Off-Nominal - 180 - Murgers Back on the Menu

Episode Date: January 10, 2025

Jake and Anthony take a look back at their 2024 predictions, make a few for 2025, and check in on Mars Sample Return announcements.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 180 - Murgers Back on the Menu - YouTubeLaunches, moon landings and more: Here's the top spaceflight missions to watch in 2025 | SpaceNASA to Explore Two Landing Options for Returning Samples from Mars - NASANASA to study two alternative architectures for Mars Sample Return - SpaceNewsFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

CLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, happy New Year, Jake. Happy New Year, buddy. Good to be back. How you doing? I'm refreshed. I'm ready to roll. I'm excited.

There's a lot of stuff happening here. Already. Big content this year. It's the content year. Content year is happening. Space content creators wringing their hands for 2025. Lots of stuff going to happen.

I will have you know that it took me 50 seconds of this show to spill beer in my desk this year. So that is, uh, christened. I'm, I beat you because I, I spilled in our, uh, preamble before you go live. So, yeah, I'm at negative 50 seconds. We're killing it. We're killing it. And I have like, I have an appointment after this episode and I'm going to walk in there with like, Brandy all of rain. Your smell. Brandy, nice. Wow, look at this. Mead still not ready. Is the mead ready? How's the mead doing? It's getting close. We're getting close. I'm bottling a batch in like two weeks. And so that'll be a tasting opportunity. And there's a chance that one's ready. It's not 100%, but it's much better than the 0% of the other one's worse. How are the other living beings in your house dealing with the mead journey?

It's fine. It doesn't actually take up me making meat mostly just waiting. Yeah, it doesn't really take up a lot. you like get up on a weekend and you spend like an hour doing one and then you put in a closet and then like a month later you come back and check on it you know there's not a there's not a lot of touch time so i hope that everyone in your house shares that opinion i'd say the thing that bothers my wife the most is that i'm always like collecting like bottles from wine or beer whatever that i've made and like trying to get the labels off and stuff so like that's happening and then i'm not very good at it so usually she like takes it from me and she's like oh just do it so she's We're just like scraping labels off in this thing from old wine bottles and stuff.

But you're not drinking that today. What do you have? What's you got? I made a lot of eggnog over the holidays. So I had a little bit of brandy left. This is Azteca de Oro. So, you know, I got a little, it's pretty, pretty dark stuff. That is dark.

Really dark. It's good. It's strong, though. This is like, this is adult drinks. I've got. This is not for kids. I have a beer from the hop cartel. Do you know about this?

I've never known about this. El Cinco. It appears, I just looked at the back. It appears as if this is from El Dorado, Idaho. So, nope, it's not, that's the hops line. Oh, that's bad typography on here. That's, that's part of the line for hops, El Dorado, Idaho, 7. Oh, yeah, Eldorado hops.

Where am I drinking from? Oh, just Westchester. Okay, just close by. This is close by. But I got it because it's marsy colored. And something about a cartel came and gave me like JPL cartel vibes. And I would like to investigate the carteliness of the Marsamp return drama with me towards the end of the show. So that just, this is the one that jumped out to me.

I thought you were going to go to the whole Mexico row with me. You got a calavera on there, everything. Well, I mean, that, obviously. Yes. Yeah. So soon to be part of my country, along with most of North America. Yeah, I had a good time on the beach of the Gulf of America this holiday. It was nice.

We don't need to get into it. I just will say, I'm so into this Greenland thing. There's going to be too much pushback on that after he makes those epic really expensive. We're not getting into it. We have so many things to talk about Jake. We do have a lot of things. We have to recap our 2024 predictions. We have to make 2025 predictions and debate.

Mars sample return happenings. I think we'll do it in that order. Yeah. Okay. We don't have to exhaustively go through 2024, but maybe we can call out the good ones. Yeah. Yeah. Starship makes orbit in 2024.

It was the first thing we wrote down. And Joe, this was Joey Barnard, right? It was the only one who took a position and said it would make orbit. I don't think either of us took a position on this. What's funny about that one is that I think that if we did take a position on that, is because we thought that it wouldn't fly. And then what actually happened was it flew a whole bunch. It just never went to orbit.

Yeah. I don't think anyone had that one on the bingo car. You can gatekeep whether it made orbit or not. Yeah. That's just like a, this is a discord argument waiting to happen. It is. Yeah, we've had a lot. It's a sore subject now.

Vulcan first launch. We all thought it would work. We got that right enough. Yeah, yeah. That was pretty good. Yeah. We have one that says life is discovered, and Eric Berger says yes. I don't think he said that.

I think we did it because of that article he wrote at the beginning of the year. Do you remember that article? I don't remember that one. It was a JWST, like, biosignatures. Oh, okay. All right, all right. Yeah, it was this article. James Hope Space Telescope hasn't found,

felt there, at least not yet. And it was like very leaning into, I maybe, like probably did. So that's a good one. Oh, Eric. Good, good. Do you have any favorites? The Dream Chaser one was my favorite.

Because none of us got anything right. And I think our... Yeah, we're all way off. But we might want to just carry these over. We were like in the nuts and bolts of like what that flight would look like. Oh, yeah, it's going to like land. It's not going to make it to the runway. It's going to make it to the ISS, then it's going to bird.

Oh, no, it's not going to birth. All these details we were, like, stressing over. But I think that's why I like it. It's so detailed that I'm going to copy it and put it in our 2025 predictions. Love it. Because Eric said it would fly, but it didn't land on the runway. I said it would fly and make it to the ISS, but... No, it does not make it to the IS.

