This Week in Space 136 Transcript

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00:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Coming up on this Week in Space, we'll talk SpaceX, starships and trips to Mars with re-entry. Author Eric Berger of Ars Technica Tune in.

00:09 - TWiT.tv (None)
Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TWiT.

00:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
This is this Week in Space, episode number 136, recorded on November 8th 2024. Spacex Ascendant, recorded on November 8th 2024. Spacex.

00:25 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Ascendant. Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the SpaceX Ascendant edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Ad Astra Magazine, and I'm joined as always, to my great pleasure, by Tarek Malik, editor-in-chief at Spacecom. Hello, my friend.

00:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Hey Rod, How's it going? Happy Friday.

00:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's good.

00:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I'm at the.

00:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Astronaut Memorial Foundation building at the Kennedy Space Center. I'm looking out the window at the rocket garden here. It's a beautiful day. We had a Falcon 9 launch yesterday that shot right into the clouds so we heard it, but we didn't see it. But I think there's another one tomorrow.

01:04 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And why are you? I was tomorrow and so why why? Are you ending?

01:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
these. I was gonna say I was about to tell you I'm sitting in the national space society's international headquarters here at kennedy, uh, and I'm attending the space settlement summit which we hold every year about this time of year and sitting next to who I think and hope might actually be the next nasa administrator. But no names, please. But um that aside.

01:30 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Grease those palms for access, rod.

01:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Grease those palms for access, oh they are so slippery I can't even um. But the greater pleasure today is we get to speak with Eric Berger so excited who is, as I will say when we see him, the king of space reporters and who's also written that book that Tarek just held up called Reentry, which is a follow-up to his earlier very well-received book called Liftoff all about the saga of SpaceX, and it's quite a read. You'll enjoy it. It's the closest thing to an Adventure novel you can get reading non-fiction about the space trade. Now, before we start, I want to remind everybody to do us a solid make sure to like, subscribe and do all those cool podcast things, because we're counting on you, we love you and we need you. And now a space joke from listener Tom Melton Tom hey, tarek, yes, rod, how much do they charge space pirates for ear piercing?

02:31 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Ooh, I don't know that's a good question how much?

02:35 - Rod Pyle (Host)
A buccaneer, oh that was painful.

02:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Is that really a space joke, because you only just said space?

02:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
No, that's a recycled nautical joke, but we got it from a listener.

02:49 - Tariq Malik (Host)
We love our listeners. I'll take it. I love it, Tom.

02:51 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah.

02:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You can all the taboos.

02:56 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, oh good, good big nod to you All right, let's do some headline news.

03:04 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Headline News. Headline News.

03:10 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Thank you, miss Australian Person, who I will never meet because you're completely electronic. So, gosh, we've had an election, we have yes, and we have a transition team getting ready to come on board. I believe at this point they're just waiting to get some space allocated and then they can get together and put their collective heads together. Um, I did hear that there was a read that there was a a phone call between musk and trump not too long ago where, in the middle of the conversation, trump said what's this starlink thing? So I guess the transition team has some of their work cut out for them, but what do you know?

03:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, as you mentioned, president-elect Donald J Trump was coming in as the 47th president. That election happened the week of this podcast that we're recording and actually you know we pretty much expect space exploration to weigh pretty heavily in that new administration Because during I mean, I stayed up till 3.30 in the morning waiting for results from the election after voting and Trump name dropped Elon Musk and SpaceX and Starlink like all in one, like during his big announcement speech that you know his victory speech, that he was saying and it was kind of like self-deprecating, he was acting kind of like oh I don't know what Starlink is, I saw the rocket launch, he was mentioning the Starship one and that he stopped and called Elon and put some fundraiser person on hold for 45 minutes to talk about watching Starship Flight 5 come back, that's right.

04:46
It was very interesting and it was a story that we had heard before in previous speeches, during stump speeches by Trump. But to highlight it during that moment, I think was very telling about how he values his relationship with Elon Musk, who spent a million dollars a day in the last weeks to support voters, I guess to give them awards and whatnot and threw millions more into a super PAC.

05:16 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Is it a super PAC?

05:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's just one just a PAC right.

05:20
His election committee to get him elected.

05:26
So that's happened.

05:27
I think that it's very clear that there is a much cozier relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk than there was during the first administration, when Elon pulled out of, I think, some industrialist panels for the economy at that point in time, based on things.

05:45
Things are different now, and the fact that you have the incoming president name dropping this billionaire that helped get him elected through fundraising but very clearly has these visual events like the Starship launch is going then is very telling. One thing I would point out in this whole story because he said it twice now is he keeps talking about the rocket looking white but it's all dirty because it's been used again, but he's talking about Starship, which is made out of stainless steel, and so I think that there's just a little bit of disconnect there about what he's saying, but I think the message is still the same he values SpaceX and Elon Musk because of what they've done for him in this election. They're clearly entrenched now in the Artemis program, as well as the US space program and the defense space program, and you're going to see a lot of that play out in a new Trump administration.

06:41 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well at flying. I don't know what last count. 97% of US payloads, I mean, who can even come close? That's right, all right. Moving on more SpaceX, we have an ISS reboost mission coming up, which I loved it was either your headline or your sub-headline. Spacex will boost the space station for the first time friday, november 8th, as the company prepares to eventually kill the orbiting complex. Really, my friend I don't.

07:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Oh yeah, that's the lead. Yeah, yeah, hats off to, uh, elizabeth howell, our writer, about it. Yeah, because spacex has that contract to build the, the, the d orbit tug as well. So this is really interesting because for the first time, there actually has been an update since, uh, since we've got this story from spacecom by Elizabeth Howell here, because that was our big preview that they're going to do this thing that they'd never done before Reboost at the space station have been done by Russia's Progress vehicles and also, I believe, europe's ATVs as well did it.

