Preliminary launch schedule for Flight Test 11

SpaceX has picked the launch date and time for the next Starship Flight Test, FT-11 is preparing to launch as soon as Monday, October 13. The launch window will open at 6:15 p.m. CT.  This mission is being talked about as the last Version 2 Starship that will fly, so it's a combination of things they want to get "one last look" at and things they'll need for what the next test flights will be like. 

The upcoming flight will build on the successful demonstrations from Starship’s tenth flight test with flight experiments gathering data for the next generation Super Heavy booster, stress-testing Starship’s heatshield, and demonstrating maneuvers that will mimic the upper stage’s final approach for a future return to launch site.

The booster on this flight will be reused, having flown on Flight 8.  Of its 33 Raptor engines, 24 have flown before.  Its primary test objective will be demonstrating a unique landing burn engine configuration planned to be used on the next generation Super Heavy.  The booster will not return to the launch site to be caught by the Mechazilla arms but will land in the Gulf of America, as some previous flights have done. 

Super Heavy will ignite 13 engines at the start of the landing burn and then transition to a new configuration with five engines running for the divert phase. Previously done with three engines, the planned baseline for V3 Super Heavy will use five engines during the section of the burn responsible for fine-tuning the booster’s path, adding additional redundancy for spontaneous engine shutdowns. The booster will then transition to its three center engines for the end of the landing burn, entering a full hover while still above the ocean surface, followed by shutdown and dropping into the Gulf of America. The primary goal on the flight test is to measure the real-world vehicle dynamics as engines shut down while transitioning between the different phases.

The Starship itself will be the last Version 2 ship to fly.  A highlight of flight 10 was finally getting the "Pez dispenser" to eject a handful of simulated Starlink satellites during the tests of the Ship itself.  The same things are planned for this mission.  They're also planning a relight of one Raptor engine, something that has been talked about many times but apparently never was achieved.

The flight test includes several experiments and operational changes focused on enabling Starship’s upper stage to return to the launch site on future flights. For reentry, tiles have been removed from Starship to intentionally stress-test vulnerable areas across the vehicle. Several of the missing tiles are in areas where tiles are bonded to the vehicle and do not have a backup ablative layer. To mimic the path a ship will take on future flights returning to Starbase, the final phase of Starship’s trajectory on Flight 11 includes a dynamic banking maneuver and will test subsonic guidance algorithms prior to a landing burn and splashdown in the Indian Ocean.

Again, October 13 at 7:30  PM EDT.  That's under two weeks away and, as always, best available guess. 

Now essentially a stock photo - Starship test in April of 2023. Image credit: SpaceX

Firefly Aerospace's next Alpha rocket explodes during testing

The booster (first) stage for Firefly Aerospace's next Alpha rocket was destroyed Monday Sept. 29 in a fiery accident on the company's vertical test stand in Central Texas. 

Engineers were testing the rocket before shipment to Vandenberg Space Force Base, California, to prepare for launch later this year with a small commercial satellite for Lockheed Martin. Activities at the vertical test stand in Briggs, Texas, include propellant loading and test-firings of the booster's four kerosene-fueled engines. The rocket was undergoing one of these test-firings on Monday when the accident occurred. 

Firefly released a statement saying the rocket "experienced an event that resulted in a loss of the stage." The company confirmed all personnel were safe and said ground teams followed "proper safety protocols."  They concluded with saying, "We will share more information on the path forward at a later date." 

It seemed to me that this story was more recently, but on Sept. 15, Firefly's investigation of losing the booster on their previous launch, Message in a Booster, was resolved enabling them to get closer to launching this mission for Lockheed Martin.  This mission was to be the Alpha's return to flight mission.  

Still image from a security camera video of a nearby business shows the explosion of Firefly's Alpha rocket on the test stand in Briggs, Texas. Credit: Harold's Auto Parts

Firefly's facility in Briggs is roughly 40 miles north of Austin.

The booster destroyed Monday was slated to fly on the seventh launch of Firefly's Alpha rocket, an expendable, two-stage launch vehicle capable of placing a payload of a little over 2,200 pounds, or a metric ton, into low-Earth orbit.  

The details of the previous mission's failure were covered in that previously linked story from Sept. 15th. The Alpha rocket already has a mixed and frankly not very impressive record heading into this year. Firefly has only achieved two fully successful missions in six launches of the Alpha rocket. Two missions put their payloads into off-target orbits, and two Alpha launches—the rocket's debut in 2021 and the flight in April—failed to reach orbit at all. 

The company's most notable success was its Blue Ghost lunar lander program, which achieved the first fully successful landing of a commercial spacecraft on the Moon in March. NASA has selected Firefly for three more commercial landings on the Moon, and Firefly reported last week that it has an agreement with an unnamed commercial customer for an additional dedicated lunar mission.

There's some demand for a rocket like Alpha, which is larger than micro-launchers like Rocket Lab's Electron and smaller than SpaceX's Falcon 9. Lockheed Martin announced last year that it signed an agreement to purchase up to 25 Alpha launches from Firefly. The US Space Force, NASA, and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration are also booked to fly national security and weather satellites on future Alpha missions.

As mentioned above, Firefly didn't say much today but has begun their failure analysis efforts.  Seems a safe bet that to say that the mission which was the eventual goal of today's test is going to be delayed some amount.

And the Tropical Storm threat has ended

On Friday night, local time, I posted about the next tropical storm that looked to be developing and coming closer to threatening us than any this year.  A few of us had a bit of discussion to follow that post but here on Sunday night local, the bottom line is that the forecast tonight is radically different from the prediction I posted two nights ago, and I expect no issues from what is now Tropical Storm Imelda.   

Here's tonight's look at the next five days worth of positions.

The date and time on this graphic (lower left, under "Tropical Storm Imelda") work out to be Monday morning, September 29th at midnight UTC.  You'll note nowhere in Florida has the yellow Tropical Storm watch or blue TS warning color. 

As mentioned in comments to Friday night's post, I talked about looking at some models that just weren't available until the storm was officially named as a Potential Tropical Storm and said, “Everything I saw concluded it was going to turn hard right out to sea. The models mostly varied in how far north the storm gets before it turns right.”  Sure enough, every plot between the one I posted Friday until this one - all from the National Hurricane Center - showed the right turn and every successive plot had it turn out to sea sooner and farther south.

Since the first time I looked at the more detailed forecasts of our local conditions, the winds forecast for Monday have stayed the highest, but nothing beyond a slightly blustery day: winds say 18-20 steady, gusting to 30 mph.  

