Main Engine Cut Off - T+228: Artemis I, Act I

Episode Date: September 9, 2022

Artemis I scrubbed its way through its first and second launch attempts, and is now undergoing repairs on the pad, ahead of its next launch attempt. I talk about the initial attempts, general thoughts on where we’re at with this program, where it’s headed in the future, and what public reactions to Artemis I have been.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 43 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, Matt, The Astrogators at SEE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, Hemant, Dawn Aerospace, Andrew, Harrison, Benjamin, SmallSpark Space Systems, Schultzy, and seven anonymous—and 826 other supporters.TopicsFirst Artemis 1 launch attempt scrubbed - SpaceNewsSecond Artemis 1 launch attempt scrubbed - SpaceNewsNASA to repair SLS liquid hydrogen leak on the pad - SpaceNewsNASA officials evaluating late September launch dates for Artemis 1 moon mission – Spaceflight NowSpaceflight Now on Twitter: “Here’s a NASA photo of the temporary enclosure assembled at the base of the Space Launch System moon rocket, providing environmental protection as workers replace seals on liquid hydrogen connections between the rocket and the launch platform.”The 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 NewsletterMusic by Max JustusArtwork photo by NASA/Joel Kowsky

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo, and I want to talk about Artemis I, the initial attempts, the repairs that they're trying to work through on the pad now, general thoughts around this Artemis One campaign so far. And I got to be honest, usually I try to get my thoughts together for the show. I start to try and figure out, you know, a neat organization of thoughts. And I start to put bullet lists together of outlines and points I want to hit. I've got none of that for this show. Mostly because I don't have clean and neat thoughts about this. And I think that's because it's a little bit overwhelming to

consider everything that's going on here. This last two weeks or so, I feel like has had every storyline of criticism of SLS embedded in it. You know, there's the political points, there's the technical points, there's the mission cadence points, there's the overall architecture of this. There's just everything that we've had in terms of criticism of this program overall, going back 10 years, was present this week. So there are just like too many angles to dive into. So kind of just want to meander through general thoughts about this and we'll see where we get to. So if you have not kept up on Artemis 1, they went out for an initial launch attempt on August 29th. They scrubbed that after problems, what they thought were problems cooling down engine three

on the vehicle. They later determined that that was a sensor issue with sensors that exist for this test flight, but won't in the future. The other signals they're getting from the vehicle and the other engines show that they were fine on that engine. They did have a variety of hydrogen leaks that morning that they were working through, small ones that they were able to manage around. And then on the second launch attempt on the following Saturday, which was a couple days later, it was September 3rd, they had a much larger hydrogen leak that was not manageable per their comments in the press conference afterwards. Now, they have not officially confirmed the root cause

of that, but there was, right before they began loading hydrogen into the vehicle, they had an inadvertent overpressurization of the liquid hydrogen line, and that was caused by operational issues and human error, it sounded like in the most recent press conference, that may have damaged the quick disconnect seal that they're talking about here. So they haven't officially said that yet. And they're still looking into it. They've said they've been inspecting these different seals on the vehicle. And we should hear more about that in the future. But what they're doing, they announced they're trying to fix this issue, this hydrogen leak issue on the launch pad.

So they've set up a work platform, Spaceflight now has a picture of this work platform and temporary enclosure around where this quick disconnect is, so that they can repair that seal. They think it's what they call the soft goods of that seal that they're going to replace and repair and replace, and then they're going to retest that. The reason they're keeping it on the pad is because the pad is the only spot where they can test these seals with cryogenic fuels flowing through it. So if they were to take this vehicle back to the vehicle assembly building and then repair it there, they could only test at ambient temperatures. They could not test

at cryogenic temperatures when things change quite dramatically. You know, when this fuel is negative 400 degrees or whatever it is, negative 430 degrees, I know, when this, this fuel is negative 400 degrees or whatever it is, negative 430 degrees, I forget the exact amount, but it's very low. And the dynamics of that change a lot of the vehicle performance. So I think this is the right call to, to do this fix on the pad if you're, if it's possible, right? There's no hurricanes bearing down on the coast. They seem, you know, other than typical Florida weather, they seem okay on that front. down on the coast. They seem, you know, other than typical Florida weather, they seem okay on that front. I think it's smart to keep this vehicle out there, try to get this fixed and test this because they have not made it all the way down through a countdown in their wet dress rehearsal,

