Tag: competition

Flights into Brownsville sold out prior to SpaceX’s sixth test flight of Starship/Superheavy

8:57 am

If anyone thinks the anti-Musk activists groups that have been using lawfare to try to shut down SpaceX’s Boca Chica facility have any local support, this story should put a quash on that. According to the airport director for the Brownsville-South Padre Island Airport, all flights sold out leading up to the sixth test flight of Starship/Superheavy.

Airport director Angel Ramos told Channel 5 News he’s noticed traffic increases whenever SpaceX does a flight test. “People are excited,” Ramos said. “They’re wearing SpaceX hats and SpaceX shirts [when they come] in to the airport.”

Ramos said flights were sold out between Sunday and Tuesday, and 700 people have been arriving daily at the airport since Sunday. “There is no launch that happens that we don’t see lots of people coming in and out of the airport, and now that they continue to be more frequent and more successful, people are paying more interest and actually coming days before,” Ramos said.

The story was reported by the local ABC television affiliate, and reflects the very positive impact SpaceX is having on the local community that is recognized quite clearly by everyone who lives there. The Brownsville area had been economically depressed for decades. Now the economy is booming, all because of SpaceX.

The public wants SpaceX there. The nay-sayers represent practically no one. That many local news organizations not only don’t report these facts when they cover the lawfare of these activists but instead often frame their stories as if the opposition is general throughout the region is shameful and an indication of the bankrupt nature of these press outlets.

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Freedom wins again: SpaceX completes the 6th orbital test flight of Starship/Superheavy

3:50 pm

Starship/Superheavy at T+6 seconds

SpaceX today successfully completed the sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy heavy lift rocket, only forty days after its previous test flight, the shortest turn-around so far, mainly because the FAA imposed no red tape to hold SpaceX back.

Before describing details of the flight, it is essential to note that this giant rocket, bigger than the Saturn-5 that sent Apollo astronauts to the Moon and intended to be completely reusable and being designed to be able to relaunch in mere hours, has been conceived, designed, built, and tested entirely by a private company and free American citizens, funded almost entirely by private investment capital hoping to make a profit from the rocket. The government and NASA has played almost no part, except possibly using its regulatory power improperly to slow development down by a year or two.

Even more important its development has cost a tiny amount compared to similar government programs, and has been accomplished in less than a third of the time.

Thus this rocket is a perfect example of freedom in action. Get the government out of the way and allow humans the freedom to follow their dreams, and they will do astonishing things.

As for the flight, Superheavy worked perfectly in getting Starship off the launchpad and on its way into orbit. However, engineers canceled a second tower catch attempt and instead diverted Superheavy to complete a soft splashdown just off the coast in the Gulf of Mexico. The booster touched down on the water quite softly, and then fell over into the water. Expect SpaceX to quickly do salvage operations to recover it.

Starship reached its orbit as planned, carrying for the first time a payload, a single plastic banana suspended by cords in the center of the Pez deployment payload bay where SpaceX hopes to soon begin deploying Starlink satellites. Though somewhat silly, the banana is being used by SpaceX and the FAA to certify future payload operations.

About 38 minutes into the flight engineers did the first re-light of one Raptor-2 engine while in orbit, the burn lasting about three-four seconds. This burn demonstrated that Starship is capable of doing a de-orbit burn so that in a future flight it can be launched into a full orbit and use the engines to bring it back to a precise location on Earth, including possibly a return to the launch tower for its own chopstick catch.

Starship splashing down vertically
Starship splashing down vertically

During re-entry the flight plan called for pushing Starship beyond its technical margins in order to learn exactly what those limits were. Even so, it appeared that — unlike the previous flights — there was very little evidence of damage to the flaps from the heat of re-entry. One flap appeared to have damage at one pointed end, and even that burn-through appeared far less than the previous flights.

During final descent and moving slower than the speed of sound they pointed the ship nose down in order to stress the flaps the most. Even so, the ship performed as planned, and splashed down softly and vertically in the Indian Ocean.

Though the flight plan for this Starship flight as well as the previous flights was purposely designed to bring it back to Earth before it completes an orbit, this was still essentially a successful orbital launch, and thus I am including it in my launch totals. The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

118 SpaceX
53 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 136 to 79, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 118 to 97.

