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Allen and Joel discuss their experience at the ACP OMS event in Nashville, Tennessee. Ameren’s High Prairie Wind Farm shuts down all turbines following three turbine collapses. GE Vernova partners with Amazon Web Services on wind projects. And a larger discussion about the way OEMs attempt to solve problems.
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You are listening to the Uptime Wind Energy Podcast, brought to you by build turbines.com. Learn, train, and be a part of the Clean Energy Revolution. Visit build turbines.com today. Now here’s your hosts, Allen Hall, Joel Saxum, Phil Totaro, and Rosemary Barnes.
Allen Hall: To start off the week, Joel and I have just completed a couple of days that.
ACP OMS in Nashville, Tennessee. And if you don’t know where Nashville is in the center ish of the country, more towards the eastern part than the western part. It’s the same state where it Davey Crockett came from Daniel Boone. Am I right about that, Joel? Sergeant York, Andrew Jackson.
Yeah. This is some old names. Yeah, it’s right next to, actually next to North Carolina. So we’re like I don’t know, an hour’s drive from North Carolina with the area that got hit with hurricane a couple of months ago. We’re not very far from it. But Nashville, the event was pretty well populated.
I was trying to relate it to the OM and S event that happened in San Diego a year ago. It felt like it was a little bit smaller of an event, Joel, and maybe the attendance was a little bit lower.
Joel Saxum: Yeah, the interesting, we were at the Gaylord Opryland Convention Center. It’s absolutely massive. I learned today that it’s the largest like resort convention center without a casino in the entire world.
Like it felt like he walked like a mile through the inside of the thing to get to it. Like the conference center. What I think the issue there was, or what it felt like, is it didn’t feel like it was as well attended as it was last year. A lot of ISPs, so a lot of blade repair companies, a lot of service companies, all floating around, not as many operators, but my thought is we’re used to having this thing in San Diego.
It was 40 degrees and raining today. And in San Diego every year it’s like 75, 80 degrees. Beautiful. Everything is fantastic. People bring their families and stuff like that. So you hear a lot of people, oh yeah, I can’t grab dinner tonight. I got, my, my wife and kids we’re gonna go do this. When you’re in the San Diego event here, not so much.
’cause it’s, there’s live music that’s great that but it, you’re also 20 minutes from downtown. It is a little bit of a different feel. But yeah the show floor. Of course, Allen and you and I took a couple laps around it and Claire, our producer as well. We took a couple laps around to see what was there.
A lot of the same players that we’re used to seeing a lot of the same companies. Nothing super new that stuck out. Nothing groundbreaking, however. A couple cool things, right? We sat down, I think we rec, we recorded a bunch of great material with some of our podcast friends and people new to the podcast at the thing.
You’ll hear those in the coming weeks, of course. But we did get to look at the Earth next platform from Earth Wind. That was really cool. Also the Gulf Wind Technology team was there and they were show showcasing their up tower root bushing repair. That was really cool. Other than that, ah, c nnc onsite, right?
The ability to do precision machining up tower, which is really neat. But other than that, yeah, kinda lackluster for new technology or really cool new stuff. I don’t know what you thought about that, Allen.
Allen Hall: I didn’t see much new there. I motor dock or brought some new stuff in terms of software to analyze wind turbines and that’s always cool.
I love when Howard Pinrose. Brings new technology to the market and he’s so gung-ho about it. And as an electrical engineer, I just find his approach to solving problems. Interesting. Arons has some cool stuff, obviously. They always bring the robots and they have a New Rover internal drone inspection robot that has en enhanced lighting for some of these offshore blades.
And obviously they’re doing a lot of work with GE Renova at the minute. Yeah. But the operator’s part of it was really non-existent. GE Renova had a really small booth. Vestas also had a booth. Joel
Joel Saxum: Vestas had the same so you can see the scale Vestas had the same size booth. We did, yes. Yeah.
It was, I would say a lot of ISPs there. We talked to a ton of blade repair companies a lot of people providing services to the industry, which is normally what’s at this event. But a, it seemed to be lacking in the operator, the asset owners, the actual purchasers of services and products, almost like.
A pendulum swung and all the operators started to figure out that this is really the event to go to. So there was a ton of them here, but there happened to be less operators. I’m I did hear some really good conversations around the booth business getting done, everybody getting prepared for the upcoming repair, blade repair seasons.
