BTS of a NASA + SpaceX Launch

During our two-day NASA Tour, host Blythe Brumleve assumed that one episode (this one) would be sufficient. But considering we had enough content to make this episode 5 of the NASA Series, this is the one where we’re showing the BTS of what goes into a launch, favorite moments from creating this series, and the NASA goodie bag.

NASA SERIES LINKS:

• NASA Series: Building Space Infrastructure
• NASA Series: Shipping Weather Satellites to Space
• NASA Series – How to Grow Food in Space
• NASA Series – Deep Space 

EPISODE LINKS:

• Blythe's Instagram post with photos from NASA event
• NOAA’s GOES-U Mission NASA Social Panel

WATCH THE FULL EPISODE HERE

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Chapters

• 0:06 NASA SpaceX Team and Meteorologist Community Connections
• 5:10 NASA Social Program and Launch Experience
• 13:51 Behind-the-Scenes Tour and Memorabilia
• 34:10 Launch Day and Media Room Experience
• 48:54 NASA Lunchroom and Media Room Details
• 49:08 Previous Episodes and Key Takeaways
• 49:38 NASA Social Program and Launch Traditions
• 59:57 NASA Goodie Bag Unboxing
• 1:06:47 Future Plans and Acknowledgments

Transcript

Blythe Brumleve: 0:06

Welcome into another episode of everything is logistics, a podcast for the thinkers in freight. We are proudly presented by SPI logistics, and I am your host, Blythe Brumleve, and this is episode five of our five part NASA series. So if you've been listening to all of the other episodes part of this as part of this series, and thank you so much. This is the fifth part from specific to the trip that I took at the end of June. But we frankly, made a lot of good contacts with a lot of folks within the NASA SpaceX team, and then also within the meteorologist community. So I am hoping to have more space weather logistics focused episodes with experts from those fields on in the future. But I thought what would be good for a fun sort of round out, is making this episode about all of the cool things learned during those four previous four episodes, but then also a lot of the things that I couldn't include in a dedicated episode. So some of the more behind the scenes moments, some of the the things with the NASA lunchroom. What does the NASA lunchroom look like? Astronaut doors and launch stickers and launch services programs, and, you know, all of those cool things that I wanted to talk about. So I thought, why not just make behind the scenes type episode? And so that is what this is going to consist of. So I'm going to talk a little bit about the overall trip. Then I'm going to talk about, you know, some cool moments that didn't make it into a specific episode. Then I'm going to review a little bit of like behind the scenes, things, some photos that I took that didn't make it into a previous episode, or maybe it did, but they're still cool. So I'm going to show it again, even if I did maybe show it. I tried to keep all of them separate, but this, this two day event I had my main cell phone on me. I had a backup cell phone on me that I like to record B roll with. So it might I'm not, you know, inhibited by my current device, that is, you know, I feel like I'm perpetually seeing the iPhone storage is full. So I always bring a backup phone to any kind of event that I go to. And then I also brought my nice Canon camera. I have been so afraid to take this camera down the one that I am using right now, because I don't want to mess anything. It was such a process to get a nice camera set up for this podcast that I have been afraid to take it down ever since. And so for a lot of the conferences that I've gone to you may have noticed that, you know, maybe the quality isn't all the way there as it should be. I specifically remember the TMSA that I was just at. I did not bring a nice camera I bought. You know, let's just say the equipment was subpar, and it showed in the content. So considering that my NASA trip was about two weeks after TMSA, I was not going to be in that situation again. And so I took the risk, and the risk paid off, because I got a lot of really great content using a really nice camera. So it was a lot of files, it was a lot of sorting through. And so essentially, what I did is I take inventory of all of the the content that I had. And I assumed that this episode that that I'm recording right now, I assumed that that would be the one episode that I would make after the trip. Turns out, there was so much really good content that came from this, so many fantastic speakers that I was able to record those conversations, sometimes not the best, you know, as little shaky at times. I probably needed to bring, you know, set some equipment up on a tripod, you know, you know, in order to avoid some of those issues. But the content, the audio, the it was still all there, and so published a lot of it, organized a lot of it, but the stuff that didn't make it into the previous four episodes, that's what I want to share with you all today. Also, in case, if you are watching, you might have seen this NASA bag in back, in the corner of my footage, and I have been waiting to record this episode because they gave us NASA gave us this goody bag. And so to end this episode, I'm going to kind of go through it and show you what was given to us by a bunch of different teams within NASA. I have only been to one launch, born and raised in Florida. I thought that launches were something that were really risky to kind of go to because there were only a few of them a year, and they were pushed back a lot. So, you know, kind of trying to, like coordinate the logistics behind, like, booking, you know, a hotel or, you know, driving down there only for, you know, to have a delay was, you know, always kind of like a very real concern in the back of my head, but I was able to see. Uh, my first shuttle launch back in 2020 with the over the summer, which was just sort of like a weird time, because you couldn't really Cape Canaveral, which is where the overwhelming majority of NASA launches take place, is still technically like federal government land, and you're in the state of Florida, and Florida, you know, kind of never really closed down for covid better or worse, I would argue, better. But at that point it was still like a really, like murky area where what you could do on in regular Florida land versus federal government land was still very much challenging. So it wasn't the, I will say it wasn't the best experience trying to go and watch a launch during that time frame. However, Fast forward four years. This then the NASA Social program. I cannot speak enough about how awesome this was and how well we were treated. Like I said, it was a couple dozen people, a lot of them, astrophotographers, meteorologists, I think that was the only podcaster on this trip. A lot of folks, you know, of course, like meteorologists, they have media training as well, so they're on camera all the time. But I believe I was the only podcaster on the trip, which was kind of cool, but it's basically a program for folks who may not be aware. NASA Social is almost like an extension of the PR team. And what they do is they have an email list. You can go and find them. They have a Twitter slash x account, so you can go find the NASA Social handle. They have a link in their bio of where you can sign up for email alerts, and on that email alert, they will let you know ahead of time, probably about a month or two months, in advance of future launches, that they are going to have a NASA Social team assigned to that launch, because there's so many more launches now I, you know, I mentioned earlier, about a few launches a year, so it was very challenging to even think about, You know, trying to get down to Cape Canaveral for a launch, but now there are several launches every single week. Even one of the photographers that was on this tour, he was based in Orlando, and he said that he tells all of his friends and family. He said, If you want to see a launch, come to Orlando, because there's about three a week. And so that's how so we went from a few a year to a few every week. And so that's how massive this industry has grown. And so knowing all of that, there's so many more launches, and NASA Social is is a program that has been kicking up a lot more. I had to apply a couple times. I got denied a couple times, but the third time is the char because I did get accepted for for this particular mission, and it was just such a fantastic experience. I'm going to be applying to every single one of them in the future, and I would encourage you to do the same. You do have to pay for your own travel, you know, hotels, things like that, but I would argue that the behind the scenes access that you get is so worth it. So if you're interested in participating in a program like this, and you have a social media presence, I highly encourage you to go to the NASA Social account, get signed up for their email alerts, and then maybe you too could participate in a future launch like this. Highly, highly recommend. So let's get into a little bit of the behind the scenes. Okay, so first I want to talk about the overall trip. And I've mentioned, you know, how many people were in my in my group with the the NASA Social team. So it was about, I think, 26 of us that were in the group itself. And I will say, as a sports fan, I had no idea that fan Space Fans existed like this. I mean, I knew I'm a fan of space. I would call my fan. I would call myself a fan of space, but