Off-Nominal - 22 - The Dark Lord

Episode Date: August 6, 2019

Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins Jake and Anthony to talk about his recent trip to Boca Chica for Starhopper’s first hop, propellant depots, NASA policy, Artemis, and the passing of his friend, Chris Kraft. Upcoming meetup! Hang out with Jake, Pat (creator of RocketLaunch.Live), and other fellow Anomalies in Kent, WA on August 31! Details at events.offnominal.space. Drinks Shiner Bock - Spoetzl Brewery - Untappd Liberty Bell Ringer DIPA - Victory Brewing Company - Untappd Pale Ale - Steamworks Brewing Company - Untappd Topics ADRIFT: Part 3 - Charles Bolden on Vimeo NASA agrees to work with SpaceX on orbital refueling technology | Ars Technica The SLS rocket may have curbed development of on-orbit refueling for a decade | Ars Technica SpaceX’s Starship prototype has taken flight for the first time | Ars Technica Elon Musk will update the status of Starship development on August 24 | Ars Technica Christopher Columbus Kraft, NASA’s legendary flight director, has died | Ars Technica Picks Is SpaceX's Raptor engine the king of rocket engines? - YouTube The Astronaut Maker: How One Mysterious Engineer Ran Human Spaceflight for a Generation: Michael Cassutt: 9781613737002: Amazon.com: Books Watch Chris Kraft raw interview | Ars Technica Video | CNE Apollo was NASA’s biggest win — but its legacy is holding the agency back - The Verge Follow Eric Eric Berger Eric Berger | Ars Technica Follow Jake WeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to Mars WeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | Twitter Jake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | Twitter Follow Anthony Main Engine Cut Off Main Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | Twitter Anthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | Twitter Off-Nominal Merchandise Off-Nominal Logo Tee WeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

You're live. Oh, I'm talking. Okay. Hey, everybody. So we got really carried away with the conversation with Eric Berger today. We got really excited. So, of course, I forgot to mention one of the most important things. If you are in the Seattle area, we are recreating a meetup.

It's meetup number two. I was there a couple months ago. It was awesome. And I'm going to go back. So August 31st at the Airways Brewing Tap House, there's two. So check the page at Events. off nominal. Dot offenomenal.

We're going to show up there to have a few drinks. They have New Shepherd Paleo. Which you're going to buy and bring back for the next episode of Offnominal. Like literally a real beer named after a rocket.

So if you are in the Pacific Northwest on August 31st, please come by and see us. It'd be really amazing to see you. That's it. Enjoy the show. Jake, it is a huge week. We have a very special guest with us today.

We have Elon Musk's favorite person on Twitter. We have Mr. Eric Burger back with us. How are you doing, Eric? Hey, I'm doing great, guys. Thanks for, thanks for having me back. You're the first repeat guest on Off Nominal, just so you're aware.

This is a big moment. Does that mean there are about four people that will come on the show, or is that because you actually wanted me back? We ran out of people on and space Twitter that like us. You know, I like to think that we're like, we're pretty good at picking

guests that are like topical to what's going on like I give us like a solid like B minus B plus maybe like pretty good overall but this week I can't think of a week we need Eric Berger more than this week I think we knocked out of the park this week so another way of saying you got very very lucky when Anthony reached out to me on Monday or so yeah we're never that we're they're very last minute bookings in case anyone is aware and somehow we trick everybody hanging out but I think it's the beer that does it. Yeah, absolutely. Did you bring some beer, Eric?

I did, yes, absolutely. Yeah, I got a Shiner Bach. It's a good, good Texas beer. Yeah. Finer Bach. I was thinking about bringing one of those. I was, but I had to find one. Can you get those outside of Texas?

I can. In my little craft beer store. I saw one sitting on the shelf. Oh, very nice. But I had to get one that said double dry hopped. Wow. So I've got a Liberty Bell ringer. a special seasonal double dry hopped need a need a double hopper for this week jake i also brought a

whole cooler up to my office today i figured it was going to be a long show i see what you did there with the hopper though yeah that's what i was working on that's pretty good i got it yeah um so i have i also needed lots of beer for this week so i stocked my mini fridge in my office um and i have uh i got a Steamworks seasonal pack. So Steamworks is a Vancouver brewery, kind of a craft brewery. And I bought, they have like four different kinds. So this is the pale ale, and it's got

some sort of steam-powered flying contraption on the label, which is pretty cool. And then we'll see what else I get into as the show gets on. I like anything in which you can work the word contraption into. Yeah, it is. It's totally a contraption. It's got like a clock on it, which is the Vancouver gas town

steam clock, which is a kind of a thing you can see there. And there's like a propeller on it and some, there's like a little camera on a mini drone thing here. Anyway, it's good beer. And his regular size. Jake usually brings a 40-ounceer, but it's not- That's why I brought multiple because I had to,

this is going to be, I'm going to be done this like before we even get to the first topic. We're at the first topic, but we're going to start out different this time, Jake. Eric sent us a link. We're going to do a little guided listening. and then we're going to update ourselves a couple years later.

I'm excited for this, yes. Charles is a visionary, and visionaries frequently have a belief that if we just are turned loose. And it could have been done if, as Charles said, you take everything else, you forget all this other stuff,

forget about a heavy left launch vehicle because you don't need it, develop on-orbit depots, and then the commercial folk, the entrepreneurs, will build smaller rockets that will use the on-arbit depot, deposed, and you won't need a heavy left vehicle. Is that true?

I don't think so. But that's the story he told. And they still say that. You know, let's be very honest again. We don't have a commercially available heavy-left vehicle. Falcon 9 heavy may someday come about. It's on the drawing board right now. SLS is real.

SLS has, and you've seen them down in the shoe, we're building. We're building the core stage. We have all the engines already done, ready to be put on the test stand at Stennis. We are building, we have contracted with Europeans to build a service module for Orion. Orion is ready to fly before the end of this year. That's all hardware. I think the farthest along that a commercial entity is, is the two carriers that we use right now, Antares and Falcon 9.

