Okay, fine. This is “This Week in Space!” Except … This Week in Space!, complete with exclamation point, was always something of a weak title. So I’m stealing “Kosmos,” which was the title of a book that Darksyde and I did in the early days of DK and taking it for a spin.
Space.Com: NASA decides it wants to go back to the Moon in a hurry.
Tariq Malik
NASA really wants to land astronauts on the moon in 2028. But to do that, the agency is looking to commercial space companies to build the landers, space tugs and refueling stations required to make a moon exploration effort that lasts.
"This time, when we go to the moon we're going to stay," NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine told a roomful of space industry representatives here Thursday (Feb. 14). "So, we're not going back to the moon to leave flags and footprints and then not go back for another 50 years. We're going to go sustainably. To stay. With landers and robots and rovers — and humans."
The gathering at NASA's headquarters comes a week after the agency unveiled what it calls a Broad Agency Announcement calling on commercial space companies to submit ideas for lunar landers, tug-like transfer vehicles and refueling systems to gas up those vehicles for reuse. Interested companies have until March 25 to submit their ideas, with NASA aiming to make selections in May and issue contracts of up to $9 million for follow-up studies in July (just in time for the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing).
Honestly, no matter what I think about Bridenstine, I have sympathy for anyone trying to accomplish anything that takes more than a week at NASA. With the agency subject to complete rewrites of its direction every four to eight years, and 538 legislators all looking on the agency as a source of revenue, not research, it seems impossible for it to stay focused, especially on the manned space flight side, long enough to get anything done. And anything that does get done is often vastly over cost especially because it is the ill-fitting compromise of pieces leftover from competing visions.
While privatizing NASA would be a disaster, I’d be completely behind legislation that provided the agency with a semi-autonomous buffer zone, allowing it more independence so long as it continued to set goals and accomplish them.
Tight competition leads to contract despite at NASA
Considering the tense competition for government launch contracts — a competition in in which last year the Air Force awarded contracts to a brace of companies, including some yet to fly a payload to orbit, while leaving SpaceX on the sidelines—it’s amazing this hasn’t happened before. But Spaceflight Now reports, that SpaceX has filed a formal protest over a recent NASA contract that was awarded to United Launch Alliance.
The contract for the Lucy Mission, which is intended to fly to the Trojan asteroids around Jupiter in the fall of 2021, was awarded to ULA at the end of January for a price of $148.3 million. But in its protest, SpaceX claims it offered the launch the mission at a significantly lower cost and within the other constraints set by NASA. As a result of the protest from SpaceX, NASA has issued a “stop work” order on everything related to Lucy, an order that could potentially cause the mission to be delayed or scrapped if it continues for too long.
SpaceX advertises the cost of a typical Falcon 9 launch at $57 million on their website. However, the Lucy Launch would not be a typical launch. To reach the required velocity and orbit, a Falcon 9 would have to expend all its fuel, leaving nothing to allow SpaceX to conduct it’s usual booster recovery. SpaceX has done other such launches in the past, but their estimate cost is somewhere between $75 and $100 million.
Recently, SpaceX laid off 10 percent of its workforce despite several years of positive returns and a steady increase in launches. In the last year, competition from smaller launchers like Rocket Lab has increased and communications companies in particular are decided they’re rather have their own bespoke small launch, taking them to orbit on their schedule and path, rather than hitching a ride with a bigger satellite. At the same time, SpaceX is trying to complete two almost impossibly large projects: their 4-7,000 satellite space-based internet service and the construction of the new stainless steel Starship and Super Heavy Booster that will power everything from taking tourists to the Moon to colonists to Mars.
It may well be that when its launch schedule was full and its cash flow was positive, SpaceX was more willing to allow NASA and the Air Force to toss contracts to other companies even when the bids didn’t seem competitive. But now that things are getting tight, and the money is needed for the big two projects that will make or break the company, it’s no longer so willing to be generous with competitors.
In possibly related news, the military has decided to conduct a review of whether it was correct in certifying the Falcon Heavy for top security flights.
SpaceNews: Relativity picks up former SpaceX engineers.
Jeff Foust
Small launch vehicle developer Relativity has added three people, all of whom previously held key positions at SpaceX, to its leadership team as it refines the technologies it will use on its rockets.
Relativity announced Feb. 14 that it has hired Tim Buzza as a distinguished engineer. Buzza joined SpaceX months after its founding in 2002 and stayed there for 12 years before joining Virgin Galactic and, later, Virgin Orbit, working on its air-launch system. Buzza initially joined Relativity in August as an advisor, spending a few days a week with the company before taking this full-time position.
Also joining Relativity is Josh Brost, former director of government business sales at SpaceX, who will take on a similar role, vice president of government business development, at Relativity. David Giger, who worked at SpaceX for 12 years, including as senior director of engineering for the company’s Dragon spacecraft, will be relativity’s new vice president of launch vehicle development.
Though this announcement came right after word that SpaceX let go of several hundred people, it doesn’t appear that any of the SpaceX veterans ended up at Relativity were part of that group. Relativity is known for building it’s rockets using an extensive about of 3D printing. These new hires bring the total size of their company up to 64 people … but hey, they’re rockets are also small.
