Fight & Flight: A Look At Blue Origin’s Fight For A Lander Contract & SLS’s New Flight Software

August 17, 2021 28:12 13.54 MB Downloads: 0

Fight and flight — the battle over NASA’s lunar lander and new software for the agency’s moon rocket.

Blue Origin, the aerospace company founded by Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, is suing NASA over its selection of rival company SpaceX to design and develop the agency’s next moon lander.It’s the latest in Blue’s protest efforts over the April decision by NASA to contract SpaceX to build a spacecraft to take humans to the lunar surface.

We’ll talk with Anthony Colangelo, a commercial space analyst and host of the podcast Main Engine Cutoff, about the protest — and what’s ahead for NASA’s Human Landing System. We’ll also chat about the burgeoning space tourism market and the latest delay of Boeing’s Starliner spacecraft.

Then, as the fight over NASA’s lunar lander rolls on, software that will launch the agency’s next moon rocket is getting installed. We’ll talk with NASA’s Anton Kiriwas about the software that will fly SLS to the moon and back.