Main Engine Cut Off - T+287: Polaris Dawn (with Jared Isaacman)

Episode Date: November 1, 2024

Jared Isaacman of the Polaris Program joins me to talk about the Polaris Dawn mission, his EVA experience, the Hubble Space Telescope situation, how the Polaris Program and SpaceX approach tech development and flight planning, and the Philadelphia Eagles.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 31 executive producers—Jan, Matt, Fred, Harrison, The Astrogators at SEE, Pat from KC, Will and Lars from Agile, Warren, Steve, Joel, Pat, Better Every Day Studios, Donald, Lee, David, Kris, Frank, Josh from Impulse, Joonas, Ryan, Russell, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Stealth Julian, Bob, Theo and Violet, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsJared Isaacman (@rookisaacman) / XPolaris ProgramPolaris DawnSpaceX on X: “The @PolarisProgram’s Polaris Dawn crew performed the first-ever spacewalk from Dragon, travelled farther from Earth than anyone since the Apollo program, and used @Starlink to connect with those back on Earth”T+233: Jared Isaacman, Polaris Program - Main Engine Cut OffPrivate mission to save Hubble Space Telescope raises concerns, NASA emails show : NPRIn first sports bet from space, billionaire Jared Isaacson picks Eagles to win Super Bowl LVI | PhillyVoiceThe ShowLike the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack!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 SpaceXWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

hello and welcome to midnich and cutoff i'm anthony colangelo and we've got jared isaacman back on the show today he is the man behind the polaris program just flew up on dragon and uh did the first private eva uh which was awesome. So if you've not checked that out, they just posted a great kind of wrap up video on Twitter that will run you through the highlights that said previously on Polaris Dawn if you've not, if you hadn't watched along with the mission. So we're going to talk all about the mission and about some larger questions around the Polaris program and the way that they're kind of thinking about things, you know, a couple years into the program at this point, looking forward to future flights and talk about

how they plan things, what kind of challenges they'd like to take on, their relationship with the rest of the industry. So I'm very excited for this chat with Jared. So without further ado, let's give him a call. Jared, welcome back to the show. It's been over two years and now an epic space flight since we chatted. So I'm glad to have you back on. It's great to be back and time flies, that's for sure. I'm excited because that's enough time to have a lapse that some thoughts may have changed as the development of the Polaris program has unrolled since then. Uh, you know, the last time we chatted was October, 2022. So it was early days now that we know, um, then we were talking to kind of about the, the initial inspiration of Polaris program and how that developed out of, uh, inspiration

for, and, and your thoughts for how that all, that would all go. Um, we're beyond the first flight. So I'm, I'm curious to dig to dig in if things change and talk about some of the ways that the players program is taking life but before we get to that obviously got to talk about the flight and and here you know after you've had some time for for things to sink in um you know which we i mentioned before we started recording i had kid on the other show that i do and i was asking him what did he like better being at super high altitude or looking out the hatch now you got to stick your head out there so your answer may be different he'd like the high altitude but but uh you know how would you compare those two experiences yeah i mean well look just to hit on hit on it all i think like in terms of you know

what's changed from two years ago till now with the polaris program and now that we have one mission done i think like the idea is like you're no matter what you're trying to bridge the gap from the world that we have today in terms of, you know, you know, Falcon and Dragon to how dramatic the world is going to change when Starship arrives and you have two factories cranking them out and you can literally open up the entire solar system, you know, for experimentation and exploration and, you know, getting to Mars, making us truly a spacefaring civilization. And I'd say like, even without Polaris Dawn, like every day goes by, SpaceX works so quickly that you're learning new things. And then you're constantly asking the question of like, where could we apply this, you know, to help

better prepare things for the world of Starship. And generally, almost everything we do has to, you know, pass the test of will this help us get to Mars? So, yeah, for sure, we learned a lot off of Polaris Dawn. But I mean, literally, just seeing, you know, the super heavy booster get caught by, you know, by the chopsticks triggered a lot of dialogue of like, okay, so how does this change our current line of thinking? And I think one area is like timelines. We probably were all on a different timeline until we saw that as well. So I guess just saying like Polaristan for sure, we learned a lot from it that will go into informing the next mission. But even throughout the last two years, there's always new developments that are coming up that, you know, help us kind

