Tag: freedom

Space Perspective buys ship to use for launching and recovering its passenger balloons

9:38 am

The high altitude balloon company Space Perspective has now purchased a 292-foot long ship to use as both a launch and recovery vessel for its planned flights of its Neptune capsule carrying tourists to 20-plus miles above the Earth.

Named in honor of the Voyager 1 space probe, the vessel was acquired to allow the company to launch and recover its spacecraft capsule Neptune from anywhere in the world, starting with pre-approved locations near Florida. The company completed its first test flight in June 2021, launching from land near Kennedy Space Center. The capsule splashed down in the Gulf of Mexico roughly seven hours later. On that occasion, the capsule was recovered from the water using a chartered commercial vessel, GO America.

Building on that first recovery, Voyager will have the capability to both launch and recover the spacecraft in an integrated, flexible solution that can also relocate to avoid bad weather — a problem that often plagues traditional rocket launches and marine capsule recovery operations. Space Perspective has previously stated it expects Voyager to be the first in a fleet of marine spaceports globally.

It is now expected that Voyager will begin operations late this year, when Space Perspective begins test flights of Neptune.

The article also notes near the end the growing congestion at Port Canaveral due to the numbers of space-related ships, either already operating or anticipated. It appears a marina for these ships will soon become necessary, as the port does not want them taking up docking space when not in use.

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Hiking in a most unusual way, for others

1:51 pm

The Tucson crew for Luke 5 Adventures takes a hiker uphill
The Tucson crew for Luke 5 Adventures takes a hiker uphill

Since I was blacklisted by the caving community in 2021, I have been searching for a new outdoor hobby that would satisfy my interests and provide me a new social community.

This search has landed me in a very unusual place (a circumstance that for me has actually been very typical in my life). During a loop hike in October last year, Diane and I met a couple who were doing the loop in the opposite direction. The first time we met we chatted for a few minutes, and then moved on in opposite directions. When we met the second time, however, we talked longer and exchanged contact information. It appears that Angelo and Bonnie Piro also love hiking, recently moved to Tucson from New Jersey (which meant I had a lot in common with them), and were looking for people they could hike with.

Since then we have hiked together numerous times. One day in late November Angelo mentioned that they had the day before participated in a short hike whereby they helped transport a 9-year-old boy who could not walk on his own in a one-wheel chair — dubbed Rosie — over a trail, as part of a volunteer organization called Luke5Adventures. From its national webpage:

For those who aren’t physically able to hike it, forge it, climb it, cross it, or ascend it, we
we can make it possible.

As the founder of this organization, Kevin Schwieger, explains on the webpage,

I knew we needed to give this venture a name. My thoughts went to the Gospel of Luke, Chapter 5, and the account of the group of friends who took their paralytic friend to go see Jesus. The house where Jesus was speaking was so crowded that they could not get in. That didn’t stop them. They were determined to enable their friend to see something amazing. They carried him to the roof, cut the thatch away, and lowered him down through the hole in the roof to see Jesus! I pictured in my mind’s eye, groups of friends by the hundreds, using Rosies to take their new friends to see places and things that heretofore have been impossible. Not figuratively impossible, but, literally impossible.

It seemed to me that volunteering for this organization would give me an opportunity to do some fun outdoor stuff in a way that was new and interesting while doing good as well. It would also likely introduce me to some decent and righteous people with whom I could make some friends. That they were Christians and I was a secular Jew made no different to me, and I was quite confident it would make no difference to them either.

Not surprisingly, I was right.
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SpaceX successfully launches another 51 Starlink satellites

1:18 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched another 51 Starlink satellites, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage successfully completed its third flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Both fairings completed their second flight in space.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

30 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 34 to 17 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 34 to 29. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including other American companies, only 30 to 33 in launches this year.

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SpaceX to launch Vast’s first space station module as well as two manned missions to it

12:11 pm

Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing
Vast Haven-1 station inside Falcon-9 fairing

SpaceX and the private space station company Vast today revealed a deal whereby SpaceX will use its Falcon 9 rocket to launch VAST’s first space station module, dubbed Vast Haven-1, followed soon thereafter by two manned missions using SpaceX’s Dragon capsule and lasting up to 30 days.

The announcements claim that first launch will occur by August 2025, which will make it the first privately-owned manned space station to reach orbit, well ahead of the plans by the three space station companies that NASA has issued contracts (by teams led by Northrop Grumman, Sierra Space, and Nanoracks). The only other private station hoping to beat this date, Axiom, won’t be flying independent, but will be attaching its first module to ISS in 2024.

