Yay, missile defense

 news, nukes, politics, rockets, spacecraft, THIS is why Trump won, weapons  No Responses »
Jan 182019
 

Yesterday the Trump Administration announced that the US is going to get back into the “Star Wars” business. Not to the scale of the original Strategic Defense Initiative days, when the goal was to put a dent in a Soviet full strike, but to knock down a strike from the likes of Iran or North Korea or Canada.

“Star Wars” Lite? We Explain Trump’s Missile Defense Strategy

A direct link to the Missile Defense Review is HERE. Ideas include F-35’s and drones armed with lasers and/or interceptor missiles to do boost phase interception… which would, of course, require that the aircraft be on-station near the launch site as it happens. This might work for the likes of North Korea or Iran, but wouldn’t be valuable against Russian or Chinese land or sea based ICBMs. For those, they also want to use space based interceptors. Yay! If the US actually goes ahead and fields a flock of Brilliant Pebbles, as was planned late in the SDI days, it will require a *lot* of low-cost launch capability.

It ain’t gonna happen, of course.

 Posted by at 2:23 am

Stratolaunch approaches

 aircraft, Hmm..., news, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jan 102019
 

Stratolaunch airplane nears first flight

On Jan 9, the giant Stratolaunch plane did a taxi test that reached a top speed of 219 kilometers per hour (137 mph), and the nosewheel rotated off the ground. Flight tests probably aren’t far off.

I remain a little baffled about the business plan for Stratolaunch, especially since the initial payload is apparently supposed to be *three* Pegasus XL launch vehicles. That eems an odd thing to do. But Stratoluanch intends to eventually build their own better-optimized expendable and reusable launch vehicles. And the more launchers, the better.

 Posted by at 3:02 pm

Space Station concept art

 art, history, nukes, Patreon, projects, rockets, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jan 032019
 

Two pieces of NASA-marked (but likely not NASA-produced) concept art from the 1960’s depicted artificial-G space stations.

 

The first station (previously presented here in black and white not so long ago) depicts a substantial three-armed station witha multi-segment spine and three habitats. At one end of the spine is a nuclear reactor and its radiator; at the other end is a presumably rotationally0decoupled docking section. There is also an external “track” with two cars seemingly to provide transport from one habitat to another; it doesn’t really seem like this would provide a substantial improvement in transport over simply taking an elevator from one hab up to the spine and then down another elevator to the destination hab.

This space station, which appears from the art style to be a Grumman design, is a single-launch space station to be launched atop a Saturn V. The two arms would fold back for storage on the launch vehicle and would deploy once in orbit. An Apollo CSM is shown approaching for docking along the centerline; it’s not clear if the docking cone was rotationally decoupled. if it was not, the two Apollo-like capsules hanging off the sides of the cone are a bit of a head scratcher.

Both renderings have been uploaded in their full resolution to the 2019-01 APR Extras dropbox folder. This folder is available to APR Patreon Patrons and APR Monthly Historical Documents Program subscribers at the $4 per month level and above.

 



Details below.

 Posted by at 11:03 pm

The Orville

 art, awesomeness, humor, science fiction, spacecraft  No Responses »
Jan 032019
 

Honestly, I thought the season premiere, “Ja’loja,” was pretty lackluster (caveat: saw that during my so-sick-I’m-an-NPC phase). But the second episode, “Primal Urges,” shows a vast improvement. There was a whole lot of cringeworthy squidginess – I could’ve gone my whole life without all that hot Moclan-on-Moclan action – but even that served the story. And there were some great lines that are exactly the sort of thing you’ve never hear on *any* version of Trek… “Hi, I’m Dan” and “Aw, neat, what is it” don’t sound like much out of context, but they made me laugh uproariously *in* context. Plus, the episode just *looked* downright great: TNG *wishes* they could have done half as well back in the day. Interestingly, this second episode of season 2 was originally supposed to be the final episode of season 1, but for whatever reason it got slotted in here.

I have high hopes for the rest of the season. I do miss Yaphit, and hope he’s in this season.

 Posted by at 9:20 pm

Ultima Thule in closeup

 awesomeness, Crazy, Forward!, history, Hmm..., news, photography, politics, science, spacecraft, ಠ_ಠ  No Responses »
Jan 022019
 

NASA’s New Horizons Mission Reveals Entirely New Kind of World

This image taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) is the most detailed of Ultima Thule returned so far by the New Horizons spacecraft. It was taken at 5:01 Universal Time on January 1, 2019, just 30 minutes before closest approach from a range of 18,000 miles (28,000 kilometers), with an original scale of 459 feet (140 meters) per pixel.

This indicates that higher-rez images are possible in the coming days… assuming the camera was pointed in the right direction. Unlikely that it wasn’t, but you never know.

The first color image of Ultima Thule, taken at a distance of 85,000 miles (137,000 kilometers) at 4:08 Universal Time on January 1, 2019, highlights its reddish surface. At left is an enhanced color image taken by the Multispectral Visible Imaging Camera (MVIC), produced by combining the near infrared, red and blue channels. The center image taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) has a higher spatial resolution than MVIC by approximately a factor of five. At right, the color has been overlaid onto the LORRI image to show the color uniformity of the Ultima and Thule lobes. Note the reduced red coloring at the neck of the object.

 

And because this is 2019 and we can’t have anything nice, the Twitter maniacs and SJW scolds are at it again:

NASA Has A Bit Of A Nazi Problem With Its ‘Ultima Thule’ Name

 Posted by at 4:13 pm

And a reason to stay up late on New Years Eve

 awesomeness, news, science, spacecraft  No Responses »
Dec 302018
 

The New Horizons probe will zip past the small Kuiper Belt object “Ultima Thule” at abut 12:30 AM eastern time (10:30 PM Mountain). NASA TV should cover it, but there’s also Ye Olde Interwebs:

How to Watch New Horizons’ Ultima Thule Flyby on New Year’s Day: A Webcast Guide

Given the distance and the consequent low data rate, I don’t imagine images will be forthcoming. Those will probably trickle in over the subsequent days, assuming the probe survives. Even now Ultima Thule appears as just a single pixel, but the light curve has been sufficiently puzzling that one explanation has been that it is surrounded by a cloud of particles or micro-moons. Which would be awesome, so long as New Horizons doesn’t hit one of them.

 Posted by at 10:45 am
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