Main Engine Cut Off - T+333: New Glenn Explodes on LC-36, Starship Flight 12, and NASA Moon Base Updates

Episode Date: May 29, 2026

Blue Origin’s New Glenn blew up on LC-36 last night during a static fire test, Starship flew its 12th flight, and NASA had a series of updates on its Moon Base program, including LTV awards, launch ...and landing contracts, and a somewhat unexplained branding exercise. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 32 executive producers—Lee, Steve, Josh from Impulse, Kris, David, Miles O’Brien, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Jan, Donald, Frank, Better Every Day Studios, Stealth Julian, The Astrogators at SEE, Ryan, Matt, Warren, Will and Lars from Agile, Pat, Fred, Joonas, Theo and Violet, Russell, Joel, Natasha Tsakos, Joakim, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters. Topics Here's why the failure of Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket is so catastrophic - Ars Technica NASA takes steps toward building Moon Base, including discussing a "perimeter" - Ars Technica NASA selects four companies for initial moon base awards - SpaceNews The Show Like the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack! Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to anthony@mainenginecutoff.com Follow @WeHaveMECO Follow @meco@spacey.space on Mastodon Listen to MECO Headlines Listen to Off-Nominal Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Artwork photo by NASA/Bill Ingalls Work with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

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Starting point is 00:00:11 Almost 10 years ago, August 31st, 2016, I recorded the 19th episode of this podcast, and I was kind of buzzing, to be honest, about the cadence that SpaceX had picked up to. They started flying Falcon 9 regularly. They seemed to be getting their wits about them to fly monthly or even better than monthly cadences with Falcon 9. They had a huge roadmap for the back half of the year. The vibes were good for Falcon 9. and the next day, Amos 6 exploded on the pad.
Starting point is 00:00:43 The Falcon 9 that was carrying Emo 6 exploded on the pad, and it felt horribly depressing. And we're here again, and this time feels so much worse. And it is so much worse, to be honest, for the impacts that this would have. Nuceland exploding on Launch Complex 36 last night during a static fire test. No payload on top, so lesson learned from the M.O6 era.
Starting point is 00:01:05 I don't know if anyone is really that concerned about the Amazon satellites other than Amazon, but nonetheless a good sign and good validation that you should do static fires without the payload. But just a tremendously disappointing and depressing and sad night for spaceflight really.
Starting point is 00:01:24 Blue Origin, certainly. Probably feels terrible internally there. I can't imagine what that feels like watching everything turn out the way it did. They were static firing the vehicle for their upcoming launch of the Amazon satellites on the fourth launch of New Glenn. They had just got clearance to go ahead
Starting point is 00:01:44 and move into that flight after investigating what went wrong with the third flight. And then obviously we've all been focused on the lunar plants. They had blue moon mark one coming up. They say the fall was the schedule
Starting point is 00:02:00 now, which was a slip from previously. We got that in a NASA event this past week that we'll talk about as well. We've also had a Starship Flight 12 that occurred. And yeah, there's just so many intertwined things here. So I want to unpack it all with you. But this is really catastrophic.
Starting point is 00:02:20 It feels similar a lot of the ways that I just said about the Falcon 9 did in 2016, that New Glenn felt like it was turning a corner. They were going to upgrade their cadence to be monthly. They had a lot of interesting payloads to fly this year. It seemed like they had all this momentum. They just won this huge tranche of awards from NASA to fly things to the lunar surface with Mark 1. Vives were good, and then here we are again. So a lot of similarities. But this is disastrous for Blue Origin. They have to go and figure out what they need to rebuild,
Starting point is 00:02:50 which is going to be most all of a pad. You know, I don't know what will be in good shape enough to remain. I don't know if they want it to remain, even if it is in good shape. You know, you make a launch pad once. There's a lot of things you would have done differently the second time, and they will certainly do that here. Some talk. online about will they jump straight to New Glenn 9x4, the 9 engine first stage, the 4 engine upper stage. Not sure that that's true.
