[[Home|🏠]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> [[Interviews]] <span style="color: LightSlateGray">></span> December 19 2019 **Insider**: [[Peter Beck]] **Source**: [Everyday Astronaut](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUfOnwSLWxY) **Date**: December 19 2019  🔗 Backup Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CUfOnwSLWxY ## 🎙️ Transcript >[!hint] Transcript may contain errors or inaccuracies. **Tim Dodd (The Everyday Astronaut):** Hi, it's me, Tim Dodd, The Everyday Astronaut. I am here at Rocket Lab's brand new launch facility in Wallops, Virginia. This is Mars Pad 0C, and this will allow Rocket Lab to launch their awesome little Electron rocket from the United States. You know, right now they only have Launch Complex One in New Zealand, this is Launch Complex Two, and I still have a lot of questions, especially, Rocket Lab is working on reusability for their awesome Electron rocket, so I wonder if there's anyone that could, you know, answer a few more questions about that whole thing. You mind if we talk up here... on your launchpad? **Peter Beck:** No! *(Tim laughing)* **Tim:** So I guess let's talk to someone that knows a lot about everything Rocket Lab. Don't fall in the pit, don't fall in the pit, don't fall in the pit. Hey Peter! **Peter:** Hey Tim! **Tim:** How are ya? **Peter:** Good to see you again. **Tim:** You freezing your butt off out here? **Peter:** Yes. *(Tim laughs)* **Tim:** Well, it's a good place to end the year though! We're almost 2020! **Peter:** It is a wonderful place, yep. ### Rocket Lab's 2019 Achievements **Tim:** And, you guys had an unbelievable year. **Peter:** Yeah, I'm super proud of the team for 2019. I think we can end up this year with a smile on their face. **Tim:** Yeah, so you ended up with six launches right? **Peter:** Yup. **Tim:** And, you ended up with two launchpads now online? **Peter:** Yup. **Tim:** And you, ended up working on recoverability? **Peter:** Yeah, no, we achieved a pretty decent milestone with recoverability, actually. It was way better than we expected. ### The Road to Rocket Recovery **Tim:** As you know, that's what I want to start on, 'cause that's really exciting. So, you're sitting back here, mister, I don't know, probably not gonna try, recoverability doesn't have margins in it. First off, tell me what kind of closed for you on that concept that maybe there is room, maybe it's worth it. Just run me through your thought process there. **Peter:** So, small launch vehicles are notoriously difficult, right? 'Cause the margin on a small launch vehicle is so tight. When you've only got 150 kilograms of payload to play with, adding 100 kilograms of parachutes, it's just very difficult to trade. So, what really got me thinking is I started to look at the data and started to see how well stage one was surviving. We got good measurements during ascent of the environments, and really, I started understanding everything that was going on. And then also, trying to increase launch cadence at the same time, and steering out into a factory where we knew we were going to have to double the size of this factory, and just keep on building more and more machines, and automating more and more and more, and it just sort of became obvious, well, the data doesn't say that it's insane, it says it's difficult, but we're not breaking any laws of physics here. So, yeah, I formed a small team within the company and we started to go after it. **Tim:** Do you have, just a chalkboard full of Wile E. Coyote style, what's going to work for us? **Peter:** Yeah, I mean there was plenty of whiteboard sessions, that's for sure. **Tim:** Share with me, one other one, before you landed on, was there even something close, another contender before you landed on trying to do the air recovery? **Peter:** Yeah, I mean we looked at landing it in a net not dissimilar to what SpaceX does with experience. Obviously, we looked at propulsive re-entry, but that was, you know, you only get half a napkin filled out before you realize that's just not going to work. *(Tim laughing)* And then, yeah, there was all sort of all different concepts from the team, you know, giant drones, and all sorts of stuff, yeah. ### The "Why Don't They Just..." Questions **Tim:** Yeah, okay, I guess we're going to pop right into that, that's actually, I do a podcast with some guys, it's called "Our Ludicrous Future", and each week, we take people's questions of "Why don't they just..." **Peter:** Yeah, yeah, right. **Tim:** And that was a good one, it was "Why don't they just use a giant drone, you guys already have batteries, you have motors, and it could be cheaper than operating a helicopter, you could even do four of them that fly in unison", why didn't that end up working out? **Peter:** Well, I mean, I'm trying to get my helicopter's license, so... **Tim:** *(laughs)* I know you are. **Peter:** Using a helicopter is great. **Tim:** Is this just you wanting to fly a helicopter