Off-Nominal - 159 - The Budget Wedges are All Wedging (with Joey Roulette and Jacqueline Feldscher)

Episode Date: July 18, 2024

Anthony is joined by Joey Roulette of Reuters and Jacqueline Feldscher of Payload to talk about the Falcon 9 failure and its fallout, and the ongoing communications debacle that is Starliner.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeSpaceX's Falcon 9 grounded after failure dooms batch of Starlink satellites | ReutersChris Bergin - NSF on X: “Here are two minutes of the SpaceX launch stream where the ice build-up began.”Starlink 9-3 - SpaceX - LaunchesEpisode 159 - The Budget Wedges are All Wedging (with Joey Roulette and Jacqueline Feldscher) - YouTubeNASA cancels VIPER lunar rover - SpaceNewsNASA Cancels VIPER Lunar Rover – SpacePolicyOnline.comNASA astronauts voice confidence that Boeing Starliner will bring them home | ReutersFirefly Aerospace Investigates CEO’s Alleged Inappropriate Relationship - PayloadBill Weber Steps Down as Firefly Aerospace CEO - PayloadMax Polyakov and Noosphere released by U.S. from restrictions imposed before Russian invasion of UkraineFollow JoeyJoey Roulette (@joroulette) / TwitterJoey Roulette - ReutersFollow JacquelineJacqueline Feldscher (@jacqfeldscher) / XJacqueline Feldscher, Author at PayloadFollow 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, happy Thursday. It's a Jake left, so I got other people with J-names, I guess. I now realize that I've fully replaced Jake with a Jacqueline and a Joey. So welcome aboard, and thanks for joining me on what is probably the most chaotic, like, month and a half of space news of all time. It kind of feels that way. I don't know, maybe not even limited to just space news at this point. It's been a busy week, that's for sure.

Yeah. We're going to have competitive bidding for who wants to bring up which topic next because there's like There's so much. There's so much. We'll have to figure out who's I don't know Falcon 9's grounded and that feels like the fifth story that we should talk about like it's almost unimportant What would be number one? I mean that's like that's a pretty big story It is but it's also I don't know let's get into it because I feel like I'm underreacting to that So we're a little earlier than normal. Oh Jake's trolling us in the chat too.

that'll be fun. So I don't know if either of you, I think Joey's in the office or something, so I don't know if it's appropriate to having to drink out at 3.30 where you are, but you tell me. I have a drink. A little fuel. Just some coffee. That's the way to do it. Jacqueline, a little darker where you are, less office looking. Yeah, I mean, I'm at home, but I don't want to be the only one drinking. You're not. That's what I do the show for. So I went through our beer fridge to find appropriately spaced beer. So it's like Hulsar and it's a little, sorry, squirrel astronaut dude. Is it a space cider?

It looks like Sandy from SpongeBob. It does look like Sandy. Is it a squirrel? I think it's a squirrel. It's like a Michigan cider place. Oh, so it's not really a Wolverine, is it? It's definitely not a wolverine. some kind of rodent.

Yeah. We'll call it a rodent. It's a Midwestern rodent of some sort. It is rodent boy summer apparently, but. Or rat boy summer is what they're saying, but that's tough. I missed that. I think I missed that one. I did not see that.

Really? Oh my God. Okay. Pizza rat. Different rap. It's like that guy from the bear. People say he looks like a rat, which is kind of like really mean, but like, The New York Times has been talking about it, so it's okay.

I'm joking. I think it's unfair that's hot girl summer and rat boy summer. That feels like an unrealistic standard. The rap boys are co-opting the hot girl summer rhetoric. Wow. We're on it. I mean, you come here for all of the latest social drama. I'm joining you in the Midwest drinks.

I've got another can of space camper. This is one of our few and far between and always beloved beer, sponsors. The Boulevard Brewing sent me a box of stuff. Well, I guess via the Kansas City of Royals, that's a strange connection, but, uh, this is delicious. So out of KC. I'm cracking that baby open. All right. So Joey, explain or help me overreact to the story, because I think I've underreacted to Falcon 9's grounding, uh, mostly because, all right, riddle me this. The most recent groundings that we've all experienced over the last decade or whatever, right? They were vehicles that were either early in their run,

and we had question marks about them anyway, Antares, et cetera. But I guess in defense of you saying I'm underreacting, even though you didn't say that, and I put those words in your mouth, all of those other failures happened at a time when there were other launch vehicles available. you could buy an Atlas 5 or you could fly on a Falcon 9 and this one happens and there's no other rockets available. So it is larger. But I guess my reaction was like there's 8,000 Starlink Lit missions. I thought they would go this route where they might get approval to keep flying and then have to finish the investigation before the human side.

But what's your vibe on it? Right, right. I don't mean to make this sound like it's the biggest deal ever because you just laid out a bunch of really great points. It's like this, like they have asked for that public safety determination, which means, you know, the FAA can say everything's good before they finish the investigation. But also, like, this isn't the worst failure ever. Like, it is grounded and they need to figure out a safe way to resume flights. But it seems like a fairly simple issue. There was a liquid oxygen leak on the second stage and the engine blew up and then somehow it, like emergency ejected itself.

satellites or something. I really want to see video of that because I think that is pretty crazy. But yeah, it seems like a fairly simple issue. And I think the fact that SpaceX requested that public safety determination on July 15th, which is pretty soon after this happened, shows that they think they have a good understanding of what happened to the extent that they can lay it out in this report to the FAA and seek the FAA's approval of the go ahead to resume flight. So I think that signals that it's not the biggest deal. I mean, it's important because it highlights the fact that, you know, much of the world perhaps overrelies on a single rocket. And so when shit hits the fan, excuse my language, you know, we all are reminded of that.

