Off-Nominal - 182 - Firmly Against Night Launches (with Stephen Clark)

Episode Date: January 24, 2025

Jake and Anthony are joined by Stephen Clark, space reporter at Ars Technica, to talk about Starship Flight 7, New Glenn Flight 1, and let’s be real, probably space policy.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 182 - Firmly Against Night Launches (with Stephen Clark) - YouTubeStarship’s Seventh Flight Test - SpaceX - LaunchesSpaceX Catches Booster 14 but loses Ship 33 on Ascent - NASASpaceFlight.comFire destroys Starship on its seventh test flight, raining debris from space - Ars TechnicaHere’s what NASA would like to see SpaceX accomplish with Starship this year - Ars TechnicaThe US military is now talking openly about going on the attack in space - Ars TechnicaFollow StephenAuthor: Stephen Clark - Ars TechnicaStephen Clark (@StephenClark1) / XFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine, start. You had a re-had intro ready. I asked if you wanted to do it, but you didn't have one ready. You asked me if I wanted to do it? This is how well we prepare the show. I think you had the mute button on. I did not hear that. Oh, really?

Oh, I'm glad that. Oh, really? That didn't work. All right. I thought that thing would have worked where I could talk to you before we live. What better way to... This is totally how it goes all the time. What better way to start off nominal than off nominally?

Man. He gets a new friend, well, a new old friend here with us, Stephen Clark. Like I said, when we emailed you, I was like, how have we not had Stephen on yet? So I think we were a little scared to ask if you wanted to come hang out with us, nitwits. Well, here I am. Here I am. The answer is off. We duped him.

We duped him. Oh, dear. Yeah. Well, you know, it's a chaotic week, so things are very chaotic right now. What's up? You got like rockets. I said last week, it was the most 2020's, week that it has been in the old 2020 so far and it just continued to be 2020s like it just keeps

going there's i feel like we're going to rehash a couple things we already talked about but it also feels like we need to like just every time we get a new piece of information i feel like we need to just circle back the last two weeks and review real quick so i think it's a good day for it oh dear okay uh well um before we dig into that uh uh Stephen, do you have a drink? Do you have something prepared there for us to enjoy? Well, yes, it's pretty simple. I'm a simple man with simple taste, so it's just a cold brew coffee.

Okay. With a Spurs cup. Yeah, yeah. Hopefully I don't get any haters from that. But yeah, just Texas pecan coal brew. I brew it here in my fridge, so that's what I'm having. Can you explain what that means? I don't think I know the pecans throw me.

Is it just like pecan infused? It's it's a pecan flavor in the I brew it like you brew it like tea just for bags in a pitcher and Okay, it's my go-to rocket fuel every morning and afternoon Wow That's pretty legit I've never I gotta go experience this Yeah they sell it at HG is the Texas grocery store So I've been I've been a loyal HGB fanatic, mainly because of their Texas, pecan coal brew.

I used to live in Florida, and when I came back to Texas, my family's in Texas, so I would come back as my parents and friends and stuff a few times a year. Always go to HGB, get like six months or four months supply of Texas pecan coal brew from the grocery store. 60 bucks, take it back in a suitcase. Jeez. Yeah, HGB is a fantastic grocery store. good that I as a Canadian know about it and love it.

That's like if I ever have to go to Texas, I don't have to go often, but when I do, it's like, get to go to H.E.B. It's a great grocery star. Yeah. Cool.

Anthony, what do you got? I've got a Lawson's sip of sunshine, which is nice as it's four degrees here, I think. So this is delicious. I don't know if you've ever had this Lawson stuff, Jake,

but it's absolutely delicious. So they're from Connecticut. I was trying to remember where they're from. It's great. There's like different ones. This one's the sip of sunshine. There's another one. I forget the names of them all.

They're just different colors. It's like a blue one and a green one and the yellow one. And I got the yellow one today. And it's very summery for, it's literally like five degrees. So we get a snowy winter. Yellow. Yeah. It's the yellow one.

Yeah. We're having a cold snap here too. It's dipped down to us. So you can see. It's one of the rare days that I wear long sleeves on a sweater because it's been... Well, Stephen probably got snow the other day. I don't know what particular part of Texas are in. Oh, really?

We got robbed. We got robbed. It's ridiculous. It was all south of here. It was all Houston, central Texas, Austin. And it got really cold, at least for here, and down to the upper teens. As you laughed from Philadelphia, probably. Yeah.

So we got really cold, but we didn't have the winter precipitation. and so I feel like we got robbed, you know. If it's going to be cold, I want snow, you know? What we did get robbed of of this being a storyline for why there was like an SLS delay out of Michoud. Like that feels like a storyline that could have happened. I was like, well, it snowed the one day, and we slipped on ice and dropped another locks dome,

and then there went another six months. Maybe it's happened. I don't know. It's a new administration, though, so it's going to be, we dropped a locks dome, and so we're just canceling the program. It's all done. Yes. Jake, you threw some drink together.

You didn't even tell us. You don't want to tell us what it is. Oh, yeah. No, I did. I just made a margarita. So I went in. Oh, had time to do the salt. I did, yeah.

I'm getting pretty good at it. I don't know what that says. Oh, me. Getting pretty fast and making margaritas. That's why you moved there, I feel like. Consequence of living in Mexico, but yeah. Yeah, so. Cool.

All right. All right. All right. All right. Where are we starting on this chaos? Are we starting at Starship? Because we talked New Glenn last week a little bit, but, but I think they pair went nicely together.

There's some fun interplay between the launches. But Stephen, were you at this one this time around? No, I was not at this one. I'm probably going to wait until they try to catch the ship, which seems like it's probably going to be at least another couple of launches away to go back down there. I was at the first five, and I was there for the first booster catch last October from four miles away,

which was pretty spectacular. and you know once I saw that I'm like okay I've seen it all until the ship until the ship was caught and so I'll go back for that you need double booster catch it now that's what you got to do right for super heavy heavy when they get that one going man that would be yeah I would like to say that would never happen but like I mean it's probably going to happen at some point stranger things Stranger things. Okay, cool.