more often? **Peter:** No, no, no, but there's a small atom of it. *(Tim Laughing)* But, no, I mean, many have recaptured with a helicopter, it's been done before. And I know a lot of people look at that and they sort of, they say "Man that's super tricky" and "How are they going to pull that off?" but really that is, relatively academic, compared to actually re-entering the stage and getting it through one bit. **Tim:** Right, well, do you work with the company that was based out of, was it Scotland or England, that has the recovery system? Really? **Peter:** No, no. **Tim:** Okay, 'cause, of course, everyone on the internet immediately saw what you guys are working on, and go "Well, this has already been done" here's a video of company recovering a, it was a mock-up booster with a parafoil. **Peter:** Yeah, I mean it's been done. Lockheed Martin did it, I think it was in the 90's, to try and recover some... re-entered artifacts, so yeah. I mean it's in, you know, if you go back far enough you look at the Corona missions, all that was in a helicopter, it's still the same gig. **Tim:** Right, same, yup. Getting through re-entry popping a chute, swooping it up before it hits the water. **Peter:** Yup, that's pretty much it. **Tim:** And, how much time do you have between when the parachutes deploy, and before it hits the ground? **Peter:** Yeah, so that's the idea of the parafoil is we can steer it into the wind, and maximize the hang-time there. So, you could have up to twenty minutes. **Tim:** Really? So you could have multiple attempts with the helicopter. **Peter:** Yeah, yup, and so we try and limit the descent rate to a maximum of 10 meters a second so you know, you get a decent opportunity to go and scoop it. **Tim:** Okay, that's pretty cool, so I guess, no autonomous drones in the near-time future? **Peter:** No, there was talk of autonomous ships at one point, but, no, no autonomous drones at this point. **Tim:** Okay, so that's your "Why don't they just use *(laughs)* drones." **Peter:** Pete likes flying a helicopter. **Tim:** Because Pete loves flying helicopters, that's why. No, okay, so propulsive, that came up in a lot of discussions, people say, "Why don't they do propulsive re-entry?" The simple answer, most likely, is that you don't need it. Your booster can survive, it survived the wall. **Peter:** Yeah it did survive the wall. **Tim:** Without propulsive slowdown. **Peter:** And not only did it survive the wall, it's the worst possible descent you could imagine, there was absolutely no deceleration device on it whatsoever, so it was just coming in screamin' hot. ### Engine Technology and Relight Capability **Tim:** So, okay, a couple questions come out of that, sorry, I'm just going to keep digging through here, because... Does your engine, the Rutherford, does it actually have re-light capability? **Peter:** Well, I mean, we don't use T-Tab, we use an igniter torch, so yes it does. But, we don't actively use it, I mean there's a few things we'd need to do, we'd need to purge the chambers with some nitrogen and stuff, but we don't actually use it on the launch vehicle, but it's relatively trivial to make it relightable. **Tim:** But, you've never had missions or anything where you need a relight? **Peter:** No **Tim:** And that's what the kick stage is for? **Peter:** Yeah, well, the kick stage is beautiful, because it's a right-sized propulsion system for trying to circulize and insert really, really accurately. That's the trouble with doing kind of a second light on a stage two is that you're only lit for a few seconds, and it's just a big thump. Whereas the Courier burns for like 20 or 30 seconds and you just get exquisite accuracy. **Tim:** Yeah, yeah, you have a long, it's such a low thresh, or, you can do a tiny little bit of burn, right? **Peter:** I tell you, there is nothing more satisfying than when we would do the circularization burn on the trims, is you know, in mission control, we have the couple of lines, the target line, and then the ascent line, and just watching those two lines just inch together and converge over 30 seconds is just incredibly satisfying, they just *(buzzes)*, and they just pop, it's just beautiful. ### Photon and Kick Stage Performance **Tim:** That is actually amazing, and there was a recent SpaceX mission where, you know they have such an overpowered upper stage with their Merlin engine where they, I think they lit it *(snaps)* for like, it wasn't even, it was like a half second, or something. They were just like *(explosion imitation)*. It's like wow, I can't imagine the startup transience and all that stuff, just for that one, quick, little jolt. And you guys are able to, with, when, now you upgraded, too, your photon, and, do you still do, do you fly photon and Kiri separate, or is it all just photon now? **Peter:** Yeah, no, so, well it's a bit of a debate really. So, the kick stage is really just a photon now, but we have different variants, so we have a