And here’s the megafeed of everything I’ve been doing.
Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins Jake and Anthony to talk about his recent trip to Boca Chica for Starhopper’s first hop, propellant depots, NASA policy, Artemis, and the passing of his friend, Chris Kraft. Upcoming meetup! Hang out with Jake, Pat (creator of RocketLaunch.Live), and other fellow Anomalies in Kent, WA on August 31! Details at events.offnominal.space.
A pair of interesting smallsat rideshare announcements this morning: Arianespace announced their first (of many?) direct-to-GEO flight opportunities, and SpaceX began advertising—with pricing—the first 3 annual flights to a 600 kilometer sun-synchronous orbit.
Finally.Onward.
Very special thanks to the 292 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon for the month of July. 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.
Steve Altemus, President & CEO, and Dr. Tim Crain, VP of Research & Development, from Intuitive Machines join me to talk about their Nova-C lander, the Commercial Lunar Payload Services program, and their task order from NASA for a landing on the Moon in July, 2021.
NASA terminated OrbitBeyond’s CLPS task order, opened CLPS up to more providers, and announced exciting partnerships with Blue Origin, SpaceX, and others.
IEEE Spectrum published a fantastic collection of stories and features on the current trend of Moon missions. I’ve had a hard copy in my office that I’ve been reading over the past week or so, and it’s a great read for you, the super enthusiast, or your non-space-obsessed friends.
Just three days ago on the podcast I said that given the momentum we’re seeing, soon enough people would start asking why NASA wasn’t involved with Blue Moon and Starship. Now they don’t have to ask.
I share some thoughts on three important stories from this week: NASA quietly announced their intention to sole source the Gateway habitat to Northrop Grumman, Starhopper made its first flight, and Lockheed Martin invested in ABL Space Systems.
Back in February, in what I thought was a fantastic all around announcement, ABL upped their payload, dropped their price, and moved to their own engines. And now they’ve got some additional funding via Lockheed Martin for what’s next.
Caleb Henry, for SpaceNews, on an FCC proposal that I like the sound of and will be keeping my eye on.
Two top NASA human exploration leaders—Bill Gerstenmaier and Bill Hill—have been ousted from their positions. I break down what this means for NASA and its plans, where things could go from here, and ponder whether these changes really matter.
Eric Berger over at Ars Technica with his typical great insight from interesting sources.
On the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, Jake and Anthony talk about the aftermath of Apollo and alternate histories we could have seen—the Apollo Applications Program, a crewed Venus flyby, and more Skylab.
On the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11, Jake and Anthony talk about the aftermath of Apollo and alternate histories we could have seen—the Apollo Applications Program, a crewed Venus flyby, and more Skylab.
The big problem is that it’s painful to get established at Vandenberg because of the environment the state has created there. Head to Cape Canaveral, and Space Florida will actively throw money your way. Head to Vandenberg, and you better watch where you step.
If the tips I picked up previously about Firefly using Intuitive Machines’ lander were accurate, this is a curious change. The Beresheet-derived lander is probably quite a few years out, though, as the mockups show it stacked on top of a Firefly Beta and it needs that kind of lift to get to the Moon.
There hasn’t been much info released about the drop test, but apparently it went well. There still are a few issues to iron out, mostly surrounding the payload environment before it drops off the plane’s wing. Turns out planes vibrate a lot.
I’m glad that Virgin Galactic and Branson walked away from the funding from Saudi Arabia, but this route still has some oddities—a merger to get investment, going public not by going public themselves, but by merging with an already-publicly traded company, and so on.
Sandra Erwin published an enlightening interview with Matt Donovan, Acting Air Force Secretary, where he shares his thoughts on the Space Force debate publicly for the first time. It’s a notable interview because he was the undersecretary of the Air Force for the past two years, yet we heard nothing from him through that time.