Really Rocket Science

Chalk up another loss for space/launch insurance underwriters. A Proton/Briz M launch’s 3rd stage failed and lost MexSat-1 (a.k.a. Centenario) — a huge Boeing 702 intended for mobile and fixed services (L- and Ku-band).

What happened? Anatoly Zak gives the best, most-qualified explanation. Probably fuel line problems.

Add this to a Soyuz launch anomaly earlier this month and you would think this may be a pattern. Is it technical or is it systemic? Probably both.

One could argue there’s a lack of enthusiasm and a brain-drain of top Ukrainian engineering talent in the Russian space business. Or it could be the return of the “old Soviet work ethic,” where nobody really cares. People get promoted to positions of authority without really being qualified, just so they can be “controlled” by others at the Kremlin. That’s what I think is happening.

It goes back more than 10 years, around the time Putin started going after complete control of Russia. In 2006, Mario Lemme’s Space Transport Inc. was created to take control of International Launch Services, the joint venture created to market Proton and Atlas launches. Since then, the market for commercial launches has changed (thank you, SpaceX), but the prices for launch services has gone up. But the technical success helps further development of non-commercial and space-exploration systems. With the world still dependent on getting humans to/from the ISS using the Soyuz launcher, we’re in a spot of trouble.

Meanwhile, how are we to substitute our supply source for RD-180 engines? We need to make this a priority. Rather, the big boys in the U.S. are more concerned about corporate headcount (read about the “mothers day massacre”).

Science likes to explain things with facts. Political views tend to use some facts. But outright liars and social manipulators such as Putin and his fellow KGB remnants don’t get along with any facts they don’t like. They just want control. Control of people, money and probably access to space from Russian territory (hence the pressure to build Vostochny).

Succeeding in space will further popularize Putin in Russia and that’s what he’s after. Fuck science: Russia’s space industry is failing due to “moral issues,” according to Rogozin.

This week’s news that traces of nitrates were found by SAM on Mars — and the Fark headline linking it to hot dogs — reminded me to ponder the one decent rumor to come out of the Satellite Show in Washington last week: Apple is buying a spacecraft from Boeing.

You might as well sell one to Sabrett’s to connect all their hot dog carts around the world. Hey, they’re selling branded merchandise, so why not?

Google, Facebook or Amazon might buy one, too. Does anybody at Reuters check this stuff? One call to anybody in the business would tell you “you’re way off on this one.” This is link bait.

Designing, building, launching and operating a spacecraft takes a long time and costs a lot of money. Understand this. This cannot change.

You can have all the bandwidth and high-throughput possible on the spacecraft’s payload, but it means absolutely nothing if you can’t make use of it on the ground. One-to-many distribution is where this technology makes sense — not point-to-point or multipoint-to-multipoint. That’s why TV loves satellite. This network topology can’t change much. Higher frequencies need better antennae for reception — and transmit has its own challenges. If you plan on using mobile frequencies such as those used by Thuraya in Asia and the Middle East, you’d be planning on coordinating with terrestrial and mobile telecoms for more years than it would take to build the spacecraft.

Get over it, people. Building a new satcom network isn’t worth it. It’s like selling hot dogs on Mars: who are you going to sell it to?

With O3b Networks actually operating and building out globally, get in that space and figure out how you can work with it. Latency is minimized on the tech side, and terrestrial connectivity is being added for “the other 3 billion people” inhabiting this planet who are without Internet access.

And put some mustard on it.

Elon Musk is standing up to Russian imperialism: “It’s very questionable in light of international events. It seems like the wrong time to send hundreds of millions of dollars to the Kremlin.”

Not only is he standing up for doing the right thing, he’s standing up to two 800-lb. gorillas in the military-industrial-complex: Boeing and Lockheed Martin. They’re co-owners of United Launch Alliance, launch service providers to the U.S. Air Force. ULA buys RD-180 engines from NPO Energomash in Russia. Like most important businesses in Russia, it’s controlled by Putin’s Mafia State.

So the pussy lawyers had this to say…

“ULA and the U.S. Department of Justice filed motions to dissolve the preliminary injunction supporting ULA’s earlier statements that the purchase of the RD-180 engines from our suppliers and partners, RD AMROSS and NPO Energomash, does not violate the Ukraine sanctions.

