August 12, 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.
- Relativity releases its July update of the company’s progress towards first launch of its Terran-R rocket
Though the company remains tight-lipped about a launch date (no longer promising 2026), it increasingly appears as if 2026 is no longer impossible.
- Relativity touts the layout design of the 13 engines on the Terran-R 1st stage
Nine will gimbal, four will not.
- Russia again delays the launch of its Luna 27A lunar lander to 2029
A second lander has also been delayed till 2030. Both were originally supposed to launch by 2025. I predict both will be delayed again. And again. And again. etc.
- On this day in 1960 the reentry capsule of the military surveillance satellite Discoverer-13 became the first human-made object to be recovered from orbit
It was the eleventh attempt, carrying only sensors to track its flight. With this success the next mission a week later carried a film camera for reconnaissance.
- On this day in 1977 the test shuttle Enterprise flew its first manned test flight
Piloted by Fred Haise and Gordon Fullerton, it was released from an airplane at 22,800 feet and glided down to a landing 5.3 min later.
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.
- Relativity releases its July update of the company’s progress towards first launch of its Terran-R rocket
Though the company remains tight-lipped about a launch date (no longer promising 2026), it increasingly appears as if 2026 is no longer impossible.
- Relativity touts the layout design of the 13 engines on the Terran-R 1st stage
Nine will gimbal, four will not.
- Russia again delays the launch of its Luna 27A lunar lander to 2029
A second lander has also been delayed till 2030. Both were originally supposed to launch by 2025. I predict both will be delayed again. And again. And again. etc.
- On this day in 1960 the reentry capsule of the military surveillance satellite Discoverer-13 became the first human-made object to be recovered from orbit
It was the eleventh attempt, carrying only sensors to track its flight. With this success the next mission a week later carried a film camera for reconnaissance.
- On this day in 1977 the test shuttle Enterprise flew its first manned test flight
Piloted by Fred Haise and Gordon Fullerton, it was released from an airplane at 22,800 feet and glided down to a landing 5.3 min later.
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
Something really stood out from the recent SpaceX launch. The Falcon reuse and reliability is amazing
“””SpaceX placed another 24 Kuiper satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The Falcon 9 first stage was new, completing its first flight by landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic”””
NEW FALCON 9 FIRST STAGE.
We look forward to the day when the SuperHeavy Booster will be reused as much. We will never get bored of seeing the 33 engines of the SuperHeavy push that building-sized Booster into the sky.
Since the SuperHeavy Booster is basically operational, I wonder if it will be used to launch more than just Starship. I realize SpaceX Falcon Heavy can place a certain amount of tonnage in space. I wonder how many cubesats the SuperHeavy Booster could place in LEO. I realize that the original plan was to fill Starship full of StarLink satellites.
I would like to see other upper stages myself–but I got attacked elsewhere for even daring to mention that.
I learned something new again from you today, Bob.
And I must admit, I am a little amazed that the first recovery of an artificial object from orbit came so early in the Space Age. I’d have figured it would have come a lot later. Impressive.
Richard M: Both the U.S. and the Soviet Union moved quickly in the 1960s to develop orbital reconnaissance. Initially both used short-term satellites launched quickly that used film. The undeveloped film would be returned in a re-entry capsule for development.
The U.S. accomplished this first, as noted, but within a few years abandoned this system for long term orbital satellites with digital capabilities. Much more efficient. The Soviet Union continued to launch similar short term satellites with recoverable capsules right up until its collapse in 1990. Apparently the Soviet government preferred spreading the pork around with many launches, even though it was a less effective system. Or maybe it was incapable of developing a better system, based as it was on a top-down corrupt nationally-run bureaucracy that was stultified and unable to innovate.
Dwayne Day has some wonderful articles on The Space Review about spysat development. Gambit’s offerings are among the best, even compared to modern day hardware.
Almaz/Salyut (DOS core for Mir and ISS) was a Russian MOL.
I have heard it said that the USAF was originally hostile to GPS, and didn’t initially think live digital spysat data was needed…as per one of Dwayne’s TSR articles.
Mr. Day also intimated that film–over a light box–is top notch…no pixelations.
Spreading the pork around came after the death of Khrushchev–who viewed space as a way to save money. With him and Korolev out of the way–the USSR tried to match us– deep water navy for deep water navy… bomber for bomber.
Khrushchev knew that would fail–so be favored space over planes and ships.
Here in America, space advocates were the ones neglected–the polar opposite of what Russia ‘s did.
Jeff Wright,
You wrote: “I would like to see other upper stages myself–but I got attacked elsewhere for even daring to mention that.”
What kinds of upper stages would you like to see?
Here is a list of Starliner types that SpaceX already plans to cover:
Uncrewed Cargo to orbit:
— Cargo to orbit: clamshell hatch for satellites, space station modules, deep space probes, and other cargo
— Cargo to orbit: Pez dispenser for Starlink satellites
Uncrewed Surface Cargo (w/ elevator for cargo for bases, settlements, colonies)
— Materiel to Moon (no heat shield or reentry)
— Materiel to Mars: the purpose of Starship
Crew (LEO)
— Men & materiel to low Earth orbit (LEO) & Cislunar space
— Human Landing System (HLS), Men & materiel to Moon (w/ elevator, no heat shield or reentry)
— Men & materiel to Mars (w/ elevator): the purpose of Starship
Uncrewed Propellants to orbit:
— Tanker (refilling) — needed for all Starship activities higher than LEO
— Depot ship — propellant storage & refilling (no heat shield or reentry)
I already think that a Starship could be useful as a space station (LEO, lunar orbit, Lagrange points, etc.). I may be lacking imagination, but are you thinking upper stages of other rockets or are there other missions that you think an upper stage could be designed and made to do?
