Ozan Bellik's Blog

The storied Soyuz and the venerable Proton... For about six decades, they have been the mainstay of Soviet and Russian space launch. Together they have flown over 2000 times and supported almost every significant Soviet & Russian space mission from the beginning, including the entirety of their human spaceflight programs, if we count Soyuz's R-7 family predecessors. They have been prolific, effective, and affordable. And yet for at least four decades, their replacements have been, with starts and stops, under development. They are, after all, quite long in the tooth. But how do you successfully replace such effective launch vehicles? Zenit 3F    Credit: Roskosmos The Zenit rocket family, which was intended to eventually replace both, first flew in 1985. It was sized between the smaller Soyuz and the larger Proton. It used more efficient engines than both and mostly non-toxic propellants, unlike Proton. But after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, it remained in Ukraine, so Ru

  Why Starlink Matters for Spaceflight Originally published on weekly-spaceflight.webnode.com in June 2021. Updates in white. There has been a lot of talk about Starlink, SpaceX's work-in-progress satellite megaconstellation. Will it provide a valuable and much needed service to millions without access, or is it just for gamers in Alaska? Is it a scourge to astronomy or is SpaceX doing a good job minimizing the impact? Is it a danger to spaceflight or are the Kessler Syndrome fears overblown, not taking into account the effectiveness of active collision avoidance and the self-cleaning nature of low orbits? Is it driven purely by profit or are they really going to try to finance Mars missions with this? Will it be profitable or is it a scam? Have Starlink launches gotten boring or is every launch exciting? And will SpaceX go bankrupt trying to do build it? Amidst all that debate, it's easy to miss arguably the biggest impact of Starlink on spaceflight: its full frontal assault