Tag: SpaceX

Watching return of ISS crew on Freedom

9:40 am

The SpaceX manned capsule Freedom has undocked from ISS, carrying three astronauts completing a six month mission, with a scheduled splashdown planned for 4:50 pm (Eastern) off the western coast of Florida.

I have embedded NASA’s live stream below, for those that wish to watch. Note that though NASA inserts itself into this event, once the spacecraft has left ISS everything — including all workers involved in splashdown operations — is solely under the supervision of SpaceX, with NASA’s participation only that of a customer, albeit a very powerful one. This is a capsule and splashdown designed, built, run, and most important, owned by a private American company, not the government.
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Ispace targets November 9-15 launch window for first commercial lunar lander

9:07 am

The private Japanese company Ispace has now scheduled the launch of its commercial lunar lander Hakuto-R on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket for a November 9-15, 2022 launch window.

Though the lander’s primary goal is to see if this lander will work, it also includes several customer payloads, the most significant of which is the Rashid rover from the United Arab Emirates. Rashid, which is about the size of a Radio Flyer red wagon, will operate for one lunar day, about two weeks. While its main mission is to test the engineering and to train the engineers who built it, it will have two cameras for taking pictures. In addition, on its wheels are test adhesive patches of different materials, designed to see how each material interacts with the Moon’s abrasive dust.

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Dennis Tito signs deal to fly on 2nd manned Starship mission around Moon

10:26 am

Capitalism in space: Dennis Tito, the first tourist to fly in space and now 82-years-old, has signed a deal with SpaceX for both him and his wife Akiko to fly on 2nd manned Starship mission around Moon.

His weeklong moonshot — its date to be determined and years in the future — will bring him within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar far side. He’ll have company: his wife, Akiko, and 10 others willing to shell out big bucks for the ride.

Tito won’t say how much he’s paying; his Russian station flight cost $20 million.

The couple recognize there’s a lot of testing and development still ahead for Starship, a shiny, bullet-shaped behemoth that’s yet to even attempt to reach space. “We have to keep healthy for as many years as it’s going to take for SpaceX to complete this vehicle,” Tito said in an interview this week with The Associated Press. “I might be sitting in a rocking chair, not doing any good exercise, if it wasn’t for this mission.”

The bottom line is that this deal, combined with the two other passenger Starship deals SpaceX has already signed, demonstrates that there is a solid market for Starship, even before its first launch. Expect that market to boom once the rocket begins operations.

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SpaceX fully stacks Starship/Superheavy in preparation for launch

9:53 am

Starship about to be stacked on Superheavy
Starship about to be stacked on Superheavy, using
the launch tower’s chopstick arms. Click for full image.

For the first time in six months SpaceX engineers have stacked Starship prototype #24 on top of Superheavy prototype #7, with the intention of running a dress rehearsal countdown and a full static fire test of Superheavy’s 33 engines, all in preparation for the first orbital test flight before the end of this year.

According to CEO Elon Musk, Booster 7 and Ship 24 will attempt Starship’s first full-stack wet dress rehearsal (WDR) once all is in order. The prototypes will be simultaneously loaded with around 5000 tons (~11M lb) of liquid oxygen and methane propellant and then run through a launch countdown. Diverging just before ignition and liftoff, a WDR is meant to be more or less identical to a launch attempt.

…If the wet dress rehearsal goes to plan, SpaceX will then attempt to simultaneously ignite all 33 of the Raptor engines installed on Super Heavy B7, almost certainly making it the most powerful liquid rocket ever tested. Even if all 33 engines never reach more than 60% of their maximum thrust of 230 tons (~510,000 lbf), they will likely break the Soviet N-1 rocket’s record of 4500 tons of thrust (~10M lbf) at sea level. It would also be the most rocket engines ever simultaneously ignited on one vehicle. SpaceX will be pushing the envelope by several measures, and success is far from guaranteed.

Depending on the results of these tests, the stacked rocket will either require further modifications, or could even proceed directly to launch.

