Tag: competition

ATK today announced that it is building its own manned capsule for its Liberty solid rocket.

6:58 pm

The competition continues to heat up: ATK today announced that it is building its own manned capsule for its Liberty launch system.

The capsule’s first two flights are scheduled in 2014, both abort tests, followed in 2015 by an orbital flight and, finally, a crewed orbital flight. The spacecraft is designed for ten flights each, and ATK plans to build a minimum of four capsules. All flights will be launched by the Liberty launcher, and ATK is not actively exploring adapting the capsule for other [launch vehicles].

Liberty is based on the upgraded shuttle solid rocket boosters that were developed for the Ares rocket, now cancelled.

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An Australian billionaire is building a full scale replica of the Titanic.

9:48 am

Want to relive history? An Australian billionaire is building a full scale replica of the Titanic.

When fully built, the Titanic II will be 270 meters (886 feet) long and capable of holding 1,680 passengers. By modern standards, this is actually fairly small for a cruise ship, especially when compared to newer passenger liners like the behemoth Oasis of the Seas, which measures 360 meters (1,180 feet) long and can hold 5,400 guests.

The Titanic II is set to make the same maiden voyage as the original, traveling from England to New York, by late 2016.

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SEC documents have revealed that the total development costs for Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket have increased to $472 million, $184 million more than what NASA is paying them.

5:12 pm

SEC documents have revealed that the total development costs for Orbital Sciences’ Antares rocket have increased to $472 million, $184 million more than what NASA is paying them.

That the company has been willing to commit these extra funds to develop Antares suggests to me that they see a commercial value for the rocket that will exceed these costs. Or to put it more bluntly, they see a market for their rocket that will pay for their investment, and then some.

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Killing private space

9:31 am

The financial foolishness in Congress, by Republicans this time, continues. In making its budget recommendations for NASA, the report [pdf] of the House Appropriations Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies subcommittee also demands that NASA immediately choose one commercial company for its commercial space program. (Hat tip to Clark Lindsey for spotting this.)

The number of ways this action is counter-productive almost can’t be counted.
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To mine the asteroids, first build small cheap space telescopes.

7:46 pm

To mine the asteroids, first build small cheap space telescopes.

The space telescope will be based on the same design Planetary Resources will eventually use for its asteroid-prospecting spacecraft: a 30-kilogram to 50-kilogram flier packed with imaging sensors and a laser-optical communication system the company is developing to avoid encumbering its spacecraft with large antennas. The company, which says it has about two dozen employees, will market these spacecraft as cheap but effective telescopes for both astronomical and Earth-observing applications. Sales would provide cash for the company’s core work on asteroid mining, Eric Anderson, co-founder and co-chairman of Planetary Resources, said.

The telescope slated for launch sometime in the next two years “would be something, let’s say, a university buys [for astronomical observations], or a commercial company that wants to monitor shipping traffic or something like that,” Anderson said in a phone interview. The cost for the telescope, which Planetary Resources is calling Arkyd-101, would be “millions of dollars, including launch.”

At the Planetary Resources press conference today, there was a lot of talk about the benefits and profits to be gained from mining the asteroids. However, this ain’t gonna happen for quite a few years. In the meantime, the company plans to make money building space telescopes which scientists and others can use, for a fee, to do research.

In other words, the government and astronomers dropped the ball on replacing the Hubble Space Telescope. Now, private enterprise is going to pick it up and run with it.

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No announcement yet, but of the many stories available this Wired article and this Yahoo article appear to provide the best overview of the asteroid mining plans of Planetary Resources.

8:36 am

No announcement yet, but of the many stories available this Wired article appears to provide the best overview of the asteroid mining plans of Planetary Resources.

The company’s first phase is most interesting:

Within the next 18 to 24 months, Planetary Resources hopes to launch between two and five space-based telescopes at an estimated cost of a few million dollars each that will identify potentially valuable asteroids. Other than their size and orbit, little detailed information is available about the current catalog of near-Earth asteroids. Planetary Resources’ Arkyd-101 Space Telescopes will figure out whether any are worth the trouble of resource extraction.

The actual press conference is scheduled for 10:30 am (Pacific). Stay tuned.

Update: The Planetary Resources website has now been updated. You can read more about their space telescope proposal here.

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SpaceX has delayed the launch of its Dragon test mission to ISS, with the launch now scheduled sometime between May 3 and May 7.

9:09 pm

SpaceX has delayed the launch of its Dragon test mission to ISS, with the launch now scheduled sometime between May 3 and May 7.

“After reviewing our recent progress, it was clear that we needed more time to finish hardware-in-the-loop testing and properly review and follow up on all data,” SpaceX spokeswoman Kirstin Brost Grantham wrote in an email. “While it is still possible that we could launch on May 3rd, it would be wise to add a few more days of margin in case things take longer than expected. As a result, our launch is likely to be pushed back by one week, pending coordination with NASA.”

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House panel proposes giving commercial space $500 million.

