Tag: commercial

Boeing to take more than a decade to refit two 747s for Air Force One

7:30 pm

Utter incompetence: According to recent news reports, Boeing will not be able to deliver the two 747s it is refitting to be the president’s Air Force One fleet until 2029, even though it signed a $3.9 billion contract to do so in 2018.

The delay is startling given that Boeing isn’t building the planes from scratch. During Trump’s first term, Boeing started to overhaul two 747s that were built for a Russian airline that never took the jets.

This is more than absurd, it is obscene. Boeing is handed two flightworthy 747s and almost $4 billion, and it can’t refit the two planes in less than a decade? It seems one of the first things Trump should do once he returns to office next month is cancel this contract entirely, demand a refund from Boeing, and simply convert his present fleet of “Trump Force One” airplanes that he has been using since 2020 for use as president. Cheaper, faster, and certainly a wiser use of taxpayer money.

As for Boeing, this story illustrates once again how far this company has fallen. Remember, it was Boeing that conceived, designed, and built the 747. Moreover, its 747 has been used for decades for Air Force One. For its engineers now to be incapable to refitting another two 747s for this purpose seems inconceivable, and suggests those same engineers should not be trusted on any new planes they build.

22 comments

SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites

9:39 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched 22 Starlink satellites, 13 of which were for its direct-to-cell constellation. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg in California, its first stage completing its ninth flight by landing successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific.

According to a tweet by SpaceX at the end of October, only five more launches were necessary to complete the first version of its direct-to-cell Starlink constellation. Today’s launch meets that criteria. Since the FCC has approved the constellation’s license, this means T-Mobile can start offering the service to customers, filling in all dead spots worldwide.

What makes this launch even more unique is that for the first time in quite awhile there was a four-day-plus gap between SpaceX launches. The company has been launching so often that it has been rare for more than two days to pass this year without a launch.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

129 SpaceX
60 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 148 to 92, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 129 to 111.

One comment

Melinda Kathleen Reese – O Come O Come Emmanuel

6:01 pm

An evening pause: This was first posted in February 2019. As I noted then,

The video replays her singing the same thing three times. There is a good reason, as she almost appears to have begun singing as a lark, and the acoustics of the church astonish her. The repeats help bring out this amazing quality.

I always open the Christmas-Hannukah holiday season with this truly glorious piece of music, as it speaks to both religions. And it is one magnificent song, sung here magnificently.

May all my readers have a glorious weekend.

6 comments

Rocket startup Stoke Space completes static fire test of first stage engine

10:02 am

Stoke's Nova rocket
Stoke’s Nova rocket

The rocket startup Stoke Space revealed yesterday that it has completed a static fire test of the first stage engine it will use on its Nova rocket, shown in the graphic to the right.

The test, which was not the first for this engine, proved out several new technologies.

Stoke Space called the test significant for several reasons. It’s the first hotfire of the company’s Block 2 (flight layout) stage 1 engine, and this engine architecture — called full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) — is considered particularly challenging. Only two entities in the world — Stoke and SpaceX — have successfully developed FFSC engines. … Stoke’s stage 1 engine is a liquified natural gas/liquid oxygen engine capable of producing 100,000 pounds of thrust. The duration of the test was not revealed.

It was the first time Stoke has tested on its new vertical test stand in Moses Lake. The company’s testing philosophy is that you must “test like you fly,” and it believes vertical testing is key to engine development.

Nor is the first stage engine the only technological innovation. Nova’s second stage uses a radical design whereby the engine releases its thrust through a ring of small nozzles on the outside perimeter of the stage, rather than a single central nozzle. This design is what the company hopes will allow it to return that upper stage intact for reuse.

The four year old company has raised $100 million in investment capital, but has also faced environmental red tape from the Space Force for its launch facility at Cape Canaveral. It had previously targeted 2025 for the first test flights of Nova, but that schedule appears unlikely because of this red tape.

One comment

SpaceX requests special election to make Starbase at Boca Chica a city

9:41 am

In a letter [pdf] sent yesterday to a local judge, SpaceX requested that a special election be held in Cameron County on whether its Starbase facilities in Boca Chica should be incorporated as a city.

To continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community. That is why we are requesting that Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Valley.

Incorporating Starbase will streamline the processes required to build the amenities necessary to make the area a world class place to live—for the hundreds already calling it home, as well as for prospective workers eager to help build humanity’s future in space. As you know, through agreements with the County, SpaceX currently performs several civil functions around Starbase due to its remote location, including management of the roads, utilities, and the provision of schooling and medical care for the residents. Incorporation would move the management of some of these functions to a more appropriate public body.

The letter went on to list the many other things SpaceX is already doing to benefit the area, including many of the environmental requirements imposed on it by the FAA and Fish & Wildlife.

At this moment there has been no response from the judge or Cameron County. I suspect there will be no objection, and this vote will take place in the near future. I also expect it will pass, because SpaceX employees now make up almost the entire population of Boca Chica.

9 comments

Ispace signs agreement with lunar mining startup

10:15 am

Landing sites on Moon

The Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace has now signed an agreement with a lunar mining startup dubbed Magna Petra to transport the latter company’s helium-3 mining equipment to the Moon.

In a memo of understanding, ispace and Magna Petra have agreed to collaborate to utilize the moon’s resources for economic benefits to life on Earth, the companies announced Tuesday, Dec. 10. Through “non-destructive, sustainable harvesting,” according to a joint statement, Magna Petra plans to one day extract “commercial quantities” of helium-3 isotopes from regolith on the lunar surface for delivery and distribution back on Earth, where the resource is facing an extreme supply shortage.

Ispace meanwhile still has to prove it can put a lander on the Moon. Its first attempt, Hakuto-R1, almost succeeded, but crashed in April 2023 when its software thought it was just above the ground and shut down its engines when it was still three miles high. The company’s second attempt, dubbed Resilience and carrying a rover dubbed Tenacious, is scheduled for launch in January 2025. The landing site is shown on the map to the right, within Mare Frigoris in the northern part of the Moon’s nearside hemisphere.

2 comments

ADRAS-J gets within 50 feet of abandoned rocket stage

3:28 pm

abandoned upper stage, taken by ADRAS-J
Image taken during ADRAS-J’s initial approach in April 2024.
Click for original image.

The demo maneuvering spacecraft ADRAS-J, built by the Japanese orbital tug startup Astroscale, has successfully maneuvered to within 50 feet of the abandoned rocket stage that the company hopes to grab and de-orbit on a later mission.

When ADRAS-J was 50 meters behind the upper stage the spacecraft reduced the gap in a straight-line approach then maneuvered to approximately 15 meters below the Payload Attach Fitting (PAF) — the planned capture point for the follow-on ADRAS-J2 mission — aligning the spacecraft’s relative speed, distance, and attitude. ADRAS-J successfully maintained this position until an autonomous abort was triggered by the onboard collision avoidance system due to an unexpected relative attitude anomaly with the upper stage. The spacecraft safely maneuvered away from the debris as designed before reaching the CIP. Astroscale Japan is currently investigating the cause of the abort.

Engineers will have to understand that the cause of that abort prior to launching ADRAS-J2, the mission that will grab the stage and de-orbit it.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

3 comments

Part 2 of 2: De-emphasize a fast Moon landing and build a real American space industry instead

10:41 am

In part one yesterday of this two-part essay, I described the likelihood that Jared Isaacman, Trump’s appointment to be NASA’s next administrator, will push to cancel NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion capsule, deeming them too expensive, too unsafe, and too cumbersome to use for any viable effort to colonize the solar system.

I then described how the Artemis lunar landings could still be done, more or less as planned, by replacing SLS with Starship/Superheavy, and Orion with Starship. Such a change would entail some delay, but it could be done.

This plan however I think is short-sighted. The Artemis lunar landings as proposed are really nothing more than another Apollo-like plant-the-flag-on-the-Moon stunt. As designed they do little to establish a permanent sustainable human presence on the Moon or elsewhere in the solar system.

Isaacman however has another option that can create a permanent sustainable American presence in space, and that option is staring us all in the face.

