have to find, or you use Computer Aided Manufacturing (CAM) software, which is what I did. 

The program I'm using is an old version of DeskProto, version 5. I bought this software about a decade ago, and while it has been updated several times, they appear to be offering what I bought as a free version now, and you pay to add capabilities in the SW.  I need to look at the free version and see if it's better than what I have.  I have to arm wrestle DeskProto to get it to do what I want; the problem is even when I do, I don't get exactly what I want.  This is a screen capture showing the tool paths before I save them to a file.  The green lines are what are called rapids, or rapid movements; G0 or G00 in Gcode; these are as fast as your machine can move.  The red lines are the regular movements with a controlled feed rate.

I end up editing the tool paths in a text editor to remove those loops around the raised center area; that top surface is Z=0 and that area is already flat.  Some of those paths would cut off my mounting bolts if I didn't do this.. Then I check it in GWizard Editor from CNCCookbook.com to ensure it's cutting right. There still appears to be wasted motions that I'd like it to not make, but since I'm not trying to save every second of machine time, I won't try to edit them out.

This made me concentrate on that little triangular area in the lower right.  That's a large corner that's getting cut away, and what the image doesn't show is that the waterline paths will cut a slot in the aluminum there.  Eventually an inch deep and the 1/2" width of the cutter I'm using.  That concerned me because the cooling system I'm using, a misting coolant called a FogBuster, isn't going to get into a deep slot and blow the chips out like flood cooling will.  I decided to cut away that corner manually.  To do that, I had to figure out where to start and stop along that angular path.  Enter the design program again.

The only thing here that wasn't done by eye and saying "that looks close enough" was to draw the circles the size of the cutting tool (0.500") and pick places to put them.  The reason points 2 and 3 are farther off the edge than 1 and 2 is that I tested the points I had and the cutter didn't go past the edge of the blank.  I drew the rectangle wrong, so I moved 2 and 3 further along the angled path.  Then I wrote a GCode file that moves the cutter in numerical order, 1 to 4 and back to 1 and does that loop over and over.  That will cut away most of that big piece of waste, the only part of the blank to cut away. 

It didn't take long to notice that the cuts didn't seem to be as deep as the Mach 3 display (DRO) was saying as it was cutting.  When the file was done, instead of being all the way through the 1" thick piece, it was cut about a half inch deep. The cutter had driven the rest of the way up into the collet. I thought I had tightened that as tight as always. Oh, well...

I repositioned the cutter (a 1/2" carbide, 4-flute end mill), tightened very tightly and started the cut again. This time, it cut farther down, but still left a sizable ledge on the work - maybe .050 thick. I trimmed that back but every time I cut another pass, it didn't seem to cut any more of the edge away.  

Since the cut had pretty much achieved its purpose of trimming away most of that corner, I said it was close enough to done and decided to do the actual cut. I re-zeroed the cutter in the collet yet again and loaded the big Gcode file.  This file also left a thick ledge again.  You can see it in the red highlighted area, especially on the left.  That area on the right that looks thin with an irregular edge was from the cut to remove the metal in that area.

At this point, I took the carbide cutter out and replaced it with one of my older High Speed Steel (HSS) cutters that I had used several times before.  I suspected that the first cutter might be too small in diameter and that's why the collet couldn't grab it securely enough.  It's a cutter I got from some dood's table at Cabin Fever in '15, so maybe it was surplus because it was imperfect?  My mistake in retrospect was that I never stopped to analyze the problem and didn't really ask, "why is this a problem now and never has been before?"

I did the same exact file with the HSS cutter, spent about 10 minutes cutting air before it got to the bottom and it also left part of bottom too thick. By this time, it was late enough to shut down in the shop and I said I'd look closer at the cutter and collet today.

The cutter diameter was fine. The carbide cutter measured 0.4995 to my manual micrometer while the HSS cutter measured 0.4985. The diameter clearly wasn't the issue, so I cleaned out the collet with a paper "shop towel" (the blue paper kind) and some mineral spirits.  I don't know how it got oil in there, and I didn't see anything on the paper towel, but I put the carbide cutter back in the collet and did the last couple of passes around the side plate (I edited the file to remove everything above cutting to -0.950). This time, it left a thinner margin on the very left side of the blank, but it still had a visibly thicker area.  I re-checked the Z-axis and the cutter hadn't moved, so that meant the work must have moved due to the cutting forces. I lowered the last cut from the value the CAM set (-1.001) down to -1.004 and ran it again, this time resulting in a proper looking side plate.   I think the reason that previous try left some material on the left side is I inadvertently didn't position a backing plate under the left edge.

