Off-Nominal - 102 - Does Anyone Need SRBs?

Episode Date: April 7, 2023

Anthony is joined by Eric Berger of Ars Technica and Matthew Russell of the The Interplanetary Podcast to talk about Starship, the future of European spaceflight, and the Artemis II crew.Announcement: Off-Nominal and MECO Live Shows at Space Symposium 2023More details coming soon, but Anthony will be at Space Symposium 2023 and will be hosting MECO and Off-Nominal live at the Redwire booth on April 18 and 19. We’ll have wonderful guests such as Lori Garver, Peter Beck, Masami Onoda, Karina Drees, Loren Grush, Michael Sheetz, Jacqueline Feldscher, and more to be named soon! Come hang out, watch some live shows, and say hello to Anthony in real life.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 102 - Does Anyone Need SRBs? (with Eric Berger and Matthew Russell) - YouTubeLive at Space Symposium 2023! - Main Engine Cut OffSpaceX moves Starship to launch site, and liftoff could be just days away | Ars TechnicaEuropean Advisory Group Calls for Space Autonomy, European-Led Lunar Landings in 10 Years – SpacePolicyOnline.comAll of a sudden, NASA’s return to the Moon feels rather real | Ars TechnicaInterplanetary Podcast #290 - Jupiter Icy Moons ExplorerInterplanetary Podcast #291 - JUICE - PART 2- Olivier WitasseFollow EricEric Berger | Ars TechnicaEric Berger (@SciGuySpace) | TwitterFollow MatthewThe Interplanetary Podcast (@Interplanetypod) / TwitterThe Interplanetary Podcast | Twitter, Instagram, YouTube | LinktreeThe Interplanetary Podcast | UK | Space ExplorationRecovering Queen : The Queen PodcastFollow 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

DLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, friends. Happy Thursday. I've got, like I said, on the pre-stream, I'm not happy that Jake's not here, but I'm a little bit happy that Jake's not here, because we've got an epic... That's not what you said before.

That's not what I said before you're alive, but an epic, epic cast here of the father of science himself, Matthew Russell, as I heard on a recent interplanetary pod. And the man who Elon Musk gets his Starship launch news from Eric Berger what I've seen on Twitter lately. How's it going? It's going great.

Well, it doesn't look like you were right, though, when he was reading your launch news. Or you were right at the moment, but you're not right in the long span of history. At the moment, they were targeting April 10th, and then they decided to take some more time. A quasi-week based on the tweet. So I'm doing this is the international hand gesture for Tilda.

That's Krasala week, isn't it? Yeah, that's a Tilda. I mean, seven days is technically a week, so I'm not sure you need quasi in front of it. Well, why did they put the TILBA in front then? They're not a TILDA. It's not a Tilda. Is that a Tilda? I don't think they want to get locked down to a public date yet, so they're just sort of being fairly coy.

Because once you sort of set a date, people start to make travel plans and they get mad about that. And then if you don't hit that date, then people like, oh, they missed it. another launch date. That's true. They start canceling their plans for the Space Symposium, for instance. Which nobody should do. I should mention this up front, once again, to plug, for everyone that will be at Space Symposium, I'm going to be doing a ton of live shows at the Space Syposium.

There's going to be five MECOs and then off nominal live at the Redwire booth. It's going to be crazy. That looks amazing. I have to tell you, I'm happy to have an excuse not to go to space. floating on the shit. Fine. You weren't invited anyway on any of these casts. That's how much.

If I could have made it, would I have been invited? 100%. You'd have had to pick in the litter here. Yeah, for sure. I could have been on all of them. You could have been on all the shows. Five Miko's in an off-nominal, Matthew Russell, every time. I honestly probably would have done that. Just hold the court in the middle of the conference.

It's sort of an amazing. Anyway, that's not what we're here for today. But if you are at Space Symposium, come hang out. I got stickers. I got off-nominal stickers. I got new Miko stickers. I've got little cards printed that have the show art on them. It's going to be sweet.

So come hang out. At least one of them, we'll be having some happy hour beers live for, which will be asked. And I should have mentioned, I didn't say this last week because we didn't have guests, but we'll have based right now until everyone changed their plans for Space Symposium travel, The live show will have Michael Sheets of CNBC, Lauren Grush of Bloomberg now, and then Jacqueline Feltcher of payload will be hanging out with me for the Off Nominal Live. So that will be a fun cast to crack a beer with. And on that topic, did you guys bring some drinks? I did.

Yeah. I brought mine. I went out and I brought, it's really rubbish. It's called Juice Forsyth, which is actually a play on Bruce Forsyth. which is actually a play on Bruce Forsyth. I don't know if you even know this character over there. He's a sort of major TV character over in the UK. He's dead now, but he was like an anchor for about 50 years.

But I just, the fact that it has the word juice in it. Yeah, it's the one you could find. I should be flying the flag there, you know. I don't know how Bruce Forsyte fits in, but it says something pretty grim. juicy bonus fruited IPA. I'm not sure I'm going to enjoy the drink. I'm just doing it for the show. Eric,

do you bring something Texan for us? I brought a Shiner Bach because I had my fridge and we've got an orbital flight from Texas coming up here in a couple weeks. It's happening. Got to celebrate that. We've never had a rocket, well, we can debate whether starships

going all the way to orbit. We've never had an orbital launch attempt. from Texas before. And so what better way to do it than what the biggest rocket ever built? That's pretty Texan. Go bigger, go home, right? The most Texan of all time, yeah. If you asked Chad GPD to tell you about what rocket Texas would make,

they would pretty much nail it. Yeah, it would have a hat on it as well, though, wouldn't it? I've got a somewhat thematic. I've got a hop devil, so that's a little bit. Star Hoppery. Remember Star Hopper? I can't make this focus on the devil. Star Hopper is the best. It's the best. Star Hopper is the goat. It's still there. I talked to the guy who actually was the site director when Star Hopper flew and made the decision to put it out front for everyone to see. They were going to scrap it. Well, now it's like a weather station and a Wi-Fi hotspot and all sorts of

stuff. It's also very good sort of in terms of to as a size indicator. That's true. Good shade. Good spot to eat lunch, I'm sure. And I mean, it's not small. It's pretty big if you actually walk up to it. But it just sort of sits there like this tiny little thing when you see the full stack. It was really epic, wasn't it, when that went? And it's kind of hard to remember. It's like it's trying to remember a time before chat GPT. It's a similar sort of experience. It's like life as chat. I can't, it seems a bit poxy now, the star hopper. It was 2018? 2019.

