CEOInterviews.AIArtemis III Setting The Stage (with special guest, Jared Isaacman) - The Flame Trench Show 100

S

Sawyer0:05

Oh, what the what? Who uh who left NSF running on this computer? Oh jeez. And here we go.

N

Narrator0:22

There's the WH ignition. Rolling up. Did he just do a kernel? Back to the moon and beyond. Put that in the big bag. You know, back at home, we all have a lot of work to do, but from here, this sure looks like a perfect world. Propulsion continues to be normal. We did have an observation. 343 unfolds to go. It's orange. Water towers can fly.

S

Sawyer0:59

Bingo. Right in the center. Where's Jacquine? There it is. That was surreal.

N

Narrator1:09

That's not what we want to see. No. No. No. No. Oh my god. Yikes. You bet. And we don't need any more of these.

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Sawyer1:22

Jeez. Who is that guy? Welcome to the plane trench, everybody. This is our weekly news show where we go over all of the things that are happening in spaceflight that we find interesting and discuss it with you. And uh yeah, in case you're wondering, this is an extremely special episode because this is Flame Trench 100 since we rebranded our NSF live Sunday shows, moved them to Fridays, and came up with this crazy cast of characters that for some reason you like seeing us on uh Friday evenings or Saturday mornings if you're watching later. This is the hundth one. And boy is this one extremely special. We will have uh at least one special guest on today's show and you already know who that is. We are talking about the master of disaster, the West Coast best coaster, the NSF abandoner and chief. And oh yeah, he's also doing awesome stuff over at Astroforge. Mr. Jack Buyer is back at NSF for a one-off special. How's it going, Jack?

J

Jack Buyer2:21

I can't uh I can't tell you how odd it is to be back on this show with y'all. You know, I love you guys so much. So, when uh when the old Camar reached out and asked me to be on for the hundth episode, I couldn't say no. Plus, I mean, hey, at least one special guest. Certainly, I'm not special, so we'll see what that ends up being. But, hey, hi. Hi, everybody. I've I've seen all of your lovely comments over the last uh seven months and I've missed you all as much as you apparently missed me for some reason. But yeah, just super good to uh to pop in and sort of look back on what feels like seven months, but also seven decades. Is that just me?

S

Sawyer3:02

No, it it's not you. And not just the fact that uh you've got the grayer beard now looking with the more professional over there with the button-down shirt all fancy.

J

Jack Buyer3:13

I got that salt and pepper come back.

S

Sawyer3:16

I was hoping you would come back with the ah my hat hat, but uh speaking of wearing the hats, here we've got uh EJ. How's it going, EJ?

E

EJ3:24

Hey, I don't have a button-down shirt, but I am here. Wait, what? Am am I a special guest, too?

S

Sawyer3:31

You are a special guest. I think we have the OG Flame Trench Crew.

E

EJ3:36

Let's go. 100 episodes. That's pretty cool. Pretty This is pretty This is pretty neat. I already like this. This is a good time. Oh yeah.

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Sawyer3:44

Yeah. I immediately think about like The Simpsons or any show where uh you know they hit 100 or 200 or 300 episodes. They always do like a a clip show. Is it This isn't going to be a clip show, right? Like we're I mean we're going to be hanging out.

No, we're we're going to be hanging out chatting. Obviously, we've got some big stories this week as well to talk about. one very big story in particular uh that we are going to definitely have to delve into regards to Artemis 3 and uh yeah we're going to go real deep dive into that and of course we have Kevin Michael Reed pushing the buttons pulling the levers and producing along with Jake Keegan kind of hanging out in the back channel here too so we've got the original Flame Trench gang joining here this is amazing oh this is so cool yes Yak is back. I love it.

J

Jack Buyer4:34

We got the game together. Yeah.

S

Sawyer4:36

Yep. Chat went nuts when you walked into frame in the chair. I was watching it and it was just Oh my god, Jack.

J

Jack Buyer4:44

So, yeah. Just like really really quick. I don't know. I don't want to make this the Jack show because it's not, but like uh it kind of is. It's it's it's really easy to get FOMO when you're not chasing rockets constantly and you see all your friends chasing rockets and producing really amazing stuff. Uh, so it it's it's very heartening, if that's even a word, to to to see the response in chat and just to see people periodically, you know, pop into the uh the podcast comments for Astro Forg's podcast or hit me up on Twitter or whatever it is and be like, 'We miss you.' Like, y'all, you're you're too sweet. It really means a lot. Uh, so yeah, just wanted to throw that out there.

S

Sawyer5:22

And you're already cancelled. You called to Twitter. It's XJack. Come on.

J

Jack Buyer5:26

Oh, I'm a failure. Oh jeez.

S

Sawyer5:27

X the everything app, sir. SMH my IPO.

J

Jack Buyer5:34

Oh god. No, we're not discussing that. We're not going into that.

S

Sawyer5:37

Oh, why not, man?

J

Jack Buyer5:40

I saw it got up to 169.67 at some point today or something like that, didn't it? I swear that happened. All right, anyways, let's move on.

S

Sawyer5:47

Will get timed out if you type those numbers, so don't joke about it.

J

Jack Buyer5:53

Yes, the numbers after five and before eight consecutive will time you out. So, don't do that. Anyway, uh so the last time that you were here, Jack, uh before you decided to leave us and go trying to mine asteroids with Astroforge, um was the week before Jared Isaacman took over NASA. Talk about how things have changed, my guy. There is a lot that has happened since Jared took over. And I mean, geez, if he was here, he would tell you yourself, 'Dude, you missed out.' But, uh, alas, we have to help us out to go over with what we missed out on.

Yeah. I mean, I just like right off the bat, it feels I mean, like I said, it feels like seven months, but it also sort of feels like like decades of time has passed. uh when I left NSF to come here at Astroforge, you know, the only reason I did that, NSF is basically my dream job is because Astroforge really feels like for the first time we have a chance at exploring the cosmos in mass and you know, mining asteroids is part of that and that really inspired me. But it's crazy how much the world has changed in the last seven months. I mean, I didn't I certainly didn't think we would actually end up getting Jared as NASA admin. And I and even in my wildest dreams, I don't think I thought that he would in the event that he did become admin start just kicking butt and taking names to the extent that he did. I mean, surely I think we all thought he would do a fantastic job. Um, but the extent to which NASA and and the whole team has been executing just like crazy. I mean, dude, Artemis 2, I was crying like a little baby. Like the the Artemis 3 crew announcement that happened this week, I was crying like a little baby when Andre started thanking his mom and his dad. Like where do we even start? Where do we even start? I mean we're going to get an F-14 again maybe or something. Like what? How would how do we exist in this most awesome of timelines all of a sudden? I love it. So, uh, suffice to say, I've been on the sidelines along with the rest of everybody for the last seven months, watching along and cheering along and just like super stoked that we're finally getting a NASA admin that we deserve and we're finally finally making progress towards getting humans to be a space fairing society. It's just like the this feeling. I don't Can you name a better feeling? I can't.

S

Sawyer8:22

Uh, I don't think YouTube would allow me to say it, but anyway. We're back, folks. It's spicy. The flame shred just spicy jokes.

J

Jack Buyer8:34

But I mean, yeah, it's last time we were talking about him with you on was the disappointment when his nomination got pulled and how we thought it would be great and was wondering who was going to take over and then we had Shawn Duffy as interim and thankfully they brought Jared back. So, at least we had that. And uh I mean EJ, we got to go over Jack's opinions on some of the major stories since then. I know you've been compiling a list of topics. Don't worry, we'll get to the actual news. I promise we'll talk Starship. We'll talk Artemis 3. But we have Jack here. Come on. We got to do a little uh get some Jack spicy opinions here. See if we get the bell rung between any of our comments. The fight bell.

I just want to say everything you think about bagels is wrong, Sawyer. Sorry, EJ. Go ahead.

E

EJ9:19

Whoa. No, not EJ. Go ahead. That's not true. Also, yes, I know Fluffy, I was saying Mr. West Coast, best coast. Not saying that I agree with that. I still think East Coast, best coast, even though I will actually

S

Sawyer9:32

I'm pretty sure you said it in a sentence, so it counts. I'm I'm pretty sure that's how that works.

E

EJ9:36

You know what? I'm going out for a couple days later in the month. We'll see how great it really is.

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Sawyer9:44

EJ, hi. So, so Jack, I I Dude, I know it's we're not like this might not be like a garden variety flame trench over here, but also I I we have Dude, we haven't you've been so busy like and we've been busy like you you know we haven't had time to catch up on things, dude. Artemis 2 thoughts like what was your favorite part? I I have to ask and I know inquiring minds want to know.

J

Jack Buyer10:10

Yeah, man. It's really like I feel almost like I've been ambushed by this question. How dare you? No. Um, it there was so many cool moments with Artemis 2 that I feel like whatever moment I say is going to um unnecessarily uh skip over other parts that I think were equally awesome. But the naming of the or the suggested naming of the Carol Crater uh really that one that one hit, you know, I'm always I'm Mr. They're like, 'Oh, the human lifespan is woefully short.' Like, uh, predominantly preoccupied with our own mortality. Um, yeah, that one that one hit.

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Sawyer10:51

My favorite part was the toilet breaking.

J

Jack Buyer10:55

The peicle 2.0.

S

Sawyer10:57

Yes.

J

Jack Buyer10:59

No, you're right, dude. It uh that was that was that and the far side transit was Oh, man. Like I feel like if like you know if we ever you know have like astronaut like the Artemis 2 crew on here it' just be like that SNL sketch where I'm like hey we read you remember when the far side of the moon that was really cool.

S

Sawyer11:21

Yeah classic.

J

Jack Buyer11:23

I also just to throw in another like grab bag option too like I am so happy they managed to take uh what's the approved term? smartphone devices like with them and like holy cow. The imagery off of off of uh the smartphone devices or what the personal computing devices whatever they were uh really really like allowed everybody I think to sort of get a visceral sense of what it would be like if you were on the Orion capsule. So that was that was particularly special to me as well as like a you know camera video nerd which is honestly in some ways blasphemy. Like I give our CEO Matt crap all the time for posting cell phone photos. But you know what? There's a time and a place. Uh so I really do think it was a great time and great place because it just it brought everybody along for the ride in a completely unique and and unprecedented way.

S

Sawyer12:16

It's funny, you're the one who always says, you know, the best there's a saying, the best camera that you have is the one in your hand. Although they had Nikons with them that they could have used and did.

J

Jack Buyer12:29

Did I like Oh yeah, I'm gonna use an iPhone.

S

Sawyer12:34

Come on. I thought you were going to give me guy.

J

Jack Buyer12:37

They had a nice Nikon mirrorless camera, too, which you know, it's not as good as a Canon mirrorless camera.

S

Sawyer12:43

Still pretty cool. Waiting for it.

J

Jack Buyer12:47

Jeez.

S

Sawyer12:49

I I teamed you up for that, man. I set you up. You whiffed.

J

Jack Buyer12:53

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We're back, baby.

S

Sawyer12:56

I mean, wouldn't be us. It wouldn't be the original crew if that wasn't the case, right? Like, oh boy.

J

Jack Buyer13:04

But man, yeah. Also, seeing the eclipse on the far side was pretty darn cool. I mean, super cool.

S

Sawyer13:10

That was that was my favorite part. That was my favorite part. There's a photo from Artemis 2 of the the moon eclipsing the sun and you could see Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and a bunch of a bunch of the planets, a bunch of constellations. That is my favorite picture from that mission by a long shot. It is righteous. Great picture.

J

Jack Buyer13:32

Yeah. Didn't they get didn't they get moonrise and moonset and they got the the Earth eclipsing the sun? Like just a a deluge of amazing imagery. the the one where you can see like the Starlinks around the orbit of like it's just like ah how is this a real image and you know I feel like regular people for lack of a better term non-space fans often ask questions like didn't we already go to the moon like why are we going back and having modern imagery with like modern technology is a huge part of the reason again to me I'm biased camera nerd uh why it's it's an important thing because There are so many images or videos or what have you that were just not possible before and now they're possible and they can bring these events back down to earth and inspire people in an entirely new way. And you know we shouldn't be limited to 1960s imagery of the moon or of earth rise or of earth earth set like we should have 50 megapixel super high dynamic range like ultra vision of everything. Like send one of them sphere cameras up there. Let's go, baby. Like, it's 2026. Sorry, I'm I'm all hopped up on Red Bull and happy to be back.

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Sawyer14:48

No, I mean that that Earth shot, people don't realize, and we talked about this, I think during it, just what high of an ISO they used to get that shot cuz everyone's like, 'Oh my gosh, you know, Earth looks so dull compared to the moonrise shot or to the blue marble shot.' And it's like, well, yeah, did you see the settings on it? That's why this was taken essentially at night to get a daytime shot of it. But yeah, I mean that's something that is definitely easier to do now than when you have limited roles of film.

J

Jack Buyer15:19

It's pretty crazy. Like Sawyer, you could probably uh like identify with this experience. Um for so long in my photography career, I was like, 'No, I if I'm not going high ISO. I'm not going to go over ISO 6400.' For those of you non- camera people out there, ISO is like how sensitive the sensor on the digital camera is. It's akin to how big the silver halite crystals were in film. Um, so a higher ISO means you have much better low light capability, but you're increasing the gain and you're also going to increase the noise in the image. It's like increasing the signal to noise ratio. So for a long time in my career, I was like, I'm not going over 1600 or 6400 or, you know, given whatever camera I had. Um, now with modern cameras, you know, you can go to like, I don't know, 51,000 or 100,000 ISO, which is just utterly bonkers. And yeah, it's going to be a noisy image, but in certain conditions, that's what you have to do to get the shot. And it enables such unique imagery. I'm so happy that this crew was uh apparently so well briefed that they were able to, you know, just smash it. They clearly trained uh to to shoot exactly what they were going to be shooting, exactly what they were going to be shooting with. And man, they knocked it out of the park.

S

Sawyer16:40

Yeah. If you haven't seen it yet, this was video that they just posted today on the NASA Artemis account of while they were on the far side and uh Ike taking it all in and talking with uh the commander and going over all the eclipse stuff. And you hear them talk about, oh, I can see the wisps and this and that and you know, all the things that was in their training. I mean, look at that. Would you just look at that?

J

Jack Buyer17:04

Would you just look at it?

S

Sawyer17:06

Would you just look at it? We are so back right now.

J

Jack Buyer17:09

We are so back right now, dude.

S

Sawyer17:12

But yeah, this was during the eclipse that we were talking about right there. This was uh they posted them talking about it and all. It was so cool.

J

Jack Buyer17:20

Oh my.

S

Sawyer17:20

Hey guys, you you know what was cool? read.

J

Jack Buyer17:25

As as he's talking on the monitor in the back, you can see pictures of the moon.

S

Sawyer17:31

But that is cool.

J

Jack Buyer17:32

Now we have those pictures.

S

Sawyer17:34

Yeah. True. Very true.

J

Jack Buyer17:38

I got all excited and then I'm like, 'Oh, look, pictures of the moon.' But we have them. Look, dude. Yeah. This looks like it was appreciated, too. Like, we were talking about that.

S

Sawyer17:49

Yeah. I I appreciate that NASA is continuing to sort of parcel out new imagery. Like there was such a huge dump in the immediate time frame after Artemis 2 that in my head I was kind of like, 'Oh wow, they really they're just dumping everything.' But still, we're getting the occasional post where it's like, 'Here's new imagery or previously unseen imagery from Artemis 2.' It's like, 'Yeah, baby. Give me more. Give me all of it.' Like it's it's crazy how much they actually shot.

J

Jack Buyer18:18

Speaking of those, do you want to try that name again in chat? Remember the one?

S

Sawyer18:24

No. No. No. I think we don't have to we don't have to do that.

J

Jack Buyer18:27

For those who remember it, you'll understand the connection between a photo dump and what was uh what that person's name was.

S

Sawyer18:34

Oh, Sawyer.

E

EJ18:38

Hey, this is a way to guarantee we don't get him back until the 200th, right? Scare them all.

J

Jack Buyer18:43

I was gonna say I'll allow it.

S

Sawyer18:46

You would. Oh man.

J

Jack Buyer18:49

Sorry. Of course he would. By the way, my think I came on your Twitch a couple times in the last seven months, EJ, and you do me that dirty. Come on now.

E

EJ18:59

Well, I mean, you did that City Skyline city pretty dirty. That was part of it, too.

J

Jack Buyer19:05

You brought it up, not me. Oh, no.

E

EJ19:09

I didn't mean to do it while you were taking a drink.

J

Jack Buyer19:13

Yeah, thanks for that. I almost sprayed Red Bull all over my very nice work studio display. Thank you.

S

Sawyer19:20

You good?

J

Jack Buyer19:23

Oh, we are so back.

S

Sawyer19:25

We are so back.

J

Jack Buyer19:27

Oh man.

S

Sawyer19:30

Uh let me thank get some support here cuz Jack, oh my god, people are so happy you're back and then we'll keep going with some of the other topics of discussion because there's a lot more I know that we want to hear your opinions on. Um, Kerbal Guy with a $50 super chat saying, 'Thanks for the great shows, y'all. Here's to a hundred more episodes and hopefully more reckless speculation and spicy takes about the future of spaceflight. Also, you're the man, EJ. Stay cool, brother.'

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EJ19:57

Thank you. Staying cool is probably not going to happen. It is uh it is uh 85 degrees in here. That's 29 Celsius. It's not It's not great, but I'll be all right. We'll manage. We'll manage. So, stay cool. I'll try. I'll try. We'll see.

S

Sawyer20:18

Hey, EJ coming in with the puns there, too.

E

EJ20:23

I stay rad. How about that, J? You got to help me. I've been hanging around with Sawyer too much.

S

Sawyer20:29

Clearly. I mean, you're making puns.

E

EJ20:33

I know. Jalapeno everything cheddar bagels.

S

Sawyer20:38

I'm sorry. I'm not I'm not ready. I'm not ready to make that make that leap, dude.

E

EJ20:44

Yeah. Yeah. You You've been hanging around Sawyer too much. Yeah. I didn't think there was such a thing, but clearly there is.

S

Sawyer20:48

Can't do it.

E

EJ20:51

Oh, goodness gracious. Um the Space Pope $50 super chat. Good to see you back, Space Pope. Been away for a little bit. Space Pope's coming back saying what, Jack? My guy. Bless this trench. Praise be. Space be with you. Thanks Facebook.

J

Jack Buyer21:09

Also with you.

S

Sawyer21:11

Yes. I don't think we have the sound effect for that anymore. Um

E

EJ21:18

John Valentine saying I for one according to Jeff saying I for one welcome our PPE overlord by the way with your uh your hairetss and face hair nets.

J

Jack Buyer21:29

Oh yeah. I've got I've got some additional ideas on where to take that bit. So stay tuned.

S

Sawyer21:35

Ooh.

J

Jack Buyer21:38

And to be clear, it is a bit. It's a bit. Okay. Like, calm down, everybody in my Twitter replies. I'm just goofing around with BP in the office.

S

Sawyer21:48

Come on. You were just chomping at the bit to do that.

J

Jack Buyer21:53

Okay, that's too far. All right.

S

Sawyer21:55

All right. Uh, Steve Callie saying, 'I smell bacon.'

J

Jack Buyer22:00

Uh, Oliver pork product of some type.

S

Sawyer22:03

I have not had bacon in a hot minute. Like I know that's uh destructive to my persona, but but no, like turns out when you get health insurance and you go to a doctor and they're like, 'Hey, your cholesterol is real high.' Uh you start eating a little bit less bacon.

J

Jack Buyer22:21

Don't burn it next time.

S

Sawyer22:23

Just think, 'Oh, dude, dude. Oh, how did I even come back?'

J

Jack Buyer22:29

Sorry. Sorry.

