 And welcome to tomorrow, my name is Jamie Higginbotham. Oh, hey, look, we have little banners now. You can find me at Photonic Empress on all of the socials. I am joined by a Jared, oops, Jared Head, and by a Ryan Keaton, and we will be your hosts for today. By the way, I loved last week's show, where you all got to call in. And I, you know, I've always wanted this show to be something where, you know, it's just a bunch of space nerds hanging out at a round table, having a drink, and nerding out over space stuff, right? Like, it should be a fun, exciting show where everyone has a voice. So to that end, we're going to continue the ability for you to call into the show week after week. And if you want to add your voice into the show, if you look into the description, you're going to see a URL you can click on and you can join in, add your own comments and thoughts into the show itself. It's pretty cool. So I think that's going to be a lot of fun. I realize that generally speaking, you're going to have a lot more people viewing passively than you are going to be participating, but like, you know, if you want to, I think it'd be, I think it's pretty exciting. I think it's pretty cool. We're all space nerds, right? And we all want to geek out together. Certainly another way you can participate is through the comments section on YouTube as well. So on that note, I did a little bit of a clickbait title. I forgot exactly what I wrote, but it was something along the lines of can old space survive Starship? Obviously Starship hasn't fully made it yet, but when we think about where it's at, you know, we've got a super ultra heavy lift. What is the classification of Starship, by the way? It's beyond heavy lift, right? Like super ultra heavy lift? Big. Thanks, Ryan. We have, a rocket classified is big. So, but really, does it have a classification above heavy? Heavy lifter? Like, is it super heavy? Is it like, isn't like a Delta IV considered a super heavy? I thought that would just be heavy. I thought, I thought we have small, medium heavy, which would be like your electron, your Falcon 9, your Falcon heavy. I think super heavy, mega heavy, so stupid. So let's not use that. Super heavy, I think would be a fair notch up above into this next generation of vehicles that we're getting. Godzilla heavy. Well played, well played. Love it, love it. So, all right. So just call it super heavy, I guess. So we've got this super heavy rocket that is fully going to be, oh, article super heavy is Falcon heavy enough. But okay, this is, okay, let's put a pin in this. Someone make a note that we should talk about this in the after party. Like, I wanna, like it feels like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I feel like we're missing a classification. I don't think there's enough granularity because I think there's a pretty big difference between something like a Falcon heavy and a starship. But let's move that to the after party, right? So, okay, so we've got this super heavy launcher, but the super heavy launcher for the first time in history will be fully reusable, first stage and second stage. So if you've got this fully reusable rocket, how in the super duper heavy, how in the world is traditional aerospace going to compete? They're still struggling to get basic reusability done, right? You look at ULA and they're talking about smart reusability and that is basically you jettison the engine, the thrust chamber, and then you reuse the thrust chamber and you rebuild the tanks, which, okay, cool, like, what? A majority of the price of the rocket is in the engines, if we're being honest, right? But also, you lose all of that, like, now you gotta just build, just constantly be building tanks, right? I think it misses, in its entirety, the point of reusability. Ariane-6 just did a static fire, right? Like, what's the reusability on Ariane-6? I feel like they were targeting something. So Ariane-6's current reusability, oh, they don't. But weren't they targeting something? Wasn't there gonna be a future reusability plan there? Or am I just crazy? I say pictures, pictures is a strong word. There's renders of Falcon 9 knockoff looking things, just, like, you know, kind of taped to the side of an Ariane-6 core stage and then they've kind of drawn in crayon a reusable crew thing on top as well. So, you know, let's give them a pat on the back. A plus for effort with the conceptual drawings. But at the moment, Ariane-6 really is, you know, what they are currently developing in terms of what they have on the pad in French Guiana is very much not reusable stuff. Now, to credit where credit is due, they have been doing extensive research and development on reusable engines in Europe, but they're no good in Europe because they're not underneath a rocket. They're on a test stand. You want them underneath a rocket in French Guiana and launching. Yeah, that makes sense. So, and actually, Don't Panic just brought up a really good point, which is constantly building tanks like the fuel tanks and the LOX tanks. That's kind of the point. It's a jobs program, but that actually goes directly back to my point, which is if you've got these traditional aerospace programs that are jobs programs, how do they compete with a company that is not a job? Whatever the opposite of a jobs program is, right? Well, and then fully reusable rockets. Like, they're already, you look at Falcon 9, it's basically just spanking the industry, right? I mean, can anyone argue that? I guess, like, I'm obviously biased. No, no, I'm not gonna attempt to argue against that. The statistics speak for themselves. Yeah. Right, and that's half reusable, right? Think about that, right? They gotta build a second stage every freaking time. What happens when the vehicle's not just super ultra-duper heavy? I want someone to put that into Wikipedia. I got NASA to say, embegnate on comms. I now want to get the community to put super ultra-duper heavy into Wikipedia. That's my next life goal, super ultra-duper heavy. That's a fair trade for having our article deleted from Wikipedia. Yeah, exactly, that's a fair trade, exactly. Oh, boo, Bennett, boo, boo, boo. Oh, and you just hear, I don't know if Dudda's mic is up, I hear him chortling in the background. So, how does? Just a thought to dig into for a second. SpaceX is spanking the rest of the industry because, is there a portion of that spanking that is because they're absolutely not a jobs program? That's a good question. I'm not sure I'm allowed to answer that, like I've backed myself into a corner of things I can't talk about. But, Ryan, do