Off-Nominal - 169 - Sexy Atlantis

Episode Date: October 4, 2024

Jake arrives sad about space, and Anthony tries to cheer him up. We talk ISS, Artemis, budgets, and government strategy and goals.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 169 - Sexy Atlantis - YouTubeNASA is working on a plan to replace its space station, but time is running out - Ars TechnicaNASA confirms space station cracking a “highest” risk and consequence problem - Ars TechnicaThe politically incorrect guide to saving NASA’s floundering Artemis Program - Ars TechnicaA key NASA commercial partner faces severe financial challenges - Ars TechnicaOne company appears to be thriving as part of NASA’s return to the Moon - Ars TechnicaFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. I'm getting shit in the chat already, Jake. I'm just reading the chat, yeah. I'm just reading the chat. What a way to start the show, a dolphin slatter. I'm getting Jacques Cousteau shit. I have not watched any more Jacques Cousteau filmography since the last time we talked.

You had enough marine gore for one like when he was out. I mean, I want to see his evolution into, you know, conservationist, I guess. I do want to go on the character arc. I'm just laughing the way you characterize that too, or he's just like on the boat like, oh shit, we just, we just, killed like all those dolphins. What were they doing there? Oh my God.

Dude, it was nuts. It was, it's totally nuts. What a shame. You apparently haven't watched it. No, I will, I will not. Yeah. What's up, buddy? Not much, man. How are you? I heard you sad. I heard you sad. You told me your, an hour before this show, Jake told me that what we should talk about today is he is sad about space things and he wants me to cheer him up. Yeah, yeah. I do have to warn you, all I've been listening to for the last month is a crying baby and swing state election ads. So I don't know that I'm the one to cheer you up too much. What's been your favorite election ad so far? There is an ad running in the Philadelphia area in which it is a, I don't know if it's the Trump

campaign itself or a pack I should see next time because the ending is absolutely stand-up comedy level SNL bit funny, which is, it's about, it's like culture war stuff. And at the end, it ends with Kamala Harris for they, them, Donald Trump for you. Oh, yeah. It kills me. It kills me. Because that's like,

that is straight up an S&L bit and it's absolutely hilarious. Yeah, that one gets me. It's a total Shane Gillis, it's like it's, it is, like it is, it's amazing and it's a legit ad. Maybe I'll try to find it on,

on YouTube and send it your way because it's, it's excellent. So that one sticks the landing. I saw the graph about like, like, like spending per state on ads and like you guys are just getting clobbered. It's like, Like you're 10xing any other state in spending. The real shame is, you know, I grew up on the New Jersey side of this area here and

they get the same ads over there, same TV networks, but they don't get any of the voting benefits of that. Yeah. Yeah. So the half of the TV networks, half of the TV, you know, audience is just getting obliterated with these things for no functional reason. That's funny. Yeah.

Anyway, but that's a good one. That's what I got. Yeah. All right. Did you bring a drink? I did, yeah. Rocking another Petito today. I went for the IPA this time. Nice.

You know what, man? Something happened with me in IPAs. Like, I want to say within like three years, like the last three years, because I was an IPA guy 100%. Yeah. That was my, I loved it. And I still like, my tastes have not changed. I love it.

But like, I cannot do more than one of the, two of these knocks me out. Like, I'm dead for the rest of the week almost. Like, I can't remember. recover from it. It's too much. To process. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I get that. Too heavy. Yeah. I used to be able to like just call. I could, I could, when I was young, I could do a six-back IPAs, like. I was young. I watched you drink three boots at the, at the IAC meet. So yeah. Yeah. And that wasn't that long ago. No. I think those might have an

years ago. I think they were. That was a legit, legit thing. Yeah. Yeah. Where do you go? Well, I keep telling you I found the last one of these, but I think I, 100% did this time. I've exhausted the back corner of my shelf. I found another space camper from Boulevard Brewing Company that was sent to us by the victorious Kansas City Royals. They won their playoff series, which is amazing because I'm pretty sure last year there were the Worst team in baseball. Did they win the baseball cup? No, they did not. We were only in the very early days of the playoffs. The Phillies have not even started playing yet. The playoffs, Jake, you will know when I start playing whatever song becomes the playoff run song.

so yeah that's what I got I got it all right hit me with this we're starting with the sadness there's been a lot of rocket news that we've not talked about but no we haven't um I think we should start with whatever the hell you're sad about okay so I was just like catching up on news and everything right as I do because I have like dedicated time for it now I used to just kind of like read it as it came in and I just yeah doesn't work for anymore so now I have like a day or it's just like all right and I just like oh right and I just like oh open 38 tabs and start reading. When the one benefit of that is you see the trends better though, like it doesn't

it's not a trickle feed, right? You're actually like, I just read like 15 articles that were all written. Okay, cool. And so I was doing that today. And I got a little down. I got to admit I was just like I saw a couple trend lines that I didn't like. And the, I mean, the overall thing is I'm not feeling super good about the future of space right now.

And I want to see if you can... Capital F, capital S. Help me. Future of space? Like, no particular area of space? Are you feeling good at them? Three areas. Three areas.

But I think they're related, though. Yeah, get your notes. Okay, so the first thing where I'm like pretty depressed right now is the ISS. Because like, there aren't any wins coming out of this program right now. Like, there haven't really been for a while, right? Like, we got the thing is like falling apart. It's got this real bad leak that's like accelerating now. And we have like the Russia thing is just, like it's not getting any better.

It's still got it's a lot of runway to get worse with Russia. Like let's put it that way. And it probably will. It's going to use that runway. Yeah. I mean, side note on that, they still are only committed through 2028. And I don't actually know what happens if they don't extend that. Yes.

Yeah, that's fun. Yeah, that's part of it. Starliner, not looking good. So, like, that's half of a flagship program that is just not performing, right? And then I was like, well, okay, maybe there's some hope, you know, for, I don't know, private, but like, it's pretty murky there, right? Like, we got axioms, space station things, like, not a healthy outlook right now. They're in trouble with that. everything else is PowerPoint.