S

Sawyer22:31

Pinned in our back channel. Just saying. We still have it pinned so it's easy access.

J

Jack Buyer22:38

I I'm just like the the Overton window of burning bacon has shifted so thoroughly because D is the burner of bacon. Like it is known. We did a bacon cooking stream and D burned bacon like live on air. I was cooking jalap we don't have let's talk about the news. Let's talk about the news.

S

Sawyer22:56

Well, let me keep uh hitting a few more thanks and then we'll get your opinion on some of the other hot takes. Oliver Redmond saying, 'Bless this Pope and bless this Jack.' Uh, Kevin Harrington saying, 'Yay, Jack. Congrats on 100.' And y'all are like valued parasocial friends we get to hang out with on Fridays. Um, Fel 86, great to see you again, Jack. Have they added a kilt to the Astroforge uniform? I hope they have good bacon there.

J

Jack Buyer23:28

No, not yet. Although I hope nobody from Astroforge is watching this right now because technically I'm in charge of merch. So that would probably be something I got asked to do.

S

Sawyer23:43

Anyways, moving on. Moving on. Moving on.

J

Jack Buyer23:44

By the way, everybody at Astroforge, Jack needs a kill.

S

Sawyer23:51

Yeah, he does.

J

Jack Buyer23:54

I don't know. Make like an asteroid pattern or something on it. That'd be cool. like asteroid and some that would actually be kind of cool.

S

Sawyer24:01

Yeah, that would be awesome. Um, Phil says, 'Jack, OMG, are you going to try to do a shuttle Sunday? Hope you're well.' I mean, uh, oh wow. What episode are you guys on, Sawyer? Like, what mission?

We haven't gone much further since. There's been some other stuff that's kind of taken precedence over it, but we'll get back to it. Yeah, a couple, you know, a couple one two things like a Starship launch and a crude launch around the moon and a everything else in the world. Um, yeah, that's all. Nothing crazy.

J

Jack Buyer24:36

Actually, while we're here, you know, I was going to say, what do you think about Flight 12, but go

S

Sawyer24:42

Oh, let's do it.

J

Jack Buyer24:43

Oh, I was I was just going to say, uh, I would love to go on a shuttle Sunday again in the future. Um, the main reason I haven't been on any streams for the last seven months is I'm super busy here, believe it or not, um, to the point where, you know, I'll come in very frequently on the weekends and it's just I need to I need to focus. Uh, so if there is a Sunday in the near future where uh where I can make some time, yeah, sign me up. Let me know. You know where to find me. Um, Kevin and Sawyer and Krispy. Um, but yeah, in general, I think this was 100 100 episodes of the Flame Trench, so I carved some time out in order to make this happen. But I'm just I'm just so freaking busy, you guys. We've got a lot going on here. Um, EJ, to your question for flight.

S

Sawyer25:25

Before we do, I want to point out Dy Cinema in chat says, 'Whoa, I'm not even on stream and you're calling me out. Not cool, Jack. I don't burn bacon. It was an experiment.'

J

Jack Buyer25:35

That's not that is demonstrabably not true. You have 4K 120 frames a second slow motion footage of you burning bacon because you were checks notes so entranced by your 4K 120 frames a second slow motion footage of the cooking bacon. Yes, we have receipts D. In fact, I'm pretty sure those receipts live on your hard drive, which may be why you're so emboldened to talk back about it because I don't have it on my hard drive. Otherwise, I would have receipts and then it's game over.

S

Sawyer26:06

Hey, anyway. That's why I miss you.

J

Jack Buyer26:10

I have a question.

S

Sawyer26:11

What's up?

J

Jack Buyer26:14

How do you feel about the new host of Starship update?

S

Sawyer26:16

Max, he's killing it.

J

Jack Buyer26:18

Yeah. Yeah, he replaced you.

S

Sawyer26:21

Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer26:22

Yeah, he's doing one bald bearded guy with another. That's all.

S

Sawyer26:26

Yeah, pretty much. I do I do enjoy seeing Max's beard like continue to grow. It's It's quite astounding. He's got a mighty beard. Uh, anybody that wants to challenge Max on bearditude, be careful. Be careful, man. We've all seen it. The thing's a beast.

J

Jack Buyer26:44

I could beat him if I felt like it.

S

Sawyer26:48

Yeah. What's the What's the Simpsons line? Like Bart sees a guy like doing crazy contortions and he's like, I could do that, but I don't want to.

J

Jack Buyer26:55

I don't want to.

S

Sawyer26:58

It's no I'm good. I was trying to make a good segue, but since we were talking about Starbase update, I just have something.

J

Jack Buyer27:08

Oh, Starship. Oh, look at you with your producer.

S

Sawyer27:12

Oh no.

J

Jack Buyer27:12

Oh no.

S

Sawyer27:13

Oh no.

J

Jack Buyer27:14

Allergies and stuff.

S

Sawyer27:18

Oh, I'm in this allergies. Weird.

J

Jack Buyer27:21

My sinus.

S

Sawyer27:22

Ah, my hat. My sinus.

J

Jack Buyer27:25

Ah, my hat.

S

Sawyer27:28

You sure about that?

J

Jack Buyer27:29

My hat. My hat.

S

Sawyer27:33

Thank you, sawyer. Thank you, Sawyer. Goes in the square hole.

J

Jack Buyer27:36

Oh, my back.

S

Sawyer27:37

My back. Ah, my back.

J

Jack Buyer27:38

Stubby squirrel. The square hole.

S

Sawyer27:41

Oh, my hatch.

J

Jack Buyer27:42

Oh, my hatch.

S

Sawyer27:43

Oh, my back is getting freezing.

J

Jack Buyer27:45

Allergies. Get out of my head. Get out of my head.

S

Sawyer27:48

Out of my head. Out of my head.

J

Jack Buyer27:50

Are you sure about that?

S

Sawyer27:52

Allergies. The square hole. Allergies.

E

EJ28:07

My sign is EJ dislike that.

S

Sawyer28:16

Hey uh chat, guess what? DJ disliked that, too.

J

Jack Buyer28:21

Hey, that one kind of slapped.

S

Sawyer28:23

No, that was pretty good. It was It was pretty good. of course, courtesy of Space Boat, who not only sorts supports us every show, but also sends us some of those.

J

Jack Buyer28:36

I uh one thing that I do like I've been paying attention to all the spaceflight stuff over the last seven months. One thing that I do feel like I've missed out on is like all of the NSF inside jokes and mememory. Like surely there's a whole bunch of of random things that have been entrenched in the sort of the NSF culture or stream culture like like on my hat, but I don't know. You guys have all new things, I imagine.

S

Sawyer29:03

Where's Jack? That's what I think.

J

Jack Buyer29:05

There it is.

S

Sawyer29:06

Yeah. Where's Jack?

J

Jack Buyer29:08

Yeah. Yeah, that's a good one. That's a good one.

S

Sawyer29:09

Yeah, it's in the new intro that finally got done once you left.

J

Jack Buyer29:15

Dude, he's never coming back.

S

Sawyer29:17

I know. That's why I can say it. Hey EJ, you know uh you know about the Gimly glider.

E

EJ29:24

That sounds familiar.

S

Sawyer29:26

I do at least.

J

Jack Buyer29:27

I think it's the thing where the the pilot like ejected from a fighter jet and the fighter jet just kept flying until it ran out of gas and like just landed in a farm field like perfectly.

S

Sawyer29:36

I don't think that was the game glider that was different, but still.

J

Jack Buyer29:37

Okay. Well, whatever. I'm talking about the fighter jet thing. That's the NSF intro. Like I just ejected. I was like, 'See you.' And it just kept going. And Ry Ryan took it and made it made it uh made the new one finally. So, I'm glad I'm glad

S

Sawyer29:54

Ryan did it and he put himself in it.

J

Jack Buyer29:59

Yes.

S

Sawyer29:59

I mean, to be fair, when I did it, I put myself in it as as well. Like it's kind of it's kind of like the privilege of the of the intro editor is at a at a certain point you you get to like sprinkle in whatever you want until you know the rest of the team is like what about

J

Jack Buyer30:16

what about

S

Sawyer30:16

what about Starship?

J

Jack Buyer30:18

Speaking of Starship, what about Starship? We had flight 12 recently, Jack.

Yeah. Uh so for this one, I was in uh London for a Boards of Canada listening party. If you have no idea what those words mean, look it up. Um, so I was a little bit disconnected, honestly. Like literally, we had left the we had left the venue and we're walking through the streets of London looking for a pub to go to to like decompress from this insane auditory experience. And uh, the friend I was with, her her mom texted her and was like, 'Oh my god, it launched.' And we were like, 'Oh jeez.' reason I brought up the stream on my phone and we're like walking around London. I'm like looking at the stream. I'm seeing the ship with the plasma around it. So I I don't know like if you guys want to give me as sort of a recap. I mean my general understanding of flight 12 is two did good. Booster flipped weird and had a bad time. Uh ship lost an engine on ascent but landed on target still somehow and did a cute little pyouette when it landed probably for like a tile check with all the buoys or something. Is that Am I leaving anything out? Dodger dogs.

S

Sawyer31:30

Uh, Super Heavy flipped the wrong way from what we understand. It looked It looked that flipped the wrong way and then uh that led to some uh propellant feed anomalies during the Bruce back. Pretty sure

J

Jack Buyer31:45

that one like I don't know if you want to unpack that or what, but that one like I was like, 'Huh? How it's a cylinder. How can flipping the wrong way mean that?

S

Sawyer31:55

Yeah, I I don't know. I don't dude.

J

Jack Buyer31:59

Is it Is it cuz the landing tank is like on one specific side of it or something? Like I thought it was co axial. Maybe that's a V2 thing. I don't know

S

Sawyer32:06

the So, all right. They have the transfer tube, right? That's as big as a Falcon 9 first stage, right? Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer32:13

Yeah.

S

Sawyer32:15

Right. So, let's go.

J

Jack Buyer32:16

The locker same transfer tube. So the transfer tube works as your landing tank for your methane, right? And then they staggered the locks header tank to one side. It's uh it's on the I think it's negativex axis of the booster. So uh if it flips the wrong way, the the locks feed tank is going to be unhappy. Yeah, as I'm as I'm currently understanding it. chat if you uh if you uh want to chime in. Yeah, that yeah, it's not it's not great.

S

Sawyer32:50

I just remember at least on the on the Scrub stream they said uh transfer tube and I tweeted it with an all caps tweet and was very pleased. Every time they say transfer tube it's like sweet sweet dopamine. Thank you.

J

Jack Buyer33:04

Yeah, I know. Sorry. Stop saying downcomer. I mean, you can if the rocket has a down comer. Say that.

S

Sawyer33:14

Yeah, we're not getting that spicy already.

J

Jack Buyer33:17

That's honestly, Jack, that's the nomenclature that I adopt to like whatever the company calls it is what I call it. Like, it's a downcomer on an Atlas 5, it's a downcomer on Vulcan. But if SpaceX calls a transfer tube, technically it serves the same function, right? You call it a transfer tube, right? Uh, it says Mr. pad this and pad that. Hey, they've c Dan Dan in the cast called them this and that pad. Go watch it. He did.

S

Sawyer33:46

Really?

J

Jack Buyer33:46

He did. He abs He absolutely did. Yep.

S

Sawyer33:48

Dan Hwitt said that.

J

Jack Buyer33:50

I think he said that pad.

S

Sawyer33:52

Yeah. Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer33:53

He said it. He said it. It amazing.

S

Sawyer33:56

Jeez.

J

Jack Buyer33:57

You're You're ahead of the times, EJ. You're a trends setter.

S

Sawyer34:01

Or they were just watching EJ. So given how

J

Jack Buyer34:06

so given how flight 12 went

S

Sawyer34:10

uh no we're not doing negative selft talk. We're over that. Uh, so how flight 12 went, there's an FAA investigation, right? But it seems like it went pretty well still despite booster having a bad time

J

Jack Buyer34:22

and losing flight 13 will be

S

Sawyer34:25

Yeah. Also, yeah, but it landed on target, so it's fine. Right.

J

Jack Buyer34:30

Right.

S

Sawyer34:30

I mean, yeah, but it was also not a nominal orbital insert or, you know, orbital suborbital insertion because they had to burn a little longer and it changed things up and that also got rid of the uh inspace relight that they were planning on doing, too. So, it changed things up a little bit, but I mean, come on. That that payload deploy, man. Seeing from the Dodger dog with the camera on it and the light popping out of Starship. Cinema. Absolute cinema.

J

Jack Buyer34:59

Yeah. Shout out shout out to Joe Bernard uh for I feel like championing deployable cameras from rockets before basically anybody. Maybe I'm alter like misremembering how history works. But I feel like Joe's been working on deployable cameras from his rockets for like I don't know years. And you know in the last couple years we've seen Blue Origin yeet a camera off of a New Shepard. We've seen uh you know now Starship throw cameras out on Starlinks. Like it's certainly like not an idea that any one person owns, but credit where credits do. Joey B. Uh, really, really solid pursuit of deployable cameras. More deployable cameras, more better. That's my official position as Jack Buyer, the human being.

S

Sawyer35:46

He said the thing. He said the thing.

J

Jack Buyer35:49

He did say the thing.

S

Sawyer35:50

I was like, what did I do? Oh, I said the That's I did say the thing.

J

Jack Buyer35:52

I mean, he didn't say the thing. He said a thing. But still.

S

Sawyer35:56

Uh, so like, do we think flight 13 will be soonish? I have no idea where the hardware's at. I have not been paying attention to Starbase personally. Um, but I'm curious given the fact that, you know, SpaceX just went public and there's like a lockup period for like 90 days or whatever it is. So maybe there's a Starship launch before anybody can sell their stock. I don't know. Really like completely new territory that we're in with uh SpaceX being a public company.

J

Jack Buyer36:24

I dude I think they're definitely going to try to shoot in July. I'd say like second week of July. I mean, we got it's booster 20 and ship 40. Uh

S

Sawyer36:36

oh my god,

J

Jack Buyer36:36

they got Yeah, I know. I know.

S

Sawyer36:39

Yeah, I know.

J

Jack Buyer36:40

I wasn't even dude,

S

Sawyer36:42

dude. I don't I don't know. I don't know, man. I just work here.

J

Jack Buyer36:45

Stupid freaking arrow of time makes fools.

S

Sawyer36:49

Right. Right.

J

Jack Buyer36:51

I'm mad.

S

Sawyer36:52

Yeah. Seriously, dude. Yeah. If it's not I I would say like first week of July, but I don't think they're going to launch, you know, on the 4th of like the week 4th of July. Maybe. Who knows? Uh if not, it's either going to be right before it or right after it.

J

Jack Buyer37:06

Yeah. Well, they can't on the 4th of July because of the whole beach closure thing, but

S

Sawyer37:10

yes.

J

Jack Buyer37:10

Um I mean, yeah, I I think it's possible. We've been seeing them do uh cryo testing uh out at Massiey's again. So, we've got booster getting tested there. Uh hopefully we'll see another static fire of that once they finish testing it, get all the engines mounted and everything. We'll see if they end up doing another one because they did this weird thing, Jack, where they put like 10 scattered engines on for the first static fire attempt and then

S

Sawyer37:35

Oh, yeah. I saw that. It was like a snagle tooth

J

Jack Buyer37:37

the snaggletoothoth booster. Yes.

S

Sawyer37:41

Oh, yeah.

J

Jack Buyer37:42

It's like, oh, that booster's seen some seen some days. Like it's it's gotten some punches to the to the craw.

S

Sawyer37:48

Seen some things, man, and some stuff.

J

Jack Buyer37:51

Yeah. But yeah, you wouldn't even believe.

S

Sawyer37:53

But yeah, I mean, we'll see if they kind of do that again, but they made it through the timeline relatively quickly of uh version three from when they did that static fire to get everything rolled out. So, yeah, I think July is possible. I didn't even think about the whole 90-day thing of, hey, while before people can sell in case something goes wrong, which I I should say, by the way, I do want to point out I've seen things on X today uh of like, oh, look at this explosion that happened. First off, some of it is New Glenn. Some of it is old footage. One of them was a Julia photo from 2023 from uh what was it? Uh the one that tipped over and burnt and then there was a little bit of it that came back. I think that was the one you and I were on the Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no stream.

J

Jack Buyer38:43

The tw So

S

Sawyer38:45

I don't remember what launch that was. Oh man. But yeah, you and I were on that the one where the No, no, no, no, no came from. But yeah, uh I mean

J

Jack Buyer38:55

I think I was like completely disassociated for that.

S

Sawyer38:58

Wait, what is that? Is that a big Mars and some other planets on a ship?

J

Jack Buyer39:03

Is that on Doug?

S

Sawyer39:06

Yeah, that looks that looks to be Bob or Doug.

J

Jack Buyer39:10

Well, Bob was out today catching the fairings for Starlink this morning.

S

Sawyer39:13

Yeah, that's right. So would be Douggee Fresh right there. This is live.

J

Jack Buyer39:22

Uh, yep.

S

Sawyer39:23

Yep.

J

Jack Buyer39:24

Everything you're seeing now is happening now.

S

Sawyer39:27

This is live.

J

Jack Buyer39:28

That's not true. That's actually demonstrabably not true.

S

Sawyer39:32

Oh, also it happens speed of light times distance or something ago.

J

Jack Buyer39:37

Whoa, look at you, nerd.

S

Sawyer39:42

Did you leave us come back? We come back bringing C into the conversation, man. always see. Oh, no. It's nothing new, dude. It's nothing new.

J

Jack Buyer39:53

It's a marine.

S

Sawyer39:54

You just didn't understand it before.

J

Jack Buyer39:56

Oh, Sawyer.

S

Sawyer39:59

Also, remember the inflatable snowman on the transporter? Is this the new version of that? The inflatable Mars and other associated planets.

J

Jack Buyer40:08

Wait, so is this coming into the Cape?

S

Sawyer40:12

This is live from Fleet Cam is my understanding here. Oh, they're rolling.

J

Jack Buyer40:16

Oh gosh, it's one of those planets is moving around. I'm getting I'm getting anxious. I think it's Earth.

S

Sawyer40:21

It's orbiting.

J

Jack Buyer40:24

Whoa. Okay, I'm sorry.

S

Sawyer40:29

Yeah, this is wild. But I mean, yeah, I that's their goal with the whole interplanetary thing now. So, although moon first,

J

Jack Buyer40:37

I wonder where those are going to go. Like Hangar X, I assume. What would they need them over at Hangar X or Robert's Road for though? Also, where did they come from?

S

Sawyer40:50

Gigab Bay.

J

Jack Buyer40:52

Yeah.

S

Sawyer40:52

I forgot Florida has it own gigabay.

J

Jack Buyer40:55

And where did it come from? Uh gel. Cotton.

S

Sawyer41:00

You mean cotton? I gel.

J

Jack Buyer41:02

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's it. Yeah.

S

Sawyer41:04

I'm I'm so mad at both of you now. Uh you know who I'm not mad at though? Shout out to Julia and Colleen for the Battle of the Bays that I've every time uh I see one of those go live, it's a treat to sort of get to compare where the different bays are at. It's going to be so wild when there are two gigabays active, three launch sites. Is Is SpaceX really doing stuff in Louisiana or is that just a rumor? I saw that come across my bow like a month ago. Like what? How many launches are we going to have? Dude, they they purchased a site down in Louisiana in Vermillion Parish on Pecan Island that is like as big as the Merit Wildlife Sanctuary. Merit Island Wildlife Sanctuary. It's uh it's it's a lot. It's It's a lot. So, it's Yeah, it's pretty pretty serious, man.

J

Jack Buyer41:57

Wow.

S

Sawyer41:58

Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer41:58

Exciting times.

