Tag: competition

Virgin Galactic shares crash after Branson flight

8:44 am

Capitalism in space: The price of the stock for Virgin Galactic plummeted 17% shortly after Richard Branson’s flight on July 11th, experiencing its worst day in more than a year.

The drop occurred shortly after the company announced it was going to sell an additional $500 million in new shares.

Virgin Galactic, which trades under the ticker SPCE, fell 17.3% after it filed notice of its stock sale offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Trading in Virgin Galactic was briefly halted Monday morning due to volatility.

The drop in price is likely a reflection of several things, none of which reflects negatively on the overall bright picture for commercial space. First, the release of new stock meant the supply was greater than demand, and thus the price dropped. Second, Branson’s flight, while grand, also highlighted its limitations. While there certainly appears to be a market for suborbital tourism, I suspect the arrival of regular and likely increasingly cheaper orbital flights will cut into this market. In comparison, a short five minutes of weightlessness cannot compare with spending a week in orbit.

Third, Virgin Galactic as a company has nowhere to go. The rocket is essentially an engineering dead end. It can do suborbital flights relatively cheaply and quickly, but the demand for such flights is limited, especially with the arrival of relatively cheaper orbital access.

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The bell of freedom rings in space

12:31 pm

The Liberty Bell
“Proclaim liberty throughout all the land unto all
the inhabitants thereof.” Photo credit: William Zhang

Not surprisingly the mainstream press today was agog with hundreds of stories about Richard Branson’s suborbital space flight yesterday on Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity spaceplane.

The excitement and joy over this success is certainly warranted. Back in 2004 Branson set himself the task of creating a reusable suborbital space plane he dubbed SpaceShipTwo, modeled after the suborbital plane that had won the Ansari X-Prize and intended to sell tickets so that private citizens would have the ability to go into space.

His flight yesterday completed that journey. The company he founded and is slowly selling off so that he is only a minority owner now has a vehicle that for a fee can take anyone up to heights ranging from 50 to 60 miles, well within the U.S. definition of space.

Nonetheless, if you rely on the media frenzy about this particular flight to inform you about the state of commercial space you end up having a very distorted picture of this new blossoming industry. Branson’s achievement, as great as it is, has come far too late. Had he done it a decade ago, as he had promised, he would have achieved something historic, proving what was then considered impossible, that private enterprise, using no government resources, could make space travel easy and common.

Now, however, he merely joins the many other private enterprises that are about to fly into space, with most doing it more frequently and with far greater skill and at a much grander scale than Virgin Galactic. His flight is no longer historic. It is merely one of many that is about to reshape space exploration forever.

Consider the upcoming schedule of already paid for commercial manned flights:
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Israeli nonprofit that built Beresheet-1 raises $70 million for Beresheet-2

8:23 am

SpaceIL, the Israeli nonprofit company that built the Beresheet-1 lunar lander/rover that crashed just before landing in 2019 has now raised $70 million of the $100 million it needs to build Beresheet-2.

SpaceIL said the new pledges means that it has raised almost all of the $100 million it estimates is needed for the mission to meet its 2024 launch target. SpaceIL said the funding would come from South African-Israeli billionaire Morris Kahn, who bankrolled much of the first mission, French-Israeli billionaire Patrick Drahi and South African philanthropist Martin Moshal, co-founder of venture capital firm Entree Capital.

A number of the engineers who helped build the first Beresheet have since moved on, forming their own company as well as getting hired by the American startup rocket company Firefly. Still, there is no reason Beresheet-2 cannot be built and flown, especially if SpaceIL focuses on rebuilding it rather than redesigning something new. They came very close to a success, and probably only need some tweaking to make the next attempt succeed.

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Virgin Galactic finally flies Richard Branson on its reusable suborbital Unity spacecraft

12:05 pm

Capitalism in space: After almost two decades of development and almost as many false promises by Richard Branson, Branson today finally flew on his SpaceShipTwo ship dubbed VSS Unity.

Unity was taken to about 45,000 feet by the carrier airplane WhiteKnightTwo, where it was released and its engines fired.

Once VSS Unity’s rocket engine cut off, the spacecraft’s momentum took it to an altitude of around 90 kilometers. This is above the minimum altitude of 80 kilometers required by the US Air Force, NASA, and the FAA to grant astronaut wings, and is above the discernible atmosphere. This apogee, or maximum altitude, is below the Federation Aeronautique Internationale (FAI) recognized boundary of space at 100 kilometers, which SpaceShipOne crossed twice to claim the X-Prize in 2004.