But I don't see any hardware for a Falcon 9 heavy, except that he's going to take three heavy, three Falcon 9s and put them together, and that becomes the heavy. It's not that easy and rocketry. I understand. I understand. I am not an opponent of On-Orbit Depots. We will need on-orbit depots somewhere down the line because we will need a viable near-Earth infrastructure, a low-earth orbit infrastructure, so that, commercial entities can gradually take over. As we move farther out, we're going to need somebody to fill in behind us. It's like a, it's like a, you know, a supply line. If the military goes

somewhere, they lay in, they go out and fight and win land and put in a fuel line, and then right behind them comes somebody like a brown and route, and they put in commercial infrastructure, but they're not out there shooting. So we're out there shooting. That's such a weird thing to end with. also. It is a weird thing to end. It took such a weird turn there. Eric, what the hell is going on there? Well, so this is in 2014, and I was talking to Charlie about a study that Charles Miller had done.

Charles Miller was a consultant to NASA, and he had done this study basically showing that an architecture built around on-orbit propellant storage, the Delta-4 heavy rocket and the forthcoming Falcon Heavy rocket could get you back to the moon by 2020, which let me check my watch, is next year, within the existing NASA budget. And this was year three of the space launch system program. They'd only spent, you know, five or six billion back then. And Charlie's point to me was, look, you know, the Falcon Heavy is great in theory, but it doesn't exist.

But the SLS exists. And my favorite line in that whole thing is we have all the engines. And yeah, I mean, they've been to space. Yeah, I mean, so even back then, like, there was really an extreme sensitivity to, like, what SpaceX was trying to do with a heavy lift launch vehicle and skepticism from NASA that it wasn't real. And then, you know, four years later, three and a half years later, the Falcon Heavy did fly, right? And so a year and a half after that, it's flown three times. And SLS, they're still building the course stage. in Meschid assembly facility in southern Louisiana.

So I just thought it was funny because, you know, there's a lot of, there's a lot of political stuff going out there, questions about sort of NASA funding for propellant depots because it does open up this architecture to use smaller commercial rockets to do an exploration program. And it was pretty clear that at around the same time that the SLS rocket was conceived of by the U.S. Senate,

that NASA was told through its brand new space technology program to stop funding on orbit depots and on orbit's fuel storage and transfer. And it's been that way for eight years. And then the big news this week was that NASA's space technology program came out and said, look, we're not going to give any money to SpaceX, but we're going to do a SpaceX agreement whereby our people at Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama and Glenn Research Center in Ohio. are going to work with people from SpaceX. And they're going to try to, you know, we're going to share our knowledge about on-orbit, propellant storage and transfer with them. And they're going to, you know, say what they need for the starship vehicle. Because one of the huge technical challenges among many that SpaceX has to solve with its starship program is the transfer of propellant.

So, you know, if they do a do emission to Mars, there's five refuelings of that starship vehicle in Earth orbit before it takes off to Mars. So they really need to, they really need to master that. And, you know, Elon kind of glosses over that a little bit when he talks about it. But it is a big technical challenge. And if you talk to people like Paul Wooster at SpaceX, they will say, look, you know, this is one of the big things we have to solve. And so the fact that NASA came out this week and said, we're going to help SpaceX, you know, tackle this problem. It was really significant, A, because of all this political history and the pressure on NASA to not do anything with depots because of the SLS rocket. and B, just the fact that NASA acknowledged that Starship existed.

Yeah, those are both huge things, but also I think it's interesting when you couple that news with the expanded commercial lunar payload services. They're on-ramping new providers. They're changing parts of the original RFP that extend the timeline to 2024, and that RFP is not capped at an amount of cargo that could be landed on the moon. They could buy a lander that's capable of putting 100 tons on the moon and only pay for some payload. So when you start looking at some of this, it certainly looks like really creative ways to get around political problems that would prevent NASA from working on projects with Starship, working with Blue Moon. You know, not that they're not allowed to work with Blue Moon, but it's being a hell of a time to get that $1.6 billion that they want for a lander contract. and it's really cool to see inventive ways to get around that system, you know, within the existing constraints that they have, even if you extend to the Gateway, this Northrop Grumman contract that they just extended for the commercial or for the habitation department of Gateway. Yep.

Like that's through the next step stuff that was already approved in Congress. Yeah. Yeah. They're just like trying to get around it as best they can to work on the things that we want them to. I think that's, you know, I think that's a good observation. And I will say this, you know, a Bridenstein, the NASA administrator who, frankly, does not have that much power in all of this. But there are, there are definitely key elements in Pence's office and advising Mike Pence, people like Newt Gingrich, who I've talked to about this stuff and who's out there sort of banging on banging the drum to really try to say, you guys should let NASA go more commercial. You know, that there are elements within the administration and within NASA that would like to take this approach.

There are elements within NASA that would not, obviously. But the political pressure there is clearly stay the course with, you know, the SLS and Orion and so forth. And, you know, a moon program in some distant future. And so you see Bridenstein trying to do this. One of the biggest things to me, one of the biggest steps that was telling to me was with the lunar land, program when they were putting out the proposals for the descent module. One of the ways to do that, one of the traditional ways, excuse me, is that NASA would have said, okay, they would have designated a center, Marshall or Johnson Space Center in Houston and said,

this is the lead center for the lander program. They are going to be responsible for aggregating the lander. You know, Boeing may build one piece of it. Blue Origin may build another piece of it. Someone else has made built another piece of it. And that program will all be in or that, the hardware, will all be integrated at Johnson Space Center, right? That is a recipe for higher cost, time delays, things like that. And they didn't do that. They said, these are going to be purely

commercial programs. And if it is different companies building different parts of the lander, then one of the companies will basically be responsible for integrating it, much more commercial approach. And so I think that you're right. They're definitely trying. Yeah. I'm still stuck on this quote. I keep, I keep, thinking about this thing you just played for me. Doesn't the bolden, I know this is like an easy dig to me, doesn't the bolden description of the status of SLS sound remarkably the same as what it is today?

Yes and no. I mean, it is true. I tweeted out a picture. I really went a little insane on Twitter this week. But I tweet out a picture of actual hardware for the core stage that's still in the shoot five years, five years after the. after what Bolden, you know, had said to me. And I mean, yeah, they are still building the course stage.

Now they've transported pieces of it up to Marshall Space Flight Center to do tests, you know, on this huge multi-million dollar test stand, you know, and then they're going to ship it all back to Stennis Space Center of Mississippi and assemble it sometime next year for a green run test. But, but, yeah, I mean, at best, Boeing completes the construction of the core stage by the end of this year. So five and a half years after he was saying, you know, there's real hardware, you know, they may have a, they may have a core stage. Jake's so sad right now.

