Off-Nominal - 212 - Subcontractor Voltron

Episode Date: September 26, 2025

A guest scheduling snafu, a sickness at Anthony’s house, and a great idea from a future guest leads to an old school late night Off-Nominal where the boys have some fun making a tier list of rockets.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 212 - Subcontractor Voltron - YouTubeNASA Selects Blue Origin to Deliver VIPER Rover to Moon’s South Pole - NASANASA, Sierra Space Modify Commercial Resupply Services Contract - NASASierra’s Dream Chaser is starting to resemble a nightmare - Ars TechnicaArtemis II Crew Members Name Their Orion Spacecraft - NASANASA targeting early February for Artemis II mission 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. Hi, Jake. This is great jazz. It's bringing me back. It's bringing me back. It's an old school kind of night. I figured we'd throw it back to the happy hour days with the neon lights. It was really the neon lights that I was viving on,

not the happy hour branding that lasted for 10 minutes. Should I have two? Like my hue lights to go like purple or something? Should we have done something. Yeah, we should have done that. Should have been smarter. You know? Yeah.

Should have went in my closet. And then, actually, the closet in here is probably about the size of the closet I originally recorded this show. Hmm. So, all right. Closet era. Closet era. Yeah. Yeah.

That was a good one. Three off nominal studios. Yeah. Yeah. Late night edition, trio of things, right? We had a guest scheduling snafu, which was very fortuitous because then one of my children was sick, which upended my Thursday plans. which made sense to shift at late night and also

future guest next week's guest Adam Whirl had a discord at us at some point it was like hey you should tier list rockets and you're like I guess we're doing it so

plenty of stuff going on here for the late night yeah yeah yeah no it worked out good for me too because I'm still doing all this home renovation stuff and so this basically opened up the whole day I was like, hey, I can just go work on the casita.

And so that's what I did. Yeah. So it was good. We got a lot of business, though, first. Turns out one of these nonsense late night old school shows we're doing is also there's 8,000 news items that are worth talking about. Maybe a lightning round style because we've got a lot. Maybe.

Yeah. We've got a lot of things. What are you drinking over there, by the way? What are you doing with your dinner time, your dinner timed off nominal? My wife picked this up for me. I think I have, yeah, but she saw it and she's like, Jake will probably like this. It looks like a Honda from Star Wars.

It's like a Halloween Honda. You know what I'm saying? I'm seeing that. Yeah. You were a little off with some of your Star Wars. Yeah, you know? Listen. Analogies earlier, but you're getting it back now.

I thought I could make, I'm trying to make a tier list on this other screen here. I thought this was the, website I found earlier, it's not letting me. Not let me do it. I don't know. I just have a prima pills. That's what I got. Prima Pilsner.

Crack it open. Zilsner. All right, we've got, here's the list of things I want your quick takes on first. Fiper is alive. Dream Chaser is dead. Orion has a name. And Jeremy Hansen speaks French. I need a Jake Robbins review of Jeremy Hanson's French.

That's what I need. Yeah, there was actually like a surprising amount of news this week again. It was like kind of a sleeper news cycle. It was like, there's nothing going on this week. And then it was just like, just slipped in a couple. You're like, actually, I'm going to read this article and think about this for a little bit. These are the weeks to drive me nuts because I have in extenuating circumstances on the familial schedule here that scoots my podcasting to a certain. day. And then that day, more news breaks. And then I'm like, all right, I'll catch up on this one and

I'll do it. And then the next day, that news breaks. I'm like, I gotta just cut it off at a certain point and just hit record and fire one out there. Yeah. Yeah. What do you want to do first? I feel like the first two are quick. Viper alive. What do you got on that? That was a, this is a wacky one. I'm, oh, you know where I'm going to go with this one. Oh, this is all big JSC shenanigans. For sure, for sure. And blue is in on it? I don't know what's going on This is so strange though Because it's like

Okay so let's see if we can remember the history Right because it's like NASA awards the delivery to astrobotic And then the price goes up like two or three times Then NASA says it's too expensive We want to find someone to do it for free Yep No one wants to do it for free

To take it over, run it exactly how we would have And send us the data And surprisingly, no one took them out on that offer. And then they were just like, oh, okay. And they just bought it again with a different supplier? Like, I don't understand the strategy here. This is the least fiscally prudent way to handle that. And then, like, you notice how this contract is like really noncommittal?

It's like they've selected Blue Origin to think about this for a little bit. And we might buy it. There is an option on the contract to deliver and safely deploy the rover. there's an option to safely deploy it. Like there's one version where they just land it and then they fling it off the top of the lander and then there's another where they set it down gently. And like the whole press release is like

we've selected Blue Origin to deliver the Viper rover. And then the actual fine prints like, not really. We think it's going to be them. But we're not, we're dipping our toe in the water with this Blue Origin relationship. I'm going to see how that goes. But I don't know.

It's weird. Is this such a strange, strange, project. I don't get it. What just turned off? I don't know what happened. I lost the light. What happened? It really is off nominal after dark.

You know what? That's my, you know what that was? Is my grow light for Project Redwood over in the corner. That was on. That was on until 907 which is probably when I turned it on the first time for a 12-hour timer. Blue Origin was the only

bitter for this as well. And Astrobotic put out a statement that was like, just to everyone knows we didn't bid on this. We actively avoided bidding on this. Okay, but in, all right, let me steal man this then, if you're taking the negative

side, right? Total potential value is 190 million. So, we knew before, if I can pull numbers out of my brain, when Viper was canceled, wasn't there like, they only had 80 million dollars left on the

to get the thing to the finish line or something. There was something where like there was an $84 million spend or wasn't it, no, that was what they would spend turning it down. It's what they saved. It's what they saved. It's what they saved by canceling. But they still had to spend more money

to save the money. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, which is something like that. Again, we got to get Leon back on here and do the accounting thing, but all right, so Viper was crazy, but they already spent almost all the money.

