Off-Nominal - 23 - What is the protocol for this?

Episode Date: September 17, 2019

Jake and Anthony talk about their plans for IAC 2019, Chandrayaan-2, Starhopper, KSP 2, and the special place that Jake secretly holds in your space-loving heart.Upcoming meetup! Hang out with Jake, Anthony, and other fellow Anomalies in Washington, DC on October 20! Details at events.offnominal.space.DrinksNew Shepard Pale - Airways Brewing Company - UntappdPre-Flight Pils - Airways Brewing Company - UntappdSpace Force Double IPA - Eight & Sand Beer Co. - UntappdTopicsIAC Meetup! Sunday, October 20 - Off-Nominal EventsChandrayaan-2 | The Planetary SocietyWhy stowaway creatures on the Moon confound international space law - The Verge150 Meter Starhopper Test - YouTubeInSight | The Planetary SocietyKSP HistoryAnthony’s Crewed Duna MissionPicksKerbal Space Program 2 – Kerbal Space Program‎Mars-Clock on the App StoreMidnight PlanetsWelcome to the JMARS website | JMARS - Java Mission-planning and Analysis for Remote SensingFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

Do you want to hear from main engine start? Miko, welcome to space. Do you want to hear some inane Canada election trivia? Oh yeah, of course I do. I didn't know this is part of the show. I'm just going to start it off in a completely off nominal way. Is this a question and answer kind of situation? No, it's more...

It's like a look how different we are from you conversation. Okay. Yeah, so our election started two days ago, our federal election. and it will be done more than a year before yours. Well, that could be a three-hour election. That's not specific. It's a 40-day election. Oh, my God.

Why? Because elections are really tiring, and I don't know how you guys do them 60% of your life. Wait. 40 days, you mean like the, is that inclusive of the campaign? pain season? Okay. Yeah, yeah. We love election. I know you do. We love election. You've been having the 2020 election for like nine months already. Some would say longer. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Rip, roar and start. Yeah. That's how I do it. Killer intro. When we just kind of throw these intros on each other, there's like, you know, we're 24 episodes in now and, uh...

Oh, wow. You know, like that, it's, we're going to drop a few. Is it 24? It might be, isn't it? Didn't we do 23 last time? Or is it 22? That's close. 23. We're all like Googling on our website.

So the next show is our two-year anniversary. It's because we missed one, remember? Which one was that? Because our podcast dates were like drifting later in the month. Oh, yeah, yeah. Yeah, we did a leap year kind of situation. Oh, that's funny. Yeah.

It has been two years, though. almost because I think it was it must have been the September episode was our first one I think that's what it was well look at that yeah we managed to do something for two years and actually reminds me that I have something that we need to tell the listeners Jake got some very valuable feedback can you give us before you got this feedback at a meetup yes so we had give us a meetup rundown again uh the airways meetup v2 yeah we went back it was so good the first time went back down so our friend Pat was in town, who is the curator of the amazing rocket launch.

Live website, which I'm sure many of our listeners will know. It's where you should go to find out when rockets go up. So you should check it out. And pay him money so that you get the premium feature of getting the calendar link because then you put it in your calendar like I do. And at all times the day, on your Apple Watch, you know if there's a rocket launch to watch. It's amazing. And so he was in town.

So we went to Museum of Flight. It was awesome. And then back to Airways again. We had a couple listeners show up, so one of them, it was a good night. It was, again, they're short because they close at seven on Saturdays, which is a tough, a tough time to close a bar on a Saturday. But it's a, it's a weekday bar. It's like a, it's where, you know, blue origin goes after work. So it was great.

It had a lot of fun. Oh, it reminds me. So I have it right here. Okay. Here's a jingly sound. This is a bag of some amazing swag. And I'm going to show you. I think you've seen it.

So this is an amazing pin. Oh my God. I have not seen that. Okay, so it's an amazing pin that Kevin made for us. Can you post a link in the chat? Yeah, I will do a picture of it. Holy crap, man. And it says Jim Bridenstein fan club with a picture of his lovely face. Wait, somebody made these?

Someone made these for us. Kevin made these for us. When you say for us, because we love Jim Briden's But he didn't make a bunch and also give us some Like this was inspired by Oh my God, that's so many of them

Holy crap, are we And he said, well, because he was like how much This is the greatest thing I've ever heard in my life Yeah, so he was like, how much is it for one? And they're like, that's this much. He's like, well, how much is it for like 50 And it was like 10 cents more? So he just bought them all.

And then he said, what do you want to do with these? I said, well, how about I'll take them to IAC for the meetup? Yes. Oh my God. This is going to be the album. of this show, by the way. Anyway, so that happened. So, Kevin is awesome.

And then Kevin also gave us some really... No, no, hold on that. The picture of J.B. on that is amazing. I know, it's such a good one, right? Yeah, it's like third grade school photo, you know, like, it's the version of the iPhone camera portrait mode that nobody uses where it blacks out the background. And it's, like, kind of shitty.

That's amazing. And, like, we're really getting ready for IAC because check this out. Like, look how many stickers I have. Oh, yeah, you got the whole run of Miko stickers, too. I did buy some Miko stickers for you. Speaking of which, you got feedback at the meetup. Yeah, so Kevin also didn't just make me awesome pins. He also gave us good feedback.

Did you know, Anthony, do you remember two years ago on her first show? And we were like, hey, this is a weird new podcast. Let's explain what it is. And we like talked about our other podcasts and how they all relate. Well, well, it was two years ago. we've never done it since. And so... Every two years, we need to do this.

Every two years, we need to remind it. So, listeners, if you came into Off-Nominal from Main Engine Cut-Off, Anthony's great, lovely podcast, you should know that I also have another podcast. It's called We Martians, and it's about Mars. And you should check that out, too. Mm-hmm. And if you came in from Wee Martians, Jake's lovely podcast about all things Mars, I do a show called Main Engine Cutoff, and you should check that out also.

It's about... It's about... Policy and Rockets. mostly. And if you came into it from this show, you'd need to email us immediately. If you somehow came into Offenomenal organically, because Apple podcast told you to download it because you were a subscriber to, I don't know, the space show or something. Yeah, you definitely need to check out.

