Tag: commercial

SpaceX launches Indonesian communications satellite

9:01 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched an Indonesian communications satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

Indonesia’s reasons for buying SpaceX’s launch services are explained here. The first stage completed its 17th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

16 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran
2 Russia
2 Japan
2 India
2 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined in successful launches 19 to 16, with SpaceX now tied 16 to 16 with the entire world combined (excluding American companies).

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The Doobie Brothers – Jesus Is Just Alright with Me

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live on television in 1973. Back then, a song like this was entirely okay for a mainstream band to perform and mainstream TV show to air. Today, such songs are put into a “Christian music” ghetto, regardless of their quality.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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How SpaceX got Indonesia’s business

9:58 am

Link here. The article describes not only how Elon Musk and SpaceX persuaded the Indonesian government to buy Falcon 9 launches and introduce Starlink into its country, it describes how a Chinese launch failure contributed as well.

When a Chinese rocket malfunctioned shortly after launch in April 2020, destroying Indonesia’s $220 million Nusantara-2 satellite, it was a blow to the archipelago’s efforts to strengthen its communication networks. But it presented an opportunity for one man. Elon Musk – the owner of SpaceX, the world’s most successful rocket launcher – seized on the failure to prevail over state-owned China Great Wall Industry Corp (CGWIC) as Jakarta’s company of choice for putting satellites into space.

The most fascinated aspect of the article for me however was its effort to create a sense that the U.S. government dislikes SpaceX’s independence.

But the U.S. government and military are concerned about their reliance on SpaceX, especially given Musk’s muscular business style, according to one current and one former U.S. official working on space policy. While legacy U.S. defence contractors like Boeing and Lockheed Martin typically consult the State Department before making foreign deals, Musk and SpaceX dealt directly with Jakarta, the two officials said.

…Nicholas Eftimiades, a former U.S. intelligence officer and expert on Chinese espionage operations at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank, said SpaceX’s CEO had ruffled some feathers in the U.S. capital: “Elon Musk does things his way and some officials don’t like that”.

The only Pentagon official quoted however had nothing negative to say about SpaceX.

It is likely there are officials in the Pentagon who want SpaceX to crash and fail, especially considering the full court press by many agencies against SpaceX since Biden became president. It is also likely that Reuters, which published this article, wants that full court press to succeed, and is eager to spin any SpaceX success badly, if it can. In general today mainstream press sources like Reuters operate as arms of the Democratic Party. If Biden wants SpaceX killed, so will Reuters.

No matter. The article can’t help describing why SpaceX is successful. It competes aggressively, and wins customers because it produces products that work, reliably.

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Australian rocket startup raises $36 million in private investment capital

9:43 am

Proposed Australian commercial spaceports

The Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space has now raised $36 million in private investment capital in its most recent fund-raising round. The company had previously raised $46 million.

The funding supports the small launch vehicle startup’s campaign to manufacture, test and begin launching rockets and satellites from the Bowen Orbital Spaceport in North Queensland.

Gilmour Space, founded in 2012, is developing a three-stage rocket called Eris. The first Eris test flight is expected “in the coming months, pending launch approvals from the Australian Space Agency,” according to the Gilmour Space news release. A second test flight is expected later this year and commercial launches are scheduled to begin in 2025. [emphasis mine]

The map to the right shows both the location of Gilmour’s Bowen launch site, but also that of Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA), which is building a spaceport open to all rocket companies.

Gilmour had originally announced plans for an April 2023 launch. Though it is not surprising for a new rocket company to experience delays in developing a new rocket, the highlighted phrase in the quote above, which has appeared in a previous story in September 2023 about the delays at Gilmore, strongly suggests Australia’s government might be a problem as well. Its legal framework is strongly influcenced by Great Britain’s, which has turned out to be a nightmare for both rocket companies and spaceports. That approvals have been pending now for many months is further evidence this is so.

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ESA awards Spanish launch startup PLD a million-plus development contract

9:06 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) today awarded the Spanish launch startup PLD a €1.3 million contract to develop a payload deployment system for its Miura-5 orbital rocket, expected to make its first launch in 2025.

Designed to release all types of satellites with as much flexibility as possible, the payload system – called MOSPA for Modular Solution for Payload Adapter – will allow PLD Space to offer its customers a wider range of missions and services, including accommodation of CubeSats, nanosatellites and microsatellites. The development of the modular payload adapter will be done in partnership with OCCAM Space. The goal is to create the hardware to be as light as possible while also being as adaptable as possible to launch more satellites and meet market demands.