Business Insider: Border deal saves SpaceX’s Texas launch site … unless Trump gets his way.
Dave Mosher
Elon Musk's aerospace company, SpaceX, is working around-the-clock to build a rocket-launch site at the southern tip of Texas. ...
Firing off Starship to the moon or Mars from that site might be impossible, though, if a wall cuts across the launch facility: SpaceX's site is less than three miles from the US-Mexico border. Yet lawmakers said a physical barrier is precisely what proposed maps from the US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) showed, according to Bloomberg.
However, a $1.37 billion border-security agreement by a bipartisan group of lawmakers may spare SpaceX's facility from DHS bulldozers, thanks to a small section in the 1,159-page document.
Maybe Musk could join in one of the many, many lawsuits. SpaceX and the butterfly sanctuary should get together.
NASA: Farewell, Oppy.
One of the most successful and enduring feats of interplanetary exploration, NASA's Opportunity rover mission is at an end after almost 15 years exploring the surface of Mars and helping lay the groundwork for NASA’s return to the Red Planet.
The Opportunity rover stopped communicating with Earth when a severe Mars-wide dust storm blanketed its location in June 2018. After more than a thousand commands to restore contact, engineers in the Space Flight Operations Facility at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) made their last attempt to revive Opportunity Tuesday, to no avail. The solar-powered rover's final communication was received June 10.
I am not going to reproduce that cartoon. You know the one. It makes me cry every time.
SpaceNews: NASA plans to buy more seats on Russian launches
Jeff Foust
With both SpaceX and Boeing falling behind in conducting demonstration flights of their man-rated craft, this seemed all but inevitable.
NASA is considering buying two additional seats on Soyuz spacecraft to ensure a continued American presence on the International Space Station amid worries about additional delays in commercial crew flights.
In a presolicitation notice filed Feb. 13, NASA announced it was considering contracting with the Russian state space corporation Roscosmos for two Soyuz seats, one on a mission launching in the fall of 2019 and the other in the spring of 2020. The notice was first reported by NASASpaceFlight.com.
US Mint: 2019 Dollar coins celebrate Native Americans in the space program.
The 2019 Native American $1 Coin reverse (tails side) design highlights the contributions of Native Americans to the U.S. Space Program. American Indians have been on the modern frontier of space flight since its infancy. American Indian contributions to the U.S. Space Program culminated in the three spacewalks of John Herrington (Chickasaw) on the International Space Station in 2002. These and other pioneering achievements date back to the work of Mary Golda Ross (Cherokee), one of the first female American Indian engineers. She helped develop the Agena spacecraft for the Gemini and Apollo Programs.
The reverse design features Mary Golda Ross writing calculations. Behind her, an Atlas-Agena rocket launches into space, with an equation inscribed in its cloud. An astronaut, symbolic of Native American astronauts including Herrington, spacewalks above. In the field behind, a group of stars indicates outer space.
NBC News: Richard Branson plans to be in space in time for Apollo anniversary.
David Freeman
Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson has long claimed that one day he would ride into space aboard his company’s spaceplane, and now he knows when.
The British billionaire said Thursday that he plans to take his first trip to space within the next six months — the flight will coincide with the anniversary of the first landing of astronauts on the moon, one of spaceflight’s greatest achievements.
"My wish is to go up on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing, that's what we're working on," he told AFP during an event at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.
GeekWire: FAA certifies that giant Stratolaunch plane for flight.
Mark Harris
The Federal Aviation Administration has cleared the world’s largest airplane for takeoff — but it’s not yet clear exactly when Stratolaunch, the aerospace venture founded by the late Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, will put the plane in the air.
Stratolaunch’s unique aircraft, code-named Roc, measures 385 feet from wingtip to wingtip, longer than three Boeing 737s lined up end to end. The company hopes to win full FAA certification for the Roc and use it for airborne rocket launches as soon as next year.
Fascinating as it will be to see this beast aloft, now that founder Paul Allen has died and Stratolaunch has pulled back from developing actual rockets to launch, the whole thing is something of a boondoggle.
Ars Technica: The comeback of FireFly … and no, not the television show.
Eric Berger
[Founder Tom Markusic’s rocket company, Firefly, was left for dead in 2016 when its funding dried up. In those last desperate days, as Firefly burned through a million dollars a week, Markusic spent most of his time chasing investors. Eventually, Firefly and its 159 employees crashed hard. Few in the aerospace industry were surprised. Then, as now, dozens of start-up rocket companies are seeking to build newer and cheaper boosters to launch satellites into space. Some failed before Firefly. Some have failed since. Certainly, with a glut of would-be launch providers, most will fail within the coming years. That Firefly joined the ash heap was hardly surprising.
Only it didn't fail. Months after Firefly went dark, Markusic found a lifeline in an Internet entrepreneur named Max Polyakov, who hailed from the city of Zaporizhia in southeastern Ukraine. Together—with Markusic's engineering brilliance and Polyakov's money and business sense—they have brought Firefly roaring back. The once-dead company may just launch its first rocket this year.
Fascinating story on why Texas may soon have yet another launch site. Well worth a read to see what one of these companies goes through on the path from idea to launch.
Checking in at Boca Chica