As usual, a couple of items I found of interest this week - while looking for something interesting to share.
United Launch Alliance's Decatur, Alabama unit, basically the home of the Space Launch System (NASA's SLS) had a historic vote in Mid-February: for the first time ever, 100% of the votes agreed to go out on strike if negotiations got to that point. In the typical contract year, that number is more like 90%. TV station WAFF48 carried their local story.
Every three or four years, the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers Local Lodge 44 Union negotiates a contract with United Launch Alliance. Union members vote ahead of time with the intent to see who is willing to go on strike if they can’t reach a fair contract. Union President David Story says usually 90 percent or more vote ‘yes.’ This time every single member said yes.
He says they feel taken advantage of. “Roughly two decades we have made concessions on every contract,” said Story. “We’ve given up pension, retiree healthcare, in some classification, we’ve agreed to a $20 per hour pay cut in the last contract to stay competitive with Space X.”
Union President Story went on to say the vaccine mandates were the last straw, because the company agreed that certain people could be exempted from the mandates, then broke that agreement almost immediately firing 13 people. Story says the union members feel the company treats them like dirt, doesn't treat them as the contracts stipulate, and workers are fed up with it.
They went out on strike the last time they negotiated their contract in 2018. That strike lasted two weeks. Before that, the most recent strike had been over a decade earlier in 2005.
RocketLab, the SmallSat launching company with big ambitions, announced they had completed their second launch complex on the Mahia Peninsula in New Zealand, home of their first launch pad. They later expanded to Wallops Island, Virginia for a second launch site, and this gives them a third pad. At the moment, it looks like the pad will get its initiation tomorrow, with a launch on February 28th at 2035 UTC (3:35PM EST) of the StriX β synthetic aperture radar satellite for Synspective, a Japanese Earth-imaging company.
Two Electron rockets on the pads at Mahia Peninsula. RocketLab
photo. Pad B is in the foreground.
There has been talk for a few years that the small satellite launching
business is heading for some sort of shakeout. There's a lot of
competition and not much money to be made carrying the small payloads that
colleges and small companies develop. RocketLab has apparently been
among the leaders - if not the leader - of the smallsat launch business and also announced an expansion
that may well help assure they're one of the survivors.
Last Thursday, the company announced that they are entering the satellite manufacturing business. More precisely, the company signed an agreement that it will help to build 17 satellites for MDA Globalstar.
Rocket Lab will lead the development of the spacecraft buses, while MDA will act as prime contractor to manufacture Globalstar’s satellites, lead the development of the payload, and perform the final satellite assembly, integration, and test. The partnership between Rocket Lab and MDA brings together two of the space industry’s most innovative satellite companies. The total initial contract value for Rocket Lab is US$143 million, with options to provide the satellite operations control center, launch dispensers, launch integration, and up to nine additional spacecraft with flexibility in timing to order such spacecraft. The satellites will integrate with and replenish Globalstar’s current constellation, ensuring service continuity. Globalstar expects to launch the satellites by the end of 2025.
All 17 of the 500kg spacecraft will be designed and manufactured at Rocket Lab’s Long Beach production complex and headquarters, where a new high-volume spacecraft manufacturing line is being developed to support growing customer demand for Rocket Lab satellites.
Don't forget that Rocket Lab is also developing a reusable launch vehicle, the Neutron, which will be closer to the Falcon 9 in its payload capacity. They are working several angles to keep the business thriving into the future.
Ah, unions. Great timing. Perfect time to use the union strike as a way of extorting more fedmoney from FedGov. Or a great excuse to shut the whole thing down for 5 more years or such.
ReplyDeleteAs to Rocketlabs, good for them. There's plenty of opportunities if regulators allow the opportunities to exist.
Weird note, there are groups of professional and amateur astronomers who are actively working on stopping the 'proliferation of near earth objects' because it's 'ruining' their view?
I've seen some of that. Likewise, there's an International Dark Sky Association dedicated to stopping the indiscriminate use of lights at night: shopping centers, car dealerships, streetlights, you name it. I think that's a bigger threat than satellites even if there are thousands up there.
DeleteThe satellites can only appear in the picture when they're lit (duh!) and that's only during the times of day when the sun is still visible at the satellite's altitude but it's dark on the surface. What that does is cut down on the time available for long exposures to less than pretty much all night. I'm sympathetic to that but I know that a photographer doesn't have to be with the camera the entire length of the exposure (once your system is working), and the pros are never out with their cameras the entire night, so I don't see it as a real showstopper.
There's so much stuff up there now that most nights you can go out an hour after sunset and see all sorts of moving objects. This adds clutter during that same time period.
On the other note, seriously, if SLS were to be on strike, could we tell?
OMG, SLS on strike, would that mean something would actually get done, since strikes tend to do the opposite of what is normal (like stop working when people are working...)?
DeleteULA is clearly not keeping up with the times and to an extent taking it out on their workers.
ReplyDeleteThose kind of concessions are the Hallmark of a failing company...
Of course. They are half Boeing, half Lockheed Martin. Both companies are known for employee abuse, and both are failing.
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