Tag: freedom

SpaceX launches 20 more Starlink satellites

9:38 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched 20 more Starlink satellites, 13 of which were capable of direct cell phone use, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

49 SpaceX
20 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 56 to 32. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 49 to 39.

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Proposed private GPS-type satellite constellation raises $19 million

9:56 am

Capitalism in space: Xona, a company that wants to build a commercial GPS-type satellite constellation, has now raised $19 million in private investment capital.

The round was led by Future Ventures and Seraphim Space. New investors NGP Capital, Industrious Ventures, Murata Electronics, Space Capital, and Aloniq also joined the round.

Xona is developing a commercial positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) service through a constellation of low-Earth orbit satellites. The company plans to offer the service as an alternative or backup to the Global Positioning System.

It appears the commercial users of GPS want more than one American-owned system in operation in case the government’s present constellation goes out, either because of an attack, jamming, or a major technical failure, and are willing to pay for it. Xona’s constellation, once built, could initiate the full transfer of GPS responsibility from the government to the private sector.

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ULA signs contract to build a second transport ship for its Vulcan rocket

9:45 am

ULA yesterday announced it has issued contracts for the construction of a second transport ship for bringing its Vulcan rocket from the factory in Alabama to the launch sites in Florida and California.

ULA awarded Bollinger Shipyards a contract to build a second roll-on/roll-off vessel classed for both ocean-going and river service. Construction has just begun on the 356-ft-long ship at Bollinger’s shipyard located in Amelia, Louisiana with delivery to ULA expected in January 2026.

…“ULA currently has its first ship called RocketShip that has been in service for decades and with this second ship called SpaceShip our maritime fleet will enable enterprise transportation capacity of four Vulcan launch vehicles across two voyages to either the East or West Coast,” said Ellerhorst.

ULA also hired a company in Rhode Island to design and supervise the construction. The company needs two ships because it has a lot of launches scheduled over the next few years, including 38 for Amazon to help launch its Kuiper internet satellite constellation as well as a number the U.S. military.

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A French rocket startup enters the competition

9:35 am

A new French rocket startup, Hyprspace, has assembled the engine and body of a first stage demonstrator, dubbed Terminator, to be used to test that new engine in preparation for the first suborbital test launch.

On 4 May 2024, the company shared the first glimpse of the Terminator demonstrator at its facility in Le Haillan, France. According to the update, teams had worked through double shifts over a three-week period to prepare the demonstrator for its test firing. The test will be conducted at a Direction générale de l’armement missile test facility in Gironde, France. HyPrSpace has not yet revealed when the test is expected to take place.

This engine will eventually be used in the company’s planned orbital Baguette-1 rocket for launching smallsats.

We now have at least five European rocket startups, three in Germany (Rocket Factory Augsburg, Isar, Hyimpulse), one in Spain (PLD), and one in France (Hyprspace). We also have Avio in Italy taking over ownership from Arianespace of its Vega family of rockets. That company is about to begin static fire testing a Vega-C upper stage, its engine nozzle completely redesigned following a launch failure. It hopes to resume flying by the end of the year.

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

12:07 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its third flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

48 SpaceX
19 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 55 to 31. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 48 to 38.

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A former SpaceX employee gives a fascinating account of what it is like to work there

10:29 am

Link here. The account is everything you would expect. The work culture is open, efficient, and aggressive. You need to provide value and be self-motivated or you will not survive.

This one story reveals a lot:

[I]f I was in a meeting and it was adding value to what I did daily, stay, or if I was adding value based on my expertise, stay — but if neither of those things were happening, you should get up and respectfully walk out.

In one instance, a government customer came in with a 50-slide deck. Six slides into the presentation, 75% of the room had walked out. I had to tell him that if he didn’t get to the point, I’d be the only person left in the room — and only because I had to walk him out. He skipped ahead to his last five slides. That kind of environment makes you much more efficient.

