Tag: SpaceX

A former SpaceX employee gives a fascinating account of what it is like to work there

10:29 am

Link here. The account is everything you would expect. The work culture is open, efficient, and aggressive. You need to provide value and be self-motivated or you will not survive.

This one story reveals a lot:

[I]f I was in a meeting and it was adding value to what I did daily, stay, or if I was adding value based on my expertise, stay — but if neither of those things were happening, you should get up and respectfully walk out.

In one instance, a government customer came in with a 50-slide deck. Six slides into the presentation, 75% of the room had walked out. I had to tell him that if he didn’t get to the point, I’d be the only person left in the room — and only because I had to walk him out. He skipped ahead to his last five slides. That kind of environment makes you much more efficient.

I bet there are a lot of corporate workers reading this that fervently wish they had the right to walk out of a meeting that was wasting their time. Furthermore, consider that government customer: He or she brought a slide deck where 90% of the slides were fluff. That indicates the kind of work atmosphere he or she comes from.

For smart people who want to be creative, it would be an incredible pleasure to work in such an environment. No wonder SpaceX produces such good products.

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Musk: SpaceX and Starlink don’t use artificial intelligence

10:31 am

During an interview at a recent conference Elon Musk admitted that both SpaceX and Starlink have found artificial intelligence (AI) lacking, and don’t use it at all.

The irony was that prior to this admission, Musk had been extolling AI’s potential, predicting it would someday do wonderful things.

Musk, who answered questions during 27th annual Milken Institute Global Conference on Monday, spent a sizable portion of his talk extolling the benefits of artificial intelligence. At one point, he said a “truth-seeking” AI could “foster human civilization” when asked about the role the technology would play in human’s everyday lives.

But when asked whether AI could “accelerate” his efforts in space exploration, he seemed less excited about the technology. …”I mean, oddly enough, one of the areas where there’s almost no AI used is space exploration,” Musk replied. “So SpaceX uses basically no AI, Starlink does not use AI. I’m not against using it. We haven’t seen a use for it.”

Musk continued, saying that he’s been testing improved AI language models by asking them questions about space — and the results have been disappointing. “With any given variant of or improvements in AI, I mean, I’ll ask it questions about the Fermi paradox, about rocket engine design, about electrochemistry — and so far, the AI has been terrible at all those questions,” Musk said.

Here we see the visionary meet the practical engineer/businessman. Musk always looks to the future with grand visions, but when it comes time to build those visions, he never allows his vision to interfere with practicality. AI is still essentially garbage-in-garbage-out. The rush by businesses and tech-firms to blindly use has resulted in more than a few disasters.

Musk doesn’t do anything blindly. He tested AI first, found it wanting, and thus put it aside, despite believing it will someday do wonderful things.

If only more companies used this approach. If they had, they might not have blindly pushed DEI and ESG requirements that have done nothing but harm to their companies, their work forces, and their bottom lines.

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SpaceX unveils the spacesuit Jared Isaacman will use to do the first private spacewalk

10:05 am

SpaceX this past weekend unveiled the spacesuit that Jared Isaacman will use on his Polaris Dawn mission, presently scheduled for this coming summer, to do the first spacewalk by a private citizen.

This spacewalk suit is based on SpaceX’s flight suits that astronauts presently wear when inside Dragon, but is much more capable. From SpaceX’s webpage:

Developed with mobility in mind, SpaceX teams incorporated new materials, fabrication processes, and novel joint designs to provide greater flexibility to astronauts in pressurized scenarios while retaining comfort for unpressurized scenarios. The 3D-printed helmet incorporates a new visor to reduce glare during the EVA in addition to the new Heads-Up Display (HUD) and camera that provide information on the suit’s pressure, temperature, and relative humidity. The suit also incorporates enhancements for reliability and redundancy during a spacewalk, adding seals and pressure valves to help ensure the suit remains pressurized and the crew remains safe.

Creating this suit was the main reason Isaacman’s five day orbital Polaris Dawn mission was delayed by almost two years.

I wonder what it cost SpaceX to develop this new suit. I strongly suspect it was much cheaper than the spacesuits NASA has hired Axiom and Collins Aerospace to create. It certainly has been built faster.

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

11:22 am

It just keeps going and going: SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

47 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 54 to 30. SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 47 to 37.

