Tag: competition

A private Russian rocket?

9:01 am

According to two short stories in the Russian state-run press (here and here), a private Russian company, dubbed SR Space, is developing a private orbital rocket, and has already completed two launches of a test rocket, though neither launch reached suborbital space.

It is now assembling its first suborbital rocket intended to reach space.

As the SR Space press office specified for TASS, the new sub-orbital rocket is set for its launch at the end of the year. “The launch is scheduled for the end of the current year to deliver a signal transmitter payload,” the press office said. The transmitter’s signal sent to Earth is expected to be received by drones engineered by the company. “This is necessary to test interaction with remotely piloted aircraft systems and the technology of their remote control and flight control of a swarm in automatic mode,” it explained.

This will be the first launch of a private sub-orbital rocket in Russia to an altitude of over 100 km (the altitude where outer space begins). The carrier rocket will measure 5.17 meters in length and 0.45 meters in diameter and weigh 253 kg.

SR Space appears to be the same kind of pseudo-company that China allows. It has obtained private funding, and is operating with some independence hoping to win contracts from the Russian government in order to earn a profit. At the same time, it without doubt does nothing without that government’s permission and approval, and can be taken over at any time by that government, as happened to Russia’s last commercial rocket company S7 that wanted to use the Sea Launch ocean platform to fly commercial launches.

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Tomorrow’s final launch of Europe’s Ariane-5 rocket delayed indefinitely

2:01 pm

Arianespace officials today cancelled tomorrow’s final launch of its Ariane-5 rocket — supposedly to be replaced by the not-yet-flown Ariane-6, citing issues with “three pyrotechnical transmission lines that are associated with the Ariane 5’s solid rocket boosters.”

No new launch date has been set. There is the possibility that to resolve this issue the rocket will have to be rolled back to its assembly building and destacked. If so, the launch will be delayed months.

At the moment, Europe has only managed one launch in 2023, a far cry from the seven to twelve launches it used to do annually, before SpaceX came along and offered a cheaper rocket that could launch more frequently and quicker.

Hat tip to BtB’s stringer Jay.

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Cape Canaveral, version 2.0

11:45 am

Falcon 9 first stage hauled back to the cape after launch
Falcon 9 first stage hauled back to the cape after launch

Last week BtB’s intrepid stringer Jay was unable to send me any “Quick Space links” because he was working at Cape Canaveral at the Kennedy Space Center, involved in a project involving, as he noted, “infrastructure,” giving him only a limited access to the center.

He did however have time to drive around and take pictures. For example, we have the picture on the right. On his way to lunch on his second day there he “had to pull over for a semi carrying something large. At first I thought it was a fuel tank, but it was the first stage of a Falcon-9 that lifted off on June 4th.”

This picture alone illustrates how things have changed at Kennedy since the retirement of the shuttle in 2011. Then, local officials and NASA managers all thought the sky was falling in, and that the economy of Cape Canaveral was about to die forever with that retirement.

Instead, it is now entirely routine for a private rocket company to drive its used first stages back and forth in between launches. Cape Canaveral hasn’t died, it has been reborn.

More pictures by Jay are below, all of which illustrate the resurgence of space activity that private enterprise is bringing to America’s first spaceport. To quote Jay,
» Read more

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Taiwan company issues letter of intent to build cubesat facility in California city

9:27 am

The city of Paso Robles in California has now received an official letter of intent from the Taiwan cubesat company Gran Systems, describing its desire to build spaceport there.

The CEO of Gran Systems recently toured the proposed Paso Robles Spaceport and tech corridor area and met with Paso Robles Airport Manager Mark Scandalis to discuss opportunities for establishing its California facility in Paso Robles.

Though the news article refers to this as a “spaceport,” I don’t think this has anything to do with launching rockets. Instead, this spaceport is part of Paso Robles’ effort to establish an industrial park at its airport, including space companies such as satellite builders, and Gran Systems has decided to rent space there, probably to widen its market in the U.S.

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Arianespace signs deal with Spanish rocket startup PLD

8:58 am

Following up with its agreement with the UK rocket startup Orbex, Arianespace yesterday also signed a deal with the Spanish rocket startup PLD to study using that company’s as-yet-unflown Miura-5 rocket.

Like the Orbex deal, this agreement makes it possible for Arianespace to arrange launches using PLD’s rocket. It also tells us that Arianespace and the European Space Agency are shifting from designing and building their own rockets — a process that has failed to produce any profit and had presently left Europe with no launch capability — to acting simply as a customer buying that capability from independent competing private companies.

For this to work however both Orbex and PLD will have to get their rockets off the ground.

