Off-Nominal - 100 - Astronaut Astronaut

Episode Date: March 24, 2023

Jake and Anthony are joined by Christian Davenport of The Washington Post to catch up on all the space news, and to celebrate 100 episodes of Off-Nominal.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 100 - Astronaut Astronaut (with Christian Davenport) - YouTubeEpisode 09 - Randomly Throwing Money Out Into the Cosmos - Off-NominalEpisode 12 - Gary from Lockheed - Off-NominalRep. George Santos on Twitter: “My review of the new lunar space suit. ⁦@NASA⁩ you get a thumbs up! 🚀”NASA unveils a new spacesuit astronauts will wear on the moon - The Washington PostAxiom Space reveals design of Artemis spacesuit - SpaceNewsBlue Origin continues investigation into New Shepard anomaly - SpaceNewsRelativity Space launches first 3D-printed rocket - The Washington PostRelativity launches first Terran 1 - SpaceNewsVirgin Orbit begins “incremental” return to work as it seeks new funding - SpaceNewsFollow ChristianChristian Davenport - The Washington PostChristian Davenport (@wapodavenport) / TwitterThe Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos: Davenport, Christian: Amazon.com: BooksFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine start. Hello everyone. Welcome. Episode 100, Anthony. We're here. 100. We made it. That's some kind of milestone.

Yeah. We'll talk about it. It's really like a weird one because it's a monthly to weekly transition is like there's no, no, I can't really draw any parallels. Look at how many years we've been doing it. We don't really follow a lot of rules on this show. And so counting the episodes is already that chaotic. So that's basically.

This one went from weekly or monthly to weekly. My other show started at zero. So, yeah, I'm doing great at the whole numbers thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We should not get jobs in math, I guess, is the real thing there. But we have a great guest for episode 100. So Christian Davenport from The Washington Post. Thanks for coming back.

I missed the last, how many times have you been on? This is my first time actually hosting the show with you, even though you've been on here. Because I was always away, so I'm jazzed to hang out with you. Yeah, no, I'm so psyched to be back. The last time I did it, it was with, Lauren Grush. So that was super cool, then of the verge and now of Bloomberg. So I'm happy to be back here all by myself. Lauren is a well-known, less good alternative to me. So I can understand how much fun that would be. I was going to say, legitimate fan favorite. Yeah, no, she's great. But I have to say, congrats. A hundred episodes. That's incredible. So I'm honored to be here.

Oh, yeah. Well, it's great. We're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're, we're pretty surprised about it too. I would maybe say it's funny. I try and remember back to like some of the like original conversations that we had about this. Like we should we because we had our own podcast and you know it was like we should do this show and it's like well what are we going to do what are we going to do together? It's like I don't know. We'll just like make jokes and drink beer and that's be the show and that's basically as much planning as we put into it. And so I'm pretty I'm pretty jazz that it did anything more than that. well yeah should we talk about where we're drinking here yeah absolutely that's a key bit what

you got uh i'm i hadn't made my gin and tonic yet but i'm in the process of that right now so okay okay you make it and i forgot to uh forgot to actually make it before we started so this the second week in a row i'll be having drink noises happening in the background while other people talk that's good i got i got a whole thing a tank right here good good chrisdy have anything with you there today I do. And so, you know, last time, I think I went the non-alcoholic route. And that's where I was headed today. I mean, you know, it's afternoon. It's a little early. But I was like, wait, no, it's the 100th episode. Right. Like, I got to show up. So, so I will say I was pretty close to actually going down and like digging out a bottle of champagne, you know, from like some New Year's party. But then, you know, then I was like, my wife's going to come home and she's going to. going to see like this bottle of champagne open on the counter and be like what's going on here and the kid so so i just poured myself a cocktail teetos and tonic nice cheers we're kind of on a similar vibe yeah yeah yeah is it tough okay my favorite part about your champagne story is that

you then have to explain us to your family you're like well there's these two guys that do the show of the internet so i like to picture you know it's faster if you just watch the show Let me just put it on for you. I got a fun one today. I got, so this came in the mail this week, which I'm very excited about it. So this is a new liquor I got. It's Poblano chili liqueur. Wow.

I don't know if you said. Lycord de Chile Poblano from Puebla. So it's like a spicy pepper liqueur kind of thing, and it's like super good. So I made a weird little cocktail. It came with recipes on the back. So this is. the liqueur with a little bit of lemon juice or lime juice, sorry, and then topped it up with like grapefruit soda, you know,

with like fresco basically. Did you use those weird limes though? No, these are real limes, no. What are the other things called? The bitter oranges, yeah, sour oranges. Yeah. Well, cheers. Cheers, y'all.

Ficey. Cocktail. 100% cocktail, I don't know if we've ever had 100% cocktail. Have we? I don't know. I don't think so. Classy episode. Well, where are we starting? It is classy. That's, well, I mean, I kind of want to interrupt, though.

I want to ask you guys about, yeah, I want to ask you guys about how this all started. And we can talk about the space stuff, but I do want to take a minute and ask you some questions about how this started to come about. And some of your memories, you know, you're sort of highlights for the show, some of your favorite guests. how did this come about? A surprise feature in the Washington Post. This is great, Jake.

This is exactly the big break we're looking for. I honestly don't remember anymore. I know exactly how it happened. Oh, do you? Okay, then you tell the story. Yeah, we used to do. This is like a couple of one house is on our anniversary. No, because I don't even know if you remember that this was related.

But back in the day, 20, what did we start to show? 2017? Something like that? 17, yeah. Yeah. So back, like, first year of us

doing our other shows, uh, we would randomly on like Saturdays Skype with all the other space podcasters to just like talk shop. So it was like, Brendan Byrne, interplanetary, forget,

was the Orbone Mechanics there? They were there for a minute or two. We didn't do this many of them. I think we did. We just like, no. Would get on and talk about like dumb shit, like microphones and what do we,

software do we use? Like talking shop, right? And, uh, And we had just, Jake and I had been talking outside of that too. And so that became like a monthly thing we were talking to each other. And at some point we were like, hey, we like talking to each other on a monthly basis. Why don't we make it content instead of not content?

