Off-Nominal - 134 - Artemis II.5

Episode Date: December 8, 2023

Jake and Anthony check in on Starship, Artemis, spreadsheets, and a lost tomato on the ISS.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 134 - Artemis II.5 - YouTubeISS astronauts find tomato that was lost in space for 8 months (video) | SpaceSpaceX on X: At dawn from the gateway to Mars, the launch of Starship’s second flight testArtemis Timelines SpreadsheetWe got a leaked look at NASA’s future Moon missions—and likely delays | Ars TechnicaIAC 2016 timelineGAO-24-106256, NASA ARTEMIS PROGRAMS: Crewed Moon Landing Faces Multiple ChallengesNewest NASA timelineFollow 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, Jake. Hey, man, how's it going? Oh, I'm vibing right now, Jake. We had a very productive free show. I think... We really did. I would argue it was our most productive,

so productive that I'd like to bring it up the very first thing of this show, because we turned it into content. We can talk about after our drinks, but, yeah, you know. Sure, sure. Make people wait for it. Except for the several 14 people that were hanging out for the content themselves.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Check out the chat. They're getting out there. They know what's going on in there. What do you got today, man? What are you drinking? I have the last of the long johns from last week.

The long johns. Long johns. I don't know how to do it. Long johns. You got it kind of right, the long john. Yeah. That's it. Made with good water.

Water. Water. I don't know. What you got? The Philly accent is one that like, it doesn't like live rent free in my head. So I can't just like summon it when I need to. Yeah, it's hard to find in media that is not directly from here. Like you got to really.

Yeah. Yeah. People always get to New York or to Baltimore. I drifted to New York when I try it. Yeah. So it's like, the other mistake you make though is the Baltimore. Because if you go out to the western counties, it's like, gets pretty baldymorey, you know, baldymore.

Okay. Baldymore. Yeah. That's like getting down. These are two. The resolution's too high for these accents for me. There's like, to me there's a one accent from like Philly to Boston and then Boston gets a special one.

That's like what it is. It's like most of the U.S. population that's are offended by this right now. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we could do like micro regional accents in Canada and see how you. you do we can go that way if you want but i could try it sometime that sounds like a good thing to do when there's zero space content to be ahead yeah what do you got all right next pre show next pre show it um so i sent um i sent my wife to the store to get a beer for me and i said just get anything

that looks like pretty label i just let her i put her in charge of it and she came back with an american beer look at that a small small unknown beer yeah an unknown i don't know you've heard of this one um They're pretty rare, and almost as rare as to Katab. So they're, uh, you know, fun fact, worked on that Laginitas website one time. And they, as part of the agreement, delivered us a lot of beer to the office. It was great. Did you get, did you get this one?

The California IPA 6.2%. That's like the standard. Is it? Yeah. I thought the standard Lagunita had like a green label. I thought that's what the, I mean. Yeah. So.

So. So. Breaking news. Breaking news out of the free show. So if you've been following, you know, the space media, there's a, it was the 25th anniversary of the ISIS, Jake, this past week. I didn't realize that was the event. And there was this news story that came out that the Frank Rubio had lost a tomato in March

and never knew where it went and they found it. this week or who knows when honestly we don't know when they found this tomato but they have announced that they found this tomato sometime in the last couple months yeah sometimes it's in September 13th when it was first publicly acknowledged and now they found this tomato have not seen a picture

they've not seen where this tomato was found there was no description of where the tomato was so in the pre-show which you can get at off nom.com slash discord join the discord if we go live in the in the Discord for 40 minutes or whatever before the show. And usually we're just screwing around talking about whatever, arguing about stuff sometimes.

But today, I've submitted a FOIA request for pictures and descriptions of locations of this tomato. So we've got a case number, case 24002-91F, JSC. We submitted it to JSC. So we're going to let you know when they get back to us on the pictures and location of the tomato when it was found. I submitted that I was willing to pay up to $250 for this information, so we're going to see if I get billed. People may ask why we didn't submit an exemption,

but reading the federal code, we would have needed to prove that this was likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of the government. So we thought we wouldn't necessarily mean. their criteria. How do you feel about this project? I'm pro this project. Although I can't tell if this is a good or bad sales pitch for the pre-show, though,

because you can say it's a good pitch because it's really funny to FOIA picture of a tomato. But we also just like basically charge people to watch us read federal code live, and that was like not a good salesman. We also, in our defense, we also look through cameo to see who we could have do videos for introducing the off nominees this year. So it wasn't all lost. And if you out there have any suggestions on who we should pay like sub-50

cameo range is probably fine. We can pay people to do our off-nominy introductions in a couple weeks. So, I don't know. I feel like we have turned on time. Can we choose AI to make videos of the people we want to do it? I was thinking that too. That's definitely possible. Like some creepy like Morphy AI video?

Like I don't know. I don't know. They're like, they're not quite real. And Danielle Poole doing the intras. All right. Hi, Bob. All of this is burying the lead because I, in addition to the FOIA project,

I approved a project this week, which was that Jake was allowed in our business meeting, Jake was allowed to make a PowerPoint, no, not a PowerPoint, a spreadsheet for this podcast. And boy, did he. Did you like to tell us about your work here? Okay, so we were thinking that a good show content this week would be that we check in on Artemis because we had a starship flight recently. You and I have not properly caught up on what that felt like. Sometimes we just call each other, we just shows. We haven't done anything yet.

It's just like we still have not even like. I don't think we've talked about it. I don't think we've talked about it really. Not even offline. Like we have not talked about a starship at all, which is other than like a few messages. So we thought we'd catch up on that. And then we're like, well, you know, that's also like one of the basing items for Artemis. So maybe this would be a good opportunity to check in and see how things are doing.

Like, what's on schedule? What's not on schedule? What does it look like? And so there's obviously a lot of stuff to keep track of on dates for Artemis, like all the different things contributing to it and when it was promised and when those promises changed and when things actually happened. And so, you know, I was like, this is a spreadsheet use case right here. That's what it needs to be.

