And here’s the megafeed of everything I’ve been doing.
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.
I understand why Vector and Astra are in, but I can’t for the life of me figure out why Virgin Orbit is interested.
There’s a lot of interesting flexibility here with Rocket Lab’s new kick stage-derived satellite bus.
A solid $30 million under their previous NASA science mission contracts, but DART is only 500 kilograms, so will likely be sharing its ride.
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.
Starliner’s uncrewed test is now NET August, and Chris Gebhardt has a pretty brutal piece that’s definitely worth reading on it.
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.
It’s a big one. I continue to be excited about someone other than Bigelow working on inflatables/expandables.
This month we talk EM-1, Moon by 2024, the commercialization of LEO, and more.
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.
Seems like one of those rounds of funding that was contingent on getting the first satellites up, but good to see the money still flowing into OneWeb. And boy, will they need it.
Caleb Henry of SpaceNews joins me live in studio to talk about his trip to Kourou for the first OneWeb launch, more affordable antennas, the current spectrum wars, and more from the world of satellites.
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Fantastic article by Debra Werner, for SpaceNews, that explains the furor over today’s FCC spectrum auction.
The Space Development Agency is up and running, and we have some details on what its first task will be. And this is all a really good example of why I’m supportive of Space Force as a wholly separate branch.