Off-Nominal - 211 - The International Team (with Christian Davenport)

Episode Date: September 19, 2025

Jake and Anthony are joined by Christian Davenport of The Washington Post to talk about his new book, Rocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 211 - The International Team (with Christian Davenport) - YouTubeRocket Dreams: Musk, Bezos, and the Inside Story of the New, Trillion-Dollar Space Race: Davenport, Christian: 9780593594117: Amazon.com: BooksThe Space Barons: Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, and the Quest to Colonize the Cosmos: Davenport, Christian: Amazon.com: BooksChristian Davenport on X: “So some personal news, as they say. I’m joining the amazing team @CBSNews as a contributor. So grateful they had me on to discuss Rocket Dreams.”Elon Musk Interview: Why the Starship Is Built of Stainless SteelFollow ChristianChristian Davenport - The Washington PostChristian Davenport (@wapodavenport) / XFollow 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. Happy Thursday. How's it going, everybody? Great. It's a Christian Davenport show, a long-awaited show. One of our furthest out booked shows, because you're on a very specific schedule down there with the hot book release. So, big week.

Big week. We're here on the Junkett, Jake. We love being on the Junkett. We always get very high marks for our Junkett I want to be on the record saying that. We've been told more than once that we're the favorite part of the junket because all the other interviewers are lame and unoriginal and we're really smart and clever. Which is why I'm looking forward to this.

I love it, Jake. Just leading off with the props here big time. Just coming in hard, you know? Yeah. I love it. Yeah. There's, man, I don't think Jake had a chance. to read the book. I have rock-blocked my way through the audio book between the last, probably

over the last, I finished it this morning. So all yesterday. I had no meetings. I just had to do some coden. And it was just, who was your narrator's name? I forget Dan something. Yeah. So I actually I'm curious. I forget his name and I haven't listened to it because it's very, it's just weird. You're busy? Well, no, it's weird. I mean, I don't want, I don't, it's weird to hear like your words coming out of somebody else's voice. What did you think of the narrator? I thought at first, I was like, there's an 85% chance this is a voice out of chat GPT

or this guy has done voice work for chat chagipt. It's like he's got a voice that is, a lot of people, they see us on the first time and like, oh, it's not what I pictured you looking like. And I have no picture for what this man looks like. He is a very, just straight down the middle narrator. He did a voice or two with people's quotes, which I enjoyed.

There was like a slight difference on, I don't remember who it was, but there was only like two or three people in the book that got a voice and I appreciate that. Oh, interesting. Okay. All right. Well, I still, I can't listen to the books.

I think it's good. Well, I did, and it's great. And I think everybody, if that's your format, that was the way I was going to get through it also. But I'm really excited for Jake to read this thing because there's some real good nuggets, which I'm sure we'll digest here. Yeah, okay.

Speaking of digesting. Oh, Jake. What did you bring, Christian? Do you bring something fun to drink or are you super busy? So I got to do like massive soccer driving. You know, we're back to school, back to, like, I got to do the carpool. I'm driving other people's kids. So I got a Diet Coke.

There you go. A fridge thing. Yeah. So I'm driving. I'm driving other people's kids. I stick to the. D.C. Super responsible.

Yeah. The Diet Sotas are back on the space beat after Bridenstein's appearance in Congress. At least that's the one thing he kept intact was the commitment to the bit on that one. Otherwise, he's totally off script. Yeah. I did an event with him on the book launch, like at Johns Hopkins University. And, like, we didn't go on. It was like 6.30 in the evening.

And I was like, I was, should I tell the organizers like to stock some dive mountain dew? And I was like, I mean, not at 630. Like he, I mean, you know, I was like, that's probably too late. And he comes in and he's like, he didn't ask for dive mountain dew, but he was like, do you have any coffee? And he was trying to go harder. Yeah. And I was like, he's like, you want any? I'm like, I'm good.

But, yeah. I mean, it's probably pretty desensitized to the caffeine content. at this point, you know? Right. Yeah. I always forget that it has caffeine because in Canada for the longest time, it didn't. It's like a recent thing. Yeah.

There was like, there was like one of those like weird like archaic food regulations in Canada where like if you wanted to put caffeine in your, in your soda, your pop, it had to be like colored like Coke. Like it was like only the only the dark. Like you could put it in Dr. Pepper because it looked the same color. But like if it didn't look like that, you weren't allowed to put caffeine in it. And they like got rid of it reasonably recently. I thought my former home state of Pennsylvania had dumb rules about things you could drink, but that's maybe the stupidest one I've ever heard in my life.

It was always such a shock, though, because I would go to the States sometimes, and then I'd be like, oh, I'll have a mountain dew. And it was like, whoa, it just like hits you because it's like caffeine and all this like high fructose corn syrup. It was just like drinking electricity. Like it was like the wildest thing. Is that what you brought today, Jake? Or do you get? No.

Back on the mead? How's the aging going over there? The aging is going good. I should have some more to share soon. But I'm just still working on the same mescal this week. So creiente. It's really good. I'm kind of in love with it.

So I didn't feel the need to change it up. So yeah. I knew there was a lot of Florida talk about to happen. So I got the high lie out for the lot of Florida in this book. It's, man. I want to start off with a question, which is how in the first maybe we should start more fundamental than this of like previously on davenport writes books what was your what you got the other book out there that ran until what would you say the timeline

cutoff of your first book was well so it's published in 2018 I think that last you know reporting and research was done in 2017 so around then okay and then the goal here was like catch us up from that point to this point because it's fairly consistent contiguous to that then it is I mean it does kind of pick up where the space barons left off and yeah I mean I thought at some point I would write another book but it's like so much has happened that like I you know I went to my agent I was like I think there's enough here for the next book I mean it's it's crazy so and he was like yeah so we we sold it took me took me longer to write this one though so I mean could have come out could have come out probably six months to a year ago but

I just didn't have my act together. I was going to say like 2018, that's ancient history in in this space right now because it's just transformed since then, right? So, yeah, very, very rapid pace. And that's the question I had for you, was like, how did you pick which things to tell the story of? Because there are so many SpaceX storylines in this book. And yet I think you mentioned Starlink.

