Off-Nominal - 115 - I’m Getting a Twinkie Vibe

Episode Date: July 14, 2023

Anthony is joined by Loren Grush (Bloomberg) and Rachael Zisk (Payload), to talk about Loren’s recent trip to see Virgin Galactic’s first commercial flight, to catch up on some news, and to do a mid-year check in on our 2023 predictions.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 115 - I’m Getting a Twinkie Vibe (with Loren Grush and Rachael Zisk) - YouTubeLoren Grush on Twitter: “It’s all been leading to this–Virgin Galactic's first commercial flight is set for this morning, with a research mission for the Italian Air Force. I'm in New Mexico at Spaceport America to finally see a flight”Loren Grush on Twitter: Video of Unity returningTitanic Sub Implosion Highlights Space Risks of Virgin Galactic, Blue Origin Too - BloombergAstra Looks to Raise $65M and Avoid Nasdaq Delisting through Stock Split - PayloadAstra establishes subsidiary for spacecraft engine business | TechCrunchThe Artemis Astrovan Arrives - PayloadFollow LorenLoren Grush (@lorengrush) / TwitterLoren Grush - BloombergFollow Rachaelrachael 🌠 (@RachaelZisk) / TwitterRachael Zisk, Author at PayloadParallaxFollow 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. Hey, everybody. I am pushing all the buttons today because Jake is not here. And then a fun kicker, none of my technology worked. So it's just me talking to you on off-nominal. Lauren Grush, you are here in the Jake box today. Thanks for coming back. How's it going?

Honored. Good. It feels apt that we have technical trouble for a spacecom podcast. It's totally part for the course. And we have a new friend today, Rachel, welcome aboard. You are here from The Lovely Payload. We were just basically asking around at Payload who would like to come on the show this week

because we've talked too many of you before. But first time on the show, so thanks for joining us. Yeah, I'm excited to be here. It's my very first appearance. Yeah, everybody from Payload has great things to say. So excited to make my debut here. Well, we've got a fun list of things. So Lauren was out in New Mexico for the Virgin Galactic launch, which based on the videos you were posting, I cannot wait to hear about what being at one of the...

Were you at the first crude launch as well? I feel like you went to that thing, too, right? No, that was actually my very first time to go to an actual launch. I've been to Spaceport America before, but yeah, this was the first time. People were actually getting into VSS Unity and flying to space. All right. So we're going to have to review that situation. because there's like, that's a faceted conversation, which I'm pumped about.

And we also made a bunch of predictions several months ago, which essentially amounts to us reading a list that Rachel can laugh at us for. So that will be a good backhand for the show. This year in particular has been pretty bad when it came to like things launching on time. Yeah. But to start us out, to either of you, Rachel, did you bring anything fun to drink on your off-normal debut here? I did. I did. I was excited to join the tradition.

I brought a little river. So basically in Amaro Spritz, I'll show. Oh, nice. For everybody here. Look at this. In a nice, like, old-school Coke glass? Yeah, one of my favorite things. Just makes everything taste a little bit better. Lauren, you're in a different environment than I've seen you in previously. I don't know if there's a fun story or if you're just like out and about.

No, just out and about, and I've brought with me a very classic drink, which is a Pellegrino. Oh, nice. So, yeah, so very, very creative today. But, yeah, no fun story, just out and about. Just out and about with a sweet chair. I've got a, it's the thing that we lovingly refer to as stick wine here in the family, which is a multiple chano. That's fairly delicious. So a bruteso.

It's where the Calangial family roots are, too. So somewhere in my heritage feels like home. All right. Let's start with this Virgin Galactic thing. I am always terrified whenever I watch this vehicle. And I would just like to get a sense around the horn here of like, am I the outlier? Or is this a natural thing while we're watching this vehicle? No, I think I'm definitely the same way.

I have to preface it, though, that I didn't actually see this. vehicle go to space, unfortunately. If you'll recall, the same thing happened to me when I tried to watch inside go to space and didn't see any of that either. So I had a repeat event. It was just a very cloudy day out in New Mexico when we went. We did see it take off from the ground, but in terms of any kind of drop and release and fire, that was all obscured by, Yep, that's the tweet. No, but also, the thing about this, sorry, my buttons aren't working exactly well. The thing about this vehicle is that, like, even if it was perfectly clear, you're sort of in the same situation, right?

Because... I was told you might see the contrales, you know, when it's igniting the motor and that, you know, you could see it just at the very beginning of igniting that engine. But, yeah, you could still see it. So I did feel a little... A little disappointed for trekking all the way out there. Yeah, yeah. But, you know, that's the risk that comes with going to one of these launches, right? You know, you can't, the one thing you cannot control is the weather,

as the space industry has learned time and time again. So, but it was fine weather for launching, just not for viewing. Rachel, scale 1 to 10, afraid of watching Virgin Galactic launches is 10 is maximum afraid. One is very relaxed. Where are we at? Listen, so I've never actually seen a rocket launch in person. I don't even mean in real life.

I'm just generally like where are you at stress level. I'm gonna, definitely at the upper end of the range. I'm gonna give it like a seven or an eight. Yeah. But what's your like crude baseline? What is the baseline of crude launches? Because I guess we should be fair. There's always a little bit of anxiety involved.

