Author Topic: Astra Space  (Read 405694 times)

Re: Astra Space
« Reply #440 on: 06/05/2021 08:15 pm »
Big thing from that stream I'd like to note: they expect to build a dozen more Rocket 3s, and then start launching Rocket 4 next year. Rocket 4 to have a new, bigger engine, with no details.
Wait, ∆V? This site will accept the ∆ symbol? How many times have I written out the word "delta" for no reason?

Online gongora

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #441 on: 06/05/2021 08:50 pm »
a few notes I jotted down during the show (some already mentioned above):

rocket 3.4 is 5 feet longer
rocket 4.0 next year, weekly launches, several hundred kg of payload, new engine
flying monthly starting in fourth quarter, increased run of 3.x series production to a dozen
aiming for high reliability but not 100%
engines electrically gimballed, electric pump fed.  Two 3D printed parts, main combustion chamber and pump impellers.  Those are the most expensive parts, would like to move to different manufacturing method.
almost 180 employees now
currently certifying AFTS system, running in shadow mode now
Cape could be backup option for TROPICS launches
looking for eventually around a dozen spaceports
will have their own spacecraft bus to which customers can easily add sensors/payloads/programs

Offline FlattestEarth

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #442 on: 06/06/2021 12:43 am »
Rocket 4 to have a new, bigger engine, with no details.
Wonder if it will be electric pump and if it can still be tested at Alameda.

Offline space_snap828

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #443 on: 06/06/2021 12:53 am »
aiming for high reliability but not 100%

My problem with this goal follows this analogy. If I aim for a B in a class from the beginning, I will likely fail the class. I'll cut corners and fall behind. So, if they aim for a little less than 100% success, they might end up with much less than 100%.

Offline M.E.T.

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #444 on: 06/06/2021 04:59 am »
Very interesting how they have the totally opposite view to Relativity when it comes to 3D printing. Kemp says 3D printing is the worst possible approach to take if you want to mass produce something at low cost.

Relativity, by contrast, want to 3D print absolutely everything.
« Last Edit: 06/06/2021 05:11 pm by M.E.T. »

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: Astra Space
« Reply #445 on: 06/06/2021 06:26 am »
Very interesting how they have the totally opposite view to Relativity when it comes to 3D printing. Kemp says 3D printing is the worst possible approach to take if you want to mass produce something at low cost.

Relativity, by contrast, want to 3D print absolutely evertything.
The car industry doesn't 3D parts for their mainstream cars.

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Offline M.E.T.

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #446 on: 06/06/2021 06:30 am »
Very interesting how they have the totally opposite view to Relativity when it comes to 3D printing. Kemp says 3D printing is the worst possible approach to take if you want to mass produce something at low cost.

Relativity, by contrast, want to 3D print absolutely evertything.
The car industry doesn't 3D parts for their mainstream cars.

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Yep, I’m not criticising Kemp’s statement. I’m noting how this calls into question Relativity’s self proclaimed competitive advantage, which is entirely based on a 3D printing approach to everything.

Offline uranium

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #447 on: 06/06/2021 02:09 pm »
I don't think it's a contradiction. Relativity isn't talking about making 100000 of anything. Their advantage comes from being able to reduce their part count, labor cost, iteration time, and supply chain, not because they can make individual parts cheaper.

Offline niwax

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #448 on: 06/06/2021 02:25 pm »
He is absolutely right about 3D printing. I've worked quite bit with metal printing especially, and while it looks shiny there are no good reasons to use it outside of one-off prototyping or very specific specialized parts that can't be made any other way where cost is no criteria.

If you think about the taxonomy of manipulating material, you go from bending and riveting through cutting and welding to machining and casting. You spend a bit more energy and wast material at each stage for a bit more capability. 3D printing is at the very extreme end of this scale. You literally grind the material down into tiny particles and rebuild and melt every bit of it from scratch.

Not only does this use pretty much the highest possible amount of energy to build a given part, the melting process also vaporizes about 50% of the material and wastes it into the air outlet filter. You also have constraints on material selection which is inconvenient considering you'd use it for especially high performing parts.

If you can cast the part instead of printing it, you save the material without increasing energy use. If you can machine it, you use far less energy but still waste some material. For something like a tank, both are far too complex. Bending and welding sheets, hoops and stringers is dirt cheap not just because it is simple and reliable technology, but also from a first principles point of view regarding material and energy cost that you can't get past regardless of technological development.
Which booster has the most soot? SpaceX booster launch history! (discussion)

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: Astra Space
« Reply #449 on: 06/06/2021 05:01 pm »
He is absolutely right about 3D printing. I've worked quite bit with metal printing especially, and while it looks shiny there are no good reasons to use it outside of one-off prototyping or very specific specialized parts that can't be made any other way where cost is no criteria.

