Off-Nominal - 114 - Starship Blue

Episode Date: July 7, 2023

Jake and Anthony are joined by Adrian Beil of NASASpaceFlight.com (and a long-time beloved member of the Off-Nominal Discord) to talk about how he got his start via an epic spreadsheet, and to tell some stories from his trip to Boca Chica for Starship.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 114 - Starship Blue (with Adrian Beil) - YouTubeStarship debut leading the rocket industry toward full reusability - NASASpaceFlight.comSpaceX focuses on launch site readiness ahead of Starship Flight 2 - NASASpaceFlight.comBlue Update: New Glenn testing hardware at the cape as New Shepard closes in on return to flight - NASASpaceFlight.comChina outlines ambitious plans for Moon landing; ZhuQue-2 prepares to launch again - NASASpaceFlight.comHow Chang Zheng 9 arrived at the "Starship-like" design - NASASpaceFlight.comFollow AdrianAdrian Beil (@BCCarCounters) / TwitterAdrian Beil, Author at NASASpaceFlight.comFollow 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. Hey, everybody. Chiller intro music than I was prepared for when I, I figured I'd try some of the later half of your playlist down. Trying some of the new tracks? Yeah, yeah. So, what's going on?

No, one was going to chill. I needed that. I needed that chill. Yeah, you did. I need more chill in my life right now and that's good. Yeah, you've had a week. Yeah. Adrian, how you doing, man?

Welcome to Opnominal, the other side of the screen. I still have to get used to this because I'm watching his life. We argued before. It's not really a time saver for me because I usually watch it. Now I'm on it. It's a different world. You don't have to participate in the chat, but you do have to participate in the show. So it's a little bit more focused effort.

But, I mean, this is truly the marker. This and only this is the marker that you have officially made it. None of the other stuff you've done. This is it. Yeah, that's true. I mean, it's true. That's the real truth. So, yeah, no, we're excited to have you. This is cool. So, I mean, obviously, the listeners don't know you. Hopefully they do, but you're doing a lot of the good work over at NASA Space Flight and among all the other things that you're doing. And I, you know, I think I remember when you joined the

Discord and popped in and became an anomaly first all those years ago. I don't know how long ago that was. So it's really cool to see you blossom into this cool role that you're doing. So welcome. Thanks for having me. Yeah, I think I joined at the beginning of the pandemic. I think it was like everybody had time at home and it was like in this big people just going into the off-nominal discord and everybody was just joining was like, yeah, I have to sit at home now. So where can I

type with space friends? Thank you, COVID, for delivering us something good. I can verify your timeline because I'm looking at your at your Twitter account here and it says joined August 2020. So, yes, your Twitter account and my son are the same age. So that's great. I want to talk about the Twitter account.

That wasn't in my original topic list, but I'm going to want to talk about that at some point. Yeah, we definitely need to. Yeah. Because it's got a funny backstory too. Oh, yeah. Jake? What are we drinking today? What you got?

I'm keeping it simple today. I just got this. Johnny Walker Black. Look at that. Yeah. That is. That is. Yeah.

No fancy. You're not pouring anything. It's not a weird color. I don't need any complication today. I just want a little bit of... I see aggressively tips it into his glass. Extremely aggressive. I just don't want this.

At least he uses glass. Yeah. Thank you. You all right? Oh, yeah. Cheers. Cheers. Adrian, it's a later over there.

So, who knows what you're doing? Yeah, it's 10 p.m. But I decided because I'm German, so I have to bring beer. It's like I thought about like, what can I bring, but I had to bring beer. So I tried to find something fancy. And apparently this is like from the island Ruegen in Germany. and it's like a smaller like crafting brewery that does all this like weird fancy things and this is like a Baltic stout with 7.4 or 5%. So but also it's got a sweet owl in the front. Look at that thing. Yeah that is Jake sized. I mean I've never met you in real life so I have no sense for how big you are in comparison to what I know about Jake but yeah. About your size.

Okay. Wow. Then that's a huge beer. Oh, and of course he has to open it the German way with another bottle. I mean, that's the, um, when I was in, when I was in high school, we would do a band trip to Germany. And that's like where I learned how to drink beer because I was like, I don't know, 16 or something, 16 and a half. And I hadn't really been into it at that point. But then, of course, I tried German beer and it was amazing. And so I had this, this great memory because we, you know, high school band and we went and we met some other high school band from Germany and we did like a joint

concert and it was like you know you're a teenager you're traveling you're very emotional and impressionable and it was very moving we played both anthems and um and then when they were done it was like in a gymnasium of a school and they like took the curtains down off the back wall and there was a loading dock there and they like opened the thing and this truck pulled up it was just full of beer like literally like it just came up and they had they get a pallet jack to get off and then And they just started handing out. And they looked, bottles just looked like that. And so I went to open one, and I didn't have a bottle opener.

And the German doctor came over. He's like, I got you. And he just took another one and opened both of them together. And we drank it. That's my memory from Germany. That's it. You're not fully an adult German until you can open beer with at least like five random objects in your room. It's like the inaugural thing.

It's an exam. That's amazing. My claim to fame is I usually do it in a hotel room on those heavy doorstop that they put in hotels because they have those like latches that are like they're bolted down with like the, you know, the will of God. And so you can just smash anything on them and can open any bottle. A friend of mine did it. A friend of mine wanted it on like in a glass table and was like, yeah, I'm opening a bench on the glass table, like broken middle. It was a bit of an unsatisfying experience for everybody.

Don't do it on a glass table. That's a pro tip. That's a day wrecker. Anthony, what do you got? I also have something from Europe, which is this French wine that my French friend brought over a couple of days ago when we were watching the Tour de France Netflix series, which is epic. And now the Tour de France is in full swing, also epic. So for the cycling fans out there, I will say, Jake, as a foreshadowing element, randomly, if you watch the Tour de France, you will see a future. off-normal guest somewhere within the broadcast at various points.

