Tag: capitalism

First look at the new Starliner flight suit being made by Dover

10:08 am

It appears that the flight suit that the company ILC Dover is making for Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule has been unveiled not by the company but as part of an exhibit at the Kennedy Space Centers’ visitor complex.

Boeing has also signed contracts with two companies to provide two different flight suits.

Announced late last month, Boeing’s choice of ILC Dover’s AES came somewhat out of the blue. The aerospace company had previously selected another spacesuit manufacturer, the David Clark Company, to provide pressure garments for astronauts launching and landing on its CST-100 Starliner capsules.

An example of the David Clark suit, which was first revealed in 2017, has already flown twice to space on Boeing’s two orbital flight tests. Although astronauts have yet to fly on the Starliner, an anthropometric test device (instrumented mannequin) named “Rosie the Rocketeer” was dressed in the suit for the trial missions.

Boeing’s next and, as currently planned, final Starliner test flight will carry a crew, who will also wear the David Clark suit, according to a statement released by the company. The ILC AES will be introduced once Boeing begins flying astronauts on NASA-contracted missions to and from the International Space Station in 2023.

“In the spirit of commercial human spaceflight, we made the decision to bring an additional Starliner spacesuit supplier online to introduce additional redundancy, flexibility and competition for crew accommodations on future flights to low-Earth orbit destinations. We expect to introduce the new suits during operational missions, and are pleased to see the market opening up and allowing more options for Boeing as well as our government and commercial customers,” read the company’s statement.

In my opinion, the graphics at the link of both suits show them both to appear more comfortable and better looking than SpaceX’s Dragon flight suits. That opinion however is just a question of taste and style, and has nothing to do with the suits’ operation or use.

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OneWeb successfully tests airplane wi-fi using its satellites

10:12 am

Capitalism in space: During an eleven hour test flight, OneWeb has successfully tested the use of its satellite constellation to provide wi-fi service during long international flights.

Flight tests will continue throughout the rest of this year, with certification of the Sidewinder terminal expected in mid-2023. OneWeb expects to launch its new service in the middle of next year. It has so far launched about two-thirds of its 648-strong constellation of satellites.

This puts the OneWeb and SpaceX’s Starlink constellation in direct competition, since both will be offering this service directly to airlines. Thus, for both the airlines and their customers, this competition will likely not only lower price, it will improve service.

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Dragon cargo launch now delayed until July to fix fuel leak

9:32 am

Capitalism in space: Having now identified the source of a toxic hydrazine fuel leak in a Dragon cargo capsule that had been scheduled for launch on June 10th, SpaceX has now delayed the launch until July 11th so that it can fix the leak.

After removing propellant from the vehicle, “SpaceX was able to narrow down the source of the issue to a Draco thruster valve inlet joint,” the agency said. “Teams will now remove the specific hardware to replace it ahead of flight.”

Based on standard SpaceX procedures, it will not only replace this one valve, it will carefully figure out why it failed, and introduce an upgrade to all such valves so that this leak issue is never repeated. Such a policy has generally not been followed with much enthusiasm by older rocket companies in the past half century. The result had been the reappearance of such problems again and again, instead of a slow decline as each was found and eliminated.

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Sierra Space developing crewed version of Dream Chaser; will train astronauts

9:24 am

Capitalism in space: In a press release mostly focused on touting the company’s new project to establish a training center for astronauts, Sierra Space dropped this bigger story:

A crewed variant of the Dream Chaser spaceplane is currently in development and will be operational in 2026, having successfully completed its System Requirements Review (SRR) earlier this month. Orbital Reef will be on orbit and operational in 2027.

Though it was always expected that the company would upgrade the cargo version of Dream Chaser it is presently building, until now it had been made no announcement to that effect. Moreover, until now Sierra Space has functioned much like the old big space companies, doing nothing without a contract from NASA. This effort to build a manned version of Dream Chaser is apparently occurring without any such contract. All Sierra has right now is a contract to launch cargo to ISS.

The astronaut training center fits in nicely with this new manned Dream Chaser, which also fits in nicely with Sierra Space’s partnership to build the commercial space station Orbital Reef.

