June 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.
- Chinese pseudo-company CAS-Space touts static fire engine test of the core stage of its Kinetica-2 rocket
The company wants to use the rocket to launch the Qingzhou-1 cargo freighter.
- SpaceX demolishes the former ULA Delta-4 rocket launch facility at Cape Canaveral
The video shows the action. This site is where SpaceX is building its own Starship/Superheavy launch facility.
- Dawn Aerospace signs deal to fly its suborbital spaceplane, Aurora Mark 2, from Oklahoma airport
This is the same airport that touted itself as a spaceport two decades ago with the startup Rocketplane Kistler. That company went bankrupt, and never flew anything.
Readers!
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As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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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.
- Chinese pseudo-company CAS-Space touts static fire engine test of the core stage of its Kinetica-2 rocket
The company wants to use the rocket to launch the Qingzhou-1 cargo freighter.
- SpaceX demolishes the former ULA Delta-4 rocket launch facility at Cape Canaveral
The video shows the action. This site is where SpaceX is building its own Starship/Superheavy launch facility.
- Dawn Aerospace signs deal to fly its suborbital spaceplane, Aurora Mark 2, from Oklahoma airport
This is the same airport that touted itself as a spaceport two decades ago with the startup Rocketplane Kistler. That company went bankrupt, and never flew anything.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Oohhh… that’s a metaphor if I ever saw one.
Definitely an “end of an era” vibe to seeing all that Delta IV Heavy structure going down in smoke.
What will rise in its place will be even grander, though.
“…SpaceX had not yet built a hangar. So the techs and engineers working on the rocket in early 2009 did so out in the open, exposed, on the hangar’s foundation. ULA employees would drive up the access road and stop at the fence. They took photos, shouted mocking comments, and laughed at their would-be competitors.”
– Eric Berger, LIFTOFF
Delta IV and Falcon are about the same size….I would have preferred SuperHeavy over FH at the 39’s–with Falcon launching out of a modified D-IV pad.
The latter would take some doing –but SuperHeavy would have had a deluge on day one.
A number of people on X yesterday were struck by the juxtaposition between ULA CEO Tory Bruno insisting in a podcast interview with Noah Sheinbaum that “You won’t believe me, but reusability isn’t that much cheaper,” on the same day that SpaceX demolishes ULA’s iconic Delta IV launch pad buildings at SLC-37..
(one example: https://x.com/KenKirtland17/status/1933148048525308185 )
Tory, God bless him, was reduced to fluffing the prospects of SMART reuse on Vulcan. Eric Berger suggested that he would be shocked if ULA actually reused an engine pod off a Vulcan in the next five years.. SpaceX, of course, will be recovering at least three Falcon 9 boosters THIS WEEK.
Hello Jeff,
Yeah, but LC-39A is where SpaceX has had the only place from which it could launch Dragons, crew and cargo, on behalf of NASA since 2017. That only changed last autumn when SpaceX finally got the Dragon crew access tower at SLC-40 operational. I think NASA is pretty happy with that.
It is not clear to me at any event that the LC-39A flame trench would have accommodated a Starship launch without some serious modification. Yes, it was rated for more than a Saturn V thrust hit; but it’s also quite old now, too,
Anyway, SpaceX has shown its ability now to build a dedicated flame trench in quick time down at Boca Chica. They should have the one at the southeast corner of LC-39A completed by the end of the year. And this one will be designed and optimized for Starship right from the very start, just as will be the ones at SLC-37 when they get built next year.
Richard M: That Berger quote reminds me of the tour of Vandenberg I had in 2015, and the photos I posted here on BtB afterward (with my impressions):
A photo tour of Vandenberg Air Force Base
My impression of SpaceX’s facility here at that time:
My impression of the ULA Delta-4 launchpad:
Hello Bob,
Thanks for that. Of course, it helps to afford all that when the Air Force is paying you a billion dollars a year in “launch readiness” subsidies!
