Main Engine Cut Off - T+94: #dearMoon

Episode Date: September 24, 2018

Some thoughts on the #dearMoon project, SpaceX’s announcement, and the essence of SpaceX’s strategy—bringing us along for the ride. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 36 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, Mike, David, Mints, Joonas, and eight anonymous—and 186 other supporters on Patreon. #dearMoon First Private Passenger on Lunar BFR Mission - YouTube 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

Dear Moon, I want to talk about the SpaceX project that was announced. I want to talk about some of the reaction to SpaceX announcements in general and see where we end up today. I'm going to think through a lot of this on the show, so it might be a little one of those, you know, rambly thinking kind of shows, but I kind of like doing them from time to time, and it's been a while. But before I do that, I do want to remind you, this is the last week of September that we're going into here.

So at the end of this week, sometime around September 28th-ish, I'm going to try to do another one of those Q&A episodes. I did one at the end of August, kind of liked it, thinking maybe we'll try another one, and then we'll see where it goes from there. So if you have questions you want me to answer or topics you would like me to cover, something that you want to hear me cover on the show, send them to me either email anthony at mainenginecutoff.com or on Twitter at wehavemiko. And I will be answering all of your questions at the end of next week. So send them in.

Send them in if you got them. All right. So let's talk about Dear Moon. First up, I think this is a really, really cool project. If you haven't heard the news, I would recommend going and checking out some of the graphics that were released, some of the details that were released, or maybe even watch the presentation, though that would take some personal strength because I'm not the biggest fan of Elon Musk, his public speaking style or anything like that. It was kind of a rough one. But what was announced is that a Japanese entrepreneur, Yasuko Maezawa, he said that he wants to go fly in on the BFR. He wants to go to the moon. He wants to take six to eight artists with him around the moon, Apollo 13 style minus the off nominal situation there,

you know, free return trajectory around the moon. And this would happen on the SpaceX BFR in 2023. So five years is the target. Obviously, timeline, you know, insert timeline padding here, but that is the target goal right now. Apparently, Maezawa was the person that was going to fly on the Falcon Heavy Dragon 2 mission that was announced last year. We never knew who that was. We didn't know exactly what was going on with it. And then back at Falcon Heavy, Elon Musk had shared that they were thinking about flying that on BFR now. Apparently that was Maezawa as well that had bought that flight. And now it's going to be upgraded to the BFR flight and take a handful of artists around the moon. They didn't want to give away too many details on how much money he had paid, but I

think we can reasonably assume it's a couple hundred million dollars that he's paying into this mission. Elon Musk had said time and time again that this was something that would make a material difference on the funding of BFR. And I think if we draw allusions to what he would have paid for a Falcon Heavy Dragon 2 mission, a couple hundred million dollars seems right about on. So, you know, that's something that gives SpaceX some runway here and it gives them a target it gives them a customer and I think that's a really cool thing and the project here Dear Moon the project I think is particularly awesome if you go back and listen to the off nominal episode that Jake and I did after Falcon Heavy back in in February we were talking a lot about Starman on that one. And what I had said there was that leading up to the launch of Falcon Heavy, I was kind of meh

about Starman. I wasn't one of those people that was angry that SpaceX was littering in space or anything like that. I am not of that persuasion by any means, but I was just kind of like, whatever, it's cool. Like, it's a fun thing. After the launch, I was captivated with Starman but I was just kind of like, whatever. It's cool. It's a fun thing. After the launch, I was captivated with Starman. I was totally wrong about Starman up front. I thought the visuals that were produced by that were very human and approachable and accessible to most everybody in the world. Certainly, most anyone that was watching the video has probably even seen a car, had a car, owned a car, ridden in a car, right? It was a very accessible, approachable thing for anyone that was seeing that video, that visual. You know, I think sometimes space is

not the most accessible thing. You know, you're seeing, even back in the day, you were seeing fighter pilots and geologists fly to the moon and, on these gargantuan rockets and fly in things that looked very unhuman. But the visual of seeing a person sitting in a car in space with the Earth as a backdrop, I thought that was such a human vision that brought that impact of that event down to people in a way that was approachable, in a way that we haven't seen in a very, very long time, if ever. That was a very unique visual. And I think here with Dear Moon, in the same way, we get a little bit of that effect. It's an approachable idea. Everybody has always talked about, what if artists go to space? It's an approachable idea. Everybody has always talked about what if artists go to space?

