Interesting New Tech

NASA has tested a lithium fed electronic thruster, which has the potential to greatly increase the thrust of high specific impulse space propulsion systems. (Up to about 2.5-25 newtons 25N=5.6 lb)

Typically various electronic thrusters can produce about 100 millinewtons. 

If you have a 100 tonne vehicle, with 6x 25N thrusters, you get an acceleration of .0015 m/s2.

ΔV	Units	ΔT
5.40	m/s	1 Hour
12.08	mi/hr
129.60	m/s	1 day
289.91	mi/hr
907.20	m/s	1 week
2029.35	mi/hr
3600.00	m/s	Delta v to get to Mars from LEO
8052.97	mi/hr

So basically, you can go from low earth orbit to coasting to Mars in 12½ days.  The trip would still take about 9 months.

Theoretically the spacecraft could use the increases ISP to further shorten the time involved, but I'm not going to spend the time on celesxtial mechanics to figure that out.

NASA engineers recently tested a next-generation electric propulsion system that could one day power a crewed mission to Mars.

NASA fired up a prototype of its electromagnetic thruster inside a vacuum chamber, reaching power levels of up to 120 kilowatts—the highest achieved in U.S. tests of an electric propulsion system. That’s over 25 times the power of the electric thrusters aboard the current Psyche mission, which launched in 2023 on a journey to explore a metal-rich asteroid.

………

Current electric propulsion thrusters rely on solar power to accelerate propellant, reaching high speeds over time through a low continuous thrust. NASA’s recently tested electromagnetic thruster, on the other hand, runs on lithium metal vapor. The lithium-fed magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thruster uses high currents interacting with a magnetic field to electromagnetically accelerate lithium plasma.

Lithium-fed thrusters could potentially operate at high-power levels, using propellant efficiently and providing greater thrust power than the electrical thrusters currently in use, according to NASA. Once fully developed and paired with a nuclear power source, the MPD could help reduce launch mass to support larger payloads for human Mars missions.

They are talking about 4-5 egawatts power, which probably would require nuclear power, 5 mW would require something like 10,000 m2 of solar arrays, but it should make things easier.

 

Well, Turnabout is Fair Play

US intelligence sources are claiming that Russia is providing high quality satellite imagery to Iran to aid in Tehran efforts to target the US military in the region.

Considering that the US has been generating and supplying the entire kill chain for numerous US weapon systems to the Ukraine to enable them to strike targets deep inside Russia, this seems to me to be an obvious step for Russia to take. 

Russia is providing Iran with targeting information to attack American forces in the Middle East, the first indication that another major U.S. adversary is participating — even indirectly — in the war, according to three officials familiar with the intelligence.

The assistance, which has not been previously reported, signals that the rapidly expanding conflict now features one of America’s chief nuclear-armed competitors with exquisite intelligence capabilities.

Since the war began Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets, including warships and aircraft, said the three officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the matter’s sensitivity.

………

Analysts said that the sharing of intelligence would fit the pattern of Iran’s strikes against U.S. forces, including command and control infrastructure, radars, and temporary structures, like the one in Kuwait where six service members were killed.

………

Russia’s assistance reshuffles how various countries have engaged in a proxy war since Russia’s 2022 full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Throughout that conflict, U.S. adversaries including Iran, China and North Korea have provided Russia with either direct military aid or material support for Moscow’s vast defense industry. The United States has given Ukraine tens of billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment and shared intelligence on Russian positions to improve Kyiv’s targeting.

This is not going to end well.

Headline of the Day

Unable to Reach Mars, Musk Does the Most Musk Thing Possible

— Gizmodo on the announcement from the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ that he is abandoning Mars for the moon

Musk is giving up on Mars because his claims of saving humanity by creating a Martian city have become so transparently laughable that even his normal fanbois are losing interest. 

The old grift has gotten stale, so he creates a new one.

Elon Musk built SpaceX on his dream of colonizing Mars. For decades, he kept the company on a strict path toward achieving that goal, arguing just last year that using the Moon as a stepping stone to the Red Planet would be a “distraction.” Now, he’s singing a very different tune.