Like it has been. And then that was purely like, we knew we liked craft beers. And it was like, what if, again, see also last week's episode when I was like, what if it was dignation for space? Plus, we like hanging out monthly. And that's exactly. Then we were like, yeah, let's try it. It was late in the year. We were like, let's see what happens.

And here we are. Okay. I am remembering that now. Yeah. Yeah. I remember sending you like messages. Guests. Oh, I mean, there's been some some singers, I think.

I don't know. I always like the ones that. So everyone's while we get guests that just get it. Like, you know, you, because, We send pitches out and sometimes people are like, what? You know, because it's like, okay, so we're like two guys and we're like on YouTube. And so we kind of like space and we don't really have any credentials, but we drink a lot of beer and then we hang out. And do you want to come hang out with us?

And some people are just like really thrown off by that. And some people are immediately like, this is where I'm supposed to be. And they're just like they're ready to like be a part of it. So those are always the most fun guests. I'm trying to think of like who's like a really good example of that. Jason Davis. Jason Davis was one of the earliest guests that we had. One of the earliest guys who got it, yes.

I think maybe even his first appearance is where J.B. was coined for Jim. We were trying to make Jim Brinestein hip with the Youngs, and that's where J.B. came from. I think it might have been his first show that he was on. Might have been, yeah, yeah. The first show Lauren was on was the only off-nominal show I have zero memory of because we got so drunk with her on the show. Yes, we did get drunk about that one. And then we kept drinking after the show, and I don't remember the Lauren show at all. And that was a fantastic episode.

I'm sure it was great. Yeah, that was a, I do remember that one. I had a big giant Jake size, very strong, like 9, 10% beer on that one. And it was, by the end of the show, I was red in the face. I remember that. And it had the fan favorite title, Gary from Lockheed, when we, I was mystified by who Gary from Lockheed, in fact, is. And now I'm well acquainted, and he's been on the show.

That's another fantastic thing is we talked about him several times of the show. and then said, we should probably have him on the show. And he was extremely confused as to why he was a character of this, of this fandom. So that was good. That was an early one. It was too. So, yeah, I guess the moral is we never quite know where the guests are going to take us. And that's always like, we like relationships with people.

It's kind of fun. There was the time that Merriam Kramer was on and we convinced her to tell SpaceX that it was the playplace, the McDonald's Playplace. And then she referenced that in the podcast series she did about Inspiration 4. And we felt like we've achieved peak success by infiltrating important spaces of media. Yeah, yeah. That was a good one. It's funny.

I think I'm a favorite gift to do, though. That's true. Jake's just flattering now. I just wonder, like, where will be 100 episodes from now? Like, what will be going on in space at that, at that time because if you look back to 2017 so much has happened you know in that in that time you know they were like falcon heavy hadn't flown there was no commercial crew there was no new shepherd was i mean all the stuff artemus wasn't around um and to think you know it's probably worth to go back

actually and i'm going to go back and watch some of those earlier shows just for like the time capsule And I think that's like some of the value of what you guys do and you put it out there. And there's this sort of digital archive that's there. It's a newspaper archive, but it's good to have to see what your guests are thinking about and talking about at the time. So anyway, thank you for everything you guys are doing. Oh, thanks. I appreciate it. That's way too high to thank us for the horsecraft.

But it is, no, to your point, it is interesting to know what we were debating. Because even like next week, we'll talk when we talk about what next week's going to be, but like humans to Mars is going to be a potential topic for next week. And it's like, that was like the hot story for a while, you know, five years ago. And it's like the last time I've heard anyone talking about flying humans to Mars, I don't know, because we've all just been debating Artemis and ISS for the last three years. Yeah, yeah, stuff changes fast. It's true. I mean, it's, yeah, just thinking back to, that's why we got into this whole thing is because like, like, in just covering space and, general, stuff was starting to change. And it felt, it felt weird and interesting and different.

And we got into it. And here we are. And it has changed and has become weird and has become different. Yeah, that's true. There's no, there's no separating the years that we started our three shows, right, like the 2015 to 17 era when everything started finally happening after being talked about for so long. And certainly like probably 2020 to 22 is another range where it's now all the human spaceflight happens or most of it. Anyway, some of it's still waiting. Yeah. All right. 100 more episodes.

Cheers. It's only two years away now, though, because we're weekly. And hell, by the time we get to 100, we might be doing the show every three days based on our progress of shifting the cadence up. Don't tempt us. Don't say that. Don't say that.

All right. So should we talk about some current affairs then? That's what we're going to try and get into here. We've got a capital J journalist with us today, Anthony. And so we should probably take advantage of the professional who's going to tell us what's up. But I don't know. We were trying to figure out what to talk about. And there was just like a smorgasboard of like different pretty important, but like pretty important stories that are just kind of washed out because there's all these other important stories going on.

So I don't know. Where do you want to start? Do we want to talk about spacesuits? Do you want to talk about crew selections? We want to talk about starship. Like there's a lot going on. Well, so I would focus first on the spacesuit because there's something, that whole thing was, well, it was weird because the spacesuit doesn't look like that. It's like the unveiling, but it's, I'm just going to annoyingly wait for 10 minutes while you talk about important stuff. But it was a veiled unveiling.

And now everyone thinks they take a look at the picture and they think the spacesuit is going to be black. And we were talking about this right before we came on. And George Santos, the congressman, like the one thing, he wasn't lying about it because he actually literally thinks it's going to be black. But it's wrong. It's not going to be black. You can't have a black space suit on the moon. It's just, you know, because they'll track all the heat and there's no atmosphere and it'll be way too hot. I was explaining to my kids this.