And right now, Falcon 9 is not available. And it's not like everyone's like, how am I going to get my satellite in space? I wanted to launch this yesterday. But like, it could get to that point. But, you know, I don't think it's a huge deal because I think, you know, they might get their FAA approval soon. It's the ISS side, though, that is, like, this, it's not the worst time in the world for SpaceX,

but it is kind of the worst timing you could imagine for the ISIS program. It's pretty... No? It's precarious. Well, the last thing I'll say on that is, like, remember when Chris... Oh, what was his name? It was the lone NASA astronaut on the ISS for a very long time.

pending, I think, crew dragons availability. And I think there were like two Russians on the ISS two, and it was very, very short-staffed. And that was right on the fence of like the U.S. getting their own capability. Like they were about to clear that hurdle. And I think that was probably more dire than what we're doing, what we're seeing now. Jackins making faces. Well, we have the two Starliner astronauts up there way longer than anticipated with no set return date and no way to resupply the ISS domestically.

So this is something we've been talking about internally. You know, I remember the fights about reliance on Russia and all this stuff. Like, are we in a situation where we're going to have to ask Russia to send up food for the astronauts who are like stuck up there. They're not stuck, but you know, who are up on the ISS for much, much longer than anticipated. We can say it on to what's a lot. I know. But yeah, I mean, that's something we've been talking about internally sort of not. And, and, you know, it does, the fact that they have requested this ability to fly from the FAA, like, it doesn't seem like it'll get to that point, but the fact that it feels like it's sort of shined a

light on the fact that, you know, we really shouldn't want a monopoly. And that, you know, the government's saying it doesn't want a monopoly is for a reason beyond just price competition. Yeah. It definitely makes that point. And you're right. The ISS always has, they occasionally update us on how many months they've stocked away on the ISS

and it's always like close to a year or whatever. But you're right, like there's two extra astronauts on board than the typical expedition. So that does eat into the rations a little bit. And they don't have their own clothes. More attention needs to be brought to this.

Remember when the Starlight was about to launch and then they just discovered that toilet issue on the ISS? They had to swap. Butch and Sunny's clothes out for like the toilet components and so the astronauts when we asked them about this. So like it's okay

we're not going to be up there for long and we can use the backup clothes on the station. They've been wearing those Russian flight suits that look like the Ukrainian flag actually. I think that's what they've been they've been they were not used very long on the station so they've been wearing those. That's a scandal. That's a scandal. The clothes scandal

needs to be covered more. What are they wearing? I think I would rather have a working toilet than my own clothes if we're being totally honest. Good, would you rather in space? Right, right. All right, that's actually, I never even considered that. There are some funny clothes stories in time.

I always bring this one up. I think it was the first operational dragon mission when there was like a whole 20 minutes of comms between dragon and ground where they were looking for a sweater and they didn't know what compartment they put it in. I need to go and excerpt this audio because it's hilarious. Like, we checked this cabinet, it wasn't there, we really want to find this sweatshirt, because it's kind of cold on board, and we can't find it. And they lost the sweatshirt.

Wait, in the True Dragon, or was that on the ISS? No, on, on the coast up to ISS. It was a hilarious little sub-story. I don't know. It's bizarre. Jake's in the chat, trolling us from Spain, and he is reminding us of the time that all in a row, Cygnus, Progress, and Dragon all blew up. So you're right that that, there has been a worse.

run in time. I think it's just made weirder that... So it's the Starliner situation, right? They previously have said maybe Starliner will stay past the crew 8 departure and still be there when Crew 9 gets up. They sent out the media availability thing for Crew 9 setting no earlier than mid-August at this point. So I'm going to upgrade that to like probably happening.

I don't think Crew 8 will necessarily leave, but it sure seems like the... This is a great reason to just keep Starliner up there until you don't get the sign off anymore. Especially when you consider, I feel like at this point, Starliner is not going to make their next slot for the operational thing. Like, they have to say pretty soon that Crew 10's flying early 2025. It seems unlikely to me with all these issues that they would even make the slot after that. So really there's no rush of bringing Starliner back. So if having them on board gets you a little schedule coverage while Falcon 9 investigation happens, like, I don't know.

At least it's a thing to blame it on communications-wise. So I would make that call if I was then. I mean, you know, if you're Boeing a publicly traded company, there might be a rush because who's paying for this? I don't think we really have a clear answer on that. This is a fixed price contract. Does that stipulate these types of issues and mission extensions? I wonder how that worked out with SpaceX,

because they had a pretty long DM2 mission as well. For kind of other reasons, that was when, you know, they needed to actually have an operational mission because they were so short-staffed from the ISS, or at least that story seemed more realistic at the time. but in this case, you know, I think to know whether there is actually a rush, we should ask or like, you know, see who is actually paying for this mission extension. I haven't seen any like contract modifications between Boeing and NASA that show last minute like financial arrangements related to this extension. But so maybe that means Boeing is taking the heat and the cost for this.

I don't know. But yeah. There are also like, isn't there like a battery issue that they said like it's good past the 45 days? But like that won't be good indefinitely. There are technological limitations that would force them to come home. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So the 45 day mark, which is like next or this week, maybe, this weekend, that was, that's like the nominal duration for Starlighter on station. And then the off nominal duration, like using its backup stuff, I think it had been set for 72 days.

