Off-Nominal - 08 - God Save The Queen

Episode Date: May 15, 2018

While Anthony is away in Europe, Jake is joined by fellow space podcasters Matt and Jamie from the Interplanetary Podcast to discuss Jake's trip to California to see InSight and what's going on in the UK Space Industry. Beers Cold Spark - Big Smoke Brewing Company | Untappd Curious Brew Lager - Chapel Down | Untappd Belgian Red - Postmark Brewing | Untappd Topics NASA's List of Human Health Risks Mars Nation Event | Interplanetary Podcast Thirty Years to the Centre of Mars | WeMartians Podcast The Frosty Plains of Utopia Planitia (feat. Cassie Stuurman) | WeMartians Podcast British Government formally considering its own satellite navigation system | Financial Times The U.K. Space Agency wants Britain to capture 10 percent of the global space economy by 2030 | CNBC Goonhilly | Interplanetary Podcast NASA's Orion Laser Communication | NASA When Biospheres Collide | NASA Gödel, Escher, Back | Goodreads What a Planet Labs Dove looks like Picks (plus the items we discussed after Picks in the spontaneous discussion that followed) The Last Man on the Moon | imdb Interview with Mark Craig, Director | Interplanetary Podcast The Americans | imdb NASA's Eyes on the Solar System Software Stellarium Software Gunter's Space Page Interview with Moon Hoaxer Marcus Allen Part 1 | Interplanetary Podcast Interview with Moon Hoaxer Marcus Allen Part 1 | Interplanetary Podcast Why People Believe Weird Things | Goodreads Mars One Waning | WeMartians Podcast Mars Special (feat. Jake) | Interplanetary Podcast Follow The Interplanetary Podcast The Interplanetary Podcast - Putting the Ace Back in to Space The Interplanetary Podcast (@interplanetypod) | 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. Negative or turn. Miko, welcome to space. God save the queen. Don't change your podcast. This is still Off Nominal. I know it sounds weird. Welcome, everybody.

This is the special Commonwealth edition of Off Nominal. So our co-host, Anthony, is off-gallivanting in Europe on a vacation thing apparently you get to have where you don't go to work for a little bit. And he messaged me and he said, listen, off nominal is going to happen. Well, I'm in Italy. And I said, okay, well, what are we going to do about that? And he said, well, I'm not going to have good Wi-Fi. I guess there's not really good Wi-Fi in Italy.

I've heard that. I don't know if any of you have been to Italy. It's a bit of truth in that. I mean, the Romans built some pretty good stuff, but like 2,000 years is 2,000 years, right? He just can't expect it to hang out that. I don't have the wrong. man's ever done for us. Good, good Matt.

Very British link there. Thank you. Yeah, and so, you know, I thought, well, I could call you from here and it'd be morning, but that'd be kind of weird to have a beer in the morning. And so obviously the solution was to that, was to that, was to call someone else in Europe, so I still had to have a beer in the morning. So we're joined by Jamie and Matt from the Interplanetary Podcast. How are you guys doing today?

Hello, we're good. Oh, yes, we're very good, thank you. I'm in my house. Matt's in a little shepherd's hut somewhere in Wales. Is that right, Matt? That is exactly right, yes. He's managed to get Wi-Fi. I mean, that is pretty impressive. Yeah, there's Wi-Fi in Wales, but not in Italy. That's pretty damning for old. Yeah, you said... We're going to get severe Italian complaints.

Yeah, well, it's Berlusconi's fault, I'm sure. Yeah, true. You sent me a message, Matt. You said you were in some very British-sounding town. It was like Hartfordstenshire on Thames or something. What was the name of it? It's called Hay on Y. And it's actually internationally famous for books.

So there's a massive book festival where people come from all around the world to come here. And yeah, so it's full of bookshops. It's a tiny little place, though. Matt, how many space books have you bought today? Did you say? I bought four space books. Facebooks and I had to stop myself from buying more as well. That's great.

Okay, so we're going to crack a beer here. For you guys, it's great. It's dinner time. Why don't you kick us off about, well, Matt, why don't we start with you? What are you drinking today? So I have in my hand a beer called Cold Spark and it's got a picture of satin and a picture of Sputnik on it, which I thought was good. And it's brewed in the town where I live called Serbaton.

So I'm going to give that, I'm going to give that a go. Okay. I've not tried it, but I'm going to give it a go. So here's me opening my bottle. Yes. There we go. That's the most authentic sound. It's good.

Right, I'm going to try it. It says it's citrony. Citrini? Citrini? What, like the car? Yeah, it's a bit like a French car. It's full of life. bed. that's a that's a that's a that's a that's a that's a that's a pretty nice beer that's good

I'm proud good Jamie what about you okay so I have in my hand a beer called Curious Brew and whilst it doesn't really have what Matt's got on it load of space stuff um because I couldn't find any um I thought it was good because I'm always curious Jake about space because I don't really know as much about space as you and Matt. But I try and learn.

And so that's what I'm drinking. It's made by Chapel Down, which is England's, I believe England's leading wine maker. And they re-ferment it using champagne yeast. So, and I've had these before. So it's a very good beer. They also do an IPA and they also have just started doing cider.

So check them out. Huh. What about yourself, Jake? So I just do want to point out that it is 10 a.m. currently. So this is a good one for me. So I want to talk about the Insight Mission today. And so I was like, I got to get a beer that's somehow related to it. But there weren't like any Mars beers anywhere.

