 that goes. I don't know where I'm going to put any of this stuff. It's going to be an interesting show. You could already tell that the format is different. I've got Ryan directly next to me and then I've got Alex. There we go. Thanks, Dad. We've got Ryan over here and then where did you normally sit? We've actually rolled in Alex. We've got two holograms for this particular show. This is a whole bunch of really awesome stuff that happened this week. But before we get started, I did want to make kind of a couple notes. A plea for subscription. So first off, if you're watching live, you may have noticed if you're not a subscriber, you won't be able to chat. All you have to do is hit subscribe and immediately the ability to chat should unlock. You don't have to become a member. You don't have to pay us anything. You don't have to do anything. You don't have to wait for any amount of time. But we're trying it out to see if that actually helps because if you're here in chatting, then hopefully you would subscribe. And one of the things we do want to do is bring our subscriptions up to 100,000 by the end of 2022. I'm going to hit a button. I'm sorry. And here's a quick stats screen I wanted to show everyone. You can see we're actually losing subscribers. And it's not a thing you would normally want to show, right? You don't want to show that you're getting rid of people. But I would like to turn that around as best I can and actually start bringing subscribers back into the fold for tomorrow. Obviously some of that is us and it's content. There's a whole bunch that goes into it. But if you do enjoy the show, and this is something that you love, please hit that subscribe button. I would love to build a community of space nerds with you together. That's just an epic place to go where we talk about all things space, not just SpaceX, but anything that's really cool and interesting and awesome in the cosmos. So let's build an amazing space community together and nerd out over all of the space stuff. Okay. I try not to do those pleas for subscribers at the beginning because it's super annoying. Like to get straight into the show. But with that out of the way, why don't I hand it over? Ryan, do you want to take it up front? Like you want to start talking to me? I can't talk SpaceX, but do you guys want to start nerding out over SpaceX? I'll start with some bags. This is very exhilarating content. Bags have been attached to the chopsticks in Boca Chica. This is top-notch stuff. You can't get any better than this in aerospace. There are images of that somewhere, right? I can try to pull one up real quick. To elaborate on that more, load tests are now beginning to start on the catch arms which are attached to the orbital gauntlet just to make sure they don't fall off whenever they first attempt to catch a super heavy booster because that would not be ideal to catch a booster and then it come plummeting towards the ground. And it's actually pretty cool to see. That's what I've got on that. It also prompted a lot of childish comments and say... Yes. Wait, what? Look, this is my surprised face. Yeah, right? It's... Yeah, basically testing the capability of the chopsticks to hold the weight of the booster, I guess. They had to do it one way or another. Otherwise... You're not going to try that with the... With the first time you're going to do it, it's right on with the booster. That would not be a very pretty sight to see the testing it out with a booster and it just come plummeting towards the ground. There we go. There's nothing childish to say about that at all. Yeah, for all the childish comments that I've seen, they actually look like pears. Oh yeah, they do. They do a little bit. And I think it's like the tree and everything. It looks like that. SpaceX is growing pears in both... I just can't talk about SpaceX so I have to sit here quietly. SpaceX? Carry on. Okay, Brian, anything else? I'm not sure, to be honest. I'm not sure whether booster 3 being scrapped is a positive thing. It can't really use it for anything so booster 3 sadly has now been... I think it's been fully scrapped now. It's fully gone. It's been chopped up into all of its different pieces so bye-bye I just couldn't use you anymore. It was long overdue to get rid of it. That thing has been there since July or something. It's been there for a long time. It was about time that they get rid of that. I can't remember. Was it originally going to fly? Or was it just test tanks? I can't remember. I know they started building booster 2 and then just used it as a test tank. Booster 3 got a bit taller. I can't remember if there was ever any plans to do any substantial tests with it. I say it's so long ago. It was like half a year ago. But in the scale of the Starbase development, it's like two decades ago. That's a long time ago in Starbase activity. There's an in-joke that if you see something or Elon says something about any plans or whatever, it changes the next day. It doesn't last too long. I remember him saying things like we're going to hop super heavy and stuff like that. We're not going to hop, but we'll just launch it. Put a ship on top and just straight up launch it. Why not? There's also a bit of news because the FCC last month was able to get the permission for Starlink Gen 2, the second generation of Starlink admitted to be able to do the I don't know about paperwork. I just talk about this in this sense. You know what I mean. I don't know too much about paperwork, but I know they were admitted for something. But in the meantime, they were like, hey, SpaceX, we have a few questions for you guys. Can you answer that so we can know more about what you guys doing? So SpaceX this week reached out to the past week actually. They reached out and they were like, hey, well, these are the answers. A whole letter with like five pages with all the answers and everything. And yeah, basically one of the things that they said was something along the lines of being able to launch this new Starlink constellation on a Starship. And I was like, okay, well, and they said March 2022. And I'm like, no, no, honey, you're not really. Yeah, they haven't even taken that thing orbital yet and yet they're already saying that they're going to launch Starlink Gen 2 in like two months time. It's just a bit optimistic. Yeah, I think so too. Like even the cargo door thing, for example, they have had one I think it was last summer they had one nose cone that they cut and everything. But then the there's a pathfinder there now. Yeah, there's another one which is ship 22's nosecomb barrel. They took that and basically made what appears to be like a door prototype. Yeah, but it's weird because it's like you're not ready. We want to do it though. We say we'll say we're going to do it and then we'll just have to wait and see how ship 20 and booster 4 end up if that is even the path that it's going to fly because I hope booster 4 and ship 23 is because if not, they're just kind of redundant. Yeah, I mean, there's there's a lot of testing to be done yet. Like we haven't seen like we haven't seen any static fire of the booster. We've seen them, for example, putting covers on the launch mount like on the top thing. We've also seen like in like yesterday and today we've seen pictures of them putting the covers on the COPVs and the hydraulics units and everything on the booster. We've also seen to on the engine section, they have covered the holes between the engines, which before you could see all the guts in there. And now it's like this cylinder thing around each of those