Off-Nominal - 145 - Space Elevator Jazz

Episode Date: March 15, 2024

Jake and Anthony are joined by Michael Sheetz, space reporter from CNBC, to talk about Starship’s third flight, recent earnings calls, whatever Astra is up to, and…there’s way too much on our list.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 145 - Space Elevator Jazz (with Michael Sheetz) - YouTubeStarship's Third Flight Test / XSpaceX Starship rocket flies milestone third test flightIntuitive Machines stock (LUNR) jumps after Odysseus moon landingSpace company Astra going private to avoid bankruptcyRocket Lab (RKLB) Q4 2023 results: Contract backlog growsRocket Lab Unveils Spacecraft Bus Lineup | Rocket LabFollow MichaelMichael Sheetz (@thesheetztweetz) / TwitterMichael Sheetz Profile - CNBCFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine start. Hello, friends. How's it going, Jake? I'm excellent. What a great day. We've got sheets here with us on what is it, chaotic, chaotically interesting day. I'm sure, of all people, you need a happy hour right now. I know, I do, and I really appreciate the previously scheduled,

may I note, appearance on this show. You guys really love to reach out to me, and then I just kind of ignore it until there's a starship launch and then whenever that coincides that's when I'm like, yeah, let's do it. I mean, or we are the predictors of when the launch

will actually happen. This is true. I like that too. You know, we should have you on every other week and then it'll always be fine. Yeah, no, it was good. I had a lovely morning. I was so much fun to wake up to it.

And I was pissed because if they had just gone one week earlier, I could have slept in an hour later because of the time change or whatever, but it was still fine. It was still fine. So you did wake up for this launch? I did. My body woke up naturally. 5.30 this morning.

It was like, you should get up. There's something going on. You should go check it down. All right, let's do it. Let's go for it. Too good. So it was great. It was destiny.

My body did not wake up normally, unfortunately. I had like five alarms set because I was just like this. there's a constant fear as a space reporter, I think, that launch windows are a suggestion so that the one time that you don't, you know, tune in on time when you need it to be, it goes like 30 minutes early and you're just like scrambling the whole rest of the time.

But fortunately, you know, orbital dynamics and all that mean that it's a nightmare that will never become a reality. That's pretty true, yeah. Events will shift left. days, but never minutes. That's not a thing. Like, if there was a minute selected, that's the minute. Yeah, this one's going.

Sometimes they shift ahead by orbits that we've learned, lunar orbits. Well, there's that. Oh, gosh. Yeah, when people for telling me like, all right, so astrobotics going to launch first, but Intuitive machines is going to get there first. And I was like, yeah, that's not my area of expertise. So I'm going to trust you on that, but I have no idea why that is. Correct.

But you're not going to like, why. If I try and explain why, you're going to get really upset that I tried to go down this path with you. And we're just going to end it earlier. I think we have other things we probably should talk about. Probably than complaining about time. Well, first of all, what are you drinking? You signed on here before Jake, and it was absolutely enormous. So I'm curious what that was.

So I've got a nice gin and tonic because I have not had any time to make anything fancier than pouring gin and tonic water into a glass with an ice cube. So, yeah, that's what I got. And I love it. Yeah. It kind of feels like the right vibe. I mean, Brooklyn, we got like the springtime vibes here. So it's very nice. And it feels appropriate.

It's 77 degrees here, Jake. That's pretty amazing. What do you got, Jake? Do you get anything good? Yeah, I've been scavenging for something. I did. No, I got a real thing this thing. I went to the beer company.

So. Yes. I've been into Star Wars lately. I found this one here. I don't know how I feel about the hop on the mask as an element. No, I dig it. I dig it as an element.

It really draws attention to the fact that like, you are getting yourself in for a, you know, dark and stormy hop. Your breath will smell like this on the way out. This filter thing. Yeah, you would raspy breathe in after a couple of these. It's one of those like thick hoppy. We'll see.

I've got the most appropriate. drink that anyone's ever had on this show, Jake. I've got, I'm back to the Star Base beers, the launch, lucky launch day logger. I don't know why I said that so strangely, but look at this thing, Jake. This is courtesy of the large box of star base stuff that's still sitting behind me, and I'm working through these beers, so. Those labels are great. I know.

They did it often. They're so good. The green, I even put the Kelly Green Eagles on for today. I always accidentally wear Kelly Green Eagle stuff very close to St. Patrick's like by accident just probably because it's like every four days I have something Kelly Green Eagles on so it's not that much of a shock

but it felt like the right the right vibe go birds so I'm cracking this open I just called Sequan sorry to not get too far on top I did my mom's other family is all from PA and that's like such a homecoming I watched him play in the Rose Bowl against USC was I don't remember what year that was like

he is like such a like we wish he played in PA professionally and now that it is happening like I mean he's going to be selling so many used cars is insane that is 1,000% accurate uh yeah I could probably pick the dealership that he'll be going to deal with that's incredible yeah that's what a good reference jakey you have no idea how good of a reference that is it's so good it's so good all right listen I I have I I'll just Jake this before the show, Michael. Mm-hmm. All right.

You can choose which things you want to compare this to. I will put today's Starship footage up against the Saturn 5 footage where I think it was Apollo 4 where they shot that epic video of like the interstage ring falling off, getting burn up in the engines a bit. I'm stacking it up against that in terms of spaceflight footage. And I think this one, now obviously like people walking around on the moon driving a car on the moon, that's like a different category, right?

I'm talking rockets, spaceflight hardware, doing beastly spaceflight things. I'm putting this one as the greatest of all time today. Wow, that is a strong call. I mean, it's not a horrible take. Ah, man. Feel good about that. No, I mean, it legitimately makes a lot of sense as, you know, the unprecedented nature of it. The fact that it was like crystal clear, it looked gorgeous.

It was incredible. and then the fact that everyone's sitting there being like, is this real? Like, this is insane. So I think that's, yeah, like nothing comes off to the top of my mind that really matches it. We talk about, you know, rockets in Earth's orbit and all that jazz, which seems to be our informal category here.

That's our thing, yes. I mean, there's been some going. Rocket Lab had that first shot that they had of like the upper stage flying away from the first stage. It's up there in the rankings. There's some good shun. subtle stuff like the booster cam that that was always cool i see this is just kind of a personal like you know i feel maybe underrated shot but the one that comes to mind for me is the first time we saw a falconine booster from separation to land it like uninterrupted all the way top to bottom that

to me was just some of the most insane footage i've ever seen because you stayed with it the whole time and it really gave you more perspective than I think I've ever gotten on any rocket webcast before. One, just how huge this thing is, how fast is moving, and how precisely it's maneuvering along the way. It doesn't just drop itself back down off the earth. So I think that is really up there. It's pretty close for me. But I mean, Starships crazy and the really glorious plume of plasma around it is, you know, it's pretty amazing. So yeah, yeah.

