Tag: commercial

Spinlaunch wins suborbital launch contract from NASA

9:00 am

Spinlaunch prototype suborbital launcher

Capitalism in space: Spinlaunch has won a launch contract from NASA to use its rocket-tossing spin launcher, shown in the photo to the right, to place a test payload on a suborbital flight later this year.

Unlike a vertical rocket first stage, the launcher spins its upper stage to a high acceleration and flings it upward. While the G-forces are too brutal for any delicate equipment or biology, this technique could be a very cheap way to toss bulk payloads like water and oxygen into space.

Spinlaunch has already done one test flight in November ’21, and hopes to do its first orbital test flight by ’25.

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Breaking: Army Corp of Engineers suspends SpaceX’s Boca Chica permit process

8:50 am

We’re here to help you! According to this very short Bloomberg news report today, the Army Corp of Engineers has entirely suspended SpaceX’s Boca Chica permit process for expanding the facility.

The reason given is that SpaceX “failed to provide requested information.”

Though not yet confirmed, this permit appears to be separate from the environmental reassessment process being led by the FAA to approve Starship launches from Boca Chica. Instead, this appears to have an application to add an additional launchpad and other facilities to the site.

Assuming this distinction is true, then launches from Boca Chica of Starship might still be approved. The action however once again indicates the growing hostility to SpaceX within the federal bureaucracy, apparently aided and abetted by the Biden administration.

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Pioneer 2140CC Kickstarter campaign shuts down

5:59 pm

An announcement from Aaron Jenkin, creator and producer the video game proposal, Pioneer 2140CC, based on my science fiction novel Pioneer:
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To everyone here on Behind the Black,

We covered a lot of topics in our Kickstarter update, but I wanted to give a special thanks to you all for following us on our journey, for your helpful feedback, and for your support on Kickstarter. This isn’t the outcome we had hoped for, but we’re hopeful it’s not the end of the road in our effort to expand on the world envisioned by Mr. Zimmerman in his fast-paced, 1983 sci-fi novel Pioneer.

In the meantime, please enjoy this wallpaper featuring characters from the game and book. From left to right: Saunders Maxwell, Jane Barlow, Becky Lightman, Michael Addiono, Alex Barlow, Morgan Callahan, and Harry Nickerson.

Pioneer game wallpaper
Click for full resolution.

I’d also like to thank Mr. Zimmerman for taking a chance on us and this project. He’s built up a distinguished career and it would have been easy to brush us off. But instead he welcomed us and did everything he could to help us succeed. We really appreciate that. Hopefully one day soon we can meet face-to-face for a hike or cave trip and talk about the adventure!

One problem we faced that we mentioned before was related to other people’s fear of being blacklisted. I can imagine that’s something a lot of you here would like to hear more about, and it’s something that I’d like to talk about, so we’ll have to get into that one day.

As far as moving forward is concerned… I’m a Creative Director, but I lost my main client at the end of the year due to a merger. That ended up being a good thing at the time because I was able to focus more on Pioneer. But now with the Kickstarter not panning out, I need to pick up new work. My plan is to fall back on one of my strong skills, video editing. I’m thinking that will leave me more time to devote to whatever comes next with Pioneer. If you need a video editor, please get in touch!

Thanks again for your support, and thanks for being such a great community!
Aaron
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From my perspective, this outcome is incredibly sad, especially because of the blackballing of Aaron and the project behind the scenes because of my politics. I have no idea if the project failed because of this blacklisting, but it certainly acted as a dead weight. Some of it was vicious. Some was simply fear, holding no animus to Aaron, the book, or my politics. Such people simply did not wish to help promote the game or participate in making it because they feared the consequences to themselves if it was learned they had worked on a project by someone with conservative values.

That such fear permeates our culture now so deeply bodes ill for the future. Very ill indeed.

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Ukrainian rocket development for Nova Scotia spaceport unhindered by war

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: The development of a Ukrainian rocket dubbed Cyclone 4M for of any satellite customers who choose to launch from a planned Nova Scotia spaceport has not been delayed by the Ukraine war.

“Everything is stable with respect to our team in Ukraine,” said Steve Matier, president of Maritime Launch Services. “The facility there is fine, the staff is fine and at work. . . . We’re continuing to finance their development of the launch vehicle.”

The Cyclone 4M rocket Maritime Launch Services plans to use is designed and built by Ukrainian state corporations Yuzhnoye and Yuzhmash in Dnipro. Known as Space City, Dnipro is located in central Ukraine. The city of about a million people was shelled in mid-March by Russian forces and the airport runways and terminal were hit by missile strikes, according to Ukrainian government statements.

