March 29, 2020

Space Force Ups the Launch Ante at Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: Aviation Week)
A recent 45th Space Wing commander set a goal of 48 launches annually by 2020. In July and August of 2019, the Air Force Eastern Range supported four launches in four weeks, and in December 2019 there were two launches in the same week. In January 2020 the Eastern Range was prepared to launch twice in the same day. "We want to launch when anybody needs us to launch," says Wing Commander Gen. Douglas Schiess. He envisions achieving launch-on-demand by implementing different scheduling practices and improving infrastructure. (3/27)

Rethinking 'Shareholders First' (Source: Aviation Week)
Encouraged by the late economist Milton Friedman and success stories such as General Electric's, aerospace companies began to adopt "shareholders first" in the 1990s. Traditional manufacturing declined in favor of profit growth driven by financial services. Employees were the first casualty, with unions weakened and raises curtailed. For example, until recently, Honeywell imposed mandatory unpaid leave on its employees, while it was making 20% margins.

Boeingspent an average of $12.8 billion in share buybacks and dividents in 2018 and 2019, while averaging just $2.2 billion in R&D. This is not just a Boeing problem; it is a corporate America problem. In 2018, share buybacks and dividends for the S&P 500 were an astounding 109% of net income. "Shareholder first" needs to be replaced with a more balanced version of capitalism if the aerospace industry is to thrive in the long run. (3//26)

SpaceX Needs to Maximize Manufacturing Efficiency (Source: Aviation Week)
At one time, SpaceX planned to produce 4 or so Falcon core stages per year, says COO Gwynne Shotwell. But that rate of production became unnecessary once SpaceX finalized a boster design that is expected to fly 10 times wiht minimal refurbishment between launches. Boosting Falcon first-state manufacturing to 40 per year, however, would have helped the company learn more about improving production technologies, Shotwell says. "Manufacturing is hard to do, and I think the U.S has kind of lost the magic. We have a lot to learn from others."

Elon Musk wants a fleet of 1,000 Starships, but he is starting to feel the heavy hand of time. "If we don't improve our pace of progress, I'm definitely going to be dead before we go to Mars," he says. Which may explain Musk's latest mantra: "If the schedule is long, the design is wrong." (3/27

SpaceX Stacks Third Starship Prototype Ahead of Testing (Source: Space.com)
SpaceX's newest Starship prototype is standing tall. The latest test version of the Mars-colonizing Starship spacecraft, called the SN3, has been stacked at SpaceX's South Texas facilities, new photos tweeted out by company founder and CEO Elon Musk show. Musk posted two images on Twitter about 45 minutes apart early Thursday morning (March 26). The first shows the SN3's tank and engine sections sitting side-by-side in an assembly facility, and the second shows them joined.

SN3 is short for Serial No. 3; the prototype is the third iteration of the latest Starship design. Completion of the stacking milestone suggests that SpaceX, which has been moving very quickly on the Starship project, will begin testing the vehicle soon. Such testing will begin with pressure trials, which have felled other Starship prototypes. But if the SN3 makes it through that gauntlet, it will likely get to spread its wings. Musk has said he aims to conduct short flights in Earth's atmosphere with the SN3, then fly higher and longer test missions with the SN4. (3/27)

Scientists Calculate Age of Massive Neutron Star Crash That Helped Form Our Solar System (Source: Space.com)
Astronomers are on the hunt for the remnants of the neutron-star collision that gave Earth its precious metals. When neutron stars merge, they spew a wealth of short-lived elements into their surroundings, and these materials become part of later-forming solar systems. Now scientists are trying to close in on the merger that seeded our solar system by tracing the elements produced by the original decaying material. From that work, they believe the responsible merger occurred 100 million years before and 1,000 light-years away from the birth of our solar system.

"It was close," the project's lead scientist, Szabolcs Marka, who is a physicist at Columbia University, told Space.com. "If you look up at the sky and you see a neutron-star merger 1,000 light-years away, it would outshine the entire night sky." Marka and his colleague Imre Bartos, an astrophysicist at the University of Florida, used meteorites from the dawn of the solar system to track down the collision. They analyzed the isotopes — flavors of elements with different numbers of neutrons in their atoms — in these rocks. (3/26)

Astronauts in Space are Beaming Positivity to the People of Earth (Source: Space.com)
Astronauts at the International Space Station are sharing positivity and stunning images of our home planet from their temporary home in orbit as the world grapples with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. Yesterday (March 26), NASA astronaut Andrew Morgan shared a hopeful sentiment from the International Space Station on Twitter. Alongside a stunning image of the Earth, with a piece of the space station in view, he wrote: "Even during our toughest times, we live on a beautiful planet. Stay strong planet Earth, we're in this together. #SpaceStation4all." (3/27)

Space Force Is Sifting Through 700 Crowdsourced Name Suggestions for its Troops (Source: Military.com)
The new U.S. Space Force is moving forward with plans to announce key information about its development, even as the military ramps up its response to the coronavirus outbreak. One imminent announcement concerns what Space Force troops will be called, the service's top general, Gen. John "Jay" Raymond, said Friday.

"The naming of our space professionals, we did a crowdsourcing ... with over 700 responses to that, and we're narrowing down that list, and I think you'll be hearing an announcement on that in the very near future," Raymond, the first-ever chief of space operations, told reporters during a briefing at the Pentagon. The Pentagon in February began soliciting ideas from individuals already assigned to the fledgling service in an effort to decide on a future, gender-neutral nomenclature. (3/27)

French Space Agency Donates 90,000 Face Masks to Hospitals (Source: Space News)
Hospitals in Toulouse, France, received 90,000 face masks from the French space agency CNES this week in an effort to help limit the spread of the coronavirus pandemic, according to the agency’s president. In an interview March 24, Jean-Yves Le Gall said CNES had a stockpile of face masks because of a French policy initiative roughly a decade ago directing government agencies to keep masks on hand in the event of a global pandemic. Many of the masks are beyond their designated three-to-five-years. (3/27)

Astra Rocket Damaged in Alaska Pre-Launch Test (Source: Space News)
Small launch vehicle startup Astra has postponed its next launch attempt after the rocket was damaged in what local officials say was an “anomaly” during a prelaunch test. Astra had been preparing for a launch of its “Rocket 3.0” vehicle as soon as March 24 from Pacific Spaceport Complex – Alaska. A previous launch attempt March 2, part of the now-completed DARPA Launch Challenge, was scrubbed less than a minute before liftoff after sensors reported anomalous data.

However, notices to airmen, or NOTAMs, posted by the Federal Aviation Administration restricting airspace around and downrange from the launch site for launch attempts March 24 and 25 were taken down late March 23. Chris Kemp, chief executive of Astra, said the rocket had been damaged in prelaunch testing earlier in the day. “We’ll be rescheduling launch,” he said, but had not selected a new launch date. He did not elaborate on the damage the rocket sustained. (3/24)