Rockets

Space transport roundup – Mar.28.2019

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

** Rocket Lab will try again this evening (22:30 UTC time) to launch an Electron rocket with a DARPA technology demo satellite on board: Launch Complex 1 | Rocket Lab

[ Update: The launch was a success:

Liftoff is at about 12:30 into this recording of the webcast:

]

Rocket Lab is currently targeting no earlier than 22:30, Thursday 28 March UTC (11:30 am, Friday 29 March NZDT) [18:30 EDT, March 28] for the next Electron mission.

The mission is the Radio Frequency Risk Reduction Deployment Demonstration (R3D2) launch for DARPA.

The mission will lift-off from Launch Complex 1 carrying a prototype reflect array antenna designed to improve radio communications in small spacecraft.

Follow @RocketLab on Twitter for regular updates. 

Technical issues and bad weather have delayed the launch from earlier in the week.

** First launch by China’s OneSpace went poorly:

[ Update: OneSpace vows to overcome this setback: Private launch firm: ‘We will never flinch or quit’ – ecns.cn

“We will endeavor to launch another OS-M carrier rocket, as well as two to three OS-X suborbital rockets before the end of this year,” [Shu Chang, CEO of OneSpace,] said late Wednesday at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in the Gobi Desert, where the first OS-M rocket mission was undertaken.

“I accept today’s failure,” he said. “Other solid-propellant carrier rockets before ours also have had setbacks in their development, but all of them passed through hard times and eventually succeeded. Explorations in science and technology have successes and failures. We will never flinch or quit.”

]

Video made by an observer:

An interview held before the launch with OneSpace CEO [Shu Chang]:

** Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser should start delivering cargo to the ISS by late 2020. Here is a new video showing how cargo would be loaded into the vehicle: SNC’s Dream Chaser® Milestone 5 Load/Unload on Vimeo

And here is an older video showing how the Dream Chaser would operate:

** Long-distance rocket transport services could reduce travel times between major global cities to 30-60 minute hops but whether such services are economically viable remains to be proven: Could suborbital point-to-point really be worth $20 billion a year in 2030? – The Space Review

All that said, the commercial aviation revenue is projected to be $885 billion in 2019. Introducing a point-to-point suborbital product could convince 5/8ths of one percent of current long-haul fliers to choose suborbital point to point. That is the percentage required to hit $20 billion a year at $12,000 per flight. That supports UBS’ claim that when the suborbital point-to-point market does finally arrive, it could be much bigger than the orbital, lunar or Mars markets.

** The smallsat launch market is too small to support the many small launch systems currently in development around the world: How the space industry learned to stop worrying and love the bubble – SpaceNews.com

If there’s one part of the space industry that seems the most primed for a shakeout, it’s the small launch vehicle sector. So many ventures have announced plans to create rockets for dedicated launches of smallsats that it’s hard to keep track of just how many are in development. At events like the SmallSat Symposium in Silicon Valley in early February, it was common to hear estimates of 100 or more vehicles in work.

Carlos Niederstrasser of Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems has been keeping track of small launch vehicles programs for several years. As of January, he had identified 112 such vehicles worldwide in various phases of development. That figure, though, includes at least 10 that have since gone defunct and another 10 whose status is unknown. Many of the others are still little more than concepts.

The number of failed launch ventures will “start increasing significantly in the next two years,” he warned in a presentation at the annual meeting of the Transportation Research Board in Washington in January. “It has to. The market is simply not going to be able to support 112 of these companies moving forward.”

** SpaceX:

**** Second Falcon Heavy launch is set for April 7th and an engine test firing on the pad could happen next Monday: SpaceX’s first Block 5 Falcon Heavy days away from critical static fire test – Teslarati

The first commercial launch of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket – this time in a Block 5 configuration – is as few as ten days away from a targeted window beginning at 6:36 pm EST (22:36 UTC), April 7th. That target hinges on whether Falcon Heavy is ready and able to roll out to Pad 39A and successfully conduct its first integrated static fire, currently scheduled on April 1st.

