Main Engine Cut Off

NASA is asking about 7.6 metric tons of cargo to lunar orbit. That’s an ATV-class vehicle—a huge undertaking, requiring a big launch vehicle.

Good news for SpaceX and Falcon Heavy, but I still haven’t figured this one out. How did a company that has yet to finalize procurement of a satellite decide that a direct-to-GEO mission was right for them and their payload?

It’s kind of amazing that this is the first we’re hearing of this. Is this a new issue, or related to whatever caused Dragon 2 to end up with four parachutes?

Typically, we see ULA chosen because the customer needs to know they can hit a specific timeline. In this case, SpaceX was chosen because ispace is confident SpaceX will be flying near where they need to go, sometime around when they need to go.

There’s some weird, gross politicking happening over in Israel around IAI lately.

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.