I bet there are a lot of corporate workers reading this that fervently wish they had the right to walk out of a meeting that was wasting their time. Furthermore, consider that government customer: He or she brought a slide deck where 90% of the slides were fluff. That indicates the kind of work atmosphere he or she comes from.

For smart people who want to be creative, it would be an incredible pleasure to work in such an environment. No wonder SpaceX produces such good products.

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Redwire developing a satellite designed to fly in extremely low orbits

10:07 am

The orbital manufacturing company Redwire is now developing a satellite, dubbed SabreSat, to fly for long periods in extremely low orbits where the atmosphere would normally cause the orbit to quickly decay.

SabreSat, Redwire Space’s satellite for very low Earth orbit, looks more like a dart than a traditional spacecraft. “As you think about aerodynamics, you want the dart to be skinny and long, not stubby and fat,” Spence Wise, Redwire senior vice president for missions and platforms, told SpaceNews.

Redwire is designing SabreSat for government intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance missions.

The satellite would fly in orbits from 55 to 200 miles altitude. By flying so low it will get far better images and ground data than spacecraft in higher orbits. It will also be less vulnerable to attack compared to high altitude aerial reconnaissance balloons or airplanes.

Its dart-like shape will meanwhile reduce friction so that less fuel will be required to maintain its orbit.

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Launch of first manned flight of Starliner rescheduled for May 17, 2024

9:31 am

Because ULA engineers have decided they need to replace the valve that forced a launch scrub on May 8th, the first manned launch of Boeing’s Starliner capsule to ISS has now been rescheduled to May 17, 2024.

The oscillating behavior of the valve during prelaunch operations, ultimately resulted in mission teams calling a launch scrub on May 6. After the ground crews and astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams safely exited from Space Launch Complex-41, the ULA team successfully commanded the valve closed and the oscillations were temporarily dampened. The oscillations then re-occurred twice during fuel removal operations. After evaluating the valve history, data signatures from the launch attempt, and assessing the risks relative to continued use, the ULA team determined the valve exceeded its qualification and mission managers agreed to remove and replace the valve.

Replacing the valve is a somewhat routine procedure, but it will take a few days, causing the two-week delay.

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Apparently rioting in support of murderous terrorists does not win the hearts and minds of the public

1:55 pm

Hamas vs Israel
Do the protesters really believe that behaving like
Hamas will get the public to support Hamas?
Courtesy of Doug Ross.

Good news: The student protests and riots on college campuses as well as at a variety of other public events in the past month in support of the terrorist organization Hamas has apparently succeeded in only one thing: tarnishing the reputations of their universities while disqualifying their own job prospects.

It appears the public really doesn’t support anti-Semitism and the killing of all Jews in Israel. Nor have the violent riots by the protesters to destroy libraries while illegally taking over campuses done anyting to change the public’s mind.

Who wudda thought it?

Instead, the public is appalled, and is showing its disgust in the past week in very public ways. For example, yesterday thirteen federal judges announced they will no longer hire law clerks from Columbia.
» Read more

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Scientists: Restrict all exploration on Mars to protect our future work!

10:52 am

In a paper just published, planetary scientists Australia have proposed strict guidelines for any future exploration on Mars in order to prevent future colonists from doing anything that might interfere with any future research the scientists might want to do.

The thrust of the paper, they comment, is to ensure that locales of geological significance on Mars do not suffer the same damage as many sites on Earth have faced. Sites on the Red Planet can be practically conserved while still allowing science and exploration to continue, they say.

“Geoconservation allows humanity to protect Earth’s story and geological history,” the researchers observe, “so that present and future generations can experience Earth’s aesthetic beauty, conduct scientific research, connect with various cultures, adequately protect and ensure the functioning of Earth’s biology and ecosystems, and learn about the history of our planet.”

Let me translate: “We academics fear allowing others the freedom to explore. We come first. Let’s create rules that will allow us to do what we want, while forcing others to ask us for permission to do what they want.”

