Off-Nominal - 216 - Golden Llama (with Eric Berger)

Episode Date: October 31, 2025

Jake and Anthony are joined by Eric Berger, Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica, to talk about the fight to be NASA Administrator, and to provide the lander for Artemis 3.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 216 - Golden Llama (with Eric Berger) - YouTubeWhy did NASA’s chief just shake up the agency’s plans to land on the Moon? - Ars TechnicaElon Musk just declared war on NASA’s acting administrator, apparently - Ars TechnicaHow America fell behind China in the lunar space race—and how it can catch back up - Ars TechnicaActually, we are going to tell you the odds of recovering New Glenn’s second launch - Ars TechnicaGEORGE SANTOS reviewing NASA space suit 🚀🚀🚀 - YouTubeFollow EricAuthor: Eric Berger - Ars TechnicaEric Berger (@SciGuySpace) / XReentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age | West Houston's Neighborhood BookshopFollow 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

See, I let's go for main engine. Oh, happy Thursday. I'm starting us off by making us listen to Kim Kardashian in the pre-show, thanks to Eric's fantastic Twitter feed. And I don't know that I made the show better for it. No. The jury's back. They say no.

They say, no. Unanimous. Yikes. How are we doing? We got a lot to talk about. Yeah. We do. I mean, I was just frantically typing out this tweet right now about what the show is going to be about.

And then I was like, I guess like NASA administrators and lunar landers. And then I was like, I think there's like three more things. And I don't really remember them all now. Probably just run back the description of our show for the last year, which has felt like it's been mostly NASA administrators and Lunar Landers. But we do have the man of the hour, Eric Berger, with us. from the old Houston, Texas, the once and future home of the space shuttle. Your great senators trying to steal some spacecrafts for the Northeast. How's it going?

Oh, it's hard to process that. I live five minutes away from Space Center, Houston, literally. And, like, I think getting a space shuttle here would be just about the dumbest thing. Imagine that battle was fought a decade ago. and anyway, I'm great. I'm here, ready to talk. It's an insane time in space policy. Fair.

Yeah. That's a good assessment. What did you bring to drink? Anything good? Anything juicy? Are you working too hard? I'm working hard, but I did bring the beer of the hour. Blumen?

Because I like Belgian. I like Belgian white beers. And now Blue Moon is not a Belgian, true Belgian beer. But I do like Belgian whites. And obviously, you know, Blue Origin finds itself right in the middle of things today. Jake and I have great affinity for Blue Moon because we were able to make the SpaceX company card purchase us many Blue Moons one time. And since then, we've had an affinity for that. We took our trolling into real life and it worked out.

So we've never hung out with that individual again. No. So there we go. That was the end of that. Yep. How about you, Jake? Well, today is another one of those days, Anthony. We're going to open a bottle today.

Yes. A mead day. Let's see. What do you got? The backstory is that I've been making mead and the first batches were not good. okay um and so what i thought was like well you know what i'll throw in a bottle and i'll just wait and then sometimes they get better and so every year i'm opening one bottle from this batch but this is a good thematic one though check the perfect yeah really in a full moon okay so you can see it was

bottled uh october 12 24 last year so we're just over the year mark now so i thought i'll crack it open let's see this one has uh what's in this i think there is I think there is some citrus and I think that's kind of like a citrus one. All right. Maybe it's very Belgian. We'll see. We'll find out. The last one didn't work out.

So we'll see. No, the last one. And very, I have a backup just in case. I got more Jameson from the last episode. So we'll see. The next episode. The next episode that we recorded already. So we're going to see if it's garbage.

The first batch I threw out. I dumped down the sink, so, you know. But you saved some from that for next year, right? Yes, I have the next one. Which is, I don't understand how the system works, but. I don't think that's going to get any better. Oh, this one looks better than the last one. Yeah, what is that?

Color looks better. Pretty good, right? Yeah. Interesting color. Yeah. Hmm. Hmm. Well, it's definitely different than the last one.

It seems drinkable. Yeah. Last time you had an audible reaction right off of the bat. Get in there. Not a great face. Yeah. A hint of gasoline, you know, kind of like that. All right.

That's good stuff. We'll see if I get through this. Yeah. That's good stuff. I just have a collection of trogues. I'm finishing out my seasonal fall pack here. And we got a trobes. I drank a graffiti highway.

in the pre-show. This is a double day, Jake. We need the extra fuel, so I got a perpetual IPA. Where should we start in this? We have the administrator angle. We have the lander's angle. Eric, you get to pick. Where should we start? Well, they're really

intertwined so we could start anywhere. We might as well start with the lander since there was new renderings today. And a very clear statement by SpaceX in response to recent news that that they're the reason Artemis 3 is off track by saying,

actually look at all this work we've done. And, you know, it's not clear to me, you know, like how much of this is rendering, how much of this is real, real work. But it's clear that they wanted to send a statement that they're making progress on Starship lunar planner. And it looks pretty cool. I thought this update was interesting in that, like,

there wasn't really a ton of, new information. I thought this would have been a good opportunity for SpaceX to drop like, oh, by the way, here's a fresh new photo of a thing that we didn't tell you about that we're actually, you know, just to kind of like make a point like we're actually further ahead than you think we are. But this, they mentioned it, but they didn't say it. Yeah, it feels a little more like recap-y rather than, I don't know. Yeah, but there's some there's some, there's some, there's some, there's some, there's some, like, landing leg drop test of a full-scale article at flight energies on to simulated lunar regolith

to verify system performance and to study foot to regolith interaction. So they said it, but you would think that they would post like a photo. And I know there were some theories that there was this giant tent down at Bocchika that was mysterious and venting gas one night.