The craft spent around five minutes in weightlessness, with the crew evaluating the experience and looking at Earth and space from 17 windows on the craft, before they strapped back into their seats for reentry.

I have embedded below the fold the NASASpaceflight.com live feed, cued to just before Unity was dropped from WhiteKnightTwo. The commentary is far less offensive than the blather on the official live feed, but they end up losing the view from their live feed and switched to the Virgin Galactic live feed, rewinding it to pick it up just before the drop. You then see that feed, with good images and with all the blather, but no interior video during the weightless period. I suspect they want to edit that footage before releasing it, just in case anyone had vomited or Branson looked uncomfortable in any way.

Overall, Virgin Galactic deserves congratulations for finally accomplishing this flight. That it took so long and occurred just before the start of commercial manned orbital flights unfortunately pops the balloon on this achievement. The flight was so short that it now seems somewhat disappointing compared to the upcoming orbital tourist flights.

The next suborbital flight by Blue Origin on July 20th, and unlike today’s Virgin Galactic flight, will carry the first paying passenger, making it the first wholly financed and built private commercial space flight.
» Read more

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Northrop Grumman wins contract to build Lunar Gateway’s habitable module

10:03 am

Capitalism in space: NASA yesterday announced that it has awarded Northrop Grumman the construction contract for building HALO, (Habitation and Logistics Outpost), the module where astronauts will live and work on its Lunar Gateway space station.

Combined with earlier development contracts this contract, worth $935 million, brings the total fixed-price cost to about $1.1 billion.

[HALO], one of the first for the Gateway, will serve as a habitat for visiting astronauts and a command post for the lunar orbiting facility. It will have docking ports for Orion spacecraft, cargo vehicles like SpaceX’s Dragon XL and lunar landers, as well as for later modules to be added by international partners. HALO is based on the Cygnus spacecraft that Northrop Grumman uses to transport cargo to the International Space Station, but extensively modified with docking ports, enhanced life support and other new subsystems.

This module is not expected to launch before 2024. Moreover, it is supposed to work in conjunction with what NASA calls its Artemis 3 mission, the third launch of SLS and the first to dock with Gateway. SLS however is so far only funded through its first two flights, and has a schedule that is presently highly uncertain.

There is great irony here. HALO, based on the Cygnus cargo freighter, will be about that size. If the present schedule for SpaceX’s Starship continues as expected, it will be flying to the Moon at about the same time, and will have a cargo bay big enough to store several Cygnus freighters inside. And though no work has yet been done to make that cargo bay habitable, Starship’s cost per launch, about $2 million, is so far below the $1.1 billion cost for HALO that it will certainly cost much less than HALO to make it a habitable station. And it will be gigantic in comparison.

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China launches 5 military reconnaissance satellites

9:37 am

Using its Long March 6 rocket, China today successfully launched five military reconnaissance satellites.

This is China’s fourth successful launch in the past week.

Though this newer rocket’s first stage does not use toxic hypergolic fuels — China’s older rockets — that first stage still crashes in China after its job is done and it falls to Earth. No word on whether it landed near inhabited regions.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

22 China
20 SpaceX
11 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. still leads China 29 to 22 in the national rankings.

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Watching Virgin Galactic’s suborbital flight on July 11th

10:24 am

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic has now made available the live stream for its planned suborbital flight on July 11th that will also carry the company’s founder, Richard Branson.

I have embedded the live stream below the fold. Though the company has not announced an actual launch time, according to that stream the broadcast is now scheduled to begin at about 9 am (Eastern). The flight itself should last about ninety minutes total, from takeoff of the carrier airplane to landing of both it and the suborbital spacecraft, VSS Unity.

The weightless portion of the flight will last about four minutes or so. Unity will get to more than 50 miles altitude, which meets the American definition of space but not the international standard of 67 miles. For more details about the flight, see this Space.com article.

Expect the broadcast to be filled with endless hype and blather about how “spectacular” and “amazing” and “wonderful” Virgin Galactic is. And yes, what the company is doing is very cool, a privately financed manned spacecraft capable of reaching space, returning to Earth, and then flying again. Unfortunately, both suborbital companies (Virgin Galactic and Blue Origin) seem to think they have to convince people of this obvious fact on their broadcasts, and scream it at the viewers endlessly. They would be wiser to take SpaceX’s soft-sell approach: State once what they are accomplishing and then simply report on what actually happens, with no breathless commentary.

