Tag: competition

Rocketdyne to reappear with sale by L3Harris of its civilian rocket engine division

9:30 am

The name Rocketdyne is about to rise from the ashes with the sale by L3Harris of its civilian rocket engine division to the private equity firm AE Industrial Partners.

The firm is selling a 60 percent stake, worth $845 million, and maintaining about a 40 percent share of the space propulsion business unit, which focuses on technologies related to NASA and civil space activities. For example, its products include nuclear power systems for future missions to the moon and Mars, and the RL10 engine that powers the upper stage for United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan heavy lifter.

That said, the RS-25 rocket engine business is excluded from the sale; the engine is the primary propulsion system on NASA’s Space Launch System being designed to send crews to the moon under the Artemis mission.

When L3Harris purchased Aerojet-Rocketdyne in 2023, the names of these two companies from the very beginnings of the space age vanished. It now appears that AE is going to bring one back.

AE Industrial ― which previously has invested in commercial space companies including York Space Systems, Redwire and Firefly — said in an announcement today that the new entity will be named Rocketdyne “in recognition of its heritage and longstanding innovation within space propulsion technology.”

Aerojet-Rocketdyne had been in trouble for years prior to is purchase, and it remains uncertain whether the engine part of this new Rocketdyne company can compete. Its main business right now is building the engines used by the SLS rocket, which in the long run has a limited future.

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A UK law professor and news outlet prove the UK is not the place to launch rockets

9:27 am

Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe
Proposed or active spaceports in North Europe

If I had any remaining hopes that the United Kingdom might finally begin to reform its Byzantine space regulations that bankrupted one rocket company and has blocked any launches from its proposed spaceports for almost a decade — allowing other spaceports in Europe to attract rocket companies and leap ahead — those hopes vanished in reading an article in the Shetland Times today, in which a professor specializing in UK space law described its red tape as “very good,” drawing “on best practice from other industries and jurisdictions.”

Alexander Simmonds of the University of Dundee says a balance should be struck to avoid launch operators being put off by strict regulatory requirements. The lecturer in space law and writer behind The Space Legislation of the United Kingdom says UK regulation of the space industry is “very good” and draws on best practice from other industries and jurisdictions.

Licences are in place for SaxaVord to host the first vertical satelite launch in 2026, and Dr Simmonds says operators have taken responsibilities “very seriously”. But he fears future operators could look elsewhere if compliance becomes too much of a problem and more cost-effective alternatives are available.

“My own view is we’re in a very good place at the moment, as regards to regulation,” Dr Simmonds told The Shetland Times. “I think that the legilsators have been cautious with this and have been very entitled to be, given the nature of what we are dealing with.”

Both this so-called expert and the journalist interviewing him appear entirely ignorant about the history of past decade. While red tape in the UK has blocked or seriously delayed launches, rocket startups have “looked elsewhere,” signing deals and launching from Norway’s long established Andoya spaceport that has now gone commercial with enthusiastic government support. At the same time, new spaceport projects have begun at three other locations, all of which appear to also have support from their local governments in Sweden and Germany. While the UK government has choked off business, the governments at these other spaceports have moved aggressively to ease regulation.

The cluelessness of both Simmonds and the Shetland Times reporter indicates there is absolutely no urgency in the UK to fix things, and in fact it appears they aren’t even aware their emperor is wearing no clothes.

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The space station race: Startup Max Space to establish factory at Kennedy in Florida

8:56 am

Thunderbird, with cut-out showing interior and person for scale
Max Space’s proposed Thunderbird station, with cut-out showing
interior and person for scale. Click for original images.

The space station startup Max Space has apparently decided to establish its manufacturing facility at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, and expects to hire its first 30 to 50 employees there this year.

Currently working with Space Florida, Max Space is moving toward setting up operation in Exploration Park on Space Commerce Way, and has already begun hiring. While the company already has a address in Exploration Park, they are seeking to set up in an existing 20,000 to 30,000 square-foot manufacturing facility. This is where the large space habitat modules will be manufactured.

While Space Florida confirmed Max Space’s intentions to move into the area, no further details were provided. Max Space said they expect to bring 30 to 50 new hires onboard within the first half of 2026.

The company had previously positioned itself as the builder of modules that any one of the four other commercial private space stations could buy and add to their stations. It now appears it has decided to enter the competition as its own station, proposing Thunderbird as its bid. It is gearing up to fly a smaller demonstration mission in ’27 to prove its inflatable design that is based on the same technology used by the modules built by the now-defunct company Bigelow.