All right. Eric said it goes, it does fine, but it doesn't land on the runway. I said it doesn't make it to the ISS, but it doesn't make it to the ISS, but it. ISS, but it does land on a runway. So it does like a starliner. And then you just said, I went all in. Be fine in the back half of 2024. Yeah. I just thought it would be way in. But we have you down for works, right? Dreamtacer works. And then Eric and I were taking those other weird odds. So I'm copying that over. While I do that, please try to explain why I typed into this document. US Space Force daddy letter. Next bullet point, Eric Berger says the letter is mailed. Please try to

understand what was happening. Where were we? Was this NSL stuff? This is my best guess. We were trying to figure out if they were going to award that that year. And he was like, the letters in the mail, it's coming. That's my best guess. But didn't he send a letter to tell them to do better? We could just go watch our own damn show and answer all these questions.

But instead, we just stubble in here and we don't do our homework. And we just guess. It's funny. I don't know why I ever wrote that down, to be honest. But Daddy Space Force is now a meme. that we use a lot. So it's worth it. Yeah, it was some Space Force general,

but I don't know why we were debating on the method of communication. Very odd. Anyway, the one that we did the best on was Eric Berger setting the over-under for Starship flights at four and a half. And I took the over and you took the under. And they ended up with four.

Yeah, that was actually the correct, yeah. He nailed it. Yeah. Huh. Was it four last year? No, it was five last year, wasn't it? Was it five? Oh, you're right, it's four.

No, it was four. Because two was two or than the year before. So two, then four, and now we're coming up on seven, right? Yeah, all right. Nailed it. He's like a bookie. Eric Berger, the bookie. Yep.

All right, let's get on to the 2025 ones. The rest of that was like clip stuff would happen. Yeah. Most of them were, whatever. The MSR one, we have to do that one just for a, for a preview. Oh, yeah. Eric says not launching before 2030 and the over under on helicopters was 1.5. Eric and I both said under.

We think that's true. Yeah. As it stands today, which is not very standy. Yes. I guess the intuitive machines one. Eric said the intuitive machines that they would not land. You said it would land. And mine says that I said soft landing.

So I think I threaded that needle correctly. and breaking news I tweeted this shortly before the show started it turns out that Intuitive Machines IM 1 you know we knew I was on this beat of it being super low to the lunar surface when they first came into lunar orbit we now know it was as low as 1.3 kilometers

above the surface for what seems like a long time that's wild that is a what yeah and 1.3 kilometers and you said the topography was already at 500 meters, right? So that was like only an 800 meter margin. It was 500 meters under the reference radius for the lunar, for the moon. So 1737.4 kilometers is the reference radius for the moon. But local topography will go above and below that.

And that spot was 500 below. So yes, so from the reference radius, they were only 800 meters above what would be classified as the moon. and they got an additional 500 meters of help from the lunar surface. So, crazy, crazy. All right, 2025, Jake. I put some categories in here. You can pick where we want to start. I've got SpaceX, I've got moonlanders, I've got new rockets and constellations and acquisitions.

You pick. Well, let's do the easy ones, which are like the... rocket counts and stuff. Those ones are, they feel very, it's like, it's the work of the prediction show. Okay. We got to chew through just the number stuff. All right. SpaceX says that they're going to fly, or I should say Elon Musk, I think, is the one that said this figure, right?

That they're going to fly more than 180 times in 2024. They only did like 130 something this year, 134, is that what it was? I don't know the exact. number of something in that range and that was with as we'll talk about three different mishap slash issues that did hold them up for a little bit of time yeah yeah i think it was 134 because didn't eric mentioned that in his article that it was the same number of flights of the space shuttle but in one year that's right that's crazy yeah that was the that was the stat that's the stat to take out of 2024 um yeah 180 that's good it's a good uh it's a good one

Because they pick it up down the stretch. They did. Yeah. We always come back to the problem with the falcon predictions. You always come back to like, is this the year that Starship puts up, you know, 25 Falcons worth of Starlings and one or two goes or whatever it is, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Within a week of flying Starlink simulators out the Pez dispenser door. Yeah. Hmm. I suspect that for the time being they don't slow down on Falcon Starlink. just because like, I mean, just math is like if you add Starship also add Falcon. Like you're growing so fast, you may as well just do it all, right? Like get every, every vehicle flying all the time while you can, right? At least until they clear out the factory of those old base crap.

But I don't know, how many old like Falcon-sized Starlings are they going to keep around when Starship's going? I don't know. They might clear that backlog pretty fast, right? This is a tough question. I'm like, I'm talking myself back and forth. Is this a tough question? Are you ever going to take the over on an Elon Musk prediction? No.

Never. Never do that. No. Never do that. Never do that. All right. We've got a very specific era veil. How do I say this? I don't know. This is going to show up enormous, I think, in the broadcast, because this is how I have its size right now. But we've got a very specific 164 falcons estimate or prediction here. Put that in the dog. I'll put you in the duck. 64 Falcons.

Jake says under when bullied by Anthony. And in your broadcast software, you can copy that tweet display as a separate thing. And we can just let it sit there for the whole year and then we can put it back up on the screen. You can put it back up on the screen at the 2026 show and it'll be funny. All right. Failures or mishaps this year, Jake. There were three things last year. So we had the...

Three falcon issues last year. Yeah, this is just Falcon concern. We had the upper stage liquid oxygen leak. We had the booster landing failure. And then the second stage reentry issue on a crew mission, where they missed their deorbit zone. So I think those... If I remember correctly, the upper stage one was like a week or two.

of downtime? They were all kind of in that range, weren't they? Like, kind of like a... It got less over time. Five to 15 days sort of situation. There were some gaps. Do you think there... Which, by the way, is like insane.

