Main Engine Cut Off

Jake and Anthony are joined by Loren Grush of Bloomberg to talk about her new book, The Six: The Untold Story of America’s First Women Astronauts.

Scott Tilley joins me to talk about ISRO’s success with Chandrayaan-3, Roscosmos’ Luna-25 mission and the mystery behind it, and the state of the Deep Space Network.

Amazon moved their Project Kuiper prototypes from Vulcan to Atlas V. Between that and some recent conversations I’ve had, I thought it would be a good time to check in on Kuiper and to see how they’re progressing towards deployment. I do some math, and it’s not good.

After the most recent show, I found a few nuggets of information in the NSSL Phase 3 documents, plus some more updates came out in a call that the Space Force had with some reporters.

Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins me to talk about the budgetary threat facing Mars Sample Return, the latest issue with ULA’s Vulcan vehicle, and the ongoing tweaks to the National Security Space Launch Program’s Phase 3 architecture.

Adrian Beil of NASASpaceFlight.com (and a long-time beloved member of the Off-Nominal Discord) joins me to talk about the state of German and European launch, with new entrants Rocket Factory Augsburgand Isar Aerospace getting close to the launch pad, many others working their way there, and institutional launch struggling amidst delays and geopolitics.

NASA selected Blue Moon as the second human lunar lander for Artemis—which is awesome!—yet the budget outlook for the next few years is…not good. I think through what NASA can, should, and might do in the face of a grim budget reality.

Live from the Redwire booth at Space Symposium 2023! I discuss the business and finance side of spaceflight, with Caleb Henry (Quilty Space), Peter Beck (Rocket Lab), and Jonathan Baliff (CFO, Redwire).

Live from the Redwire booth at Space Symposium 2023! I discuss the commercialization effort of LEO and the Moon with Angela T. Hart (Manager, Commercial Low Earth Orbit Program Office, NASA), Dr. Molly Mulligan (Business Development, Redwire), Jana Spruce (VP of Spacecraft, Firefly), and Kevin Foley (Program Director, Commercial Space Projects, Boeing).

Live from the Redwire booth at Space Symposium 2023! I discuss news, announcements, and happenings from the conference, then talk with a trio of drop-in guests: Sean Bedford (Director of Business Development, Astrobotic), Mike DeRosa (Co-Founder & CMO, Gravitics), and Jason Hopkins (Vice President of Strategy and Business Development, Crescent Space).