Main Engine Cut Off - T+305: The Starship 36 Explosion, and ESA Policy (with Adrian Beil, NASASpaceflight)

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

A special simulcast of this week’s Off-Nominal—the other show I do, if you somehow haven’t heard of it!—because it’s exactly the topic list with exactly the guest I had up next on my list. I’m joined by Adrian Beil of NASASpaceflight to talk about the recent mayhem at Starbase, and to kick around European space policy topics in the run up to the ESA Ministerial later this year.This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 34 executive producers—Creative Taxi, David, Donald, Matt, Frank, Better Every Day Studios, Warren, Bob, Russell, Pat from KC, Pat, Lee, Joel, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), Ryan, Josh from Impulse, Joonas, Natasha Tsakos (pronounced Tszakos), Heiko, Will and Lars from Agile, Fred, Kris, Stealth Julian, Joakim (Jo-Kim), Theo and Violet, Jan, Steve, The Astrogators at SEE, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters.TopicsAdrian Beil (@BCCarCounters) / TwitterAdrian Beil, Author at NASASpaceFlight.comOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 202 - Rapidly Adjusting (with Adrian Beil) - YouTubeFollowing the Loss of Ship 36, SpaceX now Focuses on Rebuilding Masseys - NASASpaceFlight.comJack Beyer on X: “Close up slow motion footage of the unexpected event(s) during Northrop Grumman’s BOLE DM-1 stb test today.”Northrop Grumman tests SLS Block 2 BOLE booster in Utah; nozzle issue seen - NASASpaceFlight.comESA studying impacts of proposed NASA budget cuts - SpaceNewsESA moving ahead with ‘resilience from space’ satellite imaging program - SpaceNewsThe 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 NASAWork with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Main Engine Cut-Off. I am Anthony Colangelo. I am here with a little bit of a special show. And it's honestly kind of a regular show, but it's a little bit of a special show as well. Every once in a while I like to run an episode of Off Nominal as the Main Engine Cut-Off show for the week. And it's usually when the two topic lists converge. And I always keep a little running topic list of what I want to talk about on MECO. And we keep our schedule for Off Nominal. And every once in a while they're exactly the same thing and I have exactly the right

guest and today I have Adrian Beale from NASA Space Flight. He is a journalist there tracking all things in space, but especially Starbase and as he hails from Europe wanted to get some insight on the Europeans perspective because we're heading into the ESA Ministerial this November. Every three years ESA meets to talk about budget and what their priorities are for the following three years, agree on contributions and where things are headed and what the policy initiatives are. And there is always a lot of talk in the run up to that of what they should do.

There's constellations, there's human spaceflight, decisions on what is important. And I wanted to get some takes from Adrian on what things he sees as being important for Europe as they head into this in a very chaotic time. So it felt like the right time to do a little crossover show. If you liked the conversation, this is what you can expect from Off Nominal. It's a little bit lighthearted, but it's still serious,

and I think you would dig the show. So you'll find it wherever you listen to this. You can find it on YouTube if you're more of a video person. So without further ado, let's talk to Adrian. Actually, I lied. Before we do that, I'm going to say thank you to the executive producers right now. So let's say there's 34 executive producers for today's show. We got a new one. Creative Taxi, which I believe is my buddy Andy Newman's new gig. So check that out. Creative Taxi.

David, Donald, Matt, Frank, Everyday Studios, Warren, Bob, Russell, Pat from KC, Pat, Lee, Joel, Tim Dodd, David-not, Ryan, Josh from Impulse, Eunice, Natasha, Sakos, Heiko, Will and Lars from Agile, Fred, Chris, Stealth Julian, Jo Kim, Theo and Violet, Jan, Steve, The Astrogate is at SCE, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for the support. As always, you make this show possible, And if you want to join that crew, mainenginecutoff.com slash support is where to do that. You can get access to MECO headlines,

an extra show that I do for the paid members. So check that out if you want to support, get a little extra in feed, and I thank you so much for it. Now, without further ado, let's talk to Adrian. CLS is go for main engine, start. Go at throttle up. Negative return.

And we see a nominal MECO. Welcome to space. Oh, Adrian. Hello. I'm glad that you're here with me. Somebody that's a legitimate professional in this streaming industry. How are you doing, buddy? Doing good. Absolutely looking forward to talk about, I will just say everything, because I think

the space industry lately has made it very easy for space reporters to talk about a lot. There's kind of one story and at the same time there's about a million because that story impacts everything ever and it all somehow is interrelated. That's where we've ended up. So on that note, I've been, this might be one of them shows that I'm like, hey listen, this is both a Miko and an off nominal at the same time because I keep little lists of like, here's what I should talk about. Jake and I typically have this little calendar of like, here's what's coming up on AuthNominal. I keep little lists for MECO.

It's the same topics right now. I'm like, I need somebody from the European continent to come on and help me, because there's a lot of European policy wrangling that is, it's just, what, every three years are ministerials, right? So it's, in the run up, the six months leading up to it, there's just like a lot of people talking and positioning,

and there's a lot going on. And then they're also angry about American politics at the same time and then mad at SpaceX. And you are kind of a one-of-one who's like into the SpaceX things, obsessed with Starbase, European politics is there. So you've got it all going on and I'm glad that you're here to help me sort through it. Absolutely. It feels like I'm very much in the middle of a lot lately. So I agree with that assessment. Yeah. First off, it's late where you are, so I hope you brought something fun to drink. So I thought a long time what I should drink. And I remember we have a beer in Germany that's literally called Astra Rakete, which means Astra Rocket. So I just thought that funny.

That's all the story behind this, behind the fact that it's called Astra Rocket. So yeah, that's it. Did they know? Did you inform them like what the whole situation is? I feel like you should reach out. I feel like we should reach out. But honestly, I don't have any more backstory to this besides the fact that I think that's an incredibly funny coincidence. And it's apparently a beer infused with citrus and vodka. So yay.

Wow. Infused with vodka. That's intense. Yeah, I'm not sure. Definitely, that would have you leave your house power sliding for sure. That would definitely fit and be on brand for that. I hope nothing power slides today here. Like that's my personal hope.

I hope this house stays where it is in horizontal and vertical axis. I'm getting... I'm drinking a Victory Primailsner, by the way. It is a German style Pilsner. So that was relevant. But it's delicious. It's a good one. Nice.

Cheers. Cheers, man. It's, I don't know which end you want to start here. There's been, I was going to say there's been some good off nominees in the last week, but I don't know that any of them have the spirit of whimsy needed to make it. I mean, Starship just blowing up. Epic explosion, certainly. No spirit of whimsy. We're beyond the era of whimsy for Starship, you know what I mean? Yeah, it's like, I feel like it's almost... I'm not sure off nominal. I feel like off nominees always have a bit of a stupid character next to that.