S

Sawyer42:00

It is. It really is exciting. I mean, when you come into the Cape now, it is very visible on the skyline. In fact, if you're coming over the bridge by the port, you notice Gigab Bay before you notice the VAB. Now, it's kind of wild.

J

Jack Buyer42:13

Really?

S

Sawyer42:14

I don't know how to feel about that.

J

Jack Buyer42:15

Yeah. If you're on 528 heading towards the port, you go over those bridges there, you notice the gigabay first and then, oh yeah, the VAB is behind it. And so many people have gone now, oh, is that black building, the VAB? It's like, no, that's they don't put the X on it yet. EJ, you know, like when you're eating uh you're eating like salted peanuts or whatever and you get like the weird peanut that like tastes funky in the bag. You ever has that ever happened to you?

E

EJ42:41

Uh yes. That's what just happened to you. You were like you had like an excited look on your face like you were having delicious salted peanuts and then you got the one weird peanut. You were like, 'Oh, I don't like that.'

S

Sawyer42:50

Oh, no. Or like a Yeah, like a burnt chip at the bottom of the bag. You're like, 'Yeah, the weird brown chip.' This is how salted peanut is my first thought, of course. Anyway, hey, it's the battle of the bays. Nice.

J

Jack Buyer43:06

Yes.

S

Sawyer43:08

Uh, let me go thank some people here and then while we have the Florida Starbase stuff up, I definitely want to talk about some of the things that we've seen recently, including something related to Julia's post here. Let me thank some people here real quickly first, and then uh we'll talk about Florida Starship and your thoughts on that, too, because we have some new stuff this week. Um, let's see. Fluffy saying, 'Sawyer, did I hear you correctly call the coast the best coast? Woo! I'mma celebrate with a bacon on a bagel.' No, it was in reference in the sentence.

J

Jack Buyer43:40

There's nothing wrong with a bacon on with bacon on a bagel. What's wrong with that?

S

Sawyer43:44

Oh, no. Nothing wrong with the bacon on a bagel. It was uh which coast is considered the best coast. That was the

J

Jack Buyer43:49

Wyoming coast, obviously.

S

Sawyer43:52

Or Adrian will never live that down. Adrien has a real job now and still won't live that down. Um.

J

Jack Buyer43:59

Oh, and I don't

S

Sawyer44:04

Come on. Come on.

J

Jack Buyer44:05

He's got a He's got a He's got a point.

S

Sawyer44:09

No comment. I

J

Jack Buyer44:10

What do you want from me?

S

Sawyer44:12

I played the fifth.

J

Jack Buyer44:13

What do you want from me? Am I not good enough?

S

Sawyer44:16

Spacecraft. You're getting to play with spacecraft all day. He's doing like boring stuff, like office stuff. It is actually uh like a true privilege to get to just like put my camera wherever I want around flight hardware within reason. Within reason.

J

Jack Buyer44:31

Yeah. Um Viper with a $100 super chat saying, 'I'm beyond excited. Thank you for having Jack on for the special episode. Loving uh NY fave 3 plus KMR.' Oh, my fave three plus KMR the controls. Tears of joy. Thank you. Copy Moon Joy. Copy Jack Joy. We're not doing that. That's not We're not doing that. That's not a thing.

S

Sawyer44:57

I'm not one of your favorite.

J

Jack Buyer44:59

It's the favorite three and then me.

S

Sawyer45:02

No, I think you're part of the You're part of the favorite arrangement. Clearly, it's a package.

J

Jack Buyer45:06

Well, she said my three fave plus KMR.

S

Sawyer45:10

Yeah, I'm a I'm a plus one.

J

Jack Buyer45:12

No, but you're not you're not a host.

S

Sawyer45:14

Canadian.

J

Jack Buyer45:16

The the clear implication is that the the OG Uh, Flame Trench Group is the

Three of us plus KMR. That's the clear implication. We're not doing negative self talk, dude. We're not doing it. We're over it.

S

Sawyer45:31

All right. Well, I'm not over that. There's still more sports to go through here.

E

EJ45:36

Kevin's like, you've changed. You've become positive. I can't do this.

J

Jack Buyer45:44

Can't do this. It's like being stuck in Texas was mentally deleterious after several years or something.

S

Sawyer45:53

Jeez. Yeah, not at all. It's all right. It's not like we have something else potentially coming up later in the show that we have to time out. Totally not. As I continue through support here, Texas Big Red, you know who you are. Winky face, but I thought you said Starship couldn't do a TLI with Orion on it. Cough, cough, wink, wink. Love y'all. We'll talk about that. I promise we will. Telstar says, 'Jack, you can't be stoked. That's the wrong company.'

J

Jack Buyer46:22

Got a point. It's actually not. I swear I'm not trying to make this like a whole plug thing, but we are launching. Astro Forge is launching on the first Nova rocket. So, yeah. No, I am stoked.

E

EJ46:34

[laughter]

Uh, yeah, I learned.

S

Sawyer46:38

Yonder Gaming. So, Jack, can they set a fire in the rain?

J

Jack Buyer46:43

Yeah, probably.

S

Sawyer46:46

He did it, Chad. He did it. He did the end the page.

J

Jack Buyer46:49

Oh, can I actually I don't know. I don't know how to handle this exactly, but if you haven't seen or read Project Hail Mary, you might want to not listen to the next 30 seconds or so of what I'm about to say. I'm going to give you a couple seconds to not listen to what I'm about to say because there's going to be a small Project Hail Mary spoiler.

S

Sawyer47:10

Yeah. Do a fancy hand signal to let people know that it's safe to unmute or something.

J

Jack Buyer47:14

I'll give you a thumbs up when it's safe to unmute. Okay, here it goes. 1, 2, 3. Here goes. In the movie, there is a scene where there is a large explosion. In the scene where there's a large explosion, you don't see the explosion first. At least from memory, if memory serves, you see the orange light on the landscape and on characters' faces. That scene, it took me back to 36 exploding. Like it was the same ex, the faithfulness to reality in that scene was remarkable to me. I don't know how the filmmakers nailed it so hard, but the fact that they showed the explosion in that way, I was like, 'Oh man, that's kind of exactly how I experienced ship 36.' Anyways, just wanted to throw that out there. You're good now. No more spoilers.

S

Sawyer47:58

That movie's all practical effects and compositing, man.

J

Jack Buyer48:01

That's why it looks good.

S

Sawyer48:03

True master. By the way, speaking of Blue and exploding things, we should talk about your thoughts on what happened here with Blue and, yeah, man.

J

Jack Buyer48:18

I hate to sound like a broken record, but you know, Blue will rebuild. Like, this obviously sucks. My heart goes out to everybody at that company who's just been, step by step, ferociously getting us closer and closer to having a true road to space. I'm just going to use all their catchphrases in one sentence. But no, like seriously, it hurts my heart to see. And while I know that they're going to rebuild and I have really appreciated the updates from Dave Limp and Jeff, and just knowing and getting so much information regarding the cleanup and rebuild, the thing that truly hurts isn't necessarily that this happened, isn't that they have to rebuild, it's the lost time. Like I know, broken record over here, but you only get so many years on this earth and part of the reason I think Starship for example inspires us all so much is because it's a meaningful cadence increase in how much we're going to be able to do in terms of getting humanity out into the solar system and exploring our place in the universe. And so, yeah, man, like they're going to rebuild. It'll be okay. I have 100% confidence that they're going to bounce back. I can't wait for 9 by 4. That configuration of New Glenn is going to be awesome. But yeah, it's just the lost time. Like I wish things didn't take so freaking long. Like why does building stuff have to take so long? I know why demo has to take so long because they have to sort of do an accident investigation and clean things up very deliberately and preserve evidence, but like man, long lead time items they suck.

S

Sawyer50:03

I was going to say they did the demo pretty quickly on that.

J

Jack Buyer50:08

Yeah. Yeah, you're both right. They did clean it up pretty quickly, or they started clean up pretty quickly. And EJ, you're right. You know, the coolest stuff is the hardest to do and the most worthwhile, I might add.

E

EJ50:19

Yep.

J

Jack Buyer50:21

And I mean, the biggest thing for me with this, and we've been talking about this, obviously, I want your thoughts, too, is the fact that yeah. Blue Moon Mark 1's getting ready to launch. Blue Moon Mark 2 kind of important for Artemis 3. I mean, this is probably a better question for someone like Jared Isaacman to ask, but I know you're not Jared, but I guess we'll ask it anyway.

S

Sawyer50:44

That's close enough. That's fine.

J

Jack Buyer50:47

In my dreams, my dude.

S

Sawyer50:54

I know this is a layup and you spike the ball.

J

Jack Buyer50:57

Yeah, I did negative self talk. My bad. Sorry. Sorry. What was the question?

S

Sawyer51:01

I hadn't gotten to ask it yet.

We're back.

Yeah. Do you miss doing the hosting, Jack? You want to take the hosting back?

J

Jack Buyer51:13

Probably not. No, that's I thought. Um, no. I host a podcast for Astroforge and that's plenty for me. Thank you. And also, subtle plug, not so subtle plug. If you haven't checked out Astroforge's podcast, it's so much insane technical detail. It's like crazy the stuff we talk about on there. So check it out. I would, it would mean a lot to me, honestly, if you did. Do you allow for special guests on there?

E

EJ51:37

Um, we're not ready to announce anything yet, but perhaps.

J

Jack Buyer51:44

You said I was special at the beginning of the stream.

S

Sawyer51:47

True. Oh, that's true. We'll talk.

J

Jack Buyer51:52

Really? Oh, jeez. All right. Okay. All right. Cool. Doss got called out in a Hank Green video today for starting off as a Kerbal streamer and then starting a spaceflight streaming company without saying his name. Oh, nice, and then mentioning NASA Spaceflight by name.

E

EJ52:10

That's cool. I love Hank Green. We love to see it.

S

Sawyer52:13

Yeah. But again, we don't love to see the impact this has for Artemis. So, I know you're not Jared, but if you were Jared, I would ask you, what do you think this means for the timeline for making the moon landing? What does this mean for Blue Origin's timeline? Do you think they can still hit having a vehicle up and ready for Artemis 3 supposedly mid next year?

J

Jack Buyer52:36

Man, I don't feel qualified to answer that. Certainly every piece of messaging we've seen from Blue at least that's come across my bow. Again, very busy, more disconnected these days than I used to be to the constant info stream that's out there. But everything that I've seen seems like they're super confident that they're going to be able to get something together by either the end of the year or, Burgers Law willing, you know, Q1 of 2027. I just cannot say enough that as a person who now has significant emotion and time invested in working on or with flight hardware, like dude, I've shot so many satellites getting launched into space. Now we have a deep space probe that we're working on. And if, like, ah, I have sincere emotions wrapped up with how that launch is going to go. And I feel like I have a much better window now into how everyone at Blue must be feeling in the aftermath of this. And my heart goes out to them. And I just hope a speedy recovery. And however long it takes, that's okay. Just do it right. And I know they will. It's just like, man, I sure hope they're back and flying again soon. I mean, I don't know. EJ, what do you think, man? You think they're going to be able to pull something together by the end of the year?

E

EJ54:01

No. Sorry.

J

Jack Buyer54:05

Sorry. We're on a huge positive note. I'm going to say no. I'm usually the optimist, but I'm not 100% sure how that's going to happen. I showed it on last week's Flame Trench. They were walking, they showed pictures of Jeff walking around on the pad and the concrete on the pad deck surfaces spalled, like Orion's heat shield, which means it got superheated and pieces were liberated because it was superheated and it heated all the gas up and the air bubbles in the concrete and it spalled. I'm not 100% sure how you're going to get this thing done in 6 months, but here's the thing, dude. I will say it's possible. You could do it. They would have to build another breakover device like the one at the port, right? And go from there. I mean, I don't know. Like maybe we'll hear from them in the future about what's going to happen, right? You could, but here's my big one. Okay, you rush this pad getting back together and you restore launch capability on essentially a cobbled together pad. No one's ever turned around an entire complex like that in six months, you know. So,

S

Sawyer55:34

Yeah. How long did it take SpaceX to recover from what was it, Amos 6? Like it was like 15 months or 16 months or something, right?

E

EJ55:42

Yeah. For pad 40. Exactly. What SpaceX just kind of washed their hands of it and then they moved over to 39A and launched, you know, so it was about a four month downtime, right? And then they returned to flight on 39A with CRS-10 and then KoreaSat right after that. And that's when you have two pads. And that's kind of where I'm going with this, dude. It's interesting that you brought it up, right? So you rebuild 36A, right? And you rebuild it to be a cobbled together pad. So we're going to use this cobbled together pad to launch Blue Moon Mark I. Like are we iterating on the pad here? What are we doing? Are you going to build another pad? I know they're clearing land for, I think, 30, I would guess 36B on the north side of the entirety of Complex 36, right? But I'm fairly confident that that might be for 9x4. So, you know, they want to achieve this high flight rate. You're going to do it together with a cobbled pad. I guess I'm kind of wondering, you know, why at this point in time would returning to flight be so ridiculously important. They got an extension on the project or Amazon LEO satellite, so they're not really under much schedule pressure anymore. Just rebuild the pad, right? And then fly New Glenn a lot off of it, right? Like I don't know. What do you think? I just think that

S

Sawyer57:11

I mean, six months is even if you did get it seems like NASA really wants the ability to test both landers on Artemis 3. So

E

EJ57:19

Yep, absolutely.

S

Sawyer57:19

If they so I guess that's where the schedule pressure would come from. And you know what? If it takes a cobbled together pad, what if they can cobble together something and continue to build a second pad and then once the second pad is good, rebuild the cobbled together thing. Like look at what they did in Starbase, right? They built a minimum viable pad with pad one and launched off of it. Basically had to repair the crap out of it multiple times and do significant refurbishment if not repair the crap out of it in between launches. Meanwhile, they spent the time, took the time they needed to build pad 2 and did it right, at least from what I've seen from flight 12. Did it so right. And now that pad 2 is operational, they can tear down parts of pad one that aren't happy and then rebuild that one, right? And it makes sense in a lot of ways to like, hey, you know what? It doesn't have to be perfect right off the bat. It just needs to get the job done. And while the job's getting done, we can make the perfect thing. That totally makes sense to me and I don't think that's necessarily like Blue's standard operating procedure, at least not from what we see in public. I'm editorializing here, but it certainly seems like the right way to go in this case, you know, and that sort of iterative, rolling over your successes into bigger successes rather than just trying to shoot for the moon immediately makes a lot of sense to me. It's an unfortunate way to arrive at that destination, but whatever it takes to get the job done and to get boots back on the moon, right?

E

EJ59:03

Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer59:03

Yeah.

S

Sawyer59:05

Go ahead. Sorry.

J

Jack Buyer59:05

That's what it comes down to. No, I was going to say that's really what it comes down to is we need to get the Artemis program going again. And Jared had the big push of we're going to get Artemis 3 next year with one or both landers and announcing that they plan on using a Starship vehicle and a Blue Moon basically Mark 1.5 vehicle and then so that way they can do a lunar landing in 2028. They kind of need that. So it's going to be interesting to see what they do. What are you shaking your head at, EJ?

E

EJ59:37

No, you're absolutely right. Nothing you're saying is wrong. But so my question back now would be okay, Artemis 3 maybe mid 2027, late 2027. Okay, that's a year from now, right? And then obviously, let's just say, I mean, so when we originally talking about this a couple weeks ago, I said 12 to 16 months. All right, so say it takes 12 months, right? You rebuild the pad, you got the pad that you need, etc., etc. You're good, right? That's fine. That conforms to the Artemis timelines just fine. And then you'll have a bunch of New Glenn GS1s and GS2s to send because your factory's cranking them out the whole time. Like I don't really understand the need for expediency with this pad, especially when, you know, maybe we could talk about this later, especially when Blue Moon Mark 1 could have potentially other alternatives, right? You can fit that in other rockets. So what's the rush? Do the pad right. Like Jack, what you were saying, with pad 2 or take 36B and make it into the pad that you want, and then you have 36A that's cobbled together and 36B that's the one that you want, and then eventually retool 36A to what you want, right? I just don't understand why 6 months is so important. Like why at that point they're kind of rushing it.

S

Sawyer1:01:02

But my thought is because the fact that they have other customers too. NASA isn't their only customer. And I'm sure NASA is going to say, 'Hey, don't put our Artemis lander, even if it's Mark 1, on your first return to flight mission. We want to see proof that you fix things and that things don't go kaboom.' So if I'm Blue, I want to get those out of the way. Get a couple LEO missions under your belt. So that way when it does come to early to mid 2027, you can say, 'Hey, now we feel comfortable launching.' And look at this, it just happens to be right in time with the planned timeline of the Artemis 3 mission. I feel like that's the reasoning behind it. Personally,

J

Jack Buyer1:01:40

Presumably that's part of it. I think, I mean just to say it, Blue also needs to get Kuiper launching on New Glenn. Like they have a mega constellation of their own. They are well behind where Starlink is at in terms of deployed sats, and that's not even bringing the whole space data center thing into the equation. Surely there's going to be a story revolving around New Glenn with that as well. A reusable rocket is extremely useful for a variety of things including launching comms mega constellations and other things. And I think Moon is certainly part of it. Sawyer, I don't think you're wrong there. I'm not trying to disagree just for the sake of disagreeing, but I do think there's a lot of competing schedule pressures that perhaps we haven't even considered or don't even know about yet. I mean, I know for example, Blue Ring is super cool and I'm sure Blue wants to get that thing launched on New Glenn ASAP as well as any moon hardware as well as Kuiper and whatever else I'm not thinking of in this moment. Yeah, I mean I understand the schedule pressure. I'm not trying to just disagree for the sake of disagreeing here. That's my job, right? But I just

E

EJ1:03:12

So back

J

Jack Buyer1:03:14

Yeah, we are dude. The deadlines are there. Sure. The schedule pressure is there, right? You cobble back together a pad and you do it quick, right? And then you get New Glenn needs to launch a lot. Sure. I mean, Jack, you said it yourself. Pad one at Starbase was cobbled together. It was cobbled together because SpaceX was just trying to get Starship into space. That was their main goal for flight iteration through pretty much all first 12 flights. Just get it to space, see what it does, right? I mean, that pad turnaround time did have something to do with flight cadence. And you know, Blue is not iterating with New Glenn with 7x2 at least. That could come back to bite you down the road because you could end up having a backlog because the pad takes so dang long. What I'm saying is take your time, build the pad that you want. Okay? Say maybe it takes eight months, maybe it takes 12 months, right? And then you can support that high flight cadence. You're going to be waiting a little while before it launches again. Do what they did with pad 2. I mean what SpaceX did with pad 2 and go from there. Schedule pressure, yes, but this could come back to bite you if you cobbled together a pad real quick with con ops that you thought about for like five minutes. I mean, they didn't think about it for five minutes, but I just want to see a lot of New Glenns fly, and I don't think a cobbled together pad is going to do it. I don't know. Maybe I'm weird. I mean, I am weird, but you don't need to tell me. I know already.

S

Sawyer1:04:59

I mean, I get what you're saying. Like, there's some inherent risk in launching off of a minimum viable product pad. I immediately think of serial number eight, the Starship static fire where a piece of the test stand's foundation fractured and severed an avionics hose. How do I still remember all this? I don't even remember what I had for breakfast today. But yeah, that could have been a very bad day for Starship. And you wouldn't want to see something like that with New Glenn. Totally understand that, EJ. I presume I don't know crap, but I presume that they are already in the process of building the pad they want, their pad 2. And the fastest way to get to return to flight is not to wait for that to be done or to restart building pad 2 v2 on the remains of this destroyed pad, but instead to sort of build a minimum viable. It's like they're starting over. They're already in the process of building their equivalent of pad 2. So why not build a quick pad one version? I'm weaving a knot of words, but hopefully you understand what I'm saying.

