Main Engine Cut Off - T+253: The German and European Launch Industry (with Adrian Beil)

Episode Date: June 14, 2023

Adrian Beil of NASASpaceFlight.com (and a long-time beloved member of the Off-Nominal Discord) joins me to talk about the state of German and European launch, with new entrants Rocket Factory Augsburgand Isar Aerospace getting close to the launch pad, many others working their way there, and institutional launch struggling amidst delays and geopolitics.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 34 executive producers—Frank, Harrison, Dawn Aerospace, Russell, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut), Bob, Pat, Benjamin, Kris, Lars from Agile Space, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Stealth Julian, Joel, Fred, Simon, Theo and Violet, David, Pat from KC, The Astrogators at SEE, Tyler, Jan, Joonas, Chris, Steve, Matt, Warren, SmallSpark Space Systems, Donald, Ryan, Lee, and four anonymous—and 831 other supporters.TopicsAdrian Beil (@BCCarCounters) / TwitterAdrian Beil, Author at NASASpaceFlight.comOff-NominalRocket Factory AugsburgIsar AerospaceHyImpulseRocket Factory Augsburg on Twitter: “Four days since we wrote history in Europe – and (of course) we still get goosebumps when watching the video! Now we want to share with you again four moments from our most exciting 280 seconds ever!”The biggest Meet & Greet of the European space community! - Space Creator DayThe ShowLike the show? Support the show!Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] @WeHaveMECOFollow @[e-mail] on MastodonListen to MECO HeadlinesListen to Off-NominalJoin the Off-Nominal DiscordSubscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhereSubscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off NewsletterArtwork photo by Global TimesWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cutoff, I am Anthony Colangelo, and today we have a beloved member of the off-nominal community, Adrian Bile of nasaspaceflight.com, here to talk with us about the European launch industry, specifically a focus on some of the German companies that are starting up on the small launch segments and how that interacts with the overall European launch situation. And I'm sure we'll get into a ton of different rabbit holes on the weird state of launch in Europe with obviously the chaos that was inflicted upon it after the invasion of Ukraine and the resulting effects in their launch industry from Aryan space

side but there's a whole new crop of small launchers that are coming up in Europe as well as a bunch of different spaceports being proposed being built out being worked on so it's an interestingly shifting time and Adrian's got a really interesting perspective on it, having talked to some of the players in Germany and having good insight in that side. And we keep mentioning Germany because they are the farthest along, as I'm sure we'll talk about. But there are some other players that are worth mentioning as well. So it should be a fun conversation. Like I said, Adrian's been around in the Discord for a long, long time and now is at nasaspaceflight.com

writing about all sorts of different stuff from China to Starship to this European perspective that he's got. But also he's got a long history on the Starship side of things. He was spreadsheet guy back in the day. If you were in the Discord, you might remember he was working on this spreadsheet tracking timing of Starship launches and being able to actually predict different parts of the launch flow. So he's been around for a while and it's really cool to finally have him on the show. So without further ado, let's talk to Adrian. Adrian, Mr. I guess I should have I should have started this show by saying the only way I should start this show is saying

yo Adrian and that is a deep Philadelphia reference for those listening so you probably don't even get that no no that's an American reference have you ever seen the movie Rocky no no okay I'm like that's another one on the list

yeah just just yeah I mean there's some good ones there's some good ones in there yeah uh so i was just explaining this to you before we actually hit record but i find very few people that are willing to talk to me about european launch it's in a really interesting spot uh for a variety of reasons from the obvious chaos that has been inflicted upon european like institutional launch after ukraine and all the rise of the commercial launchers that are coming on you've visited one or some in person so you felt like the right person to help me figure out what's going on here

i've talked to uh people from isar and from rfa from rocket Factory Augsburg both and yes I'm mostly in the picture with the German ones of course with Rocket Factory Augsburg with ESA Aerospace and with High Impulse these are the three big ones that are coming up here in Germany I would could not call myself an expert in like every

single startup in Europe because at this point it feels like we are like at about 100 it's too many to keep track of for sure every single startup in Europe, because at this point it feels like we are like at about 100. I feel like it's too many to keep track of for sure. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's also why I'm, I'm,

