HUGE Changes for STARSHIP!

Huge CHANGES at Starbase!

Crash landing! NASA Moon touchdown more violent than originally thought...

Johnson Island And The US Air Force's AntoSatellite Weapons

Johnston Island Johnston Island, located hundreds of kilometers from Hawaii, was the location of an American nuclear-armed anti-satellite program for approximately a decade. The island was small and offered no protection from weather or rocket launch accidents. The island is now abandoned. (credit: USAF) The middle of No and Where: Johnston Island and the US Air Force’s nuclear anti-satellite weapon by Dwayne A. Day Monday, February 26, 2024 Bookmark and Share Recently there was a flurry of media attention about Russia’s reported development of a nuclear-armed anti-satellite (ASAT) weapon. Soon after the space age began in the late 1950s, both the United States and Soviet Union began studying and then developing and deploying ASATs. From 1962 to 1975 the United States Air Force operated the nuclear-armed Program 437 ASAT from a remote location in the Pacific Ocean known as Johnston Island. Johnston was not only remote, it was small. There was nowhere to hide from exploding rockets or annoying coworkers, and if your hobbies did not include fishing or softball, you were stuck with the base library’s small collection of books. Now, a recently discovered trove of photographs of Johnston Island personnel and facilities sheds some light on what life was like on the tiny island where America kept its nuclear ASAT. Johnston Island A nuclear-armed Program 437 ASAT. The weapon was carried into space atop a Thor missile. The program was operational until the early 1970s. (credit: USAF) Johnston Island—also Johnston Atoll—is located several hundred kilometers southwest of the Hawaiian Islands. It has been abandoned since 2005 and an image on Google Earth shows only one structure remaining on the island, which is being overgrown with scrub. However, at one time, much of the land that was not covered with a runway was covered with living and work structures. The US Navy first started construction on the island in the 1930s and it served as a naval airfield during World War II. The Air Force added facilities in the 1950s including missile launch capabilities, and in 1962 it was the site of the Operation Fishbowl series of high-altitude nuclear tests. Johnston Island On Johnston Island, everything was near everything else. The launch pads were very close to the barracks. (credit: Joseph T. Page II) Johnston Island There were two active pads for the Program 437 Thor missiles. Launch control was dangerously close to the pads. One person here did not want to be photographed. (credit: USAF) Also in 1962, Johnston Island became the site for the Air Force’s Program 437 ASAT weapon, which used a Thor missile to launch a one-megaton nuclear weapon on a ballistic trajectory (not orbital) to destroy its target. The system became operational in 1964, with two active pads on the small island. In later years a major goal of the program was the interception of Soviet fractional or multi-orbit bombardment systems (FOBS/MOBS) that the CIA believed the Soviet Union was developing. However, Program 437 had limited ability to attack such targets because many would be out of range. Johnston Island Thor had been built in the 1950s and withdrawn from missile duty by the early 1960s. Many of the missiles were converted to launch satellites. (credit: USAF) In December 1965, and January and March 1966, the Air Force tested the Program 437AP, for “alternative payload.” This was a camera system designed to photograph satellites in space when the 437AP payload was briefly within view of a target during its lofted trajectory. The first two flights failed, but the third was a success. Although the Air Force acknowledged in an official history that the payload was a camera system, and for the third mission the target was an American Agena spacecraft in orbit, few details have been released. Johnston Island Launch of a Program 437AP spacecraft equipped with a camera for photographing spacecraft in flight. One successful AP mission was flown, but the system was severely limited in capability. (credit: USAF) Program 437 always had major limitations in terms of capabilities as well as location and resources. The Thor missiles were being used up by the Air Force during the 1960s, most of them converted to launch spacecraft. There was also the ever-present possibility that a storm could severely damage the launch site. By 1970, the program was put in standby status until it was finally ended in 1974 and removed from the island by 1975 (see “To attack or deter? The role of anti-satellite weapons,” The Space Review, April 20, 2020.) Johnston Island Johnston Island was so small that it was impossible to retreat to a safe distance during launches. The safety procedure was simple: Run. (credit: USAF) Johnston Island Johnston Island did not have much to offer its residents. This eating area was located next to the airfield tower, not far from the water. (credit: USAF) Aerial images of Johnston Island in its heyday give a sense of how small and crowded it was, but the reality for those assigned there must have been alarming. Flat as a pancake, a big typhoon could have scrubbed the island clean. Living and recreation quarters were located very close to the launch pads and their nuclear weapons. Exploding rockets could fall on personnel who had no safe locations to retreat to. Launch pad fires could pose threats to nearby structures and people. In 1962, a Thor missile with a nuclear weapon on top exploded and burned on the launch pad, spreading radioactive debris in the immediate area, which was not far from where hundreds of people were barracked. The radioactive wreckage was cleaned up, but everybody who worked there realized the dangers. Johnston Island Scrapbooks kept by base personnel show lots of fish caught on the island, which was far out in the Pacific Ocean. (credit: USAF) Johnston Island Softball was one of the few recreational activities on Johnston Island. (credit: USAF) Although official histories have captured the details of operations at the facility, photos provide some indication of what people did for entertainment. The options were relatively limited, mostly confined to fishing and softball. Base personnel competed to see who could catch the biggest fish. The island had at least one beach that was swimmable. A photo of the airmen’s lounge was perhaps intended to be ironic, showing four chairs and a television set. Viewing options were undoubtedly limited because the only signal came via satellite link. Johnston Island Serving on Johnston Island was not a desired posting. (credit: Joseph T. Page II) Perhaps the most telling images are a series of photos showing personnel lined up at the airfield to greet their replacements. In several photos they were holding up crude hand-made signs offering profane goodbyes to departing crews, and equally profane welcomes to the new arrivals. The nicest sign said “Smile – you were hand picked for this assignment.” Johnston Island Johnston Island personnel bidding farewell to their compatriots. (credit: USAF) Johnston Island Military humor. (credit: USAF) Dwayne Day has previously written about interceptor satellites and American ASATs. He can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.