Can it damage something?  I wouldn't bet a lot that it's impossible, but these are the kinds of winds we get several times a week in our summer afternoon thunderstorms.  Sometimes stuff just breaks.

But, hey, it's not even the end of September. Hurricane season isn't over until the end of November! We're not out of the woods, yet.

NASA Dumps Dream Chaser

Is this the end of the line for Sierra Space's Dream Chaser? 

Word broke on Thursday that NASA modified its contract with Sierra Space for cargo missions to the ISS cancelling guaranteed cargo flights and replacing them with essentially a single test flight that won't dock with the ISS.  

What began as a hopeful contender in NASA’s Commercial Crew Program has now been relegated to a free-flying test mission targeted for no earlier than late 2026—likely slipping into 2027—leaving its role in space station operations uncertain.

Short (4:22) video from NASASpaceflight.com.

The history of the Dream Chaser goes back to the last years of the Space Shuttle era, and a space plane called the HL-20 lifting body developed in the 1990s.  

Image of the HL-20. Credit: NASA 

In 2008, Sierra Nevada Corporation (now Sierra Space) acquired the design and pitched it for NASA’s Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program, securing funding through phases 1 and 2, as well as the Commercial Crew integrated Capability (CCiCap) stage.

Despite these early investments, Dream Chaser was ultimately passed over in 2014 when NASA selected SpaceX’s Crew Dragon and Boeing’s Starliner for crewed missions to the ISS. Sierra Nevada protested the decision with the U.S. Government Accountability Office but lost the appeal.

This led to a change of emphasis for Sierra Space, shifting directions when the Commercial Resupply Services-2 (CRS-2) contract to carry cargo to the ISS was opened. This is the program both SpaceX’s Cargo Dragon and Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus spacecraft are operating  under. Sierra Space was awarded a contract under CRS-2 for a minimum of seven ISS resupply flights with Dream Chaser and its companion cargo module, called Shooting Star. Nine years later, however, Dream Chaser has still not reached space and its cargo deal has just been changed.

"After a thorough evaluation, NASA and Sierra Space have mutually agreed to modify the contract, as the company determined Dream Chaser development is best served by a free flight demonstration, targeted in late 2026," agency officials said in an emailed statement on Thursday (Sept. 25).

"Sierra Space will continue providing insight to NASA into the development of Dream Chaser, including through the flight demonstration," they added. "NASA will provide minimal support through the remainder of the development and the flight demonstration. As part of the modification, NASA is no longer obligated for a specific number of resupply missions; however, the agency may order Dream Chaser resupply flights to the space station from Sierra Space following a successful free flight as part of its current contract."

The unavoidable consequence of being late is that the station itself is on its last legs, and while there is no firm, fixed date for taking it out of orbit, it looks to easily be NET (No Earlier Than) 2030, and the latest date I've seen is in 2031.  If the earliest possible launch of a test flight for Dream Chaser is 2026, with 2027 certainly looking possible, coordinating a test flight with the real cargo to be delivered to the ISS could be an issue.

On October 24, 2023, Sierra Space moved the Shooting Star cargo module into position behind the Dream Chaser spaceplane for checkouts before shipment to Ohio for environmental testing. Image credit: Shay Saldana/Sierra Space.  More details here. 

Sierra Space isn't saying they're giving up, but they're absolutely between the proverbial rock and a hard place.  

NASA’s statement emphasized that the shift prioritizes Sierra Space’s development needs, enabling data collection in a lower-risk environment. Potential underlying reasons for the modification, based on industry insights, include:

Ongoing development challenges at Sierra Space are hindering readiness for flight. Concerns over the timely certification processes required for ISS operations. NASA’s reluctance to allow an unproven vehicle near the station, especially given the need for rigorous safety standards in proximity to crewed habitats.

While Sierra Space has not publicly detailed the issues, the company’s determination to fly Dream Chaser for learning purposes may have clashed with NASA’s risk-averse approach to ISS missions.

NASA has been noncommittal about Dream Chaser, saying, ”we might potentially order resupply missions if needed” which doesn't offer much encouragement.  In fairness, it could be that SpaceX and Northrop Grumman have done such a good job getting cargo to the ISS they're not really concerned about Dream Chaser as a last option.  They've been doing it flawlessly since the shuttle fleet was grounded in 2011, (with some contribution from the Russians until the last few years).  Perhaps Sierra is just so late they don't matter any more. 

It's getting to be that time of year

We've had a fairly quiet hurricane season so far this  year.  A few low pressure systems went over Florida north of us, there have been a few storms that went north into the North Atlantic missing Bermuda by large distances, and basically nothing around on September 10th, the peak of the season.  

It looks like we're going to have one get closer than anything this year in the next few days.  Meet Potential Tropical Cyclone Nine. The winds as of this 8PM map were 35 mph; it shows tropical storm status in six hours at 2AM Sunday, when it will be given the name Imelda.

Thankfully, it looks like nothing but a rain event here south of the Cape.  The center of the storm doesn't even look to be a Category I hurricane until it's north of us.  Not that a very rainy, stormy day is idyllically wonderful, but it beats stronger storms. 

One of the moderators (or founders or both) of the Central Florida Hurricane site I use regularly, who calls himself cieldumort (ciel du mort is French for sky of death), posted this graphic of expected IR brightness temperature on Monday at 1500 UTC (11:00 AM).  It's the second to last post on that linked page.

You'll note he says, "parts of the east coast may get some gross weather."  We're in the second highest reflectivity colors on the map.  As of Friday evening, our detailed forecast from our local NOAA service shows our maximum winds to be 20 mph on Monday afternoon.  I'd be less than surprised if that goes up, but it doesn't look like winds to take down the antennas and put up the shutters. 

Something about the plot above it worth noting is how the last spot is 24 hours after the second to last, it has barely moved from the previous position and it drops from hurricane to tropical storm.  Stalling offshore for practically 24 hours is a sign of perfectly balanced forces and at five days out I have a hard time believing the prediction can be that accurate.  

The Other Other Space Race

Pretty much everybody is talking about what's looking to be a replay of the 1960s US vs. USSR race to be the first to land on the moon.  This time, of course, it's looking to be the US vs. the People's Republic of China and a group of others seemingly positioning themselves to get favorable trade deals with or better treatment from China. 

