Vulcan exists and will get a test launch:
ULA delivers Vulcan test article to Cape Canaveral for ‘pathfinder’ operations – Spaceflight Now
ULA delivers Vulcan test article to Cape Canaveral for ‘pathfinder’ operations – Spaceflight Now
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Not so quick there kemosabi. From the article:
"for a test campaign expected to last several months."
"Two methane-fueled BE-4 development engines are attached to the rear end of the rocket, but they won’t be fired as part of the checkout campaign at Cape Canaveral."
"ULA teams in Alabama are finishing work on the Vulcan booster and Centaur upper stage for the first launch later this year. The pathfinder operations beginning this weekend in Florida won’t include the Vulcan’s strap-on solid rocket motors or Centaur upper stage."
"The rocket stage that arrived at Cape Canaveral this week will return to Alabama at the end of the pathfinder tests to be fitted with pair of flight-ready BE-4 engines, then return to Florida for a future launch, according to ULA."
So this whole many months long exercise including transport there and back from Alabama, is just to test fit and finish (I wonder if they'll find panel gaps
). I guess this is just how ULA rolls ... really sloooowly.
"for a test campaign expected to last several months."
"Two methane-fueled BE-4 development engines are attached to the rear end of the rocket, but they won’t be fired as part of the checkout campaign at Cape Canaveral."
"ULA teams in Alabama are finishing work on the Vulcan booster and Centaur upper stage for the first launch later this year. The pathfinder operations beginning this weekend in Florida won’t include the Vulcan’s strap-on solid rocket motors or Centaur upper stage."
"The rocket stage that arrived at Cape Canaveral this week will return to Alabama at the end of the pathfinder tests to be fitted with pair of flight-ready BE-4 engines, then return to Florida for a future launch, according to ULA."
So this whole many months long exercise including transport there and back from Alabama, is just to test fit and finish (I wonder if they'll find panel gaps
). I guess this is just how ULA rolls ... really sloooowly.
A small contract for SpaceX:
SpaceX wins Air Force manufacturing research contract for hypersonic vehicle thermal shields - SpaceNews
SpaceX wins Air Force manufacturing research contract for hypersonic vehicle thermal shields - SpaceNews
New national security contracts are out. Two launches for ULA and two for SpaceX, all 4 launches planned for 2023. ULA gets USSF-112 and USSF-87. SpaceX gets USSF-36 and NROL-69.
spacenews.com
Contracts for March 9, 2021
Today's Defense Department contracts valued at $7.5 million or more are now live on Defense.gov.
www.defense.gov
Space Force awards ULA, SpaceX contracts for four national security missions
Space Force awards ULA, SpaceX contracts for four national security missions
spacenews.com
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Europe is starting to freak out about the launch dominance of SpaceX
The Falcon 9 has come to dominate commercial satellite launches.
arstechnica.com
FWIW, even beyond the purposely inaccurate clickbait title, IMHO that's at best a nothing burger of an article from Berger.
Ariane 6 and Vega C have been in development for a LONG time, pre-dating Falcon's success. As state-funded projects their requirements are heavily influenced by politics and non-technical politicians, require lots of time and money to develop and implement, heavily leverage existing hardware, and really have no mechanism to materially pivot strategy once penned from the halls of some resort in Canne (or wherever) filled with escargot eating important people struggling to work for a few hours a day during their important Future Of Space Ministerial Summit. Those launchers are on the [constantly delayed] track they were always going to be on, and nothing about what SpaceX is doing would have ever changed that. A6 and VC are the POR, and that POR was never contemplated to the scale of what SpaceX is doing. They're going to execute that POR before moving onto the next thing.
Any of that sound familiar?
So yeah...while we can all wish for a little more timely progress and more forward looking technology from Ariane, this is all a big heap of No New News.
As a related anecdote, SES hosts a [euro-centric] space industry regatta every year where all the important people get drunk on expensive yachts while sailing around Martinique, generally creating the foundation for--if not outright making--future space policy.