The Phases Of Lunar Success Revisited

Im-1 in orbit An image from the Intuitive Machines IM-1 lunar lander mission after the spacecraft entered orbit around the Moon. (credit: Intuitive Machines) The phases of lunar lander success, revisited by Jeff Foust Monday, February 26, 2024 Bookmark and Share Once again, the space community is grappling with how to characterize something less than undisputed, 100% perfection in a mission. That was the case last year when SpaceX launched its Starship vehicle on its first two test flights, both failing to complete their mission profiles but providing valuable experience for the company ahead of its next test flight, as soon as March (see “Grading on a suborbital curve”, The Space Review, April 24, 2023.) Last month, it involved two lunar landers: Astrobotic’s Peregrine, which suffered a propellant leak and failed to attempt a lunar landing, and Japan’s Smart Lander for Investigating Moon (SLIM), which did land on the surface but did so askew, tipped forward on its nose (see “The phases of lunar lander success”, The Space Review, January 22, 2024.) “What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the Moon and we are transmitting. So, congratulations IM team,” Crain said. The situation now involves another lunar lander, a case of history, if not repeating, at least rhyming. The Nova-C lander, named Odysseus by Intuitive Machines, was flying the IM-1 mission to the Moon, attempting a landing late in the afternoon (Houston time, where the company is headquartered) Thursday. Unlike the SLIM landing last month, which featured a webcast with detailed telemetry from the spacecraft—and which offered the first hint that something went wrong with the landing—the joint NASA/Intuitive Machines webcast provided only repeated computer animations and audio from mission control. The spacecraft made its final descent towards the surface, with a landing planned for 6:23 pm EST. That time came and went with no confirmation that Odysseus was on the surface. Had the lander crashed in its final descent, or was there just a problem with communications. “We’re not dead yet,” quipped Tim Crain, chief technology officer of Intuitive Machines and flight director, as they tried to establish communications with the lander. Finally, about 15 minutes after landing, the company said it had a signal from the lander. “What we can confirm, without a doubt, is our equipment is on the surface of the Moon and we are transmitting. So, congratulations IM team,” Crain said. “Houston, Odysseus has found his new home.” The webcast cut away to a scene at company headquarters were employees and their guests cheered the news. The announcement was enough for the company, and for NASA, to declare the landing a success. “Today, for the first time in more than a half-century, the US has returned to the Moon,” NASA administrator Bill Nelson said in remarks on the webcast just minutes after Crain’s announcement. “Today is a day that shows the power and promise of NASA’s commercial partnerships.” “What a triumph! Odysseus has taken the Moon,” he said. “Stay tuned.” The last comment was more figurative than literal: NASA and Intuitive Machines ended the webcast moments later. For nearly 24 hours afterwards, there were only a few updates from the company, including one a couple hours after landing where the company said the lander was upright and would soon be returning images. Yet by late Friday afternoon, there were no images yet released from the company and few other details about the health of the spacecraft. That’s when the company revealed the bad news. The lander “caught a foot in the surface, and the lander has tipped,” said Intuitive Machines CEO Steve Altemus. With no images from the lander yet, he illustrated the situation with a model of the lander, placing it on its side, resting the top of the lander on what appeared to be an even smaller model of the lander serving as a rock. The problem, Altemus and Crain said, appeared to come in the lander’s final descent. Odysseus was supposed to come straight down at a velocity of about one meter per second. Instead, it was descending at about three times that rate, with a meter per second of lateral velocity as well. In that case, the foot of one of the six landing legs might have hit the surface first and tipped the lander. “If you catch a foot, we might have fractured that landing gear and tipped over gently,” Altemus said. So why had the company said hours after landing that the spacecraft was upright? Altemus blamed “stale telemetry” from fuel tanks on the lander that initially indicated the lander was upright. Updated telemetry, he said, showed the lander was on its side. In that configuration, Odysseus was having problems communicating with Earth. Some of its antennas are now pointing at the surface. “That really is a limiter in our ability to communicate and get the right data down so we get everything for the mission,” Altemus said. Crain said engineers were working on reconfiguring communications equipment on the lander to optimize the performance of the other antennas. “We expect to get most of the mission data down once we stabilize our configuration,” Crain said. He said the company expected to keep operating the lander until the end of the lunar day. “Best-case scenario, we're looking at another nine to ten days,” he said. The company, in a press kit published before the launch, projected a lifetime on the surface of about seven days. “Based on Earth and Moon positioning, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning,” the company said in its update Monday. The company waited until Monday morning for is next update, which offered both good and bad news. The good news was that NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter spotted the lander in images taken over the weekend. It showed Odysseus had landed 1.5 kilometers from its planned location. At Friday’s briefing, Crain expected a landing precision of two to three kilometers based on the performance of the lander’s optical navigation system. However, NASA, in a release about the images, noted that the landing location was within a “degraded” crater a kilometer across, with an estimated slope at the landing site of 12 degrees. Intuitive Machines hadn’t disclosed the maximum slope for a safe landing, but Crain said at Friday’s briefing that a higher slope than expected could have contributed to the lander’s toppling. A slope, he said, “would also explain a tip-over, if there was more slope than anticipated at touchdown.” The company also said that mission operations would soon end. “Flight controllers intend to collect data until the lander’s solar panels are no longer exposed to light. Based on Earth and Moon positioning, we believe flight controllers will continue to communicate with Odysseus until Tuesday morning,” the company said in its update Monday. Im-1 in orbit A low-resolution image from Odysseus after landing, showing part of the lander and the shadow it cast on the lunar surface. (credit: Intuitive Machines) Degrees of success So does a spacecraft that made it to the surface intact, but on its side, and operating at less than full capacity for less than its planned lifetime, count as a success or a failure? Many hailed the success, including NASA, the biggest customer for the IM-1 mission through its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. Intuitive Machines had a CLPS award that, after amendments, was valued at $118 million for the mission. “Let me congratulate Intuitive Machines for three major accomplishments,” said Joel Kearns, NASA deputy associate administrator for exploration in the Science Mission Directorate, at Friday’s briefing. Those accomplishments were the first soft-landing on the Moon by the US since Apollo 17 in 1972, the first soft-landing by any non-governmental entity, and the landing that was the closest yet to the south pole, at about 80 degrees south latitude. “This is a gigantic accomplishment.” Kudos also came in from the White House. “I congratulate the Intuitive Machines team who successfully landed Odysseus, as well as their partners at NASA who are shaping the future of human space exploration,” President Biden said in a statement Saturday. “America is leading the world back to the Moon.” The stock market, though, was less congratulatory. Shares in Intuitive Machines, which have traded on the Nasdaq for a little more than a year after the company went public through a merger with a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC), fell nearly 35% in trading Monday, giving up most of the gains it recorded in the days since the IM-1 launch early February 15. So who’s right: Wall Street or Pennsylvania Avenue? The truth, as you might have already guessed, is somewhere in between. One way to examine mission success is to look at how well Intuitive Machines served its customers. The lander carried six NASA payloads and six for other customers, ranging from individuals to companies to a university. “No matter what happens, I’m extremely proud of this team,” ERAU’s Henderson said of his EagleCam student team. Four of the payloads were passive, and just getting to the Moon was enough. That included a laser retroreflector from NASA, an artwork from Jeff Koons (famous, or maybe infamous, for his “balloon animal” sculptures), a data archive in the form of a disc from Galactic Legacy Labs, and insulation from Columbia Sportwear that was used in a closeout panel to protect a cryogenic propellant tank. They wanted to get to the Moon, and now they’re there. Some payloads were able to operate during the transit to the Moon, achieving some, if not all, of their objectives. That included a radiofrequency mass gauge from NASA, designed to use radio waves to measure the amount of propellant inside, and an S-band navigation beacon, also from NASA. A startup, Lonestar Data Holdings, said it planned a series of in-flight tests of a data archive, transmitting and receiving documents as a proof-of-concept of future lunar data centers for “disaster recovery as a service.” The jury is out on a few payloads. It appears unlikely that a NASA radio astronomy experiment called Radio Observations of the Lunar Surface Photoelectron Sheath (ROLSES) will be able to operate as expected. It planned to use four antennas to measure low-frequency radio waves from various sources, including a sheath of electrons just above the lunar surface. It’s not clear that ROLSES can operate in a useful way with Odysseus on its side. Another NASA experiment, Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume-Surface Studies (SCALPSS), was supposed to take images of the dust plume kicked up by the landing, but communications issues may prevent it from returning more than a few images. The same issue may also hinder a commercial payload, ILO-X from the International Lunar Observatory Association (ILOA), which included two cameras to take astronomical images from the Moon. “Our international dedicated ILOA team, including the ILO-X payload developer Canadensys Aerospace, are working hard and remain hopeful to receive other images from the Moon surface,” the organization said in a statement after Friday’s briefing. One of the most intriguing payloads on IM-1 was EagleCam. The payload, a camera system developed by students at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University (ERAU), was intended to separate when the lander was about 30 meters above the surface, falling to the surface ahead of the lander. With several wide-field cameras, EagleCam was intended to provide a third-person perspective of the landing. A change in flight software made hours before the landing kept EagleCam from being deployed, but ERAU students and others worked over the weekend to see if the camera, about the size of a 1.5U cubesat, could be deployed while on the surface. In a statement Sunday, Troy Henderson, faculty lead of the EagleCam team at ERAU, said the analysis showed the device should be able to get three to five meters from the lander, good enough to take some images—if there is time and bandwidth to do so. But like many student projects, just getting the spacecraft built and flown can be considered a success. “No matter what happens, I’m extremely proud of this team,” Henderson said in a briefing before the launch. “Just being able to see students be mentored, trained, learn new skills outside of the classroom, take everything they had learned in the classroom, and apply it to real hardware has been a really cool thing.” The one payload that stands out is NASA’s Navigation Doppler Lidar (NDL) instrument, which was designed to measure velocity and altitude independent of the lander’s own systems. NDL, it turns out, may have saved the landing. “I said, ‘Tim, we’re going to have to land without a laser rangefinder.’ And his face got absolutely white,” Altemus said. “It was like a punch in the stomach. We were going to lose the mission.” Intuitive Machines found out after Odysseus went into orbit around the Moon Wednesday, a day before the landing, that the lander’s laser rangefinders were not working. Engineers determined that a safety switch, designed to protect people from the lasers (which are not eye-safe) was not flipped before launch so the lasers could operate normally: the equivalent of forgetting a “remove before flight” tag. The switch was a physical one, Altemus said, that could not be flipped with software. He recalled going into the control room early Thursday as Crain and his team were preparing for landing. “I said, ‘Tim, we’re going to have to land without a laser rangefinder.’ And his face got absolutely white. It was like a punch in the stomach. We were going to lose the mission.” However, Crain said that he and company engineers found it would be possible to use two lasers on NDL in place of the lander’s own laser rangefinders. The company had been working closely with the NASA Langley Research Center team that developed NDL and had already “plumbed” data from NDL into the lander’s software. “It sounds easy in retrospect,” Crain said, but required extensive modifications to the lander’s software to incorporate the NDL data, converting it into a form that could be used during the landing and compensating for different angles between the NDL’s lasers and the laser rangefinder. Intuitive Machines delayed the landing by one orbit, or two hours, to give engineers more time to make that change. “In normal software development for a spacecraft, this is the kind of thing that would have taken a month,” he said. “Our team basically did that in an hour and a half.” NASA was pleased that NDL could ride to the rescue and not only save the mission, but advance the technology beyond expectations. Prasun Desai, NASA deputy associate administrator for space technology, said that by flying NDL on the IM-1 mission, the agency hoped to raise the technology to a technology readiness level (TRL) of 6 on a scale of 1 to 9, proving a prototype of the technology in a relevant environment. Instead, he concluded at Friday’s briefing, “we were able to get an operational system now, TRL 9. It’s ready to be used from now on.” That solution was linked, though, to another problem with the mission. Altemus said they turned on the laser rangefinder earlier than planned because they noticed that Odysseus appeared to be in an elliptical orbit, rather than the circular one planned. In normal operations, Crain said, the laser rangefinder would only have been active in the final descent: “We would have probably been five minutes to landing before we realized those lasers weren’t working.” Why the lander was in an elliptical orbit wasn’t clear. The company had announced a landing time of 5:49 pm EST initially, then moved it up to 5:30 pm and again to 4:24 pm before the two-hour delay. That jumping around of times led to speculation there were navigation or propulsion issues that put the spacecraft into a different orbit than expected. While Intuitive Machines had not reported any major issues during the transit to the Moon, and had even skipped the last of three planned trajectory correction maneuvers, Altemus had hinted at Friday’s briefing of other problems with the mission. “It was quite a spicy seven-day mission to get to the Moon,” he said early in the briefing. Asked later what the mission’s “Hail Mary moment” was, he said there were several: “like I said, it was a spicy mission.” He didn’t elaborate much on what made the mission “spicy” but Crain said one issue came after the first trajectory correction maneuver when engineers found an error in the engine pointing geometry. He didn't go into details about that issue other than it was difficult to test on the ground and required changes to flight software. “This is a serious business that’s fraught with risk,” Altemus said in an interview before launch. “It’s a daunting challenge to land on the Moon. It doesn’t come easy, especially when you’re trying to break the barrier of a price point, a fixed price point—say, roughly $100 million. We’ve pushed to the bottom of the cost for lunar access.” “You're never going to build a spacecraft the first time off that's perfect. Never,” Altemus said before launch. He said then that the company would celebrate every milestone on the way to the surface of the Moon. “Whether its acquisition of signal or whether it's the commissioning maneuver, or entering low lunar orbit, every one of those is a success that we ought to really celebrate,” he said. “What I'm looking for in terms of managing expectations is really a sense of resiliency in the community. That let's keep trying, even if we have a failure in the mission.” The company expected there would be issues with the first mission, he said, and planned to incorporate those lessons into a second Nova-C lander being built for the IM-2 mission, slated to launch in the fall, and a third for IM-3 the company wants to launch by early next year. “Learning between one mission to the next is vital for our success, and that's one of the reasons why we wanted to build the same vehicle three, four times in a row,” he said. “You're never going to build a spacecraft the first time off that's perfect. Never.” Crain said at Friday’s briefing that once the lander lost solar power, the mission would be over: the electronics on board will likely not survive the cold temperatures during the two-week lunar night. “Of course, the next time the Sun illuminates the solar arrays, we’ll turn our dishes to the Moon, just to see,” he said. “We’ll take a look, we’ll take a listen.” But maybe there’s reason for hope. On Monday, the Japanese space agency JAXA said that it received a transmission from SLIM on Sunday after it had unexpectedly survived the lunar night. The lander was also able to transmit images back as well, suggesting it made it through the cold lunar night in good condition. The odyssey of Odysseus may not yet be over. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