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China launches 41 satellites on single launch, a record for that country

8:49 am

China today successfully used its Long March 2D rocket to place 41 satellites in orbit, a new record for that country, lifting off from its interior Taiyuan spaceport in north China.

No word on where the rocket’s first stage crashed within China, or whether it landed near any habitable areas. The Chinese state-run press also provided no information about any of those 41 satellites.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

40 SpaceX
23 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 45 to 23 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 45 to 39, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 40 to 39.

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World Economic Forum decides its business is running space too!

8:13 am

We’re the government and we’re here to help you! The World Economic Forum (WEF) yesterday released its proposed new set of guidelines for mitigating space junk in orbit, even though some of the most important commercial satellite operators (SpaceX and Viasat) have not signed on.

The Space Industry Debris Mitigation Recommendations document, released by the WEF June 13, outlines recommendations to avoid collisions that can create debris by limiting the lifetime of satellites in orbit after they have completed their missions and improving coordination among satellite operators.

Among those recommendations is to establish a success rate for “post-mission disposal,” or removal of satellites from orbit after the end of their missions, to 95% to 99%. That disposal should be completed no more than five years after the end of each satellite’s mission.

You can read the guidelines here [pdf], which the WEF is pushing governments worldwide to adopt. Though SpaceX and Viasat have not signed on, 27 companies have endorsed the guidelines, including OneWeb, Airbus, Axiom, and a host of orbital tug and space junk removal startups, the latter of which all benefit from these guidelines.

While the proposals makes some sense, everyone in the space industry should remain skeptical, and resist the call for more government regulation. Once this power is given to government it will never be recanted, and will only grow with time. Moreover, all signs indicate that such interference by law by government is unnecessary. Both satellite operators and most rocket companies (the exception mostly China) have been making strong efforts to deal with the issue of space junk, for profit. The fact that there are a host of orbital tug and space junk startups right now illustrates this. Investors have realized there is money to be made removing satellites and space junk. They don’t need government telling them what to do.

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Boeing gets NASA contract to develop new airplane wing design

10:22 am

In its effort to reduce fossil fuel use and thus save us from being burned to death by global warming in only a decade, NASA has now awarded Boeing a contract to develop new airplane wing design that it predicts will lower fuel use by up to 30%.

The X-66A is the X-plane specifically aimed at helping the United States achieve the goal of net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by 2050. To build the X-66A, Boeing will work with NASA to modify an MD-90 aircraft, shortening the fuselage and replacing its wings and engines. The resulting demonstrator aircraft will have long, thin wings with engines mounted underneath and a set of aerodynamic trusses for support. The design, which Boeing submitted for NASA’s Sustainable Flight Demonstrator project, is known as a Transonic Truss-Braced Wing.

While developing a more efficient wing design is certainly worthwhile, having skepticism about this project is certainly reasonable. First of all, it seems somewhat strange to award Boeing such a contract at this time, considering NASA own experience with the company with Starliner, as well as that company’s problems with other government contracts for the military.

Secondly, the press release makes a big deal about the project getting an X-plane designation, an entirely superficial and PR related title that if anything suggests there is very little steak to this sizzle.

Third, it is unclear the nature of this contract. Is is cost-plus, or fixed price? The press release says NASA will “invest $425 million over seven years, while the company and its partners will contribute the remainder of the funding, estimated at about $725 million.” If cost-plus, this means nothing. Boeing will use any excuse to go over budget in order to get more money from NASA.

Finally, half a billion dollars to develop and test a new airplane wing design, using an already existing airplane, seems incredibly exorbitant. And to require seven years to build it seems ridiculously long.

All in all, I suspect the real goal of this project is to funnel tax dollars to Boeing to help keep it afloat, not to build a new green airplane.

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Forgotten Weapons – Girardoni Air Gun

6:01 pm

An evening pause: The air rifle that Lewis & Clark took on their expedition to impress the American Indians they met. When I recently read their memoirs, I was baffled that an air gun existed in the early 1800s. This video shows it in detail, noting that it was actually invented in 1780 for the Austrian Army.

Hat tip Judd Clark.

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SpaceX launches 72 smallsats; lands a Falcon 9 1st stage for the 200th time

3:22 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched 72 smallsats using its Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

With this launch, SpaceX achieved a significant milestone, successfully landing a Falcon 9 first stage for the 200th time, an achievement that for more than a half century all managers and most engineers in the rocket business claimed was not only impossible, but impractical. They insisted that the first stage would not be able to be reused because of the stress of launch. SpaceX has proved these close-minded fools very wrong. This particular first stage completed its ninth mission on this flight, a number that has become very routine for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stages. The stage landed back at Vandenberg,

As of posting the satellites have not all deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

40 SpaceX
22 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 45 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 45 to 38, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 40 to 38.

