Off-Nominal - 88 - But, Nonetheless

Episode Date: December 16, 2022

Jake and Anthony are joined by Miriam Kramer of Axios to talk about the weirdest and funniest space news of the year, to announce the Off-Nominees, and to crown the winner of the 2022 Off-Nominal Award.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 88 - But, Nonetheless (with Miriam Kramer) - YouTubeThe Off-Nominal Awards - Off-NominalFollow MiriamMiriam Kramer (@mirikramer) / TwitterAxios Newsletter SignupFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine start. Oh, hello. Welcome to our favorite show of the year, every single year, Jake. It's here. The best one. It's finally happening. The off nominees are presented today. And we've brought a ringer. Miriam Kramer is back on the show.

How's it going? Hey. I'm good. Thanks for having me. So far, we've done this 2018, 19, 2019, 2021, right? This is our fifth. It's our fifth off nominees. fifth annual off nominees.

So far we've invited guests to the last couple, and they're always a little confused about it. But when we emailed Miriam, you were pumped. You were very excited about this. And I love that. I was like, I don't know what this is, but this sounds great. I'm so, I'm so down. Other times I was like, okay, I guess, yeah, that sounds fun.

But they were like, is there any homework? But you were like, let's do it. So this is great. Surprise me. whatever we'll improv it'll be fun oh man Jake how you doing down there? I'm good I had a my family's coming in for Christmas my wife's family on Sunday and so I've been like just like nose to the grind trying to just like knock everything out of here so I can check out and it's been a busy week but I'm super excited we're getting to the end here I got a drink it's the off nominees got the two of you it's the holiday spirit baby I'm all here let's do it. bring a thematic? Did you bring something thematic? I did, yeah.

What you got? You're excited about this one too. Yeah, yeah. Well, in the great spirit of the off nominees, and we always get this every year. You called it December a surprise, right? We had a little bit of a thing last night. So in honor of the Soyuz coolant leak, I invented the Soyuz coolant cocktail. Oh, my Lord. So I went into my cover. and I found vodka and some mint liqueur to make it colorful. And then I added a little bit of a little bit of a habanero liqueur to give it some spice

and topped it up with some sparkling water. You know, just a little bit of soda on top there. So it's probably going to be bad, which I think it should be, considering what it's representing. It's incredible. It is shockingly close to whatever John Krause drank on this show about a year ago. It's got a little bit more of a mouthwashy look. Yeah, or Listerini.

Yeah. Yep. Listerine. You didn't try it before this, did you? Nope. That was me trying it right there. Looks good. I love it.

I feel like the mint and Havanaero is quite like the choice. You know what? Actually, so I'm drinking this. It's actually not bad. There's people that would like this for sure. What a resounding endorsement of your own drink. There are fans out there somewhere. I'll think of Soyuz later when I'm into the bathroom with this.

Or just when your mouth feels horrible. Mint and habanero. Okay, whatever. Miriam, did you bring something fun? I don't know if I would call it fun, but it's certainly of this time of year. I have herbal tea. It's throat coat. Because my children have yet again made me sick.

which has been a recurring theme for the past month or so. So yeah, just like limping to the finish line here at the end of the year. Very happy to be with you guys today. The dual child setup is, yeah, twice as much surface area to be aware of. So that's problematic. They just pass stuff back and forth to each other and we're just caught in the middle of it. and yeah. You need some mint mouthwash.

I think I'm right. You need some mint mouthwash right now. Like real antiseptic stuff. Jake, I changed it up this year. That probably would actually be pretty good. For sickness? No mad elf? No mad elf.

I usually have mad elf from trogues. Apparently the local beer wars victory brewing was like, we can't let mad elf keep owning us. this bad in the holiday department. So I have a victory version called Merry Monkey. Look at this. Look at this monkey. So, I don't know if you can read that.

Belgian-style air with cranberry, orange, peel, cinnamon, and nutbag, and it's 10%. So, just over the borderline. Like, we need, Miriam, we're giving me a pass because of the sickness. But I think we should make a rule for all off-nomony shows that everything that you drink has to have at least 10%. So you can do like a nice wine. some sort of liquor or very alcoholic beers. So that's the rule I would like to propose.

Like, it's not even four. We have brand standards, Miriam. Okay. So it's in the logo. I'll need to remember this for that time. I've got it. We have a little scene setting to do here. And I just want to let everyone know.

We have put, I said last year on this off-nominee show that we should make a website. with all the off nominees, and I just this morning made a website finally. So if you go to offnom.com slash awards, you can check out all past nominees, winners, runners up. And the one thing you'll learn from this is that we have literally no style guide to how we do these awards. Some years we've done categories, other years we've done finalists and runners-up, and other years we've just picked a winner.

So, yeah, there's no spoilers on there yet. unveil the 2022 nominees as we go here. So it's spoiler-free if you're listening live. But just to further emphasize what the off nominees are, Jake, how would you set the scene for for the vibe that we're going for? So it's evolved a little bit, right? Because I think when we first did this, we were just like, let's talk about things that went wrong. And then we just kind of, it was pretty, I think the first one was pretty improv. We didn't really think that much about it. And I don't really know, but it gets a little dicey when you follow that thread, though, because then you get into things where it's just like, wow, like, something blew up or like,

oh, a company went out of business. And like there are things that went wrong, but they're not really that funny. Totally. And so you have to be careful where we're drawing the line there. And so the idea behind the off nominee, the spirit, the spirit of the off nominees is like weird and wacky and kind of unpredictably bizarre. So it should be fun and it should be interesting and generally things that didn't go as planned. There needs to be a spirit of whimsy about it. It can't just be that it went wrong or failure.