So I just like literally went to the store and looked for anything red. And so this is postmark brewing, which, which is a local. brewery here in Vancouver and it's their Belgian red so it says wow it's got I'll read the label to you here it says crimson delicate spicy I don't know that your Tinder profile yeah it is except it says gray it's gray tender spicy yeah so check that's a large beer too yeah so I don't know I don't know what the craft beer market is like in the UK, but in Vancouver, and especially like on the west coast of Canada and BC, like a Canada in the US, like that kind of Cascadia region. This is like the only size bottle we ever get. Like every beer is you buy big bottles like this. But yeah. Yeah, I've just been in a shop in hay with exactly that. In fact, one of the bottles had a space shuttle on it. So I almost bought that and changed my, uh, a little.

But I've stuck with big... What you're saying, Jake? How is it? That's pretty good, yeah. The spicy is like, hmm, what is that? I'm trying to figure out what the spices. It's like a, maybe a softer one, like a nutmeg or a clove or something. That's interesting.

Wow. Yeah. Something going on here, that's for sure. Oh, it probably says right on here. No. Jake, you sounded like a bea, sommelier then. Is that you pronounce it, Matt? A wine expert?

Is it a sommelier? Something like that, isn't it? A somelier, maybe? I don't know. Don't you say it the French way? I reckon it might be. Somalia, yeah, yeah. Cool, okay.

So usually we like to start off with any kind of follow-up emails we get from listeners. And we actually have an email that is a follow-up from the last episode that I do want to point out. So last episode, we talked a lot about the, we talked about NASA projects. and, you know, which ones stay on track and which ones don't and why is that. And we talked a lot about human spaceflight. And I think I called out that I thought that the human spaceflight program was kind of off track at NASA and they didn't have any specific goals. And Dave from Texas emailed me to say, well, hang on, hang on, you're a little wrong there. And so he cleaned me up a little bit.

But basically, there is a very. very specific list of human space flight health risks. I don't know if you guys have ever seen this. We talked a little bit about it in our Discord, but basically it's like they literally, NASA has like a list of like every potential medical problem that space poses and classifies it and like clearly identifies it in like a priority order of like, this needs to be solved, this needs to be solved. So it's a pretty cool list.

So I want to thank Dave for for calling me out on that because I was probably glossing over that a little too much and we'll put a link to it in the show notes so you guys can see i want to see that i didn't know that yeah it's really cool well what's really weird is that one of the books that i almost bought today was a uh a copy of the a iAA's uh human health risks from 2003 or something like that and it's a great big thick like proper you know one of those big books so yeah that it's yeah see jake most people have like the guinness book of world records in their toilet, but Matt has that. The list of human health risks, yeah.

That speaks volumes, isn't it? Yeah, but, but yeah, so they've been thinking about it for a long time, haven't they? The old, it's my biggest complaint about Elon Musk is he seems to just completely ignore it. Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, it's interesting because it's not clear like whether that should be Elon's problem, you know? In a way, if you're going to build ships that carry people, you need to carry some of it, but not all of it, right?

So it's an interesting question to pose for sure. But it's good to see that NASA has like really kind of already identified them all, though, and like is working on them, even though we don't really know what we're going to do in deep space yet, but they're like, well, this has got to get solved, so we may be able to start working on it. Yeah, it's good to chip away. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I mean, Elon Musk would be pretty bonkers.

wouldn't it if he built a massive spacecraft only to find out that humans couldn't do the trip to Mars yeah that wouldn't be a very good business move would it yeah he'd just turn it into a hyperloop or something like that you know if you you know surely Boeing when they're building things like

the 747 they are thinking about the safety of their passengers yes of course yes obviously I guess there's more because like that it's cool because the health risks go more than just like okay there's radiation so you need to solve that. It's like a whole bunch of psychological things about long-term spaceflight.

Like, you know, what happens when you can't see the Earth ever? What happens when all you do is interact with computers all day? Like there's, there's like really, really specific stuff in there. And that's why I say that, you know, some of that is going to be, whoever's in charge of transportation will have to take some of that on their belt, but some of it is just like you're going on a two-year mission and there's psychological problems you need to deal with in that. And that necessarily wouldn't be.

you know, the bus company's problem. Yeah. Well, actually, Matt, that sounds a little bit like the Mars Nation event we went on. Yeah, we were discussing mental health in space and some of the challenges that faced astronauts or even members of the public. If we are going to go into space, what would be the challenges facing us and how would we overcome them in terms of mental health and loneliness? It's really interesting. Yeah, we, I think we all can. came up with VR as the, as one of the sort of big solutions.

It was, it was, it was interesting. In fact, it was, it was shared by someone from Imperial College, I believe, who's like one of the leading experts on mental health in spaceflight. So that was, yeah, he was, he was all over it. It was very interesting. There was also a, there was also a pet seal, I guess like a little tomoguchi that you had to look after on the, on the spaceship. so interesting.

I think I heard about, I think you guys had to podcast on that, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I remember that, yeah, yeah. Cool, well, why don't, why don't you tell us a little about your podcast? Maybe there's some listeners that have never heard of you guys,

but it's a great show. What? I know it's hard to believe. But why don't you, yeah, why don't you tell us, tell the listeners about what you guys do? Go for it, Matt. Well, I guess we're very similar, I guess, to a lot of the, the space exploration podcasts.

We take a slightly, I guess a slightly more flippant, a flippant side to everything. We're associated with the British Interplanatory Society, so that we're kind of aligned with them, but we're our own thing, aren't we, Jamie? Yeah, we go fully independent, just like I would say. We go pretty off-piece quite regularly.