In addition, Vast says that this module will be the incorporated into its proposed larger spinning-wheel station.

Vast is owned and financed by billionaire Jed McCaleb, who doesn’t need NASA seed money for development. In fact, it appears he and SpaceX want to remain as independent of the government as possible, considering the high fees NASA is charging to dock and stay at ISS as well as the stringent research rules it is demanding from private astronauts. This approach also appears to be the same one that Jared Isaacman is taking with his series of private missions on Dragon and Starship.

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UAE asteroid mission will rendezvous with seven asteroids and will include lander

10:08 am

Though the mission was first announced in 2021, the UAE only recently revealed at a science conference the mission’s specific targets and plan.

From the conference poster [pdf]:

The mission will launch in 2028 and visit 7 main belt asteroids, including 6 high-speed flyby encounters en route to a rendezvous with the asteroid 269 Justitia. The mission is enabled by solar electric propulsion and gravity assist flybys of Venus, Earth, and Mars, bringing the total number of mission encounters to 10. The trajectory design presented will include the overall timeline of the mission, launch targets, launch period, overall duration of the encounters, design of the encounters, and trajectory modeling. Mission design analyses include designing the Deep space maneuvers (DSMs) prior to the rendezvous with Justitia and design Justitia’s orbits and maneuvers to accomplish the lander deployment.

As with the UAE’s Al-Amal Mars Orbiter, the country is relying on an American university, the University of Colorado, as well as the commercial company, Advanced Space, to design, build, and operate the spacecraft. In this sense the UAE is paying these American entities to fly the mission while requiring them to train its own engineers and scientists.

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UK regulators give okay on Viasat’s purchase of Inmarsat

9:46 am

After months of delay, the United Kingdom’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) regulators has finally admitted that Viasat’s purchase of Inmarsat would not reduce competition in the communication satellite industry, and has approved the purchase unconditionally.

The evidence analysed by the panel shows that, while Viasat and Inmarsat compete closely– specifically in the supply of satellite connectivity for wifi on flights – the deal does not substantially reduce competition for services provided on flights used by UK customers.

The evidence also shows that the satellite sector is expanding rapidly – a trend that is set to continue for the foreseeable future. This is due to increased demand for satellite connectivity, driven largely by the ever-growing use of the internet by business and consumers.

The CMA press release is a classic of bureaucracy blather. Essentially, it tries to make it sound like this agency did lots of difficult hard work to discover what is patently obvious, that without this merger these two companies will almost certainly not be able to compete with the emerging new satellite communications companies coming on line.

The best thing that the UK could do to encourage competition and new industries in the UK would be to defund this agency, now. Its existence accomplishes nothing other than to stand in the way.

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Momentus and Astroscale team up to propose Hubble servicing mission

11:29 am

Capitalism in space: The two orbital tug companies Momentus and Astroscale announced today that they have partnered to propose a servicing mission to the Hubble Space Telescope, designed to boost the telescope and extend its life.

The proposed mission concept, a commercial solution to extend the life of this important national asset without risk to humans, includes launching a Momentus Vigoride Orbital Service Vehicle (OSV) to low-Earth orbit on a small launch vehicle. Once on orbit, Astroscale’s RPOD technology built into the OSV would be used to safely rendezvous, approach and then complete a robotic capture of the telescope. Once mated, the OSV would perform a series of maneuvers to raise the Hubble by 50 km. Removal of surrounding and threatening space debris in Hubble’s new orbit using the Vigoride and Astroscale’s RPOD capabilities will be prioritized after the completion of the primary reboost mission.

As I have written repeatedly, Hubble is a telescope that refuses to die. I predicted that come the 2030s, when its orbit had decayed to a point that it either had to be de-orbited (NASA’s preferred option in the past when it ran everything) or be lifted to a higher orbit to extend its life, people would find a way to lift it.

Now that private enterprise is running the show, NASA is taking advantage of that to ask for private solutions to save Hubble, and not surprisingly it is quickly getting them.

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Space junk removal company ClearSpace signs deal to launch on Vega-C

9:59 am

The European company ClearSpace has signed a launch deal with Arianespace to fly the first test of its space junk removal robot on a Vega-C rocket set to launch some time in the second half of 2026.

