Off-Nominal - 137 - Daddy Space Force

Episode Date: January 12, 2024

Jake and Anthony are joined by Eric Berger to lay out our predictions for 2024!TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeAfter its impressive first flight, here’s what’s next for the Vulcan rocket | Ars TechnicaJeff Bezos says what we’re all thinking: “Blue Origin needs to be much faster” | Ars TechnicaFour huge rockets are due to debut in 2020—will any make it? | Ars TechnicaCiting “crew safety,” NASA delays upcoming Artemis missions by about a year | Ars TechnicaThe situation with Astrobotic’s lunar lander appears to be quite dire | Ars TechnicaSpaceX completes static fire test in push toward third Starship launch | Ars TechnicaFollow Eric BergerEric Berger (@SciGuySpace) / XEric Berger | Ars TechnicaFollow 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, everybody. Happy New Year, I suppose. What's going on? Happy New Year. Eric made it. Happy New Year. We really brought in a ringer for our first show of the year here. Yeah, we wanted to kick it off by the right tone.

And we had no idea how much good news, or like not good news, but good, comma, news to discuss there would be in the very first week of the year. It's been wild, right? Like there's been, the first like full work week of 2024 has been an eventful stretch of stuff happening. It's been fun. I've enjoyed it. By far the coolest event was the big launch this week. And I'm referring, of course, the Gravity One rocket.

Which was, which was what you were. That's what we were watching before the show. So, I mean, really, that's the one that's important. as Jake as Jake alluded they were definitely doing their best their best starship launch pad on this thing there's so much debris into the ocean I don't know if this boat if they can still drive this ship afterwards can we get the FAA to look into that into the marine passers from that yeah that's a rough one what a weird rocket that's a good rocket that's a good rocket yeah that's good good good

Cool. Well, so yeah, we're going to do our best today to try and make some educated guesses on what we think will or won't happen this year. This is our annual space prediction show. Annual. I think we did it one time so far, Jake. No, no. We got like, this is like our third or fourth time. Oh, it is. I feel like last year was first. Definitely. Definitely. Definitely we've done it before. And yeah, so we're going to do that. And of course, you know, Eric, you're the perfect guy for this because you got your finger on. the pulse. We generally assume that behind your camera is the space profit just sitting there like mouthing answers to you and we're going to just kind of like channel that energy right into the show. Yeah, we'll see. I'm not afraid to make predictions. I can't guarantee that it's going to be accurate. I'll certainly throw some opinions out there. Do you ever go back

and look at the old stuff that you predicted and then just like totally cringe? I have this, I had this famous story from like at the outside of 2020 predicting when big rockets were going to launch and like it was vulcan I was thinking of it. Yeah, yeah. Famously good sourcing on that. I wonder who you contacted for thoughts. Yeah. And like out of the starship launch first, which was insane.

Anyway, you know, it's you can you can always make like a late prediction. Like you're never going to go wrong predicting things are later than expected. I guess. Yeah. Yeah. That is true. That's how we get to. I found it.

I found it. It was July 2018. It was this story. Oh, here it is. And the answer was no. Rion 6. Space Lump System, New Glenn, Vulcan. And then I didn't even put Starship on there.

I was like, well, they're not going to make it. Amazing. SLS is real. Star Ship. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah. Bless Israel.

Drinks. Anthony, what do you got today? I've got a couple of these ship bottom brewing, hop and hazy IPAs that I got over the Christmas break there from a friend. This is one of the breweries down in Beach Haven, like LBI, New Jersey. So got some Jersey beer. Very not seasonal. It's like a very beachy, a beachy.

IPA kind of situation, but you know, that's good. It's delicious. Cool. What do you got? I've got, for our spicy takes show, I've got a smearn off.

Wow. Spicy tamarin flavor. This is the weirdest thing I could find. That is weird. There's a lot going on there. I have no idea what to expect on this. It's like, I guess it's vodka and then

tamarin flavor. And then I don't know what it's a habanero or something here. I don't know. That looks awful. That looks absolutely dreadful. We'll see what ends up happening with. They do all with the weird shit here with this kind of stuff. You ever heard of this like chamoi thing that they do? It's like I don't really know. It's it's it's peppers and tomatoes and you mix it in with alcohol or other beer or something like that. So it's almost like a it's almost like a climato or something like that, but it's spicy and it's it was awful. It was the worst thing I ever drank. So they like fully purified?

or there's still chunks? I think it's fully pure. It's like the flavor. Why am I so blurry? What's going on, guys? I'm trying to fix my camera. Eric, while I'm doing this, what did you bring to dress? So I'm, this is very lame, but I'm running the marathon this weekend, so I'm not drinking

alcohol today. Wow. But I have some great Belgian trappist ale for when I finished the marathon this weekend. Is that Jeff Bezos on the label? Pull that up here. Are you kidding? Look at that thing. St. Bernardus.

Look at it. It looks like Jeff Bezos from my angios. This is literally one of the best beers in the world. Like, highest rank is you cannot go wrong with Belgian Trappistale. So just water for the exoplanets. Yes. Bernardus 12. It does something like an exoplanet name.

By the way, there's a rumor out there right now that Webb has found life on an exoplanet. Yes. it's kind of out there in the undercurrents of the internet. Jeremy Corbell lets us know that... I ran that down a little bit, and I was told that there are some interesting things that have been found, but we're kind of 1% of the way there toward identifying life on another world.

Just a small scoop here. Interesting. The Tom Cruise thing that never happened from J.B. and Eric I would say we're one percent of the way there toward, you know, identifying life on the world. But I do think there are interesting discoveries from web forthcoming. So, you know,

stay tuned to off-nominal for all of your exobiology news. The number one spot for the announcement of life. That's amazing. If you're following abiogenesis. Oh, my God. That's so good. All right. Well, so that's a good, should I put that down in the prediction dog for 2024?

Absolutely. I'm putting Eric down as that's the prediction. We haven't discovered any intelligence of life here yet. We're still looking on this podcast. Over under on new instances of life, 0.5. Oh, my God. I'm actually, I'm writing this in the document right now. Eric Berger says yes

Okay, great Before we get to the The predictions and all that I feel like there was too much going on this week That we need to talk about first Because there was Yeah, definitely Everything from Vulcan to the Artemis stuff

Where do you want to start? I guess under one realm it's all Artemis If you're of that I think we have to start with Vulcan Because we've been talking about this forever And it was an absolute absolute success. You know, the rocket had been delayed for three and a half or four years due to engine problems at upper stage issues. But by God, when they flew it, that thing looked amazing and it

hit his target orbit and they are off to the races, I think, with Vulcans. Let's face it, there has been no 0.0 capacity in the Western market for launches outside of the Falcon 9. And that's going to remain so for a while because Vulcan has dozens of military missions that's going to fly. So it doesn't have any spare capacity. But it does finally bring some competition to the table for Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy with a company that everyone is pretty comfortable working with. So I think it's a big deal. And they said they're going to fly. They're going to try to fly six from this year.

