NASA and the Private Sector - Page 188

As part of last week's federal budget rollout, a process during which the White House proposes funding levels for fiscal year 2022, the US Air Force released its "justification book" to compare its current request to past budget data. The 462-page book contains a lot of information about how the Air Force spends its approximately $200 billion budget.

For those tracking the development of SpaceX's ambitious Starship vehicle, there is an interesting tidbit tucked away on page 305, under the heading of "Rocket Cargo" (see .pdf). The Air Force plans to invest $47.9 million into this project in the coming fiscal year, which begins October 1.

"The Department of the Air Force seeks to leverage the current multi-billion dollar commercial investment to develop the largest rockets ever, and with full reusability to develop and test the capability to leverage a commercial rocket to deliver AF cargo anywhere on the Earth in less than one hour, with a 100-ton capacity," the document states.

Although this does not refer to Starship by name, this is the only vehicle under development in the world with this kind of capability. The Air Force does not intend to invest directly into the vehicle's development, the document says. However, it proposes to fund science and technology needed to interface with the Starship vehicle so that the Air Force might leverage its capabilities.

Clearly, some Air Force officials are intrigued by the possibility of launching 100 tons of cargo from the United States and having the ability to land it anywhere in the world about an hour later.

Accordingly, the Air Force science and technology investments will include "novel loadmaster designs to quickly load/unload a rocket, rapid launch capabilities from unusual sites, characterization of potential landing surfaces and approaches to rapidly improve those surfaces, adversary detectability, new novel trajectories, and an S&T investigation of the potential ability to air drop a payload after reentry," the document states.

The Air Force is spending $9.7 million on these activities in the current fiscal year but seeks to increase that total for the coming year as it moves into the test phase of the program. The funds will have to be approved by Congress as part of its budget deliberation process this summer and fall.

This clearly is an important contract for SpaceX, as the US Department of Defense has near-limitless budgets and could become an important customer of Starship. This fully reusable vehicle, currently undergoing tests in South Texas, theoretically has both the capability to fly to the Moon or Mars, as well as suborbital point-to-point flights on Earth. If it is successful, it would offer the US military logistical capabilities that no other force on the planet could match.

SpaceX already launches spy and communications satellites for the US military. However, in moving into logistics and the potential movement of munitions, the company may be treading on an ethical line with some space enthusiasts. It would also further embolden the claims of some international critics, such as Russian space leader Dmitry Rogozin, who has suggested (without evidence) that SpaceX aims to launch nuclear weapons into space.

Long Beach, California. 02 June, 2021 – Rocket Lab, the leading launch and space systems company, announced today it has received authorization from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to resume launches. The approval comes fewer than three weeks after Rocket Lab experienced an anomaly during its 20th launch, resulting in the loss of the mission.

Rocket Lab is leading the mishap investigation into the anomaly with oversight from the FAA; the federal licensing body for U.S. launch vehicles. While the FAA has confirmed that Rocket Lab’s launch license remains active, Rocket Lab will continue with a rigorous internal review into the anomaly. The review team is working through an extensive fault tree analysis to exhaust all potential causes for the anomaly and the full review is expected to be complete in the coming weeks, following which Rocket Lab anticipates a swift return to flight.

“With a vehicle with so much flight history and our heavy mission assurance and quality focus, any anomaly was always going to be a complex failure and this one is turning out to be an intricate and layered failure analysis,” says Rocket Lab founder and CEO, Peter Beck. “However, we have successfully replicated the failure in testing and determined it required multiple conditions to occur in flight. We are now piecing together the sequence of events and preparing corrective actions for a safe and swift return to flight.”

The anomaly took place almost 200 seconds into the May 15 flight, which was Rocket Lab’s 20th mission since the company began Electron launches in 2017. Electron completed a successful lift-off from Launch Complex 1 and proceeded through a nominal first stage engine burn, stage 1-2 separation, and stage 2 ignition. Shortly after the stage 2 ignition, the engine computer detected that conditions for flight were not met and performed a safe shut down. The vehicle remained within the pre-determined safety corridor at all times and all safety procedures performed as expected. Launch Complex 1 was unaffected by the anomaly and the site remains ready to support the next Electron launch.

Rocket Lab continued receiving good telemetry from Electron following the engine shutdown, providing engineers with comprehensive data to review. The data is being methodically scoured to enable the review team to accurately pinpoint the issue and implement corrective actions for future missions.

Flight data shows Electron’s first stage performed flawlessly during the mission and did not contribute to the flight issue. The mission saw Rocket Lab achieve the next major milestone in making Electron a reusable launch vehicle, with the successful ocean splashdown of Electron’s first stage as planned. Rocket Lab’s recovery team retrieved the stage from the ocean for transport back to Rocket Lab’s production complex for analysis and testing to inform future recovery missions. The new heat shield debuted in this flight protected the stage from the intense heat and forces experienced while re-entering Earth’s atmosphere and the engines remain in good condition. Rocket Lab intends to put the engines through hot fire testing to assess their performance following atmospheric re-entry. Rocket Lab also intends to re-fly selected components from the recovered stage on future missions. Rocket Lab’s program to make Electron a reusable launch vehicle is advancing quickly, and the company intends to conduct its third recovery mission later this year.

As the fourth most frequently launched rocket in the world, Electron has become a workhorse launch vehicle relied on by government and commercial small satellite operators globally. Prior to the May 15 mission failure, Electron had completed 17 successful orbital launches and deployed more than 100 satellites to orbit.

Relativity Space announced Tuesday morning that it has raised an additional $650 million in private capital and that this money will fuel an ambitious agenda of 3D printing large, reusable rockets.

