Off-Nominal - 06 - I’ve Got Like 35 Loons

Episode Date: March 6, 2018

Brendan Bryne joins Jake and Anthony to discuss the National Space Council, the 2019 NASA Budget Request, and the wonders of Jai Alai. Beers Jai Alai - Cigar City Brewing - Untappd Red Fish - Flying Fish Brewing Company - Untappd HopFish India Pale Ale (IPA) - Flying Fish Brewing Company - Untappd Sasquatch Stout - Old Yale Brewing Co. - Untappd Topics Palm Beach Jai-alai Commercial - YouTube NASA Provides Coverage of the National Space Council Meeting - YouTube As Elon Musk antagonized rival, the space industry battled over who will host a cocktail reception for the vice president - The Washington Post How the Trump administration wants to make it easier for commercial space companies to do business - The Verge NASA budget proposal plans end of NASA funding of ISS, seeks commercial transition - SpaceNews.com Astronaut Story Musgrave Talks Imagination And Ingenuity - Are We There Yet - 90.7 WMFE Picks Chasing New Horizons: Inside the Epic First Mission to Pluto, Alan Stern, David Grinspoon - Amazon.com Mars: The NASA Mission Reports: Apogee Books Space Series 10 (Includes CDROM: Mars Movies and Images): Robert Godwin: 9781896522623: Amazon.com: Books Mars The NASA Mission Reports by Robert Godwin An Apogee Books Publication Mars: The NASA Mission Reports Vol 2: Apogee Books Space Series 44: Robert Godwin: 9781894959056: Amazon.com: Books Mars The NASA Mission Reports Volume 2 by Robert Godwin An Apogee Books Publication A Message from Earth Follow Brendan Are We There Yet - 90.7 WMFE Are We There Yet? (@AWTYMars) | Twitter Brendan Byrne (@SpaceBrendan) | Twitter Follow Jake WeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to Mars WeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | Twitter Jake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | Twitter Follow Anthony Main Engine Cut Off Main Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | Twitter Anthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | Twitter

DLS and go for main engine start. Welcome to space. Okay, so we've been trying to get this call started for a few minutes now. And it's like, it reminds me of this shirt that I'm wearing now. And it says, I never want to hold again. It's the Rocket Lab shirt. And that's how it goes? Anthony, how you doing?

I'm doing good. We got a friend here this time. We do have a friend. Who else is out there? Let's hear it. Oh, hello. Is that me? That's you. The only other one. Hey guys. I'm sorry I delayed you.

I apologize. I apologize. We call that the Elon Musk. I just show up whenever, right? Show up whenever. Whenever the driver gets there. We're going to assume it's because you had to take a swing out to landing zone one and just take a look at the boosters before you showed up, right?

That's, well, it was actually, I was in a conversation with our another favorite space reporter of ours, Emily Speck. So I was hanging out with her tonight. Nice, nice. Lost track of time. Sorry about that. It's an acceptable reason. Yeah. Okay, so this is Brendan Byrne, who's joined us today.

We thought, hey, we've been doing off nominal for a few episodes now. Maybe you guys are tired of just hearing me and Anthony talk because we have the same old stale ID as month after month, and it's just really wearing you down. We thought we'd inject some new blood into it. And yeah, so Brendan, before we start, You want to just kind of let everybody know who you are and maybe a plug for your sweet podcast that you do? Yeah, I'm friends of Jake and Anthony's.

I think that's the only reason I'm here, right? I'm friends with these guys and I host a podcast of my own called Are We There Yet? It's kind of all right. But more importantly, I'm friends with Jake and Anthony. I had a good time with them when they were in town. Yep, so that's me. You did make an appearance in reference on the last episode of this when we discussed the way that Jake had to make his entrance to Kennedy Space Center

and how you and I did hear. I did just cruise through the line. Jake was just, you know, with the peons out there. That was pretty cool. Like, I love, I listen to that episode. I love how you were like, oh, yeah, Brendan knew what he was doing. We, like, drove through the gates. Like, I had no FN idea what I was doing, Anthony.

You drove with purpose, though. We were just cruising. And I was like, oh, crap. I was thinking about sitting in his line all day. And here we are just left lane, baby. that's the number one rule of journalism is like pretend like you belong there and then you get in where you need to go and we were there what 30 minutes early like we were there super early so right through the gate no problem drove the purpose drove for the purpose so meanwhile i was like baking in the parking lot of the badging office waiting for the the immigrant bus to show up i was like i made sure like all the SpaceX people that i that i know i'm like i'm not friends with this guy i don't know who this guy is. Like, if he's, he's, he's not with me. He's not with me.

Well, I was, I was laughing because I, you know, I mentioned this last, we're going to rehash the whole show here again, but I was just saying that, like, I should have just gone with you because I could have just taken that green badge off that says that wasn't American. And like, they wouldn't have anything. They didn't check anything. They wouldn't have. There probably would have been like a, there would have been like a manhunt though after, after they, they, they board the bus and they counted. They're like, there's someone missing. I do have to say, so, so, um, So Jake hung out with us.

You came a few days early. So Jake stayed with me. I live in Orlando. I'm a few miles away from Cape Canaveral. But Jake stayed with me. And it was the Super Bowl. And so we hung out and watched the Super Bowl together. And then exactly.

I'm sure Anthony knows exactly what happened that day. So I was cleaning out the guest room because I got my mother-in-law coming. And I found there's so much Canadian coin just like everywhere. Like on the windowsill, there's like. Spare, like you like empty your pockets just threw it in the room. Did I really do that? I don't remember doing that. How many loons did you count? There's a lot of loons

35 loons. Guys, guys, it's loonies. It's loonies. I don't remember doing that. But hey, that's a good, it's a good souvenir for you. I thought I'd send it back to you, but it's going to cost like 40 bucks to send a lot more than that's worth. That and my phone charger, I think I left. Your phone charger, yes. I'll keep it here for you that for the next

big launch, Jake. You're all set. You got spare change in a phone charger at my house. I think I'm like one for 30 on a trip where I don't forget something. At least it was the cheap stuff, the coins and the cables. Sounds good. So the real reason we asked him to come here is because he got to go to a cool event recently, or cool up for debate, I guess, but we'll let him tell us how cool it was. Brendan, you were at National Space Council? No, I wasn't. Oh, I thought you were there.

I was going to be there, and then I saw the schedule. And you were like, no. They needed people to be there like, like seriously, if I wanted to record it with my own equipment, I had to be there at like 3 o'clock in the morning. Oh, man. So I was like, nope. And then if you wanted to cover it, just cover it. You had to be there at like 6 o'clock in the morning. But the day before. You had to get in there on a bus?

The day before was the test, media availability. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's right. Did that instead. And so there's no way that I get my editor to say. say, oh yeah, you can take a whole day to go watch the spacecraft and take a whole day to go meet the vice president. So I didn't go. I covered it.