I was like, you know why the baseball players wear the chalk under their eyes or the charcoal? So that keeps the light out of their eyes. And you need white to reflect it. So I don't know. I just was a weird thing for me to put on this sort of fashion show and then have it look nothing like it's actually going to look like. And I got some pushback because I felt like, you know, as I guess a capital J journalist,

I had to kind of really point that out. You're getting pushback from on this. This was a great A horseshit rollout. I'll be real. Like, this is terrible. Who's pushing back on this? Like, people that aren't into space but want to be excited about the space suit? No, there were people with, I'll say this, people with ties to the company, push back and said, you know, and I was like, well, our job, I mean, we got to, we got to tell people the truth.

and the first thing is that this is not what it looks like. And I place it in the context of, look, commercial space has revolutionized everything that's going on in the sector, right? More efficient, bringing costs down, cutting through barriers, cutting red tape. But there's also this level of privacy. And the reason why they showed this black space suit as opposed to the real one is that was essentially a cover so that they wouldn't reveal their proprietary information because they are in a competition, right, with other companies, or another company on this. And, you know, the privacy issue is a real concern. You know, you have, you know, Blue Origin, for example, had that mishap with New Shepherd. We haven't

heard very much about it at all. It's sort of becoming increasingly clear that once they are back to flying, they're not going to talk about what happened. to any great extent. And they don't have to. I mean, they're private companies. So, and it's on my mind because, you know, they are in a lot of ways writing the history of what's going on in space right now, these private companies. And, you know, are they keeping notes? Are they taking oral histories?

Are they writing this stuff down for the record? And that's why actually I do think it's so important that what you guys are doing, at least you guys are doing it and we'll have that. but I really hope they are internally. So I think it was just illustrative of a bigger issue about what's going on here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you know, I think about this all the time, honestly, just like the way that we take, you know, what NASA does for granted in just their government agency, and they just, they kind of legally have to tell us everything that's going on.

So they just, you know, they make stuff and then they publish and you can go online and download the technical diagrams for the Apollo moon suit, right? Like you can just go and get them, just download them, right? right on NASA.gov, right? And, and, uh, like, that's, that's like a pretty nice benefit, I think, at least as someone who's like trying to like learn stuff about this and, and share it with others. Like, I think that is a, a benefit that is sometimes undersold as part of NASA because you, you're right. Commercial stuff has done a lot of great things and I'm thankful for those things and it's lovely, but we should recognize what we, we've, what the cost is for that too,

right? Yeah. Yeah. The Blue Origin one's really interesting because that to me just feels like the wrong way to play the thing that happened with New Shepherd because like their system worked like the abort motor worked it got them out of there it is the one great advantage that they have a couple advantages is the one best advantage that they have over Virgin Galactic so if they're looking at this purely competitively they can just point to like hey look in the worst case scenario every thing's fine we did it you're safe you're back here on earth like you don't have to be too gruesome to say, look what happens when the other guy's engine blows up. But that is the reason

that I am so, like, I would never, I honestly would never get on spaceship two. It terrifies me. And I would get on New Shepherd tomorrow. And the fact that they're, by like making it this forbidden knowledge, I feel like they're making it scarier than it needs to be because the reality is they had the abort system there for a reason. And I just, I don't know, to me it's like being scared to talk about it is making it seem worse than it may be. And maybe it's really bad. I don't know. It might be horrible.

But like they got New Shepherd back. Yeah. You have to be open though, especially when it comes to human spaceflight. And sorry if I'm having some internet. I just froze on me there for a second. But like you have to have public trust. And whether it's SpaceX and you talk to SpaceX, I don't, you know, their anomalies, you know, you could argue that maybe they weren't as transparent with the public as a whole.

But if you talk to people at NASA, they felt like SpaceX was incredibly transparent, right? And NASA, the people I talk to, even though they had these setbacks, it's not so much the setback. It's how you react to it and what you do in the moment and how you say, we're going to fix this. this is what happened and come inside and help us. And we're going to show you everything. And I'm a pretty good authority, know that that's how SpaceX handled those incidents with NASA. But if I'm a customer of Blue Origin,

I want to know everything about that issue. And what happened and what's going on. And yeah, I'm glad the abort motor worked. But, you know, I kind of want to know what the issue is well beyond, oh, space is hard and these things happen. Like, no, no, no, no, no. We want a real sense of what's going on here. And I thought it was interesting, too, that the FAA was like, oh, no, there's no, like, they can speak.

They can talk about this investigation as much as they want. So, I mean, we'll see. I think it'll be a learning moment for them, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Thinking of, like, the axiom suit, though, do you think that, because I have a, it's a complete guess theory. I guess there's no, I have no data about this, but no sources. But like I kind of wonder, are they actually hiding proprietary, like, information that they're trying to protect from Collins or whoever? Or are they just like not done a lot of that stuff yet?

And so they're just kind of covering it up. And because it's still pretty early. Like I know the landing is supposed to be coming soon, but like they just got this contact. They can't like be, you know, near the end of where they've got a suit ready to go and they're trying out the prototypes. They can't be at that stage yet. So I wonder if this is more just like, we need to show something because we need to get ahead and this is what we got. So we'll just say, you know, it's covering up my due guys. It's mostly that XEMU suit that they wore in that event from like three years ago or whatever.

Exactly. The one with the way like all the Super America event, whatever it was. We took all the NASA patents and then we just painted the suit black and here we go, right? But I don't know. I wonder about that. And it's an interesting question to me because they, you know, they're weird. It's weird to me. It is really fast.

That's the one thing that makes me really believe your theory is it's like it's been 10 minutes. Yeah. That's a great. I actually think that there might be something to that. You know, you can just get some Hollywood designer right from all mankind, which, you know, by the way, that's like one of my favorite shows. I think it's incredible. But yeah, you have some designer throw together a costume and can claim it's

proprietary information. And if I'm being really cynical here, you know, try to stay positive and optimistic. But if I'm going to look at this skeptically, why now? Why are you doing, why are you doing this now? Why unveiling it now? Is there some milestone you just achieved? Or is it that, you know, maybe there's a fundraising round or. Right.

