Off-Nominal - 89 - The Final Year

Episode Date: January 6, 2023

Jake and Anthony are joined by Loren Grush of Bloomberg to talk about and predict what’s to come in space this year.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 89 - The Final Year (with Loren Grush) - YouTubeOff-Nominal Happy Hour - Dec 30, 2021 (with Jeff Foust) - YouTubeFollow LorenLoren Grush (@lorengrush) / TwitterLoren Grush - BloombergFollow 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. My friends, welcome to 2023. We made it. Lauren said for the show, the final year, which is extremely ominous. So welcome back on that note, Lauren Grush. Yeah, sorry, that wasn't my joke. I sold it on Twitter somewhere. But I've always joked, you know, if it's going to be, if we're going to be at the apocalypse,

at least there's some comfort knowing we aren't going to miss out on anything after it, you know? Like you've seen all there is So that is The ultimate FOMO avoidance Yeah, exactly. So now we know you have serious FOMO generally. It's like when you get to the end of 2001

Space Odyssey and at least there's no more 2001 Space Odyssey after, right? Exactly. Wow. I mean, aren't you kind of jealous? I mean, that is why there is all of this, you know, urgency. I think a lot of people when they want to see us go to Mars

or they want us to see all these great things in space. It's like, you're going to be a little jealous if that happens after you die. You know, other people get to experience it and not you. I think it's a little, it's a little fomo, you know? They want to see it while they're here. That's incredible. Sorry, starting off on extremely dark now. We're glad to have you.

I'm desperately looking for a prop that I had, Jake. I think I may have discovered it. So I thought maybe we could just start off by discussing a little bit of what we did on our winter break since we had a nice two-week break. Okay. So did you have anything of note? I had family came down to Mexico to visit. So that was really nice to get to do a little bit of touristy stuff. But I was busy, man.

We're driving around. I'm so tired of driving. I'm definitely happy to be sitting in this chair and not going places right now. So it was a great, great holiday, but I'm excited to be back. Well, I took a nice trip out west. I went to Vegas and Death Valley. And it's been a recurring theme of my national park reviews on this show. So I thought it might be good to just check in real quick.

Death Valley is incredible. If anyone out there is like, I should go to Death Valley, you should go to Death Valley. If anyone out there is like, I shouldn't, you should definitely go to Death Valley. Incredible place. Wonderful National Park. Bizarre landscape. Also is Tatouine. Like, it's amazing.

wonderful spot now if you have ever been to death valley you may have driven from las Vegas two hours to death valley about an hour into the drive you get to this spot outside of perump Nevada okay perump so that's a place name that you have I might be saying it wrong but that's that's the name there's some interesting factoid about perump if you go Google it it's a weirdly big town in the middle of nowhere and So I have a short video snippet from our drive out there that I would just like to play real quick. Okay.

Like I said, about an hour. It's kind of hard to see in this video, but what I want you to realize, and you might hear some narration, I don't know if my audio will work. But literally every single piece of green that you can see in this video, except for these roadside shrubs, are Joshua trees. Okay? 100% Joshua trees. Miles. Miles of Joshua trees. Huge Joshua trees. So you can imagine my, I felt trolled by the earth. Lauren, I don't know if you know about this, but I was incredibly disappointed by Joshua Tree National Park.

It is not a good national park compared to all the other ones. And it has made even worse that you can drive an hour from Las Vegas and see more Joshua trees than are in Joshua Tree National Park in the middle of nowhere. So now I feel even more robbed of my time having gone to Joshua Tree National Park that had generally disappointing nature. And so, you know, there you have it. I just wanted to bring a little evidence here that there's way more Joshua Trees than Joshua Tree National Park would have you believe elsewhere. Wow, false advertising. Terrible. Yeah.

That's some on the ground reporting for you, Jake. Okay. I've actually never been to Joshua Tree and I've always wanted to go. So now I'm thankful to you for steering me in the right direction. It's fine. It's not terrible. It's fine. But it doesn't live up to the hype. That's all. It's so hyped. It's such a hyped place. Which hype is on the menu for today, Jake. Yes, it is. Great transition. I'm just our drinks, though. What do you drink? We did. We did these drinks. Okay. So I have, I'm clearing out old holidays stuff we had in the fridge that we bought before we were here. So I don't know what this is. I don't remember buying this, but this is Ron Mojito. Ron Mojito. It's not even a mojito. It's just by a man named Ron Mojito.

Oh, that's rum in Spanish. So this is the rum mojito. But this is my favorite part. It's El Sabo de Cuba, right? The flavor of Cuba. In New Mexico. Yeah. That's how it's getting done today. That's amazing. I'm not being a mojito in a can. That is awesome. I am putting it in a glass though just because I can't, I can't do the whole. Have you had this? Yeah. So, cheers. Well, at least you know it.

Hmm. All right. I was going to say, at least you haven't subjected some poor bartender into making it, because I know that mojitos is notoriously hard to make for bartenders. That's good. This is very sweet. Very sweet. Yeah, because they have to mold or the, you know, there's so many ingredients and processes to it.

That's why I always have bartenders to make it. I'm not doing that. Sorry, but hopefully. You mold the, what is it, cilantro or whatever? What's in it? Mint? Yeah. Mint.

Mint. Dude, not cilantro. That'd be really weird. It's terrible. Hence why I've never made it, Mojito. This is, it's bringing back memories of the last one we had with, uh, uh. Starlink is eating your punchline. When I had the, oh, man.

It tastes like mouthwatch. Like the cool stuff I made the other episode. Oh, yeah. That was terrible. That was horrible. Well, Lauren, do you have something? better than that one better i think i don't so i realized you know 30 minutes before i hopped on that i'm doing dry january and so i have a non-alcoholic beverage i think i was drinking tea the last time i

was here because i was with miriam and i was sick fun fact i found out i had covid after that so that was i did a whole show with you guys uh having covid so go back and replay that and see how old strange I look. But anyway, I don't have COVID now as far as I'm aware, but I'm drinking organic chai, which is very exciting. I have a cool glass mug situation. Exactly. I'm also clearing out my fridge, Jake. There's one more of these monkey, Merry monkeys left in my fridge and I thought, if I don't drink this now, it will never be drank because you can't be that far away from Christmas and have a Christmas beer.