But then NASA publicly came out and said 90 days. And then, right, the batteries are the main, you know, determining factor there. I had a story, I think, in late 2022 about that and about concerns that NASA had about the batteries. they yeah like it was a really weird time and like I think there's concerns among some in the astronaut office or the chief engineer office about the potential for them to overheat and potentially catch fire that has not happened in testing Boeing has emphasized to me that no batteries have caught fire during testing but that is like the unspoken potential concern for the batteries that are on station right now and I think when we say when we hear Steve Stitch talk about like a cell and this unit getting off nominal or going out of family or something like I think what he means is just this battery cell overheating and then propagating to other battery cells and it creating an exponential problem like going full galaxy note seven or whatever that one was that would right right right right right yeah yeah but and so if you know that's that is a big thing to look at too because you can't have thing, if something on Starliner goes wrong, then something on the station could go wrong too. And then you involve international partners and international partners have to be okay

with certain risks. And so NASA's weighing all of that too, I think, as it decides how to keep Starliner on the station. Do we know what the maximum dragon can stay up there is? I don't know if we've ever heard how long crew eight could stay, right? Because that launched in March? March 4th. So, like, it will hit it six months in September. Do we, I don't know, if we've ever even asked about how long could you keep a dragon on station? That's a good question. I think we got number, I'm sure we've asked that question before.

I just can't remember the number. But, yeah, I don't know, I want to say, I don't know, I actually don't want to say anything and be wrong. But, like, there's also the NASA astronaut. I can't remember who, but she took the Soyuz capsule up there too. So technically the crew dragon exhibition could come home and they would still have a US presence on the station. So that might not be an issue. We're just back to the old style.

Yeah. Right, right. Then we're like, this is a real, I mean, it is not stressful at the current moment, but it is a situation because the things we've just discussed is when do spaceships run out of time, when do batteries potentially explode, and when do you run out of food, let alone the clothes that Butch and Sonny do not have.

So, like, one of these things will run short first. And I guess patience would be the fifth one. NASA has already lost their patience for us in particular. Yeah. I would love to talk about that a little bit, because I don't know if we've taken a deep dive on NASA and Boeing being mad at people like you, Jacqueline, who say anyone is stuck on board.

And they'll be clear. I mean, I feel like in some ways this is just the nature of journalism is fighting with PR people over words that are technically right, but they don't really like them. But I do think, I mean, we, we wrote, Tim wrote for us the story about like, you know, Starliner's very, very long, bad journey to the ISS is finally ending with this launch. And it really has been kind of like the beginning of like the next not so. great chapter in addition to everything else Boeing has going on. So I get the sensitivity. I get the concern over the word stuck. You know, one of our reporters pointed out, like, if I'm at home and my mom asks like when I'm coming to visit for Christmas, I can't tell her, I'm not stuck in my apartment. So I get the logic. But at the same time, if your flight is delayed, you say I'm stuck

at the airport or if you're sitting on the tarmac, you're stuck in the, I mean, in that case, you're kind of stuck in the airplane because you're not going to open the door up. But the airport, for sure, you're stuck at the airport. You could leave. You totally could leave. Right. You are stuck in the war. The astronauts could theoretically leave in an emergency scenario.

But that's a great point. And in fact, one of my colleagues just made that exact point, too, because it's something that I'm kind of debating with, like at Reuters, too. I think everyone's newsroom is kind of going through this. People who don't cover Starliner closely is like, why hell can't we say they're lost or stranded in space or stuck in space? but I think to be stuck in space has more important implications than what they're currently going through now. Like if someone's truly stuck in space, they don't have any ride.

And as long as Starliner, as long as they say Starliner can bring them home in an emergency, I think that makes it a little harder to say they're actually stuck in space. And it's such a dramatic situation and people get angry when you say it. And so it's like, let's just describe what is going on. instead of, you know, playing it until like a... I don't know, it's a... Maybe they'll actually be stuck in space at some point that we'll all start saying that, but...

They're not yet. Yeah. Maybe not yet. Yeah. It's been a weird. There's two parts of it that NASA I find, like, just talking about the communications of it, that I find NASA and Boeing having been,

having caused some of this chaos in that, there's one side of it, which is, you can tell the difference between NASA avoiding, very specifically avoiding saying something, and just explaining something poorly. Like, those are clear differences. We've experienced both of those varieties. And this one was clearly dancing around, I think it was you, Joey, that asked, like, you've said that they're cleared for emergency, but do you need to wait for this testing on the ground to finish before they would be cleared for return?

And that had been asked on a couple different calls, and they were always exceedingly careful answering that. question, which I felt didn't actually clarify the situation because you're tiptoeing around what you actually need out of this testing. And that creates us all going like, oh, so they do actually need the testing before they come home. That's issue one in my eye. Yeah. I think given the totality of all these vague things that everyone's been saying, like all the officials have been saying, I think it's clear that they need the testing before they make the call to nominally return them home. They've said they need to build a better flight rationale with more data from more testing to make that decision. If there's, if a Russian satellite blows up in space and they

need to undock from the station, then they can do that in Starliner. I think because the risks of staying on the station in the event of an emergency are greater than the risks of taking Starliner off the station. But what's interesting about that is when Sonny was asked about that on the station, I think last week, she was explaining that, like, you know, in the event of emergency, like, we'll get in the Starliner. I'm confident we'll be able to get in the Starliner, and then NASA will figure out the next steps. It wasn't like, and then Starliner will bring us home. And then I trust that they'll be able to figure out what to do next. So it's like, are you guys just going to float freestyle in orbit until someone comes up with a plan? How long will that take?

