Off-Nominal - 230 - Bequeathed in the Divorce

Episode Date: February 27, 2026

Jake and Anthony catch up on Starliner’s no good very bad report, Artemis II’s no good very bad fueling tests, and Vulcan’s no good very bad solid rocket boosters. Topics Off-Nominal - YouTube Episode 230 - Bequeathed in the divorce - YouTube NASA Invites Media to Discuss Next Steps for Artemis Campaign - NASA NASA says it needs to haul the Artemis II rocket back to the hangar for repairs - Ars Technica NASA chief classifies Starliner flight as "Type A" mishap, says agency made mistakes - Ars Technica Bowersox to retire from NASA - SpaceNews Audrey Decker on X: “Senate Commerce's reauth bill would prohibit NASA from acquiring more than 50% of launch services from one provider, according to bill text I obtained. SpaceX currently dominates the market. However, bill says the administrator can seek waivers” ULA isn't making the Space Force's GPS interference problem any easier - Ars Technica Follow Off-Nominal Subscribe to the show! - Off-Nominal Support the show, join the Discord Off-Nominal (@offnom) / Twitter Off-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey Space Follow Jake WeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to Mars WeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | Twitter Jake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | Twitter Jake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey Space Follow Anthony Main Engine Cut Off Main Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | Twitter Main Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey Space Anthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | Twitter Anthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘 Off-Nominal Merchandise Off-Nominal Logo Tee WeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Oh, Jake. We got carried away with USA Canada Hockey Talk. Yeah, we had a pre-show where I know that I laughed a lot because my face is a little sore from the amount of smiling we did. So we had a good pre-show, I think, overall. Great pre-show. There were some dips, but it was, I think, overall, a success. I didn't mean to today to wear my Lake Placid 1980 Olympic Games shirt.

But what we found out in the pre-show is that Jake did not know about the 1980 USA men's hockey team and their victorious run to the gold medal that year was shocked that that's the last time we won the gold medal. Which also Jake, why did you think we won a gold medal in hockey more recently than that? I don't know. And your head canon, when would we have won that? I mean, in my head canon, every gold medal game ends up being Canada versus you guys. So it's just kind of like, you must have won some of them. Would have put a winner in or something. Yeah, Tony Amonti would have been scoring.

Yeah. Like I generally think that the Olympic gold medal like results over time is just kind of like a little back and forth between our two countries. And then sometimes the Scandies get in, you know. And that's incredible. Everyone's about we and let Sweden or Finland have one and then, you know. I'm such a sucker for Scandinavian hockey players. I am absolute sucker. Yep.

Not this year. Not this year. Not this year. Boy, did a lot of things. to happen with launch vehicles and spacecraft that were not great in the last two weeks that we need to talk about. Yeah, I was thinking like, this is going to be a really downer of a show

I think, but we'll see if we can glean something from it. I don't know. I don't know what we'll end up with but we'll try. Yeah. We'll find out. Volcan't. There you go. Put that comment right up on this train. Vaucant. Ouch.

Volcan't. Yes, we'll talk about that day, I think. Yeah. Well. So, yeah. What'd you bring? You bring something fun to drink? I brought some mead. Oh.

And it's not one of the shitty bottles that I'm waiting to get better miraculously one day. So this one, no label, but this is what it looks like. Nice clarity. Good. You can see through it, right? Wow. Good clarity. So that's pretty happy.

But do you know that that's a thing that's good? That's what you want? How do you know the attributes you're looking for? Well, it just means that, like, okay, well, I tried to make it clear and it worked. So I'm taking that as a win. I had no context. I just thought, I guess that's good. Yeah.

This is a bit of an experiment, though, because this is about as far from me as you can get while still being meed. So this is a tamarind martyterudan. So it has actual tamarind in it. I, like, took one of those, like, bricks of, like, the tamarine pulp that you get with all the seeds and shells in it. And you, like, mash it up and boil it and whatever. And you put that into it with a thing. thing and let it sit so it soaked through and then I reinforced it with actual tequila and then back sweetened it with agave syrup. So it's like pretty margarita e, but the actual fermentation

is still honey. So anyway, so all right. Okay. I'm, I'm, I'm drinking it. I like it. I think it could be better, but I'm pretty. There's no name on this one? You had no label, but you didn't know a name? I haven't really thought it through yet. Do you want to do it live? What's your process here? something with a planet and something in Spanish. So like I like to do some sort of alliterative thing. So Margarita, if you think of like maybe like an M planet, Mimas maybe.

Mercury. You should find a moon that looks approximately that color. Maybe. Yeah. The only problem is it like all the meads are like approximately this color. That's true. You kind of like you get yourself into a corner with that one. Good point.

Yeah. Yeah. Put it in the chat. Put it in the chat, folks. Think on that. Yeah. So, cheers. I have an entire pot of coffee.

I'm still dragging a little bit from yesterday. I was on a flight very early yesterday morning. Like, woke up at four, and I'm dragging a little bit. So. Here we are. Flew out of, I was hoping to catch, I was flying out of Florida, hoping to catch the rollback of Artemis 2, but I did not. I did see the cape out the window, but we were too far away.

There's nowhere. Here, we're going to start on SLS than I guess. There's nowhere that you can get to from a public road where you would be able to visually discern the velocity of the rollback. No. Yeah. It would just look like it was standing there. No, I just wanted to see the rocket.

I like looking at it. It's a good rocket to look at, which is a good attribute to have for one that likes to sit on the pad for a long time. you know at least it's pretty looking okay um real concern i have jake the concern i have is that they put the america 250 logos on those boosters and i'm like foo you are time dating those boosters man like

good lord you've you've gotten yourself down to to three more launch windows before those are old logos yeah yeah uh that is a that is a concern I'm feeling good about my prediction, though, because if you remember, at the end of the year, I said it's going to be April. All right. So like, and I didn't say before or after April. I said April.

