Tag: SpaceX

NASA names revised crew for next manned Dragon mission to ISS

9:34 am

NASA today named the two astronauts who will fly on the next manned Dragon mission to ISS, to be launched on September 24, 2024 for a six month mission, where they will be joined by the two astronauts who launched on Boeing’s Starliner in June but now will return with them when their Freedom capsule returns in February 2025.

NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Roscosmos cosmonaut Aleksandr Gorbunov will launch no earlier than Tuesday, Sept. 24, on the agency’s SpaceX Crew-9 mission to the International Space Station. NASA astronauts Zena Cardman and Stephanie Wilson, previously announced as crewmates, are eligible for reassignment on a future mission. Hague and Gorbunov will fly to the space station as commander and mission specialist, respectively, as part of a two-crew member flight aboard a SpaceX Dragon.

The updated crew complement follows NASA’s decision to return the agency’s Boeing Crew Flight Test uncrewed and launch Crew-9 with two unoccupied seats. NASA astronauts Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams, who launched aboard the Starliner spacecraft in June, will fly home with Hague and Gorbunov in February 2025.

With Starliner now scheduled to return on September 6th and Freedom not arriving until around September 24th, there will be an eighteen day period when Wilmore and Williams will have a limited and more risky lifeboat option on ISS. If an incident should occur that requires station evacuation there is room to squeeze them inside SpaceX’s Endeavour Dragon capsule presently docked there, but they will return without flight suits. Their Dragon flight suits will not arrive until September 24th, on the next Dragon. The suits they used on Starliner will not work on Dragon.

One comment

Has the FAA grounded SpaceX?

9:59 am

The FAA statement yesterday seemed quite clear — that the agency was grounding all SpaceX launches until the investigation into the failed landing of a Falcon 9 first stage was completed. That clarity was further accepted by numerous news organizations today, all of which clearly described in their reporting the FAA’s action as a grounding of further SpaceX launches for an unspecified amount of time, from days to weeks. (See here, here, and here for just a few examples.)

Nonetheless, there are strong indications that the FAA’s grounding will be very short. For example, though no dates are presently firm, SpaceX continues to list at least two Starlink launches as well as the Polaris Dawn private manned mission as targeting launches over the next few days, with one Starlink launch still aiming for a 10:18 pm (Pacific) launch tonight from Vandenberg. That liftoff might be tentative, but that SpaceX is still pushing for that launch date suggests it is trying to pressure the FAA to back off.

And SpaceX has good reason to expect that pressure to work. The FAA has already admitted there were no public safety issues from the first stage failure. In the past it has allowed launches to proceed under that condition, even if the investigation was on-going. SpaceX is almost certainly making this point known to the FAA, if its managers don’t know it already. We will find out I think by the end of today.

Even if the FAA backs down, that it even attempted any grounding in this situation was an egregious abuse of its regulatory power. There was no rational reason for it to even hint at doing so, even based on its own regulations as well as its statutory authority. If the goal was to do its job and not to harass SpaceX and Elon Musk, it would have immediately announced that no grounding was required because no issues of public safety were involved in the failure. Instead, it pushed its power, forcing SpaceX to push back.

14 comments

FAA grounds SpaceX because of first stage landing failure early today

1:36 pm


“Great business you got there! Really be
a shame if something happened to it!”

They’re coming for you next: Once again the FAA has expanded its harassment of SpaceX by now grounding the company from any further launches while it “investigates” the failed landing of a Falcon 9 first stage last night. The FAA statement is as follows:

“The FAA is aware an anomaly occurred during the SpaceX Starlink Group 8-6 mission that launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida on August 28,” the FAA said Wednesday in a statement. “The incident involved the failure of the Falcon 9 booster rocket while landing on a droneship at sea. No public injuries or public property damage have been reported. The FAA is requiring an investigation.”

The FAA’s actions against SpaceX since Biden became president have consistently been unprecedented and biased against the company. » Read more

30 comments

Musk: Starlink will be made available to all cell phones in emergencies

9:34 am

Elon Musk has announced that SpaceX will make its Starlink internet constellation available to anyone with a cell phone should they need it during an emergency in remote areas.

The SpaceX CEO made the comments in an X post as the company, in partnership with T-Mobile, currently seeks approval from the Federal Communications Commission to operate its direct-to-cellular Starlink technology commercially. SpaceX says the satellite-based service would provide supplemental cell coverage to Americans from space that would close mobile “dead zones.” Cellular service providers AT&T and Verizon have raised concerns about the technology, including that it would disrupt their own mobile networks.

