Off-Nominal - 56 - Export Control is Like Fight Club

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Philip Sloss of NASASpaceflight joins Jake and Anthony to talk about the rollout and wet dress rehearsal for Artemis 1, and to go behind-the-scenes on how he does his incredibly-in-depth reporting and coverage of SLS.DrinksSession IPA - Big Rock Brewery - UntappdGreco di Tufo DOCG | Donnachiara Wine CompanyTopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 56 - Export Control is Like Fight Club (with Philip Sloss) - YouTubeInside Artemis 1's complex launch windows and constraints - NASASpaceFlight.comArtemis 1 rollout timing remains uncertain as NASA leadership deliberates the schedule - NASASpaceFlight.comNASA moon rocket SLS rolls out to “rebuilt” LC-39B ahead of Artemis 1 rehearsal - NASASpaceFlight.comNASA working through wet dress rehearsal, final major pre-flight test for moon rocket - NASASpaceFlight.comSpace Shuttle: The History of the National Space Transportation System The First 100 Missions: Dennis R. Jenkins - Amazon.com: BooksJosiah 🚀 on Twitter: Artemis 1 + Pad 39B + LightningFollow PhilipPhilip Sloss, Author at NASASpaceFlight.comFollow 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

DLS and go for main engine start. Hello, everybody. Welcome to Off Nominal. I forget the number, Jake. 56. 56. 56. We're doing a wet dress rehearsal

live stream because the wet dress rehearsal is always ongoing these days. Yeah, it's the perfect little white dress rehearsal. And we've got a special guest, none other than Philip Sloss. We were talking about this pre-show. The person who might know the most about SLS as a unified front of anyone on the planet. Yeah, I don't know about that, but I do, I know a little bit. Do you want to roll out your theory as to why we're convinced this is true?

Well, so we were talking about, so do you know Emily Lactawall, she wrote this book about the Curiosity Rover, right? She wanted to like really understand the engineering of it. And she started to like, you know, the reason she wrote it is because there was, it's such a big project that there was all these people that were like experts and special. in their one little piece of the rover. Like, you know, I know everything about the wheels and that's it. And no one knew the whole thing in like in completion. There was no like one expert. And so that's why she wrote the book.

And so I've decided, Philip, that you are, you were that person for SLS because it's such a large project. And, and you were writing about it all the time. You've been doing it for a long time. And so you felt like the, the right person to, to get on to talk about this exciting time, I guess, for the rocket, right? So things are finally doing stuff. So that's why we're, that's why we're jazz to have you.

Yeah, totally. Cool. Yeah, I mean, I, I, we, as we were talking before we went live, you know, I mentioned, some of the best people to talk to about this. And, you know, I don't know Emily personally, but I mean, I'm familiar with, you know, I know she does some work with the planetary, oh, is it planetary society. And, you know, so this is definitely, they have engineering that they do for, for all those spacecraft and that that's actually really interesting too.

But this is, you know, maybe that's why I'm, I've dug into this so much, is because I have an engineering background and this is engineering, really. I know everybody says rocket science, but it's rocket engineering too. And so systems engineers, I've talked to several of them and I would say they definitely hands down no more than I do on this. And it's like they, like I said, they need to, they need to be able to see the trees and the forest. And so, you know, like Najeed Moranci, now she's, she was more Orion and then now she's in advanced exploration systems. But somebody like that, just like, you know, I could ask her anything on Orion and SLS and probably even exploration ground systems.

And she would have just been able to rattle it right off. but the difference is those kind of people are not available at 4 o'clock on a Thursday to come on here and drink with us That's true Yes I usually have a little more spare time than those people Jake you are on a surprise trip back to your homeland Did you go to your old stomping grounds of like the craft beer stores while you're up there

I did yeah yeah yeah no so I had a it's a crappy circumstance But I had a death in the family this week and so I took a a trip up to Canada and I'm in my mom's house here with, yeah, my road set up. So I sent this picture. Please just break this down a little. What is your mic sitting on? What mic is this? What's going on here?

Yeah, so, okay, so I've got my iPhone up there as a camera. I've got my MacBook with me. And this mic, so, you know, long-time listeners will recognize this mic because this is the original one that I bought to do the Wee Martians with. So that's the episode one microphone for the Weimarsians podcast. for all you long-time listeners. And I think F-FSA, Jake, you're going to sell an NFT of that, I think you've mentioned. Yeah, Alton, an NFT of this picture.

I've got some old magazines holding the MacBook up. And then this right here, this is a leftover tile from my mom's bathroom. So she renovated and it's holding up the mic. So this is like, this is the perfect tile to keep it at your, the height you need. Exactly. That's right. Just off the camera here, right where my voice is. So yeah, let's hear it for team Jake.

Thank you, thank you. It's my favorite road set up so far. And then, yeah, I've got, so I'm in, I'm in Alberta. And so I went for a good old fashioned Alberta beer here, Big Rock Brewery in Calgary's session IPA. It's got a pirate ship or something on it. I like that. Which I don't know, this province is landlocked,

so I'm not sure where that came from, but that's how it goes. All right. I've got a, what do you got, Anthony? A Greco de Tufo. It's called. It's from Campania. It's a white wine. It's white wine season. Wow. So I'm bringing to bring the white wine back out. Very refreshing. You can tell how humid it is in here today because of how drippy that glass is. So it's been raining. I went from like the, the, I went from like the wettest place in the world to the driest place in the world. So like, there's no, no condensation at all here.

Philip, do you have anything fun to drink over there? I'm just, no, I'm working on, I'm just working on some ginger ale today. But it works for me. It's a good color. It matches. And your stomach will be very saddled. Yes. It might be a little drier here right now.