“Unfortunately, SpaceX has made many public but unfounded speculations to create negative perceptions of a competitor solely for purposes of its own self-interest. This frivolous lawsuit caused unnecessary distraction of our executive branch leaders during a sensitive national security crisis.

“The letters from U.S. Departments of State, Treasury and Commerce clearly state that NPO Energomash is not subject to any of the current sanctions and that ULA’s continued purchase of the RD-180 does not directly or indirectly contravene the Ukraine sanctions.

“As a result, both ULA and the Department of Justice have requested that the injunction be immediately lifted.”

As he’s been doing to honest business people in Russia, Putin is now fucking with international business.

Take this business away from entities controlled by Russian mafia and give it to an honest, smart, hard-working American company: SpaceX.

Who would you rather do business with: innovative leaders or murderous managers?

And which launch system is more reliable? The American one, naturally. Atlas launches cost 40-50% more than Russian launches (86% success rate since December, 2010). It’s worth it to keep the engineering talent and expertise here in the U.S.

Here’s another Proton failure, an anomaly at T+9:00 with the third stage. With a beast of a bird onboard (Express-4R/«Экспресс-АМ4Р» — a Eurostar 3000 bus built by Astrium), its payload had 30 C-band, 28 Ku-band, 2 Ka-band, and 3 L-band transponders — so this has to hurt.

When Russian contractors work for American or European customers, everything they do has to be diligently verified. With only Russian customers, nobody really cares that much. This is a remnant of the Soviet system and must be changed. You can’t complete as a world-class company with this attitude.

Here’s the video (warning: there’s no dramatic explosion)…

The detail given comes to us courtesy of SpaceFlightNow.com

The Express AM4R spacecraft, worth approximately $200 million, was supposed to begin a 15-year mission beaming radio, television, broadband Internet and telephone services across Russia and neighboring countries.

But a few minutes after the 12,720-pound (5,770-kilogram) Express AM4R satellite launched from Baikonur, Russia’s primary space base, its Proton rocket ran into a problem.

The failure occurred during the third stage of the Proton’s ascent into orbit, according to a statement by the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, the Moscow-based manufacturer of the Proton launcher.

An announcer declared an emergency during a live webcast of the launch, and Khrunichev’s statement also described the incident as an “emergency situation.”

Khrunichev said experts were analyzing telemetry to determine the cause of the failure.

A report by Interfax said debris from the rocket may have fallen the Altai or Amur regions of Russia’s Far East.

Spewing a brilliant flame of blue exhaust, the 19-story Proton rocket lifted off at 2142 GMT (5:42 p.m. EDT) to start a nine-hour flight to deploy the powerful European-built Express AM4R telecommunications satellite for Russian government and commercial customers.

The launch was at 3:42 a.m. local time at Baikonur.

The hydrazine-fueled rocket disappeared from the view of a ground-based tracking camera a few minutes later, with no visible signs of any trouble.

But a problem occurred about 545 seconds, or about 9 minutes, after liftoff, according to a report by the semi-official Itar-Tass news agency.

Another report by the Interfax media service said the time of the failure was about 500 seconds after launch.

Both of the times reported for the anomaly occurred during the firing of the Proton rocket’s third stage, which is powered by an RD-0213 main engine generating 131,000 pounds of thrust. A four-nozzle vernier steering engine is also mounted on the third stage to keep the rocket pointed in the right direction.

The rocket’s guidance, navigation and control system is a triple-redundant digital avionics package on the third stage.

Thursday’s mishap marks the fifth launch failure of the Proton rocket or its Breeze M upper stage in 36 flights since December 2010. Another Proton/Breeze M mission put the Russian Yamal 402 communications satellite in the wrong orbit, but the spacecraft was able to boot itself to the correct location.

The string of mishaps has brought focus on the quality control procedures of Khrunichev and its suppliers, with the Russian space contrator announcing expanded inspections, video monitoring in its factories and other measures to bolster the Proton’s reliability.

I suspect commercial payload customer on the Proton manifest are scrambling: Express AM6, Inmarsat 5 F2, ASTRA 2G and Turksat 4B.

