Off-Nominal - 37 - Go Behind Wendy’s

Episode Date: December 22, 2020

Jake and Anthony are joined by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, to talk about Starship SN8’s epic flight test, Tim’s trip to Boca Chica, and to unveil the 2020 Off-Nominees and crown the winner.DrinksTip the Cow - SingleSpeed Brewing Company - UntappdEast of East Van Vol 2 Apricots & Peaches - Steamworks Brewing Company - UntappdDouble Blizzard - Tröegs Independent Brewing - UntappdTopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeweemartians.comouimartians.comouimartiens.comStarship | SN8 | High-Altitude Flight Test - YouTubeI lost my mind watching the launch and explosion of Starship SN8! - YouTubePicksCosmic PerspectiveStarship SN8 Flight: The Mini Documentary - YouTubeWatch The Expanse - Season 5 | Prime VideoSTAR WARS™: Squadrons – First-Person Multiplayer Space Combat Game – EA OfficialChallenger | Netflix Official SiteThe Most Important Space Shuttle Mission Never Happened - YouTubeSpace Shuttle Decision, 1965-1972 (History of the Space Shuttle, Volume 1)Development of the Space Shuttle, 1972-1981 (History of the Space Shuttle, Volume 2)Follow TimEveryday Astronaut - YouTubeEveryday AstronautEveryday Astronaut (@everydayastronaut) • Instagram photos and videosEveryday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) | TwitterFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TOS is go for main engine, start. 2020 is looking up for the first time since January. We've got good space events. We're getting multiple sample returns. There was an awesome launch and landing sort of. People are getting vaccinated. Jake, how are you feeling? I'm feeling very optimistic about the final 5% of 2020 and 2021.

I'm very excited. This is going to be a good episode. We've got a good friend with us today. We've got a fantastic year of space coming up, but we have a hopefully a hilarious look back at 2020. I was going to say, let's bring it down. Before you get too optimistic, we're going to talk about the off nominees tonight. So it's going to be epic. Tim Dodd, welcome to the show, the everyday astronaut himself.

How you doing? I'm good. I'm happy to be here. Happy to be home for me. I just literally walked in the door a couple hours ago. but you know there's no better time to hang out with you guys than when you're fresh out of a road trip man you were busy you had a lot you you were very busy this past past week so yeah yeah yeah well the whole thing anytime so uh anyone that doesn't know i was down in uh south padre

island pocaca area uh to catch seal number eight and there's something just exhausting about like running around constantly like we gotta get this we got to set this over here we got to like we were just like basically chickens with our heads cut off for like two and a half week. So I'm excited to kind of get back into a normal routine. It'll be. Yeah, I am ready for that. Yeah, those trips can be a lot. It's like similar to when I do lunar and planetary science conference.

It's just like it's a mad dash for 14 hours a day for five straight days. And he's like, how am I even alive after this? Yep, exactly. Exactly. But I'm good. I'm happy to be here. I'm happy to be talking about some fun stuff. Do you have a drink as well now that you're done driving?

Yes, now that I'm non-driving. Unless this is a really fancy studio set inside my car, but it's not. It is not. This is a tip the cow. It's a milk stout, an espresso milkstout from a local brewery. This is from single speed brewery in Waterloo, Iowa. Can we get a close-up of that, sucker? It won't focus, but it's...

That's fine. That's what mine does. all the time people lives with it yeah that's mostly so i can google it later and put it in the show notes yeah tip the cow i big fan what a great name too yeah yeah yeah they have good ruse take what you got uh so i got a i got a bit of a fancier one today um so this is a a brewery i've had on here before steamworks uh but this is uh it's called east of van um volume t and it's like a higher end. So it's,

I'll read, it's mixed fermentation, barreled ale with apricots and peaches. So it is like, I don't know, it's pretty fancy. I wouldn't normally buy, like this is like one bottle of beer that's $12.

So I don't normally buy this all the time. The cost per milliliter is not great. Yeah. Well, it's also Jake size. So you get a little bit of that. I can never sell. I can never sell.

This one's actually, this might be bigger. than this is 750 mils. Last time you did drink a 40 on this show. Yes, I did. By accident. I didn't plan that, but. Last show, there was a quote from Jake that in which he said, I can't feel my face, so.

Then the weekend comes on and sings that song and the whole party just starts. Yeah. I have bad news. I usually have a mad elf on this show because it's December. I can't find Medelf. It says beer that this brewery, local brewery named Troegs makes. I have another trogues. I gotta get my face out of the shot and it will focus.

I don't know what happened, man, but beer, I feel like beer got a little weird in the pandemic and I'm not seeing the same kind of like mixed packs and stuff, right? So I know that it's out there. I doled it to make sure that they were selling it, but I can't find it in my shop. So I have a different one called Double Blizzard because we did just get a bunch of snow here.

Nice early snowstorm. So we got like six inches of snows past weekend. a little sore from shoveling. So I thought I should get something Blizzard themed for the show. And it's good. It's got a nice art 8.3 ounce per cent so It's perfect. That's a lot of snow.

That's a lot of snow. It's not that much. You probably get way more than that. Well, I'm on a similar latitude compared to you, I think. But Jake probably Jake's snowmaster. I'm a ghostly, man. I don't get a lot of snow to be honest. Yeah, Philadelphia probably gets as much if not more snow than we do.

We have this thing where we, if we get too much snow, the only plan that the city has is to dump all of it into the river. So that, it's never that much snow until the city's dumping them, dumping snow, garbage trucks full of snow in the river. Is that an option? That's the only option that we apparently have created for ourselves here. Either that's brilliant or that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard. I don't know. I think it's both of those. We just pilot at the end of the parking lot. So when we get a snowy winter at the end of the mall, there is always like mount snow.

And it's like 40 feet tall. And it's this giant and kids climb up it with like pickaxes. Sounds kind of cool. Oh, yeah. It's like the acro frag. When I was like 19 or 20, I spent a whole night carving out a giant cave for myself in one of those one time. And then slept in it. And it was, and I just kept in like calling my friends, but guys, come hang out in my snow cave.

And they're like, shut up. And I'm like, no, seriously, go behind one. Andes, like, look and like, and they just like all eventually like showed up and we just hung out in the snow cave and it was great. See, we always wanted to do that. But when I was a kid, I was in, I was in French immersion. So my whole education was French when I was a kid. And there was this movie that our teachers made us watch early.

Like this is like third grade maybe. And it was this Quebecwa movie and they had all these kids. And I don't remember the movie at all. But there was these kids and they were having like snow fights and they built snow forts. And they did the same sort of thing. They built this giant thing and they carved out a hole. And as part of the story in the movie, some dog goes in there and falls asleep and then the thing collapses and the dog dies.

And I can never go into a snow cave ever again. You know what? I actually thought about that. Like I woke up from that snow cave thinking, I have sincerely weakened the structure of this thing. There's a good chance I just die. Like, I just not thinking, you know. That's what an 18 year old does, though, I guess.

All right, before we get into S&8, because we have a lot to talk about, I have a, I bought a couple of gifts for Jake that I need to give him now. Oh, no. So it's the spirit of giving here on off-nominals. I bought three gifts. So wait, hold on, let me get this straight. You invite me on a show. Uh-huh. And then you make me watch, you give Jake gifts.

Yep. But you're going to love him. You're going to love him, too. I promise. I promise you're going to love him. All right, so Jake, this is a audio-visual bit. So what I'm going to do is going to show the gifts here and have you speak out to what the gifts are. Okay.

Are you prepared for this? All right. I'll try. So this is the first gift. I have bought you this domain. Oh, no. We Martians with two E's. As in Tiny Martians.com.

That works. So you can go to that and get Jake's podcast. I bought the second gift I bought is this. We, Martians in French. Okay, I love it. And I bought the third one to complete the cycle here. I bought this one. We mercien.

Yes. So now you can go to any of those domains and get to Jake's podcast. Well, thank you for translating though, because I'm just like, I don't, oh, oi martians? Oi Martians, yeah. So, yeah, those are three new domains. I'll transfer you the ownership, but it's all redirecting. So that's Merry, Merry Christmas. Thank you.