Granted, I listened. it was probably like two pages that actually referenced Starlink. There were so little Starlink talk. And as I'm listening engrossed in the story, every once in a while I'd be like, shit, but they were working on Starlink this whole time too. And there's just absolutely chaotic amount of stuff going on at that company. Yeah.

No, and it's a matter of sort of staying focused to some of the main themes. Like one of them obviously is human spaceflight, the commercial crew program, coming through with the Artemis program. And what you have in this book, too, and this was like early on, you know, I had like a few chapters, and my editor was like,

love all the stuff about SpaceX and Blue Origin commercial space, but there was like seeds of, you know, China and Russia and the geopolitical tensions. And she really encouraged me to sort of open up the aperture there. And this book is, you know, it's a lot longer. or not the leader of China. Correct.

You got a call directly. The book is long. I mean, there's, yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, I wish I could have gone more into to Starlink, given, you know, particularly it's sort of importance now to SpaceX. But, I mean, it's a little bit not off topic, but adhering to some of those themes for sure. And I've got, you know, got some other things I'm kind of thinking about in the future where that could come back actually. I was going to say, yeah, you got to reserve the Starlink book spot.

All that content's got to be protected. We should mention the book is called Rocket Dreams. We did not even properly plug this thing yet. Amazon, I got the audiobook, which is awesome. Most of our friends, Jake, that get books out there don't have the audiobook ready to roll, which is sad for somebody who likes audiobooks like me. But this one does. I'm thrilled for it.

We're still waiting for one of our friends to pay us to do the audiobook, audiobook. That's what we're open for. Or, you know, do the first one free, Jake, and maybe get yourself into the audiobook lane, you know? I like this idea. Yeah. Well, read your Starlink book.

There you go. Put us on the docket. All right. So you have, here's my review of this book, if you would like my review of this book. And I review these books for. the people listened to this show, which probably followed all of these stories very closely. And so sometimes I think there's a temptation to be like, I already know this story. Except the way you wrote this book is telling the story to people that haven't heard it before

and layering in at least one, if not three juicy tidbits into every section. That either was like a thing you were privy to at the time that didn't come out or some color behind the scenes that, to some extent, we have heard some of these stories, but other ones that were like, you know, stuff that's been rumored but never confirmed or there were just so much behind the scenes going on and, you know, meetings at NASA that happened or meetings at other companies. In many cases, a pretty gruesome look at the management of Bezos at Blue Origin in the late Bob Smith days. Bob Smith. That was his name, right? Now, Jesus Christ, I forgot. This man's name. It's a nondescript. You can forget yourself on that. That's true.

You know, because I feel like that era of Blue Origin, you certainly had some stories that came out and are detailed in this book of like, you got this scoop right before they're going to have this unveiling of a thing and they don't want you to publish it and the weird dance of working at the post, but, you know, having an inside line on some of the Blue Origin stuff, you know, hearing the behind the scenes inside baseball and stuff is I enjoy that. But at the same time, we heard all those rumors out of Blue Origin and not a lot of in the room. a sense of what it was like when Bezos was kind of there in the early days, was there one day a week, and then ramped up his activity later on. I'm just, that stuff was thrilling to me to hear what it actually is. And I don't know, like, did you come away with a looking at it from this end at the end of this book? Like, does it reframe the way that you think about what the company was up to in those years?

Or did it confirm some of the stuff that you already thought about them? That's a good question. I think it confirmed a lot of what, you know, we thought about it. I mean, to your sort of larger point, though, it is, it's amazing to me because I covered all this stuff, a lot of this stuff, right? Just as you live through it, I lived through it, I covered it. And it's kind of amazing to me how much, like, I, how little I knew about what was actually going on at the time.

And it was a fun thing to do just as like a writer and a journalist because I'm doing my day job at the Washington Post still covering the industry at the same time. And I'd be like, okay, so Washington Post reporter question, can you tell me about this, whether it's New Glenn or what's going on Starship or the latest with Artemis? And the answer is like, yeah, no, we can't talk about that. I'm like, all right, all right. So get through that. Right now, author had on. Do you remember this thing like seven years? ago and they're like oh you're not going to believe this hold on like this way is crazy and it's just

the passage of time a lot it just loosens people up to tell you Laura so I'm like it just it was a little humbling that you know I was and I covered this and then I'm like man I didn't know the half of it I you know and so it's I just feel like I'm you know not correcting the record but going back and adding to it and giving some context of the freedom to do you know in a book and just give you know, tell the real story of what happened, in large part because a lot of years have passed, people are more comfortable, people have left, you know, these companies. You know, one of the other differences, too, between the space barons and rocket dreams is, like, when I wrote the space barons, came out in, like, 2018, I've been covering stuff,

like, in space for five years or so. Now I've been doing it for more than 10 years. I just feel like, you know, I've gotten to know people through that. I got to know people through the space barons. It just had better sources, you know, and people trust me to tell me, you know, some of these stories like, oh, yeah, that's what really happened. And I'm like, that is wild. So, yeah.

And why didn't you say that back then? That's really like, I'm excited to read it now even more because that has been like a thing with trying to follow Blue Origin because they're so. buttoned up, right, like in terms of like what's going on there. And so you would always like every every couple months you would get this this thing where like a disgruntled employee who got fired would like go on LinkedIn and be like, I left Bloor today and it's an absolute nightmare and the management is crap. And you're like, okay, well, what do I do with this? Because it's like, you have a company that's, you know, five, six, seven thousand, I don't know many people work there,

but thousands of people work there. And then you have, maybe you have a sample of like 10 people who got fired or laid off and they're saying really bad things about the manager. You're like, It's just statistically not a meaningful sample, right? Like, you can't really, it's a biased small sample. And so there's always like all this smoke, but we can never really like legitimately confirm anything, right? So I'm excited to get into a little more, more detailed and sourced. It's like reading Yelp reviews and then having somebody that worked at the restaurant,

write a book about it, you know? Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's a different level to it. It's like, oh, I looked on glass door and it was like a nightmare. But it's like, okay, well, you know. I was just going to save the glass door. And it's funny to me, like, to see, because, you know, they would always downplay the competition. And they do now.

