Tag: Space Force

Space Force approves Vandenberg environmental assessment, allowing SpaceX’s to launch as much as 100 times annually

8:02 am

Map of Vandenberg Space Force Base, showing SpaceX's two launchpads
Figure 2.1-1 of the final environmental assessment report

The Space Force on October 10, 2025 announced it has now finalized and approved the environmental assessment that will permit SpaceX’s to increase its launch rate at Vandenberg to as much as 100 times per year.

The DAF [Air Force] has decided to increase the annual Falcon launch cadence at VSFB [Vandenberg] through launch and landing operations at SLC-4 and SLC-6 [the two SpaceX launchpads], including modification of SLC-6 for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles to support future U.S. Government and commercial launch service needs. The overall launch cadence will increase from 50 Falcon 9 launches per year at SLC-4 to up to 100 launches per year for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy at both SLCs combined. Falcon Heavy, which has not previously launched from VSFB, would launch and land up to five times per year from and at SLC-6. The DAF will authorize SpaceX to construct a new hangar south of the HIF [SpaceX’s horizontal integration facility] and north of SLC-6 to support Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy integration and processing.

You can read the full environmental assessment here [pdf]. The map to the right, from the assessment, shows the location at Vandenberg of the two SpaceX launch sites. SLC-4 (pronounced “slick-four”) is the pad SpaceX has been using for years to launch Falcon 9s. SLC-6 was originally built for the space shuttle but never used for that purpose. Subsequently ULA leased it to launch its Delta family of rockets. When that rocket was retired SpaceX won the lease to reconfigure the site for both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches.

The Space Force apparently decided to ignore the objections of the California Coastal Commission as well as a number of anti-Musk leftwing activist groups. And its decision is well grounded in facts. The report documents at length the lack of any consequential environmental impacts from the increase of launches, which is further supported by almost three quarters of a century of actual use.

The decision is also well founded in basic American culture and law. The Space Force as a government agency must act as a servant of the American people, in this case represented by the private company SpaceX. It must therefore do whatever it can to aid and support that company, not put up roadblocks because it doesn’t like what the company proposes.

At least under Trump, this is the approach the Space Force is taking. I fear what will happen if a Democrat regains the presidency, based on the radical and enthused communist make-up of that party today.

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Trump once again moves Space Force HQ from Colorado to Alabama

12:55 pm

During his first term as president, Donald Trump attempted to move the headquarters of the Space Force Colorado to Alabama. That move, announced in January 2021, never happened, first because it came so late in his term and second because Biden had no interest in making it happen and eventually rescinded it in 2023.

Today Trump reinstated that decision, once again announcing that the Space Force headquarters will move to Huntsville, Alabama.

The politics for this change have been and will continue to be complicated. Alabama’s lower cost of living would save the government money, but the defense industry is also well clustered in Colorado due to the military’s space operations that have been there for many decades.

In general I have never quite understood Trump’s desire to do this. I suspect there are some quid pro quo agreements in the background with Alabama politicians: “If you bring the Space Force to Alabama, Mr. Trump, we will back you on your other plans.” Then again, Trump might simply want to punish the increasingly leftist haven of Colorado.

Either way, it is now likely to finally happen. Trump 47 has been moving fast on all his initiatives, and is aided in this by a staff that is largely supportive (unlike during Trump 45).

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SpaceX launches X-37B for Space Force

9:11 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched the Space Force’s X-37B mini-shuttle, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

This is the eighth mission for the Space Force’s two X-37Bs. It appears this flight is fourth for this particular X-37B, but this is not confirmed. Nor do we know how long this particular will last in orbit.

SpaceX’s first stage completed its sixth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The fairing halves completed their first and second flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

102 SpaceX
47 China
11 Rocket Lab
11 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 102 to 82.

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Space Force preps for the next X-37B mission

9:44 am

The Space Force yesterday released a short press release, outlining its preparations and plans for the next X-37B mission, scheduled to launch on August 21, 2025.

The eighth mission of the X-37B Orbital Test Vehicle will launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, designated USSF-36, with a wide range of test and experimentation objectives. These will include demonstrations of high-bandwidth inter-satellite laser communications technologies and enhanced space navigation using the highest performing quantum inertial sensor in space.

Unfortunately, the military is no longer telling us which of its two X-37B’s is being launched. In fact, it is not clear whether both spacecraft are still operational. According to Wikipedia, this upcoming mission will be flown by the first of these vehicles, OTV-1, on its fourth flight. The other X-37B, OTV-2, has flown four times already, including the last mission of 434 days. I can find no confirmation of Wikipedia’s conclusions however.

Nonetheless, this spacecraft is one of the few projects built by Boeing in recent years that has done exactly what it was intended to do. If only Boeing’s other projects, such as Starliner, would run as smoothly.