If you think about the taxonomy of manipulating material, you go from bending and riveting through cutting and welding to machining and casting. You spend a bit more energy and wast material at each stage for a bit more capability. 3D printing is at the very extreme end of this scale. You literally grind the material down into tiny particles and rebuild and melt every bit of it from scratch.

Not only does this use pretty much the highest possible amount of energy to build a given part, the melting process also vaporizes about 50% of the material and wastes it into the air outlet filter. You also have constraints on material selection which is inconvenient considering you'd use it for especially high performing parts.

If you can cast the part instead of printing it, you save the material without increasing energy use. If you can machine it, you use far less energy but still waste some material. For something like a tank, both are far too complex. Bending and welding sheets, hoops and stringers is dirt cheap not just because it is simple and reliable technology, but also from a first principles point of view regarding material and energy cost that you can't get past regardless of technological development.
You forgot to add quality control of material in end product. With forging or sheet metal we know properties of the end product as process doesn't change it much.

Additiving manufacturing means bonding lots of matetial together by heat typically laser or arch welding. The quality of each one of those bonds has to be consistant.
With 3D a lot of printing R&D has gone into determining if material properties of end product are with spec.
As example solid looking block of plastic we 3d printed at work on $1000 printer was porous. This wasn't by design just result of not so perfect bonding between layers.


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Offline niwax

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #450 on: 06/06/2021 05:26 pm »
He is absolutely right about 3D printing. I've worked quite bit with metal printing especially, and while it looks shiny there are no good reasons to use it outside of one-off prototyping or very specific specialized parts that can't be made any other way where cost is no criteria.

If you think about the taxonomy of manipulating material, you go from bending and riveting through cutting and welding to machining and casting. You spend a bit more energy and wast material at each stage for a bit more capability. 3D printing is at the very extreme end of this scale. You literally grind the material down into tiny particles and rebuild and melt every bit of it from scratch.

Not only does this use pretty much the highest possible amount of energy to build a given part, the melting process also vaporizes about 50% of the material and wastes it into the air outlet filter. You also have constraints on material selection which is inconvenient considering you'd use it for especially high performing parts.

If you can cast the part instead of printing it, you save the material without increasing energy use. If you can machine it, you use far less energy but still waste some material. For something like a tank, both are far too complex. Bending and welding sheets, hoops and stringers is dirt cheap not just because it is simple and reliable technology, but also from a first principles point of view regarding material and energy cost that you can't get past regardless of technological development.
You forgot to add quality control of material in end product. With forging or sheet metal we know properties of the end product as process doesn't change it much.

Additiving manufacturing means bonding lots of matetial together by heat typically laser or arch welding. The quality of each one of those bonds has to be consistant.
With 3D a lot of printing R&D has gone into determining if material properties of end product are with spec.
As example solid looking block of plastic we 3d printed at work on $1000 printer was porous. This wasn't by design just result of not so perfect bonding between layers.


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Good call on the quality aspect. Guess I should have remembered that considering my work is on the quality monitoring software... With metal especially since you're ripping apart all the crystal structures that were evolved in thousands of years of metalworking. Printed crystal formation monitoring is literally an unsolved research problem. Quality control currently largely amounts to looking for outliers in a few brightness and energy values with little connection to actual physical properties.
Which booster has the most soot? SpaceX booster launch history! (discussion)

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #451 on: 06/07/2021 12:09 pm »
https://spacenews.com/astra-to-acquire-spacecraft-propulsion-company-apollo-fusion/

Quote
Astra to acquire spacecraft propulsion company Apollo Fusion
by Jeff Foust — June 7, 2021

WASHINGTON — Launch vehicle developer Astra is acquiring Apollo Fusion, a company developing electric propulsion systems for spacecraft, as part of its effort to create vertically integrated space systems.

Astra is purchasing Apollo Fusion for $30 million in stock and $20 million in cash in a deal announced June 7.

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #452 on: 06/07/2021 12:48 pm »
https://spacenews.com/astra-to-acquire-spacecraft-propulsion-company-apollo-fusion/

Quote
Astra to acquire spacecraft propulsion company Apollo Fusion
by Jeff Foust — June 7, 2021

WASHINGTON — Launch vehicle developer Astra is acquiring Apollo Fusion, a company developing electric propulsion systems for spacecraft, as part of its effort to create vertically integrated space systems.

