Off-Nominal - 67 - Eating The Pie All The Way Through

Episode Date: June 24, 2022

Chris Gebhardt from NASA Spaceflight.com joins Jake to talk about the FAA’s approval of the Boca Chica launch site.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 67 - Eating The Pie All The Way Through (with Chris Gebhardt)Follow ChrisNASA SpaceflightChris Gebhardt (@ChrisG_NSF) | TwitterFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine start. Go at Brattle Home Eco. Welcome to space. Hello, we made it. Oh man, it was a bit of a rough one there. So, you know, Anthony is away this week and I'm in charge of stuff and I am not a good planner half the time. So sometimes I'm great at it and sometimes I am just rubbish at it. So it's funny because, so Chris, you were texting me like, oh, I'm going to hop in early. I'm really excited about this and I was like oh great yeah Chris is just like on the on the money here

and I was like what drink do you have and he's like wait is that this show of course I did not you know do the good hosting and provide uh Chris you know a little a little like email with all the details and what to expect I didn't do any of that because I'm terrible so I will take the blame for this one but thank you for being here I'm really excited to have you oh my absolute pleasure happy to be here to talk about uh starship and a book report Yeah, Starship and a book report. Yeah, and it's funny too because so, you know, there's only two of us here. And normally we like to have three people.

And I was going to see if I could get you and, you know, someone else from NASA spaceflight on. But it turns out there's like some stuff going on today. So it's been a pretty busy day. Apparently once you approve stuff through the FAA, then activity happens. I don't really know what the deal is there. There's definitely that sense, yes. Yeah. So, you know, you guys all were at NASA Space Flight.

they've been busy. This stream is happening right now. It looks like the booster is getting lifted up by chops. What's going on today? Give us a little rundown. Yeah, yeah. So booster seven rolled out from the production site out to the orbital launch site. I believe it was technically morning when the roll started. And yeah, it got there. And there was a little bit of question about like, would they be lifting it today or not with the chopsticks? And man, they got it there and just put it right into those chopsticks. Like there was absolutely no tomorrow. And I see the noise about a little fan noise.

I see the note about a little fan noise. So I'm going to shut that down. Oh, is that your fan? Okay. I'm not sure I, yeah, because I'm supposedly on the current audio, but we'll see. Cool, cool.

Yeah, well, so I'm excited to talk about some of this today, but maybe we'll do some drinks. Did you manage to get something? I sent you on a wild drink goose chase at the last minute, but did you manage to secure something. You did. Like $350.

I did. I secured a little bit of rum and cherry Coke. So I'm going for rum and Coke today. Okay, that's excellent. Yeah, yeah. So I was, I was thinking, I wanted to get something that was like in some way, like Boka Chica theme. I was like, you know, what does that mean?

What does a Boka Chica drink? So I was like, wow, it's like Texas. It's close to Mexico. It's kind of, kind of deserty, kind of rural. So I found this recipe for something called Ranch Water. So this is, I don't know. I can see much here, but this is basically like if you took a margarita and then you didn't add any of the sweeteners. There was like no simple syrup in this.

And then you like top it up with seltzer and I just threw a lime in there. So it's like kind of actually I added a little bit of habanero liqueur as well. So it's like kind of spicy, not too sweet. It's very desert. Oh, nice. Yeah. That's my, that's my drink for today. So, oh.

Okay. So we're going to talk about Bocic today. So I guess, I don't know. I want to start with like a talking shop question with you because I don't think there's any organization that has been covering the FAA approval process quite like you guys have. You've like have people on this. You are on every detail of this. And so I have to ask from an editorial perspective, are you glad this is finally done so you can

start covering some other things? Yes. And I learned way more about FAA regulatory processes than I wanted to. in that regard. But yeah, I think we're all happy that it's over. And yeah, definitely. I'm ready to get back to talking about the rockets and the tank farms and the engines and not, you know, like, what does a Fonzi mean?

Not a, but like. Yeah, yeah, totally. It's kind of interesting to see it all come down because I feel like I got used to there being not much going on. like it was quiet and there's like, you know, everyone just seemed to be just waiting for this and it finally happened. And all of a sudden we're just like doing new stuff here. Right.

So that's pretty exciting that we get to actually move on to some interesting, interesting stuff. So yeah. Yeah. I agree. So I agree. And I think one of the most interesting things that came out of that Fonzie was the book report. It absolutely was.

Yeah. So it's funny. We were joking about this because I was like, man, ultimately I don't think that this is like really a bad mitigation I think it's a pretty interesting way to make the company kind of part of the community but man it is a plus comedy gold so just from a from a making jokes on this program perspective I am delighted that SpaceX has to do a book report on the Mexican-American War it is like the funniest thing I can think of to come out of this fancy right oh my gosh I mean oh man more power to the intern who's going to have to handle that but yeah yeah yeah Yeah, yeah. I mean, at least they have to hire someone, right? So it says they have to get like a, whatever, a certified historian. I don't know who certifies historians, but like an educated historian to actually do the work for them.

So like this just feels like a tax. And like they don't really do much, but other than spend money on it, it seems like. It doesn't. It does indeed. It really does indeed. And I mean, that's kind of interesting, right? Like have them do a report to sort of understand the history of the area that they're up. operating in is I think I think for all of us that is not what we were expecting at all. No, it was definitely not what I had in mind. And so I've seen a lot of interesting comments about it.

