Off-Nominal - 217 - Buran DMCA Takedown (with Paul Fjeld)

Episode Date: November 6, 2025

Jake and Anthony are joined by space artist and illustrator Paul Fjeld to review their rocket tier list, adjust some rankings, and add some new contenders to the mix.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 217 - Buran DMCA Takedown (with Paul Fjeld) - YouTubeEpisode 217 OuttakesRocket Tier List Rebuttal ※ veridical.netOff-Nominal Official Rocket - TierMaker (First Take)Off-Nominal Rocket Tiers Mark 2 - TierMaker (Spoilers)Follow PaulSpace Art by Paul FjeldFollow 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

DLS and go for main engine, start. Hello, Jake. We're just barely scavenging the remains of an almost lost episode here, you know? Almost. Jeez. I don't know. You guys didn't get to see this part, but there was some very strange. I'm going to post that.

Okay, Anthony's going to post it, but there was some very strange technological phenomena happening on my microphone. And I'm, I haven't heard it yet, but Anthony assured me that it is very funny. I'm realizing what happened was that Paul made a very off-color hobbitisholing. Halloween joke and then our computer got haunted. That's it. That's it. And apologies right now. And I thought of them for anybody who's, if you put it out on the web, I'm screwed. Just like our Tom Hanks episode, you know. Yeah, just like our time.

He's a good guy. Come on. It's Paul. Paul's back. We got a mean email from Paul after we did our tier ranking of Rockets. And then we realized, you know, this would be the best person to come back and help us do more and maybe just, you know, read us the riot act on air. I love the precedent we're setting here, though. It's like, if you want to be on the show, just send us a mean email. Scathing email, yeah. You are going to get flooded.

I mean, listen, Jake, I've had a lot of those recently. So I've not, and those people have not made it onto my podcast universe, and they won't. I thought you could have heard me scream, yell over the, you know, ether when you made your dumb comments. But apparently you did not. So I had to write a goddamn email, you know. Well, you're back. You're going to help us. So I think what we're going to do.

We're going to review the current tier ranking. Maybe do some updates. Because even, even your email aside, Jake and I have went, maybe this one shouldn't be where it was. Yeah, yeah. We had second thoughts. Revisit this like monthly. or something and refine. But we've got a whole list of ones that we would

like to go over with you. But yeah, how else do we start this show, Jake? Drinks. Drinks. Yeah, what you got? What are you cooking? Who me? Yeah, Paul, I'll start.

Nothing exciting. It's just your regular standard harp. I love harp. It's a great beer. I was going to try and find there's a really fancy beer that has a cool story about drunk lumber Jackson, Quebec, who's sell their soul to the devil, but I couldn't find it anymore. We need no more hauntings on this show, okay?

Well, it would have been perfect. It would have been perfect. It's a beer in Quebec called Maudet, which means the damned. Wow. A bunch of, yeah, lumberjacks want to go to a party. They're desperate, but they're way up in the woods, and the devil says, here's a magic canoe that you can fly there, but I need your soul at the end of it. And I think about it. And I go, yeah, let's go to the party.

It's a good-ass party. It's a great story. Without the beer, I got to tell the story. this is like the devil went down to Shikuti me that's basically what we're saying here That's it, that's it. Is this the Canadian version of the Jersey Devil? Is that what we're getting at here?

Yeah, I mean, there definitely has to be a canoe. It wouldn't be very Canadian without. Right, and a party. That's the Quebec part of it all. Yeah. And they sing the log writers waltz as part of the, that's the song, right? Oh, is that?

I don't know where you guys are at anymore. I don't know that one. I know what you're talking about, though. That's very Canadian. I did get a couple new SORA ideas here, so this is good. Jake's going to be starring in some of these later. You're doing the log writer's fault. If you're on SORA, Jake and I are on there.

Hit us up. We, I don't want to bring it up too much. We might get some more angry emails if we talk about it too much, Jake. And then we'll see. Ask me how I feel about AI. You'll get an earful. Well, you're going to, you should sign up for Sora. We'll put you in some videos.

It's, yeah, a lot of illustrators are out of a job. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you're certainly not making our shitty sore videos that's for sure. No. Do you bring fun? Something fun, Jake? Do you go on a devil's canoe ride or something? I have something very straightforward. But my, so my backstories, my in-laws are visiting. They're coming tomorrow. They're arriving. And my mother-in-law has a rule that when she visits my house that I am required by law to have a bottle of Jameson. Irish whiskey on the handle. I am a good son-in-law. You better believe it.

And you're drinking it right now? I'll have a little bit, yeah. She's going to have one glass and then never touch it. That's fair. That's fair. That's a fantastic thing to have her around when you have a mother-in-law visiting you. Yeah, yeah. And that shows what a cool mother-in-law she has because she's the one who's a guest. Yeah, yeah.

It's her rule. I'm just following the rules. That's true. Jake didn't say who she demanded it be there for. Maybe she just likes him when he's whiskied up a little bit. She's like, I only like that boy when he's got a single whiskey at him. We'll find out. After all these years, she's learned how to manage me. That's what we've learned.

What you got? I just got a nice graffiti highway once more. This is a very drinkable fall time of the year here in this inter-Hlloween Thanksgiving time that we find ourselves in Jake. You know? You know, it's funny. I have that gene that makes me take. taste different things like cilantro tastes like soap. IPA tastes like crap to me.

I can't drink. There's million IPAs that are cool and interesting, and I'm trying to hunt for a stupid little logger somewhere. And it's like not there. I feel bad for you. I feel bad for me too. You know, I'm missing out this adventure. I like them, but I wouldn't go to bat for him too hard.

I wouldn't say you're missing it, but you're not missing it that much. It's fine. Oh, good. it's not like they're under that beers out there no there's plenty of stuff to drink yeah what if you could

if I said that hey I could I could change that gene in your body but you'd have to sell your soul to the devil to do it would you if there's a party involved yeah an IPA party you were just going to go to a party

drink a bunch of IPA yeah alright you're in why the hell not yeah we mature new idea Jake when you get to your IPA era of home brewing

you can you can take that concept and run with it. Paul and a devil's canoe on the way to the IPA party. Work with that. Do an AI label for them just to really round it out. He's an AI prompting to see if I can refine this idea a little bit. Yeah. That's your version of, he thinks you're selling your soul, Jake. So that's the difference. That's right. All right. We've got, I got a tier list. Jake. I recreated this thing. And I also created it as a template that other people can, uh, if we did get some feedback,

not just from Paul. Adam, our past guest, wrote a blog post about how he disagreed. Well, he mostly agreed with us. He thought we put the space shuttle too high. Is that what his? Yeah, Adam is a... I agree with that.

