Main Engine Cut Off - T+99: October Q&A

Episode Date: November 1, 2018

This month, I take on questions about small launch, future space ventures, and the Boeing/SLS saga/drama. This episode of Main Engine Cut Off is brought to you by 34 executive producers—Kris, Pat, Matt, Jorge, Brad, Ryan, Jamison, Nadim, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, Mike, David, Mints, Joonas, and eight anonymous—and 191 other supporters on Patreon. ISS schedule slips Dragon launch to May 19 - future manifest outlook - NASASpaceFlight.com Rocket Lab | Space is now open for business | Rocket Lab Virgin Orbit Firefly Aerospace Relativity Space Vega C - Arianespace Vector – A Revolution Is Upon Us, Opening Up The High Frontier To Innovators. And Vector Is Leading The Way. ABL Space Systems Rocket Lab selects Wallops Flight Facility for US launch site | Rocket Lab Episode T+87: Rocket Lab Launch Complex 2 - Main Engine Cut Off ConsenSys Acquires Planetary Resources | Planetary Resources Deep Space Industries | Deep Space Industries Moon Express Signs Memorandum Of Understanding With The Canadian Space Agency - Moon Express NASA’s plasma rocket making progress toward a 100-hour firing | Ars Technica A shadowy op-ed campaign is now smearing SpaceX in space cities | Ars Technica NASA inspector general sharply criticizes SLS core stage development - SpaceNews.com Main Engine Cut Off is creating a podcast and blog about spaceflight and exploration. | Patreon 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

Hello and happy November. That means it is question time. It's the first of the month, so that's when we do our Q&A. This is the October edition of Miko Q&A. We've got some good questions here today. So we're going to dive in first up with a one-off about ISS stuff. I feel like we talked about this a little bit, or at least mentioned it in passing, but I thought it was worth including here in the show. Question from Adam about some ISS operations. Why does the high beta period impact docking with the ISS? Should a ship be able to just dock with the ISS from any angle that's needed? So this is something that you'll hear from time to time

when talking about ISS operations and scheduling. You'll hear talk about high beta periods. What that means is that there are certain times of the year when the orbit of the ISS lines up with the direction of sunlight hitting the Earth. So it's synced very closely to the terminator of Earth, where the sun and shadow part of the Earth kind of lands. So at those times, the ISS needs to do some different things than is typical

to reject as much heat as possible, since it's getting so much additional energy from all of this sunlight hitting it. It needs to fly at a different attitude, do some different things with its radiators, etc., etc. So that has knock-on effects on the ISS operational front. Back in the shuttle days, the shuttle was unable to fly to the ISS at those times because the attitude that the ISS had to fly at was not compatible with the attitude that the shuttle needed to be at to have all of its cooling needs met. So this additional amount of heat, the additional struggles that the systems have to reject that amount of heat, that creates

operational constraints. Now, I don't know offhand why in particular, or even if, I guess, offhand why in particular, or even if, I guess, if certain vehicles in today's environment needs to not be present during those high beta periods, or at least not be docking at those times if there's specific operational things that are different from shuttle to these vehicles, I should say. They still denote this beta period on the ISS scheduling graphic. If you've ever seen one of those graphics, that is kind of like a Gantt chart, but with all the ports defined and what vehicles are going to be there when, there will be a line that shows the beta periods as kind of blacked out dates for any arriving or departing spacecraft. So if anyone out there has some more info in the depths of today's vehicles and what

the exact constraints are there, I'd be very curious to hear that. So if you've got anything on that, email anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com and we will follow up on this thread. But that is what that means when you hear the high beta period language being used. All right, we've got some questions about launch vehicles here. A couple of small launch follow-ups. He talked a lot last month about small launch, and we've got some other ones here. From Lars, what does the less than 1,000 kilogram to orbit launch market look like in five years? So to me, markets seem to settle into having two to three big players with some smaller, more niche-y players on the side. That's kind of where, not just Launch, but others as well, that's kind of where markets tend to settle in today's environment. So thinking that way for

SmallSat, SmallLaunch, the big players right now, the front runners are really Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit. Those are both very well-funded. They're well on their way to commercial operation. They have sizable backlogs. They have a lot of hardware in flow right now. So those are definitely the front runners to get up and running and really, at least for the initial phase of this industry, be the main players that are in that market. So following that, the next most likely options in my mind, just given what I'm seeing. Firefly would jump to mind because this is the reborn Firefly. There was an old Firefly. They had some weird troubles. Firefly has been reborn. They have a new rocket design. They have two new launch vehicle designs.

