Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch another 47 Starlink satellites into orbit.
The first stage successfully completed its 11th flight. Both fairings were reused.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
9 SpaceX
4 China
2 Russia
2 ULA
The U.S. now leads China 14 to 4 in the national rankings.
Romania on March 1st became the sixteenth nation to sign the Artemis Accords, designed to get around the Outer Space Treaty’s restrictions on private enterprise and property rights in space.
Romania is now the third former Soviet block nation to sign the accords, joining Poland and the Ukraine. The full list of signatories now includes Australia, Brazil, Canada, Israel, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand, Poland, Romania, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, the Ukraine, and the United States.
Up to now Germany and France — two of the west’s most important major space powers — have resisted signing, probably because both countries have had strong partnership ties with Russia, and Russia opposes the accords. The Russian invasion of the Ukraine however has caused Germany to break off all such Russian cooperation, which suggests it now may be more amendable to signing. I also suspect France may become more willing, though predicting France in these matters is always difficult.
ULA today successfully launched a new NOAA weather satellite.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
8 SpaceX
4 China
2 Russia
2 ULA
The U.S. now leads China 13 to 4 in the national rankings.
Capitalism in space: NASA today officially announced that it has extended its contract with SpaceX for manned Dragon flights by three, paying the company an additional $900 million.
Prior to the modification, SpaceX was contracted to fly three more missions to the ISS: Crew-4 and Crew-5 in 2022 and Crew-6 in 2023. With the extension, which is “fixed-price, indefinite-delivery/indefinite-quantity,” per NASA’s statement. SpaceX’s period of performance now runs through March 31, 2028 — a nice regular paycheck for the growing launch and space operations company.
This contract extension raises what NASA is paying SpaceX for manned launch services from $2.6 billion to $3.49 billion.
While it is likely NASA would have brought more Dragon flights, it is also likely that some of these flights would have instead been bought from Boeing, if its much delayed Starliner manned capsule had been available. It is not, so SpaceX gets the business.
Boeing’s next attempt to complete Starliner’s first unmanned demo mission to ISS is now scheduled for May.
Capitalism in space: Construction of the United Kingdom’s first spaceport in more than a half century is now set to begin this month in the Shetland Islands, with the first launch expected before the end of the year.
The Lamba Ness peninsular in Unst will be home to the £43 million spaceport, with builders set to start work in late March, after Shetland Islands Council gave the project planning permission.
Three launchpads will be built at the SaxaVord spaceport, allowing for the launch of small satellites into either polar or sun-synchronous low-Earth orbits.
The company is aiming to launch 30 rockets a year, and has set the target of seeing its first orbital launch from UK soil after the third quarter of this year.
It appears now that the United Kingdom is going to have two different competing spaceports, one on the Shetland Islands and the second in Sutherland, Scotland. It appears the UK rocket startup Skyrora as well as a partnership between Lockhead Martin and the smallsat rocket startup ABL will launch from Shetland, while the UK company Orbex will use Sutherland.
Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab announced yesterday that it will build the manufacturing factory for its new Neutron rocket at the Wallops Island in Virginia, close to the company’s launchpad there.
The complex will be home to a rocket production, assembly, and integration facility, as well as a dedicated launch pad for the Neutron rocket located on the southern end of Wallops Island. The estimated 250,000 square foot state-of-the-art complex will be constructed on a 28-acre site adjacent to the Wallops Island Flight Facility and will include a Launch Control Center, Rocket Lab’s fifth global operations center for launch activities and on-orbit operations. To support rapid production of the Neutron rocket, current plans for the complex include automated fiber placement robotic production systems capable of laying up meters of Neutron’s new, specially formulated carbon composite structures in minutes. As a reusable rocket, Neutron is designed to land back on the launch pad after a mission and from there it would be returned to the production complex for refurbishment and re-flight.
The Wallops Island spaceport hopes the state of Virginia will commit $45 million of its own money to this project, but that money still needs to be approved by the state’s legislature.
“Assuming that is done and blessed by the legislature, and we have no reason to believe it will not be, $15 million will go into construction for the facility, and the 30 million will be geared toward the construction of the new launch pad,” Mercer said, noting that the pad would be multi-purpose, not a Neutron exclusive.
While all signs suggest that this week’s launch from Kazakhstan of another 36 OneWeb satellites will proceed as planned, later Soyuz-2 launches either from Russia or French Guiana now seem doubtful.
