Main Engine Cut Off - T+19: SpaceX’s Manifest, Flight-Proven Hardware, Blue Origin Updates, and Antares’ Engines

Episode Date: August 31, 2016

SpaceX has a busy manifest as they close out 2016, including SES-10 which will fly with a “flight-proven” first stage. A few bits of info have come out regarding Blue Origin’s future plans—including flying diverse payloads on New Shepard, and construction of their factory in Florda. Antares’ return-to-flight launch date is still a mystery, and I have a theory about its future engines. It’s Official: SpaceX Will Launch SES-10 With Reused Core - Main Engine Cut Off A Look at SpaceX’s Remaining 2016 Manifest - Main Engine Cut Off SpaceX successfully launches JCSat-16 satellite, faces crowded end-year manifest - SpaceNews.com SpaceX to Move Post-Recovery Operations to Port Canaveral - Main Engine Cut Off SpaceX Dragon 2 Parachute Drop Test - Main Engine Cut Off Blue Origin’s New Shepard as Generic Booster - Main Engine Cut Off Blue Origin's Sweet Spot: An Untapped Suborbital Market for Private Spaceflight Blue Origin Pours Concrete For Rocket Factory At Kennedy Space Center’s Exploration Park | Orbital ATK Conducts Test of Antares First Stage - Orbital ATK News Room Antares Hot Fire Test - May 31, 2016 - YouTube Orbital Sciences Orders RD-181 Engines for Antares Rocket Orbital Sues ULA, Seeks RD-180 Engines, $515 Million in Damages - SpaceNews.com Launch Schedule – Spaceflight Now Email feedback to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo, and we've got quite a grab bag of things to go through this week. There hasn't really been a big ticket item that would warrant its own show entirely this week. And there's been a lot of smaller events over the past few months that have not warranted their own show in the same way. But on these slower weeks, we'll pull those together and create kind of a grab bag of a show. But a lot of times these things are more interesting when you pull them together in a show like this. So I assume we'll have this kind of show every once in a while when we have a slow week and we have a lot of smaller items in the

backlog to talk about. So this will be one of them. We'll talk a lot about SpaceX, a lot about Blue Origin, and a little bit about the Antares return to flight that we're still waiting on towards the end of September. Before that, I want to thank those of you that are helping to support Main Engine Cutoff over on Patreon. Patreon.com slash Mego is where you can go to help support the podcast and the blog and help me improve this every single week. If you want a little bit of extra content, some early access to interviews, and sometimes extended interviews, give as little as $1 a month over on Patreon, and your support really helps me improve this show and what I'm doing with it. So thank you to all those supporting over on Patreon.

And with that, let's dive into our topics this week. And we'll start off with what's probably the most exciting topic. And that is the fact that SES has signed on with SpaceX to be the first to fly an already flown Falcon 9 core. This will be the SES 10 launch that's supposed to take place sometime in October or so. We don't have a hard launch date for that yet, but this will be the first launch to reuse a core that SpaceX has already flown previously. Chances are this will be flying the CRS-8 core. That was the first one that landed on the drone ship after sending CRS-8 up on its way to the International Space Station. That was the one slated to be the core to be reused first. There's no indications that that plan has changed, but we haven't heard for sure which core would actually be flying. A couple of interesting notes from the SES press release and related

interviews and things like that. The first kind of comedic point is that the SES 10 press release is calling it a flight proven core instead of a reused core. So sort of like a certified pre-owned car, they're using this flight-proven term instead of saying reflown or recovered or reused. I think that sounds a little better to investors. It's a little bit better of a spin when you're saying this has already been proven in flight at least once. So that'll be really cool to watch go off to see a reused core fly and then hopefully be recovered again for a second time. That would be pretty amazing, especially, you know, if it's the CRS-8 core, these would be

two different missions. So one would be up to Leo and this one would be a GTO launch with, you know, both landing on the drone ship. But it'll be pretty awesome to watch. So hopefully we get a launch date for that soon. The other interesting note is that in the LA Times article about this contract, the CTO of SES said that there was no material change in the insurance rate for this stage or this rocket entirely, as opposed to their regular Falcon 9 launches. So that is a pretty big deal. The fact that there's really no insurance change for flying one of these boosters that's already been used, that's a very promising sign. And it shows a lot of confidence in the insurers for these launches. And some people have been noting that it's a good time in the launch insurance industry with the low rates and high reliability

of launchers out there. So this is a good time to be doing this for SpaceX and the insurance agents and everything like that. So hopefully all goes well here. We'll be following along with this and then it would be interesting to see, you know, who else is comfortable flying on one of these cores that have been recovered and at what point the Air Force kind of certifies SpaceX to fly recovered cores on government launches. So all that will be interesting to watch over the next few months, but that's really the biggest news that we've got this week, that SES is going to fly a reflown core this fall. Now two other SpaceX notes before I talk a bit about their manifest coming up. The most interesting of which is the fact that SpaceX has bought an old Spacehab building in

