Tag: capitalism

European capsule startup wins $15 million grant

10:43 am

A Luxembourg-based startup aimed at building orbiting recoverable capsules for cargo as well as in-space manufacturing has won a $14.7 million grant from the European Innovation Council as part of its European Innovation Council Accelerator program to encourage development in Europe’s private commercial space sector.

The company, Space Cargo Unlimited, will use the money to develop what it calls its “BentoBox in-orbit testing and manufacturing platform.” It is also partnering with well-established European company Thales-Alenia, with the BentoBox development based on previous work done for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Space Rider demonstrator project.

The overall nature of this grant and work illustrates Europe’s aggressive shift in the past two years from the government model, where ESA designed and owned everything, to the capitalism model, where the government is merely the customer, buying what it needs from the private sector. The government-built Space Rider, which was intended to be a re-usable space plane similar to the X-37B, has never flown. Now, its technology is being repurposed by private European companies for their own spacecraft with the intention of making profits. And this Bentobox project is a prime example.

The inaugural flight of the BentoBox platform as a standalone system using the ATMOS inflatable heatshield is expected in the fourth quarter of 2025. As of a late 2024 update, Space Cargo Unlimited had already secured bookings for 80% of the inaugural flight, and 50% and 40% of the second and third flights, respectively.

Note too that Space Cargo is a European competitor with Varda in the U.S. It appears Europe wants some of this business for itself.

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Two more former SpaceX employees sue the company for harassment and discrimination

10:19 am

SpaceX employees cheering the first chopstick capture of Superheavy
SpaceX employees cheering the first chopstick capture of
Superheavy, October 13, 2025. Click for video.

Two new articles today outline two different new lawsuits against SpaceX by former employees, with both claiming harassment and discrimination as reasons for their firing.

In the first case, the former employee, L’Tavious Rice, claims that he “was fired for being late to work while caring for his young daughter as she recuperated from a heart transplant, while his white colleagues were given a pass for their own “consistent tardiness and absences.” The lawsuit also claims the SpaceX human resources department was retaliating against him because he testified about another employee’s misbehavior in another unrelated case.

In the second case, the former employee, Jenna Shumway, claims she was passed over for promotion, and the man who got the job “waged a campaign of harassment against her, which included stripping her of her responsibilities over a period of months and ultimately leading to her termination in October 2024.” She also claims this “harassment extended to other female employees, too.”

I have no idea whether these claims are true or not. I tend to be skeptical, because of the overall make-up of SpaceX’s entire work-force. The image to the right, a screen capture from the company’s broadcast during the fifth flight of Starship/Superheavy on October 13, 2024 and taken mere seconds after the first successful capture of Superheavy. illustrates this. The SpaceX work-force is young, and typical of engineering, more male than female. At the same time it has many long time female employees, including the company’s president and chief operating officer, Gwynne Shotwell.

We must not also dismiss the possibility of political motives in these lawsuits. In the past three years the left has made it clear it is out to get Elon Musk, and that campaign has included vandalism, regulatory sabotage, and numerous other environment lawsuits by leftist activist groups whose funding is political.

At the same time, it is very possible that these two former employees have legitimate beefs. We shall have to see how both cases play out in the courts.

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Methane climate satellite fails

10:07 am

Fifteen months into a five year mission it appears the methane climate satellite MethaneSat has apparently failed prematurely.

From the press release by the environmental activist organization Environmental Defense Fund that operated the satellite:

On Friday, June 20, the MethaneSAT mission operations lost contact with MethaneSAT. After pursuing all options to restore communications, we learned this morning that the satellite has lost power, and that it is likely not recoverable.

The satellite was unusual in that it was developed and built by this activist organization, not a government or academic institution. Its failure is especially unfortunate at this time, because this non-governmental approach to science research is exactly what the science community needs to pursue faced as it is with major cuts in federal funding.

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SpaceX yesterday completed two launches

9:10 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully completed two launches from Florida. First, it placed a European Union weather and climate research satellite, Sentinel-4, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center. The first stage completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Next, it continued its unrelenting pace of launching Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off with 27 from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its 29th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

That flight makes this particular first stage the third most traveled launch vehicle, with only the space shuttles Discover (39 flights) and Atlantis (33 flights) ahead of it.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

84 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
7 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 84 to 61.

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Speculation on future New Glenn launch schedule

9:26 am

According to anonymous sources at Blue Origin, the company has now delayed the second launch of its New Glenn rocket to September, ten months after its first launch in January 2025, and hopes to quickly follow with three more launches by the middle of 2026.