And now for something entire different

Capitalism in space: I think Isaacman should shift the gears of Artemis entirely, and put a manned Moon landing on the back burner. Let China do its one or two lunar landing stunts, comparable to Apollo but incapable of doing much else.
» Read more

32 comments

SpaceX recovers parts of Starship from its last test launch on November 19th

9:22 am

Two teams of SpaceX employees have successfully recovered parts of the Starship that completed a soft vertical landing over the water in the Indian Ocean during the last test launch on November 19th.

The recovery included heat-resistant panelling and large bags of “miscellaneous metal pieces”. Images also showed large tanks being loaded off the ship, however it is unclear what they contained. Recovery of the rocket’s main section also proved too difficult, and it was left to sink to the bottom, with that part of the Indian Ocean about 6km deep. Mr Leal said allowing space material to sink after a splashdown was “pretty normal”.

It appears from this report that the Starship broke in two pieces when it fell over and hit the water. It sounds like the recovery teams focused mostly on recovering the flaps and heat shield, though getting them off the spaceship’s outer hull while it floated in the water and was sinking must have been quite an interesting experience. My guess is that salvage operations lifted out of the water for this purpose.

One comment

ULA’s CEO outlines a bright 2025 for its Vulcan rocket

4:18 pm

In an interview for the website Breaking Defense, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno outlined his optimistic outlook in 2025 for its Vulcan rocket, despite the loss of a nozzle from a strap-on booster during its second test launch.

The important take-aways:

  • He expects the military to certify the rocket “momentarily”, though this could mean one to several months.
  • The company plans 20 launches in 2025, with 16 Vulcans already in storage.
  • Eventually Bruno expects to be launching 20 to 30 times per year.
  • Blue Origin has so far delivered 12 BE-4 engines, of which four have flown.
  • Blue Origin’s production rate is presently one per week.

The last two items are significant. If this production rate is the fastest Blue Origin can do, it will limit the number of Vulcan and New Glenn launches significantly per year. For example, Vulcan uses two engines per launch. To do 20 launches in 2025 will require 40 engines. Blue Origin however wants to also launch its New Glenn a number of times in 2025, and it uses seven BE-4 engines per launch. A production rate of one per week means that Blue Origin will not be producing enough engines for the number of launches planned for both rockets. Either ULA will have to delay its Vulcan launches awaiting engines, or Blue Origin will have to do the same for its New Glenn.

Of course, it is also possible that Blue Origin will be able to up this production rate with time. It has certainly made progress in this area in the past year, since a year ago it was having trouble producing one engine per month.

5 comments

Part 1 of 2: What NASA’s next administrator should do if SLS and Orion are cancelled

2:29 pm

When George Bush Jr. first proposed in 2004 an American long term effort to return to the Moon that has since become the Artemis program, he made it clear that the goal was not to simply land in 2015 and plant the flag, but to establish an aerospace industry capable of staying on the Moon permanently while going beyond to settle the entire the solar system.

The problem was that Bush proposed doing this with a government-built system that was simply not capable of making it happen. Though this system has gone through many changes in the two decades since Bush’s proposal, in every case it has been centered on rockets and spacecrafts that NASA designed, built, and owned, and were thus not focused on profit and efficiency. The result has been endless budget overruns and delays, so that two decades later and more than $60 billion, NASA is still years away from that first Moon landing, and the SLS rocket and Orion capsule that it designed and built for this task are incapable of establishing a base on the Moon, no less explore the solar system.

The real cost of SLS and Orion
The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion

For one thing, SLS at its best can only launch once per year (at a cost of from $1 to $4 billion per launch, depending on who you ask). There is no way you can establish a base on the Moon nor colonize the solar system with that launch rate at that cost. For another, Orion is simply a manned ascent/descent capsule. It is too small to act as an interplanetary spacecraft carrying people for months to years to Mars or beyond.

These basic design problems of both SLS and Orion make them impractical for a program to explore and colonize the solar system. But that’s not all. Orion has other safety concerns. Its heat shield has technical problems that will only be fixed after the next planned Artemis-2 manned mission around the Moon. Its life support system has never flown in space, has issues also, and yet will also be used on the next manned flight.

