Following up on  yesterday’s roundup, the SpaceX Falcon Heavy successfully reached orbit and deployed a big batch of satellites on board. Three ISS crew members also made it back to Earth safely via their Soyuz spacecraft.

** SpaceX Falcon Heavy completes the company’s “most difficult launch ever”, as described by Elon Musk. While the center core rocket failed to make a successful landing, everything else went quite well, including the first-time capture of a nosecone fairing in a net. The biggest challenge – multiple firings of the upper stage engine after long coasting periods – went well. In total, 24 satellites were deployed.

The launch:

The landings of the two side boosters and the miss of the central core:

The fairing on the net of the SpaceX ship Ms. Tree (formerly Mr. Steven):

More at:

• SpaceX successfully catches first Falcon Heavy fairing in Mr. Steven’s/Ms. Tree’s net – Teslarati
• SpaceX nails twin Falcon Heavy booster landing but center core misses drone ship – Teslarati
• SpaceX caught Falcon Heavy rocket nose cone in net of high speed boat – CNBC
• NASA Technology Missions Launch on SpaceX Falcon Heavy – NASA

** The Planetary Society’s LightSail-2 finally makes it to orbit via the FH but the mission still has two hurdles ahead before the sail begins to accelerate from the push of sunlight. On July 2nd, the CubeSat is to be ejected from the Prox-1 carrier spacecraft and then about a week later the sail will be deployed: LightSail 2 Has Launched! | The Planetary Society

** Soyuz lands safely in Kazakstan with three ISS crew members:

• Three Station Residents Back on Earth After 204 Days in Space – Space Station/NASA
• Expedition 59 Trio Leaves Station for Ride to Earth – Space Station/NASA
• Soyuz MS-11 returns station crew to Earth after 204 days in space | collectSPACE
• Soyuz lands in Kazakhstan with international crew – William Harwood/Spaceflight Now 
• Soyuz MS-11 lands successfully despite propulsion problem – RussianSpaceWeb.com

Highlights of the departure from the station and the landing:

** Chinese Long March 3B rocket launches navigation satellite: China launches new BeiDou satellite – CGTN

China sent a new satellite of the BeiDou Navigation Satellite System (BDS) into space from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in its southwestern province of Sichuan on Tuesday. Launched on board a Long March-3B carrier rocket, the satellite was sent to a inclined geosynchronous earth orbit.

More at Chinese Long March 3B lofts Beidou-3I2 – NASASpaceFlight.com.

** India-based Bellatrix Aerospace raises $3M for development of smallsat rocket launchers and satellite propulsion systems.

• Indian startup Bellatrix Aerospace raises $3 million – SpaceNews.com
• IISc-based Startup Bellatrix Aerospace Raises $3 Mn To Build Re-Usable Space Launch Vehicles | IndianWeb2.com
• Bellatrix Aerospace raises $3 million in pre-Series A round – Hindu BusinessLine

“This funding will help Bellatrix to space qualify our products soon. During the coming months, we will be subjecting our thrusters to rigorous ground qualification tests and also work on key innovations that will make our products stand out. We will also be expanding to key global locations,” Rohan Ganapathy, co-founder at Bellatrix said.

** Misc. space transport items:

• Next Atlas 5 launch delayed by battery failure – Spaceflight Now – “The next launch of United Launch Alliance’s Atlas 5 rocket with the U.S. Air Force’s fifth Advanced Extremely High Frequency communications satellite, previously scheduled for Thursday, has been delayed to no earlier than July 12 to replace a failed battery on the vehicle.”
• STS-121 The Hardest Launch Part 4: Damage to the Heatshield | Wayne Hale’s Blog – The former Space Shuttle Program Manager recounts a case that illustrates the challenges in assessing risks for Shuttle launches in the aftermath of the Columbia loss.
• SpaceRyde wants to make access to space more available and more affordable | TechCrunch – Canada’s SpaceRyde startup is developing a smallsat launch system using a high-altitude balloon platform. “Earlier this year, SpaceRyde launched a stratospheric balloon carrying a scaled down version of their launch platform and rocket in Northern Ontario, Canada. The test wasn’t a complete success – a modification to the off-the-shelf rocket engine they used didn’t work exactly as expected – but it did demonstrate that their in-flight launch platform orientation tech worked as intended, and Safari says the malfunction that did occur is relatively easy to fix.Next up for SpaceRyde is to work towards a full-scale demonstration of their platform, which Safari says should happen sometime next year….“
• Univ. of Washington rocketeers take the prize at Spaceport America Cup – GeekWire – Washington’s Society for Advanced Rocket Propulsion won the top prize at this year’s Spaceport America Cup competition held at the NM spaceport. “The SARP team took the Judge’s Choice and Overall Winner Award at the world’s largest collegiate rocket engineering contest, which is run by the Experimental Sounding Rocket Association and drew 120 teams from 14 countries. Each team is required to design, build and fly a rocket that can reach 10,000 feet or 30,000 feet, depending on the contest category.“

** Raptor engine spotted at site of the Starship orbital demonstrator under construction in Florida.

Raptor seen at Cocoa FL pic.twitter.com/x3M01eKtKd

— Reagan Beck (@bluemoondance74) June 24, 2019

Another Starship test vehicle is in construction at Boca Chica Beach facility and Elon says flights will take place at both places:

Starship will do orbital launches from Boca Chica (near Brownsville) & Cape

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) June 25, 2019

A comparison of the Starships in Florida and Texas:

We saw both SpaceX starships this month.

Here’s a side by side comparison of Florida & Texas builds.

@Teslarati #starship @SpaceX pic.twitter.com/4UkkXT7ICA

— TomCross (@_TomCross_) June 23, 2019

(Progress)🚀
Aerial shots from the #StarShip development in Florida. The #SpaceX crews are stepping into overdrive, it appears that they are tied(as of right now) with the Boca Chica crews.
Photos acquired from the SpaceX Facebook page, as to who took these is unknown. pic.twitter.com/v2rTp1uhEg

— Austin Barnard🚀 (@austinbarnard45) June 22, 2019

Elon wants to speed up the Raptor and Starship program: SpaceX: Elon Musk Teases Rapid, Cheap Raptor Production to Get to Mars Fast | Inverse

SpaceX is planning to give its Mars-bound Raptor engine design a big production boost, CEO Elon Musk teased in a series of Twitter posts Monday. By the end of this year, Musk declared, the company is aiming to produce a new engine every 12 hours.
…
Musk suggested on Twitter that SpaceX is set to ramp up production for the engine “exponentially” soon. The sixth engine is almost done, and the firm is “aiming for an engine every 12 hours by end of year.” This should equate to around 500 engines per year, as Musk explained that a full year of production is around 70 percent of the peak daily rate.

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Safe Is Not an Option

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:

• The first woman to fly commercial to space describes her historic flight – The Verge.

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

• Virgin Galactic Passenger Beth Moses Details Her Maverick Space Flight – Part 1 – Forbes.com

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.

• Virgin Galactic Astronaut Beth Moses On Her Maverick Flight – Part 2 – Forbes.com

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”:

• The ultimate souvenir from space | Richard Branson/Virgin
• See pictures of Virgin Galactic and Land Rover’s ‘Astronaut Edition’ collaboration | British GQ

** 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.

• Russian Firm Starts First Tests of Technology for Space Tourism – Company CEO – Sputnik International
• Russian space tourism firm to send dummy for first flight in returnable capsule – TASS

** 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