I just want to, I want to just give credit where it's due on your line there. You mentioned all that jazz and we just kind of let that, we let that go by. And I want to make sure that we highlight that because that was great. All the rockets and all that jazz is perfect. Like that, when they started playing that music, I was like, uh, yeah, okay, I'm here for it. Yeah, let's do it. Yeah. like space elevator jazz let's do it

it was truly incredible that that like when that decision got made and who gave the green light to that is what I want to unpack that a bit original composition like is that going to be up for like a Grammy it was Chris G actually Chris G that's his new thing since he went to SpaceX he's been doing in-house jazz for the webcast

they hired him just to start a combo Yeah, he's got a troop. Yeah, it's a great crew there, you know. Dan Hewitt, I think it plays drums in it. It's the whole situation. That's great. It's funny to see Dan on the broadcast. I was like, hey, look, this guy doesn't just, you know, tweet.

He's like, he's back. He's alive. Now, we missed him from the NASA days, so it's cool to see him back. Yeah, yeah, totally good. Same intonation and everything, too, like that very calming. Okay, this moment when it goes through like that upper layer of volume, it goes like, ah, baby. I mean, no thing.

That's a good time to switch cameras. We were saying on the pre-show that it's like, you know how you have friends who have like young kids and like you meet the kid and then like maybe the next time you see them like it's six, 12, maybe 18 months later, like that kind of friend where you don't see you very often. And then you catch up and again,

you're like, whoa, like your kid got really tall and is like speaking in full sentences now. That's what Starship felt like this like from the last time we saw. Like all of a sudden it's like doing maneuvers and it's got cameras and all. all this like it's just like suddenly all capable all of a sudden and it felt very it felt very sudden and welcome okay so that is exactly what i tried to capture today because uh that was the same exact thought i went through so i'm really glad of that like i'm on a common strand here

of thought because um laurie garver and i chatted for a little while after the launch and uh basically to break down like why did this feel different than the previous two launches and what it really came down to the fact that like this could have delivered satellites into orbit. This was by like traditional metrics of a rocket launch, a successful launch. And that that difference of like, whoa, you grew up. Like you're a big kid now. Like that's kind of what today felt like. And I mean, I'm putting, I would put big money on the fact that the next one's going to have, you know, Starlink satellites on it.

Like, why wouldn't you do that? That was exactly Lori's point to me. And like, I fully agree with you and her. Yeah. Yeah, there's definitely going to be Starlings for the next one. There's got to be. why wouldn't you, right? Yeah.

We talked about that last week that this is the shift into the methodology that Falcon 9 flew with, which is like, do a useful thing, test some stuff. Do a useful thing, test some stuff after. And that's where it's at. You know, booster went chaotic again. I really thought this was the flight, Jake, that I was going to have my wing falls off and Starship goes spinning prediction come home a couple years late. Yeah, almost.

We were almost there. It may have. It may have, yeah. Actually, to the point, I don't know if you guys saw the, like, you know, post-flight update they put out on their website. But I, like, actually verbally laughed aloud when I read this one line, which was, they didn't do the relight because, quote, due to vehicle roll rates during coast. I was like, yeah, we all were watching this thing just spinning, like crazy.

And I'm going like, it's like the Astra upper stage all over again. Oh, too soon, but maybe not too soon because they're kind of gone now. Can we just go back a couple seconds here? because this shot was when it gets like the most sci-fi after separation. Let's see, where was that little? I'm interested you can use the Twitter video player and live stream at the same time. That's impressive. You know, look, that thing flying away, the booster flying away.

Yeah. Or what is that? Was that the booster? No, what was that flying away? That's just pieces of Starship. Just pieces. That's just pieces. That's just extra stuff.

I swear that like right at the point where they started reentry, there were like a couple tiles went past the camera. I didn't go back and look. But live, I was like, that one looks like a tile. Yeah, yeah. It looked like a big chunk of something, a lot of ice and stuff,

but there was something that was not ice-colored flying around in there, too. Well, and later in the coast, like something exploded, right? Like a small sort of like burst or something because like it kind of shook and that's when all the pieces fell off like in orbit or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. That induced the roll rate on orbit. Yeah. Or at least made it really worse, yeah. Yeah. Can we talk about the shark fin situation too? It flies like a shark.

Does anyone expect this to fly like a shark? I did not. Was that on purpose? That part seems stable. In the coast phase, it was flying like a shark. Yeah, didn't. Didn't expect that. Yeah, look, more bits going off.

More bits. Okay, I have a question now. Go ahead. Yeah, so we think they're going to put satellites on it, But this is the thing that maybe throws a wrench in that, right? So they didn't get the relight done, which I'm kind of getting a vibe that like they're really keen on actually doing in space. Because now this is three flights in a row where they are adding the safety fallback of even if we don't light it, it's going to come back like within an orbit, like within one revolution, right? So if they didn't do that, like are they going to because if you want to deploy star lengths, you got to get to orbit.

like you're going to have to be able to fight that engine, right? So do they do that? I don't know. I'm wondering now. That's fair. They feel kind of gun-shy about it, and I'm kind of curious about that. I think they would because we've seen them risk Starlink missions before as like a, well, like for example, with Falcon 9, like pushing reuse, you know, how many times they can refly boosters. We've seen them take that risk.

Granted, that's a new level of risk, but I wouldn't be surprised, you know, if they were like, we'll try the relight and, you know, go ahead. Well, it's not the risk of the Starlink's, right? Like, they'll happily throw those away. But if you reach orbit, you reach orbit. Nobody gives a shit about the Starlings. Yeah. And then deploy them, and then you can't relight.

Like, the relight fails. You're stuck in orbit. And then it's long March 5 all over again except worse, right? Yeah. Or do you do the inverse shake? You put Starlings on and you, you, you have to relight to make orbit and then deploy the Starlings.

But then are you going to be able to relight to come out of orbit? You're in the same situation, right? I mean, at some point, at some point, we're going to have to do their first de-orbit burn. Exactly what I'm getting at is like, they can't do this forever, right?

They can't stay in this spot forever. So, but again, maybe, yeah, if there is something about the in-space relight being a challenge, which to me hits my ears very strangely for a company like SpaceX. Yeah. And an engine like Raptor, that's had all this flight time.