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Judge rules that Ligado’s $39 billion lawsuit against federal government can proceed

9:32 am

A federal judge has now ruled that the $39 billion lawsuit by the satellite company Ligado against the federal government can move forward.

In October 2023, Ligado sued the government for $39 billion over claims that officials at the Departments of Defense and Commerce took “unlawful actions” to, in effect, improperly seize without compensation the firm’s L-band spectrum. In January, the government had asked a judge to dismiss the suit. Today Judge Edward J. Damich of the US Federal Claims Court ruled in part in favor of Ligado and in part for the government over aspects of the case, but ultimately said the case “may proceed.”

Essentially, after the FCC had awarded this spectrum to Ligado, the feds stepped in to take it away for its own use. The company argued that once it was given that spectrum to use for its satellites it was essentially its property, and that the seizure without due compensation was an illegal taking under the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution. This court decision allows this lawsuit to proceed.

The reason these federal agencies seized the spectrum this that they believe Ligado’s satellite constellation would interfere with GPS, something the FCC disputed in awarding the spectrum. Whether the company will win in court remains unclear.

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ESA awards four European rocket startups contact extensions worth €44.2 million total

9:19 am

Capitalism in space: The European Space Agency (ESA) this week awarded four European rocket startups — HyImpulse, Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Orbex — new contact extensions worth €44.2 million total to continue the development of their commercial rockets.

According to ESA, the €44.2 million in funding awarded through the Boost! contract extensions is aimed at alleviating the pressure in the months before an inaugural flight when costs are high and the potential to generate revenue is limited.

…While the ESA press release did not disclose the specific amounts awarded to each company, announcements from the companies have revealed that Orbex will receive €5.6 million, Isar Aerospace €15 million, and both Rocket Factory Augsburg and HyImpulse €11.8 million each.

The first three companies are German-based, while Orbex is based in the United Kingdom. All four have received ESA grants under this program previously. None have yet actually attempted an orbital launch, but all four have been getting close, though all also face challenges. For example, Orbex, which had said it was ready to launch its Prime rocket in 2022, has been waiting for a launch license from Great Britain’s Civil Aviation Administration (CAA) for almost three years, to no avail. Rocket Factory meanwhile had hoped to launch its RFA-1 rocket this year, but could not after it was destroyed during a static fire dress rehearsal countdown in August.

Isar meanwhile has begun static fire tests of its Spectrum rocket at the Andoya spaceport in Norway. No launch date has been set. Hyimpulse in turn has flown a suborbital test flight from the Southern Launch spaceport on the south coast of Australia, but development of an orbital rocket seems farther behind its competitors.

This ESA contract award is also revealing in who did not get contracts. The large big space company ArianeGroup, which owns the Ariane-6 rocket, also has its own smallsat rocket startup, Maiaspace, that is attempting to compete with these other rocket startups, and had previously gotten ESA development contracts. That it got no contract extension under this program suggests ESA has decided it can manage without this aid, considering its owner is a well-financed big space contractor.

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Dawn Aerospace small-scale rocket-powered airplane breaks the sound barrier

8:54 am

The crew and Mk-II Aurora
The crew and Mk-II Aurora

On November 12, 2024, the startup Dawn Aerospace for the first time flew its small-scale rocket-powered Mk-II Aurora unmanned airplane at speeds exceeding the speed of sound, becoming the first commercial airplane since the Concorde to break the sound barrier.

The company, operating as Dawn Hypersonics, achieved the milestone on 12 November 2024, with the Aurora surpassing the speed of sound for the first time, reaching Mach 1.1 and climbing to an altitude of 82,500 feet. This is over twice as high as commercial aircraft and marks the first time a civil aircraft has flown supersonic since Concorde. This achievement signifies a major step toward operational hypersonic travel and daily space access, establishing rocket-powered aircraft as a new class of ultra-high-performance vehicles.

The flight, conducted from New Zealand’s Glentanner Aerodrome near the base of Aoraki Mt Cook, exceeded its test target speeds and altitude of Mach 1.05 and 75,000 feet. The Aurora also set a global record, becoming the fastest aircraft to climb from ground level to 20 km (66,000 feet), completing the ascent in just 118.6 seconds. This beats the previous record, held by a highly modified F-15 ‘Streak Eagle’ in the 1970s, by 4.2 seconds.