I mean, I don't believe that for a second. but I do think that they might get like three off and that would be great and then double that next year and double that again then you've really got a vehicle going. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was awesome.

I was like, I got up because, you know, it was late. So I got up in the middle of the night and I watched it. And man, I was totally expecting a scrub. I was ready for there to be like methane weirdness and like they just rolled it out, filled it up and flew. There was just like no issues with it. It was so, it was really fun. that way. I'm really happy with that. I think it was like the third or fourth time they'd fueled it.

Yeah. So they had had they had they'd been through it and they tried all the valves before. Yeah. But it was it was very I mean it tight. All you can say about that is it's super impressive. Which other rocket have they fueled three or four times and still haven't had issues after the third or fourth fueling of a rocket? You ever experienced a rocket that was fueled maybe five times or something six times on the launch pad? Never seen one of those? Light fuel, a particular light fuel. fuel, leaky fuel. We're talking about that? Fluffy, fluffy fuel. Which, but did you think, Jake was betting scrubs, right? Or, yeah, scrubs, but I think, I don't know how company you were Jake in the once it

didn't scrub that it would just fly absolutely perfectly, but. I mean, like, you don't even have to imagine some sort of like a huge rud catastrophe where it like detonates and destroys the like. It could have just been weird things like underperformance that puts it off target or, like, we talked about this, you know, maybe the, maybe the, maybe the, inner stage bumps this upper stage engine on separation or I don't know there's all sorts of like little minor things maybe the the faring doesn't work or you know there's just stuff that can happen that isn't like a complete catastrophe and it's weird that like none of that seemed to happen like

maybe there was some underperformance just because miko time seemed a little off but you know the the uLA propaganda with the targeting seems to show that it's all good so sorry tweeted the number so Yeah, the story three, the number, it's all fine. So I don't know if that tells you there wasn't any underperformance. I figured something with an engine would be weird. Like, B-4s looked fantastic. There's a, I don't forget what even the changes were to this RL-10, but there were some new stuff going on there, right?

At least they built it different than the last one, right? Wasn't this a 3D-printed RL-10? Yeah, that C, whatever it was? That's what I said, 3D print one nut and then double the price on you, yeah. Yeah. Less parts than that one. So I expected flawless performance. I mean, I had a higher than 90% chance of getting to orbit just as expected.

I wasn't sure whether it was going to be a scrub, but I feel like they had had things pretty well dialed in. The weather was good. I felt like they had a pretty good chance to go. So it wasn't surprised. I mean, that is the, that is ULA's Trump card or calling card in the launch industry. There's 100% record. And they were not going to do anything to put that at risk, I think. I had very high confidence that this rocket was going to make it safely.

We got the question for Bradley. If the tilt at liftoff was intentional or not, this is the, the Ares 1-Xing of the vehicle off the pad. Just got a little bit of a slant going on. I don't know. I mean, they do so pretty quickly. So, you know, I don't know. We'll see. I feel like they probably meant it.

Yeah. Yeah. The, like, view at Lyftop where you can kind of see it sort of do that. I noticed it, but it didn't seem too crazy. But then I saw another picture of like the, you know, the long time lapse streak of the thing going up into the clouds. And it was like there's a pretty visible curve to it. So I'm kind of wondering if maybe there was some unintentionality there.

What's that word? Unintentionalists? I mean, it's entirely possible, you know, with the first Falcon 9 launch, the vehicle rotate 60 degrees as it's taking off. you go back and watch that, it's kind of scary looking. Yeah, that one looks pretty chaotic. The flight software corrects it and it goes up.

And even with the Astra rocket, you know, that was where it sort of hops off to the right. The software and was trying to correct for it. So, I mean, these vehicles have pretty sophisticated algorithms to deal with that. So there could have been some issue and it just picked it up and corrected. But, you know, we haven't had seen any extensive comments from Torrey or Gary Wentz or anyone like that yet. So we don't. It's hard to say. What's your vibe on Dreamchaser?

It's final test now, but I kind of feel like ULA's going to want to fly before Dreamchaser is. Yeah, I think that's right. You know, I did a check after Vulcans launch of NASA's internal schedule, and they sort of still have it docking, birthing between April and June, but that's not like it's written in red ink. So I agree with you, Anthony. I think it'll take, you know, ULA has had.

had a news conference they talked about where they needed 60 days to look at the data and then the hardware was ready. The B-E-4 engines are in West Texas. They still need to be shipped to the factory. It's something to put on the vehicle. And they said April-ish was the earliest date. So that really sounds like May for that launch. So I don't know if Dreamchase will be ready.

You'd think they'd wanted to get to the Cape pretty soon for processing. But, you know, who knows? I mean, hope springs eternal. They have to do things such as put all the cargo in it. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I'm, I'll believe Dream Chaser is going to launch when I see it, you know, at Kennedy being buffed, put into that payload, or put on top of a Vulcan, you know, before that, I mean, I'm kind of at Missouri. Show me with a, just because it's been so long, right? And it's kind of impressive that they're going right to the station with cargo on the first flight.

There's no test flight to the vehicle. There's a lot that could go wrong with that mission, right? It's what they're trying to do right out of the gate as a new company operating in that regime with Dream Chaser. It's very hard. So I'm not at all convinced that there'll be mission success on that, although I certainly wish they will. But they've got a lot of things to look at. So we'll see, you know, we'll see if they get there. And not just not just Sierra Space, but NASA is going to have to sign off on a lot of these things too, because when you actually approach the

Space Station, that's a whole different, you know, they've got to protect the astronauts on board. And that has to slot in with the crazy manifest on the ISS this year where... My understanding is that the Starliner is going to, if it slips, I would argue should take priority, even if it slips, like to get a spot in the new slot that it's falling into. I'm not an expert. I'm not an expert, but I was told that the port that this vehicle is using, the only other potential conflict is the new Japanese cargo vehicle. It's just the only one at births now. And that's the old, and that's on H3, so that's not coming any time soon.