So like now we're now or never, that's less. You got to prove me right. Well, there's a single day at the end of April that they could launch it too, Jake. That would be the best version if it hits the May window, but in April, that would be a great one for you. I'll take it. Can you give me your best assessment for what the hell happened to the upper stage here? because I read all the reporting about this and I don't have a good sense for

what actually occurred. I have a bigger take. All right. Which is that it doesn't matter what specifically happened. All right. Let's completely invalidate the content I was preparing for you. No, you can get it to me if you want. No, no, I like it.

Go. Roll with it. I just like, I've become very cynical about this rocket and like I'm fully on, like for a while, I was like, well, you know, it sucks and it's expensive but it's what we got and it's got we got artemus and it's like go to the moon and it's taking my boy jeremy like it's there's some good stuff about this right

and i'm pretty much like fully on board was like i would throw out all of artemus if i could cancel s-l s-lis like i'm ready to do that i think it's like just like net harmful and none of these problems are ever going to get solved that's why i mean that the specific doesn't matter it's just like well what is it going to be is it going to be like a design flaw is it going to be like a thing that we screwed up because we only do it once every four years? Is it going to be like, oh, it was fine when we made that part, but then it rotted on the pad for half a year? Like what, you know, what is the, none of these problems are ones that we're actually going to

be able to solve in any meaningful way. They're just going to swap it out and set it back out and then roll the dice in one of these launch windows that everything will work at the same time and they'll go, right? Like, it's just, it's brutal. The way this thing is playing out. And I'm super grumpy about it. But there's a line that you have said about SLS for years, which was, if this thing was flying, nobody would care. Like, we would all be loving the rocket.

And that is so true. And yet we approached the launch campaign. And like, the last month, I've just felt like this is exactly what we were all talking about forever. Like, this is it. Every storyline in here is exactly what everyone has been complaining about for all these years. So there's a lot of talk on the internet. There's op-eds and space news, like, you know, give Brittany a break, basically. Can we just have our moment with SLS?

Yeah, I saw that one. I could not even get through it. It was so well, like, on touch to me. Because I'm like, no, we can't. That's exactly the point. No. Yeah, you know when we would have if it had a good campaign up to launch and launched. And then you have the same, like, there was a line from John Honeycutt in that most recent press conference, which was like, yep, we're going to sit out in the pad until we launch.

I'm like, don't say that. Don't say these things. right? Well, the last time was something around the it's not even a named storm It's not even a named storm It's just like a little bit of wind It's like that, don't worry about it, it's fine, it's nothing Somehow they continue to feed the beach

Like I think people like us that have generally been critical of this program Like roll it back a month ago when we were like It's getting exciting, it's getting close, right? We have that in us. We have the ability to be excited and positive and uplifting and like willing to to give our energy to this mission and be supportive of it and all that and then everything else that happens beyond that is just exactly

all the thousand paper cuts that we've been stuck talking about for 10 years and and then and then they say things in these press conferences that are so immediately like thrown right back in their own faces and then don't really show any programmatic ability to adjust and patch up those bad parts. They can't. Like the design of this whole program is so fundamentally broken that you could put the best engineers and the best leaders and give it all the money you want and put it into this thing. And it still can't, they can't fix it. Like they can't. It is unfixable. It is literally, like, this is the definition of a unfixable program. So your theory of mind is that they'll just get lucky and some of the valves won't do the thing that they usually do on the one day and it will launch.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like every, every valve has an 80% chance of working and there's some some Swiss cheese moment where none of them are broken at the same time and they go like that's just you know like it's it's so and they can't they can't change it because you can't there's no test articles and you can't actually do any like operational stuff of it the people that launched the first one are like retired now like it's just like you know there's no there's no continuity to it's just it's brutal there's no ability for them to be able to do a good job they're just stuck in this like cage of a bad rocket yeah and they'll never get out of it I can just, that won't do it. It won't happen, right? Every once in a while, we use our position of privilege to speak directly into the years of people that work on these programs. And we'd like to use one of those cards right now and debit a little bit from that account. If you can come on this show, and actually, I'll extend this to even if you can't come on the show because you're not allowed to, but you can tell us and then we can relay this on the following show that we do. Please explain why it would be so hard to create that test article that you could continually tank and detank on the launch pad. and why that costs so much money to produce.

Because presumably that's the thing that holds it up, right? That has not been a line item in the budget. It would be exorbitant if we could find out how much that was to actually produce and leave at Kennedy Space Center where we're spending billions of dollars per year to continually have that there. Now, I know after so many cycles, it will crack and whatnot. But, like, could we do one before a launch campaign that doesn't involve the whole mobile launcher having to pick up an entire rocket that has been stacked and fully prepared

and the remove before flights are like there or not, depending on where state you need them in, and then roll them out. What is the actual sand in the gears preventing that from taking place? Because even to Jared Isman's credit, he's saying, yes, we're going to do this. But that felt like kind of a throwaway, like,

yeah, we'll do that. Where there's nothing that I've seen in this that actually indicates to me that anyone's taking action on, you know, because what they've said is, oh, well, we experienced this problem on Artemis 1, so we changed the procedures, or we changed the limits, or we changed this,

so that we wouldn't hit it in Artemis 2, and then we hit a whole bunch of other ones. So there doesn't seem to be actual, like, provable steps to say, we're not just changing procedures or acceptance criteria, but we are actually changing hardware configurations and processes around those to address it. Yeah, I mean, when was Artemis II built?

When was this rocket built? I don't remember. It was like two to three years ago, right? You know, like, so like the lead times in these things are so bad that, like, if you want to make a test article now, it's like, great, it'll help you with the Artemis 4. campaign and then... But is that true?

Because it doesn't need to be a whole rocket. It just needs to have the hole in the right spot, right? Like, it doesn't even really need to hold... The tank doesn't even really need to hold pressure. Look, Anthony, Boeing finds away, okay. The thing that pumps into the hole the right size, you know? Boeing finds away. Okay.

So... God. It's so frustrating, Jake, because we were right there. We were ready to be so excited about this thing. I wanted to talk about it every day until this launches. And if I did that, it would be... What would happen? It would be exhausting.

