Category Archives: Rockets

Rockets

Space transport roundup – June.7.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport:

** Rocket Lab prepares for an upcoming launch, the seventh for the Electron rocket.

** China launched a Long March 11 rocket this week from a sea platform for the first time. The rocket, which has 4 solid-fueled stages, is essentially a military missile converted to an orbital launcher. The payload consisted of seven smallsats for government, education, and commercial applications.

** ESA promotes Ariane 6, Vega C, and Space Rider projects this week:

** The Space Rider is a reusable lifting body vehicle similar to the X-37B: Space Rider: Europe’s reusable space transport system – ESA

Initially proposed in 2016, ESA’s Space Rider reentry vehicle provides a return to Earth and landing capability that compliments the existing launch options of the Ariane and Vega families.

Having recently completed system and subsystem preliminary design reviews, Space Rider is advancing quickly towards the Critical design review at the end of 2019.

Launched on Vega-C, Space Rider will serve as an uncrewed high-tech space laboratory operating for periods longer than two months in low orbit. It will then re-enter the Earth’s atmosphere and land, returning its valuable payload to eager engineers and scientists at the landing site. After minimal refurbishment it will be ready for its next mission with new payloads and a new mission.

Space Rider combines reusability, in-orbit operations and transportation, and precise descent of a reentry vehicle able to safely traverse and land close to inhabited zones. These are major developments, set to extend European knowhow across a host of applications allowing industry to open up new markets.

More at ESA promotes Vega’s evolution for independent European access to space – NASASpaceFlight.com

** Russia starts development of reusable boosters: Russian hi-tech firm working on technology of space rocket’s reusable stages – TASS

Russia’s Energomash Research and Production Association is working on the technology of carrier rockets’ reusable first stages, Energomash Chief Designer Pyotr Lyovochkin said in an interview published in the June edition of the Popular Mechanics journal.

“We constantly explain to rocket builders that if we had the operational technology of returning first stages, they would have no need to buy quite an expensive engine from us just for one flight. Today both rocket builders and we have started to develop such technologies,” Lyovochkin said.

** Virgin Orbit loses most of the OneWeb launch contracts and isn’t happy about it: Virgin Orbit takes OneWeb to court over canceled launch contract – SpaceNews.com

Virgin Orbit is suing OneWeb for refusing to pay a termination fee for canceling all but four of the 39 launches it ordered from Virgin Orbit in 2015 to fill gaps in its planned constellation of at least 648 broadband satellites.

The first VO flight is coming up soon:

** First Firefly Alpha launch now set for early 2020: Firefly prepares for maiden flight with critical testing, new additions – NASASpaceFlight.com

** Scott Manley profiles the Antares rocket:

** World View Enterprises maintained a Stratollite airship at a high altitude for 16 days: Milestone 16 Day Stratollite Mission  (pdf)

World View, the stratospheric exploration company, today announced it has successfully executed a record-setting16-day Stratollite™ mission, a key step towards the productization of persistent and navigational stratospheric flight for remote sensing and communications applications.

Prior to the completion of this mission, the longest duration Stratollite flight stood at just five days. This mission moves World View one step closer to scaled commercial operations and productization of the Stratollite and the unique data sets it provides. The Stratollite enables persistent, near-real time, very-high resolution remote sensing over large specified areas of interest for commercial and government customers around the world.

** Zero2Infinity high-altitude balloon flights can now be booked via the HOSTmi – Independent-Automated-Global on line service:

** A brief overview of how the FAA regulates commercial launch: Fact Sheet – Commercial Space Transportation Activities

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) is responsible for ensuring protection of the public, property, and the national security and foreign policy interests of the United States during commercial launch or reentry activities, and to encourage, facilitate, and promote U.S. commercial space transportation. To date, the FAA Office of Commercial Space Transportation (AST) has licensed or permitted more than 370 launchesand reentries.

** An overview of a nuclear fusion propulsion system, which has gotten NASA and DOE funding: “Direct Fusion Drive for Rapid Deep Space Propulsion”, Stephanie Thomas, Princeton Satellite Systems. The presentation was given to the FISO group on May 29, 2019.

** SpaceX:

*** Cargo Dragon returns safely to splashdown in the Pacific with load of materials from experiments and R&D projects on the ISS:

*** Falcon 9 with the Radarsat Constellation set to lift off on June 12 from Vandenberg AFB: SpaceX Falcon 9 and $1B satellite trio set for first California launch in months – Teslarati

After the better part of both half a year of launch delays and launch pad inactivity, SpaceX and Falcon 9 are ready to return the company’s California-based SLC-4 facilities to action with the launch of the $1 billion Radarsat Constellation Mission (RCM).

Built by Maxar for the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), RCM is a trio of remote-sensing spacecraft designed with large surface-scanning radars as their primary payload. Having suffered years of technical delays during Maxar’s production process, RCM was initially available for launch as early as November 2018. In an unlucky turn of events, issues on the SpaceX side of things took RCM’s assigned Falcon 9 booster out of commission and lead to an additional seven or so months of launch delays. At long last, RCM is just one week away from heading to orbit, scheduled to launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base (VAFB) no earlier than 7:17 am PDT (14:17 UTC), [June 12th].

