Off-Nominal - 17 - Larry from Boeing

Episode Date: March 12, 2019

Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, joins Jake and Anthony to talk about DM-1, the future of the ISS, Shuttle and Starship aborts, and imagine what Boeing livestreams will look like. Meetup! March 17 in Houston! Off-Nominal Events Drinks Home | The Macallan Single Malt Evan Williams Bourbon | Home Space Goat - Phillips Brewing Company - Untappd Home Grown - Victory Brewing Company - Untappd Topics Watch SpaceX launch their first Crew Dragon Capsule from just 5km away! (LIVE at KSC) - YouTube Crew Dragon departs ISS and returns to Earth - SpaceNews.com Lonely Easter Island Will Be Emergency Shuttle Landing Site - latimes Gimli Glider - Wikipedia Picks Space Missions | The Planetary Society Amazon.com: Artemis: A Novel eBook: Andy Weir: Kindle Store Astrobiology | Vol 19, No 3 Apollo 11: Get Tickets | NEON Follow Tim Everyday Astronaut - YouTube Everyday Astronaut Everyday Astronaut (@everydayastronaut) • Instagram photos and videos Everyday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) | Twitter Follow Jake WeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to Mars WeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | Twitter Jake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | Twitter Follow Anthony Main Engine Cut Off Main Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | Twitter Anthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | Twitter Off-Nominal Merchandise Off-Nominal Logo Tee Team CAESAR Tee Team Dragonfly Tee WeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS is go for main engine, start. It's a big week, Jake. It's a huge week. Big week. We've got a friend Tim Dodd, the everyday astronaut here with us. How's it going? Hey, you know, it's going great. I'm not going to lie, it's going great. You had the best week of us three for sure.

Well, I mean, just because you guys weren't down there, yeah, but I'm not going to lie and act like that was a walk in the park that we either. I came home so sick because that was just like the no sleep. like hot, just dehydrated, just miserable. I feel so bad for you that you were in Florida at this time of the year. I know. I thought you were going to say,

I came back so drunk. Like still, still drunk. No, no, I have to work hard. That stuff you guys know. No, we're fake. This is our fake job. This isn't our real job.

You guys put down to Falcon Heavy. Yeah, but we just, drank. It was our fake job. We took days off of the real job to go down to it. Everybody was mad at us for that, but that's what it is. Hey, I mean, that's, yeah, in that case, it's really not too bad of a thing. I'm not going to lie. That would have been nice, but it's a lot of hard work. Like, uh, there's a surprising amount of exhaustion that happens when you're just running back and forth, carrying all this gear, setting up, the photographers that do this stuff, you know, I'm sure you guys follow like 90%

of the photographers that are out there at every launch. you know, the John Krausses and the Trevor Malmans and the Brady's and the Craig and all those guys. You know, those guys, they, they work too hard. I'm just going to say it. They work too hard. The nice thing for them, though, is they work too hard the day before and then they just watch. And then they work really hard the day after. You're right.

That's kind of a plus. I kind of had the worst of both, because I worked really hard to set up all those cameras. Also, if we record some videos while we're setting up cameras, and then, point, whole eye stream together, then tear down the cameras on no sleep. Like, it was, I need to learn how to just settle down and maybe do like one thing at once instead of 20, you know? Yeah, we had a, we were playing around with live video earlier this afternoon, and I have so much more respect for what you do after today, because we couldn't do

anything today. We were just stumbling. We had Twitch and Skype, and they were not talking, and then, and now we're doing it audio. Take post a great photo of the quality of video that we got streaming early. earlier. I don't know. We used to be, I feel like we, we did it a couple of weeks and it was really good. And then now I don't know what I did. But just take a look at that. I don't know what. That's not a photograph. That is that's the level of quality we were achieving today. I can't tell what it is. I'll make it the album art right now so that people can enjoy why they are, they're paying good money, which is no money for this audio experience right now. And you should be glad for it. It does look like one of those AI things where you type in like podcaster and it. it makes what it thinks a podcaster looks like. You're right. And let me apologize, too.

Normally, I like fancy mic work, so we're just doing like computer mic phone. I hope it sounds okay. You sound great. Let me apologize to your listeners, though, that, you know, I'm sorry, listeners that you are having a subpar experience.

And also, while I'm ranting, mass fraction, I believe that is the, they have that one SSTO that's super wacky. What was the DCX? The DCX as a profile. I love that.

Oh, man. That is cool. My dream podcast is to find one of the people that currently works for Blue Origin that worked on DCX, because there are a couple of those unicorns that exist in the world, and I have not yet been able to get in touch with them. So if you know that person, please email me or something. Or if you're listening and you are that person. Or you are that person, yeah. I didn't figure that was super likely, but.

Tim, what are you drinking over there? I saw you got something cooking. This is some McAllen, 12-year, a little scotch. 12-year, as long as the Orion parachutes have been in testing. I think it's even, I think that's even low, honestly. Wow. I thought that first was like laughing as like, ha-ha, that's a, and then I'm like, you're actually right.

That's like, factually, I think you're correct. I think I'm low. Wow. Anyway, is that like a go-to of yours? Those parachutes are aged well. What was that? Is that like a go-to? Is that like your- No, it's.

fancy stuff because it's I figured it would be a nice night to enjoy with my friends instead of just yeah you know I don't know normally I'm not gonna lie Evan Williams it's like the cheapest dirtiest whiskey is my that's my that's my no problem is I was like oh the founder of Twitter and no wait his name's Evan Williams is the founder of Twitter yeah no well one of them do you think it's him you think he license his name for this this whiskey? I mean, it didn't have any name recognition for me, but do you think there's still a crossover there? That's, oh, Chase says that. Chase, go investigate that. See if at Ev is from where you're from. Go knock on the door of Evan Williams,

if it's close to where you live and ask if he's the guy that started Twitter. Are you the guy that made Twitter? Yeah, because there's no one named Evan Williams more than twice. Like, come on. Definitely not. Jake, what do you got over there? So I really wanted to go find a beer that had a dragon on the label, and I was unsuccessful.

So I got the next best thing, and this is space goat. Ooh. Wow. That is an amazing. Oh, an oat pail. I can't do pale ales, but I like oats. Yeah, dry hopped oat pale ale from Phillips, Phillips Brewing and Malting Company. And this is uncharacteristic.

I mean, this is a can. Last time you were talking about the malt liquor thing. Remember what was that beer that you brought up last time that wasn't actually beer? We're talking about like whatever you drank when you were a kid and it didn't even say beer on it just said like malt. Oh yeah. The big bear. The big bear. Yeah. Is this like the upgrade of that? I don't know man. Yeah, there's the there's the emoji of me. But yeah, this is a can. I don't usually drink out of cans, but you know, we'll we'll give it a go today. It's something new for me. What do you got, Anthony? Okay, so I, you may think, oh, just another local Philadelphia area beer, but let me explain the layers of the onion here. This is the victory homegrown lager.

So I thought, oh, like a homegrown thing, you know, Dragon 2, Homegrown spacecraft. But then you look on the side of the can, and this is a can that J.B. himself would be very proud of because this, this talks about the American hops that were made to brew this American beer in American soil. and I felt that that was a very fitting fitting beer for now and something that J.B. could be proud of. Right as I said that, the whole Skype froze. So I don't know if you found that amusing or not. We heard it, we loved it.

That was great. Just check. Yeah. I just, mostly I wanted the listeners out there to know that that was just not completely flat with YouTube. Our reactions were of wonder and awe and hysteria. I'll put in like some crowd sounds or something after the fact. Yeah.

All the last. laughter was just stuck in my throat. It was just coming out too fast. Hypersonic velocities. Throat nozzle diameter was just perfect for it. So, yeah, you know, all that stuff. So where are we starting with this? There's a lot to talk about.

Well, you guys do it. I'll sit here. Well, Tim, I mean, Tim, you got to go. So we did not go, but you did go to see. So Anthony said it was a busy week, huge week. crew dragon in like one one nice bookended week was like launch and docking

and stuff and landings and parachutes and it's all done now so I don't know why you just kick us off Tim with like what was your takeaway from the trip like specifically the go to Florida what did you come away with you know being on site for that it was the 249 a.m. thing

was a little rough and I love it We heard, I saw, you know, there's, of course, so many Twitter comments and people being like, don't they know anything about PR and, like, how to strum up, like, a mission? Like, there's some more important things than having, like, a high view count on your live stream when you're taking something to the International Space Station. Quick pause. Yes. Flashback to February last year. I know exactly where you're going with this. I was going to have you tell most of this, Jake, because we're sitting there. Tim, I don't know if you know about the Falcon Head. This was a great week. Okay. But the week of Falcon Heavy was literally the best week I will ever have in my life because it was bookended with the Eagles winning the Super Bowl, Falcon Heavy, and me flying back in time for the Super Bowl parade.