Like if you make them do the book report, then they have no excuse to say they didn't know about something, something so that they can't wreck it when they build a road over an important artifact or something like that. You know, that was kind of the idea that I've heard them talk about. Yeah. And just to know like,

okay, like if something gets damaged and you have to go repair. it, you know, like there was a lot of mention to those markers, those Civil War markers along the road as well. So very interesting in that regard. But I'm sure that's the easy one to just knock off the list for the mitigated Fonzie. Yeah, yeah. Was there anything, so I'll ask you this, was there anything in the Fonzie that you think is like a tough one? Like is there maybe not a showstopper? I don't think there's any showstoppers, but is there anything that's like challenging for SpaceX or that they are going to have trouble? implementing or that they didn't expect like what do you what's your sort of read on that

yeah I think the one for me that sort of sticks out is not a is not a barrier or an impediment but perhaps a a timing issue that might get them in terms of how quickly they rapidly they want to test and there's that notice in there about if you want to close the road they have to give X number of days notice and they can't so like if you get to Wednesday and you don't and you've given up third And you said, no, we don't want Thursday. On Wednesday, you can't then go re-add Thursday to your testing manifest if something turns around and you're actually able to. And these sort of notices that have to go out to the community about when the road is going to be closed so that they know they can't go to the public beach.

I think that's going to be one of the most interesting things to look at for how SpaceX interacts with Cameron County in that regard. Because how quickly they want to test. And if you just look at this week alone, like just getting the booster out to the pad, it was roadblocks. just kidding, roadblocks, just kidding, roadblocks, just kidding. And then today was like roadblocks, but then word was going around, right, that it was going to be earlier, but then they waited for the roadblocks. So, like, there's still, I think the communication element with the local county and community is going to be one of the challenging things.

And I don't necessarily mean that as a slight against SpaceX or a indication that, you know, the communication from their end is the part that's faulty, but like everyone's sort of learning how this works because when things change on a dime at the Cape, the public is not affected by road closures. But here in our first sort of fully private orbital launch location in the U.S., they have to share a road with that beach. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it does seem like sort of counter to what they've been doing, because you're totally right. So one of our Discord community members has a little bot that sends in, you know, he's got this Twitter feed that the Boko Chica Roadclosures Twitter feed. have seen that. So he's a community member in the off nominal discord. And so I see those tweets

just hit our discord. And it's just like it's all over the place. It's just like close. It's open. It's just like no one can predict kind of what's going on there. And I think that's an interesting challenge I have to do. But I think that's just like operational adaptation. Although probably knowing SpaceX, I feel like they're going to come up with some way to give themselves back that agility without having to close and open the road over and over again. You know, whether that's like setting up more stuff closer to the pad so you don't need to close the road to do certain things. Whatever. I don't know what it is,

what it looks like, but knowing SpaceX, I feel like that's what they're going to do, right? Yeah, indeed. And to be totally fair to SpaceX, too,

the sort of wonkiness with how the road closure texts go out and those alerts, right? Because, I mean, like, we've been through, like, middle of streams where roads have been closed and then my phone will go off announcing that the road is now closed. And it's like,

guess it has been for two hours, you know? And to be, fair, that might not be SpaceX not communicated to the county. That might be the county turning around with the push notification system or whoever controls that, you know, and cellular network issues. I mean, come on, we've all not received messages when, you know, when someone has sent them. So I think there's that type of logistics just to work out of, yeah, who's responsible for what piece of the pie and how do you make sure the pie is complete and delivered to the person who needs

to eat it, basically. I'm really happy with myself for sticking with that metaphor all the way. through because I really thought it was going to fall apart at a certain point. Eating the pie all the way through. Yeah, that's great. I love it. Yeah, and I guess there was like even more stuff around. This is like the same kind of issue, but broader would be like the holiday stuff, right? So there are certain holidays.

They're not allowed to close on, which like ultimately is not, I don't see that as a big deal at all. Like people like to have days off anyway. So that seems like a smart. move but the same thing now if you you know if you're doing that road closure let's say Monday's the holiday and you give you know it's Thursday you give up Friday now it's like you got to push back maybe three four days right and that's kind of right at SpaceX probably going to have to adapt to right yeah but I mean to be fair like I think

when I I think all reporters saw the list of holidays that they're not allowed to test on and went oh thank God you know We know as the person who was standing in French kiana on Christmas Day, yeah, like, yeah, yeah, I approve of not testing on holidays. Yeah. And the nice thing now is that like if you show up, you know, on Thursday or Friday to cover this and there's the holiday that is coming and you know they can't test on it, now you can go down to the beach and do one of their SpaceX approved bird watching tours, which is, it's going to be very nice, right? You're going to learn everything you can about piping plovers. I know, right? But I think you sort of touched on like those bird watching things and some of the educational things they have to do in like beach cleanup days that they have to do Are also just really good ways to

You know really good ways to not just say hey, we're a part of the community because we randomly chose you for your remote location, but to say like no, we're going to be a part of the community Right that it's not just about like come out see the rockets to the infrastructure. Yes, but let's clean up the beach. Let's make sure we're being good stewards of the area because one thing that is really disheartening when you go down there is the amount of trash on the road. Oh yeah, I've never been so you have to tell me. Yeah, yeah, it really is that there's a lot of trash along the side of the road, especially at the orbital and production sites where people pull off to to watch everything. So yeah, exactly. So, you know, having that type of community engagement is really good because it ultimately what it does is

it may, it doesn't just make the community feel engaged in, oh, I'm going up to clean up other people's stuff. It's like, okay, well, this is a part of my community. This is sustaining my community. You know, I really don't think South Padre Island and Brownsville fully grasped the economic boom and impact that was coming with the selection of their area, right? At first, I think they totally do now. But, you know, getting that community buy-ins to that, hey, like, you know, if there is a big sonic boom and someone's window breaks, it's not the least. lead story on the local, you know, on the hometown news. Crazy billionaire destroys homes.

