I’m Anthony Colangelo.

There are two payloads on CRS-14 that caught my eye as very important to the future in space.

Large federal funding of a Boeing-built system which the private sector says is unnecessary because they can provide the government with more services for less money. Sounds familiar.

Maybe the change was brought about by the seemingly-slower ramp up of BE-4 testing, but nonetheless it gets them to the pad quicker, simplifies their production lines and operations, and allows them to hit just about every useful flight profile from day one.

Hmm.

This seems like a great addition to the MEV architecture, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it grew out of customer inquiries for a stationkeeping-only service, rather than one that includes attitude control, too.

I’m holding off on making too many assessments of the Swarm authorization fiasco until we know a little more than we do now. Did one of the parties knowingly make a nefarious decision to proceed? Or did this really fall through the cracks because of how many parties were involved in getting these satellites up?

We’ll see if anything comes of this, and “last summer” is not an insignificant amount of time in the past, but it’s at least an intriguing project to think about and consider. I’d hate to see Stratolaunch repeat some mistakes from Shuttle with Black Ice, though.

If the air molecules can be collected, compressed, and stored, you could imagine an imaging or communications satellite in orbit around Mars that occasionally drops its periapsis into the atmosphere to refuel, and once refueled, boosts its periapsis back to its operational altitude. Aerial ISRU!

Forgot to post this until now, but last week after the GOES-S launch, I asked ULA CEO Tory Bruno when we’d see the new Orbital ATK GEM 63 solid boosters on Atlas V. He responded: “About a year or so.”

While I admit that companies like Moon Express do need regulatory clarity before spending too much time and money on a project in a regulatory gray area, there are not many projects held up purely because of regulatory uncertainty.

One question I’d like to see answered, that as far as I know has never been asked or commented on: how much time is needed between EM-1 and EM-2 for everything else except the Mobile Launcher?

This mission gives me such agita. Always.

Very special thanks to the 166 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon for the month of February. Your support keeps this blog and podcast going, and most importantly, it keeps it independent.