holes. So they're fitting it out. Let's let's hope they do something polishing, polishing off the equipment that they've got instead of just getting all the plumbing just be kind of susceptible to anything from the outside. Yeah, meanwhile they're building out the next booster, booster 7 it's being stacked on the highway and it's looking great. The progress at least you know we don't know how it's going to look at the end of the day, but you know what I mean I've got to wait for it to actually get out of the highway before we can be sure of anything. Yeah, we've also seen parts of ship 24 I think which will they have like the arrangement of all the like the way that they are going to stack it and everything that's going to change to for the ship 24. I'm excited because it's like they're doing progress at least they're doing better shares and better boosters. They're upgrading the vehicles as well as upgrading their manufacturing as well as upgrading their equipment that they've got. So they're just upgrading absolutely everything they can as much as much stuff as they can simultaneously and then overall that'll just create a better process for manufacturing doing all the ground support equipment stuff for Starship and then actually like flying it as well. Something that amazes me is that they're doing all of this at a Starbase and now they're saying okay we're going to go to 39A to like on top of a Starbase It's like yeah. Yeah well let me think quickly they want the launch cadence to be able to do so many years so moving to there was always the plan to move to 39A but it's just yeah they started the launch pad there in 2019 or was it the start of 2019 and then they started it to develop everything at Starbase and it's just like they want the launch cadence they're going to have the seed platforms as well it's just kind of like it's just weird to think about it they're already developing this launch pad in a second location before they've even flown the first thing orbital it's like are they going too quickly or are they just going fast yeah I think right now they have a lot of things on their plate at least to my opinion I mean everyone can think what they want right and I'm seeing on the chat this one the launch pad says Elon said was going to get nine engines I don't really know when that's going to happen I don't think we are sure when that's going to happen yet are you going to be in like Raptor 2 generation there's no way they're going to do that with Raptor 1 yeah we already know just by looking at the stuff at the production side we can see we can see when they are basically changing stuff so for example for ship 24 it looks like it's going to be Raptor 2 just because of the connections on the thrust pack it was a delivery of the first one so unless they have enough of them left over they physically can't put a new engine into there if it's the old engine design so there's not really any incentive for SpaceX to carry on with Raptor 1 apart from the ships that they've already built yeah we have another comment here saying isn't ship 24 a 9 Raptor configuration yeah so that was precisely what I was about to say that we haven't seen any indication that it's going to be a 9 Raptor configuration because from what Elon said it appears to be that it's going to be 9 Raptor engines along with strator tanks and so far at least ship 24 for example which is the next one it doesn't seem like it's going to have the extended tanks we haven't seen any extra rings or anything like that so yeah maybe once we see that we might be heading in that direction this is unprecedented this rate of progress it's just so exciting to see everything come together like this in such a relatively short span of time and the fact like they first flew with a Raptor right at the end of 2020 which was like just over a year ago and they're already about to start rolling out their second generation which is completely different of that engine that's just kind of mind boggling to me yeah oh yeah someone's mentioning on chat that I have an NSF article about the Starship and Starlink thing that I mentioned before yeah I mean you can read it and I don't know it was my first article with NSF I guess that's yeah people are here we have another good comment from Eddie Joker he mentions that ship 24 has its methane header tank move to the nose cone so that might indicate a change to the height of the tank section yeah so that's true it changed the header tank position but in order to move the height of the tank section we will actually have to see more rings like an extra section at least in either of the tanks and so far we haven't seen that so we have seen okay so I'm gonna explain it this like shortly the ship has 20 rings and then it comes the nose cone on top it's like approximately like 4-4 and then another 4 and another 20 rings right but the way that they change it it's like 4 from above then 4 then 3 then 4 3 and 2 I'm trying to remember so it's a little bit complicated but now they change that to 5 3 and now 4 4 4 so it's like we haven't seen extra rings like when you count the rings it's still 20 rings and we have seen the forward dome for example because in order to guess that they have expanded the tanks for example into the payload section we will have seen the forward dome which is the one at the top into the nose cone section into that barrel section and we haven't and we have actually seen the forward dome for ship 24 and it's just like the previous ones just it's missing one ring because that one ring is gonna be given to the payload section which is also an exciting change might point out to changes in the payload bay door design too so that's way far ahead especially if they think they're going to be watching Starlink in 2 months on Starship very much very much okay SpaceX you can believe that but that might not be happening I'm not sure about that yeah so it just kind of sounds like they're just gonna be experimenting with different tank positions for the next ship and not actually expanding it we had another question over here do you think they will move to Raptor 3 before Moon or Mars or stick with Raptor 2 do you think Ryan? Raptor 2 is already just if Raptor 1 hasn't confused me enough Raptor 2 has thinking just further on from that is kind of hard Elon has spoke on Twitter before about past Raptor 2 but I'm not even sure how far into the future that the engineers at SpaceX are thinking with that Raptor 2 for now definitely seems to be what they're gonna try and at least get off Earth with Starship with and if there's any development past that then that's in the future but I can't the numbers with Raptor 2 already are just crazy to think that they could go further with that like this decade is just crazy Raptor full thrust yeah so one of the things that we could see or at least I think we could see is improvements within Raptor 2 we already saw for Raptor 1 for example SM15 the beauty that new upgraded Raptor 1 which they can iterate any of these engines at any time if they wanted to they don't have to change the name for it yeah right I think Elon called it something like Raptor 1.5 or something like it was between Raptor 1 and Raptor 2 and it's the one that SM15 used and was like much more simpler and I don't know the only thing that I know is that it looked way simpler than the previews versions of Raptor 1 so yeah you don't need to know how a Raptor works you just need to be able to see that the plumbing has gone from like this to like that and like a Christmas tree yeah to a thin tree yeah we have we have