December 18, 2017

Reaction Begins Building U.S. Hypersonic Engine Test Site (Source: Aviation Week)
A high-temperature airflow test site designed to evaluate a key technology in the Reaction Engines’ hypersonic air-breathing combined cycle Sabre rocket engine is under assembly at Front Range Airport near Watkins, Colorado. Construction of the facility follows the award earlier this year of a U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) contract to test the engine’s pre-cooler heat exchanger, or HTX. The test work, which is due to start in 2018. (12/18)

Production of First Ariane 6 to Commence (Source: ArianeGroup)
With the successful conclusion of Maturity Gate 6.2, ArianeGroup and its industrial partners are moving into an important new phase in the development of Ariane 6, a flagship European Space Agency (ESA) program. This review confirmed that the industrial process of Ariane 6 is mature enough to start construction of the first launcher, in line with the program’s objectives.

Ariane 6 is specifically designed to be able to respond to evolving market demands. It will be a versatile, modular, competitive launcher, available in two versions, Ariane 62 and Ariane 64, in order to guarantee the continuity of European access to space. (12/18)

Scientists Cautiously Back Trump’s Moon Plan (Source: Cosmos)
Many Americans view their President as flighty, lacking on follow-through. And Robert Zubrin, president of the Mars Society, points out that when John F. Kennedy announced his dream of putting a human on the Moon, he did so in a speech before a joint session of Congress, not in a lightly attended press conference.

“There’s no evidence whatsoever of any serious commitment,” Zubrin says — not to mention that it is far too early to know if Congress will even fund the idea. The moon, he says, could be a useful test-bed for spacecraft designs and other technology ultimately designed to reach beyond. And, he notes, it’s only possible to launch for Mars once every two years: “[In the interim] you’d be idle, so you want to do the moon and Mars in parallel.” (12/18)

Trump’s National Security Strategy to Stress Technological Innovation (Source: Space News)
President Trump is unveiling a new national security strategy that focuses on ensuring U.S. economic prosperity, defending the homeland and posturing the nation to compete against rising technological powers. In the strategy, the administration coins the phrase “national security innovation base” to describe a key asset that the United States must protect.

The president will roll out the strategy Monday afternoon in a speech at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center here. According to a senior administration official, Trump is “excited” about the strategy because it “accurately reflects his priorities.” Click here. (12/18)

Stratolaunch Plane Gets First Taxi Test (Source: GeekWire)
That’s one more not-so-small step for Stratolaunch’s giant airplane: The space venture’s founder, software billionaire Paul Allen, is showing off a 34-second video of the twin-fuselage aircraft as it aced its first taxi test on the runway at the Mojave Air and Space Port in California.

Allen said the test was conducted Saturday, marking a rare outing for the plane that’s destined to serve as a flying platform for launching rockets into space. In a Sunday night tweet, he promised that there’d be “more to share soon”. Click here. (12/18)

SpaceX Delivers Orbital-Debris Sensor to the ISS (Source: Aviation Week)
The International Space Station (ISS) received new opportunities to display its versatility as an orbiting testbed early Dec. 17 with the berthing of SpaceX's 13th NASA-contracted Dragon resupply vessel and 4,800 lb. of crew supplies, science experiments and technology demonstrations. The cargo includes first-time ISS external sensors developed to assess the small-scale orbital debris environment as well as climate-influencing levels of solar energy. (12/17)

NASA Planning to Purchase Earth Science Data From Commercial Smallsat Systems (Source: Space News)
NASA expects to purchase Earth science data from constellations of commercial satellites early next year to see how useful they are in meeting the agency’s research needs. NASA issued a request for information (RFI) Dec. 5 seeking details from companies that have such constellations and are interested in selling data to the agency. The deadline for responses is Dec. 22.

“What we are recognizing is that many of you in the private sector have fielded constellations of small satellites for your own business reasons,” said Michael Freilich, director of NASA’s Earth science division, in a Dec. 12 town hall discussion about the data purchase effort at the Fall Meeting of the American Geophysical Union here. Those systems, he said, may also be collecting data of interest to NASA. “The question that we’re asking in NASA is what value do the data products that come from your small satellite constellations have to the government to advance our research, science and applications interests.” (12/15)

Earthlings, Unite: Let’s Go to Mars (Source: New York Times)
It’s an insane proposal, of course, and I don’t believe the president really means it any more than he means to build his wall — he has probably forgotten saying it already and will deny it if asked. I don’t even think going back to the moon is a good idea, per se; there’s not much there, unless there are any Easter-egg monoliths waiting for us. It doesn’t make much sense as a jumping-off point for Mars or a training ground for deep-space travel, and to quote President Barack Obama: “I just have to say pretty bluntly here: We’ve been there before.” No offense to the moon, but it’s boring; it doesn’t inspire anymore.

I also don’t subscribe to Stephen Hawking’s notion that we need to get off this planet and establish a viable human population elsewhere lest we go extinct. I tend to side with Kim Stanley Robinson, author of a trilogy about the colonization of Mars, who in his more recent book “Aurora” portrays the dream of extraterrestrial colonization as a dangerous escapist fantasy — dangerous because it lets us imagine that we have an out, that we can just ditch this planet after we’ve ruined it instead of grappling with the imminent, serious, possibly terminal problems here, the only homeworld we’re ever going to get.

I don’t support going to Mars for practical reasons at all. I think we should plan to go to Mars because it would be a healthy sign that we, as a civilization, are still planning for a future — that we intend to live. Because right now, frankly, we’re not acting as though we do. We’re acting more the way a friend of mine did in the last year of his life: letting the mail pile up unopened, heaping garbage in the house, littering the floor with detritus, no longer bothering to turn over the calendar pages. He’d clearly decided, on some level, to die. (12/17)