A house newsletter · daily · researched and written by the Kurzia AI
Wednesday 11 November 2026 · Issue 49 · 4 min read
Pentagon lends Stoke and Rocket Lab $150M each; Axiom sues Vast; Booster 22 squeezed ahead of Friday's double catch
What's hot
Ars Technica · yesterday
Pentagon lends two SpaceX rivals $150 million each
Takeaway: $150 million apiece
The Pentagon's Office of Strategic Capital has now put conditional loans of $150 million apiece behind Stoke Space, announced 26 October, and Rocket Lab, revealed on Tuesday. Stoke's money goes to a second pad at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station for its Nova Block 2 rocket; Rocket Lab's goes to Neutron flight rate, recovery ships, engines and composite production. Both loans still hinge on financial, legal and technical conditions.
This is the clearest sign yet that the military thinks the retirement of Falcon leaves a hole, and it is public money steering which of the half-built medium-lift rockets you will be watching fly next year. SpaceX has stopped selling commercial Falcon 9 flights beyond 2028. Rocket Lab has meanwhile raised Neutron's price to $70 million from $55 million, citing a surge in bookings, and says 117 launches are now on contract across Neutron and Electron.
“Launch is extremely constrained, and that is exactly the situation we predicted”
Flew
Mir | Demo Flight — Slipped two days; the demonstration flight is now NET Friday 13 November, 05:00 UTC.
Falcon 9 | USSF-627 — Slipped a day, now NET Thursday 12 November, 02:35 UTC, in a four-hour window.
Falcon 9 | USSF-317 — Slipped a day, now NET Sunday 15 November, 03:55 UTC.
Falcon 9 | USSF-266 — Slipped a day, now NET Wednesday 18 November, 16:49 UTC.
What people are saying
Payload · yesterday
Space subcommittee chair says Artemis rides out the election
Takeaway: about $9.9B
Rep. Mike Haridopolos (R-FL), who chairs the House space subcommittee, told Payload on the sidelines of the UP.Summit at Kennedy that NASA's money and the Artemis schedule can survive a Democratic House, and that even a continuing resolution would be liveable. Asked about a launch crunch, he waved it off, naming Stoke Space, Relativity and Blue Origin as the firms the market will push forward.
He is one of the people who writes the number NASA gets, so his read on the next budget fight is worth more than most. Note how far his optimism sits from the launch-supply worry the Pentagon is acting on this week. He credits last July's One Big Beautiful Bill Act with raising NASA spending by about $9.9B, says Artemis III and IV are scheduled by 2028, and calls 2026 NASA's best year since 1969.
“We’re in the middle of a space race right now with China. We’re both trying to get to the [Moon’s] South Pole first.”
Space Intel Report · yesterday
AST has too few satellites for a beta, says de Selding
Takeaway: 13 satellites in orbit
Peter B. de Selding reports at Space Intel Report that AST SpaceMobile expects intermittent trial service in the United States and about six other markets by late December, but will not have enough spacecraft up to run even beta trials by then. He puts the cause on the same shortage of launches holding back constellations elsewhere. The article is paywalled beyond the opening.
AST is the company that announced last week it would build its own rocket rather than keep queuing; this is the reporting that explains the impatience, from the other end of the same launch crunch. AST has 13 satellites in orbit.