Starting point is 00:03:16 They've got a good vehicle in the 7 by 2, as it were. Certainly want to start flying national security payloads. So I think that's a little bit more complicated of a question. But it's definitely a possibility. It's in the cards, for sure. But either way, whatever vehicle
Starting point is 00:03:32 does start flying again for Blue Origin when New Glenn returns, when will that be? You know, is this Is this a year of rebuild? Is it 18 months? I kind of would be shocked if New Glenn flies in 2027. I would be thrilled if it does. Maybe late 2027 if they really get in gear.
Starting point is 00:03:49 Could be a very clarifying moment internally for a blue origin that has had all this momentum lately and has had a different way of working and has had different pushes internally. Is this a rallying moment where they can look at themselves and say, we've done this once, we can do it faster this time, we can do it better this, time. Can they build out launch infrastructure? At the speed as which we'd seen others in the industry. Certainly, SpaceX build things out.
Starting point is 00:04:15 It takes a long time for SpaceX to perfect their infrastructure, and then once they have these big designs, it does take a long time to get in place. But can Blue Origin move on this faster than they did the first time around? I wouldn't bet on it, and also just considering the scale, this is an enormous launch
Starting point is 00:04:32 complex. It's a lot of moving pieces and a lot of activity out of the Cape. Now, we'll get some precedence, I'm sure. It's a hugely important vehicle for the redundancy that the U.S. government is interested in, and they have a vested interest in that. So trying to make things, you know, go their ways, probably in their interest. And then at the same extent, the Falcon 9 cadence is actually dropping off on the East Coast. Now, while the starship cadence pick up, seems likely. Seems like we might be seeing some starship activity in Florida this year. So that's a challenge
Starting point is 00:05:03 for rebuilding this. So that's why I'm saying I would be shocked if it flew again in 2027. I hope it does. But obviously the bigger impacts here are the payloads that got announced this week for New Glenn. NASA had this ignition follow-up event, moonbase update event that was very odd, a very clunky event. But the biggest news items that came out of there were the Lunar Terrain Vehicle Awards that NASA announced, the initial awards there, Astrolab and Lunar Outpost receiving awards for scaled down lunar rovers that was, both be robotically operated, but also operated with humans on board on the lunar surface. About $220 million a piece, I think it was $219 to Lunar to Astrolab and $220, $220 million to Lunar Outpost.
Starting point is 00:05:53 These are scaled down, redesigned versions of the LTVs these companies had pitched previously. The idea was to do simpler, that could be simpler designs that could be delivered faster. And both of them got manifested on their own Blue Moon Mark I landers. that Blue Origin also received contracts to fly. So one of the biggest changes there in the LTV Award is that the award was just for the rover and the operation of the rover. The launch and landing was handled by NASA and was awarded to Blue Origin. That was something that is different than the first time around,
Starting point is 00:06:29 where the people bidding LTVs had to account for the launch in their contract. This time they split that, which as a sidebar, is something I had heard from people working on different lunar programs, especially under Clips, that they wish NASA took this route prior with launch vehicles, that they bought launch vehicles and assigned Clips missions to a launch vehicle, maybe even aggregated some of those Clips missions on vehicles, something that other people were,
Starting point is 00:06:57 think it might be a good idea. So if this is the route that we're going with surface payloads, I think it's pretty cool. Now, those missions were supposed to happen, they say, in advance of Artemis, 4, which is currently scheduled for 2028. I don't know anyone that really believes that's going to happen in 2028, certainly not today.
