Main Engine Cut Off - T+180: Christian Davenport, The Washington Post, on the SLS Green Run, Axiom Ax-1, Virgin Orbit

Episode Date: January 28, 2021

Christian Davenport, reporter at The Washington Post, joins me to talk about the aborted SLS Green Run hot fire, the space policy landscape as we enter a new administration, Axiom’s Ax-1 mission and its crew, and Virgin Orbit’s first successful launch to orbit.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 37 executive producers—Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Joonas, Robb, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Frank, Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Tommy, Matt, Space Exploration Engineering, and seven anonymous—and 473 other supporters.TopicsChristian Davenport (@wapodavenport) / TwitterChristian Davenport - The Washington PostThe Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos - Bookshop.orgThe Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos - AmazonOfficials had doubts about likely success of NASA SLS test, briefing notes show - The Washington PostTrump pushed NASA to land astronauts on the moon by 2024. It’s not going to happen. - The Washington PostMeet the private citizens who'll pay $55 million each to fly to the International Space Station - The Washington PostEpisode 32 - Well Within the Kill Zone | Off-NominalRichard Branson's Virgin Orbit rocket reaches space - The Washington PostThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOListen to MECO HeadlinesJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterBuy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off ShopMusic by Max Justus

Hello and welcome back to Main Engine Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo and we've got another special guest with us here on the show today. We've got Christian Davenport of the Washington Post, a great writer. He's also written a book called The Space Barons that I'm sure many of you have read. And if not, you should definitely check out. We're going to talk today about SLS screen run that happened and some of the space policy drama around that. Axiom announced their first crew to go to the ISS on that first private mission.

So that's big news to talk about. And then we're going to touch a little on Virgin Orbit and their first successful launch to orbit. They finally put the orbit in their name. So I'm excited to talk about. And then we're going to touch a little on Virgin Orbit and their first successful launch to Orbit. They finally put the Orbit in their name. So I'm excited to talk with him. He's been on the list for a while here, so I can't wait to have him on the show. But before we do that, I want to say a special thank you to everyone out there who supports Main Engine Cutoff over at mainenginecutoff.com support.

There are 510 of you supporting the show every single month. Thank you so much for making this possible. That includes 37 executive producers who produced this episode supporting the show every single month. Thank you so much for making this possible. And that includes 37 executive producers who produced this episode of the show. Thanks to Brandon, Matthew, Simon, Lauren, Melissa, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, Grant, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, the Everett Astronaut,

Frank, Julian, and Lars from Agile Space, Matt, Tommy, and Space Exploration Engineering, a brand new executive producer today, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support. Thanks for making this episode possible. And without further ado, let's give Christian a call. Christian Davenport, welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. Thanks for joining me here.

Yeah, thanks for having me. You've been on the list for a while, and it felt like this is a good list of topics to talk about with you. I'm excited. You've got some great stories on these things that we're going to talk about as well. So I'm interested to dive in and see where you're at on some of this stuff. Do you want to start with the SLS Green Run Hot Drama of the Week? It was a hot drama. Yeah, sure. I think that's a great... For multiple definitions of hot drama, it was definitely a hot drama. Uh, so man, where do we even begin with this one? Um, maybe we should just skip to the end of everything. Cause people by now have probably heard the story about what happened with the 67 second hot fire instead of eight minutes long. Um, your story I thought was

excellent. Uh, the, the second one, the follow-up story about nasa being prepared for this outcome and i think we all felt they were not prepared for this they were talking up you know kind of an overconfidence really before the test saying everything's gonna go great it's gonna be awesome whereas i think all of us watching were assuming there would be some issues uh at some point the test itself. What do you gather from that and some of the things that you've heard internally after the test? Yeah, I mean, you know, you have to manage expectations. And, you know, it's interesting. Like Elon, on the one hand, is criticized all the time at SpaceX for like, you know, these just crazy timelines and, you know, we're going to colonize mars and build a city on

mars we're going to do it by this time frame and then the time frame doesn't happen yet when it comes to actual tests i think elon's really good at like managing expectations and i'll never forget before the falcon heavy test he was like man i just hope the thing doesn't blow up and there's going to be like a tire going down the road and you know like there's gonna be a 50 chance of success and nasa by contrast was like exuding confidence in this test and you know in some respects it's like they had no choice because of you know it's 10 years in development and billions of dollars it's like this didn't go right um but but the interesting thing in the story what i was reporting is there was actually in the in in industry groups you know they had had a briefing and they were you know talking about