Yeah, there needs to be something whimsical about it that it just makes it hilarious. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We did come up with some categories this year, though. So last year we had a ton of categories just to remind everyone. We had like Jake came up with this categorization last year. Best rocket stunt flight, best performance, best Jeff Bezos, cringe moment. best Russia and then planetary and since science. We don't have as many categories this year, unfortunately.

No, no. The spirit is always changing the format every year. Should we go over categories first? Like, is that what you want to start? Sure, there's two. So it's not a long conversation. And I think that every journalist covering space this year will totally understand these categories.

But the two categories are SLS and not SLS. So. That's what we got. Which one do we want to start with, Miriam? Do you have a preference? Oh, no. You guys pick. I'm happy to go either way.

Also, I think that the categories are correct. I'm going to say we should start with SLS because the non-SLS stuff is more fun to my eye. I have a feeling that the winner is going to be non-SLS. So I'm going to bias this towards let's do not even a named category. you're already tipping the scales oh man this is uh i am there's there's bias here listen hey as one of the two hosts you get you get to try to convince me otherwise so we'll see we'll see how you do all right starting us off in the uh sls category uh we'll go i guess we should go to an audio clip first this is an audio experience

I just wanted to more details about exactly what this gaseous nitrogen is. Oh, this is not the right link, is this? Oh, this is the right link? I thought I was doing something else. Yeah, is that? And what the supplier is doing to correct the problem? And does it affect only 39B or is this a site-wide issue that might affect launches at 39A or other pads? Thanks.

We have an off-site supplier for nitrogen. You've probably seen them if you drive on site here. You've come upstate. left-hand side as you get ready to come into the gate here at the Kennedy Space Center. They provide a main pipe to the Kennedy Space Center. All right. So the award or the nominee is Mike Serra, was that Mike Serafin? I think that was Mike Serafin. No, that's Tom Whitmire, isn't it?

I don't know which one it was. Whitmire will get to. That's Tom. That's our boy. That's our boy, Whitmire. So the wet dress rehearsal number, whatever. Air Lekeed was struggling with liquid nitrogen, which is fine. On its own, that's like a normal issue.

that one is not what the off nominee here is the off nominee is NASA not wanting to name the supplier, but giving you very specific directions to their facility. It's basically told you a street address. If you come into Kennedy on State Road 3, it's on the left-hand side. But we're not

going to name who it is. We're just how you, like Google Street View it, if you want to know who it is. What the hell was that? What kind of standards are these? Oh, my God. That's amazing. That's a good one. I think as we will see as we progress through the SLS Awards, Tom Whitmire's got some, he's got some zingers up there and ready to go.

So maybe this is just a, this is just a way for him to throw some punches, you know? I don't know. I can't, I can't decipher it. That one's fun, a little bit of spirit of whimsy, but not, I don't think there's a lot of weight in that one. So, you know, congrats. It's a good nominee, but, you know, yeah. Jake, I feel like you should probably do the next one here as. the person who took advantage of this situation the most?

Yeah, so I'm thinking, and I was trying to find the clip on this. We looked for a long time. We uncovered a scandal. Yeah, we may have uncovered a scandal here, but we cannot find the audio clip of visibly loose nuts. So this was a reference to the SLS launch when they had to send the Red crew out and they were fixing those, you know, they were torquing the bull. and there was like a hot mic moment,

and we can't find this hot mic moment. NASA, it's a big NASA cover up. So someone please FOIA the visibly loose nuts hot mic. But that's what the crew said. They were like, the nuts are visibly loose. And that's not good.

That's not generally how you want nuts holding down a rocket, I guess. So, yeah. So I made a shirt immediately and then all the bots got it. So if you bought one, you probably didn't support me. You probably supported some butt.

That is hilarious, though, when you Google visibly loose nuts. Yeah, Google visibly loose nuts. It's really funny. It's just rip-offs of Jake's stuff. Oh, my God. One of these is Jake's. Two of these is Jake's. The rest are all rip-offs of Jake's.

And notably, none of them are the audio clip of visibly loose nuts because NASA has scrubbed this from the internet. And, Miriam, I understand this was your favorite moment of the SLS launch. It was. I was really tired and covering it here in Nashville after putting the kids to sleep and then just sort of staying awake on my floor in the living room just like, I think they're really going to do it. Are they really going to do it? Is this really going to happen? And the bright spot of the whole thing for me was the visibly, where the visibly loose nuts and the red team and just watching like so many truly slap. happy space reporters and space fans just losing it about the note.

That is a real high point for me. And what otherwise was a quite brain-melting experience of watching this launch, if only because I was exceedingly jealous of everybody who was actually there. My favorite thing in searching the transcript, which I think adds a little bit of... you know, pomp to this being a nominee is that if you search

the transcript of the broadcast, the rest of the time, Daryl Nail was calling these bolts, and this was the one moment he said, nuts. So I enjoy that. They were not referred to as Nuts everywhere else. He deserves, like, every award, though.

Like, not the nominees, but just, like, everything but this one. No, because he was incredible through the entire SLS experience and extravaganza of this year. Like, I don't know where we would be without Daryl. So shout out to Daryl. Totally, totally.

