EP: 8 - Starliner Fiasco, Blue Origin Factory, Future of Human Spaceflight & More

hi it's me Tim DOD the everyday astronaut welcome to episode8 of spacewalk podcast okay we have a lot of stuff to talk about uh you know we got to of course we have to talk about the whole Starliner debacle thing quick uh I don't want to spend a ton of time on it cuz it's been covered by a billion different I mean that's all anyone's talking about so we'll just touch on it I'll just give my thoughts on that uh we'll also talk about some blue origin stuff with you after that first tour video is posted and as we're uh waiting approval for part two uh we'll just kind of talk about a little bit of that kind of stuff we'll also talk about uh some orbital mechanics which is fun and uh some Far space future things and of course we'll we'll touch on Starship for a minute there's a a good question that we had here from listener so join me on this uh spacewalk [Music] this AEP way to travel that's great all righty all righty all righty how are you guys I hope you're doing fantastic we've had a beautiful few days here in Iowa and the students are back uh at the University of Northern Iowa I live for those of you that don't know I live in a pretty small town in Iowa called Cedar Falls Northeast Iowa and it is a college town of the smallest College in iow which means it's probably a pretty small State College overall uh but students are back so as I walk around town uh I try to not look like a completely uh crazy person and I might you know sometimes have to like hold my phone up to my ear so that when I'm talking to myself it doesn't look um more crazy than that normally does so uh that's the scoop for me I'm it's just beautiful it's been hot it's been great spending a ton of time Outdoors ton of time with friends and family and that is helping me reset while also trying to catch up on a million other things and you may have noticed actually uh I think since the last time we did an episode uh some new stuff some we got a few exciting things like we released uh our 1969 collection if you haven't seen that um you may have noticed in the blue origin video I was wearing a a Saturn 5 shirt kind of like a followup to our F1 shirt um kind of replacing that old one schematic shirt and uh it's part of our 1969 collection we have a ton of really uh it's I think it's easily my favorite collection so far it's our most complete collection like we have an a7l hoodie that's uh designed and and kind of mimics the Apollo Eva suit and it's just incredible uh I I'm so proud of Ally for all of her work on this one it's it's this this is the kind of stuff that makes me excited because you know half the reason for everyday astronaut and trying to make it like a quote unquote brand was the idea of trying to help make space flight feel cool and help rocket science seem cool and not just like this nerdy you know thing but actually try to like brand it as something exciting and cool and fun um and and part of that is the reason for the all the stuff that we do uh for the merch and stuff like that is just to you know and is to try to help it you know elevate it to help it be cool because I think it is the coolest things in the world and um Ally does a better job than anybody on that in my opinion so very excited about that um also like I said blue origin part two is coming out soon um we have you know there's every company has an approval process uh blue has actually been great to work with just to be to be clear uh what I like for them is they do a lot of uh proactive things so before I even get my hands on stuff a lot of stuff has already been taken care of um so that we don't waste time like you know having me edit something that sending them that and then like hey take this this this this this and this out you you guys might be surprised like to be perfectly honest and and transparent you know there's a lot of stuff that can't be viewed by the public because you know a lot of the stuff Engineers will work for seven years on some really cool maybe novel concept and they don't frankly want their competition seeing behind the scenes you know seeing how the sauce is made so to speak so that's half the reason for some of the blurs or some of the cuts um you know some of the cuts are more obvious than others uh there's no getting around that sometimes uh but I do a pretty sneaky job of sneaking Cuts in sometimes where maybe a whole few minutes and you may notice in some of the tour videos in the last Elon interview for instance um a lot of people noticed that I was just sticking on his face for like 7 minutes while we're talking and pointing at things that you don't get to see and I know that was frustrating and I had people calling me the worst names about it it's like I'm sorry I was told that we can't show a certain thing that was happening in the background that the other camera had full view of so um there's things like that that sometimes it's not even necessarily you might think like just show the part just show the thing but the reality is sometimes there's other things happening in the backgrounds uh that we can't show so uh I would hope that people are just and I know 99.9999% of you are just excited to be able to see anything and I know there's a few vocal minority that that like to you know uh call names when when things seem so simple and they do seem so simple but they just simply aren't um and I'm just so fortunate to be able to you know shoot and and do whatever I can for these videos cuz they're those tour videos are some of my favorite videos that I ever get to make because obviously I get to see some really cool stuff and talk to some really really cool people cool and interesting people so uh there's more of that coming out by the way there's more uh tours we're always kind of working with companies to try to get them in the schedule especially around like a good time