the people that I was with were real fans of space, like they could name off different launches. They could name off the astronauts or the equipment that were on that launch. They could name off the years, all of these different stats, like they were talking about a sports team. And that passion was so just infectious and contagious, and it was amazing to be a part of it made me want to go and learn so much more. And that's exactly what I've done since the end of June. It's been, you know, watching a lot of YouTube videos, watching a lot of documentaries, and I've talked about a couple of them in previous episodes, but it's just, there's so much going on, and there's going to be so much more going on. One of the stats that I heard, just to kind of put things in into perspective, is that before the year 2020 there was about 2500 satellites in space present. Well, from 2020 to 2024, Was about 8000 additional satellites added to that mix. Now, over the next 10 years, it's estimated that that number is going to increase to 200,000 satellites. That's how massive this industry and how quickly this industry is growing, not just in, you know, sort of the the government side of things, but in the private sector, in the commercial sector, that's where the most growth is coming from. And so, you know, just knowing that there are, you know, just cool space nerds that are out there that are following this so very closely, it has to be so exciting, maybe, for them to watch it over a long period of time. And then for, you know, the all of these things to start happening, really, oh, I would argue, I think SpaceX started in 2008 and then so arguably, over the last 10 years, has just been a massive amount of growth, both in the the private side and, well, private and commercial side of things, and also Using, you know, different space agencies all over the globe. So it was really cool to be around that crowd and to experience a launch with that crowd, because they were so especially right after the launch was over. And I will, I'm going to play some of the videos of the people that you know, I bonded with and I was with on this trip in a little bit later on, but just the that hype, the excitement, especially right after the the launch was over, it was so incredible to to be around that kind of positive energy. Another thing that was really cool to be a part of is just the, I think, the amazing scale and size of these things, I have shared a couple of these images on social media and in previous episodes, but I think it just bears repeating, just the size and the scope of these things. So let me bring up my Instagram, and that's I like that picture a lot, but this image right here, this is me standing in front of the transporter. The transporter is what the rocket or the satellite goes on top of, and then it transports it over a gravel lane. So think of like a traditional road lane that you are traveling on right next to it in the sort of Cape Canaveral NASA Kennedy compound. Is, really, is. It's such a massive compound with dozens of buildings, 22 launch pads. I don't know why. I only assumed that there was maybe one or two launch pads, but they're actually 22 in Cape Canaveral. So that was incredible to see. But all of those launches, they use what's called the transporter, and that's what you're seeing in this photo. I am standing in front of half of it. So all of these transporters, the rocket or the satellite, it goes on top of the transporter, and it goes about a mile per hour down this dirt, gravel road that runs parallel to a traditional road that everybody else was on. So the scale of this thing is just so massive. Here's a video that you can kind of see the other half of it, and you can see some people like walking around below it, to give kind of a glimpse into how large these things are. But that was one of the bigger takeaways, is just how massive these facilities are. You can't really tell in this photo, but this is the Vehicle Assembly Building where the Artemis program is being built. So giant rockets are going to be in here. You can kind of see a lot of these different levels. And so that is, you know, essentially a rocket takes up the entire, you know, space here in the middle of what you're looking at. And then all of these different pads can be worker pads that they can walk out, and they can assess things. They can measure them. And, you know, do what they got to do to make sure that that rocket gets into space. Scrolling through some of the other images here. This is actually the media area where we watched the launch. You can see over here with the goes, you sign. That sign is the count where the countdown clock is, and it's apparently 8k didn't even know that that, I guess frame rate existed, but yeah, it's an 8k countdown clock that shows different images on there. Apparently they also have, sometimes they have, like, media nights, and they'll sit in front of it and they'll be able to watch a movie. I thought that that was a cool little nugget of information. That is the outside look of the Vehicle Assembly Building, which that American flag that you see in the photo a semi truck can fit on each one of the lines of the American flag. That's how massive that American flag is, and that is the Vehicle Assembly Building, which I just showed you that I was standing in front of. So the transporter is also inside of the Vehicle Assembly Building. But then this building too. So that is how massive this building is. So just I'm in a really, really incredible site to see. I also wanted to go through some. Some of the photos that I took on the trip that didn't make it to, I guess, the full, full episode format. So let me go ahead and I'm going to bring up all of the other photos. I kind of feel like my grandma right now, who like comes back from a vacation and just wants to share all of her photos. So if it works for y'all, I'm just going to go through some of these and then just kind of do, like a quick voiceover for it. So let me I'm going to share, get a bear with me here. There we go. Okay, so let me see if I can make this a little bit better. Perfect. Okay, cool. Okay, so just another picture to kind of give you, like the scale of these things in the background. So right up here, that's the capsule where the goes you satellite is in, if you look on the left and the right hand side of the rocket itself. These are the boosters. So this is the Falcon nine heavy. That's called the Falcon nine heavy. It is a SpaceX rocket. And what makes this incredible is that this system is reusable. It's completely redefined, like how we think about space travel, because before, it was just a use once and then never use it again, which made missions incredibly challenging to do frequently and also expensive. So for this that having the reuse or rocket reusability has been a massive game changer, and is a big reason why we're going from 8000 satellites in lower Earth orbit to a projected 200,000 of them in the next 10 years. So that is, I just think that that's cool to kind of visualize it that those two boosters on the left and the right hand side, those are the ones that come back and they return to the launch pad. I'll have a video for you a little bit later on of what that process looks like. Let me see if I can show you a few other things. Another cool thing about NASA is that there's memorabilia everywhere. We probably toured close to a dozen buildings, and there was memorabilia inside of all of them. So you're looking at obviously, you know, JFK is famous speech where he has asked, not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country. And if I haven't mentioned already, if you're listening on the audio version, this is one that you're going to want to watch. I'm sorry to like make you, you know, switch programming, switch gears a little bit. But we are about, I would say, probably 17 minutes into this broadcast. And I probably should have mentioned that a little bit earlier, that you you want to watch this one. So there should be a link in the show notes to Watch the YouTube version, so you can see all of the photos and all of the imagery that I'm sharing. So back to this photo memorabilia everywhere. So lots of also, just like motivation all over the place too. It was just really, I can't I'm probably going to say it was really cool a million times in this episode. So bear with me here. Okay, so this is if you listen to our episode four, then you listen to the Lockheed Martin representative that was talking about, and I'm blanking on his name. I'm sorry about that, but he stood in front of the Orion spacecraft. So this image right here is actually a fourth replica. And the thing that was cool about this is that this was a project that they worked with on with the European Space Agency. So it was a Space Agency and the private sector coming together and building this spacecraft that that was really, you know, kind of cool to see, cool again. So obviously you have Neil Armstrong's suit right here, the replica of it that's behind glass, like you can't obviously touch that. It's like museum quality stuff. This is also some other memorabilia, just sort of the evolution of the different rockets that are regularly at NASA. Let me pull up this. Oh, wait, hold on, let me actually share this video, because it's not going okay. All right. Josh editing note, please remove this awkward silence. Why go and try to find this file? Hold on just a second, or try to share this file.

