
Relook at
Review?
Axiom Space has shuffled the assembly sequence of its space station to remove any dependence it would have on the International Space Station (ISS) by as soon as 2028. The plan has always been for Axiom to attach its modules to the ISS. The modules would then detach upon the ISS's retirement, creating a free-flying Axiom …
Nonono, that would never do. Why use a perfectly good, well understood word in an appropriate context when you can bodge up some abomination like "relook"?
Sadly, such word butchery seems to taken as the done thing these days - they probably think it makes them sound trendy, cutting edge etc. there are probably learnings to be taken from that, but I won't bother. I can sound like an illiterate moron perfectly well already without having to invent new words to achieve it.
Whilst it is a Good Thing to have a.n.other space station ready when the ISS goes down, I keep getting this image of a blockbuster movie ("Based on a True Story"):
A plucky astronaut has to go out and try to unscrew the last few bolts holding the two stations together. We see him take one final swing, smacking the restraint and sending him ricocheting into the void, as the ISS moves slowly away, already joyfully aflame with re-entry plasma even though it is still only metres away from the Axiom station.
Will the astronaut be rescued by the nearby SpaceX capsule? Will the harried NASA engineers be able to devise a way to use the ISS gyros to control the descent of the station (out of position due to the slowness of the earlier astronaut's hammering), allowing them to manage a glide into the Los Angeles storm drain, where it'll slide until coming to a halt just before smacking into an overpass? Will the gyros that we saw fall off partway down ("We have to recalculate now! Get me a teenage hacker genius!") end up rolling across a farm and demolishing the barn just as the family dog jumps to safety out of the hayloft door onto the wagon below, as a ball of flame bursts out of every crevice (of the barn that is, not the dog's crevices)?
It is getting late, time to go.
The President('s staff) creates a d(r)aft budget. Congress fiddles with it and passes it back to the President who either signs it or doesn't. If the President does not sign the budget congress and the senate can push it through with a two thirds majority vote from both houses (Congress: 220R/215D, Senate: 53R/47D). If neither the President or congress backs down then each side publicly blames the other for the government shut down until either one side is beaten into submission or both sides agree on a compromise.
Trump was crap at getting support from his own party and his current threats at cutting into the pork will cause bi-partisan revolt. This time around he has a better understanding of how to financially ruin opponents by having them investigated by different branches of the federal government. That either succeeds or backfires by causing congress and the senate to unite against him and have him impeached and convicted. Trump was impeached twice by congress but it takes 67/100 senate votes to turn impeachment into a conviction.
I have no idea how the next budget will turn out. I am sure it will be exciting to watch from a distance but less fun for those closer to the battle. NASA's budget will be a relatively small bargaining chip. Constellation (now called SLS) is a poster child for government waste so has strong bipartisan support. Getting back to the Moon by 2028 becomes much more difficult without SLS+Orion but there is no reason for Trump to back the expensive upgrades to SLS for required Artemis IV+ (as those missions are currently planned). Some presidents have tried to cancel SLS before. Both Trump and Obama gave up very fast when it became clear they would not get a budget passed without SLS. Congress was furious when NASA selected Starship HLS and quickly doubled the human landing system budget for the Blue Moon lander (a team of old space companies from many states led by Blue Origin). Congress has not lifted a finger to fund an alternative to SLS+Orion despite that being the crippling factor to doing anything significantly more than flags and footprints again.
For 2014, the US government bought 15 of the 134 Falcon launches, the Delta IV heavy launch, both Atlas V launches and one of two Vulcan launches. ULA needs government launches far more than SpaceX and the DoD is determined to keep ULA in business to maintain diversity of launch vehicles. The DoD only move launches to SpaceX when ULA cannot deliver. I do not see the change in government making any difference to that.
The proposed next NASA administrator (Jared Isaacman) is an odd choice for a Trump appointee. He never endorsed Trump and has contributed funds to democrats. NASA's next budget will be hard to predict. He will be legally required to spend the lion's share of that budget on SLS. He could just ignore the law and hope for a presidential pardon. That would be a courageous choice for a loyal Trump supporter let alone someone who does not give full throated support to Trump. NASA will have to make decisions about Starliner. Boeing might actually prefer to be released from the commercial crew contract leaving their share of ISS missions to SpaceX. Trump is only president for life so a Blue Origin crew transport will only be an issue for the next administration.
There are commercial cargo contracts for Dream Chaser + Vulcan. I do not expect Isaacman to switch them to Dragon because SpaceX launch revenue is not customer limited. For Falcon the limit is how fast the drone ships move. For Starship the limit was 5 launches per year and the upgrade to 25 per year is going to public consultation. I have confidence SpaceX will be able to fill those 25 Starships without needing to pinch launches from competitors.
Currently (not) up in the air are replacements for ISS. SpaceX bid Starship but it was not a good match for the requirements in the RFP. I expect the existing commercial offering will progress and some of them will reach orbit. After that, NASA contracts will be awarded depending on what services are available and at what price.
I think Musk did not try to buy Trump for launch contracts. I think the goals were to relax banking regulations so X can be a bank, by-pass environmental impact studies so he can launch Starship from Florida and to get the SEC and NTSB off his back so he can defraud Tesla investors and customers.
It look like the two biggest problems with Musk's federal budget are that he got rid of everything that would have bought support from democrats and tried to raise the debt ceiling.
“Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure nineteen nineteen and six , result happiness.Annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds ought and six, result misery”
Isn't this a U.S. shell company which outsources everything to Europe just to get their hands on NASA (U.S. taxpayers) monies? What parts of this station is Axiom actually making? Are they just a trading company which sells someone else's wares?
You could argue that this is basically a European space station sold as American by some trading company.
The joke about stuff getting built by the lowest bidder has been around since the original Mercury 7 and is not remotely new
"Russia, however, has yet to formally commit to keeping the station going past 2028."
In fact Russia committed to manning the ISS until 2030 earlier this week.
https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/12/russian-space-chief-says-country-will-fly-on-space-station-until-2030/
(Ars space reporting is excellent although somewhat SpaceX biased.)