And so that's the next line of questioning that we haven't really been able to get out yet. But yeah, I think I also want to just make one other point, which is, you know, why did Boeing say that this mission was going to be eight days if they knew that they were going to run into issues? I think the communications strategy kind of set themselves up for a PR fairlier here. SpaceX, when they did DM2, they didn't announce any cutoff date. The duration of that mission hinged on the, I think, what, like the mission. needs on the I it was more relevant to what was needed on the ISS because of the political situation that made it short staffed but you know and so they didn't name a cutoff date for that mission but they did for this mission while Mark Napy was over here saying like we're going to run

into a bunch of issues on this flight where we expect problems to arise and I think with that they shouldn't have said this is going to be eight days because obviously it wasn't but then it was also even confusing because you had Butch also saying like, oh, we'll see you in a few weeks, like before they launched. He was talking to, you know, the ground control. He's like, we'll see you in a few weeks.

And so it's like, what? I thought it was eight days. So the communications on the duration, I think, was just a total cluster. The other part that you talked about there, though, is the need to finish testing. This is one aspect where I found lack of clarity.

is it that you need to finish this testing because you don't know how you want to fly the spaceship home? Or do you need to finish the testing because this is your only chance at testing the service module for the next year? Like there's not another opportunity to use this service module. It's back and forth on that one. So I don't have a good vibe on what does need actually mean. Is it literally like you're saying that Sony's like, I hope they know know what way to go home? or this is the chance we have because the hardware is up there right now.

I think it can be both. It's either, the answer is either they're up there to keep testing to help inform certification or it's both of that and they need to stay up there to figure out a better rationale to get home. I don't think it could be alone on its own

figuring out the rationale to get home because in any case, the longer you're on the station, any data you're getting is going to inform certification. Yeah. And that's the other aspect is that I think we also are always presented this as NASA and Boeing are on these calls together

when there might be times where NASA is requiring things of Boeing that they're not going to go say on the call. So maybe NASA says, we won't clear you to return until you find the root cause and tested in space. So if you're not able to find that and we run out of time, we'll clear you for landing because you can fly home. But until you've told us for sure, this is all pure conjecture, satire and projection,

but until you find the root cause, we are not going to sign this paperwork. If you find that you can't find it in this time limit, we'll sign it, but we're not giving you that signature right now. Like, there could be much more of that relationship behind the scenes than we actually know. Right, right. And it's a fixed-price contract where Boeing has more responsibilities than NASA. But the flight rules are jointly established in NASA. is very involved in figuring what's going on here,

but what's going, like how they're going to figure this out. But one just, and crucial point, I think, is the white sands testing. That testing was responsive to the issues that they found in flight.

That was not planned before the mission. And I don't, and they, I don't think they would have done that if there weren't issues to, to solve. And Stitch, and I think Bauer Sox have said, that the results of that, they have said the results of that test will determine when and how we bring them home.

So I think it's clear that the testing is required before they bring them home. What throws everyone into confusion is the way Stitch and others are saying, we want this testing. They're never saying we need this testing. I think that's just a consequence of how they try to make things easy to understand. but in this case, it's really actually complicating things. I think this conversation has really, like, shown all the problems with NASA's communication strategy around this, right? Like, it feels, it feels to me like NASA is, like,

we'll just kind of project this air of everything is fine, but then, you know, because astronauts' potential lives are at risk, like, I think they want to kind of be, like, the calming presence in the room, but by not just being more forthcoming and more strong, straightforward, you have people speculating about, you know, what could be a worst-case scenario. And I think, especially outside of the space community, it definitely feeds a lot of that. People who don't understand, you know, what a thruster issue is and what this testing is. All they know is that this thing is up there. It was supposed to come home a long time ago, and there are all these questions. So it feels like,

it definitely feels like a situation where, you know, they think it's better to give less information, but it's kind of breeding this rampant questioning and speculation. Yeah, yeah. And I didn't cover like the shuttle program. That was before my time, but NASA was way more forthcoming about issues then and before its commercial model trend. But since companies have more responsibility and a greater stake in this, things are more proprietary and things are more secretive. And NASA has less, NASA feels like it has less control over what it can say publicly. And this Starliner mission is a major. example, like maybe the biggest example so far of how the communications around the commercial model missions are problematic because like you said, Jack, like it allows misinformation and speculation and other issues to foment in the absence of actually like accurate information. I started off a numbered list 10 minutes ago and I'm finally getting the number two because it's exactly that point.

The other failure of communication here is like the failure of imagination of doing news about Boeing in 2024. And NASA does so much work to head off a lot of this when it comes to anything with SpaceX because they know all the headlines are going to be like Elon Musk's rocket explodes and Elon Musk's spaceship almost kills astronauts. And there's going to be a whole generation of headlines written about that. And so they do extra work in those cases to bring on. non-Elon representatives from SpaceX to talk about stuff and highlight them and shape the communications knowing the environment they're projecting this news into. And I feel like this was totally ignorant of that in an era where Boeing is being the way they are in the last, how many years has it been

since Boeing has been in the thick of it? Like, I don't know, when you would classify the beginning of this era. The first 737 max thing, I guess, until now, which is years at this point. And so you have to know that in the nightly news, it's going to be a Boeing Starliner thing happened and also the FAA reported about this 787 thing. Those are going to be linked together in the news. They're going to be put next to each other. They're going to be put in comparison. People are going to feel the same way about it and it's going to be mean. It's the same company. Yeah, you're going to get that response. So you need to be aware of that. And whether that's drawing a thicker line between the ISS program and Boeing, rather than feeling like this joint force on these

calls. I don't know exactly what that means, but it just feels like they didn't do any of that pre-gaming in this case. Yeah, yeah. The answer can't be like if I'm a communications person, I didn't study communications. I don't know how to do it, but like I don't think the answer is restricting information and trying to craft clever narratives about what's going on. I think the answer is to give us what we need to tell the accurate story. The astronauts are not immediate danger, but the absence of information and the speculation that comes out of that leads people to think they are. So NASA needs to take a look at its commercial contracts and give itself more power in saying what it needs to say to prevent, you know,

