Off-Nominal - 197 - Valves and Cranberries

Episode Date: May 23, 2025

Anthony is in his new studio! He and Jake catch up on his recent trip to Marotta Controls, Anthony shares the good news about valves, and they try to figure out what the hell is going on with VIPER.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 197 - Valves and Cranberries - YouTubeT+302: A Tour of Marotta Controls - Main Engine Cut OffControls Engineering | Control System Company | MarottaSpace Controls | Spacecraft Control Systems | MarottaMarotta’s post with photos of my tourBrian’s photo of a thruster firingNASA backtracks on VIPER commercial partnership - SpaceNewsBlue Origin updates work on ‘transporter’ for Blue Moon lunar lander - SpaceNewsGilmour Space on X: “𝗧𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗙𝗹𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁𝟭 – 𝗦𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗯𝗯𝗲𝗱 Last night, during final checks, an unexpected issue triggered the rocket’s payload fairing. No fuel was loaded, no one was hurt, and early inspections show no damage to the rocket or pad.”Follow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

CLS and go for main engine, start. Jake, I am here. I'm alive. I made it. Is this like a ransom video? Like, are you going to hold up a newspaper with today's date and be like, if you want an empty return from this secret warehouse? Johnny I've joined up with OpenAI, so he left his white void, and I've taken over

his old white void workspace. That's what happened. It really looks like a green screener. something like it's the no no if I step out of the way you might see some of the old paneling no it looks like it's all fake it's like you're just you're on a

I should have set up a B cam or something it looks like that someone's finally figured out how to clip around a head on a video to blur out the background perfectly like this is the best cut whatever whatever software you're using to hide where you are should be commercialized and immediately

immediately sold to everybody Zoom's gonna call you after this and be like hi how do you get that I have a single light, because there's just absolutely brutal overhead lighting in the space that is going to get taken out. I have, it's cold as hell today in New Jersey, back in New Jersey. There's no more appropriate of a day than today to be back in New Jersey and doing some podcasting. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow is a national holiday here in New Jersey, I guess, which is the first Friday of cultural summer. Friday of Memorial Day weekend.

Historically, I would be heading to the shore, but it is like frigid here for May. And our house is heated with steam boiler, which is shut down for the season in a very steampunk kind of way. And also the radiators in this room do not work yet. They are like the heat gets to the valve. So there's a lot of things that have to happen here.

I have a light, I have a wire rack that the past owner was like, would you like to keep this wire rack? because he couldn't fit it down the weird little staircase to my little studio here. So I have a wire rack in which my light and I left my keyboard over there, so I may need to get that in a second. And the one modern part about this is that I got fiber, gigabit fiber installed directly to the wall behind me. Nice. It was, we used old telephone wire to shank it through the trees all the way to. All the way to.

Yeah. Okay, excellent. So we've sacrificed old telephone line and replaced it with a gigabit fiber, which is awesome. Awesome. I think the last three houses I had in Canada, like every time we moved into new places, like I ended up pulling out the old telephone wire. I'm like, I hope no one behind me in the ownership tree is like, I really want to put in a line line because it's all gone. I pulled all of it out. Luckily, Jake, none of the wires go through the walls in this house because the house was built before there were wires. So it's all just on the walls if you would like to get involved in anything.

I'm laughing at your boiler heating. That is like the most hilarious thing. It's been shut down for the season. I'm so, yeah, that's even funnier. I'm so, like, interested in that, how climate changes those kind of things. Like, we just have such different problems for that. Like, you're trying to figure out how to turn on a boiler. Meanwhile, I had to replace, today we had to replace the conduits for our air conditioners because the sun pretty much melted them.

Like, they're only two years old, and all the sheathing around it is, like, deteriorary, just disintegrated. Just gone. We got to do these all over again. No, no, dude. My favorite thing, my favorite project I'll probably dig into this rainy weekend is I'm likely going to use the old holes of the, I think they were, it was like knob and tube access holes that were drilled in the floor down to the basement, but you can see clear on through. Some of those holes are coax cable now, but I think I'm going to be able to do, I found a route from this little studio joint straight down to the basement and I can run Ethernet through knob and tube wiring holes, which just feels like the great way to be able to do. modernize this joint. Make like a backbone trunk for your, for your own network. Yeah, yeah, got the whole ubiquity thing. All those, all of my friends have been out there telling me ubiquity is this. I'm finally

doing it. I'm finally here. I'm going to do it too. Yeah, I can't wait. Yeah. So, yeah. So the studio is not, this is barely set up. This is the first time I've turned on this mic in here. The Miko audience probably thinks I died entirely because I packed away all my shit and I thought I would unpack it at least three days sooner than I did. But, but, There was too much going on here. So I did drink. That's awesome, man. I brought a very appropriate Cape May IPA coastal evacuation, which is normally what I'd be doing this weekend, but I'm not.

All right. Cool. Double IPA. That's what's up. I got the boring, it was boring one ever. Old Dosecis. Nice. I did have a nice glass, though.

They didn't have the Steve Aoki special edition, but I did get this, I don't know, I see that. Steve Aoki special edition. I totally forgot about that. This is the glass I got at a pub in Bermuda. Let me see it. Yeah. It's a zoom in on that again.

I don't know. It's hard to see the. Yeah, put your hand back there. It doesn't work. You got to pour like a dark beer in that or something. Do you want to use? What's that?

The frog and onion pub? Yeah. I love the names of pubs. You could just make up noun and noun pub. Yeah. It's probably owned by Fosters. It's not Fosters. What is the company that owns everything in London?

Fullers? In London? Yeah, I don't know. I'm not sure. All of the like lamb and flag and pony and whip and, you know, plumber and electrician pubs are all named after or they're all named that, but they're all owned by like, I think it's like a Kellogg's cereal kind of situation.

Oh shit. It's like the illusion of, Procter and Gamble owns this. Yeah, totally. Yeah, I'm sure there's the Dungeons and Dragons pub name generator that's basically that's basically the exact formula. That's not. 100%.

Tavern. The old tavern. The Black Dragon Inn kind of thing. Clearly we have a lot to talk about. Yeah. Really getting into here. We never talked about Jake. It's very New Jersey show here.