It'd be a joke. Yeah. Those goofs on Off Nominal think this is going to launch this month. That's true. They said we have to have an Artemis 2 show because the launch is imminent in January of 2026. Great point. Great point. Also, one of the things we've said is, hey, NASA isn't really, us and others have said NASA is not really putting a lot of marketing effort behind this and nobody knows this mission is happening. This is probably why. because you can't, right? I said that.

I said that they were gun shy with it because they got so much shit the last time, right? Yeah. Like you had all that, like you said, the hurricane stuff, but also that the launch window thing where they were like publishing it's like it's going to one of these days. And it was like they just kept republishing new PDFs for all the new launch windows. They slipped like six months into the future. And it was like, oh, we're going to finally launch on what was it like launch opportunity 17 or whatever. Yeah, right, right, right.

We were making fun of that document so bad. You're like what happened to the first 16. Yeah, we were, like, no, we just started at 15. It's because we made this document in 2019, and we were really hopeful about things. And like, it's just, it's so embarrassing. And it's like, I don't know. And that's what I mean. It's like there's the, the broken stuff is so fundamental that like, yeah, you can, you can tweak a couple dials for like how fast the hydrogen goes in, what temperature you put limits at and what the torque on the screw for the seal is.

Like there's little things you can change, but like not much, not enough that they can actually like do anything interesting with it. They're just trying to get over the finish line with this rocket. That's all you can do. It's the only thing you can do. It's just get to the end of the day. I noticed that I'm trying to pull up this announcement of, um, there's a call tomorrow about the name, the title of it was really interesting. Is it the update one? Yeah.

It was like Artemis status and programmatic updates or something There's something about like plans For the future of the program Yeah Which I mystified as to what could possibly be So I wanted you to speculate What, here it is, NASA invites me

Next steps There we go Yeah, NASA invites media to discuss next steps for Artemis campaign So it's with rollback complete, the agency will host a news conference. Leadership will discuss the work ahead for the test flight, as well as provide a broader update on the Artemis campaign. Let's go, Jared. Do it.

Does campaign mean this? Because Artemis II campaign would be this launch. But the Artemis Campaign, how wide sweeping is that? Yeah, I don't know. Is this the moment, Jake? Is this the infamous moment that will occur? early in this administration. Like the EM1,

can we fly crew on the flight memo that happened back then, right? He's already past his 100 days, isn't he? I don't know. Does that count still when you're this far into a term? It counts for any new position, I guess, but, yeah. All right, give me your prediction.

Mr. I'm good at predicting the Artemis program over there. Feeling hot, you're calling it out on the show, and then why don't you put your money on your mouth is? as if I haven't already done that. I've got to fly this thing in April for me to be right. I could be very wrong still. I could go in June. And then it'll be like,

which is not even like a joke. It's like it could go. Not at all. Yeah. Absolutely. Five months away? Five. That's a win.

Do it. Let's go. That's what I mean about about the, they put the logos on it that are good until July 4th. You know? Like, uh, prediction.

Artemis campaign. I don't know. I don't think you, you don't glob much onto that. That's the wrong way to do that. If you're doing something big, you don't do it this way. No, but I mean, okay. Yeah, because that'd be absolutely crazy. But imagine for a minute that the vehicle rolled back in and was like,

it will never roll out of that building. Absolutely crazy, right? Would never happen. Also would be one of the craziest situations in spaceflight history. That would be, that level of crazy would be you and I would hop on for an unscheduled live stream. I would stream for a week

straight, Jake. I would go on the air for a week straight, yeah. We would both leave our day jobs at that instant. We'd get on YouTube. Which is this mostly, but yes. Yeah, I mean, that would never happen. I just think I actually wouldn't be shocked if it was more what we're asking about here. Like, why is it so hard to make a test tank?

Like, if did Jared Eisenman stature. We'll get to the Starliner thing in a minute, right? But the stature of him in that, did we talk about this on the show yet? The Starliner press conference thing? I feel like, why do I remember talking about that with you? Didn't it just happen? Yeah, did we talk about it? We talked about it at some point, but I don't remember. I feel like I've said this before. So if you've heard me say this before, I apologize. But his stature in that press conference was so different than every other position that has been taken thus far by a NASA administrator,

where it felt more like, the look on his face was very like, stern, I have to do this energy, and like we need to do this hard thing at the moment, which is go out here and talk about this openly, and not gloss over stuff, that it would be fitting if this Artemis campaign update was, here are actionable steps that we are putting in place, so we will never have a fueling incident again on Artemis. I, I freaking hope so, but I, but what I mean, with the whole point I've had so far the show is just like, it doesn't matter, like Jared Eisenman can be the best now as an administrator in the history of this agency and there's not a lot of knobs he can twist. I got it, Jake. I know it. I know it. I know, I know what it is, Jake. Do you want to hear the 14D chess?

That will predict happens tomorrow. Hit me. Hit me. Jake, what is the diameter of the exploration upper stage? The same diameter as the core stage. That is the point, Jake. 7.2 or something like that, right? Who gives a shit? I don't care what it is. The same diameter as the core stage. 14D Chess, we are transforming the Exploration Upper Stage contract to be a ground test article for all SLS core fueling tests that we will ever run in the future, thereby maintaining the Boeing contract for a fillable tank.

that is the exact diameter of a core stage, but it is only as short as it needs to be to go to the bottom by the tail service mass and be fueled constantly. We will operate these tests every six months. We will have this thing ironed out to a T. So anytime an SLS core stage comes along to be launched, it is launched.

We are now free of the expiration upper stage. We have the ability to launch this thing hopefully two more times, and then they move on with their lives. Boeing gets their thing, they don't get the contract canceled. We fly a couple of SLSs, and we are then free

of the exploration upper stage. Sure. I'm into it. Let's go. It is the transforming of Aries 5 into Artemis. It is that version for the Artemis program, which is transform the EUS to the thing that could most notably fill our issues in this campaign and then free us of the obligation of that in the future while still maintaining those contracts for people that care.

How built is the EUS? It's a tank, I think. Because that's not until Artemis 4 now? Four, yeah, four. Four. Three is this stack again. So like, Boeing, all Boeing cares about is, James four.

