My Outer Limits

This blog is here to provide me a way to stay on top of what's happening in the space industry. I'll be posting about astronomy, spacecraft, and the industry itself, along with other little bits of info as I see fit!

[thisblogdeadyeet]

No offence to any Americans, but this is true!

[astrohardware]

First Venus lander, first view of the far side of the moon, first living things in lunar space, first unmanned lunar sample return… But we did a heck of a lot better once we got going. NASA wasn’t crippled by internal politics (as much) and our designs managed to edge out the Soviets’ pretty handily when the final push came. We both did cool stuff, guys. The Soviets just did more of it earlier on.

[inspaaace-blog]

Being first isn't relevant today. It would have bearing on the advancement of a nation's space program if they weren't achieved through dangerous and unsustainable means. It would have bearing on the advancement of humanity in space if the Russian program hadn't regressed to the shell of its former self that it is now.

The aside regarding shuttle failures is unconscionable. No offense? What of the 21 Soyuz-U failures? What of Laika's death on her way to space? 

Let's also ignore the Voyager missions, which are further than any other man-made object. Or the Cassini mission, or the US's Mars presence. Current, on-going, relevant research.

While Roscosmos is mired with political upheaval and development failures, the US has completed PDR of the SLS, SpaceX has completed successful resupply missions, and Orbital Sciences is set to do cargo resupply demonstration in September. There is a remarkably large ecosystem of suppliers and new ideas such as cubesats. We have two asteroid mining companies in the works.

What relevant activities are Russians doing? Being our bus driver while their GPS-equivalent smoulders in the steppes?

[inspaaace-blog]

Links

Augh, I want to keep a running list of links I visit/am finding, but too busy to fiddle with the sidebar(s) right now.

Parabolic Arc: http://www.parabolicarc.com/

International Space Fellowship: http://spacefellowship.com/

Space Safety Magazine: http://www.spacesafetymagazine.com/

NASA Watch: http://www.nasawatch.com/

NewSpace Journal: http://www.newspacejournal.com/

SpaceRef: http://spaceref.com/

The Space Review: http://www.thespacereview.com/

Space Politics: http://www.spacepolitics.com/

Spaceflight Now: http://www.spaceflightnow.com/

[inspaaace-blog]

(img source: Space Fellowship)

  Armadillo Aerospace "In Hibernation"

At QuakeCon yesterday, John Carmack announced that he has chosen to wind down development work at Armadillo following the STIG B III crash in late January.

Carmack pointed out a number of things that have changed in their development that led to his decision. What stands out most to me is what he called a "creeping professionalism". As more people were brought on full time, the reviews and planning for the rocket increased and the sense of urgency was lost.

A common thread in NewSpace companies is the influence of software development on the design process. Rapid deployment and testing is the driving force for lowering costs and solving issues here, and that apparently was lost as Armadillo shifted towards being a full-time operation.

You can read more about it at Parabolic Arc!

[space-pics]

Falcon 9 Reusable Landing Leg Configuration http://space-pics.tumblr.com/

[for-all-mankind]

I’d like to see the video where this came from. personally, I don’t think this is efficient in terms of fuel, but i’m not a rocket scientist…

[astrohardware]

Making things reusable by nature cuts down on payload fractions-and thus efficiency-significantly. However, if done correctly, reusable systems can be significantly cheaper—especially with SpaceX’s plan, which reuses every part of the launch vehicle. It’s also good that the first stage landing systems use the already-in-place fuel tankage and engines, which removes the need for a complex auxiliary set of landing engines at the expense of having to carry some more fuel for the main ones.

Me, I’m more worried about the design of those legs. They really don’t look sturdy enough at the connection points to support the entire Falcon 9 first stage, unfuelled or not.