Okay? So this is a high-intensity week. That needed the launch that day, or I was not seeing it because I was not going to miss the parade. Or I was going to miss the parade and, you know, the whole thing. Yeah, yeah. So we're sitting there sweating bullets that this thing's drifting through the launch window, hour by hour. And then at one point, it was like, I think it was the window is what, 1 to 4 or something like that, 1 p.m. to 4 p.m. and we're like halfway through it and I looked at Jake and I said,

what's the chances that everything's totally fine and they're waiting to get to the crescendo of this thing? It's the end of the window when more people are watching. And Jake was like, just like a totally like weird, like nondescript facial expression. A non-zero chance. Yeah. So that's, that's, you know, I'm just saying that there may be, this was not one of those circumstances. But yeah. I don't think it's beyond.

on them. So that's my, that's my conspiracy theory. I don't think it'd be beyond like SpaceX. They're all about the showmanship, you know, and like the showing off a little bit. This one was not at all. This, yeah, this couldn't have been like just physically, unless you're an Atlas and you have like a 40 minute window or whatever, because dog legs or whatever. But yeah, this, so that kind of did suck. That is smack in the middle of the night. Say it's like 11 p.m., not as big of a deal. Say it's like 6 a at least you can, like, go to bed and wake up really early. Like, 249 is, like, the worst circumstance for this, really. That did, that was rough.

But it was a crystal clear night, like, really clear. If you saw shots from people from, like, the VAB even, and shots, even though, like, the ground was super wet, but I think maybe the humidity came out of the air already. So the line of sight, like, to the rocket was, oh, beautiful. So this was only my second night launch that I've seen. I guess I went to one in Vandenberg and just saw fall. of course. So I didn't, I don't think I saw that one.

I kind of heard a little bit and saw a little bit of an orange sky for a second. So this was really like only the second launch I've seen at night and it was just, oh, so pretty. So that was great. Yeah, it's fun too. The press site has been changing a lot. Like the attitude at the press site and of the members of the press has changed a lot since I've, I've been going there for about five years now. And it went from like, no offense to some of the people that were there during the shuttle

era, but it went from my crusty. old sad people that were sad that the space shuttle's gone and they have nothing left to like now they've all kind of weaned out and like given up and ran out of energy and now is all like young like people that are excited and so it's just like the energy is different everyone's hanging out people like hanging out before and afterwards a little bit it's just like you know communities growing around there so that's fun I don't know it's just it was good it was it's it's good that it was good because I have a lot of launches I'm going to try to see this year a lot of launches.

Was that crowd-wise? Do you think it was a... On the spectrum from like regular CRS mission to Falcon Heavy, where was it in that like both in terms of like people there, the amount of people there, and the excitement level? I think we can measure that in buses.

Like the actual amount of like press buses going out to the pad and stuff. I think this one had four buses. Kind of four and a half because they had like a little one too on the first day. And Falcon Heavy had like eight, and a normal CRS mission has about two. So I think it was about twice as busy as a normal CRS mission, half as busy as Falcon Heavy still, I think. And that's about what it felt like, too. Like the press site wasn't swamped.

You know, there's a healthy amount of press there. But like the major, you know, all the major networks and stuff did represent there, which is really cool. You know, you had like ABC and NBC and CBS, all those people. So that's always fun when they show up and they're excited. So it was a good sign, though. like the excitement level was just like people it just wasn't it didn't seem like a that big of a deal I think people were just ready for it you know what I mean like the the feeling was like let's get this thing going because we're ready to fly crew now and NASA feels that like when you hear you know

when you heard Brydenstein and something other people talking beforehand and stuff everyone's like let's get this going you know this is we're really excited and seeing even uh what's his name um who is yeah he was laughing like I didn't know he could laugh me either like just thinking people actually excited about this was was uh just very positive you know it's exciting so yeah and it wasn't like crazy hype like falcon heavy it wasn't anything like that but i think dm1 or dm2 i mean sorry will have like a yeah a substantial

total circus for sure yes yes yeah we're thinking it we're thinking of maybe doing that one and it's uh you know i mean it's a moving target just like falcon and heavy what's talking heavy timeline ridiculous trying to book flights but um yeah we're going try and hit that one i think so that's that's cool and now you know why i tend to drive like i don't like hearing stuff but just like you know it's it's such a moving target that like until you're about four or five days away you're just not sure you know like that's the reality of it like you know if you're two weeks out sure uh you can maybe have a decent guess but I don't leave the car until there's been a static fire.

I don't consider getting in the car until there's been static fire. And normally, that's three days away or so. If I waited that far, I wouldn't make it in time by driving. Where do you live again? You're in Camdenana, right? Yeah, in Vancouver. So it's just draw a diagonal line across North America and hit the other water. Basically the eclipse line.

Yeah. Yeah. That'd be like a 48-hour drive or something, I feel like. I wouldn't do it. Yeah. That's too far. So I've crossed Canada before in a car and it's like too long. Oh, well, and this is like the ultimate like first world problems and like I shouldn't be complaining, but I did take the Tesla down there.

And that added substantial seat time, unfortunately, because it's cold. The way back I had a headwind. That stuff really affected the range. In general, like it's a great, it's a pleasure to road trip and it's a great car to be sitting. It's a great place to be. And especially when it like drives itself for the most part on the interstate. Like, that's nice. You get a little bit of time back.

Yeah. But the, this definitely pushed it to the limit. It added to get 25% of amount of time. So that wasn't ideal. But maybe, you know, they just announced totally off topic now. They did announce like faster superchargers and stuff that they're going to start rolling out this year. So hopefully when those start happening, that'll make up for it, you know. My bad, though.

Yeah, you know, so. I wanted to talk, like, is anyone else shocked? I don't know if shock's the right word, but I'm kind of shocked, like, how flawlessly this whole thing went, like, for a first time spacecraft, like, I was expecting way more headaches. Like, I was expecting them to pull through, but I expected them to be a little bit of hiccups, but like instantaneous launch window, so they just kind of had to nail it, and they just did. I don't know.

I thought that was really impressive. and not what I expected. It also helps for that to be the first commercial crew mission that happens is huge. For NASA and SpaceX and everyone involved, because it's just like if there would have been a lot of issues on this or even just like little headaches or delays, that would have been something that would come up in future, like congressional hearings and all this other stuff that we had headaches.

But the fact that this was like so professional through and through and just like, oh, we're just doing business here. We're going to just do the mission real quick. Like boom, bang, bang, bing, week in, week out. we're back, everything's good, we'll see in a couple months for the abort test. That is amazing. It's so big.

It almost makes like breathing room for Boeing. Like Boeing can make a couple screw-ups now and like the overall program's okay. I have to say that, you know, it was probably two years ago, three years ago that we were, everyone I think was kind of doubting the Falcon 9 being able to be reliable on time

with the super tilt propellants, you know, especially, you know, that OGT, your OG2 first mission, and then like, I think like SES 9, I think scrub like four or five times or something like a lot. They did have a lot of big teething issues with that. Yes. And I remember sitting there questioning like this is, how are they going to do instantaneous launch windows with this thing? How are they going to be reliable?

You know, and here we are. The Falcon 9 was definitely not the concern on this mission. You know, I too assumed that like, you know, it's a new spacecraft. Like they're going to have something that they're going to have to scrub for or something, you know, pop up on us on the pad and they're powering up and like, oh, a sensor error or something, you know, but nothing. Like, didn't hear, you know, because they had that flight readiness review about a week ahead of time. And they're like, we're totally, they were fueled up even. Like, we're ready to go.

A week ahead of, like, dang. But also, you know what I think some of it is? I think the government shut down. I think that allowed enough time for SpaceX to literally have the thing ready to go as soon as they were opened back up and everything. They could just be like, here you go, boop. Like, I think if they're still trying to work against that, you know, I think we maybe would potentially seen some of those problems crop up. 35 extra days of QA.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So I think that helped because I think otherwise we probably would have seen some slips and dates of like, well, we're aiming for this. Oh, hold on. We got a, you know. And we did sort of because they were talking about, oh, well, we might fit it in if the shutdown doesn't happen this and that. And then it was like, oh, okay, we'll see you back when, whenever you all sort that out.

