An evening pause: The animation created to go with Troup’s jazzy version of this song is utter fantasy, imagining America as portrayed in culture, not reality. No matter. Sometimes the myth is better.
This also makes a nice pause to usher in the weekend.
Hat tip Mike Nelson.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 53 Starlink satellites, using a Falcon 9 first stage for the fifth time.
The first stage landed successfully on a drone ship.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
19 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
2 ULA
The U.S. now leads China 27 to 15 in the national rankings, as well as the entire world combined 27 to 24, leads that should widen in the next week with two more SpaceX launches as well as Boeing’s Starliner unmanned demo mission launch on ULA’s Atlas-5.
Capitalism in space: In a public event in California yesterday Chris Kemp, CEO of the rocket startup Astra, revealed some vague details about the company’s new larger rocket, dubbed Rocket 4.0.
The vehicle will be able to place up to 300 kilograms into low Earth orbit and 200 kilograms into sun-synchronous orbit at a “base price” of $3.95 million. By contrast, Astra’s current Rocket 3.3 vehicle can accommodate a small fraction of that payload, having to date launched only a few cubesats at a time.
…The biggest change in the rocket is its first stage propulsion. While Rocket 3.3 uses five of Astra’s Delphin engines, generating a combined 35,000 pounds-force of thrust, Rocket 4.0 will use two larger engines that produce a combined 70,000 pounds-force of thrust.
Kemp’s presentation however did not reveal whether Astra is building it or whether the company is buying it from someone else. He did say the company does not plan to attempt ot reuse any portion of Rocket 4.0, saying that the economics did not work for Astra.
His presentation also suggested a first launch for late this year, using a mission control made up of only two people, what he called “a pilot and a co-pilot.”
Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s CEO and president Gwynne Shotwell revealed today that Starship could be ready for its orbital test flight from Boca Chica as early as June, though government regulatory obstacles make that launch more likely three to six months from now.
It appears that the delays in getting FAA approval for launch have not been the only issues that have delayed that first launch attempt. Though SpaceX would have likely tried a launch months ago with earlier prototypes had the approval arrived as originally promised, that launch would have likely failed based on ground tests the company has been doing during the delay.
When Musk tweeted his “hopefully May” estimate, SpaceX was nowhere close to finishing the Starship – Ship 24 – that is believed to have been assigned to the orbital launch debut. However, SpaceX finally accelerated Ship 24 assembly within the last few weeks and ultimately finished stacking the upgraded Starship on May 8th. A great deal of work remains to truly complete Ship 24, but SpaceX should be ready to send it to a test stand within a week or two. Even though the testing Ship 24 will need to complete has been done before by Ship 20, making its path forward less risky than Booster 7’s, Ship 24 will debut a number of major design changes and likely needs at least two months of testing to reach a basic level of flight readiness.
A more likely launch date is probably late July at the earliest, though of course that will also depend on the government’s approval, something that presently appears difficult to get.
In a Reuters story today, it was revealed that Boeing and Aerojet Rocketdyne are in a fight over the cause of Starliner valve problem, where thirteen valves failed to work and caused the scrub of a launch attempt last summer, delaying almost a year to next week.
A team of Boeing and NASA engineers is in general agreement that the cause of the stuck valves involves a chemical reaction between propellant, aluminum materials and the intrusion of moisture from Starliner’s humid Florida launch site.
Aerojet engineers and lawyers see it differently, blaming a cleaning chemical that Boeing has used in ground tests, two of the sources said.
It appears that Aerojet is attempting to put the blame on Boeing because it might be liable for the cost of redesigning the valves, as well as other costs associated with the delays since last year.
The article also reveals that the valves being used in the Starliner capsule to be launched next week have only a temporary fix for the problem, and that Boeing intends to redesign them to prevent the problem in the future.
All in all, this whole fiasco does not speak well for either Boeing or Aerojet. It remains completely inexplicable for any spacecraft to be built with this kind of valve problem, now, after six decades of launches from wet and humid Florida. The problem reeks of bad design or poor quality control procedures by both companies.