E

EJ1:06:17

No, I get it. Two-pad concept of operations is definitely a better idea here. But from what I understand, and guys once again feel free to fact check me, chat do it, I'm fairly confident that 36B is not for New Glenn 7x2. So, they're not building new pads. They're just going to retool A for 7x2 and use what? 7x2 on a cobbled together pad. First of all, you want high flight rates. You're going to need more than one pad. Like, that's not me being pessimistic. I don't see how New Glenn flies. And once again, I'd love to eat humble pie here. That would be fantastic. Prove me wrong, do it. Want more rockets? That's fine. But you know, how is it say New Glenn moves to a flight cadence of once a week, that's 52 launches. Are you going to do 52 launches with one pad?

J

Jack Buyer1:07:16

I hear what you're saying. And now that I'm thinking about it, dude, sorry, I kind of talked myself out of this, but 52 on one pad is probably doable, but if they wanted to go more than that, and I'm pretty sure they do because they have a lot of stuff that they need to launch, you're going to get to the upper bottlenecks of something like that of one pad throughput. I think there should be like three New Glenn 7x2 pads. I mean, I don't know, just my opinion. Well, you don't want three New Glenn 7x2 pads, Chad. Come on.

S

Sawyer1:07:50

I do. I want one of them to be at Vandenberg.

E

EJ1:07:53

No, no, not Vandenberg. No,

J

Jack Buyer1:07:58

I mean, I love it, you know, East Coast, I get it. We love that. But more pads, more better. I don't care where they are.

S

Sawyer1:08:07

Yeah, fair enough. Also, we do love our second channel, Breaking Space, which is where this video is from, by the way, in case you didn't know. So, you should go check out the Breaking Space channel if you haven't, with Ryan Kaitton, who is in chat, by the way. Yeah, he's been disparaging me in chat. How dare he?

E

EJ1:08:23

ABP. But yeah, it's still a thing. Always be plugging is very much still a thing. But yeah, I mean really, I think the timeline is going to be very interesting to see how quick they can do it. And also they shouldn't probably cobble it back together. She probably use fondag or some kind of strong concrete. But anyway, so

S

Sawyer1:08:47

Fourth box there for is that for maybe another guest coming later.

E

EJ1:08:53

Oh, we have a fourth box. No one in it yet,

S

Sawyer1:08:59

But maybe in about now we might see our special guest appear.

J

Jack Buyer1:09:11

What are you guys trying to pull here?

S

Sawyer1:09:13

Did you mean to do that?

E

EJ1:09:18

I think he might have.

S

Sawyer1:09:21

I just pushed the wrong button.

Totally. People to try and stick around and see who's going to fill that fourth box a little later.

E

EJ1:09:36

The best part is I'm pretty sure he actually did push the button.

S

Sawyer1:09:43

But it worked. Um but yes, it's Burger's horse. That is who is going to be the first one. Um, let me thank some people here and then we'll keep going. Warp Space 94. SpaceX being worth $2 trillion dollars sounds crazy till you realize just how much they want to do, but honestly be worth 20 trillion. Not unheard of. Random saying, 'This trench isn't complete until EJ pulls out a book.'

E

EJ1:10:12

All right. Take me off the camera for a second.

S

Sawyer1:10:16

All right, I'll keep going.

E

EJ1:10:18

Um,

S

Sawyer1:10:18

I was like, really? He's just going to sit there like this is his bit. This is his wheelhouse.

Austin's Gervin saying, 'Mr. Yank is back. We all know East Coast, best coast also abandoner. Burn any bacon recently.'

E

EJ1:10:32

Wow.

S

Sawyer1:10:33

Jeez, they're just fitting them all in.

J

Jack Buyer1:10:38

Bob McBersonson, so good to hear, Jack. Love Roid Rage, especially the episodes with Matt and Robin together roasting you.

Nice. Yeah, I do get roasted a lot on Roid Rage. Which is, as a reminder, Astroforge's podcast. Check it out. It's on YouTube. It's on Spotify. It's on Apple Podcasts. Anywhere you want to be, it's there. There we got EJ with a book.

E

EJ1:11:03

I figure it's a special Flame Trench. So, I'm bringing out a special book.

S

Sawyer1:11:09

That is special.

E

EJ1:11:10

Oh, SSME Flight Operators Handbook for Endeavor, my girl.

S

Sawyer1:11:18

I think you just nerd sniped Sawyer.

E

EJ1:11:21

Oh yeah. No, this was entirely intentional.

S

Sawyer1:11:27

Dang.

Oh no, he's looking at the picture. Not the centerfold. Not the centerfold manifold. The sad part is you're blocking your light. So it was kind of hard to see your expression, but we all know what it was. It's the wolf, you know, from Tech Savory cartoons where the eyes pop out of the head and it's like a woo.

J

Jack Buyer1:11:49

You're like steam coming out of your ears.

E

EJ1:11:52

Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer1:11:53

Your back leg starts bouncing up and down non-stop for some reason.

E

EJ1:11:57

Yeah.

S

Sawyer1:11:59

By the way, Jack, you mentioned the podcast. You're not the only one that can be plugging the whole time. You know what? Try this. Hey folks, did you know we have our Hawaiian shirts at shop.nasapaspaceflight.com, including some new designs? We even have these new Starship ones that came out in addition to your favorites with Falcon 9 as well and the capsule. But take a look at these new ones here in different colors with that re-entry and then the profile with the for the rotation with the end. It's the mount. The mount is there. It's the new mount which goes over what Jack

J

Jack Buyer1:12:33

The flame trench. Hey, dick.

S

Sawyer1:12:40

Anyway, you should totally go check these out. They're super lightweight, which is great for summertime. They're super cool and a good way to find fellow space nerds near you without having to use those sketchy websites. shop.nasapaspaceflight.com.

J

Jack Buyer1:12:52

What? Wait, are we the sketchy website?

S

Sawyer1:12:55

No, we're the good website. We're the good one. So, you don't have to go on those, hey, find space nerds near you that pop up in the corner when you're pop-up sites. Let's move on.

E

EJ1:13:06

It's the Flame Trench, folks. Okay.

S

Sawyer1:13:12

Pink.

J

Jack Buyer1:13:14

Like that one. I wear that.

S

Sawyer1:13:17

Sometimes I regret the words that come out of my mouth.

E

EJ1:13:22

Sometimes.

S

Sawyer1:13:23

Yeah, most times. You're right.

J

Jack Buyer1:13:25

No, you just got to own it, dude. Just got to. Don't be ashamed of who you are.

S

Sawyer1:13:31

Oh, I missed y'all.

This is fun. We have fun here.

J

Jack Buyer1:13:35

I'd rather be flying an X-wing with a $5 tip at tips.nasapaspaceflight.com that I can put on stream to keep it family friendly, but thank you very much.

S

Sawyer1:13:44

I'll post it in the Jack in the I almost said the Jack channel in the back channel, which is now the Jack channel.

J

Jack Buyer1:13:51

Very different things, my guy.

S

Sawyer1:13:55

Steve Callie, watching Jack talk about health and wellness while drinking Red Bull is like getting advice from D on how to cook bacon. Accurate.

J

Jack Buyer1:14:05

I'm neither healthy nor well.

S

Sawyer1:14:10

Oh man. Rosebud saying with a $20 tip at tips.nasapaspaceflight.com saying, 'Loving this. My cheeks hurt from smiling. Goodness, mine do too.' Blake P saying, 'Good to see you, Jack.' Jasper Toddbot also saying, 'Good to see you, Jack. My offer from X still stands. I'll look at my I'll recheck my DMs.'

J

Jack Buyer1:14:38

Remember that one offer that that guy did that one time? That was really cool.

S

Sawyer1:14:43

That was great.

J

Jack Buyer1:14:44

That's cool.

S

Sawyer1:14:45

John Coch is saying, 'Holy crap, Jack's back. It's orange.' There you go.

J

Jack Buyer1:14:52

He's called you it's orange, man. So, there you go.

S

Sawyer1:14:55

Jack is orange buyer.

J

Jack Buyer1:14:59

When I started here, I had to explain to many employees why it is that I wear orange all the time. And I got the question a lot. And the answer is, I like orange.

S

Sawyer1:15:12

Nice.

J

Jack Buyer1:15:12

SLS is orange.

S

Sawyer1:15:14

Makes sense.

David saying, 'Welcome back, Jack. Missed seeing you on the show.' Steve Kelly also coming in saying, 'Whoever makes the videos with old footage, great job as an editor. I know how time-consuming it is to look through old footage. Shout out to Ryan Kaitton and Thomas Hayden and all those guys who help with that. Plus the team that helps try and sort through all of it because Jack, you'll be happy to know our file system is still about the way it used to be. More slightly more organized.

J

Jack Buyer1:15:43

No, dude. I thought you were going to say you have a functioning digital asset management system. And I was about to go, 'Yay!'

S

Sawyer1:15:51

But

J

Jack Buyer1:15:52

Nope.

S

Sawyer1:15:53

Can't. Not yet. Still the old fashioned.

J

Jack Buyer1:15:56

It's a hard problem to be fair. It's a legitimately hard problem to solve. In fact, yeah, I'll just leave that there. It's a legitimately hard problem to solve.

S

Sawyer1:16:06

Yeah. Also a hard problem to solve. We were talking about it before. I do want to go back to it. I want to go back to Florida Starship because we got some cool stuff happening. You pointed out that behind EJ over there is a boat.

E

EJ1:16:23

Really?

S

Sawyer1:16:25

Other other side. Oh, there you go. That works. There it is. That's live, by the way. That's a live video of a boat. And that boat is

J

Jack Buyer1:16:31

How long has it been sitting there?

S

Sawyer1:16:33

Uh, 9th, so about 3 days, three or four days.

J

Jack Buyer1:16:39

Uh, but yeah, that is Marmarmac 31 or as it's better known to the rest of the awesome people. You'll thank me later. Although I will thank you now, EJ, that you're out of the way. But we could see what there is now.

E

EJ1:16:58

Prior to that,

J

Jack Buyer1:16:59

It's possible to water ski behind a barge.

E

EJ1:17:03

Yeah, probably fast enough.

S

Sawyer1:17:05

Oh, his answer.

By the way, someone did point out that shortly after the blue oopsie happened, Jerry Pike was getting wet with rain. So, technically they static fired in the rain. Yeah, you should generally not do that.

E

EJ1:17:23

Yeah, I know. Yeah, that's probably a good idea.

S

Sawyer1:17:27

But yeah, we saw the

J

Jack Buyer1:17:31

Oh, that's fine. We don't need to go back on track. This is a Jack show.

S

Sawyer1:17:36

Anyway, yeah, we saw some of the transport stands and stuff rolling off of You'll thank me later. Those were the ones that were picked up over at Starbase and brought over here to the Cape. I mean, it seems like they really want to get Cape Starship going. If they're bringing the transport stands, hopefully that means vehicles are next. Especially since they're also working on pad 37, or shall we now say as Kiko Donv confirmed, pad 37A. It's officially named 37A, the one you see on your screen there. And that is the first segment being stacked for the new launchpad over at 37A for Starship as taken by Julia while out at Cars Park over there.

J

Jack Buyer1:18:21

Reject modernity. Embrace tradition. 37 is a two pad launch complex.

S

Sawyer1:18:28

It's good to see the timeline being restored.

J

Jack Buyer1:18:31

And it's funny because if you think of Delta IV Heavy, that was all 37B. And what are we seeing happen now? First 37A. Thank you very much. All is right.

S

Sawyer1:18:42

They called it 37B and then they just never made 37A. All right. That's a single pad launch complex. All right. You know when they made it, when the Apollo program made it, it was two Saturn 1B launch complexes. Built the rocket right on the pad. They had a single MVA service tower that could move between the pads left and right. A fuel farm that fed two pads, you know, and then we got rid of that and then ULA, you know, not ULA would have been McDonald Douglas, built whatever that coping mechanism was on top of all that. All right. And now, you know, SpaceX is writing the timeline. It's fine. You know, on pad integration, all right, no movable mobile service tower. I mean, maybe, but fuel farm feeding two pads. It's just right. Everything's right with the world. Yep, there is the official confirmation of it from Kiko Donv. 37A tower stack is underway. The growth of the Cape Skyline continues. Exciting times indeed.

E

EJ1:19:43

I'm excited. Can you tell?

S

Sawyer1:19:46

Yeah, I'm also very excited. You look very excited, EJ.

E

EJ1:19:49

Yeah, thank you. My enthusiasm is palpable.

S

Sawyer1:19:54

I can palp it.

J

Jack Buyer1:19:57

Are you picking up my pelts as I'm laying them down?

S

Sawyer1:20:01

For the love of God, Sawyer, move us along.

J

Jack Buyer1:20:05

I'll take this all the way to the end. I'll take this right off the rails and then off the cliff.

S

Sawyer1:20:10

Speaking of things that are hold, there's been a hold on the joke.

J

Jack Buyer1:20:14

Controller, please move your jokebooks to abort page one. Speaking of things that are moving along, the whole reason that You'll thank me later is behind EJ was that we did see transport stands start to roll out the other day. So, it arrived. I believe it was the 9th. Let me check my notes on that. And then, yeah, so it arrived and then after that the next day, we saw stuff rolling out of it. They already have the SPMTs there, so SpaceX didn't really need those. But then we did see it heading down the turn off of the turnbas and then past the VAB and on its way to presumably launch complex 39. At least that's what it seemed like. Right.

S

Sawyer1:21:04

Yeah. They moved to 39A. They went a weather minute. They started here and then went over here. and then went down here and then went over there.

J

Jack Buyer1:21:18

Then where'd they go?

S

Sawyer1:21:20

Then they went over there and then see this road right here.

J

Jack Buyer1:21:23

No, wait. They went this road and then they went that way, cuz the

S

Sawyer1:21:31

Where's the beach?

J

Jack Buyer1:21:32

That way.

S

Sawyer1:21:32

Which way's the beach?

J

Jack Buyer1:21:36

Nope. Other way.

S

Sawyer1:21:40

There's a beach over there. You forgot about the Banana River.

J

Jack Buyer1:21:43

Well, yeah. I guess Ply Lind is also kind of north of there, so that works.

S

Sawyer1:21:50

I'm so glad you just immediately picked up on it. Thank you.

J

Jack Buyer1:21:54

Hey, you know where the weight room is? I'll check it out.

S

Sawyer1:21:57

Yeah, don't worry.

J

Jack Buyer1:21:59

Yeah, but anyway, I mean, this is exciting. We're seeing things starting to happen with Starship at the Cape. Just this morning, we saw an interview that was posted with Gwynne Shotwell on CNBC, and she outlined a potential timeline for Starship going forward, which would be a repeat suborbital flight test for flight 13, potentially trying to go for an orbital insertion on flight 14, and then a launch from Florida of Starship on flight 15.

S

Sawyer1:22:34

Wow.

E

EJ1:22:35

Wow. That's soon.

J

Jack Buyer1:22:37

We could be three launches away.

S

Sawyer1:22:39

Well, two launches away from the next launch being from Florida. There's the transport stand. I mean, why would you start bringing transport stands for vehicles if you then don't plan to next bring vehicles, right?

J

Jack Buyer1:22:50

Yeah.

S

Sawyer1:22:51

I mean, it definitely makes sense to bring tooling out to KSC just to sort of do like fit checks, like can we move this down the road without hitting a bunch of light posts, type thing like that. That's just a no-brainer sort of pathfinder operation, right? So, it's definitely like a dotting of tees and crossing of eyes type operation seemingly, but still if you like that's I must have missed that interview this morning on my way to work or what have you. But holy cow, flight 15, that's awesome. Also, if flight 14 is orbital, I wonder if that means they would go for ship catch or just dispose of the ship in the ocean after orbiting instead of after a suborbital test flight. I just cannot wait for ship catch. Like everything that we're seeing with Starship right now is amazing. It's an amazing vehicle, don't get me wrong, but the whole point of it is to have a reusable upper stage. And so getting to that point is going to be like, 'Oh buddy, we are cooking with gas now.' Oh, look. That would be a cool shot. We got one passing the other.

E

EJ1:23:57

Yep. Ship and booster.

S

Sawyer1:23:59

That's the sound it makes apparently when one passes the other.

E

EJ1:24:04

Yeah, I like that.

S

Sawyer1:24:05

I just want someone to dub the Jetson's car noise. You know what I'm talking about over this. I don't know. Oh, I know. Yeah.

E

EJ1:24:15

Oh, yeah.

S

Sawyer1:24:16

Yeah, Sawyer, I think you're right. They wouldn't be moving this stuff here unless they weren't getting ready to go. I mean, Jack, you're right. You got to do fit checks, but if the stools are there, what comes next? Okay, so you're moving the transport stools. What comes next, right? Like, what's the next fit check? Getting a ship here and getting a booster here, right? And then you got to fit check the pad, right? My only real big thing here is ships, right? You know, they can obviously put Super Heavy on the pad and static fire it at some point. If the stools are here now, I'd say, I don't know, late summer, maybe September or something, right? Might even be earlier. Who knows? I mean, SpaceX just got a sizable cash infusion. Stuff might go a little bit faster. But, ships, to my knowledge, dudes, you're still going to have to test them at Massey's and do your checks there and then ship them here. There's no place to test ships on the Cape, right? But yeah, I mean either way

J

Jack Buyer1:25:15

I presume there's no place to test ships on the Cape yet, but even to your point, EJ, if they end up having to test them at Massey's first, guess what's conveniently on the way to the port connector road, which is what I assume they'll use to get a ship to the port. It's a really good point. So you know, it's not like they have to send it to Massey and then send it back to the production site. In theory, you can go from Massey's to a barge in the port of Brownsville and then to KSC and then do whatever final work you need to do at KSC. I don't know. I'm completely spitballing here.

S

Sawyer1:25:46

Yeah, but here's the thing. Would you want to test something like that after shipping it all the way across from Texas to Florida? It's going to be bumped around in the ocean. Who knows what the sea states are going to be and how the transport's going to go? Wouldn't you then want to test it afterwards just to make sure you didn't jostle anything important loose?

J

Jack Buyer1:26:05

No, actually. Yeah. No, I just wanted to be contrarian. You know what would be really funny to your point, Sawyer, is if the star stool ended up on the barge and making its way over to KSC. I don't know that it would work with the new pad design versus the old sort of doughnut design of the launch mount, but if some sort of ship static fire adapter was shipped to the Cape from Starbase or just made at the Cape, that would be a pretty minimal effort required, because there's nothing in the space business that's minimal effort required, but it would be a somewhat easier potentially way to static fire a ship at the Cape is if they made some sort of adapter and just did it at the pad the same way we saw them do a couple times at pad one Starbase.

E

EJ1:27:00

Yeah, about that star stool. It doesn't exist anymore.

J

Jack Buyer1:27:05

Oh, really? They tore it apart.

E

EJ1:27:06

I don't think so. I think it's been repurposed a bit, so

J

Jack Buyer1:27:10

Oh, got it. Also, hey, we got that fourth box again. Kevin, what are you doing, man?

S

Sawyer1:27:16

We're gonna. What's going on? I don't know. Almost like you should stick around because we have an extremely special guest coming up in a little bit.

J

Jack Buyer1:27:24

We do.

S

Sawyer1:27:25

What did you guys not tell me?

J

Jack Buyer1:27:26

Yeah, I don't know about this.

S

Sawyer1:27:30

Oh, just you wait.

J

Jack Buyer1:27:34

I have things.

S

Sawyer1:27:37

I do think. Yeah, let's see.

J

Jack Buyer1:27:39

I'm scared.

S

Sawyer1:27:40

Oh, you're still on for it? Oh, cool. Yes, this is a Sawyer Flex that I'm talking to you. This is completely

J

Jack Buyer1:27:48

No, I can't say who you are yet. I'm sorry. You'll get your chance. Don't worry. All right. See you at 7:30ish. Cool. Sounds good. Beep.

