Main Engine Cut Off - T+297: Firefly Blue Ghost 1, Intuitive Machines IM-2, SpaceX Starship Flight 8 (with Josh Dinner)

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Josh Dinner of Space.com joins me to talk about a wild week in space—Firefly’s Blue Ghost 1, Intuitive Machines’ IM-2, SpaceX’s Starship Flight 8, Rocket Lab announcements, and more.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 32 executive producers—Stealth Julian, Kris, Heiko, Pat, Jan, Warren, Josh from Impulse, Ryan, Lee, Joel, David, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Matt, Pat from KC, Will and Lars from Agile, Joonas, Donald, Bob, Frank, Joakim (Jo-Kim), Steve, Theo and Violet, Better Every Day Studios, Fred, Russell, The Astrogators at SEE, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsJosh Dinner (@JoshDinner) / XArticles by Josh Dinner, Staff Writer, Spaceflight | SpaceIM-2 lunar lander mission ends - SpaceNewsAstroForge | Odin't: A Complete Debrief of Our Deep Space MissionStarship destroyed on second consecutive test flight - SpaceNewsStarship’s Eighth Flight Test - SpaceX - LaunchesRocket Lab Announces Flatellite: A New Satellite Designed for Mass Manufacture and Tailored for Large Constellations | Rocket LabRocket Lab Reveals Ocean Platform for Neutron Rocket Landings at Sea | Rocket LabThe 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 FireflyWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Mid Engine Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo and it's been a hell of a week. We've had a ton of space news going on, a couple of lunar landers, a starship flight, some rocket lab announcements, plenty to talk about. So I've got Josh Dinner from space.com here to make his first appearance on the show and talk to talk about. So I've got Josh Dinner from space.com here to make his first appearance on the show and talk about it all. So without further ado, here's Josh. Josh, welcome to Miko.

Thanks for finally being on here after far too long of playing footsies on the internet. I'm really glad to be here. We have too many topics. We have about 14 hours worth of topics to cover today, so we'll see how long we can make it. I'm gonna go off and say it was not a good day for space yesterday.

Not a good day for space yesterday, not as much today either. It seems space is, it's having a time. Not the place. It's having a time. Not the place. It's having a busy time. Big up and down week though, right? We've got Firefly not too distant in the past year. Yeah, so Firefly has landed.

It's doing great. Shooting stuff across the lunar surface. Yeah. I saw that video, it was epic. IM2 is on the moon, but I don't know if you saw right before we jumped on here, they officially announced an end to the mission. It's done. Which is kind of a bummer, I was really rooting for that lander.

And then Starship once again. Oh right, Starship exploded. Yeah. More terrifying videos this time of the debris. Like, I feel like the debris had more of a downward trajectory to the to it in the videos that we saw this time. And it was it was sooner this time, wasn't it? Like they saw it from Florida this time around.

I don't remember that last time. Yeah. Yeah, it was I think I was a thousand kilometers an hour slower when it when it blew apart. So it is a little bit closer in the range. Nice and visible. I don't know where we want to start. I think let's go in the order of moon landings. Well, that kind of does leave us on a down note.

Whatever, we're going to do it. Let's start with Firefly, because I've got some business to settle up front, Josh. It's interesting that you mentioned business to Settle because I got to interview Trent Martin, their VP of Space Something. Their VP of Space Something. Because it was actually from you that I learned about the very, very close come around they had on the moon on I Am One. I was really curious about what the reaction was

sort of emotionally in the mission control when they realized that. I still am amazed that they did not publicize that more. So I Am One came in, I don't even know if I mentioned this show, I feel like I tweeted it once and talked about it on the other show that I do. But when they, and people know about it on this show

because I grilled Tim Crane when he was on after I am one about how low they came in to lunar orbit. And it turns out it was 1.3 kilometers above the lunar surface. And that was only, and the point, you probably looked at the tweet more recently, I did. But I believe the point at which that was measured was 500 meters below lunar average surface

altitude, so they were actually like 800 meters off of what the expected sphere of the moon would be. And it just happened that they came in. Yeah, it's like 800 meters, it's crazy close. through the dust. Yeah, it's like 800 meters, it's crazy close. I mean, they like referred to this in the post-IM1 details where they talked about, they came in and they opened up the sensors to see how high they were

and they noticed something. The way they referred to it was like, it seemed obvious to me that it was just like, the terrain was just like whipping by and they were like, wow, we're really close here. I imagine the views would have been really cool. It would have been amazing. If we got a Firefly like video,

they had awesome videos of them settling in the lunar orbit. If we had a video of IM1 just hauling ass at one kilometer above the surface, it would have been awesome. Now I will say, in the post IM2 days here, they've talked a lot about how much they upgraded their orbit determination skill set,

which is evident that they did come into lunar orbit in the correct altitude this time. And that was the big problem last time, was that they did not know where they were flying to the moon. So when they executed the maneuvers, they were somewhere different than they were. It's like the most dangerous scenario you can imagine

