What has happened to Boeing? | Live Show

Welcome to Tomorrow. We are Carrie Anne and Jamie Higginbotham. We will be your hosts for this show. This week, we had a really fun, live, interactive conversation with you, the fellow space nerds. We start off by talking about Dragon 1, its final mission. Memories. Exactly, the memories of Dragon 1. We then moved on to Boeing and what in the world is happening over there? And then somehow, that kind of led us into the Space Launch System. Like, that was just organically sort of happened. And people were like, also this. So if you're a space nerd and you're interested in all of the space geekery, stay tuned, because tomorrow begins right now. Good morning. So Zach actually gets us into one of the topics that we wanted to talk about today, and that is thoughts on the last flight of Dragon 1, right? Yeah. Because this has a special place near and dear to us, because we both work. We always say Company X, but you know, we work at SpaceX, which means we're not allowed to talk about SpaceX, right? So we don't represent the views and opinions of SpaceX. We are not official spokespeople for SpaceX. Like, so we just choose not to talk. Nor would we want to be. No, yeah, we really don't want to be. So we choose not to talk about SpaceX, and we bring other people on board. So we can't really, we can't talk about any of, like, the non, like, the technical specific stuff to this, or anything truly SpaceX related. But because this is around the time frame, Dragon 1 spinning up is around the time frame, both of us came online. We have, like, personal, unique views of Dragon 1 that I think are a little bit, maybe, different. And I just want, like, this was, for those who don't know, CRS-20, which just flew to the International Space Station about, what has it been, 48 hours ago? Yeah. I mean, it's berthing with the space station soon. Yeah, I won't get into that. Or already has, I've lost track of time. No, I thought it was the 9th, and today's the 8th. OK, so last Dragon 1. It's the end of an era. Yeah, it's the end of an era. So it's the end of the contract. It was CRS-20 was the last one. It just happens to also be the last of the Dragon 1s. We're moving on to human rated and cargo rated Dragon, so Dragon 2, V2, Mark 2, whatever it is you want to call it, because apparently it's been called everything in the universe right now. And this is the one that can carry not just humans, but as well as cargo in a lot of different configurations. And I came up with a fantastic analogy, because my department is currently hiring, so I've been doing a lot of these interviews. And this young lady that I was trying to explain this to, A, had never watched Doctor Who before. So when I was joking that it's a little bit like the TARDIS, because you can actually fit seven humans in there, she gave me a blank stare. I was like, OK. But then I was trying to explain it can do humans and cargo, and she also still gave a blank stare to me. We didn't hire this girl. It doesn't matter. The point is here, though, that I said that this dragon is a lot like a minivan. So sometimes you need to go to the grocery store, and it's you and one other person, but you've got to get a lot of groceries. And then there's other times when you're going family road trip, and there's five people, and then three suitcases. But either way, you can reconfigure the minivan however you need to. And there's sometimes you're taking a longer trip, and you've got five people, and you've got five suitcases, but you only have room for three suitcases inside. But you'd put two more on the roof. And that's like our un, what? This is brilliant. It's, right? I was so. I love this so much. I have not actually heard this until now. So she is, you're watching her break my brain. Keep going. Because that was the unpressurized cargo section, because we were trying to explain that. Because you've got the pressurized part where the people have to go. And there's some stuff where you would want to have the fruit and vegetables and stuff. Those have to be inside. But then. This is so much better than any way I have ever explained. Tardis is from me, right? Because I explain dragons like a Tardis. I'm like, it looks small. Right, and a lot of people just don't. Even if you have seen Doctor Who, it's still difficult. You look at dragon, and you're like, there's no way humans can fit in there. There's just, there just isn't. And you're like, but, you start explaining it that, it is though, Dragon 2 is space minivan. You start explaining it that way, and it becomes a lot simpler. You're like, oh right. You take a couple seats out, you can get more cargo in. Sometimes you have the beef jerky and the sodas on the inside. But you can put the clothes on the outside, and those can be unpressurized. It's not a big deal. And yeah, thankfully she got it then. So, questions like this, can Dragon 2 have more than four seats now though? Yeah. This is where we have to kind of like, any technical questions like this, we're gonna have to just skip. Like, we can bring on other people who can answer these for you, but they can't be us. Right. But, first off, that's brilliant. Also, I just want to point out you're hiring, so if anyone wants to, this is the cool thing about space, is everyone thinks that you need to be like an engineer, or a rocket scientist, and that is very untrue. You're hiring baristas, right? Yeah, I'm hiring baristas right now, as well as dining room attendants. So, I mean, if you are in remote, anywhere close to being food service industry, like, there's a whole entire department inside of SpaceX that is hiring. And you're hiring countrywide, I think, right? Or at least California, Texas, Florida? Yeah, I think maybe also Seattle, I'm not positive. So, basically, if you live in the United States, and you want to work for SpaceX, check out their jobs posting page, because aerospace is so much more