And they were trying to find somebody to do it for free, but if they couldn't find anyone to take Viper over for free, but they could find a way to get an essentially free landing of a really big payload on the surface. Because 190 million is like nothing. Granted, that's what the original task order was, was about $200 million. And then calculate inflation. This is like very cheap compared to the other option. So if you got to the point where there was enough people within NASA that were like, this was. stupid to cancel this. And there was an uproar outside of NASA that it was done to cancel it at the time. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, I guess I'm left with your theory that they just hate astrobotic and they want

them to fail. So they took the payload away from them and gave it to whoever had the next biggest lander with a crane system that could get it down to the surface optionally. Yeah. Optionally. Yeah, it's super bizarre, man. So you doubt this is happening, though. I think I'm sensing a lot of I don't know, maybe not. Like I, why wouldn't? I mean, the damn thing's done. So like, it may as well. Yeah.

Like you said, I may as well shoot it in the space or something. But it's just, I just don't get the strategy. Like, it's very chaotic. Yeah. Is this the XPRIZE era of NASA that we're in between this and the next

story of like, prove it and then we'll buy it. All of the, like just all of the rhetoric around this mission has been about cost savings and cost overruns and money, money, money. And then there's just like, this, this is not, this is not helping. No. Like, the rover's done great, but that is, that is literally a sunk cost fallacy.

Like they had the option to not spend this $190 million, right? So, yep. And there's like, no, let's go in, let's go in deeper. Let's spend another 190, maybe. There is a slight, um, the, uh, it is the sunk cost fallacy, but this one tastes a little better. than most because I think generally

we are supportive of the mission and it's a good it's not just that remember the test stand that they just like finished in Alabama and it didn't wasn't for anything it was for like the J2X

and they ended up just continuing to build it it's probably about the same amount of money so there's other ones there are other ones that are like really sunk cost fallacy versus I guess it's more of like

the ROI of the sunk cost at that point right like is your sunk cost 95% of the mission cost or is it 50% of the mission cost? So if you're really sunk, I guess it feels better. But it's also still a cool mission. If this flew and landed and we did stuff,

I think we'd enjoy it. And the same way that we were bitching about James Webb for so many years and now it's up there and doing its thing. Yep. Yeah. And when's the last time we argued about that? Yeah. To their credit.

I think we were ahead of that one. I think we were both Yeah, we beat that one. On record, we were both saying like, once this thing flies, then no one's going to care how much money you cost. And you're going to be in the same boat when dragonflies up there doing its thing. Oh, 100%. Yeah.

Yeah. All three and a half billion of it or whatever it's at now. It's a lot. That story also, by the way, that slipped onto the radar force. New Frontiers mission. It was a cost growth of $3 billion that was. attributed to NASA having them re-planned the mission.

It's a new frontiers mission with the cost of three new frontiers missions. They planned it a lot. So therefore, it costs three billion dollars more. It's like, wait, what? Did you watch that show community? Were you into that community show? No, never watched that one.

Oh, it's so funny. I ruined your reference. Tell the people out there, reference it. All the community people will know the reference to kick puncher, which is like a made up like robocop style movie in the in the show and the joke is that his punches have the power of kicks and that's what I think of dragonfly is it's like new frontiers has the power of three new frontiers that would be a good mission though yeah um so dream chaser man uh for the for the second time in its history

It's run out of runway, I guess. Yeah. It's run out of runway. That was a good one. That was good. Yeah, thank you. Yeah, and even there's just based in the music on this is how I see it, right? They have now NASA and Sierra Space is still the org that owns it, I think, looked at each other and said, yeah, if we're flying the first mission in early 2027,

and then typically these missions take another year and a half to get on the manifest. We might deliver what? The candles will light to say goodbye to the ISS? Like what are we going to deliver at that point? And the, well, we got Cygnus XL now and we got and we got probably some up and coming maybe plural Boeing Starliner cargo missions. So that's going to be adding some. I forgot about that.

That's a good kick for it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It isn't, doesn't Japan have one coming to you? Like, there's probably... Dude, if you went back in time and took betting odds on Starliner delivers raw cargo before Dream Chaser, it's such an odd ball.

Like, you would have sounded like the stupidest person in the world at the beginning of this podcast run in 2017, right? Like, that is the most idiotic statement. And yet, here we are. Does anyone actually think Sierra Nevada will reply? No. this thing's not even flying. Dreamchaser's not flying. It's not happening. What are they going to do? Now they're saying, oh, it's the weirdest parlay ever. Yes, 100%. Take that on the sports book.

You know, get on draft kings for our stupid ISS bets. That's my, I guess Cal she would be probably where I could clean up, Jake. But no, this thing's not, this thing is not flying ever. It doesn't sound like it, eh? Like, I mean, things are delayed, but like, what are they doing? Like, I just feel like I have zero concept of progress on this. So there was, like, Berger's article said that they still haven't certified propulsion. And then I think the last several years, we've, there's been, I don't know, we've only heard it, but I've heard talk of the software being a mess for years. And then the only thing they're posting photos of was the cargo module thing.

for a while. They're putting the tiles on the outside and stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, they're aiming for DOD contracts now. So all of a sudden, Dream Chasers is in Golden Dome. That's like, okay, sure. Cool.

