Tag: SpaceX

Dragon cargo freighter safely splashes down in Atlantic

8:49 am

After three months docked to ISS, one of SpaceX’s reusable Dragon cargo freighters safely splashed down today off the coast of Florida in the Atlantic.

This was SpaceX’s 28th cargo mission to ISS, all successful except for one launch failure not caused by the capsule itself, which post-failure analysis suggested that if it had been equipped to release parachutes it might have landed in the ocean undamaged.

This capsule brought back 3,600 pounds from the station, including some experiments that had been on the station for six years.

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Another tourist site for future Starship passengers on Mars

12:16 pm

Another tourist site for future Starship passengers on Mars
Click for original image.

Cool image time! The picture to the right, rotated, cropped, reduced, and sharpened to post here, was taken on April 11, 2023 by the high resolution camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). It shows the northwest quadrant of a 7-mile-wide crater whose western rim was smashed by the later impact that created a smaller 2.8-mile-wide crater.

What makes this location interesting is what fills both craters, and how that material appears to flow through a gap in the smaller crater. The color strip suggests the peaks of the rim and small knobs are dust-covered, while the flat materials below are either “coarser-grained materials” that might also have elements of frost or ice within them. The science team thinks ice is involved, having labeled this picture “Ice Flow Features between Craters.”
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SpaceX completes six-engine static fire test of Starship prototype #25

9:43 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully completed a six-engine static fire test of Starship prototype #25, the prototype that will be stacked on top of Superheavy prototype #9 and flown on the next orbital test flight.

Musk said in an interview on Saturday that more than a thousand upgrades were planned before the next flight of the Starship/Super Heavy. Including a significant change to the stage separation system that will see the Starship ignite its engines while still attached to the Super Heavy. Improvements are also being made to the Raptor engines to prevent leaks of super-heated gas which resulted in multiple engine failures during the April launch.

Major repair work and modifications are also underway to the Starship launch pad, after extensive damage occurred during the April 20 test flight.

Musk has also said the company will be ready to launch by August. While it is certainly possible that engineering will cause a slight delay to that schedule, more likely SpaceX will be ready, and then have to sit and wait for the FAA and the Biden administration to issue a launch permit. I am predicting it will not be issued by then, and likely not for months afterward.

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Japan’s military tests using Starlink for communications

8:49 am

Japan’s Self-Defense Forces (SDF) have been testing since March the use of SpaceX’s Starlink constellation to augment that nation’s own geosynchronous communications satellites.

Japan’s Defense Ministry signed a contract with an agent that provides SpaceX’s services to equip units of the Air, Ground and Maritime SDF with Starlink antennas and other communication devices. The SDF has been using the service at about 10 locations, including bases and camps, to verify whether there are any operational issues.

The ministry currently has two of its own X-band communication satellites in geostationary orbit about 36,000 kilometers above Earth for SDF units to use. The Starlink deal marks the first time the SDF is using a private-sector satellite constellation in low orbit.

An agreement with another company that provides a similar service will be concluded during the current fiscal year. [emphasis mine]

The goal is to provide Japan redundant communications capabilities in case China or Russia — both of which have become more aggressive militarily in the past few years — attempt to take out its own satellites. The highlighted sentence strongly suggests a deal with OneWeb is also being negotiated.

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SpaceX launches 56 more Starlink satellites

8:45 am

SpaceX this morning successfully launched another 56 Starlink satellites, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its eighth flight, landing on its drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairing halves completed their 7th and 10th flights, with the latter a new record.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race remain the same:

43 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 49 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 49 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 43 to 40.

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Update on SpaceX’s work leading to next Starship/Superheavy test launch

10:29 am

Link here. A static fire engine test program has begun for Starship prototype #25, which will fly on top of a Superheavy prototype. Also, work on the launchpad, badly damaged by the first test flight in April, has proceeded quickly.

