Main Engine Cut Off - T+90: Andrew Jones

Episode Date: August 30, 2018

Andrew Jones joins me to talk all things Chinese spaceflight—exploration, policy, industry, and more. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 37 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Tyler, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Barbara, Stan, Mike, David, Mints, Joonas, and eight anonymous—and 182 other supporters on Patreon. Andrew Jones (@AJ_FI) | Twitter Andrew Jones | The Planetary Society Andrew Jones, Author at SpaceNews.com GBTIMES: Andrew Jones Landspace of China to launch first rocket in Q4 2018 - SpaceNews.com Chinese rocket maker OneSpace secures $44m in funding; Expace prepares for commercial launch - SpaceNews.com China's mission to the far side of the Moon will launch in December | The Planetary Society Email your thoughts and comments to [e-mail] Follow @WeHaveMECO Listen to MECO Headlines 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 Buy shirts and Rocket Socks from the Main Engine Cut Off Shop Support Main Engine Cut Off on Patreon

Welcome to Main Engine Cutoff. I'm Anthony Colangelo and I've got another special guest here with me, Mr. Andrew Jones, joining us from overseas. How's it going over there? Yeah, it's all good, thanks. Thanks very much for having me. So this is another one of those timezone wrangling shows where we're dealing with a seven hour difference at this point. So thanks for doing the late night shift. You're out in Finland, right? Andrew Jones Yeah, that's right. All right. Well, you are the go to Chinese spaceflight mind. If there's anything going

on with China, I'm going into your Twitter feed first. I'm checking out what articles you posted recently because there's not a lot of people that track this stuff day-to-day like you do. So I've brought you here to discuss just about anything with China. A lot of people out there have had various questions about policy things or these new commercial companies that we're seeing, I guess, near the launch pad now. We do see some hardware heading towards the launch pad. So maybe to start, what do you see the current state of Chinese spaceflight as they're working on their lunar programs? They've got a Farsighted Lantern coming later this year. Some of these commercial companies are getting to the launch pad. What does that overall state look like to you right now?

Well, first of all, that is a hell of a question to start with. Yeah. Tell me everything. Yeah. It's like, I don't know, you have like, you know, Eric Bergeron and talk about, you know, specifically let's talk about SpaceX and rockets. Yeah. Tell me about the largest country's space flight program yeah um so the way i see it i i'll try to dissect this a little more we've got like four i see four like pillars right there's the national programs like changi landers there are the military, I don't know, faux military,

some of these constellations that are going up like, uh, Baidu and, and all the imaging constellations that they're working on right now. Um, then they have the commercial industry and then there's some general exploration policy things floating out there that we've seen them work with, you know, ESA astronauts on recovery, stuff like that. So maybe let's take each one of those first. You've been tracking the Chang'e lander, the relay satellite that's out there. Things seem to be going pretty well with that. And recently we got confirmation of that landing attempt towards the end of the year. So how do you think that program itself, just starting with that one focus thing, how do you think that's going first off?

Because that's the headline news right now. I mean, that's a very good way to break it down, just taking a step back. And I think what we can see is that China now has a very comprehensive program in all these kinds of different areas. So what seems to be going on is there's a lot of ambition and a lot of push in different areas. So as you say, the Baidu program, which is very much dual use, and then the remote sensing and imaging, which again, they have the Kaofeng kind of civilian side, and then the Yaogang, which is the more military side.

So there's all kinds of different programs going on and lots of budgetary pressures. And at the moment, it's kind of wondering, how are they going to keep all of this going? Because the program seems to be expanding. wondering like how are they going to keep all of this going because the program seems to be expanding i mean new launches i think about expanding the the lunar program beyond these uh the first three step thing which i have which is orbiting landing and roving and then sample return so they're looking at expanded missions to the lunar south pole and they have the human space flight aspect as well which is tremendously. So they have all these things. And it's hard to see if they have what they're going to prioritize.