you want to take that? Well, my, as you know, my understanding of American politics is, you know, incredible, but, I mean, potentially, it's, there's very much a clear line that's been drawn between SpaceX's ideology of how space flight should be done, and, you know, the US government's ideology, say, you know, in the shuttle era, in the Apollo era, how it should be done. Like, you know, a governmental agency, fair play contracting things out, but cost plus, right? This is very much different to the way things are being done nowadays. So, I mean, I think it's a fair point to make because this new era of how things are being contracted out, which isn't cost plus, it's a fixed price, you do it for this price, there's very strict restrictions in there. If not, you're gonna have to spend your own money, right? I think that could have a key point into it, especially considering how SpaceX is able to provide launch services at much lower costs to everyone else. Like the internal launch cost of a Falcon 9, so launch a batch of Starlings is ridiculously small. And then they obviously put their profit margins on top for other customers, but the ability to undercut everyone else in a fixed price contract game gives them the advantage because they can spend less money, which means they can use more money elsewhere, which means they can do more things, which means that they are then able to spank the entire industry because they have the ability to launch more, it's simply the way it is. They don't have to build a new rocket the entire time. They have one sitting in the hangar ready to go effectively, which they've just landed. That speaks to the financing aspect of it, but the employment aspect of it, I think that misses the mark because SpaceX has very high turnover. They go through people left and right, and I don't think that that's the case across the rest of the industry with companies that are not doing things like SpaceX. Ah, wait, wait, I'm gonna push back a little bit. I feel like the space community is fairly small, right? Like, we're all pretty nice, tighten it, and I feel like we all just kind of rotate between companies. Am I wrong? I think rotate is not the right word. There's a particular kind of culture that comes along with every company, and if you are amenable to the culture of company A versus company Y, then you would migrate in that direction. And there are times when maybe that doesn't work out, or you thought the grass was greener on the other side of the fence, so you may come back home for a little bit, but in general, there's a handful of people that kind of rotate through, I mean, again, rotate, I don't think it's the right word, that kind of migrate through companies as the challenges and opportunities that are available present themselves. And as you finish up a project and your usefulness becomes open to other avenues or other projects, maybe there's something more entertaining and more lucrative that's going on elsewhere, and you might move over there. But at the same time, there's a life, again, that lifestyle that SpaceX has, or I mean any company has, is something that you have to contend with when it comes to finding, hiring, and retaining talent. And the bigger companies seem to retain talent for a longer period of time, or longer stretches than the newer companies do. Sure, okay, but are they going to be able to, right? So first off, would you consider SpaceX a new and big company? Like where would you put SpaceX in that classification? Because they are arguably a new space company, but they're also the most active launch provider on the planet today. So it's a weird classification, how do you classify them? I mean they're an island in many respects. They are still new, their operation mentality is still new, it's still the startup mentality where everybody's putting in 60 hours a week as opposed to a cost job that's only 40 or maybe 36. 36, what? Hey, I mean, if you can get, there's places, if you can get your job done, why do you need to be here? This is what we ask of you, this is what you, that's again a different mentality, right? Yeah, yep. I mean it's, oh my God, I can't even wrap my head around that one. Right, and there are older, larger companies for which that's the case, and it's a lifestyle, I'd choose your lifestyle. So really quickly, Norman contributed $10 to this comment saying aerospace planes such as those depicted in the series, planets. I think what Norman is, I think what Norman, that's an anime, so. I think what Norman is saying is that in order for traditional aerospace to compete, they're going to need to build something futuristic and awesome and awe-inspiring and above and beyond what they're doing right now, like an aerospace plane, right? Like, I mean, like Space Shuttle 2.0, like Dream Chaser, oh, like Dreamcatcher, no, Dreamcatcher, no, like, right? Like they're gonna have to think outside of the box. So many thoughts here. So first off, so Norman, thank you for the contribution, but also, when we look at traditional aerospace, like Boeing, and we talk about those cost plus contracts, you know, or the fixed price contracts, right? Boeing tried to compete with fixed price. That's the, not the Orion, the... Starliner? Starliner, thank you. Like, that has not gone well for them, right? Like when they start doing these fixed price contracts as opposed to cost plus, Boeing does not seem to know how to operate in that world and they're limited into cost plus. But then if I'm a company and I want, and I'm looking at, or I'm even a government agency and I'm looking at, do I want a cost plus contract where I have no idea how much I'm gonna have to spend and we need to go back to Congress multiple times to get this program off the ground, or I've got a fixed price like go once and they have to succeed or they don't get paid, which one would you do? Now it is government, so like, who knows what the answer might be, but like, right? I mean, there could be some behind, but like, there's incentive in, I'm just saying that, I think they've, these large aerospace companies have maybe had the wrong business model for so long that they no longer know how to compete. Like they're not incentivized to compete, they are incentivized to take forever and never actually deliver a product, which is the opposite of competing and doing anything. It's what I feel like, it's part of why aerospace has fallen so far behind and with these companies being so used to cost plus, can they get off of cost plus? And if they can't, you know, done it to your point like, okay, you know, engineers maybe