So, you know, I think these things are done for a reason for sure. So I think your skepticism there's completely justified. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Christian nailed it. That's exactly why it. Remember that they have this flight coming up. And I will say this, to the extent that it was a, like, awareness of Axiom 2 event, somebody that I know that does not follow space, but kind of tangentially is interested.

I was talking to him the other day, and he was like, yeah, who was that? It was like the, you know, Peggy and who was the other astronaut guy? Like, he seemed like, why was he there? And I was like, oh, that was like the guy paying to go next. And he's like, oh, I thought he was like an astronaut astronaut. So I just appreciated the insight that it was like, oh, this is a sham. Like, that guy was paying a bunch of money to be there. And I was like, yeah, that's what happened.

Oh, I thought it was an astronaut astronaut, not a... That was the exact turn. That's an exact quote, an astronaut. So just to inject that into the debate of private astronaut or astronaut, real astronaut or whatever, astronaut, astronaut. That's good. I think the Washington Post should adopt that, right? Because it's private astronauts, a pavilion astronaut.

Yeah, astronaut astronaut, astronaut. Ass-ass. The first one has to be italicized to get it. That's the style of that I have to include that. Astronaut, astronaut. Amazing. Oh, dear. I didn't watch.

Did anyone watch the review, the George Santos review of the spacesuit? No. It just happened, right? Is it having any good insights or was he just pumped that it was black? Well, he liked the orange. I think the orange, too. It's been real. That's a good looking.

He liked the orange that popped. He was wondering why they would choose black because apparently in his mind they're going to the far side of the moon where it's like all dark. He's like, no one's going to be able to see him. It's easier to fake on the sound stage if you don't need to have any lighting. That's right. The whole thing was a little bit bizarre. That's amazing.

My favorite thing would be if the designer from For All Mankind forgot to take off like the gun holsters and then people realized like why is it from gun holsters? That would be the best, create like the best sub-drama of all time. Right. Well, in case you see any Soviet Union like cosmonauts up on the moon. That's why you need those. You never know. Rigozin's making his way out there.

You never know what's going to happen, you know? Senator-Administrator Bill Nelson specifically requested those holsters to deal with the Chinese problems. And it was an idea from Robert Bigelow sent that tip in. Do you remember the Bigelow illustrations? I'm never going to let those die. Those are the best things of all times. I take those out again.

Was that from a congressional hearing? I can't remember now. Is that when he was showing that? I don't remember if it might have been. It might have been. Yeah, it was like cartoons about how there would be, like, toll booths that China set up on the moon that we'd have to pay when Starship lands there or something. It was pretty incredible. Did he do the congressional thing with, like, the easel behind him?

Like, here. And, like, the big things they printed at Kinkles, like an hour before. Okay. And here's one more diagram. That's the best. I love that. I haven't watched a lot of, like, the congressional hearing stuff in a while. I feel like that was really a hot thing to do in 2018.

Like, there was a lot of those space-related ones that were interesting. and then they kind of stopped or they're just completely uninteresting now. Yeah, yeah. Well, different president, you know. That's true. That's true. Yeah.

Boy, that's a rabbit hole. That's a rabbit hole. Oddward, relativity. Anyone to watch this? Beautiful looking launch. Yes. Gorgeous. I'm in love with methane plumes now.

I'm on board. That's your thing? You're just a jam. I'm on the high brain with methane plumes. Holy moly, were they nice? looking. You made you made Chris disappear though. Oh I did? Oh I put the wrong one. I hit the wrong button here is his bag. Yeah I mean I'm not as pretty as the methalox for sure I can make us all disappear for the for the blue there Jake you're you're pumped about the color or the look or

what is your deal yeah sure yep you're just here for it yeah like it all it was good beautiful looking launch huh? If it lasted a little longer? I was going to say, no, you wish it lasted shorter because you would have won that bet. We did some predictions. Oh, that's true. Yeah, we had that. Max Q.

You bet under Max Q and I bet over Max Q. Yeah. Yeah, you won that one. They did the best of any. Yeah, I think that's true. But they did the best of any debut. They made it the farthest in of any debut rocket that I, in recent history. Right?

Thinking, thinking. definitely made it far as the fireflies was pretty a new a rocket lab was how far did they make it they made it really far right and then didn't they have to I thought they had to send the command to to destroy it but I think their second stage started right I don't

I got to remember but they got pretty far and then didn't they go on the second launch they did yeah they made it all the way yeah so predict predictions on the second launch for relativity then? Well, it's interesting that you said for relativity and not for Tern 1. Oh, yeah, yeah, you've got a prediction on this, don't you? Well, I thought that they would only do, like, a few launches of these.

And by saying I thought I've heard from many places that they would only do, like, three launches of Taryn 1. And then people have been pointing out that in their statements, none of them are like, looking forward to the next Taryn one, it'll be in two weeks. And that most of the statements have immediately pivoted to the EonR engine, and we're looking forward to the future. And I've always been annoyed that they are, like, sunk cost-falsing their way into flying Terran 1 if they really don't believe that this is the market future and they want to be on Terran R.

I've always continued to be like, why are they flying Terran 1 even once or twice? And then they come out to the pad with this thing that's not even a faring. It's just a nose cone. So, you know, and then the only name-pailer, they have on the third flight of Terran 1 is like three NASA CubeSats. Or I shouldn't even say that. I should say three cubesats via NASA. I don't know.

It might be the next vehicle. How's this landed for it, Christian? I think his internet froze or he's completely gobsmacked by this Terran R. Truthorism. Sorry about that. I kind of wonder, though, you got to get that second stage going. were so close. I don't know. I mean, what would the delay be, you know, if they, if they went right to turn on R? Yeah. Isn't that the whole, the whole like selling point of relativity, though, is that the delay wouldn't be that bar? Like, you can pivot your design really quickly

because you just like open up a file and change some numbers and then hit print. Like, that's supposed to be the benefit here, right? Like, that's why the printer settings has the scale feature on it. I get 200%. Yeah. They went to the bottom of the screen where it says 1X and they change it to 3X and they get print. That's what they do. That's the theory of my understanding of 3D printing. Please send me an email if I need to learn more about 3D printing.