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SpaceX launches another 52 Starlink satellites

12:21 am

Just after midnight tonight (Pacific) SpaceX successfully launched another 52 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage successfully completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic, the 199th time that SpaceX has accomplished this so-called impossible task. The two fairing halves completed their fourth and fifth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

39 SpaceX
22 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 44 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 44 to 38, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 39 to 38.

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China tests parachutes on recent Long March 3B launch

10:17 am

During a May 17, 2023 launch of a Long March 3B rocket, China tested the use of parachutes to better control the descent and landing of the rocket’s boosters.

The system was used on a Long March-3B rocket carrying a BeiDou navigation satellite into orbit on May 17 from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in Sichuan Province, according to the academy.

Developed by the academy, the parachute brought down the rocket boosters to a predetermined location, narrowing the range of the landing area by 80 percent.

Based on the limited information provided by China’s state-run press, it appears this system was only tested on the four strap-on boosters, not on the first stage core. Regardless, such a system, which appears to be a copy of the system Rocket Lab has been developing for the last four years, will significantly reduce the hazards to Chinese inhabitants who live in the drop zones of these rockets.

Note too that China previously tried to copy SpaceX’s grid fins. Apparently its engineers found it difficult if not impossible to reverse engineer that concept, so they apparently decided to try copying Rocket Lab’s parachute methods instead.

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Firefly buys orbital tug company Spaceflight

10:21 am

Firefly Aerospace announced yesterday that it has purchased the orbital tug company Spaceflight, and will now offer its Sherpa tug as part of its launch services.

Spaceflight Inc. was known as a leader in arranging launches of small satellites on small launch vehicles or as secondary payloads on larger launch vehicles, deploying more than 460 payloads. Spaceflight had also developed its own series of orbital transfer vehicles called Sherpa, using a mix of chemical and electric propulsion systems.

Spaceflight has worked with a wide range of launch providers, although at one point it ran afoul of one of its largest partners, SpaceX. However, Firefly said that Spaceflight’s services will, going forward, be used only with Firefly’s vehicles.

Though Firefly will honor the contracts Spaceflight arranged for smallsats to be launched on other rockets, it appears it will be no longer be acting as a launch arranger. Instead, it will offer smallsats a package launch deal, including both its Alpha rocket and the tug. For this deal to pay off however Firefly has got to get Alpha operational. The two launches scheduled for this summer should do this, assuming they fly with no problems.

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Space Force awards SpaceX and ULA contracts for six launches each

10:09 am

As part of its long term launch agreement with SpaceX and ULA, the Space Force today awarded both companies contracts for six launches each, all to occur beginning in 2025.

According to the overall agreement, each company got five-year contracts to launch as many as 40 missions. ULA won 60% of the missions and SpaceX 40%. However, the delays to ULA’s Vulcan rocket will likely change those numbers:

In a report released June 8, the Government Accountability Office noted that the NSSL program office continues to order launch services from ULA and SpaceX amid concerns about Vulcan’s delays. “ULA delayed the first certification flight of the Vulcan launch system … to accommodate challenges with the BE-4 engine and a delayed commercial payload, nearly two years later than originally planned,” said GAO. “In the event that Vulcan is unavailable for future missions, program officials stated that the Phase 2 contract allows for the ability to reassign missions to the other provider.”

One of the reasons that ULA has not hurried its effort to make Vulcan reusable and more competitive with SpaceX is that is already has this guaranteed military launch commitment. It doesn’t need to be as competitive.

What needs to happen is a third or fourth company has to enter the market, giving the military other options. The military also has to cancel this long term launch agreement, which limits the number of companies it will do business with to just SpaceX and ULA. It would be much better to open the competition up to everyone. The ULA would be forced to compete.

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China’s Kuaizhou-1A solid-fueled rocket launches satellite

9:41 am

China’s Kuaizhou-1A solid-fueled rocket today successfully placed what its state-run press described as a “experiment satellite … to verify satellite communication and remote sensing technologies.”

The rocket lifted off from China’s interior Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi desert. No word on where the rocket’s three lower stages crashed, or whether they did so near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

38 SpaceX
22 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 43 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 43 to 38, with SpaceX by itself now tied those other nations combined 38 to 38.

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Boeing sued for stealing specialized tooling to assembly SLS

9:36 am

A Colorado company, Wilson Aerospace, on June 6, 2023 filed a lawsuit against Boeing, claiming that the company conspired with Wilson’s direct competitors to steal the designs of its specialized tool for installing the core station engines on SLS.