19? 19, March, wasn't it? No, I think it was July, the first 20 meter hop was like July. And then next one was August or something, 150 meter flight. I got to walk underneath it right after it flew. It was pretty cool. I think we're going to have the same kind of phenomenon, like before and after Starship's flight, because, you know, at Space Symposium and lots of space comps, you go and you listen to sort of all these plans and people are talking about, well, we're going to do this, this, this, this.

And if you sit there and think about, like, well, how does Starship either help or this particular plan or business? It's like it really completely changes almost everything, you know, all this volume, all this mess to space on a potentially fully reusable system. It just, it disrupts a lot of things. I get the sense that a lot of the industry is sort of not really calculating that into their long-term plans yet. But once it actually flies, I think that that is really going to switch. And so we're going to kind of be in a before starship and after-starship era. And to be fair, it's going to take some time for them to work the kinks out. And the first one may go boom.

But, you know, this is a pretty mature rocket that's out there on the test stand. I mean, you don't throw together some metal and some engines and just light it on fire. I mean, they've put a lot of engineering into that. Yeah, wow. It's going to be mind-blowing. It's going to blow my mind if what you're saying is even remotely true. But it's true with everything, isn't it? Like when something comes along and then everything's gone and everything's changed.

Yeah, maybe this is that moment. It has to work technically. They have to get there in terms of reusability. but, you know, once again, the habitable volume inside of starship is bigger than the International Space Station. I mean, just think about how many launches it took to get the International Space Station on orbit. It took what? 1998, 15 years? It took a long time.

Are we going to fight about space stations this early in this episode? No, we're not. I thought we were going to mention the European Space Agency. Oh, yeah, I'm ready for that part. That's for sure. I mean, I just, we did end the last time you were on about, like, well, what if you just flew a starship up and made that a space station? Not to be the guy who's like, what about Starship taking over all the jobs, but. No, we had other things to talk about.

Yeah. So why don't we do that? The European, what was this thing called? The Revolution Space. Is this, this report? You know, this report? Is that what it's called? Anyone remember what the name of it was?

Nobody's got any. I was like the, you know, you may. You make me pull up the PDF. I'll pull up the PDF. Really? We really prepared for this one of the game. Yeah. This is the thing that they want to do

moon landing in 10 years? Yeah, I thought that's what we're going to make fun of, this wish list of epic proportions. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What do you think about that, Matt? What do you think about that plan when you look at it? Do you know what?

My week, my last few weeks has been very much focusing on the ESA science. Rob. Rather than, yeah, speculative report. That my friends is an asteroid deflection. But so I'll speak candidly. First of all, let me just say, I like Joseph Hoshbacher. I think he's a good leader for Issa.

He's trying to do the right thing. But it's essentially like the United States Congress was making space policy for NASA and them alone without sort of any executive branch. And there's, you know, what, 30 members, something like that, a few dozen members. And every, like in the U.S. Congress, every state wants its funding back. And ESA, every state wants its funding back. So it's very hard to move forward with sort of projects that are really the best for ESA or best for Europe because you have to really distribute the funding.

And so they have grand ambitions. They're sort of trying to, they're looking around at the industry and they're seeing what China doing, you see the United States, see what the commercial space industry is doing and trying to figure out their place. And they came out with this report. It's called Revolution Space. I've forgotten the name. Thank you, Anthony. I'm here.

That's why I'm here. The first major suggestion was human spaceflight, developing human space, like, Europe must have the capability to put humans into space. And then secondarily, they said we should also think about doing our own. moon landing in 10 years, which is insane because that could never happen. Like, it took Europe, it's going to take Europe a decade at least to develop an upgraded version of the ARIAN 5, right? And the Arian 6 is a great rocket. I'm sure it's going to be great.

But at the end of these are pretty incremental upgrades to the existing launch system. and so anyway you're not going to the moon in 10 years you know i would be just as skeptical if the united states made the kind of claim um and so that was that struck me as really weird like you're already most of your nations or a lot of reminations are already part of the art of this program which has a decent shot of making a human landing not sure it's guaranteed um but it's you know it's got a decent shot um so so i guess you know what do you guys think about europe trying a moon landing. Isn't it one of these reports where you stick it out and you set that the bar so high

that when the bar comes down, it doesn't, it doesn't seem too bad? Is that the purpose of it? Anchoring the negotiations? Yeah. Yeah, it's, because it is ridiculous. Obviously, 10 years to get, you know, to anyone to develop a moon lander is, is, a moon landing mission is ridiculous, I would have thought. You know, you've done it once.

Well, especially since you've never launched a human into space. I mean, the United States did it in 1960. Like, they launched the Gemini missions and the Mercury missions and then went to the moon in the decade. But that was a pretty special case. And I guess I just don't understand what Europe's strategy here is, because, okay, maybe you don't like riding crew dragon to orbit. I understand that.

like SpaceX has been pretty bad for the commercial launch industry in Europe. And you don't like Elon Musk. Hey, I understand that too. But, you know, if you look at the ESA budget, which is what, about $6 billion a year, something like that? Is that the right ballpark, Matt? I don't know. Off the top of my head, that sounds about right.