There seems to be a second race developing that is less tied to geopolitics, a race to become the preferred replacement space station for the ISS, now considered to be essentially in its last five years of life.  

We've covered Axiom Space, Vast, Blue Origin, and probably others I'm missing.  

Today, I found references to one I hadn't heard of yet on Payload, a site I subscribe to.  In fact three companies are mentioned in the headline "Voyager Selects Vivace to Manufacture Starlab".

Voyager Technologies ($VOYG), the majority shareholder of Starlab Space, has tapped Vivace Corp. to manufacture the primary structure of Starlab’s commercial space station.

The announcement places Starlab one step closer to launching the potential ISS replacement to orbit in 2029, and Voyager expects Vivace to complete the initial test structures by the end of the year.

An important aspect of this group of companies chasing the next Big Thing is that they all approach the problem differently.  Vast is on the small side of the plans, with the Haven-1 big enough for a crew of four for up to 30 days, and crews would fly up and back on SpaceX Crew Dragons.  Their early descriptions of the Haven -1 said they aim to operate a "100-meter-long [330 feet] multi-module spinning artificial gravity space station launched by SpaceX's Starship transportation system."  That never seemed to appear, and they later showed a test vehicle that fits in a Falcon 9 payload fairing.  The current planning date for the launch of the smaller Haven-1 is "NET June, 2026" on NextSpaceflight.  The most recent photo I've seen of the prototype Haven-1 appears to be the one that fits in a Falcon 9 fairing.  

Voyager is taking the opposite approach, along the lines of "how much payload can we put up on Starship?"  Which immediately brings up the question of "where can we build something big enough to fill a Starship?"  How about where they build the SLS? 

To complete the project, Vivace intends to use NASA’s Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans—which manufactured the core stage of the Space Launch System rocket for the Artemis II mission.

“We’re building a really big structure. And what place has the lock on building a space-rated, human-rated structure of that size? Well, if you look at MAF, the Michoud Assembly Facility, you’ll see that that capability exists there,” Starlab CEO Marshall Smith told Payload.

Starlab’s primary structure is planned to be about 8 m in diameter, just smaller than the core stage of the 8.4 m diameter SLS rocket. At this size, Starlab will offer about 40% of the pressurized volume of the ISS.

Go back to the Haven-1 for a minute.  Haven-1 has a diameter of 4.4 m. As a precursor to a larger station Vast is planning, Haven-1 will spend a significant amount of its time on-orbit uncrewed.

Smith told Payload that committing to a larger station will give Starlab the capacity for continuous crewed habitation from the get-go, and the ability to perform most of its maintenance from the inside of the vehicle—lessening the need for spacewalks.

“We have tremendous capability to support research—all of NASA’s desires, as well as industry and commercial,” Smith said. “We’re not going to build stuff and let it go to waste. We’re going to build the systems that we’re building, and then make sure it’s permanently crewed right from the beginning.”

So far, NASA has awarded Starlab $217.5 million on their contract. Voyager has said that the program is designed to generate decades of free cash flow by offering governments and commercial customers lots of space to develop advanced materials, test their new technologies in-space, and conduct scientific research.

“I think in the short term there will be winners and losers,” Smith said. “[With] lower pricing you’re going to see this whole [sector] grow dramatically, but again, the initial take, my guess is probably two or maybe three stations’ worth, depending upon their size and what they’re capable of doing.”

Smith maintained that there’s room for more than one station to succeed, a statement which seems unquestionable to me. As we learn to "spread our wings" in space, I can imagine a space-based economy where resources acquired in space are used in space as well as being dropped back to the surface.  The tough question there is how long it takes to establish that. 

Starlab rendering of their first station. Image credit: Starlab Space LLC

Small Space News Story Roundup 67

With the emphasis on small space news stories 

Russia's "Noah's Ark" mission returns to Earth

Do you remember the mid-August story about a mission Russia which was ready to launch to carry mice and fruit flies into orbit to determine their susceptibility to radiation?   

The Bion-M No. 2 biosatellite is being readied for its planned Aug. 20 launch atop a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Onboard are 75 mice and other specimens to be exposed to 30 days of radiation before a parachute-aided return to Russia.

Bion-M No. 2 is being dubbed a "Noah's Ark," because it's loaded with the mice, more than 1,000 fruit flies, cell cultures, microorganisms and plant seeds.

The satellite carrying 75 mice, over 1,500 flies, cell cultures, microorganisms, plant seeds and more returned to Earth on Sept. 19 in the steppes of the Orenburg region after spending 30 days in Earth orbit.

After launch, the craft was placed into a polar orbit roughly 230 to 236 miles (370 to 380 kilometers) in altitude at an inclination of roughly 97 degrees. Bion-M No. 2's payload of select biological specimens were thereafter exposed to a high level of cosmic radiation. 

There were reports that the Bion-M No. 2 biosatellite started a small fire where it landed but teams of specialists were on scene to make preliminary examinations of the mice, flies and all.  They were all expected to have been delivered to the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IBMP) by the evening of Sept. 20. 

Russia’s Bion-M No. 2 descent module, on the steppes of the Orenburg region. (Image credit: Roscosmos/Ivan Timoshenko)

NASA's tests of lasers for deep space to Earth communications wrap up

NASA's Psyche Spacecraft is on its long journey to the asteroid bearing that name (it's actually 16 Psyche).  It launched in October of 2023 and is expected to arrive at the asteroid in 2029.  A side mission to keep the spacecraft and the ground support crew from forgetting everything they need to know, has been to test replacing the radio links used to download data from Psyche to Earth.  Replacing them with what?  Space Lasers. 

NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) experiment, a technology demonstration carried aboard the Psyche mission, has completed its 65th and final test, successfully exchanging laser signals across 218 million miles (351 million kilometers), surpassing all technical goals after two years of operations, according to a statement from the space agency. 
...
During its run, DSOC achieved 65 successful passes between Earth and Psyche as the spacecraft journeyed toward its asteroid target. The system encodes data into pulses of laser light, transforming digital information into streams of photons...

Use of laser data links over terrestrial or LEO data links isn't remotely new, but using them for deep space is new.  The information in the article is low, especially in regard to the questions and concerns I have (I used to design radio communications systems, so it's sort of my home turf).  I'm sure they wouldn't engage in tests like this without calculations to show expectations for just about everything and I'd like to know if there were any unexpected results - good or bad.  In that last quote, I threw out a sentence the author wrote because it's in that never-never land of either worded horribly or just plain wrong. 