It appears the company’s goals have changed and become less ambitious, at least for the moment. According to the company’s press materials now, the goal now is to sell Mk-II (and bigger versions) for suborbital hypersonic research, both for the military and private sector. Back in 2021 however the company described Mk-II as merely a preliminary test vehicle leading to the construction of a larger fullscale two-stage-to-orbit version that would take off and land on a runway and could be used to launch satellites to orbit.

In a sense, nothing might have really changed, other than the company realizing that it should try to make money on the Mk-II now, even as it flies and tests it in preparation for eventually building the larger orbital version. If Dawn begins to win contracts using this prototype, it will then have the resources (as well as the ability to raise more investment capital) to advance to larger more powerful version.

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SpaceX successfully completes two launches today

11:40 am

SpaceX successfully completed two launches today, one from each coast.

First in the early morning the company sent 20 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its 20th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Of the 20 satellites, 13 were configured for direct-to-cell service.

Next, SpaceX launched GSAT-20, a geosynchronous communications satellite for India’s space agency ISRO, which hired SpaceX because the satellite was too heavy for its own rockets. The Falcon 9 rocket lifted off from Cape Canaveral, with the first stage completing its 19th flight, successfully landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. Of the two fairings, one completed its fifth flight while the second completed its first flight.

If we include the afternoon launch yesterday by SpaceX from Kennedy, the company did three launches from three locations in less than 24 hours. And it hopes to launch again tomorrow, this time flying Starship/Superheavy on its sixth test orbital flight, launching from the company’s launchpad in Boca Chica. I have embedded the live steam here.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

117 SpaceX
53 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 135 to 79, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 117 to 97.

With these two launches today, the all-time global record for successful orbital launches in a year, set only last year at 213, has been broken, and there are still about five weeks left in 2024.

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Oh no! Starship/Superheavy is loud!

9:21 am

Superheavy after its flight safely captured at Boca Chica
Superheavy after its October flight, safely captured at Boca Chica

Time for another Chicken Little report: A new study of the sound levels produced by SpaceX’s Superheavy booster during its fifth launch and landing at Boca Chica in October 2024 suggests that it produces more noise than predicted.

Overall … Gee et al. note that one of the most important conclusions from their data is the differences between Starship’s launch noise levels and those of SLS and Falcon 9. The team found that Starship produces significantly more noise at liftoff than both SLS and Falcon 9 in both A-weighted and Z-weighted (unweighted) noise metrics.

When compared to Falcon 9, the noise produced by a single Starship launch is equivalent to, at a minimum, 10 Falcon 9 launches. Despite SLS producing more than half of Starship’s overall thrust at liftoff, Starship is substantially louder than SLS. More specifically, one Starship launch is equivalent to that of four to six SLS launches regarding noise production. As has been hypothesized by numerous other studies into the noise produced by rockets, this significant difference in noise levels may be due to the configuration of first-stage engines on the rockets. For example, although the Saturn V produced less overall thrust than SLS, it produced two decibels more noise than SLS, which may be due to the clustered engine configuration on Saturn V’s first stage.

We’re all gonna die! Despite the doom-mongering of this study (which you can read here), the only issue noted by the paper from this noise was car alarms going off. And even here, the spread of the noise was asymmetrical, occurring in only one direction.

The concern about sonic booms has always been the annoyance they cause to residents near airports. In the case of Superheavy, it is very unlikely it will ever fly at a frequency to make its noise intolerable. More important, the nature of a spaceport versus an airport reduces the concern considerably, since a spaceport requires a much larger buffer area, and at both of SpaceX’s Starship launchsites in Florida and Texas almost everyone living close by works for the company or in the space business. They are not going to complain.

And while studying these noise issues is useful, we must not be naive about the real purpose of such studies. Underneath its high-minded science goals is a much more insidious one: finding a weapon for shutting down SpaceX. This concern of mine might be overstated, but remember, almost our entire academic community is rabidly leftist and made up of partisan Democrats. They hate Musk for his politics, and have been aggressively looking for ways to hurt him. This sound study is just another tool in that war.

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European cargo capsule startup raises $160 million in private investment capital

8:56 am

The Exploration Company's proposed Nyx cargo capsule
Artist rendition of the proposed Nyx cargo capsule,
taken from The Exploration Company’s website

The French cargo capsule startup The Exploration Company (TEC} announced today that it has raised an additional $160 million in private investment capital, bringing the total raised by the company to $230 million.

