Yeah, Axiom is working on a private space station that would bud off the ISS when it deorbits. Although they have some money problems right now.

For asteroid mining, look up AstroForge. They’re working on mining platinum group metals from near Earth m-type asteroids. They launched a forge demo sat and soon will launch an asteroid RPO demo sat.

We’re in a new space race.

There are too many rocket companies to list. This commercialization drives down launch costs and increases capacity, which benefits private companies and public research institutions.

There was just a record number of people in orbit (19) that’ll get broken again in the coming years. The ISS will get new modules. Tiangong has been expanding. The Lunar Gateway station is under construction. Several private space stations are under construction. And multiple companies and countries are working on new crewed vehicles.

Starlink has customers in 99 countries as of March. It’s a global service.

I still get surprised by how many companies managed to get funding for smallsat launch.

Wow. That’s a lot of money for IM. And NASA. I’m really curious to hear more details about this. It’s a great idea and is definitely needed to expand lunar operations, but I was not expecting that number.

Axiom’s timeline for their station is really dicey because of their dependency on the ISS until they’re ready to dive into the deep end on their own. They can’t just be 10 years late. I hope they make it. I think it’s interesting that they’re switching from Thales Alenia to Gravitics for modules. It must be a huge cost saver, but it might be too little, too late. They started off as ISS USOS v1.5, which adds some challenges vs the single module stations that are trying to be Skylab v2.

The hope was that they could be cheaper, faster, and more efficient than if NASA developed the suits and station themselves. Axiom underbid, either on purpose to win the contract, or accidentally. This is where the firm fixed price model might be breaking down for NASA.

This and BLEO (beyond low earth orbit) are “the acronym knows where it is because it knows where it isn’t”

Yup, and they have to be specifically tailored, and, even then, keeping them tight-fitting at joints is a challenge. There are some concepts with pressurized traditional gloves to work around some of that.

I like AntennaPod for podcasts.

Hopefully some day we get mechanical counterpressure suits.

I forgot SUSIE!

There’s no way those all happen, but I can dream.

But but but the VCs and PE firms have a thesis or something!

I hope all these ghouls lose their shirts.

The Micro-Nova Hopper has to be the coolest CLPS payload so far. I have a soft spot for all the adorable little rovers, but this takes the cake.

It’s cool to see Wallops trending toward more activity between Firefly prepping for Alpha and MLV/Antares and Rocket Lab adding Electron and HASTE launches and working on the Neutron pad.

Firefly’s Sweden pad is definitely interesting. I guess they’re trying to snipe the market from Vega and European launch startups like RFA, HyImpulse, Isar, etc.

The rover is cute. Hopefully they stick the landing on this one!

“50-50” odds of a launch in December.

Berger’s Law probably applies here…

I’m looking forward to the first Firefly Blue Ghost launch this year, too.

At the end of the day, at least medium term for the next 5 years or so, it’s probably best if Starliner succeeds. I hope Boeing takes the financial hit and flies another certification mission, then some of their 6 operational missions.

My understanding of Commercial LEO Destinations is that NASA will just buy seats and station time, letting the new station operators figure out booking flights. I want to live in the future where a station sees a mix of Dragon, Starliner, Blue capsules, Gaganyaan, Nyx, Dreamchaser, Rocket Lab capsules, Shenzhou, and Starship.

Companies like this make me wish I had the gall to sell snake oil to venture capitalists.

What a classic recipe. It’s a YC company with a McKinsey CEO.

I dunno. A lot of people messed up. Across the board. A successful landing doesn’t change any of the previous failures that led to NASA pulling the plug.

Flight software, test planning, program management, root cause analysis, systems engineering / requirements management, material sourcing, simulations, etc.

The thruster firing show is fun