I’m Anthony Colangelo.

Interesting to think that if SpaceX’s constellation ambitions even approach their projections, they’d be exempt from this regulation within a decade.

That makes it the 2017 version of the annual sales I talked about last month.

After SES-10, there was a chorus of doubters saying, “Yeah, but it took a year to refurbish!” This flight should put that to bed, but then again, they’ll probably say, “Yeah, but 6 months is nowhere close to 24 hours!”

This is encouraging to hear. Long coast periods are key to some more complex flight profiles—specifically direct injection into geostationary orbit—and SpaceX has yet to show that ability. It’s one area that ULA still owns with Centaur and the Delta Cryogenic Second Stage.

It’ll be very interesting to see if something like this does come about, but the suggest name is awful. They need to go with something with a long life span, like the Spaceflight Development Office.

You would have a hard time painting Luxembourg, a country with an area less than 1,000 square miles, as expansionist in any regard. And I don’t think they’d be looking to put any of their 1,000 military members on a base somewhere out beyond Earth. And they don’t have any nuclear weapons.

It’s a small start, sure, but a really good sign for the “COTS Everything” mindset that I would like to see prevail in the coming years.

Thanks to my patrons for the month of April. If you’re getting some value out of what I do here and want to send a little value back to help support Main Engine Cut Off, head over to Patreon and donate as little as $1 a month—every little bit helps.

An interesting tidbit from Jeff Foust in the wake of yesterday’s Senate subcommittee meeting.

This next year is pivotal for NASA, and for the trajectory of US-based spaceflight, in general. The pieces on the table can be arranged to either double down on the status quo—NASA needs more money and it needs a plan, dammit!—or to shed the old baggage and embrace a new way of thinking.