Dog fights. Yeah. Dog fights. Yeah, dude. I mean, remember the era where Dreamchacer was signing all the memoranda of understanding. They signed it with everybody. Anybody wanted to sign a paper that said, yeah, I know about Dreamchaser. They would sign it and be like, we might do the crew one,

day. Yeah, they feel like a very non-committal company. I don't know. I don't really get it. I don't really get that company all. Well, all the reporting was they wanted to spin off the space thing and sell it and only do defense at Sierra Nevada, right? So they made Sierra Space.

The hope was that that would get rolled out on its own. I don't know. I think there is, if you were like looking at the past five years of space companies, if you had a couple bill like okay let's do let's spend other people's money for a minute Jake if you were Eric Schmidt and you were going to buy

relativity or whatever right he didn't buy relativity but like effectively if you had a couple bill you wanted to spend a space and you take Sierra space when they were trying to sell that off and you took ULA when it was on the market and you spent a couple bill

and you had launch vehicles and a spacecraft at your disposal and you could try to figure out what to do with these parts. A more integrated pairing probably would have made sense so maybe that's what Sierra Nevada had in mind was like,

it seems like somebody might put a couple Lego bricks together here. Now it probably would have been a cluster. Yeah, let's Voltron this. Let's Voltron it, no, let's throw in Arrowjet Rocketine too. Get an engine manufacturer, Sierra Space, and ULA,

and let's see what happens. There's some energy there. I mean, that's not horrible. God. And what if it was Blue Origin that bought them all, then boom, there you go. You got a whole, you got the whole, oh, no, Northup Grumman. Need the, need the, need those. There you go.

Well, that's true. You could have bought, you could have bought Orbital 8K at the time. Yeah. Oh, shit, dude. We should, that's our business. We should not be doing the- We should go back in time. Yeah.

And just be this like defense king-pins. We'll go back in time to like 2013 and buy a whole bunch of Bitcoin. Then come, right. Then get to here again. sell it all and go back in time again and buy all these rocket companies. What about placing the bet on Starliner delivering cargo before Dream Chaser flies?

Yeah, I've also placed that bet on whatever. Whoever would take that. Yeah, whatever bookie would take that. Yeah. Oh, man, now I'm like, you know, a subcontractor Voltron here of ULA, Aerojet, Sierra Space,

and Orbal ATK, it's like, wow that's almost that's like the american defense version of the Aryan 4 like just who's got who's got a part yeah I mean Vulcan kind of that's

that's Vulcan for you it seems to slip under the radar and not get a lot of talk about that but like ULA I mean they just kind of buy parts and stick them together right there they're they're like the HB of rockets like the you have packed a laptop

Jesus this is a throwback you're bringing out Best Buy era references here. Yeah, the new national team. That's right. The new national team, yeah. That's a bummer, man. I wanted Dream Chaser to fly

because I think it looks cool. It's just so rad. Like, it's just forget what it is for a second. It's a fucking space plane, man. Do it. Let's go. I think if I'm honest with myself, though, when it got away from the version where Dream Chaser was just flying

on top of a rocket without a faring, and it got into the era with the module and the foldable wings. I was like, this is less interesting than the actual lifting body thing. Like, that's... Yeah. Although you've flown those in Kerbil. You know how hard that is.

It's very hard. Yeah. Yeah. All right, let's do Artemis real quick. Oh, go ahead. I was to say, were you a dinosaur fan? Hell yeah. I mean, it barely existed, right?

It was like a wood mock-up of it. That won't be in the tier list ranking because it never... No. But, yeah, I was always in. to that. I had a dinosaur mod on X-plane years ago. Like, probably in college or something.

There was a dinosaur mod, yeah. Because you could fly, and one of them, you could fly to orbit. Explane, I don't know, whatever was out in, like, 2010? Five? I don't know. Nine? I don't know. I don't know. Yeah.

Quick checking on Artemis here. Okay, we've got two things for you. One, give me a rating, on the name integrity of the spaceship. It's a, I don't know, what do you say about it? It's like a run of the mill off the shelf, vanilla, NASA spaceship name. Got to end an itty. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Wasn't integrity the one I was rooting for for perseverance to be named? I was rooting for gritty. So that was the right moment for that. That was also back in the Roewee face. era and that meme was very popular. You're right. You're right.

Yeah, I mean... Integrity. I mean, you had a message about hoping the heat shields are right. I wasn't going to say it on the record. Screw it. Put it out there. No, just saying it'll be a horrible name if there's any problems with that heat shield.

So, yeah. That won't happen. I did sense a little sensitivity in this event with the astronauts where they were talking about, oh, we might roll this out in Sims, Houston, integrity, integrity, Houston. And if people don't like that, they can just say, oh, Ryan. I'm like, ooh, am I getting a little

is there some disgruntlement that, like, they didn't think the space hips would be named? I thought that was weird. Maybe. Maybe. Yeah. Second topic here is is not the Jeremy Hanson French thing, which is

a whole different thing that we don't have to light them too much, but I can speak French like that. Can we just check in real quick? The fact that, like, you know, we've got a history with this program, but like, legitimately next year, there might be humans going outside of Earth orbit. That's crazy. It's coming. That's crazy.

It's crazy how close that is all the sudden. We had this conversation a few episodes ago. Remember it was like we've become so jaded now that things like these long-term things, we just put them in the back of our mind and never think about it again, and then they just sneak up on you? Yeah, they're hearing, like, oh, shit. I was like, yeah, Artemis, yeah, okay, well, when SLS flies, I will, I'll let you know. I'm like, I got to start making plans for like going down there.