That's my kind. I did not expect to receive gifts live on the air here. How's it feel, though? That's good, right? It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy. I'm in the festive spirit right now. As you can see, I have this sweater on that is... Yeah, let's take a look at that.

This is festive as I get, but it's appropriate because it's NASA. NASA, ugly Christmas sweater. It's pretty great, though. Yeah, that is fantastic. That is great. Now, Anthony, I almost have a gift for you. It's very late, so I don't think you have it yet. Oh, I don't.

So all I can say is you will get a package soon. And then when you do, you have a tweet. A cliffhanger. Tim, we'll send you something, I guess. Yeah, thanks. I also got you guys stuff. I don't want to share it. It's like

rubbing it in for all those people listening. So Can we talk about this freaking rocket? Yeah, I think we can. Jake and I have not even talked about this rocket yet.

Where did you make of it, Jake? Jeez. So I've like, I keep trying to explain this in a way that doesn't make it sound like I'm a 16 year old girl at a Beatles concert, you know, like

So all I can really think about is just like it was, it exceeded expectations. Like I was expecting sooner, bigger explosions is about the best way I can express it. So it was awesome. It was so cool. I can't believe what, you know, I can't believe that they got that much to work on the first go is my, is my takeaway. So yeah, that's about it. I mean, Tim, you were there.

So you'd probably have a more visceral response. than I did. But I mean, honestly, my expectations are the same. I really want to actually clear the pad slowly, which I didn't expect. It was pretty slow. We made a huge error on our end. You know, I had been talking with, you guys

are familiar with Declan Murphy from Flight Club. Flight Club. So we had talked and we came to, you know, we had two parameters that we shoehorned ourselves when we're making a simulation. One, they'd use as little propellant as possible for safety reasons. And two, they would go subsonic.

So using those two constraints, we came over with this flight profile and those two constraints will give you a pretty, pretty narrow set of flight profiles and parameters, you know. So we thought it was gonna shoot off the pad. We thought it's gonna shoot off the pad at like two and a half Gs. You know, and I even told Ryan Shlinski from Cosmic perspective, who runs the scope and is helping film,

doing all their stuff to like just start on the nose and just get ready, because it's gonna leap off the pad. and then come to find out, like, he literally, like, pre-let it. And it's, like, he jumped up and then, like, he just goes back down. And it's, like, slowly going off the pad. And once it did that, though, at that point, I was like, it's actually working. It's actually working. And I couldn't believe it.

You know, I don't know. I had just already pictured it blowing up so many times in my head that when it actually started ascending, I was very thrilled. I was extremely thrilled. Now, were you watching it with, um, Did you have, like, I know you were doing all your own footage and also taking it in yourself. Did you have, like, the SpaceX stream up that you could see nearby? Yep, I could see it.

So we had, like, monitors everywhere so we could track all of our different shots. And then also, like, I had that up. So, because that was a good reliable countdown clock. Yeah. Otherwise, normal stuff out of Boca Chica is, like, a total guess. You know, it's like, uh, it's venting. And normally that's, like, 12 minute, you know, like, we just have all these, like, milestones that we're kind of guessing off of.

So it's really nice to have the live stream up. And then you have to account for the delay because it's about seven seconds, you know, behind of real time. So then, yeah, so that was really nice. So I had that pulled up. And I, yeah, I just couldn't believe it. The reason I asked is because I was wondering how, like, how you felt when these engines started shutting down? Because I feel like this was the curveball to all of the viewers that were not privy to what was happening. Because I was watching this.

My wife was talking to her family on the phone. and I'm like kneeling in front of the TV and like she's like what's happening is it good like is this a good thing I have no idea what's happening I mean it appears to be going well so far but there's engines she's like well is that supposed to happen one of them's out the other ones are going I was like

I don't freaking know that was the wild card was like okay seems like everything's going okay but nobody told us how this should go right right yeah no there's which made it way more fun yeah there's no information

you know leading up to this thing and we so I wasn't paying attention to the the stream close enough to see that they had and just go down in the stream but I was watching our scope feed pretty much and you know we had a pretty hefty telescope pointing up at it you know and and we actually could easily see the shutdown of that engine and you know especially because it kind of had this flame out period afterwards you know where there's little residual gases and stuff I just thought they lost an engine and then and they're just going to it was like we don't need it yep and then when the next one

happened I was like hmm I had no idea. Like all bets off at this point. Like everything, everything I thought I knew about the flight profile was completely throwing out the window. Yeah. It looks like, like it looked to me like they really,

um, it became like so clear that it's like they really wanted to not make the pressure and like thermal environment a thing they had to deal with on this test. Like that was not what the test was about. So it's just like, just go slow, easy. We'll like back off the engines one by one.

So it just kind of like comes to a nice hover and then gracefully falls to its next little milestone, right? So then, and once that happened, I was like, oh, yeah, obviously that's, yeah. You do like, I don't know why I was all panicky when they started turning off. Right, and yeah, you, in retrospect, like, duh, they're not gonna on their first time, like,

you know, go as fast as they can and like have this big, you know, crazy parabola and everything, you know, and go up and be coasting. I don't know, I mean, it totally makes sense. Yeah, trying to do this belly flip while moving that fast and. Right, I mean, it completely makes sense. And it's, it was more, kind of like, you know, a grasshopper or F9R mission where they just went slowly.

I was going to say it was more like what they wanted here was a helicopter big enough to take this up to altitude and drop. This was a drop test. They had to get to the drop point. Yes. And they did it as slow as possible. It self-propelled drop test. A hundred percent. Yeah, like this is, you know, the dream chaser drop test where they, you know, take the helicopter up and just release it and fly it to the, to the, uh, that's what this was. Yeah. Which when you put in that context, it's, it makes the ascent still cool but way less cool. And the landing way more cool. Yeah.

I still think it's all cool. It was all cool. Rocket-powered helicopter ascent without the helicopter or the cables or anything, plus rockets. Like, yeah, I mean, it's awesome. Yeah. It was super cool. It was like almost so good that I don't have a lot to say about it other than gushing

about how cool it looked, which is incredible because I'm wearing my Star Hopper shirt, the Star Hopper ale shirt. But you think about that was, you know, a year and four months ago or something like that. and like not a lot of people have seen under Star Hopper but it was derided as and probably accurately described as a flying test stand and then the speed at which like the fidelity of these vehicles got when you look at those close-ups of these vehicles and you're seeing like all this these cable raceways and how much of the little detail is there which you know like it's got to be there if it's going to fly but we don't think about it often because we're just looking at tanks being welded

it together and new, you know, new body flaps and whatnot. But all the little stuff to get to this point from what looked so janky a year and four months ago is validating of the strategy. I actually listened back to the last time you were on the show, Tim, when we were like, I think that was like 2018 or something, or maybe 2019. And we were talking about Starship, and it was still unclear, like, what the development path was going to be. I think they had just switched to stainless steel at some point. And there was so much unknown. And this has to feel validating to like this just build starships and keep trying to get it right on the next one. That's strategy seems to be working out. Oh, 100%. And it's like when you, when you go and see the build site and you see all

the stuff, it has this like really weird juxtaposition between this is the most like duct tape and WD40 rocket, but also simultaneously the most advanced rock. Like, Like it's like, it's somewhere between this is insanely advanced and this is incredibly temporary. Like it's like, I don't, I don't really know how to. And it's literally like a part by part thing. Like, look at that. That is finally machined and extremely precise and beautiful. And then the next thing's like, that's literally tack welded on yesterday.

