NASA and Private Companies NASA is really getting up against it. They are suffering because of all those contracts that had with the legacy aerospace companies. Notice that the only company which has been there every time to launch astronauts and cargo to the International Space Station has been SpaceX. Before anyone jumps down my throat and says they had delays, I want to say just about all of them were short and mostly due to the weather. Most of the other space companies have had many different problems. The latest is a very upset NASA Inspector general, who could not believe the damage to the heat shield when the Orion spacecraft came back from circling the earth. One might think we have already figured out how to make heat shields by now, so how come this one didn’t work as planned? It is just another headache for Boeing and the companies who have joined it in joint projects. I have to mention the fact originally the Artemis 1 rocket which is powering the Orion was scheduled to launch in 2017. Space.com ran an article stating NASA will spend 93 billion dollars for the Artemis moon program by 2025. I have to wonder if it will be even more than that? Before the last launch attempt for the Boeing Starliner a NASA contractor did something which should scare the heck out of everyone because it is reminiscent of the warning which was ignored years ago when the space shuttle Challenger was about to launch and NASA got a call from an engineer working for a rocket contractor that supplied the auxiliary boosters. He told NASA it was too cold and the seals would not hold. They ignored the warning and 73 seconds into the launch the shuttle blew up, killing seven crew members. This time an engineer working for a contractor noticed something off about the Starliner and warned NASA if they launched it could result in a disaster. Thank goodness they relented this time. Maybe it was because of what happened last time they got a warning like this or maybe the people in charge were more caring for the lives of the astronauts. The problem should have been noticed by NASA, but I guess it wasn’t, or they didn’t think it was serious at first. Since I wrote this article NASA did launch and now the capsule is stuck at the International Space Station for repairs and no one knows when the astronauts will be allowed to leave. NASA has a great history. We were far behind the Soviets when the space race started. We had too many organizations operating independently and somehow all their efforts had to be gathered under one roof. In 1958 president Eisenhower founded NASA which became responsible for all the civilian activities in space. The president signed the law creating the National Aeronautics and Space Act into law. Before NASA was created, I remember all the failures we were having. This is not to say the Russians did not have failures and some were spectacular, but on the whole they were far ahead of us. I will never forget one big shot Soviet General went to the launch area to watch. He actually was said to set up a chair on the launchpad. Not wanting to look like cowards his staff joined him. Everyone else was in the blockhouse for protection. The rocket was a big ICBM being tested. It exploded and killed the general and his staff and the total dead was said to be about fifty-four. The incident was kept secret for years. NASA launched a mission called the Fermi mission. It is a gamma-ray telescope. While the telescope was performing its mission, there was a supernova explosion. That is basically the explosion of a star. It was believed when this happens gamma-rays are produced which accelerate cosmic rays to almost the speed of light. The explosion occurred on May 18, 2023. It occurred 22 million light years away in the Messier 101 Galaxy. What NASA didn’t expect happened. No gamma-rays were detected. Some explosions produced only 1 percent of the total energy in gamma-rays from other exploding stars when about 10 percent was expected. I guess it will be back to the drawing board on this one. The Cassini mission was a joint mission between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency. Its funny when a search is made to learn how many space agencies there are, the results I found say things like there are at least, or about and seems to settle mostly on about 14. The joint mission lasted from 2004 to 2017. They discovered oceans on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn and today scientists what to see if they can detect cells n the water. What is really fascinating is the fact geysers are shooting gas and ocean ice into space. Enceladus is very small with a diameter of only 313 miles. The ocean is said to cover the entire moon below the ice covering it. So far it seems SpaceX has the most reusable rockets. The Chinese like this idea and are trying to create them also. Landing rockets vertically when they come back to earth seems to have only been accomplished by SpaceX so far, but some other companies are dying to get the technology. In all the old science fiction movies rockets landed that way. I have to think these movies spurred Musk on to accomplish this, though capsules returning to earth containing people still land in the water for safety. Now that a new spaceplane has passed its tests, this will change. It sort of reminds me of the shuttle, but looks smaller to me, about the same size as the original shuttle plan called for. The plane is called Dream Chaser. It is also reusable. It is manufactured by Sierra Nevada Corporation. As of the writing of this article it is scheduled to fly its first mission to the ISS, which is a cargo mission without people on board. This will change if successful and it will become a ferry to the ISS for astronauts. The same company is testing what they call a hypersonic decelerator. The project is named Ghost. It is a sort of heat shield re-orient device which would allow supply ships to be parked in space for up to 5 years and yet be able to return when needed. It can deorbit a ship by slowing down the craft. The next thing we need is to be able to slow down re-entry to airplane speeds and fly using power back to earth like a true airplane instead of that incredible blazing return flight when we basically return like a falling stone.
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