Tag: capitalism

Blue Origin’s engine division manager leaves company; first BE-4 engines arriving in May

9:48 am

Capitalism in space: The head of Blue Origin’s rocket engine division has decided to leave the company, even as it was revealed that the first flight worthy BE-4 engines will not be delivered to ULA until May at the earliest.

According to company sources, the first two BE-4 flight engines are in final production at Blue Origin’s factory in Kent, Washington. The first of these engines is scheduled to be shipped to a test site in May for “acceptance testing” to ensure its flight readiness. A second should follow in reasonably short order. On this schedule, Blue Origin could conceivably deliver both flight engines to United Launch Alliance in June or July. Sources at Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance say development versions of the BE-4—which are nearly identical to the flight versions—have been performing well in tests.

Upon receiving the engines, United Launch Alliance plans to install two of the BE-4s on the Vulcan rocket for a debut launch as soon as possible. While at the Satellite 2022 conference in the District of Columbia, United Launch Alliance CEO Tory Bruno on Tuesday said he still anticipates that Vulcan’s debut launch will occur in 2022. However, a summertime delivery would be a very tight schedule for United Launch Alliance.

ULA was initially promised these engines more than three years ago. The delay not only put its Vulcan rocket three years behind schedule, it has delayed the development of Blue Origin’s own orbital rocket, New Glenn, by more than three years as well.

To supply the needed engines for both rockets Blue Origin will need to establish a production line that can churn them out at a much faster pace than indicated so far. Whether it can remains an unknown, with the exit now of the head of the company’s engine division making that unknown even more worrisome.

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Firefly raises $75 million, targets May for next launch attempt

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: In announcing that the company has raised $75 million more in private investment capital, Firefly officials also said that it is now targeted May for its next launch attempt of its Alpha rocket.

The launch was partly delayed because of the federal government’s insistence that a Ukrainian businessman, who had saved the company when it went into bankruptcy, divest his ownership. That has now happened, so Firefly has gotten approval to launch.

Firefly CEO Tom Markusic told CNBC that the company “worked methodically and cooperatively with the government” to both complete the divestment, as well as to add “security protocols” at the company.

With the move complete, Markusic said the company now has “full access to our facilities to go back and launch.” Firefly will next transport its second Alpha rocket from its headquarters near Austin, Texas, to California, and aims to launch as soon as it can.

“We think it’ll take us about eight weeks from here to launch — so in May is our target,” Markusic told CNBC.

The company is also aiming to complete its second test launch two months after the first, assuming all goes well.

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SpaceX switches to newer Starship and Superheavy for orbital test

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: According to Elon Musk, SpaceX has decided that the company will no longer use Starship prototype #20 and Superheavy prototype #4 for the rocket’s first orbital test flight.

Instead, the company will fly two more recently built and upgraded prototypes, rumored to be numbers #24 for Starship and #7 for Superheavy. The company has also decided to switch from the first generation Raptor engines to Raptor-2s.

All these changes likely explain Musk’s announcement that the first orbital launch will not happen sooner than May. The changes also further suggest that SpaceX has realized federal permission to launch from Boca Chica will be further delayed, and thus it might has well push forward in other ways as it waits for the right to launch.

I suspect that if the federal government hadn’t moved in to block operations, it would have flown prototypes 20 and 4 two months ago, just to get some data. Now such a flight seems pointless, as more advanced prototypes are now almost ready to fly.

This decision also reinforces my prediction that no orbital flights will occur out of Boca Chica before summer, and are more likely blocked through November. It also increases my expectation that the first orbital flight might not occur at all in Texas. The longer the Biden administration delays SpaceX’s operations there, the greater the chance the entire Starship/Superheavy launch program will shift to Florida.

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Starlink raises its prices

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: Starlink has now unveiled newer higher prices for getting its internet service, even for those who had previously put down a deposit for the service.

Originally, opting into Starlink required a $499 upfront purchase of a starter kit with all the necessary supplies, including a user terminal, or antenna, for connecting with SpaceX’s satellites. Customers would then pay a $99 monthly charge to keep the service running. Now, the new monthly price going forward will be $110. All new orders of the Starlink kit will now cost $599, and anyone who put down a deposit for the original $499 kit will have to pay $549 instead. The new monthly prices will come into effect at different times for different customers.

The price increase either indicates the lack of competition existing for those who want good internet service in the regions Starlink presently serves, or it suggests the cost of launching the system is higher than Starlink first anticipated. Either way, the higher cost gives an opportunity to others.

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Musk says Starship will be ready for first orbital launch in May

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: In a tweet yesterday Elon Musk said that Starship will be ready for first orbital launch in May, a delay of two months from his previous announcements.

