Ben Brockert

https://mastodon.social/@wikkit

Space. Travel. Not yet space travel.

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Last Notes

2024-10-14 17:17:12

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And they have telemetry. Congrats to the team, I hope the flight is smooth and the flybys are interesting. Should make Jupiter orbit in 2030, if the propulsion works.
With Europa Clipper and JWST finally both launching, it feels like it may be the end of the age of blank check Nasa programs, at least on the uncrewed side.

2024-10-08 14:43:58

If you use a digital ID on your iphone but don’t like the idea of handing your unlocked phone to a police officer, or want to let a kid play a game on your phone but not snoop around, or any other situation where it’s useful to be able to limit access to a single app, Apple has “guided access” that you can enable in andvance and turn on in an app with three clicks of the power button.
https://support.apple.com/en-us/111795

2024-10-05 12:14:28

Really neat render of the optical navigation modes of the Hera spacecraft with simulated asteroids: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Videos/2024/04/Hera_s_navigation_around_the_asteroids
And a slightly odd geopolitical bit at the end where they don’t include the UK on the ESA map. As far as I can tell it is still a (founding) Member State of ESA. Maybe it specifically didn’t contribute to Hera? It’s odd.

2024-10-04 21:48:38

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One of these nozzles is not like the other, one of these nozzles doesn't exist.
Photo by Pete Carstens for Spaceflight Now. The right motor should have a nozzle out the bottom, like the left does.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/251/347/430/997/745/original/592bdfa59ebb6d7b.jpeg

2024-10-04 12:52:56

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Close-up of earlier in the launch when the nozzle first failed with fire coming out the wrong spot, before it failed bigger.
Max Evans/Nasaspaceflight
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/249/247/085/049/030/original/de0e031ddeb5cdd1.mp4

2024-10-04 12:31:20

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SFN quick on the stabilized video.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/249/158/215/710/757/original/4e061ee3d6050f0b.mp4

2024-10-04 12:05:05

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It's uhh... an additional test of the GNC's capability to reject disturbances.

2024-10-04 11:36:52

ULA's Vulcan cert flight 2 looked like it had some kind of failure on one of the solid rocket booster nozzles. Asymmetric plume, lots of sparkly bits. Rode through it though, fortunately was in the direction away from the core.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ec_4DHUylEg
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/248/942/693/152/551/original/f8d5f16dc9bbbdf8.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/248/942/711/782/656/original/9f2602f498a7fbe6.png

2024-10-03 21:35:20

There's a red... thingy moving toward the green thingy. I think we're the green thingy!
https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx093jeZzLs26AtX7Q85K90szDMT28bgIK
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/245/635/852/955/138/original/88707b5fca8bd095.mp4

2024-10-02 18:00:38

This is exceptionally dull, but I’m staying at a hotel in Galicia with these power sockets and I can’t figure out what they are. The power pins are the same distance apart as the normal two pin Western European, but the holes are smaller so my adapter doesn’t fit. I thought maybe Swiss SN 441011, given the manufacturer, but why is the outer mechanical hole round, not squashed hex? Or is it some weird grounded Soviet outlet?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/239/126/821/713/723/original/fade2d237126e21c.png

2024-09-28 19:50:35

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Hey I could have said that there were three Spanish dialects, because Valencian and Catalan are the same thing.

2024-09-28 09:55:23

A tilted windmill I’ll definitely never win: the UK flag should not be used to signify “English”. The UK is not just England, English is not the only native or official language in the UK, and the UK is a tiny portion of English speakers.
Photo: language selection on a train in Spain, with four Spanish dialects, Basque, French, and British.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/214/568/914/843/592/original/bc24207046620b4a.png

2024-09-24 12:20:49

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"Schedule chicken" is a common aerospace industry term, where you have a schedule and two or more teams working toward it. Every team knows they aren't going to make the schedule, but none will say anything until eventually one is forced and can be blamed for the delay.
Common for the hardware and software team on a rocket to be playing schedule chicken. Or a big payload and a new launch vehicle.
It's named after the "game" of two people driving straight at each other until one chickens out.

