August 10, 2026 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay as well as what I and reader Nate have scrapped up. 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 link below.
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- Space Law Society provides long detailed comment to the Bureau of Ocean Energy Management’s request for information on ocean-based launch platforms [pdf]
The bureau’s request was a reaction to the plan by Seagate and Lockheed Martin to build a sea platform to be used by Firefly’s Alpha rocket.
- Isaacman responses at length to those criticizing his decision to cancel Lunar Gateway
As reader Nate P said in an email, “Say what one will about his policies, he’s never shy about speaking up.”
- On this day in 1976 the Soviet Union launched the lunar sample return mission Luna 24
It landed in Mare Crisium (Sea of Crises), and was the last mission to the Moon for the next fourteen years.
- Film of the August 10, 1966 launch of Lunar Orbiter 1, the first American spacecraft to orbit the Moon
Its main focus was provided detailed imagery along the equator to prepare for the Apollo landings. It did also get the first wonderful Earthrise image.
- On August 10, 1990 Magellan was inserted into orbit around Venus
It spent four years mapping by radar 98 percent of the surface.
- On August 10, 2003 Russian cosmonaut Yuri Ivanovich Malenchenko became the first to marry in space, to Ekaterina Dmitrieva
She was in Texas, while he was 240 miles over New Zealand, on ISS. The tweet shows the bride with a life-size cutout of the groom at the reception.
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
Laser comm during re-entry
https://spacenews.com/astrolight-atmos-space-cargo-eye-first-in-flight-laser-link-between-reentry-vehicle-satellite/
Rocketlab announcement today:
https://x.com/RocketLab/status/2086911725186724293
Interesting.
This tweet provides some additional info about that July 2026 contract with the military for launching HASTE from Alaska.
It is more than that, that I think.
The GHOST launch system had not been mentioned previously.
It will be tested in Alaska and the system appears more aligned with the Responsive Space Launch program.
It specifically mentioned being used for HASTE and Electron.
I mainly found it interesting, because there was another small launch company that tried to develop a “launch from anywhere” system as well. I am pretty sure that was Astra, but could be mistaken.
My take on Isaacman’s comments:
“NASA can’t succeed if it is trying to take on endless complex and costly development programs in parallel: SLS, ML-2, EUS, Gateway, crewed vehicles, a deorbit vehicle, replacement station-as-a-service, all the exciting science missions we all love, and a healthy fleet of X-planes.”
It isn’t the number or complexity of these programs. It is the lack of resources provided by Congress.
No, I am wrong about that. It is a lack of discipline within government agencies to perform efficiently and effectively. If NASA were efficient, it could handle the complex development programs within the limited budgets provided.
Here is some evidence: Starship. This is an extremely complex project that is making improvements upon previously accepted methods and technologies. SpaceX’s engineers questioned and tested many accepted rules of thumb, showing that many of them were not correct. Even the flat flame deflector was shown to be close to adequate for the half-power engine test, before the catastrophic first integrated test flight’s over stressing of the pad. Rocket scientists had feared that the acoustic reflections would damage or destroy the rocket, but this is not what happened with Super Heavy. Especially not during that half-power engine test.
Starship is doing more than SLS, getting to its first orbital launch sooner, and costing far less to develop, and SLS has the cost- and time-advantage of using previously existing facilities and equipment, where Starship’s facilities and equipment are all from scratch and are part of the (lower) cost of development. SpaceX showed efficiency and effectiveness.
And this complex project is only one of several. Falcons and Dragons are operational as frequently launched vehicles. Starlink is an amazingly complex constellation that surpasses all of NASA’s satellites and probes combined. Starfall, leasing compute time on underutilized Starlink satellites, Starshield, Rideshare, Artemis, Terafab, Starmind/Grok, and an IPO are all complexities that SpaceX has navigated very well. Companies and projects that are not reliant on cost-plus are almost always better run than government agencies and projects.
“Recycling a lot of parts from Shuttle may have been logical in 2005, …”
No, it was not logical, even back then. The parts of the Shuttle all had their own problems and should have been improved or replaced. The Shuttle project itself was a disappointment that should have been replaced long ago with something that worked as intended. The cost and slow pace of the Shuttle project slowed the advancement of America’s space program from what had been intended, to the point that the American space station had to become an international project that took two decades to put the first module into orbit and an additional decade to become operational. The ISS was itself a disappointment, with compromises and downgraded abilities, just as happened with the Space Shuttle project, again slowing the advancement of America’s space program from what had been intended.
“… but it led to a lunar rocket where Saturn V was materially better at converting pad mass to mass headed for the Moon, …”
So not only did we regress from a reusable spacecraft to 1960s technologies and methods, but the performance was significantly less. Saturn was barely able to get the job done, and SLS was unable to do the job at all, which resulted in the compromise of the horrible Gateway cislunar space station. So much of the work to get to the Moon’s surface was transferred to the landers that multiple launches were needed to do the job. Apollo was too expensive to sustain, but SLS-Orion-Artemis is even worse.
“… and ultimately means you get none of what you actually want on the Moon because you spread yourself too thin to develop something extremely difficult in a logical, iterative way.”
Too thin? No. This goes back to my first comment that government is not set up to succeed at these projects. Isaacman came from the real world and is working to make NASA much more similar to a real world organization.
“Now we are fixing the SLS program …”
Perhaps as best as it can be fixed, given that it was so poorly designed in the first place. The Artemis design and architecture disastrous. His fix for Artemis is — correctly — to reduce the government involvement and increase commercial space involvement. Better, however, is SpaceX’s own plans to construct its own lunar base for manufacturing space assets for use in space. SpaceX’s lunar base is intended for future growth in space, not some corporate prestige project. SpaceX’s projects do not rely upon fixing the SLS program or fixing Artemis. Artemis is a project that was intended as a jobs program but was not a Congressional priority. Once Congress realized that the Chinese might beat Artemis back to the Moon, Artemis became a project intended to defend our national prestige.
Why do I think it is all now about national prestige?
“I say all this because the second space race is going to be a lot closer than it needed to be, and under this Administration, we are going to ensure the third race will never be in question.“.
Congress wants to Beat the Chinese.™ Beating the Chinese is Isaacman’s explicitly assigned task. Beating the Chinese has no purpose other than defending national prestige.
Isaacman is right. The third space race is between commercial space and all the world’s government space programs, and its outcome is not in question. The third space race has been won, only no one noticed that commercial space already has the ribbon in hand.