I’m Anthony Colangelo.

XCOR laid off the rest of its staff and is closing up shop after losing a contract with ULA, which leaves ULA in an interesting spot for Vulcan-ACES. On the ULA side, they won their first Phase 1A contract from the Air Force, and the contract price sheds some light on just how much they’re cutting their costs.

SpaceX launched two missions last weekend, flew new titanium grid fins on Falcon 9, and are really picking up the pace. And Blue Origin got cozy with the Alabama Launch Alliance by announcing that they’ll build the BE-4 production facility in Huntsville—if the engine is chosen for Vulcan.

Boeing’s proposal won Phases 2 and 3 of DARPA’s XS-1 program, and I’m pretty bummed about it. And the Air Force announced that SpaceX will launch the fifth X-37B mission in August.

Dr. Thomas Lang, Professor of Radiology and Biomedical Imaging at the UCSF School of Medicine, joins the show to discuss human health and physiology in space.

Rand Simberg joins me to talk about his recent trip to the Space Tech Expo, the dawning of the age of in-space manufacturing, the future of SLS and Orion, the National Space Council, and a lot more.

Last week was rough for the Space Launch System. An issue with weld tooling was discovered, with some serious consequences, and then a LOX tank dome was dropped and damaged beyond repair. To top it off, NASA announced that EM-1 will fly without crew, and is delayed until 2019.

Eric Berger, Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica, joins me to talk SLS/Orion, New Space vs. Old Space, space policy in the Trump administration, and why the fight might not be settled until 2020.

Just what goes into the engineering feat of landing a 180 foot tall booster that’s rocketing through the sky? How does SpaceX guide the booster back to land or the barge? And what keeps aerodynamic and thermal forces from ripping apart the thin-skinned booster? Fellow space podcaster Anthony Collangelo, host of the “Main Engine Cut Off” podcast joins us to talk about just what goes into bringing the booster safely back to earth.

As the award date approaches for the 2018 Air Force launch vehicle development contracts, we keep hearing from Congress about how they would like to see it go. And I discuss the future of Antares and the Next-Generation Launch Vehicle in light of the continuing flights of Cygnus on Atlas V.

SpaceX made history this week by launching SES-10 with a previously-flown first stage. I discuss implications of this achievement, the things we learned from Elon Musk in the post-flight press briefing, and the doubters, as always.