The development of ClearSpace’s robot, which will use four grappling arms to surround and then capture its target, was paid for under a European Space Agency (ESA) $121 million contract which also required it to be launched on an Arianespace rocket. The problem right now is that it will fly as a secondary payload, and a primary payload has not yet been found.

Finding that primary payload is going to be difficult. First, Vega-C failed on its second launch last year and has not yet flown again. Second, it is expendable, and though cheaper than Arianespace’s other rocket, Ariane-6 (which has not yet launched), it is still more expensive than other commercial rockets now available. Third, the customer of that primary payload must also want to go into an orbit that will allow ClearSpace’s robot to reach its target, an abandoned Vega Payload Adapter from a previous launch.

As has been typical of Europe, this development is proceeding too slowly and is being hampered by requirements unrelated to profit and loss. By ’26 expect several other space junk removal companies — Astroscale and D-Orbit come to mind — to have already demonstrated their capabilities and already garnering market share, before ClearSpace even flies.

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Momentus test orbital tug successfully raises orbit using water-ionized thrusters

9:29 am

Momentus’s Vigoride test orbital tug has successfully raised its orbit using a ion thrusters that use water as their fuel, proving that the tug can be used to bring smallsats launched as secondary payloads to their preferred orbits.

According to tracking data, Vigoride-5 is in an orbit at an average altitude of 524.3 kilometers as of late May 7, about two kilometers higher than it was in early April, when the maneuvers started. The vehicle’s orbit had been gradually decaying since its launch in early January on the SpaceX Transporter-6 smallsat rideshare mission, descending about five kilometers before the maneuvers started.

The test of the MET is a major milestone for Momentus, which is relying on the technology to propel its tugs that will deliver satellites to their desired orbits. Technical problems with its first tug, Vigoride-3, launched nearly a year ago, kept the company from testing the MET on that vehicle.

Vigoride-5 is carrying a single smallsat, for Singapore-based Qosmosys, that it will release, although the companies have not disclosed the planned orbit for that spacecraft. The tug will also operate a hosted payload from Caltech to demonstrate space-based solar power technologies for several months.

The company already has another Vigoride in orbit that launched in April, carrying its own set of payloads for orbital transport.

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Rocket Lab successfully launches two NASA hurricane monitoring cubesats

6:11 pm

Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket today successfully placed NASA’s two Tropics hurricane monitoring cubesats into orbit, lifting off from New Zealand ((May 8th New Zealand time).

This is the first of two Rocket Lab launches to get the entire four-satellite Tropics constellation into orbit, with the second schedule for two weeks from now.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

29 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 33 to 16 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 33 to 28.

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Celestis recovers astronaut’s remains from suborbital rocket explosion

10:06 am

Celestis, the company that specializes in sending people’s ashes into space, has successfully recovered the remains of a former Apollo astronaut Philip Chapman (who never flew in space) after the suborbital rocket they were on exploded four seconds into flight.

“All 120 flight capsules are safely in the hands of launch personnel and will be returned to us awaiting our next flight as soon as UP and Spaceport America complete their investigation and any required fixes are implemented,” Celestis said in a statement on Wednesday. The recovered payloads are set to fly again on board the company’s upcoming Perseverance Flight. The company said it only launches a “symbolic portion” of ashes or DNA sample from its participants.

Celestis has sent remains of many celebrities as well as ordinary customers on a number of orbital and suborbital flights over the years. The recovery of the remains and their expected reflight in this case enhances its business model, since none of its customers want their ashes lost in a rocket failure, before reaching space.

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Lockheed Martin reorganizes its space divisions to better compete in the new commercial market

9:58 am

Lockheed Martin today announced that it is reorganizing its space divisions to make them better aligned with the new commercial market, and thus better able to win market share.

The company will streamline its operation from “five lines of business to three,” the first focused on commercial space, the second focused on classified military projects, and the third focused on military missile work.

As a big space company, Lockheed Martin has made a great effort in recent years to break into the commercial rocket industry. It was a major investor in Rocket Lab, and is also a major investor in the rocket startup ABL, which it is sending a lot of business. It also realigned its satellite construction business to focus on smallsats, including investing a lot of money in the smallsat company Terran Orbital.

This reorganization is clearly an effort to underline these changes. Whether it will work remains to be seen. Often such reorganizations in big older corporations end up being nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.

