Off-Nominal - 111 - Extended Warranty, New Fairings

Episode Date: June 9, 2023

Jake and Anthony are joined by Joey Roulette of Reuters to talk about the state of NASA’s fixed-price contracts in the face of the Starliner situation and lunar lander awards.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 111 - Extended Warranty, New Fairings (with Joey Roulette) - Off-NominalT+252: NASA Selects Blue Moon for a Second Lunar Lander, But is Facing a Grim Budget Reality - Main Engine Cut OffNASA inspector general faults agency on SLS booster and engine overruns - SpaceNewsAnalysis: Boeing, Northrop face obstacles in commercializing flagship US rocket | ReutersAfter years of turmoil, Boeing’s Starliner capsule is set for a do-over - The VergeBezos' Blue Origin wins NASA contract to build astronaut lunar lander | ReutersMichael Sheetz on Twitter: “@offnom per Joey's query (it's better today thankfully)”Follow JoeyJoey Roulette (@joroulette) / TwitterJoey Roulette - ReutersFollow 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, friends. Happy Thursday. Hello. How's it going? We're back. Anthony, you're looking a little orange. Is everything okay? And up in the Atlantic United States right now, what's going on here? Well, listen, last night, sometimes yesterday afternoon, about this time,

Philadelphia took the torch of being the worst air quality in the world. And now we've sent it on down the Mid-Atlantic a bit to where our friend Joey Roulette is sitting in D.C. So I may look orange. It's a hack that I have orange curtains in my office, though it was this color most of the day. But Joey, how are you down your way? Yeah, it's great, great arrow down here. Thank you for the nice miles from up there in Canada. Yeah, I don't know.

It's not that orange, as orange as it was in New York. Thank God I'm not up there. We'll have to ask sheets how he's doing up there. But, yeah, it's fine down here. I think it's fine. We're all good here. How are you? Everything's burning, kind of.

Is this funny because this was, I have this distinct memory from like the first, first or second version of Apple Watch software where there was, you know, they launched it. They had all these different complications you could put on their watch. And one of them was air quality. And there was not a humidity complication. And I was like, there has never been a clear sign that something was designed in California. than there being an air quality complication and no humidity.

And so this is the first time that I care about it. I'm like, oh, look at that. Like all these years later, I still remember that. Yeah, I haven't been, I've never seen like the air quality warnings before until like recently. And I was like, what the hell's going on? But yeah, now it's like we're all familiar with it. Thanks to Canada. Yeah.

Good work, Jake. Yeah. You are directly responsible. We just have all the trees, man. You guys are the ones burning them. I will say there are certain streets in the city that definitely smell better when you have burning pine smells instead of whatever was going on before. So there's a sub-spons in the city that are an upgrade. Oh, man.

Okay. What are we drinking today? What do you got? Joey, you got something fun? We see you're at the office here, so we'll see. What's going on with you? I got coffee and then I have classified drink in here. Okay.

It's I-TAR. I-TAR. So, yeah, I'll leave it at that. It's a little I-TAR mixie. I love it, love it. Anthony, what do you got? Oh, last week I was drinking a Cape May brewing beer, and I'm working my way through the mixed box,

and today I've got a Cape May white. because boy, have there been a lot of sharks recently in Jersey, Jake. I don't know if you know about this, but... You have sharks in Jersey? Generally, yes.

This year there's more than usual so far, so that's fun. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, there's a little great white bite, you know, the beach town north of where I go, so that was fun. People just taking a lot of pictures

them off their boats. So, got a little jaws situation. Just getting ready to roll here. Okay. Okay, right? How about you? I went very, I went extra today.

Look at this. Wow. Yeah, so I wanted to try this. It's a nice theme here. Yeah. Smoky, yeah. So I wanted to try this out, which is a, I'm on a tamarind kick right now,

but this is tamarind liqueur. There's a lot going on in that label. Right? Yeah, it's great. Yeah. You know. Yeah. Yeah, it's good.

So, yeah, it's kind of tamarindy. It's a mango juice, some lime juice, some rum and some grenadine and stuff. So, yeah. It's very tropical today. If I wasn't in the office, I'd probably have some kind of mescal drink. I've been on a mescal kick in, like, guava and nectar, too. It's a really good combination. So with some of it.

Jake, you got to throw that in your next couple of recipes there. I do have a little bit of mescal in a bottle somewhere. I could probably. I need to get into that more. I need to try some more stuff out. Because I really like scotch, but I can't really drink it. It makes some sort of like mild allergic reaction to it. If I drink a glass of scotch, it feels like I have a cold the next day.

It's like bizarre. But MedsCal is like kind of scratches the same itch, you know? Like it's got that smoky, like hard, like just a little bit of glass. Be good. My mic, no good. Let me tighten this up a little bit. Oh, once again. Closer?

Closer? I don't know. Tap it. Is it happening? Jake's yeah I guess we are getting I don't know it sounds a little less spacey maybe the I don't know whatever this is the third show in the row we've started right off the top with Jake's audio

so this is going great we definitely practice a lot between should I do it like this like right out of your glasses isn't that a Joe Barnard moved like I think so out of context Joe Barnard would definitely have a clip of that anyway Jake, what are we here to talk about? Okay, so we have, this is one of those shows where we have to work something out because we are like all in a tizzy over a whole bunch of news

and there's feelings and there's stuff going on. So we've had some relevant fixed price contracting. So it's like a policy show we're going to go into today. But fixed price contracts at NASA, you know, NASA has had a love affair with them for the last a few years and we're starting to see more and more with them roll out. We got a brand new Lunarlander that just rolled down the pipes. We got some questions about Starship this week and how that contract is going. We've got Dragon killing it and Starliner not so much killing it. We've got all these new stuff, suits and stuff. And I guess the big question is like,

is it working so far? I don't know. And so we've got limited results as far. As far as far as like, you know, the migration to fix price contracts go. And I don't know, it's kind of, there's some interesting stuff with it. And I just, I think we're just going to unpack that today. So I don't know, Anthony, do you give us a spot we should start with this or I already want to just kind of like, I don't know, pick something and only that like I started it because everyone was mad at me for saying that the Lunar Landers were a pay to play situation. And everyone has been not necessarily mad at me.

