Off-Nominal - 205 - Knives Out for Kansas

Episode Date: August 8, 2025

Jake and Anthony decide which spaceship(s) they would like to steal from a museum.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 205 - Knives Out for Kansas - YouTubeNASA’s new chief has radically rewritten the rules for private space stations - Ars TechnicaLawmakers writing NASA’s budget want a cheaper upper stage for the SLS rocket - Ars TechnicaIs the Dream Chaser space plane ever going to launch into orbit? - Ars TechnicaHouston, you’ve got a space shuttle… only NASA won’t say which one - Ars TechnicaSpace Shuttle Independence - WikipediaMikoyan-Gurevich MiG-105 - WikipediaLK (spacecraft) - WikipediaFollow 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

TLS and go for main engine, start. Hi, Jake. Neither of us are centered in our frames for the start of the show. I know. I got to move in the right spot here. What's up? You're still dancing. Music's not going.

Well, you know. Tone it down, Jake. We're stealing spaceships today, baby. You think the music stopped, but what was really happening is that I had the actual YouTube video up in a browser tab and I was hearing that play back to me one second after. Healthy. Healthy way to stream on the internet. Yes.

That's how I do it. Listen, I'm getting lots of Starling down. I was going to say notoriously stable bandwidth, you yourself, who didn't cancel a whole show two weeks ago. The downspeed works pretty good most of the time. But, you know, I'm looking out there. There's a little bit of clouds. I had some thunder earlier. I was freaking my dog out.

But it seems to be okay now. So we'll see. I like it. Yeah. Cool. Starlink Boys have solved a lot of problems. Thunder, not one of them. Well, let them know.

You got mead today? Do you got another? You uncork something else? I did. Oh, by the way, no, no. First. No, no. Back up.

Follow up. How did last week go? What was Friday like for you after that mead? It was fine. I felt fine. But it was not salvageable. So that bottle went down in the drain because it was just really bad. But I got three more of them.

This will be the new tradition. I'll open up one every year in August. It's poured out for your homies. I'll pour out. Yeah. We'll see. of age solves it, you know. Sure.

But yeah, I bottled another one. This is the last one. I had a little bit left over of the wine bottles. I went into a, just in a beer bottle. But this is just a traditional. It's like this plain meat. It's like honey.

That's what's in it. Honey and water and yeast. And it's pretty good. I like it. This is the first one that I made. Show us the glass. Well, this one, it didn't clear actually. So look, that's like very, you know,

this one didn't clear as well. And I'm not sure. sure why? Yeah, that's kind of ideal. You want to be able to, you know, you want to be able to read through it is kind of the thing. It's like it's not, it's not bad.

It's just kind of a presentation thing. But this is the first one that I made in the Meade fridge. So I was having issues with temperature because I live in a hot place. And, you know, like the yeast temperature range would be like, oh, this is like really great between 12 Celsius and 28 Celsius. That's like the range you want to. I fermented that.

And I was fermenting at like 32. So like, you know, it was like the use was super stressed out. So I got a fridge. Sounds like my project Redwood. Yeah, a little bit. I got a fridge and I hooked up like my own thermometer to it.

So it turns itself on and off and regulates the temperature at about 20. Oh, okay. And this is the first one that I made in there. So this is, it's pretty young and it's, that's pretty good. Oh, so do you think that's what you screwed up with the first batch?

I think it's one of the things. You baked it? basically you know crock pot at your mead yeah i told you there's like that that um that rocket fuel taste right the fucils right the the bad kinds of alcohols that that happens when yeast is stressed out so yeast will get stressed out when it's too hot or too cold or they don't have enough nutrients or they're not enough sugars or all the different you know the pH could be off all those kind of things can stress it out so um i'm sort of like eliminating variables i've started giving it nutrients and refrigerating it and blah blah blah.

So yeah. Look at you. Professional. It's all chemistry and science, man. Yep. I have acquired from, well, just the store, but originally Florida. You know this one, Jake. Hi, Lai, baby.

I love that. One day we'll go to High Lie together. All right. After the boycott. We'll go see a launch. Yeah, after the boycott's done. So 2030. I'll be there with all of my children, I think.

It'll be old enough at that point. Yeah, after the boycott when I take Will out for a beer. Us and the boys, yeah. We're all going to go out for Highland. Will's bachelor party, we will go to Highland. Yeah, yeah. We got a roundup of stories today that are newsy and weird, I would say. They're all, they all fit the weird theme.

Well, except for one of them, which is, you want to start with, yeah, you want to start with the space stations one, because that's, I think it hits on some things that I've been, we have been pissed off about and maybe is the right moment to talk about it. Time to do it. Yeah. Give us the cold notes here. Previously on commercial space stations. NASA had a brand program sketched out where they got the attached Axiom module

and the free flying space stations and it's going to be great. There's all these bidders and we have no money. that was previously on space stations, right? They never requested really legitimate budget for this. An unfunded mandate, yeah, that's what we call that. Yeah. So they've signed new rules, which they are not going to do the, by the way, this is via R's Technica, Eric Berger, the number one free space news site on the internet in the case.

The program of record for it. Yes, the new, yeah, the new blog of record, the fan blog of record. So instead of doing the downselect to an actual contracted space station, which was the plan pretty soon, I think, right, within the next year or something? It was getting close. Now they're going to just continue with Space Act agreements like they have been doing where people collaborate with NASA and they will award two or three providers who will fly

space stations and the requirements for those have been way loosened. So previously it was like two crew forever, just like ongoing basis. Now it is four crew for a one month increment. So temporary space stations are allowed. Temporary or like short, short lived space stations, right? And notably everyone's saying this point at VAST as being the competitor that was not in the old program,

almost explicitly the way that they run their space station is how this is written. So you could say like picking winners and losers. They're just like, the company must be named Vast. And then we've, yeah, we've talked with that before. This is like very much the like, write the contract so that you can get around the procurement rules. Yeah. They're not wrong.