And it seems like they can't really do all of this. I mean, everything is expanding. So I would say that the lunar side of things, lunar exploration project, it seems that this is something that they're willing to focus on quite strongly. And the way that they're talking about expanding the missions is, you know, a very, very strong indication that they're serious and looking at resources on the moon and also then possibly expanding this into putting Chinese astronauts on the moon. If I could jump in on one particular thing that you said, you mentioned the budgetary question about how could they really pull all of this off at the same time. And that was something actually I throw out whenever I'm doing an interview, a little pre-announcement to patrons, and they give me some questions that they have on their minds. And Adam brought up a budgetary issue that I don't feel like it's talked about

a lot because, you know, I definitely have very little insight into what's going on internally in China. Sounds like, you know, it's a little misty even from your perspective, how the budgets even work at all. But I guess you're getting the sense that they do have the same sort of budgetary pressures that, you know, a NASA or ESA deals with where they have so many different projects going on at the same time that it's, I just have zero idea how any of that is managed. So is there any way to get insight at all into how they deal with budgets? No, I mean, that's a very murky issue. And, I mean, when people think about China, they think, okay, China's got loads of money, and they're just throwing money at this, that, and the other, and, you know, the One Belt,

One Road project, and it seems like everything's a wash of cash. But no, I mean, they very much have to battle for resources. I mean, they very much have to battle for resources. I mean, that's a political issue, which is, you know, that's basically a black box. I mean, I have no real insight into that. And some, I mean, there's some researchers who look into this and they, you know, every year or so there'll be a report and they kind of have an estimate for how much china's probably spending in all these different space programs but i mean trying to work that out i mean that's very much like uh you know that's a research project with the proper funding and all that kind of you could you get a phd in that if you wanted yeah absolutely so that's something that i kind of like oh great someone's published something you know a new estimate on that but i don't even think about

it because i just really don't have any insight no one will kind of you know tell me when you know if i get the chance to speak to someone from china they can't really explain you know it's curious when you come from you know a country like the u.s where this is all front page of the newspaper when we have budgetary arguments and then you're trying to apply that to like a Chinese space program, and there's just nothing to go on. And that's, I find, you know, even trying to track anything from China is really tough because of that tight-lippedness. But, you know, it's when you're seeing gear like this,

where they're rolling out three different constellations, I would assume that once they get up there, those budgets could drop a little to be more of an operational budget rather than the budget that they're rolling with now, which is development, deployment. So do you think that as they shift out, because correct me if I'm wrong, I think Baidu is supposed to be deployed this year in full, something like that? 2020. 2020, okay, so they still got another year or two yeah but i think they've been talking about um i think it's going to be fully operational for the belt and road countries in 2018 um because they tie almost every program they can to the belt and road scheme which

is president xi jinping's kind of signature um like program you know so for example you want can to the Belt and Road scheme, which is President Xi Jinping's signature program. For example, you want to talk about the commercial side of things and these new companies. I think that we can look at the emergence of these new launch companies in China. We can kind of see that kind of into the... We can kind of see this through budgetary pressures in a sense. That's what I think in that they made a decision back in 2014 to open the space sector to private investment. I think part of that was that simply the space sector has to kind of contribute in some way.

It can't just be like sucking up cash. It's got to somehow lower costs and be commercially viable and so on. So one move was then to, as I say, to open the space sector to private investment, but then also this civil military integration program, which Xi Jinping prioritized in 2014, 2015. That allowed both the money to come in, but also then access for these companies to certain technologies, so solid rocket motors motors that kind of thing so they clearly made like a policy choice where you know they they recognize that um you know spacex doing certain things so they need to kind of they can't be left too far behind and they need to lower costs so that that's how i see it so i don't quite know how the vested

interests which would be uh the main space program contractor, CASC, like the China Aerospace Science and Technology Corporation, quite how they are taking this. You know, I don't know. Be very interesting to see, especially like land space, if they come up with a methane liquid oxygen launcher by 2020. And it's, you know, cheap, it's reliable, it's reusable. I mean, what's that going to do for the Long March rocket? It's very interesting. Yeah, it's curious that that happens right alongside of them replacing every single Long March rocket that they've got. Every class that was flying with hypergolic propellants are slated to be phased out with this new generation. So do you think that they're kind of, it makes a lot of sense. In a lot of ways,

it's what people wish NASA would do with heavy launch here in the US by getting rid of SLS and going with the commercial alternatives so that they can spend the money elsewhere rather than on launch. Do you think that China might go that similar route where the Long March 5, the big heavy lifter that they're working on now, would continue just fine, but this smaller variance? Is it the 7? Long March 7 is the Long March, let these commercial companies come on and ramp up their capabilities so that, you know, CASC can stop thinking about that smaller end of launch. That seems kind of viable if that's the case. Yeah, that's an interesting point. And CASC released this kind of roadmap they had late last year, with a roadmap up to 2050. And they were talking about, like,

fully reusable launch vehicles, but then, you know, talking about these big things like the Long March 9, which would be like a Saturn V-class launcher, and single-stage-to-orbit space plane, and the nuclear shuttle. Yeah, all the pipe dreams that you've just filed into the architecture.