another question here relating with the FAA and I think this is important to point out yeah says if the FAA will get off their backs they could manage to put up over a dozen of them this year alone Raptor 2 engine availability alone I'm gonna disagree with that they're not ready and people need to know this that that pan infrastructure the testing it's not done it's this is not ready the FAA like we because I've seen people say well but the FAA delayed to February 28th and maybe SpaceX is gonna be ready by February 28th and I'm like maybe but we don't know if they push really really hard then there is a possibility but right now you can't launch the rocket out of that launch pad exactly yeah that's why I kind of hate those comments because it's like first of SpaceX has to be ready for someone to claim that the FAA is somehow you know stepping on their toes or something you know like I cannot accept that kind of comment and I'm sorry but it's yeah it's a truth like maybe even if they tomorrow had the launch license and everything approved they wouldn't be able to launch they don't have things ready and that's a fact it takes a lot to launch a rocket it takes a lot more than people realize even for SpaceX yeah it's big people don't realize that it's big and even by SpaceX standards it's still very complicated to be able to get it ready for flight and yeah there's another comment here from Terence Sheppard he says I don't want to see a Starship turn into SLS and never actually launch because of improvements well you know what the difference between SLS and Starship is that Starship has an upgrade that is way easier to implement and SpaceX is not trying that while SLS yeah SLS is SLS SLS has to go through government so there's a bit of a difference there there's no single Starship which is the same at the moment there's always development on top of the previous models yeah another asking for our comment on when do we think the stage zero yeah it's getting way closer though how long do you think stage zero will be so I am going to interject only because I can't talk about SpaceX but I will say I don't think everyone knows like I know the SpaceX nerds know what stage zero is but not all the aerospace nerds know that because I think that's something that Elon kind of coined so first before you answer that question can you go over what stage zero is as opposed to stage one or stage two so stage zero is the term coined by Elon Musk as Jamie just said for all of the ground service equipment that goes into a launch so that's absolutely everything before the engines ignite and the vehicle takes off of the pad which if you don't know that's pretty much more complicated than the rocket is itself to just support it on the ground it's such a huge and complicated system that Elon just started calling it stage zero because it's more complicated than the actual rocket is and it's not even the bit that flies that's how important this ground service equipment actually is answer to answer the question on the when do I think it will be ready I don't know but I think it's I think it I think it could be soon I think it could be I think they could make that end of everything but only if they push hard at it I think realistically probably midway through March a little bit pessimistic there I'm gonna think April mostly because of the movements that we're seeing recently like just this week yeah yeah it will be ready when it's ready right here mainly because of the movements that we've seen this week are they are removing the berm between the tank farm and the landing pad they seem to be doing work for expanding the tank farm in some way like we know that well not that we know but it's like you look at the launch side and the methane tanks the vertical ones are not being used the horizontal ones are supposed to be like an interim solution because somehow the vertical ones seem to be not up to regulations but we haven't seen methane either on those horizontal tanks so it's like and then when you calculate the amount of mass that they can hold it's like they don't come like it's close but not enough to be able to launch the whole rocket so we might be able to see maybe the stage 0 ready for like static fire testing but maybe for launch we gotta wait a little bit like a month or two more that would make sense yeah so okay I'll amend my answer stage 0 ready to fire at the start of March launch a few weeks later that's my updated take I think that could work using my very limited knowledge on how government works but I think that could work yeah Robert mentions Astra and Rocket Lab trying to get rid of the ground support systems for example which is a little bit easier for these launchers to be honest yeah yeah if you there was a picture on Twitter that I put into the news last this week technically of the is it on Dropbox? it will be on Dropbox it will be in Space News Father though okay and Astra's rocket is literally the same size as the rods on top of the lightning towers yeah yeah Astra compact all of their stuff into a container that's cool but they're launching smalls that Starship is 9 meters wide and like 100 meters tall this thing is just the scale of it is so hard to comprehend you would need hundreds of containers to fit all of the stuff that they have down at Starbase to move it anywhere well the GSE scales are the size of the rocket it does that's why I'm not entirely sure how they're gonna do that with Neutrons for Rocket Lab my little bit Neutron is still very much in the development phase for we've only seen two generations of concept art yeah I know it can be done and like there's nothing physical stopping them from doing that but yeah there's another comment here and I think it fits well with all the things that we wanted to talk about I think today it has great flexible ground support that it flies it's a nice segue I'm not sure if Jamie is still trying to find the image of it yeah she's trying it should be in Space News 2022 and then 2021 in 2011 and I'm going through each item and I don't see it we tried, I failed it's really ground support at that point oh maybe we should change our membership level from ground support to stage 0 well to be fair it's ground support well no, so here's an interesting concept something that we haven't really thought about Peter Back did an interview, he actually did a bunch of interviews but there was a really great one with Tim Da the Everyday Astronaut and he talked about the challenges of GSE, the ground support equipment and with that when you look at their new rocket they're really trying to eliminate as much GSE as possible as I mentioned earlier by one of the comments, Astra also trying to eliminate as much GSE as possible because GSE is very complicated, very expensive, very hard to do so then you look at something like virgin orbit and is it ground support? is it air support equipment? you say I have to put the rocket onto the plane it's transportable so let's play pretend for a moment and let's pretend like safety is a non, we don't need to worry about safety just for a moment because we can get into a really deep rabbit hole with safety well you can't throw it out the window but for the purpose of this conversation we're going to temporarily press the pause button on safety because if we don't this gets very complicated very quickly but with a company like virgin orbit, why is the ground support equipment on the ground why couldn't it all be on the airplane? your rocket performance is going to be at its optimal, at its best when you've got the coldest, most fully