This week I’m coming to you from Florida, where I have had the amazing opportunity to see the launch of Firefly Aerospace’s blue ghost and iSpaces Mission 2. I didn’t see New Glenn launch in person due to a conflict with PodFest, but all in all, it is a week of too many good options, and some pretty awesome commitments, and you get a pretty bad background as a result. I should be home for our next episode, and I look forward to coming to you from my normal camera and microphone.
Our entire team would like to send a giant congratulations to the folks at blue origin from what they accomplished with their launch of new glenn. They made orbit on their first go, and while their first stage didn’t land politely on the barge it did make it down to the ocean and one piece. These are all magnificent accomplishments. With both SpaceX and Blue Origin contracted to create human-carrying lunar landers, I think the space race is now on between these two commercial companies, and I wouldn’t be surprised if we actually saw a change in the order in which we landed with each lander.
In less awesome news, we continue to watch the fires in Los Angeles wreck havoc on so many of our colleagues and our audience members. We’re going to share out on our website and through our newsletter information on how you can contribute to the various support funds that are being put together by the good folks at Caltech and associated organizations.
It’s the kind of week where we feel the need to put joy into the world, and we’ve made the decision to just find stories to bring a smile and share them with you. And also rockets, we’re bringing you all the rocket news.
This joy-filled episode will inevitably be balanced out by future episodes on climate change, but for today, for the next 30 minutes or so, I hope to put a smile or three on your face. We have images from orbit taken by amateur astronomer Don Pettit, efforts to protect science sites for history, and a whole bunch of other things that just made us grin.