Tag: competition

Stratolaunch completes 5th test flight of giant Roc airplane

10:21 am

Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch yesterday successfully completed the fifth test flight of its giant Roc airplane, now being designed for testing hypersonic vehicles in flight.

You can read the press release here [pdf], which stated the following:

The fifth flight debuted a new pylon on the aircraft’s center wing that will be used to carry and release Talon-A hypersonic vehicles. The hardware is comprised of a mini-wing and adapter that is constructed with aluminum and carbon fiber skins. It weighs approximately 8,000 pounds and occupies 14 feet of Roc’s 95-foot center wingspan, allowing for adequate space between the aircraft’s dual fuselages for safe vehicle release and launch. The state-of-the-art structure also features a winch system that will load Talon onto the platform from the ground, expediting launch preparation and reducing the need for ground support.

The company has been building two Talon hypersonic vehicles, and now has a third under construction. This third Talon is intended to be reuseable. All will be used as part of the company’s contract with the Air Force to test hypersonic technology, with the first flights now scheduled for ’23.

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Phantom Space orders more than 200 rocket engines from Ursa Major

9:58 am

Hadley engine from Ursa Major

Capitalism in space: The smallsat startup rocket company Phantom Space today announced it has ordered more than 200 rocket engines from the rocket engine company Ursa Major.

The order includes Ursa Major’s 5,000-Pound Thrust Hadley engines and the new 50,000-pound thrust Ripley engines. By using Ursa Major’s Hadley engines, Phantom’s Daytona rocket is slated for orbital launch in 2023, just three years after Phantom Space was formed. Under the terms of the agreement, Ursa Major will supply hundreds of its Hadley engines in different configurations including ground test and upper-stage vacuum variants, as well as numerous Ripley engines for planned upgrades to the Daytona vehicle.

The CEO of Phantom Space, Jim Cantrell, gave me a tour of its facility here in Tucson only three weeks ago, during which I took the picture above of a Hadley engine being tested and prepared for further static fire tests.

Cantrell had been the founder of Vector, his earlier failed attempt to create a smallsat rocket company. He clearly has not let that failure stop him.

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China’s Long March 2D rocket launches 8 satellites

9:43 am

China today used its Long March 2D rocket to place eight Earth observation satellites into orbit as part of a larger constellation.

The Jilin-1 constellation, now consisting of 50 Earth observation satellites since its first launch in 2015, is China’s first-ever commercial remote-sensing satellite system. The system is operated by Chang Guang Satellite Technology Corporation, also known as Charming Globe, a commercial spinoff of the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics, and Physics in the northeast Chinese city of Changchun.

The constellation is planned to consist of 138 satellites by 2025, and the satellites will be orbiting at 535 km altitude above Earth. The constellation, featuring types of satellites with different capabilities, will ultimately be capable of revisiting any point on Earth every ten minutes, with an interim thirty-minute capability being achieved with sixty satellites in orbit.

China claims the data from this constellation will be for commercial use. Don’t be surprised however if its primary customer turns out to be China’s military.

As the rocket launched from one of China’s interior spaceports, its first stage crash landed in China. No word on whether it used parachutes or grid fins to control that landing.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

17 SpaceX
14 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
2 ULA

The U.S. still leads China 25 to 14 in the national rankings, with the U.S. leading all other nations combined 25 to 23.

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Endurance undocks from ISS for splashdown tonight; Watch here

9:29 am

SpaceX’s Endurance manned capsule today undocked from ISS carrying four astronauts with a planned splashdown off the coast of Florida at shortly after midnight (Eastern) tonight.

I have embedded the live stream for the splashdown below. It will go live about 11:00 pm (Eastern) in order to cover all the splashdown events:

11:48 p.m. Trunk jettison
11:53 p.m. Deorbit burn
12:04 a.m. Nosecone closed
12:43 a.m. Dragon splashdown
» Read more

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South Korean smallsat rocket startup to launch first suborbital test flight

9:18 am

Capitalism in space: A new South Korean smallsat rocket startup company, Innospace, is now planning its first suborbital test launch in December, launching a Brazilian military payload from that country’s Alcântara Space Center.