You know, it's like, it's weird. You know, get to see a lot of like the zoomed in shots of these Starship vehicles where there's just like engineers sharpying stuff on the side. Like, I think this will work. We'll try it out later tomorrow. Or something. 100%. And I love that. Like, to me, that is, and again, I kind of have to debate this whole vehicle and this whole

program is, like, is how much of this is fairly normal? You know, I think SpaceX does this probably more than really anyone besides, like, maybe like the Soviet Union or something, you know, in the early days. But, like, how much this is normal or how much is, like, we're actually finally seeing it, you know, like, because we normally wouldn't get to see this stuff happen, you know? so I can't quite tell like is this SpaceX or is this normal or is this like normally is behind closed doors or now we're just actually seeing all the stuff and definitely like the way they test things like that is very much SpaceX but as far as uh yeah the whole thing's just

the actual like development portion of it yeah it's i think it's a mix of both where like their test programs are they have a distinctive flavor to them what happens behind closed doors because we're seeing all the stuff that gets shipped into Boca Chica. But the process to get to Boca Chica is very mysterious so far, right? Like we have a general idea of how this is working with people in Hawthorne and Elon's input and whatever else is going into it. But we don't see that as open as much. So stuff that makes it to Bocahika has already been put through some design phase.

You know, they have a very... Yeah. They've got plumbing figured out by the time they're sending the metal that needs to be welded together to Bocahika. So we're seeing a mix of that. And then the difference is that SpaceX has a good grasp on the fact that when you go into hardware, everything changes. So this mantra that I don't know if I stole this or made up or mixed both, but I said on

my podcast, waste steel, not time has been the thing. Now I'm using that. It's good. I'm crediting you because it's great. Totally. It's a great hashtag. It makes so much sense. But it only works when you hit that middle point where like you've done some design and

now you're into the actual build-out. It only works at that point forward. You can't do it from too early on. You have to find the right middle ground. And some people take too long and they are designing all the times. And then when they get to the hardware, we'll probably talk about a couple of these in the upcoming off nominees segment. So it's a matter of whether they're getting that moment, that moment of handoff. Is that the right point in time? And for SN8, certainly looks like it was. Yeah. Yeah. I think the whole thing is still just, I mean, it's just crazy to think that we're just going to be seeing this normally now, you know, and I keep debating how long will this be okay? You know, as they get higher, faster, how long before it's okay

to do this right there next to, you know, everything else? Like, I just don't know. I mean, it's crazy. It's pretty amazing they were able to fly at this one. Now imagine if they had gone 20 kilometers or, you know, when they started doing the really fast reentry stuff, you know, if they want to start testing heat shielding and stuff like that. I just have a harder and harder time picturing the FAA and all that stuff actually giving that all the go ahead. Or the super heavy, like super heavy is going to fly from there? Super heavy is going to fly five miles, eight kilometers away from hotels.

Like something is twice as powerful as a Saturn 5. The closest hotel to the Saturn 5 was like... Like 15 miles out. Like, yeah, 12 maybe or something. like minimum and that broke windows like what is what is going to happen yeah you're twice as close and twice as loud we were talking about that on our discord is that like the the sound like you guys you guys all captured some really good audio from the launch and and i was like guys that's three raptors that's three raptors yeah so not running a full throttle either i i do like these things and

yeah i do have to say um a t 38 buzzed the island um before launch and that was substantially louder than seal number eight. Like that shook stuff and was like whoa and kind of scary. So your number eight was actually relatively quiet. Like I think if that was taking off regularly at that distance, it probably started to get annoying. But I think if it was even twice as far away, I don't think you'd hardly notice it. It was actually like a low roll. Then again, right. But then again, it was still yeah, three Raptors versus, you know, six for point to point or 30 for a orbital version. It escalates quickly. Yeah, definitely, definitely.

But it was quite the experience, and it's just really surreal to think that this might be happening again in a few weeks, you know? Three, four weeks, I think seal number nine will be, hopefully, you know, I think they're going to get it out to the pad and finish up some work on it. And then I think they're going to go right back into the same test campaign.

Right now, the problem was seal number eight was clogging the whole production system. Seal number eight sat out on the pad so long, and the seal number nine was stuck in the high bay then. Seal number nine was like ready to go pretty much. And then seal number 10 just like, and they're waiting to get into the high bay to be integrated. Like, they're running out of,

this is what I don't also get. Like, why would you keep producing stuff when you, when some of those things by the time you fly it might be completely, like, already invalidate. I've seen tweets about SN17s together. I'm like, what is that? What is SN17? Why do they need it?

Maybe they don't need it. I don't know. Yeah. This was my question too, because like at some point, like, I'm glad they're doing this sort of like parallel development thing with the booster and the, and the starship. But like at some point, they have to sync up because they are. are going to fly together.

And so, like, at what point we're just like, okay, we need to stop making starships because we need to get the first super heavy built so we can figure some crap out. You mean they're effacing what I would call an Orion conundrum? An Orion conundrum where the irons are piling up and they still can't get propellant into SLS. So, yeah. Right. Oh, God.

Someone pointed out that the, the SLS that is sitting on the pad begun, I think construction in either 2013 or 14. So in other words, they started construction on that that still has not been fully fueled before SpaceX had ever landed a booster. Way before. Yeah.

Yeah. It was never a program for speed. Should we use that as a segue to get into these off nominees? Because we got a lot of them. I think we should. Tim, are you familiar with the off nominees? I remember probably two years ago,

but you're going to have to refresh me. So we decided two years ago we started it. We've done it twice now, where we've decided to live up to the namesake of this podcast and go through the news of the year and decide who wins the best off nominal award. Now, this is a celebration of struggle. This is not, Jake and I were discussing this a couple weeks ago, that we like to think of this as events in which you could play the curb your enthusiasm music after. Yes. Something sadder than that, right? Because we're in an era now where there's a lot more humans

flying to space. We know that we're going to face an issue at some point in the near future. Hopefully not, but I know that we will because space is crazy, where we're going to have to take a couple of events that happen and put them out. But this year, we don't have any of those. We have all things that you can play, curb your enthusiasm music after. If I'm remembering. Charlie Brown's music too, like in a rest of development, the like head down. Yes. That's, okay, we can define which classification, because I think there's a little of each. Yeah, yeah, which which which type is it?

So I went through all of the, I went through the headlines that I do for Miko. That was the best way I could do this. And I've done them chronologically because some of these do build on things that happen later in the year. So we're going to go straight up chronological. And some of them, I don't expect we have a lot to say on. We might say like, eh, not that good. Run of the mill. Toss it out.

And if you've got thoughts, I think you can dive in at will. And you said, just to remind me, like I didn't have to do anything. I just get to hang out and listen. Yes. I was so nervous. I'm like, was I supposed to prepare something? No, and the nice thing, too, is that Anthony shouldered all this work. So I have not seen this list either.

I wanted it like that. I wanted it to be like you two are these are your natural reactions. And also when Tim texts me that I might, I should be home by Friday. I realized that expecting any preparation was a bad idea and unfair to him. So, okay, the first one, we might just toss right out. In January, we had one, one entry. from January, which was Firefly had a test stand fire in which they said, oh, a fire broke out on the test stand.

And what actually happened was it ruined their entire stage one acceptance firing that happened. And then they said they were going to be ready to launch that stage. And it turns out they had to scrap the whole thing. And now they're just finally getting back around. Yeah, that was like, it was like, it's fine. It's no big deal. There's a, it's this small fire, like a brush fire. You'd like to see the picture here, or the video here of this.

fire. And where was this? I forget where their stand is again. This was, I forget where this is somewhere in Texas. Or is this one in Texas? Yeah. So they did this like, you know, static fire situation. And then they had, there's that fire. Look at that nice fireball that happens. And they were like, it's just a test stand fire, but it was actually like the whole vehicle catching out fire. So not that good. That goes in our in our, like a PR spin folder. Yeah, totally. That was the observation. situation. That's a fast fire, yeah. And that one definitely to me, that is a curby enthusiasm. Yeah, that's a class of curbing enthusiasm. It's a curb class error. Yeah. Okay, next one was more of a follow-up on an entry last year. Last year's off nominee was Starliner, collectively. This year,

they uncovered a second issue with Starliner that would have potentially destroyed the vehicle on the way back from orbit, where they realized that they had thrusters, uh, a side of the same, signed wrong in the software. And so this came out. I don't know if this is even an entry, honestly, because it's like the F-Up was last year. So you can say override. Yeah.