That is definitely like written to match VAS. So it does very much get away from the, uh, ISS style of like permanently crude stations. And then loosens up. Oh, also the current NASA administrator, Sean Duffy. is saying there's up to a $4 billion shortfall in the budget that NASA was expected to receive over the preceding years, proceeding years. And this was going to cost $2.1 billion over the next five years for the new space stations. So we ain't got any money.

So we're going to do this other version. Give me your assessment of this. Yeah, I mean, it sounds fine. The thing with this program is that, like, I had zero expectations for it because they just weren't, they were doing literally nothing with it. So like, sure, change it. Yeah, let's do it. Literally any idea could be better. So yeah, yeah. So yeah. And I think, I think acknowledging the budget difference is going to probably smart at this point, even though it's not in law yet, but like something, something's happening, you know, so. Yeah. I don't know what it's going to be yet, but it's,

It's changing, that's for sure. I feel like you could probably roll out my entire take on this, but I'll spare you that effort. I think this is going to be covered. Like, Sean Duffy is wearing the hot dog suit when someone find who's responsible for this, right? Like, we're all just trying to find the guy who did this. Like, this will be talked about in the way that, like, the Trump administration is wearing that a hot suit saying that. And yet, like, to your point, like, it isn't just like now there's no budget for this program.

There never has been. No one was serious about ever having the budget for this. So this is the administration that's willing to sign the paper that said it. Biden left this program stranded in space. Let's just put it that way. Yeah, like NASA generally, and this is true for this commercial space stations thing, this is true for the Mars sample return, which you can speak to more. there are several programs over the last five or ten years that NASA, the administration,

or the combination of both of them, have completely either fumbled entirely like Marsamp return or strategically bad at managing like commercial space stations, and now are left in the state where you can't even figure out how to enact the program because you weren't serious about it for the last couple years. Like, if you wanted commercial space stations to exist and your number one partner in the ISS invades a sovereign country and everybody gets mad at them and everybody cuts them out of the global market and your space station's falling apart from their side on and you don't immediately go to Congress and say, we need all the money because we need a space station.

Then you were never serious about a space station. This has been my gripe for years. And then now it's like, oh, but the Trump administration canceled. And it's like, no, you weren't serious about it. you didn't go actually do a program. You just talked about it and said, like, I don't know, $20 million will do it this year, right? And one day we'll get $2 billion. Is there anyone actually making that take, though?

Like, oh, Trump's canceling the commercial Leo destination, the program, that bastard? Like, is anyone actually making that take? I don't know. No one in the no is making that take, right? So my point is this will easily get lumped in with the rest of the NASA budget stuff. Like, hey, NASA's budget shortfall. Even Sean Duffy himself is doing it. Hey, NASA's not going to have $4 billion over the next couple of years.

years, right, unsaid because of our budget requests. That's the hot dog part of this. So even they are saying, like, yeah, we took the money away for this program. And it's like, you may have, but also NASA was never serious about going to get money for this program. Yeah. That's why that's why this one, like, I just can't get hot and bothered about it because it's just like there was, there was nothing here.

Yeah. We've been talking about every, every CLD news piece in the last two weeks that we've brought up in the show. it's always been like, well, I don't know why they're not spending a whole pile of money on this because it seems like the right thing to do, but here we are. Yeah. It does make the budgeting a little easier long term though, right? Like that this effectively removes, you know, that budget wedge graph that we see every couple of months where it's like, here's the ISS program and that will wean out and then

the next thing will balloon up and that one will like this solves that chart a little bit, right? Now everyone's going to keep talking about SLS Block 1B. and Gateway and all that. Which is what they should be talking about. Well, and then I guess I should click around the paper of record R's Technica and find the story about the... When was this?

Somebody... The house was like, hey, what would you do if you didn't use the exploration upper stage? That's a big deal. This one. You love the Block 1B, Jake. You love Gateway. You want Gateway to exist. EUS is like the biggest boondoggle in SLS's history.

That's like... I love when you say the word boondoggle. That's my favorite. Yeah. Boondoggle. That's right. I use it right. Isn't that the right word?

I know, you did. I just, you use it so rarely that when it comes out, I'm like, oh man, he's on boondogel territory. Because that's the closest you get to like going John Stossel on us. I'm too even temper. Is that what you're saying?

Yeah. I got to let it go sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, because boondoggle is not a word you use when you have a, like, middle of the road take of something. There are some financial opportunities with the U.S. Yeah, this is another one, though, that I'm like, probably good that someone's writing a letter and saying, what would you do if you did a different upper stage on top? Yep, yep, yeah.

I mean, you could be pessimistic about it and say someone's doing the setup for like, there are no other good options, right? this is all we have. That's actually a great point, though, because I feel like that's how... We looked into it and it's a disaster. I mean, wasn't that... The commercial market is not ready. Charlie Bolden, they rolled him out again for this.

SLS is real. The U.S. is real. Large diameter upper stages. It's on the launch pad. God, so good. Wait, but wasn't that we looked into it take, where when Brianstein said, we're going to look into flying Orion on commercial rockets

and then got like smack down behind closed doors, he came back and said, actually, we did look into it and actually the SLS is the best thing to launch it. So that is, yeah. His, I don't want to die on this hill part of his administration. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Don't overuse that metaphor. Yeah, I guess not. EUS is real. I don't know if we're getting better than that on that take, Jake. EUS is real. Yeah. Every time I see, the problem with that program is just like, you look at, you're like,

okay, what's your take on EUS? You're like, well, you know, it's like pretty expensive. And then you remember that it has a dependency on the launch tower, which is also really, really expensive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. like it all has and then like that's all like a dependency of the gateway thing and you're like oh shit all of this is wrapped up in a completely isolated like like triple boon dog triple boon dog oh wow and you're like okay but wait hold on this is a cancerous tumor that we need to cut

right out of the program hold on hold on if if you had to this is it would you rather Jake um one of them can survive the gateway program or e-us gateway Wow. Why? Wouldn't you? No, I'll take an EUS. You want the giant expensive stage whose only job is to put gateway into orbit and not have gateway? Or do you want gateway, which could be delivered by some other provider and do something of some value, some value greater than zero?