for them uh and that's this is a reminder too if you haven't watched the other tour videos there's a lot out there I mean every single one has nuggets of information I'm like this is so like I I don't get tired of them because I always learn something and I always see something that's that's a first for me um you know an unw an underwatched one is uh is the Ursa video uh so we went to uh Ura major in Colorado that would have been in 2023 three and it was awesome I mean it was such a cool tour and you know I literally got to be Hands-On with a rocket engine and help build a rocket engine for a minute which is really fun but you know I again just learned a ton there with with their Engineers um the also the you know I talk a lot about the European one that one's really fun for me where we go to RFA and esar and of course like you know even the even back in the day went with to Firefly pretty early on and talked to t marusik uh who was at the time their CEO really smart guy really really enjoyed I mean that's still one of my my tops um that one I feel like I had a lot of new info coming my way and I loved it so yep just a reminder if you're if you're bored watch some of those older interviews and tours cuz they are they are fun to watch so yeah okay let's start getting into your questions here um let's see so uh actually before since I'm not picking out a single comment for uh for the Starliner stuff cuz frankly we've had so many just generic questions I had so many people tagging me ask me questions about the Starliner Fiasco and I think that's the best way to put it is Fiasco it is not good um I again sorry not not to like not to air my grievances upon you guys at all too much but I had certain people saying that I was like defending Boeing by trying to explain the concept of what of what I meant by people thinking they're stuck in space cuz that's a headline I saw everywhere everyone saying you know Boeing left astronauts stuck in space and of course to a degree of course that's true like they don't have a vehicle that's certified to return those humans back down from the International Space Station that is absolutely true and I try to explain that but I think the problem is I have lit I've literally had friends and family call me or talk to me at a coffee shop or come to me and go hey so like are they going to run out of food are are these astronauts are just stuck out there in space where are they are they like at the Moon you know the general public sees that headline astronauts Boeing has astronauts stuck in space and they literally think that there's a spacecraft out there a tiny little spacecraft with two astronauts floating around stuck in space that's what people think and I'm I was trying really hard on on X to to reiterate that no they're not like floating around in space they're they're safely harboring you know they're safely hanging out on the International Space Station and they can do that for you know we have astronauts that have spent a year on the International Space Station and it's a relatively mundane safe thing at that point right now obviously all things considered it is very very very bad that the Starliner capsule is not considered deemed safe uh to be able to return them from the International Space Station that is not good I want to make that clear this is uh this is bad now this is three flight attempts with Starliner and the second one went fairly well which is surprising to me that they didn't see these kind of issues uh on the second flight test I mean they had some issues with their thrusters and a little bit you know especially the first one with with that was The Rook cause wasn't necessarily like one of these dog houses like it is for this third flight so I am just surprised at like how did it get like this how did it get to this point how I don't know I mean it's just it's wild to me honestly um so here's the deal the truth is and I think Scott Manley's I think his thumbnail was something like Starliner might be safe but SpaceX is safer and that's the exact reality of the situation and that's the conclusion that NASA came to they're literally saying between the NASA and the Boeing Engineers are saying you know what it's it's probably there's it's probably 95% safe to return on Starliner there's a very good chance that Starliner undock autonomously returns and has a completely nominal safe landing that would have been completely fine for these astronauts however they can't exactly qualify and quantify just how safe and frankly it needs to be 99.7 or whatever it is cuz it needs to be 1 in 270 chances so if they can't say for certain with data that they think they can come back down 99.7% you know chance of success of safely re-entering these humans back on Earth then they have to look at other options and that's the reality of the situation is you know really again great chance that Boeing the Starliner comes back down perfectly fine and we all look at this and go oh huh you know they probably could have landed there and probably would have been totally fine we would have to all the shuffle but NASA is being extremely extremely cautious which they should because there's humans lives at risk here and I I'd be curious okay so obviously Butch and sunny are going to do and they've kind of said this in in the press conference they said it kind of like they do whatever we want so I don't remember who said that but it was almost like they do whatever they're told and you know to to I think the the meaning the context in the press conference was they do whatever you know whatever we deem is safe safe whatever we deem whatever our teams of experts literally studying this stuff whatever they decide is the best option you know they will they will do cuz that's their that's their job their their job is to trust the teams and the the experts but I would be curious all unfiltered 20 years later 30 years later