Carried Away

Bigelow Aerospace Confirms Successful Genesis II Launch

Bigelow Aerospace confirmed that the Genesis II space station test module was successfully launched and that the module has deployed itself.  Hello Earth.

Among the first images from Genesis II

It's heartening to see Bigelow Aerospace execute according to plan so far.  C0ngrats to Bigelow!

Genesis II Launch

Spaceflight Now is reporting that Bigelow Aerospace's Genesis II test space station module was launched from Yasny, Russia at 11:02 a.m. Eastern time.  Bigelow will have a clear picture of the success or failure of the launch and initial deployment of the module some time after 7:00 p.m. Eastern this evening.

I'll check back then.

Gwynne Shotwell on The Space Show

On Friday, Gwynne Shotwell, SpaceX Vice President of Business Development, was a guest on The Space Show.  While the entire interview is worth listening to, some items of particular note include:

• If Falcon 9 successfully proves reusability, the company expects to reduce prices up to 50% over time;
• Over the next couple of months, SpaceX is moving into a new half-million square foot manufacturing facility in Hawthorne (I have covered this previously);
• The new facility will have a capacity to manufacture 3-6 Falcon 9s at a time and an equal number of Falcon 1s and Dragons;
• The company is in preliminary discussions with Wallops for Falcon 9 launches;
• The company will be accepting 50-60 Merlin engines per annum at its McGregor, Texas facility;
• The company expects a stock market Initial Public Offering after a couple of Falcon 9 flights;
• 60-70% of the funding for the NASA/SpaceX COTS Space Act Agreement is coming from the company (this percentage seems very high, so I wonder how it is calculated);
• In May, the company hired 30 new employees and expects to continue this hiring pace for the next couple of months; and
• The company's gross margins on the Falcon 1 are in the single digits, while its gross margins for the Falcon 9 are healthier.

On another note, Wired has a nice cover article about SpaceX in its June edition, with a play-by-play of the March launch of the Falcon 1.  Some of the nicer parts of the article are the large pictures, especially a full page head-on photo of a Falcon 1 first stage.