Troublesome Space Company News

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay

It was not a good week for the US space industry. One major US space company is looking to exit the business while the head of another US space company is holding secret talks with Putin.

In the first case, Boeing’s bleak finances may be pushing it to consider the sale of its space business, which includes the troubled Starliner capsule most recently stuck at the International Space Station.

Fortune magazine highlighted comments by Boeing’s new CEO, Kelly Ortber, at his first earnings conference call on Wednesday, where he stated:

We’re better off doing less and doing it better than doing more and not doing it well…What do we want this company to look like five and 10 years from now? And do these things add value to the company or distract us?

This follows rumors that Boeing has been talking with Blue Origin about handing off some of its NASA-related portfolio.

It would appear that Boeing, which has been with NASA since the Apollo program, is having some second thoughts about its role in the space program as it deals with Starliner troubles, airplane manufacturing issues, and an ongoing worker strike.

And then we read about Elon Musk having help secret talks with Russia’s Vladimir Putin since at least 2022. You may remember Mr. Musk raised concerns in Washington when it was learned that he turned off his Starlink system when the Ukranians were planning an attack against invading Russian.

Some in Congress are already calling for an investigation into these discussions, given the role of SpaceX in critical Department of Defense contracts. Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), the House Armed Services Committee’s top Democrat, stated:

We should investigate what Elon Musk is up to to make sure that it is not to the detriment of the national security of the United States.

NASA Administrator Bill Nelson also has some questions, stating:

I don’t know that that story is true. I think it should be investigated…If the story is true that there have been multiple conversations between Elon Musk and the president of Russia, then I think that would be concerning, particularly for NASA, for the Department of Defense, for some of the intelligence agencies.

It has become increasingly apparent that Mr. Musk’s excellence in creating companies will always be trumped by his bone-headed ego. He cannot help but be the center of attention rather than the competent engineer. He should really stay away from social media and social relationships until he can get his ego under control.

As I said, it was not a good week for the US space industry.

Space Quote: Musk Would Need to Divest From SpaceX to Become a Government Efficiency Commissioner

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Credit: Image by S K from Pixabay

“A reasonable individual can look at a situation such as that of a very wealthy individual who has government contracts coming into the government where he would be put in a position where he could influence current and future contracts and regulations of his businesses.”

-Statement by John P. Pelissero, the director of government ethics at the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics at Santa Clara University, as quoted by The Hill. The reference is to Elon Musk and his potential role leading a new “government efficiency commission” should Donald Trump become president. Mr. Musk, who has received billions in government contracts, is currently attending Trump rallies and spending millions of his own funds to support the Trump campaign. In the same article, former Federal Communications Commission Chair Tom Wheeler stated,

If he is that dependent on the decisions of government, he either needs to totally divest in order to do anything in government, or not take the kind of positions that have been promised or been suggested.

Space Stories: Starliner Not on the Schedule, More Questions About Artemis, and the Origin of Most Meteorites

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): The International Space Station. (NASA)

Here are some recent stories of interest.

—Space News: “NASA Further Delays First Operational Starliner Flight“

NASA will use SpaceX’s Crew Dragon for its two crew rotation missions to the International Space Station in 2025 as it continues to evaluate if it will require Boeing to perform another test flight of its Starliner spacecraft. In an Oct. 15 statement, NASA said it will use Crew Dragon for both the Crew-10 mission to the ISS, scheduled for no earlier than February 2025, and the Crew-11 mission scheduled for no earlier than July. Crew-10 will fly NASA astronauts Anne McClain and Nichole Ayers along with astronaut Takuya Onishi from the Japanese space agency JAXA and Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov. NASA has not yet announced the crew for the Crew-11 mission.

—Bloomberg: “NASA’s $100 Billion Moon Mission Is Going Nowhere“

There are government boondoggles, and then there’s NASA’s Artemis program. More than a half century after Neil Armstrong’s giant leap for mankind, Artemis was intended to land astronauts back on the moon. It has so far spent nearly $100 billion without anyone getting off the ground, yet its complexity and outrageous waste are still spiraling upward. The next US president should rethink the program in its entirety.

—CNRS: “The Origin of Most Meteorites Finally Revealed“

An international team led by three researchers from the CNRS1 , the European Southern Observatory (ESO, Europe), and Charles University (Czech Republic) has successfully demonstrated that 70% of all known meteorite falls originate from just three young asteroid families. These families were produced by three recent collisions that occurred in the main asteroid belt 5.8, 7.5, and about 40 million years ago. The team also revealed the sources of other types of meteorites; with this research, the origin of more than 90% of meteorites has now been identified. This discovery is detailed in three papers, a first published on 13 September 2024 in the journal Astronomy and Astrophysics, and two new papers published on 16 October 2024 in Nature.

The Fifth Test of Starship Goes Well

Posted on by onespaceman2000
Image (Credit): An image showing SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster being grabbed midair after the fifth flight test from Boca Chica, Texas. (Taken from a SpaceX video)

Earlier today, SpaceX conducted its fifth Starship test earlier today. It appears it was an overall success, with a new twist. This time the rocket’s Super Heavy booster returned to the launch pad to be captured midair by two metal arms. It seemed like an unnecessary risk to the landing site, but the stunt was successful.

The rocket itself “landed” without incident off Australia’s coast before falling into the sea and exploding.

All in all it went according to plan, which is a good sign for NASA and its future plans for the rocket.

While all the attention today related to the booster bravado, I just want to see a Starship that is ready for the upcoming Artemis mission. After all, all the fancy tricks related to the Starship will look pretty useless should the Chinese be the first to return to the Moon.

Outside Group with Political Agenda Taxing NASA

Posted on by onespaceman2000

As if things could not get more troublesome, the Heritage Foundation appears to be doing a lot of dirty work on behalf of the Trump campaign to obtain internal conversations by NASA employees. According to Reuters, the focus of the campaign against NASA appears to be looking for comments involving Donald Trump and Elon Musk.

The requests are likely to bog down the NASA’s employees while the Heritage Foundation pursues its agenda to eliminate any “disloyal” federal employees, all part of its earlier, now toxic, Project 2025 mission. You might think we were talking about the Soviet Union, but these are the tactics today of the far right.

SpaceX has done very well under the NASA program, but some may want to continue to tip the scales in his favor now that he has come out and supported Trump for president.

NASA is not alone. The Heritage Foundation has been sending tens of thousands of requests to federal agencies in the past two years building up a case against federal employees, most likely in the hope of putting its own selected staff into these same positions.

This is not the way to run a government or win a campaign. Whoever wins the presidential election will have amply opportunity to place its own managers in all of the federal agencies, including NASA. That in itself is tough enough, with a new president needing to fill more than 4,000 positions under normal circumstances, something the last Trump administration struggled to do.