The 16.3-meter, single-stage test rocket is a precursor to the company’s planned commercial satellite launcher Hanbit-Nano, a two-stage small satellite launcher designed to carry up to a 50-kilogram payload to a 500-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit. The first stages of the two rockets are powered by a 15-ton-thrust hybrid rocket engine that uses liquid oxygen and paraffin-based propellants. Hanbit-Nano’s upper stage is equipped with a 3-ton hybrid engine, according to the Sejong-based company’s website.

“If the upcoming test launch is successful, we will start preparing for a test launch of Hanbit-Nano,” Innospace spokesperson Kim Jung-hee told SpaceNews.

The company has so far raised almost $28 million in private investment capital. It also has an agreement with Norway to launch its rockets from there.

Since South Korea’s government has its own rocket program, it will be interesting to see which succeeds first in getting into orbit.

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Biden’s NASA administrator slams the cost-plus contracts he endorsed when he was a senator

12:48 pm

Bill Nelson, Biden’s NASA administrator and a former Democratic Party senator from Florida, made it clear during his testimony before a subcommittee of the Senate Appropriations committee today that he condemns cost-plus contracts and no longer wants to use them for any NASA project, even though he demanded NASA use such contracts when he was a senator.

Nelson was asked what, in his opinion, was the biggest threat to NASA’s goal of landing humans on the Moon by 2025. Nelson responded that the agency needed competition in its program to develop a Human Landing System. In other words, he wanted Congress to support NASA’s request for funding to develop a second lander alongside SpaceX’s Starship vehicle.

But Nelson didn’t stop there. He said Congress needs to fund this lander contract with a fixed-price award, which only pays companies when they reach milestones. This contracting mechanism is relatively new for the space agency, which traditionally has used “cost-plus” contracts for large development programs. Such awards pay contractors their expenses, plus a fee. “I believe that that is the plan that can bring us all the value of competition,” Nelson said of fixed-price contracts. “You get it done with that competitive spirit. You get it done cheaper, and that allows us to move away from what has been a plague on us in the past, which is a cost-plus contract, and move to an existing contractual price.”

The significance of Nelson’s remarks is that it bluntly signals that the Biden administration has now wholly bought into the ideas I put forth in Capitalism in Space. Nelson wants NASA to be a customer that buys what it needs from the private sector, and to do it as inexpensively as possible. He also wants to encourage competition by allowing that private sector to own and control what it builds.

In the past, a new administration would have abandoned the policies of the past administration. Instead, the Biden administration is accelerating the Trump administration’s policy of encouraging private enterprise and eliminating cost-plus contracts.

The future of the American space industry appears bright indeed.

This statement by Nelson also indicates that the future of SLS is now very precarious, especially because it is being built almost entirely on cost-plus contracts. Any serious failure could kill it. And even if its next launch succeeds, further launches hang now by a very thin political thread. And the more success private space has, the thinner that thread will become.

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Viasat once again demands government block its competitor Starlink

9:50 am

In a letter to the FCC submitted on May 2, 2022, Viasat once again demanded the government block the deployment of SpaceX’s full 30,000 Starlink satellite constellation.

SpaceX shouldn’t be allowed to greatly expand its Starlink network while light pollution issues surrounding its deployed satellites remain unresolved, Jarrett Taubman, Viasat vice president and deputy chief of government affairs, said in a letter to the regulator.

While calls for a thorough environmental review that Viasat made for Starlink’s current generation of satellites in December 2020 were largely rejected, Taubman said SpaceX’s plan to grow the constellation by seven times “would have significant aesthetic, scientific, social and cultural, and health effects on the human environment on Earth.”