In an X post on Sunday, Musk said SpaceX has “shifted focus toward building a self-growing city on the Moon.” Achieving this new goal, he said, will potentially take less than a decade, whereas colonizing Mars would take more than 20 years.

As usual, it's rally all about getting government money to further enrich himself.

………

This pivot comes as SpaceX is racing against Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin to deliver a lunar lander for NASA’s Artemis 3 mission, which will be the first to land astronauts on the surface of the Moon in over 50 years. NASA awarded SpaceX the contract in 2021, but that never stopped Musk from criticizing the agency’s Moon-to-Mars trajectory. 

NASA originally planned to launch Artemis 3 in 2024 but has since pushed the mission to 2028, partly due to uncertainty over when a crew lander will be ready. SpaceX’s Starship Human Landing System (HLS) has faced significant developmental delays in recent years, prompting the agency to reopen the contract in October. Now, Musk has apparently gotten on board with the whole Moon-to-Mars thing.

Considering the basic architecture of Musk's moon lander, it's no wonder that Bezos is nipping at his heels.

The lander weighs 6 times that of the Apollo LEM and requires multiple in orbit refuelings, and his rockets are still blowing up and their payload capacity seems to be shrinking with each new test.

His rockets are unlikely to make it to either the Moon or Mars. 

Project Scoop

This is a reference to a Michael Crichton novel The Andromeda Strain, of course, involving a lethal pathogen brought back to earth by a satellite operated as a part of a government program called Project Scoop..

Project Scoop was a program to bring back potential candidates for germ warfare from the upper atmosphere.

Well, I just read an article about an experiment where viruses were sent into space, and while no one was harmed as a result, some profoundly weird shit happened.  (Take off the tinfoil hat.  The emergency evacuation of some crew from the ISS is entirely unrelated., the E. coli and the bacteria phage viruses used are completely harmless)

When scientists sent bacteria-infecting viruses to the International Space Station, the microbes did not behave the same way they do on Earth. In microgravity, infections still occurred, but both viruses and bacteria evolved differently over time. Genetic changes emerged that altered how viruses attach to bacteria and how bacteria defend themselves. The findings could help improve phage therapies against drug-resistant infections. 

It gave me a big of a literary flashback to the Crichton book. 

In Another Episode of "Leopards Eating Faces"

'I never thought leopards would eat MY face,' sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People's Faces Party.

— Adrian Bott (@Cavalorn) October 16, 2015

Karma, Elon

In an extremely amusing article at Techdirt, they note that , "Elon Musk Discovers What Hierarchy Actually Means."

In this case, he is upset because, despite beinmg the world's richest man, NASA is looking at another way of getting to the moon because he's sh%$ posting about Donald Trump.  (Yeah, there is also budget and timeline slippage, but we all know what this really about)

The Tech Bro sh%$ heels like Musk, and Andreeson, and  Thiel, and Zuckerberg always thought that they would be running things when their much anticipated authoritarian oligarchy arrived.

It does not work that way, just ask Hugo Junkers. 

Elon Musk is having a very bad week. The man who bought Twitter for $44 billion to secure unaccountable power over public discourse is discovering what unaccountable power actually looks like when wielded by someone who understands dominance better than he does.

Trump just stripped SpaceX of a government contract and handed it to Jeff Bezos. Musk’s response? Rage-tweeting at Trump officials, including the immortal question “why are you gay”—the rhetorical sophistication we’ve come to expect from the richest man-child on the planet having a public meltdown because Daddy won’t give him what he wants.

This isn’t just delicious schadenfreude, though it is that. This is the neo-reactionary project—the Silicon Valley movement to restore hierarchy and reject democratic constraints—consuming its architects in real-time. A perfect demonstration that the oligarchs funding authoritarian politics fundamentally misunderstood what they were building.

………

Musk thought he’d bought partnership. He bought the privilege of being degraded publicly.

This is what Peter Thiel and Curtis Yarvin and the entire Silicon Valley neo-reactionary apparatus never quite explained to their fellow travelers: In the systems they’re building, someone has to be subordinate. The hierarchy they’re restoring doesn’t stop conveniently at their own necks. And Trump—whatever else he is—understands this instinctively. He knows that power in authoritarian systems isn’t demonstrated through competent governance or policy achievement. It’s demonstrated through the arbitrary exercise of dominance over those who thought themselves powerful.