Yes. And I feel like that test was just like, I mean, in the in the essence, it was just a fail test. It lacks the it lacks the funny stupid part of it. No whimsy at all. Just pretty depressing. Yeah. Reminiscent of I think we were talking about this on the pre show last week, right?

Reminiscent of like SN four or something where they were testing and they had that, was it a methane leak or something that then the entire field ignited and there was this kind of two-stage explosion happening. Incredibly energetic. I don't think, so do we know why there was that second even more explosive aspect to the explosion? I gotta pull up the video while we're talking about this. For this test for ship 36. Yeah, there was the initial explosion and then there was one that everything really started flying.

I don't know if that was a tank on the ground that also got hit at the same time and that was the secondary explosion, but the second part was crazy. I think it's the LOX tank. I want to say it's because I think you see in the clip how there's like a part of the tank that just falls down. I think it's the Lux tank just hitting the ground and probably also part of the methane tank and it's just like emitting a lot of because this test is relatively low on methane and while this explosion looks spectacular, it's not really like that huge of a force. It's more like a giant fireball that happened.

We can see that now in the aftermath. We flew over it. You know, others also did. And the damage is relatively calm versus what it initially looked like. Of course, the test stand is toast and a lot of piping and everything around it is toast. But besides that, I mean, honestly, there's material like 400, 500 meters away from this, that is perfectly fine. So in terms of energy, kind of lower than SN4, I think. All right, there's always a silver lining there. It's interesting now, I'm trying to

pull up the your flyover. There's some videos you're tweeting out, what, yesterday or something? Yeah, there's... I feel like everybody, as soon as this happened, got into the air and decided to just... Yeah, I mean, there you can see it. I mean, look at it. It's not apocalyptic by any means. No, it's just a problem that once again they have to re-figure out all the details, right? And we know putting a stand there, that's one thing, but all the cables, all the piping, everything, that's going to take time. Yeah, so now that we've kind of... We talked about this on the show last week with Eric Berger and Casey Dreier, but that was so close to the immediate aftermath that I don't think there was really anything that we could glean other than like, this is bad in a horrible year

and vibes are bad. Now we're a couple days out, we got a couple of tweets from Elon on it or whatever, and maybe we've seen some hardware moving around. Do you have a good sense for what the game plan is from here? Like obviously setback, but is there, they have a lot of sites down in Texas. Is there, you know, what is your expected like traffic pattern here for what they're going to do? I don't think SpaceX has a traffic plan yet. I feel like they're still in cleanup. I feel like that's going to be quite some time again.

They have to do like assessment of the place first and understand what they have to repair. From what we can tell, they're still in the cleanup process. I would still think this is a very bad year overall and I think SpaceX people probably would agree with me. I honestly feel like there's a lot of decisions that SpaceX right now has to make. They have, of course, two more flights on their Block 2 chain of vehicles. They have them Block 3 coming up, which will result in a lot of changes in their hardware anyway. They already started adjusting MASSES before this test, and now they have to repair it and adjust it. They adjusted it during this test as well. Yeah, they rapidly adjusted

test site, which is funny because it happened now two times that they rapidly adjusted something they also wanted to adjust in the future. But I think there's a very high chance that they will fly the remaining Block 2 vehicles because the issues they had are not necessarily Block 2 related. One of the three failures is Block 2, that was the actual the resonance issue, but the other one was the Raptor failure. That's not Block 2, that's Raptor. The other one, this test was a failed COPV.

That's also not Block 2. That could also have happened. So not blocked too. That could also happen as well. Yeah. Yeah. So are you are you really gaining something by skipping? You're just carrying these issues that apparently you have right now all the way to the next generation. So I feel like there's a good chance they will fly it in the remaining two vehicles. How they will fly it and how they will test it.

That's the interesting part because Massey's toast. And obviously we'll get a new nomenclature out of this. It'll be a block 2.5, which will be really nice for the block trackers out there. There's always a new one, just when you think it stabilizes. Or when they retroactively declare something as block 2 that wasn't block 2 before, and they're like, no, no, we totally flying block 2 boosters. And we're like, are you? Because recently you didn't call this Block 2. Like I have a spreadsheet that goes all the way back to the original countdowns. And that is not that is not true in spirit of what we're watching here. Yeah, the new I think we at some point we declared the new Block 3 is the old Block 2 in boosters. They like resigned that for some reason. I mean, whatever. It's their

internal name assignment. And let's be real, Falcon 9 is not any better in terms of names. No, no, no, that's much worse because there's more of them. So, yeah. Do you think that something that's been in my head about this particular failure? I don't know if it's just the visuals of it, but I also think it's something about where in the life cycle of the vehicle it is this feels like the Pad explosion that happened with dragon where you kind of felt like we were over the hump You know the delays were there. We finally are flying this thing. They're doing some testing they got a good schedule forward and then we get that leaked video after the explosion and it's a Tough thing to look at right and and I feel the same about Starship that you're watching Starship explode right when it's a test tank

You're like, oh, well, it's clearly development hardware. You're watching numbered, you know a very high numbered Starship explode and that's a bad visual that is gonna be out there forever and they have to deal with that visual existing and In the dragon case that definitely ratcheted up the intensity right they were that far down that program and it felt like okay This got serious. It's got really serious now that this happened. I If it weren't for the recent troubles that starship I would feel exactly the same but that's the part that tempers it a little for me like maybe this is different because It's a rough year and like

hopefully we keep waiting for rock bottom. Is this it? I hope because it was for Dragon and I hope that's the same for Starship here. In a weird way it fits just into this year so perfectly that I think people are just accepting it happening. But yes, I agree. I didn't expect this to happen. Like I didn't expect at this point in the program for an upper stage to explode. Of course, we have way more mature rockets that failed during weird testing in the past. That's not something that is super unusual. But I felt like SpaceX was kind of on the path of like they really needed to win with Starship. They had like a decently okay-ish flight nine where at least hey you got to Seco. Like you're we it was okay you could sell that and I feel like they had this path this

vehicle was really like the one to turn this bad year into a good year and well now you're at least on a like two three four months stand months stand down. And I mean, at three months to this year, we are already somewhere in September, maybe October for return to flight. That that's not going to really help you to turn this year around. And yeah, I was surprised. I didn't watch it live. I will fully admit it was five a.m. my time. And I I woke up after one of us.

Yeah, it was like I actually didn't watch it live. I woke up and I got the AI summary of Discord and it was we have like a channel where we talk about stuff behind it. People talking about ship 36 explosion like, huh? That's not one you want summarized. That's an Apple intelligence summarization failure for sure. Yeah, I was like, oh, static fire into explosion. That's weird, Apple. Nope.

