Is Starship about to become a fully operational vehicle?

Starship flight 14 is right around the corner. This will be the first flight to send operational Starlinks to orbit. [music] Now, does this mean that Starship is about to become a fully operational rocket? Or does [music] SpaceX still have a bit of design and testing in front of it? Well, buckle up. Put your tray tables in their upright and lock positions. Orbit 18, episode 24 is expected to be a bit of a bumpy ride. Called it. [music] >> [music] >> I believe flight 14 is targeting September 18th, although I'm also hearing September 22nd. So, we'll kind of see where the cards lay, but right now I believe officially it is still September 18th. Uh, you know, flight 13, I think, was a smashing success. Uh, hand it over to the group. What do we What is different in flight 14 over flight 13? because I I know they repeat a lot of stuff. Ryan, I'll hand it to you. >> It's looking to be the first time Starship will actually go to orbit. It's only taken 14 flights to reach this milestone. Okay? I mean, brace yourselves everybody because for so long, for so long, you know, we've been promised back in 2019, Mark 1 will go to orbit, Mark 2 will go to orbit, and then we had the suborbital flight testing, the uh of just the ships going up to 10, 12 km and then coming back and attempting to land. And then we had the integrated flight testing, flight one, which kind of, you know, um concrete tornado. And then flight two, they introduced water deluge. You knew you needed water deluge, right? Uh and then suddenly we had a pretty good uh linear line of progression with version one and then they brought version two still going to a suborbital trajectory and it kind of started doing loop-de-loops over South Texas and then we got to version three and finally new pad new design across both booster and ship. It feels like finally we could be a week away from going to orbit for the first time because every single Starship flight up until this point even though it's been close to orbit it has been suborbital. its perigee, the lowest part of its trajectory has intersected either the Earth itself or its atmosphere. So that classifies as a suborbital flight because it only made it to the Indian Ocean. Fingers crossed though, come the 18th or whenever it will actually launch, we'll have a Starship being inserted into a proper orbit. It'll stay there for a few hours. It'll deploy some Starlings and Starship will actually be a rocket which to use the words that Elon loves to use will actually deploy meaning a meaningful payload into space. Uh for you know for clarity the reason they've been suborbital to date is um not because they can't reach orbit but because they choose not to. Right? Like this isn't SpaceX going, "Oh, orbit's really hard." This is SpaceX going, if something goes wrong, we want this vehicle to fall back. This thing is huge, right? These stages are massive. They want these things to fall back to Earth quickly and safely over an ocean and not, you know, some crazy non-controllable orbital fall back to Earth over time, right? So, I it's been by design. Um, it is excited to see like like actually orbit, right? Like I mean we need to make orbit in order for this to go. We also need to carry real satellites and real payload for it to leave its current ex uh what is it like engineering test phase. You know this one's going to have some V3 satellites. Does this move Starship in our opinion? Does this move Starship from an experimental phase to an operational phase or is it a weird in between thing? Ryan, I'll go back to you. It's a murky gray area in my opinion because this still this vehicle is still under development. You know it just because SpaceX believes it can get to orbit doesn't mean that everything that happens after orbit for both booster and ship is you know good to go 100% success. Everything, you know, everything's dancing in rainbows, right? The ship, they're still not ready to bring that ship back to the launch site, right? So, there were some rumors that this upcoming flight could be the first ship catch attempt. We now know for sure that it's been scratched off. That is not happening. This is going to be an ocean splashdown for uh the next Starship uh which fingers crossed will reach orbit. And of course, the booster, the super heavy booster also still has problems. We saw on the previous flight, second flight of the booster still was not able to conduct a fully successful boost back burn and was not able to relight the engines required for the landing burn. to of course those two important uh burns that you need to be able to do to bring a booster back to the launch site. So there's still some open items on both the booster and the ship. So in that sense it's very much still an experimental vehicle. It's just an experimental vehicle which you know fingers crossed in a week from now will be able to uh will have proven its ability to reach orbit and deploy meaningful payload. They splashed down flight 13 off of Australia and then struggle bust to get that vehicle back when it [laughter] actually like landed unexpected. Like they're like, "Oh my gosh, we got this thing back." And then it was this massive struggle to get the the vehicle back. Are they going to splash down in around the same zone or because they're orbital, they can splash down anywhere they want. Are they picking a different splashdown zone? >> No one knows. >> Who knows, right? Um [laughter] I think it is it's a who knows question. Environmentally, they are of course approved uh for the Indian Ocean uh where we've seen them splashing down in the past. They've also got a couple areas in the Pacific Ocean. They've got a box around Hawaii where they were originally targeting on Flag One. Of course, they never got there. Um they barely got over the Gulf. Um and then of course there's another uh area in the Pacific off the coast of Peru and Chile which they can splash down to. So, you know, judging by, you know, the timings of the orbit, you know, maybe it's a a 9 10 hour mission. Um, maybe it'll be somewhere over the Pacific, but honestly, until SpaceX still hasn't said anything for the record. Like, you usually SpaceX would do a a mission page on their on their website and they do an updates post like here's what we've learned from the previous flight. Here's what we're going to be doing on the upcoming flight. We've got nothing, quite literally nothing out of SpaceX um as we approach flight. So, um it'll be very interesting to to see what they have to say uh on that website page whenever. I'm sure it's written already. They're just waiting to publish it. So, if they could publish it, I mean, that'd be great. uh SpaceX. Uh we we'd love to read it whenever you want to share it with us. >> Watch for the launch licenses. >> Yeah. Yeah, that's fair. You know, Dada, you you worked with rockets, you worked in aerospace for a bit. What's your opinion on operational versus experimental? And I realize it's not like an actual real tag that companies use, right? Like a company doesn't go, "This is operational now." But they kind of do, right? There's a there's a mental difference. Yeah. There's a mental difference between an experimental vehicle where you're like that. Whoops. And an operational vehicle where you're like, "Oh, whoops." Right? So, like what's your opinion? >> SpaceX has investors now. >> They have things that they need to do. >> They have they have milestones that they need to succeed at. uh operational to me is that they can uh controllably land the booster and the the ship in the the places they say they're going to and reuse them. >> Do >> until then it's it's still experimental >> and well so you you're saying to get it out of experimental phase it needs to be fully operational with full reusability. That's what they're claiming they can do, >> isn't it? >> Yeah, but I mean, >> you make big claims, you got big hurdles. [laughter] >> That's fair. That's fair. Uh >> I didn't set those targets for you. >> Yeah, I that's fair. It's It's fair. It's fair. The I I guess my question becomes we look at Falcon, right? And it was, I would argue, operational while they were still building and testing the vehicle, but it was sending payloads to space. To your point, SpaceX has, you know, they've got investors now. It's it's a public company, so they need to make money. Is the is the bar hitting all of the targets or is the bar financially making money? You know what I mean? >> It's what you claimed you're going to do. So Falcon was an iterative process and they had different blocks and different versions and different capabilities throughout. >> All named something differently the entire time. It was great. >> Yeah. Block mark whatever we call it whatever we want because we are not not accountable to any investors. But that whole time each of those vehicles had specific targets and specific things that they could do and specific uh objectives that they could reach. And yeah, you keep moving the goalpost, but they had they moved the goalpost with a different iteration. So I I don't I don't say I don't think that it's fair to say that it was an experimental vehicle the entire time because they had a vehicle that did what they say they were going to do with that block of vehicle and the next thing that they were going to do required a change and then they modified the vehicle. Um so it was operational. They had paying customers, not themselves. And I I think that's a that's a different case. Uh with Starship, uh you're still you're doing your own payload. So I until you can find another customer that's willing to plop down and buy one. Um and then you can you can accomplish all of the things that you set out and told your investors you're going to do with it. Uh it's not operational. >> Uh interesting comments from the chat room. uh from Jason Witty. It says, "If it deploys V3 satellites into orbit, I say it's operational and it just gets better and better. Love the system, you know, and that's kind of uh you know, that's kind of where we're we're getting at, right? Like it this is where it's a it's a weird to Ryan's point, it's a gray area, right? Cuz like it's making money, but to Dada's point, it's not feature complete. So, you have to be changing bits and bobs on the vehicle, and changing bits and bobs adds risk. So, >> I think I would push back on the making money part. >> Oo. Okay. >> Uh, and I've I've had this this notion since uh Falcon or Star Starlinks were being launched on Falcons. Um, that's just kind of like the snake eating eating its own tail. Like it's it's putting money in different places. You're you're deploying satellites, okay, but that's not a paying customer. That's that's a different thing. It's a different risk posture. Like SpaceX with their Starlinks, they're they're they're largely disposable. They they don't have a huge life expectancy. You don't have a national security bent to their necessity and their operation like that to to to SpaceX building another thousand Starlinks is nothing. They just continually poop those out. And so the risk is very very low of losing a launch and losing a a handful of satellites in the the grand scheme of things. And yes, it contributes to the bottom line. And it the satellites being in space makes money, but that's that's kind of like feeding itself. It's like saying you paid yourself an x number of dollars for for doing a thing. That's not that's not real money yet. Real money is when the customer pays for it. >> I think I feel I hear you. Go ahead. I just want to say um you know in researching for this uh over the past couple of days um what to kind of go with data's point with that where where where are you getting your money from launch services aren't the primary thing that SpaceX is making their profit from anymore um it's from Starlink right so that's that's where the big money is coming from I mean it's literally launch services is something on the order of of 10% or less of that that's coming in. So, um, yeah, it's just it's it's so interesting to have watched the evolution of SpaceX go from a launch services company to a communications company. Um, and you know, >> we'll see about that. So, um, you know, the the future the future was pretty well set until everyone started getting nervous over the last 72 hours, I guess, is the way I would phrase that. Um, so we'll we'll see. [laughter] So, EA has an interesting point in the chat room and she says, "Starlink division is a customer of the launch division." I don't know if that is actually true. Um, m maybe I I actually don't know. Starink >> I don't think they make that distinction. >> Yeah, I I'm I I I legitimately don't know. You would think I would, but I I honestly don't. Uh, so it I I think D's point is a good one. I'm not I think it's just a whole bunch of gray area though, right? Because you're you're right. SpaceX is launching its own payload that it built itself. And so it's kind of its own, you know, money moving through different buckets. However, Starlink is a massive profit center for them. And the more satellites they can get up, the more profit the company overall actually does get. And so it's a weird gray area. Is is it is the vehicle operational with Starlink satellites going up? I don't know. I don't know. It doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. I mean, I think maybe maybe in maybe moving the bar a little bit cuz dada you're saying like the bar is fully doing everything you promised and and I hear you, but like that's aggressive. So like maybe it's um kind of like iPhones, right? They they give you a whole bunch of promises, but they're still a shipping product. Uh, but they're still waiting to deliver the software updates. Starship, maybe that's similar software updates on Starship to get maybe it's hardware, I don't know, to get it fully reusable. But maybe >> is your is your full is your full self-driving operational? >> I That's a gray area, too. [laughter] Can I drive without my hands on the wheel or without paying attention? No. No, that wasn't that wasn't the claim. That wasn't the claim that your claim was your car will pick you up and drive you to your destination and you have you need zero input, >> right? And so the answer is yes through robo taxi but not my car. But yes, you can do it but not my car. So like I don't know. It's it's gray areas. That's my point. It's all a whole bunch of gray areas. >> You paid for it in your car though. >> Oh, I paid for it many times through. Oh, through many cars. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah. sucker. Uh, actually, I like driving. >> I I think there we're we're in the the dawn of an era of uh creative uh finance tracking and creative uh expensing where people can claim something they didn't actually do because it's a different branch or a different pocket. They're just moving money in between pockets. uh it's not actually generating wealth for the company and it and it's not actually adding value to the to the stocks. >> But it is >> look at what we're doing over here. >> Pay no attention to the promises behind the curtain, >> right? >> But but it but it is generating profit through Starlink, right? So it might not be a direct profit center, but it is absolutely like like looking at their P&Ls like Starlink is absolutely a major profit center for SpaceX. It's the thing that until AI came around was going to pay for Mars. And so getting V3 satellites up there so they can add more capacity absolutely goes to the bottom line. >> So >> wholeheartedly agree. However, the risk posture for that is exceedingly high and they accept that. >> Yeah. >> It's not operational until until you can get another customer to buy that risk. >> Yeah. And maybe that's that maybe that's the real test is not hey are all the bits and bobs on for reusability but is another third party paying customer willing to fly their payload on this vehicle. Maybe that's where we go oh hey people are willing to pay for this now. I don't know. Um Aravail in the chat room says I don't think operational and experimental are exclusive. Um, maybe, right? Like, maybe maybe I don't know. I don't know. Um, what what is interesting is that Falcon's no longer flying Starlink from the Cape at all. SpaceX was like, "Nope, we're done." Now, they do still fly Starlink on Falcon, but they only do that out of Vandenberg Space Force Base. But Cape Canaveral, uh, the work the workhorse for getting the Starlink satellite constellation up and operational, no more. It's done. They're done. They've been done for a minute. So, it's star it's Starship only now. They're like they're they're going all in on V3 Starlink because that's that's really what they need, right? The star you can you can feel the strain on the Starlink constellation. You you know they need V3 to get up there. What like hopefully flight 14 is a success, but we we haven't seen like a whole bunch of success out of this. How do I word this? We've seen some pretty visible problems with Starship. Some uh fiery blowy upy kind for a while. [laughter] What What do we I see Ryan smirking. Uh what do we think [laughter] we Well, uh what do we think we need to bring Starship to Cape Canaveral and actually have confidence in launching out of the Cape? Um Ryan, I'll toss it to you. Well, to bring Starship to Cape Canaveral, we need a barge. Uh, we need to roll Starship onto the onto the barge and then No, [laughter] but in all seriousness, um, >> they they need a good orbital flight. [laughter] >> As proven as proven by ship 40. >> Yeah. [laughter] >> Um, I'd say they need a good orbital flight. Uh, probably a couple good orbital flights. You know, we were kind of expecting that on maybe flight 15, but now that they're not going to be going for that ship catch attempt on this flight, then maybe they'll be pushed another couple flights down the list. It's it's difficult to tell because if as soon as they take a ship and a booster out of the kind of out of line uh in Starbase, you know, Starbase is suddenly months uh weeks at least, you know, kind of set back because they've taken those vehicles out of Starbase and they're sending them to Florida, right? So one of the theories is well to try and minimize that disruption in Texas they'll take a reused booster or a landed booster which is of course comes into the booster catch but still as we've seen on the last two flights booster is nowhere near catch ready. They really need to nail that down on this flight in order to catch the booster on not the next flight but the next next flight and then they could potentially refurb that booster and ship it off to the Cape because of course 39A let's not forget is a brand new pad. So even if they ship a booster to the pad, booster will probably be working fine, but they've still got to go through all the little nags that they've got to go through when you're commissioning a brand new launchpad. If you look at the first flight campaign over at pad 2 in Starbase, yes, it was also the first flight campaign for the ship and the booster, but don't rule out ground support equipment. You know, SpaceX calls that stage zero for a reason. It is arguably more complex than the vehicle itself in order to simply fuel the rocket and get it ready to launch. So, they need to commission that stuff. They're already commissioning it. We see them, you know, doing tank farm testing almost every day now at 39A, but you can't actually properly test fueling a vehicle without a vehicle to fuel. >> Yeah. That I mean, so other than getting a barge and getting the vehicle there, well, man, that that's a that's a big ask, right? Like there's a lot there's a lot. Do Okay, so really quickly, do we think Starship is going to launch from the Cape in 2026? Uh, let's dada, what do you think? Thumbs up, thumbs down, no maybe. Thumbs up, thumbs down. And chat room, same question to you. Actually, uh, uh, Colton, if you don't mind, build a poll really quick. Will Starship launch from the Cape? Yes or no? Let's get that Let's get that going. Uh, D, what >> has Elon Has Elon said he said they would? >> No, I don't know that they have. Uh, but like they've stopped all Starlink launches off of Falcon from the cave. So, you know that they're chomping at the bullet. Chomping at the bullet. What's that phrase? They're they're want to get going. >> Bit um I I I don't ever Well, not ever. I I rarely bet against SpaceX being able to accomplish something. Uh but the timeline is always up in in question. Um there there's a lot to that. A vehicle that's never been at a brand new pad that's never launched a rocket before in that configuration with that hardware, etc., etc., etc. Um not outside of the realm of possibilities. We're in the middle of September, so they've got three and a half months left. Yeah, maybe. Could be. Uh but that's that's still a tall tall order. >> I mean, the chat room right now is saying no. Uh um who's up next? Jared, what do you think? Yes or no? You don't think you No. May, >> man. Uh 109 days left in 2026. Uh you know, SpaceX is frequently miracle workers and what they do, but no, that's that's a very tall order. And people are people. You need to make sure you don't burn out your crews. Uh >> no, they don't do that. uh [laughter] at least at least like you got to be careful in how you do that. If you if you decide that you are going to burn out your crews, you got to be careful in how you decide to do that. And SpaceX has been very lucky on that front. Um when when it when it comes to studies of the past and things like that, they've been very very lucky on that front. Um but yeah, 109 days are left in this year. That's a very very that's a nearvertical cliff to climb without any gear. Um I'm gonna have to go no on this. But uh man, I'll be thrilled to be wrong about this one. >> Uh >> I will point out that that that le that other companies have done more incredible things. For example, the blank sheet of paper to a flying jet from Lockheed for the what was it? The P33 shooting star in 90 days. I don't I don't know what that was. >> One of the first jets the United States built. >> So, >> yeah, that's different. Come on now. >> Well, I'm just saying that's that's a monumental task from a company that knows what they're doing. If they get all their ducks in a row, it's not outside the realm of possibility. That's all I'm saying. >> All right. Fair enough. Fair enough. Ryan, what are your thoughts? Yes or no? No. Um my you the vibes in the community is leading no but I will say yes there are 109 days left in the year but if we say 10 days until the next starship flight then and that starship flight will go fantastically well and absolutely nothing will go wrong and booster will be fantastic and then 30 days between flights where they will catch booster and ship because you know life is wonderful and everything is perfect that is 70 days left in the year to ship two vehicles to Florida, commission the pad and launch. And they did that. I'm pretty sure they commissioned pad 2, you know, thinking from when they first sent vehicles there to the launch. I'm pretty sure that was a couple months or at least somewhere in that time scale. And of course, they've already commissioned a pad of this style. Uh so it's not the first time they'll be commissioning a pad, right? at 39A. I'm going to say that in 70 days it's possible. >> Okay. So, your your thumbs up. Um the chat room overwhelmingly >> I'm just being optimistic cuz why not? >> Sure, why not? Uh the chat room overwhelmingly at uh 62% said nope. Um not doing it for a hot minute there. It was a 3:1 uh ratio, but um uh I guess that is still about 3 to1, isn't it? Oh, no. It's Well, whatever. So yeah, um I I'm >> Well, we know that the chat room cheats, so >> yeah, that's true. Uh I I'm >> the answer. >> So another interesting comment from the chat room, which is uh uh from the thick 4445 said they sat on flight 15. Right. Well, we're going to flight 14 here. So uh you know, flight 15's hopefully right around the corner. Does that mean if they're planning to Does that mean that this is the last flight of the year for Starship? If they're planning flight 15 to go out of Cape Canaveral and we're all saying or like most of us like we don't think it's going to happen from the Cape. Is this it for the rest of 2026 until uh I feel like they can't make that. I Yeah, we'll see. It'll be fun to watch. >> It'll be fun to watch. It's going to it's this What an exciting program, right? Like keeps keeps you on the edge of your seat. This would not be the This would not be the first overly aggressive timeline that they failed to meet >> or second or third or fourth or fifth or sixth, [laughter] >> you know. Uh let's wrap up Flight 14 talks with uh I'm just curious and chat room. I'd love to know from you as well uh live or on demand. What are you excited for on Flight 14? Like what what gets you all uh all excited for what's about to happen? Uh I'm going to go around the room. I'm going to go backwards from the last uh the way we did it last time. So Ryan, what are you most excited for on Flight 14? >> I'm very much most excited for finally just pushing through that gate and being orbit. Like it's such a simple word, but it's like such a simple word for such a difficult concept, right? I mean, finally actually just putting stuff into orbit. It's like that's what a orbital class rocket is designed to do. And for so long, Starship has been in its suborbital testing phase. like it feels like forever at this point. Like um this is going to make everybody feel really old, but a quarter of my life Starship has been in a suborbital testing phase. So, you know, for me this is a big deal cuz it's like, "Oh, finally they're getting to orbit." I know I've just absolutely ruined everybody's day. Um but that's a big deal for me. And also because Egon loves to go on Twitter and be like, "Well, Blue Origins never put anything of meaning never put anything meaningful into orbit." Uh well, suborbital doesn't matter cuz we're actually going to orbit and it's really far away. Well, finally Starship is going to be able to join the join the orbital club. [laughter] >> Someone should someone should tweet that to Elon. Welcome Starship to the orbital club. Jared, what how about you? What are you excited most about uh for flight 14? >> Uh obviously heading to orbit is uh a big one. I want to be I want to see it actually get over that hill and and expend enough energy to finally welcome itself to space. Uh, I I guess we're all going to send messages um uh to the Big E uh for that. And uh I think for me personally um I'm I'm most interested in what the Super Heavy booster is going to be doing because on the first two flights of version three, the Super Heavy booster for recovery at least has just not been where it needs to be at in order for it to be a fully reusable system. um they've lost both boosters on the flights. Um and that's going to be very critical for rapid reuse reuse. Uh because that's what Starship's supposed to do, rapid reuse. So, we'll see. >> Feels like we're close. Um data. >> It is. It feels It really does. Uh epic footage from catching a booster and landing a Starship. >> Are we catching a booster? Ryan, are we catching the booster? We're not catching anything, are we? >> Well, well, hopefully we'll have a a buoy cam for booster and ship. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, the Well, did they have a buoy cam for booster last time? I don't remember. >> They not live, but they did do a they did do a tweet afterwards uh of the I forgot what flight it was, but they they've done a couple a couple tweets of buoy cam on uh in the Gulf. Uh I remember because the last one of course they cut off the landing burn uh at altitude so the booster would then come and slam into the gulf and blow up so it wouldn't remain bobbing in the ocean for anyone to to come and sniff. Um and then you know of course they tweeted the video but as but as the booster came down towards the surface of the water the video slowly faded to black right until it touched the water and then the video ended so we didn't actually get to see anything. Um that's what I remember. Yeah, about right. >> All right. Uh, >> can I throw one more in there? >> Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. >> Um, depending upon how long Starship So, first of all, Starship needs to make orbit. Um, but depending upon how long it's in orbit, I would like to attempt to try to image it from the ground. Um, so I'm going to be giving I'm going to be giving that a go to see if we can actually be able to see it. I have no idea if that's going to be possible. It's a cylindrical shape, which is terrible for reflecting light. Um, [laughter] at least bright large amounts of light. Um, but we'll see. >> Little flappy bits. >> So, it's got it's got flappy bits, but the flappy the little arrow uh arrow surfaces, which I've been yelled at and told they're not aerosurfaces, even though they are aerosurfaces. >> Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Who says they're not aerosurfaces? [laughter] Hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up, hold up. If they're not aerosurfaces, >> hold hold. If they're not aerosurfaces, why are they there? >> Right. >> Um I don't So that was a general uh thing that I heard from SpaceX fans back in the day, which was Jared, stop calling them aerosurfaces cuz they're not aerosurfaces. You know, it was like it was like when I got uh you know, when people had beef for me saying turn and burn to describe the boosters coming back. So, because technically they did do what I now call flip and dip. Um, but [laughter] like who cares? It's It sounds good. >> Sounds like something in the cafe at Starbase. >> Oh, yeah. Flip. That does sound like something from the cafe. Oh, all right. If if uh SpaceX kitchen staff are listening, Flip and Dip needs to be a special at Starbase. I just want to say as well that uh I I don't I have it buried somewhere and I wanted to bring it up today but I couldn't. Um but I have a there's a great meme. I don't know if anybody here is old enough to remember the anomorphs series of books. Um and on the front of the books it would have the kids morphing into the animal that they were going to be for the book or whatever. And there's a great one of Starship morphing into a space shuttle. And uh [laughter] that crosses my mind all the time when we're talking about like tiles and aerosurfaces and other things. So that was >> I'm just saying SpaceX fanboys on Reddit can't change how physics work. If they affect the air flow, they're they're aerosurfaces. You know, it's not it's you know what it comes down to is I think it's um I remember way back in the day Elon on one of the announcements for BFR, MCT, it whatever it was called back then before it was Starship. One of the first announcements in Guadalajara or in Adelaide, um I think Elon said something along the lines of wings on a space shuttle are stupid. It's just a bunch of mass that you don't need. And so the original vehicles were just cylinders, like the renderings were just cylinders. And then um as they realized, oh hey, we need aerosurfaces to control this. You slowly saw more aerosurfaces get tacked onto the side of the vehicle before you don't have wings, but you I mean effectively I mean you don't really have wings, but you definitely have a surfaces tacked onto the side of Starship at this point. They're aerosurfaces, people. >> Look, it's it's it's not designed to glide. I get I get that. And Space Shuttle is wasn't either, but they are aerosurfaces. >> Yeah. Yeah. 100%. All right, moving on. Uh, let's talk about uh you know what, let's give let's give Jared a topic. We haven't done this for quite some time where I'm just like this one. I should have had I should have just gotten some popcorn ready so I can just sit back, eat some popcorn. We can all take a break. We're going to talk about the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. Uh, in the rundown, I have questions. What I should have put in the rundown is just Jared go. Uh but but but [laughter] >> in in your best Julia child, set it up and let Jared cook. >> But [laughter] I don't know that I have a good Julia Child. [laughter] >> Yeah. Uh uh >> tell us about the road be fired as we go into [laughter] here. >> I just want to call from the desk. I just got a call from some people. They said that they've got some big mirrors for me. I'm going to have to put them in my shed. >> So, we [laughter] have the pretty much we have the Roman space telescope [laughter] >> and we derailed. >> Uh, what? >> I haven't been following the Robin Space Telescope. Uh, what is it? What like what's going What is What's happening? What's going on here? >> Well, this is this is Jimny Glick. >> Yeah. Yeah, thank you for that. One of my favorite characters on TV. Um, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope is Hubble's replacement. Uh, and we're all very excited for it to have finally been launched. Uh, and it's on its way out to L2, the launch point 2, which is a area where the Earth and the Sun, their gravity balance each other out. So, you could put objects there and they'll just kind of stay in that area with minimal amounts of thruster use, which is good because the less you can use, the more fuel you'll have on board, which means the longer you can last out there, which is fantastic. Um, and I'm very much looking forward to it. Uh, there are some very big differences between the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope. Uh and the biggest one is that the Nancy Grace Roman telescope has a massive field of view. So this is what separates it from Hubble, the big old field of view that it has. Uh now there's a very interesting reason as to why it has this big old field of view. And that is because during the original design work of the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, it was actually not as big as Hubble. It it was not set to be as big as Hubble. Um it was going to be a 1.3 meter mirror. Um but it ended up getting upgraded to a 2.4 meter mirror or a Hubble mirror. uh simply because the this group called the National Reconnaissance Office, don't know if you've heard of them here in the United States, um they contacted NASA in 2012, and they said, "Hey, we've got two optical assemblies. They're kind of like they're kind of ob obsolete for what we need to do, so if you want them, bring a trailer. They're yours." Um so that is exactly what happened. This mirror in the optical assembly is a donation from the National [laughter] Reconnaissance Office. These are these are systems that were designed to look back at the Earth and do spy satellite work, which is just mind-blowing to me. Um, now >> 30 years ago, >> uh, in actually in the 80s, so more like 40 years ago. Um, and you know, looking over the system, it was very much like, oh my god, this is better than anything we've got right now. Um, and this is obsolete for you. Uh, so yeah, I mean it makes sense if you think about the fact that the Hubble the, you know, Hubble Space Telescope itself is basically a spy satellite that's not designed to look at the Earth. It's designed to look out [laughter] into space. Uh, because they, you know, in order to keep the Hubble cost down, there was a shared commonality in the design between the spy satellites of that time period in the in the 70s and early 80s with that. Uh but there was some resistance to having this mirror uh because it was going to add cost onto the mission. Uh but luckily that resistance was like pretty quickly shut down once everybody realized what it was going to allow us to do because we're going to be able to exceed Hubble's resolution just a little bit. Not much. But the critical key here is that big field of view. Um so back in the early 2010s there was a survey that was done of the Andromeda galaxy. They basically used Hubble to look at individual stars in and in the Andromeda galaxy which is 3 million lighty years away from us. So pretty far away resolving individual stars looking at them figuring out what type they are and from that determining if physics works the same in Andromeda as it does here in the Milky Way. And in that study they proved that they found that the distribution of types of stars in Andromeda is the same as here in the Milky Way. So why is that important here in the context of Hubble versus Roman? Well, Hubble has a very small field of view, very itty bitty, you know, in there. So because of that, they had to take over 120 images in order to get the full Andromeda galaxy. Roman, the field of view on it is so big. And if you want to take a look at it, we've got a great great uh view of it here. uh that field of view is so big it would have only taken two images to do the exact same study at the exact same resolution. So that would that would have helped out quite a bit. Um so the amount of data that's going to be generated by this mission is going to be off the charts. Um that's great. Like you want data. That's what allows you to do your work. Um, and overall we're just very very excited uh to finally be getting the successor to Hubble up while [snorts] Hubble is still up. Um also while the James Webb Space Telescope is still operating and also while the European Space Ay's Uklid mission is operating as well uh these four observatories in space are going to be working together uh to actually perform similar studies and uh you know we're going to be hunting down things like what's the cause of dark energy. Uh we're going to be hunting down primordial black holes. Uh there's what's called a coronagraph in the Roman telescope which is a system that will block the light from a star so that way we can actually directly image those exoplanets. That would be pretty amazing to be able to do that. So um yeah, overall like we've been waiting a very long time for this. So here we go. It's up. It's on its way. And uh hopefully hopefully we'll be getting things underway with commissioning very very soon. I have a question from the chat room Jared and this is from Benjamin Dudu who asks could Hubble hypothetically be upgraded to have better imaging system which would be the same as Roman. Um so you're not going to be able to do a very wide field of view. Um [clears throat] and that's because of the the optical assembly itself. uh just the design of the mirrors and other things like that on Hubble are are not they're not built for wide field of view. They're built for very closeup um because we just didn't have this idea uh that we wanted to do very wide field of view work with Hubble. It was just basically a visible space telescope of extremely high caliber in orbit around the Earth to operate. Of course, we know that it it was just a little bit it was just just a smidge off caliber. Um so that made it actually not good. Um at the time it was, you know, with Hubble needing before Hubble got its glasses, it was still pretty comparable um to the best groundbased telescopes of the early and mid 90s at that time. But it it took, you know, that incredible uh shuttle mission STS61 um in order to fix Hubble and get that. Um but yeah, you you just you can't you can't change the path of light on inside of Hubble without changing the mirror, without changing the positions of things inside. And that would be really really difficult. We could change the instruments. Um, but also, you know, there was a study done that Jared Isaacman, you know, was in on as a part of the Polaris program before he was the NASA administrator that they looked at possibly doing a Hubble servicing mission. I don't know if that meant that that uh I Jared Isaacman at that time was looking at paying for a servicing mission to Hubble. Um, but it was looked at and NASA sort of said thanks but no thanks on that front. So, um, yeah. Don't uh I guess long story short, no. [laughter] >> I I I see Hubble as an older distinguish distinguished gentleman with a monle. >> That's a good way to look at Hubble. Honestly, that I would say that is what Hubble is. Yeah, it is. Uh, it is sort of the an older gentleman with a monle. And then uh I would I'd say James Webb is like uh what would I put James Webb? Gabes Web is like the fresh out of grad school. Uh maybe maybe going to do the PhD work. So, and then Nancy and then uh Roman and Uklid right now are sort of like the new hotness just rolling up. So, we'll we'll have to we'll have to see what we can do to stretch them. >> Got another question from the chat room and hopefully I get the context right which is this is from John M. Anderson60 who asks, "I wonder why the CCDs of Grace Roman have this arc down disposition, which I I think what he's referring to is if you go back to the um go back to the the comparison image between Hubble and Roman um you can kind of see like there's this like arc to the to the layout. Is is that like any reason that's happening?" I assume that's what referring to. That's yeah, that's a great question. I actually don't know. So, um, >> and why is there a gap in between them? >> Well, the gap in between them is because of the positions of the sensors. Um, you you'll notice that Hubble has a single sensor because it is a single sensor. Uh, in this case, Roman is 18 sensors that are working together in order to pull out about 300 megapixels of data at at a time per image. Um, so yeah, that's that's what those that's what those gaps between the boxes are there. The box is a what a sensor sees. Uh, and then the gap is just that little small area where we just can't, you know, we can't put we can't put parts of the sensor inside of there. Um, so yeah. >> And then why is it named the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope? That's a very long name and it it clearly has meaning. So what is the meaning behind that name? >> Yeah. So Nancy Grace Roman was a absolutely incredible astronomer in the United States. Um her career goes all the way back to the 1940s and runs to the 2010s. She is she is NASA's first astronomer. Um basically set the standard for space telescopes. uh worked on every single space telescope at that time uh from starting in the 1960s with the orbital space telescope program um and orbital solar observatory program as well. I mean you want to talk about the forerunner of people who did this. Um so uh Lyman Spitzer is sort of considered the guy who did the math and figured that out but Nancy Grace Roman is the woman who actually made it happen. She did the she did the engineering work, she did the astronomy work, she did the work with Congress in order to wrangle and get the funds and other things like that. So, uh so she is, you know, half jokingly called the mother of Hubble, um but really she's the reason why not just the Hubble Space Telescope is a thing, but just about every single space telescope exists. If she hadn't put in the work when she was NASA's chief astronomer in the 60s and 70s, um space telescopes would be decades behind where they are now. Um and you know she and she had to do this at a time as well where being a