for a space mission is you did a maneuver thinking you were one spot, you were actually somewhere else, and that's how they ended up there. And this time they didn't even need the correction maneuver. Yeah, and that's the real bummer of this mission, right? That it seemed like they actually did incorporate all these lessons learned from IM-1, made it,

we still don't know the final, what, I don't know the final, I don't know, minute, two minutes? Like what time range are we? Yeah, we don't know what happened I think from, I don't know, maybe it felt like three minutes, felt like a lot longer than a few minutes. But yeah, I don't think they've released sort of a,

this is what we think the flight pattern was yet. And then they touched down, on the comms loop, they're saying the engine's still running. They said it was idling, which I didn't think was, yeah. And then they touched down on the comms loop, they're saying the engine's still running. They said it was idling, which I didn't think was a thing that rocket engines do. I don't think this was the case, but I had an image of it doing donuts on the surface with one engine just spinning the thing around. I don't think it was doing that at all. Wait till we get the LRO image and we see like the doughnut patterns. I did think, all right, so the telemetry on the screen, here's my theory for throwing theories out. The telemetry on the screen at one point did show the distance to the moon climbing again.

I think they took back off and toppled over. Interesting. I'll be interested to see what they come out with. Oh, yeah, a bounce would be something. Maybe, I mean, it could have just been totally Bork telemetry. I am not a rocket engineer by any means. That's why I write about it instead. But just the idea of a lander that fires this way and then has to turn over and fire, that like, it seems dubious

Also, they seem to discuss a lot the engine still running while they were on the surface Feel like I would have turned it off sooner Personally, you did seem to end very abruptly Second time the commentator seems a little like oh, we're ending now. Okay, I Guess I'll be very in three hours at the press conference. The case of IM2 though is a bummer because it was a significant step back in terms of the laser altimeters still did not work correctly. It's unclear if that's the exact same issue they had the first time around or if it's something different

Part of me hopes it's a new issue because that at least to me Signifies a measure of progress and this mission did feel like there was a lot of progress made it felt I mean it felt like You know it was right on the money until that's Tim crane in the in the press conference after said I did did say that as much and and so I I think I believe them that The operational changes that they made and the upgrades to the entire flight up to that point are legit. And the fact that they do have a runway of missions in front of them, right?

They've got two more contracted out already as Eclipse missions, right? They've got IM3 and IM4 on the books. So that's always a big thing, right? When we were in the astrobotic days and that was like the one peregrine that flew and then Griffin's a big question mark, that's the stuff that makes me nervous. When you've got Firefly and I am, and Intune machines, you know you have a bit of a runway

of missions. Then at that point, the cumulative nature of your improvements do matter because you know there will be a next one. And so that is a big deal. And I do believe them that they are improving, that this was a clean flight up to the final descent and also as much shit as we can give them for like you tipped over again. It's like you are landing on the moon, there's gonna be chaos that happens and if your flight was clean up to that point and cleaner than the first time

around then that is a good sign. Yeah, very. Not a great day for NASA's moon marketing. Got a clips, got a clips lander down, got a HLS moon lander in pieces flying through the sky. Let's talk about Firefly and uplift our spirits for a minute. I feel the need to fully apologize to the Firefly team because I, from day one of Blue Ghost existing as a concept, I had completely discounted it entirely. Almost recklessly so. I struggled to believe they were actually doing this when they first announced it. I've been mystified by the very sluggish flight rate

of Firefly Alpha, right? They fly every few months they've got a flight. They are marketing it as responsive launch, but they're flying every six or eight months, and half of them work. And I have been, that gave me a flavor for like, what I should expect out of Firefly. I've also heard from multiple different people that the turnover at Firefly is pretty astronomical.

That people are coming and going pretty quickly there. So that whole mix of things led me to believe that something's going on here. Then they say we're going to start building our own spacecraft. I'm like, you don't even really have the rocket side or the upper stage nailed down yet. So I've discounted Blue Ghost, critically so, from day one. Maybe the on-Earth stuff is the hard part for them. That's it? Just they like the no atmosphere? I guess. Maybe they just own the space. I'm absolutely thrilled if that's the case. So like, I was wrong, you nailed it.

Would just like to put that out there because people don't own their mistakes as much. I've been a horrible skeptic of fireflies in space systems and I'm glad to be proven absolutely beautifully wrong because they've had an incredible video. It was such a smooth landing. It was amazing. I could not stop watching that video.

I just put it on over and over and over again. It was just a smooth landing. It was amazing. I could not stop watching that video. I just put it on over and over and over again. It was just so gorgeous. Even just the video of them settling into orbit, I feel like they've done a better job at getting that stuff home sooner than other missions. And I mean, we haven't had video from either of the other landers, right? Astrobotic did not send video back. Intuit Machines has not sent video.

Artemis1 sent some video. Well, yeah. That might be... Well, no, did China's lander send video? They've had video, I think. Yeah. I think they had some video. But this was like a lot of times it's a video way after the fact.

This felt like as soon as it hit Earth, they were showing it. They were tweeting it before it was downlinked. Feeding the people. So props on that. Again, Firefly 2, right? That they've got... The fact that they have a run of missions. I think I'm just realizing that astrobotic's in a really weird spot right now.

