Tag: competition

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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China launches military communications satellite

9:48 am

China’s Long March 3B rocket yesterday successfully launched a military communications satellite.

This was China’s eighth government launch since the beginning of July, in a span of only five weeks.

The launch was from an interior spaceport, so the rocket’s strap-on boosters and first stage core landed within China. No word if any landed near or on habitable areas, or if the Chinese were using parachutes or grid fins to control their landing.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

26 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman
3 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 30 to 26 in the national rankings.

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China’s Long March 6 launches two military technology test satellites

8:47 am

Using its Long March 6 rocket, China yesterday successfully placed two military technology test satellites into orbit, designed to test “new interference suppression technology for Ka-band mobile communications satellites.”

The launch occurred at one of China’s interior spaceports. No word on whether the rocket’s first stage crashed near habitable area.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

25 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman
3 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 30 to 25 in the national rankings.

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Details on the Russian movie to be shot on ISS in October

9:13 pm

Link here. The article provides a lot of details about who will fly, who will do what, and who is slated as back-ups if the primary crew of actress and director fail their training. However, I found the description of the movie to be the most interesting thing:

Shipenko revealed the script is still being fine-tuned, but the plot involves a cosmonaut who suffers a cardiac arrest during a spacewalk and, although he survives, he will require surgery to ensure he can handle the Soyuz return to Earth. A female cardiac surgeon, named Zhenya, has to be sent to the ISS to perform the procedure with only a few weeks to prepare for the trip.

Unlike the American space films like Gravity, this story is incredibly well grounded in reality. The Russians have actually experienced examples of station astronauts getting so sick in space that their missions had to be aborted early. In one case it was a prostate infection. In another it was the mental illness of the entire crew.

This story is also comparable to situations that have occurred in Antarctica, a very similar environment to the station. In the early 2000s the doctor in Antarctica had to perform surgery on herself because she had developed cancer. Then in 2016 Buzz Aldrin had to be evacuated due health issues.

If done right, this could not only make a damn good movie, it will also do so by revealing the true dangers of going to space.

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Superheavy prototype #4 rolls to orbital launchpad

2:51 pm

Superheavy #20 on the way to launchpad

Superheavy on launchpad
Click for live stream.

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today rolled its 4th Superheavy prototype from its assembly building in Boca Chica, Texas, moving it to the orbital launchpad in preparation for having the 20th Starship prototype stacked on top and assembled for the rocket’s first orbital test flight.

The first image to the right is a screen capture taken from a short movie posted in an Elon Musk tweet. It shows the base of this Superheavy, with its 29 Raptor engines. The engines appear surrounded by the support structure that holds the stage to the truck mover.

The second image to the right is a screen capture from Labpadre’s live stream Saphire camera, captured shortly before this post was published. Superheavy is 230 feet tall. Starship is 165 feet tall. Combined that equals just under 400 feet, which is still about 30 feet taller than the Saturn-5.

Yet, Superheavy is easily dwarfed by the launch tower behind it, and when they stack Starship on top the combined rocket will still be only three quarters as tall as the tower. They are using that tower not only for launches, but for stacking of Starship as well as a capture devise for when later Superheavies return to Earth. Instead of having landing legs, Superheavy will eventually lower itself into position next to the tower and hover there so that the tower can grab it.

All this means the tower needs to be taller than the combined rocket. I would also expect that a second tower will be necessary eventually for that landing grab.

Before they stack Starship #20 on top they will likely do pressure and tank tests of Superheavy, and maybe a few dress rehearsal countdowns leading to short static fire tests.

It still appears to me that we are looking for an orbital test flight sometime in late September, early October.

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Chinese pseudo-private rocket fails during launch

2:23 pm

A launch attempt by the pseudo-private Chinese company iSpace failed today, the second failure in a row for this company following a success.

A Hyperbola 1 rocket lifted off from the Jiuquan launch base at 3:39 a.m. EDT (0739 GMT; 3:39 p.m. Beijing time), China’s government-run Xinhua news agency said. Xinhua, which described the launch as a “flight test,” said the rocket exhibited “abnormal performance” after liftoff. Officials did not immediately specify when during the flight the rocket failed.

The news agency said a satellite carried by the rocket “did not enter orbit as scheduled.” Chinese officials did not identify the payload lost on the mission.

This is the second launch failure in a row, following the first successful orbital launch in July 2019.

The rocket is made of four solid-fueled stages, which means it most certainly is using military tecnology and is being closely supervised by the Chinese government. ISpace is one of about four such pseudo-private Chines companies. In each case, China is allowing private Chinese capital to finance the development of these rockets, for use both by the Chinese government as well as sale to customers (but only with the government’s approval and control).

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SpaceX installs 29 Raptor engines on Superheavy #4

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has now installed 29 Raptor engines on the fourth Superheavy prototype, intended to be the first to attempt an orbital launch, even as the company also prepares Starship prototype #20 for that flight.