Unbelievable. For sure. But also, I think if this were, if I'm going to be fair here, in years gone by, we all took note when ULA started having a lot of scrubs at the launch pad and we were giving them shit for this. that they used to never scrub and now they always scrub. And we took that as a trend of this is how this company is getting. Do you believe that the three issues that happened this year is the start of a trend or is it merely a factor of how many Falcons are flying?

I think it was the start of a trend and they would have nipped it in the bud. I'm guessing that three mishaps in a year for Falcon, I think crossed it over into the unacceptable territory. and changes were probably made. That's my guess. Because my original theory on that, by the way, I don't know if we talked about this. My original theory on that was that the A team is all in Boca Chica. I don't even think that's a theory.

I think that's a thing. And then we were starting to see that in the production line. But I think that that might have been backfilled to ensure that that doesn't happen again. Because that's, it's the funny thing with a flight rate like Falcons. is that like a failure like that losing two weeks of flight is like a big freaking deal like yeah yeah yeah that's we we kind of joke about how it's like oh they're such good engineers they got back from their their their failure so quickly and it's like that might have been more of a financial decision than a technical one you know like it's time to get moving like you're

you need to solve this problem tonight well they make money when we're flying so yeah yeah yeah All right. So you going, are you going, uh, a flawless year for Falcon? No, I'm going to, let's do it over, under, and let's put it at 1.5,

and I'll take the under. Oh, shit, man. I'm, I'm, I'm just saying, flawless year. Do it. I think they're on it. There's no rules about these. You can do it every one.

Yeah, flawless year. I mean, they, they had a run of flawless years, so this is not a stupid prediction. is just historical trends Yeah All right What else we got here

All right Collection of Starship things Jake I wrote down Orbit payload deployments Refueling Demo Moon question mark Do you have any particular Okay

We're just doing them all Love it Yeah payload deployment Yes Unless you don't count The PES dispenser Test next week

Is that Is that a payload It only says deployment on this list. It doesn't say deployed into something good. Refueling demo. Yeah, I think so. Moon, no.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, no. That's my... You think the refueling demo is going to happen? The demo? Yeah. All right. Talk me through. Talk me through that.

I... How's this? They got another launch pad up and running. They're launching these two starships within a couple weeks of each other. Yeah, I think they're just kind of just not. knocking it out one after the other on the same pad. Got it. Like, you got it.

Again, like the, all the financials of this company are built on speed. Like, what are, you can't just piss around and, and, and do suborbital ops on these things forever. Like, it's time to go, you know? And there's now, like, there's one's a tozy about it, though. Yeah. But there's prestige to it now, too, because, like, Here's the thing, in a couple weeks, Elon can no longer complain about the FAA.

Because him and team are now in charge of it. I don't know, Jake. If we're putting that in the prediction document, Elon complains about the FAA this year. I'll put that down as one of them. Elon complains about FAA. Jake says no. I mean, he can't, okay. I'm just saying it seems likely that it will involve the deep state.

well look we got in there and looked around man and it was so bad it's going to take us months to clean all this up for right now it's still bad I think the other I mean in your in support of you they they seem to have the path cleared to being approved for as much as they can do this year like because the 25 approval that was like circulated but I don't think that's official yet right we just think it will be soon the 25 launch of or is it official official? I think it was it signed off or was it like a we intend to? I don't remember.

Because it was, I don't think there was a lot of ceremony around it because they just modified the existing one and just said like everything was fine. We just put a two in front of the five and we're good to go, right? So I don't think any of us would bet that they fly more than 25 times in 2026. So they, I don't know that there will be as active of complaining as there was this year just because they have that the stack in front of them of like what they need to get through this year is a lot bigger than the things they need to ask allowance for that they haven't already.

Yeah. But I still do think he will have some FAA deep state. They're going to fly a lot because they got they got this 25 fight approval from the Biden administration. That's cleared. All right. So you say the refueling demos are going to happen. Do you want to flaunt on that and tell me the timeline? Like first launch, second launch is two weeks later.

Yeah, I don't know. I suppose you can even do a demo with one, right? Just transfer from one side of the ship to the other. But you mean two ships docking, that was what you're asking, right? Yeah, docking. Yeah, I don't know. A weeks situation, it'll put one in orbit and then... Like a Gemini-style situation.

Yeah. Which one was that? Gemini 6A and 6B, where those are the two? it. Well, there was the ones that, what, six and seven flew next to each other, right? And then there was the ones that docked with a gina. And sometimes the Gina would launch and then they would launch like an orbit later. Yeah, that was wild.

It was stupidly close together. Like, go back in time in 1960 and tell someone that. That was awesome. 90 minutes later so the ground track wind up. Shut up. That's crazy. All right. I think you sold me on it being the only really important thing this year for them to do.

No, the other important thing is to get through reentry. Let's be clear. Like, that's... And to a tower? Because they got... You don't think they got through reentry? You wouldn't say they did that this past year? I mean, not without non-trivial damage.