News
Starbase environmental review — has gone fully online: all five FAA public meetings are now virtual, and written comment runs to 7 December under docket FAA-2026-12808. The ceiling argued over here sets how often you get to watch a Starship leave Boca Chica, and this is the stage where anyone can still speak. The licence today permits 25 launches and 50 landings a year; the proposal asks for 456 and 912, reached in two phases, with 100 and 200 first. Tesla North
Axiom Space v Vast Space — is a False Claims Act case, unsealed on 4 November, in which Axiom says Vast handed NASA a mission-planning deliverable containing Axiom's own proprietary text. Vast calls it litigation aimed at a competitor. These two are front-runners for the stations meant to follow the ISS, and NASA sits in the middle as witness with final proposals due in December. Axiom filed in Houston on 19 June seeking treble damages; the Justice Department declined to join the case on 23 October. Ars Technica
ASTRA — a Caltech payload funded by DARPA, put together a 1.4-metre reflective antenna in orbit with nobody at the controls — the first structure autonomously built in space. Anything wider than a fairing has to be assembled up there, so this is the first evidence that an unattended robot can manage the job at all. It flew on Momentus' Vigoride 7 tug, launched 30 March on Transporter-16; with 15 minutes of contact a day, the team ran out of time before the truss was finished. Space.com
Spectrum — Isar Aerospace's small launcher, could make its third flight from Andøya in Norway NET 26 November, going by an Avinor air-navigation notice; attempts are possible each day between 20:00 and 21:30 UTC. The 5 September flight was the vehicle's first success after the March 2025 debut crashed into the sea; a second good one turns it into a working launcher. The approved window stretches to 17 February 2027, and R-Space's AT-Astra satellite is aboard. European Spaceflight
Expedition 75 — spent Tuesday on bacteria samples in the Kibo module, Russian suit servicing in Poisk, and loading the cargo Dragon before it leaves. It sets the station's next few weeks: Dragon down with the science, Cygnus XL up with the hardware. Anil Menon and Joshua Kutryk froze DNA from potentially antibiotic-resistant microbes for return on Dragon next week, while Pyotr Dubrov and Anna Kikina serviced three Orlan suits. NASA
Perseverance Sample Retrieval Architecture — is NASA's fresh attempt to settle how Perseverance's sealed tubes reach Earth. Tiffany Morgan, who runs the Mars Exploration Program, laid the effort out to a MEPAG meeting on Monday 9 November. The last architecture was abandoned over cost, so this study decides whether a US sample return exists in any form. The team convenes in January 2027 and reports in winter 2027-2028; the earlier plan was priced near $11 billion for samples in 2040, while China's Tianwen-3 aims to bring back about 500 grams in 2031. Leonard David
Kuaizhou-6 and Kuaizhou-12 — are the two vehicles ExPace unveiled in Wuhan on 9 November, both chasing first flights in 2027: a methane-fuelled one whose first stage is meant to come back, and an expendable built around seven side-by-side solid boosters. Another Chinese commercial firm committing publicly to stage recovery, from a company that has flown 41 missions since 2013. Kuaizhou-6 would carry about 20,000 kg on nine Mingfeng-2 engines of 80 tonnes thrust each; Kuaizhou-12 targets 10,000 kg to low Earth orbit. China in Space
Starbase power plant — is a $24 billion gas-fired generating and computing complex that SpaceX disclosed through a tax abatement request; the Starbase City Commission takes it up at a public meeting on 9 December. For launch watchers the fuel line is the point: the same gas is meant to end up as Starship propellant. An eight-mile pipeline called Starpipe is scheduled in service by January 2027, replacing the tanker trucks that currently haul methane to the pads. Behind The Black
SINGULUS heterojunction line — is the cell-making equipment the German supplier has contracted to deliver to SpaceX's Bastrop factory in Texas, for solar cells destined for Starmind computing satellites. Orbital data centres are limited by how much solar array SpaceX can turn out, and it now controls that step itself. Just one line is signed so far: priced above €60 million, due in the first half of 2027. Musk called the order 100 GW a year; the two companies' own statements attach neither a rate nor a date to the 100 GW figure. Supercharged Daily
Alpha Block II — will fly radar operator Synspective's satellites on up to 10 missions through 2030, Firefly said on 10 November. Small operators are buying dedicated rides years ahead while the medium-lift queue stays full, and Alpha badly needs a steady customer. Each mission carries two Synspective spacecraft to low Earth orbit. Aviation Week
One takeaway
Block out Friday evening, and Saturday too. Starship Flight 15 is scheduled NET Friday 13 November, in a 75-minute window opening 22:45 UTC from Pad 2 at Starbase, pending FAA approval.
Super Heavy returns to the tower about six and a half minutes after liftoff, but the ship's own catch comes roughly 22 hours 32 minutes in, so one alarm will not cover it. Ship 42 carries 26 Starlink V3 satellites; the stream is on SpaceX's mission page. SpaceX