Off-Nominal - 198 - Gotahm

Episode Date: May 30, 2025

Jake and Anthony figure out if we should panic about Starship, or just Starship Block 2, or not.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 198 - Gotahm - YouTubeStarship’s Ninth Flight Test - SpaceX - LaunchesNorthrop Grumman Invests $50 Million in Firefly Aerospace to Advance Medium Launch Vehicle Named Eclipse™Introducing the new Northrop Grumman logo. | Northrop GrummanRocket Lab's Neutron tapped for U.S. military cargo test - 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

Jake? Am I here? Did I hit the right button? I'm pretty sure my teleprompter froze exactly when I hit that. So I'm hoping that I have the actual right camera. Still ironing out the kinks of the new Helangelo abode. I can't explain that one. I have no idea why that happened.

Because that was definitely working right before this. But yeah, as I mentioned, things are different this week, but not final, which is the worst kind of different because now everything's just a little bit off Well, I have more stuff in the room. I have a desk over here that you can hear. I have more boxes, which maybe will help the sound insulation. I don't know. We'll see.

And still literally nothing on the walls, which is driving Jake nuts. So we'll see how long it can go. I like how you're different but not final, which is the worst kind of different. And that's kind of the topic of our show today when we get down to me. I do feel a bit like this week is flight eight. So we'll see what happens next week. And then after that we should be good, right? That's the theory.

Anyway, let me try to, I'm going to unplug my teleprompter. I'm going to do something highly ill. I don't know, what's the word I'm looking for? Stupid? Hold on. All right, I like it. Unplug. We're doing it live.

Oh, boy. Something flickered. I don't know what happened, but something flickered. That's because my like one monitor turned sideways. Okay, we're back. We're back. It's live. There we go.

Yeah. Here we are. All right, Jake. What do we got? How do we start this show? Well, usually we start with drinks. That's typically our first segment. Yeah.

What do you got? Ill-advised is the chat is telling me is the words I was looking for, which is exactly the word I was looking for. What do you got? What do you got? You got any of mead? No, I made a market reader today. I went the full board this week.

Look at this. Ta-ean on the rim. A little, I did it in a shaker and everything with the tamarindo for the sweetener. Wow. Let's love it. This is a... You are living life. This is how you do it, man.

This is how you do it. Yeah. Guess what I'm drinking, Jake. It's going to be... The same one I had last week because I've been moving everything else in this house except for more beer. Yeah. You haven't had a lot of time to go and novelty shopping for drinks, right?

No. I've been... Yeah. Right now my home is somewhere over the Delaware River, I think, is the approximate... Like, how the Rock Alab people used to tell me that they live somewhere over the Pacific. but they're not exactly sure what time zone. I feel like that, but between Philadelphia and New Jersey. All right, right.

So, nonetheless, this is a delicious beer. So we're going to have more people at the house helping us this weekend. So I assume these will be gone by next week. Excellent. You have to try something new then. Cheers. So I'll pour one out for Starship, I guess. Collectively.

All of the entire Starship program. That's what I put in the description, Jake. I said, we have to figure out whether we're going to. panic over Starship, Starship Block 2 or not at all. Those are the things that we're going to debate today. Okay. Where it's your, we'll do this like that debate format, right? Where you pick an initial setting and then we'll see who moves each other farther in one

direction or the other. So I guess that means whatever you pick, I'm going to pick the other end of and then we'll figure out where we land. I think my take is, is not very, if I was going to present my take to the director of content for the off-nominal entertainment. industry executive. An explosive growth

firm, really. Yeah, yeah. He would say that is the worst take for Prime TV. Please have something more, have something more inflammatory. This is the most Jake thing coming.

Let's hear it. Come on. I'm going to give you a one shot for this. No, no. We need a full. No, no, okay. Okay, okay. So the booster doesn't seem,

I don't know, like there's nothing really concerning. for me on the booster side, right? Because like they... I mean, it blew up. Yeah, but they... It's the first reuse. So like, great.

Like, they're figuring some shit out and it blew up. Well, they always kind of do one. You know, but they tried like some new, what is it? Some new angle of attack. They were coming in hot. They were like, let's push it. It got more on fire than the previous one.

First reuse and a really aggressive entry and it blew up. I'm like, okay, well, that's, it seems like the normal thing that you do. Like, I don't know. The booster did not concern me at all. So that's my. my first take. And then ship. Okay, so I've been like thinking about this and I think this basically tells us nothing. I think I'm, this is the worst take for content. Right? This is what

I'm saying. Not concerned and not only that, we learn nothing. But here's why though. Here's why though. So like the the first of all, we're still running on like the old ship version. And so like there's a limit to how useful this flight is because they're changing everything. Right. So that doesn't really help us. It's like kind of blew up or, you know, demised itself in roughly the same area we've seen before. I don't know if there's like a lot of new data you get from this entry.

Like there, I mean, it kind of reinforces some ideas probably and that's a great in science. But I don't know if there's like some groundbreaking truth that they're going to get from that. And it still leaves open the biggest question of this program. which is like, can they solve second stage reentry? Like, that question is now, like, not answered. So I feel like the program did not move in any direction with this other than just sort of like, they're just burning through these old ships. And we got to do zero.

It moves zero in a worse direction for you. I mean, only the fact that it's like, it's time lost. That's the, that's the backwards direction, right? Because it's like, instead of learning something now. I assume it was fairly expensive as well. Yeah. But, you know, money doesn't seem to be an issue for this company at this point. Yeah. So I don't know. I'm like I'm watching. I'm kind of like, well, there we go. This thing is this something's something's not working and they didn't change that today.

Do you do remember what my worst fear of the Starship program is? No, I don't think I do. That it is just all of the mistakes of shuttle. at the same time. Other than the side strap, right, the fact they're not sitting themselves next to solid rocket boosters, so they've been proved of that.