but mad at a viewpoint at which I was passing along that I heard from many different people in talking about these current contracts. And I've yet to be thoroughly convinced that, I guess the base premise, Joey, to catch you up previously on fights in the off nominal discord. So I and Jake have both said that, like, yeah, to win these contracts, you definitely have to have money to pay for your half plus of the contract. And that feels kind of weird in some ways. and at the same time, NASA doesn't really have another option because of the budget scenario that they're facing. So they either can go and do lunar landers this way or there's no lunar landers. It's not really a – it's kind of a false choice unless they're willing to take on the political maelstrom that is trying to cancel something else, be it commercial space stations, the rest of the ISS, Gateway is the easy target that I've found once again.

and I guess that's kind of, is that catch us up on the previously on? Yeah, I think so, yeah, because the Lunar Lander was definitely the kicker for this, right? And so I don't know, so maybe we want to start with that because do you want to maybe clarify what the pay-to-play argument is supposed to be?

Because I think that's where we got. The only way I will do that because the rest is pedantic BS. is to run your own little exercise in your brain. If Dynetics bid the same lander, and they said, this costs $100 million, and the rest of it we've got entirely, would NASA have picked that one?

Or would they have said, no, we're going to pay $3.4 billion, which we do not currently have, to Blue Origin and the national team. And where you land on that decision, I think clarifies exactly what I mean by pay-to-play, which is you have to be, NASA's banking on there being

a handful of people that are committed enough to these projects that they'll effectively double NASA's budget and be able to fund lunar landers. And if Dynetics was the one that had that and if they said yeah, we're going to pay 90% of the budget, NASA would have said, sure, great.

So, you know, you still have to, now, if they did that their first bid and it was like, this actually doesn't close in the laws of physics, then NASA couldn't have picked that because it would technically not work, right? You can't say, I'm going to use warp drive to get to the moon and it costs $100 million. But you can say I'm going to use a traditional lander.

And if it works technically, then NASA would have picked you. So apply whatever terminology you want. Joey, where do you land on our pedantic bullshit? Yeah, I mean, valid points there. I mean, the business case and the strategy of the contractor to, you know, sell to other customers is kind of like a big deal for NASA too, which is all, you know, about the money too, right? Like if you have a way that you can sell and, you know,

make revenue from other areas, then, you know, NASA likes that. So I think, you know, the question that you asked, like, if Dynetics had pitched the same exact lander, but $100, like, way less, would they have gone with that? I mean, I don't know. Like, that's a, it's just a really interesting question,

because NASA is really obsessed with lower costs these days. But going back to, like, commercial crew, when NASA picked both SpaceX and Boeing, they could have just picked SpaceX. They could have just picked Boeing, but they needed the redundancy and they paid for two contracts instead or for that redundancy.

So I don't know, like while they are, or back then they were probably, you know, still concerned with cost, which was like while they were really kind of kicking off the fixed price momentum there, maybe they were still kind of willing to pay a little more. But I don't know. I think like a good bigger question is like,

you know, is the market actually going to take places or is NASA going to have to keep kind of like funding this more and more in the future? Like, what is NASA expecting from this given like the customers that were, the private customers that we're seeing with these spacecraft that have been funded for these Express contracts? But I don't know. It's still developing a lot. But yeah, I feel like everything I just is pretty obvious. Yeah. No, and I think that's an interesting point, right? Because that, you can argue against us to say, like, of course the companies are putting in money. They're developing a product that they want to sell.

Like, every company has to pay R&D. Like, why would we expect NASA to cover 100% of the R&D bill? Like, obviously, right? But I think there is a bit of a different, like, we can't just pretend that because it's a fixed price contract, that it's like just like any other government procurement. Like, it's not, you know, even if the contracting mechanism is the same, this isn't like buying pens from the company that sells pens and NASA doesn't have to pay R&D on the pens because pens are invented and they just buy the pens. Like it's not it's not that kind of market,

right? It's a fully different thing. It's a it's a very specialized market with as far as we know right now like one-ish customers. And and there's not going to be to some rush of people that are going to come in and kind of share all these R&D costs, right? So the the paid a play thing where it like resonates with me is that now that these are done you know we've got SpaceX and blue origin for example on these two lunar flander contracts the next one comes down the pipe uh you know let's the lunar whatever the next acronym is the next contract right um who's going to bid for that right who's going to who's going to bid for the next one is dynanics still going to bid maybe they've lost two in a row now maybe they've maybe they're done um is there some

new entrants that's going to be able to come in and, you know, compete with SpaceX or Blue Origin to, against, you know, against two big companies that already have a leg in the door, I don't know, maybe. We're kind of seeing that happen with, like, Sierra Space is now trying to get into, into the commercial crew stuff, right, in the commercial car. So maybe. But it does definitely give them an advantage, right? SpaceX and Blue have a huge advantage now, kind of locking up any future government

contracts. And so that's where the paying it's like, you know, they throw in a little money now, but then they're locked in, right? So that's, I think that's where the criticism resists are. I don't know if I fully agree with that criticism, but it does resonate to me there at least. Yeah.

And I mean, NASA's also kind of taking a risk on these fixed price contracts too. Like the companies are a little bit, but so is NASA because so much of the rationale depends kind of on like, you know, other customers being able to these things. NASA wants to stimulate commercial marketplace by allowing the companies to own these spacecraft,

and then they can sell to other people. But if no one's there to buy it or if there's not enough customers to buy this other than NASA, then what does that leave NASA with? It leaves, you know, the companies with a good deal of power to negotiate prices or contract modifications after that initial award. So, you know, if NASA really has like an interest, of course, in seeing, other customers come along to pay for these rides, to pay for other rides. Because if it doesn't happen, then the companies are going to need more money. And with the fixed price contract, they'll have the power to kind of be like, well, this is our craft.

