NASA plans to colonize Mars without SpaceX or Elon Musk! Here's how...

Will the FAA ground ULA Vulcan Centaur?? How will NASA and the USSF rea...

LIVE!! ULA and Vulcan Centaur Moment of Truth!!

Is the most infamous UFO for real? The Black Knight satellite and other...

Is the most infamous UFO for real? The Black Knight satellite and other...

Red Planet Live -- 2024 Mars Society Convention Interviews

Reintegration Of THe Boeing Crew FLight Test Astronauts

change of command ceremony Oleg Kononenko shakes hands with Suni Williams during a change of command ceremony on the ISS on September 22. (credit: NASA+) “Not quite the plan, but here we are”: NASA ritual and the reintegration of the Boeing Crew Flight Test astronauts by Deana L. Weibel Monday, September 30, 2024 Bookmark and Share On September 22, 2024, a strange rupture in the normal activities of the International Space Station (ISS) and its constantly changing crew came to an official close with a traditional “change of command ceremony.” (Dinner 2024) The circumstances leading to this ceremony, however, were anything but traditional. The Expedition 71 crew had arrived on April 6, 2024, and Oleg Kononenko took his place as the ISS commander. Exactly two months later, on June 6, 2024, the Boeing Crew Flight Test (CFT) brought veteran astronauts Sunita Williams and Butch Wilmore to the ISS for what was supposed to be an eight-day mission. When certain issues with the Starliner capsule “Calypso” became apparent, NASA, after some deliberation, decided to send the spacecraft back to Earth without its passengers. This left Williams and Wilmore as unexpected, un-planned-for crew, both part of and apart from, Expedition 71. I was contacted by journalist Elizabeth Howell, who was taking a very social scientific view of the situation for an article she was writing (Howell 2024a). She was curious about the “the unusual-ness of a mission transition in space without that ritual.” While this might seem like a strange question to many in the space community, I immediately understood what she meant. When anthropologists like me study humanity, we look at people all over the world. We are simultaneously interested in what human beings have in common (many of us believe in an essential sameness in the human brain and cognition.) At the same time there is also a lot of variation, with cultural differences often serving as a way to mark group identity. One thing that all human groups seem to have common is the existence of rituals. Rituals may be religious in nature, but they don’t have to be. The most important thing about rituals is probably what they do, which is often to indicate transitions between, different states of being or different identities. The most important thing about rituals is probably what they do, which is often to indicate transitions between, different states of being or different identities. To use the example of a religious ritual, baptism is a way that some Christian churches recognize a birth and show acceptance and approval of that birth by welcoming the infant into the community (other churches delay baptism to a later age.) In churches where infant baptism takes place, the activity may have a supernatural function, but it also serves a social purpose. The baptism ceremony reminds the baby’s parents that they are supported by a group who cares about them, while simultaneously reminding the group that they have a new responsibility to newest member. Many rituals are ways that human societies convince themselves they have some control over something that happens naturally. Think of a bar mitzvah ceremony: You can’t stop your child from becoming an adult, but a ritual recognizing this transition and reintegrating your child as an adult gives you something to control and a way to give your blessing. Non-religious groups with exclusive membership (like NASA) also rely on rituals. When a person joins the military they may go through basic training, or boot camp. This is a secular form of “initiation rite” that denotes another transition, from outsider status to insider status. The military itself, in all of its branches, tends to be full of rituals. Hope College Religion professor Dru Johnson, for instance, describes military ritual practices in his book Human Rites: The Power of Rituals, Habits, and Sacraments. Johnson explains that “basic military training may be one of the most ritualized experiences in the world. It blows religious rituals out of the water in terms of meticulous performances. The military scripts and choreographs everything so that it’s done just so: picking up a fork in the chow hall, folding underwear with tweezers and a ruler, marching in exact synchronicity, and on and on.” (Johnson 2019) He goes on to explain that the military rituals he had to follow during his Air Force training served to encourage trust and commitment, creating a sense of cohesion. Rituals are also associated with circumstances where humans may have less control than they would like. They are a way of improving luck or asking for help from the powers that be, and NASA, like the nautical culture that preceded it, tends to have many rituals and superstitions meant to smooth out changes and make transitions easier. When less predictable changes happen, like the shift in the Apollo 13 mission from a Moon landing to a desperate race for survival, or when Sergei Krikalev went to the Mir space station in May 1991 as a member of the USSR and returned in March 1992 to a transformed country, Russia, sometimes these rituals of transition get lost. We saw what happens when rituals were lost during the months of the COVID-19 quarantine. Research done during and after that time by anthropologists, sociologists, psychologists, and others suggested that life transitions like funerals did not have the same effect of closure when they were done online, and that the transition into married life for couples wed during the quarantine without families and friends being present was more difficult. For Williams and Wilmore, there was a transition, a mostly unexpected one, from being Starliner crewmembers to becoming surplus crewmembers on the ISS. Reports indicated that the ISS crew had to ration food to some extent, that Williams and Wilmore had to borrow clothing, and ended up taking on chores already assigned to Expedition 71 crewmembers. (Kluger 2024) The whole situation left Williams and Wilmore in a strange “halfway” identity, where they were CFT crew, then lost that identity, but never fully became Expedition 71 crew. In the same way that the aforementioned cosmonaut Krikalev (who living in the Mir space station when the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991) seemed to be both Soviet and Russian while being neither Soviet nor Russian, taking on a temporary “statelessness,” Williams and Wilmore found themselves oddly “missionless.” Without ritual, reintegration becomes difficult. The whole situation left Williams and Wilmore in a strange “halfway” identity, where they were CFT crew, then lost that identity, but never fully became Expedition 71 crew. When I was first asked about this situation and the impact of the lack of ritual, I assumed this would stand out in the history of NASA as a situation similar to (although far less dangerous than) Apollo 13, another event where unexpected turns changed the mission into something else entirely, creating a new moment in history. The CFT mission would be remembered a rupture in the routine, unmarked by ritual, perhaps the beginning of something new. I thought Williams and Wilmore would remain liminal (literally “in the doorway,” despite its contemporary use in “liminal spaces” games), half-CFT and half-Expedition 71, fitting into neither fully, left to do the cast-off chores in borrowed clothing … at least for a while. I was wrong. The purpose of ritual is to smooth over such ruptures, patch holes in normal goings-on, and give approval to things we can’t control. Rituals have the power to take people removed from their normal place in society by circumstance or choice and reintegrate them in good standing. In this case, crews were changed, missions were adjusted, and Williams and Wilmore were pulled out of their liminality into fully-realized, much more acceptable new roles, as members of Expedition 72. Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson were cut from the mission (Howell 2024b) to make room, and leave available return flight accommodations, for Williams and Wilmore. Although the CFT astronauts were never meant to be part of Expedition 72, they were not only brought into the mission, but Sunita Williams was named the commander of the ISS until SpaceX Crew 9’s expected return to Earth in February 2025. With this decision, the “liminal” CFT crew, who had become weirdly “missionless,” were given a clear identity. The decision to make Williams commander gave this shift undeniable emphasis and allowed a classic ritual of transition to take place, the change of command ceremony. The change of command ceremony was a reworking of an existing Air Force ritual brought to the ISS by Expedition 1 Commander, William M. (Bill) Shepherd. The original change of command ceremony (common throughout different military branches) seems to have started in the 1700s, when “organizational flags were developed with color arrangements and symbols unique to each unit. The flag served as a rallying point and reminder of their allegiance to their leader during battle. To this flag and its commander, military members dedicated their loyalty and trust. Because of its symbolic nature, when a change of command took place, the flag was passed to the individual assuming command in the presence of the entire unit.” (“Change of Command Ceremony,” 403rd Wing) bell ringing Astronauts Brent Jett (left) and Bill Shepherd ring a bell on the ISS during the STS-97 shuttle mission to the ISS. (credit: NASA) The change of command ceremony first occurred on the ISS when Expedition 1 commander Shepherd welcomed the new Expedition 2 commander, Yury V. Usachev. Instead of passing an organizational flag, however, the transition was marked by the ringing of a bell, described in the April 6, 2001, Space Center Roundup (a JSC employee newspaper) as, “an old Navy tradition of ringing a bell to announce the arrival or departure of someone to a ship.” (“Welcome Home Expedition 1,” 2001) STS-97 mission commander Brent W. Jett’s status as a US Navy captain probably contributed to the use of the bell. The change of command ceremony has continued since then over dozens of missions, creating a sense of normalcy and comfortable routine during times of transition. In a 2020 interview, Bill Shepherd explained: (We) thought, you know, the Navy has a long tradition of doing this, and it’s the Royal Navy in the UK, the Russian Navy does it, the U.S. Navy does it. Then you have this little ceremony where you say, OK, fine, here’s the crew, and we’re going to tell you something, and here’s the new guy who’s in charge. And this is what he’s going to do, and so it’s a change of command. And we thought that was a really important cultural thing to introduce to the space station. (“Expedition 1,” NASA, October 6, 2023) On September 22, 2024, the Change of Command Ceremony took place again, with Expedition 71 commander Oleg Kononenko passing authority over the ISS to Expedition 72 commander Sunita Williams. He passed a space station hatch key to Williams, saying he was leaving the ISS in her “delicate hands.” (Dinner 2024) The bell was rung, marking the completion of the ritual and calling to mind (at least to me!) the way the first kiss of a newly married couple after their wedding marks the start of their new life together. Williams and Wilmore were completely reintegrated as NASA crewmembers when that bell was rung – they were now full members of Expedition 72. By moving Sunita Williams into a command position on the ISS, a transition that prompted a ritual, NASA helped heal the strangeness and uncertainty of the CFT crew’s extended stay on the ISS, reintegrating the so-called “stranded” astronauts into Expedition 72 and restoring normalcy. After that moment it was Williams’ turn to speak. First, she acknowledged the strangeness of the liminality she and Wilmore had experienced, stating, “This Expedition 71 has taught all of us a lot about flexibility, the ability to adapt to a number of amazing things. A lot of things weren't planned and somehow you guys put it all together and did it. It's pretty amazing, pretty impressive. You adopted Butch and I, even though that was not quite the plan, but here we are as part of the family.” Then, stepping into her new commander role, she did exactly as expected and thanked the departing crew members—Kononenko, Nikolai Chub, and Tracy Caldwell-Dyson—with warmth and friendship. (“NASA’s Suni Williams Becomes ISS Commander for 2nd Time in Ceremony,” YouTube) Social sciences like anthropology and sociology have long argued that “liminal states are threatening both to the self and to the social group” with rituals serving to “eas(e) the transition from one place in the social structure to another.” (Gusfield 1984) Social groups tend to abhor liminality the same way nature is often said to abhor a vacuum. By moving Sunita Williams into a command position on the ISS, a transition that prompted a ritual, NASA helped heal the strangeness and uncertainty of the CFT crew’s extended stay on the ISS, reintegrating the so-called “stranded” astronauts (Rannard 2024) into Expedition 72 and restoring normalcy. References “Change of Command Ceremony.” 403rd Wing. Accessed September 26, 2024. Dinner, Josh. “Boeing Starliner Astronaut Suni Williams Takes ISS Command as 8-Day Mission Turns into 8 Months (Video).” Space.com, September 24, 2024. “Expedition 1.” NASA, October 6, 2023. Gusfield, J. “Secular Symbolism: Studies of Ritual, Ceremony, and the Symbolic Order in Modern Life.” Annual Review of Sociology 10, no. 1 (January 1, 1984): 417–35. Howell, Elizabeth. “Boeing’s Starliner Astronauts Speak Publicly Today for 1st Time in 2 Months: Watch It Live.” Space.com, September 13, 2024a. Howell, Elizabeth. “SpaceX Crew-9 Dropped 2 NASA Astronauts from ISS Mission, but They Were Prepared (Video).” Space.com, September 26, 2024b. Johnson, Dru. Human rites: The power of rituals, habits, and sacraments. Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2019. Kluger, Jeffrey. “How Two Stranded Astronauts Are Camping out in Space.” Time, August 13, 2024. “NASA’s Suni Williams Becomes ISS Commander for 2nd Time in Ceremony.” YouTube. Accessed September 26, 2024. Rannard, Georgina. “Being Left behind by Starliner Craft Was Hard, Say Stranded Astronauts.” BBC News, September 13, 2024. “Welcome Home Expedition 1.” Space Center Roundup. April 6, 2001. Deana L. Weibel, Ph.D. is a Professor of Anthropology at Grand Valley State University with a joint appointment in GVSU’s Brooks College Religious Studies program. She has held a lifelong interest in voyages, studying pilgrimage, tourism, and scientific expeditions and the cultural, religious, and spiritual meanings they, and the places visited, hold for those who travel. A member of the American Anthropological Association and a Fellow of the Explorers Club (and current chair of the Chicago/Great Lakes Chapter of the latter), Weibel has conducted ethnographic field research in a number of settings, including the Black Madonna shrine of Rocamadour, France; Spaceport America; and the Vatican Observatory. Her website is http://www.deanaweibel.space.

