Cygnus XL does its best Boeing Starliner Imitation

While on the way to rendezvous with the Space Station, Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL suffered a thruster failure on Tuesday morning, September 15th.  As a result, this morning's (Wednesday the 16th) attempt to dock had to be cancelled.    

As a result, "the Cygnus XL will not arrive to the space station on Wednesday, Sept. 17, as originally planned, with a new arrival date and time under review," NASA officials announced in an update on Tuesday afternoon.
...
The Cygnus XL's "main engine stopped earlier than planned during two burns designed to raise the orbit of the spacecraft for rendezvous with the space station, where it will deliver 11,000 pounds of scientific investigations and cargo to the orbiting laboratory for NASA," agency officials added in the update. "All other Cygnus XL systems are performing normally."

It's admittedly extremely sarcastic and dark humor to compare the Cygnus XL to Starliner, especially in light of how terrifyingly bad that mission was.  If you haven't read that summary lately, you might not remember that Butch Williams, a very senior and very experienced astronaut went through more than one issue that had one of the possible outcomes being, "then the crew dies."  I don't honestly know this set of problems compares directly to how bad Starliner was, just as I don't know this set of problems is any better than Starliner's were. 

I've been watching every site I know all day for updates to the situation.  The big question (the several million dollar question) is if there's some way to get the Cygnus XL from whatever orbit it's in up to the ISS.  Is there any vehicle that can dock to the ISS docking adapter on the Cygnus XL that can then maneuver it up the ISS orbit?  Too many questions there I just can't answer. 

The cargo flights to the ISS have a rotating schedule, such that there's always a couple of cargo loads in the process of getting ready to fly.  A new cargo carrier on the schedule is from Mitsubishi Heavy Industries in Japan and JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA); called the HTV-X . The HTV-X No. 1 is scheduled to launch on an H3 rocket from Japan on Oct. 21.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s new unmanned cargo transfer vehicle, the HTV-X No. 1, is seen at the Tanegashima Space Center in Kagoshima Prefecture on June 2. Image credit: The Yomiuri Shimbun

What they didn't say about Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL

On Sunday evening, I mentioned watching SpaceX launch Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL cargo transporter to the ISS.  I watched the flight without looking up anything on this cargo drone, expecting it to be a duplicate of every other mission Grumman has ever launched.  Yeah, it was launched by SpaceX but that's not new either.  

It's not like every other mission.  As Stephen Clark of Ars Technica puts it,"Northrop Grumman's new spacecraft is a real chonker."  

... This mission, known as NG-23, is set to arrive at the ISS early Wednesday with 10,827 pounds (4,911 kilograms) of cargo to sustain the lab and its seven-person crew.

By a sizable margin, this is the heaviest cargo load transported to the ISS by a commercial resupply mission. NASA astronaut Jonny Kim will use the space station's Canadian-built robotic arm to capture the cargo ship on Wednesday, then place it on an attachment port for crew members to open hatches and start unpacking the goodies inside.

It's not unusual for things discussing size to reach for strange analogies, like expressing the size in the number of giraffes, or something equally unintelligible (to most of us).  Thankfully, they don't go quite that far to silly.  

The cargo module is 5.2 feet (1.6 meters) longer on the Cygnus XL. The full spacecraft is roughly the size of two Apollo command modules, according to Ryan Tintner, vice president of civil space systems at Northrop Grumman. Put another way, the volume of the cargo section is equivalent to two-and-a-half minivans.

"The most notable thing on this mission is we are debuting the Cygnus XL configuration of the spacecraft," Tintner said. "It's got 33 percent more capacity than the prior Cygnus spacecraft had.

I feel comfortable saying it's 1-1/3 times the capacity of the original Cygnus - at least, I find that much easier to grasp than how many more bananas or giraffes it could carry.  This is the first launch of the Cygnus XL, so they're going a bit more cautiously than a "plain old" Cygnus would warrant. 

Dina Contella, NASA's deputy ISS program manager, said engineers assessed how the larger Cygnus XL might affect the space station's thermal control and life support systems. Engineers also made sure the station's robotic arm could handle the heavier spacecraft.

"The NG-23 vehicle is packed with consumables like nitrogen, oxygen, food, and toilet parts, and it has a large number of spare parts that are required for systems like, for example, our urine processor," Contella said. The station was running low on some of these space parts over the past year. "We'd like to have a good reserve for the future," she said.

For refresher (review) of the older story, until a few years ago, Northrop Grumman launched these Cygnus cargo ships on an older vehicle of theirs called the Antares.  Antares can't fly any more because parts of it were made in Russia and parts were made in the Ukraine.  When that situation started becoming apparent a couple of years ago, Grumman contracted with Firefly Aerospace to build a next version of the Antares called the Antares 330 at the same time they contracted with SpaceX to launch three Cygnus missions for them.  The original stories claimed the new Antares might fly by the end of '24.  Obviously, we're well past that and the latest estimates are it will be by the end of 2026.   

NASA has a multibillion-dollar contract with Northrop Grumman to routinely resupply the ISS. Without a rocket of its own, Northrop Grumman inked a contract with SpaceX for three Falcon 9 launches to carry the resupply missions until engineers could develop a new, all-domestic version of the Antares rocket. Sunday's launch was the last of these three Falcon 9 flights. [Emphasis added: SiG]
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Tintner confirmed Friday that Northrop has purchased a fourth Falcon 9 launch from SpaceX for the next Cygnus cargo mission in the first half of next year, in a bid to bridge the gap until the debut of the Antares 330 rocket.

In one sense, having SpaceX launch Cygnus cargo missions is very much like "nothing much has changed" in getting cargo to the ISS.  Instead of Falcon 9s lifting Cargo Dragons and Antares rockets lifting Cygnus cargo ships, Falcon 9s are lifting everything. The important difference is the Falcon 9 can put heavier payloads in orbit than the old Antares rocket.  This allows NASA to take full advantage of the additional volume on the Cygnus XL. The combined Falcon 9 and Cygnus XL can deliver more cargo to the ISS than SpaceX's own cargo ship.  (For as long as SpaceX wants to keep the Cargo Dragon smaller).

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus XL supply ship inside the payload fairing of SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. Credit: SpaceX

Firefly Aerospace gets cleared to fly their Alpha rocket again

If you're a fan of Firefly aerospace you might remember off the top of your head a post about Firefly failing to launch a customer's payload back on April 29 of this year, and losing both the vehicle and the customer's payload on a mission called "Message in a Booster."

The US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has cleared Firefly Aerospace to resume launches of its Alpha rocket. 

During the stage separation, just after the first stage shut down and dropped away from the upper stage, the vehicle suffered an anomaly as the two stages separated, which led to the loss of the nozzle extension for the upper stage's single Lightning engine.  This reduced the upper stage thrust enough to render it unable to put its payload, an experimental satellite for Lockheed Martin, into orbit. 

