Main Engine Cut Off

Loren Grush joins Jake and I to talk about whatever the hell SpaceX is going to announce, Opportunity’s troubles, the masterpiece that is Space Craft, and why you never start in Mexico.

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.

We’ve heard about these fueling demos before, but it was a mystery when and where they would take place. Eric Berger has the intel.

Blue seems to be trying really hard to limit the downsides of dual manifesting, and a single price for a ride to orbit no matter how you fly or when is a huge departure from the norm. It really only makes sense two ways: the entry price for a ride on New Glenn is shockingly low, or Blue will have no shortage of their own payloads to fly. Or both.

Teslarati posted some great photos of the recent upgrades to Mr. Steven’s net. This thing looks absolutely batshit crazy.

AFSPC-52 is well within the performance of an expended Falcon 9, so this is exactly one of those scenarios predicted for Falcon Heavy’s use: flying a recoverable Falcon Heavy instead of an expended Falcon 9.

This language is surely the byproduct of ULA lobbying for funding that can be used for Centaur V and ACES, but I would absolutely support a program focused on upper stages.