Tag: capitalism

NASA official in charge of its manned program denigrates the idea of fixed-price contracts

9:32 am

Jim Free, apparently hostile to commercial space despite running the NASA manned program dependent on it
Jim Free, apparently hostile to commercial space despite
running the NASA manned program dependent on it

Eric Berger on June 16, 2023 wrote up a careful analysis of comments made by NASA official Jim Free, who is in charge of its Artemis manned program, when he appeared on June 7, 2023 before the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Space Studies Board in Washington, DC.

During that appearance, in which Free provided an update on the program’s status, including admitting that the manned lunar landing will not happen in 2025 but in 2026 — something that everyone in the space industry has known for years but NASA had been denying — Berger then noted this further comment by Free:

Oddly, Free also questioned the value of the contract mechanism that NASA used to hire SpaceX and its Starship lander. “The fact is, if they’re not flying on the time they’ve said, it does us no good to have a firm, fixed-price contract other than we’re not paying more,” he said.

Free did this after trying to place the entire blame for the launch delay on SpaceX, made worse by the regulatory delays being imposed on it by the FAA.

Berger than proceeded to outline in great detail why fixed-price contracts work far better than cost-plus contracts — also known widely in the space industry and detailed myself in Capitalism in Space. To sum up, cost-plus contracts produce very little but cost gobs of money, while fixed-price contracts save money while guaranteeing results. He then asked, “What’s going on here?” and answered it as follows:
» Read more

16 comments

SpaceX successfully launches Indonesian broadband satellite

8:48 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully launched an Indonesian broadband satellite, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairing halves completed their seventh and ninth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

41 SpaceX
23 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 46 to 23 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 46 to 39, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 41 to 39.

3 comments

Rocket Lab completes first suborbital test launch of its Electron rocket

8:42 am

As part of its contract for providing the Defense Department with a testbed for hypersonic testing, Rocket Lab on June 17, 2023 successfully completed the first suborbital test launch of its Electron rocket.

The HASTE suborbital launch vehicle is derived from the Company’s Electron rocket but has a modified Kick Stage for hypersonic payload deployment, a larger payload capacity of up to 700 kg / 1,540 lbs, and options for tailored fairings to accommodate larger payloads, including air-breathing, ballistic re-entry, boost-glide, and space-based applications payloads. By leveraging the heritage of Rocket Lab’s low-cost Electron – the world’s most frequently launched commercial small launch vehicle – HASTE offers true commercial testing capability at a fraction of the cost of current full-scale tests.

Because of its military nature, Rocket Lab’s press release was generally terse in providing details. Sources in the industry tell me that this launch was designed to prove out the required suborbital capabilities of Electron prior to the first hypersonic test flight. When that flight takes place, it will carry a hypersonic test vehicle built by another company, Hypersonix.

Rocket Lab with this launch demonstrated again the smart flexibility of the company. It only announced this suborbital concept for Electron in April. Only two months later it has test flown it. It is now ready to fly an actual hypersonic test flight, and waits only for the test vehicle to be provided by Hypersonix. The speed of this program leap-frogged Stratolaunch, which is also offering its Roc airplane and Talon hypersonic test vehicle to the military but started its project in late 2020 and is still not ready for flight.

1 comment

PLD’s first suborbital test launch aborted just prior to launch

1:07 pm

According to company officials, the first suborbital test launch of PLD Miura-1 rocket was aborted today just prior to launch because some of the umbilical fuel and power lines failed to disconnect as planned.

The launch was from PLD’s launch site in Spain. No word when the company will try again. Before it can build its orbital Miura-5 rocket it needs the test data from this suborbital launch.

0 comments

Rocket Lab about to launch a secret mission

9:27 am

Rocket Lab is gearing up to launch a rocket from Wallops sometime between June 15th and June 20th but it will provide no live stream and no press access.

The article at the link then speculates that this launch might be the first military hypersonic test flight using a suborbital version of Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket.

That launcher is called HASTE, short for “Hypersonic Accelerator Suborbital Test Electron.” As that name suggests, HASTE is derived from the workhorse Electron and is designed to help test technologies for hypersonic craft — highly maneuverable vehicles capable of flying at least five times the speed of sound.

HASTE can haul up to 1,540 pounds (700 kilograms) of payload aloft, whereas Electron can deliver a maximum of 660 pounds (300 kg) to low Earth orbit. The suborbital rocket also features a modified version of Electron’s “kick stage” specialized for the deployment of hypersonic payloads, Rocket Lab said in an April 17 statement that announced HASTE’s existence.

The suborbital rocket is scheduled to make its debut right about now, on a mission whose details are hard to come by, according to that statement.

If so, we will only find out some limited details after launch, based on what the military decides to release publicly.

Regardless, the HASTE project demonstrates the ability of Rocket Lab to quickly improvise in order to find new ways to make money from its existing assets. For its stockholders, it is another piece of evidence that the company is a good investment.

1 comment

Axiom delays launch of first space station module to ’26

9:08 am

Buried in a Space.com article today about Axiom was the important revelation that the company has now officially delayed the launch of its first space station module that will be attached to ISS from 2024 to 2026, with the rest of its follow-up modules delayed as well.