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California’s Coastal Commission again rejects an increase in SpaceX’s launch rate at Vandenberg

9:21 am

Wants to be a dictator
Wants to be a dictator

As expected, the California Coastal Commission yesterday again rejected the proposed doubling of launches by SpaceX at the Vandenberg Space Force Base, from 50 to 100 launches per year, claiming this time it would destroy the environment.

“The sonic booms and their impacts on California’s people, wildlife and property are extremely concerning,” Commissioner Linda Escalante said at a hearing Thursday in Calabasas. “The negative impacts on public access, natural resources and environmental health warrant our scrutiny under California as a standard of review.”

The commissioners and its staff also argued that the launches were not related to national security or military purposes, but instead acted “to expand SpaceX’s commercial telecommunications network rather than serve federal agencies.” See the staff report [pdf] issued prior to the meeting.

The simple fact remains that it is a privately owned company engaged in activities primarily for its own commercial business. It is not a public federal agency or conducting its launches on
behalf of the federal government. It should therefore be regulated accordingly. [emphasis mine]

How dare SpaceX try to make a profit as a private company in America? And how dare the Space Force act as a servant of the people to provide this private company service? What have we come to?! Is communism and top-down authoritarian rule no longer America’s fundamental purpose?

Nor are the claims of the commission about the environment valid. » Read more

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New Space Force policy will encourage a robust private industry to build the capabilities it needs

9:39 am

Capitalism in space: The U.S. Space Force (USSF) today released what it calls an “annex,” outlining its “Principles for Space Access Resourcing Decisions,” that will act as an over-arching guidance to its general space policy. The nine principles listed are expressly focused on encouraging redundancy in launch and satellite military capabilities by using the robust private and competitive aerospace industry that now exists.

The annex details how the service will consider and prioritize commercial space sector requests for government resources, as well as government investment decisions. The annex features nine principles, rooted in law, that will guide the Assured Access to Space Enterprise’s decision-making on a variety of resourcing decisions including acquisition strategies, investment priorities and property allocation. … “These principles reflect our understanding that a strong commercial space industry is a force multiplier for the U.S. Space Force. We are committed to working alongside our industry and allied partners to ensure safe, reliable and resilient access to space for decades to come,” [said Deputy Chief of Space Operations for Strategy, Plans, Programs and Requirements Lt. Gen. Shawn N. Bratton.]

The annex signals an acknowledgment of the evolution of the space access landscape from the 1950s, in which the government was the primary customer, to today where commercial space activities account for the preponderance of launch manifest activities.

You can read the full “annex” here [pdf]. The principles clearly emphasize the need to use the private sector for the military’s needs. It also underlines the Space Force’s responsibility to serve the needs of this growing private sector by making its launch ranges as available as possible to that industry.

The principles however also recognize that strain caused that increased use, and adds this last principle as a caveat:

Launch rates at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station and Vandenberg Space Force Base have increased to the point where commercial and hybrid launches comprise the vast majority of operations. The demand for operational support and infrastructure sustainment and modernization exceeds USSF resources. Therefore, the USSF transparently engages with stakeholders to arrange equitable cost-sharing of multi-use resources and balanced input on public/private infrastructure investment.

It makes excellent sense for the military to re-negotiate its fees with the launch companies that use its facilities to cover costs. In fact, this is a much better way to cover these costs than the launch taxes proposed by Senator Ted Cruz’s budget bill in June. Cruz’s proposal is a legal tax that allows no room for negotiation. The Space Force’s policy will allow it flexibility to negotiate fees as needed and with much greater efficiency and speed.

Sadly, expect Cruz’s taxes to win out, as this kind of heavy-handed overuse of government power has been the default for decades.

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House committee moves to eliminate Trump budget cuts to Space Force

10:45 am

Useless: In its first review of Trump’s proposed budget cuts for the Space Force, the House Appropriations Committee, under Republican leadership, immediately moved to not only eliminate those cuts, but to increase the Space Force budget another $300 million.

And these turkeys are adding this money even though they admit, due to Congress’s incompetent budget process, they really have no way to determine exactly how the money will be spent.

The House Appropriations committee took the first step in crafting a FY2026 bill to fund the Department of Defense today, albeit reluctantly. Appropriators from both parties lamented the paucity of data they have about what the money will be used for, but decided to move ahead and mark up their bill at subcommittee level this afternoon. Full committee markup is scheduled for Thursday. President Trump’s request would cut about $2.5 billion from the U.S. Space Force’s budget, but the committee would restore it and add a little more.

According to the new budget put forth by this committee, the Space Force will have a budget of $29 billion, more than even the highest budget figure proposed for NASA.

This is what we can expect now from the Republican leadership in Congress. They will cut nothing, but instead restore all the spending that Trump attempts to eliminate, even money that is expressly designed to help leftist causes. They are worse than useless.

What these idiots don’t realize that if the country goes bankrupt, it will become impossible to accomplish anything. A smart person would realize it is better to only get part of what you want now (so you can maybe get the rest later) than to try to get it all immediately and instead end up with nothing at all.

But then, these are Congressmen. The word “smart” is the last word I would use to describe them.

