Off-Nominal - 179 - Not Supposed to Poof (Presenting the 2024 Off-Nominees with Loren Grush)

Episode Date: December 20, 2024

Jake and Anthony are joined by Loren Grush of Bloomberg to present the 2024 Off-Nominees: the most bizarre space news stories of the year.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 179 - Presenting the 2024 Off-Nominees (with Loren Grush) - YouTubeThe Off-Nominal Awards - Off-NominalFollow LorenLoren Grush - BloombergLoren Grush (@grushcrush) • Instagram photos and videosLoren Grush (@lorengrush.bsky.social) — BlueskyFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@offnom.com) — BlueskyFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine, start. Jake, we made it to our favorite day of the year on this show. Best show. This is the one. Best show. And shockingly... No pressure. Lauren, I don't know how you did not ever do an off-nominees show with us before.

Yeah. I'm very excited for this one by far. Maybe we felt bad trying to hit you with the bad news, but your sense of humor is so right on for it that it's unfortunate that we didn't yet. So there was time you guys gave me a quiz after I got for a book leave and that was stressful. I remember. Yeah. And while I was gone, a lot had happened, you know, because it's me. And there was, I think, multiple companies had gone public via SPAC.

Multiple billionaires had gone to space. Yeah, it was just a wild time to have taken off for write a book. But they're really, when it comes to the brain space, there's no good time to do it. No. Good book though. So that worked out. And all panned out nicely. Yeah.

So we have any other topics to cover Jake before this epic list? No, this we need to get into it. Like we there can be no like messing around today. We have a lot of wacky stories from 2024. This list throughout the year, we've been like, you know, tracking these as we go. And it's like, you know, I think it was like February. We were like, oh, man, this is going to be a busy episode. We already knew by then that there was going to be some pretty chunky stories to cover. Think now in your head what you think the winner is going to be because I guarantee you forgot

at least one of these that's better than whatever you're thinking. Just for Lauren. That's for everybody. It's a lot. I'm thinking. I will. I'm thinking I have something in my head. But I don't want to say it.

Don't say yet. Just think about it. Okay, I will. I'll think about it. Yeah. Okay. Did you bring a drink today? I know it's a little earlier for you. I did. I did. You got a nice daylight still. Yes. I know I think I drank kombucha last time I was on, but I'm also drinking kombucha again. And but this one I love because it's pink lady apple flavor. And pink lady apple is by far the best flavor of apple. So when I found this in the grocery store, I bought.

Honeycrisp. I're taking some shots. Jeez. I know. Honeycrisp is a close second. And there is also cosmic, which I do enjoy and seem as appropriate. But pink lady is my one-truth. We're a royal gay house, so. Wow. Oof. Major miss. Huge miss. That's going on the list, Jake. Jake's apple takes are on here. Oh, man. Brutal. What'd you bring? Do you bring some,

some other bad tasting mealy bullshit too? No, no. I got a patito Navidena. It's their Christmas Imperial stout. So this one is yeah, you see how that's condensating?

This is, look at this tropics baby. Look at that. Mine's doing that too, Jake, but it's it's Mad Elf time. You remember this one? Mad Elf. Yeah, it's the Mad Elf episode, 11%.

It's the exact beer we need for the off nominees. I don't really like cherries and drinks, but I do it for once a year. And then I bring the leftovers to my family's house for Christmas. And they say, congrats. I brought five beers. Why'd you bring five? That's what I had. No reason. You always bring five beers every Christmas. Four or five. I sell them in sixes, but. Yeah, that's funny. Okay. All right. So should we do any, I was going to say we should introduce, like what this is. Maybe do a little bit of like a, here were the winners of years gone by. Because I've updated the website, Jake.

So I want to take a victory for that for that. Yes, we need to take credit for that. Okay. So if you have not listened to this show before we do this every year, this is the off nominees. These are the weirdest, wackiest, kind of funniest things that went unexpected, wrong. As we say every year, they must have, these stories have to have the spirit of whimsy. So there was a little bit of like in the early years of doing this. There was a little bit of like it kept meandering into just like things that went wrong,

just like sad stories. And that's not what we wanted. It has to be whimsy to this. It needs to be funny. We're going to laugh a lot today. That's the kind of point of these. So Anthony and I have been collecting them all year and there's a lot. Yeah, there was a year where there was a lot of launch failures.

And most of them were just like not, we were like, it's just not really worth talking about. They're just things went wrong. nothing fun. And then when you, this many years in, this is our sixth year doing it, I think.

Sounds right. Sixth. Then you read this list of who has won and the years gone by and you're like, oh yeah, so that's exactly the kind of stuff that we're talking about. So,

2023, Jake, I rewatched the episode and we'll say Joey B and us, it was a hilarious episode because there was many great stories. The winner, though, was the Vega propellant tanks that got thrown out and were found in a landfill next to other scrap metal.

So that was a great one. Incredible. Yeah, yeah. That year there was two categories, Starship and not Starship. The winner of the Starship category was this fantastic tweet, what are the 63 items in which Elon asked the FAA directly on Twitter what the items were that his company sent them. So that was a great year. I think I also asked the FAA that question.

One of them could tell us. Elon being a reporter, you know, and he understands what our jobs are, you know, when he's not railing against them. 2022, one of my favorite years, Oleg, Artemiev threw a CubeSat into the ISS Solar Array directly on a spacewalk. He bounced it off the solar array. One of the greatest of all times, I think. It's a rebound shot. That one's excellent. 2021 Nauka was the winner just generally for all of its trails

That one I was really sad to miss Talk about another thing I missed when I was on book leave Was that I think I was blissfully writing a chapter And then kind of checked online and went oh my god But there were even like events leading up to it It almost didn't make it It almost didn't stay in there was all these little things leading up to it then You had the great line for this Lauren

Because when NACA first launch, we were all cheering for it. And then it like went really sour and you said it got milkshake ducked. It was exactly what happened. Wow. Nailed it. Pass Lauren. Quote you back to you. Yeah.

