Tag: competition

Rocket startup Stoke Space completes static fire test of first stage engine

10:02 am

Stoke's Nova rocket
Stoke’s Nova rocket

The rocket startup Stoke Space revealed yesterday that it has completed a static fire test of the first stage engine it will use on its Nova rocket, shown in the graphic to the right.

The test, which was not the first for this engine, proved out several new technologies.

Stoke Space called the test significant for several reasons. It’s the first hotfire of the company’s Block 2 (flight layout) stage 1 engine, and this engine architecture — called full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) — is considered particularly challenging. Only two entities in the world — Stoke and SpaceX — have successfully developed FFSC engines. … Stoke’s stage 1 engine is a liquified natural gas/liquid oxygen engine capable of producing 100,000 pounds of thrust. The duration of the test was not revealed.

It was the first time Stoke has tested on its new vertical test stand in Moses Lake. The company’s testing philosophy is that you must “test like you fly,” and it believes vertical testing is key to engine development.

Nor is the first stage engine the only technological innovation. Nova’s second stage uses a radical design whereby the engine releases its thrust through a ring of small nozzles on the outside perimeter of the stage, rather than a single central nozzle. This design is what the company hopes will allow it to return that upper stage intact for reuse.

The four year old company has raised $100 million in investment capital, but has also faced environmental red tape from the Space Force for its launch facility at Cape Canaveral. It had previously targeted 2025 for the first test flights of Nova, but that schedule appears unlikely because of this red tape.

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SpaceX requests special election to make Starbase at Boca Chica a city

9:41 am

In a letter [pdf] sent yesterday to a local judge, SpaceX requested that a special election be held in Cameron County on whether its Starbase facilities in Boca Chica should be incorporated as a city.

To continue growing the workforce necessary to rapidly develop and manufacture Starship, we need the ability to grow Starbase as a community. That is why we are requesting that Cameron County call an election to enable the incorporation of Starbase as the newest city in the Rio Grande Valley.

Incorporating Starbase will streamline the processes required to build the amenities necessary to make the area a world class place to live—for the hundreds already calling it home, as well as for prospective workers eager to help build humanity’s future in space. As you know, through agreements with the County, SpaceX currently performs several civil functions around Starbase due to its remote location, including management of the roads, utilities, and the provision of schooling and medical care for the residents. Incorporation would move the management of some of these functions to a more appropriate public body.

The letter went on to list the many other things SpaceX is already doing to benefit the area, including many of the environmental requirements imposed on it by the FAA and Fish & Wildlife.

At this moment there has been no response from the judge or Cameron County. I suspect there will be no objection, and this vote will take place in the near future. I also expect it will pass, because SpaceX employees now make up almost the entire population of Boca Chica.

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ESA continues to dither about building a heavy lift rocket

10:47 am

In what almost appears to be a clown show, the European Space Agency (ESA) has three times issued and then retracted and then reissued a request for proposals for studying possible designs to possibly build a heavy lift rocket to both replace Ariane-6 as well as compete with SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy.

ESA published an initial call for its European 60T LEO Reusable Launch System Pathfinder Study initiative on 20 November. The call was, however, deleted later that day. On 3 December, a second version of the call was published and then removed, once again, on the same day. On 10 December, ESA published a third iteration of the call, with this one being the first to remain published overnight.

The second version put more emphasis on “time and cost efficiency.” The third version added details noting the limitations of Ariane-6 (its cost, limited payload capacity, and non-re-usability).

When ESA issued the second version, I noted its lack of urgency. “This is ‘call’ for a ‘study’ to ‘explore’ the ‘options’ for development. Hell will freeze over before ESA starts construction.” The new version doesn’t change this in the slightest. It only recognizes more fully the bad decisions that ESA made in 2015 when it approved the expendable design of Ariane-6, making it too expense then to compete with SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

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Chinese citizen arrested for flying drone illegally over Vandenberg

10:29 am

Yinpiao Zhou, a Chinese citizen in America on a legal immigrant visa, has been arrested for flying a drone illegally over Vandenberg Air Force Base.

Nearly a mile above Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County, a hacked drone soared through restricted airspace for roughly an hour. The lightweight drone photographed sensitive areas of the military facility on Nov. 30, including a complex used by SpaceX, according to federal investigators. The drone then descended back to the ground, where the pilot and another man waited at a nearby park.

Before either could leave however, four security officers from Vandenberg showed up. Initially Zhou lied about what he was doing, hiding the drone under his jacket. At one point however the officers spotted the drone, forcing Zhou to admit the truth as well as delete the footage on the drone.

Neither Zhou or the second man, who remains unidentified, were arrested at that time. Zhou was arrested on December 9, 2024 at San Francisco International Airport, just before he was to board a flight back to China. He is charged with flying a drone illegally out of his line of sight and in a no-fly zone, and remains in custody.