Getting Space Traffic Coordination On Track

TraCSS The Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS, will ultimately take over civil space traffic coordination work from the Defense Department. (credit: Office of Space Commerce) Getting space traffic coordination on track by Jeff Foust Monday, September 30, 2024 Bookmark and Share On Monday morning, a new era in space traffic coordination began with all the pomp and circumstance of… a press release. “TraCSS represents a modern approach to spaceflight safety, integrating the latest technologies and providing on-ramps for continuous improvements that will scale into the future,” Rich DalBello said. The Office of Space Commerce, a small office with NOAA, itself part of the Department of Commerce, announced in a statement it had turned on its long-awaited civil space traffic coordination system, called Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS (pronounced “tracks.”) The initial “phase 1.0” version of TraCSS was now up and running, just meeting a goal of having it in place by the end of September. “TraCSS represents a modern approach to spaceflight safety, integrating the latest technologies and providing on-ramps for continuous improvements that will scale into the future,” Rich DalBello, director of the Office of Space Commerce, said in the statement. “I’m thankful for our team and partners for doing the hard work to launch the first phase on schedule.” The milestone was more than six years in the making. In June 2018, Space Policy Directive 3 instructed the Commerce Department to take over space traffic management services that had been provided for decades by the Defense Department, freeing up the Pentagon to focus its resources on national security applications (see “Managing space traffic expectations”, The Space Review, June 25, 2018.) (That directive was a “space traffic management” policy, although since then the term “space traffic coordination” has become preferred, reflecting the fact that, unlike air traffic, space traffic cannot be managed by a central authority but instead only coordinated among various operators and agencies.) Developing a policy and implementing it, though, are two very different challenges. A skeptical Congress had to be convinced that Commerce was the right place to host a civil space traffic coordination system rather than NASA, the FAA or even keeping it with the Defense Department. A 2020 report by the National Academy of Public Administration, commissioned by Congress, agreed that the Office of Space Commerce within the Commerce Department was the best place for it. Only later, though, did Congress finally start appropriating the funding the office needed to develop what became known as TraCSS. “In Washington, of course, everything takes a while,” DalBello quipped in a talk September 20 at the AMOS Conference, devoted to space situational awareness and space traffic topics. “We didn’t end up getting our first budget until 2023 to actually start the program.” The office took an approach to TraCSS as if it was a Silicon Valley startup, embracing agile development of an MVP (minimum viable product, not most valuable player), one of the first projects in the Commerce Department to use that development technique. “We had the realization that this was a process,” DalBello said at AMOS. “This was going to be a system that was never done.” What the Commerce Department announced Monday was now up and running was that MVP. The phase 1.0 version of TraCSS is essentially a beta test of the system, providing users with conjunction data messages, or CDMs, which inform them of potential close approaches between their satellites and other objects. The office has limited phase 1.0 to nine satellite operators. They range from major GEO satellite operators like Intelsat and Telesat to Planet and Eutelsat OneWeb, which have constellations of hundreds of satellites in low Earth orbit. NOAA itself is among the operators participating in the beta test. About 1,000 satellites are included in the beta test, with their operators receiving CDMs six times a day, twice the frequency that the Defense Department has been offering. DalBello noted in a panel discussion earlier in the month at the US Chamber of Commerce’s Global Aerospace Summit that the CDMs they would get from TraCSS are experimental. “The operators that are working with this know that this is not operational data yet. This is not data that they should be relying on for safety services yet,” he said. “They’ll be able to get comfortable with the processes and see the quality of data and make their own assessments about that.” The TraCSS MVP is so minimal that the system doesn’t even have its own website yet, instead using the existing Space-Track system operated by the Defense Department to distribute those CDMs. The purpose of this phase 1.0 beta test is to collect feedback from those operators that will be incorporated into later phases of TraCSS. The Office of Space Commerce, true to that agile development philosophy, plans to roll out a series of upgrades—phase 1.1, 1.2, etc.—on a quarterly basis. Those upgrades will involve bug fixes, new capabilities, and new sources of space situational awareness (SSA) data to augment what the office gets from the Defense Department. “Transitioning the spaceflight safety SSA responsibilities to DoC, a civil agency, will improve support to these users and allow DoD to focus its resources on core defense missions,” Hill said. By phase 1.4 of TraCSS, scheduled for next September, the system will finally have its own “presentation layer” or public interface, which will be online at tracss.gov. By then, the transition from Space-Track to TraCSS will be far along: DalBello said at AMOS that the goal is to complete that transition, with all current Space-Track users instead getting CDMs and other data from TraCSS, by the end of calendar year 2025. He reassured operators, though, that the transition will be gradual. “Operators told us at the very beginning, ‘Please don’t just throw a switch one day,’” he said of the transition from Space-Track to TraCSS. He added it will be up to the Defense Department when to turn off Space-Track once the transition is complete. “DoD standing down on a service should be a response to our mutual perception that we’ve got it, so we want to make sure that the new product is stable and that people can rely on it in a trustworthy fashion,” he said. “When we have run these processes in parallel for a while, and DoD goes, ‘We think you’ve got it,’ then they can step down.” In the statement about the beginning of TraCSS phase 1.0, a Pentagon official emphasized the cooperative nature of the work between the two departments. “The Department of Defense is working side-by-side with the Department of Commerce to ensure the seamless transfer of responsibility for civil and commercial space situational awareness services and information,” said John Hill, performing the duties of associate secretary of defense for space policy. DalBello, in previous conference appearances, also praised the cooperation between the DoD and his office. “Right now we’re getting tremendous support,” he said. As one example, he noted that his office was getting updated catalogs from the Defense Department through “sneakernet”: a manual transfer of data from a classified DoD catalog to the unclassified Commerce catalog. That will soon change, he said, with an automated pipeline to get that data to TraCSS. The Defense Department is motivated to work with Commerce so that it can free up resources it currently uses for civil space traffic coordination for national security applications like space domain awareness (SDA), which goes beyond what objects are in orbit to what they are doing. In a webinar in August, John Shaw, a retired Space Force general who previously was deputy commander of US Space Command, lamented the lack of progress on SDA, calling for improvements such as “dynamic tracking of hard to detect and track targets in non-standard orbits.” Hill echoed that intent. “Transitioning the spaceflight safety SSA responsibilities to DoC, a civil agency, will improve support to these users and allow DoD to focus its resources on core defense missions,” he said. There are still many challenges ahead for TraCSS, including how it will incorporate other data sources beyond the DoD catalog. DalBello noted at AMOS that his office recently completed a “consolidated pathfinder” project to assess the capabilities and costs of commercial data, and will provide details about the outcomes of project in October at the International Astronautical Congress in Milan, Italy. “Spoiler alert: they were good.” Space traffic coordination is more important than ever, as the number of active satellites and debris objects continues to grow. Incidents like the breakup in August of a Chinese upper stage in low Earth orbit after delivering a set of broadband satellites—the first for a constellation that could exceed 10,000 spacecraft—only heightened those concerns. “As space has become more congested, NOAA has risen to the challenge to prevent catastrophic collisions in space by developing TraCSS,” NOAA administrator Rick Spinrad said in the statement. TraCSS alone won’t prevent catastrophic collisions—operators will need to heed warnings of potential collisions it produces, if they are able and willing to do so—but it is a necessary first step in maintaining safe space operations in increasingly congested orbits. 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.

