Episode 60 - Soviets Invented the Boostback
Jake and Anthony talk about the best/worst/most cursed rockets of all time, why they love them so much, and why you should, too.
I host Main Engine Cut Off and Off-Nominal.
Formerly: Quirks & Compulsions and The Multilogue.
Jake and Anthony talk about the best/worst/most cursed rockets of all time, why they love them so much, and why you should, too.
Casey Dreier, Chief Advocate and Senior Space Policy Adviser at The Planetary Society, joins Jake and Anthony to talk about the NASA budget, the recently-released decadal survey, and other space policy storylines.
Brent Sherwood, Senior Vice President of Advanced Development Programs for Blue Origin, joins me to talk about Orbital Reef. We talk about the long history leading up to this architecture, the nature of their partnership with Sierra Space and other team members, the parts of the program that are specific to their contract with NASA on the Commercial LEO Destinations project, and dive into how their business strategy might play out in the near future.
Brad Cheetham, co-founder, CEO, and President of Advanced Space joins me to talk about their upcoming CAPSTONE mission. We talk about how the mission came to be, what it’s been like working with NASA and the other partners on the mission, and then dive into the nerdy details of the trajectory it’s flying to the moon, the orbits it will operate in, how its autonomous positioning system works, and how it might be used in the future.
Brendan Byrne, of WMFE and Are We There Yet?, joins Jake and Anthony talk about Artemis 1 and its “Wet” Dress Rehearsal, Axiom-1 on the ISS, and other goings-on in space.
Andrew Maximov, founder of Precious Payload, joins me to talk about what he and his team have been working on, what they see as the missing pieces in the industry, and why they think they are building the right set of tools for where things are headed.
Caleb Henry of Quilty Analytics joins Jake and Anthony to talk about Amazon’s Kuipermania launch contract, and what it was like to moderate panels at the 2022 Space Symposium.
Amazon is purchasing up to 83 launches from Arianespace, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance—in addition to the 9 Atlas V launches they bought last year—to deploy their Project Kuiper constellation. This is a huge deal that changes the game for heavy lift launch providers, and has major implications for the small launch providers in the industry.
Philip Sloss of NASASpaceflight joins Jake and Anthony to talk about the rollout and wet dress rehearsal for Artemis 1, and to go behind-the-scenes on how he does his incredibly-in-depth reporting and coverage of SLS.
Tory Bruno, CEO of United Launch Alliance, joins Jake and Anthony to talk about how he got into space, his background in engineering, the shift from engineering to management, and the future of ULA and the rest of the space industry.