Well, so I think... Wait, New Cygnus doesn't dock, though, does it? New Cygnus does, but is Cygnus now doing that? All I was worth it. So couldn't that go then? I'm an idiot. I'm not a space station nerd, so I don't know all the details. But what I was told was that the only other potential conflict this year is the Japanese cargo vehicle,

which I don't think is flying this year. So they go. I mean, and for sure. Dragon nor Starliner are not conflicting with Dream Chaser. So like take those off the table, then you can decide for yourself how busy this space station is going to be, right? Yeah. I think there's lots of flexibility.

I think it's really going to come down to Dream Chaser readiness and NASA's willingness to let Dream Chaser approach this station. Yeah. Okay. We should put some actual predictions on these that. We should write some of this down. So is a prediction, does Dream Chaser fly this year? or is it successful?

Where do we want to put the like, what's a good one to stick a claim on? I would say Dream Chaser flies this year, but it does not ultimately successfully land on a runway. I love that that maintains the capability that they just miss the runway and land in grass somewhere. But it does in fact land. I mean, they just that weird.

Or like they abort to white sands and just land in the middle of the desert. They did that weird test. Like how long ago they tested the landing gear? Oh, yeah, when they were old? Like, that is very far back in my memory. I should look it up. That was like 2016 or something, maybe even earlier. 15, 16, and they said it was a success, but it really didn't look like a success.

I mean, you know, like I said, they are trying to check a lot of boxes on their very first flight of this vehicle. And I wish them well, but it's going to be a real challenge. I love Eric says it flies this year, but doesn't land on a runway. I just love the possibilities in that. I I'll do I'll do that it does fly this year it doesn't make it to the ISS

but it does land on a runway Okay That's a good one I'm writing these down I'm noting it down Jake You're putting in the wrong document anyway I'm looking at the document that's supposed to go in And you're not typing in here

So I'll handle this And you tell us what you think Dream Jays will be Let's hear your prediction Jake Yeah I do think it's going to fly this year I don't think I'm confident on like May though I'm kind of thinking it's back half for sure I think back half of 2024 is when it flies

I think I think it makes it to the ISS and I think there's a birth because I think it doesn't need to do I mean it just needs to fly into the right space and then my boys on the arm are going to grab it right so I think there's a lot involved in flying to the right space though I mean, that's like, really, it's wrong. It's got to do with the ice is. Just got to go to the right spot.

So I'm going to say it gets to this station. I love it. Jake, for someone who doesn't know American football, like, boy, do you have what is an accurate representation of what the Eagles have been doing lately? I'm just going to try to get it to the right spot, see if they can catch it. Yeah, that's my prediction. It flies in the back half and makes it to a successful berthing. And then what?

I'm not going to stake a claim. on a landing. You have no confidence in the atmospheric part of this flight? No. I got to think about that one more. Here's the, here's the most fun way that reentry could go for Dreamchaser is that one wing doesn't lock out. That's the most fun way that this could possibly go. This is not sound very fun if you work for Sierra Space. No, not at all, but like, does it have the control authority to make it back in with one wing not locked out? I can't imagine that it does. I'd be very much impressed if it did. Wouldn't it be interesting to see? Listen, this may or may not be sourced from my longstanding prediction that at enduring a starship flight, one wing will fall off and it will spin its

way to a fiery death. Apparently I have this thing, this fetish for one wing not working. All right, okay. All right. All right. Now that, I got a question. I got a question about Vulcan. Because the other part about the Vulcan future flights is how many Kuiper satellites are they trying to launch an Atlas 5 this year? Right? Because that's going to take some time up on the pad. And how does this weigh out on priority list? Do they want to bank the money from the Atlas 5 flights that they know will work? Or do they need to get to the U.S. Space Force flights that they've got money coming their way for?

I've got to imagine that Daddy, the U.S. Space Force, is saying, we've supported you for 20 years. we've been waiting for four years for Vulcan to get going, you're flying our missions. I'd be shocked if the Space Force missions don't have a very high priority over everything else, outside of potentially Starline or whatever it's ready. So you are predicting the Jim Brydenstein memo version, or the U.S. Space Force version of the Jim Brydenstein memo about SpaceX needs to do the things that we've contracted them to do? Do you remember that one?

Yes. Yes. I think the space force is saying it's time to deliver to the ULA.L.A. And Uly is saying, yes, we want to deliver. And they took a great step toward that. So how about how many Kiper satellites will fly? It's the same pad, the Vulcan Atlas, when I lose track of the pads. By the way, people are working on Jake's roof right above his head right now for all those wondering what the hell's going on out there. Okay.

Yeah, it's the same pad. I don't know how many, I don't know how many Atlas are on the manifest this year for Kuiper launches. you got no guess how many satellites are ready like that's a great question too I mean they've just launched two I'll tell you a little story we'll have a little story time here

so I learned this as part of writing this this Falcon 9 book that's coming out this year that I've written but so it was 2017 or 2018 anyway

Anyway, did Elon Musk in like 2013, 2014, hires a guy named Rajiv Badjall from Microsoft to come in and run avionics for SpaceX, 2014, I think. And eventually he goes over and starts running the Starlink program. He's Microsoft, he's in Redmond, sets up the office up there. And so he hires a bunch of Microsoft people. He's got this big Microsoft vibe up there. And they launched Tintin A and Tintin B.

Was that launched in 2017? I think so. Anyway, they go up there. They do some tests, kind of like what they're doing right now with these Starlink direct to sell satellites. They're kind of out in the parking lot looking and saying, oh, cool, we can send text messages. And then, but y'all wants to like do more tests. Like he's like, we're not ready for operational satellites.

And Elon Musk says, oh, yes, you are. And like, there's this whole culture thing, right? because the Microsoft office, excuse me, the SpaceX office in Washington State was basically taking the culture of Microsoft. It wasn't taking the culture of SpaceX, which is very different. And so Elon Musk goes up there one weekend and fires by D'all and like four other VPs, puts Mark Junkosa, who's his fixer in place. And basically cleans house and says, okay, Junk goes comes in and says, we're doing this to SpaceX. way now. And it worked. Like a few months later, they launched these 60 satellites that, and some of them failed, but that was the beginning of their operational, their operational cadence.

So where does Raji Badiol go? I'm probably butchering his last name. He's the Kuiper guy now, right? He goes to Amazon and starts trying to Kuiper. So I, so the question, the reason I digress there was because are they going to want to do more test flights with after the two satellites they put up for Kuiper? Because he clearly did after, Tintan A and Tinti B. So I agree with Jake's point is like, are there satellites ready to go? How many are ready to go? I think the rockets will be ready.

