Main Engine Cut Off - T+53: Loren Grush

Episode Date: July 22, 2017

Loren Grush of The Verge joins me to talk about Falcon Heavy, SpaceX cancelling Dragon 2 propulsive landings, Red Dragon riding off into the sunset, Moon Express, US space policy, and a whole lot more. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 16 executive producers—Kris, Mike, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Laszlo, Jamison, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, and four anonymous—and 62 other supporters on Patreon. Loren Grush (@lorengrush) | Twitter Elon Musk suggests SpaceX is scrapping its plans to land Dragon capsules on Mars - The Verge Farewell, Red Dragon - Main Engine Cut Off Larry Lemke - Red Dragon: Low Cost Access to the Surface of Mars (SETI Talks) - YouTube Meet Scott Pace, the National Space Council's new executive secretary | The Planetary Society JAXA Interested in NASA’s Deep Space Gateway - Main Engine Cut Off To mine the Moon, private company Moon Express plans to build a fleet of robotic landers - The Verge How Moon Express could use robots to mine the Moon - YouTube Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Overcast, Google Play, Stitcher, or elsewhere Subscribe to the Main Engine Cut Off Newsletter Buy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off Shop Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

lauren thank you so much for joining me on the show yeah thanks for having me i'm really excited to be here we've got a serious list of things yeah Yeah, it's been a fun week. I'm going to let you have the honors of picking where we go first. We've got Dragon stuff, Mars stuff, Falcon Heavy, policy stuff, maybe not so much of that, but the void is interesting in its own right. I mean, I think Elon kind of supplied us with more information than we can handle this week. I think my favorite, I mean, there was a lot of big news. Obviously, the biggest news was Red Dragon. But I think what I'd love to talk about is his pessimism towards the Falcon Heavy. I've never heard him talk like

that before. I feel like he's always kind of inflating our expectations for things. I mean, he does kind of lower expectations a little bit right before something's about to happen, but it's usually long in advance he's always talking things up, saying we can do things next year, you know? Yeah. It was totally a weird kind of feeling from him that I don't know how many times he said that things are going to blow up, which was just like, this just got weird and off into the weeds in that section. Well, I guess what he was just very cautious about, Falcon Heavy probably won't make orbit on its first flight,

which, I mean, you know, that's a fair thing to be worried about. Like you saw with Rocket Lab, their first flight didn't make orbit either. They made it to space, which is pretty great, but still didn't make it to orbit. You'd have a little higher expectation, though, for SpaceX because they've flown the Falcon 9 before, and this is basically just three Falcon 9 cores. But, yeah, I still thought it was funny just how cautious he was.

He seemed that about everything, though. It seemed like somebody hit him with a tranquilizer when he was on the flight over from L.A. I thought he was going to fall asleep a couple times during this talk. I know, I know. To be fair, though, he always is very calm. He'll just say things in the most mild-mannered tone, which I think is such a fun experience. Whenever I'm listening to him, he's just like, oh, yeah, I think, yeah, seven years, 2024, we can have people

on Mars. Yeah, no problem. So other than the explosions, was there anything in particular about Falcon Heavy that piqued your interest of what he was talking about there? Or really just the fact that they are shooting for this year still, and we haven't yet heard of too many delays in that regard? Yeah, I mean, I feel pretty positive that it might actually happen this year. We've actually seen the hardware, right? Like we've seen them testing

out the core, um, that they're going to use. We've never seen that before. So they're actually working toward it and everything, you know, knock on wood seems to be going well. And that, that's of course key in order for it to happen like they can't have another mishap or else we're not going to see the falcon heavy again for years and i did see a tweet just this morning uh that the doors were open on their hangar outside of 39a and all three of the cores for falcon heavy are inside right now sitting next to each other what did he say when that happened once they're all delivered it's a couple months yeah they so the last i've heard on the schedule for pad 40 i heard some stuff last week that that's going to be actually flying at the end of august that they're going to

do a flight out of 40 at the end of august oh that'd be great because they really need to get that i mean that's been kind of a thorn in their side for a little while now and that's a big hold up because they can't do anything on 39A in the way of Falcon Heavy until they've got somewhere else to fly out of. So I think they've got a Dragonflight coming up at the beginning of August out of 39A and by the end of August they should be flying out of 40 again. And then they will see how they manage it. I don't know what they're gonna do with Dragonflights from there out. They seem to be liking that out of 39A for now. So it's really just gonna be interesting to see how they manage all the out uh they seem to be liking that out of 39a for now so it's