And their payload offerings seem really good. The size that they're offering to orbit. They have a launch site locked down out at Vandenberg. They're going to be using the old Delta 2 launch site. So that's kind of important that they're already planning for a launch site like that. And they seem to have a good product in mind. So I have a little bit of hope in that. The other one that jumps to mind is Relativity. Now, I had another question here from Owen about relativity as well, what I thought about them.

So here's my little take. Maybe they have a little bit too novel of a mission to 3D print entire launch vehicle and engines all in one go. Might be a little too novel, but they do have incredibly smart founders and people working there. They seem to have amazing connections in the policy world, at least here in the US. Tim Ellis, the CEO, I think he's founder and CEO, he's appeared in front of Congress. He's been in National Space Council meetings. So there's some really good connections there that are meaningful when trying to find a spot in this market. And they have a very, very sizable footprint down at Stennis Space Center. I think they've got something like 40,000 square feet of space or something like that. So they have a serious amount of momentum.

They have this piece of hardware built that is their 3D printer that they're going to construct the launch vehicle with. They've kind of built, I think, an initial pathfinder, the second stage. They've done engine firings. So they are making good progress. And I think the connections there should not be overlooked as an important component to be able to fit into this market overall. So those two, Firefly and Relativity, are jumping to mind as like, who could enter that other big player realm with Rocket Lab and Virgin Orbit?

And then there are those small, more niche-y operators. You know, Vega, the launcher that the European Space Agency, Arianespace, is developing. That's kind of a small sat launcher. Vega will be around because that does have institutional backing from Europe. And as much as you might want to complain that there's an option that's funded by governments, that's still a thing that's going to exist because Europe sees a need, much like the US, much like China, much like India in certain ways. There is this thing that you want to, as a political entity that wants to maintain a launch vehicle, you want to have your own assured access to space. a launch vehicle, you want to have your own assured access to space. So Vega seems like one that will be around. And there are certain common components between Vega and Ariane 6.

So there's a certain amount of synergy there for any of you types that like to use the word synergy. So Vega will be around. That will be a force in the market in some capacity. And then there's all these Chinese small sat launchers that are around right now. Right now, there's these solid boosters, the repurposed missiles, essentially. But there's a lot of these commercial companies that are starting out with repurposed missiles and are trying to move into other realms of launch. So those will definitely be around. India is still around right now. PSLV is one of the more frequent small sat launchers. They tend to do these big shared launches. They had one last year, it was 104

small sats or something like that. So those more nationalized alternatives will be there, probably fitting the more niche-y section of what Model Eye outlined. There's some other commercial companies that are in play, you know, Vector. Vector right now seems a little too small to me. Their targeted payload right off the bat is like 50 kilograms. I think the Vector H is like 150. That seems a little small to me, starting at 50.

But, you know, I wouldn't be completely surprised that they would make it to full operations and all that. Haven't been thrilled yet with their approach. They've been very PR blustery, not a lot of activity that we can latch onto and talk about, but that's more of a personality thing probably. Then there's some other players that are still mysterious. There's this ABL or Able Launch Systems, Space Systems, I think it is. They're one of the companies that are going to buy from Ursa Major, who we talked about in the last Q&A episode. Something like that

could come to fruition, but right now I see it as Rocket Lab, Virgin Orbit, and if I had my pick, probably Firefly with a close second of Relativity as being the main anchor players alongside the nationalized options. And then

there's probably a wild card that I'm missing somewhere out there. Next up, a question from Adam. What missions do you think Rocket Lab will be able to launch out of wallops? In your July podcast, you mentioned that they could use some dogleg maneuvers with a performance hit to get to sun synchronous orbit. But in their announcement, they only mentioned the previously stated launch inclinations of 38 to 60 degrees. Seems to me that they're retreading the same ground that Antares did. They have a launch site that can't access higher inclination orbits, is not effective at reaching low inclination orbits because of the high latitude, and there aren't a lot of missions that even want the inclinations it can fly easily. The only plus