In a letter to the FCC on Friday, SpaceX said the service would connect first responders in a variety of environments and would be able to send wireless emergency alerts to everyone — not just T-Mobile customers — in places where there is no earth-based cellular coverage.

While this offer is morally correct, it is also good politics, as it acts as icing on the cake to encourage the FCC to approve that T-Moble license request. At the moment the technical details for making the proposal happen remain murky, but SpaceX’s willingness to offer this emergency service at no charge, something its competitors have apparently not, cannot hurt it in its negotiations with the FCC.

7 comments

SpaceX launches 21 Starlink satellites but loses first stage at landing

8:44 am

SpaceX last night successfully placed 21 Starlink satellites into orbit, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in the early morning hours.

The first stage however fell over on its drone ship in the Atlantic after landing. This was its 23rd flight, which would have been a record reuse of a Falcon 9 booster had it landed successfully. Because of this failure, SpaceX rescheduled another Starlink launch, delaying it one day until August 30, 2024, as engineers assessed the stage data to determine the cause of the problem. From the video is appears that one leg on the far side, out of sight, either failed to deploy or collapsed after landing.

To be clear, SpaceX anticipates only a one day delay in all its launches because of this issue.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

84 SpaceX
35 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 99 to 53, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world, including American companies 84 to 68.

11 comments

Manned Polaris Dawn launch delayed due to weather

9:13 pm

SpaceX tonight scrubbed the launch of Jared Isaacman’s manned Polaris Dawn orbital mission due to poor weather predicted in the splashdown zones off the coast of Florida when the mission would have ended.

The flight has tentatively set now for August 30, 2024, but that remains a very preliminary date.

SpaceX however is not sitting on its hands while it waits for good weather for this manned mission. Tonight it has two Starlink launches scheduled a little more than an hour apart, one from Cape Canaveral in Florida followed by the second from Vandenberg in California. If the first launch is successful its Falcon 9 first stage will set a new record, flying for its 23rd time.

Leave a comment

SpaceX blasts its satellite competitors for lobbying the government to shut down Starlink/T-Mobile partnership

9:45 am

SpaceX on August 22, 2024 responded harshly to the effort by its satellite competitors to get the FCC to shut down the planned partneship of Starlink and T-Mobile, whereby Starlink will fill the gaps in T-Mobile’s coverage.

You can read SpaceX’s letter here. Its language however is quite blunt:

While the petitions from AT&T, Verizon, DISH/EchoStar, and Omnispace lack technical basis or legal merit, their game is clear. AT&T and Verizon seek to hamstring their competitor T-Mobile by talking out of both sides of their mouths, on one hand demanding without technical support that T-Mobile and SpaceX operate at unnecessarily low power levels that will force Americans to sacrifice service, while giving their own partner AST a free pass. AT&T goes so far as to claim to have conducted a secret study it refuses to show the Commission to support suppressing SpaceX’s out-of-band emissions to an interference-protection level ten times below the limit sufficient to protect terrestrial networks, while allowing its partner AST to exceed that limit.

DISH/EchoStar repeats its demand to siphon proprietary information from SpaceX to aid its own flailing ambitions, while stoutly refusing SpaceX’s repeated requests to engage in actual good faith coordination the way a company with actual technical concerns would.

And although it still has no commercial satellite service anywhere in the world, Omnispace continues to make unfounded claims of prospective harmful interference to prop up a decade-old spectrum play that it fears will lose financial value if American consumers can enjoy ubiquitous mobile connectivity using the PCS G Block downlink.

Fortunately, none of these unfounded arguments present any reasonable basis to delay swift grant of SpaceX’s request to bring ubiquitous mobile connectivity to American consumers.

The FCC has not yet responded to any of these demand letters. Nor has it yet issued the waiver SpaceX had requested in June 2024 allowing its Starlink system to operate beyond its licensed radio frequencies in order to facilitate cell surface with T-Mobile.

2 comments

SpaceX gets FCC okay for next Starship/Superheavy test flight

9:41 am

Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing
Artist rendering of Superheavy being captured by
the tower chopsticks at landing. Click for video.