So it was definitely like a month of time where they just punted on that. Yeah. And that's probably exactly what it needed to make, make it just the flawless mission that it was, you know. Yeah, but that was, I mean, that's great. I'm so excited that NASA's excited about it. You can tell they want, you can tell how tightly they're trying to brand themselves and like, which they should as a communicator and as, you know, I think those of us that understand the relationship between NASA and SpaceX,

I'm glad that they're, you know, co-broadcasting on SpaceX's live streams, making darn well sure everyone understands these are high-end NASA missions. It's, you know, NASA's the reason why this is all happening now. You know, because I think a lot of people still do the old NASA versus SpaceX thing, which is just so, like, so frustrating to me. Yeah. Yeah, but I say it's, I'm really glad you brought that up because I thought it was really interesting. You know, so if you think back to like, well, just think of NASA TV coverage for the last,

call it, I don't know, even to 10 years. And then that's kind of the standard. That's the benchmark of what we kind of think is as the best, you know, live coverage of, of a space event. Like, oh, you just go to NASA TV. They'll have everything. That's what we get to watch as civilians, right? And then SpaceX comes on the scene and they start this live stream thing that they do.

And it's totally different. They have their own style. And then, you know, how many of those streams have we all watched where we're just like, yeah, I'm going to watch another launch and landing today. And now I'm like zeroed in. And it's become normal to us. But this is the first time, like, those paths have been diverging for all these years. And this is the first time that just kind of like all came back together.

and this like, I felt it was like almost a little like tense trying to like blend these streams back together where they diverged for so long. Like on location in Hawthorne. You had Dan Hewitt or whatever his name was where he's very buttoned up and like that you could tell the first couple of streams they were having like figure out the chemistry between everybody like oh no, we're the super lax webcast. We're the very tight and tidy one and it's like a lot of feeling it. It was just like pulling back and forth and I just thought I was like this is

bizarre. And even by the splashdown, like Dan's, I felt like Dan's, like, attitude or like, personal, because I actually know him. He's, he happened to give me my first tour of Johnson Space Center, like super nice guy, crazy nice guy. He, uh, he changed quite a bit from like way more buttoned up during the launch by Splashdown. Like, I wonder if they almost had a little, like, let's keep, let's keep working on it. You know, like, so they're closer mesh together because I felt like it was way more natural. They're way more casually talking to, which was, well, then again, it is splash on there's so much just like dead air of like here it comes for 30 minutes now we're gonna be yeah up the burn started it's we got to stand here for 15 minutes while it happens and then we'll

let you know if it worked exactly so i think some of that too it's just like there was more breathing room for them to be able to like casually chit-chat but uh yeah my friends uh that that do the like webcast for SpaceX i think they were pulling their hair out while they were uh working to like work with NASA on that like I can't imagine having to now deal with two communication departments to like, you know, here's what we're going to say, like, two people wanting to fit their scripts in, too, like, oh, oh, no, thank you. As we said, we can't even get a single stream going, so that's just way beyond me at this point.

Oh, man. I just thought, I thought it was so just like, and I think it'll get better. I think as they start to feel themselves out a little bit, and they'll, like, okay, this is how NASA can look good on the SpaceX stream and how SpaceX can look good on a NASA the stream and it's going to get better. Just this first one felt super awkward, you know, because they like, you'd have these, like, the SpaceX is very like, you know, they don't have, you know, dedicated faces. They're just engineers that are, that are, they can kind of do a role.

And so it's very authentic and kind of laid back, whereas NASA tends to like find faces, right? Like you're a professional face and a talker and that's your job, which has pros and cons. And so it's like, the bounce back and forth to that was just like, here. this very polished square-jawed handsome man who's going to provide coverage of the launch. And then it's just like, you know, dude in a hoodie is like, yo, I built this right here. Like, it's flying. I'm pretty excited about it because I made it and now it's in space. It's true. I think like I'm not a big fan of constantly like jumping to different now so-and-so is going to be on location to tell us all about what it's like to be at the Banana Creek, Saturn and five feel the heat center.

I'm here, standing here with hundreds of people, you know, or whatever. Like, that feels very old school to me. I would, I would love if they, like, basically just followed SpaceX's live stream format, you know, maybe had their one, throw one thing to do one of their engineers or something.

And just kept it, like, nice and short and simple and sweet. And yeah, I would like if that would happen. Well, and it's funny because, like, that's not, we shouldn't we shouldn't just call this the NASA style because it's actually kind of like the KSC style because like if you go to to JPL it's not like that right um so it's it's it's it's interesting to see that it's like specifically that old like

crusty human spaceflight format it's the cronkite thing it's the cronkite yeah yeah yeah it was very wrong kronkite for sure yeah exactly um because even like if you think about the insight landing coverage which i thought was really really good they just had you know they had one moderator and she was just bringing on the experts and they were right in the room there so it felt like real and you know you had these these real engineers who were trying to talk and do the job of communicating but they're so like you could tell they're like I just want to leave this desk and go look at that terminal over there because there's some shit going on that I want to see but like so that that kind of added that authenticity to it whereas yeah I don't know I don't like the talking

heads I guess I'm very curious to see what the Boeing thing is going to be like because like The ULA does webcast for their launches. So hypothetically, they could use the ULA team for the launch, which has been getting better. But Boeing, like, when's the last time you've seen a Boeing webcast? I still hope this is going to be like 48 white guys in military uniforms. It's either going to be that or like every like airplane safety video you've seen. I'm just going to get the people out of those, that section. Or they're going to do like, you know, when you fly sometimes they have like a cool person,

like a group or something doing like a one person, one take shot or something. Or like, okay, or something's going to do the webcast or something. Because they're just like, we don't know. I mean, I'm a game for that. That sounds better than anything else I was thinking about. But I'm wondering, I wouldn't be surprised if Boeing almost just defaults to NASA. Yeah, that was my assumption as well. Basically, this is like, here, you guys run your live stream, we'll provide some.

Especially because I know that there is a separate mission control in Houston that Boeing is going to use for their missions. So they're inside JSC for that. So they're even taking that way out on the control center thing. So I assume that they would do that on the webcast as well. But they're not flying anything else on their own, especially nothing that they like webcast. Yeah, nothing. I don't think they've ever had a stream, a live stream on the internet.

But you know what? This is also a UCLA launch. So why couldn't they, they might default to ULA and have ULA tie in with. Yeah. They own half of it anyway. Yeah. Just have the accountants figure out how the money works.

and make sure it all checks out and they're good to go. Well, like, I wonder, you know, is that in the contract to provide communication services as part of the launch? Like, I wonder if that's part of it. Yeah.

Maybe, right? Yeah. Or is it like... In the age, it might be, because it is very important. And it could just be, well, the other side would be that NASA to be like, listen, we got it,

we'll do it, no problem. But SpaceX is like, no, we'll take the extra cost because we want to insert ourselves into what you're doing, right? Like, that could be the way, too. Whereas Boeing's like, You got it.

You're fine. Yeah. Or, or Boeing's got to start something and get practicing because it's only like seven or eight years for SLS fly. So we got to make sure we have, they're going to want to cover that one too, right? Brian contractor, right?

No. I'm just kidding. Maybe Lockheed Martin's going to need to step that game up because, you know, Orion capsule. What is this? Somebody found a Facebook live video from Boeing? This looks out here. This looks pretty much like we assume.

No, I don't want to watch. that. Yeah. Let me describe it. You have, I'm not going to say geriatric, but a stereotypical, you know, a 65-year-old white male. That's generous. That's generous. With a... 72, 72. With a sport coat. I actually would probably really like this guy. So I'm not, this is nothing against the guy. It's about the choice of having like a old sports broadcaster with a purple turtleneck introducing your spacecraft or your locks tanks or whatever they're looking at.

I don't even know what they're looking at here. I believe that's the inside of a triple seven. Or 7-8-7 maybe even. Oh, that's probably triple, isn't it? That's pretty big. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Man, I'm going to definitely make that at the album art right now

because everybody needs to see that. Yeah. Can the title this one just be Boeing live stream? No, I'm actually writing down a couple titles right now. First option, I'm not going to say geriatric, but dot, dot, dot. And the other one is an old sportscaster with a purple turtleneck. There we go. There we go. I like that. Yeah. So that note is off to a good start. Yeah, yeah. Like I said, though, I would like to talk to this guy. I think we should have him on the show. A thumbnail of him, yeah. I bet he would come on. I'm sure he's great.

We've got a knack for this, Jake. Yeah, we've already got Gary. We've got to provide, you know, balanced approach to the old space guys, right? So I bet Gary from Lockheed could put us in touch with this guy. Yeah, he probably knows them. I'm going to send him in nowhere now. It's Larry from Boeing. Larry from Boeing.

