Tag: commercial

SpaceX launches 52 Starlink + 2 customer satellites

4:09 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 52 Starlink satellites along with two smallsat satellites.

They have put just under 1,700 Starlink satellites into orbit. The first stage completed its 8th launch, and the fourth in 2021, according to the SpaceX announcer. Let me repeat that: That’s four launches of the first stage in less than five months. The fairing halves were also flying on their second flight.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

15 SpaceX
12 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 20 to 12 in the national rankings.

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Rocket Lab launch fails

9:22 am

Rocket Lab’s launch yesterday of its Electron rocket failed when the upper stage began tumbling right after stage separation and engine start.

This was the second Electron failure in twenty launches. The last, in July 2020, was also caused by a problem in the upper stage, though far less dramatic. In that case an electric failure caused the upper stage engine to shut down prematurely before it had reached orbit.

Though the launch was a failure, the recovery of the first stage as part of Rocket Lab’s effort to make it reusable appears to be proceeding as planned. According to the company’s statement:

Electron’s first stage safely completed a successful splashdown under parachute and Rocket Lab’s recovery team is working to retrieve the stage from the ocean as planned.

I have embedded below the fold the Rocket Lab live feed, cued to just before the failure. You can see that as soon as the upper stage fires it begins to tumble.
» Read more

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SpaceX in FCC filing outlines first orbital flight plan for Starship

9:40 am

The flight plan for Starship's first orbital flight
Click for full images.

Capitalism in space: This week SpaceX filed the flight plan for the first orbital flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket, taking off from Boca Chica and landing in the Pacific Ocean near Hawaii.

The images to the right are from the filing, which also states:

The Starship Orbital test flight will originate from Starbase, TX. The Booster stage will separate
approximately 170 seconds into flight. The Booster will then perform a partial return and land in the Gulf of Mexico approximately 20 miles from the shore. The Orbital Starship will continue on flying between the Florida Straits. It will achieve orbit until performing a powered, targeted landing approximately 100km (~62 miles) off the northwest coast of Kauai in a soft ocean landing.

No date is listed as yet, though the filing suggests they are aiming for a launch before the end of the year. It also appears that though both Starship and Superheavy will make controlled vertical landings, both will target locations in the ocean. It could be that SpaceX plans to place its two refurbished oil rigs at both of those locations, but this is not stated in the filing.

Achieving this flight before the end of the year remains a serious hill to climb, though if any company could do it, SpaceX is the most likely.
» Read more

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Roscosmos announces two commercial tourist flights to ISS

9:49 am

Capitalism in space: Roscosmos, the government corporation that controls of all of Russia’s space industry, announced today that it will be flying two different commercial tourist flights to ISS, both occurring before the end of this year.

The first will take place in October.

Roscosmos [is] sending an actress and a director to the ISS in October with the aim of making the first feature film in space. The film, whose working title is “Challenge,” is being co-produced by the flamboyant head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, and state-run network Channel One.

The second will take place in December, and will fly Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa (the man who has already purchased a Moon mission on SpaceX’s Starship) and his assistant Yozo Hirano in a Soyuz capsule to ISS for twelve days.

Let’s review the upcoming tourist flights now scheduled:
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Senate committee mandates NASA award 2nd lunar lander contract

9:25 am

More crap from Congress: A Senate committee has approved a new NASA authorization that requires the agency to award a second lunar lander contract — in addition to the one given to SpaceX — even though that authorization gives NASA no additional money to pay for that second contract.

This provision was inserted by senator Maria Cantwell (D-Washington). Washington state also happens to be the state where one of the rejected companies, Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin, is located. I wonder how much cash Bezos’ has deposited in Cantwell’s bank account.

This provision not only does not give NASA any cash to build two lunar landers, what NASA dubs the Human Landing System (HLS), it forces NASA to violate other laws.
» Read more

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Company offers luxurious 3-day astronaut training vacations

9:02 am

Capitalism in space: For those considering spending millions to buy an orbital tourist flight from SpaceX, a new company, Orbite, is now offering for only $29,000 a three day high-end astronaut training vacation that will include a short zero-gravity flight on an airplane.

[CEO Jason] Andrews and Orbite’s other co-founder, French-born tech entrepreneur Nicolas Gaume, have set the schedule for astronaut orientation courses that’ll include virtual-reality simulations, a zero-G flight and a high-G flight — all designed to provide a taste of space without tying the participant down to a particular program.