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ESA finally admits — sort of — that private enterprise can do it better

9:48 am

Stephane Israel, the architect of ESA's rocket failure
Stéphane Israël, the head of Arianespace and the
architect of its failure to compete in the field of rocketry.

Today there was a news report in which Stéphane Israël, the head of Arianespace, kind of admitted at last that the expendable design of Europe’s new Ariane-6 rocket was a mistake, and that it will take a decade more to fix it.

“When the decisions were made on Ariane 6, we did so with the technologies that were available to quickly introduce a new rocket,” said Israël, according to European Spaceflight.

He added that it will not be until the 2030s before Europe begins flying its own reuseable rocket.

Israël’s comments illustrate the head-in-the-sand approach he has exhibited now for decades. He claims the European Space Agency (ESA) chose to make Ariane-6 expandable so that it would be ready quickly, but its development has not been fast, and in fact is now more than three years behind schedule. When it finally begins flying operational it will have taken almost a decade to create it.

His comments also are his lame attempt to push back against a recent ESA report [pdf], issued in late March, that strongly rejected the decades-long model that ESA has used to build its rockets. Up until now and including the construction of Ariane-6, ESA designed and built its rockets, using Arianespace, headed by Israël, as its commercial arm. In other words, the government ran the show, much like NASA did for most of the half century following the 1960s space race. The result was slow development, and expensive rockets. Arianespace for example never made a profit in its decades-long existence, despite capturing half the commercial market in the 2000s and early 2010s.

The March ESA report rejected this model, and instead advocating copying what the U.S. has done for the past half decade by shifting ownership and design to the private sector, as advocated in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in space. To quote the ESA report:
» Read more

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Weird dome near Starship candidate landing zone on Mars

1:47 pm

Weird dome near Starship candidate landing zone on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on February 27, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows what the scientists label as domes in Arcadia Planitia, one of the many large northern lowland plains of Mars.

This to me is a “What the heck?” image. I won’t dare try to explain the warped concentric ringed pattern at the top of the mesa, nor the bright and dark splotch that surrounds it. The small craters around it appear to have glacier material within them, and the terrain here likely has a lot of near surface ice, being at 37 degrees north latitude in a region where the data suggests such ice exists. The different colors here likely indicate the difference between dust (orange) and coarser material (aqua).

The location, as shown in the overview map below, makes this mesa more tantalizing.
» Read more

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Maxar sale closes and company goes private

9:44 am

With the purchase today for $6.4 billion of the satellite company Maxar by two private investment firms, its stock was removed from the NY stock exchange and is no longer traded publicly.

The company was acquired for $53 per share by the U.S. private equity firm Advent International and minority investor British Columbia Investment Management Corp. in a deal announced in December. “With the closing of the transaction, Maxar will remain a U.S.-controlled, owned and operated company,” the company said. Maxar’s common stock will also be delisted from the Toronto Stock Exchange.

Maxar started trading on the New York Stock Exchange and the Toronto Stock Exchange in 2017. It officially became a U.S. corporation in 2020 when the company spun off the Canadian subsidiary MDA.

The desire of these private investors to spend so much strongly indicates that Maxar has real value. It also indicates indirectly the strength of the emerging new commercial launch market. These investors clearly believe that this launch market will continue to grow and force the launch price of its satellites to go down.

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SpaceX launches 56 Starlink satellites into orbit

12:41 am

Using its Falcon 9 rocket, SpaceX tonight successfully placed 56 Starlink satellites into orbit, lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its seventh flight, landing safely on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The two fairing halves completed their eighth and ninth flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

29 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 India

American private enterprise now leads China 32 to 16 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 32 to 28. SpaceX now trails the rest of the world, including American companies, 29 to 31.

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Irish startup lobbies for Irish spaceport

9:26 am

According to an official from the startup SUAS Aerospace, Ireland is an ideal location for the creation of a new spaceport.

Mr O’Halloran, who is now vice chairman of Irish space company SUAS Aerospace, said space vehicles could be launched from Ireland for telecommunications, environmental monitoring, or medical experiments.

…He later told the Irish Examiner: “There are loads of companies in Europe that need to have a facility of a launch pad, or a spaceport, and by and large they are all heading towards the Azores. The UK is now starting to set up spaceports, but they are now outside the EU. Ireland is ideal as a launching site.”

This Irish company’s focus, according to its website, is “…to build a leading European Space Port providing flexible commercial satellite launch facilities with provision for engine and rocket testing.” And it wants to do it in Ireland. O’Halloran’s speech was an effort to gin up both private and government support for the project, including a commitment of the Irish government to provide it the land it needs for such a site.