So I just started making it this morning, and I thought it was going to take me 30 minutes, and it took me four hours. So, because I had to go and read, like, every article to find out what was going on with it. But it was a lot of fun. This is a serious spreadsheet. We're going to be video-heavy show today,

if you would like to get spreadsheets in your life. But maybe we should put that, behind the part where we talk about, arguably the coolest launch that's happened in years. Not to put my thumb on the scale here. Okay, well, I'm glad to know where you stand on. It was pretty rad. Okay, so some of the people in Discord were bugging me, like, we need to know how you feel about this thing.

And there's this sick hype video that's basics put out like today, which is really good. So, yes, the answer is this launch was pre-wratting. It was pretty good. That's your statement on the matter? So the one of the things that really, and you can see it when they finally takes off, I'm trying to, I'm leading up to it, all right? I'm kind of like. Okay.

All right, go ahead. What do you, okay, give it to me. This launch kicked fucking ass. It was the best. It was the best. Look at this thing. I mean, this launch is like, did break ground. I don't know how many other rockets have blown up twice on the same launch.

Like, that's pretty impressive. So, so, no, but that shot there. So you can see when, like, when you're taking the picture of the,

of the rocket from far away, it's, like, pretty wild because the scale, I don't know what it is, but you can tell the scale. One more, like when there's people in it.

That's pretty good shot. Yeah, this one. Okay. Okay. So I don't know what it is about, like Starship must have, it must have transcended some sort of normal scale of rockets where even at this perspective, you can tell like, that's not how big rockets are. That's a different thing.

Rockets aren't that big. Like, I've sat that far from a rocket before and they're smaller than that. And like you can tell. Like from a distance, it would be really hard to like visually like pick out the size difference of like Falcon 9 versus like Alice or like that's all, they're all in like the same way weight class. This is just different. It's just very different. And I just, that was something that struck me with this video. It's just like,

yeah, that rocket is big. That is a big rocket. It's the, the plume length, right? Like, it's that very, I mean,

Saturn V is probably the only thing you can compare it to that had that plume that went on. Yeah. Because you know that 75 feet or whatever it is. Yeah. And it just goes on way bigger than the rocket is. Yeah.

It's also really bizarre. Like, it kind of throws off your, um, I don't know what this is. it's like we have, we've watched so many rocket launches that we have just like a natural feel for them. And like they just like, this is what it, what a rocket launch looks like. And I think the, the ratio of first stage to second stage on this is so weird that it like kind of trips me up.

You know, just like they're almost like the same length, you know? And like it looks like two of the same size things just stacked on top each other rather than like a bulky first stage and a smaller second stage. And that kind of weird. I don't think I appreciate that until you said it. Yeah. Yeah, it's weird, man. It's like, and apparently. they're going to stretch it out, so it's going to look even weird. Like, they're going to be like the same size at one point. Like, I don't know what the thing is there, but the, the depot is supposed to be like this huge, like, pencil thing. So, like, it's going to be, that's going to be wild.

Like, Jake, this number, all right, first thought I had when this thing ignited, right? First of all, let me set the stage as well that, uh, this launch happened around my breakfast time. And I eat breakfast every single day with a three-year-old who really likes rockets. so, like, I had a good baseline for how excited I would be about this launch. When it came off the pad, like, I had this reaction of, that's a legit rocket launch. Like, that thing's doing, it's doing a rocket launch right now, you know, whereas the first time. Showering their coast with concrete, yeah. Yeah, but even the slowness of the first one, the slow acceleration, right, because all the engines were out and everything was blowing up.

Like, it had this weird lumbering sense. to it, whereas this was just straight up, like, it was hitting our muscle memory for how a rocket launch should look coming off the pad. So I was, I was pumped. Like, I don't know. I don't know what it is if I've just gotten jaded on rocket launches, because we've watched 8,000 of them. But like, most rocket launches, like, whatever. Like, we talked about on a show a couple weeks ago, like, we're not waking up for middle of the night rocket launches, especially Starlink launches, if they were ever streamed on YouTube. So, but this was like the first one in a long time. that felt like the rush of,

holy shit, this thing's working and it's going the direction. Yeah, that's doing all the things. Yeah, that was definitely special about it. It's like, like, a lot of those early SpaceX launches really felt like you were watching things change. And, like, watching a Falcon 9 Starlink launch, they does not accomplish that. It's just like, yep.

Like, it can't even bother to put it on, like, put a host stream on it. Right. So this felt like it's, I felt like that again, right, being able to go. oh, we're, it's going to get different now. Awesome. Even comparing this to the first launch of the stack, like that one I felt, I admittedly was not in the best state to enjoy that launch. I was in a rental car outside the Denver airport,

driving back from the space symposium. So it was not like the, I did not set myself up for the viewing experience. But the sequence of events that happened on that launch was confusing enough that like I stayed in trying to understand what's happening state rather than just dealing with the euphoria of a rocket launch. And this felt like the ship testing phase of Starship, which, you know, the whole time you're riveted with like, number one, this looks amazing. Number two, it's working. It's doing a thing. And number three, I wonder how this is going to go wrong next. And then, I mean, they had no one thought hot staging was going to go right the first time.

time and it was the least. That was awesome. But like, no, it had, I have nothing to say about the hot staging part because it just worked and it looked awesome. It's like, great. They nailed it on that, you know? Yeah. I mean, the thing I love that I didn't, I didn't know what's coming was the staging of the,

of the, the booster engines turning off in like sequence, like, yeah, yeah. Like that's sort of like multi-step, like, that was pretty neat. I was like, I wasn't thinking that was how it was going to be. And I was like, this is cool. I didn't, I didn't really think. about that phase before, but yeah, I mean, I'm trying to pull the video that because it did just look. I don't know, man. I just, you know, I went into this with you dunking on these old shitty raptors they were going to throw into the ocean and like, it went amazingly. It's perfect.

Well, they tightened all the bolts at me. You hear the workback list there. They did. Tighten all the vaults. It's leaking. Let's just go around and tighten every one of these. It's just like an extra I had a core return. Yeah, I mean, obviously everything blew up eventually, but I don't know. I feel like I feel like I was able to tap back into like just a dude excited about rockets for a couple minutes on this one. And I was very pumped that it went as well as it did because, you know, and then there's obviously the whole discourse of like, was it a failure or not.