07:43
I can't recall if HTV did, I don't think so, but this is a new capability for the SpaceX Dragon cargo ships and in fact, since that it actually has occurred and there's actually a really great image too that my colleague, josh Dinner, put together, because it looks like the reboost went just as they expected, which, again, you know they keep performing, they keep hitting all these milestones and they've hit another one. Nasa and SpaceX said that they finished it at 12.50 pm Eastern time on this day, as we're recording, rod. So it went swimmingly and now they've got a new capability for the next what is it? The next six years until the end of the space station to be able to reboost it and keep it in its proper orbit.

08:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Cool, yeah, all right, and switching gears here. Sunita Williams is just fine in space. Just fine, yeah, despite what kind of picture.

08:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
All right, all right, this is really bad. This is a weird one. This is weird. So yesterday we got an announcement from NASA that was really strange and out of place. It's just like an announcement that came through their blog as well as through their regular email service, and it says all NASA astronauts aboard the International Space Station undergo routine medical evaluations and they have dedicated flight surgeons monitoring them and they are all in good health. That's the statement.

09:15 - Rod Pyle (Host)
The astronauts are fine, right, and it's like where Kind of begs the question itself, doesn't it?

09:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Why would you have to put out a special announcement that the astronauts are fine? And it's because the Daily Mail at least in my investigations of this, I pinned it back to the Daily Mail. But because the Daily Mail and some other tabloidy news publications found a photo of Sonny Williams, commander right now of the International Space Station. You know she has this extra long mission along with Butch Wilmore because their Starliner vehicle couldn't bring them back to Earth. We talked about that ad nauseum on the show. But they found this picture. They thought she looked gaunt, quote unquote, and decided to run a three bylined article interviewing doctors about how at death's door she was. And it's just really. I think, um, it's really. I don't do I want to say chauvinistic, I don't know it's. It's like body shaming, like just because someone looks a certain way in the picture, that they must be this, you know.

10:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Uh, yeah, and maybe a little culturally insensitive, yeah, and, and she does have very deep set eyes, yeah, and in the wrong lighting it can look quote gaunt unquote. But you know, and this is, a person, a lot of us.

10:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
this is the person who ran the first marathon in space, right, and, and they have doctors checking in on them all the time and whatnot. And it's just very clear that this story was written to grab eyeballs and know, I mean, they didn't call NASA, right, they just decided to run with it and it was just really. Yeah, it was really sad to see and so I mean, she's fine, butch Wilmore is fine, is fine the astronauts they're all fine, right, they've got people checking in with them every single day to make sure that they're fine and um, and they're all professionals too, and being an astronaut is not an easy job. So, uh, it's just very disappointing to see that example in the media, which is clearly for um, hyper hyperbole and like click grabbing and whatnot.

11:25 - Eric Berger (Guest)
you you make jokes about me.

11:27 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I was gonna say so I'm being clickbait, you know yeah, given the gravity of that, I forgive you your clickbaity headlines like to kill this, to murder the space station?

11:38
all right, we're having too much fun with this. Uh, I don't want to keep eric, so we'll be back in just a moment with Eric Berger. Stand by Eric Berger. This episode of this Week in Space is brought to you by US Cloud, the number one Microsoft Unified Support replacement. Us Cloud is the global leader in third party Microsoft Enterprise Support, supporting 50 of the Fortune 500. Switching to US Cloud can save your business 30 to 50% on a true, comparable replacement for Microsoft Unified Support.

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14:33 - Eric Berger (Guest)
well, that's an amazing title, rod. Thank you. I'm not sure I can live up to that, but I appreciate it.

14:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's I'm afraid you already have, having written two best-selling books in an area where getting a bestseller is quite a challenge and as I can tell you from firsthand experience. So, uh, congratulations on on the latest one. It's, it's quite a read, as a publisher put to me years ago um, and you know, my books I don't think are going to sell close to what yours does. But he said the thing I like about your books is they read like adventure novels, and this one really really does also read like an adventure novel. I mean the story is. I can tell you had really great fun in the telling.

15:15 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Yeah, that's right. I mean, I wanted to essentially take readers and put them alongside the SpaceX engineers and technicians who were turning the wrenches and making the decisions that ultimately allowed SpaceX to do the incredible things it did from 2010, basically to 2020.

15:30 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I should probably back up and tell the audience we should point that out. You wrote a book called Lift Off and then you wrote a book called Reentry which has just come out recently, and they're a great Senior Space Editor at Ars Technica as well.

15:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, uh, doing all the good stuff, fighting that good fight there.

15:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So well, and tarik, why don't you take it on? Because I know you have a question.

15:52 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, okay, I'm dying to ask all right, I'm gonna ask you, eric, the question that I ask everybody who comes on here, which is how you found space, in particular because I mean, I've known you since your chronicle days, of course. I think I, uh, I think that was when you and I first met, when I was traveling out there to houston. Um, now you're at ars technica, uh, you've written these amazing books, uh, on a private space flight, uh. But where did space bite you? Because I know that you have some weather origins as well, and so I always ask people kind of what their path to space was. Was it little Eric? You know who found it? Was it something that you found later on, you know? Can you clue us in on that?

16:35 - Eric Berger (Guest)
It was little Eric that found space. I was always interested in it. I distinctly remember as a kid in the 70s writing to NASA and getting back these glorious full-page photographs of, like the planet, outer planets that had been taken by the voyagers and being mesmerized by the views of Uranus and Jupiter and all the other planets that this was well before the internet. So it was. You know. You got a big manila envelope and you felt pretty special. And then I went off to school and was studying astronomy and then went into journalism and I wanted to basically be a science journalist. I ultimately decided, wow, and I was Get go.

17:12
Yeah, I was working as a science journalist at the Chronicle in 2003 when Shuttle Columbia happened and I got called to go to Johnson Space Center that morning to help out Mark Corot with the reporting following that accident and that really rekindled a fascination that I had with space and so I helped cover space the Chronicle for a while.