in a launch attempt, they have not completed a complete fueling and countdown of this vehicle yet. So, you know, if you're in a position right now where things are configured to be able to test this fix, that is 100% the right decision. And then the knock-ons of what that does to your actual launch date, I think that's secondary regardless, because you roll it back to the VAB, you try to do repairs, then you got to go test it. You're in the same situation you're in right now, you've just wasted time going back and forth to the VAB. So I am happy that they're doing this in a way that allows that quicker iteration. They could test if it doesn't work, they'll try to fix it again, retest it. That's what we want to see from this program.

And that's largely what the problem has been that led us to this point was that they weren't able to do that. You know, the ground systems here at Kennedy Space Center, the first time they had a tank capable of testing out their ground systems was back in what, the spring when they started doing the wet dress rehearsals? I guess that was, I guess that was, yeah, earlier this year, right? So they never had a Pathfinder tank where they could, they had a Pathfinder tank, but that was just to like test things, cranes lifting and maneuvering um the vehicle but they they weren't able to hook up their ground systems and test fueling the vehicle you look at all these other programs of in the world of new launch vehicles you know vulcan uh ula's vulcan had a tank out on the pad months ago at

this point i forget might have been a year ago. I forget exactly when that was, but they took that out to the pad. They tested fueling it. They tested their ground connections. They were able to run it through its paces. Obviously, Starship and Super Heavy down in Boca Chica, they've got more hardware than they know what to do with that they're testing and blowing up constantly, and that's what you want. You want to be able to test these systems quite frequently. Now, that said, you know, NASA continues to say that these are first-time operations, and that's why they're having all these issues, is that this is the first vehicle. We haven't tested the ground system and the vehicle together before until the wet dress

rehearsal and this. So, this is as expected. At the same time, they're also saying hydrogen is very tricky. These kind of things are hard to nail down. We've, you know, we ran into these problems nine years into the shuttle program. So those two things don't quite map. And even when you look at the two launch attempts that we've had, you know, different days, we had different hydrogen leaks. Yeah, that's the smaller manageable leaks. There were different ones on the first day, there were different ones on the second day, then we had this quick disconnect issue. So even day to day, there are changes between what the systems are ailing with, right? So I think the first time operations only goes so far. And then when you factor in the point that, you know, Artemis 2 is about two years away at best, I would say, I think they say it could be 20 months, but realistically, it's two years at a minimum away in my eyes. How long of that,

or how much of that gap, how does that diminish the first time operations benefit, right? They're going to go through Artemis 1 and figure all this stuff out, and then let two years go by before they do it again. And so what changes in the meantime? Do they have fixes they're going to apply to the ground systems based on what they find from Artemis 1 and then never test them until Artemis 2? Is just sitting, you know, vacant for two years on the mobile launcher? Is that going to cause issues when we try to go fuel Artemis 2 in the future? I just think that first-time operations reasoning only goes so far with a program that isn't going to be launching as consistently as even the shuttle program was. Even so much as you think of the people that are working on the pad today at Artemis 1, and they've had really long days over the past couple of weeks working on this launch campaign, are they going to be burnt out from SLS and they're going to move on to another program, another job somewhere?