In the satellite business, there’s a always a sense of excitement.

The competitive arena around choice orbitals slots. The suspense surrounding a launch campaign. Pushing the limits of new technology to get more out of what you already have.

Outside the industry, the general business public doesn’t fully understand it. For those of us inside the satellite business, being aware of the immense financial interests at stake on each of those complex systems, we can get worked up over the smallest success or failure, only without the drama.

It depends on what part of the business you’re working on.

We work in spacecraft propulsion systems: electric propulsion, to be specific. So you can imagine how we reacted two years ago, when we released news of our partnership with OHB Sweden, just as Boeing announced contracts to build two pair of all-electric spacecraft, one each for Satelitales Mexicano (Satmex) and Asia Broadcast Satellite (ABS).

This came soon after the U.S. Air Force and Aerospace Corp. saved the Advanced EHF spacecraft using electric propulsion. So we thought our timing was rather fortunate.

We’ve always admired Boeing for being typically at the forefront of new technologies in commercial space systems. And it’s been rather interesting to see how other manufacturers are responding. The ELECTRA project, a partnership with SES S.A. and European Space Agency, is one of the most noteworthy recent examples in developing a complete, all-electric propulsion platform.

Naturally, we’re very excited. We’ve seen the future and electric propulsion technologies will soon be at the core of in-space propulsion. This transformation will likely usher in a new era for satellite-based services by significantly expanding payloads aboard virtually any spacecraft.

We’re a small company and we’ve spent more than a decade developing electric propulsion systems and we think that soon the scene will be set for it to take center stage. Our breakthrough technology, the Electrodeless Ionization Magnetized Ponderomotive Acceleration Thruster (E-IMPAcT) is being brought to market on a solid foundation of more than 30 registered patents. Various testing in the U.S. and Europe have been very promising and we are approaching a new technological horizon. The interest we’ve received over the last couple of years has exceeded our expectations. Propulsion has a major impact on the entire economics of the satellite market and new solutions are rare.

Indeed, in many respects, the interest in electric propulsion for orbit-raising is logical and expected. Boeing’s 702SP bus is a real commercial endorsement of the critical advantages conferred by all electric propulsion and a prime example of future game-changing economics: more payload at less overall cost.

The Boeing spacecraft for Satmex and ABS, scheduled to launch in early 2015, are expected to weigh 1,800 kg and carry the same payload as some of the behemoths we’ve seen go up lately, thereby getting two spacecraft to launch on a Falcon 9 (or Ariane 5, just in case). Think about what this does for the design-build-launch side of the satellite business. Add the revenues associated with bigger payloads and the economic advantages are enormous.

There’s always risk in the space business. However, Boeing’s approach is only the beginning of this revolution. They spent a few years developing this propulsion system for the 702SP bus. However, one must consider the heritage this is built on top of — many years of experience with XIPS (xenon-ion propulsion system). Proven on-orbit technology is one of the most significant qualities customers looks for. This flown technology is being used in a new way, applied to medium-sized spacecraft after proving itself for station-keeping many times over.

On the orbit-raising aspect, flight-proven electric propulsion systems do take a long time to get the spacecraft to its useful service orbit. ESA’s Artemis took 18 months from the launch to its intended orbital location. That’s right: 18 months. The U.S. Air Force’s AEHF spacecraft needed 14 months to be salvaged by its electric propulsion system after its main chemical propulsion system failed.

That’s why we see opportunity for change in our industry, providing the technology for faster, higher-thrust, all-electric orbit-raising capability. We feel fortunate to have worked in electric propulsion for more than a decade and to now be at a point where we expect to meet the emerging and proven needs of the marketplace. We are but one company out of many in the space business who are continually looking for a better way to do things. These are the leaders with whom we identify – and the quiet, inherent enthusiasm we feel in our space business partners have for their work.

Seek out new technology. Embrace it and share your vision of what’s possible. The enthusiasm, competence and dedication I see every day is encouraging.

The new era in electric propulsion, of which Elwing hopes to be a part of, brings to mind a passage in Sir Arthur C. Clarke’s essay “Space and the Spirit of Man” (1965)…

“…we cannot predict the new forces, powers, and discoveries that will be disclosed to us when we reach the other planets or can set up new laboratories in space. They are as much beyond our vision today as fire or electricity would be beyond the imagination of a fish.”