S

Sawyer1:28:02

Did you say beep?

E

EJ1:28:04

Did you make your own Quindar tone?

J

Jack Buyer1:28:08

It goes back to the whole thing when we were doing the Artemis streams with the beep and the boop at the end. I had to do one to like end the, yeah,

S

Sawyer1:28:18

Pretty good.

J

Jack Buyer1:28:21

Pretty great.

S

Sawyer1:28:23

But yeah. Anyway,

J

Jack Buyer1:28:24

What if we get to whatever time and in the fourth box it's just a second one of me?

S

Sawyer1:28:31

It's just like echo. We do like a whole ventriloquist bit. I drink some water and then the other me is like oh wait, sings the song. I'll refrain from singing and spare your ears. But anyway, moving right along.

E

EJ1:28:47

It's jack.ai.

S

Sawyer1:28:50

It's just an AI.

J

Jack Buyer1:28:51

Oh god.

S

Sawyer1:28:53

Version of you that just sends fun catchphrases. And you know, we gave it a little pull string, too. So

J

Jack Buyer1:28:59

Pull string. Yeah. So basically I'm like the Woody doll from Toy Story.

S

Sawyer1:29:06

Just like that.

J

Jack Buyer1:29:09

Transfer tube.

S

Sawyer1:29:13

Bagel.

J

Jack Buyer1:29:15

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

S

Sawyer1:29:16

Or no, if you're talking Jack AI, then it would be

J

Jack Buyer1:29:20

That's a great question. I think we can all agree that both coasts have their positives and negatives.

S

Sawyer1:29:26

Oh, you can make it say whatever you want. That is not, I don't approve.

J

Jack Buyer1:29:31

I'm trying to take the neutral ground, right?

S

Sawyer1:29:34

You're right to question me. You're right to push back on the West Coast being the best coast, Sawyer. East Coast also has its merits.

E

EJ1:29:42

It's like, do Claude speak?

S

Sawyer1:29:44

Someone said AI stands for Astroforge intelligence. I like that.

J

Jack Buyer1:29:50

Also, you know, somebody said this a little bit earlier in the chat. You work for Astroforge. You were talking about Project Hail Mary. Astro Forge is almost Astroofage. There's something you're not telling us. Actually, right around the time Project Hail Mary came out, I got an IR modified camera, like a camera that had its IR filter removed specifically because some of the lasers we have in the lab here are infrared wavelength and so you can't really see them with the naked eye, but with an IR camera, you can. And turns out it had that same kind of bright fuchsia look because turns out those astrophase shots from the movie were filmed with IR light sources and an IR modified camera. So we love a fun coincidence or parallel construction or whatever I'm looking for that I can't find.

S

Sawyer1:30:46

Yeah. We have a petrocope here. It's an IR modified ADD. Works great. Dang, there were no spoilers in any of that chat. Don't worry.

J

Jack Buyer1:30:56

It's all in the trailers. So,

S

Sawyer1:30:58

I guess here's the question then. When first Starship launch from Florida from

J

Jack Buyer1:31:09

I'm going to give you a nominal range. Best case scenario, I'd say fourth week of August, you know. Worst case scenario, fourth week of September. Yeah, it's a little bit of a wide range, but the fact that those dates are actually on the table at all is absurd. All right.

S

Sawyer1:31:31

I recall there being a rumor at one point or some kind of leaked internal thing that was like, 'Hey, maybe they're targeting the end of August to actually have a cutout on the range.' I don't know if it was true or not. I saw some people posting about it.

Facebook, so take that with a grain of salt. But I mean that's not out of the question to do.

J

Jack Buyer1:31:50

A boulder sized grain of salt to any information coming from Facebook.

E

EJ1:31:54

Yes. With a rock salt. Yeah. Exactly.

S

Sawyer1:31:58

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But no, you know what comes to mind, my dudes, is remember like however long ago in this we were talking about potential causes for schedule pressure to get New Glenn back on the pad and returning to flight. Starship at the pad certainly would be an additional item that would motivate me as a different rocket company as SpaceX to also be flexing in that same time frame.

J

Jack Buyer1:32:31

Wow. I see a lot of people saying I see a lot of people saying Q4 2027 for the first launch from Florida.

E

EJ1:32:40

Is September not Q4?

J

Jack Buyer1:32:43

27.

Wait, 27? Whoa. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa. I didn't math. What the

E

EJ1:32:48

Really?

J

Jack Buyer1:32:49

No way, dude. Finished.

S

Sawyer1:32:51

I'm going to say Starship 15, which I guess according to Gwen is the first Cape launch of Starship. I'm going to say before the end of the year, and that's probably optimistic, but I don't think it's way off. I mean, I'm completely guessing here, but plausible. Seems plausible to me as a person who's increasingly disconnected. But yeah, seems plausible. I would, yeah, I mean, I'd probably say Q4 of 26, which knowing Burgers love would mean Q1 of 27 for the actual launch. But we will see, I think it's safe to say that we will see a Starship vehicle on a launchpad in Florida this year.

J

Jack Buyer1:33:33

Wild, really wild stuff.

E

EJ1:33:36

It really is. Also wild is the love that you continue to get here, Jack, from all of this and the support. Drew Nar saying, 'In honor of Yak's return, can we get a Jack shirt? Full size collar to waist face?'

J

Jack Buyer1:33:51

Nope.

E

EJ1:33:52

That for a dollar?

J

Jack Buyer1:33:54

No.

E

EJ1:33:54

I mean, I guess

J

Jack Buyer1:33:55

Also preference acknowledged.

To me, all I'm thinking of is like we have now the shirt, the Artemis Sun shirt, the TPS Sunshirt. Now, we just need a Jack Sunshirt. No, the Jack Sun shirt is the Texas tank top for tank watchers. The tank watcher tank top. That's the canonical Jack shirt. You don't get to put my face on merch. I'm not an NSF employee anymore. I refuse.

S

Sawyer1:34:24

But you saw we literally put actual photos that team members have taken of Starship TPS and of SLS and made them into shirts. Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer1:34:33

That's where the Texas tank top for tank watchers to tank well top like it's that whole that was also photos of SN8 on that. It's so there's a long and storied tradition.

E

EJ1:34:46

No, as in the entire heard about what I just said.

J

Jack Buyer1:34:49

Just look at shots.com. Byford saying for my fave and greatest producer Kevin Michael Reed hugs KMR. There you go.

E

EJ1:34:59

Don't encourage him.

J

Jack Buyer1:35:01

No, do encourage him. Kevin's great.

S

Sawyer1:35:04

A thank you, Bford. As my phone goes off in the background.

J

Jack Buyer1:35:12

Oh, maybe it's our special guest calling Kevin because I'm not good enough to take a real phone call. And that was a fake phone. I mean, what?

E

EJ1:35:18

That wasn't a

S

Sawyer1:35:19

You said beep out loud,

J

Jack Buyer1:35:21

Bro. Don't break kayfabe. Never break kayfabe. Um, Steve Calli saying, 'Jack AI says Canon cameras are for losers. Steve is all knowing.' Nothing. Just the headshake. Okay.

S

Sawyer1:35:41

Telstar 86 saying, 'If they try to launch a ship from the Cape and there's an issue before launch, would they have to take it all the way back to Starbase to do fixes?'

J

Jack Buyer1:35:51

Depends on the issue. Yeah, it really depends. It depends on what happens. If they have to swap an engine out, might be able to do that here. Depends. Is the gigabay going to be finished? The gigabay is finished. No. No. Absolutely not.

E

EJ1:36:09

They'll seen the battle of the bays imagery. It does seem like the Cape Gigabay is much further along than the Starbase one. So,

J

Jack Buyer1:36:18

Relative relatively soon.

S

Sawyer1:36:20

And if I saw that picture right, it looks like it's got at least the trusses for a roof. Looks like they got the top of it. They're starting to get the top of it on there, which is impressive. Most impressive.

E

EJ1:36:35

Yeah. I don't know what I was doing there.

S

Sawyer1:36:39

I don't

J

Jack Buyer1:36:39

But I mean, [laughter]

S

Sawyer1:36:42

But I mean, if you look at the gigabay progress either from Julia's photo, sometimes we have it on Space Coast Live, our 24/7 live cameras. I mean, hey, what do you know? I was just talking about that. Look at the progress on that. I mean, the cladding is going up almost entirely on one side and the side that Julia was able to Oh, sorry. This one in Starbase. I mean, it's still got pretty good progress on it, but when you compare it to the one from Julia or any of our live shots we have over at the Cape, it feels behind like it's missing a bunch of Hey, look.

J

Jack Buyer1:37:18

Ah, that was good.

E

EJ1:37:19

There you go.

J

Jack Buyer1:37:21

Right in the center. I still got it.

S

Sawyer1:37:25

You missed the opportunity to say bingo right in the center. But anyway,

J

Jack Buyer1:37:30

No saw you on that one, too.

E

EJ1:37:34

But yeah, there's your comparison. And I mean, just look how much more of the cladding is on. We've got roof work, it looks like, going on over at the Florida version. So, I mean, the cranes that were on the top are like disappearing in there, man. Yeah, it's pretty crazy. I mean, you get some trusses up, you get a roof on there, you got yourself a building.

J

Jack Buyer1:37:58

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure

E

EJ1:38:01

Wrong with it. Ain't got no roof on it.

J

Jack Buyer1:38:06

Sorry. What was

E

EJ1:38:07

The Florida one is starting to have a roof on it, though. That's the thing. Look at that.

J

Jack Buyer1:38:10

Yeah, dude. It really is. That's It looks like about half the roof is on there because you can see a shadow, right? Like that's actually crazy. That building went up very quickly.

E

EJ1:38:24

It really did, man. But yeah, that's going to be exciting to see. I don't know how they would fix it, but I'm sure it's SpaceX. They find a way to do crazy things at the pads and jerryrig everything. So, also not our Jerry. Sorry, Jerry. Please don't leave for SpaceX. We've lost enough people from NSF to either SpaceX or other deep space mining asteroid companies.

J

Jack Buyer1:38:52

Hi.

E

EJ1:38:54

Oh, you got to be different, huh?

J

Jack Buyer1:38:55

All right.

E

EJ1:38:57

Yeah. [laughter]

J

Jack Buyer1:39:01

Oh, man. So, I think we should probably move on to obviously the big topic. Wanted to get Starship in there. Folks, you always complain, 'Oh, we don't talk about Starship all the time. We need we save it to the end.' There we go. I don't know who I was impersonating there, but there you go. We got some Starship in before the end. You happy?

E

EJ1:39:18

I feel like you were impersonating EJ, impersonating me as Morty.

J

Jack Buyer1:39:24

Oh jeez, guys. I work on asteroid mining equipment now. Oh jeez. Oh god.

S

Sawyer1:39:31

Gotta say new season not terrible. But anyway, um,

E

EJ1:39:36

Let's get on to the next topic.

J

Jack Buyer1:39:38

It's the difference between you and me, Sawyer. I don't go back for the new season. All right.

All right. Let's go.

E

EJ1:39:50

Anyway,

S

Sawyer1:39:50

Let's talk about the thing that had me sobbing like a baby on my way to work the other day.

J

Jack Buyer1:39:55

I mean, we got you sobbing on your last flame trench. Are we going to get it again today?

But,

S

Sawyer1:40:01

No, no, I'm saying the Artemis 2 announcement had me absolutely balling. It was beautiful. It was. Yes, we have Artemis 3. We have the crew members announced. We have a lot more information announced about the mission. So, of course, we have the amazing astronauts on board. We have Commander Randy Breznik, who is a shuttle veteran.

J

Jack Buyer1:40:25

Yeah, baby.

S

Sawyer1:40:26

Yeah, got to love the shuttle love in there. So we have he was on STS 129 and then was on expeditions 52 and 53 aboard Soyuz MS05 pilot from the European Space Agency from Italy. Luca Parmitano feels like a like calling a World Cup announcements. But anyway, um

E

EJ1:40:48

You need like a microphone that like comes down from the ceiling that you can like hold in your hand and it's like all silvery

J

Jack Buyer1:40:57

To Artemis.

E

EJ1:41:02

I regret that. That's

J

Jack Buyer1:41:03

Solid dedication.

S

Sawyer1:41:04

Yeah. No, that was dedication though. Good job,

E

EJ1:41:07

Guys. Look at that YouTube chat. Devin Waldron there dropping 50 packs.

J

Jack Buyer1:41:14

Thank you. Wow. Beyond amazing. Thank you Devin Waldron for that. Appreciate it, man. But yes, [laughter] as we were saying, oh my gosh, someone in chat just said three humans in one pizza [laughter] instead of three humans and a Canadian. Like what? Anyway, um, yes, Luca Parmitano, who has flown a couple times to space, both on expedition 36 aboard Soyuz TMA-09M, as well as expedition 1661 with Soyuz MS-13 vehicle. Then for the mission specialists we have Frank Rubio who currently is the American for the longest single space flight duration with about 371 days consecutive in space across expedition 67, 68, and 69 launching aboard Soyuz MS-23 and then the newbie so to speak a rookie flyer but definitely not a rookie to NASA and especially the Artemis program. As you pointed out, Andre Douglas, who was the Artemis 2 backup crew member for the United States astronauts, was also part of the Artemis 2 closeout crew. And all of them with a bit of military experience. You have Breznik who's a Marine aviator, Luca who was in the Italian Air Force, Frank who was an Army aviator, and then Andre was with the US Coast Guard. So quite a talented lineup if I do say so myself which I mean what are your thoughts on this crew? I mean you had Luca who almost drowned in space. You have Randy who's a shuttle era guy and Andre who basically was embedded with Artemis 2 for all those years.

Sawyer, this sounds like the who's who of low Earth orbit expertise. And I think this crew is pretty rightly picked here. These Randy Breznik has done I think six EVAs and then Frank Rubio has done five. Lucas famously had an EVA where water leaked in his helmet, right? And he didn't I mean that's you know I know what people are going to say like so what water leak now that can kill you very quickly and obviously it didn't he just kind of was just like hey I got water in the soup we should probably go back you guys go if you watch that EVA it's yeah gets a little hairy real quick. This is like a who's who of low Earth orbit expertise and long duration mission expertise and then you throw Andre Douglas on top of all that the guy has five degrees. I think it's naval architecture, mechanical, I think electrical, and yeah, I don't even know all of them. That's the guy you want. That's the guy you want if something goes weird. And I will say this, so this mission, I know people are going to say like, oh, it's just going to low Earth orbit. Who cares? This is a double docking mission and a long duration mission on top of that. We heard from the presentation that this is going to be a two-week mission and you have two different landers ideally in two different not two different orbits technically like it's probably going to be similar right and you got to dock to one undock and go dock to another dock to that and on top of that you're doing a two-week mission. This is a like I don't think it can be overstated that this is a complicated mission to do right and then it's on top of SLS which is SLS, right? This is a great crew, dude. This is a great crew. Tons of experience in low Earth orbit, tons of experience with EVAs, tons of experience with long duration missions. Like this is great, dude. I like this crew a lot. These are the right folks for the job. Jack, what do you think?

Yeah, I mean like I said when I was listening into the crew announcement on my commute to work and particularly Andre's comments really struck a chord with me. Thanking his mom and thanking his dad really it just hit. And then I'm tempted to say funnily enough I don't mean to be dismissive. That's in fact the polar opposite of what I mean to be. But specifically I think it was the ESA director afterward his comments in speaking about Luca were you know as space nerds we all know that story. We know the story of him almost drowning. I mean imagine you're in a space suit, you're on a spacewalk, you can't itch your face if you have so much as like an eyelash on your cheek and he's getting water filling up his suit. But those two moments kind of stood out to me in the announcement as really meaningful but just like as a whole I feel like this whole thing was done really well. I mean, these four individuals are representatives of the human race as we step out into the cosmos, and they deserve every bit of excitement and hype that we can lay on them. But you can't get that hype if people don't know who they are and they don't know their background. So, I just thought the whole thing in general was really well done. And I know that I have seen some of the reaction takes on the interwebs in the aftermath of the announcement which I don't know maybe we'll get into here momentarily but I thought it was a very well done event. And in fact I tweeted later that day. I was like who did it better this week in keynotes. Was it Apple with WWDC or was it NASA with the Artemis 3 crew announcement? And in some ways that was meant to be like a jokey tweet and a jokey poll. But in other ways, as both a space nerd and an Apple nerd, I feel like there were parallels. Maybe that's just my own stupid weird brain. But I saw parallels in how NASA handled this event in terms of treating it as like a very well produced, a very tight announcement that served its role to get everyone on the same page and hyped up and just sort of lay out the playing field going forward, which is the exact same sort of thing Apple does every year at WWDC or Google does every year at whatever the Google thing is called that they do. I don't know anything about Android. But yeah, it really struck me. I was like, hey, we got two major keynotes in the same week. They're very different. Obviously very different subject, very different methodologies. I sort of wish Apple would have the guts to do what NASA did here and go back to the live in-person keynotes rather than just the recorded videos that they sort of do now. But that's neither here nor there. I don't mean to drag my Apple nerdism into the fray here, but really just appreciated how well the keynote the Artemis 3 crew announcement was done. I felt like it was extremely well produced and it's just a sign of the times. It's clear to me that Jared is making positive changes to the agency and this is an additional one of them to me anyway.

S

Sawyer1:49:06

And stop your crying. It's a sign of the times. But yeah, interesting in chat because Taylor Hose, who's the lead of the closeout crew for Artemis 2 and I believe will also be for Artemis 3, saying that his dad was jumping up and down. It was amazing to see. So Andre's family showing the love there for that. The other thing that I found amazing and heartwarming was the literal passing of the baton. I mean, the fact that it was literally, hey, they've been carrying these around, you know, with them and everything of, hey, look, we're carrying the baton. We're going to pass the baton along to the next crew. And they physically did that on stage. I thought that was absolutely amazing. It was Yeah, that's one of those awe moments. And you can see how happy the crews were for each other, too.

J

Jack Buyer1:49:58

Yeah, absolutely. 100% agree, Sawyer.

S

Sawyer1:50:01

But I mean, you mentioned it. I feel like we have to address the elephant in the room or lack of female in the room, I guess, on this crew. I mean,

J

Jack Buyer1:50:14

On this show, Sawyer, come on.

S

Sawyer1:50:17

You don't know who our special guest is.

E

EJ1:50:19

Actually, you do, but you don't know who our special guest is.

J

Jack Buyer1:50:24

Touche.

S

Sawyer1:50:27

I mean, what are your thoughts on the fact that this is an all-male crew? Obviously, there's been some concerns from many people on social media about this. It was trending a lot, I noticed, on the day when it happened. I've seen a bunch of reels and TikToks and Facebook posts and X posts all about that.

J

Jack Buyer1:50:48

Would I have liked to see a mix of genders? Sure. Would I allow that to dampen my excitement? No. But that's me personally. And if someone feels differently, that's okay. I feel like in this day and age, so much of the internet is just a rage factory. And it's very hard to have anything. Like I could literally hold up a blue piece of paper and be like, 'It's blue.' And the comments would be people be like, 'That's fuchsia. That's cyan, you moron.' It's tough every day. But you know what? If I'm putting on my optimist hat, I'm trying really hard and putting on the old optimist hat. And maybe I'm reading too much into things or maybe it's my tin foil hat, but it certainly seems like a good way to compromise if the Artemis 4 crew ends up being all female. Like I saw that's another thing I saw go by on the internet. And it would certainly be like, hey, Artemis 3 was all dudes, Artemis 4 all women, and they're going to go to the moon in their landing. Like that would be badass if you ask me. Do we know that's going to happen? No. I'm completely just echoing crap I saw on Twitter, which generally shouldn't do, but yeah, that's sort of where I'm at with this. Obviously, I'm a guy, so that colors my perception, but I am trying to experience joy for what is and not rage about what isn't or what I think should be. You got to take your wins where you can get them, man. And I fully understand people's frustration. I really don't mean to minimize it. I hear you. Valid, but yeah, can we just have nice things? Can we just be stoked for a little bit? Just for five minutes be like yeah great announcement and then we can talk. That's my long rambling about that.