And like not known to everybody, but like they had, you know, the launch broadcast, which was like, I don't know, two, two and a half, three hours long or something like that. And then he was on the tanking operation for like the eight hours before that. So he commentated like the whole stretch. And it was a crazy run. Yeah. Yeah. My favorite thing was watching the media channel because it was like just Daryl.

It was holding Daryl. I was like, that's all I want. I just want Daryl. He's the one that's going to tell me what I need to know. And I can be calm the rest of the time. So. Yeah. Moving on, Jake.

Last year, in the best performance category, SOS engine number four was an off nominee. And this year, one of its brethren is receiving the nomination, and that is engine number three, I believe. Is that correct? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Not to be outdone by engine number four, engine number three decided to join the competition. And I think your favorite part is the reasoning that the way the sensor is behaving does not line up with the physics of the situation. This was regarding the sensor that scrubbed the first launch of SLS where we were on the beach and anxiously awaiting this. And it was a single sensor that they didn't even really need to use for the flight. That was the one reason they scrubbed it. Yeah, I still don't feel good about this one because it was like, they just like, yeah, we left

the sensor on and we don't need it and it's wrong most of the time. But then it said it was bad. And so we listened to it and scrub the launch. I'm like, why is it? Why is it here? But this like this expression, was so good, like the physics of the situation. There's been a lot of like really good expressions that have come out of the Artemis campaign. I'm thinking like the direction of goodness. That's like in one of my favorites. There's there's the physics of the situation. You can throw like mega moon rocket in there if you wanted to. Yeah. There's so many good like expressions, but this one. The kinder, gentler, fooling process. It was a kind and gentle. I was like gentler, slower and gentler. And I was like, what were you doing before if it was not gentle to this giant rocket?

Be nice to the rocket. They do get latched onto those phrases. I feel like it just percolates through the office. And then it just, no one can think of anything else to say except these certain phrases. Even the Mega Moon Rocket, when people ask like, why did this come about? They were like, I don't know. I thought someone else said it. And then it sounded cool.

So we kept saying it. It's like, okay, that's weird. Sure. Well, the best part about Mega Moon Rocket is that like, it's, It sprung up really quickly, and then exactly what you said. They were like, we just heard it and we loved it. And then it was everywhere for a little bit. And then it just like stopped and they never said it again.

It was like someone that clamped down on it, I think. So it's pretty good. So yeah, the sensor, Engine 3 sensor, really, I think this one is putting in the work. Because not only did this derail, effectively derail the launch for three months, right? because like this everything was good to go on this first attempt. I'm trying to think, would any of the other situations that delayed SLS between August 29th and whenever it took off, I forget the date already, would any of those situations have happened in that launch flow?

Or were they already, like the hydrogen is fueling well and there was no leaks there at that point. I think they were fine otherwise, right? I mean, that we know of, right? That we know of, yeah. I just want to blame this sensor for ruining the celebrity guest scheduling that was. the like crazy ceremony that they had for August 29th.

It's engine number three's fault that Kamala didn't get to see the launch. All right. Now we're getting into the good ones here on Artemis 1. Okay. Tom Whitmire comes back with what may be our favorite moment

from the SLS campaign, which is the not even a named storm moment when this is Ian I guess right this is the first one that was percolating down by your house Jake yeah right which one wasn't I think this is the one that was sitting by Jake's house at the moment that this press conference happened in which Tom Whitmire shrugged off all of the profession of weather forecasting like on a grand scale yeah yeah this is this is I mean this one was played played to death I don't know

I don't know what more we can say about it. Other than I want to just give a shout out to Eric Berger for getting the chance to write the story he was born to write. It was good. I loved it. Yeah. He was absolutely going to write.

What is the same story? It's the speed at which this story developed, which is the best part. That they, not even a name storm happened at like 5 p.m. And then at 9 p.m. it got a name. Like, it was instant.

So you could catch it all in one news cycle, which I think really, I mean, this last year, Jake, in the show, we had an Anthony category as well in which we played two of my takes that were immediately wrong. I had one that no one was ever going to sell a commercial Atlas 5, and the next morning they sold like nine of them. And then I had one that I told, I said, what are you going to do, Russia, shoot down all our GPS satellites? And the next day they suggested that they would shoot down all of our GPS satellites. And this is very much in that same vein of like, you know, called shot and immediately wrong. Mine were not as impactful as this. No, no. Yeah.

Yeah. And we should note that we have not seen Tom Weymier since. So please, please send us an email if he's. Yeah, that was it, right? She was gone. That was the whole Washington Post thing, right? Then we pick up the Washington Post and see if it's going to rain, which, like, there's just so much in that. Yeah.

I'd like to imagine the meeting where you had to sit Tom Whitmire down. and be like, listen, this was a series of bad statements. Yeah, I think it's like it's just someone that really doesn't get what happens in Florida from a weather perspective. Like, it is, yeah, sure. It's hard to know if it's going to rain sometimes in D.C. But like a hurricane, kind of a different story. I just, I also love it.

It's not like it was some other random agency. commenting on it, right? It was NASA. Like, they're the ones that have operate the weather satellites. It's unreal. Also true. Yeah. No, I couldn't have got much more ironic, so. That was a strange one. That was a pretty weird one. Yeah.

Well, the final entry in the, in the SLS category. Is that correct? Is that this is the final entry? Hold on. I've screwed up my system. I did. I think so. This is the final entry. Yes. And this one, similar. It's like SLS by tangent, tangentially SLS.