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Air Force issues impact statement for SpaceX’s proposed Cape Canaveral Starship/Superheavy launch site

2:04 pm

Map of proposed Cape Canaveral Starship/Superheavy launch facilities
Click for higher resolution version.

The Air Force today released its environmental impact statement for SpaceX’s proposed Starship/Superheavy launch site at Cape Canaveral, generally approving a launch rate of 76 launches per year, noting that this would cause “no significant impact” on the environment while providing “beneficial impact” on the local economy.

You can read the impact statement here [pdf]. It lists 69 areas where these new operations could impact something, and found in almost all no significant impact. The beneficial impact was found in the areas where the operations would boost the local economy.

The single area where these additional launches might have an impact is the issue of noise, noting that “community annoyance may increase” due to the launches. Considering the wealth that the local community will gain from jobs, industry, and tourism due to those launches, I suspect the only whining about this noise will come from fake environmental groups opposed to anyone doing anything.

None of this is any surprise. Launches have been occurring at Cape Canaveral and the Kennedy Space Center for more than three quarters of a century, and the only significant impact to the ecology has been beneficial, reserving large areas from development where wildlife has prospered. If anything, the obviousness of this proves the utter waste of money we now spend on such reports.

The statement notes that it still will require FAA input on coordinating the closure of air space during launches, but it also appears to consider this part of normal routine actions, not a requirement the FAA can use to block operations or approval.

The number of proposed launches however is quite impressive. SpaceX’s plan would close to match the annual number of global launches by everyone for most of the space era. Nor is it impossible considering the design of the rocket and the plans the company has for getting to Mars. The site plan includes two launch mounts for Starship/Superheavy (as shown in the map above). This is in addition to the two Starship/Superheavy launch facilities the company wants to build at Kennedy.

The statement is now open to public comment through July 28, 2025. The Air Force also plans three public meetings in the Cape Canaveral area on July 8, 9, and 10. It will also make a fourth virtual public meeting available from July 15 to July 28.

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Judge rules that SpaceX’s lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission can go forward

11:22 am

A federal judge yesterday ruled that SpaceX’s lawsuit against the California Coastal Commission for its actions attempting to block Falcon 9 launches at Vandenberg because a majority of the commissioners don’t like Elon Musk’s politics can now go forward.

U.S. District Judge Stanley Blumenfeld Jr., a Donald Trump appointee, denied in part California’s request to dismiss the case at a hearing Friday in Los Angeles federal court. In a tentative decision, which wasn’t made publicly available, the judge rejected the state’s argument that four of SpaceX’s claims for declaratory relief weren’t “ripe” because the commission hadn’t enforced a threatened requirement for SpaceX to obtain a coastal development permit for the expanded launch schedule. “The tentative doesn’t find that the evidence is compelling, but that it is sufficient at this stage,” the judge said at the hearing.

This same judge had earlier ruled in favor of the coastal commission, noting that the commission has no real power to limit SpaceX operations at the military base and thus the company could not demonstrate harm. SpaceX amended its complaint to emphasize the harm caused to Musk’s free speech rights, and this was sufficient for the judge to change his ruling in favor of SpaceX.

This ruling doesn’t mean SpaceX and Musk have won. It means the judge considers their case sufficient for it to the lawsuit to proceed.

SpaceX’s complaint stems from an insane October 2024 hearing before the commission, where multiple commissioners came out against a SpaceX request to increase its launches at Vandenberg not because it might harm the environment but because Elon Musk now supported Donald Trump.

Their actions that day were a clear abuse of power for political reasons, and a clear violation of Elon Musk’s right to free speech.

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SpaceX launches GPS satellite for military

10:51 am

SpaceX this morning successfully placed a military GPS satellite into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. As of posting the satellite has not yet been deployed.

This was the second military GPS launch that the Space Force has taken from ULA and its Vulcan rocket and given to SpaceX instead. Even though Vulcan was certified in late March by the military for these kinds of military launches, delays in getting Vulcan operational forced the Space Force to find another more reliable launch provider. Even now, two months after that certification, ULA has still not announced a launch schedule for this rocket. The company in December 2024 had predicted it would launch 20 times in 2025, with 16 of those launches being by Vulcan. The year is almost half over now and ULA has only launched once, using an Atlas 5 rocket.

The leaders in the 2025 launch race:

66 SpaceX
32 China
6 Rocket Lab
6 Russia

SpaceX now leads the rest of the world in successful launches, 66 to 51.

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Space Force to cut civilian workforce by 14%

9:49 am

As part of the Trump effort to reduce the size of the federal government, the Space Force will by the end of this year reduce its civilian workforce by 14%.

Civilians comprise about 5,600, or more than one-third, of the service’s 17,000 people. “Total reductions have been almost 14 percent of our civilian workforce inside the Space Force,” Saltzman said. That number is higher than the 10 percent Space Force officials previously expected to take.

