Tag: competition

NASA freezes work on SpaceX’s lunar lander version of Starship

9:23 am

In response to Blue Origin’s lawsuit that is attempting to cancel the contract award to SpaceX for adapting its Starship upper stage rocket as a manned lunar lander, NASA yesterday officially paused all work by it and SpaceX on this project.

From NASA’s statement:

NASA has voluntarily paused work with SpaceX for the human landing system (HLS) Option A contract effective Aug. 19 through Nov. 1. In exchange for this temporary stay of work, all parties agreed to an expedited litigation schedule that concludes on Nov. 1. NASA officials are continuing to work with the Department of Justice to review the details of the case and look forward to a timely resolution of this matter.

The optics for Blue Origin remain ugly. Not only does the company appear more interested in fighting court battles than building spaceships and rockets, it now is acting to prevent others from doing so.

The timeline of events however is interesting. Blue Origin filed its lawsuit on August 13th. NASA issued the first $300 million payment to SpaceX for this $2.9 billion contract on August 16th. Even with this announcement today, the payment suggests that NASA is doing what it can to make the contract award an accomplished fact that the courts will not find easy to overturn.

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Japan to attempt sample return mission to Martian moon

9:06 am

Japan’s space agency JAXA today announced that it will launch in ’24 an unmanned probe to the Martian moon Phobos that will return a sample to Earth in ’29.

The plan is to bring back about 10 grams of material.

If launched as planned, Japan will beat everyone in getting the first samples back from Martian space. China says it hopes to grab samples from Mars itself by 2030, while the U.S. and Europe hope to launch a mission to return the Perseverance cached samples sometime in the 2030s.

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Two new smallsat rockets now set for launch

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: The launch dates of two different new smallsat rockets is now confirmed.

First, Astra has obtained from the FAA a launch operator license that will allow it to launch rockets from now until March 2026. This license now allows the company to proceed with its August 27th first orbital launch of its Rocket-3 rocket. If successful, Astra hopes to move to monthly launches before the end of the year.

Second, Firefly has announced that it will attempt its own first orbital launch of its Alpha rocket on September 2nd. The company had been promising a launch before the end of the year, but until now had not set a date. The successful completion of a static fire test of the rocket cleared the way.

Three other smallsat rocket companies, Relativity, ABL, and Aevum, have also said they are targeting this year for their first orbital launches, but none has set any dates yet.

If successful, these companies will join Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit in providing launch capabilities for tiny satellites like cubesats and nanosats.

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The knives aimed at SpaceX are getting sharpened

10:01 am

Starship must be banned!
Banning Starship: The new goal of our leftist masters.

Two stories today mark what appears to be a growing political campaign focused on squelching by any means possible the continued unparalleled success of the company SpaceX. And the simultaneous publication of both stories on the same day also suggests that this campaign is deliberately timed to force the FAA to shut down SpaceX at Boca Chica.

First we have a story at Space.com aimed at SpaceX’s Starlink constellation, making it the big villain in the growing threat of satellite collisions.

SpaceX’s Starlink satellites alone are involved in about 1,600 close encounters between two spacecraft every week, that’s about 50 % of all such incidents, according to Hugh Lewis, the head of the Astronautics Research Group at the University of Southampton, U.K. These encounters include situations when two spacecraft pass within a distance of 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) from each other.

Lewis, Europe’s leading expert on space debris, makes regular estimates of the situation in orbit based on data from the Socrates (Satellite Orbital Conjunction Reports Assessing Threatening Encounters in Space ) database. This tool, managed by Celestrack, provides information about satellite orbits and models their trajectories into the future to assess collision risk.

Though his data appears accurate and the growing risk of collisions is real, it appears from the story that Lewis, one of only two experts interviewed, has a strong hostility to SpaceX. He doesn’t like the fact that SpaceX is so successful in such a short time, and appears to want something done to control it.

The article also nonchalantly sloughs off one very significant fact: Very few satellite collisions have actually occurred. While the risk is certainly going to increase, that increase is not going to be fueled just by SpaceX. At least four large constellations are presently in the works, all comparable to Starlink in some manner. To focus on SpaceX in particular makes this article appear like a hatchet job.

Then we have a news story from CBS and its very partisan and leftist news show, Sixty Minutes+, providing a loud soapbox for the very small number of anti-development environmentalists fighting to block SpaceX’s operations in Boca Chica, Texas.
» Read more

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Firefly hires noted SpaceX engineer

9:03 am

Capitalism in space: Firefly Aerospace announced earlier this week that it has hired as it chief operating officer Lauren Lyons, a former SpaceX engineer familiar to many for her regular appearances as a announcer on SpaceX’s launch telecasts.

