Off-Nominal - 74 - All the Garys We Know

Episode Date: August 26, 2022

With just a single weekend remaining between us and Artemis 1, Jake and Anthony pregame the launch, mission, and meetups, and talk about the Artemis program overall.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 74 - All the Garys We Know - YouTubeArtemis 1 Launch Events - Off-NominalSteve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address - YouTubeThe SLS rocket is the worst thing to happen to NASA—but maybe also the best? | Ars TechnicaWe got a leaked look at NASA’s future Moon missions—and likely delays | Ars TechnicaFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Hello there, Mr. Jake. Hello, hello. Hello from the new studio. I was going to say, am I talking to you via space at the moment? You are. This is coming to you live over the internet, over space. Over space.

Thank you, Elon Musk. Thank you for your kind gift. Not good enough for the FCC or whoever was the... No, no, it's not, no. Thankfully, the rural broadband initiative does not apply to Yucatan. So I was out to lunch either way. But I got like awesome news this morning. So I opened up my email this morning and Starlink sent me an email and they're like, hey, we're reducing your price to reflect the local market better. And it went from 2,300 pesos, which is about

call it 115 US to 1,100 pesos. That's like $55. So it dropped more than half today. That is great news. How am I just hearing about this? I don't know. It's awesome. So it went from being the most expensive internet I've ever bought to the cheapest. Is it have anything to do with upload speeds? I'm guessing that they are not getting the sales in Mexico coming in as fast as they want because the whole country was like wide open available.

You wanted a dish? It was their next day. There was no hold, no wait time, nothing. And I know in the States they don't have that, right? So. But yeah, I mean, there's a. a new ground station here in Merida. So it's pretty good.

Like, the speeds I've been getting are generally better than what I see people post statesider in Canada. And we're going to test it out today. So we're live streaming on it right now. Let's see if it's good enough. Yeah. So this turns into a solo episode. I don't know what I'm going to do, but I didn't prepare any satellite outage content.

You're going to have to figure that out. Yeah, yeah. It's funny. Like, it works pretty good, except I was just saying right before we started, when it rains, you know. So I look at the weather. There's, there's, there's some rain coming in this evening, like four or five o'clock. So we'll see, uh, we'll see if we have any problems. How that works out. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Well, here we are. Yeah. That's it. So on the eve of the most exciting thing in a decade, we've, uh, are talking about your

internet connection. That's right. Yeah. Yeah. So yeah, we're flying out. Both of us. Wait, we didn't even talk about what we're drinking here. You're just totally ruined in the format. I haven't been here for like two weeks. You haven't been here, but I'm a guest. You're all off. You're all out of sorts. I'm all off. It's a new studio. Everything's different. The mic's coming at me from a different angle. Like I'm just, I'm like the walls are green. But I do have some of my old stuff. Did you see that? Let me let me take you full. Yeah. Oh, look. It's looking at actually looks shockingly like the room you used to be in in Vancouver. A little bit. The couch, the two things there. I guess you know. I guess you know. I didn't have a couch before. Well, you had that, the bed couch thing. You can't quite see this, but this thing right here. Yeah. That's my Apollo 11 landing news article from the Calgary Herald.

So I'm happy to have that up. That's great. Well, what are you drinking today? You make something fancy? Well, I did. I made something fancy. Getting back to the cocktails and I made something appropriate. So I got here, tequila sunrise, baby.

Oh, yeah. Right? So I got some orange in there, orange juice, orange. garnish here because Florida and also Orondrocate good and yeah it's a sunrise which is where we're going to be on the beach watching this thing go up hopefully in a few days so we're going to be there for sunrise regardless yeah well I got the other the other end I'm filling out the topical drinks here I was trying to find a drink called better late than never but I couldn't find one of those in my local beer shop I was really hoping I went through all of the

fridges this morning to try to find better late than never. But I did find one called American Experience, which I feel like is a pretty good. Number one, it's the National Park Signage that is this, see what I'm talking about there? Like, that's the National Park sign. I love that. It is not Joshua Tree on the label, which is also excellent. And I, and it's, this is from Dewey Beach, I think, in Delaware. And a portion of the proceeds go to Asateague Island and Cape Henlope in State Park. So that's that. That's cool. Asateague, very close to Cinco Teague, which is where rockets also launch out of.

These are tough words to say. And we are about to have an American experience. Getting drunk on the beach in Florida. Yeah, at sunrise for a rocket launch. Like there's, you know, there's few other things that are more American than that. For a project way late over budget and of marginal utility. How much more American can you? get. I don't know if you can. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. We got Pat in the chat talking about. He's a, he's a big

fan of the Teegs down there. So is he? Okay. I know. I'm excited. I'm really stoked. I'm flying out on Saturday. That's like two days from now. This is just happening now? Like seven years of waiting and Now it's just like it's now. This is the thing, man. When did we have Eric Burger on off nominal? Like two months ago? That sounds about right, yeah. It was in June, right?

Yeah, so, I mean, like that was the date then that we knew. This was the date then. So SLS was just slippy, slippy, slippy, and then it just stuck. Stuck on the calendar. Now, I think you can cynically say, you know, did date? short some tests. Should they have done a little bit more of the testing? Should they have gotten through another wet dress rehearsed, right? Like there was stuff you can complain about. But once it was on the books for a date, it's just sticking. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I really wonder if like,

I wonder what the risk is of, you know, those last, because the dress rehearsal, what was it, 29 seconds left or something like that, 20 seconds. They missed 20 seconds of what they were hoping to get to. Whatever they were going to go through. So I wonder how much in, there is risky. Like they made it sound like that, well, obviously they are happy with it, but they made it sound like it wasn't that big a deal. So I'm really curious to know like what are in those 20 seconds. Yeah.

