Fifth Avenue Forum

Good video from Everyday Astronaut on ULA's new Vulcan rocket, which just had a flawless debut.

I have no doubt that Vulcan will be a capable launcher. The delay has been largely attributable to Blue Origin taking years longer than planned to develop the BE-4 engines, and how fast BO can produce engines remains an open question, but the BE-4 certainly seems to work well. ULA has always had an impressive record of reliability. The question is the long-term viability of a launcher that is 100% disposable.

Nothing about the Vulcan as it currently exists is capable of reuse. Not only does SpaceX have the partially reusable Falcon 9, but it's developing the completely reusable Starship, and partially reusable launchers that can launch payloads in the range of what Vulcan can do are in development from Rocket Lab (the Neutron), Blue Origin itself (the New Glenn), and Firefly Aerospace (the MLV). Firefly's MLV also has Northrop Grumman money behind it because NG plans to use the same first stage for its Antares rocket, which can no longer get Russian engines. Whether ULA can compete in a world that is rapidly switching to reuse remains to be seen.

Congrats to Chinese company OrienSpace for the first launch of its Gravity-1, a chonky and totally Kerbalesque sea-launched rocket comprising all solid stages. The Gravity-1 is now the world's heaviest-lift rocket powered solely by solid motors and has a reported capacity of 6 metric tons to LEO, which is in the neighborhood of what a Soyuz can do.

There are three solid stages in the center and four solid boosters. I think the boosters are the same as the lowest solid motor in the core, and my understanding is that only the four boosters light on the ground, the first stage in the core lights when the boosters separate, and then there are two more smaller solid stages above that. The mission is reported as a success and there payload (several weather satellites) made the proper orbit, although given how much stuff goes flying from their launch ship at ignition, I think they might need some work in whatever system they are using for flame diversion on their launch ship. They supposedly went with the "short and fat" design for the Gravity-1 so that it would be less vulnerable to potential wind and ship movement for the launch platform.

China has a lot of rockets in development, both by the government and by private companies. They obviously view space as a high priority.

More views:

Astrobotic's Peregrine lander is currently on a trajectory that will cause it to reenter Earth's atmosphere in several days. While there is still a little bit of fuel on board to attempt a course change, Astrobotic has decided that the best course of action is to just let Peregrine burn up on reentry. That eliminates a potential piece of space junk.

Wiggle, wiggle.

While Orbital Sciences (later purchased by Northrop Grumman) certainly expected its Cygnus cargo vehicle to fly primarily on its own Antares rocket, they designed the Cygnus to be agnostic as to launch vehicle and be capable of fitting into the payload fairings of other launchers. Which proved to be a very wise decision. This week the Cygnus will launch on its third different rocket (Antares, Atlas 5, and Falcon 9).

It was a super clear day in Florida, and the Cygnus launch featured a RTLS landing for the Falcon 9 booster, so there were some really nice tracking shots today. Skip to 25:00 of the video.

Wiggle, wiggle.

Hadn't jumped into this thread in a while. I would like to see footage like that using captured telemetry data from a real launch showing just how active all that stuff is during ascent.

Congrats to JAXA for a successful second launch of the new H3 rocket. The maiden launch failed around a year ago due to a failure of the second stage, but launch number two was the charm. The H3 looks a lot like Japan's prior H2 rocket, with the stubby solid boosters and all, but it features new first-stage engines, new solid boosters, and an updated second-stage engine. Both core stages are hydrolox, and the rocket can use zero, two, or four solid boosters. The no-solids version uses three first-stage engines, while the versions that use solid boosters have two first-stage engines. The H3 is in the same range as the Falcon 9, Vulcan, Ariane 6, and Long March 7 in terms of payload capacity. It is not reusable.

The Intuitive Machines IM-1 lunar lander appears to have successfully touched down on the Moon, although the signal from the lander is weak. Intuitive Machines is a US public company that has a contract with NASA under the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, which is the same program as Astrobotic Technology, whose Peregrine lander wasn't able to accomplish its mission after an anomaly. Hopefully the weak signal is a matter of antenna pointing and isn't a sign that the lander tipped over, which is what recently happened to JAXA's SLIM lander.

Alas, the Intuitive Machines IM-1 lunar lander did tip over on landing. The science instruments are pointing up, however, so they may still be able to get useful data from them.

This is why you never let the computer land.