Starting point is 00:07:13 But the idea was to launch the LTVs in 2028 for the landing. And before that, we obviously had a Blue Moon Mark 1 mission coming up this fall. The Viper rover was supposed to go down to the surface in 2027, and then these two would be the third and fourth
Starting point is 00:07:28 mission for Blue Moon Mark 1. The other big update out of this Moon-Base update was the well, there's a couple things. One, the moonfall program. These are a series of small landers that JPL is working on that would go down to the surface of the moon and then hop around the surface. And those would be launched on a Firefly mission to be carried to the lunar environment by Firefly's Elytra spacecraft. 75 million dollar contract for that from JPL, a subcontract
Starting point is 00:08:00 actually from JPL for the launch and the spacecraft delivery. It would drop it off about 50 kilometers above the lunar surface and the drones themselves would go down to the surface. They're calling them drones. I don't know why. They're just small landers. But drones are cool, I guess. The only other update out of this event was the rebranding
Starting point is 00:08:20 of certain clips missions to moon-based missions. So the first blue moon-mark-1 lander was supposed to be now Moonbase 1. Astrobotics Griffin-Lander that is coming up is called Moonbase 2. And then Intuitive Machines IM-3 mission is called Moonbase 3. what makes a moon-based mission beats me. Are all-clips missions moon-based missions, or are all-Mun-based missions, all-clips missions, are all-clips missions, moon-based missions, or are all-based missions, clips missions? But not all-clips missions are moon-based missions. Do you see what I'm saying? Nobody really knows. Because find me a throughline on what makes a moon-based mission, a moon-based mission, from the first landing of a lander that was already
Starting point is 00:09:03 scheduled by the company and would have happened regardless of clips but they ended up putting a $6 million payload on the lander and calling it clips a lander from a company that was supposed to fly a very important rover for NASA that then was removed from the flight and is now flying a different commercially derived payload but NASA was still allowing the Griffin one lander to fly under the clips banner that's a moon base mission and I am three called moonbase three that's going nowhere near where we might put the moon base it's going to like like five degrees north. Ask anybody where the moon base is going to be. Nobody's saying five degrees north. Interesting spot to go has nothing to do with the moon base. So the branding here of let's call
Starting point is 00:09:43 these moon base programs or moon base missions, I kind of roll my eyes out a little bit. I don't know. Like, I guess it's sensible, but are we just rebranding clips and saying all lunar landings are the moon base? Because that does sound kind of weird. And are all eclipse missions now going to be only focused on moon base things? Or are we still doing scientific? research, which we are with IM3 that is called Moonbase 3. So I'm a little bit crumbly about the whole moon-based branding, but it's beside the point. Let's keep it focused on the blue origin situation here with regards to the moon for a second. Obviously, the plans to fly Mark I are off the table on New Glenn for a while. And certainly, the human-rated version of this would probably even more likely
Starting point is 00:10:27 definitely need New Glenn, whereas Mark I think we have some conversations to have about what else that could fly on. But for the human-rated version, that's pretty much just out of the game for 18 months at best. So any thoughts of that being part of Artemis 3, I think, should just be set to the side and just think of Artemis 3 as an Orion and Starship flight, which probably was going to be anyway. I don't know. Maybe it could have shaken out differently, but let's just consider that almost a given at this point. And then the schedule for these Mark I landings really throws into question, you know, does NASA want to go and take on other lander development? Do they want to shift these missions already, that they awarded two days before this happened?
Starting point is 00:11:12 Do they want to shift that to other landers? Do they want to use this impetus to go and develop other landers that are capable of putting one ton on the surface to be able to carry this kind of payload down? Does Blue Origin want to go find other places to fly Mark I on, right? Vulcan? Is Vulcan an option? if it gets its boosters in order, is it able to lift that? We have a better propellant commonality with the Mark I lander,
Starting point is 00:11:37 which uses hydrogen and oxygen, just like Centaur. So the hydrogen facilities at the Vulcan launch site would be available, whereas over at the Falcon Heavy Pad, they don't have hydrogen service right now. They do have some methane capability because they did that for the Intude Machines lander, but they don't have hydrogen at the moment. And it's a big lander.