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Momentus concedes its Vigoride tug will probably not be able to deploy more satellites

9:32 am

Capitalism in space: Momentus yesterday conceded that because of the problems that have dogged the first flight of its Vigoride tug, it will probably not be able to deploy the remaining smallsats on board.

Previously the company had said that communications issues were interfering with deployment. This update revealed that the tug’s solar arrays had also not opened as intended.

After initially experiencing these anomalies, we were able to deploy two customer satellites from Vigoride on May 28. Since that time, we have continued efforts to deploy other customer satellites, but have not confirmed any subsequent deployments. While we previously established two-way communications with the Vigoride vehicle, we have not been able to continue such two-way communication, which we believe is due to the low power situation on the vehicle due to the deployable solar arrays not operating as intended.

Though this update is very unclear on this point, it appears that Vigoride was able to deploy three objects in total, or a total of six smallsats. How many additional smallsats failed to deploy is not clear.

The company plans its next launch in November, with additional launches next year.

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Test of solar sail for de-orbiting smallsat ends successfully

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: The Canadian company Space Flight Labs announced yesterday that its first test of a solar sail for de-orbiting a small satellite ended successfully last month.

The CanX-7 (Canadian Advanced Nanospace eXperiment-7) was a three-kilogram, 10x10x34cm satellite that was launched on September 26, 2016. The satellite was funded by the Defence Research and Development Canada, the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, COM DEV Ltd. (now Honeywell), and the Canadian Space Agency.

According to SFL [Space Flight Labs] “the satellite successfully completed a seven-month aircraft tracking campaign before deploying its drag sails in May 2017 to demonstrate drag-sail based deorbiting.” SFL said it took five years for the drag sail to deorbit the satellite and without it the satellite wouldn’t have burned up in the atmosphere for roughly another 178 year.

When the four drag sails, each about one square meter in size, were deployed, engineers immediately measured an increase in the orbital decay rate. Though it still took five years to force a de-orbit, the system removed the satellite from orbit much sooner than otherwise.

The system is aimed at the smallsat market, satellites too small for other proposed removal methods that also might remain stranded in orbit for a very long time because of their small size.

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Astra launch a failure when upper stage shuts down prematurely

11:09 am

Capitalism in space: A launch attempt today by Astra of two NASA weather cubesats, designed to study the evolution of storms in the tropics, was a failure when the upper stage engine shut down prematurely.

This was the second launch failure for Astra out of three launch attempts in 2022. Both this failure and the February 10th failure occurred after the first stage has successfully done its job. The first was due to the failure of the fairings to separate. Today the fairing ejected properly, but then the second stage engine failed.

The launch however did illustrate something quite profound. Though it occurred about one hour and forty-three minutes into its two hour launch window, the launch team was able to recycle the count three times due to various issues and still launch. What makes this significant is that such quick countdown recycles have now become very routine.

When SpaceX did its first quick countdown recycle back during its first Falcon-1 launches in the 2000s it was astonishing, as NASA would never do such a thing. If a NASA shuttle launch aborted close to launch, the agency would always stand down for at least a day to figure things out. Even today, its ability to do a quick countdown recycle with its SLS rocket is almost impossible, as shown during its first attempt to do a dress rehearsal countdown of SLS in April. With each abort the agency had to reschedule for the next day or even later. It had little ability to quickly turn things around.

Private enterprise has since proven that such slow operations are inefficient and unnecessary.

Meanwhile, Astra needs to fix this issue and launch again. It was able to investigate and fix the fairing issue that caused that February launch failure in just over a month. Hopefully it can do the same again.

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Momentus’s space tug successfully deploys two smallsats, despite communications issue

8:21 pm

Capitalism in space: In a brief update released on May 31st, Momentus announced that despite the communications issues engineers are having with the communications system on its Vigoride space tug, it was still able to successfully deploy two smallsats several days earlier.

The update also says that the company plans “… to continue work to address the anomalies on the Vigoride spacecraft announced on May 27 and deploy additional customer satellites.”

Based on these updates, as well as the company’s description of this mission, it is not clear how many other smallsats still need to be deployed.

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Stratolaunch test flight of Roc ends prematurely

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: A recent Stratolaunch test flight of its giant carrier airplane Roc was ended prematurely because engineers had detected an unexpected “test result”.