Like, this is, I have a calendar to look at now. That's great. It's great. And then when they said in this event, a date now, right? There's dates and multiple dates, which is a whole thing that makes it hard. But in the event, they also said they're going to do a conference between them around the moon and the astronauts on ISS. And he was like, this is the first time

we'll be both around the moon and in low Earth orbit. And I was like, that's actually a really cool. Now, is that true? Was there ever the case where there was an Apollo mission going on at the same time as a Soviet mission? Oh, probably.

So then maybe this was some bullshit. I don't know. Maybe not. When did, because the, the space station era was in the 70s. So there wouldn't have been all those. Right. because salient one was

or even before that was no salute one was the first one right yeah that was well that was uh no there you go that was April 1971 so I bet somebody yeah because that's that's like the 70s yeah yeah yeah so maybe they're

maybe they're talking smack that there's the first time a single entity then yeah sure it's a per lit of yeah it's first time that NASA's been up there at the same time right yeah right if you believe they went the first time, Jake. Ooh.

Spooky. Yeah, I just, I don't know. Sometimes I'm like, shit, man, this is super close. And much like James Webb, man, when they're out there doing a free return, we're all the drama is going to melt away for like a week and a half at least. We're just going to be like, holy shit. Like, oh, my God, oh, my God. Yeah.

Yeah, no, and obviously I had there's some, there's some patriotism effect for me too, right? So this is it's sneaking up Well last week you said you When referring to Artemis 2 And this week all of a sudden Here we are with this patriotism No it's still you guys flying

You're just taking us with you You're not going to break the embargo For this mission I guess I got to decide right Yeah If there's any This is the one Yes exactly

But also like I don't want to go spend two weeks In a freaking Airbnb Yeah you did that You did that last time That was tough Yeah Yeah. Yeah.

That was tough. That was a bit of a downer. Well, good thing they're doing a wet dresser for this time. Not only am I breaking the embargo. Like, I'm breaking the embargo. Like, I'm just like festering. You're moving there. Festering in the end of the, the, I was going to live in.

Unvaccinated. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. You're going right in it, man. Real America. In the winter, though. So.

So all that's left are Floridians. Consider that. Isn't the winter when everyone else comes down, though? I don't know what's the Florida. Not in the space coast. I mean, yeah, but like not in the space coast. That's when Canadians go to Florida. But they're all at Disney World.

Yeah, that's different. That's different. It's not that warm in central Florida. And, yeah, it's not that warm until you get close to Miami. Yeah, but it's like a sauna compared to Canada in February. Well, yeah, that's your problem. Yeah. All right, let's tier rank this shit.

I made... Do we have criteria for this, or are we just... No, no, no, we got to figure it out. Yeah, so I will... I will pull up this screen, this very beautiful interface, the tier list maker. And I will upload images as we go of the Rockets. So let me pull up another browser window over here.

somewhere I can do this where do you want to start you want to start from a particular era you want to people in the chat want to yell out some rockets that we should go with the people in the chat are yelling at rockets we're going to get really obscure ones they're going to be rank the scout I mean I'll dig that deep you know rank the whack me with a good time

shit that's a good deep cut man that's good all right should we should we at least give us a little bit of a of a bounding box right should we pick an s and a d right off the bat should we should we do some orbital gatekeeping and limit it to to just orbital rockets yeah I think so right yeah yeah I mean what what s would you put first.

There's only one answer for S. Saturn 5. Ooh. Okay, because there's two answers. Falcon 9. I was going to say Falcon 9. Yeah, Falcon 9 is. All right.

Shit, man. Okay. I'll grab a photo of Falcon 9. I'm going to pick a photo of it landing because that's that's really some S level shit. Can I just drag to upload or is that going to give me some shit? Oh, come on.

Come on. I got to choose. Jeez. Couldn't even do that. Now I got to make the whole folder for this. A lot of, yeah, I mean, all right. So Falcon 9 we're putting as an S. I'm not even scrolled to the right part.

All right. Falcon 9's an S. I got all sorts of shit. Okay. Choose files to your list. Falcon 9 This is a terrible website I have to hit save or download

No, what's happening? What button do I even need to push? Oh, here, just put it in here. Okay. S, Falcon 9. All right. At least we got through that one. What would you, you got any D's top of mind?

D's, okay, so this D's supposed to be the worst or is there one's below that? No, it's D. I mean, I can make one if you want. D is all right. I think five tiers is good. Okay. Right?

Think about it like one to five star. So I would say S excels at all aspects, right? In the middle, you're going to have ones that are good rockets, but maybe four shitty jobs. And then lower level is like rockets that work but are not good at anything. and then D is just abysmal, you know. Yeah. All right. A lot of astro callouts in the chat.

Let's do Saturn 5. We already mentioned that one. That's got to go on there. I'm trying to establish a lower bound for us. Well, you want to start the bottom. Okay. I want a top and a bottom so we can kind of, you know, play the middle there. Does Rocket 3 go in the D list?

Yeah. So Rocket 3 is, is, is, It's terrible, right? We should knock it down a few pegs, given all the rhetoric this week from our buddy camp. He's the worst. I have no qualms about saying, I just don't know what to do with that guy. So, yeah, Rocket 3. He doesn't hold back on you.

