Yesterday, on-line media picked up and repeated again and again a story posted on Techcrunch.com claiming that SpaceX is seeking to raise capital on the secondary market. Just for reference, Investopedia defines secondary markets thusly: “A market where investors purchase securities or assets from other investors, rather than from issuing companies themselves. The national exchanges […]
Image Credit: SpaceX One of the most reliable outlets for attacks on SpaceX over the years has somewhat curiously been from Forbes, with a semi-regular stream of articles penned by Loren Thompson, a paid consultant for Lockheed Martin and other legacy aerospace companies. Ostensibly writing on behalf of the non-profit Lexington Institute where he is […]
Image Credit: SpaceFoundation.org A number of news stories over the last week have focused on SpaceX firing somewhere between 200 and 400 employees, and the lawsuit filed over California’s WARN act as a result. Now however, a more interesting story is unfolding regarding the departure of just a single employee, not from SpaceX, but from […]
As the second full week of August begins, we are approaching ever closer to a critical decision point in the future of American space transportation, an award announcement in the final phase of NASA’s Commercial Crew program. The next phase, called CCtCap, or Commercial Crew Transportation Capability is notionally set to be awarded in “August […]
Mars One, the Dutch non-profit corporation which hopes to send colonists on a one-way journey to the Red Planet as soon as 2025 has issued a Request for Proposal for a payloads on its planned 2018 Mars lander. The lander would most likely be built by Lockheed Martin, and is based on the proven design […]
The battle over the USAF Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) program took a new turn Thursday evening with a blistering series of tweets from Elon Musk, made in response to a report regarding a contracting official deeply involved in the award. The story, linked to in the Musk tweet says in part: “From March 2011 […]
Two interesting Mars related items are taking place this week. On Monday, officials held a ribbon cutting at NASA’s Stennis Space Center to commemorate SpaceX’s conversion of the E-2 stand to test for testing components of its Raptor engine. SpaceX has made bones about the fact that the Raptor methane engine program is specifically geared […]
Sierra Nevada Corporation’s announcement last week that it is partnering with Lockheed Martin to further develop its Dream Chaser space plane for NASA’s Commercial Crew Competition brings a new twist to the program to succeed the Space Shuttle as America’s ground to LEO space transportation system. With Dream Chaser designed to launch on the United Launch Alliance Atlas V, a rocket designed by […]
Korea has announced that the upcoming launch of its Nar0-3 rocket will be further delayed while it awaits the arrival of a new fuel coupler from Russia. The Korean Space Agency (KARI) had hoped to reschedule the launch of the two stage rocket to sometime around November 17, but has yet to receive a firm delivery date on the replacement component, leading to a […]
Spacenews is reporting that in the wake of a critical report by the National Research Council, the United States Air Force is cancelling its Reusable Booster Program, citing budget concerns. The program sought to develop a horizontally launched, partially reusable booster which would be powered by a staged combustion kerosene/oxygen engine. The winged booster would have carried an […]
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