You have two new podcasts to add to your Q. And you need to email us. And you've got a big, yeah, email us at I am an organic listener at offnominable. Not to give you more work. It'll work. It'll get to us. Trust me. But yeah. So we should probably do that more often than two years. Thank you for the feedback, Kevin. That was good feedback. That's very good feedback.

Yeah. The meetup. Oh, let's talk about beers. We didn't do beers. Let's do an interlude of beers. Okay, well, so I brought beer from the meetup. Oh, this is a good transition. Yeah. So this is, listeners can't see it, but I have a full growler of Airways brewing. This is the New Shepherd pale ale Oh, you did get it this time. It's literally named after the New Shepherd Rocket

for Blue Origin. I'm pretty sure that's why you did the second meetup because last time we talked about you not bringing any. Did you drink this when you were there also? The first time I drank the New Shepherd Pale Ale and the second time I tried the pre-flight Pilsner. They must drink a lot of that.

Oh! Dinger. You might say that the actual blue origin beer is still brewing. A couple of batches. Kidding. A couple of test batches. Hmm. That's a good beer.

Breaking in the Oilers Cup. What do you got? I went to my local corner shop. They have a nice display of the beer, special beers, that they don't usually sell. What's a corner shop? It's a thing when you live in cities. That is a very tiny shop. It's probably, let's see, 400 square feet.

You go in, it's a bunch of bridges. Called the foodery. Don't be creepy. It's a lovely shop. It's only a couple blocks away. A little closer than that, but I don't want to be too specific. And this Space Force beer was there. Wow.

And it's from 8 in sand. Eight, the number 8, but spelled out and sand. Space Force. Double IPA. It has a questionable graphic of like a spacesuit. It kind of looks more like an orange chef's jacket than a spacesuit, you know what I mean? Like the one with the buttons down the kind of the side. And it's apparently from South Jersey, only across the bridge in Woodbury is where close to where I grew up.

So look at that. Cool. You want to hear a little origin story of 8 and Sand Beer Company? I do, yeah. We're two buddies from South Jersey that are fully devoted to brewing innovative and quality craft beer. The phrase 8 in sand was used to wish train crews a quick and safe journey, and we feel it a fitting name for our brewery. Adorable. Cool.

It's delicious. A couple of tall boys. A couple of tall boys. All right. Well, in the live chat here, where we should also mention, we have this little discord. We do this show live. Yeah. The live crew is discussing something that we did in Florida for Falcon Heavy, which was the beer swap.

Yeah. where you brought a bunch of local beer. Brendan Byrne of Florida fame brought a bunch of local beer, and we drank it all. Yeah, we did drink it all. And we should do that down in D.C. Because in a month, month and a couple of weeks, you and I will be together in Washington, D.C. for IAC 2019. The Capitol. Glorious.

You keep saying that. Nobody really says it. No. But it is the Capitol, right? It is. It's an accurate statement, but. What are some fun colloquial? Like the Beltway? Inside the Beltway, yeah.

Okay. That's pretty much it. All right. Really expensive place that's a little south of Baltimore. So we have some meetup plans. You want to talk through them? Yes. So we are going to be the conference as a regular weekly conference kind of situation.

So we'll be busy with the conference stuff. If you're going to be at IAC, let us know. Because we'll be walking around the floor, hanging out in the evening. evenings. So hit us up through one of the channels. And we should note that Friday is an open day. You don't need to have, like you don't need to be an IAC member or like IAF member or media or anything. Friday is open to the public. So. Oh, cool. Well, maybe that's a good time for people that are in the area that don't have a ticket to come on by. We're getting crap in the chat room because we literally solidified these plants five minutes ago. We didn't start generating them five minutes ago. We just

solidified them five minutes ago. We had wonderful help from local, local man, Caleb Henry. Yeah. Another South Jersey boy, much like me and the guys that made the spear. Ooh, I just spilled it all over the place. Oh, no. First time we haven't done that. Yeah, that's actually pretty odd.

No, these plans are coming. What do we do now? What is the protocol here? Do we pause the show and I wipe this up? I think probably you have to. Okay, hold on. Wow, this one's really off-nominal, guys. Real off-nominal.

Is that toilet paper? Oh, no. My kitchen is two whole floors away, Jake. That's toilet paper. Very absorbent. Oh, no. It's going to disintegrate all over your desk. Two years.

All right, anyway, while I'm wiping this up. We've got new listeners in the Discord. This is their first time, and they're really getting a show here. Okay, can you talk about the meetup while I'm wiping this up? Okay. All right. So, yes, so if you are at the conference Monday to Friday, especially Friday, which open the public, please come by, say hello, we'd love to hang out with you.

But if you are not going to the conference, the weekend before, we're coming in a little early we want to hang out a little bit. So Sunday, which is, I'm really bad at dates all of a sudden. Is that the 20th? October 20th. October 20th Sunday. We're going to go to the Udvar Hezi Space Museum. What do you call it?

Space Center, Space Exhibit. Air and Space Museum, Air and Space Museum, which is out at Dulles Airport. We'll be there around 10 a.m. and then they're basically the whole day, so if you want to come by and look at Space Shuttle Discovery with us,

that'd be pretty cool. SR 71. SR 71. A Concord. Wow. There's a lot of really good stuff. A ton of planes from World War II, including a bunch of Nazi planes that we captured.

Very, like, weird one-offs that we have. Okay. There's some other spacey articles there, too. There's a couple of Gemini capsules. There's an astrovan. There is an entire, there's a space lab in the back, actual space flown space lab. There's an entire, last time I was there, there's an entire SSL-1300 satellite bus. You can stand next to a commercial satellite bus.

I think it was a serious XM bus that never flew. Isn't SSL-1300 going to be the gateway logistics or the, Gateway APPE? Probably. I think so. But this one's pretty old. Totally is. This one's old,

so it's probably out of date. Probably not going to use this one. It won't have solar electric propulsion. It's not this one. It could be this one. I don't know. That is a very NASA way to save some money, just grab some old.