This story illustrates the strong possibility that the recent success the Ukraine has had on the battlefield has served to prevented any serious long term damage to its aerospace industry and its partners in the west. Those partnerships if anything look stronger, with the work in the Ukraine apparently able to continue as planned, with only slight delays.

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Commercial Orbital Reef space station passes NASA’s design review

9:30 am

Proposed Orbital Reef space station

Capitalism in space: A proposed commercial space station dubbed Orbital Reef and being built by a partnership led by Sierra Space and Blue Origin has passed its NASA’s design review, allowing for construction to now begin.

The review, conducted as part of a $130 million development contract from NASA, found no issues with the station’s design.

This commercial partnership also includes Boeing, Redwire, Mitsubishi, Genesis Engineering, and Arizona State University, and plans its launch before 2030 when ISS will be retired. This quote from the article I think is important:

“We’re going as fast as we can,” Steve Lindsey, chief strategy officer at Sierra Space, said during a panel at the Goddard Memorial Symposium March 25. “We don’t want to have a gap like we did with crew back in the last decade.”

Three other private space stations are also under construction or being planned, all hoping to be operational prior to ’30. If even two of these launch, the 2030s will be very exciting indeed.

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Rocket Lab to attempt 1st stage recovery by helicopter on next launch

9:11 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab will attempt during its next launch later this month to become the second commercial rocket company, after SpaceX, to successfully recover a first stage for reuse.

The company will use a customized Sikorsky S-92 helicopter to rendezvous with the stage as it descends slowly using parachutes and capture it. The helicopter will then fly it back to land and safely deposit it on the ground.

This launch is now scheduled for April 19th, at the earliest.

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Sonny & Cher – I Got You Babe

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This performance, from 1987, has some important historical background. As noted on the youtube page,

In November of 1987, Sonny Bono was running for mayor of Palm Springs and Cher was promoting her upcoming movie Moonstruck. The divorced couple went on Letterman together and were coaxed into playing ‘I Got You, Babe’ with Paul Shaffer and his band; they weren’t exactly the best of friends at this point, but both of them knew it would make for unforgettable television. Had YouTube existed back then, this would have gone insanely viral the next morning. It wound up being the final time they ever sang together, as Bono passed away in January 1998.

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UAE wants to prioritize private enterprise for its space effort

10:17 am

Capitalism in space: According to officials of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) space agency, that nation is working to encourage the growth of a private space industry, funded initially using government money, in its effort to become a major world player in space.

“We’ve spent well over Dh1.5 billion ($408 million) on building capacity within the space industry over the last eight years and we’re more than doubling that over the next decade.”

Laws and regulations, including permits, which would allow interested companies to set up base in the UAE, are already available through a space law passed in 2019.

Companies would also have access to funding from a new initiative launched by the space agency, called Space Analytics and Solutions, which has a budget of Dh20 million. The programme aims to help start-ups build space-based applications that focus on food security, climate change, infrastructure and the oil and gas industry.

The space agency hopes that as these companies progress, they would become less reliant on government funding.

While the UAE’s Al-Amal Mars orbiter was mostly built and launched by foreign companies, it hopes its next major mission, to send an unmanned probe to seven asteroids, will be built almost entirely by companies run by UAE citizens, something they claim they have achieved with an upcoming smallsat Earth observation satellite.

The article also mentioned as an aside that the UAE has ended its 2019 agreement with Virgin Galactic to allow it to launch from the UAE. Instead, it is negotiating with Blue Origin “to set up spaceports.”

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Amazon announces launch agreements with Blue Origin, Arianespace, and ULA

9:42 am

Capitalism in space: Amazon today announced major multi-launch agreements with Blue Origin, Arianespace, and ULA to launch its 3,000+ Kuiper satellite constellation.

According to the press release, ULA won 38 launches using its new Vulcan-Centaur rocket (not yet flown), Arianespace won 18 launches using its new Ariane-6 rocket (not yet flown), and Blue Origin won 12 launches using its new New Glenn rocket (not yet flown), with an option for 15 more. The ULA deal is in addition to a previous launch contract of nine launches using the Atlas-5 rocket.

In addition, Amazon hopes to launch two prototype satellites later this year using ABL’s smallsat RS1 rocket (not yet flown).