I don’t expect that to happen however. Thus, I’m not sure I can stomach hours on end of Virgin Galactic PR hype on Sunday, especially considering that this spaceflight by Branson is more than a decade late. His own endless hype for the last fifteen years, promising over and over again that he would be flying in mere months, has soured me from any desire to listen to more. Maybe I’ll go on a hike instead.
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British startup rocket company wants to recover only satellite launched by UK

10:08 am

Capitalism in space: Skyrora, a British startup rocket company which is attempting to build the first rocket using hypersonic technology, has now issued a challenge to the commercial space industry to come up with a plan to snatch from orbit the only satellite ever launched by a rocket built by the United Kingdom and bring it back safely to Earth.

Edinburgh-based rocket company Skyrora is issuing a challenge to find a way to retrieve the Prospero satellite. The object was the first and only UK spacecraft to be launched on a British rocket, from Australia in 1971. It’s defunct now, obviously, but is still circling the globe on an elliptical orbit some 1,000km up.

Skyrora, who will soon start sending up rockets from Scotland, regards the satellite as an important piece of UK space heritage. The company has already recovered part of the Black Arrow vehicle that placed Prospero in orbit. This fell back to Australia in the course of the mission where it languished for decades in the Outback until the firm had it shipped home and put on display.

Now, Skyrora is looking for ideas as to how best to approach and grab hold of the 66kg satellite, whose original mission was to investigate the space environment.

After that single successful launch of Black Arrow, the British government decided to abandon it, and in fact for the next half century refused to invest any money in space, at all. While the decision was probably economically wise for the government, it also did not do anything to encourage a private space industry, and for the next half century there was none in the UK. This is now finally changing, but fortunately not as a government space program like Black Arrow but as a competitive private launch industry aimed at profit.

Recovering Prospero would be a nice public relations stunt that might help further encourage that private industry.

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NASA to scientists: Don’t expect to use SLS for science missions for at least a decade

9:58 am

In a briefing held by the planetary science community to propose its future missions for the next decade, a NASA official explained that there will likely be no available launches on NASA’s SLS rocket for planetary missions until the late 2020s, and more likely not until the next decade.

While NASA has a goal of being able to launch three SLS missions in a 24-month period, and two in 12 months, the supply chain is currently limited to one SLS per year. That will change by the early 2030s, [the official] said, growing to two per year and thus creating opportunities for additional SLS missions beyond the Artemis program. That will be enabled by changes to at the Michoud Assembly Facility to increase core stage production and a “block upgrade” to the RS-25 engine used on that core stage that will be cheaper and faster to produce.

The official also claimed that the cost of buying a launch on SLS is at best going to be $800 million, but that price won’t be available until the ’30s when SLS’s are launching more frequently. Until then, it appears NASA will charge one billion per launch.

All of this is pure fantasy on NASA’s part. Once cheaper and more usable private commercial rockets come on line, such as SpaceX’s Starship, SLS will go the way of the horse buggy. And this is likely to happen much sooner than 2030, more likely in the next three years.

Moreover, for both cost and practical reasons I cannot see any planetary scientist planning a mission on SLS, ever. There are now much cheaper options that are actually flying, such as SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy, which costs about $100 million per launch. Moreover, SLS’s slow and cumbersome launch pace should scare any planetary scientist away, as such missions must launch on time, and SLS might easily miss their launch windows. In fact, this has already happened. For years Congress mandated that Europa Clipper launch on SLS. When it became clear that SLS would not be available for that mission’s launch window, Congress finally relented and allowed NASA to buy the launch from a commercial company.

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China targets 2024 for next lunar sample return mission

9:42 am

The new colonial movement: China’s next robotic lunar sample return mission, called Chang’e-6 and targeted for a 2024 launch, will also attempt to bring back the first samples from the far side of the Moon.

Hu Hao, chief engineer of the China Lunar Exploration and Space Engineering Center, announced in a statement released on China’s national space day in April this year that the Chang’e 6 probe, consisting of an orbiter, lander, lunar ascent vehicle and reentry capsule, will target the South Pole-Aitken (SPA) basin.The SPA basin is a colossal, ancient impact crater roughly 1,550 miles (2,500 kilometers) in diameter that covers almost a quarter of the moon’s far side. The impact basin, considered to be the oldest on the moon, holds vital clues about the history of the moon and the solar system, according to a new report.