But we're trying to concentrate now, I think, on sort of more European stuff, Because the one thing we've realized is that we're kind of, you know, people will listen all around the world to us. And we get that on our Twitter feed quite a bit as well, people asking, oh, where can I hear about Indian space use or where I can hear about that? So if we concentrate on the European stuff, it's really good. And of course, we live down the road from a lot of the European centres. So that's, it's quite cool in that sense. Yeah, I really like, Jamie.

Well, I was just going to say, Matt, don't forget to tell Jake that we found out that we have one listener. in North Korea. Yeah. It's probably Kim. Yeah, who'd you reckon it is? Could just be someone using a VPN or something, right? Oh, yeah. I like to think it's a spy.

Don't ruin it, Jake. Who's just, like, logging in. I don't know who would use a VPN to go through a North Korean IP address. That'd be the least helpful or useful a VPN you could ever do. I think we're just trying to wangle a Hollywood movie about us somehow linked to North Korea. I'm sure it will happen. I really like your guys' show because it's, well, I mean, flip it is one word maybe, but you guys are very funny.

So, I mean, that's one of the big reasons we wanted to get you on this show because this is a little more casual, a little more laid back. And you're a great fit for that. But I also do like it because you do have that kind of European connection. And I always try to do, you know, like I do Mars stuff. So I try to say if anywhere on Earth is interested in Mars stuff, I'm interested in it. But I get wrapped up in NASA really, really easily. And so sometimes I do miss some of the European things, which is good for years to help me out.

Well, likewise. Thank you for your kind words. We love listening to podcasts from, you know, over the pond. And so yours is a great place for people to start. But we like the fact that it's really international. And especially like Matt said, our listeners are from all over the place. So when we ask people what they'd like to, they'd like us to talk about, it's really interesting, the responses that we get.

So long may it continue. Yeah, no kidding. Yeah, it's weird how like it is very international, right? I'm thinking about kind of where my listeners end up being in. And I think the UK is like number three on my list for countries. It's like the US, Canada, and then the UK is right away. And so to think about, you know, having to cater to a global audience all the time makes it makes it weird. I don't know what you guys think about that.

Any North Korean listeners, Jake? I don't know. I haven't seen any. You know what's really funny? I think we talked about this. I had a huge spike one, like one specific day. Something happened in the UK. And on the south coast, like in Plymouth somewhere around there.

Like all of a sudden I got all these listeners, like all these listeners. There's like all these listens from this area. This is one specific area. There was like, you know, like hundreds of listens. And all these little town names I popped up. I'm like, what is this town? I look up, look it up. And it's all within like a 40 kilometer range of Plymouth.

So I don't know what happened. Like, I don't know if someone like took out an ad and said like you got to check out this podcast or like I have no idea what happened. So Matt, was that when you were flyering down in that town for Jay? No, I've been, I've been thinking about this. I think that it's something like, imagine in Plymer. They might have done, there might be a university where they have like a class. And the professor's gone, go away and go and listen to this podcast.

And I'll ask you questions on it later on. And he's given them your podcast. And they've all gone home, listened to it as their homework and then come back in. There's one explanation, I reckon. Could be. Beautiful thought. Well, if you're in that class, listeners, please tell me, I really would like to know what happened in Plymouth. because that would be

what was the feedback what did you think of the show I mean did you get those listeners the week after Jake I'm hoping so I'm not sure it kind of dispersed a little bit after that well if something set as homework it's kind of I don't want to do it yeah yeah it's already got the negative connotation it's very true

all right so you guys want to talk about what I want to talk about insight that's that's pretty big news for me at least yes we do we are beyond jealous we actually stopped talking about it on our last podcast because we thought there's no point really talking about it because we want to talk to you about it because you went to see it right yeah i did um it was a really interesting experience um uh it's this would be my second launch um i saw falcon heavy

earlier in the year which is my first which is uh everyone said that's setting a very high bar for your first launch and they were right uh totally uh it was quite a spectacular event but yeah van denberg is a weird place, man. It's like, so like you fly into Los Angeles and I had these, I plotted the course like along the coast and it's like the Pacific Coast Highway and it's, I landed kind of around dinner. So it was like you'd be driving into the sunset and I had this great, um, uh, scene in my mind. I was like, this is going to be a great California experience. I'm going to just like drive along the coast and the beaches and it was like that like at first. Yeah, because like you cut through. I think it's like Malibu and Santa Monica and stuff. And it's just a lot of. And it's just,

like it's exactly what you'd expect there's just like convertibles and like people that are like super tanned on beaches playing volleyball and like it was hilarious it was but then like it sounds like sussex and so you drive but it is like it's not close like I was expecting like I don't mean like an hour and a half or something like that and it took me like three hours to get from los angeles by car to Vandenberg and so it was like nighttime by the time I got there and you cut away from the coast when you get close to it and you drive through the little hills are just like kind of hills all around this area and you go into this valley and like all of a sudden it was like boom fog like right away you're i pull into this little town a little town of

lompoc and like you can see the like the street lights and they're just like all these like you know beams of light cutting through the fog and everything you couldn't see anything i almost ran a red light like i literally like almost died getting into there because i couldn't see what I was doing. So, yeah, it was interesting. And there was like hardly any hotels left. So we got this like really crappy like Motel 6 thing and and, which I guess is apparently like, I don't know if you guys know that brand, but it's like from.