Would have been off the shelf. Yeah. So come hang out at Udvar Hasey if you want to do that. If you are busy during the day though and you want to just come have beers with us, we are going downtown. after that. 7 p.m. Is it downtown D.C.?

Is that really, I don't know. We're going inside the belt. We're going to go into D.C. to it's called DACA Beer Gardens. D-A-C-H-A. If you don't speak German, like I do not. D-A-C-H-A. We'll put her in the show notes.

It is about a 10-minute walk, I believe, or maybe even less than that, from the convention center where everything will be happening. So it's nice and close. Yeah. Not too far from Logan Circle. It'll be great. Did you say the time?

I'd miss that part if you did. Yeah, 7 p.m. will be at Daga. So 10 a.m. at Udvar Hazy, 7 p.m. at Dhaka Beer Garden. And important note, Sunday night, the Eagles are playing the Cowboys. Oh, it's going to be that kind of night. It's going to be that kind of night, especially for this guy right here. So I assume we'll be able to see something at the beer garden. If not, we'll look at the score and yell at each other if you are some sort of fan.

Lars is going to bring the Crisco so I can show you my Philadelphia pole climbing skills. Yeah, I'll grease up the poles, yeah. Yes. And I will have all of these stickers with me and these amazing Jim Brynstein fan club pins. Those are absolutely incredible.

We're all going to put them on our lapels for the, well, I'll put them. I don't think Anthony has ever worn a jacket his life, but we will... You got married. I think he must have jacket there. So we'll put them on our shirts and wear them around the conference

and we'll see if we can find J.B. Oh, my God, I didn't even consider that. Convince him to come on this show because that's really the ultimate dream. Or at least a photo of us wearing that. If we get J.B. on the show, we can just shut down on our podcast after and then that's it. That's it. We're good. Yeah.

Cool. So that's the meetup plan. Come hang out. And if you forget any of that, events.offnominal. Space will have the details. Yeah, which is not linked from offnominal. dot space. Right. Thank you.

We learned. What was this our webmaster's name? That's Kevin again. Kevin is the killer here. He's got employee number one of off nominal. He's got pins for us. He's got website feedback. He's got like a business plan.

He's all good. Yeah. So we'll convince J.B. Come on. That's the goal. Boom. Measure of success for I see. Set attainable and measurable goals.

We will see how much I, or how easily I make it through Sunday. actually am taking a red-eye flight. Oh, you're going to be a wreck. I'm going to be a disaster. But, yeah. Well, somebody else tried to land on the moon this week, Jake. Somebody did try to land on the moon, but instead they did a somersault. Yeah, I didn't get a chance to read that new release about this.

There's nothing to read. It did a somersault. Okay. I mean, I saw that in the trajectory or in the simulation. I found this one a little odd from India. be honest. So a little background, India was working on this moon lander. Vickram

as part of the Chandrayan 2 mission. Chandraian 2 is in orbit. Vickram was going down for landing. Didn't work out. Oh shit. Somebody just said we need to drink Mountain Dew with J.B. I'll do whatever J.B.

asks. Hmm. Awesome. Anyway, so this lander didn't work out. Very reminiscent of bearishy. almost identical in vibe, right, where it was going well, all of a sudden things went off the rails. And then they were very quiet. I mean, I guess it's not weird for India, right?

Like, they've had launches in the past where something went off nominal. And they, like, didn't really talk about it. Like what? I can't remember that. The one, there was the faring one where the faring didn't open. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And they were, like, kind of hush-hush about that. Yep.

And then wasn't there another one? maybe like two years ago where they it was like a something underperformed and they just didn't make orbit or am I thinking of something else? I can't remember now.

I don't know. Anyway, they were very weird about this one. You know? Yeah, I would love to see like a press release let's be honest. I'd love to see like

here's what we know so far here's what we're working on but yeah, it's sad because it's just like It looks like the, I'm trying to think of how it would happen. I don't really know the engine configuration, but it just, it pitched forward and did like a complete somersault while the engine was burning.

And so it added a bunch of downward velocity instead of canceling a bunch of downward velocity. We've all been there. Yeah, it's basically a carpal space program. Right. When you launch a rocket and you forget to put the tail fins on it. And so it's like top heavy and then it spins. Oh, yeah. So that was basically what happened with it.

So I don't know, maybe it even corrected itself, but it just, you know, the margin was too tight and whatever. Or it just... It did. I mean, in the simulation thing, if that was accurate, which is... It was questionable, but now knowing that, you know, they're saying it did a somersault, that was seen in the simulation in the background of the video we were watching. Yeah.

And in that video, it did show it stabilized before they lost contact. Yeah. Unless they just so happened to lose contact the moment that it was tipped back around facing up. Yeah. And then telemary stopped. Yeah. That could be right.

No, no, it was hauling ass, though, when it lost connection. Yeah. So. And, yeah, so then it's, well, because they're saying that they found it and it's, like, tilted on the surface. This is what makes me think that it's still kind of, like, semi-work, but maybe it just, like, you know, maybe it didn't hit the ground at 500 kilometers an hour. Maybe hit the ground at, like, you know, eight kilometers an hour, and it was, like, too fast to land, but it still, like, didn't disintegrate. I don't know. Could be.

We'll see. I think we'll find out this week. Yeah. Yeah, like four days from now we're recording, which is probably going to be like the day that this comes out and it's going to be all out of date immediately. But LRO should be imaging it by the time you listen to this and hopefully we'll see pictures of it. Here's what I want to know about this. Now we've had two of these kind of low-cost small landers from governments in this case.

We're going to have a bunch of small low-cost landers. Do you think, I have a couple of different questions. Number one is like, is this like a new thing that if you're a nation, you want to be the person to land the small lander that isn't, you know, U.S., Soviets, or China? Because like now it seems like a thing that everyone's trying. Because now it's a race. Right.

Now it's a thing. Now it's like, well, you know, you two failed. Let me see if I can do it. It's like the relegation round winner I'm trying to get for. I just, it feels like one of those things that they both went down so similarly that I would not be shocked to see somebody jump in and be like, we want to do it. But who else is going to? I don't know. It's in one.