Starting point is 00:11:56 It's a lot of hydrogen to fill up. So, you know, is Vulcan an option? In Eric Berger's article about this explosion, he had a line in there that said that the Mark I lander actually had to be backfilled from the New Glen Upper Stage a couple hours after launch. I have heard that is not true. That is not the case with the Mark I lander. It is filled from the launch pad, and I dedicated umbilical from the launch pad and the ground service. I will ask him about that if he hears this first.
Starting point is 00:12:27 hierarch. But that does, it does keep the options open to fly on other vehicles more so than his comment would indicate. The biggest question is getting those umbilicals and the facilities ready to handle that on the launch pad. I think a big question here is very much in the theme with Jared Isaacman saying that for so long, NASA has just kind of gone with the wins of the industry. they would award contracts and what does he call it an acquisitions type agency before that they
Starting point is 00:13:02 acquire and give out contracts but but he wants NASA to be active in these plans and I think this is going to be a really telling year where that will either be true or not because in his model this was still the acquisition style NASA and this happened and it delayed all of their plans here for all these landers, the LTVs, the other missions, Artemis 3, they would just go with that and say, I guess we're going to delay a year to two on the current baseline plan, which is probably where they were anyway, right? All programs are late, you know, I hate saying that, but this makes late later, and NASA would have just gone along with that previously. With this as an impetus, does Jared Isaacman push to use this moment as a reason to diversify?
Starting point is 00:13:53 in many different ways. So let's look at can we support launch providers building out infrastructure to fly all these different propellant types from all their pads? Are there contracts that we can give out to diversify the launch infrastructure and make it more possible
Starting point is 00:14:11 to switch payloads around for redundancy? Does he say, let's go and find places that we can incentivize one-ton landers to exist? Can we go out to Astrobotic and say, let's do a lander bigger than Griffin? Because Griffin could do about 600 kilograms or something to the surface. Can we go and get a one-ton version of this? Can we go out and find a contract vehicle to get Intuant machines to accelerate work on their larger lander that can do 1,500 kilograms to the surface? Are there things that Starship needs to go off and develop to deploy some of these rovers, right?
Starting point is 00:14:49 There was this specialized crane on the Blue Moon Mark I to deploy. these rovers at the surface like Viper and then these LTVs, are there things that obviously have been in work for Starship to get payloads down to the surface, but is there something else that we need to go and develop? Can we do all of this in the guise of diversification and redundancy? Because that is certainly for a space program that Jared Isseman is pushing, certainly an important capability to be able to fly things and not be stuck on one particular launch vehicle or one particular launch site, to have redundancy across the board. Are there ways to do that?
Starting point is 00:15:25 Because right now, given the situation you're in, awarding contracts for the missions in the early 2030s, beyond the ones that you've already awarded, is not as important as making the ones that you've just awarded can fly. So if you are focused on building a program with momentum and increasing the activity level of NASA, and you've just been given this as an input, your response better be stop all future work
Starting point is 00:15:53 for the out years, which are very speculative at this point. You know, a lot of the stuff that we're talking about, many people are like, I wouldn't be shocked if that flu in 2030, not 2028, right? So we're already working five years down the line. So let's take some of those contracts that might have followed on
Starting point is 00:16:10 and redirect effort towards ensuring that the current slate can fly, reliably, ensuring that we have redundancy because anything else could happen to. Starship is not on the cleanest path right now. So there are other things that could happen that could really harm your capability to do any of this if you are stuck on one or two options and you don't have the full suite of capabilities available to you. That could be if you're able to mix and match a little bit more. So I'm very curious in the way that he said NASA is going to take action and not just let the industry happen to it, but really go out and affect the industry and take on its own programs, were those areas that he can find to make NASA's way easier in the
Starting point is 00:16:56 future? And honestly, I think in a lot of cases, that's being a really good supporter of the industry. To use NASA's demand signal, in his words, to indicate how important it is that these things do work together and can be mixed and matched so that we are redundant across disasters like this, across, you know, minor failures that might have you stood down for a couple of months on a vehicle issue or a redesign or something, or companies deciding that a program is no longer for them. You know, there's a world in which Falcon Heavy was canceled, and now we'd be staring down the barrel and it's like, you know, not a lot of other options for payloads like that. There's Vulcan, but look over there. They don't have boosters that work right now. They can't
Starting point is 00:17:46 fly payloads for this national security program with boosters on them for probably several more months. And you're going to need those boosters to do any of these things going out to the moon. So, you've got a really fragile infrastructure when you look at it from that angle and can NASA use its resources and its weight and the desire to increase its momentum to solidify that infrastructure at that level. That's the response I'm really hoping for from NASA. In addition to seeing can Blue Origin rebuild faster? Do they want to take Mark I and try to, you know, go source it out elsewhere? Is that something that they're interested in? And obviously, another thing I should mention is that we don't know that Vulcans out of the weeds on this particular issue either.