The FCC yesterday issued SpaceX a communications license for the fifth orbital test launch of its giant Starship/Superheavy rocket, with the license permitting Superheavy to “either return to the launch site or perform a controlled water landing.”

The license runs through February 15, 2025.

This does not mean a launch has been approved however. The FCC only gives approval for radio communications on such a flight. It is the FAA that must issue the actual launch license, and it as yet not done so.

SpaceX had announced on August 8, 2024 that it was ready to go. It is now almost two weks since then and the FAA has said nothing.

The only justifiable reason for this delay would be that SpaceX has requested permission to do the first chopstick landing of Superheavy at Boca Chica (as suggested by the FCC approval), and since this changes the already approved flight path from the previous four test launches, the FAA is reviewing it more closely, and taking its time to do so.

The simple fact is that it can’t learn anything by this review. It isn’t qualified to make any educated determination. Either it is willing to let SpaceX do that return, or not. If it is against it at this point, it should simply say so, demand SpaceX hold off a chopstick landing until later, and give it permission now to do another ocean landing. At least this way the company would have clarity and could proceed.

6 comments

SpaceX launches 20 more Starlink satellites using a new first stage

8:50 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage was new, having never flown before. It successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic, and is now part of the company’s fleet of Falcon 9 first stages.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

83 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 98 to 52, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 83 to 67.

5 comments

SpaceX launches 116 payloads on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission

12:20 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched 116 payloads, including 108 satellites, on its eleventh smallsat Transporter mission, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing back at Vandenberg. As of posting the satellites had not deployed.

The payloads included a wide variety of satellites and demonstration missions, including one orbital tug from the European tug company D-Orbit, its Ion tug deploying five satellites. In addition, five different companies will be using their own deployment equipment to release about fifty of the satellites from the Falcon 9.

These SpaceX Transporter smallsat launches demonstrate the value of lowering the cost to launch. Almost none of these satellites could have obtained investment capital when the cost high. Now that SpaceX has lowered that cost, a plethora of new satellite companies of all kinds can get that capital and build and launch their projects. And that burst of new companies is more than enough to provide business not only to SpaceX but to a lot of other new rocket startups.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

82 SpaceX
34 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 97 to 52, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 82 to 67.

14 comments

SpaceX launches two commercial Earth observation satellites

8:56 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched two commercial high resolution Earth observation satellites for the company Maxar, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its sixteenth flight, landing back at Cape Canaveral. The two fairings completed their seventh and seventeenth flights.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

81 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
9 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 96 to 50, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 81 to 65.

These numbers will continue to go up, as India has a launch scheduled for later today, while SpaceX has another Transporter launch scheduled for tomorrow, carrying dozens of smallsats.

3 comments

SpaceX announces another commerical passenger flight on a Dragon capsule

10:17 pm

SpaceX today announced it will fly a four-passenger commerical flight, using the Dragon capsule dubbed Endurance and flying the first manned human flight to circle the poles.

The private Crew Dragon mission will be led by a Chinese-born cryptocurrency entrepreneur named Chun Wang, and he will be joined by a polar explorer, a roboticist, and a filmmaker whom he has befriended in recent years.

The “Fram2” mission, named after the Norwegian research ship Fram, will launch into a polar corridor from SpaceX’s launch facilities in Florida and fly directly over the north and south poles. The three-to-five day mission is being timed to fly over Antarctica near the summer solstice in the Southern Hemisphere, to afford maximum lighting.

As with the Jared Isaacman’s previous and future Dragon manned missions, the flight avoids any of the NASA bureucracy and costs by not docking with ISS. The flight is targeting a launch date before the end of this year, but that date is not firm.

6 comments

FAA cancels scheduled public meetings to review new Boca Chica environmental assessment

9:52 am

For as yet unknown reasons, the FAA today sent out an email canceling all the public meetings that it had scheduled in mid-July and were designed to allow the public to comment on its new environmental assessment of SpaceX’s application to increase its Starship/Superheavy launch rate at Boca Chica from five to as much as 25 launches per year.

The FAA is cancelling the in-person public meetings on the Draft EA scheduled for: Tuesday, August 13, 2024; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT City of South Padre Island Convention Center, 7355 Padre Blvd, South Padre Island, TX 78597 Thursday, August 15, 2024; 1:00 PM–3:00 PM & 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT Port Isabel Event & Cultural Center, 309 E Railroad Ave, Port Isabel, TX 78578 The FAA is also cancelling the virtual public meeting scheduled for: Tuesday, August 20, 2024; 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM CDT The FAA will provide notice for new dates for the meetings and a new date for the close of the comment period in the future.