So it's like, I don't know. So I was like, I'm pretty down on ISS right now. And I think that's going to be like, there's like a sad sort of end of the era thing happening with that. And I don't know. So that's my first thing. We'll pause there. Yeah, the other thing I was going to pull up was that the Axiom space, was it the Forbes report? That was like, Axiom Space doesn't have any money left?

Yeah, and they like overhired and everything. Yeah, I don't pay for Forbes, so I can't read it, but I'll link in the chat or I'll link in the show. It's for anyone they can. They tossed, uh, the Sephardini is not there anymore, right? Yeah, that was, uh, that was a while ago. A while ago at this point. Right. But probably related, right?

Yeah, seems related. Those departures always are, you know, we haven't talked about, um, Phil McAllister becoming just a senior advisor at NASA rather than the head of commercial space. and I have not sniffed around that one too much. Also not good for the future of space. Not good, but also like, yeah, I mean, that one's tough because it didn't feel like there was anything in particular that was like a triggering event. And he's been there for so long.

And all of the things that he's touched, like you have to mark down as a win. So whatever. But all right, so you're, we're starting at the ISS. We're scoping it to the ISS. No win. All right, I'll try to find some wins for you on the ISS Jake. Dragon is doing pretty well. That seems to be good.

I think it's safe to say that the additional crew member that we've got in the commercial crew era has been going well on the ISS. There's a significant increase in crew time. That seems good. Like that actually panned out. That was one called shot from NASA that has tracked. that might just be keeping up with inflation though because the maintenance costs on that are also going up right

that's getting your cost of living wage increase that's a really fun one to look into yeah like they but they quantified it at the beginning of um they quantified the crew hours at the beginning of the four crew member us orbital segment right because everybody's got to remember there's two segments of the isis they are joined but they operate independently in most ways other than like sharing power and you know, thermal resource and all that. There's four crew members over on the U.S. side, and they quantified the number of hours that were going into investigations. And it was, like, shamefully little before the four crew member variant of the operations

have come up. And it, like, I don't know if it increased it by magnitude, but it felt like it was close to that. It will because, like, it's... Low hours to a work week. It's incremental over the minimum maintenance time, right? So, like, if you have three astronauts that are done, doing, let's pretend they have 40-hour work weeks. So three astronauts doing 120 hours of work in a

week. If it takes 100 hours to maintain the station, you got 20 productive hours. You add that fourth crew member, you triple the time, right? You go from 20 to 60 of productive time, right? So yeah, the fourth one should give you a ton of extra time, right? Let me ask you one question about that that I find interesting. We always talk about Axiom private missions, and not just Axiom, but private astronaut missions, because Axioms lose money on these things, reported everywhere. Others want to get into the game, like VAST wants to get into these private astronaut missions. So others may do it eventually. We talk about how national astronauts are a really good market, like selling some country their first astronaut or an astronaut at all.

When you're talking about that, right, every crew member that NASA or Issa or Jaxor or Canada flies up is an incremental boost to crew time. Is there nothing that NASA would take advantage of on like a super discounted seat and send somebody up for like to, weeks, like a NASA astronaut on one of these flights. So, like, having NASA actually purchased, like, AX-4 seats or something like that? It's like the cheapest, cheapest ISSC they could find. Yeah, maybe, yeah. Like, what if they bought one up on four and one down on five? Now that we know that you can ride on a, you know, wherever you keep the dishes in Dragon.

Yeah. I mean, they could. It's a funding issue, though, right? Like, that's incremental, incremental spend, right? So, yeah. I don't know. I mean, why not, why not just buy more dragon flights and send forth a group? Why doesn't he just start buying dragon flights?

Yeah, true. I mean, start stacking them up. Yeah, I don't think availability is the issue there, right? Like, I think if NASA wanted to have more astronauts up there, they would. Or if they could afford and wanted to, they would, I guess, is the qualifier you put in there. Really like their plans, which is... Yeah, they do. I actually want to know, like, how much of a train wreck this Starliner situation was to the crew rotation plans, you know?

Yeah. That seems... Yeah, it's not good. Nightmarish. And it might get worse, too, right? Like, for the Russians as well, because if they have to close off that module with a leak, they lose a docking port, right? So now that makes it even... You read this leak document, this OIG leak report.

Can you give me any... Anything good in there? There wasn't any nuggets. Like, if you read the burger. article, you got it all. So, yeah. But I mean, they, they did the same thing that I'm doing right now, which is they're assembling individual topics and going, hey, look, this is a conjoined problem.

This thing doesn't work well anymore. Yeah. So they were, they were talking about the leak, obviously. But then they were also talking about MMOD, which is a problem, especially with debris getting worse. They talked about, they talked about Starliner, basically just like we have one provider. and there's no evac plans. Like if we had to do something like, you know,

I think that's related to the SpaceX contract we saw for emergency, whatever, right? Right. And then they talked about, there was one more topic and now I'm blanking on it. It was, it might have been crew time stuff, but. I thought there was some like deorbit. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Related stuff in there, right? Yeah.

So, you know, risk basically because of Russia not signing on. And can you deorbit this in time? like what's that going to look like and all that kind of stuff. So, you know, it's scary. What is the actual, how does it work if Russia's like, no, we actually want to bail in 2028? I don't think that will happen. But if that does, but the other partners are all signed on in 2030, what happens?

I don't know. Because, I mean, I think, I think it ends. Like, I think, I think this is a, this, you need 100% compliance on this agreement. I don't think it's like a majority rule of sort of situation. But you know what's like crazy about that is this is a scary thing to say, but like it's 2024 right now. They to get, you know, to renew the 2028 agreement, they probably have a couple of years to take care of that.

