Off-Nominal

Jake and Anthony figure out if we should panic about Starship, or just Starship Block 2, or not.

Anthony is in his new studio! He and Jake catch up on his recent trip to Marotta Controls, Anthony shares the good news about valves, and they try to figure out what the hell is going on with VIPER.

Jake and Anthony talk about Firefly’s latest spectacular Alpha failure, and the skinny budget request.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Dante Lauretta, Principal Investigator of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, and Professor of Planetary Science at the University of Arizona, to talk about—take a guess!—returning and studying pristine samples from Bennu.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Roman Chiporukha, founder of SpaceVIP, a travel agency for space.

Jake and Anthony talk about Jared Isaacman’s confirmation hearing, and the apocalyptic NASA science budget.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Chris Carberry and Sam Burbank to talk about their first documentary film, Alcohol in Space - The Movie, their upcoming projects, and the 2025 Humans to the Moon & Mars Summit.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Richard French, Vice President, Business Development and Strategy, Space Systems at Rocket Lab, to talk about their Mars Sample Return architecture, the way they’ve been putting the word out on it, and to hear what’s been up with their space systems side of the business lately.

Jake and Anthony are joined by writer and podcaster Jason Snell, to talk about Jared Isaacman’s nomination to lead NASA, what’s been up in the NASA CFO scene, what astronauts really want to be doing, and so much more. Also, this episode completes the Lifoff-Nominal crossover spectacular, AND makes 10 year old Anthony very happy that he’s podcasting with Jason friggin’ Snell.

Jake and Anthony are joined by Awais Ahmed, Founder and CEO of Pixxel, to talk about building a constellation of hyperspectral imaging satellites. Honestly, we mostly try to help Jake get his head around the electromagnetic spectrum.