Sadly, this mentality now rules throughout all of western civilization’s intellectual community, and its not much different than the totalitarian top-down attitudes of the Russians and Chinese. Those in charge or better educated simply know better than everyone else, and are hell bent on telling everyone what they can and cannot do.

The first few generations of colonists on Mars, the Moon, and the asteroids are going to find their hands badly tied. Freedom will not exist.

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Musk: SpaceX and Starlink don’t use artificial intelligence

10:31 am

During an interview at a recent conference Elon Musk admitted that both SpaceX and Starlink have found artificial intelligence (AI) lacking, and don’t use it at all.

The irony was that prior to this admission, Musk had been extolling AI’s potential, predicting it would someday do wonderful things.

Musk, who answered questions during 27th annual Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday, spent a sizable portion of his talk extolling the benefits of artificial intelligence. At one point, he said a “truth-seeking” AI could “foster human civilization” when asked about the role the technology would play in human’s everyday lives.

But when asked whether AI could “accelerate” his efforts in space exploration, he seemed less excited about the technology. …”I mean, oddly enough, one of the areas where there’s almost no AI used is space exploration,” Musk replied. “So SpaceX uses basically no AI, Starlink does not use AI. I’m not against using it. We haven’t seen a use for it.”

Musk continued, saying that he’s been testing improved AI language models by asking them questions about space — and the results have been disappointing. “With any given variant of or improvements in AI, I mean, I’ll ask it questions about the Fermi paradox, about rocket engine design, about electrochemistry — and so far, the AI has been terrible at all those questions,” Musk said.

Here we see the visionary meet the practical engineer/businessman. Musk always looks to the future with grand visions, but when it comes time to build those visions, he never allows his vision to interfere with practicality. AI is still essentially garbage-in-garbage-out. The rush by businesses and tech-firms to blindly use has resulted in more than a few disasters.

Musk doesn’t do anything blindly. He tested AI first, found it wanting, and thus put it aside, despite believing it will someday do wonderful things.

If only more companies used this approach. If they had, they might not have blindly pushed DEI and ESG requirements that have done nothing but harm to their companies, their work forces, and their bottom lines.

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SpaceX unveils the spacesuit Jared Isaacman will use to do the first private spacewalk

10:05 am

SpaceX this past weekend unveiled the spacesuit that Jared Isaacman will use on his Polaris Dawn mission, presently scheduled for this coming summer, to do the first spacewalk by a private citizen.

This spacewalk suit is based on SpaceX’s flight suits that astronauts presently wear when inside Dragon, but is much more capable. From SpaceX’s webpage:

Developed with mobility in mind, SpaceX teams incorporated new materials, fabrication processes, and novel joint designs to provide greater flexibility to astronauts in pressurized scenarios while retaining comfort for unpressurized scenarios. The 3D-printed helmet incorporates a new visor to reduce glare during the EVA in addition to the new Heads-Up Display (HUD) and camera that provide information on the suit’s pressure, temperature, and relative humidity. The suit also incorporates enhancements for reliability and redundancy during a spacewalk, adding seals and pressure valves to help ensure the suit remains pressurized and the crew remains safe.

Creating this suit was the main reason Isaacman’s five day orbital Polaris Dawn mission was delayed by almost two years.

I wonder what it cost SpaceX to develop this new suit. I strongly suspect it was much cheaper than the spacesuits NASA has hired Axiom and Collins Aerospace to create. It certainly has been built faster.

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Rocket Lab delays first launch of new Neutron rocket

9:41 am

Rocket Lab has delayed the first launch of its new larger Neutron rocket from late 2024 to mid-2025 in order to complete the testing of that rocket’s new methane-fueled Archimedes engine.

Many component, subsystem, and all-up system tests will be conducted throughout the test campaign. These tests will validate Archimedes’ transient start-up, steady-state, and shut down performance. The engine test and development campaign is a key driver of the schedule for Neutron’s first launch, which the Company today confirmed is now expected to take place no earlier than mid-2025.