17:39
Then Mark left and I kind of picked it up as part of my science beat and I kind of picked it up as part of my science beat and around 2012, 2013, 2014, I got really interested in space because of what was happening in the private sector. I mean, I don't know what your feelings are about covering the space shelter, but I found it pretty boring. I hate to say that, but I mean it was wonderful people seven wonderful people going up to do interesting things in space, but it was fairly repetitive and everything at NASA was pretty much by the book and buttoned down. So I appreciated kind of the more freewheeling nature of the private space industry and so I just started writing more and more about SpaceX and other companies and what they were trying to bring about. And then I got offered to a full-time space writing job at Ars Technica about a decade ago, nine years ago, to just write about space, and basically they said you can write whatever you want. I mean that was pretty freeing, that's really nice.

18:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's a pretty cool assignment.

18:40 - Eric Berger (Guest)
I mean it probably is a huge perk right and at the Chronicle I'd kind of been reined in a little bit because we were in Houston and so in Johnson Space Center you can't be too critical of them. And so when I left for Ars Technica I just said I'm just going to start writing what I think is really happening out there. And so it's just been. I've had that approach over the last decade to really just kind of understand what's happening and sharing that with readers.

19:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Oh, that's awesome.

19:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Keep cowing or run for his money. That's an insider comment, so I guess just to position this, you know, since your books have been about SpaceX, I mean, here's this scrappy upstart company that starts in 2002, looks like they might go out of business in 2008. Steve Jervison and other people come along and help them get over that bump. Mr Musk pushes and pushes and pushes and cajoles and insults and yells and pushes, and then flatters a little bit and pushes some more and suddenly amazing things happen. And insults and yells and pushes, and then flatters a little bit and pushes some more, and suddenly amazing things happen. And now they're launching well over 100 flights this year.

19:51
The US would be a distant second to China if it wasn't for SpaceX and, as I recall, not that many years back the US was only launching, I think, what sometimes 10 launches or fewer per year through their traditional launch providers, and it's just hard to see anybody, except maybe Blue Origin, coming along to compete. And I'm sorry this is a very long rambling introduction to my question, but with this change administration, can you look at your crystal ball a bit and tell us what you see ahead for this company, and then I'm going to turn it over to Tarek after that.

20:29 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Well, I think we're going to see the administration embrace the Starship vision right, which is Starship brings two things to the table that we've never really had before, the world has never really had before right Super heavy lift rocket at an affordable price. And even if it's 150 million to launch 150 tons, that's still one to two orders of magnitude less than any rocket in history. That's been a super heavy lift rocket. And it's also got this huge payload fairing right. We could build a house inside that payload fairing and be pretty comfortable. So you're talking about bringing mass and volume to space at prices that really were unthinkable before. So there's an enormous potential in that. I mean, spacex was already going places. You know, I don't think a Kamala Harris victory would have been bad news for SpaceX, because the Starship vehicle has sailed, it's on the critical path for NASA's program, so it was happening regardless. This is just going to speed things up. I mean, the biggest headache Musk has had really has been regulatory. We all know how he feels about regulatory agencies, and the Trump administration is going to feel the same way, and I think the FAA and FCC do important work, but they are going to be rendered less effective or be told to basically fast track SpaceX's activities with Starship, and so I think we'll see Starship move even faster than we've seen before.

22:05
And to go back to your comment about SpaceX started out scrappy. They were scrappy throughout the 2010s. It really is only the last few years that we've seen their resources really become unlocked. And so what we're seeing in South Texas where they built down ship what 3031 or 32 and booster 13 or something that is called being hardware rich, and when you're hardware rich, you can send stuff up and have it explode and then learn and fly again. And so we're seeing a company that has been fiscally unrestrained for the last couple of years and now, if the regulation side of things loosen up, they're just going to go even faster. Now the challenge for them, of course, is that they still got a. They're just going to go even faster. Now. The challenge for them, of course, is that they still got a long, long way to go. There's so many different steps that they have to complete to actually get a fully functional interplanetary starship, but they're going to go as fast as humanly possible, I think, at this point.

23:02 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I think that speed is pretty evident. I mean, I think we were there right at the unveiling of SN1, that first starship, and you know, on that warm, I think it was September right September 2019.

23:15 - Eric Berger (Guest)
It was a hot night.

23:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Irene Klotz kept poking me to take off my suit coat because it was so hot, but I was like no, got to keep the image up, you're a madman, got to keep your image going.

23:27 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Hey, Tarek, before you launch into your question, let me take a quick ad break.

23:31 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, of course.

23:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Got to pay the hounds. All right, we will be right back. Stand by. We'll be back with Eric Berger in a moment.

23:40 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, no, I was just trying to kind of paint that picture because back in 2019 when we saw SN1, it was bright and it was shiny, and now of course, it's like smithereens. But Starbase was like a giant tent, maybe like a few tents, and there was like the temporary trailer, bathrooms and whatnot. Now you've got like a bunch of vertical bays. You've got like you were talking about being hardware rich and it's only been a few years since that, which is absolutely crazy. And in Liftoff, the first book on SpaceX, you kind of chronicle the whole rocky road to Falcon 1. And I remember distinctly then getting an alert saying hi going to a wedding and getting an alert on my Blackberry.

24:24
That's when this was, by the way from SpaceX PAO to say, hey, we're going to launch our next Falcon rocket in 45 minutes if you want to tune in and join. And I think that one failed but then the next one did in fact make it. And now here we are with reentry and the Falcon 9s. We take them for granted. They launch three a week. Maybe you know, and I'm kind of curious if when you started really paying attention to SpaceX, you know, and making that shift into, you know, the commercial sector, if it was as apparent to you then you know, as kind of what you described now about them being fairly unrivaled, you know, I think deservedly so, with all the stuff that they've done, was it clear they were going to reach it or was it still just that open question, even as they shifted into Falcon 9, as you were reporting for this book here, to make a big business case out of that? I mean, was it as questionable with Falcon 9 as it might have been with the Falcon 1 days?

