Category Archives: Business

Business, Political Commentary, Space

Progress

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Apparently, after yesterday’s successful comsat launch by SpaceX, the Russian cargo mission to ISS is failing, or has failed. Wrong orbit, undeployed antennae on Kurs, spinning or tumbling, unable to contact from ground-station passes. With Cygnus still out of business, if they can’t deterrmine root cause, this puts all the responsibility on SpaceX to resupply in June. If that mission fails, they may have to think (once again) about abandoning ship, after a decade and a half of continuous occupation. And once again, this demonstrates the need for redundancy and resiliency, and why it would he stupid (as Palazzo, and Shelby, and others continue to push for) to go to a single provider for commercial crew. It’s also a reminder that, even after all these decades, spaceflight is not routine.

[Update a few minutes later]

OK, hearing now that the initial TLEs were incorrect, and the orbit is all right. That doesn’t mean they’ll be able to get to the station, though, given the control/communications issues.

[Update a while later]

Here‘s what looks like the manifest for the mission. It’s looking unlikely that it will be delivered.

[Early afternoon update]

OK, looks like the initial TLE was correct. It’s got a low perigee, and won’t last more than a day without a boost. I wonder if this will turn out to be a booster, or separation problem?

[Update a while later]

Interfax is now reporting a problem with the third stage. Which means Soyuz flights are iffy again, until they figure out what happened.

[Update mid-afternoon]

OK, now they’re saying that the original TLE was wrong, and it’s not far from the correct orbit. And that the prime suspect is now the primary flight computer.

[Wednesday-morning update]

It’s sounding pretty bad. They can’t contact it, it’s out of propellant, and it will enter in a few days. The JSpOC is tracking almost four dozen pieces, yet to be cataloged. Sounds like something happened at the end of the third-stage burn, or at separation. And it’s not clear what the implications are for Soyuz flights.

[Update a few minutes later]

Anatoly Zak has a pretty comprehensive report.

[Update a while later]

Jeff Foust describes the issues with resupply, and how much margin they have.

I’d note that while no one other than me is talking about it, this is likely to delay the next Soyuz flight, currently scheduled for May 26th, if they haven’t resolved it by then.

Business, Political Commentary, Space, Technology and Society

Space Habitats

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NASA is finally taking a sensible approach to Congress’s unrealistic goals:

“What we’re trying to do is maximize commercial applications of these technologies while getting an impact for our requirements as well,” says Jason Crusan, director of advanced exploration systems in the Human Exploration and Operations (HEO) directorate at NASA headquarters. “There may be commercial applications for habitation in low Earth orbit at some point. We’d like to understand what industry thinks about that. At the same time we have real requirements for habitation in deep space, and there have been some commonalities in that.”

NASA (for now) has to waste billions on SLS/Orion, because it’s the law. They’ll continue to do so in the hope that it will satisfy the fools on the Hill, while doing sensible procurements for hardware they actually need to get beyond earth orbit.