Astra is purchasing Apollo Fusion for $30 million in stock and $20 million in cash in a deal announced June 7.
That SPAC money is apparently burning a hole in their pocket. They will need to spend it fast before somebody figures out that the 300 launches a year driving the valuation of their currently suborbital launcher is wildly optimistic...
« Last Edit: 06/07/2021 12:49 pm by ringsider »

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #453 on: 06/07/2021 01:11 pm »
https://astra.com/news/astra-apollo-reaching-new-orbits-together/?swcfpc=1

Quote
ASTRA & APOLLO: REACHING NEW ORBITS TOGETHER
JUNE 7, 2021
By: Benjamin Lyon

Today, we announced that Astra will acquire Apollo Fusion. This acquisition enables Astra to efficiently deliver and operate throughout our solar system, and brings incredible technology and talent into our team.

So, what is this all really about? At Astra we’re focused on rapid and affordable access to space. This really requires two kinds of transportation: You always have to first fly from Earth to a low orbit on the edge of space, and Astra shines in getting you to the best possible low orbit for your mission. However, often you need to keep going — to fly higher in space for your operational mission. And this is where Apollo comes in.

Let’s dig into this a bit. When flying from the ground to space, you need powerful, high-thrust engines to overcome gravity and push the vehicle with its payload through the atmosphere at an ever-increasing speed. This requires a LOT of thrust and consumes a huge amount of fuel. (Typically, 90% of more of the weight of a rocket ready to lift off is fuel) Once you get to space and are in a low orbit, the spacecraft is floating in zero gravity, so you can use very small forces to move around. This is analogous to a getting a boat into a lake – it’s very heavy to lift and carry it on the ground, but light paddling will move it easily once it’s in the water.

This “paddling” is where electric propulsion (EP) systems come into play in space. Harnessing the power of the sun, they use electricity to accelerate a very small flow of inert gas to high speed, producing a constant, low thrust that is highly efficient. The high efficiency allows a spacecraft to slowly but continuously accelerate, which moves it to a higher and higher orbit. This makes EP an excellent solution for going from low earth orbits to medium, high, or geostationary orbits, and even to the moon or beyond!

We chose Apollo Fusion because they had developed a best-in-class EP system that is cost-effective and reliable, at scale. Apollo’s design cycles are measured in months, not years, and their solutions are both easy to manufacture and to assemble. They don’t see their job as done when they have something that initially works. Apollo continues to optimize for manufacturability and scalability.

Astra has purposefully drawn its talent from beyond the aerospace industry, and bringing the best practices from tech, automotive, services and other industries has been a key element to our rapid progress to date. Apollo Founder and CEO, Mike Cassidy, shares the same belief in the value diverse skill sets bring. He has both the understanding and experience of how bring consumer technologies like high performance, low power processing to aerospace, with team members from companies such as SpaceX, Google, Tesla and Apple. Their deep expertise is important too: Apollo team members have contributed to over 2,000 satellites in orbit today. Their culture shares Astra’s focus on maximizing development velocity, designing for scale, and passion about the opportunity that space creates.

We are delighted to welcome the Apollo Fusion team into the Astra team! I’m excited to see what we do together.

Ad Astra!

-B

Offline edzieba

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #454 on: 06/07/2021 01:13 pm »
They will need to spend it fast
No they don't.
The whole point of a SPAC is they get an immediate lump-sum cash injection with very minimal strings attached (i.e. no jumping through the hoops of an IPO) and no debt to repay. The post-acquisition stock price tanking makes further investment funding rounds unlikely and annoys employees expecting large share option payouts (and means investors in the initial SPAC make out poorly), but does not mean Astra's existing funding suddenly vanishes. That cash is in the bank.
It's prudent to spend what they have to accelerate development - as their R&D is paid for by past income rather than future debt, penny-pinching and stretching development time to reduce total R&D outlay is not an optimal strategy - but not mandatory.

Offline ringsider

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #455 on: 06/07/2021 01:55 pm »
They will need to spend it fast
No they don't.
The whole point of a SPAC is they get an immediate lump-sum cash injection with very minimal strings attached (i.e. no jumping through the hoops of an IPO) and no debt to repay. The post-acquisition stock price tanking makes further investment funding rounds unlikely and annoys employees expecting large share option payouts (and means investors in the initial SPAC make out poorly), but does not mean Astra's existing funding suddenly vanishes. That cash is in the bank.
It's prudent to spend what they have to accelerate development - as their R&D is paid for by past income rather than future debt, penny-pinching and stretching development time to reduce total R&D outlay is not an optimal strategy - but not mandatory.
The SPAC has not closed yet, and they do not yet have the cash in their bank account. See Momentus for details.
« Last Edit: 06/07/2021 01:55 pm by ringsider »

Offline deadman1204

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #456 on: 06/07/2021 02:09 pm »
He is absolutely right about 3D printing. I've worked quite bit with metal printing especially, and while it looks shiny there are no good reasons to use it outside of one-off prototyping or very specific specialized parts that can't be made any other way where cost is no criteria.