than just the engineering of the rocket. Oh, absolutely. It's everything, because I can't function without my coffee. Right. I bet a lot of people at SpaceX would say the same thing. For sure. So, you would be helping to do that. I would just recommend going to their careers page. What is it, spacex.com slash careers? Yep, easy as that. In any case, so there's those sorts of things. So, that's a major differentiator between Dragon 1 and Dragon 2. But, yeah, we both came on right around the very beginning of the COTS program and CRS missions and what have you. It was one of the first missions that I got to see inside. Dragon? Yeah. Spaceship? Yeah. I have that funny story in Dragon 2, too. Yeah. So, COTS, for those who don't know, that was the contract that SpaceX won along with, not Northrop Grumman, Orbital, oh man, who was it at the time? It was Orbital. I think it was Orbital at the time. It was Orbital, yeah. To fly payload, it was the Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract, I think. I think that's what it was. And that was a contract to send, to basically become the FedEx of space, right? You send your payload up to the International Space Station. SpaceX won that. I got hired just after Falcon 9 Flight 1. So, this is nearly nine years ago. Yeah. So, I was there for Falcon 9 Flight 2, never Falcon 1, Falcon 9, which was the COTS 2 Plus contract. And that's where they took, there were supposed to be three COTS missions. Yep. And then once that part was done, then they would consider it operational and they moved to CRS, which is the Commercial Resupply Services. Orbital Sciences, then Orbital ATK, and now part of Northrop Grumman. And now, yeah. Northrop Grumman, and so- This is why we can't remember what it was called at the time. Orbital Sciences ATK is Space Innovations Division of Northrop Grumman. There you go. I think is what we ended up, what we jokingly called. Yeah. So, I've been there since COTS 2 Plus and COTS 2 Plus was the combination of COTS 2 and COTS 3. So, two different missions that they kind of moved together so that they could kind of push the program along. And, I mean, I remember sitting there and working on that basically full-time. All's I did at that time, we were so laser focused on COTS 2 Plus, like 12, 16, you remember when I first started? Yeah. It was crazy long day. And it was just constantly working on Dragon and just like this incredible machine that no one had really ever done before. It always been like the purview of giant governments. So, there wasn't a huge great blueprint for something like this. Did they change it again? Now it's Northrop Grumman Space Sector? Or is it- I mean, it's a lot easier to say, let's be fair. It's a lot easier to say. That's funny though. Anyhow, and then I remember, I remember the pucker factor of Falcon 9 Flight 2. And like, at least in my role, I'm the principal video systems engineer. So, I was responsible for making sure that all of the video worked everywhere, including from the pad to the consoles and from just everywhere and the webcast. And I was just, I was so, so worried that time came to a halt on that first launch on COTS 2 Plus. And I remember like, lift off through Dragon separation was about a four hour event. And then once Dragon separated, I was like, I was able to breathe a sigh of relief, but now I'm worried about the space to ground video and how they're going to perform. And they did pretty decent. And then I think I didn't actually like relax until we were attached to the space station. Yeah, I bet. And I think the entire company was like that at that moment, just kind of like this tense moment of like, you know, what don't you know? What, you know, what don't we know? What didn't we think about? What did we forget? Just like that kind of paranoid, like how can we do this better? What didn't we do? And it went off without a hitch. And so that is my introduction. My introduction into working at an aerospace company is Dragon 1. So for me, getting rid of Dragon 1 is a little bit bittersweet. Yeah. Because I love Dragon 2 as well, or Crew Dragon, whatever we're calling it. I banged my head on it many times. Like. I know, boo hoo. That's what I said too, don't worry about it. I literally, I think I bled in Dragon 2. Accidentally. But yeah, it's, I'm going to miss Dragon 1. It was really cool. And those missions were always something special. Just something a little bit more than the satellite missions. Not that the satellite missions aren't important, but there was something just a little more magical about the Dragon missions. The thing that I'm really excited for though, with Dragon 2, I think it's going to take that magic up a notch, right? Because it's the vehicle that we can send humans on. I think that's going to be pretty cool. I appreciate that this last CRS-20 mission is a refurbished dragon. She's got her little stamp of approval. So her couple different ISS tattoos on her, which I think is kind of cool. But yeah, I think it'll be interesting to kind of see kind of like people put on football helmets, the number of like, I don't know, it's a sports thing. So I guess I don't really know. But I just know that, you know, you mark how many times you've been somewhere and what have you, almost like a passport stamp. I guess it's more like that. So it'll be kind of neat to see the first crew dragon with all of her different ISS stamps on it. That will be cool. That'll be really cool. They might have to make them smaller because they're quite large right now. Like they're really about this big. Would they change the stamp based on whether it sent a crew up or cargo? Ooh, maybe we could change the color. That's a good idea. That's great. Smoshscale wants to know, can you buy a non-flight capable Dragon 1 capsule as like a backyard shed for kids asking for a friend? Wouldn't that be incredible? It would be, but the number of times that just Jamie has hit her