The Continuing Mystery Saga of USA 276
USA 276 is making another close approach to the ISS, and yet again, there is a lot of activity around the ISS when it happens.
And here’s the megafeed of everything I’ve been doing.
USA 276 is making another close approach to the ISS, and yet again, there is a lot of activity around the ISS when it happens.
There’s a bit of a logjam out at the Cape: the launch dates of TDRS-M and CRS-12 fell very close to each other, and they’re both high-priority missions for NASA. This situation sheds some light on future SpaceX operations in Florida.
Eric Berger returns to the show to talk about Elon Musk and SpaceX’s crusade against cost-plus contracting, the end of Red Dragon, where NASA policy is heading, and what SpaceX may have in store for the Air Force’s next round of development contracts.
In the wake of the announcement that Dream Chaser will fly to the ISS on an Atlas V 552, I’ve been curious how much performance the dual engine Centaur will add to the Atlas V configurations we know and love.
Loren Grush of The Verge joins me to talk about Falcon Heavy, SpaceX cancelling Dragon 2 propulsive landings, Red Dragon riding off into the sunset, Moon Express, US space policy, and a whole lot more.
Taking your shop on the road with you to craft fairs, concerts, and other live events has never been easier. A quicker in-person checkout in the Big Cartel app makes it even better.
A launch on an Atlas V 552 probably runs pretty damn close to the $200 million mark. Yikes.
The current pricing SpaceX uses makes no sense in the high-level, long-term view. It’s pretty obvious that the model grew out of an expendable-minded era, and that SpaceX is sticking to it because the market itself has not yet changed its thinking.
It seems that Boeing took Charlie Bolden too literally: his oft-heard refrain was that NASA turned over LEO to commercial companies and wanted beyond LEO to itself. Boeing designed and built a vehicle that literally can not fly beyond LEO without help.
The ISS R&D Conference is kicking off this week in DC with sure-to-be interesting keynotes by Elon Musk, Robert Bigelow, and a few members of Congress, among others. But there are also a bunch of technical sessions in the afternoons, so I went digging through the agenda. I found two sessions by Sierra Nevada—one on Dream Chaser at the ISS and one on their NextSTEP-2 Deep Space Gateway concept. Lucky for us, the session PDFs are up already.
XCOR laid off the rest of its staff and is closing up shop after losing a contract with ULA, which leaves ULA in an interesting spot for Vulcan-ACES. On the ULA side, they won their first Phase 1A contract from the Air Force, and the contract price sheds some light on just how much they’re cutting their costs.
I always thought the north side of the UK would be a great spot for a polar launch site. Some will liken this to the spaceport dilemma in the US, but it’s totally different.
This is exactly what NASA was hoping to achieve by putting the plans for the Deep Space Gateway out into the public eye. They need international and commercial partners to latch onto the idea of the Deep Space Gateway, develop plans to use it, and talk about those plans publicly. That’s how they can build support for it within the US political sphere, and that’s how they can get it funded.
This leaves ULA’s Vulcan-ACES in an interesting position. Blue Origin and Aerojet Rocketdyne are now in direct competition for engines on both stages of Vulcan-ACES: BE-4 and AR1 for the first stage, BE-3U and RL10 for ACES.
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Fantastic update from Chris Bergin over at NASASpaceFlight.com on SpaceX’s incredible week. Two launches, one reused stage, two successful landings and recoveries, the first appearance of their new robot on the droneship, the best attempt yet at recovering fairings. All while preparing for another launch Sunday.
Ashlee Vance, with a poorly-titled-yet-interesting piece on Peter Beck and Rocket Lab in Bloomberg. Great photos within, as well as a little nugget on their schedule.
SpaceX launched two missions last weekend, flew new titanium grid fins on Falcon 9, and are really picking up the pace. And Blue Origin got cozy with the Alabama Launch Alliance by announcing that they’ll build the BE-4 production facility in Huntsville—if the engine is chosen for Vulcan.
Things are still looking up for BE-4.