Adam says you cannot speak worse about the shuttle than what is actually true. That's fair. So if you're like Adam or Paul and you have thoughts, instead of emailing us, I'll put this link in the show on us. You can just make your own and then send it to us that way.

And we can see where you would rank them. Big tier fight. I'm realizing now that I had a version of Us 3 on this, us 2 on the screen, but the Us 3 on the screen is probably a little smaller. So we'll flip between this and just the, just the full screen. Ooh.

All right. We had S-tier, Falcon 9, Saturn 5, Atlas 5. Can we get a quick review? Is there any second thoughts about this? We had Falcon 9 and heavy linked together, Jake. Together, sure. Saturn 5. I think we're going to separate those today.

Is that one of our tasks today to separate those? I think that's a good point. But let's review these. All right, so let's keep it. Just Falcon 9, Saturn 5, Atlas 5. Where are we at, Paul? You have any edits for us on these? I'm going to add one.

Well, no, we'll get to that later. We're doing it. We're just revising. We need to restack these five. I agree with that. I agree with that. I think that Falcon 9 is a phenomenal rocket in the history of rocketry. And it was a evolutionary, well, revolutionary step.

So, no, I don't disagree with that. And Saturn 5 was just a remarkable achievement, as early as it was in the beginning of rocketry, to jump out of the gate with a monster like that, to fly it the way they did the first time on Apollo 4. That was just a miracle. George Miller talked about all-up testing where you get in there.

You don't do it kind of like piecemeal. Man, that worked right off the bat. There were only a couple of flights where it didn't work too well. We'll talk about the last stuff, the skyline one later. later. I'll hold my, my... A couple didn't work to me.

Well, the connection. Ooh, this is going to be fun. No, what really impresses me about the Falcon 9 is, in a sense, it kind of was the first one they launched. They launched perfectly. It was kind of like an all-up testing also. So a lot of the people saying, ooh, it's not, you know, like SpaceX does this thing where they just fling them up and they crash and they crash and they crash and they learn

and they iterate quickly. Well, Falcon 1, they were trying to get each one. just small little mistakes on each one that didn't make it successful from corroded nuts to knocking the thing off or forgetting, you know, the regenerative engine having a little extra push to bang it in the back. I mean, they made such small little mistakes that first one could have launched almost perfectly. And Falcon 9 just, I mean, it had that one big accident and then one on the pad. But other than that, that's a miracle vehicle. Sorry. Falcon Heavy too. No, I love that. I think it's good, it's good for us to remember.

as well in this day and age where people like to equate Starship development to Falcon 9 development that nope, they were just shipping it right out the gate. They were nailing it every time. Yeah, they figured it out. Yeah. It's great.

Starship is a revolution on a revolution, so I can, I have like a stuff. A brewing kind of long-term take that we are, we make mistakes when we try and compare Falcon 1 to Falcon 9 to Starship development cycles. I think like, I think the company, those, the three spaces, X-Xs of those times are like dramatically different companies and it's like comparing them one-to-one

is kind of a I don't know if it adds a lot of value. That's my weird long-term point-take. Well, the point that I was making was just at the early start, you know, they're trying to launch a successful mission on the first attempt on each of them where Starship, you know, they're just having kind of a scaffolding shape of a Starship and they're practicing all the flipping stuff. Well, they're definitely different. Yeah. My, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, my, being that like sometimes we look back and like oh well it took this many falcon launches before x thing happened therefore it will take that same amount of starship and it's like no like don't doesn't matter like don't even bother looking at that like and even trying to even trying to draw like

parallels in operations like oh well their strategy was this i think is like i don't know if that's really valuable i don't know if that's useful to do that that's my well the leap in technology for starship is so much greater than the leap from falcon nine as i said i believe it was was a revolution and how they make the rocket and using the engine the way that they did. Starship is like two levels beyond that in terms of what they're trying to do from the material that they're using to those engines, which literally must come from another alien civilization. Like the Trial Famadorians come in with a Raptor 3 engine, like there's no way. You know?

Even like money and workforce though, too, right? Like what's what is the workforce size of SpaceX now versus when they were developing Falcon. Like, is it an order of magnitude different? Are they 10x from then? They might be. Like a thousand to 10,000 employees? Is that a fair take from, that might be, you know? Good question. Well, you've got to throw in dragon and some of that stuff. So hard to say, you know, what's the rocket? What's dragon? What's, you know, the future stuff? But we don't know, right? Because it's an old thing. It's neither here nor there. Yeah, well, they just show us what they want to show us, which is frustrating. And we've got a bunch

a smart catch down at Chico, Boka Chica. We're trying to ferret out all kinds of details. But I don't know that they really understand what's going on behind some of that still. I can't wait to clip that a little bit and send it some people that have been emailing me the last week since I've had Miles of Brian on Miko. They were coming in hot and heavy telling us that SpaceX is the most open company that's ever lived. And I'm like, I'm pretty sure working in public does not mean, they don't get credit for being open by merely working not in a tent. That doesn't, or leaving the bay door open every once a while. They're the most open rocket company and literally the door to the park is open.

Right. That's not what that means, though. That's not what we mean when we say that. Right. And we can't hear their decision making necessarily where during Apollo and the rest of it, we had a right to that because we owned it. And so the public affairs and these guys I know really well, they were in there kind of as agents of the press.

And so they were, you know, ferreting out a lot of detail. They knew a lot themselves and could answer it directly. and questions that they had, they would just say, okay, here's a manager, we'll set up an interview, talk to that guy. Even in the middle of the craziness of it all, they were answering questions. And finally, we all had news references, which were very detailed descriptions of every system of the spacecraft and rocket, that we could peruse and figure out, were they saying these really difficult technical details, we could follow along because we had that if we took the time. So you don't have that anymore.

Well, let's go to our A-tier where it's half things that we did have that for and half things that we definitely did not have that for. A-tier we had space shuttle, Soyuz, Mercury Atlas, and Proton. My baby. So which one's your baby? Mercury Atlas? Yes, because that's, can I make a point about the fact that I'm not an expert? I'm not a rocket expert. I've just been following this stuff for a long time.

And I picked up things kind of by osmosis, but I'm not an engineer. I mean, you might want to just credential yourself a little bit more than that. Like, they left you in charge of the LM and the National Air and Space Museum. I know a lot about that. Okay. I'm not a curator, though. I'm not a curator. That's a train position.

Okay, very good. So I know a lot about it. All right. They let you inside the LM. I don't give a shit what you were or not. They'd make you sit in the podcaster section of the media room. Is that what you're saying basically? Yes, they would.

Doesn't my old stuff count? They go, no. It doesn't. You've got to start a gate. Like, I interviewed the administrator. You don't get a chair. I know three. Oh, they're dead.