But the discovery was this year, like the announcement of it. I guess they knew about it because they swapped out the software like on orbit. They're trying to get two years of wins. Yeah. All right, skip it. Iran had a terrible year. They had like multiple launch failures. They eventually did have a successful satellite,

but they had like two failures last year. They had another, and then they had a launch pad explosion last summer, and then this year, they just totally, actually just kind of what Astra did, where they just launched and it went to space, but it didn't achieve orbital velocity.

So again, not that good. They had a success later, but similar in that they had many entries last year. Skip it. I have a good one here that might be, this has potential. This has potential, I'm going to say. And I bet neither of you remember this.

Do you remember this incident? Oh yeah, it was one of the Starlink missions. Where it just missed the ship? Yeah. With the splash on the side. Yeah, you see this water splash? This is B-1056. And just missed the booster or missed the ship entirely.

Yeah. And then they said nothing on the stream. That's my favorite part about this video, is that it's just quiet. but I love also how the camera was getting wet because like there's such a big giant like explosion of water basically but the thing to remember I think that was the one where they also lost an engine on Ascent and then they had a really dodgy reentry and they actually lost another engine on reentry so they actually ended up down two engines and that's why well well tim you might think that but that was in fact a March entry because the next launch of the year for

or maybe two launches later of the year, a second Falcon 9 missed the drone ship entirely because of an engine out issue. Crap. Yeah, did we ever learn why the first, why that other one? No, I missed. So the only thing I found looking back was an incorrect win prediction.

Oh, I do slightly recall that. And the reason I remember that is because they sent a ship out to get the vehicle on the first one. And the ship was actually heading back to Philadelphia. And I got all excited because I thought I was going to see like this beat up Falcon 9 wreckage

coming into port, but they ended up just scuttling it at sea. But yeah, like two back to back Falcon 9s missed. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I remember we were talking about that

because that was leading up into DM2, right? And that was like a whole big thing is that a string of bad luck and failure ahead of the most important launch of the year. Exactly. So so far, I'm putting that in the lead pretty firmly. I do like that one.

Just by like the comedic value of the video where it's just like, poop. Exactly why I'd like it. Current champion. I'm saying current champion. And no comment. And the eventual like 10 seconds later, water splashing the lens. It's good. It's a good curb class error.

It is. I like that one. All right. Next one. Now we get into the real meat of the year here. So here's SN1's cryo test where the entire thing blows off the mount. This is a really good one of all the serial numbers that have met their demise this year. This one looks particularly great because of the way that it crumples.

Yeah, I love that one. Yeah, I love that it knocks the lights out and everything. Yeah, that was a great one. I do now have a Rachel and Gene from S. Padre, the, from S. Padre aisle down there, the people who helped me a lot with stuff. They actually found a hunk of that vehicle, and they turned to, into a skateboard for me. So I now have...

I saw that tweet. That's amazing. So I already love this one because now I have a piece of that rocket as a skateboard. So it's already... That's amazing. Yeah. I feel pretty spoiled with that. So that was in February, by the way.

Just to really rock your clock there. Wow. That was a February 28 situation. Yeah, that's insane. FN1 was February. Okay. All right. That's crazy.

We calibrate that one. This has been a long year. So also, it's a... in March, after that second Falcon 9 missed the ship, Astra blew up their rocket on the launch pad. That was only in March?

That was in March. So Astra had three attempts this year? Yeah, they had 3.1, and then 3.2 just launched. They're obviously going to make a lot of many entries on this list. So the first one,

the reason that this one I'm not going to rank too high we have no, like, all we know is that it blew up and destroyed some ground test equipment or whatever, ground support equipment. We don't have anything else on it. So I would say skip it. Skip it. Skip it. Let's go. Venezuela's geostationary satellite lost its control maneuvers and it tumbled through geostationary orbit. Does anyone care about that? No. No. Not at all. Next. We're blowing through these because we need to because we've got, we're only in like March. SN3. We're up to S&3 here. Oh, I remember this one, collapse,

clapsy boy. So this was just a little like crumpler, right? Yep. I got to check. There it is. It's starting to crumple there. I like that one because it's just like, it's almost just seems like it just gave up.

Yeah. It's like, no, I don't want to do this anymore. That's, and that's definitely a curb class. So far I haven't really seen any good. Oh, that sound. So sad. Yeah. I feel like I haven't really seen any

any sad Charlie Brown versions yet. They've all been curb class, in my opinion. I think that might be our style, though. Yeah, that's cute. It might be the ones that I like. Here's a good sad Charlie Brown one. I got a good sad Charlie Brown on in May. The only thing I wrote down was Doug Laverro.

Oh, yeah. This is the one I was like. Does this count? Or is this because it's like a criminal situation? Well, it kind of is. It's like blue collar, white collar criminal, right? Yeah. I'm already blanking.

So this is the associate administrator who got into some contract shenanigans with with Boeing on the human learning system. So, like, this one is definitely a light treason. Light tree. I may have given some light treason. Yeah, I just, like, this one just, it just boggles my mind because, like, you bring this guy in. to change it up and I don't know what the end game was. I don't know what, you know, so he calls Boeing in the middle of a contract and says, hey, you're not going to win because your thing is, your bid is no good.

Are you going to fight me on this? And they're like, no, no. And then they try and resubmit the bid. Yeah. Well, that's the thing I don't understand. They weren't going to get caught. The intention was like, from the other paperwork that was released, Boeing's bid was so bad it never had a shot. And the fact that he, like, contacted them and they resubmitted it makes it seem like a typo that they had to fix.

Like, they added an extra zero somewhere and they needed to, because it was like, how is there that, if it's that bad of a bid, how was the turnaround that quick? So, which I can't imagine it was. So why are you calling them? I don't understand this one at all. I just yeah I don't get it and the the like the curb your enthusiasm sad Charlie Brown music comes in because he was just so brand new and it was like supposed to be a whole big thing like we're changing it up the old guard of NASA's go oh do over okay Kathy Do you remember his statement that he put out too? Because it was real mellow. It was like, I've taken some personal risk to try to speed things up and the burden is on me alone.

And it was really, really like, emo. It's like, that's how it goes, man, you know? But I think his logic there was he thought that if Boeing tried to like counter sue the bid or whatever, it could literally delay it by six months to a year, though. He was probably right, for sure. And he's probably right on that. But I think what he left. it better. Yeah, when he left office, I'll bet he did have the sad Charlie Brown music with two

suitcases in each hand. I got to get that on my soundboard for next year. Jesus. All right, we had another good one in May. We had Virgin Orbit's first attempt that lasted slightly longer than Virgin Galactus latest attempt. Sorry. How do you feel about this failure? What are we feeling about this? This was a, I think it was like a locks feed line that disconnected from the engine or something. something like that, yeah. Yeah. I mean, these launch ones are just kind of like, I don't know, they're less funny to me. They're more just like, oh, bumger.

Yeah. Yeah. Especially on their first attempt. Yeah. I thought it was a pretty good first attempt. I mean, the thing that a lot of people always ask me, like, why doesn't everyone do like air launch like this? And then when you actually stop and thinking about it, you're like, it's always a good

idea to normally like test your engines and like make sure they're running before you like go of the rocket. and you just can't do that with air launching. You have to drop your rocket and then be like, hope it turns on. You need to drop your rocket and then like get out of the way. Yeah. And then turn the rocket on. Yeah.

I just still feel like it's like a such a especially, I mean, this is the first like liquid fueled like orbital rocket I say. Especially it's a 7.47. This is not the nimblest of aircrafts. It banks hard though. They get, they GTF on that. They go, yeah. They bank out.

They'll go to like a pretty steep ascent angle before they drop too and then they just kind of peel. Yep. Yep. I think this one's a pretty, I mean, I don't know. I don't know if it's like that. This one's not like funny. No, it's not the spirit of our awards. Not the spirit.

Yeah, all right. We'll do it. They'll get it next time. We got another good one that is definitely in the spirit of our awards. Playback error has occurred though. Oh, is that it? Apparently. Oh, we're going to watch the Stacey Abrams ad.