We're selling it to you. So we're going to, I mean, this hasn't really happened yet, I don't think. But I mean, if the company owns a spacecraft, they're selling it to the agency. So they have, I think, a little bit of power to set the price. So. Yeah. Yeah. I struggle sometimes at the comparisons to like. No, no, I just, the comparisons to commercial cargo and crew, I always struggle with a little bit because these aren't necessarily the same kind of fixed price contracts across the board, right?

The commercial cargo and crew ones were like fixed price, we paid some development cost in as NASA, and then you give us the fixed price on the actual mission part. And certainly it was foreseeable that a company like Boeing would have to spend a billion dollars of their own money to make the ends meet on the program. But it wasn't a contractual obligation in the way that these fixed-price public-private partnerships are different because you are expected to have this level of investment from your own business perspective in order to fund the thing because you have to then go off and find other customers. And that was the hope with cargo and crew. There was hope that, you know, they would sell like Dragon Labs or whatever on the cargo dragon front. And it has panned out that they've sold commercial cargo or commercial crew dragon missions. But that was like a hope, not a something between an expectation and a contractual requirement of the program, right? So it is, they are different.

They do have the same fixed price words in it, but they have other words in the contracts too. So I find like the direct comparison is kind of interesting because, to put it in perspective of the recent examples with Starliner, right? If Boeing was going into that program up front saying, we're getting $4 billion from NASA and we're going to put in $4 billion of our own, their plans would be different with Starliner long term. It would position it differently in that if they got into the position they're in now, they would either have canceled the program entirely because it's their own program,

or they would see enough upside in the other business opportunities that it would be worth pushing through this stuff to, get to. And now we're at the point where they're a billion dollars in of their own money and they have six missions on contract. And like, that kind of feels like it. So it's, I guess now I'm convincing myself that the other model is better because it leads to more and more, not just like monetary investment from the company, but like, you know, execution commitment to, to the company itself. The other model being what? requiring, you know, investment from the company that's going to win these contracts because they are specifically need to go after other business.

It's just a delicate balance between creating a race to the bottom pricing mechanic that we've seen with like commercial lunar payload services. And, you know, trying to get to realistic pricing in a case where you've on ramped so many competitors in that instance. And they're all saying like, well, we're just going to get an anchor tenant in NASA and then go off and sell. bunch of customers and it's like all right did you get anyone that's not like putting bitcoin on the moon yet or what i don't know it's just it's it's interesting that there are like three different variants of this all with their own shortfalls or like areas of criticism so yeah like it does kind of feel like betting at this point like which one is the best model for the future yeah yeah and i i wish i like could predict which one was but i mean i don't know like

I think with SLS going to a services type contract, too, it's like, what the hell is going to happen with that? Like, what is the plan? What does NASA actually believe is going to happen as it's trying to reduce the cost by 50%, which is like crazy? You know, I think 25% would be crazy. But 50% cutting the production costs in half is just like, wow. I mean, like, capping the price on what engines cost would be crazy. That would be a good start. Yeah. Can you tell us about this story? What is going on here? How did you work your way into this one? And what did you find out?

The engine one or the SLS cost reduction one? Yeah, the commercializing the SLS thing. Well, that's been going on for like two years. Like NASA's been trying to work out like some kind of plan with Boeing and Northrop and Airjet to, you know, switch to this commercialization contract for. a while since like mid early 2021. And a while it got like a few months ago, Boeing had a statement where they said, we believe SLS will be appropriate or good for the Space Forces Phase 3 National Security Space Launch competition. And I was like, oh my God, what? Like that's a pretty bold statement.

Like are you guys pitching it to them? It was very interesting. I had a little like story on it. Irene Klotz from Aviation Week did too. and she actually was the one who got that initial kind of statement out of borrowing. She had talked to somebody else, but then I'd followed up with going. And so, yeah, I thought that was interesting. And it kind of got me curious, like, well, what's happening with the cost reduction stuff

that's been happening for two years? I had some, like, FOIA records that I got that, like, just showed that they had been working on this for a while. They'd been, like, little tag-up meetings that were going on years ago. And now we saw that, like, solicitate the sole source intent a few months ago that came out. or like last year. So, yeah, I was like, I wanted an update. Like, where are the plans?

Like, what is Boeing doing to bring the costs down? Where do things stand right now? Who's pitching what on what? And, like, no one really wanted to talk about it. Boeing declined to talk about specifics. Northup wasn't talking about specifics. They were like, oh, it's still under negotiation, which is like, okay, sure. But, like, is there anything that you guys have?

Do you have any kind of, like, agreed on, like, plan that might happen? But there wasn't much. And I think an interesting part of the story is like what is going to happen to the Marshall Space Flight Center because that is like the big kind of SLS hub. But yeah, so I mean the story was really just laying out the challenges that lie ahead for Boeing, which are quite clear. It's like if you want to sell SLS to other customers, who are those customers, the most likely one would be DOD because they have the deepest pockets. And I talk to them and they're like, I mean, we don't really need it, you know. These are like the most savage quotes from the TOG. Yeah, I mean, like, it makes sense, though, like, because we saw phase two, like,

with the recent competitions, like, NASA, they've all been about, like, low-cost stuff. Like, they've been trying to look for deep rockets, reusability, launching quick, responsive. And that's not SLS right now. It's not launching quickly. Production line is very slow, and it's going to be a pretty big effort to speed that up, especially when they're trying to get Block 1B online in a few missions. So it's not really like SLS is emerging from development, and it's now ready to get in this production mode