Like I think by 26, maybe 27, you need to have that figured out, right? So you can put stuff in motion. A lot can happen in Russia in two years, man. Like I don't know what. So, yeah, we'll see what it looks like. I mean, the key is, yeah, they're asking the chat. U.S. owns Zarya, correct, but not the other parts of the Russian module. And then there's different jobs that everything does.

There's different roles that they would need to take over. And I think Zarya is like pretty like shut down, isn't it? Like, hasn't it? Like the functions it had in the early station have been sort of like deactivated and passivated. And isn't that the one where they fold the panels in because there's no room for the panels to be out because there's other panels in the way. There's all the other modules there.

Right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I don't know how useful Zaria is. No, it's just in the middle. There. It's just a tunnel now. But I think the key is like does the, you have to get the, the deorbit vehicle contract has to go so well for just generally.

Like there's no, there is no real margin for the deorbit vehicle. Which looking at the design of it, I'm like, all right, it should be, it should be okay. It shouldn't be too many unknowns here. We've got a dragon body. It's one of those things where like, a shitload of Dracos. If you screw it up, you can cause some problems, but it'll still come down. Yeah, sure. Maybe you'll hit the wrong spot.

Maybe there's some like damage, like very worst case. You have some, I don't know, some property damage or loss of life, God forbid. But like it'll come down, you know. The project will probably be successful in that respect. Yeah. How do you feel about this thing that came out? earlier this week, where if a dragon is reentering and the parachutes don't, if all the parachutes fail, they're able to do propulsive landing? I feel like I read the details weirdly

about this. That was pretty wild. But it kind of makes sense, though, right? So I know that NASA does not love the propulsive landing, but in a situation where the parachutes have broken and you have the thrusters and they're fueled up. Yeah. Like obviously you want to turn those on. Yeah. Messing around with that. There's not, no, they're too risky.

Like, no, that's not even a question at that point, right? So like, it does make sense to put that plan into place. Like, let's, let's pre-think that through so that in the event that there's actually an issue, we can just go, bhm-m-up, and you're good, right? Like, not even you to press a button. Like, it would just automatically happen, like, you know, to detect a parachute failure and go from there. But I really, I don't think that's too weird.

I really hope they do that. Just to test. No, you don't want to parachute. Not with people. Not with people. No, no. I'm not even on a mission. I want them to like take whatever the cargo dragon they hate the most is. You know, because they're all,

spacecraft are all quirky. I'm sure there's one that people are like, God, I have to work on this freaking thing again. Like this one sucks. You know, the shuttles were all different. It's like working on Columbia when the area. Yeah,

and they're all different. Everyone had their favorite. Sexy Atlanta. It was like ready to go. Sexy Atlanta. That's what I'm going on. This is Halloween. Atlanta's the sexy shuttle.

It's the thinnest one. It had the least amount of weight. I just hope they take whichever dragon that is, and then, you know, let's throw some experiments on it that we don't care about that much. Like, do some Cygnus Disposal class experiments inside on the way home

and then do a propulsive landing test. That would be awesome. That would be pretty cool. They can do that while they're sitting around waiting for their FAA license for Starship. I don't feel like I have, I'm being honest, Jake. I'm sad about the ISS as well and I don't really have anywhere to help you. I shouldn't have let off with the ISS with you since you're already just like,

I'm hard and cold on ISS, right? We've known each other for damn near a decade now and you know how many times it went back and forth. I still think to state my position in the year of 2024 here, I still do think the ISS was a thing that kickstarted so many different ends of the commercial space industry in really interesting and profound ways. And that will be its greatest legacy. And if we can ever trace any the research back to the ISS of like long duration human spaceflight, super cool. But I think the greatest legacy will be all of the, in NASA parlance, all of the spinoffs, which is this, I hate

spin-off policy. This isn't a spinoff though, right? I wouldn't call it a spin-up. It's a development platform and it's like produced it's produced product right so that's that's that's legit and that's awesome uh the other aspect is i think um what we're talking about with the de-orbit situation is definitely a forcing mechanism for nassah to sort this stuff out and i think that's been the the more we get into the 2020s the more that pressure is there and nasa has to figure out okay we need the fund a u.sd orbit vehicle. I just wish they were taking commercial Leo more seriously five, six, seven years ago. And as I've been my main criticism of the Bill Nelson era of NASA, you had the greatest geopolitical opportunity of your life to get a billion dollar level funding for commercial Leo. And you

completely missed the opportunity to take that, largely because the budget is stifled out by everything else that's going on. But there has never been, I could not come up with a better situation to to 5x the funding for commercial Leo than they were given in 20 what was that 2022 2023 right February 2023 um and none of that happened 22 to for two is it been almost two years or one one and a half years it's only been one and a half years right or that is what yes almost two years is one and a half years it's been too long how much i slept last night yeah yeah the only thing about that before we move on to the next topic is, like one way to look at that cynically is that the reason that Bill Nelson didn't get a shit ton of money to replace the ISS with

commercial things is because commercial stations don't solve the main problem the ISS was created to solve, which is to keep Russia and engineers busy making space stuff and not rockets, right? Like, not missiles. So like that doesn't help. Like commercial stations don't have Russian partnership, right? So like, no, it's like, you know, if you're, if you're, If you're like a super high level thinking Congress, people are just like, I don't care about how you discovered how to make T cells do something weird in the body and ZERG. I care that this kept Russian nuclear missiles pointed in different direction. Yeah, right.