really just going to be interesting to see how they manage all the hardware that they have down there yeah now do we know how long like how much they need to update uh 39a to accommodate falcon heavy or is it ready to go for falcon heavy what we've heard last is that they need 60 days um and most of that is on the transporter erector side of things because that's not ready yet to lift all three cores okay so there's some work in that i think what happened was when they were going to do that work and then they had the incident with amos six and they didn't finish they were going to put on the hold down points for falcon heavy but then once everything went south they had to just get 39a up and running as fast as they could

for falcon nine so they ditched the plan to put the hold down points. So they've got like this, the remaining pieces of the puzzle at 39A to support Falcon Heavy to do. They've said 60 days in the past, but nobody's quite sure if that means do they have to shut down all launches out of there for 60 days or could they do some flights while they're doing that work? It's kind of a mystery. I have a feeling that they probably can't launch out of there so if it's 60 days from when they finally have 40 up and running again i my prediction then is december maybe like we could probably have another like christmas launch or early next year because i mean august is fast approach. I mean, we're almost at August. Yeah. It would definitely need, I, I, I'm going to put my money on December for now, but we'll see.

I hope selfishly. I hope it's not December. Cause I'm going to, I'm hoping to go down for it, but if it's December, I'm not going to be able to make it down there. So it's always in the back of my mind. So, uh, my boyfriend and I want to take a trip to Paris at some point and we were thinking October, but I want to take a trip to Paris at some point. And we're thinking October. But I swear to you, this is how sad my life is. I was thinking in the back of my mind, well, maybe the Falcon Heavy will fly. I have noticed you have a knack for being on like holidays and parties when launches are happening.

It really is. Like there's a joke in my office that if I go on vacation, then they should expect some huge space news to happen. Like the worst was Mardi Gras. I went to Mardi Gras and it was like the first vacation, big vacation really been taken in a while. And it wasn't even that big. I took four days off. And while we were out there, Elon goes,

oh, expect a huge announcement from SpaceX. And that was the moon trip with the tourists. I can't tell you how much it hurt. Like it was, I ended up, I ended up waking up in the morning to write a whole analysis of it. And it was just, that's my life. I love it. Let's track that launch based on when you're going away and we'll, we'll try to figure it out based on that. Other SpaceX-y things. We'll just stay on the SpaceX thread for now. What other, sounds like Falcon Heavy, we're hopeful, but still maybe not. What was the other,

you know, we heard about subscale interplanetary transport system plans, cancellation of propulsive landing. What are those? Do you want to go to next? The cancellation of the propulsive landing was a shocker to me. I saw like inklings of those rumors, but, you know, I try to refrain from reporting on rumors. You know, I just like to see how they play out. But I'm glad somebody did end up asking him that at the luncheon. And yeah, I was really surprised because, I mean, I don't know if you remember, but NASA did, I think NASA did a study, let me say like 2012, but don't quote me on that, about Red Dragon and the landing technology. And they basically concluded that this could revolutionize landing on Mars because landing on Mars is so tough. You know, nobody outside of space, I think, quite understands that. It's just

that thin atmosphere really gets you and you really can't slow down. And I thought that, I mean, it seemed to me that the Red Dragon landing was the way to go. Now, it's not, I mean, like Elon said, they're still going to do propulsive landings. They're just not going to test it. Well, yeah, not with a dragon, though. Right, not with dragons. So here's my theory, and I'm kind of confirmed, but it seems more complicated than that. Sounds to me like getting the propulsive landing validated through NASA was pretty tough for them, and they want to stick on this timescale of launching by next year, um, or launching their first, uh, test missions next year. And, um, so maybe because of that, they

didn't want to go ahead and develop the technology to land on Mars instead, just, you know, don't validate it that way. Go ahead and validate whatever vehicle they do want to land on Mars and actually use this in people or whatever. But it sounds like it might be a little more complicated than that. Maybe there are some technical challenges with the Dragon that we don't know about. That's definitely what, you know, I'm in the same thread with you there. From what it sounded like was that, because even last October, they were talking about the fact that they were going to use the cargo missions in CRS-2, the second phase of commercial services, to do propulsive landings and test them on Dragon 2 with that, because they'll be flying cargo with Dragon 2. Now that doesn't seem to be the case. So what I think, to extend on your theory a bit, I think you're exactly right in that regard. What I think, to extend on your theory a bit, I think you're exactly right in that regard.

