This accident makes it really questionable whether ISS will be manned past January 2019. Not only is there a current lack of rides up (the two new US vehicles are nowhere near reaching their NASA final approval points, and Soyuz will likely not be re-approved until a very considerable pile of paper has accumulated affirming that the cause of today's incident is known and fixed), but the Soyuz already docked at the station which is the ride home for the current three man crew has a clock ticking toward the "use-by" date. I've seen different sources assert that time is up for the currently docked ride down Soyuz in either December or January.
It was the plan that another up-flight would take place in December, with the three current crew riding the "old" Soyuz down then, leaving today's Soyuz and the December Soyuz docked and with clocks ticking toward expiry much farther in the future. New plan is needed.
Your points are well noted. Soyuz is approaching end of life but it has been a work horse, but not one I would continue to use.
While I realize that there remains more testing to be done for Boeing's offering and SpaceX is there a point at which risk outweighs return on investment and lives. Yes I do understand what I am asking. I also realize that I might not be willing to accept the risk personally but there are those who look at things differently and might be willing to take such risk. Failure to do so might bring the space station effort to an abrupt end. And maybe that will be the way it will end.
While I've seen no official announcements, there have been many days of well-sourced rumors that the Russians think they have a clear idea of what went wrong, and are steaming along preparing the next launcher with every intention of doing a crewed launch again this year. One of the rumor sources has been the NASA administrator, so to the extent his troops follow management signals the usually huge obstacle of NASA delay-by-committee and death-by-paperwork may move quicker than I fear. But I think their official approval is still the long pole in the tent on this one.
There are even specific dates offered by Interfax, of December 3 for a crewed launch, and December 20 for bringing down some crew members in the Soyuz at the ISS which is rapidly approaching the on-orbit shelf life limit.
There's a new name in commercial space we could hear a lot more in the months to come. California-based Rocket Lab successfully sent six small satellites into orbit aboard one of its Electron rockets from the company's private launch site in New Zealand on Sunday.
Like SpaceX, another California space venture, Rocket Lab aims to be able to launch frequently and on the cheap. Sunday's launch was its first fully commercial mission and the company is shooting for weekly launches by the end of 2020.
Sunday's mission, named "It's Business Time," included satellites belonging to Spire Global, Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, Fleet Space Technologies and the Irvine CubeSat Stem Program.
Japanese space agency JAXA says it has successfully sent cargo back from space for the first time.
A capsule containing crystalized proteins returned to Earth from the International Space Station on Sunday morning Japan Time as scheduled. It splashed down in the Pacific Ocean and JAXA sent a ship to recover it.
On Thursday the spacecraft Kounotori7 detached from the space station, which is orbiting the Earth at an altitude of 400 kilometers.
It gradually lowered its altitude to approach Earth. At 6:24 AM the capsule undocked.
JAXA says it recovered the capsule near the Ogasawara Islands.
Hirohiko Uematsu, Director of JAXA's HTV Technology Center, said he can give full marks for the successful return of the capsule to Earth.
Japan has previously relied on US or Russian recovery capsules to send cargo back from space.
An article posted at Florida Today says that the SpaceX East Coast fleet will soon expand by two hulls. Mr. Steven which has been operating on the West Coast in early efforts at developing a fairing recovery capability using a large net, is expected to arrive in early December. And A Shortfall of Gravitas is expected early in 2019, adding one additional landing barge.
In my interpretation, moving the fairing catcher suggests SpaceX now values the higher frequency of East Coast launches over the proximity to home base advantage for further development, or is actually hoping to start succeeding soon, and values the larger number of recoveries expected. Regarding two East Coast barges, this seems necessary for Falcon Heavy launches which operate at substantially higher payload mass/velocity points, so that the side boosters both need sea recovery, rather than the beautiful but wasteful land recovery we saw on the first mission. Two barges also would make it less likely that closely spaced launches would be inhibited by barge availability.
On a totally separate note, today is scheduled to be an East Coast Falcon 9 launch with barge recovery. Less than five hours from now. Here is a link to the planned broadcast.
After a long pause, SpaceX is scheduled for their second launch in a short while. November 19, Vandenberg (West Coast) 10:31:47 a.m. PST, 18:31:47 UTC. The energetics required are low enough to allow a recovery to land, but the range was not available, so a barge landing is expected. The first stage will be the first attempt to fly the same one three times. As it happens, the previous two launches were one each at the two Cape Canaveral launch sites, so this will make this first stage the first to use all three of SpaceX's current launch sites.
Reading the tea leaves of Mr. Musks's tweets, it seems Mr. Steven won't be trying to catch a fairing this time.
