Main Engine Cut Off

I’ve been doing a good amount of reading of these reports already, and I’ll write something longer after I’ve finished up, but they’re interesting to read through.

It’s been a rough day or two for spaceflight: SpaceX’s incident on the pad, China’s Long March 4C failure, and an earthquake near Rocket Lab’s launch site (everything is fine there for Rocket Lab).

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I love the way they call it “flight-proven” instead of reused. It’s like the “certified pre-owned” of the launch industry.

The first launch is just under a month away. It’ll be the first launch for SpaceX from Vandenberg since January. I’m particularly interested in the flight pattern and recovery of this first stage. Last we heard, SpaceX was working on RTLS clearance for Vandenberg flights, and was constructing what looked like their west coast landing zone.

ULA posted a new video about the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage over on YouTube. They spend a lot of time talking about on-orbit refueling, distributed lift, and Integrated Vehicle Fluids. The video even shows a little sneak peek of Xeus, the Masten-ULA lunar lander collaboration.

Seán Doran has been adding a CG astronaut to the photos of the Murray buttes that Curiosity has been sending back as it travels past them. I’ve been absolutely loving these images.

SpaceX has been in need of room to work on recovered boosters since running out of space in their hangar at Pad 39A months ago. More importantly, they need that hangar to support launches from 39A in the next year.

I like how NanoRacks is approaching this—looking objectively at hardware that’s in use today to put things together in interesting ways.

Aside from this being an election year plea to avoid cancellation of a struggling program, I’m not sure where the idea comes from that SLS will be rid of development in the 2020s.