No, you got to get rid of it. This is the last moment possible to drink this thing. So once again, we'll go into the predictions with 10% alcohol. Okay. My predictions may be suspect. So we're doing some predictions. Last year we did this with Jeff Faust. We did a categorized prediction show, right? Where we just cruised through a series of categories.

I thought we might want to recap some highlights to see if we did it all right. So maybe I'll pick the fun ones out of here. Are you just going to pick the ones where you were right and I was really wrong? Is that what you're going to do? Fortunately, I could just go like this and I feel like I know. Oh, yeah. Here we go. Here we go.

Okay. So, you know, you know, sage as he is, Jeff Fouse thought that there would be a commercial space flight from Virgin Galactic last year. I said, no flights. Wow. There were none. Jake refused to take a position on this one as far as I know. So there it is.

And what remind me, remind me, what had the latest announcement been a year? ago because I know they kept pushing back with each of their earning calls. So do you remember what the prediction was in January? It was that they were undergoing their maintenance period and they would have a test flight and then the flight with the Italian Air Force at the end of the year. Okay. So there was still some hope. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And I talked about a schedule that really kind of fell apart because they like rushed, they rushed out and beat new, you know, beat blue or origin. That was like two years ago. That's been the last thing.

Oh my God. Yeah. That was it. For 2021. Oh, my God. Okay. Yeah. Okay.

We're going on. We are. Let's see. We were all optimistic about New Shepherd. Jake said there would be at least seven flights. There were three and then a little bit of one. So that's not great. Yeah.

That's your responsibility, Jay. Yeah. I thought that Axiom would finally announce some professional astronaut customers, and I guessed that the UAE would be their customer. And in fact, in April, the UAE was their customers. So that one didn't even take long to come true. Actually, Lauren, there's one that didn't get resolved yet that we would like your take on. We put an over-under at 33% for the Rotten Tomato meter for the Russian movie The Challenge. And we would like to know if you would think it would be, we all took the under, 33%. You under. Okay. I, I,

saw the trailer and I was impressed. So I think maybe, well, did you see the trailer? It was actually quite well shot, you know, great acting from the cosmonaut. He just had to sit there, you know. It was, he did a wonderful job. Less work than was in Richard Garriott's movie in which he made them actually act. I think they learned their lesson, like don't actually give them dialogue and you'll be fine. But no, it looked great. It looks like a movie. It looks like a movie. You know, I think there's something to be said about that. So I'm going to go over, but not by like, I'm not talking like 50% here, maybe like 40. It's just an over under, which is the beauty.

You could be, you could be 34 and you're a good shape. So I'm putting you down here. I'm putting you down. Okay. All right. I mean, optimistic. I'm in a good mood this year. I feel good about this year, yeah.

Feeling good about the final year. Yeah. The final year. You know, if it's going to be our last year, like, let's have, let's do it. Go on with a bang. Just be happy, yeah. Love it. A couple other fun ones we had.

I was concerned that Dart was going to go straight through dimorphous and not really explode just because of how squishy all asteroids to that point have felt. And based on the debris trail, I feel like I wasn't as far off as you were laughing at me being at the time. I feel like that thing went pretty far in. So. I've been. Half credit. It worked way better than they thought.

Does that count? I don't know. What kind of root? brick is this. This is unbelievable. All right, fine. Let's go to the next one. Clips. We, Jake said one Clips mission would fly. Jeff thought two would launch

and one would land and I said none would fly. Once again. You did well there. You did well there. Great. Do we give iSpace honorary clips status though since they're pretty much doing? That's actually. I think I get a half point for that. Yeah. You know what? Fine. I'll let that one go.

Artemis 1. I thought we'd be sweating it out in August, so that was almost right. Jeff said late spring, as did Jake. Jake said May. And Lauren, gosh, I believe, had a prediction about Artemis I. Well, obviously, I don't have it publicly recorded somewhere, so you just have to take my word for it. But a few of us did place bets on which month it would actually launch. And after, I remember at three in the morning or whatever ungodly time, I was back in the press.

And I was like, wait, didn't place bets on this? And I looked up the spreadsheet and it said I had November of 2022. And I was like, oh my God, I did it. I finally got something right, like a time schedule right. So I was very proud of myself. But like I said, there's no public recording. So you can think I'm lying. But I swear it's true.

I'm giving you full credit. One thing I got. Thank you. And I don't think we really had any other fun ones. No, no. We watched the start. Starship won all of us. Oh, gosh, yeah.

Yeah. Did you make a Starliner prediction? Shockingly, no. I don't think we talked about Starliner at all. It was not on our radar whatsoever. There's nothing you predicted for last year. I rewatch the show and it didn't come up at all. Wow.

Yeah. So there we are. So, all right. Again, the way we did this last year, we had some categories. We went through them and we randomly threw out predictions on anything that you may have a feeling on, so there's no pressure to make predictions, Lauren, but since you are a space profit, you might want to, I'm going to write them all down. Just one. So, just be aware. We'll do this in a fun order. Do you want to pick a category, Lauren? We got Artemis, launch

vehicles, orbital, suborbital clips. Anything fun? Let's do, okay, I think we should do the launch vehicles first, because I noticed a lot of those things rely on Vulcan. And so I think that that will kind of dictate the rest of those categories. All right. What you got? Fulken. Is it happening? I think it's happening.

I think what it said. It was supposed to be Q1 of this year is the latest prediction. I think they stole the schedule for next week if you ask them. Yeah. Sorry to Tori, but I think they just got the engines last year. I mean, towards the end of last year. I think it's going to take a little longer to integrate them. than, you know, one quarter.

So I would say, yeah, I would say, fall, I'd say Q3, optimistically. Wow, I love that, writing that one down. But also because I know that just the stuff takes time and they need to be reliable. They're the most reliable. Well, I don't know how they compare to SpaceX at this point, but, you know, they have a pretty great track record.

