Off-Nominal - 208 - 1-0 Freedom

Episode Date: August 29, 2025

Jake and Anthony talk about Starship Flight 10, what the future holds for the Starship program, and the Chinese lunar program.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 208 - 1-0 Freedom - YouTubeSpaceX - Starship's Tenth Flight TestAfter recent tests, China appears likely to beat the United States back to the Moon - Ars TechnicaFollow 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. What's going on, buddy? I'm going to dance. I just, I love our music. I just think it's so good. You know, I love it so much, especially the fact that this streaming app still doesn't stop the music when I turn it down for me. You don't hear it anymore, but I still hear it.

So that's how much I love it because I don't stop listening to it. Do you just listen to it the entire episode? No, I have to go and hit stop. But usually I just fade it out and let it finish. But I instead, yeah. I don't know, man. The second time I've seen you today, we did a, we've threatened it many times to do a spin-off podcast where we talk about web and native app development and design and non-space things.

And we actually did it. In our other lives. I'll put a link in the show notes. I just want to mention it because there's, that's likely more content coming your way, people. If you're the, there's like 90% of our audience is like deep in the space industry. The arrest is deep in the tech industry. So yeah, I'll say that that. That Venn diagram is pretty healthy of the people in the middle that listen, that we want both those, both that content. So yeah, that's good. And many of them, right. Many of them write software in the space industry and burn out from SpaceX and go write software somewhere else. So they scoop to the other bend diagram. Yep. Yep. That's how it goes.

It was fun. It was good. We got a lot of things to talk about today. We've got a starship flight that we have been waiting for for months, years. Yeah, a long time, I guess. Months at least. Chinese lunar program, we've got to check in. It's time to check in, apparently. It's that moment. We're going to talk.

Is it or is it not, right? We've got to figure that out. That's part of the thing to resolve. Did you bring a mead or what? We're doing a little early show here today. Not a mead, no. I'm just going for a good old Topochico today. That drinks, meikanos, paloma.

This is such a classic, like, Mexican, like, just use the English word a little bit. drinks. It's really funny. We're having a a great. Just for the important word. I'm having my cousin from L.A. is in town

staying in our house tonight, so we're having some family over. And so I had the cooler full of beer and drinks, and I dumped a bunch of ice on it this morning to chill everything down. And then I went out to grab one, and I realized I dumped way too much ice in this cooler. And there's just like a six inch layer of ice on top now hardened.

into a solid unit. So I chiseled through and the first thing I grabbed was a high lie. Of course. I did not select the beer today. The cooler selected the beer for me. Because I was like ice fishing

through this cooler to get to it. And I was like, I'm going to have to come and chop this stuff up before people show up. Yep. Yes, you will. Yeah. Cheers.

Cool, man. Cheers. Got a good flight. Starship 10th times a charm, looks like. So it's good to know. Yeah, let's dial in on where you're at. I said this on Miko, is that I feel kind of funny about this because we've been waiting for it for so long.

And there's like, I have almost nothing to say about it because it was just a thing we had to get over. It was, yeah. It's funny because you were talking to me earlier and we're like, well, we got to do a show about, we'll talk about Starship. And I was like, man, when can we not have a show every time a Tesla flight a Starship? Like it just, it's like a habit, it's a routine. It's like 10 times in a while we've had. You're in the Starlink territory. already with Starship. I'm almost there. I need there to be something different. So at least they

kind of did that this time. So that's good to know. But yeah, as far as like what does this, you know, what does this do? Is it what's, how's our, how's our take shift? What's the take shift? The take shift. The take shift. The off nominal take shift. I don't know if it changes a whole lot for me. Yeah. I'm glad they got through this, you know, some of the test objectives finally. But I don't know. I'm, I'm still mullin a bit, but I'm curious to hear what you think. You're mullin. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's always a little difficult because it seems to have gone well, right?

We don't, we don't truly, deeply know, like, how did the internal data look? But from the publicly facing stuff, it seemed to go well. But then also, like, damn, did this thing look toasted when it came back in? The very orange hue to the landing burn. Maybe I should just jump to that part, but. You know, is that we don't have, this is the funny aspect about SpaceX generally, Starship specifically, is that they work in the open and yet they don't. Like, we don't know where their expectations were.

We never actually know where their expectations are. With other companies, oftentimes they couch, all right, well, success is clearing the pad or success is not blowing up the pad. I think that one was a SpaceX one. But other first launchers, at least make it clear what they're going to grade it against. we don't really know what they're going to grade Starship Flight 10 against, because what is perfect success when they are intentionally stressing a vehicle or trying a new reentry pattern or trying a new engine burn, right?

It's in a good way they have some variability in what the outcomes would be, but then that does make it hard to have a report card on like, you know, they came down near the buoy. Is that it? Is that full success? Probably. But the thing was toasted. Did they expect it to look like SLS on the way back in or did they not?

I don't know. They've very clearly like nailed the math on where does it land when you, you know, come in. That's that, that's always impressive. You know, all the Falcon 9 experience is like really obvious there. Like just like other side of the planet and then just like there's this floating buoy that's like within like 10 meters of the stupid.

Oh my God. Like that was insane. Until we find out they have a fleet of buoys out there. Yeah. There's a huge zone of the ocean that's just covered in space X buoys. I very well could be true. We don't know that. Yeah, I know. So what worries me is like, like my, my, I don't want to say my anxiety, but like my point of concern for Starship didn't change preimposed this flight.

And I still think that reentry is the number one problem to solve and the hardest one to solve. And I don't think they're there yet because the bar on it is way, way higher than it didn't explode until it hit the water. You know, that, that can't be the bar. And seeing the, I'm glad that it maintained control authority at the end there. But like those fins were burnt through. There was charring all over it. Like, it was a rough, it was not a smooth entry for the vehicle, right?

