Off-Nominal - 184 - Trickle Down Space News

Episode Date: February 14, 2025

Jake and Anthony catch up on some news, stories they haven’t covered yet like Rocket Lab’s Mars Sample Return architecture, and discuss the glory of Super Bowl LIX. It’s Anthony’s birthday, so he will not be stopped by Jake. Go Birds.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 184 - Trickle Down Space News - YouTubeChiefs vs Eagles | Super Bowl LIX Highlights - YouTubeMars Sample Return | Rocket LabSpace Policy Edition: Mars Sample Return, but… | The Planetary SocietyCiting too much “bureaucracy,” Blue Origin to cut 10 percent of its workforce - Ars TechnicaBoeing has informed its employees of uncertainty in future SLS contracts - Ars TechnicaDOGE to examine NASA payments - 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

Hello, Jake. I told you last week I wasn't playing it. So I figured I would just start us out. I was kind of hoping that I've never heard that tune, but I was kind of hoping it was going to be the other Philadelphia song. No, you're thinking of the Sixers one. Yeah. They suck.

They're terrible right now. I didn't know if it was like if it was a specific sport theme or if it was just like a Philadelphia sports general thing. I guess it has seven sixers in the name, doesn't it? Kelting is a big part of that song. Yeah. I play that for the outro. They suck.

They're terrible, though. They're like truly awful and depressing. So. All right. Yeah, we have two good sports teams in this town. One that has embraced the rebuild and the other one that's a complete hot mess. So and a soccer team. So hot mess also.

Wait, what about the other sport? Which one? Hockey, baseball, basketball, football. Soccer. Okay. I lost the thread. Yeah, I thought you had a punchline planned. I was like, where is this going? No, I think you said you had two good teams and one bad team. I was like, you have four at least. I said two good teams, one that's embraced the rebuild, one truly terrible hot mess and a soccer team. It was also a hot mess.

See, I thought that one and one was referring to the two subdivided. See? This is a math problem at the end of the day. It's a math problem. Welcome to Off Nominal. We have really great content where we talk about. Super good. First, we're doing a play-by-play breakdown of the Eagles, absolutely dismantling the Kansas City Chiefs in a way that was that I and my wife clearly saw coming for two weeks when we were talking it up. And I was harassing at least one of our listeners via email with pictures of Sequan Barkley. And my wife was convinced our backup quarterback would in fact play a couple of snaps at the game, which he did because we were absolutely destroying the Kansas City Chiefs. And it was a glorious day. For everybody in Philadelphia and no one else, because it was probably a boring fucking Super Bowl.

for anyone else on earth. If you had 30 seconds to explain to me who knows next to nothing about football, why the Eagles won the Super Bowl, what would you say? Absolutely dominating defense that was the number one in the league and shut down what was one of the best offenses in the league for the last several years. They were terrible this year. I think the thing about the chiefs is the worst chiefs team that there's been, and everyone was just talking them up because historically they were good,

but we all knew that they were bad compared to how good the Eagles defense was. Also, Jalen Hertz is amazing. The worst Chiefs, but they still, like, if they're the worst Chiefs team, they're still second place in the league this year, right? Yep, they won like tens of one score games in a row through various different means. So they were really scrappy and doing great. And yet, for two weeks, everyone talked about how they were going to win the game against the number one defense in the league

with the number one rusher and a quarterback that plays his best games in the biggest games. Is the Chiefs the one that is affiliated with Taylor Swift? Unfortunately, yes. Although she has revoked her Eagles fandom so much that she got booed at the Super Bowl

by all the Eagles fans who are mad at her and her dad for not rooting for the birds. She's a PA girl, right? She is a local girl who grew up a little witty of the city and went to the shore near where I went growing up,

so we probably hung out together and didn't know it, and now does not root for the Eagles. Even has Eagles references in her songs about her Eagles t-shirt, and no love for the birds. So, booed. Well, she's getting love from the chiefs, so at least one of them. At least one of them, wow, that took a turn.

Oh, man. Well, on that note, our Super Bowl breakdown is over. I'm going to get emails for that one. We'll get emails. We'll get some emails about other shit that we talk about today. Yeah. What are you making over there? What kind of drink you got cooking? I'm rocking just a patito today. Got a Belgian blonde ale. Yeah, a Belgian, Belgian beer, which always makes me think of Eric Burger. I was going to say the same thing.

Yeah I'm making a gin and tonic as we speak A little birthday gin and tonic here So I'll show it when I'm done It's going to be birthday Yeah man It's your birthday today

Happy birthday Thank you I'm having a parade for tomorrow A parade yeah Just like every year you wish for the Super Bowl And then every once in a while you get it That's funny Listen, we got a lot of things that have been in, we have a couple of documents for this show.

We have our crazy theories document that we've shown before. We have guest ideas that we procrastinate on because we're nervous to email people. We have discussion prompts, which we've dipped into. And then I keep a document of like recent stories that have been happening that we just haven't talked about yet or would be fun to talk about at some point. And that feels a little full to me these days. There's some things in there. Yeah, yeah. It's been, I mean, it's wild and crazy news all around right now.

And space seems to be getting a fair share of that. It seems like it's trickling down. Trickled down space news. Trickle down space news. Yeah. Yeah. Did you, I don't know. I feel like, I mean, there's been a lot.

lot of politics lately, obviously. It's all politics. Let's be serious. Like, the, there's not really a lot of space news right now that isn't space politics is. That's the, yeah. Point one, two, and three of the, of the news list right now is politics. So, so we got to talk about it. Yeah. Should we start with with that? Or, I mean, you, you told me you, you, you wanted to talk a little bit about the Rocket Lab, Morris sample return architecture, which I'm intrigued by your take on. I think, I think that's a politics thing,

too, right? I mean, we're, we're seeing Rocket Lab not just like make a proposal, but like they're marketing it, right? They're going out, they're doing a junket on the Mars sample return, program that they have there. So that is a, it's absolutely a political play. And it's just, this is what happens with a new administration, right? I think all the doors open up again when the administration changes and everyone tries to rush the doors to get into the room they want to get into. and then that's how it all has to sort itself out, right? So. All right.