I'm actually more interested in somebody who's not up on all of them because I feel like you'll have a better barometer of helping me and listeners understand like what things should we actually care about? Should we focus on actually, and I should roll this back. Like you have a very interesting origin story on how you're on this podcast here and so people might not know adrian and i would like if they've been in the off nominal discord they know adrian if they have not or if they've not watched a lot

of nasa spaceflight stuff uh who is adrian uh yeah i am a journalist and at this point full-time for nasa spaceflight you probably know us from doing the Starship stuff. That's what we mostly do at this point. But I also write a lot about, for example, Chinese and European spaceflight. I have started my space journey on the Off-Nominal Discord listening to Wee Martian and Miko. And over time, it developed into becoming a space journalist myself. And so this is like really funky for me right now, because I started with listening to this show.

And now I'm on this show. Coiling over the spreadsheet too, the old Starship tracker spreadsheet, which is, I feel like we got the early days of that in the Discord and watched it flourish into being the actual timeline for Starship launches. Yeah, it became increasingly accurate. At some point, I have to say, at this point, I kind of stopped doing it super precisely because at this point, it feels like everybody knows it. But I think that's a good thing. If everybody knows it, I think I did my job well. Your thing worked. Yeah, totally.

If everybody knows it, I think I did my job well. Your thing worked. Yeah, totally. So yeah, before we get into the European launch stuff, if people aren't listening to Off Nominal, you'll be on, it's in about a month, I think, July 6th, if I was looking at my calendar. Yes, July 6th. And we're going to talk about the origins of the spreadsheet. And you got to go down to Boca Chica for the Starship launch.

That worked out. I'm sure you have great stories from some of the pictures I've seen. So offnom.com, people should follow and listen to Origin stuff. But all that aside, where should we start? What's most helpful as like an entry point here? The battle between the institutional, the commercial launchers, and like kind of what's the general vibe, I guess. We should start with the old Nico vibe check.

Okay, I think the general vibe is it's less a topic in the public than people i think would expect from coming from a u.s background because i feel like if you talk to people from the u.s they're like space is it's an important topic people talk about it i think if i told like 10 random people on the street hey there are startups developing rockets in germany they would be like no um they're like rockets that go sideways you mean not up like the sideways rockets they're like they wouldn't know it's it's it's not a topic that is on the front page here um it's it's exciting for space fans at this point uh of course with the front runners right now i think being isar and rocket factory ox both both are aiming for 2023 and i think as soon as we get to like a launch campaign that might heat up things

but as of right now i wish it was more of a topic and not like a i need to go to page 15 and then they're like oh, they've static fired something. So the other aspect that's hard to get our heads around is like, how these companies got to their position, right? Because in the US, we have this typical storyline of like, how all the startup launch companies developed, where, you know, there was the old, the old launch companies that were there for like the military industrial complex reasons, through the, you know, original original space era all the way through like the shuttle era and whatnot and then there's been this explosion of launch interest spacex starting out most notably on the smaller end and growing up the scale and then all these others coming in saying like we should do you know our falcon one um where do these new starts from the german perspective are they kind of on that trail end of like, what if we started with small launch?

Or is that a legitimate niche that they see that needs filling in European launch in the market right now? I think there is some part of this that is, of course, SpaceX oriented. They saw, like, I think the world saw SpaceX worked, like the startup to big approach work. But all of the threes have some sort of institutional background. You have, or like at least company, bigger company background. You have High Impulse with DLR in the background somewhere. You have ESA Aerospace with the Technical University Munich somewhere in there.

And you all have the Rocket Factory Augsburg with OHB. So there's always another company attached to this and there's not this one big contract that suddenly sparked everybody drushing in. It's more a general market move, I feel like.

And the tricky part then is like, you know, the European launch market has been served by the institutional operators because of the weird circumstance that is aryan space and you know aryan 5 obviously and now six on the aryan 5 we should pour one out this is we're coming up on the last one here uh but aryan 5 and 6 on the on the upper end vega and and there might be some interesting things to talk about with vega and and rumors i heard about Avio trying to spin that off. But there's this, you know, and Soyuz is now no longer an Arianespace offering, but they had the spread covered from small to large. And then there's the weird aspect where I think a lot of times people compare Arian 5 and 6 to Falcon 9 because it had a huge place in the commercial market for so long.

