Off-Nominal - 33 - Regular-Ass Fishing Boat

Episode Date: August 18, 2020

Jake and Anthony are joined by Loren Grush to catch up on a wild few weeks—from VR tours of spaceships, the Doug Loverro situation, Mars mayhem, Starship hops, and of course, the DM-2 boating fiasco.DrinksRotary Chaos - Ten Bends Beer - UntappdJai Alai - Cigar City Brewing - UntappdOriginal Dry Cider - Austin Eastciders - UntappdAPRICOT WILD ALE - Persephone Brewing Company - UntappdTopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 33 - Regular-Ass Fishing Boat (with Loren Grush) - YouTubeOff-Nominal on Twitter: “🚨🚨we are live! off-nominal 33 with @lorengrush 🚨🚨 grab a frosty beverage and come hang out as we talk through Current Events™ 🚀🚀🔴🕵️👨‍🚀👨‍🚀🦠”Virgin Galactic unveils the interior cabin of its tourist spaceplane - The VergeCriminal probe looking into misconduct allegations by former NASA official, WSJ reports - The VergeSpaceX’s Crew Dragon successfully returns NASA astronauts back to Earth - The VergeChina successfully launches interplanetary mission to Mars with rover in tow - The VergeThe United Arab Emirates successfully launches its first spacecraft bound for Mars - The VergeNASA’s life-hunting Mars rover is officially on its way to the Red Planet - The VergePrototype of SpaceX’s future Starship rocket flies short hop to 500 feet - The VergeSpaceX Starship prototype finally flies - SpaceNewsPicksBen Cooper’s photo of Victor Glover and the rest of Crew-1Outer Wilds - Mobius Digital, the chill oneThe Outer Worlds, the outlaw oneNASA’s Eyes@rachel_handler on TwitterLoren’s Breaking News!Follow LorenLoren Grush (@lorengrush) | TwitterLoren Grush (@grushcrush) • Instagram photos and videoslorengrush Profile and Activity - The VergeFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterWatch the Launch of Mars 2020 Perseverance with us! - WeMartians PodcastFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Nominal Miko, welcome to space. Hello, all you anomalies. Welcome to Off-Nominal. You are great today with the best hat. We've decided this before the show started. It's the best hat we've ever had on Off-Nominal. We have our good friend Lauren Grush joining us today to talk about a lot of stuff.

There's a lot of stuff on the docket today, and I don't even think we're going to get to all of it. So, Lauren, you're back on the show. Welcome back. I'm back. I'm so excited to be back. A long absence. It was a very long time ago, right? Yeah, too long.

I knew it was too long because you're the first person that's ever said, when am I coming back on the show? And I went, oh, okay, I guess it's been too long. The original episode we had with you, Lauren, it sticks out in my mind because it might have been the one that I was the most drunk on. That might have been. Oh, really? In fact, it doesn't stick out in my mind because I don't have a little tipsy as well.

I didn't know the next day. What we did? I don't often get wasted on these things, but that one was the closest to the line, I think. I think that was the one. And then I inspired a full other show about Gary from Lockheed, which I listened to, and it was amazing. Gary from Lockheed for real. That was the follow-up. Yeah.

So you are cemented in Off Nominal lore, that's for sure. So welcome back. Well, thank you for having me. I'm excited. Yeah. What should we do? Is we some drinks? Let's do some drinks.

Remember our format? That's what we always try to do. I've got one called Rotary Chaos. Because that's what it feels like lately. It's straight up Rotary Chaos. And also this can just looks awesome. It's from Ten Ben's Beer in Vermont. Vermont.

I don't know. Never had it. It's really tasty. But I really like the name. And I felt like the list of things that we were talking about talking about on the show is like, Damn, that's... Chaos works. Chaos does work.

So that's what I'm here for. Lauren, what are you drinking? So I am continuing my train. I think last time I was on the show, I had a Shiner. I know this technically is not... It's a cider, but it's from Austin. Totally. Yeah.

I think I'm slightly behind you guys. Why is this so hard? Anyway, it's in the Austin's East Cider original. dry cider. Cool. Excellent. That's nice in summer. I have a, yeah, it is summary.

I have a fancy one. So I went up to a place called Squamish, and I got this thing. So you can tell how fancy this is. Look at this. So this is the bottle. So it's Persephone brewing. That's the company. And it's an apricot wild ale.

And it has a fancy wax top. That's how you know it's fancy. What is the process for getting that off? I'm just going to grab this this year bottle opener. It's a regular, regular situation. I'm just going to go into it. I'm just going to see what happens. And it's like, oh, it looks pretty good.

Yeah. Jake's size bottle, as always. Yeah, it's pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good. Jake, have you ever held like a 12-ounce beer bottle? I don't order children's eyes. I usually know. Oh, I forgot.

I forgot one. I brought a second one. brought a high lie because I miss. I miss Florida and I miss like hanging out with you two in Florida drinking things like this high lie. I think I had one of these on the show when Brendan Byrne was here. I think I got one of these just so I could talk about High Lie. But it is also a tasty beer.

Well, cheers, everyone. And cheers to all the people listening out there too. I know they like to bring beers too. That's true. We got a Rogers Pilsner. We got, sell some other ones, an eastbound fresh start. I don't know why this is beer shableness. Shout out our hour, but now it is.

Okay, where are we starting? This beer is more sour than I thought. Well, I made a tweet with emojis for every topic of like current events that I thought was going on. So maybe you should pull up the tweet and then decide which emoji you want to talk about. Can we do that? This is a fun game. Yeah, all right. Go over to the Twitter.

I've got it here on your screen, Lauren. Should be good for that. Okay, great. Yeah, not the pin one. Your tweet yesterday was, oh, my God. The criminal one? Was it the criminal one? Yeah.

It was too bad. Yeah. All right. So there's a list of topics for you. Okay. Rocket, rocket. Red Circle. Detective.

Got it. Okay. You know what this reminds me of is, Once, oh, many moons ago at the Verge, we all started doing the plots of movies using just emojis. It was the funnest day. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And we did like the Matrix and Jurassic Park. It was so fun, but this is great.

It's the plot of our space summer. Yeah, well, maybe we'll start there. So that's a good one. You have been very busy this summer, I would say. You've done a lot of stuff, a lot of articles. just keep coming out. That's the thing about you is that every time I turn around, there's a new article from you. So why don't you just tell us how your summer's been? What's been a highlight for you and what's been crazy? Honestly, I kind of have compared it to college where you know how

sometimes you have these periods of insane downtime and then all of a sudden you have all the finals in the same week and you have to study for every single one. That's how the summer's been. Like May, for instance, May was, I got to to a very dark place in May. And then there was a bit of a relaxation period. And then July was another dark time. I mean, ultimately, this is good, right? Everything I'm covering is so fun and it's amazing.

But man, it's as if all these companies and these agencies get together and they all plan to do all of their most ambitious stuff at the exact same time. And I just don't understand it. You also are like, imagine if you could travel at this time in life, how many things you would have had to travel for. So there's like... Oh, I'd be all over the place. Yeah. So the fact that there was like a moratorium on traveling around all of the space news that was not condensed enough where you could merge two of them into the same trip, but you would have to do discrete trips across the nation.

It's maybe lucky for that. Yeah, you would have had to have been in Florida for a launch on a, some sort of pleasure. craft in the Gulf of Mexico to participate in the landing. With the Trump flag. Yeah, hanging out with all your best friends. I forgot about that. I've already forgotten about that, and I can't believe that I forgot about that. I should have done that.

Number one, listen, I'm going to spoiler alert the rest of the year. That is the 100%. That's the off-nominee winner for 2020. The off-nominy of the year. Oh, my God. 100%. I would not speak so soon because it is only August. And there's an election coming up.

