I’m Anthony Colangelo.

Absolutely fascinating read about the work done by the 45th last week in response to the Amos-6 incident.

With each tweet from Elon Musk, it seems less and less likely to me that the Amos-6 incident was triggered from within the Falcon 9. If it’s discovered that there was an issue with the TE, now would be the best time to discover that.

If you need something good to watch this weekend, I suggest an Atlas-themed weekend, in honor of the launch of OSIRIS-REx, and ULA’s 111th straight successful launch.

A full transcript of Jeff Bezos’ email is at the link above, and they posted a nice animation of the flight on YouTube. They’ll be live-streaming the test in the “first part of October.”

They’re around $30 million under budget. It’s great to see a New Frontiers mission come in that far under budget.

Excellent table from /u/Kona314 showing every Falcon 9 launch with information about its static fire. Since Amos-6, it’s been going around that SpaceX has only just started doing static fires with the payload attached, and that’s absolutely false.

That’s a fine strategy for the here and now, but it isn’t a viable long-term strategy by any means. SpaceX isn’t the only one coming for Arianespace’s market share by way of reusability.

Blue Origin is going to be pretty damn active out on the Cape. Very exciting.

We’re still about a month out from OA-5, but it’s a good sign that Orbital ATK made any comment. The radio silence has been deafening after their static fire.

Absolutely fantastic read, and a great pick-me-up after SpaceX’s rough week. There are an incredible amount of parallels to the age that launched Boeing.

I’ve been doing a good amount of reading of these reports already, and I’ll write something longer after I’ve finished up, but they’re interesting to read through.

It’s been a rough day or two for spaceflight: SpaceX’s incident on the pad, China’s Long March 4C failure, and an earthquake near Rocket Lab’s launch site (everything is fine there for Rocket Lab).

Thanks to my patrons for the month of August. 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.

I love the way they call it “flight-proven” instead of reused. It’s like the “certified pre-owned” of the launch industry.

The first launch is just under a month away. It’ll be the first launch for SpaceX from Vandenberg since January. I’m particularly interested in the flight pattern and recovery of this first stage. Last we heard, SpaceX was working on RTLS clearance for Vandenberg flights, and was constructing what looked like their west coast landing zone.

ULA posted a new video about the Advanced Cryogenic Evolved Stage over on YouTube. They spend a lot of time talking about on-orbit refueling, distributed lift, and Integrated Vehicle Fluids. The video even shows a little sneak peek of Xeus, the Masten-ULA lunar lander collaboration.

Seán Doran has been adding a CG astronaut to the photos of the Murray buttes that Curiosity has been sending back as it travels past them. I’ve been absolutely loving these images.

SpaceX has been in need of room to work on recovered boosters since running out of space in their hangar at Pad 39A months ago. More importantly, they need that hangar to support launches from 39A in the next year.