upy, that's a technical term liquid oxygen on the rocket right? if you fill your liquid oxygen on the ground and I think that flight yesterday took an hour to get to where they needed to get to that's one hour of locks burn off that just occurred that they lost on their rocket, not an hour, but you get the idea that's an hour of additional warmth and things that they could potentially eliminated if they were able to do that on the airplane itself again we are ignoring safety concerns about fueling a rocket on the wing of an aircraft because it gets absurd quickly but pretend for a moment I know it's ridiculous but pretend, pretend, pretend with me maybe there's a different way to do that the point of this argument is people are trying or companies are reimagining ground support and trying to find ways to simplify it and move it into different locations and make it more awesome oh my god you have no idea there was a comment earlier years ago you mentioned GSE and space nerds I don't know what that is and now you mention it most space nerds are like it's the hardest thing on the rocket it's interesting to see all of this emphasis on the ground and realizing that actually one of the hardest parts of launch isn't the rocket it's the ground system it would be cool if Virgin Orbit could do air support and actually do liquid oxygen and it's RP1 right it's a hydrolox do a hydrogen load on the plane no the Hindenburg wasn't the real thing it's fine that's why you have to pause that's a comparison image that little white and silver dot in the middle there that's the rocket and then everything the big two towers are the lightning towers in case it gets quite thunder in Florida this is on the pad right now this is Astra on the pad that looks like it's one of the standard I don't think the candlesticks are quite that fat if you've ever been down to Cape Canaveral you'll note that the lightning towers are those candlesticks on either side that looks right I don't know which pad this is most of the pads look identical because it was at the time the air force but now the space force that put those together so like slick 40 most of the different pads all have very similar candlesticks on them because they're actually not done by the independent companies but by the air force or space force so when you look at say a falcon or a delta or an atlas on the pad is it on the delta pad? they're other on the delta pad they're not on complex so they're only on the space force side pads they're on 39B no they're not there are different candlesticks on 39B and they were different when it was before and after so during shuttle it was actually single candlestick on the top of the fixed surface structure and now it is I think it's four but I believe those were built by NASA and not by the space force and so they're actually a little bit different than all of the other candlesticks down at Cape Canaveral and you can actually tell when you drive past them they don't quite look the same whereas on the other pads they look very very similar so anyhow point to that is you can use that as a point of reference so when you're looking at that image you can actually go oh hey I've seen a falcon 9 go really high up in this image as compared to like this aster which is really far down there so next time you're looking at say a space x launch or a delta or an atlas make a note of where the top of the fairing is for each one of those and that will give you an idea of the scale difference between these to your point ground support or lack of ground support on a rocket that's that size is far easier far far easier than a rocket that is starship sized for example you'd need just a few containers to get all of the grounds to see four starship just anywhere anywhere in the world you'd need a few containers and a few more container ships yeah I think also the rocket now that Jamie said the like how big it is and everything I think the rocket could fit in a falcon 9 fairing because I think it's like 13 minutes long hang on you can fit an astra in a falcon is that what you're saying yeah a falcon 9 could launch an astra to space let's ignore wait for a moment ignore physics I think in terms of weight too I think so far I've had this ignore safety and physics on the show so I'm doing great today the fun thing I think it can fit well I think I haven't done the math but it's like approximately about the same size as like the length obviously the diameter is not the same as the fairing yeah that's too big for astra but yeah even I think the mass I think it's like 13 to 15 tons that's more or less what they carry on on a starling mission on falcon 9 so yeah I just did some quick googling falcon 9 fairing is 13 meters and the astra rocket 3 is like so it would fit just ignore the mass ignore the mass and how tall is the astra would it fit you're saying it's 13 meters astra is like having 0.6 meters and the fairing is 13 meters and that's the availability the available size inside of the fairing is what you're saying or is it tip to tail 13 meters I don't know just that's 13 meters yeah the internal bits there was also a comment from fun user name crappyice in the chat which is saying it's a very underutilized pad happy to see astra there I actually didn't realize that astra had made their way down to Cape Canaveral I thought they were still launching from Kodiak no this is the first time they are leaving Alaska they're coming they're going from like super cold to reasonably warm and yeah the last time this pad was used was for the ESA not the Orion abort test which was a fattened minotaur 4 with an Orion capsule on top and that was a long time ago they must be going to a different orbit I assume if they were in Kodiak was it a minotaur or was it a peacekeeper or something like that that would make worse yeah yeah because the minotaur is like the rock and I can't remember and then the peacekeeper is just like the first thing like the booster well Ruby says peacekeeper that makes more sense also I like this comment let's see if we can get to it smoke scale says astra power sliding into space now from Florida I will say I was impressed with their vehicle the fact that they effectively had an engine problem like T plus point zero one right they lost something they slid over but then so it was you're watching it right and you're like oh this is not good and then it like stabilizes and then it goes off I would say to space but we'll say to high altitude I thought it was really impressive that they were able to at least the flight systems were able to compensate correct but like it was still an experimental rocket at this point right so you're allowed you're allowed this is the time to learn these things so yeah that it was really epic footage also I had a point if astra is moving to Cape Canaveral that means that their orbit is changing as well right I assume if they're launching from Kodiak they're doing a sun synchronous or a polar orbit of sorts but from Canaveral unless they're doing some sort of dog leg they're probably going to Leo I'm not sure some sort of synchronous like it feels like logically that would make sense but I I don't know I haven't got any data it's just a little bit different to see yeah Joseph says a 40 degree inclination so okay that's cool but are there a lot of small sets that go to a 40 degree inclination forgive my ignorance I feel like most of those I think so yeah I think rocket lab I think rocket lab has done a few missions to to that type of inclination I think there's like black sky satellites for example that have gone to that