Okay, here's, this is going to be a great. This is one of our, this is goodbye Caesar versus dragonfly. The new thing is EUS versus Gateway. I'll be an EUS stand in this one. Gateway locks you in to a weird, like you have to then manage a space station. Having EUS is, it doesn't drastic,

like having or not having EUS does not drastically change the flight rate of SLS. That seems like that's going to be pretty much what it is. It doesn't make it worse. Probably a little bit worse, but it doesn't make it a lot better. It doesn't really make it a lot worse. There's no other option yet, right?

Like, there's, you can't make the interim one anymore. So it's like, that's what I'm saying. Straight up, straight up shootout, EUS or Gateway. What I'm saying is gateway locks you into having Gateway and maintaining it and flying stuff there. And there is more future sunk cost in the Gateway than EUS, which is tied up with SLS in a way that like every once in a while when SLS launches, it's like 10 extra tons. I could figure out what to do with that versus Gateway that's locking you.

into lunar orbit. I'm saying, I'm going all in on lunar surface. I don't want any parts of lunar orbit. I want to go straight to the surface. So having EUS, if I have to have EUS for gateway to go away, I'm game. No, man, do the math. Do the math. What is the US caught? Yeah, what is EUS caught? Like, if we want to have EUS and you got to buy the damn tower through. A couple bill. Yeah. For a year? I don't know. I hope not. We're buying the tower once, right? Is it a subscription? Okay, so all that money. ML as a S. I'm buying the service.

Extended warrantsly? What am I getting? I mean, yes, it's a cost plus program. Like, yeah, absolutely. I don't care how they frame it. You are paying a annual subscription to the SLS program. I hope you know that. Yeah, yeah.

So you've got all this money you're going to tie up in U.S. to get an extra 10 tons of lift every year. Whatever it is. It might be more like I'm talking co-manifesto for HALO, right? I know it's like a billion tons of Lyft for SLS then. So I don't know if you've looked up the price of a Falcon 9 recently, but I can get you that 10 tons somewhere else way, way.

Okay. So if that's what you're after, let's get it a different way. At least if we have to pay a tax. You're a misunderstanding me, sir. If you have to pay a tax and buy either a gateway with all the obligations that come of that of maintaining some shitty space station and some shitty orbit, versus the tax of having an upper stage that delivers 10 tons to lunar orbit every year,

dude like I'll take the space station any day at least I'll get a picture of a of an astronaut drinking a cappuccino out of a weird thing with the moon in the background man let's do it let's do it all right that's my all right how much does this cost per year uh three billion ops plus a billion of transportation right four billion do you think a lunar space station is more or less than a low earth orbit space station well they're going to operate it like for three weeks a year so yeah true and the and the and the occasional rental anyway. It's the space vacation home.

It's not like a real thing that you're living in every day. And the transportation costs of Gateway are the SLS costs. So like you're paying that in either one of these scenarios. No, no, no, no, no. This is my, this is my game, Jake. You can't, you can't do it isolation. This is my game. It's my game.

Let me have my rules. No, you're out. You've lost. Now you've run to go post. I'm trying to be in the US then. I just hate Gateway this much. I'm going to be honest with you. I know there's people that listen that work on it and stuff. Well, I think what we're arriving to.

The correct answer is neither. Neither is right. Yeah. But I don't know which one. Is this like people in Congress trying to figure out, okay, well, we tried canceling Gayway and that didn't work. What if we try canceling EUS? Will that make the House of Cards fall?

Yeah, I don't know, man. I think it's just like, like, I mean, Congress, if my take on Congress right now is that they're all just trying to stay under the radar and get their job done while like the strapnels flying. and I think if there's anything that's like a stalling tactic or like a study or like just defer the thing to next year, like you're just trying to get to the end of the day. I think if you're Congress right now. And like midterms are coming up.

It's like I just kind of get to that damn election and we'll figure out the rest from there. So anything you can throw out there as like misdirection or a talking point or whatever without making an actual decision. No one wants to make a decision right now, right? Because it's like fraught. So, yeah, it's a bloody expensive to do so. You don't want the freaking eye of Sauron from the, from 1600 Pennsylvania looking at you. Although a resounding rejection of the budget request was interesting. Yeah.

Almost none of that. You got a little bit of wiggle room here and there, but like the Senate was like, no, the Biden budget was good. And then the House was like, the Biden budget, but like, let's shift a billion of science over to humans. The Biden budget. You're my favorite political story of the last year. The Biden budget. It lives, man. Yeah.

Yeah. Zomified. But that is interesting. That they, there were less, I figured Congress would reject many of the big headline things there, that there wasn't the political support to go along with some of those things. But I figured,

I figured a couple would be embraced. And really it was just like, no, we're going to do pretty much full funding. It's interesting. A little turning of the guard. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. Here's the thing with, I mean, we were going to have a no Trump show, but here we are. No, no, we were.

And then here we are. The, uh, the budget request. We went off. You were like, you're like, you're like, you're like, uh, here's the thing with this administration is the, the budget request may have done his job, which was just like, shake the shit out of everything and make everybody panic

and freak out and epic chaos, right? That might have been its only job for all we know. Yeah, I mean, if some of it gets through, then they were into it. It's the flood the zone

with shit thing. Yeah. Well, now it's a shootout between, you know, we want to get this thing passed before the deadline, but also we're taking that August recess, nonetheless.

So now it's a shootout on what can they do in the early and mid-September? to actually do this. Good news is Labor Day is a little early this year in the U.S. It's a little early on the schedule. It's the very first couple days of September, so a little bit more time before the October deadline

than we'd usually have. Not going to matter. Not even one bit. Yeah. Anyway. Anyway. What else is that on life? Do you want to talk about Dream Chaser, or do we want to talk about our

spaceship acquisitions. We should talk about Dream Chaser. We should do a small take on Dream Chaser. Paper of record, Ars Technica, pulling that article up again. We're doing exclusively Ars Technica content for the next several weeks. This is really funny though, because I was mentioning this in the pre-show about how I'm so jaded on dates now that I just put things out of my mind and then I forget about them. And literally like four days ago, I was like, hey, yeah, Dream Chaser.