Yeah, so they weren't really talking about the smaller things. So I mean, yeah, maybe. But the thing is the Long March 7, so that was supposed to kind of replace the Long March 2F for human spaceflight. But also they were going to make a version to a variant which goes to GEO. And that would replace the Long March 3B, which is hypergolic and old. But we're not really seeing that movement. Yeah, they had one of them launched, right? Yeah, but they've both been... They had the test flight, which had

a scaled-down re-entry capsule of a new generation spacecraft. So that was the test launch. The second launch was the Tianzhou-1, which was the cargo spacecraft, so to test that with Tiang gong too so those are both to leo so they were talking okay this is you know these are non-toxic uh modularized they're going to be a lot cheaper but it doesn't seem like they're making the move to actually replace

the long march 3b with this new variant so i don't see that kind of coming online anytime soon. So it doesn't look like they're going to stop, um, using Xichang and bombing the villages down range of the, the boosters. So, I mean, that was the idea, but we don't actually see that happening quite yet.

So yeah, there's lots of plans. There's lots of talk, but it's, it's, um, it seems that it's open in which way they go. So these,

these, uh, new launch companies might well come in and sort of take up that role of the lighter launch vehicles. One of the things that I have a lot of questions about personally, and I get a lot, is what the relationship is between these new commercial companies uh between them and the chinese government uh is there any sense you can get there for what that relationship is like or is that another it could be another black box i would assume that it's kind of miss a mystery yeah it's it's kind of a black box and it's the kind of question you don't really get an answer to when when you ask that kind of question Nobody really likes to talk about it? Well, I mean, just in generalities, they'll talk about it, but they won't explicitly say.

So for these companies to start up and to have access to this technology, then, I mean, that's going to have to be cleared by the Communist Party of China. have to be cleared by the Communist Party of China. And it's going to the military that are kind of involved in this and kind of overseeing the space program. They are going to have to be okay with this. So, I mean, you can't just start up a space startup in China and expect to get anywhere. I mean, you have to have contacts.

You have to have, yeah, you've got to play the normal kind of political game there. You have to get anyway. I mean, you have to have contacts. You have to have... Yeah, you've got to play the normal kind of political game there. You have to be connected. So they've helped with access to technology, and they would most probably have had funding from SASTIN, which is

the government body which oversees the space program. So, I mean, all of this would have to be very closely watched. So it's like a privatized arm of the Chinese space program in some ways? I think that's the main thing that people have questions about, is not necessarily approvals or funding, but maybe the level of control that the Chinese government could impose upon a company. I think a level of oversight, at least.

I mean, maybe not control. I mean, maybe not a heavy hand. For example, Kask. I think that they have... I mean, they're state-owned, but I don't think there's so much state-controlled. I mean, they have a lot of freedom to work on all these different projects. I mean, they have to be okayed by the Communist Party, but it seems that they're able to put money into all these different schemes,

like reusable space plane, for example, the Long March 9 and the next generation spacecraft, which would be the Shenzhou successor. I mean, they're working on these, even though they're not explicitly approved by the government. So they do have some kind of scope to act by themselves. But at the same time, I mean, this would have to be to some level kind of OK with the Communist Party of China, which oversees everything in China. Right. And then I guess there, the point is, if they're seeing budgetary problems in space, they're probably going to be okay with anything that kind of gets them out of that problem territory. And if they see launch as a viable

spot to reduce costs, then give these people the freedom that they can have and see what happens with it. It's a very curious transition period, I would say. For a while, I thought that China was kind of going to follow the US route storyline from like the 60s to now, where it went through this very government heavy phase, and then it slowly transitioned out of that. And it feels, you know, based on what you're saying here with the 2014 mindset shift, it feels like they're maybe fast forwarding that timeline a bit, realizing that they need to make that switch sooner. Um, and now it's a matter of getting these couple of companies online. It's land space, link space, one space. They all have to have space as the second half of their name,

where else they're not allowed is what I'm getting. Yeah, you forgot iSpace as well. iSpace. Yeah. It's not that. The other part of that is, I assume that they kind of think that these companies would be able to capture some part of the commercial launch market internationally. I don't know if you have any sense of how... I mean, obviously, you know, there's companies

all over the world today that have launched stuff on Chinese rockets before. Iridium satellites were launched on freebies back in the day, and there's plenty of people that go over there to get launches. Given the current political landscape, how do you see the prospects for a company like Landspace being able to land contracts out of, you know, US, Europe, Russia? What do you think that breakdown would be? Or even, you know, other parties, like, there's a lot of countries from the Middle East right now, sending up their first satellites and things like that. What do you think their market would be if they could project out a couple of

years? That's a question which I thought about, but I have absolutely no idea. That's a huge question. We're talking about trade regimes, ITAR, all this kind of thing. So I haven't actually sat down and tried to work that out. So, of course, you have these four companies. So there's lots of domestically there's some demand for launch. domestically there's some demand for launch. It seems that there's quite a few satellites, as well as the launch companies.

