This Week in Space 143: King Starship

Summary

Summary of "This Week in Space 143: King Starship"

Release Date: January 10, 2025

Hosts:

• Rod Pyle – Editor-in-Chief, Badass Magazine
• Tarek Malik – Editor-in-Chief, Space.com

Guest:

• Leonard David – Renowned Space Reporter

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Introduction

In the 143rd episode of This Week in Space, titled "King Starship", hosts Rod Pyle and Tarek Malik delve deep into the latest developments surrounding SpaceX's Starship program. Joined by esteemed space reporter Leonard David, the discussion navigates through critical updates on NASA's Mars Sample Return mission, the impact of wildfires on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the broader implications for the future of space exploration.

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Wildfires and JPL Update

The episode kicks off with an update on the devastating wildfires affecting the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles. Rod Pyle shares his personal experience with the poor air quality, stating:

Rod Pyle [00:48]: "The fires are every bit as bad or worse than you've heard."

Tarek Malik adds details about the impact on the community and JPL:

Tarek Malik [01:17]: "Leonard Leschen, the director there, said that JPL is untouched by fire because of all of the first responders that have been working in the area."

Despite the community's devastation, the JPL facilities remain unharmed, allowing crucial space missions to continue without interruption.

---

Mars Sample Return Program

A significant portion of the discussion centers on NASA's Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission. Tarek Malik highlights the program's financial revisions:

Tarek Malik [07:33]: "They had a big report. They said it was going to cost what, $11 billion which was too much."

The original plan's cost has been slashed to under $8 billion, with NASA considering two primary options: a JPL-driven approach utilizing Sky Crane technology or embracing commercial missions. Rod Pyle sarcastically remarks on the budget presentation:

Rod Pyle [10:11]: "The actual numbers given from JPL to NASA headquarters for this was a range from 6.5 to 11 billion on the high end, which was not how it was represented at the press conference."

Leonard David expresses skepticism about NASA's ability to meet the ambitious timelines and the program's future under the new administration.

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SpaceX's Starship Developments

The heart of the episode revolves around SpaceX's Starship program. With anticipation building for the upcoming Test Flight 7, Tarek Malik outlines SpaceX's aggressive launch schedule:

Tarek Malik [13:46]: "This is the year that they plan to really ramp up their test flights. Maybe up to 25 launches this year."

Leonard David emphasizes the significance of on-orbit refueling:

Leonard David [15:24]: "Refueling in orbit is really tricky... the scale of what SpaceX wants to do there is going to be a turning point."

Rod Pyle reflects on the robustness of JPL's facilities, speculating on their resilience against fires due to their construction:

Rod Pyle [06:22]: "Everything else is either steel or big thick cement like nuclear proof bunkers."

The discussion also touches upon the design iterations of Starship, with Tarek Malik explaining the latest upgrades:

Tarek Malik [35:57]: "They have a new testing, new heat shield... they're really trying to learn as they fly."

---

NASA's Infrastructure Report

Leonard David brings attention to a concerning report on NASA's infrastructure:

Leonard David [56:06]: "The infrastructure at NASA is getting too old. A lot of problems. Things are taped together."

This "NASA at the Crossroads" report highlights significant challenges within the agency, questioning its readiness to support ambitious lunar and Martian programs. Rod Pyle muses on the potential consolidation of NASA's field centers amidst political and economic pressures.

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Commercialization and Private Sector Involvement

The conversation shifts to the increasing role of private companies in space exploration. Tarek Malik notes the contrast between SpaceX's rapid development and other private entities like Blue Origin and Rocket Lab:

Tarek Malik [17:35]: "They're not the only new thing. New Blue Origin is going to launch New Glenn in the next few days."

Leonard David underscores the importance of integrating private sector agility with NASA's capabilities to drive innovation and reduce costs.

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Future Missions and Plans

Looking ahead, the trio discusses various upcoming missions, including Blue Origin's New Glenn launch and Firefly Aerospace's endeavors. Tarek Malik expresses optimism about the launch schedules:

Tarek Malik [65:58]: "This is a really exciting time as we're recording this episode. We are days away from Blue Origin's first flight of New Glenn..."

Rod Pyle highlights the immense payload capacity of Starship, comparing it to historical space stations and envisioning its potential to revolutionize space infrastructure.

---

Conclusion

As the episode wraps up, the hosts and Leonard David reflect on the dynamic and often turbulent landscape of space exploration. They acknowledge SpaceX's pivotal role in pushing boundaries while recognizing the systemic challenges within NASA that need addressing to sustain progress.

Rod Pyle [66:59]: "Starship has been, was so big so early. It's because they wanted to build it so that they could figure out and push."

With numerous test flights on the horizon and significant missions poised to launch, the future of space exploration appears both promising and fraught with hurdles. The "King Starship" episode encapsulates the excitement, challenges, and relentless drive that define humanity's quest to conquer the final frontier.

---

Notable Quotes:

• Rod Pyle [00:48]: "The fires are every bit as bad or worse than you've heard."
• Tarek Malik [07:33]: "They had a big report. They said it was going to cost what, $11 billion which was too much."
• Leonard David [15:24]: "Refueling in orbit is really tricky... the scale of what SpaceX wants to do there is going to be a turning point."
• Rod Pyle [10:11]: "The actual numbers given from JPL to NASA headquarters for this was a range from 6.5 to 11 billion on the high end, which was not how it was represented at the press conference."
• Leonard David [56:06]: "The infrastructure at NASA is getting too old. A lot of problems. Things are taped together."

---

This comprehensive summary captures the essence of the "King Starship" episode, providing listeners with an insightful overview of current events and discussions shaping the future of space exploration.

Transcript

[Rod Pyle]

On this episode of this Week in Space, we look at SpaceX's Starship in 2025 and what to expect is this Elon's year. Stay with us podcasts you love from people you trust. This is Turret. This is this Week in space, episode number 143, recorded on January 10, 2025. King Starship. Hello, and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the King Starship Edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor in chief, Badass magazine. And as always, I'm joined by my good friend Tarek Malik, editor [e-mail]. hello, my friend.

[Tarek Malik]

Ahoy. Ahoy, Rod. Where are you today? Yes, well, a different setup.

[Rod Pyle]

Living. I mean, I'm very fortunate to live in the part of Los Angeles I do. Kind of smack dab in the middle of the San Gabriel Valley, so no evacuations yet where I am, but the air was so bad I figured I'd better come down to the shore. So Long beach always has dirty air, but compared to what's going on up north, it's. It's actually breathing air you can't see, which is lovely. So, yeah, and yeah, the. The fires are every bit as bad or worse than you've heard, so.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, we should.

[Rod Pyle]

Not a good time here. So our. Our best wishes and hearts go out to everybody who's either displaced or has permanently lost something. And I think at this point, for the county overall, they're probably up to.

[Tarek Malik]

15,000 structures and 10 people, sadly. You know the reality. So it's really, really sad. We should talk. We'll talk about that in a bit under headlines, I think.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

But for anyone listening, our hearts go out to you.

[Rod Pyle]

So getting back to good news, we have Leonard David with us today, who fittingly for the King Starship edition is the king of space reporting. How are you, Leonard?

[Tarek Malik]

Welcome.