And then there's new people in there for Artemis 2 because of that gap. It's not surprising that we'll have at least between now and two years from now, a couple of retirements, people get new jobs, people relocating because of family stuff. Things happen on the people side as well. And a thing I always harp on is that companies and organizations don't have experience. The people that work there do. So yeah, you could say NASA hasn't loaded a vehicle in 10 years, but the people that work there probably worked on other programs in the meantime. Some of them I'm sure didn't, but some did. And so, you know, and then in the same vein, when they leave, they're taking their experience with them. And they probably, you know, documented stuff and have good paperwork about procedures and

things like that. And they're trying to pass on everything that they had learned and put together and figured out. But stuff falls through the cracks and that matters extensively, right? And at the same time, they could gain some people in those two years that just had spent a lot of time out at the pad at SpaceX, Blue Origin or Relativity down there that are like, yeah, we did it this way and it worked a lot better. And maybe there's people from the Delta 4 program that uses a lot of liquid hydrogen that could come over and help out with this kind of stuff. So that is also time that could be used in a good way, but it does concern me. And I hope that when they look ahead to Artemis 2, they take some of these learnings about, you know, maybe roll out a couple of days in advance of the launch window

so you can do a fueling test entirely and that you can run it through its paces. Even if they weren't planning on doing wet dress rehearsal before, I hope now they're looking at, you know what, we should take this out a couple days early. We should try to fuel the vehicle entirely and we should, you know, knock some of these kinks out before we go for our initial launch attempt. So anyway, moving on from the hydrogen leaks themselves, where does this leave NASA with the Artemis 1 attempt? They are going to attempt these fixes. They're going to test them out. And right now they have tentatively scheduled with the range that they would have launch slots on September 23rd and September 27th. Now those are based on a couple of assumptions.

Number one, that they're able to fix this hydrogen leak. They're able to test it in time. They're able to give it the thumbs up that they're ready to go. They also said they're going to do a complete filling test, which with the core stage and upper stage, they're not going to run it all the way through the countdown, but they're going to do a complete filling of the vehicle. They're going to do pressurization tests, which they have not gotten to yet on any of these countdowns where they pressurize to flight levels. So there are still a bunch of tests and fixes to go.

The other thing is that they need the Space Force to approve an extension of its certification for the batteries on the flight termination system that would destroy the vehicle if it starts flying off of its course. They originally had a 20-day window where those batteries were certified. That starts from the moment they put them in, in the vehicle assembly building, roll out to the launch pad. They got to get the launch off within that 20-day window. They did extend that by five days, even leading into this original attempt because they were actually not going to make the third launch day that they had set aside if they didn't get that extension. So they had a five-day extension. Now they're looking for an extension of basically doubling that. So it doesn't seem

likely to me that they would get that extension, but there's a lot going on behind the scenes. We haven't heard a straight-up no yet. So by the time this comes out, I might be out of date. But I guess we'll see about that. If they're able to get this fix done, if they're able to get the waiver, they could have some launch attempts at the end of September. Beyond that, it gets really tricky. You know, and this is where we start to get into some of this architecture criticism of SLS.

Because of their various constraints of Orion, of SLS, of the ground systems, of the flight termination system, of the propellants that they have to load in to Kennedy Space Center to fill this vehicle entirely, they basically get a handful of days every two months where they can launch this vehicle. Now, the flight termination system extension really changes the math on that because if they stick with their current certification, they have to roll back to the VAB to reset those batteries every time. And that itself imposes a huge schedule constraint on the program because preparing the vehicle to roll back, rolling it back, doing whatever you need to do in the VAB, which could be just swapping out those batteries, but they've also had a crack on the foam, the thermal protection system on the core stage. They might want to check that out. There might be some other maintenance they need to do on the vehicle when they're in there. Then preparing it to roll again, rolling it out, dealing with weather that whole time, the weather constraints they have for rolling back and rolling out, getting it re-established

at the pad. I'm not sure there's been an officially announced shortest time that they could do if they hot rod that program to get this back in the VAB and back out as quick as possible. How long does that take? But I wouldn't be shocked if it's more than two weeks, three weeks, you know, even more than that. I've seen some people considering or trying to figure out this math and landing around like 30 days where that that full cycle. So that itself really puts a constraint on because let's say they go, they get the flight extension, that gives them the opportunity to get to the September 27th date that they have set aside right now. Well, then if that doesn't go, they need to roll back, they need to do the whole thing. The next launch window they have to have is October 17th to the 31 whole thing. The next launch window they have to have