And I don't know. I was like, God, no, it was not a failure. Like, they did so many things in a row. All of it went spectacularly up until the moment when it didn't. I'm not sure we've gotten resolution on why the ship lost telemetry and then was the AFTS triggered. But like, I don't know. I really couldn't care.

Well, like, that whole question, was it a failure or not? It's like, it's not, it's missing the, it's not asking the right question. because there's like there's two parts to that there's like is it did the mission fail and is the program of failure and for Starship those are two different answers that's a good way for every rocket before SpaceX

ones that was the same answer if the rocket blew up the program was in trouble that's just like if SLS had blown up bad bad day congressional hearings and everything everything would have gone wrong this pulls up it's like well it'll be another one soon it's like whatever like so so you can't

ask it that it's too short have a question to ask. It's like, was, did, did IFT2 fail? Well, yeah, it blew up twice. Right. But the program made significant steps forward and that's like what's really good, right? Because you solved the hot staging issue, like you said, that was a huge unknown. And then the lunch pad didn't blow up. So that's stupid thing. Whatever the upside down rocket bidet, they order they call it now is working. So that's good. So like that's why it's like really exciting because and we know that. Right. So we're watching it. We're seeing those two things happen. After the hot staging, we're just like, yeah, we've made, it doesn't matter what happens after this.

Like, this is a double checkmark win in our books, right? Even the fact that the ship got blown up, like, basically at the end of its burn, I got great, great, that is awesome. Like, if it didn't blow up, then it was going to blow up in 90 minutes when I hit the atmosphere, so it was fine. I mean, it would have been preferable if that happened, but, you know. Yeah, probably. It is, yeah, I mean, I don't know, man, like, I think the only, I think the only,

only, I mean, that's unqualified great day in my book. It was awesome. I do have, the only stuff that you have to figure out is, you know, what we're talking about next, which is just it's a general timeline overall and how quick they can send a couple other starships up there because they've got a bunch of them. They've got more than them than they can fit in the buildings that they've got. So, you know, assuming the launch pad is actually fine, which did great, then that was going to be the next question of like, all right, when's the next one? You know, when are we doing this again? How quickly can we get iterating on this thing? There's the Artemis pressure on Starship, but there's also the Starlink pressure

on Starship. There's a lot of questions about which things come first for the Starlink or the Starship roadmap overall. Like, you know, is getting this thing working as an expendable launch vehicle with the testing that happens after you, each stage does its job? Like, that's the part that they'll work out as they go. Are they going to do the operations? operational bits as they fly all the other parts like they did with Falcon 9 because that's a thing that I feel like we forget that you know When Falcon 9 was starting to fly We literally all watched as they just were like well We're we're on borrowed time here with this first stage coming back in like let's try some stuff with it and eventually it resulted in them landing it

Propulsively and reusing it but we went into this program saying that's a Launch 1 requirement is like soft touched out on the ocean and that was yeah a total afterthought and in the first round that SpaceX did of this kind of stuff. Yeah, it's definitely like trying to compare Starships development to Falcon 9s is really interesting because it's like, I don't know, like there's parts of it that feel like it should be like a synergy, you know, like Falcon 9's the tick and Starships the talk, right?

Like it's, they had to invent landing rockets on the first one and that was really hard. Now they just need to scale it up and reuse the upper stage. So it's like doing the same concept but a little bit better. So you're like, well, it should be easier. But then at the same time, it's like, I don't know, man. It still is going to require some work. So it's like, you know, what is that?

With landing on the chopsticks or whatever, that's okay, all right. That sounds like possible, but hard, you know. So we'll have to see kind of what that looks like. But yeah, no, it's there's, there's still a lot of, to me, there's still a lot of paths this program can take. Like the paths sort of narrow for these things as you develop. right like what you know what the vehicle is for and I think that we are we are nowhere on that question yet like like right now it's like pretty clear what Falcon 9's job is and what like

it's going to is the job is doing now is great it's going to keep doing that job for a while and then they're going to get rid of it like that's there's there's we know what's going to happen there right but like Starships like I don't I don't know what the job is yet like it's got a lot of jobs and it doesn't know how to do any of them yet so like I just don't know what the situation is yet Yeah, but I, there's always a part of my brain that that does not, like I wouldn't say I have an allergic reaction to it, but the whole idea that the starship itself is the thing that will go everywhere to deliver stuff everywhere is still a tough one for me to get around versus it being like the ultimate Earth to orbit and back solution, right? Like you get your cargo flown in on a 747, but that doesn't drive to your house and also deliver your packages to you. It's like the way that we've optimized transportation around Earth is optimized transportation means for each leg of the journey and making that as efficient and, you know, well-rounded

as it could be. And this is, we're going right to full reusability and this thing touches lunar dust on the way down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not that that same ship will fly back and forth into re-entry and whatnot, but you get my point. Is it going to be the, is it going to be the cargo ship or the 18-wheel truck? or the delivery van or like the parachute. You know, there's lots of different kind of steps to a journey, right?

Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. Part of me still is like, I don't know, this like New Glenn with a reusable upper stage architecture makes more sense in my head for Earth. And then you've got reusable bits that do the other parts, you know? Well, especially with all the stuff, all the new, like, you know, we just talked to Tom Mueller about his company, all that kind of thing that's happening. opens up a lot of different possibilities

where, you know, like the idea of New Glenn being just a Leo truck is like, well, it's actually maybe kind of smart. Like, yeah, yeah, like that's just get really good at that one thing. That's what they're intending, you know. Blast like 1,000 of these like, you know, impulse-based cargo things attached to payloads and let them go wherever the hell they want to go after that.

Who cares? Like, you know. Yeah. I'm willing to buy into the fact that the next 20 years will be Starship delivering everywhere. but I am not yet willing to concede that the 2050s looks the same as that. Mm-hmm. You know? Yeah.

Yeah, that's probably true. It's probably a more efficient use of our resources in the next 20 years to have a stack that looks the same that goes everywhere so that we can get really good at doing space operations and understanding what actual business opportunities are in space and what the actual economically viable things are. And then it will specialize. That makes sense to me. but I'm not sure a starship-shaped thing is what will land us on Europa. No, probably not.