We never talked about my trip to learn about valves. And I feel like we should have talked about this. Yeah. I don't even think we've talked about it. Like even off the show. We have not even talked about it. I don't really know much about it, except for the one good story. Yeah. So we met, I met a guy named, there were many Jims on the, on the tour. And I met this

guy named Jim who hand polishes poppets, hand polishes by eye. Like he, I didn't see a measurement device near him, but apparently he has to polish us down to like four microns or something. And so that is the embodiment of, of, who's the Valve Zink guy? Bob. Bob from Valve Zinc, yeah. That's him. His name's Jim. Or that was Jim, wasn't Bob. It was Jim the whole time. I was laughing when you told me that because it's like, oh, yeah, this guy can tell by I. He's like, that good. And I was kind of like, either he's that good or maybe we just figured out why valves keep failing in every, every mission.

Maybe this is the actual answer. Some guy doing it by hand. And he won't teach anyone else how to do it. Yep. It's just Jim sitting there. This was Marada controls. I don't know if I mentioned that. This was Marada up, you know, an hour and a half north of me.

And, man, it is a. legit place. It is crazy. It's tucked up in the hills. So you would never even know it's there. All of a sudden you go in and there's just, there is shit everywhere. Like, you know, we always talk about the vibe check of how much hardware and how many people are doing things. And I think often this gets associated with photos of ULA or Blue Origins facilities. And like how many people are in the shot at any moment? Like, yeah, can you take a picture when there's no people in? If so, you have a problem. Yeah. You couldn't stand anywhere without somebody running by with like a whole sheath of stuff that they're carrying somewhere else in

the factory it was an active joint um that's cool i think that's because it's in new jersey so there's not really like long beach levels of space to expand to you know there's not okay and it's just it is where it is and i don't think the neighbors want it to expand beyond that so uh it's it's a lot time man over there on the dense coast yeah yeah um not not so much at a premium that they can't test fire stuff at the facility, which is fantastic. So if you want to listen to a sound that's almost incomprehensible and really not even worth listening to unless you're there experiencing it like myself, they test fired a cold gas thruster from a notable first stage.

I think it was, there was a slight modification on the standard one that goes in Falcon 9, but it is the power of a Falcon 9 cold gas thruster, the little ones at the top of the the first stage and I stood like, I think it was like 15 feet away from this thing. There were shock diamonds from just nitrogen flowing through this thing. That's how much power was going through. It's, you got to do it once. It's the craziest thing. That's funny because like, you don't think of those as the where the power comes from on a falconine. Like if you're like, yeah, what's the, what's the strongest part of a falconine? You're not going to be like, yeah, the little cold gas thrusters oriented. That's the crazy part, right? Like, that's the, that's the, that's, that's,

the perspective shifting thing is that you stand, you're like, oh, that's the little one on the rocket. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I, Falcon just has that problem in general. Like, it just from, if you only ever view it in front of a computer desk like this, you know, which is mostly how I see them. They're, they just feel way smaller, but they're not that small. They're actually pretty big. And if you want to move those things around, I'm sure you got to have a little bit of a, get some elbow grease in that one, you know? yeah and uh it's they they have this thruster there thruster pod they kind of have like a generic covering on it with the nozzles doesn't look like the one that gets all wrapped up for falcon nine and they can fire any of the actual thruster directions but they now they one time fired horror like to the side and then blew a tv off off the wall and so they all now only fire the one pointing straight up so that it goes right into the table and nothing comes off the walls anywhere.

So, yeah, it's a good experience, man. Obviously, this is not an experience you can go pay for, although I told them they could probably charge admission to stand in the room while they, like, acceptance fire this thing because it's... You're like, I can give you a few hundred anomalies. It'll come down and get $50 for sure. The best part was that we go in, I should pull up a picture of this thing. I don't even know if I have a picture of this box.

So we go in this, we go in where they have the test rig set up. and, you know, there's the thruster on the table, there's all the steampunk piping. It kind of looked like my basement with the steam boilers. There's just like shit happening everywhere. And there's this metal box, like metal framework in the back of the room with some glass doors. And it's got a sliding door on it. So clearly, like, it's a thing that something goes in, humans or otherwise. So they're debating.

They're like, oh, where should we stand for the test? I'm like, I don't fucking know. Like, that's not my department to figure out where I should stand. You tell me where to stand. I'm not going to stand where you're not standing. Uh, so they're like, let's do the, let's stand in the in the box. I'm like, that seems appropriate. This seems like a legitimate piece of test infrastructure. This must be the safety box. Yeah, clearly, this is the Richard Garriot kill zone box, obviously. Seems sturdy. It's built a metal. It has glass, which that part felt potentially dangerous. Uh, we were in safety glasses. So, you know, only so much could go wrong. So we're in there. They're getting close to hit the button. I'm like, hey, by the way, what is this thing? Like, what are we in right now? And they're like, oh, this is like a test chamber for the marine components that we make.

So when we are operating them, we put them in here, and then we run the test in here in case it blows up. And this is like, I think you can hear it on the Miko Shoy did. This is like seconds before they hit the button. So I'm like, wait a minute, I'm standing in a thing that's supposed to keep shit in? Like, this is not built to keep stuff out, which would be the thing that I would be concerned about as you're about to put 6,000 PSI through this thruster next to us. So test goes off, it's great. I'm like, yeah, so when's the last time anyone was in the box for the test firing? And they were like, that might have been the first time we've ever done that.

All right, so a worthy experience. Now we know that that test box is actually Richard Garriott, kill zone of Peru. and I would do it a hundred times again if they let me just go in there and push the button all day. It was badass. That's awesome. So I did learn about poppets. I was asking all these questions about poppets. Yeah, what the hell is a poppet?

It's just a piece inside the valve. I don't know why everyone made it such a big thing, you know? It's all anyone could talk about. It sounds like you don't know what a puppet is. Not really, to be honest. They showed them to me. I can point them out. I know where Jim sits.