That testing will also certify it for use in as many as twenty flights, as the Neutron rocket is being designed from the get-go to be reusable.

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Starliner launch scrubbed due to valve issue

9:21 am

Yesterday’s Starliner launch was scrubbed before launch because ULA had detected an issue with a valve on the Atlas-5’s Centaur upper stage, causing that valve to flutter because it had not closed in the proper position.

At the press conference that followed, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno explained that during an unmanned launch, engineers would have simply cycled the valve, which almost always works to get it to seat properly. ULA launch rules however forbids it from doing so on a manned launch, because that would be the equivalent of fueling the tank with people on board the rocket. The Atlas-5 was initially not built for manned flights, and though it has been upgraded to man-rate it, those upgrades did not permit ULA this capability, unlike SpaceX’s Falcon 9, which get fueled entirely after the crew boards Dragon.

They are reviewing the data to see if the valve will need to be replaced. If not, the launch could happen quickly. If it does, the launch will be delayed slightly longer, but not significantly. Right now ULA, NASA, and Boeing are targeting a May 10th launch.

It is worth listening to Tory Bruno’s explanation of the situation because of its clarity. I have embedded his comments below, time-stamped to when he began speaking.
» Read more

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The long delay in Israel’s final Gaza offensive has harmed everyone except the terrorists

5:32 pm

Hamas vs Israel
Even the Arabs recognize these facts.
Courtesy of Doug Ross.

Despite several months of delay forced on it by the Biden administration in its effort to placate the Democratic Party’s Islamic wing, Israel today began its final offensive against Hamas’s last Gazan stronghold in the southern city of Rafah.

According to the Israeli Defense Force (IDF), “The IDF is currently conducting targeted strikes against Hamas terror targets in eastern Rafah in southern Gaza.” It has also dropped leaflets throughout Rafah telling the general population to evacuate to the west and north into areas that Israel has set up to hold non-combatant refugees.

The initiation of this offensive is likely linked to Hamas’s actions this weekend. First Hamas proudly took credit for bombing the border crossing used to bring humanitarian aid to the city. That attack killed three Israeli soldiers, and put an end to the aid. Hamas also continued to stall and refuse to negotiate, and then when it was clear the offensive was about to start it suddenly announced it had accepted a ceasefire deal offered to it by Qatar and Egypt that Israel had no part in negotiating and had already rejected.

What will happen next is somewhat unclear. Israel will without doubt be able to take Rafah and likely eliminate the remaining four or so battalions of Hamas terrorists. Will it be able to do so without a large number of civilian casualties is unclear, as Hamas has a policy of using those civilians as shields. It will likely try to do so again.

The ramifications of the long delay in this offensive are however important. It occurred partly because Israel’s army wanted to regroup, but mostly because the Biden administration has been desperately trying to prevent it. The White House has threatened Israel in a number of ways if it moved forward with the attack, most recently by putting a hold on a shipment to Israel of ammo. Biden officials have also stated several times that they are considering a major change in its policy towards Israel if the Rafah offensive occurs.

Israel’s leader Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly made it clear that Israel has no intention of making any peace deal with Hamas. In the past month however it did appear the Israeli government was holding off on the offensive in order to placate the White House and hopefully work out a deal to get the hostages released.

In the end, the delay has served no good purpose, and in fact has had many negative consequences, against Biden, the Gazan people themselves, and the United States.
» Read more

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

11:22 am

It just keeps going and going: SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its fifteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

47 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 54 to 30. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 47 to 37.

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Another Starship/Superheavy update

9:15 am

Link here. The report details the extensive work being done by SpaceX engineers and construction crews at Boca Chica, not only upgrading and testing the 30th Starship and 11th Superheavy prototypes that will fly on the fourth orbital test flight but also improving and expanding the launch facilities there.