[Leonard David]

Okay, well, thank you for having me again, I'm know about King, but I'm. I always have my opinions. I'll try to come up with new ones.

[Rod Pyle]

All right, that. That will work for me. Before we start, however, a little bit of housekeeping. Don't forget to do us a solid, make sure to like subscribe and other good podcast things to let the world know that we're wonderful and that they should come listen to because we want to share the love with everybody. Also, of course, as I mentioned last time, it's time for the 2025 TWiT audience survey. This is an annual survey that helps us understand the audience so we can improve your listening experience, because that's what we Care about it. Only takes a few minutes to do. Still, go to Twitter TV survey to take it. Don't wait, take it before it closes mid January, because it'll make us better and it'll make everything better. So come on down, give us your answers, and we'll love you for it. And even though we do love you, I'm sorry to say I have a space joke.

[Tarek Malik]

Oh, no.

[Rod Pyle]

This is.

[Tarek Malik]

I mean, yes.

[Rod Pyle]

Hooray, Stan. Breed love. Hey, Tarik.

[Tarek Malik]

Yes, Rod?

[Rod Pyle]

Why did the rocket suddenly jump off the launch pad?

[Tarek Malik]

I don't know. Why?

[Rod Pyle]

It had a specific impulse.

[Tarek Malik]

That's a good one. That's a smart one. You got to be smart for that one.

[Rod Pyle]

Pretty small drum roll. Yeah, Okay.

[Tarek Malik]

I am smart. Smrt. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. Now, I've heard that some folks have their own specific impulse to end this podcast when they hear my jokes, but you can help send us your best, worst, or mostly different space joke at Twisted Twit tv. All right, let's go do some headlines.

[Tarek Malik]

Headlines.

[Rod Pyle]

So we don't have the list.

[Tarek Malik]

I was going to say, where's the headline? Where's our. Where's our song?

[Rod Pyle]

There's my Aussie friend. All right, so speaking of wildfires, Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena is up in the foothills. And as I was talking to you guys about before we started, I've lived here most of my life, and we've always had fires with these big Santa Ana winds that are katabatic winds that come roaring down the San Gabriel Mountains and head towards the ocean, and they bring with them this hot, dry air. And the air compresses the base of the hill so it gets even warmer, and it's really conducive to fires. But those fires have never gone beyond kind of the baseline of the mountains. They don't encroach into the city much, which includes where JPL is, and. And this year is a whole different story. So very bad news for Altadeena and, of course, Pacific Palisades out on the west side of la. But apparently okay news for jpl. Now, that said, a lot of people that work there have lost homes and been displaced and tons more have been evacuated, so that's horrible. But the physical facility seems to be okay from what we've seen, right?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. In fact, as of earlier this week, they shut down. Lori Leschen, the director there, said that they were shut down, but today she said that JPL is untouched by fire because of all of the first responders that have been working in the area. But of course, the community is. Is Devastated. She said something like a thousand folks are still evacuated there. More than 150 have lost everything completely and are displaced long term. So they're really hoping to to be able to weather as well as they can what's going on. Of course this is where the Mars rovers are operated out of, where Europa Clipper is operated out of. But you know the protection of life as is the highest priority. Not so much like that but as of now it's still closed but. But it's not, it hasn't been damaged at all from the fires themselves.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, there was a lot of concern on social media about that, you know because it is the NASA field center we have out here. Yeah, but we've all spent time at JPL and I was trying to think of, I could think of of now I have not walked the entire lab edge to edge but I've been most parts of it a number of and I can think of a couple of wood buildings but everything else is either steel or big thick cement like nuclear proof bunkers. So other than the landscape it's hard to imagine that it could be too terribly tortured by fire.

[Leonard David]

I think the only thing I've heard is kind of a rumor. But I think the DSN folks that have to keep a vigil on the spacecraft you mentioned, I think some of that got transferred to maybe some other Goldstone, huh? Yeah, I think Goldstone. So I think that may be one issue that from impactful for spacecraft that are en route or on. I don't think I've seen any new Mars Rover imagery out of perseverance or curiosity. I think that's partly why.

[Rod Pyle]

So Leonard says dsn he's referring to the Deep Space Tracking Network which is a series of three dishes sort of equidistant placed around the planet for monitoring deep space missions that are normally operated out of jpl. But I think you're right Leonard. I think they have a sort of an auxiliary control out the Goldstone Tracking Station which is out in the Mojave Desert. Speaking of Mars rovers, Mars Sample Return.

[Tarek Malik]

That's right.

[Rod Pyle]

We hope, we hope. What's the story?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, as our dear listeners and viewers might recall, last year like we we found out that NASA had to overhaul their Mars Apple return plan. You know they had a big report. They said it was going to cost what, 11 billion which was too much. Bill Nelson said, the NASA chief it wasn't going to be able to happen before 2040, which was too late. Bill Nelson said. And this week we found out that NASA has not yet made a decision on what to do about it. That was what their big announcement this week was. However, they did say that they're to pick one of two different options. Both of them are less than $8 billion. So that's a pretty big cut from the 11 billion they thought that the original plan was going to do. One of them could be a JPL homegrown approach to two star return that would use kind of the same type of sky crane technology to land a lander on, on the surface that they used for perseverance, for curiosity. And that is capped I think at about $7.7 billion US dollars. But they don't have like the whole program kind of all set up. The other one would be like in some sort of embrace of commercial provided missions. That's really unclear as to what that would be. If it's going to be something like a starship that lands to do the return or some sort of mix of starship and GPL or other types of agency stuff. And that one I think was capped at about 7.1 billion. So a pretty significant savings overall for, for, for sample return. Still though, you know, the, the goal would be to, to get it by like 33rd, 2035, 2039, so still before 2040, but you know, maybe only just. And, and so they will decide in 2026 actually, so in 18 months or so from now, so that's not anytime soon, but hopefully, hopefully they will be able to figure something out in time to make the window that they want to launch that like by the end of the decade.

[Rod Pyle]

So in a decade or so we can compare our hard one widely gathered Martian samples to the ones the Chinese bring back in 2027, right?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, yeah, we'll have to see. It's really interesting though that when they announced this, Rocket Labs CEO Peter Beck put out a little note saying hey, you know, you open it up to competition, maybe we can get it there even cheaper than all of this stuff. So we're going to have to wait and see if that's going to be an open season on the commercial front to be able to come up with different ideas beyond what we have here.

[Rod Pyle]

So, and although we've said it before, just so it said, at least according to some of our sources, the actual numbers given from JPL to NASA headquarters for this was a range from 6.5 to 11 billion on the high end, which was not how it was represented at the press conference. Thank you, Mr. Nelson.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, but, well, Bill Nelson says if you're going to tell him 11 billion on the high end, then that's how much it's going to cost overall. That's, that's kind of.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, he's probably right, but still, you know, give the guys a break. Okay, let's wrap this up with Bill Nye, our own Bill Nye, the science and twist guest guy. That's right. A Medal of Freedom.

[Tarek Malik]

He got the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is I think one of the highest civilian honors. Right, that you can do.

[Rod Pyle]

I think it is.

[Tarek Malik]

And Bill Nye was ours. No. Where is ours? I feel like Chewie in Star Wars. Right.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, Leonard should get it first.