Artist's conception of the satellite Psyche in close approach to metal-rich asteroid 16 Psyche.  Image Credit:  NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU

Next launch up: NASA's IMAP probe and two ridesharing missions

Currently set for No Earlier Than 7:30 AM EDT tomorrow (9/24), IMAP is the next SpaceX launch from LC-39A on the Kennedy Space Center portion of Cape Canaveral Space.  Bound for the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange point, there are three payloads on this launch. The trajectory will be due east.

IMAP, or the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, is a NASA heliophysics mission that will map the boundaries of the heliosphere: the large bubble created by the solar wind that encapsulates our entire solar system. IMAP will study how the heliosphere interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond and will support real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles, which can produce hazardous conditions near Earth. Falcon 9 will launch IMAP into a transfer orbit that will take it to the Earth-Sun L1 Lagrange Point – a gravitationally stable region 1.5 million kilometers from Earth (directly between Earth and the Sun) where the Sun and the Earth's gravity essentially balance each other. Also on board the mission is NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory and NOAA’s Space Weather Follow On-Lagrange 1, which will also head to the Earth-Sun L1 point. 

SpaceX tells us this is the second flight for this booster, B1096. This photo of the booster being delivered to 39A for tomorrow's launch was taken this past Sunday, Sept. 21, 2025. Image credit: SpaceX

NASA has produced an introductory trailer about the mission that strikes me as rather well done.  It's at the IMAP program site linked to in that quoted (indented) paragraph above and presented here.

Overview

The Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe, or IMAP, will explore and map the very boundaries of our heliosphere — a huge bubble created by the Sun's wind that encapsulates our entire solar system — and study how the heliosphere interacts with the local galactic neighborhood beyond.

As a modern-day celestial cartographer, IMAP will also explore and chart the vast range of particles in interplanetary space, helping to investigate two of the most important overarching issues in heliophysics — the energization of charged particles from the Sun, and the interaction of the solar wind at its boundary with interstellar space. Additionally, IMAP will support real-time observations of the solar wind and energetic particles, which can produce hazardous conditions in the space environment near Earth. 

There are 10 instruments onboard the IMAP satellite, and more onboard its two rideshares, NASA’s Carruthers Geocorona Observatory, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Space Weather Follow-On Lagrange 1 (SWFO-L1) spacecraft.  

NASA names next astronaut class

NASA today named the 24th class of astronauts since the Mercury 7 in 1959, including the first person to have been to Earth orbit before becoming an astronaut.  The class was chosen out of a pool of more than 8,000 applicants after an extended recruitment process that began in March 2024.

The space agency on Monday introduced the four men and six women who comprise its 2025 trainee class during a ceremony held at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Following two years of basic training, the new candidates will be eligible for mission assignments in low-Earth orbit and on the Moon, as NASA's Artemis program works toward sending the first humans to Mars.

"We picked the best and the brightest, the most skilled, the best looking, the best personalities to take these 10 spots," said Sean Duffy, acting NASA administrator and secretary of transportation. "You are America's best and brightest, and we're going to need America's best and brightest because we have a bold exploration plans for the future."

In addition to Sean Duffy, NASA Associate Administrator Amit Kshatriya and Vanessa Wyche, director of the Johnson Space Center, also spoke at the event. 

NASA's 24th class of astronaut candidates ("ascans") at Johnson Space Center in Houston at their announcement ceremony on Monday, September 22, 2025. Credit: collectSPACE.com

They will next undergo lessons in orbital mechanics, basic spacecraft systems, spacewalking skills, robotics control, and other disciplines needed for spaceflight. Upon their graduation in 2028, they will become members of NASA's astronaut corps, which has 41 active members as of Monday.
...
Given plans to retire the International Space Station in 2030, the new ascans may be too late to visit that complex, but they could launch to commercial orbital platforms that are under early development today. They could also be sent on missions to land at the Moon's south pole, with the first Artemis lunar landing targeted for mid-2027 at the earliest.

I personally don't see any problems using a term like Senator Ted Cruz talks about here but a few things come to mind. First and foremost, I'm an old guy, while this class is six women and four men, all of whom are not just at the "best of the best" levels, but all of them are closer to 40 years old than 22-ish, just out of college. Based on having worked with some really good women engineers, I assume that like those women I worked with, they're not without a sense of humor.

"Now I recognize that these guys are capable of pulling out a can of whoop ass, but I would humbly suggest next time, maybe we go with a different name than 'ascan' [pronounced 'ass-can,' short for astronaut candidate], like the collective branding can come up with something suitable to the occasion," Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) said at the event.

NASA's 2025 astronaut class portraits: Ben Bailey, Lauren Edgar, Adam Fuhrmann, Cameron Jones, Yuri Kubo, Rebecca Lawler, Anna Menon, Imelda Muller, Erin Overcash, and Katherine Spies. Credit: NASA/Josh Valcarcel  (Note: short biographies of all of them here) 

In case she isn't immediately familiar to you, the one "ascan" who has actually flown in orbit before is Anna Menon, bottom row, second from the left.  Anna was one of the four to fly on the Polaris Dawn mission, the private, crewed mission to do the first space walks ever by "civilians" and flew the farthest from Earth than any mission since the end of the Apollo program.  That mission was in a Crew Dragon, commanded by Jared Isaacman, and while Anna was the medical officer on that mission, she was listed as being a SpaceX Engineer. 

Congratulations to all 10 of the class.  I have to say that at this point, it looks like they're not likely to fly to the International Space Station; at least, not all of them.  There are other alternatives possible, and Artemis, of course, is really the emphasis of what was talked about. 

What's the word for a rerun of a rerun?

Despite the major changes to the Federal Budget that have gone by since President Trump took office, I'm getting the feeling that it's all just "the same old bullshit" we've been going through for decades.  Yes, I'm reading of government shutdowns coming.  As usual, it's going to shutdown "if they can't agree to a budget."  Ars Technica (who are apparently 100% in the crowd that says, "yes cut the budget, but don't you DARE cut what I want!) summarized it this way: "In a win for science, NASA told to use House budget as shutdown looms."

The White House proposed a budget earlier this year with significant cuts for a number of agencies, including NASA. In the months since then, through the appropriations process, both the House and Senate have proposed their own budget templates. However, Congress has not passed a final budget, and the new fiscal year begins on October 1.

As a result of political wrangling over whether to pass a "continuing resolution" to fund the government before a final budget is passed, a government shutdown appears to be increasingly likely. 