Unknown: 19:38

Actually. Let me mark this down. Okay? Okay, window i. Yeah, okay, 321,

Blythe Brumleve: 20:32

okay. Now I guess you know sharing images is one thing, but sharing videos, I have to jump through a couple more hoops in order to share that. So in this next clip, this is actually the video that I got with my cell phone recording the launch. And so I think what is really, what is the craziest part about this is that the heat and the flames were were, or the, I would say, the heat and the light from the launch were so intense that there was a couple moments that I was like, I feel like they should have given us, like, safety classes for this. Or some it was we were three miles from the launch pad, which is about as close as you can get. Maybe if you're like an animal or a bird or something, you can get a little bit closer, but this is about as close as you can get in it is you can feel the power of these things. So let me go ahead and play this part, and you can hear it as far as like audio wise. You can hear it through the just even the Camera. So let me play it.

Unknown: 22:01

Brumleves, okay, Jesus, all right. 22, minute mark two.

Blythe Brumleve: 22:14

Cut to launch because I didn't time it right. So Josh, if you're hearing this,

Unknown: 22:19

let's just cut the part up until the actual launch takes place. Let's see if I can find it. I thought I already had this clip cut. What the hell Why did I include all of This stupid let's Okay, all right, here we Go.

Blythe Brumleve: 23:35

You can see the smoke coming off. I can hear the people talking in the background. That was a NASA Social crew, space nerds. I

Unknown: 24:10

God, you Okay, 321, not yet. All right.

Blythe Brumleve: 24:51

Okay, so, 321, all right, here we go. I'm. Uh. So I was the dummy that set my camera up, and then didn't really I was so entranced by the launch itself that I had forgotten to actually film it. Continue, continuing, still to go up. I did get it on my cell phone, but that is, this is from my Canon camera. So let me see if I can bring up the next clip, which is the boosters returning, which the boosters were the sides of the rocket itself. So they come back and they land on a launch pad, either on a barge or on the launch pads in and around Kennedy Space Center. So let me I'm going to share this window, and so you can see these two little dots. Those are the boosters that have already detached from the rocket itself, that are coming back down. And so I'm going to speed through this, because what I think is the craziest things, like, I'm too far away to actually film the boosters landing, but the sonic boom that comes that you hear afterwards. Because what's crazy is that you can see these things happening, but you don't hear them until several seconds later. So I thought that that was really cool. So let me go ahead and hit ahead and hit play, and I'm going to skip through some of this stuff. So those are the parachutes that are coming out, kind of trying to slow them down, and then they Will

