The reused booster that blew up was coming in with an extra hot and stressing landing profile, so I wouldn’t read too much into that blowing up.
I agree that they need to make reuse and refueling work for their proposed Artemis architecture to be viable. I’m saying they could be up and running as a traditional disposable upper stage already if they wanted to. 50 tons to LEO is a start. Add a kick stage and you can do some cool stuff with that.
That’s actually quite typical, I’d like to make that point.
Shout-out to Rocket Lab for building the first 3 buses for Varda. Hopefully this works out, but I’m expecting some teething issues. I really like what Varda is doing overall, and bringing their bus manufacturing in house seems like an important part of scaling up.
Where the hell did this come from?
If Honda decides to get into the launch business with a reusable rocket, that’s curtains for a handful of undifferentiated launch companies.
Europe calls on them to have rockets available to launch.
Complaining that SpaceX stole their lunch is a bit of an own goal when Ariane 6 was so delayed, Vega scrapped some tanks they needed, and Vega C was grounded for 2 years.
They caught a few 1st stages and reflew one. That’s huge. If they weren’t trying to make a reusable 2nd stage, this program could be done and operational.
Let’s just pretend the V2 ship design never happened.
Hopefully the ground infrastructure isn’t too damaged.
I really hope they have grander ambitions than New Sheppard. There isn’t really anything wrong with it, I just don’t see much of a point to it.
Another alternative that had no intent of turning into a rocket was the Masten/Astrobotic Xodiac. It was a hopper that kept hopping to test lunar lander hardware and software.
I love this. For a real LEO economy including manufacturing, we need cheap launch and reentry. Atmos and Nyx both getting cheap rides on SpaceX rideshares is great for pushing that technology development.
I’ve played and DMed both. A West Marches campaign has been the right fit for some groups with tough schedules. That format can work really well when you have a larger world plan and story that different venn diagrams of groups slowly discover and have to post notes about to a group chat or Discord. Players remember and read about things from different sessions and piece together the story and world, then can decide on new missions and exploration in a real collaborative setting. Picture a tavern setting where they’re arguing about different plot hooks, missions, and tips, and start to switch from the selfish motivations of wanting cool loot to also wanting to uncover the story. It can be great if you lay the groundwork.
A few lazy players can disappear into the background, and they still have fun and want to hang out.
One of the campaigns I play in is more of a West Marches or Adventurer’s League style with a rotating cast of players. There are… differening levels of effort.
And the person who didn’t gets to default to being the loner outcast who doesn’t talk much, easy
A 2-seater in 10 years for $1+ billion isn’t the most inspirational thing ever, but they have to start somewhere? It was 10 years from the first Cargo Dragon to the first crewed Dragon 2 flight, Demo-2.
Based on who wrote it, my guess is more that it’s an easy way to tax bigger companies that can afford it, not a way to be nice to startups / small launch.
For some reason I was thinking it was the same ring of 9 for each vehicle, but different numbers of those rings depending on launcher capability and fairing size.
But needing to go to different facilities to integrate the stacks and deal with the different companies sounds awful.
They must be planning to ask for an extension.
Their manifest on Wikipedia lists this for the rest of the year, with x sats on board each (I’m rounding up and assuming multiples of 9):
Atlas V, 27 (today)
Falcon 9, 27
Atlas V, 27
Vulcan, 45
Ariane 6, 36
And no planned New Glenn launch until next 2026. Other than the Vulcan, I could see those launches happening. There’s just no way they hit the 50% mark next year. No way.
Starship is way too big as a 1st crewed moon lander. I think the sustainability of the whole program would be improved by having fully reusable smaller landers and transit vehicles that can be refuelled, ideally including by ISRU. Statship wasn’t architecture for this, and making it work had tons of compromises.
I really want the rest of the space industry to benefit from functional and cheap super heavy lift as soon as possible from a Statship stack with a reusable 1st stage and disposable stripped down 2nd stage. Launch some normal payloads and experimental reusable ships in between.