But it was, like, clear that, you know, around, they realized that, like, sitting out, like, you know, Cots, the Cots program, the Cargo Pro, sitting out commercial crew. I think a lot of people that are really high up regretted that. Like, that was a mistake. You know, they were actually in the early rounds of that. But I think they regret that. And I think maybe even Jeff regrets it. that scene in the book where he's like from now on, like, we go after everything SpaceX bids on. We're going to go after it.

And that's what set them on this course. Like the opening of the book is a Trump transition for Trump 1.0 coming in. And they're all like, yeah, forget this Obama era journey to Mars, the asteroid redirect mission. Those are ridiculous programs. We're going to the moon, which I think there was a lot of consensus in the space industry, that that's what we should do. And then the Blue Origin team, like with Jeff's mantra in the back of their heads, like we have to go after everything SpaceX goes after.

They're like, all right, well, we missed Cots. We missed commercial crew. If this administration wants to go to the moon, we have to like position ourselves to do it. So they go from blue, this team from Blue Origin meets with the Trump transition team. And they're like, oh, well, we just landed New Shepherd a few times out in Van Horn. we can build like a moon lander based off that to land on the moon. Like they completely made it up. There's no moon program.

I mean, listen, that's what happens when a shepherd flies. You just make some shit up and pick a date a couple of years from then, you know? Right. Exactly. That's what you do. It's living to the namesake, you know? Yeah. And it showed, so it showed there like this sort of desperation to almost make up for the mistakes of the past and to try to position themselves to do it.

And now you see it, you know, like, and it resonates now because everyone's like, oh, Bezos is sort of, you know, trying to curry favor with the Trump administration. It's like, well, he tried to curry favor with the Trump administration in the first term, too, to benefit Blue Origin. So anyway, that's like, that's just one example. None of that seemed healthy to me. At the time, and especially reading it in hindsight like this, right, like knowing the way that it ran out, the jumpiness that is present in what they went after and the stories that you've got of

like how leadership was dealing with it and how the people on these programs were dealing with it. It just, it really seemed to come through that they were letting other people pick their roadmap and not being sticky on the things that they care about, right? Because that's the biggest credit we give SpaceX is they have a roadmap in mind and they will take on programs that also kind of get them further along on their own roadmap. And Blue has seemed jumping in that way. And if that was really the stated intent of like anything SpaceX bids on, we're bidding on too, like, that doesn't seem.

It's not very good. That's weird. It's not visionary. It's not visionary, right? Yeah. And I don't know. Like, you tell the story a lot from the management side, but from the people that were lower levels at the company that you had talked to in the time, did that, was that a source of strife that they felt like they were getting dragged along as to whatever the others were doing in the industry and not necessarily, you know, going on their own path alone?

Yeah, absolutely. I think there's an enormous amount of frustration with that and that there has been. You know, what's interesting, too, and you can almost take this as like a business school case study of like, you know, second mover advantage and when you have a competition like this. And, you know, for the HLS competition, right, jumping ahead a little bit. But there's obviously for the NASA contract to for the spacecraft that's going to land astronauts on the moon. Blue Origin's a leader and this initially. In the first round of contracts,

they win the lion's share of the money, like $579 million. SpaceX is a distant third at $135 million, kept on really just because, you know, it's the first round. Why not give them some money and see what happens? Blue Origin has the national team, right? You know, Lockheed Martin and Draper and Northrop Grumman and the, you know, all of industry. And they, you know, gave NASA what NASA said they wanted, like this three-tier architecture with like a descent vehicle, transfer vehicle, and a sent, you know, and it's like right out of Apollo. And that's what NASA said they wanted. And they're going to those industry days and they're like, that's what NASA says they want. That's what we're going to build them because that's what they say they want.

Like Starship is the opposite of that. It's not at all what NASA said they wanted. It's a completely like radical architecture, this massive thing that needs to be refueled in orbit, who knows how many launches you have to have. And yet they win, right? And SpaceX wins with Starship. And they win that competition. And, you know, it's this huge upset. And to me, it's like a major moment, you know, in the book, obviously, but also in sort of the history of this. Because it just shows that NASA doesn't know what it wants. And you talk about sort of having the vision and and having a path and sticking to it, that's the SpaceX way, right? And that's what they did.

And then Blue Origin goes back and they're like dumbfounded and they're like, oh, well, that's how the game is played. We would never have built this architecture. We would build this new Blue Moon architecture with reusability and refueling and cryo propellant storage and transfer, like what they're offering now, which is much more innovative and much more risky. but it's almost like SpaceX taught them that, you know,

that they learn that lesson in that loss, which to me is just sort of, you know, fascinating. And that's not the thing like in a newspaper article, like you can explain that. Like, you know, like that takes a book to catch or something. Yeah.

But do you, do you, all right, let's run the thought process, though, that let's, you know, roll our heads back to the 2021 time period. Blue Origin submits the same national team bid, but it's $2 billion, not $6. Do you think that's still true? That they would have selected?

Because to me, what NASA wanted was not to spend money, right? They didn't have money. They weren't going to have money. That was expressly the decision to only choose one provider was there's no money. So if, and I think, you know, what, a year later, or during the lobbying process for the second lander, there was that whole storyline where,

Bezos was like, I'll chip in $2 billion or whatever. And it was like, well, you had the chance to do that when you were submitting your bid. That was where you could have chipped in the money. So I don't think, was there something about that architecture itself that you think would have excluded it entirely if they had gotten the money side correct? That's a great question. That's chicken of the egg, right? They couldn't have gotten the money side correct with that architecture because of the people involved. But let's just say that they could have done that.

