Off-Nominal - 251 - Yada Yada Yada (with Dan Rasky, Charles Miller, and Charlie Camarda)

Episode Date: August 6, 2026

Jake and Anthony are joined by Dan Rasky, Charles Miller, and Charlie Camarda—the sources of the heat shield discourse!—to talk about Starship Flight 13 and thermal protection systems overall. Topics Off-Nominal - YouTube Episode 251 - Yada Yada Yada (with Dan Rasky, Charles Miller, and Charlie Camarda) - YouTube Some Thoughts on Starship V13 Flight — Starship’s Current TPS is a “Dead-end” to Full-and-Rapid-Reusability Experts warn current Starship heat shield tech is a "dead end" for rapid reuse - Ars Technica Is Orion’s heat shield really safe? New NASA chief conducts final review on eve of flight. - 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. Go at throttle up. Negative return. Well, Jake, we're breaking new ground here tonight. We've threatened the quad box. We've threatened an octobox. We've never done a heptobox. What are we in?

Hex, not a hexabox. Penta. Penta box. Penta box. Yeah. Good name. Good name for it. Getting a little creative with the layouts here.

But it's going to be a good one. We had some fun with it. It should be fun. Yeah. It's our favorite show. Our favorite kind of show, when we get on here and we start yelling about something, and then the people that we're yelling about are like, we should come on and talk. And we're like, you're absolutely right. You totally should.

It's fun when you guys argue. Yeah, you know. So the best part about this whole thing is that five days ago, Jake had no idea any of this was going on on the internet. He was totally tuned out. Didn't know anyone was talking about anything. And then I start yelling. And here we are. You know, we got five people on the show all right.

So it's good stuff, Jake. That's what we like. That's the internet and action. I'm excited for it. Yeah, it is. Yeah, it is. Uh, we're doing, this is our, this is our Jake's vacation block of the summer. So we're pre-recorded some shows. This one only two days pre-recorded before you out of town. Are you, do you have a special drink before you go away. What's your strategy? Uh, not special. No, no. Uh, I don't really have as much of a chance as I wanted to to say, get up something special today. So I have a stevea-oke-free dos-a-oh. So, yeah. no Steve Aoki on this one he's exited the space scene yeah he's he's no his sponsorship deal has expired and so the cans are normal again so good all right let's go let's go in order Dan you got anything which way are we up here we got Dan I guess we should

introduce our guests Dan Dan Rasky Rasky Rasky Rasky Rasky Rasky I mean where do you want me to begin on the on the bio you want to give us a little elevator pitch on Dan Rasky and your drink. How about we do that?

Yeah, let's do that. I mean, I'll start with the drink. So it's been hot here in Denver, so I've got a summer shady. Oh, yeah. Heck yeah. There you go. Love that. That's some refreshment. Yeah, that's a nice refreshing hot drink. So, a real brief while. Yeah, I'd worked at NASA for almost 40 years, 38 years, never expected that. And my specialty was, he shields and particularly working tiles. We did a lot of the work for these shuttle tile tile systems and follow-on system.

So I know this topic inside out. You are the tile enthusiast that we specified last week. We found them. And you know how it is? I know the good, the bad, and the ugly. And so that was one of the reasons why when I saw Elon and pursuing what he was on Starship, like, ooh, Elon, I'm not, you know, if you want rapid reusability, ooh, you're barking up the wrong tree.

And again, you have this last Starship 13 flight, which again, great they got the vehicle back, but also showed, you know, the challenge are going to have with 18,000 tiles, any number of which can crack or break and, you know, from flight to flight. And it's like, okay, this is going to be a really big challenge. So the tile enthusiast got the work on your back. That's good. Well, actually, see, I retired in December. I thought it was out of this game.

But then Charles, I'm going to pass the Charles. Charles kind of drugged me back in. Yeah, the ringleader, Charles. What's going on over there? Oh, Charles. Well, I've been conspiring to open the space frontier for about 40 years. And all three of us have. been championing fully, full and rapid

reusability for almost our entire careers. I was working on this in the 1990s. I got the first funding for the X-33 passed through Congress. I chaired a cheap access to space symposium in 1997 in Washington, D.C. So this is the sine qua non-a-quanon number one national space policy issue that we need to solve, right? So we have, SpaceX has done amazing things.

We have gone from about 10 years ago, flights per month. We are now flights per week. We're on the verge of flights per day. In fact, with even this current TPS, I think we can get flights per day. But what we all really want is flights per hour. That changes everything. And so we've been working on this all our careers. We have deep knowledge of all aspects of the challenge,

Elon and SpaceX are doing an amazing job. They're doing everything they can. And what we're saying is they're at a dead end for this TPS to get the flights per hour, right? To get the airline-like operations. And we think there's some things our nation can do, and we look forward to going deep on that with you. And what are you drinking? What is the ringleader's choice? I am drinking a dogfish head 90-minute pale ale.

So I wish I, you know, for the free marketing here, we got free beer, but that's not the case. Yeah, I mean, listen, you're drinking out of my neck of the woods over here, so I appreciate that. That's not too far away. All right, Charlie, you've been in the news a lot lately, so I feel like people might be more recently. I've heard your name running around these parts. So, Anthony, you're going to take a shot of pronouncing my last name? Charlie Carmada No

No Are you Carmada Camarda Camarda Camarda Camarda It's not an extra army I thought you would get it

I thought you were a little bit Paisan there I'm a Paison I guess I'm not a writer That's how much of a Paison No No Anthony

He's had too much to drink Charlie You're talking about a guy that That was shocked I know I didn't get I didn't get It was called Copacola, you know.

