With all due respect to anyone reading this who works at Virgin Orbit, this is quite frankly bullshit. I’m fine with designating high-visibility, time-sensitive launch campaigns like Mars 2020 (Perseverance), Commercial Crew, or even AEHF-6 as essential services. But a company still in the development and testing phase of a launch vehicle that has been delayed for several years now with the only government flight being a Space Test Program launch?
SpaceX recently signed two agreements: one with Axiom Space to fly a private mission up to the ISS, and one with Space Adventures for a free-flying tourist flight up to 1,000 kilometers. I discuss these two missions and why agreements like this are key to SpaceX’s long-term strategy.
At $117 million, Falcon Heavy is a hell of a deal for NASA. It’s no surprise, then, that SpaceX has been winning a lot of NASA science missions lately. Just within the last year, they’ve been selected to launch DART, PACE, IXPE, and now Psyche.
This continues the same story I’ve been harping on with Starliner’s issues since December: Boeing is making mistakes that even to non-technical audiences sound downright stupid.
Long-time head of human spaceflight at NASA, Bill Gerstenmaier, has joined SpaceX as a consultant, but everyone is excited for the wrong reasons. And SpaceX missed a booster landing on their most recent Starlink launch, which prompted a new round of debates over whether booster recovery is part of mission success or not.
Mike Suffredini, President and CEO of Axiom, joins me to talk about their recent announcement: Axiom has been selected by NASA for access to an ISS port. They will build out Axiom Station as an expansion of the ISS, and eventually operate it as a free-flying space station. Before Axiom, Mike was NASA’s ISS Program Manager for a decade.
I’m hopeful—both personally and for his sake—that Gerst is heading to SpaceX not to be a political face for the organization or to schmooze inside the right DC circles, but rather to take things back to his roots as an engineer.
Jake and Anthony are joined by Laura Forczyk to talk about all the drama, from the NASA Authorization bill making its way through the House, the latest in Starliner anomalies, and Laura’s new book, Rise of the Space Age Millennials.
Nice win for SpaceX, but the most interesting part is that PACE is going to sun-synchronous orbit from Cape Canaveral rather than Vandenberg. SpaceX will be trying out this long-unused launch profile next month for the launch of SAOCOM-1B.
I’m really excited to watch this project move forward. It’s a distinctly 2020s project, and has the feeling of something we’ll remember in the long view of space history.
Main Engine Cut Off