And what they got to was a point where they said, we can't test this and develop this on NASA flights the way that SpaceX likes to do. That's how they did Falcon 9 reusability. They did all of that as they're flying customer missions. So once they were faced with the fact that they couldn't do this on flights of Dragon 2 that they're flying for NASA, that added to their own schedule and budget, probably added two to three years because they would have to factor in their work outside of the NASA work,

probably added on the order of $100 million, something that's nine digits long because all that extra time for engineers to be on that project, they're going to have to fly their own test flights if they were to develop things for that architecture. So once you start looking at, okay, maybe we wouldn't get to send one to Mars

until 2022, 2024, or even beyond that at the expense of some hundreds of million dollars, you have to take a step back and say, maybe it's better to spend the two to three extra years and a couple hundred million dollars in the ITS department rather than what is essentially a technological dead end because almost nothing from Dragon 2 applies to their grander plans.

You know, it's entirely different landing mechanism, totally different control systems, and just about everything is different. The scale is obviously way, way off. So I think once it looked like it was going to be a huge project in its own right, they took a step back to see, does this justify existence? And while disappointing, I get the decision that was made there. Still, though, it will be interesting to see how they do end up testing because you're right. SpaceX has been very smart about kind of integrating their R&D into their already

existing infrastructure, which is, I mean, you got to do what you got to do to bring down costs. And that has been a good way to test is through their own missions. But I think that's kind of what everybody is wondering right now. And that's what Musk says he's going to address at the next IAC is this cost, which I think is, yeah, that's the big kind of question mark for me right now, because there really isn't a way to incorporate the research and development of this new capability within what they've already been contracted to do. I'm curious on the, we know they're going to downsize a bit. That's all but been confirmed by what he said. Yes. Was it two days ago now? Yeah. I'm curious when we see what the actual scale of it is, how much the fact that Blue Origin is in existence today plays into the size of the new subscale version of this. Because it was like the same week that Jeff Bezos was like, hey, by the way, we've got one of these, too.

I think it was like the week before or something that he initially announced New Glenn. Is that it? Yeah, I can't remember. Or maybe teased it, but I think he teased it the week before, but we didn't actually find out how big it was going to be. And when you're looking at something like funding, like you were talking about, if their new smaller version is going to be more focused on being able to fly customer missions and not being so monstrously oversized that doesn't make any sense for anyone to buy. I'm wondering how he plays that against the size

of New Glenn, both in payload fairing size and just payload mass size. New Glenn's about 45 metric tons to low Earth orbit. So it'll be curious to see if they're going to start, you know, I think they're both banking a little bit on the if you build it, they will come mentality that nobody has a rocket that big yet. So nobody knows who would buy launches on a rocket that big yet. So that'll be curious. I just think that's risky because, I mean, that's one of the main criticisms about SLS, right, is we don't really have anything that needs to be lifted by this huge rocket? And that was one of the things that kind of struck me when I saw him reveal. What is it? It's the BFR, but now it's the ITS.

We don't know. Pick your name. Pick your favorite name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it went back to the BFR, so I'll stick with that. What is the business case for it? And it sounds to me like Elon is banking on all of these people willing to just go live on Mars now. And I just that's not going to be the case for a very long time. And so, yeah, I think

he's got to add some practicality to it because that's that's just it didn't seem very practical to have such a huge ship like that. If that's all you're going to do is just take people to Mars, then I don't see a business case for it just yet. So that brings up an interesting factor in this, a little bit policy related, is their lobbying both in front of Congress and even in Elon's talk yesterday, or two days ago, the fact that they even are bringing up lunar voyages at this point and being able to fly payloads to the moon. Yeah. I mean, if anybody has been following the space community lately, it's very clear that the moon is coming up more and more in conversation these days. And I think people are just kind of vying for the possibility that we could see a shift in direction, I think, policy-wise.