No one knows what it was. And some people thought maybe that's like a regolith simulator. Maybe Eric's been lit in and that's why he's hiding from the camera at this point. He's like, I'm going to go back far away from the screen. I don't know. I just thought it was interesting

that they had a long list of stuff, because you really have to wonder how much effort they're actually putting into HLS, but at the same time, if you look at the milestones, they've been paid for like two-thirds of them or something like that of their contractual milestones, they're clearly meeting a lot of the targets that NASA has, you know, wants them to work on. I just think the timing is not at all coincidental, and they wanted to essentially send a message to NASA, to its administrator. who bears several different names at SpaceX, and just to say, hey, we're actually making progress on this.

Everyone's telling me it was McGregor, where the mysterious tent was. So even closer to Eric's house. Would that be closer to your house? Probably not. Yeah, yeah. It's a crapshoot, a couple hours. I get there in three and a half hours, probably. All right.

All right, well, a couple angles on this. One, I've been getting a lot of shit lately for, I had Miles O'Brien on managed to cut off recently, and we got a lot of shit for criticizing SpaceX for not being very open about what they're working on, and the criticism was like, look how much

we can see in Boca Chica, which I, and I won't speak for Miles, but I think both of us felt like working in the open does not mean open in the way that doing updates like this more regularly would be open. Like, actively talking about this stuff, not just in response to criticism that you're

getting and pressure you're getting from politics, So I'm curious if you would make anything out of them not posting this stuff more frequently. Like why aren't they posting stuff about this landing leg drop if they're also willing to go out and talk about it once pressure is applying? How much transparency have you gotten from Boeing on the exploration upper stage? I don't, I'm not going to stand here and defend anyone else. My point is, have you gotten from Axiom on the spacesuits? I mean, we know nothing about the spacesuits. Yeah, but that's what I'm saying.

Like, why not? about Starship on every launch they do. Like they have like 45 minutes to fill and they provide information updates. And like NASA is the customer. So where are the updates from NASA? Like like really if we're going to be critical, it the government out to be, and this is where I would, this is where you want to get me wound up, buddy, you got it. Good job.

So like, like it has been a full year since any, the senior exploration official at NASA has any kind of public availability. Any time at meeting with the press to answer detailed questions. And Duffy has not done this. And so Nelson gave interviews right up until kind of the end. But talking to like Amit or his predecessors, those people are not made publicly available. We have no idea what has happened in the last 12 months with the Artemis program, and especially with Artemis 3 and beyond.

So I start at NASA because there's zero. transparency about the program. And, like, China is putting out more information about its moon rocket and lander and spacecraft at this point than NASA is almost. And so, like, I'm not blaming SpaceX. I thought today's update was pretty substantive. And so, you know, I would, sure, I mean, SpaceX could be more transparent about these tests. They could release videos of these milestones and things that you're talking about.

But, like, I would start with NASA and say, like, the last time. there was a press availability. It was like a year and a half ago or even longer. Jim Free was on the call. And like I asked him, I said, you know, 2027 or 2020 is not looking very realistic. You know, what's going on? And like, he got really pissy.

Like he said, no, no, we have, we have contracts with these CEOs have stood up and told me they're going to meet these deadlines. Yeah, it was all BS. And it's just like, so it's just, it's super. frustrated. And I understand, like, you know, under the Trump administration, you don't want to step out of line because it's bad, right? But, like, we're getting nothing from them. And so that gives us very little confidence in what's actually happening. I give them their credit for the updates. I think doing it more regular, like, I always say that, SpaceX moves the goalposts

on themselves more than people in the industry do. They are such an outlier in every way that they ratchet up the expectations on them by being such an outlier. And the fact that they do work in the open and that they show every flight test, when they don't show things that they then go and tell you, we've been working all this stuff, that's what feels incongruous to me. And I think if they, if they are to just say, all right, screw it, we'll work totally in the open on HLS and they're out there demonstrating their momentum and demonstrating stuff that NASA has changed on them, because they reference it obliquely in this post that like, we've given NASA feedback. on what they're changing about Armist 3. If you are just assaulting the public with information,

do you stave off some of the, there's political pressure being applied to them right now, but there's also like gen pop public pressure asking for images of these different things and like, where are the updates on XYZ? You would stave off at least a portion of that if you are showing momentum. And I think most of their message here is like, look how much we're doing. We're investing more money than everyone else. And we have more launch pads and launch sites. and we've made three dozen starships and all these different boosters. And it's a list of the things

that they've done over the last several years to show how much more they're doing than everyone else, which is, I would give them huge credit for. But there are times when they are very clearly not talking about things that they're working on. And maybe that is, like, you know, I think you and I in the past have talked to Eric

about how many people really are working on the crew cabin component of HLS. When I'm like, yeah, you know, if they think the other parts at the Starship architecture are the longer pole here, then they're going to deprioritize the stuff that's two steps out because they've got to get the next step right. And that's always been the SpaceX way.

So I can't criticize that aspect as much that while they're not working on that, it's like, well, yeah, because it's not important yet. They've got to get the other part right first. So I think it's a good update, and it's a good roundup of what they've been working on. But I don't know that it, towards the end of the post, they get into, like, we've got some thoughts on how to speed up this schedule or change the mission to make it simpler. That's the part I'm really curious. about what they, what they proposed.

Do you, too, have any, what's your vibe on the reading of that, that end? Let me find the quote, because I have, I have some theories that I want to throw out you. Where did it go? Yeah, I don't know, I mean, what theory could be that you, go ahead, Jake, sorry. No, I was to say, I'm not reading too deeply into like the, the, the motivations here. like this is all just sort of like standard political jockeying to me. So I don't know. I don't know if I read much.

I think the question that you're asking, and it's a good question is what do they, how could you actually streamline the Starship architecture? Right. Do you have thoughts on that? I'd love to hear him. I'm just trying to find the quote from this thing because the, the reading of it.

Yeah, it's right at the end. I just can't find it because I'm bad at scrolling. Is it the since the contract's been awarded part? Let's see. since the contract's been awarded, we have been consistently responsive to NASA as requirements for Artem's 3 of change. That's what I was talking about.