[Tarek Malik]

That's right. Yeah, that's right. But you know, congratulations to Bill Nye and even the folks at the Planetary Society where he's been like at the helm for a good long time. But the President and the White House said that Bill Nye has inspired and influenced generations of American students as Bill Nye the Science Guy. And then because of that, his dedication in science education continues through like the work at the Planetary Society. They get a big name drop from the White House as a vocal advocate for space exploration. So that was why they, they selected. He was one of a, like a good many of people, many different people. I think Hillary Clinton was on that list and a few others to, to get this, this Medal of Freedom. And of course it's kind of the last big of the outgoing administration too, to recognize individuals that they, they want to spotlight. So, you know, it's nice to see someone at the Society get that honor. But we got to get you, Rod, that honor from the National Space Society to you to make.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, let's get it for the nss. I don't need it personally. Actually what we should ask for is a pardon for the space joke segment for the show.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, there you go.

[Rod Pyle]

All right, let's go run to a break and then we'll be right back with our main subject, king Starship standby at T Mobile.

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[Rod Pyle]

So gentlemen, I ask you two professionals, quote unquote, that's just rhetoric's benefit. Is this the year of Starship? Is this when we're finally going to see. I mean we've seen some amazing things, but is this the year when the. When it really blows the lid off? What do you think?

[Tarek Malik]

Should I go first or. You want to go? Yeah, Well, I mean I think we talked about it last week or last episode when we were talking about our big picks for 2025, but this is the year that they plan to really ramp up their test flights. Maybe up to 25 launches this year. We're not sure. In fact, as we're recording this podcast, SpaceX is days away from a January 13th test flight for Flight 7, which will largely fly a similar profile of their last couple of flights. But it's going to be a brand new starship, one that has a lot of upgrades, a brand new flight, compute, all of that. I'm sure we're going to talk about that a little bit.

[Rod Pyle]

So excuse me, but you need a new design.

[Tarek Malik]

A new design?

[Rod Pyle]

Well, because they've all been new.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, a new version of it because the design is largely the same, but it has enhanced flaps and stuff that we can talk about in a little bit. But I, I think the fact that they're kicking off this are strong. By the way, we should point out we. We didn't talk about it in headlines, but they're not the only new thing. New Blue Origin is going to launch New Glenn in the next few days.

[Rod Pyle]

It's kind of a big story and I realized after I cut the break, I thought, oh yeah, New Glenn, you skipped it.

[Tarek Malik]

But I messed up the order. I apologize. That was on me. But yeah, so. So this will be the year of big giant rockets to not just, not just Starship but, but I think Starship is the vanguard. You know, it's been two years since they've been flying and they've flown six times now. And by the end of the year they could be at, at what, 31 flights. That's crazy for like a brand new rocket for the world's biggest rocket. I'm excited about it. I don't know about you, Leonard, how about you?

[Leonard David]

Well, yeah, I mean, but yeah, it's just amazing. They had four flights last year and you know, that, that one flight, bringing it back to the launch tower, improving that part of it and you know, the next big thing, I mean, from a logistic standpoint that will kind of make or break, you know, Lunar operations is really refueling in orbit and that one is tricky. A lot of people talk about it, a lot of people have been waiting for it to happen. We've had little experiments and this and that. But the scale of what SpaceX wants to do there is going to be, that's going to be a turning point. And you know, once you're off the planet and you got a lot of fuel, you can go a lot of places. So one hopes that you just can't discount the SpaceX crowd. Every time I go on the live cam, I don't care what time it is, there's somebody working on the thing, you know, Sunday morning and they're busy.

[Tarek Malik]

I guess the fact that there's always, there's a cottage industry with live views of what they're doing all the time tells you that there's always something going on there.

[Leonard David]

Now I have lost track, to be honest with you, about Florida Starship launches. I don't think the FAA is still a big part of the assessments or I mean, how close are we even with the Florida operation?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, we can talk about that now real quick. But as I understand it, they're either complete with or very near complete with the tower there. But it is a new environmental assessment that I haven't heard an update on where those stand right now, but it sounds to me that because they already have been launching heavy from there and they've built basically a second pad at 39A, that it might be an addendum, but they just have to do a final follow up of it. I guess we're going to find out when the new administration, how they streamline that process, if at all, to get through it.

[Rod Pyle]

I ought to be to jump the cube it sets. Leonard brought it up. Leonard, have you heard any more refined numbers on how many refillings it's going to take to get the human landing system version of Starship to the moon and back.

[Leonard David]

I have, I, I've, I, I've read them and I don't believe any of them but I, I'm not quite sure what the number is anymore.

[Rod Pyle]

It was 6, it was 12, it was 15, then I heard as high as 24, which yeah, it's just insane.

[Leonard David]

Yeah, I don't know. You know the, the thing about Florida is fascinating to me because I, I always remember when I think about heavy lift rockets leaving Florida then I'm old enough to remember Brinkley, Chet Huntley and David Brinkley on the first flight of the Saturn 5. And the line was from, one of them was that thing was so loud I didn't know if the rocket was going up or Florida was going down. You know, I love that line, I've always remembered that. But boy, you know, if you get both Bezos and Musk flying out of Florida, that's a, that's a huge capability of new development. And again, you know, I keep my eye on China. I mean we're going to see some also booster upgrades there as they move toward their heavy lift.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, wait, wait a second. What we are already starting to see, yes, we see some booster upgrades, yes, we see some attempts towards recoverability and yes, we see some stuff that looks exactly like Starship.

[Tarek Malik]

That's right.

[Rod Pyle]

What a coincidence.

[Tarek Malik]

We should take a beat to explain to folks who maybe don't or aren't as familiar like what exactly Starship is before we're talking about just I guess really quickly. Starship is a next generation heavy lift reusable launch vehicle that SpaceX has been developing. Elon Musk announced a version of it in 2016 at the Mexico IAC conference. And at the time it was called BFR Big Bleeping Rocket or Big Falcon Rocket. Whatever you want to, whatever you want.

[Rod Pyle]

To call it, you fill the blank as you see fit.

[Tarek Malik]

Exactly.

[Rod Pyle]

Vibe.

[Tarek Malik]

But the concept was to build a giant rocket capable of being a workhorse to carry up to 100 people. At that time I'm pretty sure that they're looking at much fewer numbers of people aboard.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, excuse me. But, but before that it was the Interplanetary Transport System system. Before that it was the Mars Colonial Transporter.

[Tarek Malik]

That's right. It's had a lot of names before they settled on Starship. And Starship is the name of the entire launch system. So the ships, the spacecraft are called ships. The big boosters are called super heavy. So it's a super Heavy booster.

[Rod Pyle]

The, the ship actually now the booster is just called booster because, because they suddenly got so clever. It's like booster and ship. I thought that's, that's one of the most uncreative things I've ever seen.

