And I have a really dumb question that I've been waiting all day to ask you.

All of this technology, all of this new stuff for this mission, this is still

how we're returning from space. Is there really just no better way to do

this? Tried and true.

It works. We're sticking with it.

Yeah, Just good old fashioned rocket science.

Right? The flat bottomed capsule.

It's a really good point. I think to a lot of people, the millions

and millions of people watching around the world yesterday evening, the thing

that all of us in industry and you know, I did the splashdown show with

Bloomberg's Loren Barasch, who is leads our space coverage at Bloomberg but also

has this like deep family connections and access and history.

And then Laurie LESHIN, who used to lead NASA's propulsion labs.

We did this show. And the thing that both of them are

super clear on is, is that, you know, you're trying to enter Earth's

atmosphere at 400,000 feet, altitude, traveling at 25,000 miles per hour.

It just seems insane. But you just hitting a wall of air on

that flat bottom and the heat shield and and the need for the heat shield to hold

up, that is the best way to do it at this moment is I'm glad you mentioned

the heat shield, because there were a lot of questions going into this reentry

yesterday about the durability of the heat shield after what happened with

Artemus one a couple of years ago. At this point, do we have any close up

images of how the heat shield withstood this sort of different reentry that was

for a less of a period of time, but still really, really challenge the

materials? So the answer, frankly, is no.

You know, the recovery has taken place. And what happens is that the Orion

spacecraft gets taken. Actually, it's Kennedy Space Center, and

then all of that analysis done with particular focus on the heat shield,

there is going to have been some breakup, some material, you know,

removal from the heat shield. That's what it's designed to do and it's

what it's designed to do. The issue was in Artemus one, which was

an Uncrewed mission, that it was just it broke up in ways that they didn't

expect. The material itself behaved in ways that

they didn't expect. But actually, the fix for this, I mean,

it's academic now, right? Because the four astronauts are safe.

They say they made it and successful end and mission.

But how they they ensured that was to actually change the angle that the Orion

spacecraft integrity entered Earth's atmosphere, that the reentry phase

rather than actually make any material changes or design changes to the shield

itself. You are such a space nerd.

Why did you know that? Well, we talked to Ed.

Yeah, Come on, Ed, You know, one thing that I noticed

yesterday, for all the success that this this mission had, there was this kind of

hiccup in terms of communication when when things when the Orion capsule

splashed down yesterday, what happened? They were like, so somebody asked, are

you sure you're pressing the right button?

Essentially press the t the push to talk.

It was almost like it was going to smoothly.

They needed a moment of drama to make a sound.

Yeah. I mean, so I guess in in a in a sequence

that's 13 minutes. It's about 13 minutes from the reentry

interface. The moment that the capsule kind of

orients back into Earth's atmosphere and splashdown.

Of all of the things that can happen post splashdown, the Talk Back being a

sort of a comical, lighthearted moment, it's not really it's not really a big

deal because bear in mind that at that 400,000 feet altitude and its speed

25,000 miles, plasma encases the capsule.

Right. And from sheer heat, 3000 degrees

Celsius, 5000 Fahrenheit. So for 6 minutes, there's no way for the

crew, the astronauts to speak to Houston and there's no way for Houston's feet,

then that's really scary. So, Nasser, I think in the press, in the

debrief, it came out. But I think that was just giddiness and

human euphoria, having pulled off quite a feat of space travel.

So we've talked before about the commercial aspect of this and the growth

of the commercial space industry and what that means for NASA in these

programs. And there's a story that just hit the

terminal this morning talking about Boeing's moon rocket faces an uncertain

future under Trump and the fact that despite this success, the Trump

administration is looking to competitors for a possible replacement.

What does that mean for you and how could this impact future missions?

Yeah. So there are future missions.

And what NASA has said officially is that they are committed to the last

space launch system, the rockets orbit developed by Boeing until at least

ULTIMATE'S five. However, you know, Lauren Grossman, I

broke his story a few weeks ago that that

he was going to put it it ruffled some feathers because Nasser hadn't yet

communicated how they wanted to take the project forward to the parties involved.

And what we reported was there are two proposals on the table, one from Space

DAX and one from Blue Origin that would change the mechanism for humans landing

on the moon, essentially. And in one of the mechanisms, Orion, the

spacecraft would dock with Starship Space X's rocket in low Earth orbit.

And then I'm using my hands. I hope that's okay for Bloomberg this

weekend. But like Orion would merge with starship

nose to nose, and Starship would push it to the moon.

And then there were various proposals on the table to land down on the moon's

surface. But that cuts out SLAs, you know, even

if that's the vehicle that that would take Orion to to low earth orbit.

And but also starship is like massively unproven, right?

It's never had done a human spaceflight. They basically have two years less than

two years to prove this thing can work without blowing up.

So so there's a lot there. But yeah, you know, this was a huge

success and to end human deep space mission, but it's had problems.

It's way over budget and it's way behind on its timeline.

And it's important to restate that now that everyone's safe.

So had just about 40 seconds left on this next steps on on building that base

on the moon and then ultimately getting to Mars, at least for NASA's Jared

Isaacman, what does it mean? Yeah, there's two tracks in parallel.

On an ongoing basis, many more missions to the moon, which is why Space X might

come in because they can launch more regularly at lower cost to put robots

and and hardware on the moon. No humans, but just flood the moon's

surface to start building out the space. 2028.

That's the earliest that NASA thinks it will get humans to land on the moon.

And so there's lots of steps. Ultima three is a mission is a

demonstration of how those different technology providers would interact with

each other in orbit, some of what I just described.

So there is a timeline over the next two years.

Well, we'll see many more launches with the target of having Nassau astronauts

and new humans back on the moon's surface 2020.