In other words, rather than try to compete with SpaceX, Viasat wants the government to squelch that competition. Though Viasat’s previous complaints have been rejected entirely, there is no guarantee that the Biden administration will continue to reject them. Recent evidence suggests instead that it will instead use this complaint as another opportunity to limit SpaceX’s operations, for political reasons.

Meanwhile, the only possible harm to Earth the full Starlink constellation might do is cause a limited interference in ground-based astronomy. Since astronomers have made so little effort to get their telescopes into orbit, above such interference, few should sympathize with them. If anything, Starlink should be the spur to get all of its telescopes off the ground and into space. Astronomers will not only avoid light interference from Starlink, they will get far better data without the atmosphere smearing their vision.

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Space Force awards 125 small contracts to develop space junk removal and satellite repair

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: The Space Force yesterday announced the issuance of 125 small contracts, each worth $250,000, for developing new technologies for the removal of orbiting space junk as well as the robotic servicing of orbiting satellites.

SpaceWERX [a Space Force division] plans to award the 125 contracts over the next 30 days and each team will have about 150 days to deliver a product or study. Later this year they will have an opportunity to compete for second-phase awards of up to $1.5 million to continue development and prototyping.

The long-term goal is to select one or more teams two years from now to conduct an in-space demonstration of OSAM technologies, short for on-orbit servicing, assembly and manufacturing. This includes a broad range of technologies to repair and refuel existing satellites, remove and recycle orbital debris, and manufacture products in space.

Many of these development contracts likely went to already established companies like Northrop Grumman, Orbit Fab, Momentus, Launcher, and Spaceflight, which are all developing technologies for in-orbit transportation and servicing. These small contracts were also likely given to new startup companies that have not yet launched.

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Update on Dream Chaser

10:57 am

Link here.

Overall progress has been incredibly slow, considering the NASA contract to build this was awarded in 2016. Sierra Space is only building one spacecraft, designed to be reusable. For six years to have passed and the spacecraft, dubbed Tenacity, is still a year away from flight, seems excessive, especially because the spaceplane is small. It took SpaceX only four years to go from concept to successfully landing first stages. Starship began test flights only three years after the project began.

Still, the spaceplane is moving forward. Hopefully by February ’23 it will finally fly, giving the U.S. another method besides Dragon for getting cargo to and from space. That it might do so before Boeing’s Starliner is somewhat ironic, and puts more pressure on that company to get that capsule operational.

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China and Russia each successfully complete launches

10:25 pm

Both China and Russia successfully completed launches in the past few hours.

First, shortly before midnight today (local time) Russia used its smaller version of its new Angara rocket to place a military satellite into orbit, launching this version of the rocket for the second time.

Next, using its solid rocket Long March 11, China on April 30th (local time) successfully launched five smallsats from an ocean platform in the East China Sea. This was the third launch from sea by the Long March 11.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

17 SpaceX
13 China
6 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. still leads China 24 to 13 in the national rankings. The U.S. also still leads all other nations and companies combined, 24 to 22.

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SpaceX launches another 53 Starlink satellites

2:37 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 53 Starlink satellites using its Falcon 9 rocket, the first stage successfully flying and landing for the sixth time.

That first stage had flown only three weeks ago, thus completing the fastest turnaround yet.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

17 SpaceX
12 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 24 to 12 in the national rankings.

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Axiom signs deal with the UAE to fly one astronaut to ISS in ’23

10:52 am

Capitalism in space: Axiom announced today that it has signed an agreement with the United Arab Emirate (UAE) to fly a UAE astronaut to ISS in ’23 for a six month mission.

Axiom was able to put its own passenger on this flight because of a complex deal with NASA that had Axiom act as the go-between for Mark Vande Hei’s launch on a Soyuz in April ’21. Axiom brought the flight for NASA (which didn’t have the funds), and got in exchange a free seat for a passenger on a later American launch. Axiom has now sold that seat to the UAE.

The UAE in turn solidifies its space effort, with a six month manned mission to ISS.

