Off-Nominal

Jake and Anthony are joined by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, to talk about Starship SN8’s epic flight test, Tim’s trip to Boca Chica, and to unveil the 2020 Off-Nominees and crown the winner.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Eric Berger of Ars Technica to talk about the space policy fallout of the 2020 US election, Eric’s upcoming book, and Jake’s bad decisions.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Caleb Henry, formerly of SpaceNews and now of Quilty Analytics. We talk about SpaceX’s new satellite contract, OneWeb’s new lease on life, Caleb’s new gig at Quilty, and what it’s like transitioning away from capital-J journalism.

With Anthony off on parental leave, Jake is joined by guest host Emilee Speck and guests Anna and Henna from But It Is Rocket Science to talk about making space podcasts and Life on Venus?!

Jake and Anthony are joined by Loren Grush to catch up on a wild few weeks—from VR tours of spaceships, the Doug Loverro situation, Mars mayhem, Starship hops, and of course, the DM-2 boating fiasco.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Lord British himself, Richard Garriott de Cayeux. Richard is a storied video game designer/developer, an entrepreneur, an astronaut who flew to the ISS for a week, and an adventurer with so many tales it’s hard to keep up. Richard is also the son of Owen Garriott, a NASA astronaut who flew on Skylab II and STS-9. Richard joins us to talk about growing up as the son of an astronaut, to tell tales of spaceflight and undersea adventures, to ruminate on the commercial spaceflight industry, and to blow our minds with stories of dodgy Russian safety protocols. Also, our fundraiser is over and we’ve made a significant impact on two organizations working hard to bring racial equity to STEM and space. We raised nearly $35,000!

Jake and Anthony are joined by John Johnson. John is an expert on exoplanet research at Harvard University, having done work for NASA on Kepler but also as Principal Investigator for the MINERVA project. He also founded the Banneker Institute at Harvard, an organization dedicated to helping people of color enter astronomy and the subject of our current fundraiser.

NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine joins Jake and Anthony for the first episode of Off-Nominal Origins. We talk about how he got interested in space and aviation, his time at Rice University, his years as a Navy pilot, his continuing fascination with the Rocket Racing League, and a whole lot more. And yes, obviously, we talk about the time Jake and Anthony started a weird little sideshow at IAC 2019 with The Jim Bridenstine Fan Club.

Jake and Anthony stop by with a quick update on our donation campaign to help two wonderful organizations, Black Girls Code and the Banneker Institute. The response has been incredible so far, so let’s keep it up!

Here at Off-Nominal, we've been following the demonstrations against racial inequality and police violence in the United States, Canada, and around the world with concern. These events have highlighted deep problems with how we treat each other in many domains, and space exploration is not exempt. While we have been processing this in real-time, it has become obvious that we must do our part and use our platform to speak up against these inequalities and take action to stop them. We have been engaging with our Discord community this past week to come up with a plan.