mono-propellant kick stage and a bi-propellant kick-stage. So, you know, for missions that don't require the extra performance, we just prefer to run mono-propellant, because, you just gotta open a valve, that's it. But, for higher performing missions, we run the bi-propellant. **Tim:** What's the specific impulse difference between mono-prop and dual-prop? **Peter:** It's quite big, you know, it would be probably 50 seconds, 60 seconds, something like that, so it's pretty decent. **Tim:** And, how much delta V does that afford you when you go to the dual-prop? **Peter:** I can't remember the exact number, because it depends on what propellant tank combination we're running as well. So, we've got quite a lot of flexibility in that upper stage to really change it up depending on missions. I mean, flight 10, we flew to a high orbit to 400 Ks, and then, we did a re-light, and lowered, and then deployed some more. So, you know, more and more of these missions, we're finding, we do multiple re-lights, and change orbits and stuff. **Tim:** Yeah, it's a value to the customer to be able to go directly to where they need to go, they don't have to have their own propulsion and do all that stuff. **Peter:** Well that's the whole point of dedicated rocket, right? I mean, if you can't do that, then, it's a ride share. **Tim:** Yeah, yeah, exactly. ### Moon Missions and GEO Capabilities **Tim:** So, do you guys still have a mission going out to the moon, is that correct? **Peter:** Yeah. **Tim:** Yeah, is that, so how much of that is riding on the kick stage, does the kick stage do the full TLI? **Peter:** Yeah, it's photon. **Tim:** Really? **Peter:** Yeah, we'll basically just take a photon to the moon. **Tim:** Wow, it has that much Delta V kick? **Peter:** Yeah, yeah, so, like I say we can configure it and change tank configurations, so, you know, photon to the moon is just basically a big tank on top of the payload deck. You know, everything is already there, all the guidance, comms, and everything, it's just there. And, you know, we architected the Kiri engine in a way that it could burn for a very long time. So, yeah, it's not-- **Tim:** Would it take multiple, I'd assume it'd take multiple-- **Peter:** Yeah, yeah you want-- **Tim:** Insertion burns? **Peter:** To optimize it. Direct inject's expensive, but-- **Tim:** That will be really exciting to see that. I mean, just thinking that a rocket this size, a relatively small rocket will be able to take a payload to the moon I mean-- **Peter:** Yeah, and I think it's exciting on a lot of fronts, because it opens up so many different opportunities. You know, TLI injection is great, but we can also go to GEO we can do a heliocytical, but there's all sorts of stuff you can do, which are really exciting. **Tim:** I didn't even think about GEO. I'm sure there's never been a rocket this small putting anything in geostationary orbit, right? **Peter:** No, no I'm sure. **Tim:** I mean, not even close. So, that's pretty amazing. ### Hardware Requirements for Recovery **Tim:** One of the things that everyone's, you know, definitely questioning is, some of the hardware that's required to do some of your recovery stuff, is that one of the reasons you also went dual-prop, is to make up for that delta V difference? **Peter:** Yeah, I mean, wherever we, we're continually trying to improve the performance of electron to both gain margin and also offset the changes that we're making with recovery. But, like I said before, if a mission doesn't require it, then we generally won't put it on, we'll just run mono-propellant. **Tim:** Yeah, so overall, have you done any changes to batteries or optimization of the engines between flight one and 10 now that have-- **Peter:** It's amazing really, remarkably few systems have really changed. You know, we've understood the systems better, so we've been able to pull back margin, but there's been no kind of major re-architect of really any system. You know, we'll continue this year, 2020 we'll continue to kind of tweak, and make a few improvements along the way, because we will be adding a bit of mass on stage one to recover, so we've got a pretty simple road map, there, to add performance to the vehicle. **Tim:** If you don't mind me asking, how much mass is added for first stage recoverability? **Peter:** It really depends on... how successful the ballistic descents are with parachutes. I mean, I would imagine probably no more than 150 kgs on stage 1, but you have to remember the ratios. **Tim:** Yes, what was it, about 4:1? **Peter:** Actually, on electron it's much, much more than that. 