But if you are, then maybe you do that tactic. You load a couple star links on, and you might not want to put a full slate. You might want to test this weird Pez door out and just deploy one. You don't want the first one to get jammed in the door and then be stuck with a bunch of like lopsided cargo and try to do a reentry test with it. That's not going to be great. That's going to have an unexpected roll rate on orbit, I think, if you do that. Yeah.

It is funny, though, because that is, you're right that that is like a, a note of caution that has been in their planning. And even the move to the Indian Ocean, right? I speculated, the only thing I think I thought about this week that I hadn't thought of previously was that the point where they were reentering was in daylight, as we can see, from the video today. But Hawaii would have been darkness. So if they wanted to make sure that they had daylight for the video capture, once they

were confident that they were going to be able to get video off of this thing, maybe that was the reason for the change. Yeah. I can't really come up other than wanting. more wiggle room between them and any other pieces of land. I can't come up with a lot of reasons for why they moved the trajectory so far. Yeah.

There's shark fin mode, by the way. Shark fin mode. Did not expect shark fin mode. Put that into the canon. Shark fin mode. Yeah, it looks like an orca like underneath a big cruise ship. Just sneaking up on some unsuspecting

fashioners. You think the edges of the tiles are always, going to stay like that, like this very unrefined edge? Why not? It looks like the finished part of your basement and the unfinished part of your basement. I don't know. Feels like they should spude that out. Yeah, you're guess you're right, you know.

Anthony, I're slowly describing all the pieces of a Pennsylvania, like, suburban lifestyle. We're cracking into it. Oh, my God. That's shockingly accurate. Is that not? It's like mischief night. I realize these are more regional things than I realize. Yeah, yeah.

What else? Just watch always sunny all the way through. It'll only take you like four years and you'll be all caught up. What a show, man. That show is just a gold mine. That's such a good show. I feel like that show for you is like Letterkenny for me. It totally is.

It's the same vibe. Yeah, those are cousins. I always hear Americans talking about Letterkenny and they're like, this show is so funny. And I was like, there's no way you're catching all these jokes. Like there are some of these that are just so freaking niche that like there's just no possible way you have any idea what that means. No, that's a rest of development for me because I grew up in Orange County in California. And there's like some stuff in there that people laugh at. I'm like, no, no, you don't actually get that joke.

Yeah. We are not the same. We're both laughing in this joke, but we are not the same. What else we got on Starship? Anything else in particular? I did appreciate that Bill Nelson's Twitter took a victory lap on this one. That was the thing we always were waiting on, right? That you could plant your flag and say, this is Artemis, baby.

Yeah, the unqualified success, I think, is the biggest difference, right? He's like congratulated them each time, but there's kind of been this like, you know, we hope that it's going to do well and this was like a great successful launch like full sample that's because they called up at the Intuitive Machines press conference they're like, what the hell? What the hell?

Yeah, some of the early ones are very much like oh, you're doing so good buddy like good, here's your participation metal, you know? I can't wait to see you try again. Yeah. Oh yeah, here's the like I don't know, yeah.

Like those are like two tiled pieces or it's so hard to get scale of stuff floating by, but isn't there a point like, but right before that debris comes off, isn't there a shake on the camera? Like, I really feel like there was something that actually... I think that was the first time the fin moved and everyone realized this was mounted out on the fin. No, I felt like there was like a vibration. I think they'll have to go back and watch it really carefully, but I don't know.

I felt like they saw a shake of some kind. Are we Zeprodering this live on the show here? Yeah, we're staring at this video. The podcast listeners are just going to absolutely love this segment. Just revel in our enjoyment of this. I mean, yeah, the Finn kind of moves, but maybe I made this up. It was early. No, I think it was right on here because there's not that much debris at the moment.

So, I know, you're right. All right. I'll keep it running. All right. Sounds good. So now are they going to, what's the vibe from here, right? Like, I haven't been on Twitter this afternoon. Do they need to miss out investigation or what?

They're opening one. They already said, yeah. Okay. So, like, we'll do the normal, you know, rigum a roll. But, like, the biggest difference we saw between one and two versus two and three was the number of actions that they had to take between the two. The time of the investigation didn't take as long. So, I mean, it feels like they're really starting to get some rhythm here,

not just on the tech side of like getting it ready, but also on the regulatory side of the FAA being more comfortable with things and being able to sign off a little more quickly. Yeah. Well, and the MISAP on here is not like out of bounds, right? So like usually with these kind of things, the way I'm always learning new things about them, but the way I understand it is like, you know, they pre-write the MISAP procedure, right? And so it's like, if this happens, we do these these things.

And then FAAs, okay, good, we like your plan, right? And so like these all felt like very expected failure modes. Like, yeah, okay, what if it doesn't reenter? What if it? You know, and so they probably have like all of that done. Like that report's probably done. Like that's be honest, that report is probably written already pre-written. And now they just file it and FAA stamps it and they yeah, great.

The booster one probably is too. Yeah, exactly. That's what I was going to say for the booster, which is probably the closest thing to a mishap that you can describe here. Because look, this is the thing I was my, I was talking about, like, Like, how do we frame this, you know, while we were all waiting for confirmation of like, did it survive the blackout period or not? We were talking about framing and a huge aspect of that conversation was like, this was either going to, you know, come all the way down to the surface of the ocean and smash and break in the

little pieces or it would break in little pieces and then smash into the ocean. Either way, like their outcome was kind of the same after reentry. So, like, you can't be like, oh, I guess. yes, it exploded and it's a failure or like they didn't complete the plan. You can't jump to that conclusion of that they didn't complete the flight because the difference between it broke up a little higher and then it hit the ocean is more money. And they honestly won't know because the blackout period definitively to make a call on, hey, yeah, it did or didn't.

And which is I think why you heard Dan on the webcast talking about like, you know, we lost the ship one, we didn't splash down two. Like those are the things that they could say confidently, and that's it. Like, and hopefully we'll get some more detail here in the next couple weeks because if that's, that just what happened, I think, after reentry and during reentry is the thing that everyone's going to want to know. And if you, you know, if you keep it within the ranges of debris that you stated, then you're in much better shape, right? The booster especially, if I clearly lost control towards the end, but how close to the center of their target were they? If that was still way within the bounds of that, then it's very similar to the Falcon 9s

that we've seen lost on the way back in, the one that went all crazy spinny that one time, which looked similar. I forget what flight that was. Do you remember what Falcon 9 I'm talking about where it went like real spinning? Oh, yeah, that was four years ago, three years ago. It was a while back.

