New tests vs flight 5:

Reigniting a ship Raptor engine while in space

Testing a suite of heatshield experiments and maneuvering changes for ship reentry

Astra still somehow being around is a testament to how good they are at scamming people.

Next we get to see which of the bigger rockets last. Rocket Lab Neutron, Firefly MLV/Antares 330, and Stoke Nova all have reasons to exist. Terran-R and Vaya Dauntless, on the other hand…

The culling continues.

Their responsive launch and mobile infrastructure concepts were neat, but they couldn’t get it working fast enough.

At one point it seemed like Lockheed might be ready to buy them outright, but not doing so looks like the right call.

The original ITS was way more orca

One of their competitors, ABL, just gave up on their commercial launch ambitions. Another one bites the dust.

So, the same agency that accused a US astronaut of drilling a hole in a Soyuz while on her period, they’re saying they trust it? Hmmm.

Someone tell Jared Isaacman to make Polaris 2 a Dragon that docks with a Starship in low lunar orbit

Firefly has had some good news lately between announcing launch contracts and getting their satellite bus into the SDA HALO fray.

They were supposed to launch Blue Ghost this year, but I haven’t seen anything about that in a few months and wonder if it isn’t slipping because of environmental test delays.

The article also mentioned Alpha being the only 1000kg class rocket doing anything, but it still isn’t launching often at all. Hopefully another one flies this year.

And this is one of the parts of the space division that Boeing wants to keep?

There are actually a ton of “space laser” companies at this point. SpaceX above all others, but in the SDA world there’s Skyloom, Mynaric, CACI, Tesat.

For legit “space lasers”, Aetherflux wants to beam power to the surface.

I’m holding out hope that SpaceX doesn’t want to do everything. They don’t want to build all the rovers, scientific instruments, one-off or low quantity satellites, space stations, surface habs, etc.

In this case, though, getting crew to and from the lunar surface is right up their alley.

Boeing actually wants to keep SLS despite selling off some parts of their space division. SLS is still a juicy cost plus contract that they can milk no matter how slow and over budget they are.

I’m not going to do the math on these, but Orion on a New Glenn or the “Bridenstine Stack” Falcon Heavy + Centaur would be cool.

There are actually tons of nuclear power systems like this in space:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nuclear_power_systems_in_space

The only surprise is that it didn’t happen sooner

VO somehow managed to spend a billion dollars developing their little rocket. Shout-out to their Boeing exec who way overhired.

Virgin Orbituary:

https://arstechnica.com/space/2023/05/no-one-should-be-surprised-virgin-orbit-failed-it-had-a-terrible-business-plan/

Not excusing Doc, but this team probably wasn’t going anywhere either way with the old core, Middleton being out, and weak bench. They should at least be in the playoff race, though.

Kenny Atkinson would have been cool. Griffin wasn’t the answer, either.

I bet those little arms could catch a floating tube thing

I thought they had enough of a war chest to ride out the flight stoppage, but I guess not. I don’t see it with them. Tourism flights and low capacity point to point doesn’t seem like enough to sustain a real company. Blue Origin can do it because they don’t need to make money.