Right. Right. It's, you know, a successful first orbital flight of starship, you know. Yeah. They caught it on the tower. Yay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I agree. I think it is a way to, and it may be, you know, regulated, so it's sort of forced, but it still is a way that gets SpaceX involved with the community. And I guess in fairness to SpaceX, though it is regulated, they built this report. So a lot of these things are, I think, correct me if I'm wrong, but a lot of these things would be like their ideas, their proposal, right? They would definitely have had input to some of them.

So like the beach cleanup, you know, this much to this organization, this much to this organization doing the bird watching tours, doing the student rocketry thing, you know, doing the, you know, X number of field trips for the Cameron County, you know, school district and stuff like that. yeah those are all things they would have had say in and then there are obviously the other things like you have to have this type of a light so it doesn't disturb the sea turtle they don't have any say over that that's an EPA regulation you know and and stuff like that but they definitely had input and and also to be fair they did not get that report when we got that report they were well aware of what was in it well before we were and you know like we sort of talked about this the guy the gang over

at NSF when this came out um and we ended up doing a live read of it. Which was epic, by the way. Yeah. I just went through all 75 mitigation points one by one. Anthony and I were talking was just like, I was like, wow, I think NSF's just going to read the report on the layer. They're just going to go through them.

I think they're doing it, man. I think this is the coverage. They're just going to hit it. That was it. That was it. But, you know, a lot of the good things that came out of that report. I mean, good things in terms of, yes, there were 75 mitigation steps, but a lot of them have already been accomplished, right? Or a lot of them were already in work. Like, it's not surprising

to see in a Fonzie finding of no significant impact that, hey, like, you still need to be cognizant of the sea turtles in the area. Like that, not surprising to see some of that language. There would already have been protections in there for the orbital launch site that they were building and other things like that. And, you know, it's also important to remember, too, that when we talk about, you know, sea total protection and stuff like that, that doesn't mean you can't have floodlights on. That doesn't mean you can't have work lights on. That doesn't mean that work has to stop at night. I mean, if you go by the Kennedy Space Center right now, SLS is lit up in all of its glory out on the launch pad. I mean, you can't tell me those are. In the middle of a wildlife reserve. Yeah.

Yeah. So it's not saying that. It's just saying like, hey, like over the scope of what we looked at, you just need to constantly remain on top of this. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So the other question I have then is, is this the end of it? Because there's always the, this talk about, you know, lawsuits and stuff. Can this be challenged and will someone challenge it? And if they do, what does that look like? Is that mean like, you know, if a judge gets a challenge, they just stop it again and then until they resolve the lawsuit?

Or is there a way through that? I don't really know. I'm not an expert in this, obviously. Yeah. Yeah. So the simplistic answer, and of course, the simplistic answer is not the real answer. But the simplistic answer is that, yes, this can still be challenged, and it's not necessarily the end of it.

There can be challenges. There can be lawsuits. Depending on the severity of the lawsuit, depending on what the lawsuit is alleging and what the initial evidence for filing the suit sort of shows, that's hard to say, there can be differing levels of responses, right? It's not the same level as, you know, SpaceX wins the award for human landing and Blue Origin sues, so everything has to come to a stop. Because if they're saying, well, they didn't take this one small little point that I talked about into consideration, that's not going to be a major thing, right? A big environmental group comes down and says, wait a minute, we submitted this.

There's no mention of this endangered species that lives here. And I'm choosing an example that purposely does not exist in this area. You know, that could be, that could have a very radical impact on what a judge would talk about there. But I mean, when you look at the agencies involved, right, the FAA is sort of the umbrella agency. So they definitely caught the flack as this kept going. Yeah, there's traffic. And it wasn't their fault.

Yeah. That it was this late. And I do kind of want to touch on that too because I think I think the reason it took so long is very interesting and not necessarily what everyone has been talking about in terms of the number of comments that they got on that. But to finish my first thought, so basically, yeah, it would take a lot for a stop work order because when you look at the agencies that were involved, FAA was the umbrella, they caught the flag, but NASA was there, the DOD was there, the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency

was there. These agencies know what they're doing. These agencies know what they're looking for. They know the regions that they're operating in and looking at. that the odds that they miss something that a judge would go, yeah, we need to stop that, not high. But again, it depends on what the argument in the case and what the initial evidence is showing.

But I wouldn't expect a huge delay or challenge to this. I think the marching orders are pretty clear. As long as they're doing and following what the mitigated Fonzi is saying, and they're following the mitigations, I don't think we're going to have a problem here in reality. And I guess if it's a legal challenge, And, you know, you can't just file a lawsuit and say, I don't like this decision. There has to be a reason that it was done improperly.

So I guess a lawsuit would have to be something like the FAA didn't consider all the things as they were legally obligated to do or the FAA like cut corners on some process that they were really obligated to do or Fish and Wildlife Service didn't check all the boxes on there. Something like that. Like there's got to be wrongdoing, right? Bingo. It's going to like it's a procedural thing, right? and a pretty big procedural thing that would hold them up at this point, right?

Because this isn't like, oh, we don't like that they were awarded this. That's not what this is. Yeah. So then to dovetail on your further thought there where you wanted to talk about the delay, is that part of it then? I feel like the FAA was being like extra diligent because they knew there was going to be a legal challenge, right? So that might have been why they took someone. Yes.

So two main things on this. first of its kind assessment, not the first time we ever did an environmental assessment or a programmatic environmental assessment, not the first time they've done that. But first time in terms of this is our first private orbital launch site range. If this goes well, others are going to want their own. So let's make sure we absolutely dotted all the eyes, crossed all the T's, make sure we did everything, right? Because in many ways, this is the precedent setting. moment for which all of the other space ports to be incredible to be able to say that and not have it be like talking about Star Trek in the future but like our actual future but like all the

space ports that are to be and that are and that will come online not just because of starship but because of the other systems that are coming up as well this is your precedent setting documents so make sure you get it right because everyone is looking back at it and if two years down the road someone else wants to build their own and they go, uh-oh, we didn't make SpaceX do this when we should have now making the other company do it is harder. Right. So, yeah, like take the time to get it right.