Cybersecurity FOr Satellites Is A Growing Concern

Cybersecurity for satellites is a growing challenge by Sylvester Kaczmarek Monday, February 26, 2024 Bookmark and Share The Conversation In today’s interconnected world, space technology forms the backbone of our global communication, navigation, and security systems. Satellites orbiting Earth are pivotal for everything from GPS navigation to international banking transactions, making them indispensable assets in our daily lives and in global infrastructure. This emerging battleground highlights the urgent need for robust cybersecurity measures to protect our space assets from sophisticated attacks that threaten global stability and security. However, as our dependency on these celestial guardians escalates, so too does their allure to adversaries who may seek to compromise their functionality through cyber means. A satellite’s service could be interrupted or, at worst, the spacecraft could be disabled. The expansion of the digital realm into space has opened new frontiers for cyber threats, posing unprecedented challenges. This emerging battleground highlights the urgent need for robust cybersecurity measures to protect our space assets from sophisticated attacks that threaten global stability and security. Recent cyber incidents, such as the 2022 attack on the KA-SAT network, highlight the immediate vulnerability of satellites. The network, owned by global communications giant Viasat, faced a sophisticated cyber assault that disrupted its services across Europe. While the perpetrators have not been officially confirmed, many suspect Russia’s involvement. As we witness an increase in state-sponsored attacks and the commercialization of hacking tools, the stakes for securing space assets extend beyond technical challenges to encompass potential disruption to the world economy and diplomatic relations between countries that operate satellite networks. The focus on space security has been thrown into the spotlight recently by the claim that Russia is developing a space-based anti-satellite weapon—possibly one that’s nuclear-powered. Evolving threats The shift from analog to digital has transformed space technology vulnerabilities, exposing them to a spectrum of cyber threats. Initially, from the late 1950s onwards, concerns centered around physical tampering and espionage, but as the technology advanced, digital vulnerabilities became the forefront of security challenges. With adversaries now employing artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to find new vulnerabilities, the complexity of attacks goes well beyond traditional strategies for defending satellites. Early breaches such as the hacking of a US-German satellite in 1998 were precursors to the complex cybersecurity landscape we navigate today. Modern adversaries leverage sophisticated techniques to exploit vulnerabilities in satellite communications and data transmission, aiming to disrupt, intercept, or corrupt the invaluable data they carry. This evolution signifies a pivotal shift in how we must approach the security of space technology, underscoring the importance of anticipating and mitigating digital threats. This includes end-to-end encryption to make data transmission harder to hack or disrupt and better detection of suspicious activity in advance of an attack. There’s a cost to implementing these security measures, however, such as limitations on computer processing power and bandwidth. Vulnerabilities in the void The isolation of satellites in orbit and their reliance on wireless communications expose them to specific threats such as signal jamming, spoofing—disguising communications from a suspicious source as those of a known, trusted source—and the interception of data. Additionally, the limitations on processing power and bandwidth in space exacerbate the challenge of implementing routine software updates and patches, leaving systems vulnerable to exploitation. Software vulnerabilities within satellite systems can be exploited from great distances, allowing attackers to potentially take control of them. This vulnerability is compounded by the ever-increasing complexity of satellites and their software. The void of space does not shield these assets from cyber adversaries; instead, it presents a domain rife with unique challenges. These challenges require innovative solutions. In response to these escalating cyber threats, a united front has formed among space agencies, technology companies, and security experts. This effort is focused on developing robust defense mechanisms to protect satellites and other space-based technologies. The economic repercussions of cyberattacks on space infrastructure are profound. A significant cyber incident could cost billions in damages, disrupting global services and requiring extensive resources for mitigation and recovery. Key initiatives include establishing secure communication protocols, implementing end-to-end encryption for data transmission, and deploying AI-powered anomaly detection systems to identify suspicious activities in satellite networks. Beyond initiatives by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA), other international collaborations have taken shape, reflecting a widespread commitment to space cybersecurity. Agreements among countries in the Five Eyes intelligence alliance (consisting of the US, UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand) and partnerships with private-sector leaders in space technology underscore the global acknowledgment of the importance of securing space assets. These cooperative endeavors are crucial not only for safeguarding national security interests, but also for ensuring the uninterrupted operation of the myriad services that rely on space technology. Cyber defenses in space The development of AI-driven security protocols and quantum encryption is poised to revolutionize the protection of space assets. AI-driven security offers the potential to predict and counteract cyber threats in real time, continually adapting to new challenges. However, this technology is still under development and faces significant challenges, including the availability of limited data sets for training in the unique context of space. Similarly, quantum encryption offers impervious security— in theory—by making use of the field of physics known as quantum mechanics. But this is still in the research and development stage for space applications, thus practical deployment of such technologies in space will require a great deal more innovation and testing. Global implications Cybersecurity in space extends far beyond the technical realm, affecting international relations, cooperation, and competition. There is a drive towards greater protection for space infrastructure. International collaboration would be ideal to achieve this, but such an aim faces challenges due to competing interests and varying levels of trust between nations. The economic repercussions of cyberattacks on space infrastructure are profound. A significant cyber incident could cost billions in damages, disrupting global services and requiring extensive resources for mitigation and recovery. The complex interplay between the need for collective security measures, the hurdles in achieving global cooperation, and the potential for catastrophic economic impact underscores the intricate relationships between cybersecurity in space, international relations, and economic stability. Progress in cybersecurity measures in outer space is not just a technical necessity but a global imperative, to safeguard the future of space exploration and the integrity of critical space infrastructure. Addressing the evolving landscape of cyber threats demands ongoing vigilance, innovation, and a unified approach among all those involved in spaceflight. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Sylvester Kaczmarek is a research scientist in the Department of Computing at Imperial College London. He is also chief technology officer at OrbiSky Systems, where he specializes in the integration of artificial intelligence, robotics, cybersecurity, and edge computing in aerospace applications.

Book Review: The Battle Beyond

movie poster Review: The Battle Beyond by Jeff Foust Monday, February 26, 2024 Bookmark and Share The Battle Beyond: Fighting and Winning the Coming War in Space by Paul Szymanski and Jerry Drew Amplify Publishing, 2024 hardcover, 400 pp., illus. ISBN 978-1-63755-071-7 US$35.00 Earlier this month, Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), chair of the House Intelligence Committee, warned fellow House members of a “serious national security threat” that he called on the White House to declassify. Within hours, various reports indicated that threat came from a Russian anti-satellite weapon of some kind, but details of which were unclear. Some claimed it was a nuclear-powered spacecraft with weapons that could destroy other spacecraft, while others said it was a nuclear weapon itself, detonated in low Earth orbit to disable potentially hundreds or even thousands of satellites. The system, whatever it is, is not operational, the White House says, without providing more information about it. “If space is a warfighting domain, as US policy now states, then it requires a language—to the greatest extent possible—that is familiar to other warfighters,” they write. That discussion has highlighted growing concerns about the threats to satellites in any future conflict. US military officials now frequently describe space as a warfighting domain with the expectation that, in any future major conflict, military and even commercial satellites could be subject to threats ranging from jamming and cyberattacks to kinetic ASATs (and, apparently, Russian nukes.) In The Battle Beyond, Paul Szymanski and Jerry Drew discuss how to study space warfare, but using an approach that may be useful only to a fairly narrow audience. The key issue for understanding space warfare, the authors argue, is language. “If space is a warfighting domain, as US policy now states, then it requires a language—to the greatest extent possible—that is familiar to other warfighters,” they write. Much of the book is spent translating existing terminology used by the US military into concepts suitable for attacking and defending space assets. That includes one chapter where the authors take the military’s “principles of war” or “principles of joint operations”—concepts like mass, maneuver, and surprise—and discuss how they apply to space warfare. The authors note in the introduction that the “primary audience for this discussion is the military practitioner,” and that becomes clear as the authors work through topics from strategic to operational levels. If you’re curious to know how ASAT weapons might work, or what is known at least from unclassified and open sources about Chinese and Russian capabilities, you won’t find much here. But if you want to understand how to communicate space warfare in ways that warfighters in other domains might understand, this may be the book for you. (The book includes nearly 15 pages of testimonials, primarily from current and retired generals and admirals from the US and allied militaries, including former general and CIA director David Petraeus.) However, the authors’ approach to the subject might be pushing it even for a military audience. For example, the authors spend dozens of pages describing, in great detail, symbols for depicting space assets and threats, a symbology of their own design but based on Defense Department standards. That is material that seems like could be better placed in an appendix, especially since those symbols are used infrequently in the rest of the book. Many of the other illustrations in the book, including screenshots of the authors’ software for modeling space warfare activities, are printed too small to see useful details. The book also curiously lacks an index. The authors note in the introduction that the “primary audience for this discussion is the military practitioner,” and that becomes clear as the authors work through topics from strategic to operational levels. The Battle Beyond does briefly mention the one space warfare option that has generated recent headlines: detonating a nuclear weapon in orbit. Szymanski and Drew argue that a country like North Korea that is less dependent on space might be willing to do so to “render a key portion of their enemy’s satellite fleet inoperable or large portions of space unusable.” That would appear to make Russia less likely to use such a weapon, although its once-significant space capabilities have been eroding in recent years, a decline accelerated by sanctions imposed after its full-scale invasion of Ukraine two years ago. “One might even consider the possibility that if a country is willing to suffer the consequences of detonating nuclear weapons, space might not be the best place to do so because of the potential for diminished political or psychological impact,” they add. “After all, there will be no smoking hole in the ground afterward.” If that was meant to assuage concerns about the most severe aspects of space warfare, it may not exactly leave the reader relieved. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that al