Both stages splashed down into the Pacific near Antarctica, a pre-cleared safety zone, with no other property damage and nobody injured.  

The FAA oversaw the review alongside Firefly, with additional support from a board of outside experts from government, industry and the company's customers. The investigation concluded that extreme heat from a phenomenon known as plume-induced flow separation over-taxed portions of Alpha's first stage, which suffered a structural break as a result.

Investigators determined the heat buildup from the plume-induced flow separation was exacerbated by Alpha's steeper ascent angle compared to previous launches, which was needed for proper payload delivery on this mission. The combination caused the stage to rupture milliseconds after separation, which destroyed the nozzle extension on the second-stage engine.
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To prevent similar problems during future launches, Firefly will reinforce the first stage's thermal protection system and adjust flight profiles to avoid similar ascent trajectory stresses to reduce heat buildup.

With the investigation closed and modifications in place, Firefly says it is turning its attention to Alpha Flight 7. That mission will be the company's next chance to demonstrate the rocket's progress as it works to establish Alpha as a competitor in the small-satellite launch market.

Another look at the "Message in a Booster" launch. (Image credit: Firefly Aerospace/NSF via YouTube)

Well, that was a pretty enormous waste of time

The radio contest I mentioned yesterday.  As the day went by yesterday I pretty much only heard a handful of guys in the peninsula of Florida, from a guy in Miami area to one on the farthest northeast corner north of Jacksonville.  I didn't even hear the panhandle like out by Tallahassee or farther, like Pensacola or Panama City.  A review toward the end of the day showed there were a couple of short openings to around San Antonio, Texas and then around Arlington, Virginia.  Both openings were short and I didn't try to call those stations.  

This morning started out looking quite a bit busier.  I had the station on around 8AM and listened to the meteor scatter activity also on 6m.  It was busier than most of Saturday, with signals copied from around the SE US.  After not hearing any new places to work, I went back to FT8.  While the overall picture of the activity was similar to yesterday, there were no new places to work there, either.  

A rough rule of thumb for choosing meteor scatter over other modes is that meteor showers are best, and those tend to be densest in the midnight to sunrise hours.  This is primarily due to the geometry of how Earth moves through the space dust trails the comets leave, which create the meteors.  The speed at which the meteors impinge on the atmosphere and leave their ionized trails drops off after sunrise, and the few times I've dedicated a morning to making contacts thanks to some meteor shower it was unusual to get a contact after 9AM.   

Today brought more signals heard from relatively populous areas in New England, and along the eastern seaboard.  As the day went by that thinned out but didn't get replaced by areas to the west, as often happens.  As a trade-off (I guess) we did have a few countries in South America show up as it was approaching evening: Argentina, Chile and Uruguay were all heard, and all three are common and easy to contact from here.  

By the time the Cargo Resupply launch to the ISS from Cape Canaveral rolled around, we were ready for some "sit back and enjoy" time. 

From Space.com's Video From Space.

A Radio Active weekend

In the sense of "active on the radio" instead of like playing with radium or uranium or other elements that emit alpha, beta or gamma radiation.  

This weekend is American Radio Relay League's annual September VHF contest.  As you can read on that page, this is the third and final VHF contest of the year that the ARRL provides.  The other two are in January and June; like this one those two tend to be close to the middle of the month.  Without a doubt, the June contest tends to be the most active and busiest of the three.  I've written about these before, partly in effort to get more people interested in the contests and partly just to talk about things that are interesting, fun or important to me.  

For those who have seen maps signal reports spotted when it's busy, this map from around 2350 to 0000 UTC (on Sunday the 14th) will seem weird.  This is DXMaps, with the settings I use.  This only includes the most recent 15 minutes worth of "spots" (signal reports from one or both of the calls on one line).

For comparison to how it looks when it's busy, you can look at this old post.  Almost every state east of that noticeable North-South line (marked DN and DM in the big rectangles to the west) is hidden under a blob of red lines between contacts.   

My own station has heard another station outside of peninsular Florida only four times since 2PM EDT when the contest started.  That is, it heard only four different calls outside of the peninsula.  It's pretty dead.  I haven't worked a single station - I've worked these folks several to many times. 

 But hope springs eternal.  I'll be spending most of the weekend in the station. 

 

 

A bit back to normal last night

A minor anomaly this week is that SpaceX had started to attempt to launch the Nusantara Lima communications satellite for Indonesia last weekend and finally got good enough weather last night, right at the end of the possible launch windows.  When a similar thing happened a few years ago at the start of October, somebody came up with the name Scrubtober.   Maybe we should call this year's run Scrubtember?

It's somehow settling to get normalcy back.  The launch was at 9:56PM EDT.  The trajectory was close to due East, and the sounds of the booster reached us about three full minutes after ignition.  We've had launches with stronger rumbles, those that cause our back doors to rattle for longer periods.  They're always good and welcome.

This was the 23rd launch and landing for this booster, B1078, and the landing was as smooth as usual.  The satellite is headed for the Geosynchronous orbit where it will undergo testing.  Nusantara Lima is expected to start operations in 2026 after the testing. PT Pasifik Satelit Nusantara (PSN), Indonesia's first satellite-based private telecom company, will use the spacecraft to beam service to customers across Indonesia's 17,000 islands, as well as in neighboring countries.

Our next launch is Sunday evening, No Earlier Than 6:11PM EDT, when SpaceX will launch another of those Northrop Grumman Cygnus cargo spacecraft to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) contract with NASA.  If you're in southern  California, you get the next launch before ours, on Saturday afternoon, NET 9:21AM PDT.

How does "the society" make 9-11 worse?

Yesterday, Wednesday, September 10th, started out as dreary day.  The murder of that young Ukrainian legal immigrant Iryna Urutska was still leading the headlines of the day, yet as awful as that story was the day was going to get much worse, with the assassination of Charlie Kirk.  Between the two stories, the "hey, it's the 24th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks" story was almost completely pushed out of the headlines.  

I've read a cross section of the blogs today, as I assume most of you have.  Virtually everyone I've looked at is echoing the idea that the left has apparently decided that murder is an acceptable political tactic.  There's just too much of it to ignore any longer.  Online, the reactions from the left ranged from it was all Kirk's fault to "kill everyone on the right."  The Twitchy capture that's at the heart of this thread goes to three pages on X, each page full of users crying out for more murders.  JK Rowling, Matt Walsh, Trump, Ben Shapiro, Libs of TikTok (Chaya Raichik), Elon Musk, Joe Rogan, and more.

Early in the day, the FBI released these photos of a Person Of Interest, looking for information from anyone that might recognize this guy.  I just saw pictures that were higher resolution but that showed less of the person's facial details.

