SpaceX flies 30th mission of a Falcon 9 booster - the new record

This morning (Thursday 8/28) at 4:12 AM EDT (0812 UTC) SpaceX's fleet leader, B1067 flew for the record-breaking 30th mission, launching Starlink mission 10-11, delivering another 28 Starlink V2 Mini broadband internet satellites into the low Earth orbit constellation.  The launch site was Pad 39A on the Kennedy Space Center side of Cape Canaveral.  Close to 8 minutes 30 seconds after liftoff, B1067 landed on the drone ship ASOG - A Shortfall Of Gravitas.  This was the 122nd landing on ASOG and the 495th overall booster landing to date.  

With 30 successful missions, it's hard to come up with a short summary of B1067's life, but it's inevitable reporters would try.  From Spaceflight Now's summary:

The previous missions for B1067 include two astronaut flights, two cargo missions to the International Space Station and 18 batches of Starlink satellites. 

A short post, but only news for a day or so.  The previous Falcon 9 mission was yesterday (Wednesday) morning at 7:10 AM EDT (1110 UTC) from SLC-40 on Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, and the next launch will be from Vandenberg SFB (Space Force Base, not station) Friday night at 11:09 PM EDT (0309 UTC).

I've never written a fan letter at all, let alone to a rocket, but I almost could.

As the flight 10 data starts to pour in ...

As the data on yesterday's test flight starts to release, I don't see reporting of anything new that could be signs of bad outcomes along the way.  The flight test seemed to be entirely as planned.  

For the first time, SpaceX engineers received data on the performance of the ship's upgraded heat shield and control flaps during reentry back into the atmosphere. The three failed Starship test flights to start the year ended before the ship reached reentry. Elon Musk, SpaceX's founder and CEO, has described developing a durable, reliable heat shield as the most pressing challenge for making Starship a fully and rapidly reusable rocket.

And there were lessons to learn from Tuesday's test flight. The ship made it all the way to the Indian Ocean intact, arriving next to a prepositioned buoy northwest of Australia, where it was just after sunrise Wednesday morning at the time of splashdown. A camera on the buoy showed the ship slowing down before contacting the water, then tipping over and exploding as expected.

Today, though, I got to see something I didn't see watching the mission.  The Starship changed color in flight, so that it looked rather orange right before landing in the Indian Ocean.  It's quite noticeable here; I'm rather confident that area was a dull silver like the stainless steel alloy that it is at launch 66 minutes earlier.  

Starship 36 settles down to reach zero velocity at the surface of the Indian Ocean. As expected, as soon as the engines were shut down, the ship tipped over and exploded. Image credit: SpaceX 

This article was published at 10:48 AM and by that time, no SpaceX officials talked about this and whether or not it was expected.  It could be an effect of the thermal environment the ship goes through during reentry, and remember that the flight had many experiments planned for the thermal protection systems. 

Those of us familiar with the Space Shuttle era remember seeing the Shuttles covered in white and black tiles.  The Thermal Protection System on the shuttles was not a slam dunk engineering success, where a set of tiles was installed on a shuttle and with the odd exception of hitting some piece of space junk leading to replacing a small number of tiles, it was close to zero maintenance.  In reality, tile damage was a regular occurrence throughout the 30 year shuttle program with tile repairs and replacements being done between every pair of missions of every shuttle.  

SpaceX is working on the same problems today.  Musk mentions thousands of tiles peeled off of the space shuttle Columbia when NASA first flew the orbiter on top of its modified 747 carrier aircraft in 1979.  For the desired "rapid reusability" targeted for Starship, that sort of repair and replacement after every flight isn't reasonable.  

"We are confident in making a fully reusable orbital heat shield but it will require many flights, many iterations to figure out where the weak points are in the heat shield, where we need to change the design, either strengthening the tile or changing how big the gap is between tiles, or changing what’s underneath the tile," Musk said in a discussion broadcast on SpaceX's official livestream of Monday's Starship launch countdown.
...
"The space shuttle heat shield would come back essentially partially broken and would require many months of refurbishment in order to fly again," Musk said. "What we’re trying to achieve here with Starship is to have a heat shield that can be reflown immediately."

These are deep subjects, but not easily linked to the Flight Test 10 mission.  As always, there's no such thing as knowing too much.  SpaceX had a great day yesterday, one which it seems they were overdue  to have.  It's just that they have a lot of things they need to get working properly soon.  Starship won't make it to the moon without refueling in space, which means that has to be worked on soon, maybe even before they finish with the thermal protection systems.  The first refueling test missions were penciled in for this year but that isn't looking very likely as we're virtually in September already.  That requires more than one flightworthy Starship. 

OK - THAT was incredible

Starship Flight test 10 was simply incredible.  Going into the mission we knew they were testing far more than just getting Ship 37 to a suborbital flight and lots of things we might consider negative outcomes could simply mean a test of some idea was concluded.  Maybe the results were positive, maybe they were negative, we simply won't know but at the end of the flight, when Ship 37 landed on its tail in the Indian Ocean then exploded it was obvious that the mission was the big win that we were saying SpaceX needed.  

We watched the launch, watched the booster to see if it could land vertically in the Gulf, which it did before it exploded.  Thousands of degrees temperature difference between the engines, hardware and the Sea Water will do that.  That was followed almost immediately by the deployment of 8 mockups of Starlink satellites up at the Starship on its suborbital flight.  The last time we were close to watching that, the door to the "Pez dispenser" wouldn't open because some air in the ship's body generated enough pressure to keep the door closed.  So the simple fix was to drain the air out of the ship through another port before trying.  Looked excellent.

Once the Starlink satellites (size and weight mock-ups) were in Space, attention turned to the ship re-entering.  We got very good views of that whole process, part of which was to test different heat shield materials and ways of applying them.  I expected the hull to burn through in places, but I only saw some molten areas in corners of the flaps, like we did on last year's Ships.  

The ship never lost control and looked as stable as a building - going 25,000 km/hr.  We'll have to wait a bit for SpaceX's content to hit, but this video contains the full flight.  To help you reduce your time looking for the big events, the launch is around the middle of the slider bar (which gives times from the end of the video not from the start) and the end of the mission is around 66 minutes after the launch. The mission timer in the upper left corner is more valuable than the video slider bar at the bottom.

This is around the last fraction of a second of this booster's life. Screen capture from the NASA Spaceflight video. Image credit: SpaceX

CRS-33's Dragon capsule isn't your average Cargo Dragon

Buried so deeply in the mission details about the Cargo Dragon launched yesterday that I didn't see it anywhere is that this isn't a standard Cargo Dragon.  This Dragon contains a scale model test system for the one that will enable the ship to kick the International Space Station out of its orbit and send it to its destruction on re-entry.  The modified Dragon with the full-sized engine system is going to be called the US Deorbit Vehicle (USDV) and is expected to be needed in 2030 or the early 2030s. 