During the first integrated test flight of Starship, Super Heavy Booster 7’s 30 working engines dug a sizable hole under the OLM [Orbital Launch Mount] during liftoff. The first images of it pictured a dramatic scene and pointed at some tough repair work ahead for SpaceX teams. Over the last two months, the hole was covered and reinforcements have been installed deep into the ground to strengthen the soil.

More recently, teams have been installing several tons of rebar underneath the OLM. While some rebar remains to be installed, as seen from aerial pictures captured by NSF, this work is expected to be finished soon and should be followed by a convoy of concrete trucks to fill up the pit. SpaceX will then install water-cooled steel plates over this concrete which will help support them and serve as an anchor for them.

The update also describes the numerous additional prototypes SpaceX is building at Boca Chica for further flight tests. It also notes this disturbing fact about the company’s planned Starship/Superheavy launch facility in Florida:

Work on the second set of tower sections, chopsticks, carriage system, and QD arm at SpaceX’s Roberts Road facility has come to a halt. Contractor equipment has visibly disappeared and other construction equipment has been removed. The Florida Mega Bay parts have also made their way to Starbase, becoming the second Mega Bay at the Texas facility. The two big cranes that were previously at Roberts Road were also moved to Starbase to aid in the construction of that new Mega Bay.

On top of this, SpaceX has changed the use of the building previously thought to be the factory for Starship sections. This facility is now being used to process Starlink payload integration with Falcon 9’s fairings.

This slow down is probably because NASA has forbidden Starship/Superheavy launches from this launchpad because it is near the launchpad SpaceX uses for NASA’s manned missions. The agency wants SpaceX to be able to launch Dragon from its other more distant pad, and that work needs to be completed first before the Starship/Superheavy pad can be used.

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SpaceX launches another 47 Starlink satellites into orbit

12:28 am

Just after midnight tonight SpaceX successfully launched 47 more Starlink satellites, with its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The first stage completed its fourth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Pacific. Both fairing halves completed their third flight.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

42 SpaceX
24 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China in successful launches 47 to 24 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 47 to 40, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 42 to 40.

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FAA finally reduces airspace restrictions for some launches out of Cape Canaveral

9:46 am

On June 15, 2023 FAA announced that it has at last reduced the airspace restrictions for some launches out of Cape Canaveral, thus allowing more launches while reducing the disruption to commercial airline traffic.

The move is part of broader efforts to address the conflicts between launches and commercial aviation, particularly in Florida’s congested airspace. In April, the FAA released a set of factors when considering whether to allow a launch to proceed or ask the launch company to identify alternative windows for the launch.

Among those factors are the timing of the launch, particularly relative to holidays or other special events that cause increases in air traffic, and the duration of the launch window. “The FAA encourages commercial space operations to take place during nighttime hours (to the extent practicable) when other flight operations tend to be reduced,” the guidelines state.

I say “at last” because SpaceX have been pushing for this reduction for years. It knows its rockets will fly very reliably, and even if a rare failure forces their destruction, the territory threatened is much smaller than what was once considered necessary in the past. It just took years to get the federal bureaucracy to recognize these facts.

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NASA official in charge of its manned program denigrates the idea of fixed-price contracts

9:32 am

Jim Free, apparently hostile to commercial space despite running the NASA manned program dependent on it
Jim Free, apparently hostile to commercial space despite
running the NASA manned program dependent on it

Eric Berger on June 16, 2023 wrote up a careful analysis of comments made by NASA official Jim Free, who is in charge of its Artemis manned program, when he appeared on June 7, 2023 before the Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board and Space Studies Board in Washington, DC.

During that appearance, in which Free provided an update on the program’s status, including admitting that the manned lunar landing will not happen in 2025 but in 2026 — something that everyone in the space industry has known for years but NASA had been denying — Berger then noted this further comment by Free:

Oddly, Free also questioned the value of the contract mechanism that NASA used to hire SpaceX and its Starship lander. “The fact is, if they’re not flying on the time they’ve said, it does us no good to have a firm, fixed-price contract other than we’re not paying more,” he said.