are used to cushy jobs with 36 hour work weeks. I can't even say it without laughing. Okay, maybe that's the case, but like, if companies like Company X come along and they just clean house with everyone, where those engineers, like, those legacy aerospace companies aren't going to be able to compete anymore, they're not gonna make money in that particular division anymore, what's gonna happen to those engineers? Right, like. That's why we still have jobs programs, like smart reusability. Well, do we though? I mean, ULA, I jokingly call it blue ULA, it's like Dracula, but with blue, right? Because there's rumors, there are unfounded rumors, unfounded rumors that blue is, well, there are founded rumors that ULA is looking to be purchased, right? That ULA is like, nope, we're done, right? Like that seems like that part may be legit. And it sounds like there might be a few different people who are like really interested in picking them up. Blue, which I really hope happens just so I can call them blue ULA. Just personally, I wanna call them blue ULA. But then also, what was it? It was Aerojet Rocket Time, I think was one of the prospects. Again, all rumors, a handful of different, and then there was one, well, we talked about Amazon, but I don't think that's real. I thought that was brilliant. But no, it's brilliant, right? But I mean, isn't this just kind of the beginning of the end for these legacy space companies? If ULA is already looking at this going, hey man, we've got these government contracts and even we don't know how to keep this going, right? Like, are they maybe just reading the writing on the wall going, nope, we can't do this? Yeah, I think it's probably, I think everything, my opinion is everything stems down to just the company culture. Because there is a difference between the culture of a traditional old space, aerospace company and the culture of say, SpaceX. SpaceX's entire ideology is, especially around the Starship Program, is to build, test if it doesn't work, fix. Build, test if it doesn't work, fix and just keep doing that cycle. And that's something, if you subscribe to that, that's brilliant and they make some cool stuff with that ideology. The other ideology of let's work everything out on paper first and then do it in 15 years time, it's worked in the past. They've built and successfully flowed SLS on that in recent years, last year, but it's much slower from the outside. It looks like they're not really doing much perspective. So I think we've seen behemoth airlines go bankrupt largely because of company culture. Newer, fresher airlines, let's say, who have been able to swoop over and pick up market share just because they, because of company culture, you know? I think if the traditional companies want to survive in the new space age or whatever you wanna call it, I think there just needs to be some switch somewhere if they want to survive of a more rapid, kind of build stuff kind of mentality rather than a, let's draw stuff mentality. How about you, Jerry? You haven't chimed in too much. What are your thoughts here? Well, I think work culture is always a very interesting thing to look at, to examine and see how it works. And I feel like with a lot of the rapid iterative design and other things like that, it makes sense to me that you would have these very young workforces that last for two to three years. You burn them out, you burn your engineer out completely and then basically discard them and move on to the next one. And that makes sense to me at least because your ideas in that kind of an environment are coming on quick and fast and you're gonna want that kind of attitude there that's present in order to handle something like that. However, if you go somewhere, say where there's gonna be a project that's going to be at a set time with as much money as we need to and we don't have to rush or anything like that, then it doesn't really make any sense to end up having a type of employment where you're gonna be burning through and eating talent as fast as you possibly can with it. It makes sense in order to develop a work culture that would allow for something to sit and simmer and cook for a very long period of time. So I don't necessarily think it comes down to the contract and how I wanna do money and other stuff like that necessarily. I feel like that ends up stemming from the work culture itself and what do we really wanna do here? Do we wanna get humans on Mars within the next 10 to 20 years or are we good kind of just puttering around low Earth orbit with what we wanna work on? And I feel like that's also a little bit unfair too because there's absolutely plenty of new space companies that are working on systems for low Earth orbit that are also putting in this tremendous amount of effort in order to make that happen. So I feel like your work culture influences the people that it's gonna bring to you and in turn that ends up influencing a lot of the work that you're actually gonna end up doing. Oops. So a couple of really great comments that came in. We'll start with this one from Jack asking, Dada's eating the banner. Is part of the problem that some of the companies that are publicly traded are shareholder risk-avers and slowing them. So I think a really great example of this would be the Rocket Laboratory. They're a publicly traded company now. Like can they move with the agility necessary to keep up with someone like SpaceX or whoever, right? Like, and I think it was you or Dada or someone, well, it was one of the three of you, brought up the point that you do kind of need money to make all of this go, right? And so becoming a publicly traded company is a great way to infuse cash into your company, which may be required in order for you to just survive, right? But then, like, exactly, not every aerospace company has an angel investor worth hundreds of billions. Having a few billing to throw in the ground breaking design isn't easy to reason about all these days, especially in this current market, right? So like aerospace companies are really, really hard. I was gonna say, just look at small SAP launchers right now, we're basically entering into the, well, it's going to be the end of quite a few small SAP launchers. It's sort of that thing that we all said was coming over the past three to five years. We're now starting to get into that point where the bodies of the companies are gonna start to pile up. I mean, we've seen this before too, right? Like, Beale, Aerospace, like, it just seems to go in cycles. SpaceX is a little bit of the anomaly here, but like, yeah. Also, like in