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 and that lowers the orbit over time.  Yes, there's still atmospheric drag at the altitude of the station, primarily because the atmosphere can expand and contract over time.

Responsibility for maintaining the station's orbit has historically been borne by the Russian space agency, which had the sole capability to reboost the ISS after NASA retired its space shuttle fleet in 2011. Russia's Progress cargo freighters often use their own thrusters to raise the lab's altitude or steer it out of the way of space junk. What's more, Progress ships can refill propellant tanks inside the station's Russian command post, giving the outpost the ability to perform its own maneuvers when necessary.

Historically, Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft first demonstrated its ability to raise the station's orbit in 2022.  There are a couple of problems with using the Cygnus - the current big problem that gets them out of consideration is that Cygnus can't fly because their launch vehicle depended on Russian engines.  That's the root cause of why SpaceX is flying Cygnus CRS missions to the ISS.  

As always, it's more complicated than that, including that Cygnus has to dock in a different place than Cargo Dragon can, and Dragon actually nets some more positive effects from that.  Dragon, though, suffers most from using small thrusters.  It just simply needs "more power."   

When NASA asked SpaceX to modify Dragon for larger reboosts, engineers devised a new propulsion pack to be placed inside the hollow trunk of the spacecraft. This unpressurized compartment is mounted below the craft's pressurized cargo cabin, and it's where SpaceX usually carries larger experiments that are robotically attached to the outside of the ISS.

For this mission, SpaceX installed two additional Draco thrusters into the spacecraft's trunk. The small rear-facing rocket engines are closely aligned with the station's velocity vector, and they're connected to six dedicated propellant tanks in the trunk containing hydrazine and nitrogen tetroxide, combustible fluids that ignite upon contact with one another.

"Our capsule's engines are not pointed in the right direction for optimum boost," said Sarah Walker, SpaceX's director of Dragon mission management. "So, this trunk module has engines pointed in the right direction to maximize efficiency of propellant usage."

A look inside the Dragon spacecraft's trunk shows six propellant tanks covered in silver insulation and a central helium pressurant tank overwrapped in black carbon. Credit: SpaceX

From the way it's discussed, it doesn't sound like there's a specific planned date for this test.  When a desired time is decided on and all is ready, the Draco thrusters will gently accelerate the massive 450-ton complex.  It's calculated that the reboost kit can add about 20 mph, or 9 meters per second, to the space station's orbital speed. It doesn't sound like much, but they quote analysis saying it's the same speed-up contributed by "one-and-a-half Russian Progress cargo vehicles."  

I'm sure verifying those calculations and their underlying assumptions are what this mission is all about.  After all, they're planning to splash that 450-ton behemoth into deep water.  It would be a Very Bad Thing to accidentally crash it into a big city because the calculations were wrong. 

EDIT TO ADD 8/26/25 0905: Link in the first paragraph to the source article on Ars Technica

It wasn't a total waste of a day to SpaceX

Just because the big test was scrubbed, it's not like they had a day off.  

This morning at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, SpaceX launched a Cargo Resupply Service mission to the International Space Station.  The mission called CRS-33 lifted off at 2:45 AM EDT (0645 UTC) on August 24, 2025, from SLC-40.   The booster on this flight, B1090, has flown six times: O3b mPOWER-E, Crew-10, Bandwagon-3, O3b mPOWER 9-10, and two Starlink missions.  In my book, six previous missions is as good as new - or better - and has flown often enough to be seen as proven to be known good.  CRS-33 is the third flight for this Dragon spacecraft, which previously supported the CRS-26 and CRS-29 missions.

This is a time-compressed video, only 2:11 long, but shows launch, a couple of highlights and the booster landing on A Shortfall Of Gravitas, or ASOG.

The CRS-33 dragon capsule is scheduled to autonomously dock to the ISS at 11:30 UTC (7:30 AM EDT). 

On the eve of the next big Starship test flight

While they seem a little against the limits here - it's less than 24 hours before the scheduled launch and Ship 37 hasn't been stacked on its booster - it's hard to think of a group that gets more done faster and better in the industry.   

The summary I posted eight days ago (Friday August 15) still seems good.  The big picture converges on a couple of other posts; the first one is here in a piece that focuses on SpaceX's approach to design; Elon Musk's Five Laws of Manufacturing.  I'll edit it aggressively and re-post it here:

1. Make the requirements less dumb. The requirements are definitely dumb; it doesn't matter who gave them to you. ... “No matter who you are, everyone is wrong some of the time.” ... “all designs are wrong, it’s just a matter of how wrong.”
2. Try very hard to delete the part or process. If parts are not being added back into the design at least 10% of the time, not enough parts are being deleted.
3. Simplify and optimize the design.  Don't optimize something that shouldn't even be there.
4. Accelerate cycle time. 
5. Automate.  If a product is reaching the end of a production line with a high acceptance rate, there is no need for in-process testing.

The other one takes a good look at how SpaceX has implemented these laws, in a provocatively entitled article, "SpaceX has built the machine to build the machine. But what about the machine?"  

It dances around the topic that building the production factory is both more important and more difficult than building the rockets.  Ponder this one for a moment:

The ultimate goal of this factory is to build one Starship rocket a day. This sounds utterly mad. For the entire Apollo program in the 1960s and 1970s, NASA built 15 Saturn V rockets. Over the course of more than three decades, NASA built and flew only five different iconic Space Shuttles. SpaceX aims to build 365 vehicles, which are larger, per year. 

You've seen Starships - the current revision is taller than the Saturn V, and has more than twice the thrust.  The next version will be bigger.  The goal with the SuperHeavy isn't just reuse, launching after a month of refurb; it's rapid reusability.   They've talked about using them for transoceanic travel, like an airliner; go anywhere on the globe in less than 90 minutes.  The model is something like a monstrously powerful version of a Boeing 747. 

Naturally with three flights that ended with three mission failures, along with the loss of another ship on the test stand, it's reasonable to ask if the "machine to build the machine" was built correctly.  Berger's response is that his sources in the company think it was.  He goes on to add:

They are frustrated by the run of problems this year, but they believe the fundamental design of Starship is sound and that they have a clear path to resolving the issues. The massive first stage has already been flown, landed, and re-flown. This is a huge step forward. But the sources also believe the upper stage issues can be resolved, especially with a new "Version 3" of Starship due to make its debut late this year or early in 2026.

The acid test will only come with upcoming flights. The vehicle's tenth test flight is scheduled to take place no earlier than Sunday, August 24. It's possible that SpaceX will fly one more "Version 2" Starship later this year before moving to the upgraded vehicle, with more powerful Raptor engines and lots of other changes to (hopefully) improve reliability.