The company said that Lyons will focus on “transitioning Firefly from an R&D environment to a production environment” for its Alpha small launch vehicle, Space Utility Vehicle tug and Blue Ghost lunar lander. “Firefly is entering a pivotal and exciting phase of its growth,” Lyons said in the statement. “I’m thrilled to take on the challenge of leading the efforts in scaling the company’s infrastructure to support rapid growth, high execution rate, and deliver exceptional value and service to our customers.”

Translation: Using Lyons expertise from SpaceX, Firefly intends to operate much like SpaceX, upgrading its rockets and spacecraft continuously even as they operate commercially.

The launch date for the company’s first orbital attempt remains unannounced, though it says it will occur before the end of the year. It appears they are ready to go, except for one component of their flight termination system.

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China launches two more military surveillance satellites

8:52 am

China today used its Long March 4B rocket to put two more military surveillance satellites into orbit.

No word on whether the spent first stage landed near habitable areas in China. China also said nothing about whether that stage carried grid fins or parachutes for bringing it back to Earth more precisely.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

27 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

Russia plans a launch later today (tomorrow in Russia) of another 34 OneWeb satellites. In the national rankings, the U.S. still leads China 31 to 27.

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Blue Origin files lawsuit against Starship lunar contract award

8:40 am

What a joke: Jeff Bezos’s company Blue Origin on August 13th filed a lawsuit in federal court, attempting to overthrow the contract award NASA gave SpaceX’s Starship in its manned lunar lander Artemis project

In a court filing on Friday, Blue Origin said it continued to believe that two providers were needed to build the landing system, which will carry astronauts down to the Moon’s surface as early as 2024. It also accused Nasa of “unlawful and improper evaluation” of its proposals during the tender process. “We firmly believe that the issues identified in this procurement and its outcomes must be addressed to restore fairness, create competition and ensure a safe return to the Moon for America,” Blue Origin said.

The article then goes on to list the basic facts that make this lawsuit absurd. First, NASA had not been appropriated enough money by Congress to award two contracts, and had it done so, it would have violated the law. Second SpaceX’s bid was the lowest bid, far less than Blue Origin’s expensive price. Third, SpaceX was already test flying early prototypes of its Starship lander, while Blue Origin had built nothing. Fourth, many other technical issues made SpaceX’s bid superior.

Finally, the GAO, as an independent arbitrator, has already ruled against a Blue Origin protest, stating unequivocally that NASA had done nothing wrong in its contract process.

This lawsuit makes Blue Origin appear to be a very unserious company. Rather than putting its energies towards building rockets and spacecraft to demonstrate its capabilities, it focuses its effort on playing legal games in the courts. Such behavior will only make it seem less appealling when next it bids on a NASA or Space Force contract.

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Arianespace’s Vega rocket successfully launches five satellites

8:54 pm

Capitalism in space: Arianespace’s Vega rocket today successfully launched five satellites into orbit, completing the company’s third launch in 2021 and the second Vega launch this year.

With only three launches so far in 2021, Arianespace does not make the leader board, which is presently as follows:

26 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S.’s lead over China in the national rankings remains 31 to 26.

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China, politics, and space

11:17 am

This interesting essay today describing China’s space policy and its ramifications for the United States found this most significant quote from a Chinese official:

A senior official with the CNSA’s lunar program has been reported by the Daily Beast as saying the moon and Mars (and presumably myriad other rocks out there) are the equivalent of the islands in strategic locations in the Indo-Pacific region that China contests with Japan and other countries:

The universe is an ocean, the moon is the Diaoyu Islands, Mars is Huangyan Island. If we don’t go there now even though we’re capable of doing so, then we will be blamed by our descendants. If others go there, then they will take over, and you won’t be able to go even if you want to. This is reason enough.

The fact the CCP views real estate in the solar system the same way as real estate on Earth is both instructive and amusing.

I don’t find this Chinese attitude amusing in the least. It suggests quite starkly China’s intention to claim all the land it occupies in space, in direct violation of the Outer Space Treaty. Unlike the western nations, it doesn’t care that under that treaty’s restrictions, it can’t provide property rights to its citizens. It will possess everything it gets in space, for itself.

All the more reason for the U.S. to push for the Artemis Accords, which China rejects, as those accords bypass the restrictions of the Outer Space Treaty and make property rights possible in western space settlements. In the end, every nation that establishes a base or colony in space is going to claim it, notwithstanding the Outer Space Treaty, so establishing a framework for U.S. law in those colonies is essential. The accords are a first step in doing so.