The deal also demonstrates the priceless value of leaving ownership to American companies. Axiom made this deal to sell globally its long term space station plans, and it will use a SpaceX Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket to launch it. Both companies thus make money on their products, instead of the cash going to NASA. Such profits will only encourage further sales, not only to these companies but to other competing American rocket and space station companies.

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Watch today’s launches by SpaceX and Rocket Lab

10:35 am

UPDATE: The Rocket Lab launch has been pushed back to May 1st because of poor weather today. The live stream below is still valid but it won’t go active until about 20 minutes before launch.

Capitalism in space: Two American rocket launches are scheduled for today, first a launch of another 53 Starlink satellites on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral followed by the launch of 34 smallsats on Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket from New Zealand.

I have embedded the live stream of both below. The Rocket Lab launch will be especially exciting, because the company is going to attempt for the first time the recovery of the first stage for reuse by snatching it in the air with a helicopter as it slowly descends on parachutes.

The SpaceX launch is scheduled for 5:27 pm (Eastern), with the live stream going active about 20 minutes before launch. If successful it will be the shortest turnaround for a Falcon 9 first stage, only 21 days and shaving almost a week off the previous record.

About one hour later the Rocket Lab launch will occur, the live stream also going active about 20 minutes beforehand.

» Read more

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Launches of UK rocket company delayed by red tape in Iceland

10:11 am

Capitalism in space: Because the United Kingdom rocket company Skyrora has been unable to get Iceland to approve a suborbital test launch from that country, further test orbital launches from the new spaceport in Shetland in ’23 are threatened with delays.

The suborbital test launch had been scheduled to launch in September of last year, and has been delayed since because of this red tape.

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China’s Long March 2C rocket launches two Earth observation satellites

9:54 am

China yesterday successfully launched two Earth observation satellites using its Long March 2C rocket.

Since these were launched from one of China’s interior spaceports, the rocket’s first stage fell somewhere in China. No word if it used parachutes or grid fins to control that landing. Also, weather yesterday forced the scrub of a launch of China’s Long March 11 solid rocket from a sea-based launch platform. That launch has been rescheduled for tomorrow.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

16 SpaceX
12 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab.

The U.S. presently leads China 23 to 12 in the national rankings. Since there are two U.S. launches scheduled for later today, as well as a Russian and Chinese launch pending, these numbers will change in the next 24 hours.

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Rogozin: Expect delays for future Russian lunar probes

9:45 am

China/Russian Lunar base roadmap
The so-called Chinese-Russian partnership to explore
the Moon.

According to a statement by Dmitry Rogozin, head of Roscosmos, yesterday in the Russian state-run press, the launch of two unmanned probes to the Moon, Luna-26 and Luna-27, are likely to be postponed due to “the current circumstances.”

“As for the Luna-26 lunar orbiter and the Luna-27 heavy lander mission, possibly, it will be adjusted taking into account that in the current situation we will be spending the main financial and industrial resources on increasing the orbital group. Now it is more important,” the space chief emphasized.

The Roscosmos CEO also asked for understanding if the mission is postponed. “Science is very important but now we are talking about the viability of Russia’s orbital group, about bringing it to a new level, its work as a group of double and military designation. Yet we are not postponing the lunar missions for long,” he added.

Rogozin added that Luna-25, scheduled for launch this year, has not been postponed.

Apparently the more than $1 billion of income that Roscosmos has lost by its refusal to launch OneWeb’s satellites is forcing it to make choices. For the government, the priority has to be launching communications, weather, navigation, and military surveillance satellites. Being tight on cash, Rogozin thus has no recourse but to favor those launches over any purely science missions.

This decision also demonstrates that Russia’s so-called partnership with China to explore the Moon, as shown in the graphic to the right that was released by China and Russia in June 2021, is pure hogwash. as I noted then:

Of the three Russian missions, Luna 25 is scheduled to launch later this year, making it the first all-Russian-built planetary mission in years and the first back to the Moon since the 1970s. The other two Russian probes [Luna-26 and Luna-27] are supposedly under development, but based on Russia’s recent track record in the past two decades for promised space projects, we have no guarantee they will fly as scheduled, or even fly at all.