They've got Griffin coming up, but don't have another Eclipse task order on the books. They do have some of these other programs of the infrastructure on the lunar surface, the solar panels and the power grids and some other things like that. But in two machines in Firefly, having a string of landers on the books is the most important aspect of Clips right now, because it means that you can plan differently, you can build hardware differently because you're building a series of hardware rather than astrobotic building two one-offs. So I have a creeping concern after watching the last couple missions What are your thoughts on a

Astro no, that's you just said Astro Forge. What's the one? Um, I said astrobotic Astro Forge Forge. Yeah, my brain my brain just jumped to Astro Forge Because they're not doing so hot either I don't think. They're not. Hold on, my desk chair just dropped out of nowhere. Uh oh. I'm down. I'm back. I'm back at the height that I need to be for my microphone.

Yeah, so Odin, I think they posted an update yesterday. I didn't read the entirety of it but it sounds like they're- Did you see the title of it? No, I did not. What was it? They're having a nice sense of humor with it. I think it was something like, oh didn't. Oh didn't. Oh, didn't.

There you go. It seemed like from a reason over that, that they were still where they were a week ago when Matt posted the blog post of like, here's what's gone wrong in the mission so far. I like the transparency. I'll say that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, them and Firefly both points for that. It's a bummer that they are not able to, I mean, I don't know what I expect of this mission,

to be honest. So that's really always what we're measuring, right? Like expectations versus reality on this. And I think that's why Firefly was such a delight and IM2 was such a bummer. And this Odin, I feel kind of like, all right, I mean. Well, I think that's the attitude they're taking too. It's like, hey, we got as far as we did.

We're gonna try again. Good for us. And I agree, good for them. Hell yeah. Get some, go get some money. I'm pumped about their approach to things. Generally, they're like, yeah, pretty YOLO about it. You know, and eventually bringing home some pieces of rock will be a really cool accomplishment. Yeah. Here's one aspect of IAM2 to talk about talk about is Intuita machines bought that Falcon 9 and

they manifested a whole bunch of other stuff on the flight, right? I think they were the ones that arranged at least Odin and the, what's it called? Chimera or something, the camera that flew, the Geo- The lunar trailblazer? The camera that flew to, no, the other one. There was like three payloads. I forget the details on how lunar trailblazer ended up on this flight Um, I think last I checked it was low on power and spinning out of control

Oh, yeah, that one's done. I just meant like how did that get how did that get manifested on the launch? I don't know if the two machines line that up or if nasa decided they should fly it here Uh, yeah, that I don't know, but you're right, there was a whole speed on this mission. Yeah, I think, and that's notable, right, because Intuit Machines bought however many, create your own Falcon 9 pricing, if it was however tens of millions of dollars,

but they offset a lot of that cost from others launching with them. Some of the criticism I had heard in early days of Eclipse was NASA's awarding these task orders for 70, 80, 90 million dollars and half of that's going to SpaceX for Falcon 9 right off the bat. And then we've got to figure out how to do a lunar mission and the rest.

And there's a lot of people out there that are like, NASA should be just buying Falcon 9s and operating them as ride shares to the moon that like whoever's ready can hop on board. Yeah, well how does that is that you're like digging this idea? I mean, I've never thought I've never thought through like, oh, what if NASA just bought a whole rocket and said who wants to go to the moon? I mean I think that's a brilliant idea. But I also don't think Clips is not working for them. It's not working great. You know they're what 50-50 right now?

That's a generous count but yeah. Speaking of buying rockets, I actually had the thought recently of when if at all, do you think, and this is, I don't know if it's a silly idea or not, but we have enough astronauts now in training, but who have not yet gone to space. Is it cheap enough now and easy enough now that part of astronaut training could just be going to space? Like why not just shoot them up there on a dragon

on a suborbital thing or a few orbits, show them what it's like? I've been wondering recently if that's ever gonna manifest at any point, but just to thought of that. Never thought about this. I mean that was probably the idea behind suborbital crew, right, of like let's see what we can do with these hundreds of thousands or low millions of dollars orbital crew, right? With like, let's see what we can do with these

hundreds of thousands or low millions of dollars worth of a ticket. That is funny, right? Like how many hours of SIM do you need to go to space if you could just go to space for a couple of days and then train for your ISS mission? Exactly. And you know, you don't know how microgravity is gonna feel until you're in it.

And I've never done one of those zero G flights, but I'm sure 30 seconds or a minute is not really long enough to gauge how you'll do living up there. Yeah. But I imagine it's gotta cut down on the acclimation time and everything else. I think it'd be a cool thing to get started.

Let them know. I mean, I'll let them know. There's a lot of budget to go around right now, Josh. So, you know, that's the critical element that you're missing. On the idea of SpaceX or of NASA buying a bunch of rockets for clips, right? I think I get the argument at its heart,

which is everybody knows these people are buying a Falcon 9. Like astrobotic, you know, got a free, question mark, ride on the first Vulcan. I think it was something in the department of free. I don't know, maybe there's a nominal cost to it, but other than that, everyone's buying a Falcon 9. Yeah. So for right now, I understand the motivation.

