And here’s the megafeed of everything I’ve been doing.
Very special thanks to the 414 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cut Off for the month of May. 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.
It happened! American astronauts on American rockets from American soil. Bob and Doug successfully launched, docked to the ISS, and joined Expedition 63. I talk about what this means for SpaceX, NASA, space policy, and where things go from here.
Though NASA and its projects provide a source of hope through scientific advancement and inspiration, those things can often feel unreachable to many of us. However, the platform it provides for representation and for role models to step forward into the public eye is hugely important.
Virgin Orbit carried out their first flight this past weekend, and as most first launch attempts go for a new launch vehicle, it ended in a failure. But not without checking off a ton of items on the rundown.
It’s worth reading Jeff’s article on these changes. They make so much sense that I almost have nothing to say about it.
Roper has been the chair of the Space Acquisition Council, which has been trying to find ways to get funding out into the industry during the pandemic to help contractors of all sizes. They’ve moved much slower than I would have expected when hearing about the Council in the early days, but seems like the news will start flowing now. Starting with what is essentially advancing funds that were already planned is nice, but I’m expecting to see some splashier funding setups soon enough.
The head of human spaceflight at NASA resigned last week, just before the most important crewed launch the agency has seen in a decade. However, it appears as though the resignation is related to the Artemis program and its landers. I give some thoughts on the implications of the departure, and also cover a recent development in international space politics—the Artemis Accords.
Jake and Anthony are joined by Jason Davis of The Planetary Society to talk about NASA’s human landing systems, SpaceX’s upcoming DM-2 launch, and to debate whether or not Tom Cruise will make a cool movie on the ISS.
The decision was primarily communicated as a way to eliminate technical risk and complexity, but it certainly plays well on the political and budgetary side of things, too. The convergence of political factors this year are a nightmare for NASA’s budget outlook, not to mention the federal budget generally.
This week we are joined by our Space Podcasting buddies from across the pond to talk about what happened in a really busy space news week. Anthony and Jake take time out from MECO and WEMARTIANS and their joint show Off Nominal to share their wisdom and humour.
Very special thanks to the 402 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cut Off for the month of April. 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.
NASA announced three contract awards for the Artemis Progam’s Human Landing System—a Blue Origin-led team, Dynetics, and SpaceX’s Starship. I talk through some thoughts on each landing system and what the future might hold for NASA, regarding both politics and decisions.
Probably not a bad idea, because of those positive tests for COVID-19 at Baikonur. Luckily they’ve been up there for a while and all seems fine.
Sean Mahoney, CEO of Masten Space Systems joins me to talk about everything they’ve been up to lately, from flights of their terrestrial vehicles out in Mojave, NASA’s Lunar CATALYST program, their recent Commercial Lunar Payload Services task order award, and some other projects like DARPA’s XS-1, the Broadsword engine, and XEUS.
Coinciding with a presentation to an astrophysics decadal survey committee meeting, SpaceX posted a bunch of information (and really nice visualizations of Starlink satellites) about what they’re doing to work with astronomers on the visibility issue. It’s wonderful to have this amount of information put in one place, straight from the source.
Peter Beck, Founder, CEO, and CTO of Rocket Lab returns to the show to talk about how the industry is dealing with the pandemic, and to update us on their busy past few months, including their acquisition of Sinclair Interplanetary, flying missions to the Moon and beyond, and their work towards reusability.
Speaking of rideshares, SpaceX continues to fill that first rideshare flight to sun-synchronous orbit.
Rocket Lab taking advantage of a bad situation in French Guiana and showing United Launch Alliance how to do it at the same time.
Caleb Henry, for SpaceNews, with a paragraph written so well it stopped me in my tracks. A must-read on OneWeb’s bankruptcy and the strategy of its timing with regards to its upcoming spectrum sale.
Tim Ellis, CEO and Cofounder of Relativity joins me for an in-depth discussion about Relativity’s status and work towards their first launch. We cover everything from their company vision, funding, new headquarters, wider fairing, customer backlog, potential west coast launch site, and dive into the details of Stargate and Relativity’s materials work.