All right. So let's just say it. Let's say it. Worst Starship launch, this one. Worst one. I don't disagree. That's the worst one. It's the one that is the most clear setback of every launch.

I agreed. Yeah. Agreed. That's a great way to put it. I think every, there's an argument to be made every single launch until this one had made some progress. And this was definitely a setback. and I don't think it's going to be a lengthy delay, obviously,

but they really wanted to get data on the heat shield for the version 2 ship, and they got none other than maybe seeing how the tiles perform during the launch, because I know there's some concern about them shaking free during Ascent, but we didn't see how they performed during reentry, and I'm really interested to see how the new metallic, tiles perform because the new metallic tiles they put on the version two in some areas of the ship are more durable and that's you know Elon Musk has said that's one of the big challenges for

starship going forward I think you called it the acid test a few months ago is how the heat show performs during entry and how it holds up and doesn't need to be refurbished or can they do a quick turn and refly it and metallic tiles may hold a solution there but they're going to have to wait to the next flight to see how they actually work Yeah. We were talking on the, a couple of shows ago about next steps for Starship. And the thing Anthony, I had an argument about was whether, whether the reentry had been solved yet. And I think, I think my stance got a little bit of support this week that were, we're a little behind on the reentry solution. Yeah. All the, all the uncertainties are not filed away. And this, this didn't help, right?

Yeah. Yeah. I think they've, they've, they've, shown they can land it on target and we've seen the splashdowns next to the buoy in the Indian Ocean two or three flights now that's really impressive that's a really good sign and the heat shields worked I think the big concern is how you turn it around between flights can you get that rapid turn around almost airline like that that E-line is going for with starship and jury's still out there I think they'll get there but you know they wanted data and see on this flight to see how close they were and they didn't get it. So I think that the ship catch was going to be potentially the next flight, flight eight, almost certainly going to be flight nine at the earliest now.

And, you know, we'll see. There's also the regulatory side of things we can talk about in a minute, but with the new administration, there's some question marks there. But I think the ship catch is potentially, even with the new administration, is going to be interesting to see how the FAA handles licensing for that reentry, the ship. Because it's going to be coming over land, including Brownsville, potentially. And if they're dropping tiles, you know, during reentry, and what kind of poses to population centers? So I think that's going to be really interesting and kind of eye-opening to see how the FAA under the new administration

handles that to do a thorough review, but not burden it by a necessary red tape. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's the, I mean, that's the really key point that you said there is like it has to survive not just getting to the surface, but it needs to be reusable pretty quick, right? That's always like a really, really high bar for for what success looks like on this reentry system. I think a lot of people, like I've had people say that to me. Like, what do you mean it's, you know, it clearly made it to the surface, therefore the reentry works. And it's like, no, no, that its job is not get to the surface. Its job is get to the surface like a hundred times in a row. Right. And so it's got a lot more to do from that. And that's, that's what I'm kind of like really curious to see is it's like, um, when they finally land one of these ships to a point where they can like recover it and put it into a bay and crack it open and look what's all the guts look like on the inside. Like, you know, what, what things are figured out and like, okay, we can sign off on that and which things are like, oh no, like we didn't see that coming or this was anomalous or that was way out of, you know, out of family. And now we got to redesign this.

to redesign that. And there's a lot of uncertainty sitting under that somewhere, I think. And that's kind of what I'm, that's what I'm paying attention to is, is what happens from that, right? For sure. I think with this version two ship, they had 30 plus cameras on board. They had more cameras to look at different angles of the flaps and the tiles, see how they, you know, work during reentry.

And so there's something to be gleaned from that when they do achieve a reentry with ship version two, hopefully on the next flight. But, you know, getting their hands on the booster twice now and then getting their hands on the ship, hopefully soon will definitely be a, and kind of, you know, a test of reality, reality check and seeing how the missions are going to match up with reality. That is crazy to consider that, like, you know, we think it went pretty well because we did make it to the surface the ocean. But yeah, once they're able to see one hanging up on the chopsticks, they're going to be like, oh, shit. Like, we got to, we got to rethink so many things,

you know, that, or it's great. Either way, it's going to be an interesting day at Starbase when they're either outcome, very entertaining to us. Yes, yes. I think that's going to be, you know, you may as may agree, it may be apparent that it's going to be even more spectacular and impressive than the booster catch. It's going to be wild. I mean, it's going to be, and then after that is there going to be a letdown for a while I mean there's a lot to do

with in orbit refueling and all that stuff but it's going to be out of sight for most of us and you know from the visual perspective like maybe we're talking about

at the entry two boosters landing at the same time I don't know a space nirican dream right we got to talk about the the starship reentry on this one in particular.

I've plugged in new monitors, so I have no idea what's going to happen when I hit this button. I hope it shows the right screen. Who knows? Let's see. Nope. Just trees.

Just trees. Primary display? Is that the one? There you go. Is that the video? All right, great. Yeah, let's play this. This is wild, man.

Like, you know, this, the fact that it goes right overhead is terrifying and also, reminds me of that Aryan 5 launch that one time that like flew right over the beach the point in the wrong direction even more sci-fi than all of those though just like if I would say better I would think this is like some fake AI generated thing that was trying to be viral right like or the thing that they tried to do for the Tokyo Olympics remember they they were going to do exactly showing the trees too that what was that I was

thing about this the other day, because I think I have my head cannon correct on this. They launched a satellite for the Tokyo Olympics right before the pandemic happened. So by the time the Tokyo Olympics happened, the thing had re-entered and not Yeah, because they delayed it, yeah. Yeah. Okay. I just want to make sure I'm correct.

Yeah. But that's what I think they were hoping it would look like was, yeah, an artificial media shower on the way and over the opening ceremonies. Man, yeah, that, that, I think up my posts on social media was like beautiful or terrifying or something like that. Yeah, the fact that it went right overhead definitely concerning. And you mentioned the Aeron 5 launch.

