Seitenstück. Belles Lettres waren ja rar in der letzten Zeit.
Zitat Harvey Wins 2024 Booker Prize
November 12, 2024
Orbital by Samantha Harvey (Jonathan Cape; Grove Atlantic US) is the winner of the 2024 Man Booker Prize. It depicts the lives of astronauts, and is “the first Booker Prize-winning book set in space.”
Zitat She is of sf interest for her fifth novel, Orbital (2023), a contemplative rendering of its six protagonists' sensory responses to their visions of the planet beneath them during sixteen orbits of their Space Station, which amount to a single day of the world. The trip to the Moon undertaken at this point, the political situation beneath them, and the visible signs of Anthropocene devastation, hint at a moment in the very Near Future. The flattened affect of the six hints at the supernumerary future of flesh creatures in the exploration/exploitation of the universe. The novel ends with a vision of our Posthuman destiny, if any of us survive the Suicide below, an insight quoted in at least one review of the tale, where future iterations of Homo sapiens are seen as "exo-skeletal-cybernetic-machine-deathless-postbeings who've harnessed the energy of some hapless star and guzzled it dry". [JC]
Zitat Samantha Harvey gewinnt mit ihrem Roman „Umlaufbahnen“ den Booker Prize, die wichtigste Auszeichnung für Literatur Großbritanniens – und muss sich in ihrer Dankesrede Mühe geben, die Contenance zu wahren.
Die deutsche Übersetzung (eben als "Umlaufbahnen" erscheint morgen, am 14.11. bei dtv als gebundene Ausgabe. Klappentext:
Zitat Von oben betrachtet sieht die Welt gleich ganz anders aus
Sechs Astronauten schweben in einer Raumstation durchs All. Den Planeten Erde umkreisen sie in 90 Minuten, sechzehnmal in 24 Stunden. Die zwei Frauen und vier Männer aus ganz unterschiedlichen Nationen arbeiten, essen und schlafen auf engstem Raum – und doch ist alles losgelöst vom Alltag, Schwerkraft und Zeitempfinden sind außer Kraft gesetzt. Was passiert, wenn man seine Heimat nur aus weiter Ferne durch ein kleines Fenster sieht? Wie verändern sich Denken und Fühlen? In dem Zeitraum von nur einem Tag, während die Sonne sechzehnmal auf- und untergeht, betrachtet dieser ungewöhnliche, kraftvoll poetische Roman die großen und kleinen Fragen der Menschheit und bringt uns der Schönheit des Universums ganz nahe.
In der englischen Ausgabe umfaßt der Text 144 Seiten.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat Samantha Harvey, one of the most consistently surprising contemporary British novelists, becomes something like the cosmic artificer of our era with her slim, enormous novel “Orbital” (Grove), which imaginatively constructs the day-to-day lives of six astronauts aboard the International Space Station. “Orbital” is the strangest and most magical of projects, not least because it’s barely what most people would call a novel but performs the kind of task that only a novel could dare. It’s barely a novel because it barely tells a plotted set of human stories, and the stories it does tell barely interact with one another. Yes, Harvey gives her six astronauts fictional first names and various nationalities. In this sense, they are preliminary fictional characters. Roman and Anton are from Russia, Chie is from Japan, Nell from the U.K., Pietro from Italy, and Shaun from the United States: two women and four men. Roman, Nell, and Shaun, who arrived three months ago to join the others, are the ship’s newbies. Each is given a strip or two of backstory, enough to mobilize a rudimentary plot. In Japan, Chie’s mother has just died. Nell’s brother, in Wales, has the flu. On board, Pietro listens to Duke Ellington while he works out. Anton’s marriage is unhappy; his wife has been unwell for a long time. And so on. In addition, the astronauts have their particular tasks while in orbit. Pietro monitors microbes, Chie and Nell are doing experiments with mice. All of them are experimenting on their own bodies, testing and checking the limits and stresses of prolonged weightless existence.
But this minimal fictionality is not really the point; it’s merely the ransom paid to the genre in order to resemble the novelistic. The point is everything else: the almost unimaginable unworldliness of the situation. Six imprisoned professionals are speeding around the world at seventeen and a half thousand miles an hour. They circle the Earth sixteen times a day, and thus daily witness sixteen sunrises and sixteen sunsets (“the whip-crack of morning arrives every ninety minutes”). A gigantic typhoon can be seen gathering over the western Pacific and moving toward the Philippines and Indonesia; this event, from the godlike vantage of the I.S.S., is important but also irrelevant, no more than a vicious corkscrew of distant cloud cover on that faraway blue marble. The real point of “Orbital” is the demonstration of how a writer might capture this spectacular strangeness in language adequate to the spectacle. And how she might do so with fitting surplus, in ways that surpass the more orderly permissions of journalism and nonfictional prose.
