June 5, 2026 Zimmerman/Batchelor podcast
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, go here.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Robert,
Your report on the retraction of NASA’s “Core Module” proposal demonstrates that NASA truly is becoming less important and less influential on space activities. Commercial space is finding its own customers and its own investors. Not just the launch companies but the on-orbit operators, too.
It was two decades ago that Commercial space expanded from communications and an emerging observation industry to a wider variety of orbital industries. NASA started hiring commercial cargo resupply for the ISS, taking half a decade to get that service going. Half a decade later, investors started seeing that commercial space was a viable option, that NASA and Congress were not going to hamper commercial space operators. Anymore. For the past decade, commercial space companies have been exploring options and developing ideas for making money in space so that today we have a variety of companies now doing business in space.
It isn’t that the SpaceX IPO will suck the investment funding from the space industry; it is a sign that the space industry is now of great interest to investors. Why is the IPO happening now rather than a decade ago? Because now an IPO can raise a tremendous amount of funds. Half a decade ago, SpaceX was raising hundreds of millions of dollars in funding at a time, but now there is enough interest to raise far, far more. It shows us that the estimates for the growth of the space economy may have been conservative rather than optimistic.
It seems to me that the New Glenn explosion, spectacular that it was, was an extremely expensive way to make a couple of cool videos. I propose that this is the most expensive rocket explosion in history.
It isn’t just the cost of the rocket and the cost to rebuild the launch pad. It is also the lost revenue to Blue Origin from the New Glenn launches that won’t happen. It is the lost — or maybe only delayed — opportunities for Blue Origin to develop its various space products.
Perhaps most costly of all is the lost opportunities for other companies that had depended upon New Glenn for their own revenue services. It may even cost SpaceX, when some of those payloads transfer to SpaceX for launches — launches that would have been used for SpaceX’s own business plans and thus delay SpaceX’s own revenue operations for a few $60 million launches.
We have seen that SpaceX’s launch services are small potatoes when it comes to the company’s various revenue products. Delaying the launch of the hardware that produces that revenue delays the income. People may think that SpaceX will benefit greatly from the increased launch business, but I suspect that the overall effect will cost SpaceX more than it raises in extra Falcon revenue.*
SpaceX may be the U.S. space program, replacing NASA in importance, but all the other companies are beginning to become important, too.
A couple of years ago I was disappointed in how this decade was shaping up. The loss of Bigelow and Starliner seemed to be a blow to commercial space and the activities I had expected us to see in space. The second half of this decade is giving us several more space products and activities than I had imagined a couple of years ago. This is turning into an exciting decade after all.
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* Or maybe I am wrong. 10,000 Starlink satellites bring in $12 billion per year, for an average of $1.2 million per year per satellite. Each launch puts up more than 20 or so satellites, so loss of each launch affects revenues of $24 million, or so, annually, which is less than the $60 million that they get from selling the launch to an outside company. SpaceX could grow slower than it would have done without the additional launches for the other companies left in the lurch by the explosion.
It’s compelling to consider the companies that were viable businesses in 2015 versus now–while there were certainly firms pursuing beamed energy, asteroid mining, habitats, etc., either they could not find the financing, or there simply wasn’t the flight rate available to support them. Transporter, Bandwagon, Electron, and upcoming vehicles like Nova are providing very low-cost launch opportunities that simply were not available otherwise.
I don’t know of any systems off the top of my head that will be permanently lost thanks to the explosion, but there’s quite a bit that’s delayed. Mr. Zimmerman reported AST’s troubles himself here.
So far as delaying SpaceX’s revenue, I am unsure–with SpaceX launching far more flights for their internal needs than they do for outside customers, they’re not leaving money on the table. Also, regarding your note at the bottom, recent Starlink launches put up either 24 or 29 satellites per launch, so using your $1.2 million/satellite figure. that’s about $33 million in revenue per year per launch. But as the majority of those are launches they wouldn’t have otherwise, and they help drive down per-launch operations costs, and give SpaceX valuable experience, I think they’re worth the price tag.
I think a lot of it is the profusion of ex-SpaceX (and some ex-Blue/ex-Rocket Lab et al) employees fanning out across the economy and starting their own companies. They know what it’s like to work for a company that’s driven and doesn’t carry much dead weight, and they are mimicking that rather than the traditional primes or NASA. The next generation of businesses they enable should be better still.
The next generation of businesses they enable should be better still.
Come to think of it, it may be the driven ex-employees, fanning out and starting their own companies, that is making this decade more exciting than I had thought. They were trained by excellence and now they get to train additional excellence. It is sad that the talent leaves the successful companies, but when they start their own successful companies, then that makes up for it.
I see space industries as being similar to both the expansion of the American frontier and the spread of railroads. The railroads did a great deal to enable productivity during that expansion, just as the launch companies and tug companies are enabling the rest of the space industry. The American frontier sent many goods back to the eastern states and then to the rest of the world, and the rest of the space industry is just now beginning to produce goods and services to enhance lifestyles and livelihoods around the world.