I think they want to maintain it. And so they need to do the necessary testing and integration work. Start off strong. I love this, Jake. I'm going to stand. So I went out to Astrobotic in October. I forget when I was there. And I was picking up May vibes at the time.

So I'm going to just stick with it and say May is what it's happening. Okay. I'll split the difference then and I'll say summer. How's that? Summer. Yeah. A month, a season, and a quarter. Well, like, you know, cultural or scientific summer.

You know, if it happens after Memorial Day, are you in? Is that summer? It depends on how that works out for me. Is school out? Yeah, like, okay, sure. Meteorological summer, calendar summer. When people are in school, I don't know. Cosmic summer.

Cosmic summer. Mars summer. Summer in Australia. I'm writing down northern hemisphere. Summer. Northern Hemisphere summer. Yeah. Okay.

All right. I'll let you, I'll let you put that. And I'll look up the school year in Florida to know when it runs. Yeah. So. No, I think Lauren's right.

There's lots to do on that and they're not going to rush it. They might rush a little bit, but they're not going to rush too bad. We were just talking about this in the Discord today. Like Vulcan, man, and the B-4s, there's a lot riding on that rocket. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Like, the whole. market is looking at that right now, right? It's wild. And it's like, the launch industry is in a

position to root for it. I mean, obviously, no one's not rooting for it, but, you know, there is all this emphasis lately on the fact that SpaceX is kind of the sole launch provider in the U.S. right now. And so, you know, it behooves us to have multiple launch providers. So they really do need this to go well because ULA's out of commission. You know, that's a huge, that's puts all the pressure on SpaceX and as much as the SpaceX fans would want, you know, it's, it's better for everybody if there's multiple, you know, if there's multiple redundancy. It's the, uh, it's all Ohio meme, but it's like, it's all a monopoly. It always has been. It's like that's where we're at the moment, you know? I haven't even, like, whenever SpaceX has won a science mission in the last

like six months, I haven't even mentioned it on the headline show that I do because I'm like, well, obviously, who else is winning these things? Like, no one else is in the market at the moment. So that's a bummer. How are you feeling about the other big ones that are supposed to launch with the first time this year? We got, well, let's hold off on Starship, right? Yeah, the one everyone's waiting for. At the moment is slated to be Q4.

No, no one thinks that's happening. I don't think that's happening. New Glenn is currently still slated for Q4, 2023. No. No, none of us are. I have a question for you on that one, related to Vulcan, though. Is the demand for BE4 is now, because of Vulcan, who now has the biggest customer in the world, the U.S. government,

and the biggest commercial launch contract in the world through Kuiper, is the demand for B.E4 is enough that New Glenn actually is later because they're going to be putting every possible resource into getting the engine production line going. Yeah, I mean, Amazon themselves have bought 78 BE4s. Yeah. Right? It was 39. I think their production line is good.

It's set for a while. that's a great question yeah it makes getting that stage back even mean more for new glenn because it's like if we'll lose this thing like we're not launching for two years yeah it's you got a

I think it's definitely helpful though for getting New Glenn up and running because they'll have all this data coming in soon about the engine and performance so I don't know we'll see no but that one this is a silly reason

but like they're not I haven't seen any any pictures. Like, you know, there's no, they're not tweeting anything. So until they start tweeting and kind of, you know, hyping things up, that's kind of how I see. That's when I, I take notice of that for sure. Totally. That's, it is the easiest rule. Like, if you have a picture of hardware, you are posting that picture of hardware. You're never not posting pictures of hardware if you have hardware to show. And even if you're Moot Express and you just have pictures of mockups, you're just tweeting them all the time. So, you know, yeah, anyway, uh, all right,

Let's keep it big. Starship. What's everyone's current vibe on this? This is much trickier than last year. Last year we were optimistic. We thought we were believing the hype that it was going to launch. You and Jeff, Jake, were pretty optimistic about the environmental review. I wasn't so much optimistic. So this year, though, I feel like everyone's a little more pessimistic.

How do you feel about how the environmental review turned out? Do you think that was ultimately a win? It was totally a win. It was even the way it was position. And I forget the exact wording, but the FAA was like, the press release they put out was like, FAA approves SpaceX thing with 78 mitigations. It was written in a way that was like, but when you let them off the hook, right? But when you read the mitigations.

It's also unclear though, like how do we track progress to that, right? I specifically ask the FAA. Or is it they just have to be working on it? Yeah, I know. I specifically asked the FAA and they said they're looking, they're like, in communication with SpaceX about it. So I guess it's kind of like we just have to, you know, trust. So you know what it is?

We haven't seen anyone down in the Bocca area posting selfies at the Wildlife Viewing Station. So maybe we should just keep an eye out for that. Yeah, absolutely. I will go find that wildlife viewing. Let's take a trip. Well, I'll take a trip. We'll go find this. Does NASA Space Flight have a webcam for the wildlife viewing platform?

A wildlife viewing platform? We got a lot of watching. We need that. I think the FAA launch license is equally as important and is not getting as much, you know, attention as I think it deserves. And so I don't think that one's just going to come tomorrow either. You know, I think that will also be reliant on these mitigation measures. So what are the, okay, what are the milestones that we're looking toward in terms of a launch being imminent? Maybe with the hardware being ready, let's forget about the regulatory stuff.

I think we have a number of wet dress rehearsals and then we, well, first we need the 33-inch static fire. I think that one is going to be when I start kind of perking up and paying attention, but I have no idea when that's going to be. It's that and then it's fully fueling, right? Because they have never fueled more than a little bit relative to how much fuel they're going to have to put into this thing for launch. And I think they'll do a bunch of those 33 static fires.

Like I'm not going to do one. and then just be, okay, we're good. That's true, too, yeah. Right. And same with the wet dress rehearsal. I think there'll be multiples of those. You got to do five to six, right? Just based on history.

Yeah. Requirement. And go through all the way through terminal count. Yeah. Go all the way through terminal count. Don't stop. Don't stop at 29 seconds, SpaceX. Go all the way.