“PLD space has proven itself with its first launch last year, and we look forward to seeing the experience applied to the Miura 5 launch services development,” says ESA’s Jorgen Bru, “The payload adapter development engaged today was chosen to increase market competitiveness and ensure that many different types of satellites and customers can fly.”

This contract once again signals ESA’s shift from depending solely on its own launch company, Arianespace, to instead obtaining launch contracts from as many private, independent, and competing European companies as possible. Arianespace, for many reasons (some not its fault), failed to develop rockets capable of competing with SpaceX, and also failed to get them developed on time. ESA presently has no launch capability, and has had to sign contracts with SpaceX to get its payloads into orbit.

The shift is ground-shaking. It suggests that in the next two decades Europe should have a half dozen competing rocket companies of its own, all striving for business and thus all working hard to come up with ways to reduce launch costs. Under the Arianespace monopoly, little innovation took place, launch costs never dropped, and though for many years it controlled a majority of the launch market, it could never make a profit.

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Rocket Lab successfully launches Japanese commercial space junk demo satellite

10:45 am

Rocket Lab today successfully launched a commercial test mission of commercial space junk removal satellite, dubbed ADRAS-J and built by the Japanese company Astroscale, in partner with Japan’s space agency JAXA. It is designed to demonstrate the ability to make a close rendezvous of a large piece of space junk and then photograph and inspect it closely to determing it precise condition to facilitate later removal efforts.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

15 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran
2 Russia
2 Japan
2 India
2 Rocket Lab

A lot of launch entities grouped at 2. Expect Iran and Japan to fall away as Russia, India, and Rocket Lab continue to launch regularly this year, with Russia and Rocket Lab eventually outpacing India.

American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined in successful launches 18 to 16, with SpaceX still trailing the entire world combined (excluding American companies) 15 to 16.

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Maurice Jarre – Lawrence of Arabia

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed by the BBC Concert Orchestra. I think this makes for a good way to start the weekend. If you have time, get the movie and watch it. One of the greatest ever made.

Hat tip Doug Johnson.

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Rocket Lab begins maneuvers to bring Varda’s capsule back to Earth

9:46 am

With the FAA finally giving its okay (six months late), Rocket Lab has now begun the orbital maneuvers required to bring Varda’s small manufacturing capsule back to Earth at the Utah test range.

For more than eight months in space, Rocket Lab’s 300kg-class spacecraft has successfully provided power, communications, ground control, and attitude control to allow Varda’s capsule to grow Ritonavir crystals, a drug commonly used as an antiviral medication for HIV and hepatitis C.

Due to the initial planned reentry date being adjusted from late 2023, Rocket Lab’s spacecraft has been required to operate for more than double its intended orbital lifespan, which it has done without issue.

If all goes as planned, the capsule will land on February 21, 2024. Whether those drugs are still viable and sellable remains unknown. The delay due to government red-tape might have made them useless.

Nonetheless, a success in recovering those samples, viable or not, would establish Varda’s business plan. With three more missions planned, all to be launched and controlled by Rocket Lab, it will be positioned well for the future, its capsule a method for manufacturing a number of products in weightlessness that are needed on Earth but can only be made in space.

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Uruguay signs Artemis Accords

8:42 am

Uruguay yesterday became the 36th nation to sign the Artemis Accords, originally conceived during the Trump administration as a political maneuver to get around the legal restrictions against private ownership imposed by the Outer Space Treaty.

It is unclear where Uruguay stands with these goals. The last two signatories, Belguim and Greece, hinted in their public statements that their goals were far different, aimed more at imposing the modern leftist globalist agenda instead (“You will own nothing and be happy.”)

At present these are the nations who have signed on: Angola, Argentina, Australia, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Columbia, Czech Republic, Ecuador, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The competing alliance of communist nations, led by China, includes only Russia, Venezuala, Pakistan, Belarus, Azerbaijan, and South Africa. Former deep Soviet bloc nations like Bulgaria and Romania, as well as previously very Marxist Angola, joined the American alliance, suggesting that these two space alliances are not a return of the Cold War of the 20th century. Instead, it appears that both alliances are untrustworthy when it comes to individual rights, freedom, and limited government. Both have tensions within each, with many leaders in both groups working both against and for these ideals, with a large plurality likely focused on power and control, not human freedom.