Photos from FBI.gov via Town Hall. 

At the end of Glenn Beck's "nine to noon" (Eastern) radio program he said he had an audio clip taken from the video of Charlie Kirk's last speech.  There was audio of the last two questions Charlie took from the crowd.  As best I can recall:

2nd to last: "Do you know how many mass shootings have been carried out by transgenders?"

Charlie:  "Too many." 

Last: "Do you know how many mass shootings there have been?"

Charlie:  "After subtracting all the gang shootings?" 

That's when the shot was heard and Charlie went down.

Combine that with reports that his Mauser, bolt-action, .30-06 was recovered along with a lot more information from things found where the rifle was found, including "engraved cartridges" that had both "transgenders are wonderful" and "anti-fascist" stereotypical phrases.  How out of touch with reality does this moron have to be to not realize saying "you don't agree with what I think government should be doing so I'm going to kill you" is about as fascist as can be? 

Brother Borepatch put together a more succinct version of my rambling.  I'd say "go read" but this is just about the whole thing.

It's the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season...

It's September 10th, or what we consider August 41st around here, but no matter what you call it, it's the peak of the Atlantic hurricane season.  There's nothing out there and that makes me happy.  You may also be aware that while it's the peak of the season, the Atlantic basin has been pretty quiet, with a couple of storms forming in Atlantic's Main Development Region (MDR) and heading north while staying well offshore the east coast of the US as well as west of Bermuda.  

The current photo grab shows a yellow blob in the MDR and a 20% chance of getting to tropical storm strength within the next 7 days.  The previous week or so was empty.  Before that and going back to the last weeks of August, it went through its color spectrum ending in bright red and a 90% chance of development within a few days, and then back through moderate chances (orange) to low chances (like this yellow) before dissipating without ever developing or making it to Tropical Storm strength.

Current National Hurricane Center plot. 

As always any bad weather of any kind is blamed on climate change but when the hurricane season goes quiet (for example), it's just weird weather.  Helene in NC last year?  Milton?  Both blamed on climate change.  It's a different subset of people than the ones blaming it on weather modification or malicious forces trying to buy up all the land so they can mine the lithium out of it.  In both cases the basic idea seems to be, "it seems abnormal to me, so it must be this instead of just plain weather" - where "this" is climate change, cloud seeding, Black Rock, the military, or whatever.

 

A plot of the number of tropical storms and hurricanes versus month and day.  Since we've had them in several years recently, note that little "late season" peak around the second week of October (I'm SWAGging around the 16th).  The other thing that's noteworthy is that while the peak is fairly sharp - especially on the rising side, the overall chance on August 1st is still higher than on November 10.  The whole curve is lopsided, rising faster, falling slower.  Hurricane season ends at the end of November.  The shape of the peak is a bit tilted and stays stronger longer on the right than on the left. 

Space X preparing for flight test 11

While there are no potential launch dates being discussed and NextSpaceFlight.com shows nothing more specific than No Earlier Than 2nd Half 2025 (which started in June), SpaceX is still crunching data from Flight Test 10 along with discussing new plans for this next test flight. 

The occasion was the American Astronautical Society's Glenn Space Technology Symposium in Cleveland held Monday, September 8, in Cleveland.  The SpaceX spokesman will probably be familiar to you, Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX executive in charge of build and flight reliability.  Gerstenmaier came to SpaceX in 2020 after a career at NASA.  He began his career as an aerospace engineer working on the space shuttles in 1977 - before the first STS mission.  He rose through the ranks at NASA to become head of the agency's human spaceflight programs before joining SpaceX. 

As we've talked about before in FT-10 posts, there were many things being studied, but the most important were the problems with Starship's propulsion and propellant systems that ruined the three previous test flights.  On top of that was data on Starship's heat shield, an array of thousands of tiles covering the ship's belly as it streaks through the atmosphere during reentry.  

"Things went extremely well," Gerstenmaier said.

A little more than an hour after liftoff, the Starship guided itself to a controlled splashdown in the Indian Ocean northwest of Australia. The ship came within 10 feet (3 meters) of its targeted splashdown point, near an inflatable buoy in position to record its final descent.  

Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability, discussed the results from Starship Flight 10 on Monday. Credit: American Astronautical Society

Nearly halfway around the world and within 10 feet of the inflated buoy seems like pretty good performance to me.  Yeah, a couple of B-2 bombers that took out Iran's nuclear program were apparently more accurate than that, but they were piloted by well-trained experts, not self-guided. 

"We were essentially doing a test to see if we could get by with non-ceramic tiles, so we put three metal tiles on the side of the ship to see if they would provide adequate heat control, because they would be simpler to manufacture and more durable than the ceramic tiles. It turns out they're not," Gerstenmaier said.

"The metal tiles... didn't work so well," he said. "They oxidized extremely nice in the high oxygen environment. So, that nice orange color, kind of like a [space] shuttle external tank color, maybe paying homage to the shuttle program, was created by those three little metal tiles up on top."

How well the tiles worked is interesting but not that important to folks like us who watch and try to understand.   More importantly, they're a good example of how SpaceX iterates and refines designs.  Metal heat shield tiles aren't a new thing; NASA was working on them when Gerstenmaier hired on there in '77. 

"I think we learned a lot by taking them to flight, and we still had enough protection underneath that they didn't cause a problem," Gerstenmaier said. "In most of the tiles, there are fairly large gaps, and that's where we're seeing the heat get through and get underneath."

A mastery of Starship's heat shield is vital for the future of the program. The heat shield must be durable for Starship to be rapidly reusable.  Musk eyes reflying Starships within 24 hours.

A (stunning) view of SpaceX's Starship rocket shortly before splashing into the Indian Ocean. Credit: SpaceX

Continuing his presentation, Gerstenmaier pointed to a patch of white near the top of Starship's heat shield. This, he said, was caused by heat seeping between gaps in the tiles and eroding the underlying material, a thermal barrier derived from the heat shield on SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft. Technicians also intentionally removed some tiles near Starship's nose to test the vehicle's response.

"It's essentially a white material that sits on Dragon and it ablates away, and when it ablates, it creates this white residue," Gerstenmaier said. "So, what that's showing us is that we're having heat essentially get into that region between the tiles, go underneath the tiles, and this ablative structure is then ablating underneath. So, we learned that we need to seal the tiles." 

An important aspect that's worth remembering is that Starships are made of stainless steel, a "special alloy" (seems to be the common description - I thought I remembered it being a 400 series stainless, but that's not enough detail to do any kind of study).  The Space Shuttles were made of aluminum.  That means the Starships can handle temperatures higher than the Shuttles could without damage.   

[...] SpaceX officials think they have a solution. Near the top of the ship, amid the patch of white, engineers noticed a few darker areas. These are places where SpaceX's ground team installed a new experimental material around and under the tiles.

