T+336: Rocket Lab Buys Iridium, New Glenn’s Pad Rebuild, and NASA Awards 4 CLPS Missions
Main Engine Cut Off

T+336: Rocket Lab Buys Iridium, New Glenn’s Pad Rebuild, and NASA Awards 4 CLPS Missions

B2Upper-intermediateJuly 2, 202624 min

Rocket Lab is buying Iridium for $8 billion, Blue Origin has a new plan to get New Glenn flying again without rebuilding the same pad architecture, and NASA just awarded four new CLPS missions. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 32 executive producers—Warren, Matt from Built, Theo and Violet, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Natasha Tsakos, Lee, Donald, David, Matt, Joonas, Russell, Steve, Frank, Will and Lars from Agile, The Astrogators at SEE, Josh from Impulse, Fred, Joel, Kris, Pat, Joakim, Miles O’Brien, Stealth Julian, Jan, Ryan, and four anonymous—and hundre...

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on lately that I have some quick thoughts on. Rocket Lab, big announcement, buying Iridium

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Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I am Anthony Colangelo. Three stories going on lately that I have some quick thoughts on. Rocket Lab, big announcement, buying Iridium Communications for about $8 billion. Blue Origin released some more information about their pad rebuild going on after the New Glenn incident back in May. And just this week, NASA

0:34

announced four new CLIPS missions. I feel like there's at least one interesting thing to unpack there about how they're handling these new awards. So some quick thoughts on each. Let's definitely start, though, with Rocket Lab. This is huge news. This is something that I didn't quite expect, but I feel like I should have when you're looking at what Rocket Lab's been doing lately,

0:55

what they've been talking about, what Iridium's been up to. And Rocket Lab is at a very interesting point in their history. You know, if they were going, a lot of times people are like, is Amazon going to sweep up Rocket Lab? Is Blue Origin going to sweep up Rocket Lab? I think if Rocket Lab was going to sell, they would have a couple of years ago to something that was probably

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