Advisory Opinions - Our Place in the Stars

Episode Date: August 10, 2020

How realistic is the SpaceX dream to get to Mars? What does the latest scientific literature have to say about supernovae? Is there intelligent life in the universe? Today, Sarah and David are joined by Atlantic staff writer Marina Koren for a deep dive into all things space. Hear everything there is to know about the space race between Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, colliding black holes, and other crazy interstellar phenomena. But today’s episode would be incomplete without its requisite dose of legal nerdery. Tune in to hear David and Sarah break down the legality of Trump’s latest executive actions and offer some insights on the D.C. circuit’s decision regarding the House Judiciary Committee and former White House counsel Don McGahn. Show Notes: -The D.C. Circuit McGahn case and the president’s executive actions this weekend: student loan payment relief memorandum, executive order on evictions, payroll tax deferral memorandum, unemployment insurance memorandum. -Advisory Opinions episode with Josh Blackman, associate professor of law at the South Texas College of Law Houston. -“Black Holes Really Know How to Savor Their Meals” by Marina Koren, and her author page at The Atlantic. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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I was born ready. Welcome to the Advisory Opinions Podcast. This is David French with Sarah Isker, And we have a really good podcast for you today. It's Monday in August. Exactly. So that means we're going to really nerd out on a fun subject. And that fun subject is space. We're going to have a guest, Marina Koren, who is on the space beat at the Atlantic. So that's a cool beat, Sarah. I'm kind of envious of the space beat. Her Twitter beat is pretty fun too. She's the only person who gets to look at something

and be like, that looks like Jupiter. Oh, okay. That's awesome. Exactly. So we're going to talk space. We're going to talk about the new space race of Elon Musk versus Jeff Bezos. And we're going to talk space. We're going to talk about the new space race of Elon Musk versus Jeff Bezos. And we're going to talk about crazy interstellar phenomenon.

But before that, we've got a boring legal subject and an interesting legal subject to dive into. What do you want to start with, David? Boring or interesting? You know, you kind of want to build to a crescendo. So let's start small. Okay, marshmallow test. You do the thing you don of want to build to a crescendo. So let's start small. Okay, marshmallow test. You do the thing you don't want to do first. Okay.

Yeah. So let's start with the boring, boring McGahn-DC circuit decision. That wasn't that boring? No, no. I reject. You reject? Okay, well, convince me that I'm wrong. Here's the summary.

Okay, well, convince me that I'm wrong. Here's the summary. It looks like the House of Representatives has standing to try to enforce its subpoena. Okay, that does sound boring. Yes. Yeah. It has standing, and it's now been sent back for more litigation.

Spice that up, Sarah. Okay. Okay. You really did sell that in the most boring way. Um, and I look, I agree that because they've sent it back down, this isn't going to happen before the election. And so it's pretty, you know, if Trump loses, for instance, it's, they're probably don't even care after the election. If he doesn't lose, this thing could still drag on quite a while. With some exceptions, I think this is likely to go up to the Supreme Court because it is kind of the next follow-on to Mazars of whether there's political question

involved here. And that's where the interesting part starts, right? So this is a question of whether the House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, they sent a subpoena to Don McGahn, who was no longer White House counsel at that point. That's pretty important. And Don McGahn was just like, nope. And the executive branch said that he would not honor the subpoena. They were a certain executive privilege. So this went to the three-jud on the DC circuit who said that it was a political question. And then the en banc court took it. Nine of the judges heard it and it was seven to that. It was not a political question. And that in fact, the courts would

help Congress enforce their subpoena against the executive branch. But David, if this is not a political question, what is a political question, which is what Judge Griffith, I thought in a Alito-esque spicy, spicy dissent, did so nicely. And I will read a section if you don't mind. Please. And for what? Who benefits from today's decision? Not Congress. The majority's ruling will supplant negotiation with litigation, making it harder for Congress to secure the information it needs. And the committee likely won't even get what it wants in this case because the majority declines to decide whether the, you know, all the other stuff. the federal courts won't benefit either.

The majority's decision will compel us to referee an interminable series of interbranch disputes, politicizing the judiciary by repeatedly forcing us to take sides between the branches. Most importantly, the decision does grave harm to the constitution system of separated powers, which constrains federal courts to the narrow task of resolving concrete cases and controversies so that elected representatives call the political shots. I cannot join the court's expedition into an area where we do not belong and can do no good, David. Okay, well, you made it. The dramatic reading is what really put that over the top. So I'm not actually yawning as we discuss this as a result of that dramatic reading.

But I mean, it's just feels like basically what's happening with a lot of these cases is that the courts are sort of swatting aside the maximalist executive branch argument that is putting, tries to put them outside the reach of, of, of process but then not really giving the executive the legislative branch nor could it really in this procedural posture everything that it wants so it's swatting aside sort of the we're the executive

branch yeah yeah yeah we're immune to you um and but then sending everything back for further proceedings that may well be entirely mooted out by the election. May, may or may not, may be mooted out by the election. And what we're going to be left with is sort of a body of law that says, I think will actually facilitate the political negotiation process by- What?

Yes, by removing from the executive branch all these maximalist arguments on the front end. Wrong. You're wrong. Oh my goodness. I'm so right. You're wrong for a few reasons. One, because I think Griffith says this exactly right.

Now, all of these disputes where it used to be, you know, sort of an arm wrestle, work it out. You know, Congress can withhold funding. Congress can impeach him. The executive can make their lives more difficult with the bully pulpit. Now it's just all going to get tied up in litigation that's going to last at least a presidential term. the different, depending on the posture of the subpoena, the only way around the litigation was to essentially grant to the executive the immunity that it sought. And I don't, that strips the power of negotiation in large part from Congress, unless it wants to go nuclear with impeachment, go nuclear by defunding entire departments. This is your entire thing about Congress needing to

reassert itself as an actual branch of the government and legislating. Yes, they could withhold funding from things very easily. They don't need to impeach him. But they're unwilling. They're dysfunctional enough that they're unable to hold the executive branch accountable and actually withhold funding and use the power of the purse. And that's the only reason why the courts refusing to act would be a win for the executive. But in the meantime, the courts inserting themselves, long run, this is bad facts make bad law and it's a disaster. Boom. Man, I feel like we're reenacting our castle doctrine debate over a much less interesting subject. I'll just have you know that my father said I was right. Oh, your dad ruled in your favor. I shall retreat to my corner.