That sounds right. Sounds and looks right. I love it. Oh, yeah. Then there's that old character. Who was that? Will Ferrell's character, what was the character's name? Harry Carey, there we go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, he wasn't a character. He was

portraying Harry Carey. That's great. I don't know if you guys remember that. I don't know that one. If there are, if the moon was made of cheese, would you eat it? Oh, okay. I now understand that reference, but the gift did not do it for me. Especially because it's just static for me, so it's just a picture. Oh, man. Oh. Okay. I need to I need your help here. I need your help. Both of you.

This is like, I've had been serious issues lately, okay? We got this whole thing going on where, like, certain senators want to extend ISS till 2030, and that's a thing that we have to figure out. So, up until now, I've mostly thought, like, let's sync the ISS as quick as possible so we can get, like, move on to another thing here, because I feel like we need to. But lately, I'm feeling like I don't see a lot of productivity happen. in the other thing, so maybe we should just keep this one rolling for a while if this is the best we can get. And I can't figure out which side of my brain is going to win this fight. So like, where are we at right now?

Where do you two lie on this ISS thing? Keep it to 2030, sink it in 2024. What do we got? Jake, take it. I want to hear you. I want to build off your success. Start with the reasonable one. But this is where I'm actually kind of radical. Oh. Yeah. I think the ISS. needs to go. Sink it? Sank the ISS. We're going to start that. And that's not because it's not because they don't do good work.

It's because... We can attach so many arms to this thing. Hey, hey, Canada can't afford that, man. We just had a $2 billion dollar space program announcement over like... By the time the space program cost... Timeline is done, I'll be retired.

Like, literally it was like... It was $2 billion over 24 years. Who makes a policy like that? Man. Anyway, why do you want to sink the ISS, Jake? I think it's really old and it isn't doing anything else that we need right now. The technology on it is not, like, we've, we've eeked out every amount of knowledge from the engineering side of it that we can. And we need to try something different.

Like, the astronauts go up there and they spend, I don't know the exact number, but I wouldn't be surprised if he told me, was 60 to 80% of their workday, making sure it doesn't break. It's like they're cleaning mold off the walls. They're fixing the CO2 scrubber. They're checking for ammonia leaks. They're just like, it just, it kind of like barely holds together because there's really talented people on board. And so I'm not necessarily saying.

That's a really good way to phrase that. Wow. Right? Yeah. And it's like, I don't care what you do with the money, but I think that that's, that's, that's one that's the bit of a sink and now I mean you've got a good point as to what would happen if we cancel it without a plan but I know that's that's my radical you just put that so like it literally takes like the 30 smartest people we have in the world 80% of all of their day to keep the thing

together that putting it that way makes me a lot more sad than I was right before this same oh that puts me in a funny position because in general like I'm only recently having an appreciation for the ISS that like I definitely didn't have five years ago you know what I mean and there's some things on it that are valuable in space because they're already there you know like like tools and you know I mean even like those solar panels like we have to refly solar panel we have to refly like a lot of systems I would but then again like okay I'm gonna totally I'm gonna go on I'm gonna go fall sorry man I told you I'm all conflicted over here too so I assume we got to work through this because like you don't want to pull uh SLS and say like

we already have engines. We already pretty much know, like, solid rocket, we have half the rocket done. And then, like, come to find out, wait, it's actually really hard to design around something that you're just, like, scrapping together from leftovers as opposed to just start new.

So maybe it's not smart to be like, I know, we'll just send up a vehicle that doesn't exist to disassemble the ISS, the parts we like, and attach them to something. Like, that's probably really stupid. And maybe at this point, but there is so much, like, scientific value. I think the mechanism that is the ISS is a mess, and it sucks and it's cobbled together.

But there's a lot of really good instrumentations on board, a lot of really valuable parts and pieces that need to be in space. And if you're to relaunch something like, say, I don't know, four, like, BA 330s or something, to stuff them full of the instrumentations and the things that would need to replace the ISS would still be a massive, massive undertaking. So it's really hard because I think I think we need to keep the ISS until our scale of what is big in space changes like until we have something bigger

than what the space shuttle was capable of you know say Starship something that can all of a sudden take up a 9 meter diameter payload for way cheaper and all of a sudden the thought of building something like the ISS is laughable like we can do that two launches you know for $100 million or whatever you know

then I think we should definitely look into like a proper replacement but until then I don't think we actually have a valid solution to building anything substantially better than the ISS and I don't think Lunar Gateway, Lunar Orbital Platform Gateway or whatever it is

like I just I see that as a jobs program for the SLS at this point yeah that's a good point too and you're not wrong so it's not a it's not a one answer problem that's the thing I think the big thing is where this funny crossover where

the ISS is on its way out. Like, it's dying. It's old. It takes a lot of maintenance. But we're not at the point where we're massive payloads that could easily replace it. You know, there's obviously going to be a crossover. Say we did send up a replacement in five years

on the technology we have right now, the rockets we have right now. And probably like, dang, that was barely worth it. Like, ah, we have this new system. But then, like, maybe five years after that, doing that exact same thing could be ten times cheaper. So there's just this, like, awkward crossover where I you know it's like we do we maybe should just wait until we have it to be cheap enough

to be able to replace it with something worthwhile until it's like really obvious that we can do it better it almost reminds me that Bill Gates quote of like we what is it we overestimate the amount of change that happens in two years but underestimate the amount that happens in five where it's like it's very slow creep and maybe we're still in that intermittent phase where it's like we clearly see the trend lines but we don't yet have the the hard and fast results from it. Okay. The exponentials.

I don't know. The linear, we all think linearly, you know, and Elon mentioned that when talking, I think about ramping up production in the model three, how hard it is to predict, you know,

like, when are you going to hit 50,000 cars? And that could be off by like, you know, one month you might be like so under 50,000. And then like the next month's because it's like exponential. You'd be like, oh,

we're at 100,000 now. You know what I mean? Whereas like, We went from producing $10,000 to producing $100,000 in a tiny scale of window here. But that whole, you know, because it's exponential, like, it's just really hard to predict that ramp, you know. And you might be in those first little bits where it's treading water. You think like this is the fastest trend line that we have, but we could be just barely hitting the curve. Exactly.

And I think as like Blue Origin and stuff comes online with new systems, I think we're coming on a new era. We're like, okay. This is it finally. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's such a struggle because there's not one reason to have the ISS. There's like 12 and some of them are good and some of them are bad. And depending on which reasons are important to you, you'll have a different opinion on it. Like if your only reason is you want to maintain the workforce that can operate a vehicle like that, you're just like, yeah, keep it going as long as possible until something is already in place. If your reason is specifically like microgravity research, it's probably not that good. because the group that manages that is pretty incompetent, like the output is not very efficient. I'm going to get emails for that one probably.

I know precisely who you're going to get them from as well, because I've got these emails. I'll just send the report back to them. But so they know Larry from Boeing. Yeah, Larry from Boeing will probably. There you go. There you go. Yeah, yeah.

And so depending on how you come at the problem, you'll have a really different different perspective. And it kind of comes back to a bit. My recurring theme that I always harp on is nobody can answer me why we want to send people to space in a really succinct and universally accepted reason. Everyone's kind of like, oh, well, it's because of this. And it's like, well, that's not enough to get funding that it's getting. So think bigger or come up with some sort of, yeah.

Yeah, you got to like, you got to glom up all these kind of reasons and hope that they convinced someone, right? I thought you were over this. I thought you were through that phase of your life. Well, I'm through it, but I've accepted it into my life. You just made your piece of it? Yeah, yeah. It's like, that's just how it is now, you know.

So the thing that I always said about the ISS was that its best legacy is going to be the fact that it created this phase of the economy that we're in right now, where you've got the SpaceX and you've got like the new arm of the orbitals in North Grumman's and you've got Sierra Nevada doing interesting things with Dream Chaser. There's all of these things that are coming out of it as an integral part to the program right now, but if you ask the people at the start, this is like a total side effect. So in that way, it's like, I don't know, when we're just getting started with crude flights for these companies, I'm like, I think 11 years of ISS, like 11 more years is crazy.

But then at the same time, I'm like 11 years for other people to figure out side projects they could work on that have a thing in the ISS and it turns into something else and like the amount of chaos theory that goes into that. But having all of this like interesting, interesting stuff happened in the cargo world the last couple of years

and now we're going to have that in crew. I don't know. I'm starting to get a little bit more hopeful on that side of things, especially as we continue to see all the gateway stuff, we're not getting as much funding in the budgets as people expected there to be and it just seeming like another one of those things,

another one of those projects that will go down in the space history books. but I don't know. I guess keep it flying. And it's like, well, one of the other reasons to say extended is like if you end it in 2024, is that where it is right now, 2024, let's say you end it there. Like, have you earned your money back as a government on the investment made in commercial crew?