I mean, it's funny you say that because I'm thinking back to all the rocket launches that you remember the sticky valves for the ones that you were at and didn't launch more than the ones that happened on webcast. So I'm just going to select in my mind the rocket launches I've been at, which is tens of data. And I feel like the valve scrubs were always. during fueling or right before launch. It's never like, you know, that you always get to the point where if it's counting down,

you're getting the point where it's like 60 seconds, you know, like, oh my God, is this rocket going to launch? It's never like 45 seconds ago and scrub. It's like 30 minutes to go or 30 milliseconds. Nobody scrubs at 90 seconds. Yeah, yeah, right. So, yeah, maybe there's not a lot left in that situation. I mean, the biggest thing if we're talking about, like, is this going to go before we get

into actually interesting content. The biggest concern is whether or not they fix that hydrogen leak because they can't test that until I mean they made it sound like they'll be able to test it two hours before lift off something in that range. So they'll test it that morning.

But if they didn't fix that, that's like, I guess we got to roll this sucker back and try to get out of the next attempt. Yeah, yeah. And they basically admitted that they wouldn't be able to test that until they right when out there's nothing they can do in the VAB

there's nothing they can do in the pad now yeah okay well I mean that's that's how it goes right so I booked the whole week so I'm ready I'm ready to wait for the second and third attempt you know I'm ready to do that I'm ready to have the Florida experience the American experience yeah the American experience yeah

well yeah do you want to talk about some of our plans is that kind of where we should start what do you think I mean we've been advertising this to Let's talk about plans. I do want to just revel in the, the, you had a good Twitter thread that was much the way that I've been thinking about this of like, now that it's this close, I am just fully embracing the chaos in my head of like being so excited and being so disappointed and being hopeful about the program and not hopeful. And I would like to dive into that, but let's save that for the back half. Let's do the logistics up front. You're flying tomorrow.

I'm flying in Sunday. We're going out in Port Canaveral Sunday night. this is where we're starting. So Sunday night to meet up, you know, and we're trying to keep it in that port canal area. So if you know the area, maybe you can bring up a map. I don't know if you can bring up the area there. But there's like, you know, the pier kind of comes in across from east-west, right, which is where all the ships come in. Yeah, perfect.

Look at that. So generally in that area is where we're trying to have it. We've been trying to call like some of the restaurants, but they're like, no, we don't take reservations. the best I can do is like a call ahead where an hour before ready to come, I give them a ring. And I'm like, we got 20 people. Where can you, are you going to bust at the seams if we show up? Are you going to be mad if we're standing near the bar? Because that's what we're going to do.

I don't know. So at this point, I'm just kind of like, we're just going to go to one and see how it goes. And then there's a stretch, you know, of different places all in the same area. We might just migrate a block over or something and see how that goes. And we know there's some other events. I mean, in these situations, just to use several our expertise from having been to these things before. There's going to be some shenanigans going on in this general area at Sunday night. It's going to be, you're going to randomly be running into people that are a lot of fun to

hang out with. You're going to meet people you know, people you never have met before. You're all going to be best friends. It's going to be a great time. Yeah. But per what Jake is talking about, if you are coming to this region, please sign up on this newsletter that Jake has offnom.com slash events because if stuff changes, we're going to just send out emails to this. And you'll be able to follow us around wherever we're going. Or just like DM us on Twitter, hit us up if you're like, where is everyone? I mean, this happened admittedly when we did our meetup in Philly. I was getting like Twitter DMs from people like, I don't know where to go or I'm in line

for this thing. So I know that happens anyway. So just do that. You'll find us in, this is not a very big area of that we're in here. Yeah. So, yeah. This is going to be great time. And I've got like a little email template done up already so that once we like

settle the place, I can just hit the button. and boom, you'll get an email being like, this is where we are. Come on down. And hopefully it should be good. But yeah, it's going to be fun. So Sunday night, that is, we're trying to start at like 6 o'clock. I know there's some competing meetups. I think Planetary Society and NASA Space Flight, everyone's having a meetup that night.

So you go already want to go, but we love you want to hang out. Just like this is going to, it's going to be an old matter. It's going to be fun. It's close. I can't wait. I can't wait to see you again. I can't wait to see all the anomalies. It's going to be good.

I mean, so was it IACU's the last time we've seen each other? I think it was, right? Yeah. So pandemic was right after that. Yeah, it's almost three years. And, yeah, we're going to meet some, some of our anomalies that we've met before are coming down. So I'm excited to see them again.

We're going to meet some brand new ones that we've been talking to in the Discord for a long time, but we've never, you know, been able to shake hands with. So that's pretty fun. I'm excited. I just can't wait. To make these trips to success, right? Because I'm slurring already like I'm hammered off this American experience. I'm just excited.

I'll take you about our drink. Jake is a one of those 40-somethings that is sexy and has fun per Twitter this week. That's a thing that's going on Twitter. And I am one of those that is not sexy and does not have fun because I have kids. But what that actually shakes out to for Rocket fans is that Jake can be in Florida for the whole week. And I am much like everyone else who has to be very targeted at these like SEAL Team 6 fly in and out, you know, based on when the rocket's going on. But the way to be not disappointed in that is to plan these other events such that if there was no rocket at all, you would still be like, what a great trip. I went to Port Canaveral.

You hung out. We went to the beach the next day. Exactly. So, like, that is honestly the thing that I'm looking forward to the most. Because when I think about the Falcon Heavy trip, we did much the same thing where it was a short trip. And we went out the night before. And we ran into, I think Tim Dodd was in that bar and Chris G was in that bar. And it was like, oh, look at this.

We're seeing all these people. So these are the things that we are going down for. So the beach next morning. Logistics on the beach the next morning if you're like us and not credentialed media. Yeah, yeah. We were not until the credentialed media is jammed. This Kennedy Space Center is just like pop it at the seams. And so they took a big list of all the media applications and they sorted by media type and

podcasters were at the bottom and they just went and cut us out. It's weird. We don't even use chairs when we go in there. So it's really not a big. concern for it just needs standing space so um but anyway so we're going to go to uh the beach uh in port canaveral cape canaveral i guess i think i think jettie park pier is technically in port cannavro but yes that whole little beach on the on the side there is where we're going to go um looking at i'm pointing at my screen but nobody can see it but me yeah so this this kind of area here now it's going to be

a little bit chaotic right so uh the thing about this is the launch is at 830 um in the morning and the sunrise is at like roughly seven we want to kind of go for that the park opens at five and they're going to close it as soon as it's full but that's like you mean the pier right the jetty park i don't know how far down that goes is that just the pier or is just this part yeah and i think that's that's that's that and all of this parking stuff that's over here all right so yeah so we're going to go early either way because i want to get a good spot because the more north we are on the beach the closer we are to the rocket so that's kind of ideal, right? So we're going to try and get up there.