There's so much left. Yeah, there's so much left. There's a whole other crude flight to go. You never know what's going to happen. There's a starliner thing that's out there. Starships blowing up stuff left and right. We are going to have a big year for the all nominees. That's true. Yeah.

It's funny. We talked about 2020 being like a landmark. Remember like two years ago, three years ago? Like 2020 was the year everybody was planning on everything to happen. It was like all the new rockets are going to launch and all the, This stuff's going to happen. It was like 2020. It was like the backstop year that didn't want anything to go past that.

And then none of that actually happened. And then a bunch of other stuff happened. It was like it just swapped out. Well, it's like 2017 was supposed to be a big year too because that's when, you know, the original commercial crew flights were supposed to take place. Then things kept getting delayed. Original SLS was going to be then as well. Yeah.

Oh my God. You're right. Yeah. Though, though I get in trouble when I, used 2017 as the original date was supposed to fly, but whatever. You can't escape the wayback machine. You can't escape the wayback machine.

Exactly. Yeah, but anyway, everything got delayed, and they all got delayed until they converged on the same year. But now we have all these other delays that are probably all going to converge at the same time as well. Like the SLS flight and New Glenn,

that was supposed to happen this year. New Glenn and Vulcan were both supposed to be 2020. Yeah, exactly. And then JWST was supposed to happen. Well, it was supposed to happen next year, but now where are we at? It's twins, sorry. Yeah. Halloween, right?

That's so not on my, oh, yeah, it's Halloween. Halloween next year. Yeah. It's going to be a spooky launch. Spooky telescope punch. Have you found the, like your, because you, you are a, a. capital J journalist, which is different than what Jake and I do, which is like, you know, the quotation lower-tays journalism.

You know what I mean? Like, have you found that your work style? The first sells T-shirts if you're interested. No, I mean, like, you walk outside the concert where the good T-shirts are and there's the guy who just screenprinted, you know, 40 of the worst design you've ever seen, which I guess we do some of that as well. And those spinny things with the lights. Yeah.

Yeah. But have you found that, like, your workflow has been similar enough in that. you've always covered some remote events or like, you know, covered a conference from afar. So you have some of that. But you're doing like PR things where they're sending out VR headsets to unveil spaceships. Like how weird has that been? Maybe you're better at it than the companies are? I don't know.

I will say, I mean, there's no other way to describe it. It's been really tough to continue doing the job. The things I really loved most about being a journalist, especially a space journalist, getting to travel, getting to meet people, reuniting with other journalists at similar events. You know, I kind of call them many high school reunions because we all know each other and we're all seeing each other again. We've been keeping tabs on what the other people have been doing.

And then, yeah, just getting to be around people and getting to see and experience cool things. All of that has been taken away. So it's been very tough. And at the same time, like you said, it's been so busy. so it's just been constant writing. And with July, it got to a point where I had, you know, all these things on the backburners. As soon as I finished one report, you know, I said, okay, I'm done. Moving on to the next one.

It was just kind of, I was on that routine for a really long time. So that's been a struggle. However, I actually have to say the Virgin Galactic experience was really fun because it broke up the monotonous. of what I've been doing for the past couple of months, you know, instead of just sitting at my computer and writing, I actually got to do one of those experiences that I've been missing. So it was actually really neat. Can we get the behind the scenes on that?

Not like what it was like to do the VR part, but like how did you clear out enough space in your apartment to set up the VR rig? Like I want some of that behind the scene stuff. It actually didn't require a lot of space. So I never used, I never operated an Oculus before. So this is my first time actually using device. So basically you have the headset and then you have these two little controllers that

mimic your hands in the virtual space. And beforehand, I have a small space in my living room that I set up and you have to draw a circle on the floor that denotes your, this space will be using for the virtual reality. And then you have to also denote where the floor is in relation to the headset. But somehow, so the funny thing about mine was, was I had a virtual tour from the designers, the three guys that were taking me through the tour. So they got to be in the headset with me, which was pretty neat. But for some reason, I had messed up the floor where it was in relation to the headset. So I was like six inches taller than everybody else inside the headset.

So I basically had to sit down the whole time while they were standing. and when we were inside the cabin for a spaceship two, I stood up and I like, you know, busted forth through the cabin ceiling, and then I was like out in space. And then you stayed there the rest of the time. Yeah, I was like, okay, continue the tour. I'm just going to stay here for a minute.

But it was fun. It was really neat. And it was actually a really great way. I would actually say that they should do more of this because I feel like a lot of Virgin Galactic's events are pretty, you know, there you have to have an invite, kind of an elitist feel to it. So if more people have these like apps or VR experiences, I know VRs aren't necessarily cheap, but it at least opens up these experiences a little bit more to people who are interested in them. So this was the actual cabin. Is this what it looked like in the VR set as well? Because these are the photos they released.

I don't know how one-to-one it was. Yeah, but I mean, I just got, well, these are reclined, I believe, because in this position, they're heading back to Earth. But yeah, I could maneuver around the seats, and I could actually sit in the seats if I wanted to, which was pretty neat. But yeah, that's what it looked like inside. Yeah, down at the, um, wait, go back. I saw the earth.

The original seat. Yeah. Nice. Definitely didn't look like that at all. I'm making this the album art for this show. Oh my gosh. That's ridiculous. It reminds me of like a kitty slide or something, you know, like you're about to slide

into a pool. And then you have the waves. It does look like a low end water park. That's amazing. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. That is awesome. Yeah, I think there's going to be like a lot of weird positives that come out of like the whole

COVID thing, right? Like, you know, we're seeing this a lot in conferences where there's, they're opening it up and trying all these new technologies and seeing how they can get more people involved with it. And I don't know how much of it's going to like stick around forever, but, um, there's got to be some portion of that that stays and kind of makes things different. And I'm kind of, I'm kind of excited for that in a weird way, like to see what, what stays around.

Absolutely. I'm the same way. I, you know, I wish I could. go to every single space conference that is ever held. But I feel like they're, you know, in pre-pandemic times, there was one every other week or so. And it's just not feasible to go to every single one. And then sometimes they incentivize you to go by not showing the live stream of an event

or, you know, you have to be there to actually get the news. And I understand if you put the effort in and to go, you should get that reward. But at the same time, it would be nice if things were. become much more available and open to the public and for journalists alike. Yeah. Yeah. I know the same thing. I get to do the Humans to Mars summit, whatever, in a couple weeks.

And I've never been able to do that one because I just, DC is a tough place for me to get to. Like, I don't know what it is with the flight schedules, but it's just like, it was always just difficult and expensive. The last time I went, I had to take a red eye and it was not fun. So, like, I've never gone to this thing. But now it's virtual and I'm just like, yeah, I can absolutely go. That's great. right, I get to participate in that. And LPSC is going to be virtual next year,

so that's going to be an interesting experience. And yeah, I'm really kind of stoked to see how that feel changes and how, I mean, I guess for a small time freelancers like me and Anthony, it's like a total, it opens up a lot of flexible options, right? And then so I don't know, maybe a big time establishment, big, big journalism. I don't know. Oh, my God. You guys.

Big space churno. I'm curious how they're going to handle space symposium because that is currently scheduled for end of October. I just do not see that happening. But space symposium is such a big deal for the industry. So I don't know if they're going to try and go online or what. I don't think I will be going if it is held in person. But I think with that,

they're going to be more open with the live streams, which they haven't been before. I mean, they've shown some things, but a lot of this stuff has been, you know, in person only. And so I hope that that, like I said, I hope that becomes a norm, but I might be a minority on that opinion. We'll see. I guess IAC as well. Is there a dirty virtual? There's quite a few. Yeah.