like leading up to it there was a lot of concern about just sort of the messaging and the pr and the setting expectations and that you know they had wished there was a little bit, that they had framed it in a way that said, this is a test, the point of a test is to learn, things might go wrong. I mean, we want to get an eight-minute full duration. If not, we want four, but we're going to try this out. So, yeah, I mean, I think there was, inside these industry circles, among the engineers talking um that was sort of there's sort of a disconnect between you know the engineers working on the rocket working with the

engines versus sort of the uh the pr spin of it all yeah and that i think caused some problems it's almost it's not quite as bad as like a go fever kind of situation where you're putting an actual flight at risk but it it makes me wonder how related that is to what had been reported previously was like they were running low on schedule margin for making artemis one's launch date right now november um and they so they had already said publicly we really are out of time if we want to make this so it felt like they had to say everything's gonna go fine and we'll ship this thing to Kennedy because they haven't even laid the groundwork that this may be shifting into 2022. So it feels like if they were open more on the schedule side, which is more obvious to everyone out there that they could have been more honest about the test itself. It just feels like that's the relation there,

especially when you're talking about the breakdown between, you know, who's saying what engineers or, you know, Jim Bridenstine, for as much as everyone loves him, he's responsible for that at a certain point with the way that he was talking everything up. Yeah, and you have to think, you know, if there was any scheduled pressure, you know, under the Trump administration, and, you know, imposing that 2024 deadline, and, you know, just think back to the language that was used by, you know, Vice President Pence at the time saying, you know, we're going to do this by any means necessary. I mean, obviously that didn't come to pass. I think with the Democrats in office now and a change in administration and a change in leadership at NASA, you know, I think the

Democrats, and in fact, I know this from talking to, you know, people who close to the transition team, think that the 2024 timeline is, you know, there's no way they're going to make that. And maybe that will ease off some of the pressure. I mean, that said, you know, I, my sense is, though, that Cathy Leaders, John Honeycutt, the leadership at NASA, they're going to move deliberately and thoroughly. I see what you're saying about the schedule pressure, and I think there's maybe some of that in political pressure. maybe some of that and political pressure but you know given what we saw particularly with commercial crew and all the delays that they had there um you know all the stuff that went on with boeing i still very much get the sense that you know they're not going to do anything you know risky um you know that astronaut safety is you know first and is paramount over everything. Then again, Artemis I is an uncrewed mission.

But, yeah, I don't know. I mean, now that they're not going, I mean, it's clear that, you know, Artemis I isn't going to go this year. I think they would have to redo the hot fire test. You know, they had said at a minimum they need four minutes, and now they're getting 67 seconds. You know, you know, I know they say they got a lot of data out of it and they put the best

possible spin on it. Still seems to me that, you know, that the prudent course of action would be to do another test and let that thing run. I mean, of course the other thing is, you know, we think about these engines. Yeah. It's, you know, it's a new configuration. It's on the core stage of the SLS. They've never fired them up on the SLS, but the fact that these engines, yeah, it's, you know, it's a new configuration. It's on the core stage of the SLS. They've never fired them up on the SLS, but the fact that these engines, you know, go back to the shuttle era and have all of that heritage and that legacy,

you know, I think that also is feeling it. It's like, these are, we're familiar with these engines. We know that they've been on other missions before. So that's sort of yet another reason why it's like, you know, you maybe would have hoped this one would have went a little bit better. Yeah, certainly. Yeah. And I didn't even mean that they would not delay Artemis one more that it

was, they put themselves into a corner where they were already talking up. Like they don't even want to entertain the idea that we're going to delay Artemis one. So we can't even talk about the fact that if we have to scrub, there's going to be this four week waiting period, uh, which puts the whole thing into jeopardy. And then, yeah, the other side of it is the, about the fact that if we have to scrub there's going to be this four-week waiting period uh which

puts the whole thing into jeopardy and then yeah the other side of it is the the catch-22 of sls is it built on heritage or is it new stuff if it's new stuff we got to run all these tests if it's heritage then we don't have to as much it's hard to to kind of thread that needle uh communications wise is you know yeah these particular engines have some of the most lifespan of any engine that has ever flown to space and back and yet we're still we still have to run this full test because that's what we said we were going to do and that's the way that we're going to do it um it was instantly kind of a you know the fact that has happened during a presidential transition uh as insane as much insanity as there was around that, it led to all the space nerds saying, oh, this is going to factor big into the SLS plans.