Yes. Okay. Similar vibe, though, in that this has been scrubbed from the internet, much like visibly lose nuts. Okay? Much less. Yeah. We need to FOIA this.

Yeah. So SLS is the hottest new CubeSat launcher, as we know. Do you know how to, this is a Jackson mission that was on board? I have no idea what the name of this mission is, Jake. Do you know what I'm supposed to do with the name of this mission? I'm going to take a wild guess and say Achulius. Okay, we'll go with that. This was a CubeSat that was launched on SLS, and this was a tweet they had.

The second Jackson Station Pass after the closest approach of the moon, in this pass, we will perform come cleanup maneuver to cancel the trajectory control errors. This small maneuver will precisely guide, what did you say it was, EQLUS into the nominal trajectory to the Earth Moon Lagrangian point. So, shocker, this tweet's been deleted. The clean up maneuver has been had a name change. This one's rough. It's been cleaned up.

This is rough. This is really rough. I have nothing to say. I heard that you actually, if you look hard enough and you just need a, you just need an ultraviolet light and then you can find it. Oh, my God. We're moving on. We're moving on.

I was right. William was right the whole time. There's nothing to say about this one. There's nothing to say. You showed the tweet, that's all. So those are our five SLS entries. We got the non-naming, the anti-doxing strategy that NASA had with Air Lekid, visibly loose nuts, engine three, not even a named storm, and the cleanup maneuver.

What's your initial vibe, Miriam? I mean, it's hard to beat visibly loose nuts to me. That will be in my heart as one of my favorite space moments, maybe ever. Because it was just rare to have something that tickled me so much during one of the webcasts that I got through it okay. my anxiety really ratchets up during like a big launch and so the SLS launch was I probably should have been medicated. Yeah. Yeah. So the nuts got me through. I enjoy that one because it opens up a series of questions. Like if they were visibly loose, how did they stay that way for so long? Did no one see it or did everyone walk by and think, that's somebody else's department?

right and like how visible were the nuts yeah right really i mean to someone they were invisibly loose right because someone passed over it yeah so solid point yeah that's deep yeah do you want to lobby for anyone particular jake i probably got to throw some way some some support behind my boy tom because that that quote will live in infamy forever so i'm gonna i'm gonna lean a little on that side I love the Tom one. I'm going to be honest, because I enjoy that there are just so many angles to it. Like, there's probably fights that he started within NASA over that.

You know? Like, there were a couple angry emails within the agency. You should foyer the anger emails. I should foia for those emails. That's a really good point, actually. Thank you. I'm going to write that down. Hang up.

Yeah, yeah. We love assigning homework on this podcast. We do. Are you, Miriam, are you good if we award this to Tom Whitmire personally? Oh, yes. I think that's, I think that makes sense. I do also love when we can personally award it, like to a named individual, such as we did with Oleg Kononenko. Oh, man.

Okay. All right. Whitmire, not even named Storm. Is this like a finalist then? Or we've got two categories? Are we doing like a showdown? For doing it like we did last time with. categories. We named a category winner and then we named an overall winner.

Okay, okay. Sounds good. Now last year, well, I guess no, we decided Nauka won category and that also was the overall winner. But we actually convinced Matt Russell that Nauka should be the overall winner, even though he never voted for it in the category round. So that was fun. So there's minor stipulations here. But we'll move into the non-SLS category. And this is probably the kind of stuff, Miriam, that you were out on leave for part of the year, that maybe never crossed your radar. And so I'm excited to dig into some of these ones. I'm kind of excited. I know what they are.

Well, like, I looked at it, but I did not dig into anything. So I'm coming in pretty blind to this one. Jake, as the Starlink user, I feel like you should do this first non-SLS category, which was the launch of Starlink at which a geomagnetic Storm destroyed most of the batch. The whole batch? Was it the whole batch? Yeah. It was like 55 out of 60, I think, or something crazy, right? Like, it was it was not a good launch for them. They lost a lot of payloads there. But I mean, for me, mostly the reason I want this up here is not just because I'm the

Starlinked user, but it's a chance to reference the critically acclaimed sci-fi thriller Geostorm starring Gerard Butler, which is just one of the best movies I've ever watched. So I'm just going to use this as an opportunity to plug that. Oh, no. And I think I got two episodes in a row now where I've mentioned U.S. Storm. So we're going to see if we can get a hat trick on the next one. It's going to be good. You're going to have to remember, though.

That's a couple weeks away. I do enjoy this one thoroughly because of how like the positioning of, this would have been a major incident for any other launch campaign. Like, holy crap, we just lost everything to a geometric storm. And this is like, damn, we'll just get on to the next one. Like, it was so not an issue. And I think that's hilarious. It's very SpaceX is like an attitude, guys.

It's like, oh, all right. Like, we just lost more satellites than most operators have ever launched in one week. It's true. It's true. I mean, but yeah, this one, this one was. right before I gave birth. This was like 10 days before I gave birth.

Wow. I think. So I was paying attention when this happened and I thought it was kind of crazy and a little funny. It feels like it's right for this show. Yeah. This kind of phenomenon though is like

it's the reason that I am always so impressed when they can land spacecraft, like when when a Soyuz or a Ryan or whatever comes home and they're like they can land it with any kind of accuracy because like the atmosphere is just like whoa, whoa, whoa, it's just like growing and shrinking all the time and doing weird stuff from the sun. And I'm like, how do you even predict anything? It's wild to me that you can do that.