……… 

This is the system they built. This is what they wanted—rule by the strong, unencumbered by democratic constraints, where power flows from dominance rather than from consent. They just thought they’d be the ones doing the dominating.

………

The man who bought Twitter because he wanted absolute control is learning what absolute control actually means when someone else has it. The irony would be poetic if it weren’t so terrifying. Because this isn’t just about Musk’s bruised ego. This is about oligarchs discovering that the authoritarian systems they funded don’t stop at the people they don’t like. Hierarchy has teeth. And those teeth point in every direction.

………

Welcome to the world you built, Elon. How’s it feel?

I am amused. 

 

Parasite

The Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is trying to kill Virginia's program to bring fiber optic connectivity to residents of the commonwealth, because they want to sell their (overpriced and under-performing) service to these same people.

Just so you know, based on Starlkink's own data, you start getting significant performance degradation at 6.66 subscribers per square mile.  That's about 96 acres (39.2 hectare)per subscriber.

Starlink operator SpaceX is fighting Virginia's plan to deploy fiber Internet service to residents, claiming that federal grant money should be given to Starlink instead. SpaceX is already in line to win over $3 million in grant money in the state but is seeking $60 million.

Starlink is poised to benefit from the Trump administration rewriting rules for the $42 billion Broadband Equity, Access, and Deployment (BEAD) grant program. While the Biden administration decided that states should prioritize fiber in order to build more future-proof networks, the Trump administration ordered states to revise their plans with a "tech-neutral approach" and lower the average cost of serving each location.

With the Trump administration backing its attempt to obtain more federal funding for Starlink, SpaceX is likely to object to state plans that still include significant fiber builds. That's what happened yesterday when SpaceX filed comments on Virginia's final proposal, which will be reviewed by the National Telecommunications and Information Administration (NTIA).

 Elon Musk is the biggest welfare leech in the world.

Grace Under Pressure

Apollo 13 Commander James A. Lovell, Jr. has died at the age of 97.

He, along with John L. Swigert Jr. and Fred W. Haise Jr. had what could justifiably called the mother of all bad days at the office in 1970.

You might have seen the Tom Hanks movie. 

I Agree with the Human Bowling Jacket

Ontario mayor Rob Ford has terminated the deal with Starlink to provide remote communications systems.

Rob is the Ford brother who wasn't caught smoking crack.

Ontario has officially cancelled its $100-million contract with Starlink, but the province refuses to say how much it cost taxpayers to get out of the deal.

Energy and Mines Minister Stephen Lecce did not answer numerous questions Wednesday about the kill fee the province will have to pay Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

It should not cost anything.  Just refuse to pay, like Elon Musk and Donald Trump do.

“I can confirm we’ve cancelled the contract at this point, and we look forward to bringing forth alternatives to the people of Ontario so we can get people connected,” Lecce said at an unrelated press conference.

………

Ontario Premier Doug Ford threatened to kill the deal in February if U.S. tariffs on Canadian goods were imposed, and he ultimately pulled the deal in March when U.S. President Donald Trump implemented those tariffs.

“It’s done, it’s gone,” Ford said at the time. “We won’t award contracts to people who enable and encourage economic attacks on our province … and our country.”

This is the, "And find out," part of the whole, "F%$# around and find out," process.

It should be noted that the Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ at one point said that Canada was not a, "Real Country."

Well, I guess that they are not a real former customer. 

The Epitome of Chutzpah

SpaceX, which has been blighting the night sky and interfering with both visual and radio astronomy, is freaking out about the impact of the AST SpaceMobile BlueBird LEO satellites, which are far less numerous and intrusive than Musk's system.

Despite owning more than half of the satellites currently in low Earth orbit, SpaceX is complaining about AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird constellation and how it’ll introduce added risks.

In a letter sent to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), SpaceX raised concerns that AST SpaceMobile poses a threat to the sustainability of low Earth orbit. Elon Musk’s space venture accused the Texas startup of underestimating collision risks in space and whether its satellites pose a threat to people on the ground during reentry. To be fair, these are valid concerns, but the accusations are laughably ironic coming from SpaceX. The company operates more than 7,800 satellites—currently around 60% of all satellites in orbit—and they’ve had more than a few close calls with other objects.

