Month: July 2018

Enlarge / First hot firing of the P120C solid rocket motor that will be used by Europe's new Vega-C and Ariane 6 rockets. (credit: ESA/CNES)

KOUROU, French Guiana—White light flooded in through large windows behind Alain Charmeau as he mused about the new age of rocketry. The brilliant sunrise promised another idyllic day in this beach town, but outside the sands remained untroubled by the feet of tourists.

Lamentably, the nearshore waters of this former French colony are chocolate rather than azure, muddied by outflow from the Amazon River. French Guiana has other compensating assets, however. It lies just 5.3 degrees north of the equator. Neither tropical cyclones nor earthquakes threaten the area. And its coast offers untrammeled access to both the east and north. These natural gifts have helped this remote region become one of the world’s busiest spaceports.

From here, Europe has established a long but largely unheralded history in the global rocket industry. Nearly three decades ago, it became the first provider of commercial launch services. If your company or country had a satellite and enough money, Europe would fly it into space for you. Remarkably, more than half of all telecom satellites in service today were launched from this sprawling spaceport.

Enlarge (credit: Blumhouse)

"Dude! This is darknet!"

That quote, taken from new low-budget horror film Unfriended: Dark Web, might be all you need to decide whether to buy a ticket. Indeed, this film's obsession with technical legitimacy inevitably falls into Hollywood pitfalls, because there's no getting around the trickiness of pacing an entertaining, cheesy film while simultaneously getting the computer details correct.

In spite of a few silly quotes, however, U:DW does a decent job stitching its computer and Internet content into the general plot—which is good, since the whole film is seen from a single Macbook's desktop POV. This clever conceit returns from the original and surprisingly solid Unfriended, and at its best, U:DW does an even better job of showing how to frame a film from this unique perspective.

Enlarge (credit: Aurich Lawson/SpaceX)

Welcome to Edition 1.09 of the Rocket Report! This week, we have several stories about the small-satellite launch race going global. There is also coverage of Blue Origin's daring launch and success for Europe in French Guiana with the test of a critical new solid rocket booster.

As always, we welcome reader submissions, and if you don't want to miss an issue, please subscribe using the box below (the form will not appear on AMP-enabled versions of the site). Each report will include information on small-, medium-, and heavy-lift rockets as well as a quick look ahead at the next three launches on the calendar.

Blue Origin continues to stringently test New Shepard. During its ninth flight test, Blue Origin engineers subjected New Shepard to a high-altitude escape motor test. Both the rocket, which had already separated from the capsule, and the spacecraft itself passed the test with flying colors. The escape motor firing pushed the spacecraft to a record high altitude of 119km.