Yeah, it felt very similar to the booster today. The reason I remember that one was, I want to say it was like six months-ish before demo two because everyone was looking at that like oh is this something we need to be concerned about and you know it's did a splash down instead the other thing too I mean look

my dumb American ass had to check this but they said 462 meters is when the rud for the bootster happened that's 1500 feet I mean that's really low altitude this thing basically was like almost all the way back down before it actually disintegrated so like to your point on a regulatory

story side of things really tightly within the bounds of, you know, what was expected. It's basically like this anomaly did not produce any more danger than an actual like nominal outcome, right? Like that's different from the very first launch where that explosion is sending concrete flying. Like that that's non-nominal. So there's extra danger there. Even if it was danger that was accounted for, it's still extra danger, right? Whereas this one like didn't actually like they already blocked that off that whole area. Right. Like they're already just any kind of booster coming in. There's no one in that area. And so. So the fact that it hits in one piece or a thousand pieces doesn't really make a big difference, right?

So, yeah, that's exactly it. Yeah, the first one was also crazy too, because witnessing it in person, you had no sense of like how much of that concrete was just being flung everywhere. But they're not going back and lost the live stream. And you can literally see it peppering like the water. And that water is not very close to the launch pad. So that was just a wild experience to go back and watch it and be like, oh, wow, yeah, that did a heavy, heavy damage to the pad.

versus this, you know, you watch it lift off, like, you know, it's cooking. I still am like truly floored that the steel plate is as effective as it is. And I'm curious to see, you know, like I would love to you guys to have like a concrete, you know, expert on if you haven't already to be like. Let's do it. That sounds ridiculous and I love that. Yes. Get some guy who like just nerds out about commercial concrete and have him on to explain like how

durable, how much, like, how long that concrete with the steel plate is going to last versus the fact that the normal stuff just got obliterated in one long. God. I'd love to know that. This is so good. Usually we assign homework for the journalist that we bring on the show. And this is exactly the kind of dumb bullshit that I think we should be assigned. I love this.

My only worry on that is that like the crossover of the use case of like really good at concrete and launching rockets. Like that, the bend diagram of people is like the three guys that work at SpaceX right now. I also definitely listen to this show. So I think that's totally within our wheel outs. Like again, the PA theme is strong,

but like get someone from like a steel factory who deals with heat tolerances. It doesn't have to be a launch. Like I want a guy who's not a launch expert and he's like, yeah, okay, Rockett's cool, but like knows concrete super well. And you build everything at a concrete down here.

I can grab some turn out of al-a-a-neal. This is the best assignment we've ever received. Can you always give us the assignments that you know your editors will never approve you doing a story about? And then we'll do them because they're just like too stupid. I'll pass off the ones that I'm like, hey, guys, what about? And they're like, Michael. No. Right to off, nom.

That's what we want. Straight to jail. I'm putting it in our notes. I'm putting it in our ideas, Doc. Find the concrete guy. Special jail for goodness. Put it in the batched ideas folder where we have that Orion cooped out thing in there. Yeah, yeah.

We have a document that. that says crackpot. We don't, neither of us remember why we made this document in our planning thing. It just says, the title is crackpot theories and the only line in it,

I'm looking at it right now, says Airbus uses Orion as their own spacecraft. We have no memory of when we made this document, why we did it, and what that theory even means, but it's in our crackpot theories document

and we've never edited another entry. We will never ever delete this document. Airbus buys Lucky Martin. And then... It's like, wait a minute. Airbus sees an opportunity to go after Boeing and this is how they do it is they just come into their turf.

Yeah, yeah. It's a great document. No idea. All right, I'm putting this in the show ideas though. Okay, love it. Find the concrete expert who does not, who is not interested in space.

See, this is the thing that I've found more recently really interesting about reporting is finding people who don't know space stuff really well and then balancing stuff off of them because you get so much good feedback of like how the most normal people think about space. And I can still go talk to the space people, you know, just fine. But like the folks who are quote unquote normal, if you will, are then like bringing back their

more kind of visceral reaction of is this significant, do we care about this or not? And I think it's really interesting to see what moves that barometer and what doesn't when it comes the space stuff. Like, as, I think this is my favorite recent example, like, the starship launches have obviously gotten such a huge amount of attention, like, not just within the space community, but, you know, writ large. Intuitive Machines lander is like how much smaller than Starship. And was doing something that's so early developmentally, like, really just trying to, like, can we make this one thing stick, right? But in terms of capturing the public imagination and, like, the significance, I would argue, had as much of an impact and as much attention as any of the

Starship test flights. And I think it's really interesting because in the space industry, we talk about the fundamental changes of Starship and other things, because we're in tune with those things. But we also have to not be in tune with the rest of the populace on like, what do they care about? What makes a difference in their lives? And being able to send stuff to the moon is like something that's inspirational. And like sending 7,000 more. Starlink satellites into orbit, not really. I always meant to ask you this, because I always think about you in particular. Are you the person?

I mean, you think about me all the time. Well, it's specifically about work, so watch it. But now it's about Pennsylvania suburban trivia, so watch over that too. I have a boring office job question. It made me think of you. No, no, just straight up. Like, I've always noticed that NBC, both national and local, cover a decent amount of space stuff. And I'm always picking up on like which things they, and I'm always running NBC.

All my sports are on NBC. So NBC is just the thing that happens when I turn on my TV. I'm loyal to NBC for you there. But who, like, is that, is that you? Is that other people internally? How does that, how does it get decided, like, the time you're on nightly news or the time that A-Space story is on nightly news? What is that filter and why do, why doesn't Tudor Chines make it, but other ones might not?

That's a great question. I mean, you could get into the, there's like two kind of kind of questions. in there, which is like the assignment question of like, why do I do either TV hits or write articles for not just CNBC but other NBC brands? And then also like who gets assigned to those things and like why is their interest in those stories from those outlets? The second one is a question that you can kind of answer just by like reading through who they're writing to. Like who is their audience, right? When I write for CNBC's audience, I'm writing for an investor case. Like the thing they care about the most with Starship is like what's the business case you know how much money is

SpaceX spent on this thing how much you know development cost of this stack up to the next thing what's the payload you know they care about the stuff that has financial applications NBC's audience isn't going to care about that as much they're more speaking to a broader audience that's interested in like you know science news and the latest you know space exploration so they're they're going to speak much more to like the this is something that you know can deliver Artemis Cruz to the moon. And they're going to talk about kind of the space exploration aspect of that. So there's a distinct difference in philosophy of like what audience they're serving.

