The competition heats up: On Saturday Arianespace’s Ariane 5 rocket has successfully launched two commercial satellites, its 59th straight successful launch.
Failure to launch? A reporter takes a close look at Virgin Galactic and Spaceport America in New Mexico and comes away very skeptical.
Read it all. The view might be pessimistic, but it is important to keep an open mind. Richard Branson’s effort, as sincere as I think it is, might not succeed.
The contamination that has delayed SpaceX’s next Dragon cargo mission to ISS was caused by oil from a sewing machine.
The machine sewed the cloth blankets that protect payloads in Dragon’s unpressurized trunk section.
Orbital Sciences has set May 6 as the launch date for its next Cygnus cargo mission to ISS.
According to the former CEO of Arianespace, now head of the French space agency, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 costs significantly less to launch than the Ariane 5.
How big is the difference? Jean-Yves Le Gall, who until mid-2013 was chief executive of Evry, France-based Arianespace and is now president of the French space agency, CNES, addressed the point in Feb. 25 testimony to the French Senate. According to Le Gall, launching a satellite on an Ariane 5 costs around 100 million euros ($137 million). After subtracting the amount of European Space Agency subsidies to Arianespace, the per-satellite cost drops to about $100 million, he said.
Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, he said, would charge $60 million to $70 million to launch the same satellite aboard the Falcon 9. In fact SpaceX has charged even less than that to its first few commercial customers.
It is for this reason that Arianespace is struggling to decide how to build its next generation rocket. They have find a way to do it cheaper, something that is very difficult for this multi-headed European conglomerate to do.
The first test flight of NASA’s Orion capsule has been delayed from September to December.
The supposed reason is to allow a military launch to get the best launch opportunity first. I find this excuse to be quite lame, and instead suspect that the NASA program needed more time but did not want to admit this publicly.
The delay moves the launch until after the November elections. Watch the political pressure continue to build to end this expensive, bloated, and not-very-useful boondoggle.
The competition heats up: Swiss Space Systems (S3) is planning to offer zero gravity airplane rides at the Kennedy Space Center in direct competition with Zero Gravity Corp.
The competition heats up: Arianespace and the Russian-owned Sea Launch are seeking to get the restrictions against them removed so that they can sell their services to more customers.
Arianespace wants to sell its launch services to the U.S. government, something it is not allowed to do right now because of U.S. restrictions. These are the same kinds of restrictions that has prevented SpaceX from launching military satellites and which that company is now contesting.
Russia meanwhile wants to use Sea Launch for its own payloads, but because Sea Launch’s platform is based in California, the Russian government won’t allow their payloads on it because of security reasons. They want the platform moved to Russia so that they can use their own company to launch their own satellites.
The article also describes how Japan is trying to reduce the cost of its H-2A rocket by 50% so that it can become more competitive.
All in all, I would say that the arrival of SpaceX has done exactly what was predicted, shaken the industry out of its doldrums. How else to explain this sudden interest in open competition and lowering costs? These companies could have done this decades ago. They did not. Suddenly a new player arrives on the scene, offering to beat them at their own game. It is not surprising that they are fighting back.
The next Dragon launch to ISS has been delayed for two weeks because of the detection of contamination that could affect some of its research cargo.
[T]he launch was put on hold, sources said, when engineers noticed contamination of some sort on the Dragon’s lower unpressurized trunk section. Two of six electrically powered payloads aboard the Dragon are mounted in the trunk section — a first for this mission — and engineers were concerned the contamination might “outgas” in orbit and cause problems for the station-bound hardware.
The competition heats up: Lockheed Martin announced on Wednesday that they will either give a full refund or re-fly a payload for free if their Atlas rocket fails at launch.
This means that Lockheed Martin’s customers will no longer have to shop or pay for insurance. Instead, the company is providing it for them free, thus lowering the cost for those customers.
The competition heats up: The Russian company that owns the Proton rocket is considering a redesign that would allow them to launch two satellites on one rocket.
Launching two or more satellites during a single launch is not ground-breaking technology, but the Russian have never done it with their Proton. If they make this change, it will allow them to reduce the cost for a commercial launch considerably, thus making them more competitive against companies like SpaceX.
That they have decided to consider this now, after almost three decades of commercial operation since the fall of the Soviet Union, is more proof that the low prices of SpaceX are forcing innovation and an effort to lower costs across the entire launch market.
Update: My statement above about Proton never launching more than one satellite is wrong. They have done it numerous times, something I am very aware of but for some reason completely forgot when I was writing this post. (The jet lag from the trip to Israel must still be affecting my brain.) In fact, they have just rolled to the launchpad a Proton with two communications satellites on board, a fact that makes the story at the first link above very puzzling.