Venture capital firms Balderton Capital and Plural were the lead investors in the round which also included French government-backed investment vehicle French Tech Souveraineté and German government-backed fund DeepTech & Climate Fonds.

TEC’s core product is Nyx, a capsule that can be launched from rockets into space carrying passengers and cargo. Nyx is reusable so once it has dropped its payload, it can re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and be used for the next mission.

The company hopes to do its initial test flight of Nyx in 2028. It flew a demonstrator prototype on the first Ariane-6 launch in July 2024, but was unable to test that prototype’s re-entry capabilities (its prime mission) because of a failure in Ariane-6’s upper stage. It hopes to fly a second demonstrator in 2025 on a Falcon 9.

At the moment company officials say they already signed $800 million in cargo contracts, 90% of which are with the commercial space station companies Axiom Space, Vast, and Starlab. The rest are government contracts.

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SpaceX launches Australian geosynchronous communications satellite

3:37 pm

SpaceX today successfully placed an Australian geosynchronous communications satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The rocket’s two fairings completed their 10th and 20th flights respectively. The first stage completed its 16th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. At posting the satellite had not yet been deployed.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

115 SpaceX
53 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 133 to 79, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 115 to 97.

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SpaceX delays 6th Starship/Superheavy launch one day to November 19, 2024

2:42 pm

In a tweet yesterday SpaceX announced that it is now targeting November 19, 2024 for the sixth orbital test flight of its Starship/Superheavy rocket. The thirty minute launch window opens at 4 pm (Central). Though SpaceX will provide a live stream on X, X does not provide a standby service, so I am embedding below the feed of SpaceX’s live stream provided by Space Affairs.

From SpaceX’s webpage for this mission:

The next Starship flight test aims to expand the envelope on ship and booster capabilities and get closer to bringing reuse of the entire system online. Objectives include the booster once again returning to the launch site for catch, reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space, and testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry and descent over the Indian Ocean.

Starship’s landing will be in daylight this time in order to allow for better observation.
» Read more

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Orbital tug startup Impulse Space buys three SpaceX Falcon 9 launches

12:53 pm

The orbital tug startup Impulse Space announced yesterday that it has signed a contract with SpaceX for three Falcon 9 launches in order to fly its Helios orbital tug as well as its smaller Mira tug on several commercial missions.

The first launch, planned for mid-2026, will be the first flight of Helios. The transfer vehicle will transport the company’s smaller Mira vehicle, carrying a commercial optical payload, from low Earth orbit to geostationary transfer orbit on the Victus Surgo mission for the Space Force and Defense Innovation Unit. Impulse Space received a $34.5 million contract for Victus Surgo and another mission, Victus Salo, Oct. 3. Impulse Space said the schedule and payloads for the other two Helios launches will be determined later.

This development signals a major shift in the nascent orbital tug industry. Up until now the varous tug companies would buy launch space on rockets as secondary payloads. This I think is the first time a tug company has purchased the rocket itself as the primary payload, giving it the ability to control the rocket in order to make its tug operations more precise for all of its customers.

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Rocket startup ABL abandons its effort to build a rocket

12:42 pm

The rocket startup ABL, which had one failed launch attempt and a second failure during a static fire test, announced yesterday in a long tweet on X that it is abandoning its effort to build a rocket and will instead use its assets to provide products to the military.

[W]e have made the decision to focus our efforts on national defense, and specifically on missile defense technologies. We’ll have more to share soon on our roadmap and traction in this area. For now, suffice to say we see considerable opportunity to leverage RS1, GS0, the E2 engine, and the rest of the technology we’ve developed to date to enable a new type of research effort around missile defense technologies.

In other words, they are repurposing their RS1 rocket for missile technology.

The company’s announcement claims this decision is partly because the competition from established companies diminished its opportunity to gain market share, but I think its real problem was twofold. First, failure breeds failure. ABL’s rocket failures, combined with its very slow response after each failure, probably caused a shrinkage in investment capital. For example, one of its biggest investors had been Lockheed Martin, which had signed ABL up for a big launch contract. ABL’s failure to get its rocket off the ground however had Lockheed switch rocket companies, signing a new launch deal with Firefly in 2024. ABL had thus lost its biggest customer.

