Off-Nominal - 68 - Pop It Back Up There

Episode Date: July 1, 2022

Eric Berger of Ars Technica joins Jake and Anthony to discuss Administrator Bill Nelson a year into his tenure and whether he’s been good or bad for NASA.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 68 - Pop It Back Up There (with Eric Berger) - YouTubeWe got a leaked look at NASA’s future Moon missions—and likely delays | Ars TechnicaEric Berger on Twitter: “I wrote fairly critically about Nelson's nomination to become NASA administrator. A year later, I think he's handled the Russia-ISS situation masterfully, and validated the Biden administration's faith in his ability to work with Congress. In other words, I was wrong.”NASA chief says cost-plus contracts are a “plague” on the space agency | Ars TechnicaT+220: Artemis Architecture (with Eric Berger) - Main Engine Cut OffEpisode 66 - My Next One is “Fiction” - Off-NominalEscaping Gravity: My Quest to Transform NASA and Launch a New Space Age: Garver, Lori, Isaacson, Walter: 9781635767704: Amazon.com: BooksBill Nelson on Twitter: “@Astro_Pam and I met with Italy’s Minister of Economic Development Giancarlo Giorgetti about our nations’ shared goals and partnership — and the incredible opportunity that space offers in developing groundbreaking science and technology for the future!”Follow EricEric Berger | Ars TechnicaEric Berger (@SciGuySpace) | TwitterFollow JakeWeMartians PodcastWeMartians 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, friends. Welcome to Off Nominal 68. I do the numbers. Jake does not do the numbers, I don't think. No, I haven't made a part of my routine to introduce the show. I just say hello. It's my way of remembering what show it is, since I've introduced this show as main engine

cut off multiple times. We have brought our dear friend Eric Berger here today to kiss either the ring of Bill Nelson or the ring of Off Nominal, depending on how this goes. Are you prepared for this, Eric? I'm kissing no one's ring today. Not kissing anything for that matter. Oh, man. Jake, I'm back from vacation yet again.

Mm-hmm. Yeah. And I promise I won't leave you alone too much longer this year. It's okay. I will not make the same promise to you. It's going to be very U-e in the next little bit here, I think. U-I. U-E.

Should we, I don't have any major recaps from this vacation. Other than Everglades National Park, Biscayne Bay National Park, less disappointing than Joshua Tree National Park, since that's a running bit on this show now, how disappointing are various national parks. Joshua Tree still sucks. Everglades and Viskeen A-plus. And that's my bit.

Eric, did you bring anything fun to drink on your slightly earlier than, well, I guess you and Jake in the same time zone? I just had to explain to my wife. She asked, why are you getting a beer at 3 o'clock in the afternoon. It's for work. It's a Shiner, Viceneese, so it's basically

a light Belgian white Shiner beer. It's good, yeah, it's light. Summertime beer. I love me some Shiner. Yeah, it's always good. They're the ones that make Ruby Redbird, right? I feel like we talk about this. They make Ruby Redbird, yeah.

It's great. That's a great summer beer right there. Look at this. He's got a little kuzi and all, Jake. Got to keep it cool. Cool, yeah. I'm keeping it simple today. I have just a gin and tonic. So I had some friends.

Yeah, I had some friends pop over and they left some nice tonic at our place, this fever tree stuff. So I figured, you know what? I'm able to just drink this because it's here and it's good. That one has less constituent parts than you usually bring to this. Yeah, there's just like a little lime juice in this, but otherwise it's just like a nice and tons of these fancy Home Depot ice cubes, as everyone calls them.

I've got a lollyhop, which is a fun label. That's what I'm drinking over here. Nice 8.2%. And it's a pounder, Jake. Not quite of Jake size, but it's a pounder. 8.2% tallboy. Is this going to be one of those episodes? I think I might need it because...

I think the last time Eric was here was when I was drinking that maltz. What was it like the giant... Malt liquor. It was malt liquor. Yeah, the huge... huge bottle and I was like, I've never had this before and you guys were like, stressing for me. It was like, yeah, that was good.

All right, we've got a lot on the agenda here because number one, the reason we wanted to have Eric on was this tweet from, uh, when was this? May. May 3rd. When Eric declared that he was wrong that Bill Nelson was not going to be a bad administrator, or he was declared he was wrong that he would be. I'm really screwing up this description. Eric thought he would suck.

He thinks he doesn't. That's how it went. But maybe before that, Eric, we should talk about Artemis 3 and a half because you were on managing cut off a week or so ago. Strangely, you were on, that weird timing how you were on that shortly before that article went live about Artemis 3.5 being a thing that existed and we talked around it. But this, man, I don't know. Jake, the public has heard our thoughts. on the state of the Artemis manifest. Do you have any things to kick us off on what a shit show actually is?

Well, because we were talking about this. I think there was right around the SLS had a press conference, one of the wet dress rehearsal press conferences. And so you two had already talked. And then Anthony called me and he's like, I got to tell you about this thing. Eric's going to publish this Artemis 3.5. And I was like, I was out for a walk because I was trying to like get exercise on the

press conference. And so I was like out for a walk. And I was just like mad in the street because he was telling me, me all these things about this like cadence bit that you know that you published so i don't maybe maybe erika can you can explain a little bit better about what the idea is here but i i was not very happy about this so i that's my summary so the issue here basically is that the the top line one there is the the baseline plan that's out there now which is completely fiction um that's about as realistic as a SpaceX Mars landing in 2024 and, you know, Vulcan launch in the summer this year,

that kind of stuff. And so what NASA is really struggling here is, and I actually ended up talking to Jim Free about this this week. He was in Houston for this moon to Mars event, and I talked to him some about it. And, you know, we talked about the story. And he said, yeah, we're struggling. And what he told me, it was interesting. Like, okay, go back and focus on anything because I think it's useful.

If you look at all the things that have to be ready for Artemis 4, SLB Block 1B, Orion Gateway Hab, IHab module, whatever, same, you know, like, let's say that the launch tower is not ready, or Block 1B is not ready, or there's a problem with Orion, or there's a problem with the payload. It's like everything on that mission slips, right? And so it's everything is just getting stretched out because like if one piece of a mission isn't ready, it gets blocked out. So he's like, yeah, we're looking at moving the pieces around.