Thus, it is very likely that when Jared Isaacman, Trump’s appointee for NASA administrator, takes over running the agency, he will call for the cancellation of both SLS and Orion. How can he ask others to fly on such an untested system?

When he does try to cancel both however the politics will require him to offer something instead that will satisfy all the power-brokers in DC who have skin in the game for SLS/Orion, from elected officials to big space companies to the bureaucrats at NASA. Isaacman is going to have to propose a new design for the Artemis program that these people will accept.

Artemis without SLS and Orion

Before I propose what Isaacman should do, let’s review what assets he will have available within the Artemis lunar program after cancelling these two boondoggles.
» Read more

26 comments

Two congressmen demand FAA streamline its launch licensing process

10:22 am

In a letter [pdf] sent to the FAA on December 6, 2024, two congressmen have called for the FAA to fix what it calls its Part 450 launch licensing process, established in 2021, that has been choking off rocket development in the U.S.

The congressmen, Sam Graves (R-Missouri) and Rob Wittman (R-Virginia), specifically focused on the problems these new regulations have imposed during what the FAA calls its “pre-application review.” From the letter:

In November of 2024, the FAA indicated that 98 percent of applications are met within the statutory 180 day timeline. However, this timeframe does not include the months, and oftentimes years, of pre–application review that create extensive delays for companies seeking a launch and reentry license. [emphasis mine]

Consider the implications of this one quote. The FAA is proud of the fact that it approves license applications within six months — an ungodly long time for a startup — but doesn’t mention that the approval process is actually far longer because it requires new applications to be reviewed at length, before they can even be submitted.

In November, a week after Trump’s election victory, the FAA announced that it was forming a committee made up of people from the launch industry as well as academia to review Part 450. In their letter the congressmen approved of this new committee, but noted its work would not be completed until mid-2025, and that “the system is broken and must be fixed” immediately.

We, however, urge the FAA to act now and ensure that all actions short of rulemaking that can help mitigate the deficiencies of the part 450 regulation are taken in advance of any necessary regulatory changes to ensure that the commercial space industry does not have to wait years for relief.

I suspect we shall see some real action at the FAA come January 20, 2025, after Trump takes office.

One comment

Superheavy to be used on next test flight completes 15-second static fire test

10:04 am

SpaceX has successfully completed a launchpad 15-second static fire test of the 33 engines on the Superheavy booster that will be used on the next test flight (the seventh) of its Starship/Superheavy rocket.

The video at the link is remarkable in that it appears all 33 Raptor-2 engines fired for the entire test with no problems either to the rocket or launchpad, despite producing more thrust in that time than any rocket ever in the history of space exploration.

According to this report, it appears SpaceX is targeting January 11, 2025 for that seventh test flight.

SpaceX has not yet announced a launch date for Starship’s seventh test flight, but the company appears to be eyeing Jan. 11; an email sent by NASA to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration identifies that date as the target. (According to that email, NASA plans to deploy a Gulfstream V jet to observe the upcoming flight.)

This date however has not yet been confirmed by SpaceX. Nor has the FAA indicated it will issue a license. The FAA’s approval will depend on the flight plan SpaceX chooses for the test. If similar to the previous two test flights, then that approval will be fast. If not, the red tape will likely cause several more months of delays.

Leave a comment

AST SpaceMobile’s satellite-to-cell constellation gets its second contract

9:46 am

AST SpaceMobile, which is building a constellation of satellites that act as orbiting cell towers and can provide service where ground-based cell towers are unavailable, has now won its second contract, signing a 10-year deal with Vodafone, a European cell company which provides service there as well as across Africa and the Middle East.

AST’s first contract is with AT&T in the U.S. It already has five satellites in orbit, and plans to begin launching its second generation and larger BlueBird satellites next year, with the goal to begin service in the U.S. first.

All it needs really is an FCC license, which it has applied for but not yet received. Its main competitor, Starlink, has received its FCC license, so expect this red tape to evaporate relatively quickly, especially with the coming change in presidents.