And both numbers suggest that the Space Force is losing proportionally more civilians than the rest of the Defense Department, which Secretary Pete Hegseth is working to cut by five to eight percent—a process that has caused widespread uncertainty and fear among federal employees.

As is usually the case with today’s press, the article provides many quotes from people decrying these cuts. I say, it probably isn’t enough. The main job of the Space Force at this time is to issue contracts to the private sector to build satellites and spacecraft for the military. That work does not require a gigantic workforce, and it is very likely, based on the actions of this department during the Biden administration, that its leaders have been focused more on empire building that doing their job. Trimming that work force is likely practical and smart.

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Air Force issues draft approval of second SpaceX launchpad at Vandenberg

9:44 am

Air Force last week issued a draft environmental impact statement approving SpaceX’s plans to rebuild the old Space Launch Complex 6 (SLC-6, pronounced “slick-six”) at Vandenberg that was first built for the space shuttle (but never used) and later adapted for ULA’s Delta family of rockets, now retired.

The plan involves rebuilding SLC-6 to accommodate both Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches, including the addition of two landing pads. With its already operational launchpad at Vandenberg, SLC-4E, the company hopes to increase its annual launch rate from 50 (approved by the FAA earlier this month) to as much as 100.

The estimated launch cadence between SpaceX’s existing West Coast pad at … SLC-4E and SLC-6 would be a 70-11 split for Falcon 9 rockets in 2026 with one Falcon Heavy at SLC-6 for a total of 82 launches. That would increase to a 70-25 Falcon 9 split in 2027 and 2028 with an estimated five Falcon Heavy launches in each of those years.

The draft assessment is now open to public comment through July 7, 2025, with a final version expected to be approved in the fall. It appears the Air Force wants it approved, as it needs this capacity for its own launch requirements. It also appears it no longer cares what the California Coastal Commission thinks about such things, as it has no authority and its members appear motivated not by environmental concerns but a simple hatred of Elon Musk.

An annual launch rate of 100 however exceeds what the FAA approved in May, doubling it. In order to move forward either the FAA will have to issue a new reassessment of its own, or some legislative or executive action will be needed to reduce this red tape. Since Vandenberg is a military base, the military in the end makes all the final decisions. The FAA simply rubber-stamps those decisions.

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Space Force awards twelve companies satellite development contracts worth $237 million

9:38 am

Capitalism in space: The Space Force yesterday announced that it has awarded twelve different aerospace companies contracts worth a total of $237 million for developing a variety of smallsat technologies to be used in future military satellite constellations.

The list of selected companies, announced May 1, includes defense and aerospace firms Lockheed Martin Corp. and General Atomics, as well as specialized space firms such as Blue Canyon Technologies, Loft Orbital Federal, Spire Global, Terran Orbital, and York Space Systems. Also named were Axient, Lynk Global, Orbit Systems, Turion Space, and the Utah State University-affiliated Space Dynamics Lab.

…Under the contract, vendors will build and integrate small satellite buses capable of carrying a variety of military experiments and sensors. These buses, often the size of a microwave or small refrigerator, serve as standardized platforms that can be customized to carry diverse payloads.

These contracts are part of the Trump administrations push to get the military to rely on the private sector for its needs. Though the private sector would general build things in the past for the Pentagon, often the design, construction, and even ownership was held entirely by the government. The companies didn’t have anything they could sell elsewhere. Now the design work is being left entirely to the companies, so that what they develop they will own, and will have the ability to market it to others.

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Rocket startup Radian now also building commercial reentry capsule

9:20 am

The rocket startup Radian Aerospace, which is attempting to build an orbital spaceplane that takes off and lands from a runway, has announced that it is also building a commercial reentry capsule that can be used for hypersonic testing.

The Seattle based company announced April 29 its intent to develop the Radian Reusable Reentry Vehicle (R3V), a spacecraft for hypersonics testing or returning payloads from space that also gives Radian flight experience in key technologies for its future Radian One spaceplane.

Livingston Holder, chief technology officer of Radian, said in an interview that the company was looking was ways to test Dur-E-Therm, the thermal protection system it is creating for Radian One. The company had recently completed tests of the system in a lab at NASA’s Glenn Research Center. “But, testing in a non-flight environment only gets you so far, so we were crafting how to test it in a more relevant environment.”

It appears the company has recognized that its spaceplane will take years to develop, and more years before it can bring in any revenue. An orbital capsule however can be developed much more quickly, and it also appears there are a lot of commercial and military customers for it.

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Rocket Lab gets two big military contracts, from the Space Force and the UK

9:17 am

Due to its success in quickly redesigning the first stage of its Electron rocket into a hypersonic test vehicle dubbed HASTE, Rocket Lab has now won two very large hypersonic test program contracts from both the American Space Force as well as the United Kingdom.