Look at him. And I mean, it's so, it's so, it's so disingenuous to also to point to SLS and say it's real because of the hardware, because like we mentioned earlier, you're using the space shuttle's main engines, okay? Yeah, of course you've got the engines because they were made 30 or 40 years ago, okay? And to point to the solid rocket boosters and say, hey, we've got the solid rocket boosters. Well, great job. You added one segment to a space shuttle booster that you'd built for 40 years.

Okay? So, yes, I know there's new engineering and you're trying to bring down the cost of these boosters and so forth. But, I mean, come on. It's not a big hurdle. So the core stage is the one sort of new piece of equipment because you're integrated. the shuttle's main engines with very big tanks, and you know, you've got four instead of three, and so there's, you know, some challenges with that. But, you know, it's just taken a long time. And the point is, you know, every year there's a delay, it's another two and a half billion dollars

just for the core stage, or just for the rocket. That doesn't include another half million, or excuse me, a half billion for the ground systems where, you know, there were. working on those to get them ready for a launch. So it's just, it just really adds up. One thing I got really annoyed at this week was thinking about the alternate history in which shuttle C, like the cargo variant, was developed that flew with the existing external tank and the existing length of the solids and could put like, I think it was like 80 tons into orbit or something like that.

Man, it's hard to be like not annoyed that that path wasn't taken. So you're talking about this space shuttle derived heavily. lift vehicle. And several years ago, someone who worked at NASA at the time here in Houston now works at Boeing told me kind of the story of what had happened with that. Because Houston was really pushing for that for obvious reasons because it continued the space shuttle program, yada, yada. But he said that they went up and proposed that in Washington and just got crushed by

delegations from Florida and from Alabama. Marshall Space Flight Center, so they didn't stand a chance. Headquarters was against it. What were they annoyed about? Because Marshall wanted to build a new rocket. I think people in headquarters were tired of the space shuttle program at that point and wanted to try to move on to something new. And so it just got crushed.

So stacking it all on top was enough of a new rocket? I mean, clearly it was at this point, but at the time, like it was sold on, it's not that big of a change. We could, you know, use the same hardware. We've got the tooling. We can do this. Yep. I know.

I know. Tell me about it. So, you know, one thing that's one thing that's interesting looking ahead the next year is, you know, as you talked about sort of how this, you look at this administration and you look at Brydenstein and sort of moving Gerstamire out, clearly, and Pence clearly wants to try to get something done. So what happens, you know, as we get into next year and they don't get their $1.6 billion, right? Which seems likely. and when the SLS rocket officially slips to late 2021, right, which is what I'm told is the day, internal day right now. So what do you do then? I mean, if you're, if you're Pence and Bridenstein. You know, I think that, you know, sort of these these tentative steps we've seen

toward commercial and trying to take a more commercial approach at NASA may be, maybe bigger. And what happens, too, if Starliner or Dragon carries people into space and safely? And so you all of a sudden can look at a fixed price program for human spaceflight and say, hey, look, this works. So, you know, the next 12 to 18 months of spaceflight policy, it's been a really interesting treadmill for the last year or so with this. I think it's only going to continue, especially as sort of you get to the point where you can only. longer say, well, we're going to continue on the existing plan and accelerate it to do Artemis 2024 because you're not going to have the funding for that. And B, you know, SLS really is going to continue to slip because they've got a lot of work ahead of them and problems could arise in the

green run test, which, you know, probably isn't going to even get started until the spring of next year, you know, all this kind of stuff. So it's, you know, interesting times ahead and continued turmoil and challenges, I think, for, for Bridenstein and the White House when it comes to space policy. Do you think that it's actually going to be 12 to 18 months of interest, or is it going to be six months of interest before the election really kicked off? And then there's nothing about it at all. Oh, well, I mean, interest is space nerds, right? No one, no one gives a shit in presidential politics about spaceflight policy. It just doesn't, it just doesn't rise the occasion.

Now, it could, maybe in the Democratic primary at some point, in terms of climate change and NASA's focus really ought to be on solving that problem. You know, Lori Garber's Earthrise Alliance group sort of put out an op-bed a few weeks ago where she said, look, you know, we've been in this, we've been trying to get the deep space for 20 years, over four or five administrations, and they've all failed. You know, the real priority here is really studying, understanding what's going on to Earth and helping finding solutions for a warming planet. So maybe it could sort of impinge that way, but I doubt it. And so, no, it's really going to be like an issue between the White House, the administration, and its contractors who have continued, you know, to collect checks for a decade, but but do not have viable hardware yet to prove for it. You brought up Lori Garver, which made me think of the whole Gerson-Myer situation. Yeah.

I think I did a show about who's going to replace Gersen, and I floated a couple of ideas of, I used people's names, but I was talking about like, you know, personalities or, you know, stand-ins for what type of person might be promoted. But the two options I chose for some of these options. options were Lori Garver and Jason Cruz on. And Lori Garber then the next day was like, I don't think we should do human spaceflight. And apparently, Jason moved to like Australia last year and isn't in NASA at all. Within like hours, I was like, wow, I did a great job on this. Yeah, Jason, Jason took a job in Australia and is making a lot more money. And I understand he's,

quite happy. How to deal with this? Yeah, Lori obviously would not be good for this. And I've heard names. actually I think I know who the frontrunner is but I'm not going to put that out there yet Jason Kuzan's going to sorry back sorry about that my sense my sense is that

Brynstein wants something someone younger than Gersd who is in his early 60s and someone from the outside so the chat room is so mad at you right now they can be mad I'm not going to burn my sources to ask me just not to say anything sorry you don't have to tell us who the sources Eric we're fine if it's you man if you need help

looking for a place in D.C., we're going in October, we're going to I. See, we can do some house hunting for you. It's cool. No, it's not, it's definitely not me. I wouldn't want that job. It was funny. It was funny, you know, I had a good conversation with a source a couple weeks ago, and we were talking about, this was someone who knew

Gersh pretty well. And kind of the challenge, you know, of finding someone who is, is capable, because, because, by the time, if you need someone who's smart, can get the job done. and you know it's a difficult spot to be going into

because there's 18 months left in this president's term and would you really want to work for this president, right? Because, you know, Brydenstein and Pence has spent about a year, a year and a half putting together a plan to go back to the moon, your rationale to go back to the moon, and it's just been completely turned over upside down by a president who says,

oh, look, Mars, we haven't been there. And so, So, I mean, that's, you know, that's a real, real challenge. And, you know, he asked me, like, would you go? Like, if the, I'm not sure A for communications or whatever it is, if you like the top communications jobs open up at NASA and they said, we wanted you, and they said, would you take the job? And I said, no, I wouldn't take the job.

