South Korea’s space agency wants to accelerate its launch capabilities
The head of South Korea’s space agency KASA, Oh Tae-seok, yesterday outlined plans to to accelerate the launch cadence of its government-built Nuri rocket, while also beginning research into building a second spaceport along with a specific launchpad for private companies.
Oh Tae-seok, head of KASA, held a press briefing at the agency in Sacheon, South Gyeongsang Province, on Thursday. “This week, the assembly of the first, second, and third stages of the fifth Nuri rocket will be completed,” he said. “From next week, we will begin full assembly of the entire rocket, and after the Launch Management Committee in early August, a September launch is expected.”
Oh also stressed the need to build a repeated launch system after the fifth launch to advance toward an era of “commercial launch services.” “To ensure the economic viability of Nuri, changes are needed in standardization and specification, as well as contracting methods and launch site operations, in addition to the advancement project,” he said. “We are preparing for four launches from 2029 to 2032.”
In addition, the agency plans to accelerate construction of the second spaceport. KASA began accepting candidate site applications for the second spaceport on the 22nd of this month. “We will select the final candidate site in October this year and aim to begin the project in 2028,” the agency said Thursday.
This second news report quoted Oh as also saying this:
“In the 2030s, rather than the current R&D approach, we should consider converting to a system where we commission launch services through purchasing, as NASA does.” This is a model similar to how NASA purchases launch services from private companies such as SpaceX.
In other words, even as he accelerates the use of Nuri, Oh wants to replace it with private rockets. Whether he can do both is questionable, because they act to cancel each other. A cheaper and viable government rocket will make it difficult for private startups to compete.
At the moment South Korea has one truly viable rocket startup, Innospace, which has one launch failure and hopes to try again before the end of the year. That it does not launch in South Korea but in Brazil suggests KASA has not been as cooperative with the commercial sector as Oh wants. His statements about building a launchpad for the private sector suggest he is aware of this.
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The “phase boundary,” so to speak, between government and commercial entities has always been fuzzier in Korea than it is most other places. Much of Korean industry is concentrated in a handful of giant “chaebol” conglomerates such as the Hyundai and Samsung groups. Space launch seems likely to follow this pattern, Innospace notwithstanding.
Given the proven entrepreneurial instincts, education levels, and dedication to hard work of the South Korean people, I have no fear about the future of private space in that nation.
PS- we should force North Korea to remain communist as a living demonstration to socialists of the failure of their creed. Every time one warbles how wonderful socialism is, we can point and ask, ‘would you want to live there?’
I think artificially preserving an omni-hostile nuclear-armed hermit Marxist monarchy for the sake of providing object lessons to those who won’t profit by them anyway is maybe a bit much to ask of the DPRK’s much-nearer neighbors.
Once Golden Dome is up and the Russian Federation and PRC are both history it will be a simple process to deal with the DPRK – assuming it hasn’t collapsed on its own in the interim.
Wouldn’t make a difference. There are a multiplicity of failing socialist governments right here at home, and people still vote for them. None of whom, by the way, are beating feet to China.
State funding is best used for multi-purpose projects.
If I had my druthers’ I would see space-planes.
Here, Eager Space talks about some shortcomings:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Mk16En1qqEY
But I see an opportunity.
Beausabre talked about example setting, and I think that is important, to debunk flat -Earthers.
Imagine, if you will, a very long sled for a space-plane that stretches across the width of a peninsula.
In the middle, the track is below grade.
On both coasts, it is elevated, looking a bit like infrastructure used to lift small boats out of one body of water, and into another….a bit like aqueducts.
The track, however, is DEAD LEVEL.
I flat-Earther can easily stand at one end of the track and point a laser towards a target at the other.
But at the terminus, he is meters above the coast. He can see a bubble in a level off center, and perhaps see a ball roll to that stretch that is below grade.
This allows a space-plane and a sled to use gravity, without that severe bend we saw in the film WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE.
Since this structure crosses a peninsula…it can have utility use as well.
This means you can deliver energy, teach science, and use a launch system that can easily roll away from fuel tanks and umbilicals so as to not put them in jeopardy as was the case with the New Glenn pad explosion.
Attachments can slide back or away.
Maybe build that in my old stomping grounds, the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. Make sure the track includes plenty of deer crossings though.
How does this address South Korea’s space needs, Jeff?
Jeff Wright,
The Eager Space video that you linked to should help you understand SpaceX’s battle with the rocket equation. I am glad that you now understand why there are so few winged spacecraft: Physics hates humans. It always has.*
Instead, the wings just add mass that needs to be taken to space, and that reduces the payload, which reduces the utility of the spaceplane.
___________
* An excellent example of physics hating humans is weather. If I had been the intelligent designer of the universe, I would have installed drip irrigation to each plant rather than the more generalized rain, which gets onto and ruins everything that mankind builds.
Did you expect this footnote to agree with Mr. Eager Space and request the repeal of the rocket equation? Well, it isn’t a law, which can be repealed through legislation or constitutional amendment.** It is just an equation, and legislators have no influence over equations.
** It looks like Einstein started a movement to repeal the law of gravity in favor of making the phenomenon a matter of curvatures in the space-time fabric of the universe.***
*** Could it be that this fabric of the universe is the elusive aether that physicists thought existed in order for electromagnetic waves to travel through? Or what about dark energy? If space and time are curved, then maybe that is what dark energy really is, explaining the increasing expansion of the universe, being a mere unexpected curve in space-time. And while we are at it, another unexpected curvature could explain the phenomenon that makes us so sure that there is dark matter, too. The universe is a strange and mysterious place, which could explain the rocket equation and why physics hates us humans.