Here we are. If you're in Georgia, congrats. If you're in Georgia, please vote. This is SN4, the static fire. Oh, God, yeah. I probably need to jump into the video quite a bit here. Right?

Yeah, there it is. So this was, they static fired successfully, if I remember correctly. Yep. And then what happened? Oh, should go boom. But like, why? Did we know why this happened?

Oh, we do. What was it? It was something about, Something with like the quick disconnects or something. Oh right, it was the quick disconnect one. I could look at my notes that I took. I have ground support equipment, quick disconnect. Yeah, that was a good one now.

Yeah, that was a big, I mean, that was a way, there's way more fuel on board for that one than like SN8. Yeah. You can hear like the secondary explosions too in this video. Yeah. This is a good one. That is a good, oh man. And it looks terrific. Yeah. Yeah. That one's incredible. So is this more just entertaining than it was embarrassing. That's true.

I know, I have a hard time putting the, uh, the Starship stuff in this because it's like, well, it's kind of supposed to go wrong. It's not like that though. Yeah. I think, I think that's a pretty good one though, you know, because of course, no one's getting hurt, you know, hardware in this case is like the next one rolled out almost immediately, you know. Good thing we have a spare.

If anyone's watched the Grinch, they have that like scene where they roll out the spare Christmas tree, right? After the one lights on fire something. I'm having a hard time with these because I know they're, There's like better ones coming up. I know. And I was just about to ask you, do you want me to skip the winner

or do you want me to put the winner in chronological order? Wait, why don't we don't declare anything the winner yet? Okay. It's going to be the winner. Well, and then I want to make sure, like, we can all guess and see if we put what you had as the winner too. Make sure it's unanimous. All right.

I'm going to shuffle the next couple, just because, you know. Some shit went wrong. the ISS this year. Oh yeah. Yes, it did. Just this past weekend, they had a power outage that they don't know what happened yet with that. They had this air leak that was in the Zvezda module. And this one I like because to find this air leak, they used tea bags. They put tea bags around in the space station and waited to see how they drifted to find, like this is the most old-worldly way to find a leak, and it's in a space station. Yep. Yeah. I think to me, The off nominee of this was when they all, like, they all centered into like, it was in DesVesda, right?

And they're like, we'll just close Osvezda. That way, we're all in here and we'll be able to check all the modules and find the leak. And then they couldn't find it because it was in Zvezda. The leak was coming from inside the house, yeah. I did not realize that. What confuses me more is that that happened. And then the next day, they didn't say, oh, the leaks in Vesda. Why didn't they know that?

Oh, it's right here. That's funny. They're all like, they wake up and they're all like sleeping on the one side of the wall. They're just getting sucked towards the, yeah. Your Velcro ripping off the walls. And the other thing about this too is like it, the news came out. It's like, look, hey, like we found it. There's a little hole.

It's just, it's not on a, on a seam, like on one of the airlock. It's just a hole in the hall. So it's all fine. And I'm like, hang on. Why is there a hole, like just in the middle of the hull of your space station? Like, there should not be a hole. Like, if the seal on the airlock, because you've been opening it and closing it for 20 years, if that starts to be a little longy, okay, I get that.

Like, that's a maintenance thing that we all expect that to happen. There's just a hole in the middle of a pressure vessel wall. And it's not like this is a module that's at the end of the space station. No, this is the middle. This is a really important part of the space station. the core module. And I just like, there didn't seem to be any like uproar about it. Like the, even the

journalist was just like, here's what happened. And we just moved on with our lives. And I'm just like, wait. Did we ever get like a reason? Was it like a micromete rate or something? That I know if it's unresolved. And even more concerning, I know that the cosmonauts were asking I guess they used

like captain tape or something that was not very permanent. And they asked this was heard on the ground control loop where they asked the flight control that they know that NASA has some better, I guess they, like Jake's tweet, they have, what is that stuff? The flex tape. Flexile. Flex seal. Yeah, they got something better on the NASA side. But they said no. Like the Russian ground control said, no, we don't want to use that stuff, the last I heard, which is concerning to me. Wow. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, wow. So moving on, keeping it on the ISS, though. That's pretty high up in the list,

though that one I'd say. It's pretty good. Yeah, it's pretty good. DM2's recovery was spectacular. Yeah. And I got this frame grab because I think, what was it two? It was it three or four shows ago. We titled the podcast episode,

regular ass fishing boat because this is the moment in which it was clear what was happening. And I love the fishing boat on the horizon on this photo is my favorite part because, let me see if I can hit this button. it's where's he going right he's so close here why is he going that way still that's what I want to know and this photo is just incredible so these

fishing boats swarmed and they were very close to the recovery operations the Trump flag situation like this this hit peak 2020 on many levels and this frame especially because like before this exact frame it was just like there were too many boats nearby and we're like why okay we got to get these boats out of here and take it on the radio and then it was just like zoomed in and we were all watching it and it was like and the trump flag goes by and it was like oh my goodness like what are these guys doing just some florida man out

out on the boat i i just had someone go get so mad at me for talking about this and how like like you need to learn up on maritime law you can't enforce those waters anyone can do whatever they want out there. And I'm like, that's not the point. That's like, first off, actually, no, the Coast Guard had a posted thing. And, and because it's U.S. law with the Coast Guard can actually enforce U.S. law outside of U.S. territory when it's a U.S. vessel. So, no, like, sorry. That was my point, too, is like, because the Coast Guard had that statement that was like, look, we absolutely had the authority to go to one of these boats and board them and shut it down. We chose not to because there is a long-standing relationship between the Coast Guard and boaters.

We really respect the boating community and we like to work things out amicably. And I was kind of like, well, that's a, I like that mentality. But I got to say, that better mean that after this press conference, you took the boating community in your room like a good friend would do and you would have cleaned them up. Because that's what I would have done to my friend if they were a jackass, right? Yeah. I wouldn't have done it on camera, but I would have done it once the cameras were off. Take the voting community into a room. Yeah, what was the

Like the, what was the You know, the no, no Like the slap on the wrist there, there was none It was like, yeah, you guys better do better Next time. Don't do this again. What do you think's going to have them though? When crew one comes back.

Well, I know that SpaceX had talked about increasing You know, the number of boatages out there And I think getting Navy vessels too. Which makes sense. Think about like when Apollo and stuff landed. Like they were, you know, like taken in by aircraft carriers with like full blown crew you know crews and stuff and now it's like they were like

recently out of world war two aircraft carriers like it was actually crazy the apollo recovery operations like if you look in just go if you want to like really shock yourself go and look up like the head count of a recovery operation for apollo like it wasn't it wasn't like 30 people it wasn't 300 people. It was like 20,000 people or some crazy number of like individual humans that had to be involved with Apollo recovery operations. And like multiple recovery zones and yeah, that was a lot. Yeah, this is a lot more stripped out. This is like, you got two fast boats and a, and a boat with a crane on the back. And some other guys. Yeah. As I think we were saying at the time, the only way that I could get more Florida is if one of the boaters

throwing some like shitty beer at them to shotgun right as they got pulled out of the capsule. Yeah. There was like only 5% off of peak Florida. So when people also don't understand like why this is so dangerous, you have to think about like what if a boat was, you know, pulling up to it, trolling on up and their engine, you know, dies or something, they just puncture the whole of that thing.

I mean, you have two people on board. You just sank a spaceship. Yeah, he sank a spaceship. you could, you know, you could puncture COPV, you know, have hydrazine spraying everywhere. You know, it's like, this is not okay. I kind of imagine the reverse of that because I don't, I don't imagine that those, like, crappy pleasure crafts have, um, like, stronger hulls than the dragons. It's just kind of clunked smashing into a SpaceX ship.

Yeah. It's just like some shitty fiberglass and it just like breaks up against the dragon. And then, yeah, it's just like, you see this, this boat going under with like some, I don't know what you call them like vacationers just like getting sprayed with hydrazine and then it's like a whole SpaceX people trying to enjoy a boating day

that's the PR nightmare right there Elon Musk spaceship kills boater kills Trump supporter Is it politically motivated? Who can tell? Exactly Click here exactly

That's really good That's really good That's up there for me All right so I have one here that is a positive yet still curber enthusiasm. And thank you, Jake, for the one submission that you made.

