Off-Nominal - 149 - Bob from Valves, Inc.

Episode Date: April 19, 2024

Jake and Anthony are joined by Aria Alamalhodaei, reporter at TechCrunch, to talk about valves, getting footage of Astra’s explosions, Mars Sample Return, and everything else that has been going on lately, including cursed eclipses.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 149 - Bob from Valves, Inc. (with Aria Alamalhodaei) - YouTubeAria Alamalhodaei on X: “my most unpopular opinion is that I hated the eclipse, felt cursed”Why valves are a spacecraft engineer’s worst nightmare | TechCrunchFootage from 2020 shows Astra rocket exploding during prelaunch testing | TechCrunchInternal pre-Starlink SpaceX financials show big spending on moonshot bets | TechCrunchIs NASA Actually Committed to Returning Samples From Mars? - jakerobins.comNASA to look for new options to carry out Mars Sample Return program - SpaceNewsFollow AriaAria Alamalhodaei (@breadfrom) / XAria Alamalhodaei | TechCrunchFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine start. Hello, Jake. It's a big week. Hello. It is a big week. It's a big week for your beat. It's an $8.00 week. Yeah, yeah. It's big if you're interested in this planet right here, but maybe not in the good way. We'll see.

Yeah. Yeah. It's big if you're interested in ballooning budgets and perhaps some administrative and competence. Oh, okay. I was going to say flagrant mis-management, but yeah, I like your term better. That is a really big week. Yeah.

Huge. Jake, we did not do our homework before this show started. I don't know. We did not ask Aria how to pronounce her last name. No, we did not. Jake tried last week, and we don't know. You didn't give us a feedback if you got right or wrong. I'm hoping you, there's no way I did it right, so I'm hoping.

I kind of want to hear it. now. I'm curious. Jake said it last week. You ought to try. Oh, now I've got to try, I guess, right? Okay, so I'm going to pull it up, though, so that I can look at it. So are you al-a-a-mal-hoda-i? Yeah, pretty good.

Yeah, pretty good? That's not bad. I've heard worse. All right. It's not saying much. She's not going to talk either. No, it's Al-Mal-Hodai. Oh, no.

You merged two syllables in the middle, but yeah, got it. There's a glottal stop with Al-A-Mal. Is that what it is? No, I'm saying Jake did. Jake, like, tried to skip over a little bit of the middle part. There's a little bit of a, like a hesitation in the middle that you missed. Yeah. I actually find, so.

The name is, is once you kind of get it, I don't feel like it's as challenging as some of the like Polish and Eastern European names I've heard that have Js and Zs and all kinds of. The letters with the lines through them. Intimidating. Yeah. Intimidating letters. So, but it is, yeah, it's a mouthful. But I'm happy to be here. I feel like I, this is like a ad on my, my jacket.

You say that, but we're like just, you wrote the article for us and our fan base. So we were like, you were on our list and then you wrote that article. And then you found video of Astra's rockets from a long time ago blowing up. And you've just like worked your way right into our hearts. So we finally have you on. It feels so good. So. Yeah.

I know that video, man. It's only like 10 seconds. long, but they're a crazy 10 seconds, aren't they? I'm curious. Yeah. Yeah, totally. I'm kind of curious what's going on with ABL, because I was expecting them to launch by now.

So I'm wondering, I'll be curious to hear what they're up to. I think you could have said that sentence any day for the last five years and probably would have been right. That would have been pretty accurate. So that's my take on there. But this is like, you know, they were tweeting about final launch preparations in like March or something. So that's why I was, that's why they've been like in the back of my head, you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right.

There was that tweet. I forgot about that. That's, that's how it goes. Yeah. She has one of these big time jobs, Jake, and we're just doing this. Yeah, that's why you're a capital J journalism. We're just, I'm a lowercase B blogger. Because I'm on Twitter.

It's probably actually true. They're good. Because I just remember. We're going to talk about some tweets in a little bit, Jake, I think. Yes, yes. Did you bring any drinks down there in Austin? I just have a Coke Zero, but I did put it in a Tumblr to celebrate. You upgraded it.

Yeah, to keep with the spirit of the show. Love it. Nothing hard for me this afternoon, 3 p.m. So a little early. Yeah. that's a trap I always end up getting falling. One of our guests will say it's a little early and I'm in an earlier time zone. I'm like, yeah, you're right.

Totally totally too early. Who would do we have an alcoholic drink at this time? So anyway, here's my margarita. Let's see it. Show it to us. It looks grosser than it is. It's got the tamarind. It looks like swamp water.

Did you use your new water system for that, Jake, or what? Yeah. As you can see, I've really cleared up the water in my house. No, it's got tamarin. in it, which is the best way to make a margarita, I've decided. Put a little tamarind concentrate on there. It acts as a sweetener so you don't need the simple syrup. It's fantastic. Tamarind. Interesting. No simple syrup. I get this tamarin concentrate. So it's like, you know, normally you would mix it with water

and then it would make it like a, you know, it's like a coolate or something, right? But it's just like tamarin flavored. They call it aqua fresca, right? But just drop a little bit of that in with the tequila and the liqueur, and you're good to go. Sounds delicious. White wine season here. I'm on to the Vernanche. I've made it. That's how you know it's warm in Philadelphia, finally. All it took was turning the sun off and on back again, and then it was 80, so it's great. Were you in the path of the eclipse?

No. In Philadelphia? No. It's a long story, long story. I was supposed to be in Dayton, did not, but I was here in the 90% and very cloudy range, but I did see the sun. Oh, okay. So you saw it a little bit. I saw it for a brief passing moment.

Did you know what was your cloud situation down there? It was pretty cloudy. We were in the path of totality from our house, so we didn't end up having to travel west. But it was pretty cloudy. And honestly, guys, I was kind of creeped out by the eclipse. I didn't like the eclipse. I saw your turn and I wanted to talk about this. Yes.

Yeah, I know. I, I, I, everyone was like, that was the most beautiful thing I've ever seen. I'm permanently transformed. And like, that's great that, you know, I'm happy for you. However, my experience, I don't know. It just like, because it's not like the light at 90% or whatever. It's not, um, oh, you're pulling up the tweet. The best tweet.

My most unfodged opinion is that I hate the eclipse, comma, felt cursed. I don't know what you mean the eclipse felt cursed or you did or what. No, the eclipse felt cursed. Well, did you see someone responded and was like, and tweeted and shared a link to SoulBrah, who's like that influencer who's all about, like sun maxing? And he was like, whatever you do, do not open your, do not open your auras to the eclipse. I don't know what sun maxing is, but it sounds very bad. You lost us earlier in that sentence than you thought you did. Okay, I'm not going to go down those rabbit holes.