I mean, first of all, I have a fantastic job, you know, here in Houston. But, you know, I think that's going to be a challenge too, right? So absolutely is and I'm still you kind of alluded to it earlier and I had always been Even when the Brydenstein original drama was going on about him being administrator I had a lot of you know I was wondering a lot does it matter who's administrator and I wonder even more does it matter who's In the Girst position you know they they have some influence but do you think it it really could change the trajectory of things? Yes yes getting getting the right person in the Gersd Meyer position at this point is essential for a number of reasons, not least of which is the whole

Artemis program. Like, there is some momentum behind this. If you got the right person in there who is credible with Congress, you know, even if it gets pushed back to 2028, which is going to happen, I'm pretty certain. If you had the right person in there, they could continue to sort of steer the ship in that direction. But it's got to be someone who's credible with the troops at NASA, someone who's credible with the White House and someone who's credible in Congress and someone who's credible with industry. Gersh was all of those things. He just was not moving fast enough. And he was sort of, you know, he wasn't slow playing the administration, but he was basically keeping backup plans

in place in case Trump wasn't reelected and the next president wanted to do something else. So he was not, I don't think, I think it's fair to say he wasn't 100% committed to Artemis, but he was willing to work with them. But he just was not moving fast enough. or aggressively enough. And so if you got the right A and the A in there, he could really, he or she, excuse me, could really kick some butt. Oh, that's a hint.

That's a hint, everybody. And move some things forward. I'll give you just one example. I'm actually going to be writing a story about this probably for tomorrow or Tuesday at the latest. But think about this, right? We've got a human spaceflight coming up from the United States into orbit.

within the next six to 12 months, hopefully in six months, but almost certainly within 12 months, right? You're going to be SpaceX or Boeing. You know, for the first time, someone is going to have to sit at the head of the flight readiness review table and say, I believe that SpaceX or I believe that Boeing is ready to go fly. And that will be, in some respects, especially if it's SpaceX, given, you know, given sort of their propensity to upset the aerospace industry, that's going to be a controversial call. Now, if Bill Gerst & Meyer is sitting at that table and making that decision, everyone kind of falls in line because, A, he's been there forever.

B, they know he's a, you know, he's a very smart guy. He's technically, he's brilliant. He's made that call before. And so if everyone kind of will say, if Bill thinks that we're ready to go fly, we must be ready to go fly. Okay. Let's say it's, you know, let's say it's like a political figure, right?

I'm not saying this is going to happen with AA, but the Trump administration just tried to pluck this guy from Congress to be the director of national intelligence that had no credibility whatsoever. Now, I don't think that's going to happen with, with Einstein. But if it's like, if it's like someone who has no credibility in the aerospace industry, right? Right. Making that call, then what's going to happen? Like, if you're on the other side of that issue, you think that Boeing or space, isn't ready for whatever reason, you're probably going to go talk to the New York Times or the Washington Post or someone else and say,

hey, look, look at all this stuff that says that they're not ready to go fly. And it just could be a real mess. And so, yes, it's important. Yes, the AA can make a real difference, the associate administrator for human spaceflight. And for a lot of these decisions, it's going to be essential to have someone,

you know, with Gersh credibility. and it's going to be difficult to find someone to fill that job. The candidate whose name I've heard is not a household name by any stretch, but I think he'd be pretty good. So we'll see. We'll see. But it's a very important job, and it matters a heck of a lot. I also think that it's going to be really important for the new associate administrator

to have a role in changing NASA culture, right? Because if you talk about the bad part of NASA culture, the part that people are not happy with today, that gets criticized a lot, you know, the sort of stuck in the mud, doesn't want to change, like has their ways of doing things. A lot of that lives in the human spaceflight side, and this new person's got to fix that if they want progress or change, right? Well, excuse, all I would say is good luck changing the culture at NASA. I mean, that's not an 18-month job.

That's an 18-year job. I mean, you look back at the spatial accidents. And both of the accident investigations found that the safety culture at NASA was a problem. And it took a long time and a sustained effort and the deaths of astronaut to really make an impact on changing the culture. So yes, while I agree that that's important, it's going to be difficult. You know, it's not the kind of thing we're like, this isn't SpaceX, right? Or Blue Origin, where if Musk or Bezos says, we're doing it this way, right? you know, stop doing that.

You know, we're not doing that. And the troops stop doing it, right? It's a completely different ballgame with civil servants because they have their jobs. They're not getting fired, right? And they may look at the AA and say, well, he's gone when Brian Stein's gone and Trump's probably going to lose election. So I'm just going to keep doing it on doing for 18 months or whatever.

So it's a very difficult thing. And you cannot come in and just start barking. orders. You really have to earn the trust of the center directors of the program managers and their sub-managers and kind of all the way down. And so it's, you know, Gersd had that, right?

He had that credibility. And so, yeah, one of the first jobs of this person will be to earn it. And I would, I would not, if I were that person, I would not come in and just start the first day talking about everything that he or she wants to change at NASA because I don't think that's going to be a formula.

for success. No, it won't be. That's not a great start to it. You mentioned, you know, deciding on a whim to do things or not. So that's a good, good enough segue for me to talk about your recent trip down south. You took a nice long drive recently. That must have been like, what,

a couple hours? From my house to to Boca Chica Beach is about five and a half hour. Woo! That's way out there. Texas is so big. Texas is pretty big. And, I mean, Houston, technically, Houston technically...

How long was it four hours out of Houston and then an hour? No, no, man, come on. Houston technically is in southeast Texas. You know, I get that joke. You know, Houston to south... Southeast to South Texas, you wouldn't think it's that far. But yeah, it's a big state.

And it's only, you know, it's only about five hours to Brownsville, but it's another 30 minutes from Brownsville then over to the beach. Have you... This is random Texas stuff. Have you been down that way previously before this visit to Star Hopper?

