Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
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On today’s podcast of Pratt on Texas, Robert Pratt played three segments with me that we recorded yesterday discussing both commercial space and blacklisting. Some good stuff. If you want to listen the podcast can be found here. My segments are in the 2, 3, and 4 parts of the show.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
You can now listen to the podcast of my appearance last night, January 18, 2022, on the Space Show at this link.
Both David Livingston and I thought this was one of my more interesting appearances, as the calls and conversation was lively and very positively interactive. The discussion about the government and its effort to block SpaceX’s Starship was especially good.
Just a reminder that I will be doing a long appearance on The Space Show tonight with David Livingston, beginning at 7 pm (Pacific).
As usual I beg my readers to call in. The show is always more interesting when people call.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Last week I recorded a long interview with Robert Pratt of Pratt on Texas discussing some of the recent blacklist and pushback stories I have posted on Behind the Black. That interview is now available in two parts here.
The most interesting part of the interview for me was when Robert and I discussed the mental strain and stress we both felt writing or discussing these stories every day. Both of us are optimists, and these stories of oppression are depressing, to put it mildly. After awhile you just want to ignore them and deal with something more uplifting.
We don’t however, because we both know that if we ignore this stuff it will only make it more difficult in the coming years to find anything uplifting to write or talk about. Freedom and human creativity is under aggressive attack, and as civilized human beings it is our obligation to report that story, so that all civilized humans will have the knowledge to successful fight back.
Give it a listen and comment below. We face a real civil war in the coming years, and the thoughts of my readers would be appreciated.
And if you are in Texas and can support Robert Pratt’s advertisers, please due so. He was blacklisted himself in January, and this podcast is his way of fighting back.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Robert Pratt has now made available a 20 minute podcast I did with him this week. You can listen or download it here. From the podcast announcement:
New Texan Elon Musk has the ear of many of the younger techies and he is giving them good lessons on government policy. Also, Robert Zimmerman of BehindtheBlack.com joins us for a space industry updated including comment on the James Webb Telescope set for launch on Friday; Blue Origin’s orbital engine delays, and; much on Elon Musk’s SpaceX including developments at the firm’s Texas launch facility in Cameron County.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
You can now listen to the podcast of my appearance last night, December 7, 2021, on the Space Show at this link.
As always it was a fun show. Thank you to my readers here at Behind the Black for your email questions. I just wish we had had more callers, as the conversation is usually more vibrant than simply answering questions from email.
Just a note to remind people that I will be on The Space Show tonight with David Livingston, beginning at 7 pm (Pacific). And if you have any questions please consider calling in. I don’t bite, though I sometimes growl. ;)
UPDATE: Podcast is now fixed!
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
I recently did a 25 minute podcast with Rhode Island radio host Bill Bartholomew which is now available here.
This was my second interview with Bill, with the focus of the conversation a review of the past year in space.
Embedded below the fold in two parts.
To listen to all of John Batchelor’s podcasts, well worth your time, go here.
» Read more
It appears that after more than a year of delays, the NASA bureaucracy might finally approve launches at Rocket Lab’s new spaceport at Wallops Island, Virginia by the end of the year.
The article at the link is mostly about Rocket Lab’s planned acquisition of another company that builds satellite deployment systems. However, its real story was in the last paragraph:
[T]he company is still waiting for NASA to complete certification of an autonomous flight termination system the company needs to launch from Wallops Island, Virginia. Delays in NASA’s certification of that system has, in turn, delayed the use of Launch Complex 2 there for Electron missions. “The current expectation is that it could be done as early as the end of the year,” [Adam Spice, Rocket Lab’s chief financial officer] said of that certification, “which would allow us to commence flight operations out of LC-2 and Wallops in the first half of 2022.”
The company got FAA approval for launches more than a year ago, and had hoped to launch shortly thereafter. NASA however has blocked that launch, refusing for more than a year to approve the flight termination system Rocket Lab uses to destroy rockets should something go wrong just after launch.
The delay is baffling. Rocket Lab has successfully proven that its system works in that it has used it several times to safely abort launches in New Zealand. This success apparently has not been good enough for NASA’s bureaucrats, and the result is that Rocket Lab’s ability to launch rockets has been seriously hampered in ’21.