It appears this was an intended spying operation by China or one of its pseudo-companies, attempting to steal more information about SpaceX’s technology in order to copy it. Why Zhou and that other man were not arrested immediately is unclear.

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Ispace signs agreement with lunar mining startup

10:15 am

Landing sites on Moon

The Japanese lunar lander startup Ispace has now signed an agreement with a lunar mining startup dubbed Magna Petra to transport the latter company’s helium-3 mining equipment to the Moon.

In a memo of understanding, ispace and Magna Petra have agreed to collaborate to utilize the moon’s resources for economic benefits to life on Earth, the companies announced Tuesday, Dec. 10. Through “non-destructive, sustainable harvesting,” according to a joint statement, Magna Petra plans to one day extract “commercial quantities” of helium-3 isotopes from regolith on the lunar surface for delivery and distribution back on Earth, where the resource is facing an extreme supply shortage.

Ispace meanwhile still has to prove it can put a lander on the Moon. Its first attempt, Hakuto-R1, almost succeeded, but crashed in April 2023 when its software thought it was just above the ground and shut down its engines when it was still three miles high. The company’s second attempt, dubbed Resilience and carrying a rover dubbed Tenacious, is scheduled for launch in January 2025. The landing site is shown on the map to the right, within Mare Frigoris in the northern part of the Moon’s nearside hemisphere.

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A satellite startup in Oman signs on to China’s lunar base partnership

10:03 am

Middle East, showing Oman's proposed spaceport

Oman Lens, a satellite startup in Oman, has signed an agreement with China to participate in its International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) lunar base project.

This follows Oman’s first suborbital launch, which according to Oman’s state-run press lifted off from its Duqm proposed spaceport facility and reached space. None of this however has been confirmed, though government officials said they hope to do three more suborbital test flights in the next year.

The Duqm spaceport hopes to be fully operational for orbital flights by 2026. Besides China, Oman has also been in negotiations with various American rocket startup companies, though no deals have been announced, mostly because of the State Department’s ITAR restrictions protecting American technology from hostile foreign theft. Oman is not necessarily considered a friendly country.

It appears Oman decided to make a deal with China when it couldn’t make one with the U.S.

As for China’s ILRS project — it formed in competition with the U.S. Artemis Accords — it has now signed thirteen countries and about a dozen academic institutions and international companies. It claims it hopes to get fifty countries on board, but that number likely includes such institutions, not nations.

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China launches five satellites to test the design of a planned laser communications constellation

9:41 am

China today successfully placed the first five satellites of a planned satellite constellation called the “High Speed Laser Diamond Constellation,” its Long March 2D rocket lifting from the Jiuquan spaceport in northwest China.

The satellites are apparently intended to test the engineering of using lasers for communications. China’s state-run press provided little further information. Nor did it say where the rocket’s lower stages, using toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

128 SpaceX (with a launch scheduled for later today)
60 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 147 to 92, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 128 to 111.

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ADRAS-J gets within 50 feet of abandoned rocket stage

3:28 pm

abandoned upper stage, taken by ADRAS-J
Image taken during ADRAS-J’s initial approach in April 2024.
Click for original image.

The demo maneuvering spacecraft ADRAS-J, built by the Japanese orbital tug startup Astroscale, has successfully maneuvered to within 50 feet of the abandoned rocket stage that the company hopes to grab and de-orbit on a later mission.

When ADRAS-J was 50 meters behind the upper stage the spacecraft reduced the gap in a straight-line approach then maneuvered to approximately 15 meters below the Payload Attach Fitting (PAF) — the planned capture point for the follow-on ADRAS-J2 mission — aligning the spacecraft’s relative speed, distance, and attitude. ADRAS-J successfully maintained this position until an autonomous abort was triggered by the onboard collision avoidance system due to an unexpected relative attitude anomaly with the upper stage. The spacecraft safely maneuvered away from the debris as designed before reaching the CIP. Astroscale Japan is currently investigating the cause of the abort.

Engineers will have to understand that the cause of that abort prior to launching ADRAS-J2, the mission that will grab the stage and de-orbit it.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Part 2 of 2: De-emphasize a fast Moon landing and build a real American space industry instead

10:41 am

In part one yesterday of this two-part essay, I described the likelihood that Jared Isaacman, Trump’s appointment to be NASA’s next administrator, will push to cancel NASA’s Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and its Orion capsule, deeming them too expensive, too unsafe, and too cumbersome to use for any viable effort to colonize the solar system.

I then described how the Artemis lunar landings could still be done, more or less as planned, by replacing SLS with Starship/Superheavy, and Orion with Starship. Such a change would entail some delay, but it could be done.

This plan however I think is short-sighted. The Artemis lunar landings as proposed are really nothing more than another Apollo-like plant-the-flag-on-the-Moon stunt. As designed they do little to establish a permanent sustainable human presence on the Moon or elsewhere in the solar system.

