<description>&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— We won’t be restocking T-shirts, but feel free to find a print company you like and use our logos to make your own! Please do not use our logos for any other purpose without permission. (&lt;a href="https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/133g2vDB6hvHk9ptNtissB-uqwesUwpYA"&gt;drive.google.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— Posters have been added to the store (&lt;a href="https://theorbitalmechanics.com/store"&gt;theorbitalmechanics.com/store&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— There’s still a great space community on our Discord (&lt;a href="https://theorbitalmechanics.com/discord"&gt;theorbitalmechanics.com/discord&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;</description>

A goodbye to the weekly show.

Episode 511: LOS

<description>&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;Well, after last week's short episode, I suspect that a lot of you anticipated &lt;em&gt;this&lt;/em&gt; short episode would be coming out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;I'm going to use some language that David, Dennis, and I have agreed represents our intentions. Please don't, like, take this too far, but we have decided to sunset the main show.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;Here's what we're going to do. Next week, on &lt;strong&gt;Sunday, July 6th&lt;/strong&gt;, we're going to get together and we're going to record an episode. We would like to invite anybody who's interested in listening into one of our live recordings to come join us.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;We're not sure what we're going to do. We thought about calling this our last episode, but that doesn't feel quite right. I think the three of us have some ideas about what we want the future of this show to look like, even if it's not recording an episode every week. We'll also be able to tell you a bit more about what happened last week.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;We would love if you have thought about joining a recording session and haven't, or if you used to and you still kind of want to but you haven't had a good motivation, here's your motivation. Come party with us. (Hopefully it'll be a party.)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;But yeah, so that's the news for this week. Next week we expect to put out, you know, a full like hour-long episode like usual, and then we'll... it's not going to look like our normal episodes. It'll be pretty talky. I mean, our episodes are always talky. Even this short episode is pretty talky. But we're, you know, we'll probably talk about the news a little bit, but it's mainly going to be, I don't know, almost like a brainstorming session, maybe. We'll find out.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;You're invited and I would love to see, like me personally, I would love to see you. There are a bunch of names scrolling through my head right now. I would love to see everybody on that list. And I'm sure there are plenty of names that I don't know yet. And you know, that's one of the things that I'm most afraid of losing if we're not doing weekly episodes is all the new people I'm not going to get to meet.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;Come on by next week, &lt;strong&gt;July, Sunday, the 6th. We record at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 p.m. Eastern.&lt;/strong&gt; If you aren't already in our discord, you can go to &lt;a href="https://theorbitalmechanics.com/discord"&gt;theorbitalmechanics.com/discord&lt;/a&gt;, and that'll just redirect you to an invite. Yeah, you got to have a discord account. I'm sorry. But come come join us and say hi.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;All right, talk to you guys next week. Bye.&lt;/p&gt;</description>

We have decided to sunset the “main show.” We’re going to record next week, July, Sunday, the 6th. We thought about calling this our final episode, but that doesn’t feel quite right. We record at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 p.m. Eastern.

We have decided to sunset the “main show.” We’re going to record next week, July, Sunday, the 6th. We thought about calling this our final episode, but that doesn’t feel quite right. We record at 9 a.m. Pacific, 12 p.m. Eastern. If you aren't already in our discord, you can go to theorbitalmechanics.com/discord, and that'll just redirect you to an invite.

Episode 510.2: Abort Abort Abort

<description>&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;Weird, short episode here, but it still feels weird to not start the show by saying “and I’m Ben.”&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;So, we’ve had a personal emergency here on the crew. All three of us are fine, and we will let you know more about what’s happened, but for right now, this week’s episode is delayed. Hopefully it’ll be coming out later this week, but I don’t know. It may take a little while for things to get back to normal, but hopefully not too long. We just need a little bit of time to cope, and then we can figure out what our plans are.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p class="" data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;Thank you guys for listening, and you know, I miss y’all.&lt;/p&gt;</description>

Weird, short episode here, but it still feels weird to not start the show by saying “and I’m Ben.”  So, we’ve had a personal emergency here on the crew. All three of us are fine, and we will let you know more about what’s happened, but for right now, this week’s episode is delayed. Hopefully it’ll b

Weird, short episode here, but it still feels weird to not start the show by saying “and I’m Ben.”

