Main Engine Cut Off - T+330: 10 Years of MECO

Episode Date: April 24, 2026

The show turned 10 last Monday, so I thought it would be fun to have our good friend Jake Robins on to look back at where we were then, what’s happened since, and what that teaches us about the future. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 32 executive producers—Donald, Ryan, Joakim, Better Every Day Studios, Stealth Julian, David, Theo and Violet, Lee, Miles O’Brien, Will and Lars from Agile, Tim Dodd (the Everyday Astronaut!), The Astrogators at SEE, Frank, Steve, Russell, Matt, Joel, Kris, Natasha Tsakos, Pat, Jan, Warren, Fred, Joonas, Josh from Impulse, and four anonymous—and hundreds of supporters. Topics T-0: The Near Future of US-Based Competitors - Main Engine Cut Off T+1: The Near Future of NASA’s Orion and SLS Programs - Main Engine Cut Off 1 – The Waxing Interest in Mars T+23: SpaceX Mars Architecture Initial Reactions - Main Engine Cut Off 13 – Making Humans Multiplanetary (feat. Anthony Colangelo) 65 – Starship on Course (feat. Anthony Colangelo) T+135: Jake Robins on Starship - Main Engine Cut Off wemartians comments on Main Engine Cut Off — A new, short, weekly podcast about spaceflight and exploration The Show Like the show? Support the show on Patreon or Substack! Email your thoughts, comments, and questions to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Follow @[e-mail] on Mastodon Listen to MECO Headlines Listen to Off-Nominal Join the Off-Nominal Discord Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Pocket Casts, Spotify, Google Play, Stitcher, TuneIn or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Artwork photo by NASA/Bill Ingalls Work with me and my design and development agency: Pine Works

Hello and welcome to Managing Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo, and I have a special 10-year celebration. Miko turned 10 years old on Monday, and I thought I would kick it back with our boy, Jake Robbins, once of We Martians fame, now of Off Nominal Fame, my wonderful co-host. We met early in the internet days of when I posted the show the first day, Jake was in the reddit comments saying, hey, I also have a show that's very new. We should keep in touch or whatever. And thus began our 10-year career together. So I thought it would be fun to go back and listen to those old shows, figure out what we were talking about, see how we shook out, see where the industry shook out, honestly. And Jake said, sure. So here we go. Happy birthday, Jake.

Happy birthday. To us. Big one, double digits. We're 10 years into knowing each other. When did we become friends? That's a more difficult question. We met a Reddit thread. And then we gathered a group of podcasters in the 2016 to 17 era when we would have Skype calls occasionally. Yes, I completely forgot about this. And you're reminding me of those calls. Yeah.

Who did we have in that? We had. Brendan Byrne was in a couple. Are we there yet? Still going strong, by the way. We had the interplanetary podcast, boys with us. Yeah. I think we had a, did we have an orbital mechanics or two in there?

I feel like maybe that happened. I feel like they were there for a bit. Yeah. We're definitely forgetting somebody. Definitely. Sorry. Some long-loss podcast. Yeah.

To be fair, Skype doesn't exist anymore. No. We've outlived the original technology stack. Yeah. So that we were doing those. as a way to like, I don't know, talk about what microphones we were using. I don't remember what the original goal was. Yeah, I think we just shop talk, shop talk, and maybe we must have talked about the news and

things, right? It must have been a little bit. A little bit. Yeah. Yeah. And then out of that, we just were talking more. Yeah. Felt like kindred spirits.

And then off nominal was born late 2017. October, yeah. October 17, yeah. But we've both been, well, now Miko is 10 years old as of last Monday. Your show was 10. It would be 10. It would have been 10. Were it still alive?

Yes. We're going to get it back, I think. So I went and listened to the first two episodes of Miko and the first episode of Wee Martians. Okay. Yeah. As time capsules for what were we talking about them? And I specifically did the first two episodes of Miko because those were sort of my, like, Like one show was like commercial side and one show was as policy side.

