An evening pause: Its an “official video,” so much of this is lip synched footage cobbled together to make what looks like a single performance. Much of it however is the actual performance, and the song is good.
Hat tip James Street.
As ULA prepares for the second launch of its new Vulcan rocket, presently scheduled for launch tomorrow at 6 am (Eastern), it held a press briefing on October 2, 2024 to provide an update on the rocket’s present and future status.
The key takeaways, assuming this launch succeeds as planned, as noted in a tweet by reporter Jeff Foust from Space News:
Completing three Vulcan launches in the next three months will almost match the four launches the company has so far completed in the first nine months of the year. Furthermore, considering that ULA’s previous record for launches in a single year is 16, set in 2009, and that the company has not completed more than ten launches in a year since 2016, these plans are very ambitious indeed.
If it succeeds however in just getting close to these numbers, ULA will be doing very well indeed.
Several European phone companies have now submitted a request to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block a waiver that would allow SpaceX to operate its new cell-to-satellite Starlink satellites at radio frequencies normally not permitted.
This request follows similar requests by Verizon and AT&T to the FCC. The fear is that the use of these frequencies in the low orbit of Starlink satellites will interfere with satellites in the much higher geosynchronous orbits that these phone companies presently use.
While those concerns might be valid (SpaceX says no), these companies also fear the competition of Starlink itself, as its low orbit means it can provide better service, and are clearly hoping the FCC will act to protect them from that competition.
In a more sane world, the FCC would decide this issue on purely technical grounds. It was formed expressly to police the frequencies so that users would not interfere or pirate each others licenses, and had done that job quite well for decades.
Sadly, the FCC no longer confines itself to this one job. For the past four years the FCC has arbitrarily decided its job should include many other things not listed in its statutory authority, such as policing the de-orbiting of satellites and determining the acceptable lifespans of orbiting spacecraft, while also making many decisions based entirely on political factors, sometimes even favoring some companies over others for partisan reasons.
Thus we should have no confidence that the FCC will make this decision on purely technical grounds, especially since it has shown a clear hostility to SpaceX in its recent decisions.
An evening pause: Performed live 1977. The filmwork leaves a lot to be desired, and the sound might not come from this particular performance. No matter. Just listen to the music.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
A US Coast Guard announcement issued today includes a notice to mariners of a rocket launch window at Boca Chica from October 12th to October 19th, suggesting that SpaceX has gotten an update from the FAA that a launch license will be issued for those dates, more than a month earlier than previously predicted by the FAA.
It must be emphasized that this notice is from the Coast Guard, not the FAA. The FAA has said nothing new about SpaceX’s launch license application. This notice suggests several possiblilites, all or none of which may be true:
1. The FAA has told SpaceX privately that it expects to issue that license in time for a launch in two weeks, and SpaceX then moved quickly to get the Coast Guard in line.
2. SpaceX and the Coast Guard are working together to increase the pressure on the FAA to get out of the way.
3. The public condemnations of the FAA by SpaceX in the past few weeks have worked to force that agency to back off its hardnosed regulatory over-reach.
All of this is wild speculation. For all we know, this Coast Guard notice is something it always issues prior to major static fire tests at Boca Chica. We shall have to wait to get a better sense of what is happening.
Hat tip to reader Steve Richter.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has awarded a Polish rocket startup, dubbed SpaceForest, โฌ2.4 million to upgrade its suborbital Perun rocket that the company has test launched twice in last year.
Perun runs on modified paraffin, commonly used as candle wax, and so its propellant is non-toxic. The rocket can be launched on a mobile launch pad, allowing for easy deployment at launch facilities around Europe. Last year, SpaceForest launched two full-scale models of its Perun rocket that flew to 22 km and 13 km altitude from the coastal town of Ustka, Poland, on the Baltic Sea.
This company is now the second Polish rocket startup to have successfully tested its rocket. The ลukasiewicz Institute of Aviation has completed suborbital test flights of its ILR-33 Amber 2K rocket, and has a deal to fly its next test from Norway’s commercial Andoya spaceport.
The orbital tug startup Impulse Space announced yesterday that it has raised $150 million in private investment capital, money it will use to develop its planned two tugs, dubbed Mira and Helios.
So far the company, founded by former SpaceX engineer Tom Mueller, has only flown one mission, a demo mission of Mira last year that had some communications and software problems but was still declared a success.
Both Mira and Helios use chemical propulsion systems that offer large amounts of delta-v, or change in velocity, that can be provided quickly. Impulse said when it announced Helios that the vehicle could take a five-ton satellite from low Earth orbit to geostationary orbit in less than a day.
It hopes to fly an upgraded version of Mira late next year, and the first Helios mission in 2026.
An evening pause: Performed live 1995.
Hat tip Ferris.
Gogo, which provides internet access for business jets, has now purchased its main competitor Satcom Direct, in order to provide a service that can better compete with Starlink.
Satcom Direct would get $375 million in cash and five million shares from Gogo under a deal announced Sept. 30, subject to regulatory approvals, and up to $225 million in extra payments tied to performance targets over the next four years, suggesting around $636 million in maximum total proceeds.
Gogo has historically dominated the small and midsize part of the business aviation market and connects about 7,000 planes, according to William Blair analyst Louie DiPalma, while Satcom Direct has a commanding market share for long-haul.
Combined, William Blair estimates the companies are providing Wi-Fi to around 8,200 of the 9,200 business jets that currently have connectivity โ or nearly 90% of the market.
Gogo’s share price has dropped 70% since 2022 in the face of Starlink’s recent signing of numerous airline companies. The stock market obviously thinks Starlink is eventually going to capture the business jet customer as well. This deal will possibly allow Gogo to compete more effectively.
According to a report in Reuters, the FAA yesterday announced that it has grounded SpaceX from any further launches, two days after SpaceX had already paused launches, the action triggered when the second stage of Saturday’s Falcon 9 launch to ISS failed to fire its de-orbit burn properly, thus causing the stage to splashdown outside its target zone in the Pacific.
This action is a perfect example of the FAA’s extraneous interference. SpaceX was already on the case. It doesn’t need the FAA to kibbitz it, since no one at the FAA has any qualifications for providing any useful advice. All the FAA accomplishes here is get in the way.
The FAA’s action also likely falls outside its statutory authority. The stage landed in the ocean, causing no damage or threat to public safety, the only areas the FAA’s authority resides. And if the agency now deems returning equipment part of its licensing requirements, why did it didn’t say anything about the uncertain nature of the return of Boeing’s Starliner capsule, which targeted a landing on land and could have easily ended up crashing in the wrong spot because its own thrusters were untrustworthy?
The FAA is playing favorites here, and needs to be reined in, badly.
An evening pause: Performed live 1973.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
A spaceport startup, the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC), has successfully launched two small suborbital demonstration rockets from the island of Santa Maria in the Azores of Portugal, where it hopes to eventually establish a spaceport.
The first of the two flights was launched from a mobile platform at 13:04 UTC on 27 September. The rocket reached an altitude of 5,596 metres. The second was launched at 11:49 UTC on 28 September 2024. According to the company, the second launch โwas not perfect,โ but it did not provide any further details on what occurred during the flight.
The rocket was developed and built by ASC, and was intended to demonstrate its own rocket capabilities as well as provide information to the Portuguese government for establishing its own regulatory guidelines, as per an agreement signed in August.