If you think about the taxonomy of manipulating material, you go from bending and riveting through cutting and welding to machining and casting. You spend a bit more energy and wast material at each stage for a bit more capability. 3D printing is at the very extreme end of this scale. You literally grind the material down into tiny particles and rebuild and melt every bit of it from scratch.

Not only does this use pretty much the highest possible amount of energy to build a given part, the melting process also vaporizes about 50% of the material and wastes it into the air outlet filter. You also have constraints on material selection which is inconvenient considering you'd use it for especially high performing parts.

If you can cast the part instead of printing it, you save the material without increasing energy use. If you can machine it, you use far less energy but still waste some material. For something like a tank, both are far too complex. Bending and welding sheets, hoops and stringers is dirt cheap not just because it is simple and reliable technology, but also from a first principles point of view regarding material and energy cost that you can't get past regardless of technological development.

if 50% of your material is caught in air filters, how do you manage that for larger projects?

Offline FutureSpaceTourist

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #457 on: 06/07/2021 02:35 pm »
https://twitter.com/kemp/status/1401908302305320961

Quote
Update on @Astra’s process of going public - our S-4 is now effective with the SEC. We will start mailing proxy statements today for shareholders of $HOL to vote ahead of the shareholder meeting on 6/30. We intend to start trading on @Nasdaq as $ASTR on 7/1!

Offline ringsider

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Re: Astra Space
« Reply #458 on: 06/07/2021 03:34 pm »
https://twitter.com/kemp/status/1401908302305320961

Quote
Update on @Astra’s process of going public - our S-4 is now effective with the SEC. We will start mailing proxy statements today for shareholders of $HOL to vote ahead of the shareholder meeting on 6/30. We intend to start trading on @Nasdaq as $ASTR on 7/1!
There you go.

Now the issue here is that Holicity's shareholders - the people who own the SPAC units - can redeem their units for the value they paid, $10.00, plus interest.

So if the share trades below that price, or people believe it will trade below that price, as Holicity has done in the past month, the SPAC may see some problems closing [edited] the merger, as happened with Stable Road and Momentus, or, if goes through, potentially lots of redemptions, reducing the cash in trust at the SPAC, and thus the cash that lands in the bank account of the merger target.

The only capital that is locked in is the money in the PIPE, and those investors are only "in" because they can buy cheap, and in happier times expect a big 50%-100% pop when the stock traded.

But with many announced SPACs trading close to or below redemption price, and those closing trading well below the redemption price, the PIPE market has dried up in the past 10-12 weeks, because all those ebullient announcements in Q1 are struggling to close at significant pops.

And the PIPE market is very important as it basically validates the price negotiated between SPAC and target. So without a solid PIPE, it's unlikely the SPAC will succeed.

Three examples, two of which are related:-

AST Mobile: a business that says it can make (literally, see slide 30 of the investor deck) a 99% profit margin, lol. Drops 30% within days of trading to about $7 and change. PIPE investors are underwater.

Arqit: announces a $400m SPAC merger with Centricus - but with a tiny $70m PIPE made up of connected investors (related to the same guys running the SPAC). SPAC is trading below redemption price since it was announced, $9.96

Rocket Lab: which is the pick of the litter, is barely trading above redemption price at $10.06. Peter Beck is probably doing all the promotional conferences possible to make sure that price stays afloat.
« Last Edit: 06/07/2021 07:59 pm by ringsider »

Offline TrevorMonty

Re: Astra Space
« Reply #459 on: 06/07/2021 04:57 pm »
Thanks for update on SPACs.

Here is quick summary of four space ones. Of four only Astra isn't operational with solid revenue stream.
https://investorplace.com/2021/03/4-space-spacs-with-exciting-futures/?mod=mw_quote_news

All four's near term earnings projections are optimistic to say the less. I think Redwire is one with best grow potential, they have MIS. In space manufacturing is still a while away but will be massive if we are to expand into space.

 Blacksky is operating in competitive and crowded earth observation market. Don't see them going under but also don't see massive grow.

RL has steady revenue stream from varied space business. While launch gets all media coverage RL isn't solely reliant on it.
I don't think they will hit their optimistic future earnings predictions anytime soon but I do expect them to survive and do well.

Astra is big gamble, Unlike RL and Redwire they seem to be one trick pony that has yet to start making money. Small LV market is going to become very crowded in next couple of years. With RLVs likely to dominate.





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