I watched it on NASA TV, which is the same as everybody else would have. Well, it's better because you can do other stuff and be productive while it happens. Yeah, it was not very, there wasn't much that came out of that meeting, was there? It was a pretty rough. Shit as they, everyone gave everybody for like the night before event where there was like some party where you would go and schmooze. Like, I don't know why people are under the impression that the schmoozing part isn't the main thing. You know what I mean? Like that's kind of the main idea is that it's your chance to meet the right person and say the right thing and get a relationship going that leads somewhere interesting.

I feel like the schmoozing part is the part of the thing that matters. And I think the schmoozing part was the story. So, like, if you look at the official invitation and saw who hosted the schmoozing party, you kind of saw what the whole National Space Council was all about there. I mean, the actual meeting was just prepared remarks and people reading it. But, yeah, the schmusing was the big – I tried to get in the schmoozing. I tried to get in the schmusing. And Anthony, the gentleman that I introduced you to when we were at Falcon Heavy, Dale Catcham, he tried to get me in the schmusing too. And we could not get into the schmoozing event.

Because that would have been fun to be a fly on that wall to see, you know, who's courting who and what's happening behind the scenes would have been very interesting. That was definitely not a very press-friendly event. Yeah, I think they would want to keep that out of the line light. Yeah, I was not allowed to go there at all. Do we want to talk about what we're drinking before we get into it? Oh, I forgot about the whole segment of the show. You're like so excited that Brendan's here.

I know. I love this. This is great, Anthony. Tell me about Vice President Pence. You're my number one and only fan. I love it. Go ahead, Jake. You brought it up.

No, no, no. The guest has to go first. So, Brendan, you got something there? Did you have time? Yeah, so I went up to the brewery to meet up with Emily Speck and my whole plan was to get a growler of that Falconers, which you and I had and totally forgot to do any of that stuff. So I grabbed another local beer that I had my fridge. I've got a Cigar City High Lie, which we got somebody in the chat drinking one of those too. Oh, really? Excellent.

Are they from Florida? No. Pennsylvania. Oh, excellent. Well, High Lie is a wonderful kind of Florida-esque sport that they named this beer after. I'd be, oh, you've been in the brewery twice. Excellent, Kurt. Yeah, I've actually never been to the brewery. I've drank a lot of their beers, I've never been to brewery. But Highlight's a phenomenal sport where you can bet legally in the state of Florida, which is wonderful. And they've got really, really cheap beer, really cheap ice cream. So Highline's a lot of fun to go see. So the beer is delicious. It's a very hoppy, lovely beer. So that's what I'm drinking.

Hold on, we got to talk about actual High Lie for a second. You went to a match? No, there's High Lie. There's High Lie Stadiums all across Florida. And they're like, when High Life season is in season, it's incredible. And it's really cool.

So it's like... You go to Miami one, though? I feel like you got to go to one in Miami so that you can see all the non-legal stuff. I've been to one, not Miami, just north of Miami in Fort Lauderdale. Which is pretty fun. We have one up here in Maitland.

There's also one at Dania Beach. It's cool. Oh, Dania Highla. I've seen one of those ads for Dania Highlight. Yeah, so it's a lot of fun. I'm going to put a link into the show notes because there's a YouTube video of the Dania Highlight ad from like the 90s and it's awesome. So check that.

Yes, I'm basically by having a lot. No, not even close. Not even close optimistic marketing. This is two people who've lived in Florida and I have to say that if I had not watched the Mad Men show where there's like the one episode where the guy tries to sell them highlight, I would have no idea what you were talking about just to be clear. Like I don't know anything about it other than I think it's kind of like lacrosse but a little bit weird. I don't know. It's basically like these guys have these giant. Oh man. How would you explain what the the hand thing is Anthony? I would say like a banana catcher like you know one of those like a banana shaped lacrosse is it's like lacrosse is it's like lacrosse cricket. I would say. Yeah. And then you basically just wing this wooden ball against a wall.

And it's like handball, but with this wooden ball that goes at like 200 miles an hour. And then people in the crowd can bet on it. And then they can also yell at the people that are playing based upon what your bet is. So that's my wife's favorite thing to do is. So we'll bet we'll do a trifecta, which is you basically pick the top three teams. If the teams aren't doing well, my wife will just yell obscenities at these folks. that are playing. Why do we go to?

When is High-Lye season? I don't think it's in season right now. But next time you guys are in-tell, we'll go to High-Lie. You've got to go to High-Lie. But only if your wife comes. Yeah, I want to go to Brendan. She's so mean and she's so great. It's fantastic.

So, but yeah, so long story short, the beer I'm drinking is based on the lovely sport of High-Ly that we have here. It's a delicious beer. Okay. Okay, good. Have had it. Would love to drink it again. I'll ship you some up there, Anthony.

I'll send you up. Thanks. Jake? No, you go first. Okay. I've got a, everyone knows I'm in Philly, but I did grow up across the river on the Jersey side of things.

So I've got a little flying fish. It's a little brewery just across the bridge. Got redfish, India Pale Ale here. Kind of typical IPA, but it's good. Then we got another one. another of their IPAs, hopfish IPA. Standard.

Local, so it's cheap. I don't even think you can get this like out your way because it's a brewery that's like the size of a small restaurant. Like it's just a tiny one. I don't think they distribute anywhere. I like Anthony's choices because they're always like no nonsense.

He's just like, I need a beer. They're like, what do you like? Sheep. I like beer. Yeah, I'll take it. It's my theory on like when you go to a place, if they have a menu item named after the name of the place,

that's the one you get first. Because it's just like, give me the baseline, let me know what it's like, and then you can expand from there. And I feel like that with breweries, you go, you get the one that they would recommend,

and then you expand from there. It's a good strategy. So, what do you got to take? I don't have that strategy. So I tried a new brewery, and I went for their, like, my goodness,

that's enormous, Jake. Jake's a large person. I don't buy the regular size bottles because then you have to buy six and you can't get a good variety. So this is, this is old Yale brewing company which is in a little town called Chilliwack

which is like a far out, too far to really be a suburb of Vancouver. It's like, it's kind of up into the mountains a little bit. And this is their Sasquatch stout. So this is, it's got a cool picture of a Sasquatch on it. That's the most Canadian thing I've ever seen.

A saskwashed stout A little bit It's coffee, chocolate, and mystery on it Yeah So yeah it's cool It's a fun little brewery And I've been kind of on a little bit of a stout kick lately So I decided to

Okay And we get the poor We get the poor You always does this so you can see Yeah I'm going to put the camera up of a newer four and stuff I usually do the Like the bottle opening too

it does write the mic adds authenticity to the sound recording yeah good poor this is the most fun I've had on radio ever just to let you all know turns out all you gotta do is not be on radio yeah we're only a few minutes in it's fun stuff

I'm gonna let Jake get us back on the topics here because I didn't do a good job the first time yeah so normally we would talk about like follow up on emails and then but we don't have any follow-ups so I think we're gonna just die right in, right? Yeah.

I already did once. Yeah. We can do it again. So we talked about Space Council and it's Shmoozy. So I have something I want to kind of bring up. So what do you guys think actually came out of this? Like what is a deliverable from this meeting? Because that seems to me to be like the one thing about this is that it was a lot of schmoozing.

And maybe that's the deliverable as Anthony says. But like, did we get anything out of it? What do you guys think? Do you want the cynical journalists? viewpoint of this. Yeah, definitely. That's exactly what I want. Nothing. Nothing came out of it. Yeah,

it was my expectations were low and they didn't even meet those. It was yeah, nothing. Nothing. Nothing. I like, and I'll give you a little

kind of like behind the scenes here. Like I had pitched this to my editors And I was like, I'm going to do a story on space council. Like space council's coming. And so like for days, like we had on the rundowns, like, okay, Brennan's going to take care of space council. And then like, I watched the space. I'm like, I've got no story.

There's nothing here. Nothing came out of this. And, and, and, yeah, that's, that's what I have to say about that. Yeah, it's, nothing happened. I'm like, so the schmoozing part is one of my main theories. It's like, the schmoozing part is one of my main theories. It's like, the schmoozing. who this thing is the part that matters,

who's sweet talking who matters. But there's also like, I don't know, they always try to have this like defense segment on the public display version. But you know, like, there's a lot more going on behind the scenes, though.

You know? Mm-hmm. That they're not talking about and they can't talk about because it's defense stuff. Yeah. So what do you guys think? I mean, the,

I was reading all the coverage and, you know, most the articles were like, they said this, not much happened, a lot of this, handshaking, but Lauren Grush at the Verge actually had kind of a deliverable out of it, which was about all this regulation stuff.

And that came from, the regulation came from the first meeting that they had right outside of D.C. And they were trying to get some deliverables on regulation. And that's true. That's something that needs to happen. That needs to change. If we're, if this country is going to put a focus on on private space, they need to pull focus off of all of these, you know, kind of crazy regulations that are out there. And I think that that's starting to change, that that's starting to happen, but nothing new came out of this recent one. You know, that happened at the last one. Nothing new came from this one. I guess, yeah. I, so, I mean, I don't pay attention too much to the, to the licensing and all the kind of regulation

and stuff. And so I have a hard time sorting out. Like, what is what is kind of towing the line for the rest of the administration? Because they're going after every regulation in every industry. And what is actually something that the space industry really requires? Like, what's a real problem and what's politics? What do they want? They want multi, multi-use, multi-vehicle kind of licensing, right? Anthony, you know more about this than I do. It's interesting because recently we've started to see some licenses that are changing. So like, SpaceX is currently flying out of 39A, I think it is. They have a license that's like mission to GTO out of 39A. That's it. And it's not for any particular date. It runs until a certain time. So they want that, but for a Falcon 9 flying from

39A and 40 and Vandenberg, all under one license. So they can just file one generic paperwork. And then when they have one-off missions, file something separately or whatever, however that shakes out. but like I don't know a lot of me feels like that a lot of times when you're talking about any given private company and they are very far away from doing their mission they bring up regulation as something that's holding them back so it's not as much of like oh actually we're not ready yet

you know it feels a lot of times like they're throwing up a little bit of smoke screen of like we really need regulation it's like fine we could fix regulation now but if you don't fly until 2022 what does that do for you but then there's also cases like Moon Express and other who like need the clarity up front to make sure they can do the thing. And that's a special case to me. I think the biggest example

of government regulation getting in the way is we're going to go back to Falcon Heavy and go back to the government shutdown. SpaceX did not understand or did not realize that a government shutdown was going to impact them like it would, like it did. And it did.

And I think, think that that is the best example to point towards government regulation, that it had nothing to do with any of their launch operations or anything that they were doing, but just the sheer fact that the government shut down and the range civilian employees weren't there, they couldn't do their static fire test. I think that that is the biggest thing for them. From my reporting and from talking to those people and from getting berated by those people when I reported that there was going

to be a delay, they did not expect that to happen, and it happened. And I think that that's the biggest kind of signposts as to regulation getting in the way of these private space companies. But isn't that kind of, like, so when I read

through the verge list, there's like the four types of regulations that they're really going after, and that's not one of them, right? Like that's not something that's affected by these things they've outlined. It's not, but it's also like reasons why SpaceX is looking for a true private spaceport. That's why they're looking at places like Bocahika.

That's why they're trying to get away from, I mean, it's Kennedy Space Center. It's a government facility. Yeah. And the only reason why they couldn't do their thing is because government employees couldn't work. So that's kind of the issue there. The other part, though, is that it's like indicative of, the fact that space isn't seen as a critical enough item to be on the exclusion list for

government shutdown, which is another whole topic entirely. But I don't know, if you're starting like Kennedy's thing right now, or not Kennedy, but Canaveral's thing right now, 45th space wing is like drive to 48 is their new hashtag or something where they want to get 48 launches a year. You can't do that if you're not a critical or conversely that at that rate, right? Where is the line between critical and not? How many launches a year do you need to be saying this is a critical service? Is it 48 or is it less than that?

Are we already there? Or is it 100? Right, because airport is going to shut down, right? Yeah. Yeah. It's totally. Or if it was a national security payload, then they would have paid those civilians to be there and working the range.

But that's a very good point is, you know. But, I mean, if you're a company that's, I mean, how much, how many millions of dollars did SpaceX sink into Falcon Heavy? the fact that it was truncated by a silly government shutdown. You know, you get to see where the frustration is from them as well. So, okay. Jake's deep and thought over there. Yeah, yeah.

The Canadian deep and thought about American regulation. I've learned more about the United States doing this project than I ever thought possible. Like, pretty soon they're just going to de facto have to just send me citizenship because, like, I, I just know too much. You're just trying to get an easier ride into Kennedy, is all you're trying to do. Exactly. It's all what this is about.

I just want a green card, man. Okay. Do you want to do a budget request then? Oh, that's another good one. Give us your take as an outsider on what budget request is. What it means, what you think about it? Well, yeah, it's super different from what we do up here, that's for sure. So, I mean, my understanding is this is the, this is the administration.

So it's the White House. I think that would technically include NASA and, you know, the administrator if you had one. Very good point. Yeah. Setting, setting what you want to happen, right? So which is why I, I always find interesting trying to sort out reporting because I don't think a lot of people that report on the. budget request even

characterize that properly? Does that make sense? Like I read some some reporters. I have words on that, Jake. I want to hear it. Yeah, I've seen some like, you know, articles on this and it'd be like,

the new NASA budget says this. So see you later, a W first. And it's like, well, it's just the request. Like Congress could slap that back in in a second and then this article's wrong. Right.

So I don't know. That's, it's definitely wacky the whole way it works. But, yeah. I'm waiting for Brendan's words. I don't know if he's willing to light journalists friends on fire at this point. I'm not going to know.

I'm not going to light anybody. It's exactly that. It's, it's, that is the president's budget request. The president's budget request normally does not go into effect. We reported last year that the president wanted to cut the NASA education. I don't know if he unplugged himself or something.

He might have got fiery over there. I'm not sure what happened. We can't hear you, Brendan. Yeah, I don't know what happened to him. I think he ripped his microphone out at the Office of Education. I can't believe he's going to cancel it. I think I'm back. Am I back?

Yeah, you're back. Sorry, the dog stepped on the cable here. But the last presidential budget request, they tried to cancel the NASA's education department. That did not happen. We still have the education department. They tried to do it again. They tried to take away the orbiting carbon observatory. And the way that, that, that,

that funding happens is the president delivers a request. The request goes to both houses of government. And, you know, you've got the House, the Senate, they come to two separate kind of budget requests. Then you go to this, you know, joint committee, and then finally it comes out. So, you know, when that president budget request comes out, mighter's always like, oh, give me a story on this. And it's like, it's not going to be what it's going to be about. We haven't had a real budget in a year or two. So it's kind of, it's kind of, you know, difficult to even report on this stuff and see what happens. But with these requests, you kind of see where the administration has their priorities, where they want things to go, who's kind of pulling who, who's lobbying who. So that's really what the story is, is what the

administration wants to do. It's not really what's going to happen, but it's what the administration wants to happen. The one thing I'm wondering to tie these two stories together is how much of this, I don't even know if we'll be able to answer this really, but how much of the space direction in general is from the mind of Scott Pace and other friends on the National Space Council if, you know, obviously we don't have an asset administrator. I'm still of the belief that that does not really matter that much in this era of NASA.

But I'm wondering how much of the direction is decided. upon based on an inner circle of space advisors that are just, you know, so many in administration is like, here, go write up a space thing and bring it back when you're done. Do you think that's a likely possibility of what's going on behind the scenes? Yeah, you know, I kind of have that same debate, Anthony, as to, you know, do we really need that leadership to be telling us what to do, or is that leader just someone who does the will of the administration? It's more on the policy experts, and I really haven't seen anything with this administration. I don't know, because we really haven't seen anything major change. There hasn't been something that's come out

and it's like, oh, well, we know, oh, they canceled SLS, so that's something that, you know, so-and-so in this department said to do, or moving forward on this particular thing. We're really at a stalemate when it comes to everything regarding, you know, the NASA's as an agency. So it's really hard to kind of do that litmus test and find out where it's coming from. But I think I'm with you. I don't know if, you know, the NASA administrator is really a nobody. They're just a puppet at this point. And will things change when we get someone there? I don't think so. I can't imagine it being any other way because, like, especially without an administrator, like, who is heading up this budget request, right? Like, you know, like Trump's not writing the budget.

Pence is not writing the budget. So who would they put in charge of it? You think that Lightfoot is leading the charge and kind of coordinate it all? Or is he more an advisor role and, you know, Pace and that crew are really setting the agenda? I think. Struggy. I don't know. I'm speculating.

Yeah. You've got a comment in the Discord here. Yeah. What about Brydenstein? Is he done? I've heard some things that Brendan might have heard some more things on down in Florida there. I don't know if you know what I'm insinuating. Yeah, I, uh, I'll say it.

You, you say it. So I heard some little birdies that said that, so that TLDR and Brianstein is that he currently does not have the votes. He's, this has been reported widely. This isn't the little birdie part, but the vote right now would be 5049. The one missing was John McCain, who's got cancer and is not in Congress right now. So if he were to come back and vote 50409, but the one missing was John McCain, who's got cancer and is not in Congress right now. So if he were to come back and vote 50-50, then Pence would come in and break the tie. Brydenstein wouldn't be in.

Doesn't seem likely that if McCain did come back, he would vote for Bridenstein because Brian Stein politic first McCain in the past and all this stuff. But what I did here was that the Florida contingent down there, Marco Rubio and Bill Nelson, are trying to get Bob Cabana in as administrator, who is right now the leader of Kennedy Space Center. That is what I've heard. I don't know. Brendan's tied into these politics directly, so he can no comment his way out of that

or confirm or deny that, but it's weird. I have Bob Cabana is coming to doing a live event with me in a few weeks, and that might be an interesting thing to talk about with him. From what I've heard is I think that Marco Rubio, so Rubio kind of, he broke from party lines on this one. and kind of went against Bridenstein. And there's tons of reasons why you can speculate why he did that.

I mean, Bridenstein totally campaigned against him. And when he was running for president, and maybe it's a little ill will from the presidential campaign. I think Marco Rubio is kind of seeing a lot of, he's got a lot of heat recently down here. with the way that he's been portrayed after some of the school shootings that were down in South Florida. I could see that if it went to a vote, he might go back to party lines on that. The Bob Cabana stuff, I haven't heard too much about that.

I've always wondered why he wasn't up for it from the beginning. He's, Bob Caban is a really, in the, in front of cameras, he's a, he's a great guy he's a good politician he's done he's turned around the the the program down here in kSC um and uh really turned k sc into a multi-user space port that's that's his talking point that he would be a very good um he'd be a very good nassi administrator um just from like pure figurehead perspective yes yes yes he would be a lot like bolden though which would disappoint me yeah he would be a lot like Bolden but I'm just a little bit closer to him

since I've actually had a lot more contact with him than I had with Bolden or Bridenstein that I think he'd be good for the job but I think Rubio is going to get a shift position so if it does go to a vote again to kind of confirm Bridenstein that Bridenstein gets confirmed but this administration has a lot more I don't know issues to deal with right now that They're probably not going to bring that to a vote anytime soon. And I really, I think I'm going to have to disagree with you on this one, Anthony.

I think it's really hurting the administration. It's really hurting NASA that they don't have a clear leader at this point. It's been a long time. And I think that a lot of the ambiguity of NASA is because there isn't a clear leader. Okay. That's interesting. We just that was like the most political segment we've ever done I think We had senators by name we had school shootings

We had I didn't even there's one more politicking piece that I was gonna throw in is that Throw it throw in there yeah like here rubio is interesting Not to get too much on your Florida ground but rubio was done like he wanted to be done politics after he didn't get the presidential That's what he said But he was out he was out he only came back because this seat was up at risk Right? I don't know maybe not but I'm just wondering, the only reason I said that is that if he is done, then he might give less of a shit about party line stuff. I don't think he would ever not give that about party line stuff.

I mean, he's such an interesting character. Like covering Marco Rubio is, he's such an interesting character. And when he said, you know, I'm going to run for president and I'm never going to run for anything else, all of us down here were like, BS. we'll see you again. Like that's not true at all. He's, and I'm probably getting trouble for saying this, but I mean, he's a true politician. And, you know, we have to hold him to everything that he says. And I mean, much like all of the politicians that are down here, you know, we never take them at their word.

And it's always interesting. And if you don't live in Florida, you totally should because it's just a soap opera every day. So there you go. Okay, so we talked about how the budget request is less of an actual budget and more of a statement about intent, right? So is there anything in the actual request that either of you found surprising or particularly interesting? The only thing that is in there is that is worth discussion to me is the W-first stuff. And my TLDR is like, they're really effing up James Webb right now. So it's not surprising that there's not a lot of support for another big,

that, you know, space telescope that would go way over budget and take way longer than they say, because that's always been the way of things. Even Hubble did it. Hubble just had serviceability, which could lead to some drama with James Webb that it doesn't. So I'm not surprised about the W-First thing. Yeah, I'm not either. I'm also, I'm not surprised at all by the fact that you've had these National Space Council meetings and you've had all of these, you know, political decrees that we're going to put humans back on the moon.

We're going to walk on the moon again. We're going to have the deep space gateway, which I just got used to saying, and they changed the damn name of it. We're going to do all this stuff. And then literally, not a single line item in this budget addresses that. So. Yeah, have you got $116 million for Lunar Land or concept technology demonstrations? That's nothing. 160 million is nothing, Jay. Come on.

I think we should direct all of that towards ULA and Mastin, and they should build Zeus for once and for all before Centaur goes away the dodo, and we can actually have a legit lander for, that's probably more than enough that they would need to turn that thing from where it is now into an actual lander. But the original website, something to say about that. Yeah, yeah. Anthony for Prez.

That's not fair. that's that no-nonsense trademark right there. Yeah, the W-first thing. The tough part about that is it's one of those things you can't really catch a break because the nature of that business of being like bleeding edge, you know, deep space, dark matter astrophysics. Like nobody knows how much that costs. Like every time you try and set a budget for that project, you will get it wrong.

every single time. And it happened with Hubble and it happened with James Webb. It happened with W-First. It'll happen for the next one after that and the one after that. It's just how it is, right? It's not run-of-the-mill stuff. So like it's kind of, I think maybe the mistake is doing James Webb and W-First development at the same time.

Maybe that's, you know. Well, it wasn't supposed to be that way. James Webb was supposed to be up there, what? How many years ago at this point? Yeah, I don't know. But still, it's... 98. Yikes.

Yeah, but I mean, that's the only thing. So, like, W first from a science perspective is like a really valuable mission. And I should preface that I don't actually know anything about astrophysics, but I trust that the big team behind the Decatal survey would not put that as a number one priority if it didn't have some kind of value. And it's cheaper than James Webb, that's for sure. But, you know, it's tough, man. It's a tough call. you really stopped us in her tracks there yeah that's what happens

when you land a mic drop point so here's the one other thing that the ISS thing is the other monster story there oh dear I can pull up the hot drama alarm if you want me to but yeah I got a I got a point out to crack another beer for this one

hot drama there it is the hot drama alarm as Jake pours another beer I regret making that So I went on a whole rant multiple times. Is there a way that I can make that happen for my end? I can't make that happen from my end. And you just let me know and I can hit it again, whatever you need it.

So I went on rants about commercial space stations and stuff like that and about how like the ISS skews the market. You can't really figure out a commercial segment. But I've got another annoyance that I think Brendan could help us through here because it's Florida again. It's always Florida. It's either Florida or Alabama these days. But I feel like the Floridians in general at this point are the leading state in seeing the rise of commercial space as a viable engine of the industry. Whereas, you know, Houston at this point, they've got a lot of space companies there, but they are, you know, based on the JSC programs that are up and running. So they're obviously going to defend those programs with all they've got.

but the ISS program, when you see it in comparison with the rise of commercial space, you know, thanks to space Florida and the like who are developing the area, at what point are we going to hit that turning point where like, you know, the allegiances flip and the politicians at large, you know, maybe it's the next politicians that are in bed closer with Blue Origin and OneWebs and everyone that sprouts up down there. But like, if you're looking from launch perspective, way more launches happen. in a year that are not ISS than are ISS from Florida today. There's, you know, Blue Origin, One Web, there's all these factories popping up down there. SpaceX might have another factory down there soon. There are so much other stuff happening there that Florida to me feels like the closest to that tipping point. And I'm wondering if you're picking up any signs of things starting to change a little bit in the even local.

Great question. Yeah. Maybe not like the U.S. Senate, but is some of the state politicking that's happening? there with spaceflight and the like, is that starting to switch? I think, so the interesting thing is that you're right. I mean, Florida is booming when it comes to commercial spaceflight. And when you talk to any of the academics here or people that work at universities, it's the greatest thing in the world because they can now get their CubeSats,

they can get their experiments on suborbital flights. so inexpensive and so quickly. The fact that they can turn around so quickly is really the big thing. And so I think that's what really the commercial spaceflight is doing down here for us. Just for an example, our university, UCF, University of Central Florida is really close. I happen to be alumnus, so I might be a little bit biased. They're building their own satellite. And they're going to send it up on either New Glenn or SpaceX Falcon 9 in the future.

They're building tracking stations down here. And they're going to do some really awesome science about planetary formation and stuff like that on this little tiny Kupset. When you think about the ISS and science that's done there, so right before the space shuttle program was retired, Space Florida built their whole, this giant building right next to the Lou Origin facility. You guys probably saw it when you were down here. And I took a tour of it the other day, and so they have all of these. It was basically built as a facility to prep experiments to go up on the space shuttle. And they built it, and then they canceled the space shuttle.

So there's this giant facility which has like this amazing laboratories and cryogenics and all this stuff. but they have no use for it right now. So Florida and space Florida is really hoping that we continue our partnership with the International Space Station. Everybody else around here, they're kind of moving away from that and saying, experiments don't have to happen in orbit. They can happen or on orbital space station. They can happen in orbit. They can happen on HubeSats with that.

So you got this kind of this fight between old-schools, and new school kind of stuff. And it's interesting to see. And I'm not sure who's going to win or what's going to happen from it. So I have a couple of thoughts about that. Because I, well, first of all, like, I was really confused about how Senator Nelson, like, came out hard when he, when he heard that the ISS might be decommissioned in 2025, right? I think it's quotes like, this is like the dumbest idea. It makes no sense.

he characterized it as pushing the frontiers of exploration, which I thought was a little rich. But he came out of Harvard, and I was like, okay, well, and just like you said, Anthony, does Florida's stake in the space program really depend that much on ISS? Like, it's just cargo resupply right now. And eventually you're going to get crew, which is important from a, from a, you know, an image perspective, right?

But it's just not that many launches. And the other thing to consider, though, is that if ISS goes away, I don't know, my neighbor is running some pipes or something right now, and you could probably hear water, fall, noises in the background here. But if ISS were to go away, the thing that would ramp up per the budget request is SLS, Deep Space Gateway, all the things that are in Florida. Like, it's not like they're losing a program that is in Florida for a program that is not in Florida. Yeah, and like all the commercial Leo development that's in this budget request, right? That's all money that's eventually going to go to launch stuff, right? So that's one thing

that confuses me. And then, so the other thing was, you know, a friend, and you called out this whole research side of it. And I think everybody knows that I'm the, you know, I've got a science bias. So I'm super pro that. I used to be like the biggest supporter of IAS from a science perspective for a long time. But when I started to dig into it a little more, you know, like it's a national lab and it, and it has that, there's this organization called Cases, which kind of facilitates the access to the station for all these universities and commercial companies and stuff. That funding is minuscule.

Like, it's something like over the last five, six years, it was like $30 million. Like, it's nothing. It's nothing at all. And when you read in deeper, the worst part about it is that they have a limit on up and down mass. So there's more demand than cases can actually handle. So ISS is not suitable for that.

And then even once you get it on station, they're only utilizing crew time to like 75%. So like it's not a good system for that. Like I don't know. Like to me, if you, like even if you're a Florida senator, if you followed the commercial route better and we had seven years to get something up for ISS,

you could have Bigelow up there, you could have Axiom up there, you could have more than one commercial partner up there, you could just move cases over there, double the funding and still save money. You'd have more science up there than you would with ISS. So when I started to learn about that, I really started to be like, why is this, why is this support in the way that it is, right? I don't know. Yeah, I totally. That's my rant.

I'm totally with you on that last point there, Jake. And it really is. And a lot of scientists don't want to move stuff that way because it's all on the public domain, right? So when they do public research up there, or when they do the research up there, it's public immediately. And so if you're kind of trying to do some cutting end medical research that might be connected to the pharmaceutical industry, you don't really want to do that. Going back to your first point about Nelson, he's up against – he's up for – for reelection. And this is going to be a very contentious re-election. And it's going to be very, very close. The polling right now is close, and it shouldn't be that close this early for a sitting

senator against someone who hasn't actually committed to running. So he's going to say whatever he possibly can to kind of make this work. And so some of his comments are a little dramatic when it comes to space exploration, especially the International Space Station. So I don't really take what he says as what's actually going to be policy and act. He is in full campaign mode at this time. And that's the problem, though. This should not be political, right? This is science.

This is to make humanity better. And we're having these conversations about budget and campaigns. and it shouldn't be like this, right? It's kind of frustrating. But I totally agree with you, Jake. I think that privatization of space science is going to really change the way that we do business in space and really change the way that we do science.

But you don't even have to completely privatize it. I mean, imagine like an ISS version of the COTS program. where NASA funds two, maybe three companies to run a lab for them. So you still keep it as a NASA lab. It's just contracted out through, you know, it's like lab as a service, you know. And then you'd have, you could have all of them up there. You could maintain space. You could still have them designated as national labs.

You could still have cases, supply, all the stuff. Those companies could also take the private customers on the side. You'd have both systems working on the same hardware. and it would leave it in a situation where if NASA needed to pull out, it would have that flexibility because you're also creating a market on the side, right? That's, to me, it's frustrating. I guess that that is such a, to me, and I know that some... Jay for president.

Sometimes these decisions, like, they don't make sense for one side, and that's why you get fought, but to me, this makes sense for every side. Like, I don't see who loses in that situation, other than maybe Boeing loses their contract because they can't operate the ISS anymore. I love our new show where we bring on somebody and just grill them on local politics. A great segment.

Yeah, you're going to never come back again. We could have a lot. Who do we know in Alabama for the next month? I got a good relationship with Nelson. Have you ever heard that when he was on the mobile launch tower, when he was getting on the shuttle, he looked out and he saw his grandparents' homestead out there on what is now part of things. I know what you're doing. I know what you're doing, Anthony. You're fishing for it's not going to happen.

mentioned it in the last show. I mentioned it. You'll have to come. Oh, we should have plug this up front, Jake, but we're doing a meetup in Philadelphia, and we're going to fly Brandon up for his senator Nelson impression alone, and that's it. We were watching coverage of something, and Bill Nelson came on TV, and my wife looked at me, and she goes, I've never heard him speak before. You actually sound just like him. So she's heard me do the Nelson impression for years, but she's actually never heard. heard him. And then she was like, put the highlight back on. We didn't see who won. Oh, my team's losing. You bastards. Are we out of politics topics and should we move into picks? Yeah, I think so.

I think I've spewed enough ISS rant. That's what is he does I got. I will be right back. I'll sneak away for two minutes. I'm not worried about it. Go get another beer or something or whatever. You think he's going to chase his dog away from the audio hardware again?

Could be. His dogs are a little rambunctious. Let me see. We didn't get an email. We got no email. We did get some topics in the Discord to talk about, and I'm thinking maybe we just do off-nominal bonus content of just,

like a call-in show almost. Oh. That'd be cool. So while Brendan's away, let's plug this. We didn't plug it up front. We should have plugged it up front. Jake is going to be in Philadelphia. towards the end of March.

We're going to be doing an off-nominal meetup in Philadelphia. It is at Yards Brewery. There's a beautiful new brewery down there in Center City here, Philadelphia. We're going to go hang out.

There's some details at event.offnominal. That space, I'll put a link in the show notes. If you are remotely close to Philadelphia, you should come hang out, have a drink. We've got a couple of us

that are going to be there hanging out. Super informal hangout, but at least we can all be nerds together. We'll do like a quick round the Robin and try every beer that yards has. Okay, that's going to get carried away. However long that takes. I'd quickly turn into a power hour that we're going to do.

I don't know. Some people are driving in for this, Jake. So should we put some links in the show notes for like hotels nearby then? Yeah, totally. You're going to be in Philadelphia because you're going to be in the U.S. Because you're going to be. Yes. So I'll be attending lunar and planetary science conference again.

And I just realize that today it's in exactly two weeks that I leave, which is very scary for me because I think I packed my trips a little too close together this year. So I was like just kind of finishing up, like feeling good about everything's done for Falcon Heavy. And then it's like, hey, you have to fly in 14 days. I better get started on that. But either way, it'll be fun. And so I don't know if there are any listeners in the Houston area. I don't know what we got for that.

But I'm thinking about also setting something up for Houston. So keep an eye on that events. Dot openominal. That space because I'll stick it up there. If I get it, I just got to figure out the schedule because these conferences are like insane scheduling. They pack it 13 hour days doubled up. Like there's you could do two different schedules.

You can have two different conferences. there's so much stuff happening on there. So I got to figure that out and find out what day's best, but I'm thinking about it. So if you're from Houston and you're like, hey, I would really like to go to a meetup with Jake, send us an email at what's our off nominal one?

Hello at off nominal. Literally anything at off nominal.space will do it, but hello is the one we tell people. Okay. Hello at off nominal space. If you want to get creative, send it to like something hilarious at off nominal. And we'll still get it.

Oh dear. Okay, yeah, send that in and then you're going to get some weird emails. Yes, we are, Kurt. Thank you for that. Brendan's back. I am. Yeah, sorry about that. He's reloaded.

We're good. We plugged all of our house ads while you were away. Okay, perfect. Or underwriting, as you might say. Yes, we don't have commercials in public radio. We have underwriters. Oh, dear. So we briefly told Brendan about picks.

I don't know if he has a space pick. I do. I do. I have a few. I'm not sure what counts of space picks. Anything. Literally anything. It's super preform. So I wish I had my video camera going because I end up getting an advanced copy of chasing new horizons inside the epic first mission to Pluto, which was written by Alan Stern and David Greenspoon. I really don't read much, so I've been skimming through this and there's no pictures. I actually this one kind of hooked me a bit it's an incredible book about like how the new horizon mission came to be and like like day to day normal stuff and how dramatic it was

um like it goes back to like stuff that happened in like 2002 and 2003 and like it's really an incredible like look at how that mission came to be and just the emotion behind it. So it comes out in May. I'm going to try to read it early, and then I'm going to interview Dr. Stern again. I interviewed him before New Horizon left, which was really cool.

But yeah, so that was my pick, is this book that came across my desk. I also had another pick, and I can't remember what it was, but I think you guys liked this one. Yeah, that's right. Perfect. Yeah, I can't wait to read.

that. And it's funny because you say all the way back to 2002, but that's not even like anywhere near the start of the Pluto idea, right? Yeah, it started way before that, but I think that this like, this kind of kicks it off around then. But

yeah, I love like the human aspect of, of these missions and stuff. I get to hang out with these spacecraft a lot, you know, and I mean, just recently I went to go see Tess. That's about to, you launch in April on a Falcon 9.

And talking to the principal investigators, I'm like, do you have any jitters? Do you have any pre-flight jitters? I'm like, oh, yeah, of course I do. Like, you get such a great radio when you talk to them about that. Like, are you nervous? I love the human aspect of these planetary missions. Because there's a group of like really incredibly smart

and awesome people behind these things. And I think we should highlight that a little more. So I'm glad this book came out. It'll be fun. Not only are they smart and amazing, they've spent, like, an entire career. Decades, yeah. That's why it's unbelievable when you think about, like, just how long lived some of these missions are. One of my favorite sources to go to, he's the assistant dean of physics at UCF.

And I, he worked on Cassini. And I'm like, hey, can I, you know, interview you about the end of Cassini? And he's like, yeah, Cassini was my first job out of my, you know, when I got my doctorate. back in 1989 or whatever it was. And so, like, this guy's been working on Cassini for, like, decades. And so we talked about the end of Cassini. And it, you know, it's incredible that people spend all this time, like, studying these things. And I love the human aspect of things.

So that's my pick. You'd like the book by Adam Stelzner on Curiosity as well. Same kind of thing. It's all about his, like, personal journey through the spacecraft development. Oh, that would be really good. Yeah. It's more of like a leadership book and like how to be successful than it is like a, here's how the spacecraft works.

Well, apparently Emily Lakdala just published a book about everything you know about what happens on Curiosity too. So you can read them in tandem together, right? Yeah, that one I expect to be more like a user guide to the road. If you find yourself running. Somebody that happens upon the rover in like 100 years on Mars will be like, Oh, yes, I understand how to drive this thing now. Like, I'm pretty sure I'm going to have like a hard copy of my desk.

And like every time I like see like an article or a picture I'm going to like open it up like, what does that part do? Like, oh, perfect. Very ago. So I'm her detail is like microscopic. So it's going to be. I'm expecting it to be like 900 pages and. No, it's going to be huge. So I don't have the curiosity book, but I do have a Mars book, Jake.

Oh, let's hear it. I don't want to trample on your territory too much. So this is an old one I picked up If you've ever been to Portland, Oregon There's this old bookstore I forget what it's called Pals I think Pals books And it's like super weird looking And I was in there

I was out there for a conference like a couple years back And I went in there and I found this book That is called Mars The NASA Missions or something NASA Mission Reports And this goes from like Mariner to Polar Lander I think

this is like the first edition, but it's, I'm showing this on the webcam. It's like the mission reports of like, they've gathered the press kits they've sent out for like Viking and all this. Those are some sweet graphics. Like look at that old school Viking logo.

Holy crap. Look at the old school NASA logo down there. Yeah, the worm. There's the worm. Yeah. And there's like, you know, diagrams of how stuff sat in the Delta 2 and all this. But it is,

it is like a collation of all of the media that went out around the launch and around all the operations at Mars that they've just like got and reprinted. But you see like diagrams of like here's the parking orbit we got into at Mars and then here's the science orbit and it's like all this crazy detail.

Let me find one of the ones that's like... Oh my God, I want this book so bad. I think it's pretty cheap online. Did you... Do you know how much time I've spent like looking up old press kits and like trying to like print stuff off? Oh my God.

It's got like trajectories and like schematics of everything. It's, it's awesome. So for for Mars nerds, it's pretty cool. I think there's two. Jake, you look so upset. You look so upset. You don't have this book. So I think there's two volumes, Jake.

If you're looking online, you seem to be like poking around trying to buy them. There's this one that goes to polar lander. And I think there's another one now that goes the rest of the way, or at least till like opportunity and spirit. But it's all. And it even comes. with, because it's an old book, it comes with a CD in the back cover. I don't even know if I can put that in anything at this point.

I happen to have an optical drive on my windows computer. I'll mail you this CD so you could find out what's on it. If it's just the PDF for the book, I'm going to be upset. Probably is. And also really really happy about it. Minimum requirements. Windows 95. Ooh.

So you should be okay. You should be right there, Jake. There's a point where minimum requirements become maximum requirements. Okay, cool. That's awesome. So I have a pick and in the tradition of me selecting my pick at the very last minute, I'm stealing this from the planetary radio episode that just came out this week and I listened to it this morning on my hike. And so this is a kind of art project, which is pretty cool. So basically this group got together. It's a weird origin. It's,

it's a data transfer company called We Transfer. And they kicked off this idea for some reason. And they paired up with like a studio and they got all these artists together. And they're celebrating the Voyager mission. So it's kind of a Voyager 40 celebration. And they wanted to do this installation and they decided that to reach more people and to go further, they made like an online exhibit. So you go to this website.

It's a message from Earth. A message from dot Earth is the website. and you can go to it and it's this whole experience where you go through and they do pictures and they do audio and they do video and they do like some poetry and words and stuff like that and it's like all this kind of exploration of some of the themes and the topics of Voyager. So it's pretty cool because it's kind of like a mix of art and some of the science they did. And so what really sold it for me is that they hired the musical group called survive. I think it's called survive.

Yeah. And it's the group that did the soundtrack for Stranger Things. So if you know that that theme song, that's what it's all about, right? And what they did is they, well, first they took a little bit at like sounds of stars. So they converted like light waves into audio. so you could hear what a star looks like. And then they made this whole sound palette with all the different things and you can play with it and make your own music with it.

So it's it's really quite cool. So I'm going to play, I opened the palette on my phone here. I'm going to play a little bit about what it kind of sounds like. But you basically just like using these tools, you can kind of add sounds. Let's see if you can hear this here. What is happening? I don't even know. I even can't make any sense of this.

So basically these are sounds from stars. and then you make a palette and you can make your own song. It's really cool. This reminds me of that one thing where they, on the lunar reconnaissance orbiter, did you ever see that where they reconstructed, a micrometeoroid hit LRO and it like, while it was taking an image and it like made this weird

vibration pattern in the image and they turned that into sound so you can hear it like, boom right off of it. Yeah, it's like that's exactly what it is. Yeah. I always love those projects. It's like turn weird space thing into sounds. Yeah, well, the story's really cool because they got this astronomer who's blind.

And she, so she has to do this for all of her data. She takes all this data in and she conversed to sound so she can listen to her data. And it's like, it's the most surreal thing. And so they got her to kind of teach her how to do it. And then they have some sound files for like a gamma ray burst and a, like a pulsar and stuff like that. And you can hear all these different sounds that are, that are, looking at stars, right? That's the thing that really blows my mind is I interviewed Nicole Stott last week.