Yeah. I mean, it's... it's south padra island is like five to seven miles away um like you can look from south padre and have a really good view of the launch site um it's gonna be but you have to drive like way back inland and then there's no road from south podray directly directly down there yes yes i had been down there um been down there before it's actually a beautiful part of the state it's going to be interesting to watch them like this is a whole different topic but it's i'm just curious how they're going to fit into because it's you know Florida's always had the Cape Canaveral thing in these

days that travel got very popular so it was like a beach destination that also had a launch site nearby but this is now an established beach destination that randomly got a launch site and I'm interested to watch that interaction but that's a topic for another time let's talk about Starhover you were down there for the hop you witnessed it from however far away you and all the randos that are live streaming can, you know, peer in on this thing. This thing has been wild to watch. We're getting welded together randomly in a field, and then lifting off. You couldn't see much on the flight itself, but what have you made of all this progress so far?

That seems to have picked up pace, you know, since we heard all the carbon fiber, dear moon talk, however long ago it was. Now that the plans totally changed, and it's been a crazy pace to watch. What have you made of it so far? Well, I'll say a couple things. First of all, you look at Star Hopper, you think, oh, man, that's kind of a small-looking vehicle, right? It doesn't look that impressive. But, you know, up close, it is six stories tall, right? So it's pretty big.

Well, this is what I was thinking, because it was supposed to be like a 20-meter hop, and then we watched the video, and I'm like, yeah, barely moved at all. But it just went, like, one vehicle length up, so it didn't look like a lot, but that was still a huge height. Yeah, I mean, it's a big, it's a big vehicle. vehicle. And actually, if you look at the starship Mark 1 that they're building, and that thing is huge. Like,

I mean, whenever that thing does fly, it'll be super impressive to watch that, to watch that go up. I mean, he just, he tweeted last night that, you know, they'll be ready to fly that about the time he does his presentation on Starship on August 24th. And God bless them if they are. I mean,

but, you know, we'll see. It's, it's basically, you know, the shape of starship will be and sort of some of the engines and things, but they've obviously got a long way to go. What I make of it is that this is a company that is hustling. You know, you go back and you look at, you know, the early days, 2002, 2006, when no one said that these guys could build a rocket, right? And it was like a couple hundred people in California getting kicked off of Vandenberg and going out to Quadrille to launch and, you know, doing all this crazy stuff. And, you know,

it's funny you know like they would ship they would try to ship locks um from l.a to quaduline right so it would spend a couple weeks on a boat um from L.A. to to Hawaii and then it would get tropical Pacific yeah right right and then it would spend a couple more weeks on a boat from from Hawaii to Quaduline and then finally it would get shipped over to the Amalek Island and like half of it would be gone right I mean they It's just so, you know, they were, they need depots, baby. They need depots, yeah. So, you know, this is a company in their DNA with sort of, which is accustomed to kind of hustling and, and doing some crazy stuff.

And they are building Starship kind of like they did the Falcon One in terms of, you know, improvising, changing, iterating. I mean, that's what you see with these two teams. you've got the team building mark one in in spoke chika you've got another one in cocoa florida building mark two and they're sort of trading information and trying stuff and you know they are really throwing shit up against the wall and seeing what works and it's pretty cool to watch this because you know they're trying to do some really hard stuff trying to solve some really hard problems and you know on one hand it's easy to sit back and criticize and say well they're never going to get there right that's too hard that's

too ambitious. And maybe they won't, right? Because it is really hard. It is really ambitious. But, you know, it's hard to bet against a company that will willingly has employees that will just work their asses off and, you know, we'll work around the clock. Like in Boca Cheekker, you know, like in McGregor, they have services that'll come out there and like wash your car or, you know, do your laundry for you. So like you can spend more time working, you know? I mean, so, like, they're really dedicated to trying to make this work. And so it's, you know, the Star Hopper test was cool because for the first time, they got to see what the Raptor engine could do when they let it off its leash and it flew.

You couldn't see it behind this cloud of smoke. But it was, it obviously went up and moved and you could tell from the engine camera. I'm sure there'll be some more cool views whenever Elon does his presentation. But, you know, that was a big thing because that's the first. time any starship related hardware has flown. You know? Yeah, sometimes I'm like, oh, man, it's just a flying test stand. Then I go, holy shit, it's a flying test stand.

That's awesome. Weird. When were we grasshoppers flights? 2011? I mean, you don't look at- 11 and 12, yeah, right? Yeah, you look at grasshopper. You say, well, that's just a flying test stand.

So what? They went up and they came down, and it turned out to be the pivotal technology for landing boosters on, you know, on ships and on land. And same kind of thing here. You know, they're learning to try to control this, and they've got huge challenges coming back to Earth's atmosphere. But they also have a shitload of data from, you know, what, 78 or 80 rocket launches now? I mean, they're collecting data on every one of those launches about what that environment is like

and how to control the vehicle and so forth. So, you know, I don't know if they're going to get there, but they're sure moving as fast as they can toward that goal. You know, Elon has a couple of sayings about schedules that are interesting. He says, he says, tight is right and long is wrong, right? And so they are moving forward with all due speed. Time is money. And really, ultimately, if you're going to get government funding for the starship vehicle,

and if it's going to become a significant player in NASA's exploration plans and then DOD launches, they realize, I think, now that they're going to have to build it and fly it. So that's why they're moving with breakneck speed to try to do just that. It kind of feels like SpaceX at its best, right? Like this is almost like, I almost wonder like SpaceX is a better development company than it is an operating company. You know what I mean? I don't know. They're flying a lot of rockets, man.