[Tarek Malik]

But okay, so the, the concept is that both vehicles are reusable. The, the booster would be caught by this giant kind of chopstick type machine at the launch pad and then the, the starships themselves could either land upright on the moon. NASA has picked it for Artemis 3 to land the first astronauts on the moon of the 21st century. And, and then SpaceX, as we'll talk about in a bit, is hoping to also catch these, these boosters back on Earth. So, so that's like the run on next generation, like super advanced stainless steel which makes it look really retro sci fi and fully reusable which should drive down cost. Now SpaceX wants to launch 25 this year. They need to really amp that up to, to do a lot of the tests that Leonard's talking about before they can launch people maybe by the end of the decade on the moon. NASA says by 2026. That seems really early to be able to do that. 2027, pardon me, and, and then they'll be able to pursue that. Meanwhile, SpaceX has sold at least two of these flights on Starship 1 to Polaris dawn owner Jared Isaacman. Another two, possibly Dennis Tito, who has reserved a trip around the moon. They did have another one. We'll talk about Dear Moon in a bit. But so they're, they're, they're using it for more than just NASA and more than just Starlink. But we'll talk about that stuff. That's, yeah, Starship in a nutshell, just.

[Rod Pyle]

To be clear, as I recall, Tito bought two out of a minimum of eight to 12 seats, right? Yeah, yeah, so that's a partial one.

[Tarek Malik]

For him, one for his wife.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, yeah. And it's, it's been a long time coming and the timelines have always been very aggressive and never met. And we're used to that with Musk now. So that's okay. You know, I mean people like to bash him about that, but he's doing it and he has single handedly, with the help of an awful lot of good people at his company of course, kind of reinvented how launch works and what it costs and you know, how many times you can set up a single rocket and bring it home. So you know, not taking anything away from him. It's just sometimes if you're writing about it when you hear another one of these dates and his voice, it's kind of like, can you tell me what you really believe and not what you're thinking right now? But you know, we roll with the punches. Speaking of the punches, let's roll with a commercial right now. So stand by, we'll be right back.

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[Rod Pyle]

All right, partner, do you want to talk about upcoming Flight 7 or recap some of the previous test flights?

[Tarek Malik]

I guess just because we were talking about it. And Leonard, please let me know like if you've got thoughts too.

[Rod Pyle]

But Leonard, tell him when you want him to shut up and let you.

[Leonard David]

Yeah, yeah, that's good.

[Rod Pyle]

You know, pull the rope starter on Tarek and you know he goes about.

[Leonard David]

Elon Musk and being the titular head of the whole program. It'd be nice to know more about the team, you know, I mean, you know, what team. Yeah, well, I'm not sure how many people that got who's in charge of whatever it is. I'd love to know more about the kind of people they have they brought in. Everybody should stand in the spotlight on the successes they're having and what and the promissory note of, you know, of more successes to come. So it'd be good to know more about the people. That's my only complaint there. On the other hand, alon, when you think about him when he got into this job of Mr. Rocket, I mean, all I remember is paypal and all of a sudden he's taking the everyday astronaut around in the shop and other people describing unbelievable capability in his own mind, engineering mind. And I've heard him even kind of keep his own with a National Academy of Science symposium or something where a lot of rocket experts there and he held his own. It's pretty impressive.

[Tarek Malik]

He's the chief engineer at space and.

[Rod Pyle]

Early on they were trying to trip him up. And let's bear in mind this is a guy with a bachelor's degrees in physics who was a self trained engineer. So that's, that is impressive. But that said Leonard, that's a really good point. And certainly, I mean there are many people whose names are attached to this, who have given a lot of their, of their life essence to this project. Gwynne Shotwell, the operating President of SpaceX being one of the many people, feel that she's sort of the, I don't know, what would you call it? The operational conscience of Elon or something. Tom Mueller was the chief propulsion engineer and he did, I mean he kind of invented the Raptor from my understanding. Hans Koenigsegg, Is that how his name is pronounced?

[Leonard David]

He's gone.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, but that, yeah, well, Mueller's gone too.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, well, they got, they got Bill Gerstenwire from NASA in charge of space operations. You were talking about Starbase Starbase and SpaceX launches, these missions right now, these test flights from quote unquote, Starbase Texas, which is a testing facility in South Texas near Boca Chica beach, where they are trying actually to make it its own city right now. But former former NASA human space flight chief Catherine Lueders is in charge of that place at SpaceX now running it. So they don't have, they have a lot of NASA experience running a lot of these things even at their PR level too, because some, some NASA PR folks are on that team too. But a lot of it is like mixed in with the homegrown expert. Think they went in the. How long has it been since 2019? Five years? Four? Six. Almost six years. Right. Six years is in September of 2019. When I went there was temporary tent structures over a lot of what they have now. And in the last five years they have built up what is an amazing facility with like a bunch of different high bays to assemble the starship vehicles and the boosters. That's why you've got folks like, like Captain Loiters, like Bill Gerstenmayer making sure that they're on track for all that. Gwynne Shotwell making sure that the company overall is doing things right and I think they just closed out like was a record year. It's kind of like 135 flights, 34 flights last year on Falcon and Falcon Heavy and I guess they're going to up that with all of these flights this year with Starship, of course.

[Rod Pyle]

Speaking of tents.

[Leonard David]

Yeah. It didn't, it didn't help along a little bit. I'm still trying to figure out what the source was, but I'm trying to skip the moon. Elon Musk is, it's a sidetrack, you know, here he's got the contract to haul the Artemis 3 people there. So I, I'm not sure where Elon's thinking on the moon. I think that's a good argument.

[Rod Pyle]

Boy, you're talking about his advice to Trump, right?

[Leonard David]

Yeah, I'm not sure about skipping the moon, but I think I'm in the camp where can't do the moon. Mars is going to be really hard, you know. So I think there's a lot of capability that they can show SpaceX and House of Blue Origin at the moon and really fine tune the whole private sector and then you have all the cis lunar economy people on the outskirts of this thing and we'll see how this all plays out. But yeah, I don't know where that, I think Arc Technica was the first people to report Elon's kind of non moon vote.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, Elon has said starship is like the backbone of elon Musk and SpaceX's vision for interplanetary flight. He historically and very well well known, wants to settle Mars. I don't want to say colonize because that sounds like oh my gosh, we're all the great colonizer. But he wants, he wants to conquer, conquer Mars. He wants that. But they, you know, they have shown grand visions of starships out at like Saturn and Jupiter.

[Rod Pyle]

I remember when I first saw that Saturn shot, I thought, wow, I can feel the skin roasting off my bones as we pass Saturn because of the radiation environment. But hey, whatever works for him, you know.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. But the reason that I bring it up is because he has said that, that while they're working on this plan to build starships, enough starships do the fueling tests that they want to do the 15 or so refuels for, for a trip to Mars for Artemis 3 in 2027 land people on the moon. He would like to in 2026 send an uncrewed starship to Mars to kickstart that whole part of it. And he said that himself, Leonard, on the Twitter. Well, the X now. Right on. On X. And that was what really started that.

[Rod Pyle]

Discussion on his personal social media platform.

[Tarek Malik]

Exactly, exactly.

[Leonard David]

Yeah. I do worry about, again, we've talked about in the past the Pied Piper problem here of getting along out there so far on his dreams and dragging a lot of people along with them. I'm one of them. But you know, I, I've been there on a couple things where somebody that had the big dream, had the big vision, dies or something happens and you're never, you know, it's a disconnect and you know, all these starships that he's planning, I mean, the next one could blow up on the pad. I don't know.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, you say, you say that, but in 2015 they blew up a rocket, right. We filled with NASA stuff and they came back less than like within that year and started flying again and they blew up another rocket on the pad. They blew up their own spacecraft, their own test dragon spacecraft on the pad. They've been flying how many?

