Off-Nominal - 252 - Paying Now and Later (with Eric Berger and Joe Barnard)

Episode Date: August 13, 2026

Anthony is joined by Eric Berger, Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica, and Joe Barnard to talk about crewed spaceflight in the 2030s, what options exist if and when Dragon stops flying, and what we should do about it. Topics Off-Nominal - YouTube Episode 252 - Paying Now and Later (with Eric Berger and Joe Barnard) - YouTube A "disaster waiting to happen"? Industry officials worry about Crew Dragon availability. - Ars Technica Actually, Starliner might fly into space this year - Ars Technica SpaceX eyes tower catch for next Starship after auspicious end to 13th flight - Ars Technica SpaceX on X: “View of Starship in space from a Starlink V3 satellite on Flight 13. This composite is made of imagery from four separate cameras on a single satellite. Six of the satellites were equipped with cameras to scan Starship’s heat shield and transmit imagery down to operators…” I Built a Gyroscope Stabilized Rocket Camera with GPS - YouTube Follow Eric Author: Eric Berger - Ars Technica Eric Berger (@SciGuySpace) / X Reentry: SpaceX, Elon Musk, and the Reusable Rockets that Launched a Second Space Age | West Houston's Neighborhood Bookshop Follow Joe BPS.space - YouTube Joe Barnard (@joebarnard) / Twitter BPS.Space I made my rocket nosecone too pointy - YouTube 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

DLS and go for main engine, start. Go at throttle up. Negative return. Oh, well, I just probably blasted your two ears out since we're pre-recording this and not live streaming it. There was no fade in at all. It was just music, very loud in your ears. So, sorry about that.

I'm sorry, did you say something? I can't hear you. Listen, we got a Jakeless show today so we can really get off the hinges, and no one's going to pull us back on. We're all wearing blue shirts. Joe Barnard, you're back. It's been a year since you've been on the show, I think. I think I have about a yearly appearance here. Yeah. Is that about it? It should be more frequent than that. But it's usually good because I have it, then I have a couple of your videos worth of things to comment on, which is excellent. Yeah, yeah. So thanks for having me on. We'll get to that. I'm going to have Eric Berger, our other guests here.

I'm going to have him, uh, judge. I have a little contest between you and SpaceX that I want to run later. So that will be riveting for you, I'm sure. But hi, Eric. What's going on over there, buddy? I, you know, just living the dream here in Houston, Texas, and August. Yep. Look at you.

Interloon shirt and all. That's right, yeah. Thinking about cooler places to go on the lunar surface. The South Pole here gets pretty cold. Houston's pretty humid, too, right? Oh, yeah. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah.

I guess you get it bad. And we're right on the golf and you get heat, humidity, mosquitoes, all that's great time. And you had all the tropical storms so far. Yeah, but they were both extremely weak. I know. I read your article about it. El Nino is going to get off the chains or something. Yeah, next year, you know, you guys talking about going to the cliffs next year.

It's going to be about 10,000 degrees probably in the cliffs places next summer. Well, I'll find out about that. We'll see how we do. We'll convince Eric to go, because you could come to Spain, stay an extra week, and see the Vuelta. That is something. Yeah. I wish they overlap, but they do not.

This is a very oddly timed off nominal. I didn't know if Joe woke up early enough to join us today. I don't know what time you're usually up, but sometimes your YouTube videos make it look like you're up very late. So I assumed mornings were a no-go, but here you are. Look at you. 9 a.m. Do you have... I'm up pretty early most days.

I don't have my carbonated milk. I have coffee and tea because I'm sick as a dog. I've got some kind of cold. It sounds like you're sick with something too. You can hear it. Yeah. Yeah. But I'm excited to talk about crew capsules.

Because you'll make one someday to put on top of your rockets now that you're mixing. No, I will not. Do you know that Joe's like mixing his own fuel for rockets? It's not something I would do. but, you know, it's for the, for the brave, right? Well, here's the thing. There's a, there's a level of brave of I'm willing to get hurt if I make a mistake. I think that's, I think it's your God-given right to blow yourself up if you're not careful

as long as you don't hurt anyone else. You are welcome to do that. With crew transport, it's a whole other level of brave where you're like, I'm going to believe that I'm good enough at this, that I'm willing to risk life. I don't think I'll have that. What if you, but in, well, it fits in your first category. If this is like a Copenhagen Suborbital's thing, you only put yourself in the vehicle. Or who was the guy, who was the flat-Earther guy with the rocket?

That was real bad. Mad Mike Hughes. Mad Mike Hughes. Yeah. Yeah. What if you were like an even-tempered Mike? He was not even-tempered. He was not.

But Joe could be. No. Oh, you talked to him? Oh, yeah. I did a story way back in the day when he was doing one of his, crazy things. And yeah, he was he was something else. It was a slow news week in Eric's defense. Hey, hey, Eric, you're probably a good judge of this. I don't know that you can be even tempered and do something like that. I think, I mean, my guess is to get to that point where you're like,

I'm going to build a rocket and put myself in it. You have to have a little something off. Yeah, I mean, you got to give yourself the name Mad Mike probably to. Is this the story? Mad Mike Hughes. build a rocket so he can jump the Grand Canyon of Texas? 2016? Yeah, something like that. Probably. March 2016. Look at that. What a story. Well, let's not continue down this storyline too long.

Rest in peace, Matt Mike. Anyway, Eric, you've been writing about this crude spaceflight situation in the 2030s, and then you've been tweeting mysteriously about it, which makes me think you've knew other things. And I'm not going to drag them out of you yet, but, like, okay, actually, let me even step one,

one little bit further back. Because your names come up on the last several shows that I've done, because we talked about the Starship Heat Shield. We had the crew on that wrote the piece about, we think this is a dead end. And I want to compare and contrast these two storylines in which both of them were sprung from Eric Berger writing an article about this. Sometimes you like to write things where you're like, I know about, I know some things,

people are telling me some things, I want to put some of this in from out. Sometimes you like to write things just to make everyone aware, like this is happening. You should probably be attuned to what's going on over here. You should be aware of this argument. Is this like an example of each? Like this 2030s crude spaceflight thing? Is this like people are nervous and just telling you I'm nervous about it? or like, this shit's happening.