Rocket Lab has been selected by the U.S. Air Force to participate within its Enterprise-Wide Agile Acquisition Contract (EWAAC), a $46 billion indefinite delivery-indefinite quantity (IDIQ) contract designed for the rapid acquisition of innovative technologies, engineering services, and technical solutions that develops the Air Force’s new capabilities. The program has a contracting period through to 2031 and is designed to be broad in scope, flexible in funding, and agile for maximum use to enable the Air Force to quickly procure services and technologies across various domains.

Further, Rocket Lab has also been selected by the United Kingdom’s Ministry of Defence (UK MOD) for its Hypersonic Technologies & Capability Development Framework (HTCDF), a ~$1.3 billion (£1 billion) framework to rapidly develop advanced hypersonic capabilities for the United Kingdom. As a newly-selected supplier to the HTCDF, Rocket Lab is now eligible to bid to provide services, technologies, and testing capabilities that support the UK’s development of sovereign hypersonic technology.

In both cases Rocket Lab will bid for test contracts using HASTE.

These deals indicate that Rocket Lab has essentially grabbed the business that Stratolaunch had been vying for with its giant Roc airplane and Talon test drop vehicles. Stratolaunch might get some contracts, but it appears the bulk of the work will instead go to Rocket Lab. It also appears that Stratolaunch has also been beaten to this business by the startup Varda, which has also won an Air Force contract for hypersonic testing using its orbital capsules during their return to Earth.

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New Trump executive order requires Pentagon to “prioritize commercial solutions”

9:24 am

A new Trump executive order signed on April 9, 2025 now requires the space divisions in the Defense Department to “prioritize commercial solutions” in all its future space projects.

The executive order, called “Modernizing Defense Acquisitions and Spurring Innovation in the Defense Industrial Base,” referenced commercial technology multiple times, including call to utilize existing authorities to “expedite acquisitions throughout the Department of Defense, including a first preference for commercial solutions” and “the restructuring of performance evaluation metrics for acquisition workforce members to include the ability to demonstrate and apply a first consideration of commercial solutions.”

According to Pentagon officials, this order simply underlines what they have been doing. Maybe so, but the reason the Pentagon has been moving in this direction is not because it wanted to, but because of two factors in the past decade that forced action. First, for the past three decades the Pentagon has increasingly failed to get much accomplished in space. Under Air Force leadership (before the creation of the Space Force) the military focused on designing its own big satellites, creating projects that generally went overbudget and behind schedule. That general failure demanded change.

Second, to institute change Trump created the Space Force in his first term with the express desire to shift the military from building its own gold-plated satellites to buying them from the private sector. And despite the four years when Biden was president, the Pentagon maintained that shift, which is why this new Trump executive order will do little to disturb its present space plans.

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Firefly wins Space Force contract to test orbital maneuvers with its Elytra space tug

12:33 pm

Firefly yesterday announced it has been awarded a Space Force contract to use its Elytra space tug to test orbital maneuvers designed for military purposes.

As part of the mission, Elytra will host a suite of government payloads, including optical visible and infrared cameras, a responsive navigation unit, and a universal electrical bus with a payload interface module. Firefly’s Elytra Dawn configuration will utilize common components from the company’s launch vehicles and lunar landers, including the avionics, composite structures, and propulsion systems, to enable on-demand mobility, plane changes, and maneuvers with high delta-V capabilities and reliability.

Though unstated, the inclusion of cameras suggests the Pentagon wants to test Elytra’s ability to maneuver close to other satellites and photograph them.

This contract further illustrates Firefly’s effort to diversify its space products. Like Rocket Lab, it is not relying solely on its rocket division to make money, but is also developing and selling a range of space products, from lunar landers to orbital tugs to satellite equipment.

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Space Force gives SpaceX launch originally contracted to ULA

8:45 am

For the second time in less than a year, the Space Force has taken a launch away from ULA and given the payload to SpaceX to launch.

The GPS III SV-08 satellite, the eighth in the GPS III constellation, is now scheduled to launch no earlier than late May aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida, the Space Systems Command announced April 7.

This marks the second time in recent months that the Space Force has reassigned a GPS launch from ULA to SpaceX. Last year, the GPS III SV-07 satellite was moved from a planned ULA Vulcan rocket launch in late 2025 to a SpaceX Falcon 9, which successfully launched on December 16 in a mission called Rapid Response Trailblazer.

Both switches were apparently triggered because of the delay in getting ULA’s new Vulcan rocket certified by the military, resulting in all of ULA’s launches in 2025 being pushed back significantly. That certification finally occurred a few weeks ago, but it appears the Space Force has decided that ULA won’t be able to get all those launches off this year as planned. It therefore decided to shift this launch to SpaceX.

This situation once again highlights the importance of private companies to move fast in the open competition of private enterprise. SpaceX has always done this, and thus it gets contracts and business that other companies that move with the speed of molasses lose.

