The U.S. Court of Federal Claims yesterday denied Blue Origin’s suit against NASA’s lunar lander contract award to SpaceX’s Starship spacecraft.
NASA has immediately said it “will resume work with SpaceX under the Option A contract as soon as possible.”
I guess Blue Origin might have to consider the idea of actually building stuff now.
Capitalism in space: After four years of review, the FCC has finally approved a license for Boeing to launch its own internet constellation of 147 satellites.
The license requires Boeing to launch half the constellation by ’27, with the rest in orbit by ’30.
The real significance of this constellation, combined with those being launched by SpaceX, OneWeb, Amazon, and even the Chinese, is that they are creating a gigantic demand for launch services. A lot of rockets of all kinds from many companies are going to be needed to put in orbit the tens of thousands of satellites now proposed.
Such demand, should it continue, guarantees that launch costs will drop, because there will be a lot of business and competition to force the costs down.
A large United Nations committee of nations has approved, by a vote of 163 to 8, a United Kingdom proposal, backed by the U.S., to start a working group to develop rules nations must follow in connection with any military actions in space.
The plan for the Open-Ended Working Group (OEWG), which would meet twice in 2022 and 2023 and work on a basis of consensus, was pushed by the United Kingdom and co-sponsored by a number of Western countries including the United States. It passed First Committee with 163 “Yes” to eight “No” votes, and nine abstentions — 13 more votes than last year’s UK-sponsored resolution passed last year by the UN General Assembly soliciting national views on military space threats and how to ameliorate them.
In order to become a reality, the full UN General Assembly now needs to approve the OEWG plan during their session in December, but given the First Committee vote, this is pretty much a foregone conclusion.
According to the announcement by the UN, the opposition was as follows:
The Committee approved — by a recorded vote of 163 in favour to 8 against (China, Cuba, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Iran, Nicaragua, Russian Federation, Syria, Venezuela), with 9 abstentions (Armenia, Belarus, Comoros, Djibouti, India, Israel, Pakistan, Tajikistan, Zimbabwe) — the draft resolution “Reducing space threats through norms, rules and principles of responsible behaviours”.
The Russians further expressed its forceful opposition in TASS, the government’s state-run press.
A detailed explanation of the proposal’s goals can be found here. Overall it appears the UK, with the backing of the United States, wants to begin a dialogue on the use of the military in space, in the hope that some reasonable compromise can be made.
From what I can gather from both articles as well as the UN announcement, I do not see this as good news, even though it was opposed by the authoritarian nations like China, Cuba, North Korea, and Russia. There are a number of clauses in this proposal that were approved that the western capitalist nations of the world opposed.
In the end, I expect these negotiations to produce a treaty not unlike the Outer Space Treaty, whereby most of its mandates make sense but hidden within will be one or two that in the end will be used successfully to squelch individual freedom and private enterprise. Power will be centralized to the governments, not to the citizens, and the rights of future space colonists will be limited significantly. No bill of rights for them!
Meanwhile, Russia today announced it has signed an agreement with Zimbabwe to outline their future cooperation in space.
The battle lines are being drawn, but I have little faith in the commitment to freedom and individual rights by those in power in the west.
Capitalism in space: With the announcement on October 30th that the Space Force has added a third military Falcon Heavy launch for ’22, the rocket is now scheduled to fly five times next year.
The addition of a third national security mission for Falcon Heavy will make for quite a scheduling challenge for SpaceX’s three-core rocket that also is projected to launch in 2022 a Viasat-3 commercial broadband satellite with an Astranis communications satellite as a secondary payload, as well as NASA’s Psyche planetary science mission.
The Space Force missions USSF-44 and USSF-52 both were scheduled to fly in 2021 but have been delayed by payload readiness and range scheduling issues. No target launch dates have been announced yet although the Space Force said they would happen in 2022. Falcon Heavy rockets lift off from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
It increasingly looks like 2022 will be a major record-setting year for rocketry.
