Cosmocast - All For Science 2u5464

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Cosmocast S2Ep3: All about that SpaceX

Cosmocast S2Ep2: Interview With Dumitru Popescu of Arcaspace

"I can't wait to dip these in Valium" Show notes:  First things first, I'd like to give a shout-out to a couple listeners. The show (and my life, same thing)  has been through some turmoil and hearing input, or just a plain old “hello” from listeners always kicks my ass into gear.   So thanks to : Giles Mason, Dimitri, and Peter Bergheim  There's a post on the new site, which is Cosmocast.space detailing what's been up if you'd like to read that, but without further ado, let's get to the show!!  Oh yeah, also to get this out on time I had to cut music and sound effects. They'll be back soon.    Falcon flights!   3 launches in last two weeks!   Intelsat 35-e had no first sage recovery, Bulgariasat was the most difficult landing yet (on a “flight tested” booster) and Iridiumsat was the first Falcon to use the new titanium griffins.   Arca’s built the first SSTO. OR IS IT?  (Atlas 10B SCORE)  Atlas 10-B used a “1.5” stage system to deliver its payload to LEO.  A 1.5 stage system is really neat, as it drops a bunch of weight (the engines)  but doesn't lose a whole stage.   XCOR lays off all employees XCOR has been through some shit. Over the last year, they've laid off half of their workforce, lost all three founding leaders of the company, and then the replacement for the company leader left for a political position as the deputy chief management officer of the Department of defence.  They will be maintaining some employees to take care of their “intellectual property” and to try to get the company back on its feet again.  Looks like the Lynx Spaceplane will be a future topic for episodes based around “ neat-o things that might have been”    Soyuz 5 is cool and all, but a weak response.  Roscosmos hasn't had the best time with implementing a new rocket family.  The Angara series has had some delays. Crewed flight has moved from 2021 to 2022 and it looks like that's a bit of a candy-coated estimate.  Still waiting on a 2017 launch.  Soyuz 5 is a drafted plan to bridge the gap between retiring the Soyuz and implementation of the Angara vehicle.    Perchlorates on Mars. What to do, what to do.   Aight, so there's a ton of perchlorates in Mars.  If we processed ~60kg/soil per day that means we could hit the 550liters of Oxygen an average *naut has to breath a day.  That's because the perchlorates are a chlorine atom surrounded by oxygen atoms. In the case of the most common perchlorate on Mars, ClO4- , it's a chlorine atom surrounded by four oxygen atoms.  We can, nay, *need* to use this resource.  Oxygen is an insanely useful resource, and to find that there's tons of the stuff, pretty much wherever we land, locked away in *dirt* is *good* news.   Furthermore, this has been used to make the argument that living on the surface isn't possible, but we already kind of knew that. Look at the leading designs for Mars habitats. The general idea is that for anything long term, we need to bury the habitats, or put a bunch of dirt on top of them, which is kind of like burying, but in reverse or something.   Also, fucking Mike Pence needs to either keep his paws of flight hardware, or show the same discretion around power lines.   Aaaand with that I'll bring this episode to a close. Our launch is a... Soyuz 2.1a with a Fregat upper stage.             It's launching from Baikonur and will be sending up Kanopus-V-lk, which will hang out in sun synchronous orbit, with an operational life of 5 years, and will be imaging and reporting on wildfires. Good stuff.    

On this postponed CosmoCast episode, Pedro and Plamen go over the events of a busy last week for the space exploration community.This week's topics of interest include Rocket Lab's Electron launch, the trouble at camp SLS, Falcon Heavy's core booster test, Buzz Aldrin's recent comments regarding the ISS, and more.Show notes:Our brief review of NASA's current state of affairs.SpaceX's Falcon Heavy test video.First static fire test of a Falcon Heavy center core completed at our McGregor, TX rocket development facility last week. pic.twitter.com/tHUHc1QiKG— SpaceX (@SpaceX) May 9, 2017 NASA's... uhmmm... Mars rover? No? Eh. Are you ready for #SummerOfMars? Take a sneak peek at the Mars Rover Concept Vehicle at #KennedySpaceCenter, built by @parkerbrosconcepts in Cape Canaveral. This summer, get a front row seat for #NASA's #JourneyToMars A post shared by KSC Visitor Complex (@kennedyspacecenter) on May 8, 2017 at 5:11pm PDT Rocket Lab's orbital characteristics tweet.Target for 'It's a Test' - an elliptical orbit, varying between 300 - 500km at an 83 degree inclination. pic.twitter.com/D8CYoTpspP— Rocket Lab (@RocketLabUSA) May 14, 2017

Welcome to this week's Cosmocast! We talk about the fantastic footage of the Falcon 9 landing during the last NROL launch, the stem cell experiments taking place in the Chinese Tiangong space station, and the CNSA science missions. We mention the launch of BulgariaSat-1 and give an update on the Cassini grand finale. In the end of the episode we give an update on Juno and Jarrod talks about the new energy generation and propulsion system that could get us to Pluto in little over 4 years (spoiler alert, it's not the EM Drive).We have two main topics this week: first we talk about Vector, their successful launch and what this could mean for the future of spaceflight. Speaking of the future of spaceflight, we also talk about NASA and the problems that are now emerging due to bad management.Also, we have a classic making a comeback. We got interrupted during the recording with someone knocking at the door. Amazing footage of the Falcon 9 landing.You can see footage of the Vector-R launch here. The video that Jarrod mentions where you can see what happens to the launchpad during a Saturn V launch.Here you can find the excellent article that Plamen wrote about the NASA situation:Multiple government reports outline major uncertainties, regarding NASA’s future manned exploration efforts