So that's going to be an interesting show and it does come about. So, yeah, I'm going to finish off. I can't pronounce any French stuff, but I believe this is something from Bon Pa, which is like southeast-ish, bon pa. Bon-pa? I would like to choose myself for pronouncing any French. Yeah, I struggle with the French. Is that the Bon-Pas?

Yeah, well, it's delicious. So wherever it is, I'd like to go there and hang out for a bit. Yeah. Good, good, cool. Well, so where should we start? We should, should we go back? Should we do this chronologically? Talk about some of the older fun stuff?

Is that where we should go, you think? Yeah, the origin story. We want Adrian origin story. Because, like, I now, as I pulled up, we have your Twitter account. Oh, that's the wrong one. Your Twitter account from August 2020 when you were BC car counters. You were the guy counting how many cars were going which direction? But I don't remember if that was the first thing that you were doing in the space area,

or if the spreadsheet came first. So you can drive which one of these things we need to talk about first. Yeah, I think that was like the first thing that I did with that was like some sort of, like, where I did something that other people could read or watch. It basically was, so for people who don't know, that was back in, I think, the Hopper days, on early starship days where we were not really sure when testing would occur.

So the easiest way to do this was to count cars go in and out of the pad and then you're basically looking at like it's the amount of cars increasing at the pad. We have confirmation.

You were only hired a NASA spaceflight because of your near card counting capability for this. You actually were on a list in Vegas after this incident. So that's good to know as well. It was like, it's really, in retrospect, I was just sitting and looking at my screen for like two hours in a row and like looking at cars. Like you cannot tell this to anybody because they were like, what are you doing in your free time? And yeah, but that was the origin.

Did you, how did, how were you counting these things? Did you have like the little pitch counter? This is probably a reference that doesn't track to my German and Canadian Mexican audience. here, but like you got a little, you know, those little trigger button counter, like, if you ever gone into Costco and they count how many people are coming into Costco, it's the same, again, another reference that might track to Jake, I don't know if Costco's made it to Germany yet, I doubt it, but do you know this thing, do you know this object I'm talking about? I think, it's like for people, like, that, like in front of like, uh, roller coasters where they track enough people is already in a roller coaster.

Rollercoasters, yeah. I don't know they say like a dance club or something. This is a new metric is like what that item means to you. It means like baseball and Costco. I'm like, how much more American can I get at the moment? Is that like an indicator of what you do in your free time? Can you use like the, is this an indicator of a device?

Like what do you do this? Yeah. What is this device used for? No, I used. And actually there was a person and I'm sorry for forgetting that name. They are not so not around anymore. But there was like a simple app made for me. at some point where I could just click on like plus and minus and it would track over time and give me charts.

So there was an app made for car tracking. So yeah, it got pretty deep at some point. And the theory there was once you know that everyone's cleared the pad, we're getting close to something happening. Is that the baseline? Or was there also another trigger on like the high end of like, wow, there's a lot of people at the pad today? It was kind of funny because this was back in the day where SpaceX didn't really have like

advanced personal there and like good security measures so the last thing that would leave was like this modified fire truck so it was always like down to seven eight cars and then all the last cars would leave like at once including his fire truck so the last

thing you would always mark was like yeah a fire truck is leaving we are go for watching a test tank like get cold for the next eight hours I mean that's what we did just totally riveting stuff Yeah. If baseball wasn't enough for you in this episode.

We used to make fun of you all the time in the Discord, which is really fun. Yeah, we got to get Adrian to tell us how many Ford Explorers are in the parking lot, because we need to, we need to, this is an important metric. I can tell you, I was always surprised by the amount of trucks that are there, because I had not until that point, I see like a truck once a month. And then you see like the street. You didn't understand Texas. Is that what you're talking?

That is amazing. Yeah, I didn't consider the way that this pure voyeurism of webcams would introduce people to American life. It was like, where I come from, a big car has four cylinders. I mean, I always tell like this, how I put it into a perspective for Americans is like, a Tesla model three is a kind of big car here. like that's that's a pretty decently sized car yeah so that's that's always the perspective we we always joke it's the same where where i'm from in canada and alberto we have it's just truck i mean alberta is the texas of canada and so we always a big joe for us is how many white pickup trucks do we see like within like five minutes of stepping out of the airport it's just like okay

can we get up to like you know like 12 within the first five minutes or something like that it's always white pickup trucks. Alberta's the land of white pickup trucks. Is there like a discount on the color white on pickup trucks? Because every second pickup truck I like to camouflage with the snow. Yeah. I like to be undercover as they go out to the oil

fields. All right. So you went from counting pickup trucks and now my main question is why did you continue counting them instead of just waiting for this fire truck? That's my number one question of the counting era. Because it would least give

an indication if we're moving into the right direction because they could be an increasing amount. You're looking at velocity. Car velocity was your key, not when the fire truck shows up. At some point, I think that was back when I was not a team member of NSF, but I would

still relay information to them where I would just DM like team members being like, hey, you wanted to have a heads up. The pad is probably clearing in like 20 minutes. And that was like my first interaction with the NSF team because I was constantly like giving them hats up. I like to think about like a scenario where the fire truck came out and you were for sure that there was a car that didn't leave yet and you could like on a hot phone call SpaceX to be like somebody's still out there.

The fire truck's gone, but there's a F150 somewhere out at the launch pad. It's got like a red phone next to them to alert them. They left cars at the pad during testing because they evacuated people with other cars, so they left their cars there. So I could for sure tell people, yeah, there are two more cars there somewhere at the pad. I don't know where, but they're parts somewhere. I don't know where, but these people want to get new Teslas. They do not want their pickup truck anymore. Trying to figure out a way to get rid of their pickup truck.