*** Falcon Heavy STP-2 launch set for June 22nd from Cape Canaveral includes NASA payloads among the 24 total spacecraft: Media Briefing Highlights NASA Tech on Next SpaceX Falcon Heavy Launch | NASA

NASA is sending four technology missions that will help improve future spacecraft design and performance into space on the next SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket launch. Experts will discuss these technologies, and how they complement NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration plans, during a media teleconference Monday, June 10 at 1 p.m. EDT.

Audio of the teleconference will be streamed live online at:  https://www.nasa.gov/live

*** SpaceX still trying to catch nosecone fairings: SpaceX’s Mr. Steven preparing for first Falcon 9 fairing catch attempt in months – Teslarati

SpaceX recovery vessel Mr. Steven has spent the last several weeks undergoing major refits – including a new net and arms – and testing the upgraded hardware in anticipation of the vessel’s first fairing catch attempt in more than four months.

Required after a mysterious anomaly saw Mr. Steven return to Port in February sans two arms and a net, the appearance of a new net and arms guarantees that SpaceX is still pursuing its current method of fairing recovery. Above all else, successfully closing the loop and catching fairings could help SpaceX dramatically ramp its launch cadence and lower costs, especially critical for the affordable launch of the company’s own Starlink satellite constellation.

*** Speeding up booster turnarounds: SpaceX beats Falcon 9 recovery records after company’s heaviest launch ever  Teslarati

Completed on May 30th, SpaceX’s latest Falcon 9 booster recovery smashed several internal speed records, unofficially cataloged over the years by watchful fans.

In short, as the company’s experienced recovery technicians continue to gain experience and grow familiar with Falcon 9 Block 5, the length of booster recoveries have consistently decreased in the 12 months since Block 5’s launch debut. Already, the efficiency of recovery processing has gotten to the point that – once SpaceX optimizes Block 5’s design for refurbishment-free reuse – there should be no logistical reason the company can’t fly the same booster twice in ~24-48 hours.

*** A Falcon 9 lifting off in high-res slo-mo: Falcon 9 rocket liftoff filmed with ultra-high speed cameras [1,000fps x 1920×1080] : space/reddit.com

*** An item about the status of the investigation into the explosion during a Crew Dragon test:

*** The Raptor engine for the Starhopper flight tests has yet to arrive at the South Texas site. Nevertheless, lots of activity underway with both the Starhopper and the Starship orbital demo vehicle:

*** A report on the Boca Chica Beach activities and the local community: Before Elon Musk reaches Mars, SpaceX may need to survive south Texas – Business Insider

Developing this system at the company’s remote and privately controlled Texas facility comes with several advantages. The area is fairly close to the equator, which adds a natural speed boost to rockets. SpaceX’s autonomy over the site also gives the company more flexibility in scheduling launches, privacy from competitors, and greater freedom in how it uses the land.

But launching a skyscraper-size rocket from this area (engineering challenges notwithstanding) is no trivial undertaking. For one, any future flight path must avoid populated islands. The bay-bottom mud and sand below SpaceX’s site also cause dense structures and tall towers tend to sink and lean. Gulf Coast weather is a challenge, too, as SpaceX recently saw when gale-force winds damaged its Starhopper.

And then there are the 20 or so people, like the Pointers, who live in or near Boca Chica Village. For them, the unparalleled view of the experimental rocket program, while stirring, is also foreboding.

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Delta-v

Rockets, Spaceflight & Parabolic Flight

Space tourism roundup – June.4.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images related to commercial human space travel:

** Beth Moses talks about her SpaceShipTwo flight and what she is doing to prepare others for such flights:

Describe to me the experience of being in space. We all saw that picture of you staring out the window in complete awe.

It was just magic and almost indescribable.

I felt very fortunate to fly where I did and the day I did. I felt like the Earth was so beautiful, but even more so than you can describe or can be imagined. I happened to fly on a day where we had snow on the mountains in the southwestern United States. And I remember vividly that appearance of glistening white mountaintops and blue Pacific Ocean and the green of the Earth. I told someone the other day I felt like Earth was wearing her diamonds for us that day, because it was so, so glistening and sharp.

It just took my breath away. It was amazing

“The face you make when you look back on Earth from space. Our Chief Astronaut Instructor, Beth Moses, is the 571st person to fly to space and the first woman to fly on board a commercial spaceship.” – Virgin Galactic

Clash: Compare the real flight to the simulations.

Moses: The Gz [force through the head] was of a much lower duration. I reached our expected Gz on boost and re-entry, but was pleasantly surprised at how short it was. It just ramps up and then ramps off. You take a breath and realize, ‘Oh this is high G,’ and you take another breath and say, ‘Oh, this is high G.’ By the time you’ve finished your second breath, it’s done, and you’re back to normal G. The Gz felt like the centrifuge, but the Gx [force through the chest] I didn’t perceive as strongly as I did in the centrifuge. I don’t know why. Maybe it was because I was so happy to be going up. So Gz felt like the NASTAR centrifuge, Gx did not. Both maximums were about 3.6.

Clash: Will you fly again?

Moses: I would love to go back up, but I also want to get future astronauts up there as fast as possible. So it depends on what we still have to test, how many test flights we have and for what reasons. We’re actually still mapping that out. But I will not nominate myself. There are lots of other skill-sets and factors that need to be tested, so I will train other folks to do those tests. I’m not trying to blindly hog evaluations. But if there are evaluations that need my particular skill-set, I might fly again. We’re still working that out.