Unknown: 26:58

Okay. So let me See if I can. I'm

Blythe Brumleve: 27:40

Yeah. Okay, so that was my annoying yelling, but everybody else was yelling too, because it was, it was a pretty hype moment. So let me bring up a few more photos. But that was the boosters returning, which created a really loud sonic boom afterwards that it scared everyone. Even though we kind of knew it was coming, we still didn't have kind of an idea of what to or at least I didn't. I didn't have an idea of what to expect. Another thing that I do want to show off is the astronaut doors. So there are these, there are these doors that every astronaut in the history of NASA, if you've gone to space, you've walked out of these two doors. And so you can kind of see all of the different launch stickers for every launch, for every mission. There is a logo that is made. And so they use these stickers, and they put them everywhere. There's another image that I want to bring up, that I think is really interesting. So hold on just a second. Can you see that photo? No, you can't. Hold on just a second. Let me bring that one up. But it's this door that is located in the Launch Services Program. Yeah, that's what it's called, Launch Services Program. So that's like the launch division of all of NASA. And so they have this door. Every mission that has ever been carried out is on this door. And so just, and there's a front and a back of it too. I think I can bring up the next one. Yes, perfect, awesome. So you can kind of see the other side of see the other side of the door like they're going to run out of room, especially at the rate of how many launches are taking place right now. Let me see if I can just make things a little bit easier and just sort of start scrolling through. I'm going to start at the beginning, and then see if just a second, because I kind of want, oh, there's Okay, that's a good place to start. So this is the NASA doors that every astronaut has ever walked out of. So that was a good, like little photo op opportunity there. Let's see. Oh, this is how we started the day. So everybody get meets in a parking lot. You get on a bus, but you actually have a. A dog that comes through, security guard that comes through and sniffs through all of our stuff, just to make sure we aren't, you know, carrying anything crazy inside of NASA facility. This was the first classroom, so it looks, or Yeah, it was really a classroom that we walked into. But a lot of the hallways very boring. I know that they have, you know, very much like, you know, memorabilia and things like that, all over display everywhere. But that's more of like the front of the buildings, like, kind of the lobbies and stuff it. This is like a typical NASA hallway, which I still thought was cool, because in some of the doors were open, you can kind of peer in and see what's going on. And just, you know, smart people working on cool things is never not impressive. This is the Vehicle Assembly Building. I just thought that was a cool photo, so that'll probably be an Instagram post here soon. Oh, inside at the Vehicle Assembly Building. That's that transporter that I talked about earlier. Just so you can see kind of the scale of it. It's located inside the Vehicle Assembly Building. Another shot of Artemis, or the Artemis sign inside the vehicle assembly building that's just looking up another transporter video. Oh, this is also every astronaut that has ever gone into space, or I think, worked on these different equipment, so they get to sign their name on a replay that, but, yeah, look at all those names that were part of all these missions. There's so many people that have to come together for these things to take place. Now this is the so I didn't explain this earlier, but I talked about the transporter. And so there's two transporters. I think there's like eight drivers of them in total. But one of the transporters is being refurbished. You can kind of see in the background a little bit here see how rusty These panels are. So they are replacing these panels. So right now, this transporter is at a commission. It's getting maintenance work done on it, but they let us kind of walk around and walk underneath it, which I thought was cool to kind of really feel the scale of these things. Here are more parts from the transporter that they are replacing. They actually told us that we could take this if we wanted to it actually, you know, kind of helped them out, because there were so many of these things around. Obviously, it's very heavy, it's very greasy. No, I did not grab it, but looking at this photo, I probably should maybe have tried to, like, take a lug nut or something off of it. I did, I will say I borrowed a rock. So the little rocks that you see on the ground, I did borrow a rock. If anybody from NASA is listening, I just borrowed it. So if you want it back, I will mail it back. I'm just borrowing it. I'm just borrowing it. But, yeah, let's see what else. Oh, that's the vehicle simply building. And this is just kind of like an up close video of the tread itself, and that is, again, what is being replaced. Here's just, I mean, this is one wheel of the transporter. It looks like a tank, but these are all the treads and all of the the parts that are being swapped out for newer parts. There's that door again with all of the the launch stickers on it. I will say this part of the tour, which was the Launch Services Program. There were a lot of rooms that we walked into that we were not allowed to take photos, especially if computer screens were on. We weren't allowed to take photos of that. There was another, I can actually see it on that photo. There was a there's also a name badge. So we have our sort of press badge that we got, but then we also have, like a visitor badge, visitors NASA badge. We were not allowed to have that on during photos or to have it be photographed. So that was something that they told us, if you see it in any photos, you know, just try to blur it out and try not to post it because, you know, security, security reasons we want to, want to keep our people safe. This video here, remember that road for the transporter that I was talking about that had runs parallel. We're on the the real road on the bus, but this is the the transporter gravel road that runs right next to us. So the transporter will be on that road anytime that there is a mission going on, here's one of the launch pads that's before they put the the rocket up there. This was on Monday of the trip that we weren't exactly sure if, if we were going to be able to see the launch, because they hadn't put the rocket up yet. But later on that night, I think a little bit after midnight, possibly closer to, like 1am they did wheel the Falcon nine, or the Falcon Heavy out and then loaded it up. And so that was a welcome surprise. This is another one of the launch pads. And this is just kind of, I wanted to show this one because of how close it is to the water like that is a beach right there that is a Nash cape, Canaveral National shoreline. So very similar to like a national park, there's also national forestry, and this one is a national shoreline. So this is also a fantastic spot to go to if you want to watch a launch. But then also have, like, a cool beach day. Water's beautiful. Sand is beautiful. Even, like the foliage all around is great. But, yeah, it's literally right next. So you can kind of get a glimpse of, like, how big port or Cape Canaveral is, or just like Kennedy Space Center, because let me see if I can pause this. You can see that's the in the background. That's the Vehicle Assembly Building that I just showed you. So it's that far away. And so think about it, 22 different launch pads. And this is just another one. Another thing I wanted to show you is, if you look on the launch pad itself, so you kind of see these poles that stick straight up. That's a that's for lightning, so they don't want these things to get struck by lightning. Lightning is Florida. Is the lightning capital of the United States, possibly North America, and so just lightning is a problem. And so they use this as a way to try to prevent electronics from being damaged by too much lightning. That's just a little I'll probably post this one to Instagram soon. So that's another one I need to take note of. Oh, this is one of the murals that is outside of the media building. And so this is where we are walking into kind of wait it out to see if the launch was going to happen. At this point that this video was taken, it was still only a 5050, shot that the launch was going to take place, because typical Florida weather in, you know, storms every day in the summer, pretty much so they thought that this was going to be the same for this day. That's why it was a 5050, shot in the morning. It was only 30% so it got a little bit better throughout the day. But the launch did end up happening, and I think it was only delayed by about 10 minutes, which was awesome. The following day, though, that was the day that I drove home, and I drove home around the time that the launch would have taken place, and it was so it was raining so bad, it was so stormy. So thank God that they picked Tuesday and instead of Wednesday. And also it that would have sucked if people would have missed because they, what they what would have happened is that they would have pushed the law, if it got delayed on Tuesday, what they would have pushed the launch to Wednesday, and then that would have required all of the people that flew in, overwhelming majority of the people of the taking part in the NASA Social program flew in, and so A lot of them had flights out to go back home, back to work the day after. So thank God it, you know, it did take place on that day, so everybody could, you know, be around and watch it and cheer and have fun, like what you just saw in the videos prior. This is inside one of their media rooms, which is, you know, there's so many buttons, there's so many equipment going on here, but this was just one of the media rooms.