Did you ever get to the point where you were like logging license plates so you could like keep track of individual vehicles? Sadly, that was like still the time when all the cameras that were in Boko were like very far away. So there was not like, I basically counted pixels. So yeah, no license tracking. Yeah. Don't give them ideas. They'll have like those toll booth readers that'll just pull the NFC. Yeah, yeah.

I'm sure I'm sure JetGPT can do it. I mean, it can do anything else. Yeah, sure. An ML thing and it'll tell you which kind of engineers are out there. Yeah, exactly. All right, so you went from this. to tell how high their salaries are based on the models of the vehicles and stuff. If they were recently moved to Texas or not based on the amount of dirt on the car,

how much buildup there was. How many California plates you see. You imagine how creepy that would be if I would be like, oh, that's a new person that got hired. I never saw that license plate. I mean, it's effectively the tail number tracking. It's Elon Jet. This is just Boca cars. you know yeah yeah

I'm giving assassination coordinates away you will get kicked off of Twitter now for doxing but yeah yeah yeah bye that's okay we can we can survive there's threads now so you're good no not in Europe oh yeah

it's not private enough for Europe it sells too much stuff it's so many data things that it's not allowed in Europe I just find that funny because that was like it was three less items than Twitter I'm like okay like these

These three items are the ones. These are the ones. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I want to dive into these spreadsheets because I have pictures, Jake, of these old spreadsheets that you probably haven't seen in literal years. We still have the link up in our Discord, don't we? I should look at that.

But yeah, that was the dashboard. Oh, the dashboard. That was a fancy version. Yeah. That was, yeah, that was V2 of the spreadsheet. Yeah. What am I put out first? The colorful one or the not colorful one?

Do we have like the black one? that mostly black one that should be the front end part of it. Oh, this well this is the dashboard that I'm looking at, right? Or is this the thing that you're talking about? That's the front end. Basically that would be the screen that I tweet.

The front end? Yeah, from there. I actually I had to like this is the good looking part because you will see how this looks in the back end and it's way worse. But this was basically the part that would start to like draw lines based on testing.

and say like hey this is comparison to i don't know sn8 sn 9 sn 10 and i would track as n15 and could see like oh it's above or be below the corridor like that was that was the beginning of it and i would start to at the beginning was really funny because uh i remember somebody on the nsf discord was like hey somebody really should track these vents and i was like yeah i have time right now for like two weeks i'm on vacation like okay and i put out on like adobe premiere and put like every test next to each other and there was like this moment where you had like all of these numbers floating around you where you're like, I start to see patterns. It's like this matrix moment where like I'm starting to believe.

And I'm like, wait, I've seen this vent before, but on the other screen. And that was the moment where you notice, okay, there is patterns. There is a flow here. And yes, once you start looking for it, you suddenly have a flow. You suddenly have a way to predict this. So you had at that point, it was, it was a. couple of different, basically recorded archives of these tests. And was it different vehicles or the same vehicle through the same test or whatever? But whatever it was, it was a couple different runs.

And you could just try to like, boy, that sounds tedious. Try to drag these tracks in Premiere. Can you go to the big data one with the more color? Yes. More, the colors. That was actually the raw numbers that I had. That was just, that was just raw numbers. looking at raw numbers, looking at ups and downs,

and basically there you can see S&8, S&9, S&10, S&15, and also the tanks that were used and everything. So I started to look at like, what does all of these numbers mean? Yeah. That was my day. This is unreal. Like the color coding. So red was outliers, I guess, and green was like, they did good this time?

Red was like, it's basically a color coded from low to the high. So con means condenser and TV for example means tri-vent. So if you go in the very orange bracket there, you can for example see the average time from condenser to tri-vent. And yeah, basically, you can see basically, at the end you can always see SpaceX kind of getting more consistent with it. Because at the end, beginning, it's kind of fluctuating, but then it's kind of getting closer always to 40 minutes-ish more and more. So that was interesting to see because the tests got more consistent over time. What's going on with SN9? What a disaster that ship was.

Yeah, SN9 had this funny, SN9 had this funny day where they did like three tests in a single day. You can see it on the first, on the 13th of January 2021. My favorite day of all time, because they did three recycle tests in a quick succession. So everything was off. Like every.

single tracking was completely Chambles. I excluded S&9 in data sets after SN9 a lot. It's like, nope, not using this data. It's completely useless. Just go away. There's a rogue starship.

S&9. Completely useless. I don't like S&9. Oh, wow. This is just excruciating detail that like I'm

How convinced are you that SpaceX was tracking it like this? So I know The funny thing is I know So there's always words going around Of like people putting out on Twitter

Like hey I heard it's like this and that time And you sometimes get a feeling like Oh they have like a T0 they're actually targeting And I was at some point in the S&10 era Better than these leaks because I already knew that something was off while the leaks were still saying you know we are targeting top of the hour

and I'm like nope that's not working anymore with this condenser time you can five minutes after top of the hour that's earliest you can find so at some point I could I out SpaceX SpaceX I think because the level of detail knowing how SpaceX works I don't feel like they were lining up

streams of all their tests in Premiere looking at the differences between them. They were probably like, let's fix the thing that broke on the last one and try it again on the next one. Right? Like that moving kind of focus. Whereas you've got this beautiful mind spreadsheet that you could run averages on. Beautiful mind spreadsheet.