We just had, I'm based out in Los Angeles area and we just had the Santa Ana's pickup. And so like the temperature went from 60 degrees to 85 in about 30 minutes. And the dew point went from about 66 degrees to about 35 degrees in about half an hour. so it's now very dry here. Much like the insides of the tanks of the SLS at the moment. Oh, what a segue. We got to do like, all right, before we dive into the whole situation, can we get a little rundown, Philip, on like what the hell happened for the last week?

Because many storylines have followed about how many times they tried this, where is it at currently? What is the best Phillips lost knowledge on the situation right now? Well, they had, I mean, that was a crazy, series of days, and I think that at least partly was why they decided to take a little bit of a break, although, I mean, again, I think they also decided to take advantage of that time to, they want to, I think they want to come back to it kind of with a clean slate when they come back to the countdown. You know, we are hearing some, we are hearing some rumors today about maybe some possible issues. So we'll, let's, let's see what happens with, obviously, the Axiom launch is scheduled for tomorrow, and that's, that has to happen first. But they were originally supposed to, on this schedule, get to their sort of targeted T0, and we can talk about that at some point. But it's a full countdown demonstration test where they're targeting a T-Zero time,

which was going to be Sunday the 3rd about mid-afternoon at the time. And so they started the countdown on Friday afternoon late. and then they got all the way to sat and they got to the next afternoon and they were getting ready to do the final pad configurations and then they just had a really bad weather setup slam them and we're watching that you know, we're watching the storms

and the cold front coming down and that kind of you know stalled cold front stationary front and storms running along that that they were having and so what it turned out was is that they had, and this isn't completely unusual, but they had four lightning strikes within a third of a mile radius around the vehicle in that short period of time. And then they also had very high winds and then torrential rain. And all of those three things are typical Florida weather. But to have them all happen right at that time was kind of tough. And I think at that point then they were just behind for the next, it seemed like, two days. And so they came in the next day and they were ready to tank except for the fact that they were still behind.

And then they ran into an issue with the, I guess their air conditioning blowers, essentially. And they have a primary backup like they have for all of the, for all of all the equipment. And these actually aren't a part of the mobile launcher. they're a part of the launch pad equipment. So they're off in a room that's set several, you know, a distance away, sort of, I guess, an underground room in the pad infield. And then those air conditioning ducts run all the way up to the mobile launcher. And the idea is you want to put a positive pressure.

So the air is going out of the building in case you have a leak of hydrogen, oxygen, or any of, you know, the vehicles being purged with gaseous nitrogen too. to keep all of that out of there, even though there's nobody at the pad while they're doing this test, you wouldn't want to get any of that and trained inside the mobile launcher when they go back in. So they had

that issue, and eventually it took the most, you know, it of course evolved the exact way you would expect. So they're working off the primary fan or it was a fan. And then they had the circuit break

pop and so that one's not working anymore. So they went out to take a look and see, well, you know, like you have a circuit breaker pop at your house. It's maybe a little more complicated because usually what I do is I'll just reset the circuit breaker. But after they talked about that for a while, they switched the backup and it ran for a little while and then it died and it didn't die the same way either. So and then that was when they, that was when they decided to call it a date. day on Sunday.

And so they never actually flow propellant on Sunday, which allowed them to come back the next day. And the problem is then now they're troubleshooting those things all night. So they come back in the next day. They're not really on schedule. And but they had, after working all night, they'd gotten the two fans configured to where they could support essentially a launch attempt. And so they discussed that for a while, and I guess what they said to us was just about the time that they finished discussing that and they were going to start flowing propellants.

They then had this issue with air liquid, which is the nitrogen provider for the space center. And so then what it turned out was is that they had a vaporizer. So, you know, if you've ever seen some of those some of those. though. No. If you've ever seen those, you've seen those, if you, if you're on the freeway from time to time, you'll see these liquid nitrogen trucks that, you know, it's a gigantic, like a gigantic caplets shaped vehicle.

Is that how you say it though? Air liquid? Is that how you guys pronounce it? I think. I can be wrong. I don't know anything about it and I always assumed that it was a, I don't know why they. Air liquid is also making my heart warm because I say water ice and everyone gives me shit for it and air liquid is the same shit. Like that's just two states of matter.

Yeah, why'd they throw the extra E on there then? I don't know. So, yeah. We totally throw them off. Somebody will take, somebody will take that mail. Got him. Our whole goal of this episode is to let you get way down the weeds in us less and make you totally forget your train of thought when you're halfway through.

Right. Well, here, let me get a sip of this. Yeah. Well, so at the, they, they, they trend, the, it's moved around as liquid nine. nitrogen. And then it cut they when they in the plant then converts the liquid nitrogen to to gaseous form. And then it's routed through piping to the it's similar to all other places that use this type of setup. So again like when they did the engine test firing at stennis space center in Mississippi with the core stage same thing because this is the same core stage. It requires somebody described the core stage as a gaseous nitrogen pig. So it needs a lot of it needs a lot of it needs. a lot of gaseous nitrogen and so you want to keep things you don't want to keep you want to keep things dry inside the inside the the empty volumes around the propellant tanks and so one of the things that they do is they they're keeping a dry air

purge in those when people are working on them but then when they do hazardous operations like this they convert they switch the air over to to gaseous nitrogen for you know it's a to reduce the flammability risk So if you were to have a leak of hydrogen or something like that, then if you had a spark, you're at least kind of overwhelming that leak with nitrogen to try and keep the flammability down. So you don't go full in six right away.

