I remember SM video on it, I think they had launched one on an ESA rocket. It's essentially a tug that's being tested, designed to attach to a satellite in a graveyard orbit that has lost station keep ability, but is still functioning. This thing grapples the back end of it and brings it back in to a service orbit until closer to end of life.

Alledgedly there are a lot of satellites in the graveyard orbits that are still functional/useful, they've just run out of fuel for station keeping.

I'd be curious to see how that would work. If there's ever an environment where one would imagine solar energy would enable modern physics to convert it into...power it would be an orbiting satellite, slowly decaying over years, but it seems the challenges are too great without some form of other consumable chemical/propellant energy source.

Everything on a satellite (including radiation/heat shields etc facing outward) is very fragile, and if not built to be 'grabbed' I am not sure how it could work in practice easily.

I think I found it. Yes, it looks like it might make sense for (very high dollar value) geostationary satellites.



He's right on that, but it of course is a limited set of vehicles that could be so serviced. It had to grab the bell nozzle basically, and then serve as a fresh thruster/power source itself. It worked, and did buy 5 years of extra life.

But then, as he discusses, the future prospect of actually refueling sats in orbit is still...a next step, and even then is probably going to be pretty iffy for those not designed to be so handled. Will be interesting.

I think the proliferation of small sat vehicles will help make this more viable.

I have to wonder if the future will be less about refueling, and more about expendable modules like this one that can be docked. Put a falcon 9 worth of them into GTO, and proposition per satellite goes way down. Design the new GSO hardware to have a new bus attach to it every few years maybe.

nortex97 said:

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I'd be curious to see how that would work. If there's ever an environment where one would imagine solar energy would enable modern physics to convert it into...power it would be an orbiting satellite, slowly decaying over years, but it seems the challenges are too great without some form of other consumable chemical/propellant energy source.

Everything on a satellite (including radiation/heat shields etc facing outward) is very fragile, and if not built to be 'grabbed' I am not sure how it could work in practice easily.

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Pesky conservation of momentum strikes again.

I always wondered if some kind of gyroscopic device can be devised to transfer momentum in a way as to move a satellite in linear directions but the momentum would then only be able react against itself so the forces always balance out and result in no linear motion.

will25u said:

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Oh interesting. That looks like it's from Mexico. They have a better view than those in SPI

All 3 raptors are in. Static fire this week and maybe launch the week after?

Whoa, looks like we might have a static fire tomorrow.

Have they mentioned why the raptor failed on SN9?

Not that I've seen anywhere.

Since we're showing off kerbal abominations, I'm playing with a 1/4 scale solar system mod, just messing around in science plathroughs. My UHLV at 150 tons to orbit on a 10m first stage and a 7.5m upper.

Yeah this timeline seems a little more realistic

Just made my donation to St Jude. I'll wave at you suckers from space.



https://inspiration4.com/

Bezos might 'ramp up' blue origin in his Amazon retirement. I am skeptical, to say the least. I'm also, for the record here, opposed to their lunar lander proposal.

Quote:

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Now, Blue Origin is battling to win a competition with SpaceX and Dynetics to develop a new lunar lander for NASA's potentially multibillion-dollar push to return humans to the moon in a few years. Dynetics is owned by Leidos Holdings Inc.

Winning the lunar lander contract - and executing its development - are seen by Bezos and other executives as vital to Blue Origin establishing itself as a desired partner for NASA, and also putting Blue on the road to turning a profit, the people said.

With limited revenue streams, Bezos has been liquidating about $1 billion of Amazon stock annually to fund Blue, which he said in 2018 was "the most important work that I'm doing."

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Quote:

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Bezos already has transplanted Amazon's culture on Blue, down to enforcing similar "leadership principles" and kicking off meetings by reading documents in silence, sources say.

But one industry veteran said Bezos needs to take a hands-on, operational role if he is going to fix a number of problems like bureaucratic processes, missed deadlines, high overhead and engineer turnover which, according to this source, have emerged as Blue Origin seeks to transition from development to production across multiple programs.

One person familiar with the matter said that Bezos has no desire to immerse himself completely in daily operations, and instead would prioritize major initiatives and new endeavors.

