And here’s the megafeed of everything I’ve been doing.
Very special thanks to the 350 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon for the month of November. MECO is entirely listener- and reader-supported, so your support keeps this blog and podcast going, growing, and improving, and most importantly, it keeps it independent.
Blue Origin successfully protested the US Air Force’s RFP for the National Security Space Launch program, which will have big implications for the way the current round of contract awards plays out. NASA added five new providers to the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, including SpaceX and Blue Origin, and I’ve got some thoughts about the inclusion of those options in what is quickly becoming my favorite NASA program.
This is definitely an improvement over the status quo, which is that you can launch a single satellite and that covers your spectrum rights for thousands more that you may never launch.
When I was at IAC, I heard that this would be flying on the back of Centaur. That made sense, as ULA was a partner in Nanoracks’ Outpost program. But after this announcement, I went looking, and ULA hasn’t appeared in anything related to Outposts in months.
Last week, NASA announced the addition of SpaceX, Blue Origin, Sierra Nevada, Tyvak, and Ceres Robotics to the list of Commercial Lunar Payload Services providers. That brings the total number of providers to 14.
Blue Origin filed a protest back in August with a handful of complaints about the selection criteria for the National Security Space Launch program. The Government Accountability Office sided with Blue Origin on what seems like the most important complaint, but threw out a handful of other ones.
Richard Duke from the Surrey Space Center joins me to talk about their RemoveDEBRIS mission, which launched last year and carried out 4 different tests focused on space debris removal and management.
I’ll be speaking on a panel alongside my friends Joe Cieplinski and Curtis Herbert, among others, about ethics in technology and what the role designers, developers, et al play in making sure technology is used for good.
I think I’m too quick to shrug off the “domestic launch capability on demand” aspect of Virgin Orbit. That’s a big selling point for countries with no up-and-running spaceport, and even more so for countries with geography that isn’t conducive to the existence of one at all.
Very special thanks to the 335 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon for the month of October. MECO is entirely listener- and reader-supported, so your support keeps this blog and podcast going, growing, and improving, and most importantly, it keeps it independent.
Jake and Anthony tell the tale of IAC 2019—meetups, making connections at the conference, trolling around the expo hall, and the much-anticipated-and-surprising meeting with JB.
Peter Beck, Founder, CEO, and CTO of Rocket Lab, joins me to talk about what they’ve been up to with Electron and Photon, as well as some of their new offerings like ground station support through KSAT and Photon missions to the Moon.
Artemis and international politics were on display on the first day of IAC 2019, followed by strange-yet-politically-minded partnerships on the second day.
That’s some serious speed.
I still think that as a launch services company, it’s a bad idea to put yourself in a situation where you’re beholden to someone else’s business for your core engines. But the confirmation of moving to a single-core, reusable first stage, along with a doubling of Beta’s previous payload is at least the best case scenario here.
I’ve been genuinely excited to see what Firefly can do in the launch market. And I still am excited to see Alpha, but for Beta, this is a major violation of the rocket equivalent of Alan Kay’s theorem: people who are really serious about launch services should make their own engines.
Big week coming up: I‘ll be heading down to DC for IAC 2019. It’s sure to be packed with announcements and interesting information, so keep your eyes peeled here on the blog, over on Twitter, and become a supporter to get access to any and all bonus content I produce throughout the week. I will likely be doing some ad hoc recording (maybe even interviews?), so it’s a great time to hop in and support!
I’m not completely sure what to make of this new set of filings yet. The optimistic end of the spectrum is SpaceX preparing for massive growth in Starlink services over the next decade.
A few bits of follow-up on Starship to GTO, the Bridenstine-Musk show at SpaceX HQ, and flying to polar orbits from Florida. Meetup alert! Sunday, October 20, 2019 in Washington, DC. Hang out with me, Jake, and a ton of amazing people of space the night before IAC 2019 kicks off. Details at events.offnominal.space.
The RFP was released back in August, and as we heard then, the program contains up to 20 missions that will be competed as they are ready. The selected launch providers are a nice mix of those who are flying today, those who are coming up on their first flight, and those who are still early on in their work.