Yeah, they streamed all this stuff that was like the big stuff. And I know in particular, Lauren was. the dancers. By the opening, yeah, the dancing part of last years. So if they keep doing that, then I think we're good. Yeah. That was an event. That was something.

That was a old thing. That feels like an entire life ago. Like, man, that dancing of that, because that week itself felt very long as well. I don't, I didn't even remember it until you just mentioned it. What was the, what was the conference that started off with Broadway? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I see. We were, Jake and I were sitting there like, what is going on?

What is going on? And then we saw you tweeting, loving it. And everyone else was very confused. And I was like, all right, I need to tap into whatever Lauren's on here. I need to figure out what's going on. It's because I'm a secret theater kid. And I feel like that is unheard of in the space world sometimes. And so I love Broadway and I love space.

It's just a interesting. I was not able to pull myself out of the situation and where like the vice president was there and all the heads of the agencies were there. and then also all of that was happening. And there was just my, I was, I was also like an overload mode where there was just like, holy shit, there's a lot of people around what is happening. So it was a little bit of a, a like, in person was a, and mind F entirely. Yeah. And maybe if I was just watching it on a screen.

The pageantry. Like, I was not prepared for that. I was like, okay, the conference is starting. I was expecting like the IAC guy, right? Right. DeGal or whatever. I expected him just like walk up and be like, well, comfortable with it and it was not like that all of a sudden we were at like low end Olympics and it was

just very confusing to me but anyway should we get to some hot drama is it the hot drama alarm for this whole criminal situation I I feel terrible but let's I guess if you have an alarm for hot drama oh we got one right now is the time to use it hot drama I haven't really read anything about this yet can somebody fill me in on what's happening to Doug Laverro So, I mean, it's not funny. It's not funny. But essentially, the rumors about him speaking with Boeing, Boeing's Jim Chilton during the procurement process, looks like they've opened a criminal probe and to look at it and to see if he actually violated any integrity laws there, which I was, I assumed what happened if that is actually what occurred, right? If you speak with somebody outside the procurement process, that it seems to be that would be something someone would look into on a federal level.

I just can't figure out what the deal was because they say that he gave Boeing info and then they revised their proposal. But I thought they had already put the proposal in. Like how did they have time to revise it? Well, and apparently they didn't, right? Because it came too late. Well, they, they, it came too late, so they had already put in a proposal. The allegations are that he told them that it wasn't strong enough and that they went back and redid it. And then it got suspicious that they turned in a proposal that was like, you know, really followed the guidelines.

That's what I'm wondering, though. Like, when was their time to redo it? I'm confused by this situation. I'm not sure of the timeline. Maybe he was like updating files that they haven't been opened yet or something? I guess. That's the thing. It's still not a lot of information about like the specifics of when and what happened. Oh, gosh, my screen is making me all pixely. I look strange.

Do this. Do what happens. There we go. You have pixel refresh every once in a while. The thing that like I don't understand is is Boeing is not unfurring. familiar with a federal government procurement process. Like, it doesn't add up that they would be like, oh, let's just, we got a tip, just send it a new thing. Like, I, I don't, I don't understand that.

I don't understand, like, how they expected that that would work. Like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't want to speculate. Yeah, I know. I do. I think he was updating files on some internal server that hadn't been opened yet, because that's the only way I can figure out that it was ref.

revise. Because him, or maybe they sent in a revision and whoever received that was like, uh, no, we already got your thing. You can't update it. That's not part of the rules. Maybe that's what happened. And that's how they figured out that somebody was telling them, you got to fix this. Yeah, maybe.

Well, I think the idea, at least from the reporting, it's that what they've turned in was a little too on the nose. Like, and that's what tips them off that somebody had, like, possibly talk to them, you know, gave him the help. You were like, you didn't double space it. You need to double space this. And then they double spaced it. Yeah.

Secret NASA style guy that they completely adhered to. This is Chicago format. We need APA. Oh, my God. Yeah. So I don't know. I guess there's there's a chance that this is all just like process, right? Like you have to open the criminal thing.

And then maybe they look into it. It's like really not that bad. And then everything's fine. we don't hear about it again. But, uh, I don't know, it's, it's definitely interesting.

For what Doug is saying, though, I mean, he, I think, at least from what the Wall Street Journal reported, they said that Doug's excuse was that he didn't want Boeing to, um,

you know, protest the bid or protest the pyramid and then slow down the process. Yeah. Because they want to do this all very fast for the 2024 moon landing. So he thought he was actually helping speed things up. rather than actually giving him a leg up. I don't know if that's true. I don't know if that's good enough excuse.

A lot of people are saying no. We'll see. We'll see what they decide essentially. Yeah. Jake's just an onlooker. He's like, I got no money on the line on this one. Well, it's a tough one, right? And just, like you said, I don't want to speculate.

And there's just not that much information. It's all you can do is just, make up unflattering stories about Boeing and NASA. We knew it was going this kind of direction because of every time it was brought up, they were like, oh, we're going to shovel right along, not talk about that one. We don't talk about your predecessor, Kathy Leaders. We're talking about Kathy Leaders on Kathy Leaders Day. Welcome to Kathy Leaders Day.

She's the only associate administrator that's ever existed. Yeah. So you knew there was something else percolating. Well, we knew that there were the Inspector General, NASA. as Inspector General was looking into it already. And so now it's just kind of, you know, been amped up to 11. And I think at this point it's just we got to figure out, you know, we got to see what they decide, you know, and what decisions they come to.

It's not, I'm not too worried about it, honestly. Like outside of Doug Leverro's personal matters, that sucks for Doug Levero. But in terms of affecting NASA, this is like a, if you're going to have a very outrageous political scandal, 2020 is a great year for outrageous political scandals that are anywhere lower in the government. That's not going to get covered. That's not going to be anywhere in the newspapers. We're going to be fine, like, going forward. I mean, it's just been a blip on the radar of all the things that have happened at NASA. So I have to say it's really nice that all of all the memes that they've made about 2020, at least Bob and Doug have made it into the memes. Like,

you know, they haven't been overlooked. They're still count. in the like crazy shit that's happened this year. We got to talk about the, we got to talk about the boats. We need to cover this event. Oh yeah, we absolutely do. Okay, this whole thing started where I think we were chatting in the live chat in Discord

and all of a sudden there was like, man, that's weird that there's a fishing boat way in the background of this recovery operation because you could see one like the telephoto lens was in on the capsule way in the distance. There was a regular-ass fishing boat. And then all of a sudden, as they zoomed out,

more and more entered the frame. The slow onset was maybe my favorite element of that because it was boat by boat and then there was the boat with the fishing rods, the outriggers, and the Trump flag. And it was just such a perfect moment. I didn't quite believe it at first, you know, because also whenever I'm covering these events,

I'm doing 20 different things at once. So I'm tweeting, I'm trying to update the story, you know, making gifts. and, you know, just doing a bunch of different stuff. And then, yeah, priorities, you know. And then so I wasn't really paying attention at first. And then I saw people were tweeting about it. And then I saw the Trump flag go by.

And I was like, wait, holy shit. Like, oh, this is going to be something I have to write about. Yeah, exactly. It's like, oh, this is another story that's happening. But I think my favorite part was when, they were hoisting the capsule onto the boat and all of the boats were in kind of like a semicircle watching from afar. I was just, I was truly amazed.

And they were all just, it was just like a front row seat. The only way to upgrade this situation was Bob and Doug to walk out and somebody like throw them a bud light to shotgun on the way out of the capsule. Like that was the only thing missing from that situation. What do you think happens to these people now, though? Nothing, probably, right? Well, that's what I was going to bring up. I don't think anything's going to happen to them.

I saw one guy very eagerly posting pictures of it and bragging about it. And I feel bad. So I need to remember I have a very large Twitter following sometimes. So I had tweeted out his Facebook because he had been posting pictures of it. And he was so proud. of it and I was just aghast. You know, I was just thinking, what? How could you think this way?