Yeah. And I thought those were like kind of the pilots, right? I mean, it's kind of funny how we Martians was very similar because the first episode was like human spaceflight and the second episode was planetary science, which again is like the two the two faces of the show, right? Yeah. So we and I don't know, we were just trying to figure out how to do things. So that's that's what we picked off. but I thought it would be fun to go back and look at what we were talking about

and where we got to since because shockingly, I think a lot of the same themes are still here. Yes. We have just a lot of other side tangents or new storylines, but you could listen to those shows today as a pretty all right primer

for where we're at now. Yep. Is that good or bad? Well, I mean, I think it's a nice sign that we were at least, you know, had some inkling of what we wanted to do and where we were going. Like, we must have had some sort of vision of some kind that was not too far off the mark because like I just, so when I was listening back to your show, it's it's almost like the details were a little fuzzy and weird, but the foundation was rock solid. It was like exactly what, you know, I don't feel like we've lost sight of that. And that's, I feel like that's something to be proud of. I don't know.

I feel pretty good about that, honestly. What were the things you were most surprised of like, oh, yeah, I forgot, I forgot that was going on. Or that was a thing. Well, listening to your two shows to begin with, I think just the, the Bigelow story is the funniest part of the whole thing. The best. That's the detail that was farthest off track because there was like these great discussions about, you know, okay, well, ULA is going into this new era where they have to actually compete for things. and this is like a big deal and this is, you know, it's going to affect mill space and all this kind of thing. And they have to, they have to figure out the commercial market.

And Bigelow, look, this is it. Bigelow is the way into this. This is how they're going to survive and move into this new era. Because they got beam. Bigelow is real. That was my. It was totally that. Yeah.

So that was very, very funny. But like, even though like that just totally did not pan out, that's still true. Like, that's the ULA's challenge today is like, how do they make themselves relevant in a commercial market? That continues to be the biggest problem on their plate. And so I thought that was really funny. We both remarked in the policy side how at the moment in time we were, SLS Orion didn't have a manifest. We weren't talking about the goals of the program. We were so floaty.

We were like, we don't know what these vehicles are doing after the first, maybe second launch. And I don't remember that that way at all. No. No, because I mean, back then, that's when we had, that was like the EM nomenclature, right? EM1, EM2. Wasn't, I feel like at some point there was EM 6 and 7, like was written down on a PowerPoint somewhere. Like, I feel like that was known.

Was that after we'd started then? Was that that kind of rolled out? I guess. I don't know. I mean, we recently did this thing where we made a GitHub repository of the, effectively, the constellation program and its descendants. And in that framing, it always felt like. like we had a known destination or program we were contributing to. But we both were harping on so much

the fact that we knew what the first mission or two would be. And then it was going to be up to a new president to figure out what to do with it. I just don't remember. Yeah, we were, but I don't remember floating as much as we were at that time. Yeah, no, it felt a little more concrete. Like when I think back to that first episode, I feel like it was all laid out. there was a plan and it felt very, I mean, that's one of the impetus for me to start it is I felt like maybe this is actually going somewhere. So I must have felt that, you know. Well, I mean, Mars was front and center, right? We had journey to Mars going on. We had thoughts that, I think there was my third show or something like that was SpaceX officially announcing Red Dragon.

So even that was still relevant. Announcing it. Wow. Yeah. That's the one that got away from me. I wish that was a thing that happened. Yeah. Well, that plays into your whole story of how long do we have to go before SpaceX is going to be criticized for not sending anything to Mars. Yeah. It would just be so much more interesting if that, if Red Dragon panned out. It definitely would have been.

Yeah. Yeah. Bummer. All right. On the launch side, here's the thing I've been trying to think about since that show. When you started your show, SpaceX had landed one Falcon booster. When I started my show, SpaceX had landed two Falcon Boosters. That was it.

Yeah. There has been 10 years between then and now. Are you more surprised that SpaceX has landed 600 or that Blue Origin has only landed two? I can't figure out if you told me then, this is the result from two Falcon 9s landed. SpaceX would have landed over 600 times and Blue Origin only would have landed twice. That is a great. And no one else really would have done it. That's a great question.