The precise spot for landing has not been revealed. Since the basin is so large and covers the Moon’s south pole, the mission could land in that region where ice is thought to possibly exist in the permanently shadowed floors of some craters. Whether they would attempt a landing in one of those craters is presently unknown, though unlikely because of the technical challenge.

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FAA initiates new prelaunch air space clearance system

9:33 am

FAA has now begun using a new prelaunch air space clearance system that is intended to shorten the time airplane travel is disturbed by the scheduled launch of a rocket.

[The FAA] developed the Space Data Integrator (SDI) tool to reduce how long ATO must close airspace around space launches and reentries. The system is voluntary. SpaceX, Blue Origin, Firefly, and the Alaska Aerospace Corporation are current partners. SDI was first used operationally for SpaceX’s Transporter-2 launch last week and is being used for the SpaceX-22 Cargo Dragon reentry today.

…Space operators now are voluntarily sharing telemetry data including vehicle position, altitude and speed, as well as data if the vehicle deviates from its expected flight path. Asked when additional companies might join, Monteith said he would have to defer to ATO to answer that question.

…Using the automated SDI system coupled with “time-based procedures and dynamic windows,” the FAA expects to be able to shorten airspace closures “from an average of more than four hours per launch to just more than two hours” and eventually less.

The article makes no mention whether this new system will allow the FAA to shrink the closure areas as well, which was Elon Musk’s main complaint after SpaceX’s Transporter-2 launch near the end of June was scrubbed seconds before launch when a helicopter slipped into that airspace. As Musk wrote in a tweet,

Unfortunately, launch is called off for today, as an aircraft entered the “keep out zone”, which is unreasonably gigantic. There is simply no way that humanity can become a spacefaring civilization without major regulatory reform. The current regulatory system is broken.

I suspect there is discussion to reduce the size of the closure areas, but I also suspect that the FAA is resisting industry calls to do so.

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Problems with Blue Origin’s engine force more delays of ULA’s new Vulcan rocket

10:28 am

In a detailed and very informative review of the partnership between ULA and Blue Origin yesterday, Eric Berger at Ars Technica noted these unfolding facts:

For years, United Launch Alliance chief executive Tory Bruno had been saying the new Vulcan rocket, powered by two [Blue Origin] BE-4 engines, would launch in 2021. However, he recently told Aviation Week the first launch would slip into 2022. Bruno said this was due primarily to the mission’s customer, Astrobotic, whose Moon lander was not ready. Technically, Bruno said, Vulcan still had a chance to be ready for a 2021 launch.

This seems highly unlikely because it is already July, and United Launch Alliance (ULA) still does not have a pair of flight engines. After receiving the flight engines from Blue Origin, ULA needs to attach them to the Vulcan rocket, roll it to the launch pad, and conduct a lengthy series of tests before a hot-fire ignition. After this hot-fire test, the rocket will be rolled back to the hangar and prepared for an actual launch attempt. As of January, Bruno was saying this hot fire test with the flight engines would take place this summer. That will no longer happen.

In December both companies promised delivery of those flight engines by this summer, but so far nothing has arrived. Moreover, both companies have remained very tight-lipped about the cause of the most recent delays. In October 2020 Bruno said that an issue with the engine’s turbopumps had been identified and fixed, but if so why has the engine not arrived as promised?

A GAO report released last month had described issues with the engine’s “igniter and booster capabilities,” but Bruno himself has denied the igniter was a problem.

Regardless, Blue Origin’s inability to deliver this engine is causing problems at both companies. Both have been forced to delay the launch of their new orbital rockets. Both rockets were initially scheduled to launch in 2020, were delayed to 2021 about two years ago, and now are likely not to launch until 2022.

While ULA can still switch to its Atlas 5 rocket for some planned Vulcan launches (and has already done so), that rocket is more expensive and thus eats into the company’s profit margin. Using the more expensive Atlas 5 in bidding also makes it more difficult for ULA to compete with SpaceX in any head-to-head competition.

Blue Origin does not even have this option. Its proposed New Glenn rocket is grounded until it gets its engine operational.

All told, the failure of Blue Origin to deliver here is essentially grounding all of SpaceX’s potential American competition, a situation that is not healthy for the American rocket industry.