"We call it crunch wrap," Gerstenmaier said. "It's like a wrapping paper that goes around each tile, and then... these tiles are mechanically held in place. They're snapped in by a robot. When we push the tile in, this little wrapping paper essentially sits around the sides of each one of the tiles, and then we cut it off on the surface."

For flight 11, the mission will be more similar to FT-10 we just had than the big words being thrown around - like "orbital".  Not this time.  We don't have a definite date, but it looks like FT-11 might make it in October and the shift to FT-12 will at least partially depend on well that goes.

"Next year, we step up to another version of both ship and booster, called V3 (Version 3)," Gerstenmaier said. "It also has a new Raptor engine underneath, with more performance than the previous ones.  So we'll fly V3 (suborbital) first, and then if that's successful, then we'll probably go orbital after that with the next V3."

That leans toward predicting an orbital flight no sooner than Flight 13.  Flight 10 was August 26th.  Saying FT-11 might be in October implies something like six to eight weeks between them with FT 12 in November and FT-13 looking to be by the end of the year.  This also matches a recent comment by Musk, who said SpaceX will likely attempt to catch and recover Starship back at Starbase somewhere around Flight 13 to 15, depending on the outcomes of the next couple of test flights.  

Where are we with SLS and Artemis after all the talk?

A week ago, we had the story of Senator Ted Cruz hosting a "save the SLS" meeting in the US Senate chambers last Wednesday, arguing that acting NASA director Sean Duffy and President Trump himself have both argued we need to make Artemis III's mission the last SLS launch because we simply can't afford to use the SLS.  Cruz argues that if we want to return to the moon in time to beat China nothing we can launch without massive and risky new development has as good a chance of getting us to the moon as SLS.  Ergo, if we want to go back to the moon we simply must pay for the SLS.  The counter argument is that with each SLS launch costing $4 Billion or more, we simply can't afford to go back to the moon.

From the beginning, the second Trump administration has sought to cancel the costly, expendable rocket. Some officials wanted to end the rocket immediately,  but eventually the White House decided to push for cancellation after Artemis III. This seemed prudent because it allowed the United States the best possible chance to land humans back on the Moon before China got there, and then transition to a more affordable lunar program as quickly as possible.  

In response, Ted Cruz added money to NASA's budget (via the "One Big Beautiful Bill" ) to ensure that Artemis IV and Artemis V flew on the SLS rocket, with the promise of additional missions.  

It might be surprising that after the release of their budget proposal back in May, calling for the end of the SLS rocket, the White House and NASA have been quiet.  

However, that changed last week, when interim NASA Administrator Sean Duffy addressed the issue on a podcast hosted by one of the agency's public relations officials, Gary Jordan:

Here is my one concern. If Artemis I, Artemis II, and Artemis III are all $4 billion a launch, $4 billion a launch. At $4 billion a launch, you don’t have a Moon program. It just, I don’t think that exists. We have to bring the price down. And so I have to think about and work with members of Congress. What does Artemis IV, V, and VI look like? But to spend that much money in thinking about what we have to do to have a sustained presence, I think becomes very, very challenging.

Duffy went on to say that since the private sector started advancing the launch industry, a company that wants to put a satellite in space can do it for prices that were unimaginable as little as 20 years ago (still the Shuttle era).   

Duffy clearly argues that the SLS rocket is unaffordable and that any lunar program built around it cannot be sustained for more than a few flags-and-footprints missions. Instead, he says, the agency should be taking advantage of commercial alternatives (which are being developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin). 

I think it's not terribly uncommon for two sides that realize neither of them gets anything they want to sit down and see what they can agree about.  In this case, Ted Cruz's bill says NASA must procure and operate the Space Launch System for Artemis IV and V missions, but it doesn't specify the configuration of the vehicle.  

I don't know how many times I've mentioned that SLS has always been designed with an upper stage option called the Exploration Upper Stage, and that in keeping with the rest of the SLS, it has never been built, never been tested, and nothing associated with it has ever come in "on schedule and on budget" - let alone ahead of schedule or under budget.  So in the budget, instead of saying to buy the SLS,  the House Appropriations Bill calls for the space agency to "evaluate alternatives" to the Exploration Upper Stage.  "Evaluate alternatives" is a wide open door to modify the SLS plans.

One of these, as Ars reported last year, is the Centaur V upper stage built by United Launch Alliance, which is already flight-proven.  Another option is a "short" version of the upper stage Blue Origin currently flies on its New Glenn rocket. Sources indicated that Blue has already begun work on a modified version of the stage that could fit within the shroud of the SLS rocket. This smaller version of the stage, like the Centaur V, would allow NASA to continue launching the SLS rocket using the existing launch tower in Florida.  

But wait.  It gets a bit funnier.  

By canceling the Exploration Upper Stage and second launch tower, NASA could save more than $1 billion annually, which could be applied to other aspects of the Artemis program to ensure its success both in the near and longer term. It would give the Trump administration the talking points it wants on making Artemis more affordable and allow Congress to continue flying its beloved SLS rocket for a few more missions.

Finally, it would buy time to see whether SpaceX and Blue Origin can get their Starship and New Glenn rockets flying regularly and whether NASA can bring down the cost of a partly commercialized SLS rocket. At that point, the future of NASA's deep space program, and the rockets it should use, will be clearer.

A posted NASA graphic of SLS versions. The Block 1B Crewed version features the Exploration Upper Stage while the version that launched in November of '22 is the one shown on the left here. 
This was posted here around 8 months before that Artemis 1 mission flew.

This is something I've never posted about before

And probably never will again.  As a general rule I don't pay much attention to how many readers I've gotten or how many followers I have.  A crude explanation is I don't think I have much control over that.  Keep writing and keep posting.  

Within the last couple of weeks, I noticed I was getting more page views some days.  Some days there were 1500 views and 2000 would be a very popular post.  Other days were getting 20,000 and up into the 40,000s.  It was mostly on popular topics (of course), and I was getting close to having had 10 million total page views here in the 15th year of the blog's life.   I thought it was going to make 10 million last night, but it didn't and that's honestly part of why I did the "three sigma" (far from normal) post last night.  

It made it today.  

Screen snip off this PC with a couple of red, comma-like things added to show the number when I grabbed it was 10,019,164.  That was 7:45 PM EDT, 2345 UTC on September 7.  Which has no traceability to the time when the total went over 10,000,000.  The middle box on the top says I have 5379 posts, making this one #5380.  I've posted when I hit some big round numbers of posts before like 4000 and 5000 but not every thousand.   

I think posting something like this is probably a good way to know I had nothing else.  But that belies that Starbase Boca Chica static fired a booster today, Booster 15, supposedly chosen for Flight Test 11.  We hear rumors that FT-11 will be going more quickly than the 9 to 10 delay.  