Sounds about right. So, I mean, if you're going to do develop humans, spaceflight capability. Doing it the institutional way that Europe will do it, right? They're not going to go commercial crew, commercial cargo, that kind of program because they don't have the commercial space industry, frankly, to support that kind of activity right now. That is 60 or 70% of that budget for the next decade, I would guess, right?

Because crude spacecraft, crude spaceflight is not cheap. Like, yeah, was it, when did they announce the Gaganian program? It was like 2018? That sounds right, too. Or 2017. And their original goal is like to do it in 2022 or 2023. And this was like basically a Soyuz-like spacecraft, right? Very sort of stripped down, simple.

And they're just going to space and coming right back. And now they've already pushed that out to 2025. And, of course, India labor is much lower than Europe. So I just, I don't understand, A, the justification really for it. But B, if you're going to do it, you'd almost have to double ESA's budget. And like I said, I just don't see how that is a strategic capability your needs right now. Do you do feel differently about that, Matt? Absolutely not.

I mean, doubling the budget seems ridiculous. And it's clearly way more than doubling the budget, surely. It's a whole. It seems like you'd have to. 4.9 billion euro in 2023 was the budget. Okay. See, that's, that is your, that is, you would need almost all of that, I would guess. every year for a decade to get a human space flight vehicle, I would guess.

Yeah. Close to it. Especially in that model, right? Like the public-private partnership situation here with NASA is the incentives make sense for trying to get costs down for individual spaceflight units per se. But there's also the other aspect, and I think we talked about this on the space station front last time, Eric, was that doing it in that way is essentially exporting part of your budget requirements to people that think they can find a business case

for whatever that thing is. So they go and invest. In some cases, it was like, we expect 50-50 investment on some of the smaller public-private partnership deals that NASA signs or like emerging technology kind of deals. They expect 50% of the budget

to come from the private individual or company that's doing the work. So it's a way to like, create budget where you don't have enough of it in the first place, and that you don't have to get the political world to agree on putting that much budget towards it. You can basically say, well, we'll get half the amount of budget we need and then hope that there are people that take the shot and put the other half up. So, yeah, without having that to lean on to the same level with, you know, there's European

launch startups now that seem to be making pretty good progress and certainly ease our aerospace just got another $165 million. So they're doing well so far, but they're working on a one-ton watch vehicle. Doing it the old style where you had to do it all yourself as a publicly funded endeavor is enormously expensive. And, you know, Europe doesn't exactly have not a lot on their plate at the moment. There seems to be some other things going on that might require some budget. So, you know, it's not the best time to go out searching for money. No.

here's a question for you. Like NASA spending presumably is a bit that that floats above everyone's radar, right? Like if you're an average American, you think about NASA spending. Do you? Because in like in Europe and certainly Britain, I think e-sus spending is like it flies massively under the radar. No one talks about it. It's never on the news. I mean like it is never on the news.

I think we have the opposite thing here where people think that we spend way more on NASA. Everyone thinks we spend multitudes more than we do on NASA, just like socially, you know. But yeah, but yeah, exactly, but you still talk about it, presumably, you know, it's like a sort of, you know, there's a lot of national pride, I would have thought with NASA, but presumably Americans, they talk about. I mean, I'm not like shopping at whole foods and having conversations about the NASA budget. I might be, but that's just me. That's not going on next to me. Does it come up on news?

I mean, does it come up on news programs? You know, is it, you know, your sort of normal news program. There is a surprising amount of coverage of just regular commercial crew missions on my local NBC affiliate, as an example. Like, they just cover that as like a coming back from a commercial break. Here's, you know, Elon Musk, SpaceX launching some more people, which is how it's always phrased. There is definitely a current in U.S. politics where people think that we should not spending money on spaceflight because there are people starving here. We have climate change problems on Earth. Why are we wasting this money shooting it up in space and, you know, supporting

Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk and that sort of thing. But it's not a major issue. I guess the point I would make is I don't understand why ESA, which has one quarter of the budget that NASA does. And that's a political decision. They certainly could have a larger budget if Europe wanted to. They could probably afford it. But they've made that choice. Why ESA sort of would put out of the this strategic document, which basically tries to do what NASA did with developing commercial crew, which has been a decade-long program in terms of getting a replacement of the space shuttle. They wanted two providers. And then the Artemis program.

Why would you do those two same things if you don't have the budget for it? It makes zero sense. I think if I were in charge of ESO, which my French is not very good, so I don't think it would work. but if I were in charge of Visa, I would say, what are Europe's strengths? And then I would double down on those. Like, like, okay, we're not the commercial, we're no longer like, because Arian dominated commercial launch for a long time, but they don't, they don't anymore. They got a piece of the Amazon launch contract because Amazon wanted to launch any company

that wasn't named SpaceX. But they're not going to, I mean, the commercial launch business is not great for them looking forward. And so what do they do well? What could they do if launch is cheap and abundant? What could you do in space that is meaningful and additive? And I understand you keep sort of a national launch capability. I totally get that.

I think that's very specific decision. But you ought to be looking around saying in the 2030s, what could Europe be doing that other countries aren't that would be beneficial for Europe and beneficial for space over? we're all. And that's, you know, I think we are definitely headed toward, and Anthony and I've talked about this, where in the 2030s, low Earth orbit, the U.S. space stations may or may not make it, but if Europe wanted to have a space station, it could be like a thing. I mean, NASA, I think, would love to have a European alternative, right? Then it could say, okay, we're going to, our nanorax. Sorry, companies, you know, we're going to sort of rely on this European space station. or just find your strengths and leverage those and don't try to recreate what NASA has spent

10 or 15 years and a lot more money with a much more vibrant commercial space industry trying to do. It's just I don't get it. Two ways to go on that one, especially the fact that NASA has spent all this money on that and one of the two providers has worked out and the other one has not. And once again, we're in this scenario where SpaceX is such an extraordinary. outlier that it is like mind-boggling to try to make policy around. That is the exact right.

