Off-Nominal - 187 - Amazon Basics Lunar Lander

Episode Date: March 7, 2025

Jake and Anthony talk about the Moon lander mania this week has been—Firefly’s Blue Ghost 1 and Intuitive Machines’ IM-2 missions.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 187 - Amazon Basics Lunar Lander - YouTubeBlue Ghost Mission 1 - Firefly AerospaceAstroForge | Earning the Learnings: The Launch of OdinNASA still working to restore contact with Lunar Trailblazer - SpaceNewsIM-2 lunar lander on its side after touchdown - SpaceNewsVirgin Galactic to start assembly of first new spaceplane in March - 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

DLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, Jacob. Nope, James, Jake, Jack, John, Jill. I'm running on J names. Jeremiah. Yeah, could have gone with Jimmy. Or my Mexican name, Jaime. Hmm, good one.

Very good one. The name that I use when I want the locals to be able to say it out loud. what's up buddy it's a crazy week yo it's all moon all the time right now just just look at you you got that shirt go birds go birds listen man that's an eagles fan hardware

that went on the surface today so oh yeah this is I thought this was like but isn't intuitive machines in astrobotic that's like the Pennsylvania Texas rivalry this is yeah but Steve Ultimus Steve Ultimus is

an Eagles fan. Let me just list a couple of facts for you. Jared Isaacman, Eagles fan. Christina Cook, Eagles fan. Steve Altimus, Eagles fan. Are you getting it yet? Are you getting it? Are you understanding what I'm saying? Anyway. What is the Texas football team? Texas

Texas. Please tell me. You tell me. The Texas Revolvers. I don't know. The Dallas Cowboys. Okay, I know that one.

Yeah, yeah. And the Houston Texans. It's a real team. That's the name. You made that up. That's the name. That's the name. Yeah.

Isn't the Longhorns one? Coming from the land of the Philadelphia Phillies. Houston, Texas is the name. That's also pretty bad. Yeah. The Illinois Aligni. Aligni? Mm-hmm.

It's college, but... What is a... The Illinois, Aligni. I believe it isn't that the... What's the word, the denim... Denominum? The demonym? Demonym.

Demonym of a person from Illinois, right? An Illinois person is an... An Alinae. Aligni? I'm pretty sure. Does anyone want to fact check me in the chat, or no? Illinois Illinois

That can't be That's not a real No You can't So far this episode You've mostly just made stuff up So Illinois fighting Alignai

Illinois Look at that Yeah No I don't like that Let's click on Let's click on Okay Fine

How you doing Jake We do a space podcast There's two moonlanders this week A lost lunar satellite What was the other thing that happened that was large news that we need to talk about. Astroforge? Astroforge.

There was an asteroid mining mission. Kind of a moon mission. It's like moon adjacent, you know? Moon adjacent. Yeah. We have a lot to talk about. What do you drink? It was cis lunar.

Why is that funny? I don't know. I don't understand why that's funny. I was like moon adjacent. I was looking for a synonym. But it was less funny because that's just, legitimately that's what the word is. I thought you were just like waiting

into the culture wars or something. I just did the comedian version of Silicon Valley reinventing a bus is what I just did. Yep. It's like an Uber, but more people ride it. Yeah. Yeah, Ben, it was busy.

I couldn't even keep up with it at all, honestly. I was like, I still have stuff. I still have stuff to like watch and read on to fully understand. Maybe we can do some of that today. Maybe we can watch some things from these missions. I watched the, well, do you have a drink? Should we do that?

I do. Should we do some segments for this show? Yeah. Is there a sports talk throwing you off or something? We're out of sorts right now. We had a guess. So, you know, we said last week that Dante Loretta was going to be on. He had to reschedule.

There's some stuff we're just working through. So it happens when you get big deals on the show. That's the risk. The risk of scheduling a big deal is that they reschedule sometimes. The benefit. is the big deals. So the strange, the strange alignment of facts is that interesting people and busy people,

it's that band diagrams like a circle. And unfortunately, we do not have an actual TV show. So people are like, I could reschedule this. And we're like, you can, but we're still doing it. So. Yeah. So it's why wine time here, Jake.

The clocks are going forward this weekend. It's, it's been 50 something out. We've got the white wine cooking. A little solving on bunk. The worst for me now. I hate it. Sorry.

Yeah. What would you make? You made another one of the crazy fireball. Fruty drinks. Pretty drinks. Not a fireball. This is no spice in this one. I mean, it looks like a fireball.

It's just fruit juices and grenadine and orange liqueur and this little friend of the diary here. Look at this little monkey. Yeah. We're going to have breaking news on the show, I bet, because they're about to do an Intuitive Machines. I am too press conference. Because NASA bailed on it. Yeah, quick, too.

All of a sudden they were like, we're out of here, by the way. That's exactly what happened last time. Do you remember that? Yeah. It had, like, landed and no one knew it was going on. It's almost the same flow. Like, Tim Crane said something. Like, well, we think we have something down there.

And then. Yeah. And both times very abrupt. Like it's like, so we're just waiting to hear about, you know what? Actually, things are great.

Thanks for watching today. We're going to wrap this up. We'll let you know there's a press conference later by. NASA logo. Like, it was just over. Just like, done.

Yeah, the only thing that they've said is that we don't believe we're on the, in the correct attitude. So I am too tipped over also is what we're, Yeah. All right. So we've had a hell of a moon landing week. Did you see the meme with the tipover thing already?