all fairness, Daniel has a really great point, which is we keep talking about SpaceX burning out engineers, but isn't it still one of the most desired jobs for engineers and highest happiness among? It says EEs, to me, that means electrical engineer, I don't know, but I'll just say engineers in general. And then like, yeah, I would argue that, again, bias, but I would argue SpaceX is one of the top engineering companies in the world, not just the country. Like, engineers from all around the planet want to work on these insanely difficult problems. And like, you just, it's, there's cache that comes with it, you know? I mean, now. So like, yeah, I don't know. All right, there's a real fine line that you have to walk with that, though, because you don't want to, you wanna have a level of institutional knowledge that's built within your own company, but at the same time, you don't want to destroy the prospects of being able to have capture and hold on to that institutional knowledge. And I don't know what SpaceX is doing, but even with their extremely high turnover rate that they have, which I feel like really in any area would not allow for that institutional knowledge to build very well. They've still been able to do a really good job of being able to hold on to that. And I don't know if it's just in like the methodology of documentation or how things are handed to people or specific aspects of work culture that they do that are different from other aerospace companies, but it's been able to do a really good job of that. And again, much like Dada said, they're sort of an island on their own in these areas where they have a very high turnover rate, but for some reason, they're able to avoid a lot of the issues at that. Actually, this is a great question. Is this turnover talk? Go ahead. Their institutional knowledge has a name and it's Jira. Is the turnover talk back by statistics? Like everyone keeps saying, oh, they've got high turnover, high turnover, high turnover based on what? Like I've been there for 12 years saying, like I think there's a story in the industry that there's high turnover, but like, is there? I don't know the answer I'm asking. I was about to say, I could definitely try to hunt for it, but I don't know if that's, I don't know if you're gonna wanna watch me on air do that, so it doesn't make for, I think it's a good question. Turns out statistics doesn't make for compelling viewers. Wait, wait, we could go to your full screen and then we could just have you watch you type like that, just watch you type. I think we veered off course a little bit, right? Because I think the fundamental topic here is like, we're going into work culture and like that's not really what we're talking about, right? What we're talking about is, can old space compete with new space? Specifically company X, right? Like you've got this super ultra mega heavy lift rocket that's gonna be fully reusable, coming online imminently, right? Like we're not talking 10 years away here. Like this thing was close last time and yeah, there's gonna be more stuff that goes into it, but like it's coming online here soon. So you look at other companies that don't have reusability or don't have plans for reusability, how in the world, how in the world can they compete? It takes forever to figure out reusability. How are they not gonna go out of business? Or are they just gonna all keep merging, right? Just merge and merge and merge and merge and merge again. Cause we kind of again, we see this in cycles in aerospace, right? Like Northrop Grumman, oh God, what? Sierra Nevada and Aerospace Division of Northrop Grumman Orbital ATK. Like it's, right? I mean, we joke about it, but we've joked about this for years and it just, it's absolutely what happens is these companies keep gobbling each other up and you end up with one behemoth of a company and you talk about culture, imagine the culture of that company that's been gobbled up by nine other different companies. Look at what happened to Boeing, right? Like Boeing and who was it, McDonald? Yeah. They bought, yeah, right? Like they went from the premium, Boeing arguably was the premier aerospace or engineering company on the planet. Look at them now. Not to say bad things about Boeing, but like, oof. Yeah. Aravail has a good point. Even the companies that do have plans are targeting where SpaceX is now not where SpaceX is going to be in five to 10 years. I don't think the larger older space corporations have the foresight to understand where they want to be. They're relying on government dollars and decadal surveys for what we should be doing that have crazy whack-a-doo ideas from one scientist or another that are competing for funding and attention. And it's like, if you want to operate the old space way, we need to all get together and find an old space solution or problem to solve and agree on how we're going to solve it. And then you divvy up government dollars to be able to get that done. But there's, we're still competing on are we going to go to the moon and Mars or how we're going to get there? Are we going to have a Mars Cycler or like, let's figure something out and get it done. And you've got companies like SpaceX or like, I'm going to Mars, screw you guys. And they just do it. All right. Have we, I did have one person join, but I'm not sure if they have a microphone. So I'm texting on the side to see if that is going. Any final thoughts on this particular topic of like, can old space compete with new space? Like, I feel like my answer is no, they can't. And as was just mentioned, they're, you know, they're going to where the puck is now and not where the puck is going to be. What is that, Wayne Gretzky, right? And like, there's just, it's just mean constant miss, miss, miss. And if that's the case, like I don't see how they survive. If you don't have a reusable rocket in the drawing board right now, like starting to build parts and testing it right now, I just do not see how they can make things go. So older established firms need to adopt. Exactly, Keith, right? But that's really, it's easier said than done. Also, let's be clear. Starship is not proving yet, right? Like, now I would say never bet against Elon. That's, those are my, that's my advice to the, all people everywhere only fools bet against Elon. So like, but yeah, yeah. Okay, any final thoughts on this, Jared, Dada and Ryan? I just think if you're an old space company and you want to, you want to be able to survive over the next decade, you're going to have to basically look at yourself, figure out which parts of yourself to