The payload for this mission – communications satellite Arabsat 6A – had its original Lockheed Martin manufacturing and SpaceX launch contracts signed back in the first half of 2015, while the 6000 kg (13,200 lb) spacecraft was effectively completed once it was shipped from California to Florida at the start of 2019. After approximately 12 months of delays from an original launch target shortly after Falcon Heavy’s 2018 debut, Arabsat 6A’s four-year journey will hopefully reach completion in a geostationary transfer orbit. At the same time, the US Air Force says that it will be watching this launch – and the one meant to follow soon after – as a critical test along the path to fully certifying the powerful rocket for military launches.

**** Crew Dragon launch with astronauts could come as early as July or as late as November: SpaceX’s Crew Dragon to launch astronauts in July, says Russian source – Teslarati

A source familiar with Russia’s aerospace industry recently informed state newspaper RIA Novosti that NASA has provided Russian space agency Roscosmos with an updated planning schedule for International Space Station (ISS) operations, including a preliminary target for SpaceX’s first Crew Dragon launch with astronauts aboard.

According to RIA’s source, NASA informed Roscosmos that the agency was tentatively planning for the launch of SpaceX’s Demonstration Mission 2 (DM-2) as early as July 25th, with the spacecraft departing the ISS, reentering the atmosphere, and safely returning astronauts Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley to Earth on August 5th. In a bizarre turn of events, Russian news agency TASS published a separate article barely 12 hours later, in which – once again – an anonymous space agency source told the outlet that “the [DM-2] launch of Crew Dragon is likely to be postponed to November”. For the time being, the reality likely stands somewhere in the middle.

**** Launch and landing highlights compilation video was quietly released recently by SpaceX:

**** Preparations for the Starhopper demo vehicle to begin its first low altitude “hops” continues at the company’s Boca Chica Beach facilities in South Texas: Starhopper progressing toward Static Fire test; Starship/Superheavy updates – NASASpaceFlight.com

Testing of SpaceX’s Starhopper suborbital vehicle in Boca Chica, Texas, achieved a new milestone on Monday with another Wet Dress Rehearsal (WDR) and pre-burner test of the Raptor engine. This is another step towards engine ignition, which will technically result in its first hop, albeit by just inches due to being tethered to the pad.

**** A Starship must withstand intense heating when it enters the atmosphere of Earth or Mars: SpaceX’s steel Starship glows during Earth reentry in first high-quality render – Teslarati

Aside from a unique lack of ablation for Starship’s stainless steel hull and curious hexagonal steel heat shield tiles, SpaceX may end up having to implement a wholly unproven technology known as transpiration cooling, in which some of Starship’s liquid methane propellant would be intentionally pushed out from micro-scale holes drilled or perhaps laser-cut in certain hexagonal plates. After traveling through the steel skin/shield and out of the holes, the liquid methane would almost instantly vaporize into gas and then plasma as it confronts the spacecraft’s superheated bow shock wave, reducing the thermal loads on tiles with such an active cooling solution installed.

It’s unclear what the resulting methane-rich plasma plume might look like but it’s not out of the question that SpaceX’s graphic design team have either done the math themselves, so to speak, or asked engineers to verify what color Starship’s plasma tail might end up looking like. As shown in the latest render, a plume of hues ranging from light blue and indigo to red through white seems entirely plausible. Regardless, Starship is bound to look spectacular during orbital reentries thanks to its metallic skin and shield and planned hot structure, meaning that the entire windward half of the vehicle could end up glowing red, orange, yellow, and even white-hot, precisely like the thermal testing video Musk recently shared.

**** Two webcams now watch SpaceX Boca Chica Beach facilities to allow you to monitor StarShip activities:

**** Crew Dragon from the recent demo mission without any astronauts on board is lifted from the recovery boat to the dock at Port Canaveral in this video courtesy www.USLaunchReport.com –

**** SpaceX raises more funding to pay for its many projects including the Starlink broadband Internet constellation, that presumably would be launched with the help of both the Falcons and StarShips: Baillie Gifford defies Musk critics with £262m capital injection in SpaceX – Citywire

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