Was in our Discord? I did. Yes. No way this could have happened says only company where it keeps happening. I won the onion ripple. Just kill it. If the off nominee, we should have a meme award for the off nominees and just show the best base meme. We should do that.

That's something to think about. Here. I've got it. I've got it right here. No way to prevent this. There's only company where this regularly happens. Very good. Very good meme.

Let's talk about Firefly first, though. So Blue Ghost, Blue Ghost 1, Jake. I don't know where your vibes were going in to Blue Ghost 1, but holy shit. They nailed it. Nailed it. And the video was one of the best space videos in a long time. Like, hands down.

in the in the ranking of like cool footage man they killed it just absolutely nailed it I should have wore my firefly shirt today that's what I should have wore not this we should have yeah yes we should have the firefly puck shirt we got great I mean great imagery this entire mission they had the awesome lunar orbit video like pretty early on um when they were landing and where they were learning landing made for these epic views of their Earth in the background, which was awesome. So best moonlander by a lot of the clips program, which is absolutely shocking to me. And this is my...

If you scroll back like two years when we were like, well, we know that astrobotic and intuitive machines are like flight one and two. So like it's a race to see who's going to get the first like picture perfect landing. I don't think anyone would have said if it's going to be firefly. I came to this show specifically today, Jake, to offer an absolutely enormous apology to the Firefly team because I had, when they've announced they were going to do Blue Ghost, I wrote them off immediately. Like, they're not really doing that, are they? Because they're, Firefly Alpha is sort of works. Like, it works every other time and it flies very little. They've announced now another mission. But like, it's months between those launches, even though they market them as responsive. They have this program with Northrop Grumman to basically build Antares 2. So when they announced we're doing all these other vehicles amidst all of the drama of

Poliakov being ousted and Marcusek being there and then not and then a private equity firm, I've heard that turnover is astronomically high at Firefly, which remains true. So that's a problem for them, I think, long term. But I wrote them out so far. And I was like, there's no way this is a legitimate program. and I am happily, happily wrong. Sometimes a scrappy little team nested inside of a big mess can do good work, right? All it took was Michael Sheets.

That's the... Look at this. It's super curbel space program, hey, with the shadow? That's how I always land, so I know where, how I am. Yeah, where's my shadow? Do, do, do, do, do, do. Yeah. No, just awesome.

just what a video. Yeah, but they, there's like not a lot to say. They were just crushed it. And I'm completely amazed that they did. This will help their hiring and turnover, if that's for sure. I don't know. I'm not sure that's true.

That's the thing, right? Like, nonetheless, they are doing the thing. That's the kind of amazing part to me. Yeah. Also, this is the last, well, I have to check the task orders if I say it's the last. But this, in my memory, this task order for Blue Ghost 1 was the last Clips task order that felt clearly too low to me. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

After this, right, the task order amounts have climbed and climbed and climbed. Yeah. They feel realistic now, I think. What's the most recent one is I Am 3 was awarded, right? Yeah, when, I mean, the later Blue Ghost missions have been like 170-ish, I think, 170 million. Um, let's see what Iron 3 was. No more of the 77 million nonsense. Like,

please take us to the moon. This money won't even buy your launch. Right, which is part of the criticism of the program, right? Like we've heard, I think we've both heard from different people saying that the Clips program should be buying. They're like,

it's no surprise what vehicle they're going to buy. They're going to buy Falcon 9. So the Clips program should buy Falcon 9s and then manifest landers on them. Which. Well, unless, Unless that you're actually can get away with the ideal, which is like the, you know, the company buys the launch and they fill it up. And like they're making way more than 77 million on the on the flight, right?

That's the ideal goal is that NASA's like, we're not even, we're barely even an anchor tenant on this flight. We're just buying space, right? And IM2 did that, right? In two machines did that with IM2, where they were the ones that got the other payloads on board. So, Hakuto, right? Hokuto R. Is that the lander? what is this? The Ice Space one? Yeah.

Odin and then the epic camera thing, whatever that chimera thing is. All those other payloads were contracted by Intuitive machines on the launch. So that's my thing, right? I think I get the criticism that, yes, everyone's just buying a Falcon 9, but I do think, I think there's an intentionality behind the clips program that's like, you be creative. We are less creative than you being NASA. We're like stodgy. All we can think of is buying a Falcon.

canine and trying to manifest it appropriately, but like you go be creative and figure out how to get to the moon. We're okay with however that comes out. So I think in the long run, that's the right approach, whether or not it's the first couple missions, maybe there's better reason to say, like, you've got enough on your plate, we'll figure out the launch, and then you can figure out the other part. But either way, like now I feel like they're climbing. Task orders have settled into a realistic level.

I don't really know what goes on behind the scenes, though. Like, have they received obvious lowball offers? And they, they are counted out from realism? Is that kind of thing published in the source selection statements? I don't think they even, they only announce what they award, right? So, yeah. They don't get to hear the bids from the other ones, right? Yeah, I don't know.

That's a good question. That's a good question. But either way, it feels like we're through that part now of like the, yeah. I bet Firefly lost money on this one, right? Probably, yeah. First one, guaranteed, right? Right. That's a sure thing.

Yeah. I was going to say, you know what's really interesting if we'd take a step back and I'm going to vamp on this ride share idea? Like, ride sharing in general has been like a pretty growth segment in space. Like, you know, 10 years ago, ride shares were weird and unusual. like what was like, Aryan 5 did them. And I was like, wow, what a differentiator. They put two satellites on instead of one, right?

