Yep, move the 925,000 lb. International Space Station to the moon, cover it with ice then fly it around the solar system using atomic bombs… I checked with the six year old next door, and it’s totally doable by the International Rescue Thunderbirds! Thunderbirds are go!

https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

And, how many of these rocket companies will survive when Starship is able to launch more, larger, and at significant lower cost including rideshare?

Falcon 9 already provides very cost-effective rideshare options.

Survival of the startups seems to depend on customers and the US government wanting more than a couple of launch service options.

Even Rocket Lab felt the need to pursue reusability and a fully reusable rocket in the medium-size class. And they are the leading small sat company. If they feel the need to get behind the small sat business, what chance do new entrants have when SpaceX is taking 60% of that business with ease and Rocket Lab already is the back-up provider for that category? Just saying that new small sat launchers don't seem like a safe investment at this point in time.

Well, it seems one talking about in few years- or not sooner than that.
And in few years, it's hard to predict:)
A couple significant aspects, is that SpaceX is creating new markets and one might worry about cable companies having a bigger problem. But global satellite internet, is going making internet a lot bigger {creating more internet market by a lot]. You also have consider China's plan to ramp up it's launch
rate- which "could" be more competition to US and international launch companies, than SpaceX is.
Also we got lunar market to consider, SpaceX would seem to making it so Crew lunar mission will not be delayed as much as might have been otherwise. And it seems SpaceX is about only factor, which could drive Mars
exploration to begin faster than it would otherwise.
And then we got the general rule, cheaper launch cost, more payloads launched. And we private companies making Space Station- including one trying to do an artificial gravity station.
And SpaceX might energize idea of suborbital or point to point travel on Earth.

Oh, also in terms of global satellite market, the significant cost has
been the satellite, rather launcher costs- you might blame SpaceX
for lowering the satellite costs- but you can blame others also.

Following this gentleman on “Dongfang Hour” for news on Chinese space and his latest video covered the commercial methalox rockets on the “coming soon” pipeline.

The Scinews website did something similar but focusing only on the engines.

Always good to have a picture of our entire species’ progress.

Tianlong 2 is China's 1st liquid fuelled private SLV but not a CH4 one.

Can't stand it when the term "Methalox" and other variations are used. It's like when people say "Nuke-You-Ler" instead of "Nuke-Lee-er." Oxygen/Methane is fine. The spacex fanboys invented this on forums with "Kerolox" and it just makes space enthusiasts look stupid. They don't really care about that though. It is all about the fan club and coded language.

The linguistics people will probably say the “language is a living thing that evolves.” Every group/tribe will develop their own dialect, be it teenagers, plumbers or space folks. Given enough time in isolation and they mature into separate language.

Heck, all it takes is just two entities. Loving couples have their secret codes, toddlers somehow understand each other and even AI programs end up with their own made up words (5 years ago).

I despise the spacex fanboy cult. They have tormented me for years. Really. I believe it is a case of simple sociopathic gravity as these particles of trolls coalesce around the tainted aura of Elon. They love him and by extension his company because they are much like him. Except they are just toxic and not rich; self-deluded temporarily embarrassed millionaires. Much like Trumpists. And obviously many Musk worshipers are also Trumpists. So of course I dislike their teenage joe-the-space plumber proto-fascist folk slang.

I would likely be a spacex fan except what Musk did by taking the focus off the Moon at a critical period ten years ago, his influencing millions when stating Space Solar Power is, "the stupidest idea ever", and finally his narcissist meddling and ever more extremist views.....

His outfits getting rockets launched. You ain't

You ain't changing the world either buddy, are you?

Just another fanboy.

"There has been, though, little commercial interest in the H3 so far despite its lower cost, which remains high compared to competitors like SpaceX’s Falcon 9."

I opined on hydrogen as the only acceptable propellent and Vertical Take-off Vertical Landing Super Heavy Lift Vehicles (VTVL-SHLV's) as the only acceptable future launch vehicles on another forum. I was promptly attacked by several of the sociopaths that have cyberstalked me for years. That particular opinion of mine seems to be a trigger that drives them even more insane for some reason.

“It will take a couple of years to actually be reusing the engines,” he said, including technology demonstrations like the test of an inflatable decelerators flown as a secondary payload on an Atlas 5 launch last fall. “Eventually, we’ll have the confidence to recover them, inspect them, and them reuse them. That will happen in this window of a few years.”

The problems the launch industry faces are fundamental and serious. The first is, of course, the Frankenstein monster that is megaconstellations, which never should have been permitted. The second is the proliferation of small launchers competing to cash in on megaconstellations, which also never should have been permitted. The third is the propellants and structures used which have been recognized as harmful to the upper atmosphere if launched in the quantities necessary to maintain all the proposed megaconstellations.

The solutions to the problems are to first turn off the megaconstellation "revolution" by severely restricting the number and type of LEO satellites. The replacement is Space Solar Power by way of lunar resources as the solution to Climate Change. It follows that hydrogen VTVL-SHLV's and refinements to that concept that minimize reentry byproducts will result in a launch industry orders of magnitude larger than the get-rich-quick monstrosity now in progress.

