Tag: SpaceX

NASA to decide on 2nd cargo contracts Nov 5

9:40 am

The competition heats up: NASA will announce the two contract winners for its second round of ISS cargo contracts on November 5.

If it was up to me to pick the two winners from the four companies bidding, SpaceX, Boeing, Orbital ATK, and Sierra Nevada, I would go with Orbital ATK and Sierra Nevada. SpaceX and Boeing already have contracts to ferry crews to ISS with their Dragon and Starliner capsules. By picking Orbital ATK’s Cygnus capsule and Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser reusable mini-shuttle, NASA would then have four different ways to get payloads to ISS.

Sadly, the decision is not up to me. It is more likely NASA will pick SpaceX and Boeing. Boeing especially is likely to get picked because they are an established big player with lots of capital and influence.

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A detailed update on the Falcon 9 return-to-flight

9:21 am

Link here. It appears that SpaceX hopes to complete the following launches in quick order::

1. November 24: First Falcon 9 upgrade launch: 11 Orbcomm low-orbit satellites
2. December 15: Last old Falcon 9 launch: Jason 3
3. December 27: Second Falcon 9 upgrade launch: SES-9 geosynchronous communications satellite
4. Early January: Third Falcon 9 upgrade launch: Dragon and the Bigelow BEAM inflatable module to ISS

All these dates are of course subject to delays. Launches 1 and 3 will definitely attempt vertical landings of the first stage on a barge.

The main point of the article above was to note that the SpaceX is now ready to do a full thrust test firing of the first stage that will be used in the November 24 launch, doing that test at its McGregor, Texas, test facility. As noted, “All Falcon stages pass through the Texas site, allowing them to be fired up and tested for any issues prior to continuing their journey to the launch site.” The article then described one case where the testing successfully spotted an issue that was fixed prior to launch.

I think this speaks volumes about the robustness of SpaceX’s manufacturing process. Their rockets are built in one place, shipped to another for testing, and then shipped to a third for launch. And all within mere weeks. This robustness also suggests that the rocket’s first stage will be able to withstand its vertical landing and be able to be reused, as planned.

The article also provides some further insights in why the company switched the SES-9 and Orbcomm launches.

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ULA prepares Atlas 5 for its third October launch

8:38 am

The competition heats up: ULA will attempt its third Atlas 5 launch in October, launching a new GPS satellite for the Air Force on October 30.

In the past ULA never packed its launches in this tightly. I suspect they are now doing so because of the competition from SpaceX. They need to show their customers, both commercial and the government, that they are a reliable launch provider. Launching three Atlas 5s in one month is one way to do it.

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SpaceX Dragonfly test vehicle arrives in Texas

5:14 pm

The competition heats up: Dragonfly, SpaceX’s test capsule for testing vertical rocket landings, has arrived at their facility in McGregor, Texas.

DragonFly will be attached to a large crane, ahead of a series of test firings of its SuperDraco thrusters to set the stage towards the eventual goal of propulsive landings. The first test is set to take place in the next few weeks to kick start around two years of incremental testing.

Similar in concept to Grasshopper, Dragonfly is not an actual Dragon capsule, but a testbed for figuring out how to do vertical landings with a capsule, using thrusters.

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SpaceX switches payloads for next launch

6:52 pm

The competition heats up: SpaceX has rearranged the payloads for its next two launches, delaying the SES-9 geosynchronous communications satellite launch until December to instead launch 11 Orbcomm low-orbit satellites in November.

Using the upgraded Falcon 9, this switch will give them more fuel to try a vertical landing of the first stage on this first launch. They will then try again on the second launch.

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Facebook to provide internet access to Africa

4:57 pm

The competition heats up: Using an Israeli communications satellite built by the European satellite company Eutelsat and slated to be launched by SpaceX in 2016, Facebook will provide internet service to the African continent.

Under a partnership announced Monday, Facebook and European satellite operator Eutelsat will buy all of the broadband capacity on the AMOS-6 satellite owned by Israeli company Spacecom. The mission has no confirmed launch date, with SpaceX still recovering from a Falcon 9 launch failure in June, but the partners expect the satellite to begin service in the second half of 2016, according to a press release.

What I like about this is the number of companies involved, all trying to make money, with Facebook the newcomer to the space industry. And the more the merrier, I say!