I don't know. It's like it's a piece of the valve that goes in and out. I don't know why I think I don't know why Poppitts became famous. I guess they only became famous because of Starliner. I was going to say, NASA puts it in a press release and then everyone's got to become an expert. You get a new word. It's like, okay. Everyone is like, no, I got to figure out what a puppet is. So here's, that's, this is where I want to go with this, Jake, is the, uh, I'm sticking up for big valve. the treatment of valve companies, I find interesting, because technical issue happens. Company or organization that had the issue reports the results.

And reporters, journalists, whatever, we're all trying to figure out what was the thing that broke, right? And valves in the chain of things that broke, valves are like the first incomprehensible piece of the chain that you hit. So when you get, when the story gets to, oh, it was the valve that broke, everybody goes, good enough, print the story. Like, that's the story. This is deep enough for CNBC. Exactly.

Everyone knows what a valve is and we don't want to know anymore. Yep. And we stop right there. And we don't know in many cases. Did you use the valve wrong? Which happened, I think, in the case of like Peregrine, like the valve broke, but they blasted through the valve with like more pressure than they should have. Yeah.

Artemis ones were like, we didn't do the liquid hydrogen right or something. Do you remember? The nuts were loose, yeah. The visibly loose nuts, yes. Good point. Good point. So that's where I was left, is that these are the thing that get complex in that when you're walking the chain of what broke. These are the things that you encounter first that are significantly complex and not worth

explaining any more than this. So you stop at the valve broke. And I am here to say as much as we slag on them, I feel like that's a pretty unfair thing that we do. I keep getting bugged by our listeners to make a shirt about valves because it's always valves that screw up. Maybe I got to change it now and be like, Vowls did nothing wrong. That's the summary. Wait, I got a- Hold on. Let me find my sticker.

Wait, hold on. You got a sticker? One second. I got a valve sticker. A VAL sticker. this is good content. Hey, your, your, um, your lighting is changing without that dark sweater in the picture. I can't hear any jokes that you're making.

Oh, you can't hear my jokes. Let me tell you this great one about how shitty Philadelphia. Oh, hey, how's it going? Valves. That's pretty good. That's a good sticker. Somebody made this and they had a whole stack. So maybe it's somebody at SpaceX or something.

Hmm. I don't know. Because that's the thing with Marada. Okay. This is the mystifying part. They're the ones with, all the SpaceX work, pretty much. Like, I think they're the most expensive components on the Falcon 9 in many cases.

There might be, like, one component that is cheaper or more expensive, I mean, but they're like up there. But they're the one thing that all these companies aren't pulling in house, which I find kind of interesting. And this would ask. It's super interesting. Are you concerned about, like, Rocket Lab is probably the one, right? That would buy a Valve's company that's doing okay, but doesn't quite do the scale that

the other ones do. And hit them with the rocket lab acquisition juice. Yeah. Or SpaceX. I mean, SpaceX could just be like, actually, we're going to save a bunch of money. Now we're doing ourselves. Yeah. I think from what I hear, they may have tried once or twice.

And we're like, nah, it's not worth the, it's actually really hard and it's not worth the time. Yeah. The SpaceX way is they'll just like come over to the, to this place you went to and hire Jim, bring them over. And then have him reinvent them all over again. And then it's over. They'll just poach every talent.

He comes in. He's like, I got an idea. No poppits. We're not doing puppets. If you had a thought that we might do a poppet, we're not doing the poppits. That's true. If there's one company that would not be in the business of handmade artisanal poppets, it's SpaceX for sure.

They're going to want dirty, industrial, cheap, spill out the line. It doesn't care. Don't care if it leaks. We'll just put more stuff in the vehicle. Leak more if you want. 10 because nine of them break. That's fine. We'll just make 10 and grab the best one.

And so they kind of do that in some cases. I saw, I got to see and touch some of the assemblies that separate the farings and the, and the first and second stage. They, they are the same part that operates the pusher in both of those cases. So, but they use like two next to each other to make it redundant rather than just making the one thing more high reliability. So that was kind of sweet. I didn't realize that those would be the same part.

That was, I was like, what the, like, obviously you can change the piston size or whatever, but it adds the actual same part between the first and second stage and the farings. That's pretty cool. Yeah. That's a very falconine. That's a very space-nics thing to do. Yeah, right. Like, well, the one thing comes apart.

Might as well just make everything that comes apart. Do it the same thing? One less part to make twice as much scale. That's great, yeah. And there's a rack, kind of like the rack that's sitting my studio here, probably about the same size, to be honest. It may even be the same rack. of all of the, the, the, the, the, faring separation components that have come back,

because they, you know, if they fish them out and if they need to get cleaned out or something, because they got too much seawater, they just send them back, they clean them out, send them back their way. And I'm like, that's pretty cool. It's sooty as hell, too, the faring even. It's kind of surprised by that. That's interesting. Yeah. That's cool, man.

They separate, they get hit with a lot of soot. Well, fairing is kind of re-enter, don't they? Are they just burnt? I have a problem with the word re-enter generally. Because in some cases, it was the first time it ever entered. Yeah. It left once for sure. Never, did it really leave?

I guess they kind of leave me, Ferringss. They probably leave, right? Yeah, they leave. Yeah. But the first reentry should not be called re-entry, right? There needs to be a root entry. No, because you can re-enter after leaving something. But you never entered in the first place.

Unless you get real, real, you know, universal on this, I guess, when the atoms entered the Earth. Oh, no, no. No, you can reenter. It's one of those redundant words. So the first time, like, Columbia, first launch, right? And then it came back in. That was a reentry, even though it never entered. Okay.

100%. Because, like, at a sports game, it says no reentry. And that's because you already entered once. So that makes sense. this is also like my max cue take jing nobody cares about max q i'm still on that one i still feel right about that one also okay here you go jake what do you call it at mars it's the re-entry yeah oh hold on no no no it's no because you never left because you never left that's why because you never left okay you never got there either though yeah you got there you you

enter the atmosphere but you're you're re-entering it because you left we're gonna take a poll I don't think there's many people watching because we surprise everybody that we're doing the show an hour earlier today because we forgot to post the link. I forgot to post the link. Let us know if you agree with me

that the first entry ever should just be called entry and all subsequent ones should be re-entry. Or if you agree with Jake that only Mars gets that gets that... It's not a Mars thing. If that's where you were to begin with,

it's like returning somewhere. You re-enter it. if you leave something and then you come back into it, you've re-entered it. Okay. Yeah. I forgot where I was going before that. We got a ridiculous take. Yeah.