Like, you know, I don't think that would have been able to have been reused if they had caught it or whatever. And I feel like it's one of those problems where like the first 90% is like reasonably easy to get to. And then, of course, it's SpaceX. So maybe they can get to the first 95% really easy. but that last 5% is going to dog them, I think. And it's going to be a while before we can get to like, okay, the system meets the operational design goal of like it lands, they roll it down a thing, run a cloth over it,

fill it up a fuel and up it goes again, right? Like that's the whole ethos of this program, the whole like design requirement is to be able to move really quickly between flights. And, you know, I don't think we're close to that yet. that's what I'm like watching, you know? You're a heat shield guy, yeah. I get that. I think what's, I forget if we talked about this on the show show or just on the pre-show

last week where there was the article that Lauren Grush put out at Bloomberg. And there were, and honestly, I think Burger had a similar article, but more about, like, you know, they built the factory, but the thing doesn't work yet. Yeah. Yeah. Read between the lines on some of the stuff that they're hearing from people on the program. is weird because these V2 starships that they continue to fly,

like this is the only time that we've seen SpaceX fly hardware repeatedly that they know is end of life. Right? Like, it's not even, they have wasted so many starships and so many boosters and test tanks and all this, right? But these last few V2 vehicles,

they're like, we got to fly them, we got to fly them out, we got to get some test eject is done. Even though clearly there's a bunch of flaws with this particular these particular vehicles and these particular engines, which to me indicates

that just the V3 stuff is not ready yet. And they're behind on V3 Raptors and they're behind on the V3 vehicles actually being ready because they would have, if that stuff was ready, they would have jumped right to it,

you know? And that's the thing I've been more concerned about it recently than the explosions is that they appear behind on where they were hoping their hardware would be. Yeah.

Did we have something published about the Raptors or is that just our own internal canon right now? I feel like I, we've talked about that, like that Raptors, V3 Raptor was behind, like the testing program. Someone got a line in on the testing program and it was like, you know, it's moving, but it's like, it's like a NASA spaceflight thing about it. I feel like, yeah, it's like, it's not, it's not ready. Yeah, it's not. The durations and they just started hitting longer duration burns.

Yeah, that's what I'm thinking. You got it. Yeah. Yeah. So the, so yeah, I mean, in that context, like, that's obviously why they're going to keep flying this harder they have because it's either that or don't fly. And, well, it's SpaceX, right? And yeah, there's like in the chat, we're deck it.

I don't know, I don't know how to pronounce anything. V3 Tower ain't finished, right? There's like, that's been the stuff, though, that's more concerning to me is that at the same time as they've had these issues, you would expect when you have these issues to just move on if you're SpaceX and your hardware rich, right? But they have still been flying these. And even to this point, now they've flown this successfully. Is there another thing to learn from the next V2 starship?

You know, it doesn't seem to me like they trust these V2 ships to go to orbit because now they've done two engine relights. I always forget about the first one and people give me shit all the time that I just like, they never relit a nut, grabbed their engine in space, whatever.

So they've done it twice, I totally admit it. But like, they keep pointing in the, you know, retrograde. Why? They're scared to point these things prograde. So, you know, is that concerns over reentry that they need to be confident

in, you know, while they can make it through the atmosphere, they can't be shedding hardware all the way over your house. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's, it just, I can't get a sense for how they're road mapping this out. And that's the part that is a little bit weird to me.

I'm glad they strung all these things together. The payload deployment was cool to see. They finally worked that out. It's a little like, all right, let's glad you got over this, but like, what are you going to do with the rest of the roadmap that you've been held up on for a year? You know, are they going to add something in the next flight? Are they just truly running the clock out on V2

so that they can get to V3? Yeah. Yeah, it feels like, I've said this before, it feels like SpaceX is doing this in a not entirely SpaceX way. Like there's like there's parts of this that feel like they diverge from the SpaceX we know that developed, you know, Falcon and Dragon like and Starlink, I guess. There's like the parts of it that just like don't quite jive with it. It's the, I thought the cadence would have been faster by now.

I thought that the iteration would have been faster. I thought that like usually they don't make the same mistake twice. They usually will blow something up and then that problem is fixed. And then it's just like this one feels like it's kind of like dog in them a little bit. So there's just like little, there's parts of this that just seem different. I can't quite put my finger on it. But, you know, I don't have enough insight into the program.

It might just be that it's a huge, hard, you know, completely unsolved problem. And that's just what it looks like, you know. So I don't know. The scale is totally different on this. Yeah. I mean, no one's done this, right? been my theory that I think in that grush piece was totally confirmed in that they are moving so many things at the same time. They're testing so many things at once that tracking the

combined changes there has been problematic and testing the combined changes there has been problematic in that, you know, they've changed so much on the vehicle. Like they've added a bunch propellant, which kept the engines firing longer, which then led to engine issues and they blew up the vehicle. And then they changed a bunch of other things and all those changes together made a different, you know, a different combination of factors come together. And it's, there are so many systems on this system that it's, it's what made development programs really long for bigger vehicles in the past. And I guess that's also the good part is that they are human to some extent, right?

I had Casey Hammer on Miko the other day. Once again, we were talking about the fact that a lot of people write about SpaceX, but no one has really like put a good articulation to why are they the outlier. Nobody can really figure out. out what the mix is there, right? Because a lot of times it's like, oh, they work super long hours, they burn everybody out. And that's the depth that it gets to. And it's like, it can't just be that.

Because a lot of other people work really hard, too, and they make bullshit. Yeah. So I'm reminded of the Christmas vacation line. He worked really hard on it, grandpa. So do washing machines. Like, that's, you know, there's a lot of people working really hard on stuff that doesn't go anywhere. So it can't just be that.