of rethink what should be a next mission objective and where does that benefit up that, you know, help us kind of rethink what should be a next mission objective and where does that benefit the follow, you know, what's coming in the future. It's interesting to put it in that framework, right? Because it's, you also come from the world of software. So there's always a question of like, which thing do you ship when? And, you know, when is an MVP actually good enough to see the world and um i'm sure with blair's dawn you know kid and i and jake talked about how timeline had shifted over time as you might make a discovery and realize yeah we need a little bit more time at some point you had to make the call that it's it's time to fly was there anything that that you left off that that you said

all right we we could either slip six months and do this other thing on the flight, or we can fly now because this does take a legitimate and substantial step forward? No, I think it was right around, I don't know if it was November or December that it started to become clear that we've locked in the design for the EVA suits. I mean, you know, the EVA suit and the entire operation associated with it, I'd say drove most of the timeline. Don't get me wrong, like the Starlink laser links was a big engineering problem. And that there were still things kind of converging there, you know, right up to launch as well. But like the suit was really probably the biggest challenge. you know, right up to launch as well. But like the suit was really probably the biggest challenge. There was a period of time in late 23, where it was like, we're going to start making cuts into the, you know, for the final suits. So we're locking some things in. Now, they did break

that open a number of times, based on things that were learned in 24. But generally, like what the rotators would be, you know, how the joints would operate, you know, the stitching that was used to create dexterity in the fingers were reasonably locked in. And once you did that, then there was very, um, you know, once you kind of locked that in, there was very little to like, say like, you know, it's worth waiting for something further, because even if you, um, whatever you stood to learn from it probably wouldn't have had as much of a benefit at that particular time, versus go up, fly with what we have, bring back feedback, and we'll roll it into what's already being worked on through the next development suit. So yeah, I don't think we

were ever in a position in 2024 where it was, you know, it was ever posed that if we waited a little bit longer, we might stand to learn something more where whatever that delay would be would yield enough incremental results to make it worth it. That makes sense. Yeah, it's all a balance of, okay, we feel like we've got enough of a scope in front of us that we've got questions here that need to be answered before we go on to something else anyway. So, I mean, even we see that with the Starship. I don't know if it was intentional or not that Elon was tweeting out gaming videos that had Starship teleconferences on as well. But even in that, they were discussing, you know, we could have waited a day and done some additional checks, but we're glad we flew because we tested out a bunch of things.

So that's something that we're used to seeing in the open from SpaceX. And it's cool to have that exposure on the human spaceflight side of things as well. On the experiential side of the flight, right, it was your second launch. So I don't know if this is the case where when you watch a movie the second time, you notice little things that you glossed over on the first watch. Was there any aspect that you felt like having gone through it before you took in more or you made sure to like capture a particular moment? Or were you just like, no, it's just another flight.

I've been up in enough air and spacecraft at this point that, that I know what's going on here. I mean, uh, look, it is a, it is a total privilege to be able to go up there, um, have that experience and, and see the world from that perspective. I, I think in terms of like, um, you know, whether it's sensations, you know, there wasn't like any surprises in like, oh, launch, I picked up on something different this time or reentry, I picked up on something different this time, because I think you are so attuned in the moment and trying not to get behind your spaceship that you're very aware of what's happening, uh, and processing that. So, um, you know, launch was incredible. Re-entry is incredible. Uh, you know, so I would say in terms of those dynamic phases of flight, there was nothing like a new revelation from it. Um, and, uh, you know, but there were certainly were a lot of new things on the mission. Uh, we had five days to do a lot.

And, you know, we didn't want to leave anything on the table. So we literally spent every second we had trying to do those things. So there was a lot of learning. But I think like in terms of like the fundamentals of going to space and coming back, it was, you know, things were as expected. expected. How would you compare the experiences of the full-on cupola from your first flight to standing in that hatch as just you on the second? I'd be curious to hear a little bit of the differences that you made out from there. Yeah, I mean, it's totally two different experiences. You know, just the visual stimulus of looking out the cupola is unmatched. I mean, that window is unreal. You have no idea where it is, by the way.