'Cause stage 2 does so much of the work, so it's probably more like 8:1 on a stage 1. **Tim:** Really? **Peter:** Yeah, so we can carry a lot of mass down there. **Tim:** I should also explain for those watching and listening, that means, basically, they can add a bunch of weight to the first stage and it doesn't take nearly as much payload penalty as it does if you were to stick that weight on the upper stage. So, you add eight kilograms to the first stage, it'll only detract about one kilogram from your payload capability. ### Propellant Choices and Engine Optimization **Tim:** So, I guess, that's another question, then, is, "Has there ever been any thoughts?" Okay, I'm going to ask this first, how much specific impulse is your upper stage? **Peter:** So the Rutherford, or-- **Tim:** The Rutherford, yeah, sorry, the Rutherford upper stage. **Peter:** Yeah, so, it's around about 342 I think, 'round about there. It's high performance, it's a screaming, little engine. Yeah, it's about 97% seastar efficient, 97, 98. It's a screamer. **Tim:** So, has there ever been any thoughts of going with a different propellant on the upper stage, or the first stage, like methane, have you guys looked into methane? **Peter:** Yeah, not really. I mean, I... I love Kero. I mean I know there's a lot of talk about, "Well, it's easier to have two cryogenic propellants than one cryogenic and one not." Well, I prefer not to deal with another cryogenic propellant, personally, especially one that's a bit flamey. I mean if you've seen... some of the stuff from SpaceX recently, that methane sure likes to go on fire a lot. Kerosene is much different, like that. So, I mean, there's probably some performance upgrades there, but just the handleability of kerosene and just the ease of it. What we're trying to do here is just churn launch out, so, you know, adding systems that add complexity is not really a gig. **Tim:** I was gonna say that is almost like your calling card, it's like, keep it as simple as possible. Everyone wants to, and this is, again very much an armchair engineer thing, there's very much fans of aerospace going like "But, they could probably launch 400 kilograms if they switched to this, and this, and this!" It's like, what's the trade-off benefit of that? Are you actually going to increase your amount of customers, payload opportunities, XYZ for all these new complications, all this new R&D. I remember we spoke about aerospikes last time I talked to you, and that's one of the perfect example of "maybe it might help in some things, or improve certain situations, but by the end of the day, even if you get it working perfectly, how much did you spend to get it working, and is it worth it in the long run?" **Peter:** Yeah, that's exactly right. **Tim:** You might end up right back on page one, you know? ### Upper Stage Design and Technical Considerations **Tim:** Okay, so optimizing the upper stage. So, probably not going to liquid methane or any other cryogenic fuels, or changing up systems. I've always had a question, two questions about upper stage. **Peter:** Okay. **Tim:** You ditch both batteries at the same time. **Peter:** Correct. **Tim:** Is there a reason you don't stage them; one and then the other? **Peter:** Yeah, I mean the, payload gained by doing that is relatively minor, so the beauty of staging two at once is you don't introduce any torque offsets, because they null each other out. **Tim:** One, right. **Peter:** Whereas if you poke one off, then you sort of punch one way and then the other, and look, the guidance will deal with that no problem at all, you see the guidance when you punch both of them off, it just doesn't even know it's there, and same with the fairings. So, really that came about from day one trying to minimize risk. And, yeah, for just a tiny amount of payload just don't introduce more risk. **Tim:** Yeah, yup, again the whole "Don't introduce more risk." Second stage has a bunch of sparks that always shoot out of the nozzle. What's that from again? **Peter:** Yeah, so, the Rutherford engine is really high performance, and what that actually is, it's quite funny, you see people talking, "Oh, they must've had a bladed nozzle" despite the fact that it's glowing bright red. But, no, they're little soot deposits. So, the soot deposits kind of build up on the injector face like stalactites, and then they get to a certain size, and then break free, and then that's the carbon entrained into the exhaust plane. **Tim:** Really? **Peter:** Yeah. **Tim:** So that's your soot of RP-1? **Peter:** Yup. **Tim:** Wow, and shooting out as what looks like little sparks? **Peter:** Little sparks, yeah. **Tim:** Really? **Peter:** Yeah, but that injector, the efficiency is, it's a good injector, so it's really-- **Tim:** Are you guys doing on-face, like do you go coaxial, or what do you-- **Peter:** It's a good injector. **Tim:** It's a good injector, *(laughs)* keeping it tight. I love it. ### Recovery Mechanisms and Aerodynamics **Tim:** Okay, so, we've talked about that, we talked about the injections, we talked about methane, sparky engines. Okay, so, back to recoverability, we're going to wrap this all around. You didn't have to do any aero-systems at all for your recoverability? **Peter:** Not any aero-appendages, but the whole stage was guided through RCS. So, a little Reaction Control-- **Tim:** Rocket