Welcome to Edition 1.37 of the Rocket Report! Lots of news this week about plans to develop smallsat launchers, from India to Australia to the United Kingdom. We also have some serious shade throwing from Blue Origin's Jeff Bezos, who doesn't think a flight near (but not above) the Karman line will come without an asterisk.

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.

India smallsat launcher to fly later this year. Indian space officials have confirmed that their new Small Satellite Launch Vehicle will attempt its first flight in "July or August" of this year, The Economic Times reports. The rocket will carry two Indian defense satellites for the mission, each weighing about 120kg. The rocket has undergone a complete technical review, officials said.

A new competitor ... India has big plans for the small rocket, which it eventually hopes to launch two to three times a month. The SSLV rocket has a capacity of up to 500kg to a 500km circular orbit, and it is estimated to cost about $4 million per launch. If that figure is correct, and we haven't been able to independently confirm this, it would make the Indian smallsat launcher competitive with other emerging rockets in this class.

Bezos questions whether Virgin fliers are "astronauts."During a Wings Club luncheon on Wednesday in New York, Blue Origin founder Jeff Bezos addressed Virgin Galactic's recent flight above 80km. "One of the issues that Virgin Galactic will have to address, eventually, is that they are not flying above the Karman Line, not yet," Bezos said, according to SpaceNews. "I think one of the things they will have to figure out is how to get above the Karman Line."

No asterisks at Blue ... There's more from the world's richest person. "We've always had as our mission that we wanted to fly above the Karman Line, because we didn't want there to be any asterisks next to your name about whether you're an astronaut or not," Bezos added. That is not exactly playing nice with the competition, but since when has Bezos ever done that? The question of what to actually call people who fly on suborbital trips such as these, as passengers, remains an open question. Ars will have a longer report on this in the near future. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

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Virgin companies seek to raise additional capital. After the brutal murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Richard Branson backed out of a deal with Saudi Arabia that would have provided capital for Virgin Galactic and Virgin Orbit. Now, reports Sky News, Branson has hired the corporate finance firm LionTree Advisors to help raise hundreds of millions of dollars to support the two spaceflight ventures. The additional investment is seen as an important means of accelerating the Virgin's efforts to launch a commercially viable space tourism venture.

Good timing ... The timing seems right, coming after Virgin Galactic finally flew its first mission above the 80km line, and is set to make a second attempt as soon as this Friday. The company has also begun to return some revenue through its NASA payloads program. As well, Virgin Orbit is getting closer to its first small satellite launch, so these long-under-development programs may finally begin to pay off.

Launcher says it has printed largest single-piece engine. A New York-based launch startup says it has developed a rocket engine that is the world's largest that has been 3D printed in a single piece. After he sold his internet video business Livestream to Vimeo, Max Haot founded Launcher in 2017, targeting a 2024 launch for its smallsat booster. "With 3D printing, we're now in a world where a start-up like us can now access [advanced] liquid oxygen propulsion technologies," Haot told CNBC.

Tests already begun ... Launcher has completed several minutes worth of test fires of its E-1 engine on Long Island. The company expects to begin test firing the E-2 engine in the second half of this year. The engine used a closed-cycle combustion system, like SpaceX's Raptor engine, to maximize performance. With Haot's backing Launcher has money, and clearly the company is willing to push the technological limits of 3D printing and aerospace. For these reasons, it's worth watching. But 2024 seems a long ways off in the smallsat race. (submitted by MH)

Aussie rocket company plans launch soon. An Australian rocket company, Gilmour Space Technologies, has unveiled its 'One Vision' rocket that it plans to launch later this month. This was a scaled version of the company's suborbital Ariel rocket that is projected to carry up to 130kg to a height of 150km. For the upcoming launch, the main objective will be to "Flight-test our proprietary hybrid rocket engine for commercial orbital launches starting in 2020," the company's CEO and founder, Adam Gilmour, said according to Spacewatch.

Orbit in 2020? ... The company intends to develop an orbital rocket, Eris, for flight next year that will be capable of lifting a 400kg payload to low Earth orbit. The coming launch will also test the company's mobile launch platform and ground control station. This system will allow the Gilmour company to launch from remote areas in Australia and elsewhere. This is interesting, but we'll wait to see the results of the test flight before getting too excited. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

British company eyes space tourism market. Manchester-based Starchaser has been driving a nine-meter rocket named Skybolt around Leek in northern England to promote its space tourism plans, Stoke on Trent Live reports. The Skybolt rocket is a single-stage booster powered by a single engine. Most recently, the company launched its Skybolt 2 rocket to an altitude of 1,200 meters in 2017.

A wee bit ambitious ... The company has big plans, with a larger Nova 2 rocket on the books and ultimately a reusable three-person rocket ship called Thunderstar that will be used for space tourism. Color us extremely skeptical about this venture, as the company has been in "business" since 1992 and has yet to get out of the lower atmosphere. But sure, we'd love to see a truck hauling a large rocket drive down our street—assuming it's not an ICBM. (submitted by Tapper)

Georgia spaceport comes under fire. Environmental groups and Camden County homeowners are suing the county, saying officials are illegally withholding documents related to a proposed commercial launch pad on the coast of Georgia, The Atlanta Journal Constitution reports. The county has refused to provide documents that specify any hazards of having rocket launches over nearby residential property, plaintiffs say.