Of course. We talked to a couple of ISPs that say this has been their busiest winter that they’ve ever had, which is interesting in the states here that people are starting to kick off a bit earlier in the year to try to get more done. I don’t know if that’s a budget crunch problem or it’s, we’ve just gotten to the point where people are looking for capacity.
If you’re looking for blade repair teams that’s the conversation we kept hearing. How many teams do you have? I’ve got 15. 10 of ’em are spoken for, right? If you want to. Be a part of the other five. You better react soon.
Allen Hall: Yeah. I would say in general though, don’t you think that this spend was less this year for booze and you didn’t see the big flashy booth?
A CP probably had the largest booth this year and the most show type things happening. Of course, they have a couple of speakers that come and all that generally goes on, but you didn’t see a lot at the booze themselves. There were a couple of. Rather interesting parties that happened. We should talk about the town for a minute.
The last time I was in Nashville was probably 15 years ago. So the NFL team was here and the Tennessee Titans were here, and Broadway was always there with the live music in the bars. You could always walk along that, but the number of people that are here now is so much more. It’s crazy. The airport. Is probably the nicest airport in the United States and it competes with Copenhagen’s Airport.
Couldn’t believe it, right? We saw Louis Hamilton’s Formula one car at the conference center. Like you don’t see those things in America. That doesn’t happen. So what the activity in Nashville economic activity is off the charts. It is so much different than I remember it and I. I guess that’s good for Nashville.
People are tending to move to the southeast of the United States at the minute, so my guess is a lot of my fellow compatriots from Massachusetts and New York that are moving down this way based on the license plates that I saw. And that’s good. Obviously you want to go to a city that is vibrant for sort of these trade shows, but I’m not sure early March is the right time to be in Nashville.
April would feel like the right kind of weather. And where are we going next year? Joel. Where? Where’s
Joel Saxum: A-C-P-O-M-S. So A-C-P-O-M-S. This same conference will be in Orlando next year in Orlando course. Very fun. And so I said, when I said that to someone our friend Armando from Aland, he said, Ooh, I’ll bring my wife and kids.
We’ll go to Disneyland and do universal studios and all that. So I think that one could could peak some more interest for some travelers.
Allen Hall: Yeah, it’s a lot closer. If you’re coming from Europe too, you can usually direct flight. To Orlando, which makes life easier. Yeah, that, that’s good. But I still think San Diego is everybody’s number one
Joel Saxum: for sure.
Yeah. Next, so the next show if you’re. Wondering where you might be able to catch Allen, myself or anybody else will be in Phoenix for a CP up there in late May.
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PES Wind offers a diverse range of in-depth articles and expert insights that dive into the most pressing issues facing our energy future. Whether you’re an industry veteran or new to. Wind, PES Wind has the high quality content you need. Don’t miss out. Visit PES wind.com today. So most moon turbines at Ameren’s High Prairie Wind Farm in Missouri remain offline.
And if you remember, they had three turbines collapse last year due to some blade failures. Now according to Ameren’s, director of Renewable operations, only about 15 of the turbines have been reactivated while the company continues to perform inspections to identify which units require blade replacement.
And when I. Saw a blade replacement. I thought, oh, Rosemary, there’s, we need to understand why they are going to be replacing blades, because usually they would try to repair them. Now, Joel and I did a little bit of investigation because it’s been a while since I’ve followed this story, but there’s about what, 160 V one 20 at this site.
163. There you go. 163 V one twenties at this site, and then a handful of V one twelves. And it looks like the, probably the V one twelves are operating right now. It’s the larger quantity of V one twenties. This is not a great look for wind at the moment, especially with the political activity that is happening when you have a wind farm that’s shut off and you don’t have corrective action after all these months.
Something really serious is playing out. What I want to get from the group here is one, what is the likely cause where they wouldn’t be able to turn at least some of the wind turbines on? And second, how do we resolve this quickly? What needs to be done? Do we need us to replace the blades kinda like they’re doing at Vineyard Wind at the moment?
Or is this a deeper issue?