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Another Starship/Superheavy update

9:15 am

Link here. The report details the extensive work being done by SpaceX engineers and construction crews at Boca Chica, not only upgrading and testing the 30th Starship and 11th Superheavy prototypes that will fly on the fourth orbital test flight but also improving and expanding the launch facilities there.

A static fire test of both vehicles could happen in the next week or so, though this remains uncertain.

Though it appears that SpaceX will be ready to fly by mid- to late-May, the key factor on when that fourth test flight occurs remains this:

…there is still no news on when Flight 3’s mishap investigation will be completed.

That investigation is being conducted by SpaceX. Once submitted to the FAA that agency will have to review it and issue its own conclusions (essentially rubber-stamping it), something that is guaranteed to take time. In the past it took the FAA from two to seven months to do this rubberstamping, with the time shortening after each flight. There have been indications that it hopes to reduce that time even further with this and later flights. We should therefore expect it to take anywhere from one to four weeks this time.

Thus, a May launch remains unlikely, as I predicted from the get-go. Expect the launch to occur in June, which though delayed will still be an improvement over the FAA’s past red-tape approval processes.

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SpaceX last night launched another 23 Starlink satellites

11:42 am

The bunny is so fast I missed one: Last night, only a few hours after SpaceX launched two satellites for Maxar, out of Vandenberg in California, the company followed this with another launch of 23 Starlink satellites out of Cape Canaveral in Florida.

The first stage completed its 19th launch, landing successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

The leader board that I posted earlier today for the Chang’e-6 launch thus gave the wrong totals for SpaceX and the American launch industry. Below are the corrected numbers for the 2024 launch race:

46 SpaceX
18 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the world combined in successful launches, 53 to 30. SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 46 to 37.

Hat tip to reader MDN to letting me know.

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SpaceX launches two commercial Earth imaging satellites

3:10 pm

The bunny rolls on. SpaceX today successfully launched two commercial Earth imaging Worldview Legion satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California.

The first stage successfully completed its 20th flight, landing back at Vandenberg. This is the third Falcon 9 booster to fly twenty times. SpaceX now has two such boosters in its fleet, and is now working to upgrade its whole booster fleet to capable of flying forty times. The two fairings on this mission also completed their thirteenth and sixteenth flights, respectively.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

45 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 52 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 45 to 36.

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The plan for SpaceX’s first demo in-orbit refueling mission of Starship

10:23 am

Link here The details come from a presentation at a public meeting by Amit Kshatriya, Deputy Associate Administrator of NASA’s Moon to Mars program, with this the key takeaway:

Kshatriya then expanded the discussion beyond the next few Starship flights and talked about the required technologies for a fuel depot in orbit and the in-orbit capabilities needed to transfer fuel. “We need an instance of the ship that is essentially long, has the endurance to stay in orbit long enough for the sequence to work.

“So, we need a ship that has at least three to four weeks of endurance in orbit. That endurance is gained through augmented power system capability, augmented battery capacity, full insulation of the cryogenic systems, vacuum jacketing of all the lines, et cetera, to make sure that the cryogens that are being stored or are meant to be stored don’t boil off.”

The challenges of a cryogenic ship in orbit include the need to prevent boil-off from the stack. To facilitate the journey to the Moon’s surface, Starship will have to be refueled. For this, the company plans to refuel a depot in low-Earth orbit (LEO), which would be resupplied by several tanker Starships. The HLS Starship would then dock with this depot before departing for the Moon.

To prove this system will require a Starship test flight that lasts several weeks in orbit, to prove the capability needed for a lunar mission. It will also require a refueling mission that will require several Starship/Superheavy launches, one to put the fuel depot into orbit, several more to fuel that depot, and a final launch of Starship for its refueling and endurance test.

According to the update, SpaceX is still aiming to be ready of the upcoming fourth Superheavy/Starship demo orbital flight in the first two weeks. The NASA official claimed it would occur no later than the end of May. I see that as a confirmation that NASA really doesn’t expect the FAA to issue a launch permit when SpaceX is ready, and that the permit might not arrive in time for a May launch. This statement is meant to soften the blow when the launch finally gets delayed into June, or later.

Whether the many required later Starship launches as described above can get FAA approval quick enough to prove out this system soon enough to meet NASA’s 2026 present target date for its manned lunar landing seems very unlikely. Moreover, even if it does it will be a major challenge for SpaceX to meet this schedule.

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

3:17 pm

March on bunny! SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

44 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 51 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 44 to 36.