All is not peachy, it seems ... Southern Environmental Law Center attorney April Lipscomb, on behalf of the environmentalists, called the county's refusal to share the documents "mindboggling," adding that, "asking local residents to blindly accept the potentially life-changing conditions of Spaceport Camden without providing them with all of the facts is reckless and unfair." County officials said the requested details were provided to the US Department of Defense, but that "Disclosing that methodology would put US national security at risk" and were therefore exempt from open-records requests. This could get ugly. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

SpaceX to launch lunar lander. On Thursday night, SpaceX will attempt to launch a geostationary satellite. But the more intriguing payload is the 180kg Beresheet spacecraft, privately developed by SpaceIL in Israel and funded largely through philanthropy. A rideshare, Beresheet will be released from the Falcon 9 rocket 43 minutes after launch and spend more than six weeks raising its orbit in order to reach the Moon and become the first private spacecraft to land there. (The launch and deployment were subsequently successful).

US companies lagging ... This landing attempt comes as NASA has asked several US companies—some of which were also competing in the Lunar XPrize—to develop the capacity for small landers to deliver science experiments to the Moon. Earlier this month, NASA's science chief, Thomas Zurbuchen, said he would like at least one of those missions to fly by the end of the year, but it is not yet clear whether any of the American companies can deliver.

Air Force awards launches to SpaceX and ULA. The US Air Force has divided $739 million in launch contracts between United Launch Alliance and SpaceX for six national security missions slated for 2021-2022, SpaceNews reports. The contracts, announced Tuesday evening by Air Force Space and Missile Systems Center, were competitively awarded.

So many classified missions ... ULA will receive $441.76 million under a fixed-price contract to launch SBIRS GEO-5, SBIRS GEO-6, and Silent Barker, a classified space situational awareness mission. SpaceX will receive $297 million to launch AFSPC-44, NROL-85, and NROL-87. In its news release, SpaceX emphasized that it was offering comparable service to the government (three missions) at a significant discount. (submitted by Unrulycow and Ken the Bin)

NASA to buy more Soyuz seats. Although NASA expects to complete at least one crewed orbital flight in 2019 as part of the commercial crew program, the agency is nonetheless taking precautions. In a procurement posted online, NASA says it is considering contracting with Russia's state space corporation, Roscosmos, for two additional Soyuz seats. These flights, for one crew member each, would occur in the fall of 2019 and spring of 2020. This would ensure a US crew presence on the station through September 2020, Ars reports.

A ways from operational ... Previously, NASA has said it anticipates SpaceX will perform its first crewed mission to the space station in July 2019 while Boeing will perform its first crewed mission no earlier than August. However, those dates are likely to slip further. Moreover, certification of both SpaceX's Dragon and Boeing's Starliner vehicles for "operational" missions will likely take several months after the first crew test flights.

Border wall won't go through Boca Chica. The US budget deal to avert a shutdown, which included $1.375 billion for 55 miles of physical barriers in the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, won't go through SpaceX's land near Brownsville. Lawmakers ensured that was off limits, The Texas Tribune reports, along with other state landmarks such as a butterfly sanctuary.

No certainty ... This agreement, of course, doesn't cover President Trump's national emergency declaration. While that provision is likely to be tied up in the courts for months, if not years, there is no guarantee that the barrier would not pass through SpaceX property. The company has been tight-lipped about the issue, clearly not wanting to upset the government officials with whom it does business.

NASA's exploration plans are costly. A new analysis finds that NASA's deep space exploration plans since 2005—consisting mostly of rocket and capsule development—have consumed almost $50 billion. For all of that spending, NASA has flown an Ares I rocket once (2009) and the Orion capsule once (2014) on a private rocket. Human flights on the SLS rocket and Orion capsule likely remain about five years away, Ars reports.

Don't blame NASA so much ... Blaming NASA for the high costs and leisurely pace of these programs would be easy. Indeed, the agency has publicly lauded these rockets and spacecraft as the key to sending humans back into deep space for the first time since the heady days of the Apollo program. However, each of these programs was established by the White House or US Congress and assigned to the space agency with varied demands.

Boeing begins assembly of first SLS core stage. The primary SLS rocket contractor has connected the top half of the first-core stage in a vertical stacking cell at the Michoud Assembly Facility in New Orleans, NASASpaceFlight.com reports. The three elements—the forward skirt, the liquid oxygen tank, and the intertank—were bolted together in January. The core stage still has two other main components: the liquid oxygen tank and the engine section.

Another milestone ... "This is the first time we've stacked real flight elements to real flight elements," Boeing's SLS program manager, John Shannon, said. "We measured it like crazy, and when we put the LOX tank on the intertank, it fit perfectly—there were just no issues at all." It seems painfully slow, but NASA and its contractors are making progress on the SLS rocket. We eagerly await the green run test of the entire core stage, which will probably occur about a year from now. (submitted by BH and Ken the Bin)

Next three launches

Feb. 27: Soyuz | OneWeb satellites | Kourou, French Guiana | 21:37:00 UTC

March 2: Falcon 9 | Demo-1 commercial crew | Kennedy Space Center | 07:48 UTC

March 13: Delta IV | WGS-10 mission | Cape Canaveral, Florida | 22:58 UTC