Well, he's also just out there talking total garbage about everybody. You know, I'm not out here saying that Fireflies got the best engines, but, uh, what have we got? Saturn 5 and Astra. All right, coming in. So Rocket 3, D, Saturn 5, Apollo variant, S. How about Saturn 5 Skylab variant? Hmm.

What do you think? Skylab variant. Well, pretty limited use. Limited but cool. Kind of weird. It was cool. Didn't work that good. I was going to say.

Kind of broke the space. all the way up. Also failed, yeah. Are we arriving at this is not a good rocket? I think that's what we're finding out is like, like maybe a B, dude. It's only not a D because there's a Saturn 5. It might be true.

It literally had one job, and it broke the space station on the way off. Right? Yeah. Did I even, did I save that image? Where did I put it? it somewhere. Was it not downloading?

What's happening here? Jeez. That's a really funny. Early on this list. Dude. I think it's a defensible decision from us, though. We backed it up. Yeah.

What is happening? Why can't I save this image? It won't even allow me to save an image of Saturn 5 Skylab variant. Was there even a name for that? Like, did it get a special... A special thing? I don't remember. We're putting that at C.

I think it's a C. Good rocket, but broke the thing that it was doing. Okay. Space shuttle, everybody's calling out. So we've got to figure this one out. That's going to be maybe the most tricky. I think shuttle's an A. A tier.

All right, explain why A, not S. I think if shuttle had not... taking some astronauts. The throat clear was so... It'd be an S-tier. It'd be an S-tier. Yeah. Okay, so only dinged for the loss of crew numbers.

Loses 14 points and drops down to 8. Oh, Jesus Christ. Not to put too fine of a point on it. Shuttle, Space Shuttle. A-tier. I would agree with that. It launched a lot of great missions. Launched hundreds of times.

Great space telescopes. Checkered his... History. Still, if you ask someone who doesn't know anything about space to draw a rocket, that's what they draw. Yeah. Although, I think we've talked about this, so we don't need to recap all this, but like, it probably cemented a couple things about what NASA was working on and how they were working on it that led us to certain quandaries that we're in now. Like it, you know? Also, I'm just a straight-up shuttle Apollo.

So I will, I will. That's what A stands for. Yeah, A for a polandist. Okay. I like this so far. I feel comfortable. I don't feel like we've really... Southern Skylab, not where I...

I didn't really know where that was going to go, but that's really funny to me. The last one that ever flew is a C. Man, we've seen better. I'm also going to say real quick, just before we get into some of the newer rockets, that we can't rank any of these. We can't tier them. We have to tier them based on September 25th, 2025. Also, my brother's birthday.

Happy birthday, Lair. We have to rank them based on what they're doing today. Right. So we can't rank Starship based on Elon's latest, how many hundreds of tons it will launch to orbit. We can't rank New Glenn on how many satellites at a launch per stack. We can't rank Starship because it's not orbital, so.

Great point. It's not even on the list. Now let's do New Glenn. Let's go. Let's do it. Okay. New Glenn. What do you like about New Glenn?

Give me your baseline. I'm feeling it's giving B. Okay. Solid middle range. Explain that. Explain that. Great payload. Reusable in theory.

I don't know. Kind of a nice design. I think both. Both of those are in theory. Big payload is true. I don't know. There's still a lot of, maybe it's fear, uncertainty, and doubt out there about, like, how much can this act? In the same way that there is about Starship right now, like, how many tons is this thing actually pushing to orbit when it does it?

I've heard the same about New Glenn. Big rocket, though. It's a big rocket. Yeah, it's a big, it's a chunker. It's not going to be, like, it's not going to be a small payload. Like, I'm going to be launching cubesats on this thing. Like, come on. Well.

you say that but I know one really big CubeSat launcher you're saying B they're launching a CubeSat later this year it was the first thing Christina Cook mentioned in the in like what's cool about this mission

she was like one we're launching some CubeSats I was like oh maybe go birds but like let's let's start somewhere else with this mission B that's an interesting one to me because it worked amazing the first launch, right?

Lost the first stage. I think it would get an A if it not even stuck the landing, but if we saw the first stage again. I think if we had visual sighting of the first stage, I probably would put it into A. I'm comfortable with B. More utility than the Skylab launcher.

I like it. Let's roll. Cool propulsion. Like engines are nice. Methylose. I like that there's a little bit of of fight that suborbital should now be on the list because we have excluded Starship, so that makes me feel even better

about doing that. All right. Let's see. Who else? Let's do Soyuz. Soyuz people or no people? Or just does that go as one? You can't hear.

Here's the thing. We can't get into every goddamn Soyuz variant out there. No, you're right. 1412. Like there were just so many of them. All the way to R7. All right. So let's, let's group it all together and then adjust for recency bias.

Soyuz as a platform. Yeah. I think it's, yeah. This is an interesting one. Huge heritage. Got a lot of work done. Reasonably reliable. Until recently.

All weather. you know all weather is right yeah first instance of space piracy still launched more than Falcon I think I'm saying A

I think A is probably probably correct yeah right I think brain drain of late knocks it down from S right because the utility here can launch from so many launch pads

can launch people. It doesn't have a huge payload capacity, but a lot of useful stuff, you know. Nice slate of one web satellites, a couple GPS satellites. It's a cool factor on the, um, it's a cool factor on the Corlev-Cross staging. 100% great staging.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. He's good. That's a good one. All right. This feels easy because we're making good decisions. Where does this get hard?

Electron. People want Electron, Jake. Okay, we should do Electron. Yeah, yeah. Oh, man. A little bit of a spotty upper stage history. This one's, yeah, this one's actually interesting because, like, it's good for very different reasons than other rockets. Explain.