Right. You always want to avoid that. Yeah, I don't think the, if they had nitrogen purge, that kind of a problem is not going to, I don't think you're going to be able to contain it with a gastricious nitrogen purge. But that set them back. back at least a couple of hours, but they did finally, once they got that established, then they actually started into the tanking process and they began with, you have two liquid

propellant stages. You have the core stage and you have the second stage, which is called entrem cryogenic propulsion stage. They started with the core stage. They started with liquid oxygen and they ran into a problem. You know, we started to see the, we started to see the gasseous oxygen purges coming off of the, off the four RS-25 engines. So that was a good sign. But then, you know, again, we're getting these very sporadic updates from public affairs and, you know, the whole export control thing.

And I could go on about that as well. I do want to go on. We will. I want to hear some hot take. Okay. Okay. It's funny because I'm the one who's been complaining about that, but it was like I was the only one who didn't complain about that this last week.

Well, at least not during a teleconference anyway. So what they're doing is they're flowing liquid oxygen through. You have a sphere, you have cross-country lines from the sphere to the mobile launcher, and then you have piping, essentially, I'm calling them lines that run all the way up to those two. big tail service masks that are next to the engine section on the core stage. So, and then you run, you run into the plumbing in the core stage, the liquid oxygen plumbing, and you're trying to, you're trying to cool the metal down slowly, as opposed to shocking it. Like, for instance, if you've ever had like a coffee pot that's hot and empty, and you run some cold water through it,

you can break it real easily, you can shatter it by, you know, doing a very, an abrupt change of temperature like that. So, uh, they're trying not to do that. And so they got, what, what happened was, is that they ran into a similar situation that they did at Stennis when they first tried to load the core stage, which was that the, they were having trouble maintaining the temperature at a couple of different points in the core stage plumbing. And so it took them, interestingly, it only took them, and I say only, but it only took them a couple of hours to come up with a configuration that would work. And so they came up with that on the fly in a couple of hours, and they basically, I don't

know if you'd call it, solve the problem, but they were able to fix, air quotes, fix the problem and start loading oxygen into the core stage at that point. And so that, it took them a couple, well, let's see, I took them a couple of weeks at Stennis for different reasons. But I mean, they didn't, it took them a lot longer to do. So you can see they're turning stuff around a little faster now, so that's good. But then they had a problem. So they'd already run hours late. But I think at that point they were thinking, well, we're probably not going to come back tomorrow anyway. So let's do as much of this as we can. Just keep going, find as many of these things as we can, fix them.

Right. It might as well. We're here already. And so they got into the procedures for liquid hydrogen chill down on the core stage. And then they ran into a problem where, as it turned out, nobody switched a valve on the mobile launcher to the right position to allow I saw the size of

tweets about this. When you say they didn't switch it the right, what do you mean? Actual human hands need to put this in the right direction? You know, they, you know, I,

it's hard to say, but just the way it sounded, it sounded like that was that was probably on a checklist somewhere and it just didn't happen. You know, it's hard to say, you know, one of the questions I would have is, you know, okay, we all make mistakes. One of the things I was curious about was, well, how easy was that to fix?

If you send somebody out there and they can just, they can just manually open the valve. Much like the circuit breaker. Right. Well, yeah, of course, the circuit breaker, the fact that they moved on from that so fast was like, well, I guess they didn't want to touch that as they were afraid. to just maybe re-put that circuit breaker in. But that stopped them because it wasn't the actual, it wasn't flight hardware, but it was the ability to open a vent valve on the core stage. And of course, you need that because you've got hydrogen is at like 20 degrees Kelvin

when it's at a boiling point. So it very easily comes back from liquid to gas. And so you need to be able to vent to control the pressure in the tank. And so that they, they, you know, again, I wonder if they hadn't been four or five hours behind the timeline, if they would have tried to just address that at the time rather than just call it a day, which is what they did. So I feel like this is, this is, this description is perfectly, uh, uh, descriptive of two things. Number one, you're deep and impressive and ridiculous knowledge of systems that no one really cares about other than nerds. And that's amazing. Well, and number two, the like, well, of course, I'm a nerd. Exactly. You've got your target market identified.

Number two, the, um, these operations are like, NASA is in a weird spot where they have to make a really big deal out of these different events. They have to do the rollout. They have to do a speech in front of the rollout. They've got to like do press conferences about the testing that they're doing on the stand. But even, you know, compared to the Starship testing that we've seen over the last couple of years, compared to all the testing that we've seen for the various new launch vehicles. coming online. Like, this is the kind of stuff that always happens, but NASA has to put tweets out about it

and do press conferences around it. And SpaceX is just like, well, they, you know, we're all tweeting, well, I don't know what happened, but they're taking that one down off the stand. Like, guess it didn't really get all the way through. And it's not that big of a deal for them to have to, you know, actually write stuff down and explain it to people because they can just do whatever the hell they want. And NASA's in a weird spot where we're mad at them for not putting out a timeline. It's like, you know, it's annoying for one reason, but I'll give them credit for this because

it's like, we can give you a timeline. that shit is going to be out of date five minutes into this test because stuff's going to happen that we don't know about. We're going to try to figure it out. We're going to be working stuff. We can't put that in the timeline. The rest is going to be invalid four seconds after we start this thing. So, like, you know, everyone crusading about like open optics and all that. It's like, I don't know.

I wish instead NASA had enough hardware that they could have done this 300 times at the different stage that was just able to be tested all the time at 39B, rather than making it this one big momentous thing that has to go perfectly. And that is my soap. this. So you actually, you hit what I was going to say too. Like we're on the, we're like, we're mind melding right now. It's like, yeah, it's like, yeah. Because it's like, so we, you know, we talk a lot about how the different testing processes

compared to all these new rocket companies that are just blowing stuff up and then, and iterating really quickly. And then, you know, NASA, which does one and it has to get it perfect. And it's like that. So, but not only has the actual process to build these rockets like diverged. But now the way we consume that content is diverged because it's exactly what you said. Like, SpaceX probably forgot like a thousand different things when they were blowing stuff up. But we just never knew it was supposed to happen.