They are flying a lot of rockets, it's true. Flying a lot of rockets with a lot of customers. I think that's right. Although, I mean, they're operationally. They're pretty smooth now as well. and I mean it's it's astounding to think about it I had this this funny moment I realized that the chairman of the Indian Space Agency was talking about how their focus right now was on the Chandrian two mission that they just launched it to the moon and he was asked about there because

they're developing a new small satellite launch rocket that's cheaper than the polar satellite at launch vehicle and, you know, they've been working on it and they're getting ready to test launch it. And he was asked about that. And he said, well, you know, they were going to do it, I think, in June or July, but they'd put it on hold for a few months because they want to focus on the Chandrian 2 mission. Okay, right? It makes sense, right? You know, they want to make this an important mission. They want to get it right. But then you think about what space, you know, this is like a national space agency, right? It's not the U.S. budget or the Chinese budget, but they have a sizable budget and a pretty ambitious

program, but they're like, we're going to focus on one thing. And then, you know, you come to the United States and SpaceX on the same day is launching a Falcon 9 rocket, right? And then an hour later, they're doing a Star Hopper test in Florida, and

they're monitoring the health of these 60 Starlink satellites that they just launched into space, and they're trying to do all these tests on Dragon for a human spaceflight vehicle to try to get it flying by the end of this or early next year. And they're doing starship development there in Bocahika and in California, and they're trying to sort of develop operational Starlink satellites. And, oh, by the way,

they're flying the most used, you know, the most widely used rocket in the world, the Falcon 9 rocket, and also on their, you know, working on their 19th, you know, supply delivery mission of the space station. And so it's just totally different, right, from a government or from a lot of other companies. they just go out and try to do stuff. And I think you're right. I mean, their secret sauce for development is to just go for it, right? The way it was kind of explained to me is, you know, if you want to guess a number between 1 and 256, right,

you'll take your best guess and guess it. And that's what they do. They kind of say, well, we need a technology to build a problem this all this problem. So we're going to build what we think might work and we'll test it and see if it works. And then we'll get halfway to that answer, right? And then you'll sort of go in between whatever your end state is and that, you know, that technology and continue to improve it. Like, they just kind of keep iterating it. That analogy probably doesn't make any sense. Sorry about that. I like it. For the developers out there, it's Git bisect. That's a really useful thing that everyone should

look up. And that's what Eric's talking about. So they just kind of, so they just kind of do it, right? they don't sit around talking about it. In this case, they're not sitting around trying to get money. And I think that's one of the big things, too, with Starship, is they don't have any government funding for this vehicle. So there's a lot less oversight. Although the customer, Mazawa, I know he's, I understand his people are looking pretty closely at the Starship development, as you might expect.

But they don't have a government customer looking over their shoulders. I don't expect that at all, to be honest, Eric. I'm pretty sure he's signed out of that for a while, so that's news to me if he's, like, following along with this. I used to know, Mayazawa, that whole thing seems so weird to me. Isn't he broke? I don't think he is. I think that was, like, some Twitter drama.

Eric, you know about Twitter drama this week. I know about Twitter drama. I can say with confidence that his people are paying attention to Starship development. But anyway. You heard it here. Mayazawa, AA for Human Exploration. He's the one. He's the one.

Yeah, young, outside. So for the first time since Falcon 1, they are really allowed to do development at their own pace and sort of on their own rules, right? Because Falcon 9, that was ultimately paid for, not really, but, I mean, they got the final funding through the CRS contract, that Dragons were through the CRS.

And so they really, you know, this is a new development program and they are just, you know, they're going for it. It's in their DNA to do it this way. It's very exciting to watch. And so much more so exciting than a traditional contractor, which gets a contract from NASA, and then they sort of haggle about the price for six months or a year, and then they start work on it. And, you know, eventually, maybe you get a program, or maybe it gets canceled because it takes too long and it costs too much. Jake, what do you make of all this from like a Mars perspective? Because you're the Mars guy.

Years ago, we were talking about the original Starship presentation, which was BFR or whatever at the time. And things are totally different now. Mars doesn't come up a lot when they're talking about it because they're in development. No, yeah. I mean, I'm obviously more cynical than I used to be. But it's still really cool to watch because whether it's for Mars or not for Mars, Like, it's a, it's an enabling technology, right?

And no matter where this thing flies and if it's 100 people or if it only ends up being 50 people or 10 people even, like that's, it's an enabling technology. So I'm jazz for it. Like, it's, this is so cool to watch. And I, I like that they're like that flying this stupid beard keg thing is awesome. Like, it's just, you can't, you can't overstate that. That it, like, it has flight experience already. So think of any other engine of that class at this point in the development cycle. Like it is not typically flying at this point, right?

So why would you say that they're not that the focus is not Mars? Because I can tell you it's SpaceX. The focus still very much is Mars. Yeah. And I think that they still kind of want that. But it's the end point of Mars and kind of where they are now, that line is not clear. And they're okay with that. I feel like they're comfortable with not understanding the full pathway there.

It's just, so when I say it's not about Mars, I mean, like in the short term, it's not about Mars. Yeah. But it's, or like communication even.

Like, they're making this like, we are working on this vehicle. It will one day land on Mars, but we're working on this thing right now. So, like, I think early days,

the presentations were, check out our vehicle landing on Mars. And I expect when August 24th rolls around, the focus will be, here is our active in development launch vehicle and all the things that can do. including Mars, which is a slightly different take on it, right? But maybe more realistic. That's what I thought was missing from the original announcement.

Yes. So I think that's right. I would just say this, a couple things about Mars, if you don't mind. First of all, I mean, the idea that NASA was ever really going to lead us to Mars was just not realistic. It's, it's, the SLS is an enabling technology for Mars. just isn't. It required too many launches.

It would have cost way too much, and there were just so many technology gaps in terms of needing to get there. However, I do think that if Starship does become a thing, if, if, if, and if Super Heavy does become a thing, and SpaceX starts to build them and that's flying,

then you could come along with a NASA that helps develop a program to go to Mars because just as I don't think NASA is going to go to Mars alone, I don't think SpaceX is going to go alone either. There's a lot of stuff quite clearly after his presentations that they have maybe

thought about and talked about a little bit, but they don't have solutions for. Most notably, like, what the hell are these people going to do once they get to Mars? And sort of how are we going to ensure that they get back, that they can come back if they want to. And so, you know, SpaceX is going to need NASA, and then they realize

that. Of course they do. So they're going to have to work together one day, but I think, you know, I think as I said earlier, SpaceX has ultimately realized that to open up those doors, they can't sit around and wait for a NASA contract to build Starship. They're going to have to suck it up and scrape up funding and try to find a way to pay for this development. And if they build the capability, then, you know,

then NASA will take use of it, we'll make use of it at some point. Yeah, that's been the obvious part to me, is like you need to just work on development until it's so excruciating that NASA isn't involved on your program. And I thought that was going to be the way that both Blue Moon and Starship went this week. Now all of a sudden they're partnered with them,

at least from like the knowledge sharing portion. But Elon even alluded to this recently, that it would be easier to just land on the moon than convince everybody that they could land on the moon successfully. And I think that's totally right. That is absolutely right. I read that quote as well and thought, yep. Totally nailed it. Yeah. And it's clear that like, you know, if there are companies out there that have the resources to make it painful for NASA to sit on the sidelines and watch, right? And I don't think to NASA's credit, to the politician's credit, they wouldn't let NASA sit on the sideline and watch one of these programs go to complete success. They would have to jump in at some point. And it would be uncomfortable for a lot of people in the current political environment. But at a certain point, it's going to be, you know, the momentum is going to be too much to sit that out. at a certain point. I don't know if we're there yet, but I know that that moment will happen.

