Main Engine Cut Off

Gary Napier joins Jake and I to discuss doing communications for Lockheed Martin, dodging flat-earthers, and Dean Martin.

We knew Ball had won this last year, but this is confirmation of an option for the first of two spacecraft.

A ton of teams—18!—are competing for this. If it was DARPA’s intention to shake some stealth mode launch companies out of the shadows, it seems like maybe they’ve done that.

Jeff Foust wrote a great rundown of the space implications of the midterms that’s worth reading this morning, and I’ve got a few thoughts, as well.

Very special thanks to the 224 of you out there supporting Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon for the month of October. Your support keeps this blog and podcast going, and most importantly, it keeps it independent.

Linkspace is interesting to follow along with, and I’m excited to see how they do with their bigger hardware. But check out the photo in the article—they consistently use forced perspective like this to make their hardware look enormous.

Tough times for SSL, but it’ll be incredibly interesting to see who scoops them up.

I said this at the time, but I expected this news alongside either the BE-4 or Air Force selection announcements. Burying bad news with good news is always a solid plan, and I can’t imagine something has changed drastically in the last few weeks on the Vulcan front.

Just a few weeks back they announced the selection of ULA for a ViaSat-3 launch, and now they’ve firmed up what was an existing option for a Falcon Heavy launch in the 2020–2022 timeframe—the same timeframe as the ULA mission.

Looks like this move is solidifying, and may have interesting implications for the geostationary satellite production and launch markets.