While we haven't had an actual government shutdown in a few years, it's just the same old routine used all the time.  As for passing a budget, one of the actual duties assigned to the legislative branch, it still seems to be that the most recent Federal budget to be passed and signed was in 1997.  That's actually a polite and kind way of summing up the situation.  I say it's kind because it implies that congress has only been so bad in doing their jobs since 1997.  A better picture is conveyed by a quote attributed to South Carolina's Nikki Haley (governor at the time), "in the past 40 years, Congress has passed a pathetic four budgets on time."  

What they do that allows them to keep spending at nearly infinite levels is to pass those "continuing resolutions" mentioned in the first quote to legalize the spending.  

My guess is that if the media wasn't so tied up with the story about Charlie Kirk, they'd be blabbering about a looming government shut down, with the usual Gloom and Doom talk.  

Things like this recurring story are one of the reasons I've drastically cut back on the amount of politics and economics writing I used to do.  I'm so bored with writing about this, I'll just get to the essence of why I'm here.  If you want the long story, go to this 2023 post. 

So why do we go through this crap every time the subject comes up?  Political theater.  Kabuki (overly dramatic) theater.  They drag it out to the last minute so they can look like heroes.  If they shut down the Fed.gov, so what?  Those workers get their time off and their pay, so it's "no harm? no foul."  Feel sorry for them?  I think if one works for fed.gov, one should have a savings buffer of a few weeks to ensure you can buy your groceries in the event of a shutdown.  It's not like nobody knows a shutdown is coming. 

There's a cartoon I've been running for years, almost every reference to the debt ceiling since 2013, that I really think sums up the whole story.  In a way, a Star Wars parody reference.

Yup. They drag it out as long as they want, make it sound as dire as possible, all so that they can look like heroes, as in the last panel.  I went to the website referred to in the lower left of the cartoon and the web site appears to be gone, with a Vietnamese language site there.

Night Off

Sorry everybody.  Did some stuff today that left me sore and hurting, so I need to sit still.  "What?," you say.  "I thought you sit at a keyboard and it's hard to sit more motionless than that." 

Very true.  It's just that typing hurts a few fingers.  

So a few things I've seen lately that stuck with me.  

Yes, the train broke the sound barrier, but not the one that 99% of people who read that will think it meant.  It broke that fence that blocked some of the sound from trains going by.
 

Then there's Queen as you never saw them.

From the "needs no explanation" file.

And finally 

Because it honestly choked me up and it's simply too beautiful for words.  Yeah, we're cat "staff" and not dog people, but how can you not appreciate this?

Europe making Progress? What?

A bit over six and a half years ago, March of 2019,  Ariane Group and the French space agency CNES announced the creation of an "acceleration platform", called ArianeWorks, to speed development of future launch vehicles.  It sounds like a Skunk Works in concept.  Deep in the announcement, they let out a big idea. They were going to start working on a competitor that would emulate the SpaceX Falcon and be reusable.  It even resembled the Falcon. 

This week, the France-based ArianeGroup aerospace company announced that it had completed the integration of the Themis vehicle, a prototype rocket that will test various landing technologies, on a launch pad in Sweden. Low-altitude hop tests, a precursor for developing a rocket's first stage that can vertically land after an orbital launch, could start late this year or early next.

"This milestone marks the beginning of the 'combined tests,' during which the interface between Themis and the launch pad's mechanical, electrical, and fluid systems will be thoroughly trialed, with the aim of completing a test under cryogenic conditions," the company said.

There was a brief mention of the Themis vehicle having arrived in Sweden for these tests back at the start of this July (second part of a Small News Roundup).  

For completeness, it's not as if the European space community wasn't aware of the efforts as SpaceX went through their design iterations to finally get a Falcon 9 to land on the Cape Canaveral Landing zone in December of 2015 and the first landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic a few months later.  I have read (and posted) words from the European Space Agency that they didn't think reusable rocketry would be good for Europe because they viewed their space program as "make work" done to create jobs in Europe.  At some level, though, they had to realize the real result would be they would launch less and create fewer jobs as customers who had come to the ESA for launch service would instead switch over to those who dropped the cost with reusability.   

[B]y the middle of 2017, the space agency began to initiate programs that would eventually lead to a reusable launch vehicle. They included: 

• Prometheus engine: In mid-2017, the space agency started funding the reusable Prometheus engine, fueled by methane and liquid oxygen, with a thrust comparable to SpaceX's Merlin 1-D engine. Designed by ArianeGroup, Prometheus completed two long test firing campaigns this year.
• Callisto program: France, Germany, and Japan began collaborating in late 2017 to develop a subscale demonstrator of vertical takeoff and vertical landing technologies. It was a smaller-scale version of SpaceX's Grasshopper program and used propulsion based on liquid hydrogen and oxygen. Flights of this vehicle have been repeatedly delayed, and now will occur no earlier than 2027.
• Themis program: This program started later, but is further along. After Themis' adoption by member states in November 2019, The European Space Agency contracted directly with ArianeGroup to build a first stage rocket, with landing legs, and using the Prometheus engine. This program sought to be less experimental than Callisto, and feed directly into a rocket that could succeed Ariane 6. This is the vehicle on the pad in Sweden.

Europe's reusable rocket demonstrator, Themis. Credit: ArianeGroup

While I'd like to believe that flight tests will be "any day now," it's worth remembering that the program is several years behind schedule.  In that 2019 announcement mentioned above, Themis was intended to make its first hop tests in 2022.  

The Themis T1H vehicle will likely undergo only short hops, initially about 100 meters. A follow-up vehicle, Themis T1E, is intended to fly medium-altitude tests at a later date. Some of the learnings from these prototypes will feed into a smaller, reusable rocket intended to lift 500 kg to low-Earth orbit. This is under development by MaiaSpace, a subsidiary of ArianeGroup.

While we see reports of Chinese rockets making good progress, as well as Japan, every week puts SpaceX another few launches ahead of everyone else.  I watch videos of SpaceX missions more often than I go out in the yard to watch them.  Familiarity has made me dismiss launches to some trajectories (mostly to the northeast) as not being rewarding enough to go outside.  I don't recall a mission where I didn't think it's just amazing to watch these guys make routine these things that nobody else has done before.  These other launch services had a lot of catching up to do.

Small Space News Story Roundup 66

Because Slow News Day  

The Launch Industry's biggest problem is exactly what you think 

It's one word: cadence.  

