September 4, 2023

Korean Payload to Head to Moon on U.S. Lander (Source: Korea JoongAng Daily)
A domestically-developed space payload will be loaded onto a U.S. lunar lander slated for launch next year, Korea's Ministry of Science and ICT said Monday, as the country picks up its pace in the new space race. Named the Lunar Space Environment Monitor (Lusem), the payload will embark on its mission atop the unmanned lunar lander Nova-C by Intuitive Machines, a Houston, Texas-based spacecraft developer, as part of a NASA-led Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) project.
 
The Nova-C will then be carried into space on SpaceX’s Falcon-9 sometime around the end of 2024, to land in the low-latitude Reiner Gamma region on the lunar nearside. (9/4)

SpaceX Launches Starlink Satellites From Cape Canaveral Spaceport (Source: WESH)
Sunday night, SpaceX launched 21 Starlink satellites from the Kennedy Space Center. The Falcon 9 launch took off from Launch Complex 39A. SpaceX says this is the first stage booster's 10th flight. During the mission, the first stage booster landed on a droneship after the stage separation. (9/4)

Musk Dominates Commercial Space - Some Think That’s a Problem (Source: The Hill)
Some people in the federal government want Elon Musk to be taken down a peg. A recent piece in the New Yorker notes the increasing disquiet some in Washington feel toward Elon Musk. Musk wields too much power for a single, private individual, in the view of many people inside the Beltway. SpaceX’s monopoly in human space flight and its launch service is the result of that company’s development of reusable rocket technology.

SpaceX can charge far less than its potential competitors because it recovers and reuses the first stages of the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy launch vehicles and its Dragon spacecraft. Boeing’s Starliner, the other commercial crew spacecraft, is years behind schedule, as is Blue Origin’s New Glenn launch vehicle. Rocket Lab has made some strides by recently reusing one of its rocket engines.

Editor's Note: During the '80s, '90s and '00s, legacy DoD/NASA contractors were awarded hundreds of millions for rocket reusability projects. Most focused on adding wings for jet powered or gliding returns to the spaceport. A decade later, only SpaceX thought to add landing legs and weapons-heritage grid fins, and reserving fuel for landing burns. I believe the complacent legacy contractors (along with NASA and DoD) deserve as much blame as SpaceX deserves credit. (9/3)

Space Junk Is On the Rise, and No One Is In Charge of Cleaning It Up (Source: Ars Technica)
With more countries landing on the Moon, people back on Earth will have to think about what happens to all the landers, waste, and miscellaneous debris left on the lunar surface and in orbit. People think of space as vast and empty, but the near-Earth environment is starting to get crowded. As many as 100 lunar missions are planned over the next decade by governments and private companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin.

Near-Earth orbit is even more congested than the space between Earth and the Moon. It’s from 100 to 500 miles straight up, compared with 240,000 miles to the Moon. Currently there are nearly 7,700 satellites within a few hundred miles of the Earth. That number could grow to several hundred thousand by 2027. Many of these satellites will be used to deliver Internet to developing countries or to monitor agriculture and climate on Earth. Companies like SpaceX have dramatically lowered launch costs, driving this wave of activity.

“It’s going to be like an interstate highway, at rush hour in a snowstorm, with everyone driving much too fast,” space launch expert Johnathan McDowell told Space.com. Scientists argue that to avoid a tragedy of the commons, the orbital space environment should be seen as a global commons worthy of protection by the United Nations. The UN can regulate the activities of only its member states, but it has a project to help member states craft national-level policies that advance the goals of sustainable development. (8/31)

Splashdown! NASA's SpaceX Crew-6 Astronauts Return to Earth Near Jacksonville (Source: Florida Today)
A SpaceX Crew Dragon capsule carrying three astronauts and one Russian cosmonaut splashed down off the coast of Jacksonville, wrapping up NASA's SpaceX Crew-6 mission early Monday. The re-entry could be seen by many across the southeast United States. Between 12:05 a.m. and 12:17 a.m. EDT Monday, the Dragon Endeavour capsule arced across the night sky over the Gulf of Mexico and central northeast Florida, generating largely harmless but sometimes startling sonic booms that could be heard across the state. (9/4)

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic Problem (Source: Spectator)
Branson’s project has suffered years of delay and catastrophe. In 2014, a test pilot was killed when an experimental flight suffered a catastrophic breakup during a test flight and crashed in the Mojave Desert. Another pilot was seriously injured. Virgin Galactic has uncanny parallels to Armando Iannucci’s TV series Avenue 5, starring Hugh Laurie, captain of a spaceship operated by an accident-prone space tourism business headed by megalomaniac billionaire Herman Judd.

Around 800 people have supposedly reserved tickets for the Virgin Galactic experience, which includes a few minutes of weightlessness after a one-minute rocket ride. Prospective celebrity astronauts include Leonardo DiCaprio, Tom Hanks, Russell Brand, Angelina Jolie, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. The price, originally $200,000, has now increased to $450,000, perhaps due to interminable delays and cost overruns. In 2004, Branson predicted Virgin Galactic would begin commercial flights in 2007. He was out by 16 years.

Virgin Galactic has around $980 million cash on hand. But at the current burn rate, it will run out of money in less than two years. This math is unlikely to change in the near future. Even if Virgin Galactic can maintain the tempo of flying into space every four to six weeks or so, it will lose a fortune. Each of these flights only carries three paying customers. Since a chunk of the spacecraft’s engine must be replaced after every flight, these missions are operating at a loss. (9/4)