Harvey, writing like a kind of Melville of the skies, finds that fitting surplus again and again. First, she attends with imaginative curiosity to the question of embodiment. It’s one thing to learn as fact that, say, astronauts aboard the I.S.S. are given to headaches and nausea, or that their dried food—already compromised, of course—is tasteless because their sinuses are so often blocked. (Without gravity, our sinuses don’t drain as they should.) Or to learn that mornings aboard the spaceship begin with two hours of running on a treadmill, weight-lifting with resistance devices, and stationary-bike riding, so that the astronauts’ muscles don’t atrophy. But what might it feel like to be experiencing such things, to be sailing in this frictionless Pequod, these cramped quarters where, as Harvey puts it, the floors are walls and the walls are ceilings and the ceilings are floors? Harvey writes of Pietro that “everything in his body seems to lack commitment to the cause of its animal life,” a description that may or may not be physiologically accurate but which is imaginatively acute. In a similar vein, she writes about the suspension of time in orbit, of how the astronauts “feel space trying to rid them of the notion of days. It says: what’s a day? They insist it’s twenty-four hours and ground crews keep telling them so, but it takes their twenty-four hours and throws sixteen days and nights at them in return.” Again, it’s one thing to learn how astronauts sleep aboard the I.S.S. (strapped to a bed and slotted into a compartment that’s not unlike an old British telephone kiosk). But how might it feel to sleep while floating in space, to sleep while dimly aware that a mad earthly floor show of light and darkness is constantly spooling beneath you? Harvey’s prose has an instinct for a kind of exact magic. “Even when you sleep you feel the earth turning,” she writes. “You feel all the days that break through your seven-hour night. You feel all the fizzing stars and the moods of the oceans and the lurch of the light through your skin, and if the earth were to pause for a second on its orbit, you’d wake with a start knowing something was wrong.” Is this how it really feels? I’m persuaded by its imaginative accuracy, in the way that I’m persuaded by the imaginative accuracy of Tolstoy’s descriptions of warfare.
Photographs and video bring us the sickly terror of watching astronauts spacewalking, hanging off the limbs of their station while fixing something or other, the irradiated Earth looming below them. But Harvey’s six-page imagining of it plunges the reader, as even video cannot quite do, into the game of becoming that spacewalker, in both terror and ecstasy. Nell and Pietro are installing a spectrometer. Nell has been told not to look down, but how can she not? Alarmingly, the Earth below her “doesn’t have the appearance of a solid thing, its surface is fluid and lustrous.” Her feet are dangling above a continent, “her left foot obscuring France, her right foot Germany. Her gloved hand blotting out western China.” She reflects that her underwater training hasn’t quite prepared her for something that is closer to surfing than to swimming. Then she looks down again, and now the Earth is not terrifying but magnificent, “blue and cloud-scudded and improbably soft against the truss of the craft.” She relaxes somewhat into her tasks. The closest analogy Nell can summon is how one flies in dreams, “because it ought to be impossible for a heavy wingless body to be gliding this freely and smoothly and yet here it is and it seems that you are finally doing the thing for which your being was born. It is hard to believe.” She looks down yet again, and the Earth seems to hang like a “hallucination, something made by and of light, something you could pass through the centre of, and the only word that seems to apply to it is unearthly.”
I’ve quoted this episode at length so as to convey the remarkable quality of immersion that “Orbital” offers, how narrative becomes not plot but the pacing of sensation. (It’s a viscerality that characterized Harvey’s last book, “The Shapeless Unease: A Year of Not Sleeping,” a nonfiction account of her insomnia; this particular light sleeper had to stop reading it, fearful of catching its anxiety.) And notice, too, the musical modulations of Harvey’s prose, how easily the ordinary (vertigo) consorts with the marvellous (space vertigo), and how quickly this prose music moves into the key of the metaphysical: there’s something inevitable, yet beautifully unexpected, about arriving at the vision of our Earth as “unearthly.”
Of course, any cosmic poetics is bound to be a cosmic metaphysics as well. As Melville describes and redescribes his whale, so Harvey ceaselessly drapes our globe in words, and, as with Melville, each redescription is also a reckoning, a theological sizing up. Always, there’s astonishment—Harvey begins and ends with astonishment—especially at the way the world is lit, how it is “chiming with light”:
Zitat In the new morning of today’s fourth earth orbit the Saharan dust sweeps to the sea in hundred-mile ribbons. Hazy pale green shimmering sea, hazy tangerine land. This is Africa chiming with light. You can almost hear it, this light, from inside the craft. Gran Canaria’s steep radial gorges pile the island up like a sandcastle hastily built, and when the Atlas Mountains announce the end of the desert, clouds appear in the shape of a shark whose tail flips at the southern coast of Spain, whose fin-tip nudges the southern Alps, whose nose will dive any moment into the Mediterranean. Albania and Montenegro are velvet soft with mountain.
This illumination makes the world seem palace-like, heavenly: “If we must go to an improbable, hard-to-believe-in place when we die, that glassy, distant orb with its beautiful lonely light shows could well be it.” At other moments, from such a distance the Earth seems completely uninhabited; or mankind a creature that comes out only at night, with flares. Perhaps this uninhabited place is nothing more than the ruins of a civilization. At only two hundred and fifty miles’ distance, our glowing world still seems to occupy a privileged place.
Rotating about the earth in their spacecraft they are so together, and so alone, that even their thoughts, their internal mythologies, at times convene. Sometimes they dream the same dream - of fractals and blue spheres and familiar faces engulfed in dark, and of the bright energetic black of space that slams their senses. Raw space is a panther, feral and primal; they dream it stalking through their quarters.
