June 25, 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.
- Axiom and India rocket startup Skyroot sign partnership deal
This agreement suggests a willingness of Axiom to use Skyroot’s rocket for supplying its space station, assuming Skyroot ever gets that rocket off the ground.
- Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space is now targeting July 1, 2025 for the first launch of its Eris rocket
Gilmour’s previous launch attempt was aborted when the fairing was released on the launchpad. It now says it has fixed this issue, reinstalled the fairing, and tested everything.
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.
- Axiom and India rocket startup Skyroot sign partnership deal
This agreement suggests a willingness of Axiom to use Skyroot’s rocket for supplying its space station, assuming Skyroot ever gets that rocket off the ground.
- Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space is now targeting July 1, 2025 for the first launch of its Eris rocket
Gilmour’s previous launch attempt was aborted when the fairing was released on the launchpad. It now says it has fixed this issue, reinstalled the fairing, and tested everything.
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
Airship to orbit.
Is this real?
https://youtu.be/fdfTCBRwijI?feature=shared
Our friend Keith Cowing at NASAWatch has tweeted out an alert of the latest political activism being waged against the President’s Budget Request for NASA:
“A protest is planned in front of @NASA HQ on Mon June 30 from 7:00-11:00 AM. This event has a permit with Metro DC Police. Organizers will not prevent or dissuade anyone from entering HQ but will raise awareness about #NASA budget cuts. Info: sites.google.com/view/nasa-need… #EmbraceTheChallenge’
https://x.com/NASAWatch/status/1938076134010142965?t=-HLXz0Nl7xBUXNVdilRlZA&s=09
No one would dispute their First Amendment right to do this. But you have to see the accompanying promotional poster Keith attached to see the problem: a demonified Donald Trump destroying a crying, anthropomorphized Solar System with fierce claws. These NASA peeps and their friends have, in short, decided to go full, mask-off Resistance.
As I have said before, there’s room for healthy critique of the PBR, and I think there’s reason to think such critiques could move or shape votes among the Republican majority. Or failing that, make the pork arguments. But that is not what is happening here.
Who is this supposed to persuade, exactly?
GeorgeC – John Powell (JP Aerospace) has been working on this for years. Maybe he has a new vision that might work?
As for Skyroot, we are manifested with them on their second flight. I think we were actually moved up to their first flight. Getting and keeping licenses for satellites is hard when you don’t know when the launch will be.
In other news, Northrop Grumman had what the industry likes to call an “observation” — the nozzle exploded — while conducting the first test firing of its Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension (BOLE) five-segment solid rocket motor at its Promontory production and test site in Utah this afternoon. (The BOLE motor is intended for use on the Block 2 version of NASA’s SLS rocket, beginning with the Artemis 9 mission).
Peter Hague quips: “The folks who comment “guess we aren’t going to Mars” under every single Starship failure probably won’t have much to say here.”
https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1938304777487516145?t=cuax_fazYsCHp4RPmix4aQ&s=19
Richard M: This is bad news, not just for Artemis but for Vulcan. I am posting now.
I cannot even begin to describe the level of disgust I have for Cowing –it is my opinion that folks like him who trashed NASA at every opportunity INVITED these cuts. I am with AMERICA SPACE’s Jim Hillhouse on this one.
To GeorgeC
I don’t buy an Airship TO Orbit….
Airship from orbit could be a different story.
Launch stop an HLLV(s) and inflate in space. Solar electric drive to Venus.
Nothing so light and fluffy as this.
HAVOC airship envelopes are at Earth’s sea level pressure–though the envelope IS the gondola.
Just make the lower surface LOFTID or have a second airship be LOFTID.
Much more roomy than Starship itself.
Richard M,
Who is this supposed to persuade, exactly? Left-wing protests are not about persuasion, they’re about self-congratulation and virtue signaling. And, often enough, also about giving free reign to personal sociopathy.
The “organizers” of this particular demo are being very cagey about just who they are, but I’d lay odds this is at least an Antifa-adjacent initiative with, no doubt, significant – and conveniently deniable – participation by some of the considerable useful idiot leftist majority of groups like the Planetary Society.
It will be interesting to see if this protest actually amounts to anything and, if so, whether it rates any coverage by the lefty legacy media. It will also be interesting to see how “peaceful” it turns out to be.
I can just see a slide rule as a shiv
Jeff Wright,
I, personally, could whittle a slide rule into a shiv as I still have my trusty old Post from high school and college days. Anyone much younger than me will have a difficult time finding a slide rule.