Starting point is 00:18:33 You know, this Eric Berger also wrote in his article that it seemed like this started from an engine. Kind of looked like that in the video. So if the B-E-4s have a problem, that's also going to impact Vulcan. So even that is pretty brittle. We are at a very interesting moment where we have so much capability, and then you get these clarifying moments where you see how brittle things are. Now, I do think if you're, if you listen to show for a while, or even if you've just listened recently and you heard me talk to Pam Melroy, I told her that my biggest criticism of the
Starting point is 00:19:08 Nelson-era NASA is that they did not take advantage of the geopolitical situation in front of them when Russia invaded Ukraine to go and get resources for commercial Leo to the extent that would have been necessary to really move on from the ISS at that time. This is Jared Isaacman's moment. Do you use this as a clarifying moment to see the, the brittle, of your entire platform that you're working on, to go and find ways to fix that problem. Because you have a lot of good storylines here on where a couple hundred million dollars here and there could make this entire system work better and could promote a better industry
Starting point is 00:19:46 and a better program for NASA and a better program for the national security environment. There's wins across the board there to be had. You know, can you go out and find the billion dollars to spread around in ways that are really helpful. And I think if anyone in recent space policy history has a good sense for sussing out which things actually do move the needle, where does that $100 million actually go farthest? Where does that $200 million contract in terms of a launch site really go far? Does Starship need more money for some of these things? I feel like the Jared Eisenman team has a good sense for which levers to pull in that case. But will they go do that is the moment that. This is the
Starting point is 00:20:27 moment, I want to see that. Now, I want to talk about Starship Flight 12 as well and how that impacts some of these things, because honestly, given what we're talking about here, can we go find a way to fly Mark 1? What about Mark 2 of the human landing? All of those questions about what we might do to get Blue Origin back in the Artemis game, I kind of think are not worthless to consider, given what I just was arguing for. But I do think this clarifies the Artemis 3 and 4 roadmap to just Starship, Starship, Starship, Starship, Starship, Starship, Starship, all Starship. Like, we're back, we're back to that.
Starting point is 00:21:04 We're back to this, like, it's all on Starship or else kind of thing, in a clarifying way this time. It got kind of messy in the last year, last year and a half, we're back to it being straightforward. It's Orion, it's Starship, it's the moon, we got to go. So let's talk about that. But before I do that, I want to say thank you to all of you out there who support Main Engine Cutoff. There are 32 executive producers who support this episode.
Starting point is 00:21:27 of the show who made this episode possible over at main engine cutoff.com slash support. I'm so thankful for all of your support. Thanks to Lee, Steve, Josh from Impulse, Chris, David, Miles O'Brien, Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut, Jan, Donald, Frank, Better Everyday Studios, Stealth Julian, The Astrogators at SE, Ryan, Matt, Warren, Will & Lars, from Agile, Pat, Fred, Eunice, Theo and Violet, Russell, Joel, Natasha Saccoos, Joe Kim, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for the support for making this possible. If you want to join them, Mainenginecutoff.com slash support.