Russia has suspended all further Soyuz-2 launches from French Guiana. And though all the Kazakhstan launches have been paid for and Russia appears willing to proceed, the war has created issues.
But even if Baikonur remains open, it is unclear whether export restrictions could affect the transport of OneWeb satellites from where they are made in Florida to the launchpad in Kazakhstan.
Another potential wrinkle, unrelated to sanctions: OneWeb has traditionally used An-124 aircraft that are operated and maintained by Ukraine’s Antonov to ship its spacecraft overseas. Availability issues aside, airspace restrictions over Europe could complicate otherwise routine logistics.
It will not surprise me if OneWeb will look for other launch services, though this will certainly damage its bottom line. First, it will likely not get a refund from Russia for the Soyuz-2 launches, which means it will pay twice for those launches if it switches to another rocket company. Second, the war is likely going to delay further launches regardless, which will delay roll out of its service and thus prevent it from obtaining customers.
The first promised deliver by Elon Musk of new Starlink terminals arrived in the Ukraine today, only two days after promised.
Ukraine digital minister Mykhailo Fedorov, who tagged Musk in a request on Twitter on Saturday, posted that Starlink was “here” in Ukraine — with a photo showing more than two dozen boxes of the company’s user kits in the back of a truck.
Each Starlink kit includes a user terminal to connect to the satellites, a mounting tripod and a Wi-Fi router. It’s not known how many kits SpaceX is sending to support Ukraine.
Fedorov thanked Musk in his tweet; Musk responded: “you are most welcome.”
Ukraine-based Oleg Kutkov tweeted a screenshot of an internet speed test on Monday, saying “Starlink is working in Kyiv” and thanked SpaceX for the company’s support.
Two dozen Starlink terminals is only a drop in the bucket, but with a first delivery this quickly, many more are likely to follow, and make a significant difference in helping the Ukraine block Russia’s invasion.
Capitalism in space: Rocket Lab today successfully completed its first launch in 2022 as well as the first launch from a second launchpad in New Zealand, using its Electron rocket to place in orbit a Japanese commercial radar satellite.
At the moment of writing the upper stage has not yet deployed the satellite, though deployment should happen momentarily. UPDATE: Satellite deployed successfully.
The new launchpad gives Rocket Lab three launchpads, two in New Zealand (both operational) and one in Virginia (delayed due to the NASA bureaucracy but about to go operational).
Rocket Lab is now tied with five other rocket operations, 4 private and 2 government, all with a single launch in ’22. The leaders in the 2022 launch race remain unchanged:
8 SpaceX
4 China
2 Russia
The now U.S. leads China 12 to 4 in the national rankings. At this same point in 2021, the U.S. had only completed 8 launches, so the pace this year is significantly higher. If this pace is maintained, the U.S. will complete 72 launches, which will just break the country’s best previous year of 70 successful launches in 1966. This total would also more than double the average yearly launch total for U.S. since 1966.
In response to a plea from the Ukraine’s deputy prime minister, Elon Musk announced today that SpaceX has activated its Starlink internet constellation in the Ukraine and is sending more terminals there immediately.
How the terminals will be delivered, or who would receive them, was not made clear by Musk.
Gregory Manco, a fighter for free speech
Don’t comply: Professor Gregory Manco, fired a professor at St. Joseph’s University because he publicly expressed some opinions, has now sued the university and six individuals (including one student whom Manco never even taught) for discrimination, breach of contract, negligence, defamation, slander, and civil conspiracy.
Manco’s story was covered twice previously in my daily blacklist column, first in March 2021 when he was suspended for having opinions the university did not like, and then in August 2021 when the university fired him for having those opinions.
Manco however is not bowing to this ill treatment. His complaint outlines in detail how the college and these individuals conspired to destroy him through false statements and slanders. He is demanding a full financial recovery for the loss of income plus compensatory and punitive damages for their actions.
Read his complaint, especially the section outlining the facts of the case. It is most revealing, especially at the level of viciousness and dishonest against Manco by these individuals, documented by screen captures of emails and texts. Worse, it appears the university in public endorsed their lies, despite that fact that its own investigation had exonerated Manco on all counts.
Based on the facts of the case, Manco is likely to win, and win big. The best part of his suit is that he is demanding damages from the actual individuals who defamed him, not just the university itself. People who nonchalantly slander others for the purpose of destroying them must be made to realize that this bad behavior will only result in their own destruction. Only then will these blacklisting tactics cease. Kudos to Manco for fighting back.
Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched another 50 Starlink satellites using its Falcon 9 rocket.
The first stage, on its fourth flight, landed successfully on the drone ship in the Pacific. The fairings completed their third flight. The satellites themselves have not yet been deployed, as of this moment. Deployment is expected in about an hour.
The leaders in the 2022 launch race:
8 SpaceX
2 China
2 Russia
SpaceX is so far maintaining a launch rate of one launch per week in ’22, as the company had predicted.
Capitalism in space: Stratolaunch’s Roc airplane, the largest ever flown, successfully completed its 4th flight yesterday, testing for the first time the retraction and extension of its landing gear.
The flight lasted one hour and forty-three minutes.
The company is now aiming to begin full operations in the second half of ’23, when it hopes it will also be dropping versions of its Talon-A test vehicle from the bottom of Roc to perform hypersonic tests for the military as well as commercial companies.
The Russian invasion might be signaling the end of the ISS partnership.
Though the international ramifications of the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia in the past week will be far reaching and hard to predict, we can get a hint by reviewing the impact on Russia’s long-standing partnership on ISS as well as the effect the invasion will have on a number of commercial enterprises dependent on both Russian and Ukrainian space rocketry.
The International Space Station
All signs so far from the western partners on ISS indicate that they are guardedly hopeful that the cooperation with Russia will continue unimpeded. According to two stories (here and here) describing a panel discussion today at George Washington University Space Policy Institute, state department officials expressed complete confidence that the partnership at ISS will continue without interruption, as it did in 2014 when Russia invaded the Crimea, taking it from the Ukraine. From the first link:
» Read more
United Airlines: Run by fascist clowns
Our body, our choice! A federal court of appeals, in a 2-1 ruling on February 18, 2022, overruled a lower court judge and granted an injunction halting any punitive action by United Airlines against any employee who refuses to get a COVID shot because of religious or medical reasons.
The Fifth Circuit judges ordered the case to go back to Pittman for review. With Pittman’s concerns about irreparable harm assuaged, he will consider remaining preliminary injunction factors and ultimately decide whether unvaccinated employees with exemptions will return to work.
In November, Pittman notably told United Airlines employees that besides their inability to prove irreparable harm, their “arguments appear compelling and convincing at this stage. … United’s mandate thus reflects an apathy, if not antipathy, for many of its employees’ concerns and a dearth of toleration for those expressing diversity of thought,” he wrote in part. [emphasis mine]
The highlighted words illustrate the general intolerance of the left in imposing its mandates these past two years. Anyone who disagrees with them is considered a non-human who deserves no rights and can be oppressed and destroyed in any way the left sees fit.
United Airlines itself demonstrated its support for this intolerance when in December 2020 it kicked a family off a plane because the parents could not keep a mask on their two year old. As I wrote then,
You must watch the video to see how crazy and irrational this is. The father is holding her with a mask covering her face, even if it isn’t on her. More important, children don’t get COVID-19. Children don’t infect others. And the child is clearly not sick. To demand a mask on her makes no sense.
The lawsuit on which the judges ruled above is part of a pushback by United employees against the company’s rules that placed more than 2,000 people on unpaid leave, with many still under United contracts that prevent them from seeking other work.
Sadly, I can’t advise my readers to choose another airline company. All the airline companies have been pretty much as oppressive as United these past two years, generally treating their passengers like cattle on the way to slaughter. It would seem there is room here for some real competition, offering employees a tolerant work environment and its customers a pleasant flight. Right now no one is doing it.
Capitalism in space: Astra yesterday released an update on its investigation into its February 10th launch failure at Cape Canaveral.
The update doesn’t provide any conclusions, but merely notes that the company has completed its review of all “video and telemetry” from the event, and has reconstructed a full timeline from that data.
It is now reviewing that timeline to create what engineers call “fault trees”, each a specific scenario path pointing at a possible cause of the failure. Once that cause has been identified, engineers can then propose a solution.
According to the press release, the company is already “implementing corrective actions”, though the release provides no information as to what the cause was or what they are doing to correct. It states instead that once the investigation and corrections have been completely, the company will then release a full report.