Like, you know. On commercial crew. Yeah, on commercial crew. Like you put all this money in so you have this ride to space and then you only use it for like, you know, five years. Jake, I know, I know you live in Canada. of we don't often earn our money back on things down here. It's not really our style lately.

I don't know if you check that national debt clock of ours, but we don't really, it's not our style. Can you imagine them in like, 1985 being like, well, shuttle had a good run, but we're moving on. Yeah. I mean, Challenger almost questioned the program. Can you imagine Challenger having to like, well, this ain't looking so good. Yeah.

Put Columbia at a museum and move on in the next. Yeah. No. man how about that alternate history yeah oh man there's so many good books that could be written about alternate histories and with like the jemini mole program yeah we were talking about that today in the discord dude and like the pool no human is polar orbited right like yeah that's very right it's weird and we had slick six which is um six six e which is uh out in vandenberg and that's where the delta four and delta four heavy launches for uLA now but it was supposed to

to do the, a, a, what was it, a Titan 4 heavy or something with a Gemini B on it? And then that got scrapped and then the space shuttle. A freaking space shuttle was supposed to launch out of there and do polar orbits. It was like weeks away from doing that too. Yes. When Challenger happened. Yes. It's crazy.

Like that's, that's some alternate history there. I mean, can you imagine? I can't, oh, I wonder what like flying through the like the Northern Lights and stuff like that, you know, because I think there actually is a significant more radiation up there, isn't there? It's not one of the concerns of flying. Right, that's, that interaction happens there because the magnetic field intersects Earth at that point.

Yeah, that would be crazy. I'm guessing you wouldn't fly perfect 90 degree polar orbit. I'm guessing you'd fly to avoid that like, that death. No, at that point, you're in the DOD program, man. They don't, they don't care what angle you're flying. Listen, first of all, if you're going to talk about like safety of the crew, you ever tried to look up space shuttle aborts in a polar orbit? That's freaking crazy.

No, I already know that the spatial abortes period are crazy. So you fly south, right? Yes, that's what I'm saying. Like on the east coast, we've got like, oh, we'll land in like Nova Scotia or Spain or Africa. We'll figure it out. There's plenty of stuff down there. They're flying out. One of them was Easter Island.

What are you just hit it? I think that was like the main one. It was like hope that you've made it far enough downrange to get to Easter Island. I love an abort scenario that's like, by the way, I know your SRB is like totally leaking and shooting spraying fire into your external fuel tank. You're going to just have to ride it out, my friends, for two and a half minutes. Jettison the SRBs. Now you're going to have to ride those RS-25s at like a 45-degree angle and pitch over until you target Easter Island. That's not.

That doesn't make any sense. And people were like, oh, the SpaceX will never be able to land their boosters. But you were just were talking about landing a space shuttle on Easter Island. Like, what the hell are we talking about here? Yeah, you're right. That's insane. So that's, all I'm saying is they did not give a shit about what was going to happen to those people if they were launching out of Van der Bergen and Space Shelf. Here's a good, I want to talk about you, because I don't always get to talk like super nerdy with people like this.

So here's a good question about speaking of abortes. This is a hot topic, and I think I'm going to do a video about it. Starship is probably not going to have any true mechanical abort system per se. Thoughts on that. But it's just going to use its own engines to separate. That's the idea. I mean, I don't even know. Think about how low a thrust weight ratio that's going to be.

Like that's not, an abort is like six, seven, eight Gs. You're getting out of the shockwave. Like you're, you have to get out of it. Yeah, you couldn't make it far enough away from the booster if something bad is happening. You're going to be inside that shot. If the main booster explodes and ruds on the pad, I don't care what happens. You don't have, you're not going to have an abort. you know, that's lighting up those seven raptor engines on the upper stage of it is not going to get you out of there.

Part of me is like, oh man, that's weird because of the context that we have, like, historically. The other part of me is like, they didn't give a shit on space shuttle. And the other part of me is like, I don't worry about that with my car. And that, those things explode a lot more than rockets do. Like, there's a lot of crazy-ass car fires I've seen. And I don't, like, have an ejection seat in my car because it's, like, reliable enough that it mostly doesn't happen. You can open the door and leave when it's on fire. That's true.

You can't break that. I don't know. I feel like we're colored by our context historically. Yeah. And they're banking on the fact that this is the moment at which that significantly changes. You know, so if that theory holds, then I'm like, yeah, I mean, the first thousand people are going to be crazy either way. So, I don't know. I'm still conflicted about this ISS thing.

I can't really even contemplate this. My strategy with Starship is that we're on version 3, and I think version 13 is going to fly, so I don't make any judgments on it yet. It's true. It's so far out. We have no idea. We have nothing to even figure out yet.

It's too soon. Yeah. My thoughts on this has changed a little bit. People are quick to blame and point to the space shuttle. Like, is like an example of why no mechanical abort is terrible. But I think that one of the big things with the space shuttle is it had two really bad, three really bad flaws that made it. So a mechanical abort was, should have been way more necessary. And one of them is like relying on solids. I mean, you don't, you had to write out

the solids. That right there should have been like, okay, wait, wait, wait. We have this whole blackout period of like two and a half minutes or whatever it is where they can't, they have no choice. No options, really. So, like, right there, that's one. They should have had, like, an abortion system for that. The other one is, you know, hanging off the side of it. Yeah, that was a dumb thing. That's bad.

That's bad. That ain't good. Ain't nobody got time for that, you know? So that was the other one. And then just the idea that, like, it has to glide to a runway, you know, and that it has to land on a runway. It couldn't land, you know, you can't just, like, with, you know, CRS-16, that 1050.1 booster, yeah, that splash down.

but even if you were inside it riding on it and had a failure of the hydraulic system, you're going to survive. You'll be fine. A space shuttle, if you don't make it to your destination, you're coming in landing on an interstate in Orlando, you know, or whatever, like going 190 miles out. 100 miles short of Easter Island.

That would be a good one as well. Yeah, that ain't going to be, that's not going to feel good. Like propulsive landings, although they're inherently, I think, riskier and more dangerous. Like at the same time, they don't require a land. landing strip, you know, to at least have a soft touchdown. But

that being said, I think you know, I've talked to with a few people and they say, you know, airplanes, jetliners that we get into every day, most of them, even the ones that are transatlantic, have two engines right now, you know? And they are reliant on getting you

safely on not having those engines fail. You know, I mean, yes, an airplane. But they can't do it on none of them. None of them. And at least, you know, none of them can still kind of glide and you can probably make a controlled crash landing and probably not

die. Unless you're halfway through a transatlantic flight and you're landing pretty much where the Titanic sank. Right, right. That's not going to be fun. It's not going to be a good day. There's one from Canada where that happened. Both engines went out and it had to land in, it landed on a go-kart

track, apparently. That is a good pilot. Yeah, yeah. That guy's better than Sully. Like Sully, you were a gardener. And that dude landed on a go-car track. That's wild. I think it was Gimley, Manitoba. This, Jake,

Jake knows how to Canadian history. The Gimley Glider, that's what it was called. Wow. Man, this is so good. The dude from Texas in the chat, nailed it. Oh, yeah. He had it before you did, dude. He lives in Austin.

Mass fraction is an encyclopedia of all aerospace. So where did it land? It said it was a, Oh, man. Gimley. From Montreal to Edmonton. Oh, this, yeah. Anyway, I'm going to get lost.

I'm going to stop reading this because that's really bad podcasting. But the point is, yes, you need a runway for land. And I think, you know, the idea with Starship is you introduce, you know, right now rocket engines are still fairly crazy. But the number of the amount of data SpaceX has with the Merlin engine now and like how many times. flown, how many static fires, you know, at that rate, when you start thinking about in that context, and especially, you know, the new Raptor engine being significantly more reusable compared to a Merlin engine. You don't have like, you don't have carbon buildup and stuff. You don't have all these other things that will burn super clean. I mean, we're looking at a

time where it's not going to take long for them to have more flight hours on that Raptor engine than any other engine, all other engines combined ever, you know, and developed to the point where a Raptor engine is going to be just as reliable as a commercial airliners jet engine. There's nothing in that system that's inherently more unbelievable. We think of rocket engines, yes, they're low run. They run for a very limited amount of time compared to a jetliner that has to run for thousands of hours

across a fleet of thousands for years on end. So there's data galore. But inherently, there's not that big a difference between, you know, there's nothing more dangerous per se about a rocket engine than there is, you know, a jet liner engine, a jet engine. And I think once the fleet and the numbers come up and we just start removing some of those statistical anomalies, like a rocket engine might be just as safe as anything else. And, you know, if we build them like an airplane and have fault tolerances where it's like

we just have to build it to that standard, I don't see why it couldn't be as reliable as an airplane. I know that's probably what they said about the space shuttle, but they also left millions of opportunities where it wasn't like air. compromised from day one and had several several different stakeholders that were competing for what kind of design they wanted and people working on the Titan program in the Air Force that didn't necessarily want it to work out and so many things going into it. Yeah. This is a different beast.

