NASA and the Private Sector - Page 164

On January 08 2019 10:18 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote:
Looks like a vaginal vibrator.

NASA and SpaceX are continuing to work on the activities leading toward the Demo-1, uncrewed flight test to the International Space Station. NASA and SpaceX are now targeting no earlier than February for the launch of Demo-1 to complete hardware testing and joint reviews. NASA and SpaceX will confirm a new target date after coordination with the Eastern Range and the International Space Station Program.

SpaceX, citing a need to get “leaner,” said Friday it will lay off about 10% of its roughly 6,000 employees.

The cuts were cited in an email sent to employees by President Gwynne Shotwell, which was provided to The Times. “This was a very difficult but necessary decision,” Shotwell wrote.

“To continue delivering for our customers and to succeed in developing interplanetary spacecraft and a global space-based internet, SpaceX must become a leaner company,” the Hawthorne-based company said in a statement. “Either of these developments, even when attempted separately, have bankrupted other organizations. This means we must part ways with some talented and hardworking members of our team.”

Even with SpaceX’s ramp-up of satellite launches — 21 in 2018, up from 18 the year before, and on Friday the first one of this year — it has occasionally cut its workforce. Last summer, the company fired some senior managers at the company’s Redmond, Wash., office because of disagreements over the pacing of the development and testing of its Starlink satellite program.

SpaceX makes most of its money from commercial and national security satellite launches, as well as two NASA contracts, one a multibillion-dollar deal to deliver cargo to the International Space Station and the other up to $2.6 billion to develop a capsule that will deliver astronauts to the space station. The first launch of that capsule, without a crew, is planned for February.

The Elon Musk-led company has even more ambitious — and expensive — plans. Musk has said SpaceX will conduct a “hopper test” of its Mars spaceship prototype as early as next month. The production version of that spaceship and its rocket system is expected to cost billions.

Earlier this month, privately held SpaceX said it raised about $273 million in equity and other securities in an offering that sought to raise about $500 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The company is worth $31 billion, according to Equidate, which tracks private-company valuations.

In May, Shotwell told CNBC that the company is profitable and has had “many years” of profitability.

SpaceX is offering a minimum of eight weeks’ pay and other benefits to laid-off workers, according to Shotwell’s email. The company will also provide assistance with career coaching, resume help and job searches.

Last month, Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo finally reached space—or, at least, one definition of it—when the VSS Unity spaceplane flew to an altitude of nearly 83 kilometers in the skies above Mojave, California, passing the 50-mile altitude used by US government agencies for awarding astronaut wings (see “SpaceShipTwo finally makes it to space*”, The Space Review, December 17, 2018). Immediately after the flight, Virgin founder Richard Branson said commercial flights would begin some time in 2019 after a few more test flights, a schedule he reiterated last week in a television interview to announce a partnership with athletic apparel company Under Armour to provide uniforms for SpaceShipTwo customers and crew.

Flying to space is old hat, though, for another company developing commercial suborbital vehicles, Blue Origin. Its New Shepard vehicle has flown ten times, most of which flew to altitudes beyond not just 80 kilometers but also the 100-kilometer Karman Line, “the internationally recognized line of space,” Ariane Cornell, head of astronaut strategy and sales at Blue Origin, said during a webcast last Wednesday of the latest New Shepard test flight at the company’s West Texas launch site.

That test flight was intended to demonstrate a “nominal flight configuration,” she said, with the vehicle flying like it would on a fully operational test flight. And, on that flight, New Shepard once again broke the Karman Line, with its crew capsule reaching a peak altitude of nearly 107 kilometers before descending under parachutes to a landing a little more than ten minutes after liftoff.

But, unlike last month’s SpaceShipTwo flight, there was no one on board this or previous New Shepard flights; no crew in the crew capsule. Instead, the capsule carried eight experiments for NASA’s Flight Opportunities suborbital research program, including investigations on topics ranging from fluid mechanics in propulsion systems to collisions of dust particles in microgravity.