Isle Of Wright Aerospace

Black Arrow Successful liftoff of Black Arrow R3 from Woomera, Australia. (credit: GKN Aerospace) Isle of Wight aerospace: flying boats, rocket interceptors, hovercraft, and launch vehicles (part 2) by Trevor Williams Monday, September 30, 2024 Bookmark and Share As described in Part 1 of this article, in the 1940s and 1950s the small Saunders-Roe company[1] produced a succession of innovative aerospace vehicles, starting with the largest all-metal flying boat ever built, proceeding to high-speed interceptors powered by a combination of turbojet and rocket engines, and then to the first hovercraft. Unfortunately though, although technically impressive, none of these met with lasting success. The final projects carried out by Saunders-Roe before its demise were the Black Knight and Black Arrow rockets, which culminated in the first launch of a British satellite by a British launcher. However, by the time this took place the government had already cancelled the project, so it did not lead to further developments. Britain’s entry into the field of missiles and rockets In April 1957, the British government produced a White Paper on future defense policy[2] that essentially stated that the day of piloted fighters and bombers was over, and that future warfare would be conducted solely using missiles. There was therefore a need for a missile that would be capable of providing a nuclear deterrence capability for the British Isles. This led to de Havilland Propellers in Hatfield, northwest of London, receiving a contract for the development of the Blue Streak intermediate range ballistic missile (IRBM). Its specified range of 1,500 nautical miles (2,800 kilometers)[3, p. 37] would allow it to reach Moscow from England. In addition, it was soon recognized that there was little to no experience in designing reentry bodies either in Britain or the rest of the world, so there was a need for a research rocket capable of sending test vehicles on suborbital trajectories leading to high-speed reentries. This was the smaller Black Knight rocket, the contract for which was awarded to Saunders-Roe. Blue Streak Blue Streak Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile. (credit: British Aerospace) The stories of the development of these rockets are confusingly intertwined, as will be detailed in a later article focusing on Blue Streak. For instance, a Blue Streak/Black Knight stack was considered for use as an orbital launch vehicle under the name Black Prince, but this was not pursued, as the Black Arrow launcher was instead. A Blue Streak/Black Arrow composite was likewise studied as a larger orbital launcher, but Blue Streak instead became the first stage for the European launch vehicle Europa. The rather similar project names tend to confuse matters further and come from the “rainbow code” system that was used for British military projects from the end of World War II until the late 1950s. These names were made up of a color followed by a noun, in a combination that would not give a clue to the project. The noun could sometimes be unrelated to the color, giving a code name with no particular meaning, as for instance Black Arrow. Sometimes though, the two words are related, as for example Black Prince: this was originally a nickname for Edward of Woodstock, a 14th century Prince of Wales. Black Knight sounding rocket, 1955–1965 One particular problem that came to light at the start of the development of Blue Streak was the design of reentry vehicles required for the separable warhead: these had to not only survive the heat of reentry, but also fly stably. Two basic questions, unanswered at that point, were: Should this conical body fly “blunt end forward” or “apex forward”? Should it be constructed of a material, for example copper, that absorbs the heat, or from a material, for example a resin, that melts or ablates, taking the heat away with it? Black Knight was a relatively small sounding rocket, 3 feet (0.91 meters) in diameter and 38 feet (11.6 meters) long, that allowed various reentry body designs to be tested in flight by accelerating them vertically to altitudes approaching 500 miles (800 kilometers). The subsequent reentry was at speeds of up to 10,000 mph (4,500 meters per second), and so comparable to those experienced by a Blue Streak warhead. Later Black Knight versions added a small Cuckoo solid rocket second stage, firing downwards, to increase the reentry speed still further. (The solid rockets developed by the Rocket Propulsion Establishment were all given the names of birds because the Superintendent was a keen ornithologist[4, p. 8].) In addition, development of Black Knight provided valuable practical experience in rocketry. Black Knight Black Knight single-stage (left) and two-stage versions (right). (credits: Gunter Krebs) Black Knight Black Knight exhibit, Science Museum, London: scale model of vehicle (left); engine section (center); reentry test body (right). (credit: author) Black Knight was essentially a research project, and was overseen by the Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) in Farnborough. They selected Saunders-Roe to design and produce the vehicle. Given their experience with the kerosene/high-test peroxide (HTP) propellant combination in the mixed jet/rocket interceptor designs SR.53 and SR.177, Saunders-Roe selected this for the Black Knight first stage, first flying the Armstrong Siddeley Gamma 201 four-chamber engine, with a thrust of 16,400 pounds-force (73.0 kilonewtons)[6, p. 22], and