2024-09-24 12:05:52

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Airlines like Icelandair sell tickets with sub-hour connections in KEF for flights from the US to Europe. It's hard to imagine that they'll manage to run a whole new onboarding process in the little bit of margin those connections have.
If someone hits a fiber in middle of nowhere Croatia and takes out the border station's internet, do you shut down the border? Or does every land/sea/air passport control have a local copy of the entire database and store and forward updates? Or a sat modem?

2024-09-24 12:01:48

The EU± Schengen Area is playing a big game of schedule chicken right now. The announced date for the start of the repeatedly delayed Entry/Exit System is November 10, which is very soon, but no one will officially comment whether it's actually going to happen or not, and leaks say some countries aren't ready.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/sep/17/eu-fingerprint-and-facial-recognition-checks-expected-to-be-delayed-again
It will require everyone entering to have a biometric scan and will probably explode the lines, which are already excessively slow in some places.

2024-09-23 18:28:50

I can't find any official update on the "Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3)" but the apogee has stopped increasing and the loss of perigee has slowed down, so maybe they have the guidance working now?
https://www.satcat.com/sats/59588
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/188/278/421/237/102/original/7683990fc7326fac.png

2024-09-19 10:00:27

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The Vera C. Rubin Observatory, an eight meter ground-based telescope that comes online next year and was built to survey huge patches of the sky, says it will have a hard time spotting near earth asteroids because of Starlink and similar.
“the ability to detect asteroids approaching from directions interior to Earth's orbit will be disproportionately impacted because those directions are visible only during twilight when illuminated LEO satellites are most numerous.”
https://www.lsst.org/content/lsst-statement-regarding-increased-deployment-satellite-constellations

2024-09-18 20:20:51

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2024 ON of course turns out to be a contact binary, because nothing in space is simple.
https://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA26451
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/160/409/286/894/724/original/c3c60a257502605c.jpg

2024-09-18 17:54:06

The SETI Institute announced an Artist in Residence program and decided to illustrate it with machine-generated “art”.
https://www.seti.org/open-call-beyond-silos-steam-education-residency-seti-institute

2024-09-17 14:43:00

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I can't find any specific claim for it, but I'm worse at searching for things than I used to be. I did find one article where they say of the next mission "After launch in 2027, the NEO Surveyor will carry out a five-year baseline survey to find at least two-thirds of the near-Earth objects larger than 140 meters, or about 460 feet." So a lot of work to be done.
Maybe NEOWISE found the civilization killers, and the country killers are still sneaking around?

2024-09-17 10:00:04

Had the Fuego volcano stream on the TV while using my laptop, and saw a flash of white out of the corner of my eye. A very sparkly little meteor happening to fly through a very zoomed-in camera's field of view.
Also the volcano erupts every few minutes and you can watch huge glowing boulders roll down a hill.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpqT6JkKI-4
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/152/299/239/336/579/original/19aaf5686298e348.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/152/299/689/634/865/original/09f7bdfa5e4f5610.png

2024-09-17 08:58:38

This asteroid passes near earth today and really underlines why there’s still a lot of work to be done on surveying. This thing is much, much larger than the estimated Tunguska impactor. This is “wipe out a city” size and it was only discovered in July. If it had been on an impact trajectory would we have managed to do anything about it?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/152/063/614/381/558/original/230475deb7192ea5.png

2024-09-11 18:43:52

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Feels like it should basically be cosine error, so if you shoot within 45 degrees of straight backwards it would deorbit about half a pass later.
Certainly if you want to land it in someone's yard, you'll need better pointing and timing and probably a few tries, and I've heard reloading a crossbow is difficult in a spacesuit.
If you're Russian and fire it directly through a solar panel then it will not have enough velocity to immediately deorbit.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfl42B3nWr0

2024-09-11 18:30:07

Realization from a question on reddit: if you were on ISS you could fire regular crossbow bolts down out of orbit.
A decent commercially available hunting crossbow fires at 120 m/s, a typical targeted deorbit burn is usually only around 80-90 m/s. If you're with your crossbow on a spacewalk, like normal, and fire off the back of the space station, you will have created the smallest "rods from god".
If you fire forward, it goes into a higher orbit and you get in trouble.