So anyway, I know others had tweeted it too, so it wasn't just me, but so people went to his Facebook page and started, you know, space enthusiast went to his Facebook page and they're starting to post, you know, really nasty things saying, oh, you know, this is your near really toxic hydrazine and you could have hurt somebody and, you know, everyone was getting upset and the guy was just, he was just didn't give any shits about it. He was just going, yeah, yeah, we were fine. Like, no one got hurt. It was fun. Yeah. You know, so it was interesting to watch that all unfold. But I think the Coast Guard doesn't have the authority to actually, I'm all pixelated again. I'm back. There we go. So weird. Yeah, they can't do anything really because they're out,

they're offshore enough. I've done a fair amount of boating in my life. I used to work on one, technically I'm a professional. They were far enough away that... Technically, I'm a professional. That, yeah, the only way they could have done that was to board every individual and look at their paperwork and then reprimand them or something. Yeah. And there was that statement from the Coast Guard that was like, look, like we, you know, this is the authority we had. We could have boarded everyone.

We don't have that kind of labor, that kind of, you know, resources. And then they kind of said, like, the boating community is very important to us. We have a relationship with them. We use them for a lot of, and I was like, okay, that's cool. Like, I, I get that. Like, I totally understand that sort of relationship. So I was like, if they're going to have a, like, friend to friend relationship, then I hope that off camera there was a friend to friend like, hey, get your shit together

in a little bit of a, you know, like when I have to tell Anthony, he's being an idiot. I, you know, whack him upside the head. And that's how it works, right? If I could have been a fly on the wall of radio channel 16 at C that day, there's probably some good stuff going on. I mean, I hope so. I've pinged NASA a few times to see what like the updated strategy is going to be and I think they're still kind of figuring it out. So I don't know exactly what more they can do other than have more boats and people to reprimand

people because I think they were just severely outmatched at the time, right? They only had like a handful of boats out there and there were dozens and dozens of onlookers that came out to see. So I think maybe it's just. more boats next time. I don't know. I don't know what the answer is. I'm not as avid of a boater as you are.

No, I mean, there's nothing like, what are you going to do, you know? Yeah. I mean, I imagine SpaceX will hire security as kind of like one thing. It's just in some way. I don't know if it's just like a fast boat that clips these guys. I think you can also obfuscate the like direction that things are coming in. Because I believe they left, the recovery boats left from Pensacola that and people followed them out

is how some of the boaters got out there. So I think that could maybe be obfuscated a little by leaving under the cover of darkness or, you know, lingering out at sea for longer. It's just a shocker to me that we haven't had this with a SpaceX booster recovery yet. They are way more downrange, but you see how dedicated people that take photos

of SpaceX stuff are? Like, how has this not happened yet for anything SpaceX? I think maybe it's just because they're so far out. I'm assuming that Doug and Bob were much closer to the shoreline, so it was probably easier. But the ones that go, like, the Starlink launches that go to like 50-something degrees, inclination, the CRS launches, they're kind of off the South Carolina coast. That's not an extreme amount of offshore. Maybe people are a little smarter about that because we don't want a potential rocket falling on a boat. A capsule isn't that big compared to the rocket.

There's no supersonic retro propulsion happening from, you know, much to SpaceX's chagrin. At the same time, maybe we don't know. Like, we usually this, all we have of the booster recoveries are from the live stream from SpaceX. So maybe there are boats out there and we just don't see them. That's a good point. Yeah. Maybe there's actually a SpaceX sniper in addition to a ULA sniper, and that's why we haven't seen any boats out there.

I can hire the mercenaries that are. The space mercenaries. Just when I say I don't endorse the idea of a sniper. What I do endorse is the idea of us three renting a Jeep for the first time Starliner comes back in white sands. Oh, yeah. Driving out to the desert. Wow, this pixel situation is getting wild. Oh, no, what's wrong?

I think we're just doing this on Saturday night when everyone around who's watching Netflix, I think is this. Maybe that, yeah. Yeah, I like that. 20-21, orthogonal meetup at the white sands. Side of the Jeep. I can get one of those magnets. They're going to be, like, waiting for us.

Oh, like, it would look like the Jurassic Park Jeep if we put that sticker on the door. Yeah. That would be so. You can print, like, the car magnet so you can just, like, throw it on, your car is branded. Peel it off when you're done, return the rental. Real talk, we should make some of those anyway.

Separate conversation. Business meeting, open. Business meeting, yeah, okay. All right, we didn't hit Mars. Let's do Mars. So first of all, I just want to say thank you, Lauren, because you were my connection to getting some of the Mars Hope team on the We Martians show. So shout out to you.

You helped me get that done. That was pretty cool. Yeah, happy to do it. They were really great because they were so open and wanted to talk about it. You know, it was such an interesting dynamic covering all three of them. these launches because you had such unique missions going to Mars. You have, you know, the newcomers. I mean, I guess China is a newcomer as well, but they're really newcomers.

The UIE is really newcomers in the space world. And they, the way that they described how they were looking forward to the launch that you could tell they were just so nervous. Like they were just like. Yeah, they were jazzed, but they were like, they were like, they're, like, they're, were like petrified, but also really excited at the same time, which was really so sweet to see. And then you have China where it's just kind of, you just got to figure it out, you know,

based on, though actually with this mission, it was a little bit easier because there was a paper that was not even a paper, but, you know, a report published in nature that kind of outlined what they were doing. All the instruments and stuff, right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, it was more than what we normally get when it comes to China. So that was a little easier. But at the same time, nobody to interview just kind of have to figure it out from what's been reported.

Callabander Jones again. That's 100%. Yeah, exactly. Oh, man. He is such a godsend when it comes to that. He blows my mind that he can do anything productive. And then to the extent that he does, I'm like, what? I don't, he's just on Weibo all day, I think.

Yeah, I mean, I think it's like a whole other ballgame when it comes to covering China because I think it'd be so stressful, but he handles it like a pro. He's more similar to like the amateur satellite trackers than what Jake and I do or something. You know, like he's much more in like the file. Look like the filings that are airspace, not that they do airspace things, but like look at the deorbit zones that this thing came down in and the inclination it went to. It's probably one of these things. They say it's civilian, but it's probably not. Man. And then kind of like also reading into what the state news agencies release, you know, what they're saying and what they're not really saying, you know, that's kind of a whole other decoding that I don't think I'm very good at. Yeah, yeah. It's, it's crazy. Did you watch the, um, it makes me think that there's got to be a guy.

There has to be an Andrew Jones that was operating in the Cold War that was doing like the criminology back then. But we don't, because everything that we hear is like the stories that we all know. that's been lost to the sands of time at this point. But I assume that there was an Andrew Jones. The USR space guy. Yeah, who was like, oh, Sputnik went up and here it's in this orbit. And I saw it come over Burbank or something. It might have been the CIA is what the way you're looking for is.

Lauren, did you watch the Chinese live streams that were available? Did you see any of those? I did. With the family in the hotel? Yes, the family in the hotel. And then there was one that it was, it was horizontal for, while and then they switched it to vertical and I was going insane I was like just keep it straight it's about to watch the one that changed right as it lifted off they're like let's try a

different yeah and they're like turned it oh my goodness brutal but I mean I can't complain it's more than what we normally get so it was nice to have something but yeah that one was I guess that was pretty straightforward because they either tell you if it happened if it was successful or if it wasn't and so you kind of just have to wait and then we had to perseverance, which was a whole other ballgame. Yeah. Yeah. I'm so, like, sad that we couldn't go to that one.