Like, that feels unsolved, so they're close, but it feels unsolved. Okay. That's such an interesting take. Really? Because I would have bet, if you asked me how Jake felt about that. that. I would have said that he feels that what they've done so far is close enough to solve that it's pretty much solved. The delta between where they're at now and where they need to be is tiny compared to where they were and where they are now. I don't know, man, because like,

we don't have one of these ships to, like, know that for sure. There's so much uncertainty with that still. Like the last one we saw, yes, it, like, performed and did the flip and did the soft touchdown and stuff, but like it was pretty clearly like suffering damage. And like if, if they finally get one of those back and they go through it and like, yeah, like everything's fun and burnt to shit. Like, you know, that's, that's an issue, right? And maybe it's not. Maybe it's fine. But there's the uncertainty there. It tells me that it's not solved. And they are on this next flight coming up next week. They are testing new heat shield stuff. So. Yeah. If they're if they're changing heat shield stuff, even if they're just doing like,

I mean, it's not solid. All right. Fair. Well, you convince me on the refueling demo. You don't even think, you don't think that they'll just send anything towards the moon? Let me riddle me this, Jake. They refuel a starship. Then what?

They just fly them back. They fly both. They're not going to refuel it enough. If you need freaking a 12 of these or whatever to send HLS to the moon, like, you're going to have to do a bunch of these. No payload and you did a free return starship flight. Maybe. But what does that get you, though?

Frickin' amazing pictures and incredible press and you tested out your systems in deep space. I don't think, I don't know if that solves enough test objectives. All right. Fair enough. I kind of agree with you. But the reason I'm going to say no to my own thing is that I thought all along that they would do that something like that to Mars just because. Mars is way different though I know it's way different but they

operate more satellites than anyone has ever operated in the entire history of humanity they have the currently active biggest rocket two of the biggest rockets that have ever flown and they say they're all about Mars and they've never sent a hunk of metal towards Mars and I've always been like

what the fuck like can we can we not do a flyby just to do a flyby and this was the guy who started a company that wanted to land a greenhouse on Mars just for the PR of it. If you just fly it by, like we've done, kind of done that with the stupid car, right?

Because, I mean, didn't actually go by Mars. No, we haven't. That's what I'm saying. Come on. One camera, satellite, Mars. It's not enough. It's not enough. Well, then.

I think for Mars and the moon, you got to either put it in the orbit or land it for it to be. And even if you just try and it crashes, whatever, but like you got to try something. You can't just whiz by it. Not enough. For what, though? I'm saying, like, as a thing, what if, like, I don't know, I've always,

this is the thing I've always been annoyed at. Like, this, Peter Beck's out here trying to scrounge up cash for a Venus mission. And this company has spacecraft and rockets that are capable of flying one of those spacecraft by Mars for, even if it's going to be ridiculed as a publicity stunt, which I'm saying it purely would be. I'm supportive of this, even if just for a publicity stunt is my bold. 100%. Fly by Mars, gravity

assist to solar orbit. No one will ever see it again. You got one epic photo of you at Mars. Why not? Just do that thing. I think this is the SpaceX bias that I see in the industry is that they don't get shit forever, not ever having flown anything by Mars when that

was their one sole mission and Blue Origin gets all the shit for not having reached orbit, which has only recently become their mission. That is the media bias, or the community bias that I see in the space industry. I love it. I love it.

I love it. That's what I'm saying. I think eventually there will absolutely be like just chuck something at Mars. Not the moon. Mars, yes, just because it's different for them. But I don't think they're there yet. Hmm. All right.

Well. Because it's going to be a starship. They're not going to like take a falcon and send something stupid over there. That's not worth their time. No, but a Starlink by Mars, a Starlink by Mars is worth it. Yeah Maybe How much does a Starlink cost

Someone needs to have this unit cost the other day, right? Or Tom Mueller was tweeting out the unit cost of Starlink's It was like low What was it? Hundreds of thousands or something One time somebody told us like a Prius amount of money And that didn't track But it was like a fancy car amount of money for these satellites

Like a Porsche SUV Take the oldest boost you've got And your cost is one of up upper stage and whatever, how much, how much engineering would they need to turn a Starlink into something that could communicate back to the DSN? I don't know. Sounds like there's some dev work there. I don't know. There is, but come on. Anyway, let's get back to Benzians. I am surprised we haven't, I have surprised we haven't seen enough, like, we haven't seen more about whatever the Mars version of Starlink has to be. Like, yeah, there's a zero percent chance they're not, there's not

a plan written down somewhere or work already started on like how they want to communicate from Mars to Earth, right? Well, there were the commercial studies that were announced last year. So would you like to take a 2025 stance on the result of those commercial studies? What was the timeline on that? Will those do back sometime soon? I believe so. Now I don't remember.

I'm going to look those up. Mars commercial. That was out of JPL, right? NASA. Studies for commercial bar emissions. So it was announced in May, 12, 12 studies between two. and $300,000 for a detailed report on so they're already back oh they're back do you think JPL has been a little busy for two different topics one surviving the other Mars Samp return

I thought you were going to say priority one surviving priority two the fires not not wrong a little insensitive not wrong everybody listening we you know we love you for real though those are horrific fires i hope everyone's doing all right they're really terrifying uh it's apocalyptic i saw a small tangent so i saw like a video like this the rest of this fucking show jake no just about the fires though right so like because i don't always i mean i came from a fireplace in canada too but this was wild because like there's video was like a macdonald and there was like palm trees out front of it and like like palm trees were on fire, the winds were so strong and fast, like that the palm trees were

bent over and it was just like a spray of embers. It was like, someone had a hose of fire embers just spraying into the, like, I'm like, oh, that's that. That's why it's spreading so fast. Yeah. Because there's just these like fire hoses with fire coming out of them and they're just spraying the entire valley. Like it's crazy. Yikes. Nuts. Yeah. Hopefully everything's fine. Pretty horrifying. fine. So maybe we'll hear back about these studies soon.