Now for something I haven't done in a long time

This evening over dinner Mrs. Graybeard and I did something we haven't done in quite a while.  We used our streaming subscription to Disney+ to watch a movie we didn't catch in the theater, the new Marvel Cinematic Universe movie based on characters that have been cast since the Infinity War, and End Game movies about Thanos killing half of humanity.  It's called Thunderbolts: The New Avengers.   

If you've been a reader for a while, you know I like movies that aren't serious human drama.  I had enough Shakespeare in school and enough real life drama years ago.  No typical, Hallmark-channel, romantic comedies, and not much in the way of dramas that don't involve sci fi, whether that means a super hero movie or some programmed super soldier like a Jason Bourne.  As a general rule, I've liked comic book movies, although I've liked the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU) more than the DC movies.  

I've said many times that Thor: Ragnarok has been my favorite of the Marvel movies and just tons of lighthearted fun - for a topic as serious as the end of the world for Thor's planet, Asgard.  There really hasn't been one that I think unseats Ragnarok, but that's not to say none of the newer MCU movies have been enjoyable or fun.   

With a couple of exceptions, all of the characters in Thunderbolts are familiar from other theatrical movies or streaming series in the last few years and of those exceptions only one major character is completely new addition to the MCU.  The main characters are Yelena Belova played by Florence Pugh a role she first played in Black Widow, Bucky Barnes by Sebastian Stan, Alexei Shostakov who is Yelena Belova's father played by David Harbour, John Walker by Wyatt Russell, and Ava Starr by Hannah John-Kamen.  All of these actors/characters have been in at least a few movies except I think Hannah John-Kamen was only in one movie, Ant Man and the Wasp (AKA Ant Man 2) as someone who could slip between universes.  The one completely new major character is Robert Reynolds (pretty much just called "Bob") played by Lewis Pullman. 

Without getting into too much detail the movie is about them coming together to form a new team.  All of them have problems they need to work with (or around).  All of them talk about depression and the hard, lonely lives they find themselves in.  They have a big problem to solve, caused by another actor and character in previous movies, Valentina Allegra de Fontaine played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus a Washington DC insider who's trying to get more power for herself by using other people.  

The main "New Avengers" from a publicity shot.  Left to right: Ava Starr (Hannah John-Kamen), Bob Reynolds (Lewis Pullman), John Walker (Wyatt Russell), Alexei Shostakov (David Harbour), Yelena Belova (Florence Pugh), Bucky Barnes (Sebastian Stan)

Image credit: Marvel Cinematic Universe

While the movie had its opening in theaters in the June time frame, and played in theaters for a while, I don't know if it was considered a success.  ScreenRant considered it one of the 10 best movies of '25, with most of the year past.  Like I said, we watched this on Disney+ which is part of our streaming service, Hulu, so it was no money out of pocket to watch.  We're paying for these things no matter what.  To my mind it was a respectably good movie and like the writer at ScreenRant, I think it's evidence Marvel movies have recovered.  I'll grade it a B.  

Small Space News Story Roundup 65

This time from Ars Technica's Rocket Report, Space.com and DefenseNews. 

Rocket Lab unveils Neutron launch complex

As Rocket Lab proceeds with design, prototype build and testing of their Neutron rocket, work has also been progressing on having its first launch facility ready, which is on Wallops Island, Virginia, DefenseNews reports. 

The novel booster, called Neutron, is Rocket Lab's newest and the company's first purpose-built reusable rocket to tap into the medium-size satellite launch market. The first flight is expected by the end of 2025 from the company's new pad, Launch Complex 3, which Rocket Lab CEO Peter Beck officially opened for business on Thursday (Aug. 28). 

We've been talking about Neutron since Peter Beck first announced the rocket in 2021 and there's lots here if you want to go back and read some older posts.  While he acknowledges it's a big hurdle and there's not a nanosecond worth of slack in the schedule, Beck says they plan to launch the first Neutron mission before the end of this year.  "Nobody’s waving the white flag here until the last hour of the last day." 

Rocket Lab's new launch complex at Wallops Island is part of the company's growing footprint in Virginia. (Image credit: Rocket Lab) The launch mount is that large dark-colored hexagon with red trim, center of the image.

Cargo Dragon mission CRS-33 demonstrates lifting the ISS' orbit

As talked about here on Monday, August 25th, the cargo dragon used for mission CRS-33 carried a prototype of system that will be used to turn a Dragon craft into the US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV).  You may recall that the contract for the USDV was awarded to SpaceX in June of '24.  The basic problem is that due to various factors, the atmospheric drag on the ISS varies over time which then lowers the orbit.  Various systems have been used to raise the ISS orbit regularly; first the Russian Progress cargo vehicle, then Northrop Grumman’s Cygnus vehicle, launched by their launch vehicle and then their Cygnus capsules lifted into space by SpaceX.  

SpaceX’s first such test happened on Nov. 8, 2024.

And on Wednesday, Dragon's efforts got the station to an orbit of 260.9 by 256.3 miles (419.9 by 412 km), according to NASA. 

"The new boost kit in Dragon will help sustain the orbiting lab’s altitude through a series of longer burns planned periodically throughout the fall of 2025," agency officials added in the statement.

(I sure wish they'd given us before and after numbers for that 260.9 by 256.3 mile orbit.  We just know it was supposed to be a low power model of the eventual system.) 

The CRS-33 Dragon is expected to stay at the ISS until late December or early January, at which point it will head back to Earth loaded with experimental data and some discarded items from the ISS. The splashdown zone will be near coastal California.

FAA green lights SpaceX to build two new landing zones

Over the course of the last couple of years, the Cape Canaveral Space Force Station changed their rules on the use of landing zones, like SpaceX has used for years as (Landing Zone 1 and 2) LZ-1 and LZ-2.  With the increased pace of operations on the Cape, it would help minimize the number of disruptions to other launch complexes if the couple of launch providers that are planning to recover boosters would put a landing zone next to their launch pad.  SpaceX would have to construct two new pads, one next to SLC-40 and one next to LC-39A.  The way I interpret that, there will also need to be landing pads next to the Starship launch pads as well - if they don't qualify by using the "chopsticks" on the launch tower for everything.  

This Wednesday, FAA also gave the green light for SpaceX to construct and operate a new rocket landing zone at SLC-40 and conduct up to 34 first-stage booster landings there each year. The landing zone will consist of a 280-foot diameter concrete pad surrounded by a 60-foot-wide gravel apron. The landing zone's broadest diameter, including the apron, will measure 400 feet.  

The location of SpaceX's new rocket landing pad is shown with the red circle, approximately 1,000 feet northeast of the Falcon 9 rocket's launch pad at Space Launch Complex-40.  Credit: Google Maps/Ars Technica

SpaceX is not as far along in preliminary design for Launch Complex 39A, within a couple of miles northwest of SLC-40. 