Which was always, for the record, my least favorite part of those early Starship presentations was like, they went from, look how near term this thing is to like we're standing on Europa. And I'm like, all right, it's like a cool sci-fi vision, but I feel like it undermined the first part of your, your first part of your presentation where you were like, we can do this in five years, which I guess, Jake, can we? Could they have done it in five years? No, they can't. Should we crack over the spreadsheet?

For the first take from the spreadsheet, the IAC presentation of 2016 did not come true. All right. I'm going to pull up on the screen. Everyone watching, mark the time code, we're like 20-something minutes in, and you can go watch this later. Or are you going to, what are you going to do with the spreadsheet?

You're going to post like an export of this? Yeah, I'll just lock it and make it shareable, I guess. We'll put the link in the show notes for everyone to prove. All right. It's not. Give me your thinking and some takeaways and you tell me where I should scroll around on this thing. Okay. So first of all, what data did I put on here?

So, yeah, just for fun, right at the top, I have that IAC schedule that they had in that slide. So the initial, like, Starship schedule, he had, like, you know, this is when we do this, booster testing and ship testing and, you know, the orbital testing and then the Mars flights. I put that on there just as like a reference point because it's kind of funny to look back on that. Yeah, there it is right there. So I copied that over to the spreadsheet. And I really wanted to have it on because I don't know if you remember. We did a show.

Was it on Miko or was it on this show? I can't remember. Maybe it was even with Martians. But you and I talked, but we checked in on Starship like a couple years after that presentation, two or three years after. And I think the show title was called Starship on course because we went back to that schedule. And it looked like everything was right where we were supposed to be.

There was just the booster testing was a little bit late and everything else was like bang on. And we were like, wow, this is like weird. Like an Elon timelines coming true. What was, do you remember what era that was of Starship though? Yeah, I can't remember. I think it was, they were just starting. We March since 65. Yeah, Starship on course.

I think this got cross posted to Miko, I think. Oh, no, we did this was our, we did part one here and part two on Miko. That's what we did. Oh, yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah. Okay, so October 2019, right? So that's when that was. So that is in the era of they just did Star Hopper is when that is.

Okay. All right. So, yeah, we were beyond carbon fiber moment and all that. The booster testing was supposed to have started. You know, according to that thing, the Star Hopper was like a year behind schedule, but not too bad. Still within the window of ship testing. I see it over here. So, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. All right. IAC 2016 timeline. We had propulsion development. Why do you have this going back to 2014? Oh, okay, I see. This spreadsheet has moved left since I looked at it.

Yes, it has. So we had propulsion and structures and then ship testing kicking off in Q3 of 2018, and then booster testing in Q3 of 2019, which is actually where Star Hopper landed. Yeah.

Which I assume we should take that as meaning ship testing. Is that what your assumption is? Star Hopper to me is ship testing. This is all ship testing. Yeah. Yeah. That's the ship testing era. Yeah. Okay. You can see it. It's funny when you put them all on this, like, this is all by quarters, right? So like when you like zoom out to that temporal resolution, it's like, oh yeah, like all there was like very clearly a time when when this is what they were doing. And then they stopped doing that and moved on to the next thing, right? Yeah. That was a lot of flights in a very short amount of time that looking at this way. You're right. Yeah. Yeah, it's pretty wild. So yeah, so I put all that stuff on there and then I put the actual flights on there. And then I went

on to some like the next two sections are the Trump and the Biden administration's sort of like promises or schedules. So like what's, you know, what what NASA says is going to happen in terms of Artemis, right? So I have like some of the original announcements on there and the transition. And then basically everything passed today is all just like scheduled dates for stuff to happen. Right. So you got like Artemis II, Artemis 3, all that kind of thing going on there. I have the gateway stuff on there, the lunar landings. I even put Dragon Excel on there.

Yeah, you do. So yeah, so those are like our reference dates for like our baseline. Under that, I have a yellow section, which is all of the leaked schedules from Eric Berger's article. from a year ago. If you remember, there was that great, up. We had the show, pop it back up on a screen,

that show, right? The profit. Yeah, we just popped that back up there. So I put all those dates on there to see, including the profit. I love that. The profit, yeah,

when he thought our mystery was going to happen. So that's on there, too. And then what do I have? Okay, and then I have the GAO report. So that came out this week, last week, I guess, last Friday.

A week ago. Yeah, a week ago. So this GAA report came out and said, it, you know, basically the long, inch, I read it this morning, the long and short of it is Artemis ain't happening on time. Yo, that it's just not going to happen. Here's 15 reasons why it won't make schedule.

So I have their Artemis 3 date on there, as well as some of the milestones for Axiom that's supposed to hit for their suits and stuff. That was in there. I put that in there. So we can kind of compare that to see where that's coming. Then I have all the awards, all the green stuff there, is all the contract awards.

You've did so many things in this. This is amazing. Yeah. So you can kind of see when formulation starts, right? One of these things kind of get delivered. I put Dragon Incel in there for you as well. And there's some question marks about its existence everywhere past that. Because there's no other months.

Amazing. And then I have some astronaut selections in there. I have Artemis Flight Milestones. So things they actually achieved, just kind of trying to track like where, you know, where the booster is. is and where EUS is. And that's kind of awesome gateway milestones too. So there's not much on that.

But you know, you can see where HALO was. And then just for funsies, I put some other reference points in there. Like when the show started, how many Falcon flights were at those times, you know, things like that. This is the real, this one section of your, of your spreadsheet is the real detail, though. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. It starts, Miko starts. Like, bam, boom, boom. Very. Yeah. Can you tell we were inspired? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. And I put EFT1 on there just for you because I know you love that. Yeah, man. I mean, that EFT1 fits in this little quadrant of the path to this show existing. Kind of, yeah, kind of. Your NASA special. That's just a huge gap in the spreadsheet between that and anything else. It's crazy.

That is a big gap. All right. So you hit me with your takes after having reviewed all this data. Okay, so, I mean, the thing that drove us to, drove us to, this first was really this GAO report. We wanted to make sure we covered that. And so, you know, their thesis that Aramis three, the first landing, is not going to happen on time.