25:29 - Eric Berger (Guest)
I think it was an open question in the mid-2010s, especially in 2015 and 2016, when you had back-to-back Falcon 9 accidents, right, they lost the CRS-7 rocket in flight and then they lost Amos 6 on the pad a little more than a year later, and so it was not really, I think, until 2017 and 2018 when they really started to hit their stride and it seemed inevitable. And I think for a lot of people, myself included, it was really the pivot, or the point at which I decided to start writing some books was the Falcon Heavy launch. At that point, it just seemed like everything was possible for this company. I mean, they were clearly a special company when they docked Dragon to the ISS in 2012,.

26:12
Right, Because no company had ever done that before. Only countries had done that. But you know, they still had. They were still. You know you could legitimately criticize SpaceX for having a low flight 2013, 2014, 2015. I mean, they're still launching a handful of rockets a year and then the CEOs out there talking about we're going to launch every week and it took them a while to get there, but ultimately they did get there.

26:38 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Now you mentioned in reentry that Falcon Heavy. I think that was 2018, right If memory serves, yeah, february. That you had met him on the pad, uh, that that day before, remember, there was like a big, a big, like a site visit was that the first time you met him, in person or no, had you talked to him before?

26:55
yeah, really, I met him in person so you know, I'm curious because falcon heavy was like something that I don't think I had seen before. You know where you get the launch and then the rockets came back and I mean it was absolutely spectacular. What struck you about him? Because I think we had met him. I had met him before and it was really surprising. He came into the New York offices and then just started talking about these reusable rockets being the Holy Grail and I had a hard time like believing at the time.

27:25
But what struck you about what he was saying with when you're there on the pad? Because you know, in new york we're in like a little sound room. You don't see anything. It's just elon, you know, maybe his handler and and then us in the camera but you were there with this triple core rocket behind you, knowing that they're going to try to bring the half of it back in less than 24 hours. And if that was your first meeting, I mean that seems to be like a pretty big of a doozy in-person meeting to have.

27:54 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Yeah, it was interesting. I mean my first impression was he was big, like his size was physically imposing to me, and he had a great sense of humor, right. I mean you get lots of different moods with Elon, right? I've seen mad Elon before and you don't want to be on the receiving end of that, and I have once or twice. And then you know you have sort of happy Elon where he's, and he was in a good mood that day. He had just taken some of his children up on the launch pad and they got to walk around underneath the Falcon Heavy rocket, and so he was coming back around in this SUV and meeting with a handful of people, and so it was just interesting to talk to him.

28:40
And I guess what struck me most is like, even back in 2018, this is February 2018, and, by the way, not a bad time to wear a sport coat in Florida, you can get away with that. I wouldn't recommend that summertime in Texas. But you know he was not. He didn't seem all that impressed with the Falcon Heavy. I'm thinking what's wrong with you, man, Really.

29:05
We all saw that video that I think was it nat geo shot of him running outside right but if you watch the press conference afterward, like he was, just like you know this was great and everything, but it's really just a step um and we really need to be focused on starship as the key enabling technology.

29:25 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So he Falcon Heavy didn't keep his interest very long, did it?

29:29 - Eric Berger (Guest)
No, no, interesting, it didn't. I mean, even at that time in 2018, he was pretty deep in sort of the early design of Starship and you know they rolled out less than a year and a half later those first prototypes SN1, that Tarek talked about earlier.

29:46 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's really interesting. Do you have another question?

29:49 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, no, no, go ahead, go ahead, Rod. I'll be happy to wait. No, go ahead, go ahead.

29:53 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, actually, why don't you go ahead? Because mine's going to, I think, require a long answer and we need to jump to another break in a second, so you get the short stick. Well, yeah, well.

30:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I guess I did want to talk about that bridge then, because you do touch on the beginnings of Starship in Reentry and I'm just curious if at this point we're talking about that transition from Falcon well, not transition the addition of Falcon Heavy. I don't know if it's like a drive or whatnot to kind of keep pushing things forward around that turning period. But I'm just wondering if there was, in your reporting for these books, a true secret sauce that is like a common denominator from each of these different programs that have led the company to really maintain that momentum that we see it having. I guess that the public even can see it having with all these test flights and with maybe their embrace of sharing everything on social media, including the failures, which you don't see a lot of companies do there. That you do see will be key for both the I don't want to say post Falcon 9, because it seems like that's going to be a workhorse for the foreseeable.

31:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Let the man answer.

31:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Oh no, Let me finish my question. Rod, Come on.

31:10 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Waiting for a question here, Rod.

31:18 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah. So what is the secret? Is there a common denominator? Secret sauce that they've been able to keep as a company through these different programs.

31:22 - Eric Berger (Guest)
People think lots of different things about Elon and I get that he's extremely controversial, days Um and says a lot of things. I think that make people uncomfortable, myself included. But I don't think you can get away from the fact that he is the secret sauce of SpaceX, at least in the sense of he has, from day one, provided this dominant vision. He's never really moved away from it, like, and that is to make humans a multi-planetary species, and that journey begins on Mars and like. So every step the company takes is to further that ambition. And if something isn't working, like propulsive landing and dragon, then okay, he'll course correct back away from that. But but the goal is Mars and it's, it's he's. If something is not advancing that goal, then he doesn't have time for it at SpaceX.