So that's my, maybe you have like technical things you want to talk about with, with the Rocket Lab Marsnap return. Let's see if this works. What screens this is going to show? Yeah, the right screen. Look at that.

With their little avatar heads. Yeah, here we are. Hello. I mean, they put together this like legit. I'm sure some of this stuff was reused from the proposal that they sent out. Nice brochure here, right?

Yeah, but like, they put effort into putting this thing out here and talking it up at conferences. The best thing about this proposal, though, just off the top is that it's not called photon. Oh my God. Well, these aren't photon. These are like all their other crazy names. There was like lightning and Netflix and, you know, haphazard and whatever other names were for all their shit. They all called photon at some point.

It was like photon, big photon, little photon, photon two. Yeah, but then it was, no, then there was a real photo. revision on that. There was a... Yeah, they fixed it. Where is that under? Spacecraft. Maybe it's under spacecraft.

Browsing the RocketLab website. Dot com. RocketLab USA.com. Somewhere there's a list of names, isn't there? Oh yeah, here we go. Explorer. It was it. Right here.

Lightning. Pioneer is the one with the return vehicle. and photon, regular ass photon. So I was just, I'm kind of interested in why they decided to not only put out, like I understand putting out this material alongside the NASA process, but they have continued to talk it up at conferences and tweet about it kind of like randomly or like sub-tweet other people. people with the more simple turn paid that's the part that I'm kind of mystified by right because is that them saying oh well the last administration announced they're kicking the can 18 months down the road so we can still keep the pressure on is it posturing for whatever the hell's

going to happen now with MSR how do you read the strategy of like continuing to be a squeaky wheel on it I think I don't think there's too much like 3D chess we have to play here or anything it's like the the door is wide open on Marsamp return. This is what I blogged about, right? Then it's like in the most precarious position. A program like that could be in. Anything could happen. The last administration did nothing on it and then did even further nothing on it.

Like it just pushed it way out there. And we have probably the most disruptive presidential administration that we've seen in our lifetimes in there right now. Like if you're if you're rocket lab and you want to do Mars Amp term, and why wouldn't you try to market, right? Like this is the best chance you're going to get to get in on that. So I don't think there's too much to unpack with that. But I think the most important thing or, I don't know the most important thing,

but like one kind of thing that maybe is interesting about it is like, you know, if this administration, if we assume that they're going to blow up that program and do something very different with it, it's probably going to be commercially based. Like we're probably going to see the role of commercial companies. rise higher in whatever the change is going to be. All of the assumption is that it's going to be Sarshot. Like that's just, you talk to anybody about it,

that's the only thing they can really say, right? And so like Rocket Lab putting themselves out there as like another name for that might be trying to like, like it's a marketing strategy in a sense that it's just like, hey, SpaceX isn't the only darling commercial company. We can do it too. And like by like attaching yourself to the project that everyone assumes is SpaceX, you kind of are implicitly saying we're as good as SpaceX, right?

So I think there's kind of like an interesting, I already call it as just like a, it's a posturing, right? But I don't know. What do you think? Am I order to limb on that one? No, I think I just am a little bit, I don't know why it strikes me weird in the way that it's being handled. But it feels like, like, what's a good example? It feels like you A contract

was or a contract direction was announced, right? And I don't, I didn't think a company that is, that has the stature of Rocket Lab would just continue to tweet like, we could do it better, we could have done it better, we could have done it better,

and it'll do that in other areas of the, right? Like, they're not tweeting at NASA who just picked SpaceX for like a ride share mission of a small satellite, like, hey, we could have launched this right where it needed to go. We could have launched this, look at this. Here's a picture of Neutron,

who could launch it or electron or whatever. Yeah. And so I don't know what... So here's some other crap that I would like to put out into the world as part of the equation here. If you remember in the summer, early summer, was when the previous round of design studies were announced, right? There was like seven companies or something like that that we're going to do the... It was seven organizations. It was some NASA, some external, some commercial commercial.

Rockad was not on that list originally. And then... They fought their way in, right? Yeah. Yep. They... Well, I don't know if they fought their way in, but they... I've got awarded it later.

I was told... I was told that they said they were going to file a protest and maybe even did file a protest. And I sent a... Yeah, I got a little scrappy about it, right? I sent a FOIA in about any protests that Rocka Lab filed. It didn't get officially filed. I was told that it did. so some other bullshit happened behind the screen.

It almost seems like they, like, something pissed them off and, and they feel spurned by that. And that plus like the political posturing of being bold about it. And I kind of, I dig that they're being so bold about it and like naming a very specific price of like, what was it, 4.7 billion or something like that, there was a really specific price to it. Yeah. But the architecture also. is like a full rocket lab ground up, right? Like no partners, just rocket lab all the way. Yeah, and that's maybe part of the lobbying too, right?

Because they're not just saying pick us versus pick somebody else. They're saying fundamentally change the architecture of your program, like get rid of Europe, consolidate under one contractor. Like that's big change, not little change, right? It's not just swapping out, you know, oh, we're doing the MSR, but instead of the Marshall Mav, we're doing a rocket lab, Matt, that's not what we're talking about here, right? We're saying hand the entire thing over there, which is going to, which is going to come with an international diplomatic problem, right?

And so, like, it's not a small ask. Yeah, I mean, including they've got like a Mars orbiter, which is like a whole other program in NASA of let's figure out how to do commercial Mars telecommunication orbitors. They're like, we'll do that as part of this. They have, and this was going to be what, Mars is sent vehicle to the Earth return orbiter and then straight to Earth? I believe was the way. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's pretty straightforward. Like, it functionally works the same as what we have.