I do think it's a. That is a mindset that is overly fixated on the point of this program being the success of the missions when it's probably not the overall point of the program, which is to. Reestablish the way that NASA needs to think and operate these kind of missions think about and operate these kind of missions. Think about and operate these kind of missions. And if if these teams want to get together and manifest the Falcon 9 together, because apparently now the first two months of the year are when we fly all of our lunar missions, then like be creative and figure it out. You know, if if you want to hitch a ride on on a geosatellite that's going up and you're able to fly your way to the moon, like I think NASA buying a Falcon 9 limits the creativity

of teams in a way that would harm the mission or the program long-term. So even if it was more budgetarily sensible in the first four or five task orders, I think it harms the missions overall. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, long-term I think that would be true. I also feel like the task order awards are now, I look at them and they come in and they're like a more realistic value. At least it feels, I don't know, I look at $170 million. I'm

like, that feels like a good moon mission. Whereas 70 was like, I'm not great at budgeting, but it's pretty low. I mean, you're much more into the numbers of it than I am, but 70 million doesn't seem like it goes very far into space. No, no, not usually. What else we got on these Eclipse missions? Here's one that I would throw out to you. Without Firefly involved, this program's in a bad spot.

Yeah. Um, and I think as it relates to Artemis, they gotta be sweating. Um, because the big focus right now is the moon. Um, and I think SpaceX already has enough of its own public attention. When things go bad, it just makes them sweat more. And like you said, this apparently is the first few months of the year for moon missions.

Artemis Eclipse are looking a little... I'd be sweating. I would be sweating. That's interesting. I didn't group clips into that in the same way. Well, I just see clips as a branch of Artemis, because I feel like they're, you know, let's go figure out as much as we can about the Moon so when we finally get there, we either have stuff already there to play with, where we wanna go to put the new stuff.

That's gotta be the focus because otherwise it's just NASA sending NASA stuff to the moon. And without commercial pie in, I think it just won't take off. Yeah, even the concept that you could see the task orders once the Artemis missions are flying, if we've got people hanging out in the lunar surface for a while, task order is like 500 kilograms

of a cargo reload to the base, right? Like that's a foreseeable future task order. I imagine we'll see something very similar to the cargo, the cargo contracts that we see now. If we get that far, I mean, having routine cargo missions to the moon would be really, that would be incredible. Yeah, but to that extent, four in 14 months is awesome. Yeah.

You're giving them half credit, I'm saying, I'm just trying to do your math. You're giving IM1 full credit and IM2 no credit, or is that like 70 and 30? I'll be honest. I pulled it out of the air out of vibes. Well, it sounds close. I wasn't thinking about individual missions. It feels roughly like that. We've got one total success.

It feels like that. One total success, one total failure, one mostly successful, and then, I would chalk IM2 up, like, I think Intuitive Steens is being a little bit overly optimistic about how this mission went. Like, you know, I think Ultimus started the press conference the other day that was like, we're operating, we're like communicating with the lander

on the south pole of the moon, I consider that a success. And I'm like, your land other day that was like, we're operating, we're like communicating with the lander on the south pole of the moon, I consider that a success. And I'm like, your lander died in a day and it's tipped over and it's pointing the wrong way. This is not a... They did say that something about operating the Prime 1 drill. I don't know if they fulfilled operation and analysis

or if it actually made it down into the lunar surface, but something about the release did say you know and we were able to Wiggle this switch right where did it stick out to the lunar surface though? Well, we'll find out. I'm sure I don't think they drill baby drilled as Janet Petro was so triumphantly saying in her pre landing interviews I was actually really proud. I got, for remote cameras for this launch, there was a big backhoe sitting out at the launch pad where SpaceX is doing the Starship tower construction. And so I got a shot of the rocket in frame

with the backhoe just for that reason. It's a shame if we're not gonna be able to drill into the moon with it. Right? That's your whole content planning there was so that you're going to have to rent an excavator the next time they fly one of these drills and get it drive it out to the Cape. That'd be a heavy payload. Yeah.

So anyway, I want to see Eclipse mission for that. Bring her a full on cat excavator. One day. I mean hell. Yeah, man. That seems pretty rad. My son would love that Yeah, I feel like I Don't know if we need to like grade the success, but I am too not successful I would say I would say I would give it a grade. I would say C-plus to a B-minus All right, it's very teacher grade. I would say C plus to a B minus All right, it's very teacher II. I mean they are on the moon I know but at a certain point we got to move the goal posts. I

Agree, but I think you get one of those you get one of those as a company and then you move the goalposts Well, at least you know, they didn't get the moon shave this time, so it's baby steps. I still thought that was cooler, for the record. Oh, absolutely. Let's talk about Starship, because very thematically similar, if what we care about is forward momentum, building on past missions. IAM-2, Starship 8, both fit in this category to me of so much like the previous flight that it's a bummer, at least in their internet results, right? The details differ a little bit here and there.