Uh-oh, he's frozen and we don't know it yet. You're here. You're still here. I promise. I promise you're here. Yep. You're here. You're here.

So that's the question of cost. If, you know, would they have given Blue Origin a contract if, you know, if they came in, say it's not even two billion. Because they were like double. Like they were six and SpaceX was like under three. They come in at three. Oh, that's a fascinating question. I don't know. I think maybe.

I think maybe if they were able to look ahead and see, you know, to the point where we are today, because you kind of get the sense that NASA is getting really worried that China's going to get to the moon before we return. And Starship, well, an amazing vehicle, is maybe not going to be ready to land astronauts by 2030. So what do we do? and I don't think

Blue Moon is going to be ready either, but if they had more sort of confidence in that kind of architecture from the beginning, I don't know. I think it's possible. Yeah, that's like the counterfactual. I don't know what we've, it's a tough one.

Because you put that in context of the Bridenstein comments in Congress two weeks ago or whatever it was, right? This is the really funny part of reading your book two weeks after Bridenstein is out there saying no NASA administrator would have selected this. And I kind of forgot the way that that fell on the schedule, right? That it was April 2021 when the announcement was made, and it was May when Bill Nelson was confirmed. But it, Brian Stein just left office. It wasn't

like he was unaware of what the bids were or were, right? Like, I think everything had been submitted at that point by the time that he was out of office. And it just happened to be Kathy Leaders' name on the selection statement at the end. But I don't know. The more time has gone on since Bridenstein said that, I'm like, maybe he's right. Maybe the administrator, because it's their job, would have said, okay, we can't afford this one,

but does it do the thing that we need it to do architecturally? I don't know, man. It's such a confusing time. The theory of like a rogue, Kathy leaders, like sneaking one in is, It's very captivating, right? Like, I don't know. Especially that she then left and got a job at SpaceX.

It's the way, if it was any other company, we'd be like, well, that was fucked up. Yeah, I know. Yeah. No, and that's, I mean, it's an excellent point because you could see the reasoning. It's there in the source selection statement of going with SpaceX and all the, you know, past performance, everything they had done, right? But it's also, you know, also you think, like someone who is thinking not just about the architecture, not just about the engineering, but about the sort of political context, that

matters. And you do kind of wonder, because, you know what's so fascinating? Like, Trump 1.0, you had Mike Pence going on and on about China and the space race, right? And then Bill Nelson comes in, and you could like take Bill Nelson's quotes and take his name off. And it sounds just like Mike Pence, right, in terms of talking about China. And you know, to wonder if that would have Even the weird religious allegories that they would make sometimes too. So you have to wonder if that would, you know, be a factor or not. 4D chess though is that if, if let's our mental exercise here where the national team

was a $2.5 billion bid or whatever, right? If that one was selected, I don't think you get the lobbying effort the following year to get a second lander selected. So 4D chess was like sole sourcing this to SpaceX is the only way to force a second lander because of congressional wrangling. Yeah, there's that too, for sure. What a wacky time period, man. It's Washington.

Washington. You're the guy for this. This is exactly why you're there, so. Yeah, that's why you're on the show right now. I don't know what to think about that. One of the aspects I like about this book was the insight that you get into the feedback that Bezos was giving the Blue Origin team. And I don't know if you know specific examples of when he would be in these meetings and say like, this idea is terrible and horrible

and no one would ever think this is a good plan. Because you have these quotes from those meetings. I just don't know what they were in reference to. But it does kind of, you know, when we're in context, in the real time, we look at all companies as like, the whole company wholeheartedly believes in the thing that they're putting out to the world. And then you have to, have these books that look back and you're like, oh yeah, they were like, not only were they internally indecisive about what they wanted to do here, the leadership thought this was a dumb idea to go ahead with, and they just happened to put on a face of like, I believe very firmly in this architecture. Do you know specifically the, you know, was it the fact that the national

team was cobbled together in that way and what they're shipping now as Blue Moon is actually what Bezos wanted at the time? Or were there other things that he thought were like terrible decisions that the company was making internally? Well, I think, I think, I think what he wanted was to win above anything else. Like he wanted a big contract win. That's what he wanted. Because if you remember at that time, they obviously had sat out all of those competitions.

The National Security Launch competition, like they won one round, but again, then were excluded from the various rounds. They kept, even when they were trying to like throw their hat in, and I think he wanted to win. And I think he's like,

yeah, this is probably not the best architecture, but it's the architecture that's going to get us a, win and we have to get into the NASA infrastructure. We have to be part of the game, the way SpaceX is. And so, yeah, and you know what? And fascinating, there's this other anecdote in the book where when early on, like when Elon went to IAC in Adelaide, and he starts talking about, well, then it was BFR or the Mars Colonial Transport or whatever is called at the time before it's called Starship.

And there was a Blue Origin executive, like I think it was like a Harvard MBA. I mean, clearly a really smart person and they assign him to like, Elon keeps talking about this thing that would become Starship. It just sounds, and it, you know, to a lot of people, like it sounded ridiculous like at the time. And remember the IAC in Guadalajara and he's showing the images of it going. to Mars and you're just like what is like what is this thing like how many engines it's going to have and refueling in space and they're like he Elon keeps talking about it so can you go find out like what this thing is like do some corporate intelligence and he wrote a report and he was like

oh man like this thing could legit like this could disrupt everything like Elon's out to just remake the industry and you know the fact of the matter is like like it could take longer because Elon's always late, but if they deliver even like half the capability that they say they're gonna deliver, then we gotta watch out for this. And then there's sort of like recommendations, or not recommendations, but like these are courses of action.