Yeah, so like the Starship Heat Shield was just like a, this is real, this is an issue, you should pay attention to it, but we're not going to find out who's right about it until they fly some more starships and get some more data. The crew dragon stuff is very much a concern. Like, if you're playing to operate a private space station in the 2030s, the most important thing you have to solve, the 60 or 70%

cost of your project is crew transportation. So that's really job one is solving how do you get your astronauts to and from your space station safely? That's the most difficult and dynamic part of the mission anyway, going through the atmosphere.

So the obvious answer is crew dragon, right? Because it's the one vehicle that's flying and might have a reasonable price point. But what if crew dragon doesn't exist? I think that's the reality that private companies are coming up with. And the reality is that at this very time,

they're preparing to respond to a NASA request for proposals on commercial Leo destination, CLDs, for the next round of funding. And as part of that, they have to have a plan for crew transportation. And NASA hasn't put out the final RFP, but I think of the final RFP, they're basically going to throw it on the companies and say, hey, you've got to sort of negotiate with the transportation providers and show us your plan. So if you go to SpaceX and SpaceX says, we're not willing to sell crude dragon transportation in 2030s,

because they're not planning to fly crew dragon in the 2030s. That's a very difficult situation. Hearing a lot from the CLD, potential all very concerned about this and frustrated with the fact that this, you know, pretty remarkable vehicle, crude dragon, which is not, you know, has only been flying for six years is already being slated for retirement. And that's because, you know, Elon Musk doesn't want to fly it. He views it as a dead end technology and those resources ought to be put into starship in his mind.

So that's the reality of what's happening. You know, I think it's plausible crew dragon starts flying in 2030. Maybe it goes on for a little while longer. But, you know, you cannot build a business plan around crew dragon flying in the mid-2030s or beyond because it just can't exist. And so then that leads you with the question of, well, then what are the alternatives for crude transportation to lower Earth orbit outside of China and Russia in the 2030s? And that's a difficult question to answer. Well, India too. India likely on the list at that point, right? Maybe. I mean, you know, look at the Gagan Yan program. It was originally

announced by Modi in I think 2018, the date was 2022 for the first mission. Now the date is 2028, and they have to do an uncrewd test first. So you know, you expect that to slip. And look, all respect to the Indian space program, they've done some amazing things on a shoe string budget. But there's a, there's a huge need right now for commercial launch. And that's not something India has stepped up to fill the void on. So could Gaganian, could that space transportation system be a viable option in 2030s? Maybe how difficult is it to reach the the inclinations from the Indian spaceports, I have no idea. So I think that's maybe a possibility, but it's not something I would be, be bettering the form on. And the other

aspect here is the Falcon 9 storyline that kind of started first in all this when people were talking about, hey, they're not doing transporters beyond 28. And then it was actually, they're not even selling Falcon 9 launches anymore beyond the ones that they've already sold. And, with that story made sense to me because like number one you can see the path of flying payloads

and Starship a lot quicker if Starship goes well here and there's flying Starlink payloads we got some door problems we got to figure out if they are going to build a bigger door or everyone's satellite is going to fit out the little

PEZ dispenser you know tell me the whole industry wouldn't respond with flat sats if that was the case so that path made more sense but also I feel like the because of the things

they already have lined up for Falcon 9 with the NASA security launches that they have, that would probably roll over a little farther than people are talking about them not selling Falcon 9s. And I feel like the activation energy for just doing a two or three more years of Falcon 9 flights is a lot less than lining up what they would need to continue flying Crew Dragon on shorter notice.

Like if they got to 28 or 29 and NASA was like, actually, we want to fly six more missions with you guys, here's a huge contract, would they still be able to do that? Whereas if they were six flights out from the end of Falcon 9, flying a couple more is not that big of a deal because they fly it 700 times and they've got this thing pretty well ironed out. And the lifetimes on Crew Dragon hardware is a lot tighter. That's what I'm trying to figure out.

Like, is this, once they make the decision, how close to that date can they get before they change their mind? I don't know. I mean, I think that, you know, the Falcon 9 rocket availability is another huge question, completely different issue. And actually, I've got a long feature story coming out on that probably later this week after this, after you post this video. But I just know that like, okay, maybe you extend it to 2032, right, to meet NASA's needs for ISS and that's through some negotiation. and yes, that obviously they're going to pay SpaceX more. It still does not solve the issue for their private space station companies or for NASA, frankly,

if it wants an alternative to Orion to getting crew to a starship or to a blue moon lander for lunar missions. And also, like another issue is, okay, let's say that like everyone begs SpaceX to keep flying Dragon and we need two missions a year to meet the needs for Leo. I mean, how much do you think those flights are going to cost? They're not going to be 50 million a seat, right? We're probably closer to like 100 million a seat, something like that. So, I mean, it's just like... If not more, right?

Like, who are you competing against at that point? Yeah, right. Your competition is flying SLS to Leo and flying Orion on it. So it's like, I don't know, a bill? You start to get some crazy solutions like, well, Russia's been flying to Leo for 50 years. And they flew to the space station when the shuttle was down. So why don't we just go to that? Well, you can't really do that.

Like, that's just not going to work for private companies in this day and age. So, you know, then that's okay, well, what about Starliner? Well, maybe. What about Blue Origins SV capsule that they've been working on forever? The Exploration Company has plans to build a four, five, six, seven cedar. You mentioned the Garganan spacecraft. People talk about rocket labs, got an interest in a capsule. But you just don't wave your magic wand and create a space capsule.

It's a lot harder than like a neutron vehicle, right, which has taken the better part of a decade to get ready. So like, I mean, if you're going to have a capsule ready by 2035, you had better be starting serious work on it. And only Blue Origin really has done that. They're out there doing drop tests and things like that. They're not talking about it. But that work is going on. but we don't have a good sense of how far away they are from development. Joe, do you want to give us some power rankings on non-Dragon things here?

So I've got, in my head, I've got crew on Starship, right, and has to be in the conversation. You've got Starliner being good. You've got whatever Blue Origin's working on there. And with Artemis 3, we will see Orion flying to low Earth orbit. So I guess you've got to throw in NASA doing their own thing and saying, and let's fly a bunch of Orion's. Those are the nearest term solutions here. Yeah, and when you say power ranking, what are we talking about?