SpaceX uses LC-39A as a launch pad for most Falcon 9 crew launches, all Falcon Heavy missions, and, in the future, flights of the company's gigantic next-generation rocket, Starship. SpaceX foresees Starship as a replacement for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, but the company's continuing investment in Falcon-related infrastructure shows the workhorse rocket will stick around for a while. 
...
The new landing locations at SLC-40 and LC-39A will replace Landing Zones 1 and 2, nearly 10 miles to the south. SpaceX landed its last rocket at Landing Zone 1 (LZ-1) last month but will continue using Landing Zone 2 for now. Bill Gerstenmaier, SpaceX's vice president of build and flight reliability, told reporters in July that the company is working with the Space Force and NASA to determine the "right time" to move out of Landing Zone 2.

As mentioned, LC-39A is the primary launch site for Crew Dragons, and Falcon Heavy missions.  Ars points out that there are no Falcon Heavy launches in the schedule until the second half of '26 - pretty much a year from now.  Making a concrete landing pad sounds like the kind of thing SpaceX could get done in a month, if not a weekend, although some amount of waiting for the concrete to cure and reach full strength seems like it would be in there somewhere.   

The Space Force reallocated the land around LZs-1 and 2 to a pair of small rocket companies in 2023. The two companies, Vaya Space and Phantom Space, will share the property, originally known as Launch Complex-13 when it was used for Atlas rocket launches from 1958 until 1978.

Neither company is within a year or two of launching from the Cape.  

Note that the small number of landings for the landing zone at SLC-40, 34, doesn't have much to do with SpaceX's stated goal of 170 launches this year.  About a third of the 170 will be from Vandenberg, while the majority of booster landings have always been on offshore drone ships.  Return to launch site landings are pretty rare.  

SpaceX to start making their own fuel supply

If SpaceX is going to launch as often as they say they want to, there's a big problem they need to address.  We got a hint about this in Flight Test 10 - after two days being scrubbed because of weather, on the third day, the coverage team said if it couldn't launch on that day, they couldn't try again the next day.  The cryogenic fuel and oxidizers were used up and it takes many days worth of deliveries to refill their tanks.  

Let's start with what seems to be a very obvious disconnect here.  SpaceX has spent years and millions on the building called Starfactory, that was designed to produce one Starship per day.  That's nothing short of an astounding number.  Remember the talk before FT-10 about "the machine to build the machine?"  That's Starfactory.  But what about the fuel?

Tanker trucks have typically delivered rocket propellant to launch pads at America's busiest spaceports in Florida and California. SpaceX has used the same method of bringing propellant for the first several years of operations at Starbase.  There are tons of reports that the road to Starbase those tanker trucks take are falling apart with potholes and cracked pavement everywhere. 

But a reusable Starship's scale dwarfs that of other rockets. It stands more than 400 feet tall, with a capacity for more than a million gallons of super-cold liquid methane and liquid oxygen propellants. SpaceX also uses large quantities of liquid nitrogen to chill and purge the propellant loading system for Starship.

It's not just Starship's size. SpaceX has the green light from the Federal Aviation Administration to launch Starships up to 25 times per year from South Texas, and is seeking regulatory approval to fly up to 120 times from new launch pads on Florida's Space Coast. Eventually, SpaceX eyes daily launches of Starship, or even more, as the company deploys a fleet of ships traveling to low-Earth orbit, the Moon, and Mars. 

To accommodate one Starship launch, more than 200 tanker trucks traveling from distant refineries are needed to deliver all of the methane, liquid oxygen, and liquid nitrogen.   Now imagine one launch every hour for a full day.  4,800 trucks?   I'll just say can't be done.  Ain't gonna happen. The answer SpaceX chose is to create their own fuels.

The company recently received approval from local authorities to build an air separation plant across the highway just north of the Starbase launch pads. Construction of the plant began this summer. Once operational, this facility will take in air, condense it, and separate it into oxygen and nitrogen. The resulting liquid oxygen and liquid nitrogen will flow about 1,000 feet through a pipeline into ground storage tanks at the launch site.   

This, of course, is only part of their needs.  There's no mention of fuel (methane).  

The answer to this problem is a pair of methane liquefaction facilities to convert natural gas—initially delivered by truck or a future pipeline—into pure liquid methane, and eventually, a methane generation plant co-located with Starbase's dual launch pads. 
...
A public notice released by the US Army Corps of Engineers on August 27 describes SpaceX's plans, and an accompanying map illustrates the changes coming to the Starbase launch site. 

This map published by the US Army Corps of Engineers shows SpaceX's proposed expansion at Starbase. The launch site's existing footprint is in blue, and SpaceX's proposed expansion is in white. Credit: US Army Corps of Engineers

The plans for the Kennedy Space Center are behind this level of completeness as the launch facilities are behind the Starbase, Texas level of completeness, and the Corps of Engineers is soliciting comments and feedback on the plans.

Plans for Starship's future launch pads in Florida, still undergoing environmental reviews, show SpaceX intends to produce its own propellant there, too. The Army's public notice for SpaceX's plans at Starbase didn't include any details on how the air separation unit and methane liquefaction facility will work. But a draft environmental impact statement published by the Federal Aviation Administration last month lays out how SpaceX will bring the on-site propellant generation capability online at NASA's Kennedy Space Center.

In the interest of keeping this to be a shorter read, I've left out much of the commentary that's in the original story at Ars Technica.  As always, you'll get more details out of the original story than I excerpt.

A New Meeting in Congress to "Save the SLS"

I feel like I should be doing a disclaimer here: I swear I'm not making this up.  While I've regularly referred to the SLS as an abbreviation for the "Shuttles' Leftover Shit" that's a relatively new version of that acronym.  Before that it was known as the "Senate Launch System" - as in "it only exists because enough Senators were bought."  My proof I'm not making this up is the link to Eric Berger's story at Ars Technica.   

All of the original US senators who created and sustained NASA's Space Launch System rocket over the last 15 years—Bill Nelson, Kay Bailey Hutchison, and Richard Shelby—have either retired or failed to win reelection. However, a new champion has emerged to continue the fight: Texas Republican Ted Cruz.  

The only surprising aspect of Ted Cruz taking over to fight to keep SLS is that fact that he's considered to be a conservative, but the bitter truth is that SLS is good for the recipients of the billions of dollars spent on an SLS launch and he's simply doing the same things that Bill Nelson, Kay Bailey Hutchison, Richard Shelby and hundreds of senators down through time have done: he wants to take taxes from people in all 50 states to pay for government programs that benefit only a small percentage of his constituents.  

Now Cruz is taking a position that makes this seem like a small thing.  He's selling it as the only way we can beat China to the moon.   