IAM-2 is probably a smoother mission overall, but clearly this was, you know, debate amongst yourselves. Is this the worst day for the Starship program? It may be. Is this the worst day for the Starship program? It may be is this may is this the first flight Where they haven't? progressed in the For

Last seven was by the first time they done that but isn't it? I think it's even worse that it's just two of those in a row, right two losses in a row feels more significant. And occasionally setback. Especially with the cadence they wanted to fly this year. Yes, exactly. An occasional setback, you're going like, all right, things are gonna go wrong every now and then,

especially a new version of the ship. We've got a lot of changes in there. Two in a row is like, ooh, is this stagnation? Right. Versus just, you know, two things that happened in a row It makes you wonder what changes they need to make to the to the vehicle and and I've I Mean I will be shunned by by the SpaceX fans for saying it, but I've always wondered silently

What if they don't figure it out silently, what if they don't figure it out? What happens? What happens if they try Starship over and over and over and they get to the point where like, oh, this was almost the best idea, but we just can't quite make it do what we want. What happens to Artemis? What happens to SpaceX as a company?

I think setbacks like this, don't give me pause to that extent, but they make you go, huh. You start playing with the idea in your head. There are elements of Starship that make me nervous in that way, that feel very space shuttle-y. And a lot of times I'm like, well, how are they going to be different than the shuttle in that way? You know, how is, like, look at the tiling.

Like, is this not going to turn out the same way? Are we not going to be writing books about how much of a problem the tiling was over time? I'd be really interested or I will be really interested once they fly their first recovered ship to see how much of the tiles they had to turn over, what the timeline it took them was. You know, because they've gotten really good at that with the Falcon 9. I mean, they just bring those suckers in.

It's like less than a month now for them to fly back up. So you know, I think that'll be a very important milestone for them, but they gotta get there. And honestly, they have to get there this year. Yeah. They've gotta be at least refueling stuff this year. They need to have two of these launched on a timeline that's tight enough to do some refueling demonstration for,

I mean, schedule-wise, the Starship program is in a really weird spot right now. We always talk about SpaceX being a huge outlier in the industry, and they absolutely are. But is it, you know, is the Starship program, it's obviously faster than everything else in the industry, but it's slow for SpaceX. It feels slow for them. exists in a timeline sweet spot where it aggravates just the right people and bores just the other right people. Because it's way faster than the rest of the space industry in terms of everything they're developing, their launch cadence, obviously everything.

But it is slower than their constantly publicized timeline for whatever they have coming next, which makes it seem like they're behind a lot of the time when any other company or country trying to do this would be 10 years behind where they are. But they do have to move at a SpaceX cadence, especially for Artemis. Getting that thing to space,

having it spit out some Starlings is one thing, but putting a pressure vessel inside that thing with people, having it fly, they've got not a lot of time. Yeah. And the interesting aspect to compare to like recent history, right, They've got not a lot of time. Yeah. And the interesting aspect to compare to recent history is when you look at the era of specs and there were all the investor decks of every launch company was we're going to do two launches

this year, four next year, then we're going to go 12, and then we're going to be weekly launches. And it was this increase of flight rate that everyone did, even Rocket Lab did this in their investor deck which drove me nuts. But none of those, that was to draw the investor interest and to paint a picture of explosive growth that puts us up into the echelons of SpaceX and whatnot.

Nobody's basic operations depended on them flying that much in the way that Starship's does. Right. That's the difference. Is that like? Yeah. If Starship flies five times a year, it's not doing the thing that Starship was intended to do. Yeah. But every other rocket on Earth,

if it flew five to 12 times a year, we're like, it's doing all right. It's doing great. Yeah, I mean, that's a really good cadence for every other rocket. Yeah, it's doing all right, it's doing great. Yeah, I mean that's a really good cadence for every other rocket. Yeah, absolutely every other rocket. It's like one month of Falcon 9s, right? And Starship needs that to do anything interesting.

I remember the first year it turned over from like, oh there were four Atlas V launches this year, you know something, and maybe like three or four Falcon 9 launches, and then the scale just exploded. Added zeros the next couple years. Yeah, exponentially. But that's the burden that SpaceX bears as the outlier, is that they've reshaped the scale that everyone judges them.

Everybody judges the industry against them, but they are their own toughest critic in a lot of ways. Yeah, they set their own pace. Right. So that's the thing. And if this were, let's play the politics game for a minute, if this were happening under an administration that was more, what word should I use, antagonistic towards anything that was labeled Elon Musk.

This is a moment that, and there's probably still gonna be people in Congress that bring this up as like, how is this ever gonna be a realistic architecture for Artemis to fly under? Is Starship gonna be not orbital until its 10th flight at the earliest? I don't think either of us would have bet that a couple of years ago.

I certainly wouldn't have bet it a couple of months ago even. Yeah. Yeah. That's the thing that's interesting is that every time we've got this, this is why it feels like stagnation, right? Because we have to refly this and it pushes the next thing back accordingly. Right. So.

And they've got to figure out why of this one, you know, the why first, which just snowballs. And prove that it's not the last why again. Right. Yeah, it's a bad day. If nothing else, the booster works great. Amazing. Incredible landing. Great catch.

