Tag: commercial

Taiwan company issues letter of intent to build cubesat facility in California city

9:27 am

The city of Paso Robles in California has now received an official letter of intent from the Taiwan cubesat company Gran Systems, describing its desire to build spaceport there.

The CEO of Gran Systems recently toured the proposed Paso Robles Spaceport and tech corridor area and met with Paso Robles Airport Manager Mark Scandalis to discuss opportunities for establishing its California facility in Paso Robles.

Though the news article refers to this as a “spaceport,” I don’t think this has anything to do with launching rockets. Instead, this spaceport is part of Paso Robles’ effort to establish an industrial park at its airport, including space companies such as satellite builders, and Gran Systems has decided to rent space there, probably to widen its market in the U.S.

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Arianespace signs deal with Spanish rocket startup PLD

8:58 am

Following up with its agreement with the UK rocket startup Orbex, Arianespace yesterday also signed a deal with the Spanish rocket startup PLD to study using that company’s as-yet-unflown Miura-5 rocket.

Like the Orbex deal, this agreement makes it possible for Arianespace to arrange launches using PLD’s rocket. It also tells us that Arianespace and the European Space Agency are shifting from designing and building their own rockets — a process that has failed to produce any profit and had presently left Europe with no launch capability — to acting simply as a customer buying that capability from independent competing private companies.

For this to work however both Orbex and PLD will have to get their rockets off the ground.

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Boeing gets NASA contract to develop new airplane wing design

10:22 am

In its effort to reduce fossil fuel use and thus save us from being burned to death by global warming in only a decade, NASA has now awarded Boeing a contract to develop new airplane wing design that it predicts will lower fuel use by up to 30%.

The X-66A is the X-plane specifically aimed at helping the United States achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To build the X-66A, Boeing will work with NASA to modify an MD-90 aircraft, shortening the fuselage and replacing its wings and engines. The resulting demonstrator aircraft will have long, thin wings with engines mounted underneath and a set of aerodynamic trusses for support. The design, which Boeing submitted for NASA’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, is known as a Transonic Truss-Braced Wing.

While developing a more efficient wing design is certainly worthwhile, having skepticism about this project is certainly reasonable. First of all, it seems somewhat strange to award Boeing such a contract at this time, considering NASA own experience with the company with Starliner, as well as that company’s problems with other government contracts for the military.

Secondly, the press release makes a big deal about the project getting an X-plane designation, an entirely superficial and PR related title that if anything suggests there is very little steak to this sizzle.

Third, it is unclear the nature of this contract. Is is cost-plus, or fixed price? The press release says NASA will “invest $425 million over seven years, while the company and its partners will contribute the remainder of the funding, estimated at about $725 million.” If cost-plus, this means nothing. Boeing will use any excuse to go over budget in order to get more money from NASA.

Finally, half a billion dollars to develop and test a new airplane wing design, using an already existing airplane, seems incredibly exorbitant. And to require seven years to build it seems ridiculously long.

All in all, I suspect the real goal of this project is to funnel tax dollars to Boeing to help keep it afloat, not to build a new green airplane.

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Forgotten Weapons – Girardoni Air Gun

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The air rifle that Lewis & Clark took on their expedition to impress the American Indians they met. When I recently read their memoirs, I was baffled that an air gun existed in the early 1800s. This video shows it in detail, noting that it was actually invented in 1780 for the Austrian Army.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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SpaceX launches 72 smallsats; lands a Falcon 9 1st stage for the 200th time

3:22 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched 72 smallsats using its Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

With this launch, SpaceX achieved a significant milestone, successfully landing a Falcon 9 first stage for the 200th time, an achievement that for more than a half century all managers and most engineers in the rocket business claimed was not only impossible, but impractical. They insisted that the first stage would not be able to be reused because of the stress of launch. SpaceX has proved these close-minded fools very wrong. This particular first stage completed its ninth mission on this flight, a number that has become very routine for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stages. The stage landed back at Vandenberg,

As of posting the satellites have not all deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

40 SpaceX
22 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 45 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 45 to 38, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 40 to 38.

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The evidence shows clearly that Biden has worked to squelch Elon Musk and SpaceX

12:41 pm

Starship #15 about to land
Starship prototype #15, during its successful suborbital test flight in May 2021

The public concerns expressed last week by one NASA official about the regulatory delays caused by the FAA to SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy development program illustrated once again my sense that there had been a stark change in how SpaceX was being regulated by the federal government, from the Trump to the Biden administration. Under Trump, SpaceX was moving fast, launching test flights frequently. Under Biden, all such test flights appeared to grind to a halt.