[Rod Pyle]

That's true. But let's remember in this case we're talking about a rocket that's got the size of a medium yield tactical nuclear weapon. It is blowing up the rocket takes out the pad as well.

[Tarek Malik]

400Ft tall, I think 800,000. Yeah. Now Gwynne Shotwell says it's only going to get bigger.

[Rod Pyle]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

And it's already the world's. We didn't say this. It's the world's largest rocket. It's the world's biggest rocket. It's the world's most powerful rocket. So this, like all the things. Superlative. Enter that here.

[Rod Pyle]

So, so this current one is, is revised, the last one, as you alluded to earlier and I think in two or three flights, maybe sooner, they're talking about adding, what is it, another 20ft to the fuselage of, of the upper stage.

[Tarek Malik]

Bigger tanks.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. And at some point I suppose they'll probably increase the diameter of it because I have a chance to talk for a moment. Let's go to another commercial. Anthony, get that done and then we'll come back. And let's talk about test flight seven coming up. Stand by.

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[Rod Pyle]

So we have another test flight coming up in a matter of days, we Hope. Test Flight 7. We've got some new goals here. We're not just going to fly a banana this time like we did in the last one. They're going to actually fly payload which I'm going to let you guys kick around. But let me just kind of, kind of do a quick rundown here. So see, we got a Raptor version three being tested. I think 30 cameras on the vehicle this time ship the upper stage will have catch pins. Not not so they can catch it this time, but so that they can see how they do aerodynamically in flight and make sure they don't burn off when they're coming home. They're going to deploy 10 Starlink simulators out of their little PEZ dispenser thing up in the cargo bay. They're going to refly. This is the first reflight of a used engine I guess on the booster engine 314 and a faster. This sounds scary, but this is typical Elon speak. Faster and harder catch a booster with a steeper and harder re entry. What do you guys think?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, I mean we forgot the part where they're carrying 25% more fuel on this on this vehicle. So they've on the booster or the upper stage. They said redesigns include to the propulsion system include a 25% so it's unclear if it's on the booster or if it's on the ship itself. But they did also improve the quote unquote vacuum jacketing of the feed lines as well as a new feed feedline system for the Raptor vacuum engines. There's a new, there's a New ship computer, a flight computer, basically a bunch of things to increase its ability to stay in space for longer periods of time, which you would need for that. I mean, this seems like a lot of stuff that. That is like a new iteration. I mean, they're not calling the Starship V2 like they did for Dragon, because it seems like they've got.

[Rod Pyle]

Would you want to call something that looks like this V2? I don't think so.

[Tarek Malik]

I guess so, right? I guess so.

[Rod Pyle]

Version two, Mark two.

[Leonard David]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

But there's a few other advancements that I'm really interested in. That's the fact that they moved the location of the forward flaps on the ship vehicle and they reduced their size so that they shouldn't see the amount of burn through that they saw at the flap hinges, which was really dramatic footage from previous ones. They've also increased, I believe, the communications starlink networks of it with all these extra cameras so that they can have more than 120Mbps of real time HD, which is pretty crazy for this kind of a vehicle. It's super, super visibly instrumented. And it not only gives them very clear ideas of what's going on with the spacecraft as it's flying through space or the booster on its way back down, but it gives us all just some spectacular views of it. I mean, it's mesmerizing to watch and everyone should be looking for that in Flight 7 to see how it all shakes out, because just seeing that glow on re entry is pretty spectacular. So, I mean, overall, this seems exciting.

[Rod Pyle]

The glow and the little melty bits that are flying away from.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, that shouldn't happen with these new things because they've got it right, Leonard. They have a new testing, new heat shield. Yes.

[Leonard David]

Yeah. So that's good. And you know, learn as you fly. Fly as you learn. I mean, it. He's really, you know, slogan that and he's proven that. And I think the only thing that hangs out there. I'm fascinated by this PEZ dispenser with the starlinks. If I read it right, I thought they auger into the Indian Ocean. It's not going to. They're not going to go into orbit, right?

[Tarek Malik]

No, they're not. So when we say PEZ dispenser, it is what it sounds like. It's a slot on the hull of the spacecraft. In fact, they loaded them into that slot and they think that they're designed to kind of spit out these flat starlink satellites in a line and then they're Going to trail the ship on its way back down to the Indian Ocean. And so they will burn up over if things go south because they're just mass simulators.

[Rod Pyle]

They're not active satellites.

[Tarek Malik]

There is a notams for parts of like, offshore New York.

[Leonard David]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

For that stuff. Actually, no. TAMS is notice the airmen to stay out. But no, I got that wrong. That was the no time for the blue origin flight for their mask, their, their blue ring simulator. So I'm getting all my private space flights mixed up right now. There's so many.

[Leonard David]

Boy, we're having a great time for sure. You know, the only thing that I, I think is worth noting here is again, I'm getting back to this. How, how much fun we're having watching this guy do this stuff. I mean, it's amazing to me. I mean, even in the Saturn program, and I don't remember that many changes happening that fast and.

[Rod Pyle]

No. Well, do you remember there were fixes to the Saturn V, but there weren't major design changes. It was like, okay, we got to change the flex joint on engine on the first stage engines so they don't rattle through. But it wasn't like, hey, let's change the entire configuration of the upper fuselage.

[Leonard David]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

I did want to point out that also I don't think it's on this flight, but they're, they're ramping up to test active cooling as well, which is something that.

[Tarek Malik]

It's on this flight. Yeah, it is on this flight. Okay. What they've done is they've, they've enhanced the TPS system that Leonard was talking about. And then as a backup, they put an active cooling system on some tiles to see how that works too, as like a backup to see how it performs.

[Rod Pyle]

So the explanation of that was first. The first time I saw it talked about anyway, was on the dinosaur program back in the late 50s, early 60s, which was an Air Force mini space shuttle that they were working on that never flew. They. They did a mock up and a lot of studies and built bits and pieces and tested them, but never actually flew the thing, which is a shame because it would have put us into winged space flight a decade earlier. Well, almost two decades earlier than we actually did. But it's basically using fluids either as a behind the back plane or as an active spray in front of the tiles to create this. This effectively a cooling field.

[Leonard David]

Right.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Leonard David]

One thing about that that I'm not clear on, but it's. And I'm going back to Gemini, the idea that you can use Starlink to monitor the entire reentry all the way down to this terrain surface. There was a moment there with Merving where the plasma buildup around spacecraft you always have the dead zone. The astronauts couldn't talk through. Nobody knew if they were okay, do they survive reentry. And all of a sudden we're seeing all the way down from you know, the plasma buildup watching the whole thing happen. And I don't know what, what happened there but you know that was a big deal for the military back in the early days because they were worried about you know, if you're launching a warhead, are we going to lose contact with the warhead if we, oh maybe we shouldn't fire that or we try to orient it some other way. So I'm very curious about how this, this capability has evolved. Watching a plasma surrounded vehicle come in all the way down to the surface and we see the whole thing that's fascinating to me. I don't know what happened or what new capabilities are involved.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. And I guess just to some limited degree perfecting your system of monitoring all aspects of flight from Earth orbit would give you some forward information for setting up relay satellites around the moon and Mars that you're going to eventually need because Mars, you know if they're going to do what they want to do at Mars they're going to certainly need telecommunications or broadband system. And we don't want to lay cables on Mars like we did across the Atlantic. You can just set up satellites. And then of course the Chinese have magpie satellites orbiting the moon already which in my opinion we should have done back in the 60s like we planned but we didn't here in the U.S. right. But let's, let's jump to an ad and we'll be right back. So stand by.