2024-09-11 15:14:14

Really interested to see what clever shit Don Pettit does on his fourth spaceflight. He lifts off in a Soyuz in an hour and should be on the station until March.

2024-09-09 17:03:46

Bit of overlap between the current topics of space debris and the Russian invasion of Ukraine: one of Russia's tracking sites for objects affecting geosynchronous orbit is in the small town of Nauchnyi in Crimea.
This is one of the sites where they track the US Centaur stages that keep exploding, of which the CEO of ULA says are completely safe.
https://www.unoosa.org/documents/pdf/copuos/2018/copuos2018tech05E.pdf
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/108/663/889/444/182/original/40cb4b0c8528ac8f.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/108/664/273/023/593/original/d5d502034a41f056.png

2024-09-06 17:51:45

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Isn't the 7.5km perigee already MSL?

2024-09-06 15:01:09

One of the "fun things" that covid taught me is that it may not be obvious that you're in an exponential situation until it's too late. Or that it being obvious that you're in an exponential situation to knowledgeable people won't be sufficient to prompt action by those in power.
I'm not at all saying that we're in Kessler syndrome, just that when we are we won't do anything about it until later than necessary.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/091/205/012/063/577/original/95c9982cbdc4f481.png

2024-09-04 18:03:41

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As always with YT who knows if it's legit, but this video looks right for 2024 RW1 making friends with an atmosphere.
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/YCpzjOgH__Y

2024-09-04 17:29:46

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There weren't many people in the rocket structure fabrication industry who thought printing tanks was going to work out, so that mostly confirmed expectations.

2024-09-04 16:53:22

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"Our intent wasn't to pass the fairing off as anything other than just a picture of showing the size of the fairing," Ellis said.
That's an eyebrow raise from me.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/09/relativity-space-has-gone-from-printing-money-and-rockets-to-doing-what-exactly/

2024-09-04 15:02:25

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2024 RW1 is coming in steep. I'm hoping the flash will be visible from Taiwan, I haven't found any webcams in northern Luzon. Maybe we'll get a dashcam in a few days.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/079/884/508/409/561/original/ad6e359f070e08d6.jpeg

2024-09-04 11:16:01

If you know anyone in northern Luzon, they have a once in a lifetime chance to see a predicted asteroid impact the atmosphere around 12:46 AM tonight.
https://x.com/esa/status/1831270255454191893
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/078/993/719/105/863/original/790c5abdb536e17e.png

2024-09-03 20:09:20

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Here's a 13 second exposure of it from Nasa taken with an actual camera on a tripod, from Arlington Virginia. https://www.flickr.com/photos/nasahqphoto/53969248513/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/075/429/145/988/901/original/2dffe039358dedc5.jpg

2024-09-03 20:03:29

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You can find visible passes of the solar sail on Heavens Above here: https://heavens-above.com/PassSummary.aspx?satid=59588
You have to set your location! Click through on the top right, otherwise it will assume you're at coordinates 0,0.
It's in a polar orbit so there is literally nowhere on earth that won't have a visible pass at some point. On the 5th here there's one directly overhead, I'll try to go find some darker skies.

