It is now confirmed that a helium leak caused the scrub of the Falcon 9 May 10 launch.
According to reports, no damage occurred, but tracing the leak has apparently taken longer than expected, which explains the slip in the announced schedule.
The competition heats up: Aerojet Rocketdyne has signed a contract to provide rocket engine’s for the upper stage of Stratolaunch’s air-launched rocket.
This company press release is packed full of new information about Stratolaunch’s rocket. For one, the entire package has been named the Eagles Launch System, with the air-launched upper stage called Thunderbolt. For another, they have a scheduled launch date set for 2018.
The competition heats up: Russia signs a preliminary space exploration agreement with China.
Meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Deputy Prime Minister Wang Yang, in Beijing on Monday, [Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri] Rogozin announced on Twitter that he had signed “a protocol on establishing a control group for the implementation of eight strategic projects.” In a later Facebook post, he said “cooperation in space and in the market for space navigation” were among the projects.
Rogozin and Wang agreed to hold a meeting between the heads of their respective agencies “in the near future,” so that Beijing and Moscow could sow the seeds of a potential space partnership.
Federal Space Agency chief Oleg Ostapanko wants to allow “Chinese colleagues participate in some of the most interesting projects that can replace the ISS,” Rogozin said, adding that they would also discuss “projects such as cooperation in the field of rocket engine development,” and cooperation in the growing market of space applications services — which primarily applies to the development of the Chinese Beidou satellite navigation system and Russia’s Glonass navigation system, both rivals to the U.S.’ GPS.
The article does not give much information about this agreement, but does spend a lot of time discounting it, saying that it really is only a bluff to keep the U.S. from imposing more sanctions against Russia’s profitable commercial space efforts.
Sources in Russia say that it was human error in the rocket assembly that caused last week’s Proton launch failure.
The next Falcon 9 commercial launch, scrubbed from early May, has now been rescheduled to June 11.
This new date is a significant slip in the schedule, as they originally announced only a two week delay, and this adds on another two weeks. The original announced reason for the scrub was umbilical connection issues, but a commenter here at Behind The Black says it might have been something more serious, “a helium pressurization bottle burst in the stage.”
The competition heats up: Sierra Nevada has successfully completed wind tunnel tests a several scale models of their winged spacecraft Dream Chaser.
It appears from these tests that the spacecraft’s design works better than expected during ascent and re-entry.
The article also gives a quick overview of the status of all three commercial companies, and from this it really looks to me as if Boeing is the least aggressive in pursuing its construction effort. This is merely an impression, and not to be taken too seriously, but it really does look like Boeing is playing the public relations game, doing as little work as possible while trying to garner the most publicity while waiting for the award of the contract.
The competition heats up: The launch failure Thursday of a Russian Proton rocket is putting the squeeze on the commercial satellite industry.
Periodically I am told by launch industry experts that the launch industry doesn’t have sufficient demand or capacity for more launch companies. It was this logic, for example, that prompted Boeing and Lockheed Martin to combine into ULA and do a bulk buy with the Air Force. Otherwise, they claimed, they didn’t have enough business to compete with each other and stay in business.
This article above puts the lie to these claims. Not only is there plenty of demand, companies like SpaceX would probably up their fees if they wanted to because the supply does not even come close to meeting the demand. In fact, satellite companies want to get their satellites into orbit and can’t because of a shortage of launch services.
This shortage is an opportunity, not only for the companies that exist but for any new companies trying to get started, such as Stratolaunch. Rather than sit on their hands, as have Boeing and Lockheed Martin, an ambitious and competitive effort here could win market share and make lots of money.
Dragon has returned safely to Earth after a month docked to ISS.
A modern John Deere tractor with 850 horsepower plays tug of war with an 1800s era steam tractor that has about 18 horsepower. Which will win?
Virgin Galactic pretty much admits that SpaceShipTwo will fly to only fifty miles altitude, not 62 (100 kilometers).
The admission came in response to the rumors that say the spacecraft will even have trouble reach 50 miles.
Though the company is making a hard PR effort to dispel the negative rumors that are swirling about in the press, the only way they will really succeed at this is to begin actual test flights, something that has not happened, as they have promised repeatedly since the first powered flight last year.
The competition heats up: The assembly of Boeing’s CST-100 manned spacecraft is expected to begin soon.
Boeing takes over the OPF-3 lease in late June 2014 following an official handover ceremony from Space Florida. Assembly begins soon thereafter. … “The pieces are coming one by one from all over the country,” Ferguson explained. “Parts from our vendors are already starting to show up for our test article. “Assembly of the test article in Florida starts soon.”
Granted, Boeing’s lease for its assembly space at Kennedy has not yet started, but the vagueness of the assembly start date is a bit curious, and suggests that Boeing won’t begin assembly until they know they have won the contract from NASA, the announcement of which is presently scheduled for late summer 2014.
Government dithering: The Air Force has hired the Aerospace Corporation to evaluate how long it will take to replace the Russian engine used by the Atlas 5 rocket.
“I see numbers all over the map,” [Ray Johnson, vice president at Aerospace] said May 14 during the World Space Risk Forum here. “Some people say they could do it in five years. Others estimate it’s going to be longer than that, and that it could be eight.” Aerospace Corp. work evaluating what it would take to develop a hydrocarbon engine to replace the RD-180 — if U.S.-Russia relations sour to the point where the engine is no longer available or wanted — “is literally just a few weeks old,” Johnson said.
Time is critical on this issue. It seems to me a better thing to do would be to immediately issue of Request for Proposals, which would quickly tell the Air Force what the American aerospace industry has to offer. They could then proceed right to construction, rather than studying the issue endlessly beforehand.
Moreover, why isn’t Lockheed Martin doing something about this? It is their rocket that is dependent on the Russians. Why is it the Air Force’s responsibility to save them?