At the World Space Business Week this week, executives speaking at the Sept. 15 panel highlighted their problems scaling up flights of new vehicles that have entered service in the last two years.  

“The key for us is cadence,” said Laura Maginnis, vice president of New Glenn mission management at Blue Origin, citing investments in tooling and automation “so that we can scale up with a really dramatic increase in the coming year to meet the needs of all of our customers.” 
...
At the same conference a year ago, another Blue Origin executive projected the company would conduct 8 to 10 New Glenn launches in 2025. To date, New Glenn has launched once this year, the vehicle’s inaugural mission in January.

A quick check of Blue's page at NextSpaceflight shows they have a target of three more launches this year, with the next launch being the Escapade mission to Mars for NASA and targeted as "No Earlier Than October," which is uncomfortably (to me) nonspecific.  SpaceNews adds:

Rocket Lab, which built the twin spacecraft, noted in a Sept. 12 social media post that it had yet to ship them to the launch site, suggesting liftoff may still be a couple of months away. 

It's not news that ULA is in a similar boat.  CEO Tory Bruno was quoted saying that between Atlas V and Vulcan they would aim for 25 launches this year.  In August CEO Tory Bruno said the company now expects nine.  And it's not just US companies. 

As recently as June, Arianespace projected five Ariane 6 launches this year, including the debut of the more powerful Ariane 64, with four solid-rocket boosters, but has completed only two Ariane 62 flights, including one in August. 

One of the two ESCAPADE spacecraft undergoes final test in Rocket Lab's clean room.  Image credit: Rocket Lab

NASA reports passing a major milestone for the number of exoplanets discovered 

I remember fairly clearly where I was when the first planet outside our solar system was discovered and verified, Oct. 6, 1995.  In my real job, I was still working at the second to last company I'd ever work for, and the project I was working on was communications systems working around 60 GHz, well into what are called "millimeter waves" or the spectrum above microwaves.   

NASA reports we have crossed the 6,000 line of discovered and verified planets.   We're just short of 30 years since that discovery in October of 1995, which seems to indicate a rapid pace of discovery, but it's more than that.  

In fact, only three years ago, that figure was at 5,000. At least at face value, the rate of discovery appears to be exponential — which is good, because, theoretically, there should be billions more worlds out there for us to locate. 

I'm going to rush to add that while the whole concept (and the source article) are full of the stuff of dreams - not just new planets and imagining what they may be like, but the thought of visiting them to see and experience what they're really like.  That's where reality diverges dramatically from those dreams.  Without those staples of science fiction, like "warp drives" or traveling at multiples of the speed of light, we'll never see those places.  I've gone through some of the numbers before.

Voyager 1 is currently 22 hours, 37 minutes and change away at light speed. I'll call it 22-1/2 light hours away. The nearest stars are just over four light years away. Assuming it's even going in the right direction, it'll take Voyager 1 almost 77,000 years to get to the Alpha/Proxima Centauri star system. 

It's safe to say that there's no way we could mount a mission to the nearest star with any technology we know of. What moving machines do you know of that could work for 77,000 years? If we could go 10x faster than Voyager, it's still 7700 years. We'd have to go a significant portion of the speed of light to even get there in an adult's lifetime. The problems are mind boggling - and this is for the nearest star. Our galaxy is thousands of times bigger than the distance to Proxima centauri; around 88,000 light years in diameter. It's practically impossible to go those distances. Even going 100 times the speed of light it takes far too long to get there. 

Cygnus XL does its best Boeing Starliner Imitation

While on the way to rendezvous with the Space Station, Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL suffered a thruster failure on Tuesday morning, September 15th.  As a result, this morning's (Wednesday the 16th) attempt to dock had to be cancelled.    

As a result, "the Cygnus XL will not arrive to the space station on Wednesday, Sept. 17, as originally planned, with a new arrival date and time under review," NASA officials announced in an update on Tuesday afternoon.
...
The Cygnus XL's "main engine stopped earlier than planned during two burns designed to raise the orbit of the spacecraft for rendezvous with the space station, where it will deliver 11,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory for NASA," agency officials added in the update. "All other Cygnus XL systems are performing normally."

It's admittedly extremely sarcastic and dark humor to compare the Cygnus XL to Starliner, especially in light of how terrifyingly bad that mission was.  If you haven't read that summary lately, you might not remember that Butch Williams, a very senior and very experienced astronaut went through more than one issue that had one of the possible outcomes being, "then the crew dies."  I don't honestly know this set of problems compares directly to how bad Starliner was, just as I don't know this set of problems is any better than Starliner's were. 

I've been watching every site I know all day for updates to the situation.  The big question (the several million dollar question) is if there's some way to get the Cygnus XL from whatever orbit it's in up to the ISS.  Is there any vehicle that can dock to the ISS docking adapter on the Cygnus XL that can then maneuver it up the ISS orbit?  Too many questions there I just can't answer. 

The cargo flights to the ISS have a rotating schedule, such that there's always a couple of cargo loads in the process of getting ready to fly.  A new cargo carrier on the schedule is from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan and JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA); called the HTV-X . The HTV-X No. 1 is scheduled to launch on an H3 rocket from Japan on Oct. 21.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s new unmanned cargo transfer vehicle, the HTV-X No. 1, is seen at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture on June 2. Image credit: The Yomiuri Shimbun

What they didn't say about Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL

On Sunday evening, I mentioned watching SpaceX launch Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo transporter to the ISS.  I watched the flight without looking up anything on this cargo drone, expecting it to be a duplicate of every other mission Grumman has ever launched.  Yeah, it was launched by SpaceX but that's not new either.  

It's not like every other mission.  As Stephen Clark of Ars Technica puts it,"Northrop Grumman's new spacecraft is a real chonker."  

... This mission, known as NG-23, is set to arrive at the ISS early Wednesday with 10,827 pounds (4,911 kilograms) of cargo to sustain the lab and its seven-person crew.

By a sizable margin, this is the heaviest cargo load transported to the ISS by a commercial resupply mission. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will use the space station's Canadian-built robotic arm to capture the cargo ship on Wednesday, then place it on an attachment port for crew members to open hatches and start unpacking the goodies inside.

It's not unusual for things discussing size to reach for strange analogies, like expressing the size in the number of giraffes, or something equally unintelligible (to most of us).  Thankfully, they don't go quite that far to silly.  