Artemis 4 is like, what is that, 232? Like? At best, yeah, at best. Yeah. All right. Okay, so. Okay. So the U.S. gets some ungodly amount of money per year.

Any other rocket company, you tell them, I need you to build an upper stage for a 2032 launch window. When do you think they start building it? Yeah, that would be like this. I guess it's the one that comes off the line at the time when it's ready. Let us know when you need it. And I don't pick SpaceX. Like pick the worst rocket company.

When does ULA or like when do they make sense? Worst Rocket Company, ULA, for instance. Damn. They're not having a good week. They're never coming back on the show, apparently. Don't pick SpaceX, but pick, say something like ULA and say, when do you build the Centaur for your 2032 launch? When do you start at-

30, maybe, right? If that. You probably accept raw materials in 30 to be bent. Yeah. Yeah. And we've been building this thing, the U.S. for like five years now. Also, is this going to be a fantastic edition? to my theory. The Bechtel ML2 contract gets turned into adapting the EUS for ML1 testing.

Yes. Another change order for ML2. That's what we need. They get the milkstool contract. Yeah, yeah. I'm here for that. I'm here for that. US, will it be the 10-year upper stage? If this happens, Jake, if this happens, like, it's so ticky-tack crap that only you and I and Eric Berger care about, but it would be perfectly artfully done in that you are taking the biggest threat to this program, which is those future things, I think, are the biggest threat because they tie this program in a way that only set this up to be outflown by everything else in the industry. And you are turning them into the solutions to your current problems that ail you,

and plugging that in, thereby freeing the future roadmap to do what you want. Love it. Yeah. I hate that we have to, like, imagine, like, some administrator has to, to pull some kind of like tactical maneuver like this to chip away at this thing and that sucks. Yeah. If you got to, that looks, but it serves all the needs. I mean, if you're saying, if you're the people out there saying, well, these political, you know, players want their jobs to be filled in their

district. So it's like, all right, well, do they care where the tank their building actually goes on the rocket? They might care a little bit. Or do they just care. There's a tank. Let's see. I mean, Ted Cruz is trying to wrap this baby up. You know? Like, that's true. It's true. It's true. we'll see we'll see but yeah uh i don't know man i would assume the broader update on the aromas campaign is nothing close to that yeah it's probably not no it's just a weird it's a weird time for a broader update that's what that's what's throw me off yeah so i don't know what if he rolls out the similar let's transition to starliner rolls out a similar thing of like here's what we should have said as nassah three years ago

He's got to be quick before that off bill goes through. Because that one seems, I've been trying to do the math on that one, and it seems like it's just a save Starliner bill in disguise. I've been trying to read the Starliner report. It's rough. You don't need to go much past the executive summary. No. It's rough.

Because it doesn't get into the level of detail of like, you know, stuff talked about within an office that you might expect for some. some of the statements that were made in that. Like, I wonder if there's a, some of the stuff they were saying in that press conference of, like, the unprofessional conduct and some of that kind of scary language that we used around things that were in discussion during the Starliner debacle. I didn't really see that talked about in the report as much beyond that description. Yeah.

You know, not a lot of first party sources on that. Yeah. Yeah, it was, it was like, this feels like the first time we've like codified or like officially recognized that like Boeing isn't the only problem on this, you know? And it's like, that's the scary part. Because it's like, for a while it was like, oh, just dunking on the Starliner. It's like, oh, Boeing sucks. Yeah. Boeing sucks. Like it was just like, it's so easy to just do that because it was a habit for us now. And then we like finally went, oh, actually this went.

This went way deeper. So that was not ideal. But, you know, what do you think? Like, do you think anything comes to this? Or do we just, I, like, I'm serious about that off bill, by the way. Like, I think that's what this is because it's like Boeing and Texas and Cruz. And so, I mean, for those who had ready yet, like, one of the suggestions in this bill is that NASA is not allowed to buy more than 50% of their launches from one provider. and that sounds like a nice abstract number.

It's like, oh, that makes sense. You should be diversified or whatever. But if you look at how many things that NASA buys for launches, it's like they fly six to eight times a year and six of them are like crew dragons and carter dragons like to ISS. And it's like, well, there's only one option to replace those. Right now. And so like the only way to fulfill that is to like just buy more starliners or just

fly so many more missions that you dilute the crew dragon percentage right? The other thing is I'm trying to remember it like do we know who is credited with inserting that language? Like is it

because it's sponsored by Cruz, right? Yeah, Cruz did the bill, right? That's all I really know. Right, and Can't well. The thing I'm kind of curious about, those two in particular, right? We know that Ted Cruz was somehow in cahoots with Rocket Lab

to get the Mars Telecom stuff into the Big Beautiful Bill, right? Cantwell, big Blue Origin contingent. So, like, those two would be the ones that I would price in as being the biggest beneficiaries of NASA having to go find other launch providers. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Blue is working on a crew thing.

Rocket Lab has had some, wasn't there some, like, there was that re-entry into Earth from ISS contract that Rocket Lab had at one point. It was like a study contract that we thought was more like Venus probe leaning. But like you could do like a Soyuz level thing on neutron capacity wise, right? Pretty sure. Yeah, sure. Okay.

But I'm just saying that I don't think Boeing is like, oh, we're going to get some more Starliner flights out of this sucker. Like I think the other parties maybe can draft off of the Boeing disaster here and end up in a position where you're nukeland scooping up so much of the national security market because Vulcan sucks yeah but but like the thing is with like the um with the the capsules like blue origin or rocket lab are not going to come out with a capsule in the next four six years no but if if NASA is made to cap their percentage at 50 percent then they have to fund other things to usurp that and then they would get waivers up until the point at which of those are ready Maybe, yeah.

That's the play. That's the play. That's the play. Yeah. No, the play is to put this in so that you force NASA to fund a thing that you care about. Yeah, that could be true. You know what I'm saying? Yeah.