Like we need to be working on full reusability. We need to be working on cryostorage and transfer. We need to kind of be more aggressively trying to thwart SpaceX. And it's almost like, particularly on the tech development side, Now I'm thinking about going back to your original question, like they were offered, they were sort of told like you need to do this and they didn't then. It only took sort of, you know, that HLS loss for them to do it. So maybe they did think that was the best architecture going forward and they weren't doing

it just because they thought it was the way to go. Yeah. I mean, I think that national team had such a like such a vibe of play. playing Congress, right? Just like the allegiance of like the old guard and the spreading. I had like very much SLS vibes. It was like this national team will affect every state economically. Like it was very much kind of like that. Right. It's hard for me to believe that there wasn't a significant portion of that decision making that had that in mind. That doesn't happen by accident. Like I don't think I could go all the way and say like, oh, there's a bunch of managers

that thought this was just a great technical choice. It was like, no, it's probably just like, this was a reasonable thing that they could execute if they wanted to have the requirements of the political side taking care of. The space village people came together and made a lander. Inside the box of we want to make Congress really, really happy about this, that was the best thing they could come up with. And so like there's an a there's an asterisk next to that, I think, when we say that. Right. And like, and to your point, that's why they just decided to open up sort of the engine manufacturing site and none other than, and I froze again, none other than Huntsville, Alabama, right?

That's where their engine manufacturing site is, right? That's no, I mean, because that's Senator Shelby. That is interesting, though, that you then frame that whole era as them making decisions that were very policy oriented and none of them panning out really in any way. I mean, they got the Vulcan engine deal. I think, I don't know if we could grade that at this point of like how impactful is that for Blue Origin, you know, is that it turned out delayed, but it did turn out well for them and they're going to sell a bunch of engines. But like, do you think that was a net good for the company? I think it might be.

I mean, a Vulcan starts flying at a high cadence the way Tori says it's going to. I mean, particularly if they are flying a lot of the Kuiper satellites and all of a sudden needing a lot of engines, it could be a good thing. And I also think, like, financially, yes, but also what Blue really needs is high-rate manufacturing of those engines. And I think it's probably a good thing that they're making them not just for New Glenn, but also for Vulcan. Because it's just more engines they have to produce, the more engines they produce. The better they get at it, the more efficient, the more the cost comes down. But it took them much longer to get there because of the requirements that Vulcan had. Like they had to get that engine up to at such a point before they could actually start shipping them to their customer, whereas internally they probably would have been a little more forgiving on, you know, piece of shit engines showing up.

And the first New Glenn we don't believe in anyway, let's fire this thing off. The Fifi era, right? Fifi would have set in a little earlier than it might have if they had to, that they had to check all these boxes for Vulcan. Yeah, yeah, and right, because it's going right on a vehicle that's like its first mission, it's flying national security satellite, so it's got to be like perfect, right? There's not a chance to kind of like, oh, that's, you know, we got we got some valve issues. We'll work on those on the next flight as we do it. They can't do that.

Yeah. The data was worth every penny. Yeah, yeah, right. It's always like, sure it was. Yeah. Yeah. I think it's very, very interesting. I think it's going to be, we'll be studying this for lots of more podcasts, I think.

Well, it's, it's one of the few examples where space companies made decisions for political reasons that that didn't, that negatively benefited them. Or that's a weird way to say it, but did not benefit them in any way. Like, all the other companies we see, oh, they're opening a, you know, look at like the way that SpaceX opens facilities and then gets friendly with senators in that state. and now they have a pretty broad congressional support or the way that Rocket Lab goes and they, you know, get some new facilities in different states and they make deals with the Virginia space, whatever they are. And there's all these companies out there

that are positioning themselves very politically and then reaping the benefits of that. And none of the alignment that Blue Origin did with their technical infrastructure to the policy desires of NASA in that era have panned out in a beneficial way. They're like just in with Maria Cantwell. That's what I would say.

Maria Cantwell obviously emerged as a huge force during the HLS thing and basically was like, no, NASA, you are going to have a second provider. But yes, but that's their home state, right? She's, you know, she's the hometown mascot, so to speak. So yeah. Do you think there's like kind of, you know, doing the 3D chess thing, do you think that part of that decision was like anticipating the end of SLS and trying to like position yourself in a way where it was easier to cancel SLS if all that money just cycled back into the

same district for another rocket just by a different company. You know, like so you know, you build the rocket thing in Huntsville. You build test facilities in Texas. Like you do all these kind of same things that you just slot yourself in as like just like the landing pad for all that SLS money when that eventually has to go away inevitably, right? That yeah. I mean, right? Well, that's the playbook that has been. We've seen that for decades, right? That's what, you know, Constellation SLS using all of the space shuttle parts and all the space shuttle facilities and blue following going in right there. Yeah, I think so. I think what would be different about it, though, would be. I got to get that guy off the back. I mean, what would be different, though, is it would, all those other programs, Apollo shuttle

constellation SLSLs are all just big, big NASA, you know, run programs where this wouldn't be, right? that's kind of what I'm wondering is not just the transition from SLS to whatever other, you know, boondoggle gets put in there after, but, you know, to a new time where that money finally divests into the private sector, right? Oh. You do have an anecdote on the one question I've ever wanted to ask Elon Musk, and the only reason that I would have to ask him a question was to get the very specific story. behind the day that they decided to stop building composite starship and start building

stainless steel composite or stainless steel starship you have the anecdote of the moment that he announces this to the team but I'm curious if you have any of the run-up to that like because in the book it's kind of just dropped there as like he came in one day with an epiphany after and I don't I didn't realize the correlation between the dragon explosion and then how closely that decision was made on Starship to switch to stainless steel. But do you know if there was context in the run-up of like, was there internal debate of whether they should or should not switch? The composite stuff was behind schedule on Starship. Was there other people lobbying for stainless steel? Yeah. So I didn't ask him about this when I interviewed, but he did give that interview,

if you remembered a popular mechanics. I'm trying to remember what he said. I mean, you know, the way Elon works is he's got a lot of things kind of brewing in the back of his mind and going along for a while and I do think there was a fair amount of debate going back and forth. But when he decides to make a decision and he goes forward with it, like that's, it's like go. There's no, you know, there's no debate. I mean, he just, it's like, you know, zero to 60 go. And the nicest is, it's like, as a friend of mine, you say that the freedom, the liberating effects of commitment, right?