I would say very low for something like a crew dragon launch. order or two, but I think in general we're at like, maybe a four, five, it seems like a good, you know, Selews is pushing it these days. Like they're climbing into galactic range. Getting up there, yeah, I guess so. I think my issue is just like

the lack of vehicle that takes you to space. You know, as a child, I grew up on the space shuttle, which was a, you know, there was just a lot of vehicle there, which I know makes it harder to actually get to space, but, you know, It just kind of gave me comfort that they had like, you know, at least room in the cockpit and, you know, a very nice space plane behind them. So, you know, and that goes for even Falcon 9 launches too. That one still weirded me out because it was like, oh, that's such a thin rocket taking people to orbit. And so with Virgin Galactic, it's like, oh, that is a very small thing taking people to space. I know that the physics technically works, but it just still, it's still, my brain doesn't allow me to accept it. I like that that's your holdup

is like just the physical size that's hilarious aspect because for me both of the vehicles you've now classified here are like exactly the same of like boy there's no way out of that thing like that has that has abort modes

but come on like these these are not good abort modes none of the shuttle abort modes other than like oh we'll make it to a lower orbit we're good abort modes you know no no and I learned all about these shuttle abort modes for my book, which were, I loved how just everyone just, even the astronauts and the

people who were working on it were just like, yeah, we really don't ever want to do those kinds of aborts ever. That sounds like the worst case scenario we could possibly imagine. Yeah. I mean, all right, listen, they did a good live stream though. I'll give them props on the live stream for Galactic One. Yes. They definitely showed the people in the cabin more. I'm going to just do some like competitive analysis here. Blue Origin just lets you listen to everyone yelling, and this at least got like some charming man floats to back of spaceship unveils Italian flag. That was great.

Like there was some good aspects to that. Now, on the ground, you've been to Spaceport America when you went before. Was there an event of like the unveiling of like that astronaut lounge or whatever? I'm trying to remember the time. We talked to at some point on the show when you had been out there. It wasn't an event, but they had already unveiled the design of the interior. We went, I think shortly after we were actually doing a story on truth or consequences, which is the town, the nearby town, and just kind of the promises that have been made about

Baseport America and what the expectations had been when they moved to town and what the town spoke actually thought of, you know, launch as being imminent. And speaking of, I think we filmed that video in 2019. And I think there's a line in there that said, with commercial operations set for later this year or early 2020 or something like that. So, you know, that prediction didn't necessarily pan out either. But yeah, we got to go visit and kind of roam around the area. And also we stayed in truth or consequences at the time.

So it was an interesting dichotomy of kind of like, you know, very slow Americana and then also, you know, the futuristic sci-fi of spaceport America. It's a weird, it's a weird spot for sure. No, because there's like there's layers to it, right? There's the version galactic of it all. But there's also the fact that the spaceport has been a like contentious topic within New Mexican politics, generally, with how much money has been spent on it, with promises of all these different things. and then, like, it's almost one of those aspects where people talk about, oh, we need more spaceports, so then it just sounds like, like, you can use that to say, we need a spaceport here, too. And even though, like, there's nothing to do with this one other than this particular use case. So it's like the sweetest looking airport terminal you've ever seen that has nothing going on in it.

Right. And I think one interesting thing we learned was that they had the town or the county had voted to make some of their tax, increase the taxes ever so slightly, and that would go towards the building of the spaceport. And, you know, they had made all these promises. One of the things that truth or consequences kind of deals with a lot is like people coming into town saying they're going to save the town, right? Because it is a very poor community. And I remember everyone brought up this, oh God, it was. like a blinds factory that was going to come in and save the town or something. Like everyone kept bringing that up. And so it was kind of they were saying spaceport America in the same vein. So it would be interesting to go back now, now that things are kind of like picking up steam and to see if they have noticed any kind of activity related to the launches. I think I'd like to see, you know, Virgin Galactic actually achieve this monthly cadence that they're talking about.

But yeah, the irony, though, is I did. stay in Las Cruces when we went. It is a lot easier to get there from Las Cruces. So I think that's not in their favor either. The monthly cadence thing is interesting because they are now, so they're saying what, August 10th, I think was the last I saw for the second flight. Yeah, it just sounds, they just announced that today. Yeah. Oh, that was today? Oh, wow. All right. I just got back from vacation, so I'm like, I don't know. I assumed everything that I've read has happened in the last week, but apparently that was today. There's a lot that happened today. So like, cool. they can hit monthly and stay monthly, but that's also not enough per also them raising a bunch

of money recently. Monthly is not enough to make money in their current architecture of things. Lauren's first day with AirPods Pro, everybody, so give her a second step on board. They're in a weird spot where, like, this first flight they had the, it was like this half research, or full research flight where it was half seats and then the payloads in the back and all that, which was meant to be, oh, that's the thing that would increase revenue versus just flying people. And that's why this Italian flight got bumped way up the manifest, because they signed up way after the hundreds of people that signed up for regular flights, and they flew first.

But even then, monthly is nowhere near enough to make them money, and they have to keep raising money in all these different ways to extend their runway out beyond. So like, I just, I don't see how this works out for them in the medium term. So what I will say is when I spoke with them at the spaceport, they did kind of own up to that. So they were saying that VSS unity is going to be like a loft leader for the foreseeable future. So I don't, while they're, while they're happy to start commercial operations, it almost didn't feel as if it was the true start to commercial operations. because it really just felt like, okay, we've got VSS Unity up to speed. Essentially, what I understood is that the vehicle was kind of like still a prototype.