Overall, this Amazon launch announcement might be the largest launch contract deal ever. However, the company’s reliance on unproven rockets means it will also likely face some delays and failures in its early stages. That the press release makes no mention of any schedule for launches illustrates this fact starkly. All four rockets have already seen major delays. with the three biggest (Vulcan-Centaur, New Glenn, Ariane 6) now more than two years behind schedule, and the likelihood of their first launch occurring in 2022 increasingly unlikely.

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Rocket Lab launches two BlackSky Earth observation satellites

9:41 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully launched two commercial BlackSky Earth observation satellites using its Electron rocket.

This was Rocket Lab’s the fourth mission for BlackSky, with each launch putting two satellites in orbit. The satellites provide high resolution imagery to commercial and government customers, imagery presently in high demand because of the Ukraine War.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

12 SpaceX
8 China
4 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 19 to 8 in the national rankings.

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Will XCOR’s Lynx’s spaceplane be reborn as smallsat launcher taking off from California airport?

9:26 am

Capitalism in space: Wagner Star Industries, a startup that now owns the unfinished Lynx spaceplane that bankrupt XCOR had intended for suborbital tourists flights, has signed a agreement with Paso Robles Municipal Airport in California to launch from there.

Wagner’s plan is to reconfigure Lynx as an unmanned first stage that would launch smallsats into orbit. It would launch and land on a runway from Paso Robles.

Wagner Star is in the process of converting the first Lynx vehicle into a drone so it can begin tests, according to the company’s website. The work involves removing life-support systems that had been installed to support the pilot and passenger and installing equipment for remote controlled operation.

Quetzalcóatl would take off from a runway, release its payload in suborbital space, and then glide back to where it took off. The company said it would be able to launch satellites from any commercial airport runway for $5 million per flight. A suborbital flight without a satellite launch would cost $3 million.

A clever plan. I have doubts about the satellite launches, but using this plane to place drones into high altitude where they could then continue to fly for great distances will almost certainly appeal to the military.

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Ronnie O’Sullivan’s record break in Snooker

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Hat tip Phill Oltmann, who has tried several times to explain Snooker to me and failed. The game however appears to be a variation of the U.S. pool game hi-low, though maybe more complicated.

The point is that in the video below, O’Sullivan starts the game and proceeds to clear the table, and he does it in less than six minutes, the fastest time ever. It is amazing to watch.

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New Shepard completes another commercial suborbital flight

9:09 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin’s New Shepard suborbital spacecraft today successfully completed its fourth manned commercial flight, carrying six passengers to a height of about 70 miles for total flight time of a little less than eight minutes.

I have embedded the live stream below the fold, cued to just before launch. Everything went almost routinely, which is a very good thing for a rocket company.

The most interesting aspect of this flight was that one of the passengers was George Nield, who had:

…previously served as associate administrator for the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Office of Commercial Space Transportation from 2008 to 2018, being responsible for launch licensing and regulation for all commercial launch activities during that time.

During Nield’s term, the government worked very hard to help get launches off the ground, which laid the groundwork for the success of both SpaceX’s orbital Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy rockets, as well as the suborbital spacecraft of Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. His effort also helped jumpstart the new smallsat rocket industry.

Since his retirement, the FAA’s attitude toward regulation has become more oppressive, especially since the beginning of the Biden administration in 2021.

» Read more

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Japanese satellite startup Synspective raises $100 million

10:08 am

Capitalism in space: The Japanese satellite startup Synspective announced today that it has successfully raised $100 million in private investment capital.

The latest funding was led by Sompo Japan Insurance Inc. (Tokyo, Japan), Nomura SPARX Investment, Inc. (Tokyo, Japan), and Pavilion Capital Pte. Ltd. (Singapore) among others, as well as bank loans, and it is supposed to be ranked within the top ten largest startups in Japan. This puts our total funding value at US $200M (22.8 billion yen) since our founding.

The company plans to launch a constellation of 30 radar satellites by 2026, designed to do Earth resource observations.

Synspective had hoped to launch its first demonstration satellite in ’23 on a Soyuz rocket. That launch is presently threatened by Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine, though it is not clear if it has been cancelled.

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Singapore signs Artemis Accords

9:46 am

Singapore announced yesterday that it has become the eighteenth nation to sign the Artemis Accords with the United States.

The full list of signatories: Australia, Bahrain, Brazil, Canada, 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.

Though the press announcement claims the accords are “grounded in the Outer Space Treaty,” this is only superficially correct. The real goal of the accords is to build a coalition of governments that wish to overcome the treaty’s restrictions on property rights in space.

