by David Todd | Aug 28, 2015 | Launches, NASA, Seradata News, Technology
Having confounded its critics with its mainly successful progress, the SLS super heavy launch vehicle programme effectively got a stamp of approval by NASA’s high command when Todd May was promoted from being SLS Programme manager to the position of Deputy...
by David Todd | Aug 26, 2015 | Technology
In August 2015, the Boeing/Blue Origin team led by Boeing received US$6.5 million additional funding from DARPA to continue with its XS-1 design concept for Phase 1B of the program. Details of the propulsion system and propellants remain sketchy but is likely to use...
by David Todd | Aug 26, 2015 | Technology
The New Zealand-based rocket firm Rocket Lab, which is building a new very small launch vehicle called Electron has declared what its launch prices will be for customers wanting to loft cubesat size payloads into a 45 degree inclination low Earth orbit as well as to...
by David Todd | Aug 25, 2015 | Russia, Technology
No doubt stimulated by SpaceX’s development of the Falcon 9R and the European proposal to build a reusable stage for the Ariane 6, Sputnik News reports that Russia is to design and build new winged first stage for a partially reusable rocket. The winged stage...
by David Todd | Jul 28, 2015 | Commercial human spaceflight, Personal spaceflight, Space tourism, Suborbital, Technology, Virgin Galactic
The premature in-flight deployment of the feathered tail plane speed braking system was the primary cause of the destruction of the Virgin Galactic SpaceShipTwo (VSS Enterprise) on 31 October 2015, the formal investigation into the accident has concluded. The US...
by David Todd | Jul 17, 2015 | ESA, Launches, SpaceX, Technology
While the rhetoric at the third UK Space Conference held in Liverpool in July emphasised downstream space applications as the way to continued growth, there was an acceptance that there was also gap in Britain’s resurgent space portfolio: it does not have a...
