Vulcan Booster / Image Credit United Launch Alliance United Launch Alliance formally introduced its new booster on Monday. Intended to replace both the Atlas and Delta product lines over time, the new rocket’s name is Vulcan., although ULA also refers to the booster as the Next Generation Launch System. The name was chosen in an […]
Delta Heavy / Image Credit United Launch Alliance An Innerspace Editorial: In what seems to be becoming something of an annual affair, it was SpaceX versus United Launch Alliance Round earlier this week in Washington D.C. Last year, SpaceX’s Elon Musk and ULA’s Michael Gass squared off against each other in a highly contentious Senate […]
Only a few days after officially entering mediation, SpaceX has agreed to drop its lawsuit against the Air Force’s block buy of 36 launch cores from ULA under the EELV program. Here a joint statement released by SpaceX the Air Force: “The Air Force and SpaceX have reached agreement on a path forward for the […]
Russia successfully launches the Angara booster on its first orbital flight. From the Russian news agency TASS: MOSCOW, December 23. /TASS/. A new Russian heavy rocket was successfully test-launched from the Plesetsk space center on Tuesday as planned at 08:57am Moscow time. The head unit has separated from the third stage of the Angara rocket, […]
Michal Gass, Former President and CEO of United Launch Alliance Following up on questions posed in a letter by U.S. Senator John McCain to the US Air Force chief of acquisitions, Reuters has been looking closer into the United Launch Alliance RD-180 issue, and the mysterious five person company RD-Amross, which serves as the Russian […]
Will Cygnus be on the Manifest? Image Credit SpaceX One week after the loss of an Antares launch vehicle carrying a Cygnus cargo vessel bound for the International Space Station, Orbital Sciences Corporation held a conference call with investors to discuss what it has learned about the accident thus far, and its plans for going […]
Tuesday’s loss of the Orbital Sciences Antares booster carrying a Cygnus cargo vessel to the International Space Station, a failure of space hardware, is also bringing more attention to matters of space policy, where the news is both good and bad. To begin with, the explosion of the Antares rocket only six seconds into flight, […]
Image Credit: Boeing The NASA source selection statement for Commercial Crew is still not publicly available, at least officially, but Aviation Week has obtained a copy, and the resulting article sheds some light on what its says. From the article: “The internal document, signed by NASA Associate Administrator William Gerstenmaier on Sept. 15, the day […]
The Times They Are A Changin Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance held a news conference at the National Press Club today entitled “Igniting the Future.” The purpose was announce the joint development of a new main engine to replace the Russian built RD-180 which powers the Atlas V booster. Called the BE-4, the new […]
Innerspace.net Commentary With the passing of the first week in September, NASA is presumably within a few weeks of announcing the winner or winners in the next phase of its Commercial Crew program. That phase, labeled Commercial Crew Transportation Capability or CCtCap, will see the selection of which firm is going to provide crew transport […]
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