Tag: competition

German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg replaces its CEO

9:27 am

Screen capture of test failure
Screen capture from video of test failure in August 2024.
Note the flame shooting out sideways.

In a major managerial shake-up as it preps for its first launch attempt later this year, the German rocket startup Rocket Factory Augsburg has replaced its CEO, switching from someone with more general business experience to a CEO with a lot of direct experience in the space industry itself.

In an April 11 statement not widely publicized by the company, RFA announced that Stefan Tweraser, who had been chief executive since October 2021, had been replaced by Indulis Kalnins.

The announcement did not give a reason for the change, but it suggested that the company was seeking someone with expertise in the aerospace industry to lead the company. Kalnins is on the aerospace faculty of a German university, Hochschule Bremen, and has been managing director of OHB Cosmos, which focused on launch services.

…Tweraser, by contrast, came from outside the space industry. He joined RFA after past work that included being a consultant at McKinsey & Company, country director for the DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland) region at Google and executive at music streaming company Deezer. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted phrase provides I think the explanation for the change. The company had hoped to launch last year, but had a major failure during a static fire engine test on the launchpad, destroying the rocket first stage. The company has probably decided it needed someone in charge who had some hands-on experience with launchpad operations.

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Blue Origin completes ground simulation of Orbital Reef space station

9:16 am

Artist rendering of Orbital Reef design, as of April 2025
Artist rendering of Orbital Reef design, as of
April 2025. Click for original image.

According to a NASA press release today, Blue Origin has successfully completed a ” human-in-the-loop test” in a ground mock-up of the commercial Orbital Reef space station.

The human-in-the-loop test scenarios utilized individual participants or small groups to perform day-in-the-life walkthroughs in life-sized mockups of major station components. Participants provided feedback while simulating microgravity operations, including cargo transfer, trash transfer, stowage, and worksite assessments.

…The milestone is part of a NASA Space Act Agreement originally awarded to Blue Origin in 2021 and focused on the design progress for multiple worksites, floors, and translation paths within the station. This ensures a commercial station can support human life, which is critical to advancing scientific research in a microgravity environment and maintaining a continuous human presence in low Earth orbit.

Though this test might be providing useful information, it leaves me cold. While Blue Origin’s partner in this project, Sierra Space, has been testing real hardware for its LIFE inflatable module (as seen on the left side of the artist’s rendering above), Blue Origin itself appears to have built nothing real. Instead, it is following the old big space paradigm of companies like Boeing that invest none of its own money in development. Instead, the company uses NASA’s development money solely for PR mockups, in the hope the PR will convince NASA to give it the full contract, worth billions. Only then will the real work begin.

Boeing did this with Starliner, and we can all see now how well that turned out.

It also appears that the overall scale of Orbital Reef has been reduced significantly when comparing the current design above with the earlier artist renderings.

Based on this new information, I have dropped Orbital Reef to the bottom in my rankings of the four private space stations presently under development. While Starlab has built as little (following the same play-it-safe paradigm), the company has at least gotten its final design approved. It has also signed a partnership with the European Space Agency, giving it a powerful government backer in addition to NASA.

  • Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for a 30 day mission. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
  • Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth scheduled for this spring, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
  • Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, with an extensive partnership agreement with the European Space Agency. It recently had its station design approved by NASA.
  • Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Overall, Blue Origin has built almost nothing, while Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building its module for launch.
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Italy awards Italian company contract to design constellation of radio telescopes orbiting the Moon

8:45 am

Capitalism in space: The Italian Space Agency has awarded the Italian company Blue Skies Space a contract to design a constellation of radio telescopes orbiting the Moon and designed to map the universe’s earliest radio emissions.

The project, named RadioLuna, aims to uncover whether a fleet of small satellites in a lunar orbit could detect faint radio signals from the universe’s earliest days—signals that are nearly impossible to pick up on Earth due to man-made radio interference. These signals, in the FM radio range, come from a time before the first stars formed, when the universe was mostly hydrogen gas. By listening from the far side of the Moon, free from Earth’s radio noise, scientists could use the satellites to uncover a missing piece of the puzzle in our understanding of the cosmic “dark ages.”

The study will establish the viability of operating simple and cost-effective CubeSats equipped with commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) components orbiting the Moon and will be led by Blue Skies Space Italia S.r.l., a subsidiary of UK-based Blue Skies Space Ltd. Project partner OHB Italia will be responsible for the definition of a viable platform in a Moon orbit.

The contract is another example of Italy (and Europe) shifting to private enterprise in space. Rather than design this project in-house, its space agency is contracting it out to private companies.