motors. **Peter:** Little tiny, they're cute. **Tim:** They're little guys, yeah. **Peter:** Yeah, they're a little cute. **Tim:** But, that's enough control authority to keep you pointed in the right direction? **Peter:** Yeah, so, it's really interesting, you know, the kind of dynamic stability of the stage and the hypersonic regime is... It's when we get into the subsonic regime, then it wants to turn itself backwards, but, during the hypersonic regime, it's actually quite stable. **Tim:** Because of the engines being first, and-- **Peter:** The engines and the batteries are all at the bottom, so all the mass is down there at the bottom. So, when we... about 5 seconds after second stage ignited, we started the kind of, maneuver, and the first maneuver was to do a flip-around, and then align with the re-entry corridor. That was so good, too, because I had that on my screen as well, I was watching that very carefully, and you know, just watching those rates come down, and they all just converged down to zero, and I was like, "This is good!" So, this thing is just sitting bang on zero, I thought "this is good." And then, you know, we started to reach apogee, and then you see the, you know, the alignment vector come all good, and then it just stayed all good, and the little engines are firing away and doing their thing. We saw a bit of roll, but roll is the least damped axis, so, you know, it's always hard to deal with roll. **Tim:** And, you're not having to re-light engines, so you don't have to worry about tank sloshes or anything. **Peter:** Roll is good, a bit of barbecue roll, it's good so you don't cook things up. But, all credit to the GNC team, they were committing code at 2 o' clock in the morning for weeks and weeks, and tweaking, and tweaking, and tweaking, so, those guys are just. I mean, you see the accuracy of the vehicle, and it's all down to those guys, they're just incredible, incredible. **Tim:** That's amazing, and what do those little RCS thrusters run on? Are they just-- **Peter:** Cold gas. **Tim:** Cold gas, yup? And that's enough to, I just, it's so hard to picture, they're so little. **Peter:** Yeah, but, if you're in the corridor, it's good. It's only a problem if you get out of the corridor. So, the corridor is super narrow, and if you kind of get out of corridor, then, that's when the plasma knives come back out, and you just trip a shockwave boundary, and just attach and you're done. But, if you can just sit in that nice little wake, with the big bell shock in front of you, then life's good. ### Reentry Performance and Future Plans **Tim:** It's so unbelievable that we're talking about, that's a possibility now, you're just literally sending it back through the atmosphere, and it's coming in, there's parts of it that are as hot as the sun, and they're able to survive. And, did you have to beef up heat shield around your structure and stuff like that compared to previous flights? **Peter:** Well I mean, the bottom of electron has quite a hefty heat shield as it is, because of the multiple engines. You have a lot of plume-plume interaction, and then, because of that, you have a lot of recirculation flow, especially at certain mach numbers. So, the heat shield's pretty decent. You know, on the re-entry we did see the heat shield collapse, because the heat shield was never designed for those kind of dynamic pressures. But, you know, we were still receiving solid telemetry, the tanks were still pressed, systems still responding, telemetry right to impact, and yeah we lost a couple of data acquisition modules, and some sensors on the heat shield, but that was it. **Tim:** Wow, so you think it was-- **Peter:** I think it was in good shape. **Tim:** Wow. **Peter:** Yeah, yeah, all the data would show that it was in remarkably good shape. **Tim:** Really, so you're going to do that again, basically the same thing? **Peter:** Well I didn't expect flight 10 to be so successful, so I figured that with all of these things, you know, it's so hard to model and predict, you get a little thing wrong and then you go and learn from it. So, I said to the team, "Right, let's do two in a row, and you know--" **Tim:** Confirm everything. **Peter:** Yeah first one, we'll try our best, we'll probably learn a lot, and then we'll might get the second one right. But, the second time 'round, we'll... hold onto the live feed a lot longer in the second time 'round. We actually intentionally shut the re-entry camera of the line down, because we wanted to maintain the integrity of the data link. Data is king; images are great, but data is king. So, we switched into a low-bandwidth mode, and shut down the camera. But as it was, we maintained one megabit per second link all the way into impact, so we'll be able to have good camera on the way in on the next one. **Tim:** Wow, wow, so that's great news. So, as far as, so you're going to basically do repeating the thing you just did for flight 10 for flight 11, then, is