And I always think that stuff is nonsense. Like this sort of thing can be used as fodder against programs if there's sufficient motivation to do so. And there's absolutely none from what I can see up here. You're much closer to the source. Is there any sense that some of the SLS doubters, whoever they may be, even noted that this test happened the way that it did? Well, I had some people texting me. So it was, it was noted. But I think you're right. I mean, it was noted to me by industry people, former government people, not, you know, current members of Congress

on the Appropriations Committee. And that's, you know, who matters. And at this point, no, I mean, I don't think they're going to come in and like, oh, the hot fire didn't go well. This is yet, you know, another black mark in our quest to kill kill it you know i think they're gonna there's no alternate they have to go with it it is closer you know and just remember i mean you know jim tried to sideline sls for artemis one he had been getting really frustrated and there was yet another delay and um i remember reporting the story at the time he kind kind of lost it on Boeing and was like, are you kidding me? Another delay? I mean, we've got to make 24 here.

And he floated that idea. If you remember, it was like that Senate hearing. And he said, you know, maybe we'll use another rocket if SLS isn't ready. And, you know, Senator Shelby and I think others, you know, were like, uh-uh, you're using SLS. And, you know, he had made the effort. And remember, Vice President Pence said during that same speech, if the contractors we have can't fulfill this mission, then we'll find ones who can. And that's coming from the Vice President of the United States.

And still, they couldn't get rid of it. So I don't think they're going to. I think at this point, it's always this way. Right. It's like it's closer than it's ever been. If they do do a hot fire test, then, yeah, they'll go through it. But and Jim was pretty clear about this. And, you know, if Starship comes online or New Glenn Vulcan, all these other rockets that have all that capability, and they're much more efficient and affordable, and they prove that they're reliable. And SLS is flying like once or twice a year, and it's costing a couple billion dollars a flight.

You know, then you look at it, and you're like, is this really sustainable in the long run? I don't know about that. Yeah, you got to almost like lap it sustainable? I don't know about that. point at which there's a human landing system down select that is supposed to happen in February, and they said they were still going to go through with that, even though the election flipped the administration. And then, you know, gateway is still coming together that that's getting closer to launch as we go. So how do those two things come together? What how do you think the human land system shakes out with this? Like who's in charge now to to make that down select the same people, but they don't really know what they're going to get from, you know, the administration itself on direction there. So how do they manage that? Well, no, that's that you're picking up on like a huge point.

It's something that people have been mentioning to me as well, that there's a lot of concern that there's going to be a pause in the program and that they're not going to proceed, right? So the phase one for the human landing system that, you know, ends in February next month or, you know, coming up and, you know, you would think they would pivot quickly to phase two, but there isn't an, there's no NASA administrator in there. There's only the acting. Do they want, you know, to let the new team come in and assess the program and see where things are before proceeding? If they do pause it, how long do they pause it for? If there is, you know, a month-long pause, does that, you know, sort of ruin the momentum?

I mean, I don't think we're going to get to you know a constellation you know era problem where you know you pause something and then it dies I mean I actually thought it was pretty remarkable there were a lot of people commenting that you know NASA had asked for 3.3 billion dollars in the budget for next year for the landing system you know only got

850 million so you know and I'm like okay no I mean I hear you right it's nowhere near the request I don't think anyone really thought they were going to get the full only got 850 million. So, you know, and I'm like, okay, no, I mean, I hear you. I'm right. It's nowhere near the request. I don't think anyone really thought they were going to get the full request, but nearly a billion dollars in the middle of a pandemic for a landing system. Like that's not nothing. Yeah.

And it's a landing system to, you know, not, not Boeing and not a Lockheed prime and not the old steady. Of course they are there in the program, but it's largely a fixed price contract to the new space industry. Yeah. I mean, as someone said to me, this is like, this is not, uh, you know, not a vote of confidence in the program. It's just saying there's a vote of no confidence in the schedule.