2020, the Florida boaters got after it in the DM2 recovery. That was also one of my favorites. That's incredible. That picture is incredible. Let's see. 2019 Omega's observation. Probably the, I've heard that word a lot lately. Are we going to have another observation in this year's category?

For sure. Yeah. There may be a recurrence, yeah. 2018, Oleg Konanenko stabbed a Soyuz and cut into it on a spacewalk to find that drill hole that they never figured out who did. That was the best day at work, I have to say. I just, I never watch spacewalks, but this one was unmissable. Yeah. the POV of just stabbing a spaceship and like all the stuff flying everywhere.

That was incredible. So those are the past winners. Excellent, all of them. But that gets us to this year. What's the URL for that? Can you give people the... Offnom.com slash awards. The 2024 ones will be up there after the show,

but they will not be for a little bit so that you are not spoiled if you want to go look at the past winners. We do categories every year, Jake. Would you like to introduce this year's categories? Yeah. So we always kind of do the categories based on what there is. And so the subdivisions this year looks like we got three. So it's a triple category year.

We have moonlanders. There are some good stories. We have spaceships, specifically human spaceships. There were some loose stuff around that. And then a recurring category is just, you know, rockets where they shouldn't be, really is what it's going to be. Okay, so before we started, Anthony was like, do you want the list? And I said, do I want the list?

But now I'm glad I did not take the list because I'm, I think I know what many of these are. But I will also like to be surprised. There's always one or two that slip through. Yeah, yeah, exactly. There's some events that are so small, but they're completely erratic that we throw them on this list, but everyone forgets about them. So I'm excited. There's a couple in here I'm pumped about. But I don't do too, Lauren, as we go, we have to pick a winner.

of each of these categories and then we debate amongst ourselves of the overall winner as well. So we have three funny moon-leaders. Do we have criteria? Like, are there certain points we ascribe? It's just all on vibes. Okay, got it. Just vibes, yeah. You can score it.

If you want to score it that way, I would love to hear your scoring of these different things. So think about your criteria as you go. I'll think about it. Okay. We had three moonlanders, Jake, all funny. Every single one of them is funny. Everyone. Yeah. Should we go chronological?

Yeah, you should kick us off with the top one here because you know this story better than I do. Yeah, I was debating that, Jake. So, Peregrin, astrobotic, Peregrin started off the year. Highlights of this, right? Launches, launch seems to go well. Everyone was also pumped about that. There was a strong chance that Vulcans Flight 1 was also going to appear on this list.

It did not. It went totally fine, which was crazy. Lander gets launched. They're in their elliptical orbit. They, now we know, they spring a leak of their, with the pressure leaked out of their tanks, so they could not maintain tank pressure. Thus, there was fear that they would explode on their way out to lunar orbit. So the decision was made to not press ahead to go to the moon, even though at a certain point in the mission,

they ended up being able to do maneuvers, which is what they said originally. they couldn't do maneuvers because they were leaking stuff. Turns out they could do maneuvers. This brings us to a thing, Jake, that happened throughout the year. There's a story here about Peregrine on its way back to Earth that has not been out there because, shockingly, there's a whole half of this story that will not confirm any details on this, but the people that were operating Peregrine, we're pretty sure they could fly this thing past the moon. And I'm just saying this now because I don't think anyone's ever going to talk about this. So I'm just going to spit some hot goss for the celebration of the orphan nominees here.

The team operating this was pretty sure they could fly Peregrine by the moon, not land on it because they couldn't do a burn long enough to land on the moon, but they could do pulses and maneuver themselves out past the moon, fly by at least, head out to solar orbit, not risk anything. They were told they should sink this into the ocean. So what's interesting here is that that decision was made when they were on a collision course with Earth already. So if they did nothing, they would have slammed into Earth. They could have pulsed a couple of times to raise orbit, miss Earth, go by the moon, or they could pulse a shitload

more to miss the land on Earth. They had to do more maneuvering to miss land on Earth than they did to miss Earth entirely. So this is the story of Bergen. It burn up. They did some, there were some payload activity. So they get a little credit. for that, I guess. But what's your paragon vibe on spirit of whimsy in terms of it leaking propellant tanks, still doing some maneuvers, kind of being a maybe a leader in terms of communicating over the top of their status at all times? That's part of the story here. Well, let's not forget there's even drama leading up to their launch, right? Because of the controversy from the Navajo Nation and the remains of human beings.

that they were carrying. And what I find so funny, and Anthony, you and I have talked about this before, is that, you know, NASA was very much like, hey, it's not our mission. You know, we can't do anything about this. And but then when it came time to actually make a decision on how this program was going to end, you know, NASA was like, you guys probably should crash that thing into earth. Yeah, that it's our mission. Yeah. Look at me. Yeah. I'm the captain now. I'm the captain. Yeah. So bummer. I think. What an interesting one. It really is a great. I was just going to say, it's a great, it was a great illustration and example of this new era that we are entering or have it turned into, really, in terms of. of, you know, is something truly commercial or, you know, does NASA have a say? Should NASA have a say? And what happens, you know, when we do rely more and more on the commercial space industry?

It's that the government has less and less of a say. Obviously, NASA is struggling with having less and less of a say. And that's for all of its missions, not just astrobotic. But, you know, those are the tradeoffs that we make when we do. do these things. And it's a little bit like NASA having its cake and eating it too. And that's just, you know, that's not how it's going to be if you really want this vibrant commercial space industry that you, that you're trying to create. I was going to say that there, this, there wasn't like one specific thing in this mission to me that felt like an off nominee. But I think that overall it captures it in like, like all of these clips missions so far, I've just been like chaos. Like, Like, they don't just happen, you know? It's just like before the launch, crazy stories, as it's launching.

Is it working? I don't know. Something's working. Is it spinning? We haven't talked to it in a while. It's working out. No, it doesn't work. Oh, like, this blew up.