is October 17th to the 31st. And there's a couple of red zones in there that they can't fly. But if they're able to roll back and out in two weeks, they could hit the opening of the window. If it's any longer than that, if it's three weeks, if it's four weeks, they're pushing right up to the end of that October window. So it might well slip all the way to November. You know, by next week, we could be hearing that November is the next available slot for this launch. And that's due to the lunar launch windows that they have. Again, some of these constraints that I referenced earlier, you have to look at Orion's flight path to the moon and make sure that it's not flying through the shadow of the Earth where

it would lose power generation. Then you start looking at the performance of the upper stage, the interim cryogenic propulsion system, system or stage, I forget. Now I forget the acronym ICPS. You're looking at, you know, core stage performance. Again, the flight termination system batteries, like all these constraints map out how these windows fall. And if you miss any single one of them, you're basically bumping a month or two down the line. And this is really the, that is, the reason that is in existence is because of how these systems came together and the decisions that were forced upon this program outside of NASA's control in a lot of cases,

but I don't want to let them off the hook entirely about how some of this stuff came together. So I want to get into some of those larger picture things in a minute. But before I do that, I want to say thank you to all of you out there supporting Main Engine Cutoff over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. There are 869 of you supporting the show every single month, and that includes 43 executive producers. Thanks to Simon, Lauren, Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Ryan, Donald, Lee, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Eunice, Rob, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, Frank,

Julian and Lars from Agile Space, Matt, The Astrogators, SCE, Chris, Aegis Trade Law, Fred, Haymonth, Dawn Aerospace, Andrew Harrison, Benjamin, Small Spark Space Systems, Schultzy, and seven anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for your support for making this show possible and for making it possible for me to do this full time and be able to run down to Florida and hang out for the initial launch attempt of Artemis. We had a great meetup down in Florida with a bunch of you. It was, you know, 30 or 40 some of us that showed up at a bar the night before launch, a bunch of us on the beach the morning of the launch. It was really great to meet a bunch of you in person and put some faces to the names that I know from the internet. And as I always say, turn our one-way friendship into a two-way friendship,

which is the weird thing about podcasts. But it was awesome. And I'm only able to do those things because of your support. So thank you all so much for that. If you want to help join that crew, mainenginecutoff.com slash support, you could join up and get Miko headlines with the extra show I do every single week running through all the stories of the week, giving you thoughts catching you up to speed on all the space news. It's a great way to stay up on the news and support the show. So jump on in if you want to do that. So we all kind of know the way that SLS came about, right? The derisive name for it, the Senate launch system, this was willed into existence by congressional power, essentially. When Constellation Program got canceled,

there was political wrangling about what is next, and part of the deal that NASA had to strike up at the time was the existence of this new program. And specifically written into law was that NASA shall, I forget it was shall or must, it was one of the two. It was very, probably it was must to be honest, because they were very adamant about that. They had to use existing shuttle contracts and contractors as much as practically possible. And that's what led to this architecture of, okay, we'll use the shuttle main engines, we'll put them under what is essentially the shuttle tank, but we're going to change everything about that, which is a whole other thing. We've got these solid rocket boosters from the shuttle program, but they're one segment longer. We've got, you know, all these, the crawlers that we

use in the shuttle program. So there were all these little parts that were, you know, all these, the crawlers that we use in the shuttle program. So there were all these little parts that were, you know, picked from the shuttle program, reconfigured, and in many cases, completely reworked. They keep saying it's the same parts, but like, the engines have completely new computers on them. And the core stage is built in different manufacturing processes than they did for the external tank of the shuttle. And they've completely rebuilt the mobile launch tower and the crawlers have had a bunch of updates and the solid rocket boosters have an extra segment and we're putting a Delta upper stage on this. So that's totally different. There's all these little differences that really add up to being

a completely new vehicle. It looks a lot the same. It's got the same color scheme, but it's a new vehicle. Now, each of these components individually didn't do anything wrong at an engineering level, like on a large scale, right? If you look at any individual person working on SLS, they did a good job doing their thing. The problem is that the way it all comes together is not the most functional when you're looking at being a reliable and functional launch vehicle system. And I feel like that traces back to the fact that these are different line items in the budget. The ground systems, SLS, Orion, they're all different line items in the NASA budget. It wasn't all under one program, right? It was under one program at the highest level of

