FWIW, part of what this article leaves off are additional capabilities getting covered in these costs, like new launch pads, vertical integration facilities, and disposable launches.

Somehow one of our best hopes for SpaceX’s semi monopolistic practices to get upset is… a billionaire subsidized competitor in Blue Origin or Terran using anticompetitive pricing below cost to sneak in and steal market share. Cool. Hopefully Stoke and Rocket Lab win instead.

Go Tiangong, the space station nobody knows about. I wish real astronauts got more coverage than the Bezos publicity stunt.

Huh, I guess those still exist

Is ship reuse on the critical path? I wonder how cheap and light a barebones disposable Starship could be…

You know what, I really dislike a lot of people sometimes, thanks

There’s so much more to the private sector than tourism rockets! Consider:

• Cheap components that don’t work

• Cheap satellites that don’t work

• Cheap lunar landers that don’t work

• Pump-and-dump get-rich-quick schemes

I’ve absolutely been following some of the eurospace startups a lot more closely lately. The next time I switch jobs might be the first time I switch continents.

I forgot that Kuiper sats will orbit at 590/610/630 km. Hmm. Sounds like a great space junk orbit. And for that reason alone, I hope these birds are all healthy.

That’s surprising. DSS was one of the CLPS providers that I thought wouldn’t bid again after getting merged into Redwire and changing directions. Redwire has some vehicle ambitions now, though, so best of luck.

Ispace is such a weird player in this game. They’ve now launched private and JAXA funded missions to the moon. They’re building the lander for Draper for CLPS. Now they’re planning to build one for Redwire for CLPS. Hopefully Hakuto-R 2 sticks the landing in a a few months and the CLPS missions are set up for success.

“Let’s be very honest again,” Bolden said in a 2014 interview. “We don’t have a commercially available heavy lift vehicle. Falcon 9 Heavy may someday come about. It’s on the drawing board right now. SLS is real. You’ve seen it down at Michoud. We’re building the core stage. We have all the engines done, ready to be put on the test stand at Stennis… I don’t see any hardware for a Falcon 9 Heavy, except that he’s going to take three Falcon 9s and put them together and that becomes the Heavy. It’s not that easy in rocketry.”

Or it means he can turn it into the Hubble servicing mission he wanted

And there are at least a handful more scheduled:

• Ax-4
• ISS private mission 5
• ISS private mission 6
• Haven-1
• Polaris-2 (?)

I’m not high enough to imagine that. I’d settle for them each launching monthly.

I’ve always wondered how much these optimistic timelines are a product of purposeful crazy dumb ambition vs ignorance from being far away from the hardware and info getting filtered through levels and levels of managers who only want to say good news.

Maybe those two categories aren’t actually so different.

Agreed, I was surprised they were going for a booster reuse at this point. I guess it makes sense that they’re better at the booster than the shop given Falcon heritage.

Ship catch, tower readiness aside, seems like a hell of a time to permit.

This has quietly been the 6th private Dragon flight. The Dragon program has been such a big win for NASA and spaceflight.

Kuiper finally actually launching is big for the market. Starlink was such a turning point for Falcon hitting an insane launch cadence. Kuiper is the Prince That Was Promised to push ULA, Ariane, and Blue to pick up the pace.

I feel like every year since 2020 has been “the year” that competitors are finally supposed to show up. Vulcan and New Glenn have at least finally launched now, but it’ll take them years to ramp up to the point of actually being competition to Falcon.

Booster reflight is so hype. Working through stage separation will be huge for the program. Pulling off a good soft splashdown would be phenomenal.

It’s still weird to me that Blue won any of this. I get it, they have a more capable rocket on paper than a lot of other ones in work, they still have to go through full certification, and they’ve at least launched once now (vs Neutron, Terran-R, and Nova at 0), but I never get over seeing how many contracts Blue has won vs delivered on to this point.