Why are they the outlier? And then that's the other aspect. Is it the mix of people that are. are the leadership of the program, because that's, they've all now gone out and they've found it, you know, relativity and stoke. And these other companies have been seated with people from the SpaceX of your. And, you know, when are they going to kick into gear? And if they don't, then clearly there's some weird mix at SpaceX itself that is the special

sauce. Yeah, I mean, company culture is a very difficult thing to define and predict and study, you know, like it's a, that's just classically, that's not a SpaceX issue. that's in all corporate culture identifying that and getting it right it's just like a it's a you're never ever solved that problem you're always working at it right and so and every change changes every change of people every personnel changes every new employee changes it every new work site changes it every new project changes it every new political environment changes it every new money environment changes it like it's just it's in flux continuously it's just like it's regular human culture right it's like you can't

you can't as we're seeing as we're seeing during during correcting culture is really clunky and hard and doesn't make a lot of people very happy and it's difficult, right? So, you know, it's, that's, yeah, that's a certainly a hard thing to put a point on and try and like, oh, it's because of this, right? So I like this concert, T. Broghi, residency bias. I love the clip, How Not the Lina Orbital Rocket, lots of crashes of Falcon 9s. Great point. And that also made me think the fact that the Falcon 9 stuff that we saw, those were downstream of it doing its mission successfully, whereas all the Starship stuff has been. been like they can't get to that part until they've done the starship test campaign and so that

we haven't seen before right they've iterated on dragon they've iterated on five nine in the course of missions but starship is we got to do all this first before we get to the missions and that's maybe what you're getting at that that's completely opposite of what we've seen otherwise yeah and it's um it's like it's it's different but it's also like it's it's i'm trying to not how to define it, but it's like the, I don't know if it's because like the product is so different. Like the, like the point, Star Trek doesn't have to solve the like the Falcon 9 problem, right? Like, you know, just taking over the launch market and getting operational and like having good cash flow and lots of customers.

Like Falcons solved that. And so the context that they're developing these programs in is very, very different. Again, just the culture stuff, right? The money environment's different. The problems are trying to solve are different. I don't really know. The pressure on it is different. The pressure on it is different.

It's very strange. You just can't, as much as I want to, you cannot just go, well, Falcon did it this way. So why is, you know, why is Starship not doing it that way? And so I don't know. I don't know what you do with that. But it's, it's, yeah, yeah. Yeah. But I don't know.

I guess we'll have to wait, except to be patient, which we're not used to. But. No, come on. Get this moving, you know. Jeez. Yeah. We were supposed to have a city by now on Mars. I don't have to go on a vacation to Elysium Planitia.

I thought that was the whole point, but, you know. The one thing that it really is changing the game on is that the Starlink powered coverage of these flights just makes everything else seem so stone age, you know? Like, the fact that you've got video like this all the way through reentry and there is not a blackout period is unbelievable. the one. It's wild. Yeah. Could you do that on a smaller vehicle? Do you think, like, do you think the size of Starship leads a lot of, there's a lot of leeward area to put a Starlink. There's a lot of place to draft in, right? Yeah, that's what I mean. Like, I don't think you can do it on Orion, right?

Maybe Orion's pretty much, but not Dragon. Maybe. They would have done it on Dragon now if they could. Yeah, probably. It's, it's something, man. And I think that really highlights, like, uh, I was, I mean, we're talking a lot about the Starlink V, whatever, the big ones that Starship's going to launch, right? And they're like 20 times the capacity. So like a single Starship's going to be like launching like 50 Falcon 9s where the star, like, you know, some huge amount. You're like, wow, that's a lot of scale. And obviously Starlink is a lucrative business, which is helping funding all this. And it really

kind of highlights maybe as much as we've joked that like Falcon is like the, the Starlink maintenance service, you know, like that's the point of Falcon is like, it has a side gig of like launching customers, but like Falcon is just the Starlink deployment mechanism now, you know, and makes me kind of think like, wow, how much is Starship going to be that? Like obviously this technology is the game changer. Like just seeing these camera views all the way down like that is evidence that Starlink and satellite constellation internet is like game changing technology. And it's funding all of this and it's going to have to continue funding all of it.

So it really kind of highlights how the game is different. It's not so much a rocket program anymore, you know. You know, it's fun. I look at these images of this, of this stuff deploying out. The funniest thing to me about SpaceX and maybe indicative of the absolute dominance that they have on the space industry right now is if they said this is as big as the door is on Starship, everybody's satellite would fit through that fucking door. Yeah, build it. They could gatekeep the entire industry by saying, sorry, it doesn't fit out the door. Go spend millions of dollars to make it fit out that door.

it was that if the only tool you have is a hammer every problem is a nail right I guess the only the only payload bay door we have is the pez dispenser so every satellite is shaped like a pez and we are the ones that sell the pez this is like our first cell conversation earlier it is like our first cell conversation yeah server side rendering is important yeah yeah so like if you're but if you're k2 space right and you're looking at this and you're like where's my where's my door yeah Where's my giant alligator door? Is my door gonna work on this thing? Or do you have to redesign the whole ship to get a giant door?

I mean, again, this is evidence like this is the Starship. This is the new Starlink deployment service that we're developing here right now. It's not a rocket program. It's so steampunk watching these like pullies move and the, that's so old school. Yeah, it's delightfully mechanical. Yeah. It looks Soviet, to be honest. A little bit.

Yeah. Yeah, a giant rocket. just like brute forcing its way through the technical problems. Can't make efficient engine. Put 50 engines. Oh, man. Make rocket bigger. I love that the joy of, yeah, we deployed the aluminum blocks.

It's like a little unhinged in a good way. Yeah, yeah. The sincerity of the SpaceX background cheers is kind of like dwindled since the since the orbcom landing or whatever, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Huh.

Well, I guess we got to wait for flight 11 now. There's like one more V2, right? That's the thing. Right. There's one more V2. Do you think it'll be like another stand-down period after that if V3 is not ready? Yeah. I mean, at this point, NASA has moved on to talking about orbital refueling, refilling,

whatever, moving to 2026. and that being the main campaign for V3, which even that is like, you know, launching, now they launch starships pretty close together, even when they blow one up between two, it's like eight weeks. So still, again, like I said the whole time, but I didn't move the goalpost on SpaceX.

SpaceX is moving the goalpost on SpaceX all the time. They blew up a ship and only eight weeks passed between flights. They rained molten iron on the balamas or whatever. Wait, how much, Was it eight weeks from the explosion? When was it somebody in the chat? I don't remember. It's fast.