The end result of the trials.  There's a little metal around the bottom edge - or there appears to be some.  I think a little deburring will take care of that. On the table like this, there aren't many dimensions I can check but they all check to within about .002"with a tolerance of .005".  There's lots of adventures ahead with these two pieces; for starters I need to trim off the corresponding on the other side plate (visible at the right edge of the picture) and then do the big file of cuts on it.  That's just barely getting started.

About that Russian Space Station Module, Nauka

Back near the end of June, we introduced the Russian replacement module for the International Space Station, named Nauka (science).  The module didn't launch by the "No Earlier Than" date that was given at the time, but the mission successfully launched on July 21.  There were early reports of troubles with the Proton booster's upper stage, and the first planned burn to raise the module's orbit was delayed.   

Sources said Russian ground teams were evaluating issues on the Nauka module soon after its launch Wednesday, prompting managers to forego the mission’s first planned orbit adjustment burn. The issues were not expected to be a major concern for the module’s rendezvous and docking with the space station.

The problems were resolved and Roscosmos ground controllers successfully raised its orbit slowly until it was able to rendezvous and dock with the ISS.  

Nauka is to replace the Russian Pirs (Pier) module, which has been part of the ISS for 20 years, so the module was undocked from the ISS on the 26th and then set on path for a destructive re-entry with a Progress Cargo Freighter providing the deceleration.  Here's the two of them as seen from the ISS. 

Photo Credit: NASA TV/Spaceflight Now 

The Nauka module arrived at the ISS yesterday, the 29th, and the docking took place at 8:31 AM CDT (13:30 UTC).  There are two Russian Cosmonauts on the station, Oleg Novitskiy and Pyotr Dubrov, and the two were assigned the process of  “waking up” Nauka and integrating the new spacecraft with the station’s systems. 

The process was apparently going nominally until just over three hours later; 11:34 AM CDT when the Nauka module's maneuvering thrusters unexpectedly started firing.  The ISS is nothing if not enormous, stretching the length of a football field  with a mass of more than 930,000 pounds, but in the microgravity of orbit, small amounts of energy injected turn into movement, which turn into changing the position - the attitude - of the ISS.  The space station ended up tilted up about 45 degrees from its normal, intended orientation, moving at roughly half a degree per second at one point. 

Attitude control was fully lost at 11:42 am, and engines on the space station's service module were fired. This was followed by a handover to the Russian Progress vehicle attached to the station, which began to fire its thrusters. This tug-of-war offset the Nauka module thruster activity, which eventually stopped after fuel supplies were exhausted. By 12:29 pm on Thursday, attitude control was restored. It made for quite an hour on the ground and in space.

A video summary from Space.com is here.  

Just as there are standard procedures, some automated, for restoring loss of proper attitude, there are procedures for the aftermath and in "an abundance of caution," today's launch of Boeing's Starliner test flight was ordered held until Tuesday.  Starliner, of course, is heading for the ISS and there's perhaps a bit more concern than usual to verify everything is nominal on the ISS. 

As SpaceX Prepares Superheavy to Fly

Over at SpaceX Boca Chica, Texas, the Orbital Launch Integration Tower had its final section put into place yesterday (July 28) extending it to its full height of ~440 feet.  That was originally supposed to have been done the day before, but some issue kept them from proceeding.  Elon Musk says that what they do now is essentially convert the OLIT to Mechazilla, the robotic version of Godzilla.  Or something like that.  

While none of us know exactly what this is going to eventually look like, it's clear that pipes to get liquid methane and oxygen (LOX) to the Superheavy booster and Starship upper stage need to be added to the OLIT, along with provisions for every monitoring cable that will attach to both.  There will be elevators to get to various levels and a large crane to lift the Starship upper stages onto the boosters (the motor for something like those has been installed).  I'm sure there's lots more that I'm not thinking of, but as of now, it looks fairly empty.  That's the OLIT on the left here, with the ground support tanks in the middle foreground.