We are thus seeing a true race between SpaceX’s privately developed and funded rocket and NASA’s government developed and funded SLS rocket. Which will launch first? Right now the race is neck-and-neck, though that is deceiving since SpaceX began development twelve years after NASA started work on SLS. Even if SLS launches first, SpaceX will have clearly shown that private enterprise does things faster (7 years vs 18 years) and for far less money (about $9 billion vs $46 billion).

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New rocket startup focusing on new concepts to make upper stage reusable

9:22 am

Capitalism in space: Another new rocket startup, Stoke Space, is working to develop a new innovative reusable design for its upper stages.

Most commonly, a traditional rocket has an upper stage with a single engine. This second-stage rocket engine has a larger nozzle—often bell-shaped—to optimize the flow of engine exhaust in a vacuum. Because all parts of a rocket are designed to be as light as possible, such extended nozzles are often fairly fragile because they’re only exposed above Earth’s atmosphere. So one problem with getting an upper stage back from Earth, especially if you want to use the engine to control and slow its descent, is protecting this large nozzle.

One way to do that is to bury the engine nozzle in a large heat shield, but that would require more structure and mass, and it may not be dynamically stable. Stoke’s answer was using a ring of 30 smaller thrusters. (The tests last month only employed 15 of the 30 thrusters). In a vacuum, the plumes from these nozzles are designed to merge and act as one. And during reentry, with a smaller number of smaller thrusters firing, it’s easier to protect the nozzles.

Will this company succeed? Who knows? It is presently very early in development. However, that its founders are former engineers from SpaceX and Blue Origin is encouraging, especially based on this comment about why the Blue Origin guy, Andy Lapsa, left that company:

“I love Jeff [Bezos]’s vision for space,” Lapsa said in an interview with Ars. “I worked closely with him for a while on different projects, and I’m basically 100 percent on board with the vision. Beyond that, I think I would just say that I will let their history of execution speak for itself, and I thought we could move faster.”

Lapsa apparently was part of the exodus of high level managers and engineers that occurred at Blue Origin after Bezos hired Bob Smith as CEO. All complained of the company’s far-too-cautious management style under Smith.

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SpaceX launches two Intelsat communications satellites

4:17 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully launched two Intelsat communications satellites using its Falcon 9 rocket.

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

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

46 SpaceX
42 China
12 Russia
8 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 66 to 42 in the national rankings, and the entire globe combined 66 to 62.

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Endurance docks at ISS

9:16 am

Like clockwork SpaceX’s Endurance capsule successfully docked at ISS yesterday, delivering four astronauts to the station for a six month mission.

The most interesting aspect of this launch and crew is Russian Anna Kikina.

Kikina is the first Russian to fly aboard a U.S. spacecraft in nearly 20 years. She and Rubio were launched under a new agreement between NASA and Roscosmos, the Russian space agency, that ensures at least one astronaut or cosmonaut is always aboard the space station even if a Crew Dragon or Soyuz is forced to depart early, taking its crew with it.

Without the seat-swap arrangement, a medical emergency or some other major problem could leave an all-Russian or all-NASA crew aboard without the expertise to operate the other nation’s systems.

The agreement had been stalled almost entirely by the former head of Roscosmos, Dmitry Rogozin. He is now gone however, sent by Putin to take over the fake occupation government in parts of the Ukraine. It appears his bellicose manner, that caused the loss of a billion dollars in launch contracts with OneWeb, was more than even Putin could handle.

With him gone, the new head of Roscosmos, Yuri Borisov, quickly finalized this astronaut barter deal. He has also publicly acted to try to ease tensions between the U.S. and Russian space agencies.

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Important Roscosmos official endorses continuing cooperation with US in space

12:28 pm

In a clear sign of the distinct change in atmosphere since the removal of Dmitry Rogozin as head of Roscosmos, the executive director of human space flight programs at Roscosmos, Sergei Krikalev, yesterday endorsed the longstanding cooperation between the U.S. and Russia in space.

Krikalev’s comments came after the launch yesterday of Endurance with one Russian astronaut as part of its four-person crew.