I have express intentions to be swimming while this rocket launches. Just to make it clear to everyone out there. I think Jake's, I don't know. You're talking about this pier a lot, but I'm like, no, man, the ocean's right there. No, I'm not going to the pier. You have to like buy tickets to the pier. And then it's like, oh, we're talking beach. We're talking on the beach. So where your cursor is in that area

there, yeah. So we're going to head out there and we're going to bring a cooler with some drinks and some food and some flags. Yeah, yeah. We, that's how you're going to find us. We got some props that we had ordered in. So Anthony's going to show you there. This is amazing.

Oh, upside down, upside down. Oh, it's upside down. So look for this. Look for this on the beach. And we will, we will be able to be found that way. We should have this pretty visible. Like we just won the Olympics. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah, yeah. So that's such a stupid look. I love it. Yeah, so we got two of these bad boys. So we're going to hang these up somewhere. Yeah, so you'll see us. And again, we'll blast out an email once we have like GPS coordinates, I guess. I guess that's how we're going to do it.

There's no place to show it there. But yeah. And then, yeah, we're going to watch the rocket. And then once it's done, assuming it goes, you know, it goes swimming, we'll have more drinks. It'll be just kind of a little beach party until we get time. tired. Yeah, wait for the traffic to go. Yeah, and that's, that's the only advice I will give is that traffic is going to be VVV bad, like just the worst traffic you've ever seen. So if you are coming

and you're driving, make a plan, find somewhere to park and walk in if you can and don't, don't be in a rush to get out because it's going to be, it's going to be a nightmare. Yeah. So, yeah. The fun thing is this map that our friend tweeted out before this, uh, of the decibel levels expected for the launch. This is cool because I haven't seen this before for other launches and stuff to see the fall off and whatnot. It's, um, decibels are weird. We'll start there.

But it is less of a drop off than I would expect for a lot of these places. Yeah, because it's like 125 at KSC. Yeah. And we're probably in like the 100 zone. 100 to 105. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Because we're just off that map to the bottom there, I think, right? Right. Yeah. And 100 decibels is not nothing. That's like standing next to a car horn. Yeah, it's loud. I'm very curious to hear what this thing sounds like. Yeah, yeah.

It's going to be, you should be pumped for how rumbly this sucker is. All my chest is. That's what I'm going for. And like my only experience, so I have two rocket launches to my name. So Falcon Heavy was my first one, which is like a pretty big rocket. Yeah. But not as big as SLS. And then I saw a,

Atlas 401, which is like on the smaller scale in terms of you know, because there's saw it. No, no solids on that one, right? So it's, yeah, it's a little quieter. Basically like seeing I'm sorry. Yeah, pretty much the same.

Yeah. So I'm excited for this. This is going to be as big as it really. But those solids aren't even like this, these solids. No, no, no. They're not the same. Like even from 30 miles. away, the solids from shuttle, you could hear them ripping the sky apart. Like, there's a, there's a

noise where your human ears clipping, and you can, you hear that noise. Like, there's some really good YouTube videos of, I think there's one of STS-125, that is the closest I've heard to what it sounds like when you're that close to the shuttle. Oh, yeah. It's a really good one. So, and yeah, Kurt's got a good point in the chat that weather makes a big difference. If the wind's blowing a certain direction, you're getting blasted with sound or you're not getting any sound. Or if the clouds are trapping the sound down below.

Actually, that's one that, STS-134, the cloud layer, I was getting pumped for 30 minutes before launch. The clouds were completely cleared out. Five minutes before launched, this low layer of clouds rolled all the way across the gape. And I was like, ah, that's a bummer. I'm not going to see this thing all the way.

But I was like, I've seen a bunch. I really want to, like, here. And I was the closest I was to any shuttle in that one, just because of where I could get to it. the point and that was totally different with that cloud layer trapping that initial ignition in like right on you it's just wild yeah that one was particularly and it was cool too because it was a sunrise launch so when it went above the cloud layer the the shadow from the contrail was projected over the clouds on top of us so you you saw the launch and then you saw the shadow

shoot by you backwards it was really cool it was a very cool experience that was pretty bizarre so there's gonna be some good stuff yeah i'm very excited about it I was reading a thing about the sound too, because like when you hear an audio recording of it, you hear the clipping. And the first thing that I kind of assume when I hear that was like the mic is clipping. It's like the mic can't handle that pressure. It's no, it's the atmosphere. Yeah, literally it's like it's so because if you're in person, it still sounds that way. It's because the vibrations in the atmosphere reach like a max frequency and it can't vibrate any more than that.

It's the best sound. It makes me so happy. Yeah. It's such a good sound. Yeah. It's a great sound. There's a couple of visceral feels of life that I love. And it's when you walk into a concert venue and the first bass drum hits you in the chest and you like get a little bit knocked backwards. That's one of them. The sound of solids from like a couple of miles away is another one.

There's a couple like that. I mean, even Falcon Heavy had that to some extent. Yeah, yeah. But Falcons were notably quieter, I would say. Yeah. You can compare. I can't. So, yeah.

I never saw a shuttle. Comparing within the same year was really fun, too, when the original Falcon 9s went off, because we're comparatively puny to Falcon 9s that exist today. I remember when the first one went off at ignition, I was like, hmm, that's it. That's what it's got for us. I was a little bit disappointed in the sound, so. So I was laughing, too, the, you know, I was looking at the trip and trying to plan everything out. And if we stay for, well, if I stay for the whole nine days or eight days or whatever,

is between like attempts one, two and three, I may also see two Starlings. I may see two Starling launches while we're waiting for this thing. So that's kind of funny. You'll see 100 satellites launched. You'll see more satellites launched from a single company than most satellite operators have ever operated. Yeah. In this eight days span, those just be kind of like just going up in the background.