And so I really wanted to see what I could like look at in terms of figuring that out. And I think I have to say that we are underselling how much Artemis three is not going to happen in Q4 of 2025. Like I just, there is a negative percent chance that that's going to launch in 2025. It's dire. So like if you zoom in on this like section like 2024, 2025, like I don't know,

can you see my cursor in there? Like if I do that, can you see it? Yeah, I can see it. I can see it. So like, so you can see IFT2 here and then all the way down to Artemis 3. Like, yeah, like zoom in on that section there. Okay. So so that you can see where we are right after IFT2.

And then we have the original moon landing date is supposed to be right now. Love it. That's the Mike Pence date. Yeah, so that's not going to happen. The original Artemis 2 date is still supposed to be this year. And then you can see Artemis 3 next year. So in this period, this is eight quarters between now and Artemis 3.

Like, let's talk about everything that has to happen. Okay. So we'll start with a big one, human landing system, right? Mm-hmm. So we just watched the, not quite first orbital flight of this rocket. And in the next eight quarters, they got to get the rocket working,

get the ship working, invent and get the tankers working, invent and get the depots working, fly at least 30 to 40 of those in that time, just to fly two human landing missions to the moon. They need to land one of them on the moon and prove that it works. Then they be able to build the second one and fly that one. and plus any other test dates in there.

So that one like already looks like, yeah, I don't, I'm not, I'm not seeing that in eight quarters. That's a tough one. That's a really tough one. Especially not having any detail out about the propulsion system to land on the moon. Like, what are those little guys? I don't even know if we know the name of those things yet. The like side engines or another? Is that a thing? Does it still a thing? Yeah. I think. I think they, what they said, they were going to, like, use the main engines for, like, most of the descent, and then when they got close, they were going to flip over to the little one.

So, like, it's not... Have we seen them? Has there been a hardware test of it? Is it a thing? I don't know, man. Because this is not... This is SpaceX. This is not a Blue Origin, right?

If and when there's harder for this, we will just have, like, photos of it the whole time. It'll be out there. It'll be obvious. There'll be, like, people are like, this sounded different at McGregor. I've compared it to all the audiographs of all the tests that happened over the last 14 years. years. You know, this is not the hangar opens and there's a fully built, you know, Artemis ship there. Like, we will have, we will be able to, from NASA spaceflight streams alone, do all of the component tracking that NASA requires for full reliability paperwork on this vehicle.

That's how detailed this is going to be. So. So, yeah, so this is, this is dark. And like, especially because we have to fit the on-crued demo in first. Like, how, I don't know, how, how much time do you need after the uncrewed demo to, like, check everything over and then get the paperwork stamped and say it works before you, like, fly the next one. Right. Like, it's not going to be a week, you know, it's got to be some amount of time, even if they dispose it. And, like, if all those flights are disposed, like, whatever. But, like, they still need some time to go over that.

So, like, that thing has to fly, like, what, Q2 of next, like, a 2025 or something? I don't know, I don't know how fast it's going to be, but like, everything that has to happen for the mainland, you're saying that there's not eight quarters until the moon landing. Like, the first moon landing we care about is the one before that. And that's, so that's only six quarters away or whatever. Yeah. It is funny, too, when you think about Apollo,

like how many lunar modules were just, like, ditched at the testing of Apollo, you know, seven, ten, like, nine? What did nine do? Yeah, yeah, yeah. something else. Nine was the yeah, nine was the test, it was the first crude test of the lem in

in Earth orbit. Yeah, and then the one that 10 that went down to the moon, but not to the moon. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I actually looked that up because there was the, so the first limb that flew was Apollo 5. It was uncrewed and they just flew it around

in lower Earth orbit. So that was like early, like January, 1968. And so it took from then until July, so that's 69, so that's, you know, 18 months of time between the first time you flew that engine in space before you trusted people land on the moon with it. With way more risk tasting and the entire national effort behind it. Yeah, Apollo moved fast. Like, let's be clear about that. Right. It was a fast program. It happened very, very quickly. So I know this is SpaceX, but Apollo moved fast too. So that is an interesting thing. I mean, when's the first time we fly a raptor, like, whatever this landing engine configuration is, when's the first time we fly that? And then how long do we need before we feel happy putting astronauts on it? Listen, I'm here for the SpaceX exceptionalism all day long, but I do think with a two-year gap in the timeline of Starship testing, a little bit of that shine is worn off.

Like, there's, I'm really, really curious when it's 20 years from now and people are right in. their books about this era, if there is a market change in the way that the program was managed and handled in that gap. And like, was it all paperwork for two years? No. Like, they weren't, they didn't have stuff ready. What was it? Where they're, I mean, they hired a bunch of people from NASA that seemed to be like, you know, Gersed and leaders and all these people who were like make SpaceX fulfill its role as the boring option. It's kind of the thing. But I mean, that gap is definitely a thing, right?

When you look at this, and it's obviously a lot shorter than the EFT1 gap, but like that is a big period of time, two entire years. Yeah. And the orbital testing was supposed to start in Q1 of 2020. So you can kind of think of the Starship basically being three years behind Skaddle according to the very first idea, right? That's if you really want to put a number on it. Yeah.

Which like whatever. It's three years behind schedule. Which is fine. That's fine. But like that tells you that even SpaceX is going to be, you know, struggling to meet this, this unrealistic timeline. Yeah. And I'm someone who doesn't really care about schedules in this way.

Like I really don't care of what people projected of a schedule, especially when it's like so tight up and all this stuff. I care about it from the angle that you're taking, which is what are the things that have to be done or that we need to see visible. evidence of in the next, you know, several months. Yeah. And when you compare to smaller programs, like when we talked about clips last year, you know, from the outside, sometimes you can feel like, how much is left?

Like, you know, strap the engines on the freaking lander and put this thing on a rocket. Like, how much it could possibly be left to do? And here we are a full year later. And we're still weeks away from the first one launching, you know? And that's a tiny little moonlander comparatively. Yeah. Yes. Yes. Yeah. So I think that sees happen on Starship. What else? Yeah. Okay. Well, I'll add one more thing to Starship. And this is not good news if you are someone who thinks that we have a chance because it's SpaceX.