It's an old saying in sports that "winning solves a lot of problems."  SpaceX really needs a win.  They've been unable to progress on any of the other big problems they've been working on, such as orbital refueling, which has to work to enable Starship - AKA the Human Landing System - to even get out of Earth orbit and to the moon.  They need to test the ideas for cryogenic fuel storage in space.  Landing an unmanned Starship on the moon belongs in the list as well.  Quite possibly, the inability to work on these things (and more) is the biggest problem resulting from the months of bad luck this year.  

Starbase at night, with a SuperHeavy booster in transport along the curved road. Image credit: SpaceX

I should mention that within a half hour of my writing that the ship for Sunday Evening's launch hadn't been stacked yet, I went back to the (Lab Padre) live feed and the Starship was in the last few feet of being lifted to stack on the booster.   That was over an hour ago.

Small Space News Story Roundup 64

SpaceX launches its 100th, no, 101st, no - wait, 102nd Falcon 9 of the year 

Don't wait too long or you'll miss more.

SpaceX launched its 100th Falcon 9 rocket of the year Monday morning, 101st was the USSF-36 (launch of the X-37B) on the 21st from Cape Canaveral SFS, SLC-40; 102nd was this morning (the 22nd) from SLC-4E at Vandenberg.  103 will be Sunday morning at 2:45 AM.

You get the picture.

 That's quite a cadence ... The Monday morning flight was a notable milestone for SpaceX. It is just the second time in the company’s history that it achieved 100 launches in one calendar year, a feat so far unmatched by any other American space company, and it is ahead of last year's pace. Kiko Dontchev, SpaceX's vice president of launch, said on the social media site X, "For reference on the increase in launch rate from last year, we hit 100 on Oct 20th in 2024. SpaceX is likely to launch more Falcon 9s this year than the total number of Space Shuttle missions NASA flew in three decades.

This is the 34th week of 2025, so I won't count Sunday morning's 103rd launch of the year. Their 102 launches in 34 complete weeks is 3 launches per week.  This is Falcon 9s and doesn't include Falcon Heavy or Starship test launches.   

Canadian University Students Carry Out Canada's first launch in this century

It's very easy to think a country like Canada has an active space program; they're technologically advanced, all of us old enough to remember the Canada remote arm on the shuttles know they've done things that went to space.  I was a bit surprised to read a team of college students launched a suborbital mission - which didn't actually succeed.  

Students from Concordia University cheered and whistled as the Starsailor rocket lifted off on Cree territory on August 15, marking the first of its size to be launched by a student team, Radio Canada International reports. The students hoped Starsailor would enter space, past the Kármán line, which is at an altitude of 100 kilometers, before coming back down. But the rocket separated earlier than expected. The livestream can be seen here.

Persistence is thy name ... This was Canada's first space launch in more than 25 years, and the first to be achieved by a team of students, according to the university. Originally built for a science competition, the 13-meter tall rocket was left without a contest after the event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Nevertheless, the team, made up of over 700 members since 2018, pressed forward with the goal of making history and launching the most powerful student-built rocket.

A solar eclipse two years from now has started making headlines 

I just want to put this out there in case you haven't heard of this, but the solar eclipse on August 2nd, 2027 is starting to attract attention.  Why?  It will have the longest totality in the 21st century, peaking at 6 minutes and 23 seconds at the best point along the path.  (I've seen 6:22, 6:23 and 6:27 for the duration.  I went with the "Willie Nelson" version - the one in the middle.)   The longest period of totality is on the centerline of the path, and this map shows the center line and peak eclipse (in red).

It may be hard to read this but if you click it to embiggen it, you can see the peak looks to be in Southern Egypt.  

If traveling to southern Egypt is something you might want to do you should probably start looking into this some more.  The first place I saw an article on this (sorry - don't remember when/where) had links to several places that are arranging tours, and I expect that field to enlarge as progressively more people find out about this eclipse.   

Firefly Aerospace in talks to launch Alpha rocket from Japan

On Monday, Space Cotan Co., Ltd., operator of the Hokkaido Spaceport (HOSPO), announced it entered into a memorandum of understanding with the Texas-based launch company to conduct a feasibility study examining the practicality of launching Firefly’s Alpha rocket from its launch site.   

Hokkaido Spaceport is located on the island of the same name in northern Japan, in an area called Taiki Town.  The Spaceport bills itself as “a commercial spaceport that serves businesses and universities in Japan and abroad, as well as government agencies and other organizations.” It advertises launches from 42 degrees to 98 degrees, including Sun-synchronous orbits.  

The Spaceport is reported to have room for two launch complexes designed to support the launches of small, orbital-class rockets.  Which implies that Firefly will fund the construction of the launch complexes.  

“Firefly will continue to expand our responsive launch capabilities to meet the growing demand of the satellite market across the globe,” said Adam Oakes, Vice President of Launch at Firefly Aerospace in a statement. “We look forward to exploring the opportunity to launch our Alpha rocket from Japan, which would allow us to serve the larger satellite industry in Asia and add resiliency for U.S. allies with a proven orbital launch vehicle.” 

The "Big Picture" view of Firefly is a little tough to summarize.  They had the great results with their lunar lander, becoming the first private company to successfully to do so when they put their Blue Ghost lander on the moon this past March 2nd.  On the launch vehicle side, their results haven't been particularly good.  All six of Firefly Aerospace’s Alpha rocket launches so far took off from Space Launch Complex 2 at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.  Of the six, the Alpha has logged two successful flights.  Half of the remaining four ended up in the wrong orbit, and the other two failed to reach orbit at all.

Meanwhile, Firefly Aerospace also has its sights on bringing its launch capabilities to Europe. Specifically, they are working alongside the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC) towards launching from the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden.

Most recently, a Technology Safeguards Agreement was signed on June 20 at the Embassy of Sweden in Washington D.C.. The agreement between the two countries creates the technical and legal apparatus to allow U.S. rockets to launch from Swedish spaceports.

Firefly Aerospace launches its sixth Alpha rocket from Vandenberg Space Force Base on April 29, 2025. Image: Trevor Mahlmann / Firefly Aerospace

Add to that overall summary of the company that the industry seems to think well of them.  Back on August 7, they did an initial public offering (IPO) of stock in the company.  

It went well for them.  Shares in Firefly (FLY) began trading at $70 on the NASDAQ stock exchange midday Thursday, jumping from their offering price of $45, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company sold more than 19 million shares in the listing, raising $868 million.   

Thursday's X-37B space plane will test quantum navigation

Thursday night's SpaceX launch of the US Space Force's classified space plane, the X-37B, will be carrying an experiment we've mentioned briefly but they've said nothing about anything else on the USSF-36 mission.   