And they never told us that they missed it. And so we just, oh, whatever, it's fine. Right. But yeah, just like that, NASA has to get in front of every single detail on this in a way. And no one's ever going to be happy with it. But it's an interesting dichotony. So, so Philip, turn us into a question. I'm really curious to know, like, how you, because you've,

got a lot of, you know, colleagues that are working the SpaceX side of the coverage at NASA Space Flight. Right. How are you like, how are you dealing with that? How are you, how do you, how do you work differently? How do you collaborate when, when the streams are just so, so different? Well, actually, it's pretty easy. I, I stick to SLS and those guys stick to, you know, Starship and, and, well, pretty much everything except SLS. So, And, and furthermore, you don't have a Twitter account. So you barely interact with Starship. Or anything else for that matter.

So, yeah, yes. Yeah, it's, it's, it's, they're different, you know, I, I, you know, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, I, it's, the, the, the opposite point of view from you guys. Because I think, you know, if they had done this test with, with, you know, with, you know, we, I would have been interested in it. Um, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's. it's the nature of the engineering. And, you know, again, maybe we're spoiled with past public rockets. But, I mean, that's what they were. And I think what's happened is that SLS has turned into a private rocket in spite of the fact that it really has no private funding.

And you could say the same thing about Orion. Orion has kind of become privatized already, even though they're technically not supposed to be, I guess. I mean, that's editorializing, but, you know. You mean that by the way that the companies are now taking ownership over, like the data about what's going on with the vehicles? Is that what you mean? Well, this test, the wet dress rehearsal is a good example of.

So you guys, I agree. If you watch a wet dress rehearsal, which would be a tanking test for Starship or the booster, we don't hear, we don't really have any situational awareness other than what we and I say collectively, we are able to discern after watching, you know, after watching the 25th test, you can start to pick out patterns. You know, again, the 20 minute vent. These types of things with falcon launches, after a while you get a chance to, you start to be able to see things without being able to hear a countdown net. And so, but this is, you know, this was supposedly a public rocket. And so what's happened is that, I mean, as an example, again, I grew up with the space shuttle and they used to.

And again, you know, we saw, you know, all this old guys, and I shouldn't say guys, but a lot of the old people who've been around who covered shuttle or watched shuttle from the beginning, or at least the beginning of the flights, uh, are remember tanking tests that they used to broadcast with commentary with, I mean, and they would start commentary with tanking, which meant just like on these tests, you're talking about eight hours before a simulated ignition. And so... And eight hours of content in the old days, man,

there were not Twitch streamers back then. So like trying to fill eight hours of content on CBS, you know, or whatever it was in the 80s. It just depends on, you know, it just depends on what you're interested in. But I mean, that's, you know, these were the things we were talking about to, to, you know, and I feel bad for the public affairs offices

because they're kind of like, customer service, they get to take all the venting from us and they really don't have any authority. Someone told me, you know, on that side that they have influence over the discussion, some influence over discussions. They can make some input, but they don't have the authority to decide one way or the other. And so I think one of the frustrating things for, for those of us who are you know, trying to cover it is, you know, it's just, there's just a lot of, you know, you go, you go to a factory. So again, SpaceX's factory for Starship is outside. So for Falcon, for instance, it's not. It's inside. But, you know, it's, we basically get the same treatment we would get if we went

to a private vendor, like a United Launch Alliance or, you know, SpaceX Hawthorne, or, you know, Blue Origin, you know, the, the, the, the, uh, the, uh, the, uh, in, in Seattle area in, at Kennedy Space Center. Um, so, but again, the question is, is SLS public or is it private? Um, and so, you know, that's a really, I don't know if I've ever like gotten into this discussion with anyone because, probably because 99% of the coverage of SLS out there is, you know, you set up front, it's rocket science and rocket engineering, but it's politics as 99% of, SLS coverage. So maybe it's your, and this gets us into like how you got into this side of SLS coverage

that you did about the actual engineering side. But do you think that the other people aren't really picking up on that because they're arguing about congressional budgets? Like, why is it that you're picking up on that storyline when I don't hear anyone else talking about that in the same phrasing that you're putting in? Well, I think it's, it's probably along the lines of, it's, it's the same kind of, it's the same kind of thing as watching a launch.

So, you know, some people like to come in a couple minutes before liftoff. Some people like to come in a couple of hours before lift off, and some people like to come in a few years before lift off. So that's, you know,

I started to really dig into this specific to SLS. boy it's i would say beginning of 2015 so you know the the project itself of course as you say it's just a wash in politics but i mean everything that that NASA does in human spaceflight is political um so and i mean the sort of the framework you know you talk to like somebody like casey dryer with planetary society um you know i haven't got a chance to talk to him about about this but I'm, you know, listening to his podcasts and things like that. Just, it's really fascinating, but I, you know, that's like a completely different rabbit

hole to go down. But in terms of, you know, so it's really just digging into it. And so, you know, I have a background. And again, I grew up with the space shuttle. And so I have, I got an aerospace engineering degree way back when, you know, prehistoric times. And so, you know, I was interested in it to that depth at the time and then kind of diverged away from it for a while. And so, but bringing those things into the idea of trying to report on what's going on, you just really quickly get into, you see the contrast between shuttle days and today. And we hear people say all the time, it's, you know, things are different now.

But that's usually about as far as they'll go in terms of, okay. You know, and I'm like, well, how are they different? Why are they different? Because there are a lot of things that are different, too. So, you know, again, I think the concern that somebody would try to copy this system is, It is an interesting debate because, you know, we saw with the space shuttle, the Soviet Union copied it. But look at what happened to them. They flew it once, and that was it.