woman in science was extremely difficult, very rare and not wellreceived either. But you know she was just a a you know pioneer and a trailblazer in everything that she did and uh very very [clears throat] welld deserved to have this named after her. >> I there is a beautiful irony of uh if she was the mother of Hubble the to have Hubble's sister be the telescope named after her. Right. Like it all kind of the universe comes back together. Right. Because you know >> time is a flat circle. >> Yeah. The the fun bit with all of this is that you I don't think most of us even knew that Hubble had a sister until the NRO was like, "Oh, hey guys. Um uh you want another Hubble?" [laughter] Right. >> Yeah. I mean, a lot of people don't know that Hubble is is basically a key a keyhole series spy satellite aimed out, not in. So, [laughter] >> well, we didn't Now we know. We didn't know back then. Yeah. Um although uh there was a a quote from someone who was basically they were showing a picture of Hubble and they're like that's not mine. [laughter] >> Yeah. >> Yeah. I've se I've uh I've heard that story before. So [laughter] >> So uh a great question from the chat room. Uh this is from Greg asking, "Do you know in broad strokes what they're planning to for the telescope? Is it going to be an all sky survey? What are they looking for? Like supernova? like what what is this doing? It's not replacing Hubble. It's like working in addition to Hubble. So what what are we doing here? >> Yeah. Yeah. So first of all, I just want to point out that this is looking at wavelengths that go from visible light in the blue spectrum all the way to near infrared. So it's it goes through visible just into the red redder than red uh of light that you have there. Um but essentially the major things that we're attempting to do here are cosmology research. So sort of the big questions of the universe. Um what is uh like basic basic answers to the basic questions of of dark energy simply because we still don't have a like what's the cause of it? Uh has it evolved over the history of the universe? That's actually something that's come up this year. um which is that we think actually dark energy may have had a evolutionary path throughout the timeline of the universe which is completely unexpected. Um they're still working on those papers. Um but some of the initial results from those papers are kind of uh kind of fundamentally changing where what we're thinking about dark energy. Um which would be great uh for that. Um in order to do that you'll do observations of distant supernova. You'll do look at things like big galaxy clusters that have a lot of mass. So you could do gravitational lensing with them or basically like the gravity of these big clusters is so much that it warps light from objects behind them as it's coming through. Um and there's some really interesting things that can happen with that like light taking multiple paths at different speeds. Um, and then you can watch the same event happen at different times as well. So, which is so weird to think about. Like you think about light going through a galaxy cluster. For whatever reason, the gravity splits it into four different paths and then they all like they all get at their own speed as well as they travel through spaceime and then eventually arrive here. And um maybe there's a supernova in one of those light paths that you see. Um, and then 6 months later that other path of light arrives and you see the supernova again and then two weeks later the next path arrives and you see that supernova. So that's a thing that we can do with these kinds of telescopes which is to hunt down um those types of events and and give them attention um which is what they need. Um and >> I know right like and the thing is that you know Einstein and the physics behind it works and we see it. So, um, it's nuts. Um, [laughter] also, uh, very cool, too, is that it's not just like focused on cosmology. You know, since Hubble, we now know of over 6,000 exoplanets out there. So, one of the things that I know that they're attempt to do with Roman um, is a census. They're going to sort of take a population of the currently known exoplanets and really get as much detail um, as we can from them. see things like like, you know, what's the potential for habitability? What's the what's the rate of exoplanets around stars? What about systems like ours? Do they exist frequently or are we just a really weird solar system in in the universe? Um, can we actually find exoplanets that are maybe just a few times more massive than our moon? Um, you know, something like the size of Mercury. Um, can we can we actually find uh planets that are floating just by themselves in space? Like they've been ejected from their solar systems and they're just cruising around in the galaxy. Um, so yeah, there's just a whole host of super exciting things that we've wanted to do for a really long time. Um, and we've learned these things from smaller missions like the Kepler Space Telescope for exoplanets. And now we've got this big one which has got dedicated instruments to do exactly the kinds of things that we want to do in trying to figure out our universe, answer those really big questions which can have huge implications on physics which can affect your everyday life. Uh and also probably one of the big questions that just fundamentally sticks with all of us which is is there life out there in the universe? Are we alone? Is there anything else? that that bending light thing, it blows my mind, but it's lent credence by all of the imagery that we got of the black hole several years ago. >> Yeah. >> And the fact that you that light was bent around the backside, so we were able to look at the backside at and and the front side at the same time. >> And like so there there's there's something to that and the the possibilities there are fascinating. >> Yeah. There's also some really cool observational structures called Einstein rings and Einstein crosses. Uh the Einstein crosses are like what I talked about where you've got different paths of light from the same object. Um and then Einstein rings are ones where they've been they they come by the object and they actually get so warped that they're put into like a ring shape around the object that's doing the gravitational lensing. Um, so you'll see like a main object, like a galaxy, and then a ring of light from say like a galaxy behind it where that light's been distorted into this beautiful ring shape around it. Um, and it's just like the universe just does some really amazing and beautiful stuff. And uh, um, yeah, thank you so much, universe. You're great. >> [laughter] >> And you you touched on this a little bit, but uh you kind of did it in two parts going back and correct me if I'm wrong, but the Roman telescope and James Web really work well with each other, right? Cuz James Web is basically an infrared telescope and Roman gets right up to that, but doesn't quite get into infrared. It does a little bit, but like there's that like they butt from a wavelength standpoint, they kind of butt up next to each other. Is that correct? >> Yeah. Yeah, they're pretty close to each other. uh they'll they'll they'll uh do what we call co-observations. They'll be able to look at the same objects at the same time and pull data from their respective wavelengths and then you can compare that. Um and we've already been doing that with Hubble and Web. Uh so it's it's not like we're just now deciding to do it. Um it's just now we're going to be able to look at a really big field of view while we're doing it. >> This is going to be very cool. Is there anything that you are personally really excited for on the Roman Space Telescope? like where you're like this is the thing. This is the thing I'm waiting for. This is the this is the piece of science I want to see. >> Uh mine is 100% exoplanets. I want to I want to be able to see the limits uh of what Roman is capable, you know, in terms of of of studying these exoplanets and other things like that. Um I I have heard people say that that they're going to try to squeeze the data enough so that they can possibly figure out um not figure out surface features um but figure out very strong indicators of atmospheric composition um and maybe even be able to say if there are clouds in the atmosphere of this exoplanet. We might be able to figure out from the spectrum just what those clouds are made out of, which like that blows my mind being able to figure out what clouds in the atmosphere of an exoplanet are are made out of. Like I just I'm very excited for the exoplanet research that's going to come out of this. Um you know the coronagraph uh as it was originally designed the coronagraph um was not going to be a part of the design of uh of Roman. Um but the people who fought for it fought tooth and nail for it to be a part of the mission. Um, so, uh, I'm I'm super glad that the that those people are getting what they wanted. Uh, and frankly, now that it it was put in and and the capabilities are there, I I think everybody who is against the Corona graph is kind of kind of reversed their position on that. Um, and also just as well like it's great to have the successor to Hubble up and running as well. So now there's less pressure on Hubble and I I don't want to say less pressure on maintaining Hubble. The the teams at the uh Space Telescope Science Institute are still going to do everything they can to keep Hubble operational and they've been doing an unbelievable job. Uh you know, 17 years after the last shuttle servicing mission to it, Hubble's still cooking along. Um yeah, it's it's it's just going to be great to have all this. And um you know, I guess if I were to pull a joke out too, uh now that Roman's in space, it can't you can't you can't cancel the mission. It's underway. So um because boy, there was some real efforts to cancel uh this mission. Uh which is a shame because it came in on budget and ahead of schedule. though um which most flagship missions you don't say those words ever about anything involved on it but in this case it was really well managed um I think a lot of them looked at the lessons learned from from the web and and said let's not do that again >> well never never underestimate the power of tom foolery to undo something great >> yes uh some great questions from the chat room starting with uh John Manderson asking Considering Grace Roman and Hubble imaging are the same. If they were doing imaging the same star, who would win in resolution, right? Cuz Roman has a wider field of view, but that doesn't mean it has just as much resolution. >> Yeah. So, um, so it's not necessarily better. Um, so the thing the thing about it is that so so astronomy has changed since Hubble flew in the early 90s which nowadays a lot of astronomy is done through wide field work uh where we're basically looking at the sky and gathering as much data at as best a resolution as we can um simply because one uh it's really difficult to get telescope time. Two, it's really difficult to get money to get telescope time. Uh, three, the telescopes keep closing all over the place. Uh, and four, we're now dealing with mega constellations whether we want to or not. Um, so we have to we have to gather as much data as we can in order to then subtract uh the the tracks and and uh uh how would I describe it? I'm trying to figure out a nice word to describe it here. the schmutz uh that's left over of the mega constellation satellites in um in our our data. Um so it's really gone wide field with it uh simply because of that and uh there really isn't a increase in resolution. It's like just just a little bit more um than than Hubble. In terms of what most people would consider an improvement, it's really all about the fact that it's looking at a field of view, you know, over a hundred times larger than Hubble, but still providing you the same resolution. Um, and just getting a huge amount of data every single observation it makes. >> Another great question from the chat room, and this comes from Benjamin [snorts] Doo, which is, "In terms of technology aboard Roman, is it considered state-of-the-art?" So, you know, it may be different than Hubble, but is this like bleeding edge tech? >> Um, yes. Yes, it is. It is about as bleeding edge as it gets at the moment. Um, you know, in order to make that wide field of view possible, they had to combine a huge number of sensors together. Um, that's very difficult to do that. Uh, there are very few even groundbased telescopes that do that here on Earth. Um, a lot of this technology was actually pioneered by the Kepler space telescope, uh, which was an exoplanet hunter, uh, back from 2009 to the mid2010s, uh, simply because it was looking at a wide field of view for for figuring out where and where not exoplanets are. Um, so, uh, the imaging system is very advanced. Also, the instrumentation on board is as good as it gets as well. Uh so you know uh yeah state-of-the-art. So and I mean when Hubble launched it was state-of-the-art too, right? So uh back in 1990 uh that was state-of-the-art when it flew, but also it had servicing missions as well. Uh so they were able to upgrade those things. A lot of uh a lot of what Roman has is not necessarily futurep proofed, but it is set ahead simply because right now we don't have a vehicle that can go out and do service. Uh Roman, I just want to point out does have a does have a docking grapple on it. So there is going to be a capability to send out say like a mission extension vehicle or something to it um whenever it runs out of propellant. In terms of servicing it, not exactly 100% sure on that. I think that would probably depend upon whether you want it to be a robotic or a human servicing mission. Um, but Roman is uh capable of actually having a vehicle approach it unlike web uh simply because if you approach web, web is so cold uh any any thrusters that you use the gas from it will immediately depose and solidify on the optics on the other side which would be bad. So yeah, >> you know, uh you mentioned that uh the telescope was going to L2, >> uh Lrangee Point 2. Did you did you talk about how long that's going to take? Like it [snorts] I can't imagine it's going to be a quick journey there, right? It's going to take a hot minute to get to L2. So uh when when can we expect science to start coming back from