A static fire test of both vehicles could happen in the next week or so, though this remains uncertain.

Though it appears that SpaceX will be ready to fly by mid- to late-May, the key factor on when that fourth test flight occurs remains this:

…there is still no news on when Flight 3’s mishap investigation will be completed.

That investigation is being conducted by SpaceX. Once submitted to the FAA that agency will have to review it and issue its own conclusions (essentially rubber-stamping it), something that is guaranteed to take time. In the past it took the FAA from two to seven months to do this rubberstamping, with the time shortening after each flight. There have been indications that it hopes to reduce that time even further with this and later flights. We should therefore expect it to take anywhere from one to four weeks this time.

Thus, a May launch remains unlikely, as I predicted from the get-go. Expect the launch to occur in June, which though delayed will still be an improvement over the FAA’s past red-tape approval processes.

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Russia to NASA: We’ll wait a bit before putting our astronauts on Starliner

8:54 am

Even though Russia and NASA have a barter deal whereby one astronaut from each country flies free on each flight of its spacecraft, Russia it appears will forego flying any Russians on Boeing’s Starliner capsule for the immediate future.

At the May 3 briefing, though, NASA officials said it was unlikely that a Russian cosmonaut would be assigned to Starliner-1 [the first operational flight after the first manned demo flight launching today]. “We expect, on the Roscosmos side, they’re more likely to want to see a long-duration flight also, so we think they’ll want to start to fly with us on Starliner-2,” said Dana Weigel, NASA ISS program manager.

That would appear to disrupt the ongoing series of seat exchanges between NASA and Roscosmos. “We’re still working through that with our Roscosmos counterparts. It’s our desire to continue to do integrated crew,” she said, adding that NASA and Roscosmos don’t have an agreement yet in place for exchanging crews in the timeframe that will include Starliner-1.

This isn’t a surprise. Russia made the same decision with SpaceX’s Dragon manned capsule, waiting until it had flown a few times before agreeing to allow its astronauts on it. With Boeing Russia might be more hesitant, consider the problems Starliner has had in development plus the overall quality control issues known to exist at Boeing.

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German rocket startup Hyimpulse completes suborbital test launch

9:55 am

The German rocket startup Hyimpulse yesterday succesfully completed its first suborbital test launch, launching from the Southern Launch spaceport on the south coast of Australia.

The 12-metre, 2.5-tonne test rocket dubbed “SR75” lifted off shortly after 0500 GMT from a launch site in Koonibba, South Australia. It is capable of carrying small satellites weighing up to 250 kg (551 pounds) to an altitude of up to 250 km (155 miles) while being fuelled by paraffin, or candle wax, and liquid oxygen.

Paraffin can be used as a cheaper and safer alternative fuel for rockets, reducing satellite transportation costs by as much as 50%, according to HyImpulse.

The company hopes to launch its SL-1 rocket on its first orbital test flight next year.

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The pro-Hamas campus mobs were almost as barbaric as Hamas itself

2:29 pm

Library destroyed by pro-Hamas mob
Library destroyed by pro-Hamas mob

With the mobs of pro-Hamas protesters finally cleared from many occupied college campuses, we are now finding out just how much these rioters resembled the Hamas barbarians whose effort to murder Jews these protesters supported.

To the right is a screen capture from video taken during a short walk through of the inside of the Portland State University’s Millar Library, following the removal of the pro-Hamas rioters. The place was trashed in the most childish way. You can seem more evidence here. As noted by that report:

Paint splattered on floors. Spray-painted messages and screeds covering walls. Furniture moved and overturned. Security cameras disabled. Fire extinguishers missing and entrances blocked by stacks of chairs. “We’ve got our work cut out for us,” a facilities manager at Portland State University said Thursday as he examined the destruction left behind after a three-day occupation by pro-Palestinian protesters in Millar Library.

It also was reported that rare archival materials were stolen by the student mob.

