This political report on the annual Southern Republican Leadership Conference and its response to the speeches of a large number of the Republican presidential candidates provides a very good overview of the state of the campaign, and who is really in front.
Not surprising to me, Walker is considered the front runner, with Cruz and Paul in the second tier (best indicated by how often both were attacked by the other candidates).
A slew of stories in the Russian press today illustrate again the deeply ingrained problems that country has, both in corruption and in its ability to produce a quality product.
The last story describes the overall scale of the corruption, which is not confined just to the space sector, but can be found in many industries. The aerospace industry just happens to be the most visible outside Russia, and thus the most embarrassing. Yet,
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Hat tip Tom Wilson.
The competition heats up: The suborbital space tourism company XCOR has received an influx of capital from a Chinese venture capital firm.
The amount was not disclosed, but the infusion of cash can only help the company move forward on its effort to build a suborbital reusable space plane for carrying tourists.
The competition heats up: Japan has decided to upgrade its HTV cargo freighter to ISS by cutting its weight by 30% and reducing the cost to build it by half.
Without doubt the success of the U.S. in quickly building two private and relatively inexpensive freighters, Dragon and Cygnus, has influenced this decision. The managers in Japan have realized that the HTV is not efficient and could be streamlined, and they are trying now to do it.
Isn’t competition a wonderful thing?
The competition heats up: The chief executive of one of Russia’s largest aerospace centers admitted during a television appearance on Friday that their country is losing market share to SpaceX.
“The commercial launch market has changed over the past few years. New players have emerged, for example the American company SpaceX. Few people believed that a commercial project would be able to break into the market and create a competitive product, create a carrier [rocket] that’s competitive in terms of price and quality. But this has happened and we have to reckon with it,” he said. “It’s true that we have reduced our presence in the commercial launch market in recent years.
The irony here is that all of the decisions by Putin and the Russian government since SpaceX’s arrival — most especially the decision to consolidate the entire aerospace industry into a single corporation controlled by the government — have actually worked to limit Russia’s ability to compete.
The competition heats up: A committee in India is reviewing proposals for that country’s next unmanned interplanetary probe.
The mission could go back to the Moon or Mars, or maybe go to Venus.
The competition heats up: The House yesterday passed a major revision to the 2004 space law in an effort to encourage commercial private development in space.
Most of the revisions were requested by the industry itself, and generally eased government interference. As usual, the opposition came from Democrats who wished to maintain as much power for government as possible.
The bill still needs to be approved by the Senate and signed by the President. The Obama administration has expressed “concerns” but has also not opposed the bill.
With a safe splashdown today, SpaceX completed another successful Dragon cargo mission to ISS.
The next Dragon cargo flight is scheduled for June 26, when SpaceX will once again try to land the Falcon 9 first stage vertically.
The competition heats up? The Russians have delayed until late 2016 the first test flight of the heavy-lift version of their new Angara rocket so that they can fly it with its own new upper stage, rather than using the trouble-plagued Briz upper stage used on Proton.
In other words, they want to dump all the components of the Proton as soon as possible. Whether this will solve the quality control problems that seem to be systemic to their aerospace industry however remains questionable. If I was a commercial satellite company I would have as little faith in Angara, until it has proven itself through a number of launches.
ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket successfully placed one of the Air Force’s X-37B mini-shuttles into orbit this morning.
The competition heats up: Construction of India’s scaled-down prototype of a mini-shuttle is almost complete as they prepare for a July test flight.
This is an unmanned test vehicle. The full scale version, not yet built, would be manned.