The article further confirms these quality control problems by this tidbit in its last paragraph:
In 2017, Starliner had an accident during a ground test that forced the president of a different subcontractor to have his leg medically amputated. The subcontractor sued, and Boeing subsequently settled the case.
That this accident has been kept out of the news is somewhat shocking. For it to happen at all reveals a lot about the sloppy way Boeing operates these days.
Capitalism in space: Virgin Orbit has signed a deal with L3 Harris Technologies to buy two more 747s airplanes to airlift its LauncherOne rocket during launches.
L3Harris will modify one of the newly acquired aircrafts to serve as an additional airborne launch pad for Virgin Orbit’s small satellite launch service, with delivery expected in 2023. L3Harris will also overhaul the platform with a new cargo configuration, which is expected to allow Virgin Orbit to deliver its rockets and ground support equipment in the same aircraft that will launch from foreign spaceports.
The companies previously collaborated to produce Virgin Orbit’s flagship aircraft “Cosmic Girl,” the first customized 747-400 aircraft to carry and deploy payloads to Low Earth Orbit under Virgin Orbit’s LauncherOne program.
This deal once completed will give Virgin Orbit a fleet of three 747s for launching its rocket. The deal also suggests the company now has enough launch business to justify this expansion.
Capitalism in space: Orbex today unveiled a full-scale prototype of its Prime smallsat rocket, positioned on its own launchpad at the Sutherland Space Hub spaceport in Scotland, now under construction.
The photo to the right shows that prototype, held vertical with its own strongback. From the press release:
With the first full integration of the Orbex rocket on a launch pad now complete, the company is able to enter a period of integrated testing, allowing dress rehearsals of rocket launches and the development and optimisation of launch procedures. Orbex recently revealed their first test launch platform at a new test facility in Kinloss, a few miles from the company’s headquarters at Forres in Moray, Scotland.
Note that Sutherland Space Hub is not the SaxaVord Shetland Island spaceport also being developed in Scotland. The two are competing with each other to successfully complete the first launch from the United Kingdom in history. Also competing for this honor is an airport in Cornwall, which has a deal with Virgin Orbit to do its own launch later this year. And regardless who wins this race, the three sites will likely give the UK the first European-based spaceports in history.
The United Kingdom’s decision in 2016 to shift from a single government-run spaceport to competition and capitalism appears to be now finally paying off.
Capitalism in space: Terran Orbital has completed construction of the CAPSTONE Moon smallsat and has now had it shipped to New Zealand for its launch on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket no earlier than May 27th.
Tyvak Nano-Satellite Systems, a Terran Orbital Corporation, built the spacecraft for the Cislunar Autonomous Positioning System Technology Operations and Navigation Experiment, otherwise known as CAPSTONE. The 12U CubeSat includes a radio tower on top that extends its size from a traditional 12U form factor.
CAPSTONE will not go directly to the Moon but instead, follow a “ballistic lunar transfer” that will take it out as far as 1.5 million kilometers before returning into lunar orbit. That transfer, which will take about four months to complete, is designed to save propellant, making the mission feasible for such a small spacecraft. The CAPSTONE payload and its software are owned and operated by Advanced Space for NASA.
CAPSTONE will use Rocket Lab’s Proton upper stage to get it to the Moon. It will then test maneuvering as well as communicating in the lunar halo orbit that NASA wants to use with its Lunar Gateway space station. It will also be proving out the use of this kind of smallsat for future interplanetary missions.
Capitalism in space: Blue Origin yesterday announced the six people who will fly on its next suborbital New Shepard flight.
The company did not reveal the flight date. Nor did it say who is paying for their ticket and how much. In fact, Blue Origin has still not revealed what it is charging per ticket. It is appears however that at least one or more passengers are not paying, and were chosen instead for their PR value, including the apparent “woke” desire of Jeff Bezos to achieve as many ethnic “firsts” as possible.