“While completing Roc testing operations, we encountered a test result that made it clear we would not achieve all objectives for this flight,” the California-based company, which was created by Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen more than a decade ago, said in Twitter update. “We made the decision to land, review the data, and prepare for our next flight.”

The company has provided little additional information. The flight itself was planned to last as much as 3.5 hours, but only lasted about an hour and a half.

Stratolaunch’s present plan is to offer Roc and its Talon-A payload as a testbed for testing hypersonic flight.

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Update on Starship in Texas and Florida

9:01 am

Link here. The article goes into great detail describing the status of the Superheavy booster prototype and the Starship prototype now planned for that first orbital launch, with this comment:

While some claim FAA is the hold up for Starship plans [I wonder who], even if the FAA had approved a launch in December of last year, SpaceX likely still would not have been ready for an orbital launch.

Maybe so, but why do journalists today have to bend over backwards making believe the federal government is not a problem, or is not interfering with this private company’s operations? It clearly is a problem, and is interfering with private companies, and it is doing so more and more for political reasons. Good reporting must note this.

The report also provides details on the status of SpaceX’s Florida Starship orbital launchpad. The company only began serious construction in Florida in April, yet large sections of the launch tower as well as its foundation have already been built. The pace of construction — as well as SpaceX’s past history building the Boca Chica launchpad — suggests this launchpad could be ready before the end of the year.

Compare that with NASA’s incompetent effort to build its SLS mobile launchers. The contrast is striking.

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Vulcan likely delayed until ’23

9:35 am

According to Eric Berger at Ars Technica, continuing delays with both the rocket’s payload and main engines, ULA’s Vulcan rocket will almost certainly not launch before the end of this year, as hoped by the company.

The rocket’s first stage BE-4 engines are being built by Blue Origin, and are already four years behind schedule. According to Berger’s sources, they will not be delivered to ULA until mid-August, which makes a launch in ’22 very unlikely, especially because both the engines and rocket are new, and will need time for fitting and further testing as a unit.

As for the payload, Berger’s assessment is not based on any new information. The payload, Astrobotic’s first lunar lander dubbed Peregrine, has also been experiencing delays, but the article provides no further information on whether it will miss its targets to be ready in ’22.

Regardless, it appears that Blue Origin is still dragging in its effort to build the BE-4 engine. If Vulcan cannot launch this year, it will threaten ULA’s long term future, since the company is depending on it to replace its Atlas-5 and Delta rockets. The delays now are allowing others to catch up and grab business that ULA might have garnered had Vulcan been operational as planned.

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SpaceX successfully launches Egyptian communications satellite

2:38 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched an Egyptian communications satellite using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage completed its seventh flight, and landed safely on the drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

23 SpaceX
18 China
8 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 32 to 18 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 32 to 29.

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Musk: Starlink will not go public until ’25 at the earliest

9:17 am

Capitalism in space: According to Elon Musk, a public sale of stock for the Starlink internet satellite constellation has now been pushed back another three to four years, and will not occur any earlier ’25.

His revised date means Starlink’s IPO has been delayed once again for another three years. In an email to SpaceX workers in 2019, also obtained by CNBC, Musk gave a three-year timeline for Starlink’s public offering, meaning an IPO could have taken place this year.

In 2020, Musk tweeted that Starlink would “probably IPO” in “several years.” He then tweeted in June 2021 that it would be “at least a few years before Starlink revenue is reasonably predictable” and taking it public any earlier would be “very painful.”

This quote however from Musk I think best describes his experience being in charge of a publicly traded company: “Being public is definitely an invitation to pain.”

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France signs Artemis Accords

8:35 am

The U.S. State Department yesterday announced that France has become the twentieth nation to sign the Artemis Accords.

The full list of signatories so far: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, Columbia, France, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, Singapore, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.

France’s signing is a major breakthrough, as both it and Germany, major players in the European Space Agency, have appeared to resist signing on because to do so would have limited their ability to partner with Russia on space projects (Russia opposes the accords). The Ukraine War has apparently ended France’s resistance. It no longer has any partnerships with Russia, and is not likely to form any new ones in the near future.

We should expect Germany to sign on in the near future as well.

