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

U

Unknown0:05

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

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. Bingo. Right in the center.

Where's Jacquine? There it is. That was surreal.

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.

H

Host1:22

Jeez. Who is that guy? Welcome to the Flame 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 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 Friday evenings or Saturday mornings if you're watching later. This is the hundredth one. And boy is this one extremely special. We will have 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 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 the old Camar reached out and asked me to be on for the hundredth 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 seen all of your lovely comments over the last seven months and I've missed you all as much as you apparently missed me for some reason. But yeah, just super good to pop in and sort of look back on what feels like seven months, but also seven decades. Is that just me?

H

Host3:02

No, it's not you. And not just the fact that 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.

H

Host3:16

I was hoping you would come back with the hat, but speaking of wearing the hats, here we've got 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 I a special guest, too?

H

Host3:31

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. This is pretty neat. I already like this. This is a good time.

H

Host3:44

Yeah. I immediately think about like The Simpsons or any show where they hit 100 or 200 or 300 episodes. They always do a clip show. This isn't going to be a clip show, right?

E

EJ3:55

I mean, we're going to be hanging out.

H

Host3:57

No, 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 that we are going to definitely have to delve into regards to Artemis 3 and 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, Jack is back. I love it.

E

EJ4:34

We got the game together. Yeah.

H

Host4:36

Chat went nuts when you walked into frame in the chair. I was watching it and it was just 'Oh my god, Jack.' So, yeah. Just really really quick. I don't want to make this the Jack show because it's not, but like...

J

Jack Buyer4:50

It kind of is.

H

Host4:51

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. So it's very heartening, if that's even a word, to see the response in chat and just to see people periodically pop into the podcast comments for Astroforge's podcast or hit me up on Twitter or whatever it is and be like, 'We miss you.' Y'all, you're too sweet. It really means a lot. So yeah, just wanted to throw that out there.

E

EJ5:22

And you're already cancelled. You called it Twitter. It's X, Jack. Come on.

J

Jack Buyer5:26

Oh, I'm a failure. Oh jeez.

E

EJ5:27

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.

H

Host5:37

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.

E

EJ5:47

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

H

Host5:53

Yes, the numbers after five and before eight consecutive will time you out. So, don't do that. Anyway, so the last time that you were here, Jack, before you decided to leave us and go trying to mine asteroids with Astroforge, 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, alas, we have to help us out to go over with what we missed out on.

J

Jack Buyer6:38

Yeah. I mean, right off the bat, it feels like seven months, but it also sort of feels like decades of time has passed. When I left NSF to come here at Astroforge, 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 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 certainly didn't think we would actually end up getting Jared as NASA admin. 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. But the extent to which NASA and the whole team has been executing just like crazy. I mean, dude, Artemis 2, I was crying like a little baby. 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? I mean we're going to get an F-14 again maybe or something. Like how do we exist in this most awesome of timelines all of a sudden? I love it. So, 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 super stoked that we're finally getting a NASA admin that we deserve and we're finally making progress towards getting humans to be a spacefaring society. It's just this feeling. Can you name a better feeling? I can't.

H

Host8:22

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

E

EJ8:34

But I mean, yeah, 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 I mean, 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 get some Jack spicy opinions here. See if we get the bell rung between any of our comments. The fight bell.

J

Jack Buyer9:14

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...

J

Jack Buyer9:32

I'm pretty sure you said it in a sentence, so it counts. 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.

H

Host9:44

EJ, hi. So, Jack, I know it's not like a garden variety Flame Trench over here, but also we haven't had time to catch up on things, dude. Artemis 2 thoughts like what was your favorite part? 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. There were so many cool moments with Artemis 2 that I feel like whatever moment I say is going to unnecessarily skip over other parts that I think were equally awesome. But the naming of the or the suggested naming of the Carol Crater really hit. I'm always Mr. 'The human lifespan is woefully short,' predominantly preoccupied with our own mortality. That one hit.

E

EJ10:51

My favorite part was the toilet breaking.

J

Jack Buyer10:55

The Peecycle 2.0.

E

EJ10:57

Yes.

J

Jack Buyer10:59

No, you're right, dude. That and the far side transit was amazing. Like I feel like if we ever have the Artemis 2 crew on here, it'd 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.'

E

EJ11:21

Yeah, classic.

J

Jack Buyer11:23

I also just to throw in another grab bag option too, I am so happy they managed to take smartphone devices with them. The imagery off of the personal computing devices really allowed everybody to get a visceral sense of what it would be like if you were on the Orion capsule. So that was particularly special to me as well as a camera video nerd, which is honestly in some ways blasphemy. 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. I really do think it was a great time and great place because it brought everybody along for the ride in a completely unique and unprecedented way.

H

Host12:16

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

J

Jack Buyer12:27

And did.

H

Host12:29

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

J

Jack Buyer12:34

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

H

Host12:37

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

J

Jack Buyer12:43

Still pretty cool.

H

Host12:43

Waiting for it.

E

EJ12:47

Jeez.

H

Host12:49

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

J

Jack Buyer12:53

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

H

Host12:56

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

J

Jack Buyer13:02

Oh boy.

H

Host13:04

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

J

Jack Buyer13:09

Super cool.

H

Host13:10

That was my favorite part. There's a photo from Artemis 2 of the moon eclipsing the sun and you could see Mars, Venus, Jupiter, and 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 moonrise and moonset and they got the Earth eclipsing the sun? Just a deluge of amazing imagery. The one where you can see the Starlinks around the orbit, it's just like, how is this a real image? And I feel like regular people, non-space fans, often ask questions like, 'Didn't we already go to the moon? Why are we going back?' And having modern imagery with modern technology is a huge part of the reason again. To me, I'm biased, camera nerd, why it's an important thing because there are so many images or videos 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 we shouldn't be limited to 1960s imagery of the moon or of Earthrise or of Earthset. We should have 50 megapixel super high dynamic range ultra vision of everything. Send one of those sphere cameras up there. Let's go, baby. It's 2026. Sorry, I'm all hopped up on Red Bull and happy to be back.

H

Host14:48

No, I mean 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 because everyone's like, 'Oh my gosh, 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 rolls of film.

J

Jack Buyer15:19

It's pretty crazy. Like Sawyer, you could probably identify with this experience. For so long in my photography career, I was like, 'No, 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 halide crystals were in film. 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 given whatever camera I had. Now with modern cameras, you can go to like 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 apparently so well briefed that they were able to just smash it. They clearly trained to shoot exactly what they were going to be shooting with. And man, they knocked it out of the park.

H

Host16:40

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 Ike taking it all in and talking with 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 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?

H

Host17:06

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

J

Jack Buyer17:09

We are so back right now, dude.

H

Host17:12

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

E

EJ17:20

Oh my.

H

Host17:20

Hey guys, you know what was cool?

E

EJ17:25

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

H

Host17:31

But that is cool.

E

EJ17:32

Now we have those pictures.

H

Host17:34

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. We were talking about that.

H

Host17:49

Yeah. 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 are 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.' It's crazy how much they actually shot. Speaking of those, do you want to try that name again in chat? Remember the one?