Oh man. Looked like they trimmed in the margin a little bit. I feel like it came in a little bit more like they're really working this thing out. I was a little worried. I was a little worried. It looked like it may like tip a little bit. I was like, oh, oh, oh no. And then it did.

Right, like right on a dime. I was, it's, it is truly incredible. It's the coolest thing. It's absolutely the coolest thing. And props to SpaceX too for stepping up the game with their live streams with, you know, they've got the drone footage, it's panning up as the rocket's going up.

NASA's never done that. ULA's never done that. And it's, God, it just makes for us such a better viewing experience. Yeah, I just feel bad that everybody's brought down by the issues of Starship on the way out. It kind of bummed me out in a way that I wasn't expecting. I was like, God damn, it feels like we're just stuck in a way. And Starship itself, from this point of history,

there's been weird phases in Starship development where we had all the announcements originally and it was gonna be carbon fiber and then all of a sudden they were like, we're switching to stainless steel and it felt like we went into a little bit of a lull of like, all right, well they're destroying the tooling and then we had all the suborbital flights, the one landed and then it went for,

it was what, a two year gap or something between? Oh, from the Hopper? Not even the Hopper, from like the SN15 landing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, what, a two year gap or something between? Oh, from the Hopper? Not even the Hopper, from like the SN15 landing. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it was, was it two years between that and the next, I think it was. All up flight? And then we got, I'm trying to remember flight one,

they've all kind of started to blend together in my brain. Yeah, that was the one with the concrete explosion. Yes,, gosh. I don't know why they never were going to not put a flame trench in there. That never made sense to me. I imagine to the engineers either. I need to make sure I'm not going crazy, right?

Wasn't it two years between that and the all up flight? Yeah, because flight one was April 20th, 2023. Yeah, so I mean, I think the fits and starts are what's kind of interesting. Because since then, we've had a pretty regular, every, early on it was what, every couple of months, every four months, four or five months, and then it's gotten more frequent

as we've gotten better and better here. And it's almost, it was roughly monthly until they've had these last two issues. Yeah, now it feels like just a couple months between, even with the mishaps, to only have a couple months gap is pretty, I think, significant. But I think it's,

does this one make them go back and look harder is pretty, I think, significant. But I think it's, you know, does this one make them go back and look harder at the program holistically and be like, how did we end up at this spot flying flight eight like this again? I mean, it could be that they come back or realize that they need to come back making some big changes, which, you know, that would just be another setback,

so I hope that's not the case. Yeah, I would. I would love to see Starship succeed. I think a lot of people would for as many people wouldn't. And NASA certainly would. You know, I get I get very torn when I hear people talking about, oh, Elon Musk's rocket exploded again, because they are right in all of their criticisms.

But I think a lot of what the headlines that people are reacting to when they say things like that aren't covering is what the failures are leading toward. And in stressing that these are test flights, and it's not just billionaire Elon Musk's rocket endeavors, it's NASA endeavors wanting to get back to the moon. And I think, I don't know, maybe if more people realized that they'd be a little less critical of the rocket,

but it's hard when it's falling out of the sky. Well, then they'd just be space fans, right? Because we look at these missions and we look at them as indicators of program momentum, not as like one-off things, right? We don't look at it like launching Cassini to Saturn. That's like a one-off mission, right? But this is, this New Glenn flight one,

the Vulcan flights, you know, when Neutron starts getting tested, we look at them in context of what we're expecting the next few to be and what the curve looks like. And we're all just antsy to get through this part of Starship testing. We operate in space time. Totally. Where it's like, oh, two years, yeah, that makes sense.

And two years ago, whoever read whatever headline has forgotten it and then some. That makes sense. Yeah, we maintain the longer context window than most people do for these missions. And I don't blame them. I mean, if you look at flight eight, right, and you're not in depth into details like us,

you look at flight eight and you're like, well, why are they still doing that kind of test? Yeah. Didn't they catch the booster a of test? Yeah. Um, you know, didn't they catch the booster a couple of times and the ship come back. So, and I think, you know, the public also has the perception of NASA, doesn't move fast and break things, uh, where they test something on the ground for 20 years before it goes to space. Granted, obviously in this case Artemis,

between SLS and Starship, one of those rockets has been to the moon, which I think also speaks wonders. Granted- Coming out swinging. SLS had a massive head start on Starship, a decade or so. speaks wonders. Granted- Coming out swinging. SLS had a massive head start on Starship, a decade or so.