I can't shake the fear this week, Jake, that they're just trying to solve everything all at the same time, and it feels like whack-a-mole will continue for several years. Is this like a watershed off-nominal moment where you have a more cynical take about Starship than I do?

I think it might be. I think we, I think we might have crossed the Rubicon on this. I mean, it's not that I don't think any of these problems are not surmountable. It's that they've taken on a situation in which they have to get so many things right to make any progress from this point forward, that it is,

it is a little bit breaking their methodology of like quick iteration just get the next right step done right because there are so many steps that once like that works when you have a flight of stairs you think they move too fast no see no i i think they have my teleprompter died again so we're going we're going blind i'm going off the rails like a joe biden speech in mere minutes cake um you make it sound like we've scripted these shows No, it's not that they went too fast. It's that the stack of things to accomplish has a speed limit. I think that's what I'm realizing is that Starship Development has a speed limit. And they are finding it and brushing up against it. They're speeding. Yeah, they're getting tickets. Because they have to, like this is the third flight of the Block 2, Starship, right?

Which the thing was like, we're going to change where the front flaps are. never have even attempted anything that was involved with, and maybe they got some data on a cent, but like those flaps, they could have had no flaps, and they would have had just as much data on the new flap design, right? We've run dozens of the heat shield tiles, and it's like,

so it's not that I don't believe in them solving any individual problem, it's that the problem is so big that to take the next incremental step involves getting so many steps right that you're hitting, you're hitting a developmental speed limit. and that is a challenge for almost every company on this earth to overcome, right? There are companies that do that over and over again, right? Apple is one that operates at a certain scale that other people can't even touch,

and, you know, they've had their own challenges of their scale. And I'm wondering if, like, is there some formula there where the scale goes up, the number of problems that you solve rises with it, and that fundamentally limits how many incremental steps you can take at any one moment before you kind of get diminishing returns, or you haven't accomplished enough, or you're not making fast enough progress, and you get in this weird quagmire

of trying to figure out what is the slate of things that we should do, right? And then you factor on top of that that this flight, like the door stuck. Like, what is the iteration on the door? What is the thing that happened with that? Was that because of the spin? Or was that something else?

Also, you're giving them, I think you're giving them too much benefit of the doubt on the booster return. like I they've done hundreds of these so yes the goal boost have moved for this company this is not anyone else bringing a booster back they've brought them back before they've landed them like reusing the booster how many times have they reused a falconine booster two or three hundred like it's this is not they don't get the credit that the other that the first neutron that comes back and reflies they don't get the credit anymore I'm sorry like they same people

have done this hundreds of times I don't it made it it through all the hard parts and it blew up at the engine. Relight. Yeah. So if it fell apart on reentry, to use your parlance, I guess, as we've established last week, I would feel differently about that.

But it made it through and probably something, I assume that something broke on the way through that because it did seem a little spicier than last time, right? I don't know. I felt I noticed the, it was super spicy. Yeah. Yeah.

The second stage, I watched it this morning and I was like, I'm still listening. I'm just unplugging my teleprompter. Okay. I was like, this is wild because it was like, it seemed to be spinning faster and more like they had lost control pretty early. And it was just like just out of control, right?

I don't know. It seemed to be spinning faster. And then my teleprompter killed all my audio. What else? What else? I'm back now. I was saying it's it seems like they lost control pretty early. And like it.

Oh, yeah. Yeah. It was wild. And it was just like seeing a whole bunch of nonsense. So it didn't feel like a very good flight for stage two. It doesn't feel like I'm not convinced until they come out and say a lot that I'm not convinced that this wasn't the same issue. And it just happened a little later than last time. And now it presented itself as a spin versus a, you know, a rod during assent. I don't feel like we're out of the woods on that yet. I watched the, I watched Tim, Tim stream. And he was pointing out that there was like, Even at engine cutoff, like on a scent, there was a fire or like heated up elements in the engine base. So I think you might be on to something there. Like the problem had happened similar time.

It just a little further down. Luck had saved it. Yeah. Yeah, there was the one hot spot on the engine. Even my four and a half, almost five year old son did like a grimmis, the actual grimace emoji. He appeared on his face. And it's all the spot getting a little hot. I was like, that's the props, man.

That's a note. And then there was that on the other side of the skirt eventually. Which made me suspicious. Was that just like sun angle stuff? Maybe. Yeah, might have been. So I'm a little cranky, Jake.

I'm kind of cranky. I'm not mad at anybody. I just don't feel, and I also feel highly, highly convinced that internally, this is way more dramatic than the happy phase that Space Sixth is letting on externally because. Oh, 100%. This is the kind of shit. Like Elon's burning the building down right now.

Yeah, but like this is the company that likes to put out highlight reels of all the ship blowing up. and let people drive media trucks right up to where they're operating on the coast of Texas, right? So to silently cancel and not ever mention again the update from Elon that was going to be

before the flight and then was going to be after the flight and then has not been mentioned by anybody, SpaceX, Elon or anybody, and then just not, act like it never happened is very on SpaceX. It's gross knowing their history that they've been very open about this stuff

and it's concerning that, yeah, I mean, it's probably he's not. on meetings yet where he's yelling at people or whatever his current management style is. So I don't know. I just feel everything feels kind of weird. And I, at the same time, every great story has this like rock bottom moment and I hope this is it. Maybe the difference here is that here, I'll reset the universe back into its normal state. Maybe the difference is that like I was so cynical before that I just had absolutely no expectations.

You were already at rock bottom? And I was like, yeah, this is exactly. This is, like, I'm not, nothing changes for me. This is precisely what I expected to happen. And you were holding out hope and then it was dashed. Yeah. I don't know. There was enough, there was enough that happened that didn't feel like SpaceX.