Phil Totaro: Let’s start with why everything’s turned off. That’s Ameren’s decision to be prudent presumably and not some kind of, regulatory requirement by. Some state or county officials although you could run into that kind of a scenario if you have, repeated damage issues which frankly we were all expecting to come out of the lightning strike on vineyard wind this past week, and we’re still awaiting some kind of word on that.
But for them to be losing that kind of revenue. That has to be offset by their perception of the risk that would be associated with having yet another turbine collapse. Potentially if there’s some kind of, serial issue with the blades or something else. And we don’t, unfortunately, we just don’t have enough detail on what actually happened there.
Whether it was lightning strikes that were causing the issues or whether it was a manufacturing defect, we don’t know. But yeah, for them to shut off like most of the turbines in their wind farm that’s a huge financial loss for them. That is a decision they would have to make based on.
Not wanting to undertake the risk of continuing to operate and have a fourth or a fifth or a sixth turbine collapse this year.
Joel Saxum: So right now, then operationally they’ve gotta be, I. Doing inspections, they’ve gotta be putting people in blades, crawlers, external drills. There’s gotta be something that they’re pinpointing on, right?
Is it a structural issue? Is it a lightning issue? Something that they’ve gotta be out investigating? And I would under, I would, this is what I would expect. Either an inspection and or a CMS solution for whatever the problem is. But I would expect to see them cascading back online. Hey, we’ve done inspection on Turbine seven, and it seemed clear.
Let’s turn it on. Turbine eight. Let’s turn it on. It’s cleared, didn’t, yeah. Yeah, but we haven’t seen that yet.
Rosemary Barnes: I’ve got an article here that says that they are bringing them back online. It’s, it is, yeah. An article on k tvo.com. I dunno about the quality of that one. But it’s quoting David Miner’s Aron’s, director of renewable operations, that we had some turbines where the blades came off and the imbalance caused the turbines to fall.
So it sounds like, yeah, it’s a, like a root insert problem or, something related to the attachment based on his language doesn’t sound like the blades were snapping or that they were getting struck by lightning and falling off. And then it also says that they. Have started up wind turbines that they know are unaffected.
And they have about 15 wind turbines across the site running right now, and we’ll add to those. So it’s been months right since it was initially shut down. It looks like they are going pretty slow, but does sound like in their root cause analysis, they have managed to narrow it down to perhaps it’s, like one manufacturing location that is associated with the problem.
And so they’re confident about some other ones or it’s possible that they did do some they’re able to do some kind of testing. They were very cautious at first, and to be honest, it’s quite a slow, a slow process to get them restarted? From my perspective, it could be because it was hard to pinpoint.
It could be because they were getting terrible customer service from their OEM. Like both things are possible.
Joel Saxum: Yeah. I think, I’m thinking in my mind right now the cost implications of it. Like you were saying, Phil, so terrible service from the OEM, depending on if they’re under an FSA or not.
At some stage you might be able to get some insurance coverage for the business interruption, but because you’ve. Basically it takes an incident, right? So there has to be some kind of property damage to trigger an insurance case. You had that. But that was per turbine. And if you’re turning ones off, they technically don’t have any issues with them.
Do they have to cover that? I don’t know. I’m not, I don’t know what their contract looks like.
Rosemary Barnes: And even if they’ve got a full service agreement, they’re not usually uncapped. It’s not like you can just get infinite infinite damages off them. There’s usually a flaw to availability and that they have to pay for.
And then beyond that, there’s actually no incentive for them to do anything for the current, the rest of the, the year of the contract. Sometimes those, yeah, like the comfort that you feel from those kinds of agreements actually is not that comforting when you come to have an issue.
Allen Hall: No, I haven’t thought of it that way.
Phil mentioned it’s all, I’ll continue the discussion here about the lightning strike that did happen or appears to have happened at Vineyard Wind on February 27th and we hit. I just finished our last podcast episode, talking about CMS and where that can be implemented very cost efficiently, which clearly is for lightning strikes.
And I was on the airplane to Nashville when the news reports started coming out, that there had been a lightning strike to the blade that had been broken, which was a blink turbine, a W 38 out there at Vineyard Wind, and that. That broken blade got struck and then it caught fire for some length of time.
At least that’s what the report said. But I was watching livestream from my airplane, the helicopter search basically going to look at all the turbines in vineyard when my guest is looking for additional lightning strike damage or, and or debris. There was a couple of boats out there, also vessels that were looking for debris in the water, and I was slacking everybody.
