Really Rocket Science

ILS is laying off 25% of it’s workers. For those of you keeping score at home, chalk up another Russian-controlled business fail.

The original agreement for the International Space Station was to operate it until 2020.

So why is deputy prime minister Rogozin telling NASA to use a trampoline?

Thanks to Emily Gertz for pointing it out.

The U.S. is relying on Russia for transporting astronauts to and from the ISS for several years, and Russia’s space station modules currently provide propulsion for the structure. But on board the station itself, Oberg says, Russia’s sections and crew rely upon American-made and operated equipment for electricity and communications. Further, Russia’s effort to to complete and launch its own science section is “years behind schedule,” says Oberg, so it must rely upon the labs contributed by other nations.

No matter what happens with Russian space policy, Oberg is excited for the next decade of space science, which he believes will be shifting from a “CERN model” of multiple nations contributing to and collaborating at one research facility, to “the Antarctica model” of many smaller stations forming and ending cooperative efforts as the science requires.

If Russia does exit the ISS soon after 2020, he says, it will happen at about the same time that new “human-rated” spacecraft like SpaceX’s Dragon come into use, and end Russia’s current lock on crew transportation.

“The Ukraine crisis has not diverted the station’s evolution into a new path,” Oberg says. “It may have put into sharper focus the different paths the station could follow, but that was happening anyway.”

Good luck with those sanctions.

Nice daytime launch of a Proton-M (Протон-М) with SES-6 as the the payload. It’s a big boy: weighing in at 6,100 kg, with lots of transponders: 43 C-band and 48 Ku-band. It’s replacing the 806 spacecraft, one of the few remaining “brick” birds (LM/AS-7000). That’s a good thing to do because you never know when these might go on ya.

Besides filling it partially with what’s on 806, what are you going to do with all that capacity? You could probably wait until the 2014 World Cup to help fill it with 6 weeks of occasional business. Then what? Hey, how about a DTH business? And the players are:

1. Net/Embratel with 8,638,984 subscribers
2. Sky (DirecTV) = 5,144,946
3. Oi = 792,107
4. Telefónica/Vivo = 586,152
5. GVT = 451,605

Oi waits for launch, then signs the contract. Anchor customer, probably. Large? Good enough.

Convenient launch window for QuetzSat-1 launch on Friday, and you can watch it live from the Baikonur Cosmodrome via Proton/Briz-M on 29 September 2011 @ 18:32 GMT (00:32 a.m. local time on 30 September 2011; 20:32 p.m. CEST, 14:32 p.m. EDT).

In North America, DISH Network Channel 101, and via C-band on AMC-3 at 87 degrees West, C4, downlink frequency 3780.0 MHz, vertical polarization, service ID 136201.

In Europe, Astra 19.2 degrees East, transponder 1.037, downlink frequency 11023.25 MHz, horizontal polarization, symbol rate 22.0 MSym/s, FEC 5/6, service ID 5232, service name QuetzSat-1 Launch.

A webcast is available via ILS Launch, beginning 20 minutes prior to launch window opening.

Go QuetzSat. Go Proton.