Oupiin America’s Post

Read our latest blog on #DelicateStructures in #space: How .NASA used Polytec vibrometers to make sure their solar sail would survive in space: https://lnkd.in/e4b8Tg9y

Casey Handmer has a 🔥 post that underscores that monopsony is the root of what ails us. https://lnkd.in/gWdnaBE7 I grew up in the shadow of the space coast. I watched Shuttle launches from my elementary school court yard. I woke up to the double sonic booms on those exciting saturday mornings (just in time to put on cartoons). The only hope of fixing NASA is creating 'NASA2' and creating more competition inside of government. Arguable SpaceX is NASA2, but still too beholden to the monopsony. There are too many good parts of the blog post (all of it!) but I'll pull out one part that highlights the pathology of ownership. I'd go a step further than Casey and say this shows that owning something means NOTHING. Can you operate it? And if you can 'rent' the outcome, what's the problem? Look at the SpaceX Raptor vs SLS engine price performance difference at 40:1. (Casey has lots of blame on Aerojet... perhaps, but the root blame is the Monopsony): ---- As of 2020, Aerojet officially earned $146m per SSME engine that NASA already paid to develop and build and already had in a warehouse leftover from the Shuttle program. For reference, that’s more than the entire purchase price of a Falcon Heavy. Per engine. In 2023, we learned that despite Aerojet being paid $2.1b to recondition 16 of these engines for SLS, by the end of the contract in 2020 they had delivered only five... [now we are up to $420m/engine]... Once again, these are engines that NASA already owned – and that cost only $40m each to build in the first place. Not that that’s a good price, SpaceX currently builds the far more advanced Raptor engine for under $1m each, and launches the entire Falcon 9 rocket for less than $20m... Just to hammer this point home ... For the price of one SSME, built new back in 2000 in 2024 dollars, SpaceX can launch 3 Falcons. For the newly updated reconditioning price, SpaceX can launch 21 Falcons, which is enough to re-launch the entire International Space Station from scratch. For the entire value of Aerojet’s $2.1b contract, SpaceX can launch 105 Falcons, which is enough to max out SpaceX’s current (2024) considerable launch capacity for more than a year. If NASA is in the business of launching missions to space, why is it giving 10% of its entire annual budget to a contractor only for engines that it already owns? (my editioral: _because_ it owns them) ----- All of this underscores the Need for Speed: https://lnkd.in/g82xphpJ There are things Money Can't Buy: https://lnkd.in/gVJp4CMS and that There is No Process: https://lnkd.in/ggxNPxPH

Another program canceled due to cost overruns. This time it’s NASA’s VIPER moon rover that was targeted to explore the south pole of the moon in search of ice deposits. Even with the moon being at the center of the new space race, a line has been drawn to control cost and schedule.  Organizations need to implement whatever strategies they can to obtain tighter controls and to connect the digital thread throughout the entirety of a program’s lifecycle. Adopting a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach is one very promising (and proven) path to take. https://lnkd.in/eZjBZgY6 #MBSE #Models #programmanagement #digitalengineering #NASA #moonexploration

#OnThisDay Thursday, September 23, 1999 NASA's Mars Climate Orbiter (MCO) crashed into the surface of Mars after mostly burning up in its atmosphere on arrival. Sending the spacecraft approximately 35 miles (57 kilometers) too far into the Martian atmosphere caused it to quickly burn up. The failure to translate English units to metric was a failure of a team of people not properly checking for possible navigation errors. When the final trajectory was “corrected,” the measurement of force was way off. Newtons simplify physics problems, but most people who are not scientists measure things in more common forms of measurement: pound-force, pounds, kilograms, etc. The contractor who developed the software delivered a product that worked in the English Engineering Unit newton (N) measurement instead of the more common International System of Unit of pound-force (lbf). While it was true the contractor had a bias for one way of measuring things, so did the verification and validation process. Tom Gavin, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory reflected on the interplanetary catastrophe: “People make errors. The problem here was not the error. It was the failure of us to look at it end-to-end and find it. It’s unfair to rely on any one person.” The team didn’t catch the error at any time in the mission, even though several anomalies in the software popped up. As other preventable problems we recognized and repaired, the isolated team’s concerns did not reach the operations team or project management. Language is what connects us—but only if we take the time to really understand what is being said.

Exciting news from outer space! The Voyager 1 probe, with the power of an old microcomputer from the 70s and tape technology still operating on board, has been fixed remotely by NASA. The probe has now started to transmit good engineering data again after malfunctioning. This is truly a testament to the incredible engineering that went into the Voyager 1 probe, which has been traveling through space for 46 years. What an impressive project and mission. #NASA #Voyager1 #SpaceExploration #RealSoftwareEngineering

Space News -"Final #NASA 2024 spending #bill defers decision on #MSR #funding"  #space #sciences #spaceexploration #Mars #MarsSampleReturn  #OnOrbitServicing #spaceManufacturing (#OSAM) #satellites #servicing #technology #ISS #InternationalSpaceStation #Commercial #LowEarthOrbit #LEO #spaceprogram #SpaceLaunchSystem #Orion #HumanLandingSystem #HLS mission #heliophysics #GeospaceDynamicsConstellation #Constellation #VERITAS #Venus #nuclearpropulsion #spacetech

NASA has pushed forward a revolutionary new rocket technology at its Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. Engineers at the facility fired the 3D-printed Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE) for a record 251 seconds with 5,800 lb (2,631 kg) of thrust. For more than six decades, NASA has relied on chemical rockets to launch its vehicles into space. It works, but chemical rockets have been operating in the neighborhood of their theoretical limit since 1942. To squeeze more performance out of rocket engines, NASA is looking at a fundamentally different design with the RDRE. Instead of a combustion chamber where fuel and oxygen are fed in to burn at subsonic speed, in an RDRE these are introduced into a gap between two coaxial cylinders. When this mixture is ignited, they form a closely coupled reaction and shock wave. That wave travels inside the gap at supersonic speed, generating more heat and pressure. If this burn can be sustained, it can produce a rocket thrust that is much more efficient. In fact, NASA says that the latest test firing was powerful enough and long enough that it could meet the requirements for a lander touchdown or deep space burn required for a mission to the Moon or Mars. #rocketengine #rdre https://lnkd.in/dNkkKkkj

Some thoughts on independent reviews and reviewers, but also what matters, in the end. #NASA #ArtemisMission #Orion #science #heatshield https://lnkd.in/eDhfHdTf

With NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s efforts to bring humans back to the moon, effective charging infrastructure is more important than ever before. Traditional wired charging solutions do not work due to extreme temperature variations and regolith accumulation. True wireless charging can surpass these hurdles. Read our blog to learn more about our wireless charging solutions for the Moon! https://bit.ly/4dow1LI #wirelesscharging #spacetech #artemisprogram #nasa #startup