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[Rod Pyle]

So hey, let's talk about bulk. If I did my count right, they have something like five more starship. And when I say starship I guess I mean upper and lower stage. Although I don't think the numbers are the same for them. But they've got a bunch more either finished or near completion. Is that right?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, I can, I can weigh in. I mean I would be surprised if it's only that many. By the way, I did go back and there is one tile that has active cooling on flight seven. Oh, there is, there is just one.

[Rod Pyle]

That's like a four inch thing. Okay.

[Tarek Malik]

It's an experiment. Yeah. So it's an experiment to see how it works. So.

[Rod Pyle]

Well that makes sense because you don't want to do a big patch of them. Have them burn through. Through, Right.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. So. And they're, they're, they're testing some new. They said they're, they have multiple metallic tile options. So there's different types of tiles and then one of them has the, the active cooling to test different, different materials for re entry. But when I was out there back in, not, not just in, in 2023 for the, for the Flight 1 test which is the one that they blew up because of like they, they lost a bunch of engines. They had at least like, like five or six at that point in time. Those have probably all flown by now. They're gone. Right. And, and they like I mentioned, they have the high bay out there that they have two of them. I think if not more that they've been building all of these different boosters and ships for Gwen Shotwell, last one said that they are looking at. Not Gwynne Shot. Well the, the spokes folks that they're looking at building like a ship every day or so eventually to scale up the mass production.

[Rod Pyle]

Wait, wait, wait, wait.

[Tarek Malik]

Or an engine. An engine every day.

[Rod Pyle]

An engine, Yeah, I think they actually are up to an engine a day. But I think it was a ship was, I don't know, 10 days or something.

[Tarek Malik]

It was really fast.

[Rod Pyle]

It's still crazy. I mean when you think about how long it took to build Each of the shuttle orbiters. Rockwell.

[Leonard David]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

Wow.

[Leonard David]

Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

I guess the big question, though is that we haven't heard a lot about life support. Now, I asked this question.

[Rod Pyle]

Or radiation mediation.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. And I asked that question specifically to elon Musk in 2019. And he kind of brushed it off at that time, saying, hey, they know life support already. They've got Dragon. They'll just scale that up for whatever. But it's not clear what the interior for crew.

[Rod Pyle]

That's a big scale.

[Tarek Malik]

It's a big scale. Right.

[Rod Pyle]

And as we learned in the space race, not everything scales like, oh, let's say rocket engines. Yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah. I guess the question I would have for Leonard then, based on the iterations that we've seen since 2023 with Flight 1 and maybe since 2016, since they first announced it, how they changed the design over and over again, how, how different do you think the end of 2025 Starship. So like the last one that they launched, say like in December, if it's number 25 of the year or, or, you know, 12 or whatever, do you think that's going to be substantially different than what we're going to see on Flight 7 in terms of like different types of things that they're still testing at that point? Or would they already. Do you think that they're going to just keep changing it the whole time, every single flight?

[Leonard David]

It sounds like his plan is to just learn as he goes and change, iterate constantly through the whole flight sequence of all these starships. So I'm, you know, you just can't discount this guy, that he has the master plan and he can pull this off. Now, one thing that's fascinating about the coming in a reentry and learning about reentry, that's obviously going to have a big part to play in the Mars landing where you got center atmosphere. But he's going to know a lot more about that ship and reentry capability. So if anything, it'll be over what they need for Mars. But, you know, they're really, you know, I don't know. I've been trying to. I don't want to go back. I sort of want to go back to Mars. Sample return at some point here. But there's a lot of discomfort in some of the people that, you know, are kind of getting to a point where they're not sure if starship doesn't do what they hope it's going to do, what is the fallback position? Where are we going to go? I think we're very Fortunate that Blue Origin is doing its thing on its own and as part of the lunar program. And one thing it didn't show up in the Mars sample return press briefing is, you know, Maria Zuber led the team that put this report together. Well, you can't get the report. It's got proprietary information according to people that told me at NASA. And it'd be great to know exactly where they came down on a lot of these issues and take out the proprietary thing, redact whatever you need to do. Let's see what they really said. Anyway. Yeah, I'm still a little bit taken aback by the Mars sample return activity and basically kicking the can down the road for the next administration. And that is probably the biggest question. What kind of Jared thing are we going to see at NASA? The new administered Isaac, his allegiance to Alon. What kind of this guy's going to have to go through the hearings and you know what, what kind of tactic is he going to have to take to make sure that he gives everybody, all the private companies their day in the sun, whether it's on, on Mars or where are other places?

[Rod Pyle]

Well, I just want to add, you know, as long as we're talking about MSR and weird mission cancellations, I myself and a lot of people that I work with are still not quite over the whole cancellation of the Viper lunar rover. And as far as we know, and I think it's actually been made public now, you know, the problem wasn't the rover. It was done, tested, integrated and pretty much ready to go. They had a little more work to do on it. It was the landing system from Astrobotic. So, you know, since Elon's got to test the human landing system version of Starship anyway, let's just stack about 40 vipers in there, land that thing and just send, send rovers everywhere like little spiders.

[Tarek Malik]

They gotta test their 40 foot or 90 foot, whatever it is, elevator. Right. Well, but what better way than by.

[Rod Pyle]

Loading a Viper on it and lowering it to the surface, you know?

[Tarek Malik]

That's right. That's right. So, you know, I think that there's still a lot more to come. Leonard, Leonard. Leonard is right. Leonard is right. SpaceX is probably the first company where that I felt that the belief, I'll believe it when I see it mantra like you can probably take that. They will eventually.

[Rod Pyle]

We saw it.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, we saw it. Right.

[Rod Pyle]

However, however, let's touch on Dear Moon because they said we're going to circle back to that. So we believed it when we heard it. Now it's not happening. What happened to that?

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, so Dear Moon was the first starship mission around the moon that SpaceX sold and that was with people. With people. That was the Japanese billionaire, or I assume billionaire Yusaka Maezawa.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, he's a billionaire? Yes.

[Tarek Malik]

Enough that he bought two tickets to the space station so that he could fly his personal cameraman with him.