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Boeing to return Starliner to factory

11:11 am

Capitalism in space: According to a Wall Street Journal story today, Boeing and NASA have decided to remove the Starliner capsule from the Atlas-5 rocket and return it to Boeing’s factory in order to do a more thorough inverstigation into the capsule’s failing valves.

This decision means that the launch of the second unmanned demo test flight of Starliner will not occur in August, and will likely be delayed several more months. NASA and Boeing just held a press conference in which they made this decision official. During that conference they said they think the moist environment at Kennedy might have caused corrosion in the valves, which caused them to stick.

I once again wonder if Boeing has any quality control systems at all. For such a serious problem — the failure of 13 valves out of 24 — to suddenly pop up just hours before launch, when they have been developing this capsule for years, and even had an extra year and a half to check the capsule out after the failures during the first unmanned demo flight in December 2019, is somewhat astonishing, and very disturbing.

Others will argue that problems like this can always appear unexpectedly in space hardware. I say hogwash. Boeing is not inventing something new with Starliner. This is a capsule, using heritage engineering first invented in the late 1950s. It should not be so hard to get this right.

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South Korean company invests $300 million in OneWeb

10:51 am

Capitalism in space: Hanwah, a South Korean conglomerate, has now invested $300 million in private capital in the satellite communications company OneWeb.

U.K.-headquartered OneWeb expects regulatory approvals to complete the Hanwha transaction in the first half of 2022, bringing its total investment since emerging from bankruptcy protection in November to $2.7 billion. The startup has said it only needed $2.4 billion to fund its initial constellation of 648 satellites in low Earth orbit.

It reached that in June, after Indian telecom company Bharti Global doubled its investment to $1 billion to secure what would have been a 38.6% stake before Hanwha’s announcement. The U.K. government, French satellite operator Eutelsat and Japanese internet giant Softbank were each in line for just under 20% after making their own investments. U.S.-based Hughes Network Systems, which is supplying parts for OneWeb’s ground segment, also had a small stake.

Hanwha also wishes to build its own 2,000 satellite constellation, targeted for operation by 2030. This investment gives it access to OneWeb’s technology which it can later use.

For OneWeb, this new capital solidifies its full recovery from bankruptcy, and makes it a very viable competitor to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation.

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Branson sells more than ten million shares of Virgin Galactic

10:07 am

Capitalism ?in? space? Continuing his steady off-loading of Virgin Galactic stock since the company went public, Richard Branson has sold another 10.5 million shares, lowering his steadily shrinking ownership share another 4% to 18% total.

The sale garnered him $300 million in cash.

When the company went public in 2019, Branson reserved for himself 51% ownership. Since then he has periodically sold off large chunks, usually well timed to specifically planned events that worked to pump up the stock’s price. This last sale obviously was planned to take advantage of the publicity following Branson’s own suborbital flight in July.

While Virgin Galactic might have a future in suborbital space tourism, I remain very skeptical. It certainly does not have a future in the larger orbital market, as it has no experience building real rockets (Virgin Orbit was spun off this company years ago, taking with it all that experience). Thus, the company has very limited possibilities. As the orbital market grows and becomes dominant, I can’t see there being that much long term interest in short suborbital hops.

I think Branson agrees with me, which is why he is getting out when the getting is good. That he is following the classic and very corrupt method of “pump and dump” only solidifies my belief that he is an outright con-man.

That the mainstream press continues to genuflect before him only tells us how corrupt and incompetent that press has become.

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The number of new smallsat rocket startups continues to grow

9:31 am

Capitalism in space: According to a new annual report, the number of new smallsat rocket startups that have been proposed continues to grow, though the number presently in actual development or operation declined slightly in the past year.

That total has grown to 155 vehicles, he said, ranging from 10 vehicles in operation to several dozen that have gone defunct since the survey started in 2015, when about 30 vehicles were included. “I was really expecting to see a slowdown in the number of new launch vehicles that we were seeing coming out of the woodwork in the last few years,” he said during a conference session Aug. 11. “It turns out that slowdown has not happened at all.”

There have been some changes in the industry, though. He found the number of vehicles in active development declined slightly from last year, to 48, with a decrease as well in the number of vehicle concepts on a “watch” list that have not yet entered active development. More than 40 vehicles are now classified as defunct, about 10 more than last year. “This is not surprising given the challenges of getting one of these vehicles fielded,” he said.