2024-09-03 20:01:09

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I just made a naked eye observation of the solar sail! In urban Tirana near storefronts and a street light. It's not ISS-bright, but its peak brightness was less than but close to Vega, the only star I could see.
It moves quite a bit slower than ISS, since it's in a higher orbit. The brightness also fell off very quickly, as you'd expect of a 2D object, so you probably need to watch an entire pass or be lucky like I was.
Vega pointed to above, the solar sail in the middle.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/075/396/066/285/176/original/1fa7b9468a8a1421.jpeg

2024-09-03 16:38:41

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In the few days since it was deployed it has increased its eccentricity, reducing perigee by 5km and increasing apogee by 4. I don’t know what their flight plan is but it would be nice to see the opposite, and bring the perigee up as much as possible.
It’s a bit surprising that they decided to launch a solar sail into LEO during solar maximum.
I can’t actually find any explanation of their objective other than deployment, I should probably just email the people at Ames.

2024-09-02 13:35:45

Anyone know what this kind of suburban development is called, where the houses are close to the road and each other but every house has a large garden/small farm? It looks relatively modern compared to the layout of the cities or the usual state of the rural areas.
Google Maps screenshots of suburban Uzbekistan, Armenia, and Romania.
Or is it just locally default suburbia and there's no particular name for it any more than American suburbia with mcmansions on tiny grass lots?
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/068/203/989/805/981/original/c80e1b47097763a2.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/068/204/654/796/759/original/db140da470cd2004.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/068/205/512/044/580/original/862bf8a8812b282b.png

2024-09-02 09:51:32

Speaking of "Beyond Space" fairings, some people found a piece of one on a "remote island" in Honduras.
I've heard stories of people in Kazakhstan with titanium canoes made from rocket debris; a complete 5 meter composite fairing would make quite a large roof for a beach shack.
https://old.reddit.com/r/space/comments/1f6s3uz/found_this_when_snorkeling/
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/067/333/065/737/244/original/ae41bc7dd2ce2d1d.webp
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/067/333/565/997/458/original/7afa894b285965fb.webp

2024-09-01 10:02:10

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It’s possible that Relativity is going to use Ariane 6 fairings as a way to get to flight quicker. But that’s a strange way to announce it, and not particularly on-brand with the 3D printing disruption etc etc.

2024-09-01 09:56:30

Relativity Space pulls a Phantom. Read very carefully they didn’t actually say that those were their fairings, but it sure implies it, and they don’t dispute the assumption in the replies.
https://twitter.com/astro_danyboy/status/1828919478379258183
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/061/686/017/302/961/original/2a8d3b2f623b2944.png
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/061/686/450/898/653/original/130bc45fd0ecd37f.png

2024-08-30 14:04:01

Nasa has an RFI out to take their shelved Janus hardware and run a non-Nasa-led mission to Apophis.
https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/solicitations/summary.do?solId=%7BF77502A1-B310-35A0-1ACB-B24E17578FE3%7D&path=&method=init (pdf linked on the right)
The mission had two spacecraft, so if you flew them side by side and Apohis flew through the split, could you say that you were going to "hew Janus"?
The PDF also includes a mass breakdown of the craft, it's rare to so easily find out how mission uses its mass budget.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/051/339/803/905/935/original/1ff51f4558d9f1e3.png

2024-08-30 13:47:06

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Good stuff.
I was just reading about companies in the US who have never built a reactor getting a contract to build a new one in Ghana. The plant will probably cost around $10/watt; PV at power plant level is around a tenth that now.
I'm a fan of nuclear in general, it was clearly a mistake for Germany to shut down already working plants, but it feels exploitative to sell it to developing countries rather than moving toward a modern resilient approach.

2024-08-30 08:22:47

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A tracking page for the orbital data on this solar sail is here: https://www.satcat.com/sats/59588
Will a place to check on how it is moving in the next few weeks and months. Its TLE are now stale compared to the other payload on that launch, hopefully the strange propulsion doesn’t result in it often failing to get correlated by the space tracking folks.

