Tag: freedom

New Mexico’s Spaceport America loses another customer

9:37 am

New Mexico’s Spaceport America, first established in the early 2000s with the expectation it would soon see hundreds of suborbital Virgin Galactic tourist flights per year — launches that never happened — has now lost another customer

In an announcement made late Friday (Jan. 31, 2025) evening, the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association (ESRA) will be holding its annual Intercollegiate Rocket Engineering Competition (IREC) at the Midland International Air & Space Port in Midland, Texas, from June 9-14, 2025.

The announcement marks the first venue change for the IREC since the 2017 competition.

For seven years beginning in 2017 and concluding in 2024, ESRA along with the New Mexico Spaceport Authority (NMSA) partnered and jointly held IREC at Spaceport America. During that time, the IREC rebranded as the Spaceport America Cup (SAC) and grew significantly. The growth period of over a half-decade culminated with the 2024 Spaceport America Cup which featured the largest number of competing teams and launches (122) of any previous competition.

No reason for the shift to Texas was mentioned.

The Spaceport America boondoggle has ended up costing New Mexico taxpayers millions, with little to show for it. This change will only increase the losses, and raises more questions about whether that state government should continue pouring money into this black hole. No orbital rocket companies have any interest in launching from there, and Virgin Galactic won’t be launching again for at least a year, and when (or if) it resumes launches it will be doing only a small number of flights. Thus the spaceport’s customer base is very small, and shrinking.

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Rocket Lab wins another multi-launch contract

9:26 am

Rocket Lab today announced it has won a four-launch contract with a Japanese company, the Institute for Q-shu Pioneers of Space, Inc. (iQPS), to launch its Earth-imaging satellites.

The multi-launch contract, signed in July 2024 [but apparently not publicly announced till now], includes three dedicated missions for launch in 2025 from Rocket Lab Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, with a fourth launch scheduled for 2026. Each mission will carry a single satellite to form part of iQPS’ planned constellation of 36 synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites that are capable of collecting images through cloud and at night with a high resolution of less than a meter.

Rocket Lab previously completed one launch for iQPS in 2023, signing the contract and launching within four months.

Though the company has not yet announced officially the number of launches it hopes to fly in 2025, it appears the number will exceed the 14 orbital launches it completed in 2024. Before adding the three 2025 iQPS launches above, Rocket Lab had 18 Electron launches listed for 2025 at the rocketlaunch.live website, as well as the first launch of the company’s new Neutron rocket. Altogether that adds up to a total of 22 launches.

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SpaceX launches two high resolution Earth imaging reconnaissance satellites

8:34 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched Maxar’s last two of six high resolution Earth imaging reconnaissance satellites of its Worldview constellation, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

SpaceX placed the entire Worldview constellation in orbit over three launches. The first stage on today’s launch completed its fourth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral, while the rocket’s two fairing halves completed their 21st and 23rd flights respectively.

This was also SpaceX’s second launch today.

The 2025 launch race:

16 SpaceX
6 China
1 Blue Origin
1 India
1 Japan

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NASA calls for the private sector to launch VIPER to the Moon

10:55 am

As a follow-up of its August request for suggestions on how to save its cancelled VIPER rover mission to the Moon, NASA has now issued a request for actual proposals from the private sector for flying the mission, due on March 3, 2025.

The Announcement for Partnership Proposal contains proposal instructions and evaluation criteria for a new Lunar Volatiles Science Partnership. Responses are due Monday, March 3. After evaluating submissions, any selections by the agency will require respondents to submit a second, more detailed, proposal. NASA is expected to make a decision on the VIPER mission this summer.

…As part of an agreement, NASA would contribute the existing VIPER rover as-is. Potential partners would need to arrange for the integration and successful landing of the rover on the Moon, conduct a science/exploration campaign, and disseminate VIPER-generated science data. The partner may not disassemble the rover and use its instruments or parts separately from the VIPER mission. NASA’s selection approach will favor proposals that enable data from the mission’s science instruments to be shared openly with anyone who wishes to use it.

Expect a number of companies to tout their proposals in press releases in the coming weeks.

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NASA suspends numerous advisory committees to comply with Trump executive orders

10:47 am

In what appears to be an over-reaction by NASA, it has ordered that numerous science advisory committees suspend all meetings and work so that it make sure they are complying with Trump’s executive orders requiring the removal of all Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion programs.