So like if this piece is done, then we send it aside and maybe we juggle the manifest a little bit. And so NASA clearly realizes that there's a problem here. You know, they want to get to one Artemis mission here, which doesn't seem that ambitious, but it's like would be a lot greater than what they have right now. Because I think as it is, you know, on the current plan, we might see four Artemis missions this decade. And that's really not acceptable.

And so they're looking at it pretty hard trying to fix it and trying to address it. And the big picture issue is that, look, they've already had enough trouble over the last 12 years or longer doing SLS and Orion, right? And those are supposed to be the fairly straightforward pieces of this. Now they've got a tack onto it, lunar lander, elements of a deep space station, space suits, pressurize rover, lunar transfer vehicle, surface habitat, logistics, and there's just a ton of stuff that should be theoretically a lot harder than a big rocket based on shuttle technology and a spacecraft they've been working on since 2004. And so you know they're going to run into challenges. They're going to try to fit this all under a flat budget or a relatively small, increased budget. And it's just going to be

a mess. I mean, we all know it, right? And so, yeah. I mean, And it's a little bit frustrating to look about it and think about it. But I think it's the reality that we're facing. Yeah. Can you bring that up again, Anthony? Because this is... Let me just make the whole stream in this graphic. We can just never show our faces.

It turns into the worst Zoom ever. So with that context, so like this is what was making me mad. So this middle row here, which is labeled cadence. And so you can give the extra context. But my understanding is this is like the plan. if we try and make it look like we can fly more than we actually can, right? Yeah, it's basically like they put in Artemis 3.5. Now, NASA gave me a statement before I wrote the article saying,

Artemis 3.5 is not real or not happening. But, I mean, it's certainly one of their considerations, because if you look at that, you want to pop it back up there one more time, you can. You don't have to. The title of this is if you want to pop it back up there, for sure. Under the content line, there's a three-year gap between Artemis 4 and Artis 4. I miss five, right?

So, I mean, now think about that. Like, so we're talking about from like end of 26 to end of 29 or something, three year ago, how many starship missions do you think SpaceX is going to launch from 2027 to 2030? Like 50? I mean, I mean, and this is a rocket bigger than the other? I mean, it's just, it, anyway. I don't know what to say other than like nothing you see about the Artemis program is set in stone.

They realize they have issues. They're trying to work them. And I think this goes back to something I know Anthony and I have talked about before. There's all this talk about it's a race between SLS and Starship. Who's going to launch first? Well, first of all, it doesn't really matter. Second of all, SpaceX won that race back in 2018 because it used to be the Falcon Heavy versus SLS. and now that obviously happened four years ago.

But the real question is who actually delivers on the capabilities of their system, right? Because if SLS is safe and can fly every year, okay, it's somewhat useful. But if Starship is safe and somewhat reusable and flies relatively frequently, if they can get to that, I mean, it's whoever can deliver on their promises and then reach a cadence. And what this shows is that the SLS cadence, of one mission every one or two years, every two or three years, is preposterous if Starship works. Now, if it doesn't work, then that's our space program.

But it's all going to come down to who can execute. Yeah. I mean, I think that the crazy thing is that the fact that they're even considering this cadence thing, like it, you know, because this has a negative feedback loop because you insert this extra mission where you fly, Like, you know, is it block one you fly again and you push the payloads off the next flight. And so like, yes.

Yeah, if you can just pop that back up one more time. So in that case, you fly again more frequently, but you actually push the payloads back, right? And so then it causes this exact same problem again. And it's like where it's they're stuck with this issue where they don't fly enough to to show progress if they fly the same vehicle over and over again. So they're trying to like, you know, they always want to have an iterative upgrade. Now it's Block 1B. Now it's got special rocket boosters. Now it's two payloads.

Now it's gateway. Like you're trying to always one up it. And that's because they want to show this progress. But that stretches the timeline out so far that instead they have to like flip it to this not stretched out version. But then they don't actually do anything different. And it's like, it's a nightmare of trying to like get out of that cycle. And I just, I don't know. I'm upset that they're even thinking about that and not just solving the root problems.

So I'm not going to ask Anthony and pop it back up there, but the reality is that, thank you, the reality is that Block 1B ain't going to be ready in fiscal year, 27. So the content schedule is kind of probably fictional to begin with as well, because Anthony and I think talked about, we talked about this, but all of the stuff that they want to launch on Block 1B, including Block 1B. would be probably isn't going to be ready until late 2020s anyway. Look what happened with the recent report on the mobile launcher. And theoretically, that should be the furthest along because they've been working on it for three years.

And it's a freaking ground-based launch tower. And they've already built one. So think about when they get to. Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, you know, but think about when they get to really complicated stuff in space. And so, I mean, you could push for the content schedule, but your content probably won't be ready. So I think it's a recognition that they probably need to find something to do before block 1B is ready. Because that's another, look how long the SLS has taken. It's been 11, 12 years.

And I don't know when they actually started on EUS. It's been several years now and they're getting $600 million a year in the federal budget for it. But it's a brand new rocket. It uses the RL10 engine, but the SLS used the space shuttle main engine. So, I mean, it's going to take a lot of work. And so it's going to be a long time before that's ready. And obviously, we know with the launch tower. And then you've got those gateway elements are coming from Europe.

And are they going to be on time? I mean, I don't know. Yeah. The one thing I'm wondering about is a criticism that has been levied against Artemis overall for a couple of years now is that there is actually no Artemis program or program office. These are all separate parallel tracks that are running. They're organized at a higher level. then it would be for a typical program, right?