On Saturday SpaceX successfully conducted a dress rehearsal countdown and static fire engine test of the Falcon 9 rocket that will loft a Dragon capsule to ISS next week.
The results of the test itself have not been released, but that it was completed suggests all is well for the upcoming launch.
Standing on the wrong side of history: Neil deGrasse Tyson poo-poos private space.
Tyson described space travel as “a long-term investment”: “It’s an investment that private enterprise cannot lead.” He recalled the excitement around SpaceX’s delivery of cargo the International Space Station, which sparked discussion about whether private companies would replace government as the main engine behind space travel. Tyson’s response? “They brought cargo to the space station! NASA’s been doing that for 30 years!”
Tyson, who also said that government is the only one willing to do exploration and that private space only comes after, will probably push this agenda on his new Cosmos television series.
On this subject, Tyson has the outdated opinions of today’s leftwing academic community. And he is wrong. The only reasons private space didn’t lead in the past fifty years is because our federal government was against it. It wanted the turf all to itself and the private companies who could have done it were willing to acquiesce. Now that this monopoly is crumbling, stand by to see private enterprise dominate the show.
Taking a close look at the engineering and history of SpaceX’s new Raptor engine, presently under development.
Quite fascinating and absolutely worth a read.
A static fire engine test of the Falcon 9 scheduled to lift Dragon to ISS next week has been delayed one day.
The article gives no explanation for the delay.
According to the company’s CEO, Virgin Galactic is close to getting its FAA launch license.
The CEO also said that they hope to fly their first suborbital flight this summer after several lower altitude powered flights.
At this point I will believe this when I see it. Virgin Galactic has made promises like this repeatedly for the past three years, none of which have come true. The time has come for them to put up, or shut up, or finally tell us the truth.
Trouble at Mojave? The Chief Financial Officer of the spaceport there suddenly resigned without explanation, just as a financial audit was starting.
The audit is still on-going, but it appears that the reports the CFO had submitted to the spaceport were at a minimum “inaccurate.”
The competition heats up: In testimony to Congress Wednesday, Elon Musk described how allowing SpaceX to compete as a military launch provider would significantly lower costs.
[Senator Richard Shelby (R-Alabama)] said the Air Force EELV contracts require compliance with complex oversight and accounting practices that add costs to the program. As a result, he suggested comparing the cost of a SpaceX Falcon 9 and a ULA Atlas or Delta was comparing apples and oranges.
Musk agreed “there is additional cost for U.S. government missions due to the mission assurance process.” And he said SpaceX’s costs for launching a military mission would be 50 percent higher than for a purely commercial launch. Even so, he said, SpaceX could provide a Falcon 9 rocket for around $90 million as opposed to nearly $400 million for a ULA launcher. “Even when you add the Air Force overhead, there’s still a huge difference,” he said. [emphasis mine]
The only reason that Congress is against eliminating the military launch monopoly given to ULA and allowing SpaceX to compete is because the monopoly feeds a lot of pork to the districts of certain but powerful legislators like Shelby.
ULA and Shelby are losing the argument however. The cost differences are too high, and SpaceX has proven that it can do the job efficiently and effectively. Eventually the monopoly will die, and the sooner the better.
Amateur astronomers can help a commercial space start-up by taking pictures of its cubesat SkyCube in orbit.
The cubesate was launched from ISS last week, but has not operated as expected and they want to know why. Images would help.
The competition heats up: Airbus plans to do the first drop test a prototype of its commercial space plane sometime in May.
It appears this space plane is designed for both transportation and space tourism.
Returning the Falcon 9 first stage safely: More details about the next attempt during the next Dragon launch to ISS on March 16.
Not only will this test do more engine burns, they will attempt the first deployment of the stage’s landing legs. The article also gives more details about the last launch test, as well as the Grasshopper tests.
Posted from Tucson, Arizona, at last home!
The war of space names continues: Despite the disapproval of the International Astronomical Union (IAU), the space company Uwingu has announced another private commercial naming project for the craters of Mars.
Starting today (Feb. 26), anybody with an Internet connection and a few dollars to spare can give a moniker to one of the Red Planet’s 500,000 or so unnamed craters, as part of a mapping project run by the space-funding company Uwingu. “This is the first people’s map of Mars, where anybody can play,” said Uwingu CEO Alan Stern, a former NASA science chief who also heads the space agency’s New Horizons mission to Pluto. “It’s a very social thing.”
Sounds fun, and a clever way for this company to raise capital. Whether these names stick is an entirely different thing. Uwingu has as much right to assign names to objects as the IAU, but so far the IAU’s fake authority in this matter carries more weight.
It is now confirmed that the next Falcon 9 launch to ISS will have legs on its first stage and will attempt a controlled landing over water.
Earlier reports were based on rumors and unofficial reports.