Unbelievable detail. I mean, how I understand their countdown, it's just like they don't have like this classic countdown, like how I look at it. It feels more like they're going from milestone to milestone. They're like, okay, let's precondition. the tank farm, let's fuel the vehicle, let's pre-condition the engines. It feels like they're moving a checklist, and I'm trying to make it a countdown at that point. But I want it. Well, so I didn't even get to the other side of the spreadsheet, which I guess was the,

you did basically these roll-ups of averages on the different vehicles, and this is where you were driving a lot of, like, I love it, all hops, all static fires, all tests. Yep. You can all also see how big the like the differences sometimes is like like with all static fires the longest count on this one hour the shortest of 34 minutes so like good luck predicting that huh um did you did you have the car counting as a data point on this like fire truck this came after this nope this came after i oh there's this funny story about this grass vent so at the beginning i tried to make everything on the indicator, including counting cars, including every vent. And there's one vent that is referred to as grass vent. And grass vent is just a random, like a random ass vent that just

comes out of the sub-autil launch site where apparently they dispose some whatever nitrogen. And it happens whenever. And I tried for like a week to make it a countdown point. I looked at it. I looked at every footage. I looked at like patterns of it. And at some point, I just like, yeah, just random and I wasted a week on this indicator and since then people are always like since then I mentioned that once and since then people are always like oh Adrian look grass vent is going like yeah I don't care not only do I not care I actively don't want to hear about the grass vent anymore yeah this is depleted bringing up bad memories of me spending the you need this shirt now do not talk to me about the grass fence I mean we had the spreadsheet on a

shirt at some point in the store which was little bit curious. Oh dear. Okay. All right. Well, that's a thing that happened. Do you feel like, well, so this spreadsheet versions that we have only goes up to SN15. Do you, did it all go out the window?

I hadn't been tracking your spreadsheet through the actual booster and launch testing that has happened. but the boring answer is SpaceX got to good at it. It's like most of it, it's feels very straightforward. And all the time that something doesn't feel straightforward, it's just because I look at the things. I'm like, yeah, that's a halt. And that's the only reason why the spreadsheet wouldn't work.

And basically would all the time be, I know what the countdown for a ship looks. And especially with the orbital launch, with the integrated flight tests now happened, I know how a countdown of the ship looks. I could always just say, like, yeah, this is a hold. And I feel like this is just, I feel like it lost a bit of its relevance

because there was a time where people were still educating themselves about this events. And I think it did this part about educating everybody about this. And that part was just fulfilled. And at this point, it's time to focus on other things to educate about Starship, because that's other things that may be not known yet. And they're streaming the test now and all that.

So we got to move the spreadsheet over to the spreadsheet garden and move on to the next thing is what you're saying. Yeah. I think the glue factory is a good call. The glue factory. So this all culminates in you actively being at Boka for the first launch. And I have to admit, when I knew you were going flying down there, I was like, man, there's no way in hell this guy seeing this launch.

And I was 100% convinced that you were going to be flying home without having seen it. And I am absolutely thrilled that you were there for the launch. So maybe we can hear some stories because I know there were some funny elements of working out there. But I don't know how much of it you can or want to talk about. I can't talk about. So basically the thing, I didn't want to go to Boka initially. for the first flight. I was like,

I have cameras at home. That's nice. Whatever. It works. And I think there was a time when Das from NSF was over at Europe. And we talked about the orbital launch. And then he was like,

yeah, you should totally come. And like, yeah, why am I not coming to this initial launch? And that was when I really started to plan it a bit. And it wasn't really serious.

And then I started to talk more with Casper Stanley and with flow from every astronaut and we kind of suddenly went a group were like yeah we're flying together we're like the three europeans flying over to watch starship and we kind of sniped it with like i think one and a half weeks accuracy we're like we're always moving our target we had like a group where we're like oh we are now targeting for flight like the sixth of april then we are targeting like the eight of april constantly moving and we sniped it with like 10 days i think which feels pretty

impressive in the retrospect and everybody was still telling me I was flying too early. When I fly it, I heard like six times, oh man, you're flying way too early, wait for like the first drop. What are you doing? Yeah, well, we won't. Yeah, you did a way better job than I did. I was in the middle of the goddamn ocean. Yeah, you were. I was driving a rental car to the Denver airport. So it was fun too. I pulled over and watched it. That was great.

I watched, I think my worst Starship experience so far was S&10 because that was back when I was working in banking. So I had a customer appointment at that point. And we had like these screens turned away from the customers where he usually would put in numbers and everything. And that's like the S&10 stream of NSF running on that. Or like completely looking busy, looking at numbers or like checking something. And in real life, I was just looking at S&10 flying.

or actually not looking at it because you couldn't see it. Yeah. Is that the one that did it or did it not land one? If I remember correct, wasn't S&10 or like the Fog one? Wasn't that S&10? Or was the S&11? Oh, the one where it blew up.

S&10 was the one that like landed and everyone's like, that was an S&11 then. Oh, yeah. 11 was the fog. That was the one where it just kind of like went up. We didn't see it. and then just pieces came down, that was out. Oh, man, that was so fun, though.

The footage of that afterwards where, like, you would just hear the explosion and then get hit with a rain of debris. That was, like, yeah. Jeez. Great video. Great video. Yeah. The full, that was actually the Vandenberg Sim that they were running that day.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What if we launched this from Vanderbent? Op Sim for Vandy. Yeah. Jake, if you were really on it, that was the one you should have went to live. really that's your specialty really carry my my record for yeah yeah so what was the best what did it what were your expectations of of launch and where did it come in you know so i i was

in a very lucky position to work at nsf at that point because i got to watch it from the margarita will at the rooftop so i was like that's kind of a good view like south padro island high in the air like we got a prime viewing spot let's let's put it like that um margar riddenville you're really you're really getting your american uh uh onboard here that's good yeah he went to a minor league baseball game he stopped in at Costco yeah bought a hot dog at nathan yeah it was a whole thing with the onside team like the onside team was like basically trying to educate me in american fast food culture so yeah there was a whole thing um but yeah i mean the initial the first scrub i think on monday actually the weather was way better because we had like perfect view and we'll i mean nobody

