Simon & Garfunkel – The Dangling Conversation
An evening pause: Performed live 1967. One of their most beautiful songs, but rarely heard anymore.
Hat tip Wayne DeVette.
Tag: commercial
Mexican officials demand investigation into Starship/Superheavy debris on its beaches
Mexican officials of the border state adjacent to Texas are now demanding an investigation into Starship/Superheavy debris that has been found recent on its coast, claiming SpaceX is “polluting Mexican beaches.”
Karina Lizeth Saldivar, the head of the Tamaulipas Secretariat for Urban Development and Environment, recently announced that they would be requesting that federal authorities in Mexico investigate the damages and potential damages that rocket fragments could cause.
According to Saldivar, the rocket pieces could pose a potential danger to locals and claimed that her agency would request a formal investigation by Mexican federal environmental agencies. It remains unclear if Mexico’s government could do anything about the issue.
Saldivar is a typical government apparachik. Rather than try to develop the beach area in Mexico that is close to Boca Chica and thus provides a great tourist spot for viewing launches, she instead can only whine and demand the government shut things down.
Meanwhile, the article notes that ordinary Mexicans aren’t complaining. Instead, they have been collecting the rocket pieces enthusiastically, with some making money by selling them as collector’s iten on social media.
Trump eliminates restrictions against supersonic flights over the U.S.
In an executive order released on June 6, 2024, President Trump eliminated the half-century-old regulations that forbid supersonic airplanes to fly over the land mass of the United States.
The Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) shall take the necessary steps, including through rulemaking, to repeal the prohibition on overland supersonic flight in 14 CFR 91.817 within 180 days of the date of this order and establish an interim noise-based certification standard, making any modifications to 14 CFR 91.818 as necessary, as consistent with applicable law. The Administrator of the FAA shall also take immediate steps to repeal 14 CFR 91.819 and 91.821, which will remove additional regulatory barriers that hinder the advancement of supersonic aviation technology in the United States.
This order makes sense for several reasons. First, the restrictions were always absurd. The sonic boom concern was always over-rated. Second, the concern increasingly doesn’t exist due to improvements in technology. In a flight test in January, the commercial supersonic airplane startup Boom Aerospace confirmed that its test plane broke the sound barrier three times and each time with “no audible sonic boom.”
Though Boom isn’t the only supersonic startup, it is far ahead of the others. It already has orders from United and Japan airlines for its Overture 80-passenger supersonic jet. This new Trump order will certainly help it attract investment capital, as well as more airlines willing to buy its planes.
Blue Origin again delays 2nd launch of New Glenn
According to a statement from David Limp, the CEO of Blue Origin, on June 9, 2025, the company has once again delayed the second launch of its new New Glenn rocket, pushing back from May to August.
New Glenn’s second mission will take place NET August 15th. Following in the footsteps of our first booster, we’ve chosen the name “Never Tell Me The Odds” for Tail 2. One of our key mission objectives will be to land and recover the booster.
The rocket’s first launch had occurred in January, and successfully placed its test payload in orbit as intended, though it was unable to land the first stage on its barge in the Atlantic. Blue Origin later said it was targeting May for the second launch, carrying NASA’s two Escapade smallsat Mars orbiters. With this new delay it is unclear what the payload would be.
According to this report, anonymous sources claim an August launch is unlikely and will likely slip to September. The company has a large backlog of launch contracts, including 27 for Amazon’s Kuiper constellation as well as a number for the military. The hope had been that it could ramp up its launch cadence in 2025 to meet those contracts.
Instead, Amazon has begun shifting some of its launch work to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. Its FCC license requires it to get 1,600 satellites in orbit by July 2026, and at present it only has sixteen in space. It can no longer wait for Blue Origin to dilly-dally along.
Considering the actual success of the first launch, it seems very puzzling for there to be a nine-month delay until the second launch, even with the failure to land the first stage. Was there some technical problems with the rocket that have not been revealed? It seems foolish to delay further launches in order to fix the landing of the first stage, since that has no impact on getting the customer’s payload into orbit. Wouldn’t it be better to fly again, test the landing again during flight, than sit on the ground looking at computer simulations?
It is also possible the company is still having production problems producing enough BE-4 engines for both ULA’s Vulcan rocket and its own New Glenn. Vulcan uses two per launch, and according to ULA Blue Origin has delivered enough to begin launching Vulcan as many as fifteen times before the end of this year. New Glenn uses seven BE-4s on its first stage. Could it be that Blue Origin wasn’t able to produce enough of these engines for this year’s New Glenn launches?
All this is speculation. What we do know for certain is that both of these companies continue to disappoint. The result is that for larger payloads the United States remains reliant entirely on SpaceX, a situation that is not healthy for the commercial and government satellite industry.
SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites (including 13 with phone-to-satellite capabilities), its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
72 SpaceX
33 China
7 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 72 to 53.
SpaceX’s launch of Axiom’s AX-4 manned commercial mission to ISS, carrying government astronauts from India, Poland, and Hungary, has been delayed one more day to 8 am (Eastern) tomorrow due to weather issues.
Foggy Mountain Spaceship – Riders On The Storm
An evening pause: A most interesting cover of the song by The Doors, using new technology. It appears that strange instrument is called a BanjoSynth.
Hat tip Judd Clark.
Axiom charges $70 million per ticket to fly to ISS
Axiom’s assembly sequence for its planned station, initially attached to ISS but subsequently detached
According to this article today about Axiom’s tourist flights to ISS, the company now charges $70 million per ticket, which means that for the AX-4 flight scheduled for launch tomorrow, the revenues from India, Poland, and Hungary total about $210 million.
That money of course doesn’t all end up in Axiom’s pockets. It has to pay SpaceX for the launch and use of the Dragon capsule. It also has to pay NASA some recently imposed high fees to use its astronaut training facilities as well as lease time on ISS.
All told, I suspect Axiom’s profits for these flights is relatively small. The company however has other reasons to fly these missions. It is attempting to win NASA’s big space station construction contract, and these flights to ISS demonstrate the company’s ability to manage such operations while working with NASA. Of the other three space station projects competing for that contract, only Vast is planning to do the same.
This effort by these two companies is part of the reason I rank them first and second for winning that contract.
- Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for an estimated 30 days total. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
- Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth scheduled for tomorrow, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
- Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
- Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA, but it has built nothing. This might change once it obtains several hundred million dollars from its initial public offering of stock.
Starlink approved for India
After several regulatory issues that blocked the company during the past few years, SpaceX has finally gotten approval to sell Starlink to customers in India.
The company hopes to initiate service within the next year. There still remain some required license approvals:
Although the licence from the Ministry of Telecommunications clears a major hurdle, the service’s final launch in India will depend on further regulatory clearances, including the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India’s (TRAI) recommendations on spectrum allocation, which are still pending approval from the Department of Telecommunications (DoT).
These should be pro forma at this point, since it was the ministry of telecommunications that issued this most recent license. Why would it issue one permit but then block another?
SpaceX launches 26 more Starlink satellites
SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 26 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.
The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
71 SpaceX
33 China
7 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 71 to 53.
SpaceX launches another radio satellite for SiriusXM
SpaceX early today successfully launched another radio satellite for SiriusXM, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.
The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their 5th and 21st flights respectively.
The leaders in the 2025 launch race:
70 SpaceX
33 China
7 Rocket Lab
6 Russia
SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 70 to 53.
Alex Ball – The David Bowie Flanger
An evening pause: To start the weekend, let’s learn some of the engineering history behind the sounds of the 1970s.
Hat tip Willi Kusche.
Air Force issues impact statement for SpaceX’s proposed Cape Canaveral Starship/Superheavy launch site
Click for higher resolution version.
The Air Force today released its environmental impact statement for SpaceX’s proposed Starship/Superheavy launch site at Cape Canaveral, generally approving a launch rate of 76 launches per year, noting that this would cause “no significant impact” on the environment while providing “beneficial impact” on the local economy.
You can read the impact statement here [pdf]. It lists 69 areas where these new operations could impact something, and found in almost all no significant impact. The beneficial impact was found in the areas where the operations would boost the local economy.
The single area where these additional launches might have an impact is the issue of noise, noting that “community annoyance may increase” due to the launches. Considering the wealth that the local community will gain from jobs, industry, and tourism due to those launches, I suspect the only whining about this noise will come from fake environmental groups opposed to anyone doing anything.
None of this is any surprise. Launches have been occurring at Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center for more than three quarters of a century, and the only significant impact to the ecology has been beneficial, reserving large areas from development where wildlife has prospered. If anything, the obviousness of this proves the utter waste of money we now spend on such reports.
The statement notes that it still will require FAA input on coordinating the closure of air space during launches, but it also appears to consider this part of normal routine actions, not a requirement the FAA can use to block operations or approval.
The number of proposed launches however is quite impressive. SpaceX’s plan would close to match the annual number of global launches by everyone for most of the space era. Nor is it impossible considering the design of the rocket and the plans the company has for getting to Mars. The site plan includes two launch mounts for Starship/Superheavy (as shown in the map above). This is in addition to the two Starship/Superheavy launch facilities the company wants to build at Kennedy.
The statement is now open to public comment through July 28, 2025. The Air Force also plans three public meetings in the Cape Canaveral area on July 8, 9, and 10. It will also make a fourth virtual public meeting available from July 15 to July 28.