I’m Anthony Colangelo.

Jake and Anthony return from their travels with stories, and a ton of news to catch each other up on. And we’ll find out if Jake was the person who bought NWA 16799.

A special simulcast of this week’s Off-Nominal—the other show I do, if you somehow haven’t heard of it!—because it’s exactly the topic list with exactly the guest I had up next on my list. I’m joined by Adrian Beil of NASASpaceflight to talk about the recent mayhem at Starbase, and to kick around European space policy topics in the run up to the ESA Ministerial later this year.

Anthony is joined by Adrian Beil of NASASpaceflight to talk about the recent mayhem at Starbase, and to kick around European space policy topics in the run up to the ESA Ministerial later this year.

Anthony is joined by Casey Dreier, Chief of Space Policy at The Planetary Society, and Eric Berger, Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica, to talk about the NASA 2026 budget proposal, the Jared Isaacman saga, and all the space policy storylines you could imagine.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Matt Gjertsen, founder of Better Every Day Studios, to talk about leadership and management development in the space industry (and elsewhere!).

Lori Garver, former NASA Deputy Administrator, joins me to talk about the chaos of the last week: the withdraw of Jared Isaacman’s nomination for NASA Administrator, Starship Flight 9, and of course, the wild public breakup of Elon Musk and President Trump.

It returns. Hot drama. Also a moon lander is happening right now. Also Twitter fights break out. Also a moon lander doesn’t happen.

Jake and Anthony figure out if we should panic about Starship, or just Starship Block 2, or not.

Anthony is in his new studio! He and Jake catch up on his recent trip to Marotta Controls, Anthony shares the good news about valves, and they try to figure out what the hell is going on with VIPER.

Jake and Anthony talk about Firefly’s latest spectacular Alpha failure, and the skinny budget request.

Mark Albrecht joins me to talk about his time on the Trump 2024 Transition Team, the thinking behind some of the policy decisions we’re starting to see in the space and national security spheres, and more.

We take a tour of Marotta Controls in Montville, New Jersey, to see how they work, how they develop, produce, and test products at rate, and we learn about the most feared topic in space—valves!

Caleb Henry, Director of Research at Quilty Space, joins me to talk megaconstellations, the hypersonics industry, and more.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Dante Lauretta, Principal Investigator of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, and Professor of Planetary Science at the University of Arizona, to talk about—take a guess!—returning and studying pristine samples from Bennu.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Roman Chiporukha, founder of SpaceVIP, a travel agency for space.

Jared Isaacman was in Congress for a confirmation hearing for his nomination as NASA Administrator, which was followed up by reports of huge proposed budget cuts at NASA and NOAA. And as expected, SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin all received awards for NSSL Phase 3 Lane 2.

Jake and Anthony talk about Jared Isaacman’s confirmation hearing, and the apocalyptic NASA science budget.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Chris Carberry and Sam Burbank to talk about their first documentary film, Alcohol in Space - The Movie, their upcoming projects, and the 2025 Humans to the Moon & Mars Summit.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Richard French, Vice President, Business Development and Strategy, Space Systems at Rocket Lab, to talk about their Mars Sample Return architecture, the way they’ve been putting the word out on it, and to hear what’s been up with their space systems side of the business lately.

Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins me to talk about his recent interviews with Butch and Suni in the aftermath of their flight, the update NASA put out about Starliner, and how it all lands from where we are now.