I don't know what month it is. So. I still remember when they, when they blew up the... Yeah. I'm still remembering when they blew up the... Was it the first Falcon? Which one was the one that was a CR7 that blew up?

And they got back to flight like within a few months. And we were all like, wow, that is... Holy shit. That is commercial space at work. That only took six months to return to flight. Man, if that was NASA, that have been three years, right? Like, you know?

And we're like, all just like, wow, six months. It's a new, it's a new world. And now we're like that. And there was that time they lost a Falcon 9 and got permission to launch one later that week. Yeah. It's probably fine. Yeah. You've launched 200.

It's all right. Yeah. That was the moment. That was the moment that I stopped worrying about Starship. Oh, here's a good part where there's just like stuff flopping around on this thing. Like, there's just. Yeah, those things got melted in. Flaping in the breeze.

Holy. Holy. smokes. Yeah, it's a lot. I get your concern about the heat shield. It's the concern, right? Like, it's the, it's the Achilles heel of this whole thing if they can't,

if they can't figure it out. You can't just do it like, you can't be 99% done it. Yeah, you're right. It's got to be more or less perfect, you know, like, and like demonstrable across multiple flights. Like if the whole design architecture is like, yeah, we fly things over and over and over again rapidly.

So it's like, even if it like lands after one and it's great. And then after the second and third flight, it really starts to show where. That's not good enough. You know, like that doesn't meet the design objective. It's victims of their own success. They really, like I said, move the goalposts on reuse, right? Do you think officially or unofficially within the company, there are people that have some architecture in mind for the worst case scenario of we

cannot figure out full reusability on Starship? and how would we aggressively go at a Mars program in that constraint? Like cheap, cheap upper stages for Starship-sized vehicle. Just replicate the Falcon situation, right? But just giant, right? Yeah. I mean, Zuberan intensifies in that case. Your payload goes way up if you don't have to reuse them, right?

You take all the fins off, take all the heat shield off. Well, all of the mass of the ship becomes your payload, right? This is the shuttle could launch 35 tons to orbit, but 80 also went with it. Yeah. Yeah. I'm wondering about that. Like, I'm not fearmongering about Starship. I still am a inevitable list, inevitable list on Starship coming to pass, because again, no one can figure out why they're the outlier, and they clearly are and they remain it.

And so that changes, I would not change my tune about them. but if you are a responsible company and you have hitched your entire company's success to the absolute holy grail of spaceflight that may be unachievable in 2020's tech maybe we aren't what if we're not there yet do you does the whole company die or do we do something else and i wonder what that plan looks like i mean the nice thing is that Starlink will, you know, cover up a lot of those sins that they can't quite get it right. Because it's like, as long as you can just keep putting those things up, then the money will keep coming in and you just keep working at it. It's fine.

Yeah, yeah. I'm not super concerned about that in a sense of like they're not going to like run out of runway or anything, you know. So that's good to know. But yeah, I don't know. I mean, I think they're smart though. They will. There's always good. Even if it's not a backup plan, if it's like a temporary plan, like, okay, we can't.

solve reuse in the next two years. So we're going to make some throwaway upper stages. That'll run the business for five or ten years while we keep working on the tech and then come back at it. I mean, they should do that anyway. Lock five. They could be firing these boosters off left and right. That's a good question.

The booster they nailed. Like make some weird little upper stage thing and launch 100 tons at a time, you know? Just figure out where to land those giant upper stages or keep them up there and recycle them later. But the booster looks to all accounts, the booster is doing great, right? Yeah, it seems to be fine. This is, okay, this is the take, Jake.

If the ship was the dragon to the booster's Falcon 9, and every once in a while there's a dragon doing an exquisite thing, but all the other time, they're launching 300 booster flights a year with a cheap stainless steel upper stage and one Raptor or something.

Like, come on, let's do it. Let's get this going. I'm game. They're robbing us of this, Jake. They're robbing us of 100 booster flights a year with catches. and reuses. They already done it.

Just knew it. Keep doing it. I've said that before. There should be like an absolute beeline to getting Starlings up. Like nothing else matters. Now I'm so mad about this, Jake. I'm super mad about this. This is the obvious right answer.

We got there. We got there, everybody. We got there. It's the right answer, right? Like this is, I think this is what I'm concerned about is, are they going to be so tight gripped on only pulling this off with complete and full reusability that they're missing the opportunity to have a Saturn 5 looking booster flying every week launching an upper stage like every other rocket like Falcon 9 itself and and doing it by a 10x

factor of payload or whatever it is five X. You're going to let perfect be the enemy of good enough. Man, all right. I'm super mad about this. There's a zero percent chance we thought of this before they did. So someone must be. I know, but that's why I'm mad about it. Yeah. Because it's not, think about the time periods in which they've stood down between ship flights, right?

And granted, they've blown up the launch, the stand a couple times or whatever. But if you weren't limited on when are we ready as an organization to do the next ship flight and the boosters are flowing, like, that's so much potential for a crazy launch service that would totally upend everybody. Yeah. I'm trying to, I'm thinking it through, though. Is there, how soon do you want to, if you're SpaceX, how soon do you want to start cannibalizing Falcon market? Because like once you, once Falcon number start going down, it'll be really hard to bring them back up, I think. I don't think. Falcon numbers are as high as you think they are.

But what I'm saying, though, is like. All the Starlink launches and then look at the graph. It's not, it's not crazy, dude. There are not a lot of other people out there shipping on Falcon. But more just like, Falcon is stable. and it is income positive if you roll in Starlink do it. Like it's cash flow positive. It's profitable.

Like don't mess with it. So what? Keep selling up to Amazon. Amazon will buy those. Don't mess with it until you're ready to go. Maybe that's that could be the design. Do no harm to the existing system. No, no, no, no. No, because that's what they did all the other times.

