I’m Anthony Colangelo.

With our beloved JB on his way out, Jake and Anthony have been appointed NASA autocrats for five years with $25 billion per year to spend. They have done the homework, mostly, and will now unveil their grand plans.

Meagan Crawford, Co-Founder and Managing Partner of SpaceFund and host of the Mission Eve podcast, joins the show to talk about the financing side of space. We talk about recent rounds of fundraising, acquisitions, holding companies, and she helps me sort through my thoughts on the whole Special Purpose Acquisition Company trend.

Andrew Jones returns to the show for the third time to talk about China’s current missions and future plans, including Chang’e-5, Tianwen-1, the Chinese Space Station, and the international politics surrounding it. And then we dig into the Chinese commercial market a bit—launch companies and remote sensing companies are raising a ton of money, but it’s not yet clear what effect that will have on the global market.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, to talk about Starship SN8’s epic flight test, Tim’s trip to Boca Chica, and to unveil the 2020 Off-Nominees and crown the winner.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, to talk about Starship SN8’s epic flight test, Tim’s trip to Boca Chica, and to unveil the 2020 Off-Nominees and crown the winner.

NASA awarded Venture Class Launch Services contracts to Astra, Firefly, and Relativity. Astra almost made orbit with its most recent test flight of Rocket 3.2. And something is up at Firefly, but I don’t know what yet.

Starship SN8 took flight last week on a mostly-successful mission to test its final descent phase. I share some thoughts on the test, the state of Starship development, and what that all means for the near future of Starship.

A new company plans to launch small satellites from the belly of a drone. It joins the growing number of small launch companies popping up to send tiny payloads into space. So what’s the market for these small satellites?

We’ll dive into this growing industry first with Jay Skylus — he’s the CEO and founder of Aevum. His company has plans to launch small payloads on a rocket launched from the belly of an unmanned aerial vehicle. What does he see heading to space on his vehicle? And what will it take to get the Ravn X UAV off the ground?

Then, Aevum joins the growing market of small launch providers. We’ll take a look at the state of the industry with Anthony Colangelo — he hosts the commercial space-focused podcast Main Engine Cut Off about this bustling market and the future of the small satellite industry.

A lot of big, long-running projects have faced delays recently, and it seems like as good a time as any to check in and share some related thoughts. I cover a lot in this one: the Orion PDU issue, Ariane 6, Japan’s H3, Dream Chaser, Vulcan, and New Glenn.

SpaceX Crew-1 successfully launched and docked last week, kicking off a new era of the ISS. It’s a good time to zoom out and look at the ISS program overall, and what it means for the future of space development.