Please don't. We're going to get so much email and I'm the only one that gets it right now. So I fix the email server. Please do not send us any email about 3D printing. Send me an email at Anthony at Offenong.com and then, yeah. I don't know, what's the realistic time delay? Well, so let's see. I forget they didn't, aren't they have to do a whole new building for Terranar, right?

Like they've got a whole new Long Beach place for Terranar that they're going to set up shop. So I think they even talked about this on one of the webcasts. They were saying how someone that was interviewed was like, I'm outfitting the next factory. So if that's a key component, that's like a long time. That's kind of a bummer, though, if you get down to it, where, It's just like, yeah, we have this great 3D printer that we can just, we can tweak and change your design without getting any new tooling. And you're like, cool, well, how's the new rocket coming? Like, oh, we need to build a whole new factory.

Hang with that. It's like, oh, that didn't pan out, did it? Yeah, but it's not, it's not, I think everybody hears the 3D printing thing and they think relativity's printing a monolith. Like, they hit go and it makes the whole rocket. But it's like they're printing the components that then get bolted together and tested separately and put in this spot and installed there. So back to our root theory that I don't think we've tested on Christian, is relativity a launch services company that happens to print rockets or are they a printing company that happens

to launch rockets? That's the key thing. I think now they're a rocket company. I think down the road they become a manufacturing company. I mean, I think that's the long-term vision. And, you know, Tim used to, you asked them, you know, are you a manufacturing company? And I think like a couple of years ago, he sort of poohed that and said, no, no, no, we're a rocket company. But now he seems more open to talk about the manufacturing side.

But I would say not only they're a rocket company, but they're a very impressive one. I mean, going through those ones where they didn't fly and just recycling. and we're going to go again, and we're going to take it all the way up to the last minute of the launch and, like, just go. And they got hit twice by wayward boats. Then the weather, and then, you know, and then they had the bad sensors. It was like, it was the, you know, the elements were throwing everything at those guys, and they just rolled with it.

I mean, that was, that was impressive. And it's like, they're only going to get better and smarter and faster. You know, it's like, remember, like the early, launches of the Falcon 9 block 5 and there'd be scrub after scrub after scrub and then they just figure it out and now they go so you only think like man these guys are that was pretty impressive not just the launch but just watching them work every single problem that was thrown at them and just dealing with it that was pretty cool to watch yeah the quick recycles were totally like I was shocked by the way that was expected I was ready to close the app and like go do something

else cooked dinner and I was like oh wait they got to keep it open okay cool was not and they were even like oh yeah if we scrubbed at you know less than 70 seconds it's game over it's like it's the end of the day everyone's going home and then they scrubbed it 70.06 seconds and they're like now we're good set the clock back to 10 let's go let's go let's go right which our joke in the discord was someone had to be like wait a minute something has to be wrong like stop it stop it stop it it this can't be going perfectly the first time stop it before we're screwed for the day To your point, Chris, they are, so their website, main navigation, home team rockets, factory, infrastructure careers news store.

They get pretty quickly from rockets to factory and infrastructure. There's not a lot of room between those. And again, like, I feel like I just should be clear. I'm not criticizing them if they are a manufacturing company that happens to launch rockets. I think that is the prudent decision. See also the other two major launch companies that are barely launched companies by revenue. Like, SpaceX's probably doing better by revenue.

All other rocket companies. Yeah. Like Starlink is going to dwarf launch services eventually if it's not already. Rocket Lab makes most of their money from space services. So if your relativity, you should be thinking, like,

where are we going to make our money while we launch rockets? So it's the right decision. Like, I just wanted to put it on Front Street, although maybe they don't want to put it on Front Street because they're working on cool stuff behind closed doors that they don't want to talk about, which may be the case.

Or they're building the factory. Yeah. Yeah. My sense is though that they are a space company and that if they want to be a manufacturing company, they really do want to be a space manufacturing company. Like, you know, printing on stations, printing on the moon. And, you know, Tim's whole thing, it's like, you know, he's very much in the Elon. Let's go to Mars camp. But I think if you're an investor, you see the whole, you know, the rockets, but you also see the larger potential. But that's my, that's my sense of it anyway. such a perfect SpaceX analogy because the SpaceX money is the same. Elon's like, we're going to go to Mars and they're like, well, okay, but tell us more about Starlink and here's some money for that.

Yeah, I mean, and pivoting to Terranor, if that's, if that happens now or if happens in three launches, is objectively the right move, right? They want to go to an area that is, puts them in the realm of like, let's make a reusable upper stage. Though I don't feel like that's the first upper stage we'll see on Terran. I feel like there might be a Terran R, Tern non-R at first. Like, Taryn half R. I don't know what the name. They're going to have to figure this naming situation out.

Like an interim upper stage maybe, yeah. Call us, relativity. Call us if you need any branding assistance on this front. But it's the right move. They're going to hit that. I guess works perfectly on the first launch. I just wanted to tell you. I think it's got some life in it.

There might be a couple more IUSs in it, you know? There might be a couple more. But yeah, wait, we totally derailed from Christian saying, what's the timeline here if they do move to Terran R? So let's just look at like the landscape of Neutron and Terran R and do a little head-to-head on how we feel about timing. That's interesting. Because that's the race.

That I don't know. Falcon 9 is doing its thing. Starship might eventually, but the real race is who comes next? So I saw, you know, and I'm saying neutron's going to be, you know, my backyard at Wallops on the eastern shore Virginia. You got a giant backyard. That is so far away. A huge backyard.