It wasn't necessarily meant to be an operational vehicle, but they made it into one so that they could start commercial operations. It's really this new Delta class of vehicles that they're kind of putting all of their stock into. And those aren't going to be ready for what, until 2025. buy. So, you know, they're really kind of doing a bunch of dress rehearsals with their customers on Unity until the Delta class is ready. That's where they really see it be taking off as a sustainable business. When you get to the Delta class of spacecraft, though, do you think it gets to that sort of

more sustainable economic rate? Me personally. Let's not make faces about how we feel is what we're doing at the moment. I just, how about this? I'm not going to answer because I don't want to get in trouble. But if you look at all the other space companies that are trying to, you know, be public and, you know, how they're moving forward with their businesses, they've all very much diversified their portfolio in terms of vehicles they're working on,

you know, things that they offer to customers. If you look at Rocket Lab, they're not just launching rockets. They're actually manufacturing satellites. They're also building a bigger rocket. They're kind of following the market. So I would just say that I think that trend kind of speaks to whether or not that will be enough. How about that? That's actually, so now thinking about the Virgin Galactic history, right?

Virgin orbit was the spinoff because it was like, oh, we can do satellites too. and then, you know, presuming that lasted long enough, their spinoff would have been, we'll sell satellite and rocket components, because that's what everyone does. So it's almost like they were one, too many spinoffs up the chain. They went from human launch,

which is like definitely not so far a, like, great capital market to the next, the next worst one, which was satellite launch, to then like, oh, and then they petered out. So if they were just one spin-off ahead of where they were, maybe they would have had the component market in them.

But I don't know, though. The Astra ones go in the other direction. The Astro ones like coming back around. I saw you writing about this recently, Rachel, with them raising more money and then undoing the Apollo fusion situation as much as they can. Yeah, yeah. It's a tough situation, I think, that they're in right now. And I'm maybe not an expert on this topic,

but they are doing this reverse stock split to keep from being delioling. listed on the NASDAQ. And so that'll keep them, you know, in the public markets for a little bit longer. It'll also raise about $65 million through their, at the market, stock sale. At their current cash burn, though, it's only another couple quarters of operation for Astra. So it's still, I'm interested to see how they're planning to kind of make that work into the deeper future. In the short term, I think it'll work out for them, maybe.

but it's not a huge vote of confidence, you know? No. And also, it's just they have so much to do once they start launching that new rocket. Like, it's, you know, it's not as if it's just going, you know, they're going very frequently out the gate. So we'll see. You know, I'm happy to be proven wrong. Yeah, but I mean, they're both in the same situation, right?

Like shortening runway, working on new rocket. that's not a good mix there's there are like name a rocket that where the starting to launch the new rocket went really smoothly uh we're gonna be thinking a while you know like that doesn't work it doesn't go that way that's not how that works

because that's kind of the laws of physics of launch so yeah I'm just I now okay I would feel way more pessimistic about Virgin Galactic if Blue Origin was just ripping it right now, but they've yet to really show what their schedule is going to be in the return to flight era for New Shepherd, you know? I mean, this is one of the predictions we had was how many crude flights is Blue Orange going to fly this year? I was way optimistic. I can dip into this sheet already on the topic. So, granted, this was, when did we do this show? December, January,

whatever it was. So Lauren, you're looking great right now. You said two crude flights. Jake said four, I said six. So I feel like you're going to be more right. I didn't expect them to be down this long and not have really shared any details about what the schedule is going to be from here. And when did we make those predictions? This was the beginning of the year.

Oh, wow. So I'm proud of myself. I think. January 5th, 2023. Now that I think about it, yeah, it is July. And I am kind of shocked. And then I think the recent guidance, which wasn't even that recent, I think it was like beginning of June, right? They said they were going to be up and running in a couple of weeks or a matter of weeks.

And I guess it was in the cosmic sense. So, you know, we'll see if that actually happens anytime soon. Yeah, now if they were, but if they were, you know, if they didn't have that issue and they were flying, I mean, they were on their way to flying more than once a month on their trajectory of things. Like they were really ramping up new Shepard cadence. Yeah, absolutely. I was kind of surprised at how quickly they were flying back to back when they did actually have their. In fact, did I even tell you this?

I probably said it last time, but I remember at the time when that anomaly did occur, we were like, oh, it's just a cargo mission. Okay, we'll just keep an eye on it. And then, of course, you know, bit me in the butt. Now, to bring this back to where we started this conversation, how scared am I of a New Shepherd launch? Zero. Like, this situation, I feel like they should have been, and they did this recently when somebody was talking about New Shepherd,

and they were talking about how, like, this was a great proof of the abort system. I feel like they, I would have been, if I was the origin, New Shepherd sales team, I would have been marketing the shit out of the fact that our abort system worked so well, because guess what? We have an abort system. There is an abort system on this vehicle. Like, you will 100% be safe on this thing because, look, the whole thing blew up and this thing got back safely. Look at how great our vehicle is, buy a ticket, because we have an abort system. I would have made shirts. It said we have a board system. I would put in this everywhere. They have said almost nothing about it. And I think on its own, that's probably a defensible strategy because your vehicle blew up.

in terms of the suborbital tourism market and now the larger adventure tourism market, which maybe you wrote something about the sub situation, Lauren, recently, and the moratorium that's coming up in October. Like when you put it in context there, this looks like the safest thing that you could do in that area. Yeah, if you're asking whether or not I would choose to get on a vehicle without an abort system, I would prefer to fly on a vehicle with an abortion system. You have the abort system T-shirt.

We have an a board system t-shirt. I would still say it did give me pause. You know, I think it was definitely a very sobering moment. Just a reminder, you know, like, because things were ramping up when it came to Blue Origin, and it has felt a lot like, oh, there's nothing that could go wrong when it comes to these commercial space endeavors. So I would just prefer the rocket not to bear off course, I guess.

But you're right. Yes. The fact that it did actually work. work was, or the abort system worked was a very helpful advertisement for the vehicle, for sure.