Hello everyone! Finally we have a more lighthearted episode. We talk about Hubble that celebrated it's 27th anniversary, we also talk about the new ARCA rocket, the Lyrid meteor shower, Vector-R imminent launch. Our main topic is the Cassini epic mission finale.Don't forget to get NASA's Eyes to follow Cassini's grand finale and other NASA missions. here. Hubble Space Telescope ARCA's HAAS 2CA Vector's Vector-R October 15 1997. Cassini-Huygens launches on top of a Titan IV(401)B from SLC-40, Cape Canaveral. What Huygens saw while landing on Titan on January 14, 2005 Saturn's shadow Saturn's rings Another wonderful view of the rings Earth as seen from Saturn just a few days ago.

Hello and sorry for another late episode! This week we talk about the launch of China's TZ-1 Tianzhou-1 the ressuply vehicle for the Tiangong program, news on Enceladus, how ESA is helping ocean navigation. We also address a message a listener sent regarding our last episode about Space Police (thank you Bart!), finally we talk about the not so misterious disappearance of the website standards.nasa.gov. Also the cats decided they wanted to participate in this episode, sorry about that :)We mention that there's another source for the same information, you can check it here in the amazing Copernicus website.Also thanks to MacLuky for reviving the ESA launchers mod for Kerbal Space Program, you can it here.

All settled in, we have the second episode of this week. We talk about the maiden flight of the Falcon Heavy that will happen this year, a new family of rockets that Orbital is working on, some news on the ISS and the possibility of a new module being added. Our main topic is the troubling idea of having space police and what tensions that might create in future space exploration.

After almost two years of podcast we finally record an episode on the same room. We didn't manage to record last Friday so this week we'll release two episodes.Today we talk a little bit about space planes and why we don't care much for this type of spacecraft. 

This week we have a short episode, it's the last one before Jarrod moves to Portugal! We talk about the TGO maneuver, ISS spacewalk, Cygnus delay (not Orbital fault!), Kourou unrest, US Congress plans for the ISS after 2024 and the first Falcon 9 to be reused!

This week we talk about the European mission to Jupiter and it's moons and of course that we analyze this proposal for the NASA budget and what does it mean for the current and projects. Spoiler alert, it doesn't look so good. This animation shows the proposed trajectory of ESA's Jupiter Icy Moons Explore (Juice) mission to Jupiter. Based on a launch in June 2022, the spacecraft will make a series of gravity-assist flybys at Earth (May 2023, September 2024 and November 2026), Venus (October 2023) and Mars (February 2025) before arriving in the Jupiter system in October 2029.NASA's Acting press release regarding the budget here.If you want to check the new Kerbal Space Program expansion check here.

This week we have a news only episode. We talk about the 2017 EA and it's danger close flyby over our planet, the new amazing and highly detailed picture of Earth. We also talk about the Dreamchaser tests, the New Glenn, Europa Clipper (yay they kept the name), NASA's new budget, Pan's new picture and the SpaceX static fire test for the Echostar launch. 2017 EA flyby Earth as seen by Elektro-L New Glenn animation Pan and Saturn's rings Pan aka Space Ravioli

This week we talk about the new chinese Space Station, Boeing contract with Energia to give NASA more seats aboard the Soyuz, Virgin Orbital and the new plans for the Moon, namely SpaceX, NASA and Blue Origin. On a side note Pedro mentions that Roscosmos will reduce the russian crew aboard the ISS from three to one. He meant three to two.  Example of Free Return Trajectory to the Moon.

This week we talk about the two resupply missions to the ISS, possible manned mission for the very first launch of the SLS and of course that our main topic is the amazing discovery of a new set of planets orbiting the Red Dwarf TRAPPIST-1

This week we talk about the status of Progress MS-05, ISRO successful record breaking launch, possibility of Dream Chaser servicing Hubble, Event Horizon Telescope and the last ITS test. Our main topic is space stations and where we would like to see them in the future. 

This week we check the new tech that will allow for extended missions on the surface of Venus, possible photo of the Falcon Heavy booster. Then we get to Mars and talk about the new Curiosity discovery that will make us rethink about what we know about the red planet. We also give an update on Curiosity's health. SpaceX Booster

In preparation of a since-then-scrapped MicroCosmos episode, Jarrod and Pedro came upon the realisation that they had discovered the biggest reason for the slow development of space exploration technologies of the last five decades. Tag along with them this Friday, as they explain in detail what that reason is.

Image courtesy of Vector Space Systems After a short unplanned break, our host duo returns and uses up and entire episode to catch up on the news of the last 14 days.

This week's episode is all about asteroid detection and deflection missions! Or, it would be, if there were more than a handful of current ( but under/non funded) missions or even mission proposals. But alas, we carried on!Neato links and corrections: Orbit@homeTurns out Orbit@home got shut down due to lack of funding. Do you see what we mean when we say this problem is being ignored? :Orbit@home's grave: http://orbit.psi.edu/Rundown of why it is a grave: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orbit@home Asteroids@homeAsteroids@home is up and running well.You can find the project here: http://asteroidsathome.net/boinc/index.phpYou can our team here:  http://asteroidsathome.net/.../3003 SpaceX LandingIt was pretty awesomeVideo here: Technical Webcast