32:09
And I think the other thing is that he just every day, like make sure that the people working for him know that they have to go faster. And if there are problems that they're running into, don't be like me, don't procrastinate, right, like, oh, I got a problem, I'm going to worry about that next week. No, it's like tackle the biggest problem first and if you need help solving it, let me know. Right, don't not tell me and it's hard to get away from sort of that energy continuing to propel the company forward. You know, you look at a lot of other space companies start out with some big disruptive vision and they disrupt it and then they kind of become the next Boeing or Lockheed or whatever. And SpaceX is not. They're the most powerful company in spaceflight today, but they're still being disruptive. And again, you kind of have to attribute that to the founder, who's still pushing forward every day, even if he's also playing Diablo at the same time Diablo 4.

33:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I have to say, as I was reading your book last night, I wished I had a PDF of it so I could do a word search to see how many times the word faster showed up in there, because in some chapters it's again and again and I thought, man, I mean you can almost feel through your writing, and not in a mean-spirited way at all, but the pounding that these people get at this company. I mean it's just ruthless, relentless. Speaking of being ruthless, uh, I'm going to ruthlessly take us to one more ad break and we'll be right back for my next exciting question. So stand by.

33:44
So, uh, if I have my numbers right, spacex did a total of 96 launches in 2023. They're planning 130, 35-ish for this year if they finish as they want and I'm at Kennedy Space Center right now we saw, well heard mostly one go up yesterday and I think there's another uh Falcon uh plan for Saturday. So you know, I'm I'm living the evidence of how fast these things are taking off these days. And yet, in comparison, the only company I can really compare to, spacex ULA has 15 launches in 24 and launched three times in 2023. Help me imagine how anybody can compete withx at this point in the next 10 years. We've been watching a lot of stuff go in the front of the blue origin plant out here and not seeing much come out the back. You know it's been kind of constipated for a while at least. Finally the big rocket did roll out, but it just feels like they're going to dominate the field for years to come.

34:49 - Eric Berger (Guest)
They have a huge lead in launch, like, like it's now been nine years since they first landed a rocket and no one has repeated that feat, even while everyone acknowledges that that is probably the ideal way to do first stage reuse. I think that probably will change within the next 12 to 18 months that we'll see Blue Origin successfully land. We'll see probably a Chinese company successfully land an orbital rocket, but there's no question they're already far, far ahead in launch and they're also ahead in satellite internet Like they're five to seven years ahead of Project Kuiper and China's constellations and everything else. And so they are the leaders and they're going faster, right. And so in launch, like they're taking the next step with Starship, and no one has a vehicle that's like Starship, right, it's an insane design and it's preposterous that they're pulling it off. So there are a couple of things could happen. One Elon could self-combust. A couple of things could happen. One Elon could self-combust he can.

35:50
Trump could get into a furious row over something which does not strike me as particularly unlikely. And all of a sudden, the US government is favoring other competitors for SpaceX, although, like, if NASA wants to have a human spaceflight program, you're kind of screwed unless you use SpaceX and if you want to have low Earth orbit, low internet broadband, you kind of got to go through Starlink and Starshield. If you're DoD, the military is counting on SpaceX for at least half its launches and certainly for assured access to space. Some of those dials start to change in the next five years as Blue Origin comes online and Vulcan becomes reliable and Kuiper comes online, but for now there's really nothing. There's no viable competitors to SpaceX. But I mean, look what happened to Howard Hughes, right, and so Elon has spinning a lot of plates and he's in his 50s now.

36:40
So I think that's a risk. I think if Gwen Shotwell retires, that's a concern. I'm not saying that's happening imminently, but that's probably on the roadmap for her. And, like you know, you could see like the space, the NASA, spacex, mars program becoming the dominant paradigm of the Trump administration and then like, if there's a Democrat elected in four years, like they want to make a clean sweep of of programs and that would really, you know, maybe they would change the focus. You know I so there's.

37:14
I think the risks are not like other companies catching up through technical prowess or funding because SpaceX is so far ahead. It would be more of like some kind of political thing or some kind of personnel thing that kind of takes the steamroller off the tracks. And I, frankly, in terms of technical competition, I would not look in the United States, I'd look to China and the very interesting things. I mean that company excuse me, that country and its startups are seeking to emulate what SpaceX has done, whereas the reaction in the United States is everyone's trying to do a little bit differently, because I don't think they want to be seen as copying SpaceX, but China's- and emulate is such a kind word for China, by the way.

37:58
China has no qualms about directly ripping off designs for Falcon 9.

38:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's a better phrase, yeah.

38:03 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You just saw that at the Zhuhai Air Show just recently. I mean it's almost a near exact replica of Starship that they're saying that one company is going to build.

38:14 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and before that they were almost replicas of the Falcon 9.

38:18 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and like mashups of New Shepard and Falcon 9 too, I've seen.

38:22 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Literally within a week of the Starship tower catch, which was so preposterous, Right Literally within a week of the Starship tower catch, which was so preposterous. Right Within a week of that, a Chinese company had a proposal out to get funding to develop their own tower catching, you know, rocket catching tower.

38:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So yeah, Eric earlier about, like their, their dependency now or, I guess, reliance on on SpaceX and Starlink for for their, their own, their own uses. And I can remember a time when the Air Force, you know, signed a lease to SpaceX to use a launch pad out of Vandenberg and then told them no, you can't try to launch your Falcon one rocket out of Vandenberg, go find some them. No, you can't try to launch your Falcon 1 rocket out of Vandenberg, go find some other place out in the middle of the South Pacific. And is it just the fact that they can see the success now and that's what sells them on it? Or was there a sea change in the DoD that led to more openness, that led to these contracts that we saw.