head on one, I'm not sure that you want your kids tumbling around in one. Yeah, I don't know. To be fair, that was an unfinished Dragon 2, right? That was the mock-up that we had for the release, the unveiling of Crew Dragon. And it was like very early stages and I had to get in and like wire up my infrastructure. And there was like, there was literally nothing in there. There was, it was an empty shell. And so you have to kind of like, I don't know how to describe this, but you've got the door opening and you have to like reach in and grab a handle kind of up and then like pull yourself through the door and swing in and like jump down. Because again, the floor is not complete either. So you have a little bit of a fall in there. And if you miss, you go bam on the back of the head and you know, it hurts. And I remember, so this is Dragon 2 now, not Dragon 1. I remember we haven't even released Dragon 2 to the public. No one knows we're working on it really. No one has seen this thing. It's a fairly secret project, even inside of SpaceX. Let me quasi-secret, you still have engineers working on it, but like, you know, only a handful of people that are actually like looking at it, let alone going inside of it. And I'm going in and out constantly. And I come home to Carrie Anne. I know. I know, I know. I come home to Carrie Anne and I'm like, oh, my head is pounding. I had to go in the spaceship today. And like, I had to work inside of Dragon all day. She's like, can you rub my shoulders? Like, they kind of hurt. I was in and out of the spaceship all day. And I was like, no, why would I want to do that? Like, how dare you? Boo hoo. Are you serious? I was like, seriously, boo hoo. Do you hear yourself right now as in and out of a spaceship all day? Ooh. Like, that's not how I meant it, but yeah. I just, I can't sometimes. You guys. So, anyhow. Yeah, don't have that problem in the new Dragon. Like, now they actually have walkways into it and it's much, much easier. Like, there's a floor, right? So, stuff like that. Anyhow, you. Oh, someone had asked what you do. I'm the barista supervisor. I saw the question. I'm a barista supervisor. I wish I could bring it up on screen, but yes. Yeah. So, based on, for those who don't know the SpaceX layout, the main coffee bar. Oh, there you go, thank you. The main coffee bar for SpaceX is literally right in front of Mission Control. And hanging in front of Mission Control is the very first Hot One Dragon. So, you are literally looking at Serial 001, the very first spaceship that SpaceX ever sent to orbit. All day, error day. What are your, what's your memories and thoughts? Well, first of all, she's dirty. She needs to be dusted. She does need to be dusted. They just dusted the leg, thankfully. And I didn't realize how dirty that was. What's a rocket factory like? They kick up dirt. Yes, they do. That's funny. Yeah, no. Yeah, my very first experience of being able to watch a launch from inside the building, because everything else has been like how everybody else sees it, right? You watch it on YouTube. Or you watched it on Spacevidcast. Was really, it was, it was really nerve-wracking. It was the feeling around it was just so different. It reminded me a lot of watching space shuttle launches. We've had the fortunate opportunity to be able to go down to the media site and broadcast the last few space shuttle launches from there. And that was really amazing. And so it was, it was interesting though, because right when I first started, the food services department didn't really exist. Oh yeah, that's true. We were barely just sort of- Yeah, we were barely spinning up at the time. And so everyone who worked there were food service workers, but I was like the only person who was like a space nerd too or at least like knew a little bit about what was going on. And once they started to understand that I understood what was happening, then they just started asking me a lot of questions. And a lot of questions I didn't know, I couldn't answer. I was like, well, I mean, I don't, obviously I don't work on it. So like, what's happening now? Like, I don't know. I mean, for a while, it has to do stuff for a while. And then the solar panels come out. Like I was- Is that solar panels? Yeah, this is solar panels. So for all, this is solar panels. That's what they do. Yeah, they kind of- They do, actually. They're kind of more like- Yeah, one at a time. Yeah, but you know, I was getting a lot of questions like that. And so I firmly established myself as being the space nerd, I think. Nerd. In my department. In a space company. Yeah, but I mean, in my department because a lot of people just hadn't, they just didn't, they didn't know. They didn't know. It's great though, because then you can kind of see people now, like they know a lot more now, which is really kind of cool, that growth. But it was, yeah, it was really exciting. Thoughts on Dragon 1, like, not anymore? You know, I think it's time to a certain extent. Like, it's kind of sad that we didn't get to refurbish this one more times and use it for more things, right? She's only been to station twice. This will be her third time. But that's kind of cool that we could do that, that that was like even a thing. Do this smoke still? Yeah, I did this too early. I'm sorry. It's totally fine. I meant to hit blue and I hit red. No, I know. We're a little rusty. What is the most popular coffee drink you can serve at a SpaceX? So. Oh yeah, you go through, like, your brewed coffee. Yeah, we go through about 300 gallons of drip coffee a day at one location. We have multiple locations there. It's hard to say. Our menu's kept very small for a lot of different reasons. I only have seven things, items on my menu. So lattes, cappuccinos, Americanos, and mochas are probably all tied. I just named four out of seven items on my menu. You know what I mean? Maybe it's eight items on my menu now that I think about