Like, it was like, what, that's why they've dominated everything. Anyway, and I feel like a space plate came along and then SpaceX started doing it. And all this kind of like, now it's like ride shares are like almost ubiquitous now. It feels like that's just like how you get to space now. Because there are all these little things and you just claw them all together on a rocket. It's an interesting indicator. I think to me it says that launch is still way too expensive. I think it tells us that the work that these private companies have been doing in the launch industry of driving down cost is the right thing to do.

But like in the grand scheme of things, they're not close yet. We have not solved that. There's no checkmark next to that task list, you know, in progress, for sure. Yeah, I made it cheaper, but it didn't make it cheaper in a way that also revolutionized the things that are possible in the industry, right? It was an iterative change, not a, you know, it was a talk, not a tick, whatever, whichever one is the, I never know which one is which, but it was an Illini. Yeah.

Yeah. It's the fact that the same the same businesses are run or the same missions are flown. They are done so on less capital, but it's not, it's still the same kinds of organizations and missions happening. So it didn't change the paradigm of the industry. It just made things a little more efficient, which is great. It's not, we're not shitting on that concept. Like, that's an awesome thing that we can spend $50 million, not $150 to do it. like every hundred million dollars is good to not spend on that way but yeah it didn't it's not

it's not the zero off the price that we we're hoping or and and i don't think we've been pretty clear all along that like that's not going to happen until the second competitor is also putting pressure on SpaceX to do yeah to actually continue to drive down their price right we didn't necessarily expect the second competitor to be starship our own thing um yeah Yeah, yeah. No, yeah, it's really interesting. It's like, I don't know, it's, to me, like, it puts into perspective how big of a problem that really is, right?

And like, maybe even did drop a zero off of it, you know? I mean, if you go pre-Falcan days and look at, you know, if you do like an average price between like the low end, like, you know, take an Atlas 401 up to space shuttle, you know, like that's a pretty big range of cost, right? So maybe it did you go off. 50, sure. Maybe they did take a zero off of it, but they kind of need to take two off, right? And then if we, if we think about like transportation broadly and other other segments, like there, for it to be considered cheap, there eventually has to be a cheap enough option that people

will have private transportation, right? For either for their stuff or for themselves. And like, ride share, definitely not that. Like, we are, we are approaching the, the, the, the, the, the bus part of we've got it down to there are buses now the other aspect too is that the like when Matt do we remember how to say his last name Jalich Gaelic close Gaelic that's not Gaelic that's the language yeah Matt Gaelic when he's on the show they talked about the fact that I wanted to have him on Miko before they launched to ask him this specifically now I'm to wait until he's a little bit out of the launch and operation territory. But he made it sound like the existence of the clips program is the largest by which Astroforge exists at the

price point it does, right? Because there's these things that happen. I mean, right now it's yearly. There's like a clip season in January and February. It's like what we're in. Apparently, you know? I don't know if that was intended, but that's what's happening. Yeah, it's the last two years. So now I'm expecting every January to there to be a moon layer. but he's got these campaigns that are on the schedule that every couple of you know every ones to tens of months there's a thing that happens and they can slot in as a pretty cheap payload on an Esperang and then fly their mission it's like if that goes away right whether by way of the clips program being canceled or if the payload space on those missions gets canceled like what

does he do you know is there is there also is is riding along with a geo satellite also is that enough for them, right? Is a couple hundred meters a second less than a lunar transfer? But is that enough? Depends on which way you point, I guess, right? Where does your GTO? Which direction does your GTO point out to, right?

Yeah. But is there a, I'm just so curious if they've, if they've hitched their wagon to the eclipse program and its existence. And if that changes, does the economics of a beyond Earth orbit launch company, or Beyond Earth Orbit Operations Company, does that change entirely, and it completely invalidates the existence?

I like the theory because we got, you know, the ISS commercial cargo and crew program. The side effect was really amazing commercial launch from SpaceX. Yeah. And I like to think that the clips program also has an unintended side effect of astroved mining.

I enjoy that storyline, but is that, how fragile is that? I imagine that someone like Matt is desperately keeping an eye out for when intuitive machines just does a mission without NASA. That is going to be a big indicator, right? We're just like, we got the thing.

We can buy the launch on the market. Let's go. Like, why are we waiting for a clip? He's calling me right now. His answer is, well, just fucking figure it out. That's his answer, I think. Whatever. No big, we'll figure it out.

That guy, that guy. How'd you like their very, very, we're now traipsing our way through the lunar campaign. We'll get to the IM2 landing eventually. But the things that went along with it, let's talk about Astroforge Oden first. How'd you like, we're going to live stream the mission entirely? I thought it was awesome.

It was amazing. Incredible. Yeah. Anyone who's listening who does anything in this space, please just use this as a model. Just share because you generate so much hype. This is your free, consultation from the fledgling off nominal marketing consulting firm.

This is how you get goodwill, which gets you talent and attention and funding. It's great. Love it. A plus. And they also did this, they just put another one up. It looks like on March 6th. But this is the one that Matt did on March 1st, where they talked through, here's everything that happened with the mission, including like ground systems that we had issues with.

software issues that we had and very open as to like so open that I'm like most of the shit just glazes right over my head but yeah I enjoyed the the read through to understand like some of the stuff that came up during the flow of the mission it was cool to read yeah and I this isn't just for fun either like I think I would be really curious I want to talk I want to have them back to talk about this because like I'd be really curious to know what the side effects of a post like this is, you know. So he documents all this stuff and publishes it. How many people out there who know a little bit about this read that and called them and said, hey, I read this, this, this, this. I thought about this. Did you try this thing? And, you know,

like, how much like unsolicited feedback did you get? I guess in this case, it was solicited if you publish it. But, you know, like unexpected feedback do you get that like feeds into that, right? And how many people read that and go, these are cool problems that I would like to work on and apply for a job. How many people read that and go, oh, actually, they're way ahead than where I thought they were or whatever. Like, you know, there's just like so many like good, you get so many aura points from doing that. Yeah. And some, you don't always know what the aura points are good for, but one day you get to cash a check. Yeah, man.