Never mind. I knew. I knew it. But let me just, the point that I'm trying to make, though, is that part of why I might jump some of these numbers up a little bit higher because they had a special cool factor. Cool factor from a kid at the time watching these things means it continues on decades later. outside of engineering analysis. And the cool factor for the Atlas

are those stupid little veneer engines at fire. You saw it for roll control, you know? Yeah. I mean, you talk about stage and a half. The fact they call the middle engine the sustainer, you know, sustain. What is it sustaining? Well, getting into orbit, I don't know.

And the fact that that rocket, the fact of that rocket. I like that's where you're calling bullshit on the name. That's great. I was thinking like a spinal tap reference, like the sustain, you know, but no, you went. The thing that I'm going to blow your mind, well, first of all, there they go. Yeah, the little verneers.

They're phenomenal. They point, they aim their thrust in all kinds of ways. So you see them working layer asses off trying to get that thing rolled to the right direction, which is fun to watch. The other thing about it is that, you know, you had Centaur and Agena versions of that rocket that did the early planetary exploration. They launched it off to the moon. And so, and what makes that exciting for me is that this is a missile, liquid oxygen, carousine missile, that was supposed to be part of the triad, you know, to launch against the Soviets in case they did an attack. And they found it took too long to load up all the fuels. And so they went to the Titan, which was storable propellants, and they were ready to go in their silos.

And they turned this thing in from sword into plowshares. So that concept, I find very hopeful. and exciting. So I gave it extra marks. So you're saying you would have bumped it to the S tier in this. I think we already bumped, though. I want to say this, though, that we already have, because I have, Atlas is my baby too. And we, I think we already bumped it up.

I think we already bumped it up one or two because of this cool factor. I don't know if Mercury Atlas deserves to be a tier. All right. I will. I tell you, I am going to bump it all the way. up to an S for this one reason. It should have won the best supporting actor in a TV series Emmy in 1961. It was the star of a Perry Mason episode. They were on Vandenberg Air Force Base. You saw the thing blow up. You saw it was incredible. Ten minutes into the show, this was

season four, episode 25. I had to look it up. And it was broadcast the day after Alan Shepard launched. Okay, Perry Mason was a big deal back in the day. I even know it as a kid. I would watch it. My mom would watch it. Why are you up? I said, because I have to watch this Perry Mason guy. Anyway, and they had the rocket at one point. They had the rocket doing a gimbal test. They were doing the pitch and roll gimbal, so it was going diagonally side to side making the wine and that whole thing. And the actor is there listening and making notes. He's a scientist. They don't let engineers in. It is incredible. The whole thing is amazing. It just, they really, really show it off. So it's a superstar.

Snubbed. You're saying it was snubbed. Well, snubbed again. I'm keeping it in A-tier. You're too expansive in the concept of Atlas. We've got an Atlas 5 sitting in the S-tier, all right? So, you know, the Mercury Atlas. You know, we couldn't do a lot in Mercury. So it's sitting there.

A-tier. Shuttle? I feel like we have to talk about the shuttle, though, Jake. We've failed ICBM in an A-tier, so let's the same. Yeah. Okay. But it became, it's an American story. It came up from the answer. Jake. Jake, are you still happy

with shuttle sitting at A? Or are you swayed by Adam, who by the way, I just checked, had it dropping all the way down to an F tier, which was off of our chart? No.

Right. You want to A still? Yeah, I'm good on A. Paul, are you good with the shuttle staying in A tier? I have, I'm really conflicted because I was involved in the program

and I know a lot of people involved in the program. And it was in an episode of, you know, Dick Van Dyke show once or something. That's right. Mary Tyler Moore, She was at launch, but, you know, she called the wrong thing to launch in the wrong day, and the whole episode went to hell.

No, the reason that I think is fascinating and what drops it is it's failed from the start. It's, you know, the point of it, it never achieved it. So the old Apollo guys who wanted to stay in the business, a manned spaceflight, a huge crude spaceflight, came up with this notion where they had to have something that would fly like a truck very quickly. and you start with this magic piece of machinery, the engines, the SSMEs, gave them the first contract. And they built basically thoroughbreds when they needed Clydesdales, because that's the only thing that they could do. And once they lost that capability of flying frequently with these engines, they lost the whole point of the shuttle. And if you listen to Dick Feynman's comments at the end of the Challenger report, he says, basically, nature can't be fooled. You're not going to be able to do the thing you said you're going to be able to do.

So it sent him down the wrong path for many, many, many years. And I wonder what would have happened had they not had a shuttle, let the space program be dead for a little while. And everybody would be watching the Russians going and doing cool things. And then said, well, we should get back to our glory days and maybe had a new one with a realistic approach. Also, the wing is hysterical. If you look at that one paper they had,

the reason that it's got such big wings, because the Air Force needed to be able to do a one rotation cross range because of a snatch and grab, a snatch mission where they just go up into polar orbit, grab a Russian satellite. I mean, they do a little prox ops, the arm, the whole thing, whatever, suck it in, kind of like that James Bond movie. I don't know if you remember when they sucked in the Gemini. And, you know, the guy with the cat, you know, and the other thing. Steal it to California. Yeah, heist the Soyuz back to California or whatever. And then fly back.

And then there was a paper about 1975. This is after the whole plan for it was already fixed. And they said, now that's stupid. We don't need that. And here they are. They're stuck with this giant big wing that they got a kill by doing these huge S-turns. So that's the only thing that, you know, knocks it down to me. It's pretty good, Jake.

Pretty good argument. Look, if we're going to go by whether a rocket achieves its original promise, then we can't have Mercury Atlas up there either. Just saying. Would you sell your soul to the devil? Oh, no, look. And counterpoint, the Atlantis exhibit. Right.

That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Beautiful wing, man. You have whole thing's on display. It is. I painted it so many times, too. I know that thing inside out. And it's also got a giant Canadian flag on it.

So it's going to be up there. Extra points in my book. I feel like we're leaving it. All right. I'm not going to fight the. did the death for this one. I'm saving my... You gotta save your fight for it.

All right. Let's do a lightning round to see if there's any other ones you want to edit, Jake. And then we got to talk about the Skylab situation. All right. So we had B tier. We had New Glenn Electron, Aryan 5 Vulcan.

You're conflicted about New Glenn, I think. New Glenn is just a tough one for me. I've gone back to me, like three times now on this one. I think B is great because it's good, but as of yet unsettled. Yeah, yeah. I think that will be rapidly readjusted.

Our rule is supposed to be like, what have you done so far, not promises? Right. So I feel like maybe we let a little bit of promises that on the new Glenn one, but we'll see. No, they nailed it. Like first launch, nailed orbit. I'm in, I'm in on it being B.

