Main Engine Cut Off

I’ve talked about AF-M315E and other greener hydrazine alternatives fairly often over the past few months. This is an industry-wide push that shows no signs of slowing down—even water-based systems are in the works.

They’re citing launch site testing and ISS scheduling as the cause for the delay, but it sort of feels like we’re not getting the whole story here.

NASA has selected 6 partners—Bigelow, Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Orbital ATK, Sierra Nevada, and NanoRacks (working with SSL and ULA)—to develop full-sized ground prototypes for deep space habitats. Other than it being the same old insiders club as always, there are some cool bits in here.

The crew access arm at SLC-41 is due to be installed sometime this week, Pad 39A work is continuing, and Falcon Heavy is delayed until “early 2017.”

The mere existence of ARM on NASA’s #JourneyToMars roadmap is an admission of just how flawed that roadmap is in its current state.

The changes associated with artificial gravity are not as much about the changes to the still-on-paper (at best) spacecraft, and more about the changes to the NASA roadmap.

China has recently been opening up to more collaboration with Russia, ESA, and others. I really want to see the United States open up to China before it’s too late and everyone moves on together, without us.

Reports out of McGregor—posted over on the SpaceX Facebook group—that SpaceX has fired the JCSAT-14 core again, for over two minutes. It’ll be very interesting to watch how many times they run this core through tests. That was an extremely quick turn around between full-duration tests, so things must be going well.