The Orbital Mechanics Podcast

— We won’t be restocking T-shirts, but feel free to find a print company you like and use our logos to make your own! Please do not use our logos for any other purpose without permission. (drive.google.com)

— Posters have been added to the store (theorbitalmechanics.com/store)

— There’s still a great space community on our Discord (theorbitalmechanics.com/discord)

Well, after last week's short episode, I suspect that a lot of you anticipated this short episode would be coming out.

I'm going to use some language that David, Dennis, and I have agreed represents our intentions. Please don't, like, take this too far, but we have decided to sunset the main show.

Here's what we're going to do. Next week, on Sunday, July 6th, we're going to get together and we're going to record an episode. We would like to invite anybody who's interested in listening into one of our live recordings to come join us.

We're not sure what we're going to do. We thought about calling this our last episode, but that doesn't feel quite right. I think the three of us have some ideas about what we want the future of this show to look like, even if it's not recording an episode every week. We'll also be able to tell you a bit more about what happened last week.

We would love if you have thought about joining a recording session and haven't, or if you used to and you still kind of want to but you haven't had a good motivation, here's your motivation. Come party with us. (Hopefully it'll be a party.)

But yeah, so that's the news for this week. Next week we expect to put out, you know, a full like hour-long episode like usual, and then we'll... it's not going to look like our normal episodes. It'll be pretty talky. I mean, our episodes are always talky. Even this short episode is pretty talky. But we're, you know, we'll probably talk about the news a little bit, but it's mainly going to be, I don't know, almost like a brainstorming session, maybe. We'll find out.

You're invited and I would love to see, like me personally, I would love to see you. There are a bunch of names scrolling through my head right now. I would love to see everybody on that list. And I'm sure there are plenty of names that I don't know yet. And you know, that's one of the things that I'm most afraid of losing if we're not doing weekly episodes is all the new people I'm not going to get to meet.

Come on by next week, July, Sunday, the 6th. We record at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 p.m. Eastern. If you aren't already in our discord, you can go to theorbitalmechanics.com/discord, and that'll just redirect you to an invite. Yeah, you got to have a discord account. I'm sorry. But come come join us and say hi.

All right, talk to you guys next week. Bye.

Weird, short episode here, but it still feels weird to not start the show by saying “and I’m Ben.”

So, we’ve had a personal emergency here on the crew. All three of us are fine, and we will let you know more about what’s happened, but for right now, this week’s episode is delayed. Hopefully it’ll be coming out later this week, but I don’t know. It may take a little while for things to get back to normal, but hopefully not too long. We just need a little bit of time to cope, and then we can figure out what our plans are.

Thank you guys for listening, and you know, I miss y’all.

Spaceflight News

— Starship Block 2: 0 for 3 (spacenews.com) (youtube.com)

— Block 3 Update (nasaspaceflight.com)

Short & Sweet

— Xodiac flies final time (arstechnica.com)

— China successfully tests vertical-takeoff vertical-landing rocket (cgtn.com)

This Week in Spaceflight History

ii May 24, 1962: Fourth flight of Project Mercury (en.wikipedia.org) (nasa.gov)

— Next week (6/10 - 6/16) in 1973: Dos equis

Spaceflight News

— Neutron update (spacenews.com)

Short & Sweet

— China announces mission to Venus (ieee.org)

Tianhe to be expanded (spacenews.com)

This Week in Spaceflight History

— 14 May, 1973. Launch of Skylab (historicspacecraft.com) (PDF: nasa.gov)

— Next week (5/20 - 5/26) in 1962: Kickin’ up fireflies.

Spaceflight News

— Firefly Nozzle Anomaly (spacenews.com) (youtube.com)

Short & Sweet

— Efforts continue to rescue Lunar Trailblazer (spacenews.com)

— ISS avoids space debris (space.com)

Questions, Comments, Corrections

— From the intro: Kosmos 482’s parachutes dangling out? (space.com)

This Week in Spaceflight History

— May 10, 1994: Last contact with the Clementine Spacecraft (en.wikipedia.org) (researchgate.net) (nap.nationalacademies.org) (klabs.org)

— Next week (5/13 - 5/19) in 1973: It’s the final countdown

Spaceflight News

— Sierra Space impact test (asdnews.com)

— Atmos reentry test of PHOENIX-1 (spacenews.com) (europeanspaceflight.com)

Short & Sweet

— Kosmos 482’s deorbit update (sattrackcam.blogspot.com)

Questions, Comments, Corrections

— Blue Origin tank failure? (HT ArcadeEngineer: fixupx.com/kerballistic07)

This Week in Spaceflight History

— 1 May, 1979: Enterprise rolled out to 39A (nasa.gov)

— Next week (5/6 - 5/12) in 1994: Lost and gone forever, in orbit

Spaceflight News

— The Riskiest Period of ISS’ Existence (spacenews.com)

— Enginefest

— Latitude (europeanspaceflight.com)

— Pangea Aerospace (europeanspaceflight.com)

— Venus Aerospace (prnewswire.com)

Short & Sweet

— Building destroyed in explosion at Northrop Grumman test site (space.com)

— Seat barter agreement extended through 2027 (spacenews.com)

Questions, Comments, Corrections

— Unc’ Willy: “First flight” is a better term (discord.com)

This Week in Spaceflight History

— April 24, 1970: Launch of Dong Fang Hong (astronautix.com) (en.wikipedia.org)

— Next week (4/29 - 5/5) in 1979: Heading out for a three-month stay

Spaceflight News

— Confirming Isaacman (spacenews.com) (law.cornell.edu) (aerospaceamerica.aiaa.org)

— One of the Lunar Terrain Vehicles unveiled (lunaroutpost.com)

Short & Sweet

— New addition to DSN (space.com)

— DOD hires Astroscale (satellitetoday.com)

Questions, Comments, Corrections

— From the intro: Jonathan McDowell retiring (archive.ph)

This Week in Spaceflight History

— 18 Apr, 2001. Maiden flight of GSLV Mk. I (a.k.a GSLV-D1) (isro.gov.in) (astronautix.com) (PDF: sci-hub.se)  (planet4589.org)

— Next week (4/22 - 4/28) in 1970: Is the national anthem really 20 days long?

Spaceflight News

— Two more PAMs (spacenews.com) (sam.gov)

Short & Sweet

— Fram2 launches and lands (arstechnica.com) (space.com)

— SpinLaunch turns to broadband (spacenews.com)

Questions, Comments, Corrections

— From the intro: Starliner shakeup (spaceflightnow.com)

— From Espen Urkedal: FTS vs VTS

This Week in Spaceflight History

— April 10, 1979: Launch (and early return) of Soyuz 33 (en.wikipedia.org) (blazingbulgaria.wordpress)

— Next week (4/15 - 4/21) in 2001: Stumbling 58 minutes short of the finish orbit