There's a lot of satellite companies popping up. But again, I mean, are they going to have a market? And then, you know, there's so many open questions. This is something which I really need to look into, but I haven't. That's also entirely hypothetical at this point yeah but i mean it's i mean there was a report i recently about um all these uh new small set launches and it's like okay where are they going to find their markets i mean it's you know how many of these companies are going to be able to be um you know viable how are they going to survive it's a big question but But my excuse would be that I'm

trying to follow an entire program here. And I've just been lazy. And I just really haven't put my mind to that and started asking the right questions. No, but it's also, with that, knowing that these first initial launchers that these companies are bringing online are in line with those small sat launchers, payload-wise, payload range-wise. You have so many different forces at play where you have all these new commercial companies that are hoping to get their first launch in the next couple of years. You've got India still upgrading their launch vehicles, and they're still launching plenty of small sats over there. And then you have this new addition of Chinese companies, and you throw into the mix

all of the political landscape that there is today. And it's just really hard to figure out who's going to be successful, why they're going to be successful, what kind of market they're going to find. In the US, it seems like Virgin Orbit, Electron, all those kind of vehicles are banking on this growth of the market in general. And if maybe these Chinese companies see that happening within China as well, that they would have a lot of their payload taken up by these new Chinese companies investing in smallsats. Maybe there's enough there to get away. It's one of the most exciting yet impossible to figure out parts of this whole story. Yeah, and the other thing I forgot is that both

Kask and Kasik, which is kind of like a sister company to Kask, and they're a missile maker and defense contractor. I mean, Kask is looking at doing sea launches of its Long March 11, and they're claiming this is going to be really cheap as well. So they're kind of competing against the

new emerging players. And then KSIC have basically made this subsidiary called Xspace, and they're calling it like a commercial launch company. Well, it's got space as the second half of the name. There you go. So, yeah, so again, that's another state-run company which is trying to find its niche in the market. And so it's really hard to work out what's going on

and who's going to come out of this. I mean, both Kask and Kasich are also looking at getting into these low-Earth orbit communication constellations using nanosats and everything like this. So it's kind of like China wants to be involved in everything. And of course, they're putting serious effort into it, but at the same time

some of it kind of seems like a token gesture. It seems like these Hongyan constellation, like 300 satellites in low- in Earth orbit. They're just doing it because they don't want to be left behind. And even if you look at their human spaceflight program, I mean, okay, it's impressive,

but since 2003, they've had six launches. I mean, and if you go and look at, you know, back in the 60s when the USSR and USA were launching, look at their rates of launches. I mean, it just looks like they're just doing enough to kind of keep themselves relevant and at the table. Policy-wise, ESA has been getting a little closer to China over the years. They've had a couple of astronauts go out there to do training with the new, like, I don't know, land recovery of the new the years. They've had a couple astronauts go out there to do training with the new land recovery of the new crew module. They've got some astronauts learning Chinese and interacting with them a little bit more. I saw some speculation recently of Russia trying to sell their engines to China, since we seem to be ready to be done buying Russian engines over in the US

here. Everybody is opening up to them slowly in certain ways, except for the US. We still have that Wolf Amendment in Congress, that Congress passed that we can't talk to them about space at all. How do you see that kind of policy going from here? Do you think Europe in general is open to working with China at a deep level? Or is that more, like you were saying, token gesture to show that Europe is open? Or do you think there's really something there between that relationship and the relationship between Russia and China? I think with ESA, I think that they're kind of hedging their bets. I think that, I mean, they're kind of hedging their bets.