inflammatory narratives from spinning out of control. And I was going to make another point, but I just forgot. Sorry. I do think that goes both ways, too, though. Like, I've definitely heard from companies who are like, we'd love to talk with you, but NASA has this 17-step process to approve press releases. And it's harming both sides in terms of talking to the press, you know, the public-private partnerships, both the government and the industry, like the companies feel, I think,

that they're a little handcuffed when it comes to sharing information. Exactly, like NASA's not fully innocent here. Like they have, I think, and we've called them out on the press conferences. There was one press conference where a lot of us voiced our concerns with how they communicate things and they really revolve much of it around these somewhat rare press conferences, but more so around these blog posts that go out at like 6, 7 p.m. late at night, sometimes on a Friday night. And that really, you know, throws everything into chaos and it just doesn't look good. And like the biggest problem there is when I ask or email a NASA

NASA spokesperson for information about Starliner, or ask them a very basic question, they don't answer it until they have their blog posts later that night, or they'll refer us to some forthcoming blog posts. That's not how any agency does it. You know, in NASA, who's one of its core mandates is to communicate the science and the technology that it does in the world, you know, should live up to a better standard than that. It's also, as you talk about, you know, releasing these press releases at 6 p.m. on a Friday, like, I don't think NASA has ever done, like, Friday night news dumps before this, right? This is for, like, bad political news and firings and, like, NASA is the agency that's always, like, fighting for press and trying to get their stories told.

So even the fact that they're, like, participating in sort of this Friday evening news dump to try to hide stuff is, like, a really remarkable thing. Yeah, yeah. they have yeah it's it's rare that they pull out the friday night news dump they have in this case and it's just a a beast to reckon with uh the thing you left out about that call was just the best start to a call ever which was uh we're coming in this call mad at the press so the first thing i'm going to do is specifically tell everyone that i'm mad and you covered this poorly except for who did he call out ken kramer or something called out one particular version of like this one story was great but the rest of my

Google alerts are driving me nuts. And I would like to tell you all that so as to provoke better coverage. I mean, should we send him the link to the stricand effect or like what is he expecting out of out of this statement? That was a, that was a bizarre. I also don't know how much like our, like the media's concerns are being communicated to people like Mark Nappy. Like, like.

So I, and I think that call was just important. they started the call with a lot of critiques about how we're covering their mission. And then we, of course, used our time to push back on that. And by the end of the call, they sound very, they sound very understanding and willing to do what we think that they should do. And they have done that. They did the astronaut presser, which is one of the chief demands that we had on that call. And then they had the deorbit vehicle presser, too, albeit three weeks later. But so they seemed responsive to our concerns, and I think that is good.

Let's see. I was going to say that they've taken your advice to not do Friday afternoon news dumps, and this time did a Wednesday afternoon news dump, which was Fipers canceled. I don't know if we want to spend like five minutes talking about this, maybe 10 minutes. I don't know. I was surprised. I mean, I'll just quickly say I don't, I didn't really cover that very closely. But I was surprised that that wasn't a dump.

That was like, what, 2 p.m. 3 p.m. in the middle of a week. 4. That was cool. Yeah. I, you know, it's obviously very sad for the space science community that this spacecraft is literally like done and put together and just awaiting environmental testing and they're going to take it apart and just stop. It's it's very sad. Well, first they're going to see if they can give it away.

Hold on. Well, yes, yes. They're going to see if they can give it to somebody first. Which is hysterical. We had like a funny top of the newsletter where I'm like, it looked great in our headquarters if we weren't a remote organization, but they're just going to like give this away to someone, which is historical. But we had a very funny moment internally. One of our reporters was like, oh, like I hope this isn't about the Viper mission. That's such a cool mission.

And as he was saying this in Slack, it was like canceled. It was funny too when I posted that because they didn't, nothing in the headline said like, we're going to talk about the lunar program. but there was a picture of the moon and somewhere in like third paragraph said something about lunar exploration so they were tiptoeing into that one too but it is not shocking that it has ended up in this point we have talked about for a long time that this has creeped its way into new frontiers level budget like if you you know and there's been oh IG reports and all this about it but if you combine spacecraft and launch and landing it was nearing a billion dollars assuming that all the rest of the testing went well from here to

lift off. And then the other complicating factor is if they missed next launch window, they had to wait nine to 12 months or something before the lighting was right again, because the South Pole is weird. So it had potential to get north of a billion before it even made it to the moon. Factor that in with the situation that

Astrobotics in after Peregrin unfolded the way it did. Like, nothing about the mission was set up for success and really, anyway. But then you're right, Jacqueline, that, like, they said as of June 4th or something, it's put together and going into testing.

So this is, if it actually, I don't know if it'll, it's not going to do any testing from, right, based on that call, like, they're not even going to do any of the testing. It's going to be a mass simulator. Well, that's the other part is, are they just going to take the instruments off and then that's the mass simulator is like the actual structure of the thing? I'm actually curious what they will. Yeah, I don't know. I want to, like, I think it would be cool to think of something that could go in its place.

Like, I was thinking, like, I've always thought about how interesting it would be to put some kind of, like, payload on the moon as a reporter that would, like, help me cover the moon missions in the future. And this is, like, extremely, like, unrealistic. He's the one who's not drinking right now, just to clarify that I'm in the most, I'll close it to the ones that are drinking and maybe I'll come. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Let's do it.