They hang in their sleeping bags. A hand-span away beyond a skin of metal the universe unfolds in simple eternities. Their sleep begins to thin and some distant earthly morning dawns and their laptops flash the first silent messages of a new day; the wide-awake, always-awake station vibrates with fans and filters. In the galley are the remnants of last night's dinner - dirty forks secured to the table by magnets and chopsticks wedged in a pouch on the wall. Four blue balloons are buoyed on the circulating air, some foil bunting says 'Happy Birthday,' it was nobody's birthday but it was a celebration and it was all they had. There's a smear of chocolate on a pair of scissors and a small felt moon on a piece of string, tied to the handles of the foldable table.
Outside the earth reels away in a mass of moonglow, peeling backward as they forge towards its edgeless edge; the tufts of cloud across the Pacific brighten the nocturnal ocean to cobalt. Now there's Santiago on South America's approaching coast in a cloud-hazed burn of gold. Unseen through the closed shutters the trade winds blowing across the warm waters of the Western Pacific have worked up a storm, an engine of heat. The winds take the warmth out of the ocean where it gathers as clouds which thicken and curdle and begin to spin in vertical stacks that have formed y typhoon. As the typhoon moves west towards southern Asia, their craft tracks east, eastward and down towards Patagonia where the lurch of a far-off aurora domes the horizon in neon. The Milky Way is a smoking trail of gunpowder shot through a satin sky.
Onboard the craft it's Tuesday morning, four fifteen, the beginning of October. Out there it's Argentina it the South Atlantic it's Cape Town it's Zimbabwe. Over its right shoulder the planet whispers morning - a slender molten breach of light. They slip through time zones in silence.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat Spaceflight Now@SpaceflightNow Overnight, SpaceX stacked its Starship rocket at its Starbase facilities in Boca Chica Beach, Texas. A wet dress rehearsal is anticipated prior to the Flight 6 launch. Launch is NET Nov. 18 at 4 pm CST. 2:05 PM · Nov 15, 2024
Zitat Tianzhou-8 docked at China Space Station's aft port at 18:32UTC November 15 8:21 PM · Nov 15, 2024
Letzter Versorgungsflug, Tianzhou-7, ist am 17. Januar gestartet. Die Zahl der Raumstarts für China in den letzten 10 Wochen: September: 8, Oktober: 6, November: bislang 4.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat The sixth flight test of Starship is targeted to launch Tuesday, November 19. The 30-minute launch window will open at 4:00 p.m. CT.
A live webcast of the flight test will begin about 30 minutes before liftoff, which you can watch here and on X @SpaceX. You can also watch the webcast on the new X TV app. As is the case with all developmental testing, the schedule is dynamic and likely to change, so be sure to check in here and stay tuned to our X account for updates.
Zitat Analogous to the fifth flight test, distinct vehicle and pad criteria must be met prior to a return and catch of the Super Heavy booster, which will require healthy systems on the booster and tower and a final manual command from the mission’s Flight Director. If this command is not sent prior to the completion of the boostback burn, or if automated health checks show unacceptable conditions with Super Heavy or the tower, the booster will default to a trajectory that takes it to a landing burn and soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico. We accept no compromises when it comes to ensuring the safety of the public and our team, and the return will only take place if conditions are right.
The returning booster will slow down from supersonic speeds, resulting in audible sonic booms in the area around the landing zone. Generally, the only impact to those in the surrounding area of a sonic boom is the brief thunder-like noise with variables like weather and distance from the return site determining the magnitude experienced by observers.
Starship’s upper stage will fly the same suborbital trajectory as the previous flight test, with splashdown targeted in the Indian Ocean. An additional objective for this flight will be attempting an in-space burn using a single Raptor engine, further demonstrating the capabilities required to conduct a ship deorbit burn prior to orbital missions.
Several thermal protection experiments and operational changes will test the limits of Starship’s capabilities and generate flight data to inform plans for ship catch and reuse. The flight test will assess new secondary thermal protection materials and will have entire sections of heat shield tiles removed on either side of the ship in locations being studied for catch-enabling hardware on future vehicles. The ship also will intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack in the final phase of descent, purposefully stressing the limits of flap control to gain data on future landing profiles. Finally, adjusting the flight’s launch window to the late afternoon at Starbase will enable the ship to reenter over the Indian Ocean in daylight, providing better conditions for visual observations.
Future ships, starting with the vehicle planned for seventh flight test, will fly with significant upgrades including redesigned forward flaps, larger propellant tanks, and the latest generation tiles and secondary thermal protection layers as we continue to iterate towards a fully reusable heat shield. Learnings from this and subsequent flight tests will continue to make the entire Starship system more reliable as we close in on full and rapid reusability.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
23:28. Start der Optus-X / TD7-Mission vom Launch Complex 39A auf dem Kennedy Space Center. T 08:38 85. Landung auf der "A Shortfall of Gravitas." 16. Start von B 1077.
Damit hat SpaceX fast ebensoviele Starts von der ehemaligen "Mondflugrampe" durchgeführt wie die NASA (94 - 12 Starts der Saturn V & 82 Space-Shuttle-Missionen), nämlich 92 (81 x Falcon 9 und 11 x Falcon Heavy).
PS. Der nächste Start von SpaceX steht übrigens für Montagmorgen, 07:30 (MEZ) an (Starlink 9-12, von Vandenberg), der darauffolgende am Montagabend, 20:31 mit India GSAT-20 von Cape Canaveral.