We're still going to do it anyway. Let's land. Let's try. You know, like there's just so much happening on these missions. And I felt like that Peregrine definitely set the tone for that. Yeah, there was that tragic quote, remember? Yeah, that tragic quote from, was it John Thornton about, you know, how they went from the highest of highs to the lowest.

of lows and the mission control and that was just so so bittersweet you know so it really and it really does you know it's funny to laugh at but you know you just remember how much time and effort they've put into these things and it really is so tragic when and it can it can happen it's just a split second you know all that all those years of work um down the drain yeah yeah well on that note let's move on to the next funny moonlander sorry uh jack's a guy's got in the action with the Slim Lander. Yes. The off nominee criteria begins even before we get to the mission in which the alternative

name for this mission was Moon Sniper. I don't know if anyone remembers that. I don't think I knew that. I do remember we found a treasure trove of like logos or they had created a cartoon character of the lander. I got to find the link to that. I'll send that to you guys, but there was just a bunch of different images of the Lander doing cute poses in its little cartoon, like, we, you know, and we were all laughing about the,

yeah, I'll have to find that. No, it was buried on the website somewhere. Somebody had sent it to me, and so when we found it, like, oh my God, wait, did you find it? I found one, I think, because there's like a book or something, the Slim Project. Yeah, anyway, can you share it? Come on. Hold on. I'm working on. Link in chat is what we need. Link in chat. Okay, sending it here.

I don't know why I'm sending it there. He's so bad at pasting. It's being blocked by your Starlink. Starlink was like, no. What did you send it? Oh, you sent it on Discord. Couldn't have sent it possibly in the app that I'm running this whole fucking thing on.

All right, there you go. There you go. I'll send it in both places. Oh, okay. Here we go. Look, no, that's good. That's a good. spot. All right. What the hell is this? I don't think I ever saw this. Is this what you're talking about?

Yes, exactly. Isn't it cute? Whoa. I've never seen this. But there were a bunch of these. It was like it wasn't best good. It's so aggressive. We've had a bunch. So I wish you could find all of them because they were really adorable. Wow. This one, I think, has more going for it than you might think, okay? So, first of all, we've only talked about the name and its comic so far. We have not talked about the fact that the main engine fell off during its landing attempt. And there's a picture of it.

They got a picture of it. Perfectly severed on its way down to the lunar surface. Well lit, too. The shadow in the engine bell is incredible. It could not be a better picture of the main. engine falling off the bottom of the lander on the way down. So what it turned out was that that led to it landing with only one engine. And so at the, what it was at the last, because it was landing with one engine, had more

horizontal thrust. God. How is it? Like off. All I know is the results, right? The best image ever. You're talking about the one that looks exactly like the KSP start screen that somebody photoshopped the actual lander onto the yeah this is exactly KSP.

Amazing, yes. So I do love that aspect that it totally planted up on its nose. And this is the one that it was supposed to land sideways, right? It was like they had the landing engine was on the side so it would like turn sideways and land and then kind of like, like, the last landing step was... Wasn't it the centaur thing where like the... The main engines were like horizontal velocity, and then it had softer landing engines?

Or am I thinking of the... Am I thinking of the centaur thing? I can't remember, but you're right. It was supposed to be, like, it wasn't supposed to look like... I mean, it's supposed to look like this, Lauren. Yeah, yeah. But you're right. The engines weren't pointed toward the surface, if I recall correctly.

It was supposed to be on the side. And so it landed sideways, but what that means is it actually landed upside down because sideways was nominal. Right. There we got it. It was confusing. I remember being like, what is the top of this spacecraft? Which way should this be? Nobody's quite clear on that.

Yeah. So now, Chaggley, again, in the funny moon lander department, landed terrible, operated for a bit, right? And they kept waking up multiple land days. There's rovers. Rovers got deployed out, took pictures of it. And even after it, like, it had died, like, they waited like a lunar cycle and they just like gave it a shot. It's like, oh, yeah, it's back. It just came back. I'm here, I'm here. I think that's an important lesson for life in general. You know, you don't always land right side up, but you can still keep. going if you really have enough talk. The most wholesome part of this show. Yes. Lauren the Life Coach. I love it. Speaking of landing the wrong direction, Jake,

should we make Lauren tell the story of her Texan brethren down there in the IM1 department? I can try. Remember, I didn't study for this, so this is all off the top of my head. But yes, talk about a really crazy landing experience. So intuitive machines was coming in for landing,

but we got word as they were landing that they did not have guidance. They didn't really have GNC, right? So it was just, or the lasers that they were supposed to be using to come in weren't working. And so they had to try and like quickly manufacture some, you know, Jerry rigged GNC from a payload on board the lander, which I think was a JPL payload or a NASA payload? It was a NASA payload. But it didn't actually work, even though they thought it did. But it didn't actually work.

But they were convinced it did. They were really coming in blind. And the best part is we later learned the reason that their control, their navigation controls weren't working is because somebody, basically didn't pull one of those removed before flight tags. It wasn't an actual tag, but it was essentially like that. They were supposed to flip some kind of switch. Yeah, exactly. It was a to-do comment, yeah. Yeah. There's a line comment. On comment before flight. I've always wondered, like, has anyone ever forgotten that? And then we actually finally, like, that actually happened. So that was particularly hilarious to find out. And then I hope you're going to use a

picture I sent you, Anthony. Yes. I took the screen cap when we were following the press conference because I was like, I can't believe this exists. But yes, so basically the lander was coming in with a little too much horizontal velocity. And because it's so tall, one of its landing legs tripped a rock and basically tilted over. But we were and there was a good moment after they landed where we did think they had failed and there was a lot of silence and you know we were holding our breath but then you know they got confirmation that it was operating but then then we then we kept then we had more silence so first we first we got word that oh okay so they they succeeded and then we got a little weird vibes from i think if i remember correctly some weird

press releases and statements came out. And then they called that press conference the next day. And I was like, okay, now I understand why they're being so cagey about this because it's a it's a success. But is it? I don't know. It was confusing. The NASA webcast. The NASA webcast was really funny because it was like it landed. And then there was like you said that first bit of silence and everyone was kind of waiting. And then remember like they got like some sort of signal. They got like a carrier heartbeat or something. And they were like, oh, we, we, we I think we hear it. And NASA was like, that's it, folks.