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ULA completes its 100th successful launch

12:52 pm

The competition heats up: In a rare private commercial launch, ULA’s Atlas 5 rocket put a Mexican communications satellite in orbit on Friday, the 100th successful launch for the company.

The company still faces the same problems it did before this launch: It is running out of Russian engines for the Atlas 5, Congress is not willing to give them permission to use more, and the cost competition from SpaceX is not going to let up.

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Smallsat company buys its own Falcon 9 rocket to launch 20 satelites

10:40 pm

The competition heats up: Spaceflight Industries has purchased a single dedicated Falcon 9 rocket launch to launch 20 small satellites sometime in 2017.

Buying a dedicated launch, rather that seeking excess capacity on other launches, provides Spaceflight with more than just additional payload capacity. Secondary or “rideshare” payloads are subject to the schedule of the primary capability, and can be bumped off the launch if the mass of the primary payload grows. With a dedicated mission, Spaceflight is in greater control. “It helps us establish a regular cadence of launches,” Blake said. “We can book all kinds of rideshare passengers onto something that is going to be there at a certain time to a certain orbit.”

This purchase also indicates the growing strength of the smallsat industry. These companies are beginning to gain the investment capital to buy their own launches rather than fly as secondary payloads.

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New launch contracts for SpaceX and ILS

8:31 am

The competition heats up: Launch competitors SpaceX and ILS announced new contracts today for launching commercial satellites into orbit.

SpaceX announced two new contracts, one from the Spanish communications company Hispasat, who signed them up to use a Falcon 9, and a second from the Saudia Arabian communications company Arabsat for a Falcon Heavy launch.

ILS meanwhile got its own contract from Hispasat to use a Proton to put another Hispasat communcations satellite into orbit.

The two Hispasat contracts show the advantages of competition for satellite makers. They now have more than one company to choose from, and are spreading their business around to give them options while encouraging these companies to compete against each other by lowering prices.

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SpaceX releases video showing glimpse of manned Dragon interior

9:04 am

The competition heats up: SpaceX today released a short video showing a very limited glimpse at the interior of the manned version of its Dragon capsule.

I’ve embedded the video below the fold, but I will tell you it is quite disappointing. Lots of tight close-ups of seatbelts and seats and instrument panels without really providing a clear picture of the capsule’s interior.
» Read more

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Engineers propose using SpaceX rocket and capsule to bring samples back from Mars

10:14 am

Engineering by powerpoint! Several NASA engineers have proposed using SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket and an upgrade of its Dragon capsule to bring samples back from Mars.

The researchers have drawn up a plan that uses a modified version of SpaceX’s uncrewed Dragon cargo capsule, which has already flown six resupply missions to the International Space Station for NASA. The Red Dragon variant would include a robotic arm, extra fuel tanks and a central tube that houses a rocket-powered Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and an Earth Return Vehicle (ERV).

Red Dragon would launch toward Mars atop SpaceX’s huge Falcon Heavy rocket, which is scheduled to fly for the first time next year. After a long deep-space journey, the capsule would touch down near the 2020 Mars rover (whose landing site has not yet been chosen). “Red Dragon can go anywhere the rover can go, as far as landing elevation and terrain,” Gonzales said. “We’re confident we could land in front of the rover and have it drive to us.”

Red Dragon’s robotic arm would then grab a sample from the rover’s onboard cache (assuming the 2020 rover does indeed carry its samples, rather than stash them someplace) and transfer it to a secure containment vessel aboard the ERV, which sits atop the MAV. If something goes wrong during this exchange, Red Dragon can simply scoop up some material from the ground using its arm. The MAV would then blast off from the center of the capsule, like a missile from a silo, sending the ERV on its way back to Earth. The ERV would settle into orbit around our planet; its sample capsule would then be transferred to, and brought down to Earth by, a separate spacecraft — perhaps another Dragon capsule.

I like this concept because it uses available or soon-to-be available resources that are also relatively cheap to adapt for the mission. I also warn everyone that this is, as I note above, engineering by powerpoint. It is a concept, hardly a real proposal. The track record of seeing these kinds of proposals by NASA actually happen is quite poor.

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First Falcon Heavy launch now scheduled for April/May 2016

11:22 pm

The competition heats up: SpaceX is now aiming for a spring launch of the first Falcon Heavy.

That first launch will be a demonstration mission without a paying customer. That launch will be followed in September by the Space Test Program 2 mission for the Air Force, carrying 37 satellites. Rosen said the company was also planning Falcon Heavy launches of satellites for Inmarsat and ViaSat before the end of 2016, but did not give estimated dates for those missions.