Like, it seems like it's got a place in this world. All the ones are fine with, right? The design of it is really pretty smart. I like the design of it being methane main engine, perfect for the low atmosphere stuff and then that super high energy liquid hydrogen. I think that's brilliant. And also the size of the payload faring,

the 7 meter thing, is great. So it's got a lot of performance. It has a tremendous amount of promise in the design. So if they can reach the design promise, then I would put it all the way up to a name. Maybe that's the right. It sits at B and then it can. B plus.

Yeah, or if it sucks, what if it doesn't do anything? Then it'll drop down to C, you know? Correct. Yeah. Okay. All right. What were the other ones in the A tier? B tier, we had Electron, Aryan 5, Vulcan, you know, same kind of deal.

Arion 5. It's too expensive, but it became a very good performer. A lot of satellites were launched on that thing, you know, when it had the groups of communication satellites sitting one on top of another and they flung them up there. And then just JWST, the precision of that orbit, that final thing was remarkable. You know, so it sure ends up on a high note. I don't know if it deserves to be there. Vulcan, same deal. Kind of like sitting at B until it gets sorted.

You know, it's like the B is like you're waiting for your sorting hat, I think, Jacob. Right. All right, all right. Skip Skylab. We're skipping Skylab, but C, we had Gemini Titan, Antares, Delta 4 heavy, or just Delta 4, I guess, right? Delta 4, sure. And then Pegasus, which was a D, but lifted it up to a C because the plane was

pretty cool. That was where we ended up with that. L-10-11. Last use of an L-10-11. L-10-11 and the DC-10 were two competitors. Lockheed had the L-1011 and McDonnell Douglas, MacDak, had the DC-10. You had more engines on the plane than you did on the rocket. Well, so that's always a good spot for stage, Anthony.

And they incorporated the tail engine in a very neat way. So as an airplane, it was really neat. It's part of the rocket stage. So, yeah, there we go. I love it for that reason. There it is. Just because, yeah, they didn't see it very often. What was another one?

Delta IV, Antares. Delta four. You know? Well, Antares is funny because of the, yeah, no, I got to tell you about Titan 2 there. Sorry about this. I got to go in for sores into plowshares. It had the coolest goddamn start sound sequence of any rocket ever made. It had a start motor.

I'll try and do this. sounds like, do-uh, and it would go, and I've done that a lot of time, because when I was a kid, I fell in love with that sound. I would wake up in the morning, and I'd start my day. I'd just go, do-oh, and I'd jump out of bed, you know? I was that much of a dork. I already set myself up for a life of disappointment. But anyway, so, and then the fact that that that was one hell of an audacious use of a rocket. And that whole program, I just love Gemini so much, because you've got a vehicle that you got two people in there. With injection seats.

You're going to blast out the top of the... Which is a super sonic slipstream. Absolutely ridiculous. That was a good idea. They used it on shuttle. Yeah, they were like, that would have worked, right? That was hilarious. Somebody said that that was a placebo.

So I've never understood. Forget, let's say your arms and legs don't get blown off when you hit the, you know, the shock of the thing. Aren't you actually flying through the heat of the SSR? the SRBs and the shockwaves, and isn't that just going to jelly whatever is left of your body? Maybe. Okay.

So it's really only an ejection for the first 10 seconds. I mean, it definitely would eject you. Oh, yeah. You're gone. It wasn't a safety seat, but you're out of there. Yeah. Somebody, I can't use the term anymore. Yeat?

That was a big thing, 12 years ago. Yeah, you eat the meat. You get to eat the meat. You yidded it out. All right. I don't think anyone had any feedback on our D-tier. That was just all the rockets we could think of that were terrible, so that was good. Yeah, the rockets we didn't like it.

Actually, and I should, one edit we should take is take Mercury Redstone off of this because Yeah, we said, yeah, we said orbital, and then we debated this for a while, so that we're going to take that. Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. What version? Here we go. What version launched the first orbit, the first orbit, the American, our first satellite? Wasn't that? A Jupiter, right?

Yeah, Jupiter, right? Yeah, right. We were doing Mercury Redstone, so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. All right. Take us the task of defend the fact that Skylab was broken when delivered, and you're claiming the rocket was good, though. You have two stages of a Saturday 5 and an inertial measurement unit sandwiching house.

And the house, if you say it's part of the rocket, then we have a different argument. I'll still argue for me. But if you say, no, it's not. It's the deliverable. then it was the house that screwed up. The micrometeoid shield ripped off, and it smashed into the parts of the Saturn 5 that when they separated the first stage

from the second stage, there still was this inner stage. In the old days, you wanted to have the separate part of it because when you removed the stages together, you didn't want to slide along a bunch of rocket motors. They found that on the second Falcon 1 thing where they sort of banged into it.

The Falcon 9 now has. a big pole, they shove up the thrust chamber and push the whole thing out so it doesn't, you know, collide with it. Anyway, and then they were supposed to separate with this charge, the interstage, and the interstage didn't separate because debris from that micrometeoid shield, which was supposed to be tight, solid. I should really explain it better. You've got an orbital workshop that has this micrometeoroid orbital debris shield around it and it's snugged in super tight, So when they launch it, the supersonic split stream doesn't get in. And once it gets into orbit, they expand it so you've got about four inches of this bumper up in orbit.

And you don't deploy that until you're up in orbit. Well, it deployed as it was going up because some of the air snuck in, ripped it, hung on to the solar arrays. One of them got moved out. And when they separated the second stage with its interstage motors, it basically fired into the wing and blew it. off and the other one got strapped down. So that's not the fault of the rocket. Not only that, the rocket had to fly with the interstage on the second stage. It had enough oomph to be able to push it in this emergency, not caused by itself. It's just doing its own thing. Just happened to stay connected, you know? Was it robust enough to disconnect its interstage? I'm not going to go into the whole

bridge wire how charges work around the whole thing. But that was... to me, you know, I don't know. Part of me ended up with me, and that's not my fault, you know? Okay, so that's a good point. You're making a good point. I ordered this thing the other day. I ordered something from a third-party delivery service. They threw the box at my front porch. The stuff inside was broken, and they said it was the box's fault. You know, the box wasn't good enough.

Oh, my God. Okay. Well, you're victim blaming. All right, okay, all right. You want to do that. You want to play that game. Listen, of the three of us. There's only one of us that's not waxed politically about Skylab, all right? So I'm out here as a Skylab lover. So I'm happy to absolve Saturn of its hills.

But that is, in my mind, only making Skylab worse. So I am actually averse to this decision because it makes Skylab look shitty. And right now I'm, you know, kind of letting me in the muddled mess. Yeah. Here's the ultimate question. Let me look at this. Look at this. Can you have launched Skylab on any of?

other rocket. No. It was literally part of the rock. They made it out of the rocket. Correct. Yeah. They made it out of the Thursday. They made it out of the rocket.

