Chiara Kilchling – The Rain Song
An evening pause: A nice cover of the Led Zeppelin song.
Hat tip Lou Foss.
Tag: commercial
Musk: Starship/Superheavy launchpad essentially undamaged after launch
Click for original image.
In a tweet posted only a short time ago, Elon Musk announced that the redesigned and rebuilt Boca Chica launchpad experienced little or no damage during the launch of Superheavy/Starship on November 18, 2023.
Just inspected the Starship launch pad and it is in great condition!
No refurbishment needed to the water-cooled steel plate for next launch.
Congrats to @Spacex team & contractors for engineering & building such a robust system so rapidly!
Musk included the picture to the right in the tweet, showing the essentially undamaged launchpad pad. A close looks suggests there was some damage to the rear pillar near the top, but overall it appears the next launch could occur here very quickly.
Musk of course is wrong about who he credits for redesigning and rebuilding this launchpad. The real credit must go to the FAA bureaucrats who led the investigation and must have clearly guided those SpaceX engineers and contractors. To expect private citizens to think for themselves and come up with such difficult engineering without supervision from government paper-pushers in Washington is unreasonable and unfair. Maybe the Biden Justice Department should consider another lawsuit against Musk, this time for spreading more disinformation!
Moreover, who cares that the launchpad deluge system worked exactly as planned? We must allow Fish & Wildlife to spend several months now to investigate this launch — as well as write a long report of many words — to make sure that deluge of water did not harm any of the wildlife that lives on this barrier island, which has a water table of essentially zero and is flooded regularly and repeatedly by storms over time.
Anyone who disagrees is clearly a bigoted racist who wants to harm little children!
SpaceX launches 22 Starlink satellites
The beat goes on: SpaceX early this morning launched another 22 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandeberg in California.
The first stage completed its 15th flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
85 SpaceX
52 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise now leads China 97 to 52 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 97 to 81. SpaceX by itself is now leads the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 85 to 81.
SpaceX successfully launches Superheavy and Starship
Note how all 33 Superheavy engines are firing.
SpaceX this morning successfully launched its Superheavy/Starship heavy lift rocket into its test orbit.
The test flight achieved far more than the first test in April. First, during the entire flight of Superheavy all 33 Raptor-2 engines fired normally. None cut out prematurely. Then at very risky hot fire stage separation — where the second stage (Starship) ignited prior to separation from Superheavy — the correct number of engines shut down, Starship’s engines fired, and Superheavy successfully separated and began its maneuvers for a soft splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico.
At that point mission controllers issued the self-destruct command to destroy Superheavy. Though it appeared that the stage was struggling to flip for its controlled return to Earth, it is also very likely that mission controllers wanted to test that flight termination system after its not perfect performance on the first test flight. Then, the self-destruct command did not activate the instant the command was given, being delayed by about 40 seconds. This time it appeared it worked as planned.
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SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites
While everyone is focused on the Starship/Superheavy launch scheduled for tomorrow at 7 am (Central) at Boca Chica, SpaceX tonight launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.
The first stage successfully completed it eleventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2023 launch race:
84 SpaceX
52 China
14 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 India
American private enterprise still leads China 96 to 52 in successful launches, and the entire world combined 96 to 81. SpaceX by itself is now leads the rest of the world (excluding American companies) 84 to 81.
German rocket startup signs deal with Norwegian spaceport
The German rocket startup Isar Aerospace has signed a deal to provide the Andoya spaceport in the north of Norway with a new flight tracking and safety system, to be used by all launches including Isar’s own Spectrum rocket.
The purpose of the autonomous flight tracking system is to precisely and reliably keeping track of the Spectrum launch vehicle’s position, speed and direction of travel as it ascends to orbit, which is important to guarantee Andøya Spaceport’s flight safety requirements. The objective is to further evaluate the use of the system in enabling automated flight termination functionality for launches by Andøya Spaceport’s ground system, autonomously triggering an abort of the mission if ever operational parameters of the launch vehicle are out of bounds.
This announcement today illustrates the rising competition between German rocket startups and European spaceports. Yesterday the Saxavord spaceport in Scotland and another German rocket startup, HyImpulse, announced their own launch deal. Today’s announcement is the response from Andoya and Isar.
Today’s announcement also increases the pressure in the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to get its regulatory act together. Andoya is positioning itself as a good alternative to the two new British spaceports in Scotland, as shown by the red dots on the map above, should red tape in the UK slow launches there.
House committee delays vote on commercial space bill due to new White House proposal
Because of the sudden announcement by the White House of its own version of a new commercial regulatory space bill, the House Science committee was forced to delay the voting on November 15, 2023 of its own new commercial space bill, put forth by Republicans.
The committee met Nov. 15 to mark up the Commercial Space Act of 2023 and one other bill. At the end of the markup, lasting more than three and a half hours including a recess, the committee’s chairman, Frank Lucas (R-Okla.) said the committee would delay votes to advance both bills until after the Thanksgiving break because of votes on the House floor and “and the nature of additional information that has become available to us.”
The latter comment appeared to be a reference to a legislative proposal released by the White House’s National Space Council less than an hour before the markup regarding a mission authorization concept for new space activities. That proposal would establish a system where both the Commerce Department and the Transportation Department would oversee activities not regulated today, based on the type of activity.