it. In any case, it doesn't matter. We have a really, really small menu. So instead of walking into a Starbucks or a Pete's Coffee or a Caribou or your favorite coffee shop and have like three pages worth of items, we have like six or seven items. Yeah, so they're all pretty popular. And we only have three, six flavors. So there's only so many combinations you can make of anything, anyway. I have a fun game I play now, which is when I go down to get a drink from Carrie Ann, I play the I'll have what they're having game. Yep. And so whatever the last drink- Sometimes it backfires, it's great. It backfired last time severely. Whatever the last drink that she made for the last person that was right before me, that's the drink I get. Because the thing is like, we also have a bunch of different milks as well. So, and that's really what killed you on that one is the milk. Don D asks, Jamie, what do you do there? I'm the principal video systems engineer. So I don't edit any video. My primary role is taking photons, converting them to electrons and moving them around the planet. And so that's what I do. So when you're watching the live webcast, I'm not necessarily creating the content of the webcast, but the fact that you can see the webcast and you can see those pad cameras, the ability for us to paint and shade those cameras in the webcast control room. That's all me. So I'm moving video around. I'm working on making sure all of that works so that you can watch things. And then, you know, also, I mean, I would say the webcast is maybe five to 10% of what I do. And then the rest of it is just, you know, all the other video that goes into a major aerospace company. And there is a lot. Whoops, I missed. I missed again. Catherine says, I'm seriously about to move out of, I believe that's Albuquerque and go sling coffee at Company X. If this is something you're passionate about, again, I can't stress it. And also it's not Company X. Did you see recently, Long Beach, every aerospace company and their friends seem to be within like a one mile radius in Long Beach. And I was talking to Lisa the other day, I think we both were, and they've got like this really cool hangar bar thing going on over there, where it's just like a bunch of different restaurants in a hangar that has a lot of history. Was it a Grumman? No, it was a, not a Hughes hangar. Anyhow, it's just like, it's not just SpaceX. You've got Virgin Galactic, Virgin Orbit. Actually, I'm sorry. Just Virgin Orbit. Virgin Orbit, Rocket Labs down there. Blue just opened up an area. I don't know if they're in Long Beach, but Blue just opened up an office that's in LA. SpaceX, of course, is in LA. It was, it's a Douglas hangar. There you go, Douglas. Thank you, Tim. Yeah, there's just a lot of aerospace in LA, just generally speaking, and they all have different needs. I know that a couple of the bigger companies have coffee and food services and what have you. Like, yeah, if that's like something that you guys want to do, there's definitely plenty of openings all over. You want to work at a space company, that's definitely an option. A human person asked, so is Jamie the person to be mad at when we don't get to see drone ship landing? To be blunt, yes. I mean, at the end of the day, it is a team effort, and I believe we basically fixed that problem now, for the most part. And again, it was a, I'm not going to take credit for fixing it, because the final solution that got that working wasn't me. But yeah, like, I worked on that for years, and we tried, you have no idea, and I can't really talk to it, but we tried basically every launch for, I think it's been four or five years. I've forgotten the timeframe. Since we've started landing, I have been trying to solve that, and we tried something new every single landing to get that to work. And yeah. And I cannot tell you what allowed us to fix it. I can't really even talk about what causes the problem. It is way more complicated than you probably think it is. No, a buoy won't help. No, you can't do ship to ship. So, you know, that's all I'll say. Hmm, that's funny. In any case. Yep. Yeah, we got off topic with- A little bit, yeah. Sorry. Yeah, did we have other topics on Dragon 1 or on- No, I think we're good there. I think it was a good transition point? Because I wanted to, the other thing I wanted to talk about today is, actually, this is a good one. Alomar, any suggestions for where a lifelong space geek who's pivoting from tech support and going back to college for software engineering ought to look to relocate? Well, I mean, if it's software engineering, I feel like Silicon Valley is probably still, Silicon Valley, kind of the Seattle area, it's got a bunch of stuff. And actually, Austin, Texas is another surprising area. Yes. I would say those three- And Austin's great. And I think that was- Not that there's anything wrong with Seattle or Silicon Valley necessarily, but I think you're right. I think it's a much overlooked city for that kind of thing. Yeah, and actually, this is what I was just about to get into, Boeing and their failures. Another good topic to talk about. And, you know, I don't, I've always taken kind of an optimistic view of everything, right? I mean, like, we are in this together as humanity, so it's not pro-SpaceX, pro-Boeing, or anti-SpaceX. Like, why do we have to be pro or con a certain company? Why can't we be pro-humanity? And if we're pro-humanity, then we're also pro-Boeing. And we're pro-SpaceX, we're pro-Northrop, we're pro all of them. We want everyone to succeed because we're not doing enough in space right now. But, like, also saying that, oh, no, Boeing's doing great would be disingenuous. They are not doing great. Well, as a company, they will survive. Oh, absolutely. But, like, it feels like they've got major engineering issues. I have been thinking about this a lot because we know some engineers at Boeing, they're scary, smart