** Richard Branson remains steadfastly upbeat about Virgin Galactic’s prospects: Richard Branson: We’re at the dawn of new era of space exploration (Opinion) – Richard Branson/CNN

I said after the flight on December 13, as I stood with our pilots, Frederick “CJ” Sturckow and Mark “Forger” Stucky, that when you set off on important adventures, exceptional people come forward to join the journey — people who are consistently by your side and on your side, people who share your dreams and people who help make them reality. Reaching space has been the ultimate team effort.

It is evident that we are finally at the dawn of a new age of space exploration, which will see reusable space vehicles built and operated by commercially successful private companies, transforming our business and personal lives in ways that we have yet to comprehend fully.

Standing on the flight line, I could hear my dad in the back of my mind saying, as he often did, “Isn’t life wonderful?”

** Land Rover designed the Astronaut Edition Range Rover just for “Virgin Galactic’s Future Astronaut customers”:

** Suborbital space tourism will be a lot safer than climbing Mt. Everest, thankfully: Everest deaths: Four reasons why this climbing season went wrong – BBC News

Over the past two decades, the average annual death rate of climbers on Mount Everest has remained at about six.

But this spring, at least 10 people have already been reported dead or missing on the world’s highest peak.

This is also the season that saw a record 381 climbing permits issued by the Nepalese government.

In reality, this means about 600 people were preparing to embark on the climb, with permit holders accompanied by support staff up the mountain.

** Virgin Galactic & Blue Origin near space tourism operations. VG is currently installing the interior seating in a SpaceShipTwo rocketplane and plans to begin flying customers this year. Blue Origin expects to fly people on the New Shepard for the first time in 2019, though ticket sales have yet to begun. So suborbital space tourism may finally get off the ground this year:  Suborbital space tourism nears its make-or-break moment – The Space Review

After the Ansari X Prize was won in October of 2004, I was sure that there would be regular space tourism services available by 2008. (I lost a bet, in fact, that there would be services by then.) Here it is 15 years later and I’m still waiting to see routine flights of public citizens to the edge of space.

This is disappointing for sure but it is hardly unusual that a technology takes a lot longer than expected to reach the market.

I enjoy listening to Jonathan Strickland on the TechStuff Podcast tell captivating stories behind the development and commercialization of technologies. He explains the science and engineering in a clear and straight-forward manner while also drawing fine verbal portraits of the fascinating characters involved and vividly depicting the often bitter and complex battles among them.

Many of the technologies we take for granted today saw decades pass between the initial key invention(s) and commercial success. I just listened, for example, to a podcast about compact audio cassette tapes and another on video cassettes. (These are in a series from Strickland on the development of media starting with records and films.) While not nearly as challenging as high altitude rocket transportation, there was still a considerable gap between the initial invention of flexible audio tape in Germany in the 1930s and high-fidelity audio cassettes in the 1970s.  The first video tape recorders appeared in the 1950s but the first successful home video recorders didn’t appear until the mid-1970s.

Technological devices typically involve multiple sub-technologies that must work well together as a system. Finding the optimum combination of technologies that synergize into an affordable, practical product seldom happens on the first try. Instead an evolutionary competition occurs with the fittest combo eventually winning after a long struggle that leaves behind a trail of failed designs and bankrupted companies.

In the mid-2000s, there was at least a half-dozen companies making serious efforts at a suborbital vehicle for space tourism. There was no grand overarching roadblock that a few keen outsiders saw that the companies didn’t. Rather, each encountered particular individualized hurdles that tripped them up.

For example, Virgin Galactic could have developed a SpaceShip 1.5 vehicle that involved modest improvements to the 3-seat SpaceShipOne and starting flying within a couple of years after the XPRIZE. Burt Rutan has said he had customers requesting flights on the SpaceShipOne. Instead, VG decided to jump straight to an elaborate 8-person vehicle. Unfortunately, the company ran into tremendous difficulties in scaling up the hybrid rocket motor used on the SS1 and even today does not have a motor that can send the SS2 above 100 km, which was the altitude boundary for the XPRIZE.

XCOR made good progress on low-cost, reliable liquid-fueled rocket engines but could not raise sufficient funding to bring the Lynx spaceplane to fruition. Rocketplane Ltd.‘s design based on a converted Learjet turned out not to be viable and by the time they changed the design they were out of money. Similarly, TGV Rockets fell short of funding to build the Michelle-B, a vertical takeoff and landing rocket vehicle similar to Blue’s New Shepard.

Blue Origin had plenty of funding but, after flying a couple of prototype vehicles, the company decided to focus on developing a new liquid hydrogen propulsion system that could be used for the booster of a suborbital vehicle and also for the upper stage of an orbital launcher. A highly reusable LOX/LH2 engine is no trivial technology so there’s little surprise it took them a few years to develop.

The suborbital space tourism story is just another confirmation that a new technology needs multiple entrants, all trying their hardest to make their designs work.

So, if the SpaceShipTwo and New Shepard vehicles do start flying regularly, does that guarantee a successful space tourism business? No, of course, not. No untried business is a guaranteed success. However, there are many positive signs.

For example, several hundred people have signed up for SS2 flights and most have waited patiently for many years. Only a few percent canceled after the 2014 accident and many of these dropped out not because of safety concerns but because they were discouraged by the additional years of waiting to fly.

If 600 people each year attempt to scale Mt. Everest, despite an annual average of 6 deaths, just to brag about the ordeal they overcame, we can be sure there will be no shortage of customers willing to pay for the totally unique thrill of riding a rocket straight up to the edge of space and encountering the awesome view of a glittering cosmos above and a glistening Earth below.