This is not the time. But, well, no, the thing is, like, as you're approaching totality, it's not like dawn and it's not like dusk, right? The light quality is like this other thing. It's fundamentally different. It's this third thing. And there was just something in my lizard brain that felt like probably how, you know, people in like, you know, the 16th century felt when they saw a total eclipse or something. Like flee, run for your lives. The world is ending.

Sacrifice something. Yes. You know what it kind of feels like. For me, the interesting thing about it, maybe this is why it feels curse. Is it like it, you don't know until that moment. There's like everything about a good day was completely dependent on the sun. And you take it away and it just like evaporate. Like the whole, the whole idea of a good day is just gone like that.

You're like, wow, we actually really need that sun. It's pretty important. This planet really sucks without it. Right. And also like, wow, we really are the perfect distance from the sun. Like even 5% less sun starts to feel. Like even at the beginning, because of course the entire thing is like, what, like two or three hours or something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And even at the very beginning when it's like, oh, it's only 5%. Like things start to feel weird. Yeah. Like, oh, the shadows are funny and it's cold and like. Yeah, it starts to be cold. And but yeah, no, I was, I was like, in. a crowd and everyone was clapping and cheering and I was like like tugging on my husband's arm like let's

leave like let's go so yeah I love it that's the best I'm pretty sure this is exactly how my wife is going to react when we go to I'm I've convinced her to go to the next two on various trips and I am convinced this will be her reaction like I don't I don't want to go to the second one you can take the feminine urge to flee the eclipse like she doesn't like thinking about space like It's, she didn't like, or the internet. She doesn't really like thinking about the things that I do for living, which is great. But, you know, whatever. And no big deal.

I know a bunch of medical terms, no problem. It's fine. But I do think there's, even the nerds, like, we don't know what it will actually look like in real life until we see it. It is completely bizarre. It is impossible to explain. None of the photos actually capture the quality of like what the light looks like or the color of the sky or the the weirdness of the corona. It's like this silvery, delicate thing.

And it looks like the pictures you've seen, but it feels different than the pictures you've seen. And it's a completely bizarre experience. So I understand the like, I shouldn't be here right now. I totally understand that. It's a reasonable situation. Yeah. I also feel like I get, I feel sunburned differently during eclipses.

Like, I don't know what this is. I felt it on this one, too. I felt like I, there's, so there's this. thing, right, when you spend a lot of time in the sun where you feel like you're getting hot and you're getting sunburn and those are two different like phenomena. Like, oh, I feel super hot right now, but I clearly am not sunburned or I feel really sunburned, but I'm, that's like an after-the-fact thing. And I feel like during eclipses, I can't tell which one I am, am I hot because I'm looking at the sun a lot, or am I getting more sunburn than I realize because I'm not

hot because the sun is not as hot. And I feel, I felt the need to put on a lot of sunscreen, even though it was April. I felt a little wacky. I don't know. weird. My mom works in ophthalmology and she kept warning me about how people will, yeah, develop like a permanent spot in their vision because they stare at the eclipse too much. So I was also feeling very paranoid about that. Can you, next time you guys are chatting, can you, like the times when the sun, when you put your sunglasses on regular sunglasses, even on a non-eclapse day, and you can see the sun coming through a lot of clouds because it's enough clouds, but not too many clouds and you can kind of see the sun. am I like is this a majorly risky situation? Because there were moments during the eclipse when that was the only way to see the sun. And I was like, I'm going to take a peek real quick

through the sunglasses and most of those clouds that I'm looking at. Well, your vision would tell you, right? Well, I feel like, you know, if you're seeing like after images, like that's an indication. You've gone too far. Yeah, I'm good.

But if you're not seeing that, then like, it's fine. I was super nervous about that because like we had so many clouds that like I didn't need my glasses. Like just either you just didn't. There was a point where I just didn't even know where the sun was. It was that thick. And then like it would kind of like pop through sometimes.

And there was enough clouds that I could just stare right out of you in before totality. And I was like, this is great. I'm through the glass. It's so convenient. And I was like, man, if a cloud just like suddenly breaks. It would be like, oh, my God. Right. It was a little risky.

It's a little risky. But I went for it. Wait, where are you? Where do you live? I live in Mexico. And I, but I traveled to, I traveled to Niagara to see it because I used to live in Niagara and Canada. so I went up to that side and it was, yeah, it was cloudy. Oh, it was just super cloudy.

Shocker. Darn. Yeah. Who could have guessed? Who could have guessed? I know. I know. I know people who were like, like, they were just very avidly tracking the cloud cover and like

booking flights to all. Last minute because that was like the best, had like the least cloud coverage or something. You know, they were like there. You're doing the opposite next time. You're booking a flight out. You're going just outside of the line. under the clouds. Yeah, where's the cloudiest place on Earth? Yeah. Where's the next one that you're going to go to with your wife, Anthony? We jointly on this show decided last week that

we will be going to Iceland for 2026 and then the southern tip of Spain for 2027. That sounds cool. We'll see you there. We're going to crowdfund buying you a ticket to these eclipses. torturing me at the eclipse yeah I'll put you on the schedule can we talk about valves because we got to there's going to be a lot of more sample return but we got to talk about this valves piece

because it's brilliant absolutely brilliant piece of work here when did you realize that this needed to be written because once we all saw it we went yeah that needed to be written you know it's one of those like it's one of those mean in the space industry that you just like see with a fair amount of frequency, like people making

jokes about valves. But I think it was really when it was one of astrobotics when they were like making all of those great updates on Twitter. They were putting all of the really frequent updates on Twitter right after Peregrine launched. When they said that the hypothesis was that the, it was like update number six or seven or I don't know. Don't quote me on this. But they said something like the propulsion issue, you know, their current hypothesis was the propulsion issue was due to a valve between the helium pressure and the oxidizer, which failed to reseal after actuating. And that's when I was

like, I keep hearing about valves. They keep, you know, presenting catastrophic problems to critical space missions. So I actually started, I just wanted to learn more about it. And then I realized, okay, I should just write something for the website because this is actually important. And maybe other people will learn something about it too, other like non-airospace people. Because I think people don't quite realize both the kinds of tolerances and stresses that valves have to have to be able to meet and just how common of a component they are. You just don't think about them, right? Or I certainly didn't until, you know, I was seeing. Not until they're always a problem. Well, it feels like they should be a solved problem, though. That's probably why it's so bizarre, right? It feels

like we've been making vows for a long time as human beings, but. Right, right. Yeah. And, and they're not like, it's not like they're these like exquisite, exquisite things, you know, they like to some extent, they have to be, you know, productized and, you know, they are made to what, like 99.0.9.m. And percent reliability, right? So it's not as if, you know, there's, you know, I was writing an expose on like the valve industry has a problem, you know, that's not the case at all. And like the valve suppliers, you know, are for the most part, you know, very good at what they do. It's just what we ask of valves is very, very, is a lot, you know.

