A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest:
** The Space Show – Tue, 08/13/2019 – Thomas A. Olson talked about “Vector Launch, Skyrora, NewSpace Business Plan Competition, space settlement, small dedicated launchers, lunar landers & returning to the Moon plus much more”.
Space Boffins Richard Hollingham and Sue Nelson with a TinTin style headline for this month’s podcast: lunar heritage and the lost meteorites of Antarctica. Recorded at the recent Bluedot festival, Space archaeologist and co-deputy chair of Australia’s Space Industry Association, Dr Alice Gorman, explains why we need to think about preserving the Apollo sites before we return to the Moon and Dr Katherine Joy discusses her latest meteorite mission. Bjorn from Sweden provides a jingle, the joys of Lego and the Royal Astronomical Society’s Dr Robert Massey joins the fun to add to a long list of very interesting, we repeat interesting, questions… It will all become clear on the podcast.
The latest episode of NASA’s Space to Ground weekly reports on activities related to the International Space Station:
** Testing biomining techniques on the ISS for extracting resources from space based sources such as asteroids and the Moon:
** Expedition 60 ESA PAO Stockholm Culture Festival August 13, 2019
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 60 Flight Engineer Luca Parmitano of the European Space Agency discussed life and research on the orbital laboratory Aug. 13 with an audience gathered at the Stockholm Culture Festival in Stockholm, Sweden. Parmitano is in the early weeks of a long-duration mission on the complex that will run through February 2020.
** Expedition 60 In Flight Bustle Digital Group – August 14, 2019
Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 60 Flight Engineer Christina Koch of NASA discussed life and research as an astronaut aboard the orbital outpost Aug. 14 during an in-flight question-and-answer session for the Bustle Digital Group’s “Be My Guest” feature. Koch is nearing the halfway mark of a long-duration mission on the station that will exceed 300 days in orbit.
A sampling of recent articles, videos, and images dealing with space transport:
** Chinese startup LinkSpace reaches highest altitude yet for the company’s VTOL rockets. RLV-T5 rocket flies to 300 meters and then returns for a powered landing.
Chinese space start-ups like LinkSpace are taking their first steps towards a new business model: sending tiny, inexpensive satellites into orbit at affordable prices https://t.co/8LVAWf4CLmpic.twitter.com/PxkKsFsi1r
** Video of SpaceX-like grid fins on a Long March-2C rocket’s booster. As reported in the previous round-up, the stage does not do a powered landing but the fins instead help steer the booster away from populated areas. The rocket is launched from an in-land spaceport and there are often reports of boosters landing near houses and towns.
** More about reusing the first stage of the Rocket Lab Electron rocket:
Sierra Nevada Corporation (SNC), the global aerospace and national security leader owned by Chairwoman and President Eren Ozmen and CEO Fatih Ozmen, selected United Launch Alliance (ULA) as the launch vehicle provider for the Dream Chaser® spacecraft’s six NASA missions to the International Space Station. The Dream Chaser will launch aboard ULA’s Vulcan Centaur rockets for its cargo resupply and return services to the space station, starting in 2021.
“Dream Chaser can launch from any conventional rocket so we had great options,” said SNC CEO Fatih Ozmen. “SNC selected ULA because of our strong collaboration on the Dream Chaser program, their proven safety record and on-time performance. This is bringing America’s spaceplane and America’s rocket together for best-of-breed innovation and exploration.”
Under NASA’s Commercial Resupply Services 2 (CRS-2) contract, the Dream Chaser will deliver more than 12,000 pounds of pressurized and unpressurized cargo to the space station and remains attached for up to 75 days as an orbiting laboratory. Once the mated mission is complete, the Dream Chaser disposes about 7,000 pounds of space station trash and returns large quantities of critical science, accessible within minutes after a gentle runway landing.
An exploded view of the ULA Vulcan rocket with the cargo version of the Dream Chaser inside the fairings.
Animation of the launch of a Dream Chaser by a Vulcan:
**Vector Launch goes into hibernation mode as finances run dry:
Innovative Space Logistics B.V. (ISL) and UK-based orbital launch services provider Orbex today signed a wide-ranging Cooperation Agreement at the 33rd Annual Conference on Small Satellites in Logan, Utah. The co-operation will include technical launch services including launch manifest coordination and payload integration. As part of the agreement, ISL will also procure orbital space launches from Orbex for a number of its smallsat customer missions.
Netherlands-based company ISL is one of the world’s leading players in smallsat launches, having executed or supported the launch of over 350 CubeSats into orbit over the past decade. ISL is focused on the provision of regular launches for CubeSats, nanosatellites and microsatellites and provides launch brokering services, technical consultancy, launch adapters and dispensers, flight certification testing and launch insurance services to a broad range of customers.