But also, what I don't think people realize is that when you have reviews like this, they have to go through every single comment one by one. They cannot group them together into categories and dismiss them. Even when they're a form letter? by one. Yep. So when all those floods of positive comments came, right, that had no impact on the actual

decision. I guarantee you it impacted the timeline. Oh, definitely. Yeah. Yeah. And all of those comments just got dismissed because they looked at it and went, all right, took us 10 seconds to read that. And we can't comment on that.

So moving on. Like, I mean, there's a reality to this, right? Like, and I think that's an important part of the story. for why it was, it took so long. I was reading through those comments because they came out like, you know, in some sort of document that you could read later. The funniest one that I tweeted about it. It was my favorite thing.

It was just like some guy was just like, hey, I really like rockets, but I also like the environment. Good luck with your decision, homie. That was the comment. And I just, oh, that's like the perfect distillation of like what's going on with this. I just, I thought it was just delightful. So shout out to that guy. If you're that guy, please send me an email.

I want to meet you. Okay, what was I going to ask? So the other thing I was thinking, too, is that just in all that same thought, is there's got to be, I'm very surprised that this whole process has not escalated in the federal politics scene. Because there's a culture war billionaire's thing on this, right? Like, this is ultimately the representative of the president approving the project of a, the project of, of a billionaire, right? It's Biden and Musk. And there's already like stuff about that, you know, in the, in the popular culture thing. So I'm, like, really surprised that like Bernie Sanders isn't like screaming about the FAA approval. I think it's kind of interesting that that hasn't

happened yet. And I wonder if they were worried about that, right? Interesting. So maybe, maybe let me, let me say what my perception of how this is. Like, it goes because, oh my gosh, yes, there is the, there is the, there is the, there is the, and Biden war going on with Tesla and electric vehicles and all of that. And yes, that, that, that, who I have things to say. It's a whole thing. Yeah. But yes, I have things to say about that.

But, but no, in, this is sort of a process that is removed from whatever the current administration is. So it's not, so this isn't really like a rubber stamp of like the Biden administration says yes, right, or that. This is really just the overall framework of the federal government working through how it works, regardless of who the occupant of the White House is or which party controls Congress. Yeah, that's the actual thing that's happening. Yes. Because that's the actual thing.

That's the problem. And we'll get to that in a second. But, yeah, that's the, yeah, that's the other thing. But I, too, have been a little, I was a little surprised at first that this wasn't a conversation within Congress, wasn't a conversation that we were seeing senators starting to weigh into. But I think where I ultimately landed on why is because they would get road. I mean, imagine being a senator going, well, that private project that's giving X number of jobs to this region is insert adjective here that you, you know, that you don't like. I mean, imagine being that senator or that congressman. So then your constituent in whatever state you represent or district you represent stands up because, wait a minute.

So if they wanted to come here, you'd fight them. You know, like there's a weird tightrope that politicians have to walk here because if they come out against, especially in the United States, right, if you come out and say, we don't like what they're doing under capitalism, good luck getting reelected. You know, I like saying that. But you could go the other way too, though, right? Like I could imagine, you know, so pick a senator who is not in Texas and maybe get some contributions from. some SpaceX competition. So imagine, you know, the, the Colorado senator or the Alabama senators or whatever delegations who might say, like, hey, Biden administration, I think you're cutting corners

on the environment. Don't you care about the environment? Like, this is what you do. You just, you just, you sell the environment to billionaires. You know, I was, I was really surprised that didn't become a main, I mean, I'm glad it didn't, but I'm really surprised. Yes. Yeah.

I think perhaps this was a moment where every senator and Congress member, had the wherewithal to go, yeah, that's a dangerously slippery argument because this, as soon as anything environmental in my district or state hits, that can come back to bite me. Now, on the flip side, why have we not seen more supporting this? Right? Because on the flip side to your question, right, why are the Texas senators and the Florida senators and Congress people not out there going, look at this innovation and look at what it's doing for our states? Don't you want that for yours, right? Let's let ULA go, right, says the Colorado senators. Like, let's, let's open the gates and let them do more stuff. Like, let's see what we can help them do here

in Colorado or Mississippi or Alabama, where they test and where they build these things, right? Why aren't the Washington senators and Congress people standing up for Blue Origin in that regard? Like, that's actually the more fascinating question to me of that. And I think it comes down, honestly to the orange rocket that is on pad 39B right now. Wow, this SLS tie-in. Come out of nowhere with the steel chair. I did not expect that one. SLS will always enter the conversation when you least expect it.

Yes, yes. But no, I think it has to do with that, right? Because there's this interesting element with SLS that we don't want to talk about, right? And it has to do with how we've always done our space program, right? Like the Saturn 5, the shuttle and SLS, I got all three of them in there, I didn't just mention the shuttle, were they are meant to be the nation's space programs and space systems, right? They are meant to have as much buy-in from different states and constituencies and all

of those things as possible. I think the number is something like 47 out of the 50 states have contributed some component or censor to the SLS or something like that. Well, that gets you the votes to do it in Maine. gets you the votes to do it there. That gets you the votes to do it here. And, you know, yes, we are in this sort of complicated time period where both of these systems are coming to fruition. I still maintain they're going to take their same flights within a week of one another or very shortly or very awful travel schedule for us. Maybe not seven days, maybe 10, but like, you know,

you get, you get what I'm trying to stay here. Like they're going to end up flying very close to one another for their first orbital flights. So, you know, how do you get that buy-in? Well, when SLS was created in 2004, SpaceX didn't exist, as it does now, right? I mean, in any way, shape, or form, this company did not exist in that way when SLS was created. SLS was going to be our future. It just took so long to develop that now we're in the arena where the billionaires sort

of said, well, fine, we'll do it. And, you know, if the billionaires want to spend their money to make us rockets to help the planet. Okay. Yeah, we'll take the money, right? I'll take the money. Yeah. But I think your political question is really, it wraps to SLS because if you express, if you are not a senator in the state where SpaceX operates, it's really hard to be a senator from Alabama and praise SpaceX. Yeah, yeah. But on the flip side, though, I thought it would also be really hard to be a senator from Vermont and go after SpaceX, too. Well, that too. And that is, potentially one of the more baffling ones because I do look at some of the things that Bernie says and does.

