Year: 2025

Former ULA CEO Tory Bruno now working for Blue Origin

11:05 am

In a tweet on X, Blue Origin today announced that former ULA CEO Tory Bruno is now working for them, acting as president for its “newly formed National Security Group.”

Blue Origin’s CEO, David Limp, quickly chimed in with his own tweet, endorsing the hire.

My guess is that Limp felt Blue Origin needed someone with experience dealing with the military, and Bruno brings that capability, having managed ULA’s military launch contracts for years. It also means Blue Origin is very serious about grabbing a larger market share of those launches once its New Glenn rocket begins launching regularly.

I also wonder if Bruno grew tired of the culture at ULA, which has appeared resistant to building reusable rockets. Bruno sold Vulcan initially with the idea of quickly upgrading it to recover its engines for reuse, but by all signs the company has been very unenthusiastic about the idea. (The idea itself might not be viable, but overall ULA has shown no interest in developing a reusable rocket of any sort.) Bruno might have decided he’d rather work with a company enthused by reusability, especially as this is the future. Once ULA completes its large Amazon Leo launch contract it faces a bleak future, with many newer cheaper reusable rockets coming on line.

It could also be that Bruno was made an offer he couldn’t refuse. Money is always a powerful incentive.

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Japanese bank invests in Starlab

9:41 am

Starlab design in 2025
The Starlab design in 2025. Click
for original image.

The consortium building the Starlab space station today announced that the Sumitomo Mitsui Trust Bank of Japan has invested in the project.

Through this investment, SuMi TRUST Bank will support Starlab’s efforts to develop and commercialize space station technologies, while exploring opportunities for collaboration that contribute to the advancement of space-related industries and broader industrial development in Japan and globally.

The press release provided no other information, other than this boilerplate PR jargon. The amount invested was not mentioned.

Regardless, the investment tells us two things: First, Starlab has now raised more than $400 million in investment capital, and appears in a solid position to begin work on its large single module station to be launched on Starship.

Second, the investment in this American-based space project by this Japanese bank speaks volumes about the sad state of Japan’s own commercial space industry. Other than the lunar lander Ispace, Japan has seen little success from any other major rocket startups. One rocket startup, Interstellar, has obtained some investment capital, but the development of its rocket seemingly stopped for the past five years. Another, Space One, has had one launch failure. And though Honda has completed a successful vertical take-off and landing of a small rocket prototype, it doesn’t expect to attempt an orbital launch until 2030.

Meanwhile, the two rockets owned by Japan’s space agency JAXA, the H3 and Epsilon, are grounded because of launch failures.

It appears this bank believes it is more likely to earn profits from this American project than from these other Japanese space efforts.

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Brigham Young University Choir & Orchestra – Oh Come All Ye Faithful

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I hope all my Christian readers had a wonderful and joyous Christmas, from your Jewish but very secular host. With good will to all!

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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The Pied Piper of Hamelin

3:01 pm

An afternoon pause: This TV movie, the first ever, was produced by NBC and first aired in 1957. It subsequently played every Christmas season for most of the next decade. It has been forgotten in the ensuing years, something I think must be rectified, especially for the children of today. It is clever, sophisticated, innocent, entertaining, and above all, firmly American in every way.

Thus, I will now renew that past tradition.

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December 25, 2025 Quick space links

2:45 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol

12:10 pm

A mid-day pause: As I now do practically every Christmas, I bring you the classic 1951 version of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, starring Alastair Sim. In my opinion still by far the best adaption of the book and a truly wonderful movie.

And as I noted in a previous year:

Dickens did not demand the modern version of charity, where it is imposed by governmental force on everyone. Instead, he was advocating the older wiser concept of western civilization, that charity begins at home, that we as individuals are obliged as humans to exercise good will and generosity to others, by choice.

It is always a matter of choice. And when we take that choice away from people, we destroy the good will that makes true charity possible.

And in 2016 I said this:

I watched this again and felt like weeping, not because of the sentimentality of the story itself but because it is so seeped in a civilized world that increasingly no longer exists. There was a time when this was our culture. I fear it is no longer so. As noted by the Spirit of Christmas Present, “This boy is ignorance, this girl is want. Beware them both, but most of all beware this boy.”

It seems for the past few decades we have not heeded that warning, and are now reaping the whirlwind.

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The SpaceX alumni that are reshaping the space industry

10:16 am

Link here. The article provides a very comprehensive list of the many former SpaceX employees who have left SpaceX to form their own companies, most of which in space or related industries, raising $3 billion in private investment capital.

The list includes a lot of very small operations doing work on the periphery, such as in the health industry or software for a variety of industries, not just space. It also includes some new major space players, such as the orbital tug company Impulse, and the recoverable capsule company Varda.

For some reason the article refers to this new generation of space entrepreneurs as the “SpaceX Mafia”, as if they are teaming up like mobsters to eliminate any competition. This is beyond false. Instead, they are the epitome of competition and the American dream, each forming their own company to push new ideas.

Take a look. It provides a nice and very hopeful overview of the future.

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Avio wins launch contract from Taiwan to launch four satellites

10:01 am

The Italian rocket company Avio has won a $81 million launch contract from Taiwan’s space agency TASA to use its Vega-C rocket to launch four Earth observation satellites.

FORMOSAT-8 will be a constellation of six high-resolution optical Earth observation satellites. The first was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket in November. The next, FORMOSAT-8B, which does not yet have a publicly announced launch services provider, is, according to TASA, slated for launch in December 2026. The FORMOSAT-9 constellation will be made up of two synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites, which are expected to be launched in 2028 and 2030, respectively.

All four satellites will be launched aboard Vega C rockets from the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana.

It is not clear if this contract involves four separate launches, or two (one for Formosat-8A and B, and a second for Formosat-9A and B). It is also not clear if this contract is one of the two launch contracts Avio had previously announced, without revealing the customers.

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Russia launches classified weather satellite

9:47 am

Russia today successfully placed a long delayed first satellite in a new series of weather radar satellites, its Soyuz-2 rocket lifting off from the Plesetsk spaceport in northeast Russia.

The satellite, Obzor-R1, was originally proposed in 2015 for launch in 2019. It was placed in a polar orbit, so the rocket’s lower stages all landed in the oceans north of Russia.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

168 SpaceX
86 China
18 Rocket Lab
16 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 168 to 145.

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Hanna-Barbera – Good Will To Men

8:04 am

A morning pause: Apropos of my essay earlier this week on the need for more good will between everyone, here’s a Christmas cartoon from 1955, made by a generation still close to World War II and trapped in the Cold War.

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Kathy Mattea – Mary did you know

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Another reprise, this time from 2020. As I wrote then: “This song honoring Jesus I think really speaks of every child born on Earth, and how every parent should see them. As Wordsworth said, they come ‘trailing clouds of glory.'”

Did you know that your baby boy has walked where angels trod?
When you kissed your little baby then you kissed the face of god.

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December 24, 2025 Quick space links

2:45 pm

Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.

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