I mean, if my own father won't side with me, who will? Well, we don't want to spend too much time on this. The bottom line is the maximalist reading by the executive branch was batted away. However, we're a long way from McGahn testifying before Congress, if ever. That's fair enough. Yeah, and I think this is chapter two of the financial cases that were at the Supreme Court. And so I do think that the Supreme Court kind of put themselves in a position to need to take a case, either this case or a case like it. And Mazars is cited throughout the dissent,

the majority. I mean, it's all over the place. So more to come on this. Well, now let's move to the thing that's much more interesting. And this is. I think there's less here than meets the eye. Yes. So there's four executive orders. Well, uh-uh-uh. Well, three memoranda, one order. I mean, I have my Library of Congress, the difference between executive orders, proclamations, and executive memoranda up right now.

So do not mess this up. I misspoke. Four executive actions, three in the form of memoranda, and one in the form of an executive order. And these were, this comes from President Trump, and these were designed to, I guess in the spirit of if Congress will not act, I shall. I guess in the spirit of if Congress will not act, I shall. But he didn't really act all that much. I have a more and less generous reasoning behind it. Okay, let's hear it. The more generous reasoning is that this was actually to goad Congress into legislating.

Right. And the less generous reading is it was to go Joe Biden into losing the election. I there's a portion of it where I feel like you that that that reading of it seems pretty plausible. Shall we walk through them one by one? Yes. But quickly, can I give you the difference between proclamations, orders, and memos? Yes, please.

Okay, the precedential hierarchy, like in law speak, is first proclamations, which is surprising. You wouldn't think that. Then executive orders, then presidential memoranda, and then presidential notices, and then presidential determinations,

which we're not going to talk about. But the real difference between an order and a memoranda is that orders are required to be printed in the federal register and are not required to cite legal authority, and you don't have to have a budget impact statement. That's about it. Interesting.

Those are the main differences. So when we go through these, it's sort of odd that one of them is an executive order, actually. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. All right. Go for it. All right.

So the executive order was essentially a direction that various federal agencies should look into ways to help people facing evictions. So this was an order that was intended to – so Americans are facing eviction now that some of the protections that were put in place in coronavirus, previous coronavirus relief bills are beginning to expire. So this order doesn't do much at all. It basically says, hey, government under my control, hello, executive branch, look into ways to help people who are facing evictions. Right. You can do something about it or not do something about it as long as you've looked into it. Exactly. So that one didn't do all that much. The second thing is a memorandum, and it's about student loan relief, and it extends deferral of student loan obligations. Now, once again, the coronavirus relief had codified this deferral.

And what this one does is it basically says, we're going to continue it through the end of the year, even if Congress doesn't codify a new extension. Seems to me that this is the one that's probably most clearly within his authority. Yep. And I have not seen much of an interesting or compelling legal

collateral attack on this. I mean, who's really going to bring that lawsuit? Right. Make, make the kids pay. Yeah. So, yeah.

So now, those two are, one is kind of a nothing burger. The other one isn't sort of a, it's material to the people it benefits, but it's not really material to the economy and i think could have happened under any number of presidents exactly exactly now we're getting to the the the next the next two are more interesting and controversial and potentially consequential. So the next is a memorandum that was trying to get at least some of the

insurance in unemployment insurance gap or the unemployment insurance, additional unemployment insurance money into people's hands in spite of the fact that, what was it? The additional 600 per month was set to, is set to expire or has already expired. And this was a way where the president was trying by memoranda to get an extra $400 a month into individuals' pockets. The catch here is that he was using a law called the Stafford Act that requires states to also spend money. So, and also is dipping into a pot of money that isn't that large. So, if you're going to get the

extra $400 to people, the states are going to have to pony up a hundred of that 400 while the federal, the federal government covers 300. This might be way too heavy a lift for a lot of states because they are facing their own fiscal crisis. So asking, this is something that could be something or it could be nothing because the states may not pony up their part of it. And also it could be not much at all because there's not a huge pile of money

that they can draw on to pay this money. Yeah, so you definitely spotted a couple of the problems, although they can use money from the CARES Act. The states can use money that they were given through the CARES Act to pay their 25%. So if you haven't already spent all your CARES money as a state, you could put it toward this, in which case the federal government is paying 100%. It's just money that was sent to you first, if that makes sense. Right. Yeah. And then, of course, there's some legal problems potentially with it. There's an argument in the weeds that we don't need to super dive into statutorily of whether he could do this in the first place. But this kind of comes back to the same argument, David. Who's going to bring that lawsuit?

Right. And, you know, I thought Josh Blackman, who we had on the pod, I don't know, was it a year ago? Was it a couple weeks ago? Whatever. He raised some good points that what you end up with, he's dubbed this the regent strategy,

that you give a benefit of under-enforcement in the law, then you hope the Supreme Court allows that benefit to go into effect when there is a lawsuit brought, then people rely on the benefit. Fourth, now you have a reliance interest, which under law is like a thing that it's, you have a heightened problem of taking it away. Yeah, that's DACA.

And so that's Regents, which is the, if you're correctly naming the DACA case, which I never have done. No, no. Nobody calls it Regents except Josh Blackman. And I'm sure any number of you who are about to email me. So that's some of the theory behind this. The memoranda also sunsets on this year. So Trump gets to say, if you reelect me, I will re-up this. If you reelect Joe Biden, what's he going to do?

Yeah, and this is something that the trick here is this memorandum doesn't actually do anything unless the states also do something true so you've got to have the states some of them would have to act through their legislators some of them apparently can act directly through their governors depends on the law of the state. So this is not something that immediately, unlike the deferral of student loans, this is not something that has immediate effect. And that also brings us to number four. The messiest. Oh man, this is a mess.