Yeah. But I don't know what that would be. Like I just thought like, oh, mass simulator mission going to the moon. Is this an opportunity like for anyone? Is this an opportunity for me? That's not how I think about space stories ever. But like if I want to put something on the moon, like, what would you, I'm curious like if payload wanted to do that, Jacqueline, like what would you, how could we use that? for like a press 50 kilograms of stuff.

I don't, like a camera? Keep track. Right, I'm thinking like a camera, like a sensor. I don't know. I love this thought process because I have literally no idea what, like the South Pole's pretty weird. It would be cool. Just couple pictures of us, a bust of yourself? Yeah, I don't know.

It'd be cool to do like a 360-degree camera if it was in a location where there were going to be other missions in the future. I don't think that's the case. And especially, like, you talk about, like, transparency in space. Like, you know, if China launched a mission to the moon or, like, North Korea launched a mission to the moon someday, we could be like, there it is. Like, we see their rover coming. Like, that, it'd be, like, really cool, like, accountability who's on the moon. Right.

This is getting pretty for all mankind. I love it. I'm, like, I'm here for this South Pole. So NASA, given stuff. Yeah. To tie it all together, NASA owes us better transparency. So they should let us put a press simulator on the moon. Wow.

This is excellent. I have no idea where this is going, but I love every bit of it. And I feel like we at least know a couple people that we could talk to about this. Yeah, yeah. Who do you think? I'm doing an RFI request of information. All right. So if it's not the Joy Willette Space Agency that offers this by August 1st.

By the way, you have like 12 days if you want to put. that proposal together, Joey. Well, no, that's for the, that's for the Viper, right? But like, I would want to convince NASA to turn the mass simulator into something. I don't want to say it. I don't want to. Listen, you're playing,

you're playing chess. I'm playing checkers. Is that how that phrase goes? Offer to NASA to take over the rover. We rent a big van. We go pick it up. We drive to Pittsburgh. And we swap out some components. And we say, this is the, this is our commercial payload going on board that it's cooler than the mass simulator

NASA's going to send. Have good time. So, yeah. You can do it. But who's going to pick it up? Issa, as one of the lunar rover company is going to pick it up? As a troll, would astrobotic say,

we'll take it. Israel's thing, they could get back in the business. I don't think they exist anymore, but. They don't. I thought they were doing a third one. I don't know. I don't look that up. I don't know.

I think they have other priorities right now, unfortunately. What I was wondering about is how big the Astrolab rover is compared to Viper, payload-wise. I think it's bigger or heavier, but they were going to send one separately than the first demonstration mission of the lunar terrain vehicle thing. I don't know. Do you remember that? Remember the Astrolab rover? There's too many rovers. Yeah, well, there's too many different components to all this program.

but I haven't, I don't know the size of Astrolabe Rover. It came to DC one time and I had the opportunity to look at it, but I didn't. But I know the Viper thing. I had described it as like a golf cart size. And then Joel Kerns yesterday was like, people have described it as a golf cart thing, but it's really like a small sedan. So I guess. What a weird way to gatekeep on that too.

I know. It's more of a smart car, to be honest. you know, it does have some windows, so. Yeah, it's just a weird, like, there's two ways to look at it. Everyone's disappointed that this thing's canceled, because it would have been a really cool mission. At the same time, Jake in the chat is raging about the way that these missions have been handled by NASA for a long time, where they set cost caps and never enforce them, which sends the signal that these are like things you don't really need to worry about. And in the last year,

there have been moments where they are now enforcing those, right? They are, and whether that's just because of budgetary pressure, they finally are like, well, now we have to because we can't just let the growing budget handle it. But you've got the Janus spacecraft sitting in storage. They are through testing. They're not even like waiting on testing. They are ready to go spacecraft that are missed their ride because the ride changed and they're just sitting there and are canceled. You've got this one that is completed and not going anywhere. and then the other aspect of this all though is what does this mean for dragonfly that is on the higher end of budget and also exploding in cost and complexity and schedule at the same

time the mars sample return is in absolute chaos like nothing is in a good spot there and all the budget wedges are wedging at the same time so you know what if you're any mission, like who feels good about their mission in terms of the budget right now? Right. You need to have someone that goes to bat for it. Like, Culberson back in the day would fight anyone about Europa Clipper. But other than that, and then there was the era where, like, Mikulski was going to bat for any mission out of the Maryland area.

I don't really know any other congressperson that has been going to bat for planetary missions. The California delegation about Mars Samper return? I don't know. What else is up in the D.C. area these days, Jacqueline. Yeah. I mean, they, California delegation wrote a letter about Mars, and it was not the same way as like the Culberton or like, if you guys remember, Perlmutter, he was always like, we're going to Mars. Like it was more on the human exploration than on the planetary science, but there aren't like the same,

not that there aren't lawmakers who are very pro-space, like Representative Frank Lucas is like all about space. Like there are, but there aren't the same sort of figureheads to fight for these programs now. They all just either retired or lost. Like, I can't think of, like, a dragonfly person. I know. Yeah. I think, I don't know.

Like, this raises a good point, though, which is, I think, like, there's, too often there's, like, the sunk cost fallacy in space missions where you invest too much, you invest so much that you can't imagine pulling out of it or canceling it. and I think like the Collins space suit contract thing when they like backed out of that contract and they're not going to build any spacesuits anymore. I think that is a good example of not giving into the SunCost fallacy and knowing when to back out of a program before it becomes such a huge beast that's just sucking finances where it could go elsewhere. And maybe that's what Viper was going to do. And those are really important, like involved programmatic decisions that Congresspeople aren't usually privy to. Like I don't think, like, obviously lawmakers have interests for their districts, but like interests, like political interests and scientific value and interests relative to other missions are two totally different things.