So that's your cynic take on that. Yeah, honestly, I think, so Eric, friend of the show, Eric Berger has been on a kick of writing articles that are very related to things that I've been yelling at him for years, which I'm happy about. And I don't think he ever disagreed with me on these topics, but he did finally write a really awesome piece with a newly redesigned Ars Technica that I think looks great. And one of those is about the fact that, you know, like, he asked Pam Melroy, basically,

do we actually need long duration human spaceflight in Leo? You know, because that's the critical issue here is, do you want to replace the ISS? Do you want to continue this, like, permanent habitation of Leo? Is there enough to find there versus what you would do with that money? I still don't feel like that argument has been made well enough. It hasn't. I know that, and my biggest thing, you know, I'll pull up this article, but one of the things

that they point to, if I can find the button that I need to hit to show us and the screen, is that this one? Yeah, there we go. Now it looks like we're in a loom. It does look like we're in a loom. Shout out loom. The thing that they talk about is like, we are using this to extend the time in which we're comfortable with humans remaining in space,

and we've now extended it up to one year. But I do not feel like it is evident where are the points that you're applying pressure to push that north of one year? Like, is the two-year ISS stay? I hate to break to you, we're running out of time if you want to do a two-year ISS stay. So if we are going to run that experiment,

or a year and a half, or whatever, we are really close out of time to stay. start that project? So one of the ways that they're actually pushing that timeline forward? I have two thoughts about that. So one is that I don't think they're ready for a two-year mission. I don't think that they feel good enough about like mitigations to health to make that worth it. Like I feel like I'm forever affected by Scott Kelly's book and describing his experience coming back after a year. Actually, it wasn't even a year. It was it was 11 months, right. And he came back and he was he was in rough shade man. There was like severe problems that he had to

deal with for a while to get better. And it's like I think about it to your mission and that would like wreck somebody. And I don't know if I don't you know the ISS, we might be hitting the limit of the ISS in terms of how long of a mission it can support from the physiological perspective. Right. And that's a and that's my non-scientific hunch. So toss that out if it's garbage human health people. And please. This reminds me that we have an email thread that we need to follow up on, I think, right? Related to this? We do.

Okay. Noted. Resurrect that one. We're going to state that in public so that we are held live for it. Yeah, exactly. The other thought I have is just like making us live longer in space is not a strong enough objective on its own. It has to be part of the bigger plan.

I don't think we have that bigger plan. You can't just be like, we need to extend the ISS so we can do it to your mission. It's like, no, we're not. I don't want to spend $8 billion to see if we can last two years in space. That is just not a good value proposition, right? It's, you know, it's $4 billion a year to support the ISS. So I think that's also the best argument for like a lunar surface space is that you can, you can do ISS length expeditions to a lunar surface space and work your way to a two-year stay,

you know, at shackleton crater or whatever. Yeah. rather than maintain a Leo platform. That would be a better analog for Mars too because the radiation environment is more similar, right? So you're not in the safe zone. We're both, I think, in support of just building a fucking moon base. Okay, well, let's talk about Artemis. Yeah, let's hear it.

I don't have a very coalesced thought on this, but more and more, like, this is kind of related to the KCE Anmer article that came out his very angry rambly blog that is unfortunately very on point. It is like the technical underpinning of Artemis is appearing to me more and more hamstrung than we already thought it was. I was cynical about SLS like in 2020 and then I got really cynical about it after the first launch and now I'm like even more cynical about it. Like, my attitude towards it is getting worse, which is like telling because it wasn't very good to begin with. But like, I'm super worried that nothing else matters in Artemis because like this rocket is just like we're just stuck with it.

And it's just, it's costing so much money. And there's going to be no, there's no incentive to change it because that's the point of it. The point of it is to keep those people working. Right. So I almost think like every time someone there's discussion about Artemis strategy, it's like, does this matter? you know it's not really a money problem at this point it is and isn't right yeah like the I think didn't we do a show a couple weeks ago that was titled like the the wedges are wedging or something I think I got on the rant that that Eric ended up writing up which was like the only

way out is is canceling gateway and yeah yeah block 1B sLS and any through the little stunt on the end, which was you sent our five as the upper stage for the SLS. I need to ask him about how that that part came about here and like who he talked to about that being the third bullet point on the plan was make Centaur 5 the upper stage. Gateway is the only way out of the current Artemis logjam. And if it were to happen, if we were to be in a world in which Gateway was now canceled and what Artemis meant was lunar surface, I think that would clarify things in a very helpful way, and it would help organize things in a way that cannot be organized at the moment.

And the biggest argument that people make for keeping gayway is like, you know, I mean, there's the weird argument of like, you need a way station, which I think both of us would discount offhandedly. I don't know, how you feel about needing a way station, you know. You need somewhere to stretch your legs. or so Ryan's fine for you. Okay, so quick thoughts on Way Station. An intermediate piece of infrastructure between two points on a journey is only really

useful if it's if it's a branching point, right? Like you need a place where like it's like a hub, you know, a transfer hub. Like you think about airplanes, right? Like you connect from in some city to go somewhere else. That hub has like more than one goal of just getting you to the other place. Right. So it's transferring a whole bunch of stuff. It's a node in a network, right?

So if Gateway was actually doing that, if there was people going from Earth to the Moon, people going from Earth to Mars and people coming from Mars to the moon, and if you had that happening, a waste station starts to make more sense. In the current planet, it doesn't. No, that's my first principles take on it. Yeah, it's a rest stop, not an airport hub. Yeah, yeah. It's a rest stop that's like a half hour off the highway to the left, you know?

Right, yeah, it's the annoying one that you're like, it says 1.2 miles, but like, I can, it's going to be a while. I do want a road Coke, but is it going to be worth an hour? I don't think so. So the other argument is the whole like geopolitical side of listen, all the ISS partners are already signed on to the gateway and they're into it. And you know my rant about this. That was relevant when we were worried about Russia being the one that would come with us and keeping it within that context. Russia has no interest in coming to the gateway with us.

They have no interest to going to the surface with us. And I think Canada. Same problem with the ISS existing, yes. but I think Canada is the only ISS partner that has not already stated a thing that they would do on the lunar surface. Is that true? Or do you know if Canada has done any statements

of what they would be interested in for the lunar surface? Well, we're in a tough spot because we made a pretty large commitment to Canada Arm 3 and we don't have a big space agency. So like, if you want to make a meaningful contribution, if Canada wants to make a meaningful contribution

to the lunar surface, they either need to increase funding significantly or cut Canada Arm 3. And like both of those are... Both of those are not very palatable, right? But I guess at that point I would be looking at is Canada Arm 3 is the robotics component. You're going to need some sort of robotics on the lunar surface to do stuff when people aren't necessarily there. Like could that be purposed or repositioned or... It could be.

