China yesterday successfully launched two military satellites using its Long March 2D rocket.
Launched from an interior spaceport, the rocket’s first stage crashed somewhere in China.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
40 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA
American private enterprise still leads China 55 to 36 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 55 to 54.
Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s intrepid stringer.
This video is just an empty-of-content commercial for Sierra Space, filled with feel-good “woke” blather but little real information about the actual status of this long overdue spacecraft. It is worth watching however because it reveals this emptiness. Reminds me of the many similar videos from Blue Origin and NASA over the years, filled with big promises but little actual achievement.
This video, almost 30 minutes long, is definitely worth watching if you have any interest in signing up for Starlink, or just have an interest in the coming low orbit satellite constellation boom.
SpaceX appears to be gearing up for more engine tests of both Superheavy prototype #7 and Starship prototype #24 this week, having called for road closures at Boca Chica today with additional options thoughout the week.
The article at the link mostly provides an overview of the changes in both stages that occurred because of the shift from the first version of the Raptor engine to the much more streamlined Raptor-2. The side-by-side image of both versions is quite revealing, showing once again how much SpaceX adheres to Musk’s adage that “the best part is no part.” Raptor-2 is astonishingly simpler and more compact, even though it produces about 25% more power.
China today successfully placed what it labeled as “two test satellites” into orbit using its smallsat Kuaizhou-1A rocket.
No information at all was released about both satellites.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
40 SpaceX
35 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 55 to 35 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 55 to 53.
All courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
The rocket has been delayed since 2020 due to serious engine issues.
The module, dubbed Mentian, is scheduled of an October launch. We shall then once again have to watch helplessly as the core stage of the 5B rocket crashes uncontrolled somewhere on Earth. In related news:
It remains unclear whether that rocket’s core stage engines will restartable and thus able to control its de-orbit so that it lands in the ocean harmlessly.
We don’t know for sure, as the company has said nothing and this information is based solely on orbital photos taken between August 26th and August 28th.
This university does a lot of aerospace military development for China, such as hypersonic missiles. Also, considering that China has itself hacked into American aerospace resources frequently, such as at JPL, this accusation is simply the kettle calling the pan black.
The event is virtual, apparently open to the public, will include researchers from NASA, JAXA, and ESA, and will be focused on discussing methods for protecting the planet from big asteroid impacts.
Capitalism in space: The Indian rocket startup Skyroot has just raised $51 million in private investment capital for the development of its smallsat rocket, Vikram-1.
Operating as a private aerospace manufacturer and commercial launch service provider in the country, the Hyderabad-headquartered startup has been working on its flagship Vikram series of small-life launch vehicles. The first among them, the Vikram 1, is slated to take to the skies by the end of the year and launch small satellites to space.
The $51 million is the most any private aerospace commercial company from India has ever raised in a single funding round.
Though the Modi government has publicly encouraged the development of a private, independent, commercial aerospace industry, India’s bureaucracy has generally acted to block this effort. In 2019 it convinced the government to create New Space India Limited (NSIL), a wholly government-owned entity which is designed to retain as much control over commercial market share as possible. As recently as one month ago, the NSIL webpage described itself as aiming to “capture” that commercial market. That revealed its purpose too obviously, so the website was rewritten to now say its goal is to “spur” the Indian aerospace sector.
Because NSIL gets government money and has full control over all of India’s already developed government rockets and space facilities, it has an enormous advantage, which acts to discourage investment in new private companies such as Skyroot. This is a similar situation that existed in the U.S. for more than a half century following Apollo. NASA had the resources, controlled all launches, and thus made private investment for independent companies hard to obtain.
This only changed when NASA began awarding contracts to private companies in 2008, whereby the rockets and spacecraft produced were not owned or designed by NASA. And NASA was only forced to do so because Elon Musk happened to have enough of his own money to finance SpaceX himself.
When ISRO (India’s agency) or NSIL begin awarding contracts like this, then company’s like Skyroot will begin to blossom.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX tonight successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to place 51 more Starlink satellites into orbit, as well as a Sherpa orbital tug built by the commercial company Spaceflight.
The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The tug was successfully deployed and will carry a Boeing test satellite for a proposed 147 satellite constellation to its planned orbit.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
40 SpaceX
34 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA
American private enterprise now leads China 55 to 34 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 55 to 52. SpaceX’s 40 launches matches the U.S.’s entire total in 2020, and was only exceeded by the U.S. six times since the dawn of the space age in 1957.