More here and here.

The orders listed twenty different working groups as well as the cancellation of the first in-person meeting of the Mercury working group this week.

In reviewing the released list of these groups, only two, the EDIA Working Group (Equity, Diversity, Inclusion, and Accessibility) and the H2O program (Here to Observe), are expressly focused on promoting these racist policies. EDIA’s job is to make sure DEI is implemented across all working groups and science projects. H2O is an educational program restricted to “under-represented students” only, which really means minorities only. All other kids need not apply.

All the other research groups are focused on research and science, not DEI. While a review of their work to make sure they don’t have racial quotas might make sense, it seems NASA’s memos shutting them down entirely during that review appears to be overkill, and might actually be an example of malicious compliance, a tactic used by the bureaucracy to generate bad press against a politician’s policy orders. By over reacting the bureaucrats try to make the elected official’s new policy look stupid.

For example, the cancellation of the first in-person meeting of the Mercury exploration working group (MExAG) seems absurd. It was scheduled to occur this week in Maryland to discuss for example the Japanese/Italian BepiColombo mission, and the sudden cancellation resulted in quotes like this:

“We are forced, therefore, to cancel MExAG 2025,” the Mercury committee’s chair Carolyn Ernst, a planetary scientist with Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, wrote in a memo obtained by Space.com. “This turn of events is shocking and concerning, and is extra painful given the order comes four days before our first in-person meeting.” Some committee members had already begun travel for the meeting, Ernst added.

The nearly three-day hybrid meeting was expected to include at up 200 scientists attending either in person of virtually, one scientist Ed Rivera-Valentin shared on the social media site Bluesky. It was expected to include a number of researchers connected to the BepiColombo Mercury mission run by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency and the European Space Agency. The probe just made its sixth flyby of Mercury on Jan. 8.

I can see no logical reason for NASA’s management to cancel this meeting other than to create bad press for Trump.

There one other possibility. NASA’s management might simply be running scared, and has decided it must over-react in order to make sure it doesn’t get fired for appearing defiant.

I must add that the suspension of the Earth science working groups is not related to DEI, but to adhere to the Trump executive orders requiring a review of the government’s global warming and climate research. For that order a larger suspension of work makes more sense.

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Boeing writes off another half billion dollars due to Starliner

10:02 am

In filing an annual report to the SEC, Boeing revealed that has written off another half billion dollars due to Starliner delays and technical problems, bringing the total the company has lost on the capsule to more than two billion.

In the company’s 10-K annual filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission Feb. 3, Boeing said it took $523 million in charges on Starliner in 2024. The company blamed the losses on “schedule delays and higher testing and certification costs as well as higher costs for post certification missions.”

Both Boeing and NASA remain utterly silent on the future of Starliner. It remains uncertified for operational manned flights, which means Boeing continues to earn nothing from it. Will it have to fly another manned mission on its own dime to get that certification? Or will NASA instead pay it to fly a cargo mission to ISS, as rumors have suggested, to prove the capsule is ready for manned flights?

No one knows. Nor do we know if Boeing will either sell off its space division or cancel Starliner entirely and thus free itself of the problem.

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The first real Republican president in a half century

3:50 pm

Which president is different than all the others?
Which president is different than all the others?

When George Bush Jr. was elected president in 2000, he also won majorities in both the House and the Senate in Congress. At the time I remember quite naively saying that he now was in a position to force through some real change, because any radical leftist proposal needed three different signatures, and the Republicans in all three branches just weren’t going to give it.

Hah! What a fool I was. During Bush Jr’s eight year rein the federal government grew in leaps and bounds, even more than under Bill Clinton, with every leftist desire fulfilled, though generally quietly in order to avoid outraging the American public that wanted change.

Nor was Bush Jr. the exception to the rule. No, every Republican president since Dwight Eisenhower has been nothing more than a Democrat in disguise, and that includes Donald Trump during his first term as president.

Only now do we see a real conservative president in power. You need only look at the official portraits of all these presidents to the right to understand this. Just compare Donald Trump’s official picture in 2017 with this picture in 2025. In 2017 he was a happy leader who innocently thought the administrative state he was in charge of would do as he said.