All right. For a non-super spacey audience, though, like the kind of people who might be buying tickets to these tourism flights, I still think you know, Rocket not doing what Rocket should do is still kind of a scary thing to

sign up for, but not much money. I don't know. I can't imagine that's helpful. Definitely not great when you can Google image search the rocket blowing up. Now, all right, like if we're going to delve into the, we haven't not talked about the Ocean Gate situation on this show at all. Oh, really? I do feel like it's somewhat interesting because I had learned, like, you know, a week or two

ago, a week or two after the event, that last July, there was one of the missions that had Alan Stern, Dylan Taylor, and who else went on that one? Somebody else went on that that I was reading about. I forget. I don't remember that. Somebody else. Oh, was it the guy who flew twice on New Shepherd?

I texted this to Jake at some point when I was like, everybody went down on this thing last summer. But in that same vein, anyway, like the crossover here between people going to the bottom of the ocean or the Titanic and spaceflight is very heavy. So if the same people who were buying tickets on New Shepard were like, yeah, let's go on this sub, that clearly everyone coming out of the woodwork to be like, look at all these things that we should have been concerned about, maybe you're right, Rachel, like, it is just a baseline. Have I seen something bad happened to this vehicle before? And not necessarily a deeper analysis of like systems engineering from that. I don't know. I might take that back, though, because with the ocean gate situation, there wasn't an important system, right? There wasn't a way. no way out of that too

if something goes wrong I think it is a more responsible decision absolutely to get on under Shepard's life than to get into that thing that was terrifying was on the edge of my seat for days Lauren's only problem with it was that it wasn't a big enough submarine that was the main issue not enough room for activities

I will say though that in terms of transparency, I saw, I feel like there are similar issues. And, but, you know, this is an easy problem so because when you are super transparent about, well, first off, there are restrictions in terms of how transparency could be, right, because of Ritar and restrictions like that. But then let's say you are going to, you are super transparent about all of the issues you've dealt with. You know, I would say maybe the average person doesn't quite, understand, you know, whether or not those are big deals, you know, and that's kind of our job, which is to like uncover the truth and tell you whether or not that's something that should

be concerned about. But I think something I was really telling to me was, you're going to laugh. But I did, I was watching the Kardashian show on Hulu back when Pete Davidson was considering going up. And basically, you know, Kim was talking about how she was worried about it to one of her friends and then she said, you know, she sat down with Jeff Bezos and he said, he convinced her that it was safe, you know? And I mean, it's funny, but that's essentially kind of what you're going on, you know, you know, they do their public tests, but you kind of just take their word for it that they've done all the things that they need to do. So in that way, I did kind of feel an eerie similarity to the Ocean Gate issue, you know, obviously the physics

are extremely different, and the regulation is different, but it's still, there are some crossovers that I thought were interesting. This is the real reporting that you don't get elsewhere. It's direct from the Kardashian show. I honestly had not seen that talked about before, I feel like, and that's great stuff right there. You're welcome. I'm happy to provide the pop culture, space, crossover, whatever you need. Yeah, but he did not see the Titanic, though, Pete Davidson. Oh, no, not that I'm aware. I haven't seen him on a list.

So, I was shocked how many people have seen the Titanic. I feel like I've been aware of, though. So it's the whole thing. How many people have seen the Titanic? You know, a couple, but most of them are space nerds, I feel like. It's weird. I mean, Richard Garriott has gotten stuck under it. I read his book and he's been on this show and he talked about getting stuck under it.

That was weird. There was a thing. So, okay, related. Let me peel back some layers of off nominal planning. After we had Richard Garrett on the show a couple years ago, I reached out to try to get Victor Viscovo on the show, who was the guy that found out the company that takes people down to the bottom of the Mariana Trench, who's also flown on a new shepherd flight and was like friends with the guy who was on Ocean Gets. and was like trying to convince him not to go on there, yada, I was trying to get him on the show because I wanted to ask a question, and this is relevant to your reporting recently, Lauren,

about, like, moratorium is expiring and the similarities here. Why, if we assume that, like, going to space is eventually going to be a popular thing to do for tourism and even just, not even tourism, but, like, point-to-point earth travel, right? Like, if space travel is going to become economically viable, why has ocean travel why is it still the same price or more for those journeys

when we've been doing it a lot longer as a species like what is it about the market is it just is it always like I'm using that as okay if that's still really expensive then space is way off from ever being affordable I was actually talking about this recently with someone about in terms of reuse

and whether or not that's kind of like the game changer in terms of finances that people proclaim it to be. And if you've noticed, like, we haven't seen a substantial decrease when it comes to going to space on a Falcon 9. And I really just think it's the environment. Well, what they were saying is it's the harsh environment of going to space and like re-entering the Earth's atmosphere. That is always going to be extremely taxing and stressful on your vehicle, enough to the point where you're going to need to kind of do some tuneups afterwards that are going to be expensive and just needing and just the complexity of the vehicle involved taking you to space that is expensive you know it's the the act of leaving our atmosphere

and re-intering it i think is kind of the the uh the reason that that threshold is hard to like bring down so so significantly but i'm happy to be this was i was talking to an engineer so if someone else wants to come in and tell me i'm happy to be wrong Yeah, that's fair. I mean, I guess in that vein, what do you think? Well, I guess your point is, if submarines were expendable, it would be way more expensive to go through the Titanic than the fact that we can just bring the submarines back up

and get back in them. Submersibles, I know, there's going to be, like, nerds in the chat talking about submarines versus submersibles, whatever. Yeah, that's a whole thing. Just go on Reddit, Lauren. It's a whole thing. Don't make that face on me. I'm not these nerds.