It's like they spent a lot of money. They spent a lot of money. They got them. Yeah, I don't know that that's right. It was a... Imagine what they would do with a project as poorly managed as the SLS program. We would wipe half of Eurasia off the... political geopolitical math with this financially right yeah right yeah but it's you know that's it's

i mean i remember one of the one of the first uh one of the first things that i that i covered was was a an rs 25 engine test and it's essentially the space shuttle main engine with a new control system so a new controller and and a new and new software and i mean i was asking them uh you know and At that point, the system had already, for the most part, gone through critical design review. And that's important just in the sense of they already had a really good idea about what they wanted to do with, you know, in terms of operating the vehicle, building it, and so on. So in terms of going into the details on a conceptual basis, could have done that in 2015. And, you know, I was asking them things like, you know, during flight, what kind of things. what kind of throttle profile are the liquid engines going to have from liftoff through main inch cutoff?

And they were like, well, we can't really tell you. And so I already knew at that point that, you know, this was going to be different than shuttle. And it was just a question of working with that to a certain degree. But I mean, there's, you know, when you get to this point, it's really tough now because, you know, I pitched to public affairs. So just a quick step back. So the core stage was at Stennis from the beginning of 2020 to about this time last year. And they did the same type of test on the core stage at the very end of 2020. called it a what dress rehearsal.

And that was basically conducted completely in secret. And so I knew, based just on that, that rather than just go into that test and watch them not say anything about it, I needed to at least raise it with the agency somehow, and it would be through public affairs. So I submitted a proposal at the end of June last year about covering this test. And so, you know, and I, you know, I knew what I was going to need, what I would need to cover it properly, which would be, you know, countdown at audio. And, I mean, really, again, that's, I appreciate the fact that they're giving us a live stream camera, but that's not really going to help us cover the test. Yeah, no, I need details. You would want to look, it's exactly the same as a launch countdown.

And I would want to see the cameras that they're going to use for the launch count. down. You'll see a very big contrast between this and the launch coverage. Well, at least I hope so. But I mean, I, you know, I, you know, I was asking about this at the end of June last year. And so, you know, public affairs, of course, is they're, they can't say yes or no. So, but they wouldn't say yes or no. Again, it's not their call. But I didn't, I didn't get a, know until about a month ago. So by that time, I had gone through, you know, stages of grief, et cetera. So I, you know, that, that, you know, this has been going on for a long time to different, to different degrees. So I knew not to get my hopes up about it, but, you know, I was,

I guess I was, you know, I was glad to see that the rest of the industry, not, well, I, that, I, that, I think that's that's over expressing it but the fact that there were people who are you know who think the same way that I do about this that that it should be more open at the very least so I mean we so again just to I'm sorry go ahead well I was just gonna ask so like you you said it was it was been going on for a long time so I because I have my own opinions about the the transparency of this current NASA administration they've been a little weird about some of the stuff coming out but you know, so is this, is this an SLS program thing or is this a Biden administration, you know, and Biden-Nelson administration thing? Like, have you been able to correlate it with that? And I guess maybe

the third part of that question is like, how I don't, I'm not super familiar with the history of like ITAR, but is, when did I-TAR really like come into force? Because the last time, okay, unless you count like constellation, the last time that NASA did this was like the, mid-70s and like it was different it's a different time you know so like I yeah I don't I don't know how much you know where where did this change I guess is the question I'm trying to ask right yeah that's a that's a good question was enacted in 1976 right so but it in terms of I somebody somebody described it pretty well which is from a just a general point of view which is I think what's happened is that now

just about anything technical, you run it by the lawyers for export control. And so by de facto, just as a de facto result of that, anything that you have to ask that lawyers about becomes a de facto no, because that means they have to say yes. So you can't really disclose anything. I mean, I'm exaggerating to some extent. No, but they're going to look at the paperwork and say, why do these people need to know about the valves that we have on the mobile launcher? Why do these people need to know about the temperatures

that we're keeping things at and the timing? It's a better state. It seems unimportant to them, right? But if we brought them on this show, we could explain why we care. But to somebody who's, you know, and I think, well,

why should they say yes to that? Is their viewpoint, right? Right. Well, and it's, I mean, again, my own opinion is that NASA doesn't have the bandwidth or the resources to, to,

I mean, just forget about everybody else. You know, just my requests, I get a sense. They can't handle the level of requests that I've made. And it's, you know, their public affairs is slammed by themselves. And I know that the people that are just doing the reviews, the technical reviews, sometimes get slammed too. So it's, and, you know, at least what's been communicated to me and at least for some departments is that the people that are doing these reviews are, it's not their full-time job. It's like,

it's basically something that they have to kind of moonlight with their real job. So, I mean, I found particular sources that are, that are down to moonlight on this job? Like, do you have good connections now? Because I think you've done a couple trips out to facilities where SLS hardware was moving through, right, the past couple years. I feel like I remember long, in-depth articles when you visited. So have you, like, established? So have you, like, established, contact and you'd know, well, if I sent it to this person at the press office at Marshall, then they'll probably get it through to, you know, this out of the other person that would be apt to fulfill my request, or how do you manage that?

Well, this, no, this is, in terms of export control, it's, it's, it's, um, you're asking for permission. You're never going to ask for forgiveness. Um, so it's, uh, you know, sources, sources do help us. I'm certainly not the only person. I would say, you know, again, fearless leader, Chris Bergen, and certainly, you know, Chris Gebhardt and, you know, some of the other people in Thomas Berghardt, we have a lot of people who are knowledgeable about this and who report on the industry and they have sources and I have sources and we do get stuff, but I would say the sources are respectful of that too. I, you know, I guess my problem with is, is that they don't, not the sources, but that it's just the way that it's applied.