Like, oh, yeah, there's another one. So, yeah, it's going to be good. All right. Let's talk about this program now that we are on the verge. Yeah, yeah. And I do think this Eric Berger article this week is making the rounds. And it was a fantastically written article. I really like this.

A lot of this is what I think you and I have been feeling of, like, the transition between these phases and, I don't know, like, the, we've grumbled a lot in the past several weeks or months about the Artemis campaign that is all still very relevant yeah and what I can't shake is how like if if this goes if any version of the Artemis campaign goes to any of the plans that have been put out there that involve people landing on the moon whether or not we hate this rocket like the us of 50 years from now will look back at the video footage of people stepping on an SLS as like the most epic footage of this time you know and that's like I don't know let's just tell you what something does means a lot right

the ends can justify a lot of means right so and which is why it's so easy to criticize this program now because it hasn't done anything right right but if it does you're right it will be it'll be a game changer and that's that's part of the the complex thought So that tweet that I made was like really, I was just trying to show like it's okay to have like all these different feelings. And like that's one of them. It's just like, man, this could be a really impactful program. It's going to be a spectacle. That's really exciting. It can also feel like a huge waste of money. That's okay to think that. It's a weirdly managed program. Like there's just like a lot of bizarre decisions being made. It's not cohesive. But also it's like enormous and really fun. And there's just like. a lot going on in your brain and in your heart, right? And it's, so I got, I was just trying to say, like, you're going to see a lot of spicy takes and it's okay to just not have to pick aside, you know? For sure.

Yeah. Yeah, the lack of cohesion, I think, is the part that eats at a lot of people. But I also wonder if, like, have you watched that famous Steve Jobs commencement speech from forever ago? I think he did the Stanford commencement speech that maybe apparently is only popular in my circle but yeah i don't know it's this great bit i'll put a link in the show notes great speech and he has this line about how when you're trying to figure out what your life is you can only connect the dots going backwards you can never project them forwards and i wonder how much of that is is how we

compare this era of nassah to the space race error that from where we sit saturn five seemed like such a logical program right they spent a bunch of money on an engine early they put this stuff together and eventually it resulted the moon landings, eventually launched a space station that I particularly love, but like seems kind of odd. Like that was a weird fit, right? Yeah. And I wonder how much in the time, if we had the media environment we have today back then, what are the things we would have been torn up about, about like how wasteful the

spending is on, like, oh, why are they even spending money on this Centaur upgrade for Saturn 5? They'll never even use that, right? But that was a thing that they were looking at was. Saturn Centaur. Why are we ever looking at X, Y, or Z proposal? And we would have been getting mad about these little things, but here we are 50, 70 years on, and we're like, that was the most perfect program and everything shall be compared to it. And that's just, I don't know, maybe that's like a little presentism that's slipping in. But I just, I try to like figure out

if, are we just getting mad about stuff in the moment because we know every little detail about it? And we've written those details out of our memory for the space race. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I guess And you could probably, if you really wanted to make a comparison to a time stamp, like imagine it was called like May 1967. And so you've lost a crew already. Saturn 5 has never flown. And you've been spending money for eight, nine years on NASA, this brand new weird idea that's like still brand new.

Like at that point, NASA is less than 10 years old. Yeah, what would that? I don't know. Or overweight, like... Yeah, everything's wrong about it, right? And the only thing that's like really, really different is just that we don't have some giant geopolitical threat hanging over everything that you can just point to, right? But even then, that's the thing, right?

That, like, nobody really cared in the moment. There's been all this writing about how, like, people looking back didn't... Like, Kennedy was going to propose a joint thing with the Soviets even then, right? So like, yeah, there wasn't, and even the stuff about like Sputnik, people being freaked out about Sputnik is not actually historically accurate. Like, there was more hype around it than like people, you know, random people were worried about the thing. So again, I guess that's my point of like we project a lot onto that era. And I'm not sure that any of that really holds up if you were to move us right now. Take us and plant us there, right, in 1967 and have, you know, old-timey, like.

look and Eric Berger come on the show and what is our conversation? Like it probably sounds a lot similar as it does right now. There's that saying that I like a lot. It's about, it has nothing to with space. It has about social media, right? Where it's like you have to be careful when you're comparing yourself to others that you see on social media because you're comparing their highlight reel to your behind the scenes, right?

And so it's never a good comparison. And it's kind of like that. It feels like, yeah. The Apollo highlight reel is. Yeah. Their Instagram account is just on fire. Totally. And the Apollo 13 crew stepping triumphantly back on.

under the deck of the ship after a heroic rescue and like all these beautiful memories. And yeah, we don't talk about the enormous buckets of money and all the delays. Even Apollo 13 is like, we heralded it as a giant success, but it was a terrible. Like, it's horrible. If Starliner had an Apollo 13 style failure, it would be roasted. It would never be held up as like, look at this. We've rose to the occasion to save these poor astronauts that were strapped on to Starlin. We would never have that storyline today.

Yeah, yeah. No, you're 100% right. And so it's really interesting. Any kind of Apollo comparison is always, you have to take it with a really, really, really, really big grain of salt. So, yeah. But it's the lack of cohesion that drives us nuts.

And this is the thing that I want to talk about for a sec, because I don't know, Jake, if you've been paying attention in our last three months of conversations on this and every other podcast that we do, I've been particularly annoyed at this gap between Artemis 1 and 2. Yes, you have. I've been particularly annoyed about this.

There are huge gaps everywhere in the Artemis program. See also the Eric Berger article that we're talking about from the previous time he was on where they're thinking about putting this Artemis 3 and a half mission in the middle to solve. Can you bring that chart up again? I just like, I had a visual reaction. It started typing. I don't have it up. I forgot that.

episode. So this, now I've been derailed, but I'll get back. Yeah, sorry, sorry, sorry. Big gap between Artemis 1 and 2. Yes. And, oh, so where the relative hardware is, right? The hardware is relative to this current mission. So where was the Artemis 1 core and the Artemis 2 core?