Can I give you the second one where Saturn 5 was a mistake? The Saturn 5 caused the Skylab to break up in a weird freaking way that made them delay the astronaut launch for two weeks in which team time this 17-year-old Norwegian Canadian got an opportunity to do painting showing what it would look like because those were useful that got me into see a bunch of flight directors who got me into working on a bunch of paintings of watching the Skylab being made whole, rescued, which got me to a NASA artist position, which got me into Mission Control, which made my whole career.

So Sky, the Southern Five Skylab. He's done it to us. It's S-tier. He's created this guy. He's done it. As a space artist, I am, the off nominal configuration is me. I'm the epit. He's found the port in our death star, Jake.

I've done it. I've done it. No, no, no. Listen, I should be like your mascot, like in the corner. You know, when you say something stupid about, you know, New Glenn or something like Johnny, you know, Ed McMahon to Johnny. Yeah, another recent TV reference. Yeah, I keep it going. Yeah.

That's right. Yeah, I'm your off nominal mascot, you know, in the corner of your. because I'm the personification of it. So, okay, I'll use that. Maybe it's a bit personal, but I'm throwing it in a rain. It's pretty good argument. The opportunities created by the,

by Saturn 5 screwing up completely, Jake. What do you say? For one guy. I don't know. I don't think I'm buying it. Okay, shit. It's good, though. This is a real.

It was a very emotional, like, A plus for effort on that. It was a very good, very good plea. I'm, uh, this is a real. quandary, Jake, because if I agree that Saturn 5 should be absolved of its sins, that means Skylab is shitty. But if we keep it where it is, that means Paul's a fraud, I think, is what he's just sketched out for us? I don't know. Like, what is the scenario that you've scratched out? If not for Skylab. He just made lemonade at a lemon. That's what I'm saying. This is, this is, this is, yeah, again, you should credential yourself more than this, you know.

You may not be a curator, but you would have found your way into the scene. You wouldn't have just, there was no AI back then. You would have found your way into the scene somehow. So maybe, maybe, you know, yeah, but I wouldn't have had half as much fun, that's for sure. But listen, you know, rockets are supposed to, payloads are supposed to, you know, behave themselves. And I could, you know, let's put it that way. And I think the, the rescue element of it really made it a great, great mission, a story really dramatic. And I got to be a part of that whole story of rescuing it and how they, you know, compensated and coped with it. it made the Skylab one mission, SL1, 2.

Really dramatic and exciting. And you had the best astronaut of many Pete Conrad, Joe Kerwin. Go birds. And Paul Weiss. Yeah, but yeah, Pete Conrad, what a hero. Can we do that? Let's make that our first new rocket to make its way onto this list here for today, Jay. Can we do Saturn 1 on the milk stool?

Can we do that one? I have that queued up for us here. I've got both. I have Saturn 1, regular Saturn 1. Right. Payload, Saturn 1. And then I have on the milk stool. On the milk stool. Right.

For crew. Launching. Yeah. I'll pull up a photo just for people that are out there. They wanted to launch this thing from, man, that is the coolest launch tower that there is, I think. It's so they can reach the, so the Apollo is at the same level as where it would be with Saturn 5, right? They don't need any of the hour. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Well, the third stage as well. So you have the third stage. the IU in the instrument unit. And then the spacecraft, so that was all there. And then the lower part, what they should do for SLS2 is build some kind of version,

either have a milk stool or dig a bigger hole. Great. Paul, let's complicate the fucking ML contract even more. You know, this ML contract needs another piece of infrastructure. They'll love it. Reuse, baby. Reuse. Come on.

Yeah, yeah. I think the Saturn 1 gets at least one tier bumping from me on account of the absolutely batshit insane cobbled together with duct tape for a stage. It's like eight or nine other rockets glued together with like sticky tape. Like that is the most insane thing to me. And I love it for that. H1 engines. Yeah.

It's like Redstone. Didn't do very well. They're redstones basically. They're Jupiter's right. What if we jammed more of them together and put it on this weird stand? Yeah. We'll take Mercury Redstone off and put Saturn 1B on. Yeah, okay, but you wouldn't put it in the detail.

Where are you, I'm feeling. Go higher than that. Yeah, this is, this one. It's the first major rocket that they came out with. What do you mean, my name? Well, I mean, they were farting around with all the little guys and missiles and stuff. Oh, you said, I got you. Yeah.

Launch vehicle. This is part of the Saturn class. And they had, they did a great thing. They threw, they launched three Pegasus satellites, which characterized. a micrometeored environment, and that made the lunar modules job. That was actually the reason that they had that, partly was to see how much did they need to protect the limb. But it was for scientific stuff, and then, of course, they launched all the command module,

command service modules, and Apollo 7, and then on the milk stool, the last of the command service modules. So it's got a solid history. Didn't they also launch, like, a big vat of water as one of the test flights? Wasn't that a big thing they did? I don't know. That's exactly. One flight, they just like, it was like a, you know, it was like a mass

stimulator or whatever, and it was just water. This is a big water tank. That's bizarre that they would use water as a mass simulator, I thought, but it was a hot tub. Who knows? Yeah, I don't know. I'm like, ironically Googling. This might be misinformation. Turns out pretty hard to Google a rocket name and the word tank, Jake.

It's a pretty ungoogalable thing. Are you thinking C-tier? What do you think? Yeah, no, C-fields. a little low to me. It's not as bad as the Saturn Skylab. I think B is good. Yeah, a lot of good crude missions. It was utilitarian in the right way. You know, like, we have a job to do. Let's deliver on it. I think in the, in the counter example of what you're saying about the shuttle, that, like, it had some jobs that it did not succeed at. I don't know. I feel good about it.

It's a fundamental job. It's not A. It's for sure. It didn't do enough. Didn't do enough. I think A, what we have an A is that, like, frankly, Mercury Atlas seems high now that I'm looking at this and the way that I'm about to say this. A is like solid workhorses, but they didn't get over the hump of being spectacularly good at their job. So you're saying the Atlas, you can't use it in its final, in its other versions. I mean, it's the same freaking rocket. They just didn't have the, okay. Yeah. So you don't throw the Athena and its evolution and where it all lit. I mean, the Athena thing is pretty good. The Athena one I might equate more with a Mercury Atlas kind of configuration.

Agina, yeah. Athena's a different rocket. I like B. C seems too low for Saturn 1B. All right, B. Okay. I'm good. B, all right, on the milk stool. I have the cargo version down here as well, just the Saturn 1. What do we? Well, I just sent you a link, Anthony.

I think I found it. It's Project Highwater is real. I didn't make it up. It's not misinformation. Hi water. Saturn 1 is a test, an experience. that sought to determine the effect of a large volume of water suddenly released to the ionosphere. Look at this.

Look at this. Oh, so it wasn't, you thought it was a mass simulator. They were releasing this thing? Yeah, it was real mass. Yeah. 86,000 kilograms of water. Wow. Look at that.