They were concluding in August. Another Mars thing that Bill Nelson dropped the ball on. Here we go. Well, okay. So here there was 12 companies. We had small payload delivery, Lockheed Martin, Impulse, Firefly. We had large payload delivery, ULA, Blue Origin, Astrobotic. We had Mars Surface Imaging Services, Albedo, Redwire, Astrobotic, and Next Generation Relay Services from SpaceX, Lockheed, and Blue Origin. Does anything come of any of this this year? This year? Oh, yeah. I would say definitely. Okay.

I mean, this is the administration that's going to pick this up, right? Well, that's what I'm trying to shape out here. We all talk about how, oh, Mars is going to get a renewed focus under the Trump-Elon regime. What does that actually entail? Does that – we'll get to Mars Amper turn in a couple minutes. What does that entail? That is the $1 million question. Should we save this topic for Mars Amphor?

return because it might be related. Let's save this. Save this. All right. Save this. All right. Let's do some speed rounds here on, on moonlanders. We got a lot of moonlanders. We do have a lot of moonlanders.

Okay. We got a firefly mission in a week. Do we need to define success before we do this? You, uh, yeah, you, you, you can salt the taste on this. Blue Ghost. Uh, I'm going to say not full success. Any, any details? Somewhere between astrobotic and I am one.

Somewhere between Peregrine and I am one. Okay. So makes it out of Earth orbit but doesn't land? Yeah. Okay. Um, I think it's just going to be a typical, something went wrong on final descent, hard landing, no data recovered.

Could be, yeah. Which ones? There's two fine together, right? Yeah, so Firefly, Blue Ghost is flying alongside the second iSpace mission. This is a, Hakuto R.

But they're taking vastly different trajectories to the moon, which is hilarious. So, the Hakuto R will not arrive for four to five months after launch. Is Ice Space, is that, that's not a Clips one, right?

Is that just a... No. No. No. This is the second mission after they flew theirs in... When did they fly their original? Other than... So, let's see, I'm doing the...

So Peregrine flew on Vulcan. I am one flew on Falcon. Blue Ghosts Flew on Falcon. Ice Space on Falcon. I am... Is SpaceX the biggest beneficiary from the Clips program? Unless our... new friend Matt works out at Astroforge,

then maybe they are. Oh dear. So Hakuto R.M1 launched in December, 2022, impacted in April of 2023. So actually not that long ago. I'm trying to remember what went wrong with this, though. Landing attempt.

I don't remember that one. Lost contact. It was determined that the lander plummeted uncontrollably when the propellant was exhausted. Right out of fuel, okay. Yeah. I think they're going to do better this time. They did the KSP thing and just mounted a couple more radial ones just to top up that last few percent.

I think they're going to make it. I'm saying they're going to make it. I'll go with you. Yeah. Great. Second flight. Always a much better chance. Let's go.

Come on. Come on, Ice Space. Stick the slamming. I am too. Also going to make it. Full success? Over under on Perlin I think they're going to do a better job this time

So they're going to go to the Shackleton connecting ridge, Jake This is the first of the Shackleton missions, which I'm pumped about Connecting Ridge. Is that one of the Artemis landing sites? What was the difference between a landing site and a region? Oh, God, I don't remember. It's in the mix there because I think that the connecting ridge is one of the areas that's illuminated for like almost eternity.

Yeah. Is that true still? That this doesn't get moved since I made notes, right? I don't think so. Connecting Ridge near Shackled and Crater closes out pole. Look at that. That's going to be rad. I think they're going to make it.

They got to make it. They do got to. They got to make it. Do you say they do? I think they will. Also, they have to. they're going to do it. All right.

But on that mission is the Astroforge mission. Odin, as we talked with Matt about. What do you think? This is the one that's just doing, like, is this the flyby take pictures one? Is that what it is? Yep. So it's going to go past the moon and go out somewhere to some.

It's going to do a flyby of an near-earth asteroid that we don't know the name of yet because they think, They're going to get pirated if they do, say, which mission it or which asteroid it is. Successful flyby or not. You're going to get pirated. In the fierce competitive landscape of mining asteroids. Firms rush to grab asteroids before it's too late.

Do they make it or not? Do they make it? Oh. No. No. Okay. I'm going to say they fly out and target something, but some sort of failure on route cripples the mission. Wow.

Criples the mission. Crazy. What a description. I'm going full success. They fly by this thing. Everyone's victorious. And they're an epic space company. See, the problem with my take on this is that when we're,

we have Matt back later, you look good and I look like the asshole, regardless of what happens. That was already the case before our predictions, but. I don't get any brownie points, even if I'm right. No, knowing his aura, he's probably like, that was a good take. I would have bet that too. That's literally what I bet. I wrote it down. All right, you think anything else flies to the moon this year?

I am three, Griffin, Mission One, any lunar pathfinders? A blue moon. Nothing else. It's going to be like last year. We could knock a few out from the beginning of the year. I'm going to make a ridiculous prediction, which is that blue origin flies a blue moon-shaped object at the moon. Ooh. Okay.

Some sort of like test article. Like maybe just the descent stage. A mass simulator? Something. They do something blue moon shaped to the moon. Because they have to get, so they're going to launch this thing, whatever this is, the blue ring, whatever. Then they got to do Escapade. Yep.