Unknown: 37:46

Oh,

Blythe Brumleve: 37:48

this is one that I've been meaning to show. So we were on the bus, and you're traveling, you know, pretty normally, on a bus throughout the different compound, and you don't really face like traffic jams, unless there's a rocket involved. So the following day, there was going to be, in the morning, there was going to be a Starlink launch sending a bunch of Starlink satellites up into space. And what you can see here is this one is not on on the transporter. It's not on NASA's transporter. This is a SpaceX mission. So they're kind of, they can do things however they want. So they don't necessarily go on the transporter gravel lot, which is what you see to the left here, but you see this garbage, you see a regular car, you see a garbage truck, and then in front of that is a rocket being transported, or a capsule being transported to the rocket launch pad. And so it moves very slow, and so we were kind of stuck in a little bit of a traffic jam because of it. You can kind of see a better view of it here, where it's on that truck, where that capsule has, you know, all the Starlink satellites inside of it, and that goes on top of the rocket. So learning lots of new space things today. Here's another view of the rocket traffic jam, or the capsule caused traffic jam heading over to one of the other launch gates and launch facilities. Another video. I took a lot of videos of this. Frankly, it was kind of hard to get a good, a good photo of it, but I figured this is a logistic show, so I have to get the traffic, I have to get the capsules and the rocket that are on the road and causing backups and traffic. It's probably the coolest backup I'll ever be a part of when it comes to traffic related things. But yeah, I took a lot of videos of it. This is where so we got to park. You can see the capsule again over there, but you can see, look at all of the cameras out here. And the only thing they told us, like we could walk out here and that that's what you see here. We're actually standing on the transporter, like gravel lane, but you can see here all of the different cameras that are set up to record the launch. People can't get that close, but you can set up your camera and. And, you know, hope for the best. I know, I don't know if my camera would survive. I imagine there's probably some, you know, heat protectant stuff that are on these cameras. But yeah, it's, it's a ton of cameras. Here's, you know, even more cameras that are all set up. And so that's about as close as we got to get oh, this is, if you ever wondered what lunch looks like at NASA. This is a just a video of one of their lunch rooms. I don't know what deal subway made with NASA, but they were in two. We had lunch on Monday. We had lunch on Tuesday. And both of the buildings, they were separate buildings. Both of them had a subway built inside of it. So I don't know what deal subway made with NASA, but, you know, meh, I'm assuming that you know, the folks at NASA would love a variety of options outside of subway. The first day there was only two there were Sonny's barbecue and subway. So out of the two, I chose subway, obviously, because Sunny is lit. But the second day we did have an option to choose from, and that was a Greek restaurant, kind of like a coffee, pastry style restaurant. And then they had another subway. I'm pretty sure they had maybe another restaurant in there, I'm not exactly sure, but this is what the cafeteria looks like inside of the main NASA headquarters building. They got a nice Juneteenth, you know, mural on the wall there, you know, just showing a lot of what black Americans have contributed to the space program. And then, of course, you see the Greek restaurant here in the back. You have the little coffee shop over on the left, and then you have the subway on the right, okay, but that Greek spot that was really good, really, really good. Okay, let me see if I can bring up actually didn't mean to X out of that. So I'm gonna bring that window up again just a second, actually, that might, oh, wait, I do want to show one more. Yeah, I do want to show this one. So this one is probably, I think, going to be the last image I show. And, yeah, it is. I'm just looking at, you know, my other photos, so just some behind the scenes stuff of making this show. But this photo right here. So cool. This was right next to where all of the astronauts walk out of. And so they have several parking spots that say astronaut parking only. That's listed right there. So, yeah, that's a good that's a good photo too. And my little thank you for looking at my photos. I definitely feel like my grandmother when she comes back from a gambling trip and she wants to show me all of her photos. God, rest her soul. But yes, okay, let's move on to things that I could not fit into a specific episode already. Kind of talked about the Launch Services Program tour. This is where we couldn't take photos of computer screens inside of the building, only the backs of them. Launch traditions I thought were really cool too, like the door with the stickers and all the kind of the names on the wall and the Vehicle Assembly Building, I will say, Oh, this one is really good. So the press conference that took place the day before the launch, so all of us, so they hold a very professional, you know, press conference where all of their experts get up on on the stage, and they're doing a live broadcast out to all of their different channels. What was cool is that we were able to be in that building while this press conference was taking place. And if you wanted to ask a question, you got to ask it during this press conference, and it aired out to the rest of the world. And of course, your girl has got to get a question. And I had no idea what question I was going to ask, because I feel like they were just saying so many things that I it was difficult to come up with a question that they hadn't already covered, if that makes sense. So I'm going to share a little moment when I got to ask a question, and I'll link to it in the show notes, in case you want to watch it. But might want to, I don't know. I don't know if you will or not, so let me hit play. Great.