The U.S. can do much good here, if its leadership stands firmly for freedom (to paraphrase John Kennedy). Sadly, its leadership today does not do this, and it is very unclear whether future leaders will do so either.

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SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites

2:57 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California at 1:34 pm Pacific.

This was the launch scrubbed yesterday, and its launch today means the company completed three launches in less than 24 hours. The first stage successfully completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

15 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran
2 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined 17 to 14 in successful launches, with SpaceX by itself is leading the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 15 to 14.

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Space Force cancels major satellite contract with Northrop Grumman

10:02 am

The Space Force today announced it has cancelled a major multi-satellite contract with Northrop Grumman, worth almost a billion dollars, because of cost overruns and scheduling delays.

Northrop was formally notified last month of the termination within “our restricted Space Business,” the defense contractor said in a regulatory filing, using jargon for classified programs. The filing offered no details on the classified satellite or the reasons it was called off, which were provided by people who commented on condition of anonymity because of its secret status.

Based on previous contract announcements, this cancellation appears to be the contract awarded to Northrop Grumman in August 2023, as part of two awards, one to Northrop and the second to Lockheed Martin, with each building 36 satellites of a 72 satellite communications constellation. The Northrop contract was valued at $733 million.

Apparently in the six months since, the Space Force found that Northrop Grumman wasn’t doing a satisfactory. Whether Lockheed Martin will pick up the contract to replace Northrop however is not clear. The Space Force might put it up for bid again.

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SpaceX moves its corporation home from Delaware to Texas

9:51 am

As had been threatened by Elon Musk, SpaceX has now officially filed to move its incorporation home from Delaware to Texas, taking with it signicant tax dollars.

SpaceX, which was incorporated in the famously corporation-friendly Delaware, filed to relocate its business incorporation with the Texas Secretary of State, Bloomberg reported.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk publicly railed against the Diamond State and a judge’s decision to void his $55 billion Tesla pay package.

Another Musk company, Neuralink, has also shifted its incorpoation from Delaware to Nevada.

None of this involves the movement of any physical facilities. However, Musk is making it very clear once again that if a state government interferes unreasonably with his business operations, he will leave it. He did this by the actual shifting previously large parts of SpaceX operations from California to Texas when California government officials attempted to punish him for remaining open during the Wuhan panic. Now he is doing the same to Delaware because it appears one judge decided he didn’t like Musk’s Tesla’s pay package, even though 80% of the company’s stockholders approved.

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Varda finally gets FAA permission to land its capsule

9:43 am

After more than six months of paper-pushing, the FAA has finally agreed to let the commercial in-space manufacturing startup Varda land its orbiting capsule in Utah.

After months of effort and one rejected application, Varda Space Industries said Feb. 14 it has received a license from the Federal Aviation Administration to return a capsule from its first mission.

The FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation issued a reentry license for Varda’s W-Series 1 spacecraft. The license will allow the company to land a capsule from that spacecraft at the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR) and neighboring Dugway Proving Ground west of Salt Lake City. Varda said that reentry is scheduled for Feb. 21.

…The company had hoped to return the capsule as early as mid-July, but said then was still working with the FAA to obtain a reentry license, required for any commercial spacecraft returning to Earth. One issue the company said it was facing was that it was the first company seeking a reentry license under new regulations called Part 450 intended to streamline the licensing process, but which some companies reported difficulties adjusting to. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted sentence dishonestly implies it has been the companies that are having problems adjusting to these so-called “streamlined” regulations, when the truth is that the FAA has been the one having the problem. Since Part 450 was established all FAA appovals have slowed to a crawl, when previously the FAA moved much faster.

In fact, that sentence is proven dishonest in the article’s very next paragraphs, which describe how the July approval didn’t happen because two government agencies couldn’t get their act together. Varda really had nothing to do with this lack of approval.

The capsule contains pharmaceuticals for sale on Earth that can not be manufactured in gravity. For the government to delay their return almost half a year simply because of red-tape is disgusting, especially because this delay might end up destroying the startup entirely. It is even more disgusting in that these government agencies have had had no problem approving the return of NASA capsules from space, to this very same Utah range.

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SpaceX successfully launches Intuitive Machines Odysseus lunar lander

11:20 pm

South Pole of Moon with landing sites

SpaceX has successfully launched Intuitive Machines commercial Nova-C-class Odysseus lunar lander, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 1:05 am (Eastern) on February 15th.