2024-08-29 18:22:14

Somehow I completely missed that there's a solar sail mission on orbit right now?
https://blogs.nasa.gov/smallsatellites/2024/08/29/nasa-composite-booms-deploy-mission-sets-sail-in-space/

2024-08-29 12:45:59

The Blue folk probably won’t enjoy it, but the Planetary Radio summary of recent news was one of the funnier I’ve heard. Fairly sure that it’s the first time I’ve heard “bunghole” used in a launch vehicle metaphor. https://www.planetary.org/planetary-radio/ramses-and-rockets

2024-08-28 16:05:49

Huh, mastodon.social desktop web browser version finally twitterized the notifications, rather than having a new item for every favorite.

2024-08-28 11:46:48

Nice to see the sails up on Canopée. It was not clear if they used them on the first transatlantic.
https://www.esa.int/Enabling_Support/Space_Transportation/Ariane/Shipping_rockets_Ariane_on_board
(Link contains no details on this specific photo.)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/039/476/238/428/567/original/188886dac4871525.png

2024-08-27 17:30:23

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Something I was wondering about the other day that you might know off the top of your head: is anyone making hydrazine from engineered yeast, the way they do for some drugs? Seems like it would be possible since some fungi already make small quantities of it.

2024-08-27 17:25:01

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Because of the cancer? :D

2024-08-27 13:08:22

Is there a term for discouraging someone by bringing up an issue that you don't actually understand?
Recent examples I've heard are suggesting that people shouldn't go to Iceland because there is a volcano, or that people shouldn't do home pickling because of botulism.
"Concern trolling" came to mind, but the definitions of it online generally suggest intent.

2024-08-26 12:17:48

New map of lighting density by u/adkinsadam1 on Reddit.
I still find it funny that the space industry founders decided to built the major national launch site in the lightningest place possible.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/028/274/265/885/587/original/3b121c596cfbe715.jpeg

2024-08-25 13:43:11

Mines in the US use "levels", where if you're at level 400 it just means you're 400 feet down the reference shaft.
Funny to see that they do the same at the LC-39A launch pad, if in the other direction and with some embellishment.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/022/941/253/532/729/original/0865f533d7640bd6.jpeg

2024-08-25 10:23:04

Complaining about 134340 Pluto can now drink in Europe: the IAU vote was 18 years ago yesterday.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/022/163/520/503/294/original/dc7e273e46501357.png

2024-08-24 18:38:17

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The final question is if politics entered into the question at all. The democrat who has told people to call him Senator Administrator and got this job and his spaceflight experience through corrupt politics says that Nasa is nonpartisan and that the decision was entirely non-political.
This ends my livetoot of the call. Interesting times, as is so common now! I'll wrap things up with my thoughts on this from yesterday, which no one responded to, so maybe it's very dumb or very obvious.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/018/447/748/733/510/original/6903243b370739ad.png

2024-08-24 18:29:04

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The Nasa folks aren't willing to say anything specific about if there will be another two person test/cert flight or if the next flight will be a normal four person crew mission.
There was a question about the percent odds of the expected success of the return, and as before it is clear that they haven't actually done any sort of Bayesian analysis to be able to put numbers on things.
And we just got the first inane SpaceX fanboy question, so maybe time to wrap it up.

2024-08-24 18:24:48

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The simplified trajectory for the undocking and return of uncrewed Starliner is that rather than flying around ISS, it will head more directly away from the space station before doing its deorbit burn. It gives less time for anything to go wrong, and was actually suggested by Boeing.
Also thanks to Nasa for running the conference beyond an hour, on previous ones they cut it off before the questions ran out.

2024-08-24 18:12:00

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There was "extra heating" in the starboard doghouse, and they wouldn't be surprised to see one of the thrusters in there also fail-off during the return. First bit of actual new technical information in the hour so far.
There is an integrated team sim on Wednesday with both the Boeing operators doing a newly practiced uncrewed return and the Nasa ISS team.