But I always contend that that's the wrong way to think about it, that it is like, you know, what if we had SLS that also could sell commercial launches that that is more akin to the place that those launchers fit into the industry overall. So but I'm not sure like, you know, ISAR and RFA and the others, the market that they're looking at the customers that they're looking at, like, who are they targeting? Are there institutional launches that would move over to a small launch vehicle like that? Or does it still kind of like, we hope we can capture some of the rideshare market and some of the international market? I just can't make sense of that. I think right now, it's a bit of a subsidized combination of Europe wanting to have launchers. So there will be at least some sort of

political push to give these launchers contracts. We already see that with some ESA contracts, more on the smaller node, but like smaller one getting assigned to them. So I think there is some political interest to have independent access to space in Europe. I don't think it would completely move away Europe, for example, from the Falcon 9, because let's be real, it would take many, many years to even develop this capacity here.

But I think they're trying to capture like these smaller payloads, maybe like replacement for constellations, like something smaller and more in the, in where they can grab it situation. And I think actually that's also a problem with this because we don't have this one big contract that elevates a company into spheres where they want to be.

It's more this, yeah, you get 20 million here and 15 million there and 5 million here. And you have that a lot. But of course, with this money, you don't develop a Falcon 9. Yes, you can support a small satellite launch vehicle, but we will not get a reusable Falcon 9 with the funding approach that Europe has right now.

It's not possible. Yeah, and even if it... Well, so, okay, I guess, why is that? Is that purely the influence of, you know, the Aryan space conglomerate? Like, what is the thing preventing that from developing at thisate? What is the thing preventing that from developing at this point? Or is there nothing preventing it?

It just hasn't happened yet. I think Arian still hopes to develop it. There's always this talk about Ariannext and going to reusable with the Prometheus engine and everything. But maybe that's a bit of a cynical side of me, but I fail to see this in a reasonable time frame. We are right now talking about

American companies going to fully reusable rockets. We in Europe are talking about yeah we can maybe go partially reusable in the 2030s and that's that feels kind of a bummer. So I think a lot of funding still goes

to Aryan Space. I mean, that's pretty obvious right now and that it's bound there. And it's also a bit part like there's also politics involved here. You have a situation where France funds a lot of ESA. So ESA signs a lot to Aryan Space. So it's a whole political situation that I don't think benefits the market right now,

but benefits a few players that are getting the money from ESA and other contractors. Yeah, at the same time, though, politically, that is a straight-up defensible strategy, right? Like, if... I don't ever see there being a problem with a country or, you know, a group of countries deciding that they need independent access to space. Like, I feel like that's a legitimate thing to believe that,

that you need that. Right. And we've seen how strategically important it is over the last year and a half for sure. That's proved itself time and time again in the U S we have, you know, SpaceX is probably up there on the list of most valuable national security assets right like full stop but at the same time that's

not like it's dependable as much as spacex is they aren't interested in serving that kind of market but they're also able to then decide that they want to go to something else or hypothetically have you know somebody running the company that makes decisions that seem to change on a dime like so in that way and and if you're on the politics side like you do want to assure that there is a market there and that's why i've always thought some of the like oh ula got subsidies for so long that that sort of thing was a bit unfair because it's like yeah subsidy but also like the u.s air force decided that they want to spend money to make sure there are launch vehicles for them to use and that's fair right like not fair as in like it's fair to the market because it is a little bit picking winners and losers to some extent but it's also about like that's a thing they value so they're

putting money towards it but then it's tough to unstick in these circumstances where you know now there is entrenched interest in that way. And you see people starting up companies that are interesting routes to take, but they have to fight against that. So it's a push and pull, but I don't feel like it's a completely unreasonable decision from the politics end. Yeah, I think right now we are, I think the situation was okay if you looked at it in a 2020 situation, but suddenly we lost access to Soyuz. We have Vega C, which, well, had its problems. And we have Ariane 5

that is running out, while Ariane 6 is nowhere near to support any meaningful cadence. So right now, we have a good situation with the fact that Europe and the US have a good relationship. We can book flights on a Falcon 9, no problem. But I don't think this is like an optimal case.