At a briefing after the Oct. 5 launch of the Crew-5 mission from the Kennedy Space Center, Sergei Krikalev, executive director of human space flight programs at Roscosmos, emphasized long-running cooperation between the United States and Russia in civil space, cooperation that has been strained since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.

“We just continue what we started many years ago in 1975 when the Apollo-Soyuz crew worked together, and now we continue our cooperation,” he said after mentioning a “new phase of cooperation” with the exchange of seats between NASA and Roscosmos.

To understand the importance of Krikalev’s comments, you must also understand the context. First, Krikalev is a very significant figure in the history of Russia. He was called the last Soviet citizen, having been stranded on Mir an extra few months when the Soviet Union fell in 1991. Then he was the first Russian to fly on the shuttle, followed later by being on the first mission to ISS, when it was only two modules.

Since his retirement as an active astronaut, he has become the man in charge of Russia’s manned program, where he clashed with Rogozin several times over policy. His opposition to Rogozin almost certainly was a factor in Rogozin’s removal.

Krikalev’s endorsement of continuing the U.S-Russian partnership only cements that partnership, especially because Krikalev himself is a dyed-in-the-wool communist at heart. At least, he said so emphatically when I interviewed him at length in 2003 for Leaving Earth. I doubt his mind has changed in this matter, though his relentless honesty as an engineer has probably shaken his dedication to that failed ideology in subsequent years.

Nonetheless, his standing in Russia gives any statement he makes great weight. Expect more efforts by the Russians to ease tensions with the U.S., though their chances of success will be limited as long as Russia is continuing its unprovoked invasion of the Ukraine.

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Falcon Heavy to finally launch again?

8:57 am

After three years of delays due to payload issues, it now appears that the next Falcon Heavy launch will likely occur near the end of October.

The tentative date is October 28th, but this is not yet confirmed. Though a manifest of a half dozen Falcon Heavy launches has existed since 2019, and most were originally scheduled for launch in 2020-2021, none has taken place, all supposedly because of payload delays not issues with the rocket itself.

SpaceX officials are now saying that it plans to complete six Falcon Heavy launches within the next twelve months. Two are for the military, three for commercial communications companies, and the last is the Psyche mission for NASA. This last launch is delayed because of software issues discovered in June, only a few weeks before launch. Whether it can fix these issues in time for a new July 2023 launch window remains questionable.

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Satellite about to burn up because Sherpa orbital tug has done nothing

8:46 am

Capitalism in space: A Boeing cubesat satellite launched last month is about to burn up as it returns to Earth because the Spaceflight Sherpa orbital tug that was supposed to raise its orbit has as yet done nothing.

Spaceflight planned to use a chemical propulsion system on the Sherpa, provided by Benchmark Space Systems, to raise the orbit of the vehicle to an altitude of 1,000 kilometers. The Sherpa payload, initially not disclosed by Spaceflight, is a V-band communications demonstration by Boeing called Varuna.

However, tracking information from the U.S. Space Force shows that Sherpa has yet to raise its orbit. Atmospheric drag has caused that orbit to gradually decay, and the spacecraft was most recently tracked in an orbit of 283 by 296 kilometers. That raised concerns that the spacecraft could reenter in a matter of weeks if it does not start firing its thrusters.

Spaceflight officials explain the lack of action is because they are still “commissioning” the tug, whatever that means. It also appears that problems was this same propulsion system caused SpaceX to ban Spaceflight in March as a customer on future rideshare launches.

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SpaceX launches another 52 Starlink satellites

4:19 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this afternoon successfully completed its second Falcon 9 launch of the day, placing 52 Starlink satellites into orbit from Vandenberg..

The seven hour gap between launches was a record for the shortest time between two SpaceX launches. The first stage landed successfully on a drone ship in the Pacific, completing its fifth flight.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

45 SpaceX
41 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 64 to 41 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 64 to 61. The U.S. total, 64, ties the total from 1965, the second most active year in American rocketry. The record of 70 successful launches, set in 1966, will almost certainly be broken sometime in the next month.

