MASS

 

Blog for Sunday, June 3, 2023

This is the sixth weekly blog, I think it is a habit. Hope you enjoy. Any feedback is appreciated.

The Meteor Plant, just above the "Love Blooms Here" plaque, is growing at over 1 inch per day and is now over 25 inches tall. Carol has a phenomenal "green thumb".

The Chinese Manned launch – On May 30, China launched ShenZhou-16 with 3 taikonauts. I’m amazed at the lack of transparency with China’s space program. The taikonauts weren’t announced until a day before launch and when they do a spacewalk it isn’t even announced until after it is performed. China says they want to land people on the moon by 2030. I think that is going to be the motivation behind the United States pursuing their lunar manned program. NASA says it is for science and Mankind, but I think the politicians look at the strategic military perspective. Look at this headline that Dean sent to me this week, NASA head worried China will stealAmerica’s God-given moon water.

It kind of snuck up on me but we set a couple of records for people in space with the Chinese launch and the Virgin Galactic sub-orbital mission on May 25. With the taikonauts, we broke the record for people in orbit with 17, 11 on the ISS and 6 going to or on the Tiangong-3 space station. For total people in space, if you consider the McDowell line (50 mi or 80 km), the record was set on May 25 at 20, you had the 6 Virgin Galactic sub-orbital people, 11 on ISS and 3 from China on Tiangong-3. We are taking baby steps, but slowing becoming a space-faring species.

Boeing’s Starliner Manned Mission Indefinitely Delayed – On June 1, Boeing announced that they are standing down from their launch of the CFT-1 mission with 2 astronauts on Starliner due to 2 issues, a lack of safely margin on their parachutes and flammable tape used to wrap wiring harnesses on the capsule. Boeing decided to get in Commercial Crew in September of 2009. C’mon, Boeing got more money ($4.2 billion) to develop Starliner than SpaceX got for Crewed Dragon, in September 2014. How long do we have to wait to have two independent methods for US astronauts to go into orbit? SpaceX has performed 10 manned missions on Dragon, 7 for NASA and 3 for private astronauts. I’m sure glad it is a fixed-price contract and Boeing has to pony up for the costs of the delay. So far, they have charged $900 million against their corporate earnings for the delayed program. Maybe we should get some more cost-plus contracts on the SLS rocket to prevent the cost overruns that are occurring there?