The Race Is On...

Between China, India, SpaceX and others...

Within the past week we have seen India's Mars probe exit Earth orbit and successfully transition to its outbound trajectory, China launch its Moon rover set to arrive in a few days and SpaceX put its first commercial satellite into geosynchronous transfer orbit.  And here the US government is sitting with its thumb up its keester...

With the hope for US space ambitions firmly in the hands of the private sector SpaceX is our leading hope.  With today's 100% successful launch SpaceX has completed its second of three required successful launches in order to become eligible for US Military and other government agency work.  While SpaceX has a big backlog of commercial work ahead of it, opening up another revenue stream is never a bad thing.  Nor is getting a big satellite to a position about 1/9 of the way to the moon.  Only bigger and better things to come from SpaceX as they will continue to expand and build upon their run of success lately...

Is it so wrong of me to hope for the Chinese rover to impact the Moon at some uncontrollable rate, disintegrating on impact??   At some point if all these entities continue on their courses, SpaceX interests will conflict with Chinese or Indian interests...will the US be strong enough or willing enough to protect its own private enterprises since it no longer seems willing to protect itself or its interests in space??

SpaceX Completes First GTO Mission...

Orbital Launch This Morning...

Only about an hour and a half till Orbital Sciences begins its attempt to be come the second private company to launch a docking capsule to the ISS.  SpaceX performed the feat about a year ago and is continuing to do so on behalf of NASA while Orbital has taken a different tack and is just now completing its final demo flight.

The Antares rocket to be launched this morning at 10:50 AM (hopefully) will carry with it about 1/2 its "normal" payload and contain only non-essential items.  If this launch and docking is successful, NASA will clear Orbital to begin full missions later this year.  This would give NASA (and the US) two separate options for getting equipment/supplies/experiments to the ISS and one (SpaceX's Dragon system) for returning items safely.

The differences between the two systems is striking.  Orbital uses a Russian derived rocket that is propelled by only two engines while SpaceX's design uses nine.  The SpaceX design allows for the shutdown of two of the engines and can still complete its mission--not so with the Orbital design.  In fact, the design of the Orbital engines dates back to Russia's ill fated attempts to compete with NASA's Saturn rockets.  Additionally, while the SpaceX system can actually dock and return items safely to Earth, Orbital's design is not reusable and is designed to burn up on reentry (though this does allow for garbage disposal missions from the ISS).

Two very different ideas but one goal--to get the US back on a regular scheduled with the ISS.  I have one favorite company in my heart and one favorite company for my bank account (I own some Orbital stock) but I'm rooting for both of them to succeed.  Photos here are of (above) Orbital's Antares rocket on the Wallops Island site preparing for today's launch and a rendering of Orbital's capsule approaching the ISS.  The launch can be watched on Space.com

SpaceX Grasshopper--A New High!

SpaceX has continued, beyond its efforts in getting cargo to the ISS with its Dragon launch vehicles, to develop its Grasshopper vertical take off and landing rocket.  They've been taking it nice and slow with each little hop getting higher and higher.  This past week's launch took the Grasshopper up to some 263 feet, performed a brief hover and then returned to its launching pad without a hiccup or wobble.

The article states that SpaceX is developing the Grasshopper in order to reduce launch costs BUT that reusable launch vehicles have often been MORE expensive than disposable ones due to the extra protection/weight that is required.  To me this is a false argument as all prior reusable vehicles have been developed on the premise of an extremely fast reentry necessitating all the additional heat shielding and either glider or capsule reentry design.  With a VTOL launch vehicle you reduce the reentry speed to zero and eliminate all the extra gear needed for the friction protection.  Its a new model of launch and reuse, time to rethink basic assumptions.

SpaceX Grasshopper launch...