About all I can recall of those posts is that they're investigating "next generation" or replacement technologies for GPS (the Global Positioning System) and while it will probably end up in many other systems other countries launch if it's successful, GPS is the US version. 

In space, especially beyond Earth’s orbit, GPS signals become unreliable or simply vanish. The same applies underwater, where submarines cannot access GPS at all. And even on Earth, GPS signals can be jammed (blocked), spoofed (making a GPS receiver think it is in a different location) or disabled – for instance, during a conflict.  

Before GPS, there were inertial navigation systems (INS), systems that relied on accelerometers and gyroscopes.  The first systems measured changes in the vehicle's speed based on the changes in acceleration, while the second measured rotation.  INS provided independent navigation, by tracking how the vehicle moved over time.  Think of sitting in a car with your eyes closed: you can still feel turns, stops and accelerations, which your brain combines to guess where you are over time.  

Eventually though, without visual cues, small errors will accumulate and you will entirely lose your positioning. The same goes with classical inertial navigation systems: as small measurement errors accumulate, they gradually drift off course, and need corrections from GPS or other external signals. 

About here, an "I'm so old ..." story fits in.  When I was getting my BS, the various physics classes I took mentioned quantum effects now and then, but were pretty much classical physics with no quantum concepts.  I read a bunch of "Quantum Physics for Morons" books (the ones with absolutely no math) but have done very few of the practical problems.  If you're like me, you probably think of the strange stuff, like a world where particles behave like waves and vice versa; a world where Schrödinger’s cat is both dead and alive.  That kind of stuff.

At very low temperatures, atoms obey the rules of quantum mechanics: they behave like waves and can exist in multiple states simultaneously – two properties that lie at the heart of quantum inertial sensors.

The quantum inertial sensor aboard the X‑37B uses a technique called atom interferometry, where atoms are cooled to the temperature of near absolute zero, so they behave like waves. Using fine-tuned lasers, each atom is split into what’s called a superposition state, similar to Schrödinger’s cat, so that it simultaneously travels along two paths, which are then recombined.

Since the atom behaves like a wave in quantum mechanics, these two paths interfere with each other, creating a pattern similar to overlapping ripples on water. Encoded in this pattern is detailed information about how the atom’s environment has affected its journey. In particular, the tiniest shifts in motion, like sensor rotations or accelerations, leave detectable marks on these atomic “waves”.

Compared to classical inertial navigation systems, quantum sensors offer orders of magnitude greater sensitivity. Because atoms are identical and do not change, unlike mechanical components or electronics, they are far less prone to drift or bias. The result is long duration and high accuracy navigation without the need for external references.

While the coming mission will be the first time this level of quantum inertial navigation is tested in space, concepts that lead to this level have been launched already.  Missions such as NASA's Cold Atom Laboratory and German Space Agency's MAIUS-1, have flown atom interferometers in orbit or suborbital flights and successfully demonstrated the physics behind atom interferometry in space, though not specifically for navigation purposes.  It has been tested in the lower altitudes and slower speeds of commercial aviation, though.  In 2024, Boeing and AOSense conducted the world’s first in-flight quantum inertial navigation test aboard a crewed aircraft.

By contrast, the X‑37B experiment is designed as a compact, high-performance, resilient inertial navigation unit for real world, long-duration missions. It moves atom interferometry out of the realms of pure science and into a practical application for aerospace. This is a big leap. 
...
This has important implications for both military and civilian spaceflight. For the US Space Force, it represents a step towards greater operational resilience, particularly in scenarios where GPS might be denied. For future space exploration, such as to the Moon, Mars or even deep space, where autonomy is key, a quantum navigation system could serve not only as a reliable backup but even as a primary system when signals from Earth are unavailable.

The X-37B inside its SpaceX Falcon 9 payload fairing before the launch of its eighth mission. (Image credit: U.S. Space Force)

Buh-bye, Erin.

Over the weekend, Hurricane Erin grabbed national headlines by dramatically intensifying from just tropical storm strength to a category five storm with steady winds clocked at 160 mph in 24 hours.  Erin maintained peak intensity for about nine hours.    

While the media can't resist talking about jumping from 75 mph to 160, the return to minor storm status never gets the same coverage.  It was never forecast to be a potential problem for us on the "Space Coast" of Florida, but I'm always happy to wave good-bye to storms.  

This is the 00:00 UTC plot for Wednesday, August 20, update from National Hurricane Center in Miami.  Entering the latitude and longitude of Erin's center from this plot into a nifty little website that will calculate the distance between any two points by those coordinates, it tells me that as of the 00 hour position, Erin was 487 miles from me.  As a category 2 storm, the winds are nowhere near as threatening. 

It looks like it might get a bit closer, but our winds are forecast to be under 15 mph tomorrow, maybe gusting to 20, through Thursday night.  

That's the forecast for probably 80% of the days in the summer.  

While I don't have a formal forecast for Thursday night's launch of the X-37B Space Plane for the US Space Force, by then the storm will be a little behind the "2 AM Fri" point on this plot.  Far from the launch corridor. 

"Experts say" China taking the lead in the lunar race

I find this not even slightly surprising, but it's the feature space-related article at Ars Technica today: "After recent tests, China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon."  The article begins by talking about some headlines that the usually secretive Chinese space agency has talked about publicly.  

On August 6, the China Manned Space Agency successfully tested a high-fidelity mockup of its 26-ton "Lanyue" lunar lander. The test, conducted outside of Beijing, used giant tethers to simulate lunar gravity as the vehicle fired main engines and fine control thrusters to land on a cratered surface and take off from there.

"The test," said the agency in an official statement, "represents a key step in the development of China's manned lunar exploration program, and also marks the first time that China has carried out a test of extraterrestrial landing and takeoff capabilities of a manned spacecraft."

As part of the statement, the space agency reconfirmed that it plans to land its astronauts on the Moon "before" 2030.

Let's start with the idea that the issues the Artemis program to return to the moon is having are largely due to the monstrous waste of the Space Launch System.  The Artemis I mission that was the first full-scale test of the system - uncrewed, of course - was in November of '22.  The next mission, Artemis II, will be the first US mission since the end of the Apollo program to circle the moon.  After Artemis I they said it would launch in '24 - one to two years later, depending on exact dates.  As the end of '24 was approaching they said it would be late 2025.  Now that we're approaching the end of 2025, Artemis II is scheduled for 2026.  Will it make it in '26 or get bumped to '27?  It's hard to imagine they could be much faster than the switch to Artemis III after II, and the same four years as from '22 to '26 means the moon landing will be "in" 2030.  Not 'before' as the Chinese say.  All of these are SLS issues.