Australia stood up a space agency recently. Luxembourg did, but they just want to mine stuff, which still may be plausible. Japan had that one, the, uh, is that IceSpace or something like that? There's some team that was working in Google Lunar X-Prize. Yeah. And I guess the Europeans could do it too.

Right. So, It would be interesting to see if people were like, we gotta crack this. All right, so that's one thing, not that interesting. Number two, we've got this commercial lunar payload services program that we're all pumped about, where there's gonna be a bunch of companies flying in the moon, small landers, low cost, about the same cost, right?

Like the, uh, Vickram was $87 million or something like that, $89 million, something in that range. The first couple, uh, commercial lunar flights are, you know, 70 million. So very similar in budget. You think they're starting to get nervous? You know, I thought about that.

And it's like, because it's like the same class of lander and same destination, I think there's a lot of association happening, but I think what we're forgetting is that those commercial companies have a ton of access to a ton of NASA institutional knowledge and test data and experience

and all that kind of stuff. And I know that NASA hasn't landed on the moon recently, but they're good at landing stuff. Let's just be honest. They're good at landing stuff. They like to play it up. And if like Eclipse company like calls up NASA is like, look, we're a little nervous.

Can you come by and look at some of our engineering data? Like NASA has a vested interest in making sure these work. And I know they're going to like, you know, hire or whatever. however many companies are going to actually do this. There's two right now, I guess, that are contracted, but we know there's going to be more. So they're buffering, and they're going to accept, you know, at least one failure probably,

but they want more than one of these to succeed. And so I think that there's a, I think there's not anything to worry about because of these crashes. The thing that is good is that it does make it a lot easier for NASA. You know, we've always known as people that care about this, that like there's going to be clips failures. You know, there's going to be people that crash. This makes it a ton easier for people within NASA

that need to communicate this stuff to politicians or the public or whoever to say, look at how many failures there's been on the moon. You know, in the same way that it's easier for people when they're going to Mars to be like, I don't know, like, there's a lot of stuff that's sent to Mars that doesn't work out. Notably NASA, I think we talked about this before,

that NASA has an insanely good track record, but they like to talk about it. But they like to talk about how good they are about, or they like to talk about how dangerous Mars is, but they're like nearly 100%. Yeah, actually, it could theoretically strengthen funding for clips being like, no, look, we've got to get a few of these because they're going to, they're going to do some somersaults over there, man.

That's a good point, too, yeah. We've got to get some extra providers going here. More Jorbs. I think this beer's already getting to me. This is going to be up the rails real. fast. And yeah, so Lars and the Discord also calling out that, you know, there's ways to address these risks.

Testing specifically is something that I think NASA is probably really good at. And that helps a lot. Testing important. So, yeah. Yeah, I'm not too worried, honestly. Yeah, it's a bummer for India. But I think, like, overall, it's good to see metal smashing into the moon. I'm going to take a strong stance and say, I prefer.

a world where there's metal smashing into the moon into one where there is not. Yeah. That's a strong stance. It's a hot take right there. That is hot a take. Even if there's Tardagrades on it? Oh, we can talk about that? I don't know.

Do you want to? Not really. I don't know. I don't know. I don't really. Do you know how I know it was a slow news month? Because Tartagra's was the headline? I mean, it is interesting to some regard.

It is interesting in the way. way of like how long i don't know there's a little wild west element to it that i like yeah um you probably hate it i don't hate it no i i like it's not to me it's not like a space story it's just like a you know this company did something and didn't tell anybody about it and just like you know pretty much every other company and uh yeah so it's it's a it's completely policy discussion and I only have so much patience for policy. Yeah. And it's also the moon.

Like, if you're worried about contamination, that plays it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I'm, I don't. Right. We've pooped on it. We've pooped there. There literally is human poop on the moon.

Yeah, we've pooped there a lot. Yeah. And I listened to Sue, who was I listening to? I listened to a podcast about this. Maybe I'm going to do an impromptu pickier. Was it Burns? Probably. If it's about space poop, then almost certainly it was Brendan Byrne.

Burn has a new segment on Are We There Yet? It's like a quick discussion at the end of the show. And he had some of the reporters nearby and they were talking about it. I might be making up this whole thing. I just listened to this recently. Yeah. And they're talking about like, listen, like, yes, you could have splayed these tardigrades all over the moon. And maybe they're going to survive.

But they're going to be in like a frozen, like, you know, state. So like, unless you like go. and gather them up and then like put them back into a safe environment and try and revive them like nothing's going to happen right so also they can only stay the way for like four years right yeah so i don't think anyone's delivering water to like find these and like pour water on them in four years yeah now scientists may be shouting that hey we don't know but yeah we don't and if if i could have gone back and changed it and let them disclose that they were sending uh organic materials and biological payloads I would, but they didn't. And here we are, not wanting to talk about it. Not wanting to talk about it. And doing five to ten minutes on it. Not a cool move, space IL, but...

All right. Let's talk about Star Hopper. We did a whole show about Star Hopper, and then it... Extra Hop. It did Extra Hop. And it was epic. Yeah. And it looked so weird.

It looked... It didn't look. as epic as it actually was, though. You know what I mean? Hmm. Like, because I watched it and it's like, it like barely came out of the, um, out of the, like, cloud of smoke. You know, like, oh, that's not very high.

And then, but then you like, remember that even though it looks like a tiny little test vehicle, it's like 20 meters high or whatever. It's huge. Yeah. Like it's giant. Um, not 20 meters, but it's like really, really big. Uh, and so it, it went pretty high, pretty far. So, um, but it was super awesome because it was just like,

I don't know, it's just, you're watching it happen. Watching the sausage get made. Much like the pre-show where we were planning a meetup. Where everyone found out how we organized meetups on the fly right before the show. SpaceX was organizing a test flight on the fly right before the show. Here's an interesting thing that I experienced watching that. It is now a few weeks out of my memory, so I forget who and where I was when I was watching this with. but that was a weird sentence.