Osiris Rex was so good at sample collecting. They couldn't close their collector. Yeah. I like this one because it's just like a greedy gobbler sample thing. It's like, om, nom, nom, am asteroid. Look at that. Can't even close it.

It's just like imagine like a little kid like stuffing his face with pie and there's just like crumbs coming out of the mouth. This is what this sample thing did. And then we can't even. even close his mouth because it's just so full. I mean, that's... Yeah. A rod, bad, that.

Yeah. I actually, I just tweeted about this. This is, this is very me because I was like, my, my mom does Christmas baking, which is like my favorite thing of the year. So she sends me a box. I get it in the mail and it's just like all these baked goods. And I got it this week. And so like before this show, I was like stuffing my face like a, it was embarrassing. And so I was on my phone and trying to unlock my phone. And the face ID on Apple wouldn't work because I have so much stuff in my mouth. That it was like, my mouth was all exploded

and I was like, who is this? I was like, oh my God, I got to stop. That's the Osiric sample canister. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right, the next entry I've got is we're getting pretty recent here. This one was the last Vega launch

that failed because two cables were inverted and caused them to steer the wrong way. in the upper stage. Yes. Yep. This is a launch failure that I think does deserve to be here.

As I declared this on the blog, this is a Russian class error. Mm-hmm. Proton. Mm-hmm. Very proton-esque. Yeah. IMU upside down, yeah.

I don't get, if they're upside down, I don't care if that would make the engine go upside down. As soon as like something happens and then the correction to that makes it worse, wouldn't the computer be like,

oh, what? Like go the other way. You know, or like, you'd think even if one thing was backwards that it wouldn't dilute everything else, you know? Yeah, because it means you have to hard code up into it, right? Right, right, which should be some kind of like pit, you know, there should be some kind of like input and then feedback and then like repeat, you know. I don't know. Yeah, that was bad. And then we got some follow up on this like today, I think, where they said, oh, it wasn't the, it was not the people.

it was the procedures, except it was the people that wrote the procedures and not the people that followed the procedures. The procedures were unclear. They basically, and I appreciated this story because apparently the, what was the guy's name? It was like, the inspector general of Issa is like, what is his name? It's a Colangelo? It's a Colangelo, yeah. I don't know him. I need to. Giovanni Colangelo, wasn't it? Yeah. Never knew that. It's not your uncle or something or? Maybe, I don't know. But he, they were like, we're going to rewrite the procedures for this, so it never happens again. But this was like Flight 17.

Right. So that's concerning. Yeah, it's crazy with something that happens. That was now, that's two launch failures within like a year for them. Yeah. My favorite part of this story is that the UAE had a spy satellite on a Vega launch last year that failed and they lost the satellite. After that, they rebooked their satellite on a Soyuz because they wanted to have a better

schedule. Then we had a pandemic that actually delayed the Soyuz flight that they rebooked to after the Vega launch that they were supposed to be on, except that the Vega launch they were supposed to be on also failed. Oh, geez. I did not know that. Pretty wild. That's a good one. So that that part bumps this up the ranking, but I don't think it approaches some of these other ones. I think in the class of the launch failures we've seen so far, this one's at the top. This is at the top for sure. Yeah. In the subcategory of wackiest launch failure? There you go.

Mostly because of the backstory. Yeah. Yeah, I like that one. All right. And I think this might be the last one that really has a shot. This is Arecibo going down. How does Arisebo fall apart two ways, gradually, then suddenly? Because, man, what a year.

This is like, there's a lot of weird. audio in this one. This is a sad one. Because this was like many weeks long, right? There was, oh, we had a cable failure. Then we had it. There was rumors of other cable failures over the weekend. And then this happened like Monday or Tuesday morning, I think. I don't know what day it was. I made that up. I think it felt like it was a Monday or Tuesday. It might have been like a Wednesday. It was a Tuesday. I was right. Dude, the craziest thing about this, have you seen the drone shot? They happened to have a drone, literally filming it as a, I, I, it. I, as the cable snap.

It's only the cable snap, right? Like, not just, like, out and about in the area. It was, like, looking at the cable where I was going to fail. Ah, could not. Yeah, this shot is, that has to be one of the craziest, most lucky shots ever. Well, so apparently, I was putting a couple pieces together on this, that there were rumors that over the weekend they had other cable failures, and at that point, they started flying this drone like every half hour because they had strong suspicion that this was going to

happen. That makes sense. It wasn't like they just happened to be up on a given day. They literally were since like the Saturday before or whatever. They were flying this drone. And you could, I mean, you could see in that footage how rough those cables. You know, you can see how rough shape they were in. Yep.

Whenever a little mini cable inside the big cable breaks and peel the paint off. So you can just see how. That's exactly what that is. Yep. This one's wild, man. Yeah, this is definitely a stack. cable you can see it unwind right yeah yeah so you see the one that goes from white to gray because all of a sudden all the windings are coming undone yeah there you go look at that's nuts

i vote that we we create a subcategory of the off nominees for just the sad one that we wish hadn't happened yeah and eric this is it that one i mean maybe that's just the charlie brown one like I feel like that one deserves just plain and simple the sad Charlie Brown song. I agree. That's a cheers

to Eresibo kind of one. That's a, get another 40, Jake. Yeah. Pour that one out for it. So I've got some other ones on the list here. I've got,

um, like SN8 doesn't even count. It was too good. SN9 fell over a little bit, but that's fine. I have some other ones in here. I've got like Elon's shitty COVID takes. I've got four seasons total

landscaping. Gavin Newsom's dinner at French Laundry and the rest of November. But other than that, I feel like... Wait, what about Rocket Labs upper stage? An orbital fail this year, too? I... See, I did kind of like trim out some launch failures

because there was a lot this year. There's a launch, yeah. There was a lot of launch failures this year. And the normal ones, like I left out Astros' recent one because that was pretty normal. You know, I shouldn't even include it virgin orbits, but I guess I don't know, I hate virgin companies or something.

So, I mean, I think that's the list there. Yeah. What are we feeling? Tim, where are you at? Where are you feeling? What's the, what's the off nominal award? I feel like it's got to be the boats. Because here's why.

Here's why I think it needs to be the boats. The failure has nothing to do with the aerospace industry. The failure was on the general public. So therefore, by labeling it that, it still gives us the ability to, like, still celebrate aerospace achievements and everything. Yeah. I like that. Your reasoning there is like when time decides

the person of the year is you. You know, like they just totally gave up. Yeah, exactly. I like it. It's the boats. It's always been the boats for me. Since August, I knew it was the boats. Yeah, we knew right away.

It's the boats. I didn't even say in it, because we had the episode with Lauren. Yeah. Regular-ass fishing boat. Didn't we say right on there? We were just like, yeah, this is the off-num. Yeah. It's going to be hard to beat that one.

Nothing's going to top this, but. Congratulations, Florida boaters. You have won 2020 off nominal award. You go down in history. Please do not repeat it in 2021. Yes. Oh, God. We only have a few more months.

What, two or three more months? Well, three or four months or whatever before they land and we'll see if it happens again. Oh, man. I can't wait to see what's going to go on with that. Yeah. Yeah. either. So should we do some picks? What do you think? Yeah, we should do some picks. I did text him about this. I don't know if he has a pick. And it's okay if he doesn't. You forgot your pick

or that you had to have a pick? I totally remember what you're talking about, but I don't even remember what you're talking about. You probably can make one up on the spot. Do you have a thing, a space thing that you've been following lately or reading or watching that you really like and you think other people should check out? Yes. I, I, you probably can make one. I, you know, And I did think about it, and I already have it. I'm going to go ahead and say, so I was talking about Ryan Chilinski Cosmic Perspective, who is running the telescope.

I've been following their work for a long time. It's Mary Liz Bender and Ryan Jolensky. They are making some of the absolute finest content on YouTube. It's very different than any of the stuff. A lot of us are probably watching on YouTube. Nothing like any other channel. It's not, you know, it's not like an update thing. It's not like a news thing.