Capitalism in space: Amazon has chosen the smallsat startup rocket company ABL to launch its first two prototype Kuiper satellites, with that launch targeted for ’22.
KuiperSat-1 and KuiperSat-2 will reach orbit via the RS1, a new rocket developed by California-based ABL Space Systems. Amazon also announced today that it has signed a multi-launch deal with ABL to provide these early Project Kuiper launches.
The 88-foot-tall (27 meters) RS1 is capable of launching 2,975 pounds (1,350 kilograms) of payload to LEO, according to its ABL specifications page. ABL is charging $12 million for each launch of the two-stage rocket. The RS1 has not flown yet, but ABL has said that it aims to conduct a debut launch from Alaska’s Pacific Spaceport Complex before the end of 2021.
Earlier this year, Amazon announced that it had signed a deal with United Launch Alliance (ULA), whose Atlas V rocket will loft operational Project Kuiper craft on nine different launches.
Does anyone notice what rocket company has not won these contracts, even though its owner is also Amazon’s founder and biggest shareholder? That’s right, as far as I can tell, Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket has apparently not won any contracts to launch Amazon’s Kuiper satellites. Notice also that the deal with ULA uses its Atlas-5 rocket, not its new Vulcan rocket, even though ULA wants Vulcan to replace the Atlas-5 beginning in ’22.
Since both New Glenn and Vulcan depend on Blue Origin’s troubled BE-4 rocket engine, these contracts strongly suggest that the engine’s technical problems have not yet been solved, and that neither rocket will be flying in ’22 as both companies have promised.
NASA announced today that the manned launch of four astronatus to ISS on SpaceX’s Endurance spacecraft has been delayed again, pushed back to November 6tth because of a “minor medical issue”.
The agency says one of the astronauts has a “minor medical issue.” The issue is not a medical emergency and not related to COVID-19, according to NASA.
The launch is now set for 11:36 pm (Eastern) that evening.
With the beginning of a new month comes my monthly sunspot update, based on NOAA’s most recent monthly graph of sunspot activity. That graph is below, annotated to show the previous solar cycle predictions and thus provide context. It has now been extended from last month to include the Sun’s sunspot activity in October.
Sunspot activity in October continued to be higher than predicted, though the month saw a slight drop from September. Even so, the number of sunspots seen on the Sun’s facing hemisphere in October were the most since August of 2016, when the Sun was ramping down to solar minimum.
Those who are regular readers of this webpage know that I generally have a low opinion of the American public school system, based on ample evidence. It generally fails to educate while working to abuse and indoctrinate young children in ways that are so ugly and inappropriate that often the administrators and teachers involved could actually be charged with child abuse.
Today I am instead going to provide an example of a public school doing right by its students. On Saturday I was invited to watch as an afterschool engineering group, run by John Morris, the Engineering & Mathematics teacher at Casa Grande Union High School in Arizona, went out to launch model rockets that they had built themselves.
The launch to the right was the first of the day. The rest of the post below is image oriented, to give you a feel of what it involved in teaching young high school students how to make and launch small rockets. That activity, while involving relatively simple engineering, provides them the right grounding for learning how to work hard, make sure they do the work right, and learning that failure is really only a step towards success.
» Read more
The early morning launch on October 31st of the next manned flight of SpaceX’s Endurance capsule to ISS, has been delayed because of poor weather downrange from the launch site.
The bad weather could have interfered with recovery operations should a launch abort had been necessary and the capsule was forced to land in the Atlantic.
The launch has now been rescheduled for 1:10 am (Eastern) on November 3rd.
Capitalism in space: The rocket startup ABL has now leased space at the Port of Los Angeles for “spacecraft processing” and cargo shipment.