Unknown: 44:26

Thanks so much. Okay, I think we'll come back here to the room. Any questions up here front row. So

Blythe Brumleve: 44:36

with all of the data that you're collecting, I imagine it's a massive amount of information to sort through, so are using any kind of like AI or machine learning in order to filter through a lot of that data, and then what matters to just the common person that's worried about whether or not impacts their life? That

Unknown: 44:54

data is called telemetry. So as the mission telemetry engineer, it is. My job well, between launches, it is my job to write software that processes all of that data and makes it available to the engineers who are sitting on console for these launches. We may have, we may have people who are specializing in propulsion, and there may be a team of, you know, several dozen people working together looking at diagrams, and these diagrams may have associated measurements, association associated sensors that we receive the data from. As the mission telemetry engineer, I write software that allows them to plug in the name of this sensor and get the reading from that sensor as it is right now or over the course of the last five minutes, or over the course of the last 30 minutes. So to answer your question, for one, there's a whole lot of people looking at that data. So we talked earlier about how there are hundreds of 1000s of measurements coming off of a Falcon Heavy rocket, including the measurements that we're getting from the spacecraft. In this case goes, you has telemetry interleaved with the Falcon Heavy telemetry, but there are hundreds of people who need to look at all different aspects of those. And we have, we have software here at hangry, which is, which is where I work that processes the data that the engineers at Hangar EU would look at. There are engineers at SpaceX, hangar X who have their own software. Look at all of that, and it's, it's tailored to their needs. You're right. There is, there is a whole lot of data. It takes a whole lot of software to process all of it. The cables that we need to receive that data are very, very large. I hope that answers your question, if I may.