That's what they did all the other times. They could have had somebody and, you know, oh, now we're going to start selling these reused flights to somebody who's ready for it, right? SES is out there buying flights early on. doing great. Eridium took a shot early on. It worked out for them. There are companies that are willing to just take a shot, right? Even themselves, they are gated on launching the new big Starlings without. Okay. So let's say you start moving customers over to, let's say you start moving customers over to Starship, right? Some cheap interim version with not quite reuse, you know,

and just like, let's just get moving. You start moving customers over. The payloads start changing the services they get used to or the Starship services. And then something goes wrong and like Starship's got to change. And like that service, like you get disruption in that. And now you've stood down the Falcon market and like the production lines. Like, you know, we actually can't make this upper stages very fast and more because we didn't need them anymore. So we those staffs gone. We moved half that factory to make widgets for the Starship thing.

And you can't you can't spin it back up without disrupting the thing. You know, so like you can get yourself into a little bit of. of a trap there if you're not careful, right? So if if you know what you're doing, like, and you're got a plan for for how stable you're going to be in your your, your benchmarks for stability, then you can move on to it safely. But if you're just like in some interim thing, that's like, well, I don't know how long is it going to last. And it's like not really our original design decision. And we kind of pivoted quickly to it. And it's like a little bit risky, right? I don't know. That's a thought. That's my, I'm game. Only only sell them to like,

well, even if they, even if they only launch giant starlings with it. I can't know. Like, like. Only sell them to the military. Only sell them to the US government. Starlink is their number one priority. You don't. You want that to be stable, right? You want that to be zero risk. You don't want some other rocket programs,

mistakes or accidents or whatever to like, what if they do? They move everything all. They shut down the Starlink production line. They start making these giant Starlink because they can only launch on Starship. And then one of these stupid things like crashes into the like the coast of Florida or something like that.

And like now we have a huge investigation and we can't launch for six months. sized upper stage that we're dropping on Australia every other week. Yeah. I mean, they're not a publicly traded company, but you can imagine the stock price for Starlink would take a pretty big hit if that had happened, right? Yeah, yeah, right. Yeah. Anyway, that's what I'm just kind of mad about this, Jake. As a space fan, I am mad about it, too.

Let's go. I don't care. So, let's go. I don't care about your P&L. Man, I wish anyone from SpaceX would ever come on. Like, I wish any of them would ever do interviews. Like, you could justify. of me why you don't have a dumb upper stage yet that just could be working and have plans to

get rid of it once you have Starship totally operating but like yeah oh man this is why we don't run the biggest rocket company in the world no no they're too they're too brave too brave too bold for the most premier space company in operation of all time Oh, wow. Part of me, so this is maybe influenced by a lot of the talk at NASA lately, and most importantly, all of the, so crossing streams a little bit onto our dev chat, but pretty tight into the Apple world, as you know, everybody that I know that has worked at Apple doesn't work there anymore, including Scott Manley, who I think left Apple like two weeks ago or something. I know nobody left at Apple, and nothing has ever concerned me more than that. Not that I'm special, but like I knew a lot of people and they've all left. And that's concerning.

And I'm like, when we start hearing that story from SpaceX that like us or the people that we know don't know anyone left, that's when you get concerned. And until that point, I'm like, yeah, you're going to lose a couple of the startups because they're feeling entrepreneurial and they can get some interesting ideas going. And they're building the other parts of the tech tree that you aren't like impulse. You mean you're not already concerned about like, yeah, all of the engineers leaving to start startups and Kathy Lear is not there anymore. And Quinn Shotwell's like, oh, I took a huge bonus to not be the CEO of Boeing. So like, you know, at some point she had a foot halfway out the door and Elon's got lots of new fun projects to work on. Do you think that was a legit idea from her perspective? I might have been a bargaining chip.

I don't know. I know. that's what I'm saying. Like, what if, like, that would have been just a really good way to... She might have been just playing the field. I don't know. Yeah, dude. Although, she might have had, she might have looked at the Boeing role.

You know, increase your salary by $1 billion. You're up in Seattle anyway for Starlink. Yeah. I wouldn't put it back here. That, man, that would have been a wild. She might have had the same theory about the Boeing role that I do about being the NASA administrator right now. I can't fuck this one up.

You know? I can't do worse than what's happening. Man, I want to read her book. That's, oh. Yeah. Yeah. I need her to retire and write that book, ASAP. Yeah, I don't know if either of those things are ever going to happen.

Yeah. Yeah, I mean, it's not like she's lacking the money, right? So. Those people don't work on money. They have it. No, they don't. They don't work. That's what I'm saying.

That's what I'm saying. They're not, that's not part of the equation somehow. I left that job, like, a couple zero. ago. It's why you're not doing that job. You've discovered the answer to your question. Yeah. Yeah.

I get it. I think, yeah, like people are saying, you know, you get the, you get the ideas of fun challenge to go run Boeing. Totally. Like, if you want to be Icarus in that way, Gwen, then go ahead. What a fun pet project at run Boeing. Yeah. Yeah.

True. Oh, boy. Oh, man. I would have made me feel great about Boeing. I would have bought Boeing stock. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Publicly traded, though, it's a different game, man.

That's true. That's true. Line may go up, but not very fast. No. All right, we got to talk about China. Let me pull up some links here, Jake. I don't know if you... Did you vibe check this one and check in on what these tests were?

Mm-hmm. What do you got? So I don't know. Okay, so we have simultaneous tests of the lander doing like some kind of like hop test of some kind with some cable assist to simulate gravity, right? That's what we got. Yeah. Looks kind of like a, like they're lunar lander, right? Is that kind of like Changa looking?

A little bit. A little bit. Looks like Peregrin, to be honest. Yeah, a little bit, right? Yeah. That's pretty cool. And then we also got, was it a first stage test for LM10, Long March 10? Yeah.

