Month: April 2020

Enlarge (credit: Elle Cayabyab Gitlin)

When it comes to sports, 2020 is going to be one of those asterisk years, like 1919. People years from now will scroll down the page to a note explaining that "*normal stuff was supposed to happen, but then we had a pandemic instead." The Summer Olympics are being postponed for a year, and pretty much every major sports series is on hold as organizers anxiously wait to see if public gatherings can happen once more later in the year.

Motorsports is no exception, and its prospects are bleak when you consider what collapsing sales will do to marketing budgets. But while the pandemic rages, drivers, teams, and series are coming together online to put on a show for the rest of us. Or as NASCAR's Scott Warfield puts it, to give people "a distraction for 90 minutes, two hours on a Sunday and return some sense of normality to their lives."

The move from real-world to online racing really took off in mid-March, over the weekend that should have seen F1 start its year with the Australian Grand Prix. The first events to draw big audiences were put on by esports organizers. By week two, big racing series like F1 and IMSA were starting to get in on the act. These days every real-world series has an esports league, so none of them is exactly a stranger to the concept. But NASCAR was the first to elevate its esports to broadcast TV with the start of its iRacing Pro Invitational series. It's also leading the pack when it comes to giving fans something approaching normality.

This week, SpaceX workers in South Texas loaded the third full-scale Starship prototype—SN3—onto a test stand ​at the company's Boca Chica launch site. On Wednesday night, they pressure-tested the vehicle at ambient temperature with nitrogen, and SN3 performed fine.

On Thursday night SpaceX began cryo-testing the vehicle, which means it was loaded again with nitrogen, but this time it was chilled to flight-like temperatures and put under flight-like pressures. Unfortunately, a little after 2am local time, SN3 failed and began to collapse on top of itself. It appeared as if the vehicle may have lost pressurization and become top-heavy.

Shortly after the failure, SpaceX's founder and chief engineer, Elon Musk, said on Twitter, "We will see what data review says in the morning, but this may have been a test configuration mistake." A testing issue would be good in the sense that it means the vehicle itself performed well, and the problem can be more easily addressed.

Enlarge / Lake Bosumtwi, located in Ghana, is situated inside a meteorite impact crater. Perhaps we should protect ourselves? (Photo by USGS/ NASA Landsat/Orbital Horizon/Gallo Images/Getty Images) (credit: USGS/ NASA Landsat/Orbital Horizon/Gallo Images/Getty Images)

One year ago, NASA embarked upon a journey to send humans back to the Moon for the first time since the Apollo Program. At the direction of the White House, NASA seeks to land astronauts at the South Pole of the Moon by 2024. Only recently, in February, did the space agency put a price on this Artemis Moon plan—$35 billion over the next five years above its existing budget.

Since then, of course, the world has turned upside down. In the weeks after NASA released this cost estimate, the threat posed by COVID-19 has swamped space budget debates or policy concerns. Moreover, most of the space agency's major hardware development programs for the Moon landing are temporarily shuttered. And truth be told, no one knows what kind of economy or federal budget will emerge on the other side of this pandemic.

So during this pause in government spaceflight activity perhaps it is worth asking, is the Moon worth it? Certainly for much of the human spaceflight community, the Moon is the next logical step. It offers a nearby place to test our ability to fly humans beyond low-Earth orbit and the next frontier for human economic activity in space.

Enlarge / The mighty Delta IV Heavy rocket takes to the skies. (credit: Aurich Lawson/United Launch Alliance)

Welcome to Edition 2.38 of the Rocket Report! If you're reading this, you survived the first quarter of 2020. What will the second quarter hold? We can't speak for the world outside of launch, but within the world of launch there is plenty to look forward to—starting with the potential for a crew launch from Florida in May.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Blue Origin workers angered by potential Texas travel. Employees at Blue Origin say the company is pressuring workers to travel from Washington state to rural Van Horn, Texas, to conduct a test launch of the New Shepard during the COVID-19 pandemic. Many employees have expressed concerns about traveling right now, both for their safety and that of residents in rural Texas, The Verge reports. The company was originally targeting April 10 for the next New Shepard launch and was working toward that date as recently as last weekend.