Tag: competition

First launch of Japanese rocket startup fails

10:03 pm

The first launch attempt by the Japanese rocket startup Space One failed today, when its Kairos-1 rocket blew up mere seconds after launch.

The launch took place from the company’s own launchpad in the south of Japan. The live stream shows the rocket appear to lift off cleanly, moving upward out of frame. When the video then switches camera to a more distant view, the rocket fails to appear from behind a nearby hill. Instead, a white cloud explodes upward. Shortly thereafter the live stream switches back to the launchpad, where there is a fire and smoke. Fire hoses then begin working to put the fire out.

Space One is the first independent commercial rocket startup in Japan apparently not working with that country’s JAXA space agency. We will have to wait and see whether it can recover from this failure.

3 comments

FAA lists possible launch windows for Starship/Superheavy launch

11:59 am

Though it as yet not issued a launch permit, the FAA has now released an advisory to the public, listing the possible launch windows for the next Starship/Superheavy launch, beginning on March 14, 2024 and including windows on each day through March 18th.

The advisory lists a primary date of Thursday, March 14, with the time 12:00Z-14:13Z (7 a.m. to 9:13 a.m. central). The plan also includes backup dates for the following four days, with the window closing at 8:01 a.m. on Saturday and Sunday before increasing to 9:13 a.m. again on Monday.

It is very possible this advisory is premature. It does strongly suggest however that the FAA is about to issue the launch licence. Based on past actions, expect that license to be announced as close to the launch date as reasonably possible, in order to make difficult or impossible any legal action to stop it by the various independent activist groups that have been suing both SpaceX and the FAA. (While the FAA has clearly been ordered by higher-ups in the Biden administration to slow-walk SpaceX’s effort, its people generally want SpaceX to succeed.)

If the first launch attempt will be on March 14th, two days hence, that license licence must be issued soon.

2 comments

Rocket startup Phantom Space completes another investment capital funding round

8:59 am

The Tucson-based rocket startup Phantom Space has successfully completed another investment capital funding round, bringing the total funding it has raised to $37 million.

Balerion Space Ventures led the round, which also included participation from the Reaser Family Office, KOLH Capital, and a handful of existing and new investors.

The company hopes to do its first test launch of its Daytona rocket next year, lifting off from Vandenberg. The article at the link says the launch permits from Vandenberg have been obtained, but as of about a month ago my sources said the company was still awaiting approvals from various agencies.

0 comments

ISS crew splashes down safely

8:50 am

SpaceX’s Endurance manned capsule yesterday safely splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico, bringing home a crew of four astronauts from ISS after completing a six month mission.

NASA astronaut Jasmin Moghbeli, ESA (European Space Agency) astronaut Andreas Mogensen, JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) astronaut Satoshi Furukawa, and Roscosmos cosmonaut Konstantin Borisov, returned to Earth splashing down at 5:47 a.m. EDT. Teams aboard SpaceX recovery vessels retrieved the spacecraft and its crew. After returning to shore, the crew will fly to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

…Moghbeli, Mogensen, Furukawa, and Borisov traveled 84,434,094 miles during their mission, spent 197 days aboard the space station, and completed 3,184 orbits around Earth. The Crew-7 mission was the first spaceflight for Moghbeli and Borisov. Mogensen has logged 209 days in space over his two flights, and Furukawa has logged 366 days in space over his two flights.

This was the third flight of Endurance. As always, it is important to note that though the passengers were government employees from the U.S., Europe, Japan, and Russia, the entire splashdown crew and capsule were private employees of SpaceX. This was a private mission, purchased by those governments.

14 comments

Rocket Lab launches radar satellite

8:39 am

Rocket Lab today successfully launched the fourth radar satellite for the commercial company Synspective, its Electron rocket lifting off from its spaceport in New Zealand.

On this flight Rocket Labt did not attempt to recover its first stage.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

24 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia
3 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 28 to 19. SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world combined 24 to 23.

0 comments

Two SpaceX launches yesterday evening, on opposite coasts and only five hours apart

8:39 am

SpaceX yesterday completed two different Starlink launches, placing 46 satellites total into orbit from opposite coasts and only five hours apart.

First, at 7:05 pm (Eastern) a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, carrying 23 Starlink satellites, with its the first stage successfully completing its seventeenth flight.

Next, just over five hours later, a Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Vandenberg, carrying its own cargo of 23 Starlink satellites, with its first stage also completing its seventeenth flight.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

24 SpaceX
10 China
3 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world in successful launches 27 to 19. SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including other American companies, 24 to 22.

4 comments

Stratolaunch completes first flight of its Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle

8:50 pm

Stratolaunch yesterday successfully completed the first flight of its Talon-A hypersonic test vehicle, released from its giant Roc airplane.

Primary objectives for the flight test included accomplishing safe air-launch release of the TA-1 vehicle, engine ignition, acceleration, sustained climb in altitude, and a controlled water landing.

“While I can’t share the specific altitude and speed TA-1 reached due to proprietary agreements with our customers, we are pleased to share that in addition to meeting all primary and customer objectives of the flight, we reached high supersonic speeds approaching Mach 5 and collected a great amount of data at an incredible value to our customers,” said [Dr. Zachary Krevor President and CEO of Stratolaunch]. “Our goal with this flight was to continue our risk reduction approach for TA-2’s first reusable flight and be steadfast on our commitment of delivering maximum value to our customers. We are excited to review the data from today’s test and use it as we plan our next steps toward TA-2’s first flight later this year.”