NASA, but at the program level, they were different programs. So the constraints of one system are designed for that system to make sure it's doing what it was designed to do. But the way it all comes together doesn't really work when you then look at a mission design system. So having these very, very fickle launch windows that have all these different constraints from each different system that go together in really weird ways, right? Like, we have to roll the vehicle back to the VAB to replace the flight termination system, but we can only roll the vehicle back a couple of times

before we're beyond our certification. That's really ridiculous when you look at it. Like, if you knew that was a huge constraint, there probably should be some ground systems in place that make sure you can replace those flight termination system batteries on the pad without rolling back if rolling back was a huge constraint for the rest of the vehicle. And if you knew going in how your lunar launch windows shake out and the way that the length of the certification for the flight termination system impacts your ability to hit multiple days within that window.

And if you also look at the ground systems and how much fuel they can keep on site to fill the vehicle, and then you look at how that impacts how many launch days you can go a month because you've got a launch attempt. And then if you've, if you feel the vehicle, you have to wait two days before you can feel the vehicle again, because they got to replenish supply. And if you don't go that time, you got to wait another three days before you replenish. There's all these things that impact the mission design in ways that if the mission design led this program, these would not be the constraints that we're dealing with, because you would have been thinking, okay, well, no, we should probably beef up this area of the architecture, because we need to be able to support this entire week of a launch window rather than every couple

of days within the month. And we need to be able to replace the flight termination system batteries because our certification or maybe we should recertify so that we can go 4050 days on the pad before we need to roll the vehicle back because we have constraints to the vehicle. Or maybe we shouldn't have done this whole thing where we roll the vehicle back and forth all the time. And we should do it that the way that most other programs do, which is either like ULA, roll the building away, you know, build the rocket and roll the building away. Or maybe we should roll it out horizontally, so it doesn't have to be this very delicate vertical standing thing. And then, you know, put it up on the, like, there's all these decisions that would be driven from a mission perspective because

you're dealing with mission constraints that then map on to technical constraints rather than the other way around, which is technical constraints that we have to map onto a mission. So this is where we get into the same criticism of SLS that's always been is that it's driven by political and technical decisions, not mission decisions. that's always been is that it's driven by political and technical decisions, not mission decisions. And that inverse of priorities is what gets us in to this really particular flow of launch where you have to circle very particular dates on the calendar. If you don't meet that, the impact is huge. It's a month or two month delay each time one of those impacts hits wrongly for the mission that you've got in front of you.

time one of those impacts hits wrongly for the mission that you've got in front of you. Now, it's like fine for Artemis 1, right? Artemis 1 is going to go do its thing on its own. It's not meeting up with anything else in space. It's going to launch. It's going to go to the cislunar space. It's going to fly back in 40-something days. Not a big deal. Artemis 2 is going to do that with that with humans so again not meeting up with anything if it slips a month or two you know no big deal artemis 3 problematic uh if if starship lunar starships in orbit totally fueled up boiling away its propellants slowly although it may be but it's just boiling away propellants in cislunar space. SLS rolls out for its couple of days every two months that it can hit,

and a hurricane comes by, and now you've got a two-month delay before you can launch. Is the Starship going to be okay out there for that long? Is the propellant going to be all right? Is it going to boil off too much that they didn't have to refill that before they're able to launch Artemis 3 again? How does that work out when you have constraints of the rest of the program relying on this vehicle hitting its launch window because you've filled a gigantic lunar lander with a ton of propellant, and you've got to make sure that you get there in time to use that propellant before it boils off, and you have a program that is this fragile to constraints and timing, that is very concerning. And again, I'm not confident that this program can sort out these issues between now and Artemis 3, because there's only a single launch between now and Artemis 3,

right? Between Artemis 1 and Artemis 3. It's not like they're getting into this regular cadence where they'll have all these procedures really nailed down because Artemis 3 is also forever away. It's, you know, they say 25, but I'm going to guess 2028 at best. So having a launch now, having one in 2025, having one in 2028, that doesn't, it doesn't give me confidence that Artemis 3 will go on the first launch day when it rolls out. And that's what we need to happen because of the rest of the system. And it gets even more complicated beyond that when it's Artemis 4, Artemis 5, and it's going to the lunar gateway. And there's not only lunar launch windows, but launch windows that have to happen to be able to line up with docking with the gateway. I guess that exists for Artemis 3 too, because they're going to dock with the Lunar Starship.