Everything was successful. Thanks for talking by. And they just like shut the webcast down. They were. They were like, we did it. We laid it on the moon. Goodbye. And we were like, I remember because, you know, when we cover these things, I'll give you

some a little insight with us. You know, we're like ready to pull the trigger. Right. And it's me. I, you know, it's me and everybody above me is like, did they do it? And I'm like, I don't know. You know, I'm trying so hard. And like other, you know, publications pull the trigger.

and you don't want to be wrong. Obviously, you don't want to be wrong. And so we're trying, we're like, you know, we're just trying to weigh the pros and cons of saying it was a success versus not. And it can be so difficult when all you have, I mean, it's the moon, right? I can't go and check myself. So all I have is the NASA, you know, the NASA live stream and what they're saying on that. So, you know, it's such a gamble.

And it's really hard to cover these things because you want to be right. but all you have is one source of information. And that's all you're ever going to have. Yeah. There's also this metal-ass photo of the landing strut or was that the landing strut, right, from the other side? Mm-hmm. Where was that from?

Yeah, like it broke over and was hanging there. It's like, it's like you can see three legs in it, right? It's the leg piece. Yes, right. It's the whole leg. Yeah. Yeah. That was a metal photo. Love that.

Chaos. Clips chaos. There's a lot going for this mission. Yeah. I mean, this face is doing a lot of work in the Moonlander department, to be honest. Because it's like, honestly. What we've learned is that the lander is sideways. And it's like, give me that other 3D model of the lander so I can use it as the rock that is on the moon.

Like, in Lauren's story of editors breathing down her neck about like, can we publish this or not, I, this is the best illustration of our collective relationship here, which is that I distinctly remember I was at a happy hour at a bar in Philadelphia and every. Everyone was yelling at me the same questions, but it was just people drunk at a bar. But I feel like this is probably what I looked like too mad else in trying to explain what happened to this thing. It's the same face that I have if I'm trying to make people understand what happened. So there's one other aspect of this mission that I would like to, again, I have like a little intel inside details here on these moon landing missions. I will once again, I think Tim Crane listens to this show. He listened to the other one. I think he listened to this one.

I'm going to do it one more time. I'm 85 to 90% sure that when they pulled into lunar orbit, their peri-pearlene was single-digit kilometers above the lunar surface. Oh, wow. He will not answer this question to me. He will not tell me how close to the lunar surface they were. The timing data that is out there and the Scott Tillies of the world and others have put some of this together too, is that they pulled the lunar orbit off time of what they thought,

and they were so close to the surface that that's why they had to immediately maneuver up to a higher orbit. And that tracks with what they've said, which is when we opened up our sensors when we were at the moon, we saw data that wasn't matching up with what we expected. And so we remember the landing time changed? It was like all of a sudden hour later. It moved up, yeah. Oh, yeah, that's ringing about. They shifted up to like a 220 kilometer orbit rather than 100 or something like that.

that they were like kissing the lunar mountain tops when they came in. I've done that in KSP too. But anyway, Tim keeps saying one day we'll let this out and like, you know, we're still doing our data review and all that. And they've done the data review and I keep emailing him. And he is not told anyone how low they were. But it's pretty fucking low. Because if it was 50, he would say 50. Whatever.

It's 4.8. All right, Lauren, those are our three funny moonlanders. Work me through your scoring rubric. Oh, okay, I didn't actually come up with one. But on vibes alone, I mean, you know, no offense to as robotic, but, you know, we just didn't get the funny pictures that we got with them. So funny pictures are always going to win. So, okay, maybe that's my criteria as hilarious snapshots.

I mean, I got to give it to slim, I think. I think that's got to be the winner there. But I have a special place in my heart for that screen grab that you showed just because I truly laughed out loud. And I know I want to preface this. I understand how hard it is and probably how sad it was to get this information. But you have to understand we were getting no information on our end. And so for us to go into this press conference with this imagery, it was just really, it was hilarious at the time. And they still were able to, you know, get some, some data and some work out of their lander.

So it wasn't, you know, and they still get the title for first intact commercial lander on the surface of the boot. So, you know, definitely a lot of wins there. But this is also objectively funny to look at it. But I think the slim, the slim, the slim picture is funny. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm on team slim too just because of the, the, it was a sequence.

It was like a, you know, you got a bunch all in a row. Rather than just one thing, it was like engine, spinny sideways design, picture still work. Like, it was just, there was a lot going on. The name. The name. The comic. The comic. It's a full package.

It's a complete off nominee. to Steve Ultimus, go birds. Otherwise, Slim was the winner. They were definitely the winner. Should we do, we should do spaceships next, I think. Yeah. But before we move on, we've got, you should just point out that we have more moon landing shenanigans to come next year, which I don't know if you saw what we confirmed that

Ice Space is lander and fireflies lander are going to be launching on the same Falcon 9 rocket. So continuing the trend in whimsy and funny things happening to lunar landers. They just keep on coming. Also taking different paths to the moon. They coordinated a little bit. And then they were like, well, we'll get off here and we'll walk on our own. What if one bumps into the other enable fame? Oh, God.

Can you imagine? It's going to be. Hopefully the deployment sequence is far enough apart, you know. I doubt timing will work this well. but we have those two flying and IM2 in the early part of the new year. Yes. Taking a more direct path. So it will be like three, again, three quick succession moonlanders at the beginning of the year.

So, yeah, strong moonlander. We're going to have a big moonlander segment for the next several years of all nominees for sure. Clearly. As if I didn't have enough to do already. No, it's great. We love it. All right. Spaceships?