How about this? Don't invite the press until you've gone through terminal count. Not that you're bitter. I know. We don't matter. I get it. But, you know, spare me a trip, I guess. All right.

Nobody sounds very optimistic is all I'm saying. I've been thinking about this for like. Yeah. Well, but Starship. Just Starship and its schedule at the moment. Oh, I just. I can't. Oh, I'm just saying, I have no idea.

I've absolutely no idea when it's going to go. I've been like thinking about this. all year because like I in our discord we do these predictions things through a little bot thing that we have and and I was like perennially like every year I would just like uh starship is not going to fly this year and I would predict that and then everyone would be like no it's going to fly and then I get a bunch of points because like it's true every time um but last year I chicken out a little bit and I only did six months and then I did another six month one so now I'm like trying to side am I sticking with the six month one or like am I am I going to roll back and do a whole year again? Ooh I don't know I think it's

somewhere in there. I think it's somewhere between six and 12 months. I just can't quite put my finger on it. I'm saying August. That makes me happy. I will say I've booked a vacation and I'm not going to tell you when because I don't want to put that out there. So there is some risk. It does feel like it could be around then. But August feels great. My vacation is not in August. So I will keep that month clear. All right. Okay. No one else wants to take a bet.

That's fine. That's fine. I'll just be out of here. Yeah, no, I'll take. I'll take July because that's my birthday and it's super hot. And so it'll be the most uncomfortable. Super uncomfortable. Yeah.

Travel will be more expensive. Yes, absolutely. Great. Okay, I'll go on for September then. Nice. I love it. All right. Well, that rounds us out.

on the big ones. So if anyone cares about the small launchers, there's a couple of things happening this year. This is all you. I have no opinion on you. We've got like ABL and relativity imminently launching their first vehicles. ABL, we haven't heard from them in a minute ever since they said the window would open on the night. So that's another one where I'm like, maybe, maybe not. Here's why I feel good about it though. Of all the small launch companies, maybe this wasn't maybe I'm just thinking of like Astra and a couple others but like a lot of them have had issues with their vehicle before the first launch in which they've blown up a vehicle and ABL already did that with a second stage like a year and a half ago so I feel like they got through their pre first launch explosion and all these issues they had last year they didn't blow it up and I feel that's a good sign so I feel kind of awful I feel like they might actually fly this thing Yeah. Yeah, I do find it interesting that they aren't live streaming either.

So I think that they're being cautiously optimistic, I guess, which is a good sign. They're meaning on Alaska as the excuse for that, though. Oh, right, right, right. I'm just going to say it, I'm going to say, ABL is, of all the small launch companies, the least hyped, right? They've been very quiet, least hyped. So I'm going to say, of all the companies, they're going to be the one to nail orbit on their first launch. Whoa. I'm just going out there.

Okay. I'm going for it. And it will have to... I have zero evidence. Yeah. I have zero things to back it up on either side, so I go with... I'll believe you. Nice.

All right. Relativities will not work on the first launch. I'm not with you on that one. Where does it fall apart, Jake? Over under, over under. Issue before or after Max Q? Over under Max Q? Oh, that's a great. That's a great question. I'm going to say under before.

I think they'll do it. I'm going to be optimistic. Nice. I'll be optimistic. I know they are very hyped, but, you know, they're close and they've been doing a ton of testing. So, you know, why not? I'm going to just take after Max Q to keep the bet, the betting lines even. All right. Rocket Lab flying from Virginia soon. Nothing real. I mean, I guess the recovery and relaunch could be a thing that people care about with that one. Yeah, I need them to catch a rocket and not drop it. Well, that happened this year. Does anyone think this? Are you thinking to stick close?

I think that will happen. Yeah. I think that will happen this year. Should I always be paying attention to that? Probably, yeah. Let me expand upon my question. So after neutron was announced, I'm starting to think like the electron recovery and stuff is not really like a play to make electron a better rocket. It's just like a playground for reusability. And it's all good feeding forward to neutron.

And it's not really that impactful to the electron as a vehicle. Is that a take? Is that a take this worth listening to or throwing out? I kind of buy that. It feels a little like, let's throw some parachutes on Falcon 1 to see what happens. Right? It does kind of have that vibe. Well, I think it'll be interesting to see, you know, if there is a real impact because now Rocket Lab is a public company.

And, you know, one of the big questions with Falcon 9 is, you know, SpaceX says that it is, you know, saving the money by doing all this reusability. But we don't really know the intricacies of it. So it would be nice to actually see the numbers play. out, you know, when you actually reuse a rocket. And I know Rocket Lab and SpaceX are very different, but, you know, only it's saving those engines, right? That's the biggest part of the whole process. So, it'll be interesting to see the numbers when you have to report them to people. Man, I had a straight thought as you were talking about how they're a public company that I don't know if I'm willing to say that this is the thing that I would bet happens this year.

I had a straight thought that Lockheed would take them private in an acquisition and that that would be a huge piece because Lockheed's done well lately so you know that's good

valuations are down right now because the economy and also space stocks are very poor they have a strategic investment in Rocket Lab already they no longer have a viable launch vehicle in the market

because Atlas 5 is all tapped out they didn't get the urge at Rocket Dine acquisition, right? Now that's over to L3 Harris. I kind of feel like it maybe is not the worst bet I could make that Lockheed takes Rocket Lab private. I just, I don't know. Wow. Screw it.

I'm saying it happens this year. Okay. I love it. 10% alcohol and Rocket Labs go to private. I think we should also. We're going to be doing basis predictions. also will this be the year that we see a delisting of one of the newly public space companies better than better i'm gonna one up that over under 1.5 d listings because astra's on the way there

already so who else is getting delisted i know that's not fair i'm i we already know there is one on its way so who else who's the next most likely to be delisted i haven't checked in on the prices lately. Virgin Galactic? I had a weird thought the other day that Virgin Orbit and Virgin Galactic would get back together because things are in a bad state. Yeah, I don't know about that.

