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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed Jul 28, 2021 12:33 pm

Interview is from last spring, but a fantastic watch.


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Postby relantel » Thu Jul 29, 2021 4:25 pm

ISS knocked off alignment by the Nauka module earlier today:

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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Thu Jul 29, 2021 5:13 pm

Typical Russian crap.

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Postby Shyster » Thu Jul 29, 2021 6:00 pm

It looks like Nauka's computers may not have realized that it docked and were trying to maintain its orientation or still perform docking maneuvers. It's not clear to me from the reports whether the Russians got the thrusters turned off or whether Nauka just ran out of thruster fuel.

It swung the ISS around some, but it didn't really have any big impact on the ISS's orbit. The Progress spacecraft currently docked to the ISS has been used to reorient the station, and everything is back to normal. Speaking of incorrect thruster firings, the Nauka anomaly has reportedly delayed the second test launch of the Boeing Starliner from tomorrow to no earlier than Tuesday so that the focus can be on checking out the Nauka issue.

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Postby tifosi77 » Thu Jul 29, 2021 6:44 pm

Interview is from last spring, but a fantastic watch.

I like that they gave him a cameo as the CO of the USS Iwo Jima at the end of the movie.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Sun Aug 01, 2021 1:39 pm

So good


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Postby Shyster » Mon Aug 02, 2021 10:27 pm





Those 29 Raptor engines will produce 64% more thrust at sea level than the five Rocketdyne F-1 engines did on the first stage of the Saturn V. Twenty-nine appears to be the number of engines that Super Heavy will fly with for initial flight tests, although the final configuration is likely to have 33 engines.

SpaceX installed 29 Raptor engines on a Super Heavy rocket last night
https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08 ... ast-night/

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Postby relantel » Tue Aug 03, 2021 12:12 pm

Boeing Starliner launch scrubbed, next window tomorrow at 12:57:

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Postby Shyster » Tue Aug 03, 2021 6:36 pm

Everyday Astronaut did a three-hour tour of the SpaceX production facility in Texas, and Elon was the tour guide for all of it. Everyday Astronaut just posted the first hour. I've only wanted a little bit of this, but it looks like Elon is going into full detail on everything that is going on.


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Postby Shyster » Thu Aug 05, 2021 5:51 pm




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Postby shafnutz05 » Thu Aug 05, 2021 5:57 pm

About twenty minutes after sunset on Tuesday, my daughter and I (and a bunch of other campers) saw the brightest fireball I've ever seen. Bear in mind, it was still pretty darn bright outside, and this thing was as bright as the full moon streaking down for a solid five or six seconds.

I logged the sighting with the American Meteor Society, and sure enough, we were in good company. Most of the sightings were in NY since we were only about 20 miles from the state line. Many as far away as Syracuse/Poughkeepsie.

Cool breakdown here. I definitely undersold the magnitude in my report.

https://fireball.amsmeteors.org/members ... /2021/4274

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Postby Shyster » Fri Aug 06, 2021 12:09 am

After it was delayed once due to the Nauka kerfuffle, Boeing delayed the Starliner launch a second time due to sensor readings that some valves were in the wrong position. There is now a report that the abnormal valve-position readings were coming from more than half of the 24 propulsion valves in Starliner’s service module. Many of those valves reportedly cannot be accessed while the vehicle is stacked for launch. If Boeing has to take the Starliner off the Atlas V and back into the processing facility in order to fix this, the delay could be on the order of months.

http://parabolicarc.com/2021/08/04/next ... nths-away/

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Postby Shyster » Thu Aug 12, 2021 7:15 pm

Space news:

After a successful launch on Tuesday from Wallops, Virginia, the Cygnus NG-16 cargo spacecraft arrived today at the ISS and has been successfully docked. The Cygnus is carrying 8,208 lbs. of research, hardware, and crew supplies, including a new air-scrubbing system. It will be docked at the ISS for the next 90 days or so.

The Boeing Starliner Orbital Flight Test 2 (OFT-2) mission is looking even more iffy. The latest news is that Boeing has not yet managed to "unstick" many of the valves in the propulsion system, and Boeing isn't sure why the valves stuck in the first place. Also, ULA has other Atlas 5 launches upcoming that need to use LC-41 at CCSFS, including a military launch for the Space Force and the NASA "Lucy" mission to the asteroid belt, which must launch during a launch window that opens on October 16. It's likely that the Atlas V carrying the Starliner will need to be unstacked to make room for other launches, and the Starliner itself will probably need to be taken apart to replace the valves in question. I wouldn't expect OFT-2 to launch in 2021.

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) suffered a setback yesterday when the third stage of the GSLV Mk. II rocket carrying the EOS-03 satellite apparently either failed to ignite or shut down shortly after ignition. The EOS-03 was to be India’s first geostationary Earth-imaging satellite. The GSLV Mk. II family has been a little problematic, with 4 failures and 2 partial failures out of 14 total launches. This was the first GSLV in more than a year due to technical issues and the COVID-19 pandemic, for which ISRO used 100% of its liquid-oxygen-production capacity to make oxygen for hospitals.

