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	Archive through November 11, 2025	25		04/01 06:36pm

Slirdarian Corporal;

Hey, was that at me?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Tuesday, November 11, 2025 - 02:24 pm: Edit

It's also a low-cost good will gesture, and a way to calibrate the cameras.

By Roger Rardain (Sky_Captain) on Saturday, November 29, 2025 - 11:02 pm: Edit

The successful launch of 3 new crewmembers to the ISS by Russia on 11/27 has apparently damaged the launch facility.
The launch pad was equipped with a service platform for accessing the Soyuz booster lower stages. It is rolled into a protective area prior to launch. Upon launch, it appears to have come loose and fallen into the flame trench.
The upshot is that since Russia only has this specific launch pad for Soyuz boosters - including MS spacecraft and Progress supply ships - they can't launch anything to the ISS until repairs are done.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Wednesday, April 01, 2026 - 06:24 pm: Edit

We are a Go for launch.

The Next Giant Leap for Mankind.

God speed Artemis II.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Wednesday, April 01, 2026 - 06:36 pm: Edit

Fly Baby Fly.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, April 01, 2026 - 09:07 pm: Edit

All good so far.

By Jessica Orsini (Jessica_Orsini) on Thursday, April 02, 2026 - 09:08 am: Edit

Looks like they managed to fix the toilet problem (which was a fan controller inside the unit).

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, April 02, 2026 - 12:29 pm: Edit

It was the Wollowitz issue. https://www.google.com/search?num=10&sca_esv=80e2d234b7bb7b01&sxsrf=ANbL-n7-ZMMKOSdPQrM5shco22m9SnyySQ:1775147347094&udm=7&fbs=ADc_l-aN0CWEZBOHjofHoaMMDiKpaEWjvZ2Py1XXV8d8KvlI3o6iwGk6Iv1tRbZIBNIVs-5-bUj3iBl-UxHsANYwOkWWIHyK1NRBVtxaVLlI368r1pVkTF8dikqaIUDHe6ZJqgrtGKFguRwxeugWaDc6vA-ZCHR8WPXxHUpvaC4AqgGAe29vMyS3iHy8YkqMAmfHYvNDaUPlZQ6fkk7aiPg8XCKDo9WRwA&q=big+bang+theory+space+toilet&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjkrbCYy8-TAxWZGtAFHYGSFbMQtKgLegQIERAB&biw=1067&bih=493&dpr=1.5#fpstate=ive&vld=cid:13b07090,vid:5fsDDls65AM,st:0

By Tom Lusco (Tlusco) on Tuesday, April 07, 2026 - 01:32 pm: Edit

NASA has started posting high resolution pictures taken by the Artemis crew over on Flickr. Look for 'earthset' or follow Johnson Space Center. Some amazing photos with descriptions.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Friday, April 10, 2026 - 08:08 pm: Edit

Welcome Home Intergrity.

Good mission.

By Mike Curtis (Nashvillen) on Friday, April 10, 2026 - 10:27 pm: Edit

Scheduled time of splashdown before launch, 7min 7sec after the hour. Actual time of splashdown was 7min 27sec after the hour. After traveling nearly 700k miles they were only 20 seconds late...

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, April 11, 2026 - 07:58 am: Edit

The astronauts got home safely. We need a landing on the moon!

By Michael F Guntly (Ares) on Saturday, April 11, 2026 - 11:08 am: Edit

20 seconds late?

They either need a better computer, or need to get rid of the AI.

By Mike Curtis (Nashvillen) on Monday, April 13, 2026 - 10:44 am: Edit

Yeah, they go nearly 700k miles and are 20 seconds late. Go figure.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Monday, April 13, 2026 - 11:57 am: Edit

Well, I thought it was due to the 3 Males not willing to ask for Directions...

Would have been above over a minute late until the Female did!!!

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Sunday, April 26, 2026 - 05:27 pm: Edit

NASA plans to launch Space Reactor One in 2028 on a trip to Mars. This ship uses a fission reactor to power an ion engine. This is ten times the efficiency of rocket engines. This uses the propulsion parts of the cancelled Lunar Gateway. It will carry three helicopter drones known as SkyFall. The drones will not launch from a lander, but in mid-air.