I just have to say I was at that launch in French Guiana when they went the wrong direction and went over my head from my perspective. So anyway, but yeah, so I have some first-hand knowledge of seeing some, you know, space spacecraft or launch vehicle going right over me. Thankfully, that was in one piece. But, yeah, imagine being out on a cruise ship. Some of the videos from, I think, a Royal Norwegian cruise ship showed what looked like an explosion or the actual breakup of the vehicle.

And then following that was that shower of debris. And, I mean, that one thing, one thing in keeping in the back of my mind is on flight. Was it Flight 2? There we go. That's the cruise ship view. And here's the poof. Yeah. What I'm not sure of, maybe you guys have thoughts on this, what I'm not sure of is are we seeing the actual anomaly or are we seeing the, is it reintering explosion? Yeah.

Uncontrolled and, you know, the reentry heating ruptures the tanks or something. I'm not sure what we're seeing there. Yeah. Yeah. They haven't said like if and when FT. was triggered, right? Was that in that update? I haven't heard. No, no. And at some point, late, that's an answer for you, I think. Yeah. Yeah. Well, late in the, late in the burn, they do typically call out FTS-s-safed. I can't remember. I have to go back and watch. Did

they call that out before the anomaly or after? And the one thing that I'm keeping in mind throughout all this is that video is spectacular and scary. And, terrifying and all the above. And, but I think the time of day really accentuated the view. It was right at twilight. And we've seen rocket launches at twilight that bring out things that are visible at that hour that aren't visible during a typical day or night launch. Golden hour, man.

Exactly. Exactly. So on the second Starship flight, they had a similar breakup of the vehicle late in the first stage burn, different cause apparently, but at a similar stage of flight on the late in the Starship second stage burn. And the debris re-entered likely in a similar manner to what we're seeing there, but it was in, you know, 9 or 10 a.m. local time there in the Caribbean or, you know, in the Bahamas, Turks and Kekos region.

And there was some video and some footage of the reentry, but it did not look as spectacular as that or as terrifying to that. and I think the time of day has a factor in what we're seeing. Yeah, yeah. I mean, nobody's going to go out and argue that that video is not awesome. Like, I don't think anyone's like, that doesn't look cool at all. Like, that definitely looks cool. No one's going to argue that.

The other one, I think that the flight two one was the one where you could see the fins still, right? Like the very tip of the starship was kind of separated on its own. Yeah, a little like a butt in half, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, all right, so let's talk about the whole plane. part of all this because I don't know I don't even know if I figured out where to come down on this so it was messy at the beginning we were getting all sorts of different info the FAA activated the

debris response area capital D capital R capital A cue the internet being masters of this information that oh we always knew what a debris response area was nobody knew what that was you just are now an expert on this thing I think it turns out that the FAA only activates those if debris is outside of zones they've already specified could have debris. So there was conflicting information about that early on that SpaceX was saying, no, it was all within the zone. And then the FAA activated this thing. There's heat shield tiles on the beach, Turks and Kekos.

So I think clearly there's an issue that they're going to look into. But they also had this whole incident where they managed air traffic in the area to route them around the zone entirely. So there's some crazy flight maps. I should have pulled one link up. But it's like crazy flight maps flying all the way around the zone. One plane had to just go through it because they were getting worried about their fuel levels, where does your level of concern on, like my thing is, is this just going to

complicate the path back to flight because they have to sort through the airline impacts of this in a way that they usually don't with some of these issues? I don't know if it's going to complicate the path back to flight. I think they have the ability to route the air traffic around the debris field. Could they potentially extend the no-tam out? farther downrange on the next flight. Yeah, I could see that. And it's interesting.

One thing that stuck out to me, and I'm not an expert in air traffic control, however, I did listen to shortly after the launch when the first online reports came out that, you know, looking at X and social media that some planes were being rerouted. I think Scott Manley was the first person who posted that I saw about it. I immediately went to listen to the San Juan Puerto Rico Air Traffic Control. channel online and listen to it live for probably a good hour. And there was, had it on the back, on the background. That was your peak nerd moment right there.

Background is I was writing my story. And there, you know, the air traffic controller was mentioned that there was a, what did he say? The spacecraft, the word, I'm trying to look up. I wrote it down. Let's see here. Yeah, a space vehicle mishap. Airspace is closed. I wrote down the quote.

And then he rattled off the latitude of the bounds of the closure of the debris response area. And, you know, one of the pilots came back after a good hour after launch. The DRA was still in place. And he asked, how long is the whole going to be? We don't have a lot of fuel to play with. The sooner we get on the ground, the better. And some of the planes did declare fuel emergencies and rerouted to different airports or turned around and went back to their origin. I know I saw some JetBlue flights, some American Airlines flights that were either coming from the United States, continental United States to Puerto Rico and diverted to, like, Miami or Fort Lauderdale, or there was a flight I saw leaving Virgin Islands that was going to Miami and American flight that just returned to St. Thomas.

And, yeah, a little more than 20 flights, I think, were actually affected in total. Not all of them ended up diverting, but some of them had to hold and their arrivals were delayed or delayed departures, et cetera. Again, obviously this DRA thing that none of us had ever heard of was in place and ready to go and it was activated. So they have safeguards and stuff in place for that. So I don't foresee that being a major issue going forward other than they may extend the no-tem. farther down range. I think it ended the no-tam, meaning the area where no planes are supposed to be flying period during the launch ended in the Fort of Straits between Key West and Cuba in that area. It didn't go all the way to Turks and chaos.

So maybe they'll extend that on the next flight. It'll be interesting to see. Yeah. I think what's tricky, like, I'm with you. I don't think it's going to like, you know, a short term is not really going to be an issue. They'll figure it out with the flag in. it'll be fine. But I think this, um, this highlights like some of the, the, the differences with the Boca Chica launch site as to what we're used to in Florida, right? Um, when they were originally like

setting this up, there was this, I got to see if I can find this again, because I talk about this report all the time, but there was some like academic report that was like analyzing Boca as a launch site, you know, just like really quality, like quantitatively, like looking at like how many ships, how many planes, all that kind of stuff. And where the launch core. And where the launch corridors and what does that look like for all different kind of launch things. And like it ended up being like kind of restrictive because like there's basically two directions you can point over, you know, north of Cuba or south of Cuba. It's kind of your two launch corridors from Boca Chica.