The situation was the same at numerous universities. » Read more

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SpaceX last night launched another 23 Starlink satellites

11:42 am

The bunny is so fast I missed one: Last night, only a few hours after SpaceX launched two satellites for Maxar, out of Vandenberg in California, the company followed this with another launch of 23 Starlink satellites out of Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 19th launch, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leader board that I posted earlier today for the Chang’e-6 launch thus gave the wrong totals for SpaceX and the American launch industry. Below are the corrected numbers for the 2024 launch race:

46 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 53 to 30. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 46 to 37.

Hat tip to reader MDN to letting me know.

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Lockheed Martin withdraws bid to buy Terran Orbital

9:35 am

Lockheed Martin yesterday withdrew its early March offer to buy the satellite manufacuture Terran Orbital, purchasing the shares it did not already own for approximately $500 million.

No reason was given, but it appears the other shareholders at Terran Orbital objected to the purchase, and Lockheed probably decided the fight wasn’t worth it.

In that proposal, Lockheed offered to acquire the roughly two-thirds of Terran Orbital stock it did not already own. Lockheed also proposed to pay more than $70 million to buy outstanding stock warrants and either assume or repay $313 million in Terran Orbital debt, putting the total value of the proposal at more than $500 million.

Lockheed, besides being a major investor in Terran Orbital, is a major customer of the company, buying dozens of its smallsat buses for programs such as satellites for the Space Development Agency. Lockheed said in its offer letter that it accounted for 81% of Terran Orbital’s backlog.

Terran Orbital responded to the proposal March 4 with a stockholder rights plan, or “poison pill” move, to prevent a hostile takeover. It acknowledged the proposal and said an independent board committee would evaluate it as part of an ongoing strategic review.

Both companies now say they will continue to work together in the future.

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SpaceX launches two commercial Earth imaging satellites

3:10 pm

The bunny rolls on. SpaceX today successfully launched two commercial Earth imaging Worldview Legion satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage successfully completed its 20th flight, landing back at Vandenberg. This is the third Falcon 9 booster to fly twenty times. SpaceX now has two such boosters in its fleet, and is now working to upgrade its whole booster fleet to capable of flying forty times. The two fairings on this mission also completed their thirteenth and sixteenth flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

45 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 52 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 45 to 36.

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Pro-American UNC frat boys: Don’t hold a party, use the money more effectively!

2:37 pm

UNC Frat boys protecting American flag

Earlier this week a group of college students belonging to the Pi Kappa Phi fraternity at North Carolina University (UNC) put their bodies between a mob of pro-Hamas protesters and the American flag, as shown in the picture on the right. That mob had been attempting to remove Old Glory and replace it with the Palestinian flag. Video of the incident can be seen here, with the Hamas mob throwing bottles and garbage at the UNC students, while other American students circle about in-between, holding up the Israeli flag in defiance.

The story quickly went viral in the conservative press. Then someone set up a Gofundme fundraiser to thank the students: “Pi Kappa Phi Men Defended their Flag. Throw ’em a Rager”. As noted by John Noonan, the origanizer:

Commie losers across the country have invaded college campuses to make dumb demands of weak University Administrators.

But amidst the chaos, the screaming, the anti-semitism, the hatred of faith and flag, stood a platoon of American heroes. Armored in Vineyard Vines and Patagonia, fueled by Zyn and White Claws, these triumphant Brohemians protected Old Glory from the unwashed Marxist horde — laughing at their shrieks and wails and shielding the Stars & Stripes from Soviet missiles.

These boys… no, men, of the UNC Chapel Hill Pi Kappa Phi, gave the best to America and now they deserve the best. Help us raise funds to throw this frat the party they deserve, a party worth of the boat-shoed Broleteriat who did their country proud.

To the shock of everyone, the money poured in. Within days more than 13,000 people had donated over $450K, with some donations topping five and ten thousand each.