I don't know. This gives me a, there's a point of hope from this. All right. Well, that draws some points away from it being the category winner. So, yeah, if this was an educational experience, that's, that's trouble. I just love the sun, though. I mean, that's quite the star. Best one.

Like, we're going to talk about why this happened. It was the sun. Like, that's great. That's like some interesting physics. Yeah, exactly. So I was like, not today. No. The most effective anti-Starlink propaganda of all the anti-Starlink propaganda.

All right. Keeping it's SpaceX themed. The next nominee here is the FAA for assigning a book report to SpaceX on the Mexican and Civil Wars. Also turning them into a wildlife viewing organization. They have to create a couple platforms. And I believe, what is the Starlink powered wildlife viewing? I don't even remember what that was, Jake. Starlink powered wildlife viewing? Oh man, providing satellite monitoring via solar powered Starlink for remote wildlife viewing opportunities. They have to do like

Ocelot cam. I forgot about that. That's kind of fun. That's awesome. This is great. This report is just so much fun. It's so much fun. There's just like a laundry list of like little

tiny chores they have to do to like, you know, launch the biggest rocket ever. Did we have any insight into where this is at? No, I still have not got my hands. on the book report. Miriam, where's those notes? I don't put this in that note. Okay, I'm going to run it.

I'm putting it in the notes. I'm putting it in the notes. You can say assigning me a lot of it. You can FOIA's emails about book report. I literally have notes going. I'll show you later. But I'm like, yeah, no, okay, story ideas great. This is, yeah, I mean, this is our job to ruminate about it.

Your job is to, you know, get the deeds. Right stories. I need to give you the content. Yeah, imagine you broke the story that you have the report from SpaceX. You would be going huge. I'm going for the Mexican, Mexican and Civil War report. That's what I would like to see. Like, is it double spaced?

What font do they use? Do they mess with the margins at all? Was there a pay link sort of assignment? Chat says that right in with chat GPT. 100% Yeah Hi We should

We should give it to like an English professor To grade after we get it Like we should get someone to market We could probably find somebody Who's kid is in school And could submit it as like a project Oh Especially if we get it before

It's submitted to the plagiarism sites Then we'd be good Oh that's true Yeah Yeah I think Elon's fear of AI I might keep them from using the chatbot for the purpose, but who knows? It could be good.

What a weird story. I honestly thought we'd have more insight into what's going on there. I'm going to be honest. Once they got that big green checkmark, Anthony, nobody cares anymore. For sure, but I want to know where do I go to track progress on how they're doing here? Is there a spot I can go? you know why does NASA Space Flight not have a book report cam at all times that it's like the intern writing this report like subscribe to my newsletter and I'll try to write about this for you

the Boca Chica file plugging it the Boca Chica files oh god Oh no I've got YouTube ads give me a second Hold on anytime we get too close to you long you have to get to pivot That's the segment changed moment But it's an Elon story If you were on NSF live with us yesterday

Oh hey Explodes Epically On the test stands This one Yeah I was definitely not around from this one So this

This blew up the launch mount I assume knocked off a bunch of concrete Since everyone's talking about concrete lately So well we just saw Something happened here You want to hear any reactions as well If you were on NSF live with us yesterday Oh hey

Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! I love the reactions as well. Whoa. I think this was the only Starship entry we've got this year, Jake. Yeah, well, it was a pretty quiet year for Starship. They didn't really get a lot done, so.

See also the previous story. I like to just feel the comments like that to see what any else we get too. It's always really fun. That's a fun topic, Miriam. So when you went out on leave with the new child, and then when you got back to work, were you expecting to catch up on more Starship news than there was? Yeah, actually.

I was like sort of surprised. So I had written like a long Google Doc of all of the things that might happen while I went away and like SLS. was on there. Boing's first crew was on there. Like just crazy stuff. Like orbital starship, like maybe. Who knows? Keep an eye out. And like starship, possible orbital flight when I went out on Leap was still like on the table for this year. So yeah, I mean, it was it was funny. I was, you know, I wasn't like under a rock. I was mostly like under a baby. A kid. occasionally looking at Twitter.

So I sort of like wasn't all that surprised that these things hadn't happened by the time I came back. But it was like, I feel like I would be embarrassed to go back and look at that doc and be like, oh, man, it didn't do it right. Yeah, do you remember anything on there that did happen that you were like, oh, wow, look at that. Yeah, I do. Yeah, a couple of J-O-S-T milestones. because those were already like in the works and going to happen while it was away. That was like final deployment, right?

And yeah. Yeah, exactly. And it was like, I think that it got to L2 and then I sort of went on leave. So they started to use the, you know, it was like first photos. Some of the first photos kind of came out, like the engineering photos.

So, yeah. Yeah. I was like nap trapped a lot and looking at Twitter and being like, oh, no new Starship stuff. Interesting. Well, a story you may have seen, but this is pretty early. This was March, so maybe not.

This is a first real strong contender from this category, I'd say. The time that the Russians wore Ukrainian-looking flight suits into the ISS, this is pretty epic. Because this led to the whole, like, you know, is it about Ukraine? Is it not about Ukraine? did they expect to win the war already and this was like a celebratory thing was it actually about their college like was the reasoning given

who cares what it's about it's the Ukrainian colors let's use it for propaganda is kind of where we all landed on this it's a wild wow I haven't actually seen this footage before because yeah this was like when was this was March this was March

early mid-March yeah I'd like pretty much oh yeah it was less than a month after my baby was born. Yeah, this was real early on. Yeah. So, no, I did not see this one. This is really, that's something. So I still have like, okay, I throw away all the conspiracy theories. Like, it doesn't matter whether they planned it or not. I still am fixated on the idea that at some point, as they were like docking the station and getting ready, they made a decision to put them on still. Yes.