The cargo module is 5.2 feet (1.6 meters) longer on the Cygnus XL. The full spacecraft is roughly the size of two Apollo command modules, according to Ryan Tintner, vice president of civil space systems at Northrop Grumman. Put another way, the volume of the cargo section is equivalent to two-and-a-half minivans.

"The most notable thing on this mission is we are debuting the Cygnus XL configuration of the spacecraft," Tintner said. "It's got 33 percent more capacity than the prior Cygnus spacecraft had.

I feel comfortable saying it's 1-1/3 times the capacity of the original Cygnus - at least, I find that much easier to grasp than how many more bananas or giraffes it could carry.  This is the first launch of the Cygnus XL, so they're going a bit more cautiously than a "plain old" Cygnus would warrant. 

Dina Contella, NASA's deputy ISS program manager, said engineers assessed how the larger Cygnus XL might affect the space station's thermal control and life support systems. Engineers also made sure the station's robotic arm could handle the heavier spacecraft.

"The NG-23 vehicle is packed with consumables like nitrogen, oxygen, food, and toilet parts, and it has a large number of spare parts that are required for systems like, for example, our urine processor," Contella said. The station was running low on some of these space parts over the past year. "We'd like to have a good reserve for the future," she said.

For refresher (review) of the older story, until a few years ago, Northrop Grumman launched these Cygnus cargo ships on an older vehicle of theirs called the Antares.  Antares can't fly any more because parts of it were made in Russia and parts were made in the Ukraine.  When that situation started becoming apparent a couple of years ago, Grumman contracted with Firefly Aerospace to build a next version of the Antares called the Antares 330 at the same time they contracted with SpaceX to launch three Cygnus missions for them.  The original stories claimed the new Antares might fly by the end of '24.  Obviously, we're well past that and the latest estimates are it will be by the end of 2026.   

NASA has a multibillion-dollar contract with Northrop Grumman to routinely resupply the ISS. Without a rocket of its own, Northrop Grumman inked a contract with SpaceX for three Falcon 9 launches to carry the resupply missions until engineers could develop a new, all-domestic version of the Antares rocket. Sunday's launch was the last of these three Falcon 9 flights. [Emphasis added: SiG]
...
Tintner confirmed Friday that Northrop has purchased a fourth Falcon 9 launch from SpaceX for the next Cygnus cargo mission in the first half of next year, in a bid to bridge the gap until the debut of the Antares 330 rocket.

In one sense, having SpaceX launch Cygnus cargo missions is very much like "nothing much has changed" in getting cargo to the ISS.  Instead of Falcon 9s lifting Cargo Dragons and Antares rockets lifting Cygnus cargo ships, Falcon 9s are lifting everything. The important difference is the Falcon 9 can put heavier payloads in orbit than the old Antares rocket.  This allows NASA to take full advantage of the additional volume on the Cygnus XL. The combined Falcon 9 and Cygnus XL can deliver more cargo to the ISS than SpaceX's own cargo ship.  (For as long as SpaceX wants to keep the Cargo Dragon smaller).

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL supply ship inside the payload fairing of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: SpaceX

Firefly Aerospace gets cleared to fly their Alpha rocket again

If you're a fan of Firefly aerospace you might remember off the top of your head a post about Firefly failing to launch a customer's payload back on April 29 of this year, and losing both the vehicle and the customer's payload on a mission called "Message in a Booster."

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has cleared Firefly Aerospace to resume launches of its Alpha rocket. 

During the stage separation, just after the first stage shut down and dropped away from the upper stage, the vehicle suffered an anomaly as the two stages separated, which led to the loss of the nozzle extension for the upper stage's single Lightning engine.  This reduced the upper stage thrust enough to render it unable to put its payload, an experimental satellite for Lockheed Martin, into orbit. 

Both stages splashed down into the Pacific near Antarctica, a pre-cleared safety zone, with no other property damage and nobody injured.  

The FAA oversaw the review alongside Firefly, with additional support from a board of outside experts from government, industry and the company's customers. The investigation concluded that extreme heat from a phenomenon known as plume-induced flow separation over-taxed portions of Alpha's first stage, which suffered a structural break as a result.

Investigators determined the heat buildup from the plume-induced flow separation was exacerbated by Alpha's steeper ascent angle compared to previous launches, which was needed for proper payload delivery on this mission. The combination caused the stage to rupture milliseconds after separation, which destroyed the nozzle extension on the second-stage engine.
...
To prevent similar problems during future launches, Firefly will reinforce the first stage's thermal protection system and adjust flight profiles to avoid similar ascent trajectory stresses to reduce heat buildup.

With the investigation closed and modifications in place, Firefly says it is turning its attention to Alpha Flight 7. That mission will be the company's next chance to demonstrate the rocket's progress as it works to establish Alpha as a competitor in the small-satellite launch market.

Another look at the "Message in a Booster" launch. (Image credit: Firefly Aerospace/NSF via YouTube)

Well, that was a pretty enormous waste of time

The radio contest I mentioned yesterday.  As the day went by yesterday I pretty much only heard a handful of guys in the peninsula of Florida, from a guy in Miami area to one on the farthest northeast corner north of Jacksonville.  I didn't even hear the panhandle like out by Tallahassee or farther, like Pensacola or Panama City.  A review toward the end of the day showed there were a couple of short openings to around San Antonio, Texas and then around Arlington, Virginia.  Both openings were short and I didn't try to call those stations.  

This morning started out looking quite a bit busier.  I had the station on around 8AM and listened to the meteor scatter activity also on 6m.  It was busier than most of Saturday, with signals copied from around the SE US.  After not hearing any new places to work, I went back to FT8.  While the overall picture of the activity was similar to yesterday, there were no new places to work there, either.  

A rough rule of thumb for choosing meteor scatter over other modes is that meteor showers are best, and those tend to be densest in the midnight to sunrise hours.  This is primarily due to the geometry of how Earth moves through the space dust trails the comets leave, which create the meteors.  The speed at which the meteors impinge on the atmosphere and leave their ionized trails drops off after sunrise, and the few times I've dedicated a morning to making contacts thanks to some meteor shower it was unusual to get a contact after 9AM.   

Today brought more signals heard from relatively populous areas in New England, and along the eastern seaboard.  As the day went by that thinned out but didn't get replaced by areas to the west, as often happens.  As a trade-off (I guess) we did have a few countries in South America show up as it was approaching evening: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay were all heard, and all three are common and easy to contact from here.  

By the time the Cargo Resupply launch to the ISS from Cape Canaveral rolled around, we were ready for some "sit back and enjoy" time. 