Like Walmart, Super Heavy Lift Vehicles present an economy of scale that no smaller operators can hope to match. In my view the same relationship is true for satellites. The single advantage of LEO, low latency, cannot hope to match the economy of very large platforms in GEO. As part of a cislunar infrastructure, GEO platforms can recycle material thus limiting what reenters and minimizing effects on the upper atmosphere. This is, in my opinion, the key to vastly increasing space activities. The present trend going in the opposite direction is a mess. The worst thing that could have happened.

Though the shiny has some attributes of the most desirable type of launcher, it is, however, problematic, being expressly designed to populate megaconstellations and fill Earth orbit with endless junk.

I always regret checking these forums on my phone. The trolls I have blocked are all back. It reminds me of how many toxic thugs splash around here making it a cesspool.

sejones.....the sociopath that has stalked me for years. The sadistic creep that should have been banned long ago. Along with a half a dozen to a dozen other diseased predators here. Yet he and his gang of Musk-worshiping cyberbullies continue to sadistically gratify themselves when anyone not in their cult expresses an opinion. Truly disgusting.
With his dunce cap insults and the imagination of a brick, a classic loser.

"They are unanimous in their hate for me — and I welcome their hatred."

Looking forward to SLS BlockIB

As a wet workshop the SLS BlockIB can, in one day, put up a space station with more interior space than the the ten year 180 billion dollar ISS.

I am not a fan of LEO space stations, but the orbit could be raised, perhaps using a solar electric tug, and eventually transit across the cislunar sea to the vicinity of the Moon, either in HALO or a frozen low lunar orbit. Once there. modular shielding blocks could be attached to the outside and filled with water derived from lunar ice brought up from the surface of the Moon. A second workshop, attached to the first with a mile long tether system could be spun to provide a Near Sea Level Radiation 1 Gravity (NSLR1G) "true" Space Station. This would allow unlimited stays Beyond Earth Orbit with no debilitation or dosing. A nuclear propulsion module could then be attached creating the first "true" Spaceship capable of voyages to the outer solar system.

https://uploads.disquscdn.c...

Is there anything you value about it aside from volume and payload?

“Aside” from volume and payload? The ability to transport hydrogen.

Are you aware, publisur, that most of the planned nuclear-powered spacecraft will use ammonia, not hydrogen? Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation chose ammonia for their commercial NTP spacecraft. Atomos, which has a megawatt-scale NEP tug planned down the line, is similarly baselining NH3. Dark Fission Space Systems does mention hydrogen, but they also note that water, methane, and ammonia are all alternatives. There are good technical and fiscal reasons to go with ammonia over hydrogen - not the least being hydrogen's high cost, and low density requiring large tanks compared to other propellants.

You can’t beat 900 seconds with ammonia:
https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/r...

Now…one day maybe Skylon can flash ammonia to hydrogen. Good for airplanes.

I’ll let experts like Stan Borowski design NTRs.
https://core.ac.uk/download...

THAT’s your Mars ship.

Surprised to see NASA citing Isp's of 2600 and 6700 for concepts that have very little possibility of ever working. It requires wishalloy to keep reactors from melting at those temperatures, no matter what kind of tricks are used. Very aspirational, notional, whatever you want to call it. The only reference to ammonia NTR's I have been able to find is a single sentence in astronautix about a long ago Russian program. Do you have anything else on that? You see this is the big problem with NRT's'; they claim high Isp's using only liquid hydrogen which does not store well at all and is not suitable for interplanetary missions. If they can get 900 out of ammonia then it almost makes it worthwhile. Almost but not quite. I am NOT a fan of NTR's. But if that is what they want to spend our money on I cannot do anything about it.

Far better to just use bombs but nobody wants to touch that. Even though it guarantees at minimum an order of magnitude increase in Isp and with Star Wars technology likely double that. For atomic Spaceships with massive cosmic ray water shields and Tether Generated Artificial Gravity (TGAG), an Isp of close to 10,000 makes Ceres an easy trip and Callisto our advance base from which to explore the icy bodies of the solar system. The single biggest obstacle to Human Space Flight Beyond Earth and Lunar Orbit for over half a century has been the reluctance to negotiate the use of Nuclear Pulse Propulsion outside the Earth's magnetosphere. You would think our new space farce, I mean force, would be all over that.

That’s a knee-jerk reaction, publiusr. Seriously. Consider it. There’s more to spaceflight than specific impulse - much more. You’ll have better arguments if you can debate other points - such as heat of vaporization, density, propellant cost, difficulty of storage, mass ratios, and more besides.

That’s an argument from authority, and one I don’t take seriously. It’s not enough for an expert to say something; it’s vitally important to ask why. If you’re up to it, try looking at everything but Isp. I think you’ll be surprised, and you’ll learn it’s not as important as it seems at first glance.

I just glanced at Nate the troll's yapping about Ammonia when I checked my phone. I blocked him and the others but unfortunately still see their trash occasionally. I have not seen anything on Ammonia. Whatever companies he is citing, I have not seen anything about Ammonia NTR's.

NTRs are only good with LH2. S.E Jones knows it

Typo chuckle of the day…while there has been a great deal of dissembling about the status of the BE4 I think you meant to say disassembling?

Unless the engine cried out “ no disassembly” in a cute robot voice?

Yeh, that reference dates me :-)

Thanks for the laugh and the excellent summary of the year ahead.