Episode 53 - Venereal is Taken
Jake returns from LPSC 2022 and shares some stories with Anthony. #TacoGate2022
I host Main Engine Cut Off and Off-Nominal.
Formerly: Quirks & Compulsions and The Multilogue.
Jake returns from LPSC 2022 and shares some stories with Anthony. #TacoGate2022
A follow-up on my last show with Debra Werner about the war in Ukraine and all the fallout from it, both political and industrial. Everything from the NASA budgets for 2022 and 2023, NASA telling astronauts to stop tweeting, the increased importance of European human spaceflight, and how the launch industry might shift in the future.
Anthony is joined by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, and Roland Miller, a photographer who has spent years documenting space hardware of all varieties. We’ll talk about Roland’s work, and go behind the scenes on his two published books (Abandoned In Place, Interior Space) and his next book (Orbital Planes) coming out this spring.
Scott Tilley, an amateur satellite tracker, joins Jake and Anthony to talk about tracking Chang’e-5 back to the Moon and into a Distant Retrograde Orbit, how he and the wider community of amateur satellite trackers do what they do, and what else he’s been tracking lately.
Debra Werner of SpaceNews joins me to talk about Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, the ways that it is affecting the space industry, how their last invasion had similar effects, and how the situation solidifies several arguments that have been made over the past decade or more.
A special feature of a very-MECO episode of my other podcast, Off-Nominal, that I did this week with Michael Sheetz of CNBC and Eric Berger of Ars Technica. If you have yet to check out Off-Nominal, find us on YouTube or wherever you get your podcasts.
Michael Sheetz of CNBC and Eric Berger of Ars Technica join Anthony to talk about the latest in the finance side of space—what’s up in the world of funding, which businesses look steady and which look shaky, and of course, how you can’t spell space without SPAC.
Jake and Anthony talk about some (really good) changes coming to the show, Jared Isaacman’s privately-funded Gemini program, and SpaceX’s Starship…update.
Jared Isaacman, commander of Inspiration4, announced the Polaris Program—a privately-funded development program to “rapidly advance human spaceflight capabilities” via flights on SpaceX’s Dragon and Starship vehicles. It begins with a mission to the highest Earth orbit ever flown by humans, featuring the first commercial spacewalk, and culminates with the first crewed Starship flight.
Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins me to talk about what’s on our radar in 2022, to predict when the big new rockets will fly, and to generally catch up on what’s going on in the space industry.