It's just, you know, it's one contractor. And I, maybe that's the part that's getting me, Jake, is that like, they don't, they don't realistically think that would actually happen. But they're saying we could do every single part of this. Yeah. Now it will actually happen. But I don't know. Let's get in that a little bit of like, do you think,

with the most disrupt, how did you phrase it, the most disruptive presidential administration of our lifetime, there's several things that are, we're in the chaos territory, right, right now. We're like, everything's happening, all that stuff's happening. We're about to get the first of the budget drafts. Congress is going to start having opinions

on what programs are going to get money and what things are going to be. Is an SLS cancellation going to be politically viable? Is a Marsamper term cancellation or reorientation going to be politically viable? does something like a wholesale replacement of Mars Samp return, a single contractor running the entire thing, does that feel like it's something that would actually get through the Mars policy? I mean, I think so that's an impossible question to answer, right? Like, I think what we're learning so far with this administration, like we had some preconceived notions about Trump two.

Like, you know, just saying, okay, well, we look at Trump one and say, this is how they operated. and we can generally assume that as a starting place, right? Like knowing nothing else, Trump two is going to be just like Trump one. I think what we- My only couching there was that like this Trump campaign was like pretty well organized. And I think that was clear from early on. So-

Yeah. It, yeah. And I think we're seeing that in this thing. Like they're much better organized. And the strategy is like very obviously like just burn everything to the ground and see what people fight for to get back. And that's like, it's like a very disruptive way to do a sorting algorithm on all government spending, right? And just like, like, we're shutting everything down.

And then the, you know, the 50% of it that Congress puts back in, well, that's the most important 50% and then you've reduced government. Like that's, that's the strategy, right? You know, if I could look at it the most charitable way I possibly. Yeah, totally. And so part of that strategy is just like just go after literally every single thing. And so what you're trying to predict is, like, like, what you're trying to predict is, like, okay, well... No, no, no, I think I'm asking a different question than you might be thinking.

Okay. Like, I don't think it's a big question of whether the administration or even their friends in Congress, whoever those will shake out to be, would go for this structure, but would the, would the NASA management structure be able to do this? Or would it be, like... I don't see why not. I mean... Would it fit with the way that...

Like, how would it work? Would a single... Who would... Like, would a single person, a single NASA entity manage it? And it would just be a rocket lab project? And would that be relentlessly attacked to other places that still want to work on this? I mean, so that comes to bound to, like, the fundamental issue with how MSR is currently organized, right?

Where it's like doesn't really belong to one directorate and it's like kind of split across them and has no central authority. So personally, I think that it should just be... be under the science department. Like, I don't know why we need to involve all these other departments into it. And head court, like, it just doesn't need to be that complicated. It's, it is a more complicated planetary mission than other planetary missions. But like, you know, on the scale of $4 to $8 billion, it's big.

But like, I don't know, Europe Clipper was for $4 billion, right? Like, why can't the science mission? You tell me, like, the science director can't manage that program. I don't see why not, right? It's multiple launches, I guess is the tricky part. But like, I don't know. That doesn't seem like the hard part of a planetary mission. So I think NASA can do it.

I just don't think they wanted to. And, you know, so I listened to the Casey Dreyer, speaking of Casey Dreyer. Who's not on this episode? Who's not on this episode? Yeah. We were convinced that it's the week that we booked him for, but no, we booked him in two weeks. Entirely our mistake. So, but he had Peter Beck and Richard French on to talk about Mars Sam Burtur on his podcast.

and I lost my train of thought now. What was saying? Where was I going with this? I was saying that... I think you were going to review this episode of the podcast. No, he was saying that the part of the organization of Mars Sampletern had a built-in component to it, which was about like giving everybody a piece. Like they were running it the same way they were on a human space flight program.

It's like, okay, well, if you're going to build Artemis, first, you're going to, have to decide what Marshall gets to do. Then you have to decide what Glenn has to do. And then we get to decide what Johnson gets to do. And then then you decide what the Europeans get to do. Like figure out what everyone gets to contribute. And then you build a program from that thing, right? Which is like the opposite way you should do any project, really. So like why was Mara Sample return set up that way? I don't really know. It feels like a big mistake. And I think we're seeing that that was not the best way to do it. So if I'm thinking about the kinds of big change, that an administrator like Jared Isaac would want to implement, that seems like low-hanging fruit

because it's like we overthought this. Guys like Mars Ampton, we've overthought it clearly, right? So I don't know, handing it off to a prime contractor as a fixed price contract and putting it under one directorate like literally anything else. Like it seems like an okay thing to do, right? NASA's got experience with fixed price contracts at that scale with commercial crew. Like it just seems like they have the expertise, right? the fact that Rocket Lab named a price

this feels like one that's ripe for NASA issuing an X prize of like, well, by $8 billion to get samples back from Mars. And then somebody can decide, is it worth the $5 billion of Rocket Lab to make $3 billion or not? Like, it feels ripe for...

They've stated it a price. They've stated it commercially. Hypothetically, Rogelab, if somebody walked up that had $5 billion, dollar, Rocket Lab could say yes to go do a Mars sample return. If the only thing between here and there is $5 billion and NASA saying that they're allowed to grab those samples.

So have we entered the era of the XPRIZE? It would be efficient on the government side because they wouldn't pay any money until somebody did it. I don't think it works in this case because there are specific samples to grab and so like get there first. baby. That feels like, yeah, that feels a little licky. I don't know if we can pull that off, but, um, uh, but I don't know.

I, like, doesn't the rocket lab proposal also include the sky crane? Like, doesn't it require some NASA involvement? Um, not sky crane. It's like, uh, it's a little antireoshell, the aeroshell. The aeroshell. I thought it was a curiosity. Yeah, certainly. Certainly looks like it.

Do you think that's a NASA involvement or? are they subcontracting Lockheed Martin? You're right. Yeah. Wouldn't that be funny? I don't know why that's funny to me, but it's like hilarious. That they would just buy one also? Yeah.