I think that's really what it comes down to. It's not a supply, it's not, you know, really so much a supplier problem as it is just a physics, physics problem. Yeah. And then there's something else. This is something that I've talked to a lot of people in the industry about where sometimes the valve is screwed up. And sometimes in the parlance of Steve Jobs, you were holding it wrong. Like, you did a thing with that valve that you shouldn't have done with that valve. And then you said it was a valve problem.

And everyone hears that as the valve was screwed up. And what you actually mean was, I use that valve wrong. And that's never differentiated in my experience. Right. Yeah. I also think something that I learned when I talked to, you know, a handful of propulsion engineers, mostly for the story and two of them, you know, spoke to me on the record, Grant Bonin and Jake

two for it. But I spoke to a couple of other people just kind of like to get more information. And one thing that one person said, oh my God, one day you got to tell us who spoke on background about valves. That is the funest thing I ever heard of my life. Well, often people just don't, people want to be very clear that they're not speaking like for their company, which makes a lot of sense. So they want to just talk to you at valves incorporated. They're like, I'm not speaking for valves incorporated, but they would kill me if I went on the record. No. But yeah, one thing that one person said that I thought was interesting is they said that, like, testing is, like, testing is usually the area that receives maximum schedule pressure.

So if you have a really ambitious mission, you know, you end up in this dynamic where there's design and procurement and build. and that just eats up all of your schedule margin. And then when it comes to testing, maybe at the beginning, you had all of these ambitions for X, Y, and Z test that you were going to conduct before launch, but it just turns out that you either didn't, no longer have the money or no longer at the time.

And so I agree that is, it is tricky because it's like, was it the component, was it a component failure or was it like, you know, a piece of foreign object debris, you know, got in there because of something that someone was not doing, you know, just. So, yeah, it's tricky. And, you know, I certainly wasn't trying to speak. I wasn't talking about astrobotics mission in particular. I don't have any insight into, you know, what was actually going on there. I'll be curious to hear the results of their kind of investigation into it whenever if they you know release those results but

yeah yeah yeah it's an interesting thing there's a lot of factors that go into it right I'm sorry my cat is knocking things over yeah my cat is like I don't know what she's doing doing it being a cat yeah I wonder Anthony if we talked to the same person because the take that I got from talking to somebody about it was that the valves are fine you're just a bad engineer Which was like a cheeky way to say basically like there's a, we're asking, yeah, like you said, we're asking these vows to do a lot of crazy stuff. And like are we, are we ensuring they're in the right environments and the right? Are they being tested?

Well, are we keeping them clean? All that kind of stuff that you need to do to make sure that they give you their best, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think it's also hard though because, you know, you do, you know, you put it through the gauntlet of ground tests, right? You, I think, either Jake or Grant said something like,

you shake the ever-loving, I don't know if I can curse, but, you know, you shake, you shake it. I think Grant has actively cursed on this show, so yes. Oh, okay. Okay.

But you, you know, but when you're doing those vibration tests or whatever, you're not doing that while the system is also fully pressurized, while it's also exposed to oxidizer vapors, right? Like, you can't recreate the flight environment to the same degree of accuracy that you might need in order to really be reassured that, that, you know, the components won't fail once you're on orbit. And I think also, you know, if you're working on something like a lander,

you don't have a second, you don't have like a, you don't have five or even two spacecraft. One, maybe you can test to like three X tolerance or something. You know, you just have the one. Right. So, you know, maybe you don't push it to the absolute extreme because it's the only spacecraft you have and you don't want to break it for the sake of a, right, for the sake of like getting more data about what the upper limits of, you know, the valves tolerances are, whatever, you know, so.

You're also worried about so many things that aren't valves, like at the same time, right? There's just so many other variables that you're still working on or you're still rewriting. or you're patching your, you know, altimeter software because your thing didn't work. There's like 8,000 different things that you're tracking at every given moment. And also the valves then matter. Like, not only do the variables at that moment matter, but all the variables they have seen between the time you last looked at them and now all that matters. Like, how many cycles does this went through?

And how many times I use this thing? And how many, what was the temperature when I used it? It was different than when I tested. There's an incalculable amount of variables that have led up to the moment that your thing failed and then it makes a lot of sense when you look backwards but right for humans and there's no way we're going to figure that out looking forwards no yeah yeah I think I think the the most interesting thing about the valves to me is it's it's just all about tradeoffs like I take a slight umbrage to the comment about how you're just not a good aerospace engineer because I think

you have to make tradeoffs with the information you have and often um like I was saying before about schedule pressure, but also like something that Jake said was there's like this kind of philosophical debate about redundancy, because if you introduce redundancy into a system, you also introduce a new set of possible problems that can occur if, you know, so it's like, do you want an extra, you know, because I was like, why not just add another valve as a backup valve? And he was like, well, that could cause a whole bunch of other problems. I was like, oh, I don't know. You know, it's like, well, why didn't they have a backup or something?

You know, that's what you think. I just imagining this like this line that's taking fuel and there's like a bypass with a second valve and like, well, we'll just turn one. Valves all the way down. All this extra piping. Right. Right. Exactly.

It's like, okay, well, that, you know, you can't necessarily. It's not that straightforward. And that's what was so interesting to me about valves. And I think also there's a, there's kind of a, there is a supply chain piece of this that both Grant and Jake talked about, which is, which is that there is a lot of like generational knowledge in the amongst this sort of supplier base. And at the present, like it is, it almost sounds like a joke, but, but, you know, Jake said something like, okay, you have like Bob who's really good at valves. But if Bob has like a week on. off, then you get like the crappy valves or something. You know, it's like the state of the industrial base is such. I don't want that to be true. I don't like that that's true.

Listen, I got to drive because Marotta is not that far from me. And I think I have communicated with somebody from there before and I desperately need to go. Because number one, New Jersey pride. Number two, I feel like I should go hang out. You find a fine Bob. Yeah, I got a fine Bob. Who are you? And what have you seen?

Oh, if you're like going up again, like before a judge, don't do it right before lunchtime because you get like a harser sentence or something. You know, it's like, oh, if you're going to like order a valve, don't do it like when Bob just had an argument with his wife. Don't do it when Bob's at Disneyland, yeah. Yeah, don't do it when Bob's at Disneyland or whatever. So I also feel like it's like right after Bob was in the path of totality. That is just not the right time to hit up.

First. You know, weird a bad vice. Bob's distressed. Yeah. Bob is unsettled right now. He can't make your valves. Bob needs time. But, but yeah.

So I think that's like the other piece of this that I found. sort of interesting. And they, someone I spoke to said that there's all of these, like, because a lot of startups, right, you don't have that many spacecrafts.