That's brilliant. Okay. I'm into it. I mean, that's a rocket. Yeah, you're into it. Yeah. I like that. All right.

This is Saturn 1. So that's the cargo one and Saturn 1 B. Yeah, yeah. Is that what the difference was? Yeah. Well, there was a cargo 1B as well. Saturn 1. Well, I mean, they flew a lot of unmanned things.

You know, I don't know that they use. Did they use the 1B on the Pegas's missions? I'm trying to think, Karen. I need to look it up in Wikipedia. I don't know. What do we say for this regular Saturn 1? Do we pick it? Did we just put alongside at B?

Well, it's really just a jumping off to the Saturn 1B. One B was the one that they really needed to use. That had to be part. That was a part of the Apollo program. You know, they had to have that B. Yeah. Put the 1B in the B and put the Saturn 1 in the C. All right, fair enough.

And that's getting used to big rockets. That's their first big rocket, really, that they were launching. Do you guys have, I put a couple of international rockets here in the list to rank today as well. Is there any other ones that we want to get to make sure we get to? Anything that we left off that you're feeling hot about? we should do is a long march I got Vega Vega's on here

why did you think of that one first we have so many other ones that we didn't do Vega what do you give us your Vega feelings isn't Vegas is the one they found in the garbage isn't it isn't that one uh huh yeah that's what I love it that's the best it's the best one of the best

plus notes version it was on a mail carton can you've seen me and then they found it it's fantastic yeah in the garbage yeah okay but is are you saying that's a good thing Like they threw out piece of the rocket, it bumps it up this tier list?

I'm just saying it's on my mind, Anthony. It's had a lot of failures. I know. It's a ton of failures. It's probably going to go into the garbage of this S-tier list. You've done Ontario's, right? Antares is a C. Yeah.

So this feels probably... I heard, because I mean the N-33's, that's neat, talking about finding something in the garbage. You know, you got all those engines. And then somebody calling it. a Euro trash Frankenrocket. Maybe one of the best nicknames I've heard for Eurochranet. You're right that it does feel like the European version of Antares.

Like, very small payload capacity, a lot of failures. There you go. Yeah. I'm throwing it on that. How do you feel about that, Jake? A C tier? Yeah.

Love it. Falcon Heavy. We're splitting it off from Falcon 9. Here we go. Great. You guys saw it. Yeah, give us, go ahead, Paul. Stan for Falcon Heavy.

My favorite thing. actually was watching you two, especially Jake, when they had the sonic boons come back. I went to, yeah, you know. It was really fun, because that made me feel like I was there, because I've heard that, and it made me jump too, and I thought, right on, brother, I'm with you. I think Falcon heavy. Jake makes that noise when he gets out of bed every morning now, too, Paul. That's always every morning he wakes up.

Boom! He's like, oh, shit, I'm up. It's, it's, and the other thing about it, too, is the, incredible, can I say, as holiness of SpaceX, when they presented the concept of the Starship Heavy at a NASA press conference,

they weren't doing anything else, but they were like, we will rock you, or they were singing some song. You know, we are the champions. That's what they were playing. We are the champions, and they had the CG thing of a big, you know, Falcon 9 heaven. I said, that's a lot of chutzpah, man, you know, to do that. Well, three years later, one hell of a

goddamn rocket, and it's never made a mistake. It's incredible. And to your point, I think from that animation, they had the double booster landing, right? And that may have been the most accurately recreated version of the thing that they CG'd at the beginning of the project and they nailed it. It's like synchronized swimmers, watching those two suckers come in at the same time. You just blew your goddamn mind. So for effect, you're saying S?

What are you saying? You put it up with the Falcon 9? I think. I absolutely. Absolutely. All right, Jake. Go ahead. Brilliant.

Brilliant. It is a B-tier, A-tier. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Here's my case. So as lovely of a rocket as it is, it just doesn't really do a lot. It launches national security spy satellites, and then that's like basically it. And it flies like once every few months, which is a pittance for SpaceX.

It's just like, it's just not really, I'm saying it's not that big of a deal. It gives it gives a good price to the military, military, military solves it. Glad that's around for them. I love that he's making the argument that's the exact same. argument that we would put Atlas 5 in the S tier, which it is right now. So I think, I think what we're getting that is... Well, no, I'm saying that Jake, you might be, you're indexing on,

we're ranking this based on things it's already done and not things that it will do soon. Because with, in my, in my view, Falcon Heavy is cooler than Atlas 5 in many different ways. And once it launches the slew of already contracted planetary science missions that are, and NASA flagship missions that are on its manifest in the next five years, it will be exactly Atlas 5 but cooler. Yep.

And let me put one other question. You compare it to Falcon 9. Falcon 9 is just chucking up thousands of Starlings. You know, what are the other ones that it's doing, you know, that are important as far as, you know, take away the Starlings, you know, and then what have you done? Well, to make a comparison. Yeah, but you can't, well, first of all, we looked it up, we did the math, because we We were doing some other thing about that.

And it turns out if you take out Starlink, Falcon 9 still obliterates launch case for everyone, like combined. So that argument in the stand, but also I don't think integrating rockets that the payload is... Oh, it should be... Well, we're kind of incorporating the value of the missions, aren't we in this, you know, the value of the, you know, what the rocket's being used for, the important... In a sense. Yeah, because that gives you, you know, the quality of the rocket, you know,

how much you can depend on it, Arion 5, the jewel of American science, $10 billion project. They give it to that. That's why I knocked Arion 5 up there because it was reliable to an extreme degree. And Falcon 9, man, they're just not going to know suckers out. They've got the cadence going. And that's impressive. It's really impressive. But in terms of the missions of importance, how many more, I don't know how many, you know, once in a while they say, oh, it's launching this thing instead of another 60 or however many starlight that they're wanting. And what will happen to it once Starship start chucking out those version 3, I don't know how many, 70,000 we're supposed to get of these giant big, you won't be able to see the stars. I don't know if it's 70,000.

That's a great. But it is tens of thousands. Well, that's 70,000 the number that I heard that they are asked, you know, four. I mean, at some point, right? What are they going to do with Falcon 9 at that point? Does it have its missions anymore? You're just skipping all the people that are flying on that thing, but I'm here for it. it.

Falcon Heavy gets at least one tier bumpin just because of how cool it is. But like ultimately, ultimately its use case was way, way lower and way, way under all the promises that were made for it. It was supposed to be this revolutionary heavy lip that was reusable, like in all the different ways. It was so cheap and everyone was going to use it for everything. And it's like, no, actually, the reusability was like, they throw away an entire Falcon 9 with every launch and the military likes it, is what it ended up.

being, right? And then like a couple NASA flagships. Oh, that's good. So if they, if they were landing the center core reliably, would you put it at S tier? It would definitely go up for sure. Okay. So I'm good. I'm good with that being the market. Because I think all the other arguments that you made apply to Atlas 5 that we have in the S tier right now. But I think the one, if you're going to hold it over its head that the center core is sunk every time, then I'm there for it being a tier. And I'm saying, get your numbers up. Right. Because land that sucker on a boat. Yeah. Right. All right. That's true because the, Because the actual push that you need means that the center core has to fly a lot further.