I have stayed in one. It's like from that area. I think like the first Motel 6 was like just around the corner from Van der Berger Air Force Space. I really. Fun fact. I had an interesting experience in it in a Motel 6. That's not rude, don't worry.

Is that podcast appropriate? I checked in whilst I was doing my great American road trip. And an old lady said that behind the reception desk said she reminded me of her son. So I said, oh, that's very nice, you know, made a joke about he must have been handsome that she loved. And then I went to my room and she knocked on the door and she brought me some cookies. and that was it one of the loveliest old ladies I've ever met so there you go lovely motel 6 story

I didn't have as a good of experiences you didn't have that no there were no cookies it was funny because it's a little small town it's when a launch happens like it's like the big event right so the hotel had like printouts like here's where you can go watch here's the time which is really interesting but it was like really cold in the room when like

can I have another blanket? They're like, oh, we don't have any blankets. And I was like, okay, well, that's a little bit of an oversight. But, and the room was non-smoking, but only because, like, I wasn't smoking in it. Like, but it was definitely a smoking room. Sure. So, like, you just, I just reeked after us after staying in there. So that was kind of fun.

But, so I had some friends meet me down there. We, if you guys know from episode 15, Cassie, Stern, German drove down from San Francisco. That's right. And Chelsea Shostia kind of arrived pretty late. We didn't really get any sleep at all because she arrived so late. And more friends flew in from Portland and stuff. And she brought, like, bless her heart, she brought this, like, mobile coffee kit

because the launch was at 4.5 a.m. And he had to get there early, right? So we were up at, like, I don't know, 2 o'clock or something after, like, arriving at midnight. And so she made this coffee, like it was like a French press. and we made coffee, we're like grinding in the hotel room and then grinding the beans. They'll be careful how you say that. Yeah, grinding the coffee beans in the hotel room and making this coffee. And then we just filled up the cup like half with coffee and half with Bailey's.

And that was our launch experience. So we walked out right by the hotel was the Lompoc Airport. It's like a little tiny city airport. And they just opened up like this seems to me like the most non-stop. American security thing ever. They just opened up the airport and we were just like walking around on the tarmac and there was just like people everywhere with like lawn chairs and coffee and NASA had like a tent there so they're given out pins and stickers and information pamphlets. So it was pretty cool to see. There was actually a lot

of people there for four o'clock in the morning. I was pretty impressed by the turnout. I don't know how. Jake was there a was there kind of a palpable sense that this was California's or well the you know West Coast's first launch? I don't know. I mean, I don't know. It's hard to say because it's like I don't know if that made a difference to them like they have they have launches right so they're used to launches. I don't know if the planetary thing made any big difference. And I think a lot of the people like I said, I don't know how many of them were locals because I don't know how big of a deal it is for a local to have a launch. Like do you get up at four in the morning if you live there to go see something? I don't know. But yeah, it was it was interesting. There was there was quite a lot of people there. So we had like go way to the end of the runway to get. a spot where there was not people talking because I was trying to get launch audio. But yeah, it was interesting. But the launch itself, like I said, in the Weimarsians episode, it was just like you couldn't see a single thing.

It was almost, like, it was hilarious because we're all looking, we're looking into the dark sky and there's like fog everywhere. And then we're waiting, we're waiting. It's like 403, 404. I wonder if it's going to go off right away. And then you hear it and like, oh, there it is, there it is. And you're looking. And like, I didn't expect.

to be able to like crisply see like you know the sides of the rocket or anything we're pretty far it was like 10 kilometers but like I thought maybe the sky would like brighten up and like nothing it was just pitch black you couldn't see a single it was like so funny we're all kind of just staring into the sky and then it's like quiet and the the rocket sounds like filling you up and then it kind of fades away and everyone's just like is that it uh did anybody see anything no but did you see the footage that someone shot from the plane window oh it's mental hey incredible I just that has got to be the way to see a rocket launch hasn't it

from a plane yeah yeah there was there was a couple planes up there and it's funny because we could hear those planes from the airport and we were like I wonder what that is that's interesting and then to see the photos afterwards I was like oh that was that plane that's awesome because there was there was two I think there was a the one guy, I'm forgetting his name now, Max or something, he's on, he's on Twitter. Max, I can't remember. But he flew up and got pictures, which is a really good one. And then there was another guy for NASA Space Flight.

So he was actually like the official photographer for them. And he was really high. And he had this gorgeous, like you could see the clouds and, and like the rocket pushing out. We'll put it in the show notes, obviously. But yeah, it was a pretty great photo for sure. Oh yeah, it's just incredible. Wow, super, super jealous. Even if you couldn't see much, still very jealous.

Yeah, I mean, so Jake, let me ask you a question. So, okay, so Insight is going to land. They reckon 26th of November touchdown on the red planet. Yeah. And so to get its information, I believe it's got three instruments on board, a size thermometer, a heat probe, and a radio science experiment. So when they're drilling down,

what do you think is, do you think there's going to be anything that's going to surprise us five meters down? Probably not. This is not that kind of mission. I don't think. It's not like this is really, this is going to be a tough one for NASA to like to sell.

Honestly. It is because like, you know, curiosity is like every single day. It's like, look, at these amazing photos of Mars. I'm right here standing on this here. Look at gorgeous panorama, high definition color, everything. It sells itself, right?

It's a rovers, robot that drives around. This thing is just going to park and it'll never move again. And there's two crappy engineering cameras on it. And like, that's it. It's just going to be returning seismic data and temperature data. And it's going to be super boring for the general public. So it's going to be a hard one. But I think that like the data itself is going to be.

super important because what we're going to be able to do is figure out, like, we're going to be able to figure out the inside of the planet. What does the core look like? What is the, is there an inner and outer core? I'm not sure. What does the cross look like? What does the mantle look like? What are the depths of those?