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Space Force finally certifies ULA’s new Vulcan rocket for commercial military launches

9:26 pm

After significant delays in developing ULA’s new Vulcan rocket, and then further delays after the rocket’s second test launch (which experienced technical issues), the Space Force today finally announced that it has certified the rocket, thus allowing ULA to proceed with several military launches that have been stalled for months. From ULA’s press release:

In September 2016, ULA entered into an agreement with the U.S. Air Force and outlined the plan to certify Vulcan according to the Air Force’s New Entrant Certification Guide. Over the last few years, the collective ULA and Space Force team have completed 52 certification criteria, including more than 180 discrete tasks, two certification flight demonstrations, 60 payload interface requirement verifications, 18 subsystem design and test reviews, and 114 hardware and software audits.

What was not revealed was the criteria the Space Force used to finally put aside as critical the loss of a nozzle on one of Vulcan’s two side booster’s during the second test launch. While the rocket successfully got its payload into the proper orbit, for a booster to lose a nozzle is not trivial. ULA has recently said it had found the cause and has fixed it, but few details have been revealed. Nor has this new announcement revealed any further details about the fix.

Regardless, this certification is very good news for ULA. Expect it to move as quickly as it can (which will seem slow in comparison to SpaceX) to launch a number of delayed military launches.

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As Space Force switches to capitalism model for its satellites, it will also not name the companies it hires

9:58 am

Capitalism in space: The main reason President Trump got the Space Force established in his first term was because the Air Force resisted rethinking its space military operations. It insisted on building large government-built satellites that took years to complete and always went overbudget and behind schedule.

The creation of the Space Force gave new people the ability to push for a major change, switching to the capitalism model whereby the government designed and built nothing but instead acted as a customer buying what it needed from the private sector. In addition, it allowed a major shift from those big satellites — easy targets for destruction — to the large private constellations of many small satellites, cheap to build and launch and difficult for other militaries to take out.

The Space Force — in order to protect the satellite companies it hires to build these satellites — has now announced that it will no longer publish the names of those companies.

The U.S. Space Force plans to keep the names of commercial companies participating in its new space reserve program under wraps, aiming to protect them from potential adversary threats as commercial satellites play a growing role in military operations.

Col. Richard Kniseley, director of the Space Force’s Commercial Space Office, said companies signing agreements under the Commercial Augmentation Space Reserve (CASR) program can disclose their participation but are not required to. “That potentially puts a target on their back,” Kniseley told SpaceNews, underscoring the risk to private-sector firms providing space-based services during wartime.

Under this program, the Space Force has already signed contracts with four satellite companies, but the names remain undisclosed.

Though there is some logic to this decision, it carries great risk of corruption and misbehavior. Almost every time government bureaucrats and private companies are allowed to work in secret we routinely see kickbacks, bribery, and contract payoffs. And don’t expect congressional oversight to prevent such things, since there is now ample evidence from DOGE that our federal lawmakers have been quite willing to take their own payoffs to allow such corruption to prosper.

The switch to capitalism by the Pentagon is unquestionably a good thing. It will get more done for less. Letting it act in secrecy is a mistake however. Better to live with the risk of attack than allow our government and the companies it issues big money contracts to do things behind closed doors.

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ULA pinpoints reason a nozzle fell off a Vulcan rocket side booster during last launch

9:11 am

During a press briefing earlier this week, ULA’s CEO Tory Bruno noted that a manufacturing defect was the reason a nozzle fell off one of the two solid-fueled strap-on boosters during the second launch of the company’s new Vulcan rocket.

In a March 12 media roundtable, Tory Bruno, president and chief executive of ULA, said the anomaly was traced to a “manufacturing defect” in one of the internal parts of the nozzle, an insulator. Specific details, he said, remained proprietary. “We have isolated the root cause and made appropriate corrective actions,” he said, which were confirmed in a static-fire test of a motor at a Northrop test site in Utah in February. “So we are back continuing to fabricate hardware and, at least initially, screening for what that root cause was.”

The company however still awaits approval by the Pentagon to begin Vulcan commercial military launches. That delay has forced it to shift its first launch in 2025 from Vulcan to an Atlas-5 launch of Amazon’s first set of operational Kuiper satellites. Bruno also revealed during the press briefing that the company has scaled down the number of launches it hopes to complete in 2025 from 20 to 12, with the reduction caused almost entirely by fewer Vulcan launches.

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Space Force awards development contracts to eight startups

9:27 am

The Space Force’s commercial office, dubbed SpaceWERX, announced March 8, 2025 that it has awarded development contracts to eight startups totaling $440 million.

Each STRATFI agreement is worth up to $60 million, with SpaceWERX and several defense agencies contributing up to $30 million per project. Private investors provide matching funds to scale innovations that have already demonstrated viability through prototype development.

The winners — Albedo, Beast Code, CesiumAstro, Gravitics, LeoLabs, Rise8, Umbra and Xona — were announced March 8 at an event at the Capital Factory in Austin, Texas.