Super messy. So this one, the president is deferring payroll tax payments for people who make less than $8,000 a month. That payroll tax, that's your FICA, that's your Medicare, Medicaid tax, for people who make less than $8,000 a month from September 1 through December 31. Now, if nothing else is done, those payroll taxes that are being deferred would have to be paid. They'll have to be paid. So this is not a payroll tax cut.

It's a payroll tax suspension or payroll tax deferment. And what this means is that, well, wait a minute. Nobody knows what this means. It's provocative. It gets the people going. It's a mess because... I have no idea. My best guess is that you will not see a difference in your paycheck if you're somebody

who makes less than $8,000 a month and you're listening to this podcast because the payroll services are not going to want to deal with the possibility of having to pay this money by the end of the year when they've not withheld it, when they've already given it to you. Even if they've wanted to, you're talking about, what is it now, four months, five months? So you're going to change your entire payroll computer system for five months and then have to change it back. Just logistically, the largest business is going to have trouble doing this because they do so many of them. And then small businesses are going to

have trouble doing it too, because they're doing it, you know, quasi by hand. Um, very strange. Also, this is another example of my, uh, you know, this is a campaign strategy because Trump has said that if he's reelected, maybe he will forgive the deferred tax payments entirely. They basically forgive the loan. And then is Joe Biden going to do that? Or is everyone making under $100,000 basically going to feel a huge amount of pain come Joe Biden's presidency when now they all owe their deferred payroll tax. Well, and Trump apparently wants a payroll tax cut in general, not just a four-month forgiveness. He wants a payroll tax cut in general. So this is going to be a hot button either way. So already the Democrats are saying, hey, he's defunding

Social Security and Medicare, which strictly speaking, that's what these payroll taxes are designed to fund. So they're going to argue he's defunding Social Security and Medicare, which strictly speaking, that's what these payroll taxes are designed to fund. So they're going to argue he's defunding Social Security and Medicare. Trump is going to be arguing that the Democrats are going to want to hit you with a big financial wallop at the beginning of the year. The reality is, I would say if I was advising a corporation, I would say keep taking out the withholding. For sure. Not even a close call, actually. It would be a very short meeting if I were CEO. Yeah. I mean, could you imagine going to be, let's say you had $400 a month taken out in payroll taxes and you get that $400 and then four months from now, your first paycheck, you get a $2,000 withholding, which would just be devastating to a lot of people financially.

So, yeah, this thing was, it seemed to me of all of the four, the least well thought out, the most confusing, and well, you know, certainly the most most controversial even if it's not the most consequential oh i think it was politically well thought out well i bet you know again when you've got one side saying he's defunding he's trying to defund social security and medicare um and the other side saying hey they're gonna you know the then the democrats are gonna hit you with a big tax bill and I won't. I don't know. I don't know how that works out. So, yeah, this last one's a mess.

It's a mess. So let's go to space. Yes, let's do. Let's go to space and get away from all of this nightmare. But you know what? Controversy will even trail us into space, Sarah away from all of this nightmare. But you know what? Controversy will even trail us into space, Sarah, as we shall soon see. Let's take a moment and thank our sponsor, CarShield. Computer systems in cars are the new normal, from electronically controlled transmissions

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She is covering the space beat for The Atlantic. I am an avid reader, as listeners know and readers know from my newsletter. I have been following sort of the renaissance of the American space program through SpaceX and Elon Musk. Marina has been writing about that. She's also been writing about crazy interstellar phenomenon, including, I think, colliding

black holes and all kinds of exciting stuff like that. So for our deep dive, August, into interesting topics today, we're talking space. So Marina, welcome to a legal podcast to talk about space. Thanks so much for having me. a legal podcast to talk about space. Thanks so much for having me. Okay, before we dive into the cool space stuff, you've got to be, the number of people who,

in national publications, who have the space beat has got to be a pretty small number of people. I mean, how does a person land in the space beat? Right, there definitely aren't a lot of us. And that means that we all know each other, which can be both fun at times and then also pretty terrifying when we get competitive. But I don't have a science background. I was an English major and a psychology major. And I spent most of my four years in college at the school newspaper. My university didn't have a major, so I did a little minor, but I was just at the paper day in and day out. And I knew that I always wanted to be a journalist. And so when I graduated college,

I just took journalism job after journalism job, covered politics for a couple of years, then breaking news in Washington and beyond, very doom and gloom kind of stuff, you know, shootings, terrorist attacks, that kind of thing. And then that was at the Atlantic. I was on our news team at the Atlantic for my first couple of years there. And there was an opening on the science desk one day. You know, they already had someone covering climate change, they had someone covering biological sciences, and they needed someone to cover the rest of it, the universe. So I just jumped at that. Fantastic. Because my dad's a huge space fan, so I get that love from him. Well, at the right time too, because all of a sudden the American space program,

manned space program, has had a renaissance. That's definitely true. And I would cut in there just to say that NASA prefers that we refer to it as crude or human spaceflight. They don't say manned anymore, not since around 2006 officially. But yeah, I mean, when I got on the beat a couple of years ago, it was a really exciting time. And we saw a culmination of that exciting time a week ago when two NASA astronauts came home in a SpaceX capsule and landed off the coast of Florida. It was wild to see. I have to ask, a lot of people don't know that journalists usually don't write their own headlines, but I have to ask you if you write your own headlines because sometimes they are fantastic. And the one in particular,

black holes really know how to savor their meals. Just like brought me joy. Okay. So I do have to take credit for that one. I did write that one. I knew it. I knew it. I felt something that like this, this had to just be yours. Um, that's so neat. Okay. But speaking of the man, crude space flight that just landed, you wrote a great story about the couples, the astronaut couples and how the role of women has really changed from the astronaut wife at home, looking perfect with her children surrounding her as she watches her husband go off into space to now she's an astronaut herself in at least these two cases. That's right. Yeah. So the two NASA astronauts that went up to the international space station this year, um, Bob and Doug, Bob Behnken and Doug Hurley, NASA refers to them as the space dads