I think it's easier than anything is possible. I don't want to make a prediction. I'm not going to predict on this one, just because I feel like as a Bloomberg reporter, I should not. That's true. But I feel Virgin's not there yet. Yeah, I don't think Virgin's there yet.

No, they're like three and a half bucks still. So, hmm, hmm, hmm. I don't get the stock de-listened. Oh, don't buy. I don't get the stock de-listen thing because like if it's like below a dollar, can't you just do a, what's the opposite of a stock split? Like a stock consolidation? Emerge.

You're just double the price and have. Yeah, like you just half the amount of stocks that are out there. and or is that? Can you do that though? Is there some sort of minimum? I don't know if you can do that. I don't know. Of the three of us,

we are not the experts that should be weighing in on this. No, but I should be. I don't know. Yeah. This is also part of my business. I'm 2023. I know.

I know. Well, I work with people who know this, you know, much better than I do. So this is, this is part of my learning and education. This will be to get more to the finance side of things. Okay, good. All right, I think we've rounded out launch.

We all say recovery is happening this year for Rocket Lab. Is that a true fact? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm saying that they're getting taken private by Lockheed Martin at some point. So, that's fun. Congrats.

Peter Beckett as you're listening. Yeah. But she may be. I don't know. Let me know. Just tip me off if I'm on the right track here. All right, Artemis. Anyone for some Artemis chat?

There's really only two things. Let's do it, yeah. We've got Artemis 2's crew that should be announced this year, and we have a sustaining lunar development award to be awarded. I think Artemis crew announcement is imminent because NASA will probably want to capitalize on recent success. Yeah. And, yeah, because there isn't, I mean, what else is there going on this year? I mean, that, well, I guess that's another.

reason to maybe like wait till the middle of the year to kind of keep things going. But they got a sustaining lunar development award is like May or June or something. And core stage arrival too. Core stage arrival. It's pretty good. Yeah. The next rocket's going to be. So I'm thinking this could be like a spring thing.

Yeah. Yeah. I think. And what is the current NET for Artemis 2? It's spring of 2024. I think there's still in the books for May. or November or something. I think they're in the books.

I think they're in the books for something really optimistic, but it's definitely not going to happen. Yeah. But usually you announce a crew about a year ahead of time. So I think it would be in the next few months for sure. Yeah, I think they're on the books for May, but you do the Eric Burger Math of the avionics boxes, like it takes this many months from Splashdown to put it in.

And so then you do the math. It's like November, which means that other delays are going to put it, you know. But so, yeah, I think, I think it's, I think it's imminent. I think they can get away with it because here's a thing. You announce the astronauts, that's press. But then you get to follow their training the entire time after that. So it's continuous press, right? Exactly.

You can do that all year long. You can just keep going, man. It's going to be a hundred percent. All right. So the fun part, do you have any names in mind? Ooh. Well, so these, okay, not. to say it's not going to be a complete honor for them to do this, but these are the astronauts who

get to go around the moon, but not land on the moon. So they're going to be like an interesting. A little salty about it. Oh, I don't want to say that. I don't want to say B team, but it's like, it's, you know, it's like the astronauts before Apollo 11th, you know, it's the Apollitan situation. Yeah, Apollitan situation. Yeah. So, well, hey, the Apollo 8 through had Jim level on it. So I'm not going to say that that's like a, that's not a B-Team astronaut right there. For sure. Yeah. So I mean, okay, so they probably will have the chance to fly later because they'll have, you know, the experience.

I don't want to make, I don't know, I don't want to make any guesses for a few weeks. Pick one name you think. Pick one name you think is likely to the whole thing. You don't have to announce the whole crew. What about Kate Rubens? I think she would make a good, because she's been up twice to ISS, right? So she's very, you know, experienced for the core. Yeah, I would go, I think Kate Rubens would make a good one for sure.

She was high on my list. Yeah. She was high up there. Because here's my thinking behind this is that we needed to have people in mind for this mission that didn't have flight assignments coming up in the mid-2020s already, right? even when they were planning this, maybe even the early 2020s. They need to be back on Earth by 2020, 2021-ish to be able to get into flow for training on any schedule that the Artemis program ever had for Artemis 2. So she got back in 2021 from her most recent expedition.

So I think that might be a little close just in terms of like preparation time. If things were going well, they might have been a little tight. Yeah. But I still like. And here's the other aspect of the thing. her though she's very scientist scientist scientist scientistic yeah she is very scientific she's like she was like oh I'm going up the

ISS getting hard over there Scientisty she's really scientisty She went up to the ISS and was like publicized purely for like I'm going up to sequence DNA I'm doing all these awesome biology things And I'm wondering if they would save those very sciencey people for two and three and beyond that's my one concern with her

I think another one to look out for is definitely Jessica Muir um Jessica Mir and Christina Cook I think they would also make really good are any three of them committed for the foreseeable future

nope I think you're Jessica Mir and Christina Cook are great candidates for Artemis 3 though yeah well then I'm also thinking Jessica Watkins and Victor Glover as well. But I think they're also great candidates for three. So that's the thing.

It's like, this is such a weird one to cast because it's like. Here's, I got it, though. I think I nailed it. And Jake's only picked the Canadians. So let's just round out the Americans here real quick. Here's where my Venn diagram is for this. People that have not flown for a while are still in the core. And presumably this would be their last mission.

That was my criteria. So I've got Reid Wiseman is currently the chief of the astronaut office which I find I find compelling. Most recently returned Earth in November 2014. It's been a while. I'm putting him on watch. But my actual bet is Randy Bresnik,

who has not flown since 2017, has been at a lot of media events around Artemis. and is currently 55. So, you know, could be his last mission. So I'm betting Randy Bresnick. His nickname's also Conrad, which is funny. Yes, that will factor into the decision for sure. Who's got the best nickname?

So I'm putting Randy Bresnick, number one, Reed Wiseman backup prediction crew. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, so there's one Canadian on Artemis 2 as per whatever agreements made. So my guess is it's going to be, now I'm blank, Jeremy Hansen, Jeremy Hanson, I think he's the one for that. So we only have four astronauts on our core, right? So it's like, I got a 25% chance here.