Blythe Brumleve: 46:50

So she did. She did further expand on that a little bit later on about, you know, just the massive amount of data that is coming through, and you know, the amount of people it takes to look at that data and how AI or machine learning might play a role. But she also did mention that, you know, and it's a very valid concern that for a lot of these larger sort of chat bots, you know, chat GPT, for example, Claude, for example, a lot of these things, you're not exactly sure what happens with your data after the fact. So there's a, there's definitely, I think, a hesitancy in to use that part of the private sector. So she kind of insinuates that, you know, SpaceX, probably knowing who the founder is, has access to their own machine learning, their own AI, different different tools to sort through all of that massive amount of data. And NASA is, you know, has their own system and their own ways of doing that too, but they're not necessarily going to tell me that they're using like, I didn't know what the answer would be, but I all I could think about was just the massive amount of data that they're collecting that they have to sort through, and do they have any help to sort through it? And, you know, sometimes machine learning, sometimes algorithms and AI can help in that regard. Or, you know, in certain circumstances, it could, you know, be a hindrance, and you could rely, you know, on those systems, you know, a little too much. And so I think that they're, they're trying to balance, if I'm reading between the lines of what she answered, just in that clip that I just showed you, and then also later on during the press conference, they're trying to walk that fine line of really, like, human powered intelligence that also uses AI as, you know, a sidekick as an assistant. So those that was the the cool, but didn't fit into a specific episode Type section, I will say. So there's some more, like, kind of behind the scenes stuff. I showed you a lot of those photos. I'm not going to, you know, torture you and show you that again. I did talk about the launch itself, and show you a few videos from that. So I'm not gonna you know. I don't want to say I bore you with that, but I guess it's probably time. No wait. I did want to talk about the previous episodes. I don't know if any of y'all have, hopefully you have caught the previous four episodes, but I did want to mention some favorite things from each of those episodes. This won't be super long, so I won't bore you to death, but from the NOAA episode, this was one of my favorite takeaways is that the rate of launches has increased so much that it's caused a little bit of turnover. Space Force is such a cool name. I love that name. It's really grown on me through the years. But Space Forces Launch Weather Officer said when I got here in 2019 we only had 17 orbital launches last year. It was 72 this year, we're targeting about 100 give or take, depending on weather delays. So that, again, kind of goes back to how much of demand has increased for a lot of these different launches and for folks. Who may have worked at NASA for a long period of time, and the rate has increased that dramatically, even in the last few years, some of these people are just saying, You know what? This is a young person's game. I'm going to go retire and enjoy my retirement and let the you know, the younger hunger your people take over. So it's caused turnover at the rate of increase of the launches. But that's only specific to NASA. To that side of thing, I would like to, I would love to see some numbers in the future of maybe how many folks feel like there's too much red tape working with or relying on the government. That changes every four years. You know, that's very, uh, reminiscent of the Deep Space logistics episode where they talked about how their funding has, you know, went from 4% of GDP back when we first landed on the moon, to now it's point 5% of the budget. So it's a fraction of the cost, or a fraction of what they used to get, and they're still responsible for doing all of these things, and so they're almost forced to work with the private sector in that regard. So yeah, there's, I guess, the changing of the guard. There's a changing of a lot of the way this industry works. And so some of the people, I would be curious to see who is leaving, I guess, sort of the red tape around working for the government and then going to work for some of these private corporations as well, versus, you know, just taking a retirement. I'm sure there's plenty of those folks as well, but I would love to see maybe some numbers if that is ever released. Next episode is that the Deep Space logistics episode, which I did mention about the GDP and the funding fact and how, you know, just sort of priorities change, something that you could work on for, you know, a decade could change as you know, a new administration or a new party comes into office, that's got to be incredibly frustrating to be reliant on that. But another note from the Deep Space logistics episode is that, you know, I showed you a bunch of those images and videos from the transporter, but there are a total of eight drivers of the transporter. There's one woman out of all of them. So that's, that's kind of cool. I didn't I, you know, if there's only eight drivers, I didn't expect there to be any woman, quite frankly, but it was cool to hear that there is one woman who is a transporter driver. You have to have two and a half years of training for it, but you have to work on the transporter for five years. First, the company who built Alco now Fairbanks originally built the transporter. So some of the original parts in my notes, I have OG parts. They can't even get anymore, because the OG company was sold so many times. John, who is, if you saw our deep space logistics episode, he was featured quite frequently, but he calls the transporter the best piece of equipment in the world. And I thought that that was that that was really cool, because he's, you know, all of these launches that have ever launched were carried on these two transporters. That's the NASA side of things. Obviously, SpaceX can kind of do their own thing. And you know some of these other you know, Rocket Lab, and if Astra can never get a rocket working, you know, maybe they, you know, the I doubt they would use Don't, don't, don't put an Astra rocket on transporter. We don't. We don't need Astra messing up our two transporters that we have. Okay? So the growing food in space episode, one of the bigger takeaways for me is how growing plants in space helps from a mental health aspect, because astronauts still need those comforts of home. So Happy astronauts means that you can complete your mission, that you can hopefully complete it successfully in that episode too, they're trying to because of microgravity that exists. It it's difficult to get the flavor profile right. So things that taste a certain way on earth might not taste the same way in space, which I thought was pretty crazy. And so a lot of the astronauts are asking for spicier food. So apparently the spicy food is not translating well from earth to space, which is really, really interesting. So that episode I love as a plant mom, I loved that episode because they just talk about all of the cool things that they're trying to grow. Tea was one of them with some of the photos that I have previously shared. And you can see it in that deep or the how to grow food and space episode. You can see some of the different lettuces and you know, things like that that they're growing potatoes, of course, shout out Matt Damon, but then also teas, so they're experimenting with growing different teas, and so astronauts can have that in space as well. And then lastly, the next frontier episode, which is why NASA needs to work with the private sector, because their funding is too dependent on who's in office. That kind of circles back to, you know, the previous. Note also the founders of Astra versus Rocket Lab in the wild wild space documentary. I thought that that dynamic was really interesting, because you have these two rocket companies that are trying to compete with SpaceX. They're trying to build reusable rockets, but they're trying to build them smaller so they can make the thought process is that they can make more frequent missions that are more cost effective. So Rocket Lab has done an incredible job. They had that last I checked this is, you know, middle of August that I'm recording this. They've had 52 I believe, successful rocket launches. Astra, not so much. They've faced a lot of challenges. Their founder is a little is a little questionable. Watch the wild, wild space documentary, and you'll understand what I mean. That feeling is definitely felt among a lot of different people. But it was interesting to see, I think, the dynamic between those two founders and how they're approaching it, where one is coming at it, Astra is coming at it from a very like capitalistic, ego driven perspective, versus the Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck. He is coming at it from what I you know, just my impression of watching him in the documentary, that he is coming at it from a true fan of science, a true fan of space who was looking to have a career at NASA, but he said that when he interviewed at NASA that he felt like everyone was talking about what they used to do and not what they were planning to do. And so he wanted a company that was going to be, you know, forging a new path. And so that's why he started Rocket Lab. Highly recommend giving them a follow on social media, because it's really cool to see it's not just SpaceX that is doing this Rocket Lab is they were started in the southern point of New Zealand, and so they're a New Zealand space company. I believe that they have multiple Launchpad locations, but I still I believe that their main team is headquartered in New Zealand, in the southern tip of New Zealand. One more interesting note from that wild, wild space documentary is that they really touched on what makes us human and what needs to be we talk about like fuel, oxygen, food. Of course, you know, you need these things to survive, but what other parts of humans are important? And what they've discovered, especially with Antarctica, for example, there was, you know, that that's probably the closest example that we have of maybe what happens on earth will also happen in space as well. It's a very harsh environment. You're in close quarters, you're with the same people for a very long period of time, and you're doing science based missions. So there was the wild wild space documentary. They cited an example on why they take mental health, I guess, or they should. The argument was that they should take mental health much more seriously, and that's because people just, you know, anytime, if you've ever lived with someone close quarters, especially over a long period of time, especially in an environment where you can't just pick up and leave like you can't just walk out the front door in Antarctica, you can't just walk out and take a little stroll around Space, at least not yet. So you have to deal with the the probable conflicts that are going to happen when you have humans in a stressful environment that aren't used to their normal routine. They got to deal with all of these additional stressors and challenges and try to just work. And you're doing that 24/7, you're living with these people. You're working with these people. So I imagine that it's only natural to get annoyed with each other. Another thing that they pointed out during the documentary is just how important faith is to humanity. Faith and nature is to humanity. And if you don't have the ability to say, like walk on the ground, if you travel to space and it makes you question your relationship with God, or you know, things like that, like these are very real. Your mental health, your faith and your humans, attachment to nature, these are all very real things that we need to think about as we continue to go up into space and continue to build out this infrastructure, is how are we going to tackle those key things that really make us human? And I think that that is a fascinating part of space travel and space exploration and expansion that hasn't really been tackled, and I'm not sure that there's ever going to be a clear answer for it. So definitely, highly advise, you know, of course, I advise go listen to the other four episodes that we have created if you haven't already, and if you haven't already, go to HBO, go to max and download and or stream. This wild, wild space documentary. It is just full of just really interesting insights and information and just the growth of this industry and where it's going. Okay, um, I think that's about it. I think it's time for the goodie bag. So if you are tuning in and you don't care, I don't blame you, but I thought it might be fun to kind of, you know, do an unboxing, but NASA style. So this bag has been sitting in the back of my camera for the the background of my camera views for the past two months. And so knowing that I can now, like I know that I knew that I was going to record this episode, so I've been having it just sit there to wait. I haven't put any of this stuff up yet, so let's, let's go through it.

Unknown: 1:00:52

Headphones back in. Okay,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:00:56

let's make that like reminder to myself what exactly was in this bag. Okay, so first we have lunch services, program folder. We got a lot of we got a lot of documents in here. So there's a lot of different brochures. Oh, there's a lot of, like, you know, different photos here. And let me show you a couple of these photos. So this is the International Space Station at a glance, hopefully you can see that just a cool, you know, some really cool photos. It was a NOAA National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. It is, it was a NOAA launch. So we also got hurricane Michael, a Category five storm. So this was a photo that they shared with us. I don't know what I'm going to do with that exactly. Welcome to Kennedy Space Center, and it says launching humanity's future, which is really cool. So that's just a little postcard that they gave us. Also, they gave us this map of all of the different launch complexes. So just to so just look at this map. Look at all of these locations. Can't even see my face. The map is so big that's it's crazy. There's a lot of stuff going on. So there's a lot of I'm not gonna bore you. Going to bore you with this other paperwork. Some cool things that I actually forgot about was all of the stickers and the patches that they gave us. I love stickers and patches. I mean, who doesn't? So here are some cool so we got some NASA patches which are really cool, both iron on and sticky. What is this one?