The next big problem is that it's not just SLS.  The Human Landing System, or HLS, is a version of SpaceX's Starship and the last year has been a big issue for SpaceX.  The other contractor and lunar lander is Blue Origin's Mark 2 lander.  Neither of these seems remotely close to being ready to fly.  Starship's Flight Test 10 is next Sunday evening, currently NET August 24 at 7:30 PM EDT (6:30 Local).  If their fixes to the system perform as simulation and testing have shown, and Starship gets back to where they expected to be back in January, that's the best possible outcome and that could even make path back to where they wanted to be shorter. 

China's Lanyue (which means embracing the moon) lander undergoes tests in early August. Credit: CCTV

Put together, the problem with Artemis is that the program is overly complex, and the reason for that is the "corporate culture" of NASA was not to just recreate Apollo but to create a program that was more likely to help enable long term settlement of the moon.  Just going back to the moon the same way we did over 50 years ago had too much of a "Been There, Done That" feel to it.  Which led to the overly complex look with the Lunar Gateway, Near Rectilinear Halo Orbits, trying to land and settle at the lunar south pole, and more.  

By comparison, China took a much lower risk approach - use a basic system like we used in the Apollo days, one step at a time, carefully.  Minimize risks.  

The down side to that is when China beats us to the moon, those details of "we built a system better for the long term than theirs" argument won't register with the rest of the world.  It will be the end of being regarded as Exceptional.  I'll close with a comment from Dean Cheng, one of the most respected analysts on China, space policy, and the geopolitical implications of the new space competition, published on Ars:

It means the end of American exceptionalism. One of the hallmarks of the post-1969 era was that only the United States had been able to land someone on the Moon (or any other celestial body). This was bound to end, but the constant American refrain of "We've put a man on the Moon, we can do anything" will certainly no longer resonate.

It means China can do "big" things, and the United States cannot. The US cannot even replicate projects it undertook 50 (or more) years ago. The optics of "the passing of the American age" would be evident—and that in turn would absolutely affect other nations' perceptions of who is winning/losing the broader technological and ideological competition between the US and the PRC.

I can't resist a good, catchy headline...

so when I see a headline like today's "Russia to launch 75 mice, 1,000 fruit flies on Aug. 20 to study spaceflight effects" I kinda just have to go with it.  The way the article starts just adds to it.

Russia is preparing to loft a "miniature mouse hotel" into space. 

Accompanied by a photograph of what I have to assume is the miniature mouse hotel.  To me, it looks way too small for 75 mice, and there has to be many more of these IF that's really what this is. 

Note that I think they can't call it the Mini Mouse Hotel because of possible copyright issues with the name Minnie Mouse.  Those guys in the House of the Mouse are pretty serious about not letting just anyone use their Intellectual Property (IP).  

The Bion-M No. 2 biosatellite is being readied for its planned Aug. 20 launch atop a Soyuz-2.1b rocket from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. Onboard are 75 mice and other specimens to be exposed to 30 days of radiation before a parachute-aided return to Russia.

Bion-M No. 2 is being dubbed a "Noah's Ark," because it's loaded with the mice, more than 1,000 fruit flies, cell cultures, microorganisms and plant seeds.

As you probably expect, the Bion-M No. 2 satellite indicates there was a No. 1 that was the leader of this sort of research.  The Bion-M No. 1 spacecraft launched in April 2013. That spacecraft also remained in Earth orbit for 30 days but flew on a different orbit.  No. 2's orbit is planned to be a polar orbit at an inclination of 97 degrees, which will increase the amount of cosmic radiation the craft will be exposed to by at least an order of magnitude. 

Technicians work on the Bion-M No. 2 mission. (Image credit: Roscosmos)

Scientists have prepared three groups of mice. The first group will live in familiar conditions here on Earth. The second group will live in a ground laboratory in flight equipment, serving as a control group. The third group of mice will spend 30 days in orbit.

Researchers will receive real-time data on the condition of the rodents using special cameras and sensors inside the boxes that contain them. Each mouse-carrying unit is outfitted with feeding, lighting, ventilation and waste-disposal systems. Chips will be implanted in some rodents. 

After the 30 day mission, when the Bion-M No.2 vehicle has returned to Earth, researchers will study how well the mice adapted to space and readapted to life on Earth post-flight.  I don't see any mention of plans for an increase in the number of mice during the mission or mention of preventing such an increase.

Roscosmos noted that the mission will assist scientists in appraising how spaceflight affects living organisms, in an environment where radiation levels are approximately 30% higher than other near-Earth orbits. This type of data is viewed as central to prepare humans for long-distance spaceflight. 

How's your weather?

I was thinking about this topic since long before Hurricane Erin was even a slightly lower pressure area, so it has nothing to do with that.  It's an impressive storm, but the predictions would have to all be blown to bits before it would be a concern here, or pretty much anywhere in the continental US (CONUS).  

Long ago, 2014, I ran into a graphic showing a multi-color map of the US where the colors represented the warmest day of the year, according to the 1981-2010 NOAA Climate Data.  A look at the color scale at the bottom will show that the intervals aren't uniform.  Those colors aren't really by the week; the left end sorta pink color is June 1 - 15, while the either deep blue or black right end, is the entire month of September.  The time span varies from a month down to four days at a time for August 1 - 5, 6 - 10, and 11-15.  

The old map.

Since we're far from the 1981-2010 NOAA data, it had been on my mind to look for something like that but based on more recent data.  Somehow, somewhere and "somewhen" (I completely forget) I came across this map.  Same concept, except that the baseline data is shifted 10 years forward, and they use a VASTLY different approach in that they never go to an interval smaller than two weeks.  Call this lower precision.

Obviously the entire map is different and comparing them falls into that never-never land between meaningless and useless. On the old map my location, just south of the bump of Cape Canaveral on Florida's east coast, had its few hottest days of the year predicted to be in the July 26-31 interval. On the new map, the prediction is hard to pick out because the dividing line between the first and last two weeks is hard to resolve on the map. Maybe the common sense way of resolving that is to say the hottest day of the year is in the middle two weeks of August, because it's hard to resolve whether it's the first two or last two. 

Which seems like all it's saying is the hottest day of the year is in August.  That's as close as they get.  On the other hand, we're in the third week according to that scale at the bottom.  Just going by the date, we're around the hottest day of the year.  It has been in the lower 90s for our daily high, with the feels like temperature usually around 10 to 15 degrees higher.  The UV Index says 11 on a scale of 10 and uses the description, "Potentially Fatal within 15 minutes."  We know that's aimed at visitors to the area and new residents who aren't used to the weather and don't pay much attention.  

As someone else said, when they see forecasts along the lines of that summary, they could have saved a lot of time by just saying "it's August." 

Starship tested further, Flight Test 10 slips out two days.

