KSC Director Robert Cabana Addresses the Media on the “21st Century Spaceport” Addressing the concerns of his audience at the Kennedy Space Center on April 15th 2010, President Obama sought to assure NASA and contract employees that the changes his administration was about to institute; cancelling Project Constellation, maintaining ISS, greenlighting Commercial Crew, and setting […]
On Tuesday, SpaceX released this YouTube “Flight Animation” depicting a Falcon Heavy launch and landing from launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. There are a couple of interesting points to consider, particularly in the context of the recently released Draft Environmental Assessment regarding SpaceX’s plan to use abandoned Launch Complex 13 at the […]
A general roundup of SpaceX news as the latest launch week begins. Tweets from Aviation Week coming from a conference in Paris relay that SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell told an audience that the company had signed 9 new launch orders including possibly “2 to 3 Heavies” Once confirmed, it would would be solid counter to […]
Blue Origin Patent Illustration In June of 2010, Blue Origin filed for U.S. patent 8678321, which describes the process of landing the returning stage of a reusable launch vehicle onto a barge or floating platform at sea. The patent drew some attention at the time for two reasons. The first was that it seemed to […]
AsiaSat 8 Counts on August 5: Image Credit SpaceX After slipping the launch of AsiaSat 6 by 24 hours to further examine data from Friday’s F-9R test mishap in Texas, SpaceX appears to be counting down to a liftoff scheduled to take place at 12:50 AM EDT on Wednesday. Assuming the schedule holds, this flight […]
Today’s launch of the Falcon 9 and Dragon capsule to the International Space Station has been scrubbed due to a first stage helium leak with almost an hour left in the countdown. Weather was beautiful at Cape Canaveral with light clouds, warm temps and a cooling breeze, and after a 2:30 pm announcement that SpaceX […]
On Thursday, December 12th, the GAO denied Blue Origin’s protest regarding NASA’s method of establishing its lease options for launch pad 39A at the Kennedy Space Center. One day later, press sources indicated that the agency, as expected, has entered into negotiations with SpaceX regarding the terms of the lease. Although nothing is certain until […]
Why 39A Matters The ongoing fight over Kennedy Space Center’s Pad 39A has taken several interesting turns in the past week, beginning with a contentious House subcommittee hearing last Friday, and culminating in an email from Elon Musk published today in SpaceNews, which “calls the bluff” being put forward by Blue Origin and United Launch […]
The battle over who will lease NASA Pad 39A took a turn last week which was both surprising and with the injection of yet another Alabama congressman, disturbing. After SpaceNews originally reported that SpaceX was apparently the only bidder for the historic pad, it was subsequently revealed that Blue Origin is interested as well. If […]
According to a corrected story in Space News, both SpaceX and Blue Origin have put in a bid for the Kennedy Space Center’s Launchpad 39A. While SpaceX’s possible interest in the pad has been widely reported, the apparent last-minute participation by perpetually mysterious Blue Origin adds a bit of speculative intrigue to what looked like a one […]
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