For example, it seemed to me that during the Trump administration the FAA allowed SpaceX to complete its investigations of explosions or launch failures quickly, so they could proceed as quickly to another test launch, sometimes only weeks later. After the first orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship on April 20, 2023, however, the FAA responded quite differently, demanding the right to oversee a full investigation that it also implied would take many months.

Others have disputed this assertion. For example, space reporter Doug Messier commented about my analysis, stating that the FAA’s insistence on a lengthy investigation into the April 20, 2023 Superheavy/Starship orbital test flight failure was simply standard procedure. “I don’t think this represents any change in policy. This is how it’s been done for years,” Messier wrote. “It’s easy to scapegoat FAA as THE cause of the problem, and speculate about nefarious actions by the Biden Administration.”

Who is right? Am I being paranoid? Or is Messier being naive? As Howard Cosell used to say on Monday Night Football, “Let’s go to the videotape!” Or in this case, let’s take a hard detailed look at how SpaceX’s test program for Starship/Superheavy came to a screeching halt when Joe Biden took over the White House from Donald Trump.

From 2018, when SpaceX began first cutting metal on Starship prototypes, to May 2021, the company did eight suborbital test flights and at least six tank and static fire engine tests, with some resulting in explosive destruction. Below is a list of those tests (There were more such engine and tank tests during that time, but these were ones I could quickly find).
» Read more

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SpaceX launches another 52 Starlink satellites

12:21 am

Just after midnight tonight (Pacific) SpaceX successfully launched another 52 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, the 199th time that SpaceX has accomplished this so-called impossible task. The two fairing halves completed their fourth and fifth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

39 SpaceX
22 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 44 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 44 to 38, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 39 to 38.

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Zac Brown Band – Knee Deep

6:01 pm

An evening pause: Performed live in 2022.

I heard this song on the radio and was astonished because it actually didn’t overload the sound with a typical rock instrumentation so that it was no longer a country tune but a simply rock song with the singer having a western accent. Instead it is simple and clear and a pleasure to listen to, partly because it doesn’t sound like every other pop song played these days.

It also makes a great song to start the weekend.

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Firefly buys orbital tug company Spaceflight

10:21 am

Firefly Aerospace announced yesterday that it has purchased the orbital tug company Spaceflight, and will now offer its Sherpa tug as part of its launch services.

Spaceflight Inc. was known as a leader in arranging launches of small satellites on small launch vehicles or as secondary payloads on larger launch vehicles, deploying more than 460 payloads. Spaceflight had also developed its own series of orbital transfer vehicles called Sherpa, using a mix of chemical and electric propulsion systems.

Spaceflight has worked with a wide range of launch providers, although at one point it ran afoul of one of its largest partners, SpaceX. However, Firefly said that Spaceflight’s services will, going forward, be used only with Firefly’s vehicles.

Though Firefly will honor the contracts Spaceflight arranged for smallsats to be launched on other rockets, it appears it will be no longer be acting as a launch arranger. Instead, it will offer smallsats a package launch deal, including both its Alpha rocket and the tug. For this deal to pay off however Firefly has got to get Alpha operational. The two launches scheduled for this summer should do this, assuming they fly with no problems.

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Space Force awards SpaceX and ULA contracts for six launches each

10:09 am

As part of its long term launch agreement with SpaceX and ULA, the Space Force today awarded both companies contracts for six launches each, all to occur beginning in 2025.

According to the overall agreement, each company got five-year contracts to launch as many as 40 missions. ULA won 60% of the missions and SpaceX 40%. However, the delays to ULA’s Vulcan rocket will likely change those numbers:

In a report released June 8, the Government Accountability Office noted that the NSSL program office continues to order launch services from ULA and SpaceX amid concerns about Vulcan’s delays. “ULA delayed the first certification flight of the Vulcan launch system … to accommodate challenges with the BE-4 engine and a delayed commercial payload, nearly two years later than originally planned,” said GAO. “In the event that Vulcan is unavailable for future missions, program officials stated that the Phase 2 contract allows for the ability to reassign missions to the other provider.”

One of the reasons that ULA has not hurried its effort to make Vulcan reusable and more competitive with SpaceX is that is already has this guaranteed military launch commitment. It doesn’t need to be as competitive.