E

EJ18:24

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

H

Host18:27

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

E

EJ18:34

Oh, Sawyer.

H

Host18:38

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.

E

EJ18:46

You would. Oh man.

J

Jack Buyer18:49

Of course he would. By the way, I 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.

E

EJ19:20

You good?

J

Jack Buyer19:23

Oh, we are so back.

E

EJ19:25

We are so back.

H

Host19:30

Let me get some support here because 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. 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.'

E

EJ19:57

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

H

Host20:18

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

E

EJ20:23

I stay rad. How about that, Jack?

J

Jack Buyer20:25

You got to help me. I've been hanging around with Sawyer too much.

E

EJ20:29

Clearly. I mean, you're making puns.

J

Jack Buyer20:33

Jalapeno everything cheddar bagels.

E

EJ20:38

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

H

Host20:44

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

J

Jack Buyer20:48

Can't do it.

H

Host20:51

Oh, goodness gracious. 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 Buyer21:08

Also with you.

H

Host21:11

Yes. I don't think we have the sound effect for that anymore. John Valentine saying 'I for one' according to Jeff saying 'I for one welcome our PPE overlord' by the way with your hairnets and face hair nets.

J

Jack Buyer21:29

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

H

Host21:35

Ooh. Okay.

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.

H

Host21:48

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

J

Jack Buyer21:53

Okay, that's too far. All right.

H

Host21:55

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

J

Jack Buyer22:00

Some pork product of some type.

H

Host22:03

I have not had bacon in a hot minute. Like I know that's destructive to my persona, 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,' you start eating a little bit less bacon.

J

Jack Buyer22:21

Don't burn it next time.

H

Host22:23

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

J

Jack Buyer22:29

Sorry. Sorry.

H

Host22:31

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

J

Jack Buyer22:38

I'm just like 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 live on air. I was cooking jalap... we don't have... let's talk about the news. Let's talk about the news.

H

Host22:56

Well, let me keep 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.' Kevin Harrington saying, 'Yay, Jack. Congrats on 100.' And y'all are like valued parasocial friends we get to hang out with on Fridays. 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.

H

Host23:43

Anyways, moving on. Moving on.

J

Jack Buyer23:44

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

H

Host23:51

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.

H

Host24:01

Yeah, that would be awesome. Phil says, 'Jack, OMG, are you going to try to do a Shuttle Sunday? Hope you're well.' I mean...

J

Jack Buyer24:14

What episode are you guys on, Sawyer? Like, what mission?

H

Host24:17

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 one or two things like a Starship launch and a crew launch around the moon and everything else in the world.

J

Jack Buyer24:34

Yeah, that's all. Nothing crazy.

H

Host24:36

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

J

Jack Buyer24:42

Oh, let's do it.

H

Host24:43

Oh, I was just going to say, I would love to go on a Shuttle Sunday again in the future. 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, to the point where I'll come in very frequently on the weekends and it's just I need to focus. So if there is a Sunday in the near future where I can make some time, yeah, sign me up. Let me know. You know where to find me. Kevin and Sawyer and Krispy. But yeah, in general, I think this was 100 episodes of the Flame Trench, so I carved some time out in order to make this happen. But I'm just so freaking busy, you guys. We've got a lot going on here. EJ, to your question for flight.

E

EJ25:25

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 is demonstrably 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.

H

Host26:06

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

E

EJ26:10

I have a question.

H

Host26:11

What's up?

E

EJ26:11

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

J

Jack Buyer26:16

Max, he's killing it.

H

Host26:18

Yeah. Yeah, he replaced you.

J

Jack Buyer26:22

Yeah.

H

Host26:22

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

J

Jack Buyer26:26

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

H

Host26:44

I could beat him if I felt like it.

J

Jack Buyer26:48

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

H

Host26:55

I don't want to.

J

Jack Buyer26:58

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.

H

Host27:07

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

E

EJ27:12

Oh no.

H

Host27:12

Oh no.

J

Jack Buyer27:13

Oh no.

H

Host27:14

Allergies and stuff.

J

Jack Buyer27:18

Oh, I'm in this allergies. Weird.

H

Host27:21

My sinus.

J

Jack Buyer27:22

Ah, my hat. My sinus.

H

Host27:25

Ah, my hat.

J

Jack Buyer27:28

You sure about that?

H

Host27:29

My hat. My hat.

J

Jack Buyer27:33

Thank you, Sawyer. Goes in the square hole.

H

Host27:36

Oh, my back.

J

Jack Buyer27:37

My back. Ah, my back.

H

Host27:38

Stubby squirrel. The square hole.

J

Jack Buyer27:41

Oh, my hatch. Oh, my hatch.

H

Host27:43

Oh, my back is getting freezing.

J

Jack Buyer27:45

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

H

Host27:48

Out of my head. Out of my head.

J

Jack Buyer27:50

Are you sure about that?

H

Host27:52

Allergies. The square hole. Allergies.

E

EJ28:07

My sign is... EJ dislike that.

H

Host28:16

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

J

Jack Buyer28:21

Hey, that one kind of slapped.

H

Host28:23

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

J

Jack Buyer28:36

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 all of the NSF inside jokes and memes. Surely there's a whole bunch of random things that have been entrenched in the NSF culture or stream culture, like 'on my hat,' but I don't know. You guys have all new things, I imagine.

H

Host29:03

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

J

Jack Buyer29:05

There it is.

H

Host29:06

Yeah. Where's Jack?

J

Jack Buyer29:08

Yeah, that's a good one.

H

Host29:09

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

J

Jack Buyer29:15

Dude, he's never coming back.

H

Host29:17

I know. That's why I can say it. Hey EJ, you know about the Gimli Glider?

E

EJ29:24

That sounds familiar.

J

Jack Buyer29:26

I do at least.

E

EJ29:27

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

J

Jack Buyer29:34

I don't think that was the Gimli Glider, that was different, but still.

E

EJ29:37

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 Ryan took it and made the new one finally. So, I'm glad.

H

Host29:54

Ryan did it and he put himself in it.

J

Jack Buyer29:59

Yes.

H

Host29:59

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

J

Jack Buyer30:16

What about Starship?

H

Host30:18

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

J

Jack Buyer30:23

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

H

Host31:30

Super Heavy flipped the wrong way from what we understand. It looked like it flipped the wrong way and then that led to some propellant feed anomalies during the boost back.

J

Jack Buyer31:45

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

H

Host31:55

Yeah, I don't know. Is it because the landing tank is on one specific side of it or something? Like I thought it was coaxial. Maybe that's a V2 thing. I don't know.

E

EJ32:06

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

J

Jack Buyer32:13

Yeah.

E

EJ32:15

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

J

Jack Buyer32:50

I just remember at least on the scrub stream they said '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.

E

EJ33:04

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

H

Host33:14

Yeah, we're not getting that spicy already.

E

EJ33:17

That's honestly, Jack, that's the nomenclature that I adopt. 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 it a transfer tube, technically it serves the same function, right? You call it a transfer tube, right?

H

Host33:34

It says Mr. Pad this and Pad that. Hey, they've... Dan in the cast called them 'this and that pad.' Go watch it. He did.

J

Jack Buyer33:46

Really?

