June 27, 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.
- Lockheed Martin touts its $3 billion proposal to get Perseverance’s Mars samples back to Earth
It offers its plan as a fixed-price contract, which is a refreshing change from an old big space company. The press release however says a lot of blather but provides few specific details.
- Blue Origin touts delivery of a very large cylindrical-shaped container to its Florida launch facility
Jay thinks, “It is the Blue Moon Lander mid-module,” a smaller test lander that the company says it will send to the Moon this year. We shall see.
- Amazon signs agreement with National Science Foundation to mitigate the impact of its Kuiper constellation on ground-based astronomy
The actions proposed are similar to those taken by SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.
- New rocket startup based in Colorado dubbed Leap
It says its rocket and spaceplane will both be a single-stage-to-orbit and reusable. Seems far-fetched. The company also is building its own orbital tug.
- The Trump reconciliation budget bill being considered right now by Congress would give the Space Force a $40 billion budget
Boy, those trees with leaves of money must really be blooming. That more than a 30% increase.
- Chinese pseudo-company Space Epoch provides positive update on the state of the recovered engine from vertical test hop in late May
The next launch will attempt to reach orbit.
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.
- Lockheed Martin touts its $3 billion proposal to get Perseverance’s Mars samples back to Earth
It offers its plan as a fixed-price contract, which is a refreshing change from an old big space company. The press release however says a lot of blather but provides few specific details.
- Blue Origin touts delivery of a very large cylindrical-shaped container to its Florida launch facility
Jay thinks, “It is the Blue Moon Lander mid-module,” a smaller test lander that the company says it will send to the Moon this year. We shall see.
- Amazon signs agreement with National Science Foundation to mitigate the impact of its Kuiper constellation on ground-based astronomy
The actions proposed are similar to those taken by SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.
- New rocket startup based in Colorado dubbed Leap
It says its rocket and spaceplane will both be a single-stage-to-orbit and reusable. Seems far-fetched. The company also is building its own orbital tug.
- The Trump reconciliation budget bill being considered right now by Congress would give the Space Force a $40 billion budget
Boy, those trees with leaves of money must really be blooming. That more than a 30% increase.
- Chinese pseudo-company Space Epoch provides positive update on the state of the recovered engine from vertical test hop in late May
The next launch will attempt to reach orbit.
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
Meh, just tell them to do what Biden told the coal miners fired due to his green energy policies: learn to code.
“NASA Is in Full Meltdown”
“Career NASA officials were seen looking mighty freaked out during a recent town hall event about the agency’s dicey future.”
“As Ars Technica’s Stephen Clark reports based on a livestream of the town hall — which was not advertised and has since been taken down — acting NASA administrator and career agency official Janet Petro looked like a hostage as she answered questions from staff about the agency’s dire standing under president Donald Trump.”
“Given what she’s been forced to work with, Petro offered some optimistic equivocations about NASA’s current status under an administration that plans to cut its budget by 24 percent and its headcount by one-third in the 2026 fiscal year, which starts in October.”
https://futurism.com/nasa-future-meltdown
On the upside, Lockheed now publicly embraces “firm-fixed price” contracts, which is something Boeing refuses to countenance any longer.
On the downside, does anyone really think they can actually do this for no more than $3 billion? The lack of detail, noted by Mr Zimmerman, doesn’t exactly help in evaluating that.
But I have to think it’s a moot point. Congress *is* undoubtedly going to restore a number of active missions that the PBR proposes to cancel. But it’s harder to see them getting the moxie to save a multi-billion dollar Mars Sample Return (whatever number is on front of the “billion”) in this environment. It’s basically “potential” pork, not currently existing pork, and anyway little of that pork will be distributed to red states.
I think Lockheed’s plan on how to get a Mars sample for $2 billion is to hire a SpaceX astronaut to bring back a sample in his baggage, and they pocket the rest.
Both fixed-price and cost-plus have good and bad points. While the latter can be seen as gouging, the former can foster a “good enough” culture which upsets me more.