What needs to happen is a third or fourth company has to enter the market, giving the military other options. The military also has to cancel this long term launch agreement, which limits the number of companies it will do business with to just SpaceX and ULA. It would be much better to open the competition up to everyone. The ULA would be forced to compete.

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Abbott & Costello – Modern Math

6:01 pm

An evening pause: From their 1941 movie, In the Navy.

Hat tip sippin_bourbon, who “actually re-enacted this for a few classmates in 7th grade, then walked out
while they scratched their heads. The teacher, who had been watching caught me in the way out the door and told me not to do that on a test.” Sadly, a modern teacher today might consider this good math.

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Boeing sued for stealing specialized tooling to assembly SLS

9:36 am

A Colorado company, Wilson Aerospace, on June 6, 2023 filed a lawsuit against Boeing, claiming that the company conspired with Wilson’s direct competitors to steal the designs of its specialized tool for installing the core station engines on SLS.

According to the lawsuit, after some initial discussions, Boeing arranged for a “live” demonstration of Wilson’s torque device, during which participants could handle and operate it to verify the tool’s capability and performance. What Wilson claims it did not realize, however, is that some of the participants in this demonstration were not Boeing employees. “Wilson later learned that at least seven of those in attendance for the live presentation were external to Boeing and were, at the time, employees of Wilson’s direct competitors,” the lawsuit states. “This fact was concealed from Wilson who was deceived by Boeing and the ‘Bogus Boeing Employees’ into giving the presentation by falsely suggesting to Wilson that everyone was a Boeing employee.”

The complaint alleges that Boeing subsequently used information from this demonstration, as well as proprietary drawings and designs, to work with Wilson’s competitors to develop a cheaper solution. “Boeing concealed these facts from Wilson as part of its scheme to defraud Wilson and to transmit Wilson’s IP to its direct competitors,” the lawsuit states.

The company is demanding a jury trial. If its charges are proved true, it will be another piece of evidence demonstrating the level of corruption that exists at Boeing.

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ULA completes dress rehearsal launch countdown and static fire test of Vulcan

9:31 am

ULA yesterday successfully completed a full dress rehearsal launch countdown new Vulcan rocket, including a short 2-second static fire test of the rocket’s two first stage BE-4 engines.

A Vulcan rocket fired its two BE-4 engines in a static-fire test called the Flight Readiness Firing (FRF) at 9:05 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41. The engine start sequence started at T-4.88 seconds, ULA said in a statement an hour after the test, with the engines throttling up to their target level for two seconds before shutting down, concluding the six-second test.

The test appeared to go as planned. “Nominal run,” Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, tweeted moments after the test.

This dress rehearsal had originally been scheduled for late May, but issues on the rocket required ULA to scrub the launch and return the rocket to the assembly building.

There appear to be only three issues remaining before that first launch can occur. First there is the hydrogen leak that caused the destruction of the rocket’s Centaur upper stage during a static fire engine test in March. The company has apparently still not determined what action — if any — must be taken on this.

Second is whether the rocket’s primary payload, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, is ready for launch. It appears it has completed all ground testing, but there were questions whether its software has been adjusted for a new landing site that NASA assigned it in February.

Third is scheduling. Peregrine’s monthly launch windows are only four to five days long each month. This limitation also has to be juggled with other ULA launches on the same launchpad, using its soon-to-be retired Atlas-5 rocket.

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Firefly delays NASA launch to August

9:16 am

According to papers filed with the FCC, Firefly’s July launch attempt of its Alpha rocket, carrying a set of NASA cubesats, has now been delayed one month to August.

Meanwhile, a second launch by Firefly for the Space Force is presently tentatively scheduled for June, and the company says it is wrapping up preparations for that launch. That contract’s prime focus is to demonstrate to the military the ability to launch with only a 24-hour notice.

If so, then this new rocket company, which has only launched twice before, with the second launch barely reaching orbit, will be launching twice in only a matter of weeks, both times from its launchpad at Vandenberg.

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OneWeb offers its satellite constellation broadband service to the maritime industry

9:06 am

With its full constellation of 634 satellites in orbit, OneWeb has now made its satellite constellation broadband service available to the maritime industry.

With 634 OneWeb operational satellites now in orbit, the OneWeb constellation is complete and fully operational down to 35 degrees latitude. OneWeb will have the final ground stations completed and operational requirements in place, ensuring the company remains on track to deliver full global maritime services by the end of the year. Now OneWeb will start selling services to the maritime industry, via its specialist maritime distribution partners.