Earlier this year, Cruz crafted the NASA provision tacked onto President Trump's "One Big, Beautiful Bill," which included $10 billion in funding for key space programs, and in two notable areas directly undermined White House space policy goals.

As part of its fiscal year 2026 budget, the White House sought to end funding for the Space Launch System rocket after the Artemis III mission, and also cancel the Lunar Gateway, an orbital space station that provides a destination for the rocket. The Cruz addendum provided $6.7 billion in funding for two additional SLS missions, Artemis IV and Artemis V, and to continue Gateway construction.  

In various addresses and statements this year, Cruz has emphasized that his priorities for NASA are to beat China to the moon and start permanent settlements there.  I think I can agree with the priorities, it's how he plans to do it that give me heartburn.  I consider every penny spent on SLS to be as close to absolute waste as we can get short of melting them down and throwing out the zinc and while we might need to use SLS for the next launch or two, we can't get rid of SLS fast enough for me.  And by the way, that $6.7 billion for two more Artemis launches probably isn't enough, since a number closer to $4.5 billion per launch is regularly thrown around. 

This week, Cruz will hold a hearing titled, "There’s a Bad Moon on the Rise: Why Congress and NASA Must Thwart China in the Space Race." It is scheduled for 10 am ET on Wednesday.   

If you go to the link in that paragraph, you'll see that while the hearing is scheduled for September 3rd, the rest of the website is dated August 27, the Wednesday before the hearing.  One of the "interesting" developments in who will be attending since that notice is that all attendees who had links to the commercial space world have been dropped or uninvited.  

It's conceivable - though hard to believe - that Ted Cruz thinks NASA is doing this by themselves with the major contractor of SLS, Boeing with no commercial space involvement at all.  He would have to be remarkably uninformed to not realize the both SpaceX with Starship and Blue Origin with their Mark II have been contracted to deliver lunar landers.  Not coincidentally, both Starship and Blue Origin's New Glenn are reusable - unlike SLS.  That means both Starship and New Glenn are likely to be able to launch to the moon more often than SLS, which so far hasn't been able to meet a launch date for its first crewed launch, Artemis 2.  As you'll recall Artemis 1 launched in November of '22, so we're coming up on a three year turnaround and the advertised date is next spring, so more like 3-1/2 years between launches.

Another spaceflight advocacy organization, the Space Frontier Foundation, said it is healthy for Congress to have a robust debate about how the country should compete with China on the Moon. However, to do so, there should be a wide variety of viewpoints.

"The topic of our country’s strategy for competing for this new territory on the Moon, not just for the first footprint but the longer-term impact, is extremely important," said Sean Mahoney, executive director of the foundation. "We need better than just window dressing. We need an honest, realistic discussion about the costs, the risks, and the alternatives. It’s too important for this to just be something that gets a little bit of attention and then pushed through." 

I couldn't agree more.

This is the launch vehicle for Artemis II, photo from their factory in New Orleans before it was shipped to Florida.  One of the Shuttles' Leftover engines had to be replaced, bottom right in this picture.  Image credit: NASA

Labor Day 2025

Welcome to Labor day, or as we refer to it this year: August 32nd, the earliest Labor Day there can be. The chances of rain tomorrow are being put at 70% so rather than smoking something, we'll be having a pretty typical meal like we do every day, on our regular keto way of eating.  Since it seems the vast majority of stores are open, I could use to make a run to the nearest Office Supplies store for a printer ink cartridge.  Yeah, I know that's exciting.  

One of the reasons I shifted away from writing about the political/social side of life that so many fellow bloggers talk about all the time is that it's such an odd combination of important, and yet insanely boring to talk about all the time.  I get tired of the same handful of stories all the time, even if "all the time" simply means today or this week.  "Someone somewhere" decides what the story of the week is going to be and we get bombarded with versions and derivatives of that group of stories until the next story of the week gets chosen.  I get bored with seeing them on TV, I get bored with hearing them, and I get bored writing the same things.  

One of the things that's in the pile of stuff that cycles by endlessly are trade unions.  While Florida has been a "right to work" state for my entire working life, both Mrs. Graybeard and I worked in places where union membership might have not been legally required, rather it was more like a necessary evil we had to put up with.  

I know I've written this concept down before and won't bother linking to myself, but I've been involved with specifying components the company I was working for was going to buy long enough to realize that companies don't buy anything without negotiating a price.  You may get an offer for $X dollars and be insulted or you may be grateful, but in things I was involved with, we might buy components that were custom designed for us that both the component sellers and we the buyers would negotiate a price for.  Unions started in negotiating working conditions, classically hours of work versus pay per hour.  It may not seem fully logical at first glance but while I personally don't want to work in a unionized workplace, I can see the argument for having a professional negotiating your pay.  The argument against that is you have to pay the negotiator, too.  

The advent of unions was complicated immediately by violence.  The first blood spilled by union activists apparently goes back to the Haymarket Square massacre in 1886, in which:

... striking union workers threw a bomb at Chicago police, killing eight police officers and countless civilians, after being incited to their lethal rampage by socialist Samuel Fielden (not unlike how Marty Lamb was beaten after the crowd of unionists was inflamed to violence by “progressive” Rep. Capuano) [Note: explanation of the Rep. Capuano reference in that linked article just above - SiG]

Because of their enormous influence in the Democratic Party, unions have specifically gotten themselves exempted from laws the rest of society must follow.  You probably know about the exemptions from the anti-trust laws, and extortion laws, and that they tried to exempt themselves from Obamacare.  This is an exceptionally brief introduction to the history of union violence against anyone they regard as "in their way."  

Unions are progressively more desperate because membership in non-government employee unions has been dropping since the late 1950s.  Only government workers' unions are growing, where no true negotiation takes place because there are no parties at the table risking anything.  Unions like the NEA, AFT and the SEIU are the beneficiaries of fat government contracts.  They get more union dues which they siphon off to contribute to getting Evil Party politicians elected who will negotiate new, fat contracts with them.  Of course an alternate way of saying that is unions only survive where there isn't a free market but the expenses they cause are paid for by the taxpayers or society at large and don't come out of the pockets of the negotiators on the other side of the table.  

Despite the rhetoric, the unions aren't trying to make anyone's lives better except for their own.  If members get some crumbs that make their life better, that's nice.  For the non-unionized workers, who have to pay them their higher wages, too bad.  As the saying goes, FUJIGM.  

Well, this is wandering far off the topic of celebrating Labor Day, so I hope you have an enjoyable day no matter how you celebrate or mark the day.   

Sunday Morning Live - SpaceX's 9th Starlink Launch of the Month

Sunday Morning, currently No Earlier Than 7:49 AM EDT (1149 UTC), SpaceX will launch 28 satellites on the Starlink 10-14 mission. 