Now that I think of it, too, there’s a significant issue with reusing the Falcon 9’s engines. The fuel they use, RP-1, leaves significant sooty deposits on the engine’s internals as a result of even complete combustion. This means that in order to reuse a Falcon 9, SpaceX will have to remove, disassemble, and refurbish every engine used on the vehicle. That doesn’t spell well for quick turnarounds or cost-effectiveness.

[inspaaace-blog]

^^^yes. all of the above. I don't think it's too exotic to consider that they might have a rapid method for switching out engine assemblies, so a fresh set would be attached to the rocket. The used set could then be cleaned "at their leisure". It's worth mentioning that Tesla has a 90 second battery switch to provide their cars with a fresh, rapid "charge".

As for those legs...its source-less. Someone with free time might have just doodled that. However, I could see it maaybe possibly having structural support underneath the skin, and a third strut that is covered by the leg when folded up that locks it into place.

[crookedindifference-deactivated]

Nonprofit, Open Source Rocket Science

Copenhagen Suborbitals is a Danish non-profit aerospace organization that has constructed and launched several privately built rockets. The organization’s main goal is to develop relatively inexpensive forms of suborbital manned spaceflight outside of government programs and the influence of large, for-profit corporations. Founded in 2008 by Kristian von Bengtson and Peter Madsen, the project has accomplished a successful sea launch of an experimental hybrid rocket dubbed HEAT-1X carrying a full-scale human model. The test was performed in June 2011 from a seagoing mobile launch platform in the Baltic Sea, but had to be aborted after 21 seconds at an altitude of 2.8 km when the rocket began to veer off course. On June 23, 2013, the team succesfully launched the actively guided SAPPHIRE-1 rocket to an altitude of 8.5 kilometers.

In addition to their main stated goal to achieve suborbital manned spaceflight, Copenhagen Suborbitals has also focused on the promotion of an open source working environment and on fundraising solely through donations and sponsorships. Their use of relatively simple solutions for complex problems has also helped set Copenhagen Suborbitals apart; examples of this approach can be seen in their preference for simple mechanical solutions over more complex electronic ones, and their avoidance of potentially restrictive red tape by the use of lightly regulated technology in their projects.

Read more on their blog on Wired

[propagandery]

How It Works: The Most Powerful Space Rocket

When the firm SpaceX launches its Falcon Heavy rocket into space late this year, the craft will become the mightiest rocket in the world. Only NASA’s Saturn V, which sent Americans to the moon, has ever generated more power. In rockets, the most important measure of power is thrust. Falcon Heavy’s 27 individual booster engines together generate 3.8 million pounds of thrust—enough to lift the 3.1-million-pound rocket and its 117,000-pound payload toward low-Earth orbit. The rocket’s success is critical for both SpaceX and the U.S. space program: The Air Force has already hired SpaceX and its Falcon Heavy to send two satellites into orbit sometime in 2015.

[inspaaace-blog]

It's remarkable how SpaceX is taking strides to develop and create such awesome power while NASA engineers, strapped for cash, are working through an archaeological process to understand the F-1 in preparation for the SLS.

[collectivehistory-deactivated20]

Lunar Exploration Suit, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Sep. 1960 

[complex34]

Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down. Oh wait. Yes they do.

Here’s context on the suit from the JPL Archives:

In this September 1960 photo, Allyn B. “Hap” Hazard wears a space suit he designed. Hap was a Senior Development Engineer in the Missile Engineering Section of JPL in 1959 when he wrote a plan for manned space exploration. JPL was transitioning from missiles to space exploration, and Hap had a lot of ideas about the subject. In March 1961, Hap left JPL to work at Aerojet, and presumably to work on the suit and his other inventions. In addition to the suit, he designed and built a hydrofoil boat and a snow making machine during his time at JPL.

It doesn’t appear that the suit was ever an official JPL project, and very little documentation exists in the JPL Archives except for the photographs and his report, which includes a disclaimer, “The views expressed in this paper are those of the writer ….” The Section 352 online photo album includes a series of photos and drawings of his Lunar Exploration Space Suit Mark 1 and plans for a moonmobile that could be controlled from the dashboard inside the suit.