The U.S. has the most smallsat startups in development, 22, but China has the most that the report defines as operational, six of ten. This last number should change considerably if the planned launches of six or so American smallsat rocket startups occur as promised in the next six months.

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China to fly asteroid sample mission in ’24

9:19 am

The new colonial movement: Chinese scientists have revealed that China is now building an asteroid sample mission to launch in ’24 and grab samples in ’25 from the near Earth asteroid dubbed Kamoʻoalewa.

According to a correspondence in Nature Astronomy, there are two typical approaches to sampling asteroids like Kamoʻoalewa, namely anchor-and-attach and touch-and-go.

The former requires delicate and dangerous interactions with the planetary body but allows more controllable sampling and more chances for surface analysis. The latter, used by Hayabusa 2 and OSIRIS-Rex, is a quick interaction facilitated by advanced navigation, guidance and control and fine control of thrusters.

China’s mission will use both architectures in order to “guarantee that at least one works.” The paper states that there is “still no successful precedent for the anchor-and-attach architecture,” meaning a possible deep space first. A 2019 presentation reveals that China’s spacecraft will attempt to land on the asteroid using four robotic arms, with a drill on the end of each for anchoring.

The attempt to do both these approaches is audacious, especially because the evidence from both OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa-2 is that it will be difficult to safely land and hold onto a rubble pile asteroid. The material is too loosely held together.

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India’s GSLV rocket fails in first launch since 2019

6:09 pm

India’s attempt today to resume launches of its large GSLV rocket, stalled because of the Wuhan panic since its last launch in 2019, failed today when something went wrong with the third stage.

This entirely Indian-built rocket is the one they plan to use for their manned missions. This failure will certainly set that program back, already delayed significantly because of the shut down of their entire launch industry because of COVID-19.

The satellite, also Indian-built, is also a big loss. It was to be the first in a series of Earth observation satellites.

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India begins countdown for 1st GSLV rocket launch since 2019

9:52 am

India today began the countdown for its first GSLV rocket launch in more than two years, since it launched the lunar orbiter Chandrayaan-2 with the lunar rover/lander that crashed onto the surface shortly thereafter.

The launch is targeted for 8:13 p.m (Eastern) tonight.

The long gap in GSLV launches was almost entirely because of India’s panic over the Wuhan flu. For the past year and a half its space agency ISRO has completed three just launches, all of which were delayed until late in 2020 because of the panic. Prior to that panic, India had hoped to launch as many as 8 to 12 times in ’20 and ’21 each. Instead, their space industry shut down, and the commercial business they hoped to capture went to American private companies instead.

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Intuitive Machines awards SpaceX another lunar lander launch contract

9:36 am

Intuitive Machines Nova-C lunar lander
Artist’s impression of Intuitive Machines lunar lander,
on the Moon

Capitalism in space: Intuitive Machines announced yesterday that it has awarded SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket the launch contract for its third unmanned lunar lander, making SpaceX its carrier for all three.

The key quote however from the article is this:

Intuitive Machines’ first two lander missions are carrying out task orders for NASA awarded under its Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program. However, IM-3 is not linked to any CLPS missions. Marshall said that the mission “has an open manifest for commercial and civil customers.”

In other words, this third launch is being planned as an entirely private lunar robotic mission. Intuitive Machines is essentially announcing that it will launch the lander and has room for purchase for anyone who wants to send a payload to the Moon. This opportunity is perfect for the many universities that have programs teaching students how to build science payloads and satellites. For relatively little, a school can offer its students the chance to fly something to the lunar surface. Not only will it teach them how to build cutting edge engineering, it will allow those students to do cutting edge exploration.

This is the whole concept behind the recommendations I put forth in my 2016 policy paper, Capitalism in Space. If the government will simply buy what it needs from the private sector, and let that sector build and own what it builds, that sector will construct things so that their products can be sold to others, and thus expand the market.

Since around 2018 NASA and the federal government has apparently embraced those recommendations, and we are about to see that policy bear fruit in unmanned lunar exploration. Below is a list of all planned robotic lander missions to the Moon, all scheduled for the next four years:
» Read more

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Rocket Lab to launch three times in one month, beginning in late August

8:55 am

Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab yesterday announced that it is aiming to complete three launches of its Electron rocket in less than a month, with the first scheduled for late August.

Scheduled to lift-off from Launch Complex 1 on New Zealand’s Mahia Peninsula in late August, the ‘Love At First Insight’ mission will be Rocket Lab’s 22nd Electron launch overall and fifth mission of 2021. ‘Love At First Insight’ is the first in a rapid succession of scheduled Electron launches between late August through September that represent the company’s fastest launch turnarounds to date.