From Lockheed's like, yeah, man, works for us. We already made it for the other one. Yeah. We got five of these in the warehouse. We'll still charge a full price for it, but it's there. It doesn't matter who gets the contract. We're still building the Lockheed Martin Arrow show. 70 degrees sphere cone baby

The one thing that annoys me With the rocket lab positioning on this Is that they have this like snarky line that they're using Which is like Well I mean we launched rockets that size It's like well it's not like It's not the size of the rocket Like nobody's doubting the possibility of Mars overturn

Because the rockets are too small or something right That feels really icky to me That they're like I don't know man like Or electrons about the size of the set vehicle That's not the point. I mean, there's always some ickiness in the marketing, right? Like I was looking at the website earlier and down at the bottom.

You know, so like Rocket Labs trying to do this thing too where they're like trying to remind everybody that they are more than a rocket company now. Like in fact, most of their revenue, the province does not come from rockets anymore, right? They're a component company. They're, you know, think the Casey interview had the guy was like, oh, we're the leader in solar panels. in space, you know, and it's like, so they're trying to like market, you know, whatever. And then, yeah, I'm seeing this experience on Mars and they're listening. Like, this is a little, this, this has the same energy as Boeing saying they made the space shuttle, right? Like, it's like, like, taking a little bit of credit here for Mars Curiosity.

Okay, like when Curiosity launched, Rocket Lab was shooting off sounding rockets on a beach somewhere in New Zealand, you know, like, I don't think they really had a lot to do with Mars Nance Laboratory, but they may have bought the company that did. So I was like a little chuckly at that, but. I mean, yeah, these people still work there. I'm a people have experienced not companies kind of guy. So sure. Yeah. You know, that's, I've always fallen.

It's a long time ago. It was a long time ago. That's, I mean, when, yeah, like, when was curiosity put together? It was assembled from like, when did it start being put together? Oh, seven. I mean, the original launch day was 09, right? So it was probably, I think the, Bush was president. The 03 Decadal recommended it.

So it was somewhere between 03 and 08, somewhere in that area was like, you know, formulation and preliminary stuff, right? So there's probably a few people that still work there, but yeah, they probably weren't involved. No, it's kind of funny. So you do it. I'm delighted that Rocket Lab is involved in all these things, but there's always, there's always, There's always a little bit of glean on the marketing. You've got to be critical. Yeah, and they weren't averse to, like, their SPAC deck also had some of the stupid charts of how exponential launch services were going to be.

Like, everybody had that. Hot hockey stick graphs, yeah. Yeah, it just felt so. We'll launch one rocket this year, 10 next year, and a thousand in 10 years. Yeah, three a day. It's like, okay. Everybody did that, but it was a bummer that they also did. Yeah.

Yeah. So. Spax for a crazy time. Spax were crazy, man. I was, uh, today I went out to lunch somebody and we were trying to rank, um, like an Eric Bergerian, uh, rank the launch companies. I kind of like, it took me a while to remember relativity.

Like, I've already counted them out. That's where I'm at right now, you know? Like, I got the four and I was like, I think that might be it, right? Number one, SpaceX, number two, Muley, number three, Rock Lab. There's no more. Oh, I put Rocket Lab number two. I put Rocket Lab number two. That one's a flip-flop.

I debated ULA versus Blue Origin for three and four. And then I was like, I mean, I guess, like, would I put anyone above Firefly? And then I was like, who else is there? And I was like, oh, yeah, relativity still technically exists. You have to put Blue Origin above ULA because ULA is half Blue Origin anyway. So it's a pretty good argument. Also, you know, listen, Blue Origin's still out there talking up that they're going to have a Blue Moon Mark 1 late this year, Jake. This year.

I may have nailed this prediction. They're saying next launch late spring, I said may. That would count. No, dude, you're out to line. Because if you already, you can look at the couching in the language. I think I just read that statement like an hour ago. And it was like, Dave Limp was like, you know, we're, we're still confident that we have a chance to do the Mark 1 lander. And, okay, that's gone.

Like it's enough for me, baby, with my prediction. It's closer than you thought it would be. No, dude. It's February. And he's still kind of confident they might have a chance. No, it's over. If you're confident and it's February, it's like, no, we're watching it this year, 100%. Book your flight.

That's what you say if you're actually confident. Well, we'll see in that show how it shakes out. We will see. We will see. I'm still good on that one. Yeah, you want to talk about layoffs and stuff a little bit at all? I'm kind of like not that interested in the layoff story. The SLS layoff story probably more interesting of the two, but.

Yeah. Yeah. Then the blue one, I mean, I don't know. I don't know what the, what the business meeting looked like to decide that. But it, it feels like you get a new CEO with like the restructuring is very, very common. Dave Lim's been there a year now, ish, right? Wasn't it like December 20? And then he, they start like around Christmas the year before, right? I think it was something like that. That sounds right. And my thought is you don't come in and like lay off. a bunch of people when you're like racing to the new glen launch like which they were hoping would get out you know in the fall right so i i think that he took his time to get the lay of the land and then

as soon as new glen was off the pad he's like okay time to put my stamp on things right so i don't i don't it's i'm sad for people who lost their jobs today but like it doesn't strike me as a wholly unexpected thing to have happened yeah they're they're a big company too like just size wise. They were really big. Yeah. Yeah. When you, when you think about how many people they had and what their output is, you're just like, what, what are you all doing? That's just some interesting stuff there. And, and like all the people that were building a launch pad, like that's, that can go down a little bit, right? Because the launch pad is built now. That was a big project. So there are some things, there are some at the end of a development cycle, which is new line is hitting right now.

Like there are changes that happen. That's just like a normal part of that, this business, right? Yeah, I don't know. It's also, I don't know. This is like stories on the other end when someone gets funding. I'm like, I don't really, that's not even, that's like a life cycle thing. I'm not really going to cover it unless it's like bonkers a number, right?