That makes me wonder, hmm, like that something, something is different about this. Because it's not just, oh, they had another technical problem, right? It's the collection of things that I'm looking at. It's the fact that there were many different little things. that are going wrong, right? Paylor Bay door jammed. They were in a spin. They had a leak. The booster blew up. They stealth canceled a talk from Elon, which they love doing more than anything as these big events, the same title every time, making life multi-planetary. They're never going to iterate on the title. And so there was just enough happening that didn't, that wasn't the SpaceX way, right? Like the

SpaceX LLM would have not outputed this result. It was all too off of what the usual flow is. And that's more concerning than any individual technical piece of the flight. It's a it's a vibes Somalié thing right like that doesn't feel like this is the company. This feels like what show is that we had was it the last flight? I feel like I had the exact same take on the last flight like I was like something's wrong like something's all right so you're better you're better than me by one flight all right. Jesus Christ no it's good It's good. I'm glad we arrived.

All right. Well, it was a 16 minute show. We're canceling the rest of the show. So, do you think, all right, let's project forward. Do you think, take your calcium odds,

which I'm doing right. Oh, take your calci odds on V2 being, like which of these are the, are the strange result? V2 or block? two or the block one flight's going way better than planned? Which are the out of the out of family?

Out of family, yeah. That's still the funniest term. I think, I don't think, I don't see them as, I think that fundamental issue, I mean, I'm going to be stuck on this, but I still think that the second stage reentry is a technical challenge that is way bigger than people are giving in credit for. And I think that I think all the other,

I'm not worried about any of the other stuff. Like, hold on a second. They're going to figure out leaks. They're going to figure out leaks in the engine. They're going to figure out like the hot staging and the spinning and the landing guidance and the cat. That's all just like reasonably like straight. For SpaceX, that's reasonably straightforward

technical challenges. And I think that the bringing back three digit tons of, stuff through the atmosphere at orbital speed, never mind coming back from the moon or Mars, but like just plain old Leo return is going to be, uh, that's, that's non-trivial. It's, the atmosphere is thick, yo. And it's like, it's like, it's not going to, it's not just going to like casually stroll on in with a bunch of like, oh, these fancy heat douts. And they're just there, I think they're relearning that in, in your, uh, take, relearning some of the challenges of the shuttle because that was like, that was a, that dog the shuttle.

for the entire program and it killed people, right? And it's like we have to we have to not treat that like it's just, oh, it's SpaceX. It's just one more technical challenge that they're going to roll up their sleeves and knock out, right? Like, I think this is serious stuff. Let me try to drag you my direction though on that. Jake, every time they've gotten to reentry, it's worked well. I don't know if that's true though. The last one they got through, they landed on like on the buoy cam.

Okay, so the Starlink kept working. We know that. and like they turn the engines on. No, no, no. I'm saying that when they actually do a reentry, like when they have positive control and they do a reentry, they've gotten through the atmosphere and have turned the engines on and done the flip maneuver, right?

Has there been a single one that like... Again, that's like the easy stuff. I guess the first one where the flat melted. That's the easy part, but they got there. That's what I'm saying. I'm saying when they get, the rest of the ship can't get them there reliably. They've done it nine times. times and they've got three.

And that is an issue that it's like that's kind of how I see the problem. Is it three? Four? The existing, the existing like ascent problems and leaks and crashes are not problems because like those can't be solved. It's because they are, it's holding them back from the big hairy issue they need to get to and it's really, really hurting them. Right. And again, and the fact that they turn the engines on and spun the thing around and

soft land in the ocean, that to me is like not the problem. The issue is they need to get the ship reliably back. through in a way where it is reusable without a ton of refurbishment and not damage. And we don't know any of that stuff, right? It may have soft land in the ocean completely on fire and like half the tiles gone. Like, you know, there's the damage level there is a big part of that because as we've said lots of times, reusability is now the standard for this thing. You don't just need to land.

You need to land in a condition where you can roll back, you know, down the road to the launch pad the next day and go. That's the whole premise of this entire system. right? And if you can't do that, then the problem's not solved. Yeah. Yes. I mean, there's still a really good launch vehicle under the, under the hood there. If they don't, if this shit was not reusable at all, like this still would be kick-ass.

So. And it's not like they, like, of all the problems we would diagnose, it's not like, boy, it doesn't seem like they have enough starships. Like, they've got plenty of starships, right? There's been, this is 35 or whatever. And the ninth flight, they've gotten, they have starships to spare. It's all the other side. And that's my thing is when they've actually gotten to the point of reentry, they've had good control,

even if they want to improve heat shield tiles and do this and do that and change where the flaps are and make these optimizations. They've like, it's not like they've launched nine and eight times they've gotten to reentry and then completely disassembled at that point. And that's, I think my first point, right, is that every iterative step is so far to have, the technical ladder that now I'm going I'm mixing metaphors of like steps and ladders but I think everyone can deal with it. Steps down the ladder. Yep we got it.

They've got it. They've got to get the first 80% of the ladder above them to then make the next step down, right? It's one small step for every other program and a giant step, giant leap for starship. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's pretty much the point that they just have to every flight is so many things and nine of them in is a significant amount of, like, list the amount of, like, launch vehicles, spacecraft combos that have nine flights. Mm-hmm. And not that many.

So it's a legitimate number of flights. Yeah. Yeah, it's, it's interesting because, you know, trying to grade it on a SpaceX scale versus a normal rocket company scale gives you completely different answers too, right? Yeah. Like, but. It's a thing, man. I don't know.

Success brings expectation on these flights. I think Starship is showing that SpaceX is mortal and that's an uncomfortable feeling for us. Yeah, and an absolutely immortal task though that they're, it's like, they're showing that they're mortal by actually flying into the sun. And it's like, damn, I didn't think their wings would melt. Yeah, it's challenging.