Second, as a new company with a rocket under development, it probably faced heavy regulatory burdens getting new launch licenses. The FAA under its “steamlined” Part 450 regulations probably required new license applications every time the company realized it needed to redesign something, and that red tape made it difficult to move forward.

In any new industry one must expect a shake-out to occur whereby many of the startups fail or get absorbed by others. This is natural. It is unfortunate however that government regulation has become an unnecessary and unnatural factor in this shake-out.

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New thermal protection system developed by Sierra Space

10:27 am

Sierra Space yesterday announced that it has developed in partnership with Department of Energy’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee a new thermal protection system (TPS] that it expects will give its Dream Chaser mini-shuttles a heat shield that can be reused frequently and fast.

The TPS tiles are made of a proprietary composite material that’s as strong as carbon fiber but with the added high-temperature stability of ceramic materials. The composite tiles have low-density thermal protection properties that are vital for insulative protection and stable flight dynamics. Atmospheric re-entry exposes spacecraft to speeds of more than Mach 17 (About 13,000 mph or 21,000 kph) with temperatures reaching higher than 3,100 degrees Fahrenheit (1,704 degrees Celsius).

These new tiles are based on the shuttle tiles, but apparently use carbon fibers to strengthen them so they are more robust and require less replacement. The shuttle tiles were much too fragile, requiring significant replacement after each launch. That fragility also caused the destruction of Columbia on its return to Earth in 2003, because the tiles were damaged badly when hit by foam coming off the shuttle during launch.

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Blue Origin links the first and second stages of New Glenn for the first time

9:43 am

New Glenn finally stacked
Click for original image.

After more than a decade of development and five years overdue, Blue Origin earlier this week finally intergrated the two stages of its New Glenn rocket in preparation for its first launch.

The picture to the right shows the rocket stacked horizontally in Blue Origin’s rocket facility in Florida.

The company still has to roll the rocket out to the launchpad, raise it to a vertical position, and conduct at least one dress rehearsal countdown ending in a short static fire test of the first stage’s seven BE-4 engines. At the moment the company is targeting a November launch.

New Glenn is expected to make its maiden flight sometime in November, taking off from Launch Complex 36 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, which is next door to KSC. The flight will carry one of the company’s new Blue Ring spacecraft on a National Security Space Launch certification flight known as DarkSky-1 and sponsored by the Defense Innovation Unit.

The original payload for this launch, two small NASA Mars orbiters, had been pulled because Blue Origin couldn’t get the rocket ready in time for its October launch window. Blue Ring is Blue Origin’s own orbital tug and satellite platform, and this flight is probably intended to get it certified for national security payloads.

The fast development of Blue Ring might give us a hint as to the changes to Blue Origin’s culture since Bezos replaced its previous CEO, Bob Smith, with Dave Limp in September 2023. Blue Ring was announced only one month later, and in just over a year it is now ready for its first launch. Such speedy development has not been the way at Blue Origin for years, if ever. If Limp has been able to instill that urgency across the entire company, then we shall some very exciting achievements from Blue Origin indeed in the next few years.

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AST Spacemobile signs multi-launch agreement with Blue Origin

9:24 am

The direct-to-cell satellite company AST Spacemobile announced yesterday that it has signed a multi-launch agreement with Blue Origin to use its New Glenn orbital rocket to place approximately sixty of its second generation BlueBird satellites into orbit in the 2025-2026 time frame.

The next-generation Block 2 BlueBirds are designed to deliver up to 10 times the bandwidth capacity of the BlueBird satellites in orbit today, accelerating the goal to achieve 24/7 continuous cellular broadband service coverage. The service will target approximately 100% U.S. nationwide coverage from space with over 5,600 coverage cells, with beams designed to support a capacity of up to 40 MHz, enabling peak data transmission speeds up to 120 Mbps, supporting voice, full data and video applications. The Block 2 BlueBirds, featuring up to 2,400 square foot communications arrays, will be the largest ever commercially deployed in low Earth orbit once launched, surpassing the current record held by AST SpaceMobile’s BlueBird 1-5 and BlueWalker 3, each ~700 square feet in size.