That's a huge... So, there's... We have actually two examples in the last year of, like, the openness of a mission and going good or bad. Right. We'll see how this one shakes out. I think generally it's great because it shows that you're not afraid of... Like, if you're honest and you put it all out there,

that will never catch up to you. But if you hide shit, that will always catch up to you. Always, yeah. The only risk that you have is the rest of the industry or an organization that's in charge of your mission getting ahead of where you are, which is what we saw with Peregrine. They were so open on the issues they were having that, I think I've mentioned it before on the show, so I'll just mention again, that NASA got ahead of them on the story as to

like this lander being in a bad shape, so it needs to go back into Earth, rather than what actually happened in the team, which was, we actually got a handle of this and we can do more than would have been allowed otherwise. Like, if you do keep some shit internally,

you can... That's not a, that's not a consequence of, like, inherent consequence of the virtue of transparency. That is an inherent negative of government contracting to me. Like that,

none of that would have happened if it wasn't NASA, right? Like that, if it was just some other big customer, I've been like, yeah, it's fine. Because they were already, that's the one where they were already touchy about the, the American bullet, the bullet, burial rights thing, right? Yeah. So, like, it was, it was a PR, it was sensitive PR already. And then.

That was my whole theory all along, was that this was a really good opportunity to shut the whole thing down, that they didn't feel like dealing. with at that time. Yeah. But it is an interesting case to figure out. Because you remember, Astrobotic had 20 blog posts out before. Yeah, they were great about it too. You know?

Yeah, they were just posting nonstop. So it's the case of like what would have happened if they didn't do that is, is interesting. But I still, I'm always going to bias towards like post it, post the thing, be open about it. Because like everything catches up to you, right? Like we know a Kwajjo 1A blew up at Jukon's side of the on center. last week. And China has nothing about it. But like, something blew up. People know that. So, like, what are you hiding is way worse? Like, what are you gaining from that? It's in the mid-1950s or

whatever, then sure, like, there was secrecy. There is no secrecy anymore. If you're at war, sure. Maybe, but even then, like, we watched on commercial satellites the entire Russian army march into Ukraine, and we all knew it was happening the whole time. And half of us believed the satellite imagery that it was going to lead to war and a half of us didn't and it did. Yeah. There is no secrecy. Yeah.

So being shady about it is going to be worse in the long run. It will come out that will catch up to you. Telling the truth might make you friends lying never does, right? Like it's just, it's, well, there's, I mean, there's a hundred. It's a sports and a parenting podcast now.

There's a hundred idioms. can say about this. Tell the truth if only it's the easiest thing to remember. Yeah, yeah, yeah. My policy is with my children is if you tell me the truth, I won't be mad at it. Like, as

long as you're telling me the truth, I will turn off my instinct to get mad about a thing and we'll just figure it out. And I feel like that with space missions that's true too. Like, tell me the truth. Did your thrust or die? We'll figure it out. But if you're like, well, you know, we're we're still on orbit commissioning our spacecraft.

It's like that that shit's dead, isn't it? That's a dead spacecraft, right? Because if it is, we'll figure it out. Yeah, it's funny. There's obviously like a funding problem too with like these smaller startups and everything, right, where they're trying to like, they don't want to, if you admit defeat, then you could, you know, lose out on a funding round. But I almost wonder if that's like, that's bullshit, you know?

So we were talking in the pre-show for our Discord members, $5 a month if you want to join that. Who never fly ride share. Who never fly ride share. We were talking about how like we sometimes we say some things. We have takes on these shows, especially recently about a certain spaceflight figure slash political figure. Sometimes we get emails and people are upset about the things we say about it. But we always try to have like reasonable takes, right? We always try to come from a place that isn't like emotionally driven.

And the people they, you got emails that were mad at you for being too nice to Elon and mad at you for being too mean to Elon. Both those emails happen. So like one of, at least one of those emails is wrong about what you did. So. And those people are whatever. They're not listening to us anymore. Okay. So we were having this discussion about how if we just.

do our thing and be our authentic selves and try our best, we will cultivate the actual listener base that we want. And I think that's probably true with investors too. Yeah, you smoke them out by your actions. Smoke them out. And like, here's the thing. Okay, so I know that there's a lot of like shenanigans in like the VC culture funding. I'm not going to like concede that that's like a completely logic driven place.

But hands down, if someone approaches your startup, you know, like if I approach Astroforge and I want to invest a significant amount of money in them and I asked them, what was the real story about that spacecraft? And they just lie to me. I'm not going to fund it. Like, I mean, like, I'm going to smoke that out too as an investor. So like I, the people who are going to give money to you are going to find the truth one way or another. And so like, I don't know, maybe I'll just say it. Just do it. I'd love to take that and apply it over to the relativity of it all, of like, what happened with Terran 1.

Yeah. That's certainly, right? Yeah, I mean, it's a, I mean, I have serious questions about Virgin Galactic. Always have, right? Like, there's... Hey, they're starting up production of Delta. Did you read that? Two years before they, uh, I wrote down something from the recent, uh, the,

nonsense. It's like a tangent. I saw that headline. I was like, they're starting? Yeah, where was, I got to find this thing.

