Main Engine Cut Off

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 Dev…

Live from the Redwire booth at Space Symposium 2023! I discuss current space policy topics with Lori Garver (former Deputy Administrator of NASA), and Karina Drees (President, Commercial Spaceflight …

Live from the Redwire booth at Space Symposium 2023! I talk about the state and future of international partnerships in space with Mike Gold (Chief Growth Officer, Redwire) Masami Onoda (Director of …

Starship finally(?) flew its first test flight! Jake Robins of Off-Nominal joins me to sort through our thoughts on how it went (it was janky), what’s next for Starship, and to try and figure out if …

After an unsuccessful first flight of Terran 1, Relativity has announced that they’ve moved on to a newly-redesigned Terran R. Overall I think this a good direction, but there are some serious questi…

Stefan Powell, CEO of Dawn Aerospace, joins me to talk about their big news announced today: last week, they completed three rocket-powered flights of their Mk-II Aurora spaceplane in 3 consecutive d…

I share some big news about MECO and Off-Nominal live at Space Symposium 2023, and then dive into some recent launch stories: Relativity’s first flight of Terran 1, and Virgin Orbit nearing its end.

T…

Casey Dreier of The Planetary Society joins me to talk about the NASA FY2024 budget request and what it means for Artemis, the ISS, and planetary science.

Correction: At some point in the show, we sai…

Eric Berger has three sources saying United Launch Alliance is being shopped around the market right now, so I kick around some thoughts on who may buy ULA, if an offer comes to fruition.

This episode…

The Space Force rolled out the draft RFP for Phase 3 of the National Security Space Launch program, and it looks pretty good! Elsewhere, NASA selected New Glenn to launch ESCAPADE in 2024, so I check…

Lori Garver, former NASA Deputy Administrator, joins me to talk about a whole host of space policy topics, including Artemis and lunar politics, the legacies of Commercial Cargo and Crew, the status …

Caleb Henry of Quilty Analytics and I took a trip down to Wallops Island to watch Rocket Lab’s first Electron launch from the US. Listen to our conversation on the drive down to Virginia, a bit of me…

Virgin Orbit’s first launch from the UK ended in failure, putting them in an even more precarious financial position. And on the other side of the North Pole, ABL’s first launch attempt ended in fail…

SpaceX rolled out Starshield, a new, Starlink-inspired (derived?) offering for national security space systems. And I have some thoughts on the upcoming National Security Space Launch Phase 3 contrac…

Casey Dreier of The Planetary Society joins me to talk about Artemis I, where the Artemis program goes from here, and what the 2022 midterm elections mean for space.

This episode of Main Engine Cut Of…

The crew of Polaris Dawn—Scott “Kidd” Poteet, Sarah Gillis, and Anna Menon—join me to talk about the mission and its operations, their preparation and training so far, how their roles on past mission…

Jared Isaacman of the Polaris Program joins me to talk about how the program began, how it’s envisioned, how they choose what to take on and solve, how they interact with SpaceX, and why he’s chosen …

Last week, I took a visit to Pittsburgh to visit Astrobotic, who is working on a few different landers and rovers destined for the Moon. I got to sit down with several team members for a series of co…

In the wake of Axiom-1, NASA has revised the requirements for future Private Astronaut Missions. It seems to put pressure on the market to focus on a certain customer base, like research and national…

Bob Pearce, Associate Administrator of NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, joins me to talk about Aeronautics at NASA. We talk about how the directorate fits into the agency overall, how…