Port Canaveral. So this was something that has been vacant for a while, was used by Spacehab a couple years back, and is now going to be used by SpaceX for their post-recovery operations when they bring a core back on the drone ship. They're going to be using that hangar to kind of offload it into that hangar and do whatever they need to

before it'd be ready to be used again. I assume they would be storing them there until they're ready to be used again. I assume they would be storing them there until they're ready to be used for launch, at which point they would make their way over to the launch site. But this is pretty big news. They got this old building and they're going to build another one next to it. And this is something that we've been waiting on to see how they handle it, because for a while they've been out of space at the hangar at Pad 39A. They've had that filled with the recovered cores that they've been bringing back,

and a couple of them have already been sent out, some to McGregor, some to Hawthorne. There's at least one on display in Hawthorne, and it sounds like the TICOM-8 booster is again in Hawthorne now. Nobody's quite sure what that's for. We've been seeing a few others head to McGregor, so the JCSAT-14 core is at McGregor being test fired and

things like that. So they've been needing to find a place to put all these cores that won't interrupt their usage of Pad 39A. This is a really encouraging sign because they really need that space in the hangar at Pad 39A to support Falcon Heavy flights that they're going to be using Pad 39A for, and also for the crewed flights of Dragon 2. Those will be flying out of Pad 39A, both the test flights and also the full-up crewed flights. So for those two different missions, which are the most important things on the SpaceX manifest at this point, they need that space at that hangar at Pad 39A. So the fact that they're going now and getting a new hangar to move all of the recovery operations to frees up that space at Pad 39A, and that is a good sign

that they are moving towards the launch of Falcon Heavy, moving towards the launch of a Crew Dragon or the test flights of Dragon 2. All of these things depend on freeing up space at that hangar, so the fact that they're doing this now is a very good sign for 2017. Relatedly, they did a drop test of a Dragon 2 mass simulator, and this tested the new parachute configuration for Dragon 2. Originally, they were going to use parachutes similar to that on the Cargo Dragon, which are a three-shoot configuration, But there was a review with NASA a couple years back at this point in which they needed to switch to a four-shoot configuration. Most of the assumptions were that that was to support

the one-shoot-out requirement for crewed flights. But either way, SpaceX went and redesigned their parachute system on Dragon 2 to be using a four-shoot configuration. And this drop test was a test of that. So I would go check out the video of that. I actually posted that over on ManagingCutoff.com. Somebody grabbed a video out of a NASA TV stream of that drop test. It's very interesting to take a look at the configuration they'll be using for the actual flights of Dragon 2 coming up. So again, another good sign that

they're making progress on Dragon 2. They're moving forward with the testing of that and the development of that capsule to be flown in 2017. Now, the last of the SpaceX stuff that I wanted to talk about today is their manifest for the rest of the year. There's been eight flights already this year of Falcon 9, and they've got another nine on their manifest that they're saying will get off by the end of 2016. nine on their manifest that they're saying will get off by the end of 2016. Now, if you remember from a couple months back, Gwen Shotwell was saying that they hope to launch 18 Falcon 9s and a Falcon Heavy in 2016. They were hoping to get 18 launches, and we were all looking at that like, are you kidding me? That's a lot of launches. You've barely even hit double digits some of these years. So where do you think you're going to get all these launches from? With nine left on their manifest and eight flown already, that'll put them at 17. And of course, the missing launch there is the Falcon Heavy that got pushed to 2017.

So if they are able to pull this off, and we'll go through all these launches in a second to see if they will be able to pull this off, they would have hit their mark. The Falcon Heavy will be delayed, obviously, but other than that, they hit their mark, and I think that's a really promising sign if they are able to do this, that they had a mission to hit 18, we thought they were crazy, and they ended up pulling off the launch cadence that they needed. Certainly, the Falcon Heavy is a disappointment, but really, that was flying out of Pad 39A anyway, so it wasn't going to disrupt their operations down at their launch pad in Vandenberg or at Cape Canaveral. So all in all, this would be a pretty impressive milestone for them to hit if they do get these nine launches off. Now the next launch up is Amos 6, which is launching this weekend on September 3rd right now.