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SpaceX successfully launches astronauts to ISS

9:40 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX this morning successfully launched two NASA astronauts, one Japanese astronaut, and one Russian astronaut into orbit for a mission to ISS, with the docking scheduled for tomorrow.

The capsule, Endurance, is making its second flight. This was SpaceX’s eighth manned launch. The first stage, making its first fight, landed successfully on the drone ship in the Atlantic. This was the first new first stage launched since May 2022, and only the second this year. All other launches in 2022 were completed using SpaceX’s existing fleet of boosters. The company also continues to hold to the pattern of last year for maintaining that fleet, by adding two new boosters each year.

That this achievement is now becoming as routine as SpaceX’s unmanned launches proves the company’s success. And SpaceX did it in less than a decade, something NASA with its government-built shuttle was never able to accomplish.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

44 SpaceX
41 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
7 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 63 to 41 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 63 to 61.

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SpaceX and Jared Isaacman offer private mission to NASA to raise Hubble’s orbit

9:44 am

Capitalism in space: In a press release issued yesterday, NASA revealed that it has signed an unfunded agreement with SpaceX and Jared Isaacman’s Polaris program (which has purchased a series of manned missions on Dragon) to study the possibility of sending one of those private manned missions to the Hubble Space Telescope to raise its orbit.

SpaceX – in partnership with the Polaris Program – proposed this study to better understand the technical challenges associated with servicing missions. This study is non-exclusive, and other companies may propose similar studies with different rockets or spacecraft as their model.

Teams expect the study to take up to six months, collecting technical data from both Hubble and the SpaceX Dragon spacecraft. This data will help determine whether it would be possible to safely rendezvous, dock, and move the telescope into a more stable orbit.

In my book describing the history of the people who created Hubble, The Universe in a Mirror, I repeatedly noted how throughout its history people have tried to kill it, first in the design phase, then in the budget, then during construction, then after it was launched and the mirror was found to be ground incorrectly, and then after the Columbia accident when NASA management tried to cancel its last shuttle servicing mission.

Every attempt failed. As I have noted in that book and many times since its publication, Hubble is a telescope that will not die. NASA has for years intended to launch a mission to de-orbit it when its orbit had decayed enough that it was unstable. I’ve always said that when that time came, someone would propose and push for a mission to instead raise that orbit.

That prediction is now coming true. Though no robot arm exists yet for Dragon to use to grab Hubble in any rendezvous attempt, creating one is hardly difficult. At that point raising the telescope’s orbit becomes relatively trivial.

Whether such a mission could do more, such as replace Hubble’s ailing gyroscopes, is unknown. It would be foolish however not to review that possibility as well.

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SpaceX to upgrade 2nd Kennedy launchpad for manned launches

10:13 am

In order to create some increased redundancy, SpaceX and NASA have agreed to upgrade the company’s second launchpad at Cape Canaveral, LC-40, so that both it and pad LC-39A can launch manned Dragon capsules.

This plan grew out of concern by NASA that the new Starship orbital launchpad was too close to LC-39A, and could possibly damage it during a launch. Should that happen, and no back-up launchpad was available, the agency would have no way to get astronauts up to ISS, since Boeing’s Starliner is not yet operational. Because of that concern, NASA made it clear that no Starship launches could occur in Florida until this issue was resolved.

The solution? Make LC-40 a manned launchpad too.

Nothing is known about the nature of the modifications that LC-40 will require. But more likely than not, NASA will require SpaceX to develop something similar to Pad 39A’s facilities. That would involve building a new crew access tower, crew access arm, escape system (39A uses baskets and ziplines), and an on-site bunker for astronauts.

It is also likely that no Starship launches at Kennedy will occur until this work is done and a manned launch from LC-40 takes place. Though this could delay Starship somewhat, I expect not significantly. Before SpaceX is ready to launch operationally in Florida, it still has to do a lot of testing and development of Starship/Superheavy in Boca Chica, work that could take several years. I also suspect that it will get the launchpad work done relatively quickly, especially if NASA agrees to pay for it.