“We’ll have 39 flightworthy engines built by next month, then another month to integrate, so hopefully May for orbital flight test,” Musk tweeted in response to CNBC.

While the delay could certainly be because the company needed to prepare enough Superheavy engines, I also suspect it is also because Musk now expects the FAA to not approve the environmental reassessment of Starship’s Boca Chica launch site by the end of March, as has been promised. I predict that sometime in the next few days the FAA will announce another one-month delay in that process, the fourth such delay by that federal agency.

In late-December, when the FAA announced the first delay, I predicted that the first orbital launch of Starship would not happen until the latter half of ’22. I now think that prediction was optimistic. I firmly believe the federal government, controlled by Democrats, will delay that launch until after the mid-term elections in November. It appears to me that the Biden administration wants to reject the environmental reassessment, which would block Starship flights from Boca Chica for years. It just doesn’t want to do it before November, because of the negative election consequences.

I truly hope my cynical and pessimistic analysis is utterly wrong. So far, however, my prediction has proven to be more right than wrong.

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SpaceX ends future business with launch services company Spaceflight

9:24 am

Capitalism in space: For reasons not explained, SpaceX has ended all further business with the launch services company Spaceflight, which acts to find and integrate smallsats from many different companies into a package for launch.

Spaceflight also provides many of those smallsats with a small tug, dubbed Sherpa-LTC, to move them into their preferred orbit once deployed from the Falcon 9 upper stage. It looks like there have recently been problems with this tug that Spaceflight has not been able to resolve to SpaceX’s satisfaction.

The propulsion leak on Spaceflight’s Sherpa-LTC vehicle was discovered about three weeks before the Jan. 13 SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter-3 launch. Root-cause analysis of the leak traced the problem to an oxidizer circuit in the propulsion system, which worked as designed but vented some trapped liquid due to a design flaw.

…Regarding the upcoming launch, Spaceflight began working with SpaceX to address concerns about “the analysis and test results of Sherpa and its customer payloads” as soon as it became aware of them.

Despite Spaceflight’s “best efforts, SpaceX chose not to fly the Sherpa vehicle until the analysis and test approaches could be better understood,” Sorensen said. “We continue to work with SpaceX to understand their decision and address any concerns for future missions.”

It appears, though not confirmed, that SpaceX is not just worried about Sherpa, but is also concerned about Spaceflight’s quality control efforts, and that might be the reason it has reject Spaceflight from future launches.

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OneWeb signs deal with SpaceX to launch its remaining satellites, replacing Russia

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: Just 18 days after its contract with Arianespace was suspended because of Russia invasion of the Ukraine, OneWeb has now signed a deal with SpaceX to use its Falcon 9 rocket to launch the remaining 200+ satellites in its satellite constellation.

Few details about the agreement were released Monday morning. “Terms of the agreement with SpaceX are confidential,” OneWeb said in a statement.

OneWeb said the “first launch” with SpaceX is expected before the end of this year, suggesting the company anticipates multiple flights on SpaceX rockets.

It appears that launches could start before the end of this year

There are two big losers in this story. The obvious one is Russia, as it has lost OneWeb as a satellite customer. The second, less obvious, is Arianespace, as it appears it has also lost OneWeb as a customer. It will also have to refund OneWeb any payments the satellite company made for launches that have not occurred, even those that Arianespace had paid Russia for which Russia is refusing to refund.

Though no details have been released about the deal, I would not be surprised if OneWeb got a better price than what it was paying Arianespace. I also suspect that Elon Musk was willing to make this deal with OneWeb, the prime competitor to his Starlink satellite constellation, because he favors the Ukraine in this war.

Finally, this deal will not only make Russia look bad, it will make SpaceX look magnificent. Its PR value cannot be measured for the company.

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SpaceX launches another 53 Starlink satellites

9:53 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch another 53 Starlink satellites into orbit.

The first stage completed its 12th flight, a new record. The fairings were also reused, one half for the fourth time and the other for the second time. SpaceX continues to maintain a one launch per week schedule in 2022.

At posting the upper stage still had one more engine burn to insert itself into the final orbit, followed by satellite deployment.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

11 SpaceX
6 China
3 Russia
2 ULA

The U.S. now leads China 17 to 6 in the national rankings.

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Elon Musk targets 2029 for first Starship manned mission to Mars

9:16 am

Capitalism in space: In a tweet today Elon Musk announced 2029 as his present target date for the first Starship manned mission to Mars.

This target date should not be considered firm, though it must be taken seriously. Musk’s past predictions tended to be optimistic, but also not unrealistic. If Starship development proceeds at the pace SpaceX is presently maintaining, this date is wholly doable.

