Peter Hague

1 week ago | planetocracy.org | Peter Hague

SpaceX has lost another Starship, Ship 36, to an accident during a static fire attempt. The vehicle burst, and the was engulfed in a fireball, during the propellant load operation. There have been a string of failures in the Starship program this year - mostly relating to the new V2 iteration of the ship.

2 weeks ago | planetocracy.org | Peter Hague

European spaceflight has fallen behind; SpaceX have taken the commercial launch market which was a decade ago dominated by Ariane 5, have rapidly increased the rate of launch and satellite manufacture beyond our ability to keep up, and perfected first stage reusability which remains at the concept stage in Europe. We lack a human spaceflight program of our own, and our ability to explore other planets is largely tied to collaborations with others.

3 weeks ago | planetocracy.org | Peter Hague

Jared Isaacman’s nomination for NASA Administrator has be abruptly withdrawn by the Trump administration. This has been widely viewed as a very negative development - Isaacman was both well liked across the space community and incredibly well qualified. He would have been the first NASA Administrator to have prior experience running a different space program (his own private Polaris program).

3 weeks ago | quillette.com | Peter Hague

Starship recently conducted its ninth test flight. On the previous two test flights, the upper stage vehicle was destroyed during ascent, but this one fared better. However, the booster was destroyed during its landing burn while attempting a soft landing in the ocean, and the ship lost attitude control in space and was not able to complete its test objectives. There will be more test flights, and likely more failures before the rocket works well enough for use.

3 weeks ago | planetocracy.org | Peter Hague

Last week we saw the ninth test flight of Starship, and an update from Elon Musk on the SpaceX plan for colonising Mars. Neither part of the Flight 9 vehicle fully completed its flight, and thus were not able to collect all the data that was needed, but did demonstrate the second ascent of a previously flown Superheavy booster. A similar mission will have to be reflown in a few weeks, delaying fully orbital flights. This did not dampen the ambitions of the company regarding this program though.