They're going to orbit. And they do all these sort of, like sometimes they have to use valves for like medical devices and try and see if they can make that work. If the valve that they need can't be, you know, made fast enough for their, for their system,

for their launch date. So there are all these different ways that I think people try to make an imperfect system work. And yeah. Heart valves, man. They're pretty good. Yeah. There's other beneficial ones. Do the job, you know?

Yeah. And like at the end of the day, like space is still just not a mass market, you know, when, you know, we. sometimes, like sometimes things are made in intermediate volume, but there's nothing that's like truly mass production. And so I think that is reflected in the supply chain where things are still sort of artisanal. And I feel like that is a point that is like very lost in space because like, you know, a lot of people will point to something like Starlink, be like, it's mass produced. There's 4,000 of them. I'm like 4,000 is not mass produced. Like that is still bespoke. I know it in it's mass produced, but in the world of manufacturing, 4,000 is a pittance.

Like, how many Toyota Corolla's have they made? Like, it's much, much higher than 4,000, you know? So it's interesting to think about that, right? Yeah. And in the world of, like, in the world of valves, I would imagine companies are more focused on the sectors that, where they can actually sell more product, right? So, you know, maybe aerospace is not at the top of the list. always. I want to speak carefully because I don't actually know. I'm just speculating. But,

you know, surely this, this issue of mass production would trickle down to like, you know, how the companies are thinking about putting their resources. And yeah, yeah, you know. So I, yeah, I don't know. It's a, it's a, it's a tricky, it's a tricky problem. Well, yeah, we'll see. If you don't like the concept of back of valves, so wait until I introduce you to the concept of two backup helicopters on Mars sample return. Oh my gosh. That was a great segue. That was really good.

Yeah. That was really, really good. Yeah, nailed it. Let me just set the table for a second, because you think this segment's going to be all about Mars, but I feel like it's not at all about Mars. This is about a lot of what we were just talking about. like managing complexity and I don't know politics to some extent I guess but where do we even begin to talk about I don't know God I don't know yeah I'll ask you I'll ask you are like what did you

you know news comes out Monday for all this smart sample turn update what what did you think what was your first impression I'm curious to get some outside perspective because I've been I've been in a dark close to it. 48 hours. Yeah. Well, I remember when I wasn't like, I don't know, I wasn't totally shocked. I remember when the Mars sample review, independent review board came out with their report. And I mean, they really were very straightforward that this was not, this was not technically feasible given like budgetary political reality.

and it needs to be rethought. And that came out like last year or something. And since then, we've been waiting for NASA's response. So given that, and I think that that board was chaired by someone who used to work at JPL, has like, you know, intimate knowledge of the way that NASA. Or not no Figueroa, yeah. Okay, yeah. Yeah.

You know, has intimate knowledge of the agency and understands, I think, the realities that it faces as a government agency that depends on, you know, a very divided Congress for its budget. So, you know, I think when that came out, it was sort of like, okay, the writing's on the wall in terms of MSR, the MSR architecture, like, as it currently stands. And when you actually tell people about this, like, calling it, One mission is totally inaccurate.

Yeah, it's wrong. It's totally wrong. When you list all of the different, like, novel, exquisite complex vehicles that are going to be made for these missions, it's also, like, completely mind-boggling. The budget, obviously, has just, like, ballooned beyond belief. So, yeah, I mean, my reaction was not, like, shocked Pikachu phase. like, oh, they want to scrap it? Like, they want to rethink it. Like, you know, so I don't know.

I don't know. What did you guys think? Because that was kind of my like initial reaction earlier this week. Yeah. Well, so I think what could. So you have a good point in that like the IRB report last fall was like very. I mean, there wasn't much left to say that was like there were no more. There could be no more bad news after you read that report.

That report was like literally everything is broken and now costs three times as much and it doesn't work. Like that was like the summary of the report. It doesn't work. It costs three times as much and you don't actually have any managers looking at this right now. It was kind of how much. And so I agree with you. And they've already spent like three billion dollars. Right?

Yes. Yes. Yeah. So I think, you know, I think I was excited about this week at first when I heard that they were going to do an update because like, well, Well, you look at that report and it like it kind of, it was an instruction book. It was like, do these things and you're back on track. And I don't think like the technical part of it, I just, I don't get the feeling that is an unsolvable problem. Like I think that if you tackle it with all the tools that you have and all the experience NASA has, like, I think it's solvable.

To me, that like report was like, you just have it laid out very, very poorly with all the wrong people in all the wrong places. And that to me in a sense was like good news. because it's like, well, now we already know how to fix it. So I was kind of excited for Monday to hear how NASA had to pick any instructions and fix it. Wow, what a shitty Christmas. We just moved the people around, as you noted, put the right departments and the right managers and staffed up and did all the things we were supposed to do. That's what I was hoping for.

And I don't know. Yeah. I felt like NASA's response was about the least imaginative thing that you could ever have come up with. It was like our idea is to do the same idea, but just take longer. that the annual budget is palatable and change nothing. I ignore literally like the response, non-concur with this recommendation, non-conquer with this recommendation,

non-concure with this recommendation. I was like, okay, so they didn't actually come up with a plan here. The communication was terrible, I will say. It was like. It was unbelievably bad. Like, and not many people listened to the communication. The actual communication of that press conference.

That, Probably different reasons than you think, though, Jake. You don't really like Bill Nelson talking about any science mission. To be fair, you've got a pretty strong bias there. No, but even like there is the press conference with Bill Nelson and Nicola Fox, right? Nikki Fox. And that was like we're, this is taking too long and it costs too much money. So we're going to industry.

That was like the summary of the press conference, right? Immediately following that, Nikki Fox goes. into a town hall with the planetary science community. This was not as well publicized as that briefing, but I watched that too. And they, like, just ignored the press conference that just happened and talked about their 2040 plan. Like,

they went through, like, here's how we're going to do it in 2040. Like, they just walked through the whole plan as if the press conference had not happened. You know, the press conference were Bill Nelson basically saying, the mission is canceled until we figured out again.

That's odd. Like Bill Nelson's press conference was like, I asked them to go look at this six months ago. They came back to me and it was true. So we're going to industry. That's what he was actually saying. And then they just went and presented the trash at the at the town hall. I don't know.

I was just so confused. Here's my problem with the communication. So incongru. Every statement was completely contradictory of each other. Like, at the beginning they said, $11 billion is too expensive and 2040 is too long. And so therefore, we've already spent two or three billion dollars. And now we're going to try to figure out how to not get up to the total price of $8 to $11 billion. It's like, well, okay, we start.