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Delivering A Business Case For Rocket Cargo

Rocket Cargo A notional illustration of the “Rocket Cargo” concept being studied by the US Air Force for the rapid delivery of cargo. SpaceX’s Starship is the most likely vehicle to be able to perform such services in the near term. (credit: USAF) Delivering a business case for rocket cargo by Jeff Foust Monday, February 19, 2024 Bookmark and Share Even in an era where the landing and reuse of rocket boosters has become commonplace (at least for one company), the idea seems a little, well, out there. Launch a rocket and have it land, 60 or 90 minutes later, halfway around the world, carrying tens of tons of cargo needed for military operations, humanitarian relief, or other purposes where time is of the utmost essence. “We looked at this for seven years and it never made any sense,” said Spanjers. “But as we started digging into it, we found that the business case and the cost had changed dramatically.” The idea of high-speed point-to-point transportation has long been considered by the space industry, leveraging vehicles intended for suborbital or orbital launches to deliver cargo or passengers but tapping into aviation markets that remain far larger than satellite launch. The concept, though, has never gotten very far until recently, when SpaceX’s Starship vehicle started attracting attention in the military. The company, as far back as a 2017 talk by CEO Elon Musk, proposed using what is now called Starship as a point-to-point vehicle (see “Mars mission sequels”, The Space Review, October 2, 2017). SpaceX, while occasionally mentioning it since, has not emphasized it. In early 2022, the US Air Force awarded SpaceX a $102 million five-year contract as part of what it calls the Rocket Cargo program. The award is intended to study how SpaceX could transport military cargo on its launch vehicles using cargo containers compatible with other modes of transportation. The contract included an option for a demonstration of that cargo delivery capability. Two years into the effort, the military’s interest is as strong as ever. “We looked at this for seven years and it never made any sense,” recalled Gregory Spanjers, chief scientist at the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), looking back at the start of the Rocket Cargo program. “But as we started digging into it, we found that the business case and the cost had changed dramatically.” He spoke on a panel about the Rocket Cargo effort at the Space Mobility conference in Orlando, Florida, last month. That program, he said, is taking on a three-prong approach to study the military utility of rapid cargo delivery by rocket, the costs of doing so, and technical challenges. Much of the focus, understandably, has been on the technical issues, not just with the rockets themselves but how they can effectively transport cargo. For the system to be useful, he said rockets will need to be ready for launch in an hour, far faster than even “tactically responsive” launch systems today. Containers for carrying the cargo would need to be compatible with other terrestrial intermodal systems but also protect the cargo from the rigors of spaceflight. He suggested those studies had turned up no showstoppers for Rocket Cargo so far. “We are pretty tightly focused on developing a system that can go to an IOC, initial operating capability, as soon as possible,” he said. Gary Henry, senior advisor for national security space solutions at SpaceX, was similarly upbeat about the prospects of using Starship for cargo delivery. “Starship is fundamentally meant to be a rapidly reusable, fully reusable launch vehicle,” he said. “It will put us on a cost trajectory that will begin at $200 a kilogram.” “You will see, if Elon gets his way and the marginal cost of fuel is the single biggest driver of cost for one of these launches,” he added, “we’re talking about $20 a kilogram and below to low Earth orbit.” That would make it, he argues, cost-competitive with air freight. Four companies—DHL, FedEx, UPS, and the US Postal Service—provide expedited shipping from the US to China and the western Pacific. He cited prices they offered of about $33 per kilogram for shipping cargo in two to five days. “Do you think if you could deliver that same package ten times faster, you might be able to sell it for $33 a kilogram? I think so.” Starship, Henry noted, is not designed specifically for point-to-point cargo delivery, but in that role could offer significant capabilities. Starship could land with 30 metric tons of cargo, with potential to increase that over time, and offers a cargo bay similar in volume to a C-17 aircraft. Others on the panel representing different Defense Department offices sounded even more optimistic about Rocket Cargo. “It’s a disruptive technology for the Air Force. That’s my number one recommendation to senior leadership about investment priorities when it comes to supporting the joint warfighting concept,” said Col. Gabe Arrington, chief of the disruptive technology division at the Air Force. “I think in the near term it’s going to be reserved for missions that are very particular, very high-end, very exquisite,” said Seamans. “This technology, I think, has the opportunity to both promote a continued free and open Indo-Pacific while also contributing directly to the warfight if and when that time would come,” said Col. Nathan Vosters, director of requirements, resources, and programs for U.S. Space Forces Indo-Pacific. “At the very least, this changes the calculus for our adversaries in the region.” But what about the part of the US military charged with cargo transportation? “This could become another option,” said Air Force Col. Christopher Seaman, chief of the strategy division at US Transportation Command, or USTRANSCOM. “It’s intriguing. It’s easy to see why we care.” He said more work was needed to better understand the end-to-end concept, like prepositioning cargo at launch sites so it can be readied for launch quickly and then, after landing, getting the cargo to military forces. “I don’t think we’re there” on how the overall concept would work. “The conversations are starting to occur to get a good idea of it.” The program also needs a cost-benefit analysis. “In the near term, no one’s getting around the fact that it’s expensive,” he said. “I think in the near term it’s going to be reserved for missions that are very particular, very high-end, very exquisite.” Skepticism Not everyone is as optimistic about Rocket Cargo, though. “I don’t think it’s viable right now,” said David Buck, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who is currently president of BRPH Mission Solutions, an architectural and engineering firm that has worked on many spaceport projects. He concluded the concept is technically feasible but, for the time being, too expensive. “It’s really attractive to say that I can get anywhere on the globe in 90 minutes,” he said during a panel discussion at the annual meeting of the Global Spaceport Alliance (GSA), held the day before the Space Mobility conference in Orlando. “From a military perspective, that sounds great. But, boy, that’s cost prohibitive.” He cited not just technical concerns about designing cargo that can survive the rigors of launch and landing but also policy and regulatory ones. “‘Hey, Russia, we’re launching a point-to-point mission,’” he said, imagining how such a mission would be communicated. “‘This is not a nuclear warhead, trust us.’” Even without the risks of confusing a cargo launch with an ICBM, such missions bring up new regulatory challenges. “I’m going to take off in the United States and I’m going to land somewhere in Asia. I need licensing and regulation between the two countries,” he said. “That’s really hard.” He envisioned Rocket Cargo as little more than a niche capability for extremely critical payloads. “I’m just being real. I don’t see the military viability of this right now.” “It’s really attractive to say that I can get anywhere on the globe in 90 minutes,” Buck said. “From a military perspective, that sounds great. But, boy, that’s cost prohibitive.” The Space Mobility panel addressed some of those concerns, like the risk that a cargo launch would be misinterpreted as an ICBM. Spanjers said he envisioned doing accelerated versions of current warnings of space launches. “It looks nothing like an ICBM,” he said in terms of Starship’s size and its launch from existing spaceports versus ICBM fields. “When Atlas Air and UPS and FedEx fly cargo around the world, that’s not seen as a bomber,” added Arrington. Spanjers also addressed another frequent critique of Rocket Cargo: once the rocket lands at its faraway destination to deliver cargo, how does it get back? He argued the need for rapid delivery was only in one direction, with the vehicle then transported to a port to be shipped back to the US. “You’re not in a hurry on the way back.” Starship A Starship vehicle being prepared for a test flight that could take place as soon as early March. (credit: SpaceX) Commercial versus military The discussion at the two events showed some uncertainty about who would take the lead in rapid cargo delivery: the military or the private sector. Buck said he expected such services to be developed commercially. “I think commercial will evolve this, it’ll get cheaper, and then eventually—10, 15 years in the future—I could see some military viability. We’re not there yet, in my opinion.” Another panelist at the GSA event took a different view. “I would offer it’s going to need some military or national security pressure to help industry,” said Space Force Col. Shannon DaSilva, deputy director of operations at Space Systems Command. That was based on the same reason that Buck gave for the military not taking the lead: its expense. Buck was unconvinced. “There’s more application right now in the commercial world than in the military.” SpaceX’s Henry said on the Space Mobility panel that the company saw commercial applications for something like Rocket Cargo. He cited a hypothetical example long used by proponents of high-speed point-to-point delivery: a factory that goes offline because a malfunctioning component, costing the owner millions of dollars an hour until a replacement can be shipped from halfway around the world. “If you go through the numbers, it feels like there is going to be a commercial case there,” he concluded, “but I really think it’s the DOD use cases that are going to take point and probably drive the conversation early on.” Some military panelists expected any Rocket Cargo system to be commercially operated. “We’re here at a military forum, but this is commercially driven technology,” said Arrington. “In my view, that will be a Wright Brothers moment,” Garcia said of the upcoming Starship test flight. “The world will look and say, ‘What just happened here? Can you do more of that? Can you do it safely?’” Henry said later that while he expected Rocket Cargo to be commercially procured, there have been some initial discussions with the DOD about the military procuring “gray tail” Starships that it would own and operate, rather than SpaceX. “It really came down to specific missions where there’s a very specific and sometimes elevated risk, or sometimes dangerous, use case,” he said, adding that the company was exploring a wide range of options to meet DOD needs. That balance between commercial and military interest in high-speed point-to-point might be illustrated soon. Oscar Garcia, CEO of InterFlight Global Corp. and an advocate for high-speed transportation (“I’m the point-to-point guy,” he introduced himself during another panel at the GSA meeting), is closely watching the next Starship test flight, likely to take place as soon as early March. That test may follow the same profile the first two test flights last year attempted to carry out, launching from South Texas and splashing down 90 minutes later near Hawaii after completing nearly one orbit. “In my view, that will be a Wright Brothers moment,” he said. “The world will look and say, ‘What just happened here? Can you do more of that? Can you do it safely?’” “We will immediate see what reaction it triggers,” he said of that test flight, arguing—or perhaps hoping—that it will stimulate demand for high-speed transportation at some reasonable price. “If that’s the case, we go to market pull rather than industry push.” The military will also be watching that upcoming Starship and thinking about how that vehicle could provide rocket cargo services. “As soon as Starship does its thing,” said USTRANSCOM’s Seaman, “we’re going to go, ‘Wow, this is real.’” Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