The competition heats up: NASA is preparing the next round of commercial contracts to supply cargo to ISS.
NASA announced the plan in a request for information released late Feb. 21. Responses from industry are due March 21. The document, which NASA posted online, did not say when the agency would solicit bids, or when it would make an award for the Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS) contract. The expected budget for CRS 2 is between $1 billion and $1.4 billion a year from 2017 to 2024, NASA said. NASA envisions four to five flights a year under CRS 2. Back in January, the White House announced it wanted to extend space station operations through 2024. Congress has currently committed to fund the space station through 2020. CRS 2 contract calls for delivery of 14,250 to 16,750 kilograms per year of pressurized cargo, and delivery of 1,500 to 4,000 kilograms per year of unpressurized cargo.
Assuming both SpaceX and Orbital Sciences win new contracts, this will give them a strong cash flow as they pursue new space endeavors.
R.I.P. astronaut Dale Gardner.
Gardner was a astronaut during the early eighties during the heyday of the shuttle’s commercial satellite operation. He was part of the 1984 shuttle mission where he and Joe Allen each flew out to a stranded commercial satellite and took control so that the shuttle’s robot arm could grapple them. Both satellites were brought back to Earth, refurbished, and launched back into space again.
Gardner’s most remembered moment might be when, at the end of his spacewalk, he held up a “For Sale” sign (on right), referring to the commercial availability of both recovered satellites.
The competition heats up: A close look at the environmental assessment that Blue Origin submitted to the FAA to get approval for an expanded test operations reveals their intention to do numerous launch abort tests of an orbital crew capsule.
At least, this is how I interpret the paperwork.
The consolidation of the Russian aerospace industry continues as the government considers taking over privately owned Sea Launch.
The Russian government will a take closer look at the idea of buying commercial launch services provider Sea Launch, which is owned by a top Russian space contractor but whose key assets are based in California, Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin said Feb. 19. Moscow has asked the Russian space agency, Roscosmos, and Russian manufacturer RSC Energia, which holds 95 percent of Swiss-registered Sea Launch, to submit an overview of the financial situation of the maritime launch services company, Rogozin said in remarks posted on the Russian Cabinet website. The Russian government holds 38 percent of Energia, which supplies the upper stage of the Sea Launch rocket.
Should the government go forward with the deal, it likely would move the oceangoing rocket pad and command ship from Long Beach, Calif., to a Russian port on the Pacific Ocean, Rogozin said. “Something tells me that if we go for it, then the base will definitely be outside the United States,” he said.
Without question the Putin government is trying to recreate the top-down centralized system that existed during the Soviet era, with everything controlled and even owned by the government. While this might please their love of power, I doubt it will be an effiicent way to compete in the open commercial market.
Which means this consolidation is a wonderful opportunity for the new private launch companies. Soon, Russia will be out of the market, focused instead on launching Russian only satellites and spacecraft.
Posted from Rome, Italy. I am between flights, awaiting my connection to Tel Aviv.
The purchase of land by SpaceX in the Brownsville, Texas area might have revealed the name the company is considering giving to its spaceport there.
It appears they have combined the various plots of land that they have purchased and named that development “Mars Crossing.”
The competition heats up: The next Falcon 9/Dragon launch to ISS will include the first test of legs on the rocket’s first stage, as well as an attempt to complete a soft touchdown on water of that first stage.
The article is chock full of interesting details about SpaceX’s effort to make the first stage of the Falcon 9 reusable.
Posted from Garden City, New York.
The competition heats up: Russia on track to test launch its new Angara rocket before June.
A full-scale mockup of the rocket was rolled out to a launch pad earlier this week to check ground support systems. The Angara is planned to launch from both Plesetsk and the new Vostochny space center in Russia’s Far East that is being built to reduce reliance on the Baikonur launch facility in Kazakhstan. The modular launcher will have a variety of configurations to cover a wide range of payload weights, from two to 24.5 metric tons. They are currently served by several different rockets, including the Proton, Russia’s largest booster.
That first test launch will be a revealing event, as this is the first completely new Russian rocket in almost a half century. The last time they built a new rocket stage, the Briz-M upper stage for the Proton rocket, they had several significant failures before they worked out all the kinks.
And in a related story, Russia’s deputy prime minister made it clear on Wednesday that his country’s spacecraft manufacturers will face stiffer penalties for any failure to meet production deadlines.
An Audit Chamber report in July last year concluded that the country’s space industry was ineffective and plagued by poor management and misuse of funds. It said Russia had only launched 47 percent of the required number of satellites between 2010 and 2012.
Both stories are revealing by their emphasis on keeping Russia commercially competitive. Note however that Russia recently consolidated its entire space industry into a single entity run by the government. Though I doubt it, we shall find out if this Soviet-style strategy can compete with American-style competition and private enterprise.
