Recommended Posts

WHOA. So a defect in manufacturing which then failed ... and said defect should have never occurred in the first place. WHAT THE ****.

 

That kind of defect just doesn't happen. Not even in Russia. Nobody is that careless.

 

NASA is gonna pull our people for sure now. A defect like this can and will cause explosive decompression events if there are other engineering/design defects. Any Engineer worth their salt knows how to work down a fault tree.

DARPA Blackjack: DoD pivot to LEO satellite constellations

 

Leveraging large LEO constellations and techs (SpaceX's StarLink, OneWeb) for DoD purposes

 

Given the USAF interest, and recent test programs, for using SpaceX's StarLink for military aircraft comms, this sounds way more serious than most DARPA projects. Pages 4 & 5 pf the presentation show a Falcon 9 launch vehicle.

 

Interview with Blackjack Program Manager  Paul "Rusty" Thomas, formerly of SpaceX (Senior Director, Dragon Production) 

 

https://www.c4isrnet.com/thought-leadership/2018/07/30/the-calculus-of-cheaper-military-comms-satellites/

 

Quote

Thomas: Blackjack is aimed at leveraging the new mesh networks being set up by these commercial companies. A user currently in the DoD might need to look up at two or three different options in space to actually talk and do communications in this space segment. Once we link up and do encryption, the user on the ground will look up and see hundreds or more potential network nodes overhead at any given point on the planet, North Pole to South Pole; it’s going to drastically change how the DoD does communication.

That is a bit independent of what Blackjack is going to do. If the commercial companies succeed and come out, that capability, call it raw gigabit-per-second class, not all of them it. But they all have many megabit data links from one point of the planet to another, at very low latency, 100-200 milliseconds, so you do really change the game for how any user, DoD included, does global communication.

 

PowerPoint...

 

PowerPoint as PDF...

Edited by DocM

69th IAC from 1st to the 5th of October, 2018.

 

Quote

GLOBAL NETWORKING FORUM

Reusability: The Key to Reliability and Affordability

Wednesday 3 October 2018, 11:20 – 12:20

Location: Bremen Conference Center – DLR Hall

 

Quote

Hans Koenigsmann

Vice President of Build and Flight Reliability,

SpaceX,

http://www.iafastro.org/events/iac/iac-2018/global-networking-forum/wednesday-dlr-hall-1120-1220-reusability-the-key-to-reliability-and-affordability/

India Unveils Its Own Spacesuit Design for 2022 Astronaut Flights

 

1917444856_ISROsuit.thumb.jpg.e3803fb88485724438c454c9685fe7bd.jpg

 

Quote

The Indian Space Research Organisation showed off the spacesuit it has designed in-house for its first human space missions at an event held on Sept. 6.

The display comes weeks after the country announced an ambitious timeline to launch its first crewed mission by 2022 in time to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the country's independence. The human-spaceflight program is called Gaganyaan and will build on the legacy of India's first astronaut, Rakesh Sharma, who flew in 1984. But this time, India is developing every aspect of the program, which means tackling problems like spacesuit design. 

https://www.space.com/41774-india-unveils-spacesuit-design-gagayaan-2022.html?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=social

Farewell, Delta II !!

What a workhorse, and still launched by an 'ugly bag of mostly water' pressing a console button.

There's one more in storage, currently spare parts for this mission but likely headed for a museum after the ICESat-2 launch.

 

NASA's ICESat-2; observations of ice-sheet elevation change, sea-ice freeboard, and vegetation canopy height.

 

Saturday Sept. 15

 

SLC-2W, Vandenberg Air Force Base

 

0546-0820 PDT; 0846-1120 EDT; 1246-1520 GMT

 

 

Edited by DocM
  • Like 2

We know SpaceX and Blue Origin are in full reusable mode. China is also slowly adapting to this.

 

Look familiar....

 

China's latest satellite launch used a parafoil to limit damage downrange

 

Quote

China tested the use of a parafoil on the payload fairing of its latest orbital launch last Friday, with the aim of improving accuracy of its return to Earth and potentially eventual reusability.

The launch of the Haiyang-1C marine observation satellite took place at the Taiyuan Satellite Launch Centre in north China, with a Long March 2C rocket successfully placing the satellite into a 770 x 786 km altitude orbit inclined by 98.6 degrees.

China's traditional satellite launch sites are situated deep inland, due in main to the security concerns raised by the ongoing Cold War and Sino-Soviet split. This means discarded stages, boosters and payload fairings often fall to ground - sometimes in inhabited areas - instead of the oceans, as with US and European launches.

Following and inspired by the successes of SpaceX and Blue Origin in launching and landing and, in this case, attempting to recover payloads, the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation (CASC), the main space programme contractor, is seeking to bring similar technology to bear on its own launch vehicles.

https://gbtimes.com/chinas-latest-satellite-launch-used-a-parafoil-to-limit-damage-downrange

 

[youtube]

 

 

?

Quote

40 years ago today, September 17, 1978: Audiences are introduced to the Twelve Colonies of Mankind, which are about to have a very, very bad day.

https://twitter.com/daytonward/status/1041671442893615104

 

1397715070_40yearsagoSeptember171978.thumb.jpg.dc09456dd590be7ff28fce166bd12d87.jpg

  • Like 3

Michigan Low Earth Orbit Launch Facility

There's a 2-day workshp this weekend in Traverse City. State, local; Boeing Defense, Space & Security; United Launch Alliance, ATLAS Space Operations (moved here from California), etc.

