- Location
- USA
Rocket Lab fires Archimedes engine for the first time
Rocket Lab has fired its Archimedes engine for the first time, a key step in its efforts to develop the Neutron reusable rocket.
spacenews.com
Space, Rockets, Satellites, oh my!
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Megathread
spacenews.com
Rocket Lab getting their rocket going by next year would be pretty good. Hopefully that will be enough for them to keep themselves going in this increasingly SpaceX dominated market.
Pretty cool video
View: https://youtu.be/3m2Wb5y88Tk?feature=shared
Long March 10 approach look wild, I hope it work out.
View: https://youtu.be/3m2Wb5y88Tk?feature=shared
Long March 10 approach look wild, I hope it work out.
Seems a bit like they're trying to make a catching system like SpaceX is doing for Starship, but with a substantially different approach in doing so. It will be interesting to see how that works out.
I feels like this approach have greater margin of error. Though perhaps it don't translate well to heavier object like Starship superheavy booster.
Though I do hear some speculate that Chinese Long March 9 might also used this recovery approach since China already did a lot of work on it for Long March 10.
- Location
- USA
Indian solid SSLV rocket launches Earth observation satellite
HELSINKI — India successfully launched its third SSLV Thursday, placing an Earth observation satellite into orbit and completing the solid rocket’s development process. The Small Satellite Launch V…
spacenews.com
- Location
- USA
Another week, another test fire explosion.
www.bbc.com
Rocket engine explodes during test at Shetland spaceport
The test was carried out by a German firm who hope to launch the UK's first vertical rocket into orbit.
www.bbc.com
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson has just confirmed that Boeing Starliner will be sent back uncrewed while astronauts Butch and Suni will return on SpaceX Crew Dragon.
Ongoing NASA livestream:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOswKRSsHc
EDIT: NASA statement below.
And Washington Post article:
Ongoing NASA livestream:
View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AGOswKRSsHc
EDIT: NASA statement below.
And Washington Post article:
Article: NASA announced Saturday that it will use SpaceX's Dragon capsule to bring home two astronauts stuck in space for months, because the agency does not have confidence in Boeing's troubled Starliner capsule.
The highly anticipated decision, one of the most consequential by the space agency in years, is a devastating blow to Boeing, which had argued vehemently that Starliner was safe even though it suffered a series of thruster problems and helium leaks as it brought NASA astronauts Sunita Williams and Barry "Butch" Wilmore to the International Space Station in early June.
[ . . . ]
In 2014, when NASA first awarded the contracts to develop spacecraft capable of flying astronauts to the station, some officials in the agency argued against including SpaceX, then a young and somewhat unproven upstart, and pushed to award a single contract to Boeing. NASA leaders said they wanted two providers, but Boeing's contract was worth significantly more than SpaceX's — $4.2 billion compared with $2.6 billion — for the same work.
Now Starliner's future is uncertain. The problems and years-long delays have cost the company about $1.6 billion in cost overruns. Even before the flight, company officials had said they were unsure if they could justify staying with the program.
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Well hopefully next time around Boeing will have these new problems fixed as well. And they will finally have a capsule that is actually safe for humans to use.
- Location
- USA
Alas. 
www.japantimes.co.jp
Japan's space agency ends SLIM moon probe operation
JAXA said that there was no response from the SLIM after trying to communicate last week following three frigid lunar nights.
www.japantimes.co.jp
- Location
- USA
Elaboration.
Private Peregrine moon lander suffers 'critical' fuel loss after launch, mission at risk
Peregrine likely won't be the first private spacecraft to touch down on the moon.www.space.com
Why the 1st private lunar lander failed
The Peregrine moon lander's mission ended in disappointment this year, and it all comes down to a faulty valve.
On to something else.
Fire, fed by leaking engines, destroyed ABL Space Systems rocket
ABL Space Systems said it lost its second RS1 rocket after a static-fire test when a fire broke out under the vehicle fed by leaking fuel.
spacenews.com
- Location
- USA
Blue Origin flies NASA-funded scientist and space tourists on New Shepard suborbital flight
Blue Origin took six people, including a NASA-funded researcher, on a New Shepard suborbital spaceflight Aug. 29.
spacenews.com
NASA Inspector General issues harsh report on delayed SLS mobile launcher project
The ML-2 mobile launcher could cost more than six times originally projected and delay Artemis missions.
Well, I wonder if that will lead to the final death of SLS then. If it doesn't even have a launch tower for many years while Starship is probably already launching to space at far far lower costs... It would be really hard to justify a system in such a case when it at best can launch once a year.
- Location
- Earth
What is this highway robbery? Initial cost $383 million, overrun to 6 times of that to the current $1.8 billion, and then it's still going up on top of that to $2.7 billion?
It really is a jobs program otherwise congress or someone in gov would have crucified NASA over the budget overrun, let alone NASA just paying out everything without complaint.
It really is a jobs program otherwise congress or someone in gov would have crucified NASA over the budget overrun, let alone NASA just paying out everything without complaint.
- Location
- Ohio
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Like, to be clear on this, the ML-2 issues have been to a massive massive extent, Bechtel fuckups continually and this is something from like day one of the OIG reports on it, with Bechtel having thrown out NASA's lessons learned on ML-1, constantly having to be forced to deal with having it go beyond weight targets, constant overtime to fix it, and NASA is literally stripping work from it to give to other companies in order to actually deal with their fuckups. Like, this is really really really serious level of fuckups by Bechtel and NASA also having to fix those fuckups (which means also higher cost because of that). To quote from the actual OIG report:
There are few cases on something like this of actually working to deal with the kind of like, utter contractor fuckups that Bechtel has going on here for the matter of ML-2, and I can bring up the earlier cases of Bechtel ignoring the ML-1 lessons learned and the like from previous OIG stuff. And I'm not joking on the matter of uh, Bechtel's fuckups from what I've heard from people I know.