The FAA’s email also noted that public comments can still be submitted either electronically here or by mail sent to Ms. Amy Hanson, FAA Environmental Specialist, SpaceX EA, c/o ICF 1902 Reston Metro Plaza Reston, VA 20190. In both cases, the commenter must reference Docket No. FAA-2024-2006. The email also stated that the public comment period would be extended beyond its August 29, 2024 closure date.

This cancellation mirrors the situation in 2021-2022, when the FAA was reviewing its previous environmental reassessment of the Boca Chica site. At that time the agency repeatedly failed to meet its own deadlines, sometimes on a month-by-month basis, so that the final approval process ended up stretching out more than a half year. Similar delays further stalled the first Starship/Superhavy test flight by another full year.

I once again suspect that higher ups in the White House are applying pressure on the FAA to stall this process, for political reasons, probably because those higher ups want no action taken before the November election. I am guessing, but this is how Washington works. Real achievement by American private citizens must always take a back seat to the power lusts of the DC politicos who now rule us.

10 comments

SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

8:50 am

After a launch abort less than a minute before launch yesterday, SpaceX successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites this morning, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The first stage completed its 17th flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The past three days for SpaceX was quite busy, as my readers can easily see: Three launches in three days. It appears the company is working hard to recover its launch pace from the several week pause after an upper stage had a leak on a July 11th launch.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

80 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 95 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 80 to 64.

The launch schedule for the rest of the week will be as busy, with the Russians launching a Progress freighter to ISS, India launching its SSLV rocket, and SpaceX having two more launches on its manifest.

One comment

FAA red tape apparently stalling the next Starship/Superheavy orbital test launch

9:37 pm

Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing
Superheavy being captured by the tower chopsticks at landing.
Click for video.

Back in mid-June, shortly after 4th orbital test flight of SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy rocket, it appeared based on an FAA statement that the company could proceed with the next test flight as soon as it was ready to fly.

Subsequently, Elon Musk said the company expected to be ready by early August. There were also indications that the company wished to attempt a chopstick landing of Superheavy back at the launch tower at Boca Chica. Such an attempt however would require approval from the FAA, as the flight profile would not be the same as the previous flight.

I and others speculated that SpaceX would forego that chopstick landing in order to fly the fifth test flight quickly, while simultanously requesting permission from the FAA for such a landing on a later test flight. My thinking was that this would allow test flights to proceed with as little delay as possible.

Though it remains unknown whether or not the next test flight will include that chopstick landing attempt, it does appear that FAA red tape is blocking the next flight. In an update from NASASpaceflight.com about the work at Boca Chica posted on August 9, 2023 was a link to a SpaceX tweet the day before that said the following:
» Read more

9 comments

SpaceX launches two broadband satellites for the Space Force and Norway

8:49 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched two broadband satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The satellites will provide improved broadband service in the Arctic regions for both the Space Force and Norway, which partnered with Northrop Grumman to build the satellites.

The Falcon 9 first stage completed its 22nd flight, tying the record of one other booster for the most reuses. It landed on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

79 SpaceX
33 China
10 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 94 to 49, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 79 to 64.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches an additional 21 Starlink satellites

10:25 am

SpaceX early this morning successfully launched an additional 21 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its 21st flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. Note how a first stage is now used more than twenty times, and it almost goes without notice.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

78 SpaceX
33 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 92 to 49, while SpaceX by itself now leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 78 to 63.

One comment

SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine is so advanced the CEO of ULA doesn’t understand it

12:31 pm

SpaceX's new Raptor-3 engine
Click for original image.

When Elon Musk on August 2, 2024 proudly tweeted a picture of SpaceX’s new Raptor-3 methane-fueled engine, the third iteration of the engine it uses on this Starship/Superheavy rocket, Tori Bruno, the CEO of ULA, looked at the image (to the right) and complained that Musk and SpaceX were touting pictures of a “partially assembled engine.” As Bruno tweeted:

They have done an excellent job making the assembly simpler and more producible. So, there is no need to exaggerate this by showing a partially assembled engine without controllers, fluid management, or TVC systems, then comparing it to fully assembled engines that do.