I mean, when we were on Inspiration4, you put your hand up just to know when you were bumping into the window. So, like, I mean, you were immersed in this, you know, 360-degree, you know, visual stimulus of space. So that you can't beat but it is it was I had like how it impacted me was very different than being in a in the spacesuit you know outside the hatch where you have all sorts of additional stimulus not just visual you know there's pressure changes there's temperature changes you're there's a lot of exertion because there's physicality of moving against the suit, adrenaline's firing. And then it's just totally different. I mean, if you look out the window into the darkness of space and you see stars or the moon,

you know, it's exciting. It looks incredible. You you see that same thing from the suit with just the visor separating you from space, to me, it was a whole different sensation altogether. And I've said it many times, but it's a very unwelcoming feeling. It's not a, hey, this is pleasant. Everything around you is trying to kill you. You have no atmosphere. There's debris out here. It's a high radiation environment. And we didn't evolve to exist in this setting, but yet we have to be here. We have to conquer this. And when we do, when we figure out how to cross the seas or conquer the skies like we've done here on Earth, we will learn a lot and it will be better for all of humankind, but it will not be easy. That was a takeaway that I had on the EVA that you would not get looking out the window. As far as the training for the mission, I kind of want to separate out EVA-specific stuff with this question

because obviously that was, like you said, the huge focus of this flight and so much went into that. But as far as the rest of the flight went um you know a lot of the build-up to inspiration 4 was proving that this civilian mission could be done really really you know as we talked about on off nominal with kid this week it was very akin to the mercury program like can we do this and you're in the gemini how do we do this phase um so i'm sure there were lessons learned from the run-up to inspiration four, but did any of that impact the way that the crew trained for this flight? Was it less in any areas? Were there any areas where you realized we don't

actually need to do as much time on, you know, this thing that we did for inspiration four, and we could trim and focus elsewhere. Um, I'm, I'm sort of trying to figure out where you're at on the roadmap of, you know, if you're, if you're burning down all these things that we have in front of us so that someday flying to space is very normal and it doesn't require weeks and weeks or months and months of training. Um, are we making progress in that regard yet? Are we still super early? And it's really important that all this time gets dumped into the mission upfront. Well, I mean, it's, uh, I don't think that there are different ways to answer that question. Uh, training is largely based on the vehicle. So, um, like there is no

short changing flying on dragon. I mean, it was co-designed with NASA to have four crew members playing a role. Um, and, um, and you can't bypass that. So it'll be very different than, you know, Starship, where, you know, you could have 50 or 100 people and five of them are trained professionals that have a purpose for the benefit of the other 50. And the other 50 just get your basic airplane like this is what we do in certain circumstances. That's not how Dragon was designed. that's not how Dragon was designed. So, I mean, look, you know, crew nine and crew 10, you know, trained as much as, you know, probably crew two and crew three did on NASA side. Like, there's no like, we, you know, your training is built because it's identified specific situations that can happen in the vehicle. And if they happen, you have to know how to save your life and come home in those circumstances. I will say that like the amount of time that was spent on some of the, the, the basics was less, uh, because, you know, it was very widely known already, um, by the crew because Sarah Nana's background is mission

control operators. I've been to space before and was familiar with it. And, um, you know, and kid was there a lot, uh, you know, along that journey. And, you know, and Kidd was there a lot, you know, along that journey. So, you know, there were some focus sessions with him and such to get him up to speed. But generally, we focused on the development things, the things that didn't exist yet, and how would it, how will they eventually play out? And then kind of mission specific contingencies, high altitude, high radiation, you know, what happens if we lose certain systems and how we could recover from it or like full like Apollo 13 type scenarios if you had a massive solar flare that, you know, shorted out a lot of systems or EVA specific ones, failure to repressurize,

you know, medical issues that can directly relate to lowering the pressure in the vehicle during our pre-breathe and the EVA, like decompression sickness. So there, there was a lot of training spent more on the unique aspects of our mission, but you still had to know, um,

dragon should never dragon as a vehicle. We'll probably never get to the point where like, Hey, you only need a couple of weeks and you can go like, I don't think so. I think that's always going to be months. That's not the model of that. Yeah.

That makes sense. Um, especially a lot of that is scale like you're saying that uh there's going to be crew on on vehicles that tends to be the case you know now we've got some autonomous driving but like most times there's a there's some crew in a vehicle uh it's a it's how many other people are riding along with you that that also matters yeah um so being at this point now where you've got polaris dawn on your belt and uh i think it might have been you know you're no stranger to the the criticism of space like we talked about this on your last a last appearance here um some of the positioning that these kind of flights can get in the media i think you're significantly past that