Yeah, yeah. Farther. And then it's not on a boat. It's like the, it's pointless. Yeah. Okay. And like most of the people are opting for the, they're opting for the expendable version because their payloads are too big, right?

Which is like the market saying, hey, your reusable rocket has no value because there's nothing that we want to launch at that payload range. Hadn't thought of that. Love it. Good point. Bean counter, SpaceX. market decision. All right, I got some, here's all the,

here's the international roundup that we've got. I've got Angara A5, Black Arrow, which I think was just, I think is maybe as we record this, the anniversary of it. I've got the GSLV, the H2, Long March 3B, 5B, and the PSLV. Do anyone care to have opinions about these things?

Black Arrow, you're hot about Black Arrow, Jake. Give me your British Australian rocket thoughts. I mean, right. it's cool if you're from one of those countries, but like ultimately, they're not like a rocket. All right. I'm going, I'm going to bat for this thing, Paul.

Stand back. Okay. This is, look at this fucking cool rocket. Look how cool that thing looks. It looks unbelievable. It's like the peroxide or something that it uses for fuel or whatever. It has like that wicked plume, right?

Yeah, look how many engines are down there. And look at this. Shot diamonds. Look at the shape. It's a weird height. It's got this orange faring. Like, they flew it once. And then they went, nah, we're good.

Like, that was fun, but we're good with this. this, you know? It was British, but they flew it out of Australia. Did it go into orbit? One time, and that was it. It flew once. It worked. And then they said, nah, we don't need it. That was the big thing is that Britain's the only country to have achieved orbital launch capacity and then relinquished it, right? That's the, that's the jab you want to make up. You want to do it online. Well, then we're going to get into Brad, you sons of bitches. Oh, shit.

We ran away. Why didn't you put that on the last? We have to do this whole episode again now, just to like keep adding it. All right, well, Black Arrow, give me a Black Arrow, and then we're doing Brown. What do you think? I have zero comment because I don't even know what that was. It's a D. D? Looks weird.

Yeah. But the Rocket was good. The people were bad. People. The decision makers were bad, Jake. You're mean. Dee, you know, I'm going to give me a C on this thing? Worked the first time.

I will accept C on account of the cool fuel. All right. It looked cool, too. All right. And I got to stick up from a commoner. Exactly. I figured it, God save the queen. As an aesthetic connection, I'll say that I've never seen rockets that have that many shock diamonds, you know, maintain their configuration for that far.

There's like about six or seven of them that are clean. It's like 10 feet off the path. Well, no, no, but even the ones that are up there, you get a lot of dissipation of the shock diamonds. It's like six, seven of them. Holy crap. That's like skipping a stone, you know, and getting 10 of them. All right. I'm pulling up a photo of Iran launching.

Thank you. Who's got? This is what the shuttle should have been. Oh, wow. All right. This is what the shuttle should have been. Bring it. It should have been.

Cargo C is what we're looking at. If you had a shuttle where you had, you know, you didn't have the engines on that. You threw away the engines because they're just about the same cost, whether you use them again or not. And then you have, you could put a giant big cargo part on the front of it. So you had the tank with the air. engines at the base, the two side boosters. They were liquid-fueled side boosters. And then you had the shuttle itself, which would fit on it, and it had nothing but an orbital thruster capability with the right, you know, the little engines for moving back and forth. And they landed the thing automatically first time. So now, I don't know, they had like 50 Ontario computers in series or something. I don't know. That's a jerk. That's a jerk comment. I don't know. But look, I just, that's, That's the way it should have looked. And if you look at some of the concepts for shuttle C, had we had that, that would have made the space station very different, much more efficient

in the building of it. They had a whole group of people in 1993 when they canceled the first version of Freedom Space Station. They had Tom Stafford and his group. They came in there and they talked about, this is really a crappy design. We need to do something smarter. And everyone said, well, you can only take it up in little tiny pieces in the shuttle cargo bay. And they said, Well, what if we, you know, reincorporate, you know, sort of do a final shuttle C version? And they thought about that, what kind of configurations you could have with the shuttle C. You launch the whole thing in maybe three launches. There you go.

I never put these two next to each other as like the, yeah, the Energia versus Shuttle C. Exactly. Situation. That's interesting. Yeah. Yeah. Yep. So anyway, I'm throwing that out there.

Big Baran fan here, Jake. How do you feel about the Baran love that's going on here? I think well it's silly because it's a copy yeah it's a it's a B I think I think if if rockets start at the bottom this one gets points for the for the autonomous landing which was like way better idea

and actually executed than what the shuttle did than relying on crusty old Air Force pilots but and then the the other point it gets is that the booster was like pretty rad that energy like I think slaps. The engines were in the right spot.

Maybe we put that on it. Like maybe that's its own rocket because it didn't have to just launch Buran, right? So I don't know. Yeah. Maybe. Yeah. That's the question. Do we put, do we put Baran on here or do we put Energia?

Right. No, no. I'm, I see. Okay. Now this is where I was going to split the, split the difference here. Baran. Okay.

So I'm a payload. Well, no. All I'm saying is, Paul, you're out of here dumping on this, dunking on the cross range requirements of the shuttle and the Russians were like, we'll do it too. Like, we'll go out. What are they going to capture? That's a very good point. That's what I said. A Hubble?

Silly. The key holes? No, exactly. No, look, they just got all the data. They didn't have to do any of the aerodynamic analysis because they just stuck them on their own little thing. It's the same size. It's an off the shell. Marshall off the shell space shuttle. And then they left it in a hanger and let the hanger collapse on it. I wish the Texas congressmen would go steal that one instead of the one from D.C.,

you know? That's right. They paid for it. That's all we did. We paid them. Give us your damn beret. That's true.

Yeah, you did pay for it. It's our goddamn design. We did all the analysis. We want the damn so. It's a DMCA take down. They made it right. Yeah. Oh my God.

Energia of polius is going. So, all right, where are we putting these things? Because we have Baran. See, all right. So you were saying it was, you said BJ, because it was like the shuttle, but a little lesser than. But I'm saying anergia, polias should be... I mean, but

then you factor in that one, they screwed it up, it deorbited itself immediately. Remember that story? The payload did, though. It was up again. Oh, here we go with the whole payload thing. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. Although polyas had a rocket engine. It was part of the launch vehicle, yes. Yeah, shit. And so the time they launched that, it went, deployed, it did a full 360

rather than a 180, because they had to launch it upside down. So they attached the polius upside down on the energia. And then they, when they program this, instead of just spinning 180 degrees, it did a full 360, turned its engines on, and immediately deorbited itself. Yeah. Oh, boy. Which is also hilarious.