It turns out that this engine is so advanced that Bruno — the CEO of SpaceX’s best competitor — didn’t understand it. Both Musk and SpaceX’s CEO Gywnne Shotwell immediately responded with images of this same engine operating during hot fire tests. As Shotwell tweeted, “Works pretty good for a ‘partially assembled’ engine :).”

Musk in one of his first tweets describing the engine’s specifications was also right when he described it as “Truly, a work of art.” Look at it. For what is the most powerful rocket engine ever built it looks as streamlined and a simple as the slant-6 car engine I had in my 1969 Plymouth Valient, built long before environmental regulations caused car engines to become incredibly overbuilt and complicated.

This little anecdote illustrates quite starkly how advanced SpaceX is over its competitors. It is now building rocket engines with technology beyond the immediate understanding of the CEO of the United States’ second largest rocket company.

Almost a decade after SpaceX successfully reused a Falcon 9 first stage, and now does it routinely, no other rocket company as yet to do the same, and only one company, Rocket Lab, is doing flight tests in an attempt to eventually do so.

SpaceX has no competition because too many of its competitors are simply not trying to compete. It is both sad and shameful.

Hat tip to reader Rex Ridenoure.

44 comments

SpaceX sets August 26, 2024 as new launch date for Polaris Dawn private manned mission

9:15 am

Jared Isaacman
Jared Isaacman

According to a post on X yesterday, SpaceX has rescheduled the launch of the private Polaris Dawn manned orbital flight to August 26, 2024. The flight is financed entirely by billionaire Jared Isaacman, who will also command the mission (his second in space).

The mission will launch on a Falcon 9, with the Dragon Resilience spacecraft carrying four private astronauts. During the orbital flight the capsule will attempt to fly as high as 870 miles, the highest any human will have flown since the Apollo missions. It will then attempt the first spacewalks by a private citizen ever. They will open a hatch, and Isaacman will push himself outside.

The schedule change from July 31st is almost certainly due to the uncertainties surrounding the return of Starliner from ISS, which have also caused uncertainties in the launch date of SpaceX’s next manned mission to ISS. With only two launchpads in Florida for both missions (plus other required launches), a lot of juggling has been required.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches 20 Starlink satellites

12:33 am

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 20 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

76 SpaceX
32 China
9 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 90 to 48, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 76 to 62.

5 comments

SpaceX launches 23 Starlink satellites

10:12 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

75 SpaceX
31 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 88 to 47, while SpaceX by itself still leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 75 to 60.

One comment

Vast announces first two customer payloads on its Haven-1 space station

12:28 pm

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

The space station startup Vast today announced the first two customers planning to place payloads on its Haven-1 single module space station, presently scheduled for launch in the second half of 2025.

The company also revealed that these payloads will be installed on the station in what it calls its Haven-1 Lab, which is essentially a variation of the payload rack system used on ISS.

The Haven-1 Lab features 10 Middeck Locker Equivalent payload slots, each roughly the size of a microwave. Each payload slot can weigh up to 30 kg (66 lbs), is provided with 100 W of continuous power, and has access to an Ethernet data connection. Payloads will be operated by the astronaut crew on Haven-1, as well as commanded and monitored by ground operators via Starlink laser links, providing Gigabit/s speed, low latency connectivity. Partners will have the opportunity to return products and samples from space via a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.

In tandem with Vast’s announcement of its Haven-1 Lab, the company also announced Redwire and Yuri as its inaugural partners, representing some of the foremost experts in the development of microgravity payloads.

Redwire has flown numerous payloards already to ISS, including cutting edge 3D printers. Yuri is less well known, but it appears both it and Redwire are taking advantage of Vast’s much simpler paperwork requirements than NASA’s. Vast has taken no NASA funds, so it can approve payloads at its whim. Speeds things up, saves money, and everyone benefits.

These payloads will likely be part of the first Haven-1 manned mission, where four astronauts will spend 30 days in space, ferried to and from the module using a Dragon capsule and launched almost immediately after Haven-1 is placed in orbit.

2 comments

Update on Starship/Superheavy at Boca Chica

10:48 am

Link here. Progress is being made, but it remains unclear when the next orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship will take place. Musk had predicted early August, and though the company appears getting close, there remains no word yet on from the FAA about issuing a launch license.