Yeah. I mean, if you look at the institutional companies in Europe, Arian group, Arian Space, that is Boeing. That is not SpaceX. I mean, I've written two books now on why SpaceX is successful. And it is because they work long, freaking hours, right? They have a dedicated visionary, personal issues aside. and like they go hell for leather at what they do.

And the really important thing. So I was talking to, to Buellan Altan, who worked at SpaceX and avionics for a long time. And he was interesting because he decided after about it at SpaceX, because he's Turkish. He lived in Germany for a while. He was going to go back to Europe

because he wanted to be closer to his family in 2014, 2015. And he said, I wanted to see how things looked on the other side of the fence. So he went and worked at Airbus for the first. six months as like head of digital transformation innovation, but basically came in to sort of try to push them forward, modernize them and make them more competitive. And he said the CEO had a great vision and I really like the leadership. The CEO would say things and they couldn't affect change, right? It just you could not move through the layers of middle management and sort of culture at the company. And for better at worse at SpaceX, which as Anthony says, is this huge outlier, you know, when Elon snaps fingers, you either fall in line or you quit or get fired.

And I mean, it's just so I guess the point I was making is that it's commercial crew succeeded because SpaceX is the way it is, right? And bowling may come along four or five years later and have a similar capability. but the European experience is going to be much more like Boeing than it is SpaceX, I think. Well, what's the chances of a European Elon Musk suddenly coming onto the scene, though? I mean, as in, you've got pockets of, you know, commercial people making rockets. If suddenly one of those goes full on Elon Musk and does a similar sort of thing, then you could imagine it might happen. But there's no sign of that, right?

But it could happen. There is no sign of it. I do wonder about European labor laws and whether sort of the really insane work culture at SpaceX and some other U.S. space companies would fly in Europe. Maybe. I don't know. And the other thing is right now,

Ariane's boss and Aryan Group have such a stranglehold on Issa's budget that it would be difficult, I think, to get the commercial cargo and commercial crew programs that got cargo and people to international space station. I mean, those were really forced multipliers for SpaceX back in 2006, 2009, and then throughout the 2010s. Just really that government funded, they weren't able to use that to really vastly move forward much more quickly than they would have otherwise.

And I don't see the political initiative for those. I mean, they're giving like $10 million launch contracts and things. like that through boost, I think, to these companies in Germany, England, in Spain, and in France. But, you know, the commercial cargo development contract basically got was $400 million, and that was back in 2006. And in 2009, they got a $1.8 billion operational contract with why, you know, 8 admission. And so that's the kind of money you really need to be putting into these commercial companies. and I just don't see the political will yet. Ashbacher, I think Joe Ashbacher, the head of Issa, would like to do something like that.

But so far, his hands have been pretty tied. Yeah, I guess it'd be harder because you'd be giving such a big chunk of any into one nation's area. It's like you have a fundamental tension right now between Germany and France, I think, and I don't understand the space politics in Europe particularly, but my basic understanding. is that some of the most promising rocket startups are in Germany, and Ariane's boss is based in France. And so you have a real tension there between the German government would like to see more ESA funding going to support the micro-launch startups, and the French government would like to keep that money home in France.

And Italy's like, does anyone need solid rocket boosters, though? Because, like, we got them. We got them and sometimes they don't blow up, right? In terms of the things that you were saying, Eric, like double down on the things that you got. and like make that shine. Tali Zelania licking their lips at that thought. Like, boy, do we make some good pressure vessels. We fly a lot of sicknesses a year.

We've got all these parts of space station built. We're building parts of the gateway. We're building parts of a space station that may or may not still have funding from Axiom. Like, there's a solid chance that the European Space Station is, whatever's Axiom is currently funding via Tali Zalania that doesn't make it, and they end up launching it later, Nauka style, hopefully better than Nauka. But, you know. I mean, they're making, they make great pressure vessels.

They could make a European commercial space station. They could make a moon base, right? I mean, build pressure vessels for the moon. They're already doing that for gateway. I mean, it's just, I would find ways to be additive rather than trying to replace that. Unless you're like, we don't trust America and, hey, I mean, if you're once looked that way at the United States over some of its actions over the last five to seven years, hey, man, I see that.

But it's difficult to go on. your own in space with a human spaceflight program in lower orbit and beyond. Yeah, I can't be. The way I see, I mean, Europeans are always going to get on better with America than they are. You know, we were handing glove with the Russians and look how that's turned out. You know, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's better than the enemy you know. It's, you know, it's a completely different. It's very clearly a bipolar world in spaceflight in the 2020 and 20s.

I mean, there's the United States, the Artemis program, and there's China's program, which they're letting Russia sort of have co-leadership on, but that's China's program. And do you want, and I just saw today, like they were trying to get Venezuela on board with, I think, their own program. But the United States is signing up people for its program and China's signing up people's for programs. So you've got to sort of pick one. And I think ESA did that, right?

They're no longer training. Astronauts are no longer training to go to the Chinese space station, which was a big diplomatic cruffle within NASA for a while, the fact that they were training to go to the Chinese space station. So I just think, I think the choice needs to be made. I've always had a fun conspiracy theory angle on that, that Samantha Cristoforetti was just like an excellent plant to go get some intel and then report back.

She was just like sent over as, you know, you know, she'll pass she'll pass muster over there, like go snoop around and then come back and debrief us on what's actually going on with the Space Station program. I don't think that's true, but I feel like I could write a good conspiracy theory around this.

I don't think that's true either. No, I don't think so, but what if it was? It would be pretty epic. I'm just saying. Well, why not? One of us is a journalist here, is all I'm saying. Foyosome records. Oh, Matt?

That's a journalist. Definitely not. I'm just a humble humble podcaster, as you can tell. Let's be real, though. Is this strategy from the high-level advisory group purely bitter that

once again, your former colonies, the United States and Canada are going to the moon before a European? It can't be. Flying on an Airbus service model, by the way. Yeah. No, I just think it's wishful thinking, surely.

