John Lee Hooker & Van Morrison – Baby Please Don’t Go
An evening pause: Performed live 1992.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Tag: commercial
Rocket Lab to refly a recovered first stage
Rocket Lab today announced that a first stage used on a launch in January and recovered successfully from the ocean, as shown to the right, has now been moved into its normal production line for preparation for a reflight on an upcoming launch.
The stage was successfully launched and recovered as part of the ‘Four of a Kind’ mission on 31 January 2024 and has already passed more acceptance tests than any other recovered Electron stage, including:
- Tank pressurization test – a process that filled the carbon composite tank with inert gas and held it in excess of maximum operating pressure for more than 20x longer than the standard Electron flight duration
- Helium leak check – a stringent process that determines there are no leaks in the tank
- Carbon fiber structural testing – including ultrasonic assessment and other non-destructive tests to confirm no delamination of the carbon composite tank fibers.
The stage will now undergo final fit out and rigorous qualification and acceptance testing to the same standard as a brand-new Electron tank to determine the recovered stage’s suitability for reflight.
No actual launch date has been set. The company first wants to complete its final testing. If successful and the stage flies again, Rocket Lab will join a very elite club, becoming only the second entity anywhere — after SpaceX capable of reusing a significant part of its rockets. That capability will allow it to drop prices, and better compete.
This success also underlines the lack of creativity from more than a half century of managers and rocket engineers, who repeatedly insisted such reuse was impractical, or impossible. The idea of recovering a stage from the ocean and reusing it was considered crazy, so no one ever tried it. Rocket Lab is about to prove more than a half century of managers and rocket engineers wrong.
Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.
SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites
The bunny never stops! SpaceX tonight successfully launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage completed its second flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
37 SpaceX
14 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 43 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 37 to 31.
Art Garfunkel – All I Know
An evening pause: Performed live 1996.
ULA completes last Delta-4 Heavy launch
Delta-4 Heavy on its last launch
ULA today successfully completed the last Delta-4 launch, the Delta-4 Heavy version — the most powerful — lifting off from Cape Canaveral and placing a National Reconnaissance Office surveillance satellite into orbit.
From this point on ULA will rely on its new Vulcan-Centaur and Atlas-5 rockets, though production of the Atlas-5 has ceased. When the remaining Atlas-5s are flown, the Vulcan-Centaur in its many iterations will become the company’s mainstay rocket. All this might change depending on who buys ULA. If Blue Origin buys the company, the mix will be more complex, as that company is developing its own New Glenn rocket.
This was ULA’s second launch in 2024, so there is no change to the leader board in the 2024 launch race:
36 SpaceX
14 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 42 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 36 to 31.
Turkey to join China’s lunar base program
Turkey yesterday announced that it is applying to join China’s program to build a lunar base on the Moon, dubbed the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), becoming the ninth nation in that partnership.
Those nations are Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Pakistan, Russia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. In addition, another nine academic organizations of one kind or another have signed on.
Interestingly, Turkey’s government apparently decided to partner with China after it flew its own astronaut on Axiom’s AX-3 mission to ISS in January, flying in a SpaceX Dragon capsule launched by SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Previously it had also signed a deal with Sierra Space to participate in both its Dream Chaser and Orbital Reef station.
This new agreement suggests the present instability of international politics has forced it to go to its very powerful neighbors. Or maybe Turkey is signing on with everyone, attempting to burn the candle at both ends.
New startup to launch a new design for inflatable modules
A new startup, dubbed Max Space, is presently building a test inflatable module it hopes to fly on a SpaceX launch in 2025, testing its new design for inflatable modules that it says is safer and more easily scalable.
Max Space is taking a different technical approach to earlier systems that used a bi-directional “basket weave” fabric structure. “When you start making fibers go in two different directions, 90 degrees apart, the result is you don’t know how much load is going in one direction or the other,” said Maxim de Jong, co-founder and chief technology officer of Max Space, whose past work included development of [Bigelow’s private] Genesis 1 and 2 [orbital modules]. That requires additional material to ensure sufficient margins of safety and also makes it difficult to scale up designs to larger volumes. “Every scale-up is a point design and has to be revalidated,” he said.