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NOAA struggles with concept of letting private commercial space build its satellites

9:49 am

Capitalism in space? An article today in Space News, “NOAA to take first step toward a small satellite constellation”, describes at great length NOAA’s recent effort to rethink how it builds its weather satellites, shifting from large and expensive single satellites launched years apart to constellations of smallsats that provide more redundancy and are cheaper and easier to replace.

What the article misses, as does NOAA apparently, is that this shift should not be designed by NOAA at all. During the Trump administration there was pressure on this agency to do what NASA had, stop designing and building its satellites but instead become a customer that hires private satellite companies to do it instead.

Not much came of that pressure. NOAA hired one private company to study the idea of building a private satellite to observe the Sun. It also awarded three companies experimental contracts to provide NOAA weather data from already orbiting smallsats.

That was it. NOAA made no other attempts to encourage private companies to design and build weather satellites for it, even as it struggled to get its own satellites off the ground. The second new GOES satellite in a constellation of four for providing global weather coverage failed almost immediately after launch in 2018. Overall, that constellation is expected to cost $11 billion, $4 billion more than initially budgeted. And it is years behind schedule.

What the article above suggests is that, with the Trump administration gone, NOAA has now abandoned the effort to transition to privately-built weather satellites. Instead the article describes at great length the effort by NOAA to redesign its satellites from big, rare, and costly to small, frequent, and cheap.

This effort will fail. Government agencies like NOAA are incapable of accomplishing such a task. They do not think in terms of profit, and keeping costs down to maximize those profits. Instead, such government institutions see high costs as beneficial, as they pump more money into their operations.

Until elected officials force NOAA to change, it will not, and its weather satellites will continue to be late, expensive, and untrustworthy. Sadly, the elected officials we have today, especially in the Biden administration, are not going to do that. They are as satisfied with the present situation as NOAA is.

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SpaceX drone ship arrives in California

9:14 am

Capitalism in space: One of SpaceX’s two drone ships used by its Falcon 9 first stages for ocean landings has arrived in California in preparation for frequent Starlink launches from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The journey began on the East Coast two weeks ago and included passage through the Panama Canal. Once the drone ship gets offloaded, it will be based at Pier T, where it be part of recovery operations for the Starlink landings that potentially could occur in late July or early August.

These California launches will allow SpaceX to increase the global coverage of its Starlink constellation. It will also allow the company to begin frequent launches from both coasts.

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China launches communications satellite for space effort

8:15 pm

Using a Long March 3C rocket China today successfully launched a communications satellite for use by its manned space missions and its space station, similar to the TDRS satellites used by NASA for similar purposes.

This satellite is the fifth such satellite launched, and is likely intended to enhance communications between the ground and China’s new space station.

No word on where the first stage crashed, or whether it landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:

21 China
20 SpaceX
11 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. still leads China 29 to 21 in the national rankings.

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More parachute problems for Europe’s Franklin Mars rover

10:11 am

During a parachute drop test in late June, following a redesign of the parachute with U.S. help, engineers for the ExoMars Rosalind Franklin Mars rover found the chute still experienced problems that tore it during deployment.

They actually performed two drop tests, a day apart, using two different parachutes, with the first test apparently going off without a hitch. However, according to the press release:

“The performance of the second main parachute was not perfect but much improved thanks to the adjustments made to the bag and canopy. After a smooth extraction from the bag, we experienced an unexpected detachment of the pilot chute during final inflation. This likely means that the main parachute canopy suffered extra pressure in certain parts. This created a tear that was contained by a Kevlar reinforcement ring. Despite that, it fulfilled its expected deceleration and the descent module was recovered in good state.”

I have embedded below the fold the only video released by the European Space Agency. It is not clear whether this is from the first or second test. Near the end it appears that the pilot chute above the main chute might be separated, but the video ends before that can be confirmed.

Though ESA has apparently improved the chute’s performance significantly since its earlier failures that contributed to the delay of ExoMars from last year to 2022, they still haven’t gotten the chute completely right. Fortunately they still have time to get it fixed before that ’22 launch.
» Read more

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Progress docks with ISS

12:36 pm

As expected a Russian Progress freighter docked with ISS yesterday, on schedule and with no mishaps.