later the four-chamber Armstrong Siddeley Gamma 301, with a thrust of 21,600 pounds-force (96.1 kilonewtons). Black Arrow turned out to be the last rocket developed by Saunders-Roe (by then a division of Westland Aircraft), or indeed by Britain to date. The vehicles were constructed at the Saunders-Roe factory in East Cowes on the Isle of Wight, with static tests performed at High Down on the southwest coast of the island. High Down was originally part of the land of a Victorian gun battery dating back to 1862 and saw service in both World Wars, with its guns finally abandoned in 1954. It is also, though, a very scenic location, high above cliffs that provide views of the English Channel and The Needles rock stacks at the western tip of the island. Writing before the construction of the rocket test site, author, broadcaster, and Poet Laureate John Betjeman called the southwestern coast of the Isle of Wight, which includes High Down, “the longest stretch of unspoiled and colossal landscape in the south-west of England.”[5, pp. 143] Even to a dyed-in-the-wool aerospace engineer, it seems a peculiar place to test rocket engines. A description in [4, pp. 252-254] gives an explanation of how this decision probably came about: In these days… it seems incredible that a rocket test site could be built on one of the most scenic sites in Britain without objection, but it was also obvious from the files that the idea of anyone objecting did not occur to the official mind. The site belonged to the War Office, was now surplus to requirements, and a test site was needed. Planning permission as we now know it was not necessary in those days. Following static testing, each Black Knight was shipped to Australia for launch from the Woomera rocket range. Launches took place at night so as to allow imaging of reentry, and the missiles were equipped with flashing strobe lights to facilitate tracking. Black Knight had a sterling career: on a very modest budget, all 21 launches were successful apart from a few minor glitches. High Down High Down: Black Knight static test stand shown being used for Black Arrow in 1969; site in the present day. (credits: GKN Aerospace and Wight Aviation Museum, resp.) Proposed Black Prince and the genesis of Black Arrow, 1964–1971 A possible British satellite launch vehicle that was considered for a time was a Blue Streak first stage with Black Knight making up the upper stages. This combination, referred to as Black Prince (or officially the Blue Streak Satellite Launch Vehicle, or BSSLV), was deemed to be feasible, but the small size of the Black Knight would have led to a low payload capability to orbit, partly because a launch vehicle with upper stage so small compared to the first stage leads to inefficient staging. There was an RAE proposal to modify Black Knight to improve matters, increasing its diameter from 3 to 4.5 feet (0.9 to 1.4 meters), but the payload to orbit was still low. In addition, further analysis revealed control issues. Black Prince Design of proposed Black Prince satellite launch vehicle. (credit: Kaye Dee) Instead of proceeding with Black Prince, the decision was then made, after studies by RAE in 1962 and 1963, to develop the Black Arrow launch vehicle. This did not use Blue Streak and was larger than Black Knight, but was based on its design: the second stage had the same 4.5-foot diameter as had been examined for the stretched Black Knight [4, p. 298]. In addition, the Black Arrow design brief stated that “Black Knight components should be employed wherever possible.”[6, p. 52] The project was officially approved in March 1964. Even then though, for the first two years the government provided funding only in three-month contracts[6, p. 54], which is hardly either efficient or good for team morale. In line with the requirement that Black Arrow use Black Knight developments to the greatest extent possible, it made sense that Saunders-Roe be selected as prime contractor. Black Arrow was designed and built in East Cowes, static tested at High Down, and then shipped to Woomera for launch, as was Black Knight. Black Arrow turned out to be the last rocket developed by Saunders-Roe (by then a division of Westland Aircraft), or indeed by Britain to date. Black Arrow consisted of three stages, the first two propelled by kerosene/HTP engines. The first stage had a Gamma 8 engine with eight chambers, producing a total of 50,000 pounds-force (222.5 kilonewtons) of thrust at sea level. The second stage had a Gamma 2 with two chambers, with expanded bells optimized for vacuum, generating 15,340 pounds-force (68.3 kilonewtons) total thrust. Both of these engines were derivatives of the Gamma 304, itself an improved version of the Gamma 301 from the later Black Knights. Gamma 304, with its four thrust chambers forming a square, was designed to be used in Black Prince for the proposed Crusade UK/US reentry experiment campaign. However, this program was not pursued, so the Gamma 304 never flew. However, it was key to Black Arrow: using half of the Gamma 304 thrust chambers, with expanded bells, gave rise to the second stage Gamma 2. A rearrangement of the thrust chambers from two Gamma 304s, making two squares into two lines of four, and with these lines forming a cruciform arrangement, then gave the Gamma 8 of the first stage. These two lines of chambers could be rotated independently to give full pitch, roll and yaw control. Funding was only provided for a minimal number of test flights, leaving little slack for the problems that are