Of these companies, Gravitics is probably the most interesting, as it is attempting to become a major American provider of space station modules. It already has a $125 million contract with Axiom to build a small module for that company’s station. This new contract from the Space Force suggests the Pentagon is considering launching its own space station, or possibly attaching a Gravitics module to one of the four private stations presently being built. Below is my present ranking of these four stations:

  • Haven-1, being built by Vast, with no NASA funds. The company is moving fast, with Haven-1 to launch and be occupied in 2026 for a 30 day mission. It hopes this actual hardware and manned mission will put it in the lead to win NASA’s phase 2 contract, from which it will build its much larger mult-module Haven-2 station..
  • Axiom, being built by Axiom, has launched three tourist flights to ISS. There are rumors it is experiencing cash flow issues, but it is also going to do a fourth ISS tourist flight this spring, carrying passengers from India, Hungary, and Poland.
  • Orbital Reef, being built by a consortium led by Blue Origin and Sierra Space. Though Blue Origin has apparently done little, Sierra Space has successfully tested its inflatable modules, including a full scale version, and appears ready to start building the station’s modules for launch.
  • Starlab, being built by a consortium led by Voyager Space, Airbus, and Northrop Grumman. It recently had its station design approved by NASA.
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Space Force’s X-37B completes seventh flight, lasting 434 days

8:22 am

With landing on March 7, 2025 at Vandenberg in California, of one of the Space Force’s two X-37B reusable mini-shuttles, the military completed the seventh total flight, this one lasting over 434 days.

The mission achieved a number of important milestones. First, it was the first launched on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. Previously launches had used both ULA’s Atlas-5 as well as SpaceX’s Falcon 9.

Second, the spacecraft successfully demonstrated its ability to use aerobraking to adjust its orbit.

The Space Force also claimed other classified experiments on board “tested space domain awareness technology experiments that aim to improve the United States Space Force’s knowledge of the space environment.” That’s however all they told us.

Because the Space Force has stopped telling us which of the two X-37B’s is flying on each launch, it is not clear the Space Force even has a fleet of two any longer. It could be one has been retired.

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ULA & Northrop Grumman complete static fire test of Vulcan strap-on booster

9:13 am

As part of its investigation into the loss of a strap-on booster nozzle during the second launch of ULA’s Vulcan rocket in October 2024, ULA and Northrop Grumman on February 13, 2025 successfully completed a static fire test of another strap-on booster.

The test was also apparently done in order to convince the Space Force to certify Vulcan for military launches. The Pentagon originally required Vulcan to complete two launches before certification, something that second launch achieved despite the loss of the nozzle. It has held off that certification however, insisting on more information into the nozzle loss.

The investigation has scrambled ULA’s planned launch schedule. The company had hoped after the second certification launch to fly two Space Force commercial launches before the end of 2024. Both launches were pushed back into 2025, so much so that ULA has been forced to de-stack a Vulcan rocket so it can instead do an Atlas-5 launch first, carrying the first set of Amazon’s Kuiper satellites.

Whether the results of this static fire test will satisfy the military is at present unknown. No details about the test were revealed, other than the companies were studying the results.

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ULA swapping Vulcan for Atlas-5 for first 2025 launch

11:18 am

ULA has decided to destack the Vulcan rocket it had planned as its first launch in 2025 (launching a military payload) and is now replacing it with one of its remaining Atlas-5 rockets to put the first batch of satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper internet constellation.

It appears the military is not ready to certify this launch after the second Vulcan launch in October 2024 experienced a problem with one of its strap-on boosters. The payload got to its proper orbit, but the loss of that booster’s nozzle appears to be an issue the military remains concerned about.

Rather than wait, ULA decided to switch to the Kuiper launch. The company wants to complete up to 20 launches in 2025, many of which are for Amazon using its last ten or so Atlas-5 rockets. When it can start commercial launches of Vulcan remains somewhat uncertain. The military has indicated it will make a final decision of certification in the spring, and has also said that first operational flight will follow soon after.

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Space Force starts environmental impact study of SpaceX’s launches at Vandenberg

3:35 pm

In mid-December the Space Force initiated a new environmental impact study (EIS), reviewing SpaceX’s request to significantly increasing the number of launches it would do out of Vandenberg, an increase that could climb to as much as a hundred launches per year.

The EIS will examine the environmental impacts from the redevelopment of Space Launch Complex (SLC) 6 for use by SpaceX for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launches. The Space Force awarded SpaceX access to SLC-6, aka “Slick Six,” in 2023 after the final launch of United Launch Alliance’s Delta 4 from the site.

SLC-6 was built in the 1960s for the Air Force’s Manned Orbiting Laboratory program, which was canceled in 1969 before any launches took place. It was later converted to support Space Shuttle launches, but mothballed after the Challenger accident in 1986 before hosting a single launch. ULA took over the site in 2006.

The EIS would also allow SpaceX to conduct up to 100 launches annually between SLC-6 and its existing launch pad at Vandenberg, SLC-4. That includes booster landings at both launch sites as well as droneships downrange.