Included in the five-year lease is a 25,000-square-foot integration and payload processing facility, 20,000-square-foot warehouse space, and a 13,000-square-foot office space. The location, previously occupied by rocket launching ship company Sea Launch, will be used by ABL for a range of operations including vehicle processing, payload integration, and maritime operations supporting the company’s launch facilities around the world.
This deal comes on top of ABL’s announcement earlier this week that it has raised an addition $200 million in investment capital, and is planning its first launch in mid-December.
Jeffrey Horak, speaking in opposition to mask mandates
at Fergus Falls school board on October 11th.
They’re coming for you next: Jeffrey Horak, a surgeon in Minnesota with 32 years of experience, was fired by his hospital just nine days after he publicly told a school board it had no business mandating masks on little children, that such a decision belonged solely to the parents.
When asked why Horak was so suddenly fired, officials at the hospital provided the typical weasel-worded answers designed to dodge responsibility.
A spokesperson for Lake Region Healthcare deferred questions to Lake Region Medical Group, saying that the “Medical Group Board made the decision about discontinuing Dr. Horak’s practice, not LRH.”
Dr. Greg Smith, the president of the Medical Group Board, said they made the “decision to discontinue Dr. Jeff Horak’s employment contract after a thorough review process.”
“The reasons for Dr. Horak’s separation are a confidential matter,” Dr. Smith said in a statement provided to Fox News on Tuesday. “To be clear, this was a decision that was made by Dr. Horak’s peers who serve on the Medical Group Board, not by Lake Region Healthcare, the community-based hospital where Dr. Horak practiced General Surgery.”
Capitalism in space: The new smallsat rocket company Astra has revealed that it will make its fourth attempt to reach orbit with a launch window opening on November 5th.
That this launch could take place only a little over two months since Astra’s last attempt, which failed, speaks well of the company. They have very quickly fixed the fuel line issues that caused that August 28th failure and then moved immediately to fly again.
Moreover, the company’s overall pace of launch is excellent. This will be their fourth launch attempt since September 2020, less than fourteen months, suggesting that when they finally succeed and begin operational launches they will also keep their promise of frequent and rapid launches.
Capitalism in space: Boeing today announced that it has had to taken another $185 million charge out of its earnings, in addition to the $410 million previously deducted, in order to cover the problems and delays in developing its Starliner manned capsule.
When Boeing took the original earnings charge, it said it did so because it committed to redo the uncrewed flight test at no expense to NASA, a point a Boeing executive reaffirmed at the Oct. 19 briefing. “There’s no additional charges that will be going to the government for this. This is something that The Boeing Company will make sure we’ve got covered as we get this vehicle prepared,” said John Vollmer, vice president and program manager for Boeing’s commercial crew program.
These costs are beginning to pile up. Boeing has got to get this capsule fixed and flying, not only to begin bringing in some income but to show the world that it can do this right.
The new colonial movement: Poland yesterday announced that it has signed the U.S.-led Artemis Accords.
In brief comments at the ceremony, [Polish Space Agency (POLSA) President Grzegorz Wrochna] said he saw the Artemis Accords as a first step toward greater cooperation with the United States. He noted that while Poland is a member of the European Space Agency, Polish space companies are looking to expand their business outside Europe. “They want to reach for new markets, especially the U.S. market,” he said. “They want to participate in missions of other agencies, especially NASA. We would like to open the door for them, and I believe this is the first step.”
The full list of signatories at this moment: Australia, Brazil, Canada, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, New Zealand, Poland, South Korea, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates, Ukraine, and the United States.
While the accords — introduced by the Trump administration — are cleverly written to appear to endorse the mandates of the Outer Space Treaty, they are also written to bluntly minimize that treaty’s hostility to private property. With each new signatory, the ability to overturn that treaty’s limitations preventing legal protection to private property in space grows, as it binds a growing number of nations in an alliance to do so.
Not surprisingly, Russia and China have said they oppose the Artemis Accords. Both of these nations do not want legal protections in space to private citizens or companies. Instead, they wish that power to reside with them, or with the United Nations.