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Quote:

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Founded in 2000, Blue Origin, based in Kent, Washington, has expanded to around 3,500 employees, with sprawling manufacturing and launch facilities in Texas, Florida and Alabama.
Its ambitious portfolio includes selling suborbital tourist trips to space, heavy-lift launch services for satellites, and the lander - none of which is yet fully commercially viable.
Recent data shows Blue has overcome combustion stability problems on its BE-4 rocket engine - another business line, two sources said. Test engines for ULA's inaugural Vulcan rocket are expected to arrive at Florida's Cape Canaveral this week, with the first-flight engines and booster coming later this spring, one added.
By comparison, Musk's SpaceX, founded two years after Blue Origin, has launched its Falcon 9 boosters more than 100 times, launched the world's most powerful operational rocket - Falcon Heavy - three times, and transported astronauts to the International Space Station.

SpaceX said on Thursday it had 10,000 users on its nascent satellite-based broadband service, dubbed Starlink, which Musk says will provide crucial funding to develop his Starship rocket for missions to the moon and, eventually, Mars.
Blue is also hoping for a steady stream of revenue for its heavy-lift New Glenn rocket - potentially set for a debut late this year - from Amazon's forthcoming constellation of some 3,200 satellites dubbed Project Kuiper, sources say.
Amazon aims to have half the constellation in orbit by 2026, but there is no public timeline for a first launch.
Until now, Bezos has devoted one day a week to Blue Origin, with conference room meetings replaced in recent months by video calls, due to the coronavirus pandemic, the sources said.

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In somewhat related news, an '05 Aggie was just selected into the 2021 Flight Director class at NASA: https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-introduces-new-flight-directors-in-class-of-2021

Starlink has opened up pre-orders for Starlink to Texas the rest of the World. I pre-ordered mine this morning an got signed in to the Starlink APP. Says Mid to Late 2021 for service but on a first come, first serve basis. I have been struggling with slow internet for years right outside Tyler. This is a huge deal!

Awesome news, congrats. Sounds like they're working on it being a true global service, but only a handful of countries have approved.

Quote:

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SpaceX has quietly opened up preorders around the world for its Starlink internet service, with confirmations already rolling in from across the US, as well as Australia, New Zealand, Canada, and others.

...

Crucially, Starlink's international rollout is entirely contingent upon a complex, bureaucratic process of regulatory approvals in every single country SpaceX wants to operate in. As of 2021, SpaceX has managed to secure licenses to distribute Starlink internet service in the US, Canada, and United Kingdom, with beta customers already widespread in all three countries.

Work to secure licenses is well underway in Mexico, Germany, Greece, France, Australia, Argentina, and Chile. The process is also in the earlier stages but already underway in the Caribbean, Austria, Spain, Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, The Philippines, India, Japan, South Africa, Brazil, and Columbia. Many additional countries are likely in work, as well, but have yet to be confirmed via government filings or officials.

At the moment, pricing remains fairly steep in developed cities and medium-density populations in general. Prospective users will pay USD$99 per month for average download speeds of 50-150 megabits per second (MBps) and latency of 20-40ms, but must also pay a substantial fee (USD$500) for the user terminal itself. For now, that price will keep it off the horizon for most internet users in developed and less developed countries.

In reality, though, SpaceX and Starlink are almost exclusively targeting rural internet users with no access at all or service that is virtually unusable. That captive market of several tens of millions of people worldwide is ripe for the taking, as most households in those situations currently rely on extremely expensive and low-quality cellular, satellite, or DSL connections if they are connected at all. In many cases, Starlink will actually be the same price or cheaper than existing solutions while simultaneously improving the user experience by one or several orders of magnitude.

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OK, I gotta ask. What are they working on in Cocoa Beach? Something inside of starship, or more likely something...not related to it?

Anyway, the fuel production @ BC looks like it is going to have the infrastructure in place for some...scale soon.

Cocoa is a bit of a mystery.

I have a hunch that there MAY be a push to develop a non reusable starship upper stage, which would put it in to the SLS or even Saturn 5 range for lift capacity, with an absolutely ridiculous amount of potential for fairings.... just a hunch though.

Also have a feeling Musk is going to abandon California sooner or later. SS/SH launches are not practical from the cape due to the exclusion zone required, but it would be within believability that they are moving falcon and falcon heavy production to Florida. I would bot be shocked to see him build a production facility on the cocoa site... especially with sub 1 month booster turnaround a thing.

Just WAGs on my part though.

Ag_of_08 said:

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Also have a feeling Musk is going to abandon California sooner or later. SS/SH launches are not practical from the cape due to the exclusion zone required, but it would be within believability that they are moving falcon and falcon heavy production to Florida. I would bot be shocked to see him build a production facility on the cocoa site... especially with sub 1 month booster turnaround a thing.