inclination because they need to concentrate in the latitude to observe and everything even though it's not like a some synchronous thing that it's almost retrograde yeah what Joseph said SSO combined with mid-latitudes yeah SSO synchronous orbit yeah yeah and actually being able to be able to do both would be quite I guess I haven't been keeping up as much with the small set market and it's kind of amazing what we can do like go back 10-20 years and the size of these satellites and they were just they were massively huge things and yeah and Crappy eye says version orbit 45 degree inclination from the west coast from oh that's a good point from yeah floating launch site a little bit yeah it was cheating you're cheating no that's the whole thing no no I get it no I know the whole point is like legitimately and I'm not saying that like cheater in a bad way but like they have the advantage I don't care about your silly downrange exactly like they don't have to worry about where the launch pad is move it right yeah fly okay hang on I'm going to gripe about virgin orbit for a second so first off first off I do want to say congratulations hi data I do want to say congratulations to urban orbit that was there yesterday was their first successful or yeah first successful commercial payload so meaning this they've now entered actual operations as opposed to test flights or freebie rides like what I'm going to say mass simulator type things so congratulations that's a huge deal getting to that stage is very very difficult to do not a lot of companies have been able to do it in the past and it's it's a it's a long very difficult road to get there and this will help open up humanity for you know more exploration of the cosmos I think more rocket company setting more payloads up is is better Jeremy disagree with me on that one but I do think fundamentally it is better for human exploration of the cosmos that we have options to get more competition I think that's great I just I don't understand why there's the T zero time this is my gripe why is that data knows exactly what I'm going to say why is the T zero time like the wheels up time for the launch pad but it then you have the D time which like again you combine little kids I was giggling at home why you have to wait for the D what am I wrong children I know we're hang on they're laughing they're laughing in the chat room but that's what they said on the webcast it was D minus time and I'm just like can't have the D yet wait two more minutes till the D I think the D is for a drop I think so I get it but why is that so T you've got historically speaking in rocket launch you have two clocks you have an L minus clock and a T minus clock the L minus clock is your launch clock it's how much time is left until your launch it does not account for pauses or anything it's like hey this vehicle is going to lift off at whatever time UTC this is how much time is left until that time the thing is some rockets you kind of need to have pause points in there in a moment for them to start and stop operations so they can run scripted events that take a certain amount of time that they know that they need to run and then have a window of opportunity to troubleshoot and so a lot of rockets going back effectively the Apollo era will have pause points and those are generally your T clocks and those are that's your terminal count the T stands for terminal so I don't understand generally speaking when you enter terminal count that's your last moment where you can't really go out with a full reset right I'm oversimplifying generally speaking right is that a fair way of describing that the thing is virgin orbit launcher one when it's wheels up on cosmic curl in the 747-400 on the 747 wheels up is not your last back out time that's just the moment in time when your launch pad is moving but you still have an opportunity to like stop and go back like you can or is that not true once your wheels up you can't no oh I might be wrong no we can return to base you can return to base but that's the same as an abort right if you're returning to base you're not launching that day correct so that is your T time that technically right because that's it that's the last moment where you can it's either go or abort right I mean you were watching me figure this out on the air alright yeah so you know and people like saying oops you know they can return so yeah it's an incredibly frustrating launch to watch because you get all excited about the plane taking off yeah the plane is in the air and now we have to wait an hour wait an hour I get it yeah I do feel I feel bad for the webcast team because they have to feel a lot of a lot of time and you watch you know something like the SpaceX webcast barbecue they don't need to do that barbecue yeah they talk about barbecue on the webcast did they really I missed that bit actually that's because they were yeah they were talking about the about the second stage having to do a barbecue role yeah and one of the commenters said oh I like eggs barbecue I like why barbecue or something like that it's like just casually that's that's filling content it is filling but at least it's human right I'll take those human conversations on rocket webcasts over the hyper like not willing to over blue origin that's what I'm saying I'll take that I won't dance around it I don't like yeah anyhow well that was thinly veiled at all I know except that I'm never getting hired there I've said too many bad things so I'm just going to continue to dig that particular grave exactly that horse is dead now can we beat it some more but again I do want to like I think it's really cool that virgin orbit is entering commercial service now I think the next thing for virgin orbit isn't so they have to have mission success obviously but now at this point I think their next challenge that most commercial companies have is not that they've gotten their first commercial launch out there how long will it take for that next commercial launch to occur generally speaking when you look at like SpaceX or even the laboratory or whomever that's a really long almost year long gap and you can't have one year between flights and actually be a profitable company so you have to work on ramping up your production at this point you've got a vehicle that works they probably found some things that don't work quite like they want I'm assuming fix those things really quick but now it's a case of changing from a testing company to an operational in an operations company can they successfully do that and quickly that's going to be I think a key metric to their success is how quickly can they switch from testing to operations and I've not seen a lot of companies move very fast again the laboratory took I think it was like eight months it was eight months between the first it was a long time we'll see I'm eager for them to me too so we did a lot of chat about SpaceX that was fun I really enjoyed that I wish I could participate in those 30 minutes like 30 minutes of SpaceX chat and I learned stuff I learned stuff about the place I work yeah well I don't you know you get kind of I think Dada can back me up on this you get kind of set in your own like I need to do this and so you kind of end up putting these blinders on and not really paying attention to the noise over here so that you can finish that you need to finish which you know the company is so much more than just the one thing I'm working on or three or five or ten or whatever it is and so I forget we build rockets sometimes yeah you just get out of touch with the