And, you know, there are certain things like, but I mean, I think this is true with all politicians, you know, regardless of what side of the aisle are you on. Like, if you sit down and you start talking about very specific policies, you're going to find things you agree on, right? Like, I don't necessarily agree with Ted Cruz on everything, but I do when he funds the space program. Yeah. That I agree with that, right? I mean, so, you know, I think you'll find, you know, those those little moments of connection, but man, I thought Bernie would be championing this because it's taking it's taking the money off the government's shoulders. It just doesn't appear to be on board with this.

Like aside from just Jeff shouldn't get extra money for Blue Origin. Like it's like, eh. Yeah, the culture war is strong, right? Yeah, and the flip side of this that I think senators have to walk and then we'll move on because I think I'm babbling at this point is, you know, SpaceX did receive a lot of this money early on for commercial cargo and commercial crew. Elon has been very upfront that SpaceX would not exist without this, right? That working relationship, not a surprise that NASA ended up going with SpaceX for their design for the Lunarlander and everything like that.

But, man, being a senator now and having to be like, okay, we need to give money to these other companies, but we've got companies that can do it on their own. Like, that's a tricky balance for how government supports growing initiatives in a growing market. And at what point does the government say, okay, we feel like we've got enough versus, now we need more than one rocket. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's always a fine line to decide sort of what the right level of government investment is and where it goes and all that kind of thing. It's a fascinating problem to solve them.

But, yeah, I don't know if you and I are going to fix it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. If only they would add me to the NASA advisory committee. We have lots of opinions. Please add off nominal to the National Advisory Committee. Yeah. We need representation for all the anomalies out there. Okay, I have another question for you.

So the other big thing about this, this approval, is the whole five flights a year thing. So this, you know, the submittal, the submission of this, of this request for approval came with the condition that SpaceX would fly. What was it, five orbital flights and ten suborbital and a bunch of testing, I think, something like that. Yeah. And of course, everyone is like, what is, what is Starship going to do with five orbital flights? You need that many just to fill the tank up. Like, the whole point of this was to fly like every day. Like, what's the deal with that?

So I had some ideas on this and then I think I might have been wrong about some of them. I've heard some other ones. I would love your take. What is what the heck of SpaceX doing with five flights? Why did they even bother with that? Yeah. So my understanding of it is that the number of flights that are quoted in there are the number of flights they used to perform. the analysis. It is not a hard line that you cannot cross. And basically what we do is we go back

and we look at what was the last environmental impact or programmatic environmental assessment that they talked about for the Falcon family out of the Cape. Nowhere close to the 60 we're going to get to today, but no one's talking about that they can't do that, right? My understanding of it is that that's the baseline that they use to basically conduct the report of how much of an impact is this actually going to be, what do we need to do, but it's ultimately up to the FAA to grant the launch licenses. But from an environmental impact assessment, it's not a hard line that you can't cross. Gotcha. So it's a baseline. They say, if we assume this many, here's the impact and here's why you should or should be able to do that. So then would that lead you to a place where the FAA

on some, you know, when SpaceX files for the sixth orbital flight, the FAA would go, okay, is this still, do we think this is still in line with what we were thinking, or are they starting to, how far will they let them get from their environmental assessment before they start to ask questions and ask for a new one? Is that kind of what we're thinking? Right. In a way, there would be considerations like that. And, you know, like the FAA might say, like, whoa, whoa, two in two weeks is not really what we were thinking here. if it's just a test, right? And yeah, ultimately the FAA would be the authority to say yes or no from the launch license

standpoint there, but yeah, I think they'd really have to breach it, like go like, not five, 80, you know? Yeah, yeah. Well, and that's really funny to think about the FAA having to handle that because that would mean that at some point the FAA just be like, nah, it's too much. That's too much. We're shutting it down. Like, yeah.

62 was okay, but 63, we are drawing the line. This is way too, like, whatever the number is. But they have to pick a number now, then, by what you're saying, right? I mean, again, in a way, but I think when we look at the test campaign and what's likely to actually come, right, is it possible that we get an orbital test flight and won the next month? Possible. Never say never, never with SpaceX. You know, now that the answer to that is incredibly dependent on how flight one goes.

Yes. Right. And I think that's the other thing here, right? You know, five flights might seem like, oh, not enough time to do anything with Starship, but if you end up needing a couple of months to tweak the design between flights or you get into a scenario where you're like, okay, we've learned all we can from this iteration, time to move on to the next block. You know, even with the suborbital flights that we had last year, you could, from December onward, you could see that cadence sort of shifting around as the models change. So I don't think we'd get to a point where the FAA would go, whoa, slow your horses on that just yet. But I think the element of more than five orbital flights are possible in a year is also backed up by what we sort of saw SpaceX say instantly upon the completion of this year, starting next month. Yeah, and that's where obviously the question sort of kicked off. But yeah, when you look at the historical record with Florida and what they were. aiming for with the Falcons. I mean, they've gone over that. Yeah, yeah. Okay. Yeah. And I guess the other thought, the other thing that I've seen people say is like, well, they can, they can use this for two

years and fly their 15 flights of combination of subover. And then when they've got the development further along, they can apply for a renewal or an increase and say, hey, we want to do more. Is there anything you needed to do in terms of, like, you know, you can, you can increment it, I guess, although I've heard that's like a sketchy way to do it and not super legal. So I don't know, man. I can't I can't quite figure it out. You know what? I don't know to that point, actually. That's a really good thing.