The article at the link however provides a lot of information about the construction of the second launch site at Boca Chica, as well as the future Starship prototypes to be launched. The next flight, the fifth, will use what SpaceX is calling its Block 1 version of the spaceship. The sixth flight will also fly this version. The seventh flight however will fly what SpaceX dubs its Block 2 verison, incorporating many upgrades and changes based on the previous test flights.

This information suggests several things. First, SpaceX wants to do three more orbital test launches in the near future, likely before the end of this year. Whether the FAA will allow such a thing remains unknown. The environmental reassessment that it issued in 2022 allows SpaceX to do five launches per year at Boca Chica, but requires the company to get FAA approval for each one, and also requires SpaceX to submit extensive paperwork before that approval will even be considered. Whether the FAA can move quickly enough between test flights to get this three more launches completed before December seems very doubtful, based on its past track record.

Second, it gives us a sense of the overall development. In developing Falcon 9, SpaceX went through five Block designs before the operational Block 5 that now flies so routinely. The company however was flying operationally and profitably by Block 2. If SpaceX is now moving to Block 2 for Starship, it means it is likely confident that this version will be capable of returning Starship to the ground undamaged and up to additional flights.

3 comments

FAA releases proposed environmental assessment of Boca Chica permitting more Starship/Superheavy launches

10:19 am

Superheavy/Starship lifting off on March 14, 2024
Superheavy/Starship lifting off on March 14, 2024

In advance of several planned public meetings, the FAA today released [pdf] its proposed environmental assessment of SpaceX’s proposal to increase the number of orbital launches allowed per year from Boca Chica from 5 to 25.

The report makes for some fascinating reading. First and foremost it indicates the FAA’s general approval of this new launch cadence. That approval however must also be given by the public in comments at those meetings, as well as by the National Park Service (NPS), U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS), the U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Expect serious objections from the NPS and USFSW, both of which have acted to slow or stop SpaceX in the past, when each was given the opportunity. Both have a new opportunity here.
» Read more

5 comments

SpaceX launches another 20 Starlink satellites

9:30 am

I had my days wrong last night. In the previous post I said that SpaceX had another launch scheduled for later tonight. In actuality that launch was today, but in the wee hours early this morning. Four hours after a Falcon 9 placed 23 Starlink satellites into orbit from Cape Canaveral, another Falcon 9 placed 20 Starlink satellites into orbit from Vandenberg in California. That’s three launches in just one day.

The first stage completed its seventeenth launch, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

74 SpaceX
31 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 86 to 47, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 74 to 59.

Leave a comment

SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites

10:17 pm

SpaceX tonight completed its second launch in two nights since resuming launches after a two-week halt after the July 11th upper stage launch failure, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral and placing another 23 Starlink satellites in orbit.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

73 SpaceX
31 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 85 to 47, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 73 to 59.

SpaceX has another launch scheduled for tomorrow night.

2 comments

To guarantee no capsule debris hits inhabited areas, SpaceX to move its manned splashdowns to Pacific

10:32 am

As part of the changes SpaceX is instituting to the de-orbit procedures of its Dragon capsules in order to end any chance parts of the service module will fall in inhabited areas (as has happened several times in the past few years) the company will be shifting all manned splashdowns to the Pacific Ocean.

Repeated issues with large chunks of debris from Dragon — “trunks” where the fuel and electrical supplies are held — have repeatedly crashed down in areas ranging from Australia to North Carolina. One measure to fix that will be tasking future spacecraft after Crew-9, perhaps as soon as Crew-10, to splash down on the U.S. Pacific coast, SpaceX said during a press conference today (July 26).

“What we’ll do is we’ll implement a software change to complete the deorbit burn before jettisoning the trunk, like we did with Dragon-1, and then the trunk will intentionally land […] in an unpopulated area of the ocean,” Sarah Walker, SpaceX’s director of Dragon mission management, said in the livestreamed briefing. “So to make this change possible, we’ll move a Dragon recovery vessel to the Pacific sometime next year.”

Crew-9 is now scheduled to launch to ISS on August 18th on a six month mission, landing sometime in February 2025. Crew-10 would launch about that time and land sometime in August, 2025.

Side note: The announcement yesterday of August 18th for the launch of the next Dragon manned mission suggests NASA is now confident it can determine a date prior to that for returning Starliner. This reinforces the fact that the astronauts and Starliner are not “stranded” on the station, and any news source that states or even implies such a thing indicates it is a place where you are likely getting junk news, on all its stories.