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SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites

9:54 pm

Continuing its relentless launch pace, SpaceX this evening successfully launched another 27 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 27th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. This is a new record for flights by a Falcon 9 booster, exceeding the space shuttle Endeavour’s record of 25 by two, and trailing the space shuttle Columbia by only one. The record for most reflights by a spacecraft is presently 39 by the space shuttle Discovery, followed by the shuttle Atlantis at 33. Expect several Falcon 9 boosters to exceed these numbers in the next two years.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

43 SpaceX
19 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 43 to 33.

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New Trump executive order requires Pentagon to “prioritize commercial solutions”

9:24 am

A new Trump executive order signed on April 9, 2025 now requires the space divisions in the Defense Department to “prioritize commercial solutions” in all its future space projects.

The executive order, called “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base,” referenced commercial technology multiple times, including call to utilize existing authorities to “expedite acquisitions throughout the Department of Defense, including a first preference for commercial solutions” and “the restructuring of performance evaluation metrics for acquisition workforce members to include the ability to demonstrate and apply a first consideration of commercial solutions.”

According to Pentagon officials, this order simply underlines what they have been doing. Maybe so, but the reason the Pentagon has been moving in this direction is not because it wanted to, but because of two factors in the past decade that forced action. First, for the past three decades the Pentagon has increasingly failed to get much accomplished in space. Under Air Force leadership (before the creation of the Space Force) the military focused on designing its own big satellites, creating projects that generally went overbudget and behind schedule. That general failure demanded change.

Second, to institute change Trump created the Space Force in his first term with the express desire to shift the military from building its own gold-plated satellites to buying them from the private sector. And despite the four years when Biden was president, the Pentagon maintained that shift, which is why this new Trump executive order will do little to disturb its present space plans.

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Indian satellite thruster manufacturer opens American factory

9:09 am

Capitalism in space: The Indian satellite company Bellatrix, which up-to-now has manufactured electrical attitude thrusters for satellites built by India’s space agency, has now opened a factory in Delaware in order to attract business from American satellite companies.

Bellatrix hired Chris MacDonald, a former business development director at rocket developer Astra and satellite provider Terran Orbital, to lead its recently created U.S. subsidiary, headquartered in Delaware. The manufacturing facility would support localized production, testing and delivery of propulsion systems to enable faster turnaround times and closer collaboration with U.S.-based customers, MacDonald said via email.

Founded in 2015, Bellatrix’s electric hall effect thruster has been used in a handful of missions for India’s space agency in recent years.

Bellatrix is not the only foreign space company to open offices in the U.S. for similar reasons. The Japanese startups Astroscale and Ispace have done the same, as well as several other companies listed in the article at the link. It appears the new American launch industry, which has significantly lowered the cost to orbit, is attracting orbital business from across the world.

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Vast signs three more customers to fly payloads on its first space station

8:58 am

Haven-1 with docked Dragon capsule
Haven-1 with docked Dragon capsule

The space station startup company Vast has now signed up three more customers to fly payloads on its first space station, Haven-1, due to launch now in the spring of 2026 on a 30-day-long private commercial manned mission.

Vast announced April 8 that Japan Manned Space Systems Corporation (JAMSS), Interstellar Lab and Exobiosphere will fly research payloads on the Haven-1 station launching no earlier than May 2026. They join Redwire and Yuri as payload partners for the station.

JAMSS, which has supported research on Japan’s Kibo module on the International Space Station, will provide a multi-purpose payload facility for microgravity research on Haven-1. Interstellar Lab, a French company, will provide an advanced life sciences research facility called Eden 1.0 that will be used for experiments such as plant growth. Exobiosphere, based in Luxembourg, will fly a biotechnology payload to perform pharmaceutical and healthcare experiments.

The company says it still has one or two payload racks available for additional customers, suggesting that it is finding enough demand to justify profitable commercial operations.

Below are the four private space stations presently under development, with those I consider the most advanced in development ranked first:

  • Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for a 30 day mission. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
  • Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS, with a fourth scheduled for this spring, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland. Though there have been rumors it has cash flow issues, development of its first module has been proceeding more or less as planned.
  • Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Though Blue Origin has apparently done little, Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building the station’s modules for launch.
  • Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman. It recently had its station design approved by NASA.
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China launches another technology test communications satellite payload

10:52 pm

China today successfully launched a test technology satellite for doing “multi-band and high-speed communication technology validation tests, possibly for future large internet/communications constellations, its Long March 3B rocket lifting off from its Xichang spaceport in southwest China.

No word on where the rocket’s lower stages and four strap-on boosters, all using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed inside China.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

40 SpaceX
19 China
5 Rocket Lab
5 Russia

SpaceX still leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 40 to 33.

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Congress: Let’s throw some more astronaut lives away so we can preen for the camera!

2:48 pm

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

Here we go again: As I noted yesterday, the hearing this week of Jared Isaacman, Donald Trump’s nomination to become NASA’s next administrator, revealed almost nothing about what Isaacman plans to do once confirmed by the Senate. He very carefully kept his options open, even while he strongly endorsed getting Americans on the Moon as fast as possible in order to beat the Chinese there. When pressed by senators from both parties to commit to continuing the SLS, Orion, and Lunar Gateway projects to make that happen, Isaacman picked his words most cautiously. He noted that at the moment that plan seemed the best for getting to the Moon first. He also noted repeatedly that this same plan is years behind schedule and overbudget.

