And here’s the megafeed of everything I’ve been doing.
President Biden nominated Bill Nelson to be the new NASA Administrator, so I check in on some of my past thoughts on NASA Administrators and Jim Bridenstine, talk about Bill Nelson’s history in space policy, and what the future may hold under a Bill Nelson NASA.
Our good friend Jake Robins, host of WeMartians and my cohost on Off-Nominal, joins me to talk about the arrival and early operations of the 2021 Mars fleet—Hope, Tianwen-1, and Perseverance. Then we dig into what the future of Martian exploration looks like, including strategy, communications, sample return, and the upcoming decadal survey.
Leo Enright, the guy from Irish TV, joins Jake and Anthony to talk about covering space from a non-traditional space country, how he got started covering space, some current topics including Perseverance, ESA’s new Director General, and to generally have a great time.
Peter Beck, Founder, CEO, and CTO of Rocket Lab, joins me to talk about going public, their new, bigger launch vehicle, Neutron, updates to their Electron and Photon offerings, eating hats, and avoiding eating hats in the future.
Relativity sorta-announced a bigger launch vehicle, Terran R. A few days later, Rocket Lab really announced a bigger launch vehicle, Neutron. I hate one announcement, and love the other.
SpaceX broke their turnaround record and is racking up quite the flight history across their Falcon fleet. Lockheed selected ABL for a launch from the Shetland Islands. Firefly shook up their board, is looking for new investment, and won a CLPS contract from NASA.
Christian Davenport, reporter at The Washington Post, joins me to talk about the aborted SLS Green Run hot fire, the space policy landscape as we enter a new administration, Axiom’s Ax-1 mission and its crew, and Virgin Orbit’s first successful launch to orbit.
With our beloved JB on his way out, Jake and Anthony have been appointed NASA autocrats for five years with $25 billion per year to spend. They have done the homework, mostly, and will now unveil their grand plans.
With our beloved JB on his way out, Jake and Anthony have been appointed NASA autocrats for five years with $25 billion per year to spend. They have done the homework, mostly, and will now unveil their grand plans.
Meagan Crawford, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SpaceFund and host of the Mission Eve podcast, joins the show to talk about the financing side of space. We talk about recent rounds of fundraising, acquisitions, holding companies, and she helps me sort through my thoughts on the whole Special Purpose Acquisition Company trend.
Let’s put it on display next to its only rightful partner, the A-3 Test Stand at Stennis. Both are $350 million monuments to dead-end plans.
In what seemed to be surprising news to almost everyone I’ve seen mention it (including me), new solar arrays will be headed up to the ISS starting this year. They will sit on top of the existing arrays so as to take advantage of existing capabilities like sun tracking and power distribution.
I was not optimistic about the speed we’d see here, so I’m pleasantly surprised that the SDA has confirmed their original decision to award SpaceX and L3Harris with contracts to build 4 satellites each for the Tracking Layer Tranche 0.
Andrew Jones returns to the show for the third time to talk about China’s current missions and future plans, including Chang’e-5, Tianwen-1, the Chinese Space Station, and the international politics surrounding it. And then we dig into the Chinese commercial market a bit—launch companies and remote sensing companies are raising a ton of money, but it’s not yet clear what effect that will have on the global market.
These satellites are no doubt powerful and quite capable, but they’re astonishingly expensive and made in small production runs, which is why the Space Development Agency and other organizations are interested in seeing what can be done with a constellation of sensors.
I had been expecting this news since the request for proposal went up, so nothing shocking here. Now it’s up to the SDA to sort out the protests surrounding these satellites, which is a bigger and more difficult task.
Very special thanks to the 496 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cut Off for the month of December. 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.
I’ve long been a fan of Nanoracks, and this is huge news for them. They have a particular kind of grit that I love to see in a company, and that pairs really well with a long-term-focused crew like Voyager. Let’s see how they can put the new investment to work.
I took a ride out to AGI a year ago and got to see what was going on inside Comspoc. I like what they have going on there, and spinning off to their own entity will clean up the communications around what they offer and why it matters. I’m excited about this.
Chang’e-5 follows in the footsteps of Chang’e-2 and Chang’e-5 T1, which all went on to have interesting and sometimes unexpected extended missions. It feels a little like finishing a mission in Kerbal Space Program and realizing you brought along way too much fuel.