It is nice that Blue Origin appears to be making money from its suborbital division. It would be much much better however if the company was be making orbital launches with its New Glenn rocket, which were originally supposed to begin in ’20 and now likely won’t start happening until ’23, at the very earliest.
Capitalism in space: After a year delay due to government security concerns, Momentus has finally gotten all the launch permits required for a launch later this month on a Falcon 9 of its space tug, Vigoride, on its first orbital test flight.
In late April Momentus had gotten FCC approval. Now it has gotten clearance from the FAA. The FAA had blocked last year’s launch because of security concerns related to the foreign connections of several of the company’s founders/investors. Those individuals have now left the company, clearing the way for license approval.
The delay however caused Momentus to lose several customers while allowing another space tug competitor, Launcher, to catch up.
Capitalism in space: Astra today announced an agreement with the SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands to begin launches from that United Kingdom location, beginning in 2023.
These launches will be the first by Astra outside the U.S. It is the second American company to sign on with SaxaVord, with Lockheed Martin’s ABL rocket company smallsat startup planning its own first launch there later this year. SavaVord also has a launch deal with a French company, Venture Orbital Systems, which hopes to launch later this decade.
None of these however could be the first launch from the United Kingdom since the 1960s. Virgin Orbit has a deal to launch from a runway from a Cornwall airport later this year. Furthermore, the rocket company Orbex is planning to launch its Prime rocket from a differenct spaceport in Sutherland, Scotland.
An evening pause: We’ve seen her before in an evening pause, but this time she plays solo, covering the bass part in this Rush recording.
Hat tip Cotour.
Spinlaunch’s prototype launcher
Capitalism in space: Spinlaunch has released a video showing what a Spinlaunch test launch looked like from the payload’s perspective.
I have embedded that video below. This was the company’s eighth test launch, all of which appear to have only gotten to about 30,000 feet or so. The payload camera does not turn on until the payload has been released and is ascending upward. Try to ignore the dramatic music, which of course is nothing but fake PR.
Three things are revealed. One, the acceleration at launch quickly drops as the payload ascends. Second, the payload’s wild spin appears intended, to help stabilize its flight. Third, its descent is slow, suggesting the release of parachutes.
» Read more
See update below.
Capitalism in space: In releasing its quarterly report, Virgin Galactic revealed that it is once again delaying the beginning of commercial suborbital flights, pushing back those first flights until the first quarter of 2023.
The net loss for Q1 2022 was $93 million, which was higher than Q4 2021 net loss of $81 million but less than the $130 million loss for the first quarter of 2021.
Flight tests of Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity suborbital space plane that were supposed to take place this summer have been pushed back to the fourth quarter. And the start of commercial service has been delayed from the fourth quarter to 2023. The company said the delays were due to supply chain and labor constraints.
You can read the full quarterly report here.
The company also says it still has 800 reservations for those commercial flights, which suggests that once flights begin it will have plenty of business for at least a period of time, depending on how frequently it can launch and how many passengers can fly each time.
UPDATE: The overhype of all of Richard Branson’s hi-tech projects, such as Virgin Galactic, was further illustrated by this other story from February about Branson’s well publicized project to build a hyper-loop transportation system in West Virgina.
Hyperloop was over-hyped. As the Financial Times first reported, Virgin Hyperloop laid off about half of its staff, as it makes a major shift it its goals. “The U.S. company said 111 people were laid off on Friday as it refocuses on delivering a cargo version of the experimental transportation system.”
Hat tip John Harman.
Capitalism in space: Early this morning SpaceX successfully launched 53 Starlink satellites, using and landing the Falcon 9’s first stage for the twelfth time.
The fairings halves were flying for their third and sixth times. This was also SpaceX’s sixth launch in less than a month.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
18 SpaceX
14 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
2 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 26 to 14 in the national rankings, as well as all the entire world combined 26 to 23.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX’s Endurance spacecraft successfully splashed down tonight off the coast of Florida, bringing home four astronauts after a six month mission on ISS.
