_Augustus_

Tonight's observing: Moon - Lots of detail. Better than my 6" f/8. I can see craters a few km in size. Saturn - 2 or 3 bands and a hint of the hexagon. Albireo - The two components had smaller Airy disks than last night thanks to the good seeing. M27 - First time I've ever seen this. Showed some of the apple-core structure. M57 - Nice shape with the 9mm Expanse, barely recognizable with the 32mm Plossl. M13 - Definitely resolved with the 9mm Expanse, very nice. M31 - No dust lane thanks to the bright Moon. C14 - Magnificent as usual. Epsilon Lyrae - Barely split with the 5.5mm UWA. Eta Cass - Nice split with the 5.5mm UWA. Pleiades - Nice, but with a lot of stars missing compared to last night. The Moon really ruins a lot of DSOs - I never really noticed before.....

First light: Albireo - Very different view at ~25x compared to with a longer FL scope. M31 - Brighter than I'm used to, saw a dust lane. M15 - Resolved with the 9mm Expanse. C14 - Ridiculously good. Pleiades - Like binoculars but better. Maybe a hint of nebulosity? Auriga open clusters (M36, M37, M38, and a couple NGCs) - All very nice; sometimes more than one in the FOV. C1 - Boring, but what do you expect? M35 - Not like what I'm used to, but it is low in the sky just above a dim light across the street. M57 - A tiny fuzzy star at ~25x with the 32mm Plossl. Didn't have time to switch eyepieces before it went below the trees. C65 - Lost in the light dome to the south. Even with lightly-sanded bearings, the altitude friction is way too low and I can't get above 65 degrees or so without the scope heading for the zenith - my M31 and C14 observations were done with me lightly holding the OTA in place. Likewise, the scope tends to have trouble near the horizon. I will sand the bearings some more tomorrow.

I got the coated mirror back yesterday. The guy said it had the finest polish of any mirror he'd ever seen. I had a quick look at the Moon through some clouds this evening. It was good. Unfortunately it's going to rain tonight......

And XS-1

I can't do any photography with it, unfortunately, and definitely not with an uncoated mirror. I'd need thousands of $ to do it.

I spent 30 minutes looking at Saturn and star testing. Saturn is really nice and shows banding, the Cassini division, and the shadow on the rings. Stars appear as points even at high power, and the in- and out- of focus disks are identical. I say it's ready for coating!

Spider is here. Have installed it and the secondary. Testing tonight!

I think that it will be built eventually outside of Earth orbit for trips to the Oort cloud and maybe cargo to Alpha/Proxima Centauri and other nearby stars.

The spider got delayed a bit in shipping, but it should arrive later today. The DK primary is now fully ground with #80 grit to an ROC of 80" or so (about 2-3" margin of error).

I've started rough grinding the 8" DK primary. ROC is currently ~115" - I'm going to get it to ~90" and then switch to #120 grit.

This mod will work with any version of KSP from 1.2 onward, if anyone is wondering about compatibility

Spider for the 6" f/4 arrives tomorrow; I can star test the uncoated mirror that night!

Garage has been cleaned up and the secondary blanks are here. Going to get started on the primary on Wednesday.

That won't be until after DM-1.

Someone on NSF pointed out that the Zuma designation is a codename, and not an acronym, so any speculation as to the payload based on the word "Zuma" is meaningless. From some further research it appears that SpaceIL doesn't have the money for an F9 launch, and definitely not on a new booster. On Reddit people are saying it could be an asteroid mining company's prototype spacecraft or something, but those guys don't have money either....

Someone on NSF pointed out that a secret government payload doesn't need FAA clearance to launch, so Zuma is definitely a commercial payload. All bets are on it either being an internal SpaceX mission, or SpaceIL.

According to some really rough math it should be able to bring maybe 2 tons to GTO with RTLS. Since a Moon launch trajectory isn't much more delta-v, the SpaceIL lander sounds like it'd work with RTLS. But definitely no big GTO/similar orbit government/commercial sats.

No reason, but they did order an F9 a really long time ago, before reuse was a thing. With regards to manned D2, it *probably* isn't happening, but people on NSF are saying that this has to be some sort of stunt by SpaceX, and a surprise manned Dragon flight would do it.

What do you mean?

I don't think it's NRO or other government stuff. It is mentioned in the document that this will be a RTLS, which doesn't correspond to a GTO launch with a heavy payload. And we'd still hear about it officially from SpaceX. That being said, I don't think it's a normal commercial launch either - a heavy payload to GTO would again prevent RTLS, they already have a TON of customers already backlogged to 2018, and again we'd hear about it officially. If it is an internal SpaceX payload (which would explain the total silence from SpaceX), it's a little odd that they are using a new booster (maybe it'll be the first Block 5?), and it can't be Starlink because they're still doing ground tests and that would be a big GTO payload. So if it's not NRO, not a commercial comsat launch, and not Starlink, what is it? Some of the theories I've been reading, and my thoughts on them: DragonLab, maybe with a mannequin wearing a SpaceX suit for depressurization testing - Possible, but they'd be hyping it up to potential future customers and it wouldn't have this weird codename ITS aerodynamic boilerplate - No good reason to be using a new booster for this kind of flight, nor a second stage (the document states that the rocket will have a second stage) Google Lunar xPrize SpaceIL - Explains secrecy (codename seems weird but whatever), payload is tiny enough to allow RTLS Dragon 2 flight - In-flight abort test would use a refurbished booster, and unmanned to ISS wouldn't be kept a secret. If SpaceX is really crazy I guess maybe a non-NASA manned launch to LEO (no ISS docking) with Elon/engineers as crew is possible, and could explain the secrecy. I honestly think it's either SpaceIL, a MANNED non-NASA Crew Dragon flight to totally surprise the entire world, or something else we don't know about.

At this rate I think that EUS will be cancelled and EM-1 will be flown manned under order of POTUS.

Epoxied the tiles on the tool. Going to start rough grinding next week (need to clean up my garage floor and get a new turntable).

Poured the plaster tool for the 8" DK primary.

Those would be big waffles....

Opened and installed the focuser on the 6" f/4. It's bigger than I expected.