It's a really early morning launch again. They're really killing us with these early morning launches. They're really killing our sleep patterns. At least this is Labor Day weekend here in the US. So, you know, it's a good weekend to stay up late or wake up really early and watch a launch. That'll be going up to a GTO launch. And then after that, Iridium Next, the first launch of those satellites is scheduled for September 19th or 20th right now out of Vandenberg. So this will be the first launch out of Vandenberg since January, and this is the first launch of the seven flights of Iridium Next satellites. These are going up to a polar orbit about 780 kilometers high, and they are one of the heavier

payloads that Falcon 9 will have ever lofted. 9,600 kilograms in total with all 10 satellites and the adapter that would be being used on that flight. So that's a pretty heavy payload for a Falcon 9, certainly well within their capabilities of recovery, but just, you know, we haven't seen a launch that heavy in quite a while. Now in terms of what that means for recovery, I expect this recovery of the Iridium NEXT satellite launch to look a little bit like the CRS-8 recovery. This will probably be an ASDS landing. It's got more margin than a GTO flight for sure because it's going to a less energetic

orbit. And they might even do a short boost back burn like they did with that CRS-8 flight if they have enough margin. So I would bet the trajectory looks a lot like they did with that CRS-8 flight if they have enough margin. So I would bet the trajectory looks a lot like what we saw with CRS-8 and hopefully they recover this. We haven't seen a fully recovered booster out on the West Coast yet. So it would be very interesting to watch them recover that and see what their operations look like out on the West Coast. You know, they bring that back into LA and then I would assume ship it right up to Hawthorne. And, you know, maybe that's what Typecom 8 was doing where they

wanted to practice what they would do with a recovered core out in Hawthorne in prep for this kind of launch. So we'll see what they're doing out there. The last we heard about the launch pad and the landing pad in Vandenberg, they were upgrading the launch pad to support Falcon Heavy flights and the full thrust configuration and all of that. They were doing a lot of updates to support that. It looked like they were constructing a landing pad out at Vandenberg, and they were working through some clearance for return to launch site landings. So we haven't heard how that shook out yet, if they're cleared for those landings or not. I don't think we'll find out with the Iridium flight because that would be an ASDS landing, but certainly some of their other polar launches out of Vandenberg would be candidates for return to launch site landings if they were

able to do that. So it'll be good to watch what they're doing out in Vandenberg and what they've got done out there, what they've worked on. We should see a good bit of that in the webcast for the Iridium Next launch. So we'll follow along with that when we get close to that launch. After the Iridium Next launch would be SES-10, like we talked about. That would probably be in the October time slot right now. Formerly, Echo Star 23 was supposed to be launched in October out of Florida, but that's been delayed till fourth quarter. Apparently, we haven't heard why or anything like that,

if that's a payload issue, if that's a scheduling issue. But either way, that sort of frees up October for SpaceX. And I assume SES-10 would slide right into that launch slot. That would be unused otherwise, because they do not have any other October launches on their schedule for the Florida site. So that would be one launch out of Florida in October with a second move sometime later in the year. They do have another Vandenberg flight in October. That would be Formosat 5 and Sherpa, which is the small sat dispenser. That would be their second of three flights out of Vandenberg, which, you know, this second one would happen on October. So they'd be making quick work of Vandenberg launches. Then in early November, we've got CRS-10 that would be flying on November 11th right now. Those dates are locked in kind of

early because of the ISS scheduling issues, so I assume that would be flying, you know, around that give or take a day based on weather delays or whatever else might be happening. Also in November, we've got SES-11 and EchoStar-ar 105. That's a kind of joint venture between those two companies. That would be happening sometime in November out of Florida. I'm not sure where Echostar 23 would fit in, if that might be a December launch, or if this one would be a December launch and Echostar 23 would fit into the November slot. Either way, you kind of see this pattern where they're doing two a month from Florida and a few times here and there they're doing a Vandenberg flight. So after SES-11, they have KoreaSat-5 for the fourth quarter, so I would assume December, out of Florida, and then potentially EchoStar-23 in