Right. And then we want to, you know, Congress wants to get on a more realistic schedule, which, you know, maybe we need. I mean, because, you know, Blue Origin, Lockheed, Northrop Grumman Draper, the national team, they call it, a lot of heritage, a lot of experience there, a lot of expertise. But, you know, they haven't, like, Blue hasn't made it to orbi yet blue hasn't flown anybody uh that may change soon um so it seems like you know there's sort of a big learning curve there to getting to build a spacecraft that can land people on the moon um they're going to need they're going to run into problems with that they're going to want to test it. So, yeah, I mean, so I don't know. I

know that people in industry are concerned about what's going to go on with the HLS awards, if there is going to be a pause or a significant one. But on the other hand, I mean, you have the congressional funding for it. And, you know, while Biden has said virtually nothing about space in the campaign, at least there is in the Democratic Party platform, you know, those two sentences that essentially say we're going to continue with Artemis. You know, we agree with this going to the moon and then on to Mars. So I don't think there's going to be, you know, that whiplash in terms of policy changes that we've seen when other administrations have come in. Yeah, and certainly in the theme of what's happening lately, which is a lot of, you know, let's run the Obama thing again.

It's just a lot of the themes of people being put in place. One thing you could see is the Obama era was like, let's invest in space technology and develop some of the things that we would need to do more complex missions in the future. The criticism there was that was like an aimless goal. But they were focusing on that side of things. And you could take that tact with the HLS stuff and say, we've got 850 million. Let's continue the work that these companies are doing to develop their plans more flesh it out more, we know we're not going to make 2024 um and then at that point i think gateway becomes more of the the focal point and and that's the thing that's funded it's contracted out it's getting closer to launch as we go so you might see like an hls uh kind of shift the schedule a little make it more you know maybe bring back that requirement that it goes to gateway and build something up that doesn't require a bunch of money up front, but could kind of be slow rolled to some extent.

It's really a big question mark, especially when you consider like, I don't know if you've looked at the congressional backlog of late, but they've got to get through an impeachment trial and then some COVID relief and make sure that there are people in place at all the agencies in government, confirm them. So space is very far down the to-do list at this point in time. Yeah, but I think you're right just in terms of the ethos and investing in technology. And I think that's really smart. And I was thinking about this today. today. I mean, that's one thing that, you know, seems to be consistent from, you know, Obama to Trump to Biden, in part because, you know, they can, you know, take this public-private partnership and continue to use it and to leverage it because it's worked. I mean, to, well, to a certain extent, I mean, particularly, you know, SpaceX has shown, you know, that they can be trusted to fly astronauts and they want to leverage that.

And, you know, you're seeing the word commercial go into more names of more sort of official programs, right? Like from COTS, right? Commercial Orbital Transportation System, to Commercial Crew, to CLPS. commercial orbital transportation system, to commercial crew, to clips. You know, I don't think the lander program has a word commercial in it, but it is, you know, of that ilk. I mean, it's a cousin to all of those programs, which is an interesting thing that I think is going to be continued, you know, by NASA under Biden for sure. On that topic, maybe we should talk a little bit about the Axiom news that broke this week, where the crew has been announced for that first private mission. You had a nice write-up with, I guess you talked to most everyone on that crew?

Yeah, I talked to all of them. So this is pretty big. I mean, you know, buried in the news was that the schedule's slipping a little bit, a couple months, and it's going into next year. But this is a four-person crew, totally private to the ISS. They're going to stay for eight days. What did you make of your conversations with them? You know, so it's really interesting. I mean, there's a lot of, you know, history there. First, you know, totally crew comprised, totally private citizens. You know. Mike L.A. as the commander of the mission. This will be his fifth trip to space, commanded a NASA mission, also now commanding a private mission.

Larry Connor, one of the American passenger on the mission, is 71 now, so maybe I guess he'll be 72, second oldest person to go to space after john glenn um you know it's just it's it's fascinating to me you know one of the things that when i talked to them i wanted to get a sense of you know like because i think space flight is you know romanticized a lot um you know in the media and um and in film and books and but you know really it's it's dangerous and it is harrowing and even if everything goes fine it's not like oh i'm you know i get there and i'm floating around and in space i mean i think that comes but a lot of people

get really really sick i mean it's like not pleasant for the first 24 hours. I remember once talking to Frank Culbertson, former NASA astronaut, and I was sort of going on about, you know, what space must be like and how cool that is. And he was like, all right, hold it. Like, settle down, Chris. Like, what I tell my astronauts is, like, when he was, you know, training rookies,

he would tell them to, in the gym, like, go to the chin-up bar and hang upside down from their knees and stay that way for like as long as they could um just to get used to that sensation of having all of the blood in your head um because it's uncomfortable and when you're in space there's that fluid shift um and you know you're just your inner ear is off and you get sick. So anyway, I want to be like, get to take their temperature and be like, are you like, is it like the, the safety risk and all that other stuff? And it seemed like they understood that.