And I honestly think that's exactly the way that it will happen, is that it will just be excruciating to be on the outside of that. I think that's, I think that's right. I think that's right. And that's, again, that's why they're pushing so hard. I mean, the political significance of flying a super heavy rocket for the space launch system would be pretty incredible. And we'll see if that happens or not. I mean, SLS is probably still these two years away from flying at least. So,

you know, SpaceX has time to get this right. By the way, did you watch the Star Hopper webcast the first night? Are we watching that live? I missed all four seconds of it. It was a little longer than four seconds. It was like five or ten minutes. But if you listened carefully, at one point,

the host said Starship launch system. Yeah. Which I loved. I don't think that's an official term. I hope it is. I mean, it is somewhere, right? But I do love the idea of calling something the Starship launch system.

So we'll see. We had a great chat in our Discord about that, actually. And someone was saying, could there be a loophole in Congress? Like, this Congress call out of the funding must be for SLS and doesn't actually define what it meant. You could come through and just move the funding to Starship. Yeah, that seems unlikely. You know, one other interesting thing, and I know we're running along here,

is to sort of see now what the Senate does with NASA's budget, because, you know, thanks to people like me who are out there writing that, like this was like a huge breakthrough, like the SCMD, the science technology mission director, decided to start supporting depots. You know, the Senate has not written their NASA budget for FY 2020 yet. and so when they're in recess now for a while, so we probably won't know for a while, but it's going to be really interesting to see

kind of what their reaction to all of this is, and I'm speaking specifically about the chairman at the Senate Appropriations Committee, Alabama's Senator Richard Shelby, who will not be happy about any of this. And I'm just wondering, like, you know, if he tries to take a huge chunk out of this base technology budget and just says,

look, you know, here's your money for Artemis, take it or leave it. And how NASA would react to that. So that will also be something to watch for this fall, is what does the Senate budget for NASA look like? And are there sort of any mines in there that the Shelby has laid for space technology or SpaceX or sort of this propellant depot thing?

Do we find out, because Shelby's up for election in 2020, right? 2022. Oh, 2022. Okay. So we don't know if he's running again then. The general sense, and I don't have any information on this, but the general sense is that he may retire. He's pretty old. Yeah, he's in his 80s. It would be six more years. But who knows? I mean, he's at the height of his power.

And as long as the Republicans hold the Senate, he's God when it comes to NASA's budget. So they might want him to just run. And even if he's going to retire in 2023, you know, so that they can appoint somebody. Yeah, that's true, yeah, because he'll be 88 in 2022, so. Well, there you go, yeah. I don't know. I don't know if he'll run or not. The general sense is that I think most people think he would be more likely to retire than run again,

but he hasn't said anything. Okay. Well, that's a lot to chew on. Yeah. Eric, so as we're closing up here, do you want to say a few words? about Chris Kraft. I know that he was kind of a friend of yours, and it's obviously

a pivotal person in the whole, all of NASA basically, all of NASA in his spaceflight. Everything that led us to having this conversation today. Yeah, all traces back to him. So it's interesting. It's interesting. Yeah, I got to know Chris Kraft actually

just before the 40th anniversary of Apollo Landing because I went to his house and met with him for the first time because I was just kind of this, you know, reporter saying, hey, I'm doing a story on the 40th anniversary of Apollo. What do you remember? You know, kind of dippy, dipty stuff like that. And, you know, we sort of talked about that and the looming end of the space shuttle.

And then, you know, he's like, you know, we should talk some more. And so I just kept kind of going over there some more and more. And, you know, he was, he was older. He definitely had access to grind. Chris Kraft was not at all the fan of the Marshall Space Flight Center. You know, he had directed Johnson Space Center for a long time. and there was a rivalry. But, you know, he really,

he was the person who really got me passionate about this stuff and kind of angry about the state of the human spaceflight program. And really, you know, as wonderful as a space shuttle was and as really useful and valuable as the International Space Station was, kind of our inability to mount a deep space exploration program again. You know, he sort of really fired me up about that. And, you know, at the beginning of the show, you guys played that clip by Charlie Bolden, and he's talking about Charles's study. And the Charles, he's referring to there is, as I think I said, Charles Miller.

And it was Chris Kraft who connected me to Charles Miller, you know, with his whole Propelant Depot idea. And that sort of led into a greater understanding kind of the political forces that were driving the development of the space launch system and kind of what that really meant for NASA's exploration plan. And, you know, it was just cool on one hand to, you know, sort of, you know, really get to know one of the legends of Apollo. And let's face it, you know, Kraft's job was he was told in, in 1959 or so, look, we don't know how to safely get a human, you know, flying a spacecraft in space back onto the ground, how you would fly or control that spacecraft. But, you know, you're going to be the guy to go figure that out. and sort of he led that and he built everything that became mission control. He hired, you know, he hired the Gene Cranzes and the people like that and trained him and built those teams. And, you know, so he was just, he was a legend.

But he also, you know, remained passionate about this stuff, you know, up until the very end. And I think he died a day or two after the 50th anniversary of moon landing, which kind of shows you where that ranked in his heart that he held on for that. so yeah great man great man sorry to see him go um but i try to sort of carry his torch forward with his ideas and and sort of passion yeah and i'm going to put a link in the show notes to the uh you were you were tweeting out the links to the videos of the interviews you did with them um that are just totally worth every every second of time to watch that that's it's awesome it's awesome to have that you know that moment captured of of chris craft on today you know for all the tons of purposes that's amazing. He was angry about it.