at this point with polaris being like serious business, right? We're developing different capabilities. We're focusing on new developments at SpaceX. I think we focused too much on the external appearance of that last time and not enough. I'm curious about like the internal to the space industry kind of vibes. I hearken back to Richard Garriott flying up to the ISS the first time and there being a serious aversion to that from people within NASA or different parts of the astronaut corps or some of the old guard in the industry. And it was very unfriendly to those those early private travelers. I don't know how much how much crossover you've had in those areas where that kind of sentiment would happen in the space industry. But have have you encountered any of that? Has there been any change in, in how you're seen amongst that kind of old guard, if you will,

um, over the course of these last few years? Sure. I think there, there has been quite a change internally. Now, you know, what's probably the top driving factor of that is, um, is the fact that a large portion of the NASA astronaut core has now flown on Dragon. So, you know, the recruiting classes, like the new NASA ASCAN classes are bigger than they've been in a very long time and back to back. And why is that? It's because of a commercial crew program that can send four up at a time every six months or more frequently if they wanted to. So I think it's hard to be like, you know, overly critical when we're right, we're taking the same ride to space. Um, and it's commercial industry that's enabling it for both parties. So I think like a lot of the NASA astronauts who say have flown on dragon are pretty welcoming and understand the direction that this is going. Um, you know, there is still, you know, some percentage more in the old guard. And that may

not feel the same. And I think some of them surfaced during the the Hubble conversation. And I get it, too, in terms of just this is like, there's some human nature element to this. I mean, you're talking about people who have worked incredibly hard in life to be selected to be one of the few to undertake this endeavor. And that's a great feeling. It's a big sense of accomplishment. You're doing it for your nation. And it's not a great feeling at times if you feel like, you know, that other people have a shortcut to it. Now, where they need to like, you know, you know, step back and have an appreciation is that folks like, you know, Sarah, and Anna, and kid, and, you know, Chris Simbroski, and Dr. Proctor, you know, and Haley, all worked very hard in life, too,

you know, all got a handful of degrees all helped people all help make society better. You know, they're pretty, they're pretty smart at what they do and they can be successful as well. It doesn't have to remain such an exclusive group. And, and I think overall, like those that are like smart enough to see the writing on the wall and know that this is inevitable. You're not putting this genie back in the, in the bottle again. So, you know, there will be always a place for government astronauts. There will be a place for commercial and private astronauts. And we can probably accomplish more together trying to, you know,

really pursue an opportunity we can't even, we can't even quantify, we can't even like accurately convey how much there is to learn out there. You know, and how much, you know, more effective we can be at figuring it all out with, with, with the many and not just the few. So I think it's just like an inevitable, it's just inevitable that like, we are gonna, we are already on this slippery slope, and it's gonna arrive at a good place. And I think most people that are, you know, paying attention internally realize that. Certainly so when there now have been so many examples of this same exact interaction, like whether it was launch itself or heavy lift by itself or then human space flight, right? There's been, we've had this conversation so many different times that it's annoying to continue to have it when when like the arrow is pointing in the in the direction of of space development and that's if you're in the industry that should be what you're focused on um i mean there's different

flavors right there's there's those that are interested in it's the kim stanley robertson like you know the reds or the the greens the people that want to you know terraform mars or research it was like that that old adage and there certainly are those different kinds of pockets of space enthusiasts, like what kind of thing are you interested in? So I know there's people that are averse to human spaceflight on on its merits, which I just can't connect with, because I'm like, super humanist. And I'm like, this is, you know, the entire existence of our speeches have been like, moving into different areas on the earth and living there and not just humans but like all life finds areas on earth that nothing lives in and tries to live there that is a driving force of nature and space to me feels very similar to that

um it's silly too those are different audiences right like the people like on the the rest of the population that wonders why this versus anything else is very different sets of arguments. It's a different discussion than, to your point before, on the internal side of people that are very much in favor of human spaceflight because it's their careers and it's what they've done for 60 years. They just may not be as open to everybody doing it. Yes, they're protective about it in that way. Yeah, right. Yeah, protective about it instead that way yeah yeah right yeah protective about it instead of like against it is is different but um so you mentioned the hubble aspect maybe we can

talk about that for a minute actually you know what i've got one other polaris program question for you before that that's a can of worms we'll get to that at the end um you have this this kind of collaboration with spacex where you are choosing a tech tree to work against. And I'm curious how those discussions go. Is there a particular team at SpaceX that you collaborate with to figure out what pieces should we work on next? And what is the actual thing that drives that decision of what thing you'll take on for any given mission? Well, in all honesty, it's been like two and a half years since that was kind of the phase that we were working on. And it also helped that Elon essentially established the objectives for the first Polaris mission. finger on the battlefield long. It's not a pleasant place to be, but let's figure it out and come back down. We got to, we got to have an EVA suit and it's got to be something that's,