So you're saying there's a third flight this year. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah, I'm going to say no on that one. Here's the thing. I think our theory all along about Blue Origin and New Glenn specifically was be that it's going to be nothing, nothing, nothing. And then all of a sudden it arrives. And I think we are at the point.

theory, by the way. It's called the suddenly blue origin theory. I still think we're on to something there. Okay. Because again, the little, the test and the lead up to actual launch here for New Glenn has been two weeks longer than we all would hope, but it's been two weeks longer. Like that's it. Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah. That's great. During the holidays, it's good times. So now they're waiting on the wave conditions to fly this thing. That's a good sign. It's a good sign. It's a good sign.

But remember the other thing that you always say, it's always about the time between the second and the third flight, which is... Yes. Yes. Agree. But I feel like a lot of times when they're tweeting photos of their hardware, there's like there's other stuff in the picture. There's like another tank or another stage or another this. So this compounds with my theory that I don't really know what other customers they have to fly this year. You know, a lot of their launch agreements announced were like a memorandum of understanding about this or an agreement with that company that will fly five things, but no details on it.

Yeah, yeah. Escapade is still going to launch, because that had basically no launch window, right? Like, they could launch whatever with that thing. They're just going to throw fuel at the problem and invent their own launch window, I think is what it looks like, yeah. Cut right through the pork chop. Yeah. You're going regardless of what the pork chop plus. They're just cost benefit analysis.

That's all it is. So. They're going to do very on this one. Here's what I think. They get this lunch off in January. This will double as my blue origin prediction since we are rapidly running at the time of the show. They get this new glen off in January. They get the next off in May.

And round us out. with like an October blue moon shaped thing towards the moon. You're out to lunch. I'm going for it, man. Come on. Come with me. I'm not only denouncing this one. I'm denouncing this very strongly.

Like a civilization six style. You have been denounced. Okay. Give it to me. What's my problem? We're ending the show early. What is my problem? Please, please, uh, yeah.

enlighten me. I think there are only like three rockets in production line right now. I think like, so this is like depending on completely clearing out the production line. It doesn't account for just regular delays that it takes between second and third flights. Okay. The fastest rocket company we know only did two in the first year. But they blew their launch pad up on the first launch. And we don't know.

They shot their launch pad out into the ocean. We don't yet know what things are going to screw up on this flight or the next one. Okay. And mark my words, something will screw up on these new Glenn flights. I'm just playing the odds here, man. I'm just playing the odds. I know. You're playing the odds in the way I did with my SpaceX predictions.

I'm, I've always been annoyingly a little bit more hopeful at Blue Orton. You asked me, are you ever going to take the over on an Elon prediction? And I'm asking you now, are you ever going to take the over? on a new gland prediction? Because I don't think anybody's... I think I always have, which is my inherent problem, that I've...

I just want them to... I want them to be the thing that we all want them to be. You know? I don't think January and May is an extreme... Extreme prediction. Second flight, May?

I did. I put it in a duck. All right. I guess my... The problem with my theory is that it entails the first one working. Because they wouldn't...

Would they... Well, would they, well, NASA was willing to fly Escapade on the first mission, but they didn't for schedule reasons? Or are they unwilling to fly out in the first mission? My understanding was that the rocket wasn't ready. And that both makes sense and also doesn't, because apparently you can just fly whenever, so why wouldn't they just wait for it? But, like, if they can fly in May, why can't they fly now? I don't know, but I'm sticking with my, I'm sticking with my thing. You just say, so what are you saying?

It's the first one fails and then they never fly another one? No, I'm just saying that, I just say it's the three flights in this year is the green lights to Malibu scenario. There's, there's going to be some kind of red light along there. So do they get a second one off? A second one, maybe, yeah. If things go well with the first one, I think, I can see a second one this year, yeah. Okay.

what a half-ass prediction that was all right you can you can pick what you want to predict next Jake you want to you want to predict any appearance of any new rockets like neutron would you like to predict there's nothing going on there acquisitions ULA

Boeing space up for sale the ULA one is good yeah actually is there a major Boeing transaction that's your prediction right could be whatever there other stuff is or it could be ULA. Is there a major Boeing space transaction?

So the last we heard on the Boeing thing. Sales specifically, sales specifically, I guess, right? They were going to sell everything except SLS and the ISS. What was it? Those were the two excluded, right? Yes. Yes, I believe so, yeah.

So that would include the ones they're making money on, yes. The ones with contracts that continue to pay money. Yeah, the cost plus contracts. But that would. that would include half that their half of ULA. My theory is that this is why the ULA transaction didn't happen, by the way. Is that once that started getting close, Boeing realized maybe we want to sell more than just ULA.

I have a stupid, I don't know, the only person I can think, all right, here's what I think, I told this, Caleb Henry and I talked the other day about other stuff, and I got onto this topic, and I told him a theory that I want to repeat here for what should happen in the Jeff Bezos cinematic universe. I think half of Blue Origin should get rolled off and be part of the Bezos Earth Fund, and the other half should just get sold to Amazon, or be consumed by Amazon. And Amazon should buy the rest of the Boeing space stuff.

Amazon is more of a government contractor than Blue Origin is. They have more of a business need, and Amazon, in the... the way that McDonald's is a real estate company, Amazon is an infrastructure company. So, I, I, there's the, the whole part of Bezos's vision of, like, move all the factories off of Earth and make it a national park. And that's more Bezos Earth fund. Like, be the think tank you want to be. Yeah. The operational space side of you should just be Amazon branded. Bundled up with Boeing. Yeah. Take all the Boeing stuff. Keep it all Seattle area. It's not crazy.

