The Wall Street Journal’s Andy Pasztor has a less than stellar record when it comes to reporting on SpaceX, as readers may recall from this confused mishmash of story conflating an upcoming announcement from Blue Origin with NASA’s entirely separate announcement of the results of its Commercial Crew awards which came out the next day. […]
Two days after NASA hailed the arrival of its MAVEN spacecraft at the Red Planet, rising space power India is now celebrating the successful orbital insertion of its own; MOM, or Mars Orbital Mission. From the Indian space Research Organization Press Release: “India’s Mars Orbiter Spacecraft successfully entered into an orbit around planet Mars today […]
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 […]
Image Credit: Swiss Space Systems Since the day it was announced, Swiss Space Systems has been among the more intriguing NewSpace companies enering the launch arena. With its vision of a two/thirds reusable space launch platform consisting of a modified Airbus A-300 carrying aloft a fully reusable, unmanned winged second stage based on both European and […]
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 […]
Image Credit: SpaceX The timing of course, was ultimately a matter of co-incidence driven by weather and mechanical issues, but the back to back launches of the OSC Antares with a Cygnus re-supply ship, and the SpaceX Falcon 9 carrying the first Orbcomm OG-2 mission happen to highlight the stunning progress which has been wrought […]
The quickly expanding list of privately funded space ventures added a new name this week, The Boldly Go Institute, and its goals are worthy of the name. Headlined by Dr. Jon Morse, Dr. Laurie Leshin and Dr. Scott Parazynski, all NASA veterans, the institute seeks to step in where NASA is falling short with big […]
The company which likes to pride itself on being the original Newspace company, (and often refuses to refer to SpaceX by name) Orbital Sciences, announced today that it is engaging in a “merger of equals” with Alliant Techsystems, or ATK, the defense, munitions and space company which is perhaps best known as the major contractor […]
Following what might be called a “testy Tuesday” which saw a contentious hearing featuring NASA Administrator Charles Bolden and Congressman Frank Wolf turn personal, Wednesday brought the arrival of a wave of bipartisanship in both the House and Senate, at least where the nation’s space program is concerned. First, the House Science, Space and Technology […]
A recent KSC launch award to Orbital Sciences Corporation for a 2016 mission highlights just how expensive the Pegasus booster, once hailed as revolutionary, has become. The $55 million order for the air launched Pegasus for the CYGNSS mission is nearly what SpaceX is charging a commercial customer for the EELV class Falcon 9, […]
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