Zitat Sawyer Merritt@SawyerMerritt Within the next 48 hours, @SpaceX is set to break a new 48-hour launch record by launching four rockets, including Starship, from Texas, Florida, and California. This is twice as many launches as Europe has completed throughout all of 2024. 10:01 PM · Nov 17, 2024
Zitat Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎@JoeTegtmeyer As a recap, here are a few of the test objectives for Starship flight #6 per @SpaceX
Note, flight #6 is the end of the era of early Starship prototypes, as this is the last launch of the V1 ships. This is an important transition point for Starship development!
This flight test aims to expand the envelope on ship & booster capabilities & get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online.
Objectives include igniting the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, & testing a suite of heatshield experiments & maneuvering changes for ship reentry & descent over the Indian Ocean.
Hardware upgrades for this flight add additional redundancy to booster propulsion systems, increase structural strength at key areas, & shorten the timeline to offload propellants from the booster following a successful catch.
Mission designers also updated software controls & commit criteria for the booster’s launch & return.
A distinct vehicle & pad criteria must be met prior to a return & catch of the Super Heavy booster, which will require healthy systems on the booster & tower & a final manual command from the mission’s Flight Director.
If this command is not sent prior to the completion of the boostback burn, or if automated health checks show unacceptable conditions with Super Heavy or the tower, the booster will default to a trajectory that takes it to a landing burn & soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
The returning booster will slow down from supersonic speeds, resulting in audible sonic booms in the area around the landing zone.
Starship’s upper stage will fly the same suborbital trajectory as the previous flight test, with splashdown targeted in the Indian Ocean.
An additional objective for this flight will be attempting an in-space burn using a single Raptor engine, further demonstrating the capabilities required to conduct a ship deorbit burn prior to orbital missions.
Several thermal protection experiments & operational changes will test the limits of Starship’s capabilities & generate flight data to inform plans for ship catch and reuse.
The flight test will assess new secondary thermal protection materials &will have entire sections of heat shield tiles removed on either side of the ship in locations being studied for catch-enabling hardware on future vehicles.
The ship also will intentionally fly at a higher angle of attack in the final phase of descent, purposefully stressing the limits of flap control to gain data on future landing profiles.
Finally, adjusting the flight’s launch window to the late afternoon at Starbase will enable the ship to reenter over the Indian Ocean in daylight, providing better conditions for visual observations.
Depending on how well Flight 6 goes & the launch site survives the launch & catch attempt, there may be a slightly longer period of time between flight 6 & flight 7. This is also due to the move to a completely new V2 Starship design. Recently, @SpaceX has stated their goal is for ~25 Starship launches in 2025, including on-orbit refilling tests, ship catch in the 1st 6 months of 2025, payload deployment & more!
V2 ships, starting with the vehicle planned for 7th flight test, will fly with significant upgrades including redesigned forward flaps, larger propellant tanks, & the latest generation tiles & secondary thermal protection layers as @SpaceX continues to iterate towards a fully reusable heat shield.
Learnings from this & subsequent flight tests will continue to make the entire Starship system more reliable as @SpaceX closes in on full & rapid reusability. 2:39 PM · Nov 18, 2024
RoBeRt𝕏jEaN1679@RoBeRtXjEaN1679·5h Amazing summary! Thank you Joe! The ONE that stands out for me is the "shield tiles removed on either side ... for catch-enabling hardware on future vehicles", namely the 2nd stage Starships. The reason, IMHO, IF the 2nd stage successfully re-enters thru the plasma phase of the flight and soft-splashes in the Indian Ocean as planned THEN we just might see SpaceX attempt to catch the 2nd stage Starship on IFT-7 or IFT-8 (most likely IFT-8 due to the fact these will be the new version 2 of the 2nd stage Starship).
These are exciting times akin to the 1960's leading up to Neil Armstrong's first steps on the lunar surface.
Joe Tegtmeyer 🚀 🤠🛸😎@JoeTegtmeyer Spot on Robert ... I think flight 8 is the earliest possible catch for the ship as Ship 33 does not have the hardware necessary for a catch. So, Ship 34 or later will be more likely! Biggest question for this test on Flight 6 is if the removal of the thermal tiles allows for a successful reentry and landing with the proper safety margins for heat flux along the sides of the ship (and also in other test locations) 3:35 PM · Nov 18, 2024
Zitat In an interview with the news magazine Der Spiegel published on Friday ahead of the release of her memoir, Merkel said the job of politics was ultimately to balance the interests of ordinary and powerful citizens.
"If this ultimate recourse is influenced too strongly by companies, whether through capital power or technological capabilities, then that is an unprecedented challenge for all of us," she said.
She cited the example of Musk, chief executive of Tesla and SpaceX, who was tapped by Trump to co-lead a new Department of Government Efficiency that the incoming president has indicated will operate outside the confines of government.
"If a person like him [Musk] owns 60% of all satellites orbiting in space, then that has to be a huge concern for us in addition to the political issues," Merkel said.
SpaceX runs the satellite internet provider Starlink, which has over 6,000 satellites in space and is used by consumers, companies and government agencies.