I don't know. What's the most likely? What would you believe in the most of those storylines? Because they're all crazy. Like, they're all nuts. That Starship crew gets its act together fast enough that we're going to fly a bunch of of Orion's, that Starliner turns the corner, and that Blue Origin finishes a project on time.

All of those are crazy fucking storylines. I have a, I'm not even going to answer the question directly. I just have another thought of what. what we should do here. Okay, drop it from the call. We already have the solution, you guys. The real question, do this thing, do this hand motion and say, the real question, what you should ask.

Okay, we've done this before, and we already have the solution. It's perfect. It's Ares 1X. Okay? We're making the Sentinel ICBM, so we're spinning up solid motor production again. It's a national security thing to know how to make solid motors. This is why we put solids on a bunch of these stupid SLS-S-type vehicle. You're putting out here than I thought when you started talking.

Is he moved to Alabama and running for Congress? He said he's making his own fuel. This guy is stupid himself, man. I think we can all learn to change. We can all be capable of change within ourselves, and we can accept Ares 1X with love in our hearts as a crude launch vehicle. We have Orion. Orion is designed by committee,

but if it's designed for anything, it's kind of designed for LEO. It's like not... It's not really capable of the lunar stuff we are trying to make it do. We need to call it the MPCV. We need to change the name to MPCV. Maybe SPCV.

I mean, let's see, Lockhe could maybe do Orion for 800 million, potentially, but... Per flight or making one? flight, per flight, yeah. Even when they pull out those avionics boxes again. Can you, can you, Clarnet?

Can you like do after pay? Yeah. And so you throw the launch vehicle. And later on this thing for a long time. So you throw on a launch vehicle and there's still a quarter of a million dollars a seat, right, to Leo. And I think that's an optimistic viewpoint of Orion's cost. So that's just Orion.

Yeah. That's great. And Ares 1X is what? billion to pay a lot. So my serious answer is I actually, I think Rocket Lab is making a lot of interesting moves. I think they've been pretty savvy in how they're running their business. So I feel pretty good about them long term. And I don't know that there's a lot of good easy money in crew transport.

But if Dragon's gone, I think that they would be a solid contender. I don't know about Blue. Dave Limp is trying to write the ship. Eric, I think you're much more familiar with this than I am, but I don't know what to expect from that. And I think, like, I've heard they're working on stuff, but I really don't know that much about it. I mean, they're working on systems. So, like, at least they have, they have a, they have this, they have these face vehicle under development. They've changed the size several times.

But, but if you're going to be a company that envisions. millions of people working into space, you do at some point need a crew vehicle to get those people to space. Otherwise, what are we even doing here? Well, they don't say that anymore, though. They're for the benefit of Earth now. Right, right. Okay. So maybe they just want to get one or two people off Earth and that'll be good enough. Well, you know, Jeff already got his mission. So maybe. No, they're definitely working on a crew vehicle. I think the question is timing and how much it would cost to launch on Nukeland because Newkland is not a cheap

rocket to fly at this point. Because of the upper stage. You mentioned Rocket Lab, Joe, and I'm just going to gently push back on that and say, I have a tremendous amount of spec for Sir Peter Beck

and what he's done in founding a company in New Zealand of all places, which had no launch industry, no real space industry, and getting to orbit. And there's sort of business-wise, he is very savvy. I think they're quickly becoming more of a spacecraft company than a launch company. But, you know, the neutron experience gives me pause.

You know, the rocket is still quite a bit of ways from launch. It was interesting to see Beck push back after the earnings call and say, no, no, no, we're still tracking toward a 2026 launch, which is preposterous. there's no way that's happening. I mean, I think there's a decent chance they make 27, but that's not guaranteed by any means. And it's just you, it is not easy to develop a crew capsule. Like you have to look at the money that NASA spent through the crew program. We're talking about billions of dollars a decade ago.

And I can tell you right now, NASA, the current leadership of NASA does not have the appetite to fund another crew capsule. They're not particularly interested in low Earth orbit, to be perfectly honest. So where's that money going to come from? I mean, if you're, it's a multi-billion dollar program to develop a crew capsule. And Jeff Bays was confunded because he's been throwing billions at Blue Origin for 25 years now. So he's kind of comfortable with it. But I don't think, you know, Peter Beck, who's famously, I don't want to say stingy,

but he's very careful with how Rocketlett spends their money. He will come out and say it. We don't have billions to throw around on different projects. We have to be very selective. So I just don't see that as a realistic idea. I think it's something nice to talk about, but you would want a government partner who is willing to step up and support that activity.

And I don't see that happening, at least in the next two or three years, probably longer. Europe is interested in a crew vehicle, but they're going to want something native. And the exploration company is probably their best bet for that. So I don't know. I don't see any public money coming for that program. And so it does not seem realistic to me.

The exploration company, I want to go deeper on that. He sold all his Rocket Lab shares now. Well, no, I think I don't, I'm not as tuned in on this as you are. Rocket Lab is the first thing that I reach for. But you're right. They don't have as much of the sort of infrastructure around them that would be helpful for a crew capsule. I am curious too, Eric, your take on, you know, so there's vast, if we, the commercial space station companies, their whole business doesn't work if they can't transport people there.

What's the real, like, I don't think a capsule is really plug and play on just any rocket. What's the realism of them developing their own capsule to, you know, be able to mount on top of different. launch vehicles? 0%. Like this is not a simple, this is not a simple undertaking. It's very difficult. Crew spacecraft are very difficult.

Can you explain it like I'm five? Sure. Gravity, very difficult. Look behind you. Crew come back 25,000 miles per hour through atmosphere. Heat shields are dead ends. It gets very hot.

I mean, it's like, it's an extremely dynamic environment, both to launch and land people. Lower Earth orbit is much more benign environment to design a spacecraft for people to live in as opposed to a vehicle that's got to go up and come down in a very different environment. Launch is a difficult environment.