Jim Free is essentially in charge of the Artemis program, though it is just a program and name only, I guess. Do you think that is actually anything that would solve the issue? Because sometimes people point to that as like, that's the issue. There's no unified planning. But it's completely unclear to me how much of an effect that would have, if at all. Yeah, and that's a great question, because you do hear that criticism from a lot of different people, a lot of sources,

advisory committees, individuals. People that like offices. Yeah, and I think, yeah, and I don't know if, and I'm skeptical like you, whether that's going to solve it. I'll be honest. I think Jim Free, who has been in the job for less than a year, has a pretty good sense of the problems. I mean, I just say, I talked to him at length about this stuff this week, and he sort of had a pretty good understanding of the issues and wanted to try to fix them and was working to do that. And so I'm not sure of bringing someone else in there to re-identify those issues 12 months from now and fix them. is the solution. I think he could probably do that. And then when you actually get to a single

manifest, I think one of his main goals is to get down to like an actual valid manifest that everyone can work to. Then it makes sense to have some kind of program office to coordinate all that. But Jesus, NASA already has so many layers of bureaucracy. I'm not sure adding another one solves the problem. But I don't know. This is not, matrix management, all that stuff is certainly far outside my experience. So I had this same conversation. I was talking with someone from the lunar exploration analysis group on the science side, right? The moon people.

And, you know, just asking here, like, how do you coordinate with like this whole human spaceflight program, which is like, you know, dominating the moon conversation and all this Artemis stuff? And then there's like these like weird like connections between them. You know, you've got like clips, for example, which is like kind of got like funding from technology. and it's pushing Artemis, so there's a human tie-in, but it lives in planetary science, but Lori Glaze doesn't have any control over it. And it's like all this weird, tangled mess of like science stuff. And that's the same thing I asked.

I was like, it makes you think you want to just make a program office, but like, man, just like you said, just layering more people in there, is that really what NASA needs to solve this? And I don't know if that's the right answer. So I wanted to ask, like, do you see? see this is this is kind of how I see the only like possible like good path out of this is to like finally admit that SLS 1B and the EUS are like not coming anytime soon and to start breaking up the manifest into small parts and fly the block one more like just like make more of those and fly them more often so that you don't have to be tied to this I just don't know if like NASA would be

up for that there if they think that would be like an embarrassing defeat if they just can only fly the first version of this, right? Yeah, I don't know how NASA really feels about that, but I do agree that if SLS flies in a couple of months and it works, then you would think that they would want to double down on that configuration of the rocket and get some good use out of it and try to build up cadence. The problem is Congress, like, is writing into the funding bill, appropriations bills every year, you must spend a minimum of $600 million on EUS. And they're funding the mobile launch tower.

Now they're going to have this report from the NASIG that's telling them that it's under over budget and going to be years late. It's just Congress. And by Congress, I mean a few key legislators from Alabama and other states like that that are on appropriations committees are looking at U.S. is like the next generation of SLS to keep the funding going to Marshall Space Flight Center and Boeing in particular is lobbying for that because every every SLS that flies with the US. I mean, it's pretty good for them because they've got the core stage contract and the stage contract. And so they're going to, you know, they're lobbying super hard to get that whole vehicle because right now if they fly block one, the upper stage is less expensive, far less

expensive, I would say. And although I don't know how much the ICPS is, and they split that money with Locky. Right. That's just how it works, you know? Yeah. I mean, I guess like if I want to put my synchat on, like, can we just like, sure, I'll keep paying for it. Like what? I won't. But, you know, like let's, let's keep paying for the EU. Sure. You take your 600 million, keep working on that big tower thing. But let's just, let's fly block one as well while we're doing that. And then, you know, NASA can can do stuff while. And then if it's ever ready, awesome. And if it's not, then you got the funding money that you wanted. That's what you wanted it for anyway.

So I kind of like makes everybody happy. But does that balloon the budget too much where you got to develop one rocket and fly another one at the same time? I don't know. Maybe that's the problem. I mean, we're seeing that, right? They're spending, I mean, it looks like they're going to spend almost a billion dollars a year just for EUS slash mobile launcher development. Right. And so, I mean, that's a billion bucks is a billion bucks.

It's a lot of money for an upper stage and a steel structure. Yeah. I mean, it's really ridiculous. I mean, actually, what's the expression? A billion here, a billion there. It's going to real money sooner later. Yeah. You know, I mean, it's funny to watch SpaceX move pieces of its launch tower

across Kennedy Space Center, like once a week or something and stack that tower on about two months. And, you know, three months after getting half a billion dollars, Bactel hasn't started building ML2 yet. I mean, it's, it's funny, but it's also pretty obscene to think about. about the dichotomy there. Well, maybe that's the reason that you think Bill Nelson's doing a good job is that he publicly is shaming Bechtel. Let's get into this Bill Nelson debate.

I was saying this to Jake beforehand. I feel like I'm not on Eric's side that Bill Nelson is being a good NASA administrator, but I'm not 100% convinced. So I'm willing to be a very open-minded moderator as you two hash it out here. So to start, Eric, we're going to give you the floor to explain. I don't know, Jake and I were under the impression that you wrote a story about being wrong about Bill Nelson, but neither of us could find it. So I think we Bernstein bears ourselves into thinking that was a thing that we read on. Just a tweet. Just a tweet.

ARS Technica, as NASA likes to say. So can you give us your breakdown on behind the scenes of this here tweet from May? Right. So let me set this stage. First of all, Bill Nelson was a congressman from Florida and a senator from Florida. and he was a very typical space politician. His main goal as a politician was to bring home the bacon for the state of Florida. And that's fine.

I mean, that's what his voters were sending him there to do. But he talked all along about how he cared about the big picture for the space agency and so forth. And it's not really how it works. And by the way, it was absolutely Nelson and Kay Bailey Hutchinson from Texas who created the SLS rocket in 2010 as President Obama was trying to cancel, cancel or was canceling constellation. This was, this came out of the ashes. This was their brain child. And Senator Shelby from Alabama came along later. And so he is absolutely responsible for the last decade of expenditures on SLS development, ground systems, which, I mean, the ground systems

budget has been half a billion dollars a year to Florida for like the last decade. I mean, it's just an incredible amount of money to keep people employed there. You know, and early on he was not doing, he was opposing commercial space. If you want to, if you want a good primer on this, you know, go read Laura Garver's new book. It's great. Escaping gravity. And she has a lot of critical things to say about Bill Nelson. Yeah, two weeks ago, we talked it there about that.

Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, it is a brutal opening to that book. It's amazing. Yeah, yeah. She's not pulling any punches. So my expectations for him as NASA administrator was, okay, this is not a politician bringing a fresh viewpoint on things. Because I had talked to Bridenstein before his nomination and read his stuff and talked to people in the community. And this was a guy who was really passionate about this stuff. And I'm not saying Nelson's not passionate about space, but he had 30 years of policy. And you talked to astronauts.

in the program and talk about how he kind of strong-armed himself onto that space shuttle mission. And it just, this seemed like a not good thing to bring back sort of the old space mentality to NASA. So my expectations for him coming in were low. You know, I wrote some fairly critical pieces saying that this is the guy who said politicians shouldn't run NASA, you know, fought really hard against Bridenstein. and had once said that if we can't deliver the SLS rocket in five years on budget, we had to shut NASA down. And so it's been more than 10 years and it's twice the price.

And, you know, should NASA still be running, Bill? So when he went up until after he gets back from his European trip. And then he was willing to shut it down at that point. Right. And it looks like he got COVID in Europe. He did come back with the German strain of COVID. But, you know. Yeah.

So, and then certainly we would. him well. I mean, he's never been nothing but nice to me when we talk. I mean, he's a very, seem like a very good human being. I don't want to be critical in that since I'll certainly wish him well. So my expectations were low when he became administrator. It's been about a year. I think that was the context that tweeted he'd been in office a year. And I just put that up there because, you know, I was wrong. I really worried my commercial space sources his work very concerned about his attitude toward commercial space because he had fought against initially commercial cargo and was pretty hostile to SpaceX.

He has a pretty vivid anecdote in a book about that. But he's not. He's been, you know, under his quote leadership, he has empowered Pam Melroy and Bobby Alal and Kathy Loiters to sort of making these really important decisions to continue to push commercial space and I've been meaning to write a long article on this for ours, but NASA's really embracing the commercial space and trying to figure out its future in an era where it's not doing Apollo like acquisitions anymore, where it's designing, developing the hardware and then just turning the blueprints over to industry. It's like really trying to empower industry

and leaning into the future. And that's happening on his watch and he has not tried to stop that. And the other thing that's been really impressive to me is this shit show. with Russia, right? Since even before, before the invasion of Ukraine, you know, Rogazen was out there spouting about how a NASA astronaut had put a hole in the Soyuz and just some really ugly things that he was basically speaking on background to Russian publication. They were printing these thoughts from a Russian something or other, which was Rogism. And just sort of blaming the astronaut, her menstrual cycle, and that she went crazy and cut a hole in this. It's just complete nonsense. And Nelson played that pretty cool. And then since the war in Ukraine, you know,

it's been, they have kept the space station flying. And we can certainly have a debate. And I know where Anthony comes down on this. We can have a debate about whether we ought to still be partnering with Russia in space. But Nelson has taken his marching orders as maintaining that partnership. And it's continuing to work, right? The station's still. flying. It looks like Anna Kakinah is going to fly on a Russian spaceship and Frank Rubio. I'm sorry, she's going to fly on a SpaceX Dragon and Frank Rubio is going to fly in a Soyuz in September. We'll see, we'll see that's the word is still that that's going ahead. And, you know, he, the other thing that he's done, sorry, is, and the reason I think he was put in this

position was Biden or the Biden administration felt that as a former senator, he could go to the Senate and get NASA's priorities funded. And if you look at the House bill that just came out, the House priorities or the House funding package for fiscal year 2023, I mean, it's pretty damn close to what NASA asked for. They got full funding for HLS. They got full funding for a lot of things.

Not everything, but you never do. And it's just, it's a really big difference from how things have worked in the past. And so I think he's delivered, he's delivered on that too. he's been able to go to Congress and get funding for NASA's priority. So, I mean, I give him, I give a lot of credit for all that. He's certainly, my expectations were low, but he's exceeded, far exceeded them.

Hmm. Hmm. I hadn't made the connection with the budget. That's a good call. This would be his first, like, the first full budget cycle he's taken through, right? Because he would have been too late for the last one to really get off the ground. I think he was involved. I think he was involved.

But, yes, this is the one he, the first full cycle he's had working with the White House and then taking that budget. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Mm-hmm. Interesting. I still have to see what the Senate does. Good old, good old Senate. But he's, I mean, he's a former senator. So I've got to believe that.

There's also another former senator in the administration that doesn't seem to be doing so well about going to Congress and getting things happening. So I wouldn't give that all the credit in the world, to be honest. There's like a couple others bouncing around the administration that are a little keeping it more at arm's length. So. I don't know. I do. The budget part is definitely, it's definitely a thing that I will agree with Eric on. Although your comments about Russia make me realize that my thoughts on Bill Nelson are much akin to the country of Russia and its space progress is that whatever was working when Russia became Russia is what they kept doing.

And they didn't really have any new achievements that the Soviet Union did not have. And I feel like the things that have continued under Bill Nelson, I am struggling to see what sand in the gears could be thrown at that moment. to upended enough to fight off the momentum of things that were already underway when he came into office. And that's my main hold up here is that like, you know, going to Congress and saying, or let me use a very specific example. You mentioned Kathy Leaders, being the name on that source selection document to pick SpaceX as the sole award in the human lunar landing system, that was like a done deal by the time he got into office. So could he have slow rolled the contract?

presumably, but what he did was just go back to Congress and say, yeah, that one's already done. So if you want to get another one on board here, like pay up, which is, I don't know if you're in charge of NASA, what else you would do in that scenario? And so unless he was openly antagonistic to NASA's human lunar landing ambitions, I don't know how you would have put sand in that gear in particular. Publicly, you could have said that wasn't me, you know, and that reflects the priorities of the previous administrator. The last guy that was a kook and then go right back into politics.