Tory, to his credit, has been pretty ruthless in reducing a lot of that overhead over the last several years. He could see that the subsidy was going to go away once SpaceX got an NSSL slot in 2019. This is a key reason why ULA is now down to just a single launch pad at the Cape and a single pad at Vandy now. (I assume they are still less cost efficient on launch crew overhead than SpaceX, due to the nature of the systems they use, but that they’ve just reduced some of the fat they used to carry in the 2000’s and 2010’s.)
That won’t save the company in the long run, but it’s undoubtedly been a big part of what was needed to keep them afloat until Vulcan came online.
Patrick Underwood,
A metaphor and a meme. Also, I suspect, a harbinger – “All your base are belong to us.”
Jeff Wright,
SpaceX is 11 years into a 20-year lease on LC-39A. F9 and FH were reasonably well-defined at the time of lease signing while what would become Starship was anything but. SpaceX had extant and upcoming rockets to launch and needed a second pad to do it from as SLC-40 was already in use and needed to stay that way. LC-39A was a far better match to FH requirements in any case.
LC-39A is getting a Starship pad even as we speak. If the original LC-39A pad is eventually rebuilt to handle Starship stacks – and I wouldn’t bet against that – it won’t happen until both F9 and FH are fully retired. I suspect that won’t happen before SpaceX has to renew its lease, though the number of launches from the LC-39A complex will be dominated by Starship stacks over combined F9/FH missions well before that.
SpaceX will be building two new Starship pads at SLC-37 starting pretty much now as the linked site clearing footage shows, and likely two more at notional SLC-50 starting next year. Once SLS-Orion is gone, SpaceX will most likely build two more Starship pads at LC-39B. By the time of lease renewal on LC-39A in 2034, SpaceX should be well along with plans for new Starship pads at both LC-39A and SLC-40. ULA should be out of business by then too, so I’m thinking there will be an additional pair of Starship pads at SLC-41. There could easily be as many as a dozen Starship pads at Kennedy/Canaveral by the mid 2030s.
Richard M,
I think one or two of the former ULA jeerleading squad are still making comments over at Space News. They would be well-advised to make maximum contributions to their 401-K plans while they can as I don’t think ULA is going to be around long enough to hand out any gold watches to whomever is still working there when the receivership auctioneers come through to make an inventory of assets to be liquidated.
I share your skepticism that SMART will ever be a thing – certainly not within five years. If ULA doesn’t get its act together anent just launching expendable Vulcans at some kind of reasonable cadence pretty soon, it may go out of business a lot sooner than the early 2030s. The Space Force doesn’t seem nearly as tolerant as the USAF was when it was running DoD space. There now exists, I think, a non-trivial probability of ULA having its NSSF contracts canceled for non-performance as soon as next year. That probability would only increase if Blue can get, say, two more New Glenns launched by year’s end and ULA fails to at least match that with Vulcans. ULA’s Kuiper business could also evaporate for the same reason, especially given that SpaceX seems easily able to handle Kuiper deployments at the unimpressive maximum rate Amazon seems able to build their birds.
I think it is safe to say that the EIS process for the rebuild of SLC-37 has been on rails since well before the preliminary EIS was published. There’s a bit more official rigamarole to be accomplished before the last of the stamps and seals are applied but that all seems pretty pro forma at this point.
The tip-off was the explosive demolition of the erstwhile ULA infrastructure. Such demo jobs require weeks, or even months, of site surveying and preparation work by the demo contractor before the switches are thrown. It is manifestly not something that can be ginned up on a few days notice.
As I noted above in my response to Mr. Wright, the entire northern march of Canaveral, plus all of KSC, should be SpaceX territory a decade hence. The smaller fry, including Blue Origin, will be clustered at and below SLC-36 to the south.
Robert Zimmerman,
I suspect all of that “hillbilly front yard” stuff that was lining the access road to SLC-4E has long-since vanished. Vandy’s SpaceX crew were sporadic commuters from the Hawthorne mothership until the last few years of steeply rising launch cadence there. I would be amazed if they are all not now permanent residents of the area and full-timers at the site.