The GAO report talked about this a little bit. But basically, there is this whole part of the development sequence because Starship and Orion have to dock in Lower Earth orbit. there is a full end-to-end test you have to do with the software talking to each other. So Lockheed marketing and the Orion software team are now a critical dependency for HLS to be developed. And the GAO report says there are four different interfaces they have to invent because the operating systems are very different, and they have not agreed on a process on how to do that yet. So that's where we're at with that. So yeah, that's a little one. Yeah.

That's a fun one to think about, right? Oh, okay. Yeah, that's a... Yeah, I had not thought about that. I was like, yeah, I'll just talk with Ryan, whatever. I just wasn't even thinking about it, but it's like, yeah. This is not curable. He don't slap the clamp of trot on.

Yeah. No, you know, he just to run into it, and then the magnets and magnets work. Yeah. And they bounce around a little. You've got to turn off SaaS for a second. Yeah, just go to a quick, you know, zoom out your speed a little bit so that it locks together. then you can un-on-time more. But anyway, so that's on there as well.

So, yeah, I'm not super confident about that, too. The suits, I honestly, I'm looking at the report. I think the suits are in not as bad as shape as I thought they were. Like, I still think they're going to be a pacing item. But, like, I'm not, I don't think they're going to turn two years into six. I think they're going to turn two years into three, and that's whatever. It's fine.

Like, you know. But yeah, so that, I mean, that's still, like, looking at the GAO dates on there, like, they just did their PDR, I guess, is supposed to have happened now. And they got to do, like, four reviews in the next, like, six quarters. So it's, like, going to be, it's going to be fast for them. So we'll see, we have those pacing items now. We'll be able to kind of know, like, when did the CDR actually happen? When did the certification actually happen? That's an interesting one.

Are there tests planned before Artemis 3 of the suits themselves? The report said that they were. were going to do tests, but not like in space tests. They were going to do like stuff at the NAC center center. Yeah, like vacuum chambers. And then like a bunch of the ones like the gravity machines where you can get in them and it's like simulated gravity and you can walk around like those kind of things. So they were going to do some of those kind of tests, but apparently not a full in space test test. So yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean it's like that means they could just roll it on up into HLS when they need to, but also

there's like not insignificant chance that we're all sitting around the TV watching the first people walk on the moon in 60 years and they have to abort because the suit pressure valve is reading the wrong sense. The sensors are set to conservatively and they have to abort the thing. Yeah, or I

imagine like, you know, so it's supposed to be like a six or seven day stay on the surface for that Artemis 3 landing. I bet you one of those days is if we put the suits on and walk around inside the spaceship just to like try them out and you do your test right now, right? You know, and don't even go aside. So that's my thought. I'll have to foil that one too.

Hopefully they don't bring any tomatoes. So here's where I ended up with that. So looking at that Artemis 3 date in 2025 now, I'm like, yeah, not happening. So I was like, what are all the other Artemis 3 dates? Like, are there any of these that are close? And so already the stuff that Eric leaked that were all like worse are already. like the same or passed already. They're not happening either.

The only dates that make sense is the GAO thinks it's going to happen in 27. So that's like, you know, call it a year and a half later. And then you have the profit saying two years later. And like now I'm just kind of like, wow, that, I mean, I wasn't going to doubt the profit because obviously, you know, he's been pretty bang on. When that first came out, I was like 2028. My God. But now I'm just like, oh yeah, it's going to be 20.

That always made sense to my brain for sure. Yeah, for the first landing, yeah. So that's interesting. And I have a thought. I have a theory on what might end up happening because of that delay. So I'm looking at this like schedule like Artemis 3. Yeah, kind of right there. This region, yeah.

And okay, so look at the other stuff happening around there. We have the Halo PPE launch around the same time as Artemis 3. So that's like late 25. and then it takes nine months to get there so you have Halo kind of arriving there. What if we change out Artemis 3 to just be a gateway visit? You move it back a year

and then it visits the Halo, right? You move it back a year from this. So Q326? Yeah, delay Artemis 3 one year and it becomes just a gateway mission. They go over to the gateway, look at pictures of the moon, check everything out, make sure it works, whatever.

Like lots of fun stuff you can do with that. And then that takes all the pressure off the landings. You can do the uncrewd demo around the same time if you want and put the crude one back, invent some other mission. Maybe Artemis 4 becomes that mission and let it happen when it's going to happen. But I am like pretty confident now that Artemis 3 is not going to be the first moon landing. I think because I don't think you want to go three years without an S-level launch. I don't think that's smart.

I don't think NASA is going to want that. I don't think anybody wants that, you know. So Artemis 2.5 is what you're proposing. Kind of, yeah, yeah. Because that was what Artemis 3 and a half was going to be was putts in around waiting for the next human landing system. So you're saying it's Artemis 2 and a half, not Artemis 3 and a half. Yeah.

And then they're saying in the chat here, Brad said you can push back U.S. too, right? Because that's going to be, you need that for Artemis 4. Now you can push that to, you know, one SLS mission later. You have to order one more ICPS. I have thoughts about that too. We've got to talk about that. But if you order one more ICPS, then you can push all that back and, you know, interim becomes even less interim. Yeah.

Wait. What's the first thing that's going to use the weird little cargo area under Orion? Artemis 4 is supposed to be. That's your first mission. Right? Baseline now, that's your first mission with the EUS. Yeah, thumbs up Apple. It's your first.

Artemis 4 is the first one with. the EUS and it's going to co-manifest the I-Hab module. The I-Hab thing, yes. So you can, here's the nice thing about that, right? You push the first landing back to that. You can still do that. If EUS is ready, great. And I-HB is ready, great.

Slap it all in there. They fly that and the astronauts over to the gateway. They can do that. And they can go land on the moon. If it's all ready at the same time, great. But this gives you the flexibility to not have to do that, right? But right now, I don't know. I think it's not happening.

I don't think it's going to happen. Let me throw a little spice in your, in your plan here. You can tell me what's the right mission for this, but one of those missions does a docking demonstration with the uncrewed SpaceX lander. Perfect.