All three launches are for the company BlackSky, which is putting into orbit a constellation of Earth-imaging small satellites.

Since 2018 Rocket Lab has repeatedly promised that it will soon ramp up its launch rate to monthly, and then weekly. For a variety of reasons, mostly relating to two launch failures in the past year, that promise has not been kept. If the company succeeds in putting these six Black Sky satellites into orbit on three quick launches, it will finally come close to demonstrating that pace.

Rocket Lab will reinforce that promise if it also completes its manifest of 2021 launches, which calls for three more launches for a total of nine launches in ’21, six of which will have occurred in the year’s last four months.

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Antares rocket successfully launches Cygnus freighter to ISS

8:36 pm

Capitalism in space: Northrop Grumman’s Antares rocket today successfully launched a Cygnus cargo capsule to ISS.

This was the fourth launch this year for Northrop Grumman’s launch division, which was once the company Orbital ATK. It was also the most in a single year for that division since it launched five times in 2013.

26 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
4 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. now leads China 31 to 26 in the national rankings.

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Inspector general slams NASA spacesuit program

12:39 pm

NASA's failed spacesuit
NASA’s failed spacesuit

A NASA inspector general report released today [pdf] bluntly slammed NASA endless and much delayed project to develop a new spacesuit for its Artemis program.

After noting that the project has been ongoing at NASA for fourteen years, the summary then blasts the program hard:

NASA’s current schedule is to produce the first two flight-ready xEMUs [NASA acronym for spacesuits] by November 2024, but the Agency faces significant challenges in meeting this goal. This schedule includes approximately a 20-month delay in delivery for the planned design, verification, and testing suit, two qualification suits, an ISS Demo suit, and two lunar flight suits. These delays—attributable to funding shortfalls, COVID-19 impacts, and technical challenges—have left no schedule margin for delivery of the two flight-ready xEMUs. Given the integration requirements, the suits would not be ready for flight until April 2025 at the earliest. Moreover, by the time two flight-ready xEMUs are available, NASA will have spent over a billion dollars on the development and assembly of its next-generation spacesuits.

Given these anticipated delays in spacesuit development, a lunar landing in late 2024 as NASA currently plans is not feasible. [emphasis mine]

This bears repeating: NASA will spent more than a billion dollars and fourteen years to build two spacesuits. What a bargain! Imagine if we have to pay a tailor for fitting!

And yet, despite this incredibly inefficient use of money, the report also finds that NASA doesn’t have enough to get the suits made on time!

Besides the endless managerial incompetencies noted in the report, it also notes several technical issues contributing to the problems, including one case where “staff used the wrong specifications” causing a unit’s failure.

Overall, the entire management of this program by NASA and the government appears to have been confused, incoherent, wasteful, and unable to get the job done, a pattern quite typical of almost every government project for the past four decades. Yet, though the report notes that in October 2019 the agency had finally decided to dump this failed program entirely and instead hire private companies to build the suits, the report criticizes this change, noting that the commercial contractors will not be required to use NASA designs, meaning the $420 million NASA has spent will literally be wasted.

So what? That money has been wasted already. I am quite willing to bet that for no more than a quarter of that cost, two private companies could get new spacesuits ready, and do it quickly, as long as our entirely incompetent government gets out of their way.

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Eric Berger: FAA regulators should get out of the way

10:16 am

In a essay today for Ars Technica, Eric Berger makes note of the progress that SpaceX is making on its Starship/Superheavy rocket, and points out that the one major obstacle that SpaceX cannot control and that stands in its way is the revised “environmental assessment” the FAA still must approve to permit the rocket to launch from Boca Chica.

Perhaps the biggest hurdle of all will be clearance from the Federal Aviation Administration, which is working with SpaceX to conduct an environmental assessment of launching such a mammoth rocket from these South Texas wetlands. After a “draft” of this assessment is published, there will be an approximately 30-day period for public comments. This will be followed by other steps, including a determination by the FAA on whether SpaceX’s proposed environmental mitigations will be enough or if more work is required.

The stacking of the rocket late last week, and the photos released by Musk of that stacking, Berger sees as Musk’s effort to quietly apply pressure on those bureaucrats to get their work done already. As he writes, “Holding back Starship means holding back this progress, Musk wanted regulators to understand.”