Like, it does not have a good payload. No, very specific payload. Not really, not very reusable. Not a lot of, like, flexibility. Not reusable. They're not doing that anymore. Is it, it, it's not that cheap. Is it?

It's like. more expensive. It grew a lot. This is kind of okay. But it gets so many points for just execution, right? Like just be in there. When all the other small launchers wasted away into nothing and fell into the grave and flew into the ocean, electrons is like, yeah, I'm just going to keep going. And it just like kept flying. And they're just, they're still flying it. Like, there's like dozens and dozens of these launches. It's cash flow positive. That's weird for a rocket. and it's enabled Rocket Lab to do all the other things they're going to do. Get some points, man.

I think there's a, there's a case for it there. Yeah, I think, um, hmm, it feels, it feels harsher than I would imagine for Electron, but I feel like what you've just said, dragged it from a C up to a B. Ooh. Yeah, yeah. I don't think it's, I can't, I can't. put it at A. I can't put it with shuttle and soy. I feel like it's not an A, but it's, but it's, it's better. I think it's more important than New Glenn going off today. So like,

there's ranges in these tiers. That's interesting. Yeah. All right. We can, we can, we can left to right rank them at the end. It's a B plus, yeah. It's a B plus. Yeah. Man, I think, yeah, that's, this one, this one, this one, I see some disagreement in the chat around this one, Jake. I just can't put it with shuttle and Soyuz exactly for your reasons. It's very limited. They bailed on reusability.

You know? It's got a cool suborbital variant. Yeah. All right. That's a good one. I'm glad that we visited that so early on. Let's do some old school ones again, Jake. Let's throw a Gemini Titan launch vehicle on there.

Titan 2? Yeah. Ooh Titan 2 They all worked Wait hold on No Just the Gemini ones though

I mean I didn't Titan 2 launch a whole bunch of shit Like Yeah and like ICBMs and stuff But I'm just I'm thinking like I'm thinking Gemini Gemini launch platform Yeah

Yeah they all worked Absolutely cool ass engines man Yeah, bonkers escape system. Glad we never had to use that. Oh, yeah, I always forget that. There's no way that would have worked, right? I don't think so, no. No.

But at one point, they built it, and they were like, that'll do, it'll get us out of there if we need it. Better than nothing. I assume somebody said, better than nothing. It means you don't have to go to Congress and say there's no plan B. Yeah I don't know

Is it a Had a moment when it was going to be Like the manned orbiting laboratory Workhorse as well Right So that was kind of an interesting Interesting thing I just thought it had a cool look

I think vibes bounce it up But it's limited in utility Generally Right Unless you want to destroy the world Or sent two guys up to space for two weeks The Kerbal rockets were really

modeled after this pretty well, weren't they? Oh, yeah. A lot of design inspiration from Titan. Oh, yeah. And hypergolic, right? Was it hypergol. Or whatever? Was it hypergolic? What was it? It was like LR 87 engine or something. I don't remember anymore.

Right. Liquid propellant. Airjet, baby. What was it? Yes, the LR 8711. Aerozine 50 N204. Crazy. Is that one of those one engine two bells kind of things? One engine two bills. I think you're right, yeah.

Yeah. That's how the Soviets did it, right? That is how the Soviets did it, yeah. LR. 875 was adapted for, yeah, this was nitrogen tech, toxin, yeah, 50. So that was interesting. I think that knocks it down a peg. launching people on Hypergall's was kind of stupid. but it was the 60s man again this is feeling a lot lower than I thought it would when we

yeah I'm like it's like a I think it's a B I would have been maybe fine if you put it right next to the sky lab yeah yeah might have been a C plus yeah all right I think so not enough to work with you know not enough to do with it do we need to move new Glenn is starting to feel out of place with the rest of these is it a C you think it's too high why no dude seven meter payload faring reusable first stage looks beautiful great livery okay all right

blue flames the methane come on you walk me back you walk me back yeah yeah come on take it easy everyone everyone hates it though in the chat there's like everyone's mad about that one so it's launched once so what it's orbital

we're ranking it high and admitting starship is just driving people mad no once you're orbital, we can then cash some future checks. But you know. All right. What else we got? Should we round out the space race era from the U.S. side and do

Mercury, Redstone, Mercury Atlas? Are those kind of boring? Well, I'm also a Mercury Atlas apologist along with shuttle, so that's going up pretty high on my list. Okay, what about Redstone, though? Redstone

couldn't care less about it. It's a D. I thought it's a D as well. Same. Now, talk to me Sweet Nothing's about the Mercury Atlas. Bro, it's inflatable. Come on.

It invented WD40. It is the... It's inflatable. It's the historical platform upon which the current incredible Atlas rocket is based on.

stage and a half too and a half stage and a half dude that's ridiculous that's a ridiculous concept and if you're the kind of person that feels really guilty about liking the Apollo era

because of Nazi connections Atlas is like the opposite the guy that did that is like a a Dutch no Belgian guy Belgian yeah Antwerp that's in Belgian right

Yep. Is it? He was getting, getting, V2 is like, we're hitting a city, man. And then he came in the United States and made a rocket. So you didn't tell me a letter yet. I think it's definitely an A tier. I think it's an A tier. Hmm.