Where are they tracking? As I dove into that, this is the homework I assigned myself and Eric Berger. I dove into that, and it's actually pretty hard to figure out because we don't know the flow that Artemis 2's core stage will go through, right? It's going to be delivered to NASA in March, in I think March is what Philip Sloss says. That's the plan, right, yeah, yeah. But I don't actually know, they're not going to go to the, they're not going to do a green run on it. But we don't know if they're going to do like a wet dress rehearsal.

Are they going to fuel it before they go for launch attempt? We don't know. That's interesting. So it's hard to track when it gets to the Cape, how long it will be before it's ready to role, right? Artemis I's core stage was delivered in April 2021. It was, the vehicle was fully assembled by October with Orion on top. So that was a six-month gap there. Then they went into the wet dress campaign, which took longer than we would have hoped, and here we are in August. That was all first-time operations, right? So what if that gets cleaned up? It's probably not going to be,

what was that, 18 months between delivery and being ready for launch attempt. Maybe it's 12. So, spring 2024, theoretically, the core stage and the rocket itself will all be ready for launch. Orion, I have now taken a deep dive this week, Jake. I did my, I put my Charlie Day on. I can't wait. Yeah, and I went into Office of Inspector General Reports from 2016, from 2020 on the Lockheed Martin Orion program, NASA Space Flight articles that have quoted. different interviews with Lockheed folks over the years. And there's been this running thing that NASA is intending, and Lockheed are intending to

reuse avionics components from Artemis I's Orion in Artemis 2. And Artemis 2's Orion is basically complete except for dropping these avionics components in and then stitching the whole thing together. So everything's just on hold right now with that vehicle. So they are, and they are saying that they need about 20 months between Artemis 1 and Artemis 2 flying to do all that work, integration work, and then ship the thing, minimum 20 months. So just about two years.

Between when they get the capsule back and to when they ship the new one? Unclear to me if they meant launch to launch or receiving the vehicle to launch. I'm going to assume it was, we need 20 months to work on the thing. So I'm going to guess if they get this back, Artemis 1 flies next week. It comes back in October. They are able to get the vehicle back. What's 20 months from that? it's like June

2024. June 24, yeah. Is that right? June 24, yes. So, so call it, yeah, June 20, 24. And that's maybe a little, it might be like July

because they have to wait to actually fish Orion out of the ocean and let it dry out before they can open it up to get the avionics out or whatnot. But this was all done to save cost on these components. So the thing that's driven me nuts

is like, at a certain point in time, and this is why I dove into the OIG reports, sorry, I'm down the rabbit hole already. No, I love it. I'm soaking in it out. Like, just tell me what doesn't make sense and let me re-explain things. I looked in these OIG reports because I wanted to see if this was called out as like a risk to any schedule. Turns out it was in 2016. And they talked to NASA. I should pull up these PDFs. I'd like, I had all this highlighted stuff. I sent some of my homework to Eric just to check in and say, like, here's some things that I've highlighted for you. So let me pull of these highlighted bits that I've pulled up here.

But anyway, they talk to NASA about the fact that they think this is a risk to schedule because they're trying to reuse all this hardware. And if there's an anomaly and they don't get Orion back, they can't reuse the hardware. If they get their vehicle back but the hardware's unusable, hard landing, landing on land, on board, whatever, they can't reuse it. So there were all these risks that they called out. And this report, this was the 2016 report on, it was like the management of Orion program or something like that. There was talking here about how they had agreed that they should start this program to, at the bottom here, this, they identified a stage mitigation approach that would incrementally commit resources to purchase of a second set of avionics for EM2.

It was still called EM2 back then. The program is currently tracking the risk and expects final closure in March 2018. So even back then, they were saying, we probably should put something in place to buy that full second set just in case we need to use it. I don't know where that stands. And this is the thing that's crazy about that, right? Because there's, I will not believe anyone who tells me that the cost to purchase a new set of avionics is equal to the labor to move the other one over 20 months. like yeah Orion program is getting two billion a year right now one point one point something a year at least yeah so 20 months is like two and a half billion dollars exactly what are these

avionics made up of unobtainium like I don't even counting the schedule slip that has happened between when this OIG report was written and now which was almost two years so anyway the OIG report talks about how the reuse was supposed to save something like 80 to 90% of the cost these components, but they don't actually give us a price on these components. I don't know if these things are worth $300 million or $30, and we don't really have a sense for what the scale is. But anyway, point of all this is that there is, as I like started mapping all this out, I'm starting to realize though that like it doesn't actually matter because let me undermine my entire complaint, but actually my complaint is that it doesn't matter. Like the fact that there's a plausible reality based on this

chart that I've drawn that I don't have in front of me at the moment. But there is a, there's a, I could say with confidence that if they had a second set of avionics, Artemis 2 could fly six months sooner than it would on the current trajectory. But like, who cares if it flies six months sooner? Because we still have to wait forever for Artemis 3. So it would only matter. That six months would only matter if there was a program office that that had this cohesive plan put together where that six month gap would matter. Because go back to 1967. It mattered a lot. Six months was a huge amount of time then from like 67 to end of the decade or end

of the decade, however he says it, right? Like six months meant all that's something then, but six months no longer means anything. This is crew on Artemis I all over again, right? Totally. Yes, totally, yes. Because that was your argument then too. It's like, yeah, you could put crew in Artemis I, but then does it, doesn't speed up the program, it just speeds up one flight.

Exactly. And then you have an even longer gap between these things. So I started realizing that like these questions are not being answered by the program because no one is in charge of answering these questions. Do you know what I'm saying? Like nobody cares that this particular component is the holdup. They just all care about their component not being the hold up. Does that make sense? They're playing scheduled checks.

It says Vulcan ascant acrobatic all over again. Our Landerslate, our Rocketslate, our Lancet, our Lancet, our Rocketslate. Who's going to be later? Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's going to be photographing with a waiting hardware. Yeah. Where's my, where's my Orion? But, okay.