And you have pretty significant ship traffic because everything coming up from Panama Canal towards Galveston or towards like Miami is going to cross that path, right? It's a lot in the Gulf of America, Jake. It's a lot of traffic in there. A lot in the Gulf of America. Big Gulf of America traffic kind of pattern. And I almost wonder now if the plane traffic is worse too because the flight path will put you in this exact scenario, it puts you higher up so you have this debris problem coming right down over like, you know, the kind of south side of. Yeah.

Everything, yeah, between Florida and all of South America like and the Caribbean, like that whole corridor, right from Florida. Like at least, you know, from the from, if you're launching from Florida, all the air traffic going east kind of turns north pretty quick to go. to Europe, right? Like, all of that stuff is kind of going in that direction. So if you're flying or south or you can fly inland or you can come over Florida or land, yeah, an approach to Orlando or something like that. So like there's cruise ships that you divert because of, you know, they're always coming up and down, but like this does not that many ships. Like there's, there's a lot of cruise ships, but not that many cruise. It's not like container ships coming out of Panama, right? So, um, I almost wonder. Like a flight, you know, we hear some of these saying like, well, actually,

no, how many of these pilots are actually, we're low on fuel versus like, I'm pretty sure all that debris is down in the ocean, so I'm going to declare fuel emergency and go land anyway. Like, maybe that's it. But cruise ships, like, they can hang out an extra hour and it doesn't change their schedule drastically, like an extra hour on flights do. There's so much margin in a cruise ship schedule that they just park for an hour and then turn the engine up 10% and make it up immediately, right? Like, it's fine. Oh, yeah. Um, so anyway, that's my, my point here is it like, I believe it. You could say it, but I believe it. I think Texas is a bad launch site for an operational launch vehicle. Like, it's a stupid spot to launch if you're trying to do a

It might be. And we'll see, I mean, I don't know, SpaceX is pretty good at figuring out problems. But we'll see if it becomes a kind of thing where it'll be really interesting to come back to this 10 years from now to see like how many starships are flying from Texas and how many are flying from Florida every year and what those numbers look like, right? 10 years, 10 years I think might turn the corner. So here's, there's a, there's a, there's a gulf of flights that have to happen where like Starship has to fly so much. A Gulf of America sized Gulf. where Starship has to fly so much to prove its reliability to be able to fly and not interrupt things as much from Texas and they can only fly that much

from not Texas. That's the problem that I think they're faced with. Does that make any sense? I don't know how much I stumbled over that. Like their fly rate needs to be significantly high so that they have enough data

to say, yeah, we can fly and, you know, just clip this little bit of land here and not really have any ill effects or the no-tams are going to shrink because we are up to that level of reliability now. And I don't know if they can burst through that ceiling flying out of Texas, especially if... Now, like, I think some of this, what we're talking about is dependent on, does anyone really turn this into a stink?

Does this get a congressional hearing of, like... Because we've seen in the past, like, rocket launches have held up air traffic in and out of Orlando, and it became a thing that was brought up in hearings in Congress. Does this become one of those, or is this just like, whatever, it was 4,000 people going on vacation, we will be fine on planet Earth if they were delayed. an hour. Seems like there's other stuff people are worried about at the moment. I don't know that this will come up in Congress right now.

There's some stuff going on. It seems kind of busy. There are two thoughts I have there, guys. I think the debris response area, it seemed to me like it went on way longer than it needed to. I mean, obviously... By like 5x, 6X. Yes, like the debris was down within 20 minutes of the launch.

And why was it in place for... what was it, over an hour, hour and a half, something like that. Stuff didn't just start floating and hovering in the middle air. Re-levitate, exactly. So, although that would be impressive. But I think that that's one factor I think that's in play is, you know, maybe the FAA air traffic control can tighten their procedures. They've done this, you know, in the real world, you know, now instead of just an exercise

or thought, you know, thought process. and maybe they can reevaluate and look at lessons learned and see, well, did we really need to reroute all that traffic? Did it need to be over that large of a footprint for that long? That could ease things there. To me, I think the bigger concern is dropping debris on islands or populated areas. And that is what I think would give people pause or the FAA pause or people in Congress you know, some sort of talking point to ask questions about.

Of course, the Turks and Kekos are part of the United Kingdom, so there's foreign policy and diplomacy involved and all of that, not just regulatory action. And again, I think this is kind of maybe a preview of what the discussion might be like before they approve or give a license for a starship reentry over, you know, over Mexico and over South Texas coming back into Starbase and how that's going to go. The Mexico one is really interesting now, especially because the, you know, the new administration's relationship with Mexico is already pretty tense.

And so I don't know what Mexico could do about it, but they could at least say, or what? Well, I mean, if the U.S. decides they want to ask Mexico, hey, is it okay if we fly a starship over, you know,

the entire north of your country so we can land it in Texas? Like, they might say no. I don't know if anybody cares if they say no. Like, they can't stop you, right? Exactly.

Yeah, there's nothing they can do to stop it. I think one thing is, you know, if something falls on somebody in Mexico and damages something or kill somebody, God forbid, what sort of legal action there might be possible. The U.S. government or SpaceX. And, you know, the FAA licensing process requires companies like SpaceX to have a certain amount of liability insurance protection.