I was watching it with a non-space person, and there's something interesting about the fact that it looks so weird and not like a rocket that it almost made them ask more questions than if I was just watching a rocket launch. You know what I mean? Like if I was watching a regular SpaceX launch, they would say, oh, cool, like, what's going up?

What's happening, this and that, and the other. the fact that it looked that weird they wanted to know like everything about it. Why does it look like that? Why is it shaped like that? What's it going to do? Why is this thing useful? There was a lot more questions because of how weird it looked. Yeah.

And that was an interesting effect that I didn't really consider running up to the flight, even as it was happening, thinking in my own head. Actually, I had a few non-space people bring it up to me too and they were like, did you watch that? It was a, um, um, um, Um, it's, uh, Elon Musk, uh, it was like, and I'm like the giant flying beer keg. And they're like, yeah, that's the one. That's the one I was talking. And so it's like, yeah. And there's definitely people that are, you know, it's a flying test stand. We've talked about this. It's, it is a flying test stand. Yep. And you can say that in both a way that that diminishes it, but also it's a flying test stand. That's cool as hell. It's pretty cool. As a, as a thing on its own, it's a cool. that's a cool item is that actually like i know they're going to use it as a test end but are they

like they're going to continue to use as a flying test end are they going to like mount it no i think they're going to strap it down now okay interesting yeah it's cool though i don't know i i i am always like ranting on about how real hardware and real flights is way more important in theory and this is this is that underline three times like it's just like this is the new engine and it's flying in the air. Yeah, and you can point to it as a thing. You know, and there's, there is a certain part of it that is like, yes, this is for the optics.

But people that discount that as not important, I think are missing, missing the point of it. Optics do matter. It does matter that you have things to talk about and point to and say, look at the thing that we did. Even if you know as a space nerd that there's, well, technically, it's not the actual tanks and it's not the actual configuration of the engines and it's the actual GENC. none of that matters to the people that are looking at that. No. So.

The engine was real. It was real. It was not a fake. This is not a conspiracy. I'm not a rocket scientist, but the one thing I do know is the tanks, not the hardest part. Okay, so what flew off at the end? Who knows? I hope it was life support, just to troll everybody.

It was life support. Some little composite over-upers. pressure vessel tumbled off at the end. A little white one, right? That's what it was? Yeah, I don't know if it was a COPV. I don't think it was. Was it just the cold gas thrusters or whatever? Could have been. It just spun itself off its mounting. You know.

What was it doing? The international sign for cold gas thrusters is essentially flossing. Yeah, yeah. That's, yeah, it's like, it's kind of like milking a little bit, too, a little bit. I don't know. I got one more topic about Starhopper. They flew tiles on Star Hopper. Yeah. And then also flew tiles on a recent Dragon mission.

What is happening with heat shielding on this thing? They're testing, man. Because it was going to be heat shielded by tiles, and then it was going to be this crazy system that bled fuel. Transpiration. Yes, and then there's going to be, now we're back to tiles. Yeah. What do you think?

Make me a dinner bet on whether it will be tiles or no tiles. I think it's going to be a mix. A mix. That is such a cop-out on our dinner bet. Yeah. You know me? I'm an anti-factionalism guy. I never take one or the other.

I would take a middle of the road. Then I can only ever be half wrong. That's a good way to put it. I just can't suffer that much defeat. I don't know. There were like hexagonal tiles too, right? They were like, it looked like a, like a, almost like a, like a little mini James Webb Monument.

Yeah, James Webb Space Telescope without the outer ring or whatever. It's just like this, the seven, right? Between that and them calling it the Starship Launch System, I feel like they are doing these micro-trolls. Yeah, totally. And I'm digging it. I'm getting chewed out for size, hexagonal. What did you say?

Hexagonal. Hexagonal, not hexagonal. Yeah. You also say Bridenstein. right is that how you say no no i say biden what did i say uh

i don't remember you say bridenstein right steen instead of steen right steen instead of stein yeah this is why i just say j b apparently you guys don't like how i talk about stuff jb is great and i can't wait till you say it to him in person

oh j b i'm gonna say like that too what are we doing on this show this is a disaster show This is what happens when it's a grab bag I'm already on the second beer, so Same Okay, let's see, we had another grab bag topic Didn't we have another grab bag topic?

Curbel space program? Oh, Kerbal, yeah, yeah. See, I thought there was going to be another topic and then I remember how little happened in the last month other than what we just talked about. Everyone was away for some vacation. We literally just talked about all of the space news that mattered in the last month.

Yeah. That was it. Yeah. Mars was in conjunction. There was nothing going on there. Right. Yeah. Oh, can you, you want to do a little mole update?

Mole update? Mostly, I just want to know, like, I've been trying to follow along, and there's, like, the whole thing, and they were going to cover it. What's going on with this mole at Mars? Well, so they took the housing off the mole, and I guess he could probably make fun of me how I said housing. I'm not going to say make fun of you. Who's going to make fun of you?

The housing was pulled off, so they could say, see it and it was like totally sideways like at an angle and it like kind of spun a little bit with the ribbon was all twisted up and it like really carved a little bit of a tunnel so the mole is not touching much of the side of the hole and it really needs that friction to go down so this is why the mole on insight the marslander is not going down um so one idea basically that the soil is too cohesive it's all crusted together it's like a little layer at the top it's all solid and crusty. So they tried to put the scoop on the arm

and crush it down to like collapse it in and it didn't really work. So what are they going to do is scoop some and fill it up? The leading theory as far as I know is to actually put the scoop right on the top of the mole and start pushing. I like that one. Yeah, it's pretty crazy.

Why wouldn't they fill the hole first? you know like you ever been to the beach and put an umbrella in yeah you got it like you put the sand on top and like yeah and then you do a little stamp down why don't they do that well um there's no humans there should I make a call I don't know they have a shovel uh yeah they do have a shovel listen we'll call up tillman Spone Spoon I don't know how you say it German DACA we're not good at it But that's the plan right now. Let's put the scoop on the top of the mole, push down a little bit, and then restart the hammering motion and see if the extra push isn't enough to go down a little further.