I mean, particularly, um, Etan Stiba, who's the former Israeli air force fighter pilot. And he was close friends with Ilan Ramon, the Israeli astronaut who was killed on Columbia. So obviously he understood it. And then the other thing was, you know, they didn't want to be perceived as, you know, dilettantes or posers. And they're up there in the way of the other astronauts and sort of a burden. And, you know, Mike L.A., that was his fear when he did that flight.

It was 2006 with the new Shansari. He kind of looked at her as very skeptical and was like, this is going to be a mess. She's going to be in the way. I'm going to have to take care of her. And, you know, now you've got these rich guys, like three white men who are really rich, and they can buy their way up to space. If it doesn't go really well, there could be some serious backlash on that. And I think they really understood that too. So those are some of the takeaways I had. Yeah, that last note there is something I'm

curious about. On my other podcast, Off Nominal, we had Richard Garriott on a couple of months ago. And he gave us some stories of the stuff that he dealt with running up to his flight. And he was another one that flew on Soyuz. And there was a lot of contentious issues between him and people at NASA and NASA, the organization generally. Certainly, this was a while ago now to the point at which things might have changed. But that's always a thing that's going to be there, that feeling. And the, the one difference here with Axiom is that Axiom is run by Mike Sofferdini who ran the ISS program for a while. Mike LA has been to space a bunch. He's done tons of spacewalks. So both of them specifically have,

um, probably the right amount of reverence for the program, especially for people internally, the way that they feel towards this. So I'm wondering if, certainly this one, though, is different because you're bringing four people up to the ISS. It's not just, we had an empty seat on a Soyuz, you know, hop in, go for a ride. This is a whole new flight going to ISS. So there's a major difference there. But the fact that it's run by people who are known quantities to NASA and the ISS program, generally,

that's the thing I'm, I'm waiting to see is like, what is their interaction like? And certainly, I don't know if I'm going to be able to find that information out anytime soon. It might have to be like, you know,

five years from now at a conference at a bar or something. But I really wonder how that interaction interaction is going to differ from the times that it's happened over on the Russian vehicles. And then there's the other aspect is, you russia's feelings about it right and i think there's also that's a really good point and there's also like i think a cultural shift where even the astronaut office which is pretty protective you know understands that things are changing and that there's a commercialization of space coming on. And that means that not only is a company like SpaceX going to give you a ride to get to space, you know, there are these going to be commercial astronauts. And, you know, I love the fact you

break up Richard Garriott. I'm sure he told you that story where like NASA wanted to keep them off the American side of the station. That's how against it they were and he basically was like maritime rules and the commander of the station like let him come on because it's like once you're in space like he's in charge um which that's one of the great all-time stories um but but now i think there is enough of a cultural shift and it was jim breidenstein who you know changed the policy in 2019 that allows for private citizens to go to space from US soil, which had not been allowed before. And certainly to your point earlier about commercial being in the name of all these programs, it's like, well, you said commercial, you can't be mad at us that we're doing the commercial thing now that now that we're here.

I like that aspect as well. Right. But you you know, the interesting thing is, and this is a particular passion of mine, is that, you know, there was this reluctance for a long time because they wanted to have low-cost, reliable flights to space. It never really quite happened with shuttle. and taking so many people up that it's just going to, you know, we're going to have to take private citizens because they're just not going to be enough privately trained astronauts to fill all the seats. So they started the spaceflight participant program and they, there was a task force and they spent a lot of time studying who should we take up, who should be the first people. And ultimately, of course, they decided on a teacher. Then it was going to be a journalist. Then it was going to be, I think, an artist. And obviously, Krista McAuliffe, you know, they ran that huge nationwide competition. She won. in 86 nasa had already whittled down the uh journalists from it was like a couple thousand had applied and they had narrowed it down to 40 finalists so they were already like well on their way to picking the journalists when challenger happened and then they ended you know they ended

up ending that program um but it's interesting that now nasa's going back to that initial vision of we want to send ordinary people or we want to allow ordinary people to go ordinary in the sense that you can afford it yeah right well i mean everything always starts that way right like books were really expensive once and eventually they're cheap and the hope would be eventually this is cheap though going to the iss doesn't seem like the one that's going to be there for us when it's real cheap and you and I are going. The ISS is another one that I'm curious about. And I don't know if we have too much time to cover it now, but man, there's a lot of leaks in that thing these days.