I report this non-news story simply because of the Russian claim yesterday that a SpaceX Starlink satellite and Falcon 9 upper stage threatened a collision with that freighter as it maneuvered in orbit prior to docking.

Not surprisingly, there was no collision. The Russians knew this, or they would never have launched as they did. They made a stink about it as a ploy to stain SpaceX, a company that has taken almost all their commercial launch business by offering cheaper and more reliable rockets.

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More delays in India’s space program

9:36 am

Blaming COVID-19, the head of India’s space agency ISRO, K. Sivan, announced yesterday that they are delaying the first unmanned test flight of their manned space capsule so that it will not fly in 2021 as planned.

ISRO had planned eight launches in 2021, but has so far only flown one, and that launch took place in February. Since then no launches have occurred. Moreover, in 2020 India only completed two launches, far less than planned. In other words, their fear of COVID has essentially shut down their entire government space program for two years.

Meanwhile, China, Russia, SpaceX, and most other private companies roll on, launching frequently and without any negative consequences. The difference tells us that India is over-reacting, and allowing its fearful bureaucracy to run the show. The result is that they are losing ground not only in their effort to fly their first manned mission, but in commercial market share. I am certain that satellite companies that would have flown on their rockets have been shifting their business to SpaceX, Rocket Lab, and many of the other new rocket startups in the U.S.

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Bezos vs Branson: Virgin Galactic to do suborbital flight on July 11th carrying Richard Branson

11:06 pm

SpaceShipTwo

Capitalism in space: Virgin Galactic today announced that it is now planning its first passenger flight of its VSS Unity suborbital spacecraft on July 11th, and that flight will carry Richard Branson as one of its passengers.

[Aleanna Crane, vice president of communications for Virgin Galactic] said that the last flight had been so flawless that the team had decided to test the cabin experience. “Who better to test the full cabin experience than Richard Branson?” she said. “He is flying as a mission specialist, and he has a role like the rest of the crew.” The craft will carry three other Virgin Galactic employees in the cabin seats in addition to the two pilots up front.

…The company plans to broadcast the flight beginning at 9 a.m. Eastern time on July 11. The SpaceShipTwo rocket, named Unity, will be carried under an airplane named White Knight Two to an altitude of 50,000 feet before being dropped. Unity’s engine will then ignite, taking it up to higher than 50 miles. At the top of the arc, passengers will float for about four minutes before the space plane re-enters the atmosphere and glides to a runway landing.

By flying on July 11th, Virgin Galactic — and Branson — will beat Blue Origin — and Jeff Bezos — by nine days in accomplishing the first passenger suborbital flight. Blue Origin’s July 20th flight however will be carrying the first paying customer, while Virgin Galactic’s flight will not.

For Branson making this flight ahead of Bezos is almost essential. He has been promising this flight now for more than fourteen years, always declaring it was only months from happening. It never did, and the years dragged on and on with no achievement or Virgin Galactic suborbital tourist flights. To get beaten now would be quite embarrassing, to put it mildly. Yet, to only win this race by mere days remains embarrassing as well, since Virgin Galactic was supposed to do this more than a decade ago and did not.

Regardless, both flights are stunts intended to garner publicity and encourage ticket sales for future suborbital flights. And while there appears to be some market interest in these suborbital flights, both are mere pipsqueaks to the coming orbital tourist flights by SpaceX, Axiom, and the Russians, with Boeing to follow shortly thereafter.

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Bezos invites original female candidate for Mercury program to fly on New Shepard flight July 20th

5:47 pm

Jeff Bezos has invited Wally Funk, 82, one of the original thirteen women astronaut candidates for the 1960s Mercury program, to fly on his suborbital tourist flight scheduled for July 20th, joining Bezos, his brother Mark, and the still unnamed winner of the auction to buy that seat.

Funk is a pioneer in aviation: She was the first female Federal Aviation Administration inspector and first female National Transportation Safety Board air safety investigator. She has logged 19,600 hours of flight time and taught more than 3,000 people to fly, she said in Bezos’s Instagram video. “Everything that the FAA has, I’ve got the license for,” Funk says in the video. “And, I can outrun you!”

In the Instagram video, Bezos describes the plan for the New Shepard’s journey to a wide-eyed Funk, down to the moment when the rocket returns to the desert surface and its doors open. “We open the hatch, and you step outside. What’s the first thing you say?” Bezos asks Funk.