The first session will take place Aug. 23-27 at La Co(o)rniche, a five-star boutique hotel on France’s Atlantic coast that’s owned by Gaume’s family. Three other sessions will be offered at the Four Seasons Resort in Orlando, Fla., starting on Nov. 11, Nov. 25 and Dec. 2. Each session is limited to 10 participants.

Zero Gravity Corp. and Europe’s Air Zero G by Novespace will fly the participants on airplanes that can provide measured doses of weightlessness, about 30 seconds at a time. Other subcontractors will put them in the cockpits of planes such as P-51 Mustangs or Extra 330LX’s, which can deliver multiple G’s of acceleration.

In essence these training sessions are nothing more than a dressed up expensive vacation, though surely unique.
None of this training will qualify someone to fly in space, but it will give potential orbital and suborbital customers a taste of what to expect, which should help them decide if they want to cough up the bigger bucks necessary for the real deal.

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Rocket Lab launch on May 15 will attempt a second ocean recovery of 1st stage

2:16 pm

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab’s next planned launch on May 15th will attempt a repeat of the ocean recovery of their Electron rocket’s 1st stage, as they did after a November 2020 launch.

The goal of such work is to help transition the two-stage Electron from an expendable vehicle, as it was originally designed, to a rocket with a reusable first stage. And inspection of the recovered booster from “Return to Sender” suggests that this vision is no pipe dream. “We are more kind of bullish on this than ever before,” Rocket Lab founder and CEO Peter Beck said during a teleconference with reporters on Tuesday (May 11). “We reentered on a very aggressive corridor, we had no upgraded heat shield, and we still got [the booster] back in remarkable condition.”

Indeed, some parts of that rocket will fly again; the propellant pressurization system from the “Return to Sender” first stage has been incorporated into the “Running Out of Toes” Electron [launching May 15th], Beck said. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words are quite remarkable. As far as I know, SpaceX never reused any part of a Falcon 9 first stage that was recovered in the ocean.

Rocket Lab also hopes to reduce any damage further by using new equipment on their ship for getting the stage out of the water. In addition, they have added heat shielding to the stage that should also reduce damage during its fall back to Earth.

Finally, on the next flight or so they will test something they are calling a “decelerator,” designed to slow the stage down during that fall. They are not saying what this decelerator is, which suggests it is some form of new engineering.

If all goes right, they hope to make the first snatch by helicopter of a first stage before it hits the ocean sometime next year.

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SpaceX to refly Starship prototype #15 next?

9:13 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has rolled Starship prototype #15 to the launchpad in an apparent bid to immediately send it on its second flight, only two weeks after its first successfully 30,000 foot flight.

While SpaceX has yet to actually install Starship SN15 on Mount B, the prototype has been attached to a crane and said installation is imminent – possibly just waiting for winds to die down. As of publishing, SpaceX has removed SN15’s six ‘used’ landing legs but hasn’t replaced them – a necessary step before the Starship can fly again.

…It’s worth noting that even after SpaceX reinstalls Starship SN15 on a launch mount, there’s no guarantee that the prototype will fly again. Before any reflight, SpaceX will almost certainly put the rocket through at least one additional tank proof test and static fire its Raptor engines. Issues or damage that escaped initial post-flight inspections could easily arise during that process and it’s more likely than not that one or more of SN15’s three Raptors will be removed for detailed inspection or replaced outright.

If this prototype does fly next, the next question will be how high and how far. My guess would be that they will fly it to a much higher altitude to further refine the spacecraft’s flight capabilities on return. It makes no sense to simply repeat the last flight. Now is the time to push the design again, even if it means the loss of the prototype.

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NASA: Commercial demand exceeds supply at ISS

9:03 am

Capitalism in space: According to NASA officials, the number of private commercial tourist flights being proposed exceeds the availability of docking ports at ISS.

“We are seeing a lot of interest in private astronaut missions, even outside of Axiom,” said Angela Hart, manager of commercial low Earth orbit development at NASA’s Johnson Space Center. “At this point, the demand exceeds what we actually believe the opportunities on station will be.”