I mean, Elon has always been very clear about how we shouldn't go to the moon first, you know, and then now he's saying, oh, well, to really get the public energized, we need a lunar base. I thought that was very interesting, too. So I don't know what that means if it's in terms of the winds have already started changing within the people in the administration, or if people are expecting the winds to change, or maybe they're trying to make them change. But I think everything is back on the table at this point in terms of what could happen. And it's obvious that SpaceX and Blue Origin is doing this as well, or trying to be opportunistic and saying, hey, if you're going back towards the moon,

I noticed you don't have anything with landing legs on it. So we do. That seems to be the vibe. Yeah, and that's the other thing. I mean, another thing that Elon just kind of started off with right out of the gate, and it's been a focus lately, is this battle between contracting, right? That really seems to be what the future of NASA is going to come down to is just a matter of how they do business, which sounds so boring to the layperson. But it really is, I think, fascinating because it's a completely new model. And just to explain, you know, it's this idea of cost plus versus fixed price. And they've been doing cost plus for so long where they have,

give all this money to their contractors and have this detailed oversight. I mean, essentially, somebody had told it, broken it down well for me. It's like NASA was created to kind of facilitate the industry. But at the same time, they've become an industry member themselves. So it's like if it's like if the FAA built their own airline, you know, that's not what they're there for. But that's kind of what NASA is doing. You know, they're building their own rocket while everyone else is building their rockets. And so it doesn't make sense. Of course, they don't have the money to buy other vehicles and do other

things because they're spending so much time maintaining their own hardware. So I'm just not sure when it'll all come to a head, you know, because we there are so many different players involved. It's such a it's a very political situation. And we're in a bit of a stalemate, I think, for a while. I really liked, I think it was last week or so, Jason Davis wrote a post on the Planetary Society's blog about Scott Pace, who's going to lead the National Space Council. Right. And one of the things he brought up was his, his being Scott Pace's, view on the pivot towards Mars back, you know, whatever it was, a decade ago at this point. And he was very critical

because none of the other international partners went along with that, with NASA. Nobody was interested. Nobody has the money to be interested. They all wanted to go to the moon. ESA has still been talking about this lunar village thing for a while. And then just last week,

I saw that JAXA kind of floated their interest in using the hypothetical deep space gateway that NASA has been putting out concepts for. They don't really have any money for it yet, but they're putting out these concepts of something that SLS Orion would do in the 2020s. And JAXA said, we would actually like to use that because we don't have money for this whole big plan, but we do have money to build a lander and we would jump on board with that so with the feelings of Scott Pace in the past and the the things that we're seeing you know people latching on these lunar plans and NASA kind of gravitating towards that everything seems to be aligning in that direction even so far as the commercial

side goes we've got Blue Origin doing more lobbying than they've ever done in their history about going to the moon. We've got SpaceX now bringing up lunar trips. And you even got things like Orbital ATK talking about how Cygnus could be used as like a mini station around the moon. So everyone in all parts of this seems to be gravitating towards it. And it's sensible that Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, the like would would latch on to that in the same way as the international community is, which is exactly what NASA needs if they want to have any hopes of a real plan coming out of the administration change that we just had. Totally. And I think there are two main motivations at play here. I've actually talked to Scott quite frequently when it comes to policy that I write about. And and, yeah, he's been very clear. The first one is, he always talks about how today, or in the past, the reason to do human exploration was to kind of show off, right, to show your strength. Now, it's not about

who you can show off to, it's about who you can bring with you, because we're not in the Cold War anymore. So the motivations have shifted significantly. And yeah, what he said was kind of the failing of the pivot to Mars was that nobody really wanted to go there. And then at the same time, so you have this really, really strong international diplomacy angle that could be a driver for NASA. And then the other side, I think there's a better business case for the moon and for companies than by far for Mars. I mean, no one you I would say it's going to be a million times easier for companies to get to the moon and over the next decade than any company is going to get to. I mean, no offense to Mr. Musk, but 2024 is just an outrageous timeline to be landing people on the surface of Mars. So I think that it's quicker to do. You know, there's the concept

of mining like Moon Express, which we can also talk about. And yeah, we, and we have, we have a quicker possibility to figure out what we can make a business case out of. Like it's, it's unclear what, what the business of space is going to be yet. We talk about mining, talk about harvesting resources, but there could be other things that we just don't know. And we're not going to know until we go there. And the faster that we can go there, the quicker we can figure that out. And I think the moon provides a really good opportunity to test that out. Yeah, I totally agree with you there. I'm as much of a Mars head as anyone out there. But when it comes to something that there's government involved in, and even new entrance