because there are updates that are going to happen in the future. How does that jive with the commercialization effort? There's just a lot of questions. So, yeah, the story just kind of laid out, you know, the challenges that it faces. Even if there was demand, like even if the DoD really did want this, if they had some, like, classified big payload mission that they've, want to send to the moon or something on an SLS rocket, when would that launch? Would it have to disrupt NASA's Artemis schedule? Because SLS is pretty booked, you know, like we got to get

to the moon because of China, right? Like, we can't disrupt that schedule. So would that ironically, like, count, like, what's more important, this, like, theoretical classified payload or, like, sticking to the moon schedule? It would create a whole bunch of problems. So, yeah, it's, in the The interesting part though is that NASA sees generating the commercial demand for SLS is kind of key to bringing the costs down. Jim Free was like, if we can get Boeing to flow more SLS cores through the factory because of other demand, that'll help them streamline production and bring the cost down. But who's going to help them do that?

Maybe it'll be like foreign countries or something. There might be some regulatory hurdles there, I don't know. But what foreign countries, what other agencies would want to do that? I don't know. I don't know. I just kind of like rambled there. But that's kind of the thing about this, right? It's like, oh, brave.

Yeah. If we do this and then another thing happens and then, you know, maybe we could find a slot. Yeah. So, I mean, like this story has been crazy since it first was announced that they were like going to try and quote unquote commercialize this rock. it, right? Because, so, okay, so the 50% cost reduction, you're right, is like insane. Like, that is a very ambitious cost reduction for this program, right? And your article quotes, $2 billion is like the base price. It's like, we could get that down to $1 billion. Okay, that would be amazing. But I have so many criticism to that because like, the first of all, it's

billion dollars. Like, people that have enough money to spend a billion dollars didn't mind the two billion dollar price tag. That was fine. It's the same ballpark. Yeah. So like, okay, so if it's two billion dollars, I don't know if it is, then getting down to one.

So yeah, who is it? Who is buying, who's like SLS one billion? Oh, I want that. Oh, well, now that it's one billion. You know what? I did, I can make that business thing turn out. Because the, the, the, you know, D just bought the fanciest Falcon Heavy imaginable. Just the Falcon Heavy at the top of the service package,

extended warranty, new farings, all the, everything you can buy for this rocket, and it was like $300 million, right? So, okay, so are they going to spend another twice, like three times that much to get to slightly bigger? I don't know. So I don't know who that customer is. I don't even know if that customer is at $500 million, do you the honest. I don't know how low you'd have to go before this rocket person makes sense. But then the other thing is, okay.

like imagine a world where Falcon Heavy doesn't exist and and they get it down to $500 million. So they tell like. And Starship won't exist. Like, yeah. And Starship doesn't exist. And so the DOD is like, you know what? Okay, we'll buy like four of these or something. Sure.

We'll pick up a few of these. Does four extra SOSs in this decade really give you any kind of scale benefits to the price? Like doesn't it really? Like they're going to buy six. Does going up to 10 do anything? It is a very complex vehicle. And it takes, yeah, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to, the GAO and the OIG say it themselves,

that it's like hard to even track what it takes to build these things. It's a very complex system. So really understanding what would need to be shaved off the whole production process is like a whole other challenge. But yeah, the two billion number estimate, you know, we don't really know for sure exactly what that is. It's 2.2 to be exact. But like, yeah, there's a lot of uncertainty there.

And when you ask NASA, NASA won't say a number because they say like everything's intertwined with development. It's hard to track. Yeah, because they don't know. But like if they have a target to cut the cost by 50%, what do they intend to cut by 50%? Like, what are you talking about? Like, give me that number and they don't give me the number. So, but I don't know. There's a lot of nuance.

and there's a lot of weird complexities to it, but it's just a crazy challenge. A few angles to this. Number one, if the new deal was, okay, SLS is $2.2 billion per launch, we will pay you that every time we launch

an SLS, and until then the SLS program gets zero recurring dollars in the budget. Workable situation. Because then a year delay doesn't just add like one point, whatever billion dollars per year going off the window to the SLS budget. We just, you know, have a little account that collects interest up until the next launch and then it goes out the door. Great.

The other thing is, is this, is this some 4D chess on either part? Like, I have two different 4D chess angles, okay? 8D chess we're up to here. Boeing 4D chess angle is, okay, let me back up a minute. If you were to buy a launch for not Orion on SLS today, you're going to get like Delta 4 fairings, right? That's the farings that would go on SLS today. So, congrats, you've got

like a couple more tons of payload, but you have the same farings. So Boeing 4D Ches could be, all right, well, we talked to the DOD, and the only way they said that they would buy this launch is if we had those 8.4 meter farings or 10 meter farings, and that requires the new upper stage for SLS, which needs to

get locked into development schedules. So we're going to go down that path because that's the commercially viable one. That one, that 402, chess kind of checks out to me. 40 chess on NASA's side is like, boy, did we do a lot of studies and this thing's just not commercially viable. We need to move in the new direction of launches that are commercially viable. Just lay a little bit more groundwork for can we move beyond SLS at some point in our life. That one's less inspiring to me. I'm more in on the lobbying

for the exploration upper stage. The DOD customer for the exploration upper stage. Yeah, if you can find a single person somewhere in the DOD that's like, I have this space telescope that I can't even tell you one thing about. Just trust me, it's amazing. Aliens have landed on Earth, and we have alien bodies and spacecraft somewhere out there. But I can't show you any evidence of this, but I would like to do some of this alien technology on an 8.4 meter faring on SLS. Just trust me.