That's like a thing that someone said was going to exist at some point. I'm like, when was that supposed to launch? 2017, like, I think we should, I should look into that. And then, like, this thing popped up in my news feed. And I'm like, I swear to God, Eric Berger is like got a chip in my head and he's listening to what I'm thinking about. Because I was just thinking like, what the hell is going on with Dream Chaser? Can we do it?

Did you look up? Did you look up when Gene Chaser were supposed to launch originally? No, I didn't. Okay, don't, don't, don't. I want to play a game with you because we didn't. Okay. Can we do like a closest, a closest two game on who can guess the original launch date? The original launch date?

The original launch date? Are we talking about the cargo one? bounds on it. Yeah, let's do... That's too unconstrained. Original cargo launch date under CRS 2 or whatever they're a member of. Well, when did they even get that contract?

Jesus. It was CRS 2. So we've made it through Orbital Sciences era Cygnus. We made it through original Dragon and they were contracted well, I'm going to give you the game. So we got it both independently. We should have whiteboards where we can do like the write your date number down and then show it.

Yeah. I got, I'm going to say original launch date for cargo was supposed to be I'm going to pick like Should we do like an over under? Yeah, sure, sure. Because I think the one I have is a,

oh no, because that makes me change my strategy a little bit. No, just pick and we'll figure out who's closest to it. I'm going to say October 2018. Yeah, you're not far off from where I was going to say 2019 somewhere. Okay, pick a month. June 19. June 2019. All right.

Now, how do I find this date is the question. You go to the history section. SNC completes the first Dream Chaser cargo service milestone. Space News press release July 26th. let's read is this a fair enough assessment probably right yeah dream chaser will provide a minimum of six cargo delivery services to and from the ISS between 2019 and 2024 nice I think you probably won that uh how do we find out anyone in the chat get it January 16 was the award there we go and then 16 okay let's see okay here's

here's the NASA news article on it. Yeah, 2019 through 2024. That's what it says. Okay. I'm going to give you to win on that. All right. I mean, it says beginning late 2019. That's what I said.

Okay, there we go. You win. You win. You win. So that was supposed to launch when we were at IACDC. Yeah. God, that's so long ago. Jesus.

Right? And so this is the thing is like, these things sneak up on me. I was like, I forget about it. I put these things at the back of my mind because I know the dates are sticky. And then they either sneak up on me like, oh, shit, this is going to happen this week. Or I'm like, hey, whatever happened to. And, yeah, Dream Chaser was the whatever happened to story. And now there's, so what Eric has on this one is that it may not birth with the ISS on the first mission. They might just do like a buzz the tower.

Jeez. Do you take this as nerves over Dream Chaser, nerves over Starliner, you know, like Starliner effect? of this or? I think a mix of Starliner nerves and also not trying to add the very limited

birthing schedule to your short, you know, your short pull. Because that, that was kind of tricky for Starliner, wasn't it?

It was like, when are they going to have a spot? And I was like, just kept moving around. That's a good point. Oh, that's a great point. Maybe your Jim Chase,

you're, you're Sierra, and you're going, man, I don't want to, I don't want to work around that. I'm just going to fly around there whenever I get there. I got to get this mission off. That's a great point, man. It unhooks you

from the port scheduling. And honestly, birthing, right? Like, they just have to get close to the ISIS. They have to get within a Canada Arm 2 range. Is it, okay. Does it, does it birth? I thought it was still docking. Yeah, it's birthing. No, it's birthing. Hmm. That throws my thing into question, though. Right? Wasn't it? What else births? Like, don't they have a free of that one? nothing births anymore that schedule is probably wide open right wait no does Cygnus still birth yeah but

Cygnus births but it has the small thing and also isn't flying I was going to say like hit by a truck or whatever I'm constrained by the Cygnus schedule like constrained by the schedule of the thing whose rocket is somewhere in Ukraine like I don't oh my gosh

They're flying elsewhere right now. Oh, yeah. So, hmm. I think it just is, I'm actually, I'm coming around on this one. Just because it's birthing. They just got to fly close enough to the ISS that of a flight, if they do a flight and it flies just close to the ISS, then sure, whatever.

Although it's going to be super embarrassing the first time they go to birth and, like, they screwed something up with the, with the adapters. Yeah. That'll be embarrassing. I don't know. I don't understand Sierra space. I'll say it.

I understand Blue Origin better than I understand it's Sierra space. That's like the that's like a common take. It's just like what is? The Lurgeon doesn't seem to do anything. They just like have all this money and they build all the facilities and they never fly. I like, we don't hear that all the time. And I'm like, I don't know. You looked at Sierra because like they just get contracts.

And they're always like restructuring themselves. And like, what do they even do? I don't know. Like, are they just working on the spaceship in perpetuity? I don't get it. Like what? Yeah. They saw a lot of memorandumum understandings on potentially flying a couple later.

Like I think they have like a lot other business lines that I just like have zero concept of like do they do components and stuff. I feel like maybe they've got like a bunch of little. Well, Sierra Space itself must do it. You're talking just the space side or? Sure. Yeah. Because Sierra Nevada has like a whole bunch of department department. Department of Defense things.

Department of Depends. Yeah. The Department of Depends. Yeah, I don't get it. I don't get it. I'll say it. Explain to me in the chat. What is Sierra Space?

Pretty disappointing company overall, I would say, in the space world. You're right about that. Also, they did that one free-flying test flight where the, like, wheel didn't come down. Yeah, and they never really posted photos of that. And I feel like, if they heard of that. I think, if you're the thing about that, is I feel like they did like a whole bunch of those drop tests. It was like in rapid succession. It was like, too, too.

And I was like, cool, activity. And then it just like went away. Yeah, for years. Like, yeah. Mm-hmm. I don't get it. Dreamtacer was cooler when it was launching outside of a faring and it had like a vibe to it. That had a vibe.