And he might have, you know, he might have said like behind closed doors, don't fund it. And, you know, we'll be okay with that. But he didn't. I mean, he publicly supported that contract. And did he like it? I don't know if he liked it or not. But he's not tried to mess it up. I mean, I mean, you guys need to understand that a year, a year and a half or a year

14 months ago, SpaceX gave a sole source contract to SpaceX to put Starship on the critical path for the moon program. So they're spending $3 billion on a rocket that when it works is going to complete is going to make SLS obsolete, which has been the darling of Congress for more than a decade. And I just, 14 months later, that still blows me away because I would not have predicted that NASA was going to give Starship contracts and certainly not for a lunar lander and certainly not make it so that that has to work for you to be using the SLS. I mean, there will be a few launches of the SLS where Starship is not part of the overall mission, but most of them that will be. I mean, it's crazy. Don't you think that's crazy? I mean, that's such a huge change. And it's actually

happening. They've got funded and they're going to get funded again. So Congress is spending, you know, billion dollars a year to make its SLS rocket obsolete. That's a big deal. That's one way to look at it. Yeah. I guess the argument would be like, but like, yeah. So he didn't, that wasn't on his wife, right? That is that is, that was the only thing they could afford.

And it was because the other companies came in super high. And NASA had the guts to say, look, we're not stupid. I mean, we realize that if Starship works, that really helps our our overall exploration architecture. Like, I understand the decisions from NASA's perspective, but Congress was always going to be the hard sell. And they were not happy about picking one, but, you know, here we are 14 months later, and it's funded.

Here's why I don't want to give Bill Nelson credit for it, though. This is why I'm resistant, because we have two politicians in the last two administrators slots. So we have Bill Nelson and Jim Brynstein. Politicians are really good at, good politicians are really good at reading the momentum of industry, the public, whatever the domain is

that they're overseeing at that given moment. They're really good at reading that momentum and attaching their name to it whether they need to be or not. See also Bill Nelson's confirmation hearing in which he and Key Bailey Hutchinson were giving each other rounding applause

for being there when commercial crew was developed and championing the commercial crew industry and things that we know by reading space history, they were completely antagonistic to at the time, but now the momentum is so clear, is so clear that they attached to it when the moment strikes. And the last administration, that was not clear that the places that decisions were being made at that time with Starship, like you're talking about the lunar landing system, it was not clear that there would be acceptance of that from

Congress and the rest of the establishment in the space industry there. But that, you know, I don't know who officially gave whatever green lights were needed that Kathy leaders signed that document that said we are selecting Starship on this. But that was going against more of a grain than anything Bill Nelson has done thus far. And so I attribute it much more to what we saw in the confirmation hearing of like hopping on board the right bandwagon at the right time and, you know, just being a Cowboys fan because he grew up in the right error. Okay, but a year and a half later for however long it's been 12 months, 14 months, he hasn't turned the ship. They're still continuing on that path. And you could have seen evidence of that

in this, you know, in the new budget. And, you know, they are trying to bring a second starship a second, excuse me, second human system into the budget. A real kicker. That's another starship. But like it's not like it's not, it's going to be on an even playing field with SpaceX. And so, I mean, and they're doing it because Congress said, we'll fund it. And NASA's like, well, we'd love to have competition. So I just, the only thing he's done that I've looked at recently that's given me pause was when he put Kay Bailey on the NASA Advisory Council. And I'm like, well, why?

That doesn't really, I mean, she doesn't have any special real space experience. I mean, I guess she could offer some policy advice. But that was a little, you know, a little strange to me. Well, Jake has a totally different line of criticism, which is why I have not opened the floor up to Jake yet. Because his, Jake's reasoning for not liking Bill Nelson is almost entirely separate, which is very interesting to me. Well, actually, I have two big ones, really. So, well, I have a big one and we'll call it a maybe a medium one.

And the medium one is more, you might say this is a style issue. And so, I don't know, leadership style can be up for interpretation. Everyone likes different kinds. But the thing that stands out to me throughout, like, the Nelson administration so far is that he doesn't seem to, like, be around for anything. So like we watched the Starliner launch the other, not too long ago, the second Starliner flight did not appear on the stream, wasn't participating in that at all. For the web launch, which is like one of the hugest, hugest NASA science launches in decades, like just a massive, massive important event. And he called in from home, you know, and just like I couldn't imagine Jim Brinstein not being like on the ground in Kuru.

like crying at the sound of that thing, you know, like doing that kind of thing. So there's a style difference between the two that I'm like really having like struggle, struggle with that he doesn't seem to be like involved in anything. And this sort of, the second reason, it sort of relates to that. And it's like I don't really know what Nelson is like, what is his like his legacy supposed to be. What does he want for NASA? What does he want to accomplish at NASA? I haven't like detected a theme of like what he wants to make change for how he wants to make the agency better.

He just sort of seems to be like wherever the vehicle was driving and at the speed it was already driving. Keep it that way and don't ruffle any feathers. The Russian space program theory. Keep on. Yeah. And you know what? I'll dial in. Congrats on the launch.

Good work. All the NASA people. God bless. I know. I know. Yeah. So that's like where I struggle with Nelson. So I don't disagree with either that, but I don't see either those as a negative.

Like, Brian Stein was great, but he always wanted to be front and center and wanted to be on the camera. And I think to the, and that's great. I mean, he was a great spokesperson for the agency to, you know, did a good job of reaching out to different audiences and so forth. But, you know, he didn't need to be on all the calls. As much as we loved Jim, you know, like we're doing these wet dress calls. And like I could see Jim having been on a lot of these, like the media. There's no need for the, no need for the NASA administrator to be on there. Like they had the web call yesterday.

It was yesterday, yeah, the event in Baltimore, Maryland. And he didn't, he was not there. He was there telephonically because he had COVID. But like they had the news conference and none of the questions were for him. for Thomas Rookin, because he's the guy in charge of the science program. So him taking a backseat and sort of letting others have some of the limelight, I think is fine. I don't think it's really an indication of his interest.