December as well. And they do have the second of seven Iridium Next flights scheduled for December out of Vandenberg. So that was a lot of stuff that I'm throwing at you. But if you look at it tactically, they've got one flight out of Florida for September, one flight for October, and then two flights for November, two flights for December. That brings us to six launches out of Florida, and they're going no more than two times a month based on the schedule right now, which is very, very doable for SpaceX. They've been showing a good cadence over the past couple of weeks for their launches out of Launchpad 40 in Florida. So, you know, one launch in September, one in October, two in November, two in December is a very, very doable thing based on their operations that they've had pretty nailed down over the past couple of launches. So I'm hopeful for their Florida launches that those would get off on time. Vandenberg is, you know, assuming this first launch for Iridium Next goes off without

a hitch and all of the construction and operations in Vandenberg are kind of worked out. It's a much easier schedule because it's just one in September, one in October, one in December. And, you know, that's, again, a cadence that they could hit pretty easily so it doesn't actually seem that crazy that they could pull off nine launches by the end of the year they've had an almost once every two weeks cadence over the past couple of launches certainly well within their wheelhouse based on how smoothly things have been flowing for them so if all goes well with these launches i actually do expect them to get these nine off and it seems crazy that we're sitting here you know at the end of august saying yeah, nine launches for the rest of the year when

they've only completed eight already. It's not that crazy because they have these two launch sites going. They have a good cadence. Everything seems to be smoothing out with their process. So it's very, very promising for the rest of the year for SpaceX. Now, a couple of Blue Origin updates. We're going to switch over to focus on them for a bit. There's not a whole lot because they are pretty tight-lipped about what's going on. Their last flight was on June 19th, so just about two months ago, almost three months ago. That was the one shootout test. All went well with that. It landed softly. The data looked good from that. So that's very promising for their missions that they would be flying with humans aboard.

They've said next year they were doing test flights with humans on board. So this was a good sign for that. That would be pretty awesome to see them start to fly some people on these suborbital flights. They've been flying every two to three months in the past couple of, you know, in the past year, they've done four launches. So they certainly are at the time frame when they would be doing another flight. We haven't heard yet. And with the last launch, they told us ahead of time. So I would expect to hear pretty soon that we would be getting another New Shepard flight here in the next few weeks. Other Blue Origin news, President Rob Meyerson was doing an interview with Space.com

and said that in the future, they are planning to give people the option to fly a vehicle other than New Shepard on top of the booster. So instead of flying their own capsule with your experiments inside, you would be able to fly your own vehicle on top. So the thought was that, you know, they could fly atmospheric demonstrators or something like that, or maybe even other payloads, but they would be using the New Shepard booster and not the capsule to lift off their experiment to a staging point or whatever kind of envelope they would want to do their testing in. I think this would be a smart move by Blue Origin to try to experiment with this kind of thing because it would give them a little bit of experience in working with commercial companies and integrating their flight vehicles with their rockets. So it would certainly

give them an opportunity to work on some sort of fairing system or some sort of payload integration system. It would give them some valuable experience that they would need when they get to their orbital operations phase. I would be interested to see if they're going to put fairings on the New Shepard booster, if they would be kind that they would jettison and then recover, or if they would be fairings that would open up, release the payload, and then close back for the flight through the atmosphere. I would be very interested in seeing how they handle a fairing system around this kind of payload system, but I do think that would be a smart move for them to get into as another good test for them to build on towards their orbital capabilities. Also, just this past week, concrete started being poured in Florida for their factory

just outside of the gates of Kennedy Space Center. That's the factory that they would be building and integrating the orbital rocket in. We haven't heard much about that yet. We've seen a couple of renderings. I assume all of that will change when we actually see the rocket. But all in all, this is very promising for the orbital side of Blue Origin. They're starting to build their own factory for these rocket stages. So I would be looking for an announcement from them. Hopefully in the next year, we'll see some more concrete plans for what that booster would be,

what it would be capable of lifting up to orbit, and some more specs like that that we haven't seen yet. The BE-4 is certainly coming along. We should see that test firing by the end of the year. Like they said, they would be doing a full-scale test firing, so we'll look for that for Blue Origin. It sort of seems like they're being pretty quiet right now, but have a lot of news around the corner, both of BE-4, also these kind of new Shepard flights that would be flying something other than a capsule, and also the Orbital Rocket. Right now, they're calling it Very Big Brother, which is a really weird name for a rocket, even if that is a codename. It's a little bit weird sounding. So, you know, we'll see what they actually come out

