August 5, 2025 Quick space linksCourtesy 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.
Sorry this is so late, but I was on my way home this evening and only just got in.
- British rocket startup Skyrora gets license for suborbital launches at Saxavord
Don’t expect much. Skyrora has been around forever promising an orbital rocket, and has only managed a handful of small suborbital launches of rockets not much bigger than model rockets.
- A look at what might be causing the delay in launching Sierra Space’s Tenacity Dream Chaser mini-shuttle
Lots of guesses, similar to the guesses I have been making for the past year. All suggest there are fundamental problems preventing launch.
- China touts the launch of the drone ship for landing pseudo-company Ispace’s Hyperbola-3 first stage
- On this day in 2011 Juno was launched
It arrived in Jupiter orbit 2016.
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.
Sorry this is so late, but I was on my way home this evening and only just got in.
- British rocket startup Skyrora gets license for suborbital launches at Saxavord
Don’t expect much. Skyrora has been around forever promising an orbital rocket, and has only managed a handful of small suborbital launches of rockets not much bigger than model rockets.
- A look at what might be causing the delay in launching Sierra Space’s Tenacity Dream Chaser mini-shuttle
Lots of guesses, similar to the guesses I have been making for the past year. All suggest there are fundamental problems preventing launch.
- China touts the launch of the drone ship for landing pseudo-company Ispace’s Hyperbola-3 first stage
- On this day in 2011 Juno was launched
It arrived in Jupiter orbit 2016.
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
They should have went with the bloody hypergolics. Trucks are on the road right now towing trailers with molten aluminum. Big whoop.
Jeff Wright,
Who “should have went with the bloody hypergolics?” Can’t be Sierra Space as they did go with the bloody hypergolics for Dream Chaser. So who? The Brits? The Chinese? And “bloody hypergolics” for what? We’re not bloody mind readers. You have a tendency toward gnomic declarations that assume we all understand the context you have in mind. We don’t. A lot of your comments are mini-singularities – no information emerges from their mass.
All,
The linked info about the new ISRO Moon/Mars simulation hab doesn’t say exactly where in Ladakh it is located, but that entire province is a border region surrounded by hostile territory – Pakistan, Pakistan-controlled Kashmir and the PRC. There would seem to be a reasonable probability the simulation hab’s residents might face challenges other than those related to the site’s approximate resemblance to places off-planet.
The Ars site article (if accurate) claims Dream Chaser uses kerosene and high test peroxide…like torpedoes.
Buran used super-refined kerosene (Sintin) and LOX. I have read in secret projects that kerosene and nitric acid might be good for any shuttle replacement.
Most jets use kerosene (propellor planes still use leaded gasoline).
The idea was to keep everything as aircraft like as possible
I thought trouble might be coming from elsewhere–but Ars may very well be correct here.
The United States lost practice with making small spacecraft–and that kind of knowhow only persists if you stay in practice with propulsion–hard to do with economical and ecological zealots claiming pork this, poison that.