Tag: competition

Who was Cornelius Vanderbilt?

12:03 pm

The First Tycoon

I ask the question in my headline because I am quite sure it is a question most Americans can no longer answer, with any firm knowledge. I myself didn’t know who Vanderbilt really was until I read a wonderful biography of him, The First Tycoon: The epic life of Cornelius Vanderbilt by T.J. Stiles, about two months ago.

Beforehand, all I really knew about Vanderbilt was that he had been a big deal somehow in the 1800s, and as a result there was a statue of him on the south side of Grand Central Station in New York, visible only by drivers going past on the overpass that circles the station.

What I learned from Stiles book however was astonishing. Not only did Vanderbilt build Grand Central Station, it was part of a transportation empire he created that by the end of his life covered most of the eastern United States. For Americans in the 1800s, if you needed to get from one place to another, you almost certainly rode on a Vanderbilt steamship or railroad.

Even more interesting to me however were the remarkable similarities in style, approach, and success between the Cornelius Vanderbilt of the 1800s and the Elon Musk of the 2000s. Both focused on taking new technology and making it profitable. Both built their empires on transportation.

And most of all, both focused on the product they were building to make money, not on speculating its value to make a quick buck.
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Two Middle Eastern startups sign deal to build a mini-shuttle dubbed Oryx

9:15 am

LEAP71's aerospike test engine
Leap71’s smallscale aerospike engine during testing.
Click for original image.

A rocket startup in the UAE, Aspire, has signed a partnership deal with a rocket engine startup in Dubai, Leap71, to build a fully reusable mini-shuttle dubbed Oryx, not unlike the Dream Chaser mini-shuttle that Sierra Space has been trying to launch now for more than a decade.

As part of the plan, Leap71 will develop two types of engines for Oryx, including one using an aerospike nozzle.

Building on their ongoing cooperation, Aspire Space is now contracting LEAP 71 to develop the rocket engines powering the Oryx’s second stage. Each engine will produce 20 tons (200 kN) of thrust, and the partners are pursuing two parallel propulsion paths: a conventional engine and a novel aerospike configuration.

The aerospike concept, long studied but never flown, offers superior efficiency across both atmospheric and vacuum flight regimes — making it particularly well suited for reusable launch systems. LEAP 71 gained international recognition in December 2024 for successfully testing a 5 kN aerospike engine, validating key aspects of its design.

The picture to the right shows the LEAP aerospike engine during those 2024 tests. As I noted then, “The spike in the center acts as one wall of the nozzle, and the changing pressure of the atmosphere acting as the other side of the nozzle, allowing the nozzle size to change as the rocket rises, thus making its thrust as efficient as possible.”

Those tests were done in the United Kingdom, suggesting the company relied on British engineers using financing from Dubai. Even so, to go from that smallscale test to a full engine launching both a rocket and a reusable mini-shuttle will be a major challenge. Or to put it another way, to say their plans are aspirational is an understatement.

Hat tip BtB’s stringer Jay.

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A company that wants to shoot payloads into orbit with a cannon

9:23 am

Link here. The company is called Longshot. It isn’t the only company attempting to do this. I reported on another company, Green Launch, in 2022, but have heard little from it since then.

I leave it to the engineers in my readership to tell me if this company has any chance of success. It seems to me that any payloads it launches would likely have to be dead weight, like water or oxygen or fuel, as the speeds involve would damage delicate instrumentation.

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SpaceX launches 28 Starlink satellites; 1st stage flies for first time

9:14 am

UPDATE: When I wrote this post, several sources stated that the first stage was flying for its thirtieth time. I relied on those sources. As it turns out, they were wrong. The first stage on this launch was flying for its first time. The post below has been rewritten to correct this error.

———————–
SpaceX early this morning successfully placed another 28 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its first flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

154 SpaceX (a new record)
72 China
15 Rocket Lab
13 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 154 to 120.

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Startup B2Space launches rocket from balloon

10:21 am

The startup B2Space has completed a test flight using a balloon to lift a solid-fueled rocket to high altitude, where the rocket was then launched.

In a 17 November update, the company announced that it had completed a test of its integrated rockoon launch system using a “rocket of lower power than that planned for the commercial version of the system.” The test was conducted from the Port of Vueltas in Valle Gran Rey in the Canary Islands. Its aim was to validate key elements of the company’s rockoon launch system, including the rocket rail alignment and ignition subsystems.

The balloon was launched at 4:00 CET and carried the small rocket to an altitude of 21.5 kilometres, at which point the rocket was launched. Speaking to European Spaceflight, B2Space CTO Valentin confirmed that the ignition system had been successful but did not share any details about the state of the rocket itself. In a 17 November update, the company confirmed that all elements of the launch system had been successfully recovered following the test.

Calling this company a startup is not quite accurate, as it has been around for almost a decade, pushing the idea of a a balloon-launched rocket, dubbed a “rockoon”. The idea itself is not new. If my memory serves me right, it had been tested intermittently in some form as early as the 1950s.

The company hopes to test a larger suborbital version in 2026, followed by an orbital test.

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SpaceX issues 1st statement regarding Superheavy test explosion

9:27 am

Damaged Superheavy
Click for original image.

SpaceX yesterday issued its first update regarding the explosion in the lower half of the Superheavy booster that it had planned to fly on the next orbital test flight.

Booster 18 suffered an anomaly during gas system pressure testing that we were conducting in advance of structural proof testing. No propellant was on the vehicle, and engines were not yet installed. The teams need time to investigate before we are confident of the cause. No one was injured as we maintain a safe distance for personnel during this type of testing. The site remains clear and we are working plans to safely reenter the site.