And the fact that he's not making wild changes to NASA's programs, I mean, there's lots of structural problems about what's happening in NASA, but the big picture is they're on the right track. You know, their science missions are pretty ambitious. They're trying to do the Mars sample return. They're looking back to the outer planets. Excuse me. They've got the Artemis program or Deep Space Program that has finally looks like it's going to stick.

He's working well with international partners. He's maintaining the Artemis Corps. I mean, NASA was not fundamentally broken. And so he's trying to make – I think he's trying to make these programs work as best they can using the skills that he has. And so, you know, I don't think we needed someone to come in and, and throw plates of ketchup on the wall, right? We need someone to come in and sort of use his political skills to build a

consensus for where NASA was going. And he's done that, I think, in Congress and done that with international partners. I think it's, I don't know. Like I said, I think, I just think he's done fine for the job. So he's 79, right? And you asked the great question. And I've never been able to answer it. It was like, what does he see as his purpose, right?

Yeah. And I've never asked him this. I don't know the answer to this. I think the answer is he views it as like a capstone on his political career. Like it sort of brings together his experiences as a senator and as an astronaut, as a foreman. And he didn't like the way he went out in the Senate. and so this gets him back for one more rodeo,

and he can help out his friend Biden. And sort of, you know, I just think it's like, I think that's what it's all about. And he's kind of a caretaker. And he's taking care of things. So, you know, you know, it could be so much worse. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

That's a ringing endorsement of Bill Nelson. So I do. I definitely agree with you on the international stuff, but I think this is where he has done pretty well, especially with this whole trip to Europe. Like, like he's definitely done a lot to support the White House in what they're trying to do. Because like this is all way bigger than NASA, all this trip, right? This is this is like it's about NASA, but it's not really about NASA. It's about Russia and Ukraine. And it's shoring up support with all of our NATO partners and really, really helping the White House out.

And this is like this is team, this is team player stuff. It's like it's good soldier stuff, right? I assume it's also a trip in which Pam Melroy just gets increasingly annoyed that he gets to wear the blue jacket and with significantly less patches on his arm. Look how many patches. She can't put her arm on the table. There's so many patches. She's just looking at it. I'm like, listen, my patches go down to my wrist.

Bill, I had to wear a special watch because I can't fit it under all these patches and you've got one on there. Yeah. And I guess, so I guess this is interesting too because maybe this is related to the style thing is that I, Compared to Brian Stein, they seem to be like positioning themselves at different distances from the agency. Where as Nelson is like very much, NASA is part of the White House and I am a staff member of the White House. I support the president. The U.S. government has objectives and I fulfill them through NASA. Whereas Brian Stein was a lot more like facing inward.

Like I am a NASA administrator. So my vision and my attention goes to goes down into the NASA community. And he wasn't really like spending a lot of time. I'm toeing the Trump line while he was in office there, right? Did you want him to, Jake? No, I didn't. I'm really glad that it went that way. Okay.

But it's an interesting style of the... Brian Stein was like, I, Eric, you might know better because you talk to people and Jake and I just talk about people, but he was going to not be the Annasid administrator of Trump won again, or I guess was successful in the whole situation that happened in the late fall, but like Brian Stein was out regardless. Yeah, he was going to get... I was told by a couple sources. that he was not going to be the administrator in the second term.

And that the person who was, but I'm not going to name publicly, I don't think would have been a good administrator. I think it would have been a much more politicized agency. A little more regoseney. I mean, more like you're either with us or against us. And so they'd favor the, you know, the companies and contract. Wow. What a breaking news story this was.

W is coming back. Starbase would have been doing great if W.O. was the NASA administrator. Yeah, it would have been good. I mean, I think SpaceX would have done very well. There would have been beautiful paintings of Star Base if W.O. was the administrator.

We got some presidential trivia on this episode of Omnominal. Make sure that one's been doing their presidential reading of like weird habits. Yeah, yeah. A habitual plate thrower. There'd be a SpaceX baseball team. the SpaceX Park Rangers after they have to do their whole wildlife tour down there

Exactly, yeah, yeah Get a free birdwatching tour with every ticket Eric, you were making a point a second ago that Bradley in the chat here was making as well that Nelson is the first administrator in decades that didn't have to sell a big grand vision And that may be a lot of what we're getting on about here here. I think I agree with that. Like I think probably one of the great things that the Biden administration did early on, even before Nelson came on board, it says we're going to continue to stay the course. And so Nelson has done that, stayed the course. You know, he sort of tried to tell

what the vision of Artemis is. But I think NASA has a fundamental problem with Artemis that he is not addressed. I think Jim Free is trying to address. And that is sort of figuring out what is the purpose of Artemis. And Nelson has never spoken about this. And I've actually tried to get him on the record about why are we going to the moon? How long are we going to stay? And is it just a stepping stone to Mars? And all that. And he doesn't, I've never really gotten a good answer. Because you know, you'll hear things from time to time from people high up at NASA saying, well, we're going to the moon to learn how to go to Mars and we're not going to get stuck there. And then you talk to the Leag people, as Jake has done, and they hear that, and their hackless go up, and they're very upset about that for understandable reasons.

So what do you mean we get stuck on the moon? We want to go to the moon and have a, you know, a habitat and do really interesting things there. And so NASA has got to articulate why we're going to the moon, because I still have not seen anything from the Bridenstein administration or the Nelson administration beyond. We are going. Okay. We're going. Great. but why? Why are we spending $100 billion a year, $100 billion over the next decade or so on the Artemis program to do what? What's the accomplishment? And how are we really going to Mars? If so, why? And how are we going to get there? And it's just, why are we doing this? Because I heard Pam Melroy speak this week. And I think she's doing a great job. But, you know, she was talking about the reason we're going to Mars is to maximize our science.

And I'm sorry, robots can do almost everything humans can do and for far less money and it's much safer. And so on Mars and internally further out in the source. So if it's about the science, then let's just have a robotic program. So I really need someone there to articulate whenever we get this Artemis manifest to also say, and here's why we're doing it. Jake intensifies. Yeah. You're speaking my language, man. This is like,

and we've got none of that. We've got none of that from Nelson. So if you want to hit him for something like that, hit him on that because there's no, what they're doing generally we know, but why they're doing it and why the public should care about this is, I mean, I don't know.