or something in a memoir like what would they do what would they do in this situation would they if they got the orders you know hey yeah star liners looking looking good or you know even not star Lin is looking good Starliner here's the known issues we think it's 98.7% safe you know based on our on our simulations and based on our data how do you guys feel you know what would their decision be do you want to come home or do you on Starland or do you want to you know do the whole Shuffle thing and and do the crew n return on on Dragon capsule so I don't know I'm just rambling I'm just talking but the reality is yeah star laner was deemed uh they they don't want to bring those astronauts back home on Starliner and uh I I mean obviously obviously that is the safer option is to is to bring them home I mean that would be the safer option even if everything was normal is to bring them home on a completely proven system that's flown you know 12 times or whatever is to put them on Dragon crew Dragon of course like that's that's always going to be the safer option at this point Point uh but you know how much safer can you qualify that can you quantify that um I don't know the point being yep Starliner is coming home empty and they have to there's just a lot of weird stuff like they removed all the autonomous software from it I'm guessing they did that just so they didn't have any accidental whoopsy dos where you know humans are flying all of a sudden the computer intervenes and some line of code accidentally starts flying the vehicle and crashes it into the space station or something you know I'm sure there's some reason why blowing removed the autonomous like procedures and undocking procedures and stuff um and I'm sure it does have to do with like let's just make sure that everything works um yeah it's just like it's so disheartening because it's you know we're what 9 years or 10 years basically into the the program Al together or you know 8 years in total of actually development and like how are they still making these same kinds of mistakes how they're supposed to test these things end to end how have they not how have they how have they removed software that they know worked I don't know it's just it's pretty wild to me this whole thing is going to be a you know it's it's going to be a lesson and it's going to be a lesson in in Mission management it's going to be a lesson in program management it's going to be a lesson in engineering a vehicle it's going to be a lesson in you know not getting complacent with your contracts is going to be a lesson in a lot of things but I'm I'm allog together just I am happy that they made the hard decision and by hard I mean like the you know it's financially tiresome to to not fly to New crew up there to the International Space Station and to basically have to you know return these guys on uh on crew 9 is definitely not the the ideal plan um but I I am glad that the that sunny and Butch are going to come home safe and at the end of the day that's the most important thing and NASA knows that and that's why they're doing this so that's my rant on Starliner super long uh yeah oh gosh it's just one of those man how did we get here and we'll both I think right now the ultimate question the long question is will Boeing fulfill even be able to fulfill their six operational missions the International Space Station is currently slated to uh retire in 2030 at this point I don't think they can get 6 know they're going to have to fly this Mission again I'm guessing like they're going to have to fly uh a demonstration Mission again and you know at that point you know they're still going to have to fly if they fly once a year for the rest of the six operational missions yeah the ISS won't even be around anymore for that sixth flight you know fifth or sixth flight so and even I don't think boing can afford to do this anymore like they're already what is it a billion dollars over they've already lost like over a billion dollars because they've had to do so many refights of their of their system so you know I I can see Boeing trying to get out of this um because it's just costing them money they're not going to make money off this they're just losing more and more money so that's the question to me is like will Boeing ever fly an operational mission is is what I'm feeling right now um yeah I'd like to be i' like to be proven Wrong by that but we'll see time will tell okay let's get to your questions now cuz we have some really good questions uh the first one's kind of on on the topic of of that uh you know blue origin tour we were talking about this is comes from ex subscriber Peter Helmer at peterp or Helmer pH and this is compare the blue origin Factory to SpaceX and Firefly um I'm going to kind of wrap this into also part of the tour um so you know Firefly when I visited them they're still their their Factory was relatively new um it felt very machine shoppy it felt very uh people working on a a high Fuel dragster almost you know like a race car in a factory and that was cool I liked that um these days fireflies uh area has grown up a lot it'd be a lot different today um but you know I I I think Firefly felt very garageyour maybe SpaceX Hawthorne Starbase has in the past been extremely garageyrblt with uh with the expansion of star Factory and uh and blue origin is like the pristine do it do it right the first time kind of feel of like hey we're just going to build this you know as you know they've had this massive factory out of the cape for four or five years and in a what feels like and looks like a mostly done State and now it's finally getting to the point where it's getting filled with rocket Hardware whereas the inverse like SpaceX built a rocket and then started building the factory around it um so it's it's all of them are ending up at the same point I think all of these you know any rocket Factory will