[Rod Pyle]

Should I, should I whine once again that I produced a rock video for him back in the, I guess it was the late 90s for like, I don't know, $2,000 or something because he had no money to spend. And then, gosh, suddenly he had money to spend. I never heard from him again.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, well, you know, he, he, he flew, he, he, he flew to the space station. But this was after he announced Dear Moon, Dear Moon was a, a private flight. This was just as starship was, was getting, you know, together. It sounds like he invested a lot of money to help for the development of Starship. Yeah, from, you know, from what I've heard, to help finance the testing and the assembly and the design of everything. And the idea was that he would get to fly himself and eight or so other people, artists, dancers, musicians, etc. Around the moon. But you were just talking about everyday astronaut Tim Dodd. He was one of the people that got picked to go on that flight. And the timeline like extended. You know, Leonard was talking earlier about the ambitious timelines. They thought they'd be flying, you know, within a few years. That clearly didn't happen. And after he bought his own trip to the space station, he kind of said, you know what, I'm done waiting, I'm going to cancel the mission and move on. It seems like that, that bug that need to fly in space may have been satisfied for me so by his trip to the space station that he, he chronicled with, with his, his partner that flew with him. So, so I guess that's where that is. But, but you know, as we've seen with the failures of the start of SpaceX's flights, like the Falcon Nines that, that they lost on the pad in flight, but they were able to bounce back of it, that wasn't the end of the starship program. And then they went on to sell the Artemis 3 landing to NASA, plus another uncrewed one as a test, and then a flight to Jared Isaacman, potentially the next NASA administrator to be the first crewed spaceflight of starship. Now whether or not that's the case, that Isaac will fly that first crewed space flight, I doubt if he's going to be on there for the next four years. They might want to move it up. He said that he's going to table those until afterward. But, but it stands that, you know, Mae Zawa got impatient, flew to the space station, but the program is still there. They've, they're scaling it all up. And as we talked about earlier, the ship's just going to get bigger.

[Leonard David]

You know, the moon looms big time this year. I mean, with we've got Firefly ready to fly. I keep thinking about if I was hired to be the NASA administrator and walk into that place, what kind of, what kind of situation are you really grabbing onto? You know, just a few months ago, the Academy of Science did a pretty good heavy look at NASA as an organization. And pretty much, I mean, that's a pretty damning report about what they found. NASA at the Crossroads unfortunately, in my career writing I don't know how many NASA at the Crossroads reports I've had to review or something, but that one was pretty bad. And so, you know, Jared's walking into an organization that, you know, you do wonder whether it's fundamentally fit to even pull off any kind of lunar program. You had them backtrack like you said, 2027. Now for Artemis, three questions about the reentry shield on Orion. We got some real headaches coming up and or, you know, we're going to see the private sector get to the moon. We're going to see two what I think it's two of this intuitive machines will perhaps go off in February. Then we have the next week, it's the Firefly.

[Tarek Malik]

Yeah, Firefly and I Spaces resilience. All launching on the same flight. Yeah, on Falcon 9.

[Rod Pyle]

So excuse me, but I, I don't want to get too far away from this. Leonard, maybe you could go back and tell us about this NASA fitness report a little bit because I read it, but we haven't talked about it really on the show.

[Leonard David]

Well, you know, Norm Augustine is typically brought in to do these kind of reviews. You know, this, this poor guy had to one more time take, take a committee of blue ribbon technologists around NASA and they were a little squirrely about what they saw. The infrastructure at NASA is getting too old. A lot of problems. Things are taped together. There's a lot of concern there. And I think he's been more, I heard more concerns on that report and it kind of came and went. Very few people read it. I read it. I've listened to Norm Augustine like three times now at different meetings, giving a briefing on what they found. And it's not, it was not a, you know, a good thing. And then you have, on just the other day, you've got the guy From Florida who's DeSantis, wants to bring NASA headquarters down to Florida. I'm sure that, of course he does, because there's nobody at NASA headquarters. That's what he said. They're all gone, you know, but I think that kind of, kind of rings hollow. You really need to have some kind of presence in Washington, D.C. to march up to Capitol Hill to get the money.

[Rod Pyle]

But it does make you wonder what's going to happen to some of the other field centers. They've got Lewis, they've got Goddard, they've got Ames out in California. They've got a lot. And they're all specialized in something and they all do good work. But they were all put there in the 50s and 60s and the 50s, some of them under NACA and then the 60s under NASA. And you do wonder, and I'm painting a big bullseye on myself here, but are they all necessary? I know that the states want them to stay there. I know that the people that work at them want to stay there. And I know that the people that run them want them to continue to be in existence because they all have a legacy.

[Leonard David]

And it's jobs. It's jobs.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, but is there a, a positive and productive route towards some kind of consolidation or is that just going to destroy it?

[Leonard David]

You know, I think the report kind of, you know, as far as I remember reading the whole thing, I don't think they came up with a whole, you know, do this and that. It didn't give you a checklist of how to fix the problems. They identified a bunch of them and said they got to spend more time on this and that. But boy, you know, you got an agency is what, $25 billion or 25 billion for NASA? The question is always that money spent wisely. I mean, that to me is, well.

[Tarek Malik]

And I think that's what gets us back to starship, right? I mean, NASA, the new, the incoming administrator for NASA is going to be facing all these problems like you're talking about Leonard, with infrastructure, with aging plans, with maybe the slow pace of missions that is being outstripped. Meanwhile, you've got the SpaceX's, I guess right now, just SpaceX, because it's been a while for Blue Origin to get to the pad with New Glenn. It's been a while. We're still waiting for the second flight of Vulcan at United Launch alliance and others. But you've got this, this iteration machine that is the SpaceX people building these, these starships left and right with their stainless steel pipeline.

[Rod Pyle]

Will that mentality really stuck on stainless steel?

[Tarek Malik]

It's shiny, right?

[Rod Pyle]

Yes it is.

[Tarek Malik]

I mean it's like I look at, I look at my refrigerator. I think you know they build and start.

[Rod Pyle]

Okay, okay.

[Tarek Malik]

So anyway so so you know, do you think that's going to rub off? Right. It's a new administration. You if, if they see starship after starship maybe two this month succeed, will they finally say hey you know, we got to take a page out of that. Like what are they doing that we're not? And, and how do they get there? So.

[Leonard David]

Yeah, but you see NASA with these private, you know, government, they obviously see issues that the private sector can maybe help a Neil or get rid of and do it cheaper and faster. And that's we're back to cheaper, better, faster in some of this activity at least the buzzwords are there. But we'll see. I do think of the NASA administrator. I love them all. It is like they're on the Valdez ship trying to get, make sure they don't steer in, get the oil out on the rocks. Yeah, yeah.

[Tarek Malik]

So for our listeners the Exxon Valdez was a big oil spill a long time ago. It was a big, big story.

[Rod Pyle]

So when Rod and Leonard were younger.

[Leonard David]

Men do a study on that guy and the captain and be interesting, you know. But you know I, I just slow turning NASA. That's a tough one because you. We're back to the field centers. There's jobs, you've got the, the congress people, the lawmakers up there. They have a lot of NASA people in their districts. You know it's just going to be a rough go. But one hopes that NASA has a fortitude and the money to bring in the private sector on a much more fast paced than we were seeing today. So on the other hand you flip it around and I'm not happy with some of the deliveries that the private sector so far delivered to NASA, you know.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah, well who is?

[Leonard David]

Yeah, well and it goes to show you that you know there's some issues here with Astrobotic had its problems earlier last year. Intuitive machines. As much as they crow about how successful it was, I mean it, it was not what, what they had hoped. So well and then we have Firefly going and Ghost Rider in the sky and I've seen some punsters go that's.

[Tarek Malik]

The name of the mission.

[Leonard David]

They have a ghost, ghost of a chance of making it.

[Tarek Malik]

But no, we gotta knock on wood. Where's the wood?

[Leonard David]

Oh, my go well.