So I don't think this is Boeing. I think this is actually blue in Rocket Lab. I don't know about Rocket Lab last. I think it's more blue than anything. Could be. And this is the Cantwell. Okay. You know, in the same way we're going to kind of insert blue origin of these other contracts,

then we're going to insert them into the NASA crude contract, too. Do you want to be like, do you want to develop, a crew capsule for the ISS, it's going to be ready in 2030, 2032. No, I don't give a shit where it's going. It can't be for that, right? So. Yeah, but this doesn't say for the ISS program. This is just generally, right?

And Jared Isamans out here saying, yeah, we're not bail on on Starliner because we've got other space stations, baby. He says that with no money going to other space stations, baby. Yeah, we don't have a lot of funding for that. That's the thing, though, right? That's your bit. Yeah. Is it, okay, I mean, the commercial Leo station sounds lovely, but let's be honest about

them for a second, right? So I, okay, the waiver thing, I could see it. I can see it. You put this thing in here and then you say, well, we'll forgive you until the market's ready, but then it's like, okay, whatever, we're the weird bill. I don't know. It's, it's weird. Also, for what it's worth, I think that's a actually good national policy to have. Like, if the point is, you think it's a strategically important position for the U.S. to maintain launch capability. It is a good policy. cargo and payloads, then I don't think it's a It depends on there being a market that can provide it though. Right. And right now it is like a disaster, right? In terms of like, okay, like the first provider is great. It's covered. We're good there. Everything's fine.

Second provider is like a big mess. Well, but I actually do think that's I think that's a legit thing from Congress then to say, NASA, you talk a game of having dual reliability things to the space station and you suck at that. You got one out of two. Why don't you go buy another one also? Like I do think. I do think. think I'm really coming out as a Congress stand here, but I do think that's it actually, like, I would totally support that. Yeah. Because NASA can, and I think to their credit, Jared Eisenman, some of the criticism was everyone relied on Starliner has to be successful because of this other storyline when what he is saying and what the Senate is saying is, or you could go buy another one. You don't have to stick

with Starliner. If Starliner sucks, you can bail on it too and go another way because that's the whole time. People have been like, well, is Boeing going to pull out a Starliner? Is NASA going pull out a Starliner and you know we've asked that occasionally people have asked that of press conferences but it's it's never really gotten pressure right and they'll ask it one question of like why isn't NASA considering that and I think the truthful answer is because we don't have the money directed to go to anything else but that and this would actually make it law that they need to so this might be more of a Starliner killer than a saver Jake I guess the because it's an off bill,

that makes more sense, right? Because the authorization bills are like, do this, please. A lot of shales. Yeah, shows. I mean, this is where a lot of the SLS was written into law stuff comes from. Like, at the time at which SLS was written into law

as launching Europa Clipper, it was in an off bill. So, yeah. Did I flip you? Is this a Starlander killer? You might have flipped me. You might have flipped me.

I think this is blue getting their funding, baby. This is them inserting those launches for the GPS things into the national security space launch program. And they got their little wedge of seven launches. And then here comes Vulcan being shut down from flying until they figure out their solid rocket booster. A total incomplete shutdown until they figure out what the hell is going on. I think that's a direct quote from the president of the United States. I will choose to be optimistic about this and agree with you. I like that.

Because if that gets, if that gets us a new capsule, I think that's a win overall. So I'm into it. And where they'll get the money is the saved money from the EUS to fueling test tank swap. Well, I mean, it's a lot easier to go to Congress and be like, I need money to do the thing you mandated I do. Like this, please fund the bill you wrote is like a much easier play. You would think. You would think. You would think some people that used to be in the Senate would have done that when they were running NASA, Jake.

and they didn't. So, yeah. We're still friends with most of the senators would have went to NASA and said, I could use some money right now in the midst of our largest geopolitical catastrophic storm

that has ever happened to the spaceflight community. And then, yeah, here we are. Yeah, yeah. Too many things to fund, Jake, and not enough. Not enough priority. Yeah. No, it's crazy. All right, so let's see,

say Starliners cooked and writing's in the wall for the Congress to go for the option to it's still, yeah, all right, okay, it's weird. It doesn't make any sense like on paper, but you're right strategically it does. What doesn't make sense on paper? Funding a third thing.

Yeah, because by the time the capital is ready, the ISS will be gone and so it won't matter what the 50-50 launch split will be a whole different thing all of a sudden. And it's like, you know, okay, whatever. Okay, that's fine. And then we got that. But that's Starliner.

There's some crazy noise that's happening right now. I can hear that. Can you hear that? I don't know what that is happening in there. I think there's a wire being threaded through my floor at the moment. That's the loudest sound I've ever heard in the background of your house before. That's because it's right under my floor. There's a whole thing happening there. I'm trying to decide if you can hear the noise happening in the background.

of my house right now, which is there is a delivery man trying to get in and deliver a bunch of stuff, but my wife's not here, so he's going to have to wait. Some of the doorbells going and the dog's barking. Doing a great show here. We're both riding the mute buttons, man. I wanted your take on the time that we heard from the Starliner press conference that there would be people being fired and then Ken Bauer Sox retired. hiring, obviously related, but like...

Yeah. I mean, it seems related to Starliner, but also like Jared has been pretty, like, explicit about changing culture. And when you say, like, I've been in the business world, when you say we're changing the culture, what that means is you're firing leaders. Like, that's straight up what it always means. Like, that's the only way you can really do it because it comes from the top, right? And so it seems like, I don't know, it's partially related at least, but this might have been in the works already. That's true. We'll see. We'll see. I don't know.

I think this, a lot of times people like to make stuff of like, oh, this person left their position. I mean, obviously related, but like without further details, I don't know that like, you know, is there an incriminating text in the Starliner debacle that was, that happened? Or is it like, well, you were in charge and this didn't go well. So I think that's probably, yeah. And it's just like, and the same thing, it's like, if you're in charge for years and that persists, like, right. There's sometimes where you can go up to like an employee and be like, you have to change this and then they change it. And there's sometimes versus like, you're just not the right person to do this the way I want it to be done. Right.

