Main Engine Cut Off

Lately when I’ve been talking about political and financial tradeoffs made to sustain programs, I’ve been focusing on NASA’s exploration program, but the same things are true of Ariane 6.

Photos and videos were posted on the SpaceX subreddit of the ITS composite tank as it headed out to the destructive sea testing that we heard about from Elon Musk himself.

Signed about a month ago, this report from the FAA states that they’ve cleared the environmental concerns surrounding Falcon 9 landings at Vandenberg. Great timing, as SpaceX should be back up and flying soon.

This is going to be an extremely interesting transition period. More of a “Let’s modernize this roadmap,” instead of a “Tear it all up!”

Chris Gebhardt of NASASpaceFlight wrote up a rundown of external cargo for SpaceX CRS flights 10 through 20. The NanoRacks airlock isn’t mentioned anywhere, which is counter to what Mike Johnson talked about in my interview with him.

This is an interesting development that could point a few directions.

We should get some closure in the next few weeks on the AMOS-6 front. They’re getting started with static fires and testing in McGregor again, which means the investigation is entering the wrap-up and sign-off phases. The return-to-flight mission seems to be Iridium NEXT out of Vandenberg, with a flight out of 39A in mid-December.

A commercial cargo-style program for getting payloads to the Moon would be wonderfully interesting. It would be well-timed to be used as NASA participation in the Moon Village idea that is talked about within ESA (and pretty much everywhere but the US).

Friday afternoon before a holiday: the time to bury press releases. I’m not sure why SpaceX buried this particular update since the news is encouraging.