39:25 - Eric Berger (Guest)
I think it's a couple of things. First of all, I think it's been gradual over time and it has been part and parcel of just accepting the fact that this company is out there doing it and so you need to avail yourself of it. But I mean, spacex had to kick open the door right In 2014,. They sued the government because of ULA's sole source contract award for Heavy Lift and got a piece of those deals and obviously they haven't looked back. But there were also believers in DoD, like right at the beginning. Their very first federal funding came from DARPA back in 2003 or 2004, for the first mission was sponsored by DARPA. And there have been key believers at DoD all along. You know, like their first launch, their ULA contested their pad at Slick 40, space Launch Camp 40 at the Cape, and Susan Helms was the Brigadier General in charge of the range there and she approved it despite heavy lobbying.

40:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Excuse me for breaking in, but I did really enjoy the chapter where you talked about. I mean, she took chances with her career to go their booster in 2015,.

40:40 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Not far from the $2 billion Eastern spacecraft processing facility that's owned by the National Reconnaissance Office and they were pushing very hard for SpaceX not to do what the NRO was opposed to that they allowed them to do autonomous flight termination system.

41:03
Now, look, if you talk to SpaceX or Elon and ask him about somebody, he said that you had to basically do this kicking and screaming. But it's not like the federal government has recognized reality. I mean, look at NASA, to go back from DoD to NASA, nasa has gone from a paradigm where it awards cost plus contracts for major programs, like we saw with SLS and Orion, and those were kind of the last, and Gateway, and those were kind of the last pieces of that, and now it's like almost everything is a services-based contract and certainly the key elements of the Artemis program are all services-based. Now it remains to be seen whether that ultimately will be successful. But that is simply a product of SpaceX showing that it could be done ultimately would be successful, but that is as simply a product of spacex showing that it could be done.

41:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, um, so it's completely changed the contracting, the way the federal government does contracting all right, I've got my next question coming up right after this short break, so go nowhere. So there was a a clear pivot point at which this company said you know, I want to bring the rockets back and use them again and again. And I think I remember back at that time other people, both ULA and within the trade, even journalists, saying you can't do that Right. And I remember for I forget which book it was, but I was researching a chapter about von braun and their drawings of it.

42:30
You've probably seen them actually proposing a flyback parachute, recovered saturn 5, first stage, that they could go ahead and reuse that. And it was. You know, at that point we had almost five percent of the federal budget to play with. But ultimately I think it was just like look, we don't want to waste time on this or get into the moon. You know, worry about bringing your toys back later. But was there, was it computer processing power? That was the pivotal point about being able to reuse a rocket that way.

43:01 - Eric Berger (Guest)
I don't think so. I think it was the sort of relentless desire to do so by Elon Musk, because until you get to the starship catching tower, almost all of the ideas we've seen SpaceX do before have been thought of right. Obviously they were thinking, as you mentioned, wernher von Braun was thinking about this back in the 60s. You can find Soviet movies where they're landing rockets on a boat right and so like. Even the drone, ship landings are not really that surprising. And you know a three-core rocket like the Falcon Heavy. You know ULA did that with Delta Delta IV Heavy.

43:52
What Elon Musk and SpaceX did was there were these ideas out there that everyone had been talking about, and you could go on and on, like propulsive or, excuse me, propellant densification, like that had been considered by NASA many times over the years and they discarded it as too risky. Autonomous flight termination system, like they'd been talking about that for decades. Wow, we should have computers on board the vehicle that make this decision, as opposed to someone miles away. And he's like, no, we're going to do it and we're going to take the risks. And it's really interesting if you go back to the founding of SpaceX, like at one point in the budget cycle around the turn of the century, nasa was funding three different reusable rocket programs. You had the space shuttle, you had the next generation launch system and you had I think it was the X-33. But basically there were three reusable launch systems under funding.

44:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Adventure Star.

44:45 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Yeah, and over time those other two got canceled and then the shuttle was phased out after Columbia. And then all of a sudden NASA was funding nothing in reusable launch and SpaceX said, no, we're going to do it. And so they just, they just kind of kept pushing until it got accomplished. And again you have to sort of say that's not because the they didn't do that, because the US government was asking them to do it. Right, Because that's how the way space had been done almost entirely since the beginning. Like contractors built the Saturn V rocket because NASA said we need this to go to the moon. We built the space shuttle. Rockwell built the space shuttle and all the other contractors, because that's how NASA decided they wanted to do it. Same with the space station, Same with the Atlas V, the Delta rockets. That's what the military wanted. Spacex is like no, hey, we're going to build what we think we need and then, if it works, we'll sell you the service. So it really is. It was a big sea change.

45:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I think SpaceX was the first company when I had to stop saying I'll see it when I believe it, because I believe it when I see it.

45:51
I'll believe it when I was. When I see it. Yeah, because there was that whole period before. I'm like what, 2002 to 2004, maybe even, where you'd have all these pie in the sky, we're gonna. We're gonna do this new rocket plane, we're gonna do this new thing. There was like a balloon chained launch plan. It was like a train where the bottom part launches first and pulls the rest of it up into space, and it was just crazy at that point in time. And then, of course, spacex comes out and says we're going to reuse the rockets. And it's going to look and it's like, well, yeah, okay, maybe. And then they start doing it. And then they're like, well, we're gonna land on the ship. Now, okay, you know, and it's and. But you know now that if eventually they will get there, it may not be on the time scale that elon says, but uh, but if they say they're gonna do it, they're gonna do some version of it now and I mean that's right.

46:42 - Eric Berger (Guest)
You could go back to the 80s to find commercial entrepreneurs excuse me who are going to be the FedEx of space. Right, I mean going like literally back to the 1980s and 90s and like the test stand SpaceX got in McGregor was because of Andy Beal. Right, founded Beal Aerospace and was going to build a big rocket and engine to cut the cost of launch and they went under. The fascinating thing about SpaceX is that, whereas all these other companies failed, I mean you go back and look at the ISDC conferences dating way back and you can find keynote speeches from all sorts of people promising to be the FedEx of space and everything. And so, yeah, it was absolutely. I'll believe it when I see it and then they started doing it.