The article at the link also said that the first Starship orbital test flight “is expected to take place within the next month.” That certainly matches with Musk’s previous statements, but ignores the bureaucratic delays from the FAA that at the moment prevent it from happening.

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Sierra Space signs Mitsubishi as partner in private Orbital Reef space station project

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: Sierra Space has now partnered with Japan’s Mitsubishi for developing technology to be used on the private commercial Orbital Reef space station project.

The companies did not elaborate on the technologies they will consider for Orbital Reef under the agreement. MHI does have extensive experience in International Space Station operations as the manufacturer of the Kibo laboratory module, which was installed on the station in 2008. The company also built the HTV cargo spacecraft and H-2 launch vehicle that launched those spacecraft to the station.

…Sierra Space’s role in Orbital Reef includes providing inflatable modules called the Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) Habitat. The company’s Dream Chaser vehicle under development will transport cargo and crew to and from the station.

A consortium led by Blue Origin announced Orbital Reef last October. In addition to Blue Origin and Sierra Space, Boeing will provide a science module, CST-100 Starliner commercial crew vehicle and support for station operations, while Redwire Space will handle microgravity research and manufacturing, payload operations and deployable structures.

This deal suggests that the project wants more experience in its stable. Also, by partnering with Mitsubishi, it likely garners political support in Japan.

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Orbit Fab wins contract to outfit U.S. military satellites for refueling

8:48 am

Capitalism in space: Orbit Fab has won a $12 million contract to outfit U.S. military satellites with its refueling port.

The funding includes $6 million from the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force, and $6 million from Orbit Fab’s private investors. The contract is for the integration of Orbit Fab’s fueling port, called RAFTI — short for rapidly attachable fluid transfer interface — with military satellites. The port allows satellites to receive propellant from Orbit Fab’s tankers in space.

At present there are no refueling missions scheduled, simply because the satellites that could be refueled are not yet in orbit. Orbit Fab and the military however are discussing an in-orbit demo mission.

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The world’s two biggest rockets move to their launchpads!

10:02 am

The real cost of SLS and Orion
The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion

The big news in the mainstream press today is the planned rollout from the Vehicle Assembly Building (VAB) of NASA’s SLS rocket this evening in preparation for its dress rehearsal fueling and countdown planned for April 3rd.

This article by Newsweek is very typical. It glows with facts lauding SLS’s gigantic size and the monumental systems designed to slowly transport it the four miles from the VAB to the launchsite.

At a height of 322 feet (ft), making it taller than the 305ft Statue of Liberty, the SLS will be the largest rocket to move to a launchpad since the Saturn V launched on its last mission in 1973, when it carried the Skylab space station into orbit around Earth. Its size has seen NASA dub it a Mega-Moon rocket.

NASA says that the four-mile journey from the Vehicle Assembly Building to the launch pad at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where the SLS was recently adorned with the NASA logo, will take between 6 and 12 hours. It will be carried on the back of NASA’s 6.6-million-pound crawler vehicle. [emphasis mine]

If that April 3rd countdown dress rehearsal goes well, SLS will be rolled back to the VAB and then prepped for its first launch, presently scheduled tentatively for May ’22, though more likely in June or July.

For NASA the rollout today is somewhat of a relief. SLS was originally supposed to launch in 2015, making it seven years behind schedule. It has also been enormously expensive, costing close to $30 billion to build, if one does not count the $20 billion cost of the Orion capsule it carries. That the agency finally has this rocket assembled and almost ready to launch, after so many delays and cost overruns, means that NASA might finally be able to prove it is a reality, not simply a boondoggle designed by Congress to funnel cash through NASA to their constituents.

The Newsweek article however strangely ignores the launchpad stacking of another equally gigantic rocket that occurred yesterday. » Read more

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Overview of the impact Russia’s invasion is having on the Ukraine’s space industry

9:57 am

Link here. The summary focuses on the major aerospace regions in the Ukraine, Dnipro and Kharkiv, outlining how they have so far been untargeted by the Russian invasion.

“In Dnipro, Yuzhmash and Yuzhnoye have not been bombed or targeted by missile attacks so far. One of the possible reasons is that Russia’s plan is to take them over as part of their invasion, so they intend to keep these facilities intact,” Usov said. “Because of the Russian attacks in the Dnipro region, these facilities are not operating at full capacities, and they were forced to halt work on their projects. But a share of their employees ensures their operations continue.”

The situation is the same in Kharkiv. No aerospace facilities have been directly targeted, but the war has shut down some operations, while others — especially those partnering with western nations or companies — have gone almost entirely virtual.