because they both have two young sons. Um, they are both married to astronauts. And they all joined NASA around the same time in the year 2000, met, fell in love, had families, went to space a couple of times. And like you said, it's so different from the mental picture that a lot of us have of astronaut wives from the 1950s and 60s, smiling with their hair perfectly curled and pastel dresses on the cover of Life magazine. It's really different now. And now one of the astronauts' wives, she's going to be flying on SpaceX next year. She's going to get her own turn to go. I mean, what a great metaphor for where women have come in general in our economy and society. I mean, I think it's hard with two lawyers in this house, but I can't imagine if Scott,

instead of taking a deposition, was in, you know, Interstellar. It definitely probably requires a bit more in terms of work-life balance than the rest of us have to deal with, right? Well, mommy's in space for six months. We're going to have to find something to do. Okay, so let's dive into some of the,

what's coming in the future. So in sort of the podcast equivalent of the green room, we were talking about how we might see space flight and it differently than, different kinds of flights than we've seen in the past. For example, wealthy individuals might hitch a ride on the SpaceX, it's called the Crew Dragon, is that correct? Is that something that we might actually be seeing in the relatively near future as sort of a side effect, I guess,

of the privatization of spaceflight? Right. I mean, I think I've written this in my last five stories that we're entering a new era in American space flight, but I really mean it. It really is true. Because, you know, even a decade ago, it would have seemed impossible that a private space company was going to do the job that NASA did for so many years, the job of just taking astronauts to space and bringing them home. You know, in a lot of ways you think, okay, NASA is the agency that put men on the moon. How is it that it can't do this very quote unquote simple thing? But this is the way things are going to be done moving forward. You know, NASA is going to, and has funded this effort for SpaceX to develop this transportation system

and funded Boeing, another company, to build the same transportation system, although they're having a couple more issues than SpaceX is. So moving forward, NASA is going to be a customer. It's not going to be in-house. They are going to pay SpaceX to send their astronauts to space. And that means that you, if you are wealthy enough, can pay SpaceX to send you to space. I mean, it doesn't have to be NASA riding in the Crew Dragon. Right. Now, help me as to how this would work

because it seems to me that the Crew Dragon would still be using a lot of NASA assets, maybe tracking systems, launch control, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Or does SpaceX have all of that replicated? Or would it be paying NASA for NASA to support its Tom Cruise, I mean, for NASA to support SpaceX's Tom Cruise mission?

Right. Well, so this commercial crew dragon wouldn't exist without NASA. I think that's a pretty fair statement. You know, the reason that this mission came to be is because NASA invested, you know, gave SpaceX a billion dollar contract. So in a lot of ways, SpaceX couldn't have done this without NASA. But in terms of paying NASA for services, I mean, SpaceX rents the launch pad out in Cape Canaveral, has a lease on it, which is kind of wild to think of a private space company leasing out the same launch pad that saw the launch of the Apollo missions. But that's where we're at right

now. Um, so I mean, SpaceX it's, it's in control, you know, NASA is watching over their shoulders for a lot of things from the launch pad, from the rocket capsule spacesuits, you know, NASA's just kind of standing back and being like, go, bye, go forth. Oh, that's fascinating. This is so cool. Uh, so would you want to go to Mars? I don't think so. I think it's sacrilegious of me to say that as a space reporter. You ask most space reporters, do you want to go to space? They're like, heck yeah, put me on a rocket right now. But I'm of the mind that I have a really great atmosphere right here on Earth. I mean, happy and healthy and safe.

I think it would be really fun to do a suborbital flight, the kind that Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin Company is working on. You know, quick 10 minutes up and down. You've seen the beautiful curvature of the Earth against the darkness of space. Maybe you've thrown up, but you've come back. It's been a great time. To Mars, that's going to be unlike any journey that human beings have ever undertaken. And I think it will be really hard.

I think it would also be really hard for me to leave my cat behind. I know. I see Ace in the background there, and Ace would miss you. I think it will be really hard. I think it would also be really hard for me to leave my cat behind. I know. I see Ace in the background there and Ace would miss you. I think he wouldn't. I don't think he'd want to go to Mars. No. So how realistic is the SpaceX Mars dream? I mean, I guess, you know, on given unlimited time horizons, Mars is realistic, but within a reasonable time horizon, how realistic is this Mars dream that Elon Musk has? I mean, are you seeing concrete

advancements towards it? Right. I mean, that is such a hard question because I think anything I predict right now, I'm afraid I'm going to be completely wrong in five years, 10 years. Because for example, no one thought that SpaceX could become what it has. People didn't think that you could launch a booster and then in midair, turn it around, reverse course, and then land it upright on the ground to be reused again. I mean, even watching that now, it gives you chills to watch boosters come back

and land on a barge in the middle of the ocean. It's amazing. So neat. And also, by the way, such a great lesson for kids. I love the compilation video that shows all the times that it crashed because I think it really does show you like you have to fail so, so much to succeed in something that is so outrageous in its idea. And it's a great thing to then succeed after failing and failing and failing and failing

and it crashing big and crashing small and missing by a little and missing by a lot. And so now when you watch it, you're like, oh my God, to think about what went into that moment. Right, exactly. And now SpaceX has done it so many times and so well that it feels almost routine. And that I think seemed impossible to a lot of people just a decade ago. In terms of Mars, I think that SpaceX has a better shot of getting there and getting there sooner than if it were an in-house NASA effort. Because SpaceX doesn't need to rely on budgets and political will. It can do its own thing. And you need those two things definitely to get NASA to Mars. Now, so I have a question about sort of the space race going forward, because it seems like, you know, you have at least some degree of rivalry between Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk here. And, you know, the space race of the 1960s was Soviet Union versus the United States of America.