And this is that project. And it's not a fancy full journey of colonizing another world, settling another world, setting up shop somewhere. This is a flight. It's a cruise. So I think there's several elements of it that are more approachable than typical. And I think it's something that is interestingly captivating to somebody who is either of the scientific ilk and that likes this mission from a scientific perspective. Or if somebody is an explorer type and they like this as an exploration kind of mission. Or if somebody is an artist and just likes, you know, rad music, rad art.

You know, maybe, oh, maybe my favorite artist would go on this flight. So I think there's something there for everybody. Maezawa, I think, was a great symbol for SpaceX. I think he's a particularly great personality. I really, really enjoyed him. I think he's just got a cool vision, you know, and he wants to fund this project. And I think there's really something to that. Interesting to me of this announcement, if you have followed the show for a little while and heard me talk about the previous two years of BFR updates, when Elon Musk took the stage at IAC in 2016 and 2017, the one thing that I was really thrown off by in both of those presentations was that I hated the end of the presentations. Because in both cases, they were different examples, but in both cases,

Elon Musk spent 50 minutes talking about, here's the launch vehicle that we're building, here's the tank we're developing, here's the engine that we're developing, here is our real thing you can hold progress on this vehicle. And each of them ended with a very fanciful vision very far in the future. The first year it was visions of this thing landing on Europa and exploring the moons of Jupiter and Saturn and even farther than that. 2017 was about that point-to-point travel, you know, the thing here on Earth where you would take off in New York and land in Tokyo minutes later. Both fantastic visions that I could definitely get behind, but both very far from the conversation that Elon was having at the beginning.

So this is a significant departure from that in a way that is very, very beneficial, because it takes the here are we now update, and it says, and we're doing a mission with it in a handful of years, rather than here's what we're building, imagine what it is in 30 years. It's here's what we're building, and here's our first mission. Here's our first customer.

Here's the first person, other than Elon and other than people within SpaceX, that are willing to put their time and resources on the line here for this project. And I think that is a very, very meaningful thing that should not be missed of this announcement. The past ones, I had been very anxious about that. I've been very annoyed at the fanciful future visions. And I feel like it distracts from what BFR is today as an active project. And this really brought it home and says, this is a thing we are doing. So I really, really like this project. I really, really like the people involved here.

And I'm very, very happy with how this went as an announcement of a thing that people can come along for the ride. I think it's something that people can get interested in that aren't necessarily interested in SpaceX all the time. And that's a good thing that that came organically from somebody outside of SpaceX. I think that gives it a little more credence and that's something that is particularly interesting. And you might ask, well, why now? Why announce this now? And I might get into this in a little bit

when I talk about reactions to SpaceX, but this is a thing to say, here's our mission, here's what we're doing. This is the kind of thing that people are thinking of out there. And it's not unlikely that this would inspire somebody else to come forward and say, either I want to buy a new flight, I want to do that mission, or I'm going to come on this one, you know, bring their checkbook in hand. I'd be damned if James Cameron isn't out there somewhere flipping through his checkbook seeing, you know, where's the next blank check in this thing that I can write right now. I would be very surprised to not see him involved,

either in this flight itself as the filmographer that they wanted to send or, you know, another flight of his own. There are people like that out there. And by making this announcement and making this statement, it not only gets interest in the project, but it attracts interest in other people that might want to be part of the project. And that's meaningful. That's something they need to do. You know, especially for a vehicle like this, a project like this, a strategy like this, they need to have attention. They need to have people knowing that this is a thing they're working on, knowing that this is a thing they can take a part in. So I think that's meaningful too. I might not like Elon Musk's style on stage, but I really did like this announcement overall.

