The contamination that has delayed SpaceX’s next Dragon cargo mission to ISS was caused by oil from a sewing machine.
The machine sewed the cloth blankets that protect payloads in Dragon’s unpressurized trunk section.
Orbital Sciences has set May 6 as the launch date for its next Cygnus cargo mission to ISS.
According to the former CEO of Arianespace, now head of the French space agency, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 costs significantly less to launch than the Ariane 5.
How big is the difference? Jean-Yves Le Gall, who until mid-2013 was chief executive of Evry, France-based Arianespace and is now president of the French space agency, CNES, addressed the point in Feb. 25 testimony to the French Senate. According to Le Gall, launching a satellite on an Ariane 5 costs around 100 million euros ($137 million). After subtracting the amount of European Space Agency subsidies to Arianespace, the per-satellite cost drops to about $100 million, he said.
Hawthorne, Calif.-based SpaceX, he said, would charge $60 million to $70 million to launch the same satellite aboard the Falcon 9. In fact SpaceX has charged even less than that to its first few commercial customers.
It is for this reason that Arianespace is struggling to decide how to build its next generation rocket. They have find a way to do it cheaper, something that is very difficult for this multi-headed European conglomerate to do.
The first test flight of NASA’s Orion capsule has been delayed from September to December.
The supposed reason is to allow a military launch to get the best launch opportunity first. I find this excuse to be quite lame, and instead suspect that the NASA program needed more time but did not want to admit this publicly.
The delay moves the launch until after the November elections. Watch the political pressure continue to build to end this expensive, bloated, and not-very-useful boondoggle.
The competition heats up: Swiss Space Systems (S3) is planning to offer zero gravity airplane rides at the Kennedy Space Center in direct competition with Zero Gravity Corp.
The competition heats up: Arianespace and the Russian-owned Sea Launch are seeking to get the restrictions against them removed so that they can sell their services to more customers.
Arianespace wants to sell its launch services to the U.S. government, something it is not allowed to do right now because of U.S. restrictions. These are the same kinds of restrictions that has prevented SpaceX from launching military satellites and which that company is now contesting.
Russia meanwhile wants to use Sea Launch for its own payloads, but because Sea Launch’s platform is based in California, the Russian government won’t allow their payloads on it because of security reasons. They want the platform moved to Russia so that they can use their own company to launch their own satellites.
The article also describes how Japan is trying to reduce the cost of its H-2A rocket by 50% so that it can become more competitive.
All in all, I would say that the arrival of SpaceX has done exactly what was predicted, shaken the industry out of its doldrums. How else to explain this sudden interest in open competition and lowering costs? These companies could have done this decades ago. They did not. Suddenly a new player arrives on the scene, offering to beat them at their own game. It is not surprising that they are fighting back.
The next Dragon launch to ISS has been delayed for two weeks because of the detection of contamination that could affect some of its research cargo.
[T]he launch was put on hold, sources said, when engineers noticed contamination of some sort on the Dragon’s lower unpressurized trunk section. Two of six electrically powered payloads aboard the Dragon are mounted in the trunk section — a first for this mission — and engineers were concerned the contamination might “outgas” in orbit and cause problems for the station-bound hardware.
The competition heats up: Lockheed Martin announced on Wednesday that they will either give a full refund or re-fly a payload for free if their Atlas rocket fails at launch.
This means that Lockheed Martin’s customers will no longer have to shop or pay for insurance. Instead, the company is providing it for them free, thus lowering the cost for those customers.
The competition heats up: The Russian company that owns the Proton rocket is considering a redesign that would allow them to launch two satellites on one rocket.
Launching two or more satellites during a single launch is not ground-breaking technology, but the Russian have never done it with their Proton. If they make this change, it will allow them to reduce the cost for a commercial launch considerably, thus making them more competitive against companies like SpaceX.
That they have decided to consider this now, after almost three decades of commercial operation since the fall of the Soviet Union, is more proof that the low prices of SpaceX are forcing innovation and an effort to lower costs across the entire launch market.
Update: My statement above about Proton never launching more than one satellite is wrong. They have done it numerous times, something I am very aware of but for some reason completely forgot when I was writing this post. (The jet lag from the trip to Israel must still be affecting my brain.) In fact, they have just rolled to the launchpad a Proton with two communications satellites on board, a fact that makes the story at the first link above very puzzling.
On Saturday SpaceX successfully conducted a dress rehearsal countdown and static fire engine test of the Falcon 9 rocket that will loft a Dragon capsule to ISS next week.
The results of the test itself have not been released, but that it was completed suggests all is well for the upcoming launch.
Standing on the wrong side of history: Neil deGrasse Tyson poo-poos private space.
Tyson described space travel as “a long-term investment”: “It’s an investment that private enterprise cannot lead.” He recalled the excitement around SpaceX’s delivery of cargo the International Space Station, which sparked discussion about whether private companies would replace government as the main engine behind space travel. Tyson’s response? “They brought cargo to the space station! NASA’s been doing that for 30 years!”
Tyson, who also said that government is the only one willing to do exploration and that private space only comes after, will probably push this agenda on his new Cosmos television series.
On this subject, Tyson has the outdated opinions of today’s leftwing academic community. And he is wrong. The only reasons private space didn’t lead in the past fifty years is because our federal government was against it. It wanted the turf all to itself and the private companies who could have done it were willing to acquiesce. Now that this monopoly is crumbling, stand by to see private enterprise dominate the show.
Taking a close look at the engineering and history of SpaceX’s new Raptor engine, presently under development.
Quite fascinating and absolutely worth a read.