This event capped a remarkable month for SpaceX. It launched two manned missions to ISS (one of which was entirely private) while returning two (including that private mission after seventeen days). In between the company also launched three Falcon 9 rockets putting satellites into orbit. All told, in the four weeks since the April 8th launch of the Axiom private manned mission to ISS, SpaceX completed five launches, all of which successfully landed the first stages for later reuse.
More important, everything on every one of those launches and splashdowns went like clockwork, with no problems, delays, or glitches. The only thing that delayed anything was the weather, something no one can do anything about.
Rocket engineering is hard, maybe the hardest technical challenge facing humans. The high quality of SpaceX’s work however is beginning to make it seem routine.
An evening pause: From the animated film Beauty and the Beast (1991), a truly great movie made when Disney Studios was still sane.
Rearranging deck chairs on the Titantic: Boeing today announced that it is moving its headquarters from Chicago to Washington, DC, so as to place its corporate executives closer to key federal officials.
Boeing is a major defense contractor, and the move will put executives close to Pentagon leaders. Rival defense contractors including General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are already based in the D.C. area. Company executives would also be near the Federal Aviation Administration, which certifies Boeing passenger and cargo planes.
Gee, for more than a half century Boeing was based entirely in Seattle, and somehow got lots of federal contracts and built great airplanes and spacecraft. It moved to Chicago in 2001 to be more centrally located, but instead put its top managers distant from its actual manufacturing and design headquarters. The result has not been very cheerful.
Now Boeing is moving even farther from Seattle, just so its executives can hobnob with politicians, go to fancy cocktail parties, and figure out easier who to pay off with political donations. Who cares if the actual design and manufacturing work continues to be shoddy and poorly supervised? What really counts is getting contracts to build bad stuff that either doesn’t work or is delivered late and overbudget for our corrupt federal government.
As proof, see this other story today: Starliner’s protective window cover falls off during capsule move to VAB.
From CBS space reporter Bill Harwood:
During the rollover to pad 41, as the Starliner neared the Vehicle Assembly Building, a protective window cover somehow fell off the capsule and tumbled to the road.
You can see video of this absurdity at the link. As this was not actually part of the capsule but a protective cover, it appears no damage to Starliner occurred. That it occurred at all however once again tells us of the serious quality control problems at the company.
Capitalism in space: For the first time, a private space station company, Axiom, has purchased 32 space station robot arm grapple points, or interfaces, from the Canadian company MDA that builds the robot arms on ISS for NASA.
The MDA interfaces aboard Axiom’s space station will also include those that allow the existing Canadarm2 on the International Space Station (ISS) to build and assemble the new Axiom Station. Once that stage is complete, MDA’s Canadarm3 interfaces will act as permanent robotic system fixture points on the outside of Axiom Station, forming the foundation for future robotic arm integration and utilization once it separates from the ISS and operates independently.
This deal means that eventually Axiom is going to purchase its own MDA-built robot arm.
Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch yesterday successfully completed the fifth test flight of its giant Roc airplane, now being designed for testing hypersonic vehicles in flight.
You can read the press release here [pdf], which stated the following:
The fifth flight debuted a new pylon on the aircraft’s center wing that will be used to carry and release Talon-A hypersonic vehicles. The hardware is comprised of a mini-wing and adapter that is constructed with aluminum and carbon fiber skins. It weighs approximately 8,000 pounds and occupies 14 feet of Roc’s 95-foot center wingspan, allowing for adequate space between the aircraft’s dual fuselages for safe vehicle release and launch. The state-of-the-art structure also features a winch system that will load Talon onto the platform from the ground, expediting launch preparation and reducing the need for ground support.
The company has been building two Talon hypersonic vehicles, and now has a third under construction. This third Talon is intended to be reuseable. All will be used as part of the company’s contract with the Air Force to test hypersonic technology, with the first flights now scheduled for ’23.