As I wrote in May, the future factions in space are now becoming clearer. On one side we have the American Alliance, signers of the accords who support private property. On the other we have Russia and China, who oppose the accords because they also oppose private property.

In May I also included a third faction, made up of non-aligned space powers. That faction now appears to be fading away, though it still includes Germany and India.

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France re-approves Starlink service

8:56 am

Capitalism in space: After finally completing what France’s telecom bureaucracy ARCEP calls “a public consultation,” the French government once again approved Starlink service on June 2nd.

ARCEP had authorized Starlink in February 2021, however, France’s highest administrative court revoked the license April 5 after ruling that the regulator should have first launched a public consultation.

That ruling came after two French environmental activist organizations submitted an appeal to challenge Starlink’s frequency rights, citing concerns including the impact of megaconstellations on views of the night sky and space debris.

This approval, combined with recent approvals of Starlink in the Philippines and Nigeria, continues the steady expansion of Starlink service globally.

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Fuel leak scrubs launch of Dragon cargo capsule this week

8:52 pm

A fuel leak detected during fueling of hydrazine in a Dragon cargo capsule as it was being prepared for a June 10th launch has forced SpaceX and NASA to delay the launch.

SpaceX detected “elevated vapor readings” of monomethyl hydrazine, or MMH, fuel in an “isolated region” of the Dragon spacecraft’s propulsion system during propellant loading ahead of this week’s launch, NASA said in a statement.

The fueling of the Dragon spacecraft is one of the final steps to prepare the capsule for flight, and typically occurs just before SpaceX moves the craft to the launch pad for integration with its Falcon 9 rocket.

The Dragon spacecraft has propellant tanks containing hydrazine fuel and nitrogen tetroxide oxidizer. The two propellants ignite upon contact with each other, providing an impulse for the cargo ship’s Draco thrusters used for in-orbit maneuvers.

Each Dragon spacecraft has 16 Draco thrusters, small rocket engines that generate about 90 pounds of thrust. The Draco engines are used for orbit adjustment burns and control the spacecraft’s approach to the space station, then fire at the end of the mission for a deorbit burn to guide the capsule back into the atmosphere for re-entry and splashdown.

According to the article, it is not yet confirmed that the leak came from the capsule. If so, however, it could become a more serious issue, especially with the recent story — denied strongly by NASA — that a hydrazine leak caused damage to the heat shield of Endeavour during the return of its Axiom commercial passenger flight.

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A look at World View, one of two balloon companies about to offer high altitude tourist flights

11:09 am

An artist's impression of a Worldview tourist balloon in flight
An artist’s impression of a World View tourist balloon in flight

The future of space tourism is not going to be limited to rockets, no matter how romantic those rockets might be. For a lot of people, getting into space might not be a good option simply because of cost. Moreover, even if one could afford the cheaper suborbital flights presently offered by Blue Origin and are promised someday from Virgin Galactic, the short length of the journey, no more than ten minutes in space, could for many people make these flights not worth doing.

There is an alternative however, one that won’t get you into space, but will fly you high enough that you will be above 90% of the atmosphere, see the curve of the Earth, and get to do it for hours for far less money. This alternative comes from the high altitude balloon companies that are now working hard to begin flying tourists sometime in the next two years.

There are presently two American companies on the verge of flying tourists to up about 20 miles altitude. One is Space Perspective in Florida. If all goes as planned, it will begin flying passengers on its Neptune balloon by ’24, at a ticket price of $125K per head. It is presently accepting reservations with a $1,000 deposit.

The second company is Tucson-based World View. Up until 2019 the company had been planning to fly tourists, but a change in leadership brought on by its failure to meet the terms of a local development deal caused it to put those plans aside. Then in 2021 it restarted those plans.

Tickets will cost $50,000 per person, with World View providing what it calls “flexible financing options.” The company expects the first flight no earlier than early 2024.

At the moment about 1000 people have put down a deposit of $500 for a flight.

Both companies will be offering flights lasting most of one day, with additional pre- and post-flight activities.