On the airplane again, we live in the 21st century, so these things happen. I was literally watching a helicopter fly over vineyard wind while I was flying at 35,000 feet. And the thing that ran through my head was, how do they not know where lightning struck on that wind farm? And I think the answer is because they don’t have each of the turbines instrumented with a $250 sensor.
So they probably spent 20 grand in fuel and helicopter time. Check in all the blades with a helicopter, which just didn’t make any sense to me at all. And it just that, I would still had my, I built up about we should be putting CMS systems on for lightning strike. And then that happened it’s like the perfect test gates for putting on simple sensors.
So it’s just been the one year in quote unquote service. Joel, since those tournaments have really
Joel Saxum: been in the water, not even, eh. We know that of course more offshore turbines designed by engineering teams that are sitting in Denmark where they have a or Germany, that have a specific type of lightning and not very much of it, to be honest with you, in the North Sea.
And when they come over to that northeast coast of the US they are gonna get pounded. It’s gonna
Allen Hall: happen. So I know a guy that can hook ge slash vineyard, wind up with how many turbines are out there, 25, 30 turbines that are out there with sensors. For a couple of grand that would fix this problem.
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Visit eLog ping.com and take control of your turbine’s health today. GE Renova and Amazon Web Services have formed a strategic partnership to develop onshore wind projects that will support AWS’s expanding data sensor operations. Now, the collaboration aims to help Amazon secure, reliable, cost-effective and sustainable electricity.
It sounds like Rosemary wrote this press release for all of its growing computing capabilities while addressing. Global energy demands. Now, not very long ago, remember when GE Renova had a big release about the number of gas turbines that they were going to sell. I think it Phil, I think it was like 20 gigawatts per year was the number they were talking about, mostly for data centers.
But it looks like Amazon Web Services has decided to use wind turbines instead of. Gas turbines. That’s pretty good.
Phil Totaro: Yes, and it’s interesting too because some of those gas turbines are gonna be for behind the meter. Um. Data centers and things like that. And they, the point is they continue to expand as data centers continue to expand.
Amazon’s gonna be one of the leaders in that. And the fact that they also want to be able to leverage renewables, it’s not just a PR thing for them. They actually understand that even though renewables may be variable, they can leverage that based on. The way they’ve structured the data center to be able to do a lot of the processing when there’s, wind or solar that they can offtake.
And because of the ba, the natural balance between solar, which obviously happens during the day, and a lot of wind, which in most places in the world is stronger at night than it is during the day you get enough of a base load out of renewables that you can actually run. A data center almost entirely off renewables and minimize the amount of gas that you would necessarily have to use.
Good on them for being proactive in in finding ways to, to leverage this.
Allen Hall: So we have the discussion that we’re dealing with right now, Joel operators taking what the OEM delivers and just swallowing it, whole hog and saying whatever’s on there, what are the, whatever the OEM done has done is good enough and we’re gonna fly it without doing their homework first.
That happened to us today, man. Is that frustrating?
Joel Saxum: It’s such a frustrating thing ’cause we talked about this at the Australia o and m event to honestly, it, it was a comment made up on stage is it’s really frustrating when Allen and I are dealing with engineers left and right. Performance people, engineers, asset managers in the field.
I’m the technician, site supervisors, the people that are actually dealing with the technology. In many organizations, they either aren’t asked for their feedback, aren’t allowed to give it, or aren’t even invited to the table with the development side of the corporation that is talking with the OEMs and buying the kit, right?
So it’d be like if I’m driving a Ford truck trying to pull a trailer every day, but my trailer hitch sucks and I know it, and it bothers me every day in the field, and the person buying the trucks doesn’t ask me or I’m not allowed to talk to them, and then they buy me another truck and send me that one again.
The trailer, it doesn’t work again. That’s. Not smart. And that’s what’s happening. We see that in our wind industry is the feedback from the engineers. And after you’ve been dealing with this asset for 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, some of these things are the same six, 7-year-old turbines that they’re buying again.
Not asking the OEM or putting in the RFP, Hey, can you fix this? Can you upgrade this? This is a big problem for us. What can you do for us here? That conversation just seems to be lagging so bad in the wind industry that there’s like this, the circular feedback mechanism isn’t there.
