Welcome to Edition 1.16 of the Rocket Report! This week, we discuss an interview with Rocket Lab's Peter Beck, cover China's burgeoning private launch market, and note an interesting payload going up on a Japanese space station mission early next week.

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.

Rocket Lab chief sees lots of losers in competition. In an interview with Via Satellite, Rocket Lab Chief Executive Peter Beck says that after his experience building the Electron rocket, he sees a difficult path for competitors. "There are more than 100 small launch vehicles in development, but we'd only expect to see a handful launch and even fewer succeed," he said.

Some of the hurdles ... In addition to the not inconsiderable technical challenge of building a successful rocket, Beck also sees plenty of range issues. "The US has limited launch availability due to high volumes of sea and air traffic, which is why we developed the Launch Complex 1 in New Zealand, where we're licensed to launch every 72 hours. Likewise, there are significant regulatory and licensing hurdles to jump through to make it to the pad. Each of these took significant work to overcome," he said. Beck is not wrong, which makes the ongoing small satellite launch race so fascinating to watch.

Blue Origin a big winner of NASA suborbital program. NASA's Flight Opportunities program has selected 15 promising space technologies for testing on suborbital flights, and almost half of them will fly on Blue Origin's New Shepard spaceship, Geek Wire reports. Funding for the program has amounted to $15 million annually, but Congress has signaled that it wants to raise that figure to $20 million for the next fiscal year.

Rockets, planes, and balloons ... Seven of the payloads will fly on New Shepard, five on Zero Gravity's parabolic aircraft, and three on high-altitude balloons from Near Space Corporation and World View Enterprises. NASA's new administrator, Jim Bridenstine, strongly supports the program, which provides a boost to the suborbital commercial market. (Ken the Bin)

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Small commercial rocket launched from Scotland. An Edinburgh-based rocket developer, Skyrora, says that it has launched the first commercial rocket from Scotland. The vehicle was, admittedly, a small booster at just 2.5 meters in length. It reached an altitude of about 6km, STV reports. "This was a small but important step for us in our bid to become the go-to satellite launch provider at a future Scottish spaceport," said Daniel Smith, the company's director of business development.

Much work to do ... Skyrora said it successfully tested its portable ground systems with this launch and also gained confidence in its trajectory analysis. "We will use the lessons learned in the next stage of our test launch program, where we'll be going to a far more significant altitude," Smith said. Eventually, the company wants to develop an orbital rocket to deliver small satellites from Scotland's recently announced spaceport.

OneSpace set to launch its second rocket late this week. The private Chinese company will launch another suborbital OS-X1 rocket, named Chongqing Liangjiang Star. The rocket is 10.2m tall and has a diameter of 85 centimeters. The launch will take place at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center, Gb Times reports.

Next stop, orbit? ... In its first launch in May, OneSpace launched its OS-X1 rocket to an altitude of about 40km, and the vehicle flew for 265 seconds. The company, started just three years ago, hopes to make an orbital launch attempt before the end of this year.

But wait, LandSpace says it's going orbital in October. Launch company LandSpace is nearing the first-ever Chinese orbital launch of a privately developed rocket, now scheduled for October, following assembly and testing of its Zhuque-1 launch vehicle. The Zhuque-1 is capable of lifting 200kg to 500km Sun-synchronous orbit and 300kg to a 300km low Earth orbit, Gb Times says.

A fun race ... Such a launch would be an important moment for China, and it has been fun to watch OneSpace and LandSpace duke it out for the honor of reaching orbit first. Are either of the companies' claims for a launch this year credible? Or are they simply aspirational? We don't know. But we can't wait to find out.

But wait, there's even more news from China. The Beijing-based private rocket developer iSpace launched its SQX-1Z suborbital rocket on Wednesday from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Center in northwest China. The rocket carried three CubeSats for two different Chinese commercial companies, the Chinese news service Xinhua reported.

iSpace, uSpace, weAllSpace ... Founded in 2016, the company announced earlier this year that it had raised $90.6 million for launcher development. Like elsewhere, there are bound to be winners and losers in the Chinese private industry, where we know of nearly 10 private launch providers in various states of rocket development.