And then it can just keep, you know, catch and then go. The problem with that is like the limit is that once the scoop pushes down to the level of the soil, it's going to like go flush and hit and then you're kind of stuck. And then if that still doesn't work, then, yeah, maybe you do need to start filling it up. But I imagine that just going to take a long time and be really risk prone and like kind of be awful, right? I would assume so. It sounds like it is. Yeah. But that's the inside update.

So when they came out of conjunction, they wanted to wait a little bit and keep grabbing some more information. So my expectation is that a week or two before they go another update. Well, there's your once-a-year mole update here on the off-nominal podcast. Lars has asked me what I think of DLR's subsurface instrument programs. It's a very deep topic for Friday night late. For the sample size of the HP3 mole, I think it, I think I wish it had done better. I don't know what to say about that.

All right. I'm going to continue through the grab bag, but this is kind of an early pick for me. My pick this week, month. I don't know how often we do this show, is go watch everything there is about KSP 2. Purple Space Program 2. There's so many demos and intro videos and wonderful things coming in your future.

Are there that many? Because I've seen like the, so there was the like announcement video that was just like some flashy footage. Right, right. It's mostly like rendered stuff. A sizzle reel. Yeah, the sizzle reel.

And then there was another one that was more like alpha footage, right? The developer one. Yeah. It was like behind the scenes. It was like the, they went to the, they had a lot of talking heads and yeah. That was pretty cool. It looks awesome. Yes.

It looks great. I'm so nervous about it. The thing about KSP is that it, like for all the amazing things that it was, it's hard to like remember that it was like a success by accident and probably didn't have a ton of like really. normal user input that you would get when you're developing a game that you knew was going to be successful. Some guys were just at a marketing company and they're just like, well, let's make a space game. And they just like threw it together. And it was like kind of good. And they're like just kind of like iterated like it just bounced around through like different variations until it like all of a sudden exploded into success. And so the fact that they're able to know, go back

to KSP2 and go, okay, we already know that the format is a success. So let's just do that format really, really well, it's going to make it so much better. All the bugs with KSP that I, like, are so annoying, but you love the game so much. You just power through it. Like, when I was playing that game, it would crash like every 20 minutes. And I just didn't care. Just reboot the computer, fired up. Keep going.

Like, you just like, I don't care. And then you're good. Yeah. Like, that's how good the game is. And so if you can build it from scratch knowing that with some resources. I'm curious as a developer if this is from scratch, you know, I wonder how from scratch it is. Is it still built off unity? Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. I don't think it's like from scratch. Sure. But it's a nice refact. From the ground up-ish. Yeah. So on this topic, that's short pick, but I have an expanded topic. I would like to talk about I think KSP has a very special

place in people's hearts that are space nerds. Many people developed a love of space from playing KSP or learned orbital mechanics by playing KSP. I certainly did that. There's the XKCD graph. Got an internship at NASA,

took an astrophysics class, played KSP, very accurate. I would like to talk about our origin story of when did we discover KSP? What was the background? Like where? I'll go first because I have a longer one on yours.

Okay. So I was in Denver, Colorado. I was out there for at the time. I was a full-time web developer. I was out in Denver at an iOS conference, learning iOS development. And that was like, which is what I do now full-time.

So it was a very interesting week. Wonderful teacher, Daniel Steinberg, any iOS developers out there may know him because he's awesome and does all these great conference talks. Wonderful teacher. And I was hanging out one night on Twitter. Saul Notch from Minecraft who's maybe problematic at this point

I don't know but he was seeing I don't know what happened with him he was tweeting that he like he was like oh I crashed this satellite into the ocean in Kerrible Space Program I was like what the hell is Curbel Space Program

this was like I could probably look it up I think it was like April 2015 so I think it was like 1.6 or 1-7 or something like that okay And I watched this video of Notch totally sucking at Curval Space Program. And then that was it.

I spent the next. That was it. That was literally it. And I've not stopped playing it since. Oh, yeah, that's kind of how it goes. It just sort of sucks you in, right? It was the feeling of this is the game that I've literally always wanted to exist. Yeah.

And now it is here. Yeah. Okay. Now you have a more interesting. origin story. I mean, maybe not the origin story part, but much in the way that we, after two years, are plugging our podcast again, I want to resurve as a conversation we may have had.

You think we've had this conversation on the show. I don't remember it. So maybe it was late in the Lauren Grush episode. I don't know. We'll not remember what happened to the end of that one. Yeah, yeah, no, I will not remember at the end of the episode. Okay. When did you discover KSP?

So I'm, like, logging into my Reddit account now. to try and find like some posting history, but I think it was 2014, maybe June-ish, the summer, mid-year kind of thing. Wow, you were way earlier than I was even. Nice. Yeah. And I don't remember where I saw it first. It was just on the internet somewhere, like, I don't know, yeah, maybe a tweet or a Reddit

or something like that. but I remember there was like a demo you could get at the time and I remember we're like well I'll try this out and I download this demo and like it was awful like it was like an early version and all the demo that you do is launch like one capsule on one solid rocket booster or something it was like something really bad and like I played it for like four hours one night it's just like with all these constraints I found all this way to like make the game interesting for a long period a time. Foreshadowing.

Yeah. So I remember that and then like, and I tend to like be with games especially like I really make them trying to earn my purchase. So like I remember just like, damn, you're one of those. I'm going to put all my time in this demo and like and then if I'm like, I think I like this game, then I'll pause and then like wait two weeks and then like do I still like it? And if I do, then I'm like, okay, I'll buy it now. That's hilarious.

Yeah, I'm like that guy with games. I'm so the opposite. because I'm like somebody who makes software. So I'm like, if I have any appreciation for the thing you made and the effort you put into it, here's some cash. Like I just, I feel like it's a karma thing. Yeah. And so then I was like playing around with it.

I tried like, I don't think there was even like currently there's like, you know, science mode and like camping. There was just like one, there was just sandbox mode I think back then. Oh yeah. That went until like 1.0, I think. Yeah. And what did I do? I don't even know what I did.

But eventually like fell. into trying to recreate historical missions. Pause. Pause. Yeah. Pause. Pause. I said that KSP has a special place in space nerds hearts as a thing.

