I wish they didn’t have these budget concerns. It seems like such a short sighted shame to turn off a healthy vehicle.

Shots on goal! I wonder what payloads will be available. It seems like the default ones are the retroreflectors and landing plume cameras. I’d love to see more radio telescopes, drills, power beaming terminals, baby rovers…

I’m looking forward to their attempts and just hope they don’t end up turning their first few vehicles into much more debris in the process.

I would love to see debris bounties on dead rocket stages and big satellites in higher orbits. Those things are ticking time bombs. Starlinks are low enough that they’re a lower priority.

That visualization of stacks is cool.

I can’t believe it’s 2026 and the workhorses for a constellation are Ariane and Atlas.

New Glenn could maybe do a Leo launch in a few months if Blue Moon slips (which is my bet).

I doubt it, but I want to see them try. Aiming for monthly and “only” ramping up to quarterly would still be great.

NASA really needs to start issuing a ton of CLPS task orders if this is going to happen.

There are also more players than just Firefly and IM. Astrobotic and ispace are working on little landers, too. SpaceX and Blue Origin are officially CLPS suppliers with their big landers. So that’s 6. Impulse has talked about a Lunar lander. Rocket Lab proposed a Mars lander. If they get onboarded, that’s 8. That makes monthly landings seem less insane.

In the picture in the article, the little extension on the right is the radiator.

This Scott Manley video explores the topic. I think it was released before this update and used a smaller bus for the example, but you get the idea.

https://youtu.be/FlQYU3m1e80

Hopefully it pans out. I was worried the site would be pretty far north, but Canso is at 45.34° N, which is on par with the Russian launch sites of Baikonur at 45.96° N and Vostochny at 51.88° N.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rocket_launch_sites

Starbase, TX

This could reveal the future or end of Gateway.

I’m hoping they pull off a pivot to the international partners working on modules for a surface base.

A Lunar tollbooth shouldn’t be part of a sustainable Lunar surface architecture (unless it’s a gas station for reusable landers or transfer vehicles), but the sci-fi nerd in me still wants a Lunar orbital station for the cool factor.

This is a great opportunity for ESA astronauts and should be a nice productivity boost for the station. I’m a little skeptical of the value of some of the private 2-week missions to ISS that border on tourism for some of the Dragon riders, but this fully professional astronaut crew should be much more positive.

I do wonder how much this will cost ($200 mil+ ?) and whether that money could have made a difference on European capsule development, but that’s a whole can of worms.

I didn’t expect this one, but I’m pretty excited for it! A 1 month professional astronaut crew is a great addition to the ISS for productivity and experience. The sleeping quarters might get dicey with 11 crew and I believe only 8 bunks, but they’ll make it work.

The non-NASA Crew Dragon missions now include Axiom-5, Vast-1, and EPIC to the ISS, plus Haven-1 to the first Vast station module. Exciting times.

At least they still have a few Atlas Vs to fly for Amazon in the meantime, but this whole SRB saga is really dragging out. I really hope we don’t end up regretting giving ULA the new SLS upper stage.

So now the asteroid mining race is afoot between Transastra and Astroforge!

I like that the article included Osiris-Rex. Asteroid sample return is possible, so the challenge now is scaling up and processing materials in space.

Ok, so

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Plowshare

I meannnn I’m sure ULA will find a way to disappoint us with the Centaur V based SLS upper stage, but hopefully less than Boeing

I hope they contract Lunar Terrain Vehicles soon. I’d love to see the Astrolab’s FLEX and Lunar Outpost’s Lunar Dawn vehicles both make the cut.

Brendan Carr is the PoS who took Jimmy Kimmel off the air and seems to love media consolidation. I’m not exactly a big fan.

On this issue, I don’t mind him calling out Amazon on their BS. It’s a bit reminiscent of Bridenstine trying to put some pressure on commercial crew contractors when he was NASA administrator.

An incredible flex after Artemis 3 would be for the landers to perform a TLI and Lunar landing to really make you question the worth of Orion.