But yeah, I don't know. It's like, I think there was some term that. Someone in our Discord had a term for this. Like, it's like a common way to sort of get around, like ask for less. And then just, you know, it's like incrementing, like iterating, like batching your, yeah, your like request. Like, oh, maybe just one more, maybe just a little more, just a couple more flights. Do you mind? Do you mind?

And then all of a sudden you've got way beyond your initial request, right? Yeah. Yeah. And I have a feeling a lot of it is going to come down to like community, right? And the surrounding areas and disruptions to things like that. And I mean, particularly to South Padre Island. I mean, we talk about Brownsville a lot, but it's South Padre that's going to feel, feel it and hear it the most. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

The other thing that I was thinking on that, too, in my initial theory that I'm less attached to now than I was when I first came up with it. But the initial theory was that SpaceX has abandoned Boca Chica as the main place to launch from a long time ago. And it was always going to be a dev place. And that's why we're seeing so much work in Florida. And they had, you know, like publicly they haven't admitted this. But maybe like a year ago, they were like Florida is the place. And we're going to finish this off. So we have a dev place.

But like we're going all in now on Kennedy Space Center, right? Yes. I think from a strategic standpoint, keeping Bocahika would be good. as a second launch site. I don't know if there are specific plans to like completely abandoned Boka. I don't I don't get that sense. No, no, not completely abandoned, but just like reduce its scope. Like be like, this is not the main place.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that at an eventual point, it becomes one of the production areas for Starship. But Florida's your prime. I mean, that makes sense to me for a variety of reasons, right? You know, like we already have all of the launch agreements. with Bahamas and Cuba for how we over, I mean, specifically how SpaceX overflies them,

because they're literally the only ones that do this. And I mean, we all saw that booster go into the middle of the Bahamas. Like, really? Like, right over an island. Okay. Guess we're doing that now. Which I can wind to that in a minute, because I actually like that we're doing this now,

and that land overflight is starting to become a little bit more of a thing. Because I think it's necessary for how this system and the other systems and transportation evolve. But, you know, we already sort of have those agreements. We know how those corridors work. You know, they know how the Cape works. It makes a large amount of sense to go to Florida, right? You have established bases.

You have established programs. You have that direct interface with NASA for how this vehicle is going to work with them. Especially with the Artemis program. You've got, I mean, it's on a wildlife refuge, too, So you've got that entire complex that you can build to the north of the 39 complex right now out near Playa Linda to be its own dedicated Starship Launched Landing facility. And you can get to almost any orbital inclination from Florida. We were even talking about this because some of the Starlink version 2s are in retrograde orbits and not Sunsink orbits, like 148 degree retrograde, 17 degree retrograde, like really retrograde orbits. And we were talking about like how do you get there if they're not going to launch from Van Goget?

And in Sandenberg, you just hook, you just literally hook around Florida. Right. Yeah. And go out over Cuba like you do now. Like, I mean, you can get there. And with Starships ability, its lift capacity, you know, of 100 metric tons, I mean, heck, even if it loses half of that, I doubt your Starlings are coming to 50 metric tons in that thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. You can fill the volume before we can fill the mass probably with those things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and I guess so Boka has, you know, has that challenge too, right? Because the, I think the corridors you get out of that, like you can go over Cuba or you can go under Cuba, and that's pretty much where you can go. Although I kind of wonder if they'll be able to do like a, maybe SunSink if you go over the Mexican Ismith.

I don't know, I've been looking at. That's sort of what I was, yeah, that's sort of what I was looking at. And, you know, like, if you just sort of ballpark it, that's what I'm doing looking over here. I'm just a ballparking. I'll put it up on here, but. Yeah, the distance between Florida and Cuba there, if you just sort of migrate that over to South Texas, you can see you kind of hit that when you reach the Mexican coastline. Right.

So like if you launch kind of out like this and then down across this area, right? And you can kind of get, yeah. This is a pretty narrow piece of land. And you're pretty far into the flight at that point. So it would be pretty easy to like have a have some sort of abort zone that, you know, your debris ground track would be. that small little piece of land very quickly. Yeah.

And even like the peninsula here where I live, like you could go, you could come down and get a lower pass this way too. And I don't know, it feels like it's, there's possibility there if we're just willing to expand our horizons. But I also heard that shipping lanes here are a big problem, right? Because there's a ton of ships. Yes. Because you've have like, you'd have like, you know, Panama Canal down here. So all these ships coming up this way and going down this way would be a problem. And, you know, Galveston's a big port.

So let me see. I don't know. We'll have to see. I guess these are all interesting questions. They really are. They really are. But yeah, from a sheer physics standpoint, I mean, you can see why those two lunch sites would be nice for them because you can get basically anywhere you need to go.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, so, I mean, I guess it's great that we finally got this here. It's nice to be able to talk about something different. I'm really excited for the first orbital flight. like that's a trip I want to make so I'm like making travel plans and then of course SLS it's like oh my guy it's such a nightmare that's like how am I going to fly up to one place and the other place and you know they're going to be next to each other it's just

the law of space events has to put it in the most inconvenient way possible yeah hmm okay uh yeah I mean I don't know any other thoughts on on that like are you we I think we covered a lot but do you I think of anything else that was yeah I think overall no part of what got released was surprising to me. I think it was always going to be a Fonzie. I was pretty certain it was always going to be a mitigated Fonzie because there's so much in that area where we haven't seen that type of development before, right? That, you know, it wasn't going to be a no, but it wasn't going to be an unbridled yes.