** A UBS Global Research view of commercial space travel:

** Russia’s KosmoKurs (КосмоКурс) is developing a suborbital vertical takeoff and landing rocket vehicle similar to Blue Origin’s New Shepard and also intended for tourism services. Like the New Shepard, up to six passengers would ride in a capsule that detaches from a booster and returns via parachutes. The goal is to build the vehicle by 2023.

** A customer for a Circumlunar Mission offered by Space Adventures wanted his deposit back as delays grew ever longer: Space Adventures reaches settlement with would-be lunar tourist – SpaceNews.com

[Harald] McPike, an Austrian businessman and adventurer who lives in the Bahamas, filed the original suit in May 2017, seeking the return of a $7 million deposit he paid to Space Adventures for a $150 million seat on a Soyuz mission that would go around the moon, and additional damages. The defendants in the suit included Space Adventures; Tom Shelley, the company’s president; and Eric Anderson, the company’s chairman and chief executive.

According to McPike’s suit, he contacted Space Adventures in July 2012 about the possibility of flying on a mission around the moon that the company had been promoting for several years. In March 2013, he signed an agreement committing to participate in such a mission, and paid an initial deposit of $7 million towards the $150 million total price with the expectation that the mission would take place within six years.

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Space 2.0: How Private Spaceflight, a Resurgent NASA,
and International Partners are Creating a New Space Age

Rockets, Space Systems

Space transport roundup – June.3.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport:

** Lightning strikes Soyuz 2-1B rocket during ascent but launch on May 27th successful anyway:

** Russian Proton rocket launches Yamal-601 geostationary communications satellite on May 30th:

** Stratolaunch appears to be shutting down: Exclusive: Space firm founded by billionaire Paul Allen closing operations – sources – Reuters

** Sierra Nevada Corp’s patented VORTEX® rocket engine was test fired in a public demo: Ozmens’ SNC Test-fires Next-Gen Rocket Engine in Prep for U.S. Launches – SNC

SNC Vortex Engine Test
SNC Vortex engine test firing. Credits: SNC

** SNC will support upgrades to the Japanese next-gen ISS cargo vehicle: Ozmens’ Sierra Nevada Corporation to Provide Hardware for Japanese HTV-X International Space Station Missions – SNC

… HTV-X is the advanced version of H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV). The spacecraft will provide supplies to the Kibō Japanese Experiment Module and the International Space Station for future servicing missions.

The HTV-X spacecraft is developed and operated by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), with primary sections of the vehicle being manufactured by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) and Mitsubishi Electric Corporation (MELCO).

** Nozzle blows off during test firing of Northrop-Grumman solid fuel booster:

N-G management is downplaying the incident but I’m sure the USAF will want the problem found and fixed before the OmegA can be considered for defense payloads.

[ Update: Scott Manley analyzes the incident:

]

** An update on Gilmour Space Technologies, an Australian/Singapore company developing a SmallSat launcher with a hybrid motor propulsion system: Building a rocket in a garage to take on SpaceX and Blue Origin – CNET

GIlmour’s suborbital One Vision rocket “is slated to launch in late June”. If that goes well they will proceed with development of the orbital

… three-stage rocket dubbed “Eris,” it will blast off to low Earth orbit, dropping off small satellites 100 miles (160 kilometers) above the surface.

“Eris is a three-stage vehicle, so it has three separate stages that fire individual sections,” Gilmour explains. “We have designed it to be able to take all of the known small satellites that are being built and designed right now, into space.”

The company has started work on Eris, and completion is tentatively scheduled in for 2020.

** Rocket Crafters tests 2.5 kN Cyclone hybrid motor:

This test is the most recent demonstration of Rocket Crafters new 2.5 kN (550 lbf) Cyclone Labscale testing engine. The Cyclone Engine uses a combination of the patent pending STAR-3D (Safe, Throttleable, Affordable, Reliable, 3D-Printed) Fuel Grain and VIFFI (Vortex Flow-Field Injector) technologies. The engine was fired for five seconds at 50% throttle and performed even better than expected with a maximum thrust of 1.5 kN (340 lbf)! Notice how smooth the plume from the engine is, it is much steadier and smoother than that what would be observed from a traditional Hybrid Rocket Engine. In addition, the top view is taken from a GoPro mounted to the Oxidizer Tank for the Engine, because it is attached to the test stand any vibrations from the Engine would be seen from this view.

** Firefly Aerospace releases payload users guide for the Orbital Transfer Vehicle (OTV), which uses solar electric propulsion to move payloads to a desired orbit:

** A Chinese rocket company tests a thruster system:

** More about university student rocket teams:

[ Update: The team fell short of 100 km but still reached a high altitude: College Rocket-Builders Are Flying High, Even as Launch Falls a Bit Short – WSJ

But in the middle of their flights, the rockets ran into an issue and fell short of hitting the Karman Line, an international standard for the boundary between earth’s atmosphere and space at 62 miles up.

“The bottom line is, from the start, it wasn’t really about the small technical details,” said Saad Mirza, a 19-year-old Princeton University student who was the team’s technical lead. “The real fact is we beat pretty much every odd.”

After spending innumerable hours working toward getting to space and falling short, the team members weren’t upset. Oddly enough, they were giddy.