H

Host33:46

He did. He absolutely did. Yep.

J

Jack Buyer33:48

Dan Hwitt said that.

H

Host33:50

I think he said 'that pad.'

J

Jack Buyer33:53

Yeah. Yeah.

H

Host33:53

He said it. He said it. It's amazing.

J

Jack Buyer33:57

Jeez.

H

Host33:57

You're ahead of the times, EJ. You're a trendsetter.

E

EJ34:01

Or they were just watching EJ.

H

Host34:04

So given how Flight 12 went, we're not doing negative self-talk. We're over that. 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...

H

Host34:25

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

J

Jack Buyer34:30

Right.

H

Host34:30

I mean, yeah, but it was also not a nominal orbital insertion because they had to burn a little longer and it changed things up and that also got rid of the in-space relight that they were planning on doing, too. So, it changed things up a little bit, but I mean, come on. 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 to Joe Bernard for championing deployable cameras from rockets before basically anybody. Maybe I'm 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 in the last couple years we've seen Blue Origin yeet a camera off of a New Shepard. We've seen Starship throw cameras out on Starlinks. Like it's certainly not an idea that any one person owns, but credit where credit's due. Joey B, really solid pursuit of deployable cameras. More deployable cameras, more better. That's my official position as Jack Buyer, the human being.

H

Host35:46

He said the thing. He said the thing.

J

Jack Buyer35:49

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

H

Host35:52

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

J

Jack Buyer35:56

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. But I'm curious given the fact that SpaceX just went public and there's 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 completely new territory that we're in with SpaceX being a public company.

H

Host36:24

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

J

Jack Buyer36:36

Oh my god.

H

Host36:36

They got... Yeah, I know. I know.

J

Jack Buyer36:39

Yeah, I know.

H

Host36:40

I wasn't even... dude.

J

Jack Buyer36:42

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

H

Host36:45

Stupid freaking arrow of time makes fools.

J

Jack Buyer36:49

Right. Right.

H

Host36:51

I'm mad.

J

Jack Buyer36:52

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

H

Host37:06

Yeah. Well, they can't on the 4th of July because of the whole beach closure thing, but yes. I mean, yeah, I think it's possible. We've been seeing them do cryo testing out at Massey's again. So, we've got booster getting tested there. 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...

J

Jack Buyer37:35

Oh, yeah. I saw that. It was like a snaggletooth.

H

Host37:37

The snaggletooth booster. Yes.

J

Jack Buyer37:40

Oh, yeah.

H

Host37:42

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

J

Jack Buyer37:48

Seen some things, man, and some stuff.

H

Host37:51

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

E

EJ37:53

But yeah, I mean, we'll see if they kind of do that again, but they made it through the timeline relatively quickly of 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 should say, by the way, I do want to point out I've seen things on X today 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 what was it? 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 'No, no, no, no, no' stream.

J

Jack Buyer38:43

The two... So 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, I think I was like completely disassociated for that.

H

Host38:58

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

J

Jack Buyer39:03

Is that on Doug?

H

Host39:06

Yeah, that looks to be Bob or Doug.

J

Jack Buyer39:10

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

H

Host39:13

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

J

Jack Buyer39:22

Yep.

H

Host39:23

Yep.

J

Jack Buyer39:24

Everything you're seeing now is happening now.

H

Host39:27

This is live.

J

Jack Buyer39:28

That's not true. That's actually demonstrably not true.

H

Host39:32

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

J

Jack Buyer39:37

Whoa, look at you, nerd.

H

Host39:42

Did you leave us come back? We come back bringing C into the conversation, man. Always see.

J

Jack Buyer39:50

Oh, no. It's nothing new, dude. It's nothing new.

H

Host39:53

It's a marine.

J

Jack Buyer39:54

You just didn't understand it before.

H

Host39:56

Oh, Sawyer.

J

Jack Buyer39:59

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

H

Host40:08

Wait, so is this coming into the Cape?

J

Jack Buyer40:12

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

H

Host40:16

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

J

Jack Buyer40:20

I think it's Earth.

H

Host40:21

It's orbiting. Whoa. Okay, I'm sorry.

J

Jack Buyer40:29

Yeah, this is wild.

H

Host40:32

But I mean, yeah, 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?

H

Host40:50

Gigabay.

J

Jack Buyer40:52

Yeah.

H

Host40:52

I forgot Florida has its own Gigabay.

J

Jack Buyer40:55

And where did it come from? Gel. Cotton.

H

Host41:00

You mean cotton? I gel.

J

Jack Buyer41:02

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

H

Host41:04

I'm so mad at both of you now. 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 I see one of those go live, it's a treat to 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 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?

E

EJ41:39

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 a lot. It's a lot. So, it's pretty serious, man.

J

Jack Buyer41:57

Wow.

E

EJ41:58

Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer41:58

Exciting times.

E

EJ42:00

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 Gigabay before you notice the VAB. It's kind of wild.

J

Jack Buyer42:13

Really?

E

EJ42:14

I don't know how to feel about that.

H

Host42:15

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 salted peanuts or whatever and you get like the weird peanut that tastes funky in the bag. Has that ever happened to you?

E

EJ42:41

Yes. That's what just happened to you. You were like you had 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.'

H

Host42:50

Oh, no. Or 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.

J

Jack Buyer43:03

Hey, it's the battle of the bays. Nice.

H

Host43:06

Yes.

E

EJ43:08

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 we'll talk about Florida Starship and your thoughts on that, too, because we have some new stuff this week. 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 a bagel. What's wrong with that?

H

Host43:44

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

J

Jack Buyer43:49

Wyoming coast, obviously.

H

Host43:52

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

J

Jack Buyer43:59

Oh, and I don't...

E

EJ44:04

Come on. Come on.

J

Jack Buyer44:05

He's got a point.

H

Host44:09

No comment. I...

J

Jack Buyer44:10

What do you want from me?

H

Host44:12

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

J

Jack Buyer44:16

Spacecraft. You're getting to play with spacecraft all day. He's doing boring stuff, like office stuff.

H

Host44:22

It is actually a true privilege to get to just like put my camera wherever I want around flight hardware within reason. Within reason.

E

EJ44:31

Yeah. Viper with a $100 super chat saying, 'I'm beyond excited. Thank you for having Jack on for the special episode. Loving NSF 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 a thing.

J

Jack Buyer44:57

I'm not one of your favorites.

E

EJ44:59

It's the favorite three and then me.

J

Jack Buyer45:02

No, I think you're part of the favorite arrangement. Clearly.

E

EJ45:06

Well, she said 'my three fave plus KMR.'

J

Jack Buyer45:10

Yeah, I'm a plus one.

E

EJ45:12

No, but you're not a host.

J

Jack Buyer45:14

Canadian.

E

EJ45:16

The clear implication is that the OG Flame Trench Group is...

J

Jack Buyer45:23

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

H

Host45:31

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

J

Jack Buyer45:36

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

H

Host45:44

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

J

Jack Buyer45:53

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."

H

Host46:22

Got a point.

J

Jack Buyer46:22

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.

H

Host46:36

Yeah, I learned.

J

Jack Buyer46:38

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

H

Host46:46

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.