There are already three spaceports under development within the EU, in Spain, Norway, and Sweden, all of which at the moment are for suborbital rockets exclusively. Ireland’s location could make it a better choice for orbital launches, as it has many more options for flight paths over the Atlantic without crossing land.

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Suborbital rocket explodes four seconds after launch in New Mexico

9:15 am

An UP Aerospace suborbital rocket exploded yesterday only four seconds after launch in New Mexico, destroying a number of private and NASA science and commercial payloads.

An UP Aerospace rocket, 20 feet tall and carrying a NASA payload, exploded moments after liftoff today. The unfortunate event not only affected the NASA TechRise Student Challenge payloads but also delayed a poignant tribute to the late NASA astronaut, Phillip K. Chapman, and chemist Louise Ann O’Deen.

The rocket was set to launch the cremated remains of Chapman, NASA’s first Australian-born American astronaut, finally granting him his long-awaited journey to space.

Chapman and O’Deen’s remains were payloads from the commercial company Celestis. The thirteen NASA payloads were part of its TechRise Student Challenge program for 6th to 12th grade students.

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Viasat drops launch contract with Ariane-6

9:03 am

With SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy having just completed the first of three launches for Viasat’s new geosynchronous constellation of communication satellites, the satellite company has announced that it is cancelling its launch contract with Ariane-6 for the third launch.

The decision means the launch contract is up for grabs for the third ViaSat 3 internet satellite, the last of a three-satellite constellation Viasat is deploying to provide global broadband connectivity from space.

Viasat announced in 2018 it selected SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Arianespace to each launch one ViaSat 3 satellite, awarding launch contracts to three industry leaders.

The ULA launch, on its Atlas-5 rocket, is still scheduled for either late this year or early next.

The development of Ariane-6 however is years behind schedule. Furthermore, Arianespace has given priority on Ariane-6 to all of the ESA launches that formerly were going to be launched on Russian Soyuz rockets, further delaying Viasat’s launch.

For Viasat, the delays have become unacceptable, and it has now opened that third launch to bidding. Though both ULA’s Vulcan and Blue Origin’s New Glenn rockets could do the job, neither is operational either. It appears SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy is the only rocket available and is therefore almost certain to get the contract, a conclusion further confirmed by the timing of this announcement, just prior to that successful Falcon Heavy launch.

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SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy completes second launch in 2023

9:08 pm

SpaceX today successfully placed a Viasat communications satellite into geosynchronous orbit using its Falcon Heavy rocket, completing its second launch in 2023. Also on board were two smallsats.

The company did not recover either side booster or the core stage in order to give the rocket the maximum lift to put Viasat’s satellite into its proper orbit. With this flight, the two side boosters had successfully completed eight and three missions during their lifespan.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

28 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 India

American private enterprise now leads China 31 to 16 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 31 to 28. SpaceX by itself trails the entire world, including American companies, 28 to 31.

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Musk press conference on Starship/Superheavy launch

8:51 am

Yesterday Elon Musk held an hour-long audio press conference with a number of space reporters, broadcast over youtube. I have embedded that conference below, for those of my readers who wish to hear what Musk had to say, in his own words.

The key take-aways from Musk:

  • The launch was about what he expected
  • They will be ready to launch again in about two months
  • The debris “was really just basically sand and rock so it’s not toxic at all … it’s just like a sandstorm, essentially”
  • The biggest issue is making sure the flight termination system functions better.
  • The next flight will be a repeat, with the main goal getting to stage separation
  • He gives them an 80% chance of making orbit this year

When asked about obtaining the permit for that next flight, Musk side-stepped the question. It remains to my mind the largest obstacle for meeting his schedule.
» Read more

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SpaceX successfully launches Falcon 9 from Cape Canaveral

5:39 pm

SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to put a SES communications satellite into orbit.

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

The company also attempted to complete a second launch just a little more than three hours later from Cape Canaveral, but the countdown of the Falcon Heavy rocket aborted just 59 seconds prior to liftoff. No word on what happened, though the company has another launch window beginning around 7:30 pm Eastern time tomorrow. If successful it would be the second Falcon Heavy launch in 2023, using two side boosters flying their eighth and third flights respectively. Because of the fuel needs of the payload, neither the side boosters or the core stage will be recovered.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

27 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 India

American private enterprise now leads China 30 to 16 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 30 to 28. SpaceX by itself trails the rest of the world, including other American companies, 27 to 31.