On May 18, 2022, I attended an event held by World View at its Tucson headquarters. The event showcased the company’s talent, its facilities, and the value of hi-tech high stratospheric balloons. To begin the event, CEO Ryan Hartman gave a short presentation describing his goals for the company and the strategy he is following to reach them. The two graphics below come from that presentation, and provide I think the clearest outline of those goals and strategy.
» Read more

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India’s first private satellite manufacturing facility opens

10:31 am

Capitalism in space: At a ceremony today that included officials from the government, the private commercial company ANANTH opened India’s first private satellite manufacturing facility.

Located at Karnataka Industrial Area Development Board Aerospace Park, Bengaluru, the new establishment is equipped with clean rooms for spacecraft sub-systems manufacturing and is large enough to cater to four spacecraft simultaneously.

This unveiling is part of India’s effort to transition from a government-built space effort to one run by the private sector. In the past all satellite construction in India was designed, managed, and owned by India’s space agency ISRO. This facility will now take over that function, and do so not only for ISRO but for any private company that wishes to have a satellite built.

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NASA awards Axiom & Collins Aerospace contracts to build spacesuits

10:07 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday awarded separate contracts to two different companies, Axiom and Collins Aerospace, to build spacesuits for its astronauts, either when they do spacewalks in space or when they are exploring the lunar surface.

The contract enables selected vendors to compete for task orders for missions that will provide a full suite of capabilities for NASA’s spacewalking needs during the period of performance through 2034. The indefinite delivery and indefinite quantity, milestone-based xEVAS contract has a combined maximum potential value of $3.5 billion for all task order awards. The first task orders to be competed under the contract will include the development and services for the first demonstration outside the space station in low-Earth orbit and for the Artemis III lunar landing.

Each partner has invested a significant amount of its own money into development. Partners will own the spacesuits and are encouraged to explore other non-NASA commercial applications for data and technologies they co-develop with NASA.

More information can be found in each companies’ press release, located here (Axiom) and here (Collins).

These commercial contracts replace NASA’s own failed effort to make its own Artemis spacesuits, which spent fourteen years and more than a billion dollars before being abandoned by the agency because wouldn’t be able to deliver anything on time.

The contracts also continue NASA’S transition — as recommended in my 2017 policy paper Capitalism in Space [pdf] — from a failed space contractor to merely being the customer buying products from the commercial sector. The result is we now have a vibrant and ever growing private space sector with products available quickly and cheaply not only for NASA, but for others. The Axiom press release illustrates these facts with this quote:

The Axiom spacesuit is key to the company’s commercial space services. This new NASA contract enables Axiom to build spacesuits that serve the company’s commercial customers and future space station goals while meeting NASA’s ISS and exploration needs.

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SpaceX wins more NASA manned flights to ISS

9:52 am

Capitalism in space: NASA has now announced that it is buying five additional manned missions to ISS from SpaceX, beginning in ’26.

This new contract is in addition to a February ’22 NASA award that purchased three more Dragon flights.

After a thorough review of the long-term capabilities and responses from American industry, NASA’s assessment is that the SpaceX crew transportation system is the only one currently certified to maintain crewed flight to the space station while helping to ensure redundant and backup capabilities through 2030.

The current sole source modification does not preclude NASA from seeking additional contract modifications in the future for additional transportation services as needed.

The press release repeatedly makes it clear that NASA very much wishes to buy tickets on Boeing’s Starliner, but until it is declared operational it must give its business to SpaceX. Once Starliner begins flying, NASA will then buy seats on it and alternate between the two companies. Until then however this new SpaceX contract guarantees NASA enough flight capacity to keep ISS occupied, even if Starliner gets further delayed.

Regardless, Boeing has once again lost business to SpaceX because its Starliner capsule is not yet ready. In the long run this contract means fewer total flights for Boeing to ISS, which means less profits.

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Ursa Major announces new rocket engine to replace what Russia previously provided

9:32 am

Capitalism in space: The new rocket engine company Ursa Major yesterday announced a new more powerful rocket engine, dubbed Arroway, designed to replace rocket engines that Russia had been selling.

Arroway is a 200,000-pound thrust liquid oxygen and methane staged combustion engine that will serve markets including current U.S. national security missions, commercial satellite launches, orbital space stations, and future missions not yet conceived. The reusable Arroway engine is available for order now, slated for initial hot-fire testing in 2023, and delivery in 2025.

