A couple vintage (1960) magazine photos showing the Mk2/3 and Mk IV warheads used on the AtlasSM-65 ICBMs.
Mar 142019
Mar 112019
White House is looking to cut back on the SLS.
NASA budget proposal targets SLS
The NASA budget proposal is about half billion dollars less, but a lot of that would be made up for in going with cheaper options. For instance, by switching from SLS to a commercial launcher (presumably the Falcon 9 Heavy), $700 million would be saved. In this proposed budget most areas of NASA would get some amount of cuts, but an interesting bump up is in “Exploration R&D.” Given that NASA works best as an R&D organization, that’s very likely a good thing.
| Account | FY19 Enacted | FY20 Proposal | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| SCIENCE | $6,905.7 | $6,303.7 | -$602.0 |
| – Earth Science | $1,931.0 | $1,779.8 | -$151.2 |
| – Planetary Science | $2,758.5 | $2,622.1 | -$136.4 |
| – Astrophysics | $1,496.2 | $1,197.4 | -$298.8 |
| – Heliophysics | $720.0 | $704.5 | -$15.5 |
| AERONAUTICS | $725.0 | $666.9 | -$58.1 |
| SPACE TECHNOLOGY | $926.9 | $1,014.3 | $87.4 |
| EXPLORATION | $5,050.8 | $5,021.7 | -$29.1 |
| – Orion | $1,350.0 | $1,266.2 | -$83.8 |
| – Space Launch System | $2,150.0 | $1,775.4 | -$374.6 |
| – Exploration Ground Systems | $592.8 | $400.1 | -$192.7 |
| – Exploration R&D | $958.0 | $1,580.0 | $622.0 |
| SPACE OPERATIONS | $4,639.1 | $4,285.7 | -$353.4 |
| STEM ENGAGEMENT | $110.0 | $0.0 | -$110.0 |
| SAFETY, SECURITY AND MISSION SERVICES | $2,755.0 | $3,084.6 | $329.6 |
| CONSTRUCTION & ENVIRONMENTAL | $348.2 | $600.4 | $252.2 |
| INSPECTOR GENERAL | $39.3 | $41.7 | $2.4 |
| TOTAL | $21,500.0 | $21,019.0 | -$481.0 |
Mar 102019
And this time I’m not being sarcastic.
US ‘Gets Its Ass Handed To It’ In Wargames
In short: modern US Navy supercarriers are marvels of technology and engineering, and they are fantastically useful in peacetime. in wartime? Giant easily-sunk targets. F-22s and F-35s sweep the skies clean of enemy fighters, then get erased when they land back at the base.
The US goes for quality over quantity. The likes of Russia and China go for quantity over quality. But when it comes to offensive missiles, at a certain point “Chinese quality” is “good enough.” A relatively cheap ballistic missile can be produced in substantial numbers by the likes of China, and even without a nuclear warhead such a missile would be perfectly capable of holing a carrier or trashing an airbase. And the US has done fark-all about building up the sort of anti-missile capability that we need.
And then there’s the easily smashed command and control system, which the Chinese can likely turn into a vast field of blue screens of death with relative ease.
The Russians and the Chinese cannot conquer the US. But they could conquer, say, the South China Sea or Eastern Europe by taking America’s terribly expensive and terribly undefended local resources out of the fight in short order. If this is demonstrated *anywhere,* it is probably safe to assume that the whole world order will collapse overnight.
Mar 082019
The Crew Dragon successfully splashed down and was recovered. To all appearances, this flight was entirely successful, meaning that this summer SpaceX *should* start flying manned capsules to the ISS. Once that happens, the US will be a spacefaring nation once again. About friggen’ time.
There are, however, some people who are a little unhappy about this:
Russian editor: Our space program is entering the “Dark Ages”
Russia’s passive-aggressive reaction to SpaceX may mask a deeper truth
Basically, Russia has been resting on their Soyuz laurels for far too long. Once NASA is no longer paying them $400 million a year to launch a few US astronauts to the ISS, Roscosmos is going to have hard time affording the launch of their own cosmonauts. And they don’t really have anything in the pipeline to compete with SpaceX, certainly not in the near term.
Also resting on their laurels are other American launch providers… Boeing, Lockheed, ULA. The Delta IV and Atlas V looked *really* outdated compared to Falcon, and the ULA “Vulcan” launcher, which throws away the whole booster except for a propulsion/avionics module which is to be air-snatched prior to splashdown, is a half-hearted joke compared to the Falcon 9’s recoverable boosters.