2024-08-24 18:05:17

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Hey, we got a question about crewed Dream Chaser! That would be an interesting result of all this. Sierra has been slowly working on it for decades, never managing to get picked for anything beyond cargo.
There is a nod to the fact that Dragon also started as a cargo vehicle and then evolved into a crew vehicle.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/018/318/427/217/990/original/896ded2cb878c730.jpg

2024-08-24 18:00:33

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"We wanted to give the crew a suited return, as we always have in US spaceflight"
???
Weren't most of the early Shuttle flights done with basically jumpsuits and motorcycle helmets?

2024-08-24 17:49:50

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Nelson is monologuing on the failures of Challenger and Colombia, which feels somewhat unfair to Boeing. It is good that Nasa is able to listen to dissent now, but the risks of the three missions are quite different. And staying on the leaky ancient space station for an extra half year is by no means riskless, even though they always say that they are "never in any danger".

2024-08-24 17:38:29

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Admin Nelson says that the new CEO of Boeing says, as of an hour ago, that they intend to move forward and fly Starliner in the future. I expect at most, two crewed missions following the existing contract and then Boeing cancelling the program, rather than the six planned missions.
We will see if Boeing convinces Nasa that the next flight, likely in 2026, should be a fully crewed mission or yet another test flight.

2024-08-24 17:29:01

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Dana Weigel, ISS Manager and only person on six-person Nasa panel who isn't a graying white man, says that Suni and Butch will be doing the work planned for the Crew 9 members they are replacing, possibly including spacewalks.
An interesting aspect of this decision is that if there is an emergency between the departure of Starliner and the arrival of Dragon Crew 9, Suni and Butch would return on the other Dragon without wearing suits.

2024-08-24 17:25:14

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A rare mention that the thrusters are Aerojet Rockedyne and the valves are Moog. Now that things have been resolved, I wonder if Boeing will be less circumspect about the suppliers that were involved in this situation.
Sitch reinforces that there was too much uncertainty, which follows my theory that the real failure here was not finding a convincing root cause for the failures. Boeing was instead arguing for continuing on from the basis of having done a lot of tests and things seeming ok.

2024-08-24 17:21:46

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The review for the uncrewed undock is expected on Wednesday or Thursday.
"It's been a long summer, it's been a long summer for our team." -- Steve Sitch

2024-08-24 17:16:31

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I am not a big fan of Administrator Nelson, but it was correct of him to be the one to make this announcement. He's reading a prepared statement that hits the expected notes around safety and respect for both of the capsule programs.

2024-08-24 17:13:40

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Nasa has decided that Butch and Suni will return with Crew 9 early next year!

2024-08-24 17:10:11

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Full disclosure: on Friday I made a real money bet against Boeing stock, not because Starliner will actually hurt their bottom line much further, as they've already written it down repeatedly, but because it's another hit to reputation.
We're now at T+10 minutes with no announcement, which is strange. They're still arguing, and also arguing about whether or not they should reschedule?

2024-08-24 17:04:07

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There are 5000 people watching the Nasa stream and another 3000 on the mirror by Spaceflight Now. Those are small launch numbers, it's unusually popular for a press conference.
The hope for this call is a) that they start at some point, and b) that they've made a decision. Indications point toward an autonomous return of Starliner and the crew returning on a Dragon early next year.

2024-08-24 16:59:55

It's 7PM on a Saturday, I've got an adult lunchable (wine, brie, fancy ham, and a baguette) and it's time for the Nasa press conference on the plan for Starliner, starting now.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOswKRSsHc

2024-08-23 18:49:10

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https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/012/828/175/457/752/original/5a8822fcbdd9d3bf.png

2024-08-22 19:47:54

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Aha, probably quite similar to the white paint on almost every fairing then.

2024-08-22 17:41:39

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Interesting. With white paint even in the engine bay, did they do that to reduce boiloff between burns?