The goal, of course, is to carry people: the capsule is designed to carry six people, all customers, on suborbital flights. (Unlike SpaceShipTwo, which requires two pilots on board even for test flights, New Shepard is controlled entirely from the ground.) And, the company says, those first flights with people on board will take place some time this year.

“Our next milestone is taking people into space,” Cornell said during the webcast of last week’s test flight. The current crew capsule, and corresponding propulsion module, are intended for use only for flying payloads, she said. However, the newest propulsion module, delivered to West Texas late last year, is intended for use on crewed flights, with a new human-rated crew capsule to follow.

“We’re aiming for the end of this year, by the end of this year,” for carrying people to space, she said, “but as we have said before, we are not in a rush. We want to take our time. We want to do this right.”

Another sign that Blue Origin is not in a rush to fly people is that the company hasn’t started selling tickets, or even set a price for them. That came up during a panel session in early January at the AIAA SciTech Forum in San Diego whose participants included Cornell. That event used an online platform for people to submit and vote on questions for participants, and one about Blue Origin’s ticket plans soared to the top of the list.

“We’re not selling tickets yet. We have not selected a price yet, despite what you might have read,” Cornell said. That was a reference to a report last summer that Blue Origin was planning to sell tickets for between $200,000 and $300,000; Virgin Galactic has been selling tickets for $250,000 but Branson said the company would likely increase the prices by an unspecified amount in the near future.

“We don’t have a price yet,” Cornell said. “We haven’t determined when we’re going to sell tickets.”

When it does, though, the company has suggested it may offer alternative means for those who can’t pay the full ticket price to go on a New Shepard flight. The company may be looking to avoid any backlash that commercial spaceflight is only for the wealthy. Or, as an audience member put it during a session of the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington earlier this month, “Are you thinking about how to make this not just a new place for the rich kids of Instagram to go?”

“Space is a very expensive endeavor,” Cornell said at the San Diego event. “That said, we are going to find ways to make sure that it’s not just the ultra-wealthy that are going to be able to fly to space.” She didn’t elaborate on what those ways might be.

New Shepard is not Blue Origin’s only major project, or course. The company is developing its own orbital launch vehicle, New Glenn, which will be powered by the company’s new BE-4 methalox engine. That engine will also be used by United Launch Alliance’s next-generation launch vehicle, Vulcan, set to make its first flight in 2021, the same year as New Glenn.

Forty-eight hours after New Shepard made its latest test flight, company executives and elected officials gathered in Huntsville, Alabama, for the groundbreaking of a $200 million factory that will produce BE-4 engines in quantity. The factory, set to open in March 2020 and create more than 300 jobs, will be able to produce dozens of BE-4 engines a year. It will also produce the BE-3U engine, a version of the BE-3 liquid-hydrogen/liquid-oxygen engine flying on New Shepard modified for use on the second stage of New Glenn.

Blue Origin announced plans to build the factory in Huntsville a year and a half ago, but waited until ULA formally selected the BE-4 for Vulcan, and secured funding from the Air Force’s Launch Service Agreement program to support its development, before going ahead with construction of the factory.

While Blue Origin builds the factory, it is still working to complete development of the engine itself, which has been undergoing testing for more than a year at the same West Texas site where New Shepard flies. “It will be a true marvel of engineering when we complete its development this year,” Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin, said of the BE-4 during remarks at the groundbreaking. “We are currently rocking our test stands out in West Texas.”

Smith also announced that, in addition to the Huntsville factory, it’s finalizing an agreement with the Marshall Space Flight Center to use Building 4670, a test stand originally developed for Saturn V testing more than 50 years ago. The company signed a Space Act Agreement with the center last year that covered a “suitability analysis and preliminary facility preparations” at the site.

“Through this agreement, we’ll provide for the refurbishment, restoration and modernization of this piece of American history,” Smith said at the groundbreaking event.

The factory groundbreaking was welcomed by officials ranging from members of Congress to the governor of Alabama and the mayor of Huntsville, all of whom spoke at the event. “Today is a day of destiny,” proclaimed Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL), whose district includes Huntsville.