So send the uncrewed landing demo there. Right. Along with Artemis 3. That gives you two years of breathing room on the uncrewd landing. They dock with it and it lands. Do all the demo in one go. Bam.

Boom. NASA, call me. I'm available for consultancy. This is great. This is great. I mean, that feels like, you know, why not? It feels like the only thing you can do. Like, at this point, it's not even like a good idea. It's that the only deal.

Yeah, Artem's two and a half. Artem is two and a half. You heard of here first. I'm making a shirt. Yeah, I mean, that all tracks to my brain. You know. I think the stuff that you were saying about how many Starship flights have to happen to do this. We're getting to the point where it feels a little bit like the show I did about how many flights Amazon would have to fly to get half the next three years.

Or you're just like, that's an amount of launches that doesn't even make sense with what is currently possible on these vehicles. Yeah. Because like what if you were to do the hockey stick graph of Falcon 9, right? Like we are now in the shaft part of this hockey stick graph. Only now. It was a pretty good ramp up. Falcon 9 had the best ramp up. I put the Falcon rates on the spreadsheet.

You can look at it if you want. Let's zoom out and look at it. And you can really tell, like, it took years to get it. So we got 2014. I'm going to start there and read out every year from that point forward. 6, 7, 8, 18, 21, 13, 26, 31, 61, 90 plus. Yeah. Last two years it won't happen. We are now in the shaft part of that, right?

And you look at every other launch vehicle that has existed, including Falcon 9 and what that ramp up period was like. It is completely implausible that Starship will be as fast as Falcon 9. Yeah, Starship is not going to launch 33 times in the next two years. It just isn't. They don't have enough launch pads. Right, that's the other thing is they're just shipping around parts for launch pads right now to make enough of them.

They don't even have enough paperwork clearance for that, right? They can launch five times or whatever right now based on their current approval. And like, I know they're building a ton of launch pads. And so they have like, you know, they've got the, they can use the KSC one that they're, what is the LC-39 they can use. That'll be up and running reasonably soon. They're building another one down the coast, I think, on the Air Force base, right? They got the Delta 4 heavy launch pad.

Yeah, we were guessing that might be a, might be a starch one. And then they have the big giant thing north of KSC that they want to do. The LC 49, I think it is, right? Where the old other 39s would have been back in the day. Yeah. And that's, that one's supposed to be like a lot. That's supposed to be like lots of launch pads. A whole thing that will just destroy Plylanda Beach.

That's right. Like that one to me feels like the one, like that's what the infrastructure they need to support a human landing system launch. and like that's where are they with that one? I don't know, man. Are they even weighing down the launch pad ground right now on there? I don't know. We're in there with that.

Yeah, you got to get back. Yeah, and that's leaving alone the fact that, you know, like, I trust all the work that they're doing on the refueling, but like there's probably some assumptions that they made that they're going to have to adjust to, you know? You got to work through it. It just costs time, right? So, yeah, it's interesting.

And the only reason, like, I feel, Like some people will be like, oh, they're just dunked on Starship's schedule. And it's like, we're just trying to figure out what we should care about when. And what, and like your point, what the rest of the architecture should do, given all these different constraints, you know? Like, you're right that if, you know, if you're SpaceX and you care about Starship a lot, you care about the Artemis program a lot, which means you care about SLS's schedule a lot, which means you care about it staying politically viable.

You know, for all of the nerd arguments that we've had, for decades at this point about SLS and how much it costs and if it should be a thing and what we should do and Richard Shelby this and Richard Shelby that and Bill Nelson and Bob Cabana and all these people, you actually do care about this thing remaining relevant. So if you know that there is scheduled chicken to be played here, what do you do with the rest of the infrastructure and how do you keep all the, like they literally are in the business of keeping the stakeholders happy for SLS now while they cover the development gap to HLS. So you're right.

They, you know, the Artemis two and a half idea is like, I mean, God damn it, we'll hear about it within six months probably. Yeah, I'm almost ready to predict that. Yeah. What date would you put on it when like, you know, Bill Nelson first rolls out this take? Oh, well, actually, that's a good idea. That's a good thing, too. All right, I got it, Jake. I got it.

We're going into election year. Bill Nelson will not roll this out until 2025. If he's still the Nass administrator, then he's either, you know, be a, the election and he's still at NASA and he's ready to roll out that bad news or he's just going to let it lapse and pass it on to the next person. So we have a full year before we're going to hear about this. That's the other implication that we don't really have time to get too deep into but like if the Artemis 3 delays as much as we think it is. Like let's say it does hit early 2028. That's like maybe two presidents from now. Okay. And like that's a lot of stuff

to go through. Right? Because like, Trump can't run for a third term. So it's going to be like someone new in 2020. Yes. I mean, part of the topic of the debate the other night,

Father time might have something to say about that by 2028. Yeah. Yeah. So, okay, so, you know. But that doesn't matter anymore, right?

I mean, it doesn't matter this time, but it still matters. No, but the only way it matters is in the good direction where you can come in and say, listen, we,

part of the transits, team we reassessed this whole situation and you know the the bad team where the Dallas cowboys were hiding schedule for us and us the Philadelphia Eagles are the good guys I'm totally transplanting my own personal experience onto this so as to not be partisan but we took a realistic look at this and you know the Cowboys got it wrong the Eagles are now here to say it was 2028 and then I mean that's what happened the last election was like we're rebased landing. And so, yeah, Artemis 2 and 3 and a half are now going to be willed into the schedule. Yeah. The naming is interesting. I wonder because like the agreements were written around

named Artemis missions, right? The agreements. Like the agreements for the other HLS, the Blue Origin one. The, what was the special name for that? SELD or whatever. Sustaining lunar development. Like that said like Artemis 4, didn't it? I bet you that's not in the like the contract though like oh look I thought that's why like the halves came about yeah maybe I think they were just trying to like which just makes me even worse so the four stayed the same mission every time right because three and a half was supposed to be a new mission slotted in like it literally like it was an extra order of SLS right true but also

this Roman numeral 0.5 thing is worse than the spaceship to spaceship three debacle yeah I know I had to translate it over just because I hated it so much. I was even, I even initially wrote this like Artemis 1, 2, 3 with real numbers. And then I was like, no, I got to go change it back to Roman numeral so I could put dash, dash, dash, 0.5 and hate it. Anyway, so that's it. The worst. All right. So we're thinking we're a year out at a minimum.