Hello Dick,
1. It is no surprise to you, I am sure, that I say that I’m inclined to think that Vulcan is ULA’s last hurrah. It is the last of the EELV’s in a post-EELV world. Twenty years ago, it would have been a worthy rocket, one which could even have taken some business away from Ariane 5 and Soyuz. Today it is just barely capable of getting its company a second slot in the primary Pentagon launch program, and I think we agree that it is reasonable to doubt if it survive into NSSL Phase IV.
2. What *is* the deal with Vulcan now, anyway? It’s certified now by DoD, but it’s been 8 months since its last launch, with military payloads supposedly waiting in clean rooms for a ride to orbit. The latest word we have is from the GAO Weapon Systems Annual Assessment, released on Wednesday (June 11), which vaguely says the next Vulcan launch, USSF-106, will launch “this summer.” Which, it is careful to note, was supposed to be three years ago. I have heard that, certification notwithstanding, that ULA has been working through some other issues with Vulcan.
Link to report, relevant quote on page 167: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-25-107569.pdf
That said, I don’t think DoD is going to be *that* willing to eject ULA from NSSL. If nothing else, given the controversies surrounding Elon Musk (be they fair or not), it would be terrible optics and some level of heartburn in the E Ring to suddenly make NSSL a solely SpaceX program. They are clearly quite *unhappy* with ULA, as everyone knows now, but I think there is plenty of room for that unhappiness to simmer. I expect less visible methods for the Pentagon to act on its unhappiness for a while to come. I suspect what will happen is that Vulcan will launch soon, but only manage 2 or 3 launches in 2025, and while that will not be remotely what the Space Force and NRO were expecting or were promised, that it will be just enough to keep things going. Tory probably won’t get a USSF stocking stuffer at Christmas this year, though.
3 I really do think the evidence is there that SMART is a very real thing with very real development done on it, and Tory really does sincerely dig it. I also think it’s been starved of resources by ULA’s parents, and it’s really hard to say that they see any urgency in it. I think Berger’s pessimism is warranted, which is a shame, because I’m just plum intrigued to see it actually in operation (even if I think it is inferior to retropropulsive booster recovery).
4. How bad is it for ULA now? Eager Space did another nice video last week on this question, entitled “Will anyone buy ULA?” His short answer is “no,” but it is the rest of his analysis that is so interesting. For one thing, how little the company is worth now. ULA is not publicly held, but its two parent stakeholders *are*, and their filings show what *they* value ULA at, and the answer gets you $1.1 billion (Boeing) or $1.4 billion (Lockheed). That’s measly, compared to what they were a decade ago, not just compared to SpaceX today….but heck, even Rocket Lab has a market cap of $12.15 billion! Add to that the fact that, as Eager notes, it just doesn’t have good synergy with any of the mooted purchasing companies… How far the mighty have fallen. It is no wonder that Boeing and LockMart can’t find a buyer, nor show any desire to buy it out themselves.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bI7XXQFSSY8
“The Day The Sky Flashed Twice”
The Vela 6911 Satellite Detection Event; September 22, 1979
https://youtu.be/3asnLWPBoKY
8:28
Minuteman III Test Launch
May 21, 2025
https://youtu.be/qDoea0iamwE
1:14
Richard M,
That was a neat video by Eager Space. Now I’m probably going to have to watch more of his stuff and I can barely keep up with what I already try to read/watch. So, thanks – sort of.
You’re probably right that Space Force won’t entirely chop ULA’s head off in the near future, but it will be increasingly unlikely to do the sort of bending over backward that has been going on until recently anent keeping ULA’s assigned launches in its queue. Continued pathetic Vulcan cadence is going to result in some mission losses without any compensatory “make-ups” further out. Not head chopping, but maybe incremental removal of finger joints is the appropriate sanguinary metaphor.