In response to the latest calls, we've shared and are formally assessing a simplified mission architecture and concept of operations that we believe will result in a faster return to the moon while simultaneously improving crew safety. I have a hair-brained theory

that that is a mission concept that completely excludes Orion. And it's a dragon to starship and straight to the moon. Dragon for sure. Like no docking in lunar orbit. We're just going straight to the moon. And that's a lot safer.

Yeah. I think that's entirely plausible. Yeah. Because why wouldn't it? I don't know how you did that. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I think that's right. F me. F you. Like I'll just go out without Orion, you know? Yeah. And like how much less propellant do you need if you don't? What's the loiter capabilities is 180 days that starship has to be able to remain at the moon? it's like a long time.

And so like if you don't have a half of your loiter capability when all this propellant is boiling off, then maybe you don't need 14 launches. Maybe you just need eight or 10. So I think, yeah, all of that's all of that's on the table. What's not clear to me, Anthony, is that, okay, let's say you launch, let's say you launch Starship, it's fully fueled in Leo, ready to roll, ready to roll. You launch a dragon, those astronauts rendezvous with Starship,

ship flies out to the moon lands. Does it have enough propellant then to come all the way back to Leo? And I'm not sure that it does. But maybe. I don't know. I don't know. It seems like probably not. There's definitely, I mean, the question of like, why don't we just use a dragon to like, you know, solve every problem has been,

because it's come up. Like, I don't know, we've been talking with that for years, I feel like. And it always comes back to, I think, that exact thing. I don't, can you? Is there like, some sort of like the dragon goes all the way to the lunar orbit architecture? No, because we can't come back. I can't come back. Can starship boost it back? You know? Like is there something

is there something that where the lander could like sacrifice itself? Dragon's also not rated and like I think you would want to have a lot of redundancy in dragon for like humans like it's like you know can four people live in Dragon for 10 days? Maybe probably I don't know. I just think that it gets sending Dragon to the Moon and having crew on board it. Now maybe you could dock Dragon and Starship carries Dragon

with it out and back. And then the crew gets in Dragon when they get back to Leo? I don't know. But I would suspect that a simplifying streamlined architecture eliminates Starship. And that would be a great FU to NASA. Because at this point, like

SpaceX does not need NASA so much as NASA needs SpaceX, I think. I mean, especially when you look at like their revenue this year. Like SpaceX is making more revenue than NASA's getting. And so like, it's like, hmm. So that's not to say that SpaceX doesn't love every federal dollar it gets. It certainly does.

But like landing on the moon is a lot more important to NASA than it is to SpaceX. Yeah, that's the other big question, right? Does SpaceX care about this at all, right? And back to your transparency question, you know, Anthony, where's all the updates from Blue Origin on Blue Moon Mark 1? And where's all the updates on how you could use Blue Moon Mark 1 to land humans on them? I mean, the only reason we really know about that is because I reported it, right? Had it pulled out right here. Because I'm not discounting the fact that you may have kicked all of us off by this story.

Well, it's good. I mean, I'm glad. That was the intent. It's like, we have, Houston, we have a problem. Like, we are losing to China. And at the time, Duffo was running around on Fox and everywhere else saying, You know, oh, we're going to be, of course we're going to be China. We're America.

We're the greatest country in the world. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And actually, no, it's just like we got him to acknowledge reality. I think that's great. But so, so like, you know, let's get, let's have an open honest discussion. Maybe we're beginning that. But, but, but, but, but then sort of he and he jumped right to a government option. And that's, that's kind of troubling to me.

But like, there are people at NASA taking seriously the idea. that a Northrop Grumman or a Lockheed Martin could build a lunar lander in 30 months and have it ready to go. Because, I mean, where have you been for the last 20 years if you think that's possible? And that's just insane. In fairness, Northrop has put together those SLS SRBs real fast. They've been waiting around for a long time. Okay, yes, I agree. But a little bit, a little tiny bit of difference.

in those capabilities. So, I mean, it's just, it's troubling where this is all headed, I guess. All right, give me the background. So this article went up October 2nd. So presumably you're working on this for at least, a couple weeks probably in September, if not way longer than that.

I finally just talked to one person, I think, the day before. I was like, okay, I got the information I need. Here we go. All right. So I'm trying to calibrate your desire to go at this thing. Are you somebody that is like, yeah, we should land before China lands? Are you of that bent or are you of like all this talk is such that it is a foregone conclusion, but no one's actually assessing what that would mean?

So I used to be in the camp that like it's whoever has, plays the long game and wins, it really matters. And I still think that's true. But I'm not discounting the fact that there is a huge premium on the next humans to land on the moon. And that if China succeeds in that, it is very, very significant blow to the prestige of the United States around the world. And it is a very good opportunity for China to say, hey, look, we just not just caught the United States. We've surpassed them. And that's just geopolitically speaking, we are in a, I mean, look at the Artemis Accords, right? That's like a direct competition with China to go out and sign people up to sign.

Look, our program is better. Join us. And so I believe that we really need to be there first again. And then we really need to have the better long-term plan. Both things, yeah. Both things. And I think, I mean, if I had to pick one, yes, I would take like, you know, having some kind of lunar presence 10 years from now that's meaningful over landing first.

