This Week in Launch – #10
NASA debunks aliens, Blue Origin wins, SpaceX loses, and more
Welcome back to the tenth issue of This Week in Launch, a roundup of space-related news posted each week!
Let’s dive in…
Cloud Above the Clouds
On Tuesday, the European Space Policy Institute think tank published a report advising Europe to build space data centers. What is going on?
“Europe risks falling behind in the race to place data centres in space, unless it creates an immediate roadmap to deploy them.” — ESPI report
Since earlier this month, when Starcloud put the very first data center (test) into orbit, Jeff Bezos, Eric Schmidt, and now Elon Musk have all expressed interest.
The advantage of space really comes down to two factors — power and cooling.
As solar panel and launch costs keep dropping, the unlimited free sunlight and background microwave heat sink in space could make it a more practical location for data centers than on Earth.
Demand exists. According to McKinsey, $7 trillion in data centers will be built in just the next 5 years.
On the cooling side, Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, noted that the compute inside today’s racks is extremely small compared to the total mass, because nearly the entire structure — roughly 1.95 tons out of 2 tons — is essentially a cooling system.
Throw in the fact that latency is about 31% lower in the vacuum of space than on Earth for long-distance communication, and the future of the cloud could very soon be above the clouds.
If this turns out to be the case, Europe doesn’t want to miss out, hence the report.
Aliens?
Now that the U.S. government shutdown is over, NASA can return to its regularly scheduled programming of debunking alien theories.
Comet 3I/ATLAS — only the third interstellar object to ever be discovered entering our solar system — became a celestial celebrity when it was found in July due to speculation that it could be an alien spacecraft. While astronomers were quite clear that the interstellar visitor is a natural comet from an unknown star system, NASA was silent about the matter (because it was shut down) until Wednesday.
In a Wednesday livestream, NASA released observations from Hubble, JWST, and ground assets revealing a 1-km icy body with cyanogen jets, confirming natural origins and, sadly, no artificial signals.
Bigger is Better
On Thursday, Blue Origin got everyone excited by announcing that their largest rocket, New Glenn — which just last week made the company the second in history (behind SpaceX) to land an orbital booster — will be getting even bigger.
The new rocket, New Glenn 9x4, will have a lift capacity nearly on par with NASA’s Space Launch System, while being reusable and costing less than one-tenth as much as the $2.2 billion SLS.
At this point, with two rockets in development (Starship & New Glenn 9x4), both capable of sending man back to the moon, the exorbitantly expensive SLS program doesn’t make any sense.
It’s an overpriced taxpayer-funded job program that has been draining the agency dry while bottle-feeding contractors for years, and will likely be cancelled very soon.
Attack, Defend, Pursue
Space is officially a war-fighting domain.
On Thursday, the US Space Force introduced a new mission-based naming scheme for its space systems, platforms, and vehicles with core categories such as Attack, Defend, and Pursue.
This change is similar to how early 20th-century US Army Air Service aircraft designations (such as the B-17 bomber or P-51 pursuit plane) signaled a shift towards combat.
The timing aligns with escalating space tensions. The Pentagon has been openly discussing “defender” satellites and offensive doctrines to counter Chinese anti-satellite tests, and funding for orbital combat prototypes, like a $60M “orbital aircraft carrier” was greenlit just days earlier on Monday.
Honey, You Blew Up the Rocket
Early Friday at 4 a.m., everyone woke up to terrible news. SpaceX’s very first Starship V3 first stage — the tallest, most powerful booster ever built and supposed to lead Flight 12 in early 2026 — blew apart during a routine pressure test.
No (very expensive) engines were attached, and there were no injuries.
One of SpaceX's core attributes is that it diagnoses failures quickly, addresses problems, and gets back to flying as rapidly as possible. The company is resilient and has plenty of resources. They lose hardware, learn fast, and will have the next booster stacked next month with more behind it.
Within hours, the scrapyard crew was already cutting the wreckage for autopsy, and there’s no question that engineers are already poring over the data and quite possibly have already diagnosed the problem.
Thank you for reading. I will be pausing further issues of This Week in Launch for the time being, as I am building a company that requires my full-time attention. See you soon.
– David