And of that group that it has a special place for it, the subreddit of Curval Space Program, not as it exists today, but of like three, four years ago, was one of the pinnacles of subreddit status. I would say. It was very supportive community. You could post my first moon landing. Here's a sweet Mars mission. I should go back in my Reddit history

because I had a kick-ass Mars mission one time that was rad and I got a bunch of upvodes and I liked it. I should find that one. But it was a wonderful place. And of the people that populated Kerbal Space Program subreddit, there is one particular series

that has an even more special place. in all of our hearts. Oh, my God. You're really buttering this out. I don't think that's inaccurate to say, though. Like, there's everybody that was on the subreddit at that time, if you say these words to them, they will go, oh, my God, I love that series. And you are the man behind the curtain of KSB history.

Yes. And I don't think anyone knows that. Maybe not. I don't brag about it a lot. You should, though. Yeah, it was really fun. I just like, like, I honestly, I remember, I think what kicked it off is I was like, can I make a V2 and KSP? And then I just like, I was just firing.

You literally started from the first bit of space history. No, I think so. And I think I made this. And then I was like, and I was like not satisfied with like how it looked. And like, I'm like, I can make a thing that like does the same thing as a V2. but it doesn't look like a V2 and so I started like playing around with mods I remember I think the

the V2 mission is like I used fairings to like make the like that kind of bulbous shape of a V2 Yeah yeah yeah and uh And then I was like This is really fun And I just like Did you post that one on on the subreddit?

Yeah I did um It's uh I'm trying to remember now Well you just renewed the domain today you said so I did yeah the domain I just got it was really funny because you're like I'm going to talk about KSP history And then I got an email from go to go Daddy's like, we renewed it.

And then, yeah, yeah, V2's first one. Look at that. Part one. The Ancester of Rockets, it says, on the website. And they're just, like, imager albums. So I just, like, took screencaps and started writing about what the rocket was. And it sort of took off. Look at those fairings.

That was ugly. But here's the thing about KSP history that is so Jake. Like, it's not just, here's this mission. It's the story of each mission told through. You know, and then later, I don't know if that one had, oh, you did have some real photos in that one. Yeah, you had, well, your format never changed. That's amazing. No.

And you did this for, they got longer. So long. So this was posted in July of 2014. So yeah, I'd been playing for a couple months, I think. And when was your last one? The last one. So this was, like, this was really, the proto we Martians when you get down to it because it's like where I learned like storytelling

it's like space storytelling and stuff and it taught me like yeah it's really the storytelling part of it it taught me the last one looks like July 2015 so it was like about a year that I posted them and for a while it was like once a day like seven days a week and then it kind of like tapered off as a well because like the early missions were so easy that I just like I'd like like you know come on the weekend and I'd bang out like 10 of them in like three hours. That's a good point. Yeah, I'm all set for the week. But the writing man. Yeah, it wasn't that bad. You'll see the early ones are a lot shorter. And then like I started with V2 and then I went to, um, I jumped a little bit around. V2 went to Sputnik and then kind of went from

there. And I went through like every mission that added something new from like what it would look like in KSP. So I skipped a few if it was like, you know, oh, Mariner Fye was the same as Mariner 4, whatever, I just didn't bother doing it again. But I went through kind of every mission. So 186 parts later, one year later, I'd got up to 1990, which was like kind of some early shuttle stuff. But yeah, they got super complicated by the end. And at the end, it was like, it took me hours and hours and hours to do just one of them. And I was like, I can't sustain this anymore. It's crazy, man. But that, so. July 2015, I bought the We Martians domain name like four months later.

Wow. Yeah. I didn't realize how seamless it was. Yeah. Yeah. December, I built the website. So, like, it was that same year, 2015, because the first episode was January, 2016. So that's where I learned my stuff, guys.

Man. I just think it's so great. Like, it's one of those things that I, so, we have this, like, we have this, like, origin post of where we met on Reddit. I love that post. Yeah, but that's not the origin post of where we met on Reddit. Oh, yeah. The origin post is me going, how the F is this guy building a space shuttle out of these parts?

And how is he controlling it and landing it is pissing me off? And it was very anger-inducing. Did you ever comment on the post? Can we find further back, like, some point when we interacted and didn't help it? I don't know if I ever commented on that. there. Were you a lurker? I was totally a lurker.

I'll have to find that. I'll have to look back. What got really hard near the end is like you had to think ahead on on missions because they would last like multiple things. So like I was building mirror near the end of it and there was multi modules and like all these like and so you when you put up the first module you had to think about all the times in the future that another mission would interact with that module and what parts of the spacecraft you'd have to build.

Oh my God. And it was super complicated. The worst was like what kind of killed me was Hubble. Because I wanted to do, I wanted to do the servicing missions. So I built the whole inside of Hubble. Like I don't think you can even, I did cover it, right? 91. Hold on.

I'm looking again. So I did the launch episode. So I don't think you can actually see anything inside of it. in this post but what's behind it almost like 50 images it was so long what you can't see

is that inside there the doors open up and like I literally they built all the instruments like by hand inside of it with removable parts knowing what they had to take off later and it was like it took so long I watched I think all of the servicing EVAs

which are like nine hours long. Yeah. And I took notes like, okay, so he's taking off this thing. You are relentless. Can I build that into it? And all this, it was a nightmare. Like, so I'm glad I never actually had to do that. The Hubble one looks good though.

I'm pretty proud of the Hubble one. You should look that one up. Copy. This is great audio content, by the way. But there's the Hubble. I just put that in the chat. Oh, my God. Check your album art podcast listeners.

Check your album art. There you go. But yeah, it was fun. And it became unsustainable. So actually, that's one of the big lessons I learned from it is how to do WeMarsh and sustainably. And not like take over my life. So it was good. Man.

So, yeah, I just wanted to, in the spirit of we should plug our other stuff more. I just want everyone to know. How do you pronounce your username? I don't know. I only overspell it. Mendehu? Mandahu? What would you say?

Mandahu, I guess. Mandahu, that's the name. So the origin story of that username is, it's the name of my first Dungeons and Dragons character. Wow. Yeah, he was a wizard. I don't even have a... Do you have a pick?