So, yeah, I don't know. I think so I think there's a silver lining, I think, to the Vipa cancellation in that people are more willing to call something out before it becomes something bigger. God, I totally disagree, but I'm like we should just spend all of our money on cool space stuff, right? But I remember there was a hearing on James Webb Space Telescope when it was like way over budget, way behind, and lawmakers were like, why shouldn't we pull the plug? And Bridenstein was like, because this is going to be effing awesome. and they put the money in and it's awesome, right? Like, and you don't know what's going to be awesome until you get there. Like, what would Viper have found that we're not going to find now or that someone else is going to find?

Like, I understand there's not unlimited money. I understand that the budget is like a wreck and that NASA is never going to come out on top. But I think we've seen stuff that's over budget and delayed that has like been on the threat of being canceled that has done such cool. stuff that it's still like a loss when stuff like this is canceled. You're right. You're absolutely right. Yeah. And I think a big point to that was like I think Phil Metzger and others on that we're

tweeting about this, we're saying that, you know, what we're losing with the cancellation Viper is nothing that we're going to be able to get from other missions. NASA was making it seem like we're going to do the same kind of research on other and elsewhere within the Artemis program. but that's not really the case. So I agree with you there. Like, I mean, if NASA was not under the threat of, like, if they didn't have this huge budget cloud hovering over them,

then that would be great to keep Viper. But like, but it's like also, you know, dare I mention SLS too, that has become such. a financial beast and it's such a big jobs program for a capability that is not very soft sought after by anyone other than NASA. Well, I'll wait for the report about the demand for non-NASA payloads on the vehicle. I mean, you don't have to go far. I had a story where I asked the DOD, like, do you guys want SLS?

And they straight up set on the record, no, we have no need for the SLS. And it's like, who else? like anyone, like maybe Isa or like another country, but but like where would that fit in the Artemis manifest like it wouldn't? So I don't. I just think it's all. We can go down that or we can't. I don't know. I want to talk about Firefly because

Jaglin, you brought up this great story by Tim a couple of days ago, three days ago. Very prescient. I don't know if he knew where this was going at the time. But since then things have transpired. So Fill us in. What's going on here? Yes. Yeah, Tim did a great job, staying on top of the story.

And in the days that followed, no other media really picked up on it. And we were very much out on an island. And then, of course, just last night, the other shoe dropped. And the CEO of Firefly is no more with Firefly. So, yeah, he, the company was investigating him for this alleged inappropriate relationship with one of his female employees. You know, it's something we've seen before with launch company CEOs. And yeah, the investigation, you know, the companies that they hadn't found anything so far in the investigation. But then just a couple of days later, he was, you know, had out as CEO and they're starting the hunt for the next CEO.

It sounds like from a lot of Tim's reporting that morale overall at the company is pretty bad and that, you know, someone or employee reports, reported this relationship and then kind of lost faith in leadership the way it was handled and resigned after that. So yeah, it was an exciting week. We were obviously thrilled to break the news and then to see, you know, the fallout just a couple days later has been wild. And Max Poyakov is now absolved of the Sipheus sanctions, restrictions? What's the right word to use in that case restrictions, I guess. So yeah, now what? Like, is he making a triumphant return?

Or is that it? He's moved on with his life. I don't know. I think they, I don't know for sure either, but they have a war going on. And I know they have a big stake in the implications of that. And so maybe they're not as focused or interested in, the U.S.

launch sector as they were pre-Cipius booting. But yeah, I think it's interesting that Sipheus reversed this decision against them. Yeah, we don't really know what took so long. And also, I just, I've had vibes

about Firefly lately that are weird, because like, I would occasionally think of them and be like, man, it's been a while since that last flight that they did. And they had, had so many upper stage issues and it took them a long time to get back flying each time and then they would have a different upper stage issue. This last one seemed to have gone well or as well as it meant to. They didn't publish the target orbit before flight, which felt intentional to me. So I just don't feel like they've had the pace that you would

expect from a company that has flown as many times as they have. They're still on this slow version of it. And is that what you're saying, Jacqueline, that like morale sucks there? So it's not a very, does more else suck because the workplace sucks and that's what makes bad product? Or, you know, which one of these things came first? Tough to tell. I mean, I know we, Tim reported that there have been like a lot of departures. So it's obviously hard to make progress if you're losing a lot of your engineers and your talent over the last couple months.

That obviously doesn't explain the issues going back further. But yeah, I think I know the launch that recently happened. happened, we kind of wrote it as like, is, are they ready for prime time? Like, is this going to be, like, the breakout launch that they do start picking up operations and kind of launching on a more frequent cadence? I think it's still to be seen for the tech, but it seems like the, the sort of leadership of the company is, is going to be, it's going to be a while before it stabilizes, for sure, after all this. Was, where did Bill Weber even come from? He was part of the whole, like, private equity takeover, but I don't, was he

Spacey at all before that? I don't get the sense that he was. I don't know what I don't know what he did before, but he did he did like take over the company when AE bought the company in 2022. I'm literally going to his LinkedIn right now, so hold on. We're doing some

research here. No, like nothing no. It's all just like random corporate things. So I think that's another aspect. He embraced that too. Like he would embrace that in conversation. Like he brings a fresh perspective to running a launch business.