I think the more likely route is that they... Unless Gateway actually gets canceled, in which case things could be reassessed. because then it's not them throwing out the arm. But if gateway sticks around, like I would imagine Canada contributing smaller, like robotic rovers. So like from a either from like a construction purpose, like help you build things autonomously

or like scouting exploration from a base, I think would be a place where where Canada would step up. Like, you know, we're, we're the smallest partner, right? Like we're way smaller than Jacks or Issa in terms of contributions. So like you're also nobody like, So Issa has said that they want to do these large cargo landers,

and I think there's even some habitat drawings that they have shown as like, maybe we could do this. Jaxa has the badass-looking pressurized rover that they're working on. I think everybody would be fine if we were like, oh, we brought a friend in Canada. Like, they're here hanging out with us. Like, if you guys were the friend that, like, crashed on the couch for a night down on the lunar base, I don't think anyone would be like,

but what the hell did you pay to get here? You know, nobody would be too worried about that. Maybe. Maybe. I don't know. We'll see. We'll see. as a policy.

But anyway, point being, that geopolitical argument only made sense in that context when when Russia was a part of this. But the rest of the partners, we'll figure out what to do with Canada. It's not a big concern. The rest of the partners, on a large scale,

have stated intense interest in doing something on the lunar surface. And specifically, we all know what they are in this for. They all want their people to walk on the moon. Like, that's not a... Canada's not pumped about, oh, Jeremy Hansen's, going to fly around the moon. I mean, they're pumped about that, but that's not the whole reason

that they're in this thing on a grand scale. It's not like, one day, we will have someone at the gateway and we'll see Canada on doing its thing with the moon in the background. That is not what they're in this for. Everybody wants feet on the moon at some point, as part of this program, that is what everybody's there for. Yeah. Yeah, I think you're right. But I think the gateway issue, I think, is separate from the rocket issue, though, right? Because you can cancel gateway and you can redirect all these funds to lunar infrastructure and everyone can be on board. But unless NASA eliminates or severely downplays the role of SLS, you still can't do any of it, right? Because that's currently the only vehicle that's going to send half of this shit there anywhere, right? Let me convince you.

Let me convince you that you're thinking about this incorrectly. In my vision and in Eric Berger's vision in this article, canceling Gayway cancels SLS 1B, which is a huge amount of funding for for EUS, for the new mobile launcher. And detaching like the funding that is freed up from that move not saying it all applies immediately to

Artemis program, but the negative space that is there makes the rest of the surface missions more likely. And when we are putting everything else in place that is needed for those surface missions, you can fly your way out of SLS Block 1 much easier than

you can fly your way out of SLS Block 1B in a gateway. So fly your way out of it. What do you mean by that? If I said this all along, if there is a starship that can land on the goddamn moon with however many refueling flights that they need, we are not going to be limited to flying to the moon once a year. I hope so, man.

That is not a thing that anyone in this country will let happen, for sure. I think, I hope so because the, like, what you said, you know, getting rid of the upgrades, which are like just an anchor around the neck of this program. program. That gets brutal, right? Let's see freeze the design right now and, you know, block one or whatever's called

is the only thing that ever flies and then, you know, maybe you have to swap out to a centaur at some point. But if you freeze that design, like, it still depends on Boeing, like, doing a good job. And I don't know how to say that nicely. It's just not looking good right now that, you know, like the problems they've had in that other report about their quality control issues at Michoud, we're seeing that manifest in Starliner and in the airplanes. I'm not happy about them being in charge of this rocket, right?

Like, it's, we've had one flight, we have, which means we basically have zero data on its reliability. Like we have one, we have one thing that it worked, which might have been a good rocket and it might have been a fluke, you know? And we already know that the heat shield is having problems. So like Lockheed is obviously not taking care of their side of things up there. Boeing and Lockheed separate contractors working on a completely integrated system with only NASA as like the communicator between them.

We've had that discussion a hundred times, not a well managed. Like the project management structure of this thing is not very good. Lockheed and Boeing, not the best of friends in most cases. So it's wild. Like I, it's a really strange thing. I don't know.

It's like how we used to always do things. in today's age, the setup of SLS is wild. Like, it's just, it's unbelievable that they chose to do that. Like, Orion SLS are sometimes, like, described as separate systems, but they, there is a one to one ratio in SLS and Orion flights. Like, Orion cannot launch anything else. And SLS can't launch anything else. So, like, they're the same system, you know. So it's, I don't know, I'm just like, I'm not super confident.

I don't know. I don't know how many corners. you have to cut and down scoping you have to do before it gets palatable, but I think it's more than what you're describing. Probably. I think, though, the issue is the gateway, the, if you keep the gateway, how should I even approach this argument?

I don't even know, but the architecture of building out the gateway requires SLS 1B and Orion to, because Orion is the thing that does the, navigation from pulling this off the rocket to docking to the gateway. Gets the cargo there, yeah, yeah. Yeah, it does the Apollo style turnaround, grab the cargo out of the SLS upper stage, and then tug that to the moon, do all the rendezvous and docking operations that it needs to

put the module where it's going to go on the gateway, and then presumably undock and go to where Orion would like to sit on the gateway. And so if you had the gateway still, you would have to start a program to build a tug that is genericized and can take, you know, five or ten tons or whatever of a module from Earth all the way to the gateway. And I don't know what that program would run you, but it would be a lot. About EUS costs? Yeah, about at that point, I'll take the giant rocket. And like, let's just put Northup in charge of it just so we can have the trifecta on, like, you know, you know. Got to do it. Yeah. And that will only launch on an SLS block one.