When it was launching like my Kerbal space program vehicle. I think I've told you with that one. A couple extra fins somewhere and yeah. No, which, well, I mean, yes, probably, but like, which one are you talking about? No, I made this awesome thing in carpal space program once. It was like, it was a similar like spaceplane size, like you could fit on a top of faring angled up like that. But I was like, this thing needs an abort system. I'm like, this is my space program and my my curbles are going to be safe from anomalies, right?

And so I was like, okay, how do you do this? Like, you can't just like do a normal thing with this. You got to take the whole, the whole ship's kind of get off. It's got like decouple somehow. But you can't just decouple it because it would like hit the wrong. rocket or whatever. So I stuck four of those like little solid rocket boosters. Sepertron. Underneath it. No, like the little, the tiny, the smallest first stage solid rockers.

Four are these puppies. It's like a secret third stage in there. The four was necessary though. One would have been sufficient to thrust it away. But the four was necessary because I found out that when you put one and it separates the wings activate on the spaceship and it like peels back, right? Because it's like, the lift hits it. And it just like, and it was a thousand G's and it was like really bad. The whole thing would come apart. So I put four and then I angled them in like a corkscrew formation so that when it separated, it would spiral off and stay straight. It was the most fun thing to watch because you'd hit the abort button and be like, there's no way anyone would survive that. No, it was thousand Gs just rotationally instead of back,

but it was still fun to watch. Yeah, at least you didn't get blown apart, but you did die. Oh, man. Curbel, man. I got a dust set off. I might dust that off this weekend. Me too, man. I've been thinking about it a lot. Will's getting into the range where like that's,

he's played it a couple times, just like noodling on stuff. But I don't, it's not old enough to like get it yet, but I feel like we're, we're about there. So I'm pumped. I'm entering like Minecraft and Kerbal territory

and with his age. I'm like, this is going to be so dangerous. Get him into Factoria and then it's game over. Listen, I'm keeping my distance. Do it. Do it. All right.

We're still recovering. We got to, we got to round us out here. We got, we're just going to take some time in this topic. So. This is such a weird story. Yeah. Yeah. All right.

Do the, you do the previously on for this one. Uh, okay. So Ted Cruz squeezes a thing into the big, beautiful bill. Look at that picture. I was just going to say. Blurred discovery. It's so good. I'm tired.

Cruz squeezes a thing into the bill that says we are going to, NASA shall move one, what do they call it? One space vehicle from somewhere to Houston, right? And it was like interpreted as get discovery out of Udvar Hezzi

and put it in Houston somewhere. but then it was like it wasn't specify which one it actually was and then now this thing comes out and what Duffy says yeah we're going to bring an orbiter. The acting administrator has made an identification. We have no further public comment at this time. If we don't say which one it is. And if the bill only says space vehicle, like I really, is it going to be like, yeah, we're bringing friendship seven from.

It was like, what if it's just Starliner? What were the specifications? It was a space vehicle that's flown in space and carried people. That's the trio. I'm on, it's Starliner. I'm on that. That's my favorite way the story can end is if they get the stupid starlighting. Congratulations.

Space Center, Houston. You're getting it back. Oh, man. man. That's really funny. And so the complicator is that there's three flown in space space shuttles left. Yeah. So one of them has been fully transferred to the California Science Center.

That's Endeavor. One of them has been fully transferred to the Smithsonian. That's Discovery. And one of them NASA still owns, which is Atlantis in KSC. All Discovery is displayed pretty normally. Atlantis is a spectacular display. The new California Science Center one is, but you know about the new,

the endeavor one that they're building, right? Yeah, but it's not there yet. I know. That one's going to be awesome. I'll reevaluate it. When the boycott ends and I go back to California, check it out. I'll make a new evaluation.

But until that time, Atlantis is the raining champion. That's a good shootout of which is going to be done first. Your boycott or the construction in L.A. That's a... Yeah, that is a good one. That's a tricky one. Houston has a,

I forget which one it was. They have a structural test article or something that used to be in Florida. No, Independence. It is the aircraft carrier that has Enterprise. That's the one in New York, yeah. Yep. Independence was a...

Independence, I think, is the one that's on top of the 747 at... Shuttle carrier, I think. NASA, right? I think so. There's a couple space shuttle independences. I've been down these. Wikipedia rabbit holes.

Spatial independence. No, Intrepid is one too, isn't it? Isn't Intrepid also? Intrepid is the aircraft carrier. Yeah, it is. So this one is a, yeah, this is the one that was at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Center forever from 93 to 2012 and has now been moved to Space Center, Houston. It's sitting on top of the 747.

You can go in it. It's kind of cool. But I guess this was just a rep. like a, I thought there was one that was a structural test article or something. I don't know. Anyway, so they have a space shuttle shaped thing. What? I keep coming back to Intrepid, but.

No, Intrepid is an aircraft carrier, I promise. I know, I know it's also the air contra, but it's one of those names where they could be of 15 different things. It could be, yeah, you're right. So they want a real one. The Texans in the audience will know this goes back to when the space shuttle was originally up for where are we going to put these things. And Space Center, Houston

had a terrible pitch for what they were going to do with it. And so they did not win. Yeah. California Science Center got one because the shuttles are built nearby. Palmdale. Smithsonian obviously got one because it's the best. And then Florida beat out Houston is kind of my reading.

Or maybe California beat out Houston and Florida was always going to get one. I don't know. Yeah. It's kind of a sad circumstance of the accidents, right? Because there's like four places in the U.S. that really deserve a shuttle and there was only three, right? Okay, so I was going to do this for you first.

Like, give me your take on where they currently sit and how you feel about their positioning. And also Enterprise. Enterprise is the atmospheric test vehicle that still exists. It's in an aircraft carrier inside a thing on an aircraft carrier in New York City. Yeah, that one you could argue shouldn't be in New York. But that's probably the – if you include that as the fourth, And then you're like, what are you doing there? Maybe that one should be at like Marshall or something.