I think if you developed in a situation where, yes, Soyuz was still flying, you get Ariane 6 running while Ariane 5 is retiring, you're fine. But now we are in a... We're not in that world. Yeah, we are not in that world. fine but now we are in that world yeah we are not in that world we are in a situation where euro basically lost almost every good access to space in a short period of time and that's not optimal to me and also it of course and that's the other part of it doesn't help you to catch excitement for the projects and excitement for politicians to fund these projects because they're like okay you're booking another flight on an American rocket.

It's not a rocket where they can be proud of and say like, yeah, this was built in our country. No, it was built in the United States. And it's hard to sell. You mentioned that some of the smaller payloads that are getting assigned to these new companies, I forget what high impulse is targeting but i know rfa and uh um isar are in like the one ton range is that right yes i know isar is i haven't looked at rfa in a while but i think isar is uh one one ton exactly and uh rfa is like a tad above that like

300 1350 kilograms like somewhere in there so that kind of fits like the yeah the smaller constellations or or environmental satellites things that are certainly a marketable payloads like those are things that and you know like the um copernicus program or sentinel some things that could fit and i forget i guess sentinel's a little bigger but yeah yeah i think think Sentinel would be hard. But some of these other things that are like, we're putting up a new monitoring constellation, we're putting up imaging constellations.

So that stuff makes sense to target. I guess I'm, you know, it's always the age-old question of like, is that a market big enough, like you're saying, to then give these companies enough to push up the payload scale and start making encroachments onto the other areas that's that's a tricky lego situation to you know build that from the ground up i think it's also in a tricky situation for the companies because we are talking about is there a market for like one or two companies to support this we are talking about like 15 20

companies trying to do this in all Europe. And there's for sure not a market for 20 small side companies in Europe. So there will be a situation where they start to maybe drop and we will see some of them getting funding, some of them maybe lacking funding and yeah, not getting to launch.

And that's why also like ESA and RFA excite me right now. Because I think they're close. And I think as soon as you launch something and you show, hey, we can do this. That might be a situation where you attract more funding, where you can get the first mover kind of situation. And yeah, I hope that it sparks some excitement that's that's my honest hope right now can you tell us about your visits uh to the different facilities and some of the stuff that you picked up i have not uh visited uh the facilities directly yet i have talked with the officials um i i have more contact so far with rFA and like they based on both interactions that with both

companies they seem very German they seem very like focused on the thing I think the different approach between both companies is RFA is a bit more upfront they're more like hey they tweet stuff they show you more tests they they recently twittered their successfully uh firing of their second stage engine for the full duration, for example. They're a bit more like they scream at you, hey, we want to do this. ISAR is a bit harder to understand. They're a bit more secretive. So I have a bit of a better picture about RFA right now because they just make it easier to approach them and get a picture of them.

But so far, based on what we know, they're both targeting end of this year ish um so i hope that would be cool the second stage thing is certainly a huge achievement you know i mean that's even for all of the new launchers that have come out of the us like that was always the moment when it something either blew up in the way that ABL had an issue and then it took them another couple months to get to the launchpad or once you see that, you're like, oh, you're there. You did that. I mean, even Vulcan, right? They're struggling with their upper

stage at the moment. That is very confidence inspiring that they are at that point. So from here to there, just the launch site situation, we haven't really talked about that either. That's maybe delve into the world of the European launch sites and what the situation is there. There's been a lot of noise, you know, all the different UK launch sites that everyone's fighting over where we should put it in the middle of nowhere and what island we should choose and all that kind of stuff.

And the Virgin Orbit situation happened that was like, hey, we got a new capability. Grand opening, grand closing. Like, that's what happened there. I think they still have, like, a Pathfinder rocket somewhere. And, like, recently the UK government posted, like, a picture like, hey, we have this rocket.

I'm like, yeah, I'm not sure if you... You still have it because no one's coming to pick that up anymore. Like, congrats. You now have that rocket. Congratulations. It's abandoned. Now, the situation is trickier for the German companies.