Like if it's an insane amount of money that like relativity levels of investment is worth covering. That one always stands out. What was it like $1.2 billion or some godly? It was more than that. Yeah, it was crazy how much money they took. So you're not going to do a whole podcast episode about KT you got like 100 million today or something. Yeah, 110 million.

Yeah, baby. Do your thing. But I mean, you know, keep on going. I'm not working for CNBC. I don't need to cover every little financial transaction. I cover it if it changes the- Shout out to sheets. Who's leaving.

So that's not even a shout-out. He's leaving CNBC. Yeah. He doesn't even need to cover every jet section. He can make fun of his job along with us. yeah we should get them back to talk about not CNBC yeah I mean we are the new home for people leaving Mainstream media and going to their own independent things and then going to substack yeah so no I think it's it's significant when it changes the there's two moments

where it's significant if it changes the thing that the company's focusing on or like I think stoke a couple of maybe not this round but the one before this they hit the when you hit the milestone of we have officially taken in enough money to make it past our first launch, then that that part's significant for a launch company or a satellite company. Like we have enough money to make it to the moment at which you see if we're viable or not. Those are really the only moments that I'll talk about too much. Yeah. So, and same with layoffs.

Like if it's, if it's, we laid off a thousand people because we canceled Blue Moon, that would be a story. but if it's we trimmed in a thousand people on our 10,000 person company, it doesn't, it's going to affect those people, but it doesn't change the company level, and that's what we analyze, right? Yeah, yeah. I think what's interesting about the space industry right now is different than, I mean, like when I was in college in Florida, right?

The central Florida media ecosystem was dominated by the end of the shuttle program because everybody that I was living near either worked at NASA or worked at Disney and one of them was having a major re-architecting of the thing that was happening in that area and at that time it wasn't evident that those people would be back four years later working on the same pad

for Falcon Heavy or something right there wasn't that assurance now it's like you know it feels more like when my friends in tech get laid off and they're like well I'm going to go check out you know these other job openings that are at the other giant tech company because it's a different team now. There's more of a cross-pollination

that happens in the space industry now. So like, and we're seeing this with people that are on Falcon 9, right? Like, a lot of those people wanted to go work on Starship because there's a whole section of people that work at rocket companies that like building new rockets and hate operating them.

And you need those people. So like, when you're done building that rocket, go build the next new one at some other place. And if you finish building that launch pad, if you're somebody who likes building launch pads and not like painting rust that happens at the seaside, then like, you're going to go probably,

move jobs to somewhere that's building a launch pad. Yeah. If you like building launch pads, your job will necessarily change every couple of years. Because there's no company mass producing launch pads, at least not yet. Well, listen, Tom Rod is calling right now. We'll get him back, but, you know. So, yeah. That's different, though.

I mean, honestly, even with, to transition us into the Elon of it all and the U.S. federal government, you know, things that are. are rattling NASA and everywhere else, but we're space-focused, so we'll look at the space side. Like, some of the stories are written in a way that, like, these people have nothing else to go to, and that's not true anymore in the space industry. There are so many space companies that are dying to hire really good people and cannot, I mean, that's how Blue Origin got to the size they are. They were in a phase where they were dying to hire really good people, and they had the money to do it, and they were trying to scale up. There are other companies scaling,

up like you mentioned k2 space stoke space there's companies that have this fresh funding and they're in their inertia building phase that are just looking for these kind of people right and on a personal level obviously it sucks if like you're you're in so i mean i'm in philadelphia if i wanted to work a space company i would not live in philadelphia anymore right it would i would be moving i'd be leaving family it would suck but the space industry is so different than the last major shedding of people that nassas sure yeah yeah yeah and i just i feel like that's This is maybe going to be a theme of the show where, like, I feel like the media coverage of what's happening to the space section of the government in this era is missing the point. And that feels like one of it.

You know, yeah, and to sort of expand on what you're saying, it's like just the coverage of like you could have the same reporter covering the same kind of story, but it'll be different if it's Blue Origin versus Boeing, right? Like it'll be. Yeah. Yeah. Because like the Boeing layoffs on SLS, even today, it still feels like that might have the kind of same effect as you're talking about like back in the shuttle days. Because like the Boeing workforce is probably less mobile, right? They're probably a little older. They're probably a little more established.

They don't want to leave southern Louisiana, you know, and go to Seattle to build like Kuiper satellites. That's not what they want to do, right? And so I think that especially in some of the markets that at the SLS program really operates in Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi, like those are smaller markets where layoffs hurt more, like just period, right? Like, okay, you get laid off at your rocket company in Los Angeles. There's 15 other ones just down the street. So like, whatever, it's a huge, huge market, right? And it's not only that big a deal. But it hurts to, you know, Stennis.

If you live outside of the Dennis Space Center and you lose your job in aerospace, that's Dennis Space Center. That's it. That was the job. Yeah, I mean, it's like you want to fund a startup in that area of the country where they make like propellant tanks that go at launch sites because we just need like really large diameter tankage that go around all these launch pads. What if we took your skills but made those tanks stay on Earth? Those were very specialized. these days.

Ayo. Core stage two, actually just a commodity storage thing out at 39A. Brutal, brutal. I'm going to start a competitor to Air Lakeede and put it at the other gate of Kennedy. Call it air liquid. Liquid. Liquid air, yeah. So on the nose.

All right, here's my other thing that the media is woefully, digging themselves a hole on. Now I sound like Kristen Fisher. Let's pick the media down. All right. We're going to delve into

the media coverage around Doge. Okay. There are several areas at which so like I talked with Eric Berger this week on Miko that Elon is almost not at all interested in space right now.