Yet it now seems quite clear to many the future of in-space propulsion will indeed be electric propulsion technologies. Not that chemical propulsion is going away — there will still be many missions using it, but electric will swiftly become the mainstay, just as the rise of airplanes have not made all sea-faring vessels disappear. This evolution will certainly deeply reshuffle the global shares of the various space companies. It seems likely that the majority of satellite manufacturers will choose to no longer produce their own propulsion systems and rely instead on specialized industrial partners. Most importantly, this change in the root of the technology underlying all satellite services will probably change the entire industry, enabling new services and/or new players to emerge (think lower cost of bandwidth for sure, but also asteroid mining or satellite servicing which could not be viable without advanced propulsion).

The future will be electric, and it will be a much more diverse one. For the time being, no flight-proven electric technology to date is able to cover all the needs of all missions. Even as new technologies become available, the needs of satellite and space probe missions are diverse and call for diversified solutions. The future belongs to electric propulsion and it will greatly improve the space-based services we receive here on earth.

Gregory Emsellem
Chief Executive Officer
The Elwing Company
+1.310.308.3295
+33.601.82.15.27

Nice to see Sea-Launch’s return to service after all that bankruptcy business in 2009.

Sea Launch AG has successfully launched the ATLANTIC BIRD(TM) 7 broadcast satellite from the Equator on the ocean-based Odyssey Launch Platform, marking its first mission for Eutelsat Communications (Euronext Paris: ETL) and its awaited return to launch operations following re-organization in late 2010.

The Zenit-3SL rocket carrying the ATLANTIC BIRD(TM) 7 spacecraft lifted off at 13:18 Pacific Daylight Time (20:18 GMT/UTC) on September 24 from the launch platform, positioned at 154 degrees West Longitude in international waters of the Pacific Ocean. One hour and seven minutes later, the Block DM-SL upper stage inserted the satellite, weighing approximately 4,600 kilograms (10,141 lbs.) and built by Astrium, an EADS company, into geosynchronous transfer orbit, on its way to a final orbital position at 7 degrees West Longitude. Operators at the Hartebeesthoek ground station near Pretoria, South Africa acquired the spacecraft’s first signals from orbit shortly after spacecraft separation. All systems performed nominally throughout the launch mission.

Here’s the video, with dual English and Ukrainian countdown in the beginning, followed by the camera operator trying to keep the rocket in the frame while out at sea…

Using the Ka-band for data is a good idea, even with rain attenuation risks. Say, for example, you were to remove that risk by eliminating pesky clouds and precipation? No problem: fly over them.

Enter JetBlue’s LiveTV LLC and a deal with ViaSat and Continental to use the all-Ka-band ViaSat-1 spacecraft for connecting hundreds of aircraft to the Internet…

Continental Airlines has signed a letter of intent (LOI) with JetBlue Airways subsidiary LiveTV to bring in-flight Wi-Fi – via Ka-band satellite – to more than 200 domestic aircraft equipped with LiveTV’s 95-channel in-seat live television systems.

The deal with Continental represents what could be considered a watershed moment for LiveTV, which, while having successfully deployed Ku-band satellite-based DirecTV in-flight entertainment with several airlines, has struggled for years to gain traction in the Wi-Fi market with its lower-bandwidth air-to-ground (ATG)-based Kiteline in-flight email/messaging service.

LiveTV has since refocused its efforts on offering an ultra-high-speed Ka-band offering, in partnership with satellite communications specialist ViaSat, and succeeded in securing both United-Continental Holdings subsidiary Continental, as evidenced by today’s LOI announcement, in addition to reaching a fleet-wide equipage deal last year with parent JetBlue.

The Ka-band service being brought to Continental’s fleet will utilize the same ViaSat-1 satellite – set for launch later this year – that will help support JetBlue’s in-flight connectivity plans.

ViaSat is doing well, having just leased the Canadian spot beams on ViaSat-1 to Telesat (shh: they may do an IPO). The platform uses proven technology and some airline passengers consider in-flight WiFi a real advantage. Just don’t charge them extra. Remember Connexion by Boeing?