And it's sad, but it kind of has to happen sometimes. So I don't know. I'm optimistic about that, actually. All right. I think human spaceflight's been a little, little buggy. It's not been ideal in the NASA world for 10 years, 15 years. Yeah.

We'll see. So. And a lot of these, these are all old guard dudes, man. It's like slapstick comedy right now. Look at this. Jesus. so loud. I don't even know if my mute button works anymore.

It just dimmed it. Yeah, it's overpower. Hold on. Is it working now? I can hear you. You can still hear me? You're just quieter. My mute button is a sham.

What happened? I don't know. Doesn't mine do the same thing? Like if I hit it now, I'm hitting it now. Can you hear me now? Can you hear me? What happened to our mute buttons? They used to work.

They just get dimmer, right? No, but it used to work. I don't know. I thought mine just broke. or like I mistreated it, but if yours broke, too, I think we have the same one, right? Yeah, the rolls one. I think I mailed it to you, actually. Didn't you buy this for me?

When I could mail you things. Yeah, I used to send you things sometimes. We're getting dim Todd in the chat. It's giving me feedback on the tools being used right now. Tim Todd. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely a multi-tool. All right.

Starliner. So we're, all right, so Starliner, we need to check in real quick again. We had a prediction about when Starliner would or would not fly. didn't we? I think I put one in that crew would not fly on it until 2027 or something. Yeah, and like not this year but the year before

when the first, the first the most recent debacle flight debacle. Jesus Christ. And I have to qualify several levels. The last time it tried to fly a mission and that didn't go very well. You were like, oh, it's not flying for like

three years or something. You had You threw some crazy number out there. Yeah. Everyone thought I was not. And you were so, so much writer than I was. Oh, I did have one thing I wanted to mention about this press comments amidst my tools. Can you still hear me when this is happening?

Yeah. Or should I just, okay, this is fun. Is everyone like this Foley audio? All right, hold on. Now it's getting crazy. There was one part of the press conference in which, I forget who said it first.

But so it was Jared and Amit. And they were talking about, at one point, I forget the exact quote, but it almost sounded like the constructors being laid that, oh, it was, I think it was even Jared saying we didn't have the level of oversight of Starliner because of the contracting model to be able to do what we should have done. Like we didn't have the appropriate controls. It felt like a dangerous thing for them to put out there because, this is so funny that I'm doing this in the middle of this noise, but now you know a little bit about my life.

We said in the pre-show, it's hanging out with us so you know. us a little better. And this show, I guess, is kind of like that too, Jake. I don't know what our life's sort of like. So it felt like a very dangerous line to start to bring out and kind of surprising to me for Jared Isaac's sake that fixed price led us to a situation where we didn't have the oversight to shut down Starliner and cost plus would have been better. They were comparing it to SLS and saying, why do you trust that out on the pad when Boeing's doing this and saying, well, we have a different model there where we have increased oversight. But they didn't clarify, because for a long time, that was exactly how cost plus and fixed price was made to be, right?

That fixed price was a black box. You ask somebody for a thing. They make you a thing. You get the thing. And cost plus, you're very deeply integrated with this company and you know what's going on and you manage the program. And that's a dangerous line to start threading. If you're somebody who wants more fixed price stuff to happen and you're saying that, well, this bad situation that was covered by all the news in the entire world and is a type A mishap that, that was because of the contracting methodology that NASA didn't have the control over. That is a huge wedge for everybody else to say, all right, well, we got to do cost plus on the next one then. It's very weird, yeah. I'm also, and I'm connecting that with the strategy to use fewer contractors and in-house a bunch of talent like with NASA. Because he said that too, right?

We're like, we're going to bring it back. First party, NASA talent is going to work again, right? We're not just going to outsource us to every. That was very confusing to me, too. and now these are connected in my brain. But it's interesting because, like, haven't we heard before that the whole thing was like, oh, we didn't trust SpaceX.

And so compared to the Starliner contract, they got way more oversight. You know, they're both cost plus, but like we asked a lot more questions from SpaceX and asked to see things and whatever they did. And it's like, oh, it's Boeing. Boeing will take care of it. They just kind of left them.

So that's kind of funny. I don't know. So I don't know if you like, if that means like what we need to do cost like a fixed price contract, but you know, just provide more guardrails to it or if it's like, well, no, actually the crew capsule was never really supposed to be a good, that's not a good fixed price item. Like that's not a good candidate for a fixed price contract. And you got lucky with SpaceX, right? Maybe that's the thing you want to say there.

Because I do, I've said that before. like fixed price makes sense. If the thing is like marketable and exists on the market, you can just go buy it. Like fixed price is great when you need to lease a car because there's just cars you can just buy. You go to the store and you buy a car. Like it's fine, right? You don't need to like make a bespoke thing. But like is a crew capsule that transports you service to like the International Space Station?

That's not a bespoke thing, you know? Like they had to create that market and then they tried to fix price buy it. And it's interesting when you come to the other side of that and you go, well, we got lucky with one provider. Yeah, which I think is how you get to a Senate saying, yeah, you got lucky with one provider, but you said you needed two, so why don't you fix yourself so that you always have two? Because NASA doesn't have any mandate to do that right now. That was just the idea behind the program. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Jared's saying, well, that, and that inspiration is why we ended up in the situation with Starliner, where they pushed for Starliner to keep flying and to return the crew because we needed two providers. But that isn't written in the law necessarily. That was for the military launch side. That was a, right? The assured access to space was a, and I think that was actually written in the law and said, you must maintain this.

Or at least military doctrine, which to me feels tighter than a NASA doctrine, you know. Yeah, it was just NASA policy is what you're saying, right? That was their thought. But if Congress is saying, yeah, it's a great idea. Why don't you actually do that? Hold them to that. And then NASA has to go fund that, right? that's yeah yeah yeah yeah that's messy hey that's a problem speaking of assured access to orbit jake

the solid rocket booster on vulcan not not doing not doing their thing not doing great northrop yeah hmm what you got on that uh i got well it's not a good day to be uLA i would say that's uh down a CEO and your rocket doesn't work and you retired all the other ones you have. So, yeah, not a good day to be ULA. It's funny because they would be like, well, our rocket works, but the ones that we bought from the other people don't work. The ones that our parents bequeathed us in the divorce are not around anymore. A lot of nozzle problems, though.