expected it to go but it was still disappointing because we got so far in the countdown and then it's scrub with the second one we had like completely shitty views for most of the countdown and then like at t-minus four minutes like the sun broke through the clouds the fog went away and were like perfect view it was we could see it completely from star to explosion from the roof it was amazing and I think at some point it like like started to tumble and it was kind of like pointing at our direction still kind of semi-firing the engines was like yeah and in retrospect I shouldn't be that excited when the engine is firing at me but I was like maybe not the best FTS system that has ever

flown on the vehicle. You mean, 30 seconds is totally fine enough to design standards. I mean, a rocket can't get anywhere in 30 seconds. That's definitely, you have the same experience when you're at the Cape watching Return to Launch Site Landing, where you're like, oh, I'm, like, that's pretty much a guided missile heading my way right now. And I know I'm not really where it's aiming, but like, I'm pretty much close enough based on how fast that things go in that I'm not feeling super comfortable with this at the

moment, but yeah. It's like basically a flying bomb aiming at kind of your general direction. Like, yay. That's really funny. How did the sand taste? Did the sand taste? What kind of? What was that experience? The sand was more to Port Isabel, which was more like. Catching snowflakes? We didn't get the sand. We saw the sand moving to Port Isabel, but we didn't get to I taste some methane and yeah no we didn't get the scent unfortunately and I think at the point got a good awning so I'm not wondering like if I even would have noticed because I think at that point we were like 30 hours just like 20 hour 24 hours or so awake because of course the day before you would do preparations for the launch and then we would go live at like midnight

local so you would not sleep and yeah basically we went like i think overall we were like 30 34 or 5 hours awake on launch day and it's it's crazy you're you're it's so great and everybody like especially at the nsf team we're just like so amazing there you got to be careful with that advice to all you anomalies out there doing all nighters for launches you have to take care of yourselves because we did that we did that at aramis one and we almost had a casualty show Is she? This one way to put a point on it. So please try and stay hydrated.

I don't know how we needed those two events were. I mean, there's definitely a high correlation between the times that we stayed up too late asking what if the rocket gets too wet on NASA Space Flight streams to suboptimal outcomes on the beach. But I did pull out. So the last shuttle launch I saw, I was, it was the last month of my college, which was like our final. project, like a big thesis project. So we were working a ton on that, and then I convinced everyone that we should just drive out to the two Titusville and hang out overnight for the launch while we continue to work. So we literally sat under that bridge that goes over to the Max Brewer Bridge,

and we sat on the little deck that's next to that. There's like this weird little walkway thing, sat there and worked like all night for the 7 a.m. launch. So I think that was like 40-some hours awake before I went to sleep. I probably saw the launch at a similar time that you did. So there's definitely a like I don't know It's a Zen state though Because you're out there all night It's peaceful by the water

It's great There's like a good You don't feel as tired as you should Because you're in an environment That's like exciting And also relaxing at the same time So I'm gonna stand for AJ and staying up too long break Hey yeah

I did it for insight It's just what you do I mean All the good launches are weird times I think I was on commentary Like eight hours for our stream and at some point you're just like, you're in an adrenaline mode. You're like, you're just working.

You're like eight hours, like six to eight hours commentary and like constantly doing stuff. And also it's your first rocket launch. Like it was my first rocket launch. So it's like, whatever, what a sleep? Who needs that? That's an epic, epic first rocket launch. That is a good one. Yeah, it's only going down downhill from here.

And I'm like, somebody told me that like initially after, launch like how do you want to top this? I'm like, oh. I mean, one where it came back and landed would be probably a good way to up that. The same one but where it works would be ideal. Probably do well. Didn't watch that. How about 33 engines instead of like 27? You got shorted a couple. You got rate limited on your engines. You need to subscribe to Starship Blue if you wanted to get all the engines. God, that's a great joke. I nailed it.

Starship blue. Starship blue. Starship blue. 42 grand a month for that. 42 grand a month. No. Nailed it. Should we do some current updates since we're talking about future launches here?

What's the situation? help us get back up to speak because Jake's been a little busy lately. I've been on vacation. So it seems like there's some stuff going on. I see people tweeting about the OLM. Can you help us orient here? And like don't limit it just to Boca because I know you're writing about other stuff too. So just to have, you know, whatever you're working on and keeping your eye on.

We'd love to hear some updates. I mean, right now, I'm going to get hired by SpaceX too or? Thanks for ITAR. Cheers, Itar. Cheers to Itar. No, on the story sex side, I think my initial impression is it's going way faster than initially expected. Because after the first orbital launch, when the first tweets came out like, yeah, we launched two more times this year. I'm like, yeah, nope.

Right now, I'm kind of impressed by how quickly they are getting up to speed again. Because they are already, since yesterday, have this modified steel plate, this like showerhead in place, where they want to update their deluge system. They are already having the upper stage tested, which is like this, it's done, it's tested. They can put it on the booster or whatever. So we are kind of in a situation where they need to hook up deluge system. After that, test the booster and they are good to go. Like, it's crazy to just like talk about it because it came out of. nowhere but suddenly this orbital launch happening in like August, September ish, doesn't

feel super like out of this world anymore for me. It could happen. Hmm. Yeah, there you go. Deluge system. This thing's wild. It's just like, they're just like, what have we got the biggest piece of metal you've ever seen? Yeah, that's like, this only like the pipes. There's also an older picture of like the plate, this giant steel plate. The one they showed it was that popped up. it was like vertical underneath the launch mount. That was a wild picture.

Yeah, can somebody explain what was going on there? Because I looked at that for a couple of minutes, and I was like, I've looked at it right when I woke up this morning. I was like, I'm not awake enough to know what's going on here. It's like taking a couch into a room. You've got to turn it sideways, you know, and then to get it underneath. Okay. Basically, they have like a modified stand where you can see the stand between the legs there,

like this, where it's on right now to move it in. and they need to move it in that way to put it in there. It's so massive. And it's crazy out of year. I'm really curious how this will work. Let's just say like that. It feels so weird.