Soviet Union versus the United States of America, is the space race of the 2020s going to be Musk versus Bezos? Or do they have such a sort of a different business model or different plan and approach that they're going to be more complementary than competitive? Right. I would say right now it's a healthy competition. I'm not sure that I would call it a race at the moment, but they definitely have interests that overlap. I mean, right now, Blue Origin is wanting to do these more suborbital space tourism-y flights, but it does, at the end of the day, want to build rockets. It wants to put a lander on the moon, and Blue Origin is working with NASA on NASA's moon plans. SpaceX is working on those moon plans as well. But there have been a couple of moments where you're like, oh, like when you notice that one company is winning out a little bit.

One of those moments actually happened just last week on Friday, big news dump by the Air Force. They announced the two companies that they would be working with for the next five years as their launch providers. The Air Force uses SpaceX, it uses the United Launch Alliance to launch their satellites, and it announced that it's going to continue working with these companies, which meant that it wasn't going to work with Blue Origin. So that was a loss for Blue. And that's the kind of thing, if you do think about these two companies in competition, SpaceX has this Air Force contract, Blue Origin doesn't. That certainly says something. David, I want to leave plenty of time to talk about the other science-y parts of space,

but I don't want to leave crude spaceflight too soon. Well, so one other question. So the Starship that you've seen, the SpaceX Starship that you've seen some brief tests as it hops from one place to another, what exactly is that going to be? Is that designed to be a moon vehicle or is that the building blocks of the Mars mission? What is the Starship as opposed to the Crew Dragon? as opposed to the Crew Dragon. Right. Well, Starship at this particular moment just looks like an oversized lipstick, I think. It's just a metal cylinder. We were paying attention to space news last week. You saw it, like you said, hop.

It flew 500 feet into the air. So Starship is Elon Musk's dream to go to Mars. But he has said that it could go to the moon. It could even do these long haul trips from one continent on this planet to another. But yeah, it's mostly a Mars rocket, Mars spaceship. And last year, Elon Musk said that he could see people flying into orbit on this thing in 2020. I don't think that's going to happen. There's a joke in the industry, EST, Elon Standard Time. He's usually a little too ambitious. Everyone in the space industry is way too ambitious about deadlines. But Starship is his dream to get to Mars to make the human species, as he says, a lot interplanetary.

All right. So are we going to bounce out of the solar system now, Sarah? I just have to ask, since Marina has Ace, her cat, in the background, my two cats, listeners have heard from many a time, you did have a story earlier this year about cats, actually. You got to write about cats in the NASA space, you know, beat that you have. I did. So there was a NASA astrophysicist who tweeted that during one of their science Zoom meetings, the team was talking about a new concern that had arisen only during

quarantine conditions, cats walking on keyboards and potentially messing with spacecraft commands. And I saw that tweet and I said, yes, this is my next story. And it was actually surprisingly really hard to get anything out of NASA for that story because I think they were concerned. They didn't want to give the impression to the public, to their, you know, to the taxpayer that a cat stepping on the wrong key could derail a billion dollar space mission. But tell us, can a cat stepping on a key derail a billion dollar space mission. But tell us, can a cat stepping on a key derail a billion dollar space mission? No, no. Unfortunately, fortunately, no. I talked to people at NASA.

I talked to people at the European Space Agency. They have all kinds of controls and checks in place, you know, because humans can make typos just as easily as cats. So they have lots of procedures and systems in place to protect the spacecraft from having any problems. My favorite line was, even if a cat did manage to break into one of these rooms, it's unlikely that it could cause much damage. Quote, some of those commands require a mouse, the computer kind. Perfectly executed as a piece of science journalism. They let me have fun with that one, for sure.

So in the last, just, you know, we won't make it since you've been doing this, but just in the last several months, what are some of the wilder or, because you've written about a lot of things that have caught my eye, everything from black holes colliding to mysterious rhythms from other galaxies. That was my favorite. Yeah. So what are the things that have been most fascinating to you as you've sort of taken your eyes off the American space program and international space programs and you've looked into the heavens? What are some of the, and you've looked into the heavens. What are some of the things that you're,

you've been most fascinated by? I definitely enjoyed writing about the black hole. That is a thousand light years away from us. I believe, which one I next door. That's when an astronomer tells you it's basically right next door to us. Your next question is, do I worry?

Should we be worried? Is this okay? basically right next door to us. Your next question is, do I worry? Should we be worried? So I've definitely enjoyed learning and talking to scientists more about these kind of crazy things that are going on far away from Earth. There's obviously a lot going on here, but still astronomers can, you know, investigate the wonder out there because, you know, some telescopes on earth have shut down because of the pandemic, but there are a lot of spacecrafts that are still in space and telescopes also in space and rovers and landers on Mars that are still digging away and doing their thing. And I think that's kind of been wonderful. It's almost been comforting at times to check in on a lander on Mars and what it's been digging into.

There's one called Insight and it landed last year, I believe. And it's actually been stuck for months because the Mars soil has turned out to be a lot trickier than anyone thought. And its job is to drill deep into the ground, but it just wasn't moving. And I think I saw just today, it finally made some progress. And so it was fun to cheer that little probe on a little bit this morning. How do you, you know, when we talk to our other nerd topic guests, I like to talk about- And we mean that by the way, in the best sense possible. Oh, it's my highest compliment to be clear. Thank you.