But so it's two groups. So there's, because there's David Saint-Jacques and Jeremy Hansen, which were selected in 2009. Like, these are, this is a while ago that these astronauts joined.

And David's been to the station, but Jeremy has not flown at all. So 13 years in the core, no flights. I looked at his Twitter this morning. I went back through 2021 to see what he's tweeting about. And it was like some Canadian space agency,

James Webb stuff at the beginning of the year. He popped in to be like, cool, Axiom flight. And then starting August, it was all Artemis all the time. It was just like Artemis, Artemis, Artemis. And there was all these pictures of, you know, like the astronaut core in front of the launch pad. And it's just like the whole Artemis American Corps.

And then Jeremy Hansen standing in the back like this. I was like, that's the guy. So that's my guess is he's number one. And the only hesitation I have is that we have a pretty progressive government right now and not just progressive in generally, but like pretty focused on putting women in positions of power. And so Jenny, you know, has a chance of being in on that too. So that would be my backup if there's a backup. I don't think it's Josh, which they're all J names, Jeremy, Jenny, and Josh. But yeah, look at this guy.

This is a guy who's going on in on this two. Another one I're going. So that's disappointing. Another one I forgot about was Anne McLean. I think she would also make a great one as well. Yes. That's a good one. Yeah. So you guys know more about the history of every Ashton in the Ashton Corps than I do.

That's true. I think we just had time to look up Wikipedia this week. So-and-so hasn't flown since 2014. It's been 13 years. I'm actively reading this on Wikipedia. In 20,000 hours of flight time. Lauren, I literally have Wikipedia up right now. Okay. I didn't even write it down. I was looking it up. I didn't write it down this week. We only have four astronauts, Lauren.

really easy to keep track of them. Yeah. So the second lunar lander. We got some news recently about this, right? Blue Origins getting the band back together, minus Northroportemps plus

Northropics. And Boeing. And Boeing. And then, yes. And Boeing. So that's a little bit of a scrambler. Boeing, last time notably kicked out of the competition for

for a variety of reasons and dynetics not following the laws of physics and now they're teaming up which seems promising. So that's fun. Yeah, I think I think it'll go to Blue and that team. I think it's, you know, and they've learned their lesson this time, you know, when it comes to how much money to ask for. Yeah. That is my biggest point with Blue is like they're, after all of the bullshit that happened with

the last thing. there's just no way that Blue doesn't submit the, like, blowout bid. Like, they just be like, I don't get, like, something. I imagine Jeff Bezos in Rooms from me, like, I don't care if we give it away for free. We are winning this, this contract. Like, we cannot lose this twice in a row. Just like, period, full stop. Everyone's job is on the line for this right now.

Like, that can be, that's, like, the only outcome that I can imagine that's happening in a boardroom at Blue Origin. So that's why I think Blue would get it. Yeah. That makes sense to me. Like, maybe they'll throw in like $4 billion as their bid, right? Yeah. Something low, not as low as SpaceX, but low. Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. Something low, but enough, yeah, enough to get money, but like they can also supplement with their boss if they need to. Times are tough, but I think it'll be all right. You probably afford the extra B for a moon lander. Yeah. It is the last year.

It's the last year, so I might as well spend it all right now. Yeah. You got to deal with them. No. Well, all right. Rounded that one out. All right. Let's take a little mosey on through the list here.

Human spaceflight, does anyone have any particular strong feelings? We've got some things coming up this year. Polaris program is happening. Yes. Axiom 2 is happening. Starliner is happening. I don't think Polaris will launch a new. March just because we haven't seen any spacesuit hardware, unless that's going to be something

where they just pull it out of the closet last minute. But I imagine we'll see something before, like at least months beforehand. So either it's coming out tomorrow or we're getting to push back in another quarter, if not towards the end of the year. I would say Polaris flies into year, if it flies this year. It's a lot of hedging. I love it. I don't think I have any I need to hear your take I'm trying to think I don't think I have any takes in this it'll all be delayed a little bit but I think

I don't know I'm not as concerned about the late unveiling of hardware because I'm thinking about the McDonald's Playplace dome and how that was like all the sudden they were like look at this we have a new front of the dragon spaceship and it was all done right Miriam was there hanging out with it before it was unveiled so like Yeah, but it is.

So you're right. Space suits are crazy, and there's four people going to vacuum, you know. They're all going down to vacuum. So this is not like they just to build one of them. They have to make four of them. That's my biggest thing is. Space suits are so complicated. I mean, the common refrain is what?

They're spaceships shaped like bodies, you know? So I just think it's infinitely harder than everyone thinks it's going to be. And I can't recall. Did they say they were going to do any test? on ISS beforehand? I don't think so. I don't think so. They're just going forward.

Yeah, so that means that there needs to be extra fidelity here on Earth. But, you know, SpaceX does have that way of just being like, hey, we built this thing and didn't tell you about it. So that's very possible that that has happened with us. But also, the Jared Isaacman program has a John Krause with it. And it would be such a shame for not to get to flex. his photography skills and post them for us. So hopefully we do see some pictures of the space suit soon.

I would be thrilled with the September launch. Yeah. I think that's where all like I'll be. Yeah. I wouldn't be mad if it was September for sure. That would still be very fast. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Is that too much comfortable with? So yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, okay. That sounds about right to me. I feel all right with that. I think one of the interesting ones here would be Dream Chaser.

So do you think Dreamfish flies this year? Because I have like two. So one, you have to figure out can Vulcan get to the second flight this year? Yeah, that's the big one. I'm kind of like on that a little bit. And the other one is the Harbor ready. And I don't know. The Sierra space has been posting pictures of like reasonably look.

like real looking stuff, which has been kind of a good. Like it's flight hardware and they're starting to tile it out and everything. So I don't know. I'm feeling a little bit better about Sierra Space. But even the big really though, the pictures, every time they post a picture, I'm like,

that's a lot of like framework. Yeah. Still not finish. Yeah. I don't know. Like the recently is not framed anymore though. It's like it's filled out. So I don't know.