Zitat ALEX@ajtourville DYK: @SpaceX is conducting specialized heat shield testing using the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign's plasma jet chamber to simulate Starship's atmospheric entry on Mars. The difficulty on Mars is that the atmosphere is 95% CO₂ which, under the intense heat of entry, breaks down into atomic carbon and oxygen. Atomic oxygen (O₁) is very reactive as it desperately seeks to bond with (oxidize) anything, thus increasing surface heating of Starship's heat shield and degrading it faster. Solving Starship's fully and rapidly reusable thermal protection system (TPS) is extremely challenging work on the bleeding edge of materials science and engineering. 9:02 PM · Nov 24, 2024
Elon Musk@elonmusk·18h A truly reusable orbital-entry-class heat shield is the single biggest technology problem remaining
Zitat von Nov 25, 2024 - CONTRACT RELEASE - C24-042 NASA HeadquartersNASA has selected SpaceX to provide launch services for the Dragonfly mission, a rotorcraft lander mission under NASA’s New Frontiers Program, designed to explore Saturn’s moon Titan. The mission will sample materials and determine surface composition in different geologic settings, advancing our search for the building blocks of life.
The firm-fixed-price contract has a value of approximately $256.6 million, which includes launch services and other mission related costs. The Dragonfly mission currently has a targeted launch period from July 5, 2028, to July 25, 2028, on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket from Launch Complex 39A at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.
Dragonfly centers on novel approach to planetary exploration, employing a rotorcraft-lander to travel between and sample diverse sites on Saturn’s largest moon. With contributions from partners around the globe, Dragonfly’s scientific payload will characterize the habitability of Titan’s environment, investigate the progression of prebiotic chemistry on Titan, where carbon-rich material and liquid water may have mixed for an extended period, and search for chemical indications of whether water-based or hydrocarbon-based life once existed on Saturn’s moon.
Nur zur Erinnerung: die durchschnittliche Oberflächentemperatur des Titan beträgt -180°C; die Atmosphäre mit einem Bodendruck von 1,4 irdischen Atmosphären besteht aus 95% Stickstoff und 5% Methan und gut ein Viertel der Oberfläche ist von Seen bedeckt, die aus flüssigem Methan und Ethan bestehen, mit Küsten aus Wassereis.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat ORDER AND AUTHORIZATION Adopted: November 26, 2024 Released: November 26, 2024
1.In this Order and Authorization (Order), we grant in part and defer in part, with conditions, the application, as amended, of Space Exploration Holdings, LLC (SpaceX) to construct, deploy, and operate a constellation of second generation non-geostationary orbit (NGSO) fixed-satellite service (FSS) satellites, known as its Gen2 Starlink constellation (SpaceX Gen2 Application, as amended).1 We also grant in part and defer in part, with conditions, SpaceX’s modification application, as amended, to provide Supplemental Coverage from Space (SCS) within the United States and to operate on certain frequency bands for the purpose of performing direct-to-cellular (direct-to-cell)2 operations outside the United States using its previously authorized 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites (SpaceX SCS Modification Application and SpaceX SCS Modification Amendment)3 and grant SpaceX’s modification application to operate using V-band frequencies at altitudes ranging from 340 km to 360 km (SpaceX V-band Modification Application).4
2.Specifically, we authorize SpaceX to operate its previously authorized 7,500 Gen2 Starlink satellites at the previously proposed altitudes of 340 km, 345 km, 350 km, and 360 km. SpaceX is authorized to communicate with these satellites in the previously authorized Ku-, Ka-, E-, and V-band frequencies,5 in conformance with the technical specifications SpaceX has provided to the Commission,6 the conditions previously placed on its authorizations,7 and the conditions we adopt today. SpaceX is also authorized to conduct operations using its very high frequency (VHF) beacons at altitudes of 340 km, 345 km, 350 km, and 360 km, again, subject to conditions placed on its prior authorizations8 and adopted today.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat Dragonfly's power source is a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG), which generates electricity from the heat put out by the radioactive decay of plutonium-238. These plutonium-fueled generators have flown on many previous space missions, including NASA's Perseverance and Curiosity rovers on Mars, the New Horizons spacecraft that beamed back the first up-close views of Pluto, and the long-lived Voyager probes exploring interstellar space. ... But there is an additional certification required to launch nuclear materials, including a review of the rocket's explosive self-destruct range safety system to ensure it would not damage the payload and cause a release of radioactive plutonium. The RTG itself is designed to survive an impact with the ocean intact.
NASA's policy for new space missions is to use solar power whenever possible. For example, Europa Clipper was originally supposed to use a nuclear power generator, but engineers devised a way for the spacecraft to use expansive solar panels to capture enough sunlight to produce electricity, even at Jupiter's vast distance from the Sun.
But there are some missions where this isn't feasible. One of these is Dragonfly, which will soar through the soupy nitrogen-methane atmosphere of Titan. Saturn's largest moon is shrouded in cloud cover, and Titan is nearly 10 times farther from the Sun than Earth, so its surface is comparatively dim.
Dragonfly will launch with about 10.6 pounds (4.8 kilograms) of plutonium-238 to fuel its power generator. Plutonium-238 has a half-life of 88 years. With no moving parts, RTGs have proven quite reliable, powering spacecraft for many decades. NASA's twin Voyager probes are approaching 50 years since launch.
Dragonfly has also faced rising costs NASA blames on the COVID-19 pandemic and supply chain issues and an in-depth redesign since the mission's selection in 2019. Collectively, these issues caused Dragonfly's total budget to grow to $3.35 billion, more than double its initial projected cost.