Leave a comment

One of Australia’s proposed spaceports moves

9:37 am

Australia's spaceports
Australia’s spaceports

“I’m from the government and I’m here to help!” Because of its inability to get the proper permissions from a local council, the management of Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA) has abandoned its original spaceport location on the Gove peninsula in the Northwest Territory of Australia and shifted east to a new location on the York peninsula in Queensland.

On the map to the right the “X” shows the old location, with the new location near the town of Weipa on the west coast of the peninsula. The change was forced on the company when it could not get proper approvals from the Northern Land Council (NLC), which manages the Arnhem Land Aboriginal Land Trust where the original site was located.

In a statement late on Monday, ELA said its most recent attempt to finalise a lease for the expansion of the ASC in October had been unsuccessful, following three other failed attempts in the last 12 months. In each case, it said the NLC had “failed to meet its own specified deadline for the approval of the Head Lease” or “provide any official reason for the delay”, despite pleas from the NT government and the Gumatj Aboriginal Corporation.

Because ELA has a launch contract with a South Korea rocket startup Innospace that intends to launch next year, it decided the switch had to occur now to make sure it could meet its obligations under this launch contract.

2 comments

Panama and Austria to sign Artemis Accords

9:18 am

NASA yesterday announced that both Panama and Austria will sign Artemis Accords tomorrow, bringing the total number of nations in the alliance to fifty.

The full list of nations now part of this American space alliance: Angola, Argentina, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Belgium, Brazil, Bulgaria, Canada, Chile, Colombia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Iceland, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Nigeria, Panama, Peru, Poland, Romania, Rwanda, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, the United States and Uruguay.

The accords were created by the first Trump administration with the goal to create an alliance with enough clout to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private property. Under the Biden administration, the goal has been rewritten to accomplish the exact opposite, as noted by NASA yesterday:

The Artemis Accords are grounded in the Outer Space Treaty and other agreements including the Registration Convention, the Rescue and Return Agreement, as well as best practices and norms of responsible behavior that NASA and its partners have supported, including the public release of scientific data.

With Trump back in charge, expect him to bring the accords back to its original goal. Unlike his first term, the alliance is now large, and he can use it to quickly apply pressure on the international community to overcome the Outer Space Treaty’s limitations on private property.

Leave a comment

Kamila Valieva – Avatar

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live in 2022, which explains the stupidity of her putting on a mask at the very end of the video.

Hat tip Judd Clark, who notes her sad history: “A real tragedy, an exceptional skater, her coaches gave her trimetazidine, a medication used for heart problems, which apparently makes the heart more efficient at using oxygen. Failing a drug test at 15, most of her medals and records were rescinded.”

See this page for more details. She had finished first during this competition in 2022. All for naught.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

10:34 pm

SpaceX just after midnight (Eastern) tonight successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

128 SpaceX
59 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 147 to 91, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 128 to 110.

3 comments

Tim McLaughlin – NYC&C Scale Model Railroad

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The view from the front cab during runs of four elevated & subway lines, filmed October 14, 2012.

Hypnotic, and epic in its own way. There are times where it looks and sounds exactly as I remember it, riding on the front car of a NYC subway train, looking out that front window. Nice way to start the weekend.

Hat tip Wayne DeVette.

10 comments

Europe’s Vega-C rocket returns to flight after being grounded for more than two years

3:47 pm

Europe’s Vega-C rocket, built by the Italian company Avio but presently still managed by the European Space Agency’s commercial arm Arianespace, today successfully completed its first launch in two years, lifting off from French Guiana carrying a European Earth observation satellite. As of posting the satellite had not yet been deployed.

The rocket was first grounded when its upper stage failed during a December 2022 launch. The investigation pinpointed the problem as the design of the stage’s engine nozzle. However, the first redesign also failed, requiring a second redesign.

This was the eighth launch worldwide in the past 48 hours, the most ever accomplished in such a short time. All told, five nations completed launches (United States 3, China 2, India 1, Russia 1, Europe 1) from eight different spaceports, with all three American launches completed by SpaceX.