Landing is a difficult environment. They're both different. Your capsule has to survive. both. You have to have, you know, multiple fault tolerances all over the place to account it. Parachutes are hard. I mean, it's just all hard stuff. And yeah, we've been doing it for 60 years, 50, 60 years, but math is difficult. But it's like, I mean, it's literally nations and SpaceX that have succeeded at this. And SpaceX put, you know, they started working on Dragon in 2008, 2007, 2006, and they got a crew capsule in 13, 14 years, and they had a lot of money,

and they're like a really exceptional space company. Okay, maybe I should have clarified the question. Yeah, the crew capsule part seems very difficult. It's more, I'm curious, how would you go about trying to design something that is swappable between launch vehicles? If there's a problem with access to launch. How realistic is it? If you're vast, if you're max to say, we're going to design something that is as minimally invasive into, you know, we'll take some performance hits, but maybe we can't fuel with, maybe we have to fuel with storable propellants so we don't have to fuel up on the pad.

Do you know what I mean? You're talking about a space station that launches with the crew? Or some crew vehicle that can be ported. So that is detached from, like, everything we've listed is a space vehicle tied to a launch vehicle, and it's developed by that same company. What I think Joe's saying is, if Vast wants a business, can they develop a vehicle that can fly on other things? Like, you know, think of Dreamchacer graphics that we saw in, like, Aryan 5, and here's what it looks like that was. Dreamcacer is a fantastic example of the futility of trying to design a crew vehicle. Like, what has that been under development now for 15 years?

and it's not been dispassioned of understanding with everybody too. Everybody understood what Dream Chaser was about, but nobody wanted to pay money for it. Everybody's understanding, deeply understanding how much money I was going to cost and how uninterested they were in doing it.

I get it. I'm not paying for this. That's what I understand. Yeah. But Dream Chaser would be great because Dream Chaser looks exceptionally good for Leo and terrible for everything else. So, like, that would be,

if we were going to do any of them, that would be the one to, Why haven't we done it? Why haven't we done it? If it looks great. Here's my actual prediction. I've been talking about with on off nominal on meco I've been talking to all these different companies that are doing reentry vehicles I feel like one of them is going to come out of nowhere and say like exploration company is a good example that's like we're focused on doing cargo first these other ones are just like I'm building really good reentry vehicles that return payloads if they get really good at that aspect of it I talked to inversion the other day on meiko who's doing a lifting body design like I bet it comes out of that aspect of it I talk to inversion the other day on miko who's doing a lifting body design like I bet it comes out of that. that branch of the industry versus what we're listing here versus maybe rocket lab timeline working out I know I should state because I didn't get the way on this that rocket lab is absolutely going to have a crew vehicle at some point I don't think on a 2030's timeline that in a way that's helpful but they they want to be an end-to-end

space company and they're the closest to it and the only thing they haven't announced yet is a crew vehicle so that's going to happen at some point who pays for it is an interesting question but like it's an important question It is, it is, but I'm like, their sovereign nation wants a crew capability that will go to rocket lab and pay them for it. I don't know, or are they on a trajectory that they're gathering an interesting stack

of space applications. There is, I think you answered your question earlier. There's not much money in crew transportation. Yeah. Like the money, the money is in low Earth orbit data delivery. Yeah, everything else. That's where everyone's going to go. There's not even money in launch services.

Like that's even, there's not even that much money in launch services. That's why SpaceX is like, we don't want to fly dragon. There's no money in it, right? And it's a lot of overhead. And it's all risk, especially when you're a publicly traded corporation.

So people are probably saying, well, people are saying, hey, you idiots, why, what's wrong with crew on starship? Yeah, let's do it. Let's go. I mean,

how big of a deal, Anthony, in your heart of hearts, is it the fact that Starship doesn't have a launch escape system? Not the thing that stresses me out. I don't know. It's not the thing that I look at Starship and go, like, damn, if not for that, this would be the perfect infrastructure. Like, there are so many other things that I have on that list of... For crew? Such as... I think just Starship generally. Like, the scale that Starship demands is, it's... demands to be built and flown by the largest company on Earth that is producing its own methane and operating like several industries worth of economic activity to actually do that many launches. So, like, that is just a terrifying scale that they have to achieve to make Starship work the way that they've designed it. And I think that's the making it work that way is the only way they

get to crude flights because they need to fly at a thousand times before they do this. But Starship itself, this many flights in, seems like a pretty robust vehicle. They are, you know, heat shield discourse aside, this thing's been through some shit on these first 13 flights. And I've been absolutely impressed. I was so skeptical when they did the first tail flip maneuver and landed it and they bounced from suborbital testing, they were like, we're good, we got it. And like, how do you got it? It was the first time you did it. And then every damn time they got to that part of the flight, they fucking nailed it. I'm absolutely shocked at how well that has gone. So, you know, you can go back and listen last week's episode when I well the one thing I was asking to that crew

of people like but why is flying your way out of this problem not the right approach I 1,000% thinks that's the right approach for the heat shield and I think it's the right approach for crew on starship that if they fly this a thousand times how worried are we going to be in about an abort system not that worried there's going not to say there's not going to be horrible accidents on starship if it flies that much there will be because the law of large not numbers. A small percentage of time, a really bad thing's going to happen. But, I don't know, 13th one landed in the ocean and got towed back at least for a little bit. I don't even know. Do we have like an initial or a final understanding of what the situation is with Starship right now?

Is it sunk yet? They'd blow up. There was like a picture I saw, right? I don't know. Was that a real picture? I believe it's... I'm not sure it's long for this world. Yeah. I saw like a screen grab, but I couldn't tell if it was fake of it blowing up. up at some point. I have a, I have a, I have a thought about this. So, um, I tried to tweet about this like a year or two ago and I got in a little bit of hot water for it. So I might as well do it again. Let's go, baby. Have you guys read this book called Safe is Not an Option by Ran Sinberg? I have. Okay. So in this,

Rand worked I think Boeing for a while and he wrote this book I don't agree with everything in it but the argument is essentially like you're going to kill some astronauts not the argument is not that we should be okay with it

that we should just accept it or that we shouldn't try but he draws a parallel to like the long haul trucking industry and so in the US there's like 800 truckers who die every year through accidents

and we to say we accept it is kind of accurate. Like, we just accept that that's the cost. That's the cost we're willing to pay. And if it were $1,600, I don't know that it would change that much, too. Like, there's a number we'll hit where enough of truckers are dying that it's a really, it's an economic problem that forces us to change it.

