Tag: commercial

New Glenn launched delayed one more day because of rough seas

5:10 pm

Blue Origin announced today that it is delaying its first launch of its orbital New Glenn rocket by one day to 1 am (Eastern) Monday morning.

The company’s tweet explained that “sea state conditions are still unfavorable for booster landing.”

Without question this will be a truly heart-stopping launch. Blue Origin needs to get New Glenn operational, and it trying to also achieve its first vertical landing of the first stage on the first launch.

Right now all you need to do is stay up a little late Sunday night to watch.

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SpaceX completes two launches, reusing first stage a record number of times

12:41 pm

Since early this morning SpaceX successfully completed two launches from opposite coasts.

First, in the early morning the company placed a National Reconnaissance Office payload into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 22nd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The fairings completed their 9th and 16th flights respectively. It is believed but not confirmed that the payload was another batch of “Starshield” satellites, SpaceX’s military version of Starlink.

Next, SpaceX sent another 23 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage I think set a new reuse record, completing its 25th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The 2024 launch race:

5 SpaceX
1 China

The reuse record is significant, as SpaceX’s fleet of first stages is beginning to record flight numbers comparable to NASA’s fleet of space shuttles, but it is doing so in far less time. For example, this 25th flight matches the entire number of flights by the shuttle Endeavour during its lifespan of almost two decades. This booster however accomplished the same number of reflights in only three and a half years.

In the next few years we should expect SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stage fleet to eclipse the numbers set by the shuttles, and do so in a very spectacular manner.

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Cruz reveals another area where red tape is blocking SpaceX at Boca Chica: roads

9:13 am

In a interview with a local news outlet in Texas, Senator Ted Cruz (R-Texas) revealed that the state’s bureaucracy is stymieing SpaceX at Boca Chica in another unexpected way, getting the road to the facility repaired and upgraded.

“SpaceX has offered to invest their own money to improve the highway, and the problem is they’re running into permitting obstacles, environmental permitting obstacles that is slowing it down,” Senator Cruz said.

Cruz is the new Chairman of the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation. There are steps he says he can take to fix these roads, even if it is not something that will directly address the issue. “As chairman of the Commerce Committee, I am very focused on permitting, on reducing the barriers of permitting, on speeding up the ability to do things like improve and expand State Highway Four,” Cruz said.

In a statement, Texas Department of Transportation spokesman Ray Pedraza said, “TxDOT is currently providing upgrades and pavement improvements for the existing SH 4 between Brownsville and Starbase Texas (SpaceX). TxDOT is also working with SpaceX on further planning and environmental efforts to achieve additional widening on SH 4 in the future.”

I think Cruz did this interview to apply some public pressure on the Texas Transportation Department. Hopefully it will get the tortoise moving.

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Correction: SpaceX DOES NOT launch 21 more Starlink satellites

10:31 am

CORRECTION: Reader BobT in the comments below noted that this launch is actually nothing more than a duplicate posting of the launch I counted yesterday. Thus, it doesn’t exist, and I have deleted it from my annual count.

As I note below in thanking BobT for noting the error, “This does illustrate something profound. Their launches are now so routine and frequent that it is possible to not realize you are rewatching one you viewed a day earlier. They all sound the same!”

The 2024 launch race thus remains unchanged:

3 SpaceX
1 China

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SpaceX is now targeting January 13, 2025 for 7th Starship/Superheavy test launch

10:21 am

In a tweet yesterday, SpaceX announced that it now intends to fly the seventh test orbital launch of Starship/Superheavy no earlier than January 13, 2025, with a launch window opening at 4 pm (Central).