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SpaceX launches two Galileo satellites, part of Europe’s GPS-type satellite constellation

7:50 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched two satellites of Europe’s Galileo GPS-type satellite constellation, the first of a two-launch contract awarded to SpaceX when the Soyuz rocket was no longer available because of Russia’s invasion of the Ukraine and Arianespace’s Ariane-6 rocket was not yet operational.

The first stage completed its 20th flight, tying the record set by another booster only a few weeks ago. Because of the high orbit required by both satellites, that stage was not recovered, the first time SpaceX has expended a first stage since November 2022. SpaceX however also announced that the company is now working to upgrade its Falcon 9 first stages and fairings to fly as many as 40 missions. The two fairings also completed their fourth flight, which brought the total of fairings SpaceX has recovered to 200.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

43 SpaceX
17 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 50 to 29, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 43 to 36.

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SpaceX and Rocket Lab complete launches

10:12 pm

Both SpaceX and Rocket Lab successfully completed launches today. First SpaceX launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. The first stage completed its ninth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic.

Shortly thereafter, Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket lifted off from one of its launchpads in New Zealand, placing two technology demonstration satellites in orbit, one testing a solar sail from NASA and the other from South Korea testing a cubesat doing optical observations of Earth. Though the first stage had the markings of a stage designed for resuse, there was no indication in the company’s live stream of any attempt to recover it.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

42 SpaceX
16 China
6 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined in successful launches 49 to 28, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 42 to 35.

6 comments

Update on SpaceX’s preparations for the 4th test flight of Superheavy/Starship

11:10 am

Link here. The article is definitely worth reading, as it tells us that SpaceX is pushing hard to be ready to launch in early May, as Musk has promised. The article also thinks SpaceX will be able to ramp up later launches to one every two months.

The article however is I think being naively optimistic about this timeline, because it naively assumes the FAA will quickly approve the launch licenses to meet that schedule. I guarantee the FAA won’t, as it has taken it one to four months after SpaceX was ready to launch to approve the licenses for the previous launches. The length of that approval process has shrunk each time, but FAA still made Space X wait each time, for no reason.

Making that schedule even more unlikely is SpaceX’s desire to do as many as nine test launches per year at Boca Chica. While the company could certainly do this, the environment reassessment issued in 2022 limits it to only five launches per year. It needs a waiver from the FAA and the Biden administration,
a waiver no one should expect considering the Biden administrations hostility to Musk.

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SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites

3:48 pm

Bunny march on! SpaceX today successfully launched another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

41 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 47 to 27, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 41 to 33.

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SpaceX launches another 23 Starlink satellites; but with streaming issues

2:43 pm

SpaceX today succeeded in launching another 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral. However, after stage separation and the ignition of the upper stage, with the rocket operating normally, the live stream from X suddenly went down. The problem was not with the rocket, as all feeds from both stages disappeared, with the entire live stream going blank.

The first stage was on its twelfth launch. SpaceX has now confirmed that it landed successfully on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The company has also confirmed as successful orbital insertion.

This was SpaceX’s 40th launch so far in 2024, all successful. To get some perspective on the company’s continuing and spectacular success, the entire United States could not achieve that many launches in any year from 1969 through 2019, and in 2020 it merely matched this number (because SpaceX that year launched 25 times). And SpaceX has done it this in only three and a half months. Based on this pace, its goal of 150 launches in 2024 appears increasingly possible.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

40 SpaceX
15 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 46 to 27, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 40 to 33.

0 comments

SpaceX launches 23 more Starlink satellites with 1st stage on record-setting 20th flight

7:44 pm

The bunny flies again! SpaceX tonight successfully launched 23 more Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its 20th flight, a new record for a Falcon 9 first stage, landing successfully on a droneship in the Atlantic. At this moment SpaceX is beginning to collect a fleet of Falcon 9 first stage boosters that have flown almost as much as NASA’s space shuttle fleet, which flew as follows:

Discovery 39 flights
Atlantis 33 flights
Columbia: 28 flights
Endeavour 25 flights
Challenger: 10 flights

At present SpaceX has one booster with 20 flights, and two with 19, and I think one with 18. It will take a lot more launches to catch up, but it certainly appears possible for at least a few of these Falcon 9 stages to exceed the shuttle numbers.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

39 SpaceX
14 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 45 to 26, while SpaceX by itself now leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 39 to 32.

4 comments

LA Times: Can California’s coastal commission stop SpaceX launches from Vandenberg?