people. Oh, yeah. Like, ridiculously smart. So, yeah, and actually, being pro-space doesn't mean you shouldn't be pointing to things that go wrong. Exactly, exactly. And so I've been really thinking about Boeing and, like, what happened here? Because it's not just aerospace. I mean, it is aerospace, like the Boeing 737 MAX. Right, right, right. You know, they had issues with their Starliner and then they had issues with communications on their Starliner, like, literally communicating to us what was going on. There was a lack of transparency. And now they're trying to be too transparent. Yeah. It's like they have just lost their way. And it's like, what happened? Because I don't believe it to be an actual engineering issue. And actually, I think Loopy got, I think Loopy got to where I kind of was going, which is, is it an operational culture thing more than an intelligence thing, like the shuttle program in 1986 and OTT-3? I think that's it. I think specifically it might be a management issue. So this is all personal opinion at this point, right? And I would love your comment and feedback below. And if you're watching live, like let's work through some of this stuff because we know some of the engineers are scary smart. Obviously some of the issues are engineering issues, but what seems to have changed is a management shift from building really great engineering components or really great engineering designs from we'll call that probably 10 to 20 years ago is that Boeing of 20 years ago versus the Boeing of today, it feels like it's more centered on shareholder profit and making sure that the people who have stocks get a return on their investment. And so that means minimizing costs, cutting everywhere where possible, not necessarily caring about the engineering, but caring about the bottom line. Oh, that's interesting because I actually went a slightly different way. Oh, where did you go? Well, I was wondering if they started to get like just literally too big, right? I think there are some times that you hear about some companies that you're trying to retain the best talent all the way around. And so then you hire, for instance, three people to do the job of one person. And then you start like dividing out the one person's job amongst three people, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, to the point where you're just, you're so big, you're so bloated, you're so gigantic that like just trying to make decisions on even simple things, you have to get the okay from like six different people and they all have to agree in order to move forward that like things have just gotten to this like weird glacial pace that you just are unable to move at all. You just, you're not dynamic, you're not flexible because you have too many, too many cooks in the kitchen effectively. See what I'm saying? Yeah. That could be it too. I mean, I hadn't actually taken that approach either. And I'm wondering- I was gonna say, I mean, I like you, it's an interesting theory. It's not something I had even thought of before. And then, so you're saying too big and then I'm wondering if kind of spinning off of that a little bit, it's complacency, right? So when you have years and years of success, which to be blunt, let's remember, Boeing has had decades of success. Oh, absolutely. Their failures- That's how they got to where they are. A fairly recent issue. Yeah. Yes. They've had failures too, like let's not pretend like there were no issues in the past, but like the major, major failures of recent are fairly recent. So maybe they just got complacent and it's not just Boeing that got complacent. It's also in part NASA's fault on oversight. They admitted it at a recent conference. It's not just something mere spacemen say, it's something that NASA themselves say. Yeah. It could be one of those things of like, look, they've been doing well for so long. Like we're friends, right? I'm sure you'll get it. No big deal. This, that, and the other, like we don't know about that new guy, but fine. Like I'm sure you'll figure it out. I'm not going to worry about it because you always do. That could be oversight. Yeah, I just, it just makes me wonder. The chat room is really big on McDonnell Douglas merger and saying it was the, actually the McDonnell Douglas management coming in that broke Boeing, which could be true too. Interesting. So I think it's easy for folks to think engineering issue. And actually I think that's fundamentally my point. Anytime you have a complicated thing like a spacecraft like this, you're always going to be able to point to the engineers and say, you failed. But you need to take a step back because engineering isn't just one person building a part. Oh, for sure. There's a whole lot of decisions and compromises and like a game of kind of tug of war with the rest of the vehicle and the rest of the teams, which is maintained not by the engineer, but those wars are fought by management. Yes. And so it's actually the decisions of management that ultimately create a lot of these problems, which is why that's where I went. Well, and that's why you need the transparency inside of the company. They all need to be communicating with each other and you all need to be transparent about like what your timelines are and like how long do you think that's going to take? And you can't go, oh, that's going to take me two days when it's really going to take six weeks. Like that doesn't make any sense in any way, shape or form, right? And so then the next team is going to, oh, well, they're doing that in two days. And like, I need to get my stuff done in a single day. And like, timelines on that are very specific. And then, yeah, that's when you do start to cut corners. Because like, well, I mean, my manager promised this in two days and normally this would take six weeks and 20 of us, but now there's only going to be three of us working on it. Like there could be a bazillion different