The article also describes a Ukrainian startup, Orbit Boy, that is trying to develop an air-launched smallsat rocket in partnership with companies in Poland and Italy. The war is making this development difficult, if not impossible.

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Launching a rocket using atomic explosions?

2:12 pm

Glenn Reynolds and Leigh Outten have just co-written a short paper advocating the use of “pulsed nuclear space propulsion” to launch rockets. You can download it here.

The concept, as first described in the 1950s, is described in the paper as follows:

It is not a tremendous surprise that when you set off an atomic bomb next to something, that something will move. That it could also remain essentially intact, however, was considerably more surprising. The challenge for the Orion team was to produce a spacecraft that could function after being subjected to not one, but many, nearby nuclear detonations, and that could be steered and navigated by an onboard crew.

This turned out to be easier than it sounds. The Orion spacecraft design that resulted involved a large steel “pusher” plate, behind a rather large spacecraft with a total weight of over 4,000 tons. That sort of design is very different from the spaceships we’re used to today.

The bulk of their paper reviews the legal obstacles to launching such rockets, as both the Outer Space Treaty and the Limited Test Ban Treaty put limits on the use of nuclear weapons in space. The paper argues that these limits would not apply to rockets propelled by atomic explosions, since the explosions would not be used as weapons.

The paper also argues that the technical obstacles for building such rockets are also solvable, and might even be easy to solve. This particular quote stood out starkly to me:
» Read more

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OneWeb and Arianespace scramble to find a rocket to launch satellites

10:26 am

Capitalism in space: With the cancellation of the last six Soyuz-2 launches for OneWeb and Arianespace due to Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, the two companies are struggling to find an alternative rocket to launch the remaining 216 satellites that would complete OneWeb’s satellite constellation.

OneWeb has already paid Arianespace for the launches, so the responsibility to get the satellites in orbit is at present Arianespace’s. The problem is that its flight manifest for both the Ariane-5 (being retired) and the new Ariane-6 rocket are presently full.

Going to another rocket provider is problematic, even if a deal could be negotiated. The flight manifest for ULA’s Atlas-5 and Vulcan rockets is also filled. Though SpaceX’s Falcon 9 could probably launch the satellites, that company’s Starlink satellite constellation is in direct competition with OneWeb, which makes it unlikely the two companies could make a deal.

There have been negotiations with India to use its rockets, but it is unclear at present whether this will work.

One other option is to buy a lot of launches from the smallsat rockets of Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbiter, and Astra. This will likely cost more because more launches will be required, and that would required a complex negotiation between all parties.

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Astra successfully completes its second orbital launch

9:44 am

Capitalism in space: After a February 10, 2022 launch failure, the rocket startup Astra today successfully completed its second orbital launch and first in 2022, putting its first commercial payloads into orbit.

Unfortunately the separation and deployment of a payload platform from the upper stage had not been confirmed as of this posting. While the payloads can still function attached to the upper stage (they are not fully functional satellites), if this deployment turns out to be a failure it will put a stain on the launch. Astra confirmed the successful deployment of the payloads about an hour after launch.

That the company could investigate a launch failure, fix the problem, and resume launches in just over a month however speaks well for its future. If the deployment failed fixing it should proceed as quickly. Meanwhile, the company announced yesterday a new multi-launch contract through 2025 with Spaceflight, which finds launches for smallsats and also provides a small tug to move them into their preferred orbit.launches.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race remain unchanged:

10 SpaceX
5 China
2 ULA
2 Russia

The U.S. now leads China 16 to 5 in the national rankings.

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Dumping Windows and Apple and switching to Linux

8:32 pm

My regular readers know about my utter contempt for Microsoft and its terrible Windows operating system. Any company that treats its customers like dirt, as Microsoft routinely does, does not deserve the business of anyone. I realized this reality two decades ago, and successfully switched to Linux back in 2006. I have never regretted it.

Moreover, the increasingly intolerant behavior of big tech companies like Microsoft to free speech increases the need for people to free themselves from them. The willingness of these companies to also treat your privacy and personal data as a plaything for their use, without your permission, is another rational reason to stop depending on them.

Linux accomplishes this, in that its open source software structure is really controlled by no one. There is also no software company using the operating system to gather your data for its own purposes.

In 2016, after seeing a number of my posts noting the advantages of Linux (or anything) over Windows, one of my readers, James Stephens, offered to write a series for Behind the Black describing step-by-step the process by which one gets and installs Linux on either a desktop or laptop computer. Below are the links to this series. I have since used it myself as a guide to convert two used Windows 7 notebooks (purchased for $35 and $80) to my favorite flavor of Linux, both of which I use regularly as my travel computers.