Yeah, yeah. Good summary. That can't be true. But I mean, does this, what's your level of concern though, right? If that's the case, like has something, because I think for a while there was a lot of storylines you could write. Elon's distracted, it's just where they're at in their life cycle.

You can write off a couple, but how many do we need stacked up before you start going like, something's happening, because with, I'll give you an example. The year where Falcon 9 surpassed ULA in flights, it was the same year that ULA was starting to turn pads over for Vulcan, and all of a sudden, every launch they went through had some scrub. One, two, three scrubs.

There was that one year where all of a sudden everybody noticed ULA scrubs a lot. And I think looking back, we know that was the year that the workforce adjustments started happening in the run-up to Vulcan, and it clearly presented itself. Is this that year for Starship where the people that are working on it are different? We've had a lot of attrition at SpaceX out to companies that are either founded by SpaceXers or they just naturally progress because they don't want to move to South Texas. I don't know. I was not willing to accept this storyline with a failure or two. Three, four in a row. It's like, it's a lot.

I think something is definitely I think you're either talking about an incredible streak of bad luck, because all of these failures are odd, right? Like none of this is like, just simple. All of these are just weird. simple. All of these are just weird. It's a good question. I still think there's a lot of talent in SpaceX. I think they are still an incredibly like I mean, this company right right now, next to all of this runs the Falcon nine program, which is probably one of the most successful programs in last year. That's your last year. But but I feel like I feel like this, like this talent is for sure not gone.

However, something in Starship is obviously not going as they planned. At this point, they lost to the recent failures like what 810 months just gone. That's gone. Yeah. Yeah, the Mars 2026 looks almost incredibly unlikely almost no roadmap progression progression, right? You would know the ins and outs more than so more than me But like the stuff that's been the top their hit list has been the top of the hit list every single flight now I don't know if any of the end is stuff been redesigned I'm sure but there hasn't been a progression of where they're at on the roadmap in that time. Yep

Yeah, I mean Their goal before this year, when we recently actually did this with some colleagues, I talked about what was our expectation about the Starship this year. And it was like, maybe eight to 10 flights. Well, not happening. Maybe a ship catch attempt. Well, not happening. What they got was booster reuse, props to that, like they reflux on the booster, that's cool. Orbital refueling? No, well, not going to get that this year. I mean, it's for sure a setback and even if you go into these timeline discussions, we are talking about Artemis-3 readiness, we are talking about like moon landing readiness or Mars window next year.

These things are definitely under question. Like, will you be able to test orbital refueling until the Mars window next year and get that perfected? I'm not sure. I have my doubts. Somebody in the chat is telling us that we're two dudes to hate on SpaceX

which hasn't gone well in the past. No, no, don't misunderstand us. Like we are not shifting the goalposts for SpaceX. SpaceX and their outsized efforts shifted their own goalposts to the point where in Adrian's stack of things that happened. Yeah, they refloo the booster. That's cool. And I write like that vibe is they'd caught the largest boost there's ever been. And then they refloo it.

And we're like, yeah, that was the easy part because of what you have done previously. You write, you're writing big checks. You got to cash big checks. And you know, the, they're the fact that they are the outliers levels up the expectations for what they're capable of. And they don't get to play the same game as everyone else because they are that good. This is the role that NASA was in from the space age through what the 90s right like there was a reason that it's not rocket science was the phrase because

that was like they were just killing it and they were doing so good and they were infallible in many ways except for a handful of missions and they were and even with like JPL at Mars right every time they go to Mars they're expected to stick that landing everyone else on Earth is like Mars is really hard seven minutes of terror we might not make it JPL shifted the goalposts on Mars now they're having their own problems SpaceX shifted their own goalposts because they did so well and now they are having those problems and I think I attribute a lot of it to the fact that Starship is such a grand scale that everything is so hard and

there are so many things to get right that to have them all come together is like nearly miraculous and so, you know is that I Don't know how healthy that is long term and I don't Unfortunately, I don't see like how to simplify the structure when you're trying to do the holy grail of what spaceflight has always said Is you know where we're all heading and it is is this complex. That's a logjam I can't find my way out of. Everything below exceptional would be not good enough for this program. Because Starship,

I think we both agree Starship is probably one of the hardest programs to ever be attempted in launch, like launch vehicle history. It's nobody besides SpaceX right now would even have the ability to attempt it, because there's so many problems on the way that you would just bankrupt a company on the path. In the context of this, though, this year is not exceptional. If you say they need to be exceptional to get this program running, 2025 is not exceptional. I doubt any SpaceXer will go on any show and tell us, yeah, 2025, great year for Starship. Morale really high, we're doing great. Yeah, everybody cheering.

Like, no. Yeah, and I don't, this isn't me being doom and gloom, right? I still am one of those people that I'm a when Starship, not an if starship. And there's people that used to be when that are now if. And I get that. I totally get that this shifts your perspective on that. At the same time, I'm thinking of the hero's journey aspect of this.

Every great story in aerospace or tech or these fields that we're interested in have those moments. There's a chapter in the book, right? Eric Berger's chapter in this book is going to be epic because there's going to be probably two or three chapters of 2025. There's always that moment in these programs of like epic downfall. And you hope, and what our job is to figure out like, is this a group that's capable of pulling the nose up, right?

Same way that NASA science right now is dealing with budgetary issues and program management struggles and execution issues and vision issues. Will they be able to pull the nose up is the thing that you try to suss out. It's not unexpected that there are down periods in development, especially ones as lofty as this. So that part's not the surprise. It's just like, damn, it's not they haven't pulled the nose up yet Are they in a total stall or are they you know trying to pick up some speeds to get some lift under the wings? That's that's the question and Here's the here's the thing that I'm curious on as you look at the roadmap, right?

There's a temptation probably to say all right. Well, we're we're way behind on it's kind of like a gamblers Mentality right like I I gotta win my losses back, so I'm gonna double down and bet bigger and bigger and bigger and lose more and more money. Are they going to continue to add stuff to the next flight to try to get ahead of the roadmap? Or, I mean, so far they've been pretty committed to like, let's re-fly maybe one or two things updated

based on what we know, but we're still aiming for that same thing. Are they gonna stick with that, or do you think that, I guess, that's where you're getting at with the V3 jump, that they might say, screw it, we're doing, we're launching two at a time, and we're going to try to do orbital refilling

on the next flight because now we've got all this time to work on rendezvous and proximity operations and whatever else might be there. I really think they want to get the necessary steps ready to launch Starlink's on this. That seems to be their high level goal right now. They want to get payload deployment going. They want to get Raptor, Relight, and Space going.

