Lifeboat Foundation

At ~5:02 pm CDT on August 27 2019, SpaceX successfully launched its Starhopper test vehicle on a 150-meter flight test. After ascending to 150-meters, Starhopper successfully landed at a landing pad ~160-meters away.

The 150-meter flight was the last of a long line of tests that Starhopper, the first vehicle in the Starship program, conducted. It was based on the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR, a previous name for Starship)2018design. Starhopper used a single Raptor engine and three non-retractable legs.

Continue reading “SpaceX continues forward progress with Starship on Starhopper anniversary” »

November2021will be a big month for NASA.

The Artemis I team is gearing up to launch the spacecraft Orion to the Moon and back for an uncrewed test flight.

At the heart of NASA’s Artemis mission, which aims to land humans on the lunar surface by 2,024 is the spacecraft Orion. Here’s how engineers are preparing for its maiden voyage.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A SpaceX shipment of ants, avocados, and a human-sized robotic arm rocketed toward the International Space Station on Sunday.

The delivery — due to arrive Monday — is the company’s 23rd for NASA in just under a decade.

A recycled Falcon rocket blasted into the predawn sky from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. After hoisting the Dragon capsule, the first-stage booster landed upright on SpaceX’s newest ocean platform, named “A Shortfall of Gravitas.” SpaceX founder Elon Musk continued his tradition of naming the booster-recovery vessels in tribute to the late science fiction writer Iain Banks and his Culture series.

A month after New Shepard’s first flight carrying people into space, a science flight without crew onboard has launched from Blue Origin’s facility near Van Horn, Texas. The flight, the fourth of the year for the New Shepard program, was originally scheduled for August 25 2021, but was delayed due to a payload integration issue.

New Shepard flight NS-17 lifted off on Thursday, August 26 at 09:31 CDT local time (14:31 UTC) — after two unplanned holds — on a suborbital trajectory with an apogee over 100 kilometers, the boundary to space as recognized by the Federation Aeronautique Internationale.

Continue reading “Blue Origin launches NS-17 suborbital science mission” »

Blue Origin successfully launched its 17th New Shepard suborbital spaceflight Thursday morning. The capsule flew to a peak altitude of 347,430 feet while carrying 20 payloads.

Silicon Valley’s most succesful incubator is doubling down on space tugs.

Backed by Y Combinator, the space company is developing solar thermal rockets.

First, scientists will have to figure out if it’s even feasible.

This situation has become a logistical headache for SpaceX, which seeks road closures to move rocket hardware along the road and for tests and launches. It has also been unpleasant for nearby residents and those who enjoy the undeveloped beach.

Now, SpaceX founder Elon Musk has a potential solution. The Brownsville Herald reports that officials from Musk’s The Boring Company met with Cameron County officials in July to discuss digging a tunnel from the south end of South Padre Island to the north end of Boca Chica Beach, facilitating alternate access to the barrier island.

SpaceX appears to have more or less broken ground on a new, even bigger ‘high bay’ assembly facility at its Boca Chica, Texas Starship factory.

Barely one year ago, SpaceX erected the first prefabricated steel sections of what eventually become its Starship factory ‘high bay’ – a spartan 81m (~265 ft) tall designed at the most basic level to shield final Starship and Super Heavy booster assembly from the elements. Situated near the southernmost tip of Texas and just a few miles west of the Gulf of Mexico, those “elements” can be less than pleasant at SpaceX’s primary Starship factory, ranging from sauna-like heat and humidity and mosquitoes the size of quarters to regular downpours, thunderstorms, tropical conditions, and even hurricanes.

While a great deal of work at Starbase is still done out in the open with little more than an umbrella as protection, SpaceX has nevertheless worked to find a middle ground where the most sensitive work (mainly structural welding) can be mostly shielded from wind and rain. First, SpaceX built a (relatively) tiny ‘windbreak’ too small for much of anything. Two years later, the windbreak is partially used for Starship nose section assembly – when a nose cone is stacked on and welded to a separate stack of four steel rings.