Meanwhile, it appears that at least six law firms are considering suing the company, which became a publicly traded company in July 2021. These law firms “…are seeking clients who lost significant amount of money after purchasing the stock.” The launch failure caused the stock value to drop significantly, and these law firms apparently think that the company has made false claims about its plans — such as its claim that it will eventually be launch 300 times per year — and wish to put together a class action lawsuit based on this accusation plus the drop in stock price.
Whether Astra can meet its goal of 300 launches per year is certainly at this time questionable. However, it is too soon to call the company a failure. Once it recovers from the launch failure and resumes launches — a process that for any new rocket company generally takes a few years — that stock price will certainly recover, and will rise with each successful launch.
Only should Astra fail to resume launches, or continue to fail with each launch, will the stock truly crash, and thus provide these law firms with a possible case.
At the same time, in a free society we are supposed to recognize the concept of “buyer beware.” If you buy a product or a stock, it is at your own risk. If you fail to do due diligence beforehand, your loss is your responsibility, not the company who made the product or whose stock crashed.
It appears, based on everything Astra has so far done, an investment in its stocks while quite risky has not been an unreasonable gamble, making the present case for these lawsuits somewhat weak. Time will tell however whether that changes in the future.
An evening pause: This day, February 22nd and the birthday of George Washington, was once celebrated yearly by Americans to honor the leader of the American army in the Revolutionary War, the leader in the effort to write the Constitution, and the country’s first president who had the humbleness to step down after two terms in office.
Congress in 1971 turned that celebration into the empty “Presidents Day” holiday, that means nothing and devalues the profound importance of Washington, especially when compared to the generally mediocre individuals — with the except possibly of Lincoln alone — who followed him in that office.
I choose to celebrate Washington instead, on this the actual anniversary of this birth. The video below is a short but succinct and accurate outline of his life. It only touches the surface of the man’s unfathomable importance to American history, but it is start.
Capitalism in space: Northrop Grumman yesterday announced that it has awarded the contract for the first launch of its Mission Robotic Vehicle (MRV) — designed as a robot capable of installing multiple mission extension pods (MEP) on satellites — to SpaceX for a launch scheduled in 2024.
Once in orbit each MEP [Mission Extension Pod] is captured by the MRV and stowed for transport to the client satellite. The MRV rendezvous and docks with the client to install the MEP, which operates like an auxiliary propulsion device and uses its own thrusters to maneuver the client vehicle. Then the MRV detaches itself and moves on to grab another MEP for the next customer. The MRV is designed to stay in orbit for 10 years.
Anderson said the company expects to install as many as 30 propulsion pods over the life of the MRV.
“Our manifest for the MRV is full through mid 2026,” he said. Besides Optus, five other customers have signed term sheets to purchase mission extension pods.
Essentially, Northrop Grumman upgraded its Mission Extension Vehicle design to separate the repair section from the robot that installs it so that it is cheaper to launch everything. It can now launch multiple lighter and smaller repair pods as needed, with the robot already in orbit ready to go.
Capitalism in space: Northrop Grummann yesterday used its Antares rocket to successfully launch its Cygnus freighter to ISS.
This fact about this Cygnus is important:
This is the first Cygnus mission featuring enhanced capabilities to perform a re-boost to the space station’s orbit as a standard service for NASA; one re-boost is planned while Cygnus is connected to the orbiting laboratory.
In other words, Cygnus has been enabled to replace the boost capability that the Russians and Japanese provided.
The 2022 launch race:
6 SpaceX
2 China
2 Russia
1 Virgin Orbit
1 ULA
1 India
1 Europe (Arianespace)
1 Northrop Grumman
Getting out while the getting is good: Chamath Palihapitiya, who has been chairman of Virgin Galactic’s board since it went public in 2019, suddenly announced today that he has resigned from the company.
Palihapitiya’s SPAC, or special purpose acquisition company, took Virgin Galactic public in October 2019. The company’s stock has faced volatile trading since then — climbing above $60 a share in the months ahead of Sir Richard Branson’s test spaceflight, but it recently fell below its public debut price on news of a further delay in the start of commercial service.
The now-former chairman sold his personal Virgin Galactic stake in early 2021 that was worth over $200 million at the time. But he indirectly owns about 15.8 million shares through Social Capital Hedosophia Holdings.
Like Richard Branson, Palihapitiya sold the majority of his stock when the price was high, about the time the company flew its first and only passenger flight in July, with Richard Branson on board. His exit now suggests he wants out before the company’s dismal future prospects become obvious.