I just have been on Reddit. I don't know. I don't know. Is there anything else to glean from this? situation? Is this? I don't know. I think the biggest thing that I, what I wrote about in the story was, you know, there's, it's just, there's been a lot of discussion about when is the right time to introduce regulations for human spaceflight safety specifically. And yes, I would be remiss not to mention the fact that space is a highly regulated industry. Obviously, when it comes to launch and

reentry, we have plenty of regulations in place to dictate safety there, which does kind of spill over into the human safety aspect of things. However, you know, they've just been really reluctant to allow safety regulations to come into play because they say they're in this learning period and that, you know, it's still a new industry, which is kind of laughable at this point, especially after the last decade that we've had, you know, to say that it's an emerging industry. But I think the best, the big case for coming up with something was when I spoke with George Nealde, and he was saying, look, we could easily have something like this happen in space. You know, obviously you're not going to get lost like the Ocean Gates said well,

but there could be a very high profile disaster. I mean, can you imagine if one of Branson's flight, the Branson flight or if the Bezos flight had ended, you know, tragically, there would be congressional hearings and, you know, all sorts of investigations and people would be calling for safety regulations immediately once they found out that there aren't any safety regulations. And then that would cause, you know, a haste to create safety regulations. And when you do things with speed and haste, they aren't necessarily the best ways to keep people safe in these endeavors. So that was kind of the good point.

It's like, you know, everybody kind of has a negative or positive, you know, feeling towards a regulatory regime. And it's more of like, can we come together and make a compromise for that we're all benefiting in the long run? And that we, you don't have to deal with a very tragic scenario like the Ocean Gate disaster. I struggle with this one, honestly. like really i'd love to hear your thoughts yeah i just i don't even struggle that like i i feel strongly one way or the other but i have in all the discussions of this thing the moratorium ending and then

trying to implement regulations i feel like i haven't heard anyone really give me examples of like what what would these regulations be shaped like in in terms of specificity right like should have an abort system is that is that as specific as we're getting or is it like much more specific regulations than that, right? And then if that's true, if it's must have an abort system, is what is the definition of an abort system? Does that have to be certified to a certain, like, statistical amount that, like, you're going to get the people back what X and Y amount?

Or, you know, because, again, like, would the space shuttle be, are we going to write regulations in a way that the space shuttle would get the thumbs up? And if so, I feel like they should be a little bit more stringent than that. maybe we should use it on historical vehicles which ones do we feel good about which ones do we not and like I don't know I'm see how mushy I am

I just really don't understand I'm not anti the regulations coming into effect but I am just like can somebody give me some examples of what these would be so I can understand what effect that would have on the vehicle developers themselves that's kind of where I'm at you know

I think the idea is we want to hear from industry. You know, like if the industry speaks up now and works with the government to say the best way that they can be regulated, you know, then they can take that into account and, you know, figure out the best, you know, like use what we've learned in order to create the best path forward. Because now, now we've done what we've said. At the learning period, we've learned a lot, you know, so time to take those lessons and to apply them to an actual regulatory framework. Yeah, definitely. I know there are groups in the industry working to kind of create

these voluntary standards that everyone kind of works. Why, in the meantime, while we don't have regulation in place, to make sure that space travel is safe as possible, though it's always going to be a risky thing. I think it's really difficult to figure out where exactly to draw that line, say, you know, one and however many flights can have injury. And that's a really kind of difficult thing for a person to consider what how much risk is an okay amount of risk and how to calculate it right all I've ever heard about the the safety ratings of historical vehicles is that they were all made up like the one in whatever was declared at the beginning of a vehicle was completely fabricated out of like best math possible right which is not good based on then what happened when those vehicles

flew for 30 years so all so that the reason this is again all right I think we're getting to the root of it because then I'm left with all right, what are the regulations that we've written? And from looking at the industry right now of suborbital travel, I think if they were to propose their own, they would be like, all suborbital tourism flights should fly from the desert. That's what we're going to agree on. It's far from everyone else. There's not a lot around here. And then they would fight over, should we have wings or should we have an abort system? And that would be like, all right, so we're going to left with like, everything should fly within 30 miles of this point in New Mexico.

And that way, it feels very safe. Because that's, by the way, Lauren, how close they all fly from each other right now. On my trip to New Mexico in May, I drove from Carlsbad, New Mexico, up through the center of the state. I was like 15 miles from the Blue Origin site and then drove past the Virgin Galactic site. And I was like, wow, all of this stuff happens in the same spot on Earth. This is not very far away from each other. And it's very interesting that that's the case.

I always joke that, like, the best place to launch a rock, is the worst place to go, you know? Or it's like, it's not a place that's conducive to like human life because you want it to be, you don't want humans to be there, right? You want to be in the middle of nowhere away from people. And so it's usually in a swamp or it's usually in a desert. Yeah, middle of the ocean coming soon, right? Yeah. You're right. It's good. You got to get that a named like a like Lauren's theorem or something you got to get that like as a named thing after you the best spot to launch a rocket is the worst place to be so get that quoted somewhere okay it's good it's a good theory I like it so should we before we look at the rest of our predictions

I would like both of you to review I realize my buttons don't work to show the screen I I'd like both of you to review the new Artemis Vance. Rachel, you wrote something about this today. Give me your full review of these things. And yeah, I'm going to leave it at that. What do you make of this? I am going to say something that I don't, it is not mine, it's from Twitter.

And I think Michael Shees tweeted this, that it looks like a pill bug, like those little, like roll-up, like, rolling-poly-lubts. And I can't stop picturing that. in these fans. Something about that like fully glass top, I don't know, the shape of it. It's not a very attractive vehicle to me personally.