You know, he was angry about it. And, and the other cool thing was just like, you know, you'd have some random question about a Gemini or like the Mercury or, you know, what did you think when you were watching the television and saw Kennedy say you were going to the moon? You know, you just, well, I'll email or call up Chris and ask him, you know. Did you really like corned beef sandwiches going into space or what? Yeah, you could ask him anything. Yeah. Yeah, if you wanted to, if you wanted half an hour, you could ask him what he thought about Scott Carpenter as an astronaut.

And he would tell you. How about my boy Pete Conrad? The jokester. I love Pete Conrad. He's my, he's from Philadelphia, so he's my favorite astronaut. Well, there you go. And he's short, and I like that because that's my favorite. You both met me in person.

I'm pretty short. Jack's a monster. All right. All right. Can I give an anecdote? The closest I ever got. to anyone from mission control in that era. I was connecting through the Dallas airport one time,

and I was waiting to get on a flight. I think it was one of the times I was falling to Salt Lake City, and the gate attendant made an announcement that they needed Eugene Cranz to report to the desk, and I freaked out, and I was like, oh, my God. I was flying with the coworker, and they were like, what just happened? I don't understand what's going on. I'm like, I'll tell you in a second, and he didn't show up.

I think he missed the flight. I was so bummed. I was like, I'm about to meet Gene Kranz and he didn't even show up. I was like, God damn it. So. Oh, that's funny. Whenever I meet him, I'm going to say,

hey, did you ever miss a flight out of Dallas? That's my Indian Kranz story. Good luck with that. He'll be into that. He'll be like, what? He's talking about. Jake, did you get to bring your paper? to this episode? We'll close it out so Eric can get back to his Sunday. I have a pick, yeah.

What's your pick? So, related to Star Hopper, I want to shout out one of our past guests, Tim Dodd, and a video he made. He did a, like, massive, it was like 45 minutes or something, a YouTube video about the Raptor Engine. And he, it goes after my heart because he makes a whole, it's like 30 minutes of context and then 15 minutes about Raptors. I love context. It's just like, listen, we're going to tell you all about Raptor, but we're going to say like seven topics about Raptor, and you need to understand all of them and their history.

So we're going to do that first. And it goes through like, what are the different kinds of rocket engines and who made them and like does all these comparisons? And if you are a geek about the numbers and like the history of engines, this video is outstanding. He makes these custom animations to show you like where the locks is flowing and where the fuel is flowing and how they come together in the different combustion chambers. It's superb science communication.

And I loved it. So I'm not normally like a video guy. Like I can't usually sit down for like full videos because I'm just like I'm always moving. I need like audio to keep me to keep me like in the background while I'm doing stuff. But this is one where I had no problem just sitting in front of the screen for 45 minutes and watching. So yeah, shout out to Tim, everyday astronaut. It's a great video. Eric, did you bring a pick by any chance?

Yes. So if you're tired of the Apollo stuff for space history and how could you not be, then if you're still interested in NASA history, I would recommend a book that came out, I don't know, within the last six months or so called The Astronaut Maker. It's by Michael Cassatt, and it's about George Abbey, who was a long-time influential engineer at NASA from the mid-60s-on, and he basically picked all of the astronauts that flew on space shuttles.

And so he wielded enormous power in that regard. And later he became the Johnson Space Center director. But kind of just not a household name, kind of like in the way that Gerstimire is not really like a publicly is not not that well known, but was like so important in many different ways. Abby kind of played the same role from Houston for a couple decades. So it's called The Astronaut Maker. It's a really good book about someone, as I said, who is not that well known,

but was super influential in a lot of ways. One of our Discordians put a link in the Discord, and I pulled the Amazon link up, and it says, The Astronaut Maker, how one mysterious engineer ran human spaceflight for a generation. Do you think he's that mysterious? Um, I wouldn't say he's mysterious, but he was just, I mean, like,

does anyone outside of, like, the hardcore space nerd community know who George Abbey is or heard his name? I mean, I think in that sense he's kind of mysterious for, definitely for like the outsized role he had. I don't think I've heard his name. Yeah. George Abbey. I've never heard his nicknames, which per this Amazon listing, are the Dark Lord, the Godfather, and You,

No. Yes, like, the astronauts were terrified of them. Like, just terrified. The Dark Lord is my favorite nickname for anyone in NASA. That's awesome. I mean,

it's a good book for like, you know, like so much the Apollo stuff was rah, rah, rah, you know, and, hey,

it was a great achievement, but, I mean, you know, there's lots of, I mean, humans are not perfect. And like,

you know, there's lots of interesting personalities and lots of kind of, you know, stuff that happens that behind the scenes. And so, like I said, this book does a good job of bringing in one of the people, the Dark Lord to life. He's still around to, by the way. I mean, he's still, still involves, still cares. I talk to him from time to time. He has a position at Rice University. But, yeah, interesting guy. Good read. And like I said, not Apollo. Yeah, yeah. That's a plus. I got a, I'm sticking with the video theme for mine, Jake. Number one, I just mentioned it, the Chris Craft interview from Eric. That's a must watch.

And also, our friend Lauren Grush has been doing awesome work of late. She always does, but she had one on the anniversary of Apollo 11th launch called why NASA hasn't gone back to the moon. And I think it's such a good, like, summation of somebody in the Discord said something about the way that she perfectly can communicate to both space nerds and non-space nerds about these kind of topics. And I think that's a perfect example, this kind of video. So I really like that. You know, if somebody's like, hey, why, like, tell me about the space stuff that you like. This is a good summation of where we're at currently. So it's two videos

worth of watch. And I enjoy them both. Cool. Awesome. Eric, can you tell everybody where to go to find you to follow along? Things that you're interested in lately, things, maybe you've got some interesting stuff coming up. You want people to look at anything that you want to send them to? Uh, no, I mean, I just, you know, I write stuff for Ars-Technicaa.com. I can follow me on Twitter, um, Cyguise space. Um, and if you're ever on a call with Eric, they will pronounce it A-R-S-Technica. Yes, they will. I've heard that several times. Yes, they are. They did that. They did that on the Starlink call. And, uh, and, and, anyway,

he introduced me and the Elon started laughing. He said, A.R.S. Technico. Because he's a nerd, right? He'd read the site for a long time. So good. It's a great Twitter account, too, I have to say. It's been lit this week. I've got to dial that back.

I'm 100% sure at this point that Elon has, like, the text notifications on for when you tweet anything that includes Elon, SpaceX. or a link to your article? I have no idea what's up with that. It's a little intimidating. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, end of death.