With $40 million in project financing, Orbex is the best-funded European private launch provider. In February 2019, Orbex publicly unveiled the engineering prototype of the Stage 2 of its reusable Prime launch vehicle, a dedicated smallsat launcher, which is up to 30 percent lighter and 20 percent more efficient than any other vehicle in the micro launcher category. Orbex Prime utilizes bio-propane, a clean-burning, renewable fuel that cuts carbon emissions by 90 percent compared to traditional hydrocarbon fuels. On August 1, 2019, Orbex’s partner, Highlands and Islands Enterprise (HIE) confirmed that it had signed a 75-year lease option with landowners, the Melness Crofters Estate, to build and operate a spaceport on its land.
On Monday, August 12th, aerospace company Blue Origin filed a protest with the Government Accountability Office (GAO), arguing that the Air Force is running a “flawed” competition to pick the agency’s next round of launch providers for national security missions. There’s a good chance this last-ditch protest could change the terms of the competition before final selections are made, but shifting the rules in favor of Blue Origin won’t guarantee that the company is chosen in the end.
The day that Blue Origin filed the protest was the same day that proposals were due for the Air Force’s Launch Service Procurement program. The initiative aims to select two rocket companies that will launch all of the Air Force’s missions to space from 2022 to 2026. The Air Force wants one company to support 60 percent of the launches, and the second will handle the other 40 percent. The contracts for these missions are potentially worth billions of dollars combined and could ultimately give them an edge in future Air Force competitions. Being selected as part of this program is a matter of life and death for some launch providers.
VIA SPACE: Firstly, Blue Origin created one of the highlights of SATELLITE week with the Blue Moon announcement. Given what the company is doing in launch, how important is the lunar exploration side of things for the company? What are the plans over the next 12 months — where do things go next?
Smith: At Blue Origin, we focus on two hard problems that keep us aligned to our vision of millions of people living and working in space: dramatically lowering launch costs and utilizing in-space resources. Our work on Blue Moon is aligned to that second hard problem and so, it is central to our company’s efforts. As for our progress, we recently had exciting news with the first firing of our lunar landing engine, the BE-7. It’s a big milestone for us. Over the next 12 months, we will continue to develop and mature that high-performing engine. We will also refine our mission sequences, our detailed lander designs, define our supply base and work with NASA to integrate our offering into their overall Artemis program.
The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has published Notices-to-Airmen (NOTAMs) for SpaceX’s next Starhopper flight milestone, a 200m (650 ft) hop now scheduled no earlier than Friday, August 16th.
During this upcoming test, the unusual Starship testbed and prototype will likely spend at least 30-60 seconds in the air, propelled by a lone Raptor engine producing up to ~200 tons (440,000 lbf) of thrust. Starhopper will then attempt to land a hundred or so feet east of its spartan launch mount on a dedicated landing pad. If successfully completed, CEO Elon Musk believes that either or both of SpaceX’s Mk1 and Mk2 Starship prototypes will be ready to begin their own series of more ambitious flight tests as early as September or October.
*** Huge crane erected at Boca Chica facility. Presumably this will be used to put the top half onto the bottom tank sections.
*** Rapid progress on the 2 Starship demo vehicles appears to be pushing Starhopper to the side.
Thanks. Starship, which aspires to be fully & immediately reusable in super heavy class, is a truly 🥜🚀. Even though I’m immersed in Starship/Raptor design & build 7 days/week, it still doesn’t feel real.
*** No Falcon launches on public schedule for next two months currently but launches of 60 or more Starlink broadband Internet satellites are likely to help fill the gap:
The company will soon start employing a second net-equipped boat during orbital launches, in an attempt to snag both halves of its rockets’ payload fairings before they splash down in the ocean, SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk confirmed via Twitter on Friday (Aug. 9).
The new boat, named GO Ms. Chief, will join forces with GO Ms. Tree, which has plucked falling fairing halves out of the sky twice in the past six weeks. (The team-up involves style as well as substance; both vessels’ names are groan-inducing puns.)
According to comments made to a member of the space industry by a RUAG spokesperson, the prominent aerospace supplier may have finally reached an agreement with SpaceX to manufacture a handful of larger payload fairings for future Falcon 9 and Heavy launches.
In the likely event that SpaceX is one of two contractors awarded a portion of several dozen US military launch contracts next year, the company will need to be able to cater to niche requirements, including accommodating unusually tall military satellites. Those satellites can be so tall that SpaceX’s own payload fairing – generally middle-of-the-pack relative to competitors’ offerings – may be too short, meaning that SpaceX will have to find ways around that minor shortcoming.
A sampling of links to recent space policy, politics, and government (US and international) related space news and resource items that I found of interest:
With us today is Vint Cerf, considered to be one of the founding fathers of the internet, today he is Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist. Vint is still promoting the internet…only this time it’s an interplanetary internet. On Constellations, he discusses the potential impact an interplanetary internet capable of communicating with space stations and satellites, and open the internet to the millions of currently underserved users, would have on privacy, security and the need for an entirely new set of regulations. Vint also discusses cloud computing, specifically the emergence of multiple clouds and the ability to move the data easily from one to another. Listen to this podcast to learn about the inner cloud and cloudlets.
** The Space Show – Fri, 08/09/2019 – Trisha Navidzadeh discussed “marketing and branding for space purposes. We also looked at investor considerations for commercial space activities and NewSpace companies”.