Noonan now says he has found “a world class event planner [Susan Ralston] and she is already hard at work. She worked in the White House and knows what she’s about.” Noonan and GoFundMe is also attempting to identify every student seen holding up or defending the flag. It appears the goal is to to put together a big event that will not only be a great party but a political campaign rally.

I say that’s a big mistake. » Read more

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Private Nova Scotia spaceport company opens spaceport to all rocket companies

9:00 am

The company Maritime Launch, which has been building a new spaceport in Nova Scotia since 2016, has abandoned its original concept of providing both the launch facilities and rocket for satellite companies, and will instead make its launch facilities available to all rocket companies.

In an interview with The Journal last week, Matier – who started the spaceport project in 2016 to launch satellites with Cyclone-4M rockets it intended to buy from a Ukrainian manufacturer – said geopolitical realities in Eastern Europe now makes that approach unworkable. “We can’t get the rockets out of Ukraine,” he said. “So, we’ve pivoted away from a customer-supplier relationship with [them] … There’s such huge demand for satellites going into orbit that there’s all these [other] rockets in development that don’t have a home. The bottleneck is really the spaceport, and that’s what we’re addressing.”

According to the article at the link, the spaceport is already negotiating with an unnamed European rocket company to do an orbital launch by 2025. Matier also said there will a suborbital launch at the spaceport this summer, but offered no details about the rocket or payload.

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Astroscale to go public

8:51 am

abandoned upper stage, taken by ADRAS-J
Click for original image.

The Japanese orbital tug start-up Astroscale announced yesterday that it is becoming a publicly traded company on the Tokyo stock market, beginning June 5, 2024.

The company plans to offer 20.8 million shares in the initial public offering, but has not announced a share price. According to filings with the exchange, Astroscale will set that price May 27.

Astroscale has raised more than $375 million through a series of private rounds, most recently a $76 million Series G round in February 2023. That funding has primarily come from Japanese investors, including a strategic investment by Mitsubishi Electric in that Series G round.

The company has also won two major contracts with Japan’s space agency JAXA, building its two ADRAS-J missions to first rendezvous and survey an abandoned upper stage (as shown to the right) and then fly a grapple mission to de-orbit that stage sometime in the future.

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Voting by conservatives HAS made a difference, just not enough so far

1:24 pm

Voting does make a difference
Voting does make a difference.

In one of my essays last week I took to task the many Republican conservatives who repeatedly say there is no point voting for Republicans because the leadership of the Republican Party does not represent conservative or American interests, and is in many ways as corrupt as the Democrats, only in a slightly different way.

[T]his refusal to support Republicans because they aren’t perfect simply guarantees that the Marxist and very corrupt Democratic Party will gain more power. The result is even worse policies, and more corruption, and congresswomen like Sheila Jackson-Lee and NASA administrators like Bill Nelson.

It is all very self-defeating. If conservatives went out and always voted for the most conservative candidate available to them, the power in Congress and in local legislatures would quickly shift rightward. It would also encourage other individuals even more conservative to run for office.

Many commenters for that essay disputed my claim, and still insisted there was no reason to vote any longer because the whole system is rigged.

This claim however is wrong. Though there is certainly ample evidence of vote tampering and corruption in the whole system, these issues can be overcome by the voters, if they have the courage and determination to vote. Proof of this fact was given in this op-ed published on April 27, 2024 and entitled “GOP Establishment’s Days Are Numbered”. The writer, Kevin Roberts, is president of the Heritage Foundation, which while solidly conservative has itself too often allied itself with that establishment, and thus is not to be trusted blindly in all political matters. However, in describing how that think tank had fought the gigantic foreign aid bill for the Ukraine that the Republican establishment and the Democrats pushed through, Roberts also noted these very important facts:
» Read more

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NASA announces launch coverage for the first Starliner manned capsule launch on May 6, 2024

10:23 am

NASA today released the details for its public media coverage of the first manned launch at 10:34 pm (Eastern) on May 6, 2024 of Boeing’s Starliner capsule.