you know, we can mass produce at a, at like a reasonable cost, um, for future generations that could be living on Mars. Uh, and, uh, and we need to test out Starlink laser link because, um, we're going to quickly overwhelm legacy communication infrastructure. So that, um, overwhelmed legacy communication infrastructure. So that, um, like, uh, that being kind of set by the big guy made the mission design for Polaris Dawn a lot easier because it was just like, all right, well, what dials do we turn to make that happen? And what are the risk trades? And, um, you know, and then we kind of like, let's set out and develop and learn and keep improving. So that was very different. I imagine this next one will, will maybe be a little bit harder because there's a lot of directions to go.

And that's why you kind of have to balance what SpaceX is already working on elsewhere, right? Like, you might not necessarily want to work on a mainline system they're already doing for Starship HLS, because there's some other ground that no one is focusing on, but it's still important. It's just not important to like the NASA contract. I don't know if any of that kind of play would come into it. Well, I think like, well, I mean, this is totally collaborative. This has like nothing to do with what I want to do and like what moves the needle forward, you know, for helping humans get to Mars.

So, I mean, look, SpaceX, like it wasn't my idea when they said like, hey, we have some Starship, you know, Eclis and O2 sensors we want to fly on Polaris Dawn because it's going to help us learn a lot and we can apply it over to the Starship vehicle. That's what this program is about. So like rightfully, a lot of the good ideas should come from the rocket scientists, you know. So I'm not worried about like, oh, you know, if they already think something is very well understood and there's no benefit from flying it in space, it won't even come up on the table. Like there is for without question, like number one, you can almost guarantee they're going to continue suit development. Like I guarantee, I mean, I guarantee that it's already been said, like they're, they're going to need a backpack. No one's going to dangle, you know, a thousand feet off of a, off of a, um, a starship,

you know, you know, with a giant tether or something. So you're going to, you're like, you're definitely going to build a backpack. You're, you're definitely going to try and increase mobility. Um, you know, make it a more robust suit for a harsher environment than what you'd encounter purely in Leo. So, um, these are things that I know are going to, are going to wind up continuing on, but I think in the end, like we're all always very aligned of like, how do we move the ball forward? Not something that's ever meant to be a product for dragon. You know, it's a test, like, let's figure this out, use this environment that we have

available to us, um, and, and learn from it so that we can apply it to the future, which is clearly Starship. So I don't think there'll be a shortage of things to to come up with um uh you know as we look forward yeah so you're saying though that that's more of a mission to mission decision and iterative at that it's not something where there's like a you know tech tree uh master plan already in place this is something that is meant to kind of develop as your timeline lays out you know i um that is an area that i try and at least like challenge the team sometimes is like if i personally like working backwards from like if this is the ultimate desired state in eight years

or like elon for example said like two years uncrewed starship to mars four years crude um i'll leave the timeline estimates to him. He's the master of this. But it's like, all right, if we are working backwards from that, what are the most pressing things we have to solve? Versus sometimes it's, there is like, I would say somewhat of a tech tree, at least like, you know, EVA or out of habitat type operations is one path, you know, ongoing ECLSS development is another path. And how that plays into human physiology. So sometimes it's looked at as what's next in front of what we already know versus more of working backwards.

Either way, it generally gets to the right place because it still has to pass the test of does this help us get to Mars? Yeah. get to Mars. Yeah. And if it doesn't, there's, SpaceX is so good at evaluating opportunity costs and does not waste dollars or resources on something that doesn't fulfill a, you know, a strategic objective. All right. So the Hubble thing, uh, in that, in that vein, I don't know that it's ever been officially said it was the Hubble idea supposed to be the second flight, or was that just like, I wonder what we could do in this regard. the Hubble idea supposed to be the second flight or was that just like, I wonder what we could do in this regard? There were, um, in terms of the good ideas, uh, you know, for the second mission, um, Hubble was one of them. I mean, I think just thinking of what's in the public domain,