It's important to me to talk about what that career looks like, like what your day-to-day looks like. How do you pick stories to go chase? And what type of person would enjoy your career as we think about some of our younger listeners? I mean, you get to pick your stories, but also you're writing for your Atlantic audience. So is it what just

interests you? Or do you think about other, your, your readers? Um, and do you try to vary your topics or you're like, no, I'm in the black hole. So you know what, this year we're going to do a lot of black hole work, uh, or, you know, fall in love with the sun again of the new pictures of the sun. You had new pictures of Jupiter. I don't know. Do people pitch you? I have so many questions. the sun. You had new pictures of Jupiter. I don't know. Do people pitch you? I have so many questions. Well, so a lot of my work is dictated by the news cycle and which is interesting to think of the, but this is like, maybe it's more like the research paper cycle. You know, every week there's usually one study coming out. That's really interesting or really exciting. Like a new closeup picture of the sun or a new exoplanet discovery. So a lot of my ideas come

to me that way. I can't... But yeah, I mean, sometimes... For example, last year was the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. And so last summer was just nonstop Apollo coverage, story after story. There's a lot of history in the space flight program that is really fun to mine for story ideas, just cool people or projects that our readers don't know about. And I mean, the Atlantic, our readers are a general interest, right? I try to, because it helps that I don't have a science background because a lot of the times when I get started on a story, I don't understand. I have to call six people who are much smarter than I am and get them to explain it to me. And I will tell them, can you say that again, but act as if you're

talking to an eighth grader or a fifth grader, depending on the topic. Because I think science writing should be really accessible. And so my job is to just try to digest what the smart people are telling me and then translate it for our readers. And then I do try, I mean, like companies like SpaceX, Blue Origin, NASA, obviously, there's always so much going on there. I have a Google Doc of story ideas, and I don't think I will ever get to zero. There's just so much cool stuff going on in space, a lot more than people think. I want access to that Google Doc. And I think a certain set of your hyper fans like us should get to thumbs up and thumbs down things in the Google Doc. That would be really

helpful. Let's take a moment and thank our sponsor, Gabby Insurance. We're all looking for ways to save money, especially now. When's the last time you looked at how much you're spending every month on car insurance, on homeowner's insurance? Now's the time to check out Gabby and see about getting a lower rate for the exact same coverage you already have. Gabby takes the pain out of shopping for insurance by giving you an apples to apples comparison of your current coverage with 40 of the top insurance providers like Progressive, Nationwide, and Travelers. Just link your current insurance account and in about two minutes, you'll be able to see quotes for the exact same coverage you currently have.

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virtually nobody is tracking and he's filling the nights. He's just filling the sky with swarms of satellites. And so explain what this is. This is his dream for what global internet. That's right. So this project is called Starlink because it's not a space project unless the word star is in it. Right. Starlink is SpaceX's attempt to, like you said, fill the space around Earth with a bunch of tiny satellites that together will work as a network and beam down internet to the surface of the earth and hopefully to places that don't

have internet access, reliable internet access right now. And SpaceX just had their latest launch of Starlink satellites last week. Seriously, last week was a huge week for SpaceX. Wow. And now there are nearly 600 of these satellites in orbit. And the hope is to get to thousands of these things. Wow. And Jeff Bezos wants to do the same thing through what's called the Kuiper project. You know,

Elon is not the only person who wants to send a bunch of satellites into space to create space-based internet. The thing is, this has really upset a lot of astronomers who want want to keep the sky you know as as pristine as a national park basically so that their observations are not um not ruined and so there's been kind of an interesting debate going on between spacex and astronomers in the last couple of months so how good would this internet be mean, is this something that's sort of like, I'm only, if I'm in rural Idaho and I've got my old AOL CD in my dial-up modem,

or I have Elon Musk's satellite internet, I mean, is this something that's designed to be like commercially competitive internet or more for developing areas? That's the hope is that it could be, you know, you could pull up the, you know, settings on your smartphone and then search nearby wifi and then you find a star link and you connect to it. Yeah. I mean, that's the hope. I don't know how good it will be. Um, I think they're, they're doing some beta testing right now. You could sign up for alerts for,

for what comes next, but yeah, the hope is that it's going to be widespread and commercially available. So let's talk black holes and supernova. You wrote a great story about how we're just waiting for a supernova and it might happen tomorrow or it might happen in 10,000 years because that's the sort of timeline that we're on when we talk about space. And these black holes that we're able to now look at, and a lot of this is just driven by technology. We're able to see so much more, and the science progresses as we stand on the shoulders of, you know, everything that came before us as a civilization.

What is the thing you're most excited about that could happen tomorrow or might not happen in several more lifetimes? Oh, gosh. Wow. Okay. Or a thing that you wish we knew that we might find out. I mean, I think I would like to know if there's other life beyond Earth. I mean, the latest NASA rover for Mars that launched in July, that's going to be arriving on Mars in February, and that's going to look for ancient signs of life. So a little different than like life right now, squirming away tiny microorganisms. That NASA rover, which is called Perseverance, which is a great name for 2020, is going to look for fossilized life. It could be billions of years

old, which if we do find fossilized life on Mars, I think is going to be for fossilized life. You know, it could be billions of years old, which if we do find fossilized life on Mars, I think is going to be a fantastic discovery. But it's also a little bit sad because it's kind of like, you know, yes, we have neighbors, but they turned the lights out three to four billion years ago. Right.

So I think most exciting for me would be to see more missions to some of our icy moons in the solar system, Enceladus and Europa, because these moons have subsurface oceans where there could be life right now. And I think it would just be extraordinary to discover that there is life beyond Earth right this moment. Do you think there is intelligent life in the universe? I was about to say, I'm sure there is, as if I had any evidence, but I'm sure there is just because statistically speaking, there has to be.

Earth is not special. The solar system is not special. There are so, so many solar systems out there like our own, very unlike our own. But I think it would be a little egotistical to think that we're the only ones who figured out how to do this thing and figure out how to make podcasts and do Zoom meetings and all that. I think there have to be other intelligent civilizations out there. Not to go too far down that rabbit hole. Have you watched any of that Navy gun camera footage that's been circulating around the UFO gun camerafo gun camera footage from gosh f-18s uh yes wild stuff well what do you think about that i'm curious as you know readers news consumers i mean i i i don't know what to make of it, to be honest. I mean, there are missiles that can move extremely quickly

and are extremely maneuverable, but nothing like the kind of behavior that I've seen from that gun camera footage. It's a mystery. I mean, it's a complete mystery. I also think that our government is way too leaky to have some real Area 51 thing going on that has been, you know, like in the movie Independence Day where they have the Brent Spiner is kind of the crazy scientist and he goes down and there's a spaceship and there's an alien. We're not competent and way too leaky to have much interesting beyond what we've already seen. But what we saw was wild.