I forget the exact number, 100 million plus. Maybe that goes up. You know, maybe they have to buy more insurance. Who knows? I think there are lots of things that play. But, yeah, Mexico can't stop it. It's just, I think it would be. very, very bad optics, obviously, if something happened on, you know, and the breed dropped

on Monterey or Brownsville, even in the U.S. territory. Yeah. Yeah. And it just becomes like a, you know, in the, in the great bargain of, you know, diplomacy where countries are, you know, doing tip or tat and trading favors here and there. This is one more thing that the United States has to ask of Mexico in a time when they're already asking a whole lot that, you know, Mexico doesn't really want to do. Right. So there's that we, we know, there's a new president down here too and she's, uh,

she's already drawing some lines in the sand. And so like I'm like kind of curious to see how that, how the something simple as a starship flight reentering could escalate to like some pretty high levels of, uh, U.S. government diplomacy. Something simple. Something simple like a,

the most advanced spaceship we've ever seen in our entire human existence. Reentering to be caught by a really tall tower in Texas. Yeah. So simple. Can they do, I'm just thinking now, is there a, is there a north entry path? There would be, right? Depending on what inclination. He's got to wait a while.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, from, um, from, from, from North, like over the entire country. He's trying to drop it on all of our interesting spots of the country. Oh, okay. Right over the Grand Canyon, right? Um, well, let's see.

What, what inclination are they going to for these, these, these, these, several of the flights. 20-something. There's two inclinations they have. It's like, I don't remember. Pull it out my ass. It was like 25 and 23 or something. Yeah.

I mean, but one thing to think about is, you know, the corridor is very narrow that they can, they have to thread that needle north or south of Cuba, as you were saying. But they could do a plane change in orbit with the raptor and go to a higher inclination. And the raptor is very powerful. I think it could do a pretty significant plane change. and that would potentially open up a northern trajectory. Because I think at that, at the current inclinations, they're going to like 25 to 30 degrees.

I can't remember exactly. But in that inclination area, it's going to be coming from west to east. There's not much of a north-south component. But if you do a plane change in orbit, you could open up a more southerly or more northerly over the United States trajectory to re-enter. maybe that's because the trajectory is looking at places with more people though that's the

I know there's only more people in any other I was wondering if you could if you could thread that American Southwest where there is it's pretty sparse you know where you could thread the needle there right I was thinking the same thing you're flying over the biggest cities in Texas like well not really you could other other than number one like you could go down like that Texas border is kind of like at the right angle that same inclination right so if you came in like pattern of the Rio Grande you want to do no but there's all the major cities all the major Texas cities are not right on the Mexican border is what I'm trying to say yeah it would be coming over south of San Antonio so yeah right along the border that's a pretty

sparsely populated area and um over you know northern southern New Mexico and northern Arizona like that you kind of hit that right so yeah yeah so that's something that maybe could be eventually You know, Starship is supposed to be flying often enough for that it's so reliable. That's not a safety concern. It's not, it'll be analogous to an airplane overhead potentially. And but these early test flights, that could be something that is part of the decision matrix of, you know, on these, the first few re-entries, we don't want to fly directly over, you know, Phoenix or we don't want to fly directly over Monterey, Mexico, you know, multi-million, you know, people population. We all thought in the beginning of, you know, when they were only approved for five launches out of Boca Chica, that Boca Chica would be the development test center and the place where they would try the new crazy ideas they have or whatever was pushing the envelope. And Florida or other places would be like high tempo, high launch cadence launch sites.

Are we just there now and there's no Florida launch site to shift to? It kind of feels to me like we're there now. yeah i mean they have the approval pending close to getting the final approval for 25 flights this year i think from from boca chica for don't launch i think is still a year year and a half away at minimum just because they have to build the infrastructure they have to do yeah exactly um but i think that's my point is like they if they were in a world in which

they built the towers in florida at the same time would these we're going to fly every month or twice a month would those be things that they're flying out of Florida because they have an easier time getting to that level of to 50 launches a year or something. Potentially. I mean, I think that launching from Florida comes with a lot of benefits. You know, the downrange issue of flying over islands, you have a more, a wider swath of ocean to launch over. You don't have to worry about flying over land until you get to Europe or Africa. and I think there are many benefits.

Going back to your initial comment earlier, Texas is not a great place to launch a rocket, especially in this test phase. It may be once the operational reliability has proven, maybe a different story. But yeah, I think launching from Florida would probably be safer, actually, and would give SpaceX more options in terms of how they, want to fly, going to different orbits, not having to worry about very narrow launch corridors. However, all the infrastructures in Texas at this point, they had their own reasons for building in Texas,

you know, to get away from the, you know, federal spaceport and the range, which imposes or used to impose some limitations, although the range, the space force range at the Cape, has relaxed a lot of their, you know, restrictions and is a lot more streamlined now than it was in 2014 when SpaceX went to Boca Chiga in the first place. I still remember it was not that long ago when the rain was like the big goal was like, how can we scale up to one launch a week? It's, that was like all hands on deck. We've got to figure this out.

52 launches in a year. It's going to be a big win, you know, like, well, we'll never be able to get to this. It's a big, hairy goal. And now SpaceX is doubling that by themselves. Yeah, close to 100 launches, right? In the last two years, each, 2023 and 24 from the Cape. And, you know, I've talked to one of the deputy commanders at the space launch Delta 45, still getting used to saying that, even though it's been several years,

that runs the range. And he has told me that he thinks the current capacity, if they did nothing, is probably between 200 and 250 launches per year at the Cape. If they made no more infrastructure investments, just the current capacity with the way things are working now. So there's room to grow for sure. And I think 250 launches a year,

I may be wrong. I don't foresee that happening until the 2030s, to be honest, because I think SpaceX is nearing, nearing SpaceX's nearing capacity or nearing max efficiency on what they can do with Falcon. Yeah, so I think it would be

the era of starship in Florida until we get to that point. You know, 200 launches a year. You're not a big new glen. It's going to fly 25 times a year kind of guy? 25 times a year. Yeah, sure. Not 200. Yeah.

I mean, if you have 100 to 150 SpaceX launches, 25 NewGland launches, a dozen, best case, probably a dozen Vulcans, and then a smattering of small launch companies, you're going to get to around 200, maybe. But then you add in Starship and you definitely explode that number, you know, significantly. So I think they won't get to 200, 250 launches from the Cape until Starship is flying from Florida regularly. You also have the mass problem too It's not a one-to-one trade Falcon to Starship, right?

