Space News Roundup

As usual, a roundup of smaller stories that don't justify more than a paragraph or two:

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NASA's Artemis/SLS is supposed to roll out from the VAB to pad 39B for the second round of attempts at a Wet Dress Rehearsal on Monday, June 6th.  I don't know what their weather requirements are, but Monday is looking to be clear of the (still) potential tropical storm one.  If current predictions work out, PTC1 should be close to Bermuda by Monday morning and their forecast looks like a typical summer day with a chance of isolated showers.  First motion is scheduled for 12:01 a.m. EDT on June 6, so what most people think of as Sunday night at midnight.  The trip to the pad takes from around eight to as many as 12 hours. 

Artemis/SLS on the way to the launch pad on March 17th, for the first attempts at the WDR.

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SpaceX is making good progress installing all 33 Raptor 2 engines on Super Heavy Booster B7.  It has been about 23 days since B7 was rolled back to their Shipyard area, specifically to their new Wide Bay, after being repaired and re-tested with cryogenic gases for a couple of days.  SpaceX hasn't, as best as I can determine, released any totals of what has already been installed.  On June 1st, however, Elon Musk Tweeted that,"All Raptor 2 engines needed for first orbital flight are complete & being installed."  We just don't know how many are installed and if anything worth watching is going to be happening soon.  There are "possible road closures" listed for Monday through Wednesday, from 10AM to 10PM on the County website for the purpose.  Could we see them roll B7 out to the launch area? 

You might recall that last August, Booster 4 had all 29 of its Raptor engines installed at the rate of about one per hour.  Teslarati columnist Eric Ralph reminds us that they then had to spend more time installing heat shielding between the engines.

For Super Heavy Booster 4, which was inexplicably never static-fired, installation of all 29 of its Raptor 1 engines took just a few days, but the installation of a heat shield around those engines took at least a few weeks.

They've also made progress on Starship SN24 since I posted on Tuesday that she wasn't going anywhere any time soon.  Yesterday, they started retesting SN24 after the repairs and Musk took the time to tweet that she passed.  I don't know how much more testing is in order, but they clearly fix things faster than I'm used to.

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Finally, from the business side, this story from this week's Rocket Report from Ars Technica raised my eyebrows a little.

The US Space Systems Command has identified which eight national security space launches were funded in fiscal years 2022 and 2023, Space News reports. Of the eight missions, five were assigned to United Launch Alliance and three to SpaceX, the two companies that in 2020 won the National Security Space Launch Phase 2 launch services procurement contract. As part of that agreement, overall, ULA was guaranteed 60 percent of launches over a five-year period, and SpaceX 40 percent.

Twice the money ... The five missions for ULA will all launch on the Vulcan rocket, which has yet to launch for the first time. The three SpaceX missions will all launch on the Falcon 9 rocket. Col. Douglas Pentecost, Space Systems Command deputy director of launch enterprise, told the publication that ULA’s task orders for the five missions are worth $566 million, and SpaceX’s orders for three missions are worth $280 million.

It's not fair to compare the cost per flight without knowing if the Falcon 9 could perform the missions that the Vulcan perform (and we don't actually know the Vulcan can fly), however... ULA's launches are $566/5 or $113.2 million per launch, while SpaceX's are $280/3 or $93.3 million per launch.  We don't know if those missions will fly on flight-proven boosters, but my guess is the National Security launch folks wouldn't do that just yet.