Main Engine Cut Off

I’m surprised Stucky was willing, able, and/or brave enough to tell these anecdotes to anyone outside the organization. I don’t think the higher-ups are going to be too keen on that.

The pylon is attached, and Jeff Foust of SpaceNews has some info on their test flights.

I can only assume this use of common refers to the future use of Vulcan to launch Starliner. If that’s the case, it’s a good sign about where they’re at with the design of Vulcan, that they’re ready to make hardware changes to accommodate Vulcan in the future.

Great news for the likes of Audacy and others looking to build commercial alternatives to TRDSS, and I wouldn’t be surprised if this is the first step towards a commercial communications orbiter at Mars.

Not a day goes by that I don’t look up at the Sun or Moon and think about the 2 minutes and 40 seconds I spent in totality.

Beautiful renders, interesting payload numbers, underwhelming names, and short on just about any other detail.

Seems like Boeing sees Millennium as their ticket into the Department of Defense’s resiliency campaign that gets so much talk of late.

We knew this would be sole-sourced to Lockheed Martin, just like we knew that for the polar vehicles awarded to Northrop Grumman. What we didn’t know was the award value, and it’s huge.

Destin from SmarterEveryDay was invited down to the Parker Solar Probe launch, and got to hang out with Tory Bruno (and zero entourage) as the Mobile Service Tower rolled away from the rocket. He posted an absolutely lovely photo series with some commentary.

The switch to expander cycle is a big deal. Because of the BE-3U’s thrust level, it’ll be an open/bleed cycle. That does decrease efficiency a bit, but its specific impulse will be very much in the ballpark of the RL10 and Vinci.