Just generally with this whole government stuff that he's doing. It sounds like that's approaching the arrow when it will impact space or at least contact space. Yeah, we're coming up on it. The coverage is, there's two angles of it. One is this is a clear conflict of interest, and Elon is going to go into NASA and steer,

and the DoD, and steer all the contracts to SpaceX because he's corrupt, which is setting up a gigantic moment when they realize, shit, they're already getting all the contract awards because they're really good at this stuff. Like, we already know that SpaceX is winning all the contracts at NASA and the DoD because they have really good prices and they're really good at building this stuff. They are dominating the contracting environment by being really good,

not because they are the biggest and the baddest. I always use the equivalence of Facebook trying to like confirm regulations in place around social media to, you know, regulatory capture themselves being, they're like, we're going to, we should ban TikTok. It is a national security threat because it will benefit threads and Instagram and all the things that we operate. Yeah, yeah. That is them using their power to cement themselves as a player. SpaceX is the opposite.

They, like, hard-nosed their way into this industry and won these contracts by having lower prices and better products. And if you're in the mainstream media, as Christopher Fisher likes to say in Rush Limbaugh, and you're writing these stories that he's going to go in and direct all this stuff to SpaceX in a corrupt way, I will wait until they go and they audit all these other places and you see how much money is not being spent on SpaceX compared to how much money is being spent everywhere else. What do you do at that point if you've written all these stories and you've completely missed the storyline that badly? Yeah, I mean, I think you're right and wrong. How's that for an answer? So I think you're right.

Tell me I'm wrong and B, let's fight a little bit. Let's fight a little bit. No, no. Okay. Here's what you're right about. You're right is that the media is covering it that way. And it's like, like, yeah. And you said this on your interview with Eric Berger, which everyone should go listen to

because it's also very like, you should listen to it now because in a week it's not going to mean anything anymore. So you got to go after this podcast, go listen to them. Yeah. So it was really good. And one of the thing you said was like, you know, like, okay, some $10 billion NASA contract, like doesn't change the direction of SpaceX anymore. Like it's nice, it's a nice to have.

It's not a need to have anymore, right? Yeah. And you're also right is that they're winning all those SpaceX contracts anyway. So like what can possibly change? And so I think that's where you're right. Now, I think what you're wrong about, though, is that there are much more sinister things that you can do with a corrupt,

a conflict of interest than just move a contract over to your company and get some money. Like I think that's like a really, like Elon doesn't need money. Yeah. It's not a motivator. I'm like, oh, he's going to go personally enrich himself. I'm like, he has all the money and he doesn't spend any of it. He lives in not even an airstream.

I think it's like a shitty trailer. It's like a Winnebago or something. Yeah, that's not, I don't buy that as an argument. But like, you know, he could look at all the things he wants to do with his companies in the long term. So we're talking about SpaceX. You know, we're looking at Mars. And he can start to dismantle any kind of thing he might perceive as a roadblock for that, right? So a very obvious one to me would be planetary protection stuff, right?

So if you take apart any kind of infrastructure of planetary protection, that helps the business case that you're already going to do. Like you're already committed to going to Mars, but that is going to be an obstacle one way or another. And getting it now could be a way to dismantle that. And that's maybe not done in the interest of the American people. Like is it, you know, does the American people want planetary protection to go away? I don't know.

I don't think there's polling on that. and if there is, it's probably not very accurate. But we know that SpaceX wants to do a thing, and if planetary protection is the way, then that is an interest of SpaceX and not of the American people. That's the conflict of interest, right? And that's a regulatory thing. We could see that at the FAA,

we can see that at environmental stuff with Starbase, which is a constant storyline with that launch site, there's a ton of like that kind of thing. And you can even think of it as like if you're really long-term thinking about it, if I'm Elon and I make the government smaller and less effective and weaker now, then, like, problems I don't even know about in the future are just not going to happen anymore, right?

To get in my way to do the things I want to do, right? So that's, that to me is, like, where the possible corruption and conflict of interest becomes, like, a big, big problem. Not a, not a, not the contract for the next launch for us. Right. Yeah. They already won that one. Like, whatever, whatever, man.

Like, that one is already going to them. No, okay, so, uh, it's like we scripted a great debate because I actually think that is because of the way they're going about this, that actually is my concern in the inverse, that they are antagonizing so many. He just went very partisan, right? And if you're somebody who has those politics, like, I'm more close to the Elon mind about the federal government's financial system than probably you and most people listening right now that like we are crashing into an iceberg and we should start steering as soon as

possible is kind of my take, right? Like, we can either start steering now or hit the iceberg and then race to the lifeboats, but like, we are in a bad situation and it need, we need to figure out what we're going to do about it. Whether or not you think we should cancel everything and start over or you should like trim in the fat, let's debate that. But like, I do think we're in a, we're on a bad trajectory. But the fact that he's going about it from a very partisan direction, and you see this with the way that he handles getting Butch and Sonny back from the space station. He is totally going into the partisan lines on that. I think that's, that is really hard. the long term for SpaceX because you're going to create every political movement or

situation creates a stronger kickback, right? You can just trace the cycles from like Trump now to Biden to Trump to Obama. It's just like kickbacks on kickbacks, right? Like not kickbacks. That's a political term. But like reactions to. And the pendulum swings, it's swinging very hard and fast right now. Yeah. And I don't think that is my really big concern with this is that he is somebody who is going really hard in a direction and is creating more enemies than he already had. He probably had the most enemies in the world other than Donald Trump. And he's making, he's like minting tens a day right now, right? Hundreds a day.