Just WAGs on my part though.

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I mean...he's already halfway done that by deciding to move Tesla to Austin, so I don't think you're too far off here. I honestly think they'd be able to attract (and retain) a higher number of quality engineers just because they're no longer in LA. I used to regularly fly there for my job, and God I hated it every time. Some people like that kind of lifestyle, but even in my company the people who had lived in LA for years didn't really enjoy it, and we've had a really hard time keeping good engineers in that office. I know a big part of SpaceX's personnel problem is work ethic expectations, but dealing with that commute regularly would suck the life right out of me...

And depending on how things go with Starship, I wouldn't be surprised to see them at least shift some of their main business to Boca Chica. You already have your own launch complex (under construction) just outside your "factory", and you're pretty well split between Canaveral and Vandenberg (should they ever need to launch there in the future).

And Vandenberg is less important now because falcon can dogleg for polar launches. They could keep engine testing and production in Texas, move the falcon production to FL( they've said bluntly that falcon is.pretty much as mature as its getting...unless they pushed for meth/lox falcon heavy upper), and center things here. If they put the engine factory in/near San Antonio, they'd be better situated to serve the whole launch infrastructure.

The goal of earth-to-earth transportation via starship will necessitate dozens of floating launch points, and production thus would not be able to keep pace from BC, imho. Who knows, that ramp up still seems a few years away at least. I am curious what that thing in the video could possibly be. They'd scrapped starship production @ Cocoa Beach last summer I thought.

This just doesn't look like a starship/SH component, imho. Speculating that it goes inside one makes no sense at all but maybe it is something to do with fuel refining/production (not for kerosene/F9, but some sort of vent is visible in the tweet pictures). Plausibly, if they are in fact building a methelox upper stage for FH, things could get interesting about Cocoa Beach...a lot of words to say I have no clue.

Anyway, some good news on lunar gateway launch selection was announced for FH.

Quote:

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Days after SpaceX won a NASA contract to launch a galaxy-mapping space telescope, the space agency has selected Falcon Heavy to launch a small space station to the Moon some four years from now.

Loosely known as Gateway, NASA and a few of its 'centers' have been floating the concept for years partially on its merits as a potential platform to dip toes into crewed deep spaceflight and explore the Moon but mostly as a way to give the bloated Space Launch System (SLS) rocket and Orion spacecraft a destination for destination's sake. Weighed down by an extremely inefficient European Service Module (ESM), NASA couldn't use Orion to replicate its famous Apollo Moon missions if it wanted to.

Lacking the necessary performance to safely place Orion and its astronauts into the Low Lunar Orbit (LLO) optimal for a new round of crewed Moon landings, Orion/ESM on its own is limited to higher, more exotic lunar orbits with less immediate value. As a result, NASA's Lunar Gateway will be delivered to a "near-rectilinear halo orbit" (NRHO) where it will orbit the Moon's poles at altitudes between 3,000 and 70,000 kilometers (1,900-43,000 mi).

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IMHO, the stretched cargo fairing looks cool, but we won't see this until at least May 2024.

I have no idea on the cocoa construction...hadn't seen those pics.

Interesting that they've chosen FH, makes me think bezos may have finally been honest about new Glenn, and that what happened with SLS may have been worse than expected. NASA has been so adamantly anti FH... that's interesting.

*edit....any chance that has to do with methan production? Spacex does have an abandoned plan to update falcon heavy with a raptor....hmmm

I think the operative/leading theory is methane production (sabatier cycle for stuff on Mars) based on the evaporators around it/rest of the stuff there.

I am pleasantly surprised NASA went with FH, too. A large price tag for one flight, but my suspicion is it was a lot lower/more likely trustworthy than the other options. They may have already engineered the fairing for a DoD flight coming up.

No surprise given the bad weather on the way but the TFRs have been cancelled for this week. Road closures are still on so a static fire is still possible.

Would a vacuum optimized raptor provide improved specific impulse or greater Delta V for the Falcon 2nd stage? I know i could probably look it up somewhere but you fellas might know.

I'm fairly certain I read that FH, as currently designed doesn't have the necessary DV for TLI if it were say sending an Orion Capsule moonward.

Nortex that render and fairing was part of the DOD contract and the vertical integration agreement. Looks like nasa just caught the shifting winds. It would be nice to see the DOD fund stuff nasa benefits from after the shuttle debacle.