Though no one should bet a lot of money on this launch schedule, if they get even half this accomplished they will be doing quite well. This, combined with the possibility that they will safely land the first stage of the Falcon 9 by then as well, will put SpaceX in an undeniably dominate position in the launch market.

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Blue Origin abandons patent for barge-landing a rocket

9:24 am

The heat of competition: After losing a decision of the U.S. Patent office in a dispute with SpaceX, Blue Origin has withdrawn the patent it was awarded in March 2014 for vertical landing a rocket on an ocean-going barge.

In an order made public today, the U.S. Patent Trial and Appeal Board granted a motion to cancel the remaining 13 of 15 claims in the Blue Origin rocket-landing patent. Blue Origin itself had made the motion to cancel those claims, effectively acknowledging that its case was lost.

Blue Origin, based in Kent, Wash., has separately filed a “reissue” patent application covering the same general area. However, SpaceX has already attempted multiple rocket landings at sea and would likely be grandfathered in, allowing it to continue the practice, even if Blue Origin were to ultimately succeed in securing a valid patent.

The two companies are definitely in a heated competition. This is not the only legal dispute they have had, with SpaceX winning previously as well. Blue Origin had challenged the award of a 20-year lease to SpaceX of its launchpad at Kennedy. It lost.

In this case, it was absurd on its face for the patent office to award this patent to Blue Origin, especially since, at the time it did so, SpaceX was clearly already doing this exact thing.

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SpaceX delays its next launch

8:41 am

SpaceX has decided to delay its next launch for several additional months as it continues its investigation into the June Falcon 9 launch failure.

The next mission on SpaceX’s launch calendar had been a U.S. government ocean-monitoring satellite called Jason 3, but Shotwell indicated that a commercial communications satellite would move to the front of the line. Luxembourg-based SES SA has a contract to fly on the first Falcon 9 rocket that features an upgraded first-stage engine. The upgrade will allow SpaceX to attempt to land its rockets back at the launch site from high-altitude missions so they can be refurbished and reused.

They had originally hoped to return to flight in September. This is now probably delayed until November. However, that their next flight will include the upgraded Merlin engine and it will be a commercial flight means they will once again likely try for a vertical landing of that first stage. Moreover, SES has already said that if the landing is successful it wants to buy that first stage for a future launch. SES hopes to save money this way, while also encouraging innovation in the launch market which it sees as a long term gain for putting its payloads into orbit.

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Russians consider building reusable rocket

9:17 am

The competition heats up: Roscosmos is studying proposals for building a reusable first stage that will use wings to return to the launchpad for later reuse.

The project draft has been created as part of Russia’s 2016-2025 space program. According to Izestia, Russia could spend over 12 billion rubles (around $180 million) on the creation of the reusable first stage before 2025. The newspaper cites space experts as saying that satellite launches could become much cheaper with the use of renewable launchers as they would allow to save millions of dollars on engines installed on the first stage of the rocket. The cost of the engines used on the current expendable launch vehicles is $10-70 million.

I’m not sure how seriously we should take this. The Russians consider lots of proposals, many times leaking the proposals to the press for any number of reasons. Most of those proposals never come to fruition.

Nonetheless, SpaceX’s effort to make its Falcon 9 first stage reusable, thus making it far less expensive than anyone else’s, is clearly influencing the Russians, as it has ULA and the Europeans. They are feeling competitive pressure, and are thus compelled to respond.

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NASA postpones decision again for 2nd ISS cargo contracts

8:44 am

In the heat of competition: NASA has again delayed its decision on awarding its second round of contracts for providing cargo to ISS, delaying the decision from September until November 5.

The launch failures this year is the major reason NASA has held off making a decision. They need to see how both SpaceX and Orbital ATK react to the failures, as both have also bid for second round contracts.

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The mobile launch building at Vostochny

8:27 am

At their new spaceport at Vostochny, the Russians are building a moveable launch building that will enclose their Soyuz rockets prior to launch.

Painted in elegant blue and white and standing almost 50 meters high, the Mobile Service Tower, MBO (for Mobilnaya Bashnya Obsluzhivaniya), is designed to provide personnel access to the Soyuz rocket during the countdown to liftoff from its launch pad in Vostochny. The structure can be also used to service the pad after launch and to process the rocket in case of an aborted liftoff.