Because once you achieve that point, well, that's your way you start to get return on investment. That's really when you're getting something out of this program. I feel like that's what they're like high level chasing right now. Yes, they have some piece of other tests, especially with the DPS on recent flights that well, they didn't really test because they never get to that point. But they were more like sidelined. Right now it's feeling I feel like it's getting getting it Starlink readiness,

and then just use Starlink mission as test missions. Because once you get to this stage where you launch payloads on this, and you basically test after payload deployment, well, you're not really losing that much anymore. Especially if you also got booster catching down and props to them. I mean, in the grand context, they're still catching the largest rocket booster as a mate to uh, on a regular basis. Now, if they get that going and they can reuse that, that's probably already a huge amount of the cost and getting to this economic, a viable

scenario for Starship right now feels to me like that's their stretch goal. That's the first get to the first finish line of the 15 Philip finish lines they have ahead of them. But like, get this first finish line. That's interesting context too, because every other company on Earth, I feel comfortable making that statement, every other company on Earth would have stripped off the TPS out of all these ships and said, we're just going to be a regular launch vehicle with a reusable booster and we'll come back around to the reusability thing in a year or two when we get, and they never will, right?

They wouldn't circle back and do it. They would just launch Starship as this thing but the fact that they haven't yet I think is notable that the minute that they put All right We're just gonna do a second stage on top of this thing with a giant a huge payload bay and a giant regular fairing And it just looks like a huge Falcon. I think that's the minute I would worry of like okay But they lost the plot on why they're doing this That's the minute I would worry of like, okay, but they lost the plot on why they're doing this So I would make that my canary in the coal mine with your context of like no starlink is a and that's a clear gating element because it is

You know future star links that are going to make that business more viable do require the size of Starship, which is Could be tough could be a tough and that's why you know that they developed different versions of the starlink buses to Allow for this schedule, you know, confliction. It's fun times, man. You're busy. Absolutely. I mean, I just started writing our update for this weekend because we are doing like a weekly update on what's happening. And honestly, it's kind of crazy that you would think we talk mostly about Marcy's repairs. But what I mostly talk about is about the fact that they are building a huge gigabay now and are building like doing a foundation for one of the biggest rocket factory

building of all times after the VAB. And that maybe they're about say, hey, we're not getting the ship back. We're just got to make a bunch of them. Yeah, it's like, it's so much as this program is bigger than most other rocket companies combined at this point, basically, in terms of workforce, and the amount of work they can get done in a single week is insane. That's why I'm always hesitant to say, for example, is it two to three months to test for the next flight? Because this is still SpaceX we are talking about. They could do a very stupid, or like the stupid, yeah, very ambitious thing. Put this thing on like a test stand, hook some umbilicals up to it, static fired on concrete, whatever. We did it before. They've done worse.

Yeah, this is not the worst thing. It's not even making the top 10 of the worst things they have done with Starship. We'll go back to the tents. No problem. We're moving outside. When you took the ships inside, that's when all the problems started. Back to the tents, boys. Yeah, but just bring out like, get to Walmart. We are getting back to the good old floating things for the Raptors. Get the tiny homes out of there, you know, just camping only. Yeah. I feel like there's a good chance there, what tells you they will even static fire before the next flight? Like, very crazy thought here, but do you think there's an engineered

SpaceX right now that is like, you know, before we don't fly them, why not fly them just without the static fire? Just launch it. That's true, launch it and catch it. Yeah, put a little test cone on there and let's see what happens. I mean, I think one day they wanna ship it to other launch sites like that, right?

Yeah, I mean, never doubt SpaceX's ability to do something you really didn't expect as a news reporter. One other thing that you maybe didn't or did expect was this observation that happened mere minutes before we went on air. This is not a replay from several years ago when they had an observation. This is a new the B-O-L-E, the bowl. What's it? The booster something life extension was though. Yeah, it's something life extension. I always forget. Observation life extension. Apparently always for observation.

I didn't watch this. This is my first viewing of this. So can you give me a rundown what happened here? Yeah, it's happened a bit earlier, I think, but I will look watch this. This is my first viewing of this. So can you give me a rundown of what happened here? Yeah, it's happened a bit earlier, I think. But I will look at it. Oh, it already missed it? Yeah, the nozzle liberates at some point. Immediately? Let me. I feel like I was pretty early on.

Give me a second. I'm getting you the timestamp. Oh, it's near the end of the test. Sorry. I figured it didn't go on too long. Look at these pans it's doing though. Here we go. Is that a side angle? That would be an epic view of this thing if that's where it's happening.

How long is this test? How long should I be scrolling? Scrolling, oh, it's a long counter. That's nozzle is still there. Let's track it. Nozzle's still there. How about that? Where is it?

They must have, this might have already happened because they zoomed out. So. Oh, that could be. How about that? Uh, what is it? This might not have happened because they zoomed out. Oh, that could be. 110. I'm getting 110. Now I'm doing math. That's like just under two minutes. Let's see. Just under two minutes. That's past two minutes.

You guys do very long livestreams. Here we go. Is that really if you get this side angle? This is crazy Okay, they're apparently it's already I Like that. I'm ever I called out in the chat for telling us that we're bitching about space X too much is getting attacked in The chat everybody would be nice. I don't know what's going on down there, but There we go. There was agent. Holy crap. There we go there it was Adrian holy crap there we go oh man yeah oh yeah immediately they were honest you can see the little minor sub explosion

there so you're all right what's up with the nozzles here this is like a Vulcan like situation yeah I mean it's just like observation was with the Omega booster yeah I feel like lately nothing problem just just really dislikes Yeah, I mean, it's just like observation was with the Omega booster. Yeah, I feel like lately, nothing just really dislikes nozzles. I mean, it's also it's welcome. It's weird. You would expect at this point that they really have nozzles figured out. I feel like it's kind of a thing for nozzle as herpes. I didn't watch this test live. I was also just getting to it.

I will add this to the list of things I didn't expect to explode in the last two weeks. Didn't know it was getting tested. I haven't been keeping up on the test schedule here for the... Because these are the boosters for like Artemis 8. How far out of these boosters? This is 9? 9. 9, right? Artemis 9. This is hardware that totally will fly for sure, for sure. I mean, let's be

real. Do you think Artemis 9 will fly? I would believe. I would take a bet that something named Artemis 9 flies but not this Artemis 9. Yeah it's a good it's good branding I think the biggest problem with the the rethinks of NASA you know human spaceflight policy over the last years that we we've just bailed on a bunch of really good names right like the Ares rockets were great names Const Constellation is good names. We've shed a lot of good brand names in our past. Yeah. It's like you threw away the great name in a project and now you have to go to the

B plan. That's how you end up with a space launch system. Because they didn't want to name it. Yeah. They're like, yeah, let's be careful. That might have been the point. This might have been the moment if they would have just flipped the switch that said, SLS is named Aries 5. Just we're going, we're doing that name. We had that branding done, but they didn't.