Yeah. Because both those numbers would be surprising, right? Absolutely shocking. Yeah. Huh. Ooh, I have to think about that one. That's very interesting. Yeah, because the Falcon cadence did not feel like it was coming down.

Because we didn't know about Starlink then, right? And so, I mean, I remember back in some of those early years where, you know, Gwen Schottwe would go on Twitter and be like, we're going to launch. 18 times this year. And we were like, no. Are you out of year? These crazy people, that's like twice as much as ULA. They'll never get that much. We were talking that way for a while.

And then, you know, and then they'd fail to meet it. They promised 18 and they only hit 12. And we're like, well, that's what we were talking about. Here we go. We told you so, right? I think there was a moment in my first show like that. We're like, well, she says they're flying almost 20 times. And they're only four in or something.

I don't forget the specific numbers. But it absolutely was the vibe that. SpaceX was still like, they got to figure this out. I talked about how they scrubbed a lot on their launch attempts. I haven't thought about a scrub. And like, they happen, but there's so many Falcon 9s. They're like, oh, there'll be one tomorrow. Yeah.

That's fine. Yeah. And yeah, so maybe that's, and I don't know, like, it's a funny counterfactual would be to think like if Starlink had never happened, would that still be true, right? Would we still kind of be thinking that way? Would a 30 launch year be a good year for a falcon? would be kind of interesting, right? Yeah, I mean, when you look at the

Falcon 9 minus Starlink manifest, it is what it is. It's not significantly higher or lower each year. It's kind of somewhere in the mix. Yeah. 600's way more surprising, though. I think so. I'm thinking about it, yeah,

because it's like so much more easy to believe a, oh yeah, blue, you know, blore just delayed. Okay, well, that makes sense. Rockets are delayed. But it was a long delay, man. It was crazy. What was the original launch? The time we started was New Glenn's supposed to be like 2017, 2018, something like that?

2018? Yeah. Yeah. So it ends up like four or five years behind schedule. Yeah. I guess that's in range. Yeah. I mean, what was Falcon Heavy supposed to be?

And what did it turn out to be? 2012 or 13 and it turned out to be 18. Yeah, I think that's about right. Yeah. So I guess that's, all right. So 600 definitely way more surprising. I think so. Yeah.

I think we're there. Still shocked. I'm kind of still surprised as that many. Yeah. And I know how many Falcon 9s happen. Talk about them all. And I'm still surprised that it was that many. Yeah, it's a wild number. It's like, we've been completely desensitized to it, but it's an actually wild number. Yeah.

And the funny thing is, I probably watch as many Falcon 9 flights this year as I did that year. Because I just can't watch all the Starlings. Yeah, it's, well, it's not, I mean, it's not novel. It's not interesting anymore, right? And that's a, that's a success mark or in its own. Absolutely. That's, yeah, that's, that's a good verification of, of, of, how they've done. I don't think we would have expected Mars to have fallen so far.

Right. This is night and day. Yeah. Totally different, different, uh, environment. It's, it's, it's interesting because it's like the, it's such a good lesson in how, and it's, not even a lesson. It's like, we didn't know this, but such a good lesson. It's like, we didn't know this, but such a good lesson in how the fortunes can change. And if, you know, if there's something that I was the most wrong about was feeling as hopeful as I was back in 2015, like to think like maybe this is actually the path that we,

you know, we're actually starting to walk down it now. And this is how we get there. Like that was pretty naive of a young, young podcaster. You know, because we've talked that way before. And it never didn't pan out, right? even just at the end of the Apollo era, they were talking about that. Now we're going to go on to Mars. And it's like, oh, really?

