Astra is acquiring Apollo Fusion. AF is one of the leading EP startups that's been trying to gain traction in the industry for probably 4-5 years now. This acquisition by Astra certainly adds compelling credibility to the Astra roadmap.
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SpaceX's Rising Tide - Discussion of non-SpaceX launch companies
- Thread starter bxr140
- Start date
Relativity has secured a relatively large amount of money. Notably, they're not going the SPAC route and notably, they're getting some big investing names.
This fundraise is generally based on the aspiration for Terran-R, which is spec'ed as fully reusable and slightly higher lift (~20T) than the current F9 (~16T). First flight is 2024. It should be noted that Relativity's printing capability is pretty amazing for any industry and any company, globally; that capability likely influenced the fundraise to some degree or another.
Hopefully the 'late 2021' first flight for Terran-1 (~1T to LEO) holds schedule...
This fundraise is generally based on the aspiration for Terran-R, which is spec'ed as fully reusable and slightly higher lift (~20T) than the current F9 (~16T). First flight is 2024. It should be noted that Relativity's printing capability is pretty amazing for any industry and any company, globally; that capability likely influenced the fundraise to some degree or another.
Hopefully the 'late 2021' first flight for Terran-1 (~1T to LEO) holds schedule...
Rocketlab figured out what went wrong with the Electron:
spacenews.com
Rocket Lab identifies cause of Electron failure
Rocket Lab has identified the cause of an Electron launch failure more than two months ago and said that the vehicle is ready to return to flight.
spacenews.com
Rocketlab figured out what went wrong with the Electron:
Rocket Lab identifies cause of Electron failure
Rocket Lab has identified the cause of an Electron launch failure more than two months ago and said that the vehicle is ready to return to flight.
TLDR, Rocketlab has realized they need more thorough testing with things like pressure and temperature extremes. Reminiscent of what happened to the Challenger shuttle with rubber o rings.
German startups launch mini-rocket challenge to SpaceX and co.
Three projects in particular are making Germany a serious player in the race to provide mini-launchers for the increasing number of small satellites which observe the Earth and provide connectivity for the internet of things and smart vehicles.
[...]
The three German startups are aiming to eventually assemble a fleet of 20 to 40 partially reusable rockets, guaranteeing dozens of launches per year. Subcontractors in the automobile industry, many of whom are looking to diversify away from combustion engine vehicles, will provide engine parts for the rockets.
www.france24.com
Three projects in particular are making Germany a serious player in the race to provide mini-launchers for the increasing number of small satellites which observe the Earth and provide connectivity for the internet of things and smart vehicles.
[...]
The three German startups are aiming to eventually assemble a fleet of 20 to 40 partially reusable rockets, guaranteeing dozens of launches per year. Subcontractors in the automobile industry, many of whom are looking to diversify away from combustion engine vehicles, will provide engine parts for the rockets.
German startups launch mini-rocket challenge to SpaceX and co. - France 24
German startups launch mini-rocket challenge to SpaceX and co.
www.france24.com
German startups launch mini-rocket challenge to SpaceX and co.
Three projects in particular are making Germany a serious player in the race to provide mini-launchers for the increasing number of small satellites which observe the Earth and provide connectivity for the internet of things and smart vehicles.
[...]
The three German startups are aiming to eventually assemble a fleet of 20 to 40 partially reusable rockets, guaranteeing dozens of launches per year. Subcontractors in the automobile industry, many of whom are looking to diversify away from combustion engine vehicles, will provide engine parts for the rockets.
German startups launch mini-rocket challenge to SpaceX and co. - France 24
German startups launch mini-rocket challenge to SpaceX and co.
Do the auto parts suppliers realize that instead of supplying 100,000 parts, they'll be supplying 100?
Also, do all these small launch market players realize the market is tiny and being gobbled up by SpaceX's cheap pricing?
mspohr
Well-Known Member
I'm sure they are good at making stuff but they have no experience with rockets.
Yes, and they also realize that they can up screen batches, add more traceability in documentation, charge way more per-part (way more than the additional LOE necessary to satisfy any space concerns), and still save the space companies a bunch of scrilla.
COTS has kind of been the holy grail of space in general; the biggest issue is space getting out of its own way. Statistically, there's little and sometimes NO difference between space-grade parts (resistors, diodes, etc.) and their terrestrial equivalents, including being built on the same machines. Many times, the non-space parts are actually going to have fewer statistical failures and out-of-family pieces across a lot, due primarily to the fact that the S-grade parts can often end up as a dedicated small-batch run (to ensure traceability, etc), and of course the smaller the quantity that is run through the maker-gizmo, the more statistical variation the parts are going to have. So then the S-grade parts get a higher degree of lot screening (upwards of 20%), will often discard more parts on the front and back end of the run, etc....and one can easily imagine how those kinds of things racks up the price.
Certainly the small launcher market is over-saturated and we're going to see a gazillion dropouts over the next few years, but there's definitely--or at least, theoretically--a market. Big launcher rideshares (even not so big rideshares, like a PSLV) can be very problematic for a small-fish to get into an ideal orbit, and the secondary passenger lack of rights on a big rideshare can be extremely frustrating and not at all friendly to that player's business model. We're still in the build-it-and-see-if-they-come space so its definitely a bit speculative, but the small launchers are banking on concepts like 'launch when you want and to where you want' and 'be the only fish in the pond' in hopes that those will offset the inevitably higher bottom line.