And so this feels very short-term focused because I don't, I wouldn't be shocked if J.D. Vance won the next presidential election, but he might not. And then in five years, there's going to be, you know, if, say, he loses the election to some Democrat and the what is the reaction going to be against all of the interests that we're that Elon is trying to push right now if that's if that's the thing I just I feel like it's it's creating a harder reaction against that stuff down the line when they actually are going to encounter those issues all of those issues like you said are longer term. He's selling the he's selling the future for the present right so like he's like he's going to have hypervelocity for the next four years

and then it's going to hit a wall when then the next Democrat gets elected, right? And it's going to be, and it's just going to be, it's going to be awful, right? Yeah. Yeah, it's not going to, if you're following space news,

man, the next Democratic administration is going to be just like a whole lot around of, ugh, just the worst rhetoric and back and forth and bickering and it's going to be not fun. So, yeah. That's my disappointment is that I think a good long-term thinkers

in our in our current culture are following paths towards short-term thinking in a way that's a bummer you know Bezos is funding a 10,000 year clock because he thinks that's a cool sign of like long-term thinking and he's got his whole vision for blue origin that is always leaning in the long-term thinking direction and the more partisan people get either direction the more short-term focus they get I mean the entire presidential campaign on both sides was like we're going to tax nobody and spend so much money. It was like pretty much most of the campaign rhetoric from like both sides. I'm like, I'm pretty sure we probably should do the opposite of both of those. Like we should probably try to, you know, sort this out. But that's, that's

electoral politics, right? And we always talk about it as like, that's what you send people to Congress for us. Like, guess shit for your area of the country? That's the point of the system. So I think, you know, when we had Casey Hammer on, he was talking about the incentives of systems. There are, there's no, there's no real incentive for, you know, certain government agencies to like do more with less because then you that's how you just get squeezed out of the budget conversations NASA needs to say I always talked about that's the human landers we talk about the commercial space industry should make lunar landings cheaper than the last time we did Apollo but then you get budget circulated and everyone criticizes it for not being as big as the

Apollo budget I'm like I thought that was the fucking point I thought we could do it with not $50 billion or $100 billion right we could do it with five or 10 so if that's our criticism that's because the evolutionary pressure is that these programs should cost more and more because that's how you accrue power in that system. Spend it and lose it. Yeah. And then if you lose it, then you're like, well, shit, I can't afford the lunar landers anymore that I said we're so cheap now.

So I don't know how to fix that aspect. I don't know if turning it off and turning it back on is the right way to go about it. It's like, I'm calling this the forest fire approach, right? Just like burn a forest down and hope there's some good new growth. I just don't know that you're, there's some quote about when you start movements. You're either building up, you know, believers around you or you're rooting out heretics. And I don't know that that approach helps you in five or ten years when you're actively doing more of these long lead space projects. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I don't know. I don't know what's going to happen, man. It feels like, I mean, if you think about this new Trump administration as a pushback, like, you know, and it really is. It's like very much like a, it's the counterculture of politics, like now becoming the culture, right? And yeah, that's how countercultures usually go. And so like, but it still, it feels to me like, I don't know, a lot of people are telling the thing. It's like this feels like the word, like we are now at the climax of bad. Like, you know, I hear that kind of like mentality a lot. And I'm like, this is the lead up. Like there's going to be a lot more conflict, I think,

coming up. I think this is just sort of the, this is an indicator that the movement has velocity and momentum and that it's going to lead now to the mother of all conflicts of whatever it's going to be, you know, whether it's like, like you said, a debt, a debt ceiling catastrophe or like, you know, some sort of like constitutional crisis. There's, there's all sorts of like pretty weird outcomes that could come up from this. And so like, I don't know, I, the business of predicting the future feels very, very hard, harder than it even normally does. now. So I'm worried to make a lot of predictions, but there's a lot of stuff going on. I'll say that much. Yeah, we're also in a weird era where, or like moment where the executive branch has had

time to do a bunch of stuff, but the legislative branch has not had any time to do stuff yet because their schedule isn't built that way. Yeah, the first part of the administration is just always chaos. Like, it's just because, yeah, executive power would criticize the creeping power of the president as a very bad thing. So I'm sitting in this office that I'm sitting in right now, say like that is why we have Congress and they should be like actually authorizing things and doing stuff but that's what we don't know what the reaction's going to be Ted Cruz is trying to get this NASA reauthorization bill Eric mentioned it on my show on Monday and Wednesday the news came that like Ted Cruz like we're going to send that authorization bill back through

some read as assigned to like protect SLS or whatever so I don't know there's there's Trump's a lame duck president so there is a flurry of that will occur while they have both houses and the presidency. That's not going to last longer than the typical, you know, first year of the administration, and then they're going to be election season again, and things will shift. Yeah, yeah. There's also been moments when Republicans in Congress were like, no, I'm not going to go for that person.

So you should probably swap out the attorney general or there's been moments where, or even like the original, the government shutdown thing that happened even before Trump took office. There was more pushback on the thing that Trump and Elon clearly wanted than there had been previously. So I wouldn't count out like even a Republican pushback on certain things, right? Because they're fighting every battle in the world right now. They can't win all every battle. So is space, you could go one of two ways. Space is under the radar so they'll win those battles easily or it's under the radar so they won't care about it.

And the old way of doing space will win those battles. Yeah, yeah. Haven't we already seen some like some no votes on the Republican side? for confirmation. Like, didn't Mitch McConnell, like, not do, uh, was it RFK? He's unchanged. Yeah. Mitch McConnell unchanged.

Oh, God. Um, yeah, and I think you're right. So like, you know, executive power moves fast. And so you're seeing it, you're seeing it add velocity right now. It's the early administration. Congress is, I don't know, that seems like the smart thing to do to just like step back. Don't pick aside. Let, let, let the executive branch do the executive branch thing, see where the,

you know, see where the wind blows. And then you catch up and you go in and choose your battles and go in and fight. Right. So I think, yeah, we're going to see the, what Congress thinks about all this actually and not what they said in a soundbite. So, yeah, it's going to be interesting to see what, what shakes up. There's also nobody, an interesting aspect, I think we should track from the space angle, right? There's, there's, I haven't heard anyone that's like, this whole Trump and Elon friendship is

in the last, the whole administration. Like, I don't even think they think that. Like, oh, this will burn out at some point. But notably, I think it's, if you look at the equation there, right, Elon is very much somebody who likes to take attention and a credit for a lot of things that are happening movement-wise, right? He's standing in the Oval Office with his son giving this address. He visibly likes to be the figurehead for a lot of the stuff, even if there's other people

do. I mean, we see this with the space world, too, right? Like, he likes to be the guy up on stage doing that thing, which is, politically advantageous for the Trump administration because whenever if and when it goes south in the relationship needs to break up and Elon is ousted, they can just say, oh, that was his. He was running that whole thing. That was his. All credit and fault goes to Elon.