Yeah, that's the speed limit. No one else is flying towards the sun and they're flying into it. And we're like, shit, I guess they could die. You know? Yeah. I mean, but it does, it does give me. me pause. Like, yeah, this is something I've said years ago is like, um, the idea of, of converting the system to be used on Mars is very challenging for the way SpaceX does things because

the iteration cycle so constrained, right? Like being able to wait for the launch cycles, either got to throw a ton of fuel at it, which is like, I guess that's one way to solve it, but it creates problems or you got to just wait every two years to, to fly, I don't know, fly 10 at a time or something, but it's, it's challenging, right? And that's how they, that's how they solve problems and they can't apply that to that. And it's looking like, Like now even, like the, you know, you say they've got lots of, lots of spaceships, but it's been, you know, it's been eight years that they've been built working on this. So like 39 over eight years is five a year. And that's, that's, that's kind of just like normal pace.

Like, you'll A can make five rockets a year, you know, if they wanted to. Oh, God. We're losing so many friends right now. So, so. But it's true though, right? I mean, like it's the normal pace. It sounds like a lot. I've got 39 ships.

Okay. you know, that's a lot. But that is that is not enough to to not solve reusability at a really high level and still have the program work. It makes for like a big rocket, but it's going to be very expensive and it's not going to fly right off. They got to, someone's got to change and they got to figure that out. Yeah. Yeah, because right now they're doing a reentry test about one every Mars window. This feels like how frequently they're getting to the reentry. Yeah. Like I'm actually kind of that's one one thing that's really kind of strange to me is how I've, I felt

like SpaceX will be moving faster by now. I thought we'd be seeing one of these go up every month at this point. And we're not. That's weird. There's so many things to do. That's my point, right? They've got, they have so many big tasks as part of this vehicle, which is the great part of it, but it's totally the weakness of it too. You know, it isn't, it isn't a simple thing. And that's why that's why shuttle has always been my greatest fear, right? There was nothing simple about shuttle. No one ever said, what a simple, beautiful, elegant, sleek spacecraft, right? That was... Maybe one of the most complex things we've ever built as humans here.

Of all time, right. And, you know, obviously they're not repeating every single mistake from shuttle program, but like, hmm, oh, no, no, gives me the fear. Gives me the fear. Maybe it'll have the same fate of shuttle, and they'll stop doing commercial launches and just do DoD and NASA stuff, you know? I mean, you know? Not the worst idea.

There's a business there, Jake. All right, we got to talk about whether you think the return of Elon Musk is going to be, were they missing him this whole time, Jake? Is that what's wrong? He's out of Doge. He's getting out of Doge, and he's shitting on the Republicans' bills. So to some extent, nature is healing itself. And he's returned to his tiny home in Boca Chica.

So what are you? you think what are the projections on that front? Is that a good or bad influence? I need I need Elon in the trailer hopped up on Madison so we can stay awake for 23 hours a day and and getting into that damn manufacturing floor. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, what do you think? Is that is this is that going to be a legitimate influence? Man, we're going to find out some stuff, I think. We're going to learn if this program turns around now, I, that is an interesting observation because it's like, that's always been the number one question, right? Is Elon 50%

of SpaceX's success or or not? Yeah, what level? Because I totally trust the things that we hear internally and, you know, Berger's books of how much of that, like, founder ethos

sinks into the good parts of SpaceX, right? And then there were a lot of anecdotes over the last couple of years of his absence, letting people get down rabbit holes on certain aspects of the of the architecture there and not really like yeah yeah not really pull out to zoom out as and look at like the entire integrated set right i think to some extent the early days of starlink were that phenomena right that there was a team going down a certain path and Elon wasn't happy about

it but isn't in that office all the time and then started appearing there more and that led to friction that eventually led to then the star link that we have today and so i buy i do buy that that there's the founder ethos that cuts through certain things and cuts out certain decisions that doesn't allow things to get taken down rabbit holes that they might otherwise if given you know a run of the place so now they've still flown it's not like they haven't flown but yeah i've been i've been waiting for like the the utter shoe to drop like i feel like almost every day i'm kind of like waiting for the news to be like half the team at star base was fired you know like I'm that feels like that's the what should have happened in the normal course of

SpaceX things but at this point and I don't know it feels too many things to do there's too many things to do it's the rent is too damn high down there there's too many things to do I mean the webcasts are straight up like hiring fests right like they're yeah every couple minutes there's like a pitch you know I feel like I'm being sold on a time share I had that I had to stream up on the TV this morning and my wife walked by and she looked over and there was like you know it was Tim stream right so there was like Chris Chris G on the screen on the space X I and then Tim up in the corner and she like looks at the screen she looks at Tim looks at Chris she looks at me she's like why the hell do all you guys look the same

I was like yeah it's a problem that we have pretty pretty accurate the problem with this industry is everyone's a freaking like metal age I got I still got to show up my glasses at some point It's good to see Chris Gio, the fact that he's still around. It's good. He's out there. I miss him. I miss him. Man.

I miss when we could talk to him. I know, right? It's just in the, it's in the veil of secrecy at this point. It sucks. He probably put a lot of effort into whatever the Elon talk was going to be. He's behind the Iron Dome. Steel. Stay in the steel dome.

stainless steel dome the heat shield dome no that would be too easy to get to um yeah right we'd extend that joke I think we have as that was all that's all I've got no more bits left on that you made me feel a little better

to round out our debate format I feel a little better I feel worse that you straight up told me you are at least one show faster than me on these takes minimum No, one flight. There's many shows.

It's one flight. That's true. Yeah. They're not flying very much right now. That's a lot of shows. It's like Newark Airport up in your... Do you feel worse or better? Is my crankiness rubbing off on you at all?

I feel the same. I'm not moved much by this right now. Like there's... Well adjusted. This program has just been spinning its tires for a few months at least. And it's, I don't know. So I mean, all right, let's do some schedule math, Jake. Do you think, do you think they, what year do they transfer propellant between two starships?