The September launch will launch NASA’s two smallsat Escapade Mars orbiters.

After Escapade, Blue Origin has several missions tentatively plotted out. However, sources cautioned that the manifest could be moved around due to the readiness of subsequent New Glenn vehicles and their payloads. Based upon information received by Ars, the launch manifest could look something like this:

  • New Glenn 2: ESCAPADE (fall 2025)
  • New Glenn 3: Firefly’s Elytra orbital transfer vehicle (end of 2025, early 2026)
  • New Glenn 4: Blue Moon MK1 lander (first half of 2026)
  • New Glenn 5: First batch of 49 Amazon Project Kuiper satellites (mid-2026)

Whether this schedule will occur as speculated is unknown. Blue Origin’s long term track record — slow and timid — suggests it is very unlikely. And even if it does fly as planned, it suggests strongly that Amazon is not going to meet its FCC license requirement to have 1,600 Kuiper satellites in orbit by July 2026. So far Amazon has only placed 54 operational Kuiper satellites into orbit, on two Atlas-5 launches. It has contracts to launch these satellites 46 times on ULA rockets (8 on Atlas-5 and 36 on Vulcan), 27 times on Blue Origin’s New Glenn, 18 times on ArianeGroup’s Ariane-6, and 3 times on SpaceX’s Falcon-9.

Except for the Falcon 9, none of the other rockets have begun flying with any frequency. Vulcan has only launched twice, New Glenn once, and Ariane-6 twice. All three have been extremely slow to ramp up operations, with months passing between each launch. To meet Amazon’s FCC license requirements, they will have to achieve between 35 to 60 launches in the next twelve months, a pace of three to six launches per month. At this point none of these companies appear capable of even coming close to doing this.

Nor does Amazon have the option to switch these launches to the Falcon 9. SpaceX would certainly accept the business, but the manifest for the Falcon 9 is presently very full. It is doubtful it could do more than double or triple its commitment to Amazon.

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Mitsubishi wants to cut launch price of H3 rocket to $35 million

8:52 am

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, which developed the new H3 rocket for Japan’s space agency JAXA, wants to attract commercial launch business, and to do so hopes to cut the rocket’s launch price to about $35 million.

According to the article at the link, the price for the H2A rocket that the H3 has replaced was 10 billion Japanese yen, about $70 million.

The H2A launched more than 70 satellites and other objects into space, serving as the backbone of Japan’s space transportation. However, there was an average of only two launches a year, and most depended on “public demand” for government satellites. There were only orders for commercial launches for five satellites belonging to foreign countries, such as South Korea and the United Kingdom.

…For Mitsubishi Heavy Industries, Ltd., which took over the manufacture and operation of the H2A from JAXA in 2007, winning commercial orders has been a longstanding issue. The H3 was jointly developed by MHI and JAXA with the aim of halving the launch fee.

That price listed for the H2A rocket is likely wrong, much lower than the real price, as it matches what SpaceX has been offering publicly for the Falcon 9 for more than a decade. If the H2A had been that cheap, it would have garnered some business. It did not.

Lowering the cost for the H3 rocket to $35 million would definitely be competitive in the present launch market. Whether Mitsubishi can accomplish this however remains unclear. So far there is no indication that this new rocket has attracted any more business than the H2A, but as the rocket has only just started launching it is still too early to judge.

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Update on SpaceX’s plans to resume Starship/Superheavy flight testing

9:37 am

Link here. The article provides a detailed overview of the situation at Boca Chica following the static fire explosion of a Starship on June 18, 2025, which badly damaged the Masseys test stand used by Starship prior to launches.

The problem facing the company is that it wants to fly the last few version-two Starships (called Block 2) before it is ready to switch to the upgraded Block 3, and these two versions apparently require a different set up on the test stand. The article outlines three options, with the first two the simplest and most straightforward, but require the most delays.

Option three, which is the most SpaceX-like of them all, would involve the repair Masseys for Block 3 and, in parallel, attempt to come up with a plan to static fire Ships on Orbital Launch Pad 1 (A). This would allow SpaceX to continue testing and flying the remaining Block 2 Ships while preparing for Block 3 of Starship. This is what SpaceX is planning.

In other words, do Block 2 Starship prelaunch static fire tests on the launchpad itself while Masseys is being rebuilt for Block 3.

The article outlines in detail the technical difficulties this plan requires, because the launch mount is also used for prelaunch static fire tests of Superheavy. The two rockets require different mount clamping and fueling systems.

If this is the plan that SpaceX is following, it will likely mean that the next test flight, the tenth, will occur in about two months, maybe sooner. We will get a better idea of the company’s plans in the coming weeks.