Because, you know, one of the things we heard, of course, after the teleconferences where it came up most recently was, well, this isn't that interesting of a test. You don't see anything. Well, and my response to that is, well, all the interesting stuff you guys are hiding from us. So, I mean, I think we have, I think we're talking about that they have the wrong definition. What they're calling not interesting is what is really just secret. So there's lots of stuff that's moving during the test. We're just not allowed to see it.

And so, you know, it's, and I think what's also interesting is, again, you also have this retroactive thing. So as an example, the space shuttle program, I think, is more secret now than it was. 10 years ago when it ended. So it's harder to get information about that program, which has been retired for almost 10 years. Now, because of, I would imagine, because of its relationship to SLS, you know, there's a lot of equipment and some procedures. But I mean, you know, the Chinese have the internet too. And so they may have, they may have been looking 20, 25 years ago at a lot of this stuff. too. So, you know, it's, it's, I just, I, it's, you know, and of course, export controls like Fight Club. So, you know, you can't ask about it either. So it's, that's, that's, that's, that's,

that's kind of a, you know, I've, I've asked, I'm like, can I talk to somebody about some of this stuff, you know, can I ask, you know, can I, it's like, can I ask why, you know, and, um, because really the, the, you know, before we caught, we came to this, you know, the issues that I was having was, you know, you go to Mishoud, I can talk for lots, you know, hours with some people. Like, the people there have been, were great with me before COVID. And it's just, you know, that wasn't their choice. It's just COVID, COVID was a problem, you know, it was a problem for everybody. Yeah, yeah.

But, like, there were, there were times when I would go to Mshued, and it's like, I wouldn't even bother reaching for my camera because I knew they wouldn't let me take any pictures. And the problem is that the problem is that you can only do so much, you know, it's, you know, we're either allowed to tell or we're allowed to show and not both of them. And that's, that's kind of a hard thing when you're trying to educate, provide context, provide perspective. You really need to be able to both. So you have, you have, you have, it's funny you mention that because like I, I, I've noticed that from reading your articles where you go through this like very detailed like you know text description like man I can really use a diagram right now to help me you know place these these words that

Philip is using onto a picture of the rocket so I could see what he's talking about but yeah yeah so it's yeah it's I mean we've I think the unfortunate thing is that it's it's it's forced it's It's forced me to, you know, I just, I'm not able to write as many stories as I used to be able to do. But, I mean, you know, I was able to get a lot of information. And, I mean, it's sort of just combining, you know, shuttle experience with, you know, shuttle watching back in the day with what I, you know, what I was able to pick up, you know, during the, you know, during these years that we're doing this. So, you know, I don't know how familiar you guys are with NASASpaceflight.com, but it was really a coverage of the shuttle, you know, as it became routine, you know, became, and also with the way media was until the internet, it really kind of dwindled down to very little. And then even after the internet started, it was still fairly high level. And so now you had Chris come up with this site where he was posting presentations and a lot of the technical detail.

And my approach to this was, okay, what if I took that information and I went to the principals and had them and discussed it with them and asked them to explain it or to learn about it so I could explain it or at least attempt to explain it? And so that was, you know, that was kind of the impetus when I, when I got into this. Now, you know, again, if shuttle had lasted longer, I probably would have tried to do it back then. It's just I wasn't able to get into it until the very end of shuttle. It was like basically a little bit more than a year before the last flight. And it was still fun to do that and cover a couple of launches and missions from Houston. but I really, this was the first opportunity to do that. And so I do think it was valuable and I do think there's an audience for it.

And I don't know that I would, you know, you talk about sort of a one-size-fits-all thing. And I think that's, again, because of NASA's resources, they're sort of forced to pick one-size. And I totally understand that they want to go for a mainstream audience for what they're doing. But I do think what we're doing complements that, and it gives people an alternative type of coverage. Right. I said this to Jake a couple weeks ago when we were, like, you know, putting the schedule together and we're like, we got to get Philip on. And you're going to hate this analogy. But in the hypothetical future where there's a worst case scenario with SLS and something goes wrong, and there's an investigation board, I'm like, man, Philip would be the finding.

because you'd come in completely not on anyone's side. You have all this like, you know, you'd be Charlie Day with the red yarn. You'd be like, well, when I was in a shoot at the one time, they told me this. And they wouldn't tell me the throttle profile. So if I plug that into this information that I got when I was at Stanis for the Teth, like you've got a network in your head of all these random, because you're digging into it so deeply, right? And you're talking to people on background, I'm sure, and you're getting responses from, you know, FOIA requests or I-TAR requests or whatever.

Like, you have all of this, don't delete your email is my main request to you. Because at some point, we may need the email archives. So please back up your emails, put them somewhere just in case, in case we need to break them out at some point in the future. Great. Well, you know, it's, it's, well, it's not funny, but I, you know, I would say as opposed to, to, gosh, I assume it was Dr. Feynman. But, you know, Richard Feynman, we're talking about the Challenger Rogers, member who did the famous or you know sort of famously pushed back from that point of view on the commission but I guess to me and this is of course an obscure you know and which of course is what I

I'm always reporting on Dennis Jenkins who worked in the spatial program and he's an engineer but who put together these large volumes space shuttle history volumes and is a historian and a shuttle historian but he was one of the people that put together the Columbia Accident Board report and you can see there's some really good historical information in there that I think Dennis had a hand in putting in there just as a way of, you know, expanding the record. And so I think... Is that this book that you're talking about,

The History of the American Space Shuttle? No, it's, I don't know, maybe, that might be a new one. He's written more, these are, these are like phone book-sized. Oh, maybe this one? Space Shuttle, the history of the National Space Transportation System, the first 100 missions. Right. And it's like, I think he released a final edition, which was either, the fourth or third or fourth edition.