But not landing first, I don't buy that it's not a big deal because, hey, we've been there 50 years ago. That's just not true. I mean, almost no one alive remembers that, right? And some reality TV stars don't even think it was real. So I don't know if maybe Sean Duffy doesn't. If that's what you're talking about. Duffy to his credit I would be a real game changer He came out as a follow denier So I go there Yeah

So I think I think both matter But I think it's Sean Denier Sean Denier yeah Yeah I've been thinking about that too Because like I Like from a logical standpoint It's like you know what if they get there next

It like just doesn't really matter that much Like it doesn't indicate one way or the other but but there's there's that you know Dan carlin always uses this quote in his podcast right where it's just like magic isn't real but if everybody acts like magic is real then magic is real and it's like if a bunch of people in you know positions of incredible power are concerned about losing the race then it's like now I'm concerned to you know because they're going to they're going to act on that right they're going to they're going to do things that are that are in you know that are based on the outcome of that of that action, right? And the fact of the matters, our leadership has set up the discussion such that we are in a race with China, and they intend to win it. So to walk that back at this point, I think would be challenging. And I certainly don't see Trump having that kind of nuance or trying to walk it back. By the way, there is a group within the space policy firmament, who thinks that we should change that narrative and just talk about different goals. And in this

particular case, it would be like something like the gateway and sort of establishing that as the finish line. And, and, but I think that's, I don't agree with that. I'm never going to agree with the gateway personally. Yeah. Yeah. One, one aspect to this is like, as, as people that are, I think probably all three of us would vote like you said, Eric, that if we had to pick one, we would pick like a longer term thing over a short term thing, but both sounds fun. in that frame though, I think it would be important for the people that think like we do to say,

all right, if we are shotgunning this and trying to get there before China lands and figure out this approach that's going to get us a lander that does it in time, whether that's Starship or somebody else, like, how do we make this this time stickier of like racing against a clock, racing against international opponent in the matter, and not have it be a one-off? Like, the worst outcome would be that we just have another really fun 10-year period that results in humans on the moon and then a 50-year gap of nothing interesting happening because we've sold our soul in these 10 years to do it and we've leveraged the next 40 years of progress. So I think that I agree. Like on a baseline level, I agree.

But at the end of the day, there's got to be something purposeful for humans to beat on the moon. There's got to be a reason for humans to be on the moon. And I don't know what that is yet, right? So if we go to the moon and we decide, well, there's not enough water to make a difference. Human three isn't economically viable. The space tourism thing isn't taken off. We're not going to build space. You know, we're not going to build solar panels out of lunar silicate.

Like, so then what is the justification for having humans on the lunar surface? Because, you know, the International Space Station is a $3 billion year program. you know, a lunar surface station is probably $10 billion a year, something like that, you know, to have a sustained program. So like, is that affordable? And do we need that or should we spend our money on trying to go to Mars? So I think we've got to really find something meaningful to do there. Or maybe we don't need to stay, you know? I don't know.

What do you think about that? I think I'm such a humanist and inevitablist that I'm like, well, at some point we're going to live somewhere. that isn't Earth, so we should have a program that figures out how to actually sustain that over time from like a technological level, that that for me is a reason enough of like, we got a lot of shit to figure out. We should have a thing that is the platform for figuring that out because some time between now and a thousand years from now, I'm pretty convinced that we'll live elsewhere. And that's why I've always been somewhat critical of like the answers we're getting from the ISS that we're learning a lot about a very specific way to live in space,

but that doesn't map to the way that I think we will live in space on the very long time scale. And that's why I've always felt a little incongruous about the ISS positioning as, or the gateway even for that matter, as opposed to going down to a surface somewhere. The problem with that take, though, Anthony, is that like it's not just the act of going to the moon and staying there that would like accomplish those objectives, because you could argue that having a permanently inhabited low Earth orbit space station in which you can study the effects of zero G on human health over long term would be very useful to those objectives, but you're also saying that the ISS is not that.

And so like there's a way to do these problems wrong. Yeah, yeah. To handle these, you know, to tackle these problems wrong. And so you'd have to, if you want the, well, we should just go to the moon and because we've got to figure out how to live in space forever, it's like, well, that doesn't guarantee you that, you know? So it's like, are they actually going to go there with the will to actually accomplish that? Is that the actual objective? And is there going to be resources and efforts and funding behind that? Or is it going to be, is it going to be the grocery store for the,

for the Soviets, you know, just you put it on display so that they can all see and go, wow, Americans are incredible. I want to be like that. I mean, listen, man, you sent Tucker Carlson once and he gets some good press out of that. So don't sleep on that. No, I think the other aspect, though, Jake, is like, I don't know, would I hate, would I hate having a lunar version of the sunk cost fallacy that is the ISS and rope us into 25 years of like interesting activity that ends with a lot of side effects that are interesting for space development, you know, like would you in the world in which you went back in time and had had the choice? Like, would you, you know, if you were given the choice before the ISS started of having, like,

we could go and do like a constellation style lunar program again, or you could do the ISS program and the side effect that you get is like the greatest launch vehicle that it was. was ever created and the most interesting satellite internet project that ever occurred on the back of that. Like, there are so many second order, like, unexpected effects of the ISS program that came out of the last 10 years that I would bet. I would put my money on that happening when we have a moon program that is ISS-like, even if it just ended up ISS-like.

I think that's probably right, but it's really difficult to sell that. Oh, it's impossible. That's why I'm saying like just go, you know what, screw it. Rush, land on the moon, and then get stuck in the sunk cost fallacy of that, and we'll figure out what to do from there. I just want our type of people to figure out how do we find that thing in the context of we're going to rush back to the moon. What should we do if we are? What should we do to make it not just another one-off? How do you make laminated out of these lemons, right?

Yeah. If this is where we're going, then let's figure out how to make it stickier. We started before in the Bridenzine era of like, let's start with the sticky thing. And if that's not politically viable, then let's get the sticky thing out of the rush. Yeah. I don't know. Let's talk about the administrator. Yeah.

Well, I'm running, Eric. So I don't know if you know that. You haven't heard my name floated. It's kind of a dirty fight. I'd want to look into your political donations. Good luck. There's no way Anthony's ever donated to a political party before. No.

I think I might have done like a couple because I bought. buttons that I mailed as a troll to my friends. Like, I would donate to get the thing to send to somebody else. So you probably could find a handful of, like, things that Anthony was trolling over. But, yeah. All right. Okay. Yeah.

Because I love people that hold on to campaign paraphernalia that clearly doomed campaigns for too long. Like, you always see that bumper sticker. You're like, come on, man. That never had a shot. Please clap. I like sending that to other people. Speaking of local to you, I donated Fireton Bucks and got an Arlen Specter T-shirt. I think back in the day.