This is where we are are in the first quarter of the 21st century. Nothing new can be done anywhere without detailed environmental impact statements that take months, sometimes years, to complete, and almost always conclude that the proposed work can proceed without harm. Often however that conclusion can only come if the government and the private sector agree to funnel cash to environmental causes and organizations, if only to shut them up and prevent further lawsuits. (That’s exactly what happened in Boca Chica. Expect the same now in California.)

It must be noted again that we now have almost eight decades of empirical proof in both Florida and California that rocket launches do no significant harm to the environment, and that if anything they act to protect wildlife by creating large undeveloped refuges in the surrounding land. These new impact statements forced on SpaceX in California, in Florida, and in Boca Chica are therefore nothing more than a government power play, done in order to tell everyone who really is boss.

A new boss however takes over the executive branch of the federal government in only a few weeks. I suspect he will not look kindly at these games. Expect some quick changes almost immediately.

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China and SpaceX complete launches

11:21 pm

Two launches today. First China launched four Earth observation radar satellites, its Long March 2D rocket lifting off from its Taiyuan spaceport in northeast China. No word where the rocket’s lower stages, using very toxic hypergolic fuels, crashed within China.

SpaceX then launched a GPS-type satellite for the Space Force, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. Little was released about the payload and what information was released was not very informative. The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing softly on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

130 SpaceX
62 China
16 Russia
13 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 149 to 94, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies, 130 to 113.

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Rocket startup Stoke Space completes static fire test of first stage engine

10:02 am

Stoke's Nova rocket
Stoke’s Nova rocket

The rocket startup Stoke Space revealed yesterday that it has completed a static fire test of the first stage engine it will use on its Nova rocket, shown in the graphic to the right.

The test, which was not the first for this engine, proved out several new technologies.

Stoke Space called the test significant for several reasons. It’s the first hotfire of the company’s Block 2 (flight layout) stage 1 engine, and this engine architecture — called full-flow staged combustion (FFSC) — is considered particularly challenging. Only two entities in the world — Stoke and SpaceX — have successfully developed FFSC engines. … Stoke’s stage 1 engine is a liquified natural gas/liquid oxygen engine capable of producing 100,000 pounds of thrust. The duration of the test was not revealed.

It was the first time Stoke has tested on its new vertical test stand in Moses Lake. The company’s testing philosophy is that you must “test like you fly,” and it believes vertical testing is key to engine development.

Nor is the first stage engine the only technological innovation. Nova’s second stage uses a radical design whereby the engine releases its thrust through a ring of small nozzles on the outside perimeter of the stage, rather than a single central nozzle. This design is what the company hopes will allow it to return that upper stage intact for reuse.

The four year old company has raised $100 million in investment capital, but has also faced environmental red tape from the Space Force for its launch facility at Cape Canaveral. It had previously targeted 2025 for the first test flights of Nova, but that schedule appears unlikely because of this red tape.

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The next two Vulcan launches for the Pentagon slip to 2025

9:14 am

Both the Space Force and ULA have now admitted that the next two Vulcan launches, which both had hoped to launch before the end of this year, have now been delayed until 2025, and that Vulcan remains uncertified as yet by the military for its launches.

The United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan will not be able to conduct two planned national security missions on its launch manifest for this year after delays with certifying the heavy-lift rocket. The comments came hours after a Space Force official cast doubt that the missions could be completed before the end of 2024.

ULA launched its second certification flight in October, roughly a month behind schedule, following a first flight in January that was nearly four years behind schedule. The Space Force is still assessing data from the October launch in partnership with ULA.

The military had said if ULA completed two Vulcan successful launches it would approve Vulcan for these launches. Though the second launch got its payload to its correct orbit, during launch the nozzle on one of its strap-on solid-fueled boosters fell off. Though officials keep saying they expect certification anyway, that certification has not happened. It appears right now that the military won’t do so until the investigation into the problem is completed and a fix is installed.

At the moment the only rocket company that can launch large payloads for the Pentagon is SpaceX. Though that company has not gouged the military in bidding (though it it could) this is not a good situation. The military wants options and redundancy, not simply to save money, but to give it flexibility. It needs ULA and Blue Origin to finally deliver their rockets.

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ULA begins stacking Vulcan for military launch, anticipating Pentagon approval

8:56 am

Though the Space Force is still reviewing the nozzle issue on the second flight of ULA’s Vulcan rocket and has not yet certified the rocket for military operational launches, ULA has begun stacking the next Vulcan for an anticipated military launch of a national security satellite.

On Monday [October 21], ULA shared photos of the 109.2-foot-long (33.3 m) booster being hoisted into the Vertical Integration Facility to begin the stacking process. In the days and possibly weeks to come, the 38.5-foot-long (11.7 m) Centaur 5 upper stage will be added along with four solid rocket boosters and the payload fairings.

It appears that the military has accepted Vulcan for this launch because — despite the nozzle falling off of
a strap-on side booster — the rocket was successful in placing its payload in its precise orbit. The Space Force is simply completing the paperwork required for certification.

No date however has been set, but the company hopes to complete two military Vulcan launches in 2024, so it won’t be that far in the future.

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