Orion/SLS "will eat NASA alive if they get there"

Chris Kraft in an interview:

The problem with the SLS is that it's so big that makes it very expensive. It's very expensive to design, it's very expensive to develop. When they actually begin to develop it, the budget is going to go haywire. They're going to have all kinds of technical and development issues crop up, which will drive the development costs up. Then there are the operating costs of that beast, which will eat NASA alive if they get there. They're not going to be able to fly it more than once a year, if that, because they don't have the budget to do it. So what you've got is a beast of a rocket, that would give you all of this capability, which you can't build because you don't have the money to build it in the first place, and you can't operate it if you had it.

The Russian "Nauka" ISS Module ("FGB-2"/"MLM") Will Be Further Delayed

MLM module faces lengthy delays

During 2013, the launch of the MLM module was re-scheduled to April and then to June 2014. In the meantime, tests of the MLM at RKK Energia revealed a leaking fueling valve within the propulsion system of the spacecraft. The damage was serious enough to require a complex procedure of cutting away the valve and welding in a new one. Before committing to the repairs, engineers had to practice it on a full-scale prototype of the MLM module known in Russian as Kompleksny Stend, KS.

Further inspections of MLM at RKK Energia apparently found contamination inside the propulsion system, which would require a lengthy cleaning. According to some reports, it would take up to 10 months to resolve all the issues with the spacecraft.

As a result, it was decided to return the MLM back to GKNPTs Khrunichev for repairs. On Oct. 22, 2013, the Interfax news agency reported that all the repairs at GKNPTs Khrunichev would take a year and a half to complete. According to a poster on the online forum of the Novosti Kosmonavtiki magazine, latest plans called for the launch of the MLM module in September 2015. The head of RKK Energia Vitaly Lopota told the RIA Novosti news agency that no decision for the return of the module back to GKNPTs Khrunichev had been made yet. At the same time, Lopota admitted that he had not certified the spacecraft for launch. …

Please note a few things:

• The Russians admitting upfront several technical problems.
• Seemingly small problems (a leaky valve and "contamination" in the propulsion system) will take 18 months (!) to fix. I know space is hard, but the Russians can cobble space worthy stuff together if they want, and do that fast and rather reliable. (Plus, they have been flying FGB modules literally for decades now.) 
• Nobody is threatening to make "hard conclusions", nobody is calling for heads to be cut off, nobody is demanding that that damned module finally flies. (cf. 2013 Proton explosion)
• Nobody has committed suicide died suddenly and unexpected. (cf. the botched 2012 Progress pressure testing)

To me, this stinks. That is not the way the Russians usually handle things.

I think the Russians are going to delay Nauka as long as the ISS is being operated – and they will launch Nauka only sometime before the ISS is going to be decommissioned.

Why?

• Nauka is the planned core module of their post-ISS space station (first to be docked to the ISS, detached at the ISS's end of life).
• They can get by on the ISS without any additional modules.
• They can't afford to build another large module (FGB-2 was build in the 1990s as an ISS backup module for FGB-1 – they haven't built any large modules for two decades!)
• They can't afford to build a completely new space station in the post-ISS time.

So I think they are trying to "safe" FGB-2 for the post-ISS time (plus any ISS equipment they can reuse). Why launch Nauka now? As long as there is an ISS, they don't need Nauka – they need it once the ISS is gone. Any time Nauka spends in space will shorten the life span of the post-ISS space station. I call bull on the Russians.

Is the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) Broken?

There is something wrong with the latest images from the SDO:

There are more images in which there seems to be an aperture protruding, with an changing position of the aperture, and a changing position of the Sun.

Judging from one of the movies the problems started at 2013-10-24 at 13:00:00 UT. This coincidently after I had looked at the Sun through my solar projection setup. Did I break SDO? :-)

Let's hope it's only a temporary glitch with that spacecraft, and they will be able to resume normal operation.

[Update 2013-11-14] Seems like this is normal and part of a calibration process.

"I had so much hope for the Space Shuttle and it broke all promises so spectacularly. It is a Hindenburg of our time."

An interview with Anatoly Zak:

I am especially interested in rockets, because, they are seemingly the most awesome machines ever created by human genius, but, ironically, also the main problem of space exploration. I had so much hope for the Space Shuttle and it broke all promises so spectacularly. It is a Hindenburg of our time.