Overview: With Arms Wide Open

Space, as wondrous and inspiring as it is, rarely breaks through into the public consciousness. Even high-profile milestones don’t usually get comments from celebrities, business icons, aerospace executives and my mom.

The jaw-dropping Starship booster catch last weekend did, however.

Mark Cuban : “Incredible.”

Casey Neistat : “I’ve watched this a dozen times.”

Blake Scholl : “Holy crap they did it.”

I’ll also admit, like orbital police chief Jonathan McDowell , that I didn’t think they’d pull off the booster catch on the first attempt. My guess was that the booster would end up ditched back in the Gulf of Mexico, especially given the mountain of criteria it needed to clear.

I surveyed the crowd at yesterday’s New York Space Business Roundtable event and found a similar consensus. While SpaceX specializes in “making the impossible merely late,” the expectation was that they wouldn't catch the falling skyscraper on the first try.

And then we heard the callout: “Tower is go for catch.”

Look, SpaceX (and its leader) obviously have a cult following of enthusiasts who get fired up about stuff most people would never notice, let alone care about. It would be easy to see the all-caps superlatives and dismiss them as fanboy hype. But it’s clear from the comments of leaders outside of SpaceX that the Super Heavy booster’s successful return was historic – and should embraced with arms as wide as the now-famous "chopsticks" for representing the beginning of a new era in spaceflight.?

“One of the most significant engineering achievements in human history,” said Kevin Weil , chief product officer of OpenAI and previously the president of Planet.

“In terms of engineering achievement, this is probably more incredible than the first landing on the Moon in 1969. An astounding accomplishment by the SpaceX team!” declared Virgin Galactic pilot Nicola Pecile .

SpaceX is spending heavily to develop and scale Starship: According to a recent legal filing , the company has invested more than $7.5 billion in the past decade on the rocket and building up its Texas facilities. Currently, the program costs SpaceX about $4 million per day. That sounds like a lot until you stack it up against the other, non-reusable American super-heavy rocket in development, as NASA’s spending three times that per day on its Space Launch System rocket.?

Oh, and unless SpaceX makes some major changes to the flight path for its next mission, the FAA has already assessed Flight 5 and approved Flight 6.

“All flight events for both the Starship vehicle and the Super Heavy booster occurred within the scope of planned and authorized activities,” the FAA said in a statement after the launch.

Flight 6 in November , anyone?

WHAT'S UP

• Biden administration eases space export control laws through a Commerce Department ruling, which will allow companies to more easily ship and sell spacecraft parts and components to U.S. ally countries. – Reuters
• Michael Bloomberg calls NASA’s SLS rocket and Artemis program ‘a colossal waste of taxpayer money’ in an op-ed, noting that “none of this is necessary” given the progress made by SpaceX’s Starship, especially as SLS, the Orion capsule, and the Gateway space station are consuming the budget of other NASA programs. – Bloomberg
• Axiom and Prada show off spacesuit design in Milan, revealing the flight design for the Axiom Extravehicular Mobility Unit (AxEMU) spacesuit that will be used for NASA’s Artemis III mission. – Axiom
• Airbus cutting 2,500 jobs from defense and space unit, representing about 7% of the workers employed by the division. Airbus cited “a fast changing and very challenging business context” as requiring the company to get leaner. – WSJ
• Rocket Lab announces last-minute Electron launch for "a confidential customer.” The company says it signed the contract for the "Changes In Latitudes, Changes In Attitudes" mission less than two months ago. – Rocket Lab
• FAA grants reentry license to Inversion Space, the third company to receive such an authorization, as the startup aims to return its Ray capsule after launching on SpaceX’s Transporter-12 rideshare mission. – TechCrunch
• Varda receives Australian authorization for capsule reentries to the Koonibba Test Range, which will represent the country’s first commercial space reentry. – Varda
• Vast reveals Haven-1 space station design, announces Haven-2 mission plan: The company aims to launch its first space station next year, featuring a domed window, laboratory, and crew quarters. It then plans to follow that up with Haven-2, which is intended to launch by 2028 as a successor to the ISS. – Vast / Vast
• Boeing and Lockheed Martin ‘wouldn’t let [ULA] implement’ complex in-space propellant transfer technique, according to the rocket company’s former chief scientist George Sowers. He noted that ULA “perfected the technique” 15 years ago and is “glad to see” SpaceX doing spaceflight refueling with Starship. – Sowers
• Sierra is building a space trash compactor for NASA under a contract for the “Trash Compaction and Processing System (TCPS)” that it plans to test on the ISS in 2026. – Sierra Space
• SpaceX asks FCC to authorize lower orbit Starlink operations to “enable the Gen2 system to deliver gigabit-speed” connectivity. – Ars Technica
• NASA is questioning whether to require another Starliner test flight, as the agency assigned SpaceX to both of the crew missions to the ISS next year. – SpaceNews
• NASA’s Europa Clipper launches toward Jupiter on SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket, beginning a more than five year journey to conduct studies of the planetary moon. – NASA
• Blue Origin donates New Shepard rocket and capsule to Smithsonian’s Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. The booster and capsule each flew key first flights for the company and the museum displays are expected to open by 2026. – Smithsonian / Smithsonian
• SpiderOak rolls out open-source space cybersecurity project ‘Aranya,’ saying it “offers the same protections as the companies OrbitSecure platform currently deployed within the Department of Defense.” – SpiderOak