But that is because NASA chooses the not break things and test, test, test, test, test. Which there are arguments for and plenty of arguments against. Obviously SpaceX's cadence is a huge argument for, uh, rigorous testing and breaking and trying. Yeah. And that's, that's the other option we haven't talked about, which is we're all

just bumming out a day after a failure and overreacting because of the fact that we're bumming out and wish this week went better for, for the moon, right? And like, maybe it's fine. Maybe they just realized it was some other small issue and we made some changes because the vibration environment we experienced on flight 7 and that caused this other thing to happen and that's why we blew up the engine. Maybe it was just a bad engine. Nothing else was wrong with the vehicle, the issues that we had last time we fixed and it was just a bad engine. Maybe

it was foreign object debris. There's enough innocuous explanations. I wonder if the bigger impact is happening in approximately the same section of flight. So it created the debris incident again and they've got the DRA or what was it, the breed response area or something, like ground stop in Miami international again. I think there was a ground stop up here in Philly because of the fact that all of us at this time of the year fly to Florida. So it was like going to back up some

planes down there. Oh wow. So part of me wonders if that is more impactful than any particular technical issue is that it's, you know, they've re-contacted the same section of the public that got hot about this last time. And that's another round of the same scrutiny. Right. And then a month later, they did it again. I did think on a more positive note, for Super Heavy, the booster, I did think the

fact that you could see that some of the engines went out on its way back. And it still did what it was supposed to do. I think speaks numbers. Because when you have engines going out, I mean, that's sounds alarming, especially when it comes to rockets. So to see it come in the way it did, I was like, Oh, Oh, they really good job. Like all those, all those engines will probably refly. Yeah. Yeah, I thought that was a notable occurrence.

Terms of reliability for sure. Right? Like the fact that they've they're proving engine out capability. Now's the time to prove that when you're in this phase still. But yeah, gotta gotta make sure Starship doesn't explode though. That's that's a big one. Yeah, that make sure Starship doesn't explode though. That's a big one. Yeah, sure is. What else, you had a little list going in this.

Is there anything else we haven't talked about that we should before we- Oh man, what did I bring notes on? Yeah, why hasn't Fyrex launched with Punch? They keep saying, oh, the launch vehicle, oh, the launch vehicle, oh, the launch range. And I don't know what they're gonna say in the press conference today is gonna be,

but I have a feeling it's gonna be, oh, the launch vehicle and what's going on? I don't have any conspiracy theories on this, but. I don't have a conspiracy theory, but I do think. Well, we haven't seen a launch since the last SpaceX booster Yeah, the upper stage issues they've had with, you know, they've had a good amount of upper stage issues in the last couple of months. Deorbit burn issues and second burn issues.

Upper stages, man. To be falling out of the sky. Well, you know. Yeah, it's interesting that, I mean, the last year, right, we've had, there have been Falcon 9 things to talk about, which yeah I mean honey on its own right, you know both to their credit and detriment, you know, you don't want pieces of rocket falling on your house Or you know your backyard in the case of I think it was near Asheville, North Carolina No, it was like on the reentry path

But they also turned around from those incidents with the second stages failing in orbit really fast. Yeah. I mean, if NASA if a NASA rocket had a failure like that, where a payload was lost or something, they'd be out of commission for a year or more. I think was SpaceX back two weeks? And one of them was two weeks, one of them was like a couple days. Yeah, like that, that I think is pretty wild. It's an underappreciated aspect. So who knows what's going on with the rocket right now? Yeah, it's an underappreciated aspect of how quickly they are able to identify and resolve

issues because there are other areas in the industry that still take a long time to, I mean, look at Vulcan, right? Like they've had a really long road to just losing the nozzle on that one launch there. They say it didn't really affect anything, but that's affecting their certification of Vulcan. Yeah. Moving around a manifest to fly some Amazon satellites before this NASA security one goes. I really want to see if and when we get there

Vulcan's engine recovery. I hope they film that. It's a ways off. Oh yeah. It feels like a ways off. I just want to see the butt of that rocket parachute. Who doesn't, you know? I think it's gonna be really silly looking. You know, let's talk real quick about Rocket Lab.

There was some stuff out of there, if you're game talk about. Yeah. And they say they're still on for a launch late this year for Neutron. They only give us updates around earnings reports now because they're a public company, so that's how it goes. They bought themselves a boat named Return On Investment.

The most interesting thing though was that they added a flatolite to their line of spacecraft that they sell. So they had four models before and they added one called the flatolite, which is, as the name applies, very Starlink-y. It looks like- I was about to say, it, very Starlink-y. It looks like...

Yeah, pull it up on their site. You can check it out. It looks like it's roughly... At least the image makes it look circular, like it fits exactly in Neutron's payload fairing. And what I found interesting was in the press release around it, they talk obviously about selling these to others as a satellite bus. Maybe it's something they already are planning on supplying to the space development agency. Peter Beck once again mentioned using it as the basis for their own constellation and offering services. Did not illuminate what those services would be. I can't imagine them

going for a Starlink competitor. Yeah, that seems, that would be, I wonder if maybe they want someone else to pay them to be the Starlink competitor maybe? Also, I mean, they are the ones that are contracted out to build some new satellites for GlobalStar, who's funded by Apple. If anyone has the money to compete with Starlink,

it's probably Apple. I always thought as an Apple nerd, I always understood that that would make sense for them as a privacy-focused company to be like, you know, all of the internet traffic goes through Apple things. Maybe I'm making this up, but I feel like maybe I recently read or heard about some partnership with Apple and Starlink.