H

Host47:10

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. It was the same explosion, like 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.

H

Host47:58

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

J

Jack Buyer48:01

That's why it looks good.

H

Host48:03

True master. By the way, speaking of Blue and Exploding Things, we should talk about your thoughts on what happened here with Blue.

J

Jack Buyer48:18

I hate to sound like a broken record, but you know, Blue will rebuild. 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, 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. 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. So yeah, man, 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 9x4. That configuration of New Glenn is going to be awesome. But yeah, it's just the lost time. I wish things didn't take so freaking long. 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 man, long lead time items, they suck.

H

Host50:03

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 and they did start cleanup pretty quickly. And EJ, you're right. 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 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.

H

Host50:44

That's close enough. That's fine.

J

Jack Buyer50:47

In my dreams, my dude.

H

Host50:54

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?

H

Host51:01

I hadn't gotten to ask it yet.

J

Jack Buyer51:05

We're back.

H

Host51:07

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 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 crazy the stuff we talk about on there. So check it out. It would mean a lot to me, honestly, if you did. Do you allow for special guests on there?

H

Host51:37

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.

H

Host51:47

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

J

Jack Buyer51:52

Really? Oh, jeez. 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.

H

Host52:10

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

J

Jack Buyer52:13

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?

H

Host52:36

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, Burger's Law willing, 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, 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 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.

H

Host54:05

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 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. 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.

J

Jack Buyer55:34

Yeah. How long did it take SpaceX to recover from Amos 6? 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, 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. 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, 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, 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? I don't know. What do you think?

J

Jack Buyer57:11

I mean, six months is... It seems like NASA really wants the ability to test both landers on Artemis 3.

E

EJ57:19

Yep, absolutely.

J

Jack Buyer57:19

So I guess that's where the schedule pressure would come from. And you know what? If it takes a cobbled together pad, and 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. Look at what SpaceX 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 in between launches. Meanwhile, they spent 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. 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 Blue's standard operating procedure, at least not from what we see in public. That's my opinion, I'm editorializing here, but it certainly seems like the right way to go in this case. 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.

H

Host59:03

Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer59:05

Go ahead. Sorry.

H

Host59:05

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, 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? 12 months, 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. I don't really understand the need for expediency with this pad, especially when, you know, maybe we could talk about this later, especially like, you know, 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 know 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. Why you at that point they're kind of rushing it.

J

Jack Buyer1:01:00

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.

H

Host1:01:40

Presumably that's part of it. I think, I mean just to say it, Blue also needs to get Kuiper launching on New Glenn. 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, which surely there's going to be a story revolving around New Glenn with that as well. I mean, 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. You guys aren't... I'm actually not trying to just disagree for the sake of disagreeing here. That's my job, right? But I just... so back.

E

EJ1:03:14

Yeah, we are dude. We are like 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 now New Glenn needs to launch a lot. Sure. I mean, Jack, you said it yourself. Pad one at Starbase was so this pad, it 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 not 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 just, I mean there's no way around it. 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 that pad, 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, you know, 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.

J

Jack Buyer1:04:59

I mean, I get what you're saying. 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 Blue is 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 pad. 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. 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, say New Glenn moves to a flight cadence of like once a week, that's 52 launches. Are you going to do 52 launches with one pad?

J

Jack Buyer1:07:16

I mean, 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 one pad throughput. I think there should be like three New Glenn 7x2 pads. I mean, I don't know, just my opinion.

H

Host1:07:45

Well, you don't want three New Glenn 7x2 pads, Chad. Come on.

J

Jack Buyer1:07:50

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

H

Host1:07:53

No, not Vandenberg. No.

J

Jack Buyer1:07:58

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

H

Host1:08:07

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? 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. They should probably use Fondag or some kind of strong concrete. But anyway, so.

E

EJ1:08:47

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

H

Host1:08:53

Oh, we have a fourth box. No one in it yet, but maybe in about now we might see our special guest appear. Okay.

J

Jack Buyer1:09:11

What are you guys trying to pull here?

H

Host1:09:13

Did you mean to do that?

J

Jack Buyer1:09:18

I think he might have.

H

Host1:09:21

I just pushed the wrong button.

J

Jack Buyer1:09:28

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

H

Host1:09:36

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

J

Jack Buyer1:09:40

Yeah, but it worked. But yes, it's Burger's horse. That is who is going to be the first one. 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.

H

Host1:10:16

All right, I'll keep going.

J

Jack Buyer1:10:18

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

H

Host1:10:25

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

J

Jack Buyer1:10:32

Wow.

H

Host1:10:33

Jeez, they're just fitting them all in.

J

Jack Buyer1:10:36

Yeah.

H

Host1:10:38

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

J

Jack Buyer1:10:47

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.

J

Jack Buyer1:11:09

That is special.

E

EJ1:11:10

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

H

Host1:11:18

I think you just nerd sniped Sawyer.

E

EJ1:11:20

Oh yeah. No, this was entirely intentional.

J

Jack Buyer1:11:27

Dang.

H

Host1:11:31

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 Tex Avery 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. Yeah.

H

Host1:11:53

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

J

Jack Buyer1:11:57

Yeah.

H

Host1:11:59

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.nasaspaceflight.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 and 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.

H

Host1:12:40

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.nasaspaceflight.com.

J

Jack Buyer1:12:52

What? Wait, are we the sketchy website?

H

Host1:12:55

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 on pop-up sites. Let's move on.

J

Jack Buyer1:13:06

It's the Flame Trench, folks. Okay.

H

Host1:13:12

Pink.

J

Jack Buyer1:13:14

Like that one. I wear that.

H

Host1:13:17

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

J

Jack Buyer1:13:22

Sometimes.

H

Host1:13:23

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.

H

Host1:13:30

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.nasaspaceflight.com that I can put on stream to keep it family-friendly, but thank you very much.

H

Host1:13:44

I'll post it in the Jack... 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.

H

Host1:13:55

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.

H

Host1:14:10

Oh man. Rosebud saying with a $20 tip at tips.nasaspaceflight.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 don't know. Yeah, you remember that one? 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.

H

Host1:14:43

That was great.

J

Jack Buyer1:14:44

That's cool.

H

Host1:14:45

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.

H

Host1:14:55

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.

H

Host1:15:12

Nice.

J

Jack Buyer1:15:12

SLS is orange.

H

Host1:15:14

Makes sense.

David saying, "Welcome back, Jack. Missed seeing you on the show." And 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." Yeah. 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!"

H

Host1:15:51

But nope.

J

Jack Buyer1:15:53

Can't. Not yet.

H

Host1:15:55

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.

H

Host1:16:06

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. Really? 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?

H

Host1:16:33

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

J

Jack Buyer1:16:39

But yeah, that is Marmac 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.

H

Host1:16:58

Prior to that, it's possible to water ski behind a barge.

J

Jack Buyer1:17:03

Yeah, probably fast enough.

H

Host1:17:05

Oh, his answer.

J

Jack Buyer1:17:09

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.

H

Host1:17:20

Yeah, you should generally not do that.

J

Jack Buyer1:17:23

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

H

Host1:17:27

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

H

Host1:18:28

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.