The launch will test numerous new systems. Superheavy will test the reuse of one of the engines used on the fifth flight, brought back successfully when the booster was successfully caught by the tower chopsticks. It will also test improvements to the launch tower as another chopstick catch will be attempted. As for this Starship prototype, which the company calls Version 2, the upgrades and tests are extensive:

  • New avionics
  • Redesigns in the propulsion system
  • The flaps have been shrunk and shifted in position to prevent heat damage
  • The tiled heat shield system has been further upgraded
  • Deployment test of 10 dummy Starlink satellites
  • An in-orbit Raptor-2 engine relight

The last test is critical for future orbital test flights. On this test Starship will follow the same orbital flight path as the previous flights, low enough that the atmosphere will force it down without action over the Indian Ocean. SpaceX needs to prove that Starship’s Raptor-2 engines can reliably be restarted before it can go to full orbits that will require such a relight to accurately bring the spacecraft down at the right place.

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DeSantis: Put NASA headquarters in Florida

9:53 am

At an event yesterday Florida governor Ron DeSantis proposed moving NASA headquarters to Florida, saving the half a billion dollars NASA now wants to spend to build a brand new gold-plated new headquarters building in Washington.

[DeSantis:] “They have this massive building in Washington, D.C., and like nobody goes to it. So why not just shutter it and move everybody down here? I think they’re planning on spending like a half a billion to build a new building up in D.C. that no one will ever go to either. So hopefully with the new administration coming in, they’ll see a great opportunity to just headquarter NASA here on the Space Coast of Florida. I think that’d be very, very fitting.”

The NASA transition team for the Trump administration is already sent out a trial balloon about cutting the size of NASA headquarters considerably. That team has also proposed eliminating NASA centers in California and Maryland and consolidating their work into the Marshall Center in Alabama.

Note the trend: All these moves shifts money from decidedly Democratic states to Republican ones. The announced goal would be to reduce NASA’s overhead, but at the same time the moves would take money and power away from Democrat strongholds.

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The biggest members of ESA cut their annual contributions to the partnership

9:43 am

In a continuation of the recent trend to go their own way in space, most of the largest partners in the European Space Agency (ESA) have decided to cut back their annual contributions this year to the agency.

The European Space Agency’s 2025 budget has dropped below its 2024 level after Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom collectively cut their contributions by €430 million.

During his annual press briefing on 9 January, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher revealed that the ESA budget for 2025 would be €7.68 billion, down from €7.79 billion in 2024. The reduction in the agency’s budget could have been far worse, as all of the ‘big four’ countries, apart from France, significantly reduced their contributions.

Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, Belgium, and Spain all reduced their contributions. Except for Belgium, all have instead been recently diverting such funds directly either to space startups in their own country (see here and here), or forgoing contributing to large ESA projects and instead buying the services from other private sources (see here).

In general, it appears the bigger nations in Europe have realized that ESA has not been providing them a good deal. It takes their money, but doesn’t deliver competitive goods. Consider the Ariane-6 rocket. Conceived by ESA and ArianeGroup in 2015, it was five years late in launching. Worse, it was conceived as an entirely expendable rocket — even though SpaceX had just proven in ’15 that re-usability was possible — so that it is now too expensive to compete in today’s rocket market.

ESA also requires its projects to distribute contracts among all the partners, which increases costs and slows development.

In the past five years these countries have been increasingly bypassing ESA, especially when it comes to rocketry. Instead of having all European rockets built and managed by ESA’s commercial arm, Arianespace, these nations are switching to the capitalism model, whereby they each purchase launches from independent competing rocket companies.

The ESA budget cuts reflect this continuing trend. No point in giving cash to this moribund bureaucracy when the money can be better spent elsewhere.

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Rush – Limelight

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live 2012, but this was not before an audience but was simply their sound check performance beforehand to make sure the microphones were all at the right level to mix properly.

Hat tip to Ferris Akel, who adds “by a band that always took soundchecks very seriously.”

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Oman plans three more suborbital launches in ’25 from its proposed spaceport site

9:59 am

Middle East, showing Oman's proposed spaceport
The Middle East, showing the location of
Oman’s proposed spaceport at Duqm.

Oman is now planning three more suborbital launches from its proposed spaceport site at Duqm on the coast of the Indian Ocean, intended to further sell the location as a viable spaceport for use by others.