Yeah, yeah. I can't possibly be flown on anything else. Anyway, the architecture is also a one-to-one pairing of gateway flights to block one flights, block one-B flights. And so that's the part that I find, you know, even if you cancel the gateway and none of that funding came to Artemis, I still think that's a win. I think if you had the Artemis budget minus the gateway and block one-B stuff and that budget also disappeared, I think we'd still be more successful on a long scale than we would with the, Gateway, even if the funding with the rest of the shit increased. Yeah, probably. Again, I don't think we disagree in that. I don't think we disagree on that.

I think we agree that Gateway going away improves the program. I'm on board with that one. This is whether that's enough to... I don't know. I think it's becoming increasingly likely that China gets there first. And we've talked about this before. Like, I don't actually give a shit if China beats you guys to the moon.

You know, like, I don't, I don't think that's the actual issue. But I think what that kind of highlights is that it, like, underscores that they can accomplish things when NASA can't. You know what I mean? Like, it's sort of like, it's not really the actual objective that matters. It's the fact that they were able to succeed at it. Doing stuff. I think right now the NASA situation is just like no one is really kind of clear on what they

want to do. Like it's just really, really muddled in terms of objectives. And there's like, this is how you want it sometimes. You want like 10 objectives that align so you get like a consensus and a coalition to get something done. But I feel like all the different objectives are like only kind of aligned. And so like this thing is like barely being held together by by the various, you know, stakeholders that want to do something with this. And I'm, I'm worried about how fragile it is.

Like, I just, I just feel like it's, I don't know, there's like, because there's a whole bunch of parts of this program that feel very Hail Mary to me. Like, the suits, very Hail Mary. It's just like, yeah, we can't solve this. So, hey, companies, can you? And then two of them were like, yeah, we can. And the one of them was like, actually, no, we can. And then the other one's like, by the way, I have no money. So, you know, like, that's like a very hail. It's the suits. Yeah. Well, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, that's a, That's a critical dependency, right? Maybe you're trying to.

Yeah, maybe. Sounds like theirs are ready to go, right? So you have that. And then HLS was kind of that. I think HLS will be okay because you have a pretty rock solid contract. HLS is the hell Mary. They threw to the greatest wide receiver in the world. Exactly.

They just threw that shit up and that guy is going to track it down. And no one's going to talk about it because he catches the ball. But like no one's going to be like that was a desperate crazy move. Like they had no plan. Ross out there. They're like, Randy Moss is going to catch this shit. Thank God SpaceX is a thing that exists because otherwise this Hail Mary would have been

caught by like North of Grumman or something and then you would, you know. Yeah, that's a she could. That's a chicode. Well, okay, but on that topic, though, I think that's actually an interesting, a thing that I have, there's been a lot of op-eds about like, you know, U.S. versus China stuff lately in the election year that we're in. Yeah. I find it interesting to consider exactly in the.

context that you just said. I think you stated it beautifully. Like, they can do it, we can't, is the comparison there. Um, China's currently speed running the 1960s to 70s space industry, uh, globally. And I wonder if the good comparison is like achievements on, on milestone achievements, you know, versus like, I think our superpower here in the ISS partner world is the larger space industry. The fact that we have a vibrant space industry is the achievement we should be after. And I think strategically for NASA, they aren't, their charter is specific, but also not very good good for the modern era. I don't think it gives them a really good guiding light on what their end goal should be. Should their end goal be a thing with a NASA logo is establishing a lunar base,

or is it morphing into, like, we just want to raise the tide of the commercial space industry so that we have all these capabilities and that their benefits come out in ways that we didn't expect. Because that's been the magic that NASA has done, right? They set out a certain project to do a certain thing,

and we get six side benefits we didn't even think about. And you can look at this on commercial spaceflight for cargo and crew that we've seen with SpaceX, and side effect was we got the greatest commercial launch provider

that world has ever seen. You could look at it with like the non-NASA parts of the U.S. government are trying to buy a lot of commercial imagery from imaging companies. That has shown its worth over the last couple of years very specifically in a handful of geopolitical situations where there is a start of that in the position navigation and timing side of the industry right now where there's companies trying to do

GPS alternatives because there's been GPS jamming happening. GPS is very expensive. It's a national asset that is like billions of dollars but only a, you know, dozens of satellites. So if there is a proliferation of position navigation and timing startups, like the overall space industry, I would say that should be the goal of NASA. And in that light, is Artemis architected correctly anyway, is a thing that that would concern me there. Like, not that the thing we have to compete then is that like, we've been critical of the way clips has run. But that's run in the way that I think it should be if we're looking at like, no, we just want to raise the industry generally so that we have more capabilities to take advantage of, you know. SpaceX is a more valuable national asset

than we could ever have directed our way into, you know? Yeah, yeah. That's a good way to think about it. If we develop 10 or 20 of those, is that better than, yeah, we did a national program to land on the moon? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think I'm with you on that one. That does raise my spirits a bit. It is a good way to think about it. I think I struggle with that. And this is like, this is a It's an incubator. It's a weird thing. It's part of their charter. It's not weird.

It's not, but they act like it sometimes and they don't others. And I think the conflict is where we get into problems. Yeah. Well, and also this is just, this is sort of just high level commentary on how America runs things. It's very messy. And like for every one thing that gets done, 10 things get killed, you know, like that's just, that's the, that's the capitalist. It's. Embrace the chaos.

Yeah. Good stuff flows the top. And I do not operate well in that environment. No, you don't. You don't at all. But I'm like, yeah, I'll take, I'll take an Apple if it costs me a couple of Lenovo's or whatever. Yeah, can we just make a plan and then agree together and shake hands and then do the work? Like, that's all I want.

But, you know, it's like, no, I'm going to, I got to kill every competitor and then hope that I get killed last. You know, like, it's a very weird way to do things. And I guess it works sometimes, most of the time. It's done all right, I would say. I would come to, I would stand that approach. Yes. So yeah, that's that's a me problem. I guess it's just coming to terms with that.

