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Saturday’s Forum
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7 responses to “Saturday’s Forum”
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NASA is set to launch the Nancy Grace Roman space telescope on Sunday. It will be stationed at the L2 point in the Earth-Sun system, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth.
This piece talks about attempts by El Taco’s so-called administration to cancel it, along with lots of other science missions.
I found two things of interest. One is El Taco seems determined to reduce NASA’s budget, at a time when he desperately wants NASA to land on the Moon.
The other is near the end, where we’re informed the telescope will be launched on a Xalcon 9 Heavy. The piece notes Xpaces is phasing it out along with the Xalcon 9 rocket to concentrate on Xtarship.
I’d not heard this. I find it so remarkably stupid as to be hard to believe. Xtarship has not managed yet to either achieve orbit or even reach orbital speed. While it seems great on paper, actual performance to date suggests a far lower payload than advertised, and the low, low launch cost Adolf promises is contingent on full reusability.
I’m getting Shuttle vibes.
The Shuttle system was a heavy lift concept, too, which couldn’t get much of a payload into orbit, if we consider payload to be crew, supplies, power, satellites, probes, etc. Because the orbiter itself, the plane like vehicle, massed several times the payload. Most of the awesome amount of energy put into it was to get the orbiter in orbit. Naturally this was obvious from the start. NASA deemed it to be worth it, because the ability to reuse the orbiter itself, including its very sophisticated engines, as well as the solid fuel boosters, would bring launch costs down.
Well, the Shuttle wound up as one of the most expensive launch systems in history.
True, it could do things which had been impossible before. It could bring cargo back from orbit, and it could be used as a platform to repair satellites. Not much was brought back (excepting cargo brought up in the same mission, like Spacelab). As to repairs, Past the very notorious missions to first repair the optical flaw in Hubble and to provide maintenance for it, I can’t think of any others.
Guess what. The Xtarship upper stage is heavier than the orbiter. 100 metric tons to about 80.
Could it be Adolf overpromised and will underdeliver? Unpossible!
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I have much harsher words for the United Launch Alliance. Their new rocket has flown once this year, when the “solved” solid rocket booster problem manifested again. They’ve been grounded long enough that from the outside it’s looking like that problem has pushed things back to the design stage. We’re at the end of August, and most of the other 22 flights ULA booked for the Vulcan this year won’t go. It’s not just possible ULA has over-promised and will under-deliver; they’ve already done so.
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Sure. But there are two major differences:
1) ULA is half Boeing, and no one expects any good from Boeing.
2) ULA never promised to deliver a quantum leap in cargo capacity coupled with an astonishing drop in launch costs.
Oh, and despite the many failings of the Vulcan rocket, it has actually reached orbit.
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Maybe we should pump the brakes on slagging Boeing. Yeah, they have had some issues, bad wiring, systems that roll the trim full nose-down by themselves, fuel cut off switches somehow moving to cut-off, but everybody has a string of bad luck every now and again.
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some interesting charts, permian gas and oil production:
https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=67984
https://x.com/JavierBlas/status/2093017289138262226?s=20&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email
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I admit that I’m full of stupid questions. Here’s today’s. I’m paying more than a dollar a gallon more for fuel than I did last year. Where is that extra dollar going? Who gets the extra dollar? Extractors, distillers, shippers? ExxonMobil must be part of the answer since the XOM stock is up 37% this past year. Is that it?