I wish more people would do the same, which is why I am reposting the links to this series again. Though six years have passed, James instructions still apply perfectly, as I can attest as I used this series to convert the second laptop only a year ago. Nonetheless, James has added an addendum to Part 2, which brings the entire series up to date.

I am sure almost everyone has an old computer they don’t use anymore. It will work like new with Linux. Dig it out, follow James’ instructions below and free yourself from Windows. I guarantee you will not be disappointed.

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Russia to lose seventeen launches due to Ukraine sanctions

9:43 am

This article at Space News today provides a nice summary of the number of launches that Russia’s Roscosmos will likely lose in the next three years due to the break off of commercial operations against that country because of its invasion of the Ukraine.

According to the article, Russia will lose sixteen launches. The list however misses one South Korean satellite scheduled for launch on an Angara rocket later this year. The total breakdown of this lost business is therefore as follows:

13 launches lost in 2022
3 launches lost in 2023
1 launch lost in 2024

The entities impacted are as follows:

Government launches:
Europe: six launches in ’22 and ’23, totaling eight satellites
South Korea: two launches in ’22
Sweden: one launch in ’22

Commercial launches:
OneWeb: six launches in ’22, totaling 199 satellites
Axelspace: one launch, totaling four satellites
Synspective: one launch

If the Ukraine War were to end today, it is possible that most of the government launches would be reinstated. The commercial companies however are almost certainly going to find other launch providers, no matter what. OneWeb for example is hardly going to trust its business to Russia after that country cancelled the launches and (at least at this moment) has confiscated the already delivered satellites.

If the war continues for another two or three months, then all this business will vanish for good, as alternative rocket companies will likely be found.

This list however does reveal one interesting fact. It appears that very few private companies have been interested in buying Russian launch services, with or without the Ukraine War. Most of Russia’s international customers have been other governments. Even OneWeb falls partly into this category, as it is half owned by the United Kingdom.

This fact suggests that Russia’s product has simply not been competitive against the new commercial market. The governments meanwhile probably had political motives in addition to economics to throw their business Russia’s way. Those political motives are now gone.

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Startup Astrolab unveils its manned lunar rover design

9:20 am

Capitalism in space: A small startup company, Astrolab, yesterday unveiled its concept for a manned lunar rover, designed for NASA’s Artemis program.

The company has already built a full scale prototype, which it tested in Death Valley. It also intends to try to win NASA’s contract for building it, with bidding expected to begin in only a few months.

Astrolab will likely have major competition for the LTV contract. Lockheed Martin announced in May 2021 a partnership with General Motors to design lunar rovers but said at the time their concept was still in the early stages. Northrop Grumman announced in November it was working with several companies on a lunar rover design but also provided few technical details.

By contrast, Astrolab, based in Hawthorne, California, is a 15-person company founded two years ago after [Jaret Matthews, the founder of the company,] left SpaceX.

In a rational world, Astrolab’s small size and newness would not matter, if its design was best. In the strange world of our modern federal government, however, the political clout of big companies like General Motors and Northrop Grumman could easily be more important, even if their designs are mediocre and cost much more. Their designs might not be inferior, but their clout cannot be ignored. It will make Astrolab’s success far more difficult, requiring this startup to offer something much more superior to have a chance of winning.

At the same time, the competition might very well force the older big space companies to up their game, which will be all to the good, for everyone.

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Software company aims to launch 250 satellite weather constellation

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: Acme Atronomatic, a software company that developed the MyRadar weather app that has been downloaded 50 million times, is now planning to launch 250 satellite weather constellation, with the first test satellites scheduled for launch in April.

The satellites, scheduled to launch in April on a Rocket Lab Electron from New Zealand, are designed to test and validate hardware for Orlando, Florida-based Acme’s Hyperspectral Orbital Remote Imaging Spectrometer (HORIS) constellation.

Environmental data captured by the HORIS constellation will be paired with artificial intelligence and machine learning to create data-fusion products for the company’s government and commercial customers. Acme also intends to draw on data and imagery from the HORIS constellation to enhance its MyRadar weather app.

The first batch of Acme satellites set to launch in April are PocketQubes, satellites measuring 5 centimeters on each side. The “batch consists of our own satellite and two others that we have informally helped design and build,” Acme CEO Andy Green told SpaceNews by email. “We’re mostly focusing on the primary satellite, MyRadar1,” which is a HORIS constellation prototype.

Private weather satellites like this are the future, rather than government-built satellite, which has been the norm for sixty years. That shift is also apparently being encouraged by Congress, which the House has passed and the Senate is considering. In it NOAA’s budget to build its own weather satellites was trimmed by about 25%, from the requested $1.68 billion to $1.29 billion.