Let me just, this is my final cherry on top because I think this is the part that matters. For the last three, four, five years, SLS has been the piece that we've just all been taking giant dumps on. SLS core stage two is going to be sitting pretty at the Cape by like next summer. And then it's going to be like, where's the spacecraft that goes on top of this thing? Yeah, Orion has, like, Locky, It's dodged a lot of criticism more or the last a couple of years because of that that Orion's been waiting forever. But no, you're 100% right. But this is exactly what we mean by the cohesion, right?

Because if the rocket or the capsule is waiting for the rocket on Artemis 1 and then the rocket's waiting for the capsule, Artemis 2, it's like, what do you guys doing? Like, are you even on the phone together? Like, what? Is there? Yeah, that's the tough part. But it's that's no one's problem, though. That is no one's problem, but ours to complain about. Yeah. And then you layer in Gateway and HLS and space suits and that same problem exists

between all five of those things. You know, computationally had a bang on that. Totally. It makes for like 25 years of delays or whatever it is, right? So yeah, it's almost like the the rocket's launch constraints all over again, right? Because they just compound. They add out. just things that exist for constraints that once made sense but no longer do, but that's now the way the constraints are written. Yeah. It's tough, man. And that's why it's so hard to love this program, right? Because it's like, what are you guys doing? So let me be a little hopeful then. All right. Because I do find that what you were just saying, there's so many things that have to land right for Artemis 3. And I am doubtful that the mission will be called Artemis 3.

that actually flies people up on an SLS and transfers into the starship and puts them on the surface. I'm kind of like, well, they might get bumped back a couple of numbers. It might be Artemis 4. At a minimum, yeah. It took to 11 for Apollo, so let's give it some. Yeah, they skipped a couple, but. Yeah. I don't forget where it is.

Oh, the point is, I'm sorry, I'm like, I was calling Eric this week, and I was like trying to, I've emailed all the garries that we know that work in communications at NASA and Lockheed and everywhere. I've been like just trying to find somebody that will tell me what these things are and why they are important or whatever. So I took it another level up and said like, all right, let's talk about the program then. And what you're saying is all of these things have to play scheduled chicken with each other to be ready for Artemis 3, a rocket, a spacecraft, a spacesuit, a lander.

All's got to work by Artemis 3. So is that going to happen in 2025? No. Is it going to happen in 26? No. Seven? maybe eight probably that's how i'm looking at it but the good thing about the and this is where eric's article from this last week was really speaking about like the transition phase that we're in now

where NASA was basically they had to pay this giant 50 billion dollar tax to transition us to a new era of the industry and all of the momentum that is happening right now and all of the good vibes of the industry are detached from SLS and Orion programmatic issues, right? It's tied to those programs budgetarily because without the Artemis program being supported, there isn't $3 billion to throw towards SpaceX for Lander, and there isn't a billion dollars to throw towards spacesuits, but the development cycles of those programs don't actually impede on the momentum that can and should be built on those other programs. So as long as

that side keeps its momentum up and as long as the landers coming together well and the spacesuits are coming together well, like SLS and Orion can dipsy-doodle around programmatically as much as they want, as long as they get their act together in time

for the momentum to catch up to where they are, which is a flying spacecraft and vehicle. So. Yeah, yeah. There's definitely a path this could take that would be fine in the end, right? I mean, it's it's moving slower than a lot of people would want, but I think as long as it's accelerating, I think that's probably going to be its win, right? That's it. It can keep critics at bay for a while if it's just accelerating. If it's 10 years

between conception and launch one and four between one and two and three between two and like I think you might be able to survive a little bit there. But I think that's my other point is like, why do the critics matter at that point? Because all of the momentum is on a section of the industry that doesn't, like, $3 billion for SpaceX is cool for Starship, but it's not all of the Starship funding, you know? It's a, if you believe the rest of the math, it's a minority of funding. So if the critics get their knives out, all right, like, that's a couple billion down that we won't get for the funding. But we're still making Starship.

Whereas in the previous day, like that lander, Altair didn't exist anymore. Right, right, right, right, yeah. Yeah, so what you're saying is that the success or failure of the government program is much less meaningful today than it would have been 10, 20 years ago. Way less. If the Augustine committee came in and canceled SLS Orion again, right? Then like- Our lives would be very different or not be very different at all right. Yeah, like Starship would still be doing its thing.

Axiom still needs spacesuits. I guess Collins might not, but there's not that many, there's really not a lot of change that would happen there. And even if there is, like, even if you project yourself, if everything goes exactly as planned, believe all of the SLS documents that exist there today, exactly when those videos are going to fly, what they're going to do. In 10 years, are, I don't know anyone, even in the SLS program probably that would believe that they're still doing it the same way. like if starships are flying a bunch and they're taking people up and down to the moon then like and you're flying tens or hundreds of people to lower earth orbit commercial space stations like there's a point when it's just like what do we do it's going to ask a question to be like why are we yeah just logistically or honestly like even in these years long gaps between different sls hardware

you're just going to be like well i we can we can go do you know i got to go fix the solar panel on the lunar base like we got to get up there you know how are we going to get up there like we can't wait two years for it. There's going to be some forcing mechanism to just to just carry that momentum forward into some other part of the program. Yeah. In the many theories on on how to cancel SLS, which is like the favorite fan fiction of space fans, like, how can we get rid of this thing? Yeah, yeah. You're talking about the fade into a relevance one, right? Where it just keeps plucking along and then everyone moves on past it. Just do good work. Keep doing good work and eventually it's irrelevant. Yeah, I like it. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's

Probably, I don't know, I guess it could be the way that it goes in the long run. But I mean, what do you think about? To me, one of the things that we can talk about as well would be because of the rest of the stuff happening, I guess, I don't know, can you say Artemis happened because of SLS? I guess probably not. I don't know. It's really tough to make that connection. Like, is SLS just there because it's always has to be a part of everything? And Artemis would have happened whether it was there or not.