2024-08-22 15:54:05

It's amazing how spray foam can make anything look kinda cheap. This is one of the most expensive adapters in the history of humanity, made out of special alloys machined to better than the thickness of a hair, but once it's covered in spray foam it looks like it might as well be plywood.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/113/006/474/833/689/465/original/0babf04f22841cb8.jpeg

2024-08-22 11:55:37

This year’s Hugo award-winning story “The Year Without Sunshine” is online. It’s… midwestern post-apocalyptic urban cottagecore?
https://www.uncannymagazine.com/article/the-year-without-sunshine/
There’s also a reading of it at the bottom if you’d rather listen.

2024-08-20 11:55:57

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And a process question, is there a precomputed database of possible flyby trajectories around the solar system, or did some person mess around on a computer for a few weeks to find this?
( crop of https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/07/Juice_s_journey_to_Jupiter_the_lunar-Earth_flyby )
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/994/215/644/635/727/original/d2db7cdb7da19bb5.png

2024-08-20 11:49:59

A question for the astrodynamicists: the Juice double flyby is certainly cool, but is it actually necessary? The slingshots are in opposite directions, so if the moon wasn’t in that spot couldn’t they have gotten the same effect by flying a bit farther from earth?
( crop from https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/Images/2024/07/Juice_s_lunar-Earth_flyby_step_II_Earth )
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/994/190/544/258/696/original/334bfaead9672bd2.png

2024-08-20 10:05:47

My friend Ian (world’s greatest GNC engineer) sent me that blog post I just boosted. It is a long but fascinating read, it’s one of those articles that every intellectually curious person in the industry will end up at least skimming.
I had no idea that ICBMs just kept the gyros spinning continuously for years.
In the modern era where people trot out the ITAR boogeyman at the drop of a hat, back in the day when the ICBM computers were retired they just gave them away to schools.

2024-08-14 17:37:59

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There were a couple questions about the current odds of failure vs. the odds they had worked out at the beginning (worse than 1 in 300 of killing the astronauts), and multiple people rejected giving updated odds or even suggesting that it was possible. It seems like Nasa management has no concept of Bayesian inference, where they could update odds over time and use that to make better decisions.

2024-08-14 17:08:49

"We don't have any major announcements today" as the opening of the Nasa press conference on the ongoing (and going...) Starliner test flight. So I guess the biggest announcement is that Boeing either refused to participate or wasn't invited to the second call in a row, after having been on the rest of them.

2024-08-07 17:43:19

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Steve Sitch confirmed that the "mission data load" (MDL) on Starliner now is meant for crewed undock, so if something goes sufficiently wrong it hands things over to crew, rather than continuing to automate. Well short of the claims some people were making that the software was somehow broken.
When launching orbital rockets we'd put on a new MDL for winds within an hour of launch. Even though that meant rebooting the computer, it wasn't like you were upgrading it to Win 95 SP2 or something.

2024-08-07 17:35:21

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It is amazing how much the narrative has changed since the last call. It was like pulling teeth before to get them to admit that they were considering returning Butch and Suni on Dragon, and now they're just factually stating how they're already setting up options on Crew-9 to make that possible, including sending suits and supplies.

2024-08-07 17:32:18

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I and many others no one has ever heard of put a lot of years and a lot of thought into reusable rockets and it's cool to hear a Nasa official just straightforwardly saying "well a used booster would be nicer, obvs."

2024-08-07 17:31:16

Regarding the next SpaceX crewed launch, Crew 9:
"We will let SpaceX use our first stage booster; they'll go fly a Starlink flight ahead of our flight, to get a little shakedown of that booster. It had some moisture intrusion and we want to go ahead and get that booster flown. And so there's a win/win there of flying our booster on a Starlink flight before our crewed flight."
Steve Stich, manager, Commercial Crew Program, on the call today.

2024-08-07 17:26:37

The commercial crew briefing today makes it sound like having the parallel existence of Dragon and Starliner enables Nasa to have a new form of analysis paralysis, with people stuck on the station waiting for someone to make a decision.
Which is better than making the wrong call and killing people, as they've done a few times. But this is the first time the indecision has been really obvious to the public.