[Rod Pyle]

But, you know, just to kind of circle back to starship for a second. You know, One thing I think that kind of gets overlooked sometimes when people are writing about starship is the unbelievable capacity this thing provides. Each starship has as much space in the payload bay as the pressurized parts of the space station in total. So it's like the world's largest, you know, Skylab revisited. Right. So besides the fact that you can take, you know, 20 rovers made out of concrete up to the moon if you want in a single flight, or as I. Leonard, you weren't on with us, but I calculated the other week, somebody's, at a listener's request, how many Apollo command service module, lunar module stacks you can fit inside of a single starship. And it was at least three even fully fueled, which would be pretty impressive. You could get nine. Nine people out to the moon and back.

[Tarek Malik]

I think the goal is 100 magic tons. Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

But it also, you know, we kind of come back to this idea now. We have Vast flying this year, we hope, with their unsupport, NASA unsupported space station module, which is interesting to me, you know, as we talk about private companies, the two or three companies that are being funded are still a few years out, at least a couple of years out. But Vast, which does not have NASA funds, to my knowledge, is going to fly their first module this year. That's pretty impressive. But when you think about the potential of three or four starship upper stages to link up and be a space station.

[Tarek Malik]

And they've talked about that too. Yeah, yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

And I mean, that goes back to the 60s with the design of Skylab, which is just a repurposed upper stage of the Saturn V. Do we think there's real heat there, or is this just chit chat?

[Leonard David]

Maybe. I. I remember you've written about Nova. I mean, back in the old days of NASA, remember that it was a Super Saturn 5. I have to go back and look at the scale of what NOVA was, because they got pretty far down in design. I don't know if Starship and Nova are comparable.

[Rod Pyle]

They're kind of similar, except I think Nova had eight engines.

[Leonard David]

Yeah.

[Rod Pyle]

But they are F1 edges. They were huge.

[Leonard David]

Yeah, yeah. And with the track record of the Saturn 5, the Nova was there and, you know, again, we just didn't pursue that. But, yeah, the volume that, you know, again, it's all dream machine stuff. You get if you get the machinery going and we can dream big time. It's a game changer and it's just easy to say, but hard to do. Change the game.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, Vast is in that SpaceX Starship thing of if you build it, they will come. So that's why they're doing this. That's why starship has been, was so big so early. It's because they wanted to build it so that they could figure out and push.

[Rod Pyle]

That's true. Although they got NASA money pretty early and Vast is running out there completely unprotected. So that's, that's, that's impressive. All right, Tarik, because you say I never do, I'm giving you the last word.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, I just like two Leonard's point. Two Leonard's point. This is a really exciting time as we're recording this episode. We are days away from Blue Origin's first flight of New Glenn, from SpaceX's first flight of a brand new type of starship flight. Seven of two, count them, two private moon missions for I Space and Blue Ghost Firefly. That is just a spectacular link. Plus there's like a bajillion SpaceX launches to boot on top of that. So it's going to be a really interesting time to see. I really, I hope that these starships go off. They are impressive to see. And I highly recommend if anyone is in the South Texas area, go down there and check it out because you can just get across the street and marvel at what is the world's biggest rocket.

[Rod Pyle]

And you and you can come visit Tarek and myself in the condo that we're going to rent so that we have a permanent home base to watch the launches from. And Leonard, do you want to throw in some money? We'll include you too. I'll fill the, I'll fill the alcohol.

[Leonard David]

I'll bring my own cot. That's okay.

[Rod Pyle]

Oh, all right. Well, I want to thank you guys for joining us today for episode 143, King Starship. I don't know where I came up with that name, but it seemed fitting. Leonard, where should we look for your prolific space reporting, especially on starship?

[Leonard David]

Well, Space.com, i've written on this topic and have some new things coming up. Inside Outer Space is sort of my own website that I try to keep people happy with posting things that I don't see in other places. Probably too critical and sometimes, you know, I get.

[Rod Pyle]

I think it's perfect, actually.

[Leonard David]

Too pessimistic. You know, I have my. Wait a minute column that I love. Wait a minute, this doesn't make sense.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, and it's the only journalistic website I've ever seen that's based on the color brown.

[Leonard David]

Yeah, right.

[Rod Pyle]

Which always gets my attention. You know, it's an easy eye relieving background to read from and occasionally the color matches the stories. Tarik, where can we find you playing with your starship these days?

[Tarek Malik]

Well, you can find [e-mail] as always on the Twitter at. Well X, pardon me, @tarikj. Malik. Also now on Blue sky, but I don't know how you say it. Is it Tarek J. Malik, Whatever that stuff they add on afterward, it is at Blue sky and I'm just learning all that stuff. And then I will be at the American Astronomical Society's meeting and before we meet next, I will have learned what the breast and the best and brightest have to say about discoveries in astronomy. I'm really excited about that.

[Rod Pyle]

Where is that?

[Tarek Malik]

That will be in National Harbor, Maryland. So I'll be there in upcoming days. So that'll be really exciting to check out.

[Leonard David]

Look, look for the Vera Rubin Observatory to crank out the first picture coming up the ground based thing in Chile and that promises to be pretty exciting.

[Tarek Malik]

So yeah, I will definitely take you up on that.

[Rod Pyle]

Well, it is a vast comedown anti climax. You can find me at pylebooks.com [e-mail] where we host what is now the world's best space magazine. Although I do hear that All About Space is putting about an annual edition.

[Tarek Malik]

Well, we got, we got some bookazines coming on the pipeline. I think our Space.com manuals coming out pretty soon too. So I'll be really excited about that.

[Rod Pyle]

Yeah. Well good luck touching AD Astra and remember you can drop us a line at twistwit tv. We welcome your comments, suggestions on ideas, we answer all our emails and we especially appreciate your space jokes because if you don't like mine, feed us some better ones. New episodes this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher. So to make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us reviews. Thumbs up. Likes what, whatever the currency is. Five stars. We'll take. We'll take whatever, whatever goes. And you can also head to our website at TWiT TV. TWiS finally, don't forget we're counting on you to join Club TWiT 2025. Besides supporting TWiT, you'll help keep us on the air. And I know for at least one one couple, we're the date night for them so we have to stay on the air. So step up and be counted. $7 a month. I ask you, what else can you do for any gratification whatsoever for $7 a month? Not much. That won't even really buy you a deluxe Frappuccino at Starbucks because I got my first one in years the other day and I think it was $9 by the time there was tax added on. Of course I got a huge but that's on me. And with Club Twit, you also get programming with video streams ad free as well as some special features that are only available there. So only somebody who's not fit to be a space cadet would, would overlook joining Club Twit because it's, it's, it's the deal of the century and we're counting on you. And don't forget to go fill out the, the Twit survey, which I, I don't have the URL anymore. Anthony, what is it? Twitter TV survey. I guess I probably could have figured that out all on my own. Gentlemen, thank you very much. It's been a pleasure. Leonard, we love having you on and I hope you come back soon.

[Leonard David]

Well, I get to learn more things from you guys. I appreciate it.

[Tarek Malik]

Thank you.

[Rod Pyle]

Give. Give Barb a big hello from us if you would.

[Leonard David]

You bet. She says aye and goodbye.

[Rod Pyle]

And I guess that's our key to say goodbye. I'll see you guys later. Take care.

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