What do you guys think now? Because it has been changing so much to this last Dear Moon thing and then the stainless steel thing. Did that totally sway your confidence? Or like, where are you guys that right now? The stainless steel thing did for sure for me. I was, I think Jake and I were maybe similar in that like all of the technical problems were so far out there that they had to solve that it was like, wow, this is a really big long program and it wasn't necessarily like going to happen tomorrow. And then the stainless thing happened that I, you just saw all this momentum all the sudden and much more solvable problems and much more short-term results that could, you know, that we're already seeing stuff being put together.

and granted, maybe we didn't see some of that on the composite thing, but it just seemed like so many technical long poles in the old, the old architecture, and this seems so much more achievable, so I'm getting pretty pumped. Yeah. Jake still doesn't know why we want to even send humans to space, though. Yeah, no, I am still withholding judgment on Starship. I need to see, I need to see more. So the Hopper flight will,

help once they do that. But I feel like we're still going to get to a point where that flight's results are going to put another curveball into the design process and they're going to have to make more changes. And I don't know, I just, like, I'm confident that they're going to, like, technologically, they're going to figure it out. I still don't see any other than vanity. Like, what's the reason to build it?

Like, I don't, I still don't, I haven't been, I haven't figured out. went out yet? Like why? Why? Why do you need that way? Well, like how many payloads are that big? I'm on the other side of this where I'm saying so my thing currently, Tim, is that I think if they're, they should just make it crew only and not even worry about cargo stuff and that they super double down on this being a crew thing. But that's just me. Yeah, but like, but like, so hear me out, like, and I don't mean that like, I think the idea of sending people to Mars is awesome and I want to do it, but I don't think that they've convinced enough people that that's a good reason. Like, they're going to build it, and I don't think the government's not going to be interested,

and I don't think there's any private companies they're going to be interested. It's just going to build it, and it's not going to do anything. Like, I haven't figured that part out yet. I think you're wrong. I think you are, hit me. Because, okay. Sounds like a real Larry from Boeing, man. A real what?

He's a real Larry from Boeing right now. Where is your turtleneck? The thing that I think we're, yes, I have had that exact same thought across my head where I'm like, what payload is anywhere near 100 tons? That's anywhere near nine meters in diameter. And forget even that market that doesn't exist today because that could open up with, you know, some stuff might open up when, you know, a vehicle like that starts flying. Sure. Forget that, though. If you have a vehicle that is truly reusable, like really actually reusable, like land it and refuel it, you know, make sure.

sure spray it down with WD40 or whatever you need to do between flights and fly it again, I mean, this cost can come down tenfold, like easily, because you're just paying for fuel now and you're paying for some inspections, you're paying for some pad time, you're paying for the tracking station and the blah, blah, the range safety officers, all that stuff, your fixed costs are going to be the same on that, but the actual hardware costs are now almost zero and they're being depreciated every flight or whatever. You know, you're amortizing the cost of that. expensive vehicle hundreds of times or whatever. And so all of a sudden, even if they can lower the price in half,

they can go from 60 million to flying even just a 6,000 or a 6 ton payload, something that right now would fly in a Falcon 9, no problem. All of a sudden, if they can, they could literally charge half as much for that. Their market exists already just in the payload they're flying right now. And for them, they'll want to do it. They have the incentive to fly a vehicle that is truly fully re-reused. usable. I think that is far in a way. That is the way they're looking at this thing. Screw the payload mass, screw all that stuff. I almost wish that they had pursued something

more like New Glenn size or a little bit smaller. So the payload mass was maybe only like 20 or 30 tons, you know, like almost similar to their current fleet just so people didn't freak out. I'm like, this is impossible because I think the fact that it is so capable and fully reusable makes it seem extra absurd. But technically speaking, they have the engines to do it. They have, if they, if they know they can scale it up to the size and do all that stuff, why not? Here's the thing I can't figure out. Sorry, Jake, do you want to go on?

I just say, so you think they're just going to fly it with like a bunch of excess capacity or just multi-customer it and then take the cost savings? I mean, they could. I think they easily could fly dual for a little bit, you know, dual geo-birds for a little bit and save everyone some money in the process. and then eventually gain confidence and be like, hey, you guys can start building like way bigger, heavier, cheaper, dumber satellites than these lightweight things you're building now.

Here you go. Just save yourself some money. We'll put it up there. No big deal. We'll change the market for you. Instead of your payload, you're now limited to your satellite can only weigh 30 tons in geo. You can put a whole, like, you know, you can put a whole giant building up there, whatever you need to do.

So on that, I have two things. One, new Glenn has already started to do that. We already saw there's this Harris, Corp deal that they have with Blue Origin where they're going to build antenna that can fit that are bigger than they could fit in current farings but can fit within a new Glenn fairing. So that is happening a little bit as we see a bigger size happened or at least certain companies that are like, oh, we could do something cool with that. So that is a point in that direction of saying like market currently is responding to size changes.

I'm from Iowa. If you build it, they will come. It's like a... But here's the thing I can't figure out. What is a starship cargo trajectory to Europa? You fly to a whole damn thing out to escape and then you turn around and you burn back? Or we got a little kickstage. What do we got? Kickstage it. So what are they going to do there?

Right? 50-10 kickstage and a 50-ton payload. They could get there fast. I mean, yeah. The possibilities of endless. You put it on a highly elliptical, you know, like basically where it's just hanging on to a thread of Earth's gravity so it can easily make it back. That's like the Zubrin wants to do that with, I forget what he, I think he was talking about Starship when they were originally talking about that.

He was like, no, no, no. The way to do this is keep the thing in Earth orbit the whole time and send one habitat. And he was like doing his whole Mars direct via the Starship thing thing. So that's definitely, there's some people out there that think that. But I'm just trying to figure out like, everyone's like, oh, Starship could fly like nine Europa Clippers. And I'm like, but how? Is the whole thing going? Oh, yeah.

Right. I wonder if it has enough thing about this. Now, someone would have to run the math on this for me. If it has that bigger payload capability, could it do a small Europa clipper size payload? Do the actual injection burn, have enough, let go of it, have enough velocity or enough delta V to turn around.

Cancel the burn. Cancel the burn out. I would love to see those numbers. Who know? Because what if that was a possibility? That I could do the freaking injection burn and cancel itself out. and come back. Now, that would be

nut. Who's the dude from the Martian? What was that guy's name? That steely-eyed missile man from the Martian? Remember who I'm talking about? The trajectory guy? Yeah, but the guy that slipped... Yeah, but I forget what his name was in the thing. That's just called Donald Glover. He'll know. He's fake Mark Wallace. That's what he is.

Well, we need Donald Glover to get on the SpaceX team immediately to figure that out. I think we're kidding ourselves if they don't already have that guy on staff. That's true. Oh, the people that figure that stuff out. Rich Pernell. Yes.

There it is. That makes me think of Archer for some reason. Isn't there a... No, I know why, because Chris Parnell, not Pernell. Chris Parnell plays a voice on Archer, and now I'm all confused. And sorry. Ev Williams is the Twitter guy. Full circle.

There he is. Oh, he disappeared. Jake, should we talk... Oh, you got a... You prepared a segment for us, Jake. I did, yeah. It's the surprise segment that isn't really a surprise if you've listened to the show at all. So we do a lightning round.

Not the name anymore. But it's not the name anymore. It's called the terminal count now, I guess. Kurtz in particular is very incessant that we name it terminal count. So, Tim, do you want to participate in the terminal count? Duh. Duh. Good answer.

Duh. Prepare yourself, though. Prepare yourself. Oh, no. Just get spicy. So the first couple questions You'll be like, oh, I got this. Okay.

Okay, so we always start with a calibration question just to make sure that we understand how the game works. So T-minus 10 is when DM1 docked the International Space Station, what nationality was the first astronaut to enter? I don't know who entered. I didn't. His name was David Saint-Jacques.

so French I don't know French Canadian Canadian yeah how many arms did he have how many arms did he have none because he had a canadarm

yeah we don't we don't like arm jokes okay we take our arms very seriously okay T minus 9 of the seven days in a week Canada of of the seven not how this goes no they're different now

of the seven days in a week week, which is the best to be an astronaut on? You're the only guy I know who's an everyday astronaut. Oh, Lord. Every day's the best day. Is that the answer? That's the answer for sure. Is that how this is going?