In a case of the pot calling the kettle black, SpaceX calls on the FCC to “carefully scrutinize” AST’s plan of launching its BlueBird satellite constellation to ensure it doesn’t “present untenable risks to space sustainability.” SpaceX claims that AST’s orbital debris mitigation plan “uses inconsistent and unrealistic assumptions to significantly downplay the risk of its satellites.”

………

But there’s more to the hypocrisy and the accusations that SpaceX is levying at its rival. Similar to AST, SpaceX’s satellites have also been a visual orbital nuisance. Astronomers have raised concern that Starlinks are interfering with their observations of the universe, appearing as bright streaks in telescopic images. SpaceX was also involved in multiple disputes over the use of spectrum bands that interfere with other networks; the company has been accused of using its position in the industry as a main provider of rocket launches to coerce other companies, like OneWeb, to share their wireless spectrum rights.

Cry me a river, Elon.

Headline of the Day

Honda Launches A Reusable Rocket And It Didn't Even Explode

Jalopnik discussing the recent successful launch of a Honda prototype while throwing shade at SpaceX and Musk for their recent explosion on the launch pad

In case you are wondering,Jalopnik is an automotive publication, and only a few years ago was speaking of Musk and Tesla and SpaceX with awe, and now they are dunking on Elon.  (Video of rocket blowing up below)

The Apartheid Era Emerald Heir Pedo Guy™ is going to spend the rest of his life as an object of mockery, and it must be killing him.

Damn

I have been following the story of this technology for over 40 years, and it looks like the liquidation of Reaction Engines has put a steak in the heart of pre-cooled hypersonic engines.

The short version is that there is an heat generated when supersonic flow is slowed down to subsonic speeds in an engine inlet, and at around Mach 5, the air becomes too hot to burn.

One solution is supersonic combustion, but another, first pursued as HOTOL in the 1980s, the idea was to use the cryogenic temperatures in the fuel to cool down the intake air to manageable temperatures.

At higher altitudes, it would transition to a conventional rocket motor.

Given the higher fuel efficiency of the air breathing engines, on the order of a factor of at least 10, this could promise better performance and potentially a single stage to orbit platform.

Well, I thought that it was cool, but it's gone now:

Aerospace specialist Reaction Engines has gone into administration, potentially taking with it the dreams of hypersonic aircraft powered by its hybrid air-breathing rocket engine tech.

The company is a privately owned engineering research biz that operated for more than 30 years. Its major focus was the development of SABRE (Synergetic Air Breathing Rocket Engine), said to combine the fuel efficiency of a jet engine with the power and high speed offered by rockets.

It had been hoped that SABRE would lead to a new generation of hypersonic spaceplanes, but on October 31, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) was appointed as administrator after the company was unable to secure further funding.

………

SABRE is an exotic design, described as an air-breathing rocket engine. It allows an aircraft to take off from a runway as normal, then travel at velocities of about five times the speed of sound in the atmosphere. Switching over to liquid oxygen, a spaceplane using SABRE engines was envisioned as accelerating to Mach 25 to go beyond the atmosphere and into orbit.

The innovative precooler technology, one of the three core building blocks of SABRE, was tested in 2019. This is necessary because the air entering the engine would otherwise be hot enough to melt steel, thanks to the effects of friction and compression. Testing of the core engine components and preburner took place during 2020 and 2021.

Visitors to the Reaction Engines website will find the home page redirects to PwC, but the rest of the site still appears to be up, including pages on the SABRE engine technology.

 

Deep Thought

 NASA missed an opportunity during the Apollo program.

They could have named the command and lunar modules Ralph and Alice (Kramden).

(Not my joke)

Interesting Concept

People are looking into using metals for reaction mass in electrical spacecraft propulsion. (Alternate link)

We are talking about things like Hall Effect Thrusters, Ion Drives, and Plasma Drives.

They are looking at replacing various noble gasses, like xenon, krypton, and argon, with cheaper and denser metals, like zinc, bismuth, and the like.