I don't know the last time you looked, but your eastern flank is not probably where you want to be launching rockets necessarily. Yeah. Not a great decision at the moment. So what are they going to do? Well, there's, of course course the Andoya spaceport in Norway, which is always, you can kind of go

a bit of high inclination Leo or, for example, Sun Synchronous from there. There are other talks about, for example, launching from the North Sea with a platform. Europe doesn't have a great location to launch rockets phone

because we have a west coast a huge one and that's not really helping um but there's creative ways to to start doing this there's also like shetland isles and great britain where these companies want to launch from and i think a lot of these is like talks between the governments uh isa and the companies like what do you need what do we need to support so there is some political will to support this and get a spaceport running um i think it will still be i i really root for something in the north sea at this point because i want to see it like a german launch of a german vehicle from germany because right now it feels like okay we built this rocket,

ship it off to like Sweden or Norway and launch it from there. It feels less exciting. You're now named Adrian Bridenstine is now what we're going to call you there. Yeah, I think it like, just from a perspective of selling it to the public, I think it would be more sell to launch it here because otherwise it feels, again, like

the situation we have right now with Arianespace because they're launching from South America. It's not really connected. You cannot see the rocket going up in the horizon. It's just launching somewhere. And there are talks of adding commercial sites there as well.

Yes. I'm not sure. It's always tricky, right? We have the same situation in the US when companies are interested in launching out of like Kodiak in Alaska. And you talk to some people that have done that. And it's like, boy, it's a long way to get your rocket from where you're at all the way up there and deal with getting consumables out there.

Like there's logistical challenges involved with going there and then having to live there for however many days it takes you to launch your vehicle. So it's not always great to be that far away from your launch site. The benefit of KORU is it's like a legitimate launch infrastructure. It's not, it's not, you know, this kind of small off the beaten path thing.

And that's the, some of the biggest launches in the world happen there. So, um, but at the same time, you were then going to find yourself in a circumstance like many people kennedy spaceport right now kennedy space center or uh cape canaveral anything like that where you as a small player have to be okay playing second fiddle right so if somebody else has a bigger operations going on you're gonna have to shut down for the

day um so is there are the the companies necessarily interested in that option or would they take it if it's available because it opens up equatorial options i think all the free germans uh german companies have at least at some point signaled interest in launching from uh french kriana um okay this this might sound very evil but right now the cadence is just not there yet that it would block anybody from launching there because totally true yeah it's it's like yeah we launched two rockets a year from there so it's it's not really a busy schedule like cape canaveral we're like oh it's wednesday that's another falcon nine day um so falcon nines are fighting over the schedule for each other yeah yeah there was like this recent SpaceX post where they had every rocket

they launched, which is like a row of rockets at some point. Yeah, it's not that... I think there was a month where SpaceX launched more in one month than Arianespace launched in like two years. So,

it's a bit of a... I think there's space there. we can afford more launches from fresh kiana it is interesting though that the um for small companies like this a lot of their market is going to be sun synchronous or high inclination so it's it's not an unworkable situation that most of the space sports that you have access to are flying there right like that's that is a huge market so it's a that is a huge market. So it's a big enough market that SpaceX started flying to sun synchronous from Cape Canaveral, which is not an easy thing to do, right?

And there's clearly enough demand and benefit for them maintaining a single spaceport to get to that orbit. That is a trio of things. But like that, I think that indicates that that is a sensible solution that would at least get them, these launches that you're talking about being assigned to them, that would cover most of their ground. And if they need to, I guess...

So the other... Are any of these like the containerized launch idea? Like AVL space? I'm right now thinking if anybody of them has talked about it. They're all relatively small, so they should be easy to transport in the grand scheme of things.