In a marked increase to the already-impressive production cadence at SpaceX Starbase, it’s all hands on deck with Booster 4 and Ship 20 preparations ahead of the duo being sent to the launch site. Booster 4 was stacked on Sunday, with all 29 Raptors installed by Monday morning. While the orbital launch attempt is not imminent, the duo is expected to undergo a series of ground testing objectives, including multiple Static Fire tests for the booster. This will also provide time to complete the final elements of the Orbital Launch Site (OLS), from which the duo will conduct the milestone test flight.

Following a short ground testing campaign with Booster 3, which included cryo proofing and a three-engine Static Fire test, the focus is now on what will become the first integrated stack of a Super Heavy booster and a Starship vehicle. This is set to be achieved in double-quick time, following a call to arms from SpaceX to its workforce. This included the transportation of hundreds of workers from other sites in the country, as per a memo leaked on Facebook.

As predicted, SpaceX did not succeed in launching Superheavy/Starship on its first orbital test flight in August. However, as predicted the company is clearly pushing to attempt that flight before the end of the summer. Right now, based on the pace of operations, what has been accomplished, and what needs to be accomplished, I estimate that flight will likely occur sometime around late September to early October.

It also seems very obvious that SpaceX is trying very hard to beat SLS into orbit. If successful, it will underline most starkly the difference between free enterprise and government operations. The former got it done in about four years, for less than $6 billion. The latter has taken seventeen years, and about $60 billion, and has still not launched.

And even if SLS launches first, that contrast remains.

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Starliner launch scrubbed; no launch date yet set

8:32 am

For reasons that have not yet been revealed, ULA scrubbed today’s unmanned demo test flight of Boeing’s Starliner capsule just prior to launch, rescheduling the launch for tomorrow.

The launch tomorrow wiill occur at 12:57 am (Eastern).

UPDATE: It appears the scrub occurred because of a valve issue in the propulsion system of Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

“During pre-launch preparations for the uncrewed test flight of the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft, Boeing engineers monitoring the health and status of the vehicle detected unexpected valve position indications in the propulsion system,” the company said in a statement. “The issue was initially detected during check outs following yesterday’s electrical storms in the region of Kennedy Space Center.”

…The propulsion system valves in question are inside the Starliner’s service module, which has an array of rocket thrusters designed to propel the spacecraft away from its launcher during an in-flight emergency. Other thrusters on the service module are used for in-orbit maneuvers and spacecraft pointing control.

Boeing cannot afford more failures during this second demo flight. The company has been plagued with numerous debilitating technical failures during the past four years, from Starliner to its airlines. Right now the failure to get Starliner operational is losing them business in the emerging orbital tourist market. They need to get it working, and working reliably.

UPDATE: They have decided to cancel the launch plans for tomorrow, to roll the rocket back into the assembly building so they can do more tests on the capsule’s service module where the troublesome valves are.

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GAO rejects protests by Blue Origin and Dynectics over lunar lander award

12:50 am

The Government Accountability Office (GAO) today rejected the protests by Blue Origin and Dynectics against the award by NASA of its manned lunar lander contract to SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft.

In denying the protests, GAO first concluded that NASA did not violate procurement law or regulation when it decided to make only one award. NASA’s announcement provided that the number of awards the agency would make was subject to the amount of funding available for the program. In addition, the announcement reserved the right to make multiple awards, a single award, or no award at all. In reaching its award decision, NASA concluded that it only had sufficient funding for one contract award. GAO further concluded there was no requirement for NASA to engage in discussions, amend, or cancel the announcement as a result of the amount of funding available for the program. As a result, GAO denied the protest arguments that NASA acted improperly in making a single award to SpaceX.

GAO next concluded that the evaluation of all three proposals was reasonable, and consistent with applicable procurement law, regulation, and the announcement’s terms.

Finally, GAO agreed with the protesters that in one limited instance NASA waived a requirement of the announcement for SpaceX. Despite this finding, the decision also concludes that the protesters could not establish any reasonable possibility of competitive prejudice arising from this limited discrepancy in the evaluation.

This decision will likely allow NASA to proceed with the contract, and for SpaceX to begin work on the revisions it will need to make to Starship to make it a lunar lander.

The decision also puts companies like Blue Origin and Dynectics on notice: You need to prove you have the goods, or you won’t win customers. Commit some of your own funds to research and development, start building actual prototypes you can test, and the world will begin to beat a path to your door.

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Arianespace successfully completes first Ariane 5 launch in almost a year

11:23 pm

Arianespace today successfully completed its first Ariane 5 launch since August 2020, placing in orbit two commercial communications satellites.

The long gap in launches occurred because of a vibration issue discovered during that August 2020 launch durng the release of the rocket’s two fairing halves.