The a lot of the satellites are ready. The question is when are the satellites going to be ready? And I don't know the answer to that. Yeah. So it may not be in just a complete move point. Like, you know, like Atlas doesn't need to try and fight for spots because, you know, maybe Amazon gets one flight ready later in the year and Vulcan otherwise has free rein of the pad, right?

They also should be in a position where you're building. so many satellites that you could say, oh, ULA, Dream Chaser's six months late, just send up a couple batch of these on Vulcan to get your flights under your belt, and we'll take the risk. That probably is the backup plan, right, to send Kyper Satellites on Vulcan

if Dream Chaser pushes too far under the year. That would be my guess, yeah. I actually might put that down as a prediction that the second Vulcan flight will be Kuiper satellites. That's a pretty good prediction. I think I'm going to put that down. I'm putting it down. Okay.

Yeah. Does anyone want to do an over-under on Vulcan flights this year? How many go? I already predicted three. So I'm going to stick with that. I'll take the over. I think I'll take, wow, three is. I don't know, man.

I'm feeling like there's going to be a lot of demand on BE4s. And like, I don't know if we can get six for three more Vulcan. or six for Vulcans and then seven for New Glenn. I think some of those are already in a barn somewhere, Jake. Yeah, I know, but I don't know. I don't think they are. I think they are. Okay.

I was told there's at least some. I don't know a number, but I was told that it wasn't all going to Vulcan off the first production line. So, I don't know, man. There's some good picture of New Glenn right now. They're missing all the B-E-4s, but there's also a Moonlander that's not making it to the moon that I saw missing all its engines a year ago,

and it seems to be doing, at least had the engines. So. All right. I'm going to say two or less, Falcon. Two or less. All right. I'm going to say one more. I'm just taking the over on Eric's three just to make this interesting for content purposes.

But I actually do think, here's my scenario. They had one. The Kuiper satellites go up in number two. They somehow get to a Space Force payload and then Dream Chasers ready in like November. That's the scenario in which four fly. Or, like, let's say it gets in November, and Dream Chasers ready, but the Vulcan certified for USSF106. So at that point, does Dream Chaser fly or does Space Force fly? What do you think?

I think the Space Force is in charge, I guess. He told us that Daddy Space Force is going to apparently boss everyone around this area. So I have no reason to doubt that. I don't know. I think it's a good question. I'd love to, it's a hypothetical that would be interesting to see what happens. This is also all presuming that ULA does not get bought, or do you think the plans are unaffected by that?

I do think that they get bought, and I learned something... This year? Am I putting this in this prediction document? Oh, ULA gets sold this year. I would feel pretty confident about that prediction. So you know who is now a managing director at Cerberus, the fund that's in line to buy ULA? That's something Jake and I keep up on pretty closely.

So, yeah, obviously, we know it. Well, it's the former head of the Space Force, General Raymond. Daddy Space Force himself. Yes. Well, that's pretty wild. So, more breaking news here on the Offnominal podcast. Yeah, we're just killing it today. The, so, I mean, if Raymond is involved in vetting and pushing for servers to buy ULA,

they would be kind of my leading contender to acquire ULA. That's good. That's a really good. Yeah. All right. And if that happens, then the Space Force payload, I think, would go to the top of line anyway. But that's their most important customer. Always has been.

Always will be. That's a really interesting scenario, too. Because I think Raymond's generally, like, I don't know. I always thought he had good thoughts on the matters that he was, they always are a little bit generically, you know, U.S. military government kind of positions. Very generically. But I thought he seemed to have like a good vibe about him. So the question is, what is?

Raymond Unchained. What is it? Raymond Unshamed. I mean, he's got to have seen that he's got to understand that more competition is good for the U.S. government. And the way to make ULA competitive is to really unleash it, right? To unshackle it from the parents who just want to pull profits out of it and invest in things like reusing B.E4 engines and reusable upper stages and things like that. So hopefully they would buy ULA and not sort of seek to profit like profiteer, but actually to invest in it and to make it like a really viable company. It's just such a fascinating landscape, though,

because now that New Glenn actually looks like it's going to launch this year, and we can do a prediction on that, you know, in a little bit. I mean, that is coming pretty hot on the heels of Vulcan. And that, you know, they can sell new Glens at a loss because, Daddy Jeff, you know, is got the money. A lot of things. And so it really does sort of make you question. It's going to be a matter of operational.

Like, can Blue Origin launch one New Glenn a year for a few years? Or can they really get the cadence up? And we'll see about that. This is such a fun love quadrangle you just made, right? You've got Vulcan, you've got Kuiper, you've got B-4s at New Glenn. And I guess it's a fifth. whatever the pentangle, pentrangle is the, yeah, the Daddy Space Force. Pentagon.

I mean, if it's a Pentagon, we're already pulling in the DoD, right? I mean, it all comes together. But everyone's fighting for like my thing. I want, I want my engines for the launch vehicles. I want my satellites launched. It's, there's some good drama right there. It's some great drama. It's really, it's really fascinating to sort of think about how these, it's all going to shake out.

And you want to, ideally want two viable competitors to SpaceX and medium and heavy lift. And so we'll see. Just one would do right now. Just one would do, yeah. Yeah. I'll take one. Yeah.

Breaking news, my prediction for 2024 is that Eric starts a new book called Daddy Issues. And it's all about Vulcan and Kuiper and New Glenn and the path to the launch pad for all of this. And the B.E. I would bet I would bet strongly against that happening. Yeah, you still have your, you have your third book to. right so yeah um well well let's talk about new glen and then we'll talk about artemus stuff because i feel like we've got we artemus two and a half and three and a half both seem to come into fruition in the last week so um what we got on new glen you're i'm i'm with you right now

that new glen certainly looks like it's going to be happening this year what's the official what's it august is the official q4 is official oh we did this i don't know what it is official oh we It's in the same of the day, Jake, right? Yeah. I mean, second half of this year, certainly. I mean, Bezos has said it's happening. Blue Origin officials said happening. I talk to suppliers, they seem pretty confident that is happening.

I will say, you know, that we've got to see the upper stage. And the rumors are that they've got an upper stage completed. They tweeted the pick. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, they did that. I didn't see it. Yeah.

Yeah, I'll pull it up. I'll pop it back up there. Yeah, let's see it. You're muted, Jake, you're muted, but you're making jokes. All right. Let's pop it back up. Let's pop it back up. Sorry.

