S8 Ep716: 11. Commercial Space and Starship Delays Guest: Bob Zimmerman. Bob Zimmerman analyzes technical reasons behind SpaceX's Starship delays and the Orion capsule's return from the moon. He highlights the transition to private spaceflight as NASA's expensive S
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 9 April 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
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Summary
11. Commercial Space and Starship Delays Guest: Bob Zimmerman. Bob Zimmerman analyzes technical reasons behind SpaceX's Starship delays and the Orion capsule's return from the moon. He highlights the transition to private spaceflight as NASA's expensive SLS program faces funding limits. (11)
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Transcript
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| 0:29.9 | Today. I'm John Batchel. Behind the black, Bob Zimmerman is here. We've got big space coming back from circumnavigating. |
| 0:54.4 | No, circumcum, circum, circum, I don't know what that word is, Bob. |
| 0:58.5 | Circumnavigating, you were right, John. |
| 1:00.4 | Okay, circum, I didn't want to say it was in orbit. |
| 1:03.0 | It went around the moon. |
| 1:04.3 | It's coming back. |
| 1:05.8 | The Orion capsule, four astronauts, first time leaving low earth orbit with a manned capsule since |
| 1:14.4 | 1972 what is significance here bob i personally don't think there's much significance and |
| 1:20.4 | you've heard me say this on your show many many many times but the Orion capsule on |
| 1:25.2 | the Artemis 2 mission with his four astronauts is now circled around behind the moon and it's coasting on its way back to Earth. |
| 1:31.8 | Last night they completed a small mid-course correction. |
| 1:35.1 | This was their second small mid-course correction just to make sure they're heading for the right exact spot and the right flight path as they will return back to Earth. |
| 1:43.1 | What people have to understand is |
| 1:44.9 | that it's always been in orbit around the Earth in a sense. They fired their de-orbit burn |
| 1:51.0 | when they left Earth orbit, because the design of that de-orbit burn was to take them out around the |
| 1:56.7 | moon and back to Earth. And basically, this entire mission has been a very passive one. They've |
| 2:03.0 | basically been on a coast. The astronauts haven't really had that much real space work to do. |
... |
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