Yeah, this is it. This is how it's going to happen. No, not even close. This time, though, Jake. This time it's different. This time is different. You got a moon base? Well, and maybe that's the way the applied lesson is like, just be careful about what we're

talking about today because it can all go away, you know? All right. But on that note, I did find that in the Artemis II era, there was a lot more conversations about this being the. this being the stepping stone to Mars. Like that was said a lot by by astronauts and people at NASA and that came up so much in the

I mean every time I went on CNN I think there was a question of and then so this leads into going to Mars right? Like that felt like it went away for a little bit because we were all fighting about other stuff and I think it's re-entered to some extent or maybe my ears are just picking it up more

I don't know. Do you feel that at all? I don't feel it's that different. I mean the marketing has always stayed there even after Pence made its big announcement and we're going back to the moon like right away there was this whole moon to Mars program office and all that kind of stuff like that's always

kind of been in the background and I think it's just I was thinking about the other day because I saw it in a what was it the press release for the Artemis 3 rollout the core stage like they rolled it out of the factory this week right or last week and it was in there it was like you know this is how we're going to get to Mars I was like wow they're still using this

and I think it's just cheap marketing. It's like it's so, it's free. It's free marketing. You just say like, oh yeah, by the way, this is for Mars. And then awesome. Everyone's like, like, who's going to complain about that? Yeah, I love Mars. Let's do it. Like, you know, it's like the next giant leap thing. It costs you nothing to say that. And so it's, it feels like that's why it's always it's going to be, you know, globbed on there. So I don't feel it's that different. I guess this to answer your question. Yeah. I don't know. My ears have been picking it up more in the last couple of weeks, then I felt like it was there at all. They said it a lot in the last couple weeks just

because of all the stuff that's going on, right? But. And all right. So now where are we out on that? Do we, do we believe that? Where are we out on the perennial argument of does the moon play into Mars? Well, I have not changed my take on this in years now. And the answer is, uh, everything we do in the moon helps, but you're not going to the Mars until you're going to Mars. Like that's just like until you say, Like until you roll out some hardware and put a plan together and then put some money behind it and say, we're going, then you're not going. But it all helps. Every experience we have on the moon is going to be useful from going to go to Mars. And so, yeah, I don't know.

All right. So 10 years on, what do you think? You think we're talking to moon base? You think we're doing the moon base? You think we're back to Mars? 10 years from now? Yeah. I don't know.

It's, that's too hard to predict. I don't like making long ones like that. that anymore. Yeah, fine. I'm just trying to use our 10 years of insight now. It's supposed to be 10 years smarter. Yeah, I mean, maybe, I don't know, we did a pretty good job 10 years ago. So maybe we can get there. But I think we did better at sort of describing the challenges and understanding them, you know, what was easy and what was hard in the path forward. And so if I think of it that way, 10 years from now, if we want to have a moon base, what's going to be easy and what's going to be hard. I think the hard part is going to be like sustained motivation for that because I just

feel like there's so much going on financially in the world and it's going to be really hard to keep a coalition of institutions and governments and people together that are going to want to spend that much money because it's going to be a lot of money. I don't think that the current spending rate is enough. I don't think we can do a whole lot of reasonable stuff with that. There is a funding up curve, uptick down the line that's not really, I don't think we figured that out yet. That's to be reckoned with. Yeah, yeah. Do you feel at all like the, actually one thing, your show is a lot about the popular sentiment of exploration in Mars specifically. There's a lot of movies coming out. The Martian was king at the time. And then I think in the intervening time, we wrote,

wrote this story of like people being uninterested, which is probably true, but I think it's honestly just like not a lot of stuff going on, right? People were very interested in early SpaceX landings. I think super heavy booster catch broke through in a way. The Starliner story certainly broke through. So there's, there was examples of, hey, when there's stuff going on, people notice. Yeah. And then Artemis II captured people in a way more than I think a lot of us were prepared for. So I want you to compare having a CNA real. And then, you know, example of it, how does that map up to 10 years ago you saying, oh man, people are dying for this kind of stuff and they're excited about it when it comes. I thought it was a good representation