Little tangent there. Oh, here's the other cool part is just that this thing exists in New Jersey. Like none of the aerospace industry exists here, except for this. There's another valves company that's, I think, closer to me. Yeah. It's in New Jersey as well? Yeah. There's like, we're big on valves, man.

You do cranberries and valves. That's it. That's the name of the pub, actually, that I go to here. Cranberries and valves. Cranberries and valves, yeah. The valve state. The valve state. I should get the, maybe I'll get a, I got to get a new license plate.

Maybe I'll get one about valves or something. Katie will love that. Yeah. Can you do like custom vanity plates? Is that a thing? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Seven digits long.

I've always thought I should just get Anthony, but I assume that one's taken. in New Jersey. That one's probably taken. Probably, yeah. Seems unlikely that's available. It's extra money. If it wasn't extra money, I wouldn't, I would do it.

But I bet somebody up that works at Marada has a valves license plate. Probably. Yeah. Valves, ink. No, that's eight. That's eight. That's nine. Valves is six.

Valves. Yeah. Valving. Valves. Yeah. It's cool though, man. I think I have a new respect for the sheer level of manufacturing that goes into some of this stuff. Yeah.

Because I've been in rocket and spacecraft factories before, but I've never been at like a component supplier. So like the scale difference is interesting, you know? Yeah. Unless you've been in the Starlink factory, then basically you're used to like, we're making ten of these. Yeah, right. You can count what's in there. But this was just, you know, racks of 400 of the, and they do not space stuff. They do, you know, defense.

They do marine. They do a lot of other things, too. So there's not just the space side going on. But it was pretty cool. We'll have to have some of them on because they obviously live close. So you should fly here. Come help me turn my boiler back on and then we can go visit the valves company. I don't know anything about boilers, man.

That's not my expertise. I'll get your AC working. Isn't that? Yeah, I do not have AC in this room right now. So I'm racing the clock as to when the humidity strikes to actually put a unit in. So I guess we're on Team VALs now. That's the new, the new Off-Noller gospel. Shut up about VALs.

Is a skill issue? Yep. Yeah, I'm going to go to bat for valves every time. All right. So. I like this take. I'm going to do, you're holding it wrong like Steve Jobs did with the iPhone bumper. That's how I feel about valves now.

You probably did it wrong. I've heard that from like engineers too. It is it's like valves are fine, but when you use them incorrectly and put them in bad environments and you don't take care of them and then you just cause problems, right? Because I imagine like FOD is pretty brutal on valves.

Like if you don't keep them clean, that's probably like number one way to really screw it up, right? One green is sand and a valve that's over. Most of what they showed me were like the way that they clean the valves and then keep them clean while they work on them. Yeah, yeah. I kind of feel like that takes. was even, remember the, was it the AMO6 explosion that the, or the CRS, no, it was the CR7 Falcon 9 failure, right, where the strut broke?

Strat failed, yeah. And it was like, well, the strut failed. It's like, yeah, but you shouldn't have put that strut in that spot. Strut was not for that, yeah. Yeah, right. So the strut did break, but you also did a stupid thing with it. Same thing would have happened if you'd used a popsicle stick, and that's why you didn't do. Yeah.

I don't crash my car and be like, my car broke. It's like, it did. It definitely did break, but that's not why. My car broke. Oh, what happened? Oh, I drove it into a tree. It's like, okay, you should just let with that. So, yeah, the valve failed. What'd you do? I jammed all of my propellant through it all at once. Did that, should that have worked? I kept it in my pocket when I went to the beach.

Yeah, so we, I think us and the anomalies should be just out there. there defending the valves companies. Love it. You already hear your first, folks. We got to find a new scapegoat though. Everyone's got to bug journalists now. So when all of our journal friends just write a valve and they don't go any deeper, push back.

What really happened. Push back. Do your job. Can you see that fly? Proof that I'm actually in the physical world. It's blurred by that fake background. Can we talk about Viper? Did you read about any of those?

on there? Vipar drama? I am just like, okay, well, my first take on it, okay, well, what's the story for anyone

is that NASA had a while ago NASA had put out that whole, remember that call that was like, hey, if you want to fly this rover

for free, for us, that would be great. Let us know if you're interested. And then they put out an RFP for that. And then they got the answers back.

And now they're saying, we're going to go another way. Right? I'm not missing anything, right? No, you nailed it. I mean, the one thing you did miss was that they had to fly Viper for free, but all the data had to go to NASA. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. And you had to operate it exactly as they would have operated it on the surface. And I'm pretty sure when that first happened, you and I were like, who would do that? Like, this is the dumbest, this is the dumbest thing. That's the most prestige mission ever. Yeah. And so I was like, when I first came back,

I was like, you're idiots. Like, now you're going to go another way with, I just going to put it back on Griffin and just do the damn thing like you. Like what is the plan here? This is such a weird, weird mission. But then I realized that. That's even the worst part is that they're not going to just put it back on Griffin and operate it. They're going to let, and they've already said Griffin's still going to fly as is.

I think what they announced, didn't they announce, like, Astroforge or something was going to, not Astroforge. Astrolab was going to fly their rover. or a test version. Like the chassis of their rover on Griffin. Like a scale model of the... Because it's a bit smaller, I think. I think it's like just the drive train basically.

Something like that. So they're going to let this rover lander just fly probably not that far off a schedule. I haven't heard any schedule updates lately, but I bet it will like not be that far off. And then So there was the announcement, then there was also, was it Nikki Fox is at a conference?

Let me scroll down this article. I think it was Nikki Fox. Somebody was at a conference talking about this. And they indicated that they had gotten, there was two rounds of requests or responses to their RFP. There was an initial round of interest. And then there was a second round of, okay, if you did your plan, what would you actually do? and that was due in May, and then this announcement happened. So there was talk of, all right, well, we actually now saw what people put together,

and we've got to rethink this entirely. Yeah, yeah. And the way it read between the lines was like, everybody could not make this workable of like fly the mission for free exactly as we would have done it, give us all the data, do not commercialize it in any way. They basically were hoping for Jared Isaacman to show up and be like, I'll just fly the mission. Pretty much, yeah, yeah. Yeah, and that's where, like, I went, I went through like a bunch of stages with this news very quickly.