With this in mind, I have now added Max Space to my rankings of the commercial stations under construction, and have placed it ahead of Blue Origin’s Orbital Reef station, based on my impression of where both projects presently stand. Essentially, they are tied for last place, but I put Max Space ahead because it seems to have positive momentum, while the partnership of Blue Origin and Sierra Space appears to be faltering.
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Innospace releases preliminary results of launch failure

8:35 am

The South Korean rocket startup Innospace last week released its first preliminary results of its investigation into the December 22, 2025 failure during the first orbital launch attempt of its Hanbit-Nano rocket.

Based on video footage and preliminary data available to date, the vehicle achieved approximately 30 seconds of nominal ascent. During its passage through cloud layers, communication between the vehicle and ground systems was lost. Subsequently, the vehicle sustained structural damage of an undetermined cause, leading to separation into multiple sections and indications of first-stage engine thrust termination. As a result, the vehicle lost propulsion and attitude control and entered free fall, separating into the first stage, second stage, and smaller debris fragments.

As the calculated Instant Impact Point (IIP) remained within the launch site’s designated safety perimeter, and to prevent debris dispersion and residual hazards, the Flight Termination System (FTS) was activated in accordance with procedures pre-coordinated with Brazilian safety authorities. The launch vehicle was detonated at the point of ground impact, resulting in early mission termination.

In plain language, the rocket broke up about 30 seconds after lift-off, and as its pieces hit the ground engineers activated the self-destruct software.

The company says it hopes to try again in ’26, launching once again from Brazil’s Alcantera spaceport. I suspect it will take longer than that to pin down the cause of the rocket’s “structural damage” and fix it. The data so far suggests a fundamental flaw that require a major redesign.

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Review of SpaceX’s 2026 Superheavy/Starship test flights

11:22 am

Link here. The article begins by reviewing the work SpaceX is doing at both Boca Chica in Texas and Cape Canaveral in Florida. In the end, the company is aiming to have two Starship launchpads at Boca Chica and three launchpads in Florida, with both locations have extensive manufacturing facilities capable of building ships and boosters almost continually.

It then provides a nice review of all five Superheavy/Starship test flights that took place in 2025, a review that makes it very clear how much was accomplished, and indicates the possibilities for ’26. If SpaceX could manage almost one flight every two and a half months last year, despite two test stand explosions, the odds are excellent it will exceed that pace this year.

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SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites, plus a review of its Falcon 9 first stage fleet

12:10 am

The beat goes on: SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

This was SpaceX’s second launch in 2026. At this moment the company is the only one to have launched anything this year.

The rocket’s first stage was on its first flight, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. As new boosters are now introduced so rarely, I decided to look back at how many new stages SpaceX has been introducing each year to get a sense of the size of its fleet. The rough chart below is based on the data on this Wikipedia page. It begins in 2018 because that is when SpaceX introduced the Block 5 version of the stage that it still uses, and says is designed to do as many as 40 flights.

New stages introduced each year:
—————————————–
2018: 6 (all now deactivated or expended)
2019: 7 (all now deactivated or expended)
2020: 4 (all now deactivated or expended)
2021: 3
2022: 7 (5 deactivated or expended)
2023: 9 (5 deactivated or expended)
2024: 9 (3 deactivated or expended)
2025: 8

According to that webpage, SpaceX has approximately 25 active stages in its fleet. The numbers above suggest the company has been increasing the size of its fleet steadily. In fact, since 2022 it appears the company has added 23 stages to the fleet. In 2025 it appears it added a new stage about every 20 launches.

This estimate is rough and is almost certainly not precisely accurate. For example, several stages listed as active have flown only once, or have not flown in awhile.

Nonetheless, this rough count helps explain how SpaceX can launch so frequently. It now has a robust fleet of Falcon 9 boosters to draw on, and it is growing that fleet to meet its needs. All it needs to do is make sure it can manufacture enough upper stages and satellites to fill its launch manifest.

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SpaceX completes first launch in 2026

12:36 am

The beat goes on! SpaceX tonight successfully placed an Italian Earth observation satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base.

The satellite’s data will be used by Italy for both military and civil purposes. The rocket’s first stage completed its 21st flight, landing back at Vandenberg. The two fairings completed their 2nd and 23rd flights respectively.

At this moment, SpaceX has the only launch in 2026.