Anyway...there's no 'freaking out' from the EU because of SpaceX's success, and really the major thing they're taking away from SpaceX's success is <sips some Burgundy, squints toward the setting sun over the blue horizon> "I guess we should make our next rockets should be reusable so they're cheaper", and maybe a bit of <crumbles some funky cheese> "I guess our next rocket cycle should go a little quicker". Certainly someone in the bowels of Arianespace is working on A6 variants (and some all new A7), and we can expect to see public release of those concepts probably after A6 starts flying. Certainly they will be underwhelming based on whatever SpaceX has done by that point. Certainly they will require years of development. Certainly the EU won't actually give a *sugar*.
The "EU has no answer to Starlink" line doesn't play out work either. Besides ignoring the work both Airbus and Thales have done on constellations (which while obviously not on the scale of Starlink is also not to be dismissed), it implies equivalency between a commercial American company's interests with that of a mutli-nation Union. On the flip side, it makes perfect sense for a Union to stay out of the business of a mega constellation. Between a) SpaceX's lead in LEO service (and care free attitude toward spending money) b) Telesat's "we're not spaceX" approach, c) SES's mPOWER experiment, d) Viasat's terra-sized sats, e) Amazon's 'we're happy to out-spend you into oblivion' pockets, f) the eventually-not-fumbling-or-at-least-we-can-hope UK/India acquisition of OneWeb, g) China's determination and general "we're not Americans" appeal to certain parts of the world, and h) the user-density-limited reality of satellite internet, the world is going to know how proliferated satellite internet is really going to become before any other contender (let alone a state-sponsored one) has any real chance of emerging. Again, none of which is New News.
All in all, I rate the article as another disappointment. Hopefully Berger will learn to spend less time in the echo chamber and more time on thought provoking commentary.
Ariane 6 and Vega C have been in development for a LONG time, pre-dating Falcon's success. As state-funded projects their requirements are heavily influenced by politics and non-technical politicians, require lots of time and money to develop and implement, heavily leverage existing hardware, and really have no mechanism to materially pivot strategy once penned from the halls of some resort in Canne (or wherever) filled with escargot eating important people struggling to work for a few hours a day during their important Future Of Space Ministerial Summit. Those launchers are on the [constantly delayed] track they were always going to be on, and nothing about what SpaceX is doing would have ever changed that. A6 and VC are the POR, and that POR was never contemplated to the scale of what SpaceX is doing. They're going to execute that POR before moving onto the next thing.
Any of that sound familiar?
So yeah...while we can all wish for a little more timely progress and more forward looking technology from Ariane, this is all a big heap of No New News.
As a related anecdote, SES hosts a [euro-centric] space industry regatta every year where all the important people get drunk on expensive yachts while sailing around Martinique, generally creating the foundation for--if not outright making--future space policy.
Anyway...there's no 'freaking out' from the EU because of SpaceX's success, and really the major thing they're taking away from SpaceX's success is <sips some Burgundy, squints toward the setting sun over the blue horizon> "I guess we should make our next rockets should be reusable so they're cheaper", and maybe a bit of <crumbles some funky cheese> "I guess our next rocket cycle should go a little quicker". Certainly someone in the bowels of Arianespace is working on A6 variants (and some all new A7), and we can expect to see public release of those concepts probably after A6 starts flying. Certainly they will be underwhelming based on whatever SpaceX has done by that point. Certainly they will require years of development. Certainly the EU won't actually give a *sugar*.
The "EU has no answer to Starlink" line doesn't play out work either. Besides ignoring the work both Airbus and Thales have done on constellations (which while obviously not on the scale of Starlink is also not to be dismissed), it implies equivalency between a commercial American company's interests with that of a mutli-nation Union. On the flip side, it makes perfect sense for a Union to stay out of the business of a mega constellation. Between a) SpaceX's lead in LEO service (and care free attitude toward spending money) b) Telesat's "we're not spaceX" approach, c) SES's mPOWER experiment, d) Viasat's terra-sized sats, e) Amazon's 'we're happy to out-spend you into oblivion' pockets, f) the eventually-not-fumbling-or-at-least-we-can-hope UK/India acquisition of OneWeb, g) China's determination and general "we're not Americans" appeal to certain parts of the world, and h) the user-density-limited reality of satellite internet, the world is going to know how proliferated satellite internet is really going to become before any other contender (let alone a state-sponsored one) has any real chance of emerging. Again, none of which is New News.