The whole UAPE alien stuff is really just a DOD. It goes back to SLS. It's an SLS lobbying effort. Yeah, yeah. as believable as everything else for sure. Yeah. I think the latter 40 chest move that you mentioned, would it be accurate to say the theoret,

like that's like a nice way of closing out SLS in the long term, like in a phased way? Is that what you're saying? Yeah. Like you're going to need some supporting paperwork. You're going to need a paper trail about like, did you put in the work that this is the right decision to cancel SLS? you need some legally defensible study paperwork.

So if you can do that by way of like both at the same time putting pressure on Boeing and Northrop to ask for less money for SLS. NASA would be like, we tried. Yeah, like look, they just, they couldn't make the numbers work for us. And, you know, we got Starship launching a lunar lander. We have New Glenn launching a lunar lander at this point. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, all we can do is speculate because no one's really telling us.

what is going on or what like the goals for Boeing and Northrop can be like what they actually believe is possible. But yeah, under the Epoch contract, the commercialization contract, the plan is to do four missions after Artemis 4. And then there's an option to go to Artemis 14. So like how confident is NASA in its ability to execute that option? Would it do that? Yeah, I don't know. It's interesting. And what at that point, by Artemis 5, what are the capabilities of Starship? How much has Starship proved itself? Have any other companies unveiled any bigger rockets?

Which I think could probably happen. Or some majors developing its bigger, RD-180 replacement. And I think there might be some other plans across the industry too. But yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. A lot could happen in the next decade. Because Artemis 4 is, what, 2029, 2030?

probably a few years behind, you know, later than that. So there's a lot of time for other things to happen. There's a lot of other reasons that could pop up to cancel the SLS. So, I mean, even if it was just a move to move it to fixed price and to get like the best possible deal on what fixed price would be for this vehicle, maybe that alone is worth it, that like you free up a line item in the budget and you still have to budget for it occasionally, but, you know, at least it's not an ongoing. Because that's been the mystifying thing, right?

As these delays pile up and the Orion light item is getting 1.3 billion a year and it was supposed to fly the mission that's flying now five years ago. Where did all those five years of $1.3 billion go? Like, that's the part that could be solved by just saying, okay, great. Like we've developed SLS. It's moving to fixed price. And it's a spiky expense rather than ongoing. And if you have to do this to get to that point, maybe that alone is. But is that as politically risky as anything else?

Do we think, just random question, do we think NASA will be dependent on SLS by like Artemis 4? Like by those missions, do you guys think NASA will need SLS? Like imagine if it just vanishes, what will happen to the program at that point? Just random question. I don't know.

I think it's still pretty, yeah, I still think it's pretty integrated. Like, I think even just the most logical people would, would still be pretty nervous about depending on, well, I mean, you could probably concoct some sort of dragon meets starship in orbit and go from there. And like, that'll work. But they're the only people that can do that. So again, this, like, does that become a fixed price contract, right? Where we bought resource source from the only person that could provide this and they told us what the price was going to be? Like, you know, I don't know. So it's,

it's an interesting one for sure. And yeah, if NASA has an absolute need for SLS, under a fixed price contract, technically Boeing and Northrop or Deep Space Transportation LLC could negotiate a higher price or like a big firm price that NASA would have to stick to because it is dependent on SLS. So in that case, you could assume fixed price would save money, but in that case it wouldn't, I guess. But if deep space transport has more power to demand a certain price. Yeah. Yeah, when the fixed price contract ends up being just whatever the Orion SLS annual fee was per launch, then you're just like, cool. I'm glad we put all this time on the contract. Yeah, but I would take that deal today.

I would take that deal today because I would say, great, I'll pay you that per launch. And if you can get to once a year, I'll pay you that. But guess what? I'm betting that you won't make it once a year. That's what I'm saying is that at that point, you're doing a straight up prop bet. Are you going to be on schedule or not? So that's a win if that's what happens. I do have a cynical way to look at this too.

Maybe this is 12. Were these all non-cynical takes? Yeah, I know. I'm sorry. This is not a cynical conversation. Joey just posited, what if SLS disappeared like David Copperfield? Yeah, yeah, definitely a hypothetical situation. Okay, so I have a theory that the, okay, so you have this, this, this,

fixed price phenomenon in Dragon, right, that comes out. And it was like the first big one that came and no one thought SpaceX would be able to do it. And it was like, everyone just shat on it. Right. He's just like, this is the dumbest idea. You can't, like we got to just sole source system, Boeing and all this. And they completely defied expectations. And we have falconine and dragon. It's like this amazing story, right? And so fixed price contract is now like this very special sunflower that everyone wants to touch, right? Everyone wants to have a part of and be connected to that success, right? I think a necessary asterisk to that is that part of the success of crew

dragon was because Elon Musk put so much money into it. Brightenstein has said that and like, you know, so it's like, yeah, I don't know. That's obvious point, but I just want to mention that. Yeah. Yeah, go ahead. Well, no, that is an important note because like, do you think SpaceX would not have been successful if they just won cost plus contracts the whole time or do you think they would have been just as successful as they have been like I feel like they would have been fine and they would

have done what they're doing anyway yeah probably yeah yeah yeah but anyway so the thought I had that was this like this fixed price idea is so shiny right now that we just kind want to make everything that to just because we feel like we have to right and a lot of companies are just like well we're going to make this fixed price but like i i kind of laugh when we did the the suits contract which was which is fixed price again i'm pulling up air quotes here but like again there's not a huge market for for spacesuits on the moon like no one's buying though it's not really a market and then even the lunar train years too yeah and the way they're setting that up too is like it's all like milestone kind of like task orders. So like the the one contract with that suit is like you develop

it from point A point B and then they award new task orders to get from point B to point C. And it's like it just kind of feels like you're not really buying you know if it's a real fixed price contract you just buy it like per I don't know per EVA I guess it be suits as a service. What does that what does that look like? What is the unit? Yeah, what is the unit of that? But they're not really doing that, right? And so, like, that one really kind of struck out to me is like, we're doing fixed price because we have to do fixed price because that's how you can't start any new programs at NASA that are fixed price in the human spaceflight world anymore. Like, you're just not allowed to do it. It's like a, it's a faux pot now, right? And I kind of think that we're finding clever ways to do

fix price that kind of if you squint and look at it like sideways kind of looks like cost plus, you know? So that's my, that's my other cynical. the ninth through 12d. It's like I don't bill hourly, but I do figure out how many hours I'm going to spend on this and multiply it by a number and then give you that budget. But I don't bill hourly. Yeah, exactly. You mean you don't invoice hourly is what you mean.