Mar 072019
This subject has been mentioned on this blog before (way back in 2008, 2012, and 2013), but here’s a brand-new video covering the subject of the inconel foil insulation that protected the F-1 engines on the Saturn V when they flew. This insulation was rarely seen by the public and made the engines look entirely different from what people were used to, because the insulation was something of a last-minute addition to help counter some severe heating cause by exhaust gas recirculation as well as direct thermal radiation roasting of the central engine.
Mar 072019
A video where some guys get into the archives of the US Space & Rocket Center in Huntsville, Alabama. On display is a sizable (looks like about 1/50 scale) Space Shuttle, ET and Boosters made from plexiglas. It is a thing of beauty, surely a chore and a half for the model shop back in the day. This is *not* the final Shuttle design; some differences are obvious such as the split cargo bay doors and, while unmentioned in the video, the existence of extended OMS pod fairings, reaching out onto the aft of the cargo bay doors.
Last time I visited the USS&RC in something like 2005 they had a much bigger plexiglas STS model on public display, something like 1/10 scale, along with a gigantic plexiglas Saturn V. Such things are fantastic artifacts, and if you are working on a complex engineering project like this a see-through plexiglass large scale model is terribly helpful. I suspect that such things are only rarely made these days, as computer graphics are a lot easier, cheaper and more readily updatable. But nothing beats a Real Thing. And at least so far, 3D printing is not up to the job of stamping out large-scale transparent models like this. But someday…
Mar 032019
The SpaceX Demo crew Dragon has docked with the ISS. This is the first flight of the capsule that SpaceX and NASA plan to use later this year (hopefully July) to send actual living human astronauts to the ISS, returning to the US the ability to launch our own people. This capability was lost for at least eight years when the Shuttle last flew in July 2011; in comparison, the loss of human launch capability that existed between Apollo (last flight: July 1975) and Shuttle (first flight; April 1981) was less than six years.
The video below shows the unmanned demo capsule approaching and docking with the ISS. It just *looks* like a spaceship. Some interesting shots of it rapidly firing it’s thrusters, showing what those plumes look like in a vacuum.
After the capsule is done at ISS (should be there for five days), it will separate and re-enter. All goes well, it will land back at the Cape using a combo of rocket thrusters and parachutes. It was originally planned for the Crew Dragon to use just the thrusters, a capability SpaceX has demonstrated with their boosters, but for safety reason chutes were added. Assuming it is successful, this very same capsule will be refurbished and, in June, used for an In Flight Abort test, which should be interesting.
The launch and successful booster landing were conducted at night, so the relevant videos are less impressive than they might otherwise have been.
Note: people get attacked for wearing “Make America Great Again” hats, and sometimes they are asked to explain just when America was great. Well, I can’t speak for anyone but myself, but America was certainly greatER when we had AN ACTUAL GOT-DAMNED MANNED SPACE PROGRAM. One that can launch and recover our own people.
Mar 012019
I put a few hundred miles on the ol’ odometer today for one specific purpose: to see “Apollo 11” on an Imax screen.
Short review: if it opens on a good Imax screen near-ish you… run, don’t walk. More likely, drive, don’t run. I recommend it on about the same level I recommended “2001” on Imax.
There is no narration. The story of Apollo 11 is allowed to play out using film footage and audio recorded at the time, with some modern animation inserted to explain trajectories and whatnot. The animation, perhaps surprisingly, is not whiz-bang CGI, but simple line schematics showing simplified Apollo CSM and LM “icons” doing their thing.
Most of the movies features film which is really well short of Imax quality… it’s not like they had a 70mm camera in the capsule. But the first two minutes of the movie are worth the price of admission: it starts out with the crawler slooooowly making it’s way to the pad. It’s FREAKIN’ AWESOME.
I don’t have a 4K TV, nor a 4K player, but when this comes out on home media I’m getting the 4K version in the hopes that someday I’ll upgrade. It will sit on a small shelf along with my “2001” 4K set and gather dust until that day comes.
Feb 282019
The Air Force Research Lab has released a half-heartedly CGI animated video showing the X-60A hypersonic research vehicle designed by Generation Orbit. This is a small unmanned missile to be carried to release altitude underneath a modified Gulfstream III corporate jet, where it would fire its own throttleable liquid rocket engine and climb to cruise altitude (~130,000 ft). The vehicle is fitted with an unconventional set of wings and control surfaces; it’s not immediately clear just what it’s supposed to do other than go fast. One would imagine that high-Mach airbreathing propulsion systems would be of interest to the USAF these days, and scramjet technology is mentioned as part of the proposed payload, but how such equipment would be integrated into the vehicle is unclear.
Feb 262019
Work proceeds on the 1/700 scale Nova/Post-Saturn model collection. Here are some of them in various states of completion, not to scale.
Sometimes there’s a work slowdown. Like when Fingers decides that the best of all possible places to be is on my laptop.i