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SpaceX doing trial runs of specialized barge for transporting Starship/Superheavy from Boca Chica to Florida

9:32 am

SpaceX has now confirmed that it is doing trial runs of a barge specifically designed for transporting Starship/Superheavy from the manufacturing facility in Boca Chica to its Florida launchpads.

[SpaceX’s Vice President of Launch, Kiko] Dontchev also clarified that both the Super Heavy booster and Starship upper stage would be tilted to a horizontal position for maritime transit, in response to an artist’s rendering of a Starship traveling vertically aboard a vessel. “Initial deliveries are a single booster or ship per trip, with the plan to move to multiple vehicles per transit sooner than later,” he wrote. “You’ll thank me later.”

These barge trials, combined with the fact that SpaceX has already shipped significant Starship/Superheavy components to Florida even as it builds rocket manufacturing facility there, strongly suggest the first Florida launches are not too far in the future, possibly even this year.

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ESA funds Danish lunar orbiter

9:16 am

The European Space Agency (ESA) has agreed to fund the first Danish-built interplanetary probe, a smallsat lunar orbiter dubbed Mani that will launch in ’29 and map the Moon’s surface.

The Máni mission is a lunar mission that will use a satellite to map the Moon’s surface with high-resolution images and create detailed 3D maps. The goal is to make it safer for astronauts and lunar rovers to land and move around on the Moon. The satellite will orbit the Moon’s north and south poles, which are key areas for future human missions.

The mission will also map how light reflects from areas on the Moon that are used to study Earth’s ability to reflect sunlight onto the lunar surface – the so-called earthshine. This knowledge could improve our understanding of how Earth’s climate will evolve.

The University of Copenhagen leads the mission and is responsible for the mission’s Science Operations Center, which will plan which areas to map and analyze the vast number of images generated.[emphasis mine]

I love how this European press release about a lunar orbiter somehow makes its most important mission studying climate change on Earth. Utterly idiotic.

Mani will use the changing shadows to create detailed topographic maps. As it is unlikely it will be capable of providing better data than produced over the past sixteen years by Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), this mission is mostly an engineering demo by Denmark and the Danish startup, Space Inventor, that is building the satellite for a consortium of universities. If successful the satellite will possibly be able to replace LRO (which is going to fail sooner or later), and provide data on any lunar surface changes that occur in the future.

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SpaceX to do a major orbital reconfiguration of its Starlink constellation

9:03 am

According to a X post yesterday by Michael Nicholls, SpaceX’s Starlink engineering vice-president, the company over the next year will be lowering the orbits of more than 4,000 satellites in its Starlink constellation, in order to allow the company to more quickly de-orbit them if they fail.

We are lowering all Starlink satellites orbiting at ~550 km to ~480 km (~4400 satellites) over the course of 2026. The shell lowering is being tightly coordinated with other operators, regulators, and USSPACECOM.

Lowering the satellites results in condensing Starlink orbits, and will increase space safety in several ways. As solar mininum approaches, atmospheric density decreases which means the ballistic decay time at any given altitude increases – lowering will mean a >80% reduction in ballistic decay time in solar minimum, or 4+ years reduced to a few months. Correspondingly, the number of debris objects and planned satellite constellations is significantly lower below 500 km, reducing the aggregate likelihood of collision.

Nicholls notes that it presently has only two dead satellites in the present fleet of 9,000 satellites, but decided to do this move regardless, as it also apparently will reduce collision risks with other satellites as well.

Not surprisingly, China’s state-run press and our anti-capitalism propaganda press immediately tried to give China credit for this change, while lambasting SpaceX. That China is contributing to the risk of collision with its own multiple giant satellite constellations and is doing nothing on its own is apparently irrelevant to both. Our nice of them.

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The global launch industry in 2025: The real space race is between SpaceX and China

8:01 am

In 2025 the worldwide revolution in rocketry that began about a decade ago continued. Across the globe new private commercial rocket companies are forming, not just in the United States. And across the globe, the three-quarters-of-a century domination by government space agencies is receding, though those agencies are right now pushing back with all their might to protect their turf.

Dominating this revolution in 2025 in every way possible however were two entities, one a private American company and the second a communist nation attempting to imitate capitalism. The former is SpaceX, accomplishing more in this single year than whole nations and even the whole globe had managed in any year since the launch of Sputnik. The latter is China, which in 2025 became a true space power, its achievements matching and even exceeding anything done by either the U.S. or the Soviet Union for most of the space age.
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