Even if the program sticks with Orion, I’m hoping later missions will try bidding out flights and cutting SLS out of the picture. I’m hoping that’s at least part of the purpose of spinning all of SLS off into a commercial entity.

If anything, I think they’re moving in the opposite direction of what you suggested for landers. They’re building up an industrial base of different companies building lunar landers for cheap.

I don’t blame them for trying. Good luck catching up!

I’m conflicted on this. Artemis is a well designed political juggernaut, but NASA has budget and priority issues that the big expensive rocket, capsule, and station throw a wrench into. I’m hoping the redesigned Mars Sample Return works out and paves the way for a SpaceX and Blue Origin based redesign of Artemis.

They’ve been slowly going more “traditional”, so they can’t scam investors as easily anymore. I don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel for Relativity, Astra, or ABL.

If you haven’t seen it, the SmarterEveryDay tour of the ULA factory is a good look at the Atlas production line.

I didn’t expect the tail end of the Atlas V launch manifest to drag out so long, but I figured Starliner and Kuiper would be flying more regularly by now.

I can’t imagine why they’d do a Starliner cargo flight instead of another crewed flight test.

Maybe a less expensive (for Boeing) option would be a commercial Starliner mission to the ISS for a week or two the way Axiom has run commercial Dragon missions? I’m sure the Oceansgate type of customers would love paying for a private flight test and LARPing as explorers.

The founder has been on the Pathfinder podcast a few times now. I think it’s an interesting listen, but maybe a just drank the Koolaid. They already launched a forge demonstrator, then largely built this new fly-by bus from scratch. Launch prices and availability, specifically lunar rideshares to jump to deep space, are making the business case more viable.

This isn’t Kerbal Space Program, they can’t just stick some SRBs on as an afterthought.

Maybe Terran R will keep slowly turning into Ariane R, including some Vega SRBs. Or Avio will copy Northrop’s homework and bid VegA for a DoD contract. Or they want to steal SLS BOLE. Or… or they’re cool with just selling rockets for missiles and reminding people that they also do launch vehicles.

Haolong, Haolong will I slide?

I wonder when we’ll actually see these fly. I’m rooting for the little space plane.

Avio seeks to provide additional capacity to the industrial base for large solid rocket motor boosters in the United States

For what rockets? SLS and Vulcan are the only American rockets with SRBs. Also still Minotaur, but I’ll keep ignoring that. So, does Avio want to compete with Northrop for SLS and Vulcan?

They said they’re waiting until another round of testing is done by the end of Nov, all the Artemis 2 options are considered, and the administrator picks one, which should wrap up by the end of the year.

Did NASA ever actually say that about Starship?

Shuttle had abort modes that mostly involve landing “normally”. After jettisoning the SRBs, depending on how far it got and the target inclination, it could return to launch site, land in Europe or Africa, do one orbit then land back in the US, or abort to a lower than intended orbit, which actually happened once after an engine failure.

Starship can also do a pad abort, where the whole ship / upper stage separates from the 1st stage.

Time to go look at an asteroid. This is for their fly-by and tech demonstration mission before they try mining.

Cockroaches! Hopefully we at least get some new creative launch failures out of the resurrection.

…but they won’t tell us what it is yet. And they haven’t settled on how to make Artemis 2 safe.

I probably misremembered/misrepresented that. NASA would actually have to book more SpaceX flights to not have Starliner go back-to-back at this point.

The bigger question might be what Boeing’s refurb/turnaround time is, and whether they can even prep one of their two vehicles and a new service module in 5 months to support a back-to-back.

I couldn’t dream up a more fitting ending for the Bears

Yeah, alternate title: “Feedback Loop Works”.

Can tiny SpaceX rock Boeing?

They could literally buy part of Boeing’s space division if they saw any value in it. How the turntables.

And soon(ish) the new Bolt, EX30, EV3, and R3.