Which is the new RIP Long March 9. I would say the current. Yeah, the current because it changes a lot, which is maybe part of this story. Yeah, yeah. So it looks like they're doing stuff. But I think, I don't know, are we just too jaded at me? Because I feel like just like the Starship thing is like my take did not change. and I don't know if that's because I'm jaded

jaded or it was like am I just getting better at seeing it how it was earlier before other people did it and so everyone's take just changed this to meet me is that what happened? I got a pretty big thing. Potentially? I don't know.

You're just saying you're ahead of the curve. I don't know. It didn't not hit me weird that both of those things happened at the same week. Like, I definitely had a moment, even being a person that reads these stories off in a headlines feed every other week, right? Like, I was like, ooh, that's a rough combination of things. They tested the rocket and the lander this week. That's crazy.

Yeah, yeah, I have a take about that, but keep going. We have no insight into what test this would actually map up to. So I think it's a thing. It's tough to say, like, I don't know, is this, is this the test that we will look back to and be like, that was the moment. They tested the real thing and they never made any other changes. And it was totally on track. Yeah. Yeah, because you could, yeah, you don't have enough programmatic context to make a really good judgment about it, right? Because, I mean, when was the earliest RS-25, you know, SSME test for SLS? and then count years from that point to whenever you guys get back on the moon, right?

It's not going to be like four years. Are you not sorry? You're not hitching a ride with us the next time around, Jake, or what? I don't think so. I don't think we are. Not the way things are going. No, not even Artemis 2? Artemis 2, yeah.

You're not rolling with? Not on the moon. Not on the moon. So my point being is like, you know, okay, so they tested a thing. And does that mean they're close? Like, is this the green run or is this like a development? thing, right? That whatever. So that's always something to think about. But the other thing I'm thinking about a lot is that like we always have to remember that China is a autocratic propaganda

machine. And you cannot look at anything like that without the context of everything else going on in geopolitics. And there's a little bit of like power brokering posturing happening right now. You got Trump and Putin in Alaska. And now she's doing, what is he doing, Putin in North Korea, right? There's a little bit of like, you know,

jockeying happening this week, specifically and last week and stuff. So does it, is it coincidence that, oh, hey, by the way, here's some pictures of all the great moon testing we're doing. Like I just,

I can never, ever shake that. That's always going to be a little seed of doubt in the back your mind when you're reading news from them. So I don't know. I don't know what to think about it. Other than, I think China's going to do what China does,

and they lay out a plan for 20 years, and then just like maddingly, like execute it step by step at, you know, gratitude ferocitor. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I really have no insight. So it's just like,

I think it's more of a, I wouldn't count it out that it's just positioning. but I also wouldn't discount the positioning, right? Because even when you talk about, like, why did it matter that the U.S. was the one that landed on the moon in the 60s and why would it matter that China is next? The results of that are all positioning with regard to you and the rest of the world. And how does the rest of the world see you, right? Are there Long March 10s on shirts sold in Target or are they the Saturn 5 and space shuttle?

Like the soft power cultural victory that it was is a thing. And we talked about all the time that the fact that when a movie is going to do a space thing, it's still the space shuttle. It didn't get updated for new rockets. It's not even Starship yet. It's the space shuttle. So that stuff has staying power. And if China is able to pull off a moon landing way sooner than the U.S. is, those images are going to be way better than the ones from Apollo. because technology has advanced a lot

and they will be the ones that become culturally relevant. So if you are a person concerned about the positioning of powers in the world, then it does matter, even if these tests are just shown to be positioning. In the same way that there's thoughts that the, you know, the N1 on the pad led to the speeding up of the Apollo 8 mission.

It didn't work. The N1 didn't work out. But we certainly were concerned about it because of the positioning of that. So it does affect stuff, even if it is just posture. Yeah, this is like that, what's that old, like, I don't know if it's an old saying or whatever idiom, but like, okay, magic isn't real. But if everyone believes magic is real, then magic is real. Like, you know, there's that kind of thing there. So it's like, it doesn't, like, it doesn't actually matter if China gets to the moon before you guys get back.

Like, it just straight up does not matter. but everyone who has a lot of power thinks it matters. And therefore it is going to matter. You know? Exactly. Everyone who's in a decision-making position in the world of money and politics is, cares that this is happening.

Yeah. Now, I will say this, though. I will say that there are inherent things we can point to about the differences in these systems that lead to, Richard Feynman and the engineers that called out what was going to happen to Challenger they lead to them being storied and there's Netflix specials and books

and so much notoriety in that and the fact that you can't look for Tiananmen Square in China on the internet. Right? There is a reverence that free flows of information have for the time that a thing went wrong and the way that we fixed it and the people that were trying to call it out and the reason that that led to benefits

in the future, and the opposite being, we're going to stifle all this, we're not going to talk about it. We barely even post when we're going to do a space launch because we're concerned about what if it goes bad and then people know that we screwed up a thing. They still, you know what I mean? There's still a lack of openness from what are you working on, what are you doing, what are you launching, when are you launching it, that will manifest in issues in this program. At some point, they will lose a very meaningful vehicle, whether on the test stand or in a flight or whatever. And it will be, it will be because information did not flow freely, because information did not flow freely here when we have a very motivated press to find information

that would be negative to those that don't want it out there. Yeah. So that will happen and it will set the program back five years. And that's the, that's the thing that I don't, like, everyone just talks about this like, oh, obviously they're going to go land on the moon in 2030. And it's like, they're not. There's going to be something that goes wrong because this is a really fucking big program and shit goes wrong. Well, physics doesn't care what you're, political philosophy is. Yeah. I mean, that's the question at stake here, right?

Do you do it the American way or the Chinese way? Do you have free press or do you not? Yeah, that's the meta. Do you have democracy or do you not? Which one is better? Stay tuned to find out in round two of the space race. It's one nothing freedom. And we're out to the rematch right now coming up.

So, yeah, that's going to be interesting. But you're right. I mean, something will go wrong and there is always going to be less incentive to tell the boss that you screwed up in that kind of scenario. So we saw that in the USSR. And I don't know. China's different, though. So we'll see. I don't know.