Man, wasn't that always the prediction? Like, I feel like that that's always been the milestone we've been waiting for. Yeah, what year is that? It feels like that was really, really ambitious to even talk about that. What happens first, that flight or starliner with people? Whoa. That's a good, that's a good burger tweet. He's coming at us in our time slot.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Our time slot, but it is kind of our time slot. He's doing like an off nominal ripoff right now, ripoff nominal. And we're over here doing burger polls. So what happens first? Starliner with people or propellant transfer. Those are, that's a really good one to throw in front of me because it's wild to think about.

Okay, so you got to be careful because you don't ever want to you shouldn't make predictions about a program right after a big milestone. So you shouldn't predict negatively on Starship after a failure because you're colored and you're thinking. Okay. Yeah. Milestone isn't the word I would pick for this, but sure. We'll go with it. It's a milestone.

It's a milestone. Milestone. Milestone achieved complete stall. No, no, no. The propellate transfer is a milestone. Oh, gotcha, gotcha. I will still give it to Starship. I think I will.

Because I'm starting to feel, I'm starting to feel even more cynical ball Starliner. I'm almost into your camp where it's like, that's it. And we're not going to see it anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I forgot about that take of mine. Yeah, yeah. That's the the ISS optimization. Exactly.

I mean, if any amount of these like cuts materialized, all the NASA programs, like Starliner is at the bottom of that list, it's going to be below the line, I think. I mean, if you believe Elon Musk, none of these cuts are going to materialize on anything, which was evident the whole time. I hate to break it to everybody. Yeah. You and I have both been saying that since the very beginning. Yeah, we have.

And we are not, I don't know where everyone calibrates our political vibes, but we are not near each other on the spectrum. We are not at all. And that's why this works. And neither of us were hopeful about that or whatever word you would use. hopeful. Neither of us were expecting the budget must be close to reality. But yeah, I don't know. It's a- You pick Starship, but okay, what year, give me a calendar year. Calendar year, yeah, that's, I mean, I think it still turned things around. It could still be

26, you know, that could happen. 26, yeah. I mean, that could be a year. I mean, we're halfway through now, I guess, but like I think it takes him at least a year, but it could be 16 months kind of thing, you know. The thing I would be worried about. Because they can do that before they fix reentry. That's the thing. Right. And they arguably should. Again, I still quit.

I still will fight that there's an issue with reentry. Because they don't have to fix reentry. You're talking about solve ship reuse. Because the reentry, when they get there, again, when they get to the reentry part, the reentry part works. They haven't landed on a pad. So we don't know if they're all SN10 and we're going to debate, was it successful or not.

To me, reentery. is a reentry is just a half-built car. It's not useful to anybody. Like, that's fair. Good, you got it back. Why did you go through all that effort? Like, who cares if you can land it? If you can't use it again, then you may as well have just blown it up in space or

crashing in the ocean. Sidebar, my favorite thing about SpaceX being the reusability company is that they're also the company that iterates so quickly and makes better versions every five seconds. Right. So they're going to be the most cranky about actually reusing stuff when they're flying the ship three years ago and they're like god damn this one has the shitty valve set up in the bottom and both like both SpaceX and blue origin give like completely counterintuitive messaging on on this subject because like SpaceX does does the exact same thing that's like we're solving reuse like it's

going to transform everything you're like okay cool uh what else are you doing oh we're perfecting mass manufacturer so we can make a bajillion of these things it's like those don't match you guys like if you're going to reuse them you don't need to make a lot and if you're going to make a lot you don't need to reuse it like pick one right and then blue origin is the opposite. It's like, look at the amazing factory had. We're going to be able to make so many new lens. How am I going to make four? Because it's reusable. So that's fine for us. That's all the fleet we need. Man, I was like, okay, you guys could if you could draw, man, that would be a great comic. Like you guys got to trade like infrastructure a little bit maybe here. I don't know.

Yeah. You got to get like a ghost kitchen for for producing rocket cores, you know? Right. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Here's hard. So you said they got to solve. I don't know. You want to do it? Me and you? We could do it. No, like business case.

I think that was called relativity, actually. No, like develop, develop a really good rocket that's reusable and then just sell it like an airliner. It's like, look in here. Put an order in for five new lens. Here's your five new lens. Flying as much as you want. Put in, you know, and every company's flying the same rocket. I mean, that's the Dawn Aerospace.

Just announced that with their, with their space plane. Yeah, yeah. That they're going to sell. They're going to sell the plane. This is airliners. It's not a new. business idea but yeah I mean it's suborbital so like it is plain shaped says the word plane in it but no I mean the I'm not having a new idea I'm just described how airlines

work no and there's many businesses before airliners that also work that so yes no here's you're saying that the reentry solution situation what I you're so you're saying they might shuffle those right you're talking about what I guess would you shuffle those order Would you try to focus on stop putting heat shields on these ships? Let's go do some propellant transfers. I know. I think, I mean, so here's where I'll like fight you on your take of doing too much at once. Is that if you have enough people and enough teams, then you kind of should.

So like if let's say they solve, the next problem they solve is like these leaky raptors so that the thing isn't like constantly on fire and exploding, right? And they can like reliably get into space. Right. After that, no promises, but like they can rely to get up there. You may as well kind of do what they're doing. It's like, let's try the Starlink door. Let's put some, you know, mass simulators in there and shoot them out and see. Like, that seems like a reasonable thing to do if you can get up there reliably. And so if, you know, the reentry thing dogs them for longer, may as well put a tank on one side of the ship and a tank on the other and start transferring stuff. And then maybe, maybe launch two at the same time. That's an operational thing and transfer stuff between them.

There's like stuff you can do in space before you come home, right? And it makes sense to iterate on those unless it's distracting them. That's where the leadership comes in, right? They need to be able to look at that and go, you can do this. You can do your experiment. If you in any way get in the way of the people with the critical problems, you're out. Like that's got to be how it's done, right? But that's what we don't know if it's happening like that or not.