Sorry, I wish I wasn't sick. I know, I was going to say it. I like that you're sick, but it just sounds like you're really nervous to lay out this whole trucker analogy. It's so funny to me. I was going to say, Alaskan King Crab Legs is a good example of this, because those suckers are delicious,

but that looks like a terrible job, too. Right. If you're going to break an omelet, you've got to make a few eggs. That's the saying, right? So, um, look, I, I, dangerous jobs exist,

is your point. I don't know. I think some type of abort system makes everybody feel good. Um, and I think to do the things that Starship is, at least stated to, you know, be doing at the scale that it wants to operate at, I think I don't know that you can carry an abort system on every flight.

So a couple of thoughts on that, Joe, and that's, I have read that book. I know Rand, and I am generally sympathetic to the argument, right? I think that space flight is inherently risky and the people signing up for this out to accept or do accept some risk. And the problem is the public doesn't accept the risk. The Congress doesn't accept the risk. The difference between 800 truckers dying a year and one astronaut dying year is that, you know, everyone's watching the astronaut die and no one's watching the truckers die.

And so, in my sense, too, is that, like, it's a lot easier to accept some risk if you're sending humans to Mars, right? because that's a hugely dangerous trip. How the heck do you get back? All of those things. But for Leo, I mean, I think the threshold for Leo is going to be higher because, you know, they're just flying to lower Earth orbit, right? So it ought to be, it ought to be safe. And I don't think we're at a point now where if someone were to die that it would just be like, you know, do a short investigation, and identify the problem and move on,

I think it would be more involved, more involved in that. So I take your point about Starship. And I just, so there are other concerns I have about Starship behind, besides the, you know, lack of a launch escape system. By the way, I'm sympathetic to Anthony, your argument as well, that, like, look, if they fly this vehicle a thousand times and it lands 999, you feel pretty good about putting humans on it. But, you know, like, is this on the SpaceX roadmap?

What is the profit for them in doing humans? missions on Starship launching from Earth. Who's paying for that? And what's the value? And again, if Starlink V3, Starlink Mobile, and ultimately data centers are super profitable, that's what they're going to be launching. Because why

do the human stuff when it's costly and risky? If you lose a bunch of Starlink satellites at the end of the day, who cares? I mean, investors care, but from a regulatory standpoint, no one really does. So I think that's potentially a solution. But who knows when that's going to be ready. And then obviously if you're a commercial space station provider, you're looking at that thinking, well,

if they launch on Starship and Starship is bigger than my Space Station, then does Starship just become the Space Station? And then they get a landing with that as well. So I'm not sure Starship really solves the problem. Now, you mentioned the expiration company, Anthony. So let's talk about them. Yeah, this one's the most intriguing to me because I think the European aspect here is interesting with the amount of support that's had from like interesting players in European space politics. Astronauts going out, making speeches, coming up at different ministerials.

And then the fact that they set up the Houston office really plays to Jake's favorite Johnson Space Center mafia situation going on down there. Like you were rubbing elbows at this thing. What tells us about being at this? it was like the opening event for their they went to a thing and they were there yeah what were they doing? They were having some VIPs over to their opening of their office, a few miles from Johnson's space.

And they were like, you can come to? Are we the VIP? Hey, hey, man. Come on. No, I've met Elaine Hubey. She's the founder of the exploration company several times. Spoiler about it.

I think the world of her, like she is super smart. She does not speak like a European when it comes to space. she's not cautious. She's realistic. You don't get the usual sort of spin you get from European officials about things. She's very blunt, very cognizant of the problems with the European ecosystem. And she basically, well, so she, her number one mission is to develop a crew vehicle. That's what motivates her.

That's the goal of the expedition company. And she has basically set up a Houston office and has said that if, Europe steps up to sort of support our work. And she's not looking for all of it. She's looking for like 30 or 40 percent. She can go raise private capital. We'll build it in Europe. And if the United States or NASA shows an interest, we'll build it in Houston.

But she's, yes, very much trying to leverage the human spaceflight community. So I'm very intrigued by them as well. And the European Space Agency has made noises about wanting to do a crew capsule. We'll see if we'll see if that follows through. but yes, I like their plans and think that they have a real chance in this because she's very ambitious and is making some interesting hires to sort of pull that off. Whether they could be ready in eight or nine years, I don't know. Again, it's a big challenge, but they're the wild card in this who I would be watching closely.

Yeah. I would like that if that pan out that way, because I would have gotten it exactly backwards. were like, I guess in the last ministerial cycle and when it became clear what NASA's total half-acid policy was towards commercial space stations, I was not lobbying, but I was on the show saying, like, Europe should go build the space station and let us handle the human space flight aspect of this because funding level, the players they've got there,

they got Tally Zelania, they got Airbus, like they got people that made a bunch of space station shit before. it's more achievable than what we're seeing out of the area and space side of the launch vehicles to pull this off, make some pressurized vehicles, and get these up on orbit, then it would be to do the spaceflight side. If we do that exactly in the opposite, it would make no sense, be completely illogical. Both of us would be spending way more money than we care to on either of these endeavors. And if it worked, that would be kind of fun. That's not a hot take. That's a moldy take. Maldi as hell. Yeah. That's a Talas joke there. They said they're working on it, Eric. They had a plan in place, okay?

Yep. Okay. You have to admit they made so many that some of them got moldy. No, no, no, no. I don't disagree with that thesis. You leave some stuff around. Think about how moldy Naucca was by the time it got up there. It sat on the ground for 60 years.

Europe is building a $20 billion dollar, iras squared constellation. Like the cost is like $17 billion now for that. Everyone just keeps announcing, I'll throw two or three in. I'll throw $4 billion in. Because they don't, you know, because they don't want to rely on Elon Musk, and so they're not going to rely on him for crew transportation. Yeah, that's, I mean, the hate they have for Elon Musk drives their space policy. Which, hey, I get it.