It just seems because it comes as such a sort of, it's so over the top and so ridiculous. I just think it's, there's not as many eyes on it in Europe, as in it's like it's fast stuff to say it might look good in a press release somewhere, you know, and, and you know, because it, you know, it made it into my feed. Europe, Europe says it needs to develop its own human space flight capability. and it's like, well, yeah, it's not going to happen anytime soon. And it just sort of comes into the newspaper cycle and then disappears again. I think that's kind of the long term of history, they should at some point.

Like there should at some point be many spaces flying from all of the places if we're all, if our hopeful future of space turns out. But yeah, but I mean, it's like Britain, Britain was the ultimate. They gave up its spaceflight capability because it's like, why bother that we, we, we got mates over in America that will do it for us. It's literally why bother? They're much better. They're just much better.

They've got more money and that's it. Matt, is there been any rumors there about an ESA or European astronaut on Artemis 3, 4, 5? Like, what's the, I know the Japanese are negotiated and you get a person on there. And I'm wondering, is Artemis 3 going to be all American? Or is they going to try to put an international partner astronaut on that one? I would bet there's a European astronaut that stays up in orbit or something. Yeah, I, I mean, that's the feeling that I've got is that there's a European astronaut in the pipeline that's coming, yeah. But whether it's Arthur's three, I don't know.

And two would stay on Orion and two would go down on Starship. That's correct, yeah. Christina, Christofareti, Samantha Crystal Ferretti, the plant. We're sending her out there. She was spio, the Changa Rovers. I'm going to write an epic sci-fi book where she's a spy. It's great. Okay.

She's never coming on this show. No, I don't think she is. That'll just prove my point. Yeah, well, you've flown it now. She's blown it for all of us. Listen, somebody that I feel like I do have an in with is Christina Cook, because I have to pull up this photo of her just being fillied out up on the space station when she was up there last fall. while the Eagles were making a run and the Phillies were in the playoffs.

So she's welcome any time to come and just be, we could do an entirely Philly sports-themed show, and it'll be great. So just want to let everyone know that there's an Eagles fan going to orbit the moon. For the second time, I presume that Pete Conrad, the hometown boy, was pretty into Philly sports as well. But, I mean, just look at this wonderful photo

of the Eagles getting primetime. She's doing the late show with Stephen Colbert, but I'm sure she'll write over, Anthony. Hey, you know. Listen. Next on a list. We have niche pull, is all I'm saying. We got you on here.

You can write a couple books. Real journalist. If we're going to transition the Artemis 2 crew, I think they're an awesome, they're an awesome group. They all seem, I mean, I know a couple of them pretty well, and they're great people. And I just think they're very sharp and great representatives for North America. And I just, it's, it's, it feels great. I mean, it's nice to have a crew named to a real moon mission.

You know, I've been waiting 15 years. It's, it's great to see. Yeah, I mean, for me, when I saw, when I saw it announced, it was one of those things. You presumably knew it was coming up, but it is, it definitely does make it feel really quite real. Because it still seems a little bit of a fantasy to me. But then actually seeing, aren't you? Yeah, it kind of, yeah, I mean. It really does, though.

It really does kind of make it, yeah, it's like, wow, that is, and they are legends as well. They're all really cool. They're all sort of superstars, aren't they? So it's, well, particularly, I definitely do have a soft spot for Victor Glover. It was just his super smile when he was getting on the, when he was getting out of, where he was getting onto the space station out of the, yeah. He does the thumbs.

When he was announced, was that the, like, the Artemis, what was the, that event, Eric, where they were like, this is the Artemis Corps or whatever. The Artemis Cadre. Is that the one where he had that epic photo that I think was in your article? No. No, no. That was in when they announced the commercial crew teams. And he was on Artimate, he was on crew one with Hopkins.

And he came out on stage and was just super pumped up. That's him. I mean, he is an extremely positive, warm, genuine human being. And that will come through. I mean, he will be the superstar of that crew just because he is so good at speaking and just very good at convey. That's it. See, right there. You know, just very passionate about it.

And, you know, he speaks out on some social issues, too. It's going to be really interesting to follow him over the next two years to see where he takes this because he's, yeah, he's an interesting guy. It's fun to have, I feel like for so long we've been stuck in, like, having the same arguments about how Artemis should go or what should get canceled or what should get funded. And the reason I was so excited to be beyond Artemis I was to, like, can we at least talk about some new stuff for now? And I'm trying to look at this all way more optimistically that we can fight forever over, like, exactly how all this stuff should go down.

But the stuff is going down. There is a flight to the moon with four people on. on it in the near future. How near is up for debate, but like, screw that for five minutes, just to be pumped that there are people going to the moon. It's awesome. It's totally awesome. It's not that far.

If this whole thing works out, if this whole thing works out, though, like, my son Will, who's two and a half, will have this as, like, his early childhood memories of people going to the moon, and it will be epic. When he's my age, it will be like, Artemis II was an epic mission. I got a whole

thing of stamps on the wall over here from the Apollo 8, the Earthrise photo that was made of stamps and there's like the original 1960 stamps that somebody found in their attic once gave it to me and I framed it because it was epic looking. But like that's the kind of stuff that will survive if all of this stuff goes really well. And I've just wanted to linger on that for a couple of minutes. Well, every time, every time Apollo comes up, it nowadays, often people say the Apollo 8 is still their favorite mission, right? So Artemis 2, it does hold is like, it's going to be absolutely epic, isn't it?

And it's going to come right. Apollo 8 was special in that it was the first time it happened, and it was right around Christmas. And so it had a lot of sort of novelty going forward. Now, none of the people, you know, two generations were not really alive and sort of cognizant of the world around them when that happened. So there will be a lot of people for whom this is all brand new.