Yeah. And that's the other risk, right, is that they try to do. they try to just catch up on their iteration roadmap. All right, well, the next flight, we'll do all what we plan on this flight and the next thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. And there's a balance there because it's like you should probably repeat a flight once or twice, and then you should probably add a thing on to the flight because that team that was working on the next thing up is ready now. So throw their thing on there.

But then eventually, if like too many of them in a road don't work and you've added too many of those things to your point, you've scope creeped your own launch. Yeah. You've kind of Artemis Ford yourself, right? There's like how many things can be on the critical path. And we don't know how this played out internally, but like I would hope that, you know, this flight, the long pole item on this flight was the critical stock. It was something to do with reentry and something to do with solving these engine problems. If this, if this flight in any way waited for the Starlink door actuator to get installed, then they've got their priorities.

Yeah, they screwed up. That thing better have been sitting installed in the Starship for the last week's waiting for. for their chance to fly, right? That's got to be the word. It broke because that was four versions ago. And it was like, yeah, that one sucks. We didn't think that was in a work anyway. Yeah, if they did like an Orion and the batteries died waiting at the facility,

that's fine. The Cube sets. Yeah. They're still out there announcing Cube sets, by the way, for Artemis 2. There's a press release every once in a while. I was like, this country puts a Cube set on. That's that the people in that program don't really know what's happening in the world. but sorry if you listen sorry i love you guys but we can take it to leave you know i'm sure

you can do something else oh man he could come work at our company where we create a ghost kitchen for producing rocket stages we're going to commoditize reasonable rocket sales yeah just buy them in the market go to the store get a rocket cots cuts for the stages speaking of which it's kind of uh relevant to firefly did you you see the Firefly news that came around five minutes ago, pretty much. Is this the investment? Is this the Northrop investment? Yeah, yeah.

It's good. I want to bring it up because it's like my long-held prediction, I guess, of what's going to happen to these things. Where's my Northrop? What was it? Was that on Northrop Grumman Firefly, $50 million, which now that we did not really sound like that much money. No. For some reason. But, um, 50 million dollar investment to advance the medium launch vehicle named Eclipse. They changed the name, Jake. Give me your review of the name

eclipse. Well, first of all, we all agree the old name was bad. So it could not have gotten worse. Yeah. Clips. I don't know. We have a problem in space with naming stuff. And this just perpetuates that same problem. It's like, so here, I'll go on the thing. Space stuff like has this. When you work in the area of space, you have this bounty of cool sounding weird names. Like just everything in space is named something super like quasars. Yeah, yeah.

Constellations that are Orion and like all this stuff. Like all these like super sick names that are like tied into like science. Aquarius. And like all this like we're just like we're so spiritual about how we name stuff in space. So like people feel like they have no choice but to just like I got it to take from that. It's it's on topic. I can't do better than that. So yeah, here's my new rocket.

It's called freaking Orion just like every other goddamn thing. And it's like this is the Orion Aries constellation machine. And you're like, okay, guys like I struggle with that. One of my biggest pet peeves of a company is when they've when they've established. a naming convention and then bail on it on like the second vehicle. That's my concern with companies. So, because there wasn't there a beta for a minute?

Because we have alpha. There was a, wasn't there a beta for a minute? Maybe even a gamma. Was that just the code name for MLV? Probably, but why not just name it the name then? I don't know, man. I don't know.

And why did you call it alpha if we're going to bail on the whole Greek alphabet thing? These are great questions. It's crazy. Okay, so the most mind-numbing piece of this announcement, Jake, is that both of these companies still act like Antares 330 is going to be a thing. I don't understand why. If that's true, what the hell is going on there? Why can't you just make the... one launch vehicle, you know?

Just get together. This is like when two of your friends, you're like, just get together. Like, we both, everybody knows it. Just go. Like, go be together. You know, this is that. You're always hanging out. We can tell.

You don't have to act like you got different plans. Just go, man, you know? They're still like, oh, Antares 3.30. We're coming back. We're going to put that shitty little solid rocket upper stage on top of this really cool first stage that we're built. I just love this. Northrop and Fire.

Firefly the will-they-w-want-the relationship. Yeah, it is. It's a situation-ship. It totally is, man. Oh, my God, get a room. Yeah, I mean, like, okay, if you're saying, I mean, okay, let me steal man this first. Firefly is bad at upper stages. So if Northrop is like, listen, we're fine with your first stage, but we're going to,

we're going to just handle the upper stage from here to get, like, presumably Cygnus. They talk about ISS cargo. They're going to put Cygnus back on this thing, if the schedule works out, I guess. Um, so I'm, I'm, that's the best argument I can make for it. The worst argument is like, so you're going to make these new first stages, all these new beautiful engines, and then you're going to put a little caster on top. You're going to waste one of your beautiful first stages on the little cast. I don't know. That's weird.

Is it going to fit in the fairing? Is the fairing different? Because, you know, these are like, this is such an old. old space way to design a rocket, right? Like this is exactly how like the entire history of like Atlas and Delta went. You know, it was just like, well, what do we got? Like you just go to the factory and be like, well, I got all these things and all these things. And so if I just turn a knob on this and turn this one upside down, we got a whole new

rocket. Let's go. Let's see. You know what I'm just like welcome to Atlas three. I was bringing up the Delta three image, which is the one that's like, what? And even like the like, is going on this thing. the old like Saturn is happening with this. That's like a centaur on top of there or something. Well, no, it's like the Delta upper stage.

Like that's still. Oh, yeah, right, right. That's like the EU or I-CPS right on top of this crazy thing. Whichever one it is. There's this might be the most curable looking. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Most curable looking thing, right? You've unlocked the big payload fairings, but you still have the small tanks.

Exactly. So you've got to do this. Yeah, yeah. That Aryan four. Aryan 4 is a historically terrible looking long people Yeah And that one is like

Very literally like four different countries You'd be like well I got these things lying around And they're just like well I gotta find a really good image of it Germany called France It's like what do you have lying around you know I got some solid rock Okay put those on there

And we'll The buffet Oh he's bringing the accents out Yeah look at that thing That's crazy looking What a nightmare And it's like four stages too It's a lot.