I mean, there was a joint study with NASA, uh, SpaceX and Polaris. So, I mean, that was kind of a giveaway there. Yeah. Yeah. I just don't know if like, in your head, your idea when you originally did this was like, first flight, EVA, second flight Hubble, third flight Starship. I think that there was there was always about two or three very good ideas that would likely build on establishing an EVA capability on the first mission that you would be able to build upon for the second that would have, you know, that would serve a greater purpose. Like that's, you know, there's all the technical things we want to accomplish, you know, to kind of help enable this exciting future that's on the horizon with Starship. But you always have to fulfill some

sort of an inspirational, unifying, good of everyone, good for everyone type of objective. That's like a given in any mission because we're not going to get to Mars without the support of a lot of people all over the world. So Hubble, you know, checked a lot of those boxes because, because look the thing is on its last legs uh whether people really want to admit it or not the giveaway is like every couple of months it goes into safe mode uh very open with the reality that um it's lost almost all of its redundancy it's only observing a small portion of the actual sky compared to what it did previously because it's lost so many INUs. And oh, by the way, it's going to reenter. Like we're in solar maximum. Its orbital decay is only accelerating as it gets lower, which by the way, the lower it gets, the harder it is to actually

affect a rendezvous and the less benefit you get from a boost. So like the risk reward is very favorable and it benefits, you know, science community all over the world. And, uh, it, it forces us to solve problems, which is so important to applying to future bigger problems of things like rendezvousing with a non-cooperative target, uh, an EVA that has, you know, um, that is more technically complex though, nothing like the, the old days of the shuttle program, you know, that is more technically complex, though nothing like the old days of the shuttle program, you know, those were some real heroic efforts. So look, it was, it all checked out well. There was an official recommendation by NASA in the study, which I would hope would come out at some point, which should imply what it actually, you know, stated. But in the end, a small group was less supportive of it than a larger group. Yeah, the other aspect there, though, is budget problems right now.

Hubble and Chandra themselves are in a weird budget spot politically at NASA. are in a weird budget spot politically at NASA. So there's, I don't know how much of that impacted the actual, you know, old guard-y protective vibes that we've got from what we've seen publicly, but that's another aspect as well, that it's like, all right, we've got more and more of a budget issue every day to deal with with some of these missions.

That's very true, by the way, and I'm glad you brought it up. It isn't solely, you know, on a small but loud group. They do have budget issues. I just think what I don't like is like the and this is not NASA's specific. the propensity to sink extraordinary amounts of money into the next new shiny object, and the things that are actually working well that you paid for long ago, and if you tried to replace them would cost like 20x the price, they get the short straw. It shouldn't work that way. There's tons of data to support this, by the way. The number of PhD papers that Hubble supports has increased exponentially, and now combined with James Webb, the number of PhD papers that Hubble supports has increased exponentially. And now it, you know, combined with James Webb, the science it's producing from like the comparative work is like off the charts. So it has value and whatever we think is going to replace

it, because like the whole audience of like, why boost it? Like just build a new one. Are you freaking kidding? Do you know how the government works? It'll be $50 billion and we'll all be dead before it's launched. It's working. Keep it going. And along the way, you help the commercial industry immensely. But I don't disagree that budget is probably part of the problem in this whole thing. It's just we shouldn't sacrifice the small dollars that are working for the big shiny object that's you know overpriced um and always late couldn't couldn't put it by myself uh all right let me uh let me spitball lightning round some second flight ideas and and see your vibes on them i did this on off nominally the other day uh instead of flying to hubble you fly john kraus up with a really big lens that's one second you mentioned a backpack uh would you ever go untethered not that this

would be the second flight but would you personally do an untethered bruce mccandless style spacewalk i i think like um you know i i guess like i'm i'm not a um i'm a I'm not like a like a like a like a crazy risk taker. Like I am. I have no problem accepting, you know, risk with high return. So I guess the question would be like, what are we learning from doing this? For sure. Like when you're when you're walking around on Mars or or the lunar surface surface, you're, you're, you're not going to be probably on this extensive tether operation, but in Leo, like what, um, what game do you have, uh, by doing that? And if like, and if somebody made a compelling enough case, I certainly would, would trust in the engineering and I'm sure I would have been involved in some of the testing.

So why not? But yeah, I mean, I, I just has to make good sense, right? Sorry. It's not a lightning answer, but no, it's not a lightning. I lightning i mean you know these are just dumb ideas for you no i think the if i were to steel man the argument it would be and i think this was even the original statement from like bruce mccandless era was a sort of a flight safety situation that you're going to wear like the safer backpack that that has the ability to you know propulsively get you back somewhere if you've lost a handrail or, you know, slipped off the spacecraft or something like that, that it would be moving in that direction.