So you can knock out, you know, whatever it is, five Falcon flights with one starship when you're doing Starlinkes or whatever it is, right? That's true. How much does it eat into the Falcon 9 launch cadence? Yeah. Yeah. When do we see peak Falcon flight cadence? Is it 2026?

Mass cadence will keep going up, but flight cadence may may kind of like flatten out or stagnating a little bit first, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would, what do you guys think? I would think 2026, 2027 maybe is when we see, or is it this year, when we see the most Falcon flights. Peak Falcon?

Wow. Peak Falcon. That's a, that's a question. Yeah, yeah. We've been talking about that a couple of times. Or the other one is just like when do they cancel Falcon, right? When is that day when they say like, we're done, we're not making it anymore, fly out the rest of these boosters? And then it's done, right?

That's kind of like a, which is like I, I always get so messed up thinking about it too, because it's just like, SpaceX is the only company that could have the, the, like, bravado to cancel the best rocket the way it's ever seen. Totally, man. But this is the, this is the thing. This is the way they're like Apple. Like, Apple was king of the world with the iPod. And they were like, fuck it, we're doing a phone.

And then it was all phone, right? So you think Peak Falcon is this close. You think it's 26. I think it's like 28. Yeah, I'm closer 27, 28, I think. It all depends on when they're flying Starlink's on Starship because

that's the game change. That's over half of the Falcon 9 demand. Yeah, two thirds. Yeah, two thirds. Yeah, so our Starlink launches right now. So, yeah, you know, maybe 27.

I could see 27. if I had to bet I think it would be before 28, but we'll see. It's probably a Calci market for this. There's not we should create one. There's an ongoing meme that I'm just a degenerate gambler on the SpaceX odds on Kalshi, and it's not entirely wrong, but it is a tricky question because there's multiple variants, right? Does the variant of Starlink they're flying at the time only fly on Starship?

so they're just overnight, the Starlink demand for Falcon 9 will evaporate. That's probably true. But is their starship manifest going to be so full with Artemis or Artemis-inspired missions that they will delay? Like, let's zoom out

to the political landscape that we're looking at, right? Everyone can have the theories on what Elon's up to on a political level. But one variant of that is he sees this as like, the moment to step on the pedal of if he wants to see people land on Mars in his own lifetime, he has political leverage to put pieces in place that can make that possible in the very near term. So if we get that

shift that we're looking at from a national policy level, that it was in the inauguration speech that people will land on Mars and plant the flag, if he gets that through the political system, that Mars becomes an immediate focus of the national space program, does he put Starlink on the back burner to some extent, which sounds crazy, and keep it flying on Falcon and say, all starships are aiming at Mars. If they're not a test flight to lower Earth orbit, they're aiming at Mars. And you shall not launch a Starlink on Starship in the next four years, because this is our moment that, like, people will actually back us to send these things to Mars. That's the kicker. That is a great question. I'm going to have to think about that.

There are a lot of variables at play, like you said, how much is the government going to be funding Starship development that's focused on Mars? How many millions or billions of dollars is NASA going to put into that over the next few years over this term? Because Elon has always said that Starlink, the revenue from Starlink is what is funding the Mars mission, the Mars ambition. So in order to maximize revenue from Starlink, you probably need these version 3 satellites. The version 3 satellites, I think, are going to be a lot better for direct to sell than what is available now with the V2 Mini. So that is a huge new market that could open up with version 3. And my understanding is still that version 3 cannot launch on Falcon 9 full stop. and so I think there's still an appetite to launch.

What if easier money becomes a parent sooner, right? Like that's, yeah, I think it's a big, yeah. I have a couple of thoughts on this, right? I think that like there's two variables to that that I think will change things. So one, even if they don't put the pedal to the metal on like human space flight and just fulfill their existing Artemis requirement like responsibilities. Like what is it? We got a demo flight to the moon plus Artemis 3 plus Artemis 4 are on contract right now,

I think, right? That's the three that are on contract. So that's like three HLS launches plus a dozen tankers each. So like you're, you know, in the next three years, you already have like 30 to 40 starship launches on the books just to fulfill the existing like Artemis manifest. And 30 to 40 launches in the next three years is like a pretty good ramp up for starships. Yeah. You know, like they did four last year.

So they got to get up. And then the other thing I think about is even if they do ramp up and they can fly as many of the funds and they want to move all the Starlings over there, Starlink's growth is so high that it would make sense to fill up all the starships you have and also fill up all the Falcons with the old satellites anyway. Like just throw, if you have launch capacity, use it because there is Starlink growth potential there. So like if it means putting up a bunch of old satellites that you don't care about and they're going to be out of date immediately, like I would still do it because there's just so many customers that want in on Starlink, right? So that's the complicates the Falcon 9 question for me about that, even if they move all the Starlink's over and launch all these amazing V3s. I think they're just going to keep flying the old ones anyway until they absolutely have to shut the factory down. and go from there. But I don't know.

It's interesting. There's a lot of variables, right? That's a good point. That's a good point. If you have launch capacity, you use it, and they have lots of launch capacity with Falcon 9,

lots of boost in rotation. I think one thing is, you know, SpaceX is about efficiency. Do they really want to keep two separate production lines going for V2 Mini and V3? And what does that do to the cost, you know,

that they're, you know, they're producing Starlink satellites for, what, a couple hundred thousand, less than a half million per satellite now. Who knows what a version three costs, but probably not much more, maybe less. And, but do they, if they have two production lines going up in Redmond, Washington, does that, you know, affect their efficiency going forward? So I think that's something that maybe is a factor in the decision. But, yeah, they have a lot of Falcon nine launch capacity. That's a good point. Why not use it? But I think there are other factors kind of, I play my cats joining me. Yeah. I think the big question will be like, you know, are they, did they spin up a new, literally like a new building to make them? Or are they like shrinking down the V2 assembly line to make room for the V3 assembly line? Because if you have a finite amount of factory space to make these, then like absolutely you should switch over the new one as soon as you can and shut the old one down. But if they have, if they're spending. up a new building to run that in and then they plan on closing the first building, then like,

you can run both buildings temporarily while you, you know, while you fulfill that extra growth capacity, right? I don't know the answer to that, but I'm just thinking operationally. That's what I'd be thinking about, right? These are good questions. I'm kind of thinking out loud as we go too. What we do on the show asked even is we give journalists homework. So we give you a bunch of questions.