The other real interesting thing smaller launchers open up is a [potential] paradigm shift in constellation design and replenishment. Historically, even with LEO constellations, the sats are more or less designed "old school" such that they have high reliability. That drives the price of each sat up and so the constellation inevitably gets pared down to the absolute minimum number of sats such that full failures often leave gaps in coverage.
SpaceX has taken the completely opposite tact with Starlink, which is to build a *sugar* ton of less expensive (and less reliable) sats, and brute force through attrition with quantity. They're going to have multiple folds of coverage for any user on the globe such that any one sat that's out of commission will have near zero impact on service. Given the state of technology and the bigger picture SpaceX mission, this makes sense.
What the smaller launchers enable is a constellation to be built with inexpensive (and less reliable) sats, but ALSO a near-minimum number of sats making up the constellation--so Capex on the space segment, both from the sats themselves and also their deployment (which of course would use big launchers) can be minimized. Then as attrition kills off sats, a small launchers can direct inject a replacement that could, again theoretically, be soup-to-nuts on the order of days. The logic is that one is not paying to build and launch spare sats that aren't necessarily required and instead are spending less total capital to build fewer spare sats and only launching them on demand.
Obviously this doesn't close with 1.0 small launchers like Electron, which can put like 150kg or something to LEO for $5-6M...but if that number can be burned down to maybe $1-2M and mass can be bumped up to 300kg...that starts to become very compelling.
To analogize, while a semi can move product much more efficiently and at much lower cost than a delivery van, that doesn't mean there's no need for delivery vans.
Good news is the application is pretty irrelevant--its the environment that matters. Space parts have to withstand 1) a mechanical/vibration environment during launch and 2) a thermal environment over the course of their life, as temperature swings from orbital motion (eclipses, satellite attitude relative to the sun and earth's albedo, etc) and from satellite operation (heavy operation builds up heat, no operation cools everything off) endlessly cycle. Most importantly, both of those are well defined and very controllable environments. You don't get too hot, you just shut it down. You don't get too cold, you just turn on the heater. You don't vibrate too much, you just add a damper.
Whip out the Venn diagram and automotive parts have a lot of overlap. Parts need to survive a lifetime of vibration and a really wide operational range of temperatures, each of which isn't very well defined or controllable, so the limits have to be REALLY wide.
mspohr
Well-Known Member
Save for appendages (solar array wings, deployable reflectors and other gizmos), most equipment on a comms satellite is kept within tens of degrees of room temperature. While there are of course some hot spots during operation, usually 50C is the upper operational limit for a big assembly, like a panel or module. I feel like 60-70C is typically the max hotspot temp for the high functioning/dissapating electronics, but don't quote me on that...either way the number is more or less in family with what a high functioning terrestrial electronic component might see.
In non-op satellite scenarios, survival heaters usually kick on between 0 and -20C. Compare that to a car which is designed to not just survive, but operate with electronics soaked at tens of degrees below 0 and again we're really not looking at a different environment.
For exposed space electronics--notably diodes on the backside of deployed solar arrays--yes, its hard to get around the thermal environment (plus they're in a worse radiation and ESD environment)...so yeah, those kinds of parts will always end up being some grade that's more robust than 'automotive parts bin'.
Most of the other appendages end up being mostly passive (= mostly just structural stuff) and are of course designed to handle the mad thermal swings. Active components in those appendages that are exposed (and are not part of some auxiliary thermal environment, notably the actual release mechanisms for said appendages) are indeed always going to be close to, if not full on space grade parts. Even then, early satellite operations will often orient the satellite such that release of the deployable is done in an optimal thermal environment. For example, if your hinge and active release mechanism wasn't designed to swing open at -200C (which, it probably isn't) you're not going to leave it in the shade for a few hours and then send a release command, you're going to put it in sunlight for a bit, or maybe barrel roll it through the sun so it warms up to the proper operating temp (and so the rest of the sat doesn't get too cold). But I digress...
Anyway, its a similar-ish situation for rockets, with the notable addition of electronics having to be hardened against corona events as the atmosphere thins out during ascent (though I suppose avoiding coronas is probably more design than parts selection). Satellites can avoid coronas to a large degree by only operating a small set of electronics during launch, or launching while powered off.
Finally, observation and other scientific sats are usually tighter temps than comms sats, since they typically have things like optical surfaces/geometries or critical sensors that would just as soon rather not go through thermal cycles (or have to compensate their data through those thermal cycles).
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And for the latest in what's absurd in SPAC news today?
Shareholders of some acquisition company are down with giving Pete Beck $777M
A billionaire's rocket company swindles some SPAC out of a few hundred million
Shareholders of some acquisition company are down with giving Pete Beck $777M
A billionaire's rocket company swindles some SPAC out of a few hundred million
mspohr
Well-Known Member
SPACs are Wall Street's latest scam to avoid disclosing the difficult parts to the public.
I prefer your headlines to the real ones. It will be interesting to see if either company survives the next 5 years as an actual viable business.
FWIW, Im actually quite a believer in Pete Beck and Rocket Lab. They'll be around for sure.
Hard to say whether VO will be able to push through the very crowded small launcher space. The airborne launch thing certainly is novel and has some interesting upsides, but its clear that to succeed the small launchers need a) more lift capacity b) more launch frequency, c) lower cost that all but absolutely requires reusability.
why do you think Rocket Labs wont be a viable company? They already have contracts with NASA and I believe the DoD. They make empty canvas satellites that companies are purchasing to conduct experiments. Vertically Integrated. I think Neutron will take a lot of Falcons business as SpaceX goes all in on StarShip.