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Postby Shyster » Sun Aug 15, 2021 5:32 pm

Boeing has announced that the Starliner will be unstacked and sent back to the factory, likely for replacement of all of the affected valves. John Vollmer, the program manager for Boeing’s commercial crew program, said on a media call that the apparent cause of the valve problem is that nitrogen tetroxide, the oxidizer used for Starliner’s thrusters, infiltrated the Teflon seals in the valves. That nitrogen tetroxide then interacted with moisture on the “dry” side of the valve, creating nitric acid, which corroded the valves and caused them to stick in the closed position. The valves are provided by Aerojet Rocketdyne. Boeing isn't sure where the moisture came from. It would have been introduced during assembly, or it could have come from exposure to humid conditions on the pad.

We're now looking at months of delay. Not only does ULA need the pad for multiple other missions, but SpaceX is scheduled to launch a Crew Dragon in October that will occupy the docking port that the Starliner was going to use. Plus, I don't see NASA permitting Boeing to launch without both identifying the root cause of the valve problem and making corrective changes. My bet is that Starliner doesn't launch until well into 2022.

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Postby relantel » Mon Aug 16, 2021 5:50 pm

Delayed until 2022 beats a catastrophic failure during launch.

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Postby Shyster » Mon Aug 16, 2021 7:30 pm

True. Although it wouldn't have been a kaboom failure on launch. The stuck valves would have disabled the Starliner's RCS system, so it wouldn't have been able to maneuver or even control its orientation. Without the ability to control its orbit or orientation, it would have quickly reentered and burned up.

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Postby Shyster » Sun Aug 29, 2021 7:07 pm

Two launches yesterday, one successful and one not. SpaceX successfully launched the CRS-23 Cargo Dragon mission to the ISS, with a successful booster touchdown SpaceX's new third droneship A Shortfall of Gravitas. The new ship sports new design features and improvements from the two prior droneships, which will both continue in service. In addition to crew supplies and station equipment, CRS-23 is carrying a multitude of engineering and scientific experiments to the ISS.

The second launch was the third launch attempt for Astra, which is developing a smallsat launcher capable of being launched solely using portable ground equipment. This test launch was from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak, Alaska. The Astra Rocket 3 uses five electrically-pumped engines on its first stage and a second pressure-fed engine on the second stage. The vehicle experienced an engine failure less than a second after liftoff, which caused a tilt and reduced the thrust-to-weight ratio down to 1:1. The rocket did a "powerslide" sideways away from launch tower before burning off enough propellant to start a slow ascent. Almost miraculously, the guidance system and the four remaining engines were able to compensate for the lost engine and kept the vehicle upright, and it did manage to fly for more than two minutes before Astra shut down the engines and terminated the flight. This is, by far, the most "Kerbal" real-world launch that I've ever seen.

Scott Manley covers the Astra launch here:


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Postby shafnutz05 » Tue Aug 31, 2021 10:21 pm


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Postby Shyster » Tue Sep 07, 2021 8:04 pm

We had a second launch attempt last week of a new smallsat launcher: the Firefly Alpha. The Alpha is supposed to be capable of at least 600 kg to LEO, or about three times the payload of the Rocket Labs Electron. The launch went awry about 15 seconds into flight when one of the four Reaver engines shut down. The rocket proceeded on three engines until it entered the transonic phase, at which point it lost control due to the buffeting and dynamic pressure. Because each of the four engines only gimbals on one axis, the Alpha loses quite a but of control authority from the loss of an engine, and it couldn't maintain stability. Video of the launch:



Commentary by Scott Manley:



Firefly has announced that the engine that shut down did so due to an electrical rather than a mechanical failure. A circuit lost continuity, and that caused the engine to close its propellant-line valves. It may have been something as simple as a loose connector that vibrated apart. That bodes well for the next launch attempt.

The Alpha uses kerolox propellants and engines that use the relatively uncommon tap-off cycle. The only other current engine that uses that cycle is the BE-3 engine that Blue Origin uses on its New Shepherd suborbital tourist rocket.

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Postby relantel » Fri Sep 10, 2021 2:41 pm

No launch date yet (Launch calendar says November 2021) but they are nearing the final stacking for Artemis 1. NASA highlighted that all hardware necessary was at Kennedy.


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Postby PFiDC » Fri Sep 10, 2021 4:28 pm

I see we are bringing back dirt from Mars. Have we done that yet? If not that's pretty **** amazing I'm going to see this in my lifetime.

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Postby DigitalGypsy66 » Fri Sep 10, 2021 9:17 pm



Samples will be here in 2031. Really cool tech to get it back to Earth.

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Postby Gaucho » Sat Sep 11, 2021 6:59 pm

So they found salt on Mars.

Image

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Postby robbiestoupe » Wed Sep 15, 2021 9:41 am

The Inspiration4 launches tonight, if anybody cares.

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Postby shafnutz05 » Wed Sep 15, 2021 5:38 pm


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