Yeah. I don't know. So it's interesting because like, didn't Atlas fly? Because Atlas flew these new North of Grumman ones first. They were they were on Arrowjet Rocket Dime ones for a long time. That was like that standard Alice solid booster. And then they were like Vulcan's coming. Let's swap these out for North Grumman. It was like a shorter version. Right. It was like Gem 33 and Jim 63. 63. Xcel goes on Vulcan. Right. And so like we'll get some flight heritage. And those all seem to just work fine. and then they put them on Atlas and we're like two for four or whatever it is. Yeah. Yeah. That's not great. No. I don't know if it's like the longer.

Is there a problem with the longer version or are these just issues that didn't crop up with Atlas like miraculously? And I think the gem boosters, they even had a longer heritage than that too, right? They flew on Delta 2. I think they were something else. Yeah. But they weren't on Atlas. Right. Maybe there were the Delta ones.

They were shorter, shorter ones, yeah. Yeah, Jim, Jim, something else. 40s and 40-somethings. I mean, then also North of Grumman, right, has had a nozzle issue on Omega. They've had nozzle issues on Artemis, on SLS test firings as well. And they're all, like, seemingly unrelated? Well, yeah, okay, Jesus. Yeah, but I don't know.

Yeah. Not good. Are we watching like Old Space rot before our eyes? Is that what's happening here? Feels like it, man. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, much like we said with the Artemis 2 storyline, right? It's all the things that we've talked about for so long are now just apparent for everybody.

And it does kind of all feel this. All these stories feel the same to us. Right? Yeah. It's one of those things you're like, you hate being right. Yeah. Like, I knew it. Solid rock boosters are bad though.

So as an add-on, they're bad, you know. Well, and that's the thing. So SLS is a little different. But like for Vulcan and for Atlas, it's very much like a, the solid rocket booster is very much a band-aid solution. It's like, I designed a rocket and the engine's not powerful enough. So I'm just going to like tape some extra engines to the outside of it and hopefully that's enough thrust. Right. Like that's like, that's not a good design.

If you're like greenfielding a rocket, like a from scratch brand new thing, wouldn't you want to just have like a single? single thing with one thing. So it's like very simple. Of course you would, right? But they don't do that. So like the whole design concept, the exact same theme where it's just like it's fundamentally coming from a bad place, right? Um, I like that as a theory. Because it's like, you actually need those saw. It's like the course age was in no way designed to lift anything off the ground. Right. Yeah. But I mean, that was the it was that conversation you just had for us, but in the 80s when that happened. Right. Like even then though, all. the other shuttle mechanisms were not shaken out to be good and we needed a little extra and that got us over the hump and yeah i mean those are also enormous right yeah like shuttle and sless feel a little different because it's like it's literally like 95 percent of your ground thrust you take off right yeah the balance is so out of whack yeah yeah um i don't know what vulcans is i guess they're very thrusty so i don't know maybe maybe it is a significant amount but well and you put six of them on there for sure Yeah. Yeah.

I might actually do that math, but it still feels like they're literally just strap on boosters. They definitely feel much more like an afterthought, which is like we have a thrust gap we have to solve, right? Whereas SLS and subtle, it was more like, no, this is what we're choosing as our primary. It's fundamental to the architecture. Yeah. Yeah. And like, well, we use these ones and they're so big and so we're using makes sense. And they're easy. They're just simple, solid things. You just, they're just can. Slide them and they go.

Fill them up with stuff and sign them on fire. It's good, right? Yeah, it is a, it, these are three very similar storylines. Yeah. Like, not shocking and yet sad. Yeah. Yeah. Bummer.

Because like early on, there was like a lot of the discussion of like, oh, we got these disruptors. They're coming on the market. Things are going to be different. And then it's like, no, that's pop pipe. these people have been around for a long time. You know, these old space companies, they know what they're doing. They've got good processes. They're more expensive, but like they've got the mission insurance.

They've got the heritage. Like, you know, like you're touting all those things. And then like over time, that just becomes less and less true. And now we've like, I feel like we've like crossed a threshold in the last, I don't know, maybe four or five years or something where like we're starting to see them really stumble. And the disruptors are now. the primes. Yeah.

Well, that was the other thing. It was like, well, we have these two. So we'll see both models operating side by side. And you're like, we're not, though. Like, one of them's operating and one of them's not. You know, and the Starliner thing. Starliner bridges the gap. At the beginning of the Starliner program, they were like the hot shit and the other guy

was the disruptor. And now they're just the garbage. You one's right. Yeah. And I don't know. Like, I truly don't know where the Starliner storyline goes from here because I hear what, you know, Jared's reasoning was, well, we're going to need more human spaceflight in the future because there's going to be other places to go. And I believe that. But,

but I don't know that that is such an interesting prospect to continue with a thing that is so clearly, you know, not going to get there. And like, what a shit place to be in? Like with the, you've got one, like, shit place for Jared Isaac when to be in. Because you've got one good, crew capsule, one that's garbage, ideas from anyone else. Your space station has a horizon written into law and the replacements are like still in the, I have no idea stage. And then you're like, make a policy and make a decision. Like that's a, that's a tough place to be in, man. I don't know. I don't, that is, that's one of those times where it's like, yep, this is the hard part about making decisions and being the decision-making guy.

Like, that's not one way, you have to put it all in the line and make a call and make a guess with everything you know and go for it. And it's like, ugh, that's rock. I wouldn't want a job of trying to convince everyone that your idea in a sea of uncertainty is the right one. And how to figure out what you want to do and what you think is the right path, but how do you roll that out without having run it through its paces through every level that would need to sign off on that?

and how long does that process take? And what does that entail? And yeah, I mean, to some extent, you know, are NASA and Boeing playing chicken on who is going to cancel Starliner first? You know? I'm very shocked that Boeing didn't at that moment where they were changing leadership

and they were reconsidering everything. I'm truly shocked that they did not proceed with getting rid of Starliner, either selling it off or canceling it outright. I mean, I've been thinking But that, because that's related to the whole idea of, like, them selling off their space division, right? Which is, like, not even a conspiracy theory anymore. Like, didn't they come out and say that they were thinking about that?

