The Atlantic: First Man and the Sci-Fi–Science Feedback Loop
Kevin Bankston
SpaceX names their drone ships after AI spacecraft from Iain Banks’ novels. Discovery and Enterprise are names that has traveled both across worlds of fiction and around the globe by sea and space. The roade between science fiction and real space exploration goes both ways.
The figure-eight trajectory flown by the Apollo moon missions was the very same path followed by fictional astronauts in a classic silent film from 1929, Woman in the Moon. It was plotted by Hermann Oberth, the German father of rocketry and the first in a long line of science consultants for cinema. These scientists have not only made the science in movies more realistic, but have also advanced the state of real science in the process.
Besides calculating a flight path so accurately that nasa would use the same trajectory 40 years later, Oberth designed the Woman in the Moon’s fake rocket so realistically that Hitler’s Gestapo confiscated the blueprints. The movie’s production team also paid Oberth to build and launch a real rocket for the premiere. Oberth failed to complete that ambitious assignment—an embarrassment that led him to leave town before the big day—but he did test-fire his first liquid-fueled rocket later that year.
My micro-review of First Man … harrowing. Beautifully shot. Beautifully acted. The same restraint that marked every action of Armstrong is carved into every moment of the film, but the tragedies on every level make it sometime feel as if you’re taking your own dangerous journey just by watching.
ArsTechnica: On the launch of the BepiColombo to Mercury
Eric Berger
The Sun's enormous gravity makes putting a spacecraft into orbit around Mercury quite difficult. How much gravity are we talking about? The g-force at the surface of the Earth is 9.8 meters/second^2. By comparison, the Sun's gravity is nearly 30 times greater, at 274 m/s^2.
To overcome this gravity, a mission intended to reach a stable orbit around the tiny planet of Mercury (with a gravity of just 3.7 m/s^2) therefore requires an enormous amount of energy—more than is required to send a probe to Pluto. Over the course of such a mission, a spacecraft must build up energy to resist the Sun's gravitational pull and slide into orbit around Mercury.
Follow the link to read up on the long strange journey ahead and what the pair of probes will do when they arrive at the innermost planet. And just in case you missed the launch, watch the beautiful Ariane 5 fly and hear the countdown in French.
SpaceNews: SpaceX sells another Falcon Heavy launch
Caleb Henry
A Swedish company with plans for a geostationary communications satellite announced Oct. 16 a contract with SpaceX for a Falcon Heavy launch no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2020.
Ovzon of Solna, Sweden, has not yet purchased the satellite, but paid Eutelsat $1.6 million earlier this year to move one of its satellites to an unspecified Ovzon orbital slot to preserve spectrum rights at that location.
Getting this launch was a Very Good Thing as far as the Falcon Heavy is concerned. While the Falcon 9 is racking up launches, there haven’t been many large satellites willing to buck up for its big brother, especially large satellites willing to risk their several hundred million price tag on a rocket that’s flown once. With SpaceX planning to move a lot of their former Falcon Heavy missions—like carrying people out of Earth orbit—to the upcoming BFR, it’s not at all clear the Falcon Heavy will long persist. It’s test launch was spectacular, but its lifespan could be short.
Scientific American: Bose–Einstein condensates … from spaaaccceee
Hanneke Weitering
By launching a tiny, atom-packed chip into space and blasting it with lasers, German scientists have for the first time created an exotic state of matter known as a Bose-Einstein condensate in space. Their findings could lay the groundwork for a new way to search for gravitational waves, or ripples in space-time. ...
A Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC) is a state of matter that forms when a cloud of atoms is cooled to temperatures approaching absolute zero, or 0 Kelvin, which is equal to minus 459.67 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 273.15 degrees Celsius). When atoms get cold enough, they stop behaving like individual atoms and clump together while occupying the same, lowest-possible energy state. In other words, the atoms become impossible to tell apart, and the clump starts behaving like a single atom.
The satellite, called MAIUS-1, actually managed to perform more than 100 experiments, most of them focused on the possibilities of this exotic state of matter — not bad for a mission that was carried by a suborbital sounding rocket that only achieved free fall for less then six minutes. Another experiment, the Cold Atom Laboratory, has since been taken to the ISS, where it will have a lot more time to conduct similar work. It’s been on the station for more than four months now.