Opportunities for private astronaut missions are limited by what NASA calls the “traffic model” for the ISS, or the schedule of vehicles arriving and departing the station. Commercial crew missions are limited to two docking ports on the station, one of which is occupied by the vehicle that transported the current long-duration crew on the station. The other is used by commercial crew vehicles during crew handovers, cargo Dragon missions and private astronaut missions.

That restricts the opportunities for private astronaut missions. “About two is about all you fit in there with the rest of the traffic,” Dana Weigel, deputy manager of the ISS program at JSC, said.

The solution should be obvious to all. Private launch companies that wish to use ISS have to launch either their own docking ports, or their own modules with docking ports. This is Axiom’s plan, with its own module scheduled to arrive sometime in ’24. A secondary solution would be for private companies to launch their own space stations, independent of ISS. This would not only sidestep the problem of the bottleneck at ISS, it would free such a company from the charges NASA imposes for using ISS.

Meanwhile, it appears that Axiom is countering those new NASA’s charges for its ISS flights. From the article:

Thanks to an exchange of services between NASA and Axiom, it will actually be NASA paying Axiom for the Ax-1 mission. While Axiom is acquiring services such as crew supplies and on-orbit resources, NASA will be purchasing “cold stowage” space on the Crew Dragon spacecraft to return cargo to Earth at the end of the mission. NASA will pay Axiom $1.69 million for the mission, although Hart noted there will be other charges to Axiom for training and launch services, some of which are still being negotiated.

Suffredini said that, on later missions, Axiom will seek to reduce its reliance on NASA services. “We have a goal that, by after our third flight, we will provide all of those kinds of capabilities” that it is currently purchasing from NASA.

I wonder if that third flight will occur after the launch of Axiom’s module.

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A look at Ingenuity’s legs

9:56 am

Link here. This update, written by Bob Balaram, the helicopter’s chief engineer at JPL and Jeremy Tyler, senior aero/mechanical engineer at AeroVironment, outlines the engineering that went into building the helicopter’s legs in order to make sure they could withstand the somewhat hard landings required in the Martian environment.

To withstand these firm landings, Ingenuity is equipped with a cushy suspension system, [with a] distinctive open hoop structure at each corner of the fuselage where the landing legs attach. The lower half of this hoop is a titanium spring that can bend as much as 17 degrees to provide 3.5 inches of motion in the suspension, while the upper half is a soft non-alloyed aluminum flexure that serves as the damper or “shock absorber.” By plastically deforming and fatiguing as it absorbs energy, this flexure acts much like the crumple zone structure of a car chassis. However, unlike a car or the crumple-cushioned landing gear of the Apollo moon landers, Ingenuity’s titanium springs rebound after each impact to pull these aluminum dampers back into shape for the next landing.

The aluminum damper gets a little bit weaker with each cycle as cracks and creases develop. While it would eventually break after a few hundred hard landings, with only a few flights scheduled for this demonstration, that’s a problem we could only dream of having.

This is most likely the failure point that will end Ingenuity’s life, though at the present it is a bit in the future.

Also, the post reveals that JPL subcontracted much of the development of Ingenuity to this company.

AeroVironment designed and developed Ingenuity’s airframe and major subsystems, including its rotor, rotor blades, and hub and control mechanism hardware. The Simi Valley, California-based company also developed and built high-efficiency, lightweight propulsion motors, power electronics, landing gear, load-bearing structures and thermal enclosures for NASA/JPL’s avionics, sensors and software systems.

Good ol’ American capitalism does it again.

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Virgin Galactic reveals issue with WhiteKnightTwo

9:43 am

Capitalism in space: On the same day that Virgin Galactic unveiled a $130 million loss in its first quarter report, it also announced that it might have to delay the next flight of its Unity suborbital spacecraft because of an undisclosed “wear-and-tear issue” on its carrier airplane.

From the second link:

[Mike Moses, president of space missions and safety], in response to later questions from analysts, did not disclose the specific component of the aircraft that was at the heart of the issue, but described it as a “family of items that relate to fatigue and long-term stress” of the airplane. It was not an issue with the number of flights of VMS Eve, which first flew in 2008 and has made fewer than 300 flights since.

Engineers are currently examining the plane to determine if additional maintenance is needed now to correct that problem, with an update expected next week. Virgin Galactic had planned to perform work on the plane this fall during a downtime that would also include work on VSS Unity, but Moses said engineers are now looking at whether some of that work needs to be moved up.

