The competition heats up: Google subsidiary Planetary Ventures has signed a $1 billion 60-year lease with NASA for use of Moffett Field in California.
This Aviation Week story provides a detailed update on China’s effort to build a new family of Long March rockets that are less expensive to operate and can effectively compete with SpaceX.
Two main take-aways from the article. First, the first flight of the Long March 7, a direct competitor with the Falcon 9, has been seriously delayed. Originally expected to fly in 2013, that first flight has apparently been pushed back to 2015.
Second, even with extensive cost savings, the Long March 7 will still cost a customer more than a Falcon 9, $70 million vs $61 million.
The heat of competition: Orbital Sciences has pinpointed available launch slots and alternative rockets for getting Cygnus into orbit in 2015.
[Orbital CEO David] Thompson said Wednesday the company has narrowed its options to three launch providers which have openings as early as the second quarter — between April 1 and June 30 — of next year. Two of the launch providers are based in the United States. Orbital could also launch Cygnus missions with a European-based company, Thompson said. The contractors under consideration are presumably United Launch Alliance, SpaceX and Arianespace.
Unlike Virgin Galactic’s claims in my previous post, I find Thompson’s prediction here quite likely. His main problem is not technical but political. He has to convince his competitors to help him, and this story is his first shot across the bow in that negotiation. By making these facts public, Thompson applies pressure on these other companies to agree. And though the request is unstated, he is also enlisting NASA’s aid, since the agency is certain to back him in this negotiation and apply its clout in his favor.
The heat of competition: During a press tour of its Mojave facilities this week Virgin Galactic’s CEO revealed that the company expects to begin flying its replacement to SpaceShipTwo by April.
George Whitesides, the company’s chief executive, said construction of the second spaceship is already 65 per cent complete. Like its doomed predecessor, Enterprise, the new spaceship’s name is a tribute to both Nasa and Star Trek. It will be called SS Voyager, the Sunday Times reports.
Whitesides also said that LauncherOne, designed to put very small payloads into orbit, is 18 months away from its first flight.
I hope this predictions are true, but coming from Virgin Galactic I think I can be forgiven if I am very skeptical. Nonetheless, in referring to the new ship I will make it a policy to call it Voyager from here on out to distinguish it from the first ship.
The competition heats up: At an space industry conference this week Sierra Nevada outlined the ability of Dream Chaser to land at almost any airport, including the many financial and safety advantages of that flexibility.
The story notes that because Dream Chaser would not need an unusually long runway, it could land at most airports. Also, because it would have no hazardous materials on board, removing it from the runway after landing would be simple and straightforward. You would simply tow it away. The biggest advantage of this, howevr, is that if the spacecraft was docked at ISS and there was an emergency that required immediate evacuation, bringing Dream Chaser and its passengers home to a runway will be possible any time.
This presentation is part of Sierra Nevada’s sales effort to find new backers for their spacecraft, now that NASA has begged out. I think they make a good sales pitch. I hope someone with money agrees.
The competition heats up: Even as ULA and Blue Origin begin work building an American engine to replace the Russian engines on the Atlas 5 rocket, ATK is offering its solid rocket motors for both Atlas 5 as well as Antares.
The company’s sales pitch is that they can get their product ready faster and cheaper. And since they are merging with Orbital Sciences anyway, I will not be at all surprised if Antares ends up with ATK solid rocket motors for its first stage.
As for Atlas 5, this sales pitch is actually aimed at Congress, which could step in and force ULA to buy ATK motors instead of Blue Origin’s new engine, even if this switch is against the wishes of ULA. As foolish as this might seem, the politics of pork (ATK provides more jobs than Blue Origin) could make it happen.
The heat of competition: Virgin Galactic’s Arab investors have decided to hold off further commitment to the project until the investigation of the SpaceShipTwo crash is completed.