very out of touch is not the right word you just don't pay attention to it not to the same level that I did before like I remember before I was there it was very similar to like what you guys are talking about of like oh hey rocket X is in hangar whatever and you know doing you knew every little detail every little nut and bolt about the rocket and now I'm like oh oh I forgot we're launching tomorrow hang on I need to yeah yeah exactly so it's actually kind of fun to it's really cool to have people that are that passionate about something that we're working on collectively together and nerding out over it in a really cool in a fun way and having fun ideas and speculating and like I can't speculate with you but some of that stuff is like I don't know the answer to that I wonder if they're right yeah yeah anyhow yeah yeah yeah go ahead yeah I was I was about to like a crossover of both which is a small set and space X we had a transporter mission this week oh yeah yeah I'm sorry about that a lot a lot of a lot of satellites launched in that mission it was like the the kind of mess was like separation separation separation separation it was like all the time it was funny to to be like I was like what separates there's like this list on the space X website and it was like this is super long this is not gonna end it felt like that at one moment oh there was like a hundred and three or a hundred and five different satellites inside of one payload fairing on Falcon 9 yeah and every single one of them separated that's pretty pretty close to the record isn't it didn't isro have like a hundred eleven the record is right now by space X on transporter one and that was 143 wow I didn't actually know that that's a lot I remember you and that hang on and I was there but but I will say so I remember building the I remember building the timeline graphic the config file for that for transporter one and I noped out of it I basically I built a singular like deploy and then there was a coast phase and I put another deploy after the coast phase like that's good enough for transporter three I wasn't gonna put it because it was like pew pew pew pew I was gonna have how do you space that out in a way that makes sense yeah exactly you get a cube set you get a cube set you get a cube set for transporter three I was like I got a bit of time here let's see if we can make this work and so I actually I spent a little bit of time yeah you saw me have to expand out the timeline and so my favorite bit is when it's expanding because it's dissolving on the word deploy at the same time and so it's just this it's just this garbly just like yeah I saw the like they did a burn and like five minutes later it was the separation I saw deploy and then when when it was reaching deploy it was like shim I was like oh yeah yeah I think I missed some though because I seem to remember that they were calling deploy and like I didn't have some so I have to go back and check my config I think I think I screwed that sorry I think one of the reasons for that was that they had Superdose which were like firing boom boom boom while others were separating they have 44 Superdose from planet the which for those that know they are an earth observation satellite company and shout out to Harry because he's he's the the satellite that I thought I saw him chatting earlier I'm looking for him he had a comment he was going to say hi I'll see if we can find it that's fine say hi again we'll put it up on the screen he loves a lot these these observation satellites I think that it's really amazing that we are in an era that we can see a rocket launch so many of these satellites and within hours are going to be looking at the earth and you can buy these pictures and even videos they also posted a video I don't know if you guys have it they posted a video on Twitter of the of the booster landed on on LC1 which for this mission it landed back and they had like this satellite passing overhead and and they posted that video so yeah the they had the booster there and as the others were you know separating from other places it was like boom boom boom super dope super dope separated it was hilarious to hear super dove separation confirmed super dove separation confirmed super dove separation confirmed show me all the blueprints show me all the blueprints show me all the blueprints it is possible that I didn't actually miss him what happened was they did a roll up for me in my config file and they basically they may have given me an initial super dove separation time and then I didn't see all the other ones and that would explain why why I didn't have the dots also I'm not entirely sure I would have been able to put that many dots on the screen and you would be able to read it without zooming in so much that it's just like the arc is going at a rapid pace this is this is quite funny separation asmr super dove separation confirmed anyhow crabby eyes also mentions something that I wanted to bring I mean to attention here is that rocket lab has launched one in seven satellites during the company's entire lifetime so how do these small sat companies can compete with missions that are launching every three months and launch as many satellites as an entire one as an entire company's worth of satellites like in its entire history price and I know that is like price price and flexibility right so all of the the satellites in that launch from SpaceX got the same orbit same inclination if that's not the inclination you're after then that's not going to work for you I have I have a counter to that which is tugs there's now tugs orbital tugs tugs okay yeah yeah I think tomorrow actually had an interview with momentous like two or three years ago before they weren't even known as always in the boat that's what we do that's what we do but that's that's an additional cost in order to be able to get your face and yeah I understand trying to defend a little bit there but I like I see arguments to launch on small sat satellite launchers but it's also the fact that you know you have like SpaceX is renting these like these slots on these missions at very low prices and you see people from a space flight and all of these other companies that are like merging all the payloads together to be able to make sense of all the integration because it's really complicated to put 100 satellites into the same rocket but these companies are very like they are experts at these now and they yeah well one of the comments right now on chat says there aren't tugs in space yet though yet and that's kind of my point here that once you see yeah Krabi also mentions that hang on hang on yeah there we go yeah there Spaceflight Inc. had a propellant leak on one of their tugs for Transporter 3 and that's true they had one tug that was supposed to be with its own propulsion with its own power and everything and I think we can see both I'm on off the option of we can see both we can see small sats and we can see these transported missions because there's I think there's an off market even even now because Joseph said assumes that there's a continued future small sat market a lot of these new space small sat companies are not going to be here in the next 5 years, 5-10 years I think there might be because if you have like planet with the super doves they have like 44 in a Transporter mission but say one fails in orbit or two of them for example and they need to replace it you're not going to launch two on a Transporter mission you say okay I'm going to write on a small sat launcher that fit two of these or maybe even four