It's just water. They just have like a shower plate. It's just a rain shower. I mean, regardless of whether you are big SpaceX fan or a big SpaceX hater. You can't deny they do some weird shit that's fun to watch. I'm excited to see this

bizarre contraption and I don't know, if it blows up well, it's going to be cool. It constantly feels like SpaceX engineering meetings are a constant like watch this competition and apparently somebody won here with a giant shower head played.

Yeah. So you're feeling good about a couple of months away, a month to a couple of months away, is where you're at. I mean, there could always be some booster testing issues because I would still say the booster is probably the most complex part with the whole like 33 engines. And also with the fact they are now using electrical, uh, thrust vector control instead of hydraulic trastrichtor control for the next booster, because these HBOs were a massive shit. Um, I enjoyed it. This show is allowing me to really use swear words.

It's in the name, so, yeah, if people weren't prepared for that. They should look at the name of this podcast one more time. That's all I'm going to suggest. And, like, I'm kind of interested how that will work, but I think if booster testing works and if they're making good progress on it, I think September. My initial prediction is September right now, probably a good, good aim.

Anthony, what did we have for our predictions? At the start of the year, where were we? I can't remember. Mine's September. I don't remember what yours is. Didn't we just, that was just the general, like, first launch prediction, right? This is not the relaunch. Yeah. No, I think mine was about getting to orbit, though. Oh, excuse us for you reassessing what your thing was. So I said August.

I have it on record, buddy. I have it on record. Is it? I don't know. I feel like this was our first launch. I want to go back. I'll bring this up in a couple minutes we talk about next week because we're going to actually check it on these. But I had August, Lauren had July, you had September. Okay, okay.

I think right now August, I would say is very optimistic at this point because we are already at like, I would say two or three weeks before days can start boost the testing with concrete just poured. So I think August would be a massive stretch. but I think September could work out I'd be pumped about that because that's weather wise man that's that's nice

that's nice time of year that's not nice in Boka that's not nice weather and Boka it's nice no I I hate I was there in April you're not built for this no I'm not built for this I hate humidity weather yeah also the mosquitoes like you step like one foot into the grass

and they are like swarming you like tie fighters. It's like, it's instant. They're aggressive and insane. Yeah, again, I'm just going to remind you what Jake and I did for Artemis I. And remind you that we didn't do any active work. We literally just sat on the beach and had drinks. And that's what my plan is once again for this. I realize that this is a scenario.

So I always am in this situation, right, where organizing travel when you have a kid is tough. And then I realized after this launch attempt, I was like, I could just rent like a beach house, go chill there, me and him and like play on the beach and then just wait for it to happen. And if it doesn't, then we just had a nice week at the beach. If it does, we also got a rocket launch. So this is kind of the ideal because I'm excited for Will's being able to start joining us. Yeah, because I can't take them to like Kennedy because then if I'm going on base, I can't bring a toddler.

And so this is kind of the ideal scenario. I can be super close to a rocket launch and just hang out on the beach. So, yeah. Thanks, Cameron County. I think I didn't even went like actively into the Gulf of Mexico once while I was in Boka. I was just like... It's a real swing in the mist right there. That is a huge swing in the miss.

Yo, the Gulf of Mexico is the best place to go swimming. It's so hot though. But I could also spend time to get starship. It's a little too hot. I was, I had like, I think, so the initial when I arrived at the airport, Das picked me up. And my initial plan was, yeah, well, it was like late at night. We'll go to sleep and in the morning we'll drive to Boka. And that's in the truck when like, oh, we could now drive to see Starship in the late at night.

I'm like, let's go now. That was a rookie thought that you could go to sleep as soon as you got there. We could go to Starship until Margaritaville's open. So that's an option. It's, it was wild. Like, first time arriving there and just driving down this highway four and suddenly you see like the blinking. lights of Macazilla and you're like, holy, holy crap, I watched thousands of hours watching this place. And you're suddenly standing there. It's weird because you know so much about this place,

but it's more like in this, like, you know, these old, like, role-playing games or like video games where you just had like certain screens where you're like, these point and click adventures. Like that was my Boca view up until that point. I had like the Boca point and click adventure a way I could go from map screen to map screen. And suddenly I had like a 3D open world adventure. That was mind boggling. That's such a good way to put it. That's amazing.

You went from mist to Skyrim, as basically what you were saying. I saw Boka Skyrim. There is, so I will say you did that right because, so like whenever you go to rocket launch sites, they're always epic. But at night with stuff illuminated, there is an additional. level of epicness that I don't feel like can even really be described and this is even more true when like you go to Cape Canaveral because all the launch sites have epic spotlights that are like cinematically aimed at the launch pad but I don't know there's something about it being like

the only thing lit up in your area that that makes it the grandiosity even more so so that was a good decision it's like also the first thing you see is like the star base sign and the entrance that's like just neon sign and everything. Like, they did a good job in making sure it looks cool when you drive there. So that's nice. Good. Okay. We'll have to make it happen, Jake.

Yeah, we'll get there. It's a cool place. I, from my... We'll do it. I got to teach, you got to bring Will, and I have to teach Will bad words in Spanish, and then we'll watch a rocket launch. It'll be a fun time. he'd be really good at that

we can go with Adrian down and count cars for real yep oh also we also love that yeah he's so into all these activities rocket speeches cars like this is where it's at baseball

if we go to a baseball game too I think we should go what's the closest minor league team to star Darship I didn't see like any it's definitely not like I don't think South Padre has a maybe they have like a super Brownsville Martians or something somebody had a corpse Chris or something

somebody had a Somebody in the chat knows this. I have yet to say, like, I didn't spot the, like, huge entertainment culture in Brownsville when I was there. It was more about Starship, really. No one has ever said... No one has ever said that sentence ever in the history of the world. You didn't swing by and catch a jazz concert or something? Big nightlife down there.