And then how does that affect how the planet wobbles, right? Because Mars is super weird because of that whole like the bulge on the side, right? The Tharsis bulge. There's like Olympus Mons and then those three Tharsus Mountains that are very characteristic if you look at the map of it right and it's like literally like this like raised elevation bulge on the side of the planet that makes it kind of wobble when it spins and so kind of understanding the what the the map of the inside it looks like it's going to inform a ton of stuff because that that that tharsis bulge can like really um you can trace that back in time and figure out what happened with the

climate because it has a huge impact on climate this massive elevation and that's where all the volcanoes are and stuff so like figuring out when that happened and how big it is and what the shape of it is it's going to be huge. This is going to impact so many different like models going forward that we use for everything else. It's it's pretty important. So it's going to be a very important science mission in terms of you know just gathering science data but is it going to have much of an impact on manned missions future manned missions? Uh not really. Not really. I don't think that's not the answer everyone wants to hear. Um, but uh, like it's about understanding how the planet works. and it's passed.

And I mean, there may be a really, really indirect way to help a future crude mission. You know, maybe by figuring out how the climate used to work, we can figure out how it probably works today, which maybe can help us understand the today's locations better, and then you can characterize where resources might be. That's me tracing a lot of lines there. Yeah. It's possible.

For sure, but yeah, this is a scientific mission almost exclusively. And that's why I think, again, it's going to be hard for NASA to sell that one. Unless, Jake, they drill down and find, you know, maybe like a little talking rodent five meters deep. Yeah, that'd be an easier sell. What do you think? Well, something like the 2020 rover or the Mars XO rover, XO-Mars rover, presumably they are back on to being like these mega missions that are easier cells right I mean is insight because insight seems to have gone pretty much under the radar it's not in

the sort of public eye even now even at it even at its launch is it yeah exactly I mean that the um the rovers you mentioned so mars 2020 XMRs they're like specifically going after like trying to find traces of life, right, which is kind of one of the core missions, at least on the NASA side, that's a core mission objective for the Mars program. But Insight's not part of the Mars program, even though it's a Mars spacecraft. It's a discovery competed mission. So it's kind of to the side of the typical marketing you see from NASA when it comes to Mars, right?

You know, trying to find traces of life, past habitability, you know, preparing for future crude missions. That's all the kind of the core of the Mars program, which curiosity and opportunity they're all contributing to. And this is, this is separate from that, which makes it kind of a unique, unique mission. It's interesting for sure. Yeah. Very cool. But, uh, yeah. So I mean, that's that was a launch experience. It was pretty funny. I had a hell of a time with flights, man. Like, like, oh, traveling with the travel part of this trip was like awful. I don't know what it's like in Europe, but changing flights in North America is apparently like the hardest thing that you've ever done in your entire life.

I don't get it. Like, uh, such expensive change fees, man. Yeah, we, everything in Europe is, is trains and planes between the sort of major hubs, but you don't sort of do the same sort of hopping around on a plane thing, really. Yeah, we don't have good train infrastructure.

It's real shame. or to make you feel better Jake once I had a flight booked for me I must reiterate that this was not my error but it was a flight booked for me I won't mention who did it it's very unfair but check this one out so I had a flight from London to Berlin and they couldn't get London to Berlin so I went via Dusseldorf and I had seven hours in Dusseldorf Airport now the flight from London

to Berlin is it's an hour and a half so yeah I wasn't best pleased because I only found out on the day that that was going to be my journey horrible hang on a second Dusseldorf to Berlin is only like an hour train

isn't it yeah I know I couldn't do anything about it but I got very drunk in Dusseldorf Airport on some lovely white German beer so you got every cloud guys every cloud I did the exact same thing when I came back from Florida for Falcon Heavy.

I had a connection in Phoenix and it was four hours. And I thought like I would need the four hours to like get through the airport and like, you know, figure anything out. And it was like the gate I got off was right next to the gate had to get on. And there was a bar right there. And so I was so like bagged from the trip. I was like, let's start drinking. And I just like, yeah, it was a good, it was a good flight home after that.

Yeah, airports are so dull. I always try and walk around the duty free shop like I'm vaguely interested. the perfumes and cigarettes that I will never buy. And I don't know why I do that. So what I should just do is, you know, sit down and read a good book. But I always wander around for about an hour, aimlessly, until I head to the bar. Yeah, yeah. The airports are hell on earth.

I absolutely hate them. I can't stand the fact that you have to be there early either. Like two hours early. It's just like, oh. I'm jealous of your hour and a half flight, though. I love that that's This Vancouver to Los Angeles was like I consider that like a small to medium class flight

and it was like three and a half hours. Right. Yeah, it's crazy. When you think about where we're linked to, I mean, I think from London to Amsterdam is like 45 minutes. It's pretty crazy. It takes longer to get from one side of London to the other.

Although it's funny, I had to fly through Seattle on the way down and Vancouver to Seattle. It's a two-hour drive. So it's like a 31 minute flight. Like it was, it's always funny because you're like taking off from Vancouver and then you look out the window and you can see the airport you just took off from. And it's like the ocean, the Vancouver airport, the city. And the pilot's like, and we are now beginning our descent into Seattle airport.