Yeah, yeah. So, yeah. Well, yeah, this is my thought. I think I saw Jeff Faust tweet. He was covering some science meeting where he quoted Jim Free as saying he thinks, the lunar train vehicle fixed price model was pushing it was pushing the fixed price model and I thought that was an interesting acknowledgement

I wasn't watching that's the one that we're drawing the line at is the cars no right exactly good good point I wasn't watching the thing so I don't know like the full context but I just thought that was an interesting acknowledgement from free like are we going to keep acknowledging that across other programs I don't know like what made him think that too That's a really funny one, too, because, like, boy, not only have we built those before, we've built a lot of cars in the world.

How many spacesuits have we built, like, less than 50, you know? What is the total number of spacesuits ever built? That's a knowable number. Somebody do the math. Let me know. It's probably tens of space suits, right? Yeah. I mean, I'm not counting pressure suits.

Get out of here with the pressure suits. Like, give me EVA certified space suits. It's probably tens. Yeah. So yeah, it's not 100. So it's 10s. Yeah. Well,

I don't know. If it's like 120, I'm going to take credit on the tens thing. All right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No. The other interesting thing about this that I think, and this is like, we bring this up a lot, right? But like, are you building policy on a multi-sigma outlier, right?

making policy that applies to everyone based on SpaceX's success. And given the Boeing news this week, I almost wanted to clip that question on his head and be like, is commercial fixed price contrast successful? And then like the one sample of Boeing, I'd be like, no, it's not working at all. So I kind of wonder like how we can, do we have a big enough sample at all to make any kind of judgments on this or are we all just like is the does the contracting mechanism even matter at this point or is it really just like you you pick the right contract based on the company you're selling or you're buying from right that's a good question yeah like fixed price contracts work for the

company like depending on the company like depending on the company that you give to um depending on depending on the company is willing to make its own investment into it and I think the companies that we've seen that can make big investments into the fixed price hardware are the ones that are owned by billionaires or the ones that have like a big market already set or predictions or investors for you know market in the future but that hasn't really taken that good of a shape yet I don't think so and I think commercial crew is like a good case study for that because one is you know has this ambitious kind of like streamlined effort development efforts there is like a legacy publicly traded giant

and, you know, one has like several missions already flown. One hasn't flown yet, or crude missions. So I think that's a pretty good indicator or case study. And yeah, I mean, both contracts have increased. They're not fixed. Like SpaceX has increased a little bit. Boeing's has increased a lot for a fixed price contract, like seven something percent, which is hundreds of millions of dollars.

So I think in that nature, It's like, I don't think NASA expected the Boeing's fixed price contract to increase by that much when they start. I mean, maybe, I don't know, but like that's not generally what's supposed to happen with these types of things. So, I don't know. And like NASA's stated reason for entering these things is to create a commercial marketplace, right? Like, I think we should hold them to that. Like that's why NASA wants to do this is that it can create competition and bring the cost down.

there has been competition but look at the human space flight market too does crew dragon have a lot of missions as a backlog does axiom we don't really know like I don't really know the answer to that

but axiom seems to be really like into flying governments too so it's not like you know private customers paying yet it's still very expensive to go to orbit with crew dragons and I think we should all question whether those seats actually do cost $55 million a pop, which is like the, you know, stated kind of notion right now. Oh, actually, I don't know.

I think money on each of those flights for sure. Well, sure, like they're definitely not making money. But like, yeah, are they still selling them for $55 each or are they selling for more? Like, is Saudi Arabia paying $55 million or more, I don't know. But yeah. I bet they're paying some more, yeah. Based on what I'm seeing in the golf market. market I feel like that's that's probably a higher budget line than the

Jared Isaacman's pain just based on that alone yeah the car that one is an interesting variant get two seats together can someone sit in my lap yeah the car no market you got to pay more for it right that's a really funny idea yeah like yeah I don't much more is the window seat I can do your drag if you want to pick which seat you, it's $19. How does seat guru not have like a crude dragon mode? It's just, it's like, good seat. You're the commander.

Average seat, you're the pilot. You're responsible for a safety. The cargo market is an interesting parallel there too, because to your question, Jacob, like, have these actually worked out? By what metric, right? Like, Dreamchaser's a hot mess. Maybe it's getting it together now. Northrop Grumman, Orbital ATK, Orbital Sciences, North Grumman, etc.

Like, they flew a couple of cargo missions, the ISS, and that's about the extent of everything that was developed and kickstarted on that contract. And then SpaceX, like, Cargo Dragon hasn't done anything else itself, but they created the world's greatest commercial launch company that ever existed on the, you know, on top of the booster that was built for that thing. So, like, that's the one, once again. And I think I've determined, Jake, my new suggestion for NASA to truly determine the heart of whether it is the contracting mechanism or not. We need to flip Dragon XL's contract to a cost plus contract and see how SpaceX does with it.

That is the lowest impact change we can make. You know, last week we were doing Joey B, what one change would you make? What one decision would you make to change the future of space? I would have went back in time and changed Dragon XL to cost plus and seen what happened. because I bet they would do great if at all number one they in Jake's theory they would spend zero dollars because it's actually canceled and no one said

it yet in my theory it's not a real it's not a real thing space X would do great and everyone would say well now what I guess what do we do with that information if it's if it went totally fine then what yeah that's a funny

I forgot about Dragon XL I'm officially running for the next NASA administration greater position and my single campaign promise is to switch the Dragon XL contract to cost plus for SpaceX. That's it. So hit me up. Any and all presidential candidates. I'll say most presidential candidates, not any and all, but like most of them just hit me up and we'll talk. Oh, dear. Yeah, that's a good idea. Great idea. What other fixed-price shenanigans are going on across NASA.