OneWeb and its partners have also developed a range of hardware terminal products which are available from trusted maritime communications providers Intellian and Kymeta. Offering hardware terminal products from two established providers with different form factors enables greater choice for customers.

More information here.

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NASA names winners in annual student rocket competition

9:01 am

NASA yesterday named the winners in its annual student rocket launch competition, which took place at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama on April 15, 2023.

The live stream of the competition is available here, cued to when the rockets begin launching.

The number of awards is a bit too many, making it seem that NASA wanted to make sure every team got some form of participation award. Nonetheless, these students demonstrated that they will soon be building real rockets, as part of the new and emerging rocket industry.

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Heart – Crazy on You

6:01 pm

An evening pause: I posted this same song in 2022 from a different performance during the same 1977 tour. This version however was recorded as part of a documentary and includes some backstage footage that is definitely worth watching.

Has tip Rex Ridenoure, who notes that “Heart was the first rock band with female leads who also wrote all their own songs.”

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Researchers successfully transmit electricity from space

10:22 am

In a test of a system to wirelessly transmit electricity from solar power stations in orbit, researchers from Caltech have succeeded in transmitting a small amount of electricity from an orbiting cubesat launched in January.

“Through the experiments we have run so far, we received confirmation that MAPLE can transmit power successfully to receivers in space,” [professor Ali] Hajimiri says. “We have also been able to program the array to direct its energy toward Earth, which we detected here at Caltech. We had, of course, tested it on Earth, but now we know that it can survive the trip to space and operate there.”

This small scale test mainly proved the technology can survive launch, operate in space, and transmit power back to Earth. Whether the rate of transmission can be profitable remains as yet unknown. Nor is it yet known the effects such energy transmissions through the atmosphere will have.

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German rocket startup successfully completes full duration engine test of upper stage

10:03 am

The German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg on June 2, 2023 successfully completed a full duration engine test of the upper stage of its rocket.

Launch service provider Rocket Factory Augsburg AG (RFA) has successfully hot fired its upper stage for a full duration of 280 seconds. This marks the successful completion of the Integrated System Test (IST) campaign, in which a staged-combustion Helix engine was integrated into an upper stage tank system and hot fired several times up to full duration in the final test. This is the 1st time in Europe that a privately developed staged combustion upper stage has been successfully hot fired.

The company will also use the Helix engine in its first stage, so this test essentially proved its capability for that use as well. With this success, the company will now start constructing the first stage, with the first launch of the entire rocket targeting the end of this year.

Two important tidbits about this story. First, the test was done at a private testing facility in Germany. In the past all such testing was done under the control of the the European Space Agency, at its sites. Germany has essentially now broken that monopoly in its push to develop its own independent rocket industry of competing private companies.

Second, the launch is presently aiming to take off from a launchpad the company has leased and is building at the new Shetland Island spaceport in the United Kingdom. I wonder if it will have the same regulatory problems as Virgin Orbit in getting its launch permit. If so, that launch won’t happen this year.

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SpaceX successfully launches cargo Dragon to ISS

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully launched another cargo Dragon freighter to ISS, lifting off on a Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral.

This cargo capsule is on its fourth flight. The first stage completed its fifth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The capsule carries about 7, 000 pounds of supplies, including another set of new solar arrays for ISS, and will dock with ISS tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

38 SpaceX
20 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 43 to 20 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 43 to 36. SpaceX by itself leads the world 38 to 36, but when you add other American companies it still trails everyone else combined 38 to 42.

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SpaceX launches 22 2nd generation Starlink satellites

6:19 pm

SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 22 2nd generation Starlink satellites into orbit, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral at 8:20 am (Eastern).

The first stage completed its third flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their sixth and ninth times respectively.

The company had hoped to follow this launch with a second from Cape Canaveral only hours later, sending a new Dragon cargo freighter to ISS, but that launch was scrubbed due to weather concerns later in the day. It has been rescheduled for tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

37 SpaceX
20 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 42 to 20 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 42 to 36. SpaceX by itself leads the world 37 to 36, but when you add other American companies it trails everyone else combined 37 to 42.

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Newly discovered Starliner issues delay launch again

9:24 am

NASA and Boeing revealed today that two newly discovered design issues involving Starliner’s parachutes and the tape used to protect the capsule’s wiring has forced it to cancel the planned June launch, with no firm new launch date scheduled.

The parachute issue involves the parachute cords, specifically the “soft link joints” that connect those lines to the capsule.