Lunar Reactor One will land on the moon’s South Pole in 2030. It will power the manned moon base. A similar reactor will power the first base on Mars.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Monday, April 27, 2026 - 03:19 pm: Edit

I hope Space Reactor One is launched on a booster that's 100% reliable; I do NOT want a nuclear reactor splattered all over the Florida coast, irradiating a coastline, swimmers, and fishermen, and just because of the problems of boosting weight to orbit, I can see this reactor as not having, because it doesn't NEED, the shielding that US insists on for its ground based reactors.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, April 27, 2026 - 03:48 pm: Edit

We have launched nuclear space probes with nuclear reactor engines before. I think this may be the biggest one.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Monday, April 27, 2026 - 04:53 pm: Edit

Standard space based nuclear is an RTG (Radioisotope thermoelectric generator), which is entirely solid state. The isotopes decay, producing heat, and you basically run a thermocouple in reverse to generate power from that heat source. Containment is by encapsulating relatively small amounts of radioisotopes. Typically Pu238 which has a half-life of 87.7 years.

AFAIK, every probe we've ever sent past Mars has an RTG, and the USSR put some in low Earth Orbit and about a thousand on the ground to power isolated beacons and lighthouses. There was some radiation released by a 1964 US launch, which resulted in tighter safety standards for ours. We've had several more failures since with no release (including the Apollo-13 Lander which reentered after being used to bring the capsule back and where the RTG survived reentry). Soviet ground station power cores have killed at least a few people, but we can blame that on poor Soviet record keeping and safety standards.

Space Reactor One uses both a different reactor core and a different power generation system so as to produce 20 kW rather than a few dozen watts. I doubt that it's as safe as an RTG, but you can be a lot riskier than a modern US RTG and still be quite safe by comparison with risky things like stepping out of a shower.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Monday, April 27, 2026 - 08:16 pm: Edit

This is the biggest ion engine ever, but we have launched some probes with smaller ion engines. Dawn and deep space one both had them. So did DART.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, May 06, 2026 - 03:58 pm: Edit