2024-08-05 05:24:48

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Cygnus gets dropped off at a near circular 250 km orbit, which is extra draggy right now. Maybe an artifact of the original Antares ride? F9 has a huge excess of performance, they could put it a km below station if allowed.
It’ll probably be fine, but there have been no updates and having some extra coasting time seems like it would have been appealing.

2024-08-04 19:28:46

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"We just got word that the solar arrays are deployed on Cygnus successfully, so that's good news. Also on the previous burns sounds it like the fitter(?) erroneously stopped the burns. The Cygnus team thinks that the engines are still good, and so now it's just a matter of coming up with a new burn plan to try to get to still Tuesday (capture) so they're still working on that. They probably won't have that by the time you go to sleep, so by the time you wake up we'll know what the plan is."

2024-08-04 18:15:16

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https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/905/113/220/570/718/original/9fcce26b394bed0f.jpg

2024-08-04 18:07:54

Oh, for fucks sake.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/905/083/588/587/083/original/a6b0bcdd39c23524.png

2024-08-03 15:00:40

From the press conference for today's (now scrubbed) Falcon/Cygnus ISS cargo launch: "Spetch says they're sending some items up for Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, like clothes from their suitcases that were removed for the urine processing pump that flew up with Starliner."
At this point I assume they're just Winnie the Pooh'ing it every day, having run out of disposable underwear a month ago. Maybe at some point they can try using the Kibō airlock to vacuum-'wash' their unders.

2024-08-03 14:40:02

Anyone have a good explanation of this figure? My interpretation is that they are using the width between the slanted line and the vertical line to mean the pressure at that depth. I just don't understand why you'd do that on the negative side of the vertical axis and why you wouldn't label it. Maybe it's standard in that field?
https://geo.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Oceanography/Coastal_Dynamics_(Bosboom_and_Stive)/05%3A_Coastal_hydrodynamics/5.04%3A_Wave_orbital_velocity_pressure_and_bed_shear_stress/5.4.2%3A_Dynamic_Pressure
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/898/601/440/549/675/original/2f0f0e7a013188ac.png

2024-08-03 14:14:20

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With this and the space suits it seems like it's time to re-evaluate the weighting of past performance.

2024-08-03 10:05:55

For some reason felt like posting a photo of the NK-33 today, the Soviet moon rocket engine from the late 60s. Oxygen rich staged combustion, high performance, no rat’s nest.
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/897/522/822/683/569/original/77fe867dec8711b9.png

2024-08-02 17:59:01

There is an idea of a "world-class city" that is defined simply as a city where you don't have to specify the country for people to know it. Like there are many places named New York, but if you say New York people assume you are talking about New York, not one of the other New Yorks.
What's the smallest world-class city by that definition? I used to live in Mojave, and I feel like it must be a similar place that has glommed on to some larger regional name that has existed in popular culture.

2024-08-01 12:11:53

The DE-9 connector will never die.
https://europeanspaceflight.com/dawn-aerospace-introduces-on-orbit-docking-and-refueling-system/

2024-07-31 21:36:21

Sarcastic imperial conversions are always funny.
(But also metric people don't want to hear that inches and pints are as metric as bar and hectare.)
https://files.mastodon.social/media_attachments/files/112/883/247/033/155/281/original/90c8ab11772647e4.png

2024-07-09 22:03:38

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1: https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/09/permission-denied-for-reentry-of-vardas-orbiting-experiment-capsule/
2: boeing

2024-07-09 22:02:05

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Making it to orbit and then failing to deorbit is both the funniest failure for a new rocket and also now the third and fourth time that has happened to a capsule in a year, which isn't a lot but more than you'd expect.

2024-07-09 21:46:21

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SLS had a successful first launch, but it came after a scrub. https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/the-final-countdown-begins-for-nasas-hulking-new-rocket/

2024-07-09 21:44:03

Funny enough, sounds like the A6 problem will be getting out of orbit, not into orbit.