The Block 2 BlueBirds are designed to be compatible with all major launch vehicles. Blue Origin’s launch vehicle, the New Glenn, offers a seven-meter fairing enabling twice the payload volume of five-meter class commercial launch systems, and is well-suited to launching up to 8 of the largest-ever Block 2 BlueBirds.

According to this, the contract is for approximately 7 to 8 New Glenn launches. It also notes the large capacity of New Glenn apparently gives it an advantage over the rockets available from both SpaceX and ULA. If (the operative word) Blue Origin can finally get this rocket off the ground soon, it will then finally provide some real competition to SpaceX.

We shall see. New Glenn is five years behind schedule, and all signs suggest the company continues to move at a relatively slow pace compared to its competitors. It has said it wants to do the first New Glenn launch before the end of the year, but that remains uncertain.

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China launches Tianzhou cargo freighter to its Tiangong-3 space station

8:50 am

China today successfully launched a new Tianzhou cargo freighter to its Tiangong-3 space station, its Long March 7 rocket lifting off from its coastal Wenchang spaceport.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

114 SpaceX
53 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 132 to 79, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 114 to 97.

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Pakistan to fly a small rover on China’s Chang’e-8 lunar lander

8:36 am

In an agreement signed yesterday, the Space and Upper Atmo­sphere Research Comm­ission (Suparco) in Pakistan announced it will collaborate with China to build a small rover that will to fly on China’s Chang’e-8 lunar lander.

The lander is present scheduled to land near the Moon’s south pole in 2030, will be China’s second lander to the south pole region, and will also act to officially establish China’s International Lunar Research Station (ILRS) on the lunar surface. It will also include a “hopper” to explore the nearby surface.

Pakistan had already signed on to China’s space alliance to build the ILRS. China’s present list of partners is as follows: Azerbaijan, Belarus, Egypt, Kazakhstan, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Russia, Serbia, South Africa, Thailand, Turkey, and Venezuela. That partnership also includes about eleven academic or governmental bureaucracies.

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China and SpaceX complete morning launches

8:16 am

Both China and SpaceX today successfully completed morning launches.

First China launched an environmental satellite to study “ocean salinity,” its Long March 4B rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages crashed inside China. All use very toxic hypergolic fuels, which can literally dissolve your skin.

Next SpaceX completed another launch of 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida. The first stage completed its eighteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

114 SpaceX
52 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 132 to 77, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 114 to 95.

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SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites

12:41 am

SpaceX tonight successfully launched 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The satellites included 13 of the Starlink direct-to-cell satellites. The first stage successfully completed its eighth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

113 SpaceX
51 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 131 to 76, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 113 to 94.

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Major court decision could invalidate many federal environmental regulations

1:54 pm

In what could be a major legal ruling [pdf], a two-judge decision this week in the DC Circuit Court ruled that the White House Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), which has for years imposed environmental rules on other federal agencies based on the National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA), does not have the statutory authority to do so, thus invalidating every regulation so imposed.

All three members of the three-judge panel agreed that the Agencies acted arbitrarily and capriciously in [in this particular case]. However, before reaching that conclusion, the majority analyzed whether the CEQ regulations the Agencies followed in adopting the plan were valid, an argument not raised by any of the parties. The majority held, sua sponte, that because there is no statute stating or suggesting that US Congress has empowered the CEQ to issue rules binding on other agencies, the CEQ has no lawful authority to promulgate such regulations.

…Although this decision does not explicitly vacate any action taken by the CEQ, it does establish a precedent that CEQ rules lack statutory authorization, and therefore that other agency actions taken under the CEQ framework are at risk of being vacated. If this decision is not overturned by the full appellate court sitting en banc or by the US Supreme Court, it has the potential to completely change the landscape of NEPA review.

The case is complicated, partly because the Byzantine nature of the federal bureaucracy and the many agencies involved. (It is almost as if these agencies created that complexity to confuse and protect themselves.)

The heart of the decision is that CEQ was apparently first created as an “advisory” body to help other federal agencies follow the intent of NEPA in their own rule-making, but instead soon became a “regulatory” body whose rulings other agencies were required to follow. As that authority was never given it by Congress, CEQ exceeded its authority by making its rulings mandatory.