As far as it goes for me and like assignment wise, it really is just kind of a case by case and like relationships that you cultivate over the years. I've contributed across like all of our different brands because there aren't many people within the broader like NBC News Group that includes like Sky News in the UK to like your NBC regional outlet, right? And I can contribute to all of those because I'm at an NBC company, but whether or not they want me to is a different question, whether they have a story that's like kind of fitting. I mean, a great example of this is, you know, when I am on talking about Starship, I really try to tailor it to whichever audience I'm speaking to. And that's the important

thing to remember is like the person on the other side of the camera is very different depending on what, you know, outlet or broadcaster joining. So it's, it's really like, I've, you know, built relationships with producers at different shows and they know to come, like, oh, yeah, CNBC has the guy who's like dedicated to the space beat. But then, like, a great example is, like, Tom Costello's are, you know, kind of solid everyday man when it comes to aerospace and aviation for NBC. So, like, he's doing the Today Show hits and, you know, the interviews with the inspiration for crew about, like, raising money for St. Jude and, why they're doing that mission, right? Whereas for me, like that one, I wouldn't make as much sense

for me to go on the Today Show as it does for him. So like, they're going to give that assignment to however, you know, I would be happy to do it and I do it when other people want me to. But like, I'm always kind of figuring out like where are people looking for a need and like how I fill that gap. And it's just like it's kind of a full like spectrum of different opportunities. For example, like on the first starship launch i did you know tv hits across a whole bunch of different outlets than nbc brand this one there's less of a need and they have like general folks that are going to be able to speak to it for a you know 60 second hit and there and a lot of them you know NBC can pick up my article and put it on their site as a like this is to see NBC's but it shows up on NBC's website

you know that might just be what they wanted for this you know this particular uh mission so like it really depends case by case and it's kind of a weird part of media in that like it's really the audience and like then the producers and editors who are dictating what reporters are getting used on different assignments and or even like the what what happened that day like I'm just always shocked you know sometimes there's a we're going to commercial break and here's 30 seconds where we're talking about like crew seven launched the ISS or crew eight did this like there's just sometimes random things that drop in where if that had on a day where there's like all sorts of other stuff. going on in the world that just wouldn't make the cut or something, you know, but

I always try to keep in touch with it because it helps me, like you're saying, orient to, you know, Gen Pop. What is Jen Pop interested in on Space News? I like to try to stay in touch. What is the concrete guy? Where are his thoughts on this, you know? Yeah, exactly. He's out there somewhere.

We got to find him. We got to find him. And you will. Just give quick creed a ring. They'll hook you. I am an Italian from New Jersey, so I feel like I know concrete people, you know. I definitely feel like I have a connection. Does everyone feel good about Starship?

Because I've got like 8,000 other topics on this list. Yeah, we should talk about some stuff that Michael's actually working on most of the time instead of this hijacked lunch, right? I don't know, what else you got covering on your docket? I mean, so we got Astra, we have the Taryn Orbital acquisition situation with Lockheed Martin. we've got the whole like is uLA going to actually get sold or not like the fact that it's now been a year since eric first broke that story and that hasn't actually happened i mean there's all the signs are pointing to it jeff selling all that stock you know it looks like blue's going to come

out of the winter we can get into all the like you know does this deal make sense kind of questions if you guys want to but there's that story i think it's interesting and then like so Intuitive machines kind of takeaways, like what's up next for the clips program. You know, they're one for two. Like politically, we have the budget. Like, my newsletter today was supposed to be about the most recent budget, you know, requests. And that got booted because Starship. So that's where I think like there's a lot of good questions there about like, ooh,

you know, NASIC took quite a hit with this budget request. Space Force even, you know, took came in a lot. little under what they were asking to. However, now they're budget Dorf's nascent. So like they're blown away and cooking along. So, you know, we at least know where our priorities continue to lie. So I mean, there's so many different stories I think that are out there. I'm trying to keep up as best I can. I remember I came back from like Christmas and New Year's vacation and I don't feel like I've caught my breath since then. Like because the first, I literally landed on a red eye from visiting my folks in California

and Vulcan had like launched a couple hours prior and that's like I haven't stopped since then where do you want to start Jake sounds about right sounds about right should we unpack what's going on with Vulcan Vulcan ULA well the ULA side of it I call Blula that's what I'm saying Bluela Blue LLA but like kind of like like MLA like Commander MLA

but yeah yeah I like I like I like Blua because it sounds stupid and there's no way they're going to use it I just don't understand. I cannot figure this one out. I really cannot figure this one out, other than it being just like a incredibly anti-competitive move, which if you know me and you follow me for years,

is the least likely thing I'll ever say. Like, that's more Jake's wheelhouse than my wheelhouse. But I cannot figure out. You think there's a chance that like antitrust shuts it down? Like, is that a possibility? That's what I said up from. When I was talking about this with Eric Burr. on Miko that like I don't know that acquisitions go through right now. Adobe could not buy

Figma like which I understand spiritually more than technically but this just and it's weird too because this isn't it isn't defense contractor consolidation but it's it's not not that it's not entirely not but even before that I just the only reasonable explanation I can come up with for why Blue would buy ULA is that they're worried about ULA getting turned loose via private equity or something and it being a viable competitor to them in the future. And that's the only reason I can come up with it, which then is like right on front street, I don't know if that's really healthy. Yeah, I mean, I will say from a competitive landscape, my preferred outcome was always like,

I want to see three different heavy lift companies going, you know, toe to toe to in the U.S. Like, I think that is the best thing for everybody, including Blue Origin. Like, I think it's best for Blue if they don't buy ULA. And that's my personal opinion. Like, that's not a factually grounded thing. But it's more just this idea that you're kind of either you're telling everyone who's worked on New Glenn for years. Like, sorry, we actually needed like kind of bolster things a little more. Like what you guys been doing for years isn't quite good enough.

Or you're like turning around and shutting Vulcan down. And neither of those are really great things. And I think Blue is in a great job of showing off like, hey, we are making progress on New Glenn. Like we rolled it out to the pad. We did a bunch of testing. Like things, they're actually starting to show some stuff about New Glenn. And like as far as we can tell, be much more aggressive than they have before. And huge credit to, you know, the new CEO, Dave and like what they're trying to change the culture there.