So, I mean, I think they had certain experiences with NASA in terms of how decisions are made with the ISS. And so they just want to have different options. And because they don't have their own spaceflight capability, so the more options they have, the better. So, yeah, so three of the astronauts, so that's Sam Cristoforetti, Matthias Maurer, and I think it's Thomas Pesquet, learning Chinese,

and two of those went to the sea rescue training last August. So they're making quite serious steps towards actually flying European astronauts on the Shenzhou. But, I mean, that's a long, long path. I mean, learning Chinese and having these, you know, manuals and all this, and everyone's happy with what's going on. I mean, that's going having these manuals and all this, and everyone's happy with what's going on. I mean, that's going to take a long, long time. So, I mean, that's not going to

happen for another 10 years or something like that. That you might see a ESA astronaut going to the Chinese space station. And if I would imagine that if China sees it as politically advantageous,

I think you might even see a national from a different country, say Pakistan, something like this, fly first. So they'll be able to say, look, we're giving these nations access to space, position themselves as the leader of the developing world, which they've tried to do since the 50s. And so, I mean, yeah, it's another very interesting area to follow, and another one which is very opaque, to say the least.

We're getting a trend here, I think. Absolutely. here i think absolutely and um yeah uh russia and china um that's something that i haven't focused on very much um i mean it seems that every few months there's some kind of announcement where they've had more agreements on lunar exploration or launches or maybe human space flight so all these kind of things are going on in the background but i don't have the kind of insight into that relationship so with dealing with east is great i mean the more kind of uh cooperation that china has with the outside world it makes it so much easier for for us journalists to kind of you know find a way in to find out what's going on yeah you at least have a new couple of new contacts not too far from your house that can give you some tidbit from their interactions.

There were two other questions that a couple of listeners had. One from Mass Fraction. He wanted to know how the Chinese space program is regarded within China itself. Is it seen, you know, there's always the trend everywhere in the world that's like, why are we spending money up there? We could be spending it on people starving down here. There's that thread that pops up everywhere. Do you have any sense for if that kind of mentality

is winning out with regards to the Chinese space program, or is it a force of national pride for people within China? national pride for people within China? Well, taking the usual foreign journalist in China kind of trick, which is to speak to taxi drivers and make a survey of them. That's very relevant. Oh, it's very scientific, yeah. No, I mean, speaking to them, I mean, you know, just generally, the main sense is that, yeah, this is a big source of national pride. And, for example, when they landed on the moon, put the lander on the moon in 2013, I mean, people are really proud of that.

And the space authorities have been trying to popularize this by having naming competitions and all those kind of things. On social media, you can see now and again that people say, okay, look out

in the interior, in certain parts of China you know there's still problems with poverty and infrastructure why are we spending on space okay but i mean that's a minority view so when there's a launch and you know if you look at what people are saying on social media it's all national pride except for the people in the village where one of the stages is coming down even that seems to be morbid curiosity well yeah but i mean they've been evacuated and they've been told when it's going to happen so they're up on the hills with the cameras right yeah and and i don't know if this is just some kind of scheme so they don't get their posts deleted but they'll say like

oh look here's the launch it was successful and you know this fell down but never mind no go motherland kind of thing and so they're either really keen or you know they're just trying you know hoping that their post gets past the census kind of thing so yeah it's it seems insane but um it seems that this it's quite popular but on the other hand i mean the chinese authorities are still very nervous about every launch that they do so you know when i post something on twitter saying okay there's gonna be a launch and then someone say oh it's gonna be live stream like no there was like three ever that were streamed well actually do you did you follow the um the relay satellite launch yes probably didn't probably didn't. You did? Did you get to watch the live stream?

I think I caught a bootlegged version of it, but I don't know if there was anything but a bootlegged version of it. No. Well, they released official launch videos a couple of hours after. Later, yeah. Yeah, but I was just looking around on Chinese social media, and there was someone live streaming a couple of hours before the launch. And she was like driving to the launch site. I'm like, no, this can't be happening.

Surely not. I mean, the Xizhang launch site, there's actually a company which organizes tours. And you can pay your money and you get a bus there and everything. You can go and sit and watch the launch. You can pay your money and you get a bus there and everything. And you can go and sit and watch the launch. And also, I was told by someone that there's even farmers in the hills who will actually, like, they'll sell you a ticket and take you up to, like, this wooden bench you can watch from there. Right?