Yeah. I mean, honestly, half the people would not notice the difference between Aries 4 and 5 and SLS, I think. It's fine. Maybe this is for all the commercial availabilities of such a booster because I bet there's so many commercial companies that will be like, yeah, we need this SRB. We need this giant SRB. Yeah.

I mean, we could bring back Aries One. Like Aries One Plus. That's always a threat, I think. That's always teetering on the edge of coming back. I always wake up at night in sweat and I'm in fear that Iris 1 comes back. That's my biggest fear at night. That's your biggest fear. You're like, God, what upper stage are they gonna put on it, though? Like, oh my God, imagine the Centaur. Yeah, what about it? It was a J2X. Remember that? That was a cool looking engine. That's true. I was like flying it in Kerbal. But yeah, it's not a

good rocket. I did see, you know, I was there for Ares 1X. Did you know that? You were? I was there. I was at that launch. I totally was. How was it to see something flight it is already canceled it was it was totally bizarre it was. Completely surreal and it looked absolutely ridiculous. And i hate it but i love that i that's in my brain somewhere and also remember it toasted the launch pad. I also remember it toasted the launchpad. It like kicked out and just blasted. It kind of star-based the 39B, I guess it was at the time. They clean-slaid it. What did you say earlier?

They rapidly adjusted it. Yeah, they rapidly adjusted launch site. So they did a 39B back in Aries 1 X days. Somebody called this the Aries 1 moment of the Artemis program because it's testing hardware that is already not flying. I love that wording because it's like, it's not that far off. If you ask 100 space journalists today, will this booster ever fly? I think more than 90 would say no. This one that we're watching get tested?

No, no. I mean, in general, this kind of booster design. So you don't think, well, two and three are going, right? Yeah, but then they would- So you're saying all the other ones are going to museums, is your point. I mean, this one is for nine. This one's for nine, that's a lot. There's no way 16 of these or 14 solid rocket boosters go.

Yeah. If they go for like five and six, yes, but these new upgraded boosters are not flying before nine. Also, I like that you're getting called out for your overestimation of there being a hundred space journalists. There might be. It's like one of these social media posts with like, name 100 space journalists. I think we can do it.

We have way more interesting topics for the back end of the show than that. But I bet we can. We'll do it. We'll do it in the we'll do it later on. We'll make a little list. Perfect. Can we talk about European policy? I need you to help me sort through what's going on here. There's a lot. There's like like multiple constellations. There's this whole ESA European Commission negotiation back and forth

on like which constellations are ESA and which are European Commission and what about the countries that are not in one but not the other and A lingering question that I thought was gonna get resolved last ministerial was what do we do about human spaceflight? And that question is even more so now so You pick pick of the litter for what are you watching most going into the ministerial? General budget question my general question is what kind of slacker we picking up from nasa science programs basically imploding because the wording of the director general recently has been a bit of we will have. been a bit of we will have as much as I understand it is there are different agendas for the ministerial depending on how NASA decides about their budget. So I'm wondering which coming up in November, they better not hope on having a budget because I don't think

we're gonna have a budget for them when they get to the ministerial. Yeah, I think the latest update from ESA was they expect the budget to hit about a week before the ministerial, which I'm like optimistic. That's in time. No way. I really think right now ESA is flying on at least three different plans, maybe four. And it all depends on not only the US politics, but also the European politics, Because we had recently a lot of shifts and a lot of governments in Europe. We of course, last year was a bit of a disaster for the budget because it actually got less, especially from the big ones. We now have I mean, Germany has the one what was it?

One trillion dollar fund package that was which was which 500 billion are for military purposes. So these could also be theoretically space stuff. So it's this there's so much movement right now in terms of money, but nobody's really committing to space, which is the weird thing. It's like, okay, we have all of this money, how much is space again? Like how much we're doing for space and nobody's kind of answering the question. It's like just throwing into the room and after that silence. And I feel like that's the biggest problem. And I think one of the huge problems we are right now seeing is that ESA is noticing that you cannot build up a reliable space industry in a year, which everybody told him like 10 years ago.

And now we basically have one launcher that is not really up to cadence. We didn't properly fund all the smaller companies. They got their like 50 million contracts and then we wonder why we don't have a Falcon 9 competitor in Europe. And that's the bad situation right now they're in. And of course, there's for politics. It's so hard to justify money on space right now because you in. And of course, there's for politics. It's so hard to justify money on space right now, because you have a million other issues that also deserve money right now. So welcome, welcome to the huge, confusing budget problems of Europe, where nobody kind of

has money for space. But there is money, but nobody wants to spend it on space. And I also lost track who's who's increasing and who is decreasing money at this point. It's so in the air. With the exception of the launcher that hadn't gotten up to cadence, I felt similarly seen as like, oh, we wonder why we don't have a Falcon 9 competitor and we're underfunding all these other options because that's there are some like US politicians that feel the same that feel like that's in the same spot 500 billion dollar defense package feels like you're what would your branding be?

Branded Berg dome like what would your what would your branding be for a crazy missed defense program? That's gonna clearly be Trillions of dollars because we got one of those So it doesn't feel totally off from where we are. We have a rug that we keep pulling out from under the ESA science programs that we're like, we're going to do a Mars project together. No, we're not going to do a Mars project together. You're going to fly a rover. No, we're not doing that. So that part is different. And also there's this absolute stupid move that ESA made, like stupid in retro, like I can now call this stupid. ESA attached himself to NASA as closely as they could over the last 20 years, and we're, like, hugging every single program that NASA has and was like, oh, we can totally help you, he takes optics for this program. And now we are noticing,

well, if NASA cancels, like, everything, we have nothing. Like, we are, yes, there are some projects that we run independently, but most of the projects are in cooperation with NASA. So you're suddenly in a situation where well, what can we run on our own gateway is the biggest example, there's so much contribution in gateway, and there was so much, oh, we're telling giving you gateway for that we getting free astronauts to the moon. That's totally a cool deal. And now gateway is cancelled and Artemis becomes more of a signature project without any science meaning. And they will be like, if we don't contribute

gateway, if nobody takes gateway, get we do we get the astronauts to the moon? I don't know. I don't anybody else. You got the service module, which I guess is the barter. Our ISS time is the barter for that though, right? So you got to get that Argonaut thing up and running. The Argonaut thing that totally wasn't suddenly made up because we really needed a bargaining chip. That was like, oh, we also have Argonaut. We do?

