March 10, 2026 Quick space links
As BtB’s stringer Jay is on vacation, here are a few links I spotted that don’t deserve full posts. 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.
- The Paso Robles city council approves plan to make its airport a spaceport
Don’t bet on any orbital launches from this California city, for years if ever. There are no horizontal rockets presently operational, few are in development, and launching from California’s burdensome regulatory and anti-business government will discourage any that eventually start flying to come here. There are too many far better choices.
- Meteorite breaks up over Europe, with some pieces crashing on a German home
It is estimated the asteroid was a few meters in diameter.
- NASA inspector general generally approves its commercial manned lunar lander program
You can read the report here [pdf]. While it identifies a number of relatively minor management issues, it admits that relying on private companies to build the lunar lander has controlled cost, kept it low, and is proceeding at reasonable speed. It whines about whether either SpaceX or Blue Origin will be ready for a 2028 manned landing, but recognizes that both are proceeding with all due speed. Note too that this report is out-of-date, as it does not include the recent reshaping of the entire Artemis program.
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
As BtB’s stringer Jay is on vacation, here are a few links I spotted that don’t deserve full posts. 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.
- The Paso Robles city council approves plan to make its airport a spaceport
Don’t bet on any orbital launches from this California city, for years if ever. There are no horizontal rockets presently operational, few are in development, and launching from California’s burdensome regulatory and anti-business government will discourage any that eventually start flying to come here. There are too many far better choices.
- Meteorite breaks up over Europe, with some pieces crashing on a German home
It is estimated the asteroid was a few meters in diameter.
- NASA inspector general generally approves its commercial manned lunar lander program
You can read the report here [pdf]. While it identifies a number of relatively minor management issues, it admits that relying on private companies to build the lunar lander has controlled cost, kept it low, and is proceeding at reasonable speed. It whines about whether either SpaceX or Blue Origin will be ready for a 2028 manned landing, but recognizes that both are proceeding with all due speed. Note too that this report is out-of-date, as it does not include the recent reshaping of the entire Artemis program.
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
Eight launches are scheduled worldwide this week, with Falcon 9 again dominating the launch schedule.
SpaceX is set to launch a communications satellite and Starlink satellites this week from its Florida and California launch facilities. Meanwhile, Firefly Aerospace is set to launch its Alpha rocket from California on Tuesday.
Internationally, China is scheduled to launch three rockets from three different Chinese launch sites toward the end of the week. All payloads being launched by these rockets are currently unknown, but more information may be made available following the launches.
Somebody give Jonathan McDowell a ring, and ask if there have been some mil-sat assets in need of replacing after…cough…meteor strikes…um…yeah… that’s the ticket! Morgan Fairchild.
He’s still out from the chloroform? I’ll check back later.
For all the eagerness of some people, including Sean Duffy, to ride the hope that Blue Origin could deliver faster results than SpaceX for a lander, it is striking to note that the OIG says that as of August 2025, nearly half of the official requests for action on their Preliminary Design Review (PDR) on Blue Moon Mk2 remained open! This includes the need to “mature the propulsion system, reduce mass, and improve propellant margins.” These are not small things. (See page 14) They are also now facing an additional 11 month delay to Critical Design Review on top of the 8 month delay they negotiated with NASA in 2024. (Page 15)
I’m not even trying to bash Blue Origin — I hope they can succeed with their HLS system, and we will be better off if they do. But expectations have to be realistic. And the picture that the OIG paints is that they do not seem to be nearly as far along on their HLS as SpaceX is.
On a more serious note, there is now an advance in solar cell protection:
https://dx.doi.org/doi:10.1002/aenm.202506763
On depots and orbital data centers
https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/10.2514/1.A36386
signing off…
Richard M: To this I simply shrug and say: “This is news?”
Hello Bob,
It’s not a surprise, at least not to anyone who has been paying close attention to Blue Origin!
But for those with more . . . sanguine expectations of what BO is capable of, especially over the five months since Duffy publicly pushed BO as a potentially faster alternative, this report serves as a sober *official* (and more detailed) tonic.
More than a little of that campaign has been driven driven by animus against Elon Musk.
All Moon landers need to be hypergolics anyway.
You can’t build a more reliable ascent system than “pull string for orbit.”
New Jeff Foust story on Starlab reveals an interesting piece of information that is drawing some discussion: Voyager is paying SpaceX $90 million to launch the Starlab space station. This seems to be the first time we have seen a hard price point for Starship commercial launches.
https://spacenews.com/starlab-space-fully-books-commercial-payload-space-on-planned-space-station/
Many questions remain about Starship pricing, but this might give us something like a ballpark of what to expect?