And it was, and that's the first one. I was like, this is, this is so dumb, guys. Why are you doing this? And I was like, oh, maybe all the proposals were like really bad. Like maybe just like, like industry just like did not come through. And I was like, wait, maybe NASA really architected this RFB in a goddamn awful way. And industry was like, no thank you. Right.

That's probably more likely. Yeah. And then I finally arrived. My last point I got to was where I am today is it's like, uh, NASA has absolutely no fucking idea how much money they have and they're not. start anything right now. I'm like, that is the real, that's the only real answer. It's like, we're not going to do any new starts right now because we're on a budget

that is two and a half years old and the current administration wants to remove all the money we have. So yeah, I'm not, I'm not signing up for anything. I'm saving my pennies. NASA's bank account is in a sock under the bed right now. Like, that's how dire things are. Maybe this will end up being a Mars rover. Maybe. You would be pumped.

It's going to be sample return. That's what it's going to be. This is it. The new MSR. Viper-based. It's a bummer, too. It would have been such a cool mission. I know, and I'm just so frustrated. This is like not helping me with my get over the Big Johnson Space Center conspiracy theory thing because it's just like you guys just bungled it. Like you just, what did you do? Like, what is this? How many times this rover going to get canceled before like we actually cancel it? know, like, what do we got like the third? I know, Viper was based on the, um, are you counting the resource prospector?

Yeah, I count a resource prospector. Okay. It is, that's what it is. That's what it is going to ask. Is Viper is managed out of Johnson because of resource prospector? Yeah. Yeah, okay. And so's Clips.

And clips is too, yeah. Um, so, yeah. But how is this not, you're saying it's not helping your JSC theory. wouldn't please help me understand this JAS because I love your Johnson Space Center conspiracy theory it's my favorite thing ever I can't wait to go to Johnson with you personally and see how quickly you get deported or something no I just mean it's not helping me because like this is you know they this is your shenanigans these are like project but wouldn't they just get the money if that's your if that's your if this fits wouldn't they just say hey we're doing

this rover like give us five 500 mill or whatever? Yeah, but the administration said no, right? And so now they're just saying no, we're taking our ball and gone home. They're trying different things, right? But the point is that like we've been doing this project now for how many years if you go all the way back. And it just keeps, it keeps getting shoehorned and patched into other projects to like stay

alive, all these shenanigans just to keep the damn thing alive and get the money in. And hasn't delivered a single thing. And, yeah. So cancel it, you cowards, or fly it. Pick one. Those are your two options. Oh, man. Sometimes Wikipedia, man.

It's like, when was Resource Prospector started? The overview. In February 1976, the Soviet Lander, Luna 24, I'm like, no, no, we're off base here. It was like a... It was field testing in 2015. Kind of thing, right? Yeah, so, I mean, if it was field testing in 2015, it had to be... it doesn't even say

when this actually was working on when they were actually working on. Double digit years though. Double digit years. Yeah. Man. I wonder if they still have that little were they using the like chassis that was sitting in Building 9 at JSC for this?

I'm pretty sure I've seen this rover. I've stood next to the resource prospector one, yeah. I think when I visited JSC in 2016 it was there. It's that graveyard of cancelled stuff next to the ISS. There's that robot, that massive robot that's like, yeah, that one building. It's like a bunch of R-C cars and stuff.

It's like a Morpheuslander, the robot. The zombies there. Yeah, and a whole bunch of like lunar habitat, like test articles. Oh, yeah. The Lopjee is in there. Shout out. The whole gateway is in there. Yeah, it's still there, the real one.

Dragon X-L is in there somewhere. Yeah. It's in the restricted area. Not a lot to go in there. Yeah, it's a bummer, man. Yeah. So it sucks. It would be cool.

But I don't know. It's the same thing, though. It's just like, what's that take I always have? Whereas it's like, if you don't have a good like, I go back and forth this. But if you don't have a good consensus, like if you don't have a good support for a whole bunch of people to think this is a good idea, then you're going to have a hard time and this is going to happen. Right.

I mean, I think people should fight for their projects. But if you don't. don't have the support, don't try and sneak through on loopholes and bend the rules and get around, because it just always happens this way, right? Like, you need, you need a little bit of, of institutional support for what you're doing if you wanted to really succeed. And if you don't have it, it's tough. And I don't know, I don't know, I don't know what the solution is there. Because I don't think that, like, I'm not mad at the, the Viper team for like, busing in their ass, try and make just happen. That's what we're supposed to do. But I don't know. It's weird.

You are somebody, as we've talked with Dr. Z on the show, that, like, you're somebody who doesn't like trying to sneak flagship missions in outside of flagship mission tracks, right? That this was a project that was always clearly a misfit for clips. It was too early in the, in the manifest of flights that we had. Like, nobody thought, oh, yeah, yeah, by flight four or five, we have all this worked down. Wasn't it the second one manifested? They were like, pretty much, yeah. Astrobioc is going to fly a Peregrine,

and the next thing is going to be Griffin. Yeah, because, I mean, Brian Stein announced it at that I-C, and so that was 2019. Clips was like a year old, if that, right? So they did the original task orders. It was the Peregrine, I Am One, and then the company that went out of business

10 minutes later, orbit beyond. Yeah, orbit beyond, yeah, yeah. And I think the next one was Viper. I think that's roughly correct. but even then, yeah, like nobody thought, oh, we'll be in good enough shape. There were too many competing thoughts. Nobody thought the landers would be in good shape by then, realistically. Also, nobody thought this would be a throwaway amount of money,

like a giant, a huge rover that's going to the moon and drilling, was never going to be, ah, if we lose it, no big deal. Yeah, that was a huge issue with it. I think there was definitely a mismatch in expectations on because actually, honestly, if they had project manage us in a way where it was like, yeah, we're treating this rover the exact same way we're treating the clips landers where it's just like cut every corner, go, you know, don't buy any risk management. Just like do your best.