Starting point is 00:21:57 It's where you go. You get access to Miko headlines, a whole other podcast feed of me talking about all the stories in space that matter, filtering out the ones that don't. It's a great way to stay up on the news, support the show. I could not do it without you. So thank you all so much for the support. Starship Flight 12. I felt good about it the day of, the day after, and every day after that, I felt worse about
Starting point is 00:22:17 it, to be honest. The extent to which this was a new vehicle for Starship was something that SpaceX really impressed upon everybody. And I mean, the list of updates is staggering. Huge mass savings across the vehicle, all new engines, you know, integrated hot stage ring, heat shielding, so many different components in there, too many that I can even remember, right? Oh, the grid fins are totally different now. There's only three of them. They're positioned differently. I mean, it looks amazing. It looks like a really tight vehicle. So I'm not knocking that. And I don't honestly know if I had a good rubric going in for what I expected out of the flight. But unfortunately, the things that went wrong hold them
Starting point is 00:23:03 back from progressing the roadmap yet again. I don't know that that's all bad because what we did find was, you know, we had a Raptor vacuum engine go out on the way up. So they really demonstrated their engine out capability, which I think long term benefits them quite a bit. That becomes not something that was just theoretical, but is actual. Now, obviously you can say, what about? the payload. I had a pretty hefty payload on board this thing. And flying with five out of six engines on the way up, that's impressive. So honestly, that demonstration, kind of worth it. It was like, that's something that I really do think is a good feature for them to have demonstrated going forward. The booster had a huge problem on its boostback, right? Sort of flipped the wrong way, engine exploded,
Starting point is 00:23:50 came in so hot, didn't complete really anything on its back half of the flight. So that holds them back from catching the next booster, which was the plan originally before this. They are going to the next flight fly the same profile with the booster, I'm sure. Launchpad looked great. Daylodge system looked awesome. So, like, that's great. Ship reentry looked fantastic.
Starting point is 00:24:15 We got great views of the heat shield after Splashdown when it did its little twirl, so we could see all the heat shield tiles. That looked much cleaner than in the past. Seemed to go really well. But they didn't get, because of the Raptor vacuum engine out, we didn't get the Raptor relight in space. So they have to do that again next flight, and they are not going to be able to go full orbit,
Starting point is 00:24:39 unless something drastically changes with their risk posture for that. So they did make a lot of good forward momentum, flying a pretty much brand new vehicle and showing a lot of the strengths that they have built. I don't want to knock them entirely for that, right? Launchpad looked great. I mean, the vehicle came off the pad much hotter
Starting point is 00:25:00 than the prior launches of Starship. It looked much more like what we would expect. I mean, they said that they've saved a ton per engine, per Raptor engine in mass and payload capability. So that's a huge jump in that. And it's something that people in the industry have been concerned about of, Are they really getting as much payload lift out of this?
Starting point is 00:25:19 It's something that I have completely hand-waved away because I am not worried about it at all. It was not the thing that SpaceX was concerned about optimizing. They have plenty of other things on their list, and that's the way they work. Let's get through the next things on our list. We know the math on paper works out, but we got to work our way there. We've got to get through all this other stuff. So then you go and you see a clean sheet design like this, basically,
Starting point is 00:25:42 and how much cleaner they make propellant lines and plumbing and all these systems that they save one ton per engine. Like, those are the things that SpaceX is good at achieving. So that's why I hand-wave that away, and we see that's good progress there. Heat shield looks great. They demonstrate engine out. The payload deployment looked much better.
Starting point is 00:26:00 Coms were still good throughout. So there are a lot of upsides there. But I think the thing I got stuck on in the last few days was, man, we're still not progressing through this roadmap at all. You know, are they going to fly in July? in August, the next flight. You know, July seems right, like two months on from that, maybe late July, early August.