That no propellant was involved explains why the booster and test pad experienced relatively little damage. They were likely pumping nitrogen through the system to test it, and while something exploded, the gases were not volatile.

The picture to the right is a screen capture from aerial drone flights performed by RGV Aerial Photography and posted on nasaspaceflight.com. I have enhanced it to bring out the details. Note the lack of damage on all sides of the booster at its base. The explosion was clearly confined to the booster, and appears to have occurred from within.

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SpaceX launches 29 more Starlink satellites

1:02 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 29 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 9th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

153 SpaceX (a new record)
72 China
15 Rocket Lab
13 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 153 to 120.

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Superheavy intended for next test flight damaged during static fire test

9:57 am

Damaged Superheavy
Click for source.

According to video taken by the Labpadre live stream of SpaceX’s operations at Boca Chica, the Superheavy booster that the company was preparing for the next orbital test flight was damaged while it was being fueled for a static fire test.

The video, which I have embedded below, suggests a tank rupture occurred in the booster’s lower section, where its main oxygen tanks are located. Another post-incident image from different source on social media and to the right, shows the hull of that section badly deformed, with the far side not visible apparently blown out. It also appears the test stand experienced no or little damage.

This incident will likely delay the next orbital Starship/Superheavy test flight, but not significantly. SpaceX has more prototype Superheavys in the queue. While it might need to do some quick additional work preparing one, that should’t slow things down by much.

Figuring out what happened to cause this burst tank is more likely to cause a delay. The company needs to identify and fix the issue before it can proceed.
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China launches a “communications technology test satellite”

9:33 am

China today successfully launched what its state-run press called a “communications technology test satellite,” its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No other details about the satellite were released. Nor did that state-run press provide any information about where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

152 SpaceX
72 China (a new record)
15 Rocket Lab
13 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 152 to 120.

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Maritime Launch Services touts a second non-orbital launch from Spaceport Nova Scotia

8:51 am

Proposed Canadian spaceports
Proposed Canadian spaceports

The competition between Canada’s two proposed spaceports heated up yesterday when the owner of Spaceport Nova Scotia, Maritime Launch Services, announced that the second launch had taken place there, this time by a rocket startup named T-Minus Engineering.

The launch took place at 11:54 AM, and the mission marked an important milestone in advancing the operational readiness of Spaceport Nova Scotia, critical infrastructure that will provide Canada with sovereign launch capability. The launch was conducted from Spaceport Nova Scotia under approved regulatory and safety frameworks. The demonstration strengthened coordination among launch site teams and stakeholder partners, while refining launch operational procedures and the safety and security systems that govern all activities at the spaceport.

The press release provided no details about the launch itself, though this report noted that the rocket failed to reach its goal of 100 kilometers, the altitude considered by most as the edge of space. The rocket, dubbed Barracuda, is solid-fueled and was apparently designed by T-Minus to demonstrate its capability for hypersonic testing.

This was the second suborbital launch from this spaceport. The first, in 2023, was a student test flight. In both cases, the launches were mostly a PR effort to sell the spaceport, which was first proposed in 2016 but has been unable so far to draw any launch customers. Maritime now also faces competition from the Atlantic Spaceport being proposed by a different company, Nordspace.

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Firefly to provide the launch rocket for Kratos’ hypersonic test vehicles

8:36 am

The rocket/lunar lander startup Firefly yesterday announced that it has signed a partnership deal with the hypersonic test startup Kratos.

In August Kratos partnered with the Australian company Hypersonix to build 20 scramjet test vehicles for the Pentagon for hypersonic test flights. Firefly with this new deal will provide the launch vehicle for getting those scramjets into the air at the speeds required. In fact, it appears Firefly is now going to do with its Alpha rocket the same thing that Rocket Lab did with its Electron rocket, revising it for suborbital testing.

Rocket Lab has already completed six successful HASTE launches. It will be interesting how quickly Firefly can get Alpha reconfigured and launched in this manner. Some of that schedule will also hinge on Kratos’ ability to provide the scramjets. The press release makes no mention of schedule.

Firefly’s action here continues the recent shift by many American space startups from rocketry and space exploration to defense work that is only tangentially related to space. It appears they are all diversifying to grab the expected rich contracts the Pentagon is expected to hand out to develop Trump’s proposed Golden Dome defense system. It also appears that many are diversifying because they have doubts the civilian space industry can sustain them, by itself.

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Spanish rocket startup PLD unveils the first qualification unit of its Miura-5 rocket

8:01 am

1st Miura-5 qualification unit
The 1st Miura-5 qualification unit. Click for original.

The Spanish rocket startup PLD yesterday unveiled the first of two full-scale qualification units it is building to test the design of its Miura-5 orbital rocket, scheduled for a first launch sometime in 2026.

The QM1 unit will serve to qualify two key elements of the launcher. Firstly, the MIURA 5 second stage will undergo a destruction test in the United States to validate the functioning of the Flight Termination System. This test will verify the operation of the explosive charges onboard the vehicle, designed to destroy the launcher in the event of an in-flight anomaly.

Secondly, a Wet Dress Rehearsal will be carried out on the rocket’s first stage – a full propellant loading test that replicates all structural load scenarios during the fuelling and pressurisation phase. This test is essential to validate the behaviour of structures under real operational conditions.

By December (next month) the company hopes to complete a second qualification unit for further testing, followed by the flight rocket, which will be shipped to French Guiana for a launch sometime next year.

Right now PLD and Germany’s Isar Aerospace are in the lead in the race to become the first European rocket startup to reach orbit. Isar — which in March attempted one launch that failed — has already shipped the stages to Norway for its second attempt before the end of this year. PLD thus appears to be just behind, though all this could easily change. This is rocket science y’know.

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