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Commercial Space Flight General / Re: Amazon Project Kuiper Broadband Constellation

« Last post by meekGee on Today at 06:40 pm »

Penalizing Kuiper won't achieve anything except give Starlink monoploy which means every body, public, business and government will pay more and have less choices. Eg ULA before SpaceX.

What I'm saying is that effectively it's pretty much going to be a monopoly.

The first deadline is in mid 2026. Let's see where production rates and NG launch rates stand by then.

What do you do if the 4 and 25 prediction falls flat?  Suppose NG follows a more F9-like growth rate of 50-100% /year?

A more realistic progression is 1 in 2025, 2 in 2026, 4 in 2027...  and not all of them are Kuiper.  That puts the 2029 deadline at risk as well.

MeekGee, do you know that Kuiper constellation is smaller than Starlink, right?

This is not about launch satellites ad infinitum...

Yes Tywin, I do.

Not on paper, not in your head, but de-facto in earth orbit, yes.

It is much larger today, and can deliver more tons to orbit per year than Kuiper can, by a wide margin.

Actually, why don't you tell me? How do you think Kuiper can catch up in mass in orbit with Starlink? 

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SpaceX General Section / Re: SpaceX Dragon XL

« Last post by yg1968 on Today at 06:37 pm »

SAM.gov: Deep Space Logistics ENgineering Support Extension [Jul 15]

This justification documents the basis for issuing a modification to an order under the Deep Space Logistics ENgineering Support (LENS) contract  using an exception to the Fair Opportunity process. This modification is to add additional option periods from October 1, 2025 through November 29, 2025 and from November 30, 2025 through May 29, 2026.

This relates to this contract:

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-awards-deep-space-logistics-engineering-support-contract/

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ISS Section / Re: Expedition 73 thread

« Last post by Targeteer on Today at 06:27 pm »

The Expedition 72 crew is currently talking to the Ex 73 crew from Huntsville and giving them a really hard time...  Service insults and defenses are flying.  Space Force was just called Army's grand child.

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SpaceX Starship Program / Re: Starship Flight 9 UPDATES : Starbase TX : 27 May 2025 (23:36 UTC)

« Last post by StraumliBlight on Today at 06:24 pm »

NSF: Possible Starship Salvage Operation Underway off Coast of Mexico [Jul 18]

NASASpaceflight.com is currently tracking a developing situation involving the salvage of SpaceX Starship booster parts off the coast near Brownsville, Texas.  The construction and salvage ship LB Jill appeared on the Port of Brownsville’s manifest, explicitly stating “To Load Rocket Parts 1 M/T,” strongly suggesting salvage operations of rocket debris from previous Starship flights. The vessel has been maintaining position near an area where rocket debris from a previous launch may have drifted due to ocean currents.

Marine Traffic: LB JILL

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Commercial Space Flight General / Re: Amazon Project Kuiper Broadband Constellation

« Last post by DanClemmensen on Today at 06:14 pm »

Are we sure about this 51 thing? This sounds very low.

There will be also be 1292 Kuiper satellites in polar orbits.

Yep, they added that later and I forgot about it. For customers, it's a question of timing. A large subset of the high-latitude customers are ships and planes. Since installing the user equipment is expensive for them, they are reluctant to switch to a new provider unless there is a major performance improvement. We'll see.

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SpaceX Falcon Missions Section / Re: SpaceX F9 : Starlink group 13-4 : VSFB SLC-4E : NET 29 July 2025 (~15:39 UTC)

« Last post by catdlr on Today at 06:10 pm »

This launch has shown up on CADENA OIS:

Primary Launch Day 29 JUL 1539Z-2022Z Backup Launch Day 31 JUL 1539Z-2022Z Backup Launch Day 31 JUL 1539Z-2022Z Backup Launch Day 01 AUG 1539Z-2022Z Backup Launch Day 02 AUG 1539Z-2022Z Backup Launch Day 03 AUG 1539Z-2022Z

This is an unusual trajectory.  Maybe Starshield deployment?

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Space Policy Discussion / Re: FY 2026 NASA Budget (May 2nd and 30th 2025)

« Last post by yg1968 on Today at 06:07 pm »

See below:

If it’s all smoke and no fire, then Duffy should provide the briefings and op plan that Congress has requested and things will deescalate from there.

But if NASA under Duffy’s leadership continues in the prior vein of not providing information on spending plans, then Congress has every right to exercise its constitutional perogatives and things will escalate from there.

Nitpicking whether several statements by NASA leadership combined with some reporting in the press combined with an ongoing OMB recission action constitutes smoke or fire misses the point.  Congress requested spending plans.  NASA didn’t deliver.  Either the new NASA leadership under Duffy starts providing them or there will eventually be some consequences, one way or the other.