I do recall that cesium was favored as a reaction mass a few decades ago, but that is corrosive and difficult to handle:

Move aside, xenon, krypton and argon. There is a new, heavier-weight class of spacecraft propellant: metals.

This year, several startups are testing electric thrusters that run on metal propellants. The companies say the hard stuff packs a greater punch for its volume and is cheaper and easier to handle than conventional gases.

In March, propulsion company Benchmark Space Systems launched its Xantus plasma thruster system, which uses molybdenum as a propellant, on Orion Space Solutions’ 12U cubesat. In August, Neumann Space and the University of Melbourne announced the successful completion of on-orbit tests of the Neumann Drive, an ion thruster that also uses molybdenum, on a nanosatellite. And in January, Starlight Engines plans to test its Crucible Hall-effect thruster on orbit using zinc propellant.

Metal propellants work inside electric propulsion systems in a similar way to gaseous propellants: After being vaporized, they are ionized and then accelerated out the back of the system using an electrical field. Because metal propellants have greater atomic weight, the elements require less storage volume to generate equivalent thrust.

Typically such systems provide very low thrust, from the 10s of micronewtons to a few millinewtons, but they provide somewhere between 4 and 10 times the ISP (Fuel efficiency) meaning that for station keeping in orbit or long duration missions, they can offer significantly better performance once in space.

I'm keeping my eye on this.

Well, It Didn't Blow Up

The #Starliner spacecraft is back on Earth.

At 12:01am ET Sept. 7, @BoeingSpace’s uncrewed Starliner spacecraft landed in White Sands Space Harbor, New Mexico. pic.twitter.com/vTYvgPONVc

— NASA Commercial Crew (@Commercial_Crew) September 7, 2024

The Boeing Starliner capsule undocked from the ISS and landed successfully at White Sands in New Mexico.

It was unmanned, and the astronauts who were originally supposed to be at the space station will now be returning early next year.

What a clusterf%$#.

Still Can't Make Spacecraft

Boeing again, and we have a data point which goes a long way to explain why its Starliner has left 2 astronauts stuck on the International Space Station until February.

In a classic, "I see what your problem is," moment, we now know that workers at Boeing's New Orleans facility are inadequately trained and inexperienced. 

To be fair, how could they overpay executives or engage in massive stock buybacks if they had properly trained personnel?

An undertrained and inexperienced workforce at NASA's Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans is a key reason for a "degraded state" of quality control on the Artemis project that's set to send astronauts to the Moon and then Mars in coming decades, according to the space agency's internal watchdog.

In a scathing report issued Thursday, NASA's Office of Inspector General cited rocket maker Boeing, which employs more than 1,000 people at Michoud, for dozens of problems on its Space Launch System rockets that are being assembled there.

An upgraded version of the SLS rocket is more than seven years behind schedule and $1 billion over budget, and federal monitors found 71 problems on the Michoud-based project ranging from minor to potentially serious.

To be fair, the Starliner is not made at the Michoud facility, but the refusal to invest in people or equipment to get the job done is systemic.

Oil Executives in ……… Spaaaaace!!!!!

NASA is looking to BP to help Nasa establish base on the Moon possible linkage

BP is to use its expertise gained drilling for oil to help Nasa in its quest to establish a base on the Moon, and eventually explore more of the solar system.

The energy giant has signed a deal with the US space agency that will see it share technology currently used “in harsh environments” on Earth and apply it to space.

The oil giant says the deal could ultimately lead to collaboration between BP and Nasa on a range of technology, including hydrogen power, high-capacity batteries and small nuclear fission systems.

Nasa is currently working on the first lunar space station, to be put into orbit next year at the earliest, as part of efforts to establish a permanent base on the Moon.

It plans to subsequently develop living accommodation on the surface, along with energy systems. BP’s expertise in developing machinery that works beneath the ocean’s surface could help Nasa to model and understand the problems faced with establishing a base on the Moon.

………

The initial phase of the agreement between BP and Nasa will focus on developing standards that “allow engineers and scientists to visualise equipment in remote locations more than 7,000 feet underwater or millions of miles away on another planet”, according to the oil company.