The folks at Japan's Space One had a Bad Day and did not go to space today with their maiden launch of the company's KAIROS launcher. The vehicle had an anomaly shortly after launch. Based on a brief press conference later on, it seems like the vehicle, which uses an autonomous flight termination system (AFTS), triggered a self-destruct shortly after launch, but it's not been announced why.



Space One is trying to be Japan's first private launch company. The company was founded by investments from some major Japanese companies, including IHI Aerospace, which has experience making the solid-rocket boosters for JAXA's H2 and H3 rockets. The KAIROS launcher is very similar in concept to the ESA's Vega launcher in that both vehicles use three solid-rocket stages topped by a very small hypergolic liquid-fueled fourth stage used for fine tuning the payload's final orbit, although KAIROS is much smaller and has a payload capacity right around the Rocket Lab Electron (roughly 250 kg to LEO). IHI Aerospace makes the solid motors. The launch site is a new purpose-built facility (Space Port Kii) near the town of Kushimoto, Wakayama Prefecture, near the tip of the Kii Peninsula, which is the southernmost point of Japan's main Honshū island.

Some still frames I've seen show a brief flash around the interstage between the first and second stages before the rest of the vehicle broke up. There have been a several failures in the last couple years on other vehicles, including the Vega, where a solid-rocket motor had a structural failure at its forward dome structure such that the stage ended up firing out of both ends. The KAIROS may have detected such a failure on its first stage and triggered its AFTS.

Space is hard.

Got some nice onboard views today.



Looks like the landing burn failed. Those grid fins were trying their best.

Holy poop balls this reentry video is awesome.

Didn't seem to have a good attitude control for the reentry. I don't think we'll see any more data. But seeing the plasma on the fins was neat.

End of an era today, with the final launch of the Delta 4 Heavy and the final launch of any Delta-family vehicle. The last mission carried the NROL-70 mission for the National Reconnaissance Office (i.e., a spy satellite).



The Delta family dates back to the 1950s. The "Delta" name came from the fact that the launchers were originally based on a modified version of the Thor ballistic missile, which was used with several different upper stages. The fourth of the stages was just called "Delta" because delta is the fourth letter of the Greek alphabet, and over time the Thor-Delta versions came to just be called "Delta" which was probably easier to remember than stuff like "Strengthened Extra-Extended Long Tank Thor."

The original Thor-based Deltas (all versions through the Delta III) went through numerous versions and upgrades. Fuel tanks were repeatedly stretched, the original S-3D engine was upgraded to the RS-27 and upgraded again to the RS-27A, and up to nine solid boosters were fitted. NASA in particular was a big Delta user, and various versions launched famous missions like the Spirit and Opportunity Mars rovers, the Mars Global Surveyor satellite, the Deep Impact comet mission, and the Dawn spacecraft to asteroids Vesta and Ceres.

The Delta 4 was really an all-new rocket that just carried the Delta name, and it switched from the original kerolox first stages to the hydrogen-powered RS-68 engine, which was the largest hydrogen-fueled rocket engine ever flown. The Delta was also really expensive, which is why it is being retired in favor of the Vulcan, which will also eventually replace the Atlas 5 as well once the existing inventory is flown out.

Neat.

Congrats, I guess, to Roscosmos for what seems to be a successful test flight of the Angara A5 rocket, which was the first launch of the Angara from the Vostochny Cosmodrome. Despite being in development for decades, the Angara A5 has only flown four test launches, none of which so far have carried anything more than dummy payloads. The Angara is built around a common-core design, with the standard core having a single RD-191 kerolox engine. The second stage is also kerolox, with an engine derived from the Soyuz's second-stage engine. There are two versions: the Angara 1.2 is a "single stick" version with one core, and the A5 version uses five cores—one in the center and four more as boosters. After launch of the A5, the center core throttles down to save fuel, and then throttles back up once the four boosters are jettisoned. The Angara A5 has been slated to replace the ex-Soviet Proton rocket, which uses toxic propellants, and the "single stick" 1.2 version will replace older ex-Soviet small launchers like the Dnepr, Tsyklon, and Rokot.

The Vostochny Cosmodrome is a relatively new launch center located in the Russian far east north of China and North Korea. It's intended to be a supplement if not replacement for Baikonur Cosmodrome, which is located in Kazakhstan and not Russia. Much like the Angara rocket, Vostochny was supposed to be operational years ago, but its development has been plagued with rampant theft and corruption to the point where something like 60 people have already gone to jail.

To put things in perspective, the Angara family has been in development for more than 10 years longer than SpaceX has been in existence. Such is the state of the Russian space program.

New wallpaper just dropped:

Jump in