April 14, 2025 Quick space links
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.
- China touts Mars program using proposed Long March 9 rocket
China claims the first stage will always be reusable, while the upper stage will be eventually. At the moment however this is all powerpoint presentations, no more.
- Chinese pseudo-company Space Pioneer delays first launch of its Tianlong-3 Falcon-9 copycat rocket until the summer 2025
This same pseudo-company had a test first stage break free and launch itself last year during a static fire test.
- Rocket fairing found on road in Anhui in eastern China
No information about the rocket or launch is provided. To quote: “It may have been accidentally dropped during transportation after recovery. Or maybe it was blown away by the wind from a previous launch months ago?” Since China has said nothing about any attempts to recover fairings, this remains a mystery.
- Telesat amends its FCC licence, reducing its Lightspeed constellation from 1,671 satellites to only 300
The company has not provided an explanation as to why.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
- China touts Mars program using proposed Long March 9 rocket
China claims the first stage will always be reusable, while the upper stage will be eventually. At the moment however this is all powerpoint presentations, no more.
- Chinese pseudo-company Space Pioneer delays first launch of its Tianlong-3 Falcon-9 copycat rocket until the summer 2025
This same pseudo-company had a test first stage break free and launch itself last year during a static fire test.
- Rocket fairing found on road in Anhui in eastern China
No information about the rocket or launch is provided. To quote: “It may have been accidentally dropped during transportation after recovery. Or maybe it was blown away by the wind from a previous launch months ago?” Since China has said nothing about any attempts to recover fairings, this remains a mystery.
- Telesat amends its FCC licence, reducing its Lightspeed constellation from 1,671 satellites to only 300
The company has not provided an explanation as to why.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon. from any other book seller, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
This isn’t a blog idea, just something I ran across just now on X that I know almost everyone here will appreciate, including our kind host.
Jay Nagy, a SpaceX engineer working on Starship, reacted to the news that Falcon 9 booster B1067 just completed its 27th launch and landing:
“I’ll never forget working at ULA and a boss telling me “it might be economically feasible, if they could get them to land and launch 9 or more times, but that won’t happen in your life, kid.”
https://x.com/juicyMcJay/status/1911635756411408702
LOL
I’m watching the US / China trade dispute. China’s economy is already tenuous from fraudulent accounting practices, stolen intellectual property, substandard materials, substandard construction and manufacturing processes… it’s all fake. Unemployment was already ramping up before the tariffs.
The Chinese Communist Party keeps pressing forward using their tired old ideology. Enter Trump. I don’t see this ending well for the CCP. Their space program is their crown jewel but it may go the way of the Soviet Union’s.
Unreliable Launch Activity
Hey!
To Richard M
The sad thing is that Jay’s boss came close to being right. Had Russia been civil to Elon…
But attitudes like those of Jay’s boss is what kept many from trying in the first place.
There were some who thought to do what Vulcan is to attempt—Saturn V-B.
Now to de-extinct Phil Bono’s zombie so he can bite a Rombus shaped wound into Jay’s old boss.
Richard M,
Fun anecdote. I’m never above a nice bit of schadenfreude. Jay’s old boss should fly to France, look up that Arianespce or ESA dude – I forget which – that was similarly dismissive back in the day and they can commiserate at a nice sidewalk cafe over wine or Pernod.
Ray Van Dune,
Heh.
Jeff Wright,
“Close” would require that there was actually a reasonable probability of Russians being polite. Playing nicely with others is simply absent from Russia’s cultural DNA.
James Street,
Bingo. The PRC economy is a house of cards and the wind is rising. The only PRC thing that has been in the black in recent years is its balance of trade. That’s going to take a big hit. And not just from Trump. As much as the current batch of Euros dislike Trump, there’s not much daylight between him and them anent the PRC and trade.
PRC unemployment certainly will get worse – particularly youth unemployment. As long as two years ago the official PRC youth unemployment number was 20%. Given how much pencil-whipping PRC official numbers about everything get, the real rate was most probably near 50%. Proof that said rate has deteriorated further is that the PRC quit releasing youth unemployment numbers entirely.
The situation is particularly indicative of big trouble because the PRC has almost no youth left to employ compared to its total population size – which isn’t anywhere near the conventional wisdom figure of 1.4 billion in any case. Population numbers get reported to Beijing by the provinces and they’ve all been lying through their teeth for decades in order to get more population-based funding from the central government. The PRC has no more than 1.2 billion people and might have as few as just a billion – and falling.
Half of all Chinese are now 50 or older. Given PRC life expectancies, we should expect half of whatever actually remains of the PRC population at present to be in the ground by mid-century. Much of the rest – including most of today’s meager youth – will be gone by 2075. The Han Chinese, as an ethnicity and culture, are going out of business during the remainder of this century.
The main unknowns are not whether, or even when, this will happen – that’s already baked in. The X factors all have to do with how much and what kind of trouble the PRC makes on its way out before it collapses and exactly when both the trouble and the collapse can be expected. My own expectation is that both PRC Peak Troublemaking and PRC Collapse will occur within the next ten years.
Well, thank God they weren’t!
But that’s just politics, not engineering. It was clearly very possible with the TRLs we had in 2002, let alone 2012.
I can think of no better theme for this luncheon than that Pet Shop Boys song: “This used to be the future.”
Enjoy the Pernod, boys!
Speaking of ULA, by the way, ULA employees on a certain forum have been indicating that formal notice of an impending reduction of force went round to staff at their Decatur facility this week. It looks to be significant, a 5-15% reduction in headcount for the company, focused on the development staff (now that Vulcan R&D development is essentially concluded, SMART efforts notwithstanding).
Best of luck to the employees in their efforts to find new jobs.