We're starting by flushing for. down the drain, so that's a good start. But also, he said, we're in this situation because Congress and the budget caps. So you would have been fine with 11 billion, assuming you could have gotten budget increases to let everything else keep happening. So you're not allowed to spend 11 billion? Yes, you're not mad that it's 11 billion on the fact that it's 11 billion. You're mad that you'd have to cannibalize other stuff. So you're not actually truthful. And then you're saying 2040 is too long. It's only 2024, but the lead times of these things is like, to get back before 2040, you've got to be on the surface gathering your samples by 2037, 2038?

Like, what's the... So, all right, now we're going back to the drawing board with like 12 years to launch. So I just don't really know how you get back. If you're starting from scratch, how can you get there sooner than 2040? And then the last piece is like, all right, we need to save money. We need to save time. We've got to think of new ways of doing all this stuff, but we want to use tried and true technologies.

We want things that have done this before. So you can't, none of those fit together. And I was, it was the SLS strategy, right? Cutting, bleeding edge technology invented in the 1970s. Yeah. Yeah, so now we've sent all these really. So none of the things actually fit together in any sensible way. And it, to me, was indicative.

Not that these two individuals were thinking about this mission poorly, but that is how confused this entire architecture is at the moment, is that it is three, are we crediting it for three really complex missions? I don't know, how many missions you would say MSR is? Three, I would say three. I would give it three, maybe two and a half. What's your credit on this, Jake? It's four.

Well, perseverance happened already. Yeah, I guess. Perseverance already happened, yeah. Okay, and then there's that whole aspect, which is the 2040 plan involves perseverance stopping at 2028. The oft-ignored perseverance mission, which, by the way, is very critical to the whole thing. But let's not make it part of the Marisabweger project. That would be weird. Yeah, especially for budget reasons.

Yeah, right. But that's, so I don't know, have you picked up from these planetary circles, Jake? The part of this is that in 2028, they're going to drive back to the crater floor. What's up with that? I, that is maybe the worst part of this plan. I didn't even. I wrote about this today and I didn't even mention that because I'm still like, I'm too mad to even articulate about that. That is like the dumbest idea. Can they take the scenic route? Like, is there any other can they do anything different this time? It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter yet because that's part of the 2040 plan, which Bill Nelson. and killed before you lost it. So it's fine. But yeah, they were like, yeah, we'll drive it back to the crater. And then just like, they call it a quiescent state. We will put perseverance in a quiescent state. I'm like, so you're going to turn it off for seven years while you wait for the rest of this mission. Wow.

To be fair, that's my plan instead of death is a quiescent state. So that's fine, yes. It's the biggest waste of a national asset that I can imagine NASA ever coming up with. That is crazy. Yeah. That is crazy. And they're hoping it'll turn back on in seven years. my MacBook wouldn't do that.

I mean, this is nicer than a MacBook, but... Yeah, it's got bounce, too, so... I know my MacBook doesn't have valves. Wow. I didn't... I didn't catch that part. I was crazy. I was crazy. From the OSAM mission that we just canceled, where we're breaking into satellites

and putting it on the sample retrieval lander so that if Perseverins is dead, we can just chisel into this thing and get all the samples out from a way we weren't supposed to. Yeah. I mean, I feel like the other... writing on the wall was when there were all of those awful layoffs at JPL earlier this year and you know it's like JPL is responsible for

the sample return lander right and the rover the sample fetch rover right? No more rover just the helicopters. Just the helicopters and the backup helicopter. The first one is the backup helicopter and then there's the backup to the backup. The primary thing is perseverance putting the samples in right? Yeah, the helicopters aren't even really a part of it anymore. That was Bill Nelson's addition to the mission and then he

planned the whole thing. There's like, yeah, it's very confusing at JPL because they have perseverance, which is under the Mars exploration program. Then they also are in charge of overall management of MSR, like they're the technical contracting lead on the whole program. And they have the part of developing the surface return lander, right? So there's like there's like literally three departments at JPL that are working on MSR. and nominally one of them kind of reports to the other one

and the third one, Perseverance, reports to a whole different directorate. Like, it's like a whole different place. Like, it's very weird how it's said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I feel like the layoffs were a bad writing on the wall. And I remember I read this blog post by Casey Handmer a while ago about MSR. And he, you know, used to work at JPL.

And he was saying in the blog post, he said something. something like, you know, there is all of this competition from private industry for talent now. And there are in industry, there are just, there are higher risks, right? Like, you wouldn't expect to be laid off from JPL. I think that was like fairly unprecedented. There are higher risks working at a startup, but there's way higher reward, both in the immediate in terms of compensation and then eventual, like, obviously you're hoping that the company would have this massive exit and you would, you know, get super rich as employee number 20

or whatever. You know, that's that's the dream anyway. Yeah, yeah. So it's like big risk, but big reward. And I think he said that of his sort of cohort of like 500 people that joined around the same time, there's only like 100 people that are still at JPL and everyone else has left. Because like who wants to work at a place where, you know, with your salary,

and your spouse's salary, you can't afford a house in the expensive part of California where JPL is located. You know, it's like you don't want that. You want a better quality of life for your family as you get older. There's like normal people pressures on that. Yeah, yeah. It's just like a just a labor force issue, you know? And I think NASA does also just have to face that.

People are going to, people are going to aim for, I think, different career paths now that they're available. They weren't available 20 years ago. NASA had no competition. No, they were. You know? They were. And now they have the competition.

And now these people can go and propose different parts of the Mars Sempertern. Yeah. All those JPRs can go in this, by the way. Like this, this call for proposals has like two rules. It's kind of epic. Yeah. It's like, bring back 10 samples. I think that's as close to an epic strategy as they could get on this.

Yeah. I feel like that's a good thing, though, right? It's the same with clips. It's like they're like just. get there. Just do the thing. But so, I guess, though, the other, it sounds like a really rough working fall for whoever receives these proposals because with that, like the proposals, are they constrained,

maybe you know this from the town hall, Jake, to even addressing the full mission? Or can you just say, I have a better idea for the lander that can do just that one part of your current architecture? You can mix and match. Yeah, it's specifically that says, like, you can use one or many of the existing parts, basically like, you know, so if you want to incorporate the capture device or the Mars ascent vehicle or the lander, like you can, you can submit a proposal that makes use of existing assets.

There was a really interesting language in it, actually. There was like another line that was like you can, you may but are not required to make use of existing national assets from the Artemis program, which like, I was like, whoa, okay, that's interesting. Like, is that a starship call out right there? Yeah, we're taking the gateway, hold away to the surface, baby. Please, please SpaceX submit a proposal.

Was that basically with that, you know, I don't know what else. I have a SpaceX tab that I desperately need to roll out to you, Jake. I know I've been waiting for this one. Okay. All right. So obviously this stuff comes out, right?