Max Space is pursuing a technology called an ultra-high-performance vessel created by de Jong that distributes loads in one direction, a design that he credited to a “totally accidental discovery” while working on other concepts. That reduces the uncertainty in safety margins, which has been demonstrated in tests where modules burst at pressures within 10% of predicted levels. “The predictability is great and the scalability is great,” he said.
According to the company, this design will allow it to quickly build modules with as much as a thousand cubic meters volume, matching ISS in a single module, and able to launch on a single Falcon 9.
The company is not planning its own station. Instead, it simply wishes to be a provider of modules to the other American space stations, four of which are presently being built. It also is offering its modules as potential fuel depots as well as in-orbit storage faciliites.
Primal Space – The Longest Eclipse Ever
An evening pause: Using a Concorde jet in 1973 to chase the shadow for 74 minutes.
Hat tip Wayne Devette.
SpaceX launches 11 commercial payloads
SpaceX today successfully launched 11 commercial payloads into orbit, as the first of what it calls its Bandwagon series, designed to provide launch ssatellites to medium inclination Earth orbits. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, its first stage completing its fourteenth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
36 SpaceX
14 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 41 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 36 to 30.
Musk provides update to his Boca Chica crew
The candidate landing zone on Mars for Starship
Elon Musk yesterday gave a 44-minute update on Starship/Superheavy to his team in Boca Chica, outlining what he now expects in the next two years as well as in the next two decades.
You can watch his presentation here. Musk began by once again describing his fundamental goal behind the company, to make the human race multi-planetary, for its own survival, and that Mars is at this time the best choice for doing so. He then provided some details about the on-going development of Starship/Superheavy:
- SpaceX will be ready to launch 4th test flight in early May
- There is an 80-90% chance they will attempt a tower landing of Superheavy, caught by its chopstick arms, by the end of this year
- Starship will require at least two precision ocean landings before they attempt a tower landing
- To provide tower redundancy for these test landings, by next year they will have 2 towers at Boca Chica, 2 at Cape Canaveral, with Cape Canaveral operational by next year
- In 2024 they hope to build 6 Superheavys and Starships for test flights
- By 2025 they plan to test full refueling of Starship in orbit
- The third iteration of Starship/Superheavy will be capable of placing 200 tons in orbit
- That third iteration will cost less to launch than Falcon 1, $2-3 million
- To make a base on Mars self-sufficient quickly, he anticipates sending large fleets of Starships every two years, everytime the flight window to Mars opens.
- The preferred landing sites will be in the low mid-latitudes, 30-40 degrees, with elevations two kilometers below the Martian “sea level”, to take advantage of a thick atmosphere.
- If all goes as planned, Musk expects SpaceX to establish a Mars colony in about two decades
That next-to-last bullet point fits perfectly with the region north of Amazonis Planitia, as shown on the map above, where SpaceX has requested numerous images from the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It is two kilometers below the “sea level” of Mars. It is at a latitude either on or close to 40 degrees north latitude. It is a region that orbital data says has lots of very near-surface ice. And it is flat, making those first landings relatively safe.
SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites, with 6 capable of direct-to-cell service
The beat goes on: SpaceX tonight launched another 22 Starlink satellites, six of which were capable of direct-to-cell service. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg, with its first stage completing its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2024 launch race:
35 SpaceX
14 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab
American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 40 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 35 to 30.
Varda quickly raises $90 million after completing its first orbital manufacturing mission
As expect, Varda announced yesterday that it raised $90 million in investment capital following the publication of the results of its first orbital manufacturing mission, where its returnable capsule was used to produce test pharmaceuticals in space that cannot be made on Earth.
Varda announced April 5 it raised a Series B round led by venture firm Caffeinated Capital, with participation from Lux Capital, General Catalyst, Founders Fund and Khosla Ventures. The company has raised $145 million to date. The funding round comes on the heels of the successful conclusion of its first demonstration mission, W-1, on Feb. 21 when the company’s capsule landed at the Utah Test and Training Range. The capsule had been part of a spacecraft launched in June 2023 to test the ability to produce pharmaceuticals in microgravity.
The new funding will allow Varda to scale up production of spacecraft that take advantage of microgravity to produce pharmaceuticals that are not possible or cost-effective to make on the ground.
The company already has a second returnable capsule scheduled for launch this summer on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket.