Bittersweet Infamy - #146 - Mirror, Mirror, in the Sky

Episode Date: July 19, 2026

Josie tells Taylor about the plans to use mirrors in outer space to provide solar-powered solutions for critical problems, like artificially increasing the length of the work day or hosting a Columbus Day race to Mars.

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Visit O-D-O-D-com to book a demo. It's O-D-O-O-O-O-O-com. Welcome to Bittersweet and Me. I'm Taylor Basso. And I'm Josie Mitchell. On this podcast, we share the stories that live on and in me. The strange and the familiar. The tragic and the comic.

The bitter. And the sweet. Jizzy. Jizzy. Jizzy. Can we start the podcast with me? Okay, I can't keep that up for 90 minutes. No, don't.

It's even longer in real life. We edit them. Can I share one of my favorite recent vocal stims with you? Please, yes. I'd love it. Because this is something that I've wanted, like, actively had to, like, hold back from saying on the podcast, but it like literally just, it's a new word, a neologism that sort of just plays in my mind and has kind of slipped into, like, the way that I conceive of the world. Wow, that sounds foundational. This is great, yeah.

And it's going to be even more impressive when I tell you the word. The word is low, low, kirk genuinely. Have you heard this? No. Low kirk-quenually? Low-Kerkennuantly. Okay. We start with the words low-key and genuinely. Now, low-key, famously a verbal tick of, let's say, Gen Z and below.

Yeah. High-key, low-key, this, low-key that. Yeah, high-key, all the keys, middle-key. Yeah. It's like a lock-picky. You've got to go around the circle, right? See where it clicks. Yeah.

Uh-huh. Wow. Yeah. Been playing a lot of Skyrim, a lot of lock-picking. And genuinely means what it sounds, like genuinely. Low-key, but genuinely. I genuinely feel this way, but, you know, low-key, right? Yeah.

Yeah. Why waste the time, Josie, to say both low-key and genuinely when you can say lo-kenuently? Lo-kenually. Now, you may remember that our word is low-kirk-en-u-in-ly. Where do you think that Kirk comes from? No, I didn't. Is it Charlie Kirk? It is Charlie Kirk.

So... Wait, no. It's Charlie Kirk. Oh, my God. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We are Charlie Kirk! Charlie Kirk. He has, in my observation,

the assassination of Charlie Kirk has become the 9-11 of young people insofar as, do you remember how 9-11 quickly came to be memed by people who knew it, not from their own genuine reactions of the day, but from like adults' seemingly hyperbolic reactions of the day, such that it becomes like a dark comedy thing that you would bust out, a 9-11 joke or whatever. Not that I would, not that I ever have. Don't go looking around.

But now the average probably like elementary school person doesn't know or give a fuck about Charlie Kirk, but they sure did watch everyone freak out in this like horrible graphic video of him go around, et cetera, et cetera. So now his name is sort of this like da-daist phrase that you can just insert into things. I saw it said online that like low curkenuantly, it uses the same rules of language as something like fan fucking tastic where that middle syllable is just there to sort of like emphasize. Make it pack.

Yes. Okay. So sometimes I'm like, man, I low curcanually feel pretty vulnerable right now. Like sincerely this goes through my mind sometimes. I've stopped the part of my life where I don't say that on the podcast, and so, no, with, listen, don't, don't cancel me right-wing media if you're still doing that. Loaker-canuantly, I offer it to you. Loaker can you. I'm not pro-assination.

Don't get that office. No, no, you're pro-language. You're pro-evolution of language. Fuck you, Academy Frances, you can cancel me. Is that what you're saying right now? Jose. Yes. Jose.

Yes. The reason I mentioned. and all of this very low-kerkenuan sentiment. Uh-huh. Low-ker-kentiment. The reason I mention this, Josie, is because this was America's first Fourth of July without Charlie Kirk. Well, except for all the ones before he was born. But yeah.

I don't think so. Okay. So, that's not... When do you think Zero was, Josie? When was Zero in your head? Anyway, how was your Fourth of July? I know that this is a sort of a Christmas in the summer for your fam jam where you kind of get together and have a nice time in your homeland of San Diego, California. Yeah, it was good.

You know, for a long time, I was like, I don't want to be in the country for July 4th, 250. Like, whatever. Unpack it. Unpack it, baby. Why do you feel that way? Are you caught me? What's the deal? Yeah.

Nailed it. Unpack. Yeah. I just just like, I don't want to be involved. those celebrations, like it might be kind of big to do and just like, eh, whatever. And then the planning kind of worked out and it was just like, well, wait, I want to go to San Diego this summer and that's the best time because of schedules. Here's what I think sincerely, for better or worse, a very big chunk of the people who celebrate Christmas aren't doing it because they're like,

wow, Jesus was born today. Yeah. They're doing it because, like, I get to get together with my family and I can watch the Scrooge movie with my mom and I can like hang out with my cousins and shit. that and open gifts and wear matching pajamas and whatever the family bag is, right? Yeah, yeah. So I would say just look at it that way, you know? Look at it as like, oh, it's my time to go and like ritual time with family is important, I think. Yeah. And that's kind of exactly what happened. I just like got to hang out with my niece. That was really fun. And she's 15. She's going to get her learner's permit for her driver's license. Next, fun. They're getting older every day. Oh, my gosh. Yeah, it's really exciting. Well, I've been afraid to change it.

That's what it was like, yeah, hanging with her. And we did some tie-dye. We did some very rad tie-dye on the fourth. Lovely, you do great. I have. It was the summer that we camped out in that VW bug. So I think summer of 2023 or 2024. And Josie gave me these lovely, it was a tie-died scrunchy, and it was a tie-died

bandana. And that bandana is what I use when I'm traveling. to mark my suitcase because the suitcase that I've been using recently, I used to have a hound's tooth one. Love that one. I know, but broke. I just got overzealous while packing it. Just like, you know how I am. You've seen it in person at your fucking as I left your wedding and we had to duct date that bitch together. Well, it happened again. And it happened like as I was getting ready to go to the airport and I was like, you have got to be fucking kidding me. Thankfully I had another suitcase on standby. But it's like a less exciting visually suitcase. So I tie that tie-dye bandana

around it so that it marks it as mine. Cool. And then right now, since I didn't travel with my suitcases the last time I traveled, it is tied to my backpack, which is what I was traveling with. Oh, cute. Yay. Yeah, so that's your role. Yours, like, don't lose your luggage, Taylor. That's what that bandana ended up doing. Yeah. Oh, I like that. I like that.

But I have to say, my time in San Diego, probably a highlight, like a historical highlight was not 250, which I'm very thankful for. It was very, like, tame, no big dealio. So that's what I hear 250 was like on that fucking festival that Trump did. just a bit along with some booths. Yeah, I don't know if it was because I was in California or because I was tie-dying. I just didn't seem very like uber patriotic to me.

It just seemed kind of regular. And then I even like tried to downplay it less. It's an interesting time in American history if you're someone who doesn't approve of the way that the country is going, which I'm willing to bet is a chunk of our listenership. Yes, yes. What was monumental in San Diego when I was there is that the Mormon temple of San Diego

was open for visitors. So let me give you a little background here. Off of the five freeway in San Diego, very close to where I grew up, is this like princess Disney castle, like really dramatic. Fuck yeah. God bless America, dude.

You all do it big. White. Big shit. I was just thinking that everything in America is so goddamn big, you know? We have roller coasters on our cruise ships here. Exactly. Well, earmark that.

Because that's an interesting point about this. So it's just, it's super iconic. It doesn't match any of the other architecture. It's Disney-esque. You know, it's very like castle, castle vibe, brilliant white, like bright white and like stained glass. Iconic architecture, this iconic building, that you cannot enter. It is a sacred space. Even if you're Mormon, you can't enter it all the time.

Then what the fuck is the point? Sorry, Taylor. That's a very important religious building. Okay, well, this is what I learned because the temple was open to the public. They were doing renovations on it. Oh, okay, if I get to go, then I'm fine with it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, in order to do any type of construction work on it, they deconsecrate it.

And then as a good faith neighbor measure, they invite the public to come in and look. It's only a short time. They walk you through, you get to see the whole thing. And then I think the end of this coming weekend, it closes. The last time the temple was open was 1993. You're Indiana Jones sliding under that door. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Mormony. And so my friend Chelsea Rose and I were like, well, we got to go.

This sounds great. Shouts to Chelsea Rose. Always a pleasure. Chelsea had gone with her grandmother when it was last opened in 1993. So she's like a deadhead. She's like a lifer. Yeah. But she was like five. She like couldn't really remember. She was like, I think there were statues of cows in there. I don't know. Were there?

Let me tell you. Yes, there were. Were there ever? And what cows they were? They organized it brilliantly. You go to this big tent and they move you through that temple really fast. But on the note of everything being bigger in the U.S., bigger in the Mormon temple, I was expecting a temple space to have like a big worship area. Like I'm used to like cathedral. But no, but it's private consecrated. Exactly. And it's not for weekly Sunday worship.

It's not a gathering space for people. It's the place where you go for special ceremonies, for baptisms, for weddings, for, I assume maybe funerals. So it's these very like particular like ceremonies and rituals that you go for. You don't go to like be in a big room with all these people. You go to be in a small room. So even though it's this huge looking thing from the outside, you go inside and it's this like maze like small little room here, small little room here, and like a lot of gold, a lot of white

carpet, very like 80s. Donnie and Marie. Yes. Yeah. It totally had that vibe. It was wild. It was so crazy. And maybe even crazier was I was expecting it to be pretty evangelical.

You know, they get you in this big kind of tent to begin with, and it's air-conditioned. Oh, Mormons are known for knocking on your doors, aren't they? Exactly. Often part of your mission is you go and spread the good word. And there was none of that. There was explanation, and there was, like, very rote explanation. It seemed very clear that everybody had been instructed. You do not share direct information besides what we've written out for you,

but you will constantly ask if somebody has a question. Do you have a question? Do you have a question? All these very, like, young and happy and very friendly folks on their missions would come up to us and be like, do you have any questions? It's so nice to have you here. Thank you for coming. The Mormons didn't forget about customer service.

You put on little booties before, like little plastic booties over your shoes. White carpets. Of course, exactly. Those carpets ain't going to stay white themselves. The baptismal font, which is pretty much just like a big jacuzzi. at least the San Diego Temple one, is supported by sculptures that represent the 12 tribes of Israel. You know what they were?

What? Cows. Chelsea was right. They were cows. Vindicated yet again, Chelsea was. Again. Again. The papers keep coming back from the lab.

Positive, positive, positive. Parentheses, in a positive way. In a positive way, yes. Yeah, it was a trip. It was a real trip to go in there and to see it. What a way to celebrate America. You know, it really, it really was. We didn't go directly on the fourth, but it was like for my Fourth of July trip.

The Fourth is a week. It's like birthdays, you know? Fair, fair, fair. We got to sell fireworks, bitch. Yeah. Snap in. Let's do it. Yeah, so it was a very, I mean, yeah, it's a completely American religion.

And there we were on that white carpet. It was wild. And you can't take any photos on the inside. Good. I'm okay with that. They let you take a lot of photos from the outside of the big, you know, princess-like thing. And all the young teenage girls were kind of stationed on the outer ring, I guess, of the grounds. And they were offered to take your photo. Like, they were like, okay, you want this? Okay, okay. Now, closer and there were great photos. Oh, yeah. No, I'm sure they were. Fuck yeah, little Mormon girl. Take my photo. This is killer. Exactly. Yeah. I know you guys don't do booze, but can I have like one of those fancy sodas you guys drink? That'd be fun. No caffeine, please. That, yeah, that, as you say, it was like my Fourth of July celebration.

Good deal. Totally American religion. I got to see inside. Inside the temp. You saw inside the temple. In what way do you mean? I'm curious. The temple of camping. Is that right? Go and she does it again. If you're watching this hand, you don't know where the other one's going.

Yes, I've really seen. And I went camping at Buttle Lake Park on Vancouver Island, big fucking nice island. Big fucking nice island. You should go. Cool. It was good and then all at once it wasn't. Oh no. Is that because you missed the fairy?

Bump, bump, bum. You did get it. You did get it. Yes. I sent Josie a postcard. I sent Josie a postcard. It came today. Oh.

Nice. You sat on that the whole time. That was good. Dear Josie, Mitchell, Batman, and gender non-binary cat. We arrived too late to catch our ferry out of Nanaimo, so now we need to drink our sadness at the fake Irish pub near the pier. But why should an hour loss be your gain? Please try out this recipe for the famous local confection, the Nanaimo Bar,

which is featured on the front of the postcard, and let us know if they are worth savoring during the long, long, hours long wait for the next sailing. XOXO, XO, Taylor and Rui. And then there's lovely drawing of Me with Heart Eyes, and boobs and mixture with like a mullet and musical notes. And then there's B-Man and there's P-K too. Those are not up to my usual. I was literally at a pub full of like football fans drawing that in my defense.

It's great. I lot. Are you kidding me? Oh, I'm so glad. I feel glad. Because literally we had like fucking four hours to, holy shit, did it ever go sideways? Okay, so I want to throw it back.

So first of all, I'll say for this perfectly lovely camping trip, if you're ever driving up the east side of Vancouver Island, Check out about a lake. It's kind of up near Campbell River. Really nice spot out of the way. Rui and I got to go on like a nice little paddleboard in the lake and we discovered these little, like, we would just paddleboard up to the next little island and sea drift, and we walk around it and see what was on there. And then we get on the paddle board and paddle to the next. It was very nice. That's really fun. Oh, wow. Lovely, lovely. And we got those like no name brand. Josie, do you know about the Canadian brand, no name brand? I know that's yellow. And it has plain like Helvetica black type. Yep. The thing that I love about no name brand, there's a lot. There's an effortlessness to it that so many other brands have tried to replicate but couldn't, is that no name with the big black letters and the bright yellow bag is actually a really

recognizable brand. Yeah, yeah. It's like a really strong brand. So they've decided to lean into it with like cheeky things. So like we got camp chairs that are bright yellow and they say chair for sitting. Cute. Oh, nice. This is good.

A big beach towel that said towel for beach. And then I got a sippy cup that said cup for sipping. We were laying there in the tent and I heard an older couple go by, look, chair for sitting. You know, the people love it. It's a great brand. That's who I've been caping for on this camping shit. Nice, nice. Maybe we can get no-name brand to sponsor us.

Fuck yeah. I will whore out for anyone, loker genuinely. The problem was we got to the ferry. We had a reservation now. Okay. We had a fucking reservation. But if you go back, this is a deep, deep cut now. But if you go back to that same summer, I think it's the summer of 2023.

I was just going to bring this up. We got our little... Yeah, we got wrapped on the knuckles for this same thing. If you go check out episode 76 to 79, they're the bittersweet 604 episodes. It features me and Josie taking a road trip out to Jordan River on the west side of Vancouver Island, kind of southwest side. And at the very beginning of the footage from the episode where we go on the ferry, the very first piece of footage is us recounting getting reprimanded by the lady at the fairy. What happened, Josie? We pulled up with not a lot of time to catch the ferry. Where are we going on the ferry, too? We're going to go to Shorts Bay. How are you feeling about that?

Feeling good. Feeling relieved because we pulled up to the kiosk and the VC ferry attendant's like, you're late. But it's okay because there's still room with the ferry. Yeah, you're late. But it's fine. But like wanted us to know that we were three men it's late. Yeah. Be careful when you're ferrying, folks. These BC ferries, they don't fuck around. They're tight.

Getting jewels. Mm-hmm. We would never have attitude, but I think we were both a little, like, taken aback at her presumptuousness. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I think she may have been taken aback by our presumptuousness. O'er.

Oh, we were, we were wearing the shoes in the house. We were violating the BC ferry etiquette here. Exactly, yeah, because you should be arriving within an hour before, and we just rolled up and we're like, can we get on? She's like, casualist punch. You can, you can, but never do this again. Don't get cocky, you little shit.

Don't say this. Don't you dear, do this again. Yeah, yeah. Well, we did it again. We did it again. We did it again. We did it again. Okay. We arrived with 10 minutes to sail out of Nanaimo back to Horseshoe Bay and there was not room for us. Yeah. Nor was there on the next one,

nor I believe the next one. Oh. So we ended up getting back home at about 1145 instead of like four-ish. No, and you're just waiting at the ferry term. You're gonna wanna go. Oh, yeah, yeah, that's where I sent you that postcard from. And it was literally, I feel so bad for Rui because literally just before this, I'd been bigging myself up about like, you know, I'm pretty good about like, if you

find yourself stuck in a bad situation, like, don't be a bitch about it. Just like kind of gutted out because like, you know, something good will come. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm particularly, obviously, I'm not talking about like major gigantic life shattering shit, but I'm more talking about like, oh, you have a, you know, a, you know, a LA at an airport or, oh, it rains when you're camping or something like this. Yeah.

Minor annoyances. And I was just talking up how good I am at getting it out through that. And then this fairy thing happened. And I was just in, like, visibly the worst mood. You just crashed out. Oh, I was so annoyed. I just, like, couldn't hack it. I wasn't a prick about it, but I think I was a sulk about it.

Yeah, yeah. And we did go to this fake Irish pub, Kelly slash Carlos O'Brien's, depending whether you're there for the restaurant or the bar. That's right. there was a Carlos O'Brien and Kelly O'Brien are two sides. I think... But there was one in Canloupes. Not Camloops.

In Colonna. Colonna. There you go. It's not Colona until you've called it Camleaps. That's just the rules. And so on that note, you should go back and check out the other times that Josie and I did Vancouver-based content. This is the big skook on BC road trip.

We put so much work into this. It's episodes like 129 to like 132. And it's a lot of us taking a road trip around beautiful BC. in it, lovely. Good. In that same series, I surprised Josie with a game show. She loved it.

And there's a little bit in there about Nanaimo bars and what they are. But suffice to say, a local treat of note that if you have one, you should have one, they're nice. Josie, how would you describe a Nanaimo bar? Delicious, the best thing ever, heaven on earth. I love him so much. Okay, see, Loaker Kenuantly, I'm only a mid fan. Loaker Kenuantly, Locer Kennually.

I love them. I think they're really good. Mitchell was looking at the recipe, and he's like, oh, this kind of reminds you. me a Mississippi mud pie. Cultural exchange. That's what that is. Isn't that nice? Isn't that nice?

But then he's like, wait, this custard filling situation and the icing is kind of like not as much the Mississippi mud pie. So they're unique. Coconut notably a part of this? Flaked coconut. Custard, a custard layer? What would you call that middle part? The filling, at least that's what the recipe says on the postcard you sent.

So the base is that like cookie. It has gram wafer crumb. and the coconut. And then you have the custard filling. And then there's an icing, which because it's served chilled, the icing is like a chocolate, melted chocolate that hardens. So it's like a... It's nice. It is nice. It's really nice. You're making me want a Nenamo bar. I don't even like Nenamo bars that much. You're making it good. You're describing it good. I guess you're just like reading a list of ingredients. Yeah. Mitchell says he's going to make them. Good. No. I am so glad that one of you picked up what I was putting down there. You obviously

have to make them. Yeah. This is the psychic pet blog, Josie. This is why Mitchell and I need each other. Chee blog. Right here, yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm excited. I really do like Nanaima bars. They're some of my favorites.

Named after a town on Vancouver Island from whence it comes. Right. Where I was stuck at the ferry terminal for four and a half hours. That's a long time. But was the camping fun at least? A blast. Lots of fun, lots of fun, lots of fun. A nice time.

I like trees, I like nature. I'm a big fan. You know what else I'm a fan of? Everyone who's a fan of us over at the Bitter Sweet Film Club. On coffee.com, K-O-F-I-I-com slash bittersweet infamy.

What's coffee.com slash bittersweet infamy? To address her by her Christian name. It's a site on the internet, on the World Wide Web, where you go. You're killing it. And you can voluntarily tip us. That's important.

Just voluntarily. You're not. This is not a... You type the URL. You are not. We appreciate it. Yes. It's a donation.

It's a tip. It's a, hey, thanks. Hey, I'm thinking of you. Hey, I love the stuff you do. Money to us. You can do one-off donations as well. And thank you. But if you become a monthly subscriber, you can...

You join the Bitter'sweet Film Club, baby? Absolutely right, Josie. The Bitter'sweet Film Club is where we watch the films that you suggest to us. And they're films like about infamy, infamy, infamous films in and of themselves, films concerned with infamy. It kind of follows very loosely the subject guidelines of the main show that you're listening to right now. Last time we did The Imitation game, Alan Turing, the codebreaker, the code maker at the suggestion of Jonathan Mountain. Thank you very much.

And upcoming, we're going to be chatting, a cry in the deck. Also known as Evil angels. Evil angels. I trip on that. I need to hear some, nope. I need to hear some. I got it. I don't know what you're done.

Captain Jack Sparrow? I'm just... We should bring it down a notch because this movie is about very serious. It's actually. Yeah, it's a pretty intense legal case against a mother whose baby was taken from her. But sadly, this is like, I guess, the great common tragedy of the situation that I won't lean to it, because it leans much more heavily toward tragedy. This is a real thing with real people that are real consequences.

But one of the consequences was the dingo ate my baby became a meme because in isolation, separated from the horror of all this. it's kind of funny. You know, the word dingo is kind of funny. Oh, no, the dingo's going to eat the baby. Yeah. But like, no, a dingo ate and it's really fucked up. Well, even in the movie, she doesn't say eight. She says, took. A dingo took my, a dingo took my baby. Yeah, but we got to sell magazines, Josie. Exactly. Seinfeld, Simpsons, got to get that. Schmoney. Get it moving. Yeah. This is sort of a little bit of a preview. We haven't taped yet, but I'm actually really looking forward to you. I've watched it. So I'm excited to talk about it with you. Really interesting

case, really interesting movie. Merrill Streep, Sam Neal. Good cast. We got to chat about it, but funnily enough, ironically enough, B-Man ate our cord splinters. What is this guy's problem? Again? Again. You need to take him to rehab. What the fuck is his problem? But isn't it funny that he did it right before we watched the dingo ate my baby?

The dingo ate my cord splitter. Yeah, no, you know what? Life invitates our invitates like, fuck. He's just paying attention. At this point, he's just paying attention. He's doing meta-referential comedy if you'll keep it. up. Jesus.

No, he does need therapy. But I'm looking forward to it. And join us over at the Bitter'sweet Film Club. Yeah, that's great. See, we are saying machines. This deep in the game, you can't stop us. I'll remember what was happening in 1992, right?

Oh, on a literal level. Yes. Yeah, yeah, I've got some 92. What you got? What you got, babe. The first memory that I am conscious of having in this lifetime is when I turn three. My third birthday. I remember waking up and thinking, wow, I'm three. I'm a fucking adult now.

I can smoke cigarettes and fuck hot dudes. You did not think that. No, no, not that last part. That last part, no. That's me adding a bit of flavor in the tongue. They give you a little packet in the ramen for a reason, you know. But that's, that's what that was the little foil packet of chicken stock. What is actually true, though, is I do remember waking up and thinking, wow, I'm like, I'm grown up, basically. Like, this is, I'm finally as old as the people that I admire, you know? And I've learned, I've learned it all.

And life threw me some devastating curveballs in the 36 years to follow. But yeah, I remember I had like a log cake with a car on it. I remember being like, damn, that's a cool cake. I still think that's a cool cake. A log cake. A log cake gets me. as a person because I'm not like most cakes. Right.

Jack. You're not like the other girls. I'm not like the other cakes. Yes. I'm a log cake. Big circle ass cake from Dairy Queen. Fuck out of here. I'm a log.

With a car, bitch. Smoking cigarettes. Fucking hot guys. I'm three. I'm three. I'm getting my realtors license. Fuck taxes. Am I right?

But you were saying something. Sorry. You got a story to tell me. 1992. Taylor turned three, but it was also the 500th year anniversary of the Christopher Columbus arrival to the Americas. Boo. I think, Josie, I think you mean the East Indies. Yes, I'm sorry.

Yes. This momentous discovery of the new world quotes heavy on that one. all around, you know, win for humanity, except for that pesky detail of the subsequent genocide of all the indigenous peoples in the Americas. That's fun. Awful, awful, awful, rotten stuff

that's like under-discust broadly. And that I really take umbrage to people trying to cover up in the way that like the book bannier of the states do, right? Like, oh, we're embarrassed about our history so we won't teach a version of it where the white people are anything but virtuous. That annoys the shit out of me.

You fucking coward. That's how I feel about that. You're a fucking pussy. You know, you didn't do it yourself. So just fucking own that it. happened, you fucking weasel. But there are people who have a vested interest in keeping certain people subjugated. I'll let you tell your story. You're totally right. And a good example of what you're talking about, though, too, is two years before the 500th year anniversary. It was 1990 and the

Columbus quintinentee, quintinary. Concentenary. Concentenary. Okay. Concentenary. Concentenary. Folks. We know that you've all used this word many times in a day, but we're being introduced to it because of this. It's the 500th anniversary. The big 500-0-0. How many log cakes you get for that one, you know? 500. It was a commission that was established by the U.S. Congress to oversee the celebratory events

for the anniversary. And they proposed a galactic sail race using solar propulsion technology to power three unmanned spacecrafts to see which of them would get to Mars. first. Fuck yeah. What a wonderful waste of money that is. You know, but maybe. No, no, because here's the thing.

Here's the thing. I don't want that to seem like I am unsympathetic to the idea of space exploration. Because Josie, you and I have been to the Johnson Space Center together. You know it's fascinating. Yeah. So the plan was to have these three unmanned spacecrafts conduct a race to see who would get the first to Mars. Or hopefully, you know, someplace that they thought was Mars, if they're being historically accurate, it won't be Mars, it'll be someplace else entirely, just as Columbus landed someplace else entirely

than he thought. The commission wanted three competitors, one from the Americas where Columbus landed, one from Europe, where his journey began, and one from Asia where he thought he was heading. That's fucking funny. I know. And even funnier. Oh my God, that's a riot. That's so funny. Whoever made that call a round of applause. The three solar sailboats, the crafts, would be named the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria. Oh, this got like pushed off the chain so many times, I'm sure. Dude, this is crazy. I am intrigued to know more.

My first instinct is like, not a bad idea, but a weird idea. The Columbus Tion makes it weird. It's the Nina, the Pinta, and the Santa Maria of it all. Yeah, yeah. The idea is that they would start the race in 92. and they voyage to Mars and it would take anywhere from a year to five years. So they wouldn't be landing or they wouldn't be getting there in 92 like Columbus. The exact time frame, that one to five years, it's a big one.

It's hard to pinpoint because it was a ridiculous idea without a lot of scientific experimentation to back it up. Vives-based comedy. Yeah. Yeah. And even less financial backing for these projects. Oh, that makes me concerned. Yeah.

It seems like they wanted to do like a colonial-inspired, like friendly revamp of the space race. I don't think that colonial and friendly really go hand in hand in my experience. No, no, uh-uh. As you have probably guessed now by the verb tense, the race did not happen. It never took place. It was planned, but it was prohibitively expensive to actually do. Yeah, money pit. Money pit rule, right?

We talk about it all the time. The bittersweet infamy money pit rule is. I coin just now. Yeah. And there's no doubt all that technological advancement had to go into the technology to develop the Furby that I never got. Instead, to commemorate the 500-year anniversary, they flew the Concord real fast around the world.

The U.S. minted a dollar coin that has never and will never be used. In a more humane turn of events, the Nobel Peace Prize was intentionally given to indigenous Guatemalan civil rights leader, Rigoberta Menchu, on the October date to coincide with the Columbus 500th anniversary. But yeah, it was a nice little polite, Swedish, fuck you. So the race, like I said, did not happen. But whatever came of this technology, of this solar propulsion stuff that we were talking about? Yeah, the solar sailboats that you were discussing.

I did keep hitching on that. I was like, what an interesting turn of phrase. I wonder what that entails. So solar sails are made of like a mirror-like material. According to LA Times reporter Mara Reynolds, they function like this, quote, in the vacuum of space, the force of photons or high energy particles of sunlight bouncing off of its reflective surface, the mirror-like surface, is enough to propel a mirror through space. Theoretically, a mirror could travel infinite distances as long as it had a light source. Is that true? I think the theoretical point is that the right to.

technology and the like rugged enough materials that wouldn't deteriorate in deep space, it does mean that you could build a spacecraft that does not need propulsion from any type of fuel. And as long as it had sunlight, it could travel indefinitely. As long as it had sunlight and could like retain its structure and, you know, it could travel indefinitely. Obviously, this technology is way more interesting than Columbus Day. As you mentioned, like Columbus Day, it's just kind of like gum and enough of rocks. I forgot that Columbus Day had anything to do with this. Yeah, absolutely.

So instead, let's look more closely at this. technology and learn how this idea of harnessing the power of the sun for interplanetary space travel is potentially maybe possible. Yet we'll see how some stupidity sneaks its way back in. Columbus isn't the only... Evergreen. Yeah. Isn't the only little mishap to this story. Okay. Welcome to the story of mirrors in space, Taylor, and how humans fucked up some cool technology. Superman was right, mirrors in space. It's a very, like, Flash Gordon, like... Yeah, Sailor Moon kind of in there.

I've been reading those Sailor Moon manga, a lot of mirrors in space type of shit. Yeah, yeah, yeah, little hand mirrors, phew, pew, pew. I'm not opposed to the aesthetic implications. You can do, like, kind of like a solar punk, egotopia thing with it, but then you can also do something like... Disco balls, yeah. Very sinister, trapped in a mirror that kind of echoes the sort of cold bedness of space. Yeah.

There's a lot you can do with this imagery of mirrors in space. And then when you had a sailboat and the sun in there, Yeah. That's a spaghetti, you know, as we say. So we'll go back to 1923, a German rocket pioneer by the name of Herman Oberth. He had a self-published book that was based on his PhD thesis that Heidelberg University rejected, because it seemed much too implausible. That's, but like, forgive me, but isn't that what they said to like, Copernicus and Galileo? Yeah. Yeah. Kepler or all of it. Yeah.

exactly. You should just listen to like, you're crazy. Pluto isn't really a planet. You're, get out of here, man. Let's stop being, let's just start accepting that maybe sometimes the Earth is flat. Am I right, guys? We all know it. Let's be realistic. You're this fucking flat, because why haven't I seen the edge? Idiots. Our guy, O'birth, or A guy. He's not our guy. He's A guy in our story. Okay, one of those. Got it. Some dodgy tattoos from his past. He had a book that he self-published that had a lot to do with rocket propulsion and like the basic understanding of how to get a rocket out of the Earth's atmosphere. But one of the other things that he wrote about was a concept of concave mirrors, like a network of them, almost like a material

of them, that could be used to reflect sunlight onto a concentrated point on the Earth. So essentially kind of like taking the sunlight and then refracting it, it down to Earth is almost like a big spotlight. So his thinking was that this illumination could even avert disasters. He was thinking specifically of the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. As we are all constantly. Uh-huh. Yes. And if it couldn't have melted the iceberg in time, then it could have been used to illuminate the wreckage site and help pull survivors out of the water. It could have been daylight, essentially, over the wreckage site. And once we got the time machines in order, then...

Yeah, yeah, then be fine. Problem solved. Yeah, exactly. Fixed it. Where's baby Hitler? We're on a roll. He also had an idea that the space mirrors, as he coined them, could be used for melting icebergs for shipping lanes or just even manipulating the Earth's weather patterns, because that would be a great idea, fantastic idea. Let's do that. Let's do more of that. Put a finger in there and swirl it around and see what happens. There was in the 70s, a German-born...

rocket engineer, Dr. Croft-E-E-K-E-K-E-K, you know, German. That was German. Yeah. Oh, my God, I thought that was French. E-H-R-I-C-E. Anyway, this guy, he was part of Germany's V-2 rocket team during World War II, which developed weapons. But at the end of the war, when Germany surrendered, he got shuffled into the U.S.'s

Operation Paperclip, where they took German-S.-San War. scientists and engineers and said, you're not with Germany anymore. You're not with the access powers. But you're going to come over here and you're going to do work for the U.S. What's a little war crimes between friends? Exactly. Between geniuses? No big deal.

Between genii? In 1978, he wrote a paper detailing how huge orbiting mirrors outside of Earth's atmosphere could illuminate the night sky. So his thinking was like, okay, now we can have sun-loyal. on places that are dark for long periods of time or even farmers could use it to plant and harvest 24 hours a day. We could also convert the solar power into electricity, 24 hours a day as well, or on demand if we should need it. Fuck yeah. Yeah. Record your TV shows? Exactly. He called his idea Power Soleta.

And he never really got to see it to fruition because in 84, he did die. But don't worry, his remains were rocketed into space along with Star Trek creator, Gene Roddenberry, and the counterculture psychologist Timothy Leary. The company we keep. I know. That's no bad way to go out. That's no bad way to go out at all. I'm impressed.

I'm surprised I'm impressed I am, but that's a, you know, Gene Roddenberry. So in the 80s, the U.S. and NASA, they looked repeatedly at trying to harness some of this energy so that they could do that same kind of solar power on demand. But it never really got off the ground. Funding was always an issue. Nothing really came of it in the U.S. However, in Russia, things were a little different. So here's where we meet Vladimir Siermiatnikov. Okay. It's a long Russian name. Vladimir, we can just call him Vladdi. Vladdi, the dad, daddy, daddy. Daddy Flattie.

So Daddy Flattie, born in Arkangelsk, Soviet Union. Vladimir was born during the Stalin era, which meant that his family had to be relocated a few different times because his father, who was also an engineer in forestry, he was associated with, quote unquote, enemies of the people. Ah, don't want to be doing that. A rough time. A rough time. Vlad, our guy, he attempts to enroll at Moscow State University to study mechanics and mathematics. Go pods. Exactly. Due to his exam scores, he actually is not admitted. So he has to go to a trade school, which is also a good school, but not the like heavy math and science.

He still studies technical training. He still has a lot of engineering under his belt. When he graduates with excellent grades, he did very well. Test her hard. I'm a horrible tester too. Glad. It's okay. So when he graduated with his good grades, he was primed for the space race. Right when everything was kind of gaining traction, things were building up, he was right there ready to go. So he started off as a young engineer for a company called Nigeria. Josie, it's pronounced Nigeria. God, do we need to do a retake of that? And he worked specifically with Sergei Koralev, who was the chief designer of the intercontinental ballistics missile that launched Spugnant. The world's first artificial satellite, and it was visible to the whole world when it was

launched. Look how big our dick is. We're three motherfucker. Yeah, exactly. One of those. Very, like, groundbreaking and influential, like, I think part of the space trace and, like, sort of a ceiling that was shattered, right? Yeah, I think one of the first ceilings that was shattered.

It's partly because it was so visible to the wider public, too. Mm-hmm, that America's like, well, we got to get some, we got to get a thing that you're like, is that a star up there too? Yeah. Well, especially because shortly after Sputnik in 61, Russia launched the first manned spacecraft, Vostok, with cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin. Another ceiling broken. Another ceiling broken.

And Argy Vlad worked on that. project as well. Okay, so he's legit. He was like greatest hits of the Russian space race. Yeah, no, for sure. This is, this is quite a resume. I feel like, and I mean this and then like the highest possible compliment I can pay, I feel like this podcast is just Josie explaining the space race to me and it hits every time. Like, it's really good. It's another, it's another space race even. It's really interesting stuff, really interesting stuff. Yeah. Our guy Vlad loved docking. He's really into docking. You know what that means. Yeah, I do. Josie. I can tell by the way that you're putting strange emphasis on that. You have an accent, Jay-Z,

on that word. It's a sexual act. But this was not, not quite that. Though he did have a memoir called A Hundred Stories About Docking and Other Adventures in Space published in 2005. This is why you need a gay person on your staff. Okay. This is, shit like this. Diversity is important. Yes. When they named that busy, it's like shit like that. You just need like a culturally queer person there to like clock the tea, sis. You know what I mean? Mama.

That's what I'm saying. Clack. Fan clack Death drop. Do you know what I'm saying? I do. I really do. Yeah. Yeah. So Vlad invented what is known as APAS androgynous peripheral assembly system. Okay. What does that actually mean? It means that he created a

docking system so that different spacecrafts. Yeah, it's going to keep being funny. Yeah, it always will. It always will. A system that can work between any type of spacecraft, so the two parts that have to come together, according to what he created with this APAS system, it'll always work even between Soviet Union technology and the U.S. technology. The USB can go in both ways. Yes, yes.

He invented a way that the U.S. you can go in both ways, not just one. So the first unmanned spacecraft to utilize this docking system was in 67. And then in 69 was the first manned versions. Now I'm, now it's all 69 man docking. Was the first manned docking in 69? Is that what you're telling me, Josie, and expecting me to sit there without comment? There were two capsules.

That's just spicable. The capsules make it kinky. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that shit. So Vlad's system successfully docked more than 200 missions, and it has never failed in space. It has never had an issue in space. Docking never fails, dude, docking never fails.

Exactly, exactly. Google it. Google it, folks. Docking never fails. See what docking is. Just Google it. It's funny. It's about church.

You love it. Reddit's helpful there. For his docking prowess, Vlad was awarded the linen prize in 1976. The technology that he created was a way for U.S. and Soviet technology to kind of literally combine. So the International Space Station could come into contact with the Russian Mir space station and still functioned perfectly. So he was instrumental in kind of the thawing of the space race as well and how the two countries would come together. to work more, not completely, but more so than before. And as things in the Cold War started to thaw a little bit, Vlad was one of the Russian

scientists that was repeatedly sent to the U.S. He spoke English really well. He was interested in everything that was being worked on in the U.S. So he was kind of a natural selection for that collaboration. American engineer Bruce Bantt, who worked with him on, the joint U.S. and USSR, Soyuz and Apollo program, he told a Washington Post reporter, quote, he, meaning Vlad, was always thinking. If there was a problem, he always had a sketchpad. We had our share of failures and problems in the test phase, but it wouldn't be long, sometimes overnight, before there would be solutions. End quote. We love a competent coworker, hey. It's such a rare gem. Yeah. Fair enough. It was during his time when he was working with U.S.

engineers, that he was given the nickname Big Cheese. Fuck yeah. In part because he was kind of, he was a fucking pro. He was a big cheese. He was competent employee, big cheese over here. But the other note is his last name, Sierra Mietnikov. Sir Mietnikov, yeah. Sier or something close to it, I'm probably saying it wrong, obviously, means cheese in Russian.

Ah. Yeah. So they would call them big cheese. Big cheese. The little fucking cheese was over here. Yeah. Hey? Exactly.

A little fucking cheese dip. So as much as our bro loved docking in the late... Every time, I knew. I know. I almost swallowed a cherry pit when you said that, you know? Oh, my gosh. In the late 80s, his passion project was turned towards solar sails. We've talked about these.

This idea of propelling a space cross. by, it's the star's radiation, the pressure from the radiation that can push a sail. Yeah. It's Captain Planet shit. Essentially, yeah. Silver Surfer is very this. As the wind blows like a sailboat sail, there's a same pressure caused by a star's radiation that could essentially push a spacecraft in space.

And remember, there is no friction in space. There's no air. So just a little like, boop, can move and move and move. Everything is fine in space. There's no friction there at all. We all go along in outer space. It's the earth that poisons us against one another. Exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. Everyone's doing really great. So I said this was the late 1980s. So let's check in on the USSR at this point. Da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. No worries. So after Stalin died in 53, he was an intense guy, right?

Even Vlad's own family had issues. leadership was really concentrating on the Cold War ever since Stalin's death. And this is space race. Sputnik is 57. Vostok, the first man spacecraft we already talked about. That's 61. The U.S. gets to the moon 69. Space race is kind of a big part of the Russian scientific community, especially aerospace engineering. However, in 85, that is when we get Gorbachev in power in Russia.

and the situation in Russia is not really great. The average Russian is not living a good life. Hasn't been since the Stalin era that there were issues with food, with everybody getting enough food. So some very basic needs not being met. And so Gorbachev steps in and he says, we need to rework things. We need to judge this place up.

Yeah, we need to choose this place up. So this place could use some fucking throw pillows, guys. Yeah. We're going to clean this rug. That needs a lot of help. Yeah, yeah. Steam it. Uh-huh.

So he has a two-pronged approach. One of these prongs is termed perestroika. Yeah, that rung about for me too. I guess like, I don't know, European history. Social's loving. Yeah, yeah, exactly. World's history, yeah. So perestroika is the same word for restructuring.

So essentially, he's coming in and being like, the economic situation we need to maybe open it up a little bit more, not have it be so... Let's break down this wall between the dining room and the living room we can have an open concept. Yes, yes. And then that way there's not the centralized government doing every, everything. Because the USSR has been so focused on the Cold War, space race included,

the defense budget is most likely around 25% of the gross national product, which is a lot when a guy down the street is not getting enough food to feed his family. So one of the things that Gorbachev does is he cuts government expenditures, which include education, social services, medical care. And you would think that the focusing on more domestic things, this is going to like help things domestically. It doesn't because he's cutting things that affect the common Russian person, Russian citizen. The other prong of his two-prong system is called Glasnosh.

Glasnosed, yes. Yes? Is that ringing a bell for you too? Yeah, yeah. Okay. The exact same bell as perestroika, I remember that. Okay. Okay, this one didn't ring as hard as Parastroika. I don't know why. For me. Do you remember what it is? No, but I feel like I remember seeing this word in like Mad Magazine. Oh, okay. So there you go. There. Yeah, that's good. So this second prong, it translates to essentially openness. It's this idea that there needs to be more

political transparency for the system to actually work. And so it's essentially democratizing it. Do a small degree. It's opening up. Hey guys. How about liberalism? Yeah. Come on. What do you say? Glashnash is what got our boy Vlad over to the U.S. in the first place. Right. He was like, well, if I'm going to be making money, I should be making money. And this idea of like a little bit more open, Gorbachev also changes a little bit of the foreign policy in Russia so that they're not always on the offensive side of things. And it has big changes because Russia for so long has been told and has identified with being an aggressor on the world stage.

the Cold War. Thank God that's over. Yeah, right? Few. So this is the political, economic situation that he enters when he begins to look for financial and governmental backing for his Sunsale project, which means that no,

he's not going to get it. They are no longer interested in the space race that is draining coffers. No, why do we have to be racing? Let's take it easy, guys. It's just, Mother Russia, chill. What if we took the money? that we were using constantly send things into space and gave people like some soup with it. Bread? Just spitball and shit. Just spitball and shit.

Carves? Everyone loves a good carb. Fuck yeah, got a carb load. Yeah. Got a book before you cut. Exactly. Yeah. What the Russian USSR leaders were really interested in, though, was maximizing a productivity.

They were thinking, we need to up our game so that we can actually compete with Western countries. that means you got to work longer. Yeah. Peter, get out there. I don't want any of this eight-hour shit. I want 24-7. If you're not like that buff man with the sickle from all the communist propaganda boosters,

who's like hugging like China. A shh. And they're farming together. Yes. Big, big, big fucking forearms. If you're not that, then fuck off. A little bit, yeah. If the USSR leaders could extend the workday,

they certainly would have. Well, that guy. At Argyve Lad thinking, hey, my mirror stuff could actually do that. So instead of proposing solar sails and space flight... No, Josie, no. Stop. No. You can't be telling me the truth. Went back to the drawing board and said, let's launch a mirror into space. We'll reflect sunlight on parts of Siberia in particular that need more daylight. And we'll extend the hours of sunlight. To extend the work week? It'll boost agricultural productivity. Again, those fields can be producing.

24-7, even in the winter. It'll illuminate cities that are often in darkness for long, long periods of time. This is near or if not in the Arctic Circle. So that means you have endless summer, but you'll have endless winter. It seems like Vlad Sierman Etnikov gets kind of into it. He tells the Moscow Times, think what it will mean for the future of mankind. No more electricity bills. No more long, dark winters.

This is a serious breakthrough for. for technology, end quote. He even got to the point where he was saying, you know what, we can cure seasonal depression with this large space mirror. We can make that happen. Very tempting. That's very tempting. Lots of people.

Lots of people. I have seasonal depression. I get that. Exactly. This feels like a Mr. Burns scheme. You know what I mean? I'm wary. It's a very evil villain.

Bade me in light, Russian man. Yeah. It's got a little bit of blowfeld to it. I agree. I think there is a Bond movie. I think it's dying. another day where this is a evil villain's weapon. It's like a huge space mirror.

A big mirror in space? Yeah. USSR leaders hear this proposal. Seasons of depression. Count me in. Siberia. Fuck yeah. We're Russian.

Are you kidding me? Let's get this done. Vodka industry steps in. No, no. We keep it dark. It's nice and that. We like. We like, yes.

Very good. Serve people or you need a drink with a friend. Yeah. Russia is lacking in. heat, we'll say. As a nation, need a little heat. So the idea of bringing more sunlight, everyone's stoked. Enough that he gets his funding. Vlad gets his funding. Even after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russian government backers are still there to support him. So in 1993, he gets a chance to put it to the test. He constructs a 65 foot wide sheet of mylar.

So the mylar is like a really reflective material, but it's also really lightweight and strong and thin. And the idea is that it will be unfurled. It's all like kind of like rolled up. And then it through force caused by the mere space station, it'll unfurl into this big like huwpwamp, huge wide. A big huwbwom. Is that the scientific name for this thing? Wawwamp. Yeah.

Because there's a lot of sound in space. That's what I hear. Famously. Famously, a lot of sound in space. In space, everyone can hear you scream, I believe, is the tagline for alien. And our boy Vlad, he calls the project Zanamya, which means banner in Russian. So the first prototype, Zanamia won. It wasn't actually sent into space.

It was just constructed to see the tensile strength and any technical issues before they sent it into space. So during the early tests, according to Warren Leary of the New York. times, quote, Russian engineers say the small reflector should cast light equivalent to three to five full moons over an area of Earth measuring about three miles in diameter, end of quote. It is pretty big. And I mean, you just kind of imagine it like a spotlight, though. Like, that's what it functions like. I don't use the phrase playing God a lot on this podcast, but it, uh, that feels unnatural. And those feels strange. Right. Big spotlight, big strange spotlight. How do you feel, Josie, we talked about this all the way back in episode 130 something. Like I said, I'm

forgetting the numbers. Probably like 134 or something. The Mad Trapper or Rat River I reported back on the trip that Rui and I had done to the Yukon. Yeah. And the summer, endless, endless light. How do you feel about that inherently? How does that make you, like, is that too much? I've been thinking about, I'm really fascinated by the Arctic as a place as like a, as a place of all of this light and then like none of this light. The Arctic gets the same amount of light as everywhere else in the world. The intensity of it is much less, and the duration of it is so different compared to winter. It's cool.

I don't know. I think the Arctic is a really cool and interesting place. When I was in Whitehorse, Rui and I went to the Beringia Museum, which is like a museum that's dedicated to documenting, like, the Bering Ice Bridge that, like, how people kind of came from, like, East Asia to Western North America via this road of ice. And, like, there were giant sloths back in the day, like sloths is as big as trees that to pull the really interesting stuff with like a variety of like real and simulated skulls that you can kind of go through to be like, whoa, this is where mammoths. When we're talking about

Ice Age shit, we're talking about mammoths. This is where mammoths were. That's crazy. Yeah, I think it's a really cool place in the world. And I, I dislike the idea that it needs to be like mind-extructed. Yeah, or like sunlight needs to go onto it. It's like, no, no, no, it doesn't. It's fine. No, no. Use your mirror to check your nose for zits. Yeah. Is the lesson that. of this story. Is your mascara running? Check your vulva with a hand mirror. You know, all the hits. These are important things, yes.

Yes. Back to Zamnia. Because it's Zambnia 2, a satellite that was launched February 4th, 1993, that was the most successful of the project. So what happened is the original prototype was relatively small, and then they got bigger as they launched it into space. And it had these eight sections that would unfur. like we mentioned, through this like centrifugal force.

So it got launched, it opened wide, and it reflected the sun. It had a beam about two or three times as bright as the moon, and it was about two and a half miles wide. Oh, too bright. Too wide. Too wide. Too bright. What's this? What is this sunlit hell that you're forcing?

What the fuck? No. It passed over parts of Canada, Europe, and into Russia. Western Russia, and observers at the time across Canada in particular called into the CBC radio program Quirks and Quarks. Are you familiar? I'm not that Canadian, sadly. Well, fine. Next time, next time. But they reported their sightings, and it's a really cute little segment that they ran because they set up a voicemail box and folks would call in and be like, I saw this, I saw the blah, blah, blah. Quarks and Quarks, the actual CBC program, had an interview with Sira Mietnikov and asked him about the process.

And he said, I would love to actually have those first-hand accounts if you could send them to me when you've gathered all of them. And so CBC sent him the first-hand accounts from Canadians. So Zanamya 2, it does work. It has a visible, though not everywhere, the cloud cover over Europe meant that a lot of people, it wasn't really visible. there. Another strange issue is that it just, it moved fat. I had like a five mile per hour clip. It would just like, and you can imagine it's a satellite, right? So it's moving around in orbit. So the idea of this like spotlight that you would train on a field or on, you know, the Titanic sinking site is kind of like, what are you talking about? But it does function the way that they

intended it to. They didn't intend to get that far down the road with this second attempt. We're testing things out still. We know this. It's an odd idea, but the test is successful. And James Oberg, a U.S. space expert at the time, who is routinely critical of the Russian space program, even said, you know what, this team deserves praise. Hats off to those Ruski's. Yeah. They breed a good scientist over there. Quote, it's amazing that in the depths of their poverty, they still find the time to do something far-sighted like this, end quote.

You know what? That's really big of that. Even though they're out there drinking vodka and fucking snow. They still are able to pull themselves out of the gutter long enough to put a little extra sparkle in the sky. And isn't that what we're here for, folks? Yeah. It's very noble of them.

Now, as you've already pointed out, there are some environmental concerns with having this huge flashlight shine on the earth at all times of night. The first folks, again, this is 93, you'd think there'd be maybe a little bit more, but the first folks to raise a recus are, it was mainly amateur astronomers who said, this is going to fuck with the night sky. Like, we need to be able to study the night sky, and you're just going to be pumping all this extra light. I think that's nice.

I think, like, yeah, why are we fucking with the night sky? The night sky's fucking beautiful, isn't it? Yeah. It could be a little long, and it can be a little depressing. Especially in Siberia. In the darkness, all the tree branches feel like monsters. you know, but also there's beauty in the night, right? Like, especially when you're in, like, somewhere like Russia, you know what I mean?

Outside of a major urban spot, let's say, I imagine the night sky's quite stunning there. Yeah. Now, the response from the Zanamia team reads as following. Quote, artificial illumination will only be conducted over infrastructure poor cities and industrial zones in regions of the world that experience long polar nights. If we are not able to provide precise illumination, will not develop this application. The entire program is still in the R&D stage. Space power releases very little waste, heat, and no CO2 into the Earth's atmosphere.

We see a potential for future photovoltaic SPS, which is like the program, solar power, blah, blah, blah, in developed countries. However, we do not see a future need for space illumination in developed countries sucked as the U.S. We wouldn't do this to Americans. Right. It has a little bit of like, we would never do that in the wealthy neighborhood, in the white neighborhood. In the first world, we wouldn't subject anyone to this is for, you know,

the people who need to get to work. Yeah. But on the other hand, it's like, it's specifically for infrastructure, poor cities, industrial zones, and areas that experience polar night, which is like, so you're talking about Russia. Like talking about Arkangelsk, probably, when I grew up. Yeah.

Or it may be some spots of the Canadian North, but even then, like, it's an interesting, I guess, defense where it's like, we're just going to fuck with our own shit. So don't worry. At least that's what I hear in that defense. This will just be an issue for Russian environmental concerns. And who gives a shit about them? Maybe, maybe. So Zanamya 2.5 is the next launch that goes up. As they all do, they incrementally get larger.

Right. So this will hopefully reflect a luminosity of between five to ten full moons, which I love that as a measuring device. As a measurement. Yes. No, I was just thinking I was like. How elegant. Beautiful. Yes.

No, I adore it. I completely adore it. Yeah. And this one, this spot of light, is going to cover about five miles wide, the spotlight situation. Okay. And they're going to try. and get it so that it can be stationary and illuminate a specific spot for several minutes. Just chill out for a second, man. It doesn't need to be streaking a big, like burning line across

the earth like an ant being like torched by a child with a magnifying glass. Right, exactly. Maybe it stays in one space for a minute or two. Yeah, yeah. The satellite goes up. Everything is going according to plan, no issues until they start the unfolding process. At the same time, though, that the material is meant to be opening, there is a rogue signal that is sent to the mirror space station antenna that it should also go up. So as this big, delicate, very thin mylar material is starting to spread out, they are inserting a large metal pole into the mix.

And so the milar gets wrapped around the antenna, and they try and retract the antenna. Who said that? No, ah, uh, but by the time that they like pause and try to... Drills. This is why we do drills. The mylar, the mirror, has essentially torn beyond repair and cannot function, cannot undergo the test. Back to start.

Yes. Mission Control in Moscow watches in dismay. They're like, fuck, fuck, fuck. And nothing really can be done. It can't unfurl anymore, but it's not reflecting the little part that is out. And the whole satellite is just allowed to fall to Earth. And in the next few days, it burns up in the atmosphere. According to Valerie Linden, a spokesperson for the mission control on Moscow, she said, the mood here is very depressed.

The failure was especially painful because of the huge worldwide interest that the experiment aroused. Remember the CBC is getting voicemails. Quarks and quarks. Yeah. Worldwide interest right there. And she continues, she says, we have forgotten the old principle of Russian space programs to do something first and boast about it. only after, end quote. That's a, you know, that's kind of a good way to put it is, if you want to say it in

less put it in less put it, turns we put the cart before the horse, right? Yeah. Which I think you're actually supposed to just, no, no, you wouldn't because it would walk into the cart. I get it now. Right? Yeah. Yeah.

Thank you for explaining. No worries. No worries. Dear listeners, yeah. What made it in particularly quite tragic, especially for our guy Vlad, is that the program is totally scrapped. The Russian officials are just like, you know what? We can't.

It's a little cockamamie-me-ed plan and we can't. No, it's not going to happen. We'll have to try the giant space mirror again. We're kicking the can down the line. Yeah, yeah. When we're a little more stable. The people aren't ready for it yet. No.

It's moving to open the hand mirror and look at your own vulva. Sometimes you're not ready. Sometimes you just want to clap that compact clothes and put that shit away. So Vlad Sira Mietnikov spent years trying to recreate the Dhanamia II success. But he can never achieve that success again. The project just cost too much money and it was just totally scrapped. So he returns to working on his favorite docking mechanisms. Yeah, my favorite too.

Yeah, exactly. Until his death in 2006. He died doing what he loved. Docking. Exactly. Exactly. In 2005, he published his memoir, 100 stories of docking. So.

A seminal text in every sense of the word. Exactly. And you might be wondering, okay, that's 1993 is when it failed. Wow, we're like 30 years beyond that. What's happening now? Now that you mention it, I guess it's not 1993. Yeah. Now that you pointed out.

Yeah. So when it comes to the technology of a solar sail, the solar energy propulsion, that is a functioning space technology. Cool. There are a few countries, there are a few space agencies that have had it functioning. One of the most successful is Japan. Okay. They have a program called I-K-A-R-O-S. Sure. Or I-C-C-R-O-S, depending. I'm sure it's a great fucking pun in Japanese, dude. I'm sure it's kill. in it. Yeah, exactly. And this satellite that uses this technology has sailed past Venus and orbited the sun. Wow. Yeah. Like, Icarat, you, but do, but like, do you remember how that story ended? I know, why would you? It was an Icarus, like, went around the sun and had a great time and got a tan and came back.

Right, yeah. That's not what that story's about. Those wings did melt. But that was a successful deployment of the technology. Now, you might be wondering, wait a second, but what about the whole space mirror spotlight situation? No, I was happy that was gone. I didn't want to call a teacher, we have homework. Like, I didn't want to call attention to that. Well, you'd be incorrect, because that is still a very much of a thing. There is an American company, Reflect Orbital, that, according to its website, makes, quote, clean, abundant energy available on demand. We exist because reliable access to affordable energy is that. the foundation of human progress, economic growth, and a healthier planet.

You know what? I don't disagree with that. If that part of the pitch were all kind of that it was, I wouldn't disagree. Sure. Sure. Good clean energy for the people. And you can burn ants from fucking a million miles off, but you better go quick because this thing's flying along. This company is still developing. They're still launching satellites. You have to have many satellites in the sky to make this thing function so that it is stationary. But they're selling it as a way to power, solar power banks, to illuminate natural disaster sites so that recovery, which is what that German, early German engineer was thinking too. Obert was also like the Titanic, right? Yeah. And then to essentially power and illuminate cities that don't have the infrastructure.

sure. But it's also for sale. It's like, come and talk to us and we'll like flip on the light for you. And then when your, when your bill runs out, we're going to turn it off. Capitalism must be a part of all of it. Everything, if it doesn't make money, it shouldn't exist. Right, gang? That's what we think. Here on Bittersweet Infamy, the profitable podcast. Yes. Practically pays for itself. We're basically fucking Susie Orman and Jim Kramer right here. Come on now. That point about the economics and the capitalism of it all is so, I feel like that's the thing that I take away most is like this technology of solar propulsion is so rad.

This idea that a spacecraft, if it's built, scoogum enough, can be in flight indefinitely. What an elegant and beautiful solution to interplanetary to like intergalactic spaceflight. Like that's rad. But then we take that technology and we're like, oh, that's. not really, we can't, uh, what if we made a big mirror in the sky? That would make people work longer. Yes.

Yes. And confuse animals and cause seeds to sprout out of seasons. The cicadas are committing suicide. What's going on? Yeah. Yeah. It's just like, whoa, we really fucked that up. That could have been really a beautiful.

And the word elegant comes to mind a lot for, for that idea of, Dude, I'm so down on humans. I don't think that we make decisions like that. I don't think we make decisions based on like what's good for the environment, what's good for each other, what's beautiful. I think we make decisions based on like how can the rich exploit the poor. I hate to say it. I think we, the next depressing layer of it is we're kind of losing an idea of what is good for the environment

or what is good for humans. Yeah. No, for sure. I get that. And I think technology is a really, an easy way to see that equation. laid out is like, oh, we're going to be more productive with a spotlight in the sky. We're going to be more productive with AI. It's going to make the world better. But then on the other hand, it's like all this environmental decay. Like what? Let's use AI for an example. All the people

who have the power to do better in the world with AI, like really reserve its use, for example, for like the detection of cancer or things like that, are not incentivized to do that. They're incentivized to keep themselves rich. Elon Musk was recently named the world's first trillionaire. You could do so much with a trillion dollars that would really, really help this world. And the Jeff Bezos's is, et cetera, I think of, like, the people who are doing really well and have all this power. And it's really accomplished capitalists, right? Yeah. Katie Perry somehow. Somehow. Yeah. Killed that nun and took her life essence. And now she's our first lady. It's wild times up here. I'm so sorry about that. No, dude, I'm into it. I'm so interested. There's such a perfect, like, couple of

Sims to meet one another. I love it. It's great. According to Vladimir Sira Miatnikov, quote, space is like the sea. If you are clever enough, you should be able to sail between planets, end quote. And I just want to focus on the fact that if you are clever enough, you should be able to sail between planets. Not if you are clever enough, you should be able to illuminate the Arctic. That's not now. Did Titanic April teach you nothing? Exactly. For icebergs.

In the space sea, Jupiter is the greatest. Let me tell you about a couple of my friends. They're twins. Fobos and Demos, the moons of Mars. Come on, you got to watch out for this shit. Oh, yeah, yeah. If you're going to win the space race, parentheses, the Christopher Columbus-themed smaller space race.

Right, exactly. You got to look out for these things. To clarify. Yes. I know. And, yeah, we always seem to, like, attack some. stupidity to our most clever invention, which is beautifully human. Yeah, no, there's something about that that I, like, I wouldn't, we don't tell you the stories

without the stupidity here, do we? No. Every now and then we do, and then we, like, give lavish apologies. This one's a downer, guys. I'm really sorry, but it's important. This was not, I mean, it could have been important, but, like, malfunctioning mirror that we tried to use to, like, light up Siberia for 10 seconds. Like, come on, guys. You shot yourselves in the foot with that one. Yeah. I'm excited for these Nanaimo bars, though. Oh, I hope you enjoy it. Low Kirk Genuinely, from the bottom of my heart. Low Kirkuanely. Low Kirk Genuanyuanly, I hope you enjoy those Nanaimo bars. You have to make them, you absolutely, Mitchell's right, you absolutely like, you're, it's not like, look, I'm not going to be mad at you as a friend if you don't,

but like I was, I sent those because like that fills five minutes of a future podcast. God damn it. Robot Taylor. Exactly. Hey, I Taylor. Thanks for listening. If you want more infamy, we've got plenty more episodes at bittersweetinfemy.com or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you want to support the podcast, shoot us a few bucks via our coffee account. At k-o-fifin-fi.com forward slash bittersweet infamy.

But no pressure. Bittersweet infamy is free, baby. You can always support us by liking, rating, subscribing. Leaving a review, following us on Instagram at Bittersweet Infamy, or just pass the podcast along to a friend who you think would dig it. Stay sweet. The sources that I used in this episode include an article from BBC.com. It could illuminate an area the size of a football stadium,

how Russia launched a giant space mirror in 1993, written by Miles Burke and published to BBC.com February 3, 2025. In The Washington Post, I read an obituary, Vladimir Siermanetnikov designed docking system for space capsules, written by Patricia Sullivan, published Sunday October 1st, 2006. I read an article in SmithsonianMag.com, how a Russian space smear briefly lit up the night, written by Danny Lewis and published January 21st, 2016. I watched a YouTube video entitled, Why Did Russia Launch a Giant Mirror into Space? posted by Dark Space, November 3, 2024. I read an article in the LA Times,

experimental orbiting mirror reflects Russians ingenuity, written by Mara Reynolds, and this was published October 31, 1998. For the Columbus 500th anniversary, I read an article in the Tampa Bay Times, sailing on the wings of the sun. Published May 27th, 1990, and updated October 17th, 2005. When speaking about the CBC episode, Quirks and Quarks, I listened to their

episode from the archives, the Russian space mirror that flashed across Canadian skies. That was posted June 5th, 2026. The idea for the entire story came from an article in The Guardian, entitled Bomb the Arctic, Damn the Mediterranean, and Build a Second Moon. outlandish plans to remodel our climate. Written by Tim Flannery posted June 5th, 2006, and that was to promote the book A Brief History of Climate Folly, also by Tim Flannery, and Emma Flannery. If you would like to help support the podcast, please head over to coffee.com slash bittersweet infamy. That's k-o-fi.com slash bittersweet infamy. If you become a monthly subscriber, you have full on better.

access to the Bitter Sweet Film Club, where you can tell us what movies to watch. We talk about them, record them, and you get to listen in. And when you become a monthly subscriber and access the Bitter Sweet Film Club, you join the star-studded ranks of our other monthly subscribers, including Terry, Jonathan, Lizzie D, Eric, Joe, Sof, Dylan, and Sackchel the Cat. Bitter Sweet Infamy is a proud member of the 604 Podcast Network. This episode was edited by Taylor Basso and me, Josie Mitchell. The interstitial music you heard earlier was by Mitchell Collins,

and the song you are listening to now is T Street by Brian Steele.