We went to play laser tech with, like, a lot of, like, spatialists and everybody... Laser tag sounds about anything. That was cool There's a Brownsville FC Is that a true fact? There's a Brownsville FC That's a real thing Wow

Chris wouldn't love light to us No that's a good point There is he's not lying to us This is a true A true thing Corpus Christi Hooks I got in chat as well That's a that sounds legit So yes

All right So we're doing the whole thing Jake hang out on the beach we're going to a baseball game Corpus is forever yeah that's like forever away but we go to the soccer game I can I can recommend some food places

actually Margarita because you can imagine any big nightlife hit me up with the nightlife in Brownsville everyone everyone out there just let us know best cocktail bars maybe there's a speakies

you too basically you sit at you sit at the diner like late at night because we're in Boka all day doing stuff and then late at night at like 10 p.m. SpaceX suddenly decides to unstake the booster from the ship and you're like getting pinged and like okay we got to get eat fast and go back to boca again after like a full day and like back to it that was fun this is what people do that work around these events what jake and i do is

rabble rouse so yeah you could just like chill like also i really enjoyed the fact that you're You do. Yeah, for sure. You Americans have like AC in their rooms, which is amazing. Because it makes like homes so much more enjoyable. Because we don't have that. We're built different. Yeah.

Yeah, you've been a basic. Oh, man. This is a great cultural exchange for having here. I'm enjoying this a lot. Yeah, it's really international. Yeah. It's a Canadian, a German, an American go into a bar. Well, Jake lives in humidity now, so

I guess it was pretty humid where you're from previously too, but it's the cold variant. You can see the AC going right there right now. Look, there it is. Right up there. Look at that thing. A little undersized for what it's dealing with outside, I'm sure. Well, it's only in one room. I got three of these babies.

Look at that. Look at that sucker. Look at that. Look at that. You've got a nice focus. We can see his LG. 20? It's moving.

24, I think I have. on. It's, I arrived at Frankfurt after Boka and I like, exit the plane and I saw like rain in 14 degrees and I was like, home. Rain in 14 degrees, yeah. That's tone. I'm flying to Canada tomorrow and the weather is not looking hot. So I'm like not very excited about it. So let's see. I have to, I have to like, I'm driving to a lake and I have to stop at my mom's house to get clothes that aren't shorts and t-shirts. That's how, that's how bad is. it's going to be. Oh, boy. Was my life now. Are you going to put out the fires? I mean, I'm getting a lot of this bad air, so I assume they're still kicking. No, I'm not going to do that. Not going to help? Okay. Really hoping somebody would pitch in a little bit on that,

but it's okay. Yeah. Sorry. Sorry. Adrian, what else have you been writing about lately? Because your beat is bigger than spreadsheets at this point. Yeah, I am very much focused on this whole methane rocket soon to be taking off in China with Zukuaytu coming up. That has been a topic of mine because, yeah, what I can say, I like methane rocket, and I also like to stock the Chinese space program because not a lot of people do it. And, I mean, it's interesting. It's hard to get information. I really like to get hard to get information.

It's just an interesting topic. So that has been my focus. And I'm also working on video script for comparing the progress of the Artemis program to the Chinese program to get to the moon. And comparing those programs, like how they are comparable, how they are not comparable, and who will be first to the moon? So that has been my major work the last few days. Do you have a whole segment in there? Don't know. Don't know if it's subscribing.

Yeah. Bob Bigelow is just like, oh, man. Do you have a whole segment in there of them getting successful? of them getting stuck on a space station for 10 years, or is that not part of the script? That's not in there right now. I would reconsider that. I would reconsider, yeah.

Jesus. Yeah. It's like this funny situation, because it feels like this whole situation was, there was a time when the Artemis moon landing was 2024, like even earlier. And China was like, yeah, 2030s. And then there were,

a time we're like, no, we'll now slip to 2025 and China's like, yeah, we'll launch on 2030s, like around that, and now it's looked like 2026, 2027, and China's like, yeah, we're still 2030-ish, so at some point I feel like, there's

somebody slipping here, and it's certainly not China so far. You've got to remember, though, they operate on a five-year plan, so. Yeah, true. Every budget cycle in the U.S. Every budget cycle in the U.S.

could delay and then every five years in China you could have delay right. 2030s though are still far enough way that that's like the hand wavy time like yeah we'll do in the 2030s. So yeah I think once Artemis like if it's slipped slips like 2028 2029 that's like where it's Congress panic time that's got to be an interesting time like that's the moment like everybody like yikes. We'll see I guess. Following the Chinese spaceflight beat is also the the struggle I have is

not like keeping track of how many launch vehicles that there are because we have the problem here too like there's 8,000 launch vehicles in development it's like knowing which things matter and which things don't matter like what trend wise right like which one of these things actually is impactful in five years versus like is this a repurposed solid rocket booster that existed somewhere else and is just being launched by like a private company launching this thing to basically say that is a private company launching this thing, but the real thing they're working on is like five years down the line still. That's the stuff I struggle. Yeah. Yeah, I think right now the main focus is like Zhang Zhang 10 with the fact that it's still like the main moon exploration rocket.

Like that's the big one right now watching. I think like a lot of focus is like still on like nine, but nine is more like the pipe dream. Nine is like the big headliner, but it's not really mattering. So it's like people should really focus on 10. Yeah, nine. Nine is, was always a little too much. It's like very much like the Saturn 2 or whatever, that Nova rocket thing. The Nova. Yeah.

It's like the sea dragon of the Chinese space program. I love the whole story of nine at some point being an SLS copy and then China realizing like, ah, we shouldn't really copy SLS. Let's copy like something else. It's like, ah. I mean, at least they're building something like, from speaking as a European.