Like, that still happened. And that was, that was a decision that made was made in the moment. And so they had all the information. And someone said, it's fine. Let's just put these yellow and blue suits on. It's totally fine. It's good. We're fine.

This won't cause any problems. So like, there's either an incompetence here or a plan, you know? That's all I'm saying. That's all I'm going to say. Did anyone deny that it was like supportive? Like, I'm just like, what was like the public message? for Miss Cosmos about this. It was that they're wearing it for this

college or whatever they went to. This university. Did all of the crew members go here? Or just some of them? I forget. Either two of them or three, they all did. Two or three did, yeah. So that was the thing. It was like, oh, this is to honor their college

essentially. But Jake's right. Like, I don't know. The Soyuz, I don't know if you've seen some pictures of the inside, but getting changed into anything in there is a feat. Like, that takes some work. You got to send the other two probably into the other little hatch, so you have enough room for your arms and legs as you're getting into this fairly tight-fitting suit.

So a defined part of the mission was, let's take 10 minutes and put on these suits together. So I totally agree that, like, maybe the off-nominy here is not the creation of these suits, but the decision to go ahead and continue to wear the suits at the same time. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. now I'm wondering if you know Jake one thing that we missed maybe it's not listworthy but

remember the weird like info wars looking live stream that happened on the Russian side of the station I think we talked about this on the archaeology show I think to find when we had Justin Walsh Oh yeah it was yeah we had Justin on it and he was like going off like all like anthropologically on that picture because there were like all this like

Russian iconography and you can do a whole book report on this picture. Like it was a it was pretty crazy. But yeah. Was that like was that like an assignment to them? A reaction. Since they wore these Ukrainian looking flight suits in that they like had to bend the knee and do like a mother Russia presentation? You may not be wrong.

I've never linked these two until now looking at back. backwards this many months. But it was the same crew. So. Boy, boy. Yeah. Anyway, that's a story.

All right. You're making notes, Miriam? And then on the last guy, okay. What is happening? Can you do FOIA requests to work at the Kremlin? I don't.

I could, I could FOIA, NASA, for emails. God, I love that. She's actually taking notes, it's my go to.

It's just like, who can I, who can I foil? Like, who is the public agency that works? I don't want to give away my secrets, but that's how I'm,

that's what I do. All right, I've got a late, we have the late breaking story, Jake, that you think should be on the list. I do. I do think so.

I do think so. I do think so. So last night, I emptied the glass too It's all leaked and it's gone Oh look at that Well let's talk about it last night The Soyuz Quillan leak

Now I think this doesn't necessarily have the whimsy That is required to make the list this year Except for the one clip that was later in the night And I don't know if I'll be able to find a clip of this in particular But oh here Yeah this one This is the one that I want to show you

so later in the night when we had a different camera angle on this and and the stream started going like you know one of my children or miriam's children holding a garden hose and just spraying it all over the backyard that was the moment i thought this might have what it takes because it's just you know shooting this off like a sprinkler i don't know what so what do we think happened here that's the other part of this just like you're not you're not sure yeah you're not sure this is like bad Russian quality control or or if a Russian micrometeuroid debris hit it so it's like it's like which which possible screw up is it from the Russians on this one and it's a it's like a toss-up yeah whatever it is hope it gets resolved resolved soon because it's bad. Yeah, yeah. That's what I feel like about this.

It doesn't look great. I think they're already saying that the crew is never in danger and the ship is flyable, so I don't know. We'll see. The crew is never in danger thing drives me nuts. Never. Well, it was like, I mean, they said that when, like, the station, like, pinneills at one point. It's like, oh, so they, they,

They weren't, when would they be in danger? Like, if not then. Yeah, even right now, like, they said it's flyable. That's the initial report. We don't actually know if that means with people yet. That's my stance, right? It might be flyable home, but it might not be able to fly home with Frank Rubio and friends inside. So, if that's true.

I'm pretty sure they could have, like, they could have like an aggressor in the space station firing a gun and as long as the bullets missed the astronauts they would say they were never in danger because the bullets were in a different direction. Also, it is already factually incorrect that the crew is never in danger because the Russians are about to go out on a spacewalk

and if this was debris, they were 10 minutes from getting hit with that. Like 10 minutes and 10 feet from getting hit with that. That's extremely close. Yeah. I don't know. I mean, the money line odds that this was caused by someone in Russia,

either the person who built this coolant loop or the person who decided to do the anti-satellite operation last year is very good odds. Yeah, really good odds. That's one of those two. Yeah. It's dark. So dark.

Well, that's a good one. It's pretty dark. Let's move on one. This one was. It was in April. I'm going to say there's a 3% chance that Miriam caught this because this was one of those things that like, you may have because it was just some dumb Twitter shit.

Like this was some dumb Twitter shit. So maybe you did catch this. Nope. Okay. I didn't catch this one. Jake, do you remember any details about this? Okay, so you were still out. This was April.

I first saw this in our Discord. I think one of our fellow propulsion engine discord. I noticed this. It was large, yes, yes. And he was like, look how unsafe this rocket company is and showing this video. And then I think, then Berger found it and wrote a story about it, which I think you're showing right now. And then the company had to respond. And it was like, it was like kind of a wild little couple of days.