It happens here every now and then, too. So, yeah. All right, here's the critical question. Because if our space policy world has a penchant for things, it is putting our head in the sand and our fingers in their ears and acting like this isn't a problem that we need to actually come up with solution for until three years after the fact. And then, you know, time has moved on, so we do something else. How does this play out from a NASA needing to address this as a problem? Like, what happens first? They start talking about we need to put some, you know, farm system in place for futures, crude launch vehicles and spacecraft. Or let's just pull up the stakes on commercial

Leo and go all in on the moon base and ignore Leo entirely because we have asked the commercial space station program so much that no one wants to fly people there. One of those things is the first thing to happen. I have thoughts, but go ahead, Joe. No, no, no, no, no. You go first. Okay. So it's clear to me that the crew transportation problem is first among equals among the challenges is faced by private space station operators, who already have a lot of headwinds, I think, to what they're trying to accomplish. And so if NASA wants there to be a U.S. built successor

to the International Space Station in the 2030s, and their solution is not to just keep flying station for as long as humanly possible, because there may be a case for a flying ISS to 2040 that would not shock me. But if they do care about having a success at ISS and having those stations up there in the earlier mid-2030s, then they have got to play a key role in solving the transportation issue. Because the private companies, the axioms, the voyagers, they can't do it themselves.

Now, maybe Blue Origin could. But, you know, you've got to have some government help to solve that. And maybe that's maybe that's some seed funding to a couple of companies to try to develop alternatives, or maybe that's, you know, finding some way to make Starliner work. But the government is going to have to step in to help solve that problem. And if they don't, then the commercial space station market just doesn't exist. It just, it's a pipe dream. And so you're flying ISS if you want to keep a lower orbit presence for the next 15 years.

And riding. And I don't know. And I don't know what the administration. would decide in that sense. They made... Well, they've already said they think there's no business model in commercial space stations. They fully dunked on that industry and then got the tiniest political pressure and backed off immediately and said, yeah, you're right. Go ahead. Keep doing the thing you guys were doing that we just shat on for 20 minutes in this conversation. Which is crazy. It's crazy.

Maybe the administration was right. Maybe the administration was right. But should they have said it publicly? Maybe not. Probably not. But they were totally right. Yeah. The other aspect here is like, what if Elon, Musk does not care about commercial space stations because they would have announced and flown one if they did. So, like, whether it was Elon himself or Gwen or somebody, he was like, if we pull up the stakes on Dragon, we nuke the entire Leo distraction that it is and just go all in on Moonbase and Mars. So what if we just do that? And that lets us off the hook for a lot of work that has to happen in the next 10 years while we're building out all the things that are going to make us a shitload of money.

and then also frees us up to just focus only on the moon base. That's the most plausible version of this story to me. Yeah. And if you're looking at risks too, if you're from SpaceX's perspective, I mean, do you want to fly another 30 Leo missions on Dragon? Because what are the chances that if you do 30 more flights, something catastrophic happens? You know, 10%, 20%, I would say it's at least that, right?

And that's like, then that becomes a huge drain. on everything else you're trying to do. So, like, there is, there is risk for SpaceX beyond sort of just not wanting to, beyond sort of viewing Dragon as a dead-end technology. And by the way, it's insane that that's how you would talk about a spacecraft that is six years old is the best in the world and, you know, is largely a reusable vehicle. But here we are. Welcome to SpaceX.

That's how they've done it, you know, since the beginning. and it's allowed them to advance rapidly, obviously. Dragon was a dead end. Even when they canceled Red Dragon, Dragon became a dead end. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Red Dragon was cool. Yeah, Operation isn't really exciting for SpaceX. Like, as a...

I think you would call it like a brain drain problem, too. Not necessarily that there aren't smart people working on it, but that you need to be, like, working you need to be like working with the capsule to like maintain it is sort of the sense that I get like

when they were still flying Delta 4 heavy I remember hearing a lot about I think they called it like a hangar queen like it was it was really hard to launch the Delta 4 heavy by the end because so many of the people who knew how it worked were gone and knew

all the like really weird little quirks and from the outside it looks very much like, okay, it's just a rocket. We launch rockets all the time. But yeah, it is very strange to be looking at Crew Dragon and say, like, well, there's not, it's old now. And it's been operating since, you know, a half a decade ago. That's all. The current head of NASA flew it twice.

That's how young it is. And recently, two years ago. So Joe raises an excellent point, which is that if you're at SpaceX, it's not sexy to work on Dragon. It's not sexy to work on Falcon 9. As cutting edges as those vehicles are, when I was writing reentry, it was striking to me the number of people who had put heart and soul into getting Dragon flying left after Demo 2 or Crew 1, because they felt like, their work was accomplished. And a lot of those people obviously moved over to Starship, but they didn't leave SpaceX. So, yes, the best opportunities at SpaceX are working on the next big thing at the company. And so again, that's like, that's another reason why, you know,

they are not good at operations in that sense. I think they're very good at operations in terms of operating the Starlink Constellation, which has brought a number of challenges, none of which has really been made public because they're not talking about them. But I mean, a lot goes into flying that constellation safely. So, so yeah, I mean, there's lots of, there's lots of headwinds against Dragon's future, even though it's not only kind of the future of crew transportation, Leo, it's the present. So it's, it's a kind of a wild time, but this is, this is, you know, imagine, imagine being a private space station company trying to try to solve these issues. I mean, it's like, it's like existential.

I'm trying to think of the names that the people listening would be yelling out that we haven't brought up yet. So I just feel an urge to ask you, Eric, you having just been there, what about Stoke? Was anything cooking over there? For a crew capsule? Yeah. For a rocket that has seven tons expendable to lower orbit? I mean, maybe. I was in the factory.

And I did not see any evidence of a crew capsule. And I've talked to Andy a lot before. And I think their focus is getting Nova flying, getting flying reusable. And then they have plans to make Nova more capable by improving the engines. Yes, baby. And then maybe elongating the tanks. And then they have plans for a bigger rocket. But in terms of crew, no, I didn't see any evidence of that.

And they would need to get to a larger rocket before they could contemplate that. So again, if you're looking, if your crew transportation needs are a decade from now, which is what I think we should be looking at. Yeah. They're not a factor. We're toast. I think we're already toast. What if we play no dumb questions and we just keep tossing out names?