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Blue Origin completes another New Shepard suborbital flight

9:20 am

My heart be still. Blue Origin yesterday successfully flew another New Shepard suborbital tourist flight, sending six passengers on a ten minute flight to the edge of space.

This was the company’s thirteenth suborbital flight, and the third in the past three months. Though it is gratifying that operations of New Shepard are becoming somewhat routine, it would be much more exciting if the company to do the same for its New Glenn orbital rocket. The suborbital flights are essentially a dead end. The real money and future is found in orbital operations, something Blue Origin has still not yet mastered.

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Orbex delays first launch from Saxavord until 2026

2:26 pm

Map of spaceports surrounding Norwegian Sea
Proposed spaceports surrounding the Norwegian Sea

The rocket startup Orbex has now announced that “infrastructure requirements and engagement with regulators” has forced it to delay the first launch of its Prime rocket from 2025 until 2026.

Orbex at the start of this decade had signed a 50-year lease to launch its Prime rocket from the proposed Sutherland spaceport on the north coast of Scotland. In February 2022 it applied for a launch license, with the hope of launching before the end of that year. For three years it waited for the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to approve that license, to no avail.

Finally in December 2024 it gave up on launching from Sutherland and shifted its plans to the Saxavord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, apparently because that spaceport had been more successful in getting its CAA approvals (though even it had to wait years).

Though the company attributes this new delay as much to getting its launch facility ready at Saxavord, delays caused by British red tape continues to be a systemic and entrenched problem in the United Kingdom. It appears it remains so.

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More successful launches today

10:44 am

Two more launches occurred this morning, one in Japan and one in the U.S.

First, Japan completed the last launch of its H2A rocket, lifting off from its Tanegashima spaceport in south Japan, placing a Japanese climate satellite into orbit. This was the 50th launch for the H2A, which has now been replaced by the as expensive H3 rocket.

Next, SpaceX continued its unrelenting launch pace, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California carrying 26 more Starlink satellites into orbit. The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific Ocean.

As Japan’s launch was only its second in 2025, it does not make the leader board of the 2025 launch race:

82 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
7 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 82 to 61.

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Two American launches this evening

12:19 am

This evening two different American companies completed successful commercial launches, doing so from opposites sides of the globe.

First, SpaceX launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral, with the first stage completing its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic Ocean. This launch was on the evening of June 27th.

Then, a few hours later Rocket Lab completed the first of two quickly scheduled launches for an unnamed commercial customer, its Electron rocket lifting off from one of its two launchpads in New Zealand. This launch, on June 28th in New Zealand, was the company’s second launch in less than two days, its fastest turn around yet. As of posting the payload was not yet deployed.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

81 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
7 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 81 to 60.

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European Union proposes new space law to supersede national space rules

9:47 am

The European Union

The European Union (EU) has now released its proposed Space Act that would impose European-wide regulations on the space industries of all its partnering nations, superseding their own regulations and policies.

The press release claims, at the start, that this space act would “cut red tape, protect space assets, and create a fair, predictable playing field for businesses,” but in reading the act itself [pdf], it appears to do the exact opposite. It imposes new environmental, safety, and cybersecurity regulations on the design of satellites and spacecraft in a manner that will likely slow development and competition in Europe significantly. And it applies these regulations not only to European companies but to the rest of the world’s space industry, should it do any operations at all in Europe.

This European Union space law was initially supposed to be released last year, but was delayed because it appeared there was strong opposition to it from many of the union’s member nations.

The proposed law appears to have been reshaped to limit the areas the EU can regulate space, but my appraisal of these regulations is that they are designed to quickly expand to cover everything, while adding an unneeded layer of red tape across Europe’s space industry that will only cause it to founder.

It must also be noted once again that there is no one in the bureaucracy of the EU qualified to impose these regulations on the space industry. The EU launches nothing. Its bureaucracy knows nothing about space technology. All it can do is say no to anyone that wants to achieve anything, just because it thinks it knows better.

It will be interesting to see if this space law passes. It still must be approved by European Parliament and the European Commission. I expect there to be significant opposition from several different member states, most especially Germany, Spain, and Italy, each of which have a newly emerging space industry. We should also expect opposition from the member nations formerly part of the Soviet bloc, as their past totalitarian experience makes them very skeptical of this kind of bureaucratic power play.

At the same time, the political structure of the European Union is designed to encourage the passage of such laws, which is one reason there is a rising movement in many member nations to leave the union. If the law passes, expect it to cause more fragmentation within Europe, rather than unifying the continent as it claims it will do.

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