Giovanni Cristofoli, a senior executive at BP, said: “Both BP and Nasa are custodians of deep technical expertise, working in extreme environments – whether that’s at the bottom of the ocean or on the Moon.”

I'm beginning that I need to smoke more dope.

Cannot Make Space Ships Either

I'm not sure what exactly is currently wrong with the Boeing Starliner, but NASA is not comfortable using it for reentry, which has left its team stranded in the ISS for the current time:

Boeing is doing damage control as its first crewed commercial spacecraft remains on the International Space Station (ISS) with no confirmed return date.

NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams traveled in Boeing's Starliner spacecraft on June 5 after a series of technical delays and were scheduled to stay docked in space for between eight and 10 days.

However, 12 days after the crew's arrival, Boeing delayed the spacecraft's return until June 26.

Another delay was announced on Friday. The aviation company said it needed time to schedule two spacewalks and to assess issues on board following five helium leaks.

As Business Insider previously reported, helium supports Starlink's reaction control system thrusters, which allows them to fire.

In a statement to the Financial Times, Boeing said the delays were not considered a failure.

It should be noted here that the only thing that Boeing considers a failure is something that prevents them from using stock buybacks to goose the value of the options that senior executives hold.

Took You Long Enough

Have some rocket pr0n The Boeing Starliner has finally launched with a crew on board.

Only 7 years late.

Looks like Boeing cannot make spacecraft either.

Son of Orion

NASA is working on a new propulsion system which promises a nearly 20 fold increase in ISP over chemical rockets and thrust levels in the tens of thousands of pounds by technologies used to detonate thermonuclear warheads.

Short version is that nuclear fusion at levels well below break even still generate a lot of neutrons, and these induce fission, which generates a plasma providing thrust. 

It sounds a lot like the Orion program from the early 1960s, which involved dropping nuclear bombs out the back of a spacecraft to shove it along its course:

Engineering research outfit Howe Industries is working with NASA to develop a new plasma-based propulsion system that might help solve the problem of moving around the solar system faster with bigger payloads.

Early studies suggest the pulsed plasma rocket (PPR) propulsion system could produce up to 100,000 N [22,481 lbf] of thrust within a 5,000-second impulse.

The concept has been developed from an earlier Pulsed Fission-Fusion (PuFF), but is smaller, simpler, and less expensive, according to NASA.

"The exceptional performance of the PPR, combining high [specific impulse] and high thrust, holds the potential to revolutionize space exploration. The system's high efficiency allows for manned missions to Mars to be completed within a mere two months," NASA said.

PuFF relies on fission-ignited fusion systems that have already been proved in thermonuclear weapons. But instead of a bomb, the aim is to produce a controlled jet of plasma.

These are indeed impressive numbers with the  ISP numbers on par with other high ISP propulsion systems like ion drives.

That being said, it seems to be an awfully bumpy ride.

RIP Ingenuity

It appears that there has been an incident on Mars, and extraterrestrial helicopter Ingenuity has broken a rotor blade, which means that it will no longer be operational:

Something has gone wrong with NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars. Although the US space agency has not made any public announcements yet, a source told Ars that the plucky flying vehicle had an accident on its last flight and broke one of its blades. It will not fly anymore. (Shortly after this article was published, NASA confirmed the end of Ingenuity's mission).

When it launched to Mars more than three years ago, the small Ingenuity helicopter was an experimental mission, a challenge to NASA engineers to see if they could devise and build a vehicle that could make a powered flight on another world.

This was especially difficulty on Mars, which has a very thin atmosphere, with a pressure of less than 1 percent that of Earth's. The solution they landed on was a very light 4-lb helicopter with four blades. It was hoped that Ingenuity would make a handful of flights and provide NASA with some valuable testing data.

But it turns out that Ingenuity had other ideas. Since its deployment from the Perseverance rover in April 2021, the helicopter has flown a staggering 72 flights. It has spent more than two hours—128.3 minutes, to be precise—flying through the thin Martian air. Over that time, it flew 11 miles, or 17 km, performing invaluable scouting and scientific investigations. It has been a huge win for NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, one of the greatest spaceflight stories of this decade.

Bummer.

Also, NASA really needs to come up with better names for its robotic vehicles.