I am well aware of the tongue in cheek nature of of the “repeal” joke, sir–And my neighbors in Huntsville have proved their grasp of it to the point that only they have sent humans to the Moon with two different programs–no thanks to NewSpacers who have attacked us at every turn.
“A cheaper and viable government rocket will make it difficult for private startups to compete.” a nice admission coming from Richard.
Starship, still teething, cost 15 billion so I hear—and SLS 37–not 90.
Everyone recognizes that NASA, and MSFC under it, has accomplished some impressive technical feats. That’s never been in question. What those technical feats have not managed is to open space to industrialization and settlement. Prestige is not a bad thing, but we have seen that it isn’t capable of sustaining a real program.
You mean Robert. That said, ‘viable’ can have many possible meanings and outcomes. What’s viable for South Korea’s nascent sector would not be capable of supporting a Starlink-scale constellation, much as the SLS is not viable if our goal is building and expanding bases on the Moon.
I don’t know where you got the figure of 90 from, but this argument is terrible:
1. The SLS does not and will not have the capacity to carry people by itself, it requires Orion, so to make a better comparison to Starship, we have to combine costs for the two, which brings us to a sum of ~$73 bilion as of 2025; nearly five times the cost of Starship.
2. Starship as designed is far more capable than the combined SLS/Orion system, so costs cannot easily be compared one-to-one anyway. To match Starship, the SLS would need a lander designed, which if done by traditional contractors would probably cost another $20+ billion, further widening the gap.
3. The citizenry has to pay for the SLS and Orion regardless of how we feel about them. Starship is entirely privately funded.
4. NASA has to bear the SLS/Orion system costs alone. No one else is interested in the rocket. Not only does SpaceX have enormous internal demand, they’ve already sold launches both to government agencies and to multiple commercial entities.
For an outsider who knows nothing about the capabilities, intentions, design approach, technical advancements, etc. of the SLS and Starship, then ‘SLS launched Orion near the Moon twice and cost $37 billion’ and ‘Starship has cost $15 billion and so far only flown suborbitally’ is a compelling argument. It is not persuasive once someone becomes interested in the topic and learns that the $37 billion for SLS includes no payloads, cannot land on the Moon, does not include infrastructure buildup or developing new engines, and would require tens of billions of dollars more to make it a fraction as capable of Starship once the latter is flying operationally. I don’t want to be snarky, but as soon as Flight 14 your complaint that it hasn’t been to orbit will be taken away, and it’s possible they’ll have demonstrated propellant transfer on orbit by the end of the year. My guess is it will slip in 2027, but that still unlocks capability simply not available to the SLS or Orion.
Jeff Wright,
My response was also just as tongue in cheek. A couple of decades ago, a friend of mine and I agreed to raise our right hand when we were being sarcastic, so let this sentence be a belated raising of my right hand on the repeal joke. And the gravity joke. And the dark energy/dark matter joke.
Isn’t the difficulty of competition obvious, not an admission? Some of us understand these things from experience. For example: it was difficult for commercial space companies to compete against the U.S. government (NASA). Even after NASA started to encourage commercial space, it took a decade or so for the investors to finally realize that NASA was serious and that commercial space was a relatively safe investment.
Starship may still be teething, and it may have cost $15 billion, so far, but SLS was pre-teething for a dozen years, and is only recently even flying — and even then, only twice — at a cost so far of $40 billion, and counting. Add in Orion, and the costs go even higher, the pre-teething even longer, and the teething is scarier. SLS was made from existing parts, yet is not making any advancements to the space industry but is regressing to 1960s Apollo methods, including the destination, but with less lifting capability, so SLS cannot even get a lunar lander to the Moon as Apollo’s Saturn V did. If there is no progress, what’s the point?
Starship is intended to be interplanetary, is a fully reusable system, greatly advances the state of the art, is significantly less expensive to operate (and to develop, including all of the ground facilities), and even as a development project can already launch far more often than SLS — Starship gives us progress. In addition, Starship will be able to loft to orbit more mass than SLS can, and if SpaceX is successful, more than the Saturn V could. Starship already has two customers lined up, as well as NASA’s lunar Human Landing System, but SLS could not find any non-NASA customers, and even then, Congress had to mandate by law the one and only non-lunar SLS mission, which NASA was ever so glad to dump from the overly expensive SLS in favor of an affordable, available commercial launch vehicle.
Huntsville has gone to the Moon several times in two different periods, but I do not remember NewSpacers attacking NASA half a century ago, and even for the latest lunar flyby everyone was worried about the lax safety concerns at NASA, not just NewSpacers. Everyone is troubled that NASA learned nothing at all from Challenger and Columbia, and now that they have gotten away with their sloppy safety practices on Artemis II, we worry that they have rationalized their practices in their own minds so that we will continue to get lax safety from them.
Another point: nearly anything can be done at least a few times: doing it hundreds or thousands of times, affordably and reliably, is where challenges grow enormous. That’s one reason Musk bas so often talked about building the factory to build the rockets. One launch every couple of years, with issues cropping up before every flight, just doesn’t constitute success. The SLS, no matter that it’s flown successfully, just can’t support anything beyond flags and footprints unless other vehicles do all the heavy lifting. It will be Starships, New Glenns, Neutrons, and more lofting the probes, rovers, satellites, landers, the cargo, and soon enough crew, to make the Moon our second world.