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SpaceX Starship

I have been buying Astra shares after their June failure and was happy to see it start trending back up but today...oof! Down almost 10%. Trying to talk myself into buying more.....
 
I have been buying Astra shares after their June failure and was happy to see it start trending back up but today...oof! Down almost 10%. Trying to talk myself into buying more.....
I really want Astra to do great things, but I also think this last launch failure hurt them. They've been silent since the last failure 5 weeks ago including twitter where they were posting at least once a week before the failure, and haven't posted since. My guess is they're having an all hands on deck "reset" to go over their production and procedures with a fine tooth comb before pushing forward with the next launch. It's all going to come down to the next two launches IMO, if they can succeed with NASA's Tropics project which needs a minimum of 2 out of 3 batches of satellites active to be functional (which they already lost one batch with the last attempt, so no room for error moving forward).

With all of that said it's definitely a gamble versus an investment, but if they pull it off there definitely seems to be some solid potential. But this isn't financial advice of course haha, just observations from the outside

Just the other day, Peter Beck (head of Rocket Lab) had some words to the same effect as well

 
Yeah I found the big drop today interesting in that I went looking for news that would have caused it and......nothing. Its my fun money though, could just as easily be spending it in a casino :)
 
Hell yeah, I'll be curious how it does for ya. Hopefully it pays out, because that also means the company is doing good things! Funny you mention no news, I did a similar search and didn't come up with anything either. Which brings me back around to that tweet - while his word won't swing markets anywhere near what Elon's does, Peter Beck has proven himself to be a reliable and confident CEO, and his voice most likely reaches a lot of the same people that are invested in Astra. so I wonder if it's coincidental timing, or if that played a role for casual investors
 
Wow, their ears must be burning. A tweet from Astra



And the NSF media guys just dropped some incredible footage of the SRB test from the other day

 
And another batch of Starlinks went up early this morning, east coast this time. That was their 6th launch of the month. So routine, it's insane







And China launched the next piece of their space station successfully this morning or last night as well

 
And again China is just letting that 21 ton core stage come down to earth "wherever". Heads up for the next few days folks!

If you want to track it, the NORAD ID is 53240 and the name is CZ-5B R/B. It doesn't show upon my satellite tracker yet but should pretty soon
 
And again China is just letting that 21 ton core stage come down to earth "wherever". Heads up for the next few days folks!

If you want to track it, the NORAD ID is 53240 and the name is CZ-5B R/B. It doesn't show upon my satellite tracker yet but should pretty soon
Yeahhh it's super sketch what they do with this specific heavy lift rocket (Long March 5? Don't recall for sure). 21 tons is huge to come back uncontrolled. Hopefully they'll retire it soon, but as of now it looks like it'll be the primary launcher heaving the biggest parts of their new station so we're going to have to deal with a few more unfortunately.

Great news for Relativity, while they've done plenty of inidividual engine testing leading up to this point, their CEO just posted this pic of their first time fully igniting all 9 engines on the launch pad. They're really having an impressive showing on the processes leading up to their first launch.



And just random stuff, but SpaceX is currently rolling one of their massive tower segments out to their new (second) Starship launch pad at LC-39A in Florida. This is the fifth segment, the first four area already stacked, and there will be 4 more after this one for a total of 9. This is basically a mirror of the launch tower in Texas with a few improvements, but they're assembling at a much faster pace now that they have some practice.

 
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Video from that Relativity static fire test just came out



And Rocke Lab teasing at some upcoming launches. When they're testing reusability, they put red on the boosters along with the additional silver thermal protection layer on the rocket body itself. It has a good look to it

 
And again China is just letting that 21 ton core stage come down to earth "wherever". Heads up for the next few days folks!

If you want to track it, the NORAD ID is 53240 and the name is CZ-5B R/B. It doesn't show upon my satellite tracker yet but should pretty soon

It just came down, reports are coming in now. Apparently it put on a pretty good show





 
Pretty cool Blue Origin post for the day

Blue posted this awesome video showing the engine running a test program with various throttle levels



And what's more exciting. The first flight engine for ULA's Vulcan is DONE!



The second one is close (Vulcan uses two)



Engine #1 just recently left the facility for acceptance testing

 
Rocket Lab has a launch going up at 10PM Pacific, just about an hour and 10 minutes from now. While this one has the recovery hardware (hence the silver and red instead of normal plain black carbon), they're not catching it with a chopper. More data!





