Roid Rage

Jack is joined by Matt and Robyn to break down the Artemis 2 wet dress rehearsal*, why Starliner is what happens when you build a jobs program instead of a spacecraft, and a full rundown of Deep Space 2's recent testing gauntlet.

Matt, Chap, and Jack discuss Artemis II's second wet dress rehearsal, the volatility of metals markets, and Jack's car getting stolen.

Jack is joined by Demyan (Senior Mission Ops Engineer) and Armand (Head of GNC, Flight Software) to talk about how AstroForge plans deep space missions.We talk about why the traditional approach of "throw more humans at it" doesn't scale when you're trying to mine asteroids.

Jack sits down with Chap (Chief of Mining) and Matt to unveil AstroForge's new laser testing facility, though Matt has strong opinions about the beige walls. Between debates over whether the podcast should even continue, Jay and Silent Bob references, and explicit instructions to NOT like and subscribe, the team breaks down why bringing laser capabilities in-house accelerates iteration, protects IP, and proves asteroid mining can hit industrial scale in under 15 years.

Jack sits down with Wes and Orli from the Structures team to break down composite materials and solar array deployment. We jump into carbon fiber facesheets, aluminum honeycomb cores, why Kapton is everywhere, and how plasma from electric propulsion can arc to imperfections in conductive layers.