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.