July 18, 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.
- The French startup The Exploration Company touts the successful test of thrusters to be used on its Nyx capsule
It also said these thrusters would be used on a lunar lander version of Nyx.
- Video clip from the July 10, 2025 NASA Starliner update
It is a short clip. More information here. No real news. As has been noted repeatedly for about six months, NASA is considering flying the next Starliner flight as an unmanned ISS cargo mission, and won’t fly it until next year.
- Blue Origin touts the second launch of New Glenn, carrying NASA’s two Escapade Mars smallsat orbiters
No launch date however has been announced. Escapade is supposed to launch August 15th, but there have numerous rumors that this date is off the table.
- Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from the stratosphere in 2012, has died in a paragliding accident in Italy
Baumgartner was 56 years old.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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.
- The French startup The Exploration Company touts the successful test of thrusters to be used on its Nyx capsule
It also said these thrusters would be used on a lunar lander version of Nyx.
- Video clip from the July 10, 2025 NASA Starliner update
It is a short clip. More information here. No real news. As has been noted repeatedly for about six months, NASA is considering flying the next Starliner flight as an unmanned ISS cargo mission, and won’t fly it until next year.
- Blue Origin touts the second launch of New Glenn, carrying NASA’s two Escapade Mars smallsat orbiters
No launch date however has been announced. Escapade is supposed to launch August 15th, but there have numerous rumors that this date is off the table.
- Felix Baumgartner, who jumped from the stratosphere in 2012, has died in a paragliding accident in Italy
Baumgartner was 56 years old.
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 or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. 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
NASA workers plan “Moon Day” protest. (shakes head)
https://www.space.com/space-exploration/nasa-workers-plan-moon-day-protest-on-july-20-to-oppose-mass-layoffs-budget-cuts-this-year-has-been-an-utter-nightmare-that-has-not-stopped
“””NASA is considering flying the next Starliner flight as an unmanned ISS cargo mission”””
And yet, if allowed, they are going to put humans in an Orion capsule with an untested life support system and send it around the moon??????
Ronaldus Magnus,
Yes. And the plan is, apparently, to do both of these things at about the same time.
“I Jumped from Space”
https://youtu.be/Hz2F_S3Tl0Y
(3:29)
“Felix reflects on his achievement and shares what it really felt like to jump from the edge of space.”
Perhaps a smarter way to influence the sitting President
https://www.al.com/politics/2025/07/watch-katie-britt-chew-out-democrat-on-senate-floor-before-epstein-discussion.html
No shrinking violet her.
She is the fiercest SLS advocate—with most of the protesters who hate that wishing funds would go to Unabomber HQ (Goddard).
Jeff Wright,
Katie Britt probably is SLS’s fiercest currently serving advocate. She is Shelby’s hand-picked successor. But she lacks his seniority and decades of accumulated markers in the Senate. If Trump decides to let the SLS pork caucus have its way this year because matters other than killing SLS-Orion-Gateway have greater priority, that hardly precludes killing them all later in his term.
I’m not sure who you imagine to be simultaneously defending Goddard while urging the death of SLS. Certainly not me. Goddard and MSFC are pretty much tied for the lead on my personal Better Off Dead list of NASA centers. I sense I have a fair amount of company in that regard.
Yes, that is true. But a second term president typically does not have a better chance to get his “maximum ask” than in his first year in office. After that, his political capital wanes, and even if his party controls Congress (as the GOP does right now, narrowly), he more often than not takes losses in his midterms. It may be now or never on some of these things.*
But it looks like you are right that Trump is willing to give way on some things so long as he gets the funding he wants for immigration priorities, Golden Dome, etc.
* I do think the case for cancelling SLS/Orion has been hurt by Starship’s recent test flight setbacks. It likely would have been saved by the Senate anyway, but I think it made their case easier.
An ominous development reported by the Wall Street Journal yesterday: “Trump Aides Discussed Ending Some SpaceX Contracts, but Found Most Were Vital: Fallout between the president and the rocket maker’s billionaire founder threatened the company’s multibillion-dollar agreements with the government.”
More:
https://www.wsj.com/business/trump-aides-discussed-ending-some-spacex-contracts-but-found-most-were-vital-d1cf9ab5?gaa_at=eafs&gaa_n=ASWzDAhOY9DmwjI1XdET5ETSdxDQLJzke8Q0B24u2CRkJPiKUEMb2qacZSwJMCU8UOw%3D&gaa_ts=687ea170&gaa_sig=b8StIact0eR3ENkbTgUXZJbZVVIwwCookIw4xzj91XUs12KOEZm6NMx2YzGbma11yAheJzB6_h6bXAd_IERyZg%3D%3D
(Sorry, it’s paywalled. I don’t know if Bob has a subscription. The Journal is pretty good now at stopping all the usual work-arounds.)
Well, yeah, none of us are surprised that SpaceX is basically irreplaceable for pretty much everything they do for NASA and the Defense Department — for the time being, at least. But I think we all regret that Elon Musk let the feud get to this point. Whether he has a point about deficit spending or not (and I think he does), his repeated escalations are putting his companies at risk. And SpaceX simply does not have the competition yet that we can afford the risk of serious harm being done to its prospects.