I like this idea. So, okay, what if your relativity? You haven't flown your big rocket yet, but it's a Falcon 9 competitor replacement, whatever. It's like a mega Falcon 9. So do you think, I mean, I know they're just trying to launch right now, but would this be the time for them to, So again, like, their goal is to get the, get Terran R flying, get it scale up the cadence and then get to reuse. And that's probably a five to 10 year plan for that rocket.

But it's Smith interesting in that kind of thing. No, I don't think so. So I, unfortunately, I've never been able to talk to Schmidt about his ambitions for space and I've tried out of all the rocket company CEOs. I think he's the only one I haven't talked to. but my sense is that the reason he bought the company 18 months ago now or something like that is because he was looking out at constellations as like a 50 or 100 year problem and he wanted to be in the game of having a launch vehicle.

So I don't get the sense that crew transportation is on his roadmap. Could be wrong because I haven't talked to him, but I don't think so. What else we got? Firefly? They have a bigger rocket. I don't know. They have a bigger rocket. They have an in-space vehicle with Elytra, which hasn't flown yet.

yet. They have a lander that worked once. Hopefully it works again. I mean, obviously incredibly impressive what they did. The alpha rocket execution has been spotty for sure. And again, they are in the mode of trying to get a medium lift rocket flying. I don't know what year over under would be on the eclipse's debut launch, but I would say like 2029 would be sort of where I'm at on that vehicle.

So it's not coming anytime soon. And so they just have a lot. of other fish to fry before they would get to a crew vehicle. They, I think they're more, they would be more vectored toward. So again, like a lot of these companies that you guys are talking about, what NASA is interested in is not crew transportation Leo. They're interested in the capability to land stuff on the moon. So they're vectoring their businesses toward,

who I've used vector twice. We could have asked about vectoring me. We could ask about phantom space. Yeah, Daytona, baby. friend of the pod, Jim Cantrell. Have you ever had him on your podcast? Did you know he knew Elon Musk? Did you know he was like a founder of SpaceX?

He was there. He was on the plane when that came up. No, he's never been on the show and I assume never will. Yeah, that's probably smart. What a guy. So, they're more interesting doing, they're more interesting doing moon stuff, I think, than lowerth orbit crew transportation. Like a firefly.

Okay. I'm going to keep playing no dumb questions. Eric, do you ever see a world in which it is even remotely possible that SpaceX sells, licenses, Crew Dragon?

Oh, babe, let's go. What a question. I've been thinking about this and talking to people about this about, well, do they license it? Does there a government takes it over? because of a national need. And my sense is that any agreement that SpaceX does would be mutually beneficial.

So SpaceX would get something out of the bargain. Like the government is just not going to step in and say, we're taking over a crew dragon. Eminent domain crew dragon. Or like if they were to sell it to like someone else to run Dragon. And you've got to have Falcon 9 too, right? because the economics get pretty crappy if you're launching on a different rocket. I just, maybe that happened, sure. I mean, if someone comes along and says, we'll give you $10 billion for this.

But the cost is going to go up because good luck operating all of those elements as efficiently as SpaceX does. And I guess maybe you could get slick 40 as part of the deal, right? you could carve that out and make that like a government launch pad or a Lockheed launch pad or whatever. But I just don't see someone coming in and spending like a several billion dollars on this and then operating it as efficiently as SpaceX is done. The cost would just go up. And maybe that's what happens because, again, you double Dragon's costs and it's still the best option probably in the 2030s for crew transportation. Yeah, so we're either toast or they're just really good at negotiating. I know the second.

I don't know about the first, but I kind of suspect, I don't know. If I had to place a bet, it would be that the people at SpaceX that are interested in human spaceflight, but not Leo, realize that if we pull up stakes on Dragon,

we get all of our hopes and dreams. What do you mean? They would rather go build a moon base and rather go land people on Mars and would rather not spend time flying to the fucking Starlab thing. You buy, you buy, you buy, you buy Dragon and Falcon. If you're a SpaceX employed, you want to go work for United Space Alliance, right,

or whatever is the operating company. And the answer is probably no. Yeah, there's not the same people. Yeah, there's not the same people. And like, it's the people that made SpaceX special. Like, I talked to hundreds of them for the books, right? These are brilliant, hardworking people and that they're the reason the company is successful. Well, Eric, we're lucky enough to have a brilliant, hardworking person that I truly did not understand

on this show. Like, I do not know Joe, you're so fucking smart. I watch all these videos. I'm like, how does he know all these things? But I do have, I do have this contest that I tease at the front. I want Eric to weigh in on this, all right? This is going to be a, who shot it better is this segment, Joe or SpaceX? So first up, we've got this gyro-stabilized rocket camera with GPS. This is a unbelievable thing, Eric, if you do not see that. That little device right there, he put a gyroscope in it, and it's going to, launch out of his rocket that's very pointy, two pointy, some might say, and eventually take a photo or a video of the drogue coming out. Is that true? Yeah, I wish I had a, this is the same thing.

We used to talk about the meat rocket a lot of times, a lot on this show. I wish I had the actual shot that it's going to get, which is, it deploys about one or two seconds before drug deployment. And then the idea is it gets this shot. So the rocket separates. There's that GoPro award shot from 10 years ago or something that, but... You have streamers that are going to be like not a parachute, but also kind of a parachute. Anyway, all right, that was Joe's edition of who shot it better, this deployment cam,

or SpaceX with four stars to Starlink satellites. Oh, I love this. Because this is, yeah, so, you know, I just, you know, want to be clear that was one person making a gyroscope stabilized camera versus how many thousands of people, Joe, did it take to make this? the largest launch vehicle of all time and four of the most highly sophisticated satellites of

all time and they had to stitch together a video they didn't even get one video in frame joe it's so much better than you think man it's it's just so much harder than you think camera stuff is really hard it doesn't seem like it would be hard and it is i mean where's the color where's the color the color he's going black and white i think i think if they're going for the um ship catch and the next one if they end up doing that i think the next time they deploy one of these things, it'll be in daytime. And that, I think, will be really compelling as far as like these third-person shots. I mean, I got to go with Joe on that one. Joe shot better. I mean, he's also in the shot. You can see, you know. I mean, he's exactly. Like, that's right there.