According to the lawsuit, after some initial discussions, Boeing arranged for a “live” demonstration of Wilson’s torque device, during which participants could handle and operate it to verify the tool’s capability and performance. What Wilson claims it did not realize, however, is that some of the participants in this demonstration were not Boeing employees. “Wilson later learned that at least seven of those in attendance for the live presentation were external to Boeing and were, at the time, employees of Wilson’s direct competitors,” the lawsuit states. “This fact was concealed from Wilson who was deceived by Boeing and the ‘Bogus Boeing Employees’ into giving the presentation by falsely suggesting to Wilson that everyone was a Boeing employee.”

The complaint alleges that Boeing subsequently used information from this demonstration, as well as proprietary drawings and designs, to work with Wilson’s competitors to develop a cheaper solution. “Boeing concealed these facts from Wilson as part of its scheme to defraud Wilson and to transmit Wilson’s IP to its direct competitors,” the lawsuit states.

The company is demanding a jury trial. If its charges are proved true, it will be another piece of evidence demonstrating the level of corruption that exists at Boeing.

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ULA completes dress rehearsal launch countdown and static fire test of Vulcan

9:31 am

ULA yesterday successfully completed a full dress rehearsal launch countdown new Vulcan rocket, including a short 2-second static fire test of the rocket’s two first stage BE-4 engines.

A Vulcan rocket fired its two BE-4 engines in a static-fire test called the Flight Readiness Firing (FRF) at 9:05 p.m. Eastern from Cape Canaveral’s Space Launch Complex 41. The engine start sequence started at T-4.88 seconds, ULA said in a statement an hour after the test, with the engines throttling up to their target level for two seconds before shutting down, concluding the six-second test.

The test appeared to go as planned. “Nominal run,” Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, tweeted moments after the test.

This dress rehearsal had originally been scheduled for late May, but issues on the rocket required ULA to scrub the launch and return the rocket to the assembly building.

There appear to be only three issues remaining before that first launch can occur. First there is the hydrogen leak that caused the destruction of the rocket’s Centaur upper stage during a static fire engine test in March. The company has apparently still not determined what action — if any — must be taken on this.

Second is whether the rocket’s primary payload, Astrobotic’s Peregrine lunar lander, is ready for launch. It appears it has completed all ground testing, but there were questions whether its software has been adjusted for a new landing site that NASA assigned it in February.

Third is scheduling. Peregrine’s monthly launch windows are only four to five days long each month. This limitation also has to be juggled with other ULA launches on the same launchpad, using its soon-to-be retired Atlas-5 rocket.

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Chinese pseudo-company launches its rocket for 2nd time

9:17 am

The Chinese pseudo-company CAS Space yesterday successfully launched its rocket Lijian-1 rocket for second time, lifting off from China’s interior Jiuquan spaceport in the Gobi Desert and carrying a record (for China) of 26 cubesats.

As was usual for China, its state-run press revealed almost nothing about the satellites. Nor did it provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages crash-landed in China, or if they did any damage or landed near habitable areas.

This pseudo-company is actually even more pseudo than other Chinese pseudo-companies, as it is a direct spin-off created by the government Chinese Academy of Sciences, with most of its investors directly linked to that academy.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

38 SpaceX
21 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads China 43 to 21 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 43 to 37, with SpaceX by itself beating those other nations combined 38 to 37.

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Firefly delays NASA launch to August

9:16 am

According to papers filed with the FCC, Firefly’s July launch attempt of its Alpha rocket, carrying a set of NASA cubesats, has now been delayed one month to August.

Meanwhile, a second launch by Firefly for the Space Force is presently tentatively scheduled for June, and the company says it is wrapping up preparations for that launch. That contract’s prime focus is to demonstrate to the military the ability to launch with only a 24-hour notice.

If so, then this new rocket company, which has only launched twice before, with the second launch barely reaching orbit, will be launching twice in only a matter of weeks, both times from its launchpad at Vandenberg.

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OneWeb offers its satellite constellation broadband service to the maritime industry

9:06 am

With its full constellation of 634 satellites in orbit, OneWeb has now made its satellite constellation broadband service available to the maritime industry.

With 634 OneWeb operational satellites now in orbit, the OneWeb constellation is complete and fully operational down to 35 degrees latitude. OneWeb will have the final ground stations completed and operational requirements in place, ensuring the company remains on track to deliver full global maritime services by the end of the year. Now OneWeb will start selling services to the maritime industry, via its specialist maritime distribution partners.

OneWeb and its partners have also developed a range of hardware terminal products which are available from trusted maritime communications providers Intellian and Kymeta. Offering hardware terminal products from two established providers with different form factors enables greater choice for customers.

More information here.

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