of what you were, the promises you were writing in the early days and now seeing it actually like, oh shit, when we go to the moon, yeah, we do have that kind of vibe still. Yeah, that's an interesting question because you're right in that, like when people see it happen, they're excited about it. and objectively, it is just a very cool thing to happen when there's people taking pictures of the moon outside of a space window. That's cool. It's just objectively cool no matter who you are whether you're into space or not. But at the same time, it's like if you just, if you didn't give that context and you just approached a random taxpayer on the street and said, should we buy some moon missions, they'd be like, dude, I have so many problems. Like, why would you even bring

that out? So it's like a, it's a juxtaposition. of how you approach the framing of whether someone's interested in it or not, right? So, I don't know. I think if the money's spent, then it's like, well, cool, I'm glad this is happening. But then if you give them the option to look forward, that falls significantly down the priority list, right? And I don't, maybe that's just human behavior. I don't know how to, how to characterize that differently. It's a tension span kind of stuff. Not even a tension span. It's just, maybe it's like sunk cost. You know, it's like, well, it's like, I can't change the fact that NASA has already spent this money. And so I'll enjoy the moon picture. Sure.

but like do I want more of them? Yeah. That's fair. If I had the choice, I would redirect that money to things that improve my life much more directly,

right? Yeah, that's a tough one. I don't know. And I think that the Mars specific stuff has certainly faded. We had all the SpaceX talk in those early days and we had Mars 1

and the Martian had just come out. There was just so much Mars-ish stuff and all that is kind of backburned, right? like space space i didn't realize you went into the mars one thing in episode one too i that i was like oh shit he got into it because you very famously had a mars one storyline running through uh some of those shows but yeah yeah you were you're hot on the this thing's a scam storyline at the time yeah right away right i was like this doesn't feel real but it was emblematic right of like people were interested in it so yeah i don't know if you believe the numbers if you believe the numbers

yeah i love that there was like a little mini-series in your first episode. It was like an expose on like... Because there was like some number, right? It was like, there was like

a hundred thousand applicants or some crazy number. Yeah. But there was, you were like, but if you look at this, it was only like 2,000 people or something. Yeah.

Yeah, right away all over that. Hmm. All right, I did, I did cheat a little bit and I scrolled through our 2016, uh, coverage a little bit.

Okay. Uh, and I found our, I forget if I, We did a crossover in September around the IAC unveiling of what time was the Mars Colonial Transporter. That was Guadalajara, right, 2016? Right, 2016, yeah. Oops, I hit play.

I don't want to hit play. Interplanetary transport system? Was that the, no, that was later, right? I thought it was, wasn't it like MCT first? Let's see. Yeah. I can't remember the name order anymore. Dead links

Dead links everywhere I'm clicking these links None of these PDFs exist anymore Does even the YouTube thing exist No, video on available Every link in this is dead God, that's except for We Martians It's the only one alive

Gotta host her own content, eh? I mean the Mars SpaceX page still exists But it's pretty half-assed Anyway, I think it was Did they announce it as MCT or ITS? I forget. Who cares? Who cares? Yeah.

Starship. Point being, the infamous Guadalajara presentation was, we're coming up on 10 years from that announcement. Yeah, this September, yeah. And there's obviously been twist and turns with the initial announcement, the carbon fiber resizing, stainless steel. But I think we would both be flummoxed that this is where we're at with the program 10 years on. Yeah. It took a turn, right? Do you remember we did, was it maybe like 2020-ish, we did like a follow-up or something and we said like, let's go back to Guadal Har.

Maybe it was like five years or something, the five years after. We went back and said, let's look at that plan and see how they did. And we mapped up all the dates. And at some point in the middle there, they were like really on track. Like nothing had slipped at all. Like they were like within like a quarter, they had like nailed all the dates. And we were like, wow, this is really cool. The episode was like called like Starship on track or something like that.

And it's just funny, somewhere after that, it just pivoted and all the dates went out the window and everything became delayed and everything changed and all the priorities. Like something happened somewhere along there. They were on track and then they weren't, which was very interesting. And so I don't know if I would have predicted either. I don't think I would have predicted five years out that they'd be on track and that 10 years they'd be so far off track. This was October 2019. So this was just before. Three years. Okay. Yeah. So it was it was. It was. right after another announcement or another, you know, presentation. Right.