I told you the first couple, you'll be like, oh, I get it. And then it takes a turn right here. Okay, T-minus 8, Starliner or a dragon. He's so stressed out. Now he's trying to find, like, there's a third answer. That's the right one. Lightning round. What is it?

It's Dragon because it's now, baby. We're seeing it this year. Yeah, I've got to be excited for us now. We're looking forward to Starliner. Guys, celebrate what's happening now. Geez, I love that answer. T-Myus 7, Boeing Spacesuit or SpaceX spacesuit. Ooh.

Are there names for the Spaces? They have names yet? I think you said it. I don't, yeah. Yeah, I like, I wanted to kneel you with that one because I think you've worn one. He's worn the Michelin Man one. I have to say,

I'm a really big fan of Boeing's suit itself. I know it doesn't... Actually, these days, I almost think the suit itself might look cooler, believe it or not. It's actually a really good, tight-fitting suit, like really well done. The SpaceX suit on someone's body that isn't like a mannequin...

Not good. It looks kindly. Yeah. But that being said, the SpaceX helmet, twice as cool as the Boeing helmet. So I think it's like put the SpaceX helmet on the Boeing space suit and you got a real winner. All right, all right.

Okay. Follow up question at T-minus six. Which one's better to pee in? I pee in everything I sit in. Boeing space suit. All right, T-minus five, favorite place to eat on the cape. Ooh. I still think my favorite place to eat the cape.

I don't know why. It's such a stereotype. I do love me some grills. It's right there in Port Canaveral. It's like the end of the, it's like the last restaurant of the port. They have these really good fish tacos, a cool little like tiki bar. You just watch boats come in all day. I like that place.

Is that where we ate, Anthony? I don't know where we ate. When we went to lunch over there? Yeah. It was on the water. Yes, it was. Yeah. It's probably not even that good.

I'm sure locals are screaming at me right now. Like, that's the worst place. That was a really commanding desk punch. That was awesome. I have that shame and hitting this thing. All right. T-minus 4, Ripley or Starman? Ripley.

Power to women. We need more women. Love it. But Starman was, he had a convertible. He did. That was cool. I would rather ride Ripley's ride than Starman. It's not going to lie.

Starman had a convertible, but Ripley doesn't give a shit. Starman's dead. Ripley made it back to her. T-minus 3. Once commercial crew is flying, will Soyuz get better or worse? I think this might be like almost the beginning of the end of Soyuz. Because they've had some issues lately.

Ever since Ragozin kind of like took care of it and all or whatever he's doing with the program, it seems like we've had booster problems, we've had leaky Soyuz craft. One of the most reliable rocket and spacecraft in the world is starting to slip. and if all of a sudden their only monopoly revenue stream

is starting to slip up, I'm nervous that unless it gets taken over and something totally changes, I can see this be the beginning of the downfall, which would be a huge shame because I'm a huge fan of Russian spaceflight. But lately, maybe this will be a good point.

I'm going to say it's the beginning of the end, though. Agreed. Hard agree. That's not saying that they might not flip and do something cool. Hard disagree. that Russians have never done anything interesting in space. Only the Soviets have continue with the lightning round. All right, T-minus two, follow up.

Who would win in a fight, J.B. or Dimitvi Rogozen? Wow. That's a layer question. I like that one. Is it possible to beat a Russian in a fight? I don't think so. I'm just happy. He's a big dude, too.

Different set of rules. I feel like he grew up probably in the streets. a little bit. I think everyone in Ross Cosmos is an ex-KGB agent. I think I read that somewhere. I think, well,

isn't Ragozin literally an ex-KGB agent? Probably. Probably are, yeah. He's like boys with Putin who is, so that makes sense.

Is J.B. On Mountain Dew before the fight? Nailed it. All right. Ragozen. All right. Probably true.

I mean, J.B. is also like a fighter pilot, though. Isn't he? It's probably like seen some shit, right? That's the point. He's probably like gone through.

He spent a couple days in a gym before, right? Like, yeah, okay. All right. Last question before launch, T-minus 1. The Earthy 0-G indicator. Is it actually around or is NASA just lying to us? Wait, is it actually around? Like...

Is it round? Yeah. Is the plush toy round? Yeah. Or is NASA lying? It's flat, dude. Kid me? Did you see the images?

Did you ever see two sides of it at once? I mean, you can ever see the backside. I've never even seen it with my own eyes. I haven't seen it with my own eyes. Why wasn't there a mirror behind the plush toy to show that there was a backside to it? Because I just only saw two dimensions of it. This is a shitty lighting. It's all my fault.

I love it. Oh, I love it. Good sport. You want to do some picks, Anthony? Mm-hmm. I sure do. All right. I can lead us off.

do it. The Planetary Society has recently added to their website these awesome mission pages. Did I still your pick? Nope. Okay, cool. But it was my second choice. Okay, cool. Yeah, they're awesome.

They're great. Like you, so it's kind of weird to get to on their website, but you go to like, what is it? Missions and then space missions. And then they have like trending missions for the missions that are doing some cool stuff in space right now.

And it's their collection of like, here's the latest things that have happened. And it's pretty rad. So if you're like traveling for a week and need to catch up or you hypothetically have had three to four sleepless nights in one week, like one of us on the show here and you need to catch up with what the bear sheet lander's doing, you just go there, check it out. They got them all posted there and it's awesome. But you can't easily catch up on the bear sheet lander because that's something I need to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they got all the updates. I mean, as easy as it is to do, which is sometimes tough. What's this called? How do I look it out? Go to planet. Here, we'll do it together. Go to planetary.com.

org and then go to explore and then go to space missions and then up the top there's trending missions look at that wait wait I missed the space missions part is it a sub tab

of the thing? Yeah hover over explore and then the third one down space missions there we go and then it's pretty much Jason Davis just working hard that's amazing Jason Davis is a national treasure. He is, man.

That's great. This is fantastic. Okay, that's, thank you. Boom. That's a space pick right there. I didn't do any of the work. Don't think me. All right. Tim, you want to go next? This is going to be, you know, when like,

this is going to be the equivalent of being like, guys, I saw this awesome movie. It's called Apollo 13. You know, like, and something that happened a long time ago, I finally listened to Artemis on the way down like Andy Weir's book, Artemis, that was phenomenal. I know it's probably

been out for years now. I don't even know when it came out, but I'm sure everyone's like, I read Artemis nine years ago, damn. You're way behind. But for me, that was like a really entertaining read. And I hear they're making it a movie this year, which makes me very excited. Hmm. So, yeah, it's about going to the moon. It takes place on the moon.

They have this really cool storyline. Like, they have a legit, like, tourism. and industrial operations on the moon. It just seemed very feasible and a typical Andy Weir. I say typical is I only know the Martian, so I don't know any of other. Yeah, totally typical Andy Weir. Guys wrote two books, yeah.

All of his other work that I've seen once. But you know what I mean? Like at least like it is very feasible. It's very, it's a world that he created that is like this could exist. And that was awesome. He did such a good job. It was very entertaining. painting. So this may be just as a friendly reminder to check that out if you haven't.

But that was my space pick. I love the one thing from that. That reminder. Why, you didn't read it? I haven't read it yet. And I think this is like the third time it's been a pick on this show. So, I think, you're nailing it. The thing I loved about it was the currency was solid landed goods.

Right? It was like, your currency was a kilogram or something to the lunar surface. So, like, you could trade somebody to get. orders on the next flight. And the other thing I really liked was that he was like, Kenya, that would be a good spot for a space fort. It's like, yeah, because sometimes I just look at the world map and I'm like, where would be good to launch to space from?

And there's very few spots and that's a good one. That was, yeah, that was cool. And just how that like changed the country of Kenya too. Like that's really, he did a great job. He's got an imagination on him. It's really cool. So I'm going to geek out real bad right now. I'm going to give a pick that's literally a science journal.

So the Science Journal Astrobiology just put out a special edition. And I can actually, I'll link it to right now in the chat. But basically, NASA's been running this program called Basalt. It's a space analog mission. So you send some fake astronauts out into a lava field somewhere. You have a fake mission control and you do a whole, it's like larping. That's what our buddy Lars in the chat always likes to call analogs larping. It's very much larping.