Good news!
Some other links of interest:
On CFD and turbulence studies
https://www.secretprojects.co.uk/threads/flying-saucer-as-a-real-spacecraft-design-pros-cons.42802/page-3#post-648054
Lastly,
https://phys.org/news/2026-03-common-hydrogel-built-differently-assumed.html
“A study led by Northwestern University researchers has reported a way to observe hydrogel nano and microstructure while the hydrogel remains fully solvated…The material is orders of magnitude more rigid than previously believed, and theoretical models can be used together with this new information to better predict its mechanical behavior. Northwestern University Ph.D. candidate Nathan Rosenmann was first author on the paper, which was published in Nature Materials on March 11, 2026.”
From today’s press conference on Artemis: some asked the question: “What is the status of the Gateway?”
Lori Glaze: “The new direction that @NASAAdmin put forward is focused on transportation in the near term. There is nothing in there that talks about any other part of the program and we continue to execute on the other parts of the program.”
It sounds like they are still unwilling to say anything definitive about the Gateway. So we shouldn’t assume that it’s dead just yet. I think it simply hasn’t been decided yet. A lot of difficult discussions and negotiations with stakeholders are likely still underway.
Richard M,
Interesting data point anent Starship launch pricing. For a notional 100 tonne max payload – which Starlab seems unlikely to be – a $90 million price translates to $900/kg. There are, doubtless, any number of companies now figuring out how to get a full 100 tonnes of whatever into the volume limits of a Starship payload bay.
I also watched that presser today. I’d say you’re almost certainly right about Gateway. Jared, I think, would like very much like to be rid of the thing entirely but he may not have sufficient political capital to make that happen. On the other hand, recent European dithering anent support of the war on Iran might just add enough political capital to Jared’s balance that he is able to stiff the Euros outright. Gateway, which is mostly a sop to the Europeans, will probably never be more vulnerable to unilateral US cancellation than right now. The Trump administration is famously transactional. Killing Gateway would be one way it could express displeasure with European fecklessness anent Iran at no real cost to the US. The Japanese, the only other significant current stakeholder, would, I think, dump Gateway in a hot minute in return for more involvement in the permanent lunar surface base.
Should Gateway somehow survive, my guess is that it will be demoted in priority and will most likely be deployed and supplied on a less-urgent schedule using Falcon Heavies and/or Ariane 6s/H-3s as the SLS will no longer be capable of doing so. I don’t see it remaining a part of the Artemis program.
If what I certainly both hope and expect to be a limited number of future SLS-Orion stacks are entirely devoted to Gateway-less Moon landing efforts following Artemis 3, a real question arises as to just how any astronauts – of whatever nationality – would actually reach Gateway. Perhaps Blue Origin would be willing to launch Orions on New Glenn or build their own Orion-equivalent. Or perhaps the Euros, in a fit of space autarky, would actually build their own manned craft capable of launch on Ariane 6. If Jared made that a condition of continuing the Gateway program it would either relieve the US of a considerable Gateway-related expense or provide a reason for the Euros to decline and seal Gateway’s doom. On the US political side, Ted Cruz and others want JSC to continue having something to “control,” but can probably be relatively easily convinced to swap Gateway for the permanent lunar base.
Gateway, unlike ISS modules, is supposed to be a bit more rad-hardened.
I am hoping the assembled station would be shoved Marsward at some point.
This way, Elon doesn’t have to foot the bill for a Mars station.
Richard M,
Thank you for the nice data point. By my calculations, If Starship can take 200 tons to orbit at $90 million, then that comes to $225 per pound ($500/kg). Considering the business they have at ten times that price, Starship seems poised to be a successful launch vehicle.
Maybe NASA and Isaacman can find enough money to fund three space stations for the next Commercial Launch Destinations (CLD) phase. Either way, it looks like investors favor commercial space stations. so these stations could conceivably find funding without NASA’s CLD project.
____________
Dick Eagleson,
I think that 200 tons is not too unrealistic, considering that SpaceX has a stretch goal of 250 tons. The specific impulse of the Raptor engines and the extra propellant density from chilling give SpaceX a real chance, if they can keep the dry weight down.
Gateway was never a good idea, and its inclusion in Artemis was due to the inadequacies of SLS. However, Congress suffers from sunk-cost-fallacy-syndrome and is likely to keep that puppy going as long as it can. On the third hand, on the gripping hand, Isaacman seems to be persuasive, so he may succeed in refocusing NASA in a good direction.