Author: ChrisDMarshall
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Exciting times in Space
A lot has happened in Space or related to Space recently and the future is looking very bright. Below is a summary of some of the recent news and upcoming events. SpaceX and Boeing awarded CCtCap contracts – We now have two companies contracted to build manned spacecraft to deliver crew to the ISS. Currently…
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ULA and Blue Origin unveil BE-4 rocket engine
Today United Launch Alliance (ULA) and Blue Origin announced a new liquid oxygen, liquefied natural gas (LNG) rocket engine that delivers 550,000-lbf of thrust at sea level. The engine has been in development at Blue Origin for three years and a pair of them will be integrated into the Atlas rocket in appropriately three/four years. The…
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Atlas V launches with CLIO payload
This evening a United Launch Alliance Atlas V lifted off with a secret payload called CLIO for the Department of Defense. Details of the orbit or what the payload is for has not been made available. The launch was delayed several times due to weather constrains but those cleared allowing a liftoff to occur at 8:10pm…
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CCtCap awards announced
Today at 4pm EDT from Kennedy Space Center NASA announced the winners of the Commercial Crew Transportation Capability (CCtCap) contracts. And the winners are: Boeing – The CST-100 capsule seen to the right has been awarded $4.2 billion of the money. Over the next three years Boeing will have to complete a number of milestones below to…
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AsiaSat-6 launched successfully
Following an 12 day delay for SpaceX to triple-check that the Falcon 9 was okay after the Falcon 9 Reusable explosion the rocket and payload successfully lifted off this morning to complete another mission for SpaceX and AsiaSat, during the countdown this evening the weather conditions were not ideal including a lightning strike on the…
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Asteroid Mining the big question
We have seen a lot of news recently regarding mining asteroids to provide resources which could open up a trillion dollar industry in the future. However during all this talk the one question that doesn’t seem to have been answered is how do we get the resources back to Earth to use. During a conversation…
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My Views on Commercial Space
Today during a twitter conversation about the new SpaceX Texas Spaceport one of the people in the discussion send the following tweet. @ChrisDMarshall you seem to be determined to downplay commercial space potential and options. — NASA Watch (@NASAWatch) August 30, 2014 This got me thinking as personally I fully believe in Commercial Space as…
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Will SLS ever fly
Following on from my previous article I wanted to explore the possibility that the Space Launch System (SLS) may never actually fly. While progress has been made on the SLS it will not be ready to fly when President Barack Obama leaves office and given that he cancelled the Constellation Program (CxP) when he came…
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The true cost of getting the US back to manned flight
To date we have seen a lot of talk about the cost of the SLS program, however that isn’t the only cost that has been incurred by the US tax payer since the announcement that the Space Shuttle was to be retired. This article will look at everything that has happened since then and how…
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SLS Launch Date slips but not really
Today NASA announced they had completed the Key Decision Point C (KDP-C) review of the new Space Launch System their heavy launch rocket. With this milestone meet they can now proceed with the manufacturing of the actual flight hardware, while also performing reviews of the Ground Support systems and the Orion payload. As a result of…