Lifeboat Foundation

Interesting ArsTechnica article on the delay of the BE-4 engine from Blue Origin. It brings up a point many outside the actual industry miss in that Blue Origin has to meet more stringent and complicated regulatory and certification standards that SpaceX does since they are actually producing engines for sale rather than company use. Since SpaceX only provides ‘services’ rather than ‘products’ (they have no plans for every selling Merlin’s, Raptor’s or any other item they produce including the “mini-Raptor” the Air Force actually paid them to produce) they don’t have to meet or even consider most of the requirements that Blue Origin has had to in order to produce the BE-4.

After these tests, a fully assembled flight engine no. 1 will be shipped to Texas to undergo a fairly brief round of tests, known as acceptance testing. If this engine passes, as expected, it will be shipped to ULA. Then a virtually identical BE-4 engine will be sent from Kent to Texas. This “qual” engine will undergo a much more rigorous series of tests, known as qualification testing. The idea is to push the engine through its paces to find any flaws. Then a similar process will follow with flight engine no. 2 followed by a second “qual” engine.

The risk is that ULA will receive the flight engines before the full qualification testing is complete. This qualification work on Blue Origin’s test stands will be occurring even as ULA integrates the engines with its first Vulcan rocket for testing and ultimately a launch during the second half of 2022. So if Blue Origin finds a last-minute issue with the BE-4 engine, ULA may have to unwind its work on final Vulcan development.

Continue reading “Blue Origin’s powerful BE-4 engine is more than four years late—here’s why” »

https://youtube.com/watch?v=FduP45p-o6k

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has plans for a giant orbital arm that he claimed resembles a character from Godzilla.

Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin is challenging a U.S. government contract with Elon Musk’s SpaceX to develop technology to land people on the moon again.

In a complaint filed Friday in the Court of Federal Claims in Washington, Blue Origin said the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s evaluation process was “unlawful and improper.” The complaint was filed under seal but tandem documents seeking a protective order gave an indication of its contents.

NASA selected SpaceX’s human lander bid on April 16 leading Blue Origin and a bidding partner, Dynetics Inc., to file protests with the Government Accountability Office less than two weeks later alleging that the award process was flawed. The GAO denied that protest on July 30 saying that NASA’s SpaceX selection had been made properly. Blue Origin, which has offered to contribute more than $2 billion of work on the project at no cost to the government, had vowed to continue pursuing the matter.

SpaceX is gearing up to launch the Starship into orbit, the biggest test yet for the ship designed to send humans to Mars and beyond.

Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic’s VSS Unity just performed a successful spaceflight. Watch highlights from the mission and Spaceport America right here.

3D printed rockets save on up front tooling, enable rapid iteration, decrease part count, and facilitate radically new designs. For your chance to win 2 seats on one of the first Virgin Galactic flights to Space and support a great cause, go to https://www.omaze.com/veritasium.

Thanks to Tim Ellis and everyone at Relativity Space for the tour!
https://www.relativityspace.com/
https://youtube.com/c/RelativitySpace.

Continue reading “The Genius of 3D Printed Rockets” »

SPACE STATION CREW DISCUSSES LIFE IN SPACE WITH STUDENTS AT U.S EMBASSY IN BULGARIA

Aboard the International Space Station, Expedition 65 Flight Engineers Mark Vande Hei of NASA and Thomas Pesquet of ESA (European Space Agency) discussed life and work aboard the complex during an in-flight event July 26 where they answered pre-recorded questions from students. Vande Hei and Pesquet launched within weeks of each other in April on Russian Soyuz and SpaceX Crew Dragon vehicles respectively for their missions on the orbital outpost.

Join me as I take a tour of SpaceX’s Starbase facility with Elon Musk as our tour guide! This is part 2 of 3 so stay tuned, there’s another one coming!

If you need some notes on this video with key points, check out our article — https://everydayastronaut.com/starbase-tour-and-interview-with-elon-musk/

Continue reading “Starbase Tour with Elon Musk [PART 2]” »

According to Musk, “Starbase is moving at Warp 9” as SpaceX prepare for the first orbital demonstration of the Starship/Super Heavy stack. It is going to be an absolute monster topping out at 120 meters, almost 10 meters taller than the mighty Saturn V.

Although largely a demonstration mission, Musk has said that it will carry a “wheel of cheese.” This was also the first payload of the company’s Dragon spacecraft. It was chosen because it was the silliest thing they could imagine.