This court decision will likely leave many agencies on their own in establishing environmental regulations, based on NEPA. However, even that regulatory ability faces limitations, based on the Supreme Court’s recent Chevron decision, which said that government agencies do not have right to promulgate new regulations that are not specifically described in congressional law.

In other words, Chevron says that the bureaucracy cannot make things up, based on its own vague opinions.

The trend of all these court rulings appears aimed at limiting the power of the federal bureaucracy. It will however take some time to determine how much that power is limited, as lawsuits begin to percolate through the courts. If there are lot of lawsuits (which does appear to be happening) we should therefore expect that power to be limited significanly.

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Rocket Lab announces first launch contract for its new Neutron rocket

9:55 am

Though the press release was lacking in many details, Rocket Lab yesterday announced the signing of its first launch contract for its new Neutron rocket, scheduled to make its first orbital test launch in 2025.

Under the contract, Rocket Lab will launch two dedicated missions on Neutron starting from mid-2026. The missions will launch from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 3 on Wallops Island, Virginia. The launch service agreement for these missions signifies the beginning of a productive collaboration that could see Neutron deploy the entire constellation.

The press release did not name the satellite constellation, or the company building it. Rocket Lab’s founder and CEO, Peter Beck, was quoted as follows: “Constellation companies and government satellite operators are desperate for a break in the launch monopoly.” [emphasis mine] That launch monopoly is clearly SpaceX, and Beck was positioning Rocket Lab with Neutron as the company to provide an alternative.

The announcement as well as the company’s third quarter report caused a 45% surge in its stock price.

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Firefly raises $175 million in new private investment capital

9:19 am

The rocket startup Firefly has now raised another $175 million of private investment capital, during a new round of funding, on top of another $300 million raised previously.

Firefly Aerospace has raised $175 million in a round led by a new investor to support production of launch vehicles and spacecraft with an increased focus on responsive space capabilities.

The company announced Nov. 12 it raised what it described as an oversubscribed Series D round led by RPM Ventures. Several other existing and new ventures also participated in the round, which values Firefly at more than $2 billion.

That valuation is an increase from the $1.5 billion the company reported in November 2023 when it closed the final tranche of a Series C round. The company did not disclose the size of that earlier round but said then it had raised about $300 million since February 2023.

It appears RPM likes how the company has focused on providing the military launch services, which can also be profitable for private satellite customers. This money will be used to help increase the production of Firefly’s Alpha rocket.

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JPL to layoff 5% of its workforce, the third major layoff this year

9:10 am

JPL in California announced today a layoff of 325 workers, about 5% of its workforce, the third major layoff imposed this year.

The JPL press release indicates the layoffs are because of NASA budget cutbacks, but does not provide any specificity. The cause centers mostly around NASA’s decision to pause its Mars Sample Return project, which JPL was leading. From this report:

This is the third round of layoffs at JPL this year, a reduction spurred primarily by major budgetary cuts to the Mars Sample Return mission, which is managed by JPL. NASA directed $310 million this year to the effort to bring Mars rocks back to Earth, a steep drop from the $822.3 million it spent on the program the previous year.

In January, 100 on-site contractors at JPL were let go after NASA instructed the lab to reduce spending in anticipation of a much tighter budget. In February, the lab laid off 530 employees — approximately 8% of its workforce — and another 40 contractors.

It increasingly appears that JPL’s place in the redesigned mission could be significantly reduced.

The press release also makes it sound like these cutbacks are the end of the world. As JPL has mostly functioned for decades as a private institution attached to NASA almost like a government agency, no one there ever expects to get laid off. In the real world however layoffs such as this happen all the time, especially when a company fails to deliver. JPL in recent years has had budget and management problems, epitomized by the problems now seen with that sample return mission, so it should not be surprised by these cutbacks from NASA.

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Cargo Dragon docked to ISS boosts station

8:59 am

For the first time a cargo Dragon capsule used its Draco attitude thrusters to test their ability to adjust or raise ISS’s orbit.

NASA and SpaceX monitored operations as the company’s Dragon spacecraft performed its first demonstration of reboost capabilities for the International Space Station at 12:50 p.m. EST on Friday. The spacecraft’s Draco thrusters adjusted the station’s orbit through a reboost of altitude by 7/100 of a mile at apogee and 7/10 of a mile at perigee, lasting approximately 12 minutes and 30 seconds.