Do I have a pick? Yeah, I have a pick. I thought for a good pick, what I would do is share some of the tools that I use for We Martians. Oh, I like this. So I have a three pack. Three related picks.

A bundle. Yeah, a bundle of picks. So the first one is an app for your phone. It is called Mars clock, Mars dash clock. Oh. It's on iOS. I'm sorry, I don't know if it's on Android. But it's a really simple app that just has insight and curiosity

and the time, the mission time and Saul date right on there. so that when I do Red Planet review, I can just say today is Saul whatever. So that's kind of cool. It tells you as well, like, kind of sunrise and sunset where the spacecraft is, the distance to Earth, the time, radio signal delay. So it's kind of cool, and you just swipe through. Opportunity is still on there if you want to have a little, little cry sash. And, yeah, so a very basic app.

Like, it's just super simple how it, you know, it displays it. It's like not a pretty app, but it's purchased. I just bought it. Yeah, it's cool. So I use that. That's the easy one. Second part of this bundle is, so Curiosity, raw images are uploaded to JPL's website. But I find JPL's website difficult to navigate them because they like sort it by instrument.

And within the instrument category, it's like by Sol. And so if you want to look up everything on a certain Saul, it's like a little more. challenging. So there's actually another website called midnight planets.com. There's an app too. And there's an app. And Midnight Planets is just like, again, a very utilitarian, like not supposed to be a pretty website, supposed to be a useful website.

And you can sort it by like uplink day. So here's an uplink and all the data that came with it. I guess it's a downlink. Or you can go to the Sol to, you know, look at everything for that Sol that's been downlinked so far. So I find that much more useful in sort of grabbing raw images from curiosity. It's where I go if I ever want to make a GIF or if I want to make a mosaic or something like that. It's kind of fun.

And then the last one, which is if you really, really want to get into Mars, you have to get this program called J. Mars. Oh, boy. So J. Mars is a wonderful little software that is used by a real scientist. It is not really targeted towards the general public, but it's pretty easy to use. And so it's essentially Google Earth, but for Mars. And it has all of the spacecraft data sets loaded into it. So every image that Mars reconnaissance orbiter has ever taken is uploaded into this database,

and it connects into it. So you can navigate around Mars and then say, what does this spot look like? What MRO images are available for this? and you can load that up and it puts it over. Okay, add all the Mola altimeter data so I can see the relief of the terrain. Add that over top of it. How about Mars Express?

How about every orbiter that you can think of has put all their data in there and you can play around with it and see what you can learn from it. It's super useful if you want to examine interesting sites, like you want to look where curiosity is. You can go down there and see what the actual specific terrain is to whatever resolution is,

it's just the real data. So it's just as much information as the scientists use. You can do, there's some cool tools about like measuring distance or, or, you know, tracing objects, all that kind of fun stuff. So it's got, like, it's the tool behind it. But it's like, honestly,

even for a lot of our space fans that are probably not afraid to learn a new software and goof around with it, it's going to be a pretty cool little software to use. So J-Mars is awesome. I was browsing Arcadia Plenicia just the other day. So to see what's going on there, you know. But yeah, so that's my pick, three-pack, Mars Tools. That's nice. I like that.

Yeah. Well, shit. Is that the end of the show? Your pick was early? Your pick was KSP history? No, it was KSP 2 and KSP history. Seriously, though, KSP history. That's some shit. Oh, you're very kind. I had fun. I just love it. I love it. It's just such a great part.

of, I didn't realize how short you did it for. Not that it was short, but it was a lot of work. Looking back, I'm like, a year, that's it? Like, it was 186 episodes. It feels like a lot longer than that. Jesus Christ. What did you do it so frequently? It was literally, it was seven days a week when I first started.

I remember that. And you were married? Yeah. Wow. Yeah, my wife didn't like it. So much. I mean, I probably played KSP seven days a week.

also, but I didn't also write and screenshot and get pictures off the internet and plan. And it's so Jake. That is so Jake. That's serious. You should see the spreadsheet. Oh, my God. Of course is this spreadsheet. You'd like the Skylab one too because I built in all the failures and stuff.

I do. Oh, my God. Can you do that as a Patreon bonus of Weimarsians? Yeah, Patreon bonus. You get to see the spreadsheet. Yeah, the Skylab ones are good too. You love Skylab because I built in. I love Skylab.

I built in the part of the rocket that rips off mid-flight, and then I built in the funky para sol they put on it to, like, save it from overheating, I think. That was fun. I'm trying to think about other fun ones that were. Mere was really cool. So do you know how the Mere modules docked? Did you ever look into that? Not to the level you did, apparently.

Mere's got like that weird shape where there's like a core module. Right. And it's got the node at the end that's like, you know, you can attach all things in. But even though there are other modules kind of perpendicular to the core module, everything docks end to end. And so they would bring something in, dock it end to end. And then there's this little arm that reaches out, grabs it, and like spins, like,

undocks it and spins it around to the side. And everything comes in there and then they move it. And it comes in and then they move it. And I had to build that in KSB. It was a nightmare because like all the geometries had to be perfect and like, oh, my God. But we're using like the information. infrared robotics or whatever that thing was called. Yeah, infernal robotics.

Yeah, I built my own custom arm with just like the hinges or whatever, but that was fun. And the space shuttle was the hardest thing I have ever done. And I had to like cheat the system so bad to make it fly. It was like not pretty. There was this mod that was, I think it was like a welding mod. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. You could take like multiple parts, weld them together into one custom part. And that was the only way I could get the center of mass to be in the right spot and still make it look like the

shuttles. But yeah, it was fun to fly. I'm looking at this Skylab one right now. This is pretty great. All right. Well, that's the show. That's the show. This is a grab bag episode of Offnom. October 20th. We're basically going to do this right here, what you've just heard for an hour together in real life. MeetSpace. Yeah. Dhaka, Beer Garden, Near the Convention Center, events that off nominal.spice. Mm-hmm. You have any parting words? Um,

no. This beer is really good. One, two, three, four, five.