No. I'm getting like a twinkie kind of vibe, you know, like the snack. Thanks for the clarification. Yeah, that's my contribution. I'm just mostly perplexed. by the window below the steering wheel. Like what is the utility of the, this thing is a window. That's a window?

Yes, that's a window in all these canoe vehicles. I looked at their site earlier. Apparently they're almost always going bankrupt to this company. I feel like I looked into this a little when they were, it came out that they were going to design these things. But all their things have this window in front of the steering wheel, which gives it like a bus vibe, which I understand. in when you have a vehicle that is insanely large and you need to park it in tight spots,

it makes sense to have good visibility. When it is a vehicle that is as tiny as this, nobody needs to see that part of the road. I don't, I'm not getting extra good views of wherever I'm driving. I'm just looking at, in my case, potholds and badly landscaped roads in Philadelphia. Like I don't, my life is not improved by the window in front of the steering wheel. These astro vans are not going to be parallel parking anywhere. please explain why that window is there. Are they very small vehicles?

I can't really get a good sense of the size. How big could those seats be? Look at those seats. Four astronauts in their space seats. Yeah. I guess the back seat is pretty big, huh? And I don't put this... Like they would be small.

Yeah, I just... I mean, I guess the back seat is spacious, but there's... Yeah. Well, each one's not going to carry four, right? Are they going to do this SpaceX style where there's two and each? I mean, I imagine. I actually don't know. I think that maybe they're trying to, you know, copy the look of the old astrovan, you know, from the old airstream.

So maybe that's why they picked. And they wanted to do an EV company. So, you know, that they found one that happened to be making the very unique silhouette that also kind of looks like an airstream. And it's also an electrical vehicle. so they found it. They nailed it. All right, well, I'm glad that we're all as unimpressed as I am at those. And it's, I don't know, there's a nostalgia for the astro vans that I do not feel as warranted.

This is maybe my space hot take of the week, but like. Oh, yeah. Give it away. Yeah, let me try this one on for size. I think we all think the astro vans were a lot cooler and more glamorous, only because we grew up, like our generation grew up, like, oh, what if we, grew up at the time that people were going to the moon and in reality

it's a car that drives people four miles at most and it's like okay great it's the retro that's appealing yeah right right um no if you

if you remember we should probably don't Sally ride's first flight wasn't even the cool astrovan that everybody remembers it was the Ithaca suncruiser which really looks like, it was like a, it had the very much like a Winnebago vibe to it. It was very old and crummy looking.

It was not, not cute at all. Hold on a second. I got to find this because, number one, the best way to plug your book of all time is obscure facts like this, Lauren, by the way.

I remember because I had to look up the make and the model. I was like, what car is this? How did you even find this? There's like no results for, Sally Ride, Ithaca Suncruiser. It was, so it was STS 7. I guess like...

Oh, Ataska Suncruiser. Sorry, wow, I already messed up. Editor, take note. I feel like this is in the... Is this the background of it? Is this it in the background? What's going on here? Was that the thing?

No, what is that? Are any of these... No, I don't know. I'm looking at the walkout pictures. That was there. get into it, you know? You're going to have to find, like, a video of them getting into the car. All right.

Well, we're going to have to follow up with that because that sounds amazing. I like this kind of, this kind of, like, we've papered over these hilarious elements of space history, and you're blowing up the spot that it was, and I mean, you are fortifying my point here, that the astro vans are overly hyped, nostalgia-ridden vehicles. Yes, they're not glamorous. No, they're definitely, they were kind of. an over, well, I don't know if they were a last minute addition, but, you know, when it came to some of them, it was definitely a cheap RV. Yeah, and I bet nobody then cared at all.

No, they were probably more focused on the fact that they were about to launch on top of a controlled bomb. Yeah. Yeah. That would have been top of mind for sure. All right. That's some good lore to be found in your book, I'm sure. Let's talk about the book in a second. Let's do... Let's do... I'm going to run down a list of predictions. Rachel, you can declare

who is going to be more right about this. Okay? Well, we already said I was wrong immediately. My first prediction out the gate, I was wrong within days. Relativity, I had first launch fails after Max Q. Jake had failure before Max Q. and so I think I won that one, right?

Then they fail. They failed before they got to orbit. Oh, I think before orbit, I think after that's old. No, Lauren, you were the most wrong of us all. You said that they would have a success. All you said was they would have a success in 2023, and what they did instead was fly once and cancel the whole program. That's true.

Yes. All right. That one was a hard one to gauge, you know? So, come on. Did we really truly expect a blatant pivot? No. You're going to guess. I'm going to guess.

Vulcan. Jake had Northern Hemisphere summer, 2022. I just was betting on May pretty heavily. Lauren had Q3. So. Hey. Yeah. Not too far off.

We're going to give her any credit for this, Rachel. Does Lauren get any credit? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the most right. Definitely the most right. The most right. Yeah.

As we know. I think Q4, the earliest now, it seemed away from Tori was talking today. Yeah, what do you make of this? Do you write you out on this BE4, is it or is it not a big deal? Did you check out this stuff today, Rachel? Were you on the call? I wasn't cool enough for the call. Yeah, I got second-hand information from the call, so I wasn't gone it myself.

I don't know. I mean, there's still kind of in the midst of repairs and things from what it sounds like. still hoping to launch by the end of the year. I personally am not. I think my take is that it's just such a, it's a failure so early in the process when they are supposed to be ramping up. And it, it, in terms of what my understanding of the hierarchy of testing, this, you know, the fact that it was intended to be shipped to ULA just seems a bit concerning to me.

