Dionne Warwick – A House Is Not Home
An evening pause: Performed live on television 1964.
Hat tip Diane Zimmerman.
Tag: commercial
T-Mobile makes its Starlink capability available to everyone
T-Mobile officials yesterday announced that it is now offering its Starlink text and location cellphone capabilities available by subscription to all users, whether or not they are a T-Mobile customer.
On Wednesday, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert announced that the Starlink-powered service is officially out of beta, though it only supports text messaging and location-sharing for now. The new satellite coverage option is called “T-Satellite,” and it’s currently available as a standalone subscription. It’s being offered at $10 per month for a “limited time,” before increasing to $15 per month. It also comes included for customers on the carrier’s $100 per month Experience Beyond or older Go5G plans.
Your device will automatically connect to T-Satellite if you’re in an area with no cellular coverage. As long as there isn’t a heavy amount of cloud coverage or trees blocking your view of the sky, you should be able to send and receive text messages, including to 911, as well as share a link that temporarily tracks your location.
At present, the service is only available in the United States, though it will expand as SpaceX launches more cellphone-to-satellite Starlink satellites. T-Mobile also expects to add voice capability as well.
Nor is this the only option. AT&T is partnering with the satellite company AST SpaceMobile to offer similar services.
Mexico’s president says it will investigate SpaceX for doing salvage operations off its coast
Mexico to SpaceX: “Nice business you got here. Shame
if something happened to it.”
You can’t win with these people: First Mexico’s president Claudia Sheinbaum complained loudly about the debris that landed or washed up on its beaches after several of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy test launches, demanding an investigation followed by sanctions against the company.
Now Sheinbaum is complaining and demanding a new investigation about SpaceX’s effort the last two weeks to salvage and remove that debris from the ocean off its coast.
During a passage of her daily press conference, Sheinbaum said the agencies are analyzing whether the company has to be sanctioned after its unit tasked with clearing debris from the Starship launch, located in the Gulf of Mexico, worked without proper authorization. “We are investigating but the Environment, Navy, Digital Transformation, Government and Foreign Relations secretariats are conducting their research. The study is practically done,” Sheinbaum said.
Navy Secretary Raymundo Pedro Morales Angeles said the company hired by SpaceX to retrieve debris from its Starship rocket was allowed to enter the country but didn’t fulfill the requirements to work and ended up leaving the country.
If this behavior doesn’t prove Sheinbaum’s lust for power and control, nothing will. She doesn’t really care about Mexico’s beaches or environment. If she did, she would celebrate SpaceX’s salvage operations. What she really doesn’t like is that someone is doing something without her permission. She is the boss, and SpaceX better remember that!
Rocket startup IRocket mergers with investment company
The rocket startup IRocket has now gone public by merging with the special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) BPGC, with the latter committing $400 million in investment capital in the merged company.
Innovative Rocket Technologies Inc. (iRocket), a next-generation reusable space rocket developer, and BPGC Acquisition Corp. (BPGC), a special purpose acquisition company sponsored by The Hon. Wilbur Ross, the 39th U.S. Secretary of Commerce with more than 55 years of private equity and investment banking experience, and BPGC Management LP, an independent private equity firm dedicated to opportunistic buyouts and special situations transactions in the global industrials, materials and chemicals sectors, jointly announced today that they have entered into a definitive Merger Agreement and Plan of Merger dated July 22, 2025, in connection with the previously-announced letter of intent.
Upon closing, the combined company will operate under the name iRocket Technologies Inc. and the parties will plan to list the combined company on Nasdaq.
The press release at the link makes a lot of very ambitious claims about the company’s proposed rocket, claims that so far appear to be nothing more than nice PowerPoint graphics.
iRocket’s Shockwave launch vehicle is uniquely designed for recovery and reuse of all of its stages. Just as airplanes fly multiple flights, iRocket will Recondition, Reload, and Relaunch™ its rockets in under 24 hours. iRocket’s patented liquid rocket engines will maintain high efficiency through descent as well as ascent. iRocket’s engines will be fueled with sustainable liquid oxygen and methane, which burns cooler, imparts less stress on components, and further supports iRocket’s unique 24-hour turn-around time. Being on a leading edge with its rocket engine expertise, iRocket is also developing solid rocket motors that will transform boosters, missiles, and interceptors.
The company has been around since 2018, yet as far as I can determine has never launched anything. One would hope that something real will begin to finally happen with this infusion of significant new capital.
JAXA/Mitsubishi test upgraded engines for H3 rocket
Japan’s space agency JAXA, working with Mitsubishi, successfully completed today a static fire test of new more powerful engines to be used on its new H3 rocket, thus eliminating the need for solid-fueled boosters with the goal of reducing the rocket’s cost.
Thursday’s test involved the sixth H3 rocket, which is a Type 30 test vehicle that has three main engines and no boosters. The three main engines were fired for 25 seconds while the rocket remained attached to the launchpad. JAXA will check acceleration, temperature and other data collected during the test.
This new version of the H3 is expected to do its first launch before the end of 2025. If successful, the launch price compared to JAXA’s now retired H2A rocket will be cut in half, to about $35 million, a number that will almost be competitive with the Falcon 9. SpaceX officially charges about $70 million per launch, but it is believed it could reduce that price significantly — some estimate to as low as $20 million — and still make a profit.