this telescope? >> Okay, so we got about a month uh still left to get to L2 even though it launched two weeks ago. Um, and then once it's there, they're going to go through about a two-monthlong commissioning phase in order to get all the instruments and everything dialed in. Uh, because after all, this is a telescope that rode a rocket. If you've ever like taken your own telescope somewhere, you'll know that that if you bounce it, you might send it and bounce a mirror in the wrong direction, which wouldn't be good. Um, so yeah. Uh but by January, right around January is when we're going to have those first first images and probably first data sets beginning beginning to come down uh from Roman. Um and just to remind everybody too that these are your telescopes. So right NASA operate NASA and the Space Telescope Science Institute operate these on your behalf. uh you can write a proposal to use these telescopes to look at something like anyone can submit a proposal. So you don't have to be a scientist at a university to do that. Uh you anybody can send in for what they'd like to look at. So >> uh and then >> so get your get your papers get get your request started now. >> Yeah. Arve is asking >> accept email >> probably not. Uh is this an earth sun lrange point or earth moon lrangee point? >> This is earth sun. So uh yeah it is a it is a one and 1.6 million kilometers away from us. So it's out it's out where uh web is hanging out at right now. So they're going to they're and they were and they were roommates. So >> I I know we're way over time but the chat room keeps going. So we're just going to keep going as long as there's great content. Uh this is from Keith which who asks will the significant space telescope be uh on the far side of the moon? Will the next significant space telescope be on the far side of the moon? In other words, uh well I mean what what can we expect next after this telescope? What's in the pipeline and where will it be? >> Uh so the next big one that we're looking at in terms of like visible light is called Louvier. Uh that one is proposed to be a 16 meter uh mirror which just to give you an idea that would be double web in size um and bigger than any telescope that we current any operational groundbased telescope right now. Um >> how and where is it go where's it going and how how 16 meters is unfathomably huge. >> So that would allow you uh so that would go to L2 earth L2 as well. Uh, also that one would literally go from ultraviolet through visible into infrared as well. So you can imagine that we would be grabbing several flagship missions at the same time and stuffing them into the same telescope. So that one um that one will take a bit of time. Um but I will say this and um this is a very interesting thing um the duality of of man here so to speak. um which is that for as much as us astronomers and others have been cursing things like Starlink and other mega constellations because they they have been making things very difficult uh for us uh with the data. Um, one of the things that we often do at conferences is we say, "Okay, Starship, if you can open it like this, what's the biggest thing we could fit inside of it?" Like, what's the biggest what's the biggest thing that we dare? Um, so it is a little bit of a field of dreams where it's the if you build it, they will come. Um, so I've seen proposals for 32, 64, and even 100 meter space telescopes um to unfold from that. So, if you can imagine like an entire uh football field or what us Americans would call soccer field um in diameter uh se segmented mirror which would be absurd um with that um also be [snorts] >> yeah pretty much um and uh to kind of talk about why you would want to put a a telescope on the far side of the moon. um that would work really well for radio uh specifically radio because the moon would block all the radio for you. Any interference from the other any interference from a 180°ree zone would not be present. Um so you could set that up uh and actually um do ra some of the best radio simply because it would be the quietest place you could put one. Um and actually that has been studied. Uh NASA has has done advanced studies for things like that where they would actually take um a like mesh structure and they would find uh sort of like an Aerosibo uh radio telescope where there would be a crater maybe a couple kilometers across and they would stretch out the mesh so that it would make a parabolic reflector and and put it down in that crater and aim it that way. So um which would be amazing. I would love that. So >> all right I think like you know actually I want to end hang on did I uh I want to end on this question and this is from John M. Anderson in the chat room which is Jared what is your dream space telescope the specs and positions in space. What you know what you have unlimited budget you have an unlimited budget. You can go anywhere. You can do anything. What are you building, Jared? >> Do I have Am I limited to just one thing or can I do two things? >> Oh, you know, yeah, let's do two things. Yeah. Yeah, you you get two rocks. >> Okay. Okay. Um Well, I if I could do with both of them. Um I would love to do a uh like a laser interferometer space antenna mission. Um this is a mission that's actually been proposed. Uh there was a Pathfinder mission that was flown uh in the mid2010s that actually showed the technology that we have right now works. So we could do it. We just have to build it. Um and that would basically be a interferometer, which if you don't know what an interferometer is, it's a whole bunch of small telescopes that you put in a very specific position. Then you use uh systems to combine the light from all of them and it ends up uh you crunch the numbers. You do some real algorithmic like hardcore compute. Um and from that all these little small telescopes, you'll get the an equivalent resolution of a telescope as big as the farthest segment away from them. Um, so, uh, in Los Angeles there's a here in the LA area up at Mount Wilson, there's a telescope array called the Shara array, which is an infrared telescope that they've pioneered that at um, and they still use it today for the University of Georgia. And, uh, they have a uh, six onemeter telescopes, but they're spaced out enough that they can give you the resolution of a 200 meter telescope, which is just like ridiculous. uh like literally able to see star spots on other stars. So [laughter] like wow. Um I would love something like that except I want one uh one telescope here, [snorts] another telescope on the other 120 degrees on the other side of the earth's orbit and then another telescope 120 degrees on side of the other earth's orbit. That way uh we could have a telescope you know hundreds of millions of kilometers in size with resolution but that [gasps] that'd take a lot. Uh and then also uh one of the missions that was uh going to be flying from JPL before it was canceled which was uh terrestrial planet finder. They were actually going to fly multiple flagship class uh uh telescopes in formation. Um again doing interpherometry to try to actually directly image the surfaces of exoplanets. Um and they they did a lot of the great technology work for that and then the program just got cancelled and pulled up from under them because they said well in the future this will be too expensive. Right now it's not but in the future it's too expensive. So yeah it was a it was not a good wrapup u not a satisfying end for that program. So, I would love to get that program back. So, that's what I would do. >> I got I've got a dumb question. Um, our our solar system, all the planets are kind of arranged in a plane. >> Yeah. >> And all of our orbits kind of match that plane. We've done a couple of things where we go up and down and and in and out. Um is is there a lot to look at looking up relative or down relative as opposed to just out? >> Oh yeah. Um so uh so first of all that's a fantastic question because this is something that we have to think about as astronomers. Um which is that obviously if you're trying to look at faint stuff you don't want to be pointing near like Jupiter or Venus in the sky. Um, you want to have you want it to be as far away and as pristine and dark in the sky as you can get it. Um, but yeah, we do have to worry. Most of that comes from not necessarily the solar system, but actually the Milky Way. Um, the Milky Way is really tough to look through because there's not because of the stars, but because of the gas and the dust that's in the Milky Way. So that beautiful strip of the Milky Way that you see if you go out to you know very dark skies uh it's gorgeous but also trying to look at anything that's beyond that is extremely difficult. We have to go into the infrared or go into the X-ray or go into radio for that light to actually travel through uh the gas and dust. So we will often steer ourselves out of the plane of the Milky Way and look up or down simply because like there's just not much there. The Milky Way is very wide um but it's very very thin. So being able to look up and down through the extremely thin part of the Milky Way uh very helpful and that's that's what that's something that we actually do have to take into consideration when we're doing observations. Um it feels like every couple of years we announce that we found a new galaxy in our local group. like not a big one but um something small that we didn't see because all of a sudden, you know, we've got the ability to see just a little bit better through the Milky Way that blocks our view. Um so yeah, it's uh it is a consideration that we have to do >> every couple years. We also find water on the moon constantly things we keep finding over and over. >> Um >> it's just six months away. >> Yeah, Jerry, that was awesome. Thank you so much. Uh, you know, I I think we Well, first off, we need to give Ryan a chance to speak. Uh, cuz like he's been sitting there patiently. He even put stuff in the chat room that I promptly ignored. Uh, but like that that's pretty awesome. I'm really excited to see where the telescope goes. So, remind us when it comes online and like let's start shooting some of the pictures and and like doing story updates from that because I think it's going to be it's going to be pretty epic. Um, yeah, really excited to see where we go and like I'm really excited to see for the future of astronomy. uh because you know big bigger does actually equal better right now when it comes to capturing light and so the more we can do in space the more awesome this stuff is going to be um let's start talking about Europe if if we shall uh it sounds like and I don't know if I'm going to pronounce this correctly but I think it's is it is aerospace uh I I haven't been following them at all >> uh I haven't been following >> like like a >> ear Um I had been following them at all. Um and now apparently >> everybody who's watching in Germany is just turned off. [laughter] >> Yeah. Yeah. Who who like who are they and what happened here? Like like successful launch on their second attempt, right? Like what what happened? What are they doing? What are they making? >> Yeah. So they are a small launch uh kind of you know kind of rocket lab electron class uh vehicle which they have been working on in Germany. They are one of two companies uh which you may have heard of from Germany. The other being Rocket Factory Augsburg. Both in the Munich area. The reason it's called Ear Aerospace is because that's the name of a river that runs through the region. So they're named after after the after the river which is pretty cool. Uh RFA rocket factory Augsburg named after a kind of like a suburb near the area. So kind of both these companies working on the same thing named after geographical places around Munich which is quite the coincidence. Um, but they have been working on this vehicle for a while. You might remember they uh conducted their first launcher back in March or April March 2025. It was a long time ago now, [laughter] a little a little ways ago. And they were trying to get to orbit. Unfortunately, they barely cleared the the mountain in the background. Um, they suffered some issues with propulsion. Uh the vehicle started swaying back and forth and they triggered the flight termination system uh which cut off the engines and then it plummeted back to the sea below just a few meters away from their uh launch site which is kind of a little man-made peninsula which is uh uh just jutting out off of the island of Andoya in Norway. So this second flight cleared the tower, cleared the mountain, made it all the way through Max Q, supersonic stage separation. Second stage did everything it was meant to do and they delivered six payloads into orbit from the European continent. And that makes it the first ever launch of a European rocket from the actual continent itself proper because of course we have Europe Europe spaceport uh in uh uh French Gana but of course French Gana despite that being French territory is not in Europe. It is in geographically it is in South America. Politically it is in Europe. I know this is so easy to wrap your head around. Um but this is continentally geographically Europe proper. I know some people are like, well, Plazets is in Russia and they've been launching soy use from there for decades and that's technically in Europe. That doesn't count. I don't care. That doesn't count. Uh for for Europe proper, not Russia, European rocket from European continent, this is the first one to actually reach orbit. And that's uh very exciting because for some viewers in the US or China or India or Russia, oh launching your own rocket from your own country, uh from your own continent, like oh big deal. Like who cares? We we've never done that before. Like this may seem like really weird and like you guys are so behind, but like we've never done that before. This is a big deal. This has never happened before. We're f we're like it might just be one launch but like we are stepping up onto the same platform as everybody else. Like we are on the way there and that is an exciting thing to see because historically we've been you know I make fun of us all the time as well cuz we've been the laughingtock cuz we've been so behind. We've been nowhere near everybody else but finally it's like actually we're serious. We're actually it's actually happening. Like