We love assigning homework for sure. that you go and do your job and call a bunch of people and get your sources and then figure out the answer. Publish an article six to ten weeks later and then we take credit. And we invite you back on to answer the question. I would love to go one of the, if I had to name like one thing that I would love to see and do a real in-depth story on, it would be the Starlink production line. I think even more than start going to Starbase and getting a behind the scenes tour, frankly, because we've seen a lot. There's kind of an open book in many ways. of it.

That's not. I would love to go up to Redmond, Washington, if anyone's watching that can make that happen and do a story on it. I have a strong inkling that there is somebody who could make that happen. And if so, then I think we should all be invited to Redmond Washington. Yeah, especially the filthy foreigner. Yeah. She, who wants to drop rocket stages on Seattle by coming across the entire country?

Bring this foreign name. National up from Mexico to look at your ITAR stuff. I'm sure it'll be totally... He will lobby the Mexican government to allow Starship to fly over. Yeah, I'll help you out. On the ground help.

Lobbying work. Jeez. Does the Starship failure of Flight 7 did it put into context the New Glenn failure on Flight 1 at all? And like, I juxtapose these as we said, this was the biggest setback for the Starship.

program in its active flying history, which is obviously graded on a curve. They're doing awesome. But New Glenn's landing failure was just like, that's exactly what we expected. With the kicker that we didn't expect them to make a perfect launch to orbit on their first try. So I feel like it got upgraded in my brain after the starship plate. Like the New Glenn's success was even more impressive. Yeah, I was like, damn, that was a great, great day for them. Yeah. I, I, I, Yeah, I don't disagree. I think that was an amazing debut inaugural launch for New Glenn. And I'm really interested to hear what happened with the booster.

But I think they'll get there with that. But having out of the gate and a picture perfect first launch with New Glenn and Vulcan was also a flawless first launch. And Beat 4 really put on a show, man. Yeah, the B4 is quite an engine. So they've flown seven plus four or less 11 engine flights before, good performance across the board. You know, the upper stages to me are always something that I worry about. My entire thought process about Falcon has completely reversed. Like, you know, early on, I was like, you know, like many people, they're using the rocket.

That's the riskiest part. I feel completely differently. It's turned on its head now. Like, those failures, the issues we saw last year were all with the upper stage. Lots of flights, rocket lab, Astra, firefly, all of had up. Yep. And with Vulcan, the upper stage was largely heritage in many ways. The Centaur 5 was, you know, an evolution.

With New Glenn, it's a brand new upper stage. Completely new. The engines are similar. to what flies on New Shepherd, but they're different. They have to not ignite in a vacuum, and it performed perfectly from all indications, and that is really impressive to me. Yeah.

Yeah, upper stages are hard, right? We can't reuse them, so we don't get a lot of, like, hands-on data back, and you can't test, like, vacuum as well on the ground. You know, like, they ignite in vacuum zero-g, basically, so it's, like, really hard to do a ground test for that. And, yeah. Yeah, you have to have an,

massive test chamber to do something like that, and it's cost prohibitive to test it for any commercial company to test a vacuum ignition. I think one of the test chambers that has been used before is at the Arnold Engineering Test Center in Tennessee that we saw, I think, Northrop Gromentester-Caster, 30 upper stage there for Entaris. There's also been some vacuum testing the RL10 historically. but not for Vulcan, you know, the testing for RL10 vacuum was done decades ago. So they were building on that heritage. But 60 years of flight data, they can just leverage for that ones. Exactly. So the testing engine start in vacuum is very difficult and in zero G as well.

Obviously, that's even probably even more difficult than testing in a vacuum, obviously. So that is, you know, for New Glenn to. to have a perfect upper stage flight right out of the gate was really, really good to see. And, you know, I'm interested to see how quickly they can launch again, supposedly in the spring. And, you know, if they can replicate that and hopefully get the booster back. Yeah. I feel good about my prediction, Jake. May, something flies in May, something blue moon shaped in October.

Is that already said? Or November. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. He said this year, either way you're wrong. so. Anthony's become a Blue Glen booster, this.

A New Glenn booster. I don't think that's, I've become. I've been, I was a, I was like an overly optimistic, uh, Blue Origin fanboy for years. I think that's where I, that's where I lived. And I went through phases of like waning and waxing. Yeah. My optimism ended after the first flight. Like that was like, that was the extent that I was giving it out there.

and now I wanted to leave everything past a first flight open to judgment. Well, listen. Beautiful launch. Two things I'm interested in is why they decided to launch at night and why to that particular orbit that they picked. I don't feel like that's been answered. No, I don't have the answer to either one of those. I am firmly, maybe firmly against night launches

for the first flights of new rockets. and, you know, it was really cool seeing that. Firmly. I mean, I've seen, you know, over 300 launches, I think, at this point between Florida and Texas and night launches are cool, but, you know, you can see so much more of the rocket and how it's performing. So I think just visually, you know, a new rocket launching during the day is so much more interesting. And the blue flame was really cool for the new Glenn. but, you know, we saw SLS, Vulcan, New Glenn, all launch at night for the first time. And come on, let's get some day launches.

Let's launch in the summer when it's going to be daytime for longer and see what we can get. Didn't Taryn One fly at night, too? Yes, yes. Also, yes. Well, so I think what's, Taryn One is a methane one too, right? Mm-hmm. Yeah, you're an exclusion zone truther. I know, right? I am.

I'm an exclusion zone truther. Is it all these new methane rockets have those huge exclusion ones. zones because nobody knows what an explosion looks like yet and they're all like being really cautious. I think it was that plus sea state for New Glenn that like flying at night, they're going to have a little bit calmer of a sea. So let's try to do that to get the recovery down. You have a little more leeway, right?