The New Mexico Spaceport Faces A Lull In Launch Operations

Spaceport America New Mexico’s Spaceport America, developed with Virgin Galactic as the anchor tenant, is far different than what was earlier proposed as the Southwest Regional Spaceport. (credit: Spaceport America) From Southwest Regional Spaceport to Spaceport America by Thomas L. Matula Monday, February 19, 2024 Bookmark and Share As a space economist with a long interest in commercial spaceports, I was among hundreds of spectators parked along the tracks of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railroad in southern New Mexico on May 22, 2021. We came to witness the first crewed flight into suborbital space from Spaceport America. The facility lies some 80 kilometers north of Las Cruces, home to New Mexico State University and its Physical Science Laboratory that was founded in 1946.[1] PSL’s ground-breaking research has shaped the nation’s space and rocket programs for more than three quarters of a century. The delay put another kink in the economic development New Mexico once planned for the spaceport, a dream of revenue that would rescue this depressed pocket of the Chihuahua Desert. Most of the crowd along the railroad tracks that spring day were from the local counties that had funded Spaceport America in 2007. Having heard about the launch on the news, these New Mexico taxpayers were here to witness the inaugural event and see where their tax dollars went. The spur road to the spaceport itself was blocked off by a couple of State Police cars. Spaceport America only permits the public to observe launches at a distance, in this case a couple kilometers from the entrance to the facility where Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic launches its spaceplane. Through my binoculars, at a distance, I witnessed the takeoff of SpaceShipTwo. Its carrier aircraft, White Knight Two, climbed to an altitude whereby the spaceplane would drop from the belly of the carrier aircraft and begin the journey to the edge of space. When White Knight Two reached the drop point high overhead, I saw the flame of the exhaust from the spaceplane’s engine after it separated from the carrier aircraft and took the test crew on their suborbital trip into space. The 2021 flight of Virgin Galactic’s spaceplane was in contrast to the launch of SpaceShipOne I saw on June 21, 2004, at California’s Mojave Air and Space Port. SpaceShipOne was a precursor vehicle designed by Scaled Composites and, when it soared into the skies above the Mojave Desert, I was among the 20,000 spectators welcomed on the field with excellent parking accommodations.[2] The public along the runway could easily observe the flight of the spaceplane from takeoff to landing. We were not relegated to a desolate desert road as at Spaceport America. After that 2021 launch, Branson promised hundreds more launches from Spaceport America. In the future his “spaceliner” planned to carry passengers in this new form of extreme adventure tourism. However, in November 2023 Virgin Galactic announced that SpaceShipTwo was no longer going to make “hundreds of flights” but only a handful more before the company again pauses launch operations in 2024.[3] Virgin Galactic’s current aim is to replace SpaceShipTwo with a new larger “Delta” class spacecraft.[4] The delay put another kink in the economic development New Mexico once planned for the spaceport, a dream of revenue that would rescue this depressed pocket of the Chihuahua Desert. My involvement in Spaceport America began 30 years earlier when, as a Ph.D. candidate at New Mexico State University, I was assigned to work on the initial feasibility study for what was known then as the “Southwest Regional Spaceport” (SRS). That study envisioned a very different spaceport from the one operating today. Instead of a facility built around an anchor client, Virgin Galactic, whose business is based on the transport of tourists into suborbital space, back in 1991 SRS was supposed to be the flagship of New Mexico’s space industry and that began in 1930 when rocket pioneer Dr. Robert Goddard moved his research out here. Goddard’s research led to the eventual creation of the White Sands Missile Range. The US Army in World War II had captured V-2 rockets in Germany and were testing them at White Sands. Tests of additional rockets, like the new Corporal Rocket developed by Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), followed in that postwar decade. Soon Hollywood began incorporating footage from rocket test flights in their science fiction movies. In the minds of the public, White Sands came to be synonymous with the idea of spaceflight, a result of its popularization in cinema. Instead of a facility built around an anchor client, Virgin Galactic, whose business is based on the transport of tourists into suborbital space, back in 1991 Southwest Regional Spaceport was supposed to be the flagship of New Mexico’s space industry. To support the Army’s rocket tests at White Sands, the Physical Science Laboratory (PSL) was created in 1946 at New Mexico State University. In that same period, Sandia National Laboratory (SNL) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) in Albuquerque were also created as spinoffs of Los Alamos National Laboratory. Although focused originally on nuclear weapons research, both SNL and AFRL quickly expanded their research to include rockets and space technology. When these entities are combined with New Mexico’s three major universities--the University of New Mexico, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology, and New Mexico State University—such research centers as a constellation represent a substantial capability for space research and development. The original feasibility study intended the “Southwest Regional Spaceport” to be a hub integrating and focusing these aforementioned research centers, a nucleus for the space commerce industry. The SRS, acting as fulcrum, would implement the strategy to advance New Mexico’s visibility in space research and development. The facility was to be an incubator for advanced space technology, not a launching pad for a handful of suborbital space tourists. Even though New Mexico Spaceport Authority is today doing business with several private aerospace firms that develop technology at Spaceport America, these efforts are a distant second to Richard Branson’s space tourism now flying suborbital customers. Spaceport America’s operations bear little evidence of any strategic integration with New Mexico’s space industry, the origins of which began with Dr. Robert Goddard in the 1930s during those hard times of the Great Depression. A second focus of the original dream in the feasibility study was for the spaceport to serve a statewide strategy to improve STEM education. When the study was completed, New Mexico was ranked near the bottom in the United States in STEM educational performance and it has continued to decline, reaching the bottom of the rankings in 2022.[5] In so much as kids are attracted to rockets and space exploration, the creation of a New Mexico Space Academy at the spaceport was intended to inspire students in science and math. The curriculum would create instructional programs that explore outer space and its settlement. Despite the fact New Mexico Spaceport Authority today sponsors a popular nationwide educational event, the intercollegiate Spaceport America Cup, this competition pales in the context of the original 1990’s plan to use the spaceport for boosting interest in STEM education throughout the state. Finally, though the revenue projections for the spaceport included space tourism, that did not mean a handful of individuals flying into space, individuals who only briefly set foot on the soil on New Mexico before and after their space adventure. Instead, the focus was on the tens of thousands of terrestrial tourists that travel across the nation to view rocket launches and visit space launch facilities. The crowds lining that deserted road along the railroad tracks to watch Virgin Galactic fly in 2021, though far from the gates of Spaceport America, proves the spaceport has the potential to generate revenue based on terrestrial tourism. Yet how can any revenue result when the nearest restaurant or souvenir stand is almost an hour away from where tourists are parking to view the launch? Yes, there is the official Spaceport America Visitors Center in Truth or Consequences, the nearest town. But by the time tourists reach this little community, the travelers’ only thought is to hit the Interstate and return home after experiencing the desolation of parking along the old El Camino Real (Royal Road) cutoff through the Jornada del Muerto (The Route of Death), a road so isolated even mobile phone coverage is hit-or-miss. Spaceport America began as New Mexico’s dream to integrate and promote its space industry to grow the state’s economy. Instead, it got lost in this detour into suborbital space tourism. Since the 2021 launches Spaceport America has reportedly added a viewing area that allows visitors to watch the Virgin Galactic flights.[6] The fact that such a decision was made so late in the life of the spaceport makes one wonder if the leadership behind the facility ever consulted the economic impact studies of the past. Those projections of the economic impact included terrestrial tourism, but those studies assumed there would be opportunities for spending at concessions for food and souvenirs. Finally, any spaceport that has the word “America” in its name implies a caveat, an open invitation to visitors who hope to witness firsthand these historic flights. Recently the New Mexico Spaceport Authority has contracted with another out-of-state consulting firm to create a new “Master Plan and Strategy” for Spaceport America.[7] I am not holding my breath that it will be any better than studies in the past that forecast numerous launches and promised a great future for Spaceport America. Nor am I holding my breath that Spaceport America will return soon to flying space tourists with the new and improved “Delta” class spaceplane, given Sir Richard Branson’s recent decision to invest no more of his capital in Virgin Galactic.[8] . It is a truism in the space industry that spacecraft always take more time and money to develop than expected and Virgin Galactic’s supply of both may be questionable. Spaceport America began as New Mexico’s dream to integrate and promote its space industry to grow the state’s economy. Instead, it got lost in this detour into suborbital space tourism. The best hope for revitalizing the New Mexico space industry and its search for expansion lies in a return to the original vision, operating the spaceport as the flagship of an integrated New Mexico strategy for space rather than as an isolated facility lost in the vastness of the Jornada del Muerto. References Physical Science Laboratory, New Mexico State university (2024). “History of PSL”. Retrieved on February 10, 2024. Webber, Derek (2004). “The future starts here”. The Space Review. Retrieved February 10. Foust, Jeff (November 8, 2023). “Virgin Galactic to halt Unity suborbital flights by mid-2024”. SpaceNews. Retrieved on February 10, 2024. Foust, Jeff (November 2, 2022). “Virgin Galactic picks suppliers for future spaceplanes”. SpaceNews. Retrieved on February 10, 2024. New Mexico Education (24 October 2022). “New Mexico ranks dead last nationally on NAEP test results”. Retrieved on February 10, 2024. Madrid, Salina (July 13, 2021). “Spaceport America to add viewing area for public to watch spaceships blast off in-person”. KFOX-TV El Paso, Texas. Retrieved on February 12, 2024 from McGerald, Jennifer Nix (May 11, 2023). “New Mexico’s Spaceport America Awards Spaceport Master Plan Project to the RS&H Team”. Retrieved on February 10, 2024./li> Georgiadis, Philip and Hollinger, Peggy (December 2, 2023). “No further investments in Virgin Galactic, says Richard Branson”. Financial Times. Retrieved on February 10, 2024. Thomas L. Matula, Ph.D., is a Professor of Business Administration at Sul Ross State University in Texas. He holds an MBA and Ph.D. in Business Administration from New Mexico State University. His dissertation topic was on Commercial Spaceports, based on his work with the original Southwest Regional Spaceport. He has been writing, publishing, and speaking on space economics and development since the 1990s. In 2023 an excerpt from Matula’s book in-progress Astrosettlement: Pioneering the Solar System appeared here as “SpaceX Starship in lunar development.” He may be reached at Thomas.Matula@sulross.edu. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.