It's not like anything like that. like films. It's like many films, and it always has been. I've been a big fan of their work for a while, but the S&8 film they made literally made me cry. And I've watched it like three times now. It is fantastic. Really makes me excited and I just have to share their work because I just think it's phenomenal. I really like their stuff because like they, it's more than just like here's a high quality footage of the thing that happened. They try and tell the story. It's very emotive, right? Like they have good music behind it. And the footage is also. is really good, like really high resolution.

They do, I don't know what their post processing looks like, but they just really clean it up and it looks fantastic. So they're both doing a really good job. And I love the human. They always just make it so human, you know, with interviews and stuff like that and just sound bites that are that are really cool and really on point. So I got to give them a big old fat shout out. Yeah, I think that's, that's what I've been.

It's almost like ASMR for Rockets, like NPR meets Rockets, meets ASMR, that's causing perspective. It's just what I needed in 2020. So let's just sell them that tagline, because I think maybe they should probably license that. I should. But it's just like this, like, it just feels good. It's what 2020 needs, just something to like smile about and just,

you know, take a deep breath and be like, everything's okay. You know, yeah. Yeah, that's my pick. Look at that. Cool. Love it. Yeah. What about you guys?

Oh, do that. Anthony, you want to go first? yes um boy has space news been busy lately uh every episode of headlines is 30 minutes now so what in the last month too yeah so i've had no extra time for things so what i'm doing is cheating and what i'm going to tell you is my my preemptive picks what i'm going to be doing it's we're coming up on christmas we got a nice little time off uh i'm going to be doing two things that are space related so i will recommend them in advance because i've i've dabbled in a little bit each so far.

Pretty confident about where it's going. The expanse is coming back for season five, right? Season five. I've loved the expanse. I was not so big on season four. What I've seen of like the trailers and a little bit of watch so far of season five, I'm really pumped on. So I'm going to be watching that.

And then also, if you're into video games, I downloaded Star Wars Squadrons, which is like this Starfighter flying game. That's really cool because you can turn off all of the, like, UI elements and the UI is just the cockpit of the whatever you're flying. And it's, apparently it's really good in VR. I don't have a VR rig. I'm really excited to dig into it because it looks excellent.

And the couple hours that I've played so far has been pretty epic as well. Love it. So preemptive pick. I've done that once in four. It feels like cheating, but. I do it with books all the time, so you're in the clear. I like buy a book and read the first page. I'm like, this is amazing.

And then I do the pick and then I never finish the book. Backhand sucks. Yeah, that's happened to me for sure. So mine is I finished recently. Netflix has a documentary on Challenger flight. Challenger of the final flight. So it's only four episodes. So it's very consumable.

You know, it's like it's short. You get it done real quick. And it was really well done. So, you know, I've studied that event a lot. And I feel like I know quite a bit about it. But this was really special. because they got I don't know where they unearth the footage but they just got so much footage of like just it's like here's a Christian McCallel of leaving her house

in you know to drive to Houston for training like like where did you get that footage it's like here's packing she's like kissing her kids goodbye and then like here's the astronauts picking out their flight suits to make sure they fit in and stuff like that so they just got like really really human moments for the whole crew and it made it like it made it pretty special. So it's obviously a very, very sad story. And they did a pretty good job of sort of covering the arc of like, you know, the teacher in flight and and the lead up to what happened and then the the accident and the investigation afterwards and sort of, you know, for only four episodes, I think it did a really good job of summarizing it. So I definitely

recommend it. It was a good one. I think I put it on my list. Is that, is it like documentary style or Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Pretty pretty straight up documentary style. But it is phenomenal. I also have to say it's like way, way, way, way up there on my list. It's really good. And they even got like interviews from the people who you would have expected to say no comment, you know, like so I don't know. I don't know how they did it. But it's like it was pretty impressive.

They got people right inside, you know, Morton Fyacall and and the people involved with the boosters. People involved with that like infamous conference call and everything. Right. So it was quite the thing. Yep. and it's on what? What is it on? It's on Netflix.

Netflix. I also have to agree the footage day on earth for that is like where did you get that and wow. Incredible. And it gives you good like nostalgia too because it's like you normally don't see that high quality of footage from that era too,

you know? So it's really cool. Yeah. Yeah. I always feel bad that like the shuttle error is so dominated by the two incidents. But yeah. It's human drama, right?

Like that's what you're drawn to. Have you, okay, speaking of shuttle, do you guys see Scott Manley's video about shuttle, I think 3A and 3B mission? Yes. Like the once around of Vanderbord? This is an extra pick. For sure. Oh my.

Yeah, that's, I'll put that up there because I'd always heard, you know, the Air Force like help design the shuttle with all these dumb constraints. And I never quite understood. Like, what do you mean? Watch that video and then realize the mission that they had drawn up for, for the shuttle. It's the stupidest mission I've ever seen in my life. Is this the once around polar one orbit? Yes.

Around capture. Capture. Yeah, deploy and capture. And no way would that ever happen. Like for so many reasons, I cannot believe those design considerations made it into the shuttle. If those design considerations were not part of the shuttle, think about what more it could have been.

It would have been so much better. And then instead it was logging around all that extra junk. Two things. One, this has definitely come up because one of my early picks, was these books. There's a series of books called the Space Shuttle Decision and then the Space Shuttle Development. And they're way too long and encyclopedic,

but if you're us, it's amazing. And they go in depth on that, like the budget deliberations of, okay, the Air Force will go in on it if we can get what we want, which is that mission, and that drove the cross-range requirements and it drove the cargo bay requirements.

Number two is the last time you're on the show, I think most of the show was dunking on show. shuttle and I love that we always circle back to it. It's funny because my emotions on shuttle have gone up and down, like weekly almost. I still marvel at it. I still absolutely think it's just incredible, but it's like the shuttle enigma, man, it's like. It had some really dumb constraints to be designed by. That's, I think, what it really comes down to.

Yeah, there was like a moment when I was watching the Challenger documentary. I was just like, that's it. I'm going to pause this. I'm going to go on Twitter and I'm going to say, the shuttle was beautiful. Tell me I'm wrong. You know, like you get like really emotional. Like this is the most beautiful looking spacecraft.

And you're like, no, this is really dumb. And then he played and he 10 minutes later, he went, the shuttle is the dumbest fucking design I've ever seen in my life. Yeah, I mean, for real. I agree. I think it's stunning. But yeah. Uh, rest in peace, shuttle.

Tim, we talked a lot about it. But what are you up to lately if our listeners have not experienced? Tim Dodd, the experience. What's coming up for everyday astronaut? Oh, probably a lot more trips down to Texas because I'm going to try and capture. I just keep fearing that we, who knows how long SpaceX can get,

like a license to fly in such a populated area, you know, all these new milestones, I want to be there for as many of them as I can because it is something that I think in the grand scheme of history, I'm not sure how long this window will be open. You know, if it's only for the next two years, years, I want to be, I want to say that I have as much footage and as much, you know, invested into

this little era of like being able to drive up next to a rocket. Like literally the day before it launches, you drive up and you're, you're 100 feet away from it, you know, closer than you can get to on the pad at Kennedy Space Center or anywhere. Our listener, Lars, wants to know when you're just getting a beach house there. It's strongly considered. Like, if it closes, that it'd be cheaper to get a, you know, on a cheap mortgage, you know, than renting out a hotel so often. I very well, and or, you know, rent it out. That is definitely a consideration for sure. But, you know, that's definitely going to be the next.

That's going to be a driving thing for me the next year still, which is really hard because it's hard to plan. And like, I hate, I hate it. It actually sucks a lot. It's really, like, emotionally drained to be like, I think I had my bags packed, like, at the door, like, three times in the past, like, two months. You're a prepper but for Starship. Yeah, I'm a Starship prepper.

It sucks. I think it's going to be a lot of that and then just a lot of trying to crank out videos in between. You know, same old, same old. And I'm loving it. Cool. Yeah. Sorry, I'm writing down the title.

