So SpaceX launched Starship #9 today. Grat launch. Great flight. Great descent. A bit of an overcorrection from bellyflop to tail-first. End result; Well, poop.
One of the engines never lit and there wasn't enough thrust to stop in time: pic.twitter.com/BvkPHGIy5l
— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) February 2, 2021
If you look at the base of the engine that failed to light there's a lot more fire there than I might expect pic.twitter.com/LKgWjn43Xs
— Scott Manley (@DJSnM) February 2, 2021
Two pieces of (presumably McDonnell Aircraft) artwork depicting the Mercury capsule:
These were procured from eBay thanks to the contributions of Patrons and subscribers. They have been made available at 300 DPI to all $4/month patrons/subscribers in the 2021-02 APR Extras folder at Dropbox, and at 600 dpi directly to all patrons/subscribers at more than $10/month. If you would like to help fund the acquisition and preservation of such things, along with getting high quality scans for yourself, please consider signing on either for the APR Patreon or the APR Monthly Historical Documents Program.
SpaceX has been trying to launch Starship serial number 9 for a few days now, with the efforts being held up by FAA regulatory approval. This is of course bad… the only thing worse for a world-changing advance in technology than getting the engineering wrong is to have either incompetent or malignant government bureaucrats involved.
Still… while SN9 is awaiting launch, SN10 has been moved to the pad. Behold:
Someday – probably not during this Presidential Administration, but perhaps during the administration of President Cruz, with NASA overseen by VP Shapiro – we might see whole rows of these things lined up ready to go, some sitting on Superheavies to lob large payloads into orbit, some sitting by themselves for long range suborbital flights or even, just barely, SSTO quick reaction flights. Some will be in NASA colors, some in USSF markings; there will be FedEx and UPS vehicles for intercontinental package transport and for transport to LEO, GEO and the Lunar bases. Maybe even one in Space Force One colors to take the President to visit American bases, cities and industrial exploitation facilities on the Moon and Lagrange points.
Sigh…
Books that I can confidently state should be owned (because I own them):
– – – – – – – – – – –
Books that look promising, but that I don’t have firsthand experience with:
And then… there’s this:
Looks good. But then comes the authors bio: “Martin’s interest in the Paranormal, Spirituality, and much more goes back to his childhood. He has had many paranormal experiences and has been a student of Eastern Philosophies and Meditation for 35 years. Seeking Enlightenment; he knows that we are already all Enlightened. We just have to realize this deeply. His books are expressions of his creativity to help others understand what he has internalized through study, experience, and membership in different societies.” Ummmm……
SpaceX is politically troublesome for certain groups. You’ve got your SLS fans, terrified that Starship/Superheavy will make the SLS and all its pork go away. You’ve got people terrified of the idea of capitalism, American exceptionalism, western civilization spreading out to the planets. You’ve got your crackpots who dislike western science and engineering rigor, thinking that such things are tools of the cishet white patriarchy or some such foolishness. Take your pick of villains, they’re opposed to SpaceX. As evidence, behold:
Who are SpaceX being accused of discriminating against? Non-US citizens. A US company that makes rockets and launches Defense Department payloads would rather employ Americans? How is this even remotely controversial?
“The charge alleges that on or about March 10, 2020, during the Charging Party’s interview for the position of Technology Strategy Associate, SpaceX made inquiries about his citizenship status and ultimately failed to hire him for the position because he is not a U.S. citizen or lawful permanent resident,” DOJ attorney Lisa Sandoval wrote in a court document filed Thursday.
Ina rational world, this would be laughable. How is it even possible that non-citizens can demand employment at *any* US company, much less one vital to the continued existence of the United States as a going concern?
UPDATE: Elon lays it out. Several years ago.
Sigh. It’s sad to think that in many ways the 1970’s were more forward thinking than today. Solar Power Satellites the size of Manhattan, space colonies the size of small states. Today… apart from SpaceX, about the most you can hope for is ever more social media. Until, of course, you get deplatformed.