Spaceships. So we should probably just dig right into the big one right off the top, right? Obviously Starliner. I have three things in here, but I think there's, we could probably like pick out elements. First one I have is just Starliner comma generally. Like that's, I don't know if there's enough whimsy in Starliner as a whole. It's very sad as a whole. More sad than whimsy.

So if we were to pick moments out, there's two that we thought of that have that spirit of whimsy. One was the weird noises that were coming out of Starliner the one day that no one could figure out. Don't get me started on that. What was happening with the noises? That was like, like whole news cycles were spawned from this entire saga, and many of them should have just been dead to, you know,

Like, it really, I would. Is there another story happening this week, Lauren, that you might think is feeling similar to that? Or, you know, are you too central to the U.S. to deal with my New Jerseyans, my fellow New Jerseyans. Oh, gosh. Well, I didn't even think about that. I thought you were referencing the delay that Butch and Sunny are going to have a stranded home. But, yeah.

Stranded astronauts. Stranded more. But, yes. You're not big on the noises. You're not a pro noise being a whimsy, whimsical element. I think what annoys me about, well, the noises is that that one seemed to capture the zeitgeist in this weird way. And the amount of texts I got from people that were like, what are the noises?

And I was like, audio feedback. I was like, what did you, what do you think it's going to be? Do you think it's like aliens? Like what I don't know. It was just like, like there's. Yeah, I mean, they really did. But everyone loves a mystery. I understand it, but was it newsworthy?

No. Here's what's, all right, let me stand the noise. The noises being on this list is that think about you being an astronaut on the ISS and your day being derailed by trying to figure out what the hell's going on and stop the annoying noise that's happening. Exactly. Like, I can't even imagine what must be going through those people's heads when they are just like doing their job and then they wake up the next day. and, you know, this innocuous conversation that they had with mission control is all over the internet. Yeah.

It was weird. Yeah. It was a weird thing that happened. It was kind of funny, though. I mean, but that was like, that was just kind of how this whole story, I don't know. I hope we don't have the story that annoys me the most on this list, which is that like the New York Post saw a weird picture of Sunny. and just decided she was malnourished.

And I missed that. Oh, good. That was a really stupid couple of days. Yeah, it was like the New York Post and the Daily Mail and they just won't let it go. And I don't know, they don't have any sourcing. It's just literally like they somebody saw a picture and they're like, oh, doesn't she look kind of weird? There might be a reason this should be on the list, which is the press conference that happened after that. And when they like, we're like, all right, we got to do something to like dispel this rumor.

We had a press conference scheduled. We will ask Sunny, how are you doing? You know, like an open-ended question. And her response was like, I've been working out. Like, I've been up here. I've been on this bike. I've been pumping iron. Like, I'm good.

I'm doing great. Like, I'm, she was just totally bragging about how much workouts she's been doing. I love that. That little shit. She's like, thanks for noticing. I've been feeling great. Yeah, exactly. I enjoyed that.

I just think that clearly, like, you know, there are just a few times where I notice that stories were covering is really capturing people's attention more than the average story. And obviously Starliner had rumblings when I went to my book club. And one of the people there was like, oh, I heard about the stranded astronauts. And I was like, stranded astronauts. What are you talking about? And then I was like, oh, she's talking about. Starliner. And that was the first indication I got that this was the narrative that was forming.

And it was just a roller coaster ride ever since then. So I think everyone was just on a heightened alert. And they still are about news about Butch and Sunny because of the whole, the whole saga. Yeah, that I was going to say is that that sound story came in one of those windows between like the important press conference, you know, where I was like, they had like four or five where they're like giving to some updates and what's going on. And there was like a, there was one time when there was like a big gap. That's when this happened. It was like a two week gap between press conference or something.

It all glars together. We were all just like, we're all just like, we need Darliner News right now. This was September 1st. How about this weird noise? It's like, what is this? We need to obsess about this. It turns out it was just the sound.

This was in the burger gap. He had stated the deorbit date that no one had said yet and no, they had not yet done it press conference to confirm it. Right, right. The burger guy. The Jake's favorite Starliner story. I don't know if you want me to play a clip of this, Jake. We have to play it.

It's only like a minute. So we have to play the whole thing. The timing is so good. This is, I'll set this up. This is the first time they tried to launch that got scrubbed. Yeah. So it wasn't the one time. Oh.

This is the first one. And so this is like very close to launch. And Butch had this speech. Oh, yeah. Wow. You're sitting on console, whether you're in Houston, BNCC, Bay Sox, Atlas. This is a great day to be proud of your nation. And all of you listening as well, whether you're at Banana Creek or the Causeway or the rooftop of LCC or the ASOC.

I love the road park. It's so intense. It's so intense. It's around our nation, like the Bay Area Building and other places where you are viewing what's taking place. And the pan, the B-roll. For you, it's a great day to be proud of your nation. Great day to be proud of Boeing. Great day to be proud of ULA and NASA. And we are one nation under God, indivisible.

The Pledge of Allegiance in the middle. And we together use the power of that combination. We can do some pretty amazing things. So we'll see. With that, we are ready to put some fire in this rocket. I'm going to this spacecraft to the international world. space station where the lot of Americans have designed and have prepared it to be the flag so take us to space and back so yeah it's like yeah that's great let's just go

we got a time like sir learn and configured to terminal cam roger all steps are complete prior to terminal count in 20 seconds since he stopped talking and with that everyone's like Ready to go to space. So good. Right. Wait, wait. Listening to those words from Butch, I'm sure we'll be playing that speech back for a long time. Oh, yeah.

We're playing the speech back. That's for example. Up next. Pyrus enabled. Pyrus enabled. Pyrus enabled. Hold, hold, hold. Less than a minute.

50 seconds. 50 seconds. Healthy. What a bummer. He didn't abbreviated one on the next attempt, right? Wasn't there a shorter? I think so. I can't remember.

But okay, so I was outside at this point and I had missed the whole speech because I was basically like running outside to go watch. And I was like getting it ready. And then somebody was like, it's a scrub or no. So yeah, maybe it was Chris Davenport. Somebody turned to me and they were like, it's a scrub. And I was like, what? And they're like, yeah, it's not happening.