turn into a beautiful pristine you know spaceflight Hardware Factory um clean and modern and and operational etc etc uh but currently um you know blue origin has the nicest cleanest most operational Factory that I've ever laid ey eyes on really besides you know maybe Hawthorne uh headquarters is has been operational and clean for a long time like that um and you know maybe I haven't ever been in inside ula's but I've seen you know Destin from smarter every day has an awesome tour inside ula's production facility and that's always been similar pristine you know this beautiful uh workshop and and beautiful rocket Factory so they're all going towards that cuz that's just eventually you you care a lot about fod you know your foreign object debris you care a lot about you know cleanliness and air conditioning and all the things uh so they all do end up working towards that but I feel like with uh the the companies we list just kind of different states and like I said each of them you know each company has a slightly different approval process but they all are sensitive about you know there's certain things that are illegal to share uh as far as a a weapons perspective you know cuz all Rockets are basically missile and weapon delivery technology so there is considerations there of things we can't show and operations that we can't show and there's topics that we can't talk about uh that was something that I came uh that was a big problem with the last Elon interview actually for me was you know how do we talk about things he we' generally and publicly and I maybe should have thought more like I don't care necessarily about what I know let's reiterate what has you know what's maybe been talked about on X or Twitter um cuz generally like we know like everything almost available Elon talks about on X and it's amazing and we see everything and so I have this like snobbish attitude sometimes when I'm like with that last interview where I was like well I don't want to talk about things that we already know about cuz we already you know quote unquote we already know about it but I forget like yeah there's like a handful of us like absolute space fight Hardware foamers that remember and know every little bolt in detail but I probably should have been more open to just you know doing some overall reviews and not treating as like yeah I know I know you know and I I'll take I will take the the blame on that one because I definitely I I think I I just get that in my head like yeah yeah yeah let's talk about something we don't know about and then what happened with that interview and you might you might notice they might not there's actually a lot of questions that I asked that ended up being too sensitive and too detailed and certain areas and topics that got cut short because or cut off completely um because I was asking questions that frankly I I didn't know the answer to and I guess the reason I didn't know the answer to is because it's not supposed to be public consumption right and so um that last interview with Elon to me did feel different than the others because I was in this weird position where you know we knew we know a lot of the stuff generally and I I felt like if I was asking questions that we knew answers to the space fik Community would have been mad and then I was trying to ask questions that we didn't know answers to and unfortunately they got so detailed that we had to cut them out and so I left with a lot of like yep yep yeah uhhuh I know yep yep uh-huh yeah I know and then cut you don't get to see the good stuff so it's it's it's been a weird position for That interview and even like going to the tower um we weren't allowed to get any closer because of certain procedures that were happening at the time uh so you know even that one like we were hoping to go up the tower and right before the interview we found out that we cannot get any closer so um unfortunately we were stuck there we didn't have better camera views we didn't have better angles we kind of just stood there at the base of the rocket as it got really really really really dark and that's what we're left with and I'm perfectly happy with that because it's awesome we aren't owed anything more than that you know and it's amazing that uh SpaceX and Elon and the comm's team trust us so much to allow us to even be there in the first place I'm extremely thankful and happy for that and uh I still think it makes for awesome videos even if it's not quite giving everyone everyone doesn't get everything they want sadly and that myself included on that so uh yeah these tours are so fun like I said kind of at the beginning of this this episode so um I'm always pretty excited by them whenever we get a email or some kind of conversation going about about tours I get really excited so that's that's where we're at with that so let's do another question sorry these are like this is a ranty episode or like a this is a long- winded episode so uh this one comes from patreon Member Tom S thank you for your patreon support why is new Glenn's So speaking of blue origin and new Glenn you'll see why I did this in this order why is new new Glen's First Flight carrying a real satellite isn't the first flight very risky so that is a fantastic question generally yes first flights are risky you know a lot of unknowns a lot of news a lot of firsts and generally you wouldn't want to put uh you know a multi-billion dollar satellite or even a hundred million doll satellite um on the first flight of a vehicle and that's not what they're doing uh the first flight of new Glenn will be escapade which is uh the the bus is primarily and the satellites are primarily built uh by rocket lab it's a pair of satellites and I'm pretty sure it's I'm pretty sure the pair of satellites fully fueled is less than 550 kg these are small satellites um they're built on their I believe they're based off their Photon you