So there's just, it's not, we're not getting less constraints as we go through this program. We're getting more constraints. And if these things are just the way that this vehicle operates, I have major concerns about this vehicle being able to fit into the architecture overall in the future. And that's, I think, where it comes down to what is the future for SLS that we've all been talking about for years? When is Congress going to buck up and cancel it? When is NASA going to shed the dead weight? These are the things that people talk about over time with SLS. And I don't think any of those things are going to happen. You can go look at the work that Casey Dreyer at the Planetary Society has done about

the politics behind SLS and why we have it. And He had a great write-up a little bit before the launch about that. He's done huge dives into the budget and how this all shook out and the political side of it all and the fact that it has so much political support that it really can't be cancelled in its current state. Not only that, if you're somebody who digs Starship, you don't want it canceled because there's a huge amount of Starship funding and importance placed upon Starship because of SLS and Orion. So I think the way that SLS goes in the future is fading out into irrelevance because other programs and other systems and other vehicles are flying consistently and reliably, frequently, systems and other vehicles are flying consistently and reliably, frequently, and they become the things that we look to in these long gaps between SLS missions. That's really the future I see, is that, you know, not only, okay, let's say this is Artemis 2, and we had these similar issues, and it's going to be another two months before Artemis II launches,

from its first attempt to the attempt where it actually flies. In that, right, it's 2024, 2025, whenever this gets off the pad, how many starships would have flown in that two-year gap? Hell, how many New Glens would have flown in that gap? How many Vulcan Centaurs would fly? Because they're going to be shooting off Amazon Kuiper satellites every 10 minutes based on the amount of vehicles they've sold. How many of these other vehicles will fly in that gap just between initial launch attempt and when it flies, let alone when it flies and when the next one flies? And each of those long gaps is an opportunity for these other systems to step up and show how quickly they can fly, the cadence they can fly at, the speed of iteration between changes

of the vehicle and testing of the vehicle, improvements in the vehicle. How many of these flights will we see before Artemis III takes off on the launch pad? And how long is that cadence difference survivable from a technical side? And that doesn't necessarily matter right now when we're looking at Artemis 1 and 2, when it's tests of a vehicle, a launch vehicle in this case, and then a crew vehicle in the next case. It doesn't necessarily matter when it's that. But when we have a lunar lander capable of going down to the surface, when we have a lunar gateway out there, if we start to have surface assets like habitats on the surface, and there's international or commercial partners

going to those habitats, when we start to have other things that are the flagships of Artemis rather than just SLS, it'll look like a waste that we can only use those other assets once every two or three years by the time SLS gets off the launch pad. So it's that situation. It's the six, seven, eight year distance in the future when Artemis means other things, not just SLS, when the cadence difference really matters. When we're sitting around for two years and we're like, man, it would be fun to go hang out at our lunar habitat. Yeah, I got other rides that can take you there. And that's the situation I think that that has to happen for this SLS program to go away or to be used differently than it is currently envisioned as the backbone of the

system. Maybe it's just an occasional help to the system if they are able to, you know, maybe we don't use it for crew anymore, but we use that 10 meter fairing to launch these really one-off pieces of infrastructure. Still kind of weird, still something I could see going away in the future, but maybe that's the medium future for SLS before, you know, the other programs take over entirely. There's never going to be a day when Congress comes out and goes, you know what, we were wrong, we're writing SLS out of law, we're scratching this out of the laws that we've passed in years gone by, and everything will fly on these other commercial systems now. That's never going to happen. It's going to need to be that the industry is in such a place that it feels like we're