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SpaceX successfully launches 52 Starlink satellites

4:42 pm

Capitalism in space: Using its Falcon 9 rocket SpaceX today successfully put another 52 Starlink satellites into orbit.

The first stage successfully landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic, completing its fourth flight. The two fairing halves each completed their fourth and fifth flights, respectively.

Note: The Biden administration yesterday gave SpaceX the okay to activate Starlink in Iran, in order to provide that country’s citizens an option for obtaining information blocked by its government.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

43 SpaceX
38 China
12 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
6 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 60 to 38 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 60 to 58.

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Two launches from U.S. set for this afternoon

10:29 am

Both ULA and SpaceX have planned launches this afternoon a little over an hour apart, at 2:53 pm and 4:10 pm Pacific time respectively.

The ULA launch is first, and is the last Delta rocket launch from Vandenberg Space Force base. The company is slowly phasing this rocket out as it transitions to its not-yet-launched Vulcan rocket. The payload today is a spy satellite for the National Reconnaissance Office, using ULA’s biggest rocket, the Delta Heavy.

SpaceX will follow with another Falcon 9 Starlink launch, placing another 52 Starlink satellites into orbit.

I have embedded the live streams of both launches below.
» Read more

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Confirmed: Saudi Arabia buys two seats on next Axiom commercial flight to ISS

8:59 am

Capitalism in space: Saudi Arabia’s official press yesterday confirmed an earlier Reuters story that it has purchased two seats on an Axiom commercial flight to ISS, using a SpaceX Dragon capsule.

The twist is that the Saudi government says one of those astronauts will be a woman, and the mission should fly in 2023. It will include Axiom’s pilot, two Saudi passengers, and a fourth passenger, all as-yet unnamed.

The mission is part of what the Saudi government calls a new astronaut training program.

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Musk: Starship orbital attempt by November, at the latest

10:06 am

According to a tweet yesterday by Elon Musk, SpaceX engineers will likely have the first orbital prototypes of Starship and Superheavy ready for the orbital attempt either late in October, or by November. His full tweet:

Late next month maybe, but November seems highly likely. We will have two boosters & ships ready for orbital flight by then, with full stack production at roughly one every two months. [emphasis mine]

The highlighted words are the most significant. SpaceX is not building one rocket for test, like NASA has done with SLS. It is building an assembly line of test rockets, so that it can do a fast series of test launches plus upgrades, leading to quick and reliable operations. Should any one rocket launch fail, the company will speedily move on to the next, with little or no delay.

Should SLS fail in its first test launch sometime in the next month, NASA has no back-up. The entire program will be shattered, with no easy way to recover.

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Saudi Arabia buys two seats on Dragon for Axiom commercial flight to ISS

9:43 am

Capitalism in space: According to an as-yet unconfirmed story today by Reuters, Saudi Arabia has purchased two seats on a SpaceX Dragon capsule as part of an Axiom commercial flight to ISS.

The sources for the story are all anonymous, and no one from Axiom or SpaceX or Saudi Arabia has confirmed it. Nonetheless, it seems entirely plausible, since Saudi Arabia has made it clear it is considering such a mission and Axiom and SpaceX are eager to sell tickets.

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SpaceX fires seven engines on Superheavy prototype #7

1:52 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully did a static fire engine test of seven engines on its Superheavy prototype #7, intended to be the lower stage of the first Superheavy/Starship orbital test.

The link takes you to the full live stream. Below I have cued that live stream to just before the test occurred. Everything seems to go as planned, with no obvious anomalies.

SpaceX continues to be moving closer and closer to that first orbital flight.
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SpaceX launches 54 Starlink satellites on Falcon 9

10:53 pm

After four scrubs on four consecutive days, SpaceX tonight finally successfully put 54 Starlink satellites into orbit.

The first stage successfully completed its sixth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairings halves completed the third and fourth flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

42 SpaceX
37 China
11 Russia
7 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 58 to 37 in the national rankings, and the entire globe 58 to 56. At 58 successful launches, 2022 is now the third most active year in the entire history of the United States, with only 1965 and 1966 having more launches.