And the video is, I don't know how to describe. They take it down. Do we have this also? We have the highest percentage of off nominees that have been taken down by the time we do the show this year. This is awesome. Yeah, so I don't know. I don't know if we have that footage, but I mean, basically they pulled out, they pulled out a rocket on like a little trailer and then just like dumped it full of

very dangerous fuel and kind of like lit it and it blew up. And like you can see them running there like running for their life. I think that's all like hydrazine smoke there, the orange, right? Is that hydrazine? I don't know. But it was. The The infant is not the opportunity here.

Yes, that's what I want to get into. The kicker here is that so the whole thing that Jake said happens, right? Where the people find the video, and Eric Berger finds a video and writes about it. And then they respond to this on their own website. Okay, pithom.com. And that's the response is what the response is.

That's not the off nominee here. The off nominee is the fact that in their own website, They have a photo that says screenshot courtesy Eric Berger, Ars Technica. They gave Eric credit for the screenshot from their own video, which is the funny. That's amazing. That's amazing. Like megging yourself. Oh my God, that's so funny.

Like, we didn't publish this, okay? Eric Berger took this screenshot. It was really good. I bet Eric's is like Chrissium or it's like her to see a yeah it says

I think it oh it just says a Python space video yeah oh no yeah the credit right here on the side is Python space God that's hilarious which is a really

exceedingly dumb name by the way I just it's why isn't it Python I would think an N would be their friend but I don't know because the domain name was available. That's why.

100%. Probably true. Yeah. Totally true. All right, that's a good one. All right. Here's some, here's two with, and this is good. We're making good time here.

We've got two left that are, I think, pack a real punch. All right. Yeah. Okay. Astra, let's fire up this video of the Astra launch. Let me pause it real quick. Hold on. Let me get to the right.

Loren, that was Miko, our main engine cut off. That's the second stage launching right there. Boom. That was bearing separation and stage separation. And you can see that the upper stage Ether engine has lit. I love the cheery tone over top of this, too. This thing is just spinning, okay? Spinning, aggressive.

Such aggressive spinning. Oh, man, and I love that you can still see it. in the front facing video. Let's watch this one more time. Because there goes the upper stage right into the fairings, and then the engine lights. And it Kool-Aid man's out of the faring. That was the first one.

And you can see that the upper stage ether engine has lit. As far as launch trailers go, spectacular. This is a spectacular. This is a great one. This is a great launch failure. If there was a category for best launch failure,

this is, this is the winner. Easy. This might win the best launch failure that of all the launch failures that we've had in the off nominees. I think this is better than the power slide of last year. They beat themselves. I think they beat themselves from last year. Yeah. I think they helped him themselves this year. Poor Astra. R-I-B rocket three. Power slide or a Kool-Aid man? I like the Kool-Aid man. This one tickled me really. Like The delay because it gets caught in the fairing. So you're like, well, what's going to happen now? and then it, boom, it explodes and you can see it spinning. So good.

Oh, great. Just good. It's solid, really solid. It gets, like, the bonus points for the cameras pretty much working really well through all that. Like, a lot of times when something goes on to lose the camera fees. Or they cut away. Yeah, we got all that.

I respect it. I respect that so much. I'm like, if you're going to put cameras on your rocket, if you're going to have a launch webcast, you're going to show us the, failure and I want to see every minute of it if it messes up. It's like this is the deal, the contract that you have when you decide to show us your cool rocket launch. If it fails, I get to watch all of it too. That's the way it works. Astra has a exquisite sense too for keeping up the webcast. If you remember from the power slide webcast, the first thing they said

after the power slide was next up is Max Q was the thing that they said like whatever it'll be a little bit late but we'll make it to Max Q and this was and that was fairing separation and it certainly was but it wasn't because of why you think it was

I love that it's so good the positive spin I also respect that I respect that too Astra doing its thing all right let me get through one more YouTube ad

for another classic Russian moment on the space station. Just yeah, just witness this one. This is a class. This one's going to be a contender. This is going to be a contender. Okay, just let me get my bearings.

Narrator, he didn't. He didn't. This is wild how they do. I'm like how to rise the tether I love the narration too it's amazing so much

there comes there we go we see the previous we see the previous satellite and one two three off it goes now it comes

rotation time over the border between Mali and Algeria the seventh of the ten nanosetal now in flight. One passes close to the solar array. Oh, we touched it another time. That's the last contact.

So he throws a cube set into the solar right, but just listen to this part of the conversation. Listen to this part of the conversation. This is the kicker. Because they're trying to figure out what to do with this, right? Okay, Oleg, then the next satellite needs to be... Okay, Oleg, then the next satellite needs to be... It needs to be sent at a somewhat different trajectory. Right. It's just that I think it is okay.

Mild and the second contact was in the frame. We copy that alert. But nonetheless, make sure they're conducting them. That's the part. But nonetheless, please don't do that again. But nonetheless. Oh my God. So yeah, if you're not watching,

Oleg Artemiav threw a cube set into the ISS Solar Array on a space. Yeah, that happened. The commentary was what makes us, though. It's like, I was trying to do it better. I understand. But at this time, actually be better. You got to wonder, is this the moment when they stop. Throwing Cube sets.