And with him goes all of that, right? So he can be the easy scapegoat for all of those things, which then puts him in a situation where he could have like more enemies than friends across the board. it's not just 50-50. It would be like pretty strongly against it. I mean, we saw that with Pence and Bridenstein the last time. It was reported that Bridenstein was not going to come back for Trump too, right, if he would have win in 2020. So that can go south on you quickly, too, because partisan politics are a rough game like that.

And that's the part that is, I always thought Elon was an interesting character because he could cross-pollinate ideas in a way that was like not noticeable between political ideologies, right? He had, he had, like, grown up out of the Obama era Democrats, but he had these, like, entrepreneurial and, you know, business-minded ethics. But he was working on typical at that era Democrat priorities of, like, climate change and renewable energy and things that cross-pollinated in weird ways. And he could drift back and forth and be in both rooms. And I thought that was an interesting. And we're totally beyond that era now. So, I don't know where that way. Yeah, I know it's interesting.

And I think you're right. Like there, you know, if, if this relationship does sour and I could see it happening, you know, I could almost see it happening in relation to this sort of, you know, the 100 day period of a new administration where you get the most done, right? And it's like, because like, I don't know, does, even if the relationship does, does sour, like to someone like Elon Musk who has like, he was accustomed to sort of that authoritarian CEO power, is that someone who wants to operate in the world where Congress is fighting him on every single thing and he has to convince every senator, every representative to, like,

that just doesn't seem like his, I don't know, like, does he want that or does he want to just go to the boardroom and be like, this is my decision now execute, right? Like, that's what he's that's the lever he pulls and that lever does not work with Congress. It just straight up does not work. And so I can see him like, you know, maybe one of the reason they're moving so fast right now is Elon's like, I have like a hundred days before Congress fights back. I'm going to go break down every stupid thing that I don't like and get rid of it and clean a clean house. And then the pushback will come. I'll step, step away. Doge will be a single, you know, single purpose, one time temporary thing that does some lasting change. Then I go back to run of my

companies in this brand new, amazing environment that I set up, right? That's, I can see that. I can see that happening, right? There's also the other branch of theories that I had that he bought Twitter because Starship was moving slow and he got bored. And if Starship was moving faster in that era, maybe he wouldn't have bought Twitter. There we go. It's the FAA's fault. Yeah.

No, I think it was the fault of Starship not moving fast enough and leaving wrenches and propellant lines in Bocchika or whatever they were doing. Gatorade bottles or over that river was something. Yeah, there's some nonsense happening there. Oh, yeah. I don't know. Weird times, but I don't know. I think if K-Wa gets canceled, I'm happy.

That's where I'm at. Yeah. Oh, we should talk about Dragon XL, Jake. Nothing? You got nothing. I have nothing. What are they making more promises? Something, something, oh, it's going to be based on this.

You didn't see this. This is another one? I thought, I know there was some story about. No, no. They announced that the architecture has changed significant. accidentally. Yeah. Dragon X-L.

Yeah. To be based more on Dragon, wasn't it? I don't know if they said specifically what it was. If it had like crossover with the U.S. D.Obit vehicle was the assumption,

but. Right, right, right, right, yeah. You don't think this is, uh, just. It's confirming my theory,

yeah. Yeah, just trying to give you some props here on the whole. This is no news. No news to you. So good. Oh, yeah. So good.

Man. Oh, that's funny. Well, there you have it, folks. There we go. We stepped into the political arena. At the request of some of our fans, at the request of some of our fans, the demand is to talk about this. Yeah.

Yeah. I'll talk about it, too. It's just not that productive usually. Not usually, no. Not interesting. There's plenty of places to go for that. The signal versus noise problem right now is such a big problem, right? I guess it's like a hundred headlines come out and one of them has an interesting

information in it. So it's like, yeah, it feels it feels busier than it is probably, but also not. It's weird. It's a weird time. I just get annoyed at some of the some of the framing of everything, right? From like a completely middle ground perspective of like, how could Elon must have the power to do any of this? I'm like, I don't know, probably the same way that any of it happened in the first place.

I don't know. like did we all take votes on some of these things existing? No, probably could get canceled the same way they were written into power. Just as show everyone in your shirt. Show everyone in a shirt. This is a fun game. We're going to play it in four years where we undo all the previous executive orders with new executive orders. Yeah.

Who voted for the Artemis program? Nobody had to happen. Now it's canceled. Okay. Like that wasn't a whole thing, you know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Next week, Jake.

We have homework for next week, Jake. Yeah. We're doing a book show. We got this Space to Grow book from Matthew 1-Zerl and Brendan. Brendan Rousseau. Rousseau? Pronounce it. Rosser.

Rosto? Rosto. Rosto. We were talking on the pre-show about words that have remained French in our English language, like a rendezvous, and why we didn't choose a different word for orbital meetups. Yeah, I don't know. This is going to be cool. They got a whole book coming out on like more economic side of space.

So maybe not entirely unrelated to some of the stuff we're talking about today. Cool. So and then it's the Casey Dreyer show to accurately promote. Casey Dryder. We swear he's coming. We swear. We promise. Yeah.

We'll talk more about executive action. Boy, will. Who knows what we'll be talking about by then. Do you want me to play on a patriotic note, do you want me to play the 76er song on the way out of the show, Jake? I think we should, I think we should play it. Would you enjoy that? Okay. We'll play it.

It's so loud. It's super loud. All right, y'all. This is the best song in the world. Go birds. Go birds. We got nothing else, right? Is that it?

That's it. That's it. Bye. Tweet us. Thanks, everybody.