The last date I had for Flight Test 10 was Friday, August 22nd at 7:30 PM EDT.  As testing has proceeded, they've rescheduled that out two days to Sunday, the 24th, at the same time.  Without double-checking, I think every test flight launch this year has been scheduled for 7:30 PM EDT, that's 2330 UTC, and the reason for the shift from mornings in Texas to evenings is for better lighting in the landing zone they're aiming for near Australia. 

This afternoon, SpaceX received launch approval from the FAA.  They had run a "Spin Prime" test on Starship 37 Wednesday afternoon, and signs were it went as expected, since after that test, crews rolled the ship back to a nearby hangar for engine inspections, touch-ups to its heat shield, and a handful of other chores to ensure it's ready to fly.  

With this flight, SpaceX officials hope to put several technical problems with the Starship program behind them. SpaceX is riding a streak of four disappointing Starship test flights from January through May, and and the explosion and destruction of another Starship vehicle during a ground test in June.

At the start of this year, SpaceX had some ambitious goals with the new version of the ship.  Perhaps the most important goals were to recover and reuse Starships then to refuel another rocket in orbit.  The second one has been talked practically as long as any exploration of space has been seriously studied.  These (and more) are important to SpaceX for their stated goal to start settling Mars (with or without NASA).

Meanwhile, NASA is eager for SpaceX to reel off these tests as quickly as possible because the agency has selected Starship as the human-rated lunar lander for the Artemis Moon program. Once operational, Starship will also be key to building out SpaceX's next-generation Starlink broadband network.

At the announcement that the FAA had cleared Test Flight 10, the FAA spokesperson said:

"The FAA oversaw and accepted the findings of the SpaceX-led investigation," the federal regulator said in a statement. "The final mishap report cites the probable root cause for the loss of the Starship vehicle as a failure of a fuel component. SpaceX identified corrective actions to prevent a reoccurrence of the event."

That "probable root cause" was seen and reported by telemetry almost as soon as Starship had cleared the tower.  No, that's just an exaggeration.  It was more likely to have been around the time the booster was dropped. 

SpaceX identified the most probable cause for the May failure as a faulty main fuel tank pressurization system diffuser located on the forward dome of Starship's primary methane tank.  The diffuser failed a few minutes after launch, when sensors detected a pressure drop in the main methane tank and a pressure increase in the ship's nose cone just above the tank. 

The rocket compensated for the drop in main tank pressure and completed its engine burn, but venting from the nose cone and a worsening fuel leak overwhelmed Starship's attitude control system. Finally, detecting a major problem, Starship triggered automatic onboard commands to vent all remaining propellant into space and "passivate" itself before an unguided reentry over the Indian Ocean, prematurely ending the test flight.

Among the many goals of the next test flight is that modifications to the various heat shield elements on Starship are to be tested.  Several different, new, ceramic and metallic tile designs have been placed in various places around the ship.  Starship successfully made it through reentry for a controlled splashdown in the Pacific several times in 2024, but sensors detected hot spots on the rocket's stainless steel skin after some of the tiles fell off during launch and descent. 

Making the Starship upper stage reusable like the Super Heavy booster will require better performance from the heat shield. The demands of flying the ship home from orbit and attempting a catch at the launch pad far outweigh the challenge of recovering a booster. Coming back from space, the ship encounters much higher temperatures than the booster sees at lower velocities.

While the ship is the star of the show, there are also experiments and trials planned for the SuperHeavy booster.  

Engineers also plan to put the Super Heavy booster through the wringer on the next launch. Instead of coming back to Starbase for a catch at the launch pad—something SpaceX has now done three times—the massive booster stage will target a controlled splashdown in the Gulf of Mexico east of the Texas coast. This will give SpaceX room to try new things with the booster, such as controlling the rocket's final descent with a different mix of engines to see if it could overcome a problem with one of its three primary landing engines. 

SpaceX completed a six-engine static fire of the next Starship upper stage on August 1. Credit: SpaceX

As many times as SpaceX has said it, it's almost a cliche' we automatically quote. The purpose of the test is the data they acquire.  

"Every lesson learned, through both flight and ground testing, continues to feed directly into designs for the next generation of Starship and Super Heavy," SpaceX said. "Two flights remain with the current generation, each with test objectives designed to expand the envelope on vehicle capabilities as we iterate towards fully and rapidly reusable, reliable rockets." 

Is deregulation approaching the launch business?

In another executive order from President Trump, that was issued Wednesday, August13, the emphasis is getting unnecessary delays out of the considerations for launches. 

The order, "Enabling Competition in the Commercial Space Industry," directs multiple federal agencies to streamline launch licensing, fast-track spaceport construction and better support emerging in-space industries.

A quote being used in "all both" places I've read is an objection from an organization that is opposed to launches in general, Jared Margolis, senior attorney for the Center for Biological Diversity.

"This reckless order puts people and wildlife at risk from private companies launching giant rockets that often explode and wreak devastation on surrounding areas," he said in a statement issued on Aug. 14. "Bending the knee to powerful corporations by allowing federal agencies to ignore bedrock environmental laws is incredibly dangerous and puts all of us in harm's way. This is clearly not in the public interest."

Clearly we've seen "giant rockets" explode (the last three Starships) but I haven't seen any reports that any one of them "wreaked devastation" on anything or anybody.  I know some airplane flights in Caribbean were delayed or rerouted, but that doesn't seem to be "wreaked destruction" - more like "wreaked inconvenience."  Please Mr. Margolis, in the amazing world of the internet, it's possible you'll come across this statement, so I say, "examples?" 

I imagine you don't think this way, Mr. Margolis, but rocket companies really don't want their products to explode.  It's bad for business!  An old saying in the business (and many, many fields of engineering) is that "Boring Is Good!"  Nobody who works on rockets wants them to explode while they're working on them - that should go without saying.  Everybody involved wants their rockets to be so good they're boring to watch - although they may not think those words. 

What this ruling is all about is cutting out time spent doing unnecessary tasks; that includes finding duplicate tasks, and those that simply don't contribute any improvement to the mission, or add any value.  Space.com seems to object to NASA having a smaller role in approving missions.  These few paragraphs seem to sum it up nicely.

NASA is named throughout the order, but mostly as a coordinating agency rather than a lead. It's tasked with the same directive to streamline reviews and evaluate paths to faster innovation, but isn't granted any new authority.

Duffy said the move will support NASA's work with commercial providers and improve access to launch infrastructure. But in practice, it seems more regulatory weight is being shifted to DOT, Office of Space Commerce and FAA.

The order reflects a growing trend of divestments and sweeping changes in arguably one of the most recognizable government agencies in the world. As space policy and licensing are rerouted to outside departments, NASA is also facing the largest budget cut in its history.