Because for all intense and purposes, this engine was supposed to fly. And so, you know, regardless of whether or not acceptance failures happen all the time, it still just seems kind of sketchy to have it happen on a flight, you know, a vehicle or an article designated for flight. I don't know. That's just call me naive, I guess. Yeah, yeah. If it was the 20th engine, I'd be like, yeah, all right. like that's i get it but it it was the third third flight engine so right and i'm banking all of my

take on this that uh tory i love tori bruno everybody he's everybody's he everybody loves torre bruno he's a big all space fans love tori bruno he's just a nice guy but he has been drastically downplaying everything that's happening with vulcan for like a year and a half at this point every moment where there was something that the schedule wasn't right or this thing happened or there was a failure in that part, or when Eric started posting pictures of screenshots from Blue Origins, videos of Centaur blowing up on the test stand, he has been downplaying the severity of all of that, and then that whatever he was downplaying would have been walked back within several weeks. So, like, Centaur had its issue, and it was like, minor issue, this Centaur will

be repaired and fly again. Turns out they're shipping it back because they have to change the whole top dome of the vehicle, and it will fly. eventually most of the vehicle except for the part that broke. All right. I walked back a little bit. It was a large deal. It delayed them like five months at a minimum. So in all these circumstances,

I just feel like he's been a little too downplayy of the scenarios here. Therefore, I am baking that into my assessment that this is a bigger deal than he's making it. Yeah, I think it's probably a combination of the fact that they're already so delayed as it is. And, you know, maybe, well, I don't want to speculate about this, but, you know, there are those rumors that they're looking to sell. So they probably, you know, don't, they want to paint a rosier picture than is, you know, happening. And, you know, I doubt the centaur explosion did, you know, wonders for their, their advertisement to sell. So, you know, I imagine that plays a factor in some capacity. This is our main theme today. Stuff blowing up doesn't sell stuff. That's our,

That's our thesis of this entire episode. But I will hand it to Tori. He was extremely, like, so transparent to the point where you're like, wow, this is too much information about how, you know, art welding works. So I will, I will talk about him. Starship we had, now this is the one, if you saw my tweet earlier, I was giving Jake some shit for moving the goalposts, because he told me recently that the thing we bet on

was when Starship would successfully make orbit, when I'm pretty sure what we bet on was when the first launch would happen. So maybe we can check it on your memory, Lauren, to see, and you can be the deal breaker here, tiebreaker. I'm fairly certain it was just the first launch. 100%. It totally was. I did not anticipate them reaching orbit on the first.

So that's settled. So now we can look at our predictions. You had July, I had August, Jake had September. So once again, London is the most right. Yeah. And all right, now let's do a little mid-year prediction. Rachel, when are you feeling like if we're going to fly by Jake's rules when it first makes orbit? Let's do that instead.

Not even the second launch. What it first makes orbit? First makes orbit successfully. I think it's possible that it makes orbit on the next launch, on the next launch. attempt. You're a hot staging believer. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to say that I am.

I'm going to say that I'm optimistic for the next flight. That said, I don't know when that next flight. I'm putting this down in the predictions nonetheless. In the predictions. Yeah, I'm putting it in the official document. Next flight is successful, makes orbit timeline unclear. Lauren, would you like to update your line here? Not this year?

Yeah, I. Oh. Rachel's saying not. Oh, not this year. I don't think this year. I don't think so. Nice. I was pretty adamant they weren't going to launch again this year, but they have been moving

at a fast clip. So I think maybe the fall if they do launch again and late fall. And my issue is that they can't, the engines don't all ignite. They can't keep all the engines on. You know, I'm serious. Like, have all 33 engines ignited at the same time yet? No. So until I see that, then I'll be a little more optimistic about, I mean, they claim,

they claim that they can still reach orbit without all the engines running. But, you know, I feel like it would be nice to have them all working. Isn't that the plan, you know? Sorry, it's such a jerk. Hold on. No, no, no. I'm going to stitch a couple things together here. Starship is your ideal vehicle, because it is huge, and as long as all the engines work at the same time, you're in business.

Your double thumbs up on it. Yeah, absolutely. But until the all engines, like, hold on a second, though. Both of you are kind of just like skipping over the hot staging situation. Isn't this going to go chaotically wrong? Like the first time. It'll work eventually, but the first time, isn't the first time going to be absolutely chaotic? Yes, I imagine so. It'll definitely, something crazy will happen. Yeah, for sure. They have to,

there's the only way to test that kind of maneuver is in flight. So I don't think it's any way to actually, like, show, you know, do that on the ground and make sure that it will happen in flight. Yeah, I'm pretty pumped. Pretty pumped about that. I, my vibe was much like yours. I was feeling October for almost no factual reason, just felt right to me. So, you know, I'm putting that. I'm updating it. I'll go with November,

because I have a very extensive trip plan to Scotland. Nice. All right. I mean, we always, we do always bet on Lauren's vacations on this show. So that's definitely canon for this. Cruising through the rest of the list, we had a couple things. nobody thought Aryan 6 was happening.

Nobody thought New Glenn was happening. We were all right. Congratulations. We talked about the two crude flights. We were all very optimistic about clips. We thought Peregrine and Intuitive machines would all fly. We all agreed Intuitive machines won and Peregrin would fly this year. Are we even going to be half right?

I mean about Vulcan, right? So if we don't think Vulcan flies this year, then that's Paragon. So how about where are you at on Intuitive Machines? Are you putting a line in this, Rachel? Are you getting in this? Intuitive Machines, I am 1? What's the plan right now? I'm not sure I even remember with the...