Below is a piece of NASA-Ames art depicting the interior of an Island 3 colony. The full size version is downloadable HERE. This was intended to be a cylinder 5 miles or so in diameter by 20 long, rotating along the long axis to generate “gravity.” In this design, fully one third of the “land area” was given over to windows that would bring in sunlight via mirrors. Other notions included mounting strips of very powerful artificial light on the “ground” facing up to light the other side (this was the Babylon 5 approach), mounting strips of artificial light along the central axis pointing outwards, having external parabolic mirror beam sunlight through the central axis and reflected or diffused outwards. In order for an island 3 habitat like this to be dynamically stable, you’d need two of them, side by side, rigidly linked at the hubs. This would counter the torque and prevent the cylinders from converting rotation around the long axis into end-over-end tumbling, which is the natural response of something like this (experiment: try to spin a pencils around the long axis. You will inevitably end up with it tumbling)
The NASA art below shows an exterior view of a complete colony.The habitats would need to be pretty close to the same mass, but otherwise their interiors could be very different… one could replicate, say, farmland and meadows and such with small towns scattered about; the other could have forests and large cities. One could be in winter, the other in summer. The full-rez is downloadable HERE.
There is a ring of “cans” around the end of each habitat. These are the agricultural units for the habitat; each independently spin around their own axis, generating the level of artificial G appropriate to grow wheat or corn or weed or hay or whatever is needed. Being smaller in radius, Coriolis effects would be substantially more noticeable; but as plants don’t care, and the job of agriculture will probably be done by robots, it doesn’t matter much. Each farm would be pretty well closed off from the others, so if some sort of blight were to pop up, chances are good it could be contained.
A few years ago I had a notion for a book – half technical descriptions, half manifesto/screed – about megaprojects. A description of not only what mankind could do given time and energy, but what mankind *should* do in time. As with a lot of things, this books got squashed by the realization that its already been done (gosh, thanks Isaac Arthur), but I still kinda want to 3D CAD model one of these things. I’ve not thought about that book in some years… got a hundred pages into it, I think. Shrug.
I just came across this. So far I’ve failed to get it to admit to actually having *anything; no search term or combination of search terms results in any hits. But perhaps it is new; perhaps it’s a work in progress… or perhaps all the good stuff is behind some AF firewall. Dunno. But I thought y’all might find it of interest… and if anyone has any success with it, let me know how and with what.
https://efoia.milcloud.mil/(S(vovixi10c1twlmkm50inkazg))/App/ReadingRoom.aspx
Just a thought. If someone were to take a model of the CVN-65 USS Enterprise nuclear powered aircraft carrier and modify it with the Douglas “Ithacus Jr.” rocket transport as in the concept art below, what should go along with it? The art depicts the Enterprise modified with a bow extension, two movable “VABs,” and two of the rocket transports (an aft extension is implied but not visible). The flight deck is shown as deserted, which is reasonable under the circumstances… with those VABs, most of the flight deck would be unavailable for takeoffs and landings. Only the angled deck would seem to provide some functionality there.
The concept dates from 1964. If a model was made, it would probably tend to represent a time frame from the mid 1970’s onwards. What should be on the deck in that case, to help dress it up (it seems like it’d be kinda bland without some other things populating the deck)? A few things seem reasonable:
Boeing Heavy Lift Helicopter:
A VTOL C-130:
Convair 200 VTOL fighter:
Lockheed CL-1090 (or similar) passenger compound helicopter:
Anything else to consider?
A ca. 1964 Boeing rendering of an HL-10-derived spaceplane in orbit. Numerous companies – Boeing, McDonnell, Lockheed, Northrop, etc. – contemplated the development of a logistics spaceplane based on the HL-10. The spaceplane itself would, rather like the X-20 Dyna Soar, have been minimally functional in space; most of the propulsion and power would have come from the attached adapter module. The conical adapter would have also carried the bulk of the vehicles payload to be delivered to orbit, and would be used to provide a de-orbit burn for the spaceplane. The adapter would therefore burn up on re-entry, leaving the lifting body to glide to a runway landing. The spaceplane itself would be crammed full of astronauts and the life support they’d need; there would generally be little capacity for anything else, certainly not payload going back downhill. This was fine, though, as there were few enough payloads other than humans that made sense to send *back* down the gravity well.
Huh. This got by me… Virgin doesn’t seem to be as media-savvy as SpaceX.
It’s a nice-looking launch. But what it looked like to me was less the launch of a space vehicle, but the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile: with the 747 reaching the end of its passenger carrying life, perhaps the USAF should buy a few thousand of them and modify them into missile carriers for a new generation of air-mobile, air-launched long range nuclear strike system. I’m sure the Harris administration will get right on that.