Free did this after trying to place the entire blame for the launch delay on SpaceX, made worse by the regulatory delays being imposed on it by the FAA.

Berger than proceeded to outline in great detail why fixed-price contracts work far better than cost-plus contracts — also known widely in the space industry and detailed myself in Capitalism in Space. To sum up, cost-plus contracts produce very little but cost gobs of money, while fixed-price contracts save money while guaranteeing results. He then asked, “What’s going on here?” and answered it as follows:
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SpaceX successfully launches Indonesian broadband satellite

8:48 am

SpaceX yesterday successfully launched an Indonesian broadband satellite, using its Falcon 9 rocket lifting off from Cape Canaveral.

The first stage completed its twelfth flight, landing on a drone ship in the Atlantic. The fairing halves completed their seventh and ninth flights respectively.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

41 SpaceX
23 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 46 to 23 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 46 to 39, with SpaceX by itself still leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 41 to 39.

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SpaceX launches 72 smallsats; lands a Falcon 9 1st stage for the 200th time

3:22 pm

SpaceX today successfully launched 72 smallsats using its Falcon 9 rocket, lifting off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

With this launch, SpaceX achieved a significant milestone, successfully landing a Falcon 9 first stage for the 200th time, an achievement that for more than a half century all managers and most engineers in the rocket business claimed was not only impossible, but impractical. They insisted that the first stage would not be able to be reused because of the stress of launch. SpaceX has proved these close-minded fools very wrong. This particular first stage completed its ninth mission on this flight, a number that has become very routine for SpaceX’s Falcon 9 first stages. The stage landed back at Vandenberg,

As of posting the satellites have not all deployed.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

40 SpaceX
22 China
8 Russia
5 Rocket Lab

American private enterprise now leads China 45 to 22 in the national rankings, and the entire world combined 45 to 38, with SpaceX by itself leading the rest of the world, excluding other American companies, 40 to 38.

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The evidence shows clearly that Biden has worked to squelch Elon Musk and SpaceX

12:41 pm

Starship #15 about to land
Starship prototype #15, during its successful suborbital test flight in May 2021

The public concerns expressed last week by one NASA official about the regulatory delays caused by the FAA to SpaceX’s Starship/Superheavy development program illustrated once again my sense that there had been a stark change in how SpaceX was being regulated by the federal government, from the Trump to the Biden administration. Under Trump, SpaceX was moving fast, launching test flights frequently. Under Biden, all such test flights appeared to grind to a halt.

For example, it seemed to me that during the Trump administration the FAA allowed SpaceX to complete its investigations of explosions or launch failures quickly, so they could proceed as quickly to another test launch, sometimes only weeks later. After the first orbital test flight of Superheavy/Starship on April 20, 2023, however, the FAA responded quite differently, demanding the right to oversee a full investigation that it also implied would take many months.

Others have disputed this assertion. For example, space reporter Doug Messier commented about my analysis, stating that the FAA’s insistence on a lengthy investigation into the April 20, 2023 Superheavy/Starship orbital test flight failure was simply standard procedure. “I don’t think this represents any change in policy. This is how it’s been done for years,” Messier wrote. “It’s easy to scapegoat FAA as THE cause of the problem, and speculate about nefarious actions by the Biden Administration.”

Who is right? Am I being paranoid? Or is Messier being naive? As Howard Cosell used to say on Monday Night Football, “Let’s go to the videotape!” Or in this case, let’s take a hard detailed look at how SpaceX’s test program for Starship/Superheavy came to a screeching halt when Joe Biden took over the White House from Donald Trump.

From 2018, when SpaceX began first cutting metal on Starship prototypes, to May 2021, the company did eight suborbital test flights and at least six tank and static fire engine tests, with some resulting in explosive destruction. Below is a list of those tests (There were more such engine and tank tests during that time, but these were ones I could quickly find).
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