for Electron is that it's more reasonably priced. Do you think they'll find 12 missions a year to justify a whole new launch site? Are they thinking the military will have a bunch of new smallsats in the mid-latitudes to replace slash backup their current constellations? All right, there's a lot in there, but let's break this down. So the idea with Rocket Lab having a US launch site, it was always mentioned as a 12 launches a year kind of thing, which means that it's not something they're going to fly on a regular basis. It would be a special service. That special service as it exists would be missions for the U.S. Department of Defense that have to fly out of the U.S. and that can't go overseas to launch. So I think they say up to 12 missions a year, and maybe they do get close to that with

some higher inclination constellations and the push to small sats. Maybe they could get close to that on DoD alone. The one part that I would quibble with your question about, that they're going to build a whole new launch site, the choice of wallops means that they are leveraging a lot of stuff that already exists for them. So there's this whole payload processing facility that we talked about back in that July show that is at Wallops now. They don't have to build a custom one of those. And the pad itself is actually going to be within the pad perimeter of the Antares pad. They're going to be using the same propellant stores that Antares uses right now. They're going to be using the same propellant stores that Antares uses right now.

They're going to be running new piping from those current stores to the Rocket Lab pad, but there's a lot of infrastructure that they don't even have to build to get this thing up and running. So they specifically chose a place that isn't an entirely new ground-up build like they did out in New Zealand. They're leveraging a large amount of infrastructure at Wallops, and I think that might make it worth it. If this is a fairly low-intensity way of getting a US launch site up and running, then I think it's a good move for them. If they can get some missions over the next couple of years out of that launch site, that's a good move for them. Now, I will hedge this bet and make another prediction. I've been on a roll recently with the Rocket Lab stuff, with some EELV stuff. I've been on a little

bit of a roll, so let's see if I get this one as well, though this one's probably a little farther out than those two were. I think that we are not done yet with the Rocket Lab US-based launch site. I would not at all be surprised if they are looking at another site that could do sun-synchronous orbit, low inclination orbit, even some retrograde orbits, which I guess might be a little redundant in the sun-synchronous case. I think they might be looking at another site that can hit those orbits and also meet the US requirement. Think somewhere out in the Pacific that isn't Alaska, that isn't Vandenberg. I wouldn't bet against them opening up something else that is technically within US

territory, but can hit SSO and low inclination orbits. And then that thing would be a whole new launch site. But if they get enough DoD business, they could justify building a new launch site. But this is at least the low-hanging fruit way, this being Wallops, the low-hanging fruit way of building a US launch site, getting it up and running, seeing what kind of business is there for them on the Department of Defense front before they make a much more sizable investment by building an entirely new launch site from the ground up. One more launch question from Alex. What prevents companies like SpaceX from increasing the fairing size of Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy? You mentioned in the past payload

limitations because of this. Could they theoretically design larger fairings and test them with a demo flight? Would this affect flight characteristics too much? So the line that I think many of us have heard on this at this point that has never really been verified, I don't think, by an official source of any means. But essentially, the Falcon 9 is already an incredibly long and skinny launch vehicle. Its ratio of width to height is very extreme. It is a very long and skinny launch vehicle. So they can't make, apparently, this is what I've heard, it's been a while now, it's been a couple years probably since this was floated, and I don't know if this is really the case, but it sure seems it. Apparently,

they can't make the fairing much longer than it is now without causing new bending modes on that launch vehicle that would cause its structural issues to become a big issue. on that launch vehicle that would cause its structural issues to become a big issue. Same with Falcon Heavy as well. It's another very long launch vehicle. So it would be a significant, if not impossible, it would be a very significant piece of work for them to implement a larger fairing. And at that point, knowing that it's going to take a certain amount of investment of time and money, that it would take a lot of money and it wouldn't fly for another couple of years because it would be a significant diversion for what they're doing now. At a certain point, you have to start wondering, is this worth it? Are there enough payloads that we can't fly that would be make or break missions for us? for us? Or are we okay letting that smaller percentage of the market shift off to somebody else while we put our effort into our future, which is BFR, BFS? So that's kind of the calculus at play there. For now, for the next five, six, seven years, you name your date when you think