Like especially with these new rockets where like you're going to have holds and unexpected things and you push and push and push like both of these attempts for New Glenn took like hours. Right. So, you know, just to have that flexibility like, yeah, we're not going to like severely disrupt a bunch of air traffic or marine traffic while we try and figure out this new giant exploding bomb rocket thing you know it makes sense but and they had a very long launch window as well so that's it's a good point they have three hour launch window you know so they had had to protect that airspace for that length of time from one to four again and if you want to

clear airspace this is the time to do it yeah that's my hunch stephen can you plug some of the stuff that you're working on lately and uh if somehow people listen to this and don't know Stephen Clark, what they should know? Sure, yes. So I am obviously the space reporter at R.S. Technica. I work with Eric Berger, who is our space editor. I work for spaceflight now for 15 years. My tenure there as editor in 2020.

And I cover everything under the sun, basically, when it comes to space. Civilian, spaceflight, human spaceflight, robotic science. but my emphasis this year will be on military space and national security space. And that's kind of what I've decided. And Eric and I have talked about carving out different niches for each other. And the military space is going to be something I'll focus on this year going forward. There's a lot of interesting stories there. I wrote a feature in December talking about the Space Forces renewed openness

to talk about putting offensive weapons in space, whether it's, you know, there we go, there we go. Whether it's, you know, kinetic, you know, something can strike a satellite and destroy it, which, you know, creates a lot of space debris. It's kind of dirty. But, or jamming or directed energy, anything like that. And I suspect in this administration,

we may see some more openness than we even saw last year going forward because I think there's an appetite for having some sort of demonstration or a public accounting of what the Space Forces capabilities are. I talk about the widget or the exact specifications, but we can do X, Y, Z, so don't mess with us. And I think that's something that new administration may have an appetite for. And I'll be following that closely. We've got a good, I think a good nominee for that. head of the Air Force, who's a space person.

And he has flown planes, but he's not, I always make this distinction between the plane people and the space people that are within the hierarchy of the air and space force. And this is the first time we're going to be seeing a space person leading, if it gets confirmed. But he seems like he's being, he's a good candidate for it. People seem to be into him as opposed to some of the other candidates that are out there for different positions. Yeah, yeah, Troy Mink from NRO.

Yeah, he's, he's, you know, has a lot of history. and national security space and you know the space force is you know Trump likes to take credit for the space force and of course he's the one who pushed show with the finish line although it was in discussion well before that but in 2019 so five years ago it became the newest branch of the military

and I think that's going to be a big focus still the coolest flag when they bring it out at like football games and stuff they do like this at the college football games they always bring out like all the flags and the space for fun is always the coolest so it's legit I'm delighted to hear you're focusing on that. I'm sure Anthony is too because we always joke that between the two of us, he's the one that has to pay attention to military space because I just won't do it.

And I'm always bugging him. I send Anthony a message like every couple months. Like, when are they going to award the next rockets for space military people? And he's like, oh, no, no, no. But now I can bug you about it. So that's, that's something to watch. That's also something to watch is the pending contract award for the National Security Space Launch. for phase three. And, you know, SpaceX, ULA, and Blue Origin are in competition for that.

And, you know, who gets the, you know, first position, the majority of those launches, probably I would expect SpaceX. ULA got the majority, the last time they did a big award, which is in 2020. And that was supposed to happen before the end of the year, before the end of the Biden administration, but it's been pushed back and push back and push back. And now here we are with the new president and the new year, and it still hasn't been awarded, but hopefully, well, we'll see. It should be very soon. It's going to be that Jeb Bush meme with the electoral results. You love that.

You love that. You love that. You love that. Jake, next week, we jumped on an opportunistic opportunity here. An opportunistic opportunity. Opportunity. As opposed to the other kind, yeah. Uh-huh.

Would you like to tell everybody who we're having on next week? We will, hold on, do I know? Yeah, we're going to have, uh, I had to think, sometimes I get our weeks, our weeks mixed up. This margaritas hit me. The, uh, we're having Jonathan McDowell come on to talk about, uh, his new, what do you call it? It's a project, I guess, but he's, uh, he's doing some work on the amazing,

catalog of stuff that he tracks in space and he needs some money. So we're going to talk a little bit about that. And I don't know. He's so cool. I just, I don't even care he's doing a project. I just want to hang out with him for another hour. So that's pretty much,

yeah, that's pretty much what he was. That's pretty much what I emailed him. It's an excuse to send him an email and make him hang out with us. Yeah. It's not all that. Like, Von Carmen was not doing GoFundMe's. All right.

If he was, we would have him on the show. Okay. Yeah. That's really where we're at. I want to give an endorsement to that because I think any space enthusiast contributing to his GoFundMe is a worthwhile investment. I'll just say that.

I didn't realize he had such a physical library that he was the shepherd of, but now that I know that it's even cooler. I just thought he had an awesome old-school website, but it's all physical stuff too. I have not been to his library, unfortunately, in person. Hopefully, I can get a chance to go to his new. one when he sets it up in the UK. But I know a few people have been and, you know, I've seen photos of it. It's quite extensive and detailed. And what you would expect from someone who's as passionate and as knowledgeable as him and has a knack for detail that is, I think, sorely lacking

among a lot of space companies and space agencies and unfortunately some, I'm guilty of it as well in the space media business. Just the lack of detail that, uh, A lot of us used to get back in the spatial and Apollo era in this world, we're a new world of commercial space. You know, companies don't have to release exact numbers or specifications and all that, but he tries to track them down as best he can. So it's an invaluable resource for me, and I think a lot of others. Yeah, boom.

For sure. Well said. Thanks for hanging out with us, Stephen. It's been, obviously, we need to have you back on more frequently than this. We will try to have you be. beat out Eric Berger's number of appearances. We're going to try to... How many to see F?

I don't even know. He's got to be a, I don't know, six, seven, eight somewhere in there, right? Something like that. Yeah. You got some work to do, but... You got some work to do. We're willing to put in the time. I'm available.

So, thank you again for... It was a pleasure. Anytime.