This week in SF history
— 7 September 1958 First flight of Black Knight (wikipedia.org)
Spaceflight news
— Vector patents propylene engine (arstechnica.com)
— Fuel stats (yarchive.net)
Short & Sweet
— ULA selects the BE-4 for Vulcan first stage (spaceflightinsider.com)
— Stratolaunch releases some info about its new engine (spacenews.com)
— SpaceX will send another company’s robots to the Moon in 2021 (futurism.com)
Data Relay: Power Generation with Chris Bush
— Solar Power
— Cubesat panels can be found for ~$650 per W (cubesatshop.com)
— GOES accounts for solar pressure/atmospheric drag (PDF, site down at time of publishing: gsfc.nasa.gov)
— ISS array degrads ~0.5% a year in capacity (PDF: nasa.gov)
— Solar arrays take radiation damage in multiple modes(spenvis.oma.be)
— Solar Power for Outer Planets Study (PDF: lpi.usra.edu)
— Paper on solar power for inner planets (nasa.gov)
— MESSENGER added mirrors to it’s solar array (spacedaily.com)
— Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTG)
— They’re expensive (inldigitallibrary.inl.gov)
— Oak Ridge National Laboratory produced Pu-238 in 2015 (ornl.gov)
— Nuclear Fission
— SAFE-400 (sci-hub.tw)
— Kilopower (PDF: nasa.gov) (youtube.com)
— Four part blog post on the history and future of kilopower (beyondnerva.wordpress.com)
— Power for surface missions
— Example 500 day mars mission (researchgate.net)
— Books Referenced
— Hyder, A. K. (2003). Spacecraft power technologies. London: Imperial College Press.
— Patel, M. R. (2005). Spacecraft Power Systems. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press.