After Hap left JPL, he and the suit appeared or were mentioned in Life magazine, Boys Life, and the Syracuse Post-Standard. An Experimental Engineering class at UCLA studied the suit, and Mattel created an astronaut toy that wore a replica of it. Even today, there are many web sites that include the story of Hap Hazard, his space suit, and Major Matt Mason (the toy).

[for-all-mankind]

Probably my favourite space suit.

[inspaaace-blog]

Hey look, a non-profit consisting of scientists is designing a spacecraft to detect near earth asteroids.

The sentinel mission will go into a Venus-like orbit to detect 90% of asteroids greater than 140m in diameter and quite a few all the way down to 30m in diameter. A lot of the detection processing will be on-board to reduce the amount of data sent on the communications systems.

[inspaaace-blog]

41 satellites have been air launched via the Pegasus rocket since 1990. This guy gets strapped to a jumbo jet, lifted up to 40,000ft, and lets go to get a >1000lb satellite into orbit in about 10 minutes. It's got a pretty serious list of accolades too. 

Check it out!

Perhaps Orbital could look into designing a deployment method that could house multiple nano/cubesats so different groups could share a ride up into orbit?

[inspaaace-blog]

Orbcomm Satellite Falls Back to Earth

   Completing missions is tricky work, especially if you're trying to deliver two payloads to two separate locations! It's always good to be reminded of just how difficult and risky launching things to space can be.

 If you've been watching a little more closely to the recent SpaceX launch, you might have heard that one of the engines failed during ascent. But this didn't cause a failure in the ISS resupply mission due to the marvelous engineering work at Space X. The Falcon 9 shut off power to the failed engine, redirected fuel to the other engines, and recalculated a trajectory to ensure its mission success. No other rockets in use right now are capable of this. By excellent design, Falcon 9 delivered its primary payload.

Unfortunately, there was another passenger aboard the ship that didn't fare so well. A second burn meant to place the secondary payload into its target orbit was canceled due to safety issues caused by the trajectory changes. A communications satellite meant to gather engineering data for Orbcomm's forthcoming fleet of satellites was placed into a very low orbit where it lost speed and eventually burned up in the atmosphere.

More info at Spaceflight Now.

[inspaaace-blog]

(image via space.com)

Guys, space elevators are feasible right now. Rather than put one on the Earth, why not put one on someplace significantly smaller? The Moon, for example? Turns out there are materials today that can support the tension such an elevator would experience going from the lunar surface to an Earth-Moon lagrange point. 

You know what's even wilder? A company called LiftPort met its goals on kickstarter and is now funded to begin their plan to setup a lunar space elevator by 2020. It seems pretty ambitious to me, but who knows? There's a company planning to mine asteroids now.

Check out LiftPort's site at the link below. Their website is pretty desolate right now, but the main page has their plans in a nutshell:

http://liftport.com/

[inspaaace-blog]

They’ve effectively been curating the Soyuz design for the past 40 years. Hopefully Russian leadership will find some way to restart their science programs, but the view from this angle seems to put them in a state of decay

[inspaaace-blog]

Space Shuttle Atlantis passing over Austin, TX on its way to Los Angeles. Click through for the article from The Statesman with other photos. Not pictured is a T-38 which is just out of the field of view escorting the Shuttle. T-38s are jet trainers used by NASA and the military to prepare for piloting supersonic aircraft.

[inspaaace-blog]

Valeri Polyakov Watching space shuttle Atlantis dock with Mir. At the time this photo was taken, he'd broken the record for longest human in space. He still holds that record.

[inspaaace-blog]

If you missed the full transit like me, cause you were on the east coast, you might not have known that Venus didn't cross the sun in a straight line! Check out this link to see the full trajectory of Venus as it passed in front of the Sun.