And the one looks like bricks. Yeah. And I, yeah, that's like the weird shielding or whatever. Yeah. And like I'm pretty sure it's four stages, not because four stages was the correct amount to get to orbit. It's because four countries were involved. Yeah, it's how many they had. They needed a job.

They needed a job for everybody. So everyone got a stage and they figured it out. That's geo return visualized right there. And then like, you know, Saturn's the same way. Like the Saturn 1B was like, night. of a rocket. It was like, yeah. Yeah. What if we take eight of these other rockets we have and just literally glue them together and then we'll put that like, you know, it's such a funny way to. I think I think I'm like on I'm on team clean sheet rocket these days. I think the whole system's got to be designed from the ground up. But that's what I'm saying with the firefly thing. It's like isn't that what they're doing? And then they just keep acting like the Antares 330 is still going to be a thing. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what they're doing, man. I feel like they're keeping up appearances until they decide that it's time to actually acquire.

Probably, yeah. Right? I was going to say the stock's high and Firefly right now, but like they have a good lunar lander, they have a bad upper stage. I don't know what to do with that. I don't know either. If Antarius 3.30 flies again, or if Antares flies again, I promise I will be there for the launch. I'll throw a big meetup at Wallops.

I'll wear an Antares 330 full outfit. I'll get pants made that matched the shirt. I'll wear an entire The North of Grumman swoosh Yeah The blonk logo that they have I'll deck out

You know it's like just that Blanc It just goes falls off the edge It's a terrible logo It's the opposite of this Right It's like

Yeah yeah Right It's a terrible logo But you know how much money They paid for that too Jake I know That was We did a whole show on logos

And 40% of it Was complaining about The North of Grum New logo Yeah I'm designed for Definitely build them six figures for that.

I think it's like Gotham that they used too. Like it's a very pedestrian font. Yeah. They went to Microsoft Word and it went font and then they arrowed down six times. The Gotham and they got it. I think it is Gotham. It's Gotham or close to Gotham. Brutal.

They do that thing where they take a font and then they change like four letters by adding like a little seraph or something and then they call it Gotham New. Yeah, Northrop, Northrop, Gotham. Yeah, Northrop Gotham. Yeah, Northrop Gotham and they charge a ton of money for it. Northrop Grotham No shit I will not name the

I won't name the client I will name the advertising agency one of the last big website redesigns that I worked on when I was at Happy Cog with the G back in the day and got to hit the G hard the client had gotten

their logo redesigned by Gray advertising right like people from Mad Men like historically famous advertising firm and the quality of work in his branding document was so low that they mispelled, they used Gotham, and they misspelled it on the entire document. It was got, like, they switched the A and the H in Gotham. So it was G-O-T-A-H-M.

Got them. Got them. They cashed that jacket and went, Got him. I'm so annoyed. I've been telling this story for 11 years, and I've never stumbled. Okay. Yeah, that's the story.

That's the story. That's the story. And this is the North of Grumman. There's the old one, which had a little bit of personality. And there's the new one that just has a weird right angle. And blue shooosh. We are, uh, the official off-nominal take on the North of logo is the original one with the yellow with the eagle. We've got to find, pull that up.

That is, we're on team this logo. That's right. What was it? Yeah. It was like a whole big shoo-ishy. I don't think it was yellow, wasn't it? I thought it was yellow. Was it?

I thought it was not yellow. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. It was. Was it just Grumman at that time? No, no, it was Northrop. I'm just trying to find.

Which one was it? I'm trying to find. Most of these are, your page cannot be found. Oh, yeah, there is. No, it's the Grumman. It's the Grumman logo I'm thinking of. Are you not thinking of? Actually, they're both.

They both have it. Both old Northrop one? Yes. Yeah, that one. that was rad and then pull up the historical grub and one oh that thing

yeah that was crazy yeah is that not loading for you your screen share your screen share paused we got no search herself there you go yeah that one's awesome that looks like a badass minor league hockey team too

doesn't that look like someone that would play in the Canadian Junior's leagues yeah that's the the the Guelph Eagles, the 12th Eagles. The Drummondville. You know what I'm going to do is I'm going to start a new

beer league hockey team and we're going to make this the logo. I'm going to rip the Grumman out and we're going to have blue jerseys and this is going to be the logo and it's going to be great. It's called Godams. Goddums. Man, I'll never recover from that. So yeah, that's my take on Northrop Grumman's situation ship with Firepower. fly. I don't know what they're waiting for, to be honest. This is the moment. Just acquire them.

That's the part I can't figure out. This is the time. Acquisitions are back. Cowards. Yeah, we're back. You can, you can acquire people for the next two and a half years. Go for it. You should be able to close it by then. Yeah. Acquisitions are back. You can buy Johnny I for $6.25 billion. Yeah. Oh, man. I'll go, I swear though, I'll go to that Entarius 330 launch. I'll be there.

Speaking of Virginia launches, give me a neutron vibe check real quick. You feel like that's closer than it may appear? A little quiet. No, I think the opposite. I think like they've got a lot of things. They keep talking up, they keep talking up this year. I mean, it's so hard to tell with Rocket Lab because they're just like, nothing's going on, nothing's going on, nothing's going on. Here's the finished rocket.

We flew it three months ago and we're sharing a video now. And the payload's on its way to Venus. Yeah. They've flown three reentry capsules with Varda at this point, successfully. That's pretty good. One of them was up there for as long as it would take to get the Venus. As long as it would take to get a license, which also is the same amount of time as it took to get to Venus.