And NASA certainly has known a lot about promotion in the in the 50 years 55 years since Apollo 8 so I mean it it will be epic and it is I agree Matt it's coming sooner I think than we think you know the rocket even though it torched the hell out of the launch tower it's it's um I've heard the damage was quite a bit more than than was really let on but they've got plenty time to fix that and not just an elevator door um and then and then Orion, you know, Orion, they've got to put some life support stuff in it, but they've been working on that for years. I mean, it's, the hardware I think will be ready.

I think that'll be missionally flying within two years. I feel pretty good about that. What's that next gap? Yeah. It's, then there's a huge gap between Artemis 2 and Artemis 3 and then a huge gap between Artemis 3 and Artemis 4. That's going to be pretty painful. I mean, I will put the overrunner on Artemis 4 right now at about 2030, and that's a long time from

now. Yeah, I'll take the over. So that's, yeah, I mean, that's fair. I think it's going to be really interesting because if you look at that seven-year period between now and then, you know, let's try to imagine where SpaceX will be because they will be moving much faster than the mobile launch tower and the exploration of upper stage. By the way, Boeing is building. And so, I mean, are we going to see multiple starship flights around the moon between now and then? Are we going to see starships uncrewed flying to Mars by then?

Are we potentially going to see lunar landings by private astronauts before 2030? I think all of that is in play, and it will be really interesting to watch sort of the private space race set against the NASA slower development, especially we're relying. So there's this really interesting fusion in Artemis between old space, traditional space, and new space, which is. really SpaceX. And SpaceX is, you know, it traditionally has moved much faster than old space. And if they continue that, they're going to be doing these interesting things while NASA is sort of putting along, trying to get the exploration upper stage tested and, you know, yada, yada. So I just think that would be really interesting to watch. And it'll, you know, we'll have to see if, like, you know, Jared Isaac, Isaacman and his crew on Polaris 4, you know, launched the moon and are taking

pictures of, you know, the Apollo 11 landing site or something like that. Because that's, that's certainly possible if they really start cranking out starships. I mean, if starship launch operations become like the Falcon 9, and there's no reason to think they won't, right? SpaceX knows how to build launch and launch and land rockets. Then things get really interesting. Yeah, not the worst bet in the world that Jared Eisenman walks on the moon before Artemis 5, 4. not the worst plus plus five or 600 bet I would ever take

yeah yeah certainly not before three I mean SpaceX is going to go all into support NASA on three and it's not going to upstage them but I think after three all bets are off that's another scenario though like you were saying earlier that

where you're talking about just the purely like the first early launches of Starship here that it's a change moment if Artemis 3 happens on a reasonable timeline and there is a huge gap. It's not like Starship's not going to do anything in that medium time. So if there's frequent access to the lunar surface,

I don't think there's a political will to ignore that as much as there would be like, all right, maybe we should adjust these plans a little bit by a couple more EUSs, keep flying the regular SLS version and not go all in on the co-manifested payload space and just go down to the lunar surface as frequently as we can, you know, once or twice a year or something like that. that becomes a more viable talking point if you're seeing multiple starships fly out to the moon land with either payloads or people.

Yeah, I don't think it's crazy to, I mean, at this point, I would almost bet on a Saudi or a UAE astronaut walking on the moon before a European astronaut, just because of what we've seen with the Axiom missions, right? I mean, SpaceX will be selling if UAE wants to buy a lunar landing mission for $2 billion or $5 billion or whatever it ends up being. SpaceX will sell them that. And, you know, that NASA encourages its commercial providers to have other customers. So it's, and it's not like going to the International Space Station, where you've got to go through all these hoops with NASA. Like you just buy a ticket, I think, and go on Starship once the system is proven out. But again, it's going to be, it goes back to what we talked about at the beginning,

where Starship is going to have all of these disruptive effects on down the line. and sort of it's incumbent, I think, on the European Space Agency not to put its head in the sand and say, well, Starship can't possibly work, right? Because that was their attitude on Falcon 9 and reuse when they were developing Arion 6. Well, Rius is, reuse isn't a thing. Why would we build a rocket that takes that into account? And so you, it's to use the hockey, you've got to skate with the puck is going out where it's at right now. And so I would just encourage Europe and other countries with space programs to think about where the puck is going, where it is right now. Another way to get to the heart of a European other than a hockey reference for sure.

That's the way. Wayne Dreske, that wonderful member of the Commonwealth. I've only ever had a black eye from hockey. It's not my favorite. Wayne Gretzky, the great hockey and lacrosse player, two European pastimes. Not. Well, there's that. Well, I have to say, hearing Eric talk,

that's actually made me very much more optimistic about the whole future. Because there's something I've been seeing here thinking that Starsh is just preposterous and the whole landing on the moon doing the old belly flop maneuver, etc., etc. And, you know, how that looks, just looks in. it's going to look incredible if that all if that whole thing works out and like Eric is suggesting. If it doesn't work out, it will also look incredible.

If when that goes wrong, it's going to look at one of those test flights, that's just going to go, it's going to be unreal looking. We're going to have WV57 footage of it too. It's be crazy. I would just go back to the moon. Regular is probably too strong, but I don't see why they couldn't do one commercial mission a year and one mission for NASA year by like

2028. I mean, these things are built out of stainless steel. And, you know, I think it, I don't see why they can't. I mean, they're going to have regular launches. And so let's say you, you fill it up with Starlink, but you have like 30% extra payload space or whatever. You just put fuel in that. And after you release your star link up with a depot and drop off your extra fuel and then come back to Earth. I mean, it's just, they're going to be filling up these depots. And I think, you know, they've got to demonstrate on-orbit propellant transfer. I think that's really the biggest issue at this point is they've got to do that technology, and they can't really do that until they get starship flying.

But there's Europe. Let me take you back. Europe. You can make depots, fuel depots. That's what we can make. You can't, though, because you've already got a depot there. The other specialty of European fuel as of late, that's been a real specialty of Europe, Matt. Yeah, absolutely.