Yeah. And yeah. And now we really just get to. to watch. I think so the next major hurdle right is like all right now how does it work like we got to get that booster static fired we got to get some and we got to load propellant from yeah I'm actually excited about the narrative change here because like for the last like year and a half it's been like the government is slowing us down but now it's like okay let's go you're up your balls in your court now now they got to actually put the money where their mouth is and fly the damn thing right so it's

yeah yeah many ways yeah and you know as as we pointed out many times like that definitely was the refrain that was out there right you know like that it was the f a saying them down but like they didn't have a tank farm they didn't have a propellant farm they didn't have a fully working launch tower they didn't have a there's no way they were ready no like yeah yeah yeah yeah that's how it goes you should know though that anthony's not here right now so he can't speak for himself so i'll give him a little bit he thought it was going to be the the bad news he thought it was going to be the eIS the whole environmental impacts there He was pretty sure about that.

I think that some people were surprised. At least Anthony was we can trash talk him because he's not here. So we can say all sorts of bad things about Anthony. I think I'm just more curious as to why was that what he thought, right? Like what was going on in the process that that was making him think that. Well, I will point everyone to his podcast here. So he put it out on main engine cutoff. So if you want to hear Anthony's thoughts on it, I'll give him a little plug after I just told him

that we were going to trash talk them. But yeah, he had some thoughts there. But he just thought it was going the wrong way. I don't know. Interesting. A large part of the reason why I thought it was going to be approved just with some mitigations was for a couple of different reasons. And the primary ones were there's no way the military slash DOD slash space force looks

at that system and goes, we don't want it. Oh, yeah, guarantee you. Yeah. And there's no way with NASA has. having selected it for the Artemis program, right? That unless you literally found like this species exists nowhere else on the face of the planet except right here and we can't move it. I really didn't expect them to come back with a negative report because that would have set all of those agencies' goals back. And I'm not saying they use that as an excuse to cut corners.

I'm absolutely not. They can't actually legally I think right. Right. They legally couldn't. Right. But I mean, and that's where the environmental protection agency came into play as part of this and the others that didn't have a stake in this, right, to act as checks and balances as you go through the various approval processes. But just given what the system could mean to the variety of agencies in the U.S., I just, there was no part of me that thought they were coming back with a no on that. Okay.

Well, very prescient of you, I guess, is the answer there. Maybe. I've never been able to actually use that word correctly in a sentence. I know what it means, but never been able to use it correctly. Shout out to Megan O'Neill if she's watching. Okay, excellent. What else are you working on, Chris? So we're wrapping up here.

I know you guys have been super, super busy. I want to ask you about this. I'm going to plug for you here. You've got 24-7 cameras at McGregor now. This is a new thing. Tell me about this. That was our nice little surprise in May. Yeah.

Yeah. No, we wanted to, I mean, we were interested in how they tested all of these. I mean, like a huge part of what we do at NSF is like, is this something that we would want? Yeah, let's try it. And go for it. So yeah, to Doss and Michael and Nolan and Adam, who really helped us all out there with the installation of everything. This has been wonderful to watch them test the Raptor engines and the Falcon 9s and the Falcon 9 Second State. as they come through.

Yeah, this was like a project that ours, we had in the work for quite some time and pulled the trigger on earlier this year. Is that an actual test that's taking place right now? I mean, it's the live feed. I don't know if there's anything. Some smoke came out there. Hey, look at that. There was definitely smoke.

They tried to do something there for a second. You saw it here, folks. Are you learning stuff from this? Like, I'm curious to know. Oh, yes. Because I thought McGregor was pretty well understood. just by having the cameras here, have you guys picked up some new tidbits, some interesting, you know, reveals that help you change your understanding of what this operation looks like?

I would answer that question specific to McGregor, which is yes. Like we definitely learned like the signs of when they might fire and stuff like that. But I can only answer this to me personally. In terms of like how the raptors or the falcons operate, no, I really haven't learned anything new. It's just been interesting to see how they test the Raptors, right? Because some tests are intentional tests to failure, right? To push the engine, to understand what its current limits are. And those are very interesting. And to watch as well and how the engines sort of behave as they're pushed to their limits. So yeah, that's how I'd answer that. Okay, cool. Well, now we have,

We have lots of views coming out of NASA's place. Anything else? What else you work on? What have you been writing about lately? It's all Artemis I lot lately, I think, right? A lot of my stuff has been Artemis 1. Yeah. And walking through the wet dress and its various rollouts, that's been really cool to see.

And that's actually one that I've been learning quite a bit about because it's all heritage hardware, right? But it all works slightly different. Like the ICPS is not the Delta upper stage. It's slightly different. So it's got its own little quirks. The core stage is not the ET. The boosters are not the SRB.

You know, like all of these little things are different with it, which is, which has really been fascinating to follow and just different enough to keep the cost the same, right? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Orange Rocket good. Orange Rocket good. Orange Rocket good.

Yeah. Yeah, a lot of what I've been writing about has been on the SLS side. But I tell you what, like I've had the chance. chance recently to talk with Lockheed Martin about a bunch of their projects, including Orion and Osiris Rex and everything, or Osiris Apex as it will be after next year when it drops off its sample and everything. And that's a pretty cool mission. That's really cool to write about. Yeah, and what it's going to do next as it goes to Apophis, but it's going to reach Apophis, like just days after the closest approach inside the geostationary belt. Like, it's so fascinating

what that thing is going to do once it reaches Apophis. But yeah, that's definitely where my interest has been right now. I've actually been arcing a little bit more toward like the scientific return, like of what Hubble is showing us, what web will eventually show us. But yeah, yeah. The beautiful web pictures with the little ding on it. I know, right? I can't believe that.