Because it was like mid-20206 when they would have, is that when the next Delta class would be ready? Something like that, yeah. They were even still touting that line. Like the Colglazer was like, oh, he said in the article,

yeah, in this article, there's like a quote. I don't know if you can find it, but he's basically just like, well, this is our second space spacecraft. So actually it's going to go super smooth because we already know how to do it. Like, yeah. The test flights of Delta will be much more like regression testing where we're incrementally expanding how Delta flies, but doing so by comparing it to how we knew unity flew. Yeah. No, mine, this part, this is the net part I was saying. Tell me you've been in a meeting and heard someone say regression test and now you just say it we don't actually know what it means.

Your CTO is like, we got to do some regression tests. He goes, yeah, yeah, regression test. I'm going to say that, but it's base news. The test flights would begin in the spring of 2026, what's that, a year from now, one year from now, commercial flights with research payloads in the middle of 26. So then he said, once research flights begin, so that by the middle of 2026, we have six to 10 flights carrying research payloads, including employees, before we get to private astronaut flights. And by then, we're going to accelerate to two per week. Okay, so let's apply

spaceflight schedule thinking to this. Okay. They are going to finish this in spring of 26. When are they going to finish the spacecraft, Jake? So they say spring of 26. From one year out. They say, they say one year spacecraft is done. No way it happens in 2026 at all. Yeah. Two years from now. spacecraft is done. Then they say commercial flights starting with research payloads in the middle of 26.

So how many flights are they between completion and beginning of research flights? One? One flight? Probably one flight, right? And then a couple of research flights? Just one regression flight.

One regression test? Single one. Okay, then six to ten flights carrying research payloads, did they expect that to just take place within the year? Yeah, like over the summer, you know. And then we're going to ramp up on January 1st of 2027 to 2 per week. Like, this is completely bonkers thinking. Yeah, it's wild.

I don't understand. I literally don't understand, right? They clearly need more money to do any of this because maybe their current runway takes them research payloads including employees. I don't know how big is going to show up on screen, but I love that, yes. They are just test subjects. They're the regression we're testing. They're the test cases.

I thought we were past hockey stick launch rate curve. Thought we were past that, Jake. I mean, they never, ever got out of it because their revenue has been like this. Yeah. So every year, the graph. just moves to the to the wreck. I saw that graph in, uh, in space to grow,

the book we talked about last time, right? I saw that graph in there. Yeah, let's apply to be, uh, test payloads, Jake. Oh. I would never. I have no financial stake in the game and so you can quote me however you want. I would never fly on the Virgin Galactic Eagles. I'm sorry for the people to listen to work on them.

I literally would never fly on them. I would not either. I would fly on New Shepherd tomorrow. If Jeff called me right now, I was like, would you want to go up with the girl's trip? Like, we got to get some jump out. You want to go next to Katie Perry. Number one, I'd obviously say yes. Number two, I would say yes tomorrow.

Yeah. And I would never go on a Virgin Galactic play. So. How about that diversion from a lunar focused show here, Jake? It was really a conversation about honesty, if we're being honest. Are we, did we burn enough time where I can reload Twitter and see what the update is on IM2? That's really what we were doing with this. We're playing chicken.

Chicken with the update here. Leaving it to the end so that we can talk about it. Well, their stock is down 20% today. Uh-oh. So. Still bizarre. No, there's no significant updates. They don't know where they landed or how they're aimed.

So that's good. Scott Manley says 15 minutes into this press conference and there's zero information we didn't already know. That's kind of at odds with the claims of success. So that's a great update. The word success in the clips program have a very tenuous relationship. So it's, you know, it's... Let's talk about that for a minute, though.

I mentioned this to Brian Stein was on Miko this week, and I mentioned this to him directly that, like, between... In these first four missions, without Firefly having gone so perfectly, this program could get away from themselves pretty quick, I think. Yeah. that's one of those times where maybe you're worried about the funders finding out that you're a failure let's keep up the honesty thing what if congress finds out that the program doesn't work shots on goal one and a half one and a half out of four is good even if if iM2 is also a half right

like this sounds worse than i am one if they were generating power but not enough was a quote that I saw was that they're not generating enough power to do the things that they need. That's what happened last time, right? Because they were pointed down. No, they were, but they did like most everything, didn't they? No, but they ran out of power, like, sooner than they wanted. Way sooner than they wanted to. I don't remember that. Yeah, that was, that was a year ago, Jake. I don't remember. It was hidden among all the, look how successful we are, the PR, so. Wow, a little spicy there.

Yikes. Just we're on the honesty kick, man. It was not honest. That's the only thing. There was plenty to be excited about on IM1. If I pulled a lunar lantern into lunar orbit at 1.3 kilometers above the regolith, I'm posting that shit. That's awesome.

That was fucking cool. And they did not say that. Yeah. I want to see the image blur from your downward facing camera as you clip over. The regular effect. Yeah. That's the thing. That's the one thing that no one imitates about SpaceX.

Everyone imitates everything about SpaceX. Black and white design language, the goddamn website, the trying to tweet and wear leather jackets like Elon Musk if you're Chris Kemp. Everybody imitates everything about SpaceX except realizing how freaking cool their failures are. Yeah. I don't get it. Yeah. I don't get it.