Whether the strategy behind the Artemis Accords will work however remains unclear. That strategy requires the U.S. to maintain its strong support for private property in space. Any wavering of that support will weaken the ability of this new Artemis alliance to overturn the Outer Space Treaty’s provisions that make private ownership of territory in space impossible.
It is now almost twenty months since COVID-19 crossed the ocean from China and arrived in the United States. When it arrived there was great fear as its true deadliness at that time was unknown. Though the sparse data from China, South Korea, and the Diamond Princess cruise ship suggested it was merely a variation of the annual flu and not something to fear, the computer models put forth by a variety of scientific institutions at that time instead predicted millions were about die from it.
No one really knew for certain. Some legitimately argued that the lockdowns, mask mandates, and oppressive restrictions on normal activities were necessary to limit its harm.
Almost two years have now passed, and we can now assess realistically which of those scenarios was accurate. To best understand these things I strongly believe is always best to look at the big picture, the larger and bigger the better. In this case, let’s look at the entire U.S. and measure COVID-19’s impact by noting the total number of people in the United States who have become infected by COVID since its arrival and comparing that with the total number who have died. These actual numbers will tells us truly how deadly COVID has been, and whether our continued fear of it is justified.
CDC’s COVID-19 estimates as of May 2021
According to CDC estimates, as of May 2021, 120.2 million Americans had been infected by COVID, of which 101.8 million experienced actual symptoms. The CDC in these same estimates in May calculated that 767,000 people had died from COVID.
These CDC estimates were further supported by a Nature peer review study published in August 2021, which estimated that by the end of 2020 100 million Americans had been infected with COVID.
» Read more
Capitalism in space: Firefly has completed and approved the design of its unmanned lunar lander, and will now begin construction with a launch date targeting 2023.
Firefly said Monday that it has completed the “critical design review” phase of its program to develop a lunar lander. This means the company can now proceed to build and order components for the “Blue Ghost” spacecraft and begin its assembly. Firefly aims to launch the spacecraft as the primary payload on a Falcon 9 rocket in the fall of 2023.
NASA is sponsoring the mission as part of its Commercial Lunar Payload Services Program, through which it pays private companies to deliver scientific experiments to the Moon. NASA is paying $93.3 million for this Blue Ghost mission, which will carry 10 payloads down to the Mare Crisium lunar basin in September 2023.
In the next three years a plethora of commercial unmanned lunar landers have scheduled flights, all bringing both NASA science as well commercial payloads to the lunar surface. All are being designed and built by private companies. Expect some to fail. Some however will succeed, and will thus establish themselves as the go-to companies if you want to put a payload on the Moon.
Capitalism in space: The head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, said yesterday that they have finally approved the use of SpaceX’s Dragon capsules to launch their astronauts to ISS.
Crew Dragon spaceships of Elon Musk’s SpaceX company have gained substantial experience for Russian cosmonauts to travel aboard them as part of cross flights, Head of Russia’s State Space Corporation Roscosmos Dmitry Rogozin said on Monday. “From our viewpoint, SpaceX has gained sufficient experience for representatives of our crews to make flights aboard its spacecraft,” the Roscosmos chief told reporters at the 72nd international astronautical congress.
Russia will now begin barter negotiations for the future flights, whereby for each Russian that flies on Dragon an American will get a free flight on Soyuz.
Capitalism in space: With its first test launch of its rocket scheduled for mid-December, the smallsat rocket startup ABL has raised $200 million in investment capital, in addition to the $170 million it had raised in March.
Dan Piemont, president and co-founder of ABL, told SpaceNews that the company still has most of the $170 million it raised in March, describing the new round as “somewhat opportunistic and driven by insider interest.” Much of the additional funding, though, will go to scale up production of its RS1 vehicle that is nearing its first launch. “We have received large orders for RS1 and will need to scale faster than we previously planned to meet the demand,” he said, with more than 75 launches under contract. “Our investors have seen the incredible demand for RS1 and want to make sure we have all the resources we need to serve it. We updated our operating plan accordingly, and you’ll see that in the form of more launch sites, more facilities, more machines and larger production crews next year.”