I had, I've had plans for like three years for this trip, like, just to like go down to Florida and do my first Florida Mars launch after, you know, after we did Insight last year, which was like, like, let's be serious, was kind of a disappointment to watch. Yeah. It was, uh, I was like, I need to go see an Atlas fly, like, for real see it and not just hear in the darkness and the fog. So, yeah, I was just, I was sad. But we got to do cool stuff and I don't know.

It was still pretty fun when you get down to it. I mean, I completely commiserate with that. I mean, it wasn't, perseverance wasn't my, my, you know, holy grail. It was DM2. And I can't tell you just the amount of emotion and there were tears. There were lots of tears. you know, it just, it just felt wrong not to be there. And I mean, ultimately I did a, I think I did a great job from home, but it still was, I mean,

I've been looking forward to that launch for like six years, you know. And so for it to not work out was really heartbreaking, to be honest. But yeah, I guess I guess you get to try new things though, right? Because, you know, we get to do a live stream. Anthony, you know, Anthony totally was a soldier for me. He produced this whole thing that we did. and it was a lot of fun. So I'm kind of, it's a weird blessing.

I don't know. It's, this whole year is just like hard to interpret because of all that. You're just like, all this good stuff, all this bad stuff. Yeah, and especially, yeah, for a space enthusiast. And I think Eric had tweeted about it the other day. Like this year in particular, like we said, it's been so filled with firsts and monumental things, but at the same time, the backdrop of what's, you know, the backdrop of the pandemic and the civil rights movement that's going on, it's just, it's, I mean, it's, it's

emotional whiplash every single day, you know, especially for a space recorder. So it's been interesting to keep up with, to say the least. And I got my rocket policy story before this baby comes. I was getting nervous that that was not going to happen before. everything happened. So I was like, man, that's going to be the story that posts like the day after my son is born. But we all got our like our marquee stories just like in the last like a couple months for it, didn't me? Yeah.

Perfect. And then the crew one got pushed out until October. I'm like, oh, I'm in business. This is great. That's a nice window of time right now. I am the opposite of Lauren who everything gets scheduled whenever she's going on vacation or is getting married and Mrs. I.C. But I've got this perfect, perfect window.

When I got married, I don't think anything. I think you were spared this time around, but the meme did not live up to its potential, but it did the previous several years. Oh, yeah, absolutely. I think the funniest one for me was the week I went to, my husband and I, not my fiancé at the time, we went to Paris for just like a week. And in that one week, two spacecraft died. They didn't die, but I think it was the end of Kepler and the end of, oh gosh, it was another mission that just, they both happened to go out of commission in the same week. And my poor co-workers, I checked in Slack and they were like, oh, Lauren goes on vacation and spacecraft are just falling out of the sky.

Yeah. So funny. You want to do Starship stuff? You want to talk about Starship? Yeah. I have a, I have a question because I want to know, yeah, you're wearing your Star Hopper A shirt. It's a great shirt.

It's the month that all this stuff happens in Boca Chicken. One year celebration. Yeah. It's a Star Hopper birthday. Lauren, I want to know. Okay, so you cover like a lot of different things in space. You're in this inside the space box. Your portfolio is very wide.

And so what, what, What is your strategy with all the crap going on in Texas? Because, like, there is, I mean, there's multiple 24-hour live streams happening now. And there's, like, something going on. And someone's got something to say about everything that happens there. A guy drops a beer can on the road and there's a story about it. So, like, I really want to know. What does it mean?

Yeah. Is this a sign? I think they're marking a location for the future beer keg. This could be where the, yeah. So I want to know what your story. strategy. Like, how do you allocate time and in what way? I need to know this. This is a brilliant question. I would not have thought of this question, but this is going to help my life tremendously. I mean, you have asked the million dollar question and it's something I think I'm still kind of

strategizing about after working on this beat for the last six years. It really is just finding, Okay, what do we define as, you know, the next big moment, right? So I believe I covered a story about I can't remember which version of the prototype it was. Serial number X, yeah. Yeah, yeah. One of the Starship prototypes actually passed a cryo. Well, no, yeah, it did blow up after it passed the test. but the fact that it had passed the test was significant because all of the prior ones had not.

And so I thought, okay, passing this one pressure test, cryopressure test, was significant enough to warrant a quick hit on it. So now my strategy with Starship is to hit every increasing increment, right? So I might hit the next hop, if you will, but it depends. If they're going to be doing a ton of these hops, you know, it might not be worth it. And, you know, isn't that essentially what SpaceX is trying to do is to make them more routine? And so when things become routine, they're not newsworthy anymore. And that's kind of how it's become with the landings, you know, the Falcon 9 landings.

And also, you know, we're starting to restrategize when it comes to the Starlink launches because there's just so many of them. After a while, I can only write, SpaceX is about to launch another batch of Starlink satellites so many times. You know, it's not really newsworthy at that point. I even get, like, the email to apply for press credentials for the Starlink launches. And I know it's just the three PR people at SpaceX. And I'm like, I know this is in your job description, but. My outlook started putting those into the junk mail.

Oh, wow. Like, you know, people that live on the space coast. are going to those because it's rocket launch. Does anyone making travel plans for Starlink 14 at this point? No. Which is great. Like for SpaceX, that is, like you're saying, that is what they want. I'm not knocking Starlink for that reason.

That's the ideal. But it's just, yeah, it's like, you know, one of those things. But that's awesome. Being a journalist, especially on this beat, because I say this all the time, but I just feel like my beat is 10 beats and one, right? You know, you have a whole math. magazine, Space News, and you've got amazing reporters, but they all actually cover beats. You know, you've got Caleb on satellites.

You've got Sandra on defense, and you've got Jeff on everything, I guess. But, you know, I am all those people from my website, you know, and I just can't hit the amount of things that they do. And so it's constantly a back and forth of being like, okay, what is a verge story? also what constitutes what I consider news and newsworthy. And that is just for a journalist, that is an ever-evolving strategy. And I wouldn't say there is really, there is a rhyme and reason to it. And if we go through each story, I could probably explain to you, okay, this is why I think it's not worthy of hitting.

And this is why I do think it is. But at the same time, it's also a gut feeling sometimes. And, you know, there's also, I don't have time to hit. this the factor that also gets worked into it as well. So it's tough. It's it's a it's something I try to rope down every single day and it's hard. Did you um speaking of Jeff Fowth did you read his piece on that recent top? This is like my favorite story to talk about it was like the most passive aggressive I am so tired of covering this piece that I have ever. Can you do like a can you do like a reading of it for us? Can you do like a?

voice acting reading of some of these favorite lines. Wait, yeah, do you have pulled up? Let's see if I can find it. I love Jeff because of his Twitter. I think he's just so funny. And when it did hop, he just wrote, it flew. And that was his tweet. And I thought, I mean,

the nationals are on and I've got to get back to the game. Even just the lead is like perfect. So it's like, after months of delays and testing setbacks, so first part right there, that's the real opens up with a prototype. of SpaceX Starship, Next Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle, made a brief, in quotes, hop flight August 4th at the company's South Texas test site. That was like my favorite lead. It's like, it's so good. Tell me the lie. Tell me the lot. There's no lie. I just love the quotes. The quotes. I love the quotes. Yeah. And then like, where's the line where he just like throws Musk

under the bus. I'm fine. He getting here. Um, uh, so he goes, uh, you know, must says last September, this thing is going to fly, take off to 65,000 feet. about 20 kilometers. This may sound crazy, he says. And then he's like, the prototype, though, was destroyed in tanking last November. And then he just, like, goes on to, like, in gruesome detail, describe everything that has been destroyed. It's like, I don't know.

I just, I was dying reading about. But I like that this is this, this is his version of what Lauren was talking about. Like, I'll write the story when the next thing happens. And in that will be the roll up of here's all the previously on Starship, all of the stuff that blew up since. Yeah. Now we got to this part. that's also a calculus that I do a lot with, you know, Starlink increment, incremental news there.

