| | | | | By Jeff Brown, Editor, The Bleeding Edge | | |
What a remarkable couple of days for the booming private space economy. | | It almost feels like developments are moving as fast as they are in artificial intelligence or autonomous driving technology. | | It's remarkable because building and launching rockets into Earth's orbit is no small feat. | | It's hard work, requiring a lot of hard labor to manufacture the hardware (rockets and rocket engines), test it, and eventually ignite it on a launchpad toward its journey to space. | | Writing and testing software code for AI is a whole lot "easier." No propellant is required, just caffeine. | | And yet, the acceleration is happening, nonetheless. | | Two Missions to the Moon on One Rocket | | Yesterday, marked an incredible milestone for SpaceX. | | A Falcon 9 rocket launch marked the 100th launch from Complex 39A in Florida – the same launch pad used for launching Saturn V rockets during the Apollo program. | | Even more exciting was the payload on the Falcon 9. The rocket carried not one, but two payloads destined for the moon. | The first is Blue Ghost from Firefly Aerospace, which is now expected to land on the moon on March 2. The Blue Ghost mission is part of NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) program and carries 10 instruments, including the ability for subsurface drilling on the moon. | | | | Rendering of Firefly's Blue Ghost on the Moon | Source: Firefly Aerospace | | The Blue Ghost mission is part of NASA's Artemis program, designed to establish a long-term presence on the moon. | The second mission is the Resilience lander from Tokyo, Japan-based ispace. | | Resilience also carries a micro-rover capable of navigating the lunar surface. Important equipment on the spacecraft includes a water electrolyzer, food production equipment, and a deep space radiation probe. | | ispace is a publicly traded company on the Tokyo Stock Exchange (ticker: 9348) focused entirely on the burgeoning lunar economy. | | Hopefully, both missions will successfully complete their journeys to the moon and send back incredible pictures and research in the months ahead. | | As if yesterday's lunar missions weren't exciting enough, at 2:03 AM ET this morning, an even bigger milestone was achieved. | | | | | | Jeff just recorded this urgent message just across from the White House. Click here to see the details… Because we're moments away from President Trump's inauguration. That means you only have a short window of opportunity to act. After January 20th, it could be too late. | | | | New Glenn Makes It to Orbit | | Jeff Bezos and his team at Blue Origin successfully launched the giant New Glenn rocket into Earth's orbit, including the insertion of a payload – a prototype of its Blue Ring spacecraft. | | | | New Glenn Lifting Off | Source: X @JeffBezos | | The New Glenn rocket is a sight to behold. It's designed similarly to SpaceX rockets with a reusable first-stage booster. This is critical to keeping launch costs down. | | New Glenn stands taller than a SpaceX Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy, but quite a bit smaller than the SpaceX Starship. New Glenn can carry about 99,000 lbs. to low Earth orbit (LEO) compared to the Starship with a payload capacity between 220,000–331,000 lbs. to LEO. | | The payload that New Glenn placed into orbit is the Blue Ring Pathfinder – a prototype of a spacecraft capable of a wide range of services. | | Blue Ring is designed to support a variety of missions with the ability to provide onboard computing, data transmission and relay, hosting of separate payloads for customers, and even refueling. | | | | Rendering of Blue Ring Spacecraft | Source: Blue Origin | | As Boeing (BA) continues to struggle with its Space Launch System, Blue Origin managed to successfully reach orbit on its first try. And Boeing's design, even if it worked flawlessly, is a magnitude more expensive than SpaceX and what Blue Origin will eventually be capable of. | | While Blue Origin couldn't successfully land the first-stage booster on a drone ship in the ocean, I expect that will become as routine for Blue Origin in a year or so, as it is for SpaceX. | | The significance of Blue Origin's entry into the space economy can't be understated. | | The Space Economy Accelerant | | To date, SpaceX has absolutely dominated the launch marketplace. It launches more than 10X the payload to low Earth orbit than China and more payload than every country and company combined. It's not even close. | | Having a second major player that can provide launch services around similar price points as SpaceX isn't so much about competition. SpaceX has more business than it can shake a stick at. Once Blue Origin goes commercial with its launch services, it's an accelerant for the private space economy. | | Launch costs with the SpaceX Starship will drop below $100 a kilogram. At these costs, a wide range of industrial endeavors make economic sense. | Take Varda Space Industries for example. Just two days ago, it launched its second "orbital processing" spacecraft, W-2. Part of its payload was its second space-based pharmaceutical reactor, designed to manufacture drug compounds in space. | | Manufacturing in zero gravity enables the production of pharmaceutical compounds with structures and quality that simply aren't possible when burdened by Earth's gravity. The same is true for fiber optic cables and even some semiconductor applications. | | It might be hard for us to imagine factories in space, but that's exactly what's happening. Varda's manufacturing spacecraft are small right now, but it won't be long before they scale with much larger manufacturing capacity. | | What's next? Well, that's easy. It's SpaceX's seventh Starship flight test. | | Countdown to Flight Test 7 | | A Starship is sitting on the launchpad right now, as I write – with a 60-minute launch window that opens up at 4 PM central time. | | By the time you read this issue of The Bleeding Edge, Starship may very well have completed its successful mission. | | | | SpaceX Starship Seventh Flight Test on Launchpad | Source: SpaceX | | This version of the Starship includes a major redesign of the avionics systems, as well as major upgrades to the propulsion systems. All improvements are designed to optimize the Starship's ability to deploy payloads into orbit, transfer fuel in orbit, and ultimately return to Earth for reusability. | There is a good chance that SpaceX will attempt a first-stage return to the launch pad with a catch by the Mechazilla, as was successfully demonstrated last year and covered in The Bleeding Edge – The "Impossible" Catch. | | The point I want everyone to remember about today's issue, however, is this… | | All of these developments are happening within a 36-hour window. | | It's just incredible. I hope you can feel the acceleration taking place – it's not just happening in artificial intelligence. 2025 will be a phenomenal year for the aerospace industry. | | And that will open up the launch window for prominent private aerospace companies to access the public markets with IPOs. | | Ad Astra, | | Jeff | | | | | | | Jeff's predictions for President Trump's Day One executive orders... | | | | | | It's the catalyst we've all been anxiously waiting for… | | | | | | The fall of FTX, when it happened, was quick… | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | To ensure our emails continue reaching your inbox, please add our email address to your address book. This editorial email containing advertisements was sent to southernstylecooking@gmail.com because you subscribed to this service. To stop receiving these emails, click here. Brownstone Research welcomes your feedback and questions. But please note: The law prohibits us from giving personalized advice. 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