This trim is hardly painful to NOAA’s weather satellite program, which remains well funded. It does indicate however that our spendthrift Congress is interested in ways to save money in this area.

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Virgin Orbit signs deal to launch Welsh-built satellite from Cornwall in ’22

9:17 am

Capitalism in space: While competing spaceports are now being constructed in Scotland and hope to launch this year, Virgin Orbit yesterday signed a deal with the Wales company Space Forge to launch its satellite from Cornwall, England, in ’22.

Because Virgin Orbit is already operational, while the rockets planned for the two Scottish spaceports in Shetland and Sutherland are still being developed, it appears that Cornwall will win the race to complete the first launch from UK soil in more than a half century.

Space Forge’s business plan is in itself most intriguing.

Space Forge recently announced that, along with partners, it is developing a world-first service incorporating both launch and return of a new small class of vehicle – the ForgeStar – that can be deployed from conventional launchers to provide rapid, reliable and reusable in-space infrastructure. This inaugural mission will see Space Forge’s ForgeStar-0 platform launched for the first time and will test future return from space technology.

Aiming to unlock the next steps on the path to market expansion, dedicated in-space manufacturing, coupled with proof of reliable return, will allow Space Forge to leverage the benefits of the space environment, namely: microgravity, vacuum, and temperature, to create products impossible to manufacture on Earth.

How exactly this satellite will safely return its space-manufactured goods is not yet clear, but if it does so successfully Space Forge will have created a product that at present would be unique. While you can now get your products back from ISS, such a process is very complicated and not very cost effective. Space Forge, if successful, would simplify that process, allowing customers to launch, manufacture products in space, and get those products back, all in one package.

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Blue Origin expands its rocket engine factory in Alabama

9:04 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin yesterday revealed that it is hiring 300 more engineers and expanding the rocket engine factory in Alabama in order to produce flight worthy BE-3 and BE-4 engines.

Blue Origin in Huntsville spent the pandemic supporting the company’s main engine plant in Kent Washington with parts for the company’s BE-3 and larger BE-4 engines, [site lead Nathan] Harris said. “We are now actually in the process of building our first set of complete engines through our facility,” he said. Those first engines will be produced this year.

…“We’re getting very close,” Harris said. “They’re still doing quite a bit of retrofitting. As you learn, anytime you retrofit something that’s over 60 years old, it takes a little bit more and there’s a little bit more that you unearth that was undiscovered.”

Harris said he expects to be testing the BE-3 “in the next couple of months followed shortly by the BE-4.” [emphasis mine]

This may be good news for both ULA’s Vulcan rocket as well as Blue Origin’s own New Glenn rocket. Both need the BE-4 engine, and both have been delayed years because it has not been ready on time. While the engine problems appear to have been resolved, Blue Origin had not put any thought into developing a practical and affordable manufacturing process that would allow it to build enough engines to serve both itself and ULA.

This expansion at the engine factory suggests the company is finally moving into its production phase. The highlighted sentence above however also tells us that the first flight worthy BE-4 engines are still months away, which will further delay launch of Vulcan and New Glenn. It is now certain that neither will launch this year, putting both rockets more than three years behind schedule.

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Georgia voters kill Camden spaceport project

9:41 am

The residents of Camden County in Georgia yesterday voted by a margin of 72% to 28% to end the county’s project to build a project there.

There are hints that county officials might still try to proceed, having already spent more than $10 million on the project. There are also strong indications that if they do, they will be blocked legally on many fronts.

What this vote suggests is that Americans continue to be uninterested in more commerce, and are easily convinced to put environmental claims first in any political battle. The opponents of the spaceport had said that the spaceport threatened local wildlife — something that clearly doesn’t happen based on more than a half century of data at Cape Canaveral — and the voters in Camden were quick to agree. The voters also probably had a bit of not-in-my-backyard behind their vote as well.

Whether Camden would have succeeded as a spaceport of course is unknown. There are a lot of such facilities being proposed and built, and it is unclear if their number fits the actual launch demand.

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SpaceX successfully completes 10th launch in ’22

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully placed 48 Starlink satellites into orbit, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

The first stage landed successfully, completing its fourth flight. The fairings were new.

SpaceX continues to maintain a one-launch-per-week pace in ’22, suggesting it will succeed in completing more than 50 launches this year, as predicted by the company.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

10 SpaceX
5 China
2 ULA
2 Russia

The U.S. now leads China 15 to 5 in the national rankings. Note that Russia had predicted it would complete about 27 launches in ’22. With the loss of all of its international customers due to its invasion of the Ukraine, that number is likely cut by two-thirds. If Russia completes more than a dozen launches this year we should be surprised.