Listen. It blew me away. I didn't get the message. I'm drinking water. But, you know, I'm the oldest one here. I started working at NASA in 1974. And so I retired after about 45 years. And I worked in a branch called the Thermal Structures Branch.

And that was even before Dan was working in ceramic materials. But our two branches were basically constantly competing. between a ceramic TPS, a metallic TPS, or a metallic passive, a semi-passive or actively cooled version of a thermal protection system. So we had a lot of really good competition back in the day of all these different thermal protection systems for hypersonic vehicles. Right. And at one point, I led the technology maturation team for the National Aerospace Plan.

And we could talk about that because for that particular vehicle, it was such a complex vehicle. And the environment was extremely, extremely difficult. We looked at every possible thermal protection system. And we worked with aerospace companies in the United States, around the United States, prime airframe contractors and engine contractors working together, sharing ideas to advance the thermosans. protection system to develop this very complex vehicle. And so I stopped working as a researcher after about 22 years when NASA really stopped doing research. And I said, you know what? I think

I'm going to apply to be an astronaut. I applied to be an astronaut when I was 44 years old. I was selected in 1996. And I was so fortunate to fly on the first flight right after the Columbia accident. And that was really an engineer's dream because we had to develop lots of new technology in order to make sure that we understood the problem and would be safe enough to fly. And so I worked, I was an astronaut for about 18 years. I was the director of engineering at Johnson Space Center for a little bit. And then I was a senior advisor at NASA. And then I retired. I wrote a book. And I guess I was the first instigator that got this team together when I started raising issues.

with the Artemis heat shield and that's where you probably heard my name Anthony

you and you and our buddy Eric Berger were hanging out and got you were at the review meeting

and so was you and then was somebody else that they invited to was just there was someone from the Wall Street

Micah Maidenberg was there as well I don't know what happened our invites I think they probably got lost

somewhere in the mouth but this has been going on for a while, right? We've been watching. You know, I headed up the transition team for NASA for Trump Vance. And one of the issues I identified was this problem that we were no longer developing the next generation of Mach 25 TPS. And during the transition team, I talked to a bunch of people in NASA. And basically, a lot of them hadn't thought about it, but within several weeks,

NASA leadership was coming back to me and saying, Charles, you have a really good point. We've stopped funding research and development in this area. And I talked to, it was NASA elite senior leadership at NASA headquarters, and it was all the centers. We, the transition team talked to Langley in Ames and tried to figure out what they were doing, talked to the leadership in STMD and AARMD, and we talked to them all.

And they basically all admitted that, Nobody is, they were not seriously, NASA, our nation was not seriously working on. In fact, most of the most important stuff that NASA is doing is being funded by Air Force money. And so what happened? So when you, you know, we started digging into this Starship, you know, actually, everything Elon's tried so far visibly was technology was developed 25, 30 years ago, including some of, on Starship 13 by Dan Rasky himself. self, right? Those tiles and that liner, which we can get into, Dan helped develop in flight test 30 years ago. And so we could, but there is a ton of ideas that's just buried that could, that are the TRL 1, 2, 3. They're so nascent. It's too early for SpaceX to do, right? But we need to do it for not only for SpaceX, but all these other companies to get the full and rapid reusability. And I'll just put one,

more point on this. This is critical we do now because China is coming, they are going to do it. And if we do not fund the fully reusable Mach 25 TPS that is possible and China does, we will lose world leadership in space within five years. Because whoever gets to flights per day first, who gets to airline-like operations in space will dominate space. And that should be the United States. And, you know, that's what we need to do. All right. There's a couple.

Yeah, go ahead, Dan. Oh, good. Just head on to it a little bit because, yeah, that was a very good background for both Charlie and Charles. And the fact of the matter is that Mach 25 TPS is a really hard problem. Okay. And like I said, even Elon acknowledges that. It's a really hard problem. And you heard probably talking about, yeah,

the National Aerospace plane. There's a lot of folks that came together, a lot of money was spent, but we actually never got to a flying vehicle to help refine these ideas. So you're talking about a very difficult problem. And Elon is good at taking on difficult problems. like what he's done with his raptors and, you know, and recovering the first stage and so on.

But the TPS, because it is such a, I think, a specialized technology that without some government assistance, Elon's really handicapped, in my opinion, to get to the type of solution that we need that Charles was talking about to get airline-like operations. And again, there are some good concept. that I think that could be developed and eventually flight test and did flight proven, but it's going to take some resources and probably beyond what any individual company can do. And this goes back to this whole historical analogy

to the NACA back in the early 1900s that helped fledgling, you know, U.S. aircraft manufacturers get back in the game after Europe was kicking our bottoms after the Wright brothers, you know. uh, Kitty hot flights.

So we're kind of in the same, in the same situation again, in my opinion. So let me dig into that first. Maybe we can talk, yeah, like current, current stuff and then I do want to pick your guys' brain on

those future things that we could get to. Um, but on your comment there that, that needs to be, have a government involvement to progress through that. What is it that makes you say that when we're at a moment where SpaceX is at this turning point where they're, Their revenue is now NASA levels, which if they are going to continue to grow and continue to grow, and specifically Starship at the center of their plans, that is really a linchpin to unlocking the revenues that they're talking and now beholden to as a public company.

