When the Chinese Space Agency was founded in 1993 barely anyone was paying attention. Now, a mere 30 years later, competition with Chinese space aspirations is a major part of the US space strategy, including much of the work of the Space Force as well as NASA’s Artemis program. This is because China is in the midst of a space renaissance with every intention of being a major player in the world. The problem is, they are not doing it in a responsible way. Today I’ll talk about some of the irresponsible behavior that China has been exhibiting and its potential consequences. This and more on today’s overview of the world of space. Welcome to the undiscovered country!
Hello and thank you for clicking, adding or listening. This is the Undiscovered Country and I am your host Bryant A.M. Baker. Today, I will present the top 5 most important things happening in the world of space. Let’s get started.
1. We start off today with an incredible technical milestone out of SpaceX. It was announced that SpaceX is now capable and in the process of manufacturing a Raptor engine a day according to a report from Ars Technica. Let’s break down what that means.
When NASA selected SpaceX and Starship for its Human Landing System in April 2021, Two of NASA's biggest technological development concerns were the new Raptor rocket engine and the transfer and storage of liquid oxygen and methane propellant in orbit.
Thirty-three of these Raptor 2 engines power the Super Heavy booster that serves as the vehicle's first stage, and six more are used by the Starship upper stage.
Mark Kirasich, NASA's deputy associate administrator who oversees the development of Artemis missions to the Moon, said about Raptor, "We've seen them manufacture what was called Raptor 1.0. They have since upgraded to Raptor 2.0 that first of all increases performance and thrust and secondly reduces the amount of parts, reducing the amount of time to manufacture and test. They build these things very fast. Their goal was seven engines a week, and they hit that about a quarter ago. So they are now building seven engines a week."
To put this into perspective, the Raptor 2 rocket engine produces approximately 510,000 pounds of thrust. This is almost identical to the amount of thrust produced by the RS-25 engine that will be used to power NASA's Space Launch System rocket.
To compare that to a SpaceX competitor, in 2015, NASA gave Aerojet Rocketdyne a contract worth $1.16 billion to "restart the production line" for the RS-25 engine. Again, that was money just to reestablish manufacturing facilities, not actually build the engines. NASA is paying more than $100 million for each of those. With this startup funding, the goal was for Aerojet Rocketdyne to produce four of these engines per year.
Kirasich said that as it builds and tests Raptors, SpaceX is rapidly iterating on these processes and producing higher-quality engines.
https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/11/spacex-is-now-building-a-raptor-engine-a-day-nasa-says/
2. Less than six months after being sworn in as the Space Force’s procurement chief, Frank Calvelli has issued a list of do’s and don’ts for the acquisition workforce.
In an Oct. 31 memo, Calvelli laid out nine “space acquisition tenets” intended to drive change in the procurement of satellites and space systems in general.
Calvelli’s boss, Air Force Secretary Frank Kendall, has called for the Space Force to innovate faster to counter China’s advancements in space technology and anti-satellite weapons.
“The traditional ways of doing space acquisition must be reformed in order to add speed to our acquisitions to meet our priorities,” Calvelli wrote in the memo.
“To gain speed we must shorten development timelines by building smaller satellites, acquiring ground and software intensive systems in smaller more manageable pieces that can be delivered faster, using existing technology and designs.”
Calvelli is the first assistant secretary of the Air Force for space acquisitions and integration, a new post created by Congress due to concerns that there are too many agencies overseeing space procurements and the Space Force should have its own civilian leader to oversee acquisitions.
The nine tenets are, (1) Building smaller satellites; (2) Get the acquisition strategy correct; (3) Enable teamwork; (4) Award contracts with realistic cost and schedule targets; (5) Maintain stability in programs; (6) Avoid over-classifying; (7) Deliver ground before systems before launch; (8) Hold industry accountable for results; and (9) Execute and deliver capabilities that work.
3. The NASA InSight rover touched down on the MArtian surface in November 2018, on a mission to help scientists map Mars' interior in unprecedented detail. The lander has succeeded in that goal, detecting more than 1,300 illuminating marsquakes.
But all good things must come to an end. So much dust is choking off the solar power supply to NASA's InSight lander that the Mars mission, which is operating well past its expiration date, is expected to fall silent very soon.