That comment might be a bit of hyperbole, but the day was certainly a milestone in Blue Origin’s efforts to realize the company’s vision, espoused by its founder, Jeff Bezos, of millions of people living and working in space. But before people can live and work in space, they have to be able to get there.

Telesat and Blue Origin have signed a multi-launch agreement that paves the way for the powerful New Glenn rocket to play a key role in Telesat’s deployment of its global LEO satellite constellation that will deliver fiber-like broadband services anywhere on Earth. Telesat’s LEO program will gain significant cost savings and other advantages by launching with Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn.

With this agreement, two of the most innovative and ambitious companies in the space industry are combining their expertise, capabilities, and resources to transform the global broadband and launch markets. Telesat and Blue Origin have established a strong working relationship and will collaborate on a range of technical activities to assure cost and performance objectives are achieved throughout the multi-launch program.

Telesat’s LEO constellation will leverage the company’s innovative, patent-pending orbital architecture and global priority spectrum rights, as well as the most advanced antenna, digital processing, optical link and manufacturing technologies. Telesat LEO will offer an unsurpassed combination of capacity, speed, affordability, security and resiliency with latency equal to, or better than, the most advanced terrestrial networks. Able to serve the entire globe, Telesat LEO will help satisfy many of the world’s most challenging communications requirements. It will accelerate 5G expansion, bridge the digital divide with fiber-like high speed services into rural and remote communities, and set new levels of performance for commercial and government connectivity on land and in key maritime and aeronautical broadband markets, which are among the fastest growing in today’s satcom industry.

Founded and backed by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, Blue Origin is developing New Glenn, a reusable heavy-lift launch vehicle that will send people and payloads to Earth orbit and beyond. New Glenn’s massive 7-meter fairing has more than two times the payload volume of the largest fairing in the market today. New Glenn is powered by 7 BE-4 engines with the capability to deliver 45 metric tons to LEO. Blue Origin expects New Glenn to have its maiden flight in 2021 from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Blue Origin is also presently launching and landing its fully reusable New Shepard suborbital vehicle taking research and technology payloads to space today and astronauts later this year.

“Blue Origin’s powerful New Glenn rocket is a disruptive force in the launch services market which, in turn, will help Telesat disrupt the economics and performance of global broadband connectivity,” said Dan Goldberg, Telesat’s President and CEO. “Telesat and Blue Origin share a vision of leveraging state-of-the-art space technologies and engineering excellence to improve the lives of people around the globe and give our respective customers a significant and sustainable advantage in their own highly competitive markets. Telesat is working with a range of world-class companies to build, deploy and operate our advanced, global LEO network. We are delighted to welcome Blue Origin and their New Glenn rocket to the team.”

“Blue Origin is honored that Telesat has selected our powerful New Glenn rocket to launch Telesat’s innovative LEO satellite constellation into space,” said Bob Smith, CEO of Blue Origin. Adding, “We are excited to be partnering with this industry leader on their disruptive satellite network architecture. New Glenn’s 7-meter fairing, with its huge mass and volume capabilities, is a perfect match for Telesat’s constellation plans while reducing launch costs per satellite.”

SpaceX is seeking US approval to deploy up to 1 million Earth stations to receive transmissions from its planned satellite broadband constellation.

The Federal Communications Commission last year gave SpaceX permission to deploy 11,943 low-Earth orbit satellites for the planned Starlink system. A new application from SpaceX Services, a sister company, asks the FCC for "a blanket license authorizing operation of up to 1,000,000 Earth stations that end-user customers will utilize to communicate with SpaceX's NGSO [non-geostationary orbit] constellation."

The application was published by FCC.report, a third-party site that tracks FCC filings. GeekWire reported the news on Friday. An FCC spokesperson confirmed to Ars today that SpaceX filed the application on February 1, 2019.

If each end-user Earth station provides Internet service to one building, SpaceX could eventually need authorization for more than 1 million stations in the US. SpaceX job listings describe the user terminal as "a high-volume manufactured product customers will have in their homes."