know uh satellite bus and uh the launch so new Glenn and blue origin only got $20 million for this which is like you know obviously the launch is worth you know 60$ 80 $100 million whatever because it's the first launch it got a massive discount $20 million and I believe these uh the entire mission is under $80 million so the satellites are quote unquote only you know $60 million or something somewhere around that ballpark and uh by the way uh apparently the rocket lab price was two orders of magnitude cheaper than the next highest Builder so if if they were think about that how I mean I can't get how it could be I mean maybe that's specific to like the satellite bus maybe not the whole thing but let's say let's say that it's still towards of magnitude and let's say that these satellite buses are $5 million and that means the next cheapest one is $500 million that's just crazy but however I you know and take that with a little grain of salt I read that in one article and I don't know how true that is but still fun to think about that rocket Labs changing the game and in the production of a lot of satellite components as well they're not just a rocket company despite being called Rocket lab that honestly some of their biggest business these days is probably going to be in the inspace flight systems and the inp space computers and hardware and satellite buses and things like that so pretty cool to see that uh coming to fruition so Escapade launching on new Glenn so in general like like I eventually kind of got around to the mission itself is relatively inexpensive um all things considered it's you know yeah it's a little bit higher risk because because of the price tag because they're not you know throwing a $250 million pair of satellites or throwing you know some cheaper satellites $60 million satellites uh up towards Mars and and new Glenn is yeah it's going to be its first launch but you know its first launch is a little different than than say a Starship first launch where it's it's not as iterative it's more like hey we expect this thing to work like we have done it a little bit more traditionally where we're going to engineer this thing with a certain degree of confidence that it will work and uh you know I expect it to be something like 90% chance of success or 93 or something you know as opposed to like Starship it's like eh 50/50 if it gets off the pad I'll be happy for the first launch you know uh and there's a 50% chance that it gets off the pad um you know it's it's a different different scheme different ballpark different game and uh and it's there's two sides of this Corin because it's funny when when someone lobs up just a complete uh you know payLo uh like a mass simulator then people go why did they put a real satellite on this thing that seems like a waste of a launch and then when they put a real satellite people like isn't that kind of risky why don't they just put a mass simulator on so so there's risk and reward to both sides of this coin and uh and you know realistically it seems to be more common these days when when a company rolls out a new rocket like Vulcan uh it's it a lot of people will sign up raise their hand and say hey could we you know get that for like a quarter of the cost and you know we'll accept a little extra risk and we'll just uh you know hope that it's that it's worth it we we'll take we'll roll those dice we'll take that Gamble and you know if we lose our satellites at least we you know they're relatively cheap satellites so that's kind of uh that's kind of where we're at with that so uh thank you Tom S and uh let's go to the next one this one uh speaking of uh spacecraft going to Mars and on interplanetary missions and so on and so forth this question comes from our Discord Channel and this is mq r i u s which I believe is just kind of marious that's at least how I always read it but yeah uh the good question from from them saying are course Corrections preferably done near Earth for better accuracy or is there nothing really stopping example juice from doing a course correction when it's halfway to Jupiter so uh the reason that I lumped this in with uh with Escapade is because that is a trans Mars mission uh where they going to have to do some course corrections to be able to get to Mars and and then to be able to uh you know orbit Mars so course Corrections it's the earlier the better in some ways obviously like so just think of it like a you know if you had a uh a 10 m long Pole right versus a 1 M long pole versus a you know 50 cm Pole or whatever it's like uh if you move a tiny bit uh on one end of a 30 m long pole I don't know what I said at the beginning whatever a long long long pole and you move the tiniest little bit at one end the other end's going to move a lot right so right when a spacecraft you know is injecting to Mars the tiniest little changes in courses could be hundreds of kilometers in distance you know difference um obviously everything's an ellipse in space so you know you have to think about its course as as an ellip and your target as you know wherever it's targeting but the at the end of the day it's it's the same type of thing so you might you know if you're trying to Target Mars uh you could do a very small correction very early on and it has big changes but like you it's hard to tell how accurate you are um at at the close ranges and one of the big issues too with uh with tracking spacecraft is we mostly use Doppler shift uh which is kind of two-dimensional in ways like it's not very good at translating from the perspective if a vehicle is moving left to right you know like say you're looking up at the sky and and a vehicle moves left to right forward to back on that on that plane it's actually kind of hard to tell uh how you know how it's moving it does a lot better uh towards and away from you so you know as a spacecraft is moving away from you or away