Like when you're, when you commit to something, that's it. Like we're just going all in. And it's amazing like how quickly. Because I mean, if you look at it actually in retrospect, it makes total sense. Just the cost of it, how easy it is to work with, you know, where they're working, you know, in South Texas, you know, all the welders. It's just an easier thing for the workforce to just kind of get in and start working with it. And there's abundant supply. You know, I don't know.

It just makes it just makes a lot of sense. but in retrospect. And it's funny that there's even like there was, because I think there was a debate about it. But now it just, you know, you look at it and you're like, no, that makes total sense to do that. It's just so long ago that it, that carbon fiber arrow just feels like a little blip

at the beginning of the program. Yeah. I mean, you see the same thing too. Like when after, when you mentioned Dragon blew up on the test sand for the emergency abort system and, you know, they had, what was it? They had to change the material to Incanel. And a lot of people, again, there was a lot of debate about that.

A lot of people pushing back and saying, no, we don't want to change the whole thing. And then he made the decision to do it. And it's like 100% go, right? Same thing with the parachutes, you know. And we're going to upgrade the parachutes. These parachutes, we need them to be better. Go, 100%. And that's the thing, like, you know, that kind of now it's funny because Jeff and Blue

origin, they talk about like, you know, high level or fast-moving decision-making, like make decisions. And Jeff's whole thing at Amazon is like one-way doors or two-way doors and making decision making like a two-way door, you know, you go through the door, you made your decision, you go through the door, and then you're like, oh, man, wrong decision. Like, turn around, go back, do it. You make those decisions quickly, one-way door, you, you know, you can't really go back. You have to take time. But to see Elon, like, you can see it in publicly, him making those decisions, you know, really, really quickly. Same thing, like there's that story about Jared Matthews, the engineer with a docking system, and like NASA comes to SpaceX and they're like,

here's your docking system. Like it's our space station. You're putting this on the end of your, on the end of dragon. We're going to give it to you for free. And this young engineer looks at it. It's like, yeah, it's not, it's not really that good. Like, I could do better. And even though they haven't won the contract and they're competing against Boeing, Elon was like, yeah, yours is better. Do that. And it's like, go. I'm just made of springs and like very Soviet sounding simple physical solution versus like a bunch of software that would have been otherwise.

Yeah. It's a great story. Especially now he runs Astrolab, right? Astrolab. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I had not heard the backstory on him.

So that was good. Yeah. That's one of my favorite stories in the book, I think, just the way, because it tells the SpaceX story. And then it's like, but not like the stakes were so high, too, because then they have to go pitch the NASA, like, source selection team. Like the people are going to make the decision, like, who's going to win this contract? And Elon's right there with him. And NASA has identified the docking system as a weakness in SpaceX's, like, proposal. And so he's got to go defend it to NASA.

while his boss is sitting next to him, right? And the whole thing's coming down to him, and they're like, they can't believe that he's, they're like, you're building your own. Like, we just gave you a docking system. It's good. Use it. And he's like, yeah, it's not that good.

Here's why. I mean, it just strikes me as, it's, I love that story. Yeah. Yeah. That does sound very SpaceX, for sure. It's the perfect encapsulation of it. And, and the, you know, we've talked a lot on this show of like,

SpaceX is still the outlier in the industry, and what is it, what is the thing that keeps them to be such an outlier? And so many people try to replicate their culture, but nobody quite does it. And I don't know, everyone has their own answer as to what it is. Seems like yours probably is that, the decision making in context. But, and a lot of people say quick decision making, but it also has to be good decision making. Like, you can't just, you know, some people are out there building slingshots to try to get rockets to orbit. And it's like, that didn't seem like good decision making to me, even if it was, fast, it still has to be good. And how do you then conjure that up, right? If Blue Origin makes a lot

of fast decisions, but they're fast to make a very clugey lander that includes Lockheed Martin and North of Grumman, just because that seems politically viable, that was a fast decision, but it wasn't a good one long term. Right. That's it. I mean, SpaceX has made some bad decisions, too. They just move so fast that they just changed. They're like, oh yeah, that didn't work. You know, repulsive landing on dragon. Yeah, exactly. That's the one I was thinking of. Yeah. Right. You know, Falcon 5, where did that go? I mean, you know, so there are, you know, and I'm sure, too, like those are the big ones. You're talking about architecture.

Yeah, but look at, just look at, well, they've made a lot of changes. Dragon XL. Jake's favorite Excel logistics vehicles, big week for Excel logistics vehicles, Jake. Yeah, big week. Thanks. Yeah, they do make decisions fast, right? and it's kind of like using your one-way door philosophy. It's like maybe they took the wrong one-way door,

but by the time we all realize that it was the wrong door, there are seven doors ahead already onto the next thing. Yeah. Right. They don't really go back through two-way doors at SpaceX. Has there been a good example? Like they just find the next one-way door. They're kind of like a Git history.

They only, you know, they may revert, but they always move forward, right? They just sort of take the door off the hinges. Yeah. We don't need a door. The best doors. no door. Right.

Exactly. Down through the door, right? Yeah. Best part is no part. How do you feel on, there's kind of the three legs, well, there's a little bit of Richard Branson in this book, but only to, you know, touch on the weird suborbital space race that happened and Elon Musk showing up barefoot

at Richard Branson's house or something in the middle of the night. But there's kind of the trio here is the, the Musk branch, the Bezos branch, the Bezos branch, and then the Bridenstein branch of NASA. We're at a moment where his takes have changed quite a bit on the space industry. So I'm curious how you look back on the Bridenstain era and where he's going at the moment. Well, I mean, if you just go back to the Brindstein era, like, I mean, it was a crazy time to cover it. And obviously, you were there, you know, commercial crew flying. You were there.