The backing of deep-pocketed Aabar Investments, run by the Abu Dhabi government, may be crucial to Virgin Galactic as it struggles to recover from the accident, which killed one test pilot and left another seriously injured. “As an investor, Aabar is concerned of course. It is a challenge – nothing can be decided until investigations are over,” the source said, declining to be named because of the sensitivity of the subject. “For now, it is a wait-and-watch situation.” Asked if Aabar was still committed to Virgin Galactic, the source said only: “There is time to make an assessment of the future strategy.”
This is hardly a surprise. Nor does it guarantee an end to Richard Branson’s company. What it signals is a recognition that Virgin Galactic has had a serious problem and must demonstrate that it can fix that problem before it will regain the trust of its investors.
A former SpaceX employee has been arrested for operating one of the largest drug marketplaces on the dark part of the web.
It appears he must have spent a lot of his time at SpaceX designing and operating a dark web website where people could go to buy illegal drugs. It also appears that this might have contributed to SpaceX’s decision to fire him during SpaceX’s most recent employee purges.
I must say that I find this story very sad. The guy gets a job at one of the premier cutting edge companies in the world where he can help that company build rockets that will take humans to the stars, and what does he do with his time? He creates a webpage to sell illegal drugs.
The heat of competition: Virgin Galactic today released hanger photos of the almost finished second SpaceShipTwo.
Even as the investigation into the fatal breakup of Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo rocket plane continues in Mojave, California, the next SpaceShipTwo is more than halfway complete in a Mojave hangar — and is expected to start going through tests on the ground and in the air next year.
Virgin Galactic’s manufacturing subsidiary, The Spaceship Company, has been working on the plane for two and a half years. It’s variously known as SpaceShipTwo Tail No. 2 or N202VG, and it’s part of Virgin Galactic plan to have a fleet of five SpaceShipTwo rocket planes and two WhiteKnightTwo carrier planes.
This story is a great example of the public relations genius of Richard Branson. Even with the pieces of SpaceShipTwo still being picked up on the ground he finds a way to sell his company positively to the world. They not only intend to continue their effort, they have the ship to prove it!
The investigation into the launch failure of the Antares rocket one week ago is now focusing on the turbopump in one of the rocket’s first stage engines.
“The Investigation Board (AIB) is making good progress in determining the primary cause of last week’s failure. A preliminary review of telemetry and video data has been conducted and substantial debris from the Antares rocket and its Cygnus payload has been collected and examined,” noted Orbital on Wednesday. “While the work of the AIB continues, preliminary evidence and analysis conducted to date points to a probable turbopump-related failure in one of the two Aerojet Rocketdyne AJ26 stage one main engines. As a result, the use of these engines for the Antares vehicle likely will be discontinued.”
It was later noted that the AJ-26 could still be used if they were proven to be completely flight-worthy.
If Orbital Sciences decides to completely cease using the Russian engines, it could mean a very significant delay before they can launch again, maybe several years. If they do that, I expect them to face contract penalties from NASA for the failure to deliver cargo to ISS on a reasonable schedule. It will also mean that their chances of winning a second contract will go down significantly.
They need to replace the engine, but they also need to keep launching. The article as well as a company press release today describes how they are exploring other launch vehicles, including the Falcon 9, to launch Cygnus, but I see no reason for them to completely abandon the Russian engines immediately. What they need to do is find what failed, fix it in the remaining engines, and keep flying while they scramble hard to replace the engine entirely.
Additional details about the investigation into the crash of SpaceShipTwo have now been released.
The investigators are focusing on the telemetry that the pilots were receiving, as well as the system for activating the ship’s braking feathering system.
As I have noted in the comments, we must try not to speculate on this subject, especially because this issue could do harm to innocent people. For example, some reports have incorrectly attributed the crash to pilot error. To say this now is false. All the investigation has noted is that the co-pilot took the first step to activating the feathering system, as he was supposed to do, though slightly early. The feathering system then deployed on its own, without the second command being given.
We do not yet know the finer details that make his action significant, or not. This is why the investigation is checking into the telemetry the pilots were getting, which might have affected when they did what they did.
We need to wait for more data.
The competition heats up: Ground tests of Moon Express’s privately built lunar rover are about to begin at the Kennedy Space Center on a simulated lunar surface.