This posting is late because of my Grand Canyon trip, but I’m posting this now to make sure it is on the webpage. The goal of the test was to prove another American method for adjusting ISS’s orbit, in order to replace the Russian Progress capsules which now do the job. This test proved Dragon’s thrusters can be used for small orbital adjustments, but whether it can do major orbital corrections remains unclear. A previous test using Cygnus had already showed it could do the job.

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Polaris completes first inflight ignition of its aerospike engine

12:08 am

In what appears to be a first, Polaris Spaceplane on October 29, 2024 successfully completed the first ever inflight ignition of an aerospike engine, using its Mira-2 unmanned engineering prototype.

Later in the day on 29 October, MIRA II took off from Peenemünde Airport on the coast of the Baltic Sea with a takeoff mass of 229 kilograms, which represented a reduced propellant load. The vehicle flew to the ignition point over the Baltic Sea, approximately 3 kilometres away from the ground station, and once there, completed a short three-second burn of its AS-1 aerospike engine. During the short burn, MIRA II experienced an acceleration of 4 m/s².

According to the company, the engine operated at a reduced chamber pressure during the three-second burn, resulting in a fuel-rich combustion.

There have been several attempts in the past to develop the aerospike engine, none of which ever completed any test flights, as far as I am aware. The concept is that the thrust is released in a string of openings, with only one wall forming the nozzle shape and the atmosphere used to complete the nozzle on the other side. As the atmospheric density changes the nozzle shape thus changes its shape, producing the most efficient thrust throughout the engine’s entire flight.

More test flights will be required before the company will be able to begin work on its full scale Aurora spaceplane.

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SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites

11:22 pm

SpaceX tonight launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

Of the 20 satellites, 13 were the direct-to-cellphone version. The first stage completed its eleventh flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

110 SpaceX
49 China
13 Russia
12 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 128 to 75, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world, including American companies, 110 to 93.

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Sierra Space announces plans to build a second Dream Chaser cargo spaceplane

2:58 pm

With the first launch of Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser reusable unmanned cargo mini-shuttle, Tenacity, now scheduled for May 2025, the company has announced that it is beginning work on a second cargo spaceplane, dubbed Reverence, along with a mission control center to operate its fleet in orbit.

Sierra Space spokesperson Alex Walker shared the new May 2025 estimate and said work on Reverence, also known as DC-102, will resume once the team returns to Colorado — but declined to clarify when that would happen. At that point, Walker said, it will likely be another 18 months before the second spaceplane is complete. In addition to the fleet of cargo-carrying craft, Sierra Space is also working on a crewed variant of the vessel, labeled the DC-200 series, and a national security DC-300 variant.

Company officials say each mini-shuttle is good for 15 flights, so having both vehicles gives the company a total of 30 flights to sell to various space station and orbital customers.

Selling to others outside NASA may be necessary, because Tenacity is four-plus years behind schedule. By the time it begins flying ISS will already be approaching retirement in only a few short years.

The company intends these new Dream Chaser projects to work in tandem with its LIFE inflatable modules, which are presently being developed as part of the Blue Origin-led Orbital Reef space station. And while much of work on the rest of that station appears moribund, it appears that Sierra is developing everything needed for its own space station. We should therefore not be surprised if Sierra decides to bid on NASA’s next space station funding round independent entirely of the Orbital Reef partnership.

It certainly is assembling all the pieces needed for a station, without any help from Blue Origin.

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Vast signs astronaut agreement with Czech government

8:57 am

The space station startup Vast has announced it has now signed an agreement with the Czech government to possibly fly one of its astronauts to the company’s Haven space stations, either the smaller Haven-1 or the full size Haven-2 to follow.

Any future mission with Vast could see Aleš Svoboda, one of 12 reserve astronauts selected by the European Space Agency in November 2022, become the second Czech astronaut. Svoboda has been a focal point for the Czech government’s efforts to stimulate growth in the Czech space industry and inspire the country’s young people to pursue STEM careers, crystallized by the launch of the Czech Journey to Space project in June 2024.

In September 2024 the Czech government had signed a similar agreement with Axiom. Under that agreement, Svoboda would fly to ISS. This new deal opens the possibility he will fly elsewhere.

It is very possible the Czechs want to do both, and are covering their bets by signing both agreements. In either case, no mission dates have been set.

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