There were technical triumphs to celebrate. The second-stage ignition, they felt, was a major accomplishment. Both rockets took off “straight as an arrow,” Mr. Mirza said. And even without getting to space, the rockets still got quite high. (They are still going through data to determine the exact height.)

]

** Misc.

** SpaceX:

*** SpaceX CRS-17 Dragon leaving the ISS this morning for a splashdown in the Pacific: NASA TV Set to Air US Cargo Ship Departure from Space Station | NASA

Filled with more than 4,200 pounds of valuable scientific experiments and other cargo, a SpaceX Dragon cargo spacecraft is set to return to Earth from the International Space Station Monday, June 3. NASA Television and the agency’s website will provide live coverage of the craft’s release beginning at 11:45 a.m. EDT.

Around noon, flight controllers at mission control in Houston will deliver remote commands to the station’s Canadarm2 robotic arm to detached Dragon from the Earth-facing port of the Harmony module. Expedition 59 Flight Engineer David Saint-Jacques of the Canadian Space Agency will back up the operation and monitor Dragon’s systems as it departs the orbital laboratory.

After firing its thrusters to move a safe distance away from the station, Dragon will execute a deorbit burn around 4:56 p.m. to leave orbit, as it heads for a parachute-assisted splashdown in the Pacific Ocean, 202 miles southwest of Long Beach, California, at 2:55 p.m. PDT. There will be no live coverage of deorbit burn or splashdown.

A view of the splashdown target area:

The Dragon is currently the only vehicle that can return substantial amounts of cargo from the ISS: Science Results Packed for Return to Earth Aboard Dragon Monday – Space Station

*** Two launches set for June. The following dates are still “no earlier than” and the specific launch window times are not yet posted.

  • June 11: Vandenberg AFB, Pad SLC-4E – Falcon 9 with three spacecraft for the Canadian Radarsat Constellation.
  • June 22: Kennedy Space Center, Pad 39-A – Falcon Heavy with USAF STP-2 Mission with 24 military and scientific research satellites.

[ Update: A time has been released for the FH launch:

]

*** Falcon Heavy STP-2 launch system components are on site and in assembly: SpaceX’s next Falcon Heavy hits milestone as final rocket parts arrive in Florida – Teslarati

*** Planetary Society’s LightSail-2 arrives at Cape for launch on the SpaceX Falcon Heavy. LightSail 2 Arrives in Florida | The Planetary Society

*** The Falcon 9 booster for the launch for the 60 Starlink satellites returned to Port Canaveral last week (videos via www.USLaunchReport.com):

*** Update on the Starlink satellites: SpaceX says all 60 Starlink satellites functioning so far – SpaceNews.com

All 60 satellites — the first in a constellation that could one day number 12,000 — have deployed solar arrays, a SpaceX spokesperson said in a May 31 statement, and most are in the process of climbing from their 440-kilometer drop-off point to their 550-kilometer target orbit.  

“SpaceX continues to monitor the constellation for any satellites that may need to be safely deorbited,” the spokesperson said. “All the satellites have maneuvering capability and are programmed to avoid each other and other objects in orbit by a wide margin.”

*** Starhopper & Starship orbiter demonstrators:

**** Raptor engine being installed on the Starhopper test vehicle this weekend but just for fit checks:

From SNF:

For instance, up until recently, the company was planning to utilize Raptor SN4 for the untethered hops. However, the company has now decided to utilize this engine only for fit checks, and will instead perform the hops with SN5 – the latest Raptor to come out of SpaceX’s factory in Hawthorne, California.

SN4 arrived in Boca Chica for the fit checks on Friday afternoon. Meanwhile, SN5 is already at SpaceX’s test facility in McGregor Texas for verification testing before being shipped south.

While the precise reason for the engine change is unknown, by still shipping SN4 to Boca Chica first, SpaceX will be able to ensure that the Starhopper is ready for hopping ahead of SN5’s arrival. This should help to reduce the delays caused by waiting for SN5.

Some pictures:

***** Starships may become single-stage point-to-point transports:

**** An examination of the latest iteration of the design of the Super Heavy Booster/Starship combo:  Initial BFR (Starship) is not much more powerful than Falcon Heavy | Selenian Boondocks

BFR is now no longer absurdly over-sized at all. That talking point is over. It’s easily within their demonstrated capability. Fewer staging events also helps. And landing the Super Heavy booster may be easier than landing 3 separate cores simultaneously (no one knows right now). They switched from carbon fiber to stainless steel for fabrication, but that’s probably a step in the right direction if you want the vehicle to fly realsoonnow. Hypothetically (with almost balloon tanks), stainless has the same mass fraction as a carbon fiber (which needs design knock-downs for cryogenics and oxygen, particularly with out-of-autoclave processes) and similar to SpaceX’s current aluminum-lithium alloy. In practice, it seems SpaceX is still literally hammering out the manufacturing process. They have a method that seems to work with Starhopper, but the mass fraction is terrible (built literally by a water tower company). It seems almost like Sea Dragon.

But they don’t HAVE to have extremely good mass ratio. The upper stage doesn’t HAVE to have SSTO-like capability, not at first. It just needs enough to get to orbit with significant payload, say 50 tons. Perhaps it just needs 6.5km/s. That’s also about the delta-v needed to go from the Gateway to LLO then to the lunar surface and back (well, that’s about 6.2km/s total… 5.2km/s if you’re aggressive with your burns).