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Local Texas state/city politicians pressure congressmen to get Starship approved by FAA

11:42 am

Local state/city politicians from Brownsville are applying pressure on their local congressmen to get the FAA to approve its environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Starship facility in Boca Chica approved.

Asked if the BND [Brownsville Navigation District] Board of commissioners had made its position known to Reps. Vela and Gonzalez, Lopez said: “Actually, right now, we are in talks with both of them. We want them to help. It is a huge economic impact, having SpaceX here. It makes the Rio Grande Valley and in this case Brownsville more lucrative. It gives global attention to our city, which is something we have needed for a long, long, time.”

A reporter put it to Lopez that the City of Brownsville is hoping to attract thousands of tourists once SpaceX starts sending rockets to the Moon and Mars. “It would be a tremendous loss if we lose that,” Lopez said.

Both Congressmen are members of the Democratic Party, so I doubt seriously if they care that much for the economic benefits brought to Brownsville by SpaceX, no matter what they say in public. For Democrats nowadays it is environmental matters that trump all other issues, and so it would shock me if either Vela or Gonzalez buck their party’s agenda to pressure the FAA to approve the environmental reassessment.

However, the November elections are looming, and the polls do not look good for Democrats. If the FAA rejects the reassessment prior to that election and demands that a full environmental impact statement be written, something I now fear will happen because the FAA cannot get NOAA and the Interior Department to sign on, SpaceX will almost certainly shift its Starship operations to Florida. An impact statement would take years to complete, a delay that SpaceX cannot afford. Such a sequence of events would likely do great harm to the reelection campaigns of both Democrats.

I thus now wonder if the Biden administration will force the FAA to continue delaying its decision, month-by-month, until after that November election, thus allowing these Democrats to mouth support without risking anything.

We shall know I think before the end of the month, which is presently the FAA’s announced target date for making a decision. I am willing to bet they delay again, for the fourth time.

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Bahrain signs Artemis Accords

8:57 am

Bahrain announced today that it has signed Artemis Accords, making it the second Arab country, after the United Arab Emirates (UAE), to do so.

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

In the past week both Bahrain and Romania have joined the accords. The timing suggests both actions might have been triggered by the Ukraine War. Russia opposes the Artemis Accords, and for Romania, a former Soviet block nation, and Bahrain, an Arab nation, to make such announcements so quickly after Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine suggests both are signalling their willingness to ally themselves against Russia.

For this western alliance in space to be complete however it will require that France and Germany as well as more members of the European Space Agency (ESA) to sign on. Before Russia’s invasion these two nations as well as other ESA partners were considering allying themselves with either Russia or China (which also opposes the accords) in future space endeavors. Such an alliance would have prevented them from signing the accords.

The Russian invasion has almost certainly ended any chance these European nations will partner with Russia in space. Thus, it is very likely Russia’s invasion will force them back into a more firm space alliance with the U.S., and get them to sign the accords. If the American State Department has any competence (something we should not expect) it will be jumping on this situation and ramping up its pressure on Europe to sign on.

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Astra completes investigation into February 10th launch failure

8:44 am

Capitalism in space: Astra today released the results of its investigation into its February 10th launch failure, confirming that the failure occurred because the improper separation of the fairings on the upper stage.

Through their analysis, Astra confirmed that the payload fairing on LV0008 failed to separate properly prior to upper stage engine ignition due to an electrical issue. The five separation mechanisms that are present in the Rocket 3 fairing were triggered in an incorrect order, resulting in unexpected fairing movement that caused a disconnection in the electrical wiring. This meant that one of the five separation mechanisms did not receive the command to open, thereby preventing the fairing from separating completely.

Upon further investigation, Astra narrowed the root cause of the fairing separation issue down to an error in the electrical harness engineering diagram for the separation mechanisms. The harness was built and installed as specified by the drawing and installation procedures, but an error in the drawing itself led to two of the five harness channels being inadvertently swapped.

In addition, the company identified a software problem “that left the upper stage engine, Aether, unable to utilize its thrust vector control (TVC) system – which allows the engine to gimbal and maneuver the vehicle.”

The company states that both issues have been corrected, and is now targeting March 13 for its next launch, taking place from Kodiak, Alaska, and only carrying a test dummy payload that will not be released from the upper stage. Thus, this test launch will be similar to the company’s only orbital launch on November 19, 2021.

Astra’s fast investigation, fix, and determination to launch again quickly speaks well of the company. Why however it doesn’t test its deployment system with a dummy satellite on this next test launch is somewhat puzzling, especially since it would be very easy to release that dummy into an orbit that quickly decays and burns up in the atmosphere.