BFR will fly. For those next years, SpaceX is okay letting those larger by volume payloads going to Atlas 5, Delta 4 Heavy, New Glenn in certain instances. They're okay with those bigger payloads going that way because there are so few of them. And the return on investment there for SpaceX is just not there for them with this current launch vehicle. for them with this current launch vehicle. So whether or not they could do longer fairings, whether that's just a longer fairing in the current configuration or doing some sort of encapsulated upper stage fairing combination like the Atlas 5 5 meter fairing does where it actually contains Centaur within the fairing structure. Whether that's possible, I don't know. But from what we can see from SpaceX, the return on investment is probably not there. And that's kind of what the vertical integration situation looks like for SpaceX as

well, even though they did get money from the Department of Defense to do that, and they still have made zero progress on the vertical integration front. It's kind of that same calculus that you have to do. Is the investment in this worth the return based on the payloads that we could fly if we did this? And the fairing front doesn't seem like something that's compelling to SpaceX to implement, regardless of whether it is possible or not. We've got a bunch of more questions to get through, but before we get into the rest of them, I want to say a very special thank you to all of you who support Main Engine Cutoff over at patreon.com slash Miko. This is a 100% listener-funded, listener-supported show. The only reason I can do this in this way every single week is because of you out there. And there are 225 of you supporting this show every single

week, and I could not be more thankful for your support. This episode of Main Engine Cutoff was produced by 34 executive producers. Chris, Pat, Matt, George, Brad, Ryan, Jameson, Nadeem, Peter, Donald, Lee, Jasper, Chris, Warren, Bob, Russell, John, Moritz, Joel, Jan, David, Grant, 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 to check out Headlines. You get a special show every single Friday running through the headlines of the week for $3 a month. You get a special RSS feed. You drop it wherever you're listening right now, and you get it right in your feed like any old podcast, but it's an

extra special one just for you. It's a great way to stay up to date on space news. Highly recommend checking it out. All right, we got a bunch of interesting questions about what I would call future ventures in space. First up, we got a question from John, or at least a couple of questions from John. What happened to Planetary Resources? They auctioned off their stuff and lots of employees moved on. I heard they missed a funding round, but they haven't owned up publicly to what happened. What's your outlook on Planetary Resources, deep space industries, Luxembourg's space investments, asteroid mining in general? Rick Tomlinson left DSI, deep space industries, and they're building buses for smallsats. How does that make sense? All right, so asteroid mining,

smallsat companies, what's the deal? Well, I was thinking through my question or my answer to this question when this piece of news rolled across my Twitter feed that this blockchain. Let me just read you the start of this press release and don't mind the dripping sarcasm that's coming off of my words here. Blockchain venture production studio ConsenSys has acquired the pioneering space company Planetary Resources Inc. through an asset purchase transaction. Planetary Resources President and CEO Chris Lewicki and General Counsel Brian Israel have joined ConsenSys in connection with the acquisition. Let me read you one more statement from this press release. Ethereum co-founder and ConsenSys founder Joe Lubin said, yada, yada, yada. Bringing deep space capabilities into the ConsenSys ecosystem reflects our belief in the potential for Ethereum to help humanity craft new societal rule systems through automated trust and guaranteed execution.

And it reflects our... I am done reading this press release. I have no idea what the hell this is about other than some weird asset. I don't know. Maybe they wanted the office. They thought the office looked cool. I don't know what the hell's going on here, but that is it for planetary resources.

Farewell. We barely knew ye. That's it for planetary resources. Let's get into the rest of the question. What's the outlook on planetary resources, deep space industries? What's the deal with deep space industries building buses for small sats?