Say you have a cost plus contract. There might be times when a disaster happens and you will perhaps need extra time and money to do something *right* without regard as to how loud OMB screams.
Now some crook comes along and says all the right things–and offers fixed price. Sounds good, right?
Next thing you know, he fires the know-how…and replaces them, say–with folks on a short bus.
That is not a joke. Search for “Henry Turkey Service.”
Things are brought in under budget–but at a very different cost.
What is important is this–are the folks at the company honorable people?
Crooks will find a way to cheat no matter what.
Bezos seems to be all about optics.
Stoke (and the good guys who USED to be at Dynetics before they were told “no” too many times and bailed) I would trust with either type of contract.
I generally think a little more of LockMart–so maybe this is their way of saying “something goes wrong–we will eat it.”
That sounds noble and all.
But I’d still want to be Universal’s Invisible Man to make sure.
What I think has happened is this.
Even before DEI was a thing de jure…it was already extant de facto.
Old hands were not valued…either by NewSpace wonder kids that begrudged a good wage, or the PC crowd who have troubled companies for far longer.
So the old hands quit.
It doesn’t matter that we have a President who wants to end DEI.
The damage is done.
It doesn’t matter that you are comfy by a fire now–if your fingers are still turning black from frostbite.
That’s the only explanation as to why old and new space alike are having problems.
I remember a police department that offered to still pay retirees their pensions…AND to pay them a regular, separate wage like they were new recruits.
Now Boeing and SpaceX would both likely howl if that was called for –but if you want America back in the saddle again–those old hands won’t come cheap.
It you get called a featherbedder, a bigot, a loafer, or a tyrant—there is no way you would return to an outfit that had mistreated you so…unless they bring real BANK.
I had an old drunk call me everything but a son of God who begged me to come back.
Not enough money in the world.
Eric Berger reminds us that an important anniversary is coming tomorrow:
This thesis features prominently in his latest book REENTRY, and I think he makes a pretty fair case for it. CRS-7 was a bruising failure, but the company came out of even stronger.
I have never said otherwise.
But it’s Boeing’s leadership that you’re going to have convince on this, not me.
Anent LockMart’s offer of a $3 billion fixed-price Mars Sample Return mission I am reminded of a line from one of my favorite movies, The Wind and the Lion – “Even with treachery, the offer is impressive.”
Ha!
I had forgotten all about CRS-7.
COPVs deserve all the hate they get.
That LEAP spaceplane looks to have variable geometry wings. Can’t see why and they will be heavy which is *extremely* undesirable when you want SSTO.
Salvage One will fly before that does.
As for the cylindrical container…I think that was a last minute wedding gift for Mrs. Bezos.
…cough…
Speaking of Blue Origin, Eric Berger has an interesting update on where things stand on the New Glenn. (Short version: next launch now likely pushed back to October/November, with NASA’s ESCAPADE, and three more launches spread out over the first half of 2026.)
Time to take bets on which launch gets to see the first successful landing of the first stage?
https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/06/the-second-launch-of-new-glenn-will-aim-for-mars/
One more item of interest: NASA has extended recovery efforts of its Lunar Trailblazer spacecraft from mid-June to early July. (Doesn’t sound promising, but I am pulling for them!)
https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/lunar-trailblazer/2025/06/30/nasa-extends-efforts-to-recontact-lunar-trailblazer-until-early-july/
Bless them.
I see SPACE NEWS has gone full Photobucket with paywalls…a de-facto perma-ban for many.
It was always an investors’ rag anyway.
Jeff,
Registration at SN was free for me!
Oh, never mind. I think it just took time for the Space News cache to catch up with me.
I suppose this is one way for Foust and Robitzki to reduce the headache level of the comboxes.
They’ll lose readership over this. But I suspect they’re thinking it’s readership they’re willing to do without. (And maybe, in a few cases, readership they actively want to discourage.)
As for Space News new registration requirements, they can jump in a lake. All it means to me is that there will be more incentive for readers to come here. :)