Maybe he should have remained muted there. I don't know. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. Look at that thing. Look at you. There it is. But, but, but, but someone found that there's a not-for-flight comment on these engines.

So these are at least not the flight engines, but... But I think they're going to half-fire with those engines, maybe. We'll see. Yeah, I figured there were qualification engines or something. engines or something. But that, I mean, that's a good-ass-looking rocket. Look at that thing. It's a good-ass-looking rocket. Now, the first stage pictures that were captured yesterday by John Krause and others, and then Blue Origin puts them out. It looks good. They've got some work to do.

So, you know, we'll see. It's interesting. Like, the Falcon, the first Falcon 9 went to the launch pad, the first stage with the tanks and everything rolled out. in January of 2009, and it launched in June of 2010. So I think that rocket, that didn't have its avionics or anything like that in it. So this rocket's further along, but it did have its engines, right? So, you know, we'll see if they make it to show. I think they probably will. I don't think it's certainly not a lock and they could run into issues along the way.

But it's very nice to see hard work coming along finally from Blue Origin and very good-looking, hardware very you know obviously it's a brawny rocket so super excited to see it fly I think it's about 50 50 that it flies this year I'm saying it does it goes I'll just pick November just for the hell of it

for content then I will say it doesn't this year I'll say it's January 25 or later the funniest part is you're probably the one that would be most sad because there's a Mars mission on top of this thing yeah there was yeah all it takes he cancels one Mars podcast and he doesn't give a shit about these payloads anymore. Dude, you notice that as soon as I cancel the Mars podcast,

they just start to like delay and cancel. No more Mars missions. I wasn't canceling the show because it was bad. It was just content policy. There's nothing else going on. Too good. You just saw the Japanese one got delayed too. We're not going to have like,

it's going to be like perseverance and then sample return is going to be the next one basically. Maybe. Oh, I don't know about that, my friend. We got a part of the document in that. There's no chance for getting to it, but it is in the document somewhere. We're way behind. We haven't talked about Starship yet.

I was just going to say, we should talk about Artemis because there was all this stuff. Let's do five minutes about the call this week first because I thought it was quite interesting. Eric, I enjoyed. You had a tweet about how Artemis is complex, but NASA is also taking the jump to do the hard thing, and that's kind of cool. and I'd love you to expound on that because I read that tweet and I was like, this is, this is for me. This is content for me. Yeah. So like this is kind of the, there's been some zeitgeist out there that, oh, that Artemis is way too complex is you've got like SLS and Orion and they've got to meet up with Starship and Star Ship's got to be refueled 500 times in Lowerth Orbit.

And then they've got to rendezvous in Lower Thorbit. And then Starship's got to go down on the lunar surface and then come back and re-rondy-Roo with Orion and come back. Yeah, right. I mean, it's different than Apollo. And we could have repeated Apollo. And the Chinese, by the way, their plan basically does repeat Apollo. But you know what? Apollo was canceled because it was expensive and not sustainable.

And there was really no point because we were just doing the same mission over and over again. The future, I mean, if you talk to people. Take that John Young. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Apollo was fantastic. Don't get me wrong. But like, it's 50 years ago. Let's step into the future, not look into the past.

The fucking suckered into nostalgia, not that I always think. So, I mean, the future of spaceflight is reusable launch because you want rapid, low-cost, access to low-earth orbit. But then the next piece of that is, okay, you can get a lot of stuff up to orbit pretty cheaply, but, you know, it costs a lot to build the vehicles that actually go somewhere into space, go in the moon, go to Mars or wherever. I mean, if you could make those reusable and then figure out a way to refuelable. fuel them in space, then you'd really have something. You'd have a, you know, a sustainable transportation system in space. And that's really the goal. And this is like the big step toward that. You've got both starship and Blue Origin of Lander. And those are like, there's a, there's a spaceship that goes between Earth and the Moon. And then for SpaceX, that's Starship and it goes

down on the Moon and the back. And then for Blue Origin, it's a different vehicle that goes down the Moon and back. But all of those are designed with reuse in mind. And there's a designed to be refueled. And oh, by the way, you've got to master the storage of cryogenic propellants to make, unlock those systems. So that's all hard. And that's going to take time. And that's going to add some delays in the initial lunar landing missions. But that's a down payment on the future of where we want to be as a space-faring species, which is not sort of locked into sending to us the knots of the moon every few decades, but like actually opening up space, for many more people, commercial activity, all that stuff.

And so I don't really have any truck for the people who say, this is complex, they don't like it, because this is the stepping stone to the future that I think we want to see ultimately in 21st century. Boom. This is a 40-minute podcast. That was the end of the podcast. The thing that I was, that kicked off in my head was like, would we, if everything went great, right? If it all went the way that we all hope. and we have a slower than intended first decade

that leads to a more exciting second decade. Does that give us the opportunity to see, what was there, were there nine Apollo flights to the moon in Apollo, right? There's eight, eight, ten, eleven, twelve, thirt, four, five, seven, seven, seven, seven, seven, nine, six, seven, seven, right?

Eight, seven was six, six landed, one didn't. Jake, you're still muted and then. You're still muted. You're still muted. Six landed, one didn't. and then there was Apollo 8? No, there were nine. You're right.

Sorry. 19. Yeah. Six landings. Three not landings. Yeah. So, like, are, is this a path to get more than nine missions to the moon in my lifetime? If so, I feel like that's the best I can hope for is that it's setting us up for a, like,

can there be an Apollo, an Artemis 15. If there can be, then like, that's kind of fun. And it doesn't mean that the same hardware that's flying Artemis 2 and 3 is the same one that's flying Artemis 15, the same way that we talked about like two weeks ago, Jake, or two shows ago that like, will Starship send somebody to Europa someday? Probably. Will a Starship looking thing land on Europa? Definitely not. Like, the hardware is going to change and should change throughout the course of the program. But if it, if it sets up for a development in space cycle that leads to more and more stuff happening, then that is a good direction.