Moon Express has generally been favored to win the Google Lunar X-Prize.
News reports suggest that — following last week’s SpaceShipTwo crash — more than thirty of the seven hundred people who placed deposits with Virgin Galactic to fly on SpaceshipTwo have pulled out, demanding their money back.
In response to the claim that more than 30 customers are considering their position in the aftermath of the crash, a spokesperson for Virgin Galactic admitted a number of people have asked for their money back. “We can confirm that less than three per cent of people have requested refunds,” the spokesman said.
This is not a surprise, nor should it be. A company can only survive a crisis like this by responding honestly, quickly, and directly. If Virgin Galactic does this, finding the cause of the crash and fixing it, they will likely hold onto most of their customers. If they don’t, those remaining customers will leave. This week’s cancellations are the first immediate response to the crash. The future of the company, however, will be determined by what happens in the next six months.
The investigation into the failure of SpaceShipTwo last week during a powered flight test has determined that the accident was not caused by the spaceship’s engine and that the spaceship’s feathering system for return to Earth began deploying early during powered flight.
The ship’s fuel tanks and its engine were recovered intact, indicating there was no explosion. “They showed no signs of burn-through, no signs of being breached,” Christopher Hart, acting chairman of the National Transportation and Safety Board, told reporters at the Mojave Air and Space Port in Mojave, Calif
Instead, data and video relayed from the ship show its hallmark safety feature — a foldable tail section designed for easy re-entry into the atmosphere from space — was deployed early.
More here. Deployment required two commands, activation and then deployment. Data shows that the co-pilot Michael Alsbury activated the system slightly early. The second command, however, was not given, but the feathering system began to deploy nonetheless, during powered flight when the ship was accelerating upward. That is when the ship broke up.
As the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) begins its investigation into the SpaceShipTwo test flight failure, the identities of the two pilots have finally been released.
The Kern County Coroner’s Office announced Nov. 1 that Michael Alsbury, a 39-year-old test pilot employed by Scaled Composites, was the person killed in the crash of the vehicle north of Mojave, California. Scaled Composites confirmed that identification in a press release issued late Nov. 1, which also stated that the pilot injured in the crash was the company’s director of flight operations, Peter Siebold. Alsbury was the co-pilot of SpaceShipTwo on its first powered flight, in April 2013. According to public flight logs maintained by Scaled Composites, he most recently flew SpaceShipTwo as co-pilot on an unpowered test flight on Aug. 28, a “cold flow” test where nitrous oxide was vented through the engine but not ignited.
Siebold was the pilot or co-pilot of SpaceShipTwo on its previous four flights, including the Aug. 28 flight with Alsbury. Siebold was also a pilot on several test flights of SpaceShipOne, an earlier suborbital spaceplane developed by Scaled Composites that won the $10-million Ansari X Prize in 2004. In the statement, Scaled Composites said that Siebold was “alert and talking with his family and doctors,” but provided no other details about his condition.
Alsbury should receive the same honor given to all other astronauts and pilots who have sacrificed their lives so that humans will someday leave the surface of the Earth.
The competition heats up: The head of ULA hints that the company is developing a new rocket.
“Today, we have Atlas and Delta,” Bruno said of ULA’s product line. The company is completing studies leading to an announcement early next year of “what we will have next.” He confirmed, “It could be a new rocket.”
It could be that they have seen the writing on the wall and realize that Atlas and Delta are simply too expensive to compete with SpaceX and have decided they need to come up with something better. I hope so.
Words from Mohave.
Friday began bright and sunny, a day full of promise that quickly brought tragedy. As I write this early on Saturday, a cold hard rain is lashing at my windows. That’s a good thing. We need it.
And it feels right. The sky is crying, adding to an ocean of tears shed here today.
An evening pause: Hat tip again to Phil Berardelli, author of Phil’s Favorite 500: Loves of a Moviegoing Lifetime. As Phil wrote to me, this scene is “the sensational finale from Martin Brest’s NYU student film, Hot Tomorrows. Brest, who went on to direct Beverly Hills Cop, Midnight Run and Scent of a Woman, broke all the rules in scrounging every resource he could find to make this 73-minute tragi-comic riff on the subject of death.”