I mean, if we don't have anything at the moment, then yeah. I mean, you do have all the pressure vessels, right? We ain't got a commercial space station industry in this country unless Tali's Alenia is gonna be shipping us pressure vessels. That's kind of how it feels. As long as Turin is in Europe, we have every single pressure vessel in the West. Just export tax the shit out of that and then fund ESA off of every pressure vessel that's coming over.

I was there like six months ago. That was the craziest facility I think I've ever visited in my life. TALIS's. Scale or what? Just exquisite-ness? What was your, what was crazy? So first, the main production hall of the pressure vessels is like an empty, almost where you would assemble dirty trains. You wouldn't expect this to be a pressure vessel assembly. Everything in space is clean and white. And Talos has this old factory hall and they're like, yeah, next to the old machines, that's

where we assemble the space stations. And you're like, what? But of course, then to be fair, that's like the main modules and they polish them. Yeah. But it's like, it's such a crazy production and you have people there that then are like, yeah, yeah, I worked on like every single ISS module ever launched from the West. Okay.

And it's just this crazy heritage place because, you know, that same factory hall that I'm making a joke about probably produced half the ISS. So easily. Yeah. So absolutely crazy. And there's Don't Leak. There's a good, yeah. I mean, there was a part of the Axiom station was lying around while I was there. Oh yeah, I was not allowed. How did it seem like it was coming? Any good schedule vibes on that one?

Seemed a bit early, but to the total surprise it also looked like a Cygnus. Everything kind of looks like it. Everything is a Cygnus, I learned basically. That's what Northrop Grumman thinks. They're like, new program? I bet that looks like a Cygn sickness. I learned basically. That's what Northrop Grumman thinks. They're like, new program? I bet that looks like a sickness. We'll throw our ring. How could we modify sickness to make this work? I should use sickness as the nozzle.

If they did that. It's an absolutely crazy facility with incredibly skilled and talented people. And I love to be there. And they're so friendly. They're so open. I was like, next to Gateway, I could touch Gateway. They were like, Yeah, no, no problem. It's the structural module. It holds micro satellites. It's micro asteroids, you should be able to touch it. Did you? Did you touch the you didn't touch? Oh, you didn't?

Okay, nice. He might pence. I did. They were like, Yeah, they were like, you can totally touch this. The thing is that this is the structural module. It's basically a giant steel cube. If this has doesn't hold when you touch it, we would like to know. Yeah. So go ahead. Yeah. It's like, if this collapses, if you touch it, that's a good test. Thank you for that test. Yeah. All right. So riddle me this because this was my I don't know if you've heard my crackpot theory on what ESA should do in the human spaceflight department. I'm looking forward.

I don't know. I want you to sort through the budget side of this for me, because I think 2022, there was... Wasn't that when there was the op-ed from the ESA astronauts of like, we should do a human spaceflight thing? That might have been maybe even last year or the year before that they're... I think it was 2023 or 24. I think it was more recent. And they're targeting.

So there was some campaign and targeting an upcoming ministerial to be like, this is our moment. We should take it seriously. I don't think a crew vehicle is a good idea. It's not going to go well. It's too expensive. You got launcher problems. I guess you would put it on top of an Ariane 6 or something. I don't even know what you would really do. And the budget's definitely not there for it, and convincing everybody that should be

there is not there for it. But y'all got all these space station modules. And we're having a really terrible time funding space stations over here because we have the ISS and we don't care about funding commercial space stations apparently, above thinking that NASA shouldn't be the anchor customer, but these companies' business case is only working when NASA is the anchor customer. So I was like, all right, let's just do a little simple math here. ESA fund a ISS follow-on space station program, generate themselves some work in the pressure

vessel department, give themselves a destination to be the center anchor tenant there. They kind of flip the script and they're like, NASA, you want to have crew time while you're working on all the Artemis stuff, fly on over to the ESA space station. And I think funding-wise, based on what we've been requesting for commercial space station programs over here, it's like in range of an ESA-funded program, much more so than a new human-rated launch vehicle spacecraft program. I'm looking at the ESA budget right now and how it's currently it. So right now, wow, we pay one billion a year for space transportation for what? Whatever. We really don't know what is that for? Yeah, what's what's what

we're getting for what that one billion by the way, Russian diamond encrusted Mercedes, I think Mercedes, I think, is what space transportation. So apparently Earth observation is 1.6 billion. The overall, I would say, the non-operational side of the budget is more like 4 billion, which is very, very small versus what NASA is doing. So let's be real, unless something majorly changes in Europe, we cannot pick up everything here. I also like the idea of not doing a human space flight capsule because I think, I agree with you, it would be extremely expensive, it would probably take decades. And we'd fail. I really think Isa right now needs to find very smart partnerships that are not just attachments, but like smart, hey, we do something that you actually need. I agree with you there with no proposal. And I

think we really need your reusable rocket. I really think we should spend these 1 billion if we don't do it right now, please spend it on getting a reusable rocket because it's we talk about these constellations and let's build this stalling on our own. We kind of need a reusable rocket for that. We cannot fly this on area in six. Cadence is one one problem but cost is the other right because apparently we are paying one billion for the current capacity it's not a good deal that's funny too though the constellation thing because you have you have like you know especially on the defense side I don't know what you're

gonna do with the defense slush fund over there that you're talking about but you know there's French high resolution imaging constellations, you've got a lot of commercial options these days. And I know like currently there's, there's geopolitical tensions, right? Just like, not only just on the NASA side, obviously greater geopolitics too, but like, I mean, I don't feel dumb for being like, this is kind of a temporary situation and I think we all know at the end of the day we're going to remain friends and sometimes you fight with your friends in weird ways and you get mad at each other, but like, we're not going to go make friends with other people too quickly.

I think we'll be alright. And the speed at which space policy in Europe seems to move, the situation will be entirely different by the time they get to the next decision point. I mean, I think it's cool that ministerial is over three years. Like, if NASA operated on an every three year budget, I think that would work better than the current policy,

which is a budget and then a continuing resolution for a year and then a budget and then a continuing resolution for a year and then a budget and then that's not good. So I do like the every three years we're gonna think about it kind of thing. I just, it's, I don't know. I mean, even when you're talking about the launcher side of things, right, when you're saying like,

we need a reusable launcher, are you thinking more on the vein of like, all right, we gotta get off the Aryan space situation and make sure that we've got viable competitors coming up that are thinking about reusability I don't know what you're you know knowing where the smaller launches are now and knowing where in space is what do you how do you how would you play that if you were if you were like king for a day what would you do with the launcher situation gift I guess also starting with this start

with your priors on that. What do you actually want out of European launch? What do you find the importance of it? How should it be positioned? I think we need two things. We need a way to launch to space from Europe properly. We need a developed spaceport that can launch medium to large size rocket. I'm talking like 5 to 10 tons range. So we can launch

like stuff like the Galileo satellites or Sentinel, we can launch these kinds of things on our own. And I think we need to launch that can do that with a reusable application partial reusable program. So I think the optimal way to approach that would be in a well better budget would be there to have two or three companies compete for that. For that you would need give them, we are talking about probably 500 mils per company that we have talked about these numbers before. And that's also a ballpark that got SpaceX going. So we cannot give these, like sometimes we have these studies that are giving out and they are like, Oh,

here's 20 million to explore the reusable launcher and like, yeah, it's seed funding. It's seed funding is what it is. Yeah, it's it's like that that gets you something that gets your paper of like the problem is, yes, you get a paper out of that that says we would need this money to make this. Well, then that's where the study dies. That's where then then nobody pays 500 million for it. And I think having a reusable launcher in the 5 to 10 tons range, I'm not delusional. I know we won't develop Starship in Europe.