to the industry, the lunar plans, they seem to be much more achievable because the timeline is so much easier to grasp. You've got access there, depending on what orbit you want to go to, you've got a transfer window every month, sometimes a lot more than that, not every 26 months, which is just, you have to make it two budget cycles between now and the next time to go to Mars. So just from a sheer, you know, logistics department, it's so much more easy to see a government-led program looking out towards the moon. And the other good thing is that that is much more accessible. So you can bring on these newer players in the industry and expand the market a bit in the way that they did on the ISS program to bring SpaceX kind of into existence. You could do that with companies like Moon

Express, like Mastin, who are these smaller companies that don't have a lot of funding yet, but have a lot of R&D work going into things in and around the moon. So, you know, I think the opportunity there to expand the market by way of these COTS-like programs, I'm very optimistic about that. And I'm supportive of that as much as I want to see SpaceX head out to Mars and do all the grand things that Elon talks about. Yeah, I think one of the biggest failings in the past decade has been this idea that it has to be an either-or scenario.

And I understand where that comes from. And it goes back to the contracting angle. NASA's budget is very limited. But if NASA was thinking like a company and was employing these newer methods of contracting, then we could bring down the price and we could free up funds to do other things. But at the moment, NASA just isn't built to be as innovative as they once were, in my opinion. And I'm sure a lot of people will disagree with me, but I think there really needs to be a mentality shift in how they do their business and treat it like a business and not in all respects, but in some ways, because if they don't bring down the costs, then they're going to be stuck in this limbo for a really long time. But I think what will be good is all these different companies that you're talking about.

As soon as they start venturing out and as soon as Falcon Heavy launches and Nucleon launches. and New Glenn launches and the government sees what the private sector has done without as much assistance from federal aid, I think that will be a paradigm shift for sure. It just might take a while before we get there. Yeah, I think with regards to the contracting model stuff that seems to be coming up every day now, even among the two programs that we all point to, the cargo and the crew programs, there was a pretty big difference in the way that those were, the opportunities were seized upon both within NASA and the people that were actually winning those contracts. Cargo was, you know, originally it was SpaceX and rocket plane Kistler who eventually got fired off of the program because

they couldn't raise any of the money they needed to. And then orbital sciences came on with that. And if you look at those two examples there, the idea was to have these companies put in some of their own money, develop things that they own. But then there was a part of the program that was supposed to be NASA will use it, but you should also sell this as a service to anyone else. And SpaceX has obviously done much more of that than anyone else. Orbital ATK, now that they've done the merger and all, they haven't been able to sell a Cygnus to anyone else. They haven't even talked about doing that. They haven't really done anything commercial with the thing that they developed in commercial cargo. And then on the cruise side, that was seriously underfunded in the beginning years.

But you had SpaceX again, who is talking up all these different plans. And then Boeing, who says that they're going to use Starliner for trips to future Bigelow stations, but hasn't talked about too many other commercial ventures beyond that. So that's the thing that troubles me is that, you know, the we've well, it's great that SpaceX came out of those programs. There's at least a 50% rate there where one company goes very commercial and the other one doesn't do a lot of commercial things. They're just on fixed price contracts, which is also a good, you know, change of pace from the cost plus model. But that's an interesting difference in the way that these companies look at these contracts. That's definitely true. And that's not to say that the COTS model is, yeah, like you said, it's not totally without fault. And look, like, you know,

we were supposed to, wasn't it this year, I believe, that they were supposed to be launching regularly to the space station. And now it's going to definitely at least be next year, possibly 2019, that we have people flying on these vehicles. So there are still, you know, drawbacks to the scenario. But then you also look at SLS, too. I mean, we were supposed to be launching it, what, next year? And now it's definitely 2019. I mean, Orion has been in development since I was in like middle school, I think.