I don't know. We haven't talked about clips, I guess, right? Oh, God. Which. Tell us how you're really excited about it, too. Yeah, yeah. Speaking of the conversations. Sorry.

We're going to have, I mean, a year from now, there's just going to have to be a pretty intense one of these conversations we have to have, Anthony, because by then we'll have had probably at least one that has gone for it. I don't know, we've talked about this before, but like, if they're O for two on the first couple, I'm really curious to see what happens to that program. If two for two, I think it's fine, obviously, like everything's going to be,

but if they end up, which is not out of the realm of possibility. And then they'll be really interesting to see. They have a very recent history of all of the moonlanders crashing. So. Yeah. Yeah. Right. But isn't that good?

Isn't that good for clips if literally everyone, right? name them all. Name them all that crashed recently. It's like, what, how many do we have in the last couple years? Four? It was. Beres D. Taku-R. Vickro?

Yeah, the Indian one, right? Yeah. And then. Wasn't there another one? I think three. Was it three? Three? I think China's Mars mission is not doing well right now, but that doesn't count.

That doesn't count. Right. And that made it, too. Three? Three for three crashed. So what? You're saying like they've gotten that experience, they've learned those lessons and that? Oh, no, not at all.

I'm just saying that if I'm any of these moonlander companies, I'm like, have you looked at the moonlanders lately? They all crash. Like, I'm far for the course as we crash into the moon. So. Oh, yeah, yeah. I love that, yeah. I mean, I'm just curious.

So, you know, I can imagine a hypothetical where something goes wrong on these missions and then they have to come back and look at the the whole program and say, okay, you know, did they need more money for testing? Like, did we totally underbid this? And these guys were all operating on shoestring budgets. And then all the prices go up. And then we have to have the same conversation about whether the fixed pricing was actually, you know, the right, right call either fixed or a price.

Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So it's interesting. I think, you know, we, we had just to sum it all up, you know, this break. success with Dragon and Falcon 9, everyone jumping on the bandwagon, and now all those kind of decisions are going to start coming to roost in the next few years, and we're going to start to see whether that was correct or not. It's a super fascinating question. I'm, like, eagerly awaiting some results for this, right? Yeah, we'll see.

We did get an update from Michael Sheets, just to change the topic for a minute, and he says, it's better today, but this was his picture from yesterday. So there we go. Oh, thank you. We got some live feedback with Jeff Fowlestrolling in the comments. So it's great.

Nice, nice. So what else is going on? When can we stop arguing about fixed price contracts, Joey? What is the next thing that we're going to argue about if you had a crystal ball? Oh, God. I don't know. There's so much to argue about. But I'm not the arguer.

I just report the news. I just work here. I think how Vulcan will do when it launches or, you know. I think that's a very interesting mission. Like speaking of clips, you know, it has to get to space first. And imagine if Vulcan, never mind. I don't be negative about that. But I have no reason to believe, I definitely have no reason to believe, obviously, that they're going to do bad.

But it's just such a high-risk mission. Like, there's so much on that freaking rocket. That's so valuable. Yeah. Yeah. Inslee complex and high risk, I would say. Sufficient. How do we feel about the static fire?

I didn't really check in on the tweets today. Were there any other tidbits about it? I wasn't checking in on that that much. But it looks nice. Ben Kroop had some awesome photos of the nozzle. It looked like a part of the news. It looked like a part of it. parting in there, all those different colors.

So that looks nice. It's good for ULA. That's cool. We'll see when they can launch it. But yeah, I don't know. There's a lot to argue about. I think the recent thing that was pretty exciting was the blue origin moonlander thing.

You know, that's just, I don't know, that's another immensely complex or immensely risky or whatever the saying is thing. So I think that. Are you pro the weird moonlander? They're weird moonlander. I mean, I don't know.

I don't know. We don't really know a lot of that much. I want to kind of dive into the details and see what that contract is going to look like. And I think Lockheed's contribution is pretty interesting because I think there's some commercial potential for that little gas station thing that's going to be moving around. I don't I think they would have some other applications than just this moonlater so that's kind of fascinating but yeah I know I want to FOIA that contract and see what's what's going on whenever that comes out he's nothing if not reliable yeah that's a that'll be fun when do you guys think the moon landing is actually going to happen

the first one is Starship. What year? Oh, boy. Well, I don't know if you read the news this week, but Starship is just a big mess. Artemis was going to be on time, but now because of this, it's just all off the table. Yeah, crazy surprise there. Suits are doing great. Everything's fine.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Crew's ready to go. I want to say, 2030. Like, I don't know. You think it's that far out?

It's just so much. That's pretty much. That's closer than you think, you know? Yeah, I know. Yeah, look at commercial crew in how many years that was delayed. And this is a human moon lander mission. So.

But I don't, Mine is not even couched on, again, SpaceX's ability, right? Like, they can convert this cost plus, and they would do great, I'm sure. But there's just a lot of chaos that's going to happen between now and then. And this, I'm telling you, this budget thing is going to be a whole thing, because everything happens at the same time for NASA right now. Between 2028 and 2030, everything happens. They need to deorbit ISS, they need to have a moonlander,

they need to have spacesuits, they have commercial space stations, they have to figure out what to do with, every single program on the human space flight record right now between 2028 and 2030. So like at some point they need to prioritize stuff and history shows it is the currently operating crude missions that get prioritized. And people are even floating like let's keep funding ISS to 2035. Do you still fund the D-Orbit thing? What do you do with space stations then? I just I don't, number one, they're not going to have the budget for all of that.

