Rocket debris thought to have come from the launch failure of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 earlier this year has washed up on the shore of the Isles of Scilly near the southwestern tip of England.
I am sure that SpaceX engineers will want to look at this as it might help them better understand the causes of the launch failure.
An evening pause, posted early for Thanksgiving: I posted this for Thanksgiving back in 2012. It is worth watching and singing again, in these terrible times. The hope of America will always live on, even when America is gone. Ordinary people want freedom, love, family, and the right to live their lives as they wish, without harming others, so they can bring in “the blessings of harvest,” whatever that harvest might be. It must be our goal to allow that to happen, and to stop those that wish to prevent it.
The promise of living
With hope and thanksgiving,,,
An evening pause: Hat tip Danae. Stay with it, in only gets better.
The competition heats up: Boeing has awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne a $200 million contract to build the propulsion system for the service module for its manned Starliner capsule.
Unlike the big contract NASA gave Aerojet to restart its shuttle engine production line, this contract is for engines that will actually fly in space and accomplish something.
The competition heats up: Yesterday’s launch of Japan’s first commercial payload on its upgraded lower cost H-IIA rocket suggested that they are now a serious player in the competitive launch market. What the earlier articles didn’t tell me was the cost they charge to launch a payload on H-IIA.
This article today states that each launch costs 10 billion yen, which translates to about $80 million. That is about $10 million more than SpaceX charges for its Falcon 9, but is certainly cheaper than many other rocket companies. At this price they have a chance of grabbing some of the launch market, but to really compete they need to cut that cost even more, which the article suggests their next rocket will succeed in doing: “The government is developing a new core rocket named the H3, whose launches are expected to cost only about a half of the H2A.”
They do not say whether H3 will be reusable, but at $40 million per launch it will be the cheapest rocket on Earth. That it is government developed however makes me skeptical they will succeed. We shall see. What is clear, however, is that the competition is certainly encouraging the lowering of cost.
The competition heats up: Using its H-IIA rocket, upgraded to lower cost, Japan launched its first commercial payload today, putting Canada’s Telestar 12V into geosynchronous orbit.
It is not clear if Japan’s government-run space program can compete. The rocket is built by Mitsubishi, but it appears owned and operated by JAXA, the equivalent of Japan’s NASA. It has also been a very expensive rocket to launch, as for much of its existence it has been like SLS, more dedicated to producing pork jobs than actually competing with other rocket companies. Whether they can upgrade it sufficiently to compete in price with other rockets is highly questionable.
Nonetheless, that Japan is trying to compete is good news. The more competition, the better. The effort alone will produce new ideas, which in turn can only help lower the cost to get into space, thus making it possible for more people to afford it.
In the heat of competition: Three of XCOR’s founders are leaving the company, even as it struggles to finish its Lynx suborbital spacecraft.
XCOR Aerospace said in a statement that Jeff Greason and Dan DeLong, the chief technology officer and chief engineer of the company, respectively, were “stepping back” from those positions “to turn their attention to pursue other interests.” A third co-founder, Aleta Jackson, was not mentioned in the release but is also leaving the company.
I am saddened that these individuals will not be there should XCOR finally succeed in finishing Lynx and flying it. At the same time, the fact that they are leaving at this stage suggests strongly to me that Lynx is nowhere close to flying, and that the company bean-counters have realized this and have now been forced to take action.
As regular readers to BtB know, I have always been extremely skeptical of XCOR’s effort. I have always wanted them to succeed, but in casting a cold eye at their progress I have never had much confidence that they would. Today’s story sadly adds strength to my skepticism.
The competition heats up: Yesterday Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin did its second test flight of its New Shepard suborbital rocket and capsule, and successfully recovered the rocket’s first stage, landing the stage vertically using its rockets.
As Jeff Bezos wrote at the link:
Rockets have always been expendable. Not anymore. Now safely tucked away at our launch site in West Texas is the rarest of beasts, a used rocket.
This flight validates our vehicle architecture and design. Our unique ring fin shifted the center of pressure aft to help control reentry and descent; eight large drag brakes deployed and reduced the vehicle’s terminal speed to 387 mph; hydraulically actuated fins steered the vehicle through 119-mph high-altitude crosswinds to a location precisely aligned with and 5,000 feet above the landing pad; then the highly-throttleable BE-3 engine re-ignited to slow the booster as the landing gear deployed and the vehicle descended the last 100 feet at 4.4 mph to touchdown on the pad.
When you watch the video you’ll see that we took the liberty of engineering all the drama out of the landing.
I have posted video of the flight below the fold.
SpaceX has been attempting this with its orbital Falcon 9 rocket for the last two years. They have come very close, hitting their target and almost landing. They plan to try again in December. Blue Origin however has beaten them to it, even if they have done it with a suborbital rocket.This demonstrates unequivocally that the concept is sound and that a rocket’s first stage can be recovered. It also demonstrates that of all the rocket companies in the world, SpaceX and Blue Origin are in position to dominate for at least the next decade. I am very confident that SpaceX will succeed in its efforts to recover its first stage. I am also very confident that Blue Origin’s plans to upgrade New Shepard into an orbital rocket/capsule will proceed quickly.
In both cases, the companies will then move forward, capable of recovering and reusing significant parts of their rockets, thus making it possible to significantly lower the launch cost and thus charge their customers less. No one else is in this position, or even close to it. The launch market will belong to them.
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An evening pause: This 1950s song, which many think is titled “Last Exit to Brooklyn,” actually has no connection to the 1950s book with that title. As noted at the youtube webpage, “Maybe Hubert Selby, the book’s author objected or Gene didn’t want to confuse people since they are unconnected.” Thus, the different title.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
The competition heats up? NASA has awarded Aerojet Rocketdyne a $1.4 billion contract to restart production on the space shuttle engines, with the intent to use those engines for its hoped-for missions beyond Earth orbit using the Space Launch System (SLS).
Normally I am thrilled when an American company gets a contract to build rocket engines, but here I have my doubts. This contract will only produce deep space engines if Congress gives NASA the money to fly SLS on deep space missions. Right now, Congress has only given NASA just enough money to fly one, maybe two SLS missions, with the second not coming until 2024 at the earliest. My impression of this contract award thus is that it is not to produce engines, but to keep Aerojet Rocketdyne from going bust, since no one else has been interested recently in buying their engines. In other words, it is pork, government money handed out in order to keep the people who work for Aerojet employed.
This is not the way to become a space-faring society. Better Aerojet Rocketdyne goes bust and the good engineers that work for it find jobs with companies making products that people want. Then, the government money can be spent wisely on things that we will eventually want and use, instead of make-work projects that accomplish nothing.
The competition heats up: NASA has awarded three different companies contracts to develop advanced ion and nuclear propulsion systems for future interplanetary missions, both manned and unmanned.
These are development contacts, all below $10 million. However, they all appeared structured like NASA’s cargo and crew contracts for ISS, where the contractor does all of the development and design, with NASA only supplying some support and periodic payments when the contractor achieves agreed-upon milestones. Because of this, the contractors will own the engines their develop, and will be able to sell them to other customers after development, thereby increasing the competition and innovation in the field.
An evening pause: I prefer to do it a bit slower, but this will give the couch potatoes here a sense of why I and others like to go hiking.
Hat tip Danae.
