MASS

 

Blog for Sunday, May 7, 2023

I’m going to try blogging weekly to share recent events with you. Any feedback is appreciated.

Elon Musk speaks about April 20^th Starship launch – In an April 30, YouTube video, Musk said the launch was pretty much what he expected. Three of the 33 Super Heavy first stage Raptor engines failed to ignite and two more conked out shortly after. At T+85 seconds they lost thrust vector control and the flight termination command was sent when the rocket began to tumble. But it took a long 40 seconds to destroy the rocket. The next launch will have a more robust termination system. He felt it will only be 4-6 weeks before they try again with Booster 9 and a Starship to be named later. They hope to perform a repeat of the first launch where Starship lands in the ocean off Hawaii. Booster 9 uses electric thrust control rather than a hydraulic-system, this should improve reliability. To prevent the “rock tornado” and creation of a crater below the rocket, SpaceX plans a sandwich of steel plates with a water-cooling system below the rocket. Think of an enormous shower head pointing up toward the rocket. SpaceX thought after their static fire of the rocket that the concrete could absorb the engine exhausts but Starship rose very slowly. That slow ascent might have compressed the sand below the concrete, allowing the concrete to crack and be chiseled out by the exhaust. Musk said that if they had thrust vector control and could have throttled up the engines, Starship would have made it to staging. He hopes to perform 4-5 flights in 2023 and attain orbit. He will provide another update in 3 weeks. Musk plans to spend $2 billion in 2023 on Starship development and he hopes to fully develop the rocket with $5-10 billion. Starship is an integral part of SpaceX’s Starlink mega-constellation satellite system which will cost another $10 billion.

Grandson Ian got to meet astronaut Duane Carey – On May 1 8^th grader Ian got a picture with retired astronaut Duane Carey, who flew on STS-109, the mission that performed the 4^th Hubble Telescope servicing on March 1, 2002.  My granddaughter, Emily, a kindergartener, also got to meet him at her school on the same day. Emily was so cute as she excitedly exclaimed, “I met a man who was in space!” Carey was the 420^th person to go into space according to supercluster.com. Mankind is now up to 647 people. Yuri Gagarin was number one on April 12, 1961, when he spent 1 hour and 48 minutes in space.

NASA doesn’t have enough plutonium-238 – On May 4, NASA said a lack of plutonium will push back the nuclear-powered Uranus mission launch to the late 2030s. With the reduction of nuclear war heads, I thought we were swimming in extra plutonium, but maybe it’s the wrong isotope. If the Uranus mission makes the goal of launching in 2031-2032, it will be a 13-year trip to the planet. If it is delayed to later in the 2030s, the trip will take 15 years. Fortunately, the Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s moon Titan needs a smaller amount of plutonium for its power pack, so it is still on track for a June 2027 launch. Dragonfly will be an SUV sized, 450 kg (1000 lb), quad-copter that will use the 50% denser than Earth atmosphere (composed of 90% nitrogen 5% methane) to explore Titan’s methane lakes and other surface features for 3.3 years. I can’t wait to see those pictures, but we’ll have to wait until 2034.

Beth will be hosting at the Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, DC May 16-18 – Best wishes for a successful convention. I still see her scheduled on May 16 to be moderator, but on May 5 I heard she is traveling thru the desert on way to a convention at Biosphere 2 near Tucson. She had already done two analog astronaut experiences in Hawaii and Poland. She will have some analog astronaut  competition from the new Fox network program, “Stars on Mars”. The program will be a reality show with the contestants in a simulated Mars mission. William Shatner will be the ground communicator on Earth and 12 competitors including Lance Armstrong, not related to first man on the moon, but the bike rider from the Tour de France, and other celebrities and social disrupters. The only other competitors I recognize are a couple of ex-football players. It premieres on June 5. I’m not sure I would recommend it but I bet my curiosity might make me check out the first episode.

A black hole ripped a star apart – Spaghettification (I so wanted to see if the spell checker would flag that word), occurred for a star and formed an event 1000 times brighter than a supernova. It was labeled ZTF20abrbeie leading to the trendy name of “Scary Barbie”. Matter falling into a black hole is a much more efficient energy producer than any fusion process within a star, even a supernova.

The Czech Republic becomes the 24^th signatory of the Artemis Accords – On May 3, that nation joined Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, the Republic of Korea, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Ukraine, the United Arab Emirates, the United Kingdom, and the United States. The Accords are a fairly benign set of rules that state that nations affirm their commitment to key principles, grounded in the Outer-Space Treaty of 1967, including: use of space for peaceful purposes, transparency, interoperability, emergency assistance, registration of space objects, release of scientific data, protection of space heritage, safe and sustainable use of space resources, deconfliction of activities, and mitigation of orbital debris, including disposal of spacecraft. Of course, Russia and China, feel that the Accords are too US centric and have their own, International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) coalition consisting only of themselves. China this month stated that they plan to have humans on the moon by 2030. NASA’s Artemis 3 mission is scheduled for late November 2024 and plans to land 2 astronauts on the South Pole of the Moon with Starship from SpaceX.