NASA has embarrassed themselves regularly since (at least) the end of the Space Shuttle program while the good things they've done have relied on the private sector.  They've absolutely done some great things, but all of them have been on the unmanned, science probe side (Mars rovers, and the Ingenuity helicopter, the JWST, New Horizons to Pluto and more).  The biggest waste of money in the history of spaceflight might well be the Space Launch System - SLS.  Launches of one SLS for one mission have been priced at over $4 billion.  Yeah SLS lifts more than a Falcon Heavy so you launch two Falcon Heavies and you're still under 10% of the cost of one SLS launch. 

NASA needs to get out of the "getting there" business.  No more programs like SLS.  Budget cuts to NASA are a guaranteed impact of that. 

NASA Acting Administrator Sean Duffy (left) sits next to President Donald Trump at a cabinet meeting. (Image credit: MANDEL NGAN / Contributor)

Last night had unexpected fun, thanks to NASA Spaceflight

It doesn't seem possible to know exactly how many people enjoyed this last night, but we were treated to quite the surprise when we tuned in to NASA  Spaceflight's YouTube channel to watch the United Launch Alliance Vulcan fly its first National Security Mission, USSF-106.  With a launch time of 8:58 PM EDT, I worked on a post while listening to and watching the video.  

The surprise was that last night was also the launch of a European Space Agency Ariane 6 from French Guiana, scheduled for roughly 15 minutes before the USSF-106 mission.  As the evening progressed, NSF said they'd stream the Ariane 6 launch as well.   Within minutes, they added a stream of some testing going on at Starbase in Boca Chica, preparing Starship 37 for its flight, currently scheduled for next Friday, August 22nd at 7:30 PM.  

This video is 2 hrs:13m:10s long but if you want, you can move the slider over to 60 minutes in. At that point, there's three minutes and 51 seconds until liftoff on the Ariane 6 clock (the bottom one in the upper left corner). The top clock says 22:01 until the Vulcan Centaur launch.

You can easily watch the Ariane launch and the coverage is managed by the NSF guys so that you can see everything that can be seen in both launches.  When the Ariane reaches its orbit, it's on the order of 8 minutes into the 18 minutes between the launch times. The Vulcan launch had several aspects I haven't seen before: the (Blue Origin) BE-4 engines had a very evident blue color, quite striking to see.  Far enough down range that the distance might be why I've never noticed it, but at night, it was very evident.  Vulcan also shook our patio doors and windows for what seemed like a long time - maybe a minute.  

Both launches were successful, and the industry news sites are cheering the progress of the Vulcan.   Ars Technica's Stephen Clark writes of the next big test for the Vulcan, summarizing the launch.  As we said before, unlike most National Security launches, there was actually some word about one thing that flew on USSF-106:  a test of some concepts for a successor to the current GPS navigation satellites. 

The USSF-106 mission will carry multiple payloads, but to date, the only one that has been publicly identified is the Department of the Air Force’s Navigation Technology Satellite-3 (NTS-3). The prime contractor is L3Harris Technologies, which integrated an agile positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) payload onto an ESPAStar satellite bus from Northrop Grumman.

Artist's illustration of the NTS-3 satellite with its solar panel deployed in orbit. Credit: L3Harris

While the press before the launch was that ULA was going to attempt their next NSSL mission, USSF-87, NextSpaceflight.com is showing that the next launch will be one of ULA's remaining Atlas V missions carrying a load of Kuiper satellites for Amazon.  The date for the USSF-87 mission isn't firm, simply "NET 3rd Quarter, 2025."

ULA has a lot to work on.  Their biggest issue is that there are currently 24 missions in their calendar marked NET 2025, that added to launches already carried out this year exceeds the stated goal of 25 per year but done in 4-1/2 months, well under half a year.  And that's not even talking about the Big, BIG challenge:

ULA is also moving forward with modifications to Vulcan's core stage to allow for the recovery and reuse of the rocket's main engines. Tory Bruno, the company's chief executive, announced last week that engineers completed a critical design review for the hardware changes required for engine reuse. These changes include severable mechanical and fluid connections for the engine section to jettison from the rocket, plus a heat shield and parachute to safely bring the engines back for an ocean recovery downrange from the launch pad. 

Did a European startup just show Boeing how to save Starliner?

You might recall the recent mention of The Exploration Company, a European launch company that was attracting attention for its novel "Mission Possible" spacecraft.  

Payload reports today that Colorado-based Agile Space Industries will provide the in-space propulsion system for The Exploration Company’s Nyx reusable spacecraft, the companies announced today. 

The contract is the result of a rapid development process, in which Agile designed, 3D-printed, assembled, and hotfire-tested the DS250 in just 10 weeks.

“When we asked Agile to develop and prove out a brand-new thruster in three months, and they delivered beautiful performance on the test stand in 10 weeks, we knew we had the right propulsion partner,” TEC CEO Hélène Huby said in a statement.

During the development, Agile Space hotfire-tested its DS250 for more than ~1,100 seconds (18+ minutes). Agile also demonstrated a range of high- and low-thrust modes that will be necessary for the precise maneuvers of in-orbit docking.  

A rendering of the The Exploration Company’s Nyx vehicle. Image: The Exploration Company/Agile Space Industries

You'll recall that problems with the thrusters on Starliner is what ruined their mission last June.  It sounds like perhaps Boeing should talk with Agile Space.  The way the thruster assembly is talked about in the Payload article sounds like a similar approach to Starliner's thruster "Doghouse".   

“With a thruster that gets embedded into the vehicle, the biggest challenge is the operation,” [Agile’s chief engineer, Lars] Osborne told Payload. “The robustness in design for an engine is different than, say, optimizing for maximum performance. You are attempting to make something that has very few things that can go wrong with it.” 

The Exploration Company is European and the continent is pushing companies like TEC to only use European suppliers.  TEC found their match in Colorado.  

UK Startup Skyrora gets license to launch from UK

The name Skyrora for a British startup Rocket company might be unfamiliar to you - as it was to me - but a search of the blog's history, using that small search box in the upper left corner shows that company has shown up here before.  November of 2023 to be specific, in an article on changes in the European launch industry.  

The field of startup launch companies in Europe includes German firms like HyImpulse, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and Isar Aerospace; British companies such as Skyrora and Orbex; and Spain's PLD Space, [bold added this time - SiG]

That November '23 article features a large graphic of European launch vehicles, known and proposed as of those two years ago.  It includes a Skyrora vehicle around the middle (left to right) of the poster 

Space.com reports that the Scotland-based Skyrora has been awarded a license for up to 16 launches a year from SaxaVord Spaceport, located on the Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland.  Skyrora has a prototype of their Skylark L suborbital rocket that could be launched soon.  They're also developing a larger version, called the Skylark XL.  The large is size 36 and the XL is 42.  No, wait... That's for pants - I'll look again.  The Skylark L is listed as 36 feet tall, while the XL is shown in that graphic as closer to 75 feet tall. 