Call us. We will do a consulting session with you. Your company. Pulling in at 1.3 kilometers above the lunar surface is awesome. Why did you not say that? That's awesome. I don't know. I mean,

it's like Han Solo pulling into Star Killer Base, right? I'm going to jump out of hyperspace in the atmosphere. That was awesome. That was great, right? He didn't want to tell Laya, but it was awesome. I was going to say it's more like this is the older reference, but it's when they, when the, when Kirk took the bird of prey around. Did time travel by going close to

awesome, right? Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Maybe with clips, it's just because it is government funded. It's political thing, especially right now,

like where like everything is on. Yeah. Nothing's off the table for completely being destroyed. Maybe you want to be a little cautious. Yeah, you used to fly out of the radar. Now the radar level is a lot lower. Yeah.

And I don't know. This, we've had this discussion a lot, so we don't need to rehash it, but Intuitive Machines, publicly traded company, it does things to the way you talk out loud in public. Even when Tim Crane's on console, right? Like he, when he's, when he's announcing those things on console, he has to think, is this a forward-looking statement that it is going to, that I'm going to get SEC fined for. Yeah, literally. Yeah.

That's why I don't, I don't think that this kind of company is well-suited for, like, I think it would be okay for a lunar lander company to be publicly traded, but like you got to be like launching and landing like 10 of these a day for that to be like logistics, actual logistics level. We need to see like a statistically relevant sample of your success rate to be able to. Because right now it's like you're 0.5 for two and your stock price is like, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow, wow. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I don't want to, I'm not giving stock tips out.

I only give Kalshi tips out, but buying this dip. and selling right before the next IM3 lands is a great stock tip. You may make like $3, but if you want to make $3, you probably would. It's 20% down today. It will climb and climb and climb

and climb as they go for the next IM3 landing and then sell it right before the landing happens because it will crash precipitously, whether or not they're successful. If it fails, it drops a bunch. If it's success, it drops a bunch because people sell. Yeah.

So. Yeah. Yeah. You got it. Mm-hmm. Should we dunk on NASA missions as well and talk about Lunar Trailblazer or what? I don't know if I followed this one enough to know.

You seemed like you might know more as a JPL mission that seems to be your territory. I mean, I don't know, I don't know much about the, like the specifics on this one about, you know, why? Why did it not work? But I think there is, you know, Eric was already touching on this. Eric Berger has already got the scoop on this story. He's got the finger on the pulse of this one.

But like that Simplex program, man. Not not doing great. I was thinking about this and I'm trying to so simplex of course is like they're it's supposed to be the cheaper planetary missions right. So Escapade is a Simplex mission. We had like Luna H map. What are something else? There's a couple of. Janice. Yeah. There's been like six or seven of them right. And none of them have been, none of them have chalked up a success yet. So I've been thinking about this. And, I'm just like wondering for all the like good intentions of NASA to try and like step out of their comfort zone and do cheaper, riskier, wonky stuff like that, like is this just not

their wheelhouse? Like should they just get out of this game? You know? Because obviously they like NASA has certain tools to manage risk. And in this style of project management, it just seems like all their. levers aren't working, you know? I just, I don't know, I wonder about that kind of thing. Here's the list.

Coupase. I don't even remember that one. Do you remember that one? No. Kepase. Luna HMap launched on Artemis 1 as one of the cubes sets. Was that a cube set one? Yeah, but it might have been Artemis 1's problem for being delayed by 48 years or whatever.

Sure. Janice is in storage. Lunar Trailblazer failed. Escapade, not yet launched, but it's coming up this spring. Janice and Escapade both. I just can't get a ride for their life, right? Yeah. But that's just funny. Like, even that, like, can't get a ride.

In the shining, the golden era of ride share, and we can't find a spot for these missions, right? Like, I just, I don't know. I'm wondering if this was a good, a good intentioned program Simplex, and maybe what NASA should have done is like more of Eclipse model, but for spacecraft, you know?

We got to figure out who can come talk to us about the Simplex disaster. Got to get Zubrukin back. That might be the one. Yeah. Fortunately, we found out he listened. So maybe he's listening to this right now. Let us know if you want to come back because it's a mystery. It's,

are you saying, though, it's a structure thing that, like. I just, I just thought, like, we saw this with faster, better, cheaper, too, right? If you want to roll the clock back, like 30 years. they tried like what if we did like a cheap mission to Mars every launch cycle like we're going we're just going we're just going we're just going so many missions and they did like a good start but then they couldn't manage the risk and then they had two like very public failures and just couldn't you know couldn't keep a hole on it and yeah I don't know they Fatsy Better Cheap was fine I guess but it's just

just like, is this not something a democratic government will ever be good at? Like, it is just inherently not in their skill set, you know? That's what I'm wondering. The other aspect that's funny to me is that the program was started in what? When was this? The first two were selected August 8th, 2015. So about as old as our podcasting empire. and there's been four missions.

Yeah. I feel like that's the failure. Well, I mean, it's part of it, I think, right? It's like, because if they were actually doing a cheap, riskier, iterative kind of program, they would have launched 15 other failures first and then gotten it right, right? Yeah. But they didn't, right? They just kind of, I think they're just trying to do a big program on a small program budget.

They're trying to have their cake and eat it to you, right? And it's not, you can't, you can't do it that way, right? You have to fully embrace that kind of culture. And I don't think that NASA can. I don't know. They have to, you have to find a really clever way to do it. Clips comes close, right? Because clips, like, they are, they are selling the risk somewhere else.