How does this make sense? All right. So my general take here is that i think asteroid mining is an interesting future industry but it seems like it is a little too soon to focus on just asteroid mining to make that the sole focus of your company i think is a little too early it's good as a long term focus because you can see that in the long, long term, there's probably an industry there somewhere. But as right now is, focusing on just that seems foolish to me. It's a bit like jumping off the Mayflower and saying, hey, I heard there was gold out all the way west from here and setting out for that immediately. You could probably do it if you were really good and really incredibly amazing and fit and in shape and you had medicine and you had tools, all this stuff. It's a bit of a stretch. There's a lot of technology and transportation that has to happen between where we are now and where we're going.

of a fan of the Deep Space Industries strategy, which is to build commercially viable products that can be the foundation of your future asteroid mining ventures. So Deep Space Industries, DSI, right now is building a small sat bus for deep space purposes and a water-based propulsion system to match. So they're kind of building, those are the two products right now that they have in mind. They're building these two products as something that they think could be viable in the near term that lets them lay a good foundation for the long term, which is the asteroid mining idea. So I'm much more drawn to this idea of working there incrementally, building what you're going to need in the future as a basis for your business now, gives you a lot of experience building space hardware, operating space hardware, gives you relevant experience that you're going to need in the future.

And it gets you there incrementally, rather than just taking a bunch of funding and theoretically planning about asteroid mining when you really don't have any ability to do much about it yet. planning about asteroid mining when you really don't have any ability to do much about it yet. On a similar vein, we got a question from Jordan here. What are your thoughts on VASIMIR? What future do you think it has compared to traditional Hall effect thrusters? So VASIMIR stands for the Variable Specific Impulse Magnetospheric Thruster. I just did that off memory. How close did I get? Let's see. Variable specific impulse magnetoplasma rocket. It was close enough. So this is a new form of electric propulsion that is under development. They have some NASA

contracts. I forget what program it's under for NASA. Let's see. Yeah, so in March 2015, among other things, they got $10 million from NASA to advance the technology readiness level of the next version of the VASIMIR engine, the VX200SS. Let's see, in August 2016, Adasher announced completion of the milestones for the first year of its three-year contract, and they're going to try to do a 100-hour, 100-kilowatt firing by mid-2018.

They were working towards that. I don't know if we heard the initial or the end of the outcome of that yet. But anyway, the idea here is this is a super futuristic, really good thing that can do amazing future space transportation things. thing that can do amazing future space transportation things. This is a similarly... I feel similarly about VASIMIR as I do with the asteroid mining. Good for the long term, interesting project, very unique, maybe someday very important. But I think there are about a thousand problems closer to us to solve that are more impactful to space development right now, given the point in time that we're at. I don't think VASIMIR unlocks anything that we can't do now in other ways. I think it might make future travel better or more easy or faster or whatever it is, but we shouldn't wait for that technology to do

things now in space, especially something like a mission to Mars. I think when it does come about, if and when it gets completed, if and when it comes about, just like asteroid mining, use it, incorporate it into your architectures then. But I don't think you need to hold up everything to wait for that development to be done. So good to keep an eye on, but I don't think it needs to be the linchpin in any plans that we have, any architectures we have in space, I think it's okay to let it be a more future-looking technology development thing right now. But right now, I think with Hall effect thrusters and with chemical propulsion, I think we have a lot of other work to do before VASIMIR is going to instantly unlock anything incredible. And sub in asteroid mining

as well for that same point. One more future venture question from Jeff in Hong Kong. If the general mood now towards Moon Express is of skepticism, what should we make of the space agency's views of them? I gather the recent announcement of the Canadian Space Agency is just a memorandum of understanding to explore opportunities with no financial commitments. If so, is this kind of MOU pretty common or should it carry more weight as a vote of confidence? On the NASA side, Lunar Catalyst was extended last year and Space Launch Complex 17 was demolished this summer, ostensibly to make way for Moon Express. How significant are these votes of confidence? I'm just trying to understand whether the space agency's view of Moon Express

is more optimistic than the general feeling now among space enthusiasts, and if so, why that would be. Moon Express is a really interesting case because in some ways they did blaze some interesting trails on the regulatory front, or at least from the outside looking in, that's what it seemed like. You know, they did do, or did say that they did, and we got some paperwork to prove it, that they did do some leg work on the regulatory front to be able to fly to the moon as a private company. They were kind of one of the first companies pushing for the licensing that we needed to do under the Outer