Makes for a perfect Halloween evening pause.
An aside: Long ago, when I was in the movie business, I worked with many of the people who helped Brest make this film, and can say without doubt that he scored the best crew one could imagine finding for a student production.
During a powered flight test today SpaceShipTwo suffered an explosion, destroying the ship.
It is reported that the problem occurred after the ship fired its engines. It is also reported that parachutes were spotted after the explosion, but at this moment the fate of the pilots is unknown.
Update: One report says that one pilot was killed while the other was seriously injured. More info here.
The man formerly in charge of construction at Russia’s new spaceport in Vostochny has been arrested and charged with stealing $43 million dollars from the project.
The corruption might be true, as this kind of thing is culturally typical for the centralized government-run operations that are generally favored in Russia. It is also possible that Putin’s government wanted a scapegoat to blame for the construction delays and cost overruns in building Vostochny.
Either way, Putin gets what he wants. This prosecution will make it very clear to everyone involved in building Vostochny that the government wants it built fast and without further theft, and it is watching what people do there very closely.
Italian officials are suggesting politics or incompetence for the sudden cancellation Wednesday of the November test flight of Europe’s IXV experimental spaceplane.
ESA and CNES officials up to now have either declined to comment or, in the case of ESA, said they were at a loss to explain why a program whose mission profile has not changed in several years is now suddenly stalled for [range] safety issues that in principle should have been aired and resolved long ago.
One official, saying he could not believe that the two agencies simply forgot to evaluate the safety issues, said he preferred to suspect political motives. “Look, we are about to send a spacecraft and lander to Mars, in one year,” this official said. “Europe has rendezvoused with a comet a decade after the [Rosetta comet-chaser] satellite was launched. You want me to believe that somehow the agencies just forgot to evaluate safety? That is too far-fetched. I would rather believe there is some political motive.”
The claim is that no one ever evaluated the range issues in sending the Vega rocket to the east instead of its normal polar orbit trajectory. The Italian officials are suggesting that either the officials who cancelled the mission are incompetent, or that their competition with France within ESA over launch vehicles (Ariane 6 vs Vega) prompted the cancellation.
Europe’s lead launch-vehicle nation is France, which initially balked at participating in the Vega program. A French minister said that in Europe, launch vehicles are French. The French government declined to allow the export, to Italy, of the avionics suite that guides Vega, forcing Italy to develop its own. Italy has since done so and successfully flown it on Vega. As it stands now, one official said, France must accept the idea that with Vega, Italy has led development of a vehicle that at least in principle resembles an intercontinental ballistic missile. “Some people don’t like that,” this official said.
Either way, this cancellation combined with the difficult and extended disagreements within ESA over replacing Ariane 5 suggest that the future of this European partnership is becoming increasingly shaky.
A close look at the damaged launchpad from Tuesday’s Antares launch failure has confirmed both that it avoided significant damage and that the rocket debris being recovered there will speed up and aid in the failure investigation.
Also, the Ukrainian company that built Antares first stage has opened its own investigation of the launch failure.
ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket today successfully launched an Air Force GPS satellite.
The article is worth reading because it does a nice job of summarizing the launch history of the Atlas 5, first introduced in 2002. The key quote, however, is this:
All of the rocket’s early flights carried commercial communications satellites, with the next few launches orbiting HellasSat-2, Rainbow 1, AMC-16 and Inmarsat-4F1. In August 2005 the sixth Atlas V embarked on the type’s first mission for the US Government, deploying NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter on the first leg of its mission to the Red Planet.
In other words, the first six flights were commercial, with every flight since 2005 for either NASA or the military. What this suggests to me is that the Atlas 5 is not competitive in the commercial market. It is too expensive, and commercial customers can’t afford it. In contrast, the federal government hasn’t been interested in saving the taxpayer money for years, and pays for this overpriced rocket in order to keep its builders employed.
