Category: Points of Information

Very brief descriptions, with appropriate links, of current or recent news items.

Chinese pseudo-company almost succeeds in vertically landing test rocket

9:00 am

The Chinese pseudo-company Deep Blue Aerospace this weekend almost succeeded in vertically landing a grasshopper-type test rocket, its engines cutting off just before landing so that when the rocket hit the ground the impact was too much for its landing legs.

I have embedded video of the flight and crash landing below. The footage has a AI feel to it, for several reasons. First the camera is a fisheye lens, creating distortion. Second, this test grasshopper-type rocket is quite small, much smaller than the company wants you to realize, thus allowing the drone to fly around during its flight it in a somewhat spectacular manner.

The company stated that the test completed 10 of 11 engineering goals. It will have to rebuild a new test lander however to achieve that last and most important goal, landing without damage to allow immediate reflight. Regardless, this test means that China is finally getting close to achieving rocket reusablity, something it promised in 2018 it would achieve by 2020.

Note also that though this pseudo-company will likely not release its data to the other Chinese pseudo-companies, if China’s government wants to expropriate it for its own government rockets it will do so, and in fact likely has.
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China and Rocket Lab complete launches

3:11 pm

Yesterday there were two more launches. First China’s Long March 2D rocket in the very early morning hours lifted off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northern China, placing six satellites in orbit.

The satellites are part of a constellation for doing high resolution Earth observations. No word on where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuel, crashed inside China.

Next Rocket Lab successfully launched five satellites for the French satellite company Kinéis. This was the second of five planned launches by Rocket Lab to put the entire 25 satellite internet-of-things constellation into orbit. It was also the second attempt to launch, with the first experiencing a launch abort at T-0 seconds due to a ground-system issue.

The launch pace is beginning to heat up. There were four launches yesterday, two from China, one from SpaceX and one from Rocket Lab. The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

93 SpaceX
41 China
11 Russia
11 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 109 to 63, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 79.

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Boeing replaces the head of its defense/space/security division

4:24 pm

Ted Colbert
Ted Colbert

Boeing today announced that the head of its defense/space/security division, Ted Colbert, has been removed, effective immediately.

New Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg in his first significant move since taking over in August, said Ted Colbert would be leaving and Steve Parker, the unit’s chief operating officer, would assume Colbert’s responsibilities until a replacement is named at a later date.

One project that Colbert was in charge of was Starliner, a program that has cost the company at least $1.6 billion in overruns because of numerous faulty engineering problems.

Colbert might not be to blame for the endless problems at Starliner, but the fish stinks from the head. He also might be very qualified, but sadly, as his picture shows, he is a minority, and since Boeing went all in on DEI racist hiring quotas a few years ago, which makes the skin color and gender of an applicant a major qualification in hiring, one can’t help wondering if he was a DEI (Didn’t Earn It) hire. At Boeing that policy created a goal to increase black staffing by 20%. Its full report [pdf] makes it very clear it no longer made talent, experience, or skill the primary qualification for getting hired, but skin color and sex took precedence.

As I said, one cannot help wondering if Colbert was hired not because of his great management and engineering knowledge, but because he happened to born with a dark skin color. If so, that might help explain the failures in this paricular division.

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China’s solid-fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket launches four satellites

4:05 pm

China this afternoon launched four satellites using its solid-fueled Kuaizhou-1A rocket, lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

It is unclear what the satellites purpose are, though there are hints they are part of a constellation providing communications for the internet of things. No word was also released where the rocket’s lower stages crashed in China.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

93 SpaceX
40 China
11 Russia
10 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 108 to 62, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 77.

2 comments

September 20, 2024 Quick space links

4:00 pm

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.

 

 

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Land of cracks

1:26 pm

Land of cracks

Cool image time! The picture to the right, cropped to post here, was taken on June 28, 2024 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Labeled a “terrain sample,” it was likely taken not as part of any specific research project but to fill a gap in the camera’s schedule in order to maintain its proper temperature. When the camera team needs to do this, they try to pick something interesting, but don’t always have that option.