E

EJ1:53:25

I agree too. Go. Sorry. Oh, no. I was just going to say one of the things that really kind of jumped out to me was the fact that hopefully this means that maybe Artemis 4 will have more women on it. Of course, we didn't have that on Artemis 3 in this case. And we had Christina Koch who was, you know, again, that crew of four, they could not have picked a better crew for the return of humans around the moon. That was like peak crew. And I know they will do the same for Artemis 4. And I know it will be peak for this crew as well once they get into space. And we'll have to talk a little bit about their architecture in a bit. But I mean, it's one of those questions that I'll be honest, I wish I could just ask Jared and say, 'Look, clarify this.' because I know people have been talking about it on socials and he's tried to clear things up a bit on socials. That's one of those things you just got to ask him and hear it and be able to challenge back on it. Just saying. If only that was an option,

J

Jack Buyer1:54:28

Dude. I mean, you think he'd come on here?

E

EJ1:54:33

I mean, it's the hundredth episode. You never know,

J

Jack Buyer1:54:36

Would it? Come on, man.

E

EJ1:54:39

All right. All right. A man can dream. Okay.

J

Jack Buyer1:54:44

I don't think that would be punching above our weight class. I think I'm just

S

Sawyer1:54:50

Hey, hey, what did I say about negative self-talk? What did I say about negative self-talk?

J

Jack Buyer1:54:54

I am being realistic. I sound like Ryan now.

E

EJ1:54:59

You got Webbby. You just got

J

Jack Buyer1:55:01

Yeah, you said you were spending too much time around Sawyer. Turns out you're spending too much time around Webbby.

E

EJ1:55:08

So nice.

J

Jack Buyer1:55:13

That's fun.

E

EJ1:55:14

Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer1:55:14

Um, so anyway guys, I don't think there's anything here like, oh, they chose all dudes. No, if you really sit here and think about it, these missions are assigned years out. Like Artemis 2 they were assigned two years before the mission happened. The missions are assigned out. You know why they're so far out for assigning crews before launch is because they got to train for this mission. Now, with Artemis 3, you're in a really weird scenario. The weird scenario here is that you added an Artemis 3 like five months ago. You know, Artemis 3 was supposed to be a lunar landing, right? They moved it to Artemis 4. So logically that crew which was most likely men and women you're not going to move them to Artemis 3 retrain them for a whole new mission. That doesn't make any sense. So now honestly it would be a waste of a lunar trained female astronaut to put them on an Artemis 3 mission especially when you have clearly four extremely qualified astronauts that all have long duration spaceflight experience, spacewalk experience, etc. Everything we've just talked about. Sorry, I just steamrolled right over you, EJ.

E

EJ1:56:30

No, no, that's where I was going with that. They, this crew was chosen on short notice. It was chosen on short notice. They went with who was available in assignments. Remember, it's not just astronauts going to the space station or going to the moon, etc. NASA astronauts do all kinds of stuff from aeronautical research to underwater habitation to Antarctic habitation. This crew was whoever was free. I'm not sure if that's true. I mean it'd be nice to ask that guy if we could right but he ain't. Maybe I'll just ping him on X or something. He replies, that's all I'm saying like

S

Sawyer1:57:12

He does and he has replied to people about the topic on that. One thing that's also important to note with this mission profile is the fact that you are set to have two rendezvous and dockings and other orbital proximity ops. You want pilots for that. You have three aviators and the fourth person who is not an aviator trained with the Artemis 2 crew so knows the Orion spacecraft better than any of the other three. So I mean you want to talk about a good crew. You've got aviators doing aviating stuff in space and you have someone who has trained with Artemis 2, has done all of the spacecraft training with Orion, worked with the crew to get in Orion and knows Orion. I think that's a pretty good choice. And I know there was one reply in particular that he replied to on Instagram that sort of cleared this up for people a little bit. And he basically said, 'Look, we have people set aside for the different crew missions. You've got the ISS crew dragon missions. You have people that are in the training regime for ISS crew. The majority of the ISS crew missions have had women on them as well. Think of the fact that Crew 10, both NASA astronauts on the mission, commander and pilot, were female. And reminder, NASA only gets to select two. You have two NASA seats, one international partner, and one Russian seat, which let's be honest, do you think the Russians would be sending a woman to make an all-woman crew? I'm just going to say that. But Crew 11 female commander, 12, female commander, 13 female commander, and yeah, the latest astronaut Canada class is majority female, leaving many female astronauts presently training to walk on the moon. And it's worth noting there is the difference in the ISS training and the lunar training.'

J

Jack Buyer1:59:07

Yeah, dude. That's it. These guys are the guys that were available. They were the guys that were waiting an assignment. And honestly, this is a really good crew for the job. I mean, Randy Breznik flew on the shuttle on STS 129, which put ELC pilots on the truss segment. If you speak shuttle and ISS, you know what that means. And he's a Marine Corps aviator. He has 6,000 hours in 81 different aircraft. 6,000 hours. He's flown every version of the F-18. Like, it's all right. I actually I'm not sure about the Super Hornet, but yeah.

E

EJ1:59:55

Actually, I almost have that much of Microsoft Flight Simulator. Thank you.

J

Jack Buyer2:00:00

All right. You should command this mission then. There you go.

E

EJ2:00:03

There you go.

J

Jack Buyer2:00:06

Like, oh yeah, it just speaks to the talent that every astronaut has. This is just the guy, these are just the guys that Oh, this is just a crew we had lying around. No, this is a really talented crew with a very long resume.

S

Sawyer2:00:25

Yeah. And Chris Bergen, no he did not fly on Endeavor, so he didn't fly on the best shuttle. But anyway, I'm impressed that he's addressing people in Instagram and X comments. I'm just going to say that, too. That's one of those things where it's like, well, didn't expect that from a NASA administrator. Just go like, yeah, I'm going to reply to people.

E

EJ2:00:50

I mean, it's 2026. It's pretty easy to sort of, you know, traditionally put your fingers in your ears and be like la, but it's an acknowledgement of the media landscape that we live in today. And it's so refreshing. We all want that sort of communication. We all want to know what the decision-making process entails. And that's exactly how you head these things off at the pass is you just explain. You just tell people your reasoning and bingo bango. If people are paying attention and reasonable and you give them the reason why you did things, then that should clear things up. It's when you turtle and you hide and you don't explain your reasoning, that's when you run into problems.

J

Jack Buyer2:01:44

Am I not turtly enough for the turtle club? Stop. All right. Dana Carvey. Or was that Mike? I think it was Dana Carvey.

E

EJ2:01:53

It was Dana Carvey. Yeah, you're right.

S

Sawyer2:01:56

But I guess we should probably use that to segue into the updated mission timeline as well. So, as we mentioned, there's going to be two rendezvous and dockings. So the plan as we've learned it is that Blue Moon's Mark I guess 1.5 we'll call it which will have a pressurized section in it, the crew will be able to enter it. That will launch first, then Orion will launch and it will rendezvous and dock with Blue's vehicle. Blue's vehicle can stay in space for 90 days so it gives them a little bit more leverage. So they will launch, rendezvous, dock, separate away. Then comes Starship. Starship will launch a vehicle. From the sounds of it, it's basically just going to be a Starship that is pulled off the production line with a docking adapter stuck onto it. So it won't be entered. It won't have crew capabilities inside it. It's just going to be regular old Starship with a docking adapter so that crews can practice running docking. So it would be two days attached to Blue's and about 24 hours attached and doing operations with Starship which would then see the crew return and splash down after a couple weeks in space doing all of this. So that is what we saw. What we did see is some animations and renderings and plans for what Blue's vehicle is going to look like and what those operations will look like. SpaceX showed us pretty launch video. So, we also saw updates on the Artemis 3 hardware with the heat shield inspections. Obviously, we know the core stage inside the VAB stacked. We had the America 250 train rolling down the tracks, bringing eight of those SRB segments to the Cape, so it's getting closer. And we also found out about the Axiom space suits being tested in Artemis as well as on the ISS. So, that's kind of where we're at with this update, which I know that's a lot. I don't know where we even start with that, but that's kind of where we're at with this. What are your thoughts on this architecture?

J

Jack Buyer2:04:13

Do we think or do we know I might have missed it, the docking adapter added to a Starship off the line? Do we think that's just going to be like on the side or is it going to be on the nose? I just haven't really been able to spend time and dig through any of the imagery or renders or stuff that came out. I was kind of listening in while doing other stuff to the whole shebang. So, if they showed like a render of what that's going to be like on screen, then I missed it.

E

EJ2:04:46

I didn't think they did. I watched it twice, guys. And yeah, that's kind of what I wanted to talk about, too. I've seen everybody thinking like, oh, it's not going to be an HLS. They're just going to glue a docking port onto the side of a V3 Starship. And but that's what Jessica Jensen said was Starship HLS of this Starship demo will be based off of V3 Starship. I didn't construe that as like, oh, we're just going to take a V3 with tiles and put a docking port on the side or something. I took it that HLS is based off of the V3 design. Am I wrong here? Because I think the docking port would be on the front, right? Like what else would HLS be made out of? B2?

J

Jack Buyer2:05:36

Like I don't think you're necessarily wrong. I also don't think you're necessarily right. I mean, if only we could just ask Jared.

E

EJ2:05:44

If only

J

Jack Buyer2:05:46

Restored like ask space like

E

EJ2:05:49

But I mean here's the thing is you have header tanks up there, don't you? I know they plan to change that a little bit for HLS. We do have the old renders that they've had of what the interior will look like. Are you going to dock? I mean, I guess it doesn't matter if you're not entering but stick a docking port on top.

J

Jack Buyer2:06:06

Oh god, Alex is typing tanks already in there.

E

EJ2:06:10

I'm just saying.

J

Jack Buyer2:06:11

Yeah. See, dude. I mean, the way that Jessica Jensen said it, it just sounds like they're going to pull one off the assembly line and they're going to tool it up to be not a full HLS, but something that has a docking port and maybe a pressurized volume inside, right? Like you don't need any environmental control systems on this thing. And you know, we are under a time crunch with these landers, right? So you can forego some components. You don't need ECLSS on board. Orion can tap into it. You could go from there if you really wanted to. SpaceX and Vast I believe are doing something like that. The Haven One space station doesn't have any life support systems on it. It uses Dragon's, right? Why not do that? You could save some time that way. I just never really thought like it's going to be one with a thermal protection system, tiles with a docking port on the side. That's not how I interpreted that. But then again, I could be wrong.

E

EJ2:07:14

No, I mean I get you. I sort of wish I had a better history brain for Apollo specifically because surely there were missions before Apollo 11 where they tested things with hardware that could not have landed on the moon, but they did. You know, like again, my history brain sucks. Someone in the chat's probably like, 'What's wrong with you? You don't remember that on Apollo 9 they did a docking?' I'm sorry I'm dumb. But no,

J

Jack Buyer2:07:44

You always ask me what do you want to know?

E

EJ2:07:45

It doesn't have it. Did they do something akin to what we're talking about with Artemis 3? And I'm not talking about just low Earth orbit ops. I'm talking about specifically like did they have a nonfunctional or a minimally functional LEM that they docked with but they didn't take around the moon or did they take it around the moon but it didn't have all the fuel it would have needed just to make sure that they wouldn't attempt a landing? Although is that really true or is that just urban myth over the years?

J

Jack Buyer2:08:23

That's true. John Young said he would have landed it. He would have ignored NASA and landed it if it had a full fuel load. He may have been kidding, but

E

EJ2:08:29

God, I love Johnny. Coolest guy.

J

Jack Buyer2:08:31

He may have been kidding, but who? Yeah, exactly. He's my favorite. He's the goat for me.

E

EJ2:08:39

So, all right. So, Jack, Apollo 8 launched, right? That one went around the moon. Similar to Artemis 2. But not a lot of people know if you're not too keen on Apollo history is that eight launched with no lander because it wasn't ready. Grumman was taking their time with the lander, rightly so. You probably don't want to get that wrong. That might be pertinent to current events somehow. So they didn't launch a lander. Yeah. No, it's good. Let's just send it. Let's build a pad in six months. It'll be fine. Sorry.

J

Jack Buyer2:09:18

All right. A little. No, that was below the belt and I will keep going. So then Apollo 9 was basically for all intents and purposes a real one. And they sent it up into low Earth orbit. They tested rendezvous proximity operations. They tested plucking it off the S-IVB and they also tested the EVA suits. They EVAd just as a way of like an emergency egress or contingency EVAding out of the LM and getting to the CSM in the event that the probe and drogue system didn't work. Apollo 9 was a nutty mission. And then 10 didn't have the fuel and then 11 landed, right? They did do this.

E

EJ2:10:14

So eight was kind of Artemis 2 and nine is kind of Artemis 3 is sort of what we're saying.

J

Jack Buyer2:10:21

Mhm. Pretty much.

E

EJ2:10:21

Yeah. I would say Artemis 2 is a combination of seven and eight. Seven was on a Saturn IB and it was just testing the CSM. The block two CSM. Apollo 1 was supposed to test the block one CSM and it oh it tested it. Respect. So seven was the block two CSM they tested that it worked and then eight they sent it. So like Artemis 2 is like a combination of seven and eight and a little bit of nine because of the rendezvous proximity operations demonstration but we're splitting hairs at this point. So yeah it's not unfounded. When Jared actually put Artemis 3 on the books I thought that was a good idea. I'm just kind of worried about whether the stuff would be ready or not. But, you know, I'm sure that information will come out at some point. Maybe they know something we don't.

Also, I'm surprised Jack didn't know Rusty Schweickart, who was a big asteroid guy.

J

Jack Buyer2:11:25

Oh, I'm aware. Rusty rules. In fact, the B612 Foundation, which is a really awesome planetary defense organization, has just started giving out a Rusty Schweickart prize. So, shout out to them and shout out to Rusty Schweickart, who's an absolute legend.

E

EJ2:11:41

Yes.

J

Jack Buyer2:11:41

Um, but yeah, it's I mean, this really feels like a trimmed down Apollo 9. Again, it feels like Blue kind of got the memo on having an actual interior that crews can go around and test in, but yeah, their vehicle to launch it is kind of in pieces along with their launchpad over at 36. So, you know, that issue,

S

Sawyer2:12:07

Which is just such a shame because we've been getting I feel like really meaningful updates from Blue regarding their lander and imagery of the interior and it's like almost night and day. At least, you know, maybe chat, tell me if I'm wrong, but I still feel like where are these updates from SpaceX on Starship HLS? Like, show us a freaking landing leg. Show us the elevator. Show us the crew cabin. Show us the bridge, which I assume is what the command area will be called. It better be. If we're not adopting nautical terminology for space flight, I don't know what we're doing, but we should. I'm still kind of mad that Space Force people are whatever they are and they're not Space Marines. Like,

J

Jack Buyer2:13:00

No, for real.

S

Sawyer2:13:02

I Yeah, right. I would really love some more detail on Starship HLS and I hope we get more over time and hopefully soon. But I also worry now with the IPO will they be more reticent to share as much as they have in the past and at least when it comes to Starship HLS that they've shared very little.

J

Jack Buyer2:13:27

Hey look, it's a picture of Starship that they shared during the presentation. Hey, look. It's that thing that happened that one time 12 times.

S

Sawyer2:13:37

Yeah, that's kind of what we're getting from SpaceX, which is crazy to me. That's been their big push. Obviously, they have more flights under their belt than Blue. They've gone for the flight heavy experience versus the ground support test experience and then fly as is as opposed to learn as you fly. But I don't know. We'll see. Let me thank some people here really quickly.

J

Jack Buyer2:14:07

Uh and then we'll get

S

Sawyer2:14:08

For a company that's so good at media, it is remarkable the dearth of information on Starship HLS. Sorry, Sawyer. Go ahead. For the number of NSF people that we've lost to SpaceX, including media people. Yeah, you think. Captain Q with a tip at tips.nasaspaceflight.com saying, 'Glad to see you're doing great, Jack. Congrats on 100 flame trenches. Let's hope for a hundred more.' Yes. Drewar with the numbers here. Artemis 3 crew, 889 days in space, almost 10,000 flight hours, two bachelors, two doctorates, seven masters, and countless honors and graduates. Those are some wild numbers when you combine the crew like that.

J

Jack Buyer2:14:49

Yeah, that's a pretty good crew.

S

Sawyer2:14:54

Pretty pretty pretty pretty good. Anyway, Rosebud saying, 'I can't really afford this, but it's time to let go of questioning male or female, black or white countries represented. We are a world of humans.' Amen. I appreciate that. And then Gaul coming in saying, 'Don't talk bad about Grumman. They got the LM so right it saved a crew.'

E

EJ2:15:22

I mean, yeah, Grumman didn't miss. You're right.

J

Jack Buyer2:15:26

It took them a while to get off the ground, but once they did, they didn't miss. Almost like, huh, there's companies here that are struggling to get off the ground in time and it may take them a little longer, but as long as they don't miss, you know.

E

EJ2:15:46

Yeah, we wouldn't want that.

J

Jack Buyer2:15:49

No, definitely not. You kind of get, you're picking up what we're putting down here.

E

EJ2:15:55

Yeah.

S

Sawyer2:15:57

So, I mean, yeah, I want to see these things fly. And obviously, I know Artemis 3 I almost said Artemis 9 was no, that was Apollo 9. Artemis 3. Now you got me all messed up. It's significant. But the whole point of this mission when outlined was this is going to be to test the landers. This is going to put them through their paces in lower Earth orbit where we can learn things about them before we send them out. Now, they did mention that there is also going to be an uncrewed demonstration landings for these companies as well. So, I mean, there's still

J

Jack Buyer2:16:38

Kind of been the plan the whole time, right?

S

Sawyer2:16:41

Yeah, it has. But at the same time, it was the whole, hey, look, we're going to test this thing in Earth orbit and this is going to be the proving ground so that way we're ready to go next year. When your stuff isn't ready to go, how can it be proving grounds, especially if what you're setting up is only partial? I mean, again, for SpaceX's, there's going to be no quarters for which a crew is to get in. They can't familiarize themselves with any of the systems moving around in orbit around it. Do handles need to be moved around that could get caught in space suits or that make it easier for them to move? It's minor things, but in the end, they add up and you get that benefit from testing it in low Earth orbit, which you're not getting this time. I don't know what your thoughts are on that.

J

Jack Buyer2:17:25

Yeah, I'm sorry. It just goes back to what I was saying, dude. I don't think that the Artemis 3 HLS that's going to be up there is just some cobbled together V3. I think people are misconstruing what Jessica was saying. And I don't speak for her. I don't know. I watched the thing twice. I did not get that vibe. I don't know. Maybe I'm wrong.

E

EJ2:17:58

I mean, it's possible you're wrong. It's also possible you're right. And people just are conditioned to want to be mad about things.

J

Jack Buyer2:18:06

Yeah. What? Yeah. As I was going to say, Jack, what were you saying about you saying something about that earlier? I don't know. I mean, Jack, feedback on what you're saying, guys. Just quick side note, remember there are certain things that you can get mad at that you don't have a choice in, right? But a lot of things particularly in the minutia of the day-to-day you can choose what pisses you off and what doesn't. You choose what makes you mad and what makes you not mad. I don't know man, I was listening to this conversation it just didn't sound like that to me. It very much sounded like they were pulling a V3 off the line because they're mass-producing ships. And I think what was going on there is that they were intending to say that HLS can just be pulled off the assembly line and you just make a different variant, you know? I don't know. Could be wrong.