Like, it's not their risk. Like, they're very, like, hey, man, we're just. Their mission, though. Yeah, we're just here for the ride. You know, these companies, they were letting them do their thing. They're, like, doing company thing. We don't, we don't even know, like, we just kind of show up every once in a while and just see how they're doing, you know, we're buying a ride, not really thinking about it. We're totally cool. Like, no, whatever, man. So, like, if Intuitive Machines headquarters lights on fire tomorrow, like NASA's be like, man, no big deal. Wasn't our thing, right? Or if a company folds and gets bought by another, hypothetically. Hypothetically, yeah. So, I wonder, I feel like you could expand on a clips, though, because like how many of these Simplex missions, if those pay.

How many of those could have been like strapped onto clips missions? Probably a lot. Maybe not the spacecraft, but the payloads? The payloads themselves. Yeah. Like maybe NASA should just start buying space on their own clips missions. Like, oh yeah, well, I am three's going. There's more space on it.

I got some other stuff, some simplex payloads that could throw on there too. Let's buy those two. What the hell? Even Janus is weird. Like they're going to sell Viper, but store Janus. See if anyone that has a first launch of a. rocket wants to just try throwing Janus somewhere. Yeah, it's bizarre, man.

I don't get it. I don't understand. This might be the case that we often talk about, which was there was a post-commercial cargo era where, like, everybody wanted their thing to look like commercial cargo. Yeah. And it just doesn't track a lot of times. Even clips, I criticize constantly, right? That, like, they jumped right to the task order.

Well, that's your thing. But my thing. is more that they jumped right to the task order part and they don't do without doing the dev money yeah yeah and even honestly commercial cargo is like why aren't you doing task orders I don't understand why the

ISS program never switched to task orders we have four astronauts that would like to go to the space station issue a task order yeah I don't know like bid them out as they come it is everything's weird I think we've had the wrong program with the wrong thing we should have done the landers

like commercial cargo and now to do the second commercial cargo things like task orders. Following that like analogy, I think it's really easy to look back on commercial crew

and commercial cargo with rose-colored glasses and be like smashing success. But like it was turbulent. Like it did not go well at the first. There was bickering and fighting and underfunding and companies going out of business and like it took a while.

And when was when was the first you know, dev award? issued and when did like the first payload get delivered? When did Space X deliver a cargo? Let's see. Like it was five, eight, seven years, something like that?

Yeah, so that was It was like 2010 to 2015 kind of era. Was it the CCT cap thing, right? It was the first thing. C C, what was it? C C C C, no, that was the commercial crew one. What's the cargo one called? C C C did, no.

C. See. God, some C CETT something. Cots, probably, yeah, Cots, obviously,

Cots. Cots. Let's see. Commercial resupply services. NASA has been directed to pursue commercial spaceflight options

since at least 1984. Wikipedia takes it way back every time, Jake. It's not what we meant. Love it. That's my kind of context.

Commercial orbital transportation services launched in 2006, caught successfully concluded in 2013 after completing all demonstration flights. So there you have it. Back five more years, yeah, okay. So like, we need to not forget that that took a little bit of time

and that nobody agreed on it. It was very messy. And there was also like, there was two rounds of dev, right? There was like an initial one and then like a secondary dev and then like the actual awards for the flights, right? Have I got that right? I think you're mixing up cargo and crew a little bit, but there was COTS, which was commercial

orbital transportation services that was demonstration flights of could you launch cargo. There was one and two rounds of that, and then it flowed into the commercial resubly. Right. Then the crew side was like commercial crew dev, and then the initial capability contract, and then the task orders for the, or the block buys, basically. Yeah. Which one did Kisler win? That was like the original.

That was the OG COTS. Yeah. Yeah. So it's good to go back. Space X and Kistler were the first two. And then Kistler got swapped out and orbital sciences slotted in. Right. Right, right, right.

Yeah. So, I mean, so there is a level of patience that we had to have with that program to get it to where it was, right? And yeah. You wouldn't consider orbit beyond existing and then collapsing the clips part of that? Like, I feel like clips. was a little less patient, right? It was just like, we want this capability.

Go. Be that. And then they're like, okay, 10 companies showed up. They're like, good. Here's the flight. I'll do it for $5. Yeah, $70 million. Yeah.

Can you fly next to you? I'll pay you $40 million to do this. Yeah, there was not a lot of grace with that one. It was pretty tough. Yeah, it also felt like that era, I've already like kind of resists. designed the fact that I'll be the clips book guy. I've told Eric and Caleb this, both, who are like either written or are writing books.

Like, yeah, I think I'm going to be the clips book guy based on this note that I'm already compiling. Love it. I'll be very interested when we get to that part to figure out, were those first few years, you know, the big competitors, when they were looking at the race to the bottom mechanic of the first couple of task quarters,

were they looking at it as like, we can survive a task order this low, but the other people can't? So let's, Jeff Bezos this and like, you know, just crush them at this outset. Amazon Basics Lunarlander. Yeah. Yeah. That's incredibly good.

Yeah. That's weird, man. Well, I am too. I'm, you know, at least you're there, but you're probably on the side. I think so oddball theory that landed and then they said the engine was still running I feel like it may have taken off again and then tipped over might have yeah because at one point Tim crane called out we've got one G on the sensors I'm like you shouldn't have that it shouldn't be that shouldn't be the amount of

G that you have on the moon one one LG is that what he meant I don't know maybe maybe it was what he meant maybe he did mean one LG if you had exactly one Earth gravity like That's a pretty... It would be, but... Quite the coincidence. Otherwise, if it just sitting on the surface, firing its engine, the hole that it dug out for itself is pretty epic. It's going to be...