You know, that's things that people can go to jail for if they are lying in those documents. So the pressure is there to make them spend R&D money on the scale of NASA projects, right? I mean, you'll get like an Apple R&D budget. it is absolutely enormous compared to the NASA budget. So if SpaceX is on this trajectory and it demands Starship to get there, then wouldn't they also have those resources to throw at it? So what is it that pushes it in that direction for you, Dan? Can I jump in there, Anthony?

Yeah, sure. What we're talking about is a research capability, and most companies have left research. They're looking at more near-term technology. Okay, research, you don't just, buy it, you grow it, and you have to mentor this capability to do that. And so, for instance, Elon is doing a great job flight testing full-scale systems. He could learn a lot more about the physics of the problem to truly solve the problem or come up with advanced concepts.

If he looked at wind tunnels, hypersonic wind tunnels that were large enough that you could look at an array of tiles. That's one of the things that China has surpassed us in. the number of really good hypersonic facilities, large facilities. For instance, when I was a young researcher, we had an 8-foot high-temperature tunnel. So we could test arrays of shuttle tiles, like 12 shuttle tiles. We're talking about 8-foot sections in a hypersonic flow, whereas these objects, you're lucky if you have something on the order of 1 foot. And so when you look at a systemic problem, a systems problem,

with these tiles that are mechanically attached, you have to understand the vibration loads, you have to be able to model it, and you have to make sure your analysis can predict what's happening. You don't get that kind of fidelity by just doing a flight test. That's how you really solve the root cause

of how these systems fail. Let me give you an example and an analogy, Anthony, because I think you ask a question a lot of people are asking. So first of the first of the, all, the analogy is like the arc jet tests. There are integration of arc jets with materials and stresses and hypersonic wind flows facilities that people would like to build that nobody can build, right? Elon would just use it for one vehicle and say, I don't need that anymore,

right? So you don't build that permanent infrastructure. That's a national asset like the NACA built huge wind tunnels to accelerate American aviation back. in the 1920s and 30s, that helped America recover world leadership after we lost leadership. And NASA and the U.S. government could do that today with many different facilities. If you go want to get in, you know, even pay NASA Ames to get in the ARCJet facility, you know, I hear, you know, it's six, nine, 12 months waiting. It doesn't matter if you have the money, you know, they're backed up, right? So there's a problem. China doesn't have that problem.

They are funding this fundamental research infrastructure that should be a government capability. And then advancing Tier 1 to 3. So there's hundreds of ideas out there. You want to get to ideas. The acceleration in additive manufacturing, AI are inventing new materials. You want to lay up so many new materials. You want to lay up so many new materials with advanced, you know, additive manufacturing. You want to get in the TRL, you know, from that TRL one to two level to the three, four, five level and test them in a facility.

You want to do hundreds of different types of materials. And then once they're proven, Elon's going to grab and say, I'm going to try that in a flight test. Right. So that's a natural partnership that we have. And, you know, we did this one other time. So I basically, what I hear people doing has echoes of 120 years ago, right? There were in 1903 two geniuses invented flight, everybody so is impossible. So when I hear people say, Elon's a genius, just let Elon do it.

That's what we did in 1905, 6, 7, 8, 910. We said, the Wright brothers, they're geniuses. We don't have to do anything. Everybody gave up their agency and said, just let the Wright brothers do it. And you know what happened? Langley will do it. He'll do it. Yeah, Langley.

Well, we actually, the government spent $50,000 on Sam Langley. And they said, well, these American entrepreneurs did it. Their geniuses, just let them do it. We don't need to do anything. The result is by 1910-11, Europe had thrown money at their companies with government support, and we lost world leadership. And we didn't recapture world leadership for 20 years. So we gave up responsibility to do public-private partnerships and to help American entrepreneurs, and we lost.

And for those of you're saying, just let Elon do it, that's not taking responsibility. That's giving up agency. And it's allowing Elon, it's requiring Elon to stand alone against all of China. So how is Tesla doing in China right now? They've actually lost leadership in electric vehicles because he's all by himself. So we can't let that happen in space launch. We need to partner with these American entrepreneurs. We need a whole of government strategy.

You know, this needs to be America's team to help these American entrepreneurs break down, achieve this very hard goal. Let me add on one other thing on that. We have a really good recent example of the government working synergistically with industry that started SpaceX. And that's the COTS program, the NASA program, commercial orbital transportation services. Without that program, SpaceX wouldn't exist today. And actually, I had a key role in getting that program going.

Charles got the legislation pass, and I was on actually the NASA startup team that pulled together some forward-thinking individuals. And we came up with a very novel program that was one of the most successful NASA's ever had. and SpaceX came out of that program. And when the government understands its role, and industry understands their role, and you can work together collaboratively, you can make tremendous progress. Okay, and that's what we did with pods

that was followed in with the commercial resupply program that provided cargo transport to the ISF. And people forget that, and Elon even will tell you that. You will tell you that without the, COPS program without CRS, he would have had to close shop on SpaceX. We only would have been talking about it. And the problem is...