And so, I'll throw those in the show notes. You know, he's, I think, last, last, I haven't, I haven't corresponded it with him for a while, but he was working on putting together the, the endeavor display out here in Los Angeles with the orbiter. And they, they got external tank 94, which, uh, they got that out of there just before the tornado went through Bichu. Yeah.

And so they're trying to do, they're trying to do. they're trying to do a display where they're going to display it vertically in a launch configuration. And so, but he, that would be, you know, I certainly hope we don't have to do something like that, of course. But, you know, to me, I mean, and that's, you know, of course, we keep circling back to the, you know, to coverage. But like, to me, that's, that's what I'm, what I'm thinking is I'm just talking about a nominal, you know, a nominal flight. we want to at least apply those principles to that. And so there's a lot of stuff going on. And, you know, I think one of the ways that they used to do this was, you know,

one of the, as an age, just to pick a topic, last 30 seconds of the countdown are controlled by the flight computers on the core stage. Well, that's happening. All the things that are going on in that 30 seconds before liftoff happens too fast to, you can't talk through that at the same time it's happening. So if you wanted to educate people, you would talk about that beforehand. And you might, since it's a fairly dense topic

for those people who are interested, you might go through it more than once. And so, you know, and that was one of my pitches to NASA about covering the wet dress rehearsal because of the way that they're doing it was, we need the rehearsal too. And we would like to be hearing the launch countdown not for the first time on launch day.

So that we have some notes that we can take and we can have the ability to provide, again, provide perspective, provide context, rather than just, you know, being, you know, caught flat footed. And I, you know, I think that's probably one of the frustrations is just we're sort of being forced down that road. So, you know, that's... Yeah, and like NASA misses out on a big opportunity there, right? Because, you know, so when we listen to NASA spaceflight cover a starship operation, like the amount of times they've been through it and the data they've accumulated gives them a ton of context. So a commentator on a NASA spaceflight stream is like pretty knowledgeable. And they're looking for things, you know, listen to Chris Gebhardt, of course,

just like a fountain of knowledge and I love that guy. So like just having him talk and like spill out his experience onto the stream is like super both entertaining and valuable, right? And just like you said, so you're not going to have that with SLS because it's going to be everyone's first time except for the people actually in the control room, right? And yeah, that's that missed opportunity because there could be a whole bunch of people that are evangelists for for SLS because of that, right? But now they're just kind of going to be figuring it out on the fly, right?

Right, right. Well, I mean, there's, you know, you'll still have the mainstream audience. And I mean, again, you know, for a lot of people, it, the, the spectacle, it's just going to be visually spectacular. And so, I mean, I don't know if you guys are going to try and attend, but, you know, that for me was, you know, we have, we have, I don't know, at least half a dozen people I know who either want to be there or are going to be there. But, you know, I, what my, what my, what I was talking to, public affairs about was, well, you know, launch day is at least 10 hours long, if not longer. I mean, what about the rest? You know, you've got, you know, the engine start. And within about two minutes, it's just a little tiny dot if everything goes well. Just a little tiny dot in the sky, assuming everything goes well and it's not cloudy. It's not a big dot in the sky. Right. The, what about the rest of the time. And so, you know, when I first started this, I probably would have said, you know, I'm absolutely going to be there to watch it. But that's one of the things I think that

I've kind of has crystallized in my mind is that my job, so to speak, and it would be a job to cover this, is I'm going to be one of the only people who's not just, who's not watching it. you need to have eyewitnesses. We have camera, you know, we have photographers, videographers. That's their job is to watch it and to cover the visual. But, you know, what I was pitching to NASA was, you know, I want to be close to a control center. I want to be close to a calm loop because, you know, as we've seen with the wet dress, they haven't they just they got through a significant portion of it but you know that's what we wanted

to be covering well that's what i wanted to be covering and so um i'm not planning on being there because um i i i don't know how often you guys have have covered launches at the cape but you know if you get if you get stuck out on the causeway for instance and then they throw you back on the buses to come back to the press site, you're stuck with that cell coverage. It's really a very poor place. It's really a very poor place to cover the rest of the asset from Solid Rocket Booster Separation to MECO to MECO to, you know, the Perigyburn, to TLI. And then, you know, the flip side of that is, if you're out at the causeway for four hours before launch, you know, they usually will provide loudspeakers to hear something. Now they're not talking.

You know, we weren't, we asked about launch day. So forget about the wet dress. We asked about getting a countdown net for launch day. And like right now, you know, in fact, I think if you listen to any of the teleconferences, they haven't committed to the countdown net on launch day yet. We hope, we think, we might. Right. Yeah.

I don't know. The power's been spotty on the causeway. Yeah. So, right. So, yeah, I'm like probably one of the few people that are like, I'm intentionally not going because I don't have, I don't know that I'm going to be able to know what's going on at the press site, really. And that's the reason why I'm not, that's the reason why I'm not. Otherwise, I'd have been standing next to Chris Gabhart on Sunday and Monday at the press site. I mean, that's, you know, when I first started doing this, I figured, well, I'll just rent a place in, you know, in Cape Canaveral or Merritt Island or Titusville for, you know, the six weeks around the launch because there's no point in, you know, going back and forth between California when, you know, you'll have the roll out and the wet dress and then they'll, and then at the time it was, you know, we're going to roll back. We're going to do a couple things and then we're going to roll back out to the pad and we're going to launch. And so it was like, I may as well just stay in Florida. And so now it's probably going to be, I'll just be here in California and listening, you know, watching the, watching the streams. One of the weird side effects of COVID, too, is that we're all like really good at like covering launches from our bedrooms, right?

