I’m Anthony Colangelo.

I know, Schiaparelli wasn’t the primary mission. I know, you have to work hard to inform the public and those who hold the purse strings that ExoMars 2016 as a whole is still a success (so far).

I’m still excited about the Antares return to flight earlier this week, and am looking forward to Cygnus’ arrival this upcoming weekend. I finally finished uploading my photos and videos of the OA-5 launch.

There have been some revelations on the SpaceX front on how they’ll handle the production of Dragons moving forward, and how they’ll introduce propulsive landings.

I’ll be interested in what kinds of missions Antares launches in the future, and how viable a market it could be for Orbital ATK. Antares—due to its launch site and payload capacity—has a somewhat limited mission scope. We don’t yet know what they’d sell launches for, so that’s the big variable here.

I’ve been in the thick of my Big Cartel Employee Art Grant project for the past few months. I’ve been sourcing components, working on various mounts and enclosures, and designing the final product.

In response to this, I saw a lot of people scoffing and saying “Only 10 percent? They had said 30!” The sentiment seemed to be that SpaceX missed their mark and can’t offer a 30 percent reduction right now, rather than realizing that they are making a sensible decision.

The RFI seems to indicate that an extended Cygnus would be a great fit for the flight, as we’ve seen Orbital ATK talking up previously.

Thanks to my patrons for the month of September. If you’re getting some value out of what I do here and want to send a little value back to help support Main Engine Cut Off, head over to Patreon and donate as little as $1 a month—every little bit helps.

Pretty interesting to read through what NanoRacks has announced. They even mention human-tended experiments once Blue Origin starts flying people aboard New Shepard.

Scheduling the launch for the last slot in the initial window without a comment doesn’t express a lot of confidence. Rollout is scheduled for Tuesday (October 11), at which point the storm should be well out of the way.

Alejandro G. Belluscio of NASASpaceFlight wrote a fantastic piece on Raptor with quite a few interesting tidbits.

Last week on the podcast, Jake from WeMartians joined me for a discussion of our initial reactions to SpaceX’s Mars architecture. Today, I’m on his podcast with a bit of a deeper dive.

Sierra Nevada is finding every way it can to make Dream Chaser a reality. Their sticktoitiveness makes you believe we’ll see the crewed version launch at some point in the next decade.

Jonathan Goff wrote a nice blog post that’s really worth reading. He goes in-depth on what he likes, what he doesn’t like, what he’d do differently, and discusses his thoughts on the economics of the plan.

Rocket Lab announced that Launch Complex 1 is completed and ready for launches. We should see that first test flight on the schedule soon enough.

Orbital ATK posted a video over on YouTube showing their ideas for placing Cygnus-derived habitats in lunar orbit, and using them as the base for SLS-Orion missions throughout the 2020s. It also hints at the station staying there beyond the initial missions and supporting European (or other international) missions to the lunar surface.