3:27 pm

NASA budget battles: House panel proposes giving commercial space $500 million.

The Obama administration proposed giving commercial space $830 million, the Senate appropriations subpanel earlier this week proposed $525 million. All in all, this looks good for commercial space.

One other thing: that the House did not propose taking from NOAA the job of launching weather satellites and giving it to NASA is more proof to me that the proposal was merely an attempt by Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) to shift federal dollars to the Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland.

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Coming and going

9:10 am

There are really only two important stories today concerning space exploration. The story that is getting the most coverage is the big news that the space shuttle Discovery is making its last flight, flying over Washington, DC, as it is delivered to the Smithsonian for permanent display.

Of these stories, only Irene Klotz of Discovery News seems to really get it. This is not an event to celebrate or get excited about. It is the end of an American achievement, brought to a close probably three to five years prematurely so that the United States now cannot even send its own astronauts to its own space station.

The other news, actually far more important, has gotten far less coverage, and includes three different stories all really about the same thing.
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Some wisdom from Pravda: “Humans explore space only for profit.”

10:38 am

Some wisdom from Pravda: “Humans explore space only for profit.”

And then there’s this, from the U.N., not surprisingly published at MSNBC: “Private property in outer space: The other side of the argument.” To quote the U.N. expert: “More rules are needed, but I am also of the opinion that you do not need to create property rights [in space].”

It is a sad world when support for capitalism, private property rights, and competition comes from Pravda, while in the U.S. such ideas get slapped down.

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European subsidies have put Arianespace in the black.

1:25 pm

European subsidies have put Arianespace in the black for 2011 and 2012.

The key quote however is this:

But ESA governments have made clear they are not happy having to cover losses, especially since the workhorse Ariane 5 rocket, introduced in the mid-1990s, is well past its teething stage and has conducted 47 consecutive launch successes. Its last failure was in late 2002.

Arianespace has dominated the commercial launch market in recent years, yet can’t make a profit. In this case, however, I suspect that if the company lost its subsides it would somehow find a way to finally reduce its budget.

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Virgin Galactic has been cleared by the State Department to fly foreign tourists without obtaining an export license.

11:18 pm

Good news: Virgin Galactic has been cleared by the State Department to fly foreign tourists without obtaining an export license.

[Mark Sundahl, an associate professor of law at Cleveland State University in Ohio], said that without this determination from State, allowing a non-U.S. citizen to ride in a Virgin spacecraft — or even training a non-U.S. citizen to do so — would legally have been an export activity that required federal approval. The time it takes to obtain an export license varies, but several months is a reasonable estimate, said Sundahl, who specializes in international commerce and space law. “Under ITAR, any disclosure of controlled technical data to a foreign national, even if the disclosure takes place in the U.S., is treated as an ‘export’ of the technical data — which would require a license from the Department of State in addition to imposing other regulatory burdens on the exporter,” Sundahl said.

Freed from this regulatory requirement will make it easier for Virgin Galactic, as well as others, to sell tickets.

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SpaceX is planning its own spaceport about three miles north of Mexico at the southern tip of Texas.

4:07 pm

SpaceX is planning its own spaceport about three miles north of Mexico at the southern tip of Texas.

SpaceX had been looking at sites at various potential sites, including ones in Florida, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. Company officials have said they plan to operate out of Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base as well. A third, commercial launch site frees them from range restrictions that exist at the other two locations.

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The actual cost to launch

7:30 am

In writing this short post on the efforts of Lockheed Martin and Orbital Sciences to launch rockets for the small satellite market, Clark Lindsey made this comment:

It costs around $50 million to launch a Orbital Sciences Minotaur 4, which can put 1,730 kg into LEO while the Lockheed’s Athena 2 will cost around $65 million to put 1,712 kg into LEO. SpaceX currently posts charges $54M – $59.5M for launching to LEO 10,450 kg (equatorial) and 8,560 kg (polar). If SpaceX is able to sustain these prices in routine operation, it will obviously result in some disturbance to the launch industry.

Let’s deconstruct these numbers again, this time listing them by the cost per kilogram:
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Europe has shut down the production line producing their ATV cargo craft for ISS.

10:39 am

Is this good or bad news? Europe has shut down the production line producing their ATV cargo craft for ISS.

Confronted by parts obsolescence and waning political support, the European Space Agency has shut down subsystem production lines for the Automated Transfer Vehicle as member states debate how they will contribute to future international space exploration efforts, according to top spaceflight officials.

ESA has launched three of the five ATVs it agreed to launch, with the remaining two scheduled in 2013 and 2014. What happens after that remains unclear. It seems from the article the European partners don’t seem interested in upgrading the ATV, and instead seem willing to let the as-yet untried U.S. commercial companies carry the load.

Commercial flights by U.S. spacecraft will make up the rest of the lost capacity with the end of the ATV program.

The pressure continues to build on a successful Falcon 9/Dragon flight on April 30.

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