I don't hate that. Because then you get all the, if you buy the ULA, you buy the ULA stuff that you have all the Vulcan and all the blue, the new Glenn launches for Kuiper. Yeah. The government contracts from Boeing. My only problem with that is I still don't, I disagree with you fundamentally on the, you know,

Amazon was the ULA buyer. I still don't think that. I still don't think that was, that makes sense. It still doesn't, it doesn't, It doesn't compute with me still. Like, I've had lots of smart people like tell me like this, this is,

here's 15 bullet points on why this is correct. I'm just like, I don't believe it's not. It doesn't make sense to me. Nope. I have not been convinced on the Amazon once, once Vulcan. So.

Yeah. All right. So you think anything happens in this, in this vein? In this vein. No, I'm going to, I'm going to be bold.

I'm going to say this is the year that a major point. transaction happens. There's too much. Times, times running out. The other reason that this happens is that mergers and acquisitions are back on the menu in this era of, I was thinking of, yeah, Eric Merger. They're back on, they're back on the menu, right? The tech world's been fearing the wrath of Lenicon.

The political world is correct for it. The financial world is correct for it. The Boeing balance sheet is correct. for it. Yeah. It has to happen this year. This is the moment. Time is running out.

Time is running out. And we're saying, so we're saying announced, because this shit is not going to close for two years when it gets announced. So we're saying announcement of sale acquisition. Yeah. Yeah. We learn not necessarily announcement, but we learn about an Eric Burger leak will count as an announcement.

Eric Merger. Eric Merger leak. All right. Let's lightning round some overrun. Jake. All right, all right. We will start. Let me prep my notes here.

We will start. I made a, I made, this is your old terminal count style, Jake. I made a list of things to, to bet over under on. Over under, 120 Amazon Kuiper satellites launched this year. Under. Over under, okay, that's the only one that I had a number set for. So the rest of these, you're going to set the number, and I'm going to pick a, direction.

Russian failures. 2.5. Okay. I'm going under. I'm going under. Yeah. I think they're tightening their belts over there? No, they don't do a lot.

There's nothing left to screw up. They're going to fly. They're going to fly under 0.5 women to the space station, so there's not really a lot. Small launch company, demises. 1.5. Okay. Remember on this, much like Eric at the beginning of the show, if you've nailed within 0.5 of the number,

you get credit for being smart. So, okay. 1.5. So that's like, all right. Well, ABL's already demised. So I'm thinking that this is the year that relativity, there's all the, this is like drama in the press about it's it Eric Schmidt funding relativity.

I think they are out of the launch business this year. So I'm crediting relativity is one. And then, who else would fold someone else well we're running out of them is the problem I'm taking the over and it'll be like a European one or something

and I'll win on manusia love it love it okay how many of our friends fly to space if we had one Emily Calendrellity Calendrelli hmm 1.5 I'll stay there again

1.5. Screw it. I'll go to you over. I'll be optimistic. Love it. NASA projects or programs canceled. That's a tough one. Because it's going to be like, oh, yeah, some Earth observation

Cube sat didn't make it to the lunch pad or something. You can go programs. If you just want to say programs. I don't know what's happening to the sound. Nothing changed at our end. I think it's a YouTube thing. I'm hearing Jake. Jake's heard me, so that's getting recorded locally.

I don't know what happened. We apologize. Hmm. If you want to say just programs, you can go just programs. Oh, let's go like, uh, 3.5. 3.5? Wow. Yeah, yeah.

I'm taking the under. I'll take the over then. Okay. Uh, crew was never in danger statements. Crew is never in danger Let's do 2.5. 2.5. 2.

Is that related to your Russian failures? Did you pick the same amount? True is never in danger. There's definitely going to be some like, I don't know, like some. There's Fram 2, though. We're going polar with humans this year, Jake. But does space, it's not a NASA mission. Does SpaceX do the crew is never in danger?

That's true. They might if it gets really hairy. 2.5, that's tough. I'm going to go, I'm going over. I'm going to say there's like an orbital debris conjunction alert. There's an increase in the leak amount. Yeah, the leak goes up for sure. For sure.

And then a progress mission gets manually docked or something, but in a chaotic way. So I'll take the over. A progress mission Accidentally manually docs What was my first one? I had leaks go up Progress mission Orbital degree conjunction, yeah

Goes chaotic, okay All right Overrun NASA centers closed Oh my God I don't know man Zero I'm taking under I'm taking under that

It's zero They're gonna add down I don't need it over under Zero NASA centers will be closed this year not the battle they're going to fight. No. Yeah. Why would you?

All right. We got single digit minutes, Jake. If you want to lay out a hot take on March, and we can save it to next week. We could go into it next week, but I do have a blog post out. So if you go to my blog, jacobbins.com. So, yeah, I mean, we had that update, right? And it was underwhelming.

There are this picture, man. It's unreal. It's also corrupt. right at his nose on your site. You got to do the right viewport size to get the end. I kind of like this better. He looks like the guy from home improvement. Oh dear.

Oh, dear. Yeah, no, the short of this is that Bill Nelson did not do any favors to this project and it can go a lot of different directions. So I kind of talk a little bit about that. What's the preview in this? You read it. What do you want to fight me on? How's that?