Spaceflight Now's live video coverage here starts at 6:49 AM.  Probably.  It's honestly hard to know because SpaceX just moved the launch from 7:20 to 7:49 a little while ago and I just modified all the times I'd previously written to the current, latest times.  Which kind of assumes they don't change again and we all know that's not absolute.

All told in 2025, following the deployment of the 28 satellites on the Starlink 10-14 mission, SpaceX will have deployed more than 1,900 of its Starlink V2 Mini satellites into low Earth orbit across 77 Falcon 9 launches.

The Starlink satellites will ride on top of booster B1077 which is in the "very experienced" group.  This will be its 23rd trip to space and back.  The landing drone ship for the flight is Just Read The Instructions, which will be stationed off the coast of South Carolina.  

SpaceX plans to launch at least 170 Falcon 9 rockets across 2025, with the majority of those supporting its Starlink constellation. Sunday’s launch will the 108th of the year.  As we start the last four months of 2025, that's the last third of the year.  It seems that implies 2/3 of the year has passed and a reasonable guess at how many they do in a third of the year is half of that 108, or 54 launches.  Another 54 on top of the 108 gets them to 162.  My WAG on that is that they're close and probably can make it, but it's not an absolute gimme.   

During the prelaunch coverage of Starship Flight 10, SpaceX said in a pre-produced video that roughly two-thirds of all operational satellites in orbit are Starlinks. Cornelia Rosu, the senior director of Starlink Production, said in the video that SpaceX is producing dozens of Starlink V2 Mini satellites weekly at its facilities in Redmond, Washington.

“Generally satellite manufacturing is a very slow process. It takes people weeks or months to build a satellite,” Rosu said. “At SpaceX, we iterate very fast and we have learned how to build satellites at a 70 sats per week rate.” 

You can watch that video just referenced at the Spaceflight Now article or here on X.  

Fleet leader B1067 after Thursday morning's mission to put up another 28 Starlink Satellites. 

Combining Starship FT-10 and the record reuse of B1067...

SpaceX had an epically good week.  We're rather used to that, and it's good to see again.   

A couple of us exchanged comments on the Starship's orange color to the FT-10 entry yesterday,  but Eric Berger at Ars Technica did some deep diving on the subject today.  

This color—so different from the silvery skin and black tiles that cover Starship's upper stage—led to all sorts of speculation. Had heating damaged the stainless steel skin? Had the vehicle's tiles been shucked off, leaving behind some sort of orange adhesive material? Was this actually NASA's Space Launch System in disguise? 

This is rather important because of the nature of the heat shield testing SpaceX had targeted doing on this flight.  We got some answers on Thursday from SpaceX on X.  You see, when the Starship landed within a few feet of the "target" where a  buoy was prepared to photograph the landing, there was also a drone flying in the area and some great pictures came from that.   

A (stunning) view of SpaceX's Starship rocket shortly before splashing into the Indian Ocean this week. Credit: SpaceX

This is where the discussion we had here in the comments came from; in particular a link to Elon Musk on X saying:

Worth noting that the heat shield tiles almost entirely stayed attached, so the latest upgrades are looking good!

The red color is from some metallic test tiles that oxidized and the white is from insulation of areas where we deliberately removed tiles.

There is no "official" explanation that I'm aware of that covers the apparent explosion in the engine bay that clearly damaged things in there.  It just doesn't appear to have affected the landing approach or the landing itself. 

Damage to the engine bay and one of the vehicle's flaps can be seen clearly in the new photographs. This did not appear to impact what was a soft and precise landing in the Indian Ocean, but obviously it was not nominal.

So, with this new information, what does it mean for SpaceX's plans to test future Starship vehicles? What follows is a mixture of informed guesswork and reporting. It is also very notional because SpaceX is known to change its plans rapidly in response to new data. So take this information with a pinch of salt.

Berger goes on to list what he expects to happen for Flight Tests (FT) - 11 through 20.  Eric's expecting FT-11 to be No Earlier Than October, and for it to be the last flight of a version 2 Starship.  He expects FT-12 to be the first flight of a version 3 Starship and to occur after the first of the year.  Musk said recently somewhere in the range of flight 13 to 15, the first flight to attempt to catch the Starship would likely take place.

Somewhere between FT-15 to -20, we will probably see the first attempts at orbital refueling.  Probably in the second half of '26. 

As Berger says about taking this with a pinch of salt, expect changes.  

I can't ignore my lead-in reference to the 30th flight of B1067, because it leads into a side story that resonates with me.  Remember when we thought 10 flights would be amazing?  And then they went past 10 and got to 20 so we started wondering out loud how long they could keep a booster going?  Now that good old B1067 has flown 30 times, what now?  Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX's vice president of launch, said on X, "40 is the current goal."  Until 1067 does her 40th flight and then it becomes 50. 

A pet observation someone gave me once was, "when you do things no one has ever done before, you learn things no one has ever known before."  No one has ever made an orbital class rocket that has flown 30 times.  How can we know if they can make 50?  Just keep inspecting after launches and keep track of everything.  

I started getting interested in SpaceX when I learned about some of the bold ambitions and goals that Musk was talking about.  Yesterday, Eric Berger did a different piece on Ars Technica talking about what the industry was originally calling SpaceX's "dumb approach" to reuse.  I find it hard to believe a bunch of intelligent engineers wouldn't recognize that his "dumb" approach just flew the same booster 30 times and nobody else has gotten remotely close to that.  

The company first made a controlled entry of the Falcon 9 rocket's first stage in September 2013, during the first flight of version 1.1 of the vehicle.  This was over two years before their first successful landing on one of the concrete "Landing Zones" on Cape Canaveral.  If nothing else, that landing validates their approach to design.  I remember the launch, the landing and posting that I watched it.

In the United States, the main competitor to SpaceX has historically been United Launch Alliance. Their reaction to SpaceX's plan to reuse first stages a decade ago was dismissive. The company's engineers wrote papers (pdf warning) and performed studies that argued SpaceX's plans were impractical.

Almost one decade ago, to the date, United Launch Alliance began sharing a graphic that demonstrated its approach—to separate only the engine section of the Vulcan rocket—was superior. The company dubbed this approach SMART, an acronym for Sensible Modular Autonomous Return Technology. The implication in this name, of course, is that SpaceX's booster flyback approach was dumb.

According to the United Launch Alliance analysis in 2015, the SMART plan would result in cost savings as soon as the second launch of a booster. SpaceX's approach, by contrast, would require 10 flights for there to be any cost savings.

One imagines that those engineers never dreamed that, a decade later, SpaceX would fly the same rocket 30 times and reach an annual launch cadence that approaches the total number of rockets United Launch Alliance has flown during its 20-year existence. As for SMART, it remains a theoretical concept.