This post is late because I spend the weekend in the mountains, caving. Twas a much needed break.

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SpaceX now offers more expensive high performance Starlink for residential customers

10:19 am

SpaceX has now made available the much more expensive Starlink high performance terminals — previously only available to business customers — for its residential customers.

The purchase price for the terminal is the same as for business customers, $2,500. The standard terminal package costs only $599. However, residential customers who buy this more expensive terminal will still pay the standard $110 month rate for the service, instead of the $500 monthly fee that business customers will pay.

SpaceX notes that the high-performance Starlink kit would be best for users who reside in harsh environments, such as those who are in hot or cold climates. Starlink’s Support Page also indicates that the high-performance dish has better download speeds in hot weather, better snow melt capability, improved water resistance, and better visibility of satellites.

I would expect that eventually, when SpaceX is faced with competition in this market, these features will end up on all its terminals. Until then, however, new customers will have to make a choice.

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Starlink being tested in Antarctica

9:33 am

Capitalism in space: The National Science Foundation (NSF) has begun testing a single Starlink terminal at its McMurdo station in Antarctic, with the hope that the service can improve communications at the station significantly.

Everyone at the base shares a 17 Mbps link, according to the United States Antarctic Program, which severely limits what people can do. The station actually blocks people from using high-bandwidth apps like Netflix, cloud backups, and video calls, with the exception of once-weekly Skype or FaceTime sessions at a public kiosk or mission-critical communications.

The addition of Starlink probably doesn’t mean that McMurdo residents will be able to hold a Netflix movie night or anything — the terminals can handle around 50-200 Mbps, which still isn’t a ton to go around, even during the winter when far fewer people are at the base — but it could help make transferring important scientific data off of the icy continent easier.

According to SpaceX’s plans, this new service in Antarctica means that by year’s end Starlink will be available on all seven continents.

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Update on SpaceX’s Starship and Superheavy

8:50 am

Link here. The article not only outlines the test program leading to the first launch of prototypes Starship #24 and Superheavy #7, it describes the status of later prototypes, as well as the construction of SpaceX’s Starship launch site in Florida. Key quote:

Booster 7’s gradual approach to static fire testing will allow the teams to fix issues as they test and fully mature procedures and software ahead of the long-awaited orbital flight of Starship. Should this gradual testing go without a hitch, it could culminate in one or perhaps even two 33-engine static fire tests of Booster 7 on the OLM [orbital launch mount].

Once this testing is completed and any issues found fixed, it’ll be cleared to proceed into another phase of testing: Ship 24 will then be stacked on top of Booster 7 for combined tests. This could include launch countdown simulations, an eventual full-up countdown, and a 33-engine static fire test.

SpaceX hopes to complete this by mid-next month and clear both vehicles for launch shortly after. However, as we’ve seen in the past few weeks, any issues encountered during this intense test campaign could well mean a slip to later into the year and, perhaps, into next year.

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SpaceX appeals FCC decision that cancelled Starlink subsidy

9:35 am

SpaceX’s Starlink division has now appealed the decision by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to cancel a nearly $900 million subsidy award given to companies providing broadband to rural regions.

Starlink’s appeal is complex, its arguments appearing to all center on what the company thinks was unfair practices by the FCC in cancelling the award.

Starlink told the FCC it was held to “standards that no bidder could meet today.”

“Changing the rules to undo a prior policy is grossly unfair after SpaceX has invested thousands of employee-hours and millions of dollars preparing to meet its [FCC program] obligations on the reasonable assumption that the Bureau would apply the Commission’s rules in an even-handed manner,” the company said.

That one FCC commissioner has publicly questioned the legality of the cancellation gives some weight to Starlink’ complaint.

In the end, this entire FCC program is a rip-off of the taxpayer. No companies, including SpaceX, should get this money. SpaceX is proving that it can get its constellation launched and operating profitably in rural areas, without a dime of federal money. Why should the rest of us help them do it?