*** A talk by Paul Wooster of SpaceX at the recent Humans to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C. (starts at around 00:23:00) – Getting to the Moon and Mars:

Wooster also participated in the afternoon panel session titled, Session 1b: Surface Operations on Mars (starts at around 7:05:00 into the video).

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Space 2.0: How Private Spaceflight, a Resurgent NASA,
and International Partners are Creating a New Space Age

Rockets

Space transport roundup – Mar.29.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport:

** Boeing successfully tests integrated propulsion system for the Starliner crew vehicle. This comes after the system suffered a leak of the highly toxic propellant during a test in 2018. Boeing Completes Starliner Hot Fire Test – Commercial Crew Program

Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner propulsion system was put to the test on Thursday at NASA’s White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico in support of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. Teams ran multiple tests on Starliner’s in-space maneuvering system and the spacecraft’s launch abort system, which are key elements on the path to restore America’s capability to fly astronauts to the International Space Station on American rockets and spacecraft from U.S. soil.

The test used a flight-like Starliner service module with a full propulsion system comprising of fuel and helium tanks, reaction control system and orbital maneuvering and attitude control thrusters, launch abort engines and all necessary fuel lines and avionics.

** Rocket Lab making progress on the launch pad at Wallops Island, Virginia:

**ESA’s Expander-cycle Technology Integrated Demonstrator (ETID) project tests new technologies for next-gen upper-stage rocket engines: ‘Intelligent’ thrust for Europe’s future launchers – ESA

ESA has recently completed hot-firing tests that prove technologies in a move towards ‘intelligent’ engines to power the upper stages of next-generation launchers.

The Expander-cycle Technology Integrated Demonstrator, or ETID, is a full-scale integrated demonstrator for an upper-stage rocket engine.

Yesterday ESA, industrial partners and representatives of participating Member States met at DLR Lampoldshausen, Germany, to review the results of ETID’s extremely successful nine-month test campaign on the P3.2 test bench.

In total, four configurations of ETID with three new combustion chamber geometries and designs were tested.

Two different injector heads, including a fully 3D-printed version were also tested, as well

ETID - Expander-cycle Technology Integrated Demonstrator
ETID – Expander-cycle Technology Integrated Demonstrator

** ULA’s Vulcan and Northrop-Grumman’s OmegA rockets make some progress towards first flights in 2021: Two National Security Space Launch Rockets Moving Forward – Air Force Magazine

** Virgin Orbit flies a fully fueled LauncherOne rocket beneath their 747 carrier:

** Virgin Orbit works with NASA on 3D printing of propulsion system components: Exploring 3-D Printing Alongside NASA Marshall Space Flight Center | Virgin Orbit

** SpaceX:

** The chain of Starlink satellites launched last week by a Falcon 9 was easy to see from the ground when passing overhead:

*** The video of the deployment of the Starlink sats showed them slowly separating in clumps rather than scattering individually like dandelion seeds, which I think many viewers had expected. Here is an animation showing what was actually happening.

*** The brightness of the Starlinks set off a Twitter ado over what impact 1200 to 15000 such satellites will have on astronomy:

*** Initial broadband Internet services could begin with just 360 Starlinks: SpaceX wants to offer Starlink internet to consumers after just six launches – Teslarati.

*** Another view of the Starlink launch via the team at www.USLaunchReport.com:

*** The recovered Starlinks booster has returned to Port Canaveral:

*** The nosecone fairings from the were recovered as well and may be used again in a future launch:

*** Still no official explanation for the explosion during the Crew Dragon test but the investigation is making progress according to NASA officials:

From Space News:

More than a month after a Crew Dragon spacecraft was destroyed in a test of its propulsion system, NASA and SpaceX investigators are still working to determine the cause of the accident and its implications for upcoming test flights.

In a May 28 presentation to the NASA Advisory Council’s human exploration and operations committee, Kathy Lueders, manager of the commercial crew program at NASA, offered few updates on the progress of the investigation into the April 20 incident at a SpaceX pad at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

In that incident, SpaceX was testing both the Draco thrusters and larger SuperDraco abort thrusters in preparation for an in-flight abort test of the capsule that, at the time, was scheduled for the end of June. “An anomaly occurred during activation of the SuperDraco system,” she said, but offered no details on what caused that anomaly.

*** Work on the Starhopper and Starship orbital demonstrator vehicles at Boca Chica Beach, Texas and Cocoa, Florida appears to be making good progress. Observers are on the lookout at Boca Chica for the arrival of the Raptor engine that will power the Starhopper’s low altitude flights, the first of which is currently set for Monday of next week.

From NSF:

Meanwhile, SpaceX techs have begun to accelerate testing operations ahead of a crucial series of flights involving the Starhopper suborbital vehicle.

The Hopper last flew on April 5th, 2019, when it successfully performed a three foot hop test at the launch site while under power from a single Raptor flight-ready engine. During this test, the vehicle was held down by a group of tethers attached to each of the three landing legs.

Those tethers will not be present during upcoming hop tests, as confirmed by Musk on Twitter on April 26th.

He also stated in the same thread that the Hopper would use a single Raptor engine like before, though it would not be the same engine that was first used to propel the vehicle off the pad.

[ Update:

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*** Elon Musk is expected to give an update on the Starship/Super Heavy project on June 20th and there appears to be an official website in preparation: SpaceX Starship website spotted ahead of Elon Musk’s June rocket update – Teslarati.

It appears that SpaceX is preparing a dedicated website for its proposed Starship point-to-point transport system, potentially capable of transporting dozens of passengers anywhere on Earth in just 30-60 minutes.