Am I making that up? Or was that maybe it was just T-Mobile and not for iPhone specifically? Yeah, it's like the unmodified cell phone, you know, connections that they're working on. But the thing that Rocket Lab makes sense more for me is that they might do some sort of constellation that would offer like defense services. They are very cozy with the national intelligence agencies and the Five Eyes countries. They've got a big DOD relationship. President Trump wants his golden dome.

The golden dome. You know, golden kiwi dome. Is the golden dome idea legal in terms of the space pact not putting weapons in space treaty, whatever it is? It doesn't sound like it is. Not my department, but... Okay. I mean, I don't know.

I... It's a great thing to bring up right at the end of the show because now we can go on another six hours. Well, I mean, that also might be the question of the administration right now. Is that legal? Is that legal? Yeah, I mean, the Outer Space Treaty and weapons in space, that was like nuclear weapons, right?

So. Oh, was it specifically nuclear weapons? Wasn't it? I don't know, people are probably yelling at us right now. But I don't know, I'm also like the person that kind of hates the whole rhetoric of like don't militarize space, where I'm like, that shit's always been militarized.

Like we've had spy satellites since the first day, right? Like we've been reading your license plates since the 1960s from space, so. I always find that a little silly. I get people's, the emotional reaction of like no guns in space and no military lasers and like uniformed services. Lasers in space maybe.

A gun in space sounds like a horrible idea. It's not that functional overall, but. It's just the quickest way to decompress your spacecraft. Yeah, I mean, bringing back of the SDI concept, right? That's really what this what this proposal is in a lot of ways is a advancement. It's not it's also not terribly different from what Space Velma Agency's been working on, with they've got these different layers

of the proliferated, what is it, proliferated, is it PWS? A, P, PSW? The SDA constellation. It's like PWS something. I don't remember the name. I can't, I don't know. It's Friday afternoon.

I can't say this word anymore. I was gonna say it's outside my beat. But they have the tracking layer and they had the transport layer and then a lot of the tracking layer was, you know, hypersonic and ballistic missile tracking. So like we were already heading down that path and there's a lot of fighting around

which agency in the DOD should be the one that does that. So I'm not terribly shocked nor alarmed by that concept. I think like if anything, the last couple of years have shown us, you know, with the commercial satellite constellations, the value of a proliferated constellation, you know, being huge as we've watched Russia invade Ukraine and like we've watched that from planet satellites and max our satellites and The concept has been proven. It is not shocking that we're now like going down the next step Before before your listeners call me out I said decompression before I meant depressurization Wow

Both work you eventually get decompression. It's like you're scuba diving and you're coming back up. It's fine. You're scuba minded right now. Anyway, I bring that all up because I find it intriguing that Rocket Lab continues to talk up their own constellation. I don't think there's been any filings that would indicate that they are actively doing this.

That's the other aspect that's kind of interesting. I gotta get like Caleb Henry on to tell me if there's been any filings lately that I should know about, but I can't tell. I mean, I'm looking at the Slat-a-Lite. It does look very Starlink-esque. Looks pretty cool, doesn't it? Yeah.

It's a good announcement. I'm into it. Slat-a-Lite, great name. Great name. Great name. Josh, plug some stuff that you've been doing lately. You've got a new role at space.com. Yeah, so I just started my new role as a staff writer on the space flight beat. Covering crew 10 right now where there's some press conferences this afternoon.

I'll be going to Florida next week for the launch. So that is my type focus right now. Ugh. Yeah, the rescue mission for the astronauts whose spacecraft has been there since September. I refuse to write in any of the articles I've had to write for it, I've refused to write stranded astronauts, at least without quotations. It drives me nuts because for one thing, I'm sure they love being up there. Yeah, totally. Who doesn't want to go to space and then find out, oh, I have to be here longer?

Maybe Disney World also, but spaces, yup, be something. They're doing all right. They're doing all right up there. Yeah, man. Well, thanks for hanging out for this very wandering conversation through the week that it's been.

I needed this to end my week, just like a chill, let's talk about all this, because there's so much going on. So I appreciate you hanging out, man. Yeah, and it does not seem to be slowing down. I appreciate you having me. Whenever you want again, I'm happy to come back on. Absolutely.

All right man, thanks so much. Thank you. Thanks again, Josh, for coming on the show and thanks to all of you for supporting main engine cutoff over at main engine cutoff.com Slash support almost 900 of you I think we actually might have hit the 900 figure between the couple of platforms that were on that support this show every single month I'm so thankful for all of you supporting thanks Thanks to Stealth, Julian, Chris, Heiko, Pat, Jan, Warren, Josh from Impulse, Ryan, Lee, Joel, David, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, Matt, Pat from KC,

Will and Lars from Agile, Eunice, Donald, Bob, Frank, Joe Kim, Steve, Theo and Violet, Better Everyday Studios, Fred, Russell, The Astrogators at SCE, and four anonymous executive producers for producing this episode of the show. Thank you all so much for the support. If you want to join the crew, you'll get access to Miko headlines. I do a show every single week running through all the stories of the week, keeping you up to date on the things that matter, filtering out the

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