Der Helikopter hat ein etwas anderes Format als Ingenuity auf dem Mars: eine Masse von 450 kg (was auf dem Titan auf ein Gewicht von 62 kg hinausläuft), mit einer Länge von 3,85 m, derselben Breite und einer Höhe von 1,75 m, ein Quadkopter mit Doppelrotoren von je 1,35 m im Durchmesser; der Energiebedarf beim Fliegen liegt angesichts der 1,45-fach dichteren Atmosphäre um den Faktor 40 niedriger als auf der Erde; das Flugobjekt ist darauf ausgelegt, den Verlust eines Rotors tolerieren zu können. Zur Instrumentenausstattung zählen Panoramakameras, Mikroskopkameras, zwei Bohrarme zur Bodenprobenentnahme, zwei Spektrometer (ein Massenspektrometer und eines im Gammastrahlenbereich) und ein Seismometer. Als Landeort ist der relativ junge Einschlagkrater Selk, 8° nördlich des Äquators, vorgesehen. Der Erstflug soll im Verlauf der Landung erfolgen: Die Landephase wird ungefähr 100 Minuten dauern; 85 Minuten lang wird die Landkapsel von einem Bremsfallschirm von 1,5 Mach abgebremst; nach weiteren 20 Minuten nach dem Entfalten des Hauptfallschirms wird dieser samt dem Hitzeschild in 1,2 km Höhe abgeworfen und der Helikopter sucht sich frei fliegend einen Landeort. Der Vorgang läuft automatisch ab, da die Laufzeit der Funksignale je nach Position der Erde zwischen 70 und 90 Minuten beträgt und die Hauptantenne noch nicht entfaltet ist.
PS. Die Ebenen auf Titan sind gemäß der Namenskonvention nach Planeten aus Frank Herberts "Dune"-Zyklus benannt: Arrakis Planitia nach dem wüsten Planeten selbst, Buzzell Planitia nach einer Strafkolonie der Bene Gesserit, Caladan Planitia nach der ursprünglichen Heimatwelt des Hauses Atreides, Giedi Planitia nach der des Hauses Harkonnen, Rossak Planitia nach der der Bene Gesserit. Die drei größten Seen sind das Kraken Mare (mit einer Fläche von 400.000 km² etwas größer als das Kaspische Meer, mit einer Tiefe von 100 m (andere Berechnungen gehen von bis zu 300 Metern aus), gefüllt zu 70% mit flüssigem Methan, 16% Stickstoff und 14% Ethan, mit einem Gezeitenhub von bis zu 5 Metern. Eine Planstudie von NASA und ESA unter der Bezeichnung TandEM ist als Vorbereitung auf eine Landmission in den 2030er Jahren in Ausarbeitung, bei der eine schwimmende Sonde dort ausgesetzt werden soll. Dann folgen das Ligeia Mare mit 126.000 km², dessen Tiefe zwischen 170 und 210 m aufgrund der Transparenz des Methan durch Aufnahmen der Cassini-Sonde ermittelt werden konnte, und das Punga Mare in der Nähe des Nordpols mit 61.000 km².
Zitat Categories (Themes) for Naming Features on Planets and Satellites
Titan
Colles: Names of characters from Middle-earth, the fictional setting in fantasy novels by English author J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) Freta: Names of characters from the Foundation series of science fiction novels by American author Isaac Asimov (1920-1992) Montes: Names of mountains and peaks from Middle-earth, the fictional setting in fantasy novels by English author J.R.R. Tolkien (1892-1973) Planitiae and labyrinthi: Names of planets from the Dune series of science fiction novels by American author Frank Herbert (1920 - 1986)
Zitat Es gibt eine deutliche Zweiteilung bei den Seentypen auf der Nordhalbkugel des Saturnmondes. In der Osthälfte liegen einige ausgedehnte Seeflächen, fast schon Meere, mit flachen Ufern und mehreren Inseln. Vom Nordpol aus westlich dagegen dominieren hunderte kleinere Seen die Oberfläche.[6] Bereits 2018 enthüllten Radardaten, dass diese kleinen Seen auffallend steile Ufer besitzen und nicht etwa auf Meereshöhe, sondern auf hunderte Meter hohen Tafelbergen liegen und dabei selber oft mehrere hundert Meter tief in den Untergrund hinein reichen, ähnlich wie irdische Karstseen. Das bedeutet aber auch, dass diese Seen nicht von Zuflüssen gespeist werden können. Stattdessen müssen diese Gewässer ihr flüssiges Methan aus dem Regen erhalten – ähnlich wie viele isolierte Kraterseen auf der Erde. Vor allem Benzol und Acetylen sind in flüssigem Ethan bei minus 180 Grad ähnlich löslich wie calciumbasierte Mineralien in irdischem Wasser. Damit könnte der Regen auf dem Titan durchaus ausreichen, um im Laufe von zehn bis hundert Millionen Jahren solche mehr als hundert Meter tiefen Löcher in den Untergrund zu lösen.
Zitat Ryan Caton@dpoddolphinpro For context, since January 1st, @SpaceX has launched the same number of times (123) as: @Roscosmos since Nov 25, 2013 @ULAlaunch since May 28, 2010 @Arianespace since May 14, 2009
Falcon has launched more this year than the Ariane 4 (116), Ariane 5 (117), & Atlas V (101), did throughout their entire careers.
At their current launch rate, if extrapolated for the remaining 33 days of the year, @SpaceX could match the number of flights of the Space Shuttle throughout its entire career (135). Blimey.