 
It got delayed a half hour for wind, but it's live now. Wind is still questionable so they may have to scrub, but the countdown is on so far. 10 minutes away
 
The Starlink launch just scrubbed. Not too often that happens for SpaceX these days (was pretty common in the early days, just like other new launch providers), but good on them for not getting "launch fever" and hitting the go button when things aren't perfect.

I know we've talked about this before, but where do I find out when new sats are being launched? Would very much like to see one of these trains folks around here are catching some nights.
 
I know we've talked about this before, but where do I find out when new sats are being launched? Would very much like to see one of these trains folks around here are catching some nights.
The trains are really awesome to see, definitely worth checking out if you get an opportunity. The best I've ever personally seen, two different batches crossed the sky at different angles within about 5 minutes of each other.

For just checking out when you'll have some passing overhead you can use a website like this that can give you exact times based on your location. Then it also rates them from high visibility to low. If you're not overly light polluted and have a good eye on the nights sky, even the mid-visibility crossings show up alright.

SpaceX Starlink Satellites Tracker

As far as launches I use a lot of different sources, but NextSpaceFlight is a pretty good universal rocket schedule website. It just might not update as fast as hearing from the companies and CEOs themselves


Next Spaceflight
 
No problem.

Rocketlab's last attempt was scrubbed due to winds just barely over the limit through the entire launch window. They're back on the pad tonight for the next attempt. Stream starts in about 30 minutes, launch in about 50 minutes at 10pm pacific

 
My area must of got more starlink satellites as my dish now points south when it used to face north...was getting slower for awhile during peak use times, but now speeds back up.
 
That's actually interesting, Does your dish location have more obstructions to contend with when it was facing north? I wonder if it might have bene a tradeoff where north has more sat density but more obstructions, and south has less sat density but clearer skies

Well, todays a pretty intense day for spaceflight across the board

First was the successful Rocket Lab launch last night, nice and smooth all the way through.

Then Blue Origin had another successful flight of New Shepard with 6 people onboard this morning



And ULA's Atlas 5 also flew a successful mission today, a mission called "SBIRS GEO 6"



And SpaceX is gearing up for a Falcon 9 launch this afternoon. It's cool, they're sending this payload on a lunar trajectory



And Astra's earnings report is due to be released at market close today, which will be interesting to see. They've had three more tweets since announcing the earnings report and the radio silence that preceded it. Interestingly, these tweets have been focused on their ion engine development for satellite propulsion. Still not making much noise about their rocket and the next flight though. My hunch is they're reminding their investors that are about to hear the news that "hey, those struggling rockets aren't the only facet of our business, don't lose faith"

 
Bought some astra at 1.35, still up but not by a lot. Curious to see what happens.
 
That's actually interesting, Does your dish location have more obstructions to contend with when it was facing north? I wonder if it might have bene a tradeoff where north has more sat density but more obstructions, and south has less sat density but clearer skies

Well, todays a pretty intense day for spaceflight across the board

First was the successful Rocket Lab launch last night, nice and smooth all the way through.

Then Blue Origin had another successful flight of New Shepard with 6 people onboard this morning



And ULA's Atlas 5 also flew a successful mission today, a mission called "SBIRS GEO 6"



And SpaceX is gearing up for a Falcon 9 launch this afternoon. It's cool, they're sending this payload on a lunar trajectory



And Astra's earnings report is due to be released at market close today, which will be interesting to see. They've had three more tweets since announcing the earnings report and the radio silence that preceded it. Interestingly, these tweets have been focused on their ion engine development for satellite propulsion. Still not making much noise about their rocket and the next flight though. My hunch is they're reminding their investors that are about to hear the news that "hey, those struggling rockets aren't the only facet of our business, don't lose faith"



I had no option other than to put it somewhere with a clear view north of me using their app when we got the setup earlier this year. Due to setting up a pool for the kids, Trees with leaves on them now etc and and looking to make a better mount for up on our roof, I pulled out the app again last week and walked around the house. I now have a clear non obstructed location on the south side of the house facing south. I can still get a signal on North side of house facing North, but more obstructions due to the trees up the mountain behind my place.
 