And all of us on Twitter weren't even tweeting about it. And people tweeted at us, what about Starship? That's just assumed there was like a bunch of people ready to tweet that because that's the response to this thing. But let's just talk about. People have that saved as a macro on their, on their Twitter app is basically how it works.

100%. And so let's just do the what about Starship thing for a second, because there's two, there's two parts to my take here. One on a technical side, Jake. Am I correct in that the, I've read that the Mars Ascent vehicle, as currently designed, is twice as heavy as Perseverance. It's a chunk of a vehicle. It is not in a good place. Yeah. Actually, the Rose's amendment, like the proposal that came out yesterday or Tuesday or whatever, like specifically says, we are very much interested in any ideas that can make the Mars Ascent vehicle lighter. It was like specifically called out as a weakness technically. Yeah. And so is that the driver?

Catch me up on why we need the Earth return orbiter versus landing a thing that can fly directly back to Earth? So there is a, well, there's a political reason and is that. I was going to say. Yeah, there is that. They need to throw Isa a bone. But there is a scientific reason too. So you're looking for what's called a, you want to break the chain for planetary protection. And so the idea is this Mars Ascent vehicle comes up and then like deploys like the like the nominal plan like it will like deploy the container into orbit and then like the rocket is gone.

And then the orbiter would come and pick up the container like they would do a Mars rendezvous in Mars orbit, right? And so you break the chain in terms of stuff that's been like exposed on the surface versus stuff that's coming back to Earth. That's kind of the idea. You'd make like a clear division. it's for backwards contamination, right? So I know a lot people have lots of takes on plant trip. But that's why it's there. It's also just sounds, you got to admit that sounds fucking hilarious on a sample return mission.

It's a little funny. To protect us from. Yeah, that backwards contamination is getting Mars deep into Earth, Earth's atmosphere, or Earth's environment, right? Is it Mars Deepwater? You started out this podcast. You're skeptical of totality as like a vibes thing. So like, let's cool it on the eyebrows over there, right?

I'm like, I don't take some Mars goop. The eclipse, absolutely not, but Mars Goose, fine. You and Gwyneth Paltrow. She's like, that's a new brand for me. I got that. I'm all over that. Okay, interesting. Well, I can see it from just a scientific perspective. You want to protect the integrity of a sample.

I don't see it from like a protect Earth. And the thing would plow back through the Earth atmosphere. So, right. But the canister would theoretically be, you know, like there's a, it's permetically sealed inside the Mars Ascent vehicle beforehand, right? So you create like a clean environment there. I don't quite understand how you get the sample into the container without contaminating it. But the idea is basically like the rocket is going to be dirty. And we don't want that to come anywhere near the rest of it is the idea. So if somebody proposed a direct descent back

to Earth, is that right out? It has to go to like Mars or Earth orbit? I mean, this is where it's tricky, right? Like you just have to, you have to meet the planetary protection guidelines. So I theoretically, if you could create some sort of system that would simulate that kind of thing and then, you know, ultimately send something clean back to Earth. I don't see why not. I just don't, like, it looks like NASA hasn't, hasn't, this was their best idea and they don't have it. So, you know, well, so where this follows on to my, my SpaceX take is that if the Mars Ascent vehicle is already that heavy, then clearly adding like a direct ascent and direct entry capability would be even heavier. So there's, to me, some of this logjam is we just need a shit low.

more down mass to Mars. And so Starship is, in that case, the right heading where, like, let's just land another zero of mass on Mars. And all this other stuff gets easier and probably costs a lot less because you don't need to try to figure out how to package it in a small aeroshell and unfold it in the right way. And there's the error that we're entering in, we've talked about this is like K2, right? That when mass is no longer your driver, things are going to get cheaper because you can take shortcuts elsewhere. So that to me is why

Starship should have a proposal in but also this is the thing right now. If SpaceX does not have a paper on the NASA desk on May 17th when these proposals are due, something has gone dramatically wrong at SpaceX disastrously. This is their fucking chance, right? They've talked a big game all these years about Mars and I said this on Miko earlier.

Blue Origin gets a lot of shit for being 24 years old and never going to orbit. SpaceX is 22 years old and never sent a chunk come metal at Mars, right? They got the Tesla pretty close, but they bailed on Red Dragon. They haven't sent a satellite bus out there. They built 4,000 of those Jake said. They have not said in shit. They got Falcon Heavy. They got the most productive and valuable

rocket in the world right now because they can launch the most for the cheapest. And they sent Jack shit to Mars after talking about it for all these years, and we're two years beyond initial cargo flights to Mars scheduled territory on the initial starship thing. So if they don't, like I'm going to go one shot on this. You better fucking do this.

No matter what. If you're in the NASA program or not. If they pick your proposal or not, I don't give a shit. You better do this. You better send a thing on the schedule that you put on NASA's desk in May or like you've missed the biggest chance in your life. Because guess what? Either you're bringing the Mars sample back, which is the most scientifically valuable thing that the world has ever decided. This is the most scientifically epic thing we could ever want. So either you're doing that and you're winning or you're landing on Mars first and the MSR program is still trying to figure out what the hell to do and how to get the samples back and you've just landed a gigantic rocket on the

surface of bars and you've won either way. So this is the moment. You better do it or like, I don't know what you're doing, honestly. Yeah. I think they're going to do it for sure. Is there any reason why they, why they wouldn't? They have to. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I hate to be like, oh, what is it? Like, when everything, what's that saying? When everything's a, when you only have a hammer, everything looks like a nail or something. Like when you only have a starship, everything. You know, like, I hate to be like, oh, star ship. Yeah.

Yeah. But it's like, you know, they're the only, in terms of like the really large well-resourced companies that will for sure be around in like 10 to 15 years or whatever, you know, they're the only one where like the incentives actually align. And when you think about this MSR program, when you think about any, any type of human behavior or institutional behavior, it all comes back to incentives, right? And so it's like, yeah, of course. they would go for it because, and I also think, I don't have any, like, insider information

about this, but I would not be shocked if they have many initiatives that are non-public that are related to Mars that are related to, like, you know, manufacturing propellant on orbit so that when Starship is ready, they can just go, that they'll just go. They aren't like, oh, we also have to do this and this and this, you know? And NASA's obviously on some of that, but. Well, and that's the best thing right now is that if they had not won the Artemis contract and they submitted a Starship proposal to MSR, I think all of us would expect NASA to just go like, whatever. We can't bank on that. But having committed to astronauts going to the lunar surface, that means all of the things that would enable SpaceX to land a starship on Mars has to have happened to put astronauts on the lunar surface. So NASA has already signed on that that is technically feasible and plausible and achievable on a certain timeline.

