Make of this what you will. Two late breaking stories suggest major changes may be afoot. First: The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Pasztor reports that Blue Origin is scheduled to participate in an event at the National Press Club on Wednesday, where a major engine initiative involving Blue Origin, Boeing and Lockheed Martin will be […]
Image Credit: Founders Fund An interesting article from WSJ.com from Elon Musk friend and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel challenging the notion that open and widespread competition is an ideal to be pursued. “Americans mythologize competition and credit it with saving us from socialist bread lines. Actually, capitalism and competition are opposites. Capitalism is premised on […]
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 […]
Both SpaceX founder Elon Musk and president Gwynne Shotwell have at times chided testing efforts in Texas for not pushing the envelope far enough and creating a smoking hole in the ground. Tonight they got their wish. According to multiple reports as well as tweet from Elon Musk, a Falcon F9R test at McGregor went […]
NASA Press Release August 21, 2014 RELEASE 14-222 NASA and Commercial Partners Review Summer of Advancements NASA’s spaceflight experts in the Commercial Crew Program (CCP) met throughout July with aerospace partners to review increasingly advanced designs, elements and systems of the spacecraft and launch vehicles under development as part of the space agency’s Commercial Crew […]
Image Credit : Northrop Grumman 2014-08-19T12:00:00-0700 REDONDO BEACH, Calif. – Aug. 19, 2014 – Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) with Scaled Composites and Virgin Galactic is developing a preliminary design and flight demonstration plan for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency’s (DARPA) Experimental Spaceplane XS-1 program. A photo accompanying this release is available at: http://media.globenewswire.com/noc/mediagallery.html?pkgid=27176. XS-1 […]
NASA Press Release RELEASE 14-194 NASA Partners Punctuate Summer with Spacecraft Development Advances Spacecraft and rocket development is on pace this summer for NASA’s aerospace industry partners for the agency’s Commercial Crew Program as they progress through systems testing, review boards and quarterly sessions under their Space Act Agreements with the agency. NASA engineers and […]
NASA Press Release: This graphic depicts the goal of NASA’s Commercial Crew Program (CCP) heading into the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability contract known as CCtCap. This phase of the CCP will enable NASA to ensure a company’s crew transportation system is safe, reliable and cost-effective. The certification process will assess progress throughout the production […]
Kennedy Space Center released the following newsletter today, giving a good synopsis of recent progress in the Commercial Crew Program, which it manages. Of particular note, the real action will come later this year, first with a pad abort test, and later, an in-flight abort test of the Dragon crew vehicle. KSC News Release NASA […]
NASA today released the following update regarding the Commercial Crew program. To a great extent, the fate and timing of the program are going to depend on whatever final budget emerges for FY 2015. So far, the program’s budgeting history has not been a happy one. The process will formally get underway on Tuesday, March […]
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