but like a small number compared to the amount of satellites that fit on a Transporter mission you say I don't need a Transporter mission I can go to Virgin orbit or Astra or Rocket Lab and launch maybe two or three I don't need like you know what I mean with that there's a market there I think I think Joseph's the idea that not everyone is going to be around in 5-10 years is a very safe idea right that but frankly I could say that about any industry trying you know any company trying to break a new industry at all ever period right that's always a safe assumption of like you've got a new industry that's just coming online not everyone's going to be there you're going to have mergers like that's just how new stuff works so yeah I think we can all agree that you know not everyone's going to be there in 5-10 years that doesn't mean that there's not going to be a market for this in 5-10 years I think you know we're in orbit 15 we've been doing this for 15 years and I think when I first started out if you were to tell me that small stats were the future of satellites I would have laughed at you I would have been like why you can't do anything useful on a small set go ahead I think you actually did I think I did yeah I think you're right and I was always very wrong and I think that well I'm a lot to be wrong like it happens often thanks a lot happens a lot thank you everyone that's great thanks for coming to my defense Ryan I appreciate it but yeah so I think that you know the small sets have changed the game you can do a lot with a small set that you could not do 5-10 years ago like a phenomenal amount and imagine what we'll be able to do in 5-10 years exactly with the same size package so certainly not all of these companies will be around in the next 5-10 years but I am I do think that this is an incredible market that has nowhere to go but up space button and I think that having all of these different launchers coming online to your point Alex of being able to have like a transporter 3 or you know be or if you've got a slightly more complicated small set where you're like the disadvantage of ride sharing is that you're going wherever you're going where everyone else is going you're sharing that ride it's like it's an it's an uber pool right the bus doesn't park in your garage exactly but if you want it if you wanted to you can and this is what this is effectively doing is taking the cost of getting to space and continually putting downward pressure onto it which is only a good thing and so I'm really excited where all of this goes and this continued push for downward pressure on the price of getting things to space and this is also why I'm really excited in a similar vein really excited for suborbital spaceflight with virgin galactic and blue origin they might make me angry but I do I do actually think that this is a good thing this is like that first step put downward pressure pricing pressure on getting humans into space sure you're not going to orbit that but it's a first step anyhow that's the end of my reading not everyone might want to go to orbit for an extended period of time they may just want to go to space for five minutes says the man who wants to go to Mars I'm not talking about me I'm talking about other people some people may just want to experience space and not have to orbit the earth several times they just want to pop up there for a few minutes which is what the origin and virgin galactic currently can provide yeah absolutely yeah absolutely I would like to do all of the above I don't want to go to Mars but like I would I would love to go to so I would take a suborbital flight I would totally go to the moon I wouldn't go to Mars but like I would go to the moon unless we could fold space time on to itself and it's like a really quick journey but you know someday alright after three speaking of Mars and smallsats Mr. Hagi had a comment about smallsats went to Mars to act as as relays so yeah we've also seen at least from a space flight they also said something along the lines of operators trying to get smallsats into GEO which is something that we haven't seen too much like instead of having the smallsat in low earth orbit which is the usual thing now have that like some kind of communication satellite but instead of being the usual bus size satellite it's a smallsat and that's interesting because they said they were surprised because they were like hey we're gonna we're gonna have rideshares and flights to GEO and GEO who wanna like who wants their satellite to come here and boom a lot of people came and and they were they were surprised that they had a lot of demand for that kind of flight so we might see in the future that expansion from low earth orbit to GEO, space like commercial applications of these smallsat satellites are gonna be going way beyond what we see today that really comes down to the performance of the vehicle they're riding on right so well a couple things performance of the vehicle and where they're launching from so we start looking at Astra launching out of Cape Canaveral that's kind of exciting because that can start to open up GTO type of orbits I don't know that their vehicle has enough performance to get them there today I don't know that maybe they do maybe later on the line but that's the thing is once they've got the pad start upgrading the GSE you know well get a slight you know start upgrading the rocket look at what Rocket Lab did right they had the Electron rocket they were like let some bigonate this and now they've got Neutron right? Protron is the satellite and Neutron is the yeah so although to be fair they also have you also have Rocket Lab launching Capstone this year which is a CubeSat they're launching to the moon so and that's on Electron and so you can see some of these smallsats writing on small launchers because they are so small sats they launching the small launchers I think there's a great question from Kim and I love your opinions each of you on this which is when will we start seeing non-governmental funded sats around Mars because let's remember the communications sat that went to Mars that was a I believe that was a JPL satellite Marco so that would have been a government funded satellite so we've not done small CubeSats to Mars without the government yet well and let's break this down a little bit further right so when will we see when do you guys think we're going to see smallsats first going to the moon as just going to the moon I don't think we've sent non-government smallsats to the moon yet right I'm pretty sure we have not yeah so crappy eyes actually saying there have been no commercial only sats beyond Earth orbit so when do we think and actually I would love the communities thoughts on this as well so if you're watching live leave it in the live chat room and we'll start you know putting some of that on the bottom of the screen or if you're watching on demand leave it as a comment and like we'll I'm just curious I'll tally that information up when do you think we're going to be able to get smallsats to the moon and then the follow up to that when do you think they'll go to Mars Ryan I'll start with you it'll depend on the demand I think once we start seeing the once we start seeing the larger rockets being developed going out in that direction such as Starship towards the moon and towards Mars for the first time I think that sort of period it's then when commercial satellites of any kind is going to be up in that direction because that's when the demand will really be shifting because if SpaceX is launching Starship