They're not a carbon copy of every authoritarian state. They've done some, they got their own spin on it, right? And so we'll have to come see how that manifests. I think I love the ability to pull one over on ourselves and be like, well, the U.S. and partners effort to get back to the moon is stymied by corruption in the political system and wheeling and dealing that is leading to lack of technological progress. This other program clearly has no corruption going on within it. You're like, what?

There's probably somebody making money on who got the Long March 10 contract. You know, like that doesn't make any sense that that wouldn't exist over there. Because then, yeah, read all those books that you point to of, like, all the bureaus in the Soviet Union fighting against each other and shit, right? It was messy. It was gross. Yeah. Yeah, it was real like Boeing Lockheed back in the USSR days while we designed bureaus. Right.

They just didn't end up merging together and making a behemoth of a launch company. Well, I guess sort of they did, but, you know, it was a different. Yeah. No. So. So you're not concerned about it. Not yet. No.

Are you concerned about it at all? Like, are you, like, are you, one of these territorial claims concern types? I still have a lot of faith in the United States ability to buck up when they're actually under threat. So I think that right now it feels like you guys are behind. You're kind of behind a little bit. I love this whole you shifting, man.

You're trying to hit your ride. You're trying to hop on our Uber pool over here. Hey, man. I'm just following your lead. I'm just following your lead, okay? It's your app, you know. You guys want to go it alone? You're going to be, you're going to go it alone.

No, but like you guys, you guys rally. That's, I still think that's the most likely outcome, you know? Yeah. You'll, you'll, you'll, you'll bitch and moan and complain and fight and debate whether it's good or not. And then they'll launch like a test lunar land or they'll go on the moon and they'll go, oh, shit. And then money will just pour into whatever industry you need. Elon will summon up something and you know

it'll just it'll happen pretty fast after that or you'll move the goalpost again and be like yeah I got to the moon but you know we're doing whatever next amazing thing is and it'll be fine but landing a base yeah landing a base sure whatever it is right you know Robert Bigelow is out there just

fuming though this just I fucking talk he's calling up that comic artist he's like I'm commissioned a whole series on this gotta update these drawings He already commissioned it. He's just pulling it out of the closet now. Like, now it's ready. Yeah.

They have a weird lander, though. The fact that it's like a, it's like a stage and a half. They have a descent stage that they separate from while still on descent. And then the lander itself finishes the descent and does the full ascent back to the vehicle in lunar orbit. See, something like that is. is that gives me confidence that they're not going to like wipe the table with the West. Because like that is, to me, that is like an engineering. It's got code smell.

It's got code smell. You know what I mean? Yeah, you text it right away. Why did you do it that way? Because you couldn't close it the way you wanted to. It's the headless sustainer thing, dude. Right. It is.

It's exactly that. It's the, there's something about that. This is like, we couldn't, we wanted to do it this way. and we just couldn't make the engineering worse. So this was the Band-Aid thing we came up with where we'd like do this weird, complicated drop this here. So like that tells me that this design, this system is at like at the edges of its limit already.

And they're far away from the landing still. So yeah, there you go. There's your engineering take from a software guy. Yeah, I like it. I think the related aspect there is that they're, I'm with the people that are saying, you know, China's a bad actor when it comes to territorial disputes on the earth. So they're going to be the same on the moon.

I totally buy that. But I also think doing the level of territorial claims in the moon requires a level of infrastructure that I don't see the velocity therefore. It takes so much, like you got to sustain it, you know? Like it's... There's still dropping hypergolic stages on villages because they haven't fully transitioned to the new era of launch vehicle. Yeah, yeah. And I've been talking about that since the beginning of podcasting. Yeah.

Not all podcasting, but my podcast. The territorial stuff too will be, what's really going to be interesting about that is like, where does it manifest? Because it's like, okay, so let's say China lands somewhere and then, you know, you guys land close by. And they're like, hey, you're too close to it. We laid claim. And then you guys, the treaty says you can't lay claim. So actually we're allowed to be here while you're too close to our thing. And then you get in a little bit of a debate.

And now all that fighting happens here. It's not going to happen on the moon. Right. And so then you have, then you've got like actual geopolitical conflict happening here on earth because of whatever's happening over there. And then you're like, how does that manifest? Well, okay, well, if you don't, if you don't move your stupid thing from the moon, I'm going to move some warships into the channel here by Taiwan. And just, you know, just inside missile range where all the iPhones get made. And then you can tell me how you feel about that.

And then, you know, like, like, you get a lot of like stuff like that. Not the glass, though, Jake. All right. Listen, I don't, we're making all the glass here now. Okay. I don't, I don't want that conflict to happen. And so. Yeah, that's where it doesn't matter. That's where it does matter.

Yeah. Yeah. That tracks. The funny thing about the moon territorial claim is that I think originally it was like the peaks of eternal light, right? Like I put a solar panel up and then, you know, have power the whole year and whatever. And then all that we talk about now is nuclear power on the moon. So we're like, all right, I mean, we can put it in a hole, you know. Nobody has any idea.

And then, yeah, that's the other aspect. And then it's like we know what the resources are that we care about. and where exactly they are and in what concentrations and how to get them out. It's like trying to pick the exact place that you're going to take over early on in the sieve game before you've unveiled oil. Like, I could see where the iron is, but like, I don't know, like, I'm guessing where the oil is. Yeah. We sort of know what is on the mood and where, but we don't really have that many good theories

on how to extract it or what we would do with it or how it would play into, and then what, and then what of it, you know? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's still the, the, The killer app isn't quite there yet either, right? So we don't know. I hate that fucking phrase, man. I hate.

But it's apt, though, right? You know, it's like. No, it's not. There's no ever, ever been a killer app, ever in anything, in any regard, in any platform ever. There's never been a killer app. You are an iOS developer. There's never been a killer app.

What's the killer app? The killer app is a computer that goes in my pocket. That's a bunch of apps, Jake. All right, that's all the apps. The killer app is all the apps. There's not one thing. I hate killer apps. It's the form factor, though, right?