Like, you can see him the whole time. He's doing a million things. I can barely say gyroscope, stabilized rocket. And this guy's making them. So this streamer situation is unbelievable. When you got to this part of the video, I was like, you're doing what with this thing? You're talking about packing parachutes, Eric. He's packed streamers and has this idea of how I don't, you can explain it better than I can, but you're going to like unfurl this thing like a parachute. Yeah, there's a, there's ways to pack parachutes where they, you, you open them in stages. I mean, Eric has written about this a thousand times too, but like parachutes are another one of those things. Never streamers, but they're another one of those things that don't seem like they would be

that hard. And then when you start to do it, you're like, oh, shit, like, how does this come out? Yeah, parenting. You're not, dude. You're a truly unbelievable human being for doing all this. Thank you. What else?

You've put a new video up like a week and a half ago. Yeah, I'm actually phenomenally behind on what's actually going on. I've deployed that camera pod twice now. I'm not going to tell you how either of those ones went. It wasn't the same outcome each time.

But I'm like six months behind on what's actually going on. Okay, I do have to quibble with you there because I am going to say that air existing is not a downside. I'm going to just have to say that air existing is an upside, but please continue. Yeah, I think air existing when you're going up is a downside and when you're going down is an up. side. Or just if you're a human being who breathes. Sure, but like you don't need that. Just tough it out. There is no butt. You know, just tough it up. Well, you know, your eclist system just got a lot easier if your rocket lab wanted to feel. I don't know what to tell you. I call that the New Shepherd approach. Oh, man. Yeah. Well, I'm excited to try the,

I have a few friends at SpaceX, and I keep sending them videos of, like, the stuff that I'm getting, and I'm like, who's going to get the nice daytime shot first? But, yeah, no, I'm excited to try that drug deployment thing. How often do you have companies asking to hire you? Not that often. Really?

That seems crazy. No. Well, I think it's clear to, I failed a SpaceX interview a few years ago. And I think it's, I think part of why I feel, I mean, I also like, I felt like the technical part. I wasn't a good fit, but I really like what I do now. And it's the same thing spiritually as like everyone wants to make crew dragon. No one wants to operate it. It's not fun to do, like, like, it's fun for me to be like, I don't know how to do any of this stuff until I start doing it and I can figure it out.

if it was, hey, you have a work order and there's a procedure you have to follow. And even if you're doing some type of innovative work, you're also, you're radically accountable for the system you're building. It cannot fail. That's a lot less fun than like, hey, even if I blow this thing up, I get to make a fun YouTube video. And there's actually like, there's a weird incentive. the videos perform better when the rockets don't work because the plot becomes more powerful. That's some bad audience capture right there.

No, I'm not saying you take this job. I'm just want to know how many of these startups out there are like, damn, this one guy does a lot of this stuff all himself. I don't know what I need either. I bet he could figure it out. Because if I was doing a space startup, I would find the use of the world who are, like, that's what you want.

You want people that just figure this shit out. I think it would be, but the role that I would fill at any of those companies would be like the role of a systems engineer, which is not, which at most of these companies is viewed more as a practice than a role. Right, right. Yeah. Like I've already failed by saying the word systems engineering because it, and I think this is correct. Like it's systems engineering is a practice, not a role. It's like a thing that you do as an engineer. Anyway, I don't know. I don't want you to get a job to be clear. I just want to know. what all these people are doing out they're not trying to hire you all the time. Because everyone's got a number. That's my point. Well, I wouldn't know because I don't check my email enough. Shocker that you even responded to my very last minute invite on this. Eric, what else you got cooking? You got anything coming up? You want to alert people too?

Well, first of all, I would just say that SpaceX does do a phenomenal job of storytelling. they obviously have a tremendous amount of resources, but the videos from Starship and so forth. A lot of that does come from Elon. He cares a lot, obviously, about appearances and how his products appear. And so I think that they are among the very best in terms of storytelling. So it's not surprising that they were interested in Joe's work.

Yeah, I'm working on this launch story. I told you that this crunch in launch vehicles, I think for the second half of this decade, I think is pretty serious and it's more serious maybe than I thought about. So I'm going to have something on that in a few days. I'm also thinking about writing something on NASA's workforce conversion. At the end of this month, I think a number of a lot more employees are going to be converted from contractors to civil servants. And it's something that the NASA administration has been pushing on. There's been some blowback from the community. And so I'm just exploring that, been talking to a lot of people about really trying to understand that as implications.

I've heard a lot of people cranky about that. That's a weird storyline that I don't understand, but there's a lot of people mad about it that keep telling me that they're mad about it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, you've got to follow the money, right? Why are, you know, but it's interesting. Like, there are valid reasons to be concerned about what it means, but at the same time, I think it's being done from like the standpoint of wanting to try to make NASA better. All right. Well, Jake and I did a bizarre thing where we pre-recorded a show for next week two weeks ago in which we spent $100,000 of fake money on Investopedia buying space stocks. And we're going to every year check in on our portfolios.

We recorded it one day before the SpaceX earnings call. So find out how much spaceflight. SpaceX we all bought. So, we also had Chad GPT pick out its own portfolio and currently, spoiler alert, currently it's winning. So that's fun for us. Anyway, I haven't checked the leaderboard today though,

but it's probably, it was Rocket Lab and AST mobile heavy, which is, you know, you win some, you lose some on that front. All right, y'all. I did that with my dad when I was a kid. We picked a bunch of stocks. Yeah, no, no, no, we didn't buy anything. We just pick stocks.

And this is like, I don't know, long, long time ago. And I checked it recently. And we both would have roughly doubled our money, but it was nothing impressive. Neither of us were picking great stocks. What did you buy? Oh, I bought all the stuff I was interested in it. As a kid, I bought basically every major railroad. Oh, nice.

I think I bought a little bit of Apple stock. I don't know. It was all over the map. Should have bought more Apple stock. Yeah. Yeah. well at least it was fake money yep could have been worse all right y'all thanks for hanging out with me we'll be back soon see you see you

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