So you can do this. But, yeah, I thought, no, this can't be happening. But this girl took her mobile phone all the way, you know, filmed all the way, driving up to the launch site, went into the viewing area, and streamed the whole launch. So there's a load of us on Twitter just like... That must have been the one that I was watching, because it was a very handheld camera. It was terrible, but amazing at the same time. So yeah, I mean, if we're very lucky, we get that. On the other hand, I mean,

I think the launch of Chang'e 4 lunar far side lander and rover, that should be streamed. The other lunar missions have been, and the launches from Wenchang on Hainan Island, the coastal site. So all those have been streamed so far. So the Long March 5 will be having its return to flight at the end of the year as it stands. So that should be streamed live unless they're super nervous after the failure last time. So let's see. So leading into that, my next question,

the last question that I had for you from George, he wanted to know which upcoming launch or mission are you most waiting for? I assume it's that Long March 5 launch and then the Farside Lander, but I won't speak for you if there's another mission that you've got top of mind that you're waiting for. No, absolutely. So the Long March 5 is, I mean, that's a really crucial mission for the Chinese. I mean, that's a really crucial mission for the Chinese. So, one, they have an experimental massive communication satellite on board. So, you know, the first one ended up in the drink.

So they really want this one to be up and working. And then if that works, then they can push on with the Chang'e 5 sample return, which has been delayed from 2017 already. And then they also need it to go well so that they can test fly the Long March 5B, which is the LEO variant. And that will be used to launch the Chinese space station modules. And also, the test flight should be involving the next test for the next generation crewed spacecraft so i mean that'll

be very interesting to see and of course the chang'e 4 mission but i mean they're really squeezing everything they can out of that mission so that was the backup to chang'e 3 which you know was the 2013 mission so they've had the relay satellite, and then they've had four international payloads on that. And then they had these two microsatellites, which put themselves, well, one didn't make it, but the other one put itself into lunar orbit. And then they're having some student-designed biosphere going on the far side of the moon as well. I mean, you know, they're really trying to squeeze everything they can into this. That's really cool. And that'll be especially cool because that's kind of

China's first first, I would say in space. You know, the first thing to head to the far side of the moon. I don't know if they have another thing that they could claim we were the first ones to do this particular space feat. Yeah, they're quite used to coming through. So this is the first time that they're like, well, we've got a thing

to own. So I assume that will be even more of a source of pride for everybody over there. I'm excited to watch that mission. Yeah, I mean, it's going to be really cool and hope everything goes well with that. But I think that that's probably one of the reasons that actually got approved. That's probably one of the reasons that actually got approved is that, okay, they must have, when they were having this debate of why they should use the spacecraft, I think they were saying, well, look, this is going to be a huge prestige mission if we can pull it off. That'll be fun to watch. Before I get you out of here, where should everybody go to follow you? You've been writing everywhere. I see your bylines in Planetary.org, Space News,

GP Times. Where should they go to follow all of this Chinese events over the next year or two? Well, if you want to go down the Chinese space program rabbit hole, then I would say go to Twitter and my handle is aj underscore fi that's the spot i always go i told you at the beginning that's where i go first if there's anything happening in china well there was china space flight but they've they've um they just yeah i was gonna say what i haven't seen any tweets from that they always had the best uh crazy launch video uh of the of the week over there and they

had like the the most kind of into the weeds policy stuff and it was wild i couldn't read any of it but the pictures were great well yeah exactly so i mean i mean that's a bit that's a big loss so um apart from well i'd probably be benefited from that in one way, but no, I mean, those guys really had a great insight into what was going on and gossip and rumors and solid. Well, that's what we're going to be looking for you to do now. So I look for the best gossip out of the Chinese space program from you., solid. Well, that's what we're going to be looking for you to do now. So I look for the best gossip out of the Chinese space program from you. No pressure.

Well, Andrew, thank you so much for joining me on the show. This has been fantastic. And I'm sure maybe later this year, once we get a couple of these missions off, we'll talk to you again to get an update. Well, thanks very much for having me. Thanks again to Andrew for coming on the show. And before we get out of here for the day, I need to say a very, very special thank you

to all of the supporters of Main Engine Cutoff over at patreon.com slash Miko. There are 219 of you supporting this show every single episode, and I could not be more thankful for your support. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by 37 executive producers. Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Brian, Russell, John, Moritz, Tyler, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Barbara, Stan, Mike, David, Mintz, Eunice, and eight anonymous executive producers. Thank you so much for your support this episode and for every single other one.

If you want to help support the show, patreon.com slash Miko. And don't forget, $3 or more a month gets you access to headlines, this special little RSS feed. Do a show every single Friday about all the stories of the week, small ones, big ones, everything in there, in your pod catcher. It's a great time. So patreon.com slash Miko if you want to help support the show or get headlines. Otherwise, thank you so much for listening. If you've got questions about China or follow-ups or anything, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com is where to go for that, or on Twitter at WeHaveMiko. But for now, thank you so much, and I will talk to you soon. Thank you.