And I'm like, I can see the other airport. How are we beginning our descent already? And then you just, you don't even reach cruising altitude. They're like, oh, we're just turned the Wi-Fi on. Oh, and we've just turned the Wi-Fi off. We've crossed back below 10,000 feet. so yeah it's always it's always fun yeah that's weird so what's up with you guys i mean um we've got the opportunity to have a european presence on here you guys have done some pretty cool stuff with

uh you know stuff in the uk and and and the space industry over there and i don't think a lot of our listeners get a ton of exposure to that so what's what's happening in your world what's what's fun to talk about well well as we we mentioned on this week's podcast that insight what the The seismometer was built here in England with UK space agents. But basically, yeah, back in 2010, we set up the UK space agency that sort of was a culmination of lots of different agencies that were sort of spread all around. So they thought, well, let's consolidate those into the UK space agency. Just in time for Brexit, right?

Well, just after Brexit. I mean, yeah, the nightmare is it's. is Brexit, the very, very first thing that's happened after Brexit is that aerospace contracts are going to move over to mainland Europe. So we're going to miss out on quite a lot of that large satellite builds. Well, and this GPS thing, Matt. Yeah, Galileo. Galileo, they're like, no, no, sorry. Yeah, so obviously Galileo has a kind of military aspect.

So Galileo is the European version of GPS. And it's up and functioning, and they're putting up a few more satellites quite soon, I believe. Yes, Airbus, isn't it? I think they basically said that, you know, the UK wing are standing ready to assist in building any British sat nav system, if asked. But, yeah, a bit of a row going on at the moment. So, yeah, Brexit may or may not.

affect the British space industry, which is doing really, really well. So it was supposed to go from, you know, it's supposed to, it, it's about 6% of the global space industry, the British space industry. And the aim for the UK Space Agency was to get it to 10%, which it's on its way to doing. So it's 10% of the, of the world's sort of global space thing. And we make 40% of the world's small space. satellites. So that's it's you know obviously we it's a very very high tech sector and our sort of military aspect of that I think is is pretty huge as well. Is that mostly done? Is it the the

Surrey satellite technologies? Yeah. Yeah it is. I think I think sorry satellites are big but yeah sorry satellites do it quite a bit but there's there's quite a few other companies like like aerospace British aerospace and there's one there's one there's one up north that built the engines for Juno, the one that they didn't switch on, but that was the so they're dotted around all these different

satellite making and rocket engine making companies. So yeah, in terms of like the engineering side of it, we've got quite a lot going on and of course the next big step is our own kind of native launch facility.

So they've been, there was a competition and there's sort of five candidates of which Cornwall's one. There's one just down the road here in Wales. There's one in Scotland for launching satellites up into space. It's not a particularly great area, of course, because we're not near the equator to get that extra spin. Yeah, which direction would you launch in? Well, I guess down in Cornwall, it's firing back towards you guys.

So it's a bit like the Vandenberg. issue, I suppose, where you're not really getting much of an assist. In fact, you know, it's quite the opposite. You're not getting an assist. But I don't, I presumably they've done that kind of feasibility and it's, and it's, that's not really a problem in the same way that it wasn't a problem for insight, I suppose. Because like Insight, like Vandenberg, you'll launch south, right? It's not, you're not launching like west. You're not fighting the rotation. You just kind of not gaining from it, right? You just go straight down. Can you do that from Cornwall? Or are you just going to like fly over France?

It would be Cornwall that you could, yeah, Cornwall you could do that. Although if you went directly south, you'd be hitting Portugal pretty quickly. So, yeah, I guess it, yeah, I mean, I don't really know about the orbital mechanics of launching from here. But I mean, that's the aim anyway, is to have a launch site. I mean, Britain is the only country that has had a, that has become spacefaring and then abandoned it straight away. So we have launched one orbital rocket and one satellite But both of them were from Womera in Osk So all of that was from Wemera in Australia

Yeah, yeah At least you guys have launched an orbital rocket though Because here in Canada we're super happy with suborbital We just fire a lot of black brant Sounding rockets and we're good with that That sounds good, yeah Go Canada. Yeah, well, of course, we've been doing the same.

We've done a lot of suborbital rockets, but a lot of those come out, we're coming out at Sweden. I don't think we've been launched the UK. You know, I don't think suborbid, even suborbital rockets haven't been going from the UK, which is interesting. But the aim is to have one.

And of course, that's been, the one that I would put my money on is that it does end up in Cornwall. And one of the reasons is because that's right next to Goon Hilly, which we've talked about on... It is? That's the satellite tracking area, right? Recently received... Yeah, so that is where they've recently had European Space Agency money to do up the dishes and turn it into part of the deep space network, yeah.

And track... That was a really cool... That was a really cool interview you had when you went there. That was super informative. of that guy was was uh really smart and he got into the details really well which is always fun right oh man yeah yeah it's funny because it's the second time i've been taken around that facility and uh i've got i've got another interview in the can with the guy that took me around the first time and he's exactly the same he's he's worked at goon-hilly all his life and that's so he's you know that

they've taken it from you know the really early parts of things like tell star all the way through you know But it's not only, not only have they got their satellite dishes there, but things like the internet comes up in Goon Hilley. So there's this room that's locked down where like the fiber optic cables and all that lot are coming in from America and are coming up there. Oh really? Like the transatlantic cables or whatever? Yep, absolutely. So it's a pretty important kind of communications network and things like live aid and stuff like that were transmitted from there. and the World Cup and things like that.

So it's a piece of national heritage, and it almost all got knocked down, as in it was almost all completely demolished. Yeah, it was saved. Yeah, so British Telecommunications, which is the big sort of phone network, AT&T, I suppose. They were, you know, they've got different bases

at different places, and they were just going to abandon Goon Hilly. But, yeah, it's been saved, And yeah, it's going to be part of the deep space network. And it's got a few astronomy telescopes as well. So, well, radio scopes, I should say. That's interesting. Is it going to be part of like the, when you say deep space network, not the NASA one, but the ESA one? Or is it its own?

Why does that? No, I think it's global. So, yeah, it will be used as part of the, if Orion goes around the moon, it will be used as a, you know, a communication post, just like the Australian one and those other ones, the other dishes dotted around are used. In fact, those dishes, all of those sort of large

parabolic dishes you see are based on the gunghilly dishes. They were the sort of first of that type to be built apparently. Oh really? Interesting. Matt, I also like the noises that was coming from that podcast. It sounded like you were

an oil drill or something. Oh man. Yeah. What's brilliant about those satellite dishes is everything's so physical, as in the way that the radio signal comes down, you'd think that it's being picked up and sort of sent into wires, but it's not. It's sent into pipe. These wave guides, I'd never really seen them before,

and I was trying to get my head around it, but yeah, wave guides are kind of like these square pipes and the sort of higher the frequency that the smaller these pipes get, but it was quite incredible. And the fact that it works two ways as well, so that you're sort of shining, you're literally shining the radio light on the satellite as it goes over.

It was incredible. Weird. I'm like, I like to pretend that I can understand some space technology, like orbital mechanics, I'm pretty decent at the idea of, you know, rocket propulsion I kind of get.

When it comes to radio communications and signals and stuff, I am so in the dark. Like, I just do not gather like, oh, this is the K band and the KU band and the S band. I'm like, dude, I have no idea what that is. I don't even talking about. Jake, we are kindred spirits because I know bugger all about that. I just, you know, I pretend I know what I'm talking about. I just let Matt say it.

And I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's right. I like when like a news item comes up that's like a new breakthrough in laser communications. I'm like, well, listen, I don't know about the radio stuff, but if it's got lasers, it must be good. So I'm going to be excited about this. Oh, yeah. Well, there's a lot of that going on, isn't there? There's a lot of these small satellites going up, testing all that laser communication right now, isn't it? That seems to be a pretty big thing in space.

It's communication between flocks of satellite using lasers. That seems to be very important. I think Orion's going to test a whole bunch of laser stuff when it does cis lunar. so we'll see yeah that'll be super cool yeah yeah and anything with lasers in

it's pretty good is right like it's like a win-win that's that's a that's a NASA mission that can sell itself you don't need to it'd be really hard it's hard to say like we got an advance

in a high high frequency radio but like laser phone calls I'm interested tell me about later I'm interested even better so I was one of the other books

I saw on the shelf was cyclotrons and mazes in space. How about that? A mazer being a microwave laser. I don't even know what that is. Anyone else aroused? I was particularly, it was, I was looking at the book going, I want to buy this book, but I know I'll never understand a single word. It's just the sort of book you have on the coffee table.

Yeah, and just sort of say, yeah, yeah. Oh, that old thing. Have you not read it? Oh, really? It's amazing. You could borrow it. I feel the same way. If you dare.

Another one is that like astrobiology. It's like when you're bringing in all the, like I was terrible at biology in high school. I think I took, I took a one class in like the 10th grade and it was like I got 50.6% or something in it like just enough to like not have to take it again. And it was just, it was awful. And then you hear this like astrobiology stuff. And it for Mars and I was like, oh my God. How am I going to cover this? I have no idea.

And I got this book, there's this book about planetary protection. It's like when biospheres collide or something. And I'm trying to read it. And I'm just like, this is rough. Like, I don't know what I'm doing. Matt's just recommended a book to me that I bought. And I think it's going to be a tough one. Matt, I haven't got it in front of me.

Was it the Godal? Godel Escher bark. Yeah. So I'm going to dip into it. It's about 10 times bigger than the biggest Bible. and I'm hoping that I understand at least a sentence out of the whole thing. We'll see. I have to say that I wish I'd had that as my pick.

Go-Dell Escherbach is one of the most extraordinary books I've ever read. But it's about how consciousness occurs. I don't know how it relates to space other than the fact that I suppose if we're building AIs to go out into space for us. It's considered a classic. Hmm You should check it out Some light reading for everyone

Light reading, yeah Oh, it's good Jamie You'll enjoy it, I promise Well, I'll report back on that I'm skeptical All right, so Let's move on So I have one more email

To talk about Before we kind of wrap up And get into our picks and stuff So this is not a follow-up email This is a new email that we got And this is really fun for me because it's from Richard, who is from Southern Alberta and Canada, which is where I'm from. And it makes it a very small world. He's like, I'm a farm.

Welcome, Richard. He's like, I'm a farmer in southern Alberta. And I was like, I grew up in a rural agricultural community. And so we did my wife. And we started talking and like, yeah, he lives like a dozen kilometers from where my wife grew up, which is really interesting. But Richard was listening to us talking. And he went into a, I guess it was like an agriculture conference in a city called Leftbridge. And there was a planet labs display.

So from planet, the constellation company. And I guess so this is kind of a fun way that they are marketing their data. Because that's their business plan, right? They take a picture of the earth every day, every part of the earth every day. And then they sell it somehow. And so you can sign up for this service as a farmer. and they send you a picture of your land from space every day. And then you can watch the crop change over the year.

