Main Engine Cut Off

There’s still some murkiness here. Was the 1.5-second firing the full duration that they were aiming for with this test, or did it shut down early? I’ve heard the latter.

The cooling system is provided by none other than—you guessed it—Northrop Grumman!

A couple of takeaways from Blue Origin’s ninth New Shepard mission.

How high is this sucker gonna go?

As someone who can spend all day in any given aerospace museum, this is quite a treat. Big thanks to Ian Dawson for linking to this.

“The unanimous vote by Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai and the agency’s three commissioners lays the groundwork for the transition of some, or possibly all of the 500 megahertz of spectrum commonly known as C-band.”

Blue seems to be trying really hard to limit the downsides of dual manifesting, and a single price for a ride to orbit no matter how you fly or when is a huge departure from the norm. It really only makes sense two ways: the entry price for a ride on New Glenn is shockingly low, or Blue will have no shortage of their own payloads to fly. Or both.

“The Cygnus spacecraft’s BT-4 main engine, supplied by IHI Aerospace of Japan, fired for 50 seconds Tuesday. The engine produces around 100 pounds of thrust, and the maneuver raised the orbit of the roughly 450-ton space station by 295 feet (90 meters).”

The entire Russian space industry is crumbling, from engine sales to launches, so they’d be thrilled to continue selling us the unused Soyuz seat for the next few years for $80+ million (instead of a fraction of that for a tourist).

Teslarati posted some great photos of the recent upgrades to Mr. Steven’s net. This thing looks absolutely batshit crazy.