If maintenance is needed now, it would delay the schedule of flight tests for SpaceShipTwo, but Moses said it was “a little too early” to know how long that would be.

They had previously announced that the next flight would be in May. They will decide in the next week whether to delay it.

Meanwhile, the company’s stock price continues to tumble, dropping from a high of about $62 earlier this year to a low of about $14 today. And I would say that the price is still over-priced. The path to profit for Virgin Galactic has become extremely narrow, with few options and not much margin, especially with Blue Origin now only two months away from its first commercial suborbital tourist flight.

Richard Branson started Virgin Galactic shortly after the SpaceShipOne won the Ansari X-Prize in 2004, promising hundreds of commercial passenger flights per year in only a few years. Seventeen years later no such flights have ever occurred. Worse, not only will Blue Origin likely do the first commercial suborbital flight first, SpaceX and Axiom are likely to complete the first orbital tourism flights before Virgin Galactic.

No harm to Branson however. He has sold off most of his stock in the company, and did it when its price was still high.

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NASA and Axiom finalize contract for private tourism flight to ISS

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: NASA today announced that it has signed the order detailing the first commercial tourism flight to ISS by Axiom, set for no earlier than January ’22.

The spaceflight, designated as Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1), will launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida and travel to the International Space Station. Once docked, the Axiom astronauts are scheduled to spend eight days aboard the orbiting laboratory. NASA and Axiom mission planners will coordinate in-orbit activities for the private astronauts to conduct in coordination with space station crew members and flight controllers on the ground.

Axiom will purchase services for the mission from NASA, such as crew supplies, cargo delivery to space, storage, and other in-orbit resources for daily use. NASA will purchase from Axiom the capability to return scientific samples that must be kept cold in transit back to Earth.

SpaceX will transport the four Axiom astronauts to and from ISS in a Dragon capsule, as yet undetermined.

According to yesterday’s Space News article, the contract for this flight had been signed prior to NASA establishing its new much higher prices for the use of ISS.

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NASA officially increases prices for commercial use of ISS by 700%

11:07 pm

Capitalism in space: Though there were some revisions to the price list that NASA released in March, the revised price list for use of ISS by private companies and released at the end of April did not change significantly, and now officially increases prices for commercial tourist flights to ISS by about 700%.

The price list can be found here.

The result of the new policy is a much higher price charged by NASA to companies conducting private astronaut missions. Under the old policy, the life support and crew supplies for a hypothetical four-person, one-week mission to the ISS would cost $945,000, a figure that doesn’t include stowage, data or power. Under the new policy, the cargo, food and supplies charges for the same mission would be more than $2.5 million at the low end of the quoted cost ranges, plus $10 million in per-mission fees.

These prices will not apply to the Axiom commercial tourist flight scheduled for early ’22 because that contract was signed beforehand. Nor do they apparently apply to any visits to the private module that Axiom is building to attach to ISS.

Nonetheless, these prices will almost certainly drive business away from ISS and NASA, especially because many of these costs, such as the upmass and downmass cost of passive cargo, should really be charged by the private commercial companies, SpaceX and Boeing, that are providing the transportation. NASA has nothing to do with that and is merely skimming some money off the top of other people’s achievement.

Expect therefore more free-flying tourist missions that do not dock with ISS, such as SpaceX’s Inspiration4 flight scheduled for launch in September. We should also expect an acceleration in the construction of private stations that will compete with NASA and likely charge less.

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SpaceX launches and lands 1st stage for record 10th time

5:49 pm

During a launch yesterday of another sixty Starlink satellites, the first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket successfully completed its tenth flight, a new record for such boosters.

The turnaround time for this booster is noted at the link, and shows that they have been steadily shortening that time to less than two months.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

14 SpaceX
12 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 19 to 12 in the national rankings.

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Boeing and NASA set July 30th for 2nd unmanned Starliner demo mission

5:40 pm

Capitalism in space: Boeing and NASA today announced that they have now scheduled the second unmanned Starliner demo mission to ISS for July 30th.

In separate statements, the agency and the company said they were planning to launch the Starliner on a United Launch Alliance Atlas 5 at 2:53 p.m. Eastern July 30 on the Orbital Flight Test (OFT) 2 mission. A launch that day would allow the spacecraft to dock with the International Space Station on the evening of July 31.