reasons, a bazillion different ways that this could be getting out of hand, just generally speaking. Byron mentioned they wanted the McDonnell Douglas government contracts and ended up with the McDonnell Douglas profit drive that caused McDonnell Douglas to fail in the first place. And I think that's really important. And actually someone, it was Jim's right after that, said that's why I like Elon's take on engineering issues. Email me. And I tend to agree, like the way that the new space, it's not just space sites, but like- Again, it's just transparency about all of it, right? Like you have to, like if one group was going to say, hey, this is actually going to take us six weeks to do, everyone else has to go, okay, it's going to take you six weeks to do. And you need to like back up for a minute. Now it shouldn't probably always take you six weeks. See if you can whittle that down to four, maybe. But like, either way, you have to have that transparency within the company all the way around. And yeah, that's why I was like, if you have too many people working on the exact same project, like that could really mess you up hard. How would you pronounce that? Aviello? Sorry if I'm mispronouncing your username very badly. Saying that Bowen's going to have a very hard time to adapt to fast iterative design. I think a lot of the old space companies are going to have that issue. Yeah. And that isn't to say that fast iterative design is always a win either. Right? So there are pros and cons to all of these different approaches. You need to take time in order to go over. You can't be going too fast because if you're going too fast, you're going to miss something. At the same time, you've 30 people looking at the exact same thing and you must make sure that they all agree on the exact same thing. That's also going to take you way too much time. Like there has to be some compromise somewhere in the middle for sure. Mike brings up a good point. Engineering is all about compromising to make every part just good enough to do the job, which is very true. But the thing that people forget is that there's that layer above the engineers of management that also dictates certain requirements that can have a negative impact on those parts. Yes. That the engineers oftentimes will say, engineering will come back and be like, no. And management will go, yeah, you're doing it anyhow. And it's that mentality that can break stuff. I do not know if this is what, there's all pure speculation, but you look at Boeing of 20 years ago, what a proud and amazing company. Like it would be a place where as an engineer, you would want to go to work. Oh, for sure. It was the top of the pyramid. Yeah. And you look at Boeing today, not as much. Yeah, I forget who it was, but somebody much earlier said something like, could it just be that all the good engineers are going to Blue Origin and SpaceX? I mean, I guess that's an option. I don't know. Great question from Kenneth. Would the management bloat also be the cause of the slowdown on the space launch system? Again, I think that's just them trying to potentially maximize profits. And I think it was partly NASA's problem too. NASA has a tendency to want perfection up front and like all of the paperwork that goes with perfection. I think another entity that will struggle with iterative rapid design is NASA. Like that is just not how they think. That's not how they work. To them, failure is not an option. You cannot fail. And as soon as failure is not an option, your program is going to take forever and it's going to be very expensive because you're not allowed to fail. And for all the other new space companies, all of them, SpaceX, Blue Origin, Masten Space Systems, Virgin Orbital, I'm missing a bunch, Rocket Lab. Just keep going, just keep going, right? Failure is an option. Don't fail at your primary mission, but fail on the ground, fail early, fail often, figure it out. Figure it out, fix it, move on. Fix it and move on. And that is not how NASA works. And that same culture exists at Boeing, in my opinion. I know that culture exists at NASA. I do not know for sure it exists at Boeing, but it may. It feels the same. Sure. So now we're pivoting to Space Launch System. I'm wondering if at this point, if the Space Launch System will ever be used for human spaceflight, do the growing launch options in the coming years? Yeah, awesome, astronaut makes a really good point on that one. If you take too long to do the thing and then other people do the thing before you, then are you still the one who's going to do the thing? I mean, it's a really good point. By the time Space Launch System comes online. And not even just in America though, right? Yeah. Like China is definitely getting up there. Like they want to build their own space station, which more power to them. They want to fly humans either to their space station and or to the moon and or beyond and they're probably going to do it, right? So, and India has been working on a human spaceflight program. Like there's a lot of other places that have been working on human spaceflight programs with their own stuff for a really long time. I think this is specific to the super heavy lift class of vehicles. Sure. And I can on one hand count and have extra fingers count the number of launchers. Actually, I think China does have one and I don't remember what it is. Yeah, I think China does. But other than that, you're looking at ultimately at a super heavy with Starship. Is the integrated stack still called Starship? I don't know. Actually, I don't know how that works. I should know how that works. I don't know. I think it's still just called Starship. You've got New Glenn slash New Armstrong. I guess I should count that as two separate rockets but ultimately New Glenn. Because they're going to different places. Followed by New Armstrong. Yeah. You've got space launch system, right? Right. But you do still have options. So