I mean, this has been an issue in pre-Ardomis, right? Like just any time they've, they've talked about Journey to Mars, all that kind of stuff is always I mean, we've taken a huge step forward in that now there actually is a

realistic plan. Like there is hardware being built to a purpose and it is something is going to happen. Like it's so much better than the nebulous journey to Mars or constellation. It's like, this is happening. It's just going to be slower than we want.

And how we actually do it. Yeah, they got in the chat to beat the Chinese. You got to watch them. Bill Nelson says you've got to watch the Chinese. That's a direct question. He was like really on the Chinese for like the first three of them for my minute. I think Robert Bigelow was calling him every day being like, Bill, you've got to watch, man. I don't know.

Unemployed Bigelow was like, listen, man, I'm serious. My company is defunct, but you got to watch these. Yeah, he was definitely on the Chinese. But no, I mean, it's not to beat the Chinese. It's got to have a reason to do this. And I mean, I understand why we're doing it. But you got to articulate that to people. And he's never done that.

at all. What administrator has to face the gateway question? Is it this one? Is it the next one? Is it the one in 12 years? Is it never? Because the thing that back to the Artemis 3.5 discussion, you know, Gateway was invented in an era in which we needed to extend the international partnerships exactly as far as

they were able to go to sell a moon program. And since then, the international partnerships that we were worried about extending down to the lunar surface have completely fallen apart. completely, but essentially for future things, completely falling apart. Russia is not going to the surface with the U.S. We don't have to worry about that. They're not going to be contributing anything to the gateway. All of the partners that are contributing to the gateway have already said they want to go to the

surface and they want to build things on the surface too. So other than a thing to do in the 2020s, the gateway doesn't have a geopolitical, a geopolitical strategic purpose anymore. So are we just never going to talk about that? Or do you think there's an administrator that's going to talk about it? I mean, I just wrote an article that said that the gateway is pulling you back from the lunar surface for a decade. So some of us are out here talking about it. It's a great question.

And I asked Brynstein about the Lunar Gateway at least half a dozen times. And he was an ardent supporter of it. Think of it as a reusable command and control system. A usable command module. Command module. Useable command and service modules. Oh, yeah, that's funny. That's funny.

You're right. He was a big, big gateway guy. And I'm not sure why. Because it wasn't his program. He could have gotten rid of it. Or he could have tried, I guess. And I haven't heard. I did ask, so I did ask Jim Freib that question this week. Do we really need the gateway? And he gave me like four or five reasons. And I can't remember them all now because it's four in the afternoon here. And I've just had a beer. And I'm 49. But, you know, one of the things that stood out to me said it allows us to get anywhere to 98% of the moon surface. It allows us to access to 98% of the moon surface. Now, I'm not an aerospace engineer, duh. But I think if you have enough propulsive capability in a vehicle like Starship, you probably can't get most of the surface of the moon anyway, but I don't know. Yeah, you can get to 100% of it from the Earth, so that's not a great reasoning. Yeah, I mean, and he talked about.

You know, like the international partners were, you know, it was sort of a way to build consensus there. It's a good place to test out your life support systems and things like that in deep space for Mars. A lot of the reasons you've said, but I agree, I think there needs to be a reckoning on Gateway because we are devoting six or eight SLS launches to constructing it and crewing it. it and it's spending, I don't know how many billions of dollars to develop the modules. And there's a Delta V hit by flying your lunar mission sorties from NRAHO, then near rectalinear halo orbit where it's going to be located. It's pretty significant delta V hit. And, you know, why?

If the answer is because every contractor that NASA wants political support from has a piece of it, that's a shitty reason to have the lunar gateway. But I think the most compelling reason I've heard for gateway is that it's something we know NASA can do. Right? They've built the International Space Station through an international partnership, and it's an interim step to going to the moon where we know they're going to be successful. And I think that that has some appeal to policymakers and to NASA to sort of something that they can succeed at

and then sort of set their ambitions further by doing stuff on the surface of the moon or going to Mars. I mean, you can almost make the same argument for SLS, right? Is that in the absence of a world where starship exists, it's something that NASA can accomplish and it makes sense. all that kind of thing. And same with gateway. It's like, well, we can get to this orbit. We can build these things. We have the right expertise. But it just like the SLS, at some point, if, you know, if you've got this amazing space station in orbit around the moon and like, look how great gateway is. And there's 15 starships orbiting it as well. And they're all landing all the time and doing all the crazy stuff. It's just like, well, is this really actually. Let me know when you hit the button on your Uber

app from the gateway and all. When the crew of Polaris 7 is taking selfies on the moon with the gateway flying overhead. I mean, then, you know, it'll have jumped the shark. Again, I think one of the, one of the, the elephant in the room, as usual, is Starship. Like, we don't know if it's going to be successful. I think it probably will be. And if it is, it just, it really changes everything. But we don't know if it's going to be successful. And I don't think NASA can make firm plans about all this stuff until, and again, that comes back to why it would just so monumental to me that NASA put Starship on the critical path. There it is.

I guess that was a good spot to end because we were all just none. Yeah, yeah, that's good. Eric, have you finished your homework yet that I assigned you during the last MECO that we did? Which was, why the hell is Artemis 1 and 2 a three-year gap? I have not. I'm waiting for the Artemis 1 launch events where there will be access to talk to a bunch people about that stuff. And that is front of mind to sort of figure out why there's this huge gap between Artemis 1 and 2. All right. Eric, your new homework from Off Nominal is to figure out

who in the Orion program we should invite to drink around the world with us at Artemis 1's launch in Epcot. And by the time we get to Norway, we should have an answer. Okay. If we play our cards right. That's your new homework. You guys are going to be down there for that? as I was just explaining to Jake, I hope so, because at the moment, again, we're going to go back to my National Park review system. I currently am going to be in Yellowstone National Park in one part of the September launch window of SLS that I'm convinced that is when SLS will happen. But if it is literally any other time, then yes. Okay. So I would really prefer if it's the earlier one because I have wedding to be at Orlando and if I could just fly it down there once, it would be great.

Jake is going to pay out the butt for any flight to America at this moment in time, so he's screwed regardless. He's going to actually, he might be more, it might be smarter, Jake, if you buy a boat. Maybe, maybe, yeah. I don't think so. I think there's a, I think there's a Pegasus Barge that's available right now. Maybe you can draw out on that new Aryan space sailboat. It's not just not carting any stages around anytime soon, I don't think so. Oh, boy.

Eric, what else you got cooking these days? Anything else that you want to point people at? Rocket Report? You've been doing that a lot. Yeah, I just actually sent out one today that was like the first issue of edition 5.0. So it's like the beginning of the fifth year. So that's really going strong.

If people want to subscribe to that, that'd be great. Rocket Report Block 5. Rocker Report Block 5, although this one's flying into your inbox every week. It's got a weekly cadence. And I will have a story maybe Friday about I'm going to follow up. I'm going to write up the interview I did with Jim Free on sort of the struggles with the Artemis Manifest. And also I'm going to have a story about the potential launch date for Starliner's crew flight test. Oh.

Look at that. It's on the calendar at NASA. Good stuff. a lot of things around the calendar at NASA if you want me to just maybe I'm going to pull this up one more time they got all sorts of calendars over there Pop it up there

just pop that up over time I lost my tab for the last joke of the bit oh man I could have been so good I got it there we go okay looking forward to Artemis 9 in 2034

I can't wait got to get that the habitat My favorite thing about this, low-key, my favorite thing about this is Artemis 3.5. I'm pretty sure that there were more things listed under Artemis 3-5 when I heard about Artemis 3-5. But there's just S-L-L-I's Block 1 in Orion. Well, I had the internal documents, Anthony, and I didn't want to just copy and paste them to get my source. So I remade them.

And I really wasn't sure. That's what I like is that you took the editor's privilege of just saying, you know what, this literally, there's only two items needed for Artivis 3-5. I think Artemis 3. Three and a half is just, that may be like the, I think it's just another lunar landing. I think it's probably a repeat of Artemis 3. But I don't know. Who knows?

Artemis 3 and a half, we're going long, I guess, on this bit. But the name is only second in my most hated names other than Virgin Galactic, Spaceship 3, which is actually a spaceship 2. That's my, that's my least favorite thing. Well, we see Spaceship 3? And it's spaceship 3. No, mind. I'm not getting into it.

Will spaceship three ever fly? No, no. No. Well, spaceship two fly a lot. Probably not. It's been a long. By the way, the other thing I'm going to work on is an anniversary story of Virgin Galactic one year after Branson's flight.

They've really been knocking it out of the park. It's crushing. All right, we know what Eric's up to. Jake, what do you got going on? You got some new time opening up. Yeah, yeah. I've been making some changes to my workflow. So I've eliminated some stuff from my plate and I'm working hard on new things here.

But I'm really excited about an interview I put out this week with Scott Hubbard, who is basically the guy that invented the modern Mars program. So, you know, he came in after those terrible twin failures in 1999 when Mars Climate Orbiter and Mars Polar Lander both blew up in like within 12 weeks of each other or whatever it was. So he basically invented the Mars program as you know it today. And I wanted to talk to him because I was like, look like everything's changing about it because we're going to go into the sample return where we have,

instead of a brand new mission every 26 months, we've got four giant, super expensive missions that all have to culminate in one scientific return at the end, like 10 years from now. And like that's crazy for the Mars program. It's very hard for the Mars program to adapt to that. So I wanted to get his opinion on it. And it was a really cool conversation.

He actually made me feel better about it, believe it or not. So it was kind of interesting to see. Can I make you feel worse about it? If you look at the house budget, if you look at the house budget, they're trying to tack on two Mars helicopters to the... I saw that, yeah. And, you know, and like in the same paragraph, they're complaining about costs, but, but we'd

like you to add two helicopters to... Yeah. I mean, it's just... I'll see makers of the whole thing. That one's really funny, too, because I'm like, I've been racking my brain looking at the architecture, being like, where the heck is a helicopter going to help with this? Because they're already going to know where the cashes are. It's not a scouting issue.

you like you just need to land there. So unless these things can carry them and then you like ditch the European because it would carry them. Yeah. Like what a big middle finger to Airbus and the European Space Agency about the fetch rover though, you know? So I just don't know how that could actually, I'm not I'm not

losing sleep over that one yet. I don't know if you followed the seismometer on insight, but that was kind of an issue. Yes, it was. I'll tell you what. There was a congressman I spoke to who said we're never putting a French instrument on a NASA science mission again. unless it's Tomopesque

then you've got to put them on there well he's not an instrument but yeah to not to all of us it depends on what it depends what you assign him I don't know anyway

uh Jake you're coming on main engine cutoff tomorrow yeah we're going to talk about ride share missions that are trying to go to planetary destinations and just getting continually screwed over yeah it's not working out great not a good situation at all

psyche Got totally side, side, I don't know, I'm like, yeah, we have a whole thing to talk about about like it's going to get canceled and it's a, it's a done spacecraft, but how, how strict do the parents want to be with the allowance of a discovery mission? Yeah, yeah, there's some interesting stuff going on. I can say the parents are very upset. I would say that. Yes, they are. Yeah. So we're going to have a bad news planetary episode, I guess, is what we're going to do.

Yeah. So look forward to that. Come on Rocket Lab just launched its first deep space mission. You guys, it's a happy use story. On a dedicated rocket, Eric. On a dedicated rocket. This is what we're talking about here. Seems to be a way that it works and there's a way that it doesn't.

While all the Simplex missions are watching from the ground, like that. Have a nice flight. See you later. All right, Eric. Thank you so much for hanging out with us. As always, this was good. I feel better about Bill Nelson.

So I appreciate this. Good. I do too. Yeah, yeah, good credit to you. I feel a little bit better. Yeah. Much better. I'm still mad, but I feel better.

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 2, 1,000, end of death.