No, God, I hope not. I hope not. No, because they can't afford a proper supplier, though. Like, what are they going to do, build an airlock? Come on. See, I just, I love, I love a Russian spacewalk. Like, you never, you never know what's going to happen on a Russian spacewalk. Because, like, you, they are absolutely going to throw something off.

of the space station. Like, it is going to just, like, it's going to be like anything. Like, they're going to be like, oh, this bag, like, blah. Like, just toss it out and away. Like, and usually there's, like, a ton of buildup to that moment, so it's always great. Or, you know, someone's going to, like, pull out a knife. An actual knife. An actual knife.

And start, like, dabbing, like, the insulation on a soyas. Like, I... One of my favorite things about being a space reporter was, like, realizing how great a Russian spacewalk was. Like, the pure, beautiful chaos of a Russian spacewalk is, like, a lot of why I'm in the game still today. Oh, God, I'm crying.

All right, the reason that I'm going to vouch for this being the winner of not only this category, but of the entire year, is that this is a near identical conversation that we had with Marina three years ago after the daggering of Soyuz when she said she enjoys Russian spacewalks because they joke the whole time. And I can't imagine this transcript

would happen on a U.S. side spacewalk where they're like, all right, Toma, please throw the CubeSat differently next time. He's like, I don't know, I thought I did all right with that one. Like, that went pretty good. It went right where the other one went. I love that.

It's like, I know it. Yeah. No, yeah. It's the solar panel, but like, it's, it looks fine. It looks fine. They're not grading them anyway. Oh, my God. They don't even use these ones anymore.

I love the Marina and I both have the answer. That makes me really happy. Marina is one of my favorite people. So that's a delight. So what do we say? Non-S-category. What are you thinking? Oh, like your time?

Yeah, I think it's a clear winner. Clear winner. Yeah. And what are we thinking? He's the overall. He beats Tom Whitmire. Clear winner. All right.

Listen, the second Oleg to win an off nominee, by the way. Well, doesn't he get bonus points because he was involved in like two of the other stories as well. Like, isn't that? Very true. That's a great point. Yeah. You like a word of news personally?

Well, Oleg gets this one, I think. Yeah. Oleg, Conanenko won 2018 and Olegra Temyev wins 2022, so congratulations. We got to start making awards and actually mail them to these people. That would be awesome.

Maybe just like what certificate that you used to get from like elementary school. That's what I'm thinking. With macaroni on the outside? Yeah. All right. Miriam, what you've been up to lately other than the kid's stuff and the sickness that we talked about?

Yeah, no, I've just been writing the Axiospace newsletter each week and reading The Hobbit at the moment, which is a true delight. I haven't read it since I was a kid and it holds up. It's an incredible journey.

It is. It's an incredible journey. It's wonderful. And then the only other plug I have is that I've been watching Andor and it has made me like Star Wars, which is new for me.

That's a huge endorsement. Wow. I still got a lot of I'm a big time. Exactly. I'm a big truck fan. I'm a truck person.

So, you know, you give me a Star Wars that looks like a Star Trek. I'm going to be happy. So I'm learning about it. We're supposed to ask you about 2001 of Space Odyssey.

Marina told us to do that after she was on last week. Because we talked to her about that movie. And we roasted it pretty good. But we hear that you're a stand, a 2001. one stand. Oh, I'm not. I wouldn't say I'm a stand. I just see the, I see the art in it. And I like, I like that. I like a big swing. And it was a big swing. Marina's all business. She wants plot. Doesn't want any of this already stuff. So it's like I respect that. I do. But you know,

it's like the monolith's pretty cool. Like, yeah. I have, I'm watching. Comedic spacewalks. So. I mean, if you like spacewalks where they throw things, boy, would you love 2001 a space Odyssey. God, that's what it is. It all comes back to that for me. It's just, I want a spacewalk where you drove things. Jake, what you got?

What do I got? Oh, I just put out an episode this week with Eric Berger. So we talked about Artemis looking ahead. So finally, finally, finally. We don't have to talk about Artemis 1 anymore. And so we sort of reveled in that and looked ahead to two and three and four and beyond. And, you know, what's the story? And there are some fun moments in there.

So I think it's a good scene setter for what our content's going to be on the Artemis program coming up. Oh. Yeah. I love it. That's great. Yeah. Jake, I fulfilled one of your wishes today. Oh?

What's that? I ruminated on the National Security Space Launch phase three contract. round. Oh. So, yeah. I talked about the very topical thing that you're really interested in, Jake, which is military acquisitions. The satellites launches the whole nine yards.

Yeah, there it is. It's on the Miko feed. Basically, I think they should do it like clips, and clips sucks at it for a different reason than this would be good at it. That's the TLDR. Okay. There it is. You don't have to listen anymore.

I'm excited to listen. So. let's see we'll be back in a couple weeks right yeah we're taking two weeks off of Christmas right so we'll be back in three three Thursdays January 5th Lauren Grush will be on to do some predictions yeah that's the other that's the other good episode of the year predictions see where we're at see how wrong we'll be I love I love that you guys are getting like Marina me

And then Lauren, like, it's a powerful lineup for the turn of the year. Power trio, yeah. We need to bring in the big guns for these important episodes. Exactly right. Well, thanks again for hanging out, Miriam. Now I'm like Marina because you put Marmina in my head. Much like probably you've been confused like that on every NASA call ever at some point. Yeah, but the funniest thing has been when PR people will email me and say,

hi Marina and I'm like I know who you emailed before me the other MK yeah exactly all right everybody see you later see you next year that comment that everyone always does see next year

congrats Oleg thanks for having you're the best one two three four five five four three to one in the best