Rogozin also said yesterday that he plans further talks with China in May to further their partnership concerning lunar exploration and building a lunar base. Let me translate: “We need cash to launch anything, and hope the Chinese will provide some.”

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China plans a constellation of communications/GPS-type satellites around Moon

9:43 am

The new colonial movement: According to a statement by one Chinese official on April 24th, China now plans to launch a constellation of communications/GPS-type satellites that will orbit the Moon and provide support for its unmanned and manned missions to the surface.

China will take the lead in demonstrating a small, lunar relay communication and navigation system, Wu Yanhua, deputy director of the China National Space Administration (CNSA), told Chinese media on April 24. The first launch for the small constellation could take place in 2023 or 2024, according to Wu, who added that countries around the world are welcome to jointly build it.

That first launch will likely be a relay satellite to support the first unmanned landers/rovers targeting the lunar south pole. It will also likely be the first of several satellites designed to provide service long term for China’s planned manned lunar base, what it has dubbed the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS). Though announced as a project partnered with Russia, expect a large bulk of the work to be done by China.

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SpaceX’s Freedom spacecraft docks with ISS

9:15 am

Capitalism in space: As planned SpaceX’s Freedom capsule successfully docked with ISS last night, delivering four NASA astronauts to ISS for a five-month mission.

This launch was the sixth manned flight to ISS by SpaceX, and the seventh overall, with two of those seven launches entirely commercial and paid for by private customers. It appears that, based on already announced plans, that ratio between government and private customers should continue during the next few years, though beyond that expect the private launches to eventually outpace the government ones. When that begins to happen SpaceX might decide to expand its fleet from the four capsules (Endeavour, Resilience, Endurance, and Freedom) it presently operates.

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Ukrainian rocket for Nova Scotia spaceport so far unaffected by war

9:07 am

Capitalism in space: According to the CEO of Maritime Launch Services, the Canadian company that is building a spaceport in Nova Scotia, work on the Ukrainian Cyclone-4M rocket that the spaceport wants to offer customers has as yet not been impacted by the invasion by Russia.

Steve Matier, CEO of Maritime Launch Services, says daily planning work continues with the makers of the Cyclone-4M rocket, who are based in Dnipro, Ukraine. Matier said in an interview Tuesday his company still hopes to conduct its first launch sometime in 2023, once it gets final construction and environmental approval from the province for its proposed facilities near Canso, N.S.

However, Matier also said the first launches from the spaceport will not use the Cyclone. Instead, these launches would use smaller unnamed rockets putting smaller payloads in lower orbit. Since the company’s initial business model had been to offer to satellite customers not only the spaceport but the rocket, this statement suggests the company has changed that business model and is now marketing the spaceport to other rocket companies.

Matier’s comments were in connection with the announcement that Maritime has now become a publicly traded company.

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SpaceX successfully launches 4 astronauts into orbit

1:05 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX early this morning successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch its new capsule, Freedom, carrying four astronauts into orbit and heading to a docking with ISS this evening.

The first stage successfully landed on the drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its fourth flight.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

16 SpaceX
11 China
5 Russia
2 ULA
2 Rocket Lab

The U.S. now leads China 23 to 11 in the national rankings. In fact, at this moment the U.S. leads all other nations combined, 23 to 19.

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Watch first flight of SpaceX’s fourth capsule, Freedom, carrying four NASA astronauts

10:23 pm

The next launch of a NASA crew to ISS is scheduled to occur tonight at 3:52 am (Eastern) using SpaceX’s new capsule, Freedom, the fourth in the company’s fleet of manned spacecraft. Note too that the first stage of this Falcon 9 rocket will be making its fourth flight into space.

I have embedded the live stream below. As I write this, at 1:19 am (Eastern) the crew has just entered the capsule. Go here for details about the flight, which will be a five month mission.

