burble

Agreed, I was surprised they were going for a booster reuse at this point. I guess it makes sense that they're better at the booster than the shop given Falcon heritage.

Ship catch, tower readiness aside, seems like a hell of a time to permit.

This has quietly been the 6th private Dragon flight. The Dragon program has been such a big win for NASA and spaceflight.

Kuiper finally actually launching is big for the market. Starlink was such a turning point for Falcon hitting an insane launch cadence. Kuiper is the Prince That Was Promised to push ULA, Ariane, and Blue to pick up the pace.

I feel like every year since 2020 has been "the year" that competitors are finally supposed to show up. Vulcan and New Glenn have at least finally launched now, but it'll take them years to ramp up to the point of actually being competition to Falcon.

Booster reflight is so hype. Working through stage separation will be huge for the program. Pulling off a good soft splashdown would be phenomenal.

It's still weird to me that Blue won any of this. I get it, they have a more capable rocket on paper than a lot of other ones in work, they still have to go through full certification, and they've at least launched once now (vs Neutron, Terran-R, and Nova at 0), but I never get over seeing how many contracts Blue has won vs delivered on to this point.

I hope Vast gets it. I really want Haven-1, and Vast as a whole, to succeed. I want Axiom to succeed, too, but they'd get less marginal benefit from a 5th and 6th ISS trip than Vast would get from their 1st and 2nd.

They wouldn't have gotten the same investor money if they started with this concept, though. They got money to be SpinLaunch, so this is a pivot and a bit of a bait and switch for investors. Kind of like Relativity getting a $billion+ in investments for 3d printed rockets, then turning into Ariane.

Have you read Seveneves?

Idk if I'm in on their mission anymore. EVs are cool and the industry needed the kick in the pants and jump start that they gave, but now the company is a tech/AI/robot/cybertruck/2-seat-robotaxi company that doesn't make a ton of sense to me. EVs and solar panels and power walls all made sense, but what are they even doing now.

NASA should probably stick with the task orders instead of going to block buys. I mean, most of these companies still haven't succeeded.

I don't think block buys are needed until/unless there's a surface base getting regular resupplies.

The company has not commented on what caused a delay that pushed potential beta services into 2025.

Uh, Amazon was standing up a satellite division and designing a bus from scratch. Seems pretty self explanatory.