Wow. I guess, okay. So you're, I agree because first step of something, a lineage that's incredible. great history with getting all those all those boys up to orbit but knocked down a peg because not that much utility beyond a crude launch in terms of space yeah yeah the ICBMs that they all you guys bought just like and put them in a storage for like two months and then got rid of them for titans that was like yeah that was a pretty rough part of the story yeah they made lemonade out of man they put some people in space that's pretty good yeah we need some more Soviet shit on this

and international. Yeah, we need some marians. We have to do, um, uh, my, uh, my, my fave. Proton. Proton, yes, thank you. Yeah. It was like having a senior moment there.

My God, proton, my, my darling. The upside downer. Convince me, convince me where it should go. I think it's a B. A B? Yeah. All right. That's lower than.

I'm I could be if you give me a good argument I would let you put it in hey I mean it's not launched as many times as Soyuz but like boy howdy did that have a long a long lifetime um launched a lot of the more talked about Soviet missions I would say right generally like it was the I mean it was relevant up every salute all of meir and half of the international space station yes yeah yeah And then any of the planetary stuff too, right? A lot of that flew on proton. Always thought it was cool that they weren't boosters on the side.

Like, that was weird. Yeah, yeah, that's a little strange, yeah. Very Saturn 1B kind of thing. Yeah. I mean, the launch failure is one of the best there ever was. Right? Name a better launch failure in terms of visuals. I think

at lunch now at us. I think there's something to be said. Yeah, it once had a Pizza Hut logo. That's right. They did have a Pizza Hut logo. They NASCAR'd the shit out of that one. There's something to be said about the irony too, because it was like the other competitor for the Moon Rocket and the Soviet space program.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And N1 was chosen. And N1 failed spectacularly. And Proton carried on and got lots of. meaningful work done. It was very much like the underdog story. There's like good. Yeah.

Okay. So did I convince you that it's an A? I think you did. Yeah. All right. It's an A. Let's do N1 then while you're, while you're there.

N1's a D. It's a D for sure. Got to me, right? Yeah. Piece of shit. Yeah, terrible rocket. And you want to talk about like getting kicked down a peg

for human lives? Holy shit, did that thing do with some damage. Yeah, it's not orbital. We can't put it up there. Never mind. That's true. Oh, shit.

All right. Well, let's do it's, I've a really bad joke that I'm not, that I'm pumped faking on about the next rocket I'm about to introduce, which is Antares.

A little, a little lineage there for, uh, original engines of Antares. Antares. I'll tell you what. I'll do this one, Jake, since you know my history,

and you would expect me to put this at a D. But I'm going to probably walk up the ladder a little bit. I think the vibe of having used the old engines is pretty good. And that gets a bumped, at least a tier for pulling those out of a warehouse. whatever else Airjet did with him. Incredibly limited. Could not be more limited than it was by launching out of wallups

and only going to the ISS ever and never having any payload faring of any menial size. The upper stage absolutely sucks. Look at the injection parameters of every Cygnus that flew in Atari's. It's hilarious. None of them are even close

to any of the other ones that flew. The team that works on Cygnus gets so many props from me because of the shit they had to deal with wherever they got dropped off. Cleaning up whatever margin was that. They had no idea where they were going to be. And then I assumed the hour after launch,

I was like, holy shit, look at this terrible injection. So I actually think it's just a sea because it's a terrible rocket that has an interesting story, especially now, that this was like the last of the prior era of, you know, space collaboration with the Russian engine and Ukrainian first stage and then an American solid on top. Like, that shit is never happening again.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. I go, I go see. I feel a little weird putting it next to the Titan, but I think we have to accept that these ranges are broad, I think. Well, but I actually think that works because the Titan we feel very similarly about, and this is the photo that I'm going to use Farnsauri. Because that's exactly what I'm saying.

Yeah. I think that's logically, it makes sense with the way that we listed that. All right, we're running out of time. What else are we thrown on here? There's a lot of shit we could, but like give me, let's do like some quick ones, like, Aryan 5.

There's one that's like maybe tough to put. That is tough to put. Hmm. Aryan 5. It's got to be. a B tier then, right? Yeah, because if it launched people at any point, it would get it, it would get to A.

Yeah. But it's, it's never, you know. A lot of commercial, weird stuff. James Webb. James Webb. I think it's just B. It probably gets a whole bump just from James Webb. New Glenn, Electron, and Aryan 5 make sense in a row to me.

Okay. That feels right. Yeah. That feels like it's. a good fit. Virgin Orbit is a... We need to do Atlas 5 for one.

Alice 5. Yeah. That's because it's obvious. It's obvious, Jake. It's... I think it's S-tier? I kind of do. Centaur is awesome.

It's going to draw some higher. Centaur, you got to rank it in its time, right? I mean, like, Saturn 5 makes no sense today. You can't inflict presentism on this. Atlas Apologians. I think it's an S. It launched so many fantastic missions. A great record.

Awesome configurations. The 411, come on. That's crazy. That's a crazy rocket, dude. Centaur alone is amazing. Yeah, it's S. 100% S. Delta 4?

Delta 4. Okay. Heavy? Delta 4 heavy. Let's do that. All the other Delta 4s are, I probably like it. You can probably just say Delta 4 is a family.

Yeah. Okay. Well, if a ranking is a family, that's interesting. Launched Orion. Lights itself on fire when it launches. Very configurable. Very expensive. Very finicky.

A little bit mixed. Very expensive. I feel like the money, I feel like the, I feel like it's B, and then it's really expensive, so it's got to be a C. I think it's a C, yeah.

Yeah. If it was more economically sensible than maybe B. What else do we miss? SLS. SLS, let's do it. Oof. It's a good thing we're ranking this

before Artemis, too, because we can rank it low. Yeah. Bad Rocket, man. Yeah. Is it a D? I don't know. It might be a D.