In 2025 he is innocent no longer. Instead, he is a hardened warrior ready to do battle. And that is exactly what we have seen, a Republican president unlike any since before World War II.

For once, the voters got a choice on election day. For once, the Republican who said he wanted to change things really meant it.
» Read more

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Is SpaceX routinely stiffing its outside construction contractors in Boca Chica?

9:31 am

According to an article today in the San Antonio Express-News SpaceX has been routinely not paying its bills to construction contractors hired by it to build things in Boca Chica, and almost three dozen have had to file liens against the company to get their money.

A San Antonio Express-New review of Texas property records found at least 29 contractors — and six in San Antonio — have filed 77 liens against SpaceX since March 2022. Their total value is up from $2.5 million in May. Since then, SpaceX has settled at least six liens but gained another 44.

Though it’s unclear whether the money is owed by SpaceX, its general contractors or subcontractors, landowners are ultimately responsible for unpaid construction bills on their properties under Texas law. The liens are a legal mechanism for contractors and suppliers to secure their claims.

The article admits repeatedly that its information is incomplete, and that many of these liens might already be settled. It also admits that the failure to pay might not be by SpaceX, but as landowner with the most money, it is the biggest target capable of forcing payment by others.

It is also likely, with the amount of work and expansion that is going on at Boca Chica, such liens are somewhat expected, especially because they seem to be a relatively small amount compared to the billions that SpaceX is spending in the area.

Thus, though the article appears to suggest SpaceX is a deadbeat company, it also appears the article might also be part of the propaganda press’s effort to slander Elon Musk wherever it can.

Regardless, if SpaceX is behind in paying its bills, it needs to fix this issue now.

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Satellite startup Astranis awards SpaceX another launch contract

9:17 am

The satellite startup Astranis, which already has five small satellites placed in orbit by SpaceX, has announced a new SpaceX launch contract for launching its next five satellites later this year.

By making its geosynchronous satellites small, like cubesats, the company is challenging the recent trend away from these high orbits. In the past five years very few new big geosynchronous communications satellites have been built or launched, because they can’t compete with the cheaper low-orbit smallsats.

Astranis is bucking that trend, partly because of its small satellites, and partly because SpaceX’s launch costs are so much less than anyone else’s.

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British rocket start-up Orbex wins two-launch contract from Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit

9:10 am

The British rocket start-up Orbex, which hopes to complete its first test orbital launch of its Prime rocket this year, after years of regulatory delays, has gotten a two-launch contract from the Italian orbital tug company D-Orbit.

The contract appears to be part of Europe’s effort to have its European payloads launch on European rockets. Previously D-Orbit tugs have mostly been launched by SpaceX because the only available European rockets, Ariane-6 and Vega-C, have either not been operational or available. Moreover, all these rockets are too big for D-Orbit’s tugs, which thus have to fly as secondary payloads.

Orbex’s Prime rocket is small, and so the tugs can be launched as the primary payload. The rocket however is not yet operational, unlike for example Rocket Lab’s small Electron rocket. The decision to go with Orbex’s untested rocket suggests Europe is forcing D-Orbit to sign with a European rocket company.

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OneWeb is years behind schedule in activating its service in the Falklands

8:59 am

Despite contracts with the local government that said service would begin in 2023, OneWeb has still not activated its service in the Falklands, and that government is considering switching to Starlink as it considers legal action to recover its money.

Local reports say that the Falkland Islands government “wants its money back” from an agreement which it entered into with local telco SURE and which provides national and international fixed line, mobile data and broadband services as well as data centre and enterprise solutions to consumer and corporate customers. SURE is part of Bahrain’s Batelco Group and SURE’s coverage extends to the Ascension Islands and Saint Helena in the South Atlantic.

The problem is seemingly OneWeb. Mark Pollard, a member of the Falkland’s Legislative Assembly, speaking on January 30th, said that the telco had failed to introduce a promised service from OneWeb, which itself was supplied with capacity from Eutelsat and prime contractor Intelsat.

The article at the link does not provide any explanation for the delay. It is probably related to OneWeb’s requirement for ground stations to connect the local communications network with the satellites. There must be issues building those ground stations. Starlink meanwhile provides antennas to customers which connect directly to the satellites.

The article also notes the company’s stock value has been plummeting, dropping 62% in the past six months.

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