Volodymyr Levykin, CEO of Skyrora, said, "Becoming the first homegrown company in the U.K. to receive a launch operator license is a testament to the hard work and dedication of everyone at Skyrora.  It is essential that the U.K. has sovereign launch capabilities — not only to unlock commercial activity for companies that need to access space and to help achieve the government's objectives for becoming a global player in the space sector, but also from a strategic defence consideration."  

He added that the company has options to launch from Australia, Oman and potentially Iceland, with Skyrora having made a failed launch attempt from Iceland with the Skylark L back in 2022. 

Skylark L is Skyrora’s 36-foot (11m) suborbital rocket. (Image credit: Skyrora)

All that said, it's not likely they'll make their next attempt to reach space with their Skylark L in the remaining months of 2025, according to CEO Levykin.

Levykin told Reuters that, despite having acquired a launch license and having a rocket ready, "it is unlikely that Skyrora will be able to complete its launch from the U.K. this year." 

I Swear I'm Not Making This Up

SpaceX has had four scrubs of the same mission in four days.  The mission is to launch their second batch of Kuiper satellites for Amazon, and while four scrubs in four days is really unusual (far from normal - call it four sigma), here's the tidbit that will knock that four sigma out to six or beyond.  The booster, tail number B1091, is an unflown, brand new booster!  Even more unusual, it was originally configured as the core booster for a Falcon Heavy.  

In a May 7 social media post, Jon Edwards, SpaceX vice president of Falcon and Dragon, said that B1091 will be used as a Falcon 9 booster “a handful of times before being reconfigured and flying as a Falcon Heavy” center booster. 

For the record, the first two scrubs were due to launch vehicle issues while the last two were due to weather. The first scrub came when an issue arose while fueling the booster, and my guess is the issue was still there on the second launch attempt.  

View from the autonomous drone ship A Shortfall Of Gravitas, or ASOG, this morning (fourth attempt).  These recovery operations are generally off the coast of South Carolina. Image credit: SpaceX via Livestream

They're not out of the woods weather-wise, tomorrow either.

The 45th Weather Squadron, based at Cape Canaveral, gave the mission a 75 percent chance of acceptable weather for launch. The primary concerns in the forecast issued Sunday were for violations of the cumulus cloud and anvil cloud. Meteorologists also said the booster recovery weather on Monday was a “moderate” risk on a low-moderate-high scale.

“A stationary boundary will remain draped across northern Florida Monday, maintaining deep atmospheric moisture across the Space Coast,” launch weather officers wrote. “While conditions aloft look more stable Monday compared to the weekend, there remains a small chance of a shower or thunderstorm in the morning across the Spaceport during the launch window.

“The stalled boundary could generate elevated winds and a higher chance of showers Monday near the booster recovery location.”

OBTW, if you're in Brevard county, tomorrow is the first day of school and the scheduled launch time of 8:35 AM or 1235 UTC is probably going to coincide with kids getting into their classrooms.  That has a tendency to bring its own traffic hassles.  

Ends and Odds

Since there's no particular order to what to write about, there's no particular reason to say odds and ends rather than ends and odds.   

About Liberty's Torch blog 

The first one is a bit  of administrative trivia.  Recently, and I'm thinking two weeks ago, I went to Liberty's Torch, the domain of Francis W. Porretto, and my browser couldn't connect.  I tried a couple of times during the day, then a couple of days, and it couldn't connect.  Then it acted normally.  For a day or maybe two.  I was going to post a comment over there asking what's up but figured there wasn't much of a chance there'd be something going on that they didn't know about ("they" = Francis and whoever else helps run the place).  Then it disappeared again. 

This Wednesday, I did a search (Duck Duck Go is the search engine I use most) to see if there was any news in the last week about Liberty's Torch.  That was when I found that Francis and all seem to have moved to an old Blogger (Google) site, Bastion of Liberty.  I've changed the link to the blog in the right sidebar.  It looks rather low key or low interest; there are posts on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday (as in yesterday: 8/8).  

Yes, Francis is a writer and advertises his various books, none of which I've ever bought, but he's a good guy, and a good writer.  He's also a fellow technogeek, although I'm all but positive he's in completely different fields than mine.  I don't recall a single time he wrote on the tech topics I regularly do, but I read him regularly.  Unless it's just not an interesting subject to me.

More About "Nukes on the Moon!"

The day after my post talking about the news on building a nuclear reactor power source on the moon, in which my main point was that nuclear power for planetary exploration has been in the "to do list" for a long, long time, the daily email from Payload added to the story with something I didn't have a link to in my own blog but fit the idea perfectly.  In "NASA Wants To Hit the Accelerator On Lunar Atomics" they talk about a current program that's under half the size of what NASA is asking for now. 

NASA was pursuing a plan to put nuclear power on the Moon long before Trump took office. In 2022, NASA hired contractors Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse, and IX—a joint venture of Intuitive Machines and X-energy—to design 40kw reactors for the Moon. A plan to solicit final designs was expected this year, but now energy will turn toward the new reactor concept. 

“We’re really glad to see that this directive came out,” Lockheed VP Kevin Au, who leads the company’s lunar business, told Payload. “The United States has been investing in and working on nuclear space capabilities since the 50s, [but] we haven’t flown anything since 1965.”

Note that this 2022 contract was for a 40kW reactor while the one being talked about now is 100 kW.  That means more than twice as much heat being created in the reactor and heat is the big engineering problem.  Most of the nuclear power here on the surface is water cooled - built on rivers, or with access to the oceans or other large water sources.  How do we cool computers?  Fans, moving air, but sometimes circulating refrigerants (like Freon).  The temperature exchange with the air, coolant or whatever is critical.  I wonder if compressed air could create a good cooling medium on the moon?  

Lockheed VP Kevin Au, who leads the company’s lunar business, has a good observation:

“We’re really glad to see that this directive came out,” ... Au told Payload. “The United States has been investing in and working on nuclear space capabilities since the 50s, [but] we haven’t flown anything since 1965.” 

Remember the Firefly Aerospace IPO?

It went well for them.  Shares in Firefly (FLY) began trading at $70 on the NASDAQ stock exchange midday Thursday, jumping from their offering price of $45, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company sold more than 19 million shares in the listing, raising $868 million. 

Edit 8/10/25 at 8:00 PM:  Earlier in the day an anonymous commenter posted a link to Francis Porretto's blog on Cold Fury.  After checking it, I decided to correct the new link in the right side bar to the Cold Fury site.