The first launch, of which little was revealed, took place in early December. What Oman’s state-run has revealed about the rocket is this:

Measuring 6.72m in length and weighing 123kg when fuelled, the rocket was developed with strict adherence to environmental and safety standards. … The Duqm-1 project involved 15 Omani engineers and technicians, who gained valuable experience in the space industry. While the rocket components were manufactured abroad, assembly took place locally, reflecting Oman’s efforts to transfer and localise advanced technologies.

I suspect the planned launches in 2025 will involve a similar-sized rocket. Though I know through various sources that Oman has been trying to encourage American rocket startups to consider this location, no deals have been made because of the State Department’s strict ITAR rules that are designed to prevent hostile nations from stealing American technology. The location however is a good one, and other Middle Eastern Arab nations might begin to consider it for their own rocket programs.

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Blue Origin fined by the Florida Department of Environmental Protection for using its launch deluge system

9:43 am

Because it conducted a static fire test using its launchpad deluge system in September 2024, before the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) had issued it a permit, the department has now fined Blue Origin $3,250.

The actual permit was subsequently approved in November 2024.

The story is very reminiscent of the red tape treatment SpaceX has been getting at Boca Chica. I am certain Blue Origin’s deluge system uses potable water (confirmed in the comments below), which will do no harm to the environment — proven by decades of government launches at both Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center. Yet, FDEP accuses the company of dumping “untreated industrial wastewater [in]to the environment.”

This story kind of proves that leftist politicians and activists can never stay bribed. Bezos for years has cozied up to the left with major donations to leftist organizations, including many many environmental groups. But when he finally gets ready to launch they are still ready and willing to make his life difficult.

It seems to me that Governor Ron DeSantis of Florida should have a conversation with the officials at FDEP that issued this fine, explaining to them that the real problem was likely that permitting was taking longer than it should, especially when everyone knows such deluge systems cause no harm. The permit should have been approved instantly.

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SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites; delays 7th Starship/Superheavy launch several days

9:14 am

Early today SpaceX successfully launched another 21 Starlink satellites, including 13 with direct-to-cell capabilities, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Kennedy in Florida.

The first stage completed its 3rd flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Elon Musk also indicated around the same time that the initially scheduled 7th Starship/Superheavy launch on January 10th has been delayed a few days into next week.

The 2024 launch race:

3 SpaceX
1 China

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NASA is considering two options for getting Perseverance’s Mars samples to Earth

12:48 pm

The previous plan for Mars Sample Return
The previous plan for Mars Sample Return

In a press briefing today, NASA officials announced it is considering two options for getting Perseverance’s Mars samples to Earth sooner and what it hopes will for less money.

In the first option, NASA would use already available and operational rockets to launch a larger rover to Mars, landing using a sky crane similar but larger than the one used successfully by both Curiosity and Perseverance. This rover would also have nuclear power system used by those rovers, as well as an arm similar to theirs, simplifying the design process. Under this option it appears NASA is abandoning the use of a helicopter for retrieval, as had previous been considered.

In the second option, NASA would rely on what administrator Bill Nelson called “the heavy-lifte capability of the commercial sector.” He specifically mentions SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy and Blue Origin’s New Glenn, but added that they are looking at the capabilities of the entire private sector right now.

In both operations, the retrieval rover would clean on Mars the outside of the cores to prevent them from contaminating Earth with Martian particles. Previously that cleaning process was to take place in space on the way back. They claim this change also simplifies things.

The final decision on which option to choose is now scheduled for 2026. NASA likely wishes to see more progress with getting Starship/Superheavy as well as New Glenn operational before deciding.

Note that at this press conference very little was said about the Mars ascent rocket, presently supposedly being built by Lockheed Martin. This is essentially building a full scale rocket only slightly less powerful that Earth-based rockets by a company that has never done it before. It seems the second option is likely going to include other options and other rocket companies for this task. The lack of mention suggests NASA was uncomfortable with mentioning this possibility.

In general, this project still feels incomplete and poorly thought out. Major components — such as the ascent vehicle — have not been worked out properly. The officials claimed these changes would make it possible to bring the samples back in the ’35-’39 time frame but I don’t believe it. What it does do is guarantee a large cash influx to NASA, something administrator Bill Nelson lobbied for during the conference, for the next decade-plus. And I think that was the real goal.