inevitable with a new vehicle. In the end, there were only four launches. A third stage with a Waxwing solid rocket, producing 6,130 pounds-force (27.3 kilonewtons) vacuum thrust, provided the final push to orbit. In addition, four smaller Siskin 1B solid rockets separated the second stage from the first after burnout, also serving as ullage motors to settle the propellant prior to ignition of the second stage. Significant trajectory design effort went into ensuring that the spent stages would not risk falling on populated areas. The first stage fired for only just over two minutes, accelerating the vehicle somewhat vertically to about 1.5 kilometers per second, ensuring that it would impact an unpopulated desert area only just over 400 kilometers from Woomera. The image below shows the R3 first stage, after spending decades in the desert; by way of comparison, the second image is of the unflown R4 first stage in the Science Museum in London. Black Arrow Black Arrow R3 first stage in South Australia. It has since been returned to Britain by the Skyrora company. (credit: Commonwealth of Australia) Black Arrow Black Arrow R4 first stage in the Science Museum, London. Note the Siskin housings in the interstage at right, misleadingly still attached to the first stage. (credit: author) The second stage then accelerated the vehicle to around 4.9 kilometers per second, a high enough speed that it safely overflew the populated regions of New Guinea before reentering over the North Pacific. Imposing these reentry location constraints presumably led to a somewhat sub-optimal vehicle and trajectory design, but definitely made sense from the point of view of ground safety. Certain launchers today could do with taking such care. Black Arrow Black Arrow R4 stack and Prospero satellite spare, Science Museum, London. (credit: author) Funding was only provided for a minimal number of test flights, leaving little slack for the problems that are inevitable with a new vehicle. In the end, there were only four launches: R0 was launched in June 1968 with the first two stages active and the third stage a dummy. Unfortunately, immediately following launch a broken wire caused one set of four Gamma 8 bells to continuously rotate between its limits, which set the vehicle rolling wildly: it had to be destroyed by range safety. The second launch, R1, was retargeted to repeat the R0 mission: this occurred in March 1970, and was a success. R2 was then the first test of the full three-stage vehicle, and was intended to put a small test satellite in orbit: it was launched on September 2, 1970, but experienced a pressurization failure in the second stage leading to a serious decay in thrust and an early shutdown. In addition, the fairing failed to separate at the proper time, so the vehicle had a reduced thrust and increased mass, and consequently did not achieve orbit. At this point, the government commissioned an independent study of Black Arrow: this pointed out (unfortunately correctly) that the vehicle did not really have a viable mission[4, pp. 314-318]. It could only launch quite small satellites, of which Britain only produced around one every three years. On the other hand, building these launchers slower than about one per year would have been very inefficient, requiring the government to subsidize the manufacturers significantly. The study therefore proposed the cancellation of Black Arrow, after demonstration of the launch of a satellite to orbit. The next vehicle, R3, was completed for launch, and R4 was prepared in case R3 were to fail. (The commonly repeated statement that R3 was only allowed to be launched after cancellation because it was already en route to Australia is colorful but incorrect.) R3 was successfully launched on October 28, 1971, and put the satellite Prospero into orbit, although residual thrust is believed to have caused the Waxwing to recontact it, damaging one of the antennae. This spacecraft was originally to have been named Puck from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, but was renamed after the magician from “The Tempest” who renounces his powers, in an oblique reference to the cancellation of Black Arrow. Subsequent small British test satellites were launched on US Scout rockets. Britain remains the only country to develop the ability to launch its own spacecraft and then discard it. Black Arrow Successful liftoff of Black Arrow R3 from Woomera, Australia. (credit: GKN Aerospace) “Everything old is new again” As seen, HTP became a staple of British rocket designs in the 1950s and 1960s, usually in the kerosene/HTP propellant combination. This stems from the work of German engineer Hellmuth Walter, developer of the Walter HWK 109-509 bipropellant rocket motor, producing 3,300 pounds-force (14.7 kilonewtons) of thrust, for the Me-163 “Komet” interceptor. This used HTP (called T-stoff by the Germans) as oxidizer and a hydrazine/methanol mixture (called C-stoff) as fuel. After the war, he and members of his team were brought to Britain where he worked for the Royal Navy for several years, and their use of HTP was taken up by British propulsion engineers. Me-163 Walter HWK 109-509 rocket motor (foreground) and Me-163 “Komet” (background), National Air & Space Museum. (credit: author) Kerosene/HTP is currently making something of a comeback. Advantages of these propellants include a clean exhaust made up predominantly of steam; simplicity of handling as, unlike liquid oxygen, HTP can be stored at room temperature; and a reduced risk of fire. In