And let's be honest, like the SLS and Orion are not reusable. They're expensive. They're costly. But they're going to get us over the hump of the first few missions. And then, you know, once you start to see starships taking off and landing from Earth, you know, seven, eight, nine years ago from now, I don't know how long it'll be. Then that opens up a new way to cut the costs. And then when you start to see maybe a human vehicle launching on New Glenn, you know, you've got a way to get your astronauts for them into space. I mean, this is where the, as you were saying, Anthony, where the architecture started is not where it's going to end. And the investments that now, NASA is making now and opening up the opportunity for SpaceX and Blue Orcham to build these

reusable transportation systems in deep space is just, it's just, I don't think people appreciate how significant that is and how much of a leap it is by our space agency to sort of say to the industry, this is the future that we believe in. This is the one you should be investing in. Like that's huge. It's like it's a stamp of approval that really green lights that future. Yeah. Sometimes I think about like, you know, because Apollo is famous for having this deadline, right? Land a man on the moon by the end of the decade. And I kind of wonder if that that end of the decade deadline was sort of like at death now.

Like it was almost like that's the end. Like it's the goal and then you reach it and you're done. Right. And then we saw that. They land on the moon a couple times in 1969. And after that, funding disappeared. The program just sort of like fizzled out on momentum and that was it. Right.

And then maybe in our case, like, we should be thinking more about, like, if our deadline is the end of this decade, we should be thinking more about like, that's the start of something different rather than the end of what we're doing now, right? I don't know. That's exactly right. I mean, Apollo force decision makers at NASA to choose the simplest, fastest, most straightforward approach. That doesn't necessarily mean it was the most sustainable approach, right? So like if we had made that decision seven years ago that we were going to go to the moon by 2025, you would have probably skipped SLS Block 1, going right into Block 1B, had a lunar lander that looked a hell of a lot like the Apollo Lim,

sitting on top of Orion and tried to repeat what you did with the Saturn 5 and the Block 1B. And that would have been entirely, again, expendable, not sustainable at all. Again, you can just take about the same amount you can take with a pile out of the moon. And we don't want that. We want something different. Yeah. All right. Well, did you expect there to be an entire year delay to Artemis II?

Because I certainly did not expect that long of a delay. I expected it to be first half of the year. I had not heard that they had problems testing the components for Artemis 3, Orion. And that's pretty serious. Like they looked and they said, well, these valves aren't working that run the CO2 scrubber. Uh-oh. I mean, that's a pretty important discovery. To me, the one-year delays on both these missions is the least interesting part of that press conference.

Like one extra year, it's like whatever. It doesn't matter. Like, okay, we land. No one thought that everyone was going to happen anyway. It's not a big deal. But the fact that there were like three pretty late stage problems with Orion popping up, now is like really kind of troubling. I'm pretty concerned about that.

Who could have guessed? They didn't test the life support system and there were problems with the life support system. You should be concerned. I mean, we've been spending a billion dollars on Orion since 2005. I mean, come on. Everyone was doing age math in the Discord. So and mine was it when Orion was first approved, like got the first money. I was 21 and I'll be 40 when it flies people.

Maybe. I mean, I'll be at least 40 when it flies people. I think of it a little differently. Like I don't care when Artemis 2 flies. With all respect to the crew who I think are fabulous people, it does not matter. The real mission is Artemis 3 in the sense that that's where you bring in Starship and do rendezvous and go down to the moon. I mean, that's where you do all sorts of really difficult, interesting stuff. And that's probably not going to happen until 2028-ish.

So, I mean, if Artemis 2 gets pushed out to 2026, who cares? 26, who cares? I mean, it's just, it shortens the gap between Artemis 2 and Artemis 3. Anthony, I know and I have talked about this before. So it's, it, it, but I agree with you, Jake, that sort of these three issues with Orion, we knew about the heat shield. We didn't know about the other two issues, although the battery problem that's not like that big of a deal, but the component issue does seem a little bit scary, yeah? Yeah. Well, we had a whole slate of this document. There was going to be Artemis 2 predictions that we can just, delete, which is great. So instead, we can just make Starship predictions, which I think could be a

pretty fun segment, Eric, because there's, like, what's your baseline for how many times they fly this year? What is your gut? Or maybe if you want to set an over-under, we'll pick the over-and-under again. Did they launch? They launched in November, right? The second flight? There's going to be December, January, February, three-month difference between Artemis II and Artemis 3, or, excuse Starship 2 and Starship 3. I would say I would take the over under on four and a half would be my over under.

Wow. I think it was really hoping you'd say five and a half so he could do Yeah, because then we could debate. We could debate if they also get the paperwork approved to fly more than five times, which is another fun part. Yeah, I think that's... I'll take under four and a half. Yeah.

Four and a half is kind of bullet off. but unless they have like a serious problem with the ground infrastructure, I don't see why the cadence would slow down. And as they start to have successes, they're not, you know, they're building these vehicles quickly. And if they,

if they have a success, then you're not going to need to do this anomaly investigation after the flight. So I think just your time between flights becomes, becomes a little bit compressed. I don't know, four and a half seems. Here's my thing, though,

That's how my brain worked previously, but the way they handled the suborbital flights, screwed with me a little bit. Because I thought they would fly a couple of those, even just to continue getting experience on the final descent. And they stuck one, and they were like, we're good. We're moving on to the next thing. And so if they get to orbit,

presumably they'll get to orbit a couple of times before they're actually able to bring one back through the atmosphere. But when they do, are they going to say, like, all right, great, we're on to the refueling infrastructure. and then there will be some sort of delay while they get enough of the infrastructure for that going. Like that's... No, I see I have a little bit of reporting to share that they have two priorities with... Scoop Media today. I love this.

They have two priorities with Starship. Number one is the HLS, super high priority, demonstrating refueling and getting on to, you know, doing lunar missions for NASA. The other one is Starlink. They are very eager to start launching Starlink on Starship. So if they get to the point in the middle of next year where they're like, well, we've got to take a break and figure out this refueling stuff, they'll just launch Starlings, I think. And so in the same vein, they'll just continue to work on reentry,

but it's nowhere near. Like, this is an expendable launch vehicle until they can start landing them. It's sort of their. I think so, yeah. I think they will try to learn for every flight, but they're going to start putting Starlink's. I don't think they'll be Starlink from the next mission, but I'd be shocked if they're not on the four or fourth flight.

I mean, they could also do. do HLS fully expendably. They could. They could, especially if they land the booster. That's the really expensive part because of the engines. A lot of engines on that. They start doing smart reuse because they can't

land the thing. I found engine number 17. Paisers is out there pulling them out of the ocean. See how this thing works. So, yeah, I think. So, though, is to operate as if, like, the same, I mean, Falcon 9 was an expendable booster until they started landing them. So, yes.