Book Review- The Space Race

movie poster Review: The Space Race by Jeff Foust Monday, February 19, 2024 Bookmark and Share The Space Race: The Untold Story of the First Black Astronauts Directed by Lisa Cortes and Diego Hurtado de Mendoza 91 minutes, not rated Streaming on Disney+ and Hulu Just after midnight Eastern time on March 1, a Crew Dragon spacecraft is set to launch to the International Space Station on the Crew-8 mission. Among the astronauts on board will be Jeanette Epps, a Black woman who was selected as a NASA astronaut in 2009 but is only now making her first flight. She was originally selected to go to the ISS in 2018 on a Soyuz mission, but reassigned just months before the launch for reasons never publicly disclosed. That led to allegations of racism, although Epps said at a 2018 event that she never had any problems working with Russians. “I avoided the guy,” Bluford said of George Abbey. “I figured the less he knew about me, the better. I really didn’t want to be the first Black astronaut.” Epps is hardly the first Black person to face challenges in getting to space. The documentary The Space Race, which premiered last week and is available on the Disney+ and Hulu streaming services, describes the far greater obstacles faced decades ago by Black Americans in their quest to become astronauts. The closest thing to a central character in the film is a man who did not go to space: Ed Dwight. He was a US Air Force pilot identified by the White House as a prospective astronaut as part of a campaign promise that John F. Kennedy made. He describes being at the heart of a complex situation: the White House advanced him, but did little to smooth his path; civil rights groups promoted and praised him publicly, but also criticized him for not doing enough to advance their causes; and there was strong opposition to him within the military and NASA. “There was no way in God’s green Earth they were going to let me be equal to these guys,” he said of his chance of joining the original Mercury Seven astronauts. Dwight was not selected in a later NASA astronaut class and later left the Air Force. The film moves ahead to the 1970s, when NASA did openly seek Black astronaut candidates for the first time, including through a famous recruiting campaign that featured Star Trek actress Nichelle Nichols. It was effective: “I know she was talking to me. Others claim she was talking to them. No, she was talking to me,” recalled Fred Gregory, an Air Force pilot who was one of the three Black men selected in that 1978 class, along with Guy Bluford and Ron McNair. The three got their share of media attention as they went through astronaut training, along with at least a low-key competition among them about who would be first to fly. (“I don’t remember competing, but I’m told there was competition,” Gregory said.) That honor eventually went to Bluford, although he said it wasn’t because he was lobbying the key decisionmaker at the Johnson Space Center, the legendary George Abbey: “I avoided the guy. I figured the less he knew about me, the better. I really didn’t want to be the first Black astronaut.” “I know she was talking to me. Others claim she was talking to them. No, she was talking to me,” Gregory said of the recruitment ads featuring Nichols. Bluford was the first Black American, but the not the first Black person: Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez of Cuba went to space on a Soviet mission in 1980. NASA’s own Black astronauts said in the film that they were unaware of him at the time; historians later noted that Tamayo’s African heritage wasn’t emphasized until later (see “Review: NASA and the Long Civil Rights Movement”, The Space Review, December 23, 2019.) Tamayo is briefly interviewed in the film, where he claims the US censored any Cuban accomplishments, an allegation the filmmakers don’t challenge. The film focuses on the experiences of Bluford, Gregory, and McNair (in his case from recollections of others and archival footage, as he died in the Challenger accident) as well as Charlie Bolden, another early NASA Black astronaut who went on to become NASA administrator. It also features a few others, like Bernard Harris and Leland Melvin, as well as current NASA astronaut Victor Glover, who recalls the support he got from other Black astronauts while he was in orbit on the Crew-1 mission a few years ago, not long after the murder of George Floyd and subsequent Black Lives Matters protests. Notably, Black women astronauts are mentioned only in passing in the film and not interviewed; no discussion, for example, of any dual challenges they encountered by both being Black and female. In a scene late in the film, Glover and Dwight hold a video call with Jessica Watkins while she was on the station in 2022. “We are just so grateful for the path that you laid for us to follow behind,” she tells Dwight. “Thanks for remembering me,” Dwight responds. The Space Race will help many remember him and other trailblazers. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone. Note: we are now moderating comments. There will be a delay in posting comments and no guarantee that all submitted comments will be posted.

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Nuclear-Powered Navigation Satellites In The Early 1960s