it's actually happening and that's the exciting thing. It's >> Oh, what what part of your little island did this happen from? >> This happened from Norway, which is a different I know this is difficult to comprehend because we have actually multiple countries which are different cultures. We speak different languages around >> states. >> Uh not really. Uh we actually so there's uh we have like uh French and Spanish and German, load lots of different languages as well. Uh so this is from Norway which is a different country uh which is you know different things um not actually in the EU but it is in Shenen. So uh again polit politics it's brilliant to get your head around. >> So not on your island >> not not on my island. No we have multiple islands. >> It's part of the Europe. It's all just Europe right. It's just part of Europe. They're allowed to be excited for Europe. Large Europe. Uh tell me a little bit about Spectrum. Like is it a reusable vehicle? I know you said it's a rocket lab like an Electron class rocket. Although it actually I believe it's more powerful than Electron, right? It's like three times the performance to LEO. It's it's got a good amount of payload capability. Uh but like what what else about the vehicle? Can they reuse it? Like what are they looking for in the future? >> Yeah. Well, I I compared it to Electron because it's similar words so easy. Similar proportions. I mean, uh, some of the nighttime photography, uh, this was a night launch, as we saw in the video. Some of the photography, I mean, if you looked at this thing, uh, like the shot of the engines, you'd be forgiven for thinking it was an Electron cuz it has nine engines on the first stage. Uh, but it is, uh, for the first time ever. This is a worldwide first, by the way. So, Europe W, European dominance in space has officially begun. Uh, this is a propane oxygen rocket. No other rocket in the history of the world has gone to orbit before using propane as a fuel. So, it's uh uh much more readily available than methane. Burns cleaner than kerosene. So, it's a a unique propellant in that regard. Nobody else has ever used it before. Um but yeah, like you said, Spectrum has some grunt. Uh of course, uh for this flight, uh only launching six payloads, but it can do multiple cubats. It can do smaller satellites that aren't cubats. In terms of the future progression for EAR, they haven't really said anything. You know, EA are they're kind of the the the easiest comparison I can give is they're kind they kind of behave like the Apple of the European spaceflight world. They're kind of they have the cool branding, they have the cool name, they have the cool rocket, but they don't really say much beyond that. So, these launch attempts are really the only times that we we get a lot of information out of the company. Um, but you know, you know, each company brands themselves and behaves differently. They're perfectly within their right to do so. uh and and uh you know distribute information in that way. So we don't really know what's coming up in the immediate future for ESA. They certainly haven't said uh anything if this is going to be a spectrum heavy or a spectrum 2 or a medium lift or a heavy lift. That's not really I wouldn't be surprised if that is in their road map, but they certainly have not communicated anything of the sort. >> What do we then I mean if we don't really know their their plans, what can we expect their impact on the industry to be? um like like are they going to go headto-head with Electron? Are they like how are they going to compete in a a pretty crowded market? >> Well, it is crowded. you you you say it's crowded and yes there are plenty of other launch providers coming online but the benefit here is that not only is this great publicity because they're the first from Europe to do it from Europe uh you know based in Europe to launch from Europe um that is going to give them a a bit of a boost and they already have a line of contracts lined up for the for the forthcoming missions they've been signing contracts left right and center and being you know launching uh this is a bit this is a big deal for for for space independence space access independence because you know for your big satellites we're still going to have to launch them on an Ariana watch them on on a Falcon or or another US rocket but for your smaller payloads if you want to go into polar you want to go into suns synchronous which is you know key for earth observation Europe can do that by themselves now on the continent like that's that's going to be a big pull a big driving factor for these European launches or at least that is the thinking you know yes there are other launch providers you could launch on electron electron has launched numerous European payloads uh and they're very good at it, but it's not launching from Europe. It launches from New Zealand or from Wallops, right? So, you still have to go abroad on the other side of the world quite literally to do these things. If Europe can do it by themselves, I mean, that kind of gives it a a a geopolitical pull advantage over other launch providers worldwide, if that makes sense. >> You know, kind of moving along with other stuff that's going on in Europe because you gave me a whole bunch of things. You're like Europe is dominating and I think >> we had a brilliant week. >> I think I said Europe space is less lame is the name of the block. [laughter] That in the rundown. Uh but uh the UK's announced $10 billion investment in space like what kind of investment? What does that mean? Is it military space? Is it like uh is it you know like new space startups? What are they investing in? So it's kind of a mix of everything combined, combobulated together adds up to um about 10 billion just about $7.9 billion pounds. That number is smaller because the pound is the superior currency and is valued higher. Um so there are some investments into numerous things. There are some defense things in there. There's also some investments uh into the European Space Agency itself. For example, the European Launcher Challenge um of which ESAR is a member. Uh but it's an interesting thing. It's kind of like uh ISA sits in the middle with the European Launcher Challenge and they have different launch providers uh ESAR, Rocket Factory, Augsburg, PLLD Space um and a few others as well. And so all of the member states, the member countries fund into issa, but they specifically request that their money go into the launch providers from their own countries, if that makes sense. So they don't directly fund the launch providers, they fund issa and then they request very nicely that that money goes to the launch providers from their own country. So for example, Spain did a big investment into PLLD space through the European Space Agency. Germany has done the same with RFA and EAR through the European Space Agency. Interestingly, the UK, I don't want to say we've admitted defeat, but our two launch providers, Orbeex and Skyura, one of them's gone bust and the other one isn't launching anytime soon. So the UK government has gone all right the Germans have got the launch they've got the launch vehicles let's put more investment into the German launch vehicles. So uh money has been going towards rocket factory augsburg who plan to launch from the Saxavord spaceport in Scotland. That's why that investment has taken that route that way and there's also been an additional 30 million pound investment into the Saxavord spaceport from the UK government which has been matched by a private company. So that's £60 million in total to the spaceport and they're going to be using that to help develop two more launch pads and another hanger which will give them three launch pads and two integration hangers to hopefully entice more launches from there soon. They're currently licensed to do 30 launches per year. So that 7.9 billion pounds has been put into it's kind of been distributed everywhere and the government have put it into a nice PDF for us to read to make everything seem concise and you know everything's wonderful. But yeah, I mean it's exciting because like Like I've been saying on this show for god knows how many years, we are the only country in the history of the world to achieve orbital launch capability after we canled it. We cancelled Black Arrow and then we achieved orbital launch capability cuz the rocket's in Australia anyways. It won't cost us anymore to let's just launch it for for the fun of it, right? Nobody else has done that. Our space program is less sophisticated than North Korea's, right? We are we have done ourselves no favor over the past 60 years. And finally, we're taking things slightly more seriously, and that makes me very excited. >> Yeah, I'm clearly excited. >> Sorry. Um, >> we can pretend like that never happened. Virgin who? >> Yeah. >> Yeah. Thanks. >> Uh, [laughter] you know, um, I I I even worded it this way in the question, but as much guff as I give European space attempts, cuz like, man, it is humorous to watch sometimes. And like Ryan gets so excited and he's like this is going to be amazing and then like it falls flat. So like the these are really great successes kind of back toback like truly congrat I want to make fun of you but actually truly congratulations. You you should you guys should be proud that it is a huge undertaking especially you get a successful flight on the second attempt like and on uh what was it propane and locks up >> pox. >> Yeah. So we we have kerolocks and methyloxs. Now we have propallocks. >> Propelocks pox propolocks >> propane and propane accessories. [laughter] >> Um but in addition to all of this uh you know Aron Spas >> the W's don't stop coming. >> Yeah. Another win. Arian Spas is going to have to bail out Amazon, right? like uh Amazon Leo cuz they're not able to la I don't know if they really want to launch on SpaceX/ there's not a lot of manifest slabs open. Um they can't launch on New Glenn right now. So um like Aron 6, right? I they Yep. Amazon Leo have signed a an additional I don't know if it casts as an additional contract or like they've added more to the original contract but nonetheless they've added additional launches with Aron 6 on top of the launches they've already uh done so far they've done three launches um uh the most recent launch on Aron 6 used the new upgraded P160C solids uh which allowed them to add four more satellites so they're now doing 36 LEO satellites per launch on Aron 6. They're going to be doing multiple of those per year. Um I believe this contract officially starts in uh 2029 I think. So they are you know Amazon Leo was looking to the future of you know consistent reliable access to space on on Arion 6. And out of the four launch vehicles that Amazon Leo uh is uh contracted with you know they have Falcon 9 which they didn't want to be with in the first place. The only reason that Amazon Leo satellites launched on Falcon 9 and have more contracts on Falcon 9 is because I think it was like a pension group, a pension fund sued Amazon because they like they didn't choose SpaceX when they first divvied out their launch contracts. They chose Vulcan with ULA. They chose New Glenn with Blue Origin also under the Jeff Bezos umbrella and Arion 6 and Aron Space of course. But they didn't pick Falcon. So, this pension fund sued Amazon was like, "Hey, Falcon and SpaceX are the most reliable launch vehicle in the world. Why on earth didn't you give them a contract?" Uh, so then Amazon was like, "Okay, we'll give them a contract." So, they did three Falcon launches with SpaceX uh last year, which is kind of funny, but they've I think they've got a contract for 10 more now because Vulcan, where's Vulcan? Right. They keep blowing up their SRBs. Their SRBs keep falling apart. New Glenn, they keep blowing up their rockets. They blew up the they blew up the rocket and their launch pad and they're fighting to get back to flight this year. So out of the four rockets, they don't really want to launch on Falcon because it's owned by Jeff Bezos's biggest competitor, Aron 6 is the only one that's left. So Arion 6, you know, fantastic rocket. Nobody ever doubted it. Everybody loves Aron 6. Um is is sweeping in at the 11th hour and scooping up all of these beautiful contracts. >> Yeah, actually. So Aron 6 I I kind of foo away, right? because it's not reusable at [laughter] all. It's like an old school legacy rocket of people who just like I don't know it's it's like a bunch of it's just the old way of thinking, right? So like is there anything new happening in the Aron program? Like are they working on reusability? Are they going to try to compete with Starship or anything? Or are they just going to kind of grab these Amazon LEO contracts while they can and then once New Glenn comes online, once all of these other rockets come online that are reusable, they'll just fade into nothingness. Well, we actually did get some news on that in the last few weeks. So, the current generation of Arion 6 with the P160C solids, that's called the block two generation. Uh, Arion 6, uh, the next generation is the block 3 generation. And to work towards that, uh, Arion Space have actually done, and you know, European Space Agency, they actually made a big announcement in the last few weeks. They've cancelled the block 3 generation. So the current variant of Arion 6 is going to be [laughter] the same version of Arion 6 that flies forever. Um but the the reason for that could be because they've held their hands up and gone actually all these other smaller companies, commercial companies are going to be able to get us cheaper access to space in the future because we have rocket factory Augsburg who have plans for uh uh upgrading their vehicle to launch more mass into space. We have PLLD space who is going to be uh they recently this week announced their Mura 9 which is going to be an intermittent step between their Mura 5 small sack launch vehicle and their Mura next uh heavy and super heavy lift launch vehicle. So they're kind of speeding up their their process towards a medium lift launch vehicle. And of course Arion Group who owns Arion Space also owns Maya Space and they have their launch vehicle Maya which is going to be a medium lift partially reusable launch vehicle. So, this is pure speculation, but this could be a case of let's just leave Aron 6 alone. It's