Just one second, Charlie. And so I think in part it's not losing sight of what part of our society is best suited to get a certain part of the job done. And when do we need to work together? And companies are very good at taking... We're talking about TRL, that technical readiness level, okay, taking mature technologies and applying them. The government, when it's working right, is good at pursuing leapfrog ideas that are very low, very immature and aren't ready to be adopted by anyone, but develop them to a point that then a good company can pick up and run with them. And so that's what we're talking about here is we starting that type of collaboration and synergy between

effective government and industry. Go ahead, Charlie and Jake, is that NASA is not what it once was. We're talking about an agency that has stopped research in applied research for over 35 years. And I write about this in my book, Mission Out of Control. And so we're at a very tenuous point where NASA doesn't have the expertise and will not be able to grow it fast enough to help. people like Elon Musk, Blue Origin, Jeff Bezos. And so I think what Charles and Dan, what we're talking about is this is going to take a collective,

the United States government, national labs, Department of Defense, and NASA teaming up together, much like we did developing a technology maturation program for the aerospace plane. Because that's how bad things are now, because we have to accelerate the learning curve. We have to share this information. between organizations. We have to grow the young people coming out of colleges. We have to mentor them and getting advanced degrees in order to have this research capability that our aerospace industry is going to need.

It's not something you could just buy off the shelf like Jared Isaacman is talking about doing and pulling these people from industry. Yeah. So I think we're conflating to things. here though, right? Because on one hand, we have this great point that you're making that NASA should do more research and I think

no one will really argue with that because I think I'm on record on this show too and saying that the space technology mission director should double in size. That's some of the coolest stuff that NASA does and it's super beneficial. So like absolutely that should happen, right? But the same time, just like you said, like we're

have trouble getting that funding sometimes or we can't get the projects going or whatever reason, right? And so if you're If you're SpaceX, your choices wait around and maybe hope that NASA will get the funding together and start a program and make tiles or they can work on it themselves, right? So let me tell you what I think. They're all shaking your hands. I'm bored. No, no.

It's good you brought that up, Jake. Let me take that point on directly. You guys were so hopeful in the last highlight, Jake says a question. flying down the mountain. Here we go. So we've seen a lot of people on the internet think that what we're saying is like, well, SpaceX should stop.

No, not, no, they should do exactly what they're doing. Right. I think, you know, so what SpaceX is working on and now with will likely be fully reusable, but it won't be rapid. But that is a 100 metric ton reusable spaceship that flies once a month. is revolutionary.

It's much better than what we have. We should absolutely do that. So if he can get it down to once every two weeks, great. Right? And then build 30 of them and you're flying once or twice a day. Like, that's amazing. But what we're saying is we're within reach to do once an hour. But we've got to start investing now in the next generation of technology.

So, yeah, go operational with V3, right? And fly them once a month, build 30 of them, have a, you know, 365 flights per year once a day. That is revolutionary. There's a lot of amazing things will happen. But we still shouldn't give up on, you know, 10 times better, you know, once an hour. And we need to start funding the breakthrough technology for that now. And that might be V4 of Starship or V5 of Starship. It keep evolving, rapidly iterating.

No, Elon's doing exactly what he should, but I think there's people in SpaceX as well as Blue Origin and Rocket Labs and Stoke and relativity saying, please, right, we need better breakthrough technology so we can, as a nation, can get to Mach 25 reusability for, you know, anybody else because this is strategically critical. Hey, I just had a great idea. You know how much money the government has spent trying to develop a hypersonic demonstrator? Like the X-33, the single-state show of the vehicle, like the National Aerospace Plain, we have a hypersonic demonstrator that doesn't cost that much to fly. Imagine if we had a technology maturation program where all the companies work together and test their ideas on Starship. Well, that's kind of what I want to get to next, right? Which is, you know, in Charles' design there, where we're flying 365 of these a year, you know, Charlie, you were saying that those test flights can't get you over the edge that you as a researcher would need to make this next version of a TPS.

So I'd love to hear a little bit about that of why are they going to be limited in that way? Why isn't super cheap flight as good as a wind tunnel for this particular advancement? Well, okay, so we have wind tunnel test. And so what we talk about creating new knowledge to understand the real physics of the problem. When you understand the physics of the problem, you can not only predict the behavior that the TPS is going to see, maximum temperatures, maximum stresses, you can predict how it's going to fail. And that takes hours and hours of laboratory testing. And so we develop these intelligent tests where it highly instrumented with precise. instruments so that we could calibrate our models that we're testing our theories on how we develop

these models to predict how these systems are going to perform. And we could do hours and hours of them inexpensively and precisely understand the physics of the problem. Then you can develop these very large computational tools to look at the entire flow system. You can look at how each one of those tiles might be vibrating independently, and you could kind of predict what kind of loads and what kind of life, how they will be limited. But this is what we call a building block approach. You go from material size specimens, coupon size specimens to understand how a material is going to fail, to larger type specimens in the objects, which gets closer to simulate reality, to then even larger systems on the ground. And this is how we really perfect the

tools in order for us to predict how our systems are going to behave. All right. So here's like a good. Let me suggest one thing that might really help move this along is one thing that might really help move this along is one thing the government could potentially do is say the government had its own starship and that we could do flight demonstrations of different PPS systems. Again, bring in a research group and now you have leapfrog technologies.