Ronaldus Magnus,
Yes, once it hits its stride, Starship is going to be transformative. A 200-tonnes-to-LEO “Pez dispenser” version, for example, could launch 160 of the large Starlink sats at a time – two parallel stacks of 80. That is the bandwidth equivalent of two dozen F9 Starlink launches. It is how Starlink can go from a high-4-digit population of current-model sats to a mid-5-digit population of next-gen sats in a reasonable amount of time, then maintain the constellation with ever-newer-and-better sats going forward.
Jeff Wright,
I’ll echo Edward – what additional second stage types for Super Heavy did you have in mind?
I’ll go first.
For myself, my current favorite “X-type” Starship notion is a 12 – 15-meter-diameter flapless hammerhead version for launching really large space station modules. The lower portion would be a 9-meter, 9-engine propulsion unit that interfaces to Super Heavy just like any other Starship upper stage. The tankage would be in the funnel-shape-plus-cylinder adapter section. Above that would be the station module. Capping things off would be an aeroshell. The station modules would fly naked. The tanks-and-engines portion and the upper aeroshell would be fully covered in TPS. The three pieces would separate on-orbit to release the station module, then – using cold gas maneuvering thrusters – the aeroshell and the engine-tankage module would link back up and re-enter nose first. Once most of the speed was scrubbed off, the cold gas thrusters would flip the whole works 180 degrees to an engines-down attitude and it would do a landing burn and be caught on a catch tower equipped with extra-wide chopsticks.
As the notional station modules could comprise both what would be payload plus what would ordinarily be part of the upper stage structure, total deliverable module mass would be well above 200 tonnes – perhaps even above 300 tonnes.
There are, of course, many other types of oversize cylindrical objects one could devise to launch with such a setup. This might, in fact, be a way to maximize payload diameters and masses without ever needing to devise any sort of “chomper” nose door for now-notional Starship cargo upper stages with the currently standard 9-meter diameter. Just blow right past all of those limitations.
Anent other subjects of discussion, yes, it is entirely true that the USAF took quite a dim view of GPS in the early going. This was based on the usual combination of parochial USAF fighter-jock-Mafia/bomber-Mafia narrowmindedness and the reflexive dismissal of anything developed by the USN – and GPS was a Navy project. As “Cave Man in a Jet Bomber” Gen. Curtis LeMay once famously said, “Our opponent is the Soviet Union. Our enemy is the US Navy.”
That had been USAAF, then USAF, gospel ever since the dropping of the two atom bombs on Japan had ended WW2. USAF wanted to pretty much shut down the Navy as any future war would obviously be an A-bomb war and USAF had the only feasible delivery platforms. Quite a row broke out within the newly-formed DoD in the late 40s – put “Revolt of the Admirals” into your favored search engine for more info.
Then, of course, the Korean War bubbled up. It was not an A-bomb war despite efforts by its initial commander, Gen. Douglas MacArthur, to turn it into one. It also wasn’t a war USAF’s leftover B-29s were well-equipped to fight – given that the enemy had MiG-15s. So it was a combination of land-based US jet fighters and USN carrier-based fighters and bombers that proved most useful. After that, the whole scuttle-the-Navy thing pretty much went away for good.
The USAF then moved on to other stupidities, most notably resistance to the A-10 and multiple decades of starving any attempt at designing and deploying actual war-fighting capability in space as that would have taken funds away from fighters and bombers.
The NSA, for its part, was nearly as bad. It got tunnel-visioned on building ever-bigger and more elaborate imagery spysats, seemingly convinced that the future safety of the US absolutely depended upon the ability to read the agate type on a car rental contract from orbit. Trading some pointless resolution – the achievement of which required such large and expensive birds only a handful could ever be fielded at one time – for a much larger population of modestly-lower-resolution birds that could provide continuous real-time coverage of the whole damned planet was simply violative of the NSA’s in-house religion apparently.
Fortunately, that now seems to be changing given that we have a Space Force that takes both its mission and jointness with other services very seriously.
I think it was a mistake hiving off the NSA into its own separate box back in the day. I hope it is rolled into the Space Force at some point where it properly belongs.
What else can super heavy lift in the space?
The next challenge is an orbiting fuel station. Perhaps they should try lifting a super heavy booster without the motors on top of a super heavy booster.
Since they’re already connected, the upper tanks can refill super heavy allowing it to be ready for reuse… The empty tanks could be converted into a space station, training station, continued as a fuel Depo, or sent back to earth as empty canisters to burn up. (I don’t like waste)
I would prefer that the empty fuel tanks, built with air locks in its shell, continue to lunar orbit where it can be lowered by cables with a landing system built for this purpose to where the new lunar colony for permanent habitation will be located.
If this works, more advanced versions of spent fuel tanks can be use for habitation on Mars instead of discarded.
Speaking of spy satellites, is it true that the main purpose of the shuttle Fleet was to install and maintain spy satellites, similar to the Hubble telescope, only they looked down instead of out?
Patterns
https://www.space.com/astronomy/james-webb-space-telescope/astronomers-find-bizarre-cosmic-grapes-galaxy-in-the-early-universe-heres-why-thats-a-big-deal-photo
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/weather/10-bizarre-dark-voids-appear-in-the-skies-over-uninhabited-island-near-antarctica-earth-from-space