from Earth um it's pretty easy to see small little changes in its velocity and it's and it's vector and be able to track it but moving will say it's hard to explain this without visuals and stuff uh but I do have a video that kind of has some visuals on this if you if this is confusing to you uh about the Mars Orbiter Mission actually it's when NASA lost a $280 million Mars probe and it smashed into the into Mars instead of orbiting it uh we do talk about all these things quite a bit so with visuals of course sorry it's going to be loud here for a second but the reality is uh that you want to do your course Corrections pretty early on but it's just kind of hard to tell you know how accurate that is you kind of have to let time play out you have to have multiple points to be able to pull your data to really get an accurate velocity and accurate position uh in space to really truly know okay here's where we're at and here's where we need to go and later on you know at some point say you do a COR correction really early on and a tiny your lowest impulse on a Thruster might still be way too much of an adjustment right so there is you know eventually you want to fine-tune this thing and get it to be you know within a kilometer or two of your of your you know desired uh orbital altitude around Mars so at some point you actually want to be quote unquote less efficient you know cuz so so the answer is yes it's both like it's it's both better to do it early on get the big Corrections out of the way get as close as you can early on but then the closer you get the more fine-tuned you can get with your thrusters and with your with your systems so you know as you get let's say halfway to Mars uh you're you you have more Fidelity at the cost of using more propellant to do the same amount of movement and so on and so forth and as you get closer uh that just gets more and more extreme so um it's a yeah that's kind of that trade is is Fidelity and fine tuning uh versus how efficient it is technically as far as your final uh orbital destination hope that made sense I talked a lot okay this one comes from uh on this is just from X uh pull this one from just a regular old so ask your questions on on anywhere and I'll I'll look for my favorite ones so this one comes from really um at PP etier so like appetizer but with two PS and one uh this one is I have seen animations of the Chopsticks catching both Starship and the booster in this upcoming attempt I believe they are catching only the booster will they be catching both on the process has worked out yes they will only be catching the booster at first and that's because they've basically proven uh a certain degree of accuracy with the booster to make it safe and and the risk is lower even though the booster is bigger and technically heavier uh the risk is a little bit lower because it's it's not having to overfly land at all it's simply you know coming it it goes over the the gulf comes back and it overflies the golf back so it's it's never really crossing over any populated areas and like I said they've already demonstrated the ability to touch down and control it through re-entry uh within a fine enough margin to feel comfortable bringing that thing back to Star base obviously they wouldn't do that if you know if they didn't think they had a decent amount of control over it right and uh Starship on the other hand so far has only re-entered in one piece once mostly in one piece uh one time and it was uh a few kilm was it 6 km off course or 10 or something uh off course because of uh you know all the holes and the flaps and stuff and so in that case you know you risk having that booster or the star to potentially land in Port Isabel or in South Padre or Brownsville or on Starbase the factory you know uh so until they can demonstrate that they can for sure a maintain orientation and not have pieces falling off of it and melting off and blowing up during re entry and then b control within uh you know a few meters of their destination of their target then then they aren't going to be sending that thing anywhere near star base so that's you know that's the risk is like if this thing can't because when you're going when you're in orbit of course don't forget you're going you know 28,000 km an hour you're 17,500 mph and having any change to your like interface through the atmosphere has a massive change in you know kind of like what we're just talking about with orbitals with like getting to Mars a little tiny difference at the very beginning of re-entry uh could put you way off you know especially let's say the if the vehicle's um in some weird yaw almost or like kind of so so for instance the space shuttle to control its descent and re-entry it would do these big S turns because obviously if you banked in One Direction you'd eventually uh you know kind of Veer off course uh left and right relative I'm going to say left and right even though it's a bad frame of reference but you know you you change your your latitude basically but we'll say left and right and all of a sudden now you're if you stayed you know pitched over to the right or rolled over to the right then you could easily end up you know flying over uh and landing in Titusville or something or Landing in uh Satellite Beach or whatever with the space shuttle because you didn't you know ever cancel out that that change in course so being able to you know so being able to control your re-entry interface it has big implications on on its final landing and right now so far they have a lot of data to work with and hopefully this next launch we see uh some really really good progress being made with that so and I hope they you know next time I hope that it actually survives without a bunch of holes in it and they actually splash down exactly where they intended to splash down that would be huge and awesome and I I would still imagine they'd want to do