It was pretty crazy. Well, I haven't seen Independence Day. What? I know. It's a blind spot. It's not that great. It's not that great. Have you seen Contact?

I have. Actually, I saw it for the first time this year. Yeah. That was a... Here's the real question. As far as truly amazing, not G- you know, not warp drives, laser battles, et cetera, but the best non like Star Wars, Star Trek arrival. Have you seen Arrival? I saw Arrival.

I didn't like it. Oh, David. I wish the listeners could see both of your faces. Oh, no. I love having guests on who will say that David's cultural takes are bad. And I didn't even tell you this ahead of time. And so I'm just so pleased. So pleased. No, I loved the story.

It was just a little too cheesy. But again, I loved Interstellar. And that movie is so cheesy. But I would say that's my favorite space movie. I wonder if you had seen Contact in its time, whether that would have been your favorite. I mean, maybe. I definitely watched it this time around

and had some thoughts about Matthew McConaughey's character, you know, holding this woman back just because he had a crush on her. I think that definitely read differently when the movie came out. Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, you know, yeah. So that he was a hero. Yeah. I think it's going to be, I mean, I would love to see a better explanation for what was recorded on that gun camera footage. Uh, and why is it that only the Navy seems to have it? Like why, why is this Navy? You know, if it would seem to me, if this was a more widespread phenomenon, we'd have good gun camera footage from the air force. We'd have it from, yeah. So, I mean, it's extremely mysterious, but I'm still pretty convinced it's a, there's an earthbound phenomenon that explains it.

I think the most interesting thing to me about that story is, I think it was last year that the Navy put out a statement to its members that was then leaked to the press saying, if you spot something and it's weird, tell us. It's okay. We won't stigmatize you. I think it's a good thing that military service members are going to start reporting weird things they see in the sky without the fear potentially of being labeled a crazy person. Right. I think that's one good thing to potentially come out of these very strange videos.

Yeah. No, that's absolutely true. But I'm also just a divergence for a personal story. I'm also fascinated by the satellite internet because I have a fun satellite internet story. When I deployed to Iraq, there's about a thousand of us on a base 14 miles from the Iranian border. And we had, I think, five USO phones for a thousand people. And so I didn't want, as the officers,

we didn't want to be using the phones because the enlisted would come in from these missions and you know they needed to contact their families and so we tried to look for alternative ways uh to communicate so we found an old Iraqi army satellite dish because we were co-located next to a uh we were co-located next to an Iraqi brigade. We bought it. About seven of us pooled together our money. We bought the satellite dish. We used a crane

to put it on the roof of our headquarters building, pointed it, because we have genius communications officials, communications officers, pointed it to a commercial Hughes satellite,

called Hughes, and asked if they could set us up with a custom satellite internet plan, and they did. And so we had satellite internet through Hughes Corporation running through an old Iraqi army satellite dish. And it was a lifesaver. It was fantastic. Except the only problem was only one of us could Skype at a time. Bandwidth was limited, limited, limited. So Marina, speaking of satellites, you broke the story. I'm going to phrase it that way, that we have a second moon right now. I'm not sure if I, well, I broke the story ish that we don't actually have it

anymore. Oh yeah. I mean, it was, it was never going to be a permanent second moon, right? No, no, no. This was just a tiny space rock that got lassoed to us. Um, you know, just through the quirky ways of gravity in the earth moon system. And, um And we had it for maybe two years, maybe longer, but it was actually just earlier this year. The latest observations showed that this object was now gravitationally bound to the sun instead of us, which meant it's no longer our moon. It's now just one of the many space rocks just floating around out there. Yeah, it was kind of sweet to have a small little second moon, wasn't it? I wish I'd gotten to celebrate it more, to really let it know that it was appreciated.

Right. But don't be sad because the moon's not ours anymore. Be smile because it was. I don't know. What is that one quote? So, you know, we were talking about movies and there were all those movies in the nineties about things hitting the earth and, you know, potentially causing like dinosaur style, basically right after they found the dinosaur, uh, uh, asteroid evidence in the Yucatan. Um, you know, are there any things that we should be concerned about in space right now? So no immediate threats. I will say that that's's the top line. Everyone is fine, cosmically speaking. I don't know about the rest of the views. One thing that we could do a little improving in is our asteroid detection techniques.

So they're not as great as they could be. You know, we haven't missed an asteroid coming at us that's been very perilously close, but we've definitely seen something and been like, huh, that's an asteroid. It's that's been very perilously close, but we've definitely seen something and been like, huh, that's an asteroid. It's a little close by, not a danger, but we didn't detect it. So definitely should increase resources in that area to better detect these things because you don't know when something is going to come and destroy your planet. That's what to plan for. Well, when you talk to people who are in charge of detecting asteroids, are they also in charge of doing something about it? Or is it just going to be a,

Hey, you've got about three days to say goodbye to your loved ones and all life on the planet. That's a, yeah. The people who are in charge of detecting them, they will just provide the information to politicians, stakeholders, decision makers. So we're doomed. If Congress is in charge, we're doomed. Well, I think because then you would have to respond as a planet, not as a nation. We're extra doomed. If this pandemic has told us anything, we're extra doomed if we have to do it together.

has told us anything, we're extra doomed if we have to do it together. Right. If this situation is kind of a preview, then we definitely do have some work ahead of us. We definitely do. I cannot imagine. I'm already in my mind, like my political mind is going, what is the culture war that would erupt over our measures to save the planet? Like, you know, if we can't even agree to wear a mask to save ourselves from a virus like what completely inane culture war will erupt over saving the planet from the asteroid like what would we hoard what it wouldn't be toilet paper no no no no what do you hoard i mean yeah that's memories yeah memories Yeah, that's... Memories. Yeah, memories. That's fantastic.