Yeah, yeah. So you have, like, the part of ULA, and then you have the Boeing space sector. So you have Starliner, and you have the SLS contract. And there's all those, like, components. ISS contract as well, yeah. The ISS contract. And, like, yeah, it seems so obvious that, like, you guys aren't good at this and or, you don't want to be in it.

And the market has changed quite a bit. Like, got your losses, dude. Like, get out. Like, you know. And they're big enough to be able to figure that out, right? Like, other companies that would be absolutely apocalyptic. But Boeing can accounting their way through this if they really wanted to. They've done that on other things, you know, elsewhere.

Yeah. They have a whole other business that's fine. Commercial defense space. Like, they've got a lot going on there. Yeah. And so the fact that they didn't tells me that there's, like, there's something we're missing here and that like they've got some reason that they want to continue on this. So either it's like a belief they can turn whatever they have around and make it profitable

on a long term or there's like a future market that they are intending to go into and these are positioned well to tackle that. I don't I don't really know what it is but like I'm super dubious and I just I don't get it. I don't get it at all. I'm confused. I don't know as I guess because like the other option is like Boeing leadership is making a mistake that that's you know wait hold on is that that they're not canceling it is a mistake yeah like we can't we can't assume like we're missing some 40 testing we're like oh no I thought of this because I am right right right right right and you didn't because you're a podcaster like they they they could be like no they could just be fucking out you know like they could just be making a big mistake this is the thing

that I give Tim Dodd our friend a lot of credit for going on that that show with the guy who wants to talk about UAPs and stuff and being like, yeah, is the more likely answer all those things you just listed or like this other very plausible reason that like which one of these things is more unlikely. And you're right. After a certain point, you're like, but could it just be a weather balloon? Because it might also just be a weather balloon, you know? Like Boeing leadership making a mistake is the weather balloon in this instance.

Yeah. And like they've made mistakes before. So we actually have precedent for that, you know. I don't know. It's like I try to, I try to think of like big companies like that as operating reasonably rationally because like there's a lot of checks and balance on that. Right. It's not just like one person up there being like go for it. Like they're they've answerable to a board. They've got their own leadership like counsel that's giving them advice. They've got shareholders. They've got market pressure. They've got all kinds

of stuff operating on them to like help them do the right thing and make the right call. Right. But sometimes they screw up. And there could be weirder stuff, right? Like someone in the accounting arm of Boeing could be like, well, it's useful for us to have on the balance sheet that there's one point, whatever billion dollars owed to us by NASA. And that is actually more valuable to us than canceling for the savings of 400 million or something. Or like you could have something where it's like they do want to offload it. And they're like, this is a bad thing. And no one wants it.

And they can't sell it for any amount of money that makes sense. And so it's like, well, we're just going to ride it out until it's done. And then just. Until what, though? That's the part I can't cross the barrier on. Of like, why not canceling? Because it's not like, it's not like this would be a huge, like, reputation hit, right? To some extent, I thought the time that Boeing had where they were having such horrible reputation damage done by plane plane, way of plane, plane,

and plane, you know, the military tanker plane that they've been under fire for, very similar. Some people have been like, well, it's the SLS of the military side, Star-Lang. They had so many things going on that it felt like a really valuable time for them to offload some bad press and just like ditch different storylines that could be risks for them because they're already so low that they're just like, well, let's just get rid of these future risks now. Yeah. I think the more troubling part for NASA is that this extension for the ISS to go to 23rd to 2 is now making its way through Congress. and if you

right now, pairing down to those three Starliner missions got you to the end of ISS with the dragons that you had left and the Starliners that you had left momentarily pause, Jake for filler content

while the sawing happens. You had enough flights to get you to that with that pairing back of Starliner missions and if they add going to 2032 now what, right? Are you just buying more dragons?

Probably. But at some point the end of ISS will be so close so that the potential future impact of Starliner is nil. And if we haven't developed a commercial space station budget at that point to actually field these things, then that that storyline goes out the window that Jared's saying. Well, the future, we will need human space flights, like, to wear at that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I mean, in some ways, Boeing space leadership is in the same position as Jared Eisenman, right? Where it's like you just have no, no freaking clue what the landscape's going to look like in the 2030s in terms of destinations and providers and all that kind of stuff. And so if you got plans that you want to be a part of that, that's the thing. If you very broadly just want to be a part of that, then that could be enough to drive decision. Like, we're going to stay in the game, right? Yeah.

The man in the arena quote, you just read that every morning on your way to work. Well, this went places including into my home renovation, Jake. Can you plug what's going on next week? And I'm going to meet myself so that it doesn't get overridden. If we're confident enough to plug what's happening next week. I think we're confident. Yeah, yeah. So next week we have Justin Cyrus coming on to talk about their lunar LTV, lunar outpost.

So we're going to have the rover people. We're going to come on and tell us about rovers on the moon. Which, like, there should have been announcement? been at nobody's like schrodinger's announcement like we may get canceled because who knows all the sudden they're may maybe that's the future update of the artemus campaign you know could very well be uh hopefully it was not scheduled to fly on u.s in anthony's eos hypothetical world so we'll we'll see yeah but one one way or another we're going to talk about moon buggies so that's what I'm happy but moon buggies I love it um okay anything else to plug off not

dot com slash discord you can listen to us and try to convince jake that the 1980 lake blasted games were a thing he should pay attention to and maybe next week you'll get a review of the movie miracle which jake has never heard of let alone seen he doesn't even know who brooks is nor the epic speech that was given i do know who kurt russell is though so we're good there okay good and uh my office now smells like sawdust so i'm gonna leave bye everybody see yeah 455-4-3-2-1, enter death.