Welcome to Edition 6.16 of the Rocket Report! Plenty of news here today about big rockets, including a push by SpaceX to hurry up launch licensing by the Federal Aviation Administration. The complete-court press in Washington, DC, comes as the corporate says its Starship rocket is prepared for a second flight test but still awaiting final regulatory approval. The earliest the launch could now occur is through the first half of November.
As all the time, we welcome reader submissions, and in the event you don’t need to miss a difficulty, please subscribe using the box below (the shape won’t appear on AMP-enabled versions of the positioning). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets in addition to a fast look ahead at the following three launches on the calendar.
Virgin Galactic to fly sixth mission in six months. The California-based suborbital space tourism company announced this week that its “Galactic 05” mission will take flight as early as November 2. Such a flight would proceed Virgin Galactic’s impressive monthly cadence of flying its VSS spacecraft this yr. This flight will carry researchers who will use the inside of the space plane as a lab for research.
… I’m especially enthusiastic about Galactic 05 because two of the passengers are acquaintances. Alan Stern is the planetary scientist who led the Recent Horizons mission to Pluto and is looking for to perform suborbital astronomical observations. Earlier this yr, he told me it was significantly cheaper to fly experiments on VSS than it’s for NASA to purchase a sounding rocket. One other researcher on the flight, Kellie Gerardi, is someone I’ve gotten to know over the past decade through her advocacy of economic space. She was kind enough to put in writing a blurb for my book on the origins of SpaceX, . Secure travels to each!
Small launch firms struggle with Falcon 9 prices. Industry executives say SpaceX’s dominant position within the launch market is making it difficult for small rockets to compete, Space News reports. In a panel on the Satellite Innovation conference on Tuesday, executives said Falcon 9 Transporter missions have had a “hugely chilling” impact on the small launch industry that struggles to compete on price. “They definitely control and have a dominant position available in the market,” said Curt Blake, former chief executive of launch services company Spaceflight, who now leads the business space group at law firm Wilson Sonsini, of SpaceX. “I believe the true query is pricing, and what’s their cost, and why so low, so dramatically low?”
… SpaceX began offering rideshare launch opportunities for smallsats as little as $5,000 per kilogram. The corporate has since raised those prices to $5,500 per kilogram and plans annual increases in future years. Nonetheless, most often, those prices are far below what dedicated small launch vehicles offer. “I don’t think that they had to go that low to have a commanding share of the market,” Blake said, estimating SpaceX could have gained significant business at prices of $10,000 to $12,000 per kilogram. “That needed to have a hugely chilling effect on every other money flowing into startup launch firms. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Industry unites for extension of learning period. There are three US firms now able to flying people into space—SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic—and representatives from those three firms told lawmakers Wednesday that the industry will not be yet mature enough for a brand new set of federal safety regulations for his or her customers. An almost 20-year moratorium on federal regulations regarding the security of passengers on business human spaceflight missions is about to run out on January 1, Ars reports. In a report submitted to Congress on September 29, the FAA said it believes the US is prepared for the sunset of the moratorium.
… “The FAA will work along with industry and other US government agencies to ascertain a brand new safety framework for space transportation providing for the security of the crew, government astronauts, and spaceflight participants,” FAA officials wrote within the report. But officials from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic, the three firms lively within the business human spaceflight arena, were in lockstep during a Senate hearing. All agreed the moratorium on human spaceflight regulations must be prolonged. It was scheduled to lapse at first of October, but Congress added a three-month extension to a stopgap spending bill signed into law to stop a government shutdown.