Kenneth- it would be a significantly high energy upper stage, there has been discussion that it could have rivaled, or even passed, the centaur as a high energy transfer stage.

It does not have enough DV to take the Orion TLI as is, but it does have more than enough for two launches to take a fully fueled upperstage and a fully fueled Orion to earth orbit, and perform and EOR to TLI maneuver..... at a fraction of the cost for an sls to do it in one launch. I've been banging the pot for them to do an EOR/LOR/LOR type mission with dual heavy launches all along, but NASA is adamant it MUST be SLS. All I have been told about the current gen docking port, it should have no issue docking with a stage in orbit, granted the thing has a docking structure on top, and making it's tli burn.

Ag_of_08 said:

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Nortex that render and fairing was part of the DOD contract and the vertical integration agreement. Looks like nasa just caught the shifting winds. It would be nice to see the DOD fund stuff nasa benefits from after the shuttle debacle.

Kenneth- it would be a significantly high energy upper stage, there has been discussion that it could have rivaled, or even passed, the centaur as a high energy transfer stage.

It does not have enough DV to take the Orion TLI as is, but it does have more than enough for two launches to take a fully fueled upperstage and a fully fueled Orion to earth orbit, and perform and EOR to TLI maneuver..... at a fraction of the cost for an sls to do it in one launch. I've been banging the pot for them to do an EOR/LOR/LOR type mission with dual heavy launches all along, but NASA CONGRESS is adamant it MUST be SLS.

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Fixed that for ya. I honestly think a lot of NASA would love to ditch the SLS.

I'll agree with that, to the point I know a couple who.work at nasa who have said as much.

Wasn't Sen Shelby one of the big ones ramming sls down everyone's throat? He's retiring now I believe.

Regardless, with AJ/RD being bought out by Lockheed, it will literally take nasa and the leg telling Lockheed they have to cooperate to get them to not demand SLS with Orion.

Yep, Shelby is retiring. Doubt that it will really change anything, though.

There are no words for how much I want...just once...for someone in Congress to call out LM and Boeing and basically tell them how much they suck.

"You both have decades of flight experience and provenance in the space industry, and yet you are both getting utterly PANTSED by an entrepreneur and a guy that was building rocket engines in his garage. Explain why you should continue to get government contracts? In the time you have spent developing SLS with mostly existing tech, they have gone from garage to commercially viable launching company."

I would vote for a senator in an instant that would ask the question, and when rebuffed and lied to, has a "you may all go to hell, I will go to texas" type moment and refuses to proceed with the stupidity.

It won't happen, but I can dream.

Maximus_Meridius said:

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Ag_of_08 said:

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Nortex that render and fairing was part of the DOD contract and the vertical integration agreement. Looks like nasa just caught the shifting winds. It would be nice to see the DOD fund stuff nasa benefits from after the shuttle debacle.

Kenneth- it would be a significantly high energy upper stage, there has been discussion that it could have rivaled, or even passed, the centaur as a high energy transfer stage.

It does not have enough DV to take the Orion TLI as is, but it does have more than enough for two launches to take a fully fueled upperstage and a fully fueled Orion to earth orbit, and perform and EOR to TLI maneuver..... at a fraction of the cost for an sls to do it in one launch. I've been banging the pot for them to do an EOR/LOR/LOR type mission with dual heavy launches all along, but NASA CONGRESS is adamant it MUST be SLS.

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Fixed that for ya. I honestly think a lot of NASA would love to ditch the SLS.

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I think SpaceX's attitude is "We're going to the moon and Mars. Y'all can come with us if you want"

Kenneth_2003 said:

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Would a vacuum optimized raptor provide improved specific impulse or greater Delta V for the Falcon 2nd stage? I know i could probably look it up somewhere but you fellas might know.

I'm fairly certain I read that FH, as currently designed doesn't have the necessary DV for TLI if it were say sending an Orion Capsule moonward.

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I think they'll likely do something like that to modify it for such missions, yes. As it is, it's got 35,000 pounds cargo capacity to TLI, or so (and this is probably not it's real maximum with current design/engines).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Falcon_Heavy#Capabilities

We don't know how heavy the segments for the lunar gateway will be, separately, but I imagine both will net be under that threshold, anyway. PPE is supposed to be 18,000 pounds, and if launched together as planned, I'd guess the scaled down habitat (HALO) module will be lighter.

They'll spend 10 years getting SLS ready to go wasting 100 Billion and then spend 3 Million to throw Orion into Starship SN503's fourth launch of the week