Yeah, because I see the same time. But you're right. This was, they had, you know, Mark 1 Starship. That's the graphic you had on your podcast thing was the Mark 1 Starship model. That's the wrinkly one? Is that the one that's all? It's super wrinkly one. Yeah.

So there'd be, there'd been Star Hopper stop. They were going into suborbital testing. Yeah. And that's definitely from there to, from there to 2021, when they, when 2021 is the year I remember everybody thinking that's when they're going to start doing these first full-up tests. And that was the year that really got slippery for the schedule. So you're right that from the 2019 vantage point, we're like, just seems pretty doable. Like stuff could be happening in the Mars windows in the early 2020s.

Yeah. We are not in the early 2020s anymore. No. And there's this weird dichotomy, right? Because I hate talking about, oh, this. projects late because I just think it's a boring storyline. But it was such a centerpiece of the presentation that I don't, that of all things, I feel like Starship is the one that we talk about schedule for because it was always pushed as this is not only a

architecture that evolves quickly, but is achieving these things. And we are purposefully doing it to this schedule. It's because we want this to happen really fast. So it was a tent pole in the way that no other launch vehicle was presented with like the point being, let's do it really fast. The point was always, this is a giant vehicle that will sell a lot of launches to the U.S. government and commercial providers. So there is a difference there. But at the same time, like, God damn, Starship's so good. They're catching this giant booster on this tower. They have so much infrastructure built out. Raptor 3 is really good. We're on the precipice of like, and I think we all still feel like at some point this has to turn the corner, right?

They went through this really bad one or two year period that we're looking at here. And it's like, is this launch that we're on the verge of now? Is V3 it? Are they going to turn the corner this time around? Yeah. It's just a lost couple of years in the middle there that is a bummer. Yeah. It just seems like the scope of the vehicle surprised even SpaceX, you know, because

like they're usually pretty good at that. They're usually pretty strong on sort of understanding core requirements and what's hard and what's not and what's the long pole. and, you know, retiring their risks so they can, like, move pretty quick. They're usually very good at that, right? And then I feel like this one snuck up even on them. And so the cost of that seems to have been a couple years. But I still believe, I'm a believer still.

I think that we're going to see, I don't know if it's V3, maybe it's V4, but at some point, SpaceX is going to do that magical SpaceX thing where they just come roaring back, you know, like they had, was it, which was the one that it was June? CR7, right? That's the one that blew up the falcon. That was like in June. And they grounded the rest of the year, right? And it was like, oh my God, this is like, they blew up the NASA cargo thing. This is like the, this is up that. It was Elon's birthday. The docking port was on there. The docking port was on there. Like this is such a loss. And they grounded it for six months. We're like, what are we going to do? And then when they came back, it was the landing, the first time. And that's what

started our podcast. Like it was such a, you know, such a comeback. And I feel like that's such an emblematic SpaceX thing and they did it again for um what did they do it again for i mean even some of the starship stuff like you know when they they do all the tank uh suborbital things and there was like a downtime of like a couple years and then it's like boom they get this you know this full all up test and it was like extraordinary and exciting and back flips and all sorts of stuff that it was doing right like it was wild right detonated a launch pad yeah it was just it was wild and so like i feel like that's i think we're due for one of those yeah i feel like they you know they they went back to the drawing board and they redesigned

launch pads and they come with this B3 new engine new everything I feel like at some point they just got to roll out and be like this is it and just put something in orbit and it's wild and it lands on the first try and everyone's like you know it's just and all of a sudden the fortunes change I feel like that's coming I'm still a believer yeah I am too I really as much as I'm like but man something seems wrong I'm still like I don't know they still they still have it right they still have that thing that is

unknowable as to why they are such an outlier to the industry. No one has figured out the mix of things that keeps SpaceX where they are. They are 600 plus landings and only two for New Glenn, right? No one's figured out that. Is it the visionary outlook?