The mission is sort of a massive ride-share. Quite a bit of previous ride-sharing has been parasitic: a few cubesats or a couple of larger test articles packed along with a prime payload. On this one, however, the little guys are the prime payload--lots of them. At one point this mission (SSO-A) was expected to carry over a hundred satellites. While an Indian launch not so long ago was up in that range, I don't think most of those were as independent distinct, non-related deals as this one. Apparently getting it all integrated has been a chore, and the number of satellites expected has dropped steadily, most recently being in the sixties. The launching organization seems to have thought the better of it, expecting that smaller (cheaper) launchers will be preferred for this type of mission.
archae86 wrote:This accident
)
Your points are well noted. Soyuz is approaching end of life but it has been a work horse, but not one I would continue to use.
While I realize that there remains more testing to be done for Boeing's offering and SpaceX is there a point at which risk outweighs return on investment and lives. Yes I do understand what I am asking. I also realize that I might not be willing to accept the risk personally but there are those who look at things differently and might be willing to take such risk. Failure to do so might bring the space station effort to an abrupt end. And maybe that will be the way it will end.
Yep
)
Yep
For the want of a nail the
)
For the want of a nail a shoe was lost ....
I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter ...
... and my other CPU is a Ryzen 5950X :-) Blaise Pascal
While I've seen no official
)
While I've seen no official announcements, there have been many days of well-sourced rumors that the Russians think they have a clear idea of what went wrong, and are steaming along preparing the next launcher with every intention of doing a crewed launch again this year. One of the rumor sources has been the NASA administrator, so to the extent his troops follow management signals the usually huge obstacle of NASA delay-by-committee and death-by-paperwork may move quicker than I fear. But I think their official approval is still the long pole in the tent on this one.
There are even specific dates offered by Interfax, of December 3 for a crewed launch, and December 20 for bringing down some crew members in the Soyuz at the ISS which is rapidly approaching the on-orbit shelf life limit.
https://www.cnet.com/news/roc
)
https://www.cnet.com/news/rocket-lab-nails-first-big-launch-in-bid-to-follow-elon-musk-success/
Now
)
Now JAXA
https://www3.nhk.or.jp/nhkworld/en/news/20181111_12/
An article posted at Florida
)
An article posted at Florida Today says that the SpaceX East Coast fleet will soon expand by two hulls. Mr. Steven which has been operating on the West Coast in early efforts at developing a fairing recovery capability using a large net, is expected to arrive in early December. And A Shortfall of Gravitas is expected early in 2019, adding one additional landing barge.
In my interpretation, moving the fairing catcher suggests SpaceX now values the higher frequency of East Coast launches over the proximity to home base advantage for further development, or is actually hoping to start succeeding soon, and values the larger number of recoveries expected. Regarding two East Coast barges, this seems necessary for Falcon Heavy launches which operate at substantially higher payload mass/velocity points, so that the side boosters both need sea recovery, rather than the beautiful but wasteful land recovery we saw on the first mission. Two barges also would make it less likely that closely spaced launches would be inhibited by barge availability.
On a totally separate note, today is scheduled to be an East Coast Falcon 9 launch with barge recovery. Less than five hours from now. Here is a link to the planned broadcast.
Soyuz up, no
)
Soyuz up, no oops
https://www.space.com/42457-russia-cargo-mission-launches-to-space-station.html
Cygnus Antares soon to follow.
After a long pause, SpaceX is
)
After a long pause, SpaceX is scheduled for their second launch in a short while. November 19, Vandenberg (West Coast) 10:31:47 a.m. PST, 18:31:47 UTC. The energetics required are low enough to allow a recovery to land, but the range was not available, so a barge landing is expected. The first stage will be the first attempt to fly the same one three times. As it happens, the previous two launches were one each at the two Cape Canaveral launch sites, so this will make this first stage the first to use all three of SpaceX's current launch sites.
Reading the tea leaves of Mr. Musks's tweets, it seems Mr. Steven won't be trying to catch a fairing this time.
The mission is sort of a massive ride-share. Quite a bit of previous ride-sharing has been parasitic: a few cubesats or a couple of larger test articles packed along with a prime payload. On this one, however, the little guys are the prime payload--lots of them. At one point this mission (SSO-A) was expected to carry over a hundred satellites. While an Indian launch not so long ago was up in that range, I don't think most of those were as independent distinct, non-related deals as this one. Apparently getting it all integrated has been a chore, and the number of satellites expected has dropped steadily, most recently being in the sixties. The launching organization seems to have thought the better of it, expecting that smaller (cheaper) launchers will be preferred for this type of mission.
Falcon 9 launch from
)
Falcon 9 launch from Vandenberg, that was planned to launch on Monday, has been postponed.
https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/1063900263570788352