She does not hesitate. “I will say, ‘Honey, that’s the best thing that ever happened to me!’ ” Funk declares, pulling Bezos into a bear hug.

This is a gracious gesture by Bezos, even some on the left will use it to slander the 1960s NASA and America by making both look bigoted against women. That was not what happened, and Funk’s own success as a woman pilot and FAA official at that time proves it.

Why Blue Origin has not named the winner of its auction to buy that last seat however is beginning to be a bit puzzling.

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Relativity signs deal to expand rocket facility

8:53 am

Capitalism in space: The rocket company Relativity Space announced yesterday that it has signed an agreement for a major expansion of its rocket manufacturing facility in California.

The firm — fresh off a $650 million Series A fundraising round announced earlier this month — said Wednesday (June 30) it has signed for a 1-million-square-foot (93,000 square meters) headquarters factory at the Goodman Commerce Center, in its current hometown of Long Beach, California.

The 93-acre plant used to host Boeing’s C-17 military transport aircraft manufacturing, with the last C-17 produced there in 2015. Now, Relativity’s factory will make it the anchor tenant for a planned 437-acre business district west of the Long Beach Airport, the company said. It also plans to hold on to its existing factory space to continue producing its Terran 1 rocket.

Relativity will occupy the new space in January 2022, which will eventually host dozens of the company’s proprietary Stargate printers that can produce Terran 1 and its newly announced reusable version of the rocket, called Terran R. Relativity said the facility will include a fusion of 3D printing, artificial intelligence and autonomous robotics to create a new rocket in less than 60 days.

Relativity has not yet launched any rockets nor has it conducted any test flights. Its first test flight of Terran-1 is presently scheduled for later this year, though no date is set. The company is one of five American new rocket startups that say they will do their first launch before the end of 2021.

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Astra completes SPAC merger, goes public

8:34 am

Capitalism in space: Astra yesterday finalized its merger with the investment company Holicity and became the first launch company with stock publicly traded.

Today (June 30), the Bay Area launch startup completed its previously announced merger with Holicity, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) backed by Bill Gates and billionaire telecom pioneer Craig McCaw, among others. Astra will start trading on the Nasdaq Global Select Market Thursday (July 1), becoming the first launch company ever to do so — a milestone marked by Astra CEO Chris Kemp, who will ring Nasdaq’s opening bell in the morning.

The merger brings the company $500 million in cash.

Astra has not yet successfully completed an orbital launch, though it hopes to begin monthly launches before the end of the year. It has attempted two orbital test flights, with the second only failing to reach orbit because it ran out of fuel. It says it has contracts for 50 launches, and will ramp up to weekly launches next year.

Astra is one of five rocket companies that have announced they will do their first orbital flight in 2021. So far, none have done so.

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SpaceX successfully launches 88 smallsats, marking a renaissance in rocketry in 2021

1:07 pm

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First stage landing at Cape Canaveral today

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to place 88 smallsats into orbit, the third rocket launch today.

While Transporter-2 won’t beat the unprecedented number of satellites launched on on Transporter-1 [the first such smallsat launch by SpaceX earlier this year], SpaceX says it will still “launch 88 spacecraft to orbit” and – more importantly – carry more customer mass. In other words, Transporter-2 will carry roughly 50% fewer satellites, each of which will weigh substantially more on average.

Ordering directly through SpaceX, [the price] begins at $1 million for up to 200 kg (~440 lb). … A majority of small satellites weigh significantly less than 200 kilograms but if a customer manages to use all of their allotment, the total cost of a SpaceX rideshare launch could be as low as $5000 per kilogram – incredibly cheap relative to almost any other option. For a [comparable] launch … on a Rocket Lab Electron or Astra Rocket 3.0 rocket using every last gram of available performance, the same customer would end up paying a minimum of $25,000 to $37,500 per kilogram to orbit.

The launch also included a handful of Starlink satellites, adding to SpaceX’s constellation. I have embedded SpaceX’s live stream below the fold. As I write this the satellites have not yet been deployed from the second stage, but that should happen shortly.

The first stage landed successfully, the eighth time this booster has done so. The fairings were also reused, completing their third flight. All told, this was SpaceX’s 20th launch in 2021, 18 of which used reused boosters.

The leaders in the 2021 launch race:
» Read more

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Paypal lowering fees charged to sellers

11:21 am

Isn’t competition great? Paypal announced today that as of August 2, 2021 it is lowering the fees it deducts from the payments made by buyers to sellers.