not the future. We have other launch vehicles coming online. Let's keep Arion 6 going for the time being and transition when those other launch vehicles are ready because they're going to be cheaper than Aron 6 ever could be. >> Well, it's exciting to see Europe actually in the running at this point, right? Like, and actually like doing some cool things and making some stuff actually happen and seeing some real successes. Not just talking about things, but actually executing. Like it's it's easy to say something's going to happen. It's hard to actually make it happen. So, you know, Ryan, I want to give you crap, but like truly congratulations. Welcome. Welcome to the aerospace game. You guys finally made it. You made it. Okay, maybe I'll give you a little bit. >> Yeah, only 60 70 years too late. [laughter] >> Um, all right. Um, an hour and 33 minutes into the show. Let's go to our first trivia question. [laughter] Uh, which Oh. Oh, we're running long on this one. Uh, yeah. Which one do you want to do first, Ryan? Oh, you got it going. All right, >> I'm going to do this one. Uh, go live. There we go. Okay, so this is a brilliant question. Um, completely unbiased question. Which of these vehicles has not been grounded in 2026? Is it Falcon 9, Vulcan, Nugen, or Arion 6? [laughter] That's great. Oh boy. Oh man. Oh, chat room. Oh, no. You can't eat that. That's not for you. >> This one's tffy. >> No, it's not. Well, Jamie has already gone with Aran 6, so that answer is locked in. >> Locked in. >> Dutter, which one do you think has not been grounded in 2026? Is it the most reliable launch vehicle the world has ever seen, the Falcon 9 or Aron 6? >> Did we lose data? >> Who are you asking? >> Oh, data. >> I was asking you. Oh, Arion 6. >> Uh, Jared, what do you think? >> I'm going to go with Atlas 5. Yeah, Aron 6. I'm sorry. [laughter] Arion 6. So, sorry about that. Sorry everyone. >> Chat room decisively going for for Arian. You know, this is almost like when they print more money to try and boost the economy, but it just leads to inflation because of course everybody has gotten the correct answer. It is indeed Arion 6. So, well done. Everybody gets a point. Um, but it doesn't actually net you anything cuz you all get one point. >> Yeah. All right. Okay. Let's move on to uh questions from this uh last week's show. Um, starting with um uh I'll say forward 79. I think it's Fwood, but uh says uh sorry Jamie had to pause there to write it, but uh I also uh contributed a super chat I believe. Oh, hang on. This didn't uh let's try this again. Boop. There we go. Um, I disagree on one point. NASA Space Flight is good at what they do, but nope. I still prefer official streams of NASA, SpaceX, Blue Origin, issa over them for the simple reason that they tend to talk over good stuff. So, they're great, but after the fact commentators, at least for me. Um, yeah. And so, I think uh this goes towards the cool thing, and I'll I kind of open this up to the group. Um, the neat thing is we're in an era where you can pick how you want to watch your rocket launches, right? 10, 15 years ago, you couldn't really do that. You had the official launch coverage from the official provider, >> which was potato. >> Which was potato. Yeah. All right. I have a I have a puppy that's aggravated here. So, we're going to All right. Come here. Come here. Which was potato. Yeah. Here we go. Little little puppy saying hi. She's She just woke up from her nap. which was potato. >> Oh, look at that piece of fried chicken. >> You had a little bit like you might have like some of the small streamers like us like Space Vidcast um or I mean at the at that time NASA Spaceflight wasn't even streaming um or I can't even imagine. I don't even know who else was doing it and maybe you could see it on TV and that was it. Whereas now you've got NASA spaceflight, you've got the launchpad network, you've got the official launch broadcast, you've got I mean pick your poison, you've got a crypto scam, you can watch any one of those things. [laughter] And and I think and what what I what I like about having like a NASA spaceflight is yeah it might not be your cup of tea but they definitely are there for people especially people who are just getting into aerospace and don't necessarily understand the terminology or want the ad the star the Starlink ad from SpaceX you know so like you've got options which I think is pretty cool. Uh what what do you guys what are your favorite ways to watch rocket launches? And Donna, my question to you is what's your favorite way to watch a Rocket Lab rocket launch? >> Uh blank screen. [laughter] >> Well, like how do you guys watch >> I I like I I like the the the engineering feeds because it gives you an insight as to what's going on, what what issues they're dealing with, how they're how they're addressing them, etc. Um, I I think launches kind of get boring when nothing exciting happens and a lot of the exciting stuff happens behind the scenes and the companies are very uh protective of what they tell you about that. So, it's kind of interesting to kind of play the the guessing game of of what you can figure out from uh com the engineering comps. I mean, but that is kind of fun because NASA Spaceflight will I mean, they're playing a guessing game, too, but they're also going to be like, uh, I mean, we think it's this and it's usually a really good educated guess. So, I en like they they are the nerdiest hardcore nerds of nerds. >> Like, they go they know the bolt numbers going on the rockets. That's crazy. >> Yeah. I I'm not a huge fan of the of the fluff and the the feel-good aspects of, you know, the the produced uh telecast. Um it it just it's it's not for me. I'm glad it exists. I think there's an audience, a huge audience for it. Um but it's I I'm I'm I'm past that. I'm beyond that. I know how rockets work. I know what deal what issues they deal with and I know how to interpret from what they're saying that that something's wrong or that they're going to have a delay or something like that. And I I enjoy that more. >> Jared, how about you? What's your favorite way to watch a broadcast? >> Uh, I usually will just grab a stream uh to watch. You know, there's there's quirks and features of of everything. Um, but I I usually will grab NASA Space Flight as my my group to watch. Uh, it just seems competent and and excited about it, too. Um, I like I like my folks to be excited. Um, but not in that like corporate speak excited, which is why I often don't watch the NASA streams. Every time I watch a NASA stream, I'm just like, "Wow, this is uh this is my local nightly news." Like they're even doing the local nightly news voice um on here. So, um, and then just like some of them it just doesn't like like I just don't have access to it anymore. So like I I I'm not on Twitter anymore. So I I have to watch other places if I want to catch a SpaceX launch. So um yeah, so NASA Spaceflight does it for me. And it's that it's that it's really the enthusiasm that I love that's going on there. It helps me catch the fire as well. It is a bunch of >> aerospace. There's a lot of times when the the third parties do better explaining things than the the hosts who are usually not engineers. >> Uh well, I I'll say at SpaceX the hosts are generally engineers. Um but everything's very very scripted, right? So they're not really allowed to break from the script. And I think that's true of a lot of rocket companies. They're so worried about what words are going to be used and how they're going to be interpreted that everything is scripted and NASA spaceflight is what's the opposite of scripted off the cuff, right? >> Not scripted. >> Yeah, thanks Ryan. Um, uh, from the chat room, Kit >> one notch shy of tomorrow. >> From the chat room, kit 44 KT says, "NASA space flight, but please don't talk between T0 and main engine cutoff unless it's unless it's significant." I don't know. I mean, again, if >> you see the benefit with that is what I will say is if you're going to ask me what my favorite launch stream is, I mean, what am I going to say? Of course, it's the Elon crypto scams. But, um, wi with NSF, the the the thing that we provide is like on our proper launch streams, right? We do shut up for the first 60 seconds of of flight. So, between launch and between the first 60 seconds, we don't say anything. So, you can listen to the rumble cuz we want to listen to the rumble, too. That's the reason why you tune in for a rocket launch stream. But for launches from Space Coast or Starbase, we have Space Coast Live and Starbase Live, which are just they are it's just the raw audio off the cameras, right? So, if you just want to listen to the ambient noises from the cameras, then you don't have to worry about us talking over the the launches cuz we're never going to talk on those streams, right? Those are 24/7 just dedicated to the cameras. So, if you want commentaryless, you can just put up the our dedicated stream, mute it, open up Space Coast Live, and you get the sounds from wherever the camera may be, >> which is another really cool thing that NASA Spaceflight does is they've got the multi- view is they've got the the raw feeds from all of the pad cameras. So, if you want to just inject the launch straight into your vein with no commentary, you can do that, which is not, by the way, kudos to NASA Spaceflight for that and anyone doing that. There there are a couple different places you can get that. But like that's hard to do and hard to maintain. You don't just do that, right? Like it's pretty cool. It's pretty epic. Um yeah, like like they're doing such a great job. Uh John M. Emer Anderson's in the chat room says, "Do watches telemetry streams during launches." You know, that is one thing that I wish I wish launch providers would provide is like just um just a graphical user interface of like just what the rocket's doing, right? Uh there was something really cool that was built and I don't remember who built it. I'll have to go look it up and I'll have to post it somewhere. But during Artemis 2, there was basically um there was a gooey that was built by a fan and it was mindboggling. It was so incredible. It was so incredible. I'd love to see that for all of the launches, but the launch providers just don't release that information. Although, there were some people uh looking into like the map for the um Starship booster landing and pulling the telemetry out of the map and repurposing that. So, I thought that was pretty clever. So, maybe we'll start to see that more and more. But, yeah, I would love maybe like the space devs or someone to create like an API publishing endpoint just for vehicle telemetry that the launch providers can send, you know, non-critical telemetry to. I think that'd be I think that'd be super super cool. Um uh and then uh Ryan, how about you? Where I I can only fathom a guess. Where do you watch your launches from? Um I mean I Who knows? It's literally uh impossible impossible to guess. Um yeah. I mean, who knows, honestly. Like absolutely. I mean, it it could be anyone. It could lally be anyone. could be anyone. I will say I enjoy watching you on NASA spaceflight doing the weather updates and that's another thing I really appreciate. Although I'd love to see you guys do a space weather update as well because space weather does impact launches and like doing like showing what the Earth is, I'm sorry, showing what the sun is doing and uh impact to atmosphere and how it could expand and contract. Uh that would be a really really cool update to add to NASA space flight. And if you have done it, I just haven't seen it. But like yeah, do as I say. Okay. >> Uh, moving on. Uh, this comes from, uh, Planet Corona Virus. So, I mean, that happened not that long ago. Says, uh, you have a quote control room unquote without a studio. Make that make sense. So, I mean, my living room is my studio. This is not a green screen. This is actually my legitimate studio. And we do we do actually have a control room. Um, and and in fact, this is the first week that we've got a bridge cam available to us. And so we can and now I'm I'm putting Travis on the spot, but now we can see Travis. Check it out. Wave to the camera. There you go. So like there's a legitimate control room here. Go back to your camera for a second. There's a legitimate like there's a whole bunch of gear that runs this show. We try to Yeah. Yeah. Vanna White that thing from >> I love how the control panel almost fits on the table but just slightly doesn't. >> Yeah, it really >> Well, in that way it does. It does fit on the table. It's just that those screens also take up room on the table. So like if I move the screens off the table, which is part of the plan. Um we'll talk about this in after dark. Um talking about moving the control room and everything else to a new location. Um and actually building a real studio. But yeah, I mean like there can be a control room and then you know the living room can be my studio. And then dada you're in like are you in your garage? Where are you? >> Are you in my office a guest room? An office? Yeah. It's It's a awkward weird weird shaped small room and it's I've strategically hid all the mess over on this side. >> Uh Jared is in a bedroom I believe and he kept getting so much flack over his bed because his dog uh was on his bed that he's like fine and did the blur camera feature. Yep. Yep. Which makes >> she's on my bed right now and everyone's like make up your bed. And I'm like no she's she's precious and she wants to nap on my bed. I'm not making up my bed because of that. Like maybe you all should get a heart instead of the the the cold, dead, empty void that you have. Leave the leave the empty cold void for space and leave me and my dog alone. I'm so Did you wake up? I'm sorry, honey. I'm sorry. I was I was on the internet defending your honor. [laughter] So, look at look at what you made me do, internet. She woke up >> and she's with me with contempt. So >> my favorite part is that blur filter doesn't quite know what to do with your microphone. So your microphone phases in and out of existence. [laughter] >> Um and actually and uh Ryan, you've actually you actually you're you're in a bedroom set, right? like you're in your room and you've got like that drapey thing and it's it's hilarious watching you set up because you've got like you are perfectly