In this case, the landscape available included the channel shown to the right. About a half mile wide and only about fifty feet deep, the floor of this canyon appears to have a lot of trapped dust, forming ripple dunes, along with a lot of knobby protrusions, likely small mesas. The canyon walls appear layered, with the erosion processes producing different features on opposite sides. On the southeast the layers appear to produce distinct terraces, while on the northwest the cliff is very steep at the top and then forms a long gently descending slope that appears formed of alluvial fill (from that cliff) and formed from erosion and landslides.
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A review of Firefly’s new launch facilities in both the U.S. and Sweden

10:19 am

Link here. The company already has leases for launchpads at both Vandenberg and Cape Canaveral, though only the Vandenberg pad is presently operational. It now building new pads in Viriginia at Wallops Island and in Sweden at the commercial Esrange spaceport.

Regarding the purpose of offering a launch site in Europe, Firefly stated to NSF, “The launch cadence will largely be driven by customer demand. With the inaugural Alpha launch from Esrange as early as 2026, the new complex can support commercial customers in the broader European market and enable tactically responsive space missions to further advance national security for NATO countries.”

The company has already completed five launches from Vandenberg, with a sixth upcoming.

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Brazil approves space bill that appears to crush that country’s future in space

10:13 am

The Brazillian legislature has now approved a new space regulatory bill that appears to create a whole range of new agencies and regulatory bodies, all designed to heavily supervise all space activities while giving a great deal of arbitrary power to the government.

The quote below says it all. Note that the term “space operators” refers to any private aerospace operation.

The [government] may economically exploit, directly or indirectly, without bidding, the space infrastructure, including ground equipment and logistical resources, installations and computer systems necessary to carry out space activities.

The regulatory authorities, AEB and the Air Force Command, will have free access to the facilities and equipment of space operators. They may, at any time, cancel or change the licenses granted in the event of non-compliance with obligations or when there is a threat to national security or violation of international commitments. Even if its activities are suspended or canceled, the operator remains responsible for the artifacts that are in operation. [emphasis mine]

There is a lot more, all of it adding more heavy regulation while imposing great responsibilities both legal and financial on the private companies, all to the benefit of the government.

Who is going to invest billions, even millions, under such an arbitrary regime? No one, especially because the Brazillian government has already proven its willingness to unilaterially block or take over private companies with its actions in connection with Starlink and X.

7 comments

SpaceX finds a way to extend the launch window for Europa Clipper

10:03 am

The launch window for SpaceX’s launch of NASA’s Europa Clipper to Jupiter has now been extended a full week because the company has revised the launch process and made hardware changes.

The new launch window runs from October 10th to November 6th.

Usually the two side boosters come back to land at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station so they can be reused and sometimes the core booster is recovered at sea, but not this time. All their fuel will be used to get Europa Clipper on its way to Jupiter. Piloto said SpaceX “made some hardware modifications that enable the launch vehicle to utilize all the fuel in the boosters,” but couldn’t go into detail about what they are because the information is proprietary.

[The NASA official] added that SpaceX has gained experience in flying this configuration — it’s the 11th Falcon Heavy launch — and the company has “come up with a strategy to optimize throttling of the launch vehicle to get more performance out of it.”

NASA and SpaceX have also decided to use NASA’s orbiting communications constellation during the launch instead of ground stations, which increases their flexibility and margins.

I wonder if the FAA has approved these changes. Or even if anyone there even understands them.

13 comments

SpaceX launches 21 more Starlink satellites

8:58 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

93 SpaceX
39 China
11 Russia
10 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 108 to 61, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 93 to 76.

6 comments

China launches two GPS-type satellites

4:06 pm

China today successfully launched two more BeiDou satellites for its GPS-type navigation constellation, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in the southwest of China.

No word on where the strap-on boosters and lower stages crashed in China, all using toxic hypergolic fuels.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

92 SpaceX
39 China
11 Russia
10 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 107 to 61, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world, including American companies, 92 to 76.

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