Bummed to see Masten Space closing shop; a company with a long reputation as a gritty shop for engineers in the area to cut their teeth on rocket tech. Pictured below is the Xodiac vehicle with 100+ successful flights and helped pioneer precision landing & hazard avoidance VTVL rocket technologies.

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Apparently, there was a fire in the high bay. Artemis I is safe and no one was hurt.

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This was a fun research project! Here's a summary of my findings (Part 1 of 2), for the tech stack you need to enable rockets like Falcon-9, Starship and New Shepard to land. Also interesting to note that Grid fins weren't invented by SpaceX but a Soviet Ballistic missile designer in 1956.

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SpinLaunch - Love the idea of Yeeting a Payload off to space (remember the canon ball analogy in your space systems class)! But I bet the tougher part will be to design payloads that can handle 10,000g at TBD freq. range. It's probably why they offer Satellite Buses. (image taken from Spinlaunch)

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SpinLaunch - Love the idea of Yeeting a Payload off to space (remember the canon ball analogy in your space systems class)! But I bet the tougher part will be to design payloads that can handle 10,000g at TBD freq. range. It's probably why they offer Satellite Buses. (image taken from Spinlaunch)

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What is Stoke Space Technologies (Kent, WA) building here? For anyone unfamiliar, Stoke wants to build a fully reusable launch vehicle. This appears to be some sort of ring-like thurst structure that has rocket engines surrounding the perimeter.

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Astra cancelled a launch vehicle with just about a 50% success rate and opted to place all resources towards the development of a larger rocket. It’s certainly an odd decision and does little to instill customer confidence. Has NASA has found a replacement vehicle for its’ TROPICS mission?

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The Solar Cells on Launcher's Orbiter (Rideshare Vehicle) are mounted using fasteners as opposed to bonding the cells to the substrate. I assume they made this decision to not have to worry about CTE-induced stresses (so that way, they are not orbit-limited)

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I generated an infographic of reusable vs. expendable rockets. The list certainly isn't complete (especially the expendable part) but I'd love to learn more about the companies that have publicly stated their intentions to build partial or full reusability into their vehicles. Any suggestions?

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Enjoyed listening to this interview with Pangea Aerospace CEO, Adria Argemi. Adria notes that the geometry of an Aerospike enables allows for better management of aero-thermal heat distribution than a bell nozzle. Will Aerospikes finally enable 2nd stage reusability? (no need for a vac opt. nozzle)

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SpinLaunch - Love the idea of Yeeting a Payload off to space (remember the canon ball analogy in your space systems class)! But I bet the tougher part will be to design payloads that can handle 10,000g at TBD freq. range. It's probably why they offer Satellite Buses. (image taken from Spinlaunch)

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Are these black tension rods being used to hold down Terran-1 during a static fire? If that is true, I wonder what the benefits of using this method vs. the traditional hold down “clamps” approach. Seems like the tension rods would require greater assembly and integration time.

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Struggling to understand how Sidereus Space Dynamics can make such a bold claim of having a Single Stage to Orbit capable vehicle (image taken from their website). Being ambitious is great but it hurts the industry when such claims are made without clear definition of this breakthrough technology

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A summary of Landing Ellipses for successful Mars mission landings to date. Note that the dimensions are in miles. SpaceX opened up a whole new world by resolving those dimensions from miles to meters. This level of precision is what enables Falcon-9 and New Sheppard to land on land.

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Thoughts on Blue Origin’s newly announced Blue Ring Spacecraft bus? Looks like an upgrade to the ESPA-ring in my opinion.

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Struggling to understand how Sidereus Space Dynamics can make such a bold claim of having a Single Stage to Orbit capable vehicle (image taken from their website). Being ambitious is great but it hurts the industry when such claims are made without clear definition of this breakthrough technology

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This is the first stage of Rocket Factory Augsburg’s Rocket 1. A bold choice for a small launcher to incorporate the mass penalty of Stainless Steel as opposed to traditional Aluminum or composite outer body.

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Perigee Space conducted a successful Preburner test for their Blue 1S liquid engine. This is a high O/F ratio of 64, seemingly a first for the country to develop an Ox-rich staged combustion cycle engine 🚀

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SpinLaunch - Love the idea of Yeeting a Payload off to space (remember the canon ball analogy in your space systems class)! But I bet the tougher part will be to design payloads that can handle 10,000g at TBD freq. range. It's probably why they offer Satellite Buses. (image taken from Spinlaunch)

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My theory is that the off nominal attitude observed right before flight termination had something to do with asymmetric thrust generated by these 6 engines being offline or perhaps the remainder engine have plenty of control authority to push through a nominal flight path 👇🏽

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