Notably, Arroway engines will be one of very few commercially available engines that, when clustered together, can displace the Russian-made RD-180 and RD-181, which are no longer available to U.S. launch companies.

Arroway could replace the RD-181 engines that Northrop Grumman uses on the first stage of its Antares rocket. Both engines are comparable in size. However, with Arroway available no sooner than ’25 it still will leave a gap, since right now the company only has enough stock on hand to launch two more rockets, both of which should launch before ’24.

Arroway is also about half as powerful as Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine, so if ULA wishes to use it in its Vulcan rocket a major redesign would be required.

Either way, Ursa Major is demonstrating here again the value of freedom and competition, as well as the foolishness and negative consequences of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine. In response to the international sanctions against it, Russia blocked future rocket engine sales to the U.S. Not only did that not get the sanctions lifted, Russia is now losing that U.S. business, as other American companies are stepping up to replace it.

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Blue Origin reschedules next New Shepard flight

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin announced yesterday that it has rescheduled the next New Shepard passenger flight for June 4.

The original launch date of May 20th had been scrubbed because of an unexplained issue with the spacecraft’s “back-up systems.” The company has not provided any further information on what had been wrong, or what had been done to fix it.

This flight will be New Shepard’s fifth passenger flight, and its 21st overall.

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FAA once again delays approval for launching Starship from Boca Chica

8:46 am

Capitalism in space: The FAA today announced that it is once again delaying release of its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility in Texas, setting a new release date only two weeks hence.

The FAA intended to release the Final PEA on May 31, 2022. The FAA now plans to release the Final PEA on June 13, 2022 to account for ongoing interagency consultations. A notice will be sent to individuals and organizations on the project distribution list when the Final PEA is available.

The previous five delays had each been month-long. This two week delay strongly suggests that the bureaucrats are getting close to a final agreement. Whether that means SpaceX will receive an approval, which is what the initial draft had suggested back in December, or be blocked, we shall have to see. A statement SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell in mid-May that the company would be ready to launch Starship by June suggests it will be an approval.

I have been predicting since December that the month-by-month delays would continue until after the November election. I will be quite happy if that prediction ends up wrong.

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The new satellite industry, energized by freedom

12:30 pm

Liberty enlightening the world
Liberty enlightening the world, both on it and in space.

Last week SpaceX successfully completed its 22nd launch in 2022, sending 59 smallsats into orbit with its Falcon 9 rocket.

In the past few decades, the launch of a smallsat would generally have not merited much further coverage. These satellites, almost always based on the 10-centimeter (or 4-inch) square cubesat design, had generally been short term objects built almost always by university students not so much to do space research as to simply learn how to build satellites and learn how they operated in orbit.

This has now all changed, fueled both by the immense drop in launch costs generated by the competition between the new rockets built by SpaceX and the new emerging smallsat rocket companies (Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and Astra) and by the improved capabilities of miniaturized components. Cubesats can now do far more despite being tiny, and they can be launched for much less money.

The result has been wonderfully illustrated by the satellites launched last week on that Falcon 9. Below is a short list of the press releases in the past few days, announcing the successful activation of these satellites:
» Read more

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Boeing picks company to manufacture flight suits for passengers on Starliner

10:19 am

Dover's spacesuits
ILC Dover’s spacesuits.

Capitalism in space: On May 26th ILC Dover announced it has been chosen by Boeing as one of two companies to manufacture flight suits for passengers on Starliner.

The Boeing AES [Ascent/Entry Suit] is based off ILC Dover’s commercial Launch, Entry, and Abort suit, SOL™. ILC Dover worked with Boeing to tailor SOL for the Starliner spacecraft to provide protection for astronauts during the most critical phases of spaceflight, including launch, docking, re-entry and landing. With over 50 years of spacesuit experience, the AES suit was designed to provide maximum mobility to operate, enter and exit the spacecraft, as well as provide protection for astronauts in case of an emergency.

The black spacesuit on the left in the picture is Dover’s SOL suit, which it is adapting for Boeing. The white suit is the spacewalk suit it has made for NASA for use on ISS, which I also think is the same spacesuit that has for now almost a decade had repeated problems with water leaking into the helmet.

