And here’s the megafeed of everything I’ve been doing.
I took a ride out to AGI a year ago and got to see what was going on inside Comspoc. I like what they have going on there, and spinning off to their own entity will clean up the communications around what they offer and why it matters. I’m excited about this.
Chang’e-5 follows in the footsteps of Chang’e-2 and Chang’e-5 T1, which all went on to have interesting and sometimes unexpected extended missions. It feels a little like finishing a mission in Kerbal Space Program and realizing you brought along way too much fuel.
A great rundown on LC-48 by Anthony Iemole for NASASpaceflight.com. I expect to see Astra and ABL flying from this location in the not-too-distant future.
These kinds of acquisitions seem to me to come with two truths: they’re always way less about space than we like to think, and they always change less than we like to imagine.
All in all this seems like the right call. At a certain point, the risk of bigger delays coming from the process of fixing this issue is more than the risk on this particular flight. We have yet to see political support of Orion and SLS be eroded in any meaningful way, but every increasing delay has to catch up at some point.
I mentioned some of this in a recent podcast episode, but considering how long it will take to get BE-4 production up to the point of supporting multiple Vulcan flights alongside the first New Glenn flights, and considering that we have heard little to nothing on the BE-3U front in quite a while, it sure seems like we’re still at least 2 years out from New Glenn’s first flight.
Jake and Anthony are joined by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, to talk about Starship SN8’s epic flight test, Tim’s trip to Boca Chica, and to unveil the 2020 Off-Nominees and crown the winner.
Jake and Anthony are joined by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, to talk about Starship SN8’s epic flight test, Tim’s trip to Boca Chica, and to unveil the 2020 Off-Nominees and crown the winner.
NASA awarded Venture Class Launch Services contracts to Astra, Firefly, and Relativity. Astra almost made orbit with its most recent test flight of Rocket 3.2. And something is up at Firefly, but I don’t know what yet.
Starship SN8 took flight last week on a mostly-successful mission to test its final descent phase. I share some thoughts on the test, the state of Starship development, and what that all means for the near future of Starship.
I’m still not quite sure what to make of Chinese private space companies these days, but news like this makes the recent revisions to US commercial remote sensing regulations make so much sense.
Glad that everyone made it to the ground safely, but this is rough timing for Virgin Galactic. All the pomp around them having relocated VSS Unity to Spaceport America, talking up the fact that they’ll be starting commercial flights next year, and then this kind of thing comes up.
These three launch providers will be of great interest to NASA if and when they get flying regularly. NASA would like to not only help provide payloads and incentive to get them flying, but to also have a foot in the door early to start understanding their work, their capabilities, and maybe a bit of what’s going on behind the scenes at these companies. Relatedly, I’m slightly concerned about what they’ll find at Firefly, because something seems to be up there.
For a variety of reasons, I have not been closely following most of the European small launchers in development. But Isar says they’re funded through first launch with this round, and they have an agreement to launch from Kourou rather than an as-of-yet nonexistent launch site in Europe, so they’ve got my attention.
Yesterday’s flight of Starship SN8 has to be one of the most interesting, exciting, and downright spectacular flight tests of my lifetime. In a dim year, it certainly brightens your day to watch, even if it does not bring you optimism for the future. And there are some truly meaningful takeaways from the flight.
This is great news for cash-hungry SpaceX as they roll out Starlink. It’ll help subsidize the antenna cost that SpaceX is reportedly losing quite a bit of money on per unit.
The Space Development Agency may have the goal of speeding up acquisitions and development of space systems, but until they solve the protest-laden nature of the beast, they can only make so much progress.
This is such a no-brainer of a program for NASA, assuming they can get the money and approval for it from Congress. It would solve a massive need for NASA—a dwindling and soon-to-be-if-not-already-overloaded communications network at Mars—while also pushing the private industry to up its game and prove itself. If the program comes to fruition, I would mark this down as close to a must-win for SpaceX.
I joined Brendan Byrne on his show Are We There Yet? for a few minutes to talk about everything going on in the small launch space these days. My chunk of the show follows an interview that Brendan did with Jay Skylus, founder of Aevum, who showed off their Ravn X mockup last week. Have a listen, and if you aren’t subscribed to Brendan’s show, then use this opportunity to fix that.
A smooth first launch and docking for the cargo version of Dragon 2. Most excitingly, the Nanoracks Airlock, Bishop, is stored in Dragon’s trunk and will be installed on Node 3 later this month.