The new funding will accelerate development of the "Terran-R" launch vehicle, Relativity Chief Executive Tim Ellis said in an interview. This large orbital rocket will be about the same size as SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket. However, Ellis said, the entire vehicle will be reusable—the first and second stages, as well as the payload fairing. And it will have the capacity to lift 20 tons to low Earth orbit in reusable mode, about 20 percent more than a Falcon 9 booster that lands on a drone ship.

With the Terran-R vehicle, therefore, Ellis said Relativity Space aspires to not just match the remarkably capable Falcon 9 rocket but to exceed its performance.

"We're trying to ice skate to where the puck is going," Ellis said, adding that Relativity wants to be similarly disruptive to SpaceX, but in its own way. "What we keep hearing from customers is that they don't want just a single launch company that is, frankly, the only quickly moving, disruptive provider."

Powered by seven main engines, the Terran R vehicle will initially launch from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. Relativity has set a goal to launch in 2024, and Ellis said the company has signed a binding contract for multiple launches with an "anchor customer" he declined to name. Relativity has not publicly released a price for a launch.

Inspired by SpaceX

Ellis co-founded Relativity Space five years ago and said he and co-founder Jordan Noone both were influenced by the achievements of SpaceX—which by then had begun to vertically land orbital rockets—as well as Elon Musk's goal to establish a human settlement on Mars.

"I was inspired by SpaceX landing rockets and docking with the space station," Ellis said. "Yet despite all of that success, we realized that there were two core issues." Those issues were a lack of planning for how to live on Mars and a space industry still using labor-intensive practices.

"In every SpaceX animation, we saw a fade into black right when people walked out of the rocket on Mars," Ellis said. "So what was clear [is] that there needed to be some other company building humanity's industrial base on Mars. Replicating the infrastructure for a million people that live on Mars is a massive undertaking, and I think a lot of people need to work on it."

Relativity seeks to do this by pushing forward 3D-printing technology. Ellis intends to disrupt the long-standing aerospace practice of using fixed tooling to manufacture rockets, which are then finished using a hands-on process of adding thousands of parts. Ultimately, Relatively hopes to use what it learns about printing rockets on Earth to additively manufacture habitats and other materials on the surface of Mars.

Even as Relativity Space seeks to augment the efforts by Musk and SpaceX to make humans a multiplanetary species, the company is also directly competing with its much more established rival. If successfully developed, the Terran R would challenge SpaceX's Falcon 9 rocket for both government and commercial launch contracts.

However, Ellis said it would be a mistake to compare the Terran R rocket to the Falcon 9. The vehicle should be thought of more like a miniature version of SpaceX's Starship rocket, he said, with an upper stage that could transfer payloads through space, to the Moon and perhaps even Mars. In terms of appearances, too, it resembles Starship more than the Falcon 9.

Fully reusable

The Terran R vehicle will have a first stage that lands on a drone ship at sea, and the second stage will retain its payload fairing after satellite separation. Then, this combined stack, the second stage and payload fairing, will make a propulsive landing from orbit.

"To my knowledge, we're only the second fully reusable vehicle other than Starship that's even been planned," Ellis said.

The rocket's first stage will be printed from a custom aluminum alloy, and the upper stage will be built from a more exotic, heat-resistant material to withstand re-entry temperatures. For the rocket's first missions, Relativity will seek to bring back the first stage, incorporating full-vehicle reuse over time, Ellis said.

If all of this sounds ambitious, that's because it is, especially for a company that has yet to launch a rocket or even perform an integrated-stage test firing. However, Relativity's steady growth, to about 400 employees now, and total fundraising of $1.34 billion lend some credence to the idea that it may indeed be successful.

Relativity is also getting closer to its first Terran 1 launch attempt. This much smaller rocket has a capacity of 1.25 metric tons to low Earth orbit. Ellis said the company already has printed 85 percent of the first Terran 1 flight rocket, including the first and second stages. Relativity will ship the second stage to Stennis Space Center in Mississippi "toward the end of summer" for hot fire tests. The company's launch site is due to be activated early this fall.

The goal remains launching the Terran 1 rocket for the first time this year, Ellis said, and the company is "charging hard" toward it. But clearly, Relativity does not intend to stop there.

AS CRUCES, N.M.--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Virgin Galactic Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: SPCE) (the “Company” or “Virgin Galactic”), a vertically integrated aerospace and space travel company, today announced that the flight window for the next rocket-powered test flight of its SpaceShipTwo Unity opens July 11, pending weather and technical checks.

The “Unity 22” mission will be the twenty-second flight test for VSS Unity and the Company’s fourth crewed spaceflight. It will also be the first to carry a full crew of two pilots and four mission specialists in the cabin, including the Company’s founder, Sir Richard Branson, who will be testing the private astronaut experience.

Building on the success of the Company’s most recent spaceflight in May, Unity 22 will focus on cabin and customer experience objectives, including:

• Evaluating the commercial customer cabin with a full crew, including the cabin environment, seat comfort, the weightless experience, and the views of Earth that the spaceship delivers — all to ensure every moment of the astronaut’s journey maximizes the wonder and awe created by space travel
  
• Demonstrating the conditions for conducting human-tended research experiments
  
• Confirming the training program at Spaceport America supports the spaceflight experience
  

For the first time, Virgin Galactic will share a global livestream of the spaceflight. Audiences around the world are invited to participate virtually in the Unity 22 test flight and see first-hand the extraordinary experience Virgin Galactic is creating for future astronauts. The livestream will be available to watch on Virgin Galactic.com and will be simulcast on the Virgin Galactic Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook channels. It is expected to begin at 7:00 am MDT / 9:00 am EDT on the day of the flight.