Nils Lofgren – Valentine
An evening pause: Performed live 1991.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Rocket Lab’s new Neutron rocket faces red tape delays at Wallops
Proposed dredged channel. Click for original.
We’re here to help you! Rocket Lab appears to be having regulatory problems getting approvals to transport hardware for its new Neutron rocket to its new launchpad at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) on Wallops Island in Virginia, delays that might prevent it from launching as planned later this year.
It appears the company needs to dredge a deeper channel to ship the heavier Neutron hardware into Wallops, but it has not been able to begin work because of approval delays by the federal government.
The dredging project was approved by VMRC [Virginia Marine Resources Commission] in May, but the company has yet to start digging because it’s still awaiting federal sign-off from the Army Corps of Engineers.
Lacking this approval and unable to get the channel ready for this year’s launch, the company is seeking permission to use a stop-gap different approach to transport the hardware through these shallow waters.
Kedging, a little-known nautical method, is used to ensure the barges can safely navigate the existing shallow channel. Workers would use a series of anchors and lines to steer the barge through the shallow waters. The company is seeking permission to use this method through the end of June 2026 or until the dredging work is complete, whichever comes first.
Lacking an okay to do even this alternative approach, Rocket Lab will be forced to transport the hardware using “ramps and cranes,” an approach that is impractical in the long run for achieving a profitable launch pace. It also would likely result in not meeting its targeted launch date before the end of 2025 for the first Neutron launch.
Trump administration moving to reduce rocket launch environmental regulations
According to a draft executive order that has not yet been released, the Trump administration is planning a major revision of the FAA’s environmental and launch regulations that has badly impacted rocket companies, with the goal of streamlining licensing.
The order would give Trump even more direct control over the space industry’s chief regulator by turning the civil servant position leading the FAA’s Office of Commercial Space Transportation into a political appointment. The last head of the office and two other top officials recently took voluntary separation offers.
The order would also create a new adviser to the transportation secretary to shepherd in deregulation of the space industry.
…The draft order also seeks to restrict the authority of state coastal officials who have challenged commercial launch companies like SpaceX, documents show. It could lead to federal officials interfering with state efforts to enforce their environmental rules when they conflict with the construction or operation of spaceports.
The order would also have the secretary of transportation ‘reevaluate, amend, or rescind’ sections of Part 450, the FAA licensing regulations that it imposed during the Biden administration that was supposed to streamline licensing but ended up adding considerable new red tape which contributed significantly to squelching the new launch industry that had popped up during the first Trump term.
As is usual for the propaganda press, the article at the link implies that these changes would result in horrible environmental consequences as well as increased safety risks to the public. What it does not note is that these changes appear to simply return the regulatory framework back to what existed prior to the Biden administration, a framework that had existed for more than a half century previously. The environment and public safety did just fine under those more freedom-oriented rules. I am sure both will do just fine again.
This order might also help explain Trump’s decision to withdraw Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator and appoint Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy as interim NASA administrator. The order puts much of this work on his head, and having him in charge of NASA will likely aid that work.
Lucie Horsch & The Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century – Bach
An evening pause: Sadly they don’t identify the specific music piece.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
SpaceX launches two SES communications satellites
Despite a launch abort yesterday at T-11 seconds for unstated reasons, SpaceX followed up by successfully completing the launch today, sending two SES communications satellites into orbit with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
This was SpaceX’s fifth launch for this SES constellation, during which it has placed a total of ten satellites into orbit. The first stage completed its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairings completed their ninth and twenty-first flights respectively.
A few hours earlier a different SpaceX rocket had another launch abort at about T-43 seconds, this time because of a local power outage. That launch has been rescheduled for later this evening.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
90 SpaceX
37 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 90 to 64.
Local county abruptly stops delivering water to Boca Chica
Without any warning Cameron county early this month abruptly stopped its decades-long delivery of water to residents of Boca Chica and the newly formed town of Starbase.
[T]he county suddenly stopped the $15 monthly service — with no notice — earlier this month, said Keith Reynolds, a Starbase resident unaffiliated with SpaceX.
“Abruptly cutting off water service without notice poses safety and public health risks,” Kent Myers, Starbase’s city administrator, wrote in a letter to County Commissioner Sofia Benavides, whose precinct includes that stretch of Texas 4. Starbase, he pointed out, “has neither the legal authority nor operational capacity to deliver water to these residents.”
Neither the county nor Commissioner Benavides has responded to multiple requests for comment about the decision. Reynolds said the county and Benavides “decided to leave everybody high and dry without water — didn’t say a word.”
…Reynolds, who’s had his troubles with his SpaceX neighbors over the years — including power surges, traffic, drones and behavior he’s described as bullying, said the county’s recent move bothers him more than anything SpaceX has done. “That’s just a willful denying of basic services to your residents,” he said. “You can’t just stop being a provider of water for a whole community.”
The county’s action including cutting off service to residents both inside Starbase and those nearby.
SpaceX has been topping off residents tanks for the time being at no charge. It is in the process of establishing its own water system, but for these locals to access it will require them to sign agreements that require them to evacuate during launches if ordered to by SpaceX.
The lack of explanation or warning strongly suggests the county’s actions were a political retaliation against the recent creation of the town of Starbase. County Commissioner Benavides had previously opposed the recently passed state law that gave Starbase the power to close Boca Chica’s beaches.
The Waterboys – The Whole of the Moon
An evening pause: Performed live c2019.
Hat tip Ferris Akel.