Furthermore, the questionable nature of the FCC cancellation suggests the money from this program is possibly being awarded for political reasons, payoffs to companies that give the most campaign contributions to the right politicians. SpaceX doesn’t give much to any politicians, so it could be the cancellation was done as punishment for that lack.

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September 12, 2022 Quick space links

1:17 pm

Courtesy of stringer Jay.

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SpaceX launches 34 Starlink satellites plus commercial satellite for AST Mobile

6:30 pm

Capitalism in space: SpaceX today successfully used its Falcon 9 rocket to launch 34 additional Starlink satellites into orbit. It also launched another customer’s communications satellite, AST Mobile’s BlueWalker-3.

The first stage successfully completed its record 14th flight, the most times a Falcon 9 first stage has been reused. It landed on a drone ship in the Atlantic. In addition, the two fairing halves completed their 4th and 5th flights, respectively. As of this writing, the satellites have not yet deployed from the upper stage.

The leaders in the 2022 launch race:

41 SpaceX
36 China
11 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
5 ULA

American private enterprise now leads China 56 to 36 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 56 to 55. That U.S. lead stands a good chance of increasing this weekend, as tomorrow SpaceX plans another Starlink launch, but more significantly, Firefly will make the second attempt to complete the first launch of its Alpha rocket, almost a year after the first failed attempt.

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SpaceX successfully test fires all six engines on Starship prototype #24

10:08 am

Capitalism in space: SpaceX yesterday successfully completed for the first time an eight-second-long static fire test of all six engines on Starship prototype #24.

I have embedded video of the test below. The amount of power exhibited is quite impressive. In fact, it was so powerful it likely melted the concrete below the rocket, sending hot debris flying that caused a major brushfire.

Most likely, eight long seconds of blast-furnace conditions melted the top layer of surrounding concrete and shot a hailstorm of tiny superheated globules in almost every direction. Indeed, in almost every direction there was something readily able to burn, a fire started. In several locations to the south and west, brush caught fire and began to burn unusually aggressively, quickly growing into walls of flames that sped across the terrain. To the east, debris even made it into a SpaceX dumpster, the contents of which easily caught fire and burned for hours.

Eventually, around 9pm CDT, firefighters were able to approach the safed launch pad and rocket, but the main fire had already spread south, out of reach. Instead, they started controlled burns near SpaceX’s roadblock, hoping to clear brush and prevent the fire (however unlikely) from proceeding towards SpaceX’s Starbase factory and Boca Chica Village homes and residents.

The rocket itself came though the test unscathed, a major milestone on the path to its first orbital flight.

During a launch, the rocket would have quickly lifted off, and thus caused far less stress to the concrete on the ground. Nonetheless, this test suggests SpaceX needs to do more pad preparation for any tests of Superheavy prototype #7, which has 33 engines at its base.

» Read more

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September 6, 2022 Quick space links

5:16 pm

Courtesy of Jay, BtB’s intrepid stringer.

  • Sierra Space: Mission: Tenacity Part 1

    • This video is just an empty-of-content commercial for Sierra Space, filled with feel-good “woke” blather but little real information about the actual status of this long overdue spacecraft. It is worth watching however because it reveals this emptiness. Reminds me of the many similar videos from Blue Origin and NASA over the years, filled with big promises but little actual achievement.

  • How does Starlink Satellite Internet Work?

    • This video, almost 30 minutes long, is definitely worth watching if you have any interest in signing up for Starlink, or just have an interest in the coming low orbit satellite constellation boom.

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More static fire tests of Starship/Superheavy expected this week

9:35 am

SpaceX appears to be gearing up for more engine tests of both Superheavy prototype #7 and Starship prototype #24 this week, having called for road closures at Boca Chica today with additional options thoughout the week.

The article at the link mostly provides an overview of the changes in both stages that occurred because of the shift from the first version of the Raptor engine to the much more streamlined Raptor-2. The side-by-side image of both versions is quite revealing, showing once again how much SpaceX adheres to Musk’s adage that “the best part is no part.” Raptor-2 is astonishingly simpler and more compact, even though it produces about 25% more power.

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