But I'm not sure if anybody of them has especially talked about it, like containerized transport yet. But of course, we are also approaching the point where you would talk about that in your marketing, because now you're getting to a point. So we'll maybe see that in the next few months, once they're ready to talk about that in your marketing because now you're getting to a point so we'll maybe see that in the next few months once they're ready to

talk about that. It would certainly be the way I would go if I was one of them, right? Knowing that there is this huge range of spaceports that are, like we don't even know which ones are actually going to pan out over the long term, right? There's so many I feel like every week I see oh, this one got, you know, approval

at this level but they still got to wait for these three other approvals, and they still have to go have dinner with that guy and shake that person's hand. Absolutely. It's so mysterious what the path for these different areas are from where they are now to an actual spaceport. So if you're one of these companies, you want to kind of protect your options there. I feel like it's also a situation where everybody waits for the big drop of money for making like a really sophisticated spaceport it's like yeah we have all of these options but no i think no country is like really invested in dropping huge amounts

of money yet they're all waiting on hey will this work will we need this? And they're uncertain still. And once, of course, you get into a situation where they see opportunities in it and see the need of it, I think we will see more money, especially like governmental money spent on infrastructure that is just needed. And not just these commitment papers where somebody's like, yeah, we are committing to build a spaceport here. And then three people smile into a camera.

I love it. Do you have a sense for why... Now, again, I'm mostly uninformed in this department, and I read your writing, Andrew Parsonson, some others that are writing about European spaceflight. The list of companies that you're naming out of Germany are the ones that I've had that most interest peaked by these companies in particular. Do you have a sense

for why it is the German companies that are exciting us the most and seem the closest to this? Just a random happenstance or is there some sort of good mix of a community there? I think

there is maybe a bit more community there of course we have isa facilities here as well so there's also pr attached to it we are the biggest country in europe after all so that helps probably getting more traction it's um i wish there was a bit more excitement in germany again um but overall I think it's just like the pulling force of Germany being the biggest nation in Europe and that probably helps because

I always feel like there's a situation where we look at French and be like they get launches and they have a rocket so there was a situation where maybe some people in Germany were interested in also promoting German launches. And that might be the reason. Also, they're close.

I think High Impulse actually doesn't get that much spotlight because they're not that close yet. But EZAR and RFA just get spotlight because they're super close to launch. They might be just six months or so away. So I think that helps them being a bit more in the in the focus for sure um

you the funny thing is too that like i feel like i need to dispel a fiction that there's a massive excitement around space flight in america because like if we if again you know you listen to the shows like spacex is an extreme outlier everyone Everyone knows when SpaceX is doing a thing because it makes its way all over social media and actual media and everything else. But like aside from that and like even the highest profile things, you know, not my non space friends would be like, what is Richard Branson up to? Like, what's this thing that's going on here? Like there's a casual awareness, but there's not a, like, it's not trending on TikTok every day. So. Yeah, I think.

Yeah. I get what you mean. I think it's a bit better because at least people probably know that you have NASA. I think that. Yeah, yeah. Like, they know that it exists. If you would. I'm not kidding.

If you would ask people here, I think none of them could. Like, a lot of them could not name that we have a space agency. Yeah. They would tell, like, I don't know, the the nasa like we work with nasa i guess yeah yeah yeah well and you're talking about isa let alone the you know the bigger german companies that contribute to the a lot of the planetary missions and all the engineering missions and whatnot so i think i think there was there is also some move on isa copying nasa moves because i think they're working on for for example,

getting merchandise into normal clothing shops with the ESA logo on it. There was like talks about that. So I think they're like- They're striking up a big deal with Target or something. Yeah, they're like, what makes NASA so pop culture aware? I'm like, yeah, they're on every shirt. So that maybe helps and they start to do that.

And also to be fair with them isa started to open up more um we get more access we get more interview partners we get to talk with them more so i think there was a click there that they need to open up more it's just a bit later than i think people would have expected it and i over the long term it will of course help because it helps other people to educate about it. For sure. What was the last thing I was going to mention? I just blanked out. I'm going to have to edit this part of the show.

Now you get to see what it's really like. It's about being alive, right? Yeah, exactly. Who am I kidding? I'm keeping it in. You did mention to me the other day the Space Creator Day that's happening. Yes. um who am i kidding i'm keeping it in uh you did mention to me the other day uh the um space creator day that's happening yes and i would like to hear what's up with this because it sounds like a very interesting situation here yeah i think it started as a very funny idea where okay we have a

german discord server where like german space enthusiasts just chat around um that started about around a german creator called Sankrechstatter and around that it just revolved into like a German community. And last year we then kind of started an event with 200 people and like creators, journalists and everything meeting up at the Buran shuttle in Speyer in South Germany. And we had a great time. We just talked about space all day. We had some presentations and everything. And this year,

the idea is to scale it up, to make it bigger. And we are right now, we have our own hall this year where we invite creators. I think we have Tim Dodd this year even there. I remember that because I saw him talk about it at some point. Yeah.