And so I like sunk to my knees on the floor of like, of or on the ground outside. And then I turned behind me and I'm directly behind Kristen Fisher's CNN camera. And I was like, oh my God, did I just sink to my knees on CNN right just now? Thankfully, they told me it was not captured. I was really certain that, like, I just had done a dramatic faint on CNN. So thank God that didn't happen. God, that would have been amazing. Yeah.

Yeah. No, this speech, though, I just, it was just so, it was so perfect. God. Great day to be proud of Boeing and Starliner and NASA. And then, yeah, the best irony is that that scrub was like the best thing they were going to have for a long time. That's the most innocuous news story they were going to have to deal with for months. The comms team thought that was the low point and it was the high point. So I think that that's the only Starliner one with any whimsy.

The rest were just like, hmm. Everything else was tragic and scary. But don't be sad, Lauren, we do have two other good spaceship stories. Okay, I'm excited. one of which I know you do not remember. Okay. Hit me. First one that you will, because it happened very recently, and I feel like we have not heard

enough detail about this was Progress MS-29 that docked with the space station and probably let hypergolic propellants into the space station. Oh, yes. It was noxious odor. Or wait, which one I think you'd have? No, no, no. You nailed it. That is it?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The foul smell. A spray paint-like smell is what was reported. Got to love it. You know, it's just if it's not a leak of propellant or cooling fluid, you know, it's a foul smell, foul smell emanating throughout the ice. When is the last year that spacecraft coming from Russia didn't have a problem with it? I don't know.

It's before 2018 because they've appeared every single year. We have a spot for them every year. Did you follow up on what happened here? Because there was a little detail from Anatoli-Zak, which is that the undocking of what spaceship was it? Oh, Progress MS-27. They did not purge the propellant lines before Progress MS-27 undocked. So when it did undock, it sprayed hypergolic propellant on the docking hatch. and then progress MS-29 docked.

And because they didn't purge the lines and it sprayed there, then when they opened the hatch, it was propellant from the last progress, still on the door. So it's actually way worse, is what you're saying. Way worse. Way worse than a leak.

Yeah. Oh, God. Well, is everyone okay? I mean, that's that? They didn't say anything about it. Oh, God. This is why we were born with a few extra brain cells so that we can lose a few at various points in our lives

and still do okay. Yeah. All those permanent markers we sniffed in grade school, you know. Exactly. There's a little bit of a margin in how many brothers. It's basically the same as inhaling hypergolic propellant, right? Like, it's, you know, no problem. We all got away with it.

Here's the best Russia of the year, though. So you's MS-25. Pretty standard de-orbit, pretty standard re-entry, very non-standard landing. Did either of you remember what happened at the landing of Soyuz M.S. 25? Jake probably does because he looked at the document. I did, yeah. I briefly remembered it before I read about it again. Lauren, would you believe me if Progress or Soyuz MS-25 landed directly next to a tractor?

Oh, I do remember this. And I did see that picture. And of course I believe it. 100 yards, what, 150, 100, maybe, probably like 80 to 100 yards, I would say. It's not very far. And it's just like a little rest farming tractor. You know, how I read this photo is that tractor running away screaming, you know, like, ah!

Even though there's, I guess there's nobody in it, but. No, no, but real quick, real quick, dissect this image a little bit. Look at the, look at the path that this tractor took in the field. Oh, it was like, oh shit. Yep. Turn bright, turn right. Towards where it was coming in. And he saw the thing coming.

and then he turned to the right. Oh, my God. That's hilarious. So you think it landed as close as it is right now, but look at how close it was right next to it. Wow. You know, you're just trying to plow the field and then a spacecraft comes screaming in above you.

Yeah, what's interesting is, if you look at the dust, it's blowing to the left, which means that the spacecraft would have come floating on the parachute from the right side of the screen here too. So we've actually gone over the tractor, probably. wind analysis. I hope you got some hazard pay for that.

I doubt, I doubt it. Yeah. I have news for you, Lauren. You haven't heard a lot of good stories about Russian pay lately. Is this even in Russia or is this Kazakhstan? I don't think the astronauts got paid. So I love this one. This one is quintessential.

This is my vote 100% quintessential autonomy. It's totally ridiculous. In the spaceship category, your voter tractor? I'm voting tractor. This is insane. This is a ridiculous story. Yeah, I, I love, I think I, you know, it fulfills my criteria of funny picture. Therefore, it wins. I mean, this is the, this is the Cossack step version of the boaters. It is, yes. Yeah, when you land on land, you know, that's the hazard. You've got boats or tractors.

Yeah. You guys will all vote me on the, on the page. patriotic speech. You like the patriotic speech? I can't stop thinking about the speech. That is. Jake, we're already too American, me and Lauren,

that just barely registered for us. Yeah, you guys do patriotism. It hits different down there. I don't know. Oh, don't even, patriotism in Texas hits even more different.

We've done only had to say, we've had to say the Texas Pledge of Allegiance. I was to say the Pledge of Allegiance. Yes. Is that the song? the stars at night thing? No, it's honor the Texas flag. I pledge allegiance to the Texas,

one in indivisible. And we had to say that after we pledged the American flag. So that was everything. That's good. That was after. Interesting. I'm sure there are people

who've probably wanted it to go before, but I didn't wait into those debate. Yeah. All right. That brings us to the rocket rundown. This one, we don't leave too much time this in the show because it's usually just a highlight reel of all these fantastic videos.

So somewhat of a lightning round. Okay. We will pull this up. Let's see. Where should we start, Jake? Let's just go to the list, man. I think we can just go through it. So this top one here, this is, how can you say this?

Is it Cairos? Is this the rocket name? Cairos. Yeah. This is Japanese, right? So this one gets like a double spot this year. So we have this one here. This was back in March.