Oh, my gosh. And I think all of us were just like, like, oh my God, like, what were the odds that it would get hit by something like that, you know? Right before it's about to start too. I know. And I mean, but, you know, like, but at least like the resolution is still above baseline minimum of what's needed and everything like that. And the optics weren't too degraded from it. But man, I mean, that really does highlight, you know, like small little grain of sand.

If you come out of it at just the right angle, it can do a lot of damage up there. Space debris, man. It's a thing. It's a thing. Yeah. Cool. Well, yeah, I'm excited to read more of your, I don't know if I saw that Osiris Rex article. I feel like it would have come across my feet.

I'll check it out. So it's definitely an interesting story. It's a really, like scientific ROI on that is super high because you get like a whole, whole extra new frontiers mission essentially out of that. Oh my gosh. I know. I know. Although one thing I'm really wondering, and Lockheed hasn't quite answered all my questions on this yet, but Osiris for X uses the same spacecraft bus as Maven. So it's the same satellite, just different instruments, right?

And Maven, we just about lost Maven a couple months ago when the IMEUs failed, and they had to do a whole software patch to go this whole stellar navigation because they couldn't point the spacecraft. So I'm wondering who's asking the question about whether Osiris Rex is going to need that software, and if they're ready for us and how those IMUs are doing. That's what I'm really wondering about that one. Yeah, you know what wouldn't actually surprise me on that? like as soon as they would have had the issue on Maven, they probably would have looked at a software patch

for all of the satellites based around that to make sure it didn't happen again. Yeah, exactly. So I'm sure they're on it, but I just like, they're obviously not talking about it a lot. Yeah. But, you know, I think I'll end it this way.

One, there's one mission that I'm really looking forward to just because it's one of those NASA missions where you just look at it and you cock your head and you're like, what? You know, because like, if landing perseverance and curiosity, on the red planet with like retro propulsion and a sky crane winch and like all of that isn't enough like this Mars sample return where we're going to launch a rocket in a rocket to land the rocket on the other planet to then put the payload in it on the other planet without a human and then launch it into orbit for an ESSA return orbiter to grab it and it's just like especially when like the way they're going to launch that thing off of mars is basically like just

throw it up in the air like a missile coming out of a submarine and then ignite it and it's like well I know you have experience with that but yeah like that's still just like what I like lose sleep over that but yeah I'll use that as jumping off point because I'm going to plug some my stuff so next next week on Weymartians if you're interested in that I have an interview that I'm super excited about. So I was able to talk to Scott Hubbard, who is the, you know, the Mars Tsar. This is the guy that basically invented the modern Mars program. He came in after the twin failures in 1999, restructured the whole thing and gave us Odyssey and Spirit and Opportunity and Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and Maven and Phoenix and Curiosity and Persivir. All those missions are part of that

program thanks to him and the work that his team did back then. So I was able to talk to him. And the big reason I wanted to ask him about was Mars sample return because it's a pretty significant departure from the way the Mars program has been operating. So, you know, it's like one big monolithic mission. So it's going to be, it's going to be interesting. Lots of stuff changing. So you can hop into the Wii Marshal's feed next week to see that interview. It's going to be good. I'm excited for it.

Sounds good. I mean, that sounds fantastic. Yeah. Well, that's all I got, Chris. I really appreciate you hopping by. I pulled you away from a very busy Boca Chica Day and NASA spaceflight running on all cylinders right now, trying to follow this this chopstick lift or whatever is going on. I'm not as deep into the ops as you guys, so I might get the words wrong,

but you guys are doing lots of good work there. So thank you for that. Chopstick lift is what we've called it. Okay. That's the nice thing about SpaceX not telling us anything is we can just make up all the terms we want, right? Right, exactly. Yeah, yeah. Okay, cool.

next week everybody pop on by we have eric burger stopping by anthony will be back well my google is talking to me hush hush what did you do you do to activate it uh i think i think she picks up eric burger i think it sounds like hey google i don't know if that's if that's the same thing anyway her burger sounds like hey google okay she goes again she's going again uh so mr burger uh who his first name eric will be joining us uh to talk about to talk about Bill Nelson. We're going to have an interesting conversation about Bill Nelson as an administrator. We're going to give him a report card.

We're going to talk about what he's done well and what he hasn't been very well. So it's going to be fun. So stop on by. I'll add something to the thing he's done well if he can follow through on it. Yeah, sure. No more cost plus contracts. And who would have thought that was the guy that was going to deliver that, right? No, I know, right?

My gosh. But, hey, do it, dude. I think the mobile launcher for SLS Block 1B is your best present for that argument right now. Yeah, yeah, we'll see. So, yeah, we're going to unpack that. And so thanks everybody for stopping by and listening. If you want to become a member and support the show, we click the link.

I don't know where it is, depending on your platform. But five bucks a month gets you into our Discord where you can hang out with the people we talked about, making the Bocajiga Road closure bots and everything like that. So we have lots of fun stuff happening in there. And Chris, even you stop by. That's time. You lurk in there.

I know you lurk in there. You don't say a lot, but you're watching. I don't say a lot, but I have to admit, I do read the random thread every day because it makes me laugh and giggle and just makes me feel good. We hit all sorts of weird stuff in our random thread. So if you want to hang out with some people who love rockets and forks versus spoons and horse puns. And what else? Sometimes we reinvent government.

We do a whole thing on that. We're all over the place. It's pretty fun. I'm personally in favor of the capoon on the knife versus spoon argument there. We're not going to get into this. We do not have time. There you. Thank you, everybody.

Thanks for hanging by. And we're going to sign off. So we'll see you next week. See you, everyone.