If you do the appropriate ground development, ground testing, you have a chance to fly it on a real starship-wise vehicle. See, that could be some way to get those, you know, get the learning cycles going where you have a range of different leapfrog technologies that you're testing. And see then SpaceX can sit back and say, okay, well, which ones are performing the best? We're going to adopt this one. Stokes can adopt one. You know, the various companies can look and say, okay, which one is going to best fit? And it might be a different, better technology for different companies because they have slightly different concepts, right? Yeah.

And so they, you know, they have slightly different needs, slightly different shapes, like, you know, systems concept. In fact, you know, just putting a piece of TPS on a hypersonic reentry vehicle, whether it's the VAS or VARDA vehicle, you know, reentry capsule or Starship or Rocket, you know, Rocket Lab. starting to do this. That doesn't tell you about a very innovative systems concept, right, where the TPS and the system itself kind of work hand in hand, which might drive you somewhere totally unique. All right. So you've got me on, I think one thing that Jake and I talk about a lot is the state of the industry right now where, you know, we've went from, we have a monopoly in this one area of the industry, and now we are in a new monopoly of the industry. And no one really is catching up to SpaceX, and we both are like, this is a major concern for the entire space market,

because here we are, you can say that SpaceX wants to phase out Dragon, and Human Space Flight isn't a real tizzy in the 2030s if nothing changes. So we are definitely concerned about that as a unit. I'll speak for Jake a little bit. So I think you've got both of us appealing to, hey, this is a national asset that we should be investing in more heavily. Where you're losing me is why SpaceX would not take this on it on their own? Because I think in the model that we've seen through their 13 flights, they've shown us the way that they would do this, which is areas of Starship that they've tested either missing tiles or in the early days it was different attachment types, different arrangements of tiles. They've done these small-scale tests just

what we can see visually and flown them through the paces. So if they're now getting to the point where, you know, as you guys point out in writing, that, you know, this thing that is, I just saw this picture they've posted, Vantor is the new name of Maxar, right? They've got an image of starship being towed to port. So, they've got this thing in the ocean that has lost a couple tiles, cracked a couple tiles, and it made it back

enough to still be floating, you know, damn near a week later. When they do those component tests, they're showing that even with things missing, they're able to get them back and review that data after the fact. And we're at, you know, the first one of these that they've got back. So you assume 10 from now, if they are catching

this with a tower, then they're going to be able to review that data on the ground, and this ship is survivable to having lost areas of tiles, why can't they do this on their own in terms of having a budget level that is appropriate to hire researchers to do this investment and fly those tests on the 15th flight of a starship that's going up for a tanker mission, and if they lose it on the way back down, you know, it was spent money anyway, no big deal, and if they get it back, they've got their research data. Why is that model not workable other than the argument that this should be a national asset? first of all, I think you partly answered the question, but on the margin, they can't do everything.

They got to choose what they're trying. They said they can sell the biggest tam of all time and be the largest company of all time. So, like, they're stating the business model right now is we're going to do everything. We're going to make chips. We're going to make natural gas. We're going to fly every hour. They're doing everything. That is the point of this.

They were going to do self-driving cars 10 years ago, and they were going to do hyperloop. And, you know, like Elon has lots of dreams, right? But now you can go to jail if he is lying about it in this particular instance. They have so many waivers and would have could have, like this might not work in that that he's not doing the jail. Right. You don't think he's out to jail guys? He basically says, you know, 12 ways to Sunday why this may not work, right? So don't.

But as a national agenda, we can't just hand over all our agency to. one guy like we did with the Wright brothers. So, but that's, that's what I'm saying. You've got me on that one, but I need to feel out the other side of breaking through that next wall. He's going to do everything he can. The reason he will want to do that is because he wants to keep his monopoly, right? So if I am Elon, I would say absolutely, I'll tell you that.

You know, like it's the natural, you know, being a monopolist and wanting to be a monopolist is not bad. It's how you make extra profits. He's being a good capitalist, right? But he doesn't want competition coming after him. Look what he did to Rocket Lab. Peter Beck came and told him, like, look what I'm going to do. And two months later, they announced, you know, ride share, right?

So to take the wind out of the sales of Rocket. So it's like this is just natural that he will do that. But we need to encourage, there is a role for government to fund fundamental research, pre-competitive research we share with all companies. And the U.S. government and us as consumers want competition. Elon isn't going to lower prices because he's a good guy. He's a monopolist, right? So he just wants to get the best profit he can.

What will make him lower prices is competition, right? And that's what happened. And it happened in the 1930s. Boeing became a monopolist in the 1930s with airplanes. It gave all the first 200 planes, new Boeing airplanes, to the airline it owned United Airlines. And it held TWA out. You know, well, so there were two things happen.

First, the U.S. government broke up Boeing and made them, you know, get rid of United and Pratt & Whitney. And the second thing is TWA went to, you know, Douglas aircraft and said, I need you to do a better airplane and the DC3 is invented. So the best panacea for this is emerging competition. So we need to help everybody. From the government perspective, we need to help all these American companies,

not just SpaceX, but Blue Origin and relativity and Stoke Space all get the full and rapid reusability. And so this research should lift all boats. And, you know, let me say one thing about what you mentioned, because I think Elon is doing amazing things, Anthony and Jake. But you know what? We launched space shuttle in 1980 and put two people on that craft and brought it back and reused it. All right? And we had some tiles missing.