So they got something right when they went, if we did da-da-da-da-da-da-da, boom, they combined it into your iPhone and then the world change, right? So where on the moon? What can we get on the moon that's going to create some kind of paradigm shift like that? No one knows. Like, you say, oh, we need water. Well, there's water here. Oh, we need sunshine. What are sunshine here?

So, like, what are you going to go get there? What is it? What is the thing? The healing three. Right. Isn't that the thing everyone says? Healing three. Yeah.

I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what to do with helium-3. I feel the same way about helium-3 as I do about quantum stuff. I don't know. Like, that sounds crazy. Sure. I'll believe you when it happens.

And I realize I sound like the guy who's like, petroleum. What the hell would you do with that? But still. Yeah, I mean, you can't always predict it. So, like, maybe you just got to go there and, like, just put your flag down and wait until someone figures it out, right? But I don't know. This is all a lot of the chances that 100 years from now,

Shackleton is really the most useful spot on the moon. Unpredictable, right? Low. I would say low. Unpredictable. Yeah. I wish we could cash that bet. At some point, someone in Europe in the 1400s heard about people that are like, I want to take a boat and go on the other side. And I'm like, why on earth would you ever do that?

What could possibly be able to? If you went there, there's no gold. So what, like, this is the most useless endeavor you could ever do it. that will never make you any money. And then it did. It made someone a lot of money. Eventually, the Philadelphia Eagles. Yeah.

And then they were landing on the moon. So like, you know. Right. Yeah. You can't predict it, right? But we're still waiting for it. We are. I don't know what it's going to be,

when it's going to happen, but we're still waiting for it. This is a very philosophical show. We got places on this show. We did. I feel good about it. I didn't know where that was going to go. Because we don't,

because of the lack of it, like we don't talk about Chinese spaceflight. Not a lot. Much at all because there's just not a lot to go on, you know, but. Yeah. I wish there were more, but I don't really know how to facilitate there being more. Because they don't really want there to be more. Yeah, we should.

Take a trip. Go there and do a YouTube stream like, we're in China. Let's get into a factory. See how fast we get arrested? I see is there some point, right, isn't it? Is it? Ooh. Maybe not.

I don't know. I am pretty far. The ones coming up were pretty far away from me. I spent one night in China once, and I have no desire to go back. How'd that out of? Layover or something? Layover, yeah. A planned layover.

Yeah, just the way the flights worked out. It was not. Did you leave the airport region, or is it just? No, it wasn't, but just I didn't have to go forward. This is a conversation for a lot of place. It was a different thing. probably but it's more of a pre-show how if somebody were to listen into that during the pre-show next week how would they hear that yeah during the pre-show next week if you'd like to hear me talk about

why i don't like why i don't like china uhfnam dot com slash discord pay us five dollars a month and then bring your screen recording uh equipment and put me on business mostly for you jake doesn't have a job so uh you can't get him fine be canceled, baby. What's happening next week? Alf is coming on the show, right? The guy from the TV show. Alf, the alien, is coming on the show.

No, what is Alf actually? I'm not good with Akrams. You know how that it goes? Something Lifefinder, right? A lifefinder. A lifefinder? It's a lifelander, yeah. So Chris and Jan or Jan, I'm going to come down and talk about

this life-finding instrument. They're doing some cool experiments on ISS, I think. And yeah, we'll talk about science. I can't maybe you to dig into that one, because that's got some Mars lore to it. Yeah, we got to dig out your, your evergreen take. Life's everywhere.

Let's talk about that. Dude, Dante Loretta agrees me on this podcast. I'm like, I'm cashing out at that point. Okay, that's selling high right there. We're getting so predictable. It's just like, uh-oh, we're talking about this subject. Here comes Anthony with the tag. Like this everywhere.

Oh, no. Jake's going to talk to talk about Johnson Space Center. Yeah. Yeah, we're going to be, you can listen to the AI created versions of Opnominal pretty easily for sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Feed all 208 of these into something and you'll be able to create a really good one. Somebody will do that now that I mention it.

Yeah. I assume we're in there somewhere. We are. Too many hours. I've tried it. I think I had, I think I had like early days. I had chat GPT write me a fake script for an off nominal podcast or something like that. It was pretty weird.

It wasn't good, but it's good now. It was some of it was like, wow, that is really accurate. Some was like, what? As per usual with AI, it was like 50, 50, great and very wrong. Yeah. All right. I'm trying to think if there was something else I meant to mention to you on the live on the air, but I don't think there was.

We got it. That was it. We ran out of content. minutes early. Put a bow on it. Nothing. I don't, I thought maybe we'd go for an hour and a half on Starship and then we ended up going deep in, uh, geopolitical positioning of space. Yeah, well, I say the, the content, uh, factory is getting pretty dry on Starship. We need some new, uh, we need some new inputs here. Yeah. I did love though. I was, so I watched it with Will, who is a big Starship fan and he when it lifted off he was just chanting work this time work this time it's just

hilarious yeah and then every time there would be like a weird flash to be like oh oh dad is this it i love that that is like my new i'm going to cheer that now every time star ship launched he's like come on dad cheer with me it's work this time work this time So good. Who else takes on Starship? Yeah. When is you going to be a guest on this show? Because he's getting pretty close here.

I don't know. That's pretty insightful take. We are, I feel like we are getting to the point where the schedule on... I've made worse takes than that. The schedule on Starship on each launch is getting sticky enough where, like, the time has come to just like rent a beach house and go down there. And it would be me and him.

So I think we could do a meetup and have Will as the guest host for a podcast or something. Yeah. you would love that. That would be, he'd be super into that. Yeah. Well, I can't hear the music. So I'm hoping I'm fading this up

because the music thing doesn't work on this app anymore. And, uh, uh, yeah. Uh, you know, until next time, Jake,

uh, nothing insightful. If the women don't find you handsome, at least let them find you handy. Or, you know. Let's have a thing your dad said or something. No, it's a deep Canadian take.

That's a red green. Is it? Okay. All right. Well, we'll leave you at that. Bye, everybody. See you.