Like I know that. And that's fine for me. But I think we need at least some partial capability. We're not developing any other starships here. That's true. There's just starship, right? Like all the other ones, Neutron, Nuclean even, right? They're not starships.

So, yeah. I wouldn't put that as the gating element. I think the interesting aspect for you is that, I think you're somebody who's obviously seen the way that SpaceX has gone But on a local level right I was in college in Orlando in 2009 to 2011 it was the entire talk of like local media was shuttle shutting down what are all these people gonna do and I remember there was a forum post on NASA spaceflight way back in the day. I should try to dig this up. I remember this post so distinctly in my brain

because it was the thing I knew would happen and it was just typed out beautifully. I forget who it was, I gotta find this. But it was somebody who worked on shuttle till the very last day, was there when they turned out the lights, when they shipped the last one off to the museum, was like crying, didn't know what they would do,

and a year or two years later, whatever it was They were back at 39 a redoing it for SpaceX and they were like, I'm sitting in my Jeep. I'm looking at 39 a I'm back Things are different now. It's gonna be a great future. And that was the that was the vibe shift at the time and It was a leap of faith then that like No, no, we see a way that the industry can, like these people aren't going to disappear. They're not going to just be gone. Things will fill this gap and we have this plan in place.

And that was true in many aspects. This far on, when you see how much has built up around Kennedy Space Center and you drive through that area where there's like the one web factory and the Blue Origin factory, and you've got all the Starship stuff, you've got the thing on the way to the Saturn five center that SpaceX is working on, you see all this industry burgeoning around that same workforce, that's the message I would sell to people that think it can only be Arian space. It's like, well, these people in Europe that are working on launch vehicles, they want

to work on launch vehicles. That's not going to go away. That urge is not going to go away. So if you did Indiana Jones swap in, right, a competitive program like you're talking about, those people will find roles in those new programs. And... I agree.

Yeah, it is possible to do that. And I also think the engineering is here. Like I always hear talk of like, oh, we don't have like a robust decade long space industry. Yeah, that's true. But rockets are in essential still machines. And I think in Europe, we have experienced engineers. We have capable engineers that could develop these kind of projects.

You just need to have the money so they don't work on any other industry. They choose to go to the space industry. work on any other industry, they choose to go to the space industry. And that's the money and the interest you need to get there. And I'm sure there's a person right now working on cars and or working on other, I don't know, weapon systems. And it's like, I would love to work on an orbital launch rocket, but it's just not that easy. Yeah. And even there's the aspects too, like I said this on a couple shows ago that growing

up I didn't I didn't go into the space industry because there was nothing near me. I didn't want to move to where they were. And it was also super boring in the 90s. It wasn't inspiring to like a 10 year old kid that was thinking like, what do I want to be? Right. And then someone plopped the iPhone in my hand. And I was like, oh, shit, that's what I want to do. I want to make iPhone apps. I want to make websites. I want to do software If if I was growing up and I was 10 when SpaceX has landed Falcon 9's on boats like a hundred percent I'm in on that right same thing everyone was talks about the Apollo moments where they're like, I'm Six years old watching Neil Armstrong walk on the moon

So what when there's a void of that when that's not happening, there's no excitement to go into it. So you're exactly right. There's great engineers in Europe that are just finding the other interesting things. I got into cycling during the pandemic. The amount of like engineering nerds that are designing aerodynamics on bikes. I'm like, I bet some of these are space nerds. I bet they listen to this show. Like if you do, by the way, hit me up because I probably need a new bike. But like it's, it's nerds are nerds and they're going to find fun things that interest them to work on. I don't really think any nerds are really like, man, Aryan six, whoo, like, what a thing.

I would have I would have 100% go to the space industry if I knew about it earlier. I learned about SpaceX and Falcon Heavy landing, like six months into my training as a banking professional. I was kind of committed at the point, but what are you going to do? Well, I turned it around a bit and now I'm a space flight journalist. One of the hundred. Yeah, one of the hundred space flight journalists apparently. I wish I knew about it earlier.

I would have totally studied engineering because the only reason I didn't was because I didn't want to work in the car industry because I don't find cars very inspiring. And yeah, I'm with you. I'm not a car guy. Yeah, totally not. There's two things I'm not nerds about. There's like cars and trains and I'm like, man, I don't really get being into them. And then I'm super into rockets. And I was like, oh, I see. Like, I get it. I'm just not one of those. Yeah, not one of those ones. It's like, it's like the nerd skill tree, you have to like this different nerd stuff. And you have to like put points into something. And I also didn't put point to the cars and trains. The train ones, man, they're wild. They're one. And this disc, it's crazy. There's some channels on YouTube. It's these moments where you notice that when we at NSF stock like every single rocket on

this planet, you notice that is true for almost every industry in the world. Like there's an NSF of trains. It's so crazy. I love the internet. And then you find those and you're like, oh man, wow, like look at these weirdos and then you're like, oh shit, I'm doing that in all my weird things too. I'm the weirdo. I am the weirdo.

You totally are. You guys are like, wow, look at this new sheet metal they've got. Yeah, this has six holes instead of five before. That means block two. Look at this thing they spray painted on it. It's like that was just somebody waiting for their next shipment to come in and they had a can of paint and they were bored and they like painted a piece of pie on this thing. Although that one is cool. The pie one was nice. What's your favorite of the Starbase random messages that have been

spray painted on something? I like the not necessarily spray paint, a spray paint, but I like when they are Raptor transport vehicles, where having Mario Kart characters. So basically, you had Mario Kart characters driving around transporting Raptors. That was insanely funny to me. I love the I love the banana on the one of the vehicles. They just decide to yeah, like it's banana time now. I guess. I hate their inconsistency.

I hate the inconsistency with vehicle paint though. Not every, why are only the ships having the vehicle numbers on them? And why only some of them? Give me the numbers on the boosters as well. Make them bigger. I want big numbers on these ships. That makes them way more defiable.

