Month: December 2020

Enlarge / F1 driver Romain Grosjean climbs over a crash barrier and away from the flames consuming his race car after a crash at this year's Bahrain Grand Prix. (credit: Formula 1)

When Romain Grosjean's F1 season came to a spectacular end in Bahrain a few weeks ago, it was the fire that really drove the headlines. High-G crashes aren't necessarily common in the sport, but they happen once or twice a year and, thanks to rigorous design and testing, are highly survivable. An F1 car bursting into flames is a much rarer event—Grosjean's fiery crash is the first for over 30 years, and the sight of flames strikes a kind of primal fear, bringing to mind drivers like Roger Williamson and Niki Lauda.

Just about everyone who straps into a racing car—regardless of discipline or series—does so wearing layers of a synthetic fabric called Nomex. It was designed in the late 1950s for DuPont by scientist Wilfred Sweeney, and DuPont has manufactured Nomex commercially for a little over half a century. The material's introduction to the world of motorsport began in 1966, when racing driver and safety advocate Bill Simpson met astronaut Pete Conrad, who introduced him to Nomex. The following year, Simpson's company supplied Nomex overalls to all but three drivers in that year's Indianapolis 500.

Fire protection for drivers has come a long way in 53 years, and I got in touch with Yves Bader, development manager of mechanical protection and consumer apparel at DuPont, as well as Joe Foster, industry vertical manager automotive at the company, to find out how today's fireproof fabrics have evolved since those early days.

Enlarge (credit: Eric Bangeman / Ars Technica)

The average cost of a lithium-ion battery pack fell to $137 per kWh in 2020, according to a new industry survey from BloombergNEF. That's an inflation-adjusted decline of 13 percent since 2019. The latest figures continue the astonishing progress in battery technology over the last decade, with pack prices declining 88 percent since 2010.

Large, affordable batteries will be essential to weaning the global economy off fossil fuels. Lithium-ion batteries are the key enabling technology for electric vehicles. They're also needed to smooth out the intermittent power generated by windmills and solar panels.

But until recently, batteries were simply too expensive for these applications to make financial sense without mandates and subsidies. Now, that calculus is becoming less and less true. BloombergNEF estimates that battery-pack prices will fall to $100 by 2024. That's roughly the level necessary for BEVs to be price-competitive with conventional cars without subsidies. Given that electric vehicles are cheap to charge and will likely require less maintenance than a conventional car, they will be an increasingly compelling option over the next decade.

Enlarge / Blue Origin has released a new rendering of New Glenn taking off. (credit: Blue Origin)

Welcome to Edition 3.26 of the Rocket Report! Even though we're nearing the end of 2020, news from the world of launch is not slowing down. We'll try to keep on top of it, even as the holidays approach. To that end, we'll publish one final newsletter next week, but it will come out two days early.

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.

Astra very nearly reaches orbit. Poor weather prevented Astra launch attempts on Friday and through the weekend, but by Tuesday, the upper-level winds over the spaceport in Kodiak, Alaska, lessened, Ars reports. And so, despite the leaden skies overhead, Rocket 3.2 ignited its five main engines and launched. It followed its planned flight trajectory nearly dead-on. A couple of minutes into flight, the main engines shut down, and the second stage separated. Its engine, too, lit. This upper stage then burnt all of its propellant and simulated the deployment of a payload into space.