S

Sawyer2:19:04

I mean, yeah, there's a lot of nuance and again, a lot of that comes down to where is SpaceX at with their production, where is NASA at with their production, where is Blue at with their production in getting all of this together and in orbit and setting that timeline. And that's one of the things that I've always kind of dealt with in real life is it sucks to have to rely on other people to get something done. And I mean, I guess it's a good thing because you can get help from someone, but at the same time, if they fall behind or if they don't live up to their part of the bargain, well, then that affects you personally. And it seems like that's kind of where we're at with this current vibe with the Artemis program. I don't know if it's the same kind of feeling there. I know. We'll definitely have to ask someone about that. I feel like that's one of those kind of big-time questions that it's like I know we can't really answer ourselves, but it would be interesting to hear the NASA take on things. I don't know. What do you think?

J

Jack Buyer2:20:08

Uh, agreed. I think Yeah, I agree.

E

EJ2:20:14

Should we do that?

J

Jack Buyer2:20:17

Yeah.

E

EJ2:20:19

Should we ask?

J

Jack Buyer2:20:21

We should.

E

EJ2:20:22

I don't know. Chad, what do you think?

J

Jack Buyer2:20:23

Should we just ask NASA and be like, 'Hey, what are your thoughts on all this?' I mean, that might be helpful.

S

Sawyer2:20:28

Call up John NASA right now.

J

Jack Buyer2:20:34

John NASA. Yes. Is that like John Bor but John NASA?

S

Sawyer2:20:39

Yeah. What's his name? What? John NASA? What is

J

Jack Buyer2:20:45

Uh, I don't know who.

S

Sawyer2:20:47

Oh, yeah. Oh, no. His name's Yeah. No, that's not his name. Dang.

Oh boy. Uh yeah. So, uh ladies and gentlemen, uh hopefully uh Jared can hear me. Uh but yes, uh we have Jared Eisenman, who is the NASA administrator, uh joining us here on the 100th episode of the Flame Trench for a very special conversation about everything going on with Artemis. Jared, can you hear us?

J

Jared Isaacman2:21:14

I hear you loud and clear and uh thanks for having me on. I didn't know this is the hundredth episode. Congratulations.

S

Sawyer2:21:20

Well, thank you. Yeah. Uh, it's an honor to have you on on the hundredth and I guess the timing worked out great. We've got our crew back together and we've obviously now have a crew together for Artemis 3 quite appropriately. I mean, we were just talking about the experience that this crew has behind them. I mean, can you kind of just talk about the selection process of this crew with all of their backgrounds?

J

Jared Isaacman2:21:45

Sure. Um well I'll tell you I mean you know the actual selection took place by the astronaut office and um uh you know Norm Knight uh so maker from the chief astronaut and Norm Knight and I I'm very big on maintaining kind of the um the history if you will. You often I mean I try and make reference to it a lot is that when we've established a good process or precedent not mess with it. So I I was certainly aware of who um who they were recommending and it made sense to me. Um you know you think about their backgrounds. Comrade was extremely close uh to the Artemis 2 mission. He worked very hard was a champion of the uh the whole uh rendevous and proximity operations that was on that mission. Not to mention he was the representative to the kind of the leader the daily leadership meetings during the crew office representative during the daily leadership meetings of Artemis 2. So extremely close to that. Not to mention two-time astronaut, test pilot, and then Andre, I mean, you know, the backup to Artemis 2, you know, three and a half years of deep familiarity with Orion, uh, especially, um, you know, Frank Rubio, another, you know, record for US astronaut time in space, great background for this, two-time astronaut. And then you got, uh, Luca, who's also extremely skilled, uh, very cool under pressure as we all know from the EVA incident. So, um, yeah, I think you've assembled a really great crew for what I what I think is just going to be a spectacular mission. I mean, the bar is rightfully very high after Artemis 2 and and that amazing voyage around the moon with, you know, four outstanding astronauts. Uh, so it's going to be a little bit of a different sight picture. It's not going to be the moon, but what we're going to see of Earth and the operations around it. I mean, you know, a spectacular multi-launch campaign from three of the most powerful rockets in the world. you get cameras and optical comms on everything. So, seeing all the vehicles come together, uh, I think it's going to be I think it's be really exciting. I think we've got the right people for it.

Well, I mean, people are certainly entitled to their opinions on the subject and uh you know, nothing against people's disappointment. Um, you know, uh I I'm disappointed uh too in some of those reactions if we're if we're all entitled to our opinion because I think some of it is pretty uh you know, uninformed. you don't know the whole picture of what astronauts have come back from space, what astronauts are getting ready to go to space. Um, you know, what um what astronauts have spent years in XEVA suit development. Um, you know, and and you uh so, you know, you could be for having a strong insistence on it doesn't matter the background or readiness or experience, you know, put a female on this mission. you could be taking someone away who's already slotted uh and has been preparing for a long time to walk on the moon. Um I I I mean I again I people are entitled to their opinions but you know at least based it on on some data. NASA only gets to select the NASA astronauts on our our mission. So you go back to crew 10 you know both female astronauts pilot and commander. Um so it's 100% from NASA selection. Crew 11 commander 50%. Crew 12 commander 50%. crew 13 commander 50% on that um and then you know one-third of the Artemis 2 um you know representation there. So I I mean I um I think it's disappointing because this is should be a moment to celebrate um you know the passing of the baton from the amazing Artemis 2 crew to the Artemis 3 crew and knowing again which I think the astronauts said best at the announcement the link that Artemis 3 will have to the astronauts that are returning to the surface and all those that are preparing for that mission right now. So, I I think just celebrate the moment just like we're going to celebrate the next crew. And um and you know, just there's just enough controversy in the world. We don't need to uh you know, I think needlessly manufactured at NASA when you really look at the whole picture.

S

Sawyer2:26:12

Yeah. And I mean, we had the hype from the Artemis 2 crew with all four of them. I mean, it felt like such a tight-knit family that we were watching. I mean, this crew is kind of How much time have they really had together? Because obviously Artemis 2 crew had years and stuff and with the recent changes that you made with the ignition event to kind of set Artemis 3 as that low Earth orbit operations test flight. Do you think they've had that same kind of time to get that bond to become that family?

J

Jared Isaacman2:26:39

Well, it's it's it's early, right? I mean, you know, I would say uh you know, the Artemis uh 2 crew, I mean, they certainly knew all uh knew each other really well from just being in the astronaut corps, but yes, they had three and a half years to become you know, good friends. And then I think the crew themselves said it best that they left as good friends and came back as as best friends. There's no doubt that's that's real once you're on mission. You know, you you get closer than you ever, you know, were before. But, you know, they all know each other really well, have a a high degree of respect for each other. They're going to work. I mean, this is this is going to be an intense training period over the next year. Um, but honestly, you ask me, I would take this uh you know, every time. I I don't think three and a half years of training and preparation for a mission is is correct. I'd much rather see us back in the rhythm of uh of decades past. And and now you're starting to see it again with with the Artemis 3 crew. This is what should be expected. Um you know, there there's always going to be some fanfare on crew announcements, but uh I want it to be much more routine. Uh I don't I don't I don't want us to have three seasons of a show before a uh before a crew gets uh gets off the Earth on on their way to the moon. I want it to be crew announced gets right into training and you know a year later or less we're we're seeing them on their on their way to their uh whether it's uh you know earth orbit or or or to the moon. So this this should be more of the the rhythm you should expect of us and I have no doubt they're they're going to bond uh together over what will be extremely demanding developmental mission. I mean, they'll they'll they should be spending, you know, probably as much time out at the vendor sites looking at hardware and and and helping drive um, you know, drive it to a state of readiness for this mission as they spend in the in in the simulator.

S

Sawyer2:28:24

Yeah. And I do want to point out folks, yeah, sorry about that. Jared was able to hear the question, but we are reading chat and uh I know Jared, you're you're willing to answer some questions and comments from chat on this, right?

J

Jared Isaacman2:28:36

Oh, yeah. I don't uh and I I mean I you know softballs are always fine but I never mind the tough questions. I I I I think it's actually rather helpful. So uh yeah, anything you got.

S

Sawyer2:28:47

Uh EJ, I know you've been reading chat on some of this.

E

EJ2:28:53

Yep. Yeah, I'm watching it uh like I always do. So yeah, Jared, if they if they if I see one, I'm going to pick it out. No softballs. We'll do it.

J

Jared Isaacman2:29:01

Yeah, no issue. I can't see any of them uh the chat questions so I'll defer to you but okay and just talking the subject so all right.

E

EJ2:29:33

Rage Machine is real and you seem to be really good at fighting it. No,

J

Jared Isaacman2:29:37

Well, first of all, I I think that NASA, you know, hasn't done itself favors in in recent years by not being as open and transparent and always painting things, you know, um you know, painting the rosiest picture possible. Like, I don't actually think that um inspires confidence. And you know, we we had some good discussions very early on on things that we chose to be, you know, very quick uh and public about to the extent we could, like the, you know, Crew 11 early return or or the Starliner situation or just how we're looking at, you know, investments in programs or hardware that isn't, you know, directionally aligned with returning to the moon as quickly as possible. And it's be open and honest. Actually, when you pretend some of these things don't exist, it does not inspire confidence. you know, you're you think you're protecting the reputation of, you know, the world's greatest space agency, but in but in fact, it actually erodes a lot of trust. So, I'm very big in getting out there and confronting the issues and at least being um yeah, I mean, trying to be as reasonable can when questions uh arise.

S

Sawyer2:30:43

I want to bring something up here because obviously I mean we had the uh explosion out at 36 from blue during that static fire testing and they had a major role in the lunar program. In fact, I mean just days before we had talked about all of their role in building the moon base on the surface and how they were going to be delivering landers and all of that. I mean how has that impacted timelines because originally you had mentioned you know late 27 and now summer 27. Do you think that is still viable given what happened to Blue?

J

Jared Isaacman2:31:15

Yeah. Well, just to be clear, I'm not and I'm not faulting any of the, you know, kind of the journalists uh that covered it um that interpreted my commentary before I don't know, one of the three budget hearings as a a change to the timeline from, you know, mid 27 to late 27. I mean, I know I know what I said and that was, you know, easy to interpret that, but it really just meant like next year like we're going to address it then. We we've always been targeting mid27 uh for Artemis 3. I have no doubt uh SLS and Orion is going to be ready. I I mean we are going to start stacking this summer. Um and uh and I think that'll be send a great message to the workforce. Sends a great message to our our our rivals in this great competition. I have no doubt it will also put uh some pressure on the lander providers to uh ensure they kind of meet um you know that uh they can meet their timelines. But all all that said that so that's Artemis 3 aside uh you know did the the blue situation the anomaly there um you know uh challenge some of the timelines with the moon base absolutely um you know your near-term milestones for sure we we were going to launch um the Mark1 uh vehicle you know the first one I think later this summer but once you once you you know start looking a little bit farther out like the two awards we gave for the LTV uh rovers I mean that's that's 2028. So I I have no doubt they'll be they they'll be back on their feet, you know, well before then. And we're doing everything we can to help. I mean, this has been also a drum that we've been trying to beat a lot, which is we are not a procurement organization. Like we we don't just wait for everyone to deliver us what we want. We can go out and drive outcomes. Now in some cases that's a lot harder because uh we have lost some of our core competencies over the years and uh and that's for different reasons at different times from you know wind down of shuttle and outsourcing and other things. Um but we're rebuilding those competencies uh we have a number of ways to do that so that we can put people into the field and drive outcomes. And right now there's a at least two dozen or so subject matter experts helping in terms of blue uh whether it's anomaly investigation. Um we'll do everything we can to help them get back on their feet within reason. And we're doing the same thing with the uh EVA suit development and push that along. We're we're going to do that actually. We're we're going down to extreme uh you know layers uh subcontractors making valves that uh that are on critical path to get them to get them going. So that should be the uh the expectation. We'll do all we can with blue. There's no doubt a year ahead um you know if they get if they get launching again before the end of the year fantastic then we we will have lost very little time but even you know a year ahead you know there's ways we can work around it and um and then we'll we'll get back on track for uh for Artemis 3.

S

Sawyer2:33:55

Would you consider then moving Blue Moon Mark 1 to another vehicle say for example a Falcon Heavy with the extended fairing or something like that?

J

Jared Isaacman2:34:03

Yeah, I I mean from from my perspective the uh the moon base um you know build out look it it has there there's value in it aside from just you know putting landers and rovers on the on the surface moon. Every time we we we we you know complete a successful landing on lunar surface we're learning something that will help us um you know for the actual crude landing. So there there could be rationale um you know to launch on another another provider. I mean, you know, you know, plan A is help help Blue get back on their feet because we we all want the New Glenn capability uh and their advanced 9x4 as quickly as we can. But there might be some uh you know, good rationale to uh to look to another provider whether that, you know, is potentially a SpaceX or even maybe a Vulcan with, you know, six SRBs. Um you know, I think that'll depend too on on kind of the anomaly investigation, but it's not the it's not the plan A. Um but I do think you know getting more landings uh even for moon base aside from the capabilities we intend to deliver to the surface is very worthwhile. Um certainly getting you know getting uh comms and observation to the moon too will be very helpful for future HLS landings when you you think about you know the challenging terrain to land you know big landers on there especially for crew. So you still got to keep moving the moon base along I guess is the long way of saying it. Um, you know, even while we're helping Blue get uh back on their feet.

S

Sawyer2:35:28

EJ, I know chat's been really liking this topic. What do you have for us?

E

EJ2:35:32

Okay, I've been going through all the questions and Jared, the one that I saw that I think was a, you know, a little bit of a curveball if we're going to do that. Is, you know, in light of what happened with NG4, is the EOS even considered coming back? And if not, what are we doing with that hardware? Like what what's ML2 going to do? Are there prospective, you know, customers? We going to sell it? What's going to happen there?

J

Jared Isaacman2:35:55

Oh, well, I mean, I don't Look, if EU if one of the uh, you know, if the if one of the landers requirements was to be able to be launched to the moon on a single cargo, you know, block 1.5, I get it, but it's not. Uh, it never was. So like even you know even if you you know um uh you know wave the magic wand and EU was operational now you can't get even the slim down uh crude lander uh you know the uh to the moon on a single shot. So um so why would how are you say you know how are you helping yourself in that regard? You're still back to a multi-launch campaign. Uh the only difference is it would be you know 4 billion plus instead of you know some number materially uh less than that. But if you had told me like from the get-go, hey, the reason we have the block, you know, u you know, block 1B um you know, with EU is because that's the vehicle that's going to get a lander to the moon. Well, that would make a lot more sense to me, but it wasn't. I mean, it's co-manifesting gateway modules. Uh all that said, Centaur 5 is moving. By the way, we're going to put an update on there. First of all, I I will tell you, you know, just the the early pass back um you know, from our uh our finance team, like that's going to save over $3 billion over the next six years uh to pivot off of EU uh to um to the Centaur 5. uh and uh it's not I mean it the timeline closes to uh to mid 2028 which I would I mean I'll say I'll let the you know people write the reports that are going to write the reports on when when EOS would have come out but like it's a material cost savings as a result. So in simply put once gateway was once you've pivoted from gateway to uh to a lunar base what do you need uh block 1b for like at this point in time like your only priority is getting astronauts uh either to the moon or into earth orbit for rendevous period because everything else from there forward you whether you know cargo or whatnot you can launch through a commercial provider so you're not gaining anything and again you're not getting a one a one launch uh lander to the moon or else that would make a lot of sense um to me. So, and as for ML2, um we're still evaluating options on that. Industry has reached out about potential uses. We're looking at potentially modifying it to be the, you know, kind of the the uh block one standard, if you will, if we did want if we did think we needed to get two shots off really, you know, in reasonable close succession in in 2028. Um there's certainly spares you could harvest from it, but we're going to make good good use for it. Um but for those who are like, oh, it was almost ready. It's like couldn't be farther from the truth. Like that been late 2029 at most. Like it didn't have its elevator in. It didn't have any of its plumbing. Um you know, it was these were again this these are just programs that um we could have uh we could have done better on and there's quite a few of those. But now at least we're freeing up resources and we're focusing people um on where it needs to be and we're going to be able to move faster as a result.

S

Sawyer2:38:55

Okay, cool. That Yeah, thank you for Thank you for the comprehensive answer. I I have a followup though if you don't mind.

J

Jared Isaacman2:39:00

Sure.

S

Sawyer2:39:00

Uh so okay, you know we we want commercial we want the commercial landers. We don't want any US. It doesn't make sense because the co-manifesting payload, right? So all right SpaceX talked about in the Artemis 3 presentation they talked about using uh a Starship HLS as basically your Earth departure stage with an Orion attached to the front doing your trans lunar injection. Now, does that mean like maybe in the future we figure out some kind of mechanism to put Orion just into LEO or is SLS the the kind of long-term plan with throwing an Orion up there or will there be other conops with blue where we don't send Orion into LEO or we send it on some a trajectory like a trans lunar injection like Artemis 2?

J

Jared Isaacman2:39:47

Yeah so so and I mean you know do have to be careful people you know ask like you know why don't we have more specifics about you know what uh of course what the HLS landing strategy is and it's like well that is very much a commercial procurement right so this is their trade secrets uh you know so um but I mean obviously SpaceX chose that they are a going to be an earth orbit rendevous for uh for a starship for a uh for a lunar landing um safe to say blue it's going to be a um uh you know a lunar orbit rendevous. So in that respect you're you're still going to need the performance of SLS. Now you know I I said when we had the ignition event you're you're building a moon base so that you can go a lot uh like even go I mean I obviously I hated the idea of launching a rocket every uh you know every three three years like you want to get to at least on an annual cadence but you want to do better than that. You'd like to be going every every six months. So, um, whatever that time frame is, I have no idea. Is it is it Artemis 6, 5, 9, you know, at some point or another, uh, you're you're going to want to find, uh, you know, a more, uh, efficient or commercial approach to send your astronauts to the moon and meet up with their landers. Um, and we put out an RFI for that. And, you know, industry provided feedback on what a reasonable time frame is for when that's available. It's not, you know, right around the corner. uh you know, even in the case of SpaceX, you're you're going to want to crew rate and certify um you know, that vehicle for ascent and re-entry, and you're going to want to get a lot of reps at that before before considering. So, I I do think you're going to see SLS's launches launch for for some period of time, regardless of whether it's handing off Orion in, you know, a uh like a highly elliptical Earth orbit, which still a lot of performance to do that, or you're sending it to uh to the moon where it can uh rendevous with another lander.

S

Sawyer2:41:43

And while we're talking about uh SpaceX and their vehicle, I mean for Artemis 3, uh we know that it's not going to be a vehicle that they can enter per se as they will for Artemis 4 and for all the future moonbase landings on it. What do you think is the benefit that you get from this of basically it sounds like just kind of sticking a docking port on the side of a Starship off the line? Can you kind of clarify what that is going to look like and the benefits of doing that versus waiting for a lander that would actually be enterable?