Other one is, I don't know if you've checked out the U.S. deorbit vehicle design, that dragon, this dragon derivative that will deorbit the ISS. Certainly has the shape of a long duration dragon flight that might be able to provide a lot of thermal and power for a week-long mission, hypothetically. Maybe it could fly us around the moon, a little moon cruise. Well, I think like Dragon itself, I think they already have enough data from our mission that you probably could go out more than two weeks. from our mission that you, you probably could go out more than two weeks. Um, you know, we, uh, if you didn't use all your oxygen for an EVA and you simply use it to keep topping off the nitrous environment, like you probably could be up there for weeks. The, uh, CO2 scrubbing every time,

you know, we've flown a mission, we unlock more efficiencies from it. Um, just more data, uh, that you only really get from kind of people living in it versus, you know, going to and from the space station. We always bring home probably 90% of the food. So there's probably something in terms of like the urine tank and waste systems, you know, max volume. But I think already like kind of a base dragon could go several weeks, you know, could go at least two weeks. The issue, I think, for like going to the moon or whatnot is like, the only way you're going to get that velocity is with a Falcon Heavy. And as I mentioned, like the, you know, SpaceX being so

good at opportunity cost, the question would come up immediately of why are we putting energy into human rating Falcon Heavy when we should just make Starship better. And then you're going to have to think through the thermal reentry capabilities on coming back, which is obviously it's an Orion problem right now. Well, the Falcon Heavy one's answered by the existence of the USD orbit vehicle. That thing has to launch on a Falcon Heavy

to get up to the ISS. But it doesn't need humans on it. It doesn't need humans on it. But you're pretty fit. You're. It doesn't need humans on it. But you know, you look pretty fit. You're pretty fit. You're not that heavy. Human rating though, is a big, is a big deal on a vehicle. So that, that would be, that would be design effort that they would say is not, um, not good, not valuable enough. Yeah. That makes sense. Um, two last things I want to pick your brain on. One may be shorter than the other.

You obviously are very interested in sharing in the journey with SpaceX to getting humans to Mars. Do you have any interest in doing robotic missions as part of the Polaris program, whether that be to the moon, to Mars, as part of these smaller lander developments, or anything? Obviously, you have an interest in hubble is there any astronomical kind of interest that you've got um that you whether it's polaris or just personal level that you would want to contribute to uh sometime not not near term not long term just like any any bit of your body interested in that a hundred percent uh on like an astronomical interest.

And I'm very, I definitely love using every mission as an opportunity to, you know, raise awareness for the public, get people excited, inspired to look up to the stars. I would say like the idea of including potentially an astronomer in a future mission has been very high on my list. So I do think the human connection is important to what we do. Um, the, uh, like I, I look, it's a, it's a, it's obviously a huge difference between us looking at incredible footage from a Rover on Mars versus when we see people on Mars and like what, what that stepping stone means for humankind is very different than a robot there. So I have no doubt robots will play a robots and AI are going, are like going to be totally married with the future of human spaceflight. Uh, so there'll be, there'll be making a show no matter what. Uh,

I think that's just going to be a part of the reality of being very far away from earth and not being able to rely on the typical mission control construct. Um, but like separately, like I do think that starships, when you are making, when you have two factors cranking those things out, you have a prefab vehicle that if, if space, when space-based refueling works, you could send anywhere in the solar system, mount whatever you want on it, turn, turn starship into a bus of, you could put telescopes on on it sensors and send them everywhere every couple months i'm totally on board with that i don't know if that's something where i would like be personally applying energy or resources it's certainly possible but i think i'm more on the

human side yeah that's fair um you've tweeted in the past couple of weeks as uh everyone's been interested in the the starship faa ongoing uh you ongoing dispute that was airing its way out on Twitter and elsewhere. And you mentioned that you've, through other business ventures, have had similar kind of contact with the regulatory environment. Just kind of curious to pick your brain a little bit on what you think generally is the situation uh with with regards to boca chica in terms of um you know balancing these different regulatory reviews that starship has gone through and space has gone to um not sure how much experience you've got with it you know dealing with the human spaceflight side knowing that that does have some significant uh airspace impacts and less less now now, but, um, you know, curious how, how you saw that whole,