Assuming this website is actually a prelude to a SpaceX reveal (it could be completely unrelated), it seems likely that Starship.com will go live sometime around CEO Elon Musk’s planned June 20th update on Starship and Super Heavy. Much like Starlink.com went live on the day of SpaceX’s first dedicated launch, the company may be ready to tease more substantial details and fleshed-out plans for its aspirational Starship airline.

*** Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, provides a tutorial on the Raptor engine that will power the Starship and the Super Heavy booster: Is SpaceX’s Raptor engine the king of rocket engines? – Everyday Astronaut

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The Case for Space:
How the Revolution in Spaceflight Opens Up
a Future of Limitless Possibility

Rockets

Space transport roundup – May.23.2019

A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport:

[ Update 2: Fairings recovered:

Update: The Starlink launch and deployment went well. The booster also landed successfully.

]

*** SpaceX set to launch Falcon 9 with 60 Starlink satellites. Following a stand-down of about a week since the initial launch attempts, liftoff of the Starlink mission is now set for a 90 minute window that opens at 10:30 pm EDT this evening (0230 GMT on May  24). The SpaceX webcast should go live about 15 minutes before liftoff time.

Note that the first stage booster will be carrying out its third launch.

Latest updates:

More about the Starlink project:

Find more SpaceX items below.

** USC student team‘s Traveler IV rocket flies past Kármán line to space on April 21st according to trajectory analysis results released this week. The RPL team says the Traveler IV is “the first entirely student-designed and built rocket to pass the Kármán line into outer space”: USC Rocket Propulsion Laboratory Shatters Student Altitude Record – USC Viterbi | School of Engineering.

From the caption:

On April 21, 2019, we, the USC Rocket Propulsion Lab, launched our latest space-shot rocket, Traveler IV, out of Spaceport America. Traveler IV reached an apogee of 339,800 ft with a confidence of 90% of having crossed the internationally-recognized border between Earth’s atmosphere and space known as the Kármán line. By flying higher than the Kármán line, Traveler IV has broken the world record for the highest altitude ever reached by a vehicle entirely designed and built by a collegiate rocketry team. USCRPL thanks the alumni, faculty, department staff, parents, the university, and all others who have supported the lab’s fourteen-year-long dream.

Even greater things lie ahead. Read the full data analysis and check out more information in the following links:

** College rocket teams to compete for the Spaceport America Cup at the New Mexico spaceport in June:

Save the Date: Spaceport America Cup is Coming in June!

Join us as we host hundreds of the world’s ambitious collegiate rocketeers at the third annual Spaceport America Cup June 18-22, 2019. The event brought to you by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association and the Spaceport America Crew, is the world’s largest intercollegiate rocket engineering conference and competition.

The Spaceport America Cup will kick off on June 18th with the Spaceport America Cup Conference at the Las Cruces Convention Center in Las Cruces, NM. Spectators are invited to see the rockets displayed and interact with the rocket teams. The event is FREE.

June 19th will be flight preparation day where teams will have the entire day to assemble their rockets in the field and test components while being judged. (OPEN TO THE PUBLIC) Gates open: 11 am

Teams will be launching and recovering rockets June 20-22 at the Spaceport America Vertical Launch Area. (OPEN TO THE PUBLIC) Gates open: 8 am- 4 pm. If you are planning to attend as a spectator, you must purchase a spectator pass.

** Virgin Orbit test fires LauncherOne first stage for full mission duration:

We’re proud to announce that we completed perhaps the most challenging, most important, and most successful test in the history of our LauncherOne program: Last week, we lit up our Mojave site with our final full duration, full scale, full thrust – hell, full everything – test firing of LauncherOne’s main stage. That’s more than three minutes of controlled rocket thrust, using all of the same equipment we’ll use on our actual flights to orbit later this year. Here’s one fun way to think about it: the data proved that if this stage wasn’t physically bolted down, it had the oomph to make the journey into space.

** India launches RISAT 2B radar Earth observation satellite with PSLV (Polar Space Launch Vehicle):

From SFN:

Designed for a five-year mission, RISAT 2B carries an X-band radar imaging instrument capable of resolving structures and features on Earth’s surface, regardless of daylight or weather conditions. Earth-looking optical telescopes are inhibited by cloudy weather, and only produce usable imagery during daytime.

The satellite was developed by ISRO — the Indian space agency — and carries a dish-shaped radar antenna that was folded up to fit inside the rocket’s payload compartment. Now that the satellite is in space, its radial band antenna will be unfurled to its full diameter of 11.8 feet (3.6 meters).

“This has been a much-awaited satellite with complex new technologies, X-band synthetic aperture radar, and one of the most cutting edge technologies in the world — one that is world-class — the 3.6-meter radial band antenna,” said P. Kunhikrishnan, director of ISRO’s UR Rao Satellite Center in Bangalore.

** China Long March 4C rocket launch of a remote sensing satellite fails due to a problem in the third stage of the 3-stage vehicle:

 

** China launches another satellite for navigation constellation:

From CGTN:

The latest BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) launch took place from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center at 11:48 p.m. on May 17. Launched on a Long March-3C carrier rocket, it is the fourth BDS-2 backup satellite and the 45th satellite in the BDS network. It can provide users with more reliable services and enhance the stability of the satellite constellation.