Russia and China oppose the accords. Of the other big space-faring nations, France, Germany, and India remain uncommitted one way or the other. The Ukraine War could very well push all three to sign the accords, as their partnerships with Russia have largely vanished, and with them any incentive to stay out. Moreover, the U.S. has made it clear that for a nation to participate in its Artemis program it must sign the accords.

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SpaceX to freeze its manned Dragon capsule fleet at four

9:12 am

Capitalism in space: According to SpaceX officials, the company is suspending construction on any further manned Dragon capsules, freezing its fleet at the four capsules they have now built, Endeavour, Resilience, Endurance, and Freedom.

“We are finishing our final (capsule), but we still are manufacturing components, because we’ll be refurbishing,” SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told Reuters, confirming the plan to end Crew Dragon manufacturing.

She added that SpaceX would retain the capability to build more capsules if a need arises in the future, but contended that “fleet management is key.”

This decision — to only use reused capsules — will of course give SpaceX to ability to lower its prices for manned tourist flights, but I doubt that will happen at this time because there isn’t anyone presently available who can compete. Instead, the company will rake in more profits.

The decision however does indicate SpaceX’s own assessment of the present space tourism market. If the company thought it needed more capsules in its fleet to match the demand, it would of course build them. Right now, it appears the company has decided four capsules is enough to cover NASA’s needs, as well as any additional private commercial flights. It also suggests SpaceX is anticipating the eventual arrival of Boeing’s Starliner into the mix, which will pick up some of the business that so far has belonged entirely to SpaceX.

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FAA again delays decision on environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility

1:32 pm

Surprise, surprise! According to an FAA email sent out today, the agency has once again, for the fifth time, delayed its decision on the environmental reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica Starship launch site.

From the email:

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is updating the release date for the SpaceX Starship/Super Heavy Final Programmatic Environmental Assessment (PEA) on the Federal Infrastructure Permitting Dashboard (Permitting Dashboard) and project website. The FAA plans to issue the Final PEA on April 29th. The planned April 29, 2022 release date will allow the FAA to review the Final PEA, including responses to comments, and complete consultation and coordination with agencies at the local, State, and Federal level. All consultations must be complete before the FAA can issue the Final PEA.

This date is now listed on the FAA’s SpaceX-Starship webpage. Nor is the decision a surprise. Expect the FAA to continue this charade month-to-month until after the November election, when the Biden administration will then feel free to block SpaceX’s effort in Boca Chica completely.

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Ukraine War energizes commercial orbital remote sensing industry

10:31 am

Capitalism in space: It appears that the Ukraine War has had a positive effect on the emerging commercial remote-sensing satellite industry.

This industry is made up of a number of new private companies launching satellites to take high resolution images across a range of wavelengths, as well as do surveillance of communications. These companies have in the past decade slowly taken over this market from government satellites, which were becoming too expensive and launching too slowly to meet the military’s needs.

The war is illustrating their success, and firming up their businesses as other customers, such as news organizations, utilize their capabilities.

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Arianespace and SpaceX adjust to the new commercial launch market, without Russia

9:56 am

Link here. The article is mostly about how both companies need to adjust their launch schedules, with Arianespace scrambling to find rockets for its customers who had been scheduled to launch on Russian Soyuz-2 rockets and SpaceX describing how it will readjust its schedule with the addition of the OneWeb satellite launches.

The article had two quotes of interest. First, this fact about Arianespace’s new Vega-C rocket:

The Vega C uses an upper stage engine provided by Ukraine’s Yuzhmash, and supplies of that engine are in question because of the ongoing invasion. ESA officials said March 17 that they have three of those engines, enough to handle the anticipated Vega C missions this year.

ESA is supporting work on a new upper stage engine, M10, for a version of the Vega called Vega E that is slated to make its first launch around 2025. [Stéphane Israël, chief executive of Arianespace] said there was “no need” to accelerate work on Vega E, though, citing the Ukrainian engines in storage.

Thus, Vega-C is in the same boat as Northrop Grumman’s Antares, which also relies on Ukrainian rocket engines. When you also add the difficulty that both Blue Origin and ULA are having getting new rockets off the ground because of the delays in the BE-4 engine, it appears that in general there is presently a strong need across the entire rocket industry for rocket engines that is not being fulfilled by the engine builders available. This fact puts the new rocket engine company Ursa Major in a very strong position, should it begin to build bigger engines to serve this need. It also suggests there is an opportunity here for other engine builders, such as Aerojet Rocketdyne, if they have the wherewithal to grab it.