Post pays well after the Mesa's acquisition. You know, we're owned by Uncle Jeff, so things are good. It's enormous. But we can see, I can see launches from wallops from my back deck. So I'm particularly psyched for Neutron. And I was out there. It was during COVID. and saw some of like the mission control center and the manufacturing and some of the stuff

they were they were doing. So that's that's exciting. And, you know, Rocket Lab is, you know, I just think they're, it's a very tough business. They're for real. They've obviously, you know, shown that, you know, you guys mentioned earlier, not everybody is doing it, but, but they are. And, you know, we'll see relativity has their own sort of secret sauce that, you know, if you're placing bets, you'd like to think that they'll probably be one of the ones to make it. But what Peter Beck has done at Rocket Lab is, it's unbelievable. Yeah. Yeah, from a business perspective, they've really blossomed, I would say.

They got their fingers in a lot of pies, and that's paying off for them, I think, right? Well, we all feel good about methane. It's all good. Who's going to win? Who's going to win? Okay, well, do you want to do a prediction? You want to say, like, which rocket's going to come first? Is that what we're getting out of here?

Let's do it. Yeah, I love it. I'm going to say it's Rocket Lab. I'm actually really conflicted. I'm more conflicted about this than I thought I would be when I asked the question. Because they're both, so, you know, we don't know how far relativity is on Terran are, right? Like, that's the real thing of, is it true, Jake, that they can load the new file in and they're ready to roll on this new thing. Neutron, it is like new tank hardware.

They built this new tent out there. So there's clearly a like tooling investment that is being made there. The upper stage is doing that thing where it's hanging. So there's like there's enough new kind of stuff going on there where I feel like the initial Terran R could be like not at all what real Terran R looks like, but still be called Terran R. And I feel like that'll make it first. And I can see that. further, relativity is way more secure funding-wise. Counterpoint, we're already seeing the neutron design return back to reality from it's like,

it's like, we've got this weird alligator hung stage and it's just like, yeah, it's going to be a cylinder with a second, you know, it's regular fairings. We're doing regular fairings. Yeah. So I wonder if that shows you maturity in the design process already where they're making those decisions like, this isn't real. get real about this, right? I feel like you have one,

I hear your point, there's a lot new going on into it, but I don't know, you got to go with a company that's been to orbit and has made it, right? I mean, maybe that's just sort of a simplistic thing, but like orbit is hard. It's just so hard to do it. And it was really impressive, you know, what they did with Taryn One and they were, feels like they were so close. But, you know, Rocket Lab has been, you know, repeatable success. I know what it takes.

So I guess just for that reason, that's kind of where I got to go. That's probably the right call, especially because Rocket Lab is a show-em-don't-tell-em company. Like, they'll tell you stuff months after they did it. It'll be, you'll be shocked how long after they did a thing that they'll tell you about the thing they just did. And not that relativity is like an overhyped company in the way that there are many in space. Like, I think relativity is hyped for sure, but more appropriately hyped than most. So they could be way farther down Neutron's development and build out than we expect, you know? Yeah.

Rocket Lab is almost like the right level of openness compared to Blue Origin, where Blue Origin will never tell you anything or never show you anything. And Rocket Lab is, like, confidently doing stuff and eventually telling you about it rather than doing stuff and not telling you about it. So I appreciate that. And SpaceX has outsourced they're telling to a third party for free. Maybe. I mean, Chris G might be in charge of it now, so that's good. That's true. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, they're acquiring NASA spaceflight, kind of. Yeah, we're totally available. We could be totally be bought, by the way. Hundreds good. We made it to 100. Christian thanked us for our service and we're ready to cash out. So if SpaceX wants so like happy hour live streams, we're here. Yeah, we're ready to sell our 3D printing tech now.

Let's get it. We're ready to go. It's sitting right here. I've got a printer right out of frame here. What else? What else we got? Anything else cooking around? Man, there's a, do you want to talk about Virgin orbit?

Coming back from the dead? Kind of, maybe? I don't know. Where are you at in Virgin orbit, Christian? It's a tough one. I don't know. Early on, I had really was interested in the whole air launch concept. And clearly the Pentagon was for that.

And General Jane Raymond, a space force was every time they had a test or a flight, he was tweeting it. They were watching it. I've had some, even before, you know, the funding issues, I had some conversations with industry people who were sort of less bullish on the whole. concept of air launch. And the way it was described to me, and I'm just sort of relaying what this person said. I don't know a whole lot, but that actually, the 747 as a first stage, if you're not, you know, commercial airline, if you're not flying it every day, it's actually quite expensive. If you're only flying it, you know, once a month or something, it's a lot to maintain. So there's that. And two is, you know, you'll want to be going vertical and to go sort of

horizontal to vertical is a difficult, weird thing. You eventually have to go horizontal, but not right off the bat. All right, right. So, I don't know. What I think ultimately it's going to happen with a lot of these companies is the Pentagon's going to have to pick some. And you just sort of wonder that the Pentagon is going to want this capability and the industrial base.

And, you know, particularly with this, you know, the phase. three with the contracts and who gets those and who gets a lifeline from the Pentagon as a sort of base of business. I know we all like to think like, oh, commercial companies, they're going to make it, but it still seems like the government plays a huge role. And I think it's who can position themselves not just to get to orbit successfully, but can, you know, from government relations and lobbying and just connections in Washington make those with the Pentagon. That to me, is, we'll sort of that, and, you know, we're already seeing like a separation. We're seeing people, you know, fall out of the, out of the market. But I think it's going to be, that may be a sort of

key role for everything. That's a funny thing, too, with Virgin Orbit, because I always felt like, and I'm probably on the list of people that would have tried to talk you out of Air Launch as a concept from a technical perspective. But I think from a business and sales perspective, like they had a niche that they could crush, but they just never were quite able to turn the corner on on selling it outside of it being a talking point of like responsive launch launch from anywhere. They had a huge market with the responsive launch thing here in the U.S. from the Department of Defense, but I thought they had a launch market like the UK launch that they were doing there where they can say, do you want domestic launch capability? Because that

always sounds good to politicians no matter where you are. And that felt like a huge opportunity, but they just weren't able to close enough deals. You know, they got a lot of like memorandum of understanding type stuff where it's like, yeah, we'd love to do this eventually. But it just seemed like a niche that they weren't able to take advantage of. And maybe that's because they were expensive for the relative performance they could get. You know, they were in the teens, teens millions per launch. That's a great, I'm doing great at English right now, teens millions is where they were sitting at. Yeah, but they were less performant than some of these newer launch companies coming online,

like ABL, Firefly, relativity, all that, for. the same price. So it was, it kind of squeezed themselves there. Yeah, yeah. Do you think this, this, like, this new investment that's coming from this guy is really just like a bet on landing that NSL3, whatever the other lane is where, I don't know, what, what is this? Because like, maybe there's a new idea coming with, along with this money too, for all I know, but it's an interesting thing. Like, what is the, what is the play here, right? Two hundred million bucks. not nothing. Yeah, I don't know.

