Who Is Aerospace and What Do They Want In Commercial Space?

The Aerospace Corporation is a federally funded research and development organization.  To those in the space industry, their name is pretty familiar. Now, having been involved in oversight of USAF and NRO boosters and spacecraft for 50 years, they want to expand further into the NASA arena, especially as commercial space players like SpaceX are actually [...]

Commercial Space–The Only Way to Fly

Note: this article originally appeared in Air University’s The Wright Stuff Commercial Space–The Only Way to Fly By Mark Stout You may have heard something called ‘commercial space’ is going to significantly change or even revolutionize NASA, and perhaps by extension, the rest of the U.S government’s space requirements as well.  As such, let’s unpack the [...]

SpaceX Shocks The House With Iridium Win

How low can you go? SpaceX’s bid to serve as the Iridium Next launch agent was cheaper than the Indians and the Chinese. How low is it?  Shockingly low. “That $492 million figure would launch all 72 satellites in our constellation,” said Matt Desch, Iridium’s CEO. So will SpaceX make up in volume what they’re [...]

SpaceX and Iridium Agree to $492 Million Launch Services Deal

SpaceX will be the major launch agency for Iridium next. Let’s see–here’s my ROM.  As many as nine or ten Vandenberg launches with a massive amount of weight to orbit margin assuming a stack of five or six satellites.  Perhaps other customers will emerge to use up some of that margin, but that adds complexity regarding [...]

Return-To-Moon Not Quite Dead Yet

NASA’s prior work to return Americans to the moon isn’t dead yet, but we may want to get a priest. The big remaining issue will be about funding for contract termination, which I predict will be paid for by NASA.  And that’s not a very bold prediction. Termination costs are why no contractor in their [...]

South Korean Launch Failure

South Korea lost contact with their launch vehicle a little over two minutes into its flight profile and during its first stage burn. It was to hoist a modest 100kg payload and the launch vehicle itself was similarly modest–we’ll call it old school–with a Russian supplied first stage that used the traditional ‘highly refined hydrocarbon [...]

SpaceX’s Falcon 9 A Mind-Boggling Success

Salute to the men and women associated with SpaceX’s Falcon 9 mission! Fantastic! FWIW, I have high confidence the cheering over the countdown, narration, and telemetry nets may have been edited out!

Expectations Management For Falcon 9

Watch the Falcon 9 webcast from here. Now onto SpaceX’s expectation for the launch –let’s describe them as modest–delivered from the SpaceX site: It’s important to note that since this is a test launch, our primary goal is to collect as much data as possible, with success being measured as a percentage of how many [...]

Showtime for Falcon 9

Now that the first GPS 2F-1 has left the rocket ranch, all eyes will be on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 which is set to launch Friday. I went through their plant in Hawthorne back in November 2009.  I have to say it was fantastic.  They were making structures, engines, fairings, and more there.  BTW, the Falcon [...]

Is the Promised Land for Prompt Global Strike the Scramjet?

Maybe. The link is pretty much a super-long Pratt & Whitney press release touting the scramjet concept. While all the science is cosmic, the military, as with the NBA draft, often rewards potential versus proven performance. So can something like the air-dropped, solid rocket motor (initially) and scramjet (subsequently) powered, expendable X-51 really go from [...]