Fuel acquisition is. been a real strong point in the last year. But I think they'll get pretty close. I go back to, so back in 2013, September 2013, Space 6 upgraded from the original Falcon 9 1.1.1. And this was the first time they used the Merlin 1D engine. This was the sixth launch out of Vandenberg. And it was actually a super pivotal launch. But they had put all these upgrades into the Falcon 9 to make it a much more capable rocket. And it was the first time they were carrying satellites.

You remember the original Falcon 9? Didn't even have a payload varying. It was for Dragon. And they had data, a little bit of data, on some of those first Falcon 9s coming back to the atmosphere, but they really didn't know. But in September 2013, that very first Falcon 1.1 came back, and it came all the way down on the surface of the ocean.

it actually lit its engine and then it has been prominent slammed in the ocean. But they brought a fully intact Falcon 9 rocket back for the first time, you know, all the way from, you know, above like 150 kilometers. And that like, okay, starship's bigger. It's moving at orbital velocity and that's kind of a big deal. But they're not idiots, right? I think they understand the physics of this. and I just, I think they'll nail the landing of Starship in the first three or four missions

and just really then it'll be off to the races. I just, they understand, like I said, they understand the regime they're working, and I think they'll be able to sort of get it down. I mean, certainly, you know, John Young is still alive, or he's not anymore, but he was after the first shuttle launch, right? So, like, what was? Are we going with it? Well, what was, what was the strangest, the strangeest sentence?

No, I'm just saying, what was more wild? The first shuttle launch coming back through doing the same kind of atmospheric entry or the first starship coming back and doing it? You know? I mean, yeah, right? The shuttle did it? The shuttle did it. The thing that delayed the shuttle for so many years was the tiles were falling off.

And they were like, oh, Crippin and Young, why don't you hop up on in there and make your way back to white sands? And they're like, yeah, sure thing, no problem. And when they got back, they were furious that they did that. Because it didn't seem like they should have made it, but they didn't make it. And so all these years, later, I don't know. I don't think the first one will make it, but I don't, I wouldn't be shocked at all.

I wouldn't be shocked and I think that they'll get enough data that the second or third one will make it. At least a soft landing in the ocean that will be like, okay, we're ready. Let's get a platform or let's figure out a place for it to land. And how quick they gave up on the suborbital test flights once they landed one, they were like, we're good, like we've got it. We've seen the data. We're good.

We can move on with their life. that says a lot that they were that confident in it you know because there was they could have just kept doing those they had plenty of starships it wasn't like they were low on raptor engines or stainless steel so if they needed it they would have kept doing it yeah yeah I mean they could have

they could have sort of done a much perfect more perfect landing but they just decided no okay yeah I mean arguably they did two landings because there's that one that landed and then blew up and then everyone can gatekeep whether that landed or not so I think if it blows up it

It doesn't count as a landing, but that's just me. Wow. If you were an astronaut on board, I think you'd probably think the same. Yeah, me too. How quick can they make the debboarding process? Everybody to go? Like a Southwest flight up in there. Absolutely. Oh, yes.

I'm going to try. This isn't very good beer. It's got a good title. No. Should we talk about juice a little bit? Let's talk about juice, Matt. You've been doing some juice specials. I've enjoyed, I do have to plug your, so you've had a two-part juice special.

And one of them was fairly informative in the era of what adolescent boys in England were into back in the day in poster shops, which was an unexpected little benefit of the juice episode. Oh, yeah, forgot about that. Yeah, but so you're going to be doing the commentary. of the show around the juice launch? Tell us about it. Yeah, so the science section, after the launch campaign

and from acquisition to solar array deployment, the sort of two big milestones once it's launched, once Ariane 5 has done its job, which, you know, it should do, I hope. We should step back and just say,

this is a launch next week. It's the penultimate, it's a penultimate, it's a penultimate, area of five launch, right? And so that means, second to last. So I always bring a journalist, folks.

We're taking it right back. This is the first probe that Europe has built that's going to the outer solar system. And it's going to be freaking cool because it's going to look at the icy moons of Jupiter, as it says in the name. And then after a few years sort of zipping around the Jovian system, it's going into orbit around Ganymede,

which is this fascinating, one of the sort of four big moons about around Jupiter. And it's going to be there about the same. I'm sorry? That'll be a first. No one's managed to get around a orbit around something that's not, you know, another moon. That's exactly right. No probe has ever gone in orbit around a moon around. Yeah, exactly right.

And that's super cool. And, you know, it's just, it's going to be awesome because in about a decade, we're going to have juice and we're going to have the Europa Clipper, which NASA's building, you know, flying, that they're not orbiting the moon. They're sort of doing flybys of Europa. And we're just going to have all this information about Jupiter and its moons that we really haven't had before. It's going to be an amazing time.

So I think it's a super cool mission. And this, like I said, it's, this is the kind of thing, absolutely the European space agency should be doing. Yeah, it's quite strange because it's, it's snuck up the juice mission. I felt. And yet it's their large class. It's the first of the Cosmic Vision last large class missions. You know, it's an absolute bigon.

And like you said, you know, it's not often that the European space agency get something out to the outer solar system. So it's, you know, where it's the only time, in fact, they've done it on their own. So it's, it's. Yeah, good hits and rides. Yeah, I've done a lot of hitch and rides. But the largest solar panels, you know, it's going to be, you know, if all goes well, it's going to be absolutely epic.

And yeah, that whole mission actually coming together with Europa Clipper and Juice being there at the same time kind of gets them kind of where Nasser and Issa wanted to be in the first place when they were sort of designing the mission together in the first place. And obviously the scientific community seems super stoked. Super juiced. The whole Jupiter, super juiced about it. It was because we're going to know more about Jupiter than anything else at the end of it.

like that sort of five years of data that's going to, in the 30s that we're going to get there, presumably is going to be just a treasure trove. How confident, Matthew, would be that this is going to work? And I don't mean that pejoratively. But like if JPL was doing this big cost plus contract to do a Marslander, you know, as an American, I feel like 90 or 95% confident that this is going to work pretty well, because they've done it before and, you know, they've got some expertise. And most of their deep space missions have worked before.