that when you start attaching hypersonic balloons and parachutes on flight 12? **Peter:** Not flight 12, I expected us to have to do a lot of work before we would move to the next stage. I think we're all in kind of, like, a child giddy mode right now, because we've got all the data we needed to proceed, so we'll do another block upgrade, and that'll probably take us a few flights. **Tim:** Really? **Peter:** And then we'll get some chutes on it. **Tim:** Another, if you don't mind me asking, what changes are gonna happen? **Peter:** Chutes, so we'll get some chutes on the next one. And, you know, we'll still have more work to do with some decelerators, but what I really want to do is get it onto chutes, get it back in one piece, and in the ocean, go fish it out, and do some forensics on it. That, we'll learn the most by actually physically inspecting the hardware. **Tim:** Of course, yeah, so as far as maybe having more aerodynamic decelerators... has there ever been any talk about having the inter-stage kind of, like, peel back like some kind of flower petal or anything? **Peter:** Yeah, actually, the inter-stage is the wrong place you want it, believe it or not. **Tim:** Really? **Peter:** Yeah, it's not, hypersonic flow regime is a little bit different. **Tim:** Is it because it ends up out so far outside of the wake it's just almost sitting, and not doing any effect at all? **Peter:** Exactly, because you're punching in, if you get your corridor right you've got a big kind of shadow, so, you end up having to have something something super big to be effective. **Tim:** And that's just dumb. **Peter:** So if you just, yeah, folded your inter-stage over like petals, there's just nothing there, there's no flow there. **Tim:** That makes sense, so, you could potentially have little, small air brakes pop out of your thrust structure or something? **Peter:** Yeah, there's all sorts of different regimes. **Tim:** Just expand that surface area out a little bit more. **Peter:** I mean, different solutions for different courses. Maybe, if you had a shallower angle of attack, then those would be more effective. But, our whole concept here is to keep the stages cool and out of all the wind as possible. **Tim:** So, as far as your flight corridor; is it better for you guys to come in longer, like, steeper like that, or straight down? **Peter:** It's really about angle of attack. That's what we want to try and maintain. ### Looking Ahead to 2020 **Tim:** So, what we can look forward to in 2020 would be: we're going to be looking for more recovery hardware, more flights. **Peter:** Double the flight rate. **Tim:** Double the flight rate, once a month? **Peter:** Yup, yup. **Tim:** Wow, launches out of here. **Peter:** Yup, launch out of here. **Tim:** *(laughs)* From right here. **Peter:** Yeah, in this flying bucket. **Tim:** We won't want to be right here when that happens. And then, anything else you guys are really looking forward to in 2020? **Peter:** Photon. You know, next year is a big year of the satellite, for us. You know, I'm super pumped about photon, I think that solves a lot of problems for the industry, and really lowers the boundaries and barriers for people to put stuff on orbit. You know, science, and education, commercial business, you know, it just removes all of the fuss, that's in space. So, that'll be a big year for us next year, the first photon mission. And, we'll see, who knows, we might even skid something to the moon. **Tim:** I hope so. **Peter:** We'll see how it goes. **Tim:** That's amazing, well thank you so much for your time **Peter:** Thanks, Tim! **Tim:** and congratulations on this wonderful new launch complex! **Peter:** Thanks Tim, appreciate it. **Tim:** Until next time. ### Closing Comments *(upbeat music)* **Tim:** Isn't Peter just awesome? Thanks to the folks at Rocket Lab for giving me some time with Peter and letting me pick his brain. That stuff is just super fun to me. And, I owe an even bigger thanks to my Patreon supporters for helping me be able to get myself and my camera guy, Michael, out there to be able to shoot this kind of awesome stuff. If you want to help me continue to do what I do, please consider becoming a Patreon supporter by going to patreon.com/everydayastronaut. And, while you're online, be sure and check out everydayastronaut.com/shop for limited edition merch. Now, do notice the merchandise is getting awesome. We have, you know, they're all hand-screen printed, hand-sewn on patches, custom neck labels, all these really cool things, and these awesome designs are limited run, so if you like something, you better grab it now, because there's a good chance it won't be there next time you click on the website, and I guess you can even grab what's apparently one of Elon Musk's favorite shirts, the Full Flow Staged Combustion Cycle shirt. We also have that as a hoodie version as well, just in time for the cold weather. 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