Right. Right. And so yeah, it's, it's, you know, and it was, it was really, it was kind of interesting. Like, again, I was, I wasn't able, pardon me, I wasn't able there's the ginger I talking. I wasn't able to, um, I wasn't able to, um, go to the first Green Run Hot Fire in January of last year, but then I was able to go to the second one in March. The good one. And so Yeah, and so

we're, you know, it's funny because they had a little tent with a TV and with the, you know, with the NASA TV coverage. And you know, nobody's, there's nobody in there when you get down to the last, you know,

especially once you get down the last 30 seconds the engines start and you're you know it's it's right there in front of you you don't need the tv to see that it's you know to see what's happening on the on a big scale but i mean we can't see the you can't see the engines from the from the view and fire breaking out on the no there were there was basically there was just two media guys it was myself and bill harwood with cbs news who everybody knows um there were just two of us who kept running back into the tent to see what's going on with the test objectives during the test. So it's like instead of, you know, I'm just not going to be running back and I'm just going to be in the tent now, except it's going to be here.

You're staying in the tent. You're staying in the tent. For the launch. The Phillips lost tent in Los Angeles, yeah. Right. Right. And so, yeah, we'll have, you know, there will be guys. It would be great to just be able to go out there and just watch.

it as a spectator, but it's just not my job. It's what we like to do, though, so we'll be there. We'll be, we'll be, we'll be spectating. Oh, yeah, you guys, cool. You guys will be there for me. And like I said, you'll see, you'll see a lot of us, a lot of our, a lot of our team will be there. We'll be running through the field by the countdown clock giving Chris G a hug,

like we did after Falcon Heavy. Yeah, yeah, that's the, that's the, that's the Christian memory for us. Yeah. Leaping through the field. It's so good. Right. Well, we're here at the end, Philip. I know you're not really an internet presence kind of person.

So is there anything in particular that you want to send people to other than NASA spaceflight where you're writing? Is there anything that people should be keeping their eyes on as we get down to what hopefully is the last few months of the SLS being on Earth? Right. No, I mean, I would say, you know, same thing. You know, for people who've been following us, you know, that's probably the best place to go for our coverage. you know, you know, certainly, you know, stay tuned with, with us and with NASA and, you know, hopefully, you know, hopefully they're ready to launch here this summer. Yeah, yeah.

Hopefully. Hopefully it doesn't come on the one day that Jay can't go or the one that I can't go. And we'll figure something out. I'm pretty convinced I'm not going to actually see the launch. Like, I'm convinced that I will be in Florida, but I won't actually see the launch. That's how I'm convinced about that. But I always go in for launches thinking. that so that I'm not disappointed. And if you, if you are somebody who has watched the video of Jake

and I watching Falcon Heavy, you'll see that I grabbed Jake right at Lyftoff because I'm like, that was the moment where I was like, oh, we're here for it. It actually, it actually happened when we're here. So I always like to go in. No, no, I was going to say, though, Phil, so your coverage is great, you know, so we haven't spent enough time on this episode, um, bragging about you, but you, you have such fantastic articles. There's so much detail, um, you know, one of the ones that I, there's an article that I go back to like every couple of weeks. now so far this year, which is the inside the complicated Artemis 1 launch window planning, you know, which is like all the different constraints that you have for when it can take

off, right? And it's got the calendar and it's got all the different things about the flight termination system and how it all works and figuring out when this thing can actually launch. This is like such a useful piece of information. And so shout out to you for putting this really, really valuable content out because there are people like us who really depend on this and love it. So good work. Thanks.

Thanks. Jake, I hope I could forget to get doing it. Yeah, I know. So I don't have much going on right now. And today I've been a little wrapped up, unfortunately, in family stuff. So I will say, just go check out the Peter Beck interview that I put out this week, which was great.

Lots of fun with this one. Just talking about not talking about rockets. So Rocket Lab and not a rocket interview. So it was kind of fun. Just talking about photon and exploring Mars and the moon and Venus. It was a great interview. So check it out. Weemartians.com.

I don't have any other shows out since we've been talking. I will have one coming about Kuipermania because there's a launch contract. Big launch pilot is here. Oh, next week on this show, Caleb Henry will be joining us. Fresh out of moderating the panel about those crazy launch contracts at Space Symposium. a chance that it might be a very special episode of Caleb Henry in which I might have to fit another chair in this tiny office of mine so we will see exactly how the text shakes out for that

but in some form Caleb Henry either in this shot or in a different shot Caleb Henry will be on the show next week so it's gonna be like there's that meme you've seen that meme about what it's like listening to podcast and it's just like a guy sitting next to like a poster of people talking that's gonna be me I'm just gonna be like in my room somewhere in Mexico and you guys will be having this great conversation and like cheersing with beers and stuff and I'll just be like, hey.

I hope. It's not unconfirmed. It's unconfirmed. But we hope. That's about all we got. Thanks, Philip, for being here. This was exactly what I was hoping for to just crack the curtain open a little bit. Like, how does Philip get this in-depth to SLS?

And I feel like this is a master class in exactly that. Right. Well, hopefully I didn't get a chance to get to my props maybe next time. Oh, yeah, I know. The props. The props. promise. There's no big deal.

Okay, yeah. All right, well, episode two of Phillips Sloth. Yeah, yeah. Well, we're going to, obviously, number one, either, we'll see how long the wet dress goes. It could be sooner than you think. And launch day, we're going to have you back around the launch as well. Absolutely, absolutely. Sure.

All right, everybody. Thanks for hanging out. Thanks for hanging out, everyone. Bye. Bye.