But, you know, you do get problems. And so I'm just wondering, like, is, are you, like, 100% confident, like, 70% confident? Like, how good do you feel about juice hitting most of it, science objectives? I actually feel really confident. I think, like, the hard, obviously the dangerous bit is around 5, and it did an epic job for James Webb, you know. So there's no real reason to think that they're going to, you know, it's going to do anything different for, for, for, for, juice. I mean, there's some massive challenges with

Juice that isn't going to, the Clipper, I don't think has, because Clipper has a slightly more direct route to the outer solar system because it's got a more powerful rocket launching it. So it's, but the fact that you know, the fact that Clipper's got to go over to Venus, get boiling hot and then go out to the outer

system. Juice on the juice does, yeah. Yeah, juice goes around Venus and it's going to go super hot and then go out of the outer Jupiter system. And, and then go out of the outer Jupiter system. means that obviously there's a whole heap of design things that have had to be done to kind of get over extreme heats and extreme colds and everything still work and massive solar panels and

things like that that have you know solar panels of the size and no one other than the international space station is flying with so it's there's some there's clearly some we're in america matt we need football field units please it's uh yeah 85 square meters that does yeah any either kind of football. How many football fields is 85 square? How many soccer fields? How many soccer fields big is this? God knows.

Oh my God. Yeah, no. Yeah, we don't seem to measure things in soccer fields even. But they change. A football field can be a different size. There's no actual default size. I like that. It's on a spectrum.

I like that. Yeah. So I think I'm in answer to Eric's question, I'm pretty confident. I'm pretty confident. And they've got like an eight-year cruise to iron out any problems. That seems to be, you know, after that, after my little chat with Olivier yesterday, who's the project scientist, it was like, yeah, that entire eight years is going to be taken up

with planning the whole scenario when they're there. You know, it's going to be a lot of stuff to do while they're there and a lot of planning for that. And it's going to take that, you know, it's going to take, you know, it's going to take, you know, all hands on deck for even that cruise phase. So it's not, it's, yeah, I'm pretty confident. You know, because there's, there hasn't, we've had some really good successes, I think European Space Agency with things like Rosetta and things like that, you know,

I think it's, there's, there's, there's, that's what we do in the world. Huygens is one of the goats, for sure. Yeah. Yeah, and Rosetta was amazing too. I mean, there's sort of the images of that, that were just fantastic. And then when they found it and it was like on its side, remember that the photo of like the It was a good one. The Filet Lander, yeah.

Yeah, that's right. I should know because it's like most of the root of the city I live in, but it should be a thing that I'm an expert in. But, you know, I don't think it's pronounced Philly, the Phillylander. We need to wrap this up because I'm sure Christina Cook is calling your cell phone right now. She's calling it right now. Can't wait until this show ends. All right, so you're going to be in Dermstadt.

Is that right? Was that where you going? Damsstadt. I'm going to Damsstadt. Yes, and it'll be ESA TV. And we can watch me. Is there a live chat? We can heckle you?

Interview. Yes, there will be. So you can interact via social media. Nice. So, yeah, you can try to see if you can put me off my stride. Let's throw them off. Won't be hard because that's the thing about those broadcasts. You've got a billion things going on.

your ears as well. You know, you've got the... We will all be in the chat, saying how many soccer fields? How many soccer fields? How many soccer fields? I think I'll brush up on my soccer fields. You should drop one soccer field reference on the live stream. Yeah, I will. Okay.

For you, for you, I'm going to do it. For you Americans listening. For you in particular, I'm going to, I'm going to work out how many soccer fields. Yeah, how many soccer fields? Not the fields. Football fields. America Football Wheel It takes the solar panels

Yeah, I'll do it I'll do it for you We appreciate that Yeah I appreciate that Eric You just mentioned You've been working on your book a lot

Is there any plugs Or you got some more to go first It's still It's still a little more than a year From publication So I don't want to talk about too But too much But it is about the Falcon 9

It's great It's lots of good stories About how the sausage was made And you know It never stopped being scrappier insane behind the scenes. I am working on a story right now about the ULA Centaur anomaly that happened a week or so ago.

So hopefully maybe tomorrow or early next week I'll have something on that. Nothing too in depth. No one is really talking much on the record, but there are some interesting tidbits that I've sort of collected about that. And then I will be going to Brownsville Stott next week for the Starship launch. I don't know what to do with that. Eric will not be on the live shows that we're doing at the Space Symposium, by the way. It says he is specifically avoiding the space symposium since I decided to go this year.

So, yeah, once again, it's going to be pretty great. We've got Lori Garver's going to be hanging out with us for one of the episodes, along with Karina Dries, who's the president, the Commercial Space Flight Federation. We've got Caleb Henry, who actually, I think we'll be on the show next week. out to lunch today and it convinced him to come hang out with me next week. He'll be there with me talking with Peter Beck of Rocket Lab and Jonathan Bayliff, who's the CFO of Redwire, which should be very interesting. We'll talk about finance and strategy, and both of them are some of the more stable, spacked companies. So it'll be interesting to chat about what they're working on. But I mean, it's better than Virgin Orbit at this point. So that's going on this week. We didn't even talk about

that, but that's a whole thing. So, manage and got off.com slash live. I have all the details there, and certainly people can hang out at the All Phnominal Discord, which both of you have occasioned upon. I think you both have accounts, but, you know, it gets pretty wild in there. Don't go in there when you're on your live stream, Matt. We'll be heckling too much, if that's the case. Don't turn on your notifications, for sure. Oh, well, I'll have Discord, though.

Don't worry. All right. Thank you both for hanging out. You are the best. helping me pass the time without Jake, who I think is still like three weeks away from returning. So it'll be a while. Yeah, two weeks, three weeks, it'll be a while.

But we'll be here. So thanks again, guys. Oh, thank you. Peace.