From Space.com's Video From Space.

A Radio Active weekend

In the sense of "active on the radio" instead of like playing with radium or uranium or other elements that emit alpha, beta or gamma radiation.  

This weekend is American Radio Relay League's annual September VHF contest.  As you can read on that page, this is the third and final VHF contest of the year that the ARRL provides.  The other two are in January and June; like this one those two tend to be close to the middle of the month.  Without a doubt, the June contest tends to be the most active and busiest of the three.  I've written about these before, partly in effort to get more people interested in the contests and partly just to talk about things that are interesting, fun or important to me.  

For those who have seen maps signal reports spotted when it's busy, this map from around 2350 to 0000 UTC (on Sunday the 14th) will seem weird.  This is DXMaps, with the settings I use.  This only includes the most recent 15 minutes worth of "spots" (signal reports from one or both of the calls on one line).

For comparison to how it looks when it's busy, you can look at this old post.  Almost every state east of that noticeable North-South line (marked DN and DM in the big rectangles to the west) is hidden under a blob of red lines between contacts.   

My own station has heard another station outside of peninsular Florida only four times since 2PM EDT when the contest started.  That is, it heard only four different calls outside of the peninsula.  It's pretty dead.  I haven't worked a single station - I've worked these folks several to many times. 

 But hope springs eternal.  I'll be spending most of the weekend in the station. 

 

 

A bit back to normal last night

A minor anomaly this week is that SpaceX had started to attempt to launch the Nusantara Lima communications satellite for Indonesia last weekend and finally got good enough weather last night, right at the end of the possible launch windows.  When a similar thing happened a few years ago at the start of October, somebody came up with the name Scrubtober.   Maybe we should call this year's run Scrubtember?

It's somehow settling to get normalcy back.  The launch was at 9:56PM EDT.  The trajectory was close to due East, and the sounds of the booster reached us about three full minutes after ignition.  We've had launches with stronger rumbles, those that cause our back doors to rattle for longer periods.  They're always good and welcome.

This was the 23rd launch and landing for this booster, B1078, and the landing was as smooth as usual.  The satellite is headed for the Geosynchronous orbit where it will undergo testing.  Nusantara Lima is expected to start operations in 2026 after the testing. PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara (PSN), Indonesia's first satellite-based private telecom company, will use the spacecraft to beam service to customers across Indonesia's 17,000 islands, as well as in neighboring countries.

Our next launch is Sunday evening, No Earlier Than 6:11PM EDT, when SpaceX will launch another of those Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA.  If you're in southern  California, you get the next launch before ours, on Saturday afternoon, NET 9:21AM PDT.

How does "the society" make 9-11 worse?

Yesterday, Wednesday, September 10th, started out as dreary day.  The murder of that young Ukrainian legal immigrant Iryna Urutska was still leading the headlines of the day, yet as awful as that story was the day was going to get much worse, with the assassination of Charlie Kirk.  Between the two stories, the "hey, it's the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks" story was almost completely pushed out of the headlines.  

I've read a cross section of the blogs today, as I assume most of you have.  Virtually everyone I've looked at is echoing the idea that the left has apparently decided that murder is an acceptable political tactic.  There's just too much of it to ignore any longer.  Online, the reactions from the left ranged from it was all Kirk's fault to "kill everyone on the right."  The Twitchy capture that's at the heart of this thread goes to three pages on X, each page full of users crying out for more murders.  JK Rowling, Matt Walsh, Trump, Ben Shapiro, Libs of TikTok (Chaya Raichik), Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and more.

Early in the day, the FBI released these photos of a Person Of Interest, looking for information from anyone that might recognize this guy.  I just saw pictures that were higher resolution but that showed less of the person's facial details.

Photos from FBI.gov via Town Hall. 

At the end of Glenn Beck's "nine to noon" (Eastern) radio program he said he had an audio clip taken from the video of Charlie Kirk's last speech.  There was audio of the last two questions Charlie took from the crowd.  As best I can recall:

2nd to last: "Do you know how many mass shootings have been carried out by transgenders?"

Charlie:  "Too many." 

Last: "Do you know how many mass shootings there have been?"

Charlie:  "After subtracting all the gang shootings?" 

That's when the shot was heard and Charlie went down.

Combine that with reports that his Mauser, bolt-action, .30-06 was recovered along with a lot more information from things found where the rifle was found, including "engraved cartridges" that had both "transgenders are wonderful" and "anti-fascist" stereotypical phrases.  How out of touch with reality does this moron have to be to not realize saying "you don't agree with what I think government should be doing so I'm going to kill you" is about as fascist as can be? 

Brother Borepatch put together a more succinct version of my rambling.  I'd say "go read" but this is just about the whole thing.

It's the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season...

It's September 10th, or what we consider August 41st around here, but no matter what you call it, it's the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season.  There's nothing out there and that makes me happy.  You may also be aware that while it's the peak of the season, the Atlantic basin has been pretty quiet, with a couple of storms forming in Atlantic's Main Development Region (MDR) and heading north while staying well offshore the east coast of the US as well as west of Bermuda.  

The current photo grab shows a yellow blob in the MDR and a 20% chance of getting to tropical storm strength within the next 7 days.  The previous week or so was empty.  Before that and going back to the last weeks of August, it went through its color spectrum ending in bright red and a 90% chance of development within a few days, and then back through moderate chances (orange) to low chances (like this yellow) before dissipating without ever developing or making it to Tropical Storm strength.

Current National Hurricane Center plot. 

As always any bad weather of any kind is blamed on climate change but when the hurricane season goes quiet (for example), it's just weird weather.  Helene in NC last year?  Milton?  Both blamed on climate change.  It's a different subset of people than the ones blaming it on weather modification or malicious forces trying to buy up all the land so they can mine the lithium out of it.  In both cases the basic idea seems to be, "it seems abnormal to me, so it must be this instead of just plain weather" - where "this" is climate change, cloud seeding, Black Rock, the military, or whatever.

 

A plot of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes versus month and day.  Since we've had them in several years recently, note that little "late season" peak around the second week of October (I'm SWAGging around the 16th).  The other thing that's noteworthy is that while the peak is fairly sharp - especially on the rising side, the overall chance on August 1st is still higher than on November 10.  The whole curve is lopsided, rising faster, falling slower.  Hurricane season ends at the end of November.  The shape of the peak is a bit tilted and stays stronger longer on the right than on the left.