Space Treaty to license a private company to fly to the moon and land on the moon. So there was that bit. And I think that did lend them some early credibility among NASA, among the Canadian Space Agency, journalists, among a lot of people. I think that did give them some early credibility because it's like, hey, they wouldn't be doing the boring policy parts if they didn't have something here to back it up. Since then, we've seen no real hardware. We have not seen anything real that they've showed off. We haven't seen any plans for what they will build at Space Launch Complex 17. You know, that is more of a marketing effort from Space Florida, who is helping them develop

that site. But we haven't seen any plans for what they want to develop there. So that's kind of curious. I'm going to remain heavily, heavily skeptical until I see some real hardware that is getting ready to go or even some construction down at Slick 17 there. The fact that they ever said that they were going to hit a Google Lunar XPRIZE date and are now years out from flying is meaningful. It means they were, quite frankly, spinning some hot garbage BS of PR there. quite frankly, spin in some hot garbage BS of PR there. And I'll say that sometimes the PR arms of space agencies or government agencies, whatever it may be, they can get swept up just like anyone else. So if they're seeing things without having the real technical eye to know that that's just a

mock-up and not flight hardware. I think it's easy to get excited about. It's easy to grab some headlines like that. I don't want to be too cynical about it, but it doesn't seem like there's a lot behind the scenes there going on that we haven't seen yet. And I think, to harp on it again, the fact that they were saying last year, oh yeah, we're going to definitely fly to the moon by the end of the year. We're going to definitely fly by March 31st. And they're now like two years out. Their new date is like two years from now. That is really, really a bad look overall. And I think they're depending on people's short memory in the age of the internet to let this story kind of fall by the wayside.

But if you're a really big space fan, I don't think you can let it. And I don't think you should let it. I think that's important. For me, the creditability checks are bouncing out of the Moon Express account. And it's going to take a lot to get me back trusting that when I deposit one check that it's going to clear successfully. All right, we got a handful of Boeing and SLS questions to dive into. First up from John. He sent me a link to the Ars Technica piece from a couple of weeks ago about the shadowy op-ed campaign smearing SpaceX. This is some interesting reporting from Eric Berger about these op-eds that have been going up all over the country. John asks, is there something significant to this? Is this unexpected

or significant? I wonder that if a company like Boeing was seen to be engaging in this practice, the conspiracy theorists will question what they're capable of and equate this practice to sabotage. I don't think there's anything, I mean, this is a very weird story, don't get me wrong, but I'm not concerned about this at all. I think there's levels to this, and I don't want to just let all of my cynicism come out in this episode, but I guess there's levels to this, and I don't want to just let all of my cynicism come out in this episode, but I guess the questions are leading me that way. I expect this in today's environment. And if I were SpaceX, I would start getting concerned when this kind of stuff stopped, because that would be concerning to the point at which

knowing that a company like Boeing is not worried about you anymore, that's a little concerning. which knowing that a company like Boeing is not worried about you anymore, that's a little concerning. Until then, I expect this sort of activity. From the publisher side that is receiving these op-eds, it's shadowy how they got from the writer of the op-ed to these organizations, but from the publishing side,

they see SpaceX, Elon Musk's criticism being dangerous, fast, and loose. They read that as, holy crap, people are gonna read this story like hot pancakes. I don't know why that was a weird metaphor, but whatever. This story is going to be read a lot. It's going to get a lot of clicks, going to get a lot of views. It's going to lead to advertising, yada, yada, the reason that I Patreon fund this show. So from the publishing side, they're going to accept this op-ed because they know that it's going to do good things for the paper. From the Boeing side, you know, hey man, this is sometimes behind the scenes, how the sausage is made is pretty dirty. I think we have a lot more access to knowing that this

kind of stuff goes on now in today's world, given the media environment that we're in. But I'm under no, you know, I'm under no pretense that this kind of stuff is only just starting now. I think this has been the way that this kind of stuff works forever. And I think people have always been doing this. Companies have always been doing this kind of thing. You just would never find out in the old days because there wasn't really any capacity to find out. A guy from Philadelphia was not going to read an op-ed that was showing up in the San Antonio Times or whatever. You just didn't have that kind of access. But now you do. You can do a Google search with a sentence, find all the common places that that sentence has been put, start stringing a couple