You know, people are so excited about Starlink, so there's constantly something coming out all the time. And no offense to anyone who does hit those incremental news, but for me personally, you know, sometimes I find it important to, you know, stop and give an update on the program. other times I want to take a step back and do kind of a big analysis and then I'll include all of that information in that piece. You know, it really just, it's a constant back and forth between, you know, debating whether or not it should hit something or just save it till later for a bigger analysis. Here's a relevant question from Lars in the chat. Do we feel as journalists, which only applies to Lauren, Jake and I do not use that word for us because we're not

Are your interest in stories diverging from what the readers want? Yeah, journalists, and quote. Oh, that's really interesting. I hope not. Because they want to know every detail and every Starlink. I think to your point previously, the best thing about the internet is everyone has their own niche that aligns roughly to their own interests, and if you want the story, you can find the person doing that niche.

So if you want every hop and every iteration, you're probably going to nassaspaceflight.com. If I need to send a story to a friend who's tangentially interested in space but needs to get caught up, I'm sending them Lauren's story every time. Like there's that, it's 100% true. Like, there's, it's,

there is one for everyone's interests and has different levels of context. And that's like, that is the best part about this general area. Yeah. And that's, and that is kind of the mission that I sat for myself when I started reporting, at least when I came to the verge,

I did not want to be a cheerleader for space. I don't consider that my job. My job is to think critically about every aspect of this beat. And also, I did not want to get into the weeds and make it jargony and, you know, make it unapproachable for people who, don't come to space or don't read about space all the time. So you're right. You know, if you want something that's much more insidery, you would definitely go to Tazirati or NASA Space Flight. And they'll give you all the specs and all of the details about the propellants and, you know, the different

components and what exactly got bent and where. And while you might find some of those details in my story, I'm more interested in communicating the story in a way that everyone, as many people as possible can understand. But also not making it dumb down by any means, but just I like to consider myself a translator and a liaison for the general public. And that's kind of how I approach each story. So yeah, I would not imagine that people who are obsessively on, you know, the SpaceX Reddit come to me that much. But I'd like to think that people who want to read about space but don't follow it all the time can come to my stories and figure out what's going on pretty easily.

So what are you, you know, now you have DM2 behind you. What's on your radar for like long term, six months to 12 months? The biggest things for me, I was just thinking about this the other day. I think we all are after the mayhem of the summer. It's like, okay, now what am I actually working on next? I think the biggest thing, I want to get back to Starlink because I haven't really been paying as much attention to it lately and things are starting to ramp up. So I think that's going to be a big story.

And more analysis will be on its way. I'm sure once the beta testing gets into full swing and then people start using it. And then Osiris Rex is coming up. Their tag is in October. Crew 1 also in October. So we're going to have a big busy October. What else? You guys probably know.

Tell me what I'm in for the rest of the year. My mind's blank. For the rest of the year, that's pretty good. I mean, we have, there'll be IAC in the fall, which will maybe bring something up. And then we got Mars landings in February. Yeah, February is going to be rough again. But then also, I'm sure starship testing will continue to surprise and amaze. So I'm sure we'll see more things there.

Maybe some more explosions. If there aren't more explosions, I'll actually be disappointed. So I'm expecting that. Something is majorly wrong. if there's not more exclusions. What about the election? That's what I don't ask too. Oh, right.

I think I've been blocking that out of my life. I mean, that's going to be November. Like, not even kidding. That's going to be November. If we're lucky, it's going to be contained to November. You know, you're right. I should definitely start. I've already started preparing for what could change after the election.

but it's interesting it feels more stable than other other years in recent memory in that there has already been communicated agreement with the general direction though they disagree on years or specific milestones there isn't an existential question up in arms yeah I don't imagine a major shift in policy however I would expect a shift in

policy leaders perhaps So that is a big question You can say it. You know, I know you know that we're the JBFC here, but you can say it. Don't want to, don't want to rain on your parade or anything. But, you know, you never know. You never know. You honestly know.

You're going to be least surprised by that. I don't know. Yeah. That's what I'm starting to feel. But at the same time, we should be prepared because I was not prepared for the level of attention that the Trump administration has given to space. I truly thought that I was going to be taking a backseat through the last four years and that they were just going to kind of leave space high and dry,

and I could not have been more wrong about that assessment. So I will never not prepare for a lot of space activity to come after an administration change again. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's going to be interesting. I guess, and then I guess the budget will be a big thing too, right, once they finally sort that out because that's, we're waiting on what this lunar lander money is going to be. We're not going to know until,

how many continued resolutions can you do? I don't think there's enough for a limit. I think you could just keep going on that. Yeah, you just keep going. And I don't, I don't imagine that we will have a budget anytime soon this year just because of the election. Yeah. It's also, even before the election, we've got budgetary dysfunction as it's like, well,

we're going to take a couple weeks off. So have fun with that pandemic, y'all. We'll be back in a little while. Yeah, you guys can't pass one in a non-election year. Right. Yeah, during the biggest economic downturn and living memory. So that's the thing. I think Lawrence's right in that, like, space is about to be backburned.

Yeah. because of the change of leadership if it does pan out the way that it seems to be going, which is not a given. I have my space election prediction. Oh, nice. I've talked about it in our Discord. So I

am boldly making a prediction that, I don't know, maybe it has a porous chance of success, but that they will announce Artemis 1 crew before the election. That's my bold prediction. They are stacking Orion, right, on the adapter pretty soon. and how long do they need to train on a new vehicle, right?

If they want to fly in 2023, it's probably a year or two of training. They're probably starting to sort that out, and I think that would be like a kind of thing that J.B. would be like, this is what we're going to do to just add a little spice to my, maybe the last dying months of my tenure is to just, you know, go out with a bang. That's my prediction. My double down prediction, prediction. Oh, pixel reset. My double down prediction is Jeanette Epps will be on Artivus one.

And we will complete that random drama that's been stuffed behind a closet door somewhere. Oh, my goodness. Yeah, that would fit. Yeah. I will, I'll give that to you, Jake, because the one thing that this NASA has been extremely good at is making announcements. Jesus. Roasted. Scathing take.

Look, I'm one person. And my God, the level of news that has occurred. Well, even the perseverance launched, they had like five press conferences in that week leading up to the launch. Oh, my God. I just couldn't attend them all. At some point, you just have to say no, you know. But I mean, it's not even just NASA.

I will say this is my critique of the space world. And I understand this is how you make money. This is how you get capital. And this is how you get investment. but the space world loves to make announcements when there's nothing actually going on. And I completely understand the reasoning behind it and why it's done, but man, does it make my life so difficult? So Jake, I'm realizing, I'm galaxy branding on this. I'm realizing that the core stage is going to be firing right around then if schedule holds as is.

Oh my gosh. You got it. Wow. Not the tight of firing that they wanted for SLS before the election, but here we are. We'll take what we can get down on that test. Yeah, so I think that's my bold prediction. I've now put it on the record, so we'll see how that plays out. It's like my Starship predictions that I did with Tim Dodd.

Now, I put those up in a text searchable format so I can do like, I think I got it right. Oh, my gosh. You guys were, I mean, this feels like ages ago, too, but remember when we thought for a split second that the Falcon Heavy might be carrying Orion around the move? Oh, my gosh. There was that memo. That might have happened this year.

Yeah, the memo first. That was a big switch. Man. And then that was when SpaceX said they were going to do a similar mission, right? They were going to do what on Falcon Heavy, send two people around. They literally... They literally announced on Monday. We're going to have a press conference with Bill.

