Max Q - Rocket Lab proves launches never become boring

Monday, May 17, 2021 • By Darrell Etherington

The biggest news in space this week is probably the bad kind, with Rocket Lab experiencing another mission failure due to an anomaly with their Electron second stage. But there’s lots of good news, too, including SpaceX continuing with what now amounts to their regular commuter service to space for Starlink satellites.

Rocket Lab takes it on the chin

This past weekend was a multi-launch affair, but one of those did not go as planned. Rocket Lab’s 20th Electron launch ended in failure when the vehicle’s second stage engines ignited briefly, but then cut off much quicker than they should have due to an “anomaly.”

This isn’t the first time this has happened to Rocket Lab, either: During the company’s 13th Electron launch on July 4, 2020, an early second-stage engine cutoff also caused a total loss of vehicle and payload, resulting in mission failure.

As with that mission, Rocket Lab will complete an investigation to determine the cause of the problem and then issue corrective action. Hopefully the apparent similarities don’t actually point to a similar cause, because Rocket Lab’s fix for the last time this happened is obviously supposed to have prevented that same thing from happening again.

In happier news for Rocket Lab, the mission also included a first stage booster recovery attempt, and the first stage did indeed return to Earth and descend to the Pacific Ocean slowed by a parachute for a pick-up by the company’s recovery team. This secondary mission is in service of Rocket Lab’s attempts to go fully reusable with its Electron booster.

Image Credits: Rocket Lab

Space tourism attracts a two-time traveler

Japanese e-commerce entrepreneur and billionaire Yusaku Maezawa will pre-empt his forthcoming tour around the Moon with SpaceX with an earlier private spaceflight launch: A trip to the International Space Station courtesy of Space Adventures, the same company that once booked Nsync’s Lance Bass on a Russian Soyuz rocket to make the same trip (Lance never ended up going in the end).

Yusaku-san will be making a trip to the ISS aboard a Soyuz with his production assistant, and they’ll be documenting the whole thing for his YouTube channel. He says it’s all about getting used to time in space before his big Moon trip, but I wonder if there’s any chance he’ll go up on this one and then decide ‘nah, space isn’t for me.’

This ISS private tour is set for December 8 based on current scheduling.

Meanwhile, if the many millions of dollars it takes to make these kinds of trips aren’t within reach, perhaps I can interest you in a new astronaut training course that will at least leave you feeling more prepared for when you can pay the big bill? That’s what Orbite is hoping to offer with its new ‘space camp’ offering for would-be space tourists. It’s still gonna be a lot of money to effectively play make-believe, though.

Space tourism attracts a two-time traveler image

Image Credits: Space Adventures

Google Cloud teams up with Starlink

SpaceX’s Starlink is setting itself up to be a key part of global broadband infrastructure, for both consumers and enterprise customers alike. Google Cloud is their latest partner on the latter side, through a new agreement that will see Google play host to Starlink terminals in their data centers.

This will help Starlink and Google provide cloud-based enterprise applications and service offerings at the edge of current network reach, and in areas that haven’t previously been accessible to existing coverage. It’s potentially a big boon for Google Cloud and its customers, and Starlink has also previously lined up Microsoft as a partner in a similar capacity, so that’s great for SpaceX, too.