We had some tiles damage. And then we had to learn how do you inspect to make sure it's. good to go, one more flight with humans on it, right? And it's a heck of a lot easier to inspect the outside of RSI tiles, as Dan will tell you to give you some idea whether or not they need to be refurbished, then it is to understand what happens underneath tiles that are mechanically attached. Let me know how Elon's doing when he lands that vehicle and then turns it back around. and what we did with each other was we started perfecting and optimizing how we service it and turn it around.

Unfortunately, it took a lot more time and money, and it was very expensive. So Elon is going to be working on that, but I'm telling you he has a long way to go to be able to turn that around and get some estimate as what is necessary in order to ensure that the next flight will be safe. So I want to ask about... Just to put a plug in for the space show. You know? I love it. Got to do it. You can't fly on it and not mention it.

I mean, geez. Yeah, yeah. Big posters behind you there. None of us going to say anything. You know, we did some pretty cool things in the 1970s. This is also true. Many levels, yeah. Jake, you got to interrupt it.

It's great. I love it. I love it. I want to ask about it alternatives because looking at the writing here, and even just the headline is talking about how this TPS is a dead end to the full and rapid reusability here. Right. So I kind of want to know, first of all, like, what is, what is this fundamental design flaw with the idea of TPS that they're not going to get there? And what are the alternatives? Like, what should, you know, if it, let's say we, our dream comes true and we double STMD and they've got this massive great program. And you three are in charge. And Congress says, here's your check. Like, go nuts. Like, what are you going to work on? What do we, what do we build with it? What ideas should we be pursuing? Well, let Dan talk about why the current GPS. First?

Yeah, Dan, what did you do wrong first? Tell us about that. Well, we did. Now you can admit it, Dan. Now you can admit it. I like this whole thing of a, here's what I left unfinished when I retired. I like this idea. Yeah.

Well, we did what was right at the time. But again, like Charles was saying, it was 30 years ago. Okay, for 30 years ago, you know, the shuttle was flying. Okay, it was taking much longer to refurbish. and recertify then was anticipated. The plan was 14 days, and the best they ever got was 55-day turnaround. And so one of the big improvements that was made is what was called Tuffy Tile, F-U-F-I.

And that's actually what appears to be that Elon is flying on Starship. It's called a Tuffy Tile. and the original tiles that were flying on the space shuttle, you guys probably heard about this. They were as fragile as an eggshell. And that was pretty close to accurate. Charles was mentioning RSI that's for reusable surface insulation. Essentially, those original tiles, they had like an eggshell coating

over a fibrous substrate that's kind of like styrofoam. So imagine, you know, eggshell over styrofoam. That's what those stereos. That's what those tiles were. I've got all these. Let's see that thing. Is that one that flew with you, Charlie?

No, no. That would be cool. No. They didn't let you have that. It's very easy to damage. Those tiles are very fragile. And I was mentioning, TPS is really challenging because there's

three big requirements you have to have with the thermal protection system. And first, it has to keep you from burning up, okay, because if you burn up, that's a bad day. Okay. And once you don't burn up, you have to have some payload margin because it turns out every pound of TPS is one pound less a payload. So it trades directly with payload, okay. And then the third thing is it has to be robust. Okay, you can't have a small fault in the tile that takes the whole vehicle out.

Okay. And so meeting those first three requirements is really challenging. There's a lot of concepts, you know, for a really tough, durable tile, but, you know, or a tough durable TPS, but bad news, you have no payload. Okay, so you're really fighting against the payloaders, the tiles. Yeah. Yeah, the five. So it's a really challenging problem.

And so, yeah, the first run at it was shuttle was a dramatic improvement from the ablative systems, you know, from the Apollo program. Okay. They're much lighter weight. They're reusable. So we could control the vehicle. You had good cross range. So shuttle was a huge step over where we were at with the Apollo program. And then what we did in the late 1990s, we developed these tough and tires.

And they use the technology called functionally gradient. So instead of a thinned, you know, a shell over a styrofoam, it's now a graded coating. It's denser at the surface and then it gets less and less dense as you go in depth. And so it makes the coating, you know, orders of magnitude stronger than the old tiles. And that, we started flying that on the shuttles in the late 1990s. And it appears that's essentially what Elon has adopted for Starship. And again, they're, they solved those first three problems, but they aren't robust enough to allow, you know, rapid reuse because they're still quite easily damaged.

And again, based on what we can see from Starship, that combination of the mechanical attachment, the crunch wrap that they have underneath each tile is, leading to some flow paths and some potential faults that look like it's going to be quite challenging to have confidence you don't have a problem without checking all 18,000 tiles. That's a lot of tiles to check, gentlemen. So 18,000 is a large number. And so, and particularly, if you've got to put considerable time to, you know, each or almost every tile, I mean, you do the math. It's like, oh, my God, it's going to take forever. Just expand on this issue.

So everybody can go look at that video and that the quadcopter flies over the ship that is on YouTube. And you can see dozens of hundreds of cracks and chips. Right. So this is totally what was expected. Right. So the issue is you can't get rid of the vibro acoustics of the launch vehicle. That's physics. You just can't get rid of it.

Right. So that's going, right? You can't have the tiles touching each other because they crack each other. They ram into each other and cracks. So they got the separation. And they're still chipping and cracking and breaking, right? And then you got that crunch wrap in between it, the white stuff that everybody sees. Now, everybody sees the streaks coming out.