I don't know. That's, but, uh, what if they take that one? That would be wild because it would actually be right. It's on top of the 747. It's not been to space, though. Oh, true. It had to go to space. I forgot the criteria.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Read the bill, Anthony. Jesus. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know. That's tough. Like, if you have Florida, California, Houston, and D.C., and you only have three to pick.

Who are the most deserving? I don't know. Maybe D.C. doesn't deserve it. Maybe I'm on board with Cruz here. Take it from the bureaucrats and give it to the engineers, man. What a take. Holy shit.

Amazing. Look, me and Ted Cruz, we got a lot of it in common, both like Mexico. So you don't have any of the reverence for the Smithsonian institution as like a thing? I mean, the Smithsonian is great, obviously. but I don't know Wow Houston's also like The Johnson Space Center

Like that's pretty historical place for For human spaceflight you know What if D.C. was like, trade us your Saturn 5 And we'll send you the shuttle The The original copy of the shuttle brand standards can be in D.C. How about that? It probably is, yeah.

It's probably in there somewhere. Is there another place in the country that you might think this shuttle should be. It's not really anywhere else that. Another place where the shuttle should go from D.C.? No, just like, do you feel like another place missed out, and they should also write a bill to acquire a shuttle? Well, I was going to say,

the only other place I can think of would be like Marshall or, you know, Michoud, is like one of the part of Marshall, but somewhere in that kind of facility, right? Because they had to roll in and building all that. I think I'm less on the bandwagon of it should go, to a place related to its, its creation. Yeah, the other argument would be like,

where are the most people? Because it belongs to the American back there, right? I'm on board with that too. That makes sense to me. And my other, my other take is that maybe we should embrace this and get into like, keep sending the space shuttles around places

and just like put them on tour. Touring space shuttles? Yeah, yeah, I love it. Yeah. Because you would get, you would get people that are like, oh, shit, it's in town for a couple of weeks. Like, I'll go, I'll go see it, you know? You might.

Anthony, did you, listen to Sean Duffy, there's no money. Right, there's no money. Well, maybe that's why we're doing no space station so we can do shuttles on tour. Yeah, we can't afford to space station. We've got to tour the shuttles around. And they did that with the, for Apollo 50, right? They sent the...

Yeah, Apollo 11 made its way around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was pretty cool. They're a lot smaller, so... Well, we're also redoing the air and space museum. It was a good opportunity to send it to Houston for there. You can put that on a truck and drive it around. Yeah.

Shuttle, you're right. You're right. Okay, well, maybe that's the thing. I don't even know how they would move it. Like, that's a, that's a mission one. That's why none of this is happening. This is some bullshit. It's never happening.

So, yeah, it's going to be friendship seven, I'm calling it. What a weird thing to do, though, like that they took up this battle, you know? They have a moon rocks. They got a Saturn 5. How greedy can you get down there, Houston? In distraction game, man. We're sitting here talking about this. I'm telling you.

Oh, man. I think we should do. spaceships on tour and have, we should pick like six or seven facilities in the country that could host large objects. And every three to five years, we just ship it like, you know, one to the next. And there's like a little bit of a rotation. And we develop some system to travel these things around, get everybody engaged, Seattle area, you know, get me something up in the Pacific Northwest. Museum of Flight, extra hangar. Yeah, yeah. Bring some stuff in now and then. They already got Apollo capsule.

They can do it, right? They do, yeah. Yeah. All right. So let's take a new shake. They got a 787 dream liner on display as a museum exhibit. So I'm sure they can handle a. And a spruce goose up there, right?

Spruce goose. Yeah. I've never been to that. I got to go out there. Spruce goose is not at the Museum of Flay. It's at the weird one in Oregon. Yeah. Evergreen thing.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like in the middle of nowhere. Okay. I got to go to that one. But Museum of Flight has that big, um, there's like a Canadian Airlines airliner up front of it,

which is like a very, I don't know why that's the headline piece at the front door of the, whatever, but it's fine. Tells you where the audience is from. Yeah. Me showing up with my membership like a noob. All right.

So we made, did you make a list? I made a list of spaceships. If I were going to write a bill, spaceships I would acquire and where I would send it. Did you make a list? I thought the exercise was spaceships I would choir for my personal museum.

That's, yeah, yeah. I mean, that, that works. I just partnered, I partnered with a museum in my world. You told me to pick three. I picked two, and I'm going to wing the third one. Okay, let's hear it. You roll yours out. Let's, let's hear it.

Okay. Apollo 13, just because that's the spicy one. That's the spicy one. Coming from the Cosmosphere. Yeah, yeah. I think we got, Jake, I think we got knives out for Kansas on this show. Okay. Yeah.

I don't know. That was cool. And I also, because the, I don't know how much you know about the story, but there is like a significant, or maybe not significant, maybe a non-trivial Canadian contribution to the recovery of Apollo 13's mission. There was like, so you know near the end, right, because they turned the orbiter around the capsule and the lunar module stuck them together and they rode that home as like the lifeboat, right? But near the end, they had to like separate those things in a way that was safe so they didn't bump into each other, get the lunar module away when they powered up the command module. And there was like, I don't know, they couldn't do it.

And you know, you need like some sort of like propulsion to do that. And they just didn't have any of that. So some engineers in Montreal contributed to it. And they developed the thing where they like pressurize that little piece between the connections, like juiced up the pressure with air. And then when they separated the air, pushed them apart. and it was sufficient force to separate the vehicle safely. So I feel like that one's...

And for that contribution, you're stealing it. I think, well, I mean, among the other things. Also just the narrative, you know, power of all their team. Okay, cool. So that's my number one. Like it. Love it. And this is your personal collection.

You're taking this, bringing this to the guest house. Yeah. So the land I'm buying just back here. I'm going to, you know. Number two is Atlantis. the sexiest orbiter. Oh. Okay.

Tell me more. I'm more of a Discovery guy. I'm more of a Ted Cruz on this one. Discovery was, Discovery is like the hufflepuff of orbiters. It's like they just, you know, discovery got the job done. Discovery did a lot of work.