J

Jared Isaacman2:42:12

Yeah, sure. I mean, I I think that the the difference between say an Apollo 9 scenario versus what we're proposing with with Artemis 3 is you still have the full end uncrrewed demonstrations uh from both landers. So, you know, what are what are we trying to accomplish here? Well, we do need to get into a rhythm of launching SLS on a on a on a more regular cadence. like you, you know, again, your your skills atrophy, um your your workforce moves on to other things and you wind up relearning lessons just as we did in the in the beginning of the Artemis 2 campaign. So that's that's not um acceptable. So we will launch in 2027. If you're going to launch in 2027, expend the vehicle, put crew at risk. You you want to get as much as you possibly can out of it um to bring down risk for a landing. Uh now if you said well what if you know if the blue lander wasn't available would you still do the mission uh just for a um you know a control a stack controllability check with uh uh you know rendevous docking and controllability check with of the integrated stack. No because you're you're not getting enough out of it to to to take on that that risk. But with Blue there and being able to test out a lot of the subsystems and subsystems that are important, which frankly Blue does have to prove. I mean, we we you know, SpaceX, we we've gotten a you know, a lot of proof points over the years on their ability to manage e-class and avionics and rendevu docking. So, a lot of those systems we know they know how to do and we've been helping them on for, you know, as they adapted to the HLS environment. Uh, so, you know, that's I would say less important in that environment. rendevu and docking a multi-launch campaign still very useful. Uh again launching SLS and getting in a rhythm very useful but you're you're probably getting more in terms of your uh your test data out of the the blue test lander than you would on SpaceX. But then you're going to follow it up with two uncrrewed uh end demonstrations of both vehicles. I think you combine the you know that with the Artemis 3 objectives. Now you're starting to feel really good about Artemis 4.

S

Sawyer2:44:11

Yeah. And of course, a lot of this comes with the idea of a lot of this was going to be tested out at Lunar Gateway and doing everything out there. Obviously, Lunar Gateway is not happening in an orbital sense. I know obviously there's a lot of focus on being able to repurpose parts of it for the lunar base. Where are we at in terms of repurposing parts for both the lunar base and in addition to that, where are we at in repurposing the parts to get the Skyfall mission off the ground and get that nuclear propulsion test going?

J

Jared Isaacman2:44:38

Yeah. Well, I I love talking on the whole nuclear program. Yeah, look, I mean, Gateway was uh maybe a good idea from a different uh you know, from a different time. You know, we asked both lunar lander providers for acceleration proposals. Both wanted to ditch NRO. Uh it comes at a performance penalty. Uh it's not great from a um from an abort perspective and um it's it's a adds a lot of costs. It's a distraction and it's a it's another it's another step or part in the process. So there, you know, the uh I don't I don't know like if you well if we if we just had gateway and it didn't have all the you know the consequence I just described with it would have made it us make us feel any better about um you know our approach to get back to the moon. I'd trade adding another mission between uh two and the original landing mission of three any day uh in terms of uh you know gaining experience and uh and getting a rhythm as the you know the correct direction. Um but in terms of okay so uh you know lunar lunar base and uh and the nuclear program I I think in the lunar base there's absolutely going to be components we are harvesting from gateway modules that are going to be useful for the base. Um I I I don't I couldn't tell you today that and you know that the Halo module for example or I I have in terms of whatever stage of fabrication is going to appear on the surface and be useful in that regard. But there's a lot of very expensive components that were uh procured in support of a gateway that we are definitely going to repurpose. But there's going to be just a lot of new a lot of landers a lot of rovers. Um, you know, it's great that, uh, you've got, people have described it to me, I've said it before, like this is the platinum age of, um, you know, orbital, uh, uh, you know, communications networks and, uh, and, uh, comm relay and optical comm. So, I I think that there'll be no doubt we're going to have great connectivity and optics on the moon base, both surface uh, and and in orbit above it. That's going to be pretty pretty wild. Um, so yeah, anyway, there's a there's a um uh so grateful kind of industry is putting putting a lot of effort in into being helpful there. A lot of people want to be the eyes and ears of the moon, which I think is pretty pretty great. But yeah, lots of landers, lots of rovers, power demonstrations. Um the uh a lot of scientific instruments, uh tech demonstrations that are going to come down. I'm very big. I love the idea of uh you know using some of these rovers uh you know instead of us doing we originally just do like one extreme grand LTV rover and now we're doing a series of them in a in a more iterative approach but actually having some doing surface improvements start you know um paving out if you will few landing pads. So anyway I'm pretty excited about what we're where the the direction of the uh the moon base is going. The hopper drones by the way are very cool. I can't can't wait to show a little bit more on that. And then in the nuclear camp, uh yes, repurposing PPE and uh you know, we're slimming it down. We're we're shaving mass off it as much as uh as much as we possibly can. And then we're work, I mean, we are just leveraging some amazing expertise across NASA centers and as we should, by the way. I mean, this is kind of my point on the, you know, when I talk about NASA constantly recalibrating to do the near impossible, it's it there is not a good thing for the workforce when we're doing what everybody else can do. Uh you know, especially today, big IPO day. Great. I'm thrilled for by the way everyone at SpaceX workforce there. Um you know you don't want to be uh competing with industry that has a lot of options available to incentivize and reward their workforce. You need to give you know at NASA we need to give our people the work that no one else uh you know is is is capable of doing where there's no obvious business or use case and then you're there for the work and you stay for the work and that's why nuclear power and propulsion has got to go from the 100 million a year funded to go nowhere for decades. uh into at some point a multi-billion dollar program. um you know big you know and just keep pro you know uh you know keep you know pushing the limits on uh on on material uh for you know high temperature materials power conversion and uh and really build your your fleet of nuclearpowered uh you know probably chemically augmented nuclearpowered spaceships to to pull off a real mission uh to Mars and back with the fewest miracles required um not to mention outer solar system such so anyway the point is is that I I love that we're working on this it's absolutely the 70% solution. Uh, you know, PPE is great. Uh, if you're doing it from the ground up, you'd probably try and optimize for mass a little bit more. U, but all of our centers are contributing to this for space structures, you know, uh, an extendable boom, uh, radiators, plus industry is contributing as well, uh, designing reactor, but we're really cobbling this thing together to be that 70% solution, that nautilus that, uh, you know, kind of gives birth to, um, you know, uh, you know, a nuclear future in space. Um and it's all it's all progressing uh I think really well.

S

Sawyer2:49:33

Yeah. I mean you said nuclear is your favorite topic so I might as well ask you another question about it while we have you. I mean obviously this is going to be a huge mission for a proof of concept of things going forward. How do you see the plans to either miniaturize it or build upon the scale that you have for this particular freedom mission to be able to then use it for future Mars missions and these other you know interplanetary spacecraft.

J

Jared Isaacman2:49:57

Yeah. So I think part of I mean look I think a large portion of my my job my responsibility is um to get all of the interested parties all the stakeholders aligned on what's you know in the best interest uh for NASA and our space program for the long term. Uh there's obviously a lot of short-term things we have to get people aligned on like when you're pivoting off of the US or gateway moon base and I think we've been extremely effective at that. Um, but we're having the same conversations about nuclear because what I don't want is everyone to wait around for that mission and then say what comes next, right? Like we got to we got to make progress on this and already be thinking about what you know SR2, SR3, SR4 looks like. Um and we are having those conversations now and we're getting a lot of uh you know our stakeholders uh political leadership aligned that this is the right uh long-term future for NASA for powering our moon base uh you know for again pulling off crude missions you know maybe to Mars again with the fewest miracles required for uh you know um uh power on the surface of Mars and then just exploring the outer solar systems where um you know you just can't rely on solar uh to be that effective and uh and you know it's going well. So I I would expect at some point you're going to have multiple reactors in design. Uh you're going to have your next generation power uh you know conversion units and and uh we'll just keep layering on additional missions you know and you'll try and if we start at a 70% solution I hope we get closer to you know SR2 is maybe an 80% solution. I challenge the the science mission director and I mean our our budget called approximately you know in FY26 appropriation $7 billion a year. Um, and I know people hate to hear it because it's always the binary thing of like, you know, it's it's all or nothing, but it's really not. There's lots of ways to unlock efficiencies and when we don't spend as well and say, you know, uh, see where we can unlock additional dollars to fund a high priority decal science mission, the outer solar system, and leverage nuclear power, and let's start building SR2. And, uh, and people responding well to, to that. Uh, so, um, yeah, I think there's going to be a lot of follow on. not going to have to wait for SR1 to, you know, post a W to know that there's another one uh following shortly thereafter.

S

Sawyer2:52:07

Yeah. And I know you were at Langley today actually where they've been doing a lot of work on all those different systems and we were just looking at some of those photos. It's amazing to see all the different NASA centers coming together for all these different things.

J

Jared Isaacman2:52:19

Yeah. Oh, it's absolutely. I mean, you know, again, I was talking to people today that, you know, submitted the designs for an extendable boom and the uh, you know, radiator designs for for SR1 freedom and those that are working on um, you know, AI programs to help with uh, some uh, XPlane uh, initiatives we were working on in aeronautics. That's pretty uh, pretty exciting. So, yes, every center you go to um, you just meet a lot of fantastic people that are working really hard to, you know, change the world in air and space.

S

Sawyer2:52:47

Yeah. I mean, now we have the X59 and all of that. You mentioned aeronautics, Jack. Go for it.

J

Jack Buyer2:52:52

I You said a thing about a plane. Uh I have to ask about the Maverick Act. Uh I never thought in a million years thought we would actually get to see um something like that happen. It was always like a fanciful daydream like, 'Oh, what if we got a flying F-14 again and now the Maverick Act exists.' I hate to do that thing that people always do with like musicians and whatnot and it's like, 'Oh, awesome. What's next?' But like just because we live in this insane world, in this best of all timelines, could we possibly maybe see an SR71 flying again someday? I'll just be happy with an F-14. But I just had to throw that out there because I'm wish casting now.

J

Jared Isaacman2:53:33

Well, uh, one one step at a time. But uh I would say that um like the f first things first, we gota we we gota we got to just start doing more within our aeronautics portfolio. You know, XPlane was flew once, was in heavy maintenance uh just a handful of months ago. Now it's getting into a rhythm. Uh you know, went through the number last week, I think hit 1.4 today. I'm I'm still looking through catching up on some of my emails, but uh so great. Now we're we're in a rhythm. We we got to rebuild uh flight test, I'll tell you. We're we're definitely hiring an aeronautics to start bringing back in more um you know flight test engineers so we can uh not outsource that anymore because that's going to be the key to managing multiple Xplanes. But uh I assure you there will be more Xplanes. Uh there there is this is I I think to me like I obviously I love the uh I love the rocket business, right? And I don't think there's anything more inspirational like nobody would have you wouldn't have gotten anywhere near as many people tuning in, put it this way, if Artemis 2 was uh didn't have those uh four amazing human beings in it. But in between all of that, you get some pretty radical looking explanes out there flying around. That's a that's another great way to get people inspired about about this line of work. So, uh, fully expect, uh, more to come here.

S

Sawyer2:54:52

Yeah. Thank you, by the way, Jared, for letting us, you know, do answer some chat questions and taking some of the hard-hitting ones. I know appreciate your openness and honesty with all of it. And, uh, yeah, we love having you at NASA and getting to hear all the exciting things now actually happening. So, thank you, Jared.

J

Jared Isaacman2:55:08

Yeah, absolutely. Anytime, guys. So, anytime. We will take you up on that. Be careful. I mean, care. Yeah, careful. The only interview I go on where I'm not wearing a suit, so I welcome it.

S

Sawyer2:55:20

Oh, we got you. Yeah. See, I got a t-shirt on, too. We're good, man.

J

Jared Isaacman2:55:23

Dang. And I put the collar shirt on. Like, oh, I got to look. No, next time I'm wearing the merch. There you go.

S

Sawyer2:55:28

I'm wearing pajamas.

J

Jared Isaacman2:55:29

Nice. Very nice.

S

Sawyer2:55:31

Like it.

J

Jared Isaacman2:55:33

Well, good. Awesome. Well, hey, uh, always great chatting with you guys. Congratulations again on the hundredth episode.

S

Sawyer2:55:39

Thank you so much, Administrator Jared Isaacman. Folks.

J

Jared Isaacman2:55:42

Take care, guys. See you. Bye.

S

Sawyer2:55:44

See you, buddy.

J

Jack Buyer2:55:49

So, that just happened.

S

Sawyer2:55:52

That was uh that was pretty cool.

J

Jack Buyer2:55:56

Yeah, we were Yeah, about that uh that fourth box. There you go. That's who it was as administrator Jared Eisman. And uh yeah, there were certain things to talk about again like you know we wanted to address the you know the Artemis crew selection and all of that. And of course once I found out his favorite topic was nuclear. I mean come on that was that was awesome. But uh I think we got some really good answers. That's why we kept hinting. Huh. If only we could ask Jared about that or ask NASA what that means. I think we got some good answers there.

S

Sawyer2:56:27

You don't think we laid it on too thick?

Okay. Sorry. trying to compose myself. Uh we had a lot of support that obviously came through uh during that. So, uh let me just uh thank some people here really quickly. Um Jacob Durkin saying, 'Jack, so glad to see you back. Hope everything's going well.' EJ Sawyer, always appreciate these streams. Big love to you all. Uh Phil asking, 'Jack, do you miss being down at Starbase and photographing everything and working with NSF? Want to know how you dealt with it in the chain? how how you dealt with the change.'

J

Jack Buyer2:57:03

Oh man. Um, who cares? Like we just had Jared on.

S

Sawyer2:57:13

I think I think now is neither the time nor the place for that discussion. I I'm inconsequential compared to um everything that we just talked about. Suffice to say, there's things about it I miss. There's things about it I don't. Um, and I'm just I'm just happy that we live in 2026 when there's so much interesting stuff going on in space flight. It's it it fills my heart with joy.

Absolutely. Uh Jeff saying, 'Jack said it. Some people like to just be negative. They must not be listened to.' Yes. Um, and then came the reactions to Jared. No way. Jared the man restoring NASA. NSF always has great content. Space Pope with the $50 super chat saying, 'Space blessings to you, Jared, and the brave members of NASA. Space be with you.' Uh, John saying, 'OMG, awesome job, Jared, sir.' Uh, Telstar, getting Jared on the flame trench is a flex for sure. Well done, NSF, for having a high-profile guest. Jack is a close.

J

Jack Buyer2:58:10

Oh, and I'm not getting me on isn't a flex. What am I, chopped liver?

S

Sawyer2:58:14

Read the parenthesis. Oh, he said that he did the me.

J

Jack Buyer2:58:17

What am I chopped liver?

S

Sawyer2:58:20

Uh Jeff saying space is hard and having you Jared at the helm is a welcome site for the $25 super chat. Thank you Jeff Rishoff. Um Jared, would you rather fight a 100 duck sized horses or one horse-sized duck? Cheers from Indianapolis.

Yeah. I hope you don't mind when we were picking some chat questions. We kind of didn't take that one.

J

Jack Buyer2:58:39

I was trying to pick humdinger questions, dude. Like I was trying to Yeah. I mean he said he want you said he wanted curve balls. He he told us that before.

S

Sawyer2:58:47

Part of me was like do we have enough curveballs? like he seemed to really want to to answer hard questions. I hope we we satisfied with hard questions and uh whenever whenever you guys get him back on uh I rest assured I I'm sure you'll have some some barn burners for him.

Yeah. And you were able to hear all of uh his answers. Most important uh Telster saying thank you Jared taking the time to answer questions. I'm sure he's a very busy man. And this shows how down to earth, no pun, approach to running NASA and being transparent and honor for sure. Uh Eric Fraser, now that I'm back at my computer, happy 100th flame trench, everyone. Jack, so great to have you back, if only temporary. And what a score to have. Jared, join as well. Kudos to the NSF family. Uh Brett with $10 super chat for an amazing 100th flame trench with Jared and Jack. Thanks, NSF. And that diabetic kid saying, 'Please come back soon, Jack and Jared.' Jack, thank you so much for coming back on for the 100th Flame Trench.

J

Jack Buyer2:59:46

Yeah, I mean I I couldn't not. And look, I'm not going to promise that I'll be back in any interval or anytime soon or anytime far, but you know, when I can be back, I will be because I do I do love y'all and I do love spreading the good word of uh lowcost missions to deep space, which is exactly what we're working on here at Astroforge. Oh, yeah. And asteroid mining. Um, I have to I would be remissed if I did not say please follow Astroforge on your social media of choice. Uh, follow our CEO Matt who posts all kinds of crazy deep dive technical details and occasionally some of my photos instead of his cell phone photos. He's a great follow on Twitter as well. Um, we have the Astroforge podcast which is again insanely technically detailed. As head of media here, I've been championing sort of a radical transparency um, vibe to all of the things that we put out. And if you are, if you can see us do that, well, hey, I'm glad you see it. And I I truly believe that uh the best way to get people hyped up about what you're doing is tell them about it. And that's exactly what we're doing here at Astroforge. And uh yeah, um I I I don't even I don't even know what where else to go from there, but I I I love all of you. I love it's it's just a it's a pleasure to hang out with the crew again. And uh you know, you you better believe uh I missed this.

S

Sawyer3:01:05

Well, we're so glad to have you back and uh get back into the swing of things. I'll come out and join you in California and we'll have some fun. How about that?

J

Jack Buyer3:01:14

Deal.

S

Sawyer3:01:15

EJ, thank you for joining as well.

E

EJ3:01:17

I mean, can I?

S

Sawyer3:01:20

No.

E

EJ3:01:21

Yeah. No. Yeah, you can. You totally can.

S

Sawyer3:01:22

All right. Cool. Thanks. It's great.

J

Jack Buyer3:01:24

We'll hit Sidewinder. It'll be awesome. Maybe we'll get to catch some NASA aircraft on Sidewinder someday. Crap. I should have asked Jared about that.

S

Sawyer3:01:32

On my hat.

J

Jack Buyer3:01:33

Oh my Cliff.

S

Sawyer3:01:37

Ah, my question.

Oh jeez. Yeah. No, that was uh this is fun. Jack, it's always a pleasure having you here. Uh and yeah, it's a privilege being on here and I try not to take that too lightly. I mean, we have fun, but we try to try to lay the hammer down. But uh yeah, I mean, you you should come follow me over on Twitch. We have the EJ podcast every Monday through Friday. I'm trying to sound like Jack. I'm sorry. I stream a lot.

J

Jack Buyer3:02:02

There have there have been a handful of times where I have jumped on your Twitch channel for like 30 minutes during lunch or whatever. So, if you can't get enough Jack, maybe every now and then check out what EJ is doing if you don't already because there's a there's a nonzero chance you'll hear my voice on EJ's Twitch. Just saying.

S

Sawyer3:02:19

There you go.

E

EJ3:02:20

Oh, jeez.

S

Sawyer3:02:21

We did we did have a good conversation about your new ride a little while back.

J

Jack Buyer3:02:25

Yeah.

S

Sawyer3:02:26

Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer3:02:26

Yeah. Also, I got to at some point I got to see what you did to my sweet sweet city skyline city lost Rico. Dude, what did you do? All right, we're we we got to wrap it up. Wrap it up.

E

EJ3:02:35

Anyway, yeah, I stream over on Twitch. Uh it's double stream to YouTube. You can catch me over there. Twitch.tv_j uh ej_sa or on YouTube it's EJSA1. Uh but yeah, thank you. Thank you chat. Thank you everybody for watching. It's a privilege being here and uh yeah, it's fun. We'll do more.

S

Sawyer3:02:54

And we could not do these hundred episodes without the support from all of from all of our members and uh everyone over there that you see on your screen, the launch directors and flight engineers especially in addition to the rest of all of the rest of I'm not they can't hear me cuz I disconnected from the other call that we were in. They can hear. Don't worry, they can hear me. Uh launch directors, flight engineers, thank you very much for all of that extra support. We appreciate it. Even that one guy named Jack Buyer on there. I guess we appreciate him too. Uh, thank you as well to Kevin Michael Reed and Jay Keegan in the background pushing the buttons, pulling the levers. I am Sawyer Rosenstein. I have been your host taking over from Jack Byer and now continuing to pass the torch as it was from Jack to me. I carry that torch with pride. Thank you everyone for 100 flame trenches. We'll see you next time for Flame Trench 101 and of course later for this week Spaceflight.

Artemis III Setting The Stage (with special guest, Jared Isaacman) - The Flame Trench Show 100

About Jared Isaacman