And to do that, they have to do all the things that it would also take to land a cargo starship on Mars. Not all the human stuff because like radiation and supplies and all that nonsense. But cargo, like a metal starship can, you know, they have just said, yeah, we believe that. So it makes it easier for the MSR program, I think. Right. Yeah, I feel like when you talk to the other thing with like talking to non-space people or people who aren't really like space fans, I feel like they underestimate the degree to which Elon Musk really is. really is genuinely just focused on expanding the light of consciousness in the universe.

Like that really is his goal with SpaceX. And I think anything that gets him closer to that, like anything that gets him closer to a crude Mars mission, I think they would absolutely go after because like when you're, I don't know, he's not about like getting richer. He's really not. He's about going to Mars. He literally can't get the last year. Yeah.

You literally can't get any richer. There's no more ladder to climb on that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Could have bought anything but Twitter, but. Yeah. That's true.

Yeah. That was a move in the opposite direction of getting richer. Right. Recently, he started tweeting a lot more about SpaceX. I was like, maybe he's getting tired of this whole Twitter nonsense. And he's going to be back to like, you know, what he used to be doing. But then he went on another, another Twitter tear of chaos. So whatever.

Well, I thought that's what, I thought that's what was going to happen when he installed like a CEO. like, oh, we have a CEO for X, and so, okay, he'll be able to focus on other things. Not at all. I don't know what she does. Conference talks, I think. Yeah, like, not even. Like, he goes to all the talks. Yeah, so, yeah.

But I don't know if there's anyone else that you or any other companies that you guys are kind of having your kind of keeping an eye out for. I feel like, I feel like Boeing is like never again fixed price. Never again. I don't think so. We're not going for it. It's too much. I don't know. Like, it's really wide open because of how flexible the amendment to the roses thing is. Like, you know, like pick or choose the parts you want to replace. So I'm kind of hoping like impulse is in there with something and maybe, maybe intuitive machines. I don't know. They've been pretty ambitious about stuff lately. So I got one Twitter response to my episode today, which was Tim Crane saying there's a lot of ways to skin this cat. So I'm just taking that as confirmation. There it is. There it is. Okay. Okay. Yeah. So some of these clips providers could be in there, right? Impulse.

Can you bump out the ESA from the Earth Return Orbiter? So could Rocket Lab say, like, we could do this with our whatever the planetary things. I looked for that and it was like really unclear to me in the amendment because it said that you could replace the Earth return orbiter. And then it said, like, you know, it would be great if you could like use some sort of ESA thing. And they mentioned like bringing the fetch rover back. And like, you know, it was really, really wide open in terms of like stuff. So I don't know. I don't know what that's going to look like.

But I mean, it's a partner. So I don't know, I don't know how far down NASA wants to go that, go to that route. But yeah, I don't know. I'm sure we'll see like a Sierra space or a dynetics, you know, one of these like. No, the Grumman will say Cygnus, you know. Yeah, Cygnus derived a Mars sample return. Well, if I, if I recall Impulse is, they're developing a cruise vehicle and an entry capsule for Mars, right? Yeah, they already want to do that.

Right. Yeah. Right. I know they said like, oh, we're going to go to Mars with Taryn R in 2026. No, I'm just kidding. 2028. So I mean, but like they're already developing, you know, vehicles. They're developing a Mars lander. Yep. As well, I think. Yeah. So, you know, I could totally see. I would give Tom Mueller $5 billion, say, make this work. A solid strategy. Yeah. Can you just see this for us? Bring it back. Yeah. Figure it out. I mean, that is this other thing that everyone's. been tweeting about other than but what about starship is like make this make this like an prize like bring us back 10 samples and you get five billion dollars yeah i don't the only reason i think that wouldn't work is like the requirements of these samples having been so specifically scientifically selected i don't think nassad would want to risk like well i mean they're

trying to get it back and we'll give them five billion if they get here with it but who knows what they're doing with it in the meantime and it's too it's too big of a reward right like you can't the capital requirements to go and get those like you need there needs to be money up front. Like, you know, there's no, you need to have some sort of milestone-based system in order to make that work from a prize perspective. So, yeah, I don't think that's going to happen. But, yeah, I don't know. So I'm excited. Honestly, like, I want to see the ideas because clearly NASA doesn't have one. And so, like, please, please give me some thoughts. Like, I'm really, I'm really excited to see some of the proposals and see what kind of other thoughts come up. Because like, All right. Give us your best. Give us your best one then, Jake. Propose a, propose an architecture. I don't know. I mean, I feel I feel like we've talked about like starship has to be like the best shot we have at this. But I I don't see them doing the whole bit. Like I don't think this is an end-to-end starship mission. And so like I'm trying to imagine some some situation where like you said, where just for down mass and then like they just leave the starship there.

And it allows you to put whatever you want there. And like maybe. I don't know, maybe SpaceX partners. Like maybe there's like a, like they grab someone to come into their proposal and they say, we will deliver this giant pile of stuff there. And someone says, well, I'll just make this like, I'll just send a whole freaking electron rocket or whatever, whatever you need to do. You know, I don't know. Like, you know, but you're your, your doors are all. The entire launch pad and electron.

Literally. Like there's, you know, there's some possibility. Like a rocket lab is. on Mars. It's on Mars. Eat that, relativity. These are things that can happen, right? We just landed the entire infrastructure. See, the only problem with this idea, though, is, like,

freaking awesome as it sounds is, like, it does not match up with the rhetoric that NASA just said, right? We want heritage hardware and stuff that's reliable and blah, blah, blah. I can't think of anything that fits into all those. It fits into all those boxes. I can't think of anything. So I don't know. All right.

What's your, what's your diagram? I mean, I feel like the, I don't know how we're going to get out of this, the seemingly like intractable political problems. That's not with MSR. I mean, I'm not about Mara Stamford's, not 2024. No, no, I'm talking. Yeah, no. I mean, I just feel like it's all well and good for NASA to be like, okay, we're going to

throw it over to private industry. But like, there are. are, you know, multiple NASA centers that we're counting on this funding, these, this massive multi-year project. And yeah, so I'm, I'm kind of curious. I feel like if SpaceX could figure out some way to be like, hey, we're going to Mars anyway, we'll just bring the samples back if you want. I feel like that would be cool. You know, like, I don't know. But again, with like the incentives. The price tag is cannot be ignored proposal.

Right, right, right. Like, it doesn't fit any other box, but the price tag is so low that NASA's like, well, that's the only thing we're going to do. Like, that's it. That's our choice. Right. Yeah. Yeah.

Something like that. I don't know. We'll see. Politically, SpaceX and Impulse makes a lot of the same people that are mad right now about JPL layoffs pretty happy. Those are the same zip codes. Yeah. So.