47:25 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah. Were you screaming at the Starship? Catch, say that again Like. I was Just like, or did you?

47:35 - Eric Berger (Guest)
go out, did you?

47:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
go out for that If you were at home.

47:39 - Eric Berger (Guest)
I missed that one, but I've actually been to several of the launches. I thought they would wave it off because I thought there would be some bad piece of data that they saw somewhere on the rocket and they said, okay, we can't do it, but I thought that if they went for it it would be successful.

47:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, really.

47:56 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Wow, they were yeah.

47:57 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I thought if they went for it they were going to whack into the launch structure.

48:02 - Eric Berger (Guest)
But close as, they came, they didn't. I mean look at what they can do with the precision of Falcon 9 landings right.

48:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So they've got the algorithms wired Well and what's spectacular is watching how fast those things come hurtling down. At the last second they put on the brakes. It's pretty exciting. So we've had a couple people, including rob manning from jpl, on here to talk about mars sample returns a frustrating story, especially frustrating for those guys, and uh, we've got some opinions about it, but enough is said about that. Do we think uh, spacex can or will decide that they're going to enter that put race, now that China's said that they're going to do it? As an adjunct to that question, do you think there's any chance that somebody like Musk or one of the other of the billionaire boys club would just say you know, I'm just going to do this.

49:01 - Eric Berger (Guest)
No, I don't think anyone is going to just say they're going to do it because it's an expensive, complex mission that probably would fail.

49:07
My best guess as to what happens is that MSR gets canceled because, I think that the Trump administration will decide that its goal is put humans on Mars. They're going to set a date of 2028, which we'll know is not realistic, but any of the Mars sample return architectures being talked about now are not bringing rocks back before 2032 at the very earliest. So I think just the decision we made look, we don't need to spend $5 billion on this initiative when we're going to try to get humans there as quickly as possible. And if China brings a Mars sample return mission in 2028 or 2020, 2030, who cares? I mean literally who cares when you're actually going to be sending people there? So my sense that's my best guess as to what happens Now, maybe NASA will move ahead.

50:00
They're going to make an announcement in December about their plan, and I just it's really hard to predict what happens because we're in a really a brave new world. I just actually published a story on Ars Technica. Headlined Space Policies is About to Get Pretty Wild Y'all because it is yeah, but it's. I just think MSR is going to get canceled. It could have easily been canceled a year or two ago because the plan by JPL was completely unwieldy, and I'm not sure any of the private sector plans are all that realistic either. I guess we'll have to wait to see the details.

50:38 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I guess if you send astronauts to Mars, they're going to bring samples back, and so it turns itself into a Mars sample return. There too, we should talk about Mars more, because Mars has been on Elon's mind and SpaceX's mind for like two decades now, and it seems like they're building the infrastructure for it, in fact- Take it away, brother. Yeah, elon mentioned plans for Mars missions in 2026, right? Is that what he said they were going to try, if they can get everything right.

51:05 - Eric Berger (Guest)
So he's going to try to do an uncrewed launch to Mars in 2026?

51:09 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right. That's right. And I guess I did want to ask about that Mars plan because that's always been in the back of SpaceX's mission goals. Right, it seems like they're on a track maybe not like the fast track, depending on how much is needed. But also when I kind of look objectively or try to look objectively, at Starship in particular, which would seem to be the vehicle of choice for that kind of an expedition, I see like a lot of missing parts. Right, they have to be able to refuel it. I think that there's talk I think, rod, you had a note here like so uh, uh, launches for the refueling, just to get to the moon.

51:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And then I would assume you would Well off the record. As I'm sure Eric knows, they're talking 24.

51:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I mean that's that's a lot of launches just to get to a place A lot of choreography yeah.

51:58
Uh, and I guess the, the, the, the payback there is you get, you get a reusable rocket, but, um, but I guess the question that I'm trying to ask is is that the vehicle that will get spacex to mars, or does it? Does it have to change because of just the, the serious amount of so many launches, of refueling tests that still haven't been worked out of, I guess, landing on another planet, which they would have to test out with this? Or is there another iterative design or a new vehicle completely that is in the design work somewhere? You know, when you're poking around their files, that we're going to see.

52:39 - Eric Berger (Guest)
I mean, I think Starship is the vehicle We'll see several versions before you get to the Mars vehicle.

52:44
So just like we had five major blocks of the Falcon 9 rocket, we're kind of block one of the Starship rocket excuse me is about to come to an end, I think, after flight six, and then we'll move to block two and then they'll continue making it longer and with larger propellant tanks. So the refueling is an issue. But I mean, if you go back and you look at the Mars missions using Block 2 of the Space Launch System rocket, I mean it was calling for like eight launches of that rocket, right. So it's not like and that's a completely expendable $4 billion rocket. So you know, I mean, let's be real, and like even Blue Origins, lunar missions are six refuelings, something like that, on the order of that. So it's not like of New Glens, it's not like Starship is unique, it's just bigger than the other vehicles.

53:39
I do think it's the pathway and they'll just kind of continue to refine the design and I don't think it'll be 24. It might be 12. It might be 16. But quite frankly, you know, if you're launching a fully reusable rocket, which they will get to eventually, who cares? I mean they're launching 150, 140 times this year.

53:59
So if you've got four launch towers for Starship and you really can fly a vehicle once a week, each vehicle once a week, and you can build them for pennies on the dollar. I mean, think about, just think about the number of engines they've already lost with their first five flight tests, like almost 200 engines are in the ocean now. And like if you're NASA paying $200 million for an RS 25 engine okay, but you know these are half a million dollar engines. So it's just I don't think people are ready for sort of the economy of scale you get potentially with Starship and it really does completely upend the way we've always thought about space. So yeah, it's going to take lots of refuelings, but so what I mean this is the future. The future of spaceflight is distributed launch, propellant, storage in space, refueling and a sustainable, reusable system. So I mean they are trying to bring that future into existence.

54:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah.

55:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
When do you? I just want to hear that again. Hold on a second. I want to hear that again. Hold on a second. I want to hear that number again. Spacex turning out, I believe, an engine a day at about half a million, versus what it was costing old school prime contractors, I think, at least $90 million for the smaller rocket engines and more like, I believe, $ quarter for the rs-25 in the refined version it depends if you include the billion dollar charge that that aerojet charged nasa to to set up the tooling again for us 25 engines but you could calculate it at between 100 and 160 million dollars per engine.

55:40 - Eric Berger (Guest)
So you know 400 to 600 million dollars worth of engines on just the first stage of the course, on the core stage of the SLS rocket.

55:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Of the SLS. This is just unfathomable differences. Okay, sorry, tarek, go for it.

55:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, I just wanted to ask Eric, when your ticket to ride on a SpaceX Dragon?

56:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Is he going to get Tim Dodds? Yeah?

56:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Are you going to reserve a spot for it? Because they do seem to be. You know, starliner aside, the only game in town these days.

56:12 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Am I getting paid $50 million for this appearance Because of Sullivan?

56:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I'll go book my ticket. I was going to say, is he getting a real different pay rate than we are? I mean well the book, the royalties, there you go.

56:27 - Eric Berger (Guest)
That'll do it, not quite, but it's okay. If we're ever to see widespread space access for people, it's only going to come through Starship, I think, and so we got to be rooting for their success. And I don't know what eventually ticket prices will be. I don't think humans will launch on Starship for quite some time, but eventually, you know, if you could, you know, buy a suborbital trip from, you know, from South Texas to Australia for $10,000 or $25,000, I mean, I would do it $25,000,.

57:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I mean, I would do it, man, if it was. We make a trip to see family in Singapore every year and if I could get that trip to like less, just like, even if it's a one day trip, not a three day trip, that would be amazing.

57:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So oh well, we can still dream point to point, even if it's $25,000 to be able to spend a couple of hours of that view, instead of the few minutes you get from suborbital. However, many of those are left standing in the next five years. So I guess my last question for you is how are things going with reentry? Because authors love to ask other authors that, because we want to see how envious we should be and plans for future books.

57:47 - Eric Berger (Guest)
Well, thanks, thanks for asking. I was doing great. It was USA Today bestseller. The publishers always ordered already ordered several thousand more copies to be printed. Since it's, it's doing well and I've been very happy with it. So, and and the feedback I received from people have been great. The people who are in the book really love it because, again, they feel like it really tells their story. It's not just an Elon book, it's really a book about the people who did the hard work.

58:27
As for next projects, one of the mistakes I made after Liftoff is I didn't take any time off, so I'm consciously trying to take some time off now to focus on other things, and I kind of want to see where this is all headed. Right, it's really hard to overstate the potential for change at this point, with a new president and the CEO of SpaceX. The sitting CEO of SpaceX, with all these conflicts of interest, nevertheless, is going to be his principal advisor on a number of areas, probably including space flight. There's the potential for enormous change here, good and bad, and I kind of want to see where this is all headed before really finding another project. I just think we're kind of going through this huge window and the future is difficult to see.

59:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, on that note, I think that's covered it all. Well, on that note, I think that's covered it all. And it'll be interesting to see if Mr Musk becomes our chief efficiency officer and what that entails, because if my life gets much more efficient, I'm going to be extinct. I want to thank everyone for joining us for Episode 136, spacex Ascended with Eric Berger, the king of space journalists. I just wanted to say that again because I like to see a smile. Um, besides ours, technica, were you right? Which is a great publication. Where else can we keep up with what you're doing?

59:53 - Eric Berger (Guest)
uh, that's the best place. I am active on social media, um, on twitter and x people can find me there, um, but ours really is the place for in-depth sort of analysis and reporting on what's going on on space.

01:00:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And they're the ones that are paying him enough to get that ticket that we were talking about. Very good, Tarek. Where can we find you practicing your abort procedures these days?

01:00:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you can, as always, Rod, find me on spacecom and on the Twitter the X, you know, tarek J Malik. This weekend, you will see me going out at sunset to look at Jupiter and Venus, because they're absolutely gorgeous in the night sky, and then relaxing and getting ready for, I guess, flight six of Starship on November 18th. That'll be exciting too, and don't forget to tell us about your gaming channel. Oh yes, don't forget to tell us about your gaming channel. Oh yes, and and playing very important and playing fortnite remix on at space.

01:00:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Tron plays on the youtubes, yeah so new video coming this weekend you have now. How many subscribers do you?

01:00:56 - Tariq Malik (Host)
have 430 oh, thank you I love every one of them you're growing quickly, okay, and you answer emails, so can.

01:01:04 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, and of course you can find me at pilebookscom or at astromagazinecom, or, if you're in Florida this weekend, at the back of the Kennedy Space Center, space Settlement.

01:01:15 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah.

01:01:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, at the Space Settlement Conference. Remember, please? You can drop us a line at twist at twittv, that's T-W-I-S atis twittv. We always welcome your comments and we answer each and every one of your emails with loving attention. New episodes, this podcast published every friday on your favorite podcatcher. So make sure to subscribe. Tell your friends the goodest reviews we'll take whatever you want to give us, as long as there's at least five of them. And don't forget, you can get all the great programming with video streams on the Twit Network ad-free, on Club Twit, as well as some extras, for only $7 a month and for a limited time. Holiday season's coming. New subscribers get two free weeks. Woo, that's $3.50, so go for it. That's a cuppa at Starbucks. You can also follow the TwitTech Podcast Network at Twit on Twitter and on Facebook, and Twittv on Instagram. Thank you everyone. Thank you, eric. It was a great pleasure spending time with you today and we'll see everybody next time. Take care.