The competition heats up: Japan’s H-2A rocket, built by Mitsubishi, has won its first commercial contract.
This is a surprise, as Japan has tried for years to sell the H-2A to commercial satellite carriers, with no success. That they have finally succeeded suggests to me that the demand for launch services is increasing, and there is room for more companies to provide the service.
I must admit I did not expect this. When we made our reservations to stay in a timeshare motel in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, I imagined the town would resemble the small West Virginia towns I am very familiar with from my many years of caving in that state. There would be a relatively quiet main street, with some restaurants, a supermarket, one or two gas stations, and some basic shopping.
What I found instead is a wonderfully energetic example of American capitalism, a carnival amusement area reminiscent of the amusement spots of the past and most epitomized by Brooklyn’s Coney Island.
When I was growing up in Brooklyn in the late 1950s and 1960s, Coney Island was a shadow of its grand past, but it still carried with it much of its old glory. You could stroll along the boardwalk or Surf Avenue and visit hundreds of shops, stores, and amusement rides, most of which were independently owned. In addition, the island also had several larger private amusement parks, such as Steeplechase Park, Astroland, and Luna Park (which unfortunately had closed before I ever saw it), each of which had a collection of their own rides and amusements. With some, like Steeplechase and Luna, you had to pay a separate admission price to get in.
This is exactly what I discovered here in Gatlinburg and the adjacent towns of Pigeon Forge and Sevierville.
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India has now rescheduled the launch of its home-built GSLV rocket for December 15.
The launch of Geosynchronous Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV), which was deferred on August 19 following a flaw in the rocket, will take place on December 15, ISRO head said here today. “The launch of GSLV D5 satellite which was postponed on August 19 about two hours before liftoff after detection of a fuel leak in the rockets’ second stage will now be held on December 15,” ISRO chairman Dr K Radhakrishnan said at an interactive session with students and teachers here.
Due to problems developing SpaceShipTwo’s engine, it appears that its first flight into space will not occur sooner than February 2014, and that commercial operations will likely not begin before the end of 2014.
The problem is that despite public claims to the contrary, the nitrous oxide-rubber hybrid has never been hot fired on the ground at full duration, sources indicate. And the engine is not powerful enough even when fully fired to get SpaceShipTwo into space with any actual payloads (i.e., six wealthy passengers). Even as Scaled Composites has pursued the flight test program and Virgin Galactic has issued optimistic flight predictions that commercial flights are only months away, the two companies have been secretly working on alternatives to the nitrous oxide-rubber engine they have been using to explore SpaceShipTwo’s flight envelope. Sources report that the development of alternative hybrid designs has been running into trouble. An engine that used nitrous oxide and nylon exploded on Scaled Composites test stand on May 17. The nozzle and rocket casing were thrown clear and the test stand was wrecked. The composite tank holding the nitrous oxide did not explode, but it was damaged to the point where it could not be reused.
This is very bad news. To develop a new engine at this late stage of development will be quite difficult. The spaceship itself was designed specifically with the first engine in mind. Any replacement will likely be different in power and design and require some changes to the ship.
The window for the launch of SpaceX’s upgraded Falcon 9 will open at noon (Eastern) on Sunday.
NASA has released more details about Sunday’s schedule of Cygnus’s rendezvous and berthing with ISS.
Orbital Sciences is now aiming for a Sunday berthing of Cygnus to ISS.
SpaceX is now aiming for a Sunday launch of its upgraded Falcon 9 rocket.
A test flight of SpaceShipTwo was scrubbed today because of weather.
What made this particular test flight interesting is that about three hundred of Virgin Galactic’s space tourist customers had been invited to Mohave to watch it. More info here.
The competition heats up: China today unveiled its first unmanned lunar rover, set for a December launch, and announced a competition for the public to name it.
Opportunity knocks: A new delay in the launch of a Russian weather satellite illustrates the need that small satellite owners have for their own rocket.
The planned mid-December launch of a Russian Soyuz/Fregat rocket carrying a Russian weather satellite and a half-dozen small satellites for British, Norwegian and Canadian customers has been delayed again, to late February, following the latest series of issues with the main satellite payload, industry officials said. The delay, which is not the first for this launch, illustrates the immutable reality confronted by owners of small satellites manifested as secondary payloads: You launch at the convenience of the principal passenger, and not before.
If there was a small rocket available for these small satellites, not only would they flock to it, the number of small satellite customers would probably skyrocket, as the only thing preventing the funding of many nanosats is the lack of the launcher.
On another note, the technical delays for this Russian satellite and its rocket once again highlight the quality control problems within the Russian aerospace industry.
The competition heats up: China today successfully launched a brand new quick response rocket.
Very little is known about the Kuaizhou rocket, other than it was developed by CASIC. No photos or graphics exist in the public domain. It is also known the rocket – likely on its test flight – was carrying a satellite, called Kuaizhou-1. Built by the Harbin Institute of Technology, the new satellite will be used for emergency data monitoring and imaging, under the control of the national remote sensing center at the national Academy of Sciences. The new satellite is probably part of a “quick response satellite system” model that was already announced as in the works by the Chinese.
The rocket appears to be fueled entirely by solid rocket motors. Thus, they could build a bunch and have them in storage, ready to go at any time.