We've got a limited budget. We'll fly it. We'll see what happens. And if it doesn't work, we'll fly three more after this. And one of them will go with, we'll get there eventually. But they didn't have that mindset. Right. It did it did not match the clips mindset.

It was like, oh, what are they like? The budget doubled before they canceled it, I think. At least, at least more than doubled. And so it doubled and they weren't counting all the budget. There was stuff they left out. They didn't count the launch. They didn't count something else. They were doing, you know, V&V risk management at a discovery level and putting it on a launch vehicle that was STMD prototype level.

It was just not a good plan It was a good plan You can't knock that And honestly Astrolab We called them out But that's the right way right Like let's fly That's the right path

Great payload for clips Yeah What that noise was I don't know if you heard that But we got to figure out When we're doing this show I don't know When my neighbors do their lawn yet

We got it I have a lot of things to sort out over here Astrolab was like All right we're going to fly The stuff that we need to test to make sure the rover part of the rover works and not all the scientific payloads or the expensive stuff. If they were like, we're going to send a, honestly, if they did the plan that is currently in action, like we're going to send a viper mass simulator and make sure Griffin works

and do one launch of Griffin with the right actual structural test article. It doesn't have wheels. It doesn't have payloads. It's literally just a piece of metal shaped. They said the actual resource prospector from JSC that doesn't do anything. That would have been a better plan. Fly that once. Make sure it works. We'll work on the rover. Then you'll actually have a lander. I bet Astrobotic would have flown Griffin much earlier than they are going to because they wouldn't have done all of the additional testing and validation. Yeah. And they got a bunch of like change orders too. Didn't Astrobatic have to be dealing with like different requirements from NASA as they as they slowly realize that they weren't comfortable losing this $300 million rober?

Right. Exactly. Yeah. But if in a world, where they just set up front. We're going to do the Viper program. We're going to manifest a 500 kilogram mass simulator for Griffin and buy the second Griffin flight all at once. We're buying two Griffin flights. The first one's a mass sim. We already have the piece of metal. We used it from the JSC one. The second one has the real rover. That would have let them be more responsible with the lander capabilities, maybe even backburnered some of the costs of the actual development of Viper, so it wouldn't have all hit at the same time. Yeah, that makes sense to me, because even if you say Clips was not a good match for it, if you accept that as truth and go,

okay, well, we have this Viper rover, how should we fly it? And you go, well, there isn't actually any other landers. Like, no one has a lunar lander that doesn't exist, right? So then you're like, okay, well, actually Clips kind of is the best option. It's not a good option, but it's the best option. And so I think you're right on that. And so far, the only lander that works in Clips is the one from the company who can't build an upper stage. So, I don't know what to do with that. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

So you're probably right. It's like if you approach the landing part with a little more flexibility and rigor and bought a few flights, I don't know. Maybe even were to save money. Who knows? Like it would have been interesting. I think that's the original sin of clips still, is that the companies couldn't build a manifest of flights out unless they, you know, signed the random like Bitcoin contracts or whatever. Or just happened to win all the task orders, like intuitive machines per your J.S. sea theory.

Yeah. But I mean, astrobotic, I don't know what they got to get in a task order when. I don't know what the outlook is there, right? They've announced a lot of infrastructure projects or the vertical solar array things. But the project was just stringing wires across the moon, that one? That one, yep.

It looks like my house, but on the moon. But beyond that, I mean, if they don't get another, if they don't get another task order, let's say they fly Griffin end of the year. If they don't get another task order,

when do those get awarded? Those get awarded in the fall. Don't they do like a, who knows if they're going to do it in this fall? Yeah. I mean, they could be a year and a half out from another task order. And then, so what do they do if they fly Griffin? They keep everyone around it employed? Right.

They haven't announced commercial contracts beyond that. Now, maybe, maybe Astrolab will say, oh, we're going to buy two more because our rover worked and Starship is still a ways off and their plan was to go to you Starship, so maybe they'll buy another Griffin. But there's no way a Griffin is cheaper than a throwaway contract with SpaceX. Yeah. And Astrolab stuff only really gets interesting when Starship works. So I kind of feel, I've had this creeping, thuring.

You're zeroing in on the poor business case of clips. Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, I just, I think I just merged the word fear and theory together, a fiery. and I like that a lot. I have a theory that astrobotic is like not going to last more than two years. You have a doubt. Mm-hmm. In Spanish, if you want to ask someone if they have any like questions or concerns,

like you imagine you're like in a, you know, you're at a sales process, you're near the end. Do you have any questions or concerns? Right. They'll say, Tienes dutas, which is like, do you have any doubts? Right. And it always makes me laugh. But you have a dude, you have a duda right now. I do.

I do. I do have to do that. Do you have any doubts? Douts? No, I don't know. I have a question. No, I have no doubts. I don't know.

I haven't heard from any astrobotic peeps in a while. Maybe I'm just, they're going to be mad at me that I moved to New Jersey and I started shitting on astrobotics long-term strategy. I'm out of PA and that's it. This is capitalism, baby. What have you done for me lately? Yeah. We've got the sideways lander company down in Texas.

We've got miraculous lander company down in Austin. which more and more time goes the more that firefly blue ghost mission just feels like how did the hell did that work out so well that's crazy man hey maybe it was a fluke I don't know yeah what if the next one's terrible the next one's got all sorts of shit

it's got Artemis 4 levels of complexity it's got an orbiter it's got like another satellite it's got a lander on it so they got a lot of things that could go go wrong Speaking of Moonlanders, Jake, you added me on Discord the other day because you're getting nervous about one of my bets. I'm not nervous yet, no. No, okay.