uh, kind of battle playing out. Yeah. I'm just trying to remember, cause I don't think I actually took a, any sort of public position on the space one. I think you, you, you mentioned a little bit probably from like Draken or something that, that you've had sort of similar contacts in the past. I weigh in on the, uh, like the, like the inefficiencies and how generally the big defense primes are like a boat anchor. And we need more companies like SpaceX. Like I have, you know, for 10 years running a, you know, a decently large aerospace company, like grew to have such a distaste for all the big defense primes, not just one, um, because they were incentivized to accomplish very little. And that's why we still

have F-16s and F-18s and F-15s coming off the assembly line 50 years after they, um, you know, after they were first flown. Now, like your, your video game enthusiasts will say like, they're still amazing. You put new missiles on them. That's not how like China and the rest of the world work. You want constant innovation and change. Look at look at SpaceX. Dragon and Falcon haven't even like hit their stride. And they're like, it's obsolete. Starship's next. That's how it should work in America. Right. So on the FAA side, like, look, I definitely don't think human spaceflight or spaceflight in general needs to be that political. I think the good news is like NASA needs, you know, Starship to work for HLS.

So like they can clear some obstacles. But for me, like it would ever it would be hard to be critical of like, you know, Boeing self-checking their work on, you know, like, you know, the 737 Max and say like, hey, SpaceX doesn't need oversight because they're amazing. Just let them do their thing. Like, I don't agree with that. I think, like, it shouldn't be a needless obstacle, you know, to progress. But, like, there does need to be when you're talking with, you know, rockets that are, you know, so capable and powerful, there does need to be some oversight and checks and balances. You just need to keep them in check, you know, that are doing that work. Right. Yeah. Like we talked about the flight planning, it's a major balance between what the actual objectives are that you're trying to achieve and how the different priorities shake out. All right. I think it's my last question

for you. It's very, the most important question. I think I've, if I remember correctly, you on your last space flight, put a bet on the philadelphia eagles on my philadelphia eagles to win the super bowl uh they're looking pretty hot right now won the last four out of five first of all are you even did you grow up too far north to to be an eagles fan oh no i'm an eagles fan first of all go birds uh second of all did you in fact put a bet this time no no i no, I didn't. That one was never meant to be like a public thing. I was just telling my brother, like, put a bet in for me because I forgot that football season was approaching us, which I forgot again this time

because quarantine was three weeks. And before, you know, we arrived at the Cape on like August 19th. And before you know it, you know, we're flying, you know, September 10th. So, like, a lot of time went by. I didn't even realize football season. I will just say, like, I'm not there on the Eagles. After what happened last year, like, I don't – that epic collapse. Like, I am – they have a lot to prove. It was bad.

It was looking bad the first couple games of the season, but it appears as if we're turning it around. All right, well, that clears it up, at least. So you didn't place a bet on the Eagles, but you didn't bet on anyone else? That's correct. Okay, great. I'm glad we've straightened that one out.

I appreciate it. Jared, it's always awesome to chat. Hopefully we can get you back closer to second flight once you've got time to actually hang out with your family and relax and then start thinking about flight two. There's a lot more to talk about, so hopefully we can check back in with you in a little bit.

Yeah, happy to. So I appreciate the interest and thanks for your time. Awesome. Thanks, Jared. Thanks again to Jared for coming on the show and hanging out with us. And thanks to all of you who made this possible. There are 850 some supporters across patreon and substack you can get to that manage your cutoff.com support and join the crew there including 31

executive producers who made this episode possible thanks to yon matt fred harrison the astrogators at se pat from kc will and lars from agile space warren steve joel pat better everyday studios donald lee david chris frank josh from impulse eunice ryan russell tim dodd the everyday Warren, Steve, Joel, Pat, Better Everyday Studios, Donald, Lee, David, Chris, Frank, Josh from Impulse, Eunice, Ryan, Russell, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut, Stealth, Julian, Bob, Theo, and Violet, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for supporting the show, for making this episode possible. Once again, if you'd like to join up and get access to Miko Headlines, mainenginecutoff.com slash support.

I do a show every week to 10 days, depending on how much space news I have to read. I run through all the stories that matter, filter out the ones that don't, keep you up to date on the world of space, and you support the show. So it's a win-win across the board. If you've got any questions or thoughts, hit me up on Twitter at WeHaveMiko or via email, anthonyatmainishatcutoff.com. And until next time, talk to you soon