addition, if the HTP is decomposed by passing it through a catalyst, the resulting high temperature oxygen and steam combusts spontaneously with kerosene, yielding a hypergolic pair[7] and so no need for an igniter. Furthermore, HTP and a catalyst can be used in monopropellant mode (at reduced efficiency), in similar fashion to hydrazine. On a related point, HTP leads to a simple way of destroying a stage in the event of a problem during launch: triggering the opening of a sealed container of catalyst (usually manganese dioxide) in the HTP tank leads to an explosive event. It therefore appears likely that HTP/kerosene rocket engines will finally take flight again, after a gap of over 50 years. A key point is that the kerosene/HTP combination falls into the category of “green” propellants[8] (or, at least, greener than hydrazine!) HTP is certainly less dangerous to handle, as its low vapor pressure means that significant vapor will not form above an open container of it, making it much less likely to be ingested.[7] Since it is non-cryogenic, it can be used for long missions, although not of unlimited duration: the Soyuz descent module uses monopropellant HTP attitude thrusters, and gradual HTP decomposition leads to the Soyuz lifetime limit of 6 months. (Soyuz uses a relatively low HTP concentration of 82%; going to a higher concentration could perhaps slow the decomposition.) Kerosene/HTP has a specific impulse about 9% less than that of kerosene/oxygen, so the increased ease of handling entails a reduction in efficiency. However, this is offset by a significant increase in average propellant density: not only does HTP have a density 20% higher than that of liquid oxygen (and both of these are denser than kerosene), but the optimal ratio of the denser oxidizer to lighter fuel is much higher for kerosene/HTP than for kerosene/oxygen. All else being equal, this increase in density leads to a smaller vehicle; of course, increasing average density is also the reason for using kerosene/oxygen rather than hydrogen/oxygen in lower stages. Another advantage of HTP is that it has a much higher specific heat capacity than liquid oxygen, making it a good candidate for cooling engine components. Finally, it can also be decomposed to drive pumps, making it a versatile, multi-use working fluid. Kerosene/HTP is of renewed interest for several modern rocket engines. Notably, the Sierra Space Dream Chaser spaceplane is equipped with dual-mode HTP thrusters for on-orbit maneuvering: these use monopropellant HTP for smaller burns, and bipropellant kerosene/HTP, at higher thrust, for the comparatively large deorbit burn. Another example is the Scottish Skyrora company: it is employing kerosene/HTP for the three-stage Skyrora XL orbital launcher and for the single-stage Skylark L sounding rocket. They are also developing the two-stage sub-orbital SkyHy “hybrid” rocket that uses a solid fuel with HTP oxidizer. Finally, Ursa Major Technologies in Colorado is developing the kerosene/HTP Draper engine with Air Force funding: this has 4,000 pounds-force (17.8 kilonewtons) of thrust and is throttleable down to 10%. It therefore appears likely that HTP/kerosene rocket engines will finally take flight again, after a gap of over 50 years. As a final note, Black Arrow is somewhat similar in size and performance to the present-day, and very successful, Electron small satellite launcher, although the extensive use of composites has allowed Electron to be considerably lighter and thus have better performance to orbit. It is interesting to speculate, in an alternative space history exercise, what Black Arrow might have led to with less grudging government support: development of improved engines or upper stages, or the addition of strap-on solid boosters, could have increased its payload to orbit considerably, moving it out of the small satellite category which was not yet as well developed then as it is today. Perhaps combining an upgraded Black Arrow with the Blue Streak missile (the subject of a future companion article) as a large first stage could even have given rise to a competitor to Ariane. Of course, this is all just speculation, but the resurgence of kerosene/HTP engines does suggest that the British designers of Black Knight and Black Arrow may have been thinking along the right lines after all. References British Built Aircraft, Volume 2: South West & Central Southern England, R. Smith, The History Press, 2003. Defence: Outline of Future Policy, Command Paper 124, Secretary of State for Defence, Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, London, April 1957. Blue Streak: Britain’s Medium Range Ballistic Missile, J. Boyes, Fonthill, 2019. A Vertical Empire: History of the British Rocketry Programme, C.N. Hill, Imperial College Press, 2012 (2nd edition). First and Last Loves, J. Betjeman, Grey Arrow, 1960. The Black Arrow Rocket: A History of a Satellite Launch Vehicle and its Engines, D. Millard, Science Museum, 2001. “Past and Present Uses of Rocket Grade Hydrogen Peroxide”, E. Wernimont et al., 2nd International Hydrogen Peroxide Propulsion Conference, Purdue University, Nov. 7-10, 1999. “Roadmap Towards a Greener Kick-Stage Propulsion System”, L. Blondel-Canepari et al., Paper IAC-22-9-D6.2, 73rd International Astronautical Congress, Paris, France, Sept. 2022. Trevor Williams in an orbital dynamicist who grew up following the Apollo missions, and has long been fascinated by space history. He tries to fit in a day-trip to the Isle of Wight whenever visiting England.

