Trevor Mahlmann/Ars Technica
Welcome to Edition 6.16 of the Rocket Report! Lots of news here today about big rockets, including a push by SpaceX to speed up launch licensing by the Federal Aviation Administration. The full-court press in Washington, DC, comes as the company says its Starship rocket is ready for a second flight test but still awaiting final regulatory approval. The earliest the launch could now occur is during the first half of November.
As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don’t want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.
Virgin Galactic to fly sixth mission in six months. The California-based suborbital space tourism company announced this week that its “Galactic 05” mission will take flight as early as November 2. Such a flight would continue Virgin Galactic’s impressive monthly cadence of flying its VSS Unity spacecraft this year. This flight will carry researchers who will use the interior of the space plane as a lab for research.
Some notable passengers … I’m especially excited about Galactic 05 because two of the passengers are acquaintances. Alan Stern is the planetary scientist who led the New Horizons mission to Pluto and is seeking to perform suborbital astronomical observations. Earlier this year, he told me it was significantly cheaper to fly experiments on VSS Unity than it is for NASA to buy a sounding rocket. Another researcher on the flight, Kellie Gerardi, is someone I’ve gotten to know over the last decade through her advocacy of commercial space. She was kind enough to write a blurb for my book on the origins of SpaceX, Liftoff. Safe travels to both!
Small launch companies struggle with Falcon 9 prices. Industry executives say SpaceX’s dominant position in the launch market is making it difficult for small rockets to compete, Space News reports. In a panel at the Satellite Innovation conference on Tuesday, executives said Falcon 9 Transporter missions have had a “hugely chilling” impact on the small launch industry that struggles to compete on price. “They definitely control and have a dominant position in the market,” said Curt Blake, former chief executive of launch services company Spaceflight, who now leads the commercial space group at law firm Wilson Sonsini, of SpaceX. “I think the real question is pricing, and what is their cost, and why so low, so dramatically low?”
Cornering the market? … SpaceX started offering rideshare launch opportunities for smallsats as low as $5,000 per kilogram. The company has since raised those prices to $5,500 per kilogram and plans annual increases in future years. However, in most cases, those prices are far below what dedicated small launch vehicles offer. “I don’t think they had to go that low to have a commanding share of the market,” Blake said, estimating SpaceX could have gained significant business at prices of $10,000 to $12,000 per kilogram. “That had to have a hugely chilling effect on any other money flowing into startup launch companies. (submitted by Ken the Bin)
Industry unites for extension of learning period. There are three US companies now capable of flying people into space—SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic—and representatives from those three companies told lawmakers Wednesday that the industry is not yet mature enough for a new set of federal safety regulations for their customers. A nearly 20-year moratorium on federal regulations regarding the safety of passengers on commercial human spaceflight missions is set to expire on January 1, Ars reports. In a report submitted to Congress on September 29, the FAA said it believes the United States is ready for the sunset of the moratorium.
More time requested … “The FAA will work together with industry and other US government agencies to establish a new safety framework for space transportation providing for the safety of the crew, government astronauts, and spaceflight participants,” FAA officials wrote in the report. But officials from SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic, the three companies active in the commercial human spaceflight arena, were in lockstep during a Senate hearing. All agreed the moratorium on human spaceflight regulations should be extended. It was scheduled to lapse at the beginning of October, but Congress added a three-month extension to a stopgap spending bill signed into law to prevent a government shutdown.