I don't think I want to fight you on anything, but I do, I don't know. I think we've been very similarly minded about, yeah, your take is that the cost projections are completely made up in this assessment of like, we just magically save $4 billion and we won't explain the one weird trick we use to do that. So correct me if I'm wrong. Some of the studies that happened, some of those. were about the Mars Ascent vehicle, right? Yeah, one or two of them were specifically like,

here's how we can make the MAV better. I feel like we need more detail in that, because the entire announcement that was laid out was, we've unlocked some new architecture because the MAV got simpler and smaller, and we're doing, can you, I don't know, there's this weird, like, we're going to contain the dust in a different way

so we don't have to clean it because it'll never be exposed to dust. Is that actually a, $4 billion problem? This is what I don't understand. Like, I just, I mean,

we're talking to such big numbers that it's easy to get lost in that. It's like, oh, well, it was 11 before, now it's going to be 7.7. Okay,

that sounds like a pretty, it's like, okay, but that's four billion dollars. Like, that is not, we tightened up our testing process and used off the shelf,

uh, cameras. Like, you know, like that's not, that's right, four billion dollars. Okay.

So that, you know, that either tells you, that there's that the previous plan was so far off the rails like just like even more than we thought even more than we thought um or like there's more or there's more to this than than just we made the math smaller right so it's interesting because like even even if that you know if this new thing oh we got the sky crane so we don't have to reinvent that we don't have to reinvent that we don't have a small lander now and just you know grab something that we've already done smaller like

that's all easy. Like that, at best to me, that's like, that saves you like one to two billion dollars because it's like a whole other mission you don't have to invent. Like,

because, you know, because Perseverance was two and a half billion dollars. So that's like a good cost frame for you for like, how much it cost to develop, you know, a whole new landing platform on its own from, from scratch, right?

Riddle me this though. Okay, you, I remember in the, in the lore of Jake Robbins, there was a Wii Martians episode about the EDL sequence at Mars and that 70 degrees sphere cone and all this kind of shit. Yeah.

Yeah. part of this announcement was like the sky crane will work we just need to make it capable of 20% more mass is that in the realm of possibilities it wasn't there i thought i feel like i remember from your we martians episode we were at the upper limit of something in that 70 degrees sphere cone architecture was it the diameter was this with the Atlas five diameter this is the most we can do and because we will have by the time this launches two seven to nine meter launch vehicles yeah yeah yeah Yeah, the diameter is an issue. They definitely filled up the Atlas Faring, and I guess now the Falcon Faring, right, which is roughly the same size diameter, right? Same exact size, yeah. But when they say, we just need to upgrade this 20%, is that even, what is the path to that? Is that same shape but better engines, or is that they actually do need more diameter, more mass to Mars?

My guess is that the toughest part's going to be making the parachute work with the extra mass. That's my guess. Okay. I mean, you put a little more fuel on the sky crane and that kind of solves the whatever, as long as your thrust is okay. Maybe you have to upgrade the engines a little bit, but that feels like a lot simpler of a solution. You have stuff to engineer it, but like how you do it is not difficult. But the parachute, they already had some.

almost trouble with parachutes. The parachutes are just a nightmare, right? And so, yeah, 20% is just so much, though. I don't know. No? There was margin before, obviously, right? So, and they have, they now have two production flights of Skycranes, so they can tighten up the margins a bit. They can probably take half of that from margins, right? Your best question in this article is, why did we only think about this option now? That is the one that, that keeps you coming back of like, yeah. So, so. there was some bullshit going on here. Well, and so someone in our Discord helpfully pointed out that there are some feed forward from ingenuity going into this.

So I guess there are some like new avionics or whatever, you know, ingenuity is basically like an Android phone with a rotor on top of it. So basically like they there's something from that that they can now use on this and they're reducing costs, which is great. And so maybe that's why like part of that is now and not three years ago. But it's still like, again, four billion. dollars okay so a ton yeah where is that coming from you know and and that's not that's not bringing in SpaceX to help that's four billion dollars savings with all the same people working on

this project like no personnel change it's still jpL is still Marshall still HK like no other change other than we just like okay I'm just very confused about that but the good news on in all this Jake, is that you got one out the door, one last data point for the time when we get Eric Berger to come on this show and argue about whether or not we were correct that Bill Nelson was a bad NASA administrator. This was the most politiciany way to go about this in that... Oh, God. I was so mad. The presence that he took on the MSR era was he figured out that this program was going

in a bad direction, and he requested a rethink. of the of the architectures. And we'll save it for the next guy to decide on how it should go. What a hero. But I was the one. I totally did. Yeah. It's that is like the tell me that this guy worked in Congress for all of his life without

telling me that this guy worked in Congress entire life. Yeah. And he also blamed Congress there at the end, right? He was like this, the balls in Congress court now. If they fund it, it will work. And if they don't, oh, come on, buddy. They got lots of. funding.

That felt Project swimming and money. That felt very shitty to do. Yeah. Yeah. It's not good.

So we'll see when Eric wants to come in. Yeah, we'll bring back a friend to talk about Mars. I'll return and other things and we'll get into it more. But go read the blog post.

A lot happening though, Jake. We got that. New Glenn, another starship. What else is going to happen? New NASA administrator. I don't know. He's been kind of quiet.

A little quiet. Yeah. We'll see. We'll still have to get to inauguration. Let's hang in here. One news article at a time. Well, that's what we got, peeps. Let us know your under over, over undertakes on what we laid out there.

Feel free to chime in. Yeah. Got anything else? Discord. Plug the Discord. Offnom.com slash discord. Come join us. a month or 25 if you're a big spender.

Never fly ride share. If you're a Marsamp return level of funding and you want to help us out. Flagship plus. It's exactly like Mars Samperturner. You can pay five bucks. We pay 25 bucks. The outcome is the same. We'll get it back.

We know where Peter Beck signing up. All right, y'all. We'll see you soon. All right. Thanks, everybody.