All in all, I rate the article as another disappointment. Hopefully Berger will learn to spend less time in the echo chamber and more time on thought provoking commentary.
FWIW, even beyond the purposely inaccurate clickbait title, IMHO that's at best a nothing burger of an article from Berger.
Ariane 6 and Vega C have been in development for a LONG time, pre-dating Falcon's success. As state-funded projects their requirements are heavily influenced by politics and non-technical politicians, require lots of time and money to develop and implement, heavily leverage existing hardware, and really have no mechanism to materially pivot strategy once penned from the halls of some resort in Canne (or wherever) filled with escargot eating important people struggling to work for a few hours a day during their important Future Of Space Ministerial Summit. Those launchers are on the [constantly delayed] track they were always going to be on, and nothing about what SpaceX is doing would have ever changed that. A6 and VC are the POR, and that POR was never contemplated to the scale of what SpaceX is doing. They're going to execute that POR before moving onto the next thing.
Any of that sound familiar?
So yeah...while we can all wish for a little more timely progress and more forward looking technology from Ariane, this is all a big heap of No New News.
As a related anecdote, SES hosts a [euro-centric] space industry regatta every year where all the important people get drunk on expensive yachts while sailing around Martinique, generally creating the foundation for--if not outright making--future space policy.
Anyway...there's no 'freaking out' from the EU because of SpaceX's success, and really the major thing they're taking away from SpaceX's success is <sips some Burgundy, squints toward the setting sun over the blue horizon> "I guess we should make our next rockets should be reusable so they're cheaper", and maybe a bit of <crumbles some funky cheese> "I guess our next rocket cycle should go a little quicker". Certainly someone in the bowels of Arianespace is working on A6 variants (and some all new A7), and we can expect to see public release of those concepts probably after A6 starts flying. Certainly they will be underwhelming based on whatever SpaceX has done by that point. Certainly they will require years of development. Certainly the EU won't actually give a *sugar*.
The "EU has no answer to Starlink" line doesn't play out work either. Besides ignoring the work both Airbus and Thales have done on constellations (which while obviously not on the scale of Starlink is also not to be dismissed), it implies equivalency between a commercial American company's interests with that of a mutli-nation Union. On the flip side, it makes perfect sense for a Union to stay out of the business of a mega constellation. Between a) SpaceX's lead in LEO service (and care free attitude toward spending money) b) Telesat's "we're not spaceX" approach, c) SES's mPOWER experiment, d) Viasat's terra-sized sats, e) Amazon's 'we're happy to out-spend you into oblivion' pockets, f) the eventually-not-fumbling-or-at-least-we-can-hope UK/India acquisition of OneWeb, g) China's determination and general "we're not Americans" appeal to certain parts of the world, and h) the user-density-limited reality of satellite internet, the world is going to know how proliferated satellite internet is really going to become before any other contender (let alone a state-sponsored one) has any real chance of emerging. Again, none of which is New News.
All in all, I rate the article as another disappointment. Hopefully Berger will learn to spend less time in the echo chamber and more time on thought provoking commentary.
Yikes. Berger’s article is fine for who it is written for. Non space people who don’t know what is really going on.
Could be, though:
1. Ars is a tech heavy platform with plenty of SpaceX fans
2. Berger's niche is appealing to SpaceX fans who want to repeatedly hear that SpaceX is dominating the world
3. I appreciate that some folks prefer that truth not get in the way of a good story (especially, as history has shown, since late 2016...) but I still [want to] believe that people who "don't know what is really going on" generally would prefer they consume information that actually explains what's going on, especially when delivered by someone who should actually know what's going on.