I got it's the outside of the ship that we're seeing on it. So I'm feeling the latest picture. Yeah. I'm trying to find is this. So there's a tweet. go down. This is, this was, okay, hold on. That was, sometimes they tweet pictures out of order, which is.

Yeah, yeah. Struggling. That's a struggle to get through. They posted one on December 29th. That was from June 2020. So that's not, that's not super helpful. Oh, here we go. All right.

Again, I have no idea when these pictures are from. Is this, is this a, is the date on the tweet? Is it at least that time? Yeah, that was, that was, that was what I saw. Is that current? Like that's the outside of the ship, right? Yeah, you're right. You're right.

I see some stuff. There's stuff in this picture. So that's good. Yeah. All right. I'll say the tiling looks great. I have noticed some comparisons between Sierra tiling and starship tiling

and how this one is much smoother than the starship tiles we've seen up close. Yeah. Yeah, this is definitely very space shuttley. Yeah, very exquisitely cut tiles. Yeah. They're all labeled the same way. Don't you get a little bit of a goofy vibe? Like the character, not like goofy.

More like daffy duck, really, when you look at that. Yeah. Some kind of loony tune, yeah. Or a looney tune or Disney character. The Daffy Duck spaceship. Some kind of loony tune. Excuse me. Well, I write the title down.

I just see like a large nose where Goofy's nose would be at the front. We did watch Goofy Movie over the break as well. So it's recent. I'm going to agree with Jake, which I think was your prediction that this is not flying this year. Yeah, I was like close to it. I was like, I think if Dreamchaser had a vehicle that was already flying, there might have been a chance. Or if Vulcan had a ship that was already ready, there might have been a chance. But the two together, I think, are enough to push it into next.

year. So. Yeah. Yeah. Many vibes, Lauren. Yeah, I think, well, what was my prediction for, I said Q3 for Vulcan? Yeah. Yeah, you did.

You said Q3. Q3. So just by rule, that's a no. Yeah. And I mean, yeah, yeah, I don't think so. Sorry. How are you feeling about this suborbital cruise? We got Blue Origin working their way back from a failure that we have not heard anything about yet.

We have Virgin Galactic continuing to be Emerging Galactic. I'm going to predict how many flights of Blue Origin did we have last year with people on it. Three crude flights and then the uncrewed failure. I'm going to go with two. Two crude flights. Yes. Wow. Are you wowing that as too little or too many?

Low. I think that's low. Hmm. Yeah. Because here's the thing. It totally worked. The abort system worked. It was just an engine that died.

No biggie. You got an abort system. It worked. Yeah, but they're just so lucky that it happened without people on it. Like, I think if people had been on it and they'd been safe, it'd be fine. But, oh, my God, you know, that would have upended. you know, private human spaceflight for the latter part of last year, you know?

I don't know, though. All right. I'm going to fight you on this one a little bit. Okay, fine. Out of these two providers of suborbital spaceflight, one of them looks like a gleaming example of spaceflight when it comes to failures, and one of them is a flying death trap.

If this happened on a Virgin Galactic flight, six people die. And if this happens on a Blue Origin flight, they can do press interviews afterwards and say, yeah, I'm going to go again. I'm going to get back on that thing. We were safe. Everything was like, you know.

I'm not arguing. Figure it out, figure the engine out. But I don't feel like it, like this is exactly why it's architected this way. And I feel like they should be more confident to go fly six times this year. 100%. I'm not arguing that. I'm not going to argue which is a better vehicle. I will do that, but I think you put it eloquently.

but I will say that as a paying customer, do you think people saw that? Because a lot of these people are not necessarily space people. Do you think they saw that and were like, oh yeah, I'm ready to go? Jake's like, yeah. Here's why, though, because all the people we've seen on there that have been like, quote unquote, not space people, they're all just ambassadors. They got paychecks to go on. Like, yeah, they're fine.

The people that are all in. Like, they're into it, man. Like, yeah, I don't know if there's any problem with commerce for sure. I think the other issue is that we still don't know what it's like for the human experience when one of these aborts happens. So we have data from the mannequins, but we don't have actual real person experience. And so, you know, is that going to be extremely trying on the body? You know, yeah, maybe they could do interviews afterwards, but will they be, you know, incapacitated.

You know, right after. Yeah, and will it be from a hospital bed? You know, I'm just saying there's a lot of unknowns about what would happen if people were on board and this kind of failure occurred. And so I think, I think Blue Origin should be cautious about moving into human flights again this year. But, you know, SpaceX had their failure, however many years back. and they were back to flying faster than I ever thought possible.

So, you know, these companies do surprise me. I'm thinking they get an uncrewed flight off in like February and then do a human flight every other month or so. So I would not be shocked with five or six crude flights this year. I'll put the difference in say four. All right. Fun. Is anyone think clips is happening this year?

We're going to lightning round these last few. Clips, how many missions? I think both clips will fly. So Perricone and first Intuitive Machines. I am one. And Intuitive machines, yeah. I think they're both very close, but definitely not happening this quarter. Well, I mean, back to Vulcan.

I think that one will happen in Q3. Well, the spicy bet would be, does astrobotic actually make it on the first flight of Vulcan? Do you think they won't? I think it's not unlikely they would miss it. Like if ULA ties their stuff up quicker than you would think, and they're ready to fly, and at this point, everyone is so beyond their schedule, there's, I don't know what deals have been made behind closed doors, but like, I, again, back to our comments about how you post pictures of hardware. Every picture right now of the astrobotic lander is from exactly 90 degree angles offset from the lander in which you can not see where the engines would go because they don't have the engines yet. So they're shipping this thing to Florida and then they're going to integrate the engines in Florida that aren't that haven't left as far as I'm aware haven't left the test stand at White Sands. That's problematic.