Commander Kjell Lindgren, veteran of one previous expedition on the space station, leads the four-person crew awaiting liftoff Wednesday. He will be joined by pilot Bob Hines and mission specialist Jessica Watkins, two first-time fliers from NASA’s astronaut corps. European Space Agency astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti, a native of Italy who spent nearly 200 days in orbit in 2014 and 2015, rounds out the crew.

If the launch goes well, Freedom will dock with ISS about sixteen hours later.

If you watch, I must once again note that every person you see aiding the astronauts will be a SpaceX employee. Except for some of the announcers and NASA’s mission control for operating ISS, the launch mission control and everything else is run by this privately owned commercial company.

» Read more

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SpaceX’s signs up another airline to use Starlink Wi-Fi on its planes

9:48 am

Capitalism in space: Hawaiian Airlines has now become the second commercial airline company to agree to use SpaceX’s Starlink Wi-Fi on its airplanes.

Hawaiian Airlines said Monday that it will offer free wireless internet service from SpaceX’s Starlink satellite network on flights between Hawaii and the U.S. mainland, Asia and Oceania. The airline said it is in the early stages of putting the service in place on some aircraft next year.

Honolulu-based Hawaiian said it’s the first deal between Elon Musk’s space company and a major airline, although charter operator JSX announced a deal with SpaceX last week.

Expect all the American airlines to soon switch to Starlink. The low orbit of the satellites and its high speed make it superior to the other satellite options presently available.

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Today’s blacklisted American: The media knives are now out for Elon Musk

9:22 am

Musk: a target of the leftist press
Musk now a target of the leftist press.

They’re coming for you next: Elon Musk’s effort to buy purchase of Twitter to end the ability of its leftist management and employees to censor opinions they don’t like has apparently activated this same blacklisting effort against Musk and his companies across many media fronts, based on two stories yesterday.

First we have this story in a local Florida newspaper, describing a handful of letters of complaint to the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) about SpaceX’s proposal to build an industrial wastewater treatment facility on its leased facility on Cape Canaveral.

The draft proposal was first filed back on February 2, 2022. It requests permission from the Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) to create a facility that would “discharge up to 3,000 gallons per day of non-process potable water to a stormwater management system that, under specific conditions, discharges to a ditch leading to the Indian River Lagoon.”

After notice of the draft proposal was published in Hometown News Brevard, it drew the attention of Titusville residents.

The article then proceeds to give us a detailed description of each complaint letter sent to FDEP, all five. Based on the similar language in all the letters, they appear to be part of a quickly organized campaign by local environmentalists to block any expansion of SpaceX’s Florida operations. Because of these letters, FDEP has been forced to hold a public meeting today to discuss SpaceX’s proposal.

Next, we have this story from Business Insider: » Read more

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Endeavour splashes down successfully

8:38 am

UPDATE: Endeavour has successfully splashed down, and crews are approaching to recover the capsule.

This by the way completes Endeavour’s third manned flight into space.

Original post:
——————-
The SpaceX capsule Endeavour, carrying Axiom’s first commercial passengers, undocked with ISS last night and is scheduled to splashdown off the coast of Florida shortly.

I have embedded the live stream below, scheduled to begin shortly.
» Read more

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Ispace secures first insurance deal for private lunar lander

9:25 am

Capitalism in space: The Japanese startup Ispace has now obtained the first insurance plan ever for a private lunar lander.

The startup has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Mitsui Sumitomo Insurance (MSI), a Tokyo-based firm that started working with Ispace in 2019, to insure its first attempt to send a lander to the moon later this year. The agreement outlines intentions to finalize terms for the insurance in the months leading up to Ispace’s Mission 1 (M1), which is currently slated to fly on a Falcon 9 rocket no earlier than the fourth quarter of 2022.

According to Ispace, the insurance would cover any damage the lander takes between separating from the rocket in a trans-lunar orbit (TLO) and touching down on the moon. As well as covering a failed landing, the insurance would guard against issues stemming from radiation exposure as the lander travels through the Van Allen belts to its destination.