Data from @NASASpaceflight's @NextSpaceflight 6:01 PM · Nov 27, 2024
Joan@JoanEspar·54m It's incredible, just to think that Starship has launched more times than Ariane 6 and Vulcan, and that SpaceX launches Falcon 9 more in a month, or even a week, than anyone else (except China) does in a year.
Zitat von November 27, 2024Vega C return to flight slips a day
European officials say the Vega C rocket is ready for its return to flight next week despite a technical issue that will delay the launch of an Earth science satellite by at least a day.
Arianespace announced Nov. 27 that the upcoming Vega C launch of the Sentinel-1C spacecraft would be delayed from Dec. 3. The launch services provider said it needed to “conduct further precautionary checks and activities” on the rocket. Arianespace said it estimated the launch would be delayed by a day, with an updated launch date provided by Nov. 29. Liftoff, regardless of the day, will be at 4:20 p.m. Eastern in an instantaneous launch window.
The announcement took place a few hours before a previously scheduled European Space Agency media briefing about the launch. At the briefing, officials from Arianespace and Avio, the prime contractor of the Vega C, provided little additional details but suggested the issues causing the delay were minor.
“I don’t think there is a lot to elaborate on,” said Stéphane Israël, chief executive of Arianespace, when asked for details about the delay. “We are speaking about something which, I would say, has very limited consequences.”
“When we see something that we are not completely satisfied with, we love to intervene and conduct more checks,” added Giulio Ranzo, chief executive of Avio.
Both executives, along with ESA, expressed confidence in the Vega C in its first launch since a December 2022 launch failure blamed on the Zefiro-40 second stage. That led to a redesign of the nozzle on that solid-fuel motor and two ground tests, the second of which took place Oct. 3, that verified the performance of the new design.
“The two tests that we have performed, and joint work with the European Space Agency, have revealed a very good performance of the Zefiro-40 with the new design,” Ranzo said.
Zitat ALEX@ajtourville·Nov 29 NEWS: @SpaceX in Q3-2024 launched an astonishing 362 metric tons of upmass to space — this represents 85.7% of all upmass launched in the world in the third quarter of this year. 3:18 PM · Nov 30, 2024
Elon Musk@elonmusk If rest of Q4 goes well, should be 90%
Steve Jurvetson@FutureJurvetson·7h It was 87% for the first 9 months of 2024. The biggest shift: Roscosmos fell from 4.8% in Q1 to 0.1% in Q3.
The Q3 🚀Launch Report just came out. For Q1 - Q3 2024, SpaceX lofted 87% of the world's tonnage to orbit. China's CASC had 6.3%, Roscosmos 2.4%, ULA 1.3%, Arianespace 1%, Firefly 0.3%, and RocketLab 0.1%. Q3 itself was a record low for Roscosmos and a high for RocketLab.
I am delighted to nominate Jared Isaacman, an accomplished business leader, philanthropist, pilot, and astronaut, as Administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Jared will drive NASA’s mission of discovery and inspiration, paving the way for groundbreaking achievements in Space science, technology, and exploration. Over the past 25 years, as the Founder and CEO of Shift4, Jared has demonstrated exceptional leadership, building a trailblazing global financial technology company. He also co-founded and served as CEO of Draken International, a defense aerospace company, for over a decade, supporting the U.S. Department of Defense, and our Allies. Jared’s passion for Space, astronaut experience, and dedication to pushing the boundaries of exploration, unlocking the mysteries of the universe, and advancing the new Space economy, make him ideally suited to lead NASA into a bold new Era. Congratulations to Jared, his wife Monica, and their children, Mila & Liv! 04. Dez. 2024, 4:58 PM
Um 04:16 Weltzeit Erststart einer neuen Variante der Kuaizhou, 1A Pro, die gegenüber der seit 2017 in Dienst stehenden 1A 450 statt 400 kg in den niedrigen Erdorbit befördern kann, von Wenchang. Um 08:29 (ditto UTC), erster 24. Flug einer Falcon 9, Starlink-Mission 6-70, von Cape Canaveral, mit 24 Satelliten. Um 17:59 Start von Kosmos 2580 mit einer Sojus-2.1b vom Kosmodrom Plesetsk.
Und um 23:20 steht der erste Start der europäischen Vega-C von Kourou auf dem Programm, seit im Dezember 2022 der Zerifo-40-Antrieb der zweiten Stufe durch Druckabfall versagt hat. Beginn des Lifestreams in 40 Minuten. Es handelt sich um den 231. Start in diesem Jahr.
Zitat von Ulrich Elkmann im Beitrag #594 PS. 21:25. Verschiebung des Starts von Vega-C um 24 Stunden. Der Start ist vor 2 Tagen schon einmal vom 3. auf heute verlegt worden.
Zitat Arianespace@Arianespace FLIGHT VV25: POSTPONEMENT OF THE LAUNCH (1/2) Due to a mechanical issue preventing the withdrawal of the mobile gantry, the launch chronology has been stopped. The earliest targeted launch date is planned for tomorrow Thursday 5 Dec. at 6:20 p.m. (Kourou time , 9:20 p.m. UTC).
(2/2) The launcher and its passenger the Copernicus Sentinel-1C satellite are in stable and safe conditions. 8:31 PM · Dec 4, 2024
Zitat von Ulrich Elkmann im Beitrag #594Raumfahrtmäßig steppt heute mal wieder der Bär.