I think it's a D. Oh, shit, dude. Can you argue that it... SLS tier. Can you argue that it's provided more utility than the Redstone? I don't know, but it's something funny about Rocket 3, Redstone and SLS being the same tier. It's a really fun. Like, in the way that New Glenn Electron and Arian.

five makes sense to me, that makes no sense at all. And I can't disagree with any of it. Yeah. That's so good, dude. Oh, wow. Any other last-minute ones that you think might be? Yeah, Vulcan, we could throw Vulcan in the mix. Based on where it's at now, that's an interesting one, Jake.

I don't know what to do with that. It's a B. B. It's a B with upside potential, but it's got to earn it still. Yeah, I don't know. That's why I'm like, I don't know about that. I mean, I guess it's in the way that I knocked Delta 4 down for price. This seems to be more competitive on price, so maybe we should bump it up.

Cool engines. If New Glenn's up there, the Balkans got to be up there. I guess you're right. You're right. Firefly Alpha. Can we do that one? Yeah. What would you do with that?

Is it orbital? Yeah. They've done, they've made it. All I ever hear about is not much. What do you think? C, I guess. It might be a D, dude. Might be a D,

man. I think it's a D. It's terrible. Like they keep screwing up those upper stages. There's not really any, they never deliver the same engine twice. there's just not a real there's not a real payload base

Oh redstone was suborbital Why do we have redstone on here Jake? I don't know It's fine Just put it on there I don't know Because we're, it's late and we're old Launcher 1

What do you think about that? No you know what, screw that Let's do a better one It's a what? Launcher 1 is a D tier, isn't it? D, yeah, it's a D. Here's a D. Pegasus.

Ooh. What are you got on Pegasus with our dying time here? Pegasus is a D? The first privately developed orbital rocket

with the cool little wings. Pegas has had way more of a vibe than launcher one if we're putting the air launched in a category.

I think it should go up to a sea at least. What's the opposite of an apologist? A detractor? I don't know.

A detractor, yeah. I'm an air launch detractor. Oh, I hate air launch, but I think you don't think something about, I mean, it flew on one of those the L-10-11, like that had some interesting nonsense. You think it's a C? You think it's a C? Yeah, man, that was some 90s shit, dude.

Randy, you'll be happy to hear that. Yeah. Never thought I would come out and try to bump both Antares and Pegasus up into the C-tier. This week on Ovenominole, Anthony defends Pegasus. and Ansari's Yeah, for the look. Where's that version orbit one?

I just upload them all again. God, version orbit. What did we miss here? Launcher 1 D, Pegasus C. Should we just keep going the next time we have nothing doing the show? I'm going to save this as is. Save or download. Just keep adding to it?

Yeah, because we have so much work to doing this. thought we would make it way farther, but we have a lot of work. I think we should come back to this, Jake. All right, all right. Yeah. We'll have time. All right.

It's good. And one time we'll do an alignment chart. That will be fine. In the final 10 seconds, which one on there makes you feel the least comfortable? Um, hmm. All right,

I'll read them out real quick for everyone here at the end of the show. S-tier, Falcon 9, Saturn 5, Atlas 5. You have to have number. to get into the S-Tier is what we're learning. A-tier, shuttle, Soyuz, Mercury Atlas, Proton, B-tier, New Glenn, Electron, Aryan 5, and that's... What is that? Falcon. C-tier, Skylab, Saturn, 5, Gemini, Titan launch vehicle, Antares, Delta 4, Pegasus, D-Tier, Rocket 3, Redstone, SLS, Firefly Alpha,

and Launcherone. Straight up, I think SLS might. to be honest. You think it should go up? I think it should. I mean, don't get me wrong. It's provided as much agility as Pegasus.

I just think there's a, at this point, barring anything catastrophic, it is going to have a place in the historical rocket lineup, right, when you're looking at, you know, a thousand years from now when people are like,

when humans first set out, like it's in the mix, it's as close to, to the ones we were just debating in the early space race, as it will be to the people that are talking about it. So I feel like it's going to have

some historical aspect to it. And if Artemis goes well, then it will be the thing that the Artemis program was organized around, and that, I think, should lend a little credence because in the Casey Dreyer Parlance, like it has political viability and it stay in power.

But that hasn't happened yet. It hasn't happened yet. I know. So that's what I'm saying. I wouldn't move it up right now in 2025. We come back in a year and update this. Maybe maybe bumps to see. See, if they launched on schedule, this thing will be way higher on the list.

Yeah, yeah. Jim Free told me that this was supposed to be done in late 2024. That's right. All right, what's your uncomfortable level? I think New Glenn is still giving me weird vibes. I don't know. Too high? Yeah, I think it might be dropping down one.

Okay. let's check back in check back in in a couple weeks and we'll finish this out. It's a good holiday time one when we've really got a slow week or something. Yeah. Love it.

Love it. Next week, what's happening next week? Adam Whirls coming on the show, right? Yeah. We're doing a little bit of a different thing. Board game. Apogy game, board games. Space, board games.

Space. Scoundrels and pirates affiliated with criminal enterprises. I cannot wait. I have no idea what's going on with this, but they made a board game. That's a great background. A long time anomaly. Rob Davis, I don't know. I'd only know Adam.

Yeah, we've got a lot to talk about it. It's going to be interesting show. So that's next week. Shit, man. It's good hanging out late night. That's what we got. Love it. All right, everybody.

Have a good sleep, everybody. See you.