tater

I think a few of us have said this, but had they flown on time (sans the ULA Centaur issue) it's likely something they deal with on the next vehicle (minor He leak), but because of the increased scrutiny after the ULA issue, @mikegarrison's take is probably correct here. It'll be a while if they pull the astronauts out of quarantine.

Might be sooner than Berger, et al think.

Waiting on more information about a possible NET date.

Now it's into the crazy realm of ISS scheduling, no doubt.

https://x.com/SpaceflightNow/status/1792964760708981124 (forgot to edit x to twitter)

NSF thinks any time after Memorial Day (27th) is possible.

https://www.hou.usra.edu/meetings/orbitaldebris2019/orbital2019paper/pdf/6125.pdf This has some concerning information in it. Current Hubble orbit (per celestrak) is: Hubble's slew rates are a function of altitude to integrate on a source for whatever amount of time, obviously—since the telescope is orbiting. The lower it gets, the faster it must slew to hold on the source. The claim is that things get bad below 500 km—and it's expected to drop 10 km in 2024. The claim it is good to 2030-2040 seems delusional to me if the above paper is in the right ballpark for concerns. Perhaps 2030-2040 refers to the health of the telescope, NOT how it can function (based on orbital height). The need for a reboost might be more profound than I realized. Does anyone have a better paper to read on the subject?

Unrelated to actual updates, I'm now rocking a couple Starliner Crew Flight Test (Flight Operations) mouse pads my buddy sent me along with some other swag.

Set up controls, which creates odd incentive structures, which you then "solve" with more controls/odd incentive structures—repeat in perpetuity until bankrupt? On topic, though, I think "billionaires bad" is a stupid take, but also think that boosting/fixing/improving Hubble "right now" is also probably not required (I'd need to find out more about the vehicle's health to say more)—and hence also a stupid take. If Isaacman's offer has some expiration date, then that's another factor to consider. Is it worth a free fix in X years (factoring in risk to Hubble—crew risk is irrelevant to NASA since it's not NASA crew), vs no fix, ever (it likely gets deorbited unless NASA starts paying for rescue hardware pretty much right now (which ain't gonna happen)? NASA as an involved customer can of course demand that any such free mission meet standards that they enumerate. They could demand a certain type of attachment system—with spacing from Dragon to Hubble to avoid RCS interactions. It might end up complex enough that it requires some sort of orbital module—heck, maybe they use it as a way to let SpaceX meet a Gateway resupply milestone? Test such a vehicle in LEO, but this one has an arm on it, and functions as an airlock for Dragon? Bottom line is it seems to me that they would be smart to consider what such a mission might entail, thinking outside the box. "No, we're not really liking just using Dragon, but with X, Y, and Z added, we'd certainly consider it. We might even be able to work on it and partially fund it."

The trade is risk from boost/repair vs risk from doing nothing (the only alternative). I have no idea when the risk-reward heads into the right territory, but I'm confident that those curves cross at some point. It supposedly fails 2030-2040 assuming nothing bad happens before that (an eqp failure). Assuming it can be dealt with after such a failure, or once the end game for it is actually in play, then such a mission could wait until then, clearly. If the plausible failures include modes that make rendezvous and boost/repair impossible, then waiting too long could result in the certain loss of Hubble (tumbling?). Where the risk outweighs the benefit? Again, unsure. What I do know is that NASA has exactly zero capability to deal with it for the foreseeable future.

Well, nearly all of them have unplanned holds, so sort of applies One of the customers should say that after sitting around an extra half hour

To be fair, "Fix your little problem and light this candle" is an Alan Shepard quote—before his suborbital spaceflight. It's actually appropriate here, and the rocket is literally named for Shepard. But yes, the coverage is cringe inducing. I suppose it is part of what the actual customers are paying for, however. To THEM, it's cool, not cringe, and a record of their flight. They had a chute not fully deploy

This doesn't work. The trick is that the new links are to x.com. old links are twitter.com. If you change x in the url to twitter they work fine. The forum doesn't grok x.com.

https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1792193887945052424 There's the problem. The top link is x.com (unembedded) I altered the URL to twitter and it works. The forum doesn't know what x is.

On some endless hold. I'll likely miss it as it's in a muted tab. And pasted X links not embedding again. https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1792193887945052424 The link url has to be twitter.com, not x.com.

Just went live for a launch supposedly in ~38 minutes. Which means ignore for 37.5 minutes.

Literally everything in economics is theoretical, might as well be phrenology. India and Luxembourg have about the same Geni score—that tells us exactly nothing about which country would be better to live in—Bangladesh is slightly lower than Switzerland. Like most simple, calculated metrics comparing populations... nonsense. As for a private mission vs a NASA mission, all that matters is when they actually need to do something vs deorbiting—they clearly have some time, it's not like it needs to happen next year. Within that context of the actual WHEN, the next question to ask is if NASA has a plan for creating the capability they would prefer to service it. We all know the answer to that is there is no plan, they have no vehicle at all being worked on. If they decide to build such a vehicle tomorrow, we're talking about what, mid 2030s before it's around (smack in the middle of the stated end of life range). There's a 0% chance of them funding a crewed tug with a robot arm, airlock, etc, in the foreseeable future, so yeah, Hubble hits end of life with no servicing that way, ever. Where the balance point is—risk to future observations lost from a failed service mission vs lost observations due to unpredictable end of life (eqp failures, etc, not just orbital decay)—I have no idea. Someone there could probably ballpark t and say it's worth the risk to send a service mission in 2032 (made up date) and beyond, but not before. NASA could also simply fund their OWN Dragon mission, perhaps adding an orbital module to the trunk with an arm? <shrug> This would likely add billions, obviously.