Book Review: "Sharing Space"

book cover Review: Sharing Space by Jeff Foust Monday, September 30, 2024 Bookmark and Share Sharing Space: An Astronaut’s Guide to Mission, Wonder, and Making Change by Cady Coleman Penguin Life, 2024 hardcover, 272 pp. ISBN 978-0-593-49401-1 US$28.00 To the average person, an astronaut—a professional trained to fly to space—presumably spends much of their time in space. Those in the space community, though, know otherwise. Early in her book Sharing Space, former NASA astronaut Cady Coleman notes her career at NASA spanned exactly 8,888 days, or more than 24 years. She spent just half a year, 180 days, in space, on two shuttle flights in the late 1990s and a long-duration flight on the International Space Station in 2010–11. Sally Ride was “surprisingly real and relatable,” she recalled. “As I listened to her speak that day, an utterly unexpected idea popped into my head: Maybe I—Cady Coleman—could have that job.” What goes into being an astronaut, then, involves all that time spent on the ground training for flights and waiting for the next mission assignment, not to mention the years of effort leading up to being selected as an astronaut. Coleman uses that experience to both tell what it’s like to be an astronaut as well as mine that experience for lessons that an earthbound reader can also apply. The book, in many respects, is a typical astronaut memoir. Coleman describes how she first became interested in becoming an astronaut as a student at MIT when Sally Ride gave a talk there in the early 1980s. Ride was “surprisingly real and relatable,” she recalled. “As I listened to her speak that day, an utterly unexpected idea popped into my head: Maybe I—Cady Coleman—could have that job.” Coleman, who became a research chemist in the Air Force, went on to get that job, convincing herself and the inevitable skeptics that she was astronaut material. She got her opportunities to fly to space, along the way getting married and having a son, but also dealing with challenges along the way, such as subtle but very real sexism she encountered while in the astronaut corps. But, some of those challenges were her own doing, she acknowledged, such as a lack of organization that put a burden on support staff and others. As the subtitle suggests, those experiences become fodder for life lessons she passes along to readers, subtly, in the book. Seeing Sally Ride, she recalls, gave her “permission” to pursue a career as an astronaut: “If you can see it, you can be it.” Other lessons involve dealing with doubters, and self-doubt, and working with others. None of those lessons are terribly surprising, but they have the benefit of coming from someone who used them in space, or to get to space. Coleman was also one the key figures in the recent documentary Space: The Longest Goodbye, which covered her mission to the ISS and keeping in touch with family while away (see “Review: Space: The Longest Goodbye”, The Space Review, March 18, 2024.) At the end of the documentary, she confesses, “If I could have spent another six months, I would have stayed in a minute.” In the book, she recalls saying to a crewmate, as they neared the end of their time on the station, “I would spend another six months here in a minute.” She credited that to the bonds built up with her crewmates. “Yes, I missed my family and couldn’t wait to see them again. But my crew were family too.” 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.

Final Report from Cape Canaveral! Will Angry be coming back?

It's make or break time for ULA and Vulcan Centaur! But why can't Space...