On the case of Starship as said by Quickshot, it is literally the long pole as it stands for Artemis III, and is honestly in my view going to see a decoupling of the landing pushed back towards Artemis IV instead because of it all. Like, you have the whole matter of the development progress and how much of a clusterfuck that has been, and then of course there's the overall GAO numbers which call for a matter of fourteen tanker flights and one depot flight to support HLS... and all of that within less then a year, and we haven't even seen the kind of actual flights required for cryo work.
Like, if we want to go by a pure comparison with the HLS schedule for 2024 (which was utterly unrealistic) from the GAO, it identified the matter of a propellant transfer test demo of ship to ship from what I recall about two years before a lunar landing... and that hasn't even been done yet.
Certainly as usual SpaceX is behind its wildly optimistic time tables, yes. But they still tend to arrive fairly quick for aerospace in the end and at pretty low costs. And so far with Starship as you're probably aware that pattern seems to hold as well, with multiple rockets already made this year alone and a vehicle to space having been achieved.
Still that's not the HLS goals, obviously they are behind on them by a fair bit. But still... so far their progress is far more clear. We've already retired the risk on if Starship can reach space at all at this point after all.
So I can't help but wonder if in 2026 SLS won't just look like an obsolete vehicle. It's only purpose things Starship could already do quicker and at far lower cost.
Mazeka
You must be joking
- Location
- United States
The Starliner spacecraft has started to emit strange noises
“I don’t know what’s making it.”…
arstechnica.com
Starliner's making weird sonar-like noises.
That did not sound like sonar to me it sounded like breathing. I would say jettison it ASAP but I don't want that thing going back to Earth.The Starliner spacecraft has started to emit strange noises
“I don’t know what’s making it.”…
Starliner's making weird sonar-like noises.
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- Location
- Ohio
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But it was never specifically said as a vehicle to space in terms of HLS schedule, it was specifically stated as orbital test flight and its not even completed that yet. And like, you're telling me that Starship will be able to fundamentally achieve the kind of supporting tanking to become a BLEO vehicle by 2026? Like, there are so many issues that Starship fundamentally needs to uh, achieve first (and has literally been said to be the pacing item for A-III), that its ridiculous in that like
And no, SpaceX doesn't really 'arrive fairly quick for aerospace in the end'. Like, the entire issue of the matter of the constant failure of boosters of landing before they came up with the gridfins... Bellcomm literally identified that you needed some kind of control surfaces in the early 70s when studying ballistic return of launch vehicles back to the launch site for guidance and it took them how many flights to do so? Or just... the number of utter variations I remember with Starship and them going 'ohno, we don't need tiles' [years later] 'we need tiles'.
As came out from NASA, it was a feedback issue from station-starliner which is... honestly what I expected when I heard it? Like, it was utterly absurd that this became a story when all it sounded was an audio-feedback issue from some mic-speaker feedback bit.The Starliner spacecraft has started to emit strange noises
“I don’t know what’s making it.”…
Starliner's making weird sonar-like noises.
You seem to be greatly misinterpreting what I said. I made no claim on HLS being completed by 2026.
Instead my position was that there Starship has already managed to get to space now already, thus 2024. And considering so far one can tell its build costs are far far lower then SLS, while its launch rates are already far higher then SLS. Well in such a case, even if one ignores reusability, it's hard to see SLS looking good compared to Starship by 2026. Even if we assume every vehicle is tossed in its entirety. Thus, what will even be the point of SLS at that point?
What I did say on HLS was that they were clearly showing real progress. Considering that when it was proposed Starship was not a space going thing yet. So that rather substantial risk of it has been retired now, their rocket can get to space. But there are as you note yourself quite some steps to go still. When exactly that will occur is not clear, because as should be obvious from my previous statement, they are behind the original schedule. And it's pretty typical for SpaceX to fall behind their aggressive schedules, so we will have to see when it actually shows up.
Also you are mistaken, SpaceX actually has been on the fast side for aerospace, when one has actual comparison cases where they have to do that same thing as another company, they've so far been the first to arrive, usually by quite a few years earlier. Maybe that has to do with their competitors as well, but one can but work with the data there is. Even your example of booster landings isn't particularly credible here as it was a test program with already existing boosters that they tried modifying in various ways for it, rather then a purpose built design for booster recovery. The only competitor that tried the same to my knowledge is Rocket Lab, which tried for quite awhile and then ultimately gave up on it and used their experiences to develop a next gen rocket with a recoverable booster instead. Hardly a very quick turn around.
- Location
- Sydney
I think there's a strong argument that Starship is off-track at this point. We're more than five years on from Starhopper in 2019, and eight years on from the first prototype for BFR in 2016. In that time the profile of Starship has also changed considerably from 300t to LEO to 100-150t to LEO. This is a rocket that was originally 'projected' by Musk to launch a fleet of ships to mars in 2022 -- now two years ago. If you're only comparing it to chronically slow NASA projects like SLS then maybe this looks fine, but I do think it's worth pointing out when SpaceX is not hitting their own milestones.
Everything in artemis is off-track. Blue Origin has a HLS project even more ambitious than Spacex and they haven't put a single rocket in orbit yet. And i don't even want to talk about SLS itself, who is a giant "?".