The insurance does not cover the payloads Ispace’s lander will carry, including a rover from the United Arab Emirates.

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Return of Axiom mission delayed again because of weather

9:16 am

Because of marginal winds at the splashdown points, SpaceX, Axiom, and NASA agreed today to delay the return of Axiom’s first private mission to ISS one more day.

The Axiom Mission 1 (Ax-1) crew is now targeting to undock from the International Space Station 8:55 p.m. EDT Sunday, April 23.

Weather permitting, the Ax-1 crew is targeted to close the hatch at about 6:45 p.m. Sunday, April 24, to begin the journey home in SpaceX Dragon Endeavour with splashdown off the coast of Florida approximately 1:00 p.m. Monday, April 25.

This delay will also delay the launch of NASA’s next crew to ISS on SpaceX’s new Dragon capsule, Freedom, now scheduled for launch no earlier than April 27th.

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ULA begins stacking Atlas-5 rocket that will launch Starliner on demo mission

9:19 am

Capitalism in space: ULA has begin assembling the Atlas-5 rocket it will use in May to launch Boeing’s Starliner manned capsule on its second unmanned demo mission.

The article provides a detailed description of the status of both the rocket and the capsule, including this update on the valve issues that caused the August ’21 launch of this second demo mission to be scrubbed:

Engineers believe the valve components likely corroded from the interaction of nitrogen tetroxide propellant with moisture that seeped into the thrusters on the spacecraft’s service module, then permeated a Teflon seal inside the valve itself.

Technicians removed the service module from the Starliner’s crew module in January for shipment to a test facility in New Mexico, where teams are performing tests to better understand the valve problem. The OFT-2 [in May] mission will fly with a new service module, one originally assigned to the first Starliner mission with astronauts. Teams inside Boeing’s Starliner hangar mated the crew module with the new service module March 12. Filling of the service module with propellant is expected to occur this month, before the spacecraft rolls over to ULA’s rocket integration building for stacking atop the Atlas 5.

Boeing said the Starliner team designed a new purging system to help prevent moisture from getting into the valves during the upcoming launch campaign while the spacecraft is in the factory and at ULA’s launch site.

Boeing’s engineering failures with Starliner have been expensive to the company. Not only has Boeing had to pay out of its own pocket an extra $410 million for this second demo flight, it has had to write off the cost of that first service module. Furthermore, not being operational has probably meant it has lost business to SpaceX and its Dragon capsules. For example, when Axiom first announced it was going to fly commercial tourist flights in 2018, it was expected the company would use both Dragon and Starliner capsules. That might still happen, but at least for the first few years of operations all of Axiom’s business has gone to SpaceX. NASA has also had to throw all its manned flights to SpaceX for the next few years, some of which was originally aimed at Boeing.

Should this second demo flight succeed, however, the company will finally be in a position to launch passengers on Starliner and thus make money from the capsule.

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Blue Origin rethinking plans for landing its first stage?

8:57 am

Capitalism in space: Though the company has said little, according to this local Florida newspaper Blue Origin is rethinking its plans to use the cargo ship Jacklyn as a platform for landing its New Glenn first stages in the ocean.

The 600-foot former cargo ship has been docked at the Port of Pensacola since 2018 and undergoing a retrofit by the Pensacola company Offshore Inland to enable the ship to serve as a landing platform for the first stage of Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket.

When contacted by the News Journal to ask if the retrofit project had been canceled, a Blue Origin spokesperson responded that no final decision had been made yet.

The company is looking at “different options” for recovery vessels that give the best chance for mission success while also being safe and cost-effective, the spokesperson said.

This could be good news or bad news. Either it means Blue Origin is now getting close to finally launching New Glenn, which is three years behind schedule, or it has suddenly realized that using this cargo ship never made sense, and it is scrambling to find a solution at this late date.

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