Main Engine Cut OffThe EELV section of the House Armed Services Committee markup is quite interesting. The full committee will be marking up the bill today, so things may change quite a bit. But until then, there are a few interesting bits within.
The entire hour-long show is absolutely worth a listen—she gives a good update on where SpaceX is at, currently—but one particular moment stood out.
Andy Pasztor hasn’t been very fond of SpaceX over the years, but his recent article on SpaceX’s double-launch weekend is something else.
Back in April, ULA announced layoffs at Vandenberg, which seemed to indicate that they dropped their launch team on the west coast. Two months later, it looks like SpaceX has two independent launch teams up and running.
Scaled hardware to validate the architecture, big enough for initial Mars missions with a few crew members, and small enough to be used commercially for other tasks.
Boeing’s proposal won Phases 2 and 3 of DARPA’s XS-1 program, and I’m pretty bummed about it. And the Air Force announced that SpaceX will launch the fifth X-37B mission in August.
Marco Langbroek, SatTrackCam Leiden, on the curious proximity of USA 276 to ISS on the days surrounding the berthing of SpaceX CRS-11.
This info from Koenigsmann means one of two things: they can complete the work while continuing to fly missions from 39A, or they plan to push the work to the end of the year to give themselves some time with two east coast pads operational.
Overall, I’m quite disappointed at the missed opportunity XS-1 presented to widen the industry. It’ll take a lot to convince me that a Boeing project of this sort will ever be affordable. Boeing doesn’t have the best reputation for cost-efficiency when it comes to launch vehicles—Delta IV and SLS being the two most recent examples—and their last small launch DARPA project didn’t end well.
Yesterday was a great day for SpaceX, with the beautiful and seemingly-flawless launch of Inmarsat–5 Flight 4.