With the tower in place, technicians can easily reach practically any part of the rocket as high as 37 meters above the surface of the launch pad. Internal access bridges of the tower surround the upper portion of the first and second stage, the third stage and the payload fairing.

The article also notes that “for decades, Soviet soldiers and officers and later their Russian civilian successors had to brave winter cold and summer heat preparing Soyuz rockets for launch on open-air gantries in Baikonur and Plesetsk. But in a sign how times have changed, the new generation of rocketeers will be protected from snow and rain with a climate-controlled tower completely enclosing the Soyuz rocket before liftoff from its newest launch pad at Russia’s Vostochny Cosmodrome.”

The irony here is profound. Big moveable buildings is how NASA has been doing it since Apollo. It is also what Boeing’s Delta family of rockets uses at Vandenberg in California. It is also why the Saturn 5 was and the Delta is so expensive to launch.

SpaceX abandoned such complicated structures in designing its Falcon 9, and instead decided to copy the old Soviet method of simple buildings for horizontal assembly and the simple horizontal transport to the launchpad. This appears to save a lot of money while simplifying rocket assembly.

That the Russians are now copying NASA’s more expensive but fancy mobile building approach means that, once again, their government is making decisions not based on efficiency but the prestige their political decisions can give them. From a competitive perspective, this is not going to benefit the Russia space effort, in the slightest.

But their workers will be more comfortable while they assembly those rockets!

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SpaceX pinpoints likely cause of Falcon 9 failure

4:31 pm

The investigation into the failure of the Falcon 9 launch June 28 now thinks the cause was a failed strut in the upper stage.

The struts are 2 feet long and about an inch thick at its thickest. SpaceX does not make the struts, a supplier does. From now on, each one will be individually checked, Musk said, and the design and material may be altered for added strength. The struts are designed to handle 10,000 pounds of force at liftoff; at the time of the accident, they would have been seeing only 2,000 pounds of force. A failure at such a low threshold is “pretty crazy,” Musk said. The strut most likely failed at its attachment point, he added.

Another change: Beginning with its next launch, each Dragon cargo carrier will be equipped with software for deploying its parachutes. The Dragon destroyed last month, along with an estimated $110 million worth of NASA equipment and supplies, would have survived if the parachutes normally used for descent at mission’s end could have been activated, Musk said.

The investigation is still not finalized, but is likely close to completion.

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SpaceX in no hurry to launch 4000 satellite constellation

10:23 am

In the heat of competition: During an interview on July 7, Elon Musk noted that SpaceX’s project to launch a 4,000 satellite communications constellation will be not be hurried.

“A lot of companies have tried it and broken their pick on it,” Musk said in response to an audience question during an appearance at the International Space Station Research and Development Conference here. “We want to be really careful about how we make this thing work, and not overextend ourselves.”… “We’re hopefully going to launch a test satellite next year,” Musk said in Boston, not going into detail about the satellite’s capabilities.

Musk indicated that SpaceX was not in a rush to develop the system. “We’re still in the early stages of a big LEO constellation communications idea,” he said. “I think the long-term potential of it is pretty great, but I don’t want to overplay or overstate things.”

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NASA names its astronauts for the first Dragon and CST-100 flights

10:04 am

The competition heats up: NASA today named the four government astronauts that will fly on the first manned demo flights to ISS of SpaceX’s Dragon and Boeing’s CST-100.

Bob Behnken, Eric Boe, Doug Hurley and Sunita Williams are veteran test pilots who have flown on the shuttle and the International Space Station. ….

NASA said the four astronauts will train with both companies and have not yet been assigned to flights. Two-person crews will fly the first test flights by each capsule, after they have completed an orbital test flight without people on board. Company proposals anticipate an all-NASA crew flying SpaceX’s Dragon test flight, with Boeing’s CST-100 carrying a split NASA-Boeing crew. Boeing has not yet identified its astronaut.

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Some results from SpaceX’s Dragon launchpad abort test

10:17 am

SpaceX has revealed some of the results from their Dragon launchpad abort test in May, which may explain why they have delayed the launch abort test until next year.