In January 2020, Axiom won NASA’s contract to construct the first commercially manufactured module for the ISS. “Our first module is going to be in 2026,” David Zuniga, senior director of in-space solutions at Axiom, told Space.com. This is an update to the company’s previously stated target of 2024.

Axiom’s first station component will attach to the forward port of the ISS’ Harmony module and serve as the springboard for the remaining pieces of the company’s planned space station architecture. Axiom is planning to attach a second module in 2027 and a third module a year later. Finally, a thermal power module, scheduled for sometime before 2030, will allow Axiom’s space station to detach from the ISS and become a free-flying, commercially run low Earth orbit (LEO) destination.

This schedule puts Axiom at some risk. ISS is likely going to be retired in 2030. Axiom has to therefore be able to detach its space station before that happens. It seems however with this new schedule that it might not be ready. And if it can’t, it will then need to arrange some deal with NASA and ISS’s international partners to either take over operations of ISS temporarily or convince these nations to operate it a little longer.

8 comments

Tomorrow’s final launch of Europe’s Ariane-5 rocket delayed indefinitely

2:01 pm

Arianespace officials today cancelled tomorrow’s final launch of its Ariane-5 rocket — supposedly to be replaced by the not-yet-flown Ariane-6, citing issues with “three pyrotechnical transmission lines that are associated with the Ariane 5’s solid rocket boosters.”

No new launch date has been set. There is the possibility that to resolve this issue the rocket will have to be rolled back to its assembly building and destacked. If so, the launch will be delayed months.

At the moment, Europe has only managed one launch in 2023, a far cry from the seven to twelve launches it used to do annually, before SpaceX came along and offered a cheaper rocket that could launch more frequently and quicker.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

2 comments

Cape Canaveral, version 2.0

11:45 am

Falcon 9 first stage hauled back to the cape after launch
Falcon 9 first stage hauled back to the cape after launch

Last week BtB’s intrepid stringer Jay was unable to send me any “Quick Space links” because he was working at Cape Canaveral at the Kennedy Space Center, involved in a project involving, as he noted, “infrastructure,” giving him only a limited access to the center.

He did however have time to drive around and take pictures. For example, we have the picture on the right. On his way to lunch on his second day there he “had to pull over for a semi carrying something large. At first I thought it was a fuel tank, but it was the first stage of a Falcon-9 that lifted off on June 4th.”

This picture alone illustrates how things have changed at Kennedy since the retirement of the shuttle in 2011. Then, local officials and NASA managers all thought the sky was falling in, and that the economy of Cape Canaveral was about to die forever with that retirement.

Instead, it is now entirely routine for a private rocket company to drive its used first stages back and forth in between launches. Cape Canaveral hasn’t died, it has been reborn.

More pictures by Jay are below, all of which illustrate the resurgence of space activity that private enterprise is bringing to America’s first spaceport. To quote Jay,
» Read more

15 comments

House proposed cuts pose no threat to NASA, despite the screams of agony

10:14 am

Proposed Republican budget cuts
Proposed Republican budget changes

Before even beginning this story, it is critical for my readers to understand that the worst any of these possible cuts could do to NASA’s budget in 2024 would be to bring it back to budgetary levels from most of the last decade, levels that hardly crippled the agency in the slightest.

The graph to the right, posted initially by Roll Call, outlines in detail the required cuts the Republicans in the House are demanding in the federal budget for the 2024 fiscal year. The percentages in the last column list the amount each of these twelve appropriation subcommittees must cut from their area of focus. NASA is part of the Commerce-Justice-Science category, which requires a total cut of 28.8%.

NASA’s budget in 2023 was $25.4 billion. If the House imposes that percentage cut to NASA, it would lower its 2024 budget to about $18 billion.

O my! We are all going to starve!
» Read more

7 comments

Taiwan company issues letter of intent to build cubesat facility in California city

9:27 am

The city of Paso Robles in California has now received an official letter of intent from the Taiwan cubesat company Gran Systems, describing its desire to build spaceport there.

The CEO of Gran Systems recently toured the proposed Paso Robles Spaceport and tech corridor area and met with Paso Robles Airport Manager Mark Scandalis to discuss opportunities for establishing its California facility in Paso Robles.

Though the news article refers to this as a “spaceport,” I don’t think this has anything to do with launching rockets. Instead, this spaceport is part of Paso Robles’ effort to establish an industrial park at its airport, including space companies such as satellite builders, and Gran Systems has decided to rent space there, probably to widen its market in the U.S.

1 comment

Arianespace signs deal with Spanish rocket startup PLD

8:58 am

Following up with its agreement with the UK rocket startup Orbex, Arianespace yesterday also signed a deal with the Spanish rocket startup PLD to study using that company’s as-yet-unflown Miura-5 rocket.

Like the Orbex deal, this agreement makes it possible for Arianespace to arrange launches using PLD’s rocket. It also tells us that Arianespace and the European Space Agency are shifting from designing and building their own rockets — a process that has failed to produce any profit and had presently left Europe with no launch capability — to acting simply as a customer buying that capability from independent competing private companies.

For this to work however both Orbex and PLD will have to get their rockets off the ground.

0 comments
1 … 182 183 184 185 186 … 676