We were part, our Bridenstine's time moment. you were there for. You were the one that was, we were holding up, getting to probably an interview for this book that we were holding up by our stupid pin thing at IAC. That's right.

Like the Artemis program, Artemis Accords, Clips program, resurrection of the National Space Council, you know, Pence, a lot of rhetoric, a lot of talk,

but like also a lot of attention on it, flight of Falcon Heavy. Clips. It was just a crate. you know, it was just nuts. There was so much news. It was so busy and they were just, you know, and it was fun. I mean, it was exhausting, but it was a lot of fun to do it.

Now, Jim, I mean, I don't know. So obviously he's lobbyists and he's, you know, doing well and representing, you know, ULA among other people. But I mean, if you're talking specifically about the point of concerns about, like, beating China, I think those are legit and they're not limited to him. I think a lot of people are like, wait a minute, if that's a priority, and if you believe it's a priority that we should get there, which obviously Jim does, then I think he's right to have some concerns about that.

I think it's interesting. If I were Sean Duffy and the acting NASA administrator right now, because he's like all in, we're beating China, right? And it's looking like maybe you will, but maybe you won't. And so I'm wondering, like, I just wonder if people around him, like, if they're telling him, like, yeah, you might want to soften the rhetoric a little bit because you're making this takes pretty high. Like, we got to beat him. And we may not. And then isn't that going to look bad?

So I had thought he would come out and be like, you know, we really want to get there. We want to get back. It's really important. but the fact of the matter is we already won. Like we won 1969 and he would frame it that way, but he's totally not. He's like going all in like we have to win. And if they don't, you know, if China lands on the moon, that could be a pretty embarrassing thing for the Trump administration. In fairness, I don't know if anyone sticks around too long in this administration to have to face the consequences of their promises.

Sure. Right. If China beats you guys back to the moon, I don't know. Oh, you guys. You're not riding along, Jake, on that next flight, huh? Okay. All right. I don't think acting administrator Duffy is going to be getting up on a press conference.

I'm like, well, we lost. I don't think he'll be that. That's not the situation that's going to be there. So it's a pretty easy bet to make when you don't have to cash the check. This is true. Do you think his title would still be acting administrator or do you think he's going to be just administrator? That's a great question. He seems to clearly want to be the administrator.

I am really curious about, you know, is Jared really, is he out of it? 100%. What's going on? He was at that. Did you see? He was at that like Tech Council meeting at the White House. This is like the second time I've heard this theory now. Yeah.

I don't know they come back as like NASA administrator, but did you, someone said at Ashgosh, the air show, Jared took Sean Duffy for a ride in his MIG fighter jet. Yeah. Yeah. A Russian jet? Christian, this is huge. A Russian jet. Yeah, so Jared has a, has a mig.

I flew in it, actually. I flew with Jared in it. You're all in this cabal. It was awesome. It was, well, he's got like five fighters jets. Yeah, he's got a couple of spare. He's got a couple of spare. And he's got a mig.

which was wild. Yeah. But so is he going to, you know, and you got to listen. There's not to talk about another podcast, and you should have Jared on, but he was on, I forget the name of it, Sean Riley or something. And he really, it was like three hours. And his thoughts for like what NASA should do. And he said he gave the playbook, you know, to, anyway, Sean Duffy.

So I don't know. We'll see. But it would be interesting to see if. if Jared at some point is coming back into the fault and in what capacity? Power behind the throne. I mean, Sean Duffy's the only guy that wants to be NASA administrator more than me, who has been actively running to be the administrator in this administration. And I'm still open to it if they want to find somebody that's not also has another job.

I'm still game. We can do this, Jake. I'll change the rules for foreign nationals at the space center, just for you, Jake. There you go. I'll stop saying you guys if you do that. Yeah. I just love that you pass the buck as somebody who's like pumped that Jeremy Hanson's going to be flying around the moon at some point. Yeah. Unless you think he's going to pull out. Do you think he's going to pull out because of the relations? Oh, I don't know with the relations, but I mean, our end of that bargain is Canada Arm 3. And I think Gateway's, um, his, uh, Gateway's longevity is more tenuous than Artemis 2 at this point. So I'm liking our, our, uh, I'm liking our odds on this transaction right now.

Yeah, we'll find a use for it. We'll put it somewhere. Yeah, strap it onto a starship. We'll go like that. It'll go on the next Kluji Blue Origin thing that's made to perfectly align with the political incentives. The leftovers of the Gateway Program, they will reassemble to some sort of thing. Yes. Blue Origin, MDA, and...

Airbus. Yeah, wow. Hell yeah. I mean, that is probably the future of Orbital Reef is some sort of international team situation. You guys think that the Rocket Lab lobbying is good. Wait until you find out what Richmond, British Columbia can bring to the table. Yeah, man.

Yeah, let's see. Christian, you got anything on this? You know what's up with this Rocket Lab lobbying effort to get this telecommunications orbiter, $700 million in the bill? I've heard that they've lobbied Ted Cruz directly and got it in that big beautiful bill. Wouldn't surprise me at all. I mean, they're actually,

they're becoming much more of a force in D.C. and trying to play. And that's, I think the whole wallops thing. I mean, the reason for that, not just the orbital inclination and having, you know,

a spaceport that's not quite as congested as the, as the Cape, it's proximity to the Pentagon. Yeah, for sure. Now, they're, you know,

Peter's, he's such, an interesting guy. And he had this quote. I was interviewing him about, you know, can anyone catch SpaceX? Like that was the story. And his quote was something along the lines of, you know,

like, you know, we're the mosquito, but sometimes the mosquito bites you, you get malaria and you die. And I said, I was just like, whoa, like in the moment. Like I was like, I was like, Peter. I was like, all right, you came out swinging on that one. I just was like, yeah, I was like, you know we're on the record. He was like, oh, yeah, I'm like, I love it.