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Maxar’s Worldview-3 satellite snaps in-orbit pictures of Landsat-8 satellite

10:13 am

Landsat-8 as seen by Maxar's Worldview-3
Click for original short movie.

Using its high resolution imaging capability, mostly designed to do Earth observations, Maxar engineers took a series of pictures of NASA’s Landsat-8 satellites when the two satellites happened to pass reasonably close to each other. One of those pictures, a screen capture from the short movie that Maxar created, is to the right.

Maxar Technologies’ Worldview-3 satellite has delivered images of NASA’s Landsat 8 spacecraft from ranges of between 56 miles (91.4 kilometers) and 80 miles (129.9 km), showing clear details of the powerful Earth-observation satellite. A still image reveals the 29.5-by-1.3 foot (9 by 0.4 meters) solar array powering Landsat 8, as well as distinct science payloads on the satellite’s 9.8-foot-long (3 m) bus, or main body.

Both satellites are in similar, near-polar orbits, with Worldview-3 circling around 381 miles (613 km) above Earth, while Landsat has a higher altitude of 437 miles (703 km).

Though very cool, this image was taken by Maxar to sell the company’s capabilities to future customers. The military wants the ability to do surveillance of foreign satellites, while satellite companies often need to get such imagery of their satellites to assess their condition. Maxar has now proven it can provide this service to both.

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Big space Raytheon shifts gears to compete in the new space market

9:55 am

Capitalism in space: Raytheon, a traditional big space contractor focused mostly on winning military contracts, has decided to shifts gears from what has in recent years been a failed effort to compete for major contracts direct from the military and instead offer its capabilities to other commercial space companies.

This decision was fueled largely by the approach of the military’s Space Development Agency (SDA) to commercial contracts.

SDA’s approach to buying satellites from multiple prime contractors under fixed-price contracts is “revolutionizing space acquisitions,” [Raytheon official David Broadbent] said. The agency has been a “huge disrupter,” he said.

“Let’s call it what it is,” Broadbent added. “Raytheon and many of our traditional defense primes were constructed around sole source classified cost-plus businesses, and five to seven-year acquisition cycles.” Those markets no longer exist, he said. “So we’ve had to take a very hard look at ourselves … and drive to a far more efficient model of producing capabilities.”

In other words, Raytheon has recognized that the government golden goose of unlimited cost-plus contracts is gone, and that the company’s over-priced habits under those contracts made it difficult for it to compete against new startups designed to be efficient, low-cost, and quick on their feet.

By marketing its available products directly to other satellite and rocket companies, Raytheon can avoid the long contract competitions of the government, and make sales more effectively. As it does this it will also have time to restructure the company itself, trimming it down and making it more efficient so that it can better compete for government contracts at a later time.

Raytheon’s change is the result of the SDA essentially accepting many of the recommendations put forth in my 2017 policy paper, Capitalism in Space (a free pdf download). Rather than have the military the designer and builder of a few big and expensive satellites (also very vulnerable to attack), it is now the customer buying constellations of many small and cheap satellites from many private companies. Such smallsat constellations are much more difficult to disable by hostile powers.

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With the federal bureaucracy gleefully sharpening its knives to shut down Boca Chica, SpaceX should quickly shift Starship/Superheavy operations to Florida

1:12 pm

Superheavy still going strong, shortly after Max-Q
Superheavy still going strong, shortly after Max-Q

The results of the spectacular test launch last week of SpaceX’s Superheavy/Starship heavy lift rocket was predictable in almost all ways.

First, everyone knew that it was highly unlikely that the launch would do everything intended. This was the first time ever that SpaceX had fired all 33 Raptor-2 engines at the base of Superheavy, at full power. It was the first time ever that this firing took place with Starship stacked on top. It was the first time ever that the entire stack was fueled. It was the first time ever that this rocket — the world’s most powerful (twice as powerful as the Saturn-5 and about three times more powerful than SLS) — had every launched.

The number of unknowns were gigantic, which was exactly why SpaceX needed to do the launch. The company’s engineers needed to find out what they didn’t know about Superheavy in order to refine their engineering so that Superheavy will be more likely for success in its next launch. They also needed to find out what such a launch would do to their preliminary launchpad, in order to refine its engineering as well so that future launches could take place with little or no damage.