Starship Prepper? Oh, no. It's a funny visual. But I really, honestly, I do hope, like, this pandemic situation kind of ruined some travel plans that I had in mind where I knew little baby Will was coming, had some plans for what to do before he arrived and it didn't, and I couldn't go anywhere. So I'm seeing the light at the end of the tunnel here on the pandemic front. So I'm hoping that 2021 has a Bocatrika trip in my future. So yeah, it should. It should, especially once, once traveling is a lot easier.

It's still like there's a lot of, uh, a lot of extra effort because of the pandemic. to make sure, you know, like our whole crew, we had to like just take a lot of extra precautions and things like that. I can't wait until it's all over. Like, I am ready. I'm ready to, to travel easily and, and haven't flown. So flying will be nice, you know. Yeah. It's going to be great. Whenever that is, whenever we're renting out Tim Dodd's beach house at Bocahika for off-nominal ventures. For the off-nominal meetup, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Jake, what have you been working on? I've been busy, man. I've been very busy. Yeah, as I said at the beginning, I made you do all the legwork on this episode because I was just like I was at capacity.

I was peeked out. So lots of stuff going on. But I mean, I have some kind of exciting news that I can share a little bit of today. So we, I launched my sort of every December I try and do like a little bit of a fundraising campaign, right? Because we don't, we don't do ads. And so the Patreon and the all the merch, all that stuff. That's how I pay for this, right? And we call it going pro.

So last year I kind of shared that I had left my career to sort of reinvent myself because I want to do this more seriously, right? And that involved some skills training. So I picked up some of like web development skills. And then I went back to work as a web developer, which I could do from home. The pandemic made that irrelevant. But that was the plan before the pandemic. So actually was like some good forethought on my part. But yeah.

So like I did all that. And then now we're in kind of going pro phase two. And so I'm like really excited for 2021. And so what I think what I can share is that I have officially left my day job. So I gave my notice in this month. And this is it. This is the one. So wow.

We're going to be doing a lot of fun stuff in 2021. And I should have more time for everything. And I'm just really excited about that. That's huge. Yeah. That's huge. More time for everything. It says the man who can expand.

work to take up available time. That's exactly it. I'm pumped. I'm excited. That's awesome. So if you would like to be my new paycheck, there's a great place you can go to Patreon.com slash we Martians. And I would really appreciate support.

We got actually, but like seriously, we have goodies. If you're signing up now, there's like all these like one time goodies for Patreon. You can get stickers. You can get mission patches. And you can help me kind of fulfill my dreams of making this kind of. where I drink beer with all of you full time. Can you, for everyone out there, can you tell everyone the four domains that they can go to to get to your work?

Yeah, you can go to weemartians.com. You can go to weemartians.com, weemartians.com or wemercien.com. Thank you. Any spelling, all spellings available. Yeah, yeah. Apparently we have a net that'll catch it. I'm probably going to be calling you a lot, Tim, because I know that you did this plunge as well.

and I'll be looking for shop talk. Yeah, and help us, Tim. Just even the shaking of the shoulders, just being like, you're okay. Like, this is just the plateau. Like, it happens, but don't panic. Yeah, yeah, I'll be there for you. It's a scary, it's scary, but, you know,

the cool thing is that with an investment like that, it allows you to do more work. It allows you to spend more time creating more work and then it compounds, and it pays off. Okay. Then you buy a bunch of Apple devices. Siri jumps into your podcast. Exactly.

I was doing like, like right now I'm working. I'm still in my job. I have a couple weeks left. But right now I'm doing like 20 to 30 hours a week on this. And I have a full-time job. And it's just like it's not sustainable. It is not going to work. Right.

So no. I'm really excited to take the plan. So end of this month, 2021. Whole new year, man. I'm so excited. That's awesome. And there's more news coming? Maybe.

We'll figure it out. I mean, we'll see what we'll see what the cascading effects of that decision are. Yeah, it seems like there's a part two to that announcement. Yeah, there's still a money, you know, thing we need to solve. Yeah, yeah.

But Anthony, what are you working on, man? What's going on in your life? Oh, as I mentioned, every episode of headlines is now 30 minutes long, so that's great if you want to jump in on that. I feel like my Starship show that I just did again was really good. I haven't really talked about Starship

on the main feed since I dragged Tim into it back in February we made some predictions Tim I don't know if you checked in on those I tweeted a match yeah but you were like working you should look at those again because we were actually I can pull them up yeah actually please do if you can Anthony's like so excited yeah I'm not doing it in like a way that's like I'm right and you're wrong I actually like

we ended up like pretty good you ended up being like that the whole thing about how if you get a thousand people to guess how many jelly beans are in a jar they'll actually be right. So we had a couple of predictions. We had, will there be a flight of one of these serial number

one, two, or three? That's how long ago this was. Before the 20 kilometer hop. I said yes, higher than Star Harbor, but not that high. I think that's correct. You said yes,

very short hovers, maybe only to 20 meters. We both got that right. I'm giving us. I'm also giving us credit here whenever we talked about 20 kilometers for the 12 kilometer flight. Yep, that's fair.

So we said, when will the 20-ish, we said ish, kilometer flight happened. I said February 28th, which was a year and a day because we were recording this the day before a leap day. And it was something like SN6 or 7, and you said it would be the end of May. If I remember correctly, I was like, I tweeted out how many days that was, but we were like almost exactly the middle. Wow. Maybe slightly towards mine, but, you know, whatever. And I was only off by a serial number of one serial number, which is cool. Wow. So coming up now,

here's where we get into what's coming. How many high altitude non-orbital flights? I think they'll do six months of one flight per month between this and the first orbital attempt. And you said three non- explosive... That's one way to expend all of them. What's that? That's one way to expend all the damn starships in the pipe.

They're up to SN-17, so it's my... I'm looking good here. Tim thinks three non-explosive high-altitude hops. How do you feel about that? Um, I... Okay, does... Oh, we obviously have to count seen one. remember eight is explosive, right?

Yes. Yeah. I still almost stand by that. I think they're not going to want to do too many more things before they attempt in orbit. Like I think they're going to want to nail this flight profile, nail a faster one, so there's two non-explosive, and then maybe you nail one more, it's even like faster or something, because I think they're just wanting, knowing Elon is going to be like, screw or skipping that next step, take it orbital.

I don't care if it blows up on reentry. You know? So I said December. I might go with Tim on this one. I might go with Tim on this one. Closer to three than six. Well, I think we're going to end up in the middle again because I said December and he said February of next year.

So I think we're going to, December 2021, in my case, February 2021. I think you're way closer now. You think? Yeah. I could see us ending up halfway. I'll still be quite shocked if we actually see an orbital attempt in 2021 now. When did we see the very first non-star hopper starship start to be built? well technically like mark one and mark two

yeah like give us some more constraints on that Jake so that's like it was like kind of right after Star Hopper right yeah like while Star Hopper was testing they were making the ring sections or whatever right that was a year before the SN4-5 hops right yeah so yeah I think I think yeah I think for the first that first one up coming I'm with Tim I think closer to three than six second one I'm closer to Anthony I think December is way unlikely than February. Hopefully we can check in on these again at Tim's Beach House.

For an optimal meetup, yeah. Those are fun. I should be writing these down often because I feel like my timeline, they'd just be slipping everywhere, you know, all over the place. It's just so hard to predict this. It's so hard to predict. I'm proud of us. I'm proud of us.

That's not bad. That's good. I feel like that's not bad. I think it's way better than we thought we would be when we recorded that. Yeah, because I remember being like, you never know. It could be like literally, you know, like a month from now, or it could be three years, you know, on type of a certain thing. So, yeah. That's all we got. Very, very cool. Tim, you're the best. Thank you for hanging out with us shortly after a drive. You should go, like, sleep or shower. Or have a shower and go to bad. Yeah, I'll probably, yeah, I'll probably do the shower thing first, then get it, then just right to bed. That's just the way to do.

Yes, it's time. It is that time. Well, my pleasure, guys. Anytime you guys need me, I'm here. I'm here. here. Bye everybody. Bye everybody. Bye.