Allen Hall: The OEMs deliver blades in particular and turbines in a larger scale to the operators, and the operators don’t even know what they’re getting when they arrive on site.
That is wrong. I don’t know how to even frame that into a logical discussion that makes sense to me. If I’m buying turbines and the OEM just says plunk, here it is. Oh yeah, we did X, Y, Z to these things which you have no knowledge of. The engineers are just finding out, and when they get on site, it’s a completely different model.
And now you gotta go unwind. I’ll spool up engineering, figure out what’s going on, realize, do I have a problem here or not do what do I need to plan for? That was different from the last set, last time they delivered blades to me or turbines to me. That can’t happen. It can’t happen. Someone’s gonna push back and say, we’re not playing this game anymore.
This is over.
Phil Totaro: Yeah. There’s two things with this as well. One is the procurement people aren’t. Getting that feedback either because people involved in procurement are just disconnected and it’s ultimately their responsibility to, if you’re spending whatever, seven, $8 million per turbine hey, why don’t we make sure that we’re getting a high quality product here?
So that, that’s part of it. And that’s where I really see the failure and the fall down is the procurement people are the ones that need that type of feedback and information. Yeah. The developers. Yeah. But if the developer is an entirely separate organization and you’re buying a project, you’re typically, especially if you’re a financially focused investor, you’re buying a project and you’re expecting either the OEM or whoever is the operator to just.
Manage the thing for you. You’re buying that as a, as, it’s almost like a piece of art on a wall or something. You’re buying it as an investment. You’re not necessarily gonna be involved in the day-to-day upkeep, which basically means that there, there’s already that level of separation between the people who build projects specifically for the purpose of.
Selling them off to somebody else and they don’t have a vested interest in, as long as they can see a return on that transaction, they don’t have to worry about whether or not the OEM is fulfilling their obligations under a full wrap service contract. It’s not their problem anymore.
Joel Saxum: One of the things we have here on this fantastic panel is someone who’s lived this life and has been a part of this value chain, Rosemary. So you were, at a blade company responsible for a specific component, a specific system within the blades. Did you ever get like an email that says, Hey, this wind farm at here has this issue.
Are we gonna fix this on the next model? Or how are we gonna work within this? Or did you ever see that feedback or what was that feedback mechanism for you when you were at lm?
Rosemary Barnes: Yes I did. I don’t know if I I. Had the most typical thing ’cause so I was leading the blade heating, the blade deicing team, and it’s quite a small niche product that isn’t widely available, but for the, widely used or needed, but for the.
The sites that need it, they like desperately need it. I was the engineer leading that team and my electrical engineer as well. We both were qualified to climb towers and we would go onto site and make sure that they were being installed properly and then we’d go and look at them after a little while to see that they were doing what we expected them to do.
And then when there were problems, one of us would probably go out there too. And so it was actually quite a high level. I will say I was the first engineer at LM that was qualified to climb towers, to actually go inside and look inside the blades. And it was quite a fight at first to make them realize that I couldn’t just design something and work on it in the factory.
Joel Saxum: Rosemary, let me ask you this question then. You’re talking about a niche problem that operators have some issues with. Allen and I are talking about the largest problem, and it has been noted by insurance OEM operators, which is lightning, and we’re seeing garbage systems come out of of the OEMs that the just continuing to have lightning problems, but nobody’s doing, nobody’s fixed seems to be fixing them.
Like we’ve talked to some people in the background at some different places and they’re like, is lightning that bad of an issue? I’m like. Are you that disconnected from the field that you don’t know this, like these numbers are? Staggering.
Rosemary Barnes: That’s something I’ve got some experience on. My last deicing system that I I led before I left was a conductive system, so it was carbon fiber and we had resisted doing that system the whole time because of its effect on lightning, but we really couldn’t a, avoid it in the end.
It is just far superior in terms of ice melting performance. But I will say that project was 75% a lightning protection project and 25% a, a blade heating project. Certainly the Lightning team is incredibly or were, it’s been five years since I was there, so I can’t say what they’re like now, but.
We’re very passionate about making sure that lightning systems were improved. Everybody was aware that there is a huge gulf between being able to design a system that can pass certification very easy to do, versus a system that is gonna survive in the wild much harder. So whilst I agree that we have not come up with.