I think we all are, and by that I'm saying me, it's under the assumption that, like, they're going to, they're going to work so hard at reentry and landing that it will add time between missions, but maybe they are just in the mindset of, like, this shit's expendable until we can sort that out. And we've got enough hardware that we can sort that out. I think the reason you are hardware rich and why Musk has pushed so hard to build starships cheaply, relatively speaking, is because he does view it as an expendable vehicle and the roadmap is eventually you get toward full reuse.

I mean, I don't think they're under any illusions about how challenging it is going to be ultimately to bring Starship back through Earth's atmosphere with the heat shield as it is and land it and then refly it again. I do think that's going to be an enormous challenge. it'll take them a while to get there. Fortunately, they can build starships quickly, and they have a lot of experience landing first stages, so I think the first stage reuse will come around fairly quickly.

You know, and we might see a first stage free fly again in 25 or 26. I don't know. They can be want to take the over now, though. Well, well, Anthony. Because if they don't blow up the launch pad, then like, just keep going, maybe. That was the point I was making. It's like, if they don't above the launch pad, they're going to keep going.

But, you know, I don't know how many go get. Well, this is my prediction. They'll fly five times. We'll spend the entire fourth quarter debating whether or not they're going to apply for new paperwork. And then on January 2nd, there'll be a new launch pad in Kennedy Space Center. I mean, it wouldn't shock me if they've already filed new paperwork for paperwork for that, just to sort of get that in the queue. Yeah.

But I don't know. But, you know, they're going to go. Like, they are, they are, they built a machine to build the machine. That machine works. And they're ready to continue. testing. I'm taking the over, Jake. All right.

Eric, I don't even know where you were at. You set the over-under, but I don't know what you actually took. That's my prediction. Four and a half. Four and a half flights. I love that. That's so good. Yeah, I love that as well because then we have to determine, was that,

did that one count as half? Because it made it most of the only. If it makes it do staging and then the starship explodes, that might be, that might be the one. Or if the wing falls off, which is my white whale of a mission. Spinny, spinning move. All right. Lightning round. Lightning round.

What else we got on this list, Jake? Clips. Holy smokes. Okay. Will Astrobotics Paragon ever die? Seems like it won't. Right now. Sure.

Okay. Interesting stuff. Intuitive machines. We got it. Does Dragon X.L. Oh, Dragon X. Excel. Does it become real?

Eric, Jake has this theory that Dragon Xcel is not real. In the call on Tuesday, Monday? Why was that call? they mentioned that they gave their logistics provider the go-ahead to continue work, but they did not say the words Dragon X-L. How do you feel about this conspiracy three that Jake is working on? I don't know. I have strong feelings.

I have strong feelings one way or not. Stop bothering with this bullshit stuff. You guys are working. There will be no book about Dragon X-L. All right, Intuitive Machine. We'll take it to Houston for you for six. Is it going to work? The launch will work.

How about the other work? Pretty good about that. I, you know, you got to play the odds. I'd say I like the people to intuitive machines a lot. I like the people to astrobotic a lot. I want all Eclipse missions to succeed because I think it's such a brave, important program at NASA. But history suggests it probably will fail. I hope it doesn't.

Jake? Planetary Man? So I already made a prediction in our Discord that of astrobotic and intuitive machines, one of two would fail. So I kind of need it to go. I kind of need to nail it. Listen, we're in the year of 2024 now.

Methane is the current goat. Methane shall be victorious. This shit's landing on the moon. Well, I mean, also, the company's run by Eagles fans, or go birds? Soft landing on the moon or landing on the moon? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

No, this is not going Luna 25. Yeah, actually, maybe it will go Luna 25. It'll never actually be provably by the moon. No, I'm saying it's soft landing. Awesome. I'd love to see it. I'd love to see it. Yeah.

Well, because also, astrobotic, like, going better than I thought it would, even though it's not going to make it to the moon. Things are going great. All things considered? No. If your oxidized tank blows up. Do you think that you would also continue to fly and get pictures and operate your payloads? I mean, if you don't need your... pretty good outcome. No, it's not.

Their propulsion system failed. They're oxidized a tank block. Listen, you build a spaceship that has an oxidizing thing that blows up and still do all the other stuff. I'm out here standing for the rest of the vehicle working really well. Given that. Yeah. I commend them.

I mean, aside from the assassination, how did you enjoy the play, Mrs. Lincoln? But honestly, it was a great play. They got a picture of Earth out of it, you know? I just want to say their communication on this is. been tremendous. They haven't hidden from their failure. They've been. Yep. And that's been fantastic to see. Shout out, Olivia.

I commend them on that because, you know, it's a private mission. They didn't have to say anything. Yep. So they could have just been sending pictures back and say everything's fine. So I could, kudos to them. Yep. Do we, don't we have a section in here, Jake, of what other hardware will we see? Okay. Let me ask you this.

What odds would you give Anthony for? firefly being the first U.S. company to soft land on the moon. Well, does that require them to have an upper stage that can fire multiple times or not? That's the question. I have a little bit of problem with the circularization birds. So. I'm a blue ghost is not. I don't think blue ghost is launched on a lot.

It's not a falcon. I mean, everything flies on a falcon. Chance is that. We just say falcon, it's 95% of the chance. Yeah, I mean, what do you? You want a percentage chance that that is a true statement? Yeah. Maybe 7%.

Oh, I'd go at least 30. I'd go higher too, yeah. Because all it would take would be for intuitive machines to fail, right? Probably. And them to land on the fucking moon. And then then to land. Because that's 50% chance of each. That's a 25% percent.

It's a 25% chance. Here's the thing, right, is that the intuitive machines, at least some portion of that team, came out of Project Morpheus. Yes. Right? And Firefly has been nothing but a house of chaos for several years.

Firefly has been a house of chaos but they have really talented people regardless. I'm sure they do. They have persisted despite their leadership being a house of chaos is tremendously impressive. I just feel like Intuitive Machines has a couple people that were like

working on a thing that was doing landings on Earth. And then we're like, what if we built, basically the same thing that went to the moon. And I feel good about that. I feel more likely, I guess this is the other aspect. I feel more confident that two and two to machines missions will fly before fireflies. Okay.

So. That's your prediction. Great. I'm not pooping on Firefly. I'm more like betting on Air Force. Flying a couple times. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Go Houston, except for baseball. All right. I guess I'm writing that down. I don't know that I guess, sure, they'll both happen this year. Toyota machines is flying two times this year. Let's do it. All right.

Love it. Yeah. Well, we didn't get through our list, Anthony. This is very normal for us. We got to the good stuff. Yeah. We didn't talk about sample return. We didn't talk about Starliner.