And I'm wondering about the longevity there, specifically in regards to space policy decisions. It's such a long-running program that it's, you know, I feel like new administrations come in and it's like, well, we're spending this much on SLS for the next or ISS for the next 10 years. It's just there leave the line item. But I do wonder, you know, when those conversations start happening about this thing's not holding up so well. I don't know that that ever comes up, you know, in the Washington area, but at some point, it has to, you know, from between now and 2030. Yeah, actually, I had a story about this a few weeks ago, a month ago, because I think this is going to be one of the issues that the Biden administration is going to have to deal with right off the bat. And that, you know, I think you're right, it's flying under the radar. Those leaks on the station, you know,

everyone says no big deal, it's no big deal. But you're like, I don't know, if I'm in space, and there's a leak, that's gonna make me really nervous. And like, you know, everyone says it's no big deal. It's no big deal. But you're like, I don't know if I'm in space and there's a leak. That's going to make me really nervous. And like, you know, that whole story with the astronauts and they opened up the teabag and that's how they found this tiny crack by following, you know, the little particles from the teabag there. And they patched it, but that didn't quite work. And they're sending up, I think, extra oxygen bottles. I mean, just the thing is, I mean, it i mean just the thing is i mean it's amazing you think about it's amazing 22 years running 20 years continuously with astronauts and you know everyone's been safe i mean that is an extraordinary run i mean that's really that's insane um but things getting old and i know there's a lot of political pressure

to keep it up there um but you know it just can't stay up forever and you know jim had been sort of sounding the alarm at the end of his tenure saying you know he does not did not want to gap um in low earth orbit the way we had that gap with launch i mean once shuttle retired commercial crew didn't come on until years later so we had to rely on the russians at least the russians were a backup you know we had another way to get to space if there's no station there's no place to go you know there's no backup um so you know that's a concern and those the the you know amount he put out for the funding, even though it was modest, relatively speaking, $150 million a year, um, you know, was not funded anywhere near the full amount. Yeah, it took a zero off the end.

Yeah, right. So I think that's a real, I think that's a real, um, concern about what's going to happen after station. Is Axiom going to be ready or any of these other commercial guys? And I think Axiom has a good opportunity here to prove out with these private missions that they're serious, that they have what it takes. And I would hope that that could be used to garner some political support for we got to figure out what's happening after ISS. And if you have a partner that's ready to roll and is starting to build these modules, it seems like a good one to, you know, put your money in. But that's a it's such a long term thing that it's hard to map to our current political reality of, you know, timelines and budgets and whatnot. Right. But as you mentioned earlier, the fact that Mike Suffredini is there, I think gives you a lot of confidence, you know, that it's a legit organization. I mean, you a lot of confidence, you know, that it's a legit organization. I mean, I don't know,

I don't think, you know, these days we have that same geopolitical rivalry as inspiration in space as we did during the Cold War and Apollo. But, you know, China's up there starting to build their own space station and start to partner with countries, you know, possibly countries or even allies, uh, of ours or potential partners in space. And we're looking at nothing. I wonder if that'll drive some competition as well. Oh yeah. That's a good point. Um, all right. Last thing before we get you out of here, I just want to talk on, talk about quickly is Virgin Orbit had their first launch made at the orbit successfully or second launch first orbit successfully. Um. You had a nice write-up on Virgin Orbit generally. How did you feel about that flight? That was cool to see, you know, an air launch. You know, it's always hard to get to orbit. I love it. You know, anyone now, anyone gets to orbit,

you know, Elon is like one of the first people out there tweeting congratulations because he knows how difficult it was and, you know, finally made it on Falcon 1 all those years ago. No, that was exciting on a new platform on a 747. You know, that's the ultimate and a reusable first stage. The other thing that I noticed about that is that General Raymond of the Space Force, he tweeted actually at the time, congratulations. And then he tweeted at them like they signed another customer, like Denmark or something. And General Raymond tweeted that. So clearly, he's paying attention. I think they are very interested, and the Pentagon has, and the intelligence community has been very interested in, you know, this kind of capability for a long, long time. Like, you know, oh gosh, we need a satellite up tomorrow over, you know, South Korea at this, you know, orbit, and boom, like, let's get it up tomorrow and move. So, you know, that, um, that's a big deal.

