July 7, 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.
- Kennedy Space Center touts Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser mini-shuttle
I have no idea why, as it is hasn’t yet flown, is five years late, and there are even doubts it will ever fly.
- Former NASA science chiefs sign letter demanding Congress reject Trump’s proposed NASA budget
Of course they do. I ask: Why does anyone take them seriously? NASA’s recent work, especially with Mars Sample Return, surely does not speak well of its management. And that’s where the biggest cut is in the science budget.
- Next launch of Kuiper satellites will take place on a Falcon 9, on July 16, 2025
SpaceX got its Kuiper launch contract last (after ULA, Blue Origin, and Arianespace), has only three scheduled, and yet it will likely complete all three before the three other companies get going.
- On this day in 2003 the Mars rover Opportunity was launched
Designed to work on Mars for 90 days, it ended up operating on the Martian surface for fourteen years.
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.
- Kennedy Space Center touts Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser mini-shuttle
I have no idea why, as it is hasn’t yet flown, is five years late, and there are even doubts it will ever fly.
- Former NASA science chiefs sign letter demanding Congress reject Trump’s proposed NASA budget
Of course they do. I ask: Why does anyone take them seriously? NASA’s recent work, especially with Mars Sample Return, surely does not speak well of its management. And that’s where the biggest cut is in the science budget.
- Next launch of Kuiper satellites will take place on a Falcon 9, on July 16, 2025
SpaceX got its Kuiper launch contract last (after ULA, Blue Origin, and Arianespace), has only three scheduled, and yet it will likely complete all three before the three other companies get going.
- On this day in 2003 the Mars rover Opportunity was launched
Designed to work on Mars for 90 days, it ended up operating on the Martian surface for fourteen years.
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
When Shuttle died–all the stick-and-rudder guys had was Branson and…well…you know the rest…
Capsules do seem a ballistic leap backwards. They should only be used for BEO missions.
LEO should have a winged option.
I can’t help but wonder if a winged Starship would be more successful if someone like the “Ancient Astronaut” were at the helm.
That capitalism’s best capsule is as automated as Vostok just doesn’t sit well.
I don’t trust automation beyond an assembly line.
So spaced shuttles must have wings. Why? And you don’t trust automated rockets. Why? Launching stuff from earth is hard. Getting high enough rocket performance to do this with fully reusable rockets is even tougher. And yet, SpaceX is so clearly getting very close to doing it successfully!
Jeff Wright,
Stick and rudder flying has had a good run, but I expect it to be gone – other than recreationally and commemoratively (think antique warbird flyovers) by the time of its sesquicentennial in 2053. The advent of autonomous automobiles is already upon us and both civil, and much of general, aviation will soon follow. So will military aviation – with the fighter jock mafias of both the USAF and the USN doing their best to foot-drag against the trend. If there actually turns out to be any role for winged spacecraft, it won’t be for providing places for human pilots to sit. Armored knights had a good run too, but technology rendered them obsolete. Light cavalry had a multi-millennia run but it effectively ended in the late 19th century. So it goes.
Capsules have no future except as unmanned freight haulers to and from LEO destinations and as stand-alone mini-industrial plants, ala Varda. They have no ability at all to support human BEO flight except to the Moon and even that niche will soon have better alternatives. The longstanding notion that Orion would be of any consequential use for human expeditions to Mars was always ridiculous.
If you don’t trust automation, you’re in for an increasingly cramped and paranoid future because it is coming soon to nearly all forms of terrestrial transport and a great deal else besides (think Optimus robots). It has long since been de rigeur in space applications.
I am, personally, looking forward to all of this. I accord no undue reverence to things in the rearview mirror.
Okay, in what year will the first U. S. jurisdiction deem it illegal for a human to directly operate (drive) a vehicle on public roads, reserving them to autonomous vehicles?
My guess is 2035 for selected roads (freeways?), 2045 for all public roads.
Another one: in what year in the U. S. will the number of private, personal vehicles sold without driving controls, exceed the sales of those with steering wheels, pedals, etc.
My guess is 2030. Yep.
I visited the KSC in March and was impressed and a bit amused by the broad display of modern space hardware and models. A model of SLS, a full Orion capsule, A Starliner capsule and spacesuit. The Dreamchaser shown in the linked X post, And of course a Dragon capsule and a Falcon first stage (hanging from the ceiling along with the Dreamchaser).
The only exhibits to have actually gone to space were the SpaceX hardware. (They have flown Mercury, Gemini and Apollo craft in other buildings). Good to see NASA acknowledge new space, but I expect the contents of that hall to be quite different in 5 years.
As far as the Grunsfeld letter goes……
Congress has shown that it’s perfectly prepared to ignore the recommendations of the PBR and spend billions. If it can spend $85 million to move the shuttle to Texas then I am fairly certain it can find the few million to save Chandra and all the rest.
If Texas wanted the Shuttle in it’s state then Texas should have paid for it. Using federal money for that is a travesty.
To Ray,
I worry about that too.