It's a little scary that NASA had planned to talk about sample return and then canceled the meeting. Yeah. What does that mean? What does that mean? It's not good. I mean something's happening. That's what it means. That's it, right?

It means that there's a big decision that came late in the game at some point. I don't know what our decision is, but something happened. I don't think there are any easy choices on sample return. So it's a tough one. Someone's got to make a difficult call on that. I would make a prediction that that mission does not launch before 2030 very confidently. Interesting. All right.

Like the first flight, like whatever the first thing is, the lander and the... Yeah, whatever the first piece is, whether it's the lander or the orbiter return vehicle. Yeah. I got one to throw out. I got an over under for you guys. Over under on helicopters that will fly with Mars sample returned one and a half. Zero. Significant.

No helicopters. You're not in on the helicopters, Jake? I mean, I would go under. I would go under. I would think probably zero. I could see one. That's the compromise. Right.

Just adds mass and complexity to an already insanely complex mission. I don't know why they needed two helicopters, but. They didn't. That's the thing. It would make a lot more sense if the first helicopter that's flying on Mars wasn't kicking ass for like 70 flights. It's still going. God damn.

It's amazing. It's like a really good helicopter. And they're like, well, we should probably have two because what if? I mean, maybe they just just plan on that helicopter. still being active, you know? Better bet. Maybe that's the big decision, right? So they bring in, they, they, they fix, they take the IRB report recommendations.

They fix the organization so that, like, the whole program is not run out of like 10 different, you know, masters. And then someone comes in and goes, all right, let's take a look at this. Why do you guys have helicopters and they're like, well, they're pretty cool. That's it. My nephew got one for Christmas, and it's like a pretty good way to get around. That's the best argument for having them on there is that helicopters are cool, which is not a big... Yeah, that little helicopter. That little helicopter.

Prediction on how many reporter questions Bill Nelson will, in fact, double down on this calendar year over under one and a half. I don't know. That was one of the most shocking things I've ever seen in a NASA news conference before in my life. For what Anthony is referencing is like the question came up of how many refuelings is Starship going to do? And NASA gives a non-answer answer, answer. And then Jessica Jensen at SpaceX gives a non-answer answer answer. And then Bill Nelson says, answer the question to SpaceX. And that felt a, I like Nelson.

That felt a little passive-aggressive to me. Passive. It does not feel like, it does not feel like, sorry, the dogs are going crazy in the back. It does not feel like he was like standing up for the reporter to me. So I don't know. It was very interesting. Especially the, hello, Bill, was the response from Jessica Jensen. There was not a good vibe at that moment, but I did have like Bill Nelson's Senate committee

hearing personality flicked on for a second. Like, you didn't give me the sound bite that I wanted. Can you give me the sound bite or not? So it definitely felt like. Super good. All right. Well, and then there was Jim Free's answer to me where I asked him the question of like, how can we have any confidence in 2026?

I was so disappointed in this. And like, you know, I have a pretty good relationship with Jim and he felt like it was a pretty testy answer. So I don't know. I like, like, I mean, come on, 2026, no way. You said I've talked to all these people in the industry that are like, these dates are completely unrealistic. And he said, well, there's 11 people in the industry on this. right now who all signed contracts that it is realistic.

And if I wish I'd had a following, didn't they have contracts for Exploration Mission 1 in 2017 in 2018 and 2019? And did you hold them to those contracts, Jim? I mean, it's... What's the penalty for missing the deadline? What's the contract say about that? Yeah. Another $1 billion. Yeah. But it was it was kind of a testy response. And I'm not quite sure why that was, but it was it was kind of amusing. And anyway, it'll be something fun to hold him to now in the future. Yeah.

Yeah. Doug is on grave on that one, I think. But, poof. Well, okay. That's what's in fodder. Who's Doug? Are you thinking of Doug Leverro? You said Doug.

I didn't say Doug. I thought he said Doug. No. Maybe I had to start about Doug Leverro. He dug his own grave. Oh. D-O-U-G himself is curve. Leverro.

We got to get him on this show. If you got a connection, hit us up. We got to get him on. I've got an email, yeah. Hit us up with that. He got to get him on. We get him and who is the other guy that was, there was some other guy that was in a similar situation,

but I actually went to jail for it for a little while. Well, probably not that guy. No, I mean, he's out now and he's done some space conferences, and I thought that was an interesting decision. I'll look it up. I'll find it. For me, the Libero highlight was after the Starliner mission and like really going after them saying this was a high visibility close call and like just saying, you know, sort of being

very honest about like they came super close to losing the spacecraft, which we kind of knew, but no one had really said. And you know, the story that I want to tell that has never been told is what exactly did the NASA flight controllers in mission control do to see? save Starliner after the launch because my understanding is it got really dramatic and, you know, they were pretty heroic in their actions. And it was really the NASA guys who were contracted to fly Starliner that saved that vehicle. So if you're a NASA flight controller or former NASA flight control and you want to tell me that story, you know, hit me up because I think

there's, I think there's a great story to tell in there. And there's a few years now, we probably could tell it. And just promise that if they do hit you up, you'll tell you. them about the proof of life that you have. Yes. You'll give them all the info on that. So that would be an equal exchange of information, I think. That's it. We're way over, but Eric's, you're too good to hang out with.

So plug what you got going on lately. What's everyone, what should everybody read right now? It's not out yet, but hopefully in a week or 10 days, I'm going to have a really interesting story on something that happened in the spatial program way back in the day in terms of safety and sort of space psychology that I think is a real issue going forward with as we open up private spaceflight to more and more non-Nass astronauts in the future. So I've been doing a lot of digging and research on that. And I don't want to say much more, but look for that in the next week or 10 days. Can't wait to watch that patch. Ah. That's great. That's

Don't count your chickens. Don't catch your chickens on that before they hatch, Anthony. That's good. It's good. We're killing it here, Jake. Yeah. All right. That's it, Jake. What do you got? Anything? All right, you got a cat and a new roof. This is deer now. And a Discord. Offnom.com slash Discord. Everybody should be hanging out there. You could have gotten some of Jake's predictions early, I guess, if you're a member of the Discord, either at the base level and win points. Or never fly ride share. which is you get the same service for five times the price.

So it's great. It's a great way to support the show. All right, y'all. Eric, thanks for hanging out. Thanks, guys. My pleasure. Shout out to Daddy Space Force. Good luck on the acquisition.

Bye, everybody. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, into death.