Anthony's not excited about this at all. I try to dig up info in this guy. I have no idea who it is, and I only am, I feel better about myself when I saw Michael Sheets writing that like no one can find any info in this guy or what he's done before. I just feel like it's a great way to spend 200 million if that's what he's into, but I have a whole list of other ways we could spend it if he wants to chat about options. I just don't think this is going to pan out. Because what does it get them?

It gets them a year of runway, and I don't, I'm not sure that, like, there is enough that could develop from here to a year from now that would save Virgin Orbit's prospects long term. And SSL3? I don't know. I killed the show. Great. I guess that's a year away. But it's a year away to be promised that you might get missions in the future. It's not, you're not getting a bunch of money up with that, uh, front with that new, the Nessel 3 thing.

Yeah, yeah. Well, maybe the reason you don't know this guy is because he's, like, secretly in with the DOD. He knows what he's doing. I'm just saying. It's funny to see, like, where we are now versus a year ago, though, or, you know, two years ago when there was so much money flooding into the market. You know, Tim Ellis, great idea, you know, brilliant guy, brilliant technology with the 3D printing. How much did he raise? Like, $1.3 billion?

Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of like the money is just flowing in. And here you have a company that's been in orbit, has some cachet, the virgin brand, rich, you know, and it's like really struggling. That just sort of shows you the dire straits, the entire space industry is in right now as a result of, you know, the higher interest rates and investment money drying up. And I also think like, you know, I don't spend too much time, you know, talking to investors, but I think they're getting. getting smarter about, you know, yeah, this is the cool new thing and Elon's doing it and Jeff is doing it and Richard Branson and we want to get in on this. But on the other hand, they're realizing this is really risky and this is hard and we're a lot more conservative. So then it's like, who do you go to for money? And you're getting sort of maybe a, you know, more oddball cast of characters out there. That's a good way to phrase it. Yeah. I mean, because that's like everyone was falling for the, we'll be doing weekly launches next year.

thing, right? And launch is going to be a $30 trillion business in 10 years. And it's like, man, if you can't look around the industry and know, like, Jake, we should have cashed in on doing diligence for all these investors of the last couple of years to like just say, no, none of this is happening. We could have, we could have done great if we had a better business mind here, apparently. We were having that conversation pre-COVID. Like, like, we probably don't need to put any more money into rockets. Like, I don't know. I'm not feeling that right now. Someone's got to figure out what to do in space now that we can get there. Like, that's what we got, that's what we got to work on? Well, and it was all based on how much we could fly if, like,

a market magically appeared that would be able to support weekly launches from everybody, you know? Yeah. So that's the real crux of being able to fundraise against it or going to SPAC and having that in your investor decks. Even Rocket Lab had that for a little bit. I was like, what the hell's going on here? Like, this just feels so, feel so shady to have that in your decks. Yeah. Yeah. That's a game, I guess. That's why I don't run. a multi-billion-dollar launch company, Christian. This is it right here. Well, to your point, like this, did you guys catch any of the spacecom and, or I guess

was space mobility and general Purdy's talk down in Orlando? I mean, it was fascinating because it was this whole thing about like through space technology. And I was talking to someone, I'm like, well, what do you mean through space? And their whole point was, well, we talk so much about getting to space, right? The rockets, but what do you do you were saying once you're there? and having the mobility to move around and go where you want to go. And they're thinking at the Pentagon about that from, you know, obviously a national security standpoint where, you know,

your spacecraft is in orbit. It's going to go around on a fixed point. And the bad guys know where it's going to be. And you want the ability to maneuver and to change orbits and dodge and weave and all that kind of stuff. But I thought that was really interesting. And it's like, what else can you do once you're in space? And that whole thing about maneuvering without. regret and he gave us you know talk about you know imagine you had a you know like a

tank or a fighter jet and you could fuel it once and that's it and you have to decide how you want to use it and he's like that's what we do in space right you fuel up the spacecraft or the satellite and that's it for the rest of its life and he's like that's crazy we need to get away from that paradigm so i i don't know as a concept i thought that was really interesting because it just changed the way I was thinking about space because I was very much in the getting to space paradigm, maybe stuck there. And it's interesting to think about the next step. Well, it's even interesting about that is that, like, it is both true in that, okay, let's let's think past rockets and look at the business there. And it's also not thinking hard enough because it's just the next

step of getting somewhere, right? So like, okay, you get to orbit and then how do you get around in orbit? Okay, great, let's solve that problem. But then you solve, that. And it's like, well, now you can go anywhere. What are you going to do? Like, what is the, what is the point of being up here in the first place? Right. You still need to, you still need at the end of the line. It needs to be a space application. Like something that produces value that, you know, that you can't do on the ground. And, and there's obviously some use cases for that, but I don't know if we've, we have not solved that to a degree that necessitates all of the rockets we're inventing. I guess is the, it's the real thing that we're getting out of here.

That is something I feel like won't go away, though, because there was, for a hot minute, in the run-up to the announcement of what the National Security Space Launch Program phase three, I wish there was a quicker way to say that. There was talk of, like, will this allow companies like spaceflight in who do last mile transport or, you know, the kind of like orbital transfer vehicle market? And that was cut out of what eventually came as the draft RFP, that you only can apply if you're a launch company like, from ground to orbit. And so maybe that part got pulled out and they're going to do another strategy for what do we do with these companies that can move things around in space.