This was, this the first flight? This was like the inaugural flight, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it didn't go well. But the best part of this, though, yeah. There's the satellite. Flying away.

Love that. So cute. That's like right in the middle of it all right there. Perfect picture. Wow. Yeah. You know what it reminds me of? The frog.

Was that ever an off-nobinil? Or was that before off-nobin? That was a shuttle era, so that was a long time ago, yeah. No, it was not shuttle era. It was a sickness flight, I think. Yeah. I thought it was a shuttle flight. Oh, I'm thinking of the bat.

You're thinking of the bat. Yeah, the bat. Wait, show me the bat. There was a bat on the side of the external tank of the shuttle once when it lifted off. It was just like clinging on for a dear life and space time. Oh, that's so sad. No, the frog is one of my favorite images of all times. It's Antares, isn't it?

Yes, yes. I find this bat picture. Yeah, it kind of does look like that, though. Yeah, the satellite's just like, I'm free. All I have is an absolutely extreme close-up of this bat, Jake. So, Lauren will have to believe us that this was on the outside of the external tank. Yeah. Wow.

But that was like a night launch, right? It was a night launch, I think. Yeah. I really hope you realize. realize what was happening before he went to space. Yeah. All right. So,

Cairo's pretty good. Another failure like yesterday, pretty much. Yeah, two days ago, the second flight. Yeah. It went a lot better.

It went better. Three minutes better, I think. Three minutes better. But then, I don't know, something, I didn't even figure out the failure,

the failure mode yet, but it started corkscrewing really good. So do you have to, do you have the video of this? Did I get the video for it? Kairos launch. I think I linked to a tweet somewhere

Hang on I have a picture of it Okay, I'll find it But yeah, basically the Here, I got a picture Oh Oh, it's better in video though Hold on, hold on

Okay, find the video We're gonna get it, we're gonna get it I got it here Let me get the timestamp though Oh man With the timestamps Where is the time to? I'll just take a video

Never mind, I don't have it I don't know. That's fine. It took a hard-ass right turn. Look at that. Yeah, I think that a picture's worth a thousand words in this instance. The video's really good because it's like,

it's literally doing like a corkscrew. It's like, zhue, it makes this like little spiral motion in the sky. It's pretty funny. Did you guys ever, did you ever do Astra's side swipe one on one of your, was that during the off nominee time?

I felt like that one was it. That was like a two years ago, I think. Maybe one year ago. Yeah. It won the rocket category. Yeah. Was it really that soon? I think that was in the best stunt flight category of one of the years.

Incredible. Let's see. That was, yeah, they won best stunt flight in 2021. It was them Firefly with the time where they like engines went out. Yeah, and then it flipped at Max Q. Long March 5B. I think that was just from it deorbiting uncontrolled. Is that why we awarded that?

I think so, yeah. And then Starship SN10, which was the one that. landed or did it? And then exploded. Yeah. You know, it reminds me, do you have, you've guys seen a galaxy quest? The part where like they bring in the pig and they're like, it came in inside out. And then it exploded.

I thought about that. S&10. 100%. Yeah, that was S&10. Yeah. Perfect. All right. The next one in our Rocky category for this year that Jake loves.

is this ridiculously overhyped and dramatic Vulcan Countdown comic book that they were releasing this in batches, right? Jake, what was the situation? They were. Yeah, it came out like in a bunch of stories, right? But it's like, I don't know. I can't even read it because it's just so ridiculous. Like it's just the animation is so out there. Like, look at Tori.

Look at that. What is going on there? His horse is involved. Amazing. I think if I remember correctly, they had announced this with a countdown, like, on Twitter. And I was like, what is it? You know, because I was like, I can't handle more news right now. And then when it turned out to be a comic book, I was like, oh, my God, you know.

Yeah, yeah, he was counting down. You're right. And we were all wondering, because wasn't this like, we thought maybe it was going to be the purchase announcement or something? Yeah, I thought it was going to be some major news, you know. I was like, what could it possibly be? Did you develop a new rocket? Like, what happened? You know?

And then it was a comic book. So I guess that's good that it wasn't. Better than I give a credit for. Yeah, exactly. All right, now we've got our other Vulcan story, which was alluded to earlier. The observation. Yeah, we had a full-on observation in flight. great video uh there's the nozzle just the nozzle is what makes this an ophthalmone if it just exploded

it would not have made this list incredible um yeah so my my memory of this is um i will admit i was watching this from bed because i'm pretty sure it happened super duper early in the morning if i recall and i think we had somebody you know covering it like i'd already i'd given them all the info and i was like, okay, if you guys can just kind of push it live, you know, that would be great. And so I was watching from bed to like make sure, you know, nothing happened. And then I remember I saw it. But in their live stream, that was not clear. Like that was a NSF is what I saw right. Yeah. Yeah. No, in the ULA live stream, it wasn't clear. But it did something, you could see it. And I remember being, I go, and I woke Chris up, my husband. And, and

And he was like, what? And I was like, oh, I don't know. Never mind. I think it's not. You know, I was like, you know, maybe went through a thought or something. It's like, I always got to trust my gut, you know, because like I, I remember this happened to me during the first starship launch because I remember taking a video and I saw something pop off.

And I, in the video, you can hear me go, oh, is that okay? All right. And because it just kept going, I was like, all right, well, maybe I just don't know Rockets as thought as well as I thought. But I do is the reality. I know. When something poofs, it's not supposed to poof, you know. Never good. It's not good.

It's not supposed to poof at all. No. Not supposed to proof. Well, here's one that did, Lauren. This is an epic nebula one. This video, man. Ready for the slow-mo. Get ready for the slow-mo.

Yeah. God, I love that deal. It's really good. Like one of the best rocket videos we've ever had. Let's be honest. It's so well produced. Yeah, that's amazing. Really studying camera work for sure.

The slow-mo. No one does that. No one does the dramatic slow-mo. Yeah, that was really good. And the circular drone flight, like the fact that they were orbiting it with the drone is. Incredible. Amazing. That one's one's one of the greatest.