I think it's like soon, like early fall or something, or late summer? Yeah. I think it's Q3 at the moment. But they keep changing it. All right. She's an I'm one believer, Lauren. Yeah. I just want to say that while we were talking,

they did send out an update that they successfully conducted a complete spacecraft test run of the Nova Sea Lunarlanders. Wow. Breaking news. Factor that into the analysis. Yeah. Wow. All right. Well, there we go.

The only other thing we bet on was Polaris. Lauren said not in March, probably late 2023. And I said I would be thrilled with September 2023. So I feel like we're overall, Lauren, I'm pretty happy with our prediction list here. I'm feeling pretty good about this whole thing. Did we not talk about Starliner at all? We did not even one bit talk about Starliner. We did bet on Artemis II crew announcements.

So you thought Kate Rubens would be on board? You missed out on that one. Jake bet Jeremy Hansen, whatever. What'd the frickin' do? Like, he bet one of the two Canadians. we're going to be on it. I picked Randy Bresnick and Reed Wiseman. So, yeah, lomp.

Did it even say Victor Glover? No. I think I was expecting him to be on Artemis 3, I think, is why I didn't put him on there. No. It is Reed Wiseman, though, isn't it? Is that true? Is that who is on there? I think so.

Maybe I'm wrong. I forget. Maybe. Wow, I should know this. We all forget at this point. It's been a while. Yeah. It's been so long.

Yeah, he is on there. Now, okay, this is, I'm going to move the goalpost so this one. I wrote him down in this prediction document, but I don't know if I said him on the show. I think I just picked one name, which was Randy Bresnick. But it's verifiably in this document, and you can check the edit dates. So if Jake wants to say we're betting on Orbital Starship, I'm going to at least say, I get credit for Reed Wiseman being on this list. A hundred percent.

Yeah. Yeah. All right. So not bad. We did all right. We're feeling good looking at the second half. Well, should we add a Starliner prediction? Because, man, that one is really up for grabs.

I literally don't even know what I would bet on Starliner. What are we even betting? like that it will fly next year? What are we betting? I was going to say like it has to fly next year or I, how are they going to keep going? Or else? Because it's been, well, I mean, you're building this for the International Space Station. We're coming up on the end of the International Space Station.

Like the thing needs to start flying or else why do we have it? You know? So it's got to fly next year or maybe 2025 and then otherwise. I don't know. I can't foresee it moving forward. I mean, Boeing's come out and said they're not dropping this program, right? They're kind of sinking money into it still. They sort of half-fastedly said it. They like, they like for a second, we're like, well, we're thinking about it. We didn't mean that. What we meant was, what we meant was we're lobbying heavily for the ISS to be extended beyond 2030 so we can keep flying Starliner. Oh, right? Yeah. That's the 40 chess, right? That ISS goes to like 34. and then Starliner flies like 20, 28, 9, 30, 31, 32.

I was going to say, it like flies like 33. Like the last six years and they bumped it out. Yeah, then they close it down. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. I'd actually bet that before most things. I feel like at this point. It's hard to bet anything but that. All right, well, I feel like this has been enlightening.

I've worked through why I'm a little bit weird about these FAA situations, and we at least assess the fact that you shouldn't blow stuff up that you're also trying to sell. So I do feel like we made some progress overall. So I'm feeling good about that. Many quotable moments. Rachel, if people are not familiar with your work, what should they do to check you out? Yeah, absolutely. So I write a daily newsletter called Payload.

You can check us out, payload. and subscribe to daily newsletter as well as two weekly newsletters on policy written by my editor Jocelyn and Parallax written by Space Science. Yeah, and there was super good JWST stuff

in here with all the birthday bash photos. I think it was also one's birthday on the same day as JWST. Is that a true fact? Oh, happy birthday. Yesterday was my birthday. So that's a fun thing to be. I was going to say.

Congrats on having to work every day on your birthday for the next 10 years at a minimum. The book. We need to hear about the book. What's the situation on the book? The book is coming out September 12th. You can pre-order it. I believe, yes, there's my website. Feel free to pre-order it there or I think I put a link up on Twitter. So yes, please, you know how those pre-orders work. They really help an author out. I'm going to plug that, and I hope you all will bear with me for the next couple of months when I'm pretty shameless about it. No, the pre-orders, I say this every time somebody's on the show with the book.

The pre-orders are a legit thing because I'm pretty sure it still works this way on at least Amazon, which is all the pre-orders get counted on launch day, which shoots you way on the chart. So it's awesome. Yes. What I've also heard, though, is you're doing a full book tour in the Sally Ride Astrovan. Yes. And if not, why not? No.

You know what? I think that's a great idea, and we should definitely go find one of those and make it happen. But, no, for real, we are doing a book tour. We haven't solidified the dates yet. But once I do have those dates, I'll definitely make them known. So if you are in a certain state, I will be going to, hopefully, I would love to see everyone and meet people and talk about space and then these amazing women. So I'll definitely keep everyone posted, but we're still massaging that for now. Is there at least going to be a northeast date somewhere in there? Yes. Probably New York. No, that's close enough. We'll see. But we're kind of targeting, you know, space-related states.

So Florida, Texas, California. And then I believe Seattle is also on the list. So stay tuned for that. Awesome. Well, that's all we got. Next week. Jake's back next week. It's July 20th.

which means we'll talk about the most notable space event to happen on July 20th, which is Jeff Bezos's spaceflight, obviously, critically important space event on July 20th. I literally don't know what Jake and I are going to talk about, but he's coming back. So it should be fun. But otherwise, thank you both for hanging out for putting up with our antics here, and we will talk to you soon. See you, boy.