9:48 am

Link here. This article is a follow-up on the story I posted yesterday, about a meeting of the California Coastal Commission where locals demanded and the commission considered measures for attempting to limit an increase in launches from Vandenberg.

The article provides many more details about this political battle. It appears the military, out of courtesy, was letting the commission know that it wants to raise the number of launches to accomodate not just SpaceX but other private companies. It can do so without the commission’s permission, but wishes to work with it.

The commission and the ten or so people at the meeting complaining were exploring ways to block this increase. Though the meeting postponed any action until the next meeting in May, it was clear its commissioners will use the next few months to explore ways to expand their control, including looking for funding sources for initiating court actions.

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Amazon: First operational launch of Kuiper satellites delayed

9:38 am

Though Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy, in his annual letter to shareholders yesterday, touted the Kuiper internet constellation’s profit potential, he also implied that the planned first launch of operational satellites has been delayed.

When Project Kuiper’s first two prototype satellites were launched last October for testing, Amazon said that its first production-grade satellites were on track for launch in the first half of 2024, and that it expected broadband service to be in beta testing with selected customers by the end of the year.

Today, Jassy put a slightly different spin on that schedule. “We’re on track to launch our first production satellites in 2024,” he wrote in his letter. “We’ve still got a long way to go, but are encouraged by our progress.”

Later in a television interview Jassy was more blunt, stating that the first operational satellites will not be ready until “the second half of ’24”, with the service becoming available “in the next year or so.”

The company’s incredibly slow roll-out of this constellation puts it at a significant disadvantage. Both it and Starlink were announced at about the same time, but Starlink already has several thousand satellites in orbit, has been operational for several years, and has almost three million customers signed on. It has gotten all the low-hanging fruit. Amazon will either have to convince those customers to switch — generally a difficult thing to do — or find new customers that have so far been less inclined to buy such satellite services.

5 comments

Russia and SpaceX complete launches

9:08 am

Early today both Russia and SpaceX completed rocket launches.

First, Russia after several scrubs for technical reasons successfully completed a test launch of the largest configuration of its Angara rocket, the Angara-A5. It was the first launch of Angara-A5 from its far east spaceport Vostochny, and the first test launch of this rocket confiruration since 2014. Development had stalled for many years due to a major design issue revealed in 2019.

This launch establishes several important benchmarks for Russia’s space program. This rocket is essential for its goal of building a new space station, and the launch from Vostochny gives Russia as stronger backup to Baikonur in Kazakhstan, where long-term access is becoming problematic.

SpaceX then followed, with a launch of a military weather satellite, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg in California. The first stage completed its third flight, landing successfully back at Vandenberg.

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

38 SpaceX
14 China
6 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise still leads the rest of the world combined 44 to 26, while SpaceX by itself still leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 38 to 32.

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Activists file lawsuit to prevent land swap at Boca Chica

2:51 pm

The same collection of activists who have been waging lawfare against SpaceX’s Boca Chica rocket facility have now filed a new lawsuit, this time against the Texas Parks and Wildlife Commission (TPWD) in order to block an approved land swap that gives SpaceX 43 acres of a Boca Chica state park in exchange for receiving 477 acres nearby.

The South Texas Environmental Justice Network, the Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas, and Save RGV banded together for a lawsuit filed in the District Court of Travis County on April 3. The suit alleges that Texas Parks and Wildlife violated statutory requirements for the proposal, including the requirement to consider alternatives to giving away public park land; the requirement to ensure the minimization of harm to the public park land; and the requirement to consider the best interests of the local community and TPWD.

These jokers represent very few people in south Texas. Worse, the so-called “Carrizo Comecrudo Tribe of Texas” was in Mexico, not Texas, when it existed. The corporation that exists now is a front for filing these lawsuits, taking advantage of the numerous DEI regulations that now exist to favor such minorities.

That the commission approved the swap unanimously, despite heavy pressure from these groups, illustrates the larger support in Texas for what SpaceX is doing. Expect the Texas courts to endorse that support as well. All these suits will do is delay, delay, delay.

3 comments

SpaceX launches more Starlink satellites

11:41 pm

The bunny never stops! SpaceX tonight successfully launched 23 Starlink satellites, its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

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

The leaders in the 2024 launch race:

37 SpaceX
14 China
5 Russia
4 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads the rest of the world combined 43 to 25, while SpaceX by itself leads the rest of the world, including other American companies, 37 to 31.

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