H

Host1:18:42

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. Just 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.

J

Jack Buyer1:19:43

I'm excited. Can you tell?

H

Host1:19:46

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

E

EJ1:19:49

Yeah, thank you. My enthusiasm is palpable.

J

Jack Buyer1:19:54

I can palp it.

H

Host1:19:57

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

J

Jack Buyer1:20:01

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

H

Host1:20:05

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

J

Jack Buyer1:20:10

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

H

Host1:20:14

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 was 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.

J

Jack Buyer1:21:04

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.

H

Host1:21:18

Then where'd they go?

J

Jack Buyer1:21:20

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

H

Host1:21:23

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

J

Jack Buyer1:21:31

Where's the beach?

H

Host1:21:32

That way.

J

Jack Buyer1:21:32

Which way's the beach?

H

Host1:21:37

Nope. Other way.

J

Jack Buyer1:21:40

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

H

Host1:21:43

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

J

Jack Buyer1:21:50

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

H

Host1:21:54

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

J

Jack Buyer1:21:57

Yeah, don't worry.

H

Host1:21:59

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.

J

Jack Buyer1:22:34

Wow.

E

EJ1:22:35

Wow. That's soon.

J

Jack Buyer1:22:37

We could be three launches away.

H

Host1:22:39

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.

H

Host1:22:51

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 like 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. 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... What a cool shot. We got one passing the other.

J

Jack Buyer1:23:57

Yep. Ship and booster.

H

Host1:23:59

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

J

Jack Buyer1:24:04

Yeah, I like that.

H

Host1:24:05

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.

J

Jack Buyer1:24:15

Oh, yeah.

E

EJ1:24:16

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? 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 gonna still 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?

H

Host1:25:27

Which is what I assume they'll use to get a ship to the port.

J

Jack Buyer1:25:30

It's a really good point.

H

Host1:25:32

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.

E

EJ1:25:46

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... I don't want to say 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.

H

Host1:27:00

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

J

Jack Buyer1:27:05

Oh, really? They tore it apart.

H

Host1:27:06

I don't... Well, 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?

H

Host1:27:16

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

J

Jack Buyer1:27:24

We do.

H

Host1:27:25

What did you guys not tell me?

J

Jack Buyer1:27:26

Yeah, I don't know about this.

H

Host1:27:30

Oh, just you wait.

J

Jack Buyer1:27:34

I have things.

H

Host1:27:37

I do think. Yeah, let's see.

J

Jack Buyer1:27:39

I'm scared.

H

Host1:27:40

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.

H

Host1:28:02

Did you say beep?

J

Jack Buyer1:28:04

Did you make your own Quindar tone?

H

Host1:28:08

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...

J

Jack Buyer1:28:18

Pretty good.

H

Host1:28:21

Pretty great.

J

Jack Buyer1:28:23

But yeah. Anyway, what if we get to whatever time and in the fourth box it's just a second one of me?

H

Host1:28:33

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

J

Jack Buyer1:28:47

It's jack.ai.

H

Host1:28:50

It's just an AI.

J

Jack Buyer1:28:51

Oh god.

H

Host1:28:53

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.

H

Host1:29:06

Just like that.

J

Jack Buyer1:29:09

Transfer tube. Bagel.

H

Host1:29:15

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer1:29:16

Or no, if you're talking Jack AI, then it would be "That's a great question. I think we can all agree that both coasts have their positives and negatives."

H

Host1:29:26

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?

H

Host1:29:34

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.

J

Jack Buyer1:29:42

It's like, do Claude speak?

H

Host1:29:44

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 like bright fuchsia look because turns out those Astroforge shots from the movie were filmed, I believe, with IR light sources and an IR modified camera. So like we love a fun coincidence or parallel construction or whatever I'm looking for that I can't find.

H

Host1:30:46

Yeah. We have a petrocope here. It's an IR modified ADD. Works great.

J

Jack Buyer1:30:52

Dang, there were no spoilers in any of that chat. Don't worry.

H

Host1:30:56

It's all in the trailers. So.

J

Jack Buyer1:30:58

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

H

Host1:31:09

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.

J

Jack Buyer1:31:31

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.

U

Unknown1:31:45

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

H

Host1:31:50

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

U

Unknown1:31:54

Yes. With a rock salt. Yeah. Exactly.

E

EJ1:31:58

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But no, you know what comes to mind, my dudes, is remember 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.

H

Host1:32:31

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

J

Jack Buyer1:32:40

Is September not Q4?

H

Host1:32:43

27.

J

Jack Buyer1:32:44

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

H

Host1:32:48

Really?

J

Jack Buyer1:32:49

No way, dude. Finished.

E

EJ1:32:51

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 Burger's 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.

H

Host1:33:33

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 waste 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.

E

EJ1:33:58

To me, all I'm thinking of is we have now the shirt, the Artemis Sun shirt, the TPS Sunshirt. Now, we just need a Jack Sunshirt.

J

Jack Buyer1:34:07

No, the Jack Sun shirt is the Texas tank top for tank watchers to whatever fun name we call that. 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.

E

EJ1:34:24

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

J

Jack Buyer1:34:33

That's where the Texas tank top for tank watchers to tank well top like it's that 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.

E

EJ1:35:04

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...

J

Jack Buyer1:35:19

You said beep out loud, bro. Don't break kayfabe. Never break kayfabe.

E

EJ1:35:27

Steve Calli saying, "Jack AI says Canon cameras are for losers. Steve is all knowing." Nothing. Just the headshake. Okay.

J

Jack Buyer1:35:41

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?"

E

EJ1:35:51

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. Absolutely not.

J

Jack Buyer1:36:09

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

E

EJ1:36:18

Relatively soon.

J

Jack Buyer1:36:20

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.

J

Jack Buyer1:36:39

I don't...

E

EJ1:36:39

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.

J

Jack Buyer1:37:07

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.

E

EJ1:37:18

Ah, that was good.

J

Jack Buyer1:37:19

There you go.

E

EJ1:37:21

Right in the center. I still got it.

J

Jack Buyer1:37:25

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

E

EJ1:37:30

No, saw you on that one, too.

J

Jack Buyer1:37:34

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.

E

EJ1:37:58

Yeah. I mean, I'm sure...

J

Jack Buyer1:38:01

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

E

EJ1:38:06

Sorry. What was...

J

Jack Buyer1:38:07

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

E

EJ1:38:10

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

J

Jack Buyer1:38:24

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 jerry-rig 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.

E

EJ1:38:52

Hi.

J

Jack Buyer1:38:54

Oh, you got to be different, huh?

E

EJ1:38:55

All right.

J

Jack Buyer1:38:57

Yeah.

E

EJ1:39:01

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?

J

Jack Buyer1:39:18

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

E

EJ1:39:24

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

J

Jack Buyer1:39:31

Gotta say new season not terrible. But anyway, let's get on to the next topic.

E

EJ1:39:38

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

J

Jack Buyer1:39:48

All right. Let's go.

E

EJ1:39:50

Anyway, 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?

E

EJ1:40:01

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.

E

EJ1:40:26

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 calling a World Cup announcement. But anyway.

J

Jack Buyer1:40:48

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

E

EJ1:40:57

To Artemis.