The House bill, introduced Nov. 2 by Lucas and space subcommittee chairman Rep. Brian Babin (R-Texas), would create its own mission authorization system at the Commerce Department. It would also direct Commerce to hand over responsibility for a civil space traffic coordination system to a consortium led by an academic or nonprofit organization, rather than keeping it within the Office of Space Commerce as currently planned. Lucas, in his opening remarks, said he was aware of the new White House proposal but has reservations about it. “These proposals, I fear, simply go in the wrong direction and hurt rather than support America’s space industry,” he said.
Both bills were aimed at realigning the regulatory regime governing private space activities. The House bill’s final form apparently had been written with a lot of industry input. The White House bill, supported by Democrats, appears designed instead to clamp down on commercial space by allowing the federal bureaucracy to regulate everything.
Both bills unfortunately give too much power to the federal government, though the Republican bill at least tries to shift some of that power to the private sector, where it belongs.
One of the main reasons we have had a rennaisance in commercial space in the past decade is that there has been little regulation. The private sector has been left to regulate itself, and it has generally done so very successfully because of the invisible hand of free market forces. Build things right and the world beats a path to your door. Do it badly and no regulation is needed, you go out of business.
Modern Americans no longer trust these fundamentals of freedom and capitalism, and so we have a rush by government to establish “rules,” none of which will really accomplish anything but slow development and innovation and squelch this emerging industry.
Sierra Space shakes up its staffing
Sierra Space yesterday did a major staffing shake up, laying off 165 workers while shifting 150 with secruity clearances from its parent company Sierra Nevada.
Sierra Space this week shipped the first Dream Chaser, named Tenacity, for pre-launch testing at NASA’s Armstrong facility in Ohio. The layoffs began soon after, the Sierra Space spokesperson said, noting the company conducted a surge in hiring this year to complete work on the Tenacity spacecraft.
With Tenacity shipped, Sierra Space’s spokesperson said the company is realigning to focus on the operations phase of Dream Chaser’s first mission, as well as on classified national security work. The latter part of Sierra Space’s realignment includes adding nearly 150 employees with security clearances from Sierra Nevada Corp., the aerospace and defense contractor owned by Fatih and Eren Ozmen, which the space company was spun out of two years ago. Sierra Space’s spokesperson said the company is creating a national security space team to work on several classified contracts.
This shift suggests that at least in the short run, Sierra is putting more focus on future military contracts rather than its civilian manned space projects like its LIFE space module (for the Orbital Reef space station) and future manner versions of its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle. I wonder if the company is having more internal doubts about Orbital Reef and its main partner, Blue Origin. Unlike the stations being built by Axiom and Voyager Space, which have already garnered contracts from both national and international customers, Orbital Reef has not done the same. There could be great doubts in the space community it will be built because of Blue Origin’s absymal record for building anything.
John Tams – Over the hills and far away
An evening pause: I’m not sure if John Tams is singing, but these are his lyrics used in the British historical television series, Sharpe, set to a traditional British song from the 18th century (hence the line “King George commands and we obey). I like this lyric however:
When Evil stalks upon the land
I’ll neither hold nor stay me hand
But fight to win a better day,
Over the hills and far away.
Hat tip Alton Blevins.
Amazon’s first two Kuiper satellites in orbit worked exactly as planned
Amazon announced today that its first two Kuiper satellites, launched into orbit by ULA’s Atlas-5 rocket on October 6, 2023, have worked exactly as planned, thus allowing the company to begin building operational satellites.
With the prototypes’ testing in space now complete, Badyal said Amazon plans to begin building the first production Kuiper satellites in December and launch the first satellites for its network in the “latter part of the first half” of 2024. Badyal emphasized that Amazon wasn’t sure what performance to expect from the prototype satellites, since “you don’t know how well it’s going to work in space.”
“They’re working brilliantly,” Badyal said.
The need of Amazon to start launching lots of satellites next year — in order to meet its FCC license requirements to put half of its 3,000+ constellation in orbit by 2026 — puts great pressure on ULA, Blue Origin, and Arianespace to get their new but as yet unlaunchd rockets operating. All three have big launch contracts with Amazon, but none presently appear to have the capability to meet the demands of those contracts.
Starship/Superheavy test launch delayed to November 18, 2023
SpaceX has pushed back the orbital test launch of its Starship/Superheavy rocket one day, to November 18, 2023, because one of the rocket’s grid fins was not working properly during a prelaunch test.
The new launch window opens at 7 am (Central), but is now only twenty minutes long. SpaceX says it will begin its live stream on X and here 35 minutes before liftoff.
Saxavord spaceport gets launch deal from German rocket startup
The Saxavord spaceport, one of two being built in Scotland, has signed a launch deal from the German rocket startup Hy-Impulse, with two suborbital test launches scheduled for next year and an orbital launch targeting 2025.
HyImpulse, a launch services provider and DLR spinoff based in Baden-Württemberg, Germany, is currently gearing up for its inaugural suborbital launch early next year from Australia. It will however look to conduct two suborbital launches from SaxaVord Spaceport, located in Scotland’s Shetland Islands, from August 2024 onwards. HyImpulse has already secured an Air Navigation Order (ANO) license from the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority for one launch.
These will be followed by first orbital launches from late 2025 onwards. The plan envisions rising to full commercial operations by 2030.
All this assumes that the UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) can issue the launch licenses in time. After all it only six to ten months to approve those suborbital launches, and almost two years to approve the orbital launch. So far the CAA has proven unable to approve anything within even those long time frames.