Or, you know, did the Trump administration come together and be like, you know what, we got this SLS thing? It's almost ready to go. There's this other stuff happening with commercial space. We could put together a thing here, right? And then it was part of that. And so I guess the question being like, can we thank this program for something beyond just the delivered hardware of a rocket and a capsule, right? I would say yes, absolutely. And not only that, I would thank the inability for the Constellation Program to get its crap together.

Because, like, you know, if you roll back and, what is it, vision for space exploration, that would have had people on the moon by 2020 if we could spend all the money. Like, the world's a less interesting place now if that all worked. And, like, we had a really expensive Altair lander that would fly once in a while. And I don't know, there's, there is definitely, like, if you, there's, the alternate histories would have crowded out some of the momentum and, like, commercially minded aspect to this. I mean, I think SpaceX would still be doing what they're doing, regardless, but they

wouldn't have an anchor customer early on. They would have to figure it out all on their own, and they wouldn't get the ability to throw a NASA worm on a starship that early. So. Yeah. But I think that's how the good stuff in the world goes, which is like, smart people are going to take advantage of the environment of a situation to further their, you know, to further their own goals in a way that they think

betters the world. So is it SLS-O-Rine specifically? No, was it like because we kind of saw with the ISS that ISS existed and there were companies that wanted to do something in space and they used ISS as a platform to do it, whether it's transportation to and from, it's hardware on the space station,

it's things around the space station or extensions to it. Like, that happens elsewhere in the industry too. SLS-O-Rine just gets the daggers out for it all the time because that's what we do, you know? Yeah, yeah. It's the American experience complaining about our space program. You know, the ISS is such an interesting comparison to me.

Like, I think we need to do more comparison of ISS to SLS. Oh, all right, roll it out. You're giving Casey Dreyer his next assignment. Let's go. Yeah, but think about this though, right? So, ISS is a huge NASA project, right? It's like a completely NASA run thing. They bring in contractors, but NASA's the ball.

boss. It's the old style of doing things. We have Boeing as like a prime contractor in there running the show. Some other little upstarts get to be a part of it like SpaceX, right? It's an international collaboration, just like Artemis. What's the budget? Three, four billion a year for the program? Sounds kind of familiar, you know, for that thing. You're totally right. So like we could do a lot of comparisons. Like, you know, if you're really just like, you're concerned about the dollars and you're like, we need to shave $4 billion off the budget, what is the reasoning to take ISS away versus take SLS away, right? And it's interesting. And I think the big thing they can get away with is because ISS has astronauts that are working in space right now and they're doing stuff. Right. Even if all that stuff

is completely made up and crap and useless, it doesn't matter. Because if an astronaut can call you high school from space and do a backflip with a microphone floating in front of them. That's awesome. Do the little microphone spin that they do? Yeah. Yeah. And the water is squirt, squirt, squirt, right? So that's a big part of it.

It's better than SLS ground game. It's 100% better. Yeah, yeah. It's got mission control. It's fabled, fabled institution, you know, it's got Russian drama. It's doing their thing. playing guitar and making music videos. It's got people with hair spreading out in every direction in the cupola,

taking pictures of you on the ground from space. You know, there's all this like all this poetry and stuff with it, which is really nice. And so that's something I think about a lot. And it's like, okay, well, are we going to give any shits at all once there's an astronaut taking a picture of the moon from an Orion? We might not care when there's just a picture of Orion by the moon next week. That might be the moment

where we're like, oh, okay, there's a human spacecraft by the moon, like, I'm good. Yeah, yeah. So, there's interesting thoughts there, I guess, but. I mean, you know I was on team, Sink it a couple years ago with ISS. I still kind of am. Like, I've softened a little bit on that,

but there was a time when I was like, sink this thing, stop extending it. I still feel like that. 2030 is too far, in my opinion. Yeah. That's far. Eight more years? The soft power part of this, like, it runs the show, right?

Like, that's if there was no Russia. Sorry, is that working? Is the soft power thing working in any environment in geopolitics right now? Not right now it is. And no, but that's all those decisions, 23. It's all driven by that right now, right? It was all power play. Yeah, yeah.

Like that happened this year. Like Biden was like, we're staying in. We're staying in it. What are you going to do, Putin? Right. Europe hasn't even signed on yet, but there was that statement like a week or two ago that like everyone said that they're working on it. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Canada was like, no, whatever you guys say. Is our arms still up there? Is the arms still good? They just need to hold out until the gateway arms up there. Canada is always in the meeting room with all the ISS partners, but they're not at the table. They're just at the chair against the side wall, and they're on their phone. And then it was like, Canada, what do you think? And they look up and they go, yeah, whatever NASA said, it's fine.

So, yeah, that's how it does. The alternate, okay, so if I'm going to do like a sci-fi version of the next 10 years to, you know how I had that whole JWST doesn't work and then we need a human program to go fix it? And that was like an ideal state for me. Similarly, ISS has some failure that we need to bail out on the thing sooner. Gateway gets refitted to be the new low-Earth orbit space station, which absolves the Artemis program of having to go to the gateway,

which eliminates the need for the US. That goes out the window. Like the exploration upper stage only exists to service gateway. There's no need for that on the lander side of things. See also how the landing mission right now does not use the US.

So it is purely a gateway program which is going to cost several billion dollars. Yeah. Gateway's flying in lower Earth orbit. You don't need that anymore. freeze up the EUS budget, frees up the gateway budget, we're focused solely on the lunar surface.

We've got a small space station in low-earth orbit that already has been paid for so we can kind of figure out what to do. You can, if you're a low-earth orbit commercial space station company, you can figure out what you want to do around that market, but at least it untangles the Artemis side of things. And per my interest, gets rush off the space station. Yeah, I mean,

Maybe. I mean, I don't see gateway being repurposed. That's my sci-fi thing. That's not, I don't see gateway being repurposed to Leo. That seems like a, that seems like a stretch too far. But it does raise a question for me, though, is like, what do you do on the surface? Like, after all this, we get there and are they just going to get some rocks and do some cool science? He's fresh out of league. And here he goes with the why are we going science guy.