Because this was only the third launch by Europe this year, the leader board for the 2024 launch race remains unchanged:

127 SpaceX
59 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 146 to 90, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 127 to 109.

One comment

Union official accuses Boeing of more unsafe practices

10:44 am

According Craig Garriott, a union representative at Boeing’s satellite-manufacturing facility in Los Angeles, Boeing’s management has been allowing numerous safety violations to go unfixed in order to focus on profits and fast production.

Acquired by Boeing in 2000, the satellite manufacturing facility has long been considered one of Boeing’s more stable business units. It relies in part on a union workforce that Garriott said is responsible for constructing and testing satellites and their component parts.

“This is perhaps the most technical group of hourly people that you’ll probably find on this planet,” said Garriott, who estimated he’s raised between 300 and 400 safety violations over the past year. Those complaints, he said, range from obstructed fire extinguishers and fire alarms to concerns over heavy machinery blocking exits and trapping workers in certain parts of the factory.

In October, union workers filed a complaint with the Occupational Health and Safety Administration that, according to Garriott, highlighted unsafe conditions on the factory floor. Another technician at the facility, who spoke to CBS News on the condition he remain anonymous to protect his job, said safety had become “an afterthought” and quality had “degraded” over the past five to six years.

It is important to recognize that Garriott’s complaints might simply be the typical tactic of a union representative during or before contract negotiations. There are rumors Boeing plans to sell off its space subsidiaries, which would include this satellite division. Garriott might simply be putting public pressure on the company in order to give himself a better negotiation position if such a sale takes place.

It is also quite possible, based on Boeing’s recent very poor track record in quality control, that everything Garriott says here is also true.

7 comments

Sierra Space signs deal using its Dream Chaser mini-shuttles for in-space manufacturing

10:33 am

Sierra Space's family of planned LIFE modules
Sierra Space’s family of planned LIFE modules. Click for original

Sierra Space has now signed agreements with two different startups, Astral Materials and Space Forge, to use its Dream Chaser mini-shuttles for in-space manufacturing.

Astral Materials leverages the microgravity environment of space to grow ultra-high quality semiconductor crystals for advanced chip technologies. Space Forge harnesses free flying manufacturing facilities to produce next-generation materials for commercial industries, national security and research.

Up to now, Sierra’s only customer has been NASA, which wants to use Tenacity, the first Dream Chaser mini-shuttle, to hauling cargo to and from ISS. These new deals illustrate that there are other profit opportunities for the company’s reusable shuttle outside of government. As the startup Varda has already demonstrated with its own returnable capsule, there is money to be made manufacturing products in weightlessness that cannot be produced in the gravity of Earth.

The press release however has one additional tidbit that is intriguing. Sierra is a partner in the Blue Origin-led Orbital Reef commercial space station. It also appears to be the only partner that is actually building anything for that station, specifically its LIFE inflatable modules. The press release mentions that both these agreements include options for Astral and Space Forge to provide “input on Sierra Space’s future space stations.” That this press release does not refer to Orbital Reef here suggests once again that Sierra Space is somewhat dissatisfied with the output of its Blue Origin partner, and is thus creating options for it to build its own space station using those LIFE modules (shown above), should Blue Origin not deliver.

At a minimum, Astral and Space Forge will certainly be interested in doing manufacturing within those LIFE modules, should they end up being part of Orbital Reef.

One comment

Yuma competing for up to $160 million in an NSF grant to establish its own spaceport

10:16 am

Yuma spaceport

Arizona wants its own spaceport! The city of Yuma, located in Arizona’s southwest corner, is now a finalist in a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant program that could award it up to $160 million to establish a spaceport there.

The city is one of two Arizona applicants, the other being the University of Arizona, which wants to use the grant money “to make the state a proving ground for transformative mining technologies.” There are in addition 69 other applicants to the NSF grant.

This announcement is mostly PR, since Yuma not only does not yet have a spaceport licence from the FAA, it does not yet have approval from Mexico to fly missions over that country. Yuma is not on the coast, so launches must cross land. And if not over Mexico, launches would have to cross other U.S. states, something that would need approval as well.