They hustled. They, you know, it's like a simple, there's no complication of discovery, which is great. Love discovery. Atlantis though,

it's like the last one. They got the weight down. She's real slick. and lean, sexy. She got to do the cool stuff. She got to flirt with the Russians and do the mirror stuff. And I just love Atlanta. She's good.

Cool. All right. You would keep it displayed exactly as is now, right? Yeah, yeah, something similar to that. Great display. Can't improve on perfection, right? Yeah. There's a question in the chat of if you're assigning this.

Which space shuttle is Slytherin? Definitely Atlanta is Sistreth. for sure. Also sliverin? Oh, okay, got it. Wait, Discovery's Hubble buff, Atlanta's sliverin. Yeah, yeah. Okay, can you continue this?

Ooh, okay. Endeavour. Endeavour. Endeavour is... That's probably Gryffindore. Yeah, I think it's Gryffindore. Built the space station, you know, so it's like got the good... Yeah, I think so.

Yeah. It's got a Gryffindore vibe. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I don't know which one would be Ravenclaw, though. enterprise i guess i was going to say um columbia because of the teacher's space it's on the nose raven clock i was going to say enterprise because everyone kind of was like forgot about that one yeah this this metaphor's gone too far what else you got oh so your third

you're winging your third all right so let's think about your collection you've got an apollo you've got a shuttle you go in something modern do you want to do a little modern acquisition I was thinking either modern or I was thinking international. I don't know. Okay. I was kind of, I was kind of wondering. I think international fits you.

Yeah. I think I need a salute station. I think I need one of those. Station. It hasn't been to space, right? I guess, but they have a couple. This is in your bill.

You could do a non-flown, unflone thing. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm thinking, you know what you should do? You should get one of the lifting bodies. There's real weird Russian lifting bodies.

That is what Dream Chasers based on. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're like spiral ones. Yeah. Yeah. No, the, what was it called?

It was a mig, but it was also a spiral, I think it was called. Was it? Spiral spaceship or whatever it was. Yeah, it's a mig. The mig, 105. Yeah, dude, you should get this thing. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, you got to get that.

That's up there. That's up there for sure. Yeah, they would let that into Mexico for sure. They'd be like, yeah, it's. It doesn't it look Mexico? Yeah, it's good, man. That's a good one. So that is possible.

Then they have, I feel like, I don't know, I bet you it's somewhere in Russia there are some stuff. Like I would, the Buran orbiter is like possibly on my list too. Like that would be a pretty wild one to have. I didn't even think about the baron and even like save the ones from the broken building. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. But there's, I know there's at least one like Salute 7 style like those TKS or whatever.

Uh, no, FGB was it, the functional cargo block. That's the Zarya module, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. There's like an old salute one. There's got to be a test article or a, uh, no, uh, no, it's a, an unflown one or something. I think that would be pretty cool.

You have to promise. So if you get one of those, that you restore it so that it's Nauka. And then you put one of the t-shirts inside. Yeah. Just an actual recreation. There's like a, somewhere out there is also a prototype of the Soviet Lunarlander that like single man.

Oh, yeah? Yeah, that exists. All right. Let's try to find what that is. Obviously, it's not like a production grade. They never got that far, but it was like some... The LK3 test unit, this guy? That's the one, yeah.

Museum, science museum in London? I went there. I don't... I guess... Brits, man. They got shit from everywhere, hey? Yeah, that's definitely the thing. You go to the British Museum.

You're like, man, that's a lot of stuff you stole from whoever else. Didn't bring any flavorings for their food home. They just brought, like, people and things. They just stole rocks and people, and they were like food. Interested in flavoring. No. Thanks. I don't want any spices.

Go right across. They use a lot of spices and good butter and stuff, but well. Okay, I approve of your collection. This is pretty good, man. That's real good. It's a good collection. Now you go to yours. Where do you think I went with this?

You went into Apollo 12 because of Pete Conrad. All right. Well, hold on, hold on. Pump the brakes. Let's talk this through. But you're on the beat. You're on the beat of this, okay? This is the Pete Conrad reclamation project that I'm embarked on.

Did he do a Gemini, too? He did, right? He did. He has four space flights. Oh, yeah. I know. I'm on something. You had that number really fast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I got the whole list right here. I got Apollo 12. We had Skylab 2. We had Gemini 5, Gemini 11. Yeah, you definitely do have a Skylab something in your music. I'm going to make you guess the last thing that's thematic but not Conrad based. So, okay, let's look at, I'm thinking.

I'm thinking we need a Gemini, we need an Apollo, and these are all going to the Franklin Institute in downtown Philadelphia. They have a, for some reason, we have a structural test article of the lunar module in the park behind the museum. Not sure why we have that, nor why it's just in the park, nor why you can sort of climb on it. Not that I ever have, but you can sort of go to la. You can sort of climb on it. Yeah. All right, so Apollo 12 versus Skylab 2. here's here's my you can help me figure out Jake um I'm very I'm feeling very Ted Cruz and

John Cornyn about this I want to do like retribution on these places for having these artifacts because I don't think any of them um there's one there's one place that deserves the thing that it has and rest otherwise these four I don't think should be so Apollo 12 is in the Virginia Aaron Space Center in Hampton Virginia which is the Langley Visitor Center Skylab 2 is in the National Museum of Naval Aviation Pennsylvania, Pensacola, Florida. So they got a Navy connection with the guys who flew on board. I'm like, all right, you could keep Skylight too.

I'm taking Apollo 12. Because Langley, you don't need an Apollo capsule at Langley. You're admittedly only 40 minutes farther from D.C. than I am right now. But, you know, it's farther. You could just drive to D.C. Like, Langley needs, like, they need mercury stuff. They need mercury stuff at Langley. Or just drive to D.C.

What are you doing down there anyway? Go to Norfolk. do some naval shit. I don't know. You don't need another Apollo capsule. And also, there's no Apollo capsule close to New York other than Apollo 11 in D.C. So bringing Apollo 12 home to Philadelphia gets you closer to the majority of people to come to the U.S. So I think home, home obviously.