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UK rocket startup Skyrora badly impacted by the Ukraine War

9:16 am

The smallsat rocket startup Skyrora appears to be badly impacted by the Ukraine War, since half its employees work in the Ukraine and the founder of this United Kingdom company is Volodymyr Levykin, a Ukrainian entrepreneur.

Skyrora, headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, has about 80 employees in Dnipro, working on research and development of new manufacturing methods and materials, Levykin said.

“From day one, the priority for everyone in Ukraine was the family, then the country and then the company,” said Levykin, who comes from a small town near Dnipro. “And that’s what I told our team. Some of our people managed to move somewhere away from Dnipro, but the majority are staying there and showing significant resilience during this challenging time.”

It more and more appears that one of the biggest fallouts from the Ukraine War will be the destruction of that country’s aerospace industry. From the article at the link:

The Ukrainian space community will watch the developments in Dnipro anxiously. The rocket research and manufacturing facilities, worth billions of dollars, could not only fall into Russian hands but also face irreparable destruction, Ukraine’s former space chief Volodymyr Usov told Space.com in an earlier interview. Due to the amount of toxic rocket fuels and other chemicals, a rocket strike at Yuzhmash and Yuzhnoye could also cause a major environmental disaster, Usov said.

Russia certainly wants to recapture these space assets without damaging them, but that might not be possible. And even if this happens, any partnerships between western and Ukrainian aerospace companies — such as Skyrora’s — will vanish, and will likely not be renewed after the war ends. No commercial company is going to risk any investment with Russia for many years.

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Confirmed: Tomorrow’s OneWeb launch on Soyuz-2 rocket cancelled

8:57 am

Russia’s state-run press today confirmed that the launch tomorrow of another 36 OneWeb satellites on a Soyuz-2 rocket from Baikonur has been cancelled.

The decision was announced by Roscosmos head Dmitry Rogozin.

He also instructed to stop preparations for the launch of British OneWeb communications satellites from three spaceports. “All the launches from all Russian launch pads in Kourou, in Baikonur and at the Vostochny Cosmodrome involving the OneWeb company are to be stopped,” the Roscosmos CEO said.

Rogozin has already said that Russia will not refund OneWeb any money it paid for any of the cancelled launches. Nor will Russia return the OneWeb satellites in Kazakhstan to OneWeb.

Meanwhile, it appears that OneWeb is aggressively searching for new launch alternatives.

“We’re looking at U.S., Japanese and Indian options,” Chris McLaughlin, OneWeb’s chief of government, regulatory affairs and engagement, said March 3. “But in the first instance, we’re pointing to Ariane and saying you still owe us a number of launches.”

This statement implies that OneWeb is trying to get Arianespace to pick up the cost of any launches where Russia has been paid but will not launch. This way OneWeb won’t have to pay twice for the launch. This strategy will only work if the partners in the European Space Agency, which owns Arianespace, decide to cover OneWeb’s losses to Russia, which makes this a political decision.

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Russia blocks future rocket engine sales to U.S.

1:45 pm

Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, today announced that Russia will no longer sell any rocket engines to U.S. companies.

The head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, announced the new policy in an interview with the Russia 24 TV channel. “Today we have made a decision to halt the deliveries of rocket engines produced by NPO Energomash to the United States,” Rogozin said in the interview, according to Russia’s state press site Tass. “Let me remind you that these deliveries had been quite intensive somewhere since the mid-1990s.” Rogozin also added: “Let them fly on something else, their broomsticks, I don’t know what,” according to Reuters.

Russian engines are used on two American rockets, ULA’s Atlas-5 and Northrop Grumman’s Antares. The Atlas-4 however is being phased out, and has already received all the engines it needs for all of that rocket’s remaining flights. ULA plans to replace it with its new Vulcan rocket, using Blue Origin’s (long delayed) BE-4 engine.

Antares however is a more serious issue. Northrop Grumman uses this rocket to launch Cygnus freighters to ISS. It depends on two Russian engines for its Ukrainian-built first stage. The Ukraine War now probably makes building more Antares rockets impossible, which means at some point Northrop Grumman will no longer be able to supply ISS with cargo using Cygnus. Furthermore, NASA’s plan to use Cygnus’ engines to maintain ISS’s orbit will be impacted if Cygnus launches to ISS cease.

There is an option, though it too has issues. ULA has already launched one Cygnus to ISS using its Atlas-5. Though this rocket is going away, ULA could probably use its Vulcan instead — assuming Blue Origin finally gets the BE-4 engine operational so that Vulcan can finally launch.

Overall, Russia’s decision might cause a temporary blip in the American space effort, but if the government doesn’t get in the way I think that competition will force a solution. As Aesop said, necessity is the mother of invention.

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