Like SLS, BE-4, NG, Vulcan, Starliner, NASA, etc., there's plenty of fodder to throw at Ariane, and in general the EU's current space presence and future space roadmap. Why build some thesis around barely a sliver relevance to SpaceX when the actual story is just as damning, if not to appeal to those who wish for that SpaceX based thesis to be truth?
It's basically a summary of the French article linked in the body. While freak out may be a bit hyperbolic, the base mood in correctFWIW, even beyond the purposely inaccurate clickbait title, IMHO that's at best a nothing burger of an article from Berger.
Ariane 6 and Vega C have been in development for a LONG time, pre-dating Falcon's success. As state-funded projects their requirements are heavily influenced by politics and non-technical politicians, require lots of time and money to develop and implement, heavily leverage existing hardware, and really have no mechanism to materially pivot strategy once penned from the halls of some resort in Canne (or wherever) filled with escargot eating important people struggling to work for a few hours a day during their important Future Of Space Ministerial Summit. Those launchers are on the [constantly delayed] track they were always going to be on, and nothing about what SpaceX is doing would have ever changed that. A6 and VC are the POR, and that POR was never contemplated to the scale of what SpaceX is doing. They're going to execute that POR before moving onto the next thing.
Any of that sound familiar?
So yeah...while we can all wish for a little more timely progress and more forward looking technology from Ariane, this is all a big heap of No New News.
As a related anecdote, SES hosts a [euro-centric] space industry regatta every year where all the important people get drunk on expensive yachts while sailing around Martinique, generally creating the foundation for--if not outright making--future space policy.
Anyway...there's no 'freaking out' from the EU because of SpaceX's success, and really the major thing they're taking away from SpaceX's success is <sips some Burgundy, squints toward the setting sun over the blue horizon> "I guess we should make our next rockets should be reusable so they're cheaper", and maybe a bit of <crumbles some funky cheese> "I guess our next rocket cycle should go a little quicker". Certainly someone in the bowels of Arianespace is working on A6 variants (and some all new A7), and we can expect to see public release of those concepts probably after A6 starts flying. Certainly they will be underwhelming based on whatever SpaceX has done by that point. Certainly they will require years of development. Certainly the EU won't actually give a *sugar*.
The "EU has no answer to Starlink" line doesn't play out work either. Besides ignoring the work both Airbus and Thales have done on constellations (which while obviously not on the scale of Starlink is also not to be dismissed), it implies equivalency between a commercial American company's interests with that of a mutli-nation Union. On the flip side, it makes perfect sense for a Union to stay out of the business of a mega constellation. Between a) SpaceX's lead in LEO service (and care free attitude toward spending money) b) Telesat's "we're not spaceX" approach, c) SES's mPOWER experiment, d) Viasat's terra-sized sats, e) Amazon's 'we're happy to out-spend you into oblivion' pockets, f) the eventually-not-fumbling-or-at-least-we-can-hope UK/India acquisition of OneWeb, g) China's determination and general "we're not Americans" appeal to certain parts of the world, and h) the user-density-limited reality of satellite internet, the world is going to know how proliferated satellite internet is really going to become before any other contender (let alone a state-sponsored one) has any real chance of emerging. Again, none of which is New News.
All in all, I rate the article as another disappointment. Hopefully Berger will learn to spend less time in the echo chamber and more time on thought provoking commentary.
Joint French-Italian statement:
And that is referring the a rocket that will not launch till next year.
From the French source material:
This youtuber claims to have "busted" SpaceX cost claims:
He is claiming rocket reuse saves only a small fraction, like 10% instead of making it 10x cheaper like Elon claimed.
He says reality is even worse, launch costs have gone up instead of going down in past 10 years.
At the end he straight up compares SpaceX to Theranos and Elon to Elizabeth Holmes.
I did not dig too much into his numbers, just saw that in his spreadsheet he used 50% payload delivery for the reusable rocket, while previously he himself stated 70%. So, he is definitely cheating a bit, maybe you guys can rip apart his "thesis" more.
He is claiming rocket reuse saves only a small fraction, like 10% instead of making it 10x cheaper like Elon claimed.
He says reality is even worse, launch costs have gone up instead of going down in past 10 years.