So, we’ve had a personal emergency here on the crew. All three of us are fine, and we will let you know more about what’s happened, but for right now, this week’s episode is delayed. Hopefully it’ll be coming out later this week, but I don’t know. It may take a little while for things to get back to normal, but hopefully not too long. We just need a little bit of time to cope, and then we can figure out what our plans are.

Thank you guys for listening, and you know, I miss y’all.

Episode 510.1: Hold hold hold

<description>&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spaceflight News&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— Starship Block 2: 0 for 3 (&lt;a href="https://spacenews.com/starship-breaks-up-on-reentry-after-loss-of-attitude-control/"&gt;spacenews.com&lt;/a&gt;) (&lt;a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqQM1AfpSZI&amp;amp;ab_channel=ScottManley"&gt;youtube.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— Block 3 Update (&lt;a href="https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/05/future-starship-block-3-mars/"&gt;nasaspaceflight.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short &amp;amp; Sweet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— Xodiac flies final time (&lt;a href="https://arstechnica.com/space/2025/05/rocket-report-northrop-backs-firefly-and-names-its-rocket-xodiac-will-fly-no-more/"&gt;arstechnica.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— China successfully tests vertical-takeoff vertical-landing rocket (&lt;a href="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2025-05-29/Chinese-commercial-rocket-completes-vertical-sea-recovery-test-1DMefpHW0qQ/p.html"&gt;cgtn.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This Week in Spaceflight History&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;ii May 24, 1962: Fourth flight of Project Mercury (&lt;a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury-Atlas_7"&gt;en.wikipedia.org&lt;/a&gt;) (&lt;a href="https://www.nasa.gov/mission/mercury-atlas-7-aurora-7/"&gt;nasa.gov&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— Next week (6/10 - 6/16) in 1973: &lt;em&gt;Dos equis&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>

Recap on Starship’s ninth flight and the vehicle’s future. Also, the end of Xodiac and a test of another Chinese reusable booster.

Episode 510: Leakspin

<description>&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Spaceflight News&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— Neutron update (&lt;a href="https://spacenews.com/rocket-labs-neutron-tapped-for-u-s-military-cargo-test/"&gt;spacenews.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;Short &amp;amp; Sweet&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— China announces mission to Venus (&lt;a href="https://spectrum.ieee.org/china-venus-mission"&gt;ieee.org&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;Tianhe to be expanded (&lt;a href="https://spacenews.com/china-to-launch-new-modules-to-tiangong-space-station/"&gt;spacenews.com&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;&lt;strong&gt;This Week in Spaceflight History&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— 14 May, 1973. Launch of Skylab (&lt;a href="https://historicspacecraft.com/skylab.html"&gt;historicspacecraft.com&lt;/a&gt;) (PDF: &lt;a href="https://sma.nasa.gov/SignificantIncidents/assets/living-and-working-in-space.pdf"&gt;nasa.gov&lt;/a&gt;)&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p data-rte-preserve-empty="true" style="white-space:pre-wrap;"&gt;— Next week (5/20 - 5/26) in 1962: &lt;em&gt;Kickin’ up fireflies.&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/p&gt;</description>

Update on Rocket Lab’s Neutron. Also, China announced Venus sample return mission and an expansion to Tiangong.

Episode 509: Hungry Hopping Hippos

Every week we cover the latest spaceflight news, discuss past, current and future exploration efforts, and take a look at upcoming events. Tune in to hear about how humans get to space, how they stay in space and how unmanned craft reach farther and farther into the universe around us.

Every week we cover the latest spaceflight news, discuss past, current and future exploration efforts, and take a look at upcoming events. Tune in to hear about how humans get to space, how they stay in space and how unmanned craft reach farther and farth

The Orbital Mechanics Podcast

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