But no, you're totally right. Is it that that is like if you, if you do step back and go like, you know, if you were if you were a some third unnamed mystery, fictitious country and you're like, do you want the Chinese space program or the American space program? Like no one's going to pick the Chinese one. Like let's be serious. Like it's a completely neutral. Yeah, you're not going to do that.

So that's a good perspective to have. There's other, we talked about this last week with Joey, like the drone industry. If you picked like, which drone industry do you want? I don't know. I don't know if we're winning that one, Jake. Which semiconductor fabrication industry would you want? We're not winning that one, Jake. So like there aren't.

What's the new one that just opened? Yeah. But there should be like, yeah, I think, I think to the extent that we get distracted by whose lunar lander touchdown first with people is, is harmful to what I think the actual valuable part is, which is. it's valuable that we have a list of a bunch of companies that I've navigated to their websites and they all happen to look the same. But the fact that we have all those companies that have websites is pretty fucking cool.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, hopefully that I guess if you want to have the long-term look on that, with that perspective then, it's just like what at the end of the Artemis program, whether they beat the Chinese or not, call it, it's 2040 now. and you look back on it. It's like what, how is this space industry better because of it?

Is it, is it because of the lunar landers? Like, is it, you know, SpaceX and Blue have this new, like infrastructure and they're doing stuff there? Or is it,

is it like partners have, have grown because of it? Like, are, you know, have we created a, a better integrated economy between Japan and Europe and Canada and the United States?

Like, is the, what is the, I'll ask you, like, what do you think the objective of Artem is in that, in that, in that lens.

what should the objective be? What is the measure of success there? For me, it's the expansion of the development of space. In the way that I think the ISS is like its greatest legacy will be that expansion of the development of space to Leo and having a ton of side benefits that we didn't expect come out of that program. And we didn't expect to get not only the greatest commercial launch companies ever existed, the largest satellite operator with the best, you know, global internet service that there's ever been. all of that came out of

now I'm of the bent that like I don't think NASA is to credit for what SpaceX has done I would never take that approach I think SpaceX you know use the NASA programs that were there to work their way towards their own goals I've always said that that is their style and that's why they're successful

and others should emulate that thing in particular which is you know find where you can add value in the direction of your goals but but NASA didn't have to dictate we would like you to take cargo to the ISS and also to develop a viable commercial launch industry and satellite buses that you could sell to the NRO and internet service to Jake in Mexico and all these other things. It just happened because

to build your way there that had to happen. And I want that same idea to expand to the lunar area. So if people are interested in going to the moon, if it's Tudu machines or Blue Origin or whoever, whatever the hell they want to do out there, I would like them to have opportunities that they can leverage to get there. Yeah, yeah. And if we're funding that by way of Antarctica-style research, if that's what does it, cool. If it's national pride because we need to beat China there, that's also fine. But I think the guiding light should be, is this creating momentum in the direction of expanding? I'm like a humanist down to the core of needing to expand through the solar system. That is a dry, I think we talked about us in the religion episode, right? I see that as like the

human's goal because that's how all animals have operated. So if you can build momentum in that direction and I think that's transportation first, but then infrastructure second, then I'm there for it. Cool. Right. Yeah. Sorry,

it's not Utopia for you. Start trekking. I know. It's totally fine. It is a good way to think about it, and I need to think about that better. It's all about that messiness, though, right? Because it's like, if that's the goal, I'm like, I love that goal.

Soul's Planet, like let's write it down. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And then you're just like, no, you just got to do. it and then like some shit will float to the top and then hopefully it's cool and like you know like it's such a carefree way to like just like you know just it's carefree and it's not even guaranteed it might not work no maybe space suits is a commercial thing or not a thing this is just throwing a bunch of ingredients into a bucket and like maybe maybe you get maybe you get a cake you know but I think that's actually that that's what gives you longevity like yeah you know if if you're

somebody in politics that wants to do the U.S. versus China comparison, I think we need a little bit more insight into how these operations are actually run in China right now, but if the Chinese government at a national level stop being interested in any particular thing, would any of the momentum of those companies maintain? And if would, there might be one though. I don't know. There might be one in particular. Maybe. I don't know what these, I haven't looked into the corporate organization of these mega constellations that are cropping up there. One of them also is named Starlink. like G60 Starlink or some shit. That's weird.

But, you know, maybe some of those, I would be interested in what companies there continue with momentum. Because if NASA stopped funding SpaceX entirely, like say Elon did some crazy, crazy year shit on Twitter, and NASA stopped funding SpaceX, right? They stopped buying missions from SpaceX.

They stopped flying to the ISS to SpaceX. SpaceX would still keep doing its thing and they would find another way to do it. And they always have been that way. Like, NASA was not involved in, Falcon 1. They just were trying to figure that shit out. And the Air Force was to some extent, and others were. And they, it's been NASA happened to be greatly involved in Falcon 9 and Dragon and all that. But if that went away, I don't think the Starship program ends tomorrow.

No, it doesn't. No, they've got their feed under them now, right? So like, it's a job well done for NASA. They can wipe their hands of that one and move on to the next, the next incubator, right? But yeah. I guess also the argument of the FCC everyone's having about like FCC subsidy. and going to other people, not SpaceX. And it's like, I don't know, man. Like, they're doing all right. They're going to be. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, apparently FCC is killing people. That's the last tweet I heard about. Yeah, just directly murdering. It's fired up. Through hurricanes. They operate a heart now. That's what I do. No, you're totally right about that.

I guess the summary of my sadness on this one is, like, I think I just envy. China's ability to make a plan and do it. Like, it's such a simple thing. They're just like, we're going to do this in five years. And then five years later, there's like, that's what we did. Like, we just, we don't have any debate over here. So it just, we just say it's the law and then it's the law and then it goes forward.