Yeah. I think if you landed, I mean, and hell, for Bill Nelson's sake, we'll throw 15 ingenuities in there, you know, like whatever. We'll do all the helicopters and two impulse, like, landers and ascent vehicles, and then landed into Starship. That's the problem, is that the Starship downmast is a cheat code, and NASA has already committed to Starship being a technically feasible, realistic thing in this world. So they have Delta hand that they cannot avoid in my eye.

And SpaceX needs to do it for a variety of purposes. Yeah. I also think if they figure out the crude, a crude component, which is so much more technically risky and high profile and arguably, well, arguably prestigious, maybe not. Maybe you guys don't think so. But, you know, I feel like if they can sort that out, then I feel like cargo then becomes, you know, low-hanging fruits, sort of speak, you know. Especially if they're just a downmass and they have someone else complex doing the other.

Messages renamed this all moon to Mars again. So there is a messaging component that fits pretty nicely into that right. Yeah, that's true. That's true. Yeah, I feel like that is important because I do think people are going to wonder why we're spending so much money to get these rocks. Good rocks. They are good rocks. Are they $11 billion rocks?

Yeah, how many billion? I'm sure they're good rocks, but yeah. I mean, yeah. Why do you guys think it got so expensive if you could sum it up? Well, that's a French goodbye if I ever heard one. Oh, we're at the end. Sorry. Well, if you want to know the answer to that, you should read my new piece on my blog.

Which one of you is the writer here? Geez. Yeah, sorry, I didn't realize it was at the end. No, all good. We like that. You should be, though. I do kind of call it out a little bit in there if you do want to read that. So, I'll tell you.

Jake. Jake Robbins.com. There you go. Awesome. Yeah. I mean, the short of it to me is it's like they, nobody was paying attention to it. And they set up a spider web of management that was not accountable to each other. And so they spun their tires.

That was it. That's like, that's the long and short of it. But, yeah. So those are three really complex missions. They were all bizarrely complex. My thesis on this is that the current. administration is not really that interested in the project. And so it was left to, you know, do whatever it did.

Bob from the valves company. Yeah. Or whoever his replacement was. But it also seems like the. Yeah. Yeah. But it also seems like the complexity was like it really was just to throw a bone to everyone that needed a bone thrown to them.

So like, okay. Yeah, a bit for sure. We need all this. We need like all these centers all on board. We need ESA on board. Like, okay, so let's. that's not like let's find something to do but yeah yeah that's mistake one though and we we realized that mistake was a mistake like three and a half years ago so mistake mistake two was then letting it

sit right and spending two billion dollars so yeah right right all right all right all right else you're working on these days what's the stuff that's keeping you keeping you going what's what's about to drop what's about to drop Can't tell you that. I'd have to kill you. No. Gosh, not too much. I wrote about, you know, over at TechCrunch, we cover startups.

So I actually leave a lot of the, like, NASA reporting to some of the other amazing space journalists who have been doing it way longer than me. Yeah. So, like, you know, for example, like the story about Tom Ocunero setting up a new VC firm. Like, that's more like the tech crunch, you know, style. The TechCrunch beat, so to speak. And I am very interested in this like how SpaceX has become this sort of incubator for startups in a way and also for VCs because so many people leave SpaceX and then start investing. So, you know, those are kind of more of the things that I focus on in my day to day. I'm kind of relieved that I don't have to write about things like MSR because it is like. It's a whole basket of worms, man. But, yeah, I'll leave that to, like, the Eric Burgers of the world and who are already doing, like, a phenomenal job.

So, yeah. Yeah, yeah. There's good competition out there. Yeah, for sure. Cool. For sure. Well, thanks for having me, guys. Yeah, we are pumped that you finally are here.

And you just need to check the calendar and pick another date out so you can come back because we have apparently 8,000 topics to talk about. with you. That would be great if you could do that and help ourselves not have to fill out the calendar all on our own. Yeah. We keep asking guests. That's a really warm invitation. Thank you. We keep asking guests to do that.

Please just email us and come on the show so we don't have to plan content. That would be great. No, you're getting bug. We were talking about this in the pre-show. We do a little like pre-stream and we're like sometimes we have people on and they just get it right away and you got it right away. You're just like you're an off-nominal person at heart. It's great.

So bad eclipse takes and all. You know, it's fine. We're fine with that. Yeah, yeah. Thank you for not ostracizing me for my, for my eclipse take. I appreciate that. I'm with your wife, though. The galaxy's scary.

The universe is scary. I can't think about it too much. It's too big. Anyway. Jake, what do we got next week? What's going on? Next week we have a really fun one. We have one of our original listeners.

is coming on the show. So this is always a fun experience for us when a listener who's also an interesting space person comes together. So Aaron Edwards is coming. She is a Canadian. She is a helicopter pilot and hustled and learned about space stuff. And now she's like doing astronaut stuff at Johnson Space Center and mission control and doing all sorts of super cool work. And we're going to get her on to talk about her journey. So, yeah, we're going to, we're excited to have that on.

Also, I should mention the pre- She sounds awesome. It's great. She is awesome. Yeah. I'm pretty pumped. And, yeah, I mean, it's an OG, like, been around since the beginning of the Discord, I think. Yeah.

If not, single-digit listener, definitely double-digit listener. Like, like, early, early, early fans. So it's good to see that. Yeah. If you are in the Discord, you can listen to our pre-show where we talk about such topics as, What did we talk about today? I don't even remember. We talked about how Jeff Bezos follows us on Twitter now.

That was the thing that happened this week. Jeff Bezos followed us on Twitter, and that resulted in us trying to recommend good first episodes to listen to, and which we also remember that we named an episode Jeff Bezos's only fans, so I shouldn't bring that up on the show where we know that he definitely followed our show. So that's good. Yeah. It was a weird week.

It was a weird week. Very good week. One of the first things I did as a like space journalist was go to go to the Blue Origin mission that he flew on. And it was very weird. I was like, where am I? Were you in the champagne radius or how close? Yeah, yeah. Did you get sprayed or what?

Yeah. Yeah, no, it will like, it was just odd. Like, because, you know, it's in the middle of nowhere in Texas, in West Texas. And the call time was like 2 a.m. or something. But the launch wasn't until like 9 a.m. So it was like, everyone was just there, like all the space journalists, who I know now, but at the time didn't know, we're all just like there at like three in the morning. It's like still dark out and you have to wait like five hours. It was just very, it was very weird.

It was a very funny, weird experience. I love to hear it. Yeah. Hello, Jeff. There's our show content for the next time you're on. We can open with that. Tell us about the weird. more about it off air.

I want to know who is on background on valves and which of the reporters is the most bewildered to be up at 2 a.m. And that's what I like that. And why was it Eric Berger? All right. Off air. Off air. Yeah.

Yeah, totally. All right, thanks for hanging out. Thanks, everybody. Thanks, guys. We shall. Take care. So next week.

Bye. Bye.