Sure. Also, there's just a thing though that all the companies that are moving fast and efficiently are at the current moment generally run by founders who are into space. Like that's where that industry is at the moment. You can, there are so many pitfalls with all. the founders out there for sure, but the companies that are doing the best are the people that had a strong vision and saw a way towards that vision by way of other programs. Honestly, part of me, that is part of why I'm like side-eyeing SpaceX decision to continue

to get into the USDA orbit vehicle contracts and gateway logistics and things that are a little bit outside of their typical path. Like, they want to eat it all. They want to do all of the different missions, and I get that. but there's still something to the companies that have been able to focus to some extent but be gritty about how they get there. Like nanorax is a good example. They just have always felt like a gritty company who just figure out programs to be involved in that are relevant enough to what they're working on. But then Fireflies always felt weird.

Like when they got the Clips contract and they were still where they were with Alpha. And then they were like also were partnering with Northrop Grumman to build new Antarys. They had just felt like a decorator crap. They were just grabbing shit that floated by and attaching it to their shell and being like, that looks pretty cool. That feels like it fits. Yeah. Yeah. We have to do that.

Let's do that one, too. I think when we talk about Max Polykov and their former New Sphere roots, I'm pretty sure the blue ghost Lunerlander had some kind of Ukrainian heritage or ties to New Sphere that when Newsphere was booted out, complicated things with the future of blue ghosts. And I mentioned that idea in a story one time, and Firefly was not happy about it. But so I'm curious to see how Blue Ghost fares, not just because of that, but I assume they've obviously adapted that lander

to have more U.S. roots, and I think it's a more independent system now and they expect to launch it obviously. But you know, this CEO ouster is just the latest for a company that has been through so so much other shit in the past. I also think that what you're talking about is becoming like more than norm for launch companies. Like we wrote I wrote like a state of the launch industry story in April and, you know, Rocket Lab is doing more than just launch and relativity has like a 3D printing business. And ULA is really one of the only launch companies that's just doing launch.

So you can argue like four or against the business model, but I think launch companies by and large are getting into kind of other industries to launch their own stuff. Does Relativity have a 3D printing business? Because I think that's an interesting. Or is Relativity a 3D printing business has been my whole theory all along. They've tried to focus so much on, like when we talk about a company, on their mission, they have refused for so long to use 3D printing, 3D printers for anything

other than printing rockets. I haven't checked in on them in a while. I've actually, I've heard different. I've heard that they are involved in some programs that are more on the classified budget side of things, but that also is not helped by the fact that they canceled their first rocket because it kept cracking because they were printing it and it cracked and it wasn't good. So like that is a little bit complicated. Yeah. Right. Right. Well, they, they, They decided to cancel that rocket long before the rocket's accident, like a year before, I think. Because it was cracking. It was all the cracks.

Because it was cracking. Oh, right. Sure, sure. This was like an incanto situation. I don't know if incontos is more of just Jacqueline and I's territory on this situation. Okay. Tim Ellis is the mirrorbell of relativity. I do like, though, that of the examples you listed, Jacqueline, like the only less sure business model than launch is

lunar landers and Firefly was like, that's the one. We're doing that one. We're going there. That's true. We're going to the one with more, with less but higher ratio of companies that have gone out of business in this department before. So that's good. Give me the overrunners real quick. On Max Boycott returns, Northrop Grumman buys Firefly or random CEO enters and continues random

private equitying of the company. What are the, what's the power ranking of those scenarios? Random CEO, most likely. Yeah. That would be my bet. Then, I'm thinking then North Grumman. At some point, Northam Grumman's buying this company, right? Didn't Lockheed just make some kind of strategic invest in?

Lockheed does that to everybody. Lockheed will just like, if you got a small launcher and you paint it black, we will throw some money your way. Like, that's, that's the trick for them. So. taxes return is least likely. Yeah. All right.

Joey's in the running to be the CEO and acquire Viper as a mass simulator to be used on the moon for reporters' sake. So you heard it here first. Before we're out of here, for both of you, people should follow along with what you're working on. Joey, what should people check out that you've been working on these days? You'd follow me on Twitter. I don't tweet that much

but yeah just read Reuters. Reuters is awesome. We do awesome work. But I mean, yeah, I'm focusing a lot on Starliner. Falcon 9, return to flight, whenever that happens.

And I think international security in space is interesting too. So, yeah. Jacqueline, what's you up to these days? You got a whole thing on that at payload these days. Yeah, so people should definitely subscribe to our daily newsletter. We send Monday through Friday at 9 a.m. You can subscribe at

payloadspace.com. We're obviously covering all the news of the day that Joey just mentioned, but I will do a quick plug for Tim was recently over in Japan and did a lot of good reporting. He was at these two different conferences and talked with high-ranking people at a lot of Japanese space startup. So we are going to have a series of stories that are going to start publishing tomorrow, actually so you're getting like the sneak peek about sort of the state of Japanese space startups and the commercial space industry there that I have read the one that's publishing tomorrow and it's very interesting so people should definitely check those out. That's awesome. We got to get Tim back on because Tim came on and we I think Jake enjoyed it because he and I

sort of fought about the Space Force for like 20 minutes and we had a great time and it was lovely so we got to get him back on here. That was a good time. Man. Wait, was he was in there was some conference going on over in South Korea. Where did you say he was? Japan. Tokyo. Yep. Tokyo. He's far away.

That's a trip. Man, that's legit. That's a travel budget right there. That's some things that the independent podcaster section are not blessed with as a travel budget of any regard. Next week, I've got a fun one next week. Jake's still traveling. So what I thought I would do is get both of my favorite LGs on the show at the same time. So Lauren Grush and Lori Garver are going to hang out.

we're doing the LGs episode. So if I've left out any LGs that come to mind, I'm sorry, but I feel like I got all of them. I don't know if any other LGs. So neither of you are offended, so I guess I didn't miss any, which is good. All right, everybody, thanks for hanging out, and we'll see you next week.