No, because other companies have tried that. Is it overworking people? No, because other companies have tried that. Is it a constellation? Definitely not. Other companies have tried and failed at that. There's some mix that people can't quite crack

as to why there's such a there's such an outlier in the industry and you know, the way that plays into the IPO situation is going to be interesting because, you know, what is the worth of SpaceX? It's like the entire space industry. Like it's all on the backs of SpaceX. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be very interesting.

I'm, that's the thing I'm most worried about. Like, you know, if you think about the future of this program or anything, I'm not worried about the technical side of it. I'm worried about the IPO. and financial distractions and shareholders and, you know, all this, this AI stuff that they're, I know that you can draw a line between it and say that, you know, putting these data centers in space is good for everything else. But like it just feels like it's a, it's going to be a big mind share that they have to, even for just for Elon, right? That's just like, how much time

of the day does he spend thinking about the stuff that you and I are super interested in, you know, getting to Mars or getting this vehicle going and doing moon-based stuff? And how much of his time now has to be spent talking about AI and making... Great point as we're going to hit stop recording, go back to our software development gig where we're using data and LLMs constantly. So yes. Yeah, yeah. Well, like a caveat that there are space cells.

But yeah, no, I'm just, I'm worried about that. And I just, I have always been afraid of the SpaceX IPO. I feel like most companies really kind of just mellow out and don't do a lot after they go public, right? That's become, that's when you move from a start. up to a fixture, right? And you just got to get to the end of the quarter. And like, I've worked in that world and it's just not very inspiring, you know, it's really hard to reconcile the exciting SpaceX in December 2015 that you and I were glued to our screens watching. And that, I don't know.

I'm worried, I'm worried about that. So. Well, I, uh, I'm interested to see when we do the 20 year show, uh, what, what the storyline is. Because I, I do think we, you know, On the bigelow aside, on the large majority, our first shows got it right as to what the things that were really driving us for the last 10 years has been, which is SLS Orion talk, the SpaceX ULA Blue Origin, Trifecta, and then towards that end of that year, the Starship domination of, of, I don't think I really respected the fact that that was literally the entire lifespan of the show was like the Starship era. Like that has been a threat because that impacts everything. It impacts the Falcon 9, New Glenn Atlas 5 Vulcan conversation. It impacts the SLS-Irion conversation. Everything is kind of orbiting that. What is that going to be in the next 10 years?

Is it the moon base? Is it data centers? Is it something that we're not thinking about entirely? Yeah. Certainly could be. Yeah. There's a lot of paths this could take now, just like there was back then, right? It makes you wonder what we're going to get right and what we're going to get wrong every time we turn on the microphone here.

Let's see. Well, to us in 10 years. Yeah. I hope we did good. I hope so. All right. Thanks for doing this. Happy birthday.

Happy 10 years. Yeah. Yeah. We can bring we Martians back. You could. You might want to consider. What would it be called? We Martians.

Just episode 130, whatever you were on. Now that's talking about Mars. Curiosity's still fine and stuff. It's true. Yeah. MSR doing great. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Doing great. Slip that one in there. Thanks again to Jake for coming on the show and for being my podcast partner in crime for 10 years now. Definitely could not have done this whole journey without him. And definitely could not have done it without you as well. Thanks to 32 executive producers. who made this episode possible.

Thanks to Donald, Ryan, Joe Kim, Better Everyday Studios, stealth Julian, David, Theo and Violet, Lee, Miles O'Brien, Will & Lars from Agile, Tim Dodd, the Everyday Ashtonat, the Ashtergators at SCEE, Frank, Steve, Russell, Matt, Joel, Chris, Natasha Sackos, Pat, Jan, Warren, Fred, Eunice, Josh from Impulse, and four anonymous executive producers. Thank you all so much for the support for making this possible. If you have a head over to manage gotoff.com slash support,

can join the crew there, get access to Miko Headlines, and stay up with all the space news with me every single week. Thank you all so much for doing that. Thank you for being here. I know some of you have been listening since literally the first show, and I really, really thank you for all the years listening to the show and many more to come. So thanks, y'all.

I'll talk to you soon.