[Mark Nappi, Boeing’s Starliner VP] told reporters fabric links that join the parachutes to the lines of the spacecraft, called soft link joints, need to be replaced and possibly recertified to withstand heavier loads and stresses to ensure crew safety. “They were tested recently because of a discovery that we found during the review process where we believed that the data was recorded incorrectly,” Nappi said. “We tested (the soft links), and sure enough, they did fail at the lower limit.” [emphasis mine]

The tape — which has been found to be far more flammable than expected — is difficult to fix.

The second problem found last week is more extensive since the tape used to protect Starliner’s wiring harnesses from nicks or abrasions runs for hundreds of feet through several of the spacecraft’s internal systems. “There is a lot of tape on the wire harnesses,” Nappi said. “We’re looking at solutions that would provide for potentially another type of wrapping over the existing tape in the most vulnerable areas that reduces the risk of a fire hazard.”

That both of these issues were not fixed in development is beyond astonishing and speaks so badly of Boeing’s engineering and management that it is difficult to find words. In fact, for Boeing to use tape that could cause a fire now, more than a half century after the Apollo 1 capsule fire, suggests a level of incompetence that makes one wonder why anyone would ever fly on any of its spacecraft or airplanes. This is certainly not the company that built the 747.

Officials indicated that they might be able fix this issues fast enough that a fall launch could occur, but made no promises.

For Boeing, this new delay only worsens its bottom line. It built Starliner on a fixed-price contract, so every delay and issue must be paid for by it, not NASA. Meanwhile, the delays mean that SpaceX is getting flight contracts to ISS from NASA, contracts that Boeing would have gotten had Starliner been ready as planned. Worse, ISS is now looking at a 2028 retirement. If Boeing doesn’t get Starliner operational soon, there might not even be any contracts for it to win.

I have embedded the full press conference below for those who wish to watch NASA and Boeing officials blather about how they really haven’t done anything stupid here. Really, you have got to believe them!
» Read more

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Viasat completes merger with Inmarsat

9:22 am

After two years dealing with regulatory delays, Viasat has finally completed its purchase of Inmarsat, producing a single company that has 8,000 employees and a fleet of nineteen operating satellites.

The key quote from the link however is this:

Their merger announcement sparked additional consolidation plans as operators look to bolster their defenses amid a growing competitive threat from Starlink in the satellite broadband market. Eutelsat announced plans to buy OneWeb in November 2022 and hopes to complete its merger this summer. SES and Intelsat confirmed March 29 they were in talks about merging, although they have not provided a meaningful update since then.

In other words, the older geosynchronous satellite companies are consolidating because of the competition posed by SpaceX’s Starlink system, which also suggests these companies have never competed very aggressively against each other to cut costs. Now that someone new (SpaceX) has arrived doing that, they find their only option is to merge. Apparently the corporate culture in each separate company finds cutting costs difficult. Merger appears to be their only avenue for doing so.

I wonder what will happen to these old satellite companies when (or if) Amazon finally begins launching and operating its own Kuiper constellation, in direct competition with SpaceX. Unless they finally begin to offer a competitive product at a competitive price, I expect after consolidation we will begin to see bankruptcies.

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Sierra Space powers up its Dream Chaser mini-shuttle for the first time

9:09 am

Sierra Space yesterday announced that it has successfully run electricity for the first time through its first Dream Chaser mini-shuttle, dubbed Tenacity.

The press release is remarkably lacking in detailed information, or graphics. This quote is really the only hard facts mentioned:

Sierra Space simulated the power that will be generated from Dream Chaser’s solar arrays once on orbit. Test engineers plugged that power into Dream Chaser and began turning on systems. Sierra Space exercised flight computers, base processors and low-voltage distribution units.

Tenacity has been under construction since 2016, when the company won its NASA contract to build it. That’s seven years to build a single spacecraft, and yet all they have done so far is feed electricity through it for the first time. In that time period SpaceX not only built multiple prototypes of Starship and Superheavy, it has flown multiple test flights.

Is money an issue? The actual contract amount NASA gave Sierra Space to build Tenacity has never been published, though NASA has said the total awarded for all the cargo missions to be flown by SpaceX, Northrop Grumman, and Sierra Space equaled $14 billion. Since these fixed price contracts also require the companies also commit some of their own funds, or obtain outside financing, it is possible that Sierra Space has had money issues slowing development.

Regardless, Dream Chaser was first supposed to fly in 2020. It is now three years late, with no clear indication that a launch will come anytime soon. In many way, Sierra Space is beginning to remind me of Blue Origin, endlessly issuing promises but never delivering.

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