Yeah. So and ULA needs to get this thing flying as you commented. that's true i think it's equally likely that they missed the bus as they don't that feels like a 50-50 shot then what would it be because they have they have two unproven vehicles they need to fly on their first two flights so do you think they would substitute us just like another satellite instead they got those uh the kiper sat's hyper sat one and two is going to fly on vulcan one yeah also unproven satellites yeah but whatever it's a satellite and then and whatever the uhri bruno equivalent of a Tesla. It's like a

horse or something. I don't know. Oh my God. A giant cowgirl. A bronze horse. I put that down. Jake says Incredible. I'm saying Peregrine flies in May and

IM1 flies in June. July. July. All right. Wait, you think they'll intuitive machines will go first. No, sorry, did I say that Paragon flies in May. I am one flies in July.

Oh, Paragon flies in May. Yeah. Okay, so you think Vulcan will fly in May. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That's what I got. Yeah, it's interesting because Intuitive Machines hasn't shown any flight hardware yet,

but Astrobotic decided to do so even without its, kind of like a shell, without the engines attached. So it's interesting strategies on both parts. And Jake, you think the same thing. same ones are flying. Two flights. All right. Yeah, I think it has. I mean, if they, if they don't, we got, we got big problems. All right. We've got the last category here is just a series of overunders. We'll do this very quickly so we can get to out of here. We have the Russian overunders category. So launch failures

over under one and a half. This is for last year or this year? This year coming up. How many launch failures over under one and a half? We're going to rip into Russia real good here at the end of the show. Okay. Launch. So just launch failures, not failures in general. Just fail of launches. I'll go over.

Jake? I'm going under. Jake's taking on. I'm taking the over as well. ISS failures, two and a half. Over. So quick. I mean, come on.

Their soil is just, like, that's leaking for no reason. Two and a half. Two and a half, Jake. What you got? I'll go under because I think it's going to be two. Can we, can we, what are the, what is the average of in space failures we've got? I think it's like one a year, right?

Like we had the leak, the soy. Two is probably a good average, yeah. When did Nica? Was that last year? They're always right at the end of the year. It was the year before. Yeah, the year before. I wasn't covering that one.

I remember. I was on book leave for that one. So that was 2021. Then the hole, the drill hole. Same year. That was the same years. Oh, no, that was even the year before that. It was 2020.

That's stretching over many years. It is about one year. It's about one. But this year, we've had a hole in a Soyuz. We've had space suits that don't work. We've had. That's just still leaking. So I don't know how much we give that credit for.

is it really it's always leaking oh my god wow okay yeah I guess it's like what what what measures up to a failure

I guess that would be three we're gonna be generous so I think the over is safe which is also I'm gonna take the over with you Lauren and final over under we have is women flying to space 0.5 under

yeah under wait what is the can we look up the Roscosmos uh I think she's on board the ISS I think that she's like the only one yeah that's it yeah so yeah okay wait but to be fair this doesn't mean Ross Cosmos astronaut because she is a Ross Cosmos astronaut but I can't remember her name from the challenge

does I remember her name? I can't remember either I can't remember her name I don't watch a lot of Russian film so I don't know I don't know her name, but famous actress would have counted towards us. So, yeah, yeah. We're all taking the other. I'm looking it up. They've had one of the last two years. In the entire ISS history, there has been two cosmonauts and one actress.

But they've been this year and last year, last year and the year before. Two of them have been the last two years, yeah. Yeah. Well, that rounds us out. Oh, you know what we should bet on Tom Cruise? when will that happen, if at all? Not happening this year. No, it's definitely not having this year.

And show. That's it. And it's the final year. So there's it. This is it. Tom Cruise's chance. Lauren, you work at Bloomberg now, as we discovered for the past six months, which is a long time. So how has that been going?

And where should people follow along with what you're doing? It's been going great. I am still easing in, but still doing the same stuff. You can follow along on Twitter for as long on Twitter last at Lauren Rush. And I'm also experimenting with post news, but I did something on there and no one did anything. So still very clearly. And then also you can go to Bloomberg and Google my name. And I think it's on my Twitter where you can find my stories on Bloomberg.com. Sure is. And it's in the show notes, too. We're professionals. Oh, well, thank you so much. Also, do we have to get off right now?

This is the year my book comes out. As I announced on your show. That's right. So long ago. But I wasn't going to ask. You know, it was one of those things. I didn't want to ask, but I wanted to ask. No.

It's happening. The book is written. It is coming out fall of 2023. Is that a strong prediction? Oh, God. Yes. Over under, coming out. I'm taking the under.

Let's go over. No. No. There's a date. There's a set title yet that people can put in their notes. Yes. It is called the six. The six.

An epic title. Yes. Well, then we'll have you back in the fall of 2023 for sure. I'm writing down right now. In addition to times. Lauren Grush. Yeah.

Well. Cool. I'm all right. Here we are, Jake. I bet you don't have any updates as I don't have any updates. I have a little bit of an update. We can talk about next week on the show. We've got, we have a really weird and fun show coming up.

So our friend Brendan Byrne is joining us. And we're going to be playing a space podcast. off nominal version of the newlywitz game. So we're going to find out if Anthony knows me better than I know Anthony and in terms of life-based knowledge or opinions, I guess. So Brendan's going to be hosting it for us. The questions were submitted by all of you through, when did you have that format?

That was a couple months ago now, right? It was like two or three months back. Yeah. We got 200 and some questions submitted into this thing and I went through them all. And some of them were hilarious, like, hilarious discussion topics that we will come back to many times, I'm sure. So, yeah, that'll be fun. So we're getting to that.

And then so my update is we're going to get a lot of Brendan Byrne. So every year, I start, we've Martians off with Brendan Byrne and Emily Speck. So they joined me. We had the conversation this afternoon. You'll see that next week. And it's a lot of fun. So that's my update. Nice.

I've done nothing. I'm back right now. So nothing? Yeah. See you next week, suckers. Lauren, thanks for hanging out. You're the best. And we will grade you very generously on the 2023 predictions next year.

So if we make it. I appreciate it. If we make it. No, this is the final year. We're not going to happen. We cannot check back in on these predictions. So enjoy them when they last. See you, everybody.

Bye, everyone. Bye. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, into death.