Here we go. But I don't mean. I mean, I don't even mean the why. You can make up all the reasons you want. But like, do we actually have the wherewithal to get to Artemis five and six and seven and start putting like assets on the surface? I don't know. I'm way less confident about that part of it, right? Like, you know, are we going to put some habitats down there and actually do something for more than an EVA? Right. I don't know. I talks about set up in Antarctica, but like what does that mean? Yeah, Antarctica's got like kitchens and gyms and gyms.

and bars and like apartments, you know, like, they've been building after a while, right? What is the work that they're doing in Antarctica versus what is the work that they were doing at Shackleton base? Yeah, I mean, that's part of it. But I think if you want to do anything more than astronauts ride the elevator down to the surface and they do an EVA and they go,

oh, this is a weird rock. They scoop some stuff in the sand and a bit of the thing. And then they take some pictures. and they do a walkabout and then they come back and it's like, this is awesome. Thanks for the rocks, guys. And then planetary science runs off and does its thing. And then they're like, I guess we do that again now?

Like, I guess round two. And then they just do that. I don't know. So the question is like, okay, well, that's great. But are we actually going to follow through with the lunar rover, the pressurized one? Are we going to put, I haven't seen any ideas for a building, like any kind of like box. I think that's just whatever starship he came in. Yeah.

And so, I don't know. I'm curious to know. You're trying to figure out how to get from DoorDash for Rocks to something else? I'm trying to get past flags and footprints, right? That's really ultimate what it is. DoorDash for rocks is just past flags and footprints. Yeah, DoorDash for Rocks is slightly better than flags and footprints. But, yeah, I don't know.

I think about that. And it's just like they can't plan that far out. Like, they just can't. Yeah. They can have a bunch of ideas ready, but they can't make a plan, right? So it's interesting. I don't know. Like, where is the money for the program to begin constructing the far side lunar observatory?

Yeah. And at some point, someone has to ask the question whether the moon to Mars program is real. Because if it is, then it's like, well, what are you doing with this? And are we not going to stick around the moon? There's like so many existential questions about the exploration systems development director but, you know, that's probably out of scope for this show. None of those things we're solving today, nor over the weekend. All we're doing over the weekend is flying to Florida, having a great time,

not worrying about any of this stuff, watching a big rocket fly into space. That's what we're doing. That's right. That's right. So we hope all of you come. If you're in the Florida area, please come hang out with us. We would love to meet you. That would be really fun.

Either way, we're going to have some white claws on the beach. I think you're buying Takate, right? Some Takate, maybe I'll. It's a tecate. It's a small brand. Well, I don't know if they have it in Florida. It's pretty small. You might have to bring it with you from Mexico.

Have you ever heard of it? I don't know. We'll see. What have you been working on lately? This, I think, right? Yeah, yeah, I haven't done a lot over in the podcast feed. So the move was just too much. I ran out of capacity.

So I was like, you know what? I'm taking it. That's legit. Yeah, yeah. So I took an episode off, if you will. So we'll get back with. Artemis stuff and then we'll dig into it a little more. But there's lots going on. There's, uh, we got Dart coming up in September. That's like right on the horizon.

Yeah, we were supposed to send an email or two about that. That's what I realize now. Yeah. And, um, and then we've got, uh, you know, this league meeting just happened. There's still, we had the NASA response to planetary decal survey, which has got some, some things worth looking into a little bit there. And I don't know, it's going to be busy as always, always is now. we don't get breaks in the news cycle anymore in space. There's not these lull periods anymore. Certainly not. Astrobotic still says they're flying this year.

So, you know, they're running out of year. The rocket's not. So good luck with that. We'll see. We'll see. Jake, since the last time we talked, I don't want to freak anyone out. I put out four episodes of Miko, I think.

Four episodes since the last time we've had You have been busy. And we talked about that. You had all these interviews queued up. And they all have hit now. So if you have not caught up, Rick Mastrakio, former astronaut, he's up there in the EVA leaderboard, I think.

Super nice. Runs business development at Northrop Grumman. So we talked about their commercial space station. Doesn't currently have a name, which is a bummer. I feel like they could have gotten on that one a little bit. Space exploration engineering that do astrogation. they fly spacecraft to the moon. They worked on the photon side of the capstone mission.

So we talked about what they do. Really interesting to hear about their team and working with mission teams and how they help out figuring out trajectories and flight plans. They worked on pretty much everything that's gone to the moon since like the 90s, which is awesome. Oh, boy. Firefly and Antares. I finally talked about that on the podcast. I think it's a brilliant move. Yeah.

Never would you have expected me to say anything about Antares is brilliant. This is the one because it involves basically not flying Antares anymore. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And Suns Sets Antares, yes. And Astrobee, we talked to the lead engineer of Astrobees, which are they cool little robots that fly around the space station. That was a super cool interview. What I liked about that one is it was like Astroby is one of those programs

it gets to kind of fly under the radar. Like it felt very, you felt very connected to it, just listened to it because it was like the guy and it's just like, yeah, this is like my program. I'm on my bedroom. I got your email.

I answered your email. And then I went and did the program. And I just, I just, this is my little project that I get to do. And it's like, so there was no, there was no PR around it.

It was just like a guy talking about this thing that he made. It was awesome. I don't know. I liked it. It was very sincere. And they're like, you start thinking about it.

You're like, oh yeah, these are going to be really useful up there. just doing random odd jobs around the station. So cool stuff. I especially like the fly around and listen for RFID. Oh, that's so brilliant. Yeah.

Find my hammer. Do you like runs off. That's a brilliant thing. They needed that on some of the SpaceX crew flights because I remember there was one time they were looking for like a sweater and they couldn't find it. And that's right. Yeah. Yeah.

Anyway. Offenom.com. So events. You got to get on that list. Get on the mailing list. Yeah. And wait for instructions. We'll buy you a drink.

Yeah. That'll be great. Wait for instructions. Stand by. Burn after reading. It's going to be good. So, Orange Rocket is great.

We will see you in Florida under the shadow, said Orange Rocket.