Main Engine Cut OffI took a trip down to Wallops Island, Virginia this week for the launch of OA-5—the return to flight for Antares, sending Cygnus up to the ISS on a resupply mission. I recorded this episode on the long drive home afterwards, and talked about what Antares’ return means for Orbital ATK and what their future may hold—both good and bad.
There have been some revelations on the SpaceX front on how they’ll handle the production of Dragons moving forward, and how they’ll introduce propulsive landings.
Gwynne Shotwell, President of SpaceX, spoke at two events and dropped some tidbits about the Falcon 9 investigation, future versions of the vehicle, and what kind of discount they would offer for “flight-proven” stages. I break down the new info, and discuss their reusability discount.
In response to this, I saw a lot of people scoffing and saying “Only 10 percent? They had said 30!” The sentiment seemed to be that SpaceX missed their mark and can’t offer a 30 percent reduction right now, rather than realizing that they are making a sensible decision.
After a few busy weeks of Blue Origin and SpaceX news, I spend some time talking about ULA’s RapidLaunch program and how they are working to get competitive within the commercial market.
Last week on the podcast, Jake from WeMartians joined me for a discussion of our initial reactions to SpaceX’s Mars architecture. Today, I’m on his podcast with a bit of a deeper dive.
Jonathan Goff wrote a nice blog post that’s really worth reading. He goes in-depth on what he likes, what he doesn’t like, what he’d do differently, and discusses his thoughts on the economics of the plan.
Elon Musk took the stage at the IAC this week and unveiled SpaceX’s architecture for their planetary exploration and colonization plans. Jake from WeMartians and I discuss our initial reactions to and takeaways from the event.
My baseline expectation is a scaled-up Dragon 2. But maybe that’s not the best layout for a much larger spacecraft like we’ll see next Tuesday. There might be a way to design the spacecraft that would lead to a better layout, better functionality for payload, and better performance for atmospheric entry.
Looks like SpaceX has some plans of its own for streaming their announcement at IAC.