Please enlighten the audience of why you may or may not be nervous. Why do you have a dudus about this. I don't, I don't know. I have no, sing dudas. I don't remember where the source of this was. It was like a tweet, but I don't know if it was official. from Blue Origin or if it was like a journal or it was like, you know, one of those dudes that has an anonymous Twitter account and pretends like they are and overhard,

which, um, yeah. So that, that, that's all said, I think was just they wanted to launch a thing. I don't know if it was like scale model or test article or full thing, but. Way to make it sound really cheap scale model. Jesus. Well, what is it? I don't think it's a scale model, is it? Wasn't it? It's not like it's a tiny one. It's not like a little tiny. It's like a, it's like the Lego lem that they're launching to the moon. I'm finding it. I was going to open Discord, but when I opened Discord, I couldn't hear you anymore, which is a bizarre thing. So I couldn't hear you. I assume that you were said, I was super right and you're getting nervous that they're actually going to land this blue moon lander on the moon. Is that why my video is all off now? I feel like I'm,

I've got a video delay now. I think we disconnected into some reality here. Discord, man. Discord screws us every time. Blue moon. Discord is really struggling. So there's this crazy, very Dragon XL looking thing, Jake. Yeah. The transporter space. Because it looks like it's not too much more difficult than just a blue origin's New Glen upper stage. You know, like it feels like it's an achievable iteration.

It's like, yeah, it's upstage. And we add some solar panels and some thrusters. Let's go. Let's do it. Let's fly, baby. I don't know. I'm all for that. I mean, it looks like the Earth departure stage from

That's the tanker from Yeah, what was the, was it I guess was it the Ares? It was the consolation program that had like the crazy Earth departure stage thing It was like the Ares rockets. Yeah, that's where they assembled it in orbit, right? Looked like that.

Somewhere in here it says Mark one. Here we go. Mark one. Blue moon Mark one, a robotic lander cable placing up to three metric tons on the lunar surface. They confirmed they would fly Blue Moon Mark I lander for the first time this year. They received a task order through clips to fly a camera payload on this mission. That's currently being assembled in a facility in Florida.

That first paragraph, let's just zero in on that last sentence there. Which one? It uses the first paragraph last sentence. It uses some of the same technologies such as the B.E7 engine. as the larger Mark 2 lander. Oh, larger? Oh, yeah, but it's a scale model? No, scale model is like you built a ship for your bookshelf, you know?

Like... Just because it's the 0.9 scale doesn't mean it's not scale. I think Mark 1 is just the cargo... Cargo not capable of humans lander, no? Yeah, I think so, yeah. Okay. I'm just... So...

Poking you. The vehicle is getting ready to ship out of our factory in six weeks. We should be launching a few months after that. It's going to go to JSC for tests in a large thermal vacuum chamber, so that's fun. And then I'll return to Florida for launching at New Glenn. So, I mean, unless Escapade jumps the queue here.

Escapade's probably going to jump the queue, right? I don't know. Man, when he's supposed to launch Escapade, I feel like the timing on that is very, I think last year was the idea. but um well solid point yeah so sure i don't know i have no i have no confidence in predicting escapade right now basically what i'm trying to say literally no idea um but yeah i don't know i still even if they say they want to i just i still don't have any confidence that that would fly this year because of the of the blue origin side of things all of it everything yeah there are too many

steps behind. Every step is uncertainty, right? If it was like sitting in the in the building at Kennedy Space Center or wherever at the Blue Origin facility, like, yeah, we're just like, we're just wrapping up the assembly at the factory and the rockets come within. I'm like, okay, yeah, there's a chance now. But like, no, they've got to finish building and then they got to get out of the factory and ship it to JSC, then they got to go through all around a testing. Then they got to pack it all up again and ship it all like, like, no thanks. That's not happening. That's too many steps for Blue Origin to do in a timely fashion. Sounds like you have some major Dutus.

Muchas Duda, yeah. All right. I mean, I guess we'll find out, man. I'm also very pessimistic these days, though, so I don't know. We'll see. You are a little pessimistic. A little bit down. What did I bet, though?

Let me pull up my, what was that in? The predictions? Yeah, that was not a prediction. Yeah, that was not a prediction, isn't it? Yeah, somewhere in here. I think you said you would fly something towards the moon, like you were, like, very general on it. I said Escapade in May and Blue Moon-shaped thing in October. Blue-moon-shaped thing.

Yeah. I might be three months shifted on both of those predictions. Yeah, it could be. So it would be like Escapade August, Blue Moon, January. Yeah, it could be. I'm going to take a victory lap. When we do this prediction show in January, if they're like prepping for launch within a mere weeks

and we already like have a no-tam or something, I'm going to be counting that as a win, by the way. just to be clear. Okay. You're looking good, though. You said, Jake says New Gleon flies maybe twice.

It's pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Amazon, over, under 120 satellites launched. You took the under. It's also

looking pretty good. Looking good, yeah. Looking good. Yeah. All right. Well, anyway, there we are. are. I'm just looking at our rest of our predictions now. There was one other thing I wanted to talk to about.

We had an off-nominee this week. What was it? Yes, we did. What was it? Chat, help us out. What happened this week? That was hilarious. Didn't I write it down? I thought I did. I thought I put it in our document off-nominee's 2025. Oh, we had the, we had the Gilmore Space one. That one. That's the one, yes. I fell off. Yeah. Should we read this? I had that realization in the middle of like Discord conversation where I was like, oh my God, this thing is.

Ah, the fairings. What a great off nominee. The fairings popped off. I was like, oh my God, this is in Australia. Oh my God. The front fell off. Last night during final checks, an unexpected issue triggered the rocket's payload fairing.

No fuel was loaded. No one was hurt. And early inspections showed no damage to the rocket or pad. we'll send a replacement faring from our Gold Coast factory after a full investigation. That means we're standing down from this test campaign. Mega bummer that there's no video or even a photo. What does it look like? Yeah, I don't know, man.

It hasn't been one, right? I think they're chickening out. They've got to show it. There's got to be something. Post this photo. Post the video, you cowards. Check your staging is 100% right. Yeah, we've all been there.

Exactly. Post your pictures. Yeah. that's a hilarious one. It's so funny. And also you got to test your parents. You had the stages mixed up and someone hit the space bar and boom, there it is, right?

We've all been there. Someone at Gilmore Mission Control hit the space bar. That has exactly, the fact that nothing was damaged and they're going to be fine, that has exactly the right whimsy level of an off nominee, you know, quintessential. I hope it was up.

I don't know if it was up. I don't know if it was upright, but I hope it was upright. Oh, it had to be, right? I don't know. It might have been. I hope so. I hope it's not imagining it. Until you show me video, it's going to be upright in my head.