The fee reduction is about 15% to 20%, depending on the fee, which means I have just gotten a pay raise from those who donate or subscribe to Behind the Black using PayPal. This does not mean I want everyone to use PayPay. Right now I actually prefer new subscribers use Patreon, simply because it makes me less dependent on PayPay should it decide my commentary is “evil” and must be blacklisted.

The reductions make these fees lower than Paypal’s new competitors, such as Patreon, or from the conservative right, such as David Rubin’s Locals.com and Dan Bongino’s AlignPay. However, I expect them all to quickly drop their fees as well to match PayPal. And as long as PayPal continues to treat its conservative customers like dirt, expect this competition to continue to heat up.

Lowering its price won’t help if PayPal doesn’t stop playing partisan politics. It really has only two options for maintaining its market dominance. Either it can stop acting like a petty authoritarian dictator and canceling conservative vendors, or it can team up with the government to get its competitors banned or shut down. Which do you think it will eventually choose?

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SpaceX launch scrubbed because airplane strayed into what Musk calls “an unreasonably gigantic” launch zone.

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: Yesterday a SpaceX Falcon 9 launch was scrubbed mere seconds before launch because an airplane had been detected inside the government’s keep-out zone.

The scrub was called by the range officer at T-11 seconds. SpaceX will attempt the launch again today.

Musk immediately blasted the size of that keep-out zone, which was established decades ago at the very beginnings of the space race and has not been adjusted as launch technology has improved.

“Unfortunately, launch is called off for today, as an aircraft entered the ‘keep out zone,’ which is unreasonably gigantic,” Musk tweeted Tuesday afternoon. “There is simply no way that humanity can become a spacefaring civilization without major regulatory reform. The current regulatory system is broken.”

Musk has successfully forced the range to accept new technology that simplifies launches, makes it possible for them to occur faster with less time in-between, and requires fewer range officials monitoring the launch. He is now pushing them to rethink the size of the range, which is likely much larger than now necessary, as Musk claims, because not only are rockets more reliable, their programming is more precise.

The article at the link also notes as an aside at the end another Musk tweet, that SpaceX’s Starlink network now has 70,000 customers and hopes to have 500,000 within a year. More on that story here.

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Russians launch Progress freighter; Virgin Orbit launches seven commercial satellites

9:04 am

This morning two launches occurred. First the Russians successfully launched a Progress freighter to ISS, using their Soyuz-2 rocket.

Second, Virgin Orbit successfully completed its second orbital launch with its air-launched LauncherOne rocket, which was its first operational commercial launch, placing seven smallsats into orbit for three customers. This was also its second launch in 2021.

If all goes as planned, SpaceX will complete a third launch today also, placing more than 80 smallsats in orbit with its Falcon 9 rocket. Until then, however, the leaders in the 2021 launch race are as follows:

19 SpaceX
18 China
10 Russia
3 Northrop Grumman

The U.S. now leads China 28-18 in the national rankings.

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First orbital Raptor engine delivered to Boca Chica

10:59 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX has delivered to its Boca Chica launch site the first Raptor vacuum engine optimized for orbital operation.

The Starship prototype that will use this engine, as well as fly on the first orbital test flight, is #20.

While most of S20’s upgrades are a mystery, the ship’s thrust dome – spotted in work at Boca Chica earlier this month – has already confirmed that the prototype will be the first with the necessary hardware for Raptor Vacuum engine installation. That likely means that S20 will also be the first Starship to attempt to static fire six Raptor engines*, potentially producing more thrust than a Falcon 9 booster. On June 27th, one such vacuum-optimized Raptor (RVac) arrived in Boca Chica for the first time ever, making it clear that the comparatively brand new engine may already be ready to start integrated Starship testing.

*Update: SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that the Raptor Vacuum delivered to Boca Chica on June 27th is, in fact, meant for Starship S20, seemingly confirming that the prototype will fly with a full six Raptor engines.

While this delivery as well as statements by both Musk and Gwynn Shotwell, SpaceX CEO, all point to an intended orbital test flight in July, the article at the link outlines the many tasks still undone that must be completed before that flight, all of which suggest that it will be August at the earliest before that flight can happen.

Nonetheless, SpaceX is barreling forward toward that first orbital flight, with clearly a goal to beat SLS’s first orbital flight, presently scheduled for November.

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