J

Jack Buyer1:41:02

I regret that. That's solid dedication.

E

EJ1:41:04

Yeah. No, that was dedication though. Good job, 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, as we were saying, oh my gosh, someone in chat just said three humans in one pizza instead of three humans and a Canadian. Like what? Anyway, yes, Luca Parmitano, who has flown a couple times to space, both on expedition 36 aboard Soyuz TMA09M, 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 MS23. 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. 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.

H

Host1:43:06

Sawyer, this sounds like the who's who of low Earth orbit expertise. I think this crew is pretty rightly picked here. 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. If you watch that EVA it 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 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 you know That's it's SLS, right? This is a great crew, dude. 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?

J

Jack Buyer1:45:26

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. You know 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 that's 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 cuz 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 and that's like but yeah 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 Artemis 3 crew announcement was done. I felt like it was extremely well produced and you know 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.

E

EJ1:49:06

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 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 one of those awe moments. And you can see how happy the crews were for each other, too.

H

Host1:49:58

Yeah, absolutely. 100% agree, Sawyer.

E

EJ1:50:01

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...

H

Host1:50:14

On this show, Sawyer, come on.

E

EJ1:50:17

You don't know who our special guest is.

H

Host1:50:19

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

E

EJ1:50:24

Touche.

H

Host1:50:27

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 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 where I can in every aspect of life in 2026 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 look, I fully understand people's frustration. I really don't mean to minimize it. I hear you. Valid, but yeah, like can we just have nice things? Can we just be stoked for a little bit? For like a little bit just for like five minutes be like yeah great announcement like and then we can talk but I don't know that's my long rambling about that.

E

EJ1:53:24

Yeah. No, I got I mean...

H

Host1:53:25

I agree too. Go. Sorry.

E

EJ1:53:27

Oh, no. I was just going to say I mean one of the things that really kind of jumped out to... Sorry, I got distracted for a moment there. The fact that hopefully this means that maybe Artemis 4 will have more women on it. Of course, you know, we didn't have that on Artemis 3 in this case. And we had, you know, 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, you know, 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, dude.

H

Host1:54:28

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

E

EJ1:54:33

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

H

Host1:54:36

Would it? Come on, man.

E

EJ1:54:39

All right. A man can dream. Okay.

H

Host1:54:44

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

E

EJ1:54:50

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

H

Host1:54:54

I am being realistic. I sound like Ryan now.

E

EJ1:54:59

You got Webbby. You just got...

H

Host1:55:01

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

Yeah, we do play Battlefield together.

H

Host1:55:12

That's fun.

E

EJ1:55:13

Yeah.

H

Host1:55:14

So anyway guys, I don't think that there's anything here like, oh, they chose all dudes. No, if you really sit here and think about it, guys, these missions are assigned years out. Like Artemis 2 they were assigned two years before the mission happened, right? 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, right? 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.

E

EJ1:56:08

So now...

H

Host1:56:08

Honestly it would be...

E

EJ1:56:10

What's up?

H

Host1:56:11

In a lot of ways 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., etc. Everything we've just talked about. Sorry, I just steamrolled right over you, EJ.

E

EJ1:56:30

No, no, that dude, that's where I was going with that. 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., etc. NASA astronauts do all kinds of stuff from aeronautical research to underwater habitation to Antarctic habitation. Honestly this crew was whoever was free and that's I mean 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 anyway. Maybe you know maybe I'll just ping him on X or something. He replies, that's all I'm saying.

H

Host1:57:10

He does and he has replied to people about the topic on that. One thing that's also I think 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, you know, 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. I don't know. 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 the difference in the ISS training and the lunar training."

E

EJ1:59:07

Yeah, dude. That's it. These guys were 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. So, I mean, Randy Breznik flew on the shuttle, right, on STS 129, which put ELC pilots on the trust segment. If you speak shuttle and ISS, right? You know what that means. And dude, he's like you said, 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.

H

Host1:59:55

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

E

EJ2:00:00

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

H

Host2:00:03

There you go.

E

EJ2:00:06

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

H

Host2:00:25

Yeah. And Chris Bergen, no he did not fly on Endeavour, 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, you know, it's like 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, right, and you hide and you don't explain what your reasoning is, that's when I think you run into problems.

H

Host2:01:44

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. 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 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 as well 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 or the like I'm I don't 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 like, you know, 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 I don'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 in the wrong here? Because I think the docking port would be on the front, right? Like what else would HLS be made out of B2? 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.

J

Jack Buyer2:05:44

If only...

E

EJ2:05:46

Restored like ask space like...

J

Jack Buyer2:05:49

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.

E

EJ2:06:06

Oh god, Alex is typing tanks already in there.

J

Jack Buyer2:06:10

I'm just saying.

E

EJ2:06:11

Yeah. See, dude. I mean, like 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 like ECLSS on board. Orion can tap into it. You could go from there if you really wanted to. SpaceX and Vast I do 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 I didn't really think like it's going to be like one with a thermal protection system, tiles with like a docking port on the side. That's not how I kind of interpreted that. But then again, like I don't know. I could be wrong.

J

Jack Buyer2:07:14

No, I mean I get you. I sort of I 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 in like I'm sorry I'm dumb."

E

EJ2:07:44

You always ask me what do you want to know?

J

Jack Buyer2:07:45

It doesn't have it. Did they do did Apollo 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 like I know what was it was it 10 where it didn't have all the fuel it would have needed just to make sure that they wouldn't you know attempt a landing although is that really true or is that just like urban myth over the years?

E

EJ2:08:23

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...

J

Jack Buyer2:08:29

God, I love Johnny. Coolest guy.

E

EJ2:08:32

He may have been kidding, but who? Yeah, exactly. He's my favorite. He's the GOAT for me. So, all right. So, Jack, Apollo 8 launched, right? That one went around the moon. Similar to Artemis 2 is similar to that, 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. No, that might be pertinent to current events somehow. So they didn't launch they didn't launch Yeah. No, it's good. Let's just send it. Let's build a pad in six months. It'll be fine.

J

Jack Buyer2:09:16

Sorry.

E

EJ2:09:18

All right. A little. No, that was a I'll say that it 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 S4B and they also tested the EVA suits. They EVAed just as a way of like an emergency egress or contingency EVAing out of the LEM and getting to the CSM in the event that the probe and drogue system didn't work in any way, shape or form. Apollo 9 was a nutty mission. It was a nutty mission. Like that's Yeah. And then 10 didn't have the fuel and then 11 landed, right? Like yes, they did they did do this.

J

Jack Buyer2:10:14

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

E

EJ2:10:21

Mhm. Pretty much.

J

Jack Buyer2:10:21

Yeah. I would say Artemis 2 is a combination of seven and eight. Seven was on a Saturn 1B and it was just testing the CSM. The block two CSM might add. Apollo one 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 you know 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. You know 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. Like maybe they will. Maybe they know something we don't. We don't know.

E

EJ2:11:20

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

EJ2:11:40

Yes.

J

Jack Buyer2:11:45

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, which is just such a shame because we've been getting I feel like really meaningful updates from Blue regarding their lander and like imagery of the interior and it's like it's like almost night and day at least, you know, maybe chat, tell me if I'm wrong, like maybe I've just been too disconnected lately, 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, 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 like 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.

