September 10, 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.
- Startup Venus Aerospace touts the capabilities of its RDRE rocket engine
It claims the engine is “flight-proven and delivers at least 15% higher efficiency than any rocket engine in use today.”
- Firefly touts the engineering behind its second BlueGhost lunar lander, heading to the far side of the Moon
The image shows “the structure qualification models” for both the Blue Ghost lander and the company’s Elytra Dark orbiter, that on the mission will be released in lunar orbit.
- Relativity’s August update on its progress leading to the first Terran-R rocket launch
As with all the recent monthly updates, the company appears to be aggressively and successfully moving towards a 2026 launch date, though it however has made no firm schedule commitments.
- A section of the Israeli rocket that placed its Ofek 19 reconnaissance satellite into orbit last week has been found near the island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean, south of Italy
The tweet says it’s the rocket’s fairing, but it looks more like a rocket stage to me.
- Blue Origin touts its proposed Mars Telecommunications Orbiter
Blue Origin’s bid for this NASA contract might carry a bit more weight if it started launching some New Glenn rockets and payloads first.
- Rocket Lab touts its proposed Mars Telecommunications Orbiter
If it was my decision at NASA and my choice was between Blue Origin and Rocket Lab, Rocket Lab would win hands down. It has launched stuff that works. Blue Origin so far is mostly just smoke and mirrors
- On this day in 1959, Big Joe—an uncrewed Mercury capsule—was launched on a suborbital test flight
This was the second launch of the Mercury program and the first to use an Atlas booster. Big Joe was recovered in the Atlantic after reaching a peak altitude of 95 miles.
- On this day in 1975, Viking 2 launched to Mars
Like its twin Viking 1, it included an orbiter and a lander. Both landers were focused far too much on looking for evidence of Martian life, a search that was unrealistic for the first two human spacecraft to arrive on a planet with the surface area equivalent to the continents on Earth.
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.
- Startup Venus Aerospace touts the capabilities of its RDRE rocket engine
It claims the engine is “flight-proven and delivers at least 15% higher efficiency than any rocket engine in use today.”
- Firefly touts the engineering behind its second BlueGhost lunar lander, heading to the far side of the Moon
The image shows “the structure qualification models” for both the Blue Ghost lander and the company’s Elytra Dark orbiter, that on the mission will be released in lunar orbit.
- Relativity’s August update on its progress leading to the first Terran-R rocket launch
As with all the recent monthly updates, the company appears to be aggressively and successfully moving towards a 2026 launch date, though it however has made no firm schedule commitments.
- A section of the Israeli rocket that placed its Ofek 19 reconnaissance satellite into orbit last week has been found near the island of Lampedusa in the Mediterranean, south of Italy
The tweet says it’s the rocket’s fairing, but it looks more like a rocket stage to me.
- Blue Origin touts its proposed Mars Telecommunications Orbiter
Blue Origin’s bid for this NASA contract might carry a bit more weight if it started launching some New Glenn rockets and payloads first.
- Rocket Lab touts its proposed Mars Telecommunications Orbiter
If it was my decision at NASA and my choice was between Blue Origin and Rocket Lab, Rocket Lab would win hands down. It has launched stuff that works. Blue Origin so far is mostly just smoke and mirrors
- On this day in 1959, Big Joe—an uncrewed Mercury capsule—was launched on a suborbital test flight
This was the second launch of the Mercury program and the first to use an Atlas booster. Big Joe was recovered in the Atlantic after reaching a peak altitude of 95 miles.
- On this day in 1975, Viking 2 launched to Mars
Like its twin Viking 1, it included an orbiter and a lander. Both landers were focused far too much on looking for evidence of Martian life, a search that was unrealistic for the first two human spacecraft to arrive on a planet with the surface area equivalent to the continents on Earth.
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
In space you can hear methane scream
“In a recent study published in The Journal of Physical Chemistry A, Mizzou faculty member Arthur Suits and doctoral student Yanan Liu fired a laser at methane gas molecules moving faster than the speed of sound in a vacuum chamber at roughly –430°F, close to the temperature in parts of outer space.”
“Because the molecules were emitted through a rocket nozzle, a supersonic flow was created. The laser’s light was absorbed by the molecules, making them “excited” and vibrate against each other. Those vibrations created tiny pressure waves—actual sound—that Suits captured with a super sensitive microphone.”
“This process of using light to make sound—known as photoacoustic spectroscopy—was previously thought to be impossible in extreme conditions that mimic outer space. This is because an extremely cold, vacuum-like environment has nothing to carry sound. Besides, how can you hear something traveling faster than the speed of sound?”
“Yet Suits and his team at Mizzou found it can be done: The excitation of the molecules is converted to sound at the point when the molecules smash against the microphone.”
From:
https://phys.org/news/2025-09-laser-reveals-supersonic-molecules-space.html
Jeff Wright: that’s cool, and very interesting. How, indeed, does an acoustic pressure wave travel where there is no medium of transmission?
The exhaust products themselves likely.
Of more interest is this:
https://phys.org/news/2025-09-turbulence-fluid-pipe-discontinuous-transition.html
I worry about Raptor 3 perhaps being too compact.
The more solid something is, the less it can flex.
Rockets like Starship really are like water towers. Tankage—pipes going to the engines…engines with the sharpest bends.
Part of me wonders if more of the rocket engine itself need be incorporated into the rocket body…nozzles interchange.
On “slugs”
https://phys.org/news/2022-08-puffs-slugs-role-randomness-transitional.html
I look at Bombardier Beetles, Triggerfish… oddballs of nature and wonder what other types of inspiration can be had.
Standing sonic waves, not just flow, separate rockets from household plumbing.
We have seen vibrators as used in concrete pours. Maybe if fuel lines are longer than they “need” to be—perhaps they can be vibrated.
Yes Elon wants engines easily swapped out—but is that the best way to have reusablility?
SuperHeavy has so many engines each has the other’s back.
Could it be that having fewer engines is Starships bane?
A Raptor is not a big block Chevy.
One size fits all sounds nice—but maybe multiple smaller engines is key. Stoke seems to think so.
But Vac Raptors need a big extension nozzle, right?
Maybe have multiple smaller engines where the whole Starship aft is the bell?
Just kicking the ball around.