things together, follow the money, and you find out about these kind of things. But I don't think this is new. I don't think it's concerning. It's weird. It's a weird story, and it doesn't look good for Boeing. But I'm not surprised, and I don't think that it really matters in the long run, because especially with this story, the op-eds tended to be about the load and go situation, you know, SpaceX loading on astronauts, fueling the rocket and launching then, which is atypical of the history of NASA. That's what the op-eds are about, how this is unsafe and things like that. But the op-eds have never seemed to really move the argument within NASA, or even within the NASA Advisory, the Safety Advisory Council. Those seem to be completely unaffected from the contents of these op-eds. And NASA has already approved load and go,

we're fine, everything's moving forward. So it didn't seem to have a lot of effect overall. So I don't think it's really worth getting worried up, you know, worked up and worried about. But it is a weird, interesting story nonetheless. We got a similar question from Mark. We actually got three of the next questions from Mark. Boeing is developing a bad reputation lately with the recent newspaper op-ed scandal, as well as the cost overruns and delays with SLS and Starliner. Government reports have been very critical of them as well. NASA, the Air Force Congress, and the president, however, all continue to bend over backwards to give them whatever they want, no matter the cost.

They have done many great things for the space program over the years, but I wonder if they still have America's best interests in mind. She would be concerned as the money and politics derailed this once great company. Well, my cynicism is going to have to continue here. You know, Boeing has been a giant company for a while now. They are a huge company that has consumed several other huge companies. They are involved in massive, massive deals just about everywhere, commercial, planes, and otherwise. They've been a giant company for a long, long time. And when you get to a certain size like Boeing and you start getting involved in government programs and deals at a certain point that involve government to approve deals

and things like that, you start becoming a different company. They are not operating out of the red barn anymore. They are not just building these one-off airplanes. They are a giant, giant corporation. And this is kind of the game that you play when you get to a certain size. And they're tied up quite tightly with, not to get too political, as we want to do, but there's this issue with the Export-Import Bank of the US not currently having enough members to approve large deals. Well, I remember the 2008 presidential campaign, there was quite a lot of talk about the Export-Import Bank and how it has become

corporate welfare, specifically around Boeing, because at the time, 65% or something of deals went to other companies purchasing Boeing aircraft. So the nature of Boeing has changed so much over the years that I do think that this is kind of, you know, the way that it is when you get to a certain size. That is the nature of companies that get to that certain size. That is, you know, they do things like these shadowy op-ed campaigns. They are tied in with government. They are tied in with government institutions. So there's, it's, I know it's weird and it feels weird, but I don't, that this is a new thing, as I said with the last answer. I don't think this is a new thing that Boeing is operating this way.

And I think that's general worries that you might have about these large companies or large government programs. But I don't think it's something that's unique to Boeing, is my reasoning there. Second question from Mark. I was concerned by the lack of coverage the news media gave to the recent Soyuz mishap. Space fans who follow on Twitter found out about it, but as I scanned the broadcast and cable news networks, wasn't finding any mention of it whatsoever.

To me, this was a huge story. There are public surveys published from time to time that point out the public's lack of interest in space activities. Do you find that the news media and the public in general has little to no interest in space? I want to believe that this is not the case, but I'm believing that it is more and more. Well, I don't necessarily think that they have little to no interest in space based on the amount of space movies and TV shows that come out every single year.

That is, you know, even at that level of pop culture, that is a certain interest that I think is important because it shows that space can captivate public attention. that I think is important because it shows that space can captivate public attention. The Falcon Heavy launch earlier this year was a moment that I feel like there were certain people saying, this was the moment that the world came together in 2018. For 10 minutes, we could forget all the other nonsense that's happening and focus on something good and positive. So there's that side of it. But I don't... Well, I've got two things here. I don't know how much I would base what is showing up on cable news as the barometer for what is important. Um, because there are giant stories in a lot of niches that are huge stories that don't

get talked about a lot because they're weird and niche and important to the people that are, that care about that given thing, but aren't, you know, something that the cable news networks are going to put up there to attract attention. Something that's going on recently in the tech world is this Bloomberg story about this microprocessor that was put on motherboards that's turning out to be a big hoopla of what looks like a false story. Apple and Amazon are fighting back against it. Bloomberg is kind of just standing around waiting for people to forget about it. That is a massive story in the tech industry, and I think it might have got a couple of nights of coverage on the nightly news. So I don't think it's a good barometer to use that as what people care about. And for space,