This proposal has been in the works for many years, as having a spaceport in Arizona would draw a lot of space business to the state. It could happen, but to do so will require a lot of approvals from a lot of government agencies.

One comment

Republican California state legislator introduces bill to overturn California Coastal Commission’s effort to block SpaceX

9:46 am

Wants to be a dictator
Wants to be a dictator

Republican state assemblyman Bill Essayli has now introduced a bill that would overturn the decision by the California Coastal Commission to reject SpaceX’s request to increase its launch rate at Vandenberg spaceport, a decision the commissioners readily and publicly stated was made not to protect the state’s beaches (the commission’s prime function) but because they did not like Musk’s political positions.

“AB 10 will reverse the politically-motivated decision by the California Coastal Commission to restrict SpaceX launches for the Space Force due to their hatred of Elon Musk. This dangerous and illegal decision threatens our national security and erodes the public trust we place in our officials to act in the best interest of the people — not politics,” Essayli said in a statement this week.

SpaceX has already sued the commission and its commissioners for violating Musk’s first amendment rights as well as exceeding their statutory authority.

The bottom line however is that the commission’s decision carries no legal weight. Vandenberg is an federally operated military base, and thus this state commission has no authority to dictate what happens there. The Space Force has simply tried to work with it in the past.

Thus, if the commission’s fangs are not pulled by Essayli’s legislation as well as SpaceX’s lawsuit, the military will likely just ignore it.

4 comments

Airbus cuts almost 500 jobs in Great Britain

9:30 am

As part of a larger planned belt-tightening that is expected to reducing staffing by more than 2,000, Airbus has now begun eliminating 477 jobs in its British operations.

The cuts are expected to hit the workforce in Stevenage and Portsmouth, where Airbus’s UK space operations are concentrated, while Newport in south Wales may also be impacted. The Stevenage site is also building Europe’s first Mars rover for a mission designed to search for signs of past or present life on the planet that’s due for launch in 2028.

Airbus said that only “overhead positions” – such as management support – will be hit, with nobody assigned to individual programmes or projects affected.

The company claims these cuts are due to SpaceX grabbing a large part of market share in the satellite business. It is also because Airbus is likely overstaffed, its operations shaped by the European Space Agency past requirement that it spread those operations to as many member nations as possible. These cuts in Great Britain are likely an attempt to reduce that spread.

One comment

Another record-setting launch day worldwide

9:19 am

In what might be a record for the global launch industry, yesterday saw a total of four launches at four different spaceports worldwide.

That record might very well be matched today. Already three launches have already taken place, with one more scheduled.

First, India’s space agency ISRO successfully launched European Space Agency’s PROBA-XL solar telescope, its PSLV rocket lifting off from its Sriharikota spaceport on India’s eastern coast. This was India’s fourth launch in 2024.

Next, China launched what its state-run press merely described as a “group of satellites,” its Long March 6 rocket taking off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northern China. That state-run press also said nothing about where the rocket’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters crashed inside China. (UPDATE: More information about the payload can be found here. It appears to have been the third set of 18 satellites launched as part of China’s attempt to compete with Starlink.)

Then, SpaceX launched SXM-9, a new satellite for the constellation of the radio company Siruis-XM, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Kennedy in Florida. The first stage completed its nineteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. As of posting the satellite had not yet been deployed.

If all goes as planned, the fourth flight today will be the first launch in more than two years of Avio’s Vega-C rocket, which has been grounded while the company redesigned and then redesigned again the engine nozzle of its upper stage. The launch is also one of the last that will be managed by Arianespace, which is giving up control to Avio over the next year. The live stream is here.

If successful, it will be the eighth launch worldwide in only two days, something that I am fairly certain has never been done before. In the past there simply weren’t enough independent entities and spaceports available to allow this number of launches in such a short period of time. What makes this record even more striking is that three of the eight launches were launched by one private American company, SpaceX.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

127 SpaceX
59 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 146 to 89, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 127 to 108.

One comment
1 … 25 26 27 28 29 … 335