The new launch date comes after NASA and Boeing completed an “integrated mission dress rehearsal” for the mission using a simulator at a Boeing facility in Houston. The five-day simulation covered activities starting 26 hours before launch and going through landing, including docking and undocking from the station.

Both Boeing and NASA are still hopeful that the first manned flight of Starliner can still take place before the end of this year. Whether it does or not will largely depend on how well things go on this unmanned demo flight.

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Bezos sells $2.4 billion in Amazon stock

9:32 am

Capitalism in space: According to SEC filings, Jeff Bezos this week sold $2.4 billion in Amazon stock, adding to all his increasing stock sales in recent years.

Bezos said in 2017 that he was selling $1 billion a year to fund his Blue Origin space venture, but he has been increasing the size and frequency of the stock sales recently. He sold more than $7 billion last year. This is his first stock sale of 2021.

By my count of all his sales since 2017, Bezos has raised about $12 billion in cash. Of this, he has said that he wants to spend $10 billion on fighting “climate change,” as well as at least $1 billion per year on Blue Origin.

One way or the other, Blue Origin has far more cash available to it than SpaceX. Too bad Bezos’ company has done so little with it in the past four years. Four years ago the company was truly a viable competitor to SpaceX, though behind it in the curve. Then Bezos hired a new CEO, Bob Smith, to run the company. The development pace slowed to a crawl as the company shifted gears from using Bezos’ money to fund development to trying to obtain government money instead. That shift forced Blue Origin to bow to government demands, which in turn slowed development of their New Glenn orbital rocket. The company also took the big space approach toward development of its lunar lander, pausing all real design and construction until it won the NASA contract. This made it less attractive a bid, which is one reason SpaceX’s Starship won the contract instead.

In addition, the company ended the many and frequent test flights of New Shepard that had been occurring, slowing the pace to about one launch per year.

In that time Blue Origin lost so much ground that it will now be difficult, but not impossible, to catch up. Maybe these cash sales by Bezos is to give him the capital to catch up. I hope so. We need real competitors to SpaceX.

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Starship #15 launches AND lands successfully

3:43 pm

Starship #15 about to land

Starship #15 after landing

Capitalism in space: On the 60th anniversary of Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight, making him the first American to fly in space, SpaceX has successfully launched and landed its fifteenth Starship prototype.

The flight appeared remarkably smooth, except for the cameras on board which dropped out for much of the flight. The first image shows the rocket coming down just before touch down. At this moment it was dropping very smoothly, and landed very gently on the landing pad.

The second image was taken about thirty seconds after landing. There was a fire at the rocket’s base being extinguished by the water fire control system. Other than that, the rocket appears whole and undamaged.

As I write this, it is about ten minutes after landing, the fires at the rocket’s base have been put out, and all seems under control. I expect that SpaceX engineers will finally have a fully intact prototype that they can inspect for future design revisions. For example, the skin of this prototype has many thermal tiles attached. They can now see if their attachment system works.

I have embedded the 16 minute live stream of the flight below the fold. Enjoy!
» Read more

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How to watch the first flight of Starship prototype #15

2:50 pm

Starship #15 on launchpad, May 5, 2021
Screen capture from LabPadre Nerdle camera live stream.

UPDATED and BUMPED. The SpaceX live stream is now embedded below the fold. It is set to go live in about five minutes before launch, with the launch now set for about 5:25 pm (Central).

Capitalism in space: The roads have now closed at Boca Chica, Texas, in preparation for today’s test flight of SpaceX’s 15th Starship prototype.

The following live streams are presently available if you wish to watch:

I will add other live streams as they become available. If SpaceX adds its own live stream I will embed it below.
» Read more

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Virgin Galactic under investigation by law firm

10:12 am

Labaton Sucharow, a law firm that specializes in “representing clients in securities, antitrust, corporate governance and shareholder rights, and consumer cybersecurity and data privacy litigation,” has opened an investigation into Virgin Galactic’s decision on May 3rd to delay the release of its first quarterly report by six days.

Labaton Sucharow, a nationally ranked and award-winning shareholder rights law firm, is investigating potential securities violations and breach of fiduciary duty claims against Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. (NYSE:SPCE).