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The members of Trump’s NASA transition team

11:11 am

We now have the names of the individuals that are reviewing NASA’s future under the Trump administration:

  • Charles Miller: A member of the first Trump administration’s transition team, Miller is a former NASA official who is now the chairman of Lynk, a direct-to-device satellite company that is struggling to go public through a merger with a SPAC backed by baseball star Alex Rodriguez.
  • Greg Autry: A longtime advocate for commercial space, Autry is a professor at the University of Central Florida who also worked on the 2016 Trump NASA transition and was nominated to serve as NASA’s CFO, though Congress failed to approve his nomination. He’s signing his emails “DOGE/NASA Transition.”
  • Ryan Whitley: A NASA engineer who was detailed to the National Space Council during Trump’s previous term, Whitley last worked on the Artemis HLS program before spending just over a year at ispace, the Japanese lunar company.
  • Lorna Finman: A Stanford PhD who worked on the Star Wars program at Raytheon back in the day, Finman’s LinkedIn says she has been advising the Heritage Foundation on space policy since 2023.
  • Jim Morhard: The NASA deputy administrator during Trump’s first term, Morhard was a longtime GOP senate staffer.

All appear to have deep roots in either Washington or academic, but all also appear to have deep roots in the conservative side of the political spectrum. Several have even moved from NASA positions to the private sector. That latter fact explains the radical changes at NASA that this team has been considering, including canceling SLS and Orion and re-orienting the entire Artemis program using the private sector. In addition they are considering consolidating several NASA centers as well shrink staffing at NASA headquarters.

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Sierra Space CEO suddenly announces retirement

10:34 am

The CEO of Sierra Space, Tom Vice, revealed yesterday his decision to retire at the end of 2024, providing no reasons for the decision.

Vice had not previously announced any plans to retire from Sierra Space, where he had been chief executive since mid-2021. When the company issued the statement about his retirement, Vice was still listed on Sierra Space’s website in his roles as chief executive and a member of the company’s board of directors.

Sierra Space said that the chairman of the board of Sierra Space, Fatih Ozmen, would serve as interim chief executive while the company looks for a permanent replacement. He is chief executive and co-owner of Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), the company from which Sierra Space was spun out in 2021.

The coming year is going to be critical for Sierra, as it will finally launch Tenacity to ISS after years of delays. Should it fail, the company will face huge hurtles to survive. Maybe Vice, who is 61, decided it was time to actually retire. He also likely didn’t want take on that risk.

Overall Vice’s leadership had been good for Sierra. The company’s work accelerated significantly after it was spun off from Sierra Nevada.

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SpaceX launches 24 more Starlink satellites

1:53 pm

SpaceX today completed its second launch in 2025, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral carrying 24 Starlink satellites.

The first stage completed its seventeenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

At the moment SpaceX is the only one to complete any launches in 2025, two, though China was supposed to launch its Long March 3B rocket today as well.

I must add that I am very much under the weather today, which explains the limited posting.

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Trump administration considering major positive changes at NASA

8:45 am

According to a report two weeks ago by Eric Berger at Ars Technica and reviewed today by Mark Whittington at The Hill, the transition team for the Trump administration is reviewing a number of very major positive changes at NASA. The transition team has set up a five-person committee to review the following:

  • canceling the costly Space Launch System rocket and possibly the Orion spacecraft
  • Redesigning the entire Artemis program to make it more cost effective
  • Set a new goal to put humans on the Moon by 2028
  • consolidating three NASA centers into one to reduce overhead
  • Reducing the size of NASA headquarters

The first two recommendations would be doing what I have been recommending since 2011. SLS is an over-priced boondoggle that is too cumbersome and expensive. It can never do the job of establishing a lunar base, NASA’s prime goal. The same applies to Orion, which NASA for years touted as an interplanetary spaceship, an utter lie. It is merely an overweight ascent/descent capsule, nothing more.