the question is. A lot of options. Will New Glenn and will Starship fly before space launch system is actually ready? I don't know the answer to that. Well, it almost doesn't matter if it's before it's ready. I feel like if you both reach the finish line at approximately the same time, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, I guess. But this is over a billion per flight. It is not reusable at all. That's what I'm saying. Starship and New Glenn are both reusable rockets. No, that's precisely what I'm saying. What the what, guys? So as a customer, if you're looking at both of those options and they're done at basically the same time. Oh, yeah. It almost doesn't matter if they're done at that time. The customer is NASA and this is their rocket. So if you're a customer and you've got your own rocket or someone else's rocket. NASA's not the only customer out there. That's fair. Vax Headroom has an interesting point. The space launch system should know. I didn't intend for this to be a topic. This is how live shows go, by the way. Yeah. Space launch system should never have been a human rated rocket. It should have been cargo only like the Ares V was going to be. It would have been flying already. And for those who don't know, the space launch system is derived from the Ares V, which was part of the Constellation program. Oh man, what a series of mistakes. It's like looking at space launch system, it was a series of mistakes after mistake, after mistake to get where we're at right now. And I mean, having a super heavy lift rocket is a good idea. We need to have redundant pathways to that. But like, man, I'm just... Peter Quinn does mention, it's not a race. Peter Quinn's not wrong. It's not. No matter what Time Magazine says, by the way, it's not a race. Also, Lupe brings up a good point. The price tag for the space launch system doesn't matter because the way NASA works, space launch system isn't for the market. It's the side product of NASA's main goals. And NASA's main goals are to get humans back on the moon. Right? They want to establish a permit. That's their current goals. I think fundamentally this is part of the issue. Again, this goes back down to not, this is not an engineering issue. SLS is the perfect, perfect example of not an engineering issue. Sure. This is a management problem. And in many cases, a congressional issue, which we're just going to roll into management because most companies don't have Congress to deal with. This is true. Like mandating crazy, silly things that don't make sense and forcing the engineers to make certain decisions that they have no control over. The space launch system, well, yeah, I'm pretty sure the space launch system, at least the Ares V, space launch system had a congressional mandate to use solid rocket boosters. Yep. Required by law to use solid rocket boosters on your rocket. How crazy is that? That you don't let the engineers decide that. Fundamentally, those are some of the flaws that I don't, I'm not a huge fan of in space launch system. Wow, that's hilarious. Which one? Fabiano. I feel that space launch system is now like a poker table. The stacks are so high and it's harder to leave that table. You know, you could be right. Could be right. Absolutely. Somehow we got from Boeing to space launch system. I feel like they are in the same bucket though, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Tim's data basically said, can you imagine what the delay would have been had the space launch system needed to be recovered or reusable? First launched in 2053, while they figure out the whole recovery thing and that others have nailed already. You know, maybe. Here's the thing. NASA does have reusable. Well, they have refurbishability down, right? NASA had the space shuttle. I'm not a huge fan of the space shuttle. Sorry. I'm not a huge fan of the space shuttle. They had the solid rocket motors that they did recover and reuse. They didn't, what NASA never got down wasn't the recovery part of it. They didn't get down the pricing part of it because they don't, they never needed to worry about that. Right? To someone else's previous comment, NASA doesn't build these things to put into the market to try to sell. NASA builds these things for NASA. So they don't really care if it costs more money. They'll just add it into their yearly budget, right? Sure. It's tax dollars. But they did actually figure out refurbishability, reusing stuff, right? What they didn't get down to is rapidly refurbishable. And they didn't get down to lower cost access to space, which was the fundamental goal of shuttle. So shuttle fundamentally as a system architecture failed in its primary goal of reducing the cost of access to space. It actually increased the cost of access to space. But they did have the ability to bring this stuff back. And I think they could use a lot of those lessons learned in a reusable space launch system. Although you're not wrong. I think it would have been 20, 30 years ago. Right? Yeah. Yeah, that's kind of funny. Smokescale says on a different topic, I'd like to hear more about Astra. I haven't been able to keep track of what's been going on there. I think that's really a great topic for our space news. I think we're kind of winding down a little bit for this particular live news show. I think this was a lot of fun. I'm sorry that it was so long for us to get back to doing live stuff with you guys again. Hopefully everyone enjoyed their time with us today. So housekeeping notes on the show. I know that it's difficult when we don't have a set time and date for the show. Totally. Understand, heard and agreed. However, we've got crazy schedules at SpaceX right now. They're just crazy. And I'm trying to figure out how to make this so that you know when and where to tune in, but we're just not there yet. And I need some more time to figure this out. I know it sucks and I'm really sorry. The best thing