At the end he straight up compares SpaceX to Theranos and Elon to Elizabeth Holmes.
I did not dig too much into his numbers, just saw that in his spreadsheet he used 50% payload delivery for the reusable rocket, while previously he himself stated 70%. So, he is definitely cheating a bit, maybe you guys can rip apart his "thesis" more.
Why bother? The reality is that SpaceX has all the launch revenue it can handle. It has always been cheaper than any other provider, both for large, medium and small ride share payloads. As well, I’m pretty sure Elon never claimed 90% cheaper, and regardless it is obvious to any observer that SpaceX isn’t passing on all the savings from reusability to their customers. SpaceX is just making bigger profits from reusability while still being cheaper than anyone else.
There are a lot of people that hate SpaceX working for competitors. It's not worth trying to correct them. SpaceX is dominating and that isn't going to change. Space News has a guy that comments regularly that hates SpaceX and loves SLS, as an example.
Somebody else in a Tesla thread (forget which) posted a link toon of his videos and a response or two were of the "Well you just lost credibility for linking a Thunderf00t vid" variety.
I briefly looked at his video page and "busting" seems to be his thing, with several targeting Elon/Tesla/SpaceX/Hyperloop.
So while I can't say I've watched enough of his stuff to say he's completely off base, he at least has the appearance of having an agenda... and his presentations seem pretty sensationalistc...
The nice thing about a private company is that third parties like the vid maker don’t affect anything. There’s no stock price for retail investors to panic about and short hedge funds to short. The only people that matter to SpaceX are its customers (who are very sophisticated and do real due diligence), and its employees.
NASA preliminary budget reflects more of the same. That is good for SpaceX. Better for their competitors that don't have to actually do anything to get a bundle of money. That is nothing new though.
spacenews.com
Biden administration proposes $24.7 billion budget for NASA in 2022
The White House released a first look at its budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 that includes an increase for NASA, particularly in Earth science.
spacenews.com
NASA preliminary budget reflects more of the same. That is good for SpaceX. Better for their competitors that don't have to actually do anything to get a bundle of money. That is nothing new though.
Biden administration proposes $24.7 billion budget for NASA in 2022
The White House released a first look at its budget proposal for fiscal year 2022 that includes an increase for NASA, particularly in Earth science.
It would be nice if NASA spent their budget on science missions and none on developing rockets, which they aren't very good at, and now have zero need to do.
Remember those "news" articles a few weeks ago about a "close call" between a Starlink satellite and a OneWeb satellite (like this one)?
Surprise, they were all BS, and actually disinformation to put sand in the gears of Starlink (pdf link). The cover letter makes interesting reading.
Surprise, they were all BS, and actually disinformation to put sand in the gears of Starlink (pdf link). The cover letter makes interesting reading.
Eric Berger reviews a new book out about Amazon that has a chapter devoted to Blue Origin. Interesting reading.
arstechnica.com
A new book, Amazon Unbound, reveals Jeff Bezos’ envy of SpaceX
Bezos tried to hire Gwynne Shotwell to run Blue Origin in 2016.
arstechnica.com
ULA can use the Atlas V even though they aren't supposed to. Is anyone surprised? I know I'm not.
spacenews.com
With ULA’s new rocket Vulcan behind schedule, Space Force agrees to let Atlas 5 fill in
With ULA’s new rocket Vulcan behind schedule, Space Force agrees to let Atlas 5 fill in
spacenews.com
adiggs
Well-Known Member
The article does say that its in the contract - winners can use alternative launch vehicles if they want.ULA can use the Atlas V even though they aren't supposed to. Is anyone surprised? I know I'm not.
With ULA’s new rocket Vulcan behind schedule, Space Force agrees to let Atlas 5 fill in
With ULA’s new rocket Vulcan behind schedule, Space Force agrees to let Atlas 5 fill in
In ULA's case, according to the article, the Atlas 5 is more expensive to fly than the new Vulcan. The switch is also at no cost to the government.
Then again Vulcan hasn't been mated up with engines as yet, so it's not in danger of being ready to be the new workhorse next year.
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