But I regret to inform everybody that not only is this the best story of the year, it might be the best off nominee of all time. Wow. Right? Is there a better off nominee than the non-static static fire? The static fire test in which the rocket just took the fuck off. I'm free And when like a kilometer

Right This is like when I I try to take my dog outside But then I realize that she's not on the leash And then she just goes in You know That's a comparable situation And no

No flight termination system Because it's a static fire Yeah Also it did great I would say Yeah At the end of the day, they probably got some pretty good data from it. I hope so, yeah.

And if anything, we got, and were there like multiple views of this too? I think a lot of, there are a lot of videos because everyone was like, what is happening outside right now? And it's like China. So this test facility is like in the downtown of some city that's got seven million people. Oh, my God. Can you imagine? Oh, my God. I would have lost my mind.

I think it overflew. It went it went shockingly far, like, downrange for whatever that means. Also, yeah. Props to these people filming, I think I would be running as fast as I could. They really stick it out in China, you know? Sometimes they find their way up into a launch tower at, uh, at C. Chong and they just, they just ride it out. They put themselves in their own.

Thank you for your service. Just go for it, right? A bunch of Garriot followers out there. They just, how close can I, but how close could I stand, you know? So, I mean, listen, Nebula 1, epic, epic production, right, for running through our, our criteria. Epic production of Demula 1, bystander footage of Tyeonglong 3. But can you beat a non-static, static fire? I have to vote for it.

I think you're spot on with that take. Yeah, because I've always wondered if that would ever happen and that it did. A lot of the off nominees this year were me wondering, oh, I wonder if that could ever take place. And then I was proved that you can actually mess up in that way. Yeah. Jake? Yeah, definitely the winner of that category, the dynamic fire. All right.

So we got Slim in the Moonlanders. The dynamic fire. Slim versus Soyuz MS-25's tractor versus Tianlong-long-3. That's what we're up against. So I think it's probably Teong-Lang-Lang-3 versus Slim. I got to go with the rocket. Yeah. But it's a close second because

I'll cast my vote for Slim so that at least gets on the board. Yeah. The thing, though, here's Jake, let me try to make this unanimous. Okay. We may see another moonlander. In fact, this year we saw two moonlanders roll over in funny ways. You will never see a dynamic fire, probably ever again. That's fair.

Anthony, don't speak so definitively. This is the space is true we're talking about. If it does, it's good for the show. Yeah. All right. Are you switching your vote? Is this unanimous decision? No, I'm not going to switch my vote.

They're still going to win. God damn it. All right, well, Chong wrong three. First, the first winner out of China. I would say last year we had our first Europeans. This year,

the first out of China. Yeah, yeah. I have a feeling they're going to be a strong contender in the next. Yeah, we're going to have a whole Epcot exhibit pretty soon. Yeah, well Epcot of nominees. heading over to the China Pavilion,

where we have to the Deiq. Tongong Three exhibit, right now. to the restaurant. Russia's right in the middle. They get the most space. I was going to say, they probably got a bunch. We've got the scissors.

Sponsored by Roscosmos. Yeah, we got to have all the like artifacts, you know, just to commemorate each of the... That's a great point, Lauren. Does anyone save the daggers? The dagger's still up on the station. Oh, we got to find that. We need to get those.

We need to acquire them. We need to make friends of the billionaire that might buy those. scissors. Surely somebody has them. Surely we know a billionaire interested in space that might have access to the ISS in the near future. Surely we can think of somebody. What a concept. There is a remarkable amount of billionaires in this space for some reason. Earlier you said there aren't that many billionaires. And I was like, well, I don't know. In our world, there's a lot. There we have it, folks.

There we have it. Three, congratulations. What a year. Great year. Lauren, what do you have to tell people about that they are not partaking in other than you breaking stories as you told us in the middle of the show there? Just find me on blue sky. That's where I am these days.

And, you know, with a sprinkling of LinkedIn, I would say. Um, yeah, you know, if you see us, uh, take pity on us because we're tired and there's too much happening all the time. This is not our first rodeo with the Trump administration. And if I, anybody recalls, it was a busy time then and it's going to be even busier this time. So just know we're working hard and, um, we're not getting a lot of sleep. Especially with Speaker of the House, Elon Musk. As was tweeted about once today, at least one time. No, I was tweeted about a lot.

The funny thing about that is that you can say any other high-ranking title in the government and then put Elon's name after it, and it's still funny. You can say Vice President Musk, that's funny. You can say First Lady Musk, that's funny. You can say, speak to the House, Musk, that's funny. It's funny to you. It's what I mean. Again, he loves those patronage speeches and you have to join us one day in the independent podcast.

section, Lauren. He will be screamed questions about Moonlanders at a bar instead of work. So it's different. It's slightly different. You know, I might take it. I might take it. Jake, we are. We need to cut the tape for Lauren's dying here. We're out of here for the year, huh? Mm-hmm. That's it. Yeah. So we're back in three weeks and do our other annual tradition, which is we kick it off with predictions. We're going to predictions. I looked at our 2024 predictions. document and it, half of it makes no sense to me. There was one line. Let me just read this real quick. I know we're going long. There's one line that says, this is part of our, our 2024 predictions

thing. It says, U.S. Space Force Daddy Letter. That's the title. And then it just says, Eric Berger says letter is mailed. What does that mean? Daddy letter. Space Force Daddy was, we're going to have to rewatch that one too. Yeah, I don't know. I have any idea with that meant. But that's where we're getting to it in the next show in two weeks. Daddy Space Force rings a bell. That was a joking, yeah, because I think that was, what's his name? Raymond? You know what I'm talking about? Yes.

See, you know. Yeah. But what was this letter? Which daddy are we talking about? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what letter it is. We'll find out next week or two weeks from now.

So, tune in for that. Thanks, Lauren, for hanging out. You're the best. Everybody else. Always a pleasure. We'll see you next year. Bye, everybody. Thanks, everybody.