I can say right now is I'm tweeting it on Twitter. I'm putting it on Discord with an at here tag. And I'm trying to publish the show as soon as I know on YouTube. So if you've got the notification bell, you should get a notification as soon as we go live. And then once we do go live, we're giving people like 30 minutes or so to kind of like get that notification show up. So we're actually going live as we're still setting up. So you'll see like an empty set and everything else. We're doing what we can to make this as easy on you as possible, full well understanding. It needs to be fixed and it needs to change. I hear you. I understand it's in work. I just don't have a solution yet. The second housekeeping note I wanted to make was we've been doing Ask Me Anythings with me. The goal is to get those going with as many people as possible, right? So I want to have AMAs with you. I'd love to have with Jared and Jade, Lisa, everyone, everyone associated with the show I think should be able to sit down and just have, and these AMAs go on for hours. They go on for however long the host is able to sit there and however long you guys have compelling content. Weight is worth the quality of the show. Well, thank you. I hope you guys enjoy the slightly updated format of the live show. Also, so the AMAs. I've been doing the last few AMAs. I'll probably do one or two more. Part of the AMAs, because I'm undergoing a gender transition, like half to 2 3rds of the AMA have been focused on gender transition. And that is not what tomorrow is about. That was very Canadian of me. Well, it's not that it's not what tomorrow is about, but it's not going towards what tomorrow started as, ironically. So tomorrow's about getting you interested in space and the cosmos, and transition, while still very interesting and having a lot to do with Ben's transition to Jamie, does have something to do with tomorrow, doesn't have anything to do with tomorrow, if that makes any sense. It's my personal tomorrow and not our collective tomorrow. Yes. So here's the deal. I'm going to, I'm not going to put a hard ban on transition talk. Obviously we're doing it right now at the end of the show, but what I am going to say is that I'm going to move all of that to its own channel. And I'm calling that channel Jamie Bits, Jamie's Bits. Jamie's Bits, B-I-T-S, just in case you're wondering, it makes her laugh every single time she does it. I think it's hilarious. Yes, it was my name. Thank you. I know I'm funny in any case. But the thing is that all of those are going to be cut out. So not that they won't happen necessarily, because obviously you guys are going to ask questions and we're going to answer them. That's why we are doing these things, but it's all going to be posted. That part of it is going to be posted on Jamie's Bits. I can't even say it. It's hard, yeah. Yeah. So all of that goes over there. So the AMAs for tomorrow will be focused on space and not about me in my personal transition. I will have my own personal AMAs on my own other channel. So if you are interested in transition, go subscribe to that channel. Instead, I will put a link in the description below. If you are not interested in transition, good news for you. Totally fine. It's getting removed from this channel. So you don't have to deal with that anymore. Because again, I just don't feel like it belongs here. So I don't want to harp on that too much. All I want to say is I know a lot of you are interested. I will still be transparent. I will still do all that stuff, but I'm going to do it all over there. So go over there for that. This stays focused on space. And if you like, I will do an AMA over there as well. Oh, that's a great idea. But you need to do an AMA here. I know. Yeah, so we're going to continue to do AMAs here. I might do the next one. Maybe we should do you for the next one. That might be fun. Yeah, there you go. All right, that's it for this month. I'd like to thank everyone so much for watching. I'd also like to thank everyone who helps contribute to the show. These are the citizens of tomorrow. These are our YouTube members. These are people who contribute anywhere between $50 per month and $1 per month. And I love that on YouTube, you can actually get all the way down to $1 per month. Yes, which is awesome. It's absolutely awesome and incredible. And just using advertising on the show hasn't really been something that we've been able to use to fund it. So your memberships absolutely help a great deal. Absolutely. So if you'd like to figure out how you can help crowdfund and contribute to the shows of tomorrow, head on over to youtube.com slash T-M-R-O slash join. And even at $1, like $1, that's like one soda. It's like one coffee. I don't know what you can get for $1 anymore, honestly. If we had every single person- But you can get us for $1. You can get us for $1. We're cheap like that. Exactly, exactly. Or whatever dollar value you think it is worth for you. One final note, we are gonna try sometime in the very near future rolling in an advertisement from a third party. So we're gonna have a quick little thing. We're just trying it out. It's not like a permanent thing. I just wanna see, because we are trying to keep the show funded because it takes money to keep the lights, keeps the station on orbit, right? Right. We're gonna try that out. I love your constructive feedback on that. Let me know what you actually think. The first group or the first advertiser we're looking at is NordVPN. And they've got a kind of a little special deal. Like you get 70% off of a one-year membership and then it's VPN service. So you actually do a bunch of really cool stuff. So still kind of contemplating all of that, but yeah. I'll buy that for, hang on. I gotta push that to the screen. Boop. I'll buy that for a dollar. Anyhow. Yeah, yeah. All right. I'd like to thank everyone so much for watching and we will see you in about a month.