Wow. Nice. Why? Deep cut there. I like him. You're the squash or something? I like you, man. He's funny.

He's the Arlen Specter Squash centers over in Philadelphia. Is that right? Yeah, he's a big squash guy. Okay. Okay. That's not who I saw you were going to say. I don't know what I was expecting. We once had a governor in New Jersey named Brendan Byrne, but it's not the one you're thinking of.

No, it's not. I just talked to him one day. I was almost getting booked for that show too, but I couldn't make it. Like me and you were going to be friends on there. You're just trying to say that I was like the sloppy seconds to. No, I think we were trying to be on together, but I could. Hey, Eric, I've had a cancellation. Do you have a, do you have some time?

Act like Eric hasn't received that text from us, Jake. Come on. Yeah, 100%. Yeah. So what's going to be the next administrator? Yeah. What's going on with this year? We've got, I don't know.

So for a while, I was like pretty sure that Sean Duffy was going to be the long-term interim administrator. And now I'm less sure. But I also like, I don't know, there's so much, there's so much noise in all this signal. So I don't know. What are you reading on the ground here? So I think the fundamental thing to understand is that when Duffy was put in the position

in July, it was the understanding. at least the president's understanding was that he was going to come in, kind of carry out what OMB wanted. Because at the time, what had happened is you had Janet Petro from Florida, and then Vanessa Weish from Houston. And Vanessa Weish was kind of running the agency with Ted Cruz's office. Ted Cruz, obviously being from Texas. And basically like, so all those funding priorities that you saw on the one big,

beautiful bill, those were kind of coordinated through. Vanessa and kind of her team that were sort of pushing the JSC kind of agenda and kind of like completely undermining what the Trump administration was trying to do with his budget. So Duffy was brought in basically to do what OMV wanted to do at NASA and to provide some leadership from the Trump agency because they were not happy with what Petro and Leish and some of the others were doing. Also with the understanding that he would look for a permanent successor. But a couple things have happened since. Number one is he has, he likes the job because he gets on TV a lot.

And it's more fun being NASA administrator than it is like presiding over an air traffic controller strike or like a plane crash or something like that. And he does have political ambitions. So, I mean, you know, it's a good, it's a good platform for him to get to raise his visibility to some extent. And he didn't, he didn't really interview anybody. You heard some names of people. I heard some names of people, but I then I subsequently heard, well, he didn't really interview them. And my understanding is the president had to basically call him and tell him to re-interview Jared, Isaacman.

And then the other thing that happened is that he hires Amit, Gushitira, to basically be, he's a top civil servant position in the agency. and Amit basically, he tells us to run the agency. So Amit's a former flight director from Johnson Space Center. So it's the same kind of thing. Like Amit is sort of in there, by the way, highly respected, liked by the workforce, they were glad to have someone of their own kind of in a key decision-making role. But Amit is very much of a JSC mindset. So again, this is running counter to what the,

White House and OMB really want. And so, meanwhile this summer, like Jared, you know, doesn't excoriate anyone on the way out, even though I think he had probably had a pretty good reason to be upset about the way that all happened. And there's still people in the president's orbit, the New Gingriches, the Lord Loomers, other people who are saying, actually, Jared was the best person for this job. and Jared starts meeting with the president and developing relationship. And so he's kind of like back on the front burner to become the next administrator.

So we've, in the last several weeks, there's been this rock fight essentially behind closed doors between Duffy, his chief of staff, a guy named Pete Meecham, and then people advocating for Jared over who ought to be administrator. because Duffy at this point really wants to hold on to the job, which is really interesting because the alignment now is essentially Duffy. And that's why the appearances on Fox News, and it was at MSNBC or I'm not sure who else, where else he appeared that morning, but where he said that, you know, they were going to reopen the Lanner competition. The more interesting thing to me was the fact that he came out and said it publicly then because that was right after Isaacman had had dinner with Trump and several other people at

Mar-a-Lago and really really. sort of strengthened his relationship with Trump. And there was some sense that in Duffy's camp, that if he didn't act quickly, then a renomination was going to happen soon. And so Duffy starts calling a lot of industry contractors basically saying, you know, I'm going to bat for Gateway. I'm going to bat for companies other than SpaceX to do HLS. I'm going to support. You know, support. other companies in the industry besides SpaceX. So basically, like, Amit has kind of brought him around to, so now Duffy and Cruz and Amit are kind of aligned on priorities.

And Isaacman's kind of like, actually, you know, I think a lot of the priorities in the president's budget, like, you know, ending SLS Block 1B, ending exploration upper stage, trying to see if you could reuse Gateway for something else, are important. And so, like, that was, like, really reached a fever pitch. And then the president goes off to Asia for six days.

And it kind of all, it kind of all goes in the background. But, like, that's basically the state of play. That the Duffy wants to hold on to the NASDA administrative position for as long as he can. There is some alignment with Ted Cruz and a few other people in Congress. But then there are people in Congress, such as Senator Tim Sheehe, who are backing Jared's case. So the president is going to have to make a decision at some point about how he wants this to shake out. Why do you think that Duffy thought this was the more viable route to staying as NASA administrator, like clearly adopting the positions of the other camp than the guy that the president was interested in?

Why didn't he adopt the Jared Isaacman camp and say, no, no, you don't have to get him in there. I also am that guy too. I can't figure that out. He made a fight out of it. I don't think he needed to. I think he, well, I think at some point he came to see Jared as a real threat. And so recognized that Jared was aligned with SpaceX, at least in people's eyes. And that the way to build support was to say, this guy's a SpaceX shill.

