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In this case:
- Why are space parachutes so difficult?
- A new lawsuit alleges safety issues at Blue Origin
- News from Loft Orbital, Relativity Space, and more
SpaceX is known for its vertical integration, but one item it had outsourced was parachutes — until earlier this month, when the company quietly acquired parachute vendor Pioneer Aerospace after its parent company went bankrupt. the information Reported for the first time News.
Bailing one vendor out of the solution — which was likely Pioneer’s fate, given its parent company’s bankruptcy — seems like a strong gesture on SpaceX’s part. But this only points to the real difficulty of making parachutes designed to survive such high speeds.
“Space is hard, but space parachutes are much harder,” Abhay Tripathi, director of mission operations at the UC Berkeley Space Science Laboratory, said in a recent interview. “It’s by far one of the most difficult things, other than a very complex propulsion system, to make.”
A former program manager for Blue Origin’s BE-4 rocket engines has sued the company alleging whistleblower retaliation after he spoke out about safety issues.
The complaint was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court. Includes a detailed account of Program Director Craig Stoker’s efforts over seven months to escalate his concerns about safety and the hostile work environment at Blue Origin.
“I, my leadership team, and others across the company should not be constantly apologizing and making excuses to ourselves and our teams for the CEO’s bad behavior,” Stoker says in an email to two Blue vice presidents. “We spend a lot of time making things better, rebuilding morale, repairing damage, and preventing people from overreacting… A hostile work environment… poses a safety and quality risk to our employees, our products, and our customers.”
More news from TC and beyond
Amazon SpaceX has purchased three Falcon 9 rocket launches to support the deployment of the massive Project Kuiper constellation, its competitor in the satellite internet market.
LockBitA notorious ransomware gang has claimed responsibility for a cyberattack targeting the state-owned Aerospace Research Laboratory in India.
Orbital loft It is launching a new offering called “Virtual Missions,” where customers will be able to deploy their software applications on a Loft satellite to leverage onboard sensors and compute nodes, analyze data as it is collected and run a full range of use cases.
Relative space CEO Tim Ellis is responding to recent comments by fellow aerospace executive Peter Beck, who described unlaunched rocket launch contracts as “essentially worthless” earlier this month. In sharp contrast, Ellis argued in an exclusive interview with TechCrunch that building a backlog is the only way to verify product-market fit.
Terran orbital A lawsuit is being filed against former technology executive Austin Williams, just over a month after he and other shareholders publicly called for a change in the company’s leadership.
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