Read the whole essay. In addition to illustrating the poltical games required by SpaceX to get past the stifling rules of our modern government, it very nicely shows how America has changed since the early 20th century. Then, no such regulators stood in the way, and Americans were thus about to build fast and with great skill, reshaping the cities of the world forever.

Though I expect the politics of the moment to favor SpaceX, forcing the FAA to get its work done quickly to allow the rocket to take off as planned, this is only going to happen because of the political clout SpaceX has with the public, and thus with politicians. For small companies no such clout exists, and thus expect U.S. innovation to continue to suffer in the coming years because we have given our govenrment too much power over our lives.

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China gives vague hints about its manned lunar lander

10:02 am

According to this Space News article today, China has recently allowed some tantalizing hints become public about its plans to build a manned lunar lander.

The brief news report from Xiamen University School of Aeronautics and Astronautics July 1 (Chinese) names individuals leading projects pertinent to China’s human lunar landing plans and notably refers to the landing project as a “national strategy”.

…The report names Yang Lei as “chief commander of the crewed lunar landing vehicle system” at the China Academy of Space Technology (CAST), a subordinate to the state-owned space and defense contractor China Aerospace Science and Technology Corp. (CASC). Yang was accompanied for the visit to Xiamen University by the project’s deputy chief commander and another involved in CAST’s new-generation crew spacecraft developed for deep space journeys. Other CASC subsidiaries are working on a new human-rated launch vehicle.

No details of the lander were provided during the meeting, in which current progress and future plans for human moon landings were presented. A number of slides were published but were intentionally blurred out.

Such secrecy is not unusual for China. It is one of the reasons it opposes the Artemis Accords, which require a transparancy in plans that China does not wish to give.

The secrecy however suggests that while they have now named the individuals in charge of the project, they have not yet settled on their design for that lander, and are exploring options. Based on long term schedule for lunar exploration that China and Russia have jointly announced, the first manned landings are planned sometime after ’26.

To meet that schedule they need to get moving on building that lander, now. This story suggests they are now gearing up to do that.

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Space Force adds three more rocket startups to its rapid launch program

9:35 am

Capitalism in space: The Space Force announced today that it has added the three smallsat rocket companies ABL, Astra, and Relativity to its program, dubbed OSP-4, to develop rockets that can be launched quickly at a moment’s notice.

OSP-4 is an indefinite delivery/indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract for rapid acquisition of launch services. Vendors compete for individual orders, and have to be able to launch payloads larger than 400 pounds to any orbit within 12 to 24 months from contract award.

The OSP-4 contract vehicle was created in October 2019 and eight companies were selected then: Aevum, Firefly, Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab, SpaceX., United Launch Alliance, VOX Space [Virgin Orbit], and X-Bow Launch.

There are now 11 vendors in the program that will compete for 20 missions over the next nine years. OSP-4 is authorized up to $986 million for launch contracts over that period.

Of these eleven companies, five have operational rockets (Northrop Grumman, Rocket Lab, SpaceX, Virgin Orbit, and ULA) and five have announced plans to do their first orbital launch this year (Aevum, ABL, Astra, Relativity, and Firefly), with Astra’s first orbital flight scheduled for later this month. The schedule of the remaining X-Bow remains unknown.

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Starliner launch scrub: 13 of 24 of the capsule’s propulsion valves failed to work

9:23 am

It now appears that the launch scrub last week of Boeing’s Starliner second unmanned demo flight to ISS occurred because thirteen valves in the capsule’s propulsion valves all failed to open during prelaunch testing.

Over the weekend, the team made “positive progress,” a spokesperson said Monday, allowing the company to continue to plan for a launch this month. The company has found “no signs of damage or external corrosion,” Boeing said in a statement Monday. “Test teams are now applying mechanical, electrical and thermal techniques to prompt the valves open.” As a result, more than half of the valves “are now operating as designed,” it said, and work would continue on the others “in the days ahead.”

In a blog post, NASA said that “if all valve functionality can be restored and root cause identified, NASA will work with Boeing to determine a path to flight for the important uncrewed mission to the space station.” The earliest opportunity would come in mid-August, it said.

But Boeing still does not know what caused the valves to remain closed when they needed to be in the open position, and it is unclear how long determining that would take. As a result, some in the aerospace industry are skeptical the company could launch this month.

They have managed to get seven of those thirteen valves working again.

That 13 of 24 failed to function correct strongly suggests the problem isn’t random but is instead a fundamental design problem that needs to be identified prior to launch.