framed right now so that we don't see any of the stuff to the left or right of you which is just out of frame. So it looks like you're in this really cool like universe but reality is you have no room to move forward, backward, left or right. That's your entire frame that you can go into it. It's all TV magic. It's all TV magic. So we make what we've got. Yeah, it works. like we we make >> yeah sometimes there's comments uh on tomorrow and on NSF which is like why are you so close to your backdrop like uh it's so unprofessional we can see the shadows and it's like I I [laughter] what do you want me to do I don't have any more room you want me to sit here there's no shadows now >> yeah there's lit and you can't get a wider lens because as soon as you go wider you're showing all the stuff to the side so like that's it that's all you can Um, >> oh, look at that. >> What do we What are we looking Why is this Oh, is this live? >> Yep. >> Yeah, there's a launch right now. >> This is very cool. Look at that. >> I'm actually watching the the NSF stream if you're if you're interested. >> Yeah, but they this is where the the on screen we went so long that that the uh I I do love, as much as I hate these graphics, I do love the the engine status. um on the right hand side. And did they add G-forces finally? Like being able to get that back in there. Yeah. Like having those widgets I think is fantastic. They're really really pretty. I just wish I just wish it wasn't. I want the orbital timeline, but that won't that won't happen. Do you have Oh, no. We I didn't route audio. Oh, did I route audio? I didn't route audio in. Did I? Yeah. >> That was a mosquito that just walked across the lens. He said he's in for the ride of his life. >> Oh yeah. >> You know what he said? [screaming] >> What the hell's going on out here right now? It's really loud. It's getting cold. There's a lot of stuff going. Who in hell? What? I'm stuck. Hey, where where's Greg at? That's my other gripe with this is that the graphics are so unbalanced. You have to drop those chicklets on the top left and right to like describe what's going on. There's so much room at the bottom. That's whatever. Whatever. It's personal opinion. There's no right answer. >> I think this view is now so wide that we can see you in the shot. Jamie, >> there I am. >> Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. >> Absolutely. Although uh I will say what an incredible camera like the team like wow that view. It looks fantastic. What a clean down link. That GoPro is incredible. >> Oh, I hate you so much, Jared. I hate you so [laughter] much. >> I'll get um I'll get audio going um for the next one cuz like Yeah, there's a dead pixel in the Well, now there Oh. Oh, we're we're roll the vehicle. Oh, down link. Oh, down link. There we go. Now, was that X that was having issues or was that the vehicle down link? We'll never know. All right, we'll wait until uh stage set and then we'll uh we'll keep going with the show. Speaking of, here we go. And and stay boop. [laughter] >> Is that the sound it makes in your mind? >> Boop. It does. >> Doesn't it go boop? I I made the boop note. You wait. Jared said pop. I said boop. I did not say pop. I said [laughter] >> I think it would be more of a clunk. >> All right. I think it goes [laughter] back. The bug's back. He's coming home. >> That's a frozen dead bug is what that was. [laughter] >> All right. The other thing that drives me crazy is that Oh, that poor bug. [laughter] >> [laughter] >> Oh my goodness. >> Oh my god. >> Back to the booster cam. Back to the booster cam. [laughter] >> Oh my gosh. What in the world? Oh. Oh, fair sap. Oh, that's a different view. >> That's like blooper reels from a of a bad like 2001 spoof or something. >> All right. All right. Let's get back to the show. I'm sure this I'm sure this flight will be fine. That was hilarious. That was That was wild. I'm glad we uh glad we brought it up. >> I'll keep everyone updated on the bug. >> Thanks. Thanks. That'd be great. It would be cool to get isolated down link feeds, you know, sanitized from the system. Um but like yeah, that's also a new feature that we can do. So we can show the control room and we can show that was uh that was uh the bridge computer that was doing that. So thank you very much for making that happen, Travis. Uh, next up, this is from uh, Lex Lexasy 2008. It says, "I disagree about Blue Origin. They don't have to move at the speed of anything because they are currently not competing with anyone." I I think I tend to agree like they they are not competing with anyone, which I think is part of the problem. SpaceX just stopped Starlink flights and stopped ride shares. That's not true. They stopped Starlink on Falcon 9. They did not stop Starlink flights. SpaceX is moving some of this stuff to Starship, which is decades out. I if by decade you mean like this week maybe the cape is quiet af right now. Vulcan is it own class. Blues has nothing to worry about. I you know I I I'm not sure I agree. Um I I don't think I mean Starship might be decades out to fully realize thousands of flights per year and like point-to-point human flights. But and by the way, there's a there was another section, but I I think Starship is way closer than people give it credit for this week potentially or next week. Flight 14, it reaches orbit and then and it will be sending Starlink uh satellites like actual operational Starlink satellites up. So, it's not decades out. It's literally like a week out from sending Starlink up. What do you guys think? Is uh is is Blue Does Blue Origin have anything to worry about? Are they I mean, they are kind of in a league of their own. They're not they're they are not competing with SpaceX cuz Jeff Jeffrey Bezos is just like yolo I'll write a check right so they don't care but I think that's part of the problem too right because they know they've got funding they don't there's no sense of urgency for anything >> right >> well I mean if SpaceX SpaceX is getting rid of Falcon 9 as they're so confidently saying that they are who who's going to step in and take over in that area oh blue origin >> is that science or hubris I I mean they're getting rid of Falcon 9, but they're waiting >> they're waiting for Starship to come online, right? And like it's pretty close here. >> Does everyone Am I the only one who thinks Starship is pretty close? I feel like it's pretty close, >> right? But it's pretty close to delivering Starlink to orbit, Starlink to, you know, and and other Starlink sized accessories. You know, it's the the Starship that has been designed is a a a is a Starlink launching Starship. It doesn't launch anything else. You know, they they have a tanker variant yet. They just have one variant of Starship which is designed to launch Starlink. So, wow. SpaceX Wow. SpaceX has a a launch vehicle which can do 100 tons to low Earth orbit. That's incredible. You can only launch Starlink on it. How does that help anyone? Doesn't help anyone apart from themselves, right? So if we talk about total launch capacity into orbit, right, the total launch capacity might be incredibly, you know, expanded by the by the arrival of Starship on the scene, but for the foreseeable future, that additional capacity is going to be exclusively reserved to SpaceX and any customers who want to design a satellite that is the exact same size as a Starink V3 satellite. So, in terms of actual launch capacity, which can be sold to other people, if you want to launch the big communication satellites, if you want to launch science payloads, anything like that, you're going to need a big rocket with a big fairing. And right now, New Glenn 7 by two, let alone 9x4, the next big variant, is the largest fairing available on the market in terms of payload, you know, volume capacity. >> But how how hard is building a chomper? Like, cuz I assume they're going to want a reusable fairing, right? So I assume they would do like a rocket like rocket lab chomper, right? Cuz cuz like it would it would be silly to build this fully reusable launch ar launch architecture and be like ah throw the fairings away. That doesn't make sense. They don't even throw their fairings away now, right? So although maybe they'll they'll recapture them. Uh no, they're going for fully reusable. So maybe a chomper. How hard is it to build a chopper on top of that thing? Right. Once they've got a working vehicle and they got the propulsion system working, is a fairing really that hard? I mean they make more money launching Starink satellites than than customer payloads. Like it is it is financially better for them to exclusively launch Starlinks than launch customer payloads. So why would they do the R&D on a payload bay door to deploy customer payloads which they'll just make more money launching the Starling satellites anyways? >> That market's going to saturate at some point. >> Yeah. Do DoD missions will be fin one DOD mission will pay for all of the R&D on that, right? or DO or whatever we're calling it this week. >> Yeah. But that that the the Starlink market will also saturate. There will be a point at which you don't need that many satellites to be put into orbit >> maybe. I mean they >> so then they will move on to Star Mind which they're going to launch a million of >> I Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean there's >> just just build a just build a dome around the Earth already. Like [laughter] what the what is why >> AI? That's why. All right. Finally, uh, from Adakland 5656 says, um, pretty sure SpaceX's Louisiana plans dwarf anything China is even considering. 30 launches a day is 10,000 launches a year. Let's say SpaceX allocates half of that to the moon and Mars to build their colonies. Assuming it takes 10 tanker flights to send a ship to Mars and 15 to send one to the moon, that would mean SpaceX could send 500 V3 Starships to Mars during a year with the Martian transfer window and 300 to the moon in a year without one. China ain't matching that, nor is anyone else anytime soon if they [snorts] can pull it off. Obviously, that comment barely fit on the screen. That's the maximum character count for the comments to fit on the screen. Uh yeah, I mean uh for those who missed it, like SpaceX announced Louis plans to open up more uh launch sites in Louisiana and um I would fathom a guess that they're not going to stop there, right? Like they are they're betting everything on Starship and they're going to move with is I mean they're going to move with speed to get Starship online. So I think you can start to see launch sites all around I mean maybe around the world. I don't know. It gets tricky with it ear, but like either you're going to see a lot more launch sites uh happening. >> I mean, >> I've got a great location for a Starship launch site. >> And where's that Ryan? Is it where and where in the EU is it? >> Um, it's not in the EU. It's in Scotland. It's Saxavore. That'd be a great Starship launch site. >> SSO Polar. You want to launch your Star Mind AI satellites into Sunsynchronous? Come to Scotland. I'm just saying, >> you know, they I they might, right? like if they want to get I mean there are big big plans for Starship. So you know maybe they will maybe they'll bring back well maybe not but maybe they'll bring back the um uh what was that the oil rigs maybe maybe that wasn't a great idea but something like that right like you know I I can see launch sites all over the place >> you got plenty of those around Scotland. [laughter] All right, let's uh let's finish this thing up with another another trivia question, then get out of our um our 1hour show turned into two hours, so let's finish up with one more trivia question, then get out of here, shall we? I'll hit the buttons. Yeah. Uh start. There we go. Go live. Go live. Tada. How many days were between Spectrum's first and second flights? Was it 423 days? 572 days, uh, 825 days, or 524 days. >> I'm going to say 423. 572 just seems like too much cuz it was like 2025 and 2026. My best board's updating, so I'm going to lock in I'm going to lock in 423. [music] No one in the chat room is picking 423 but me. Oops. 423. I'm guessing chat room. So, don't just go with my answer cuz I'm saying it. >> We have uh uh two people who have picked 423 in chat room. >> Yeah, >> I am I'm going against the chat room. >> Okay, Jared, what do you think? >> I'm going to go with 423. >> Roll with Jamie this week. >> Interesting. Dutter >> $1. Bob >> $1. [laughter] >> Uh I think 572. >> Okay. Chat room also going with 572. >> That is cheating by using [laughter] answer because we all know the chat room cheats. But yep. Continue. >> Uh and the brilliant thing is this is the complete inverse to the previous question. Nobody's gotten it right. So that means that everybody gets one point and nobody and everybody gets zero points. So, nobody's actually, you know, gained an advantage on this show, which is very interesting. The correct answer is D. 524 days from March 2025 to September 2026. >> Also, Ryan, I I have a bone pick with you. Why did you not do that numerically up? You went 423, 572, uh, what is that? 800 something 825. mind games to get in your mind and make you pick an answer. >> Thanks. That's great. Thanks. Fantastic. >> And it worked. >> It did work. All right. Uh that is our exceptionally long show. I hope you guys had a fun time this week. Uh I I know I did. And uh I appreciate you uh hanging out with us. And I also appreciate all of the crew of tomorrow who helped to make this episode happen and every episode. Uh and these are people their names on the screen who contribute week after week, month after month, year after year financially to the show. You can also contribute by going to youtube.comtmro/join um or okay or uh heading to um patreon.com/tmrro. Uh in addition if you don't want to contribute financially do the do all the algorithm things. 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So just go back and and double check and make sure you're subscribed and make sure your notifications are on so that you get alerted to when our live shows are going and you can get your comments on the show. And of course if you miss it live, we'll add your comments in. We'll add the uh the top four or five comments in from next week's show. On that note, thank you everyone so much for watching and we will see you next week. [music]