Capitalism in space: The smallsat startup rocket company Phantom Space today announced it has ordered more than 200 rocket engines from the rocket engine company Ursa Major.
The order includes Ursa Major’s 5,000-Pound Thrust Hadley engines and the new 50,000-pound thrust Ripley engines. By using Ursa Major’s Hadley engines, Phantom’s Daytona rocket is slated for orbital launch in 2023, just three years after Phantom Space was formed. Under the terms of the agreement, Ursa Major will supply hundreds of its Hadley engines in different configurations including ground test and upper-stage vacuum variants, as well as numerous Ripley engines for planned upgrades to the Daytona vehicle.
The CEO of Phantom Space, Jim Cantrell, gave me a tour of its facility here in Tucson only three weeks ago, during which I took the picture above of a Hadley engine being tested and prepared for further static fire tests.
Cantrell had been the founder of Vector, his earlier failed attempt to create a smallsat rocket company. He clearly has not let that failure stop him.
SpaceX’s Endurance manned capsule today undocked from ISS carrying four astronauts with a planned splashdown off the coast of Florida at shortly after midnight (Eastern) tonight.
I have embedded the live stream for the splashdown below. It will go live about 11:00 pm (Eastern) in order to cover all the splashdown events:
11:48 p.m. Trunk jettison
11:53 p.m. Deorbit burn
12:04 a.m. Nosecone closed
12:43 a.m. Dragon splashdown
» Read more
We’re here to help you! Documents obtained by CNBC under a Freedom of Information request have revealed the specific objections of Fish & Wildlife that has helped delay the approval of the FAA’s environment reassessment of SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility for Starship launches.
SpaceX must take steps to track and mitigate its impact on endangered species and their habitat in order to gain approvals for testing and commercial launches of its Starship Super Heavy lift-launch vehicle in Boca Chica, Texas, according to documents from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service obtained by CNBC.
The documents, released by the federal agency in response to a Freedom of Information Act request, show that recent declines in an endangered bird species, the piping plover, have already been correlated with SpaceX activity at the South Texas facility.
The documents also reveal that SpaceX is, for now at least, reducing the amount of energy it plans to generate at a utility-sized natural gas power plant on the 47.4-acre launch site there.
According to a lawyer from the radical environmentalist organization the Center for Biological Diversity who was interviewed for the article, Fish & Wildlife’s demands are not tremendously restrictive, and might actually allow the project to go forward, since they appear to only require SpaceX to “monitor affected animal populations carefully, limit construction and launch activity to specific seasons or times of day and night, and use shuttles to reduce vehicle traffic of workers on location.”
I see it differently. I think Fish & Wildlife bureaucrats are struggling to come up with reasons to block SpaceX. They know that decades of data in Florida prove that rocket launches have no negative impact on wildlife. To claim such a thing in Texas is thus not justified. They are trying to do it anyway.
Capitalism in space: A new South Korean smallsat rocket startup company, Innospace, is now planning its first suborbital test launch in December, launching a Brazilian military payload from that country’s Alcântara Space Center.
The 16.3-meter, single-stage test rocket is a precursor to the company’s planned commercial satellite launcher Hanbit-Nano, a two-stage small satellite launcher designed to carry up to a 50-kilogram payload to a 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. The first stages of the two rockets are powered by a 15-ton-thrust hybrid rocket engine that uses liquid oxygen and paraffin-based propellants. Hanbit-Nano’s upper stage is equipped with a 3-ton hybrid engine, according to the Sejong-based company’s website.
“If the upcoming test launch is successful, we will start preparing for a test launch of Hanbit-Nano,” Innospace spokesperson Kim Jung-hee told SpaceNews.
The company has so far raised almost $28 million in private investment capital. It also has an agreement with Norway to launch its rockets from there.
Since South Korea’s government has its own rocket program, it will be interesting to see which succeeds first in getting into orbit.
An evening pause: The medley covers 25 songs from every James Bond film from Dr No (1962) to No Time To Die (2021).
Hat tip Dan Morris.