I mean, we're probably, so let's see, election happens. There either is a transition team or there's not. But either way, it's probably February of 20. 26 when we, uh, 25 when we hear about, it's the budget rollout for February and March of 25 where we hear about the new schedule. Yeah, but the budget, uh, okay, it depends. Because if it's, if it's a new transition, then the budget won't come out to like May or June or something, right?

Yeah, and also Artemis 2 is going to fly through 2, sorry. Two will, yeah, two is going to fly right at the end of, or in that period maybe, right? you know, so. Too much. That's too much all at once. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, so that all has to get resolved

or will or anything on this, I don't think. So, but anyway. And that's all assuming the Orion stuff goes well in Artemis 2. Yep. 56 minute 10, we get there. If you want to go down a real dark path, I was like, so normally like the, everything passed Artemis 3 on this list, all the four, all the gave it stuff.

me that is all just make-believe magic. All the dates in there mean absolutely nothing to me. That's just a notional order. But I was like, Artemis 4. I'm like, what's on the critical path for Artemis 4? And I was like, okay, so Artemis 3, you have like, you know, two companies really driving the critical path.

You got SpaceX and you have Axioms. Like, okay. Well, you know, those are like new space startup-e style of companies. They move pretty quick. Who's on the critical path for Artemis 4? Bechtel, Boeing, North of Brumman, Talluselania.

Yeah, Europe. SpaceX, Dragon 2 or Dragon XL. Sure, SpaceX. You have to have the logistics to the gateway to have them at the gateway. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there were six. The other one was, it was another old space company of some kind.

But like, the Artemis 4 timeline is very dark. You can definitely tell the Artemis 4 is, like, where we put everything we don't know what we're going to do yet. Oh, yeah, that's going to have the Juncture mission. That's the junkyard. Yeah, it's like it's going to have the EU, it's going to build a gateway, it's going to send all the international astronauts.

It's going to have a landing. It's going to have this. And that like, no, dude. Like, this is not a, oh, my God. That mission does not exist yet. It is, we have no one has any idea what that's going to be yet. And you're just not going far enough out to talk about Canada Arm 3. You don't want to, you know, talk shit about your.

It's all make believe right now, man. Yeah. That is pretty dark. Yeah. We can pay him to build it. It doesn't mean we need to fly it. It's plenty of space stations for that to go to. Yeah.

There might not be. There might be none. There might be no space stations to go to. That's the other aspect about all this. I have major stress about the next 10 years of this roadmap because you factor in the ISS and Leo stuff and it's like unknowable how this is going to shake out, which is the fun part, but also distressing. one more one more wrench for that for my plan so this ICPS I mentioned right you want to order another one of that how much longer are they going to make you will a hold up that freaking factory line

to make that that's that's hard for them too right I got to put that order in now yeah Tori's like I'm trying to sell this thing and I got to have right right people that know how to make a Delta iUS I got to shut it down guys like are you buying it or not and if they can't buy it what like what if what do you do what have what is what is what is what is Blue buys them tomorrow and then like they substitute their own upper stage like they tried to last time. You can buy you can buy a Jarvis for your iOS to do you or whatever. I mean that

honestly would be the plan like the they bid the last time. Yeah. There's some there's an extra wildcards that could come from that. So. Chaos. Chaos rains in the Artemis manifest. Anyway, NASA. Call me. I have some ideas. I'm happy to talk through with them for the cost of

one FOIA request. Yeah. Yeah. Just comp the $250 I'm about to spend on finding a picture of a shriveled tomato. We would totally come in as contractors on this for the price of that photo of that tomato. Someone definitely took a picture of that tomato. They take a picture of everything on the ISS. Of course. Well, I don't know if that was uplifting or not, but the Starship launch was friggin' awesome. I loved it.

long was great. I was shouting. My three-year-old Will was jumping up and down, excited because I was excited, and it's fantastic. It was fantastic. They nailed it as much as you can nail a flight that blows up twice. Which is incredibly nailed for the record. Yeah. Yeah. So I can't wait. Yeah. I have D3. Maybe this one will actually go to orbit. They're supposed to do a fuel transfer demo. We'll see. We'll see. As soon as. As soon as. as soon as. They did walk back back that commitment real fast. Because those PowerPoints were made before IFT2 flew.

Yeah. What are we got next week, Jake? We got a good one. Yeah. We are going to talk about some of the reasons for these delays. FAA. We're going to dig into that.

We're going to find out. So I've always wanted to get to the, because there's so much fun on FAA. There's like people being like, FAA is the worst thing that's ever happened to spaceflight and they don't know what they're doing and then I got a bunch of other people that are like FAA boosters like you don't disrespect the workers

they're working hard they're doing everything they can they are working you know I'm like I don't know what to believe anymore I don't know what's true I don't know if the FAA is a problem or a godsend or somewhere in the middle so we're going to dig into that with your buddy Tom Mara Rada yes Tom Marada runs the spaceport company worked at that FAA office so we are going to

work there dig into specific issues, like, was the walk to the water cooler too long, and that's what took so long with all these other approvals? Or what was the actual issue? You saw that, it made me realize the FAA, it's the it's the regulatory version of radiation in deep space. Like, is this going to kill us all, or is it fine? Will we ever know until we get there? Yeah, it's like, there's a couple of these issues that, yeah. I know we had an upset title, Boyle Off Truther, but I don't remember what that was about. Like,

it's Boilop a problem? I don't know. We're going to find out soon. We're going to find out soon. How many Starship launches does it take to refuel a starship? Could be 12 if Boylaff isn't a problem. It could be 35 if it's a big problem. So good.

Oh, man. All right, everybody. Thanks for hanging out. You're the best. Thanks, everybody. Bye. I have no idea how successful this show was. So let us know and see you later.

Bye. One, two, three, four, five.