And I know it's not what I actually want, but it's like there is sort of, no, I don't want that at all. I'm a very much a consensus person. But like, I do sort of envy this that ability to be like, it's just so simple. You know, there's no, you don't have to like lay awake and think about like, it's just like, is the plan and then it happens. It's why I bias towards companies that are clearly building momentum and not ones that are working towards like dead ends or uninteresting projects. You know, if you're a company that shows momentum in a particular direction.

That's the thing. Companies can do this really well. Like SpaceX is very much that as well. They're like, we're going to, eight years ago, he's like, I'm going to build this enormous, hilarious spaceship that is completely ridiculous. this and we're going to go to the other planets and like here we are they're doing it right like that plan is not changed that eight years later and that plan is not changed so like that's that's cool to see as well right then it's sometimes this is really hard to watch NASA be like well uh we're not

really sure what this problem with this so we're going to have a committee that makes a report that suggests having another committee to figure out what the plan is to understand the problem and then we'll you know and you're like uh Polaris program might be a really good example of this, Jake, that like, whatever the hell you would classify the Polaris program as. I saw Jonathan McDowell trying to understand what this should be listed as in his website, and nobody really figured that out. But, you know, name an organization that is helping to, like, infuse momentum into SpaceX development roadmap more than Polaris program at the moment. Yeah. Yeah, it's interesting.

I don't know that. I think SpaceX is building an HLS variant of Starship, but they would still be working on the same stuff, if not for the NASA contract. You know? But they wouldn't necessarily be working on the things that they are for the Players program. The role of Isaacman in SpaceX is a really interesting concept.

Like, sometimes I like step back and go like, what's going on there? Like, what is that? Straight up Lorenzo-Domenici-style stuff, man. Is it really just as simple as, like, he likes space and so he'll spend his money and go to space? Like, is it really that simple and he's just having fun? Or, like, is there, I don't know, it's interesting, man. It's, like, really.

Yeah, that's because you're uncomfortable with the chaos of, like, dude made a lot of money on payment processing and is also interested in investing some of that in the space. Like, I think that's, one thing that's weird is that investment, The term investment, though, I think, is so grouped with, like, financial return, when in this case, it's, like, straight up, he wants to invest so that there is more development in space. And that's kind of rad. The ROI he wants is, like, more capabilities. Yeah. You can't wait. I'd touch off about something. You want to know how much he has received of SpaceX, like, if there's any percentage owned or something? Maybe. I don't know. Like, is he getting, is he getting, I don't know, is he, like, he's, he's kind of helping invest. He's, he. He's kind of helping invest. stuff at SpaceX. And does he get, does he have any kind of IP rights to that? Is he, is he getting ownership or is he just like, no, it's fine, man. You guys take it really cool. I just want to go to space. And if you guys get something of that, fucking great. Like, is that all it is? Like, it just seems so strange. Like, I just, I can't think another way. But I think he's also

legitimately fine if he just has a really fucking cool Wikipedia page. Yeah, yeah. Which is, like, awesome. Like, if that's, if that's all it is, like, that guy's awesome. Yeah. Love it. I mean, it's like James Cameron, like all the stuff that he's done that's, you know, not just straight up making movies. That's in that ilk. And that the thing that I'm obsessed with that I sent you the link, Ocean X, this like Ray Dalio funded, the Ray Dalio philanthropic arm of like ocean research. And they've, apparently they shot a lot of my favorite scenes from Blue Planet too. And it's just this like epic ship that they have. That they don't, I haven't seen any other videos involve murdering sperm whales or sharks or.

animating coral reefs yet. You know, they're doing a good job with it. But I think the, and we've, haven't we done a show about, like, the old school, like, private space research that happened, like private observatories and private investment in this stuff? Did we do a show about that? Or is there just writing about it? Casey Dyer did a show about that.

That's what it is. Yeah, yeah. Space policy did specifically about, like, the old observatories. It was like the late 1800s. It was like every rich guy was buying a telescope, yeah. if that's the era we're in because our exploration technology has achieved that moment, then like it's really cool that we're here for that 100 years or whatever. Yeah, I hope it's 100 years.

Some sort of golden era. Yeah. Okay. I would say, do you feel uplifted by any measure? Yes. I'll give you 50% marks. I think you brought me up in Artemis, but we stayed. low for ISS.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We didn't get anywhere on that. You just agreed with me, and then we were sad together. I mean, I get, I think low-key, my, if we do another show, maybe this is the reason that we should do another show, Jake, of like, what would we do for NASA, dictator for the term? We might be due for that, because part of me wants to know if we just completely bailed on Gateway and ISS both. and not just ISS commercial Leo

and just went you know all out on lunar surface how that would how that would shake out yeah it's a good it's a good question yeah I think we're due for that we're due for the update there

how long was it was actually I always think it was like it's five years and it's like I don't know I don't think it was five years so was it I know the title was sorry I got to itemize Got too itemized. Yeah, some of these titles actually stick in my brain. So you can Google it.

That was episode 38. 38. Which was in... It's hard to tell that anymore now. Three years ago. Three years. Okay, yeah, I think we're due then. That's about one ministerial meeting away.

You know, we can do an... The whole phenomenon of ministerial. Yeah, it's January 26th, 206. 2021. So. Okay. Well, that's three and a half years. Yeah. Yeah. We're due. We're due. It was actually the, it was the previous NASA turnover. So I think we're on track. We should do this once a presidential cycle. Yeah. Okay. We should do it in January then. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Gives us a little heads up for it. So look at that. Little lead time. Little lead time. Yeah. I already know

changes I'd make. Until until until the last week of December. till the Wednesday before that show. So good. All right, buddy. All right. I don't necessarily think we put any, we have a couple of plans in motion, but I don't think we have anything stateable

for happening next week. No, unless you know something I don't know. We got a lot of seeds. We're still working on our schedule here. We'll see, we'll see which seed grows. Which seed grows first.

If Juno wants to be a part of that. Hello. Look at that. Wow. Hello, Junebug. Look at that. All right, y'all. Thanks for hanging out.

We'll see you next week. Bye. Bye.