certainly, I think I've said this before, but I don't think public support is that important. If our space development, if our future of space is dependent on public support, that's not a great spot to be. I don't think it's productive. I don't think it's really useful. I don't really think it matters. And I don't think it should matter. You know, there's a lot of data to say that public support wasn't there in the Apollo days. Public support wasn't there at the beginning of the ISS days. You know, the ISS as a program barely passed in the US here. So I think we tend to look back at other times and say, wow, the support was great for that. And why isn't it like that anymore? But I don't think we should tie ourselves to what gets

public support and what doesn't, because there's just certain things that shouldn't need that. So I'm not going to stay up late thinking about the fact that it's not well-supported or covered on cable news, because I don't think that really is what is impactful to the future development of space. Third question from Mark in his trifecta here. If either the House or the Senate were to flip parties due to the upcoming election, do you foresee the possibility that SLS or the Gateway could get canceled or heavily altered? I don't really think so. I think congressionally, things have been pretty synced up lately, party to party. I think the interests that drive the space policy side of the US government

are not as contentious along party lines and more contentious along state lines. Obviously, there are certain interesting people that are up for re-election that have important appointments to different committees and things like that that draw up the budget. So there may be some budgetary differences, there may be some priority differences, but I don't think that this election really has anything to do with the fortune of SLS and Gateway. It seems like that is on pretty firm footing. Politically, it doesn't seem like there's a lot of firepower to take it down right now. They certainly have plenty of ammo if they wanted to do that. Think about the Boeing stuff that we

just talked about, that crazy Inspector General report about NASA and Boeing and how they're managing the core stage of SLS. Plenty of firepower there if they want to take this down, but I don't see any political motivation that anyone wants to. So I don't think the midterms change that, whatever happens next week or whenever we're coming up on it. Yeah, next week. I don't think so. I think congressionally, things are pretty stable and we'll see what happens in the future. All right. Last question of the day from Zane, a spicy one. What do you think would happen if on EM1, the SLS went to leave the pad and just blew up? Do you think that would be the end of SLS

or would they finish the stages currently in production, try to launch those and shut it down? I'm guessing it would depend on the severity of the failure and what the cause was. In any case, I think it would be a major blow to the program, but I am curious what you think. I told you it was a spicy one. Very similar to my last answer in that that would certainly be

a major incident. That would certainly be something that there would be several congressional sessions about. And at that point in time, whenever that flight may be, it would be up to the political world to either fend that off or take advantage of it and shut SLS down, you know, they would have, again, they would have plenty of ammo to do either of those. So it would really depend on what the priorities are in that time in the country, in Congress, in elections. It would depend a lot on all those different situations. It would be an event big enough to cause a major upheaval. I mean, you know, the shuttle cancellation was kicked off in a certain way by the Columbia failure. So there's definitely, you know, the ability to take these events and turn them into something

that you can turn into a program shift like that. Whether or not that would happen, again, I think it would depend on what year that happened, what other launch vehicles are flying, happen. Again, I think it would depend on what year that happened, what other launch vehicles are flying, how much momentum other programs have, other initiatives have. If there's an alternative that is just as politically viable as SLS was, if there's a sea change in the political viability of SLS Orion versus other alternatives, I think there could be a change. Given where we're at right now, if this were to fly in 2022, 2023, I don't really think that that would be the moment that SLS changes, but that would be a pretty crazy scenario. So I guess at that point, all bets are off, but it would be up to the political winds of the moment, just like this OIG report is, just like any given SLS scandal is. It is up to how people

use that in politics as to what the decision is. With that, that is our last question for this month. As always, you got another one of these coming up at the end of November. So send in your questions if you've got them, anthonyatmanagingcutoff.com or on Twitter at wehavemiko. Send your questions in and I will start compiling them for the November episode. They were pretty wide ranging this month, but I enjoyed talking about it as always. Thank you very much for listening. Thank you to all of you supporting over at patreon.com slash Miko and I will talk to you next week. Thank you.