Thus, it is not surprising that there were surprises. The most significant was the actual amount of success. Superheavy functioned far better than anyone could have dreamed, retaining flight control through max-q and then flying for almost three minutes before Starship failed to separate and the entire stack lost control and had to be destroyed. Most of its engines worked, though discovering the reasons for the handful that failed will be a prime question in the subsequent investigation.

The second unsurprising thing about this launch is the reaction of the federal bureaucracy, run by Democrats and the Biden administration. It has quickly moved in to squelch any further launches at Boca Chica, likely for a considerable time. The FAA immediately initiated its own investigation while grounding all further launches from Boca Chica. The Fish & Wildlife Service has now begun detailing, almost gleefully, the amount of ground damage the launch caused, including ripping out the concrete base below the rocket and flinging chunks of debris hundreds of feet away as well as depositing a cloud of sand dust on everything up to 6.5 miles from the launchpad.

This quote however is significant, and tells us the real truth:
» Read more

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SpaceX and Canadian phone company Rogers sign deal

10:04 am

SpaceX and the Canadian phone company Rogers Communications yesterday announced that they have signed an agreement to provide satellite-to-phone communications to customers throughout Canada.

Rogers and SpaceX will offer satellite-to-phone technology in Canada using SpaceX’s Starlink low earth orbit satellites and Rogers national wireless spectrum. The companies plan to start with satellite coverage for SMS text and will eventually provide voice and data across the country’s most remote wilderness, national parks and rural highways that are unconnected today.

This deal makes SpaceX now a direct competitor to OneWeb, as it is apparently structured comparable to how OneWeb operates. Up until now, SpaceX has been almost exclusively marketing to individuals, who connect up to Starlink directly. OneWeb meanwhile provides its service to large ground-based customers who then sell their network — enhanced by OneWeb capabilities — to individuals or small businesses. Because of this difference in approach, the two companies were selling their wares to different markets, making the competition less intense.

SpaceX with this deal is copying OneWeb’s approach almost exactly, which means the competition for satellite internet communications is now going to heat up considerably. For users of the internet, this is the best thing that could happen.

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SpaceX successfully launched 46 upgraded Starlink satellites

9:15 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched 46 upgrades Starlink satellites, launching its Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage successfully completed its thirteenth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. The two fairings completed their sixth and seventh flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

26 SpaceX (with a Falcon Heavy launch planned later today)
16 China
6 Russia
3 Rocket Lab
3 India

American private enterprise now leads China 29 to 16 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 29 to 28.

I have embedded the live stream of the Falcon Heavy launch below, for those that wish to view it. It is scheduled for a 7:29 pm (Eastern) launch from Cape Canaveral.
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NASA awards 12 companies small development contracts with total value $14.5 million

9:28 am

NASA today announced it has awarded twelve different space companies small development contracts, total value $14.5 million, for developing new technologies ranging from new welding techniques to new thermal protection systems to better lunar rover tires.

The companies are also a wide mix, from large well-established giants like Lockheed Martin and Boeing to new startups like Blue Origin and Sierra Space.

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SpaceX leases second launchpad at Vandenberg

9:22 am

SpaceX announced yesterday that it has leased a second launchpad at Vandenberg, taking over the pad that ULA previously leased for use by its Delta family of rockets, now being phased out.

The site will be used to launch “Falcon rockets”, which suggests both the Falcon 9 and the Falcon Heavy. All told, SpaceX now has six launchsites, three at Cape Canaveral, two at Vandenberg, and one at Boca Chica, with the Starship/Superheavy site at Kennedy presently under construction.

The launchpad at Vandenberg, dubbed SLC-6 (pronounced “slick-6”), was originally built to launch the space shuttle, something that never happened. When I got a tour of Vandenberg in 2015 I took some good pictures of it.

It is very likely SpaceX will make major changes, as it did to the shuttle launchsite it took over at Kennedy.

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Rocket engine company Ursa Major raises $100 million in private investment capital

9:06 am

The American rocket engine company Ursa Major recently raised an additional $100 million in private investment capital, on top of the $85 million it raised last year.

All told, the company has raised $234 million. Its Hadley engine presently has contracts with rocket startups Astra and Phantom, the hypersonic missile testing company Stratolaunch, and the Air Force. It is also developing two larger engines, the Ripley and the Arroway, the latter designed to replace Russian engines previously used by American companies.

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