missing out on missions and capabilities by waiting for the next SLS to get to the launch pad. And because of the technical and political decisions that were made to make SLS this very fragile-seeming launch system, there are huge opportunities for the industry to prove themselves in that way. The one last thing I want to talk about is the public perception of the program overall, because these are the kind of missions when people start texting me, friends and family that aren't necessarily space people, start texting me about what's up with this launch, what's the deal with this thing. And there's a couple of takeaways I had from those interactions. takeaways I had from those interactions. Number one, and a problematic point for the point I was just making, everyone just calls this rocket Artemis. They don't know the name for it because it doesn't have, I have to explain, no, it doesn't have a name. It's called Space Launch System,

like the Space Transportation System was. So SLS is the name of the rocket, Artemis is the program, and that's the mission. Everyone just calls it the Artemis rocket, which I think shows that the Artemis branding is really strong. That actually gets through to public that doesn't care about space generally, that the name resonates and is memorable for them, which I think is an important thing if you're NASA. So thumbs up on the Artemis branding. I am glad that the Biden administration has kept that around from the Trump administration. I hope that it goes forward into the future. And I also hope that the program, if it gets canceled, or if the SLS gets canceled, or if the Lander gets canceled, or if the Lunar Gateway gets canceled, if any of these things get canceled, we can retain the Artemis branding because I think it's a really good one and I would hate it to go away. Like we've seen good names in the past, like Ares go

away because of cancellations. Number two, people ask me, when they look at the rocket, they say, which part is coming back to land? They don't say, does this part land? They say, which part lands? And it's an expectation, a general expectation that something on this rocket is coming back to land. And then that leads to the whole conversation about how it doesn't or none of this is reusable. It's just all going in the ocean. And that gets into the whole conversation about why is that done that way? Yada yada. Like what I find interesting is that their first or second question leads directly to

the same conversation that space nerds have about this vehicle all the time. leads directly to the same conversation that space nerds have about this vehicle all the time. And I think we tend to think that, no, the general public doesn't care about those kind of conversations, but their curiosity about this program and about this rocket and the public perception of spaceflight right now in general is such that it leads them directly down into the same rabbit holes that we've been arguing about for like five years third thing somewhat relatedly um this whole scrubbed launch attempt thing and then a launch attempt a week later and then scrubbed that and then uncertainty about what's going to happen after that um that nobody's nobody's excited about that people would ask like, you know, what the hell's going on with this NASA rocket? Um, and they asked in a flippant way that I feel like is not, you know, no one is fooled by the space is

hard argument outside of like one subset of the space industry. Uh, they're like, I thought NASA does rockets that work. And, and it's like, oh, I guess this is what happens when you cancel a shuttle program. Like some people have said that kind of thing to me. So I don't think as much as NASA was asked about this, and they kind of demurred and say, well, the public perception of a failure is much higher than a public perception of a scrub. When they made such a big, you know, to do about the first launch attempt, and they don't even get close to the countdown going off, I think people notice. And I don't know how much that matters in the long term. I don't think that really changes the trajectory of the program. But people do notice. And I think it's silly that

Bill Nelson, NASA administrator, and others in leadership are downplaying that fact because people do notice. And there are other programs to compare to that even normal people know about that aren't super space nerds like you and I. Again, the perception is that all rockets land now. So there are things to compare this system to. And NASA was not in that situation when the shuttle was flying. NASA is in a different space industry today. And I think that is a problem for them from a public perception perspective, from a communications perspective, that I really hope that they're not going to miss entirely. So anyway, we will see what happens with this launch attempt.

We'll see if they're able to get this waiver and go towards the end of September. I kind of think it's going to be more like October or November by the time this thing gets off the pad. But we will see what happens. And as always, I will be talking about it here. Thank you all so much for listening. Thanks for your support as always over at mainenginecutoff.com slash support. If you have any questions or thoughts, hit me up on email anthony at mainenginecutoff.com or on Twitter at wehaveMiko. And until next time, I'll talk to you soon.