What if it dug its own grave and tipped over into the hole that it... Burn out. This will be an interesting... If it did tip over, it will be interesting because there was... You know, when we didn't know anything about anything and we just saw pictures, that was what we were talking about. That lander. Real tall.

It's real tall and pointy. Is that correct? And everyone's like, well, you know, Falcon 9 first day, you're just pretty tall. And it stands up fine. It's like, okay, well, just pointing out that tall is not the, not the default design for stability. Listen, maybe you're telling, you're talking to me. That's six foot, whatever, talking to five foot four over here. Yeah.

And you're stable and I'm a mess. This is how we know this, right? So, yeah. I don't know if that's true based on how our meetups have seemingly ended. So, yeah, yeah. Well. Well, so no news on Twitter. Nothing.

No. On X.com. Just Eric Berger says, it seems most likely that Athena is lying on its side, possibly on a slope, and Tudem machine still does not know which of the four. sides is facing down and devising a new mission plan will require more information. So maybe they should add a robotic arm next time to push itself back up. Yeah.

Very Mars insight type suggestion. Wipers, yeah. Use the hopper. They're going to fire up the hopper to boost it back up. That would be some fun shit. That would be good. Awesome. Yeah.

Crazy week, man. A lot. What happened? A lot went down. Yeah. We didn't even talk about Janet Petro shouting out drill baby drill in the IM two broadcasts. Just the weirdest part. Oh, yeah, Jake.

We're like minutes away from a starship launch as we record this. What do you think is going to happen? I will be 100% honest with you. I am having a really hard time drumming up enthusiasm for this stuff right now. Typical, woke, liberal. You know what? That's the email I'm going to get next, Jake. Yeah, that's fine.

Yeah, if you're upset about me, please email Anthony. Yeah, because I was obviously way too nice to Elon Musk or way too mean based on who unsubscribed. You called me woke for that. So you're, yeah. No, but it's a little bit that. But also, I just feel like honestly, I feel like the Starship program is like kind of a little sluggish right now. Like, I feel like it's not. going as swimmingly as everyone hope to it.

It's not like it's not going bad. It's just like these tiles, man, and they keep, they keep doing this. How many times are we going to do this goddamn suborbital flight? You know, I guess this was not supposed to be like, I just, I mean, I was kind of expecting this to go a little faster. But. And so I'm kind of like, you know what? Let them, let them figure this out.

I'll come back in three or four flights when they're like, okay, now I've actually invented something instead of just, I don't know. Is that my, that's, that's the hot take. That's the one we're going to get emails about. How dare you? This is the most revolutionary. Well, it's funny because it's a mirror of your take that you unveil in the Discord many times, which is, is this company slow or are they slow compared to SpaceX?

You're like, is this program slow or is it slow compared to SpaceX, right? Yeah. Because when you grade it on the scale of the energy, Starship is like miles ahead. But yeah, it's 2025, and we're doing, like, I hope they do better this time than last time. So. Yeah. Yeah. It's not looking good for old Artemis.

party. I might be unrelated. Maybe. Yeah, I mean, not the worst take, not the best take that you've had, probably. I don't think it's going bad. I'm just like, I'm kind of bored with this phase. It's not, it's not, I don't feel like it's progressing. This, like, the last three flights have felt like kind of the same.

Like, it just, like, kind of succeeds in a kind of landing. And, okay. I can't, I can't disagree even if I find it. a humorous take, which is like, they caught the most giant rocket ever on a on chopsticks twice, you know? Yeah, and that part was awesome. I'll watch that over again. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I'll watch the highlight real. That's always our, our blatant, like, skepticism of starship alone, right? That it's like, that thing does a lot. It does, it does a lot. So it's a really complex spacecraft that they need to get working before. Yeah, it's immensely complex, some would say, Jake. Yeah. Yeah.

You're buying into the propaganda pretty hard right now. or maybe you're just concerned because you're a little bit downrange of Starship if it goes the right direction and you're watching that meteor shower and you're like, that could have been me. Could be. I wouldn't mind seeing a Starship Meteor shower

from my house, though. That'd be cool. If they want to screw up in my direction, I would watch that. They sort of did last time. You weren't the endpoint, but... It was pretty far down right. It was.

It was. I was not seeing that. that was over the horizon. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll see it happens. Yes, we will.

I'll watch the highlight reel, like I said. Do we want to attempt to say what we're doing on this show next week? Because we have a pretty bad track record at the moment. Yeah, we're not doing good. And this is a repeat. This is a Starship Flight 6 attempt here. No, we're having Jonathan McDowell on finally. So we were going to have him on earlier.

That's right. you talk about his cool space library and all that fun stuff he's working on. We haven't had them. We just generally, even if he wasn't doing this project, we needed to have him on. So, yeah, been a while. That's next week. And we will reschedule Dante at some point. We'll figure it out.

Yeah, yeah. It's coming up, coming up soon. I felt like there was something else that I was going to say at the end of this. Join the Discord. We never plug it. We literally never plug the way to support the show if you like it. Because we do this. And if you're digging.

it off the dot com slash discord you can be regular member or you can never fly ride share which is literally the same perk it gets you to the same spot but it costs five times as much but that also means it supports us five times as much and i think you get a special little tag in the discord you get a golden uh no no yeah you get a different color name yeah it's pretty fancy yeah it's the discord uh the discord uh monetization uh uh digital uh digital rewards. It gets our fan base going. All right, y'all.

We will see you next week. Bye. Bye, everyone. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, end of death.