So let's, you know, let's save NASA from becoming, you know, NASA acts. Yeah. The one thing that's like on the back of my mind right now is there's like, like, we're obviously seeing a lot of like big oligarchy energy in this administration. You know, there's just like there's just like a lot of quid pro quo going on where it's just like some company or some person contributes something to the Trump family. family and then things go their way all of a sudden, right? And like I'm really starting to wonder if, you know, some of these bigger, older,

established space companies, like, I wonder if someone made a play, you know, like, I wonder if, if Sean Duffy got a golden llama delivered to his office and, you know. So nobody has clean hands, but I don't, I don't think it's, I don't think it's that case. I mean, look, I mean, Elon gave $250 million to the Trump campaign, right? Yeah. But if you look at the donors to the ballroom, right? There's lots of space contractors in there, some of whom would love to have an HLS contract. So, I mean, I'm not sure the money is being given to Duffy, but there is money flowing into the Trump administration, right?

I mean, it's just, I don't like this form of government. I think it's pretty unseemly. and it rewards, you know, donations over the best solutions. But there's always been an element of this in our government, you know, going back to the beginning. I just, it's been so overt lately that I wondered if, you know, because like, I think, you know, I think these motivations are more survival than like someone came to him with a bag of money and said, we want you to give us an HLS contract. I mean, the idea of the government option contract, cost plus,

presumably a cost plus contract for a third option HLS lander did not originate with Duffy. That's something that Ahmed has been pushing. Amit, you know, according to the people I talk to, is not a fan of Starship HLS. This is the guy who was running that, you know, the exploration program. So it's such a weird time. I mean, what can you, what can you say? I assume he likes the Axiom spacesuits, though. What?

I assume he likes the Axiom spacesuits down there. We don't know. I mean, no one ever says anything about this. Take a quick drive. You could be back by the time the show's done to just go check in on them really quick. I know where you're at. They're going on over there and check in them. I mean, they've had like three leadership turnovers in like six months.

Yeah. So who knows? Who knows? Anyway, anyway, I don't, you know, like I said, I don't think Amit is like personally profiting from it. I think like, look, it's legitimately, it's legitimate to have concerns about the number of refuelings needed for Starship, which is why I think there's renewed interest in a Blue Moon Mark 1 approach. But the idea that a cost plus contract to Northrop or Lockheed or someone like that is going to solve this problem, I think, is pure fantasy. All right, as a space fan generally, Eric, how much do you enjoy the storyline that could play out over the next six months where Blue Origin launches a payload to Mars and then lands on the moon before SpaceX does either thing? That's really good scripting.

It's pretty good scripting. You know, I really, I'm not super enthused about it. Escapade. I mean, it's, the origin got the mission because I think they're going to take like $150 million loss or something on that launch. I went on a ran out about it recently, too. They're pretty generous. Being weird about the transfer orbit they're going into.

It's very strange. But, yeah, it is strange. But the blue moon mark one lander is really awesome. Like, I am super excited to see that fly and hopefully land on the moon. I keep waiting for it to come here to Houston. I live a couple miles away from where it's, going to be like unloaded into off of a barge and head over to Johnson Space Center for thermal for vacuum chamber testing. So I'm very excited to sort of see that. So I think and I think honestly

if and when or not if, but when that mission happens and especially if it's success, that really changes the discussion around Blue Origin because even days you see people say, well they're they haven't done anything in 25 years. Why take them seriously? And I understand that. But like if they land this huge lander on the moon, then it's really hard to dismiss that. Especially if it all went well, they have successful first launch, a successful second launch, a successful third launch or the lunar landing. If that all goes that way, that's like, that's incredibly impressive. That's an amazing record.

That's how it turns out. It hasn't happened as fast as anyone that wanted. But if they pull that off, it's super impressive. The irony of that narrative is just insane because it's like first launch successful, goes to Mars, third launch lands on the moon? It would be amazing. It would be the best storyline in space. Yeah, it would be the best way to cap off this little era that we're in in space with, you know, all the backfitting drama.

It would be better if that escapade was a terrarium. That would be the ultimate irony. But we'll take some, take a couple of cubesats. To a L2 transfer orbit or whatever it's going into first. A highly elliptical. By the way, the rant that I went on, Jake. We got confirmation directly on that being accurate. Yes, we did.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah, they're bragging about stuff that they have no right bragging about, I think. That's where we got to there. Yeah. I mean, it would be a lot.

And assume, I don't know, like, what do you bet the chances are that they actually do pull off a first stage landing in the next couple of launches? Blue Orgent? Yeah. I mean, that is the third launch. I think what's the chance that they land successfully? I'd say it leads 50% if not higher. I mean, they have, if you look at the clips companies, right? These are cash-strap entities who got pretty small contracts from NASA for their first landers.

And so they had to really cut corners in their development and especially their testing, right? I don't think Blue Origin is cutting corners in their testing. And so I have pretty high confidence that they'll land. As I say, better than 50-50. And I keep Harper on this take, and I recognize that the rockets are different, but like Blue Origin has experienced landing like 30-some rockets already. You know, like we can't, that's not worth zero. I know it's not worth the same as landing 30-whatever Falcon 9.

but it's not worth zero either. And so they're coming from a place of some experience. I mean, the New Shepard program has demonstrated technical expertise out the wazoo. I mean, it's very impressive what they've done. And they've flown a bunch of payloads on Blue Shepard, New Shepard for like terrain relative navigation stuff for other companies. So obviously they've probably done that for Blue Moon stuff too.

Like I would, yeah. I don't know. Have they talked about it publicly? I don't feel like they have, but I assume it's been. They just put out a, they just put out some information this week on, on some tests that they had done with, with this simulator in aircraft landing. So, yeah, they, they've, I'm sure they've done a lot of work. Yeah. They just haven't really talked about it.

Like, again, this comes back. It's not very open. Yeah. Transparency angle that Anthony wants to. Listen, listen, I don't think a good defense of SpaceX being closed is neither is, is Boeing's not open either. That's a shit defense. Like, that's the worst defense. I think you're going to call them out right after they just released a bunch of new information.

No, bullshit. They put this out because they're getting political pressure that their landers not ready in time and they're behind on their schedule. Like, that's horseshit. If they put this out before Duffy went on this whole weird TV-based rampage, then sure. If you can't get excited about Elon talking about sending a million tons to the surface of Mars on every SpaceX webcast. I don't know what's wrong.