Right. And it pops off and it like, you know, has that, boom, boom, it kind of waves on its way down to the ground. And it was like perfectly symmetrical and serene, just like, did you think the whole thing came off or just one side fell off? In my imagination, it's both. It's funny. For some reason, I've been picturing.

just one falling off, that the other was, like, suspended by something else, you know, on the support structure. I'm also very curious. I want to see the video actually from a, like, an educational standpoint, because I've only ever seen them, like, shot off in space. And there's like, okay, you're traveling at like Mach 50 and it's, you know, in space. There's like no gravity. There's no error. It's like, and it's like all the- There's no gravity up there. To all of the professionals that watch this show. No gravity. Have you been doing math with gravity and space. It doesn't exist. It doesn't exist. So I'm like,

I'm kind of just curious to like get like a visual of how strong the pushers are. Like, you're making me like this one less though, that it just tumbled down. Shot off like, like, you would have like an arc trajectory or it's just like kind of like peel open and fall down right right in front of the rock. Like I'd be

really curious to kind of know what that looks like, right? I mean, in Curbel, you always have the ejection force is like a million percent. Right. So it launches. It goes into the ocean when you do it in Curbel. but yeah you're probably right it probably just disconnected and like tumbled off yeah i was picturing one side shot off the rocket i don't know why one side i just thought that was the funniest thing i could picture is that one side just blast it off and sometimes in curbel if you really screw it up

and it like catches on the payload it just kind of like disconnects and then it like clips and it's like you know and it just got to like sits on the top of the rocket doesn't come off yeah maybe that happened maybe it just like they like fell down we got an somebody that has a picture of this. You can, if you have a secret video of the front falling off, please send it to the front fell off at off.com.

We will keep it and we will not air it until December. That you have our word, we will air this as the off nominee video. And you will win the off nominee. If you give us a secret video of this thing falling off, you will win the off nominee in December. No, no one will see it until that. Gilmore's baseball won it.

You will win it for sending it. No, you personally. We have a bounty out for this video. You don't even have to work for Gilmore's space. If you merely know a person and they get it leaked and then you send it to us, we will not tell anyone or show anyone until December. You have our word. If you're a hacker and you want to get it, we'll find it.

We will make a trophy and send it to you. You'll have the first off-nominal trophy and it'll be fantastic. Now that we've said all those, Gilmore's just going to release it tomorrow. Burger's just going to get the picture. Someone's going to send it. Tori Bruno is going to text to him after. that fiery photo of centaur or whatever yeah oh wow nominees already this year yeah it's looking good it's gonna be a good show and it's may so that's that bodes well it's good um homework

or no not homework housekeeping is the word i meant to say uh my homework is to build the rest of the studio uh housekeeping is this is probably the time slot for the next next few weeks because I'm kind of reverse commuting out of Philadelphia to this place and also have children to pick up. So we'll figure it out. Either that or we can rope some Europeans in and do like a matinee show. That's another option. And then beyond that, Jake, we got some stuff to figure out.

There's going to be loud renovation noises in and around the region of the studio. so I'm either going to change my office location for the summer when we do the show, or we can go back to, we could potentially go back to late night off nominal. Ooh. We haven't done that since the original off-nominals. We could go back to our 8 or 9 p.m. Eastern slot. People might like that. They might like that.

I don't know. We'll see. The Europeans will hate it, but the West Coast guests that we have would appreciate it, they would actually feel free to bring a beer to it. Yeah, yeah. Maybe we'll do a little of each, you know? A little like it's a summer schedule. It's going to be weird.

Maybe you'll just deal with the sounds of them swapping out some kitchen stuff nearby in my office. We also have, it's going to be a little turbulent because like, so we're getting in the summer and I have some time off and you're moving in a house. We have, we're coming up on a milestone here too. We got to think of something smart to do on episode. Episode 200 is coming up, isn't it? Oh, yeah, in like two weeks. What is this?

What is this? What is this? I think this is 197. So we have to figure that one out probably pretty great. I literally didn't care about that at all. But do we do special things? Have we done special milestone shows? Did we zero index this one?

Is it 199? No, no. I zero indexed Miko. This one's episode one. Oh, then maybe we did. No, I think this one is episode one. Were they even numbered at first? Yeah, I think so.

Oh, interesting. Okay. Anyway, we could do that. Oh, episodes, oh, one. Yeah, you can't go to space in pajamas, was the first title of this show. We unpacked the National Space Council's inaugural meeting, SpaceX's BFR update from IAC,

and the future of Falcon Heavy. It's still hotly debated. Hotly debated. We have not lost focus. Yeah, you were drinking a pumpkin eater from House Sound. I was drinking a victory. That was great, man. October 2017.

That's so funny. We were doing picks back then. Yep, yeah. Great. Good stuff, man. Good stuff. Well, that's all to say. We have literally no idea

what we're doing next week on the show. We have a couple of theories and concepts for who we may invite on the show, but there's, I barely got the studio together in time for today, to be honest. And I have an episode idea, but it requires you to devote homework time I don't know if that's fair.

Yeah, I got to rewatch. Jake wants me to rewatch, what was it, Deep Impact and Armaged? I want to do a compare and contrast of the twin 1998 blockbuster's Deep Impact in Armageddon because I watched Deep Impact off light. I think I just need longer than one week to organize that. Episode 200. No TV in this house yet.

I'm not sleeping at this house yet, but there is no TV in this house yet. All right, okay, all right. Yeah, 200 might not be a bad plan. Yeah. Also, to make it New Jersey, should we get Proust Willis to come on the show? I don't know if he's a, I interview you. He's not, no.

But he is from South Jersey, so. We'll just call Ben Affleck. He'll be fine. He'll do it. That'll do. He'll be available. Yeah. That's it.

That's all we got. I was unprepared for the end of the show. So there, I'll hit the music. And what else you got to plug? Anything? No, I don't think so. Stay tuned for whatever's next. Stay tuned for what is ever.

The notable tagline of successful YouTube. Stay tuned for whatever's next. Yeah. Smash that, subscribe, ring that bell. 1, 2, 3,45, 5, 4, 3,21, end of death.