NASA officials stated on Tuesday that "The spacecraft’s power generation continues to decline as windblown dust on its solar panels thickens, so the team has taken steps to continue as long as possible with what power remains.. . . The end is expected to come in the next few weeks."
InSight has far outlasted its primary mission lifetime of two Earth years. But the clock is ticking, thanks to the dust that regularly rains down on its solar arrays. The dust buildup got so bad this summer that the mission team had to turn off all of InSight's other instruments to keep its seismometer suite running.
Insight is down past less than 20% of its power capacity now and won’t last long. But it has been a great run and is an amazing end to this mission.
https://www.space.com/nasa-insight-mars-lander-few-weeks-to-live
4. China’s secret reusable spaceplane released an object into orbit.
China launched its “reusable experimental spacecraft” for the second time on August 4th from Jiuquan in the Gobi Desert using a Long March 2F rocket.
On October 31, the Space-track.org database added a new entry for an object in a similar orbit to the spacecraft (NORAD ID 54218 (2022-093J COSPAR ID)). This means that the U.S. Space Force’s 18th Space Defense Squadron has tracked an object close to the spaceplane.
The object—the nature of which is unknown—is likely in very close proximity to the spacecraft and thus only entered into the database once it could be discerned to be a separate, discrete object with a high level of confidence.
China has not released any updates on the mission since a statement announcing the launch of the spacecraft. And no images of the craft have been published though it is theorized to look similar to Boeng’s X-37B spaceplane, which itself has an uncanny resemblance to the spaceshuttles.
Little is known about China’s spaceplane project. Chinese space authorities have closely guarded launch operations and only announced its two missions once the spacecraft was in orbit.
The spacecraft appears to be related to the development of an orbital segment of a fully reusable two-stage-to-orbit space transportation system.
The project is seen to support the construction of China’s scientific and technological power, aerospace power and transportation power, and has practical social, technological, economic and other application values, according to the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology (CALT) which is developing the vehicles.
https://spacenews.com/chinas-mystery-spaceplane-releases-object-into-orbit/
5. More recently, on Monday China launched the final module of its Tiangong space station which we talked about yesterday, check out that episode for more information. It was launched using the incredibly powerful Long March 5B rocket. But there is a catch that has the international community very upset.
Long March 5B’s design means that the entire core stage — about 30 meters long with an empty mass of about 21.5 metric tons (23.8 tons) — enters low orbit. That makes it one of the largest objects ever launched with no way to deorbit it in a controlled way over some remote part of the ocean. The stage continues to circle the Earth getting lower and lower due to atmospheric drag until it reenters and rains debris over some random part of the world.
Fortunately, there have been no reports of property damage or deaths from Long March 5B launches to date. But, there’s always a first time.
This has much of the world calling foul. It is true that parts of other rockets have crashed down to Earth. A SpaceX Falcon 9 upper stage that the company didn’t deorbit reentered over the Pacific Northwest with a composite wrapped pressure vessel crashing onto a farm in Washington State. And remains of an unpressurized trunk from a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft were recovered in Australia.
These incidents are worrisome. However, overall, SpaceX has been responsible for deorbiting upper stages, which are much smaller than the Long March 5B core stages. Reports of Dragon truck debris have been rare.
Defenders of China charge that U.S. criticisms over Long March 5B are hypocritical. A basis for their argument frequently cites Skylab, the abandoned U.S. space station whose remains rained down on Australia after it reentered in 1979. (There were no injuries or deaths.) Skylab’s demise was hardly NASA at its best. And there is something to be said that we cannot hold China to a higher standard than what was expected in our own history.
However, the Outer Space Treaty makes clear that damage to people and property on the Earth is strictly liable against space states. And beyond just monetary damages, an expectation of high standards of safety should absolutely be expected of all modern space actors, regardless of the comparisons we would like to draw to the past. But I’d love to hear your thoughts. Are designs like the Long March 5B’s just the growing pains of a newer program, or is China blatantly not living up to their responsibilities in the international community? Let me know.
Thank you for joining me. Links to all the stories are in the description. The world of Space law, policy and business is changing every day. If you missed what happened yesterday, be sure to check out the video I did covering it. I would love to hear your thoughts on everything I talked about here today? I’ll see you again next time.
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