Dr. John Charles spent nearly 33 years at NASA—most recently as Chief Scientist of the Human Research Program—working on human spaceflight through Shuttle, Mir, ISS, and beyond. He lead missions such as STS-95 (John Glenn’s Shuttle flight), STS-107, and the Twins Study with Scott and Mark Kelly. He retired from NASA in February 2018 and is now the Scientist in Resident at Space Center Houston. We talk about his career, the human spaceflight issues he worked and solved in his time at NASA, and the things that need to be solved for the exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond.
I joined Andrew Heaton on his show, Something’s Off with Andrew Heaton, to talk about all things Space Force—where things stand, where they’re headed, what needs to be solved, and of course, uniforms.
Is a U.S. Space Force an inevitable step to protecting satellites and commercial space activities, or just an expensive exercise in shuffling Pentagon bureaucracies? Military and aerospace expert Anthony Colangelo joins Heaton to sort things out.
Last week, the US Air Force announced and expounded on the Rapid Agile Launch Initiative. Along with the new initiative, the new era of small launch is finally here, so it’s worth discussing a bit.
Very special thanks to the 271 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon for the month of March. 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 was on a call earlier this week with US Air Force officials talking about the Rapid Agile Launch Initiative (RALI), which is the program handling the acquisition of new small launch vehicles.
Good to hear them signing customers, but I’m ready for this era of extreme secrecy of space projects to be over. As far as the launch site is concerned, my bet is on SLC-3W.
What’s most interesting here is the implication that the US government knew about India’s ASAT testing ahead of time. Additionally, there has been little-to-no response from US officials, aside from NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
One of the things I’m always interested to hear more about is Blue Origin’s long-term plans for in-space architecture. Not the general vision of the future—the actual hardware that makes it possible.
From what I’ve heard, Vulcan is making really good progress, and is one of the odds-on favorites for selection for NSSL Phase 2. That said, we’re still waiting for BE-4 to get to full power.
The National Space Council met this week and Vice President Pence announced the administration’s intentions to see humans land on the moon by 2024. I break down my thoughts and observations coming out of the meeting.