There’s no doubt Vought/OMB/Trump II is asserting novel executive powers over most of the discretionary budget.  For example, yes, recissions have been done in the past, but the last substantive one was back during the Clinton Administration and it was done on a bipartisan basis, not as a tool for that White House to push its budget preferences over congressional appropriations.  It should not be surprising for any Congress to push back on any White House asserting novel uses of old budgetary tools that reduce Congress’s constitutional power of the purse.

This initial wrangling over NASA’s budget will be part of a bigger, government-wide, Trump II-driven fight over where the boundary between executive and legislative budgetary powers lies.  It will probably wind up in the courts and go the Supreme Court.

Between now and then, the main danger is irreversible damage to NASA programs — NASA shutting down or taking apart spacecraft in accordance with the President’s budget that are actually in the process of being funded by Congress through appropriations process.  For that reason, even as an old OMB alum who would like to have been able to unilaterally delete a lot of dumb congressional earmarks from old NASA budgets, I hope this is just the start, and Congress gets more aggressive in asserting its rights here, especially with respect to the FY26 budget.

FWIW…

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Missions To The Moon (HSF) / Re: NASA's Artemis Program Updates and Discussion Thread 6

« Last post by yg1968 on Today at 06:06 pm »

If it’s all smoke and no fire, then Duffy should provide the briefings and op plan that Congress has requested and things will deescalate from there.

But if NASA under Duffy’s leadership continues in the prior vein of not providing information on spending plans, then Congress has every right to exercise its constitutional perogatives and things will escalate from there.

On the issue of the spending plan, its seems that there is a draft spending plan but it is not entirely clear where that process is. From what I recall spending plans are usually finalized this time of the year. Here is what the letter says on the spending plan for FY25:

Of interest in the letter is that there does seem to be a draft operating/spending plan for FY25:

Additionally, to inform our ongoing oversight and to allow us to ensure that NASA is following the law, we request that the agency provide a briefing to the staff of the Committee regarding the agency’s proposed Agency RIF and Reorganization Plan (ARRP) and its current FY 25 spend plan. We previously requested a briefing on NASA’s ARRP in an earlier letter on March 11th, but our request was ignored by the agency.22 We now reiterate that request and expand it in light of recent developments to include the agency’s FY 2025 spend plan, as originally transmitted to OMB and in its current iteration following any changes by OMB. The staff briefing should take place no later than two weeks from today, July 30th, 2025.

https://democrats-science.house.gov/imo/media/doc/SST%20RM%20Lofgren%20and%20Foushee%20-%20Letter%20to%20Interim%20Administrator%20Duffy%20-%20FY%2025%20Impoundments%20-%207.16.25.pdf

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Commercial Space Flight General / Re: Amazon Project Kuiper Broadband Constellation

« Last post by StraumliBlight on Today at 06:05 pm »

Are we sure about this 51 thing? This sounds very low.

There will be also be 1292 Kuiper satellites in polar orbits.

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Blue Origin / Re: New Glenn Flight 2 - Early Updates and Discussion

« Last post by LouScheffer on Today at 06:05 pm »

[...] Blue Origin has confirmed that their 2nd New Glenn launch, NG-2, will carry NASA's EscaPADE Mars mission! After launch, the 2 probes will linger around the lagrange points for about a year, after which they'll return to Earth for a gravity assist and the Trans-Mars Injection.

A traditional gravity assist seems unlikely here, since they could already depart (if they wish) tangent to the Earth's orbit.   So I suspect what they are talking about is a "Two burn solution".  In this case, as they describe, they first drop into a very elliptical orbit with a low perigee.  Then at perigee, they do the escape burn.  In many cases (including presumably this one) the gain from the Oberth effect, from performing the escape burn at perigee, exceeds the delta-V needed for the initial orbit dropping, resulting in a net improvement.  See Using the Two-Burn Escape Maneuver for Fast Transfers in the Solar System and Beyond.

Here are the approximate numbers for this:  assume the LaGrange points are the trailing/leading Earth-moon points.  These are about the distance of the moon, in a near circular orbit with an altitude of about 384,000 km.   In this orbit the orbital speed is about 1,011 m/s.   The NASA trajectory browser shows a C3 = 10.4 opportunity to get to Mars in October 2026.  To do a direct burn from the LaGrange orbit to the Mars transfer orbit would take a delta-V of about 2520 m/s.

But suppose instead they make a 827 m/s burn to drop into a 200x384,000 parking orbit.  They can then do a 554 m/s burn at perigee to get the same C3 = 10.4.  The total delta-V needed for the two burns is 827+554 = 1381 m/s.  It's much more efficient.

Even better would be not to go to the LaGrange point in the first place.  If they just stayed in a 200x384,000 parking orbit, they would only need 554 m/s total from there.  I suspect there is solid reason they are not doing this.  Maybe science, checking out the spacecraft, or avoiding Van Allen belts?

I've got all these calcs in a google spreadsheet if anyone is interested.