Yeah, exactly. Oh God. Yeah. I remember. Now you're like, Oh wait, let me do math real quick. It was a product of consolation. And I remember my parents were talking about it and I don't want to sell my parents out, but they were just talking about some, you know, some issues with it. Yeah, and I think I was in early high school. Yeah, so I went to college down in Florida. I started down there in October of 2009, and then I saw a space shuttle launch, and then I saw Ares 1X,

and it was like this super weirdo mission because you knew it was about to get canceled, but they're still launching this thing anyway. And to think, you know, where we are now from there, it's it's just like, you know, and then you consider the fact that the because it's a cause plus model, how much that's been building over the years and in budgetary restrictions and all that kind of stuff. It just gets a little worrying when you really start to think about the calendar. Oh, yeah. And it's also strange because, I mean, my entire childhood, I could say, is defined by the Space Shuttle Program because that's all my parents were working on. And when they told me that it was going to get canceled, it didn't even register because I think I was a freshman in high school

and I was like, Oh, you can't cancel the shuttle program. It's just always going to be there. It's like, that's all that you do. You can't just, and then when it was finally, I mean, it was 2011, right? I was out of college at that point. And I, and I just remember thinking I've, my entire world has changed. You know, that's, that was a strange feeling to have something that was so consistent in your life and then to have it gone. That was a mind boggling. And yeah, now it's just been, it's been a very weird, I mean, didn't we recently pass that milestone where we're in the longest gap now where, uh, vehicles haven't flown from the U S that's very, very sad. So I hope that, I hope that we can figure it out. Like, I mean, that's a simple way to say it, but you know, a, there needs to be some massive changes at NASA and how they do their business in my opinion. And I think we, we made a misstep

in terms of how we transition from the shuttle program for sure. But I just, until we change the minds of a few people in powerful positions, I think we're going to be in a little bit of a stasis for a while. So the interesting thing on the crew front, NASA posted new dates for commercial crew flights. Yeah. And most recently before that, SpaceX had been, they haven't been talking about it, but there had been schedules posted in somewhat public areas that showed March 2018 for SpaceX demo mission.

And in the NASA announcement, that's February 2018. So it's the first time in all of the crew program that any date moved up at all. I know. Which is a good sign, I think. I'll take that. I'll take whatever I can get. Yeah, I'll take the two-week shift, you know. Oh, but you know what? That's going to be great. to, is shaping up to be a very busy year. Like this year has actually been very calm.

I remember last year was last year was kind of marked with, with all of the landings or that like 2015 and 2016 was everybody was landing stuff. Cause I remember it was like the week of Thanksgiving. It was a blue origin landed there, their new shepherd for the first time. And I was, that was just the week of Thanksgiving was Blue Origin landed their New Shepard for the first time. And that was just so out of the blue. And then that Christmas, SpaceX landed theirs. And then that next April, SpaceX landed on water.

And, you know, there's always something new and exciting happening. And now we're sadly, I mean, it's good, good but you know spacex's landings are coming becoming a bit more routine lately and uh and blue origin's been a bit silent so you know we've been in a little bit of a a weird year in terms of not a lot of new things have been happening but i think a lot of announcements and and softer stuff not not necessarily any like cool videos of hardware doing cool things at all. Yeah, but I feel like we're all bundled up in potential energy right now because we've got everybody's testing and they're all saying next year, which I know everyone says years and they always get pushed back. But I do see, I mean, if we are moving up commercial crew demo flights,

I'm going to take that as a good sign. So 2018 could be a really good year for space news. And there's a lot of NASA missions launching next year, too. Or not launching, but I believe InSight. InSight, yep. That'll be heading out. Oh, and then they're launching the James Webb Space Telescope. Yeah. Thinking of that, thinking of covering that, it makes me start sweating.

Are you going to go down to the launch? I don't, we'll see if they'll let me. That could be both a vacation and a rocket launch. That's true, that's very true. And I haven't been to South America, so that would be pretty cool. Yeah, I've been like, man, that would be awesome to go down and see an Aryan launch. You know what I really want to do is um convince the the bosses to send me to new zealand for um the moon express launch if they get that that would be an amazing trip

um but we'll see i mean i'm excited to see where rocket labs goes i mean they say that they uh fixed their or they know why they didn't make it to orbit last time so we've got two more test launches to go and they're launching and that's pretty great because i mean when you think about commercial companies in the u.s that are launching it's really just spacex and ula and so to have another player consistently launching will be really good for the industry yeah i'm so let's just do moon express real quick because then i want to hear about your new video project. So they showed off a bunch of mock-ups, but talked about the fact that they have hardware somewhere out there and they have two engines somewhere out there, but we've not really seen anything, which I think reading your article on

