I’m Anthony Colangelo.

We’re getting ever closer to a Rocket Lab launch. Keep your eyes peeled.

Tiangong-2 is set to launch today. It’s an important mission for the Chinese space program, so keep your eye on it.

There are some great details about Blue Origin’s future launch site—and some details about their stage recovery mechanisms—in the permit application for LC-11 and -36 work. The good details are hidden in the Drainage Analysis Technical Memorandum.

This is one way to spin a manifest with less demand (from government) than previous years. Nonetheless, it’s a good way to reach out to the commercial side of the market and let them know that ULA can support them, as well.

I’m not going to talk about Amos-6 specifically (or any fallout thereof) until the cause has been found and announced, but I do want to talk about the things that are said about SpaceX after an event like this.

In light of today’s announcement by Blue Origin, I’ve been thinking about their vehicle naming.

Today, Jeff Bezos gave us a nice preview of their next launch vehicle: New Glenn.

By the sounds of it, Blue Origin is late on something, and it may be pushing their engine test back a bit. I imagine that Aerojet Rocketdyne and the Congress members that are to thank for the AR1 are a little bit excited.

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.