I just feel like buying ULA completely counteracts what they've, like the direction they've started to head. in the last few months. And I think it's bad for ULA. And I think like I would love to personally, like the whole idea of property group, usually people are like, oh my gosh, they suck all the money out of a company. Like the trope, the common trope of like why private equity would be bad for a company's future. But I could see it very much from a, ULA is in really good hands with Tori. He's shown he's a capable CEO. You can deliver and be like very, very effective. They just needs serious capital to scale this thing and like try to at least bring it into the ballpark of Falcon 9.

I actually think that's a pretty achievable goal. Capital and authority, right. Authority is that big one that he's not, not ever had, right? Unchained. We always say Tori Unchained. We need the Unchanged Launch Alliance. Like, that's what we need, you know.

Yeah, I'm a thousand percent with that. And it feels like to me a private equity operator who comes in and like knows their way to not around national security companies like this. And that's why I was like the Cerberus like reported bid made a lot of sense to me. They could look. I mean, look what they've done with straddle lunch. We just saw them do a hypersonic flight recently. Strattel launch a few years ago, I with when after Paul Allen passed, it kind of felt like that wasn't going anywhere.

And Cerberus has done a really nice job of like making something very specific with it and letting them run with it. And I would love to see the same thing happen with ULA. I just don't, you know. And again, another separate question. If Pee doesn't buy it, I don't get why Locky's not buying it. But at the same time, I also get why Lockhees not buying it because of the FTC problems because they, you know, got shut down on the Aerojet deal. But then, like, from a regulatory perspective, it's a good time to be like,

we're just getting Boeing out of this. Like, that's a pretty good time in the world to say, we could just do better without Boeing. Like, it's a pretty defensible moment. Yeah, politically, I mean, like, you have all the capital you'll ever have there. So, I, you know, there's so many different pieces of this. It feels like this crazy onion where you can peel it from different directions, and you keep ending up with a different, like, flavored apple in the middle, and you're like, okay, but like, the last time I peeled this onion, it was a Granny Smith,

and now, you know, it's just a classic sweet red apple. Like, I don't really. Here's another one. Can I give you another onion to peel? Like, what if, number one, the purchase price for UCLA sounds pretty cheap, if you ask me, what if they were like, hey, man. It's not the upfront cost. Well, what if they were just like,

we just really like the launch sites that they have and we don't feel like waiting 10 years or going through some other rig and roll. We just really want those launch sites and it's like a real estate deal. Like, it's maybe not the worst angle. That's kind of what I think it is. Yeah.

All the facilities and launch sets. I think it's an access and infrastructure play at, you know, in kind of best case scenario for Blue. I totally, yeah. Like, best case for me is like, They use Centaur, right? Like, it's Centaur IP, which is like the only, like, super valuable IP that you will a has, let's be honest, right?

Like, they don't make their own engines. And so it's like you got a first stage tank and then you have this beautiful upper stage. That's the only chunky thing they have, right? Slaps new engines on that. Whose engines? Where? It doesn't matter. Any other ones than the ones that they're on there right now.

Hey, but those engines? did work, which I was like, again, another credit to like, look, Blue, like, you've got this great momentum going for doing your own thing. Keep at it. Like, don't go down this acquisition route. But I don't know. Yeah, I think the combination of the infrastructure, but then just like the national security contracts, I mean, you're literally buying into NSSL, which if everyone remembers, you know, NSSL phase two, blue felt very snub by it, even though they'd won the like half a billion in development funding for New Glenn. So you can see why they would be like,

let's shore that up and make sure that we're in this round. So we do Astra. Astra seems fun to talk about, Jake. I feel like we should do Astra. Yeah. Because I don't know, man. I don't, okay, there's like this frantic,

frantic, like heroic effort to try and like not let this company fall under. and I don't understand why. Like, what are we saving at this point? I don't really get it. Like, what is the, what is the ROI on like this year or so with two years now? How long has they been fighting to like save this company? Yeah, basically since the last launch failure. Yeah, when was that?

Was that 23 or was that 22? Yeah. Was it 22 or 21? I mean, when was the spinny? When was the spinning off nominee? That was not last year's, right? It was the year before, right? That was...

No, that was 2020. Yeah, Kool-Aid man. Yeah, June 22 was the NASA Hurricane Kucats, which was the last one. It's like two years of trying to rescue this company from death. Yeah, I mean, look, I think... I understood, like, the mojo of, like let's make things super cheap and just yeat them into space.

Yeah. Like this is a story we see time and again, I think throughout the space industry. I don't think it's anything unique to Astra, which is like you can have a, even like a decent business plan and I don't even know necessarily if this was a great business plan because we all know how the launch vehicle market is in terms of margins. But like the biggest thing was that you have to execute and you have to execute. in a capital efficient way. And it just didn't seem like they were able to kind of find that balance between,

we're going to make stuff really cheap and we're going to make stuff that works. And that's where a lot, most, more often than not, I feel like I find people who make the mistake of like spending, they're like, we're going to make it more expensive so that it works. And then that's what kills them. And this was like, we kind of spread everything too thin trying to like chase the bottom dollar, but then it didn't work very effectively. I mean, granted, they did make orbit twice.

I'm not going to, like, hold it against them at any point of, like, oh, you didn't achieve anything. Like, for a technological standpoint, like, they did a lot more than most other U.S. rocket startups in the last 20 years. So I'll give them that. But, like, you then have to execute on making it reliable. And, I mean, it's not just like a SpaceX thing. It's a known, you know, hey, like, when it comes to the launch vehicles,

if you don't demonstrate reliability, customers aren't going to sign with you. And like, that's your death now. Your salespeople are just kind of chasing anybody who will listen to you. Yeah. Like I'm just really confused because like in two years, there should have been enough time to put together a like a proposal for to get the funding you need to make Rocket 4. Right.

Like if Rocket 4 is viable and the business plan is good, like you would have gotten it by now. So that's where like Macro-Econ. conditions come into play. And I think that's like that, I mean, that was the thing that crushed and still is hurting a lot of these space packs. Even the decent ones where you're like, okay, that's a decent business, but it's trading at $4 a share. That's kind of, you know, ouch. But the like, even with Astra, you run into this problem where no one wants to deploy capital, even if you have a great business plan. Everyone's just like, market conditions are really rough. And you're trying to

avoid diluting and you're trying and trying to avoid diluting and then by the time that you finally were like okay i guess we have to raise something you're not be able to get very much and it's like you're kind of already behind the eight ball and all of that so there's this kind of like very slippery slope that the launch failure combined with the fact that the economy really turned right around that time yeah is just it's just brutal um and and then you have like the broader capital markets looking at space companies being like, or not even just space companies, this is kind of my beef with everyone who's like, oh, look, all the spacebacks are just crappy was like, yeah, you're lumping together a bunch of businesses that shouldn't have gone public with other ones that are like,

maybe this went public a little early, but it could make sense as a publicly traded company. And you're kind of just treating it as like, oh, you're all just burning money and therefore you're the same. So that's where I think, you know, they kind of unfairly, there's a lot of space facts that group there. But like, yeah, Astro was like so little revenue. And then you had the problem with like they bought Apollo Fusion, which seemed like a possible like solid revenue stream going forward. And then you had a bunch of like their senior folks leave.