with there. But all in all, Blue Origin is quietly making some good progress so I expect to be talking about them sometime in the next couple months. Now on to Antares we're still waiting on a launch date from Orbital ATK for the return to flight for that rocket. Last we heard it was second half of September so I would hope to hear in the next week or so of a firm launch date for that flight. I am scheduled to be down at that launch. I got my media pass and all that sorted out. So I'm just waiting on a date when I need to know to drive down to Virginia for this launch. I'm very excited to go see what they've been doing with this rocket. But the lack of updates from them is a little bit concerning. The press release about the delay I've talked about before that it was a little bit concerning. The press release about the delay I've talked

about before that it was a little bit vague. So I think they're sort of being quiet about some issues that they're working. The assumption is that those issues are related to the engines. They had that hot fire test back in May, I believe. There were some pretty bad vibrations seen in the video of that hot fire. And people are kind of assuming that those are, you know, that vibration issue might be a source of what they're working on or something that they're working on for the flight trajectory or whatever it is. They haven't said much, and that's the worrying part, is that we're left here to speculate what the issue might be for that rocket. Now, if it does hold for late September,

another launch of Antares and Cygnus would be on the schedule for December, another flight up to the ISS. So, you know, that might get pushed into 2017 if they are a little bit late on this launch of Antares. Now, something more interesting about Antares that I've been thinking about a lot, but not really having a chance to bring up on the show is about the way that they went about picking an engine for Antares. They were using those AJ-26 engines from Aerojet, which were refurbished engines from Russia from like the 1960s. They were actually the engines that some engineers were told to destroy, but they actually ended up storing them. And then they were found later, and Aerojet has been refurbishing them.

Those were the ones that they used to use on Antares. And those are the ones that were the source of the explosion back in October of 2014. So since then, they've been working on getting a new engine for Antares. Now, originally, they were going to be using the RD-180, or that's what they hoped to be using, but there's this American LLC called RD Amros that kind of acquires and imports the RD-180 and related engines for ULA. And ULA actually has an exclusivity deal on the RD-180. So they're the only people able to buy RD-180 engines. Orbital ATK, or I guess they were Orbital Sciences then, sued ULA for this exclusivity

deal and they tried to sue for damages and things like that. They were really trying hard to get the RD-180 as the engine to be used on Antares, even before they had the AJ-26 explosion. So they were shooting for the RD-180 for quite a while, but because of all that legal kind of deals and everything like that, they ended up picking the RD-191, which is labeled as an RD-181 for export. You'll see those two numbers used interchangeably. RD-191 is the same as RD-181. It's just used and specialized for Antares and export as the RD-181. Now, the orbital deal for the RD-181s was a firm order for 20 engines and then two options for 20 engines each. So up to 60 engines were part of the deal, but only 20 were ordered up front. And that's 10 flights of Antares

because there's two engines on each flight. The RD-180 is a single engine with two chambers. RD-181 is a single engine, so they're pairing those together on Antares for the flight. So they're pairing those together on Antares for the flight. Now, this is just about 100,000 pounds more thrust than what they were using previously. So they've had to do a lot of upgrades to Antares to support this thrust level for the RD-181 RD-180 is about 860,000 pounds of thrust at sea level. The RD-181 pair would be just a bit higher than that, but in the same ballpark. So you can see how they were going for the RD-180, but they got the next closest thing to kind of leave that option open for the future. And also they had done a lot of work, I guess, to integrate the RD-180 with Antares, at least design work. So they found something pretty close that fit. Now, it gets interesting in the future when you think about what else is out there for them to use, because, you know, they were signing these deals for RD-181s, or even if it went their way, RD-180, at a time when the RD-180 is under heavy political fire. It looks like

they're going to have plenty, ULA that is, they're going to have plenty for the launches they need to do until Vulcan is online. But there's been a lot of political pressure to ban the RD-180 and all Russian-built engines for use on military flights for the United States. So it's a little bit funny that you might be pushing so hard to sign a deal for Russian-built engines when a big chunk of the market is about to ban the use of Russian-built engines. That always seemed a little bit odd to me. But in reality, there just were no other options. There was no American-built engine ready for them to integrate with Antares. And I think that's why we saw an agreement for only 10 flights. I'm sure that they couldn't get a deal for less flights than that. They probably

had a minimum that would be acceptable from the engine maker. But when you look forward to something like the AR-1, which I have not been kind to on the podcast or on the blog, I think it's a little bit of a government pork and kind of cover your ass kind of thing from Congress because it's being designed to be ready for a 2019 launch, which is just about when Atlas 5 is going to be phased out for Vulcan. Certainly there would be launches into the 2020s to support Starliner flights and things like that that wouldn't be ready to switch to Vulcan yet. But either way, they're looking for an engine to replace a rocket that's being phased out. So it seems like a lot of waste of money. And I don't think history will be kind to the AR-1 program. And mostly because Aerojet has not even expressed