SpaceX engineers are evaluating the results of the May 6 pad abort test, in which the prototype Crew Dragon rocketed away from Cape Canaveral’s Complex 40 launch pad, reached an altitude of nearly one mile, and splashed down under parachutes just offshore in the Atlantic Ocean. Officials said data from the test showed a slight underperformance of the SuperDraco jetpack, and capsule did not reach the top speed and altitude targeted by engineers. But the test was successful by NASA’s standards, and the space agency awarded SpaceX a $30 million milestone payment after data reviews. [emphasis mine]

The article says that the delay is to make sure they are doing a launch abort test with the capsule design they intend to use, rather than an earlier design. I wonder if they also have decided they need more time to tweak their designs after this first test, and thus don’t want to use the capsule they had original planned to use since it has an older design.

Instead, the plan is to use the actual capsule after it has flown to ISS in their unmanned demo test flight of the manned capsule. They will not only be using their in-flight design for the test, this will give them extra time to study the results from the first test and revise the SuperDraco engines.

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Musk makes first extended public comments since Falcon 9 failure

11:43 pm

In the heat of competition: Elon Musk on Tuesday made his first detailed public comments about the Falcon 9 accident, the on-going investigation, and the aftermath.

Musk hopes to release more details on the failure by the end of this week after further data analysis and engineering reviews. “At this point, the only thing that’s really clear was there was some kind of over-pressure event in the upper stage liquid oxygen tank, but the exact cause and sequence of events, there’s still no clear theory that fits with all the data,” Musk said. “So we have to determine if some of the data is a measurement error of some kind, or if there’s actually a theory that matches what appear to be conflicting data points.”

He also had no word on when launches would resume.

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Dragon/Falcon 9 launch abort test moved from Vandenberg to Kennedy

8:50 am

Instead of using the Air Force’s Vandenberg launch complex in California, NASA and SpaceX have shifted their plans for the final launch abort test of the manned version of Dragon capsule to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

The date for the test has not been finalized, but it appears it will be delayed until after the next Dragon flight to ISS, itself delayed following the Falcon 9 failure on Sunday. The test will also be delayed until after the completion of the unmanned demo flight to ISS of the manned version of Dragon. SpaceX will then refurbish that demo capsule and re-use it for the launch abort test.

Update: I have rewritten the paragraph above, correcting my first version, which had mistakenly said that a refurbished cargo version of Dragon would be used for the launch abort test. My very knowledgeable readers noted the error and set me straight.

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The negative, depressing mainstream press

10:08 am

Sunday’s Falcon 9 failure has given us a great opportunity to learn something about the mainstream press and the elite culture that dominates it. As expected, while the space-oriented press focused on what happened and what will be done to fix the problem, almost every mainstream press outlet immediately concluded that the failure was a disaster that could and (with some outlets) should ring the death knell for private space. Here are just a few examples:

I could go on. Notice that these are almost all mainstream news sources. The few that specialize in science reporting, such as Scientific American, New Scientist, and National Geographic, also tend to push the left wing science agenda.

If you can force yourself to read these articles, as I have, you will find yourself inundated with negativity, pessimism, and a can’t-do attitude. Moreover, many of these articles seem expressly designed to encourage the public and politicians to withdraw their support for space exploration. For example, the Scientific American article, in outlining the history of recent ISS cargo failures, includes this quote:

Public support for the private space industry also took a blow last October (just three days after the Orbital Sciences ATK mishap) when Virgin Galactic’s suborbital space plane SpaceShipTwo crashed during a test flight, killing one of its pilots. [emphasis mine]

Does Scientific American provide us any evidence that public support had dropped after these failures? No. In fact, there is absolutely no evidence that support dropped, and if anything, based on the budget increases over the years for commercial space (despite Congressional efforts to trim that budget), support has continued to grow through thick and thin.

No, Scientific American inserted this statement because they want support to drop, and have tailored their article to help make that a self-fulfilling prophecy. The negativity of all these other articles suggest that their writers and outlets feel the same. Life is hard! Bad things can happen! Better that we stick our head in the sand and hide from the evil thunder gods rather than look up to try to figure out what thunder is!

For myself, I do not find the Falcon 9 failure this past weekend depressing in the slightest. This is a company and a rocket that hadn’t even existed a little more than decade ago, and in that short time they have revolutionized the rocket industry. Rockets fail. This is no surprise. Their track record, however, tells us that they will figure out what went wrong and start flying again, as soon as they can.

What I do find depressing is the failure culture of today’s modern intellectual society. It is one reason I do not depend on them for news, and in general try to depend on them for as little as possible for anything else.

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