June 25, 2025 Quick space links
Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Axiom and India rocket startup Skyroot sign partnership deal
This agreement suggests a willingness of Axiom to use Skyroot’s rocket for supplying its space station, assuming Skyroot ever gets that rocket off the ground.
- Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space is now targeting July 1, 2025 for the first launch of its Eris rocket
Gilmour’s previous launch attempt was aborted when the fairing was released on the launchpad. It now says it has fixed this issue, reinstalled the fairing, and tested everything.
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For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Courtesy of BtB’s stringer Jay. This post is also an open thread. I welcome my readers to post any comments or additional links relating to any space issues, even if unrelated to the links below.
- Axiom and India rocket startup Skyroot sign partnership deal
This agreement suggests a willingness of Axiom to use Skyroot’s rocket for supplying its space station, assuming Skyroot ever gets that rocket off the ground.
- Australian rocket startup Gilmour Space is now targeting July 1, 2025 for the first launch of its Eris rocket
Gilmour’s previous launch attempt was aborted when the fairing was released on the launchpad. It now says it has fixed this issue, reinstalled the fairing, and tested everything.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Airship to orbit.
Is this real?
https://youtu.be/fdfTCBRwijI?feature=shared
Our friend Keith Cowing at NASAWatch has tweeted out an alert of the latest political activism being waged against the President’s Budget Request for NASA:
“A protest is planned in front of @NASA HQ on Mon June 30 from 7:00-11:00 AM. This event has a permit with Metro DC Police. Organizers will not prevent or dissuade anyone from entering HQ but will raise awareness about #NASA budget cuts. Info: sites.google.com/view/nasa-need… #EmbraceTheChallenge’
https://x.com/NASAWatch/status/1938076134010142965?t=-HLXz0Nl7xBUXNVdilRlZA&s=09
No one would dispute their First Amendment right to do this. But you have to see the accompanying promotional poster Keith attached to see the problem: a demonified Donald Trump destroying a crying, anthropomorphized Solar System with fierce claws. These NASA peeps and their friends have, in short, decided to go full, mask-off Resistance.
As I have said before, there’s room for healthy critique of the PBR, and I think there’s reason to think such critiques could move or shape votes among the Republican majority. Or failing that, make the pork arguments. But that is not what is happening here.
Who is this supposed to persuade, exactly?
GeorgeC – John Powell (JP Aerospace) has been working on this for years. Maybe he has a new vision that might work?
As for Skyroot, we are manifested with them on their second flight. I think we were actually moved up to their first flight. Getting and keeping licenses for satellites is hard when you don’t know when the launch will be.
In other news, Northrop Grumman had what the industry likes to call an “observation” — the nozzle exploded — while conducting the first test firing of its Booster Obsolescence and Life Extension (BOLE) five-segment solid rocket motor at its Promontory production and test site in Utah this afternoon. (The BOLE motor is intended for use on the Block 2 version of NASA’s SLS rocket, beginning with the Artemis 9 mission).
Peter Hague quips: “The folks who comment “guess we aren’t going to Mars” under every single Starship failure probably won’t have much to say here.”
https://x.com/NASASpaceflight/status/1938304777487516145?t=cuax_fazYsCHp4RPmix4aQ&s=19
Richard M: This is bad news, not just for Artemis but for Vulcan. I am posting now.
I cannot even begin to describe the level of disgust I have for Cowing –it is my opinion that folks like him who trashed NASA at every opportunity INVITED these cuts. I am with AMERICA SPACE’s Jim Hillhouse on this one.
To GeorgeC
I don’t buy an Airship TO Orbit….
Airship from orbit could be a different story.
Launch stop an HLLV(s) and inflate in space. Solar electric drive to Venus.
Nothing so light and fluffy as this.
HAVOC airship envelopes are at Earth’s sea level pressure–though the envelope IS the gondola.
Just make the lower surface LOFTID or have a second airship be LOFTID.
Much more roomy than Starship itself.
Richard M,
Who is this supposed to persuade, exactly? Left-wing protests are not about persuasion, they’re about self-congratulation and virtue signaling. And, often enough, also about giving free reign to personal sociopathy.
The “organizers” of this particular demo are being very cagey about just who they are, but I’d lay odds this is at least an Antifa-adjacent initiative with, no doubt, significant – and conveniently deniable – participation by some of the considerable useful idiot leftist majority of groups like the Planetary Society.
It will be interesting to see if this protest actually amounts to anything and, if so, whether it rates any coverage by the lefty legacy media. It will also be interesting to see how “peaceful” it turns out to be.
I can just see a slide rule as a shiv
Jeff Wright,
I, personally, could whittle a slide rule into a shiv as I still have my trusty old Post from high school and college days. Anyone much younger than me will have a difficult time finding a slide rule.