Phil McAlister, Director of Commercial Spaceflight at NASA, joins me to talk about the history of and lessons learned from the Commercial Cargo and Crew programs, what things went well and not so well in those programs, the difficulty of changing NASA’s approach to human spaceflight, how to deal with varying levels of Congressional funding and buy-in, and how all of that feeds into the new Commercial LEO Destinations program.

This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 39 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, and seven anonymous—and 716 other supporters.

Topics

Philip McAlister, HEO Director of Commercial Spaceflight Division | NASA
NASA Releases COTS Final Report | NASA
International Space Station Commercial Resupply Launch | NASA
Commercial Crew Program | NASA
Low-Earth Orbit Economy | NASA
NASA Selects Companies to Develop Commercial Destinations in Space | NASA
NASA Developing a Plan to Fly Personnel on Suborbital Spacecraft | NASA
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Music by Max Justus
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T+205: Phil McAlister, Director of Commercial Spaceflight at NASA

Main Engine Cut Off

T+205: Phil McAlister, Director of Commercial Spaceflight at NASA