Photo by bocachicagal, Mary, for NASASpaceflight.com.

While the work continues of completing the OLIT, the first Orbital Launch Pad, which we've known was coming for almost a year, has also become the target of some work.  The table to be installed on the launch pad also moved to a position next to the pad this week.  It's easy to underestimate how big a task SpaceX has created for itself here.  A vehicle the size and liftoff thrust of a Starship/Superheavy combination has never existed anywhere.  NASA took a couple of years to build the Vehicle Assembly Building and the launch pads for the Saturn V, and that's a smaller task than this.  When you add in the capability of catching the returning boosters and turning them around for reuse, nobody in history has done this. 

Photo by Nic Ansuini on Twitter.

The booster currently on the test stand (visible far lower right corner above), B3, is not intended to fly and never intended to carry a full complement of Raptor engines.  Elon Musk revealed a view of the piping inside the Superheavy booster, most likely a photograph of the inside of Booster 4, currently being assembled at the shipyard.  

For the most part, Super Heavy is just a colossal duo of steel propellant tanks that is – to an extent – even simpler than its smaller Starship upper stage, which needs two types of Raptor engines, flaps, a bevy of maneuvering thrusters, and more. However, at the booster’s base, SpaceX must design, fabricate, and assemble a nightmarishly crowded and complex mechanical structure capable of mounting, fueling, and powering anywhere from 29 to 33 Raptor engines.

Simultaneously, that structure and all associated plumbing must withstand the force and pressure of more than 2000 metric tons of cryogenic liquid oxygen and the 7500 tons (16.5 million lbf) of thrust those Raptors can generate. That’s just the bare minimum, though.

Nightmarishly crowded and complex is an apt description.  I have trouble simply counting the number of workers in there trying to bring B4 to life.  Now consider the environment that will experience.  On the far side of that spaghetti-maze of pipes, will be nearly three dozen rocket engines burning fuel at a couple of thousand degrees.  On this side, the temperatures will be cryogenic with liquid oxygen in the vicinity of -300 F and liquid methane about 40 degrees warmer.   

SpaceX is being uniquely open about what they're doing, in showing pictures like this and hosting the various cameras that watch everything 24/7.  This is probably doing more to encourage STEM education, or more education and training than just about any of the regular programs out there. 

RIP Dusty Hill of ZZ Top

The news broke late today that Dusty Hill, bassist for ZZ Tip passed away in his sleep last night.  He was 72.  

ZZ Top: L-R Dusty Hill, bass, Billy Gibbons on guitar and Frank Beard on the drums (which I remember because the guy without a beard is named Beard).   Photo credit: R. Diamond / WireImage 

The band released statements today that sound like they were really written by a PR Person.  That article link above (NY Post) includes the statement.

“We are saddened by the news today that our compadre, Dusty Hill, has passed away in his sleep at home in Houston, Texas,” wrote ZZ Top drummer Frank Beard and lead vocalist Billy Gibbons in a joint statement Wednesday, Rolling Stone reported. “We, along with legions of ZZ Top fans around the world, will miss your steadfast presence, your good nature, and enduring commitment to providing that monumental bottom to the ‘Top.’ We will forever be connected to that ‘Blues Shuffle in C.’ You will be missed greatly, amigo.”

Everyone knows the show business axiom that "the show must go on," and there has been talk already about resuming their tour (they cancelled tonight's show), and possibly another bassist, since Dusty had been having some health issues.  (He had left the tour recently because of hip issues.)  On The Other Hand.  These same three guys have been playing together since the late '60s.  After releasing their first record and playing professionally, they played their high school prom in 1970.  

(L-R this time) Dusty, Frank, Billy.  Photo source.

Why does it matter?  After a while, musicians get to know what their band mates are going to do.  They complete each other's sentences.  Billy is going to be expecting the new bass player to do something specific (both note and timing) and sometimes it's not going to be there.  

I've been fond of these guys for a long time.  I started noticing the lyrics to some of their songs and thinking these guys couldn't possibly take themselves too seriously; they were in it for the fun.  Then I saw the fur-covered guitar and bass during the 80s and it was easy to like them.  

Rest well, Dusty.  We'll miss you.