that prove that out two or three times before they attempt a Starship catch back at Brownsville or back at Star base so there you go that's that's the longwinded answer on that one today's a long minuted episode and lastly on patreon we have a question from Kyle Kingsbury thank you Kyle for your patreon support and this is how about something a bit different for a change what do you expectations SL hopes for the next 10 50 100 500 years of human space flight and you're saying feel free to change the time period so whatever makes most sense let's go let's go 5 10 20 and 100 or something I don't know we'll start off with five in five years by the end of this decade let's see I do hope by then we have you know two or three major players doing doing at least H oh okay here's here's a bold prediction well this says where do I want okay I I want there to be three major players doing full reusability in 5 years I don't think we'll have that yet I hope in 5 years we have at least three launch operators doing what SpaceX is doing today I hope we have at least three operators doing first stage reuse you know we have a handful of vehicles work working on that right now obviously we have new Glenn coming up which should be flying I would say by the end of the year still seems relatively reasonable and hopefully that thing just works out right away and they're able to reuse the first stage as intended so there's one you know we have Neutron working on that same same thing of reuse we have relatively relativity working on the same thing of reuse um we have Ursa or sorry we have Stoke working on that same thing only they're working on a fully usable vehicle but their first stage will be you know I think they could have the first stage worked out in 5 years and and be making good progress on their upper stage but who knows they might surprise me and they might get to full reusability pretty quickly you never know what those guys they are sprinting um I'm sure I'm missing some but people that are actually at a pretty good obviously I think China will have landed some kind of Falcon 9 clone booster in the next 5 years and be be working on that so yeah the reality is My Hope Is that we have at least three players doing at least first you know partial reusability and I hope I let's just say 2030 I hope by January 1st 2030 we have two players that are doing fully reusable vehicles that have fully reusable Vehicles like having proven maybe not fully operational yet you know maybe not like you know how Falcon 9 landed in 2015 for the first time but it took a couple years for them to really you know get that to be the norm where you're seeing you know boosters being reused more often than you're seeing new boosters boosters flying so you know in that same vein I hope that by January 1st 2030 we have you know two or two companies where they have proven and recovered and perhaps ref flown both stages by then but maybe not like up to the full Cadence yet um yeah okay 2030 that's hope so 10 years from now let's say 2034 I hope that we have valid commercial space stations going at least a few I hope that oh let's say that by 2030 I definitely hope that humans have walked on the moon again um that's my hope I mean honestly at this point though 5 years still seems like quite a while um and I I think that is for sure something that'll be within 10 years though so I will put that in my hope that in 10 years we have people not just walking on the moon but actually you know working always on the moon a continual uh sustained presence on the moon with an with an actual infrastructure to be able to do that um back and forth and I hope that you know by then the International Space Station will likely have been retired it should have been retired by then and hopefully a lot of that energy and effort and and cost and um price and you know effort is you know focused on inhabiting and and working on the moon and studying the moon and learning how to live on the moon because I think that's a great step in general is just you know developing that system those procedures and you know obviously living on the Moon is different than living on Mars but you can learn a ton it's a little bit easier in some ways it's harder in others and it's a it's a great step to get back to and actually learn how to spend significant time there not just 3 days like the longest Mission Apollo 1 so that's 10 years let's go 20 years let's go another I hope that in 20 years we have humans on Mars um whether or not living on there I don't know but perhaps within 20 years we have humans on Mars by 2044 I sure hope so I hope I hope that that that's me trying to be realistic learning how slow this stuff is everyone says things you know take longer than you expect and I know this I've known this and I think for a long time I would have said that by 2030 I hope the humans are walking on Mars I I don't see that happening but I do hope that I even think 2034 is too early for humans Walking on Mars I think that realistically but I I do think it'll hopefully be in that decade I hope in the 2030s so by 2044 we better have had humans walking walk on Mars and successfully come home that's a big part of it and uh I hope that effort's not ingest and that it just all works um uh so that's 20 years let's go I think that's going to be the next big step by 20 years is is just having kind of sustained human presence on moon and getting our feet wet so to speak hopefully almost literally on Mars as well uh and lastly let's go let's just go 50 years let's go 2074 oh man I hope by then we really have actual industry in Space by actual industry I mean like it's very common to own space grade space made materials things that were mined on the moon uh and produced in space you know and oh look I've got this this thing was cheaper and better made in Zerg or in microgravity or in one six gravity of the Moon and blah blah blah