SpaceX's Rising Tide - Discussion of non-SpaceX launch companies

[Cosmacelf]

Rocketlab seems to be doing fine. They have yet to hit their "once a month" pace, let alone their "once a week pace they are working toward. I'm rooting for them and invested in them since, with SpaceX, it is hard to do - the investing part I mean.

Oh wow, I missed the detail that you invested in them. Is it similar to SpaceX in that you invested in a special purpose entity or were you able to snag part of a funding round?

 

[HVM]

NASDAQ: RKLB

Rocket Lab Completes Merger with Vector Acquisition Corporation to Become Publicly Traded End-to-End Space Company | Rocket Lab

*Rocket Lab Completes Merger with Vector Acquisition Corporation to Become Publicly Traded End-to-End Space Company*

www.rocketlabusa.com

SPAC SPAC

 

[Cosmacelf]

NASDAQ: RKLB

Right. I'm an idiot.

 

[Grendal]

Grendal- way to go. I missed that you had invested in both. I see that the first printed rocket is rolling out- relativity space that is. Very innovative fuel use.

I definitely didn't invest in SpaceX. It's not publicly traded. It can be done but not in the regular traditional way. I believe Galileo from Hyperchange managed to get in by becoming a LLC or something like that. I just invest in very traditional ways and buy shares of a company I hope and expect to improve based on their history. Buying Tesla stock was my first real investment. I did it because Elon said that the Model S was going to be the greatest car ever made - and I believed he believed it. I'd buy SpaceX in a heartbeat if it were public. I had no doubt they would succeed.

OT - back to the non-SpaceX companies.

I'd take a day off to see one of these come in for a landing.

Sierra Space signs agreement for Dream Chaser landings at Spaceport America

Sierra Space will work with Spaceport America in New Mexico to use that spaceport as a potential future landing site for the company’s Dream Chaser vehicle.

spacenews.com

 

[Grendal]

NRO satellite upgrades delay the second of two back-to-back Rocket Lab launches

NRO satellite upgrades delay the second of two back-to-back Rocket Lab launches

spacenews.com

 

[SwTslaGrl]

Chinese booster rocket makes uncontrolled return to Earth: US officials​

Chinese booster rocket makes uncontrolled return to Earth: US officials

A Chinese booster rocket made an uncontrolled return to Earth on Saturday, US Defense Department officials said, as they chided Beijing for not sharing information on the potentially hazardous object's…

www.france24.com

 

[Grendal]

Nice article about Rocketlab:

Rocket Lab’s launch cadence now “100 percent” driven by market demand [Updated]

"Our cadence today is 100 percent driven by market demand."

arstechnica.com

 

[bxr140]

NG is upgrading the Antares with Firely at the business end.

That’s good news for Antares and great news for Firefly.

 

[Grendal]

 

[bxr140]

SN has a decent, if not top level article on supply chain woes. Its worth noting that on the chart showing the past 10 years of smallsats, starlink represents basically all of the "Mini" sats and OweWeb acconts for a significant portion of the "Micro" sats (at least for 2019-2021).

That's actually pretty sad news, but it’s the reality of space still really being pretty unaffordable. Absent the combination of hyper vertical, privately funded, and aggressive spending that we see from SX, everything still costs a lot, and access to space for an aspiring small constellation is still really hard/expensive.

Hopefully—and is the reason I posted in this thread—the small launcher industry can pick up some of the slack and fill a need that SS and even falcon can’t do. There’s definitely a demand between the budget rideshare-to-wherever crowd and the fleet-of-heavies megaconstellations that will be best served by something in the light class Rocket Lab/Firefly/ABL/Relativity/Astra launchers. What remains to be seen is if any of those folks can actually get the price point down to an opportunistic place.

 

[Grendal]

 

[scaesare]

I wasn't sure what "recovered" in that video meant. From the youtube page:

"Recovered from the There And Back Again mission in May, this refurbished Rutherford completed 200 seconds of engine fire, multiple restarts, and produced full thrust of 21kNs within 1000 milliseconds of ignition. This engine has been to space and back. This week we proved it could go again. We've successfully test fired a recovered Rutherford engine for the first time - a significant technical milestone on our path to make Electron a reusable rocket!"

 

[Grendal]

Rocket Lab signs on to U.S. military’s ‘rocket cargo’ program

Rocket Lab signs on to U.S. military’s ‘rocket cargo’ program

spacenews.com

 

[Grendal]

 

[Grendal]

There's a new orbital rocket company in action:

Firefly’s Alpha rocket reaches orbit on second launch - SpaceNews

Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha launch vehicle reached orbit on its second launch Oct. 1, more than a year after the vehicle’s first launch failed.

spacenews.com

 

[Cosmacelf]

Here’s another new entrant that to me sounds really cool and novel. Stoke Space. Stoke Space aims to build rapidly reusable rocket with a completely novel design

 

[ecarfan]

Here’s another new entrant that to me sounds really cool and novel. Stoke Space. Stoke Space aims to build rapidly reusable rocket with a completely novel design

Wow, that is a far out rocket engine design! But even if they can raise the additional hundreds of millions of dollars that will be required to build a full scale 1st and 2nd stage prototype, their chances of success seem very low given that there are dozens of active competitors in the space they are targeting, which is “a lift capacity of 1.65 metric tons to low-Earth orbit”.

Still, always good to see serious engineers trying new approaches.

 

[Cosmacelf]

Wow, that is a far out rocket engine design! But even if they can raise the additional hundreds of millions of dollars that will be required to build a full scale 1st and 2nd stage prototype, their chances of success seem very low given that there are dozens of active competitors in the space they are targeting, which is “a lift capacity of 1.65 metric tons to low-Earth orbit”.

Still, always good to see serious engineers trying new approaches.

Yeah, I like how they’ve got a new way of re-entering the atmosphere. TBH, SpaceX Starship design was in some ways kinda disappointing since it was just an upgraded Space Shuttle idea.

 

[mongo]

Yeah, I like how they’ve got a new way of re-entering the atmosphere. TBH, SpaceX Starship design was in some ways kinda disappointing since it was just an upgraded Space Shuttle idea.

SpaceX was looking at transpirational cooling for Starship. Article says regenerative cooling, so are they also firing the engines during reentry?

 

[Cosmacelf]

SpaceX was looking at transpirational cooling for Starship. Article says regenerative cooling, so are they also firing the engines during reentry?

That’s my guess, firing during recently, but the article wasn’t clear.