Moonshot #17

Sierra Space has got Tenacity, Astra founders propose a buyout, and SpaceX has everyone asking, "will they, or won't they?"

Hello Continuum readers and Celestial Citizens,

Welcome back to Moonshot where we will give a bi-weekly rundown of all the private sector space news. If you haven’t already, consider becoming a paid subscriber ($6/month) so you can get past that pesky paywall and read the full Moonshot post!

Sierra Space’s first Dream Chaser spaceplane sits pretty in Louisville, Colorado, soon to be shipped to a NASA facility in Ohio for testing. Credit: Sierra Space

Sierra Space – Dragon is the only robotic spacecraft that can both deliver and return supplies between Earth and the ISS, we said. Progress and Cygnus wish they could be as cool as Dragon, we said. Okay, we didn’t say that last bit, but if you read Continuum last week, you know we hyped up SpaceX’s Dragon cargo capsule for being one of a kind. Well, we’re changing our tune, as the cargo-carting spaceplane we’ve all been waiting for is here with “Tenacity,” the very first Dream Chaser model from Sierra Space. On November 2nd, the Colorado aerospace company announced that Tenacity was complete and ready to be shipped to NASA’s Neil A. Armstrong Test Facility in Ohio. Like the Dragon spacecraft, Dream Chaser spaceplanes will be able to return to the homeland with ISS cargo, meaning they’ve been built to withstand that spicy-hot reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Depending on how testing goes, Sierra Space could launch their first test flight to the ISS as soon as April 2024, kicking off its minimum of seven missions as part of a Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. Here’s hoping the Dream Chaser lives up to its name, as “not just a product,” per the company’s CEO Tom Vice, but a “testament to the human spirit, determination and the relentless pursuit of what lies beyond.” 

Hughes – Ready to “Netflix and chill'' on your next Delta flight? We mean this with no innuendo, just good old fashioned, Great-British-Baking-Show fun, now that Delta has signed a new inflight connectivity (IFC) deal with Hughes Network Systems. For their first deal made directly with an airline, Hughes will connect 400 regional Boeing 717s with the company’s GEO Ka-band network, providing Delta customers with apparently faster connectivity than that of Delta’s current IFC air-to-ground service with Intelsat. Installation of antennas compatible with Hughes’ network satellites will begin on the regional planes mid-next year; the airline is also equipping the larger planes in its fleet with Viasat, according to Delta spokesperson Grant Myatt. Hughes is a subsidiary of broadband provider EchoStar, which expects its merger with Dish Network to be complete by the end of the year – despite Dish’s CEO dipping out early – along with the launch of their highly anticipated Jupiter-3 satellite.

OneWeb & Eutelsat – The U.K. space minister is encouraging a more sustainable satellite scheme after September’s merger between OneWeb and Eutelsat. Minister George Freeman recently suggested that Europe could “kill two birds with one stone” by creating a combined constellation instead of two distinct projects: the $4 billion-dollar OneWeb Gen 2 and $6 billion-dollar IRIS². Freeman proposed that while separate constellations may provide more security in some respects, having one shared constellation with partitioned “encrypted bandwidth comms platform[s]” might be just as safe, and certainly more sustainable. Because the British government saved OneWeb from bankruptcy back in 2020, they do still have a say in the matter, retaining special voting rights even after Eutelsat took over.

A hypersonic drone from Australia firm Hypersonix will launch via a Rocket Lab HASTE vehicle in 2025. Credit: Hypersonix

Rocket Lab – Launch provider and space hardware manufacturer Rocket Lab just welcomed Lt. Gen. Nina Armagno to its board of directors. After 35 years in military service, directing space programs in the Air Force before transitioning to the Space Force – the first female U.S. Air Force general officer to do so –  Armagno joins the SpaceX competitor at a crucial time, as the company builds its business relationship with the U.S. government. Rocket Lab is not only participating in the “rocket cargo” program with the Air Force, developing its hefty Neutron launch vehicle for national security missions, but as of this past week, the company plans to launch a hypersonic drone for the Defense Innovation Unit. The 2025 mission will involve deploying a 3D-printed hypersonic vehicle made by Australian firm Hypersonix from a Rocket Lab HASTE suborbital spacecraft. The company has also recovered well from a September launch failure with its Electron vehicle, recently receiving FAA clearance to resume launches from their New Zealand complex. Take that, Elon.

SpaceX – Green with FAA-clearance-envy is SpaceX, who eagerly published an update last Friday that their second Starship flight could launch in “mid-November,” despite not having a launch license. While the company has completed their checklist of upgrades and the FAA has concluded its safety review, the last piece of the puzzle is a sign off from the Fish and Wildlife Service (FWS), who is focused on that pesky water deluge system, the lack of which caused so much environmental chaos in Starship’s first launch. The haste for SpaceX, of course, is due to milestones it hopes to hit for its contract with NASA, which anticipates Starship as the first Human Landing System for Artemis. Yes, we all do poke fun at the do-now-fix-later philosophy, but it has worked well for the company, as the most reliable commercial launcher in the world which continues to break records with its reusable boosters. It’s also what has billionaires like Ron Baron backing the company and projecting a “$500 or $600 billion” valuation by 2030. However, in the words of journalist Marisa Taylor for Reuters, Elon’s “push to colonize space at breakneck speed” has consequences beyond losses of hardware. The same fast-and-loose approach that might yield technological progress is also what’s contributing to serious workplace injuries, with the Brownsville, Texas facility yielding a shocking worker-injury rate six times the 2022 average in the space industry. If colonizing the final frontier is an effort to save humanity, are we missing the point by risking humanity to get there?