Yeah, I mean, maybe it's not like they're hiding much. I would say that maybe they want to do a little shell game, but like, they're not hiding anything. I like how they started promoting that too on the on the live streams. They're like, if you want to come see just drive down the road, if they've actually started calling that out. Yeah, it's like, if you want to come see just drive down the road, they've actually started calling that out. It's just good. They wouldn't want to promote that. I mean, let's be real, there are people that identify Falcon 9 boosters on the dust pattern that is on them. I really think SpaceX is not able to hide any serial number from us. Definitely not. Definitely not. Well,

I feel good about this, Adrian. I like your vision for European spaceflight. I would put you in charge of that. I would fly over. Thank you. I'll be in charge of the space station program, if you would like. I heard you're running for NASA administrator. I am actively running for NASA administrator.

Yeah, I'm not even... I think I started out kidding and now I'm like, this might be my shot, man. I'm serious now. Now I'm 100% serious I think I started out kidding and now I'm like, this might be my shot man. I'm serious now. Now I'm 100% serious. I would totally do it. I don't know if you heard my pitch, but this is the best time to be the NASA administrator. The stakes are clear. Your mission is set.

If you make it a month, you made it a lot longer than the last guy and any positive momentum that you provide is welcomed by the industry. I mean, honestly, at this point, having a NASA administrator in general would be great, I think. Yeah. Like somebody that actually does it. I'll do it, man. It doesn't look like anyone wants to do it right now. I'll totally do it. And also, it would be great to show.

If I just went and I did a nomination hearing and then I got bounced before I was actually NASA admin, that's also fun. Probably less fun than I think I wanted I feel like Jared kind of wanted to do it just didn't get to it because well hand wave politics yeah man that boy see on me doing interesting things I mean I'm totally off topic but I think overall this might be a win for spaceflight because I think at NASA, I mean, let's be real with that budget. You cannot do anything anyway. But now we have Jared back in spaceflight.

We'll see. Let's make Polaris that is actually like a space crew. We have Polaris. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, he got martyred. He didn't. You're totally right. If he got confirmed, was there for two months and then realized what was in front of him and quit or got fired or whatever, that's a worse outcome than a week before he's confirmed, politically marty of Polaris. That's my hope.

Jared just going full into Polaris and just let's do it. So at first it was like he had that interview with Berger, which was like, maybe politics, maybe I'll get into politics. I don't know, I'll be my senator or something from New Jersey. But then a more recent interview, I forget who with, you may remember, was more floating the idea of like, yeah, maybe I will fund a science mission, which I think if he's going to do anything, fund a private lander on Mars, and just go for it. Like fund a space telescope, just pick one of the flagship missions if you're going to do, because you figure Polaris in terms of investment, is up

in those flagship class investments. Maybe not the Curiosity Rover for billion dollars or whatever, but a couple hundred mil is definitely what Polaris, you think Polaris was into the bees? I think for sure. Especially if you, I mean, Polaris I bet is a bit different because I think SpaceX has some significant investment in that, that they would not disclose this investment. But I don't think they make any profit on Polaris. I think Polaris is very much a SpaceX reputation project together with Jared. So there is some cost in there that technically is not cost but just SpaceX not charging for

it. But you don't develop a spacesuit for a lot less than one bill like a loan to space lights alone Oh, yeah, like right even if they're not even if I'm charging for it the flights alone are 200 mil or whatever it is right, so Yeah, I mean someone said viper in the chat. That's the that's a brilliant brilliant idea Just buy viper say I'm taking the commercial made that so they cancelled that viper proposal thing They were like, oh Jared wanted wanted to buy it. That would be awesome. At this point, we have to find something that the Chinese won't do first,

because I think at this point that might be a lot. March sample return, I think, at this point is locked in Chinese. Wow. All right. Everything. Yeah, all right. Everything. Yeah, we'll see. You might get it with your new crazy ministerial meeting with the slush funds that you're putting out there. No. I think I had a short lag.

Sorry. I'm back. Oh, I'm just giving you crap about your ESA budget. It's a cute little budget. Yeah, like seven builds. That's one SLS. Listen, man, we got nine boosters worth that we're cooking up here. So, you know, take it easy. We have delivered the fifth service module, I think.

We'll deliver the fifth service module very soon. I appreciate that very much. I look forward to whatever museum that ends up in. It's going to be a wonderful exhibit. Should we already plan for every part of Artemis after Artemis 3 to just distribute it? We'll make our list of journalists. We'll figure out where these are all going. And you guys can do a live stream about it sometime. So can you plug it in as a space flight for people that somehow are watching this and have not experienced what's going on there? I mean, we are we are a bunch of rocket nerds that love to cover everything in space. Today,

we for example covered the bowl test. We just love to be at every single launch. And we also have a website that have've constantly filled with articles. We do, I think the one format I was sure want to plug is Twist this weekend spaceflight. We do that every single Friday. And it's a new show constantly updating through everything that is happening in the week of spaceflight. I think it's one of the best things we produce right now. So if you have time to do that, and besides that, well, check out the channel. You will find something that you like about spaceflight I think is one of the best things we produce right now so if you have time do that and besides that well check out the channel you will find something that you like about spaceflight. It's truth and often the best

videos of things we didn't expect and have to be watching. It's frequently if something crazy happened I'm like Twitter.com is a NASA spaceflight they probably have a clip I'm gonna check it out, as always. You do too. You know, we're doing our thing and we're just running for head of NASA over here is primarily what we're doing now. This is my campaign show and we'll see how that goes. Do you want to write like a book because you kind of need to write also like a manifest book about NASA, right? Like the NASA vision. Yeah yeah I can do it man I think I've actually got a better shot at the ESA space station program so I'm gonna

do that one first because that seems that one seems more likely to me than uh me running NASA but we should we should we should run for for both both agencies you run NASA I run ESA. Now we're talking. We'll make it perfect. Hell yeah. That's the best plan. Vote for us, wherever your ballot boxes are, vote for us. This is now a political show for administration, I guess. If we run both organizations, we'll keep doing this. This will be how we sort it out. That's our promise to you. Just like the first campaign promise promise there will be a weekly podcast and we negotiate geopolitics. Yeah, we might want to launch that anyway.

Would you imagine having a podcast of like actual politicians on a weekly basis? It would be so funny. It I mean, yeah would probably not go great places, but Alright y'all Jake's still away I think I'll have a show for you next week potentially tape delayed because I'm gonna be away on the third and Then we've got a week off on the 10th and Jake will be back beyond that so we're getting into our weird little summer break so yeah, I I

Don't know what's coming up on this, but we'll find out what happens in Adrian. Thank you so much. Everybody else, we'll see you later. Thanks for having me. 1234554321 in the test.