And like Felix from what about it? And of course I will be there. And we have like people there that want to talk with, with people that are space enthusiasts and hopefully also companies. And you can like get tickets for that. And it's just an event next to the museum inspire. And if you don't want to look at space craters, you can also get a ticket for the museum

and look at the Buran shuttle because that's in the other hall. So yeah, it's just an event where we want to make sure that people in Europe get excited about space and be aware. And yeah, we are scaling it up quite a bit this year. That's awesome. And yeah, I mean museum man come on that's like gotta be on every nerd's uh bucket list for sure it's it's such a cool museum um of course you go in there it's like the big boran shuttle but there's also

i think a arianne 5 upper stage is there there's moon suits there's like tps from the shuttle it's it's one of the best access to space stuff if you're not in the u.s in a museum it's like that's that's a good access yeah it's uh there's that one what's the one in um there's that one museum somewhere in russia that has like every different engine that has been developed in Russia ever. I forget what that one's called. I've seen somebody tweet their way through that museum once. I guess it might just be at Baikonur or Star City or something.

I have to pull out where it is. There's also a Chinese one with all their rockets and everything, like an air show. But you always also see pictures of it with their new rockets. Well, it's not open. They just keep drawing stuff. show but you always also see like pictures of it uh with their with their new rockets at w well it's it's not open they just keep drawing stuff yeah they just keep adding on to it kerbal style but adrian this has been awesome to hang out and uh get my head around this situation uh i'll mention once well first of all i have the space creator day link in the show notes people need to

check that out and uh like i said july 6th you'll be on off nominal we're going to talk about uh i'm probably going to make you dig out the first version of the spreadsheet that you can find uh so that's your homework you've got a month to deliver on this uh because i would love to see i could probably find it in discord yeah i think i still have like the screenshots of the first one i don't think i have the original one because it evolved like into scripts and stuff um but i i will do my best to to show it to you all right check that out everybody and uh if there's anything else you want to plug anything going on nasa spaceflight that people should be aware of if they've not followed along well we had a lot of falcon lines that was interesting but we are hopefully moving into starship testing again this week. And also I hope to, again, Chinese space flight is my kind of thing.

So I'm working on an article for the second flight of Zhukui 2, maybe taking the crown and the methane rays. So that's also my project for this week. That's what I'm doing right now. So check all of these things out. That's what I'm planning. We'll probably have to have you back after that one anyway. So don't go too far. I'm looking forward now. So check all of these things out. That's what I'm playing. It'll probably have to have you back after that one anyway. So don't don't go too far.

I'm looking forward. Thanks again, man. Thanks again to Adrian for coming on the show. And as I mentioned, he'll be on off nominal within the next month. And that should be really fun to dig into some of the background and origin story stuff with him. But it was hugely helpful to have his perspective, helping us figure out what to uh what to pay attention to what to make sense of in the launch situation over there right now so very very cool to have him on the show and uh very cool to have all of you supporting this show this show is 100 listener supported i could not do it without your support there are 865 of you over at main engine cutoff.com, including 34 executive producers.

Thanks to Frank, Harrison, Dawn Aerospace, Russell, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Bob, Pat, Benjamin, Chris, Lars from Agile Space, Craig from SpaceHappyHour.com, Stealth Julian, Joel, Fred, Simon, Theo and Violet, Dave, Pat from KC, the Astrogators at SCE, Tyler, Jan, Eunice, Chris, Steve, Matt, Warren, SmallSpark Space Systems, Donald, Ryan, Lee, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for making this episode possible. If you want to help support the show, head over to managecutoff.com slash support

and join the crew there. There's a couple of different options. Get you in the Discord, get you in the headlines. There's a bunch of things to look at over there. So head over there, check it out if you have not yet. I thank you all so much for your support. If you've got any questions or thoughts, hit me up on email, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com or on Twitter at WeHaveMiko. And until next time, I'll talk to you soon. Bye.