ABL is one of seven rocket companies — the others are Virgin Orbit, Astra, Firefly, Relativity, Aevum, and Blue Origin — that had planned a first test launch in ’21. Of those, Virgin Orbit has had two successful orbital launches, while Astra and Firefly have attempted orbital launches but failed. Blue Origin’s first launch of its New Glenn rocket has been delayed to next year, but it is questionable it will occur then. The launch dates for Relativity and Aevum remain unannounced.
Capitalism in space: Sierra Space and Blue Origin today announced [pdf] that they are forming a consortium of space companies to build a space station they dub Orbital Reef. From the press release:
The Orbital Reef team of experts brings proven capabilities and new visions to provide key elements and services, including unique experience from building and operating the International Space Station:
- Blue Origin – Utility systems, large-diameter core modules, and reusable heavy-lift New Glenn launch system.
- Sierra Space – Large Integrated Flexible Environment (LIFE) module, node module, and runway-landing Dream Chaser spaceplane for crew and cargo transportation, capable of landing on runways worldwide.
- Boeing – Science module, station operations, maintenance engineering, and Starliner crew spacecraft.
- Redwire Space – Microgravity research, development, and manufacturing; payload operations and deployable structures.
- Genesis Engineering Solutions – Single Person Spacecraft for routine operations and tourist excursions.
- Arizona State University – Leads a global consortium of universities providing research advisory services and public outreach.
I suspect that this deal is actually telling us that Jeff Bezos is spreading some of his Blue Origin money to help finance Sierra Space’s work. The deal also appears to be an effort to generate work for Blue Origin’s not-yet-launched New Glenn rocket and Boeing’s not-yet launched Starliner capsule.
The release says nothing about target dates, but the overview [pdf] on the Orbital Reef website says they are aiming for the second half of this decade.
While the success of such a project can only increase the competition and lower the cost to orbit, thus making the settlement of space more likely, this announcement reeks of the same kind of high-minded promises that came with Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lunar lander: Big plans by the best and most established space companies, with little firm commitment by these companies to actually build anything.
Compared to the Blue Moon lunar lander project, however, this project has one very significant difference that could make it real. Orbital Reef is not being touted in order to win a government contract. It is being touted as a commercial station for private customers. Such a project will require these companies to either invest their own money, or obtain outside investment capital, to build it. To make money they can’t sit and wait for their customers to pay for it, since customers never do that (except the government). They need to first build it.
Meanwhile, the BE-4 engine is not yet flight worthy, so that Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket remains no closer to launch, even though it is now approaching two years behind schedule.
Capitalism in space: A high orbital tourist flight on SpaceX’s Dragon capsule has been cancelled because the company organizing it, Space Adventures, apparently failed to find enough customers.
Company spokesperson Stacey Tearne confirmed to SpaceNews that the company had dropped plans for the mission. “The mission was marketed to a large number of our prospective customers, but ultimately the mix of price, timing and experience wasn’t right at that particular time and our contract with SpaceX expired,” she said. “We hope to revisit the offering in the future.”
This revises the list of scheduled of orbital tourist flight that began with SpaceX’s Inspiration4 flight in September.
Why Space Adventures could not get enough customers for their Dragon flight is unclear. It could be for many reasons outside of not enough demand. For example, SpaceX might have determined that the prospective customers were not physically capable for the flight. Maybe Space Adventures sold two or three tickets, but couldn’t fill the manifest before their SpaceX contract expired.
The cancellation however does suggest that the price per ticket might have to come down to garner business for orbital tourist space flights. Or those flights need to arrive at a space station where the passengers can spend more than two or three days.