In other words, big space Boeing has hired another big space company to build its Starliner flight suits. I hope ILC Dover does a better job with the AES suit then it has with its EVA suit.

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Environmentalists sue local Boca Chica officials for closing beaches for SpaceX

9:27 am

Muskhate: The Sierra Club and other environmental groups have now sued a variety of local Boca Chica government agencies for periodically closing the beaches during hazardous SpaceX operations.

The Sierra Club, the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas and non-profit Save RGV have joined together in a lawsuit against the Texas General Land Office, Texas land commissioner George P. Bush and Cameron County in Texas for closing Boca Chica Beach periodically for SpaceX operations during Starship tests, the Sierra Club stated May 5. The Boca Chica beach is near SpaceX’s Starbase facility, where it is building Starship rocket prototypes and their massive Super Heavy boosters.

“Restricting access to a public beach, as the defendants have done, violates the Texas constitution,” the Sierra Club said in a statement. None of the allegations have been proven in court, and the statement does not name SpaceX among the entities pursued in the lawsuit.

These are the same groups that have been lobbying government officials for the past few years to shut SpaceX down. They claim that a change to the state’s laws allowing these closures that was passed in 2013 violates the state’s constitution, and want the courts to agree.

Of course, we all know these organizations really have no interest in keeping the beaches open for public use. What they really want is to shut down SpaceX in Boca Chica, because that company is actually doing something exciting and innovative while bringing billions of investment capital to the Rio Grand Valley, including tens of thousands of new jobs. (The group called “Save RGV” is especially ironic and dishonest, since RGV stands for Rio Grand Valley. If their effort succeeded, they would not save RGV, but destroy it. All those jobs and billions would vanish, leaving the area as depressed and as poor as it has been now for decades.)

These groups also wish to destroy Elon Musk, because he has recently made it clear that he no longer is a knee-jerk supporter of all leftist causes.

Nor will their effort cease should they lose this case in court. They will do what environmental groups have done now for decades, find another minor legal issue and sue again, and again, and again, and again.

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Did SpaceX’s Endeavour capsule have issues with its heat shield during its most recent return to Earth?

9:43 am

According to a May 23rd Space Explored article based on anonymous sources, the heat shield on SpaceX’s Endeavour capsule experienced “dangerously excessive wear upon reentry” because of a propellant leak.

Hypergolic propellant made its way into the Crew Dragon Endeavour’s heat shield, according to sources at SpaceX and NASA who spoke with Space Explored. This hypergolic propellant is used by the Crew Dragon in its Draco engines – hypergolic means that the two parts spontaneously combust upon contact. It is believed that this hypergolic propellant impacted the integrity of the heatshield, causing dangerously excessive wear upon reentry.

NASA however has now bluntly denied these claims:

“The data associated with Dragon’s recent crew reentries was normal — the system performed as designed without dispute. There has not been a hypergol leak during the return of a crewed Dragon mission nor any contamination with the heat shield causing excessive wear,” the NASA statement reads, in part.

“SpaceX and NASA perform a full engineering review of the heat shield’s thermal protection system following each return, including prior to the launch of the Crew-4 mission currently at the International Space Station,” the NASA statement continues. “The heat shield composite structure (structure below the tile) was re-flown per normal planning and refurbishment processes. The thermal protection system on the primary heat shield for Crew-4 was new, as it has been for all human spaceflight missions.”

Such a flat out denial by NASA strongly suggests that the anonymous sources relied on by Space Explored are not reliable, and got their facts wrong. While NASA will often try to hide or spin any issues to make them seem less worrisome, it has almost never denied the existence of a serious problem, when it was revealed that such a problem had occurred.

I know to say this sounds paranoid, but this story also suggests this claim might be part of the growing effort within the federal bureaucracy and the press to attack SpaceX, because of its new irrational hostility to Elon Musk because he supports achievement and free speech.

At the same time, SpaceX has recently had to discard and replace a Dragon heat shield planned for a future mission because of discovered “manufacturing defect” during normal preflight testing. This confirmed story, combined with the unconfirmed and questionable story above, suggests SpaceX needs to take a closer look at the Dragon heat shield design.

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