And they say, oh, that's, you know, it's okay. Well, the crunch wrap is the heat is getting between the cracks. The crunch wrap is designed to stop the heat. right but when you see those strings of white what that's telling you is the insulation the crunch wrap insulation which is kind of a sister material of pica that Dan invented

Dan helped invent this circuit at Ames right it says Ames invented this material right if that's leaking out that means it's leaked out of in between the towels and maybe underneath the tiles and you don't know right so you you can't just fly it again you got to replace that material which means you kind of

have to take the tiles off put and take the put new crunch wrap there and put the tiles back in even if they're not broken right so that you know yes you can do that yes you can maybe automate that and and maybe Elon gets optimist robots that you know 100 optimist robots doing that automates it, but still it's going to take a while. Well, and then the fact that these silica tiles are not very strong, and so the fact that they're breaking, that's likely to continue, okay, that you're going to have some breakage, again, as Charles was mentioning, just the vibroacoustics.

I mean, when that super heavy lights off, oh, my God. I mean, talk about an acoustic environment around that vehicle. And so, man, you're just slamming those things. And so there's going to be some percentage of tiles that you're going to be breaking. Okay. Now, again, maybe it's only 1%, but if it's 18,000 tiles, that's still a lot of tile. Okay. And so the physics is really what you're up against.

Okay, you're really pushing up against some fundamental physics that I think this current approach is, you know, you know, fairly doubtful it can get old. Don't soft pedal it. No, no. We got, you got here from us yelling about you being all thrash about it. Don't soft pedal it now. You're hearing the thing, you're doing it.

Come on, it's a dead end. Tell them. And it's a dead end, okay? It's a dead end. All right, so wait, I want to think into the dead end part. If you were, if you were, you know, dictator of NASA STMD Part 2 or whatever Jake's setting up, and you had, you know, you name, I guess,

Jake give you a blank check, So you name the budget. Is that tile, you know, is that tile route you consider that fully developed or is there other stuff to be found there? Well, I think you start from first principles. So you start from first principles, right? So I'll name you a number because I've already named a number, a billion dollars a year, Anthony. So, you know, as you know, I listen to you say, you know what that, SLS, we should get rid of that, that gateway. You know, we should get rid of that.

Well, guess what? The transition team said we should get rid of those things, right? Those are, we said, you know what? Again, I think my invite was lost in the mail. I don't know. I would have been there to say it. I would have dunked on Gateway. SOS and Orion and Gateway, we said those are dead dead-in programs, right?

So that's not the first time I've used those words. Yeah. Right? Now, we spent 20 years working on them. They have a use. But to get, you know, spending $4 billion a year, that's a dead end. And, you know, China is not investing in copying SLS.

They're copying Starship, right? Right. There's a reason they're copying Starship, not SLS. Right? We need to transition as fast as possible. So let me tell you what I think. So there are lots of really good ideas out there that you can't prove are bad. You need to do the research in advance of.

Second, one of the thing, you need an NACA-type partnership approach. You need to go to the companies themselves and say, you know what, we can invest in 100 different types of advanced Mach 25 TPS. What would work for you? Like, help us prioritize our research priorities. And blue and relativity and Stoke and SpaceX are going to have different ideas. But they will all come to the table and want to have input on what, that your priorities are. So you start with a really systems level approach. And so there's,

there's lots of heated debates among, you mean Rasky and Kamada? They used to be like cats and dogs. They were fighting each other over what's the best way, right? And that's good. There's lots of good ideas, but you let commercial industry prioritize what you really research. So there's ideas for advanced metallic active cooling, passive cooling. Elon even tried metallic TPS with transpiration and it rested the whole bottom of the vehicle. Right. So that was a test, right? But that's been around forever. There's heat pipes. There's, you know, there's all kinds of additive manufacturing that's coming on with metallic additive manufacturing and carbon composite and carbon-sick additive manufacturing that you could do various things.

And then what's really cool is these AI systems are inventing whole new materials that we've never seen before. And some of these, you know, AI materials can only be built by additive manufacturing. So there is a ton of really cool stuff that we could accelerate research on. And you start a program, and, you know, NASA knows how to do this. It did it 30, 40 years ago. But then you marry the best of the NACA said you focus on the end success is industry doing Mark 25 rapid reusability. That's when you're successful, when they're successful as a government agency.

And you figure out what they need and then you go develop technologies that will fit their needs. And you let them pick the solutions that work best for their systems and adopt. See, the government can offer up a menu. Here are a menu of options that have been researched, as Charlie was talking about, to a level of maturity that the company can say, oh, this is what I want to use. Okay, I'm going to use this. And that's what happened with NECA with the Fledgline aircraft industry, you know, de-icing, propeller design, structure design.

The government put forward the advanced technology, mature the technologies, put them on the table, let the companies come and pick. Oh, I want this, I want this, I want this. And then that raises everyone's votes. And again, we've kind of lost that. And the downside of letting one company try to lead the charge on this is that they may fail. And then you're all out of luck. Or even if they succeed and have monopoly, and, you know, it becomes very costly for the country.

So there's downsides of just letting a company making a run at this, as Charles was saying, and losing your agency. and particularly when you have foreign competition who may do it a smarter way. Let me draw another analogy when we're talking about research. Now, Dan and I were arch enemies for 22 years, ceramic TPS versus metallic systems, yada, yada, yada, odds is more durable. The material scientists back in the early days of space shuttle developed the RSI tile. It was amazing. We had phenomenal research scientists, material scientists.