E

EJ2:13:27

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.

J

Jack Buyer2:13:37

Yeah, that's kind of what we're getting from SpaceX, which is crazy to me that I mean 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.

E

EJ2:14:07

And then we'll get...

J

Jack Buyer2:14:08

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.

E

EJ2:14:49

Yeah, that's a pretty good crew.

J

Jack Buyer2:14:54

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 LEM 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 I mean, hey, that's the thing. It took them a while to get off the ground, but once they did, yeah, 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.

J

Jack Buyer2:15:57

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...

E

EJ2:16:38

Kind of been the plan the whole time, right?

J

Jack Buyer2:16:41

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.

E

EJ2:17:25

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

J

Jack Buyer2:17:58

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.

E

EJ2:18:06

Yeah. What? Yeah. As I was going to say, Jack, what were you saying about you saying something about that earlier? Like I don't know. I mean, Jack, feedback on what you're saying, guys. Just quick side note, remember you know 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 right? Like I don't know man just I just I was listening to this conversation it just didn't sound like that to me like it very much sounded like they were you know they're pulling a V3 off the line because they're mass-producing ships. And I think what I think what was going on there is that they were intending to say that HLS's can just be pulled off the assembly line and you just make a different variant, you know? I don't know. Could be wrong.

J

Jack Buyer2:19:04

I mean, yeah, it's 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 yeah, 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, you know, 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, you know, the NASA take on things. I don't know. What do you think?

E

EJ2:20:08

Agreed. I think Yeah, I agree.

J

Jack Buyer2:20:14

Should we...

E

EJ2:20:15

Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer2:20:17

Should we do that?

E

EJ2:20:19

Should we ask? We should ask.

J

Jack Buyer2:20:22

We should.

E

EJ2:20:22

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

H

Host2:20:23

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

J

Jack Buyer2:20:28

Call up John NASA right now.

H

Host2:20:34

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

J

Jack Buyer2:20:39

Yeah.

H

Host2:20:40

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

J

Jack Buyer2:20:45

I don't know who...

H

Host2:20:47

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

Oh boy. So, ladies and gentlemen, hopefully Jared can hear me. But yes, we have Jared Isaacman, who is the NASA administrator, 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 thanks for having me on. I didn't know this was the 100th episode. Congratulations.

H

Host2:21:20

Well, thank you. Yeah, it's an honor to have you on on the 100th 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. Can you kind of just talk about the selection process of this crew with all of their backgrounds?

J

Jared Isaacman2:21:45

Sure. Well, I'll tell you, the actual selection took place by the astronaut office and Norm Knight, the chief astronaut. I'm very big on maintaining the history, if you will. I often try to make reference to it: when we've established a good process or precedent, not mess with it. So I was certainly aware of who they were recommending and it made sense to me. You think about their backgrounds. Commander was extremely close to the Artemis 2 mission. He worked very hard, was a champion of the rendezvous and proximity operations on that mission. Not to mention he was the representative to the daily leadership meetings during the crew office representative for Artemis 2. So extremely close to that. Not to mention two-time astronaut, test pilot. And then Andre, the backup to Artemis 2, three and a half years of deep familiarity with Orion. Frank Rubio, another record for US astronaut time in space, great background for this, two-time astronaut. And then Luca, who's also extremely skilled, very cool under pressure as we all know from the EVA incident. So I think you've assembled a really great crew for what I think is just going to be a spectacular mission. The bar is rightfully very high after Artemis 2 and that amazing voyage around the moon with four outstanding astronauts. 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. 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, I think it's going to be really exciting. I think we've got the right people for it.

H

Host2:24:14

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

J

Jack Buyer2:26:12

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

H

Host2:28:24

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

J

Jared Isaacman2:28:36

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

H

Host2:28:47

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

E

EJ2:28:53

Yep. Yeah, I'm watching it like I always do. So yeah, Jared, 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 the chat questions so I'll defer to you but just talking the subject so...

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

J

Jack Buyer2:30:43

I want to bring something up here because obviously we had the explosion out at 36 from Blue during that static fire testing and they had a major role in the lunar program. In fact, 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. How has that impacted timelines because originally you had mentioned 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 faulting any of the journalists that covered it that interpreted my commentary before one of the three budget hearings as a change to the timeline from mid 27 to late 27. I know what I said and that was easy to interpret that, but it really just meant like next year we're going to address it then. We've always been targeting mid 27 for Artemis 3. I have no doubt SLS and Orion is going to be ready. We are going to start stacking this summer. I think that'll send a great message to the workforce. Sends a great message to our rivals in this great competition. I have no doubt it will also put some pressure on the lander providers to ensure they can meet their timelines. But all that said, that's Artemis 3 aside. Did the Blue situation challenge some of the timelines with the moon base? Absolutely. Your near-term milestones for sure. We were going to launch the Mark 1 vehicle later this summer. But once you start looking a little bit farther out like the two awards we gave for the LTV rovers, that's 2028. So I have no doubt they'll be back on their feet well before then. And we're doing everything we can to help. This has been a drum that we've been trying to beat a lot: we are not a procurement organization. We don't just wait for everyone to deliver us what we want. We can go out and drive outcomes. In some cases that's a lot harder because we have lost some of our core competencies over the years from wind down of shuttle and outsourcing. But we're rebuilding those competencies. We have a number of ways to do that so that we can put people into the field and drive outcomes. Right now there's at least two dozen or so subject matter experts helping in terms of Blue with anomaly investigation. 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 EVA suit development. We're going down to extreme layers of subcontractors making valves that are on critical path to get them going. So that should be the expectation. We'll do all we can with Blue. There's no doubt a year ahead, if they get launching again before the end of the year fantastic, then we will have lost very little time. But even a year ahead, there's ways we can work around it and we'll get back on track for Artemis 3.

J

Jack Buyer2:33:55

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

H

Host2:35:28

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 little bit of a curveball if we're going to do that. Is, 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's ML2 going to do? Are there prospective customers? We going to sell it? What's going to happen there?

J

Jared Isaacman2:35:55

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

E

EJ2:38:55

Okay, cool. Thank you for the comprehensive answer. I have a follow-up though if you don't mind.

J

Jared Isaacman2:39:00

Sure.

E

EJ2:39:00

So okay, we want commercial landers. We don't want EOS. 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 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 maybe in the future we figure out some kind of mechanism to put Orion just into LEO or is SLS the 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 a trajectory like a trans lunar injection like Artemis 2?