Um, and it shows that they're serious. I mean, rocket lab has sort of been owning that space. Um, and it'll be exciting when they come to the Eastern shore of Virginia at wallops, um, be cool, you know, here in the DC area to have that in our backyard. But anytime you see one of these startups like go and be successful, that's pretty fascinating to watch. And we'll see, you know, what their customer base is, you know, particularly if they can get the Pentagon, you know, and launching for them reliably, that'll help their bottom line. And, you know, if you just think like Richard Branson,

who I think a lot of people don't always take seriously has now put, you know, if you just think like Richard Branson, who I think a lot of people don't always take seriously, has now put, you know, two spacecraft, two different companies, two different spacecraft into space, I mean, clearly Virgin Galactic with suborbital. But still, I mean, that's, that's not nothing to be able to do that. Yeah, and the Pentagon, like you're saying, I think that's going to be the key for Virgin Orbit, because they are the ones particularly interested in air launch and responsive launch is the word that you can say and get, you know, you and I could start a company and say responsive launch and probably get a couple million of funding. So if the writing thing ever dries up, just let me know. We'll work on that together. that they can also export their launch services to some extent to other Five Eyes countries or whoever else would be interested in having that same service from their own shores.

And I think for Virgin Orbit, they got to double down on that being their specialty because when you look at the way that Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and then the others that are close to launch, Firefly, Relativity, even ones like ABL that are out there. Virgin Orbit is in this weird spot where their payload is at the lower range of that group, but their price is at the higher range. So if it's just the commercial market, I think they would get squeezed out. But if they can double down on that being their specialty, this responsive air launch thing, and actually make the case for that to Department of Defense, I think they got a shot to have at least, you know, a niche to fill. But,

you know, Rocket Lab is only getting better. They just put up a satellite to like 100, what was it, 1200 kilometers the other day, on what looks like the most complex mission ever. So I didn't think they would have the run on the place for so many years. But now Virgin Orbit launched, I'm hoping that we see some of these other ones go this year. It could actually finally be the year of small launch that we've been waiting for and writing about for like, what, three or four years now. And, you know, that's your launch pad. And that carving out that niche is key for them, particularly when you have competition in the small launch market. But now you have competition from SpaceX and those, you know, rideshare missions. It's your Costco deal for launch over there. SpaceX and Elon, they are not going to miss a beat, that they are tenacious competitors, they're relentless, and they're not going to, they'll see a market segment where, you know, they had that, there's possibly an opportunity there and they are going to jump on it. And so that was a significant mission. What was that? 143 satellites the other day. I mean, that's

amazing. It's not as responsive, right? You're to have a little flexibility in the schedule for one of those missions. But still, I mean, that's going to be pretty affordable and that's going to put a lot of pressure on those small launchers if they don't have that defining feature like Virgin Orbit has. Yeah, absolutely. All right, Christian, thank you so much for coming on. If anyone out there is not familiar with your work, where would you send them to check out what you're working on these days? WashingtonPost.com. And of course, you know, I have my book, The Space Barons, which is for sale. It's always nice to support your local bookstore. take the hint people all right thank you so much uh i'm hoping that we can uh like you were talking about uh going out the wallops for rocket labs launch maybe we can meet up sometime in the future when the pandemic subsides and you know space life is back so i'm hoping to uh see you soon sometime yeah absolutely that'd be fun thanks again to christian for coming on the show and like we were just mentioning uh make sure you follow him up on twitter at wapo davenport and check out his writing over at washington post I've got a bunch of articles in the show notes for all the ones

that we were mentioning here on the show, all the topics that we covered. So definitely go give those a read if you've got some time. They're great reads with a lot of good information inside that you don't find anywhere else. So with that, that's all we've got here today. Thanks again to everyone who supports over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support including the 37 executive producers for today and if you've got any questions or thoughts hit me up on twitter at wehavemiko or email me anthony at mainenginecutoff.com and until next time i'll talk to you soon Bye.