Do you know Berand tried to copy the space shuttle, and the reason why Berand failed was because of its TPS, period. Now, fast forward 40 years, and now you have China. Just for everybody listening, the Bahrain was the Russia's copying of the Soviet. The Soviets copied the space shuttle. Of the space shuttle, right? It only flew one time, and it wasn't. It wasn't because of the cost.

And it landed autonomously, which was amazing, right? But the TPS was the Achilles heel, and Space Shuttle, although it was very expensive, also very dangerous, it flew, okay? And it was successful. Now, fast forward 30 years, and we have China trying to copy what Musk's doing, only they have a phenomenal research base, and we do not. and who is going to be the leader, who comes out on top. And that's what we're worried about. Charlie, when you talk, man, I just never knew I had an uncle that flew in the space shuttle. Like, this feels like I'm hanging out with any of my uncles.

This is unbelievable. I know. You know, I really do have a PhD, even though I sound like I have a Brooklyn accent. I mean, come to dinner on Sunday. It feels like you can hang it out forever. This is crazy. Amazing. I'm just excited.

I mean, I'm Canadian, so these accents are all very novel. to me and I'm just I'm excited I just heard a yada yada yada yada real life like live right there that's really great oh yeah I'm definitely the most intense technical topic that we've ever encountered and like a guy who flew with tiles yada yada yada yada were you cranking all the way through reentry Charlie you're like god damn these surround tiles this bullshit I didn't want to give you all the details I think you have time limited This is great. What did we miss, Jake?

What else you got? We got like a couple minutes. We beat the Russians. Yeah, we did it. These are people, Jake. They've mastered the internet. Okay, don't let the decades that they were telling you about their work fool you. They got us in with the real rough language.

You know, it's dead ends, dead end. And then totally reasonable, like, national policy building thoughts here. They gave us the old one, too, on this. they did yeah yeah yeah a Klein Sinker Charles told us we had to dumb it down that's why I used the yada yada yada yeah totally for our sake this is great this is killer yeah I mean

now what you need now what I guess I mean you said some people are calling Charles after the transition team do you feel like this is it I mean the Isaac push has been a mixed bag, I think, for the stuff that you're talking about. There's been some areas that feel similar to what you're saying here, and there's some areas where, you know, and what's happened to NASA since 2025 has detracted from the ability for this to happen. So it feels kind of mixed. I don't know if you guys have a sense that we're on the right track here, or this is you saying, like, we're nowhere close. We're not even the zip code. I don't think, I think Jared's doing

amazing jobs on the things he's focused on. So he's focused on the moon, right? He's doing some great stuff with Artemis focused on accelerating the moon, transitioning out of SLS and Orion, get the full reusability. Jared understands the need for full reusability, but I don't think he's focused on this exact problem. And it's not just all on Jared. Now, Jared, you know, I think could go to NASA, but it's partly the White House, is partly Congress. You know, like, we should do this together. I think there's bipartisan consensus that we want to get the full and rapid reusability for China. To do that, we have to first acknowledge that we have a problem.

That's what the purpose of this article was, right? If you think Elon's going to do it and solve it for us, then we don't have anything to do. We're going to sit on our haunches, our behinds, and not do anything. We're part of the problem. And in that case, what I say is, you know, to paraphrase Pogo, I have met the enemy and he is us, right? We need to get off our duffs and be part of the solution to do this. And it's a whole of government. It's everybody can be part of achieving this. And whoever gets to flights per day to space first wins. Stuck to Landon. Look at that. This is

great. Oh, you're representative. Yeah, I mean, this is awesome. This was, you know, we're going to yell about stuff on the internet more often so that reasonable people come out of the woodwork to come on the show. This is why we do it. This is why we do it. This is it. We like you guys arguing and keep it up. Heck yeah.

Don't hold back. Keep it up. You guys can come back whenever you want. Charlie, I'll see you on Sunday. It'll be great. Who's cooking. It's probably my mom this week. All right.

Thanks for having us, guys. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, this is awesome. Jake's away for a couple weeks, I think, based on the order, if I can keep track. We'll have our friend, our mutual friend Eric Berger next week. I've roved him into, he's been tweeting a lot about the whole, is Dragon going to fly after 2030 thing? And all of a sudden, Starliner is going to fly this year. So it felt, and he's back from vacation, so it felt like it was time to have him on to talk about us.

It's hard for Elon to turn down money, right? It's like, I think this is just, this is how Elon negotiates. Well, I'm thinking a retiring dragon. Oh, you want to pay me more? Okay, I'll... I guess I'm going a little off. Listen, he left. He left Russia without a rocket, but he took a lesson with him.

I mean, that's not even really like an accusation. They've already done that once. Yeah, the G.A.O. said that. So, yeah. Well, it's in one of the books. I figured it was Eric's book or one of the other books where Elon was going to cancel, you know, Falcon Heavy. Many years ago.

And Gwen came in and said, Elon, you can't do that. Right? So I get it. He wants to retire it as soon as he can. Thank you. All right. Great job as you guys. See y'all later.

Thanks, everybody. Bye. Awesome. Bye, bye, bye, everyone.