But that is, you know, and it probably comes back to like them trying to certify a company like Space Flight, like they might buy a launch on an ISRO vehicle or a European vehicle, you know, like a Vega or something and then get you to orbit. And that wouldn't fly with the rest of the regulations. But I feel like there is something there

that will come about in the next few years, I've taken advantage of those things. But you're right, Christian. Maybe it's less, last mile delivery and more like the mission extension vehicle kind of thing. Like, go grab, you know, the KH11 that's in this orbit and take it over to the new useful one since we've got a better one in that orbit. We have a new enemy now. We've got to move the saddle. I would love if that's like, someone in the Pentagon thinks that, like, well, what are we doing with all the satellites over Afghanistan?

Like, are they still there? Yeah. Sometimes, yeah, like they're still there occasionally. Yeah, that's totally a conversation that happened, like 10 minutes from where Christian lives. That's terrifying that that's the thing. Anyway, so Jake and I are selling out to be consultants. So next week's show is canceled. We're being consultants, both to VCs and the Pentagon.

Yeah, yeah. Off nominal consulting LLC. Hit us up. I'm going to form that, Jake. Honestly, I might. I might do that. If you would hire us for that, hit me up. I feel like we could do it.

Jake's a Canadian that lives in Mexico. Hit us up. We read a lot of space news. We can be of used to you. I honestly, I think you guys should do it. I think there's a huge need for it to sort of separate people who actually know what's going on. Would you like to be our Beltway salesperson?

I just think, like, you know, I had friends, a friend in particular who left journalism and would go do that working for like a hedge fund. I was like, what do you know? And it's like, it's just figuring stuff out and knowing like actually kind of what's going on. You guys totally do. I say you'd go for it. I love that the show started with Christian.

Congratulating us on 100 episodes and ended with him telling us to quit. That's my favorite. hundred was enough was his message great you guys should be proud of what you accomplished you know I think if you could do the show too you could do the show

oh we can keep it alive all right cool yeah you keep it alive this is a funnel it's a marketing funnel right we gotta get new new people to come in we are huge we're a big favorite podcast of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

So we're just huge. I mean, Lori Garda's mom thinks we're the best podcast. That's true. So that's got to be worth something, right? Yeah, if that's not a market, I don't know what is. Anyway, Christian, if people don't read your writing, can you tell them where to go find it? Sure, wash and post.com.

And obviously, you know, I have my book called The Space Barrens. And I will mention something to you. guys if you if you promise not to tell anyone kind of keeping it on download but i'm working on another book um too so hopefully you guys will have me back on um something of a sequel to the last one so um yeah that's been a lot of fun we are the number one podcast for spacebook announcements i love it it's great i love it it's true it's true it's true yeah no i'm excited for that your Your first book was great. I loved it.

Yeah, 100%. I'm jazz. I'm jazz. I can't. Thank you. More books. More books. All right.

I do have a long reading list, but it just so happens that the modern books written by friends are definitely at the top of the list. So we got some, we got some stuff. I mean, what, Lauren's books coming out pretty soon, right? Isn't that summer or something? Yeah. Lauren's book is coming out. I read that. I read the galleys of that.

It's fantastic. And I'm reading Ashley Vance's book right now. Foreshowing. Show coming soon. Yeah, yeah. Nice. Eric's got his new Falcon 9 book he talked about recently on the show. His Falcon 9 book, yeah.

Brandon Byrne was working on a book about pooping in space. I'm not sure where that landed, but. I think he bailed. I think he bailed on that one. He bailed on it? No, no. He realized. You just poop.

He just go for it. You realize he wasn't cut out for number two. So it was, yeah, that's obvious. Oh, my God. Okay. Anthony, I'm going away on a vacation. What are you going to do while I'm gone? Yeah, I heard you're going away for a full month, everybody. So Jake's out of here for four episodes. So next week, Chris Carberry's coming back. We talked to him about a book that he wrote about alcohol and space. And now there's a documentary part two coming out about that. And Tanya Harrison will be coming in as my Jake stand in.

So again, I mentioned this in front of the show. I want to talk about like, how's everybody feeling about humans to Mars in the Artemis era? Because like, what happened to that? You know, that was a hot thing for a couple minutes. So that'll be cool. Yeah. And then. Moon to Mars.

Right. Moon to Mars. Right. The journey to Mars is back. It's back in action. It's back. It's always been the journey to Mars. Always has been.

And then the other thing we should mention is the Discord, Jake. Mm-hmm. Yeah, yeah. So come on down. Discord memberships. Five bucks a month. you can hang out with us. We get up to some shenanigans.

It's a private space community. The $5 keeps out the riffraff, you guys. So if you're not riffraff, you pay the five bucks, you get into where the rest of the not riffraff is. This is the really key selling point to the Discord. And we have a lot of fun in there. We're doing all sorts of random activities here and there.

And it's been, it's awesome. Five bucks, Jake, or what? Or if you really, really want to show us, you care. And you really want to set some personal standards for yourself and never fly ride share, that's what you really want to go for. 25 bucks a month. It's the premier. Go for it.

Premier membership, your own rocket into this Discord. Listen, do you take lifts or Uber's? You should be on the never fly ride chair level. That's all I'm saying. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. You can have anything else to plug this week. I do have, I just want to plug one thing, which is likely next week, major announcements.

So, stay tuned. I'm not cancel any shows which will continue to do be a joke for the year solid announcements coming your way next week so hop in the Discord yeah

that's where you can find out first that's probably true Christian you're the best you'll remain the best and we're looking forward to whatever the first project that you sell is

for off nominal consulting LLC thanks so much I'm looking forward to the book as always Yeah, I have to come back and talk about that. Appreciate it. You bet. You bet. See you later.

Okay. All right. Bye, everyone. One, two, three.