So then you're out of the talent that made Apollo Fusion, you know, what it was. So and we saw that like the last year with, you know, the contracts were a little bit, you know, slower. The deliveries were getting slower. Like stuff wasn't happening. Yeah, yeah. We just tried to do this circle going down. Yeah, yeah.

We did a deep dive on the financials in one show. We just like went through like literally like did a show going through like 10 Q's and stuff. It was like the worst show ever. You're just having the idea of a fun Friday night. Come on, right, right. Yeah, we should have had you on. Also, the guy who gave us like assignment to have a concrete specialist on the show. Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, it was like there, you know, because Chris Kemp is always talking about like, oh, the margins on a Paul fusion. they're so fat. You have no idea how fat these margins are like, we're so healthy because of these fat margins. And it's like, but they're shipping like, you know,

like 700K revenue a year. And it's like, it doesn't matter if it's 100% margin. You can't fund a rocket company on that. Like it did, you know, it was, it was just irrelevant.

And so I don't know, I just, I'm so confused about the, the length of efforts still going into this. Like, I don't know, you love something. I guess you can't let it go.

But, but maybe that's all it is. I don't know. I can't figure it out. We'll see. see. Now it's private. We'll see what's going on with it, right? But yeah, I don't know if the going private was just like an avoid bankruptcy kind of situation. I know that obviously like you're talking about shareholders that lost 90 plus percent of their value, which like, you know, and you had a bunch of big names in there.

Yeah, like it wasn't like small backers who got in on like the pipe and other stuff like that. So we'll see. Jake, this is what I was saying last week, man. People got to hire us. We could avoid it all that lost money for those people. We knew, man. If this camera just called us two years ago? No, no, not him, the investors that were like, yeah, let's do it. Two years ago, dude, pull out, get out. We know, man, we know it's gone.

Two years, we knew way before that. We were on this beat, man. This, Virgin Orbit, I was on us beat. I got a good, again, we were talking about this on the show I did earlier with Neil from K2 that I'm trying to offer vibes as a service for space companies, because our vibes detector has been, I would say, pretty damn accurate over these years. Except the problem is that you run into that, like, anyone who you're like, yeah, the vibes are off, they're like, not paying you, sorry. That's true.

I want to hear people that say this is a good decision, but it just never. And I don't have a great opinion of the, like, where this all started from and the general outside. set idea that that Astra had same with Virgin Orbit or just never was in on those spin launch obviously another one that we don't have good vibes about but maybe on a different planet for spin launch. The other two never made sense on any planet to me. The Apollo Fusion thing does make me sad though because like you're saying there's there was a huge shedding of talent right off the bat and it just kind of like stopped existing to the same extent. It wasn't it wasn't as as healthy of a version of what Rocket Lab did with Sinclair and

planetary where that is really flourished. Maybe we could talk about them for a second, too, that, like, you know, they are still a launch company, but boy, howdy, they don't really look like it based on financials. They're a minority launch company now. They're a space services company now, right? Like, it's true. It's a real true thing to say, right? Yeah, I was going to say, I just pulled up the, like, Rocket Lab Q4, and, like, when you

look at this of what they've been able to build, and I think this is the interesting thing was like a year ago, I fully agree with what Jake's talking about here, which is like, yeah, they're a space company with a launch business that helps get that stuff in the orbit. But the funny thing was like the launch electron business is actually kind of picked up. Like they, the addition of haste has really kind of been this really key thing that I think has been pretty underrated, I guess is the right word, where they have been able to, build in and kind of bulk up the like the electron backlog and and you know pete's been on record so many times saying we have never launched late because a vehicle wasn't ready it's always been like

a customer a payload that wasn't ready and i think that's a great way to then diversify yourself against that which is you have both the hypersonics missions and the regular electron business kind of flowing at the same time but like they ended q4 with a billion dollar backlog in contracts, like signed deals, which when we talk about it, like if you notice with space companies, when people talk about backlog versus pipeline, like you always want to make sure that people are, you know, really direct about what that represents. But for them, it's like, you know, they have contracts that are deals done representing those dollars. And so the fact that they added 25 electron launch deals last year actually really surprised me. I,

would have expected like, okay, you know, you've got, you know, a nice, healthy manifest moving forward. But they added quite a lot. And then you added in the fact that they like got their foot in the door with PWSA, which is my other new favorite thing to like track because I love, now like, I'm trying to like slowly build up my repertoire of like how many large government programs for space companies that I'm keeping tabs on. So I started with NSSL because, you know, rockets, that's fun. Everyone likes to hear updates there. And now I'm really focused on, been focused on PWSA, have a spreadsheet, like, tracking those deals and how much is going there.

And it's been really interesting to see who's not only winning the most, but then the fact that you've got folks like Rocket Lab and Sierra Space tucking in there and being like, yeah, we'll take a half billion there and, like, we'll show you we can deliver on those deals. And the cool thing for Rocket Lab, I think, was like they even showcase in their quarter of the report with their whole like, hey, we now have made the photon spacecraft actually. a line of different spacecraft. This one specifically, this one's for the PWSA. They're tailoring it and they're like,

we're going to have a production line pumping out. And that's what matters for the future, which is when we get in these additional bids where PWSA and SDAA want to build out the constellation bigger all on Starlink, then they're like, all right, yeah, so we'll do a $2 billion deal next time.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Rocket Lab biz dev is like a force, right? Like they're just out there like, where can we make sales? So like, okay, we can sell stuff over there. Let's do it.

Let's make a thing. Like, they must have one of those good crews that's just like, you know, the perfect kind of salesperson that just says yes before they even have anyone not actually building anything behind the scenes. Those poor engineers just come back. Every week, they get a call like, okay, listen, this is what we're going to do. We told them that we could sell. We could give them just the bottom half of our rocket.

Is that cool? Yeah, that's cool, right? Yes, yeah. Do that? We told them our orbital rocket could just not go orbitals. Do they want that? Yeah, we left off the top half. It seems plausible when I was talking to the guys, so I figured we'd say, yeah.