Garsten Meyer and I don't remember exactly who else was it, Lightfoot maybe at the time. And then that Friday, SpaceX announced they were going to do two-person mission. No, you know what it was. Or maybe I had that reversed. I don't know. No, they, this was even before then, they were going to see if they could put crew on Artemis 1 instead of Artemis 2. That's what it was.

And at the, at that week, I remember, because this was, this was a, Lauren was on vacation. Special. And special. Hot drama alarm went off. You were at the pool and the hot drama alarm started ringing out. I was in New Orleans with my family. And so I had just covered this whole, oh, we're thinking of putting crew on Artemis. It wasn't Artemis one at the time.

It was just. EM1. What did they use to call it? EM1. Yeah. Oh, my God. I'd forgotten. Anyway, and then I went on vacation.

And then that same week, Elon was like, we're going to have a press conference. And then they said, oh, we're going to send two people around the moon and dragon on Falcon Heavy. And at the time, I made the comparison. I even did this on vacation, which I can't do this anymore. I did like a whole analysis the next day where I was just saying, oh, isn't it interesting that these mission profiles are so similar? And they all got announced around the same time. It's really weird, don't you think?

Yeah Anyway But rip to that scenario And that's not happening anymore Yeah None of those scenarios No it's all gone No

We've been through several Associate administrators Two trials or criminal investigations There are so many stories That I put like so much Blood and sweat Into that are just completely Have disappeared

We did a whole video on the Red Mart or the SpaceX Red Dragon missions that they had proposed, which were supposed to happen in 2018. We did a whole video on the Falcon Heavy announcement with them sending a dragon around the moon. Now they're obsolete, you know, so all that time. People are bringing up the Dear Moon dating contest. That was a thing.

Oh, yeah. That was brutal. That was the worst thing. That was the quickest news cycle for that one. It was a couple weeks later. He's like, yeah, I'm not going to do this. Was it weeks? I thought it was like 72 hours.

I thought it was a couple hours. Wait, I don't remember. I just remember being like, oh, we should probably hit that it's not happening anymore because we hit that it was happening. We have received feedback and we have decided not to proceed with the dating contest. Jake, here's what I want to do. So I'm about to go on some sort of paternal leave here, parental leave, whatever, you want to call it. I would like you to keep track of between when I declare I am off and back.

Though I probably will not check out entirely. I would like you to keep track of stories like that that we think are a thing that's going to matter a lot and then is totally done by the time I'm back on. Should we do some picks? I think we should do some picks. Anthony, why don't you go first? I brought two picks. My first pick is this picture of Victor Glover. that's all I've got to say about that.

Incredible photo. But I do want to linger on this for a second. On the veins on his muscles? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, he's, if that doesn't make you want to go work out. This guy will crush you. Look at him.

God, he's so cool. And then you've got Soichi Noguchi who like, he's there. His eyes are, his eyebrows are raised. He's there. He actually, he did a couple of, I guess it was around DM one that he, when they announced,

the crew, he did some interviews, and he was, like, so excited to go on this mission, and it may be just fall in love with him again. I know he's been up the ISS before, but this was the first time I seen him in interviews, and that was awesome. But my real pick is, uh, this was recommended in Discord a couple of days ago, and it reminded me that a friend had told me to get it. A game called the Outer Wilds. I've been playing it on Xbox. I think it's on PS4 and Windows. It bonds me out it's not on Switch because it feels like the perfect Switch game. It's this game with a beautiful soundtrack. You're kind of exploring this tiny solar system.

You don't get told anything. Like, you're just there. And there's another schick to it that I don't want to give away because it kind of is a spoiler. But you just have to explore and figure out this, like, mystery of sorts. And it's not like curbel-level orbital mechanics, but there's a solar system with a comet and all this cute stuff. And it's an awesome little, like, ambient exploration game, and it's very relaxing.

Uh-huh. I would check it out if you have one of those platforms. Yeah. Is that going to be a parent-bel-leave game? Well, I don't know. I got it mixed up with one called the Outer Worlds as 3 a.m. You're just like... Yeah, it's true.

No, there's... Is it outer worlds the one where they're, like, outlaws? Yes. Yeah. In other planets. So Outer Wilds is a chill. Okay. Water Worlds is, I think, currently made by the same studio that runs Curbel.

Pixel Refresh. I'm going back. So Curbel Space Program is currently managed by a company called Private Division, and they made Outer Worlds, which is an RPG where you're sort of like a Star Wars Firefly space cowboy crew. I haven't super started that one yet, but that seems also interesting if you're into those kind of games. But Outer Wilds is like awesome, and I love it. I've only played it for a couple hours, so I'm not super far into it yet,

but it's very nice. And it's really good. It's designed in a way that is very good for like short stints. So you can take like a little lunch break and jump in and play a little bit and then go back to work and you're refreshed. So it's awesome. Cool. So I have a pick that I don't know if it's possible I've given this pick already.

But if I have a sufficient amount of time has passed and it is also relevant. So I would like to recommend NASA's eyes in the solar system software, which is basically a live view of where all the spacecraft are at any given time. And this is what I am using to track perseverance is journey from Earth to Mars. So it's a really cool thing. You can like get, you know, you can download the thing on your computer and then you can like pull up the actual pictures of the like, you zoom in on the spacecraft and you can you can measure distance. instances from like the spacecraft to Earth or the spacecraft to Mars, whatever you want to do. It gives you velocities and just a ton of a really cool, you know,

stats and stuff. And you can see the renders of the spacecraft. So it's just super awesome. You can, and they do like these cool tours and stuff. So you can like do a tour of a spacecraft and they guide you through and like get some content and stuff. So it's pretty cool. So I recommend, uh, I recommend that.

What have you been using it on? I'm my device. Mac. Mac? My MacBook. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, I download it. I don't run in a browser or anything. I just like download it right into my computer and it's like an application. It's like kind of a big application. I'm sure there's some software developers that are upset about the clunkiness of it. I feel like I'm being sub-tweeted right now. No, no. But they're, it's good.

It's an awesome piece of software. I'm really glad it exists because, you know, I would hate having to like go through NASA. It'd be like, you know, every like four weeks. Now where is it? How far is it for birth? How far is it? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?

So I don't want to be that guy. That proves really helpful. I think I was using, I would have been using that app with Osiris Rex because whenever I write about a spacecraft out in deep space doing something, I always like to say, okay, it's at, you know, so-and-so miles from Earth. Yeah, yeah. So that's really helpful when I have some up-to-date information like that because it's constantly changing, you know, you're not at a fixed location from the Earth at all times.

I remember when XOMAR is launched in 2016, I wanted to do that. I wanted to give like updates along the cruise stage, but that doesn't exist for, for Issa. And I had like found a video from pre-launch that like described the whole thing. And they had like a date counter flying by like as a, you know, is that like one thing I think. Extraordinary scientific. I'm sure. Yeah. And so I like took screen caps at like different. I was like at every milestone. And I put that as Twitter content. I like, yeah. Now it's like now I feel like I've. This is like my secret source that nobody knows about.

Incredible. I can tell you when, when, where this face is a niche for everything. There's a niche for everything. I have no idea how accurate it was. That's so smart, though. That's so smart. Yeah, it was something interesting. So I don't have to do that for perseverance.

I wish I knew where Hope and Chan Wen were, though. But we'll find that out. Nothing. Yeah. You got a pick for us, Lauren? You got anything queued up? I do. I have two.

I have two picks. Two picks? Is one of them, this photo of Victor Glover? Yeah. I put it in our cast chat I sent a message It's this tweet from the Space Force Oh yes

I already love that Well it's actually it's a quote tweet of from a writer I really love I think she's at Volter She actually doesn't write about space at all But I just think she's so funny Because I used to follow her because she recapped The Game of Thrones

articles or the episodes and she was so good at it. Can you do a dramatic reading of this the way that Jake did for Jeff's article? Can you imagine your loved ones coming down from the attic with your medals, achievements, and honors, asking about the time he shaped the strategic environment? How would you even begin to explain that by being part of the shaping? This sounds like one of those things that you throw like, or the, it's like the corporate, corporate speak, like, AI generated text. That's what that sounds like.