The third recommendation is mostly for photo op purposes, since it is unlikely a manned landing can occur that quick, especially if the entire Artemis program is redesigned, replacing NASA’s the SLS rocket with SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy. At the same time, if Trump shuts down the FAA’s red tape, we might be seeing many test flights of this rocket in the next two years, accelerating its development considerably.

The last two recommendations match the only recommendation from my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space [free pdf here] that NASA has not yet embraced. I had recommended NASA reduce its overhead and bureaucracy, since it widely known in the business that its many agencies do relatively little for their cost. The rumored proposal under consideration is to consolidate the Goddard center in Maryland, the Ames center in California with the Marshall center in Alabama, with the new combined center in Alabama.

Getting this done however remains difficult. The centers exist because elected officials want them in their states and congressional districts. Expect strong resistance in Congress.

That the Trump administration is considering it anyway suggests these big changes are coming, regardless. And if so, I say Hallelujah!

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Italy’s military negotiating with SpaceX to use its Starlink constellation for communications

8:14 am

In what would be a five year deal costing $1.56 billion, Italy’s military is presently negotiating with SpaceX to use its Starlink constellation for communications, rather than wait for the European Space Agency’s (ESA) IRIS2 constellation, which is years from launch and likely to experience delays, as do all of ESA’s projects.

By negotiating a five-year deal with SpaceX, Italy may be aiming to bridge the gap until Europe’s IRIS2 system becomes operational. With the ongoing war in Eastern Europe, the country’s Armed Forces likely view secure military communications as an urgent priority. However, critics may argue that the €1.5 billion price tag represents 14.15% of the total IRIS2 budget for just five years of service. For context, Italy is the third-largest contributor to the European Union, with its €18.6 billion contribution in 2023 accounting for roughly 10% of the EU’s total budget.

This story illustrates the good business sense of Elon Musk. He moved to get Starlink in orbit ahead of anyone else, and now is reaping the cash awards because he can provide services while others cannot.

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SpaceX successfully completes the first launch in 2025

11:10 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched a commercial communications satellite for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairings completed their 16th and 19th flights respectively.

As this was the first launch in 2025, SpaceX is the only rocket company or nation on the leader board. This will not last long, as there are a lot of launches coming in the next few weeks, including the first launch attempt of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket, the seventh test orbital launch of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy, the first launch of China’s Long March 8 rocket, a launch of India’s GSLV rocket, and a number of SpaceX Falcon 9 launches, including one that will send Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander on its way to the Moon.

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FAA cancels one of three public meetings on the Starship/Superheavy environmental reassessment

9:38 am

The FAA today announced that it has canceled one of three meetings that it plans to hold in the Brownsville region next week to obtain public feedback on SpaceX’s request to increase its Starship/Superheavy launch rate at Boca Chica to 25 launches per year.

The FAA was scheduled to hold in-person public meetings on January 7th and 9th, 2025. However, due to the designation of January 9, 2025 as a National Day of Mourning to honor the late former President Jimmy Carter, the January 9th meetings are now cancelled.

The meeting schedule is now as follows:

  • In-person meeting: Tuesday, January 7, 2025; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM–7:30 PM CDT at the Texas Southmost College, Jacob Brown Auditorium, 600 International Boulevard, Brownsville, TX 78520
  • Virtual on-line meeting: Monday, January 13, 2025; 5:30 PM–7:30 PM CDT Registration Link here. Dial-in phone number: 888-788-0099 (Toll Free), Webinar ID: 879 9253 6128, Passcode: 900729

As I noted in November when the new environmental reassessment and these meetings were announced, it is practically certain that the fringe anti-Musk activists groups SaveRGV, Sierra Club, the Friends of Wildlife Corridor, and the fake Indian Carrizo/Comecrudo Nation of Texas (which never existed in Texas) are organizing to be there in force, demanding SpaceX’s Boca Chica operations be shut down.