But they've been working on this for like four or five years. They've done three missions. Some of them have been in Idaho at the Craters of the Moon Park. Some in Hawaii at the Volcanoes National Park. So all these kind of lava fields. And they just released basically all of their findings. So science, operations, engineering, all the kind of. of bits and pieces. They're just trying to answer the question of how the hell do you do an EVA on

Mars. Like what are we going to do? What is the procedure? And they've been studying it for so long and all the all the papers hit in one special issue. And so you can kind of go read all the bits and pieces if you want. There's a good summary article from the PI of the mission, which is Darlene Lim. She's Canadian. Shout out for that. And then there's actually an intro to it written by by Stan Love, the astronaut Stan Love, who's also a planetary scientist, and I guess he participated in it. So he kind of writes an intro,

then there's a summary, and then 12 science papers about all the different bits and pieces. So if you really want to geek out and be like, what does an EVA look like on the surface of Mars with all the time delay and communication problems and getting teams to work together and making science actually happen in a way, like most EVAs we do today are basically fix the outside.

side of the station. So, you know, we don't have a ton of experience. Yeah, right back into that rant. TVA to fix the station. This is an awesome deep dive. So it's not for the faint of heart. I mean, the articles are human readable. They're just chock. They're just chocked so full of information that it's like you got to like go in tactically read a couple pages, go and think about it for a while. So yeah, so I'm pretty excited about it. I've done, I think, three of them so far. I got to, I've done, I think, three of them so far. I got to keep going, but it's really cool. That's awesome. Can I take mine back?

You can add a second one. I won't let you rescind one. I have a second one. I have a second one. Apollo 11. Do you guys see that? I haven't seen it yet. I'm trying to find like a real IMAX to go to because I don't have one like super close to me. Too late. You missed it. Really? I think it's a

got of IMX already. One week. It's done. You got to watch it on a on a pee on regular screen now. It was unbelievable though, wasn't it? Like, so I thought it was really interesting because of like the narrate, like there was no narration. It was just like it was like a super cut of footage, right? Like that's all that it was.

The thing that stands out for me though was the launch sequence was out of this world. I have never seen Apollo like Saturn 5 footage like that. Like I was, my mouth was hanging open. like it's worth it for that. Well, the funniest thing, two things stood out to me was the launch sequence thing and the shot of the engine where you actually realize that it's covered in that thin tin foil basically and the SPSs.

Scott Manley just did a video about it too. I never had seen that. I never had realized that. How did I not notice that on any of the footage I've ever seen before? I never noticed the like foil that wraps around the F1 engines. That was, that blew my mind. And then number two was, I didn't realize Bruce McCandals or whatever. It's Candlest, how do you say his name?

Yeah. I didn't realize he was in mission control and, like, on comms during Apollo 11, and then he was the first person to do the untethered DVA. Yeah, he was like the one of the very few shuttle pilots that was in a shuttle astronauts that was an Apollo pick. That was crazy. He was a veteran when, you know, shuttle launched. Yeah.

I really like that guy, though. He's a handsome fellow back then. Man, he was a good looking dude. Yeah. That was awesome. Yeah. So that's my, that's my other pick,

my speed pick. Good bonus pick. Thanks. Thanks. Now I'm just like, why didn't I get to go see it? Now I'm a little mad about it. I had to drive down to Florida to see it,

so don't feel. If you want another level of commitment, I didn't go for the launch. It just happened to be a launch down there when I was driving down there and see an IMAX. Yeah. Did you go to that big IMAX in over in Orlando? Point Orlando?

No, no, we went to one. There's actually one in Merritt Island in this like rundown mall. Yeah. And it was, uh, the theater ended up being fine, but like, I can't believe they had an IMAX there. I thought we were going to at the Kennedy Space Center, they had an IMAX there. Um, so totally went there, like, went straight to the IMAX thing. Like, this is the first thing we'll do. And then we're like, yeah, no, we don't have that.

We're like, but it says on the app. I don't know. The one in Orlando is one of those IMAX ones that's like so tall that it's almost square. You know what I'm talking about? It's like ridiculously weird looking. And the theater seating is at like a 60 degrees. Oh my God, it's so steep. Climb a mountain.

Yeah. Or descend a mountain. I don't like those ones because you end up like, you end up having to crane your deck, especially those, have you ever been in a curved IMAX? Screw that. I only go to movies that I've seen a bunch in those. I went to, I saw Interstellar like that. And you know how a lot of the shots of dialogue are like really tight?

It'll be like one person here, one person here. Yeah, their faces were like on opposite side. the room so you're like, huh? Oh! You're so, like, disarranting. I only do those ones if I can get the back row seats. Like, that's the only time I'll do it, because you're far enough away that your field of view is reasonable.

I did not know that. Jake, before we sign off, I meant to do this at the start, but you are having a meetup this week. Yes. Next week? Two weeks? It's in like, well, I was recording. Yeah, it's in like a week. March, St. Patrick's Day, March 17th.

Oh, right, because you almost did it at an Irish pub. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So last year I did it on, it was March 18th last year, it was the day before the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference. And so it was fine that I held it in the bar outside the hotel, which is an Irish bar. But now it falls, that day falls on March 17, which means it is not okay to have a meetup in the Irish pub on St. Patrick's Day.

So it's in the lobby bar now. But if you're in Houston and you want to drive up to the weird wonderful, bizarre, not real town of the woodlands, Texas. You should come hang out. March 17th. Events.off nominal.companel.comas has all the information. So, yeah, I would love to hang out if you guys are around. Man, I think I've been to the woodlands. Is that the one that has like a fake little downtown?

The entire thing is fake. It's made out of cardboard and sticky tape. I've been there. I think it's kind of charm. Like, kind of cute. Have you ever been to Unique? Universal Studios, it's not too different. Yeah, where, yeah, it just is all like...

Ripping this place. It's not, I mean, I don't mind. At least it's not just like a Target store and then like some like multifamily home. And then that's it. We rent like we rent Airbnb when we go to this conference. Like we just, you rent like an entire McMansion, you know, for the week and it's like $900 or whatever. And you put 10 people in it. And so I'd like get up in the.

morning on like a weekday and go for a run before the conference and there's like there's no activity like why aren't people going to work where the kids waiting for the bus where someone walking their dog it's empty and it's like you know in the walking dead where they dress up like a set they take like a neighborhood they just put leaves on the road and then it's like yeah it's now you know it's abandoned that's what it looks like but it's like it's like that houston like pollen moss that like clings to everything in houston it's that's what it looks like anyway Spanish moss? It's just, it's pollen.

It just floats around and then, because it's a swamp. So yeah, great. Let's definitely go to the Jake's meetup that's positioned it precisely in this town that he's just described as a horror scape. As a wonderful place with floating moss. Our one listener in the woodlands like unsubscribe. Our zero listeners in the woodlands. Yeah, I don't think anyone actually lives there.

So I'm not too concerned about that one. Well, luckily, I can't let up. Christ. Luckily, I have rave reviews of the woodland. So if you need to come on over to my content, if you feel awesome now, by Jake's comments, feel free to check out, you know,

YouTube.com slash everyday astronaut. I won't make fun of your town. That should be my goal. Like, I, thanks everybody. That does it for me. I'm Tim Dodd, the Everyday astronaut. I won't make fun of your town. Unlike that Canadian asshole, Jake Robbins.

Jake, I was about to tell him to plug his stuff, and he just nailed it. Like, that was so professional. We have a lot to learn. Like how to do video, yeah. Everything, literally everything, except apparently drink and talk about space. We've got that one under control. We nailed it, yeah.

You guys nailed that. You guys nailed that. We're crushing it. Of all the, like, podcasts where you drink and talk about space, this is definitely the best. Easily. Yeah. God, how many are there? actually amy shira title used to do one

where they it was a little bit i love amy shiro title so this is i'm not going to go on you're not going to go full woodlands on town yeah i'm not going to go woodlands on her it's because she's Canadian right is that why she is Canadian but she would do a thing where i think she would like have beer and talk space and punk rock whoa that's even more niche than i thought we were that was more niche and i thought that was potentially confusing for her audience who most of the time was probably 65 year old men from like the Apollo and Gemini programs, you know, being like, why am I talking to this guy about, you know, punk rock?

Like that, you know, her vintage space. Like, she's definitely, like, been the champion of vintage space. So I think a good, a good portion of our audience probably is not a similar demographic to those in, like, the ska punk rock scene. That's a solid assumption based on the Boeing video we saw earlier. But I don't know. What do I know? What do I know?

Jake, you got any parting words for us before I hit this outro music? Dude, I think we nailed it. I think we got DM1 under control. I think we know where the best places not to live in the United States are. I think we got some good beers.

Tim, thanks for coming and hanging out with us. This is awesome. My pleasure. Let's make it a regular thing. I'll pop on any time you guys need. Anytime you guys are like, hey, we need to spice things up. Let's bring that. We're going to get Larry from Boeing, and that's definitely a lot of to be the next show we do together.

Oh God, are we going to call this episode Larry from Boeing and just continue to confuse people? Sure are. That was actually the third one on my note. I'm not even lying. I can post this screenshot right now of these days. Bye everybody.