The second quote from the article of interest was from a SpaceX official, describing how the company is dealing with the sudden requirement to launch 216 OneWeb satellites:

Tom Ochinero, vice president of commercial sales at SpaceX, said at the conference that the company’s vertical integration and large fleet of reusable boosters offer the company flexibility to accommodate customers like OneWeb. “We can react very quickly because we’re just managing a fleet,” he said. [emphasis mine]

I just love the significance of the highlighted quote. Unlike all past rocket companies, SpaceX doesn’t have to build more rockets to add new customers, which makes adding new customers difficult and expensive. It simply can readjust how it uses the rockets in its fleet to get those new customers in orbit. And the new business will likely pay for SpaceX to expand that fleet so that it can launch more satellites even quicker.

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SpaceX raises launch prices

10:55 am

Capitalism in space: Though most of the press has focused on the Starlink announcement on March 22nd that it was raising its subscriber rates, that same day SpaceX announced that it too was raising its prices, increasing its launch fees by 8% to 10%.

The starting prices for a Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy rocket will each increase by about 8%. A Falcon 9 launch will cost $67 million, up from $62 million, and a Falcon Heavy launch will now run $97 million, up from $90 million. A footnote on SpaceX’s pricing page notes that “missions purchased in 2022 but flown beyond 2023 may be subject to additional adjustments due to inflation.”

..The company also adjusted its prices for its small satellite rideshare program. Those flights will now start at $1.1 million to fly a payload weighing 200 kilograms to a sun-synchronous orbit, up from a base price of $1 million. SpaceX increased the cost of additional payload mass by 10% as well and will now charge $5,500 per extra kilogram, up from a previous $5,000 per kilogram.

As with the Starlink announcement, SpaceX officials stated that the price increase was due entirely by inflation.

The irony here is that SpaceX could easily raise its rocket prices by 20%, and still be undercutting its entire competition. Even with these increases it is still by far the cheapest game in town.

Nonetheless, when it comes to inflation we have only just begun. The consequences of the Ukraine war, the sanctions against Russia, the Biden administration’s restrictions on domestic oil production, and the various COVID regulations restricting commerce are all still in effect, and are all putting pressure on supply. Prices will continue to rise.

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SpaceX’s fourth manned Dragon capsule named “Freedom”

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: The astronauts who will fly to ISS on April 19th on the SpaceX’s fourth manned Dragon capsule announced yesterday that they named it “Freedom,” both to honor that fundamental human right that is also fundamental to American history as well as to honor the memory of the first American spacecraft, Freedom 7, which launched Alan Shepard on his short suborbital flight in 1961.

Once launched, SpaceX will have a fleet of four manned capsules, Endeavour, Resilience, Endurance, and Freedom.

Endeavour has carried humans aloft twice for NASA, and is scheduled to fly a record third time on April 3rd when it carries four commercial passengers to ISS for the company Axiom.

Resilience has also flown twice, once for NASA and once for SpaceX itself, launching a crew of commercial passengers in the fall of 2021.

Endurance has flown once, for NASA.

With the addition of Freedom, SpaceX will have a fleet of four manned spacecraft, matching the size of NASA’s now gone shuttle fleet. Whether the company will need to build more will depend on demand and on the number of missions it thinks these reusable capsules can complete safely.

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NASA solicits proposals for second commercial manned lunar lander

9:25 am

Having received a budget boost from Congress for its manned lunar lander Artemis program, NASA yesterday announced that it is soliciting proposals from the private sector for a second lunar lander, so that the agency will not be reliant only on SpaceX’s Starship.

To bring a second entrant to market for the development of a lunar lander in parallel with SpaceX, NASA will issue a draft solicitation in the coming weeks. This upcoming activity will lay out requirements for a future development and demonstration lunar landing capability to take astronauts between orbit and the surface of the Moon. This effort is meant to maximize NASA’s support for competition and provides redundancy in services to help ensure NASA’s ability to transport astronauts to the lunar surface.

As part of this revised program, NASA also is negotiating a revision to its contract with SpaceX. It appears that this change will have SpaceX fly an additional manned mission with Starship, after which NASA would open up competition to everyone on future flights. The press release however is not entirely clear on this point.

This new competition will of course be a boon to the losers in the first manned lunar lander competition, Blue Origin and Dynetics. Both will certainly submit bids, as will others.

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