News and findings about our cosmos.
Subcommunity of Science
This community's icon was made by Aaron Schneider, under the CC-BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.
Hopefully they can get get to a root cause, corrective actions, and return to flight pretty soon. They had a good launch success streak going and were hitting a pretty solid launch cadence, so this really stinks. Electron has been the best (practically the only?) smallsat launcher, and I'm looking forward to their bigger Neutron rocket, so I wish them the best.
Their stock dropping 20% this morning really reinforces my dislike for the stock market.
Really hoping Rocket Lab eventually catches up with, and passes SpaceX. Could use some more competition in reusable launchers. Who knows if Blue Origin ever gets more than a carnival ride off the ground.
Stoke Space might also be a dark horse coming for the reusable market. They've got a long way to go, but it's a very unique and interesting design they've got.
I'm pretty excited for Neutron, but I'm more excited for Stoke.
I love Neutron's attached fairing to make reuse easier. It's also awesome to see such an ambitious carbon fiber project. The 2nd stage isn't reusable, though, so I'm guessing they'll be competing for 2nd place, at the top of the "not SpaceX" market.
Everything about the Stoke upper stage makes me happy. SpaceX did some work on Falcon 9 2nd stage reuse, but this is like if they hit a bong first then merged that with Starship development. It's so damn cool. AND meant to be fully reusable.
Yeah, I want all of them to succeed. They're all innovating in their own ways. Cheaper access to space hopefully means cheaper access to space based resources and eventually manufacturing in space.
Maybe we can get all the dirty industry off planet someday.
Just finishing up When the Heavens Went on Sale by Ashlee Vance. Pretty good.
Thanks for sharing.
That book is on my list. It's a long list. How are you liking it?
It's pretty good. Not super technical. But the section on Rocket Labs especially was very good.
I've been trying to switch back and forth between fiction and nonfiction, and right now my nonfiction queue is something like Failure is Not an Option (been on the shelf for ages), Ignition!, When the Heavens Went on Sale, then maybe Test Gods, The Six, and Escaping Gravity.
Sooo, lots of reading to do.
I find if I have fiction and non fiction on hand, I read a ton more. Something to switch to, you know?
I just started the Culture series, so I have a lot of nonfiction in the queue, too