A Starlink subscriber to the company’s RV option decided to try it on his sailing boat during a weeklong trip among the Greek islands, and found it worked surprisingly well.
They combined Starlink’s service with cellular connectivity and compared the two while using social media, Google maps, and video streaming. The outcome? Starlink and cellular complimented each other, according to Topolev.
Starlink suffered outages when it was surrounded by other boats’ masts or when the yacht made sharp turns, but worked well at sea, whereas cellular connectivity dropped out when the boat was far from the shore, Topolev said. “It was surprisingly good,” he said. “There were some outages and sometimes we had to manually reboot it … but basically it worked … almost all the time.”
The RV option is specifically for use in moving vehicles, though its use on a boat was not expected to be its prime target customers. Nonetheless, the test suggests strongly that Starlink will work quite well on the big cruise ships, one liner of which, Royal Caribbean, has already signed a deal to make Starlink operational by next year.
China today successfully used its Long March 4C rocket to place a military Earth observation satellite into orbit.
Launched from an interior spaceport, the rocket’s lower stages thus crashed uncontrolled in China.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
39 SpaceX
34 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA
American private enterprise still leads China 54 to 34 in the national rankings, and the entire globe 54 to 52.
On September 1, 2022, OneWeb revealed that Russia’s cancellation of the last six or so OneWeb launches as well as Russia’s confiscation of 36 satellites cost the company $229 million.
Russia’s actions were the response by then head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin, to sanctions imposed on Russia by the west because of its invasion of the Ukraine. Rogozin’s petty response ended up shooting his space agency in the foot, because it ended up losing billions of dollars in foreign launch business, business that is not likely to return for decades.
OneWeb has since signed contracts with SpaceX, ISRO (India’s space agency), and Relativity for future launches. None of these have been firmly scheduled, though the first by SpaceX is tentatively planned for sometime before the end of the year.
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay.
The tweet however provides no date for the test, nor any information about this particular engine itself.
This is preliminary design work involving Earth-based tests. A later phase, not yet awarded, will move on to orbital tests.
Most of this new private capital apparently came from Saudi Arabia and Greece, and the constellation will start out focused on serving those regions as well as Luxembourg.
Capitalism in space: in an excellent analysis of the total amount NASA will pay both SpaceX and Boeing for all their manned flights to ISS before the station retires, Eric Berger at Ars Technica has determined that the agency will essentially pay Boeing twice as much per flight.
In 2014, NASA narrowed the crew competition to just two companies, Boeing and SpaceX. At that time, the space agency awarded Boeing $4.2 billion in funding for development of the Starliner spacecraft and six operational crew flights. Later, in an award that NASA’s own inspector general described as “unnecessary,” NASA paid Boeing an additional $287.2 million. This brings Boeing’s total to $4.49 billion, although Finch told Ars that Boeing’s contract value as of August 1, 2022, is $4.39 billion.
For the same services, development of Crew Dragon and six operational missions, NASA paid SpaceX $2.6 billion. After its initial award, NASA has agreed to buy an additional eight flights from SpaceX—Crew-7, -8, -9, -10, -11, -12, -13, and -14—through the year 2030. This brings the total contract awarded to SpaceX to $4.93 billion.
Since we now know how many flights each company will be providing NASA through the lifetime of the International Space Station, and the full cost of those contracts, we can break down the price NASA is paying each company per seat by amortizing the development costs.
Boeing, in flying 24 astronauts, has a per-seat price of $183 million. SpaceX, in flying 56 astronauts during the same time frame, has a seat price of $88 million. Thus, NASA is paying Boeing 2.1 times the price per seat that it is paying SpaceX, inclusive of development costs incurred by NASA.
Despite the larger payments to Boeing, the company could very well lose money on Starliner. The higher cost to NASA from Boeing is due almost entirely because the agency was absorbing more of its initial development cost. SpaceX’s Dragon capsule had already been flying cargo missions to ISS when these manned contracts were awarded. SpaceX merely had to upgrade its manned capsule. Boeing had to design and build it from scratch. Moreover, the contracts were fixed price, which means Boeing had to absorb more than a half billion in additional costs when it had to refly the unmanned demo flight of Starliner.
Finally, because of the delays, Boeing won less NASA business. It also has gotten none of the private commercial manned flights that are going on right now. Those contracts went to SpaceX, including all the profits. Whether Boeing can eventually win some private contracts down the road is unknown. It will certainly have to lower its price to compete with SpaceX.