Um 04:16 Weltzeit Erststart einer neuen Variante der Kuaizhou, 1A Pro, die gegenüber der seit 2017 in Dienst stehenden 1A 450 statt 400 kg in den niedrigen Erdorbit befördern kann, von Wenchang. Um 08:29 (ditto UTC), erster 24. Flug einer Falcon 9, Starlink-Mission 6-70, von Cape Canaveral, mit 24 Satelliten. Um 17:59 Start von Kosmos 2580 mit einer Sojus-2.1b vom Kosmodrom Plesetsk.
Heute:
00:29 Starlink Gruppe 9-14, Vandenberg - B1081.12. 04:41 18 Kommunikationsatelliten des Typs Qiafan (3. Start zum Aufbau des Komm-Netzwerks) von Taiyuan. 10:34 Start des Sonnenbeobachtungssatelliten PROBA der ESA mit einer PSLV-XL von Satish Dhawan, Indien. 16:10 Start des Kommunikationssatelliten SXM-9 (geostationär) vom Kennedy Space Center - B1076.18.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Direkter Livestream der ESA: https://www.esa.int/ESA_Multimedia/ESA_Web_TV 22:21. Start Sentinel-1C. 22:23. Stufentrennung. t 5:04. Absprengung der Schanzverkleidungen. t 16:49. Brennschluß der 2. Stufe. t 1:43:52. Aussetzen des Satelliten.
Damit hat Europa im ganzen Jahr 3 Starts absolviert - soviel wie SpaceX in den letzten 44 Stunden.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Noch zur Vega-C. Die Rakete ist die einzige in Dienst stehende, die 4 Stufen verwendet - das andere Modell ist die PSLV der ISRO (wobei das P für polar steht). An-sich überfällt jeden, der mit der Ziolkowskischen Raketengleichung vertraut ist, beim Stichwort "4 Stufen" ein leichtes Grauen. Es hat Gründe, warum 95% aller Starts mittlerweile mit zweistufigen Modellen durchgeführt werden (salopp gesagt: die unteren Stufen müssen nicht nur die Nutzlast, sondern auch die noch nicht oberen Stufen samt deren Treibstoff beschleunigen, was deren Einsatzdauer bei zunehmender Zahl exponentiell verringert). Ich vermute, für die Vega-C als Träger leichter Nutzlasten (1,5 t für LEO) wie schon beim Vorläufermodell Vega-ohne-C für die Konfiguration entschieden, weil die unteren 3 Stufen festen Brennstoff verwenden und damit jede Menge komplexer Technik an Leitungen, Pumpen etc. eingespart werden kann; die 4. Stufe kann wie bei der PSLV geregelt werden & dient zum präzisen Einschwenken in die geplante Umlaufbahn.
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
Zitat SpaceX wants to turn its Texas launch site into a cityCiting all the work the company has put into the region, employees are requesting a special election in Cameron County to incorporate a city.
By Berenice Garcia, Dec. 12, 2024
McALLEN — SpaceX’s goal is to colonize Mars. But first, it wants to create an official city in Texas.
Employees living on the site of SpaceX's operations in South Texas are requesting a special election to determine whether the site can be incorporated into a city.
Current residents of Starbase, the company’s South Texas headquarters and launch site, submitted a petition to Cameron County Judge Eddie Treviño Thursday, according to a SpaceX spokesperson.
"We are investing billions in infrastructure and generating hundreds of millions in income and taxes for local businesses and government, all with the goal of making South Texas the Gateway to Mars," said Starbase General Manager Kathryn Lueders in a letter to Treviño.
Lueders wrote the area is home to several hundred employees and that incorporating the site would streamline the processes of building amenities needed to make Starbase a world-class place to live. Elon Musk, who owns SpaceX, announced earlier this year his intentions to move the company’s headquarters to Texas.
The spaceport — and maybe future city — sits on the edge of the Gulf of Mexico and is about 25 miles east of Brownsville, the state’s southernmost city. A single stretch of highway connects the city to the launch site.
"As you know, through agreements with the County, SpaceX currently performs several civil functions around Starbase due to its remote location, including management of the roads, utilities, and the provision of schooling and medical care for the residents," Lueders added. "Incorporation would move the management of some of these functions to a more appropriate public body."
Last month, the Cameron County commissioners denied a variance request from SpaceX that would allow them to subdivide their limited residential area into more lots.
"SpaceX is not the typical developer whose purpose is to build and to sell infrastructure," read an October 10 letter to the county commissioners from an engineering firm representing SpaceX.
"SpaceX's ability to offer adequate housing to its employees onsite is critical to the development of the space launch complex, and there are currently hundreds of employees on the waitlist to move to the campus," the engineer added. "To do this, SpaceX must maximize its space."
If Starbase were to become its own city, it would harken back to an era when cities were typically built around a single company or industry, such as Sugar Land. The town, about 20 miles southwest of Houston, was centered around the Imperial Sugar Company which was created in 1908 followed by the city which was incorporated in 1959.
Greg Abbott@GregAbbott_TX Governor of Texas. Husband to @TexasFLCA. Audrey’s dad. Our lives are not defined by our challenges, but by how we respond to them. Austin,TX instagram.com/governorabbott Joined November 2009
"Les hommes seront toujours fous; et ceux qui croient les guérir sont les plus fous de la bande." - Voltaire
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