Thinking about it all week, I really am quite happy with a lot of it. But I want to take a different tact here and talk a little bit about the reaction to SpaceX announcements and the way that everybody interacts with SpaceX. But before I do that, I want to say a huge thank you to all the supporters of Managing Cutoff over at patreon.com slash Miko. There are 222 of you supporting the show over there week in, week out, and I could not do this without your help. This episode of Managed Cutoff was produced by 36 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, Mike, David, Mintz, Eunice, and eight anonymous executive producers.

Thank you so much for your support and everybody else over at patreon.com slash Miko. Don't forget, $3 a month gets you access to that special little RSS feed. It's so easy. You drive it right in your podcast player and you've got the Miko Headlines show every single Friday, sometimes Saturday. This week it was Saturday, but that's okay.

Every single week you get a little show where I run through all the headlines of the week, small stories, big stories, give you some takes on them. It's a great way to stay up with the news. So patreon.com slash Miko if you want to be a part of that, or if you just want to help support the show, keeping it loud, live, and independent. Thank you so much for your support. All right, so I want to get a little meta here and break down the way that SpaceX announcements are treated or looked at, the relationship that we all have with SpaceX,

the more meta side of all of this. Because you might have seen a lot of talk, and I'm guilty of this as well, of going into an event like this and looking for very technical answers. There weren't a lot of them this time. There weren't a lot of technical updates. I still want to know if the Raptor on the stage in Texas is the full scale or if it's still subscale. There's a lot of technical questions that people have. There were design updates to BFR this year as well. I don't think that's particularly worth getting into right now. And here's why. SpaceX doesn't make announcements to show you their completed project. SpaceX always lets us in on the work.

They let us see their work. They bring us along for the ride. That is their style. And that is their strength. I think that is why they have been so captivating to people over the last couple of years. Why they've owned the attention the last couple of years. Because they bring us along for the work, the hard work, the good days, the bad days, every day in between, they bring us along with that. They let us watch as they figured out Falcon 1. They let us watch as they figured out Falcon 9. They let us watch as they exploded a lot of them on the surface of the ocean, on surface of drone ships. They let us see all of that progress. You know, we watched a grasshopper stage blow up over Texas.

They didn't really want us to watch that one, but we did. But through it all, they let us see the work in progress. They let us know what their current thinking is, where they are now and where they're headed. And they say, hey, you can either hop on and come along for the ride and take part of this, or ignore us until we're something that can't be ignored. And I think that's what makes them so fun. That's what makes them a company, an organization that is so fun to follow along with and to cheer along. company, an organization that is so fun to follow along with and to cheer along. It's what makes it so fun to wake up at odd hours and watch these launches and see things landing,

see stages being recovered and relaunched, design updates. All of these parts of it that have seemed mundane in the past are just intrinsically exciting because we've been let in on the work the whole way. Because we've watched every step of this. We feel like we have a part of it. You know, in a lot of ways, I think that's what the 1960s here in the United States were like. You know, I wasn't around, but people really felt, like, attached to the program because they could watch every single step. And even the first steps on the moon taken by Neil and Buzz, people around the world

felt like it was we, not us and them. We were all we. And SpaceX, by their style, brings you into that. It's what makes success so sweet with SpaceX. It's what makes failure so heartbreaking. You know, when you see Amos 6 explode on the pad, that really breaks your heart. When you see Falcon Heavy land two stages side by side, you get that same sense of joy with them. And it's all because they bring you along for the ride. They let you in on the work. And that's what these events are. I think people have the expectation that they go to these events and it's like an Apple event where they're going to show you the phone that you can pay them for the next day. But these events are always, here's where we're at now. Here's where we're going. Do