INDUSTRY MANEUVERS

• Taiwan turns to Eutelsat’s OneWeb for communications backup, fearing the potential for a Chinese attack to cripple the island’s terrestrial connectivity. – The Guardian
• Venture capital firm Interlagos aims to raise a $550 million inaugural fund, to target deep tech startups. Interlagos is led by Achal Upadhyaya, Tom Ochinero and Spencer Hemphill, with the former two previously at SpaceX and the latter at Sequoia. – TechCrunch
• Also Capital raises first $21 million fund, as the New York-based firm looks to back "exceptional hard tech founders." The VC's space investments already include companies such as Varda, K2, and Northwood. – Also Capital
• True Anomaly signs Firefly’s Alpha for three launches, with the first being the Space Force’s VICTUS HAZE mission next year. –? True Anomaly
• D-Orbit wins $129 million (€119 million) ESA contract for in-orbit servicing mission in 2028 to rendezvous with a geostationary satellite and maneuver it. – ESA
• Kepler Communications-led group wins $39 million (€36 million) ESA contract for a low-Earth orbit optical relay network, with the award covering early design work on the High Throughput Optical Network (HydRON) program. – Kepler
• Wildfire-detection startup OroraTech raises $27 million (€25 million) in a round led by Korys, the European Circular Bioeconomy Fund (ECBF), and Bayern Kapital and joined by Edaphon, Ananda Impact Ventures, ConActivity, and Findus Venture. The company currently operations two thermal infrared camera satellites. – Via Satellite
• EarthDaily Analytics acquires Descartes Labs for an undisclosed amount, representing a “major expansion” of the company’s satellite imagery products. – EarthDaily

MARKET MOVERS

• Iridium reports Q3 results, with its total subscriber count reaching nearly 2.5 million, up 11% year-over-year. The company brought in $212.8 million of revenue during the period, up 8% from a year prior, and reported a net profit of $24.5 million, up from a net loss of $1.6 million a year ago. The company forecast full-year operational EBITDA between $465 million and $470 million. – Iridium

ON THE HORIZON

• Oct. 17: SpaceX Falcon 9 launches Starlink?satellites from Florida.
• Oct. 19: Rocket Lab Electron launches?confidential mission from New Zealand.
• Oct. 20: SpaceX Falcon 9 launches OneWeb satellites?from California.
• Oct. 20: SpaceX undocks NASA’s Crew-8 from the ISS.
• Oct. 21: SpaceX Falcon 9 launches Starlink satellites?from Florida.

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