Transit 5BN Launch of the first Transit 5BN satellite on September 28, 1963 at Vandenberg Air Force Base. This was the first nuclear-powered satellite, although it had solar panels to power a backup transmitter. Although it successfully reached orbit, it deployed upside down, with its transmitters pointing toward space, and was only partially successful. (credit: Peter Hunter Collection) Nuclear Transit: nuclear-powered navigation satellites in the early 1960s by Dwayne A. Day Monday, February 12, 2024 Bookmark and Share Technology goes through phases of acceptance. What starts out as interesting, novel, unique, and amazing eventually becomes ubiquitous, boring, accepted, even ignored and invisible. Two decades ago, when GPS navigation was first appearing in cars, the people who used it were surprised, and although very few people who used it probably understood how it worked, most of them probably knew that it was made possible by satellites. But today, with navigation technology embedded in so many apps on cellphones, from the app you use to order an Uber to the one you use to track how close the pizza delivery man is to your door, it is doubtful that many people understand that the technology still uses satellites. GPS is largely invisible and unacknowledged; its existence, let alone its history, virtually forgotten. An APL engineer personally transported the power source to the Cape, putting it in the trunk of his car when he drove to the airport, and then carrying it in a borrowed Marine Corps attack jet down to the Cape, violating multiple regulations regarding the safe transport of nuclear materials. Before there was GPS there was Transit, a satellite system developed by the US Navy to enable ballistic missile submarines to determine their position at sea by poking a satellite antenna above the waves. Transit was developed during a true eureka moment at the beginning of the space age. Physicists at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) outside Washington, DC, had long used the Doppler shift of a signal transmission to track missiles launched from shore—not only did the signal change as the transmitter sped away from the receiver, it would also shift if the transmitting missile flew to the left or the right. When the Soviet Union launched Sputnik in 1957, two APL physicists worked to track it based upon the Doppler shift of its signal. One of their colleagues noted that whereas their method was based upon knowing the location of the receiver on the ground, the obverse would also be true—if you knew the trajectory of the satellite over the Earth, you could calculate your own position relative to the satellite. That technique could be used by ships at sea, particularly the new Polaris ballistic missile submarines that needed to know their position to fire their missiles at targets thousands of kilometers away. Transit 5BN The USS George Washington was the United States’ first ballistic missile submarine, launched in 1959. The submarines relied upon inertial reference systems to determine their position, but these systems needed to be updated regularly. The Transit satellite was a method of providing new positioning data to subs and ships at sea, and became operational by 1964. (credit: Us Navy) Like many new projects in the early space age, designers moved fast. Development of the system began in 1958 and a prototype was launched by September 1959, but did not reach orbit. By April 1960, a second prototype was successfully launched and proved the concept was sound. The program, named Transit, became operational by 1964, and Polaris submarines used it to update their inertial navigation systems before diving to deeper waters. A single fix from a single satellite was not as good as two signals from different satellites, but submarine launched ballistic missiles were initially intended to destroy cities, not specific targets. A user that could wait for multiple satellite passes, like a surveyor in a remote location, could develop a very precise fix on their position using only a single satellite. The first Transit satellites, launched in 1959 and 1960, were ball-shaped. By 1961, APL had changed to a cylindrical design, including Transit 4A and 4B, which contained a small nuclear power source to provide secondary power as an experiment. An APL engineer personally transported the power source to the Cape, putting it in the trunk of his car when he drove to the airport, and then carrying it in a borrowed Marine Corps attack jet down to the Cape, violating multiple regulations regarding the safe transport of nuclear materials. Transit 5BN The Transit 5BN satellites used a gravity gradient boom to orient the satellites with their antennas pointed down toward Earth. Note the nuclear power source mounted behind the main antennas. The stabilizing fins on the satellite were intended to enable it to burn up in the upper atmosphere during reentry or an accident, in order to vaporize its one kilogram of plutonium-238. This happened during one launch failure, and resulted in a change in design philosophy for American nuclear powered spacecraft. (credit: APL) By 1963, the satellites became more complex in shape. After the successful tests involving 4A and 4B, by 1963 APL engineers wanted to investigate if the satellites could be primarily nuclear-powered, using a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG, which could last longer in space than existing solar panels. The reason was that the satellites had a five-year lifetime goal, and it was unclear if solar cells and batteries could achieve this. This led to the Transit 5BN series, “N” for “nuclear.” Until recently, no good photographs of the 5BN satellites have been published, but photos of a satellite during payload integration at the central California launch site have now emerged. Transit 5BN Transit 5BN Transit 5BN Payload integration of a Transit 5BN satellite to its Thor Able-Star rocket at Vandenberg Air Force Base. Despite the labels, these are probably all the December 1963 launch of the second Transit 5BN, which was successful. The nuclear power source was located behind the forward antenna. (credit: USAF) Transit 5BN Debuts Three Transit 5BN satellites were launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base, on September 28 and December 6, 1963, and April 21, 1964, although the last mission failed to achieve orbit. They were lofted into space aboard Thor Able-Star rockets. By 1963 APL engineers wanted to investigate if the satellites could be primarily nuclear-powered, using a radioisotope thermoelectric generator, or RTG, which could last longer in space than existing solar panels. Thor started life as an intermediate range ballistic missile equipped with a nuclear warhead, in active service until the early 1960s. After being withdrawn from service, the missile was modified into a space launcher, launching from both Florida and California. For the first two decades of the space age, the Thor was the workhorse rocket for the United States military and NASA, eventually evolving into the Thor-Agena, Thor-Delta, Delta, and finally the Delta II, which proved to be just as consequential for NASA. Thor carried many military payloads into space, most famously more than 100 CORONA reconnaissance satellites into polar orbit. The Able-Star second stage used hypergolic propellants and a descendant of its engine continued in use until the last Delta II rocket launch in 2018. The 5BN satellites were equipped with transmitters of 136, 150, and 400 megahertz. They were powered by a SNAP-9A radioisotope power source that was intended to provide a long lifetime. Solar cells and batteries powered the 136-megahertz auxiliary system. The satellites also had a gravity gradient stabilization system—pioneered by Transit 5A-3 in 1963—deploying a long boom that was intended to orient the satellite so that the transmitters aimed towards Earth. The satellites were octagonal prisms 46 centimeters (18 inches) across by 30 centimeters (12 inches) high. The SNAP-9A section was a cylinder 30 cm in diameter by 20 cm (8 inches) high. The mass ranged from 69 kilograms (154 pounds) for 5BN-1 to 75 kilograms (167 pounds) for 5BN-3. The satellites were also designed with four fins located with respect to the center of mass. This was intended to ensure that the SNAP-9A power source burned up either during accidental reentry during launch failure or after the satellite’s orbit eventually decayed. Transit 5BN Transit 5BN Transit 5BN Final integration of the Transit 5BN satellite. The nuclear power source was intended to provide primary power to the satellite. The solar panels provided backup power to a transmitter that relayed satellite telemetry. The concept was to determine if nuclear power could enable long-lived satellites, with a design goal of five years. But the Navy and the Applied Physics Laboratory determined that solar power was sufficient, and subsequent Transit satellites were all solar-powered. The Transit program operated into the 1990s. (credit: USAF) Transit 5BN-1 achieved an orbit of 1,128 by 1,078 kilometers (609 by 582 nautical miles) inclined at 89.94 degrees to the Equator and began operating after its September 1963 launch. But outgassing from one end of the satellite caused it to flip and it pointed in the wrong direction, transmitting its signals up instead of down, resulting in a substantial decrease in the signal strength on the ground. By December 22 it had ceased transmitting on its two main frequencies. The 136-megahertz transmitter was used to send spacecraft telemetry and indicated that a short circuit had developed somewhere in the satellite’s systems. Eventually all telemetry data ceased by June 1, 1964. Transit 5BN-2 launched in December and reached its orbit of 1,108 by 1,078 kilometers (598 by 582 nautical miles) inclined 89.9 degrees to the Equator. It deployed successfully, becoming the first operational—as opposed to experimental—Transit navigation satellite. The satellite was used by US Navy surface and submarine forces until November 1964, at which point it suffered some system degradation and was only useful for navigation approximately three quarters of the time. It ceased providing navigational data by July 14, 1965, but still provided telemetry data on the SNAP-9A power source for some time afterwards. The Air Force launched Navy Transit satellites into the late 1980s, and the system was finally retired in 1996, replaced by GPS. The April 1964 launch of 5BN-3 failed when the ground guidance system generated incorrect commands. The system design did successfully vaporize the SNAP-9A generator and its plutonium power supply, spreading one kilogram of plutonium in the upper atmosphere. At the time, this was considered to be a “safe” disposal method, but afterwards spacecraft designers had second thoughts and radioisotope thermoelectric generators were thereafter designed to survive reentry intact. Each of the satellites had smaller “pickaback payloads” given “E” for “engineering” designations. 5E-1 was paired with 5BN-1, 5E-3 was paired with 5BN-2, and 5E-2 was paired with 5BN-3. The first two successfully separated from their primary payloads. They were essentially collections of instruments and experiments that APL engineers wanted to test in space, part of a long history of innovation by the organization that continues until this day. Although the 5BN program was considered partially successful, APL changed the Transit satellite design again and chose to abandon plans to use radioisotope power sources, which were unnecessary and created safety concerns. The Air Force launched Navy Transit satellites into the late 1980s, and the system was finally retired in 1996, replaced by GPS. Just as GPS is now becoming invisible, Transit, and the 5BN satellites, faded into obscurity long ago. Sources Robert J. Danchik, “An Overview of Transit Development,” Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest, Vol. 19, No. 1, 1998, pp. 4-21. The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, “Artificial Earth Satellites Designed and Fabricated by The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory,” 1978, pp. I-49-54; III-9-18. Theodore Wyatt, “The Gestation of Transit as Perceived by One Participant,” Johns Hopkins APL Technical Digest, Vol. 2, No. 1, 1981, pp. 32-38. Dwayne Day can be reached at zirconic1@cox.net.