Like any smart businessman, Isaacman knows he cannot make any final decisions about SLS, Orion, or Gateway until he takes office and can aggressively dig into the facts, as administrator. He also knew he could not say so directly during this hearing, for to do so would antagonize senators from both parties who want those programs continued because of the money it pours into their states. So he played it coy, and the senators accepted that coyness in order to make believe they were getting what they want.

But what do these senators want? It appears our politicians (including possibly Trump) want NASA to launch humans to the Moon using SLS and Orion and do so as quickly as possible, despite knowing that both have real engineering issues of great concern. Instead, our elected officials want politics to determine the lunar flight schedule, instead of engineering, the same attitude that killed astronauts on Apollo 1 in 1967, on Challenger in 1986, and on Columbia in 2003. The engineering data then said unequivocally that things were not safe and that disaster was almost guaranteed, but NASA and Congress demanded the flights go on anyway, to serve the needs of politics.

With SLS and Orion it is now the same foolishness all over again. » Read more

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Anti-Musk terrorists damage Musk statue in Brownsville

9:23 am

In another demonstration of their intolerance and willingness to commit violence and vandalism, anti-Musk terrorists have damaged a bust of Elon Musk in Brownsville that had been placed there by a French entrepreneur.

A 9-foot-tall statue depicting a bust of tech billionaire Elon Musk has been vandalized in South Texas. According to multiple posts across social media, the statue of the SpaceX CEO was vandalized not far from where the company’s Starbase facility sits near Boca Chica Beach.

“The recently installed Elon Musk statue, known as ‘Elonrwa,’ has been damaged. Visible patches of the outer layer appear to have been peeled off the face,” a Facebook user who goes by RGV.me said in an April 8 Facebook post. The Facebook post is accompanied by a photograph showing two areas where it appears a top layer of material has been stripped from the statue, revealing a white or pale gray layer underneath.

This senseless hate of Musk, almost certainly committed by supporters of the Democratic Party — which has been encouraging this violence because it sees Musk as an opponent — must end. And if the fools perpetrating this vandalism don’t come to their senses and stop voluntarily, they should be stopped by force and imprisonment. Just because you disagree with someone on policy does not give you the right to break the law.

And if you doubt this vandalism isn’t being spurred on eagerly by the leadership of the now vile and wholly evil Democratic Party, you need only watch that party’s Senate leader, Senator Charles Schumer (D-New York), practically endorse it when asked:
» Read more

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Isaacman’s nomination hearing reveals nothing of note

10:00 am

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

The Senate committee on commerce, science, and transportation has just concluded its hearing on the nomination of Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator. Several take-aways:

First, there was little opposition to Isaacman on either side of the aisle. He will be confirmed easily.

Second, Isaacman was very careful to say nothing that might commit him to keeping all present Artemis programs (such as SLS, Orion, or Gateway) unchanged. He instead made it clear his goal is for NASA to attempt a parallel programs to establish a permanent American presence on both the Moon and Mars. This enthusiasm suggests he sees Starship as the vehicle capable of making those parallel programs possible.

In other words, he kept his options open. His goal is to get the Artemis program functioning more efficiently, and will do whatever is necessary to do so. He repeatedly made it clear that too many of NASA’s projects, including specifically Artemis, are routinely overbudget and behind schedule, and this must be fixed.

At the same time he said his goal is to get Americans back to the Moon ahead of the Chinese, and suggested that the present plan using SLS and Orion is likely the fastest way to do so. The technical issues that might make that program very unsafe for the astronauts however were never mentioned.

We shall see whether Isaacman as administrator will be so sanguine about sending Americans around the Moon within an Orion capsule with a questionable heat shield.

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Firefly wins Space Force contract to test orbital maneuvers with its Elytra space tug

12:33 pm

Firefly yesterday announced it has been awarded a Space Force contract to use its Elytra space tug to test orbital maneuvers designed for military purposes.

As part of the mission, Elytra will host a suite of government payloads, including optical visible and infrared cameras, a responsive navigation unit, and a universal electrical bus with a payload interface module. Firefly’s Elytra Dawn configuration will utilize common components from the company’s launch vehicles and lunar landers, including the avionics, composite structures, and propulsion systems, to enable on-demand mobility, plane changes, and maneuvers with high delta-V capabilities and reliability.

Though unstated, the inclusion of cameras suggests the Pentagon wants to test Elytra’s ability to maneuver close to other satellites and photograph them.

This contract further illustrates Firefly’s effort to diversify its space products. Like Rocket Lab, it is not relying solely on its rocket division to make money, but is also developing and selling a range of space products, from lunar landers to orbital tugs to satellite equipment.

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