I’m Anthony Colangelo.

And here’s the megafeed of everything I’ve been doing.

Russian Officials Skeptical About Gateway

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I mentioned this on the last episode of Off-Nominal, but it’s worth saying here, too: I’m totally fine with Russia sitting out for the Gateway. Considering the state of the Russian space industry, and specifically how Roscosmos has been handling the ISS drill hole situation, I would very much prefer them to not be involved in building any hardware that will be flying to the Moon.

Episode T+96: Blue Origin & Harris

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Blue Origin and Harris announced an interesting partnership last week that’s worth discussing: Harris will be producing 5-meter fixed mesh reflector antennas that can only fit (for now) inside of New Glenn’s big fairing.

Thanks to September Patrons

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Very special thanks to the 222 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon for the month of August. Your support keeps this blog and podcast going, and most importantly, it keeps it independent.

Moon Express Raises $12.5 Million

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Looks like all the rumblings about Moon Express folding entirely weren’t the whole story. But I do want to point out that they haven’t even started building the first flight vehicle.

Stratolaunch’s PGA Engine

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It’s encouraging that they chose to develop a hydrolox engine for their architecture, and 200,000 pounds-force puts it right about what a Merlin 1D is pushing these days.

Finally.

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ULA says its on track for a mid-2020 flight of the BE-4-powered Vulcan. I was expecting to hear a bit of a delay with this announcement, because past statements sounded a lot like, “This is what we said previously so we’re going to say the same thing again until we update the schedule when we make the selection.”

GPS IIIF Award (and Mystery Bidder)

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Northrop Grumman and Boeing both have previously denied that they were submitting a bid for GPS IIIF, leaving Lockheed Martin as the only known bidder. But apparently, there was another response.

A Different Kind of Schedule Certainty

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Typically, we see ULA chosen because the customer needs to know they can hit a specific timeline. In this case, SpaceX was chosen because ispace is confident SpaceX will be flying near where they need to go, sometime around when they need to go.

Dust Storms on Titan

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Titan is, by far, the second coolest planetary body in the solar system and I can’t wait to see Dragonfly explore it in all its glory. It better get picked!

Views of Opportunity

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We haven’t heard from this little explorer yet, but it’s sitting pretty on its way into Perseverance Valley. Check out this beautiful shot of Opportunity from the HiRISE camera on Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, and then some landscape perspective from the incredible Seán Doran.

Episode 12 - Gary from Lockheed

Off-Nominal

Loren Grush joins Jake and Anthony to talk about whatever the hell SpaceX is going to announce, Opportunity’s troubles, the masterpiece that is Space Craft, and why you never start in Mexico.