If the rest of the public, which is the vast majority of the Brownsville community, does not show up to counter these fringe activists, it will make it much easier for the bureaucrats who hate Musk at the FAA to take action against SpaceX. It is essential that the business community at least make an appearance, as the arrival of SpaceX has brought billions of dollars and tens of thousands of jobs to Brownsville.

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India and SpaceX announce their planned launch goals for 2025

1:21 pm

We now have predictions from both India and SpaceX on the number of times each will attempt orbital launches in 2025.

In a tweet from India’s space agency ISRO today, the agency announced it plans ten launches in 2025. This count includes one launch of its man-rated Heavy Lift Vehicle-Mark 3 (HLVM3) rocket in March, testing its unmanned Gaganyaan manned capsule, one launch of its slightly smaller LVM3 rocket, four launches of its older GSLV rocket, three of its even smaller PSLV rocket, and one of its smallest new rocket, the SSLV. The last two the Indian government hopes to transfer to the private sector. (Note: The tweet says nine launches, but the graphic shows ten.)

This prediction does not include any additional orbital launches that India’s two private rocket startups, Agnikul and Skyroot, might attempt. Both have said they hope to do their first launches in 2025.

SpaceX meanwhile is hoping to smash its own record in 2024. According to comments made by the company’s CEO Gywnne Shotwell in mid-December (comments that I missed at the time), the company is planning 175 to 180 launches in 2025. This increase will likely come from two sources. First, it is my understanding that the company is adding another drone ship to its recovery fleet, allowing for more Falcon 9 launches. Second, it is probably going to be able to conduct Starship/Superheavy launches much more frequently, because the Trump administration is almost certainly going to eliminate much of the FAA regulatory red tape that has stymied the entire American rocket industry these last four years.

In the coming weeks I expect more nations and companies will announce their intended launch targets for 2025.

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The global launch industry in 2024: A year of amazing highs and depressing lows, with the best yet to come

9:40 am

For the past five years the entire global rocket industry has experienced a revolution that has resulted in a rise in global launch numbers unprecedented since the launch of Sputnik in 1957. 2024 was no different, with the total number of successful launches topping 256, two to four times the average number of launches that had occurred yearly prior to 2020.

This success has almost entirely been driven by the arrival of many private rocket companies competing for government and commercial business — led largely by SpaceX — aided by the decision by governments worldwide to get out of the way and let private enterprise do the job. The result has been spectacular, so much so that it now seem possible in the very near future to see humans finally revisiting the Moon and even getting to Mars and the asteroids.

At the same time, 2024 saw some significant signs that this success is not guaranteed, and could vanish in an instant if care is not taken.

The graph below, my annual count of launches world wide, provides the groundwork for these conclusions.
» Read more

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A detailed look at SpaceX’s investors and its stock valuations

8:52 am

Link here. The article provides a good review of some of SpaceX’s major investors as well as the recent rounds whereby employees who hold common stock are allowed to sell some shares as a bonus.

Secondary sales like this remain one of the only ways that employees have to sell their shares. Another bit of good news for employees in this sale [in December] was that the $70 per share price was an improvement over the previous tender of $56 when adjusting for the stock split, Bloomberg reported at the time. And Bloomberg also reported last month that the next tender offer may be as high as $108 to $110 apiece.

SpaceX remains a private company however. This is not stock that can be traded on the stock market, but privately issued (under strict rules) to raise money without giving stock-holders rights to operate the company.

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Seventh Starship/Superheavy test launch now targeting January 10, 2025

9:55 am

Based on a single word tweet by Elon Musk as well as the FAA’s license approval, it now appears that SpaceX is targeting January 10, 2025 for the seventh Starship/Superheavy test orbital launch.

According to the FAA license, the launch window that day opens at 4 pm (Central), with backup launch opportunities each day through January 15th.

Reading that license is very illuminating. The depth in which the FAA now demands compliance from SpaceX is beyond daunting, and illustrates the mission creep the agency has used to grow its power. Based on a recent Supreme Court ruling, the company likely has grounds to sue and win, correctly claiming that Congress never gave it such power over so many things, and that its regulatory oversight is unconstitutional.

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