Lunar Science Is Entering A New Active Phase With Commercial Launches Of Landers

IM-1 lander The IM-1 lander, scheduled to land on the Moon on February 22 if it launches this week, is carrying several NASA science and technology demonstration payloads. (credit: Intuitive Machines) Lunar science is entering a new active phase with commercial launches of landers by Jack Burns Monday, February 12, 2024 Bookmark and Share The Conversation For the first time since 1972, NASA is putting science experiments on the Moon in 2024. And thanks to new technologies and public-private partnerships, these projects will open up new realms of scientific possibility. As parts of several projects launching this year, teams of scientists, including myself, will conduct radio astronomy from the south pole and the far side of the Moon. Thanks to new technologies and public-private partnerships, these projects will open up new realms of scientific possibility. NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, or CLPS, will use uncrewed landers to conduct NASA’s first science experiments from the Moon in more than 50 years. The CLPS program differs from past space programs. Rather than NASA building the landers and operating the program, commercial companies will do so in a public-private partnership. NASA identified about a dozen companies to serve as vendors for landers that will go to the Moon. NASA buys space on these landers for science payloads to fly to the Moon, and the companies design, build and insure the landers, as well as contract with rocket companies for the launches. Unlike in the past, NASA is one of the customers and not the sole driver. CLPS launches The first two CLPS payloads are scheduled to launch during the first two months of 2024. There’s the Astrobotic lander, which launched Jan. 8 before experiencing a fuel issue that cut its journey to the Moon short. Next, there’s the Intuitive Machines payload, with a launch scheduled for as soon as this week. NASA has also planned a few additional landings—about two or three per year—for each of the next few years. I’m a radio astronomer and co-investigator on NASA’s ROLSES program, otherwise known as Radiowave Observations at the Lunar Surface of the photoElectron Sheath. ROLSES was built by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center and is led by Natchimuthuk Gopalswamy. The ROLSES instrument will launch with Intuitive Machines in February. Between ROLSES and another mission scheduled for the lunar farside in two years, LuSEE-Night, our teams will land NASA’s first two radio telescopes on the Moon by 2026. Radio telescopes on the Moon The Moon—particularly the far side of the Moon—is an ideal place to do radio astronomy and study signals from extraterrestrial objects such as the Sun and the Milky Way galaxy. On Earth, the ionosphere, which contains Earth’s magnetic field, distorts and absorbs radio signals below the FM band. These signals might get scrambled or may not even make it to the surface of the Earth. On Earth, there are also TV signals, satellite broadcasts, and defense radar systems making noise. To do higher sensitivity observations, you have to go into space, away from Earth. The Moon is what scientists call tidally locked. One side of the Moon is always facing the Earth—the “man in the Moon” side—and the other side, the far side, always faces away from the Earth. The Moon has no ionosphere, and with nearly 3,500 kilometers of rock between the Earth and the far side of the Moon, there’s no interference. It’s radio quiet. For our first mission with ROLSES, we will collect data about environmental conditions on the Moon near its south pole. On the Moon’s surface, solar wind directly strikes the lunar surface and creates a charged gas, called a plasma. Electrons lift off the negatively charged surface to form a highly ionized gas. Between ROLSES and another mission scheduled for the lunar farside in two years, LuSEE-Night, our teams will land NASA’s first two radio telescopes on the Moon by 2026. This doesn’t happen on Earth because the magnetic field deflects the solar wind. But there’s no global magnetic field on the Moon. With a low frequency radio telescope like ROLSES, we’ll be able to measure that plasma for the first time, which could help scientists figure out how to keep astronauts safe on the Moon. When astronauts walk around on the surface of the Moon, they’ll pick up different charges. It’s like walking across the carpet with your socks on: when you reach for a doorknob, a spark can come out of your finger. The same kind of discharge happens on the Moon from the charged gas, but it’s potentially more harmful to astronauts. Solar and exoplanet radio emissions Our team is also going to use ROLSES to look at the Sun. The Sun’s surface releases shock waves that send out highly energetic particles and low radio frequency emissions. We’ll use the radio telescopes to measure these emissions and to see bursts of low-frequency radio waves from shock waves within the solar wind. We’re also going to examine the Earth from the surface of the Moon and use that process as a template for looking at radio emissions from exoplanets that may harbor life in other star systems. Magnetic fields are important for life because they shield the planet’s surface from the solar/stellar wind. In the future, our team hopes to use specialized arrays of antennas on the far side of the Moon to observe nearby stellar systems that are known to have exoplanets. If we detect the same kind of radio emissions that come from Earth, this will tell us that the planet has a magnetic field. And we can measure the strength of the magnetic field to figure out whether it’s strong enough to shield life. Cosmology on the Moon The Lunar Surface Electromagnetic Experiment at Night, or LuSEE-Night, will fly in early 2026 to the far side of the Moon. LuSEE-Night marks scientists’ first attempt to do cosmology on the Moon. LuSEE-Night is a novel collaboration between NASA and the Department of Energy. Data will be sent back to Earth using a communications satellite in lunar orbit, Lunar Pathfinder, which is funded by the European Space Agency. Since the far side of the Moon is uniquely radio quiet, it’s the best place to do cosmological observations. During the two weeks of lunar night that happen every 14 days, there’s no emission coming from the Sun, and there’s no ionosphere. We hope to study an unexplored part of the early universe called the dark ages. The dark ages refer to before and just after the formation of the very first stars and galaxies in the universe, which is beyond what the James Webb Space Telescope can study. During the dark ages, the universe was less than 100 million years old—today the universe is 13.7 billion years old. The universe was full of hydrogen during the dark ages. That hydrogen radiates through the universe at low radio frequencies, and when new stars turn on, they ionize the hydrogen, producing a radio signature in the spectrum. Our team hopes to measure that signal and learn about how the earliest stars and galaxies in the universe formed. There’s also a lot of potential new physics that we can study in this last unexplored cosmological epoch in the universe. We will investigate the nature of dark matter and early dark energy and test our fundamental models of physics and cosmology in an unexplored age. That process is going to start in 2026 with the LuSEE-Night mission, which is both a fundamental physics experiment and a cosmology experiment. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article. Jack Burns, Ph.D. is a Professor in the Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences and a Professor in the Department of Physics, both at the University of Colorado (CU) Boulder, and is Vice President Emeritus for Academic Affairs and Research for the CU System. His research focuses on extragalactic astronomy and cosmology; observations of active galaxies and galaxy clusters using radio interferometers, optical telescopes, and X-ray satellites; supercomputer numerical simulations of astrophysical jets and large-scale structures in the universe; and design of next-generation observatories in space and on the Moon.

Book Review-Dark Star

book cover Review: Dark Star by Jeff Foust Monday, February 12, 2024 Bookmark and Share Dark Star: A New History of the Space Shuttle by Matthew H. Hersch The MIT Press, 2023 paperback, 328 pp., illus. ISBN 978-0-262-54672-0 US$45.00 In a chamber at NASA’s Neil Armstrong Test Facility west of Cleveland, a spaceplane is being tested ahead of its first launch. Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser is a lifting body that will launch inside the payload fairing of a ULA Vulcan Centaur rocket later this year, but will glide back to a runway landing after completing a mission to the International Space Station. The current version of Dream Chaser is designed for cargo only, although the company is working on a crewed version (reviving plans funded by NASA a decade earlier in the early phases of the agency’s commercial crew program) that could ferry astronauts to commercial space stations. The theme of the book is to put that history into a context of long-running efforts to develop spaceplanes that, to their advocates, seemed like a natural extension of aviation. Dream Chaser is a reminder that the vision of a spaceplane, offering airplane-like access to space, lives on despite the failures of past efforts. The biggest such effort, of course, was NASA’s Space Shuttle, a technological marvel but one that failed on its stated goals of providing frequent, low-cost access to space. That failure demonstrated the futility of the spaceplane concept in general, argues historian Matthew Hersch in his book about the shuttle, Dark Star. Billed as a “new history” of the shuttle, the book offers little in the way of new information about the shuttle program, relying on a mix of primary and secondary sources. Instead, the theme of the book is to put that history into a context of long-running efforts to develop spaceplanes that, to their advocates, seemed like a natural extension of aviation. That history goes back 40 years before STS-1, when Eugen Sänger and Irene Bredt proposed the Silbervogel, a suborbital rocketplane that would have allowed Nazi Germany to bomb the United States. It was never built (and had it been, Hersch notes, the vehicle would not have survived its first flight because erroneous calculations underestimated the heating it would experience) but it set in motion American post-war interest in rocket-powered aircraft that could reach space. While the X-15 set altitude and speed records, true orbital spaceplanes failed to take off, with projects like the X-20 Dyna-Soar cancelled. Interest in spaceplanes was fading in the 1960s with the focus on expendable rockets and capsules during the race to the Moon. Its prospects were revived when NASA started pursuing what would become the shuttle. Its development, though, was affected by competing demands and design compromises familiar to most readers that turned it, he writes, “from an optimistic effort to create a spacefaring civilization to an awkward, winged vehicle that satisfied no one.” Yet its vision of enabling low-cost routine access to space—“a comfortable spaceflight experience even for the lay public”—persisted even as the shuttle failed to deliver on it. The book speeds through the actual flight history of the shuttle, including the Challenger and Columbia accidents. He offers a contrarian take on the widely held view that “normalization of deviance,” as Diane Vaughan famously described the underlying cause of Challenger (and which resurfaced after Columbia) was to blame for those accidents; he describes that as “a symptom rather than the cause of the shuttle’s difficulties,” which were rooted in its technical flaws. The shuttle flew for three decades despite those flaws, he concludes, because the efforts to develop alternatives never panned out. Certainly nothing like the shuttle is likely to be developed again, but there remains not just interest but actual flying spaceplanes today. “The shuttle was simply built the wrong way, at the wrong time, and for the wrong reasons,” he writes, a blunt but hardly surprising conclusion. The title of the book is taken from the darkly comedic sci-fi movie of the same name from 50 years ago about a ship plodding through the cosmos to discover—and blow up—other worlds. The shuttle’s development, Hirsch writes, “reflected Dark Star’s ambivalence of purpose, flirtation with routine, and hints of danger.” “Although interest in winged space vehicles remained after the end of the shuttle program, the unique set of circumstance that produced the space shuttle of 1972 are not likely to rise again anytime soon,” he states near the end of the book. Certainly nothing like the shuttle is likely to be developed again, but there remains not just interest but actual flying spaceplanes today, something the book largely overlooks. There are two spaceplanes in orbit now—the US Space Force’s X-37B and a Chinese counterpart—that are uncrewed 21st century versions of the X-20 Dyna-Soar, carrying out largely classified missions. Virgin Galactic is flying its suborbital VSS Unity spaceplane for private astronaut flights, although it will soon retire Unity to focus on development of a new “Delta-class” vehicle that promises, like so many before it, less expensive and more frequent access to (the edge of) space. And there is the aptly named Dream Chaser, going through thermal vacuum tests at that Ohio facility named after a man who once flew the X-15 rocketplane. Despite past failures by the shuttle and other vehicles, it is hard for people to give up on the dream of the spaceplane. Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.