completely rip apart and then be like a phoenix and rise from your ashes from that. If you can, if your management is willing to do that, which I am pretty, pretty confident, most upper management C-suite people not willing to do that. Risk averse, risk averse. Ryan? It's comfy at the top. I just, I'm going to be honest, I really don't know what to say because you know, Vulcan is a rocket designed for the 2010s at the latest. The Ariane 6 is a rocket designed for the 2010s at the latest. There's, there's just, nobody seems to be designing for the future apart from SpaceX, Blue Origin and the new company's rocket lab that are coming through right now. And it's just, yeah, I just, it's not a really, you know, happy way to end. Is it like, well, everyone's done for them, aren't they? So it's pretty, pretty big outlook on it. And it's just, you know, like, all right then, I guess Ariane space is done for, but we'll just have to wait and see because like you said, I think Starship isn't proving yet. I think it will be proven very soon, but I might be wrong. So, you know, I just, I don't know. I hope they survive, but I'm a bit depressed now. So, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to make you depressed. All right. I'd like to make a quick little point on that. I think in our recent history from the big major companies that are also in space, I feel like the SR-71 is one of the last things that was created with any kind of vision. Mm. Well, that you're aware of. And actually that, this is where, oh yeah, and Sack actually has a nice Wikipedia article. I think he's looking to try to find a nice picture of the SR-71 and I'm gonna hit a button. Boom. Oh, wait, yeah, cool. Right, so like, that's the last thing. Like, you're like, that's the one. It was so far ahead of his time. So, then the question becomes, well, this is, this goes into conspiracy theories and I think is maybe something that we talk about in the, maybe we do this in the after party, but you know, some of these companies, and if I were to say specifically like Lockmart, I think their material designs are far ahead of where we think they are, right? Cause a lot of these aircrafts is all about materials and I'm not sure that we are fully understand the level of materials that they already have access to. Us mere mortals, we do not know what lay with the gods above. And I certainly don't. So they develop all these advanced materials and then they let the F-35 hold them back. But do the, so, oh, oh, this is, I'm gonna go deep into conspiracy theories after the show. If you guys wanna go into conspiracy theories with me, join the, join the after party. The link for the after parties in the description, you do need to be a member. But like, yeah, let's go into, like, I mean, let's have some fun with this. I think I will surprise you as to where I stand on a lot of this stuff. I think you'll be like, what? You're crazy. All right, cool. We know you're crazy. All right. All right, let's, I think we hit this topic to death. I would love to know your thoughts as to whether old space can compete with vehicles like Starship. Leave your comments down below. We do read all your comments and I'll answer anything that comes up. Like, yeah, yeah, what do you guys think? Where are we going from here? I really need to figure out how to bring like last week comments into the next week's show. Right, wouldn't that be cool? So, yeah. All right. Jared, what do you have for us this week? Oh, I got a really cool thing that actually happened. It has been happening just this week, which I wanted to talk about a little bit by our friends up at JPL here, NASA's Propulsion Laboratory, local here in the LA area in Pasadena. They've been doing some cool stuff with a little vehicle you may have heard of called Ingenuity. Anybody heard of Ingenuity? No big deal. It's a helicopter that's on Mars. So, you know, it's just doing its thing. No big. Yeah, exactly. No big, you know, it's just hanging around with that there. And what I've really been enjoying is that they have been doing a lot of testing work lately with Ingenuity. And I've got some footage that JPL put out of the most recent tests that they were doing with Ingenuity, which is now instead of just doing regular flights and things, they're starting to really push Ingenuity and really take it right to its limits. So this is a high altitude test that they were actually doing with Ingenuity. They took it up to about 50 meters, which is five times higher than it's flown before. So they've been really cranking it and trying to figure out what is Ingenuity itself capable of. And then from there, how can we continue to push the envelope and see what we can get away with. And at this point, because the initial testing to just basically be like, will a Mars helicopter work? You know, after five flights it's been proven to be true. Now it's all about just how far can we push this helicopter? And they're doing this because they wanna have a Mars helicopter as a big part of the Mars sample return missions. Basically they wanna have the samples returned by a actual Mars helicopter. So it's gonna fly out, it's gonna grab the samples, bring them back, and they've actually started testing the new rotors that are gonna be used on it. And this is a great footage of that test happening with those two contra-rotating rotors there. And this is in the space simulator at JPL. So they've basically got a chamber that you can put a spacecraft in and you can simulate very similar environments to places in space. So they simulated- Is this supposed to be a video or is it a still image? It's a video. I don't know what I'm looking at. So what we're looking at is there's two rotors there within a test rig that are driving it. It's just the rotors are spinning fast enough that you don't, it's really difficult to notice that they are. And I don't think the sound's coming through on it either. But yeah, they're spinning it like 35. They're spinning it at 3,500 RPM. So it's gonna be a little difficult for most of us to notice it. But yeah, they're basically trying to develop an improved rotor system for that there at JPL. And it's just really exciting because we're finally being able to see some of this Mars sample return work actually happening. So yeah, and just like, we're talking about wanting to do the next things and get all the big next generation projects going to things like that. Here's one, there you go. They're working on it. So. Yeah, we were talking about Cost Plus before, but this was a Cost Plus program, right? Like this is actually, and I was