This was the third launch in less than eleven hours today, and the second launch by SpaceX. The first stage successfully completed its 18th flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral.

The green dot on the map to the right shows the planned landing site for Odysseus, next to a crater with a permanently shadowed interior, though it will have no way to travel into it. This will also be the closest landing to the Moon’s south pole, and if all goes well, will take place eight days from today, where it will operate for about ten Earth days. You can find out more about the lander’s payloads and mission from the press kit [pdf].

It must be emphasized that like India’s Vikram lander and Pragyan rover, Japan’s SLIM lander, and Astrobotic’s Peregrine lander, Odysseus is mostly an engineering test to prove out the landing systems. If this spacecraft does any science on the lunar surface that will be a bonus.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

14 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran
2 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the entire world combined 16 to 14 in successful launches, with SpaceX by itself is now tied the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 14 to 14.

5 comments

SpaceX launches two military prototype satellites

3:38 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched two prototype reconnaissance satellites for the U.S. military, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 5:30 pm (Eastern) time.

The first stage successfully completed its seventh flight, landing back on at Cape Canaveral.

This is the first of four launches scheduled for the next eleven hours. Next up is another Falcon 9 launch, carrying 22 Starlink satellites and lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

13 SpaceX
8 China
2 Iran

At present American private enterprise leads the entire world combined 15 to 13 in successful launches, with SpaceX by itself tied with the rest of the world combined (excluding American companies) 13 all.

7 comments

SpaceX announces plans to build $100 million office complex in Brownsville

10:13 am

According to a filing with the Texas Department of Regulations and Licensing, SpaceX is now planning a $100 million office complex in Brownsville, Texas, in addition to the extensive facilities it is building nearby at its launch site at Boca Chica.

Just a few miles away from its launch site, SpaceX will construct the multimillion-dollar office inside an industrial factory. It will be located at 52198 San Martin Blvd., Brownsville, TX 78521, according to the Texas Department of Regulations and Licensing filing.

Construction is slated to begin this month and is expected to have just under a year turnaround. An estimated start date is listed as February 23, with a completion date of January 1, 2025, according to the TDLR filing. All TDLR filings are subject to change.

It seems to me that the activist group Save RGV (Rio Grand Valley) that is suing SpaceX to shut down Boca Chica is acting to destroy this region, not save it. Before SpaceX showed up the economy of Brownsville and the Rio Grand Valley was very depressed and going nowhere. SpaceX has brought in billions in investment capital as well as tens of thousands of new jobs.

One wonders how any court can rule in favor of Save RGV’s lawsuit that seeks to prevent any future temporary beach closures at Boca Chica and thus outlaw any further launches. Such a ruling would essentially shut down much of what SpaceX is doing in the Brownsville region, and would result in the destruction of this new economic growth.

Such a ruling seems insane, but we should not ignore its possibility. Stupider decisions by courts have been made many times in the past. And it does appear we live in very stupid times.

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Update on SpaceX preparations for 3rd Superheavy/Starship orbital test launch

9:35 am

Link here. SpaceX is apparently now gearing up for a wet dress rehearsal countdown, whereby it performs a full countdown, including fueling both stages and taking everything to T-0. Such rehearsals are a standard procedure for all SpaceX launches.

Whether this launch will occur in early March, as Musk claimed yesterday, remains very uncertain, but not for technical reasons.

The FAA said that the mishap investigation for OFT-2 is still open, pending more information from SpaceX. The license modification requires all needed information to be submitted and reviewed, and the investigation needs to be closed before Starship returns to flight.

Apparently SpaceX has not yet completed its own investigation of the November second test launch. If so, this third launch might be delayed until April, since after the first test launch in April the FAA and Fish & Wildlife took three months after receiving SpaceX’s completed investigation report to approve it and issue a license. The FAA falsely claimed it was doing its own investigation, but the GAO has made it clear this is not so. All it does is rubber stamp the investigations of private companies.

We shall see. Some reports have said that no Fish & Wildlife approval will be required this time, which will speed things up. Others have indicated that the FAA is ready to move quicker. Even so, there remains the outstanding lawsuit by activists against the closing of nearby beaches for each launch. If those litigants demand a court injunction against such closures while the case is on-going, this launch could be delayed far longer.

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