On May 4, Virgin Galactic Holdings Inc. closed down over 9% on enormous volume after the space tourism company said it would restate certain past financial results in the wake of recent comments by the Securities and Exchange Commission on the accounting treatment of deals involving special-purpose acquisition companies.

The stock price is still falling, by the way.

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Blue Origin to auction the first seat on the first New Shepard tourist flight

10:01 am

Capitalism in space: Blue Origin announced today that it going to auction to the highest bidder the first tourist seat on the first New Shepard tourist flight, now scheduled for July 20, 2021, a little over two months from now. From the company^s website, where you can bid:

On July 20th, New Shepard will fly its first astronaut crew to space. We are offering one seat on this first flight to the winning bidder of an online auction.

There are three phases of the auction:

  • MAY 5-19: Sealed online bidding – you can bid any amount you want on the auction website (no bids are visible)
  • MAY 19: Unsealed online bidding – the bids become visible and participants must exceed the highest bid to continue in the auction
  • JUNE 12: Live auction – the bidding concludes with a live online auction.

The winning bid amount will be donated to Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future, to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM and help invent the future of life in space.

This is a very smart move, as it will generate some excitement and interest. It also schedules this private suborbital flight ahead of SpaceX’s first private orbital flight in September, allowing Blue Origin to upstage its rival somewhat.

It also is designed to help Blue Origin gauge the true interest in suborbital tourism. The final price will give them a good idea the right price to charge future passengers in order to sell the most tickets.

Finally, the timing of everything shows a nice historic touch. The announcement today took place on the 60th anniversary of Alan Shepard’s suborbital flight. The flight itself will take place on the 52rd anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the Moon.

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Sierra Nevada gets clearance to land Dream Chaser in Florida

4:58 pm

Capitalism in space: Sierra Nevada today announced that it has now gotten clearance to land its Dream Chaser-class Tenacity spacecraft at the Kennedy Space Center, with a hoped-for first flight in ’22.

The Use Agreement makes SNC the first commercial user of Space Florida’s FAA Re-entry Site Operator License and provides the runway and support facilities needed during testing and landing. It also takes SNC one step further in applying for its own FAA re-entry license, something needed ahead of the first Dream Chaser mission next year.

Because Tenacity is a cargo freighter only, they do not plan a significant test program prior to that first launch to ISS.

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SpaceX successfully launches another 60 Starlink satellites

1:10 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 60 Starlink satellites into orbit, using its Falcon 9 rocket.

This raises the number of Starlink satellites to more than 1,600. The first stage also landed safely, completing its ninth flight.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

13 SpaceX
11 China
7 Russia
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 18 to 11 in the national rankings.

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Firefly raises $75 million in investment capital

10:58 am

Capitalism in space: Firefly announced today that it has raised an $75 million in investment capital, with plans for a future fund-raising round aimed at bringing in another $300 million following the inaugural launch of its Alpha rocket.

The launch itself has been delayed several times, from December and March. It now appears they are targeting mid-June.

The company claims the delays were caused by two factors, the failure of a subcontractor to deliver on time the flight termination system, and the company taking longer than expected to prepare its launchpad at Vandenberg.

On a positive note, the company received its FCC launch license a few weeks ago, which had been held up due to security concerns over the company’s former main investor, Ukrainian billionaire Max Polykov. It appears that when Polykov sold off much of his stock so that he no longer controls the company, this eliminated the security concerns.

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Rocket engine startup Ursa Major Technologies

9:47 am

Capitalism in space: While there appear to presently be about 100+ new rocket company startups competing to garner market share in the growing satellite launch industry, it appears there is only one startup, Ursa Major Technologies, focused solely on building rocket engines for those rockets.

The company’s business model is based on the idea that while many launch providers make their own propulsion systems, others will choose outsourcing so they don’t have to invest money and time in risky engine development.

It presently has a small engine, dubbed Hadley, that is set to launch on another company’s rocket in ’22, and a larger engine, dubbed Ripley, that is being developed and has a contract for use by the new rocket startup Phantom Space.

In a sense this company is conceivable in competition with Momentus, which builds and sells a space tug, essentially an upper stage engine, for moving smallsats from one orbit to another. Both are aiming for a niche within the new smallsat industry by providing rockets and satellites engines.

If the industry grows as big as hoped, both will likely have plenty of business.

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