Number two, they're not going to have the budget for most of that. Number three, like, Starship's going to go on its merry way, but they have to fly so many missions to do this moon landing mission that that's a staggering amount of missions to fly. Like, I just think I run my head back two years and how optimistic we were on the Starship schedule collectively, and it's hilarious. It is absolutely hilarious to look at the predictions that are coming up

in the off-nominal Discord right now based on predictions from 2020 and 2021. And we're like not on that timeline anymore. I had to laugh because one came up the other day. It was like just last week. It was like it said that the first the first Mars landing was going to have important NASA contributions for Starship that came doing this in 2023. And it's like, yeah, we were really out to lunch back then. Yeah.

Yeah, that's a good saying. Yeah. But yeah, I think 2031 would be early, honestly. But I don't know. Right. We'll know. We'll know. We'll see.

We have new stuff to write down, I guess. Yeah, we have to put it down. Once again, I just will reiterate, I will be freaking pumped if we're landing on the moon in 2030. Like, that is not a loss in my book, you know? Because up until recently, that was not anywhere on anyone's roadmaps. So, you know. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, we'll have to, you know, check in a few years. We'll check back in. Yeah, we've got this time. Joey, one more. Here's one for you, Joey. First to walk on the moon, Jared Isaacman or Jeff Bezos? Oh, which I thought you're about to say, like, they're going to be the first since 1922.

No, no. Which of those two is the first one to walk on the moon? Or Steve Aoki. I'll throw him in the mix. Steve A. Or, uh, May Zawa. Jared Isaacman, definitely. That guy is so pumped, and he's like,

I feel like he came out of nowhere, you know, and he's like, let's go to space, let's do this free flyer mission. Yeah, I'd say out of those, definitely Isaacman. Jeff, Jeff divides, I think, his interest between space and, like,

yachting. What if his Lander had a statue of Lauren Sanchez on the front of it, though? Oh, yeah. He has to name the lander or something related to her. Then I think there might be a little momentum there, a little competition. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

What if Steve Aoki gets this space bug, though, when he goes up on dear moon? And he's just like, I got a walk on the moon and he gets like driven. I can't believe he's actually going. I forgot about it. With Tim Dodd, it's going to be amazing. Yeah, yeah, that's going to be fun. We have a non-zero chance of having Steve Aoki on this show. That'll be a party, yeah.

Isn't his dad famous, by the way? Someone was talking about Steve Aoki's dad the other day. His dad is like known for something, right? I have no idea. Chat room. Anyone Steve Aoki fans in the house? I didn't even know who he was, so don't ask me. Yeah, you had a beer with his face on it.

You were like, who's this guy? And then the next week he was on a moon mission. That's one of the best moments of this podcast. God, you just called it. It's hilarious. His father was a former wrestler. who also founded the restaurant chain, Benny Hanna. There you go.

Steve Ayoki's dad. Oh, nice. Yeah. Nice. That's such a trivia thing? That's a real trivia bit. Yeah. Yeah.

I think Jared Isaacman would be the first to sprint on the moon or whatever. Nice. What about you? Do you guys think Bezos or Jared? Right. It's got to be Jared. Yeah. I don't think Bainesville would go to the moon.

I think he would go to lower Earth orbit if there was a really big spacious fancy spaceship for him to hang out and make business calls in. But that's about it. I think he might be wrong about that entirely, that he's personally driven to wanting to walk on the moon, which is a thing that I've definitely heard. Oh, yeah? So, yeah. But I feel like Jared's a little crazier. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, he picked a better horse system in terms of a shot. chips, right? Until they get a cost plus contract, then everything's all. Yeah, then it's all off the table. It's all out. This show is over. Joey, where can people follow along with you if they are not Joey Roulette followers like they should be? They can go on my Twitter account, which is active every so now, every often.

It's J.O. Roulette. That's my Twitter, I guess. Yeah. You guess. That's all. Don't follow anywhere else. yeah thank you guys for having me next time we do this i definitely want to have a drink in hand because that's that's that looks fun i mean this was fun i'm not i'm saying like i'm saying

like yeah that looks also fun right right um jake how is your uh whatever that was yeah it's delicious the wildfire drink the wildfire a plus recommend look at the loom go for it Jake Discord you want to tell people about the Discord

Yeah well if you want to argue out Fix price contracts with us every day all day you can at the Offnoml Discord

so offnom.com slash Discord 5 bucks a month or you're very fancy and you wanted to get the cost plus way you can do it Never Fly Ride Share

$25 and it helps us do this So we got lots of fun stuff going on there The community is fantastic they, Anthony, they just called you out on your podcast. They just went after you and that's how a great...

For an entire week and then they created another episode of Othnominal out of it. Yeah, so this is a, if you want to be a part of that, you want to be integrated into the culture of this show, this is where you got to be. So it's pretty fun. Next week, Jake, we got a fun show. Do you remember what we're doing next week? I think I do.

Don't think he's ever been on this show. He's been on Miko before. Grant Bonin, who is formerly of, space flight, RIP. They're heading off into the wild yonder of firefly at this point, but he's got a new thing called Gravity Lab, which is about artificial gravity and running little experiments in little satellites

that are doing artificial gravity stuff. So he's coming on to talk about what they're up to, which I'm very excited about. Yeah, he is also a fellow burning tree owner like me, so. Wait, has he been on this show? No, he hasn't, no. No? Well, maybe, not with me.

Unless you ran it without me. I don't know. I'll look it up. I'll remember for next week. Too many shows to remember. Too many shows. I should cancel one of them. Yeah.

I thought that I did. All right, everybody. Thanks, everyone. Thanks, you later. Thanks again for Joey. Thank you. Thank you guys. Bye.

It was fun. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, into death.