you want to come along for the ride? This is our current thinking. This is the project we have going on. Everything's in flux, but we're working on it. And this is where we're heading. This is the project we have going on. Everything's in flux, but we're working on it. And this is where we're heading. This is the momentum we have. So I think a lot of times people just go into these events with the wrong expectations. That SpaceX is going to present to us a fully developed engineering schematic, a fully developed business plan, a fully accounted for budget. None of that is the case. They're going to show us the current state and where they're headed. They're going to show us the momentum they have, what they need to do, but where they're headed. And that is very important. That is something that,

you know, a lot of times you'll just get snapshots in time of where people are. You won't know where they're headed. And that's a different interaction. But when you know where SpaceX is headed, it lets you, for one, it does let you get upset when Red Dragon gets canceled, when Falcon 5 gets canceled, when Falcon Heavy Crossfeed gets canceled. And some of those were really disappointing. You know, Red Dragon is something that I was particularly excited for. I thought that was a real, that had a real shot of absolutely changing the world. But when you go and see these events, it's important to keep this in mind because when you come out of it, it's okay if you don't know every single answer to every single technical detail because SpaceX doesn't either. They've thought of a lot more than you or I have,

but they don't know for sure the answer to all of them. They haven't gotten there yet. And they don't know where every single dollar is going to come from to fund BFR. But they're willing to say, here's what we just got a couple hundred million of them. Do you want to come along for the ride and contribute a couple yourself? It's okay if they haven't figured out every single turn in the path. But it is important to know that there is a path, that they're on the road there, that they're heading a certain direction.

It's always important to keep in mind that things may change, things will change. That's part of it. But the momentum is all that's important. Because there are certain companies out there that seem to lack all momentum and they're not exciting. We don't talk about them a lot on this show because it's not exciting. And I think a lot of times, when it really comes down to it, at some point in time,

it's going to be very important what the technical details of Raptor are. And they'll tell us about them when they get there. But there are certain updates when it's important that they show momentum, when they show the path that they're taking, when they show here's how you can get involved. And this is one of those updates. And I do think it's really promising for the future of BFR. Because hey, if somebody else comes forward and says, I want to do one of those missions, there's some more funding for them. If NASA comes along and says, we've got this lunar program and we need something like that, then they can take part in it. If NASA comes along and says, we've got this lunar program and we need something like that, then they can take part in it. If ESA or JAXA or whoever comes along and says,

I kind of would like to fund one of those missions, then hell, ESA, you know, kick in some money. So I don't think it's meaningless and I don't think it's overhyped and I don't think it's meaningless, and I don't think it's overhyped, and I don't think it's PR for PR's sake. I think that matters. And momentum really matters. And being in on the work is what makes SpaceX so fun to follow, and it's what gives them the attention that they have. They've earned that because they let us in on that work. that work. And there are other companies starting to learn that. But I partially think that's why people haven't really gotten too excited about Blue Origin yet. The nerds like you and I have gotten really excited about it. But outside, people just go, oh yeah, that's Bezos' space thing, right? And I think that's because we don't get to see the day-to-day in-progress work from them as much. I'm hoping that at some point they'll start doing that in the same way. But for now, we don't really get that. And there's just not quite the same relationship there. And I think that's a large part of it. So something to keep

in mind whenever you see a SpaceX announcement. And maybe that was too rambly of a show, but man, I've been thinking about Dear Moon a lot. And I'm really excited about it. I'm really interested to see what happens here in the future. And we'll hopefully talk about it again soon. Hopefully there will be more frequent updates rather than once a year. But for now, it's very promising, and I'm really excited to watch that go forward. And I really love Maezawa.

He's a really fun personality to follow along with. For now, that is all I've got. Don't forget again. Q&A show this week. Send me your questions, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com or on Twitter at WeHaveMiko. And until next time, thank you so much for listening. Thanks for your support over at patreon.com slash miko. And I will talk to you next week. Thank you.