A brief Virgin (and TSC) update

Enrico Palermo of Virgin Galactic discusses the company’s development of SpaceShipTwo and WhiteKnightTwo at the NewSpace 2010 conference on Saturday.

At the end of Saturday’s sessions at the NewSpace 2010 conference in Silicon Valley, Enrico Palermo, project engineering manager for Virgin Galactic, gave a brief update on the company’s activities. There weren’t any new […]

Farewell, Rocketplane

Rocketplane Global has been barely hanging on the last couple of years since its orbital counterpart, Rocketplane Global, lost its NASA COTS award and the financial crisis dried up the investment market. The company, in particular vice president Chuck Lauer, has been out there trying to drum up support for a variety of opportunities, […]

Engine restarts are all the rage now

Armadillo’s Mod vehicle descends under a drogue chute for several seconds before relighting its engine, in this screen capture from an Armadillo Aerospace video of Saturday’s flight.

First it was Masten Space Systems, who last month demonstrated an in-flight engine relight on their Xombie vehicle, and now it’s Armadillo Aerospace’s turn. On Saturday Armadillo […]

SpaceX did it

The Falcon 9 lifts off at 2:45 pm EDT Friday from Cape Canaveral, as seen in this screen capture from the SpaceX webcast.

If you had polled the attitudes of the people watching the launch of the first Falcon 9 on Friday, the most common feeling leading up to liftoff might be something like […]

Falcon 9 is ready for launch

Falcon 9 on the pad at Cape Canaveral for a static test firing earlier this year.

If all goes as planned, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket will lift off Friday from Cape Canaveral on a mission to demonstrate the capabilities of the new launch vehicle. However, the problem with new launch vehicles is that things […]

Bigelow on commercial crew and NASA’s interest in inflatables

Mike Gold talks about Bigelow Aerospace’s plans at the ISDC in Chicago on Friday.

Mike Gold, director of Washington operations for Bigelow Aerospace, spent much of his 45-minute speech at the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) in Chicago talking about the history of Bigelow’s development of inflatable (or, as the company prefers, “expandable”) modules, […]

Space Adventures returns to suborbital spaceflight

Eric Anderson (left) and John Carmack talk about their suborbital partnership at ISDC on Thursday.

As expected, Space Adventures announced Thursday at the International Space Development Conference, (ISDC) in Chicago its partnership with Armadillo Aerospace to provide suborbital space tourism flights. Armadillo will develop a vertical takeoff, vertical landing (VTVL) suborbital vehicle carrying people […]

More developments from Masten

The announcement of the Masten/XCOR partnership on Tuesday to pursue lander testbed opportunities with NASA might leave some to conclude that Masten was turning to XCOR entirely for all of its engine needs. That is not the case: Masten is continuing to develop and test its own engines, using LOX and isopropyl alcohol propellants, for […]

ISDC has a strong NewSpace flavor this year

I’m at the airport waiting to catch a flight to Chicago for this year’s International Space Development Conference, the annual conference of the National Space Society. (I was already supposed to be there, but Untied, er, United, canceled my flight last night.) This year’s conference has a particular emphasis on NewSpace, more so than conventional […]

Masten and XCOR to partner

This morning Masten Space Systems and XCOR Aerospace announced a partnership to pursue anticipated NASA business for unmanned lander technology development efforts. Masten will develop the vehicles and XCOR will provide LOX/methane engines and composite propellant tanks. Full details are in the press release below, and the companies plan a joint telecon later today to […]

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