Space: Russia Warns of Danger from SLV Debris
May 1, 2026: Russia recently advised commercial shipping companies to avoid entering certain waters, including relatively large areas. According to the notice, two payload fairings/metal structures from a Soyuz SLV/Satellite Launch Vehicle were expected to fall into the sea. As the rocket ascends through its stages, these fairings are jettisoned and descend back to Earth.
The Barents Sea is among the world’s most productive marine ecosystems, supporting some of the largest fish stocks on the planet. The designated warning areas, one north of Norway’s Varanger Peninsula and another between Bear Island and Hopen, have been issued as NOTAMs/ Notices to Airmen and NAVAREA alerts that include maritime safety information.
The warnings describe the zones as impact areas for Russian “missiles” in connection with a planned space launch. These long-duration warnings in the Barents Sea region are relatively uncommon. In this case, the restrictions are in force from 13 to 30 April.
According to a space launch tracking site, Russia is targeting 23 April for the launch of a series of satellites aboard a Soyuz-2-1b rocket from the Plesetsk Cosmodrome. The exact launch time will depend on factors such as weather conditions and technical considerations.
The rocket is expected to carry 16 satellites; all part of the Rassvet-3 series of Russian-built low Earth orbit satellites intended to provide high-speed broadband internet. The system is regarded as a Russian alternative to Starlink.
An initial batch of Rassvet-3 satellites was launched in March this year. In total, around 350 satellites are planned for deployment. By 2027, when the first 250 are expected to be in orbit, the service is projected to become commercially operational.
Two years ago Roscosmos\the Russian space agency was enduring the a period of hard times for over a decade. This began before the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and Roscosmos was created by the new Russian Federation to replace the old Soviet Space Program organization. From the beginning Roscosmos never had enough money to pay for what the Russian government wanted done. Worse, SLV technology in the west, especially the United States, was more active and innovative than the Russians.
Reviving the Russian space program was a lot more difficult than most people realized. Russia needed a win for its space program to survive because since 1991, and especially in the last decade, the space program has been a disaster. The problems with the Russian Nauka module built for the ISS/International Space Station was the latest embarrassment. In late 2019 it became a very public disaster when a senior government official openly complained about the corruption and incompetence that was crippling the Russian Space program. This was in reference to the 2018 investigation by auditors and prosecutors which found a billion dollars’ worth of corruption.
Nearly as bad as the corruption has been the losses due to launch failures. Even with insurance Russia suffered nearly $200 million in losses from uninsured launch failures since 2010. Insurance took care of commercial launch failures but these also required Russia to refund over $300 million to customers who had lost satellites. Russia has a harder time finding customers and is paying more for launch insurance. Meanwhile the American SpaceX technology, with first stage rockets that return and land for reuse, cost the Russians even more business. SpaceX was founded in 2002 and by 2010 had designed and successfully used its innovative reusable Falcon 9 SLV. By 2023 one of the early Falcon 9s had been used twenty times. This use of reusable SLVs dramatically reduced the cost of getting satellites and other items into orbit.
Roscosmos was already in trouble before SpaceX showed up. For example, at the end of 2019 it was announced Russia would conduct fifty launches in 2020. At the time this seemed ambitious. That was an understatement because Russia only had sixteen launches in 2020. That’s the worst launch performance since 2008. In one area Roscosmos did excel: the prosecution of officials for corruption.
Roscosmos was created in 1992 and immediately ran into problems with attracting competent workers and managers. Personnel quality kept declining and the average age keeps rising. The end of the Soviet Union in 1991 meant the end of a state-run economy. Russia as a whole prospered once people could work for whoever offered the best pay and professional opportunities. Roscosmos was seen as an employer of last resort for scientific and engineering personnel and those who managed that kind of work. The Russian space program turned into an extensive, about $3 billion a year make-work program for those who could not get jobs in profitable firms. By 2022 Roscosmos provided work for about 250,000 people, including many contractors. It was noted that the American space program did more with 30 percent fewer people. More importantly Roscosmos was still unable to offer competitive pay to attract and retain qualified personnel. This was especially true when it comes to senior officials, who have excelled in only one area: corruption and mismanagement.
The most plundered Roscosmos effort was not launching rockets but building or improving Cosmodrome launch facilities. The most prominent example was the decade-long effort to build the new Vostochny Cosmodrome in southeastern Russia. This was in Amur Province, just north of Manchuria. More than 80 Roscosmos officials were convicted for Vostochny-related corruption. President Putin, who ordered several rounds of corruption investigations, was frustrated by the fact that many of the replacements for jailed officials were subsequently found to be engaged in the same corrupt acts as their predecessors. President Putin even marveled at the thieving officials’ persistence, “You know we’re going to catch you.” Putin has also fired many senior Roscosmos officials for inability to handle one or more aspects of their jobs.
Construction of Vostochny had been underway since 2011 and was fully operational by 2021. The final cost of Vostochny was over six billion dollars. New regulations have been enacted to make it more difficult for officials to set up offshore bank accounts or invest personal funds outside Russia. These Vostochny-related investigations and prosecutions began in 2014 and since then over 20,000 violations have been uncovered. Many of these were due to incompetence or sloppy management. Too many of these violations were criminal in nature, involving theft or misuse of government funds.
Most of the damage at major projects like Vostochny was the result of incompetence, but a lot of the poor work was deliberate. That was often the case when the use of substandard materials was involved. This occurred with a new launch pad and the defective concrete had to be laboriously removed and replaced with concrete capable of handling large rocket launches. Another major source of corruption involved payroll, as in reporting more employees working more hours than was actually the case. Procurement was another profitable area for the corrupt as items that did not exist or were substandard were paid for rather than what was needed.
The government auditors admitted that a lot of the problem was the result of Russia keeping details of such projects secret. Many of the scams would have been obvious if, as in the West, financial details of construction were public records available for anyone to examine. Classified/secret projects are always more prone to corruption or incompetence that goes undetected longer because few people are monitoring how the money is spent.
Vostochny is for commercial, not military, launches and keeping construction details secret does not encourage potential foreign customers. Vostochny will only be profitable if there are a lot of foreign customers for inexpensive and reliable satellite launch services. The government wanted to make Vostochny a project demonstrating how the Russian space program is making a comeback. Instead Vostochny is turning out to be a reminder that not much has changed in Russia except that the traditional problems of corruption and poor management have gotten worse.
Low satellite production levels are another way Roscosmos lags behind the United States. At that time Russia produced about 15 satellites annually. In theory this could be increased to 40 satellites a year. Even 40 satellites are not enough because, for military and civilian users combined, Russia needed about 250 satellites a year. Worse, Russia has fallen behind the west in the capabilities, quality, and reliability of their satellites. Roscosmos cannot compete and with current resources, especially skilled technical and managerial manpower, Russia is way behind and not likely to catch up to the west, or even China, any time soon.
FYEO