Starting point is 00:26:23 But I would be shocked if they didn't fly the same trajectory again. So that puts them at full-on orbit with a booster catch towards the end of the year. And then, you know, obviously orbital refilling doesn't look like that's happening until 2027. So what are the things on their roadmap that they're going to check off this year? It's flying V3, maybe getting to orbit. not a terrible year, but definitely not a great year. So I do hope it goes better in this back half than we've had the past year and a half with Starship. I'm excited to see the new vehicle flying.
Starting point is 00:26:58 I'm a little conflicted, to be honest, the more time goes on. Now, that said, I don't work on the program internally. So maybe getting to this point and actually flying this thing and flying off the new pad and all the stuff that went well, maybe that was the real scary part and these other things or, you know, we'll sort them out. I believe that. I would totally believe that. But, I mean, at some point, it's going to turn the corner. I'm still in an inevitable, inevitable list. Like, I know it's going to turn the corner, and all of a sudden, they're going to be flying shockingly regularly, and it'll be great. But it, we still just, we still feel stuck on the
Starting point is 00:27:34 roadmap, and that's eating at me, especially now when you see Starship just being the way for Artemis 3 and Artemis 4 and all the interesting plans on the moon. Now, well, that clarity bring any benefit to them, that they don't feel like they have to do this whole Blue Origin versus SpaceX thing for a year, and they can just really focus in, especially with the NASA side, NASA really can just focus in on nailing down what we're doing for Artemis 3, what we're doing for Artemis 4, what do we need in place for these missions? You know, there is going to be some sort of redirected effort if this is true. If NASA, you know, it's true, it's not true. And like, no one's said, anything. I'm just saying this stuff. So if my storyline is true that NASA says, yeah, we're just going to go all in on Starship for 3 and 4, the focus of effort from the other partners, not to say SpaceX would have been distracted, but the other partners, right, NASA, Axiom, et cetera, their focused effort on Starships the path, does that clarity help things and move things along a little
Starting point is 00:28:34 cleaner? Doesn't help SpaceX get to orbital refilling any better. Doesn't help them get to orbit any better. but the other stuff that we need for those missions, it would definitely help. So not a great week for spaceflight. Yikes, man. I feel so bad for the Blue Origin crew. I know a lot of them listen to the show, so really feeling for you. And I think the news, this is one of those moments that broke out. You know, I was exclaiming on the couch as I was watching this last night, and my wife
Starting point is 00:29:03 was like, wow, that was a huge explosion. But it wasn't until an hour later when I had gotten two different calls. about this, like from people, at people, humans called my phone, like a thing that happens in 2026. And after the second one, she was like, two different people called you about this? It's that big of a deal? And I was like, yes, this is like tremendously bad in a huge moment. So it's set in for her. It was like, oh, this is a serious thing. And it feels that it was a terrible day. So here's hoping for some better days in the future. There's a lot of drama to come on the the space content front, I guess.
Starting point is 00:29:41 It's definitely no shortage of content from here. But it's a moment when we're going to see the way that different organizations step up. What does NASA do? What does Blue Origin do? What does SpaceX do in response to this as a moment of change for the program, for the industry? You know, the redundancy side of things does extend beyond the civil side as well. are there national security people that are going to say, yeah, we probably should try to figure out, other than just saying we like redundancy, what we can do to instill it on launch providers in this way.
Starting point is 00:30:18 And certainly, they got a lot of data for those methane explosion exclusion zones. You know, we talked about that in the past in the show of how big those keep-out areas were for methane vehicles because of not having the full math in front of them on what these explosions look like. Well, there we go. rerun the numbers today and we'll see see what that comes down to but that's what I've got for you today uh sorry to end the week
Starting point is 00:30:44 on a bummer note I guess but glad I'm getting this out to you pretty quick I'm sure we'll hear a lot of stuff coming out in the next week or two on this and we'll talk about it then so thanks y'all for listening thanks for the support as always at main engine cutoff.com slash support you've got any questions or thoughts hit me up anthony at main engine cutoff.com And until next time I'll talk to you soon.

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