While we’re up there working on hyphenated Einstein stuff way up there, why not look into that business with Rosen?
SpaceFlightNow: Atlas 5 rocket blasts off with AEHF 4 satellite
Stephen Clark
The U.S. Air Force’s fourth Advanced Extremely High Frequency spacecraft launched Wednesday from Cape Canaveral on top of a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 rocket, expanding the reach of the military’s most secure, jam-resistant satellite communications network.
The 197-foot-tall (60-meter) Atlas 5 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 41 launch pad at 12:15 a.m. EDT (0415 GMT) Wednesday.
And yes, there is video. In this case from The Everyday Astronaut.
That makes 50 launches that ULA has done for the Air Force alone. Quite a record.
New Zealand Herald: Rocket lab launches new factory and big plans
Chris Keall
Inside Rocket Lab's gleaming new plant, things suddenly take a very Star Trek turn - and not just because of the presence of opening-day guest William Shatner. Three of the company's Electron launch vehicles (or "rockets", as most people call them) are under construction on the factory floor. Sub-assembly cells feature 3D metal printers. A giant CNC (computer numerical control) unit that can mill components the size of a bus will be operational within weeks.
Despite the long delay in initiating commercial launches of the Electron, Rocket Labs is seriously scaling up. As in production levels that would see them putting up a new bird each week and launches from the US as well as New Zealand.
A 17m tall Electron can launch a small satellite into low earth orbit for US$5.7 million ($8.7m) - a bargain basement price in aerospace terms. Rocket Lab had a successful test launch in January. After several delays due to weather and minor technical glitches, its first commercial launch is slated for next month.
Space.Com: Russia wants three successful unmanned flights of Soyuz before it puts people back on board
Meghan Bartels
The Russian space agency, Roscosmos, initial report from its investigation into the failed Oct. 11 Soyuz crew launch should be complete by the end of this week, the agency announced in a statement released yesterday (Oct. 17).
The agency's head of human spaceflight, cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev, also said in a news conference yesterday that Roscosmos will not launch another crewed flight until three uncrewed launches are successful and the investigation's findings have been addressed. The Oct. 11 launch was aborted a couple minutes after liftoff because of an issue with booster separation, sending the two astronauts on board plummeting back to Earth.
Which seems entirely reasonable. There’s a cargo launch planned later this month that still going off on schedule.
BEAUTEOUS stuff
The videos in this pair of tweets aren’t new, but they are beautiful. Note that what looks like snowfall on the second video is more drifting particles of ice and dust displayed at a couple of hundreds times actual speed — things falls very slowly in teeny tiny gravity. The occasional bright streak is actually cosmic rays impacting the sensor.
Launch Schedule
As happens so often, I’ve fiddled with the arrangement of the launch schedule again, this time with hopes of providing more information that can be used to visit a launch. Not included this week are all the international launches taking place. Assuming this format survives comments, I’ll expand the scope next time.
Kennedy / Canaveral
Date |
Vehicle |
Pad |
Comments |
Oct 26 |
Pegasus XL |
-- |
Launched from aircraft. |
Nov 27 |
Falcon 9 |
CC |
CRS 16 cargo mission to ISS |
Dec 15 |
Falcon 9 |
CC |
3rd generation GPS satellite |
Dec 3 |
Delta IV Heavy |
SLC-6 |
NROL-71 Reconnaissance satellite |
Vandenburg
Date |
Vehicle |
Pad |
Comments |
Nov 19 |
Falcon 9 |
SLC-4E |
SSO-A mission, multiple satellites |
Nov |
Falcon 9 |
SLC-4E |
RADARSAT earth imaging satellites for Canada |
Dec 3 |
Delta IV Heavy |
SLC-6 |
NROL-71 Reconnaissance satellite |
Dec 30 |
Falcon 9 |
SLC-4E |
Iridium NEXT satellites 66-75 |
Wallops Island
Date |
Vehicle |
Pad |
Comments |
Nov 15 |
Antares |
0A |
Cygnus cargo freighter. |