Engineers introduced modifications to the Ariane 5’s payload fairing, or nose cone, to reduce vibrations imparted on the satellites during separation of the shroud, which protects payloads during the first few minutes of flight through the atmosphere. Ground teams will analyze data from the rocket to make sure the changes reduced the vibrations.

Another launch is scheduled for September, followed next by the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope in either November or December. The results from today’s launch as well as the one in September will determine if the Webb launch will go forward on time.

These issues with Ariane 5, delays imposed by the company in fear of the Wuhan flu, and other launch problems with Arianespace’s Vega rocket, has meant that this is only its second launch in 2021, a pace that is below its pace for most of the last decade. Whether the company can recover and pick up the pace before the end of the year will depend on what they learn during today’s launch.

With only two launches total, Europe’s Arianespace remains off the leader board in the 2021 launch race:

24 China
20 SpaceX
12 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman
3 Rocket Lab

The U.S. lead over China in the national rankings remains 30 to 24.

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Apollo: When Americans last did some real exploring

1:02 pm

The journey of Apollo 15 on the Moon
Click for full image.

Today is the fiftieth anniversary of the landing of Apollo 15 on the Moon. To commemorate that event the science team for Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) today published some orbital images that capture the astronauts’ travels while on the Moon. The picture to the right, reduced to post here, outlines in oblique view their various excusions to the edge of Hadley Rille and the foot of a mountain dubbed Hadley Delta. As they note,

While Apollo 15 was the fourth mission to land a crew successfully on the lunar surface, it still pioneered many new technologies and had many firsts.

Some of the technologies developed for Apollo 15 included new suits, which were more flexible and had longer life support capabilities, as well as the Lunar Roving Vehicle (LRV), a rover capable of speeds up to 15 km / hour. With these advancements, astronauts Commander David (Dave) Scott and Lunar Module Pilot James (Jim) Irwin were able to travel more than eight times the distance traveled during the previous mission, for a total of over 25 km.

All told, astronauts Dave Scott and Jim Irwin spent more than 18 hours exploring the lunar surface on three scouting trips, covering 15.5 miles. During all those excursions their only protection from the harsh lunar environment was that thin spacesuit. In addition, if their rover broke down a walk back to the lunar module would become a race against suffocation.

And even then, they still had to get that lunar module off the ground, rendezvous and dock with the Apollo 15 command module, and then get that module back to Earth safely.
» Read more

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United Kingdom passes comprehensive spaceflight regulations

10:39 am

Capitalism in space: As required by the Outer Space Treaty as well as to lay a framework for commercial and private space launches from within the United Kingsom, the UK this week passed new comprehensive spaceflight regulations that appear modeled closely after already existing regulations in the United States.

From the government’s press release:

The legislation provides the framework to regulate the UK space industry and enable launches to take place from British soil for the very first time. It will unlock a potential £4 billion of market opportunities over the next decade, creating thousands of jobs and benefiting communities right across the UK.

This also puts the UK in a unique position as the first country in Europe able to launch spacecraft and satellites from home soil. This could lead to better monitoring of climate change, as well as improved data for satellite navigation systems, improving journeys right here on the ground, too.

The full law can be read here. It is long, so I have not reviewed it entirely, but it does seem to be closely modeled after several U.S. laws, including the 2004 Space Amendments Act that presently guides FAA regulation and licensing of commercial space launches. The UK even gave its own Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) the same job the FAA has in the U.S.

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Inmarsat to launch new low orbit communications satellite constellation

10:23 am

Capitalism in space: Inmarsat announced yesterday that it plans to launch a 150 satellite constellation in low Earth orbit to supplement and improve its already orbiting communications satellites in high geosynchronous orbit.

The company is investing $100 million over the next five years to lay the groundwork for deploying 150-175 LEO spacecraft.

They aim to join satellites Inmarsat has in geostationary and highly elliptical orbits from 2026. Inmarsat, which currently operates 14 satellites, is also on track to add five new GEO and two HEO spacecraft to its network over the next five years.

Its incoming multi-orbit constellation, called Orchestra, seeks to improve latency, network speeds and resiliency for communications services across its core maritime, aviation, government and enterprise markets.

This new constellation is also an effort by Inmarsat to keep its communications product competitive against the newer constellations being launched by SpaceX (Starlink) and OneWeb.

For the space launch industry, this just means more launches, more demand for rockets, and more money to be made.

Note that Inmarsat’s approach here is the correct way to respond to competition. Rather than try to squelch your competitors using government regulation, as Viasat is attempting, Inmarsat is instead up its game, improving its product, and thus matching the challenge its competitors are offering it.

One last question: Will this new constellation, set to be operational by ’26, get there before Amazon’s long promised Kuiper constellation? Right now I’m willing to bet that it will, considering how slow Amazon has been in developing that system.

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