What was that mission that we heard about? Somebody told us about that mission. that the PI was this crazy dude who knew that it was going to take time to convince NASA to let them do like an extended mission, but they only had a certain number of days to complete this departure burn to go to a different destination. There's people listening to this that are young. The Ice-I one? Ice-I-N-I-N? IS-E, what is it, ISP.

Oh, the Interplanetary C-Montatory Explorer ever saw. the ICE one. That one. It would change the names. It was ISEE, I think, before or after one of the two. Mission. Let me do those. I don't know if we've heard international commentary explore ice.

And then it was the ISEE International SunE Earth Explorer 3. Yeah. I don't know if it was three. This is the one that they tried to reestablish contact out of an old McDonald's once. Yeah, but it might have been maybe it was number one or two. There was two. their three spacecraft. I don't know.

I don't know if I heard this on this show or in a different conversation, but there was a PI or somebody in charge of the project that, I know a particular person that's yelling at their phone right now as they listening to this,

but they only had like, I'm going to make up some times, Jake, for effect so that you understand the story. They had like a week to do a departure burn to go to a really cool destination, but they knew that getting approval

for that was going to take like a month, but that nobody would find out that they did the departure, burn for like six months or whatever because nobody's going to look so they just told the team do the departure burn we'll work on the paperwork and get approval and then by the time we're approved we'll tell them we're already on our way and this happened on a mission and we need that person to come on and tell us this story and i forget at this point why i even started this story oh rocket lab so to us yeah i i don't know i it sounds familiar but i can't think of where that came

from yeah I think I know you're talking about too when they're they're screaming at their phone right now being like it was me I was on your show and I said that story and you don't remember that or my name I remember these people's names we'll have them on the show to tell us the story yeah please email us if you told us the story email us we actually have some spots coming up that are open we do yeah we should throw that out there we got a few minutes left here we should do home key home housekeeping. Homework. Homework.

Homekeeping. Homekeeping. Housework. Also plug the Discord. We haven't plugged the Discord in a fucking year and a half or something. Okay. Okay. So basically what we're saying is we need a lot of help here.

First of all, if you would like to help us with filling out our content schedule over the next few weeks, we have some available slots. So if you are an interesting person with something to say about space, send us email. We'll probably say yes. Let's be honest about it. The second thing is, yes, if you'd like to be like to be. like to support us monetarily because this is a I don't know this is work I guess um don't sell too hard though okay you can no you our discord is awesome we have some great people in there uh it's only five bucks a month to get in and that that minimal paywall keeps out the worst 90% of people

and so you just get in with this really great group of people we we chat we make memes it's a lot of fun um so anything to discuss space wise is in there and a lot of not space stuff too for interesting non-space because we're all friends at this point. It's been going on for so long that it's like a pretty tight group. So you should do it. Discord. Tight but welcoming, I would say. Yeah, yeah, yeah, offnom.com slash discord.

Well, check and make sure that links to works because it's been, I think literally a year since we plugged this. I will also mention, Jake, as part of this plug, if you want to feel better than everyone else in that Discord, you can pay five times the amount of money and never fly ride share and get the same experience as everyone else, but know that you did it in style. Exactly. Yeah. So congratulations to those that do. And we change the color of your name.

So you do actually get more. Yeah, that's true. That's a good point. More color. More color. A digital asset, per se. And also you get what is returning next week. We'll announce that the pre-show is returning next week now that I'm established

base camp in the studio here. You can watch me as I build out. Maybe I'll do some tours of the little studio here as I build things out. The new facility. Yeah. There's just a desk in here and like a table and the light. That's it still. But you can watch.

People are going to think that you're in a facility right now with padded walls. That's like so bright and white. They're paneled. They're hard. You can see a window. If I go to my single shot, there's a window right here. There we go. It's a real place.

It's a real window. I don't know if this was the one that opens. This one opens. This one opens. All right, all right. It doesn't really open that great, but it opens. And that's the Foley work for today. So, no, it's still me.

It's still just me on the shot. All right. There's some stuff coming up, isn't there? That we typically watch in the summer. I feel like there's a couple of, there's some stuff coming up. There's something top of mind. Maybe not.

Maybe I just think we need to talk about the fact that China launched a asteroid sample return mission. Tian Wen, too. That's a topic Yeah Probably yeah Yeah I've been not paying much attention to China lately So I should probably get back on that

Yeah Jeez That makes one of us Jake You've been paying a lot of attention to China man As we've discussed Maybe not the space side but Some house renovations and I'm worried about material costs So yes

Yes I have been I thought you're just going to buy all your materials From your glorious 51st day just north of you? Yeah, also pretty expensive. We're our dead body, buddy. Oh, my God. Did any of these buttons work, Jake?

I don't know. Is there a music plan? No. I don't know. None of these buttons really work anymore. We're not going to be able to end the show. That may be true. No, there's a finish button over here.

There's the I can be any music. We'll bring on the next topic of the show. This is great. We're just landing. Land on this point so well. Got them. Yeah, that's what we got. Got them.

That's it, Jake. Thanks, everybody. See you. Bye. You might be right that we can't end this show. People, I think we're still here. It still says on the air. Now I've, I got to unplug my telecomptor.

This is so fun. Look at this little extra. This is like the Marvel credits content, you know. Oh, I see what happened. I see what happened. You got to stay in the theater. I promise. We're still here.

Look at us. We're still. here people look at this bye I'm hitting it now bye is it gonna work I don't know if it's gonna work we might be streaming forever Jake we're still live so don't say anything crazy I literally can't do anything in this app anymore so that's super fun and I don't have in this show what happened to this show hold on to find the button Jake we're talking about how good is this people where's the button to end it jake i feel like something weird is happening because something weird is happening there hasn't

been any youtube comments for a long time either i hope we're live still i'm gonna go check it out i'm just going to quit and see if we've survived okay all right how's that work good we're definitely live are we all right good well it's on YouTube then and otherwise I'm going to quit this app and we're going to see what happens

and I'll talk to you later Jake Bye Goodbye