NASA will provide live coverage of prelaunch and launch activities for the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test, which will carry NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams to and from the International Space Station.

Launch of the ULA (United Launch Alliance) Atlas V rocket and Boeing Starliner spacecraft is targeted for 10:34 p.m. EDT Monday, May 6, from Space Launch Complex-41 at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The flight test will carry Wilmore and Williams to the space station for about a week to test the Starliner spacecraft and its subsystems before NASA certifies the transportation system for rotational missions to the orbiting laboratory for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program.

Starliner will dock to the forward-facing port of the station’s Harmony module at 12:48 a.m., Wednesday, May 8.

Though that coverage includes several prelaunch and post launch press conferences, the key coverage of the launch itself will begin at 6:30 pm (Eastern) on May 6th, about four hours before the launch itself. It will also include the capsule’s docking with ISS on May 8th.

I will embed NASA’s Youtube live stream here on Behind the Black on both dates, though as always I sugggest waiting until just before launch and docking to tune in. The four hours of streaming prior to launch is mostly going to be NASA propaganda, touting the agency and often misconstruing the facts to overstate its importance. This launch will be just like SpaceX’s Dragon launches, in that almost everything will be run by the two private companies involved, Boeing and ULA, and not NASA. NASA’s real involvement will only begin at the docking to ISS.

This first manned flight of Starliner is long past due. It was supposed to occur about four years ago, but numerous technological and management problems at Boeing forced many delays. Getting that capsule operational will finally give NASA two American companies capable of putting humans in space. It will also offer some competition to SpaceX, though this competition will be weak until Boeing can demonstrate Starliner’s reliability.

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NASA wants to know the important technology the commercial space industry needs

10:10 am

Capitalism in space: NASA is now asking the commercial space industry to tell it which of 187 “technology shortfalls” it should give priority to for funding.

The agency has released a list of 187 “technology shortfalls,” or topics where current technology requires additional development to meet NASA’s future needs. The shortfalls are in 20 areas ranging from space transportation and life support to power and thermal management.

Through a website, the agency is inviting people to review the listed technologies and rate their importance through May 13. NASA will use that input to help prioritize those technologies for future investment to bridge the shortfalls.

This decision illustrates well NASA’s effort in the past decade to shift from being the boss which tells the space industry what to do to becoming a servant of that industry. In the past NASA would focus solely on what it considered its needs in deciding what new technology to fund. Often that would result in projects that NASA considered cool, but were dead-ends commercially, never used by anyone.

Now NASA wants to function more like it used to prior to 1957, when it was called the NACA. Then it worked to provide the engineering data that the aviation industry requested. This change is great news, because it means that NASA’s many small technology development contracts will better serve the needs of the industry and its need to make profits, rather the government’s wish list of projects, some of which serve no one’s real need.

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SES to buy Intelsat for $3.1 billion

9:57 am

Two of the world’s largest and oldest satellite companies of merging. The Luxembourg satellite company SES today announced that it is buying outright the American-based satellite company Intelsat for $3.1 billion in cash.

The companies announced April 30 that they had agreed on the deal, subject to regulatory approvals. SES will pay $3.1 billion in cash along with certain contingent value rights for 100% of Intelsat. The transaction is not expected to close until the second half of 2025.

SES said it will fund the deal through existing cash on hand, which it estimates to be $2.6 billion at the end of March, along with debt. The combined company would have about $4.1 billion in annual revenues and estimated adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization of $1.9 billion this year. The combined company will remain headquartered in Luxembourg, where SES is based, but will maintain a “significant presence” at Intelsat’s home in the Washington, D.C., area.

These companies had tried to put together a merger deal in early 2023 but those negotiations failed.

This merger continues the consolidation of the older satellite companies that have for decades been focused on building larger high-orbit geosynchronous satellites and are now feeling great competitive pressure from the low-orbit constellations of Starlink and OneWeb.

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