That such a problem has only been discovered now, during the launch countdown, does not reflect well on Boeing or its capsule. That the problem was not noticed in the year and a half delay caused by the software problems during the first unmanned demo flight in December 2019 makes this problem even more disturbing.

In fact, it is downright shocking. It makes one wonder about Boeing’s entire operation, considering the disastrous problems the company has also had with its commercial and military airplane projects in recent years. Does the company have no quality control systems in place, at all?

I truly hope Boeing gets this fixed and Starliner flying, but right now they need to fly a number of times, including reusing a capsule a few times, before I’d recommend anyone buying a ticket.

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Rocket Lab shifts another launch from Virginia to New Zealand

12:15 pm

Foot-dragging by NASA bureaucrats has apparently forced Rocket Lab to shift the launch of its CAPSTONE lunar orbit cubesat from its new launchpad in Wallops Island, Virgina, to its New Zealand launchpad.

CAPSTONE would be the second Rocket Lab mission in recent weeks that shifted from Virginia to New Zealand. The most recent Electron launch July 26 placed into orbit Monolith, a smallsat developed by the Air Force Research Laboratory. Monolith was originally going to launch on the first Electron mission from Virginia.

Rocket Lab said at the time that it shifted the launch of Monolith because of ongoing work by NASA to certify the software for the rocket’s autonomous flight termination system. A NASA spokesman said in July that the agency expected to complete certification of the unit by the end of the year.

Note too that Rocket Lab had originally hoped to launch from Wallops in 2020, but was forced to delay that launch to 2021 then because of NASA’s inability to approve this system. Now it looks like they won’t be able to launch in ’21 either.

This flight termination system is likely the same one that Rocket Lab has successfully used now for four years and more than twenty launches in New Zealand. Why it should take NASA literally years to approve it is shameful. As I wrote in November,

While I have no evidence of this, I cannot help being suspicious of these various government agencies. For years numerous people in the government put fake roadblocks up to slow or stop SpaceX’s first manned launch, merely because it threatened their turfs. This autonomous termination system will make the ground crews at Vandenberg and at Cape Canaveral irrelevant, and I would not be surprised if some of these issues were drummed up to delay or block this system because of that.

I know I am being cynical, but based on history it is not unreasonable to be so.

I think we are seeing evidence now that my cynicism was entirely justified.

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The trials and tribulations of Blue Origin’s BE-4 engine

12:09 pm

Link here. The article tries to provide some explanations for the delays at Blue Origin that have put the BE-4 engine years behind schedule.

The first and most important fact gleaned from the article is that flightworthy versions of this engine will not be ready this summer as promised, and will likely not get delivered to ULA for its Vulcan rocket before the end of the year, causing its inaugural launch to be delayed to the second half of ’22. This also means that Blue Origin’s own orbital rocket, New Glenn, will likely not launch until late next year, at the earliest.

Moreover, the engines that Blue Origin will deliver to ULA will not be fully tested, and might require replacement if tests on other engines reveal more problems.

The article’s most important revelation about the delays however is this:

One of the most persistent problems, sources said, is that the BE-4 engine testing and development program has been relatively “hardware poor” in recent years. Effectively, this means that the factory in Washington has not had enough components to build development engines, and this has led to extended periods during which no testing has occurred on the stands in Texas.

It was surprising to hear this because back in the spring of 2017 Blue Origin stated publicly that its development program was hardware rich. After arriving as CEO in late 2017, however, [Bob] Smith appears to have focused more on a substantial reorganization of Blue Origin’s leadership rather than hardware development. Other programs were prioritized, too, so the BE-4 team did not get all the resources and freedom it needed to proceed at full throttle. [emphasis mine]

To put it more bluntly, Smith decided it was more important to rearrange the deck chairs rather than launch lifeboats into the water. As a result, Blue Origin has essentially wasted the last four-plus years.

There are signs that the company has changed course away from Smith’s focus, but we shall have to wait and see. The childish press release issued by Blue Origin yesterday, claiming its manned lunar lander was far better than SpaceX’s Starship and should have been chosen by NASA, suggests that the course change has not been as thorough as one would hope. The amount of intellectual dishonesty contained in that release is somewhat disturbing, especially coming from a rocket company:

Blue Origin appears to be, at minimum, cherry picking its comparisons. The graphic notes that the Starship-Super Heavy system hasn’t launched yet. Starship has launched six miles into the air on several occasions, but not with its Super Heavy booster. It also points out that SpaceX’s Starship facilities in Boca Chica, Texas have never accommodated an orbital launch. Blue Origin, though has never launched any rocket to orbit from anywhere.