It's such a wild story. I feel like nobody talks about it. It's an enormous space laser. And like, I just, I don't know. We should, yeah. So where are we putting these? This is tricky. Well, as a, as a, this is, we're copying you in the stupid area.

and we're showing how it should have been done. So does that take it from a C to a B for Burr- Well, it loses points and then gains points, so in my mind. I put it, okay, put it at a B, because the promise of it, other than the stupid wings was... Yeah, it's the same as New Glenn, for sure. And what about Pollyas? Where are we putting this? Maybe one down, maybe that's a C.

See? Maybe that's a C. It's so cool. though. It gets mega cool points. I think this is in the category, you're right, it's in the category of Pegasus, which was bad but cool. Yeah. Delta four heavy too. Yeah. Delta four, yeah. Bad but cool. I love that you pointed out the whole thing goes on fire, the Delta four. Had to do that. Had to put that in there. I know. All right. Lightning round me. Give me like no comments, only rankings, okay? I don't want, the only two, the only thing you're allowed to say, both of you, is a letter. Okay. No. I'm going to say pass because I don't know any of these rockets.

All right, fine. Which will start from the left. Angara A5, Jake. C. D. I don't know. They keep like not launching it. They keep launching test demos.

Yeah, it might be a D. Wait, that's the Russian one. I'll agree with D. That's the Russian one. That's the new one. Oh, shoot. Okay. That's a promise.

That's not, that's a, this is ideal. That's a Potemkin Village rocket. There we go. That's perfect. Thank you for the title of this episode as well. G.SLV, Jake, Big Chonker Indian Rocket. B, maybe A.

Workhorse. I'm thinking A, because workhorse. Okay. Not too many failures. Good missions. Looks cool. Right. Fair. Fair.

What have we got next here? We got the H2. Oh, the Japanese, yes. Yeah. B. I have mad respect for them all doing it, but I don't know what. They ever had a failure? Have they had a failure?

I think this was, I think this is an A rocket in theory, but it was, the U.S. government ushered this along so much that I think it is only a B. It is Donald Trump's rocket, right? Donald Trump's rocket himself, yes. Well, that's right. Good for him. Well done. It is orange. He's done everything.

Can I make a comment on the long march? Go ahead. We got 3B and 5B with the two I pay. Okay. No, I saw it launch. There was video of it being. launched and it was broadcast by the Chinese government. And as it went up, they started playing heroic music.

And as it cleared the tower, it rotated like a proton on 180 degrees and crashed. And they played music for at least 20 seconds. And somebody finally said, I don't think rackets are supposed to do that. Is that the one that destroyed that whole village? No, that's a different one. This was like one of the first. It almost turned upside down right away. Just like the proton, the famous, we turned our gyro upside down.

We installed it wrong. That was a classic. Oh, my God. It's a classic one. And it took long enough that you could anticipate the final fireworks. You know, it's just, it's going to end badly. Let's just sit back and watch the sucker go. That's the thing with the 3B though, man.

It's a, it's, it is the workhorse class. But it's had a lot of failures and often drop stages on villages. You have to lose points for murder. killing. Yeah, a lot. Yeah. Like a lot. And it's hypergolic.

Yeah. I don't, come on. Hypergals are scary. In the 2020s? Maybe back when you're, you know, what's, Paul, what's his name was on? What was the guy's name? The show, Perry Mason. Maybe back in the Perry Mason days, hypergolic was fine, but so was smoking, you know?

Don't you dump on Perry. We're making it a C, I think. A C is comfortable. It's comfortable. Oh, March C. 5B. Oh, that's the one that's landing sweepstakes every time, right? Mm-hmm.

Terrible rock. Lifter. Lifted Jongong and stuff. Yeah. Stuff done, though. Ah, C. Oops. See. See, I got to find my mouse again, Jake.

It would be a D if it accomplished nothing. But it did put up some space stations. I kind of think it should be a B. Yeah. I think it would be an A if it didn't, if it had a better control of itself after deploying the payload. Oh, that's right. They don't, uh, just leave them up there and then they fall down. I think they're making progress on not doing that, though, aren't they?

Like they, well, there's a couple different versions. Yeah, but I don't know. So we settle on B then? I think B is right for it. Yeah. PSLV and Jake. That's the, that's the fancier one, but it doesn't launch very much, right? It's a little smaller.

It only goes polar. A lot of the commercial payloads from other countries fly on PSLV. Very cheap to launch. Great launch deal for people such as Planet. I'm thinking B, maybe A, but B is where I'm feeling it. I think B is good. I think it's not a good rocket, but it's so cheap to operate that it deserves a little bit of a bump up. That's part of being a good rocket, man.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. B. All right. Wow. We have so much work to do, Jake. Yes, we do.

Yeah. You have to rethink your entire Skylab problem. I don't know what's your problem. I got two more we can do next time, so we got to keep going on. I'm glad that we got Paul here to do it. Paul, can you plug some things that people should follow along with? Are you working on anything that you want to put? I'm very close to finishing a book that fits very well on.

I'm doing all my art now on the iPad using the procreate program, which is beautiful. It's phenomenal. I'm painting on with digital stuff that makes it easier. Yeah, that's one of the paintings from my Apollo 11 book that hopefully in the next year it'll come out. But yeah, it's just a lot of work. You've got to sit by yourself and try and remember the whole idea is what would the astronauts wish they could have seen when they flew. And I'm trying to paint what that would be. I love it.

So eventually. I'll let you know. Maybe you can bring me on. A Soviet flag to guarantee funding. That's what they would have hoped. Cancelled shuttle program. He's got a great painting of when the Congress didn't approve. So many shuttle paintings. Oh, my God.

So many shuttle paintings. Amazing. 1307. That's the bulkhead number. I remember it in my head. XO 1307. Well, the payload bay where it met the cabin was at a station, XO307. X0307.

I've got it in my head. I can't get it out. Man. I know. That's what happens. Now you've got to paint it. You've got to paint it out. No, not anymore.

I'm done. Jake, I don't know if we know what next week even is. If we would tell people what's happening next week. No, because next week is next week for us. Right. Next week is three weeks away from this week. That's right. So good luck.

You'll find out, people. Paul, you're the best. Well, it's fun to hang out with you. guys. I can't wait for people to see our outtakes from the beginning when we tried to record this the first time. So Jake, I can't wait for you to see it. I can't wait to see it too. The laughing guy mean. All right, y'all. See you. Bye. See you. Bye.

Bye. Bye.