Philadelphia, yes. So I think the Virginia Air and Space Center should transfer that right on up. It's Smithsonian. so I think they could probably send it our way. All right, here's the one, Jake. Gemini 11 is at the California Science Center, which I think is a absolutely spectacular museum that deserves everything in its collection.

Shout out for, I think it's got a nice little aquarium section, too, if I remember correctly, with like a little kelp forest. It was really great. Well done. Great museum. It's got the shuttle. Love the Gemini 11.

So what I'm doing is I'm taking Gemini 5, which is out of the Space Center, Houston. So if you're taking the shuttle from us up here, I'm taking Gemini 5 back, bringing it to Franklin Institute. Okay? Now, Jake, this is a little trivia for you. Typical move from a coastal elite like you. Yeah, yeah. Give me that.

Can you, so I've got an Apollo. I've got a Gemini. Can you thematically complete my Philadelphia collection of the space race era for the Franklin Institute? Got a Apollo. Oh. I don't know the, I don't know the, see if the chat gets it better than you do. I don't, I don't know the, like, home cities of enough astronauts.

You're going to hate yourself that you didn't think of this. Yeah. Pennsylvania. Pennsylvania. Philadelphia. Philadelphia. Philadelphia. Liberty seven, Liberty Bell seven or whatever.

Get in it. Liberty Bell seven. Yes. We need that. Knives out for Kansas. The Cosmosphere has that. They restored it. They helped recover.

it, whatever. They clean it off. Come on, baby. They're never going to let us come to that museum for our meetup that we have long planned after the boycott. Alternatively, Cosmosphere, if you are upset by what we said,

you can make things right by an all-expenses paid trip for us to do in a podcast that year. Come convince us to not steal your spaceships. In 2029, we will come and we will reverse our position and do a podcast in your museum. So good. Honestly, though, that's a legitimate offer.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Does Liberty Bell 7 have a crack? It did explode or something, but no, they painted a crack on. There's a painted crack. So. Hmm.

I think that'll be a good collection, though. A Pete Conrad and Liberty Bell 7? Great collection. I love your Pennsylvania collection. It's great. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Only felt right. But I do like your Soviet thing. We both went very nationalist there. That's great. You got to. In this case. right? Well, you went nationalist in the American way, which is state nationalist, but, you know, it's a city even. Yeah. Yeah. Much more local. Pittsburgh. Number one, number one. Philadelphia.

Good segment, Jake. That was a good segment. We did it. I love the history stuff. Those Soviet ones are really good, though. There's some good. There's that museum in Germany, right, that has a lot of the old Soviet stuff. I want to go. I want to go. I want to go. I want to go. I want to go. You know, like, like a history guy, like, you know, always, like, very sad about places like the Middle East that have a lot of, like, conflict and stuff because there's like all this, like, incredible history just being destroyed by bombs and fires and all that kind. You know, like Iraq is like, yeah, you weep for Iraq for the, for the loss of history there. And I feel like Russia is that for space fans.

You're just like, there's so much, there's so much stuff. I want to go there and touch every stupid piece of shitty rocket they made and just like, you know, basket. And you're like, no, it's either in a factory that is rotting, like the bread or we blew it up in our conflict with Ukraine or like, if you come here, we will arrest you for war crimes or like, it's just all the nonsense around that. You're like, there's so much, so much good stuff. Have we had a status check on Bahrain after the roof collapsed? Like, do we have anything? Did anyone sneak back in?

Remember that one time the guy snuck in and did a video? Yeah. We need that guy back. Best days ever. Yeah. He's probably in jail now. He's in a gulag. For sure.

Although if their relationship with Kazakhstan keeps going down, maybe we'll get these Bahrain back on the market. Oh, man. Wouldn't that be a great? Give us those one web satellites back and we'll give you Bahrain back, you know? Wouldn't that be a great future though? Like a future where Russia loses a bunch of influence because of their bad, bad misdeeds and Kazakhstan like shirks free of the last remaining like Soviet overreach and the Bikiner

Cosmodrome becomes like a open place, like a democratically controlled place. And we can just fly there on vacation and go to bike. And do the whole tour. Drive around in the stupid little like Universal Studios trolley to be like, no, dude, you do tours in diamond and crusted Mercedes. Diamond and crusty Mercedes is what you get toured in in Bikinor.

You get to ride the bus and like that's, that's where all the cosmonauts peed them tire. Yeah, you do, you pee, you actually pee on the tire if you want. And then you go, you go to the,

the Richard Garriot Kill Zone and watch a rocket lunch and like all the, man, I want to just do all that stuff. Like, what an amazing trip that would be. Star City. One day maybe, man. That would be really funny of all the journals

were like bus tires though. If this ever happens, we need to run the visitor center for sure. We need to be in charge of that. It would be so good. It would be so good. Give me an unlimited budget and I will turn Bikinau into the best space museum on the planet.

Yeah. So good, man. Sold. We did it. We're not sure what's happening next week yet. We have two options, Jake. We may... We are working on the Gilmore Space Crew coming on.

We're just scheduling. There might be some scoops involved if they're listening. Also, Jake, a segment we set up three years ago was we asked people to fill out a Google form for a Family Feud game. We did the newlyweds game out of that, but we also asked for Family Feud responses. responses. And all that it took was three years of LLM development for me to realize I could dump the export of that into an LLM and have it format it for me rather than convincing a human to do it. And I think we're going to be able to do our family feud finally. So we're in talks with the host,

whoever that may be, we're still trying to get that contract signed. And then family feud's happening soon. You feel confident? No, because I don't remember what happened three years ago. It's like a lifetime going. Back in the dark ages of the Biden administration. Who knows what everyone's favorite thing was in the shadow of COVID. Yeah. How many launches will Astridu next year? Yikes.

Man. All right, y'all. Let us know your favorite spaceship that you would acquire and why it's Russians lifting bodies. I think rocks. That's it. got, bye. Ciao. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, end of death.