Stratolaunch’s main customer is the Air Force, which wishes to use this testbed to test hypersonic flight in a number of ways, both for missiles and possibly aircraft. Those military goals explain the required secrecy.

Stratolaunch is under competitive pressure from Rocket Lab, which has already demonstrated that the first stage of its Electron rocket can provide a similar testbed. Stratolaunch is reusable, however, which potentially makes it cheaper with a faster turnaround. Rocket Lab in turn is already capable of test flights. This Stratolaunch success will likely spur Rocket Lab to complete its program to recover and reuse those first stages, while Rocket Lab’s succes is likely spurring Stratolaunch to accelerate its own program.

Ain’t competition wonderful?

3 comments

Japanese rocket startup scrubs first launch attempt

9:11 am

The first Japanese rocket commercial rocket company, Space One, today scrubbed the first launch attempt of its Kairos rocket, scheduled to take off from its own launchpad in the south of Japan.

“We informed the public in advance that we wanted to make the area free of people, but even 10 minutes before the launch, a vessel remained in the area, so we decided to cancel the launch because it would have been impossible for them to leave promptly,” Space One executive Kozo Abe told a news conference in the afternoon.

Abe said there were no technical problems with the launch and that the next attempt could come as soon as Wednesday, with the company likely to give a more detailed schedule at least two days before the new date.

The rocket has four-stages, the first three solid-fueled and the last liquid-fueled. Its capacity is comparable to Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket, and the company hopes to eventually ramp up to as many as twenty launches per year.

1 comment

First manned Starliner mission slips to May

8:53 am

The first manned mission of Boeing’s Starliner capsule has now been delayed another few weeks, to early May, due to scheduling conflicts at ISS.

The delay was revealed as an aside in a NASA press release detailing the schedule of press briefings related to the mission. There appears to be no technical reasons for the delay. The quiet way NASA revealed it probably just indicates the agency’s embarrassment at Boeing’s overall problems with this spacecraft that have caused a four year delay in its first manned mission.

The flight will dock with ISS, last two weeks, and carry two astronauts, Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams. Its goal is to complete the final check out of Starliner prior to the initiation of operational missions. Once done, Boeing will not only begin to fly paid flights to ISS for NASA, it will be free to offer this capsule to others, including commercial tourists. Don’t expect customers to flock to buy seats, considering the many problems both Boeing and Starliner have had. Instead, it will likely take Boeing several years of NASA missions to reassure customers the spacecraft is reliable.

8 comments

Update on rocket startup Stoke Space’s effort to make completely reusable rocket

10:07 am

Link here. This Nasaspaceflight.com article provides an excellent update on the status of the development of Stoke’s Nova rocket, which will have a radical new engine design in its upper stage, using a ring of small nozzles rather than one single central one. That design will allow the upper stage to return to Earth for reuse, something that no other rocket now in use at present can do.

Stoke Space recently carried out the first test of the full-size 30-thruster version of the innovative engine that the company is producing for its in-development second stage. This will be an integral part of its future Nova rocket, which aims to be a fully reusable medium lifter.

The engine test took place on Feb. 26 and follows the engine’s first test flight on its prototype vehicle, Hopper 2, in September 2023. Although fitted with only 15 chambers for that flight, Hopper 2 flew for 15 seconds, achieved a maximum altitude of 30 feet, traversed to a landing site, and touched down softly.

The article includes a lot of interesting technical details about this upper stage and what engineers are learning about this radical engine design. Worth reading. At present Stoke is the only company other than SpaceX attempting to make its upper stage fully reusable. If successful it will jump ahead of everyone else.

No launch schedule however for its new rocket was revealed in this report, so it might be awhile, if ever, before any of this bears fruit.

1 comment

Budget bill includes very short extension of commercial space “learning period”

9:39 am

The budget bill that Congress has just passed and awaits signature by the president included a very short extension of commercial space “learning period” that supposedly prevents heavy safety regulation by the FAA of the new commercial space industry.

That learning period was first established in 2004, and has been extended several times since. This new bill extends that period until May 11, 2024, only two months, supposedly to allow Congress time to pass a new commercial space act.

The truth is that, at present, the Biden administration has long since abandoned that learning period exemption, and has been applying a much stricter safety regulatory framework from space companies than required by law, as best illustrated by its treatment of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship launches. The FAA now expects all launches to function perfectly, even if testing a prototype, and should anything not go perfectly it treats the failure the same as an airplane mishap that requres any investigation to get full government approval before further launches can resume.

Unless there is a change in leadership in Washington, it is very likely we shall see few new American rocket companies from here on out. The existing companies with lots of money and power will survive, but under this heavy regulatory atmosphere it will be hard if not impossible for new companies to get established.

0 comments

Astra’s board agrees to deal to take the company private

9:24 am

The board of directors of the rocket startup Astra have finally agreed to a cut-right price offer from the company’s two founders to buy the company and take it private once again, rather than declare bankruptcy.

The company announced Thursday that its board had accepted an offer from its CEO, Chris Kemp, and its CTO, Adam London, to purchase the remaining Astra stock at a price of $0.50 per share. The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2024, at which time Astra will cease trading on the Nasdaq.

This offer was significantly less than their first offer in November, when Kemp and London offered to buy the company for $1.50 per share, suggesting the company’s value has declined significantly in the interim as its cash assets declined. This decline suggests that any recovery will be difficult and long, and could easily fail.

Freedom is wonderful in that it allows for the greatest amount of creativity, competition, and achievement, from everyone. It also carries great risk that everyone must face. Astra has now illustrated the risk. Not all creative gambles are going to succeed.

2 comments
1 … 170 171 172 173 174 … 784