She's an astronaut. She's the artist astronaut. And I was talking to her about, like, steam. Like, why do we add the, you know, the arts to steam? Why is it so important? And she's like, you know, everything that we see from space is, like, it's false, like, art. She's like all the Hubble stuff, we've created false color so you could see how beautiful it is. And all of these, you have to make things look good and sound good so that people can connect with space.

And so hearing something like that kind of, that's to our point there. Like, yeah, this is what stars sound like. It might not be what stars are like, but it's what stars sound like so we can make that connection to them. and we can really figure out why it's so important. And I just think it's so interesting when people take music and art and stuff like that and try to make the cosmos more accessible. I just think it's cool.

It's also cool because you always see a telescope in a different wavelength. And it's like, here's what it looks like an x-ray. And you sort of understand, like, oh, if I had eyes that read x-rays, that would be what I see. But it's cool to like, because we have two, weird senses of sight and sound.

You can kind of make sense of like, oh, this is a way that this thing transmits to me in a different medium. So I do like that there's that kind of connection there. And that was my other pick if I couldn't find this book I had was I recently put a call out

on Twitter. I'm like, how do you guys process images? I love to process raw images. How do you guys do this? I'd love to be a part of this. And I was pointed towards Emily Lackdewala's planetary dot-org online course

to show you how to process raw data and it was the coolest thing in the world like I had like all this data from Jupiter

and I turned into this amazing picture and it was awesome and like that's something so cool like you're taking science data and you're turning

it into something you can see and you can feel and you can hear and it's so cool I love it I love it I love your pick Jake

I love your picture that's what I'm trying get at. Well, we'll put it in the thing and then you can record on this palette. So another thing, listeners, if you record something fun, send it to us. We'll listen to it. That'd be really fun. Send it to us at something fun at off-nominal.companel. Yeah. Weird space sounds at off-nominal.

That space. Cool. Okay. I think that's all the topics we got. Brendan, can you tell us about what you're doing lately? Tell us like, oh, tell the listeners about Story Musgrave, your most recent episode of the podcast. Man, he's an interesting fella, isn't he? I had a great time listening to him. I turned that episode on and you were like, hey, story. And then he was just like, boom. Well, I worked on a farm and I was seven.

If you didn't work on a farm, you could never go to space. You should have heard what we did before I started recording. He's like, is this live or pre-taped? I was like, it's a pre-taped story. He's like, I just want me to know if I want to say the F word or not. It's like, please don't say the F word. He's an interesting, he's an interesting fella. He's, he's going to be speaking at the Winter Park Institute.

Winter Park, you. Yeah, so, you know, it's Rollins College, puts it on, Anthony. They have a speaker series there. And they, the last time they asked me to come and introduce somebody was George Taked. I guess they thought I was a Treki. Oh my. I'm not a Treki. Yeah.

But it was really fun. He's an interesting fella. I mean, I love Hubble. And I think Hubble is the coolest thing in the world. And my backdrop is the pillars of creation. And so I'm so happy that he fixed it so that we could see stuff like that. But he's going to be doing a great conversation about how he went from being a a farm boy to a rocket man.

He worked on a farm? He worked on a farm. No, I, seriously. And apparently he's going to do it. I knew you guys would give me, give me crap for this interview. Seriously, he sounds like he needs to be our next off nominal guest. Yeah. If the first thing he asked was if I can drop the F bomb, he needs to be the next off

He'd be more than happy to. He'd be more than happy to. And he kept call me, sir. I was like, dude, you've done way more than I've ever in my entire bike. You've flown every space shuttle ever. Stop calling me, sir. And, yeah, he's an interesting fella.

I'll be really interested to meet him. So we're having dinner before the event. So, like, my big boss is going to be there. My general manager is going to be there. And my wife will be there. And he'll be there. So we'll see how it could go greater. It could go absolutely fucking terrible.

Just steer the conversation. Steer the conversation towards you, your wife, and story go into a high lie game. Yeah, right. I think he'll get that. You ever been to High Lie? Like, that would be great. He's been in Florida for quite some time now. So he's got, he's got a farm down in Kissimmee.

So he's been to Highline. Yeah, so he's probably been to High Lie. So that was really good. And this is something you guys. might be interesting. This is the first time I'm actually talking about this publicly. And I feel like this is right to talk about it on your podcast here. But I'm writing a book about the history of pooping in space. And how... Yes. Oh my God. This is the greatest day of my life. And how solving the issue of human

waste in space is going to basically fix everything about humanity. So... This is amazing. This is the greatest news I've heard all day. Oh, a month year? I haven't made a public yet. So you guys are the first people I'm talking to about. It's roughly called boldly or to boldly go.

God, I love every detail of this. I don't think I can handle that. No, yeah. That'll be the last pick we ever do on off-nom-no. After that, we're ending picks.

I know. Frank Borman tried to hold it for two weeks. That's the first chapter of my book is all about Apollo. There was so much stuff about Apollo poop that was fantastic, Chase. Apollo poop. What was the one when the poop got out like it didn't make it into the receptacle?

And there was, was it like, John Young was like, oh, we got a turd floating through the air here. It was John Young and Crippin. That's the chapter of the first book. So, yep, Apollo 10, Chase. That's exactly what it is. That's chapter one. the drama of a floating poop.

But I mean, seriously, like, like learning how to deal with our feces and reclaiming urine can really do a lot to help us down here on Earth. So I think it's an important topic and everyone gives me shit about it. No pun intended.

I'm just to play the outro music. That's great news. I'm so excited for that. I'm glad. I'm glad. Hopefully you guys will blurb it for me. I'm working on it already.

We're giving away copies on the show. Yeah, we'll do a contest for that. Send that to poop at OffNominable. That space. So if there's any publishers out there that are listening, I can send you a pitch, but right now I'm just going to write the manuscript. That's awesome. Love it. That's great. All right.

Brennan, where can they find you? So you can download the Rwe There Yet podcast at WMFE.org slash are we there yet anywhere you download your podcast we're on NPR one I'm also on Twitter at space Brendan awesome great thank you got any no I just I want to just say that you should definitely check out Brendan's podcast because it is great it's a very broad amount of topics which is so refreshing because it's like you can bounce to all these different things you know you have the Florida bent but that means that you get to see a lot of different stuff So being able to go from like Mars tech to astronauts to like space Florida stuff to

rockets to like just plain old science is really cool that you get to kind of do all these different things. So I love it. I love this episode. And if you're not already listening listeners, this needs to be in your queue. Are we there yet? Oh, thank you, Jake. That means a lot.

That means a lot. Do it. Find him there. And thanks for coming on, Brendan. We really appreciate it. Anytime. I am more than happy to join you guys. This is so much fun. You guys are fantastic and you guys are my weekly listens to as well. So you're on my podcast cues and pretty much all my stories that I do for work probably come from tweets that you guys did. I'm like, oh, crap, I should probably be covering this. Thanks, guys. That means I need. I'm spending too much time on Twitter is what that means.

You're doing really good at your job. Yeah. Not enough time on Twitter, Jake. All right, everybody. Close it out. Godspeed.