over there that might also be an area where we might where other satellite operators may see interest in that location because everyone SpaceX just at the moment seems to be a few I don't know half a decade a decade ahead of everyone else right now kind of sort of yeah that's my take on it Alex yeah I'm going to say for space we're going to need some kind of communication system especially when you go farther out you're going to rely on the space network from NASA or any other government come so I think it could be earlier than some people think I think we could see that in five to ten years and actually I think NASA was looking for some kind of prototype communications constellation around the moon for when like looking ahead once the Artemis thing the Artemis program goes on and all of that which we don't know if it's going to be but you know they're thinking ahead and I think I saw some proposals of you know having a commercial company just put a constellation of satellites around the moon some kind of moon link of sorts and yeah I think that could be feasible and actually useful for companies that will actually go to the moon we're going to see commercial like the clips program the lenders to the moon just this year that like this year we have I think it was it's one that is writing on I think it's a Falcon 9 and so yeah we're going to see commercial lenders going there to the moon starting this year and there's going to be a point where they're going to be like hey we think an actual commercial communication system could be actually even cheaper and more agile for our applications so I could see that in the future like in the in the short term future 5 to 10 years now Mars I don't see that happening that soon I think for Mars it's going to wait until you know with I mean at the end of the day there could be SpaceX being like heck you know we're going to launch startling to Mars and we're going to have communications isn't that why they're building it yeah I mean that that could be that could be a thing it's the SpaceX factor right you don't expect when they're going to do some some crazy thing like that and yeah but like not counting them I think it's going to wait way longer for I would think it the same thing that's exactly what I Spanish Inquisition you had mentioned clips and for those who don't know that's a NASA program it's commercial lunar payload services yeah commercial lunar it's lunar that's the L and then it's payload systems payload services the S is like a throwaway yeah that's basically there it's them going to the commercial industry and saying hey we want to land stuff on the moon here's somebody make it go I oversimplified that a little bit but there you go it's a lunar landing contract like you do I like to actually this has been a fun show I think we're going to use this as a bit of a wrap point and for our members like we'll continue going after the fact we'll kind of let the conversation go wherever it leads Alex this has been fantastic like your depth of knowledge is absolutely incredible it has been phenomenal having you on today I hope you've had a fun time this has been great I've absolutely loved it and it's really been awesome being able for you guys to nerd out over SpaceX and I feel a little guilty sometimes because like I sit here I can't say anything I can't really do anything and I feel like sometimes I drag that SpaceX conversation down and you did just such a great job of like really bringing it back and doing amazing things now before I go to that I'm going to hit a button I'm sorry I'm going to take over I do want to bring up this graphic one more time one thing you may have noticed is I didn't remove the revenue in the top right hand corner that is the we'll call that $800 this month is what we're going to make for doing this show which is almost at least $3 more than the last month hey go us you know it just put this in a perspective the internet for the studio alone because we're in a commercial area and they can do it to me so they do cost about a thousand dollars so our YouTube our revenue off of YouTube doesn't even pay for the internet here it also really doesn't pay for the facility itself and the way you can help is if you want to continue to see the shows that tomorrow going you can become a member on YouTube you can go to youtube.com you can see all of our different members we've got escape velocity we've also got our orbital members these are people who have contributed different levels whatever works for you so whatever financial situation you're in if you can't afford a lot that's okay we probably got a level we can do it for as little as one dollar per month is the lowest level and that gets you access to our membership just our membership stuff for like the pre and the post show and little extra content so thank you to everyone who helped to make all of that go we truly do appreciate you to help just off load some of the burden of actually trying to afford the show to make it go you know I do this for fun I think this is this is really great it's really great hanging out with oh yeah thank you I have to get my hand off of the move that away so I don't keep doing things in pre show it was funny because in pre show I was fighting Dada for control of the show because I'd be like no I want to show this and your screen would just flash back and forth so it's taken all of my effort to not press any of the buttons on the control surface because Dada was out working on some stuff and so he is very tired and I wasn't sure if he was going to be here today anyhow becoming a member helps us a great deal but as I mentioned at the very beginning of the show subscribing to the show number one way you can help us go to the show hit the thumbs up like the show that's going to feed the algorithm it is a necessary evil on YouTube everyone hates it when you're like like and subscribe but like legitimately we need you to do that in order for the show to grow and truly I'll say it again I would love to help build the most amazing space community with all of you together not just talking about spacex but all of the things that we can do that's amazing in space spacex is doing amazing stuff but so are other companies virgin orbit is a really great example of that with their first successful flight yesterday so on that note thank you everyone so much for watching we are going to I think we're going to be off next week mostly because I'm wearing my dress for Hawaii this is my Hawaiian dress so that's why I'm wearing this last week I had mentioned Hawaii and people started tweeting me saying oh Jamie's going to Hawaii orbital flight bus piece yeah everyone read into that no I'm going on vacation everyone's getting excited no no I'm going on vacation spacex told her to say that's an epic troll by the way oh my god it is isn't it it really is but no I know no one believes me but legitimately I'm going this is the it is actually the only state in the union that I haven't been to so once I go to Hawaii I will be able to at least put my feet on all 56 so I'm really excited to go for a week which means no show next week most likely so enjoy your time off Alex we're going to have to have you back on sometime like again that was absolutely phenomenal thank you so much yeah this was great, I enjoyed too, it was great, Ryan you did great as always thank you and I absolutely have been loving and adoring your news thank you for doing that for us it's so fantastic on that note thank you all so much for watching we'll see you in two weeks I hate the dog eye did you push buttons