** Chinese commercial company LandSpace tests LOX/Methane engine:

More about the engine:

** ULA Atlas V rocket for first Boeing Starliner crew vehicle test mission leaves factory:

** Brief NASA video about Commercial Crew Program safety : Safety a Top Priority of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program – YouTube

** Rocket shorts:

Hydros thruster: Hydros uses electrolysis to split water into hydrogen and oxygen gas, which can then be burned as rocket propellants. The concept meshes well with the idea of extracting water ice from the moon or near-Earth asteroids for spacecraft refueling. Three Hydros-M flight units already have been delivered to Millennium Space Systems, and Hoyt said a Hydros-C module is due for launch on the PTD-1 CubeSat mission in December.

Despite that warning, launch vehicle startups remain focused on unique engine designs. At last count, there were 129 rocket startups, Rich Pournelle, NanoRacks senior vice president for business development, said at the April conference.

How many will survive? Eric Salwan, Firefly Aerospace commercial business development director, suggested the market could support three, four or five.

** The cause of the failure of the Atlas-Agena B rocket with the Mariner 1 spacecraft in 1962 is discussed by Scott Manley:

** SpaceX:

*** Much delayed 3rd Falcon Heavy launch holding to June 22 date for a mission that includes 24 satellites: SpaceX’s third Falcon Heavy launch is just one month away

In support of the mission, SpaceX will need to completely integrate Falcon Heavy and prepare the rocket for a routine static fire test approximately one week prior to launch, sometime in mid-June. STP-2 will be critical to both SpaceX and the USAF for a number of reasons, ranging from rocket reusability to the future of US military launch procurement.

*** A lunar lander mission launched with a Falcon Heavy will be the subject of a SpaceX feasibility study: SpaceX wins NASA funds to study a Falcon Heavy-launched Moon lander – Teslarati

NASA has announced a series of awards as part of its 2024 Moon return ambitions, providing up to $45.5M for 11 companies to study lunar landers, spacecraft, and in-space refueling technologies.

Among those selected for studies are SpaceX, Blue Origin, Masten Space, and the Sierra Nevada Corporation, alongside usual suspects like Boeing and Lockheed Martin. The chances of NASA actually achieving a crewed return to the surface of the Moon by 2024 are admittedly minuscule. However, with the space agency’s relatively quick three-month turnaround from accepting proposals to awarding studies, those chances of success will at least be able to continue skirting the realm of impossibility for now. In fact, SpaceX believes its Moon lander could be ready for a lunar debut as early as 2023.

*** Watch the lifting of a Falcon Heavy to vertical on Pad 39A in this video (at 1:04): Construction of SpaceX’s largest spaceship ever could be taking place in Cocoa –

*** Update on Raptor LOX/Methane engines and their use on the Starship vehicles: SpaceX’s space-optimized Starship engine could be ready sooner than later

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk says that there is now a chance that a vacuum-optimized version of the Raptor engine will be ready for near-term Starship launches, indicating that development has either been re-prioritized or is going more smoothly than expected.

This is a significant shift away from a strategy discussed by Musk just four months ago, in which a single variant of Raptor was to be used on Starship and Super Heavy to shorten the next-gen rocket’s path to orbit. For unknown reasons, that approach may have already been replaced with a new alternative that would lead to a Starship with six Raptors instead of seven and a 50-50 split between vacuum and sea level-optimized engines.

*** Starhopper awaits its Raptor(s):

*** Starship in Boca Chica Beach, Texas gets a nosecone:

*** A second Starship orbital vehicle is taking shape in Florida: SpaceX is constructing a second Starship prototype – Teslarati

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that the company’s second orbital Starship prototype is already in the early stages of integration at a parallel Florida facility, piggybacking on ongoing work in South Texas.

SpaceX’s plans to simultaneously build Starship prototypes in Texas and Florida have been public for some time. However, photos taken by forum members of NASASpaceflight.com offer the first direct confirmation that hardware is already being assembled in Florida. Likely unique in the annals of full-scale heavy-lift rocket development, SpaceX’s strategy of building largely identical prototypes in separate locations – and with separate teams – could be an ingenious method of speeding up development.

A comment from Elon on the two projects:

*** A visit to the Starship construction site in Cocoa, Florida by the people at www.USLaunchReport.com):

and by a local news team:

** Starships may launch from Pad 39A, which is currently used by Falcon 9s and Falcon Heavys:  SpaceX considering Starship test launches from Pad 39A – NASASpaceFlight.com

As SpaceX continues to make steady progress on multiple Starship test vehicles at their Boca Chica launch facility, the company’s CEO Elon Musk has confirmed that they are also constructing a Starship vehicle in Florida. The Florida-based Starship is expected to launch from one of SpaceX’s Cape Canaveral based facilities, as opposed to the company’s launch site in Boca Chica, Texas. NASASpaceflight.com understands that one facility under serious consideration is historic Launch Complex 39A at Kennedy Space Center.

SpaceX hopes to use the Starship spacecraft to return humans to the moon and colonize Mars. While plans for the vehicle are rapidly evolving, at present multiple sources have indicated that the company is hoping to perform orbital test flights of the Starship prototypes.

What level of testing remains an open question, as Elon Musk noted on Twitter that using SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) test launches – where just the Starship launches without the Super Heavy booster – wouldn’t allow the vehicle to be reusable.

*** An estimate of how much money SpaceX took in on launches in 2018:  SpaceX revenue: $2 billion from rockets last year, Jefferies estimate – CNBC

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