just harping on Cost Plus, but this would have been an example of a successful Cost Plus program, right? I mean, it's not, these things aren't binary or you're like, oh, all Cost Plus is bad and all other contracts are good. It's like sometimes you can actually get good things. When you're doing something that's never been done before, sometimes Cost Plus actually does make sense as long as it's not abused. As long as it's not abused. There is a significant difference though between a crew rated capsule to deliver people to the International Space Station and a historic science mission that's sending a helicopter to Mars for the first time. And there's, if you're using Cost Plus on something that, I'm gonna reword that. With Cost Plus, you remove financial limitations. However, with say a mission to Mars, you have time limitations. You can only launch for a couple of weeks every couple of years or so. So I don't know, maybe by removing the financial limitations, they're still eager to get going because they have the time limitation of if we don't make the window, we've got to wait two years. Yeah, a really good way, I think I heard someone once say is that Cost Plus works really well when you're doing something for the first time. Cost Plus doesn't work really well when you're rehashing 60-year-old rocket technology. So, ouch. And I would agree with that, so, you know. What else can we use this Mars and helicopter technology for, right? Are there future technology things we'll be able to do on the red planet with? Oh, yeah, I would imagine transport of items or materials or other things like that. Amazon Prime, Mars. Yes, exactly. Okay, great, got it, yeah. Amazon wants to do drones here on Earth. Why can't they do drones on Mars? I could see them going between SpaceX, Mars bases and, you know, like, you know, get that Jeff and Elon handshake to make that project happen. That would be pretty cool to make something like that. So, yeah, we could do something like that. We're already gonna be using it for transport because the idea is that what we're gonna do for Mars sample return is instead of having a little itty-pitty rover go out and grab the samples, they're gonna have the helicopter go and get the samples because it will logistically be easier. If you could do that. JPL has somehow made the case that a helicopter is easier than a rover. So now I kind of want to be like, well, I want a helicopter pad at my house because logistically, helicopters are easier than cars. And honestly, a helicopter would probably be more reliable and less maintenance than my Jeep. But there's no world in which I want to be near you flying a helicopter. Let's be clear. This idea scares the absolute BG brosotomy. I'm gonna nope out of this one. Why? What? Also, amend that to note that it should be, that it's cars that are autonomously driven or remotely driven from another planet. Yeah, that's a, well, I mean, so is the helicopter. The helicopter has to be, the helicopter's making, ingenuity is making its own decisions and flying. So, you know. Ingenuity doesn't have the FAA to deal with and other air traffic. Oh, yeah, okay. Okay, now I understand where you're coming from. Well, I will say ingenuity hasn't crashed yet. So, so there is also that. Why did you put that into the universe, Jared? Geez. Jared, it's on you now. You know the rules. Change the title of the episode. Jared crashes ingenuity. Jared crashes, if ingenuity crashes in the next week, Jared, I will not let you live that down. I will basically exit the aerospace world without being able to show my face anywhere, anywhere. Oh my goodness. You're gonna be relegated to the desert and you're only gonna have your RS-25 that you're supposed to eat as a shelter. Yeah, I'm just gonna be sitting out there. Which you have not done yet, mind you. I have. Peter Beth ate a hat. You've not eaten your RS-25. Somebody get me an RS-25 to eat. I will do it. God, how is this so difficult? Why is it so difficult to find one to eat? I don't, who knows who does. Am I gonna have to, Ryan? You know what, maybe if I go get one from the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Call up Bezos and have him retrieve one. Yeah, it's been pre-salted and I'll be good to go. Salted and cured. It's and cured. Ryan, how about you? What excited you this week? It's, the thing that excited me this week is incredibly exciting and I'm sure everyone else will share my excitement for this really incredible topic. And that is, how should we number the versions of Starship? Everyone. Don't. Reptress of Paws, I know. Settle down, settle down. Names. So. You brought numbers to the show. You were like, hey, the thing that gets me excited is vehicle numbering. I just want to be clear. This is what you brought to the show this week. You were like, yeah. The real shit is about to exponentially increase. You're chastising an escalator fan of bringing numbers to the show, Jamie, really? No, no, what I'm pointing out is that if you're gonna try to bring logic, this is the company who, it was Falcon One then Falcon Nine, then Falcon Nine version 1.1, then Falcon Nine full thrust, then Falcon Nine block four. It was, no, it was V1.2, then V1.2 full thrust, then V1.2 full thrust block three, then V1.2 full thrust block four, then V1.2 full thrust block five. And you, I mean, it makes perfect sense, Jamie. I don't know what you're complaining about. It's incredibly simple to keep track of. So, okay, I want to know how you think, I want to know how you think you're gonna make that company change the numbering schemes. Do, do please, ready go. Okay, so Elon Tweet is onto his social media network the other day saying, four more starships, the last of V1, an attached image, which I won't share because it's from the Rival 24.7 stream of the full ships, which are currently sitting inside, slash kind of leaning out of the high bay in Starbase, which is ship 28, ship 29, ship 30 and ship 31. However, I kind of personally, on a personal level, I disagree with Elon's assessment here of ship 28, ship 29, ship 30 and ship 31 being bundled into V1 with every ship that's come before it. Because I don't think in any world that SN8 can be compared to ship 28, ship 29, ship 30 and ship 31. So instead, I propose a better versioning scheme. If you can call everything version one, but we should introduce proper block numbers for starship. So let's say like mark one through to, let's say the end of the, not the flapless hop tests. Let's say that's like block one. And then we have the flapped hop tests, thinking like SN10, SN11, SN15, that