and it's commercially viable to have these materials and and things brought back from outer space cuz currently everything we do in our space is coming from Earth you know going up and there's nothing of value really coming back down all than science right um obviously some moon rocks are highly valuable just for their novelty but the actual raw material is not really of any you know there's no produced or raw materials of any True Value so I'm talking asteroid mining I'm talking mining the moon producing materials on the moon producing heavy industry in space so that it's not polluting our Earth I'm talking about things tangible things being used uh being built produced mind coming from space and ending back on Earth um I think that's the big thing for 50 years um and that transition is going to be so funny it's going to go from like this is stupid and why to all of a sudden like a no-brainer I think like the drop of a hat some compan is going to uh you know be ahead of all the others on same mining or something like that and all a su next thing you know it's just going to pop off and everyone's going to be racing to be you know it's going to be a gold rush but in space and uh that that switch is going to go from impossible and dumb and stupid to try to no-brainer solved problem and the first couple companies doing it are going to be you know the the wealthiest companies in the world um that's my bet so yeah there you go dang sorry this was a long long one what are we at we're probably at like 45 minutes or something stupid uh thanks for joining me on the spacewalk guys uh don't forget to if you like this stuff let me know cuz to be honest like it's I debate whether or not these are worth it cuz I could obviously just like hop on a regular live stream and do more with that and you know reach more people but I like this casual format so let me know if you guys do like this leave a little review tell me what more you want what less you want people always ask for video but frankly I don't want you seeing my sweaty sweaty face and it just be my face we're trying to make this easy where I can just upload a you know a 30 megabyte file off to Spencer instead of a 300 gigabyte file off to our editor Spencer so that we can get these things done anywhere anytime using you know airplane Wi-Fi using a hotspot and not being reliant on having good connection to be able to you know upload and produce these things so they're supposed to just be stripped down and easy and it's a podcast it's a podcast so it's hopefully just doing what a podcast should do which is giving you some entertainment in the car uh or on your walk or whatever um so let me know uh thank you guys so much for hanging out uh we're getting ready by the time this comes out hopefully uh inspiration or not inspiration 4 uh hopefully this comes out before the launch of uh of player Dawn and if you are still listening to this and if you are not planning to watch or pay attention to anything with player Dawn player Dawn in my opinion is the biggest most important and most incredible Mission uh so far of my lifetime uh because it's it's really ambitious it really ambitious I have a few interviews with with Jared isaacman and with the crew as well um about the mission and why it's special why it's crazy um they've done a lot of Novel things and new things to be able to do as Space Walk with brand new Eva suit it's the first time we've done a new Eva suit and how long I mean come on and a SpaceX Eva suit that looks amazing it's going to be an incredible Mission and uh we're wishing them the absolute best of luck as of the recording of this we were two scrubs in one for a groundside helium leak that was address and fixed right away pretty normal and the other was for weather specifically in the recovery operations this sub mission is pretty demanding as far as a performance and timing perspective they're trying really hard to avoid uh micr meteors and you know having to thread the needle between just getting out there to this high altitude they're trying to get to uh 1400 km so what is that like 900 miles in altitude which is the highest anyone's been since the Gemini program in it'll be the highest orbit ever of the earth you know if you because technically when you all the Apollo missions that went to the moon on a tli they uh you know are technically orbiting the moon or or using I guess you know Apollo 8 like free return trajectories what a what is that is that that's still technically an Earth orbit just interfacing with the moon I don't know how that works but as far as just purely orbiting the Earth these this will be the highest mission ever uh it's going to be incredible so I hope you guys are joining I will be doing a fundraiser stream so all uh I found out you know was a couple years ago or whatever for the uh I didn't realize when I was doing one of the streams that I that all of the proceeds automatically do go straight to St Jude Children's Research Hospital through YouTube I used to think YouTube still took their like 30% cut that they normally take for a super chat so for one of these streams I was encouraging people to donate directly via link and all the stuff nope just do a donation right in YouTube it all goes straight to St Jude um and it'll show that it's all you know a legitimate thing obviously uh so I encourage you if uh if you have a little money set aside to help support this Mission and and the ultimate mission of uh of Jared's crew uh which is supporting St Jude Children's Research Hospital consider doing it on the stream would mean a lot to me just to know that you're there to support and uh and there to witness history and there to support not not only the crew but also a really good cause so hope to see you guys there uh but thanks again for joining me on the spacewalk we'll see you next time [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music]