Bought some astra at 1.35, still up but not by a lot. Curious to see what happens.
Looks like you might be in for a ride hah. While their media over the last day has put focus on their ion engines, the earnings report did come out along with some surprising news - they're retiring their current rocket for the next generation. While they already had planned a bigger rocket as the next progression down the road, this is a surprise at least to me. I'm honestly wondering if they were arriving at the conclusion that they were going to have to rebuild their production line anyways with an increased....culture of quality to achieve the reliability they need, and decided it's the best opportunity to retool at the same time. Seems risky though.

The market has reacted steeply, dropping down to $1.31 this morning and bouncing back up to $1.34. Who knows where it will level off today

https://investor.astra.com/news-rel...nounces-second-quarter-2022-financial-results

Then just some media from the launches yesterday -

Incredible tracking footage of the Atlas 5 mid-launch, right when it ejects the spent SRBs



Then John Kraus got this Incredible shot of the Atlas launch itself (from a helicopter or small plane I assume)



and he stuck around for the Falcon 9 launch



 
Aaaaallllright. Somewhat interesting week across the industry.

-We saw Astras news to move on to their bigger rocket already. It is since confirmed that NASA is looking for a new ride for the other 2 Tropics missions as they aren't a great fit for the size of the new rocket. Overall this is a huge pivot for the company. And other small launch providers are voicing concern that there isn't much of a sustainable market for the payload mass range they're targeting.

-Rocket Lab's Peter Beck spoke at a conference yesterday, always an insightful guy. He is the one voicing concerns about the size of the small sat launch market. He built the Electron production line to be able to support up to 50 launches per year based on how the market has looked over recent years, but currently it looks like they're going to average 10-15 launches per year just due to customer demand for smallsat launches. With them being the dominating force in that market already, you can see why there is concern about the viability of having a handful of different smallsat rockets existing/thriving in the current space economy. So they've got the Electron dialed in, but are pushing for the newer bigger Neutron rocket as fast as they can to capture the bigger market share available for higher payload masses.

-Firefly is gearing up for the second launch of their Alpha rocket (first flight was very impressive, but they lost an engine part way up. It maintained stability up until the sound barrier-ish when it tumbled and broke up). This is a bigger medium lift vehicle that's looking like it'll be successful. But they're also working on their next Beta rocket which will have potential. Interestingly enough, it looks like they've reached an agreement with Northrop Grumman for it to replace the Antares launch vehicle once they run out of hardware (due to relying on Russian components).

-SpaceX has a Starlink launch this afternoon, and has been testing Starship stuff in Boca Chica. Booster number 7 has been in for a wild ride. They were doing a spin prime test of the engines (spinning the turbopumps up but no ignition) a couple weeks ago, apparently the propellants found an ignition source and there was an explosion at the back end of the rocket. They took it off the launch mount and wheeled it back into the assembly building for inspection. The explosion blew heat shielding off the base of the booster, and they pulled the engines so they could inspect and test them again as needed. They put the outer ring of 20 back on, and rolled it back out to the launch pad the other day. Right as it was nearing the launch tower, they started moving the chopsticks just to position for lifting and ended up blowing a hydraulic line or a ram. They called it a night, and the next day lifted the booster onto the launch mount via crane instead to continue testing.

Yesterday they had two successful spin prime tests on Ship 24, and two successful single-engine spin prime tests on Booster 7. More testing today and through the week, looks like they're leading up to static fires of both ship and booster.

Upcoming Starlink mission (live in 3 hours-ish)



Live Starship testing



Hydraulic failure:



Booster 7 explosion:




And the non-SpaceX stuff, here's FireFly's Alpha rocket #2 getting ready for its attempt

 
Yesterday ended up being a pretty impressive day besides the successful Starlink launch. They had some fun out at Boca Chica

They test fired one engine on the booster, first time they've fired up any engines on the orbital launch mount at all





And then went and fired the ship with 2 of 6 engines, back to back tests of both with potential for more today. We haven't seen this kind of activity at Starbase in a while. There were Rumors that Elon had an all hands meeting in the last few days to ramp the activity out there again



 
And he doesn't publish as many of these publicly these days, but still super handy diagrams. This is all the hardware currently in-process out there (not counting the older stuff that now stand as monuments to the progress)

 
Thank you insider Michael Lehman for showing your confidence and buying 100,000 shares of Astra. I am in the green! Astra up almost 28% today
 
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