It is odd that folks who all but Red Bait me for (Gasp!) sticking up for institutions like Marshall are so willing to give up autonomy to machines–as if the state couldn’t misuse that.
Winged spaceflight already has airport infrastructure…is a more gentle form of return.
Over at Secret Projects, there is a tiff between Jim and Martin Bayer about how winged vehicles can give engines a longer service life than Boostback
Ray Van Dune,
There definitely will be some US jurisdiction that is first to outlaw human-driven vehicles – at least those having four or more wheels and operating on roads. Bikes, scooters, e-bikes, four-wheel off-roaders and even motorcycles will, I think, remain in the realm of human control. The various single-place, low-max-speed elder mobility vehicles will most likely join the robot brigades eventually, but probably not right away. With all the bigger road vehicles driven by AI, the remaining human-driven vehicle types will all be quite a bit safer to operate, especially bikes.
Under ordinary circumstances, I would figure the everything-not-compulsory-is-forbidden state of California – my own state of residence this past unfortunate half-century – to be the likely first-mover. But there are both technological and political reasons that sunny Cal may yield that pioneering distinction. Both sets of reasons intersect in the corporate person of Tesla and the biological person of Elon Musk.
Tesla has the only really practical and scalable vehicle autonomy system extant. The legacy auto companies have proven entirely incapable of providing Tesla any real competition in this space and a number of start-ups aiming to do likewise have also all failed. The only would-be “competitor” still standing – for now at least – is Waymo, whose tech is both a lot more expensive and a lot less scalable than Tesla’s. Their deficit on the expense side is best illustrated by the fact that, in the few places Waymo actually offers ride services, its rates exceed those of both Uber and Lyft, both of which use human drivers. As Tesla’s recently-launched Robotaxi service expands from its initial Austin, TX territory, Waymo will fade and then disappear.
That means that, for the foreseeable future – and pretty far into that foreseeable future – the only usefully autonomous road vehicles will be those either manufactured by Tesla or sporting licensed versions of Tesla’s Full Self-Driving hardware and software. And note, please, that the matter of autonomy is entirely disjoint from the matter of battery-only EVs vs hybrids vs ICE drivetrains.
As a matter of sheer survival, I think all of the legacy automakers will wind up licensing Tesla FSD within the next ten years – most within the next five. The European luxury marques will probably be first in line, likely less than two years hence, followed by Volkswagen Group and Stellantis – assuming Stellantis doesn’t entirely fold first – and then the US, Korean and Japanese makers. The PRC marques that survive the current bloodbath going on in that nation’s car industry will also be in this mix, probably fairly early in the game. BYD may well license FSD before either Ford or GM.
So vehicle autonomy will remain a de facto Tesla monopoly, in my view, for what is likely to be a very long time – effectively forever, really, as I see no other entity, even at the nation-state level, able to offer effective, cost-competitive, competition in this space.
This all being the case going forward – and the animus of Blue state Karen leadership cliques toward Elon and all of his works also being what it is – I think there will be a decided reluctance to mandate – especially early – something that can only benefit Elon and Tesla.
So, somewhat ironically, it now seems likelier to be some Red state than some Blue state that is first to mandate autonomous operation of all multi-passenger and/or four-and-up-wheeled road vehicles in the US. My best guesses would be either Texas or Florida. But not even these states are likely to do it quickly. Truth to tell, it seems likelier some European country will be first to take such action.
Not that even that will happen all that quickly. Tesla and Elon are not well-liked by leftist European governments either. But the urge for control is stronger at all levels of government in Europe than in the US. Once market-driven autonomy reaches some tipping point, Europe’s dirigiste proclivities will exceed its distaste for Musk and the deed will be done.
As to dates, I think you are waaaay optimistic anent steering-wheel-free vehicles. Those seem to me unlikely to surpass conventionally-outfitted vehicles until the 2040s. Autonomy-capable vehicles will exceed those not thus equipped by the mid-2030s at the latest, but there will be a significant period of vestigial manual controls. There is also the matter of it taking about 20 years to turn over the US vehicle fleet to the 95% or greater level. So I think actual autonomy mandates will not prove practical, even in Europe, before the early 2040s. That will apply to both freeways and surface streets, by the way, though there could be an earlier autonomy mandate just for large trucks.
Jeff Wright,
States have been abusing technology for as long as there have been states. Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty. The advantages of normative road vehicle autonomy will outweigh potential abuses. Said abuses, if any, will, as with the many other forms of abuse by states, be most likely in the most statist places.
We rag on you about Marshall because you still see it through 1960s-tinted glasses. The rest of us see the malignant, dysfunctional parasitic mess it has become and – as with all forms of cancer – want to see it excised from the body politic.
Eric Berger makes what’s probably the better criticism of the budget, at least as it now exists in the BBB: “In reality, the bill says nothing about NASA’s science missions that are gutted by the President’s Budget Request. So we are abandoning real, existing assets in space to spend billions on missions a decade from now that may very well not fly.”