Yeah. There's been no new content. and quality information, okay? You wouldn't throw away an airplane, Anthony. The problem with that was that I took your statement seriously for the first half of it, and I was not ready to switch to the second half of it yet. No, I just, I don't, I agree that SpaceX is the most open of space companies, and I think they could do better than that.

And I think doing more would look, it would look even better for them than the strategy they have had, they are already racing so far, so much faster than most other companies, every other company in space. You got to modify your take, Anthony. The take can't be SpaceX isn't open. The take is being more, not being more open is a strategic misstep. There you go. Okay. Fair. I just think, I think they rely, they let themselves off the hook because NASA Spaceflight has 8,000 webcams in South Texas that capture every time they leave the door cracked a little open, they capture something cool SpaceX is doing. And there's a,

to that I think that they like. But let's be real. I mean, if,

if Highway 4 didn't run through their launch site, they would be, they would be more than happy to have a lot

of this information coming down. Because I think that, I mean, the people down there do wonderful work, and I'm glad to to have the access,

but it is pretty invasive, right? Yeah. Yeah. I mean, imagine if you swapped the New Glenn facilities into a spot

with the public highway and the Starship facilities with the spot on the Cape that New Glen is. I mean, imagine if, like, there was a road that public road that drove, like, right alongside Blue Origins launch site, right? I mean, anyway, great, it's great.

It'd be crazy. Yeah. But I think they let them, they let that, they let themselves off the hook by being like, well, we're open because you could just come here. It's like, I know that, but that's a pretty good defense, dude. It's not what we mean.

Can you point me to the article that has the most recent official public statement from SpaceX in response to request for comment that you've sent? I don't send requests for comment. Because you know you get jack shit back. You get a poop emoji or whatever that they're sending. I mean, it is what it is, you know? Yeah. I mean, is that any worse than getting like a generic statement from another company? I mean, I don't know.

No, but that's my point. There's so much better at all those other things than every other companies. Why do you want to act like them? Stop doing that. You're better than that. Yeah. Okay. I mean...

This is my take about them putting these videos out that fade to black instead of showing the explosion. That's what every state-run organization in China does when they have a test that goes wrong or they have a flight that goes wrong. And there's the same shit that Blue Origin does by never letting us see that New Shepherd plow into the West Texas desert. Like, you're better than that. Trust people that they're smarter than you're giving them credit for, that they'll be

able to understand this information. And the ones that won't understand that, won't understand that even if you do this weird doctored thing anyway. I understand that. But I mean, you know, they did provide live video of the whole thing down into the explosion. Yeah, just keep doing it. Stop doing this weird edit. It's just, it's such a weird way to tack.

And it's not that I think I don't really care about seeing that thing or not. But I think it's a notable change that there are people in the company that think what we should do is release a video that fades to black. When I know for a fact, if Elon was in charge of editing that, he would have let it run all the way at the end. Yeah. And that's a notable difference. Okay. So that's all I'm saying. We might even know these people personally.

If you're listening to this, stop doing that. That's a stupid tip. I won't make you buy a blue moon again on the company card. You want blue moon? I got blue moon for you. You'll buy them. You know what? I'll fly down when they unload blue moon on the thermal vacuum chamber

and we'll drink a case of blue moon like tailgating it out at. It's supposed to be soon. It should be any day. hopefully. That's where James Webb was for like its long duration test. Is there been other stuff in there recently? I'm sure there has. I don't know what it was.

On this topic of Houston things, why is Axiom getting off so easy in all of this drama? You have Bridenstein and Bolden talking at this symposium in which they're saying the only thing we don't have is a lander. I mean, should we not mention that Bridenstein is, okay, yes, former NASA administration, but also like getting paid almost a million dollars this year. From ULA. From ULA and like other companies who are like competing for NASA contracts. I mean, you know, on one hand, I totally respect his opinion. I don't disagree with a lot of the things he said,

but like he out to be titled such that that's disclosed. Charlie's fine. Charlie's retired. You know, he's doing what he's doing. He has a trail of bad quotes in his wake anyway. So yeah. God bless Charlie. One of the nicest humans ever.

ever met. Anyway, so what about, why does Axiom get off? Because Axiom isn't run by Elon Musk, I think. You know, it's a lot lower. Is it run by anybody at this point or what? Well, I also think the Axiom is pretty tight with the JSD crowd, right? Yeah, Jake's theory. And Axiom is of JSC, but, you know, holy. A holy own subsidiary of Johnson. They said. But like, they certainly have that, they certainly have that mindset. You know, why does the next thing get, because spacesuits are not as visible as rockets blowing up. And I think people just kind of assume spacesuits, they can't be that hard. So like, they'll be ready, right, I think.

Which, you know, it's probably not true in terms of them not being hard. But they should be getting a lot of scrutiny because, like, they are the only suit provider at this point. There is no competition now that Collins dropped out of that competition. Well, not only that, but also like the company is just a little bit on shaky grounds right now, right? There's some financial questions there. Well, I think it's more than a little shaky ground. They're financially. They have serious problems.

I don't want to get sued, but I'm not sure they're paying all of their bills that they've had. And I think the suit's side of the business is too big to fail. but I think the station side of the business, they've had lots of layoffs, and so you could ask some real questions about what's happening there. So I think Axiom should get more scrutiny, but, I mean, let's face it,

like the lander is probably the long pole in all of this. It certainly, technically, it's by far the most challenging thing to pull off, and so I think it justifiably gets a lot of the attention. That's probably fair. I mean, the good news with the Axiom suit stuff is that we will always have this video of George Santos reviewing the Axiom space suits. So that's always just a fantastic legacy of the Axiom space content. Was that the actual Axiom suit at the time?

Well, it was the one with the cover. The black cover over top. Yeah. Oh, God. That was the one where, like, we just took the EXMU suit and covered it with black fabric so you couldn't see any of the technical bits. So one where Weinstein came on and had like to show and tell, right? No, no, that was before that was.