5 comments

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 resumes launches, successfully launching 23 Starlink satellites

11:44 pm

SpaceX tonight successfully resumed launches of its Falcon 9 rocket after a July 11, 2024 launch was a failure due to an engine leak in the upper stage. The rocket lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, successfully placing 23 Starlink satellites into orbit.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

72 SpaceX
31 China
8 Rocket Lab
8 Russia

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 84 to 47, while SpaceX by itself leads the entire world combined, including American companies, 72 to 59.

SpaceX has additional launches scheduled for tomorrow and the next day, so these numbers are only temporary.

2 comments

Judge issues injunction against NLRB in favor of SpaceX

10:34 am

NLRB logo

A U.S. federal district judge today issued an injunction against the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), blocking any further action on its complaint against SpaceX until the courts rule on the constitutionality of that complaint, accepting SpaceX’s position that the NLRB’s decision to suspend that complaint pending a court decision was irrelevant.

The NLRB has sued SpaceX, claiming it had violated the labor rights of several former employees because it fired them for criticizing Musk publicly. SpaceX responded by suing the NLRB itself, claiming the law which founded it and allowed it to act as prosecutor, judge, and jury in all cases while also limiting the President’s ability to fire its officials was unconstitutional.

As the case moved through the courts, the NLRB suspended its case against SpaceX. The company however demanded this injunction as well, since it considered that suspension merely a ploy that could be rescinded at any time.

Judge Albright ruled in favor of SpaceX and imposed an injunction as the case proceeds. He said the ruling came in part because of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit’s ruling that restrictions on removal for administrative law judges in the Securities and Exchange Commission are unconstitutional.

You can read the judge’s decision here [pdf]. This quote from it however is very telling:
» Read more

9 comments

SpaceX’s contract to de-orbit ISS reveals the inability of the older space companies to compete

9:49 am

Link here. The article goes into detail about the bidding process that led to SpaceX winning the contract $843 million fixed-price contract to build a specialized Dragon capsule to dock with ISS and de-orbit it. While its focus is on the refusal of the older companies (Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and Boeing) to sign the fixed-price contracts that NASA now prefers and that SpaceX can handle with no problem, it was this section that struck me the most:

SpaceX’s bid price was $680 million. The source selection statement did not reveal a price for Northrop’s bid other than saying it was “significantly higher.” Based on NASA’s budget request, Northrop’s bid was likely approximately twice as high.

But SpaceX did not just win on price. Its “mission suitability” score, effectively its technical ability to design, develop, and fly a vehicle capable of deorbiting the space station, was 822, compared to Northrop’s score of 589. SpaceX’s approach had one weakness, compared to seven weaknesses in Northrop’s bid, according to NASA evaluators.

Finally, the selection was also based on past performance by the contractors. SpaceX’s performance was rated as “very high,” given how it has delivered with the Cargo and Crew Dragon spacecraft and its Falcon 9 rocket. Northrop’s performance on Cygnus and its various rockets was given a “moderate” rating. Overall, the NASA evaluators expressed a “very high level” of confidence in SpaceX being able to complete the mission, whereas a “moderate level” of confidence was expressed in Northrop.

In other words, Northrop not only couldn’t do the job as cheaply and wasn’t even willing to do it at a fixed price, its technical performance has not been that good either.

The article focuses rightly on the present lack of any viable competitors to SpaceX, and the problems this raises for the entire American aerospace industry. I want to point out how this situation reveals a much more fundamental problem with the industry itself. The established aerospace industry is not only doing poor work, it is overcharging for it.

Or to put it more bluntly, it is unwilling or unable to compete. Relying on businesses with such bankrupt attitudes is not a good way to get anything done.

The hope had been that the newer startups (Rocket Lab, Blue Origin, Relativity, Firefly, etc) would pick up this slack, but except for Blue Origin the rocket capabilities of these companies are just not big enough yet to do it. Blue Origin’s proposed New Glenn rocket and associated spacecraft could do the job, but the company has demonstrated for the past decade its desire to emulate the older and failing big space companies rather than a new fresh face.

The new companies, given time, could solve this problem, since they are all willing to innovate and compete, but the apparent increase in the regulations imposed by the FAA and other government agencies in the past two years suggests they will be squelched as well.

Unless something changes, the U.S. is not going to see the space renaissance that seemed so promising only two years ago.

9 comments
1 … 11 12 13 14 15 … 87