"These user terminals employ advanced phased-array beam-forming and digital processing technologies to make highly efficient use of Ku-band spectrum resources by supporting highly directive, steered antenna beams that track the system's low-Earth orbit satellites," SpaceX's new application says. "Consistent with SpaceX's space station authorization, these Earth stations will transmit in the 14.0-14.5 GHz band and receive in the 10.7-12.7 GHz band... SpaceX Services seeks authority to deploy and operate these Earth stations throughout the contiguous United States, Alaska, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, and the US Virgin Islands."

Each user terminal "will communicate only with those SpaceX satellites that are visible on the horizon above a minimum elevation angle," the application says.

"The proposed user terminal is a flat phased array capable of steering its beams to track SpaceX's NGSO satellites passing within its field of view," the application also says. "As the terminal steers the transmitting beam, it also adjusts the power to maintain a constant level at the receiving antenna of its target satellite, compensating for variations in antenna gain and path loss associated with the steering angle."

We contacted SpaceX about the application and will update this story if we get a response.

Tonight, SpaceX is set to launch its second Falcon 9 rocket of the year. This one will carry an eclectic trio of spacecraft into a high orbit above Earth. The payloads include an Indonesian communications satellite, a small experimental satellite for the Air Force, and an Israeli lander that will spend the next two months traveling to the Moon.

The rocket ride-share was partially coordinated by Spaceflight Industries, a company that serves as a broker for satellite operators that need to get into space. To do this, Spaceflight finds extra room on rockets already launching larger spacecraft and provides hardware to help deploy vehicles into orbit. In this case, SpaceX was set to launch the Indonesian satellite, named Nusantara Satu, and Spaceflight Industries arranged for the two other spacecraft to join the mission.

Nusantara Satu, operated by Indonesian satellite company Pasifik Satelit Nusantara, will provide internet connectivity for Indonesia as the country’s first “high-throughput satellite,” according to SpaceX. The Air Force’s payload, called S5, is meant to test whether small, low-cost satellites could be feasible for Department of Defense missions. S5 will ride into space attached to the Nusantara Satu satellite and then deploy when they’re both in orbit.

The final rider is the Beresheet lander, a spacecraft developed by Israeli nonprofit SpaceIL. SpaceX’s Falcon 9 will drop this lander off about 60,000 kilometers up, putting the spacecraft into an elongated orbit around Earth. From there, Beresheet will spend the next two months stretching its orbit farther to make it all the way out to the Moon and reach lunar orbit. If that’s a success, the lander will then perform an autonomous landing, marking the first Moon mission for Israel and the first private spacecraft to reach the surface of another planetary body.

On February 23 2019 23:12 Amphimachus wrote:
While I never understood StealthBlue's motivations for posting so many news articles here, it seems their former fellow mods have declared war on it. Or on him?

Pretty interesting that there will be a commercial lunar lander. But not exactly use that the long term goal is.

As for Musk on Mars, you just have got to laugh. Humans living on Mars is pretty pointless. Why live on a dusty piece of lifeless rock, completely isolated from everything when for the same money you could live like a millionaire on earth?

Then again, if this trend of super-billionaires continues into the future, why not spend tens of billions to have an unique lifetime experience? I would make the bet that the first person on Mars is not a scientist, but a super-billionaire.

I don't get how we can't get it into the thick skulls of people like Neil deGrasse Tyson that space will be explored exclusively by robotics, as long as you have economic, engineering, of scientific ambitions. And if we can't convince people like them of this, how can we convince people that believe Elon Musk?
While I am not convinced yet about the economic viability, we need companies like Planetary Resources. Not putting a super-billionaire on Mars just because it is hard.

I guess people wanting to go to Mars is not surprising while the person advising the US president on climate change things climate change is not real because CO2 levels are very high on Venus, but Venus is still a planet, so CO2 is fine.

With all these super-billionaires having their own space tech company 'just for fun', the future is going to be ludicrous, and unlike anything any SF writer has ever predicted. We are going to have armies of high tech automated robots commanded by each super-billionaire fighting somewhere in the Kuiper belt, as if it were a real life RTS game because these people have so much money, they don't know what to do with it. And they have such big egos, they hate the guts of all the other super-billionaire.