The graphic doesn’t, however, note the cost of the Starship lunar lander. SpaceX’s proposal estimates that it will cost NASA $2.9 billion, while Blue Origin’s gave a price of $5.9 billion. [emphasis mine]

For the management of a rocket company to not recognize the fundamental facts indicated by the highlighted words above, or to make believe they are unimportant, does not bode well for that rocket company. Rather than focusing on getting its rocket finally off the ground, the management appears instead unwilling to face some hard facts, and fix them.

Meanwhile, SpaceX keeps barrelling along, focused not on petty managment issues or whiny complaints, but on actually building rockets that fly.

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Zhurong travels another 700 feet on Mars

11:46 am

Zhurong's location

According to a new update from China’s state-run press today, since the last update of its Zhurong Mars rover on July 31st, the rover has traveled just over 700 feet, for a total travel distance of about 2,624 feet, just under a half mile.

As of August 6, 2021, the rover has worked on the surface of Mars for 82 Martian days and the orbiter has been in orbit for 379 days. The two are in good condition and functioning properly.

The report provides no other real information.. I have indicated on the map to the right the range in which this travel distance could have taken Zhurong. Hopefully they will release more information soon.

The nominal mission was originally planned for 90 days. Right now it looks like the rover will easily exceed that.

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SpaceX stacks Starship on top of Superheavy

11:19 am

Superheavy with Starship on top
Click for original image.

Capitalism in space: Only three days after the company had rolled Superheavy prototype #4 to the launchpad, SpaceX today stacked Starship prototype #20 on top, uniting for the first time the entire rocket.

All told, the rocket is 395 feet high, about 32 feet taller than the Saturn-5.

The photo to the right, reduced slightly to post here, was posted by Elon Musk earlier today. It also makes obvious several things that will be different for this Starship flight compared to the previous suborbital hops. Starship’s dark exterior is because it is covered with thermal tiles designed to protect it as it returns to Earth flying through the atmosphere at orbital speeds.

Note also the grid fins on Superheavy. Apparently they will be open during the entire flight, instead of unfurling shortly after stage separation as is done with Falcon 9.

I am not sure what the vertical attachments near the bottom of Superheavy are for. The plan is for the stage to land in the Gulf of Mexico, so it does not need landing legs. Could these be attachment points for holding the rocket to the launchpad?

I have been predicting a late September/early October date for this rocket’s first orbital launch test. SpaceX is sure working hard to beat that timeline. They still need to do tank tests and static fire tests of the whole assembly, but based on past schedules, they might get this done in only a few weeks. If so, it means they might be able to launch before the end of August.

My god, if only other American rocket companies worked in this manner. Imagine what wonders they all could accomplish.

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Astra to attempt orbital launch later in August

10:08 am

Capitalism in space: The smallsat rocket company Astra has announced that it will attempt to complete its first successful orbital launch before the end of this month, launching a Space Force satellite.

The U.S. Space Force has booked two missions with Astra, the Bay Area company announced today (Aug. 5). The first flight will launch a test payload for the Department of Defense’s Space Test Program from the Pacific Spaceport Complex in Kodiak, Alaska, during a window that runs from Aug. 27 through Sept. 11.

Astra has two previous test launches that attempted to reach orbit and failed. The second barely missed, because of a fuel mixture issue that had it run out of fuel prematurely.

If successful, this will make Astra the third operational American smallsat rocket company, following Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit. Four others have promised launches in 2021. By next year the competition in this smallsat launch industry should be quite fierce.

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Virgin Galactic reopens suborbital ticket sale, raises price, delays next flight

10:01 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic announced yesterday that it is resuming ticket sales for flights on its reusable SpaceShipTwo spacecraft, raising the price from the old price of $250,000 to a new price of $450,000.

Virgin Galactic is offering customers three options: purchase a single seat, buy several together or book an entire flight on the eight-passenger Unity (or other space planes that come into operation, such as the recently built VSS Imagine). The company also sells seats for microgravity research and professional astronaut training. Those are in a different tier, going for $600,000 apiece, Colglazier said during a call with investors on Thursday afternoon.

The announcement also revealed that they are delaying their next flight until September. That flight has been scheduled for the summer for months. The company is also delaying the start of regular commercial flights until late in ’22, in order to make some upgrades to their spacecraft.

By that time, regular orbital tourist flights will have become almost routine. Moreover, one has the option to experience weightlessness for far less buying a ticket on one of the various companies that fly “vomit comet” airplanes.

One wonders if the demand for these flights will be sustainable. We shall see.

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