It seems to be an 80, don't you think? And they're like, that's it. They've got it. I've got it. I've nailed it. I came together in a minute, for sure. It's true, though. I mean, that's, that is like the kind of space company I've always enjoyed is those that feel

gritty, like that they are just figuring out, you know, what is the thing that we have now? This is where we're heading. This is where the market's heading. how do we find the common denominator between those and then keep going in that direction. Those are the ones that seem to make it rather than, you know, this is my idea. God willing, this is my idea. That's as far as I got.

It's like, all right. I don't know. Does anyone want to fly on your rocket that is super cheap and can fly a lot, but you only get halfway there half the time? Or was there no interest in that ever? It's the ones that understand the priority of show intel, right? the process of show and tell show and then tell like don't go prating stuff around that you're actually never going to like show up with and so like you can talk about a lot of oh here's how we're going to compete and how's here's how like we're you know going to be successful in this market and

oh by the way has a hundred billion dollar tam and blah blah blah and like all the hockey stick charts and sure like let's make out numbers and renderings and we'll go from there but like the folks who do the like showing first and like deliver on that it like it's it's such a clear tell on like what makes them successful and what makes them effective yeah nailed it nailed it what are you tracking for the next little bit of time here what's your are you taking a break because it's been a fall three months or you got something else in the hopper i wish i could just go sleep for the next week if i could but you know that's not going to happen um no so the biggest thing i'm tracking for the next next month is probably the, you know, what'd you call it, the Blula?

I'm going to start using that instead of Blue L.A. Blue La. The Blue La deal. And then Starliner, which is now early May or like mid-May or whatever. But like that's probably the next biggest thing on my docket where I'm like that I really want to like, you know, be ready for as a reporter. I want to make sure I like understand all about it and everything like that. but yeah i mean there's there's a couple stories that i've like poked like been playing around with like features and stuff like that which is always nice but i'll be i'd be able to get to those

when you know the q4 earning season's officially done we have redwire here tomorrow so redwire is another one where like you know it you talk about an amalgamation of different companies that they brought together um but like you said gritty like they've been able to you know really start get things ruling, start making some money. I'm curious to see, you know, where do they go from here. So Q4s are always an awesome opportunity to see that reflected. So, yeah, I think, you know, Redwater Marrow is my biggest thing to watch. And then we've got Starliner coming up here soon. And I think we'll see some more acquisitions in the first half of this year. It feels like this whole consolidation process we've seen in the last year is not done.

The other thing, I need to check in with them, actually. This is a great, so I'm giving myself an assignment. I need to check in with the One Web UtilSat folks about like, they recently were talking about how they're kind of delaying the plans for OneWeb Gen 2. And I really want to get into the, you know, nitty gritty of like why they made that decision. And, you know, is it a we don't think we can get the capital right now? Is it a, you know, operational? Like, we're happy with Gen 1.

right now situation. There's a lot of different potential reasons there. But I'm kind of curious because everyone just talks about Starlink all the time and like forgets that one web exists. And I really want to like kind of check back in on that business and be like, hey, so how's this going? Now what? Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Hmm. All right. I mean, they went through hell. Like those guys went through so much to get that first gen constellation up. Technically, I think they still have satellites that are captive in Kazakhstan. Yeah, I think they're lost forever, aren't they?

I wonder where those are, man. That's such a story. It'd be really great to see the financials and that. When do they write those off? You know, like... Well, probably the day after that... Yeah, they invaded Ukraine. Lost two terrorists.

I remember at... I think it was at satellite that year, Neil Masterson told reporters. He was like, yeah, they're gone. I'm never seeing those satellites again. We're all like, it's a lot of money just to, like, be like, yeah. A wild story.

I hope we find someday, like, where they are. I don't know. They'll be in, like, a bronze hangar. Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. Or like, somebody's always like, these are the one web satellites that were for communications and then help captain. Somebody's like, you know, for your ornament.

They'll show up on eBay at some point. You can make you're going to buy a way. Real cheap price. Only this many rubles. We'll try to get one someday. It'll be great. You got to find the war effort somehow, Anthony. One of those long web satellites would look great, like, right in that curtain there.

Just hanging out. Yeah, like a, like a, that'd be, I mean, that's a piece of history to own. The satellites that were stolen, the first space piracy. Yeah. That's great. Okay, so this is the funny thing. Whenever people bring up first and sorry to derail things, I know we're over time already, but like the, whenever people bring up first,

of space-related stuff. When you think about the space history and the industry and the really like kind of book-in-eering that we've seen in the last half a century, whenever someone brings up a first, I'm like, is it really, though? Or have we just not heard of that first before because that story was never told

because it was like, you know, a black site project in the Pentagon somewhere? Some DOD space historian is just like to shake in their head at every freaking webcast. in Chris, right? No, we did that in 1986.

No, we did that in 1982. No, we did that in 1994. They just like, wake up and see headlines and are, like, pissed every day. Like, just like, I'm just constantly angry. Largest deployable structure. Do you even know? Do you know what I did?

Do you know what I did? You know the moods, man? Oh, Redfire earnings tomorrow. What is that? Jake. What are we doing next week? Oh, next week's a fun one. I think we might get yelled at next week.

I don't know. We might get, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, so we've been talking about clips a lot, and we've been, you know, asking a lot of questions about how the heck clips works and how the science works and what the heck are they doing with this program? Like, what is this?

What is it going even going on with this? And we had some friends from Johnson Space Center and call us and say, hey, well, come on and tell you all about how this is working. And so that's good. We're excited to talk to them and learn about kind of how some of the payloads get processed into this, and how does it work when they crash, I guess,

is what we're going to talk about. But, you know, we'll go into some stuff. We'll see. We don't really know what's going to happen. I said it feels like kind of like annual review vibes. Like, I don't know what I'm getting into in this one. So we'll find out what we did wrong. I expect to get some tongue lashings for my very horrible Johnson space

in our conspiracy theory. I can't wait for that. Yeah. Roll that out there. you're a concrete professional, hit us up. I'm in there that we need to make good on. Send us an email at Concrete at Offnom.com and we will

get you on the show. Let's get you on the show. Let's get you or your family members are in the concrete business. Actually, you know, port forward straight to Michael. Dot sheets at NBCU and your boss. Yes.

All right, y'all, Michael, thank you so much for hanging out. Everybody else, we'll see you soon. Bye, everybody. Thanks, guys. Ciao, everybody. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, end of death.