J

Jared Isaacman2:39:47

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

J

Jack Buyer2:41:41

And while we're talking about SpaceX and their vehicle, for Artemis 3, 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 moon base landings on it. What do you think is the benefit that you get from this of basically it sounds like just sticking a docking port on the side of a Starship off the line? Can you 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 think the difference between an Apollo 9 scenario versus what we're proposing with Artemis 3 is you still have the full end uncrewed demonstrations from both landers. So what are we trying to accomplish here? We do need to get into a rhythm of launching SLS on a more regular cadence. Your skills atrophy, your workforce moves on to other things and you wind up relearning lessons just as we did in the beginning of the Artemis 2 campaign. So that's not acceptable. So we will launch in 2027. If you're going to launch in 2027, expend the vehicle, put crew at risk, you want to get as much as you possibly can out of it to bring down risk for a landing. Now if you said what if the Blue lander wasn't available, would you still do the mission just for a stack controllability check with rendezvous docking and controllability check of the integrated stack? No, because you're not getting enough out of it to take on that risk. But with Blue there and being able to test out a lot of the subsystems that are important, which frankly Blue does have to prove. SpaceX, we've gotten a lot of proof points over the years on their ability to manage ECLSS and avionics and rendezvous docking. So a lot of those systems we know they know how to do and we've been helping them as they adapted to the HLS environment. So that's less important in that environment. Rendezvous and docking a multi-launch campaign still very useful. Again, launching SLS and getting in a rhythm very useful, but you're probably getting more in terms of your test data out of the Blue test lander than you would on SpaceX. But then you're going to follow it up with two uncrewed end demonstrations of both vehicles. Combine that with the Artemis 3 objectives, and you're starting to feel really good about Artemis 4.

J

Jack Buyer2:44:11

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

J

Jack Buyer2:49:33

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. 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 interplanetary spacecraft?

J

Jared Isaacman2:49:57

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

J

Jack Buyer2:52:07

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 was talking to people today that submitted the designs for an extendable boom and the radiator designs for SR1 Freedom and those that are working on AI programs to help with some X-Plane initiatives we were working on in aeronautics. That's pretty exciting. So yes, every center you go to, you meet a lot of fantastic people that are working really hard to change the world in air and space.

H

Host2:52:47

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

J

Jack Buyer2:52:52

You said a thing about a plane. I have to ask about the Maverick Act. I never thought in a million years we would actually get to see 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 musicians and whatnot and it's like, "Oh, awesome. What's next?" But 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, one step at a time. But I would say that first things first, we got to just start doing more within our aeronautics portfolio. X-Plane flew once, was in heavy maintenance just a handful of months ago. Now it's getting into a rhythm. I went through the number last week, I think hit 1.4 today. I'm still looking through catching up on some of my emails, but great. Now we're in a rhythm. We got to rebuild flight test. We're definitely hiring in aeronautics to start bringing back more flight test engineers so we can not outsource that anymore because that's going to be the key to managing multiple X-planes. But I assure you there will be more X-planes. I obviously love the rocket business, and I don't think there's anything more inspirational. Nobody would have gotten anywhere near as many people tuning in if Artemis 2 didn't have those four amazing human beings in it. But in between all of that, you get some pretty radical looking X-planes out there flying around. That's another great way to get people inspired about this line of work. So fully expect more to come here.

H

Host2:54:52

Yeah. Thank you, by the way, Jared, for letting us answer some chat questions and taking some of the hard-hitting ones. I appreciate your openness and honesty with all of it. And 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.

H

Host2:55:10

Anytime. We will take you up on that. Be careful. I mean, careful.

J

Jared Isaacman2:55:15

The only interview I go on where I'm not wearing a suit, so I welcome it.

H

Host2:55:20

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.

H

Host2:55:28

I'm wearing pajamas.

J

Jared Isaacman2:55:29

Nice. Very nice.

H

Host2:55:33

Like it.

J

Jared Isaacman2:55:34

Well, hey, always great chatting with you guys. Congratulations again on the 100th episode.

H

Host2:55:39

Thank you so much, Administrator Jared Isaacman, folks.

J

Jared Isaacman2:55:42

Take care, guys. See you. Bye.

H

Host2:55:44

See you, buddy.

J

Jack Buyer2:55:49

So, that just happened.

H

Host2:55:52

That was pretty cool.

J

Jack Buyer2:55:56

Yeah, we were... Yeah, about that fourth box. There you go. That's who it was as Administrator Jared Isaacman. And yeah, there were certain things to talk about again like we wanted to address 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 awesome.

H

Host2:56:19

But 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.

J

Jack Buyer2:56:27

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

H

Host2:56:31

Okay. Sorry. Trying to compose myself. We had a lot of support that obviously came through during that. So let me just thank some people here really quickly. 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. Phil asking, "Jack, do you miss being down at Starbase and photographing everything and working with NSF? Want to know how you dealt with the change."

J

Jack Buyer2:57:03

Oh man. Who cares? Like we just had Jared on.

H

Host2:57:13

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

J

Jack Buyer2:57:37

Absolutely. Jeff saying, "Jack said it. Some people like to just be negative. They must not be listened to." Yes. 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." John saying, "OMG, awesome job, Jared, sir." 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.

H

Host2:58:10

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

J

Jack Buyer2:58:14

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

H

Host2:58:17

What am I, chopped liver?

J

Jack Buyer2:58:20

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

H

Host2:58:33

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. I was trying to... Yeah. I mean he said he wanted curve balls.

H

Host2:58:45

He told us that before.

J

Jack Buyer2:58:47

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

H

Host2:59:05

Yeah. And you were able to hear all of his answers. Most important. Telstar saying thank you Jared for 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 honest for sure. 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. 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 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 when I can be back, I will be because I do love y'all and I do love spreading the good word of low-cost missions to deep space, which is exactly what we're working on here at Astroforge. Oh, yeah. And asteroid mining. I would be remiss if I did not say please follow Astroforge on your social media of choice. 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. We have the Astroforge podcast which is again insanely technically detailed. As head of media here, I've been championing a radical transparency vibe to all of the things that we put out. And if you can see us do that, well, hey, I'm glad you see it. I truly believe that 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. I don't even know where else to go from there, but I love all of you. It's a pleasure to hang out with the crew again. And you better believe I missed this.

H

Host3:01:05

Well, we're so glad to have you back and 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.

H

Host3:01:15

EJ, thank you for joining as well.

E

EJ3:01:17

I mean, can I?

H

Host3:01:20

No.

E

EJ3:01:21

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

H

Host3:01:22

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.

H

Host3:01:32

On my hat.

J

Jack Buyer3:01:33

Oh my Cliff.

E

EJ3:01:37

Ah, my question.

H

Host3:01:39

Oh jeez. Yeah. No, this is fun. Jack, it's always a pleasure having you here. And yeah, it's a privilege being on here and I try not to take that too lightly. We have fun, but we try to lay the hammer down. But yeah, 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 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 nonzero chance you'll hear my voice on EJ's Twitch. Just saying.

H

Host3:02:19

There you go.

E

EJ3:02:20

Oh, jeez.

H

Host3:02:21

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

J

Jack Buyer3:02:25

Yeah.

H

Host3:02:26

Yeah.

J

Jack Buyer3:02:26

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

E

EJ3:02:35

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

H

Host3:02:54

And we could not do these hundred episodes without the support from all of our members and everyone over there that you see on your screen, the launch directors and flight engineers especially in addition to the rest of all of...

J

Jack Buyer3:03:08

I'm not... they can't hear me because I disconnected from the other call that we were in. They can hear. Don't worry, they can hear me.

H

Host3:03:18

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. 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 Buyer 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 in Spaceflight.

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

About Jared Isaacman