it made you kind of nervous, makes me kind of nervous. Yeah. Because I generally don't see any real, you know, I really don't get too excited until I've seen an engine firing because that seems to be, you know, the backbone of any good program. I think the thing that was impressive to me was all of their hardware or their designs seem very streamlined. And I kind of like that. And that's kind of what SpaceX does, right? They have this capability, and they just scale it up. And that's kind of what Moon Express is mimicking in their hardware. But yeah, I mean, even with... We have five companies or five participants left in the Google Learner XPRIZE,

and we haven't seen really hardware from any of them. Any of them, yeah. Yeah. But we've seen a launcher now. What's that? we've seen a launcher now what's that we've seen a launcher now that counts right right right right but we yeah no but none of the actual landers which are kind of the important part and uh they have to launch before the end of the year I'm just I'm I'm assuming they're going to um fudge that that deadline yeah I mean they've done it how many times now you know it was i think that was like a 2014 deadline originally or something maybe not 2014

but they've pushed it back a couple of times yeah yeah yeah so um i think i think maybe a bunch of stuff is going to happen all at once uh but it's it's going to be interesting. Yeah, what did Bob Richards say? He said that they're still testing hardware, and you know that they've moved into the old launch pads at Cape Navarro, which we actually got to visit. I was down there when SpaceX finally relaunched their first flown vehicle, and we got to take a little sneak peek at Moon Express's facilities, which they're like revamping the entire spot. It's a really neat, neat place.

So apparently they're testing down there, still integrating hardware down there. So I think just maybe keep our eyes out next couple months, maybe. I know but we'll see that'll be exciting i mean their their plans you know you had a great article and a video about it all yeah plans are very exciting because like you were saying how they kind of streamlined their hardware where they have you know one basic vehicle design that then they put different configurations together and can support different things and different payloads. The idea there is pretty awesome because it does let them be flexible to what people, what the market wants to do. You know, they're trying to market this as a commercial thing

to send your own payloads there to do sample return. The fact that they're doing it in that configurable kind of way excites me. I just, I really hope to see some test firings or some actual hardware out at the launch pads, that kind of stuff. I know. I mean, obviously I always want to see stuff and, and, and if you have hardware launching or, or testing, you know, I will go, I'll go out there if I can, if I can make it and I'll bring a video camera and film it too. So, um, I, I really hope they get to, to revealing something soon. Um, what was the other thing? Oh, but like I was saying, I like the, the business model of Moon Express. I think it could be really

cool if they get it going. So that's why I've always been kind of rooting for them, but like, yeah, we need to see some stuff. Speaking of seeing some stuff, tell us about this new project you're working on. So for the past couple of months, we've been going on some shoots and we are going to unveil a new series. The problem is I don't have some concrete details for you. I don't think we've announced the date when it's launching, but it's definitely soon. I know that's such an overused word in the space industry. Perfect for a space podcast, yeah. But it definitely is coming soon.

And we don't have a name yet, but we've kind of finalized our list. But I can tell you the basic gist is the first season of the series will revolve around what it takes to to go to space as a as an astronaut and so they've put me in a lot of fun um scenarios where i am put to the test and sometimes i do well and sometimes i don't uh but that's the beauty of it so this is so this is a normally we have like our explainer videos right where we kind of break down news and and go through this way. This is more fun and experiential. And it's all about what can we torture Lauren with next? That sounds awesome. So follow you on Twitter, I'm sure, is probably the best way to keep up on that. And like and I really do mean it soon. We will have some announcements for you.

So keep maybe like in the next couple of weeks or so. Okay. Great. By IAC is probably the way you should phrase it. Yes, exactly. I'll maybe reveal something in Australia. We'll see. All right, Lauren, thank you so much for joining me on the show. It was a great time talking with you. Yeah. Thank you so much. I really enjoyed it. That's it for us this week. Thank you so much to Lauren for coming on the show. And thank you to the 78 supporters of Main Engine Cutoff over at patreon.com slash Miko. There were 16 executive producers for this episode of Main Engine Cutoff. They made this possible. They are Chris, Mike, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Laszlo, Jameson, Guinevere, Nadim, Peter, and four anonymous executive producers. They made this episode possible, and I'll talk to you next week.