any interest in anything but the Atlas V. They haven't said, hey, this is going to be a great engine to sell to other rocket companies or anyone else for that matter. The only use they've been saying is that this is going to replace the RD-180 as a drop-in, an American-built drop-in for the RD-180. That is something that should pique the ears of Orbital ATK. So maybe Orbital ATK has it in their mind that the AR-1 could be used on Antares in the future. So if they were looking to use Antares for Department of Defense flights at any point, if they wanted to be certified for those and they didn't want to have a Russian-built engine powering their stage in case that was ever something that happened again, where they're banning use of those Russian-built engines on military flights,

they could pursue usage of the AR-1 for flights of Antares. So I've just been kind of thinking about this chess game that Orbital ATK is playing here with Antares. They had these Russian-built engines, they wanted a different one. They couldn't get the RD-180, so they went with the RD-181. But the RD-180 and all related engines are under heavy political fire, so much so that they've funded, through through Congress the creation of the AR-1, which is an engine that would be a drop-in replacement for the RD-180, which is the thing that Antares wanted to use before they couldn't. But all that's to say, I would be interested if Antares is at all interested in the AR-1, if the Antares program at

all has an eye on the AR-1 as something they could use in the future. I'm not sure if the Department of Defense launch market is something they want to hit with Antares because Orbital ATK does have another next generation launch vehicle coming down the line that would be all American made. But you know, overall, maybe it's something that they should keep their eye on. So I'll ask those questions when I get down to the launch of Antares in September. Hopefully, I do get down to the launch of Antares in September. Hopefully, I do get down to the launch of Antares in September, and it's not delayed past that. But you know, I just haven't had a chance to talk about this theory on the show. And this week seemed like a good time to do that. Other things to keep your eye on as we close out the year, the Mars Society convention that I

talked about last week with Dr. Zubrin, that's happening in September, there's a good chance that I'll be down there for the convention. So I might have a special episode of the podcast surrounding that convention, might be able to grab a few people on the floor for interviews and things like that. And so, you know, keep your eye on that convention because I may be there to talk to people and find out a little bit of more info about some of these projects that we've been following over the past couple of months. If you're a ULA fan, you've got about seven launches to watch this year. There's another six Atlas V flights and one Delta IV flight, so they'll certainly be having a busy end of the year. They're launching OSIRIS-REx on September 8th, which is the asteroid sample return mission

for NASA, so that'll be a fun launch to watch and fun mission to follow along with. On the China front, they're ready to launch Tiangong-2, which is their second space station. They're going to launch that in September. All the pieces of that are at the launch site ready for launch. And then there would be a crewed mission up to that space station in October. So that'll be fun to follow along with to see how they're doing with their crewed launch vehicle and their crewed missions and their space station program in general. This is paving the way for the third space station that would come in the following years. Also in the Chinese front, the Long March 5 is going to be launching in October.

Long March 5 is a very heavy lift rocket. This is just about comparable to the Delta 4 heavy. So this is a big, big rocket for China. This would actually launch, you know, a lot of the space station modules for them in the future. And this would be their entrance into the heavy lift game. They haven't had a rocket this big yet. It's cool to see China in this game and see them having the ability to launch these massive payloads. So that's something to certainly keep your eye on if you're interested in the Chinese program. So that's just about it for the grab bag episode here. I hope it wasn't too scatterbrained for you. There's just a lot to talk about that really hasn't fit in other shows. So there's a ton of links for you over at mainenginecutoff.com in

the show notes for this show. I've got links to a bunch of stories related to what we've been talking about here today. So if any of those interested bunch of stories related to what we've been talking about here today. So if any of those interested you go over to mainenginecutoff.com and check out the show notes. If you've got any thoughts about any of these topics, I would love to hear them on Twitter at wehavemiko or email me anthony at mainenginecutoff.com. And remember to go over to patreon.com slash miko if you want to help support Main Engine Cutoff and get a little bit of extra content or just help support me as I travel to some of these conventions, some of these launches and upgrade some of my gear. Your support really, really helps me improve the show.

So thank you very much for everybody supporting over on Patreon. And that'll be it for me this week. So thank you very much. And I will talk to you next week. So thank you very much. And I will talk to you next week.