Isaacman however has another option that can create a permanent sustainable American presence in space, and that option is staring us all in the face.

And now for something entire different

Capitalism in space: I think Isaacman should shift the gears of Artemis entirely, and put a manned Moon landing on the back burner. Let China do its one or two lunar landing stunts, comparable to Apollo but incapable of doing much else.
» Read more

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SpaceX recovers parts of Starship from its last test launch on November 19th

9:22 am

Two teams of SpaceX employees have successfully recovered parts of the Starship that completed a soft vertical landing over the water in the Indian Ocean during the last test launch on November 19th.

The recovery included heat-resistant panelling and large bags of “miscellaneous metal pieces”. Images also showed large tanks being loaded off the ship, however it is unclear what they contained. Recovery of the rocket’s main section also proved too difficult, and it was left to sink to the bottom, with that part of the Indian Ocean about 6km deep. Mr Leal said allowing space material to sink after a splashdown was “pretty normal”.

It appears from this report that the Starship broke in two pieces when it fell over and hit the water. It sounds like the recovery teams focused mostly on recovering the flaps and heat shield, though getting them off the spaceship’s outer hull while it floated in the water and was sinking must have been quite an interesting experience. My guess is that salvage operations lifted out of the water for this purpose.

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ULA’s CEO outlines a bright 2025 for its Vulcan rocket

4:18 pm

In an interview for the website Breaking Defense, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno outlined his optimistic outlook in 2025 for its Vulcan rocket, despite the loss of a nozzle from a strap-on booster during its second test launch.

The important take-aways:

  • He expects the military to certify the rocket “momentarily”, though this could mean one to several months.
  • The company plans 20 launches in 2025, with 16 Vulcans already in storage.
  • Eventually Bruno expects to be launching 20 to 30 times per year.
  • Blue Origin has so far delivered 12 BE-4 engines, of which four have flown.
  • Blue Origin’s production rate is presently one per week.

The last two items are significant. If this production rate is the fastest Blue Origin can do, it will limit the number of Vulcan and New Glenn launches significantly per year. For example, Vulcan uses two engines per launch. To do 20 launches in 2025 will require 40 engines. Blue Origin however wants to also launch its New Glenn a number of times in 2025, and it uses seven BE-4 engines per launch. A production rate of one per week means that Blue Origin will not be producing enough engines for the number of launches planned for both rockets. Either ULA will have to delay its Vulcan launches awaiting engines, or Blue Origin will have to do the same for its New Glenn.

Of course, it is also possible that Blue Origin will be able to up this production rate with time. It has certainly made progress in this area in the past year, since a year ago it was having trouble producing one engine per month.

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Part 1 of 2: What NASA’s next administrator should do if SLS and Orion are cancelled

2:29 pm

When George Bush Jr. first proposed in 2004 an American long term effort to return to the Moon that has since become the Artemis program, he made it clear that the goal was not to simply land in 2015 and plant the flag, but to establish an aerospace industry capable of staying on the Moon permanently while going beyond to settle the entire the solar system.

The problem was that Bush proposed doing this with a government-built system that was simply not capable of making it happen. Though this system has gone through many changes in the two decades since Bush’s proposal, in every case it has been centered on rockets and spacecrafts that NASA designed, built, and owned, and were thus not focused on profit and efficiency. The result has been endless budget overruns and delays, so that two decades later and more than $60 billion, NASA is still years away from that first Moon landing, and the SLS rocket and Orion capsule that it designed and built for this task are incapable of establishing a base on the Moon, no less explore the solar system.

The real cost of SLS and Orion
The expected real per launch cost of SLS and Orion

For one thing, SLS at its best can only launch once per year (at a cost of from $1 to $4 billion per launch, depending on who you ask). There is no way you can establish a base on the Moon nor colonize the solar system with that launch rate at that cost. For another, Orion is simply a manned ascent/descent capsule. It is too small to act as an interplanetary spacecraft carrying people for months to years to Mars or beyond.

These basic design problems of both SLS and Orion make them impractical for a program to explore and colonize the solar system. But that’s not all. Orion has other safety concerns. Its heat shield has technical problems that will only be fixed after the next planned Artemis-2 manned mission around the Moon. Its life support system has never flown in space, has issues also, and yet will also be used on the next manned flight.

Thus, it is very likely that when Jared Isaacman, Trump’s appointee for NASA administrator, takes over running the agency, he will call for the cancellation of both SLS and Orion. How can he ask others to fly on such an untested system?

When he does try to cancel both however the politics will require him to offer something instead that will satisfy all the power-brokers in DC who have skin in the game for SLS/Orion, from elected officials to big space companies to the bureaucrats at NASA. Isaacman is going to have to propose a new design for the Artemis program that these people will accept.

Artemis without SLS and Orion

Before I propose what Isaacman should do, let’s review what assets he will have available within the Artemis lunar program after cancelling these two boondoggles.
» Read more

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