Or there's like one of those posters on the wall that's like be part of the shaping and then like some people jumping on a mountain. Inspirational. But I loved her joke about it. It was just because it just shows how absurd. My loved ones coming down from the attic with my achievements. How can you even explain that me by being part of the shaping? I love to be part of the shaping.

Oh, that's great. That's fantastic. I love it. Okay, and then my real pick is a big one, and I'm going to break some news on your podcast. Are you ready? Jake, this is the thing that we do know on the show. This is the second piece of breaking news we've had on the show.

Breaking news. I mean, it's not that big, but it's big for me. I am writing a book. Cras here, intensifies. It is happening. Can we get more deets on them? Yeah, it's going to be about the first women astronauts at NASA during the space shuttle program. Yeah.

Excellent. That's awesome. Yeah, I'm very excited. It's a little bit of Sally Ride, a little bit of Catherine Sullivan. Judy Resnick and Ray Seedon. We got them all. It's going to be so fun. And I'm just at the very beginning, but it is happening.

And I've got, now I've got to write it. That's fantastic. That's awesome. Wow, I'm pumped for that. Yeah. So we've got your next slot in Off Nominal already picked out. Yeah. You do.

We don't know what it is, but let us know. 2023, I guess. You'll be back before then. Artemis 2 launch. Okay. All right. Yeah. Wait, what will happen first?

Will I finish writing the book or will people launch on the S&S? Everybody's sweet at Offnom at Lauren Grush for that. We have this in our Discord chat. this this fun bot that one of our listeners created for us, allows us to make space prediction. So you like log a space prediction with this bot and then it like remembers them. And then it calls you out on it on the date that you guessed that it was going to have by. Oh my God.

That's such a great idea. Yeah. It's really fun. So yeah, now we're going to have to have a bot about a bot prediction, which comes first. Lauren's book, Artemis too. I love it. You know what? You know what I did make the right prediction was my favorite article that I've written was

about will the winds of winter be come out before or after crew launch on commercial crew vehicles and I think there was some update that George R. Barton did where I was just like, God damn, this book is never coming out. Like the astronauts will launch before the winds of winter goes out. And I was correct. Turns out it was not close. Yeah, not even close at all. So he says he made another post on his blog. He says he's written four chapters. This pandemic Maybe the one good thing about the pandemic is he will finish this book. He's got a lot of time to work on it.

Exactly. There's nothing else to do. But right, Wednesdays of winter. Oh, dear. So where should everybody follow if they are not Lauren Gresh superfans as Jake and I are? Where should they keep tabs on how your book is going, plus all the other stuff that you are doing? I mean, it's all the same spot. My Twitter account at Lauren Gresh.

You can also follow me on Instagram, though I haven't been very active. there lately but Instagram is Grush Crush Crush. And that's about it. Those are my two big things. And there exists a Verge Lauren Grush RSS feed, we have to say. So that is super helpful. Does? Yes.

I think I just have the, no, I do. Yeah, no, you're right. So I get it. My RSS feed just has Lauren articles coming in. None of the other Verge does. My favorite thing is that every writer we've had on the show finds this out when they're on the show. I'm pretty sure Marina.

Corrin was on, she was on a couple months ago, and we had the same, we had the same exact interaction. There is a Marina RSS feed. Oh, really? What is RSS? That's a terrifying prospect for every journalist, because it means that every time you write somebody, or something, somebody will immediately click on it and look at your stuff.

And even worse, most times you won't even know that they read it because it's RSS, and there's no way to find that out. But there's always that fact. to 10 minute period of terror when you press publish on a story where you're like, oh my God, someone's going to find something that I messed up and tweet mean things to me about it. So once you pass that period, then you're in the clear. Anthony just had a podcast like that where he like blanked out in the middle of the podcast and then said the exact same sentence right right away again.

Yeah. Wait, really? Well, it was it. It was the headline. So it was only the Patreon feed, which was fine. Or no, wait, was it? No, it was the real show. I think it was the real show.

It was like your small launch episode, I think. Yeah, I think I got distracted and I was looking up some other information. I forgot where I was. So I just said the same exact line. And I don't even script the show. So it's shocking that I said the exact same thing. Yeah, yeah. Minutes after the other incidents.

And that reminds me, I had a show out years ago now that I edited poorly. And there was like a middle part that I had like fully intended to cut it out. So I like had a cough in the middle of the thing. So I was like talking. And then I was just like, I always leave space. I'm like, ugh. And then I went back to the shit. And I didn't cut it out.

So there's just like really conspicuous cough in the middle of the, and I just, I left it in there for fun. So if you're, yeah, the listeners go back and find it as like a treat. So yeah, I get it. Lauren, do you have a couple of more minutes? I do. Okay. I'm going to do a plug. I want to just making sure.

I want to do a thing. We're doing this live on YouTube. I want to do a thing. It's a video bit. So we're going to do it in the after show for all you people listening audio. I want to break down this video from Mars Hope, like from a couple of years. ago that Jake found. I remembered that we DMed about wanting to break this video down. It is a promotional video for Mars Hope from like 2014 that they put out. It's at the announcement. So like they

knew nothing about the mission at the time. And I want to just have, I want to watch the video together and just comment on it. And that will be how we close the after show. So if you are interested, everyone listening head over to YouTube.com slash off nominal. Skip to the end and and watch because it's an incredible, incredible video. Yeah, yeah. Cool. I'm ready. Actually, Anthony, what have you been working on recently?

We always forget to do this. We're trying to be better at talking about what the hell we work on. Well, as we referred to, the biggest story I've been tracking, since literally the first, don't go back and listen, I think it was the first episode I ever did,

was like Space Symposium announcements of Vulcan, and that kicked off the entire news story of Vulcan and, you know, leading up to the Phase 2, U.S. Space Force Now awards. So that finally happened. So I was talking about that a lot.

And then the small launch side, there was a bunch of updates around small SAT conference. So I've been doing a bunch of that over at Main Engine Cutoff.com. Going offline for a little bit in any time between five minutes from now and two weeks from now. So enjoy what is up in the feed while I'm gone. And then we will circle back afterwards. Yeah, the launch roundup. You basically covered like every rocket that's relevant in the United States right now. Pretty much.

Yeah. Wow. What about you? You're recoup. rating. Yeah, so I took like a breather after the Mars podcast covered three Mars launches. So I'm trying to get back in. I'm doing the exact same thing you're doing, Lauren, where I'm like trying to pull up like a spreadsheet and like, what else do I cover besides Mars 2020? All right. Okay. So I'm trying to get back into some of my other storylines, which would be like the Decaturable survey coming up and, well, we need to get ready for the landing and stuff. And then Explore Mars, Humans to Mars Summit, is in a couple weeks.

So I guess I can announce this. I'm on a panel with some other cool influencers for a social media thing about promoting Mars. So it's with like Alyssa Carson and Athena Brenzberger and someone else, Kenny. I'm bad with names, but. Sorry, Kenny. Yeah, sorry, Kenny. NASA engineer at Goddard is a cool looking guy But yeah

So that's doing a panel on that which is great And I'm excited to cover that conference Because like I said we've never been able to go So it's good Yeah Is that when I was supposed to hit the outro music? That's that that's in a bit Picture refresh

We love having you here You are incredible Thank you so much for having us I said I haven't you're Thank you for having us on this show I love I love doing this It's so fun

It's my pleasure Thanks for coming. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one. End of death.