A typical Friday - in the world of the space industry

Today, of course, is the long-awaited and much-ballyhooed Black Friday - subject of at least a billion ads. In the corner of the world I like to keep track of, there were two things of note.  

• SpaceX launched the Transporter-15 Ride Share mission from Vandenberg this morning at 10:44 AM PT. SpaceX reports this was the 30th flight of Booster B1071. At 2345 UTC, SpaceX reports it had deployed all 140 payloads designed to separate from the rocket.
• In the aftermath of Thursday's Crewed Soyuz launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, which successfully carried Roscosmos cosmonauts Sergei Kud-Sverchkov and Sergei Mikayev, as well as NASA astronaut Christopher Williams, to the orbiting laboratory without incident, Roscosmos discovered some substantial damage to the launch pad. 

In a terse statement issued Thursday night on the social media site Telegram, the Russian space corporation that operates Soyuz appeared to downplay the incident: “The launch pad was inspected, as is done every time a rocket is launched. Damage to several launch pad components was identified. Damage can occur after launch, so such inspections are mandatory worldwide. The launch pad’s condition is currently being assessed.” 

Ars Technica is passing on additional reports to that quoted paragraph. 

However video imagery of the launch site after liftoff showed substantial damage, with a large service platform appearing to have fallen into the flame trench below the launch table. According to one source, this is a platform located beneath the rocket, where workers can access the vehicle before liftoff. It has a mass of about 20 metric tons and was apparently not secured prior to launch, and the thrust of the vehicle ejected it into the flame trench. “There is significant damage to the pad,” said this source.

While Russia has "plenty of launch pads" in Russia, Kazkhstan and former republics of the USSR; the issue is that Site 31 at Baikonur is the country’s only pad presently configured to handle launches of the Soyuz rocket and the two spacecraft critical to space station operations: their manned Soyuz vehicle and their unmanned Progress cargo drones.  

I get the feeling from reading what I can find is that I don't particularly doubt Roscomos' ability to fix the pad, and they say they have adequate spare parts to do it all. The issue is more along the lines of anything that might require more support from the government, which is rather tied up with their Ukraine issues. Much of that centers around the Progress cargo drones' trips to the ISS. Progress remains the only cargo vehicle to the ISS that seems rated to correct the ISS' orbit. SpaceX did that minor experiment recently that lifted the ISS but nobody that I saw would say they could take over for the Russians.  

Technicians work on the pad in Baikonur with the fully fueled Soyuz rocket. Credit: NASA TV

When I first ran into these stories I thought, SpaceX launched 140 ride sharing satellites, on the 30th flight of that booster, and it seemed impossibly easy, while Roscosmos almost lost the launch pad because someone didn't attach a 44 thousand ton (20 metric tons) service platform properly.  

Final words to Eric Berger at Ars Technica - as I often do:

The at least temporary loss of Site 31 will only place further pressure on SpaceX. The company currently flies NASA’s only operational crewed vehicle capable of reaching the space station, and the space agency recently announced that Boeing’s Starliner vehicle needs to fly an uncrewed mission before potentially carrying crew again. Moreover, due to rocket issues, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 vehicle is the only rocket currently available to launch both Dragon and Cygnus supply missions to the space station. For a time, SpaceX may also now be called upon to backstop Russia as well.