Unknown: 1:02:49

Oh, Launch Services Program, little patch, a Noah patch,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:02:57

a go zoo patch. I will definitely do something with this. Actually have two of these patches, so we will do something with these. Not exactly sure yet, what Lockheed Martin sticker, International Space Station sticker, we have some more. I mean, it's just, you know, Noah NASA stickers. That's cool. They will give a friend of the show, Grace Sharkey, one of these NASA stickers as well. I did get her because she talked on a previous episode of freight friends, she talked about the transporter, and it didn't even a little maybe behind the scenes. Cool moment from that is I didn't I had already applied to this that particular like the NASA Social program for the goes, you launch. I just hadn't heard anything back. And so when Grace was on the show and she was talking about, we were doing our source supports, you know, the logistics of segment, she picked the transporter. And so she talked about it really heavily. And so, and this was before she even knew that I had this opportunity because it wasn't confirmed yet. So I didn't want to tell you, but I didn't want to jinx myself, but when it got confirmed, and when I was there on site, I may have borrowed a rock for Grace too, so we got some Lockheed Martin sunglasses, sure those kind of looks glow in the dark. Okay. Oh, see, I haven't looked at the stuff in like two months. Okay, so we have a launch services program notebook. There's, you know, nothing inside. It's just, you know, a standard notebook. But we love a good notebook. Another notebook. This one is the l3 Harris that looks like a satellite is very like hologram, but I'll be honest, like some of the stuff that they gave us, you could tell it's kind of just laying around, but I will, I will take anything that NASA gives me, anything. Oh, we got business cards. I forgot about these business cards. Okay, okay. Oh, I didn't know that I left this in here. I. Yeah, it's my badge. So I always, anytime I go, if you see me at a conference, you know that I always have this, everything is logistics badge on my conference badge. So this is going to go with the rest of the collection, but I'm going to put it up front, because, frankly, I don't know that I will ever get a cooler badge than this one. I mean, this definitely career peak for me making this episode, and that's probably, you know, a good place to end it, because, oh, not my lately. Wait, I lied. Thought I was gonna get a little sentimental there. Pull myself together. Okay, y'all know I love pins. I just showed you the everything is logistics pin. So we got a few pens. Okay, so we have a goes. You pen. Can you see it? Oh, this camera, it's very nice. Oh, there it goes. Oh, well, Jesus,

Unknown: 1:05:54

let's see. Come

Blythe Brumleve: 1:05:56

on, focus. Focus, right? Oh, sorry, I wish the camera is, the settings are to focus on the face, and so anytime I put other things in front of it, it's just going to mess things up. So little NASA pin, little satellite pin. What

Unknown: 1:06:13

else do we got? We got a NOAA pin,

Blythe Brumleve: 1:06:18

another NOAA NASA pin, and then launch services program. So we have all of our pins, which is definitely the most exciting thing. I have to put that up on my pin board, but cool little NASA bag, not sure what I'm going to do with it yet. Probably frame it. You think I'm lying? Probably not. I'm probably not lying. I probably will do this, but this has really been a pleasure to create this five part series. Like I said earlier, I only thought this was going to be one episode, and when I really started diving into a lot of this different content, I said, I have to, I have to share this. I will be applying to future NASA Social things in the future. So hopefully, you know, I mentioned that I do believe that this is the pinnacle of my career. I've been making content online since 2007 started off as a sports and entertainment blogger, moved into logistics when I was an executive assistant working at a three PL so I always tried to balance like doing content at night and working my day job, I am very fortunate where now this podcast is my full time income. It's not my only income, but it is my full time income where I put a lot of this effort. And I wouldn't be able to create episodes like this without the support of my audience and without the support of my sponsors. So a big, big shout out to SPI logistics. They're the best freight agent program in the game. Also tie software the best three PL, TMS that's out on the market. Fabulous people that work over there. And then also new partner in Trimble transportation. So very, very thankful to my sponsors for allowing me to be able to not worry about, you know, where am I my next paycheck is going to come from because, you know, we are sponsor supported over a long period of time, which is why you hear a lot of the same ads in every episode. I, you know, I will be switching those up, because I could tweak those and make them better. It's all part of this whole process of, you know, creating content. Since 2007 you try to figure out ways to do things a little bit better. If I go back to NASA, I will know of things that I need to do better. Number one, bring a tripod. That's Lesson number one. But then, outside of that, this has really been a pleasure to create. It's really been, I think a culmination of my life's work is to create these episodes, and it's really lit a fire under me. It makes me want to make better and better and better episodes. And so I believe that this is just the start for me and to making content like this and making more of it in the future, and being able to continuously add more people to our team so that I don't have to worry about the video editing, so I don't have to, you know, worry about these, you know, these different things, and I can bring people in who are really good at those particular parts of the job, so I can focus More on the content itself. But this is a really long, a long way of saying thank you for tuning in, thank you for being a part of this, and thank you for, you know, allowing me to be able to share and tell stories like this. I means the world to me. So hope you enjoyed. We will have more NASA slash space episodes on in the future, we're looking at a cadence of probably once a month. Made a lot of really great contacts. And so, with all that said, thank you again. Hopefully you'll go back and listen to the other episodes, share it with your friends, because that also really helps, you know, get this show and grow this show to new. People, and I just think that everybody should know about all the cool things and logistics of space and all of the things that are going on to make those operations happen. So thank you again. Applause.