Air Force awards coming this month. The US Air Force is expected to sign Launch Services Agreements with three or possibly four space launch companies in September, SpaceNews reports. SpaceX, Orbital ATK (now Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems), and United Launch Alliance, as well as propulsion-system supplier Aerojet Rocketdyne, received an initial round of contracts for research and development. The Air Force wants to help private companies with their development of next-generation rockets that can serve the country's military and intelligence needs.

The stakes are high ... Now the Air Force will have to decide who stays and who goes for the next phase of the program, as well as weigh the addition of Blue Origin and its New Glenn rocket. One source indicated to Ars that the Air Force really doesn't want to down-select much at this stage, so expect most, if not all, of the companies to receive a piece of the action. What will be most interesting to us is what bits of development, exactly, each company sought money for. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Finally, construction begins on a second Vostochny launch pad. After eight months of delays, construction of a second launchpad at Vostochny Cosmodrome in Russia's Far East has begun. The $580 million project is scheduled to be completed in 2022 at the spaceport, where orbital launches began from the first pad in 2015, SpaceFlight Insider reports.

Putin down graft ... Work began on the Vostochny Cosmodrome in 2011, but the project has been beleaguered by financial problems, corruption scandals, technical difficulties, and even a strike. Earlier this year, the former boss of a state contractor responsible for the construction of the cosmodrome, along with several ex-employees, was sentenced to prison for massive corruption. Putin himself has intervened to try to get the high-profile spaceport project back on track. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

ArianeGroup awards contract for reusable engine. SpaceNews notes that GKN Aerospace will build two turbines for Prometheus, a reusable LOX-and-methane engine projected to cost $1 million per unit, about one-tenth the cost of Ariane 5's Vulcain 2 first-stage engine. The engine is also designed to be reusable.

Looking to the future ... This is one of several ArianeGroup projects that aims to keep the European rocket firm competitive well into the future. However, actual flights of the engine remain well into the future. It's not entirely clear how the methane engine will be used, but it's not expected to enter service until 2030. (submitted by Ken the Bin)

Will Red Bull sponsor a mission to Mars? At last week's meeting of the NASA Advisory Council, agency Administrator Jim Bridenstine said he's looking at monetizing some of the attention NASA missions receive. These plans could include product endorsements from astronauts in space or even selling the naming rights to rockets and other spacecraft, Engadget reports.

We'll see about that ... Color us skeptical. First, in comparison to the astronomical cost of space missions, naming rights would bring in a relative pittance. Moreover, we just have a hard time seeing the government ultimately go for this because it would open up the space agency to mockery or at least reduce its cachet. (submitted by DanNeely)

Might a space elevator one day replace rockets? OK, probably not. But a team of researchers from Japan's Shizuoka University and other institutions will conduct an in-space test this month as part of a project to build a space elevator, CNet says. The experiment, set to launch on September 11 aboard the HTV-6 ISS supply mission, will test the movement of two ultra-small cubic satellites measuring 10cm on each side connected by a steel cable about 10m long.

Baby steps ... So this isn't exactly indicative of a space elevator happening any time soon. However, seeing the dream live on with some tangible tests is cool, even if it would put this newsletter out of business. Being honest, we're not too concerned about that. (submitted by Rudde)

Next three launches

Sept. 10: Falcon 9 | Telstar 18 VANTAGE | Cape Canaveral Air Force Station | 03:28 UTC

Sept. 10: HII-B | HTV-7 mission to International Space Station | Tanegashima, Japan | 22:32 UTC

Sept. 15: Delta II | ICESat-2 mission | Vandenberg Air Force Base, Calif. | 12:46 UTC