Tag: competition

Private company offers to fly packages to Moon

10:30 am

Fly me to the moon! A company building a small lunar rover as part of the Google Lunar X-prize competition is now offering, for a small fee, to include private packages with its lander.

Astrobotic Technology on Thursday (Dec. 11) announced the launch of its new “MoonMail” program, which offers to send heirloom rings, family photos, locks of hair and other small personal items on the company’s first private moon mission set to launch in the next few years. With prices based on the item’s size, MoonMail rates start at $460 for a half-inch wide by 0.125-inch tall (1.27 by 0.3 centimeter) capsule and increase to $25,800 for a one by two-inch (2.54 by 5.08 cm) payload. “You can think of the pricing for it to be very similar to ‘it fits, it ships’ at the post office,” John Thornton, Astrobotic CEO, told collectSPACE.com in a call with reporters. “It is essentially a flat-rate box.”

They hope to launch on a Falcon 9. More interestingly, they want to land and explore one of the Moon’s skylight caves.

The first Griffin is slated to launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and land at Lacus Mortis, or the “Lake of Death,” a plain of basaltic lava flows in the northeastern part of the moon as viewed from Earth. “There is a unique feature there called a ‘skylight,'” stated Thornton, adding that only about 300 of these sinkhole-like entrances into subsurface caves have been discovered on the moon. “What’s very unique about the skylight at Lacus Mortis is that its walls have collapsed creating a ramp into the cave. … Caves on the surface of the moon could be our natural shelter,” Thornton explained. “So our first mission goes to one of these caves where we hopefully think someday we could settle on the moon. We think it’s a fantastic location to place MoonMail, which ultimately will be a time capsule of our generation for future moon explorers.”

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A Russian commercial reusable space shuttle?

10:29 am

A news report from Russia today described a project to build a commercial and reusable space shuttle for putting tourists into space.

The company, KosmoKurs, presently has eight employees and says it will launch by 2020. However, this quote from the article illustrates the difficulties faced by any new private companies in Russia:

Russian rocket and space industry is planned to produce this space shuttle. “We will talk to the United Rocket and Space Corporation. If we find common language, we will manufacture produce jointly with them,” the KosmoKurs head said. The company also pins hopes on backing of Russian Federal Space Agency and its scientific institutes.

Since Russia has now consolidated its entire aerospace industry into one government-controlled entity called the United Rocket and Space Corporation, any new private effort needs to get the cooperation of that company as well as the agreement of the government officials who control it. Such backing is not so easy to get, especially if the new company is seen as competition and a distraction from government goals.

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Want to become a rocket scientist?

4:48 pm

For the next few days you can get the ebook “How to be a rocket scientist” for free, by an engineer who has been one. As Hoffstadt correctly notes,

We are still very far from having all of the answers and seeing all of the possible technologies that can help humans travel through the air and space, and to live beyond our planet Earth. There are important questions to ask, problems to solve, and things to build. We haven’t figured everything out yet and don’t know where the next ideas and accomplishments are going to come from. In other words … we need more rocket scientists! [emphasis in original]

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A Chinese SLS super rocket?

9:23 am

The competition heats up: According to a report in a Chinese newspaper today, China is developing preliminary designs for a new rocket that would be the most powerful ever built.

According to an earlier report by China News Service, Liang Xiaohong, deputy head of the China Academy of Launch Vehicle Technology, disclosed that the Long March-9 is planned to have a maximum payload of 130 tons and its first launch will take place around 2028.

Liang urged the government to include the Long March-9’s development in its space agenda as soon as possible so that China’s rocket technologies will not lag behind those of other space powers.

Whether this rocket every gets built is highly doubtful. The article seems to mostly be both a public relations response to the U.S.’s test flight on Friday of Orion as well as an example of a government agency lobbying for a bigger budget. (This lobbying happens even in communist China.)

Nonetheless, we should not dismiss the possibility lightly. As competition causes the cost of building all rockets to drop, it will be more affordable to build bigger rockets. By the next decade building a heavy lift rocket might finally be affordable.

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New joint venture to build Ariane 6

9:42 am

Faced with stiff competition from SpaceX, Europe has handed the construction its next generation rocket, Ariane 6, from Arianespace to a joint venture between the European companies Airbus and Safran.

The new venture will be dubbed Airbus Safran Launchers, and will take over as Europe’s launch company.

I had known that Airbus and Safran had proposed this venture to build Ariane 6, but until I read this press release I hadn’t realized that the agreed-to deal to build Ariane 6 means that Arianespace has essentially been fired by Europe as the company running Europe’s rocket operations. Arianespace, a partnership of the European Space Agency’s many partners, was never able to make a profit, while its Ariane 5 rocket costs a fortune to launch. They have now given the job to two private companies who have promised to rein in the costs. We shall see what happens.

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Busy year for Russian Proton rocket?

9:34 am

The heat of competition: Russia hopes to compete 11 Proton launches in 2015.

That sounds nice, but they haven’t yet officially rescheduled the scrubbed November 28 Proton launch of a commercial satellite because of a faulty gyro in the upper stage. Considering the problems they have had with Proton in the past three years it will be a major accomplishment if this schedule gets completed as planned.

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