should be maybe block two, block three, a bit of an upgrade, let's call that ship 20, block four, ship 24 and ship 25, what we've seen now attempt to do a suborbital hop over to Hawaii. And then we have block five, which are these last four ships. And I think that they deserve an extra block on top of ship 24 and ship 25 because there's significant upgrades between just ship 25 and 28 alone. They're moving from hydraulic TVC to electric TVC. So I think that's a very fair assessment to make. All right, Elon, you can call it version one and whatever version two is gonna be will come in the future. But we need to divvy up the individual ship classes because I think it is incredibly unfair to compare ship 24 to ship 28 and the amount of work that's gone into improving the ships, hopefully we're gonna find out in the next flight in a few months time. But you know, I just think... Why not just call it by it's top assembly number in CAD? We need something that the public will easily understand. The general public already understands very easily that blowing up on a test flight is perfectly normal. Just look at the heavy ones, everyone understands that. So that's why we need very simple block numbering schemes for the different versions of Starship and not just bundling everything together into V1. But Elon says things like this. I think everyone's on board with me, to be honest. In our comments section, Psycho is saying don't forget about super heavy version schemes because there are multiple versions of super heavy or maybe different from the versions of Starship that were flying together originally. So you've got three, five different versions of the two vehicles. Yes, they're different. Wait, wait, wait, hang on. Can we just back this whole thing up to just the whole naming scheme? So you've got super heavy and sitting on top of super heavy, you've got Starship and then it is an integrated unit. What do we call that? Starship, can we fix the just fundamental naming scheme first? Can we just change the name period? It's not a good one. I liked BFR. I was always, BFR will live on forever in my heart. I know, but Star BFR doesn't really fit into the whole new SpaceX naming scheme, you know. BFR, Link. Star Biffer. BFR command, you know. It doesn't really write Star Command, Star Command. Everything, you know, by naming everything Star with a company that's called SpaceX, it makes perfect sense. I don't understand how you can't see this, just here. The branding is on point. Is Disney and Pixar okay with all of you throwing Star in front of everything? I will say, I never used it. Very Buzz Lightyear kind of thing. I never used it. So in one of the control rooms is called Ad Astra and I really wanted to rename it to Star Command. And on, so my team runs the com panels that you see all the mission controllers using. So all of the, like the countdown nets and whatnot, like that's on my team. And those com panels, in order to prevent burn-in on the LCD screens and whatnot, they have little screensavers that pop on after like, it's a long time, we'll call it an hour. I don't remember what the time is. And so I built an image that said, it had this, the company X logo, and then it just said it had a little line and then it said Star Command. And that line, I had transition from purple to blue to give homage to Buzz Lightyear. Cause I thought that would be a fun little thing. And I have that image ready to load, but I need them to actually officially name the room Star Command. And then that thing is going on to all of those screens. It's going to be amazing. And so now you know a little Easter egg of like there's this colorful line green to purple to make it look like Buzz Lightyear. Oh, I almost did Buzz Aldrin. Quick, quick. Somebody write an article about this, quick. Yeah, I know. Well, actually, Ryan, if you want him to start doing this, I think you, like you just need to get Chris and Tim Dodd the Everyday Astronaut and a handful of others that Daddy E follows to start referencing it, like start calling it. Like, instead of block, I think Mark sounds cooler, right? So just start calling it Starship V1 Block 3 or whatever you want to call it. Like, would you say Starship V1 Block 5? My personal opinion, which I'm sure everyone agrees with, is that Falcon 9 uses the block numbers. So it's an easy thing to try and say, everyone's already used to using block numbers to designate different versions of the versions of the version, right? So if we just use that name as a subversion for the full version. But Ryan, Mark sounds cooler. Mark is outdated. We had Mark 1 ship. We had Mark 2 ship. That's from years ago. Mark is a very outdated system. SN then took over and, of course, just S for ship. Now, it makes so much more sense. It's a naming scheme that everybody understands, you know? I mean, if you ask anyone on the street, what does S25 mean? They'll tell you the entire flight log of ship 25 and booster 9's flight test, you know? It's such a simple naming convention. It's just wonderful. And yeah, I also have an anecdote on talking to Elon on Twitter from the NSF account, but I'll save that for the member show. All right, all right. I'm calling it the after party now. If you didn't notice, the after party. I will say that your sarcasm has been brilliant and brought me some incredible laps today. I love all of it. I think this is pretty fantastic. I actually do think that they, I love, so for all of its faults, the space shuttle program did a lot of things right. And when you're talking about vehicles that are designed to be reusable, right? Giving them names, I thought was pretty cool, right? Like, obviously the best orbiter they have. Yeah, but shutters have character. Falcon 9 boosters are bland. Oh, no, I would argue, how dare you, sir? Those are fine words. How dare you, sir? Especially when you see them come back and they are just covered in soot. Like, they come back and those boosters are like, they're like, I've seen some shit. I'll do it again, but like, whoo, right? So don't tell me that Falcon 9 doesn't have, I'm sorry for swearing. Don't tell me that Falcon 9 does not have character. Wormy is special. Steven Lewis says, and I agree, ships that carry people need a name. I think they've done that, though, right? The dragon, the dragon spacecrafts have names, don't they? Yes, the crew, the crew people, yeah. Yeah, when starships begin carrying people, they're gonna need names. So apparently I'm turning into a Twitch e-girl because every time you contribute money, I put your comment on the screen, you're welcome. So