He was like, he was like, yeah, put that in the, put that in the story. That's amazing. You're in there. That's awesome. Jeez. I'm just amazed that they, they don't have any Texas connection. And then I hear from multiple people that they were, they got Ted Cruz to go in with them on this thing. So Jake's theory is that the Mars telecommunications orbiter is going to be managed out of Johnson's Space Center.

And that was the deal. So we'll find out. Oh, and if you want, here's our original reporting on this, Christian. You can take this and run with it if you want to publish it somewhere. But I had in the pre-show here, which we do for the people, members of Discord, off nom.com slash Discord. We pulled up the text of the big, beautiful bill. and in there, the Mars telecommunications orbiter is specifically restricted to any contractor that won funding from the administration in fiscal year 2024 or 2025 for commercial design studies for

Mars sample return. If you look at how the timeline played out, there were seven companies selected first for the Mars sample return. Those were awarded in fiscal year 2024. in early October, Rocket Lab was added to that contract, which is the only one that was added in fiscal year 2025. So we had some thoughts of like, was Blue the one lobbying for this to be included or was Rocket Lab?

It was definitely Rocket Lab, because Blue would not have allowed that language to be in there if they were lobbying for this inclusion. So it's 100% Rocket Lab that got this into the Big Beautiful Bill. Confirmed. That's as confirmed as I need. Ask the mosquito for us, you next time you see him.

I think he must have just been hanging out at wallups at a lot of time when you were talking to him because, God damn, there's some mosquitoes out there in that swamp. So bad. Yeah. The Delmarva Peninsula, Jake. You should come one time, Jake. I'm out to Delmarva with us. I have plenty of mosquito. You probably also have plenty of four-hour drives to the middle of nowhere.

I do have that, yeah, yeah. We don't have malaria, but we do have dengue. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it's worse. I don't know if it's worse, but it's bad. No, no, it's definitely not worse, but it's not fun. It can be just as bad. Can be, yeah.

Anyway, so what's the next book about? Great question. I guess we'll find out. This runs up to pretty recent, right? Yeah, I mean, I'm still doing all the interviews. I'll just say, you know, I'm really interested in National Security. space. I'm getting interested in like what's what's going on. It's it's wild sort of some of the combat operation type stuff that's happening in orbit right now. You know, you had Russia talking

about a nuclear weapon in space. You're talking space force leaders or talking about dog fighting. You know, like what is it what does the space force do? What is it doing? And anyway, so it's something I'm just kind of kicking around for sure. Golden Dome? Golden Dome, think of this. $25 billion for just this year, that's NASA's entire budget, right? That's like Golden Dome, like one Pentagon program

has NASA's entire budget. The first year of his existence. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, it's going to be as bonkers. Well, and it's also the case, though,

that like there's a lot that can just, say like, oh, this is Golden Dome, too. Like, sign it over to that budget line item. Everything is now Golden Dome. And then all the space companies that don't want to be space companies are, yeah, exactly. It's the same deal, right? Golden Dome Accords. Gateway is part of Golden Dome.

Here we go. Yeah, there we go. Now we got it. Funding secured. Canada's back, baby. Christian, plug the book. Where should people buy it? What should they do?

Tell them about it. You know, I always like to tell people go to their. their neighborhood bookstore you can get it obviously on amazon barns and noble everywhere else i you know i do appreciate it i hope um i hope people check it out uh always appreciative of reviews as well you know like on amazon or good reads um just help authors out um and to tell the story because i think like obviously you guys get it like space is really important um and i think a lot of people are like why why should care about this um and it just sort of help get the word out and educate them and not just because like everything now is everything's so bad right i mean just the

politics and and war and it's nice to be you know writing about something where it's um you know for the most part it's like hopeful and optimistic and inspiring um that said i'm taking this turn into like the dark side of space and national security space um maybe leaving that but but you know for the most part and yeah there's you know competition between the billionaires a competition between countries but in the end it's It's just, it's all really cool. And what we saw in the past, like the timeframe of the narrative is just like, if you think about what happened in the last seven years, it's nuts. And I really do think we're going to look back on this time in 30, 40 years and be like,

this was such an amazing time. The off-nominal, you know, like when we do this podcast in 30 years, we're like, remember when we were talking about Dragon blew up that first time and like that idea? That'll be, we'll look back on this time. that's why I wanted to cover that in the book. Jake, you're going to love reading it. I love to listen, like a lot of you're going to say, I didn't remember all these stories. I did too.

Like we just said, I interacted with Christian while he was writing this book, I think, or doing interviews for this book. And yet, it's still a fantastic, I love listening to it because I could throw it on. And it was like color for the parts of the stories that I knew. And then, oh, here comes the Christian tidbits. And my ears would perk up and be like, oh, that was some crazy stuff that happened that nobody knew about until this moment. also the inside baseball of like

I have this scoop I'm going to publish it Bezos was like wait until we can talk or wait until this thing and you're like well he's just screwing with me so this is like the management of how to run these stories I also loved that that was in there too because most people would skip over that but I thought

it was telling it's like a good insight into the way that these companies are run and the things that they think about internally that you don't get in every day reporting so it's awesome it's good stuff Well, thank you. I appreciate that. We always love having you on, especially when it's not book time, too.

So let's make sure that we don't wait until your next book for that. Absolutely. I love it, too. Jake, what do we got next week? Oh, our scheduling mishap from a couple weeks ago is back. Yeah, yeah. My fault. My fault. No, it's all good. It's all good.

Yeah, so from Ethero is coming on to talk about satellites and all sorts of crazy stuff that they're building up there. So it should be good. I had a scheduling mishap and canceled on him last time just so I could make Jake try to pronounce his name twice on this show without knowing how it's actually said. So is it, G or G? Who knows? We'll find out. We'll find out. All right, y'all. Thanks for hanging out. We'll see you next time. Bye.