Basic Research

Brent Sherwood, Senior Vice President of Advanced Development Programs for Blue Origin, joins me to talk about Orbital Reef. We talk about the long history leading up to this architecture, the nature of their partnership with Sierra Space and other team members, the parts of the program that are specific to their contract with NASA on the Commercial LEO Destinations project, and dive into how their business strategy might play out in the near future.

This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 40 executive producers—Simon, Lauren, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Matt, The Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, Hemant, Dawn Aerospace, Andrew, and seven anonymous—and 788 other supporters.

Topics

• Blue Origin
• Orbital Reef
• Announcing Orbital Reef - Your Address in Orbit - YouTube
• Mixed-Use Business Park Developments in Space: A Real-Estate Paradigm
• T+200: Orbital Reef, Starlab, and the ISS Conundrum - Main Engine Cut Off
• T+203: Starlab with Marshall Smith, SVP of Space Systems at Nanoracks - Main Engine Cut Off
• Blue Origin and Sierra Space Leading Team to Build “Orbital Reef” Business Park in Space – SpacePolicyOnline.com
• Sierra Space to work with Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on commercial space station technologies - SpaceNews
• NASA Selects Companies to Develop Commercial Destinations in Space | NASA
• Orbital Reef passes design review - SpaceNews

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• Music by Max Justus
• Artwork photo by NASA/Ben Smegelsky