Yikes. Yeah, you were pretty cranky about, you know, pour one out for Aryan 5. We didn't even mention it at all. Arient 5, farewell. Gone but not forgotten. My quick thoughts is we are right now a bound of nation, like a group of nations

that at some point decided they want to do space travel together and we are not even capable to build a like a, launch vehicle in time. And right now we don't have any reliable access to space besides begging the Americans to launch it for us. So I'm like... Listen, you don't want the bag. You just got to have enough money. Yeah, it doesn't feel great though.

We'll do it. We'll say yes. Just like, you know, send the bag. I just don't feel like... It's not exciting. I feel like something, for example, the other week. The other week is a good example of what shouldn't happen. A mission,

for example, with Euclite. Euclid shouldn't be launched from a Falcon 9. It's cool that it can be launched from Falcon 9, but it shouldn't have to launch on a Falcon 9. It should be able to launch on a European rocket. And that's just something that disappoints me as a European, that we are not able to deliver our own payloads to space. And it's not really exciting.

It's something that just disappoints you. And you're like, well, we are getting a glorified area on five upgrade with a fancy new number for a few hundred millions. That's a new number. Six. Six. Six. And it's, I mean, it's like,

is there like a person on this planet excited for Airy and six? Like, is there a person that's like, yay! I don't know. I mean, it's a new rocket. It's a hot take right here.

This is a ripping, just smoldering take. I love this. It's great. I'm sorry. This is me being salty. Just got to get a rag. Yeah.

stuff into this and then a lighter. Enjoy, Adrian, enjoy my French wine with your German wine that I'm hearing here. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I mean. The board of directors at Airbus and Arianas Paz and then what's the other thing? We can make this work. I mean, they are still, like, it shows a lot how excited they are that they are already talking about Arian next and like a lot of their development programs as much as they can.

can. So it feels like, are you excited though? Or is it more like a stopgap until you have like this Prometheus engine and everything ready for something that might be a bit more modern? Also, some other companies maybe. I mean, there's other companies than Ari and Space in Europe. That is a true statement. And we should plug it. Wait, we should plug the show. We did a what, a week or two ago, Adrian, over on manage cutoff. We talked about that exactly. Talked about a couple different of the mostly German launch companies that are

coming online because they're quite interesting. So that's a good one. Put that link in the showup. So people haven't listened to that. Yeah, the Aryan 6 thing, I feel like it's a good time to like look back about what was, we'll go full Jake Robbins here. Like, what was the why behind Ariens 6 and is it living up to that? It would be an interesting thing to dive real deep.

on, you know? Yeah. Because like did it change the game for Aryan space? No. Did it kind of completely derail their progress arguably? Yeah. Right? Because I mean like if they're they were like, all right, we're gonna be commercially competitive with this new rocket. Are they? Or have they not really sold any commercial launches? And of ones that they have sold, have they already moved some of them to Falcon Heavy? Like, that's a problem to contend with, you know? I think my hot take here is that right now commercially competitive to Falcon 9, there's probably not a single rocket in this world. Because it's just, like there are other rockets that just are chosen because competitors or governments want to choose them instead of Falcon 9. But if you look it from like a purely economical perspective, that they, Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy can just basically launch everything.

it's just because there's there's a reason a governmental and a political reason that some people want other launch vehicles for sure and then again from the air and space side like we're in the spirit of french wine french good-buying this entirely but like the point isn't to be the number one launch company in the world with it it's like to be commercially viable enough that it offsets some of the cost of having the aryan six so it's not like it has to own the market entirely to serve the purpose of it's like it has to own the market entirely to serve the of commercializing it. It's, as I always say, what if the SLS could compete for a commercial launch contract every now and then? Like, Amazon did not buy SLSs along with all the Vulcans and the N-S-6s and the New Glens that they bought. They didn't buy an SLS because that doesn't make any

sense. But what if SLS was a vehicle that they could buy? And it was a little bit more expensive than all the other vehicles. And that was okay because they wanted an alternative. That would be, I think anyone who's like critical of SLS would be like, that would be a better scenario. So, yeah. I like commercial viable rockets. Cheers. Cheers to I'd, sorry. Cheers.

Nothing more to add to that. Jake's got nothing. Mostly because neither Canada nor Mexico right now has as much in the way of launch vehicle. Hey, we're working on that pad. That's step one, I guess. You got to get that going. Is that going?

Yeah. Maybe one day we can have a hand six fly from there. It'll be great. Adrian, you're the best for hanging out with us and we should plug if people want to hang out with Adrian more, Jake. Where can they do that? Yeah, you should head over to the Discord where there's actually a little bit of action happening right now

because we had some bots that are hooked up to various AI language models and they're assuming to have a malfunctioning and they're going after each other. So if you want to come and see some really, bizarre stuff, space, and otherwise. You check it out.com slash Discord. It's a lot of fun. We lose our shit in their daily, so it's good. And once again, if you do not care at all about Discord,

it's still a great place to go to support this podcast. That's where we support it. You could literally sign up and not look at it ever again and just think about it the way to support the show. Go ahead, Jake. It's also a rate limited. Make the landing. Make the landing on the joke there, Jake.

I'll put your full screen. This isn't cheap, guys. Yeah, no rate, no rate limits. No rate limits. Everything's good. Yeah, yeah. So. All right, y'all.

That's what we got. Oh, next week. Jake's not here next week. Lauren Grush will be hanging out with us. I'm confirming our third friend, but it's going to be great. We are going to, Jake, we are much to your chagrin. I was talking with Lauren. and we're going to check in on our predictions

because she was with us at the end of last year when we made a bunch of predictions for this year. And it's going to be, we'll see. We'll see how we were stacking up mid-year, doing mid-year check-in. So that should be fun. All right, y'all. See you later.

Bye.