Satisfactory Lightning protection systems. I wouldn’t say no one’s doing anything about it. It’s it’s a hard it’s an incredibly hard problem that people are working on and not yet succeeding at, is what I would say.
Allen Hall: I will grant you that, but then here’s a big but here. If you’re gonna put something on a wind turbine, it better live there for 20 years and you better have data to show.
It’s gonna live there for 20 years. This sort of Hey, let’s just temporarily fix this so I get out of the warranty period, and then the operator has to deal with the remnants of the system for the next 18 years or eight years in the us. That is not good customer support and service. It just isn’t.
Rosemary Barnes: No, that’s not one, that’s not the goal.
And two, if it’s a serial issue, then they don’t, it’s not a gal jail free card, like the OEM is still gonna be on the hook for it if it’s a serial issue. What I will say is that you don’t know how it’s gonna perform after 20 years until you’ve got, thousands of turbines out there that have been out there for a number of years.
Testing one prototype turbine, like doing a bunch of simulations, tests in the Lightning Lab, doing one prototype turbine that is not. Remotely close enough to telling you if you are gonna have problems on a whole, in all these different lightning environments with a little bit of damage all of those sorts of things.
Yeah, and I think that the. Lightning protection problem was much easier 10 years ago, right? The a bit shorter. All glass blades were protected satisfactorily. I, I believe right on in, in general. And then the designs changed. Lightning problem got harder. They knew that and knew that they had to make new lightning protection systems, and they did.
And, did plenty of simulations and the required testing and prototypes, which yeah, like everybody knows that doesn’t do much. And then they got out in the field and they see failures, and now they have to fix ’em. It takes there’s a lag. Exacerbated by the fact that it was just like such a fast push from, like 2015 onwards.
It’s just been like accelerated pace of technology development.
Allen Hall: I just wanna interject here because I think, Rosemary, you touched on a pain point with me. When OEMs run into trouble that they’ve experienced problems in the field and they feel like they don’t have the expertise in-house, and lightning is one of those areas where that happens quite frequently, where do they go?
Generally speaking, they run to academia. People who have never been around a wind turbine in service, have not had that experience, have not done any sort of lightning protection in another field that’s complicated like aerospace. And what they end up doing is they get the most PhD D qualified, but real world novice person to come in and provide him guidance, which is the opposite.
And this is my struggle with you too, Rosemary. He is here’s Rosemary this. Blade expert knows a ton, has real world experience, has actually climbed a turbine or two. And when the rubber hits the road and someone runs into trouble, where do they go? They go running back to the academia to give them the, to give them the answer instead of talking to the people who are out on the front lines, who could give them better solutions, faster solutions, more cost effective solutions today.
And that is a corporate environment, which is making huge mistakes. And I would rather see wind turbines be successful, particularly in today’s environment, political environment in particular, where we have to be better. And I’ve met so many people at in Nashville this week that want things to be better, that have the expertise and could fix the problems, and could make the industry much more vibrant than it is.
They’re left on the sidelines. God knows why. It is just a real struggle with me, and I think everybody on this podcast that we’ve had on kind of fits into that mold. They really do.
Phil Totaro: And let me just add that this is the conversation we’re having about blades and lightning and stuff right now is the same conversation that was actually being had about.
18 or so years ago about gear boxes and it’s a squeaky wheel kind of issue. So the same thing that Joel said before about the pain points that everybody has, and the same thing that a said before about, not leveraging the right people that was the same. They didn’t understand what white etching cracks were, back then they didn’t understand, all these things because they didn’t have the right kind of people.
Addressing the issue
Allen Hall: and they ran academia and they slowed it down.
Phil Totaro: Yeah. But we got to a point where gearbox are closer to a 20 year design life than they ever have been before. Th that had to have a critical mass of complaints before it got fully addressed, and that’s where we are with blades.
It feels like in the industry at this point we’re, there’s a lot of people that are starting to get a lot more vocal about the pain points they’ve got and the issues that they’re having, but it’s gonna be another three to five years before we really fix a lot of these issues. I. So we’ve just gotta keep speaking up about it, as Rosemary has pointed out, we’re gonna put a woman
Allen Hall: on Mars
Phil Totaro: before
Allen Hall: we picks some of these plate issues, and that’s insane.