Keynote Address: Lt Gen David A. Deptula, USAF (Ret.)

 

Wonder if they're going to re-open the Upper Peninsula's Keweenaw Rocket Range, which closed in 1971?

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
  • Posts

    • Meta will now use data from outside businesses to personalize AI responses by David Uzondu In an update that's rolling out globally (except in a handful of countries), Meta will use your data from outside businesses to personalize your AI responses and your primary feeds. Meta already utilizes your shopping activity to target ads, but the company now plans to expand this tracking to personalize other "parts of your experience" like feed algorithms and AI assistant chats. The company is replacing the two settings ("Your activity off Meta technologies" and "Activity from other businesses") that currently let you disconnect off-platform activity with a single, renamed setting called Activity from other businesses. If you don't want Meta to manipulate your feed and AI responses using your outside history, you can just turn the Activity from other businesses setting off in your account settings. This toggle resides within your Accounts Center, applying your choice to every connected profile. Turning this off will not stop companies from sending your data to Meta. The company will still collect your web interactions, but it only uses them to train products, while still accessing external accounts you connect. When The Verge spoke to Meta spokesperson, Emil Vazquez, the representative said that this update will exclude several locations at launch including the European region, the UK, Brazil, Thailand, South Africa, Turkey, South Korea, Ecuador, Nigeria, and Kenya. The new update comes at a time when the social media giant is recovering from a major PR disaster involving generative AI. Last week, there was a huge security issue on Instagram where attackers figured out a way to exploit a prompt injection vulnerability. Hackers managed to trick Meta AI into handing over account ownership (even if the victim had 2FA enabled). Some of the affected accounts include the dormant Obama White House profile, cosmetics brand Sephora, the Chief Master Sergeant of the Space Force, and security researcher Jane Manchun Wong. Internally, the company also had to scale back plans on its Model Capability Initiative (MCI), an employee-monitoring program designed to train corporate AI models by recording worker keystrokes and screen activity, after employees raised privacy concerns and complained about severe battery life drain.
    • JetBrains is working to cut false positives in RustRover 2026.2 by David Uzondu Recently, JetBrains released the fifth EAP build of its dedicated IDE, RustRover 2026.2, bringing improvements like a Run gutter icon for criterion_main! macro benchmarking and a feature that alerts you when there are unused traits in your current scope. Now, the company is out with a blog post addressing one of the "most common" complaints from users: false positives. In RustRover, a false positive occurs when the editor incorrectly highlights something as an error even though the project compiles and runs successfully. This mismatch flags a gap between the IDE's internal intelligence and the actual compiler. When the editor flashes red warnings over perfectly valid code, developers lose trust in the tool, which stalls momentum. Traditionally, RustRover runs cargo check to detect compiler errors and warnings, but it also relies on its own code analysis engine to power real-time features. To provide quick feedback, this engine parses your source code into a syntax tree while inferring types and resolving names as you type. Because this engine must work on broken, half-written code and react instantly, its logic sometimes diverges from the compiler's, producing false positives that do not exist in the compiler's eyes. JetBrains said that it has a "dedicated task force" focused specifically on identifying and fixing false positives by analyzing user reports and examining large-scale open-source projects. To speed up this process, the team built an internal system modeled after Crater, the famous Rust project that compiles and runs tests for every single crate published on crates.io. This automated pipeline compares the diagnostics from RustRover's analysis with actual compiler output to catch discrepancies before they reach users, ensuring smoother workflows. RustRover, for those who're unaware, is a dedicated IDE designed specifically for Rust developers. It's been around for a couple of years now, providing features like built-in debugging via LLDB, seamless cargo integration, advanced macro expansion, and HTML support. JetBrains distributes the app under two licensing models: a paid commercial subscription and a free option for non-commercial use.
    • Last year I bought the 2TB variant for $114 on Amazon. That's crazy that the 1TB is now 67% more expensive for half the storage, even with the newer T9 already on the market. And that's considered a good deal.
    • You can disable all non needed features from Brave. There is also Brave Origin which removes them entirely and it is free for Linux.
    • I wish I could use Brave but the tab suspension feature is horrible. It doesn't suspend them like Edge does. Even after 2h open with 70+ tabs (same as Edge), it has 2GB more consumption than Edge for no reason.
  • Recent Achievements

    • One Year In
      Primer1st earned a badge
      One Year In
    • Experienced
      JayZJay went up a rank
      Experienced
    • Reacting Well
      Sir_Timbit earned a badge
      Reacting Well
    • Week One Done
      rubentuben8 earned a badge
      Week One Done
    • Week One Done
      ARaclen earned a badge
      Week One Done
  • Popular Contributors

    1. 1
      +primortal
      512
    2. 2
      PsYcHoKiLLa
      229
    3. 3
      Edouard
      135
    4. 4
      ATLien_0
      87
    5. 5
      Steven P.
      81
  • Tell a friend

    Love Neowin? Tell a friend!