No, no, you're thinking of the red, white and blue reveal. This was the axiom specific one. But they're the same suit. Right. Let's be honest. I mean, I know that people running the Axiom suit program here in Houston. They're good people. They are making progress, but we have, you know, almost no insight in terms of,

of where they are. And again, that goes back to the fact that, like, NASA just does not put up technical experts for public, for media, space media interviews. I mean, there's been zero, zero access. And look, I'm okay with that because I've got sources outside of the official channels that I'll run and I'll, and it, it opens up a better playing ground for me, you know, like with the Starliner saga last summer. Like, that was great because I could, NASA wasn't really giving, Boeing weren't giving great information. So I went dug in. And it was fine. But I think it really does the agency a disservice.

And we really are left with a lot of questions about where all this is headed. And it doesn't help the fact either that Duffy can't speak in any technical depth about any of this stuff. He's a very good, very eloquent spokesperson for the agency, but doesn't have any technical depth to speak about a lot of these issues that we're concerned about. Yeah. What's your bet? How does it turn out? Who's administrator one year from now? My guess is that Duffy is going to hang on tooth and nail and try to hold on to the position through Artemis II

because he would love to have that kind of publicity. The question is whether the president moves on this, and I've thought that something was going to happen for a while now and it just hasn't, so maybe it won't. The question is whether he moves on this and then there's an impetus to try to, if it's Jared, And at this point, it really only would be Jared. I don't know of any other names that are serious contenders. I've heard names. I don't want to say them and put them in the spotlight.

But I don't think there's any serious alternative at this point other than Jared, Isaacman. The question is whether they would move aggressively to try to get him confirmed before the end of the year. And I don't know the answer to that. Do you know if Jared is tight with the, like, J.D. Vance crew? Maybe. Because I continually am a little sad that Jared's. still going for it. And the only thing that prevents me from being sad about it is maybe he thinks that he can position himself to be administrator for a post-Trump era in which J.D. Vance wins the

following election. And then he's not true. That's not true. My understanding of Jared's motives are, is that he recognizes that a lot of these problems that NASA has. I mean, anyone who writes about this or is interested in the space industry knows that NASA has lots of issues that need to be addressed pretty seriously. Artemis is the biggest fish, but like CLDs, it's science programs. There's just a whole mess of problems. And Jared, I don't think, would be the type of person who would say, well, I'm just going to let those, put those on hold for three years so I can come in with a clean slate.

No, that's not the point. My point is this administration, the year that would have mattered the most is burnt at this point, and even the year and a half, maybe even two years. There's still three years left. So you're going to wait three more years? I mean, China's going to be landing on the moon in that year. Do you want to be an administrator and calling the Chinese, you know, drink it at the outpost of Ed Baldwin?

Yeah, I mean, I don't know. I just, I think Jared has so much, so many more interesting things he could be doing. And the fact that's playing on to it. That's why, like, that's why, you know, I give him credit, I think, for hanging in there because, you know, he could be doing more interesting. He could be going back to space. Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. I think, yeah, so you're saying you're saying you feel like Jared is a possibility, but it's not until spring at the earliest? No, it's not what I said. Thanks for paying attention.

You said he wants to be on until Artemis 2, and then he doesn't really care. He wants to be on through Artemis 2, but if the president decides that something needs to change, then he could nominate Jared within the next couple weeks. But would he be, how would it plink go through the system? Well, you would have to put some pressure on crews to move the nomination forward. I don't know what that will happen. What's that? Well, the Senate's working. The government's going to have to come back to work first, I assume, right?

I mean, yeah. And, of course, the shutdown complicates all of this, too, right? That's like we haven't addressed that at all. And the NASA workforce has been through so much crap this year. And you layer that on top of it. It has literally been a lost year. Yeah. And, yeah, it's not good.

bad. Yeah. Is he administrator or not, Jake? Is it going to happen? Administrator Isaac. I don't know, man. I feel like it is important. I think a coin toss is the best you can ever get, like the most confidence you can ever get in anything with this administration.

It's like the most sure things can just pivot on a dime. And I just, I don't know. I don't know what you're saying about that. It's like, okay, sure. Yeah. I'll take the over. I'll take the 50.1%. on this.

I'll be the no guy. I'm saying no. Something else unraveled and he does not become the administrator. I mean, could be. Could be. I, you know, I don't know. Anything is possible. Eric, what do you want to plug for people if they're not reading ours or anything else that you're working on?

If they're not reading ours, they need to log off immediately. I don't know. You know, next week I'm going to try to do a story on, I just mentioned now. has lost year. I'm going to probably try to articulate that a little bit better. And so maybe check ours for that next week on just sort of things are probably worse than you and think. Great. And even more uplifting ending to this show. Man, well, if you want to not think about that.

Things are worse than you think. Yeah, if you want to not think about that bleakness, Jake and I, Jake's traveling next, or you're offline next week. I don't even know if you're traveling, but you're traveling. We recorded a, we did a rocket tier, tier ranking. recently, Eric, which caused a lot of feedback. And Paul Field, the man that was once left in charge of the Lem at the National Air and Space Museum had a lot of angry email for us. So we brought him back on to update our ranking. He will defend Skylab launched on Saturn as not a C-tier rocket. So find out how that shakes out if he or we win. And we rank a whole bunch of new ones. So we're

running that next week. We recorded it a day or two ago. It's a great show. It's fun. So what else, Jake? Anything? I don't think so. No. Have a great Halloween, everybody. You'll be sleeping off that meat on Halloween. Is that probably right? I switched to whiskey bartender. See him, Delis Bartoz. It includes Jake this year. We're going to dump this bottle out and try again next October. He's going to look like the traditional Mexican skeleton by tomorrow. Like he drank out of the Indiana Jones flask. Yeah, exactly. All right, y'all. See you later.

Bye. Peace.