And of course those missions a decade from now that may never fly includes Mars Sample Return, which Ted Cruz seems determined to fund, for reasons no doubt to be found in certain Houston area zip codes….
Could we not keep the current missions going, and cut the future fat to pay for them instead?
As regards Dream Chaser (:sigh:), you know…. To reiterate, we are looking at EMI and EMC testing only wrapping up now and….4 major tests (acoustic, day in the life, tow/taxi, hot fire) still left to even start, it is looking very difficult to see how it’s ready to fly before next year.
In short, the sluggish ramp-up of Vulcan isn’t even the problem here. It is frustrating to see how Sierra has struggled so badly to get this vehicle off the ground.
Pitiful how even the broke Soviets got BOR launched with Dream Chaser still working on a (scaled up) copy.
Let’s compare this with X-37B.
Marshall did a lot of early work on this back in the OSP/SLI days–so, no…MSFC is not a cancer, but an asset.
While the rest of Boeing may be a mess–the Phantom Works guys know their business and have flown X-37B for years–literally.
The most recent flight was a marvel…OldSpace and NewSpace working together.
The NASA science mission funding and the PBR that references them are dealt with in the Commerce Department appropriation bill. That is where youi will see whether Congress adheres to the PBR or decides not to. It was never a factor in the BBB
Well, in fairness, the Soviet program was much better resourced than Sierra is now.
No, I think, with respect, you’re missing my point. It’s not that the Commerce Cmte appropriations bill can’t salvage the science missions. It’s that the BBB tells us what the committee leadership’s priorities for NASA are. In fact, even to the point to openly defying what the PBR asked for.
More Artemis missions? Check. Gateway? Check. SLS upgrade? check. MSR precursor mission? Check.
Active science missions on the chopping block? “The Sounds of Silence.”
Richard M,
Congress is being stupid, short-sighted and greedily wasteful. As the late Sir John Gielgud famously said in Arthur, “I’ll alert the media.”
Just more reason to be looking for every way possible to reduce the role of government in space activity. The politicians indulging their parochial stupidities in the short-term might actually hasten the day when what they do and want makes no significant difference. I think a good start has been made down that road. All that is required is to stay the course and keep these cretins from making trouble for the people now carrying the real load.
Jeff Wright,
Marshall did something on X-37 for five years, but I think it would probably be charitable to call it “work.” DoD got tired of cooling its heels in the lobby, it seems, and took the project away. Six more years of actual work and it was ready to fly. All the X-37 story illustrates is that Marshall was pretty far gone even a quarter-century ago. It has only gotten worse since. Not an asset.
Jeff Wright,
You wrote: “Let’s compare this with X-37B. Marshall did a lot of early work on this back in the OSP/SLI days–so, no…MSFC is not a cancer, but an asset.”
Perhaps an asset back in the OSP/SLI days, but these days Marshall (MSFC) spends a dozen years to reconfigure the existing STS into a slightly different configuration. The whole excuse for using STS hardware, instead of design from scratch a new and better rocket, was to save time and money, but neither was saved, and both were wasted. How is that inability an asset?
Congress has not been using NASA to its full ability, and that includes MSFC. It was Congress that insisted that SLS use existing hardware rather than have MSFC show off how well it can improve on that existing hardware, but it was MSFC that took so long managing Boeing to put together all that existing hardware. Back in the good-old-days, MSFC was able to make from scratch a new three-stage rocket and put on two payloads (Command/Service modules from North American and lunar Descent/Ascent modules from Grumman), all within six years. These days MSFC takes twice as long to make a stage-and-a-half rocket launching only one payload (again, Command/Service modules), making the accomplishment a relative 1/4 as fast.
Should we compare this with Starship? SpaceX’s Starship is a project that is doing an impossibility similar to Marshall’s Apollo project, which was well funded with tens of billions of 1960s dollars, yet for about 7 billion 2020 dollars Starship’s first test flight was about 5½ years after announcement compared to Saturn V at 4 years after announcement.
“While the rest of Boeing may be a mess–the Phantom Works guys know their business and have flown X-37B for years–literally.”
Well, that is Boeing, and with a lucrative contract to fund it. Sierra Space, a new company with limited funds, has to put in a lot of its own money to develop Dream Chaser. And Boeing still isn’t Marshall, so even if Boeing’s Phantom Works is an asset, that does not make MFSC an asset.
This is fun! Should we next compare the $100 billion International Space Station to the four different commercial space stations that are budgeted at less than 1/5th of that cost and are to be made operational in less than a decade rather than the ISS’s quarter century from its initial proposal?
With Government in charge, all we are getting is what government wants — a jobs program. With capitalist free-market companies in charge, we get more of what We the People want, and it is beginning to look like the new space companies are employing about as many people as the government-run old space projects. New space produces jobs as well as products that we want so much that we willingly pay the profit.
It seems to me that if NASA does not shift into an assistive agency, like the NACA was, then it may become obsolete.
Your defense of Marshall has made me pay attention to that center, and now I no longer look as favorably on it as I did a few years ago. This NASA center is no longer the same center that von Braun led.