Yeah, we talked about asteroids a little bit with the paleontologist. See, I got it right this time, the paleontologist. And he was saying, even with a Yucatan-sized asteroid, if you're far enough from the blast, you may be able to ride it out. I'm skeptical about that. Part of me wonders, if you just stand on the roof of your house and wait for the shockwave.

And then there's all the after effects, just the amount of ash and debris in the atmosphere. I don't think that we see sunlight for quite some time, depending on where we're. And unlike the little mammals who survived that asteroid, we need a lot more calories per person. True. True. Absolutely. So cockroaches, I'm sure some of them would make it, but I don't know about you and me, David. So before we let you go, what are some of the things that we need to be... Are there some interesting SpaceX or Blue Origin developments coming up down the pike? How soon before we can see Tom Cruise lifting off into space? I mean, you know, one of the things I was one of those folks who is watching, having the surreal experience of watching the SpaceX launch of the Crew Dragon as this lockdown is, you know, as the pandemic is locking in on us. And it felt like this odd combination of like hope and despair happening

at the same time. What are some hopeful things we've got ahead of us, you know, in the next year or two, you think as, as crude space flight continues? Right. Well, definitely more SpaceX launches of NASA astronauts. So the next crew to go to the ISS is ready to go. And it's international, an international crew I believe there's a Japanese astronaut and also an astronaut from the European Space Agency that's coming along this flight to the ISS with Bob and Doug the space dads this was a test flight you know what NASA and SpaceX have to do now is review everything that happened, what went wrong, what went right and certify, okay, SpaceX, we completely trust you to carry our precious lives to space. That doesn't mean that

it's going to get an easier or any less stressful. So I think what's going to be really exciting the next couple of years is seeing more and more of these flights go up and soon they might even start to feel routine, but we should never feel that way because the second it starts to feel routine, you know, something awful can happen. Um, as for when Tom Cruise is going up,

I am not sure, but NASA, I mean, the NASA administrator, Jim Bridenstine is fully behind it. Super excited. Anything that gets, you know,

NASA and the ISS good press. Um, yeah, that'll be pretty cool to see now is the boeing have they worked out the kinks on the boeing uh crude capsule yet or is that right so that was that was actually the last time i was down at cape canaveral last december boeing was supposed to carry out an uncrewed demonstration of the system did not go well did not make it to the iss landed in one one piece back on Earth, which is great, which is more than you can ask for.

But they have found so, so many errors in their flight software. So it's not a hardware issue. It's in computer code. which is troubling when you consider the various other problems that Boeing has had with flight software in other sectors. And so NASA has asked Boeing to do a repeat flight, no people on board to the ISS. That's going to happen either late this year or early next year. So they are definitely behind. I mean, if you want to talk about a race to the ISS, SpaceX won this one.

Right. Right. Now, have you seen, have you seen launches, um, live? And if so, what's the most interesting aspect of it? I have. So down at, uh, Kennedy space center, the press site is about two miles out from the launch pad. Um, and it's across the water and I've been down to a few, I didn't make it to Bob and Doug's launch, um, in may, um, just because it seemed really hard to travel with the pandemic. But I would say that the best launch is a night launch because when the rocket ignites, the flames coming out of it are so bright, it looks like a sunrise in the middle of the night. It's just stunning. And it's loud. Right.

And it's just surreal to look at a rocket launch and think, oh, wow, people made that. And now they're sending it off the planet. Yeah. It's wonderful. Did you get to see Falcon Heavy? I did. That was super loud. Much louder than a Falcon 9, obviously, three boosters to one. And that was also surreal because there was a Tesla at the top of that rocket,

which is pretty crazy that Tesla right now is floating around in space, going to be there for thousands of years. Honestly, the Falcon Heavy is when I locked in on this story because, you know, I kind of casually followed it, but the Falcon Heavy like captured my imagination. And there was something about the power of it. You know, it had that Saturn V sort of feel to it. And then the way they broadcast it with the cheering, like, you know, if you watch the YouTubes of the launch, you have the announcer talking about each aspect. But it must have been like,

they must have been piping in sound from SpaceX or somewhere, but there's this wild cheering in the background. And it just gave this really tremendous, like, sense of infectious enthusiasm that it was almost like a release of an enormous amount of stress and joy at the same time. Right. I remember that. That was, yeah. Coming from mission control in Hawthorne, California. And I think it was people were tearing because they just couldn't believe that

Falcon heavy was working, you know, even the night before launch, Elon Musk was saying it's, it's really 50, 50, whether this thing blows up or makes it into orbit. So no one on that day knew what was going to happen. With the Falcon 9, the rocket that took Bob and Doug to space, you kind of know what to expect. Falcon Heavy was a whole new game. Well, Sarah, do you have any other questions or observations for Marina before we let her go? Oh, no, I've just been enjoying this too much. I could listen to this all day long.

And I love your stories. Can you tell us what's going to publish next? What topic? Well, I am... I almost don't want to tell you what if someone else takes it. You know, the five other reporters on the... All right.

I'll just... I have my Atlantic membership. Plug, plug for the Atlantic. And I will just, you know, I have my, my Atlantic membership, plug plug for the Atlantic and I will just have to look forward to it. And how do folks follow you? What's your Twitter handle? It's my first and last name, Marina Corrin. So Marina, like a boat doc and Corrin is K-O-R-E-N. Fantastic. Well, thank you so much, Marina. And thank you listeners for hanging in on a...

Marina, before you got on, we talked about Trump's executive orders and the subpoena for the White House counsel, former White House counsel. So... Those were the vegetables. You are dessert. I've spent my morning paying attention to this Mars probe. I didn't hear anything about that. I'll have to look into that once we get there. You really don't. You don't have to. No, we started off boring.

I'm just going to tell you, we started off boring, but we ended thinking about a flight to Mars. So that's a good way to end a podcast. So thank you all for listening. And please go to Apple Podcasts and rate us and subscribe and check out thedispatch.com. And we will come back to you on Thursday.

Thank you. We used to look up in the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. Now we just look down and worry about our place in the dirt.