Caleb, thank you for, let's be honest, let's just be honest. Caleb says, I hope you all are enjoying this show, it's gone off the rails. I feel like the back half of the show is more fun than the front half, but all right, whatever. Caleb contributed $5, so thank you, Caleb says, SpaceX nomenclature should follow speculation naming conventions. Speciation, I don't know that word. Speciation, like. Speciation. Kingdom class. So we should make Star Citizen a Kingdom class. That's what we should do. Dispe, okay, I mean, okay, when Jamie Twitch, I should probably do a Twitch show with you guys after this, if I would, God. All right, did I just completely kill the show by doing that? Is that what happened? Yes, yes, that's exactly what we did. Thanks, thanks. Well, I'm excited to see, are you guys, all right, let me ask you, is NASA spaceflight going to team up with TimDot the Everyday Astronaut and like Smarter Every Day and all those guys and like just create a campaign to have Uncle E change the naming convention for Starship to move to, I really think you should go for Mark. I think Mark is cooler. I think the community at this point has made up more names that SpaceX have just ended up adopting anyway. You know, I think that's just kind of how it is. So if I start saying ship 25 V1 Block 5 on all the NSF streams, I'm sure, you know, that'll become the official name they've done a couple weeks. You know what, it's funny you mentioned that. So like the communities did make up things like OFT1. As far as I know, that was never an internal name ever at all, and then like it started seeing that inside of the company and I'm like, wait, wait, wait, wait, is this actually real? And then it was like IFT and I'm like, where are all these names? It's just Starship, like you look at the banner, it just says Starship Flight Test. That's like the actual name. And like, yeah, I think you guys have more power than you think you do when it comes to stuff like that. Trim started tomorrow, yeah, no, they don't. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. So Cal Jerry, is it Uncle E or Daddy E? Daddy and Uncle should be the same person. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. Oh, the answer is yes. Yikes, yikes, yikes, yikes. Wow, oh wow, all right, on that note, Oh, that bombshell. Woo, I hope everyone had a really fun time with the show today. By the way, Sack, thank you for showing it. So for those who don't know, Sack showed up and has been joining the show. I wonder if I can add. All right, so this is gonna go right on top of us. Here's Sack's icon, or avatar thingy. And Sack has been following along with the show and then doing things. Oh, Sack does have a microphone. Mmm. Ah ha ha, got it. So Sack has been doing things like this, there we go, so that when we're talking about stuff, we can actually see it, we can bring it up on screen. We've actually brought it up a couple times, right? So the Mars helicopter he brought up, Neutron rocket, all this fun jazz. I thought that was pretty awesome. Ooh, that's a good one. I think, Sack, if you're willing to do this for more shows, I think that'd be really cool. We just didn't prepare our scenes in advance to make it really easy for us to bring that in, but I loved that. I love, I absolutely love that. And if anyone else wants to help out with the show, again, I know all y'all hate being on camera, but I think this was a really active comments room. If you wanted to be part of the conversation and laughing along with us, you should have clicked the link and joined EVmux like Sack did. And I hope next week you'll consider doing it. I would love to have more people in on the conversation, asking questions, laughing along, doing whatever you need to do. So thank you, Sack, very much for joining the show and helping out. I hope that you'll come back next week and do the same thing. Also, I wanna thank all of the members of tomorrow. So I've been talking about the after party. We're gonna be going into the after party, which is the member show, whatever you wanna call it, after dark, up next. And this is a, we'll be talking, I think that one of the topics was my conspiracy theory on materials design. That'll be a fun one. There was one other topic we brought up at the very, very beginning of the show that I put a pin in it. And oh, wait, hold on, I have to e-girl this. Norman, he's calling it e-girling now. Norman says, I don't know, I think BFR was more to the point, oh, I fundamentally agree, I love BFR. I think that's exactly what it should be. The thing is, and thank you for the contribution, Norman. And when you guys contribute, so contribute, Norman, be a member and then you can join the after party show. There's a link in the description below for everyone who is up on the screen. And then the system will automatically be tweeting out the link if it hasn't already for how you get into the after party right after this. And like, legitimately, it's our way of saying thank you for contributing to the show and helping us to keep this going week after week, month after month. I hope you guys all enjoyed this particular episode of Tomorrow. I'm still always trying to find ways to make it more fun, engaging, and exciting for everyone. Ryan, well done. You brought us off the rails in the most epic way possible. I didn't bring anyone off the rails. I was on the rails the entire time. I think everyone would agree with me, especially. On that note, I've actually thought of a new name for the after party, what you're calling it. I think Tomorrow Block 2 would be a far more suitable name for the members' show. It clearly denotes what we're about to do. All right, hang on. Just because of that, before we end the show, let's see here, we're gonna go over the tomorrow account here. Let's see here, where we got. All right, Tomorrow Block 2, not Mark 2, but Block 2, right? Is it the number two or Roman numerals? Ryan. Roman numerals, Roman numerals. Roman numerals, making it even more obvious as to what's going on. Very clearly. It's starting right now for our members. Ryan, I have legitimately just tweeted that out. You are welcome. It's now a thing. Everyone's gonna be like, what in the world is this? And your argument is, no, no, it's very basic and everyone understands exactly what it is, right? Who doesn't? Who doesn't? Tomorrow, Tomorrow Block, I, I starts right now. Thank you. This after party, excuse me, I'm sorry. This Tomorrow Block 2 is gonna be something else. I hope to see all of you there. Thank you all so much for joining. We'll see you over in the after party. God, I, I.