You can compare, you know, once you collect a year of date or something, you can compare it year over year. That's awesome. What a cool service, right? So he was telling us they had. That's so cool. They had like one of the doves there, like one of the CubeSats that they use and stuff. And we're trying to market it to some of these people. And I think I'm trying to remember it's possible that Planet has an office in Lethbridge,

which is hilarious to me because it's like this small like nothing town. I'm sure people from Lethbridge will be mad if I say that. But I am a fellow southern Alberta and I can say it. There's no problem. But yeah, it's like it's like this little little town and there's like there's a, I guess an office planet like how it does their Canada office there for some reason, which is interesting. So maybe that's why I would like to know what Richard is a farmer for.

What's he growing? Did he tell me? I'm trying to remember if you told me. I have to pull the email up. So Richard, if you're listening, let us know what you're growing. I'm looking at his email now. And can I buy said produce over the internet? Because that would be cool. He didn't say in his email, I don't think, but knowing Southern Alberta, it was probably either wheat, barley or canola. Wow. Sounds like the healthiest beer ever.

basically I'll take a point of that was planet labs the company you were talking about on your last off nominal that was taking the oblique pictures yeah that's the one yeah

yeah that I haven't seen any of those pictures because I was listening to that last night and I haven't got round to looking at the pictures but I really can't wait yeah they're super cool you definitely got to look at them yeah I need to I might even if I go silent it's because I'm looking

I'm looking at oblique pictures of he does that yeah I'm like Matt focus focus yeah no there it was really cool like there I love that the the way that they can come up with all these different business cases for the data like once you have the data the things you can do it is it's pretty special so just like this is really good I love that I love the idea that he could change maybe when he soes his crop or you know that's that's really cool Yeah, yeah. How big are the Dove Satellites? Are they Cub Sats or are they washing machine kind of thing?

I think they're CubeSats. I'm pretty sure the Doves are Cube Sats. Wow. That's why they launched like 70 of them on that one Indian launch, right? Yeah, yeah, the, yeah, the... So, Matt, if you stood outside your house every day at the same time, could there be a satellite that maybe sees your changing haircuts? Yeah, I don't see why not?

over the year. I mean, I'd like to document that. What's brilliant, at Goon Hilly, they actually had the, they had dishes to pick up the, um,

dove satellites, uh, that, that type of, uh, cube sets. I think it was dubs. And,

uh, they're the ones in the, they're the ones in the, uh, geodesic domes. So that the, uh, antennas can spin really,

really quickly without, you know, the danger of, uh, cutting someone up. Right, right, right. And the wind, you know, and all those kind of things. So they're in that geodesic dome.

So they just look like normal air. It sort of almost look like television aerials, but they can spin really fast and, and actually get the signals off those things. Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, I'm really excited to see what they, what they come up with next in there because, like, they're still coming up with like also wacko ways to just use the optical data.

But like, I don't know, what else could they put up there? Like, what other kind of data could you market, right? That's kind of what I think about, like, I don't know, besides, you know, visible spectrum, like, I don't know, infrared or ultraviolet or, I don't know, like something. I don't know. Like there's all sorts of different data sets you could get, which would be pretty interesting. But, yeah, it was cool. So thanks for sending that in, Richard.

It's always great to hear. Cheers, Rich. Things like that. So you guys want to do picks? You got, you pick something out to share? Yeah. I've got one book and I've got a podcast. and then I've got three or, no, I've got four films.

So I don't know what you want. That's what I've got. But, well, I didn't know if you wanted, I didn't know if you wanted all of these things to be about space because some of them aren't. I'm happy to leave them out. Jamie, the instructions were a one pick and. Oh.

I'm already, I'm already on the naughty step. You got so excited. I did get really excited. I went down to a coffee shop today, Jake, and I did some work. And then I thought, right, I'll work on the podcast. And I really got into it. I was thinking, oh, what films have I seen recently? And I got really into it.

Okay, well, give us your favorite one first, of all of them, the best one. Okay, well, I guess as we're on a space podcast, I'll keep it about space. And I don't know if Matt has got this too. So apologies, Matt, if you have. but we actually interviewed the director a guy called Mark Craig and the film is the last man on the moon which is a documentary about

the great Gene Cernan you know the history and the beautiful archive footage loads of great talking heads and interviews who was in people that were involved at the time and also really lovely footage and interviews from the family

of Jean Cernan and his daughter he said that he put her initials into the to the moon dust and it's just I thought it was wonderful and really really beautiful film and just gives you that insight into what they went through and the aftermath of that and the aftermath of the family which is which is pretty intense at times So that's my pick. The Last Man on the Moon, directed by Mark Craig. Check it out. That was a good one.

That's on Netflix, I think, right? Or somewhere did I see it? I don't know if it's on Netflix over here. It sometimes is and sometimes isn't. It's one of those ones that keeps appearing and then disappearing. Yeah, it's a few years old now. So some people may have seen it. But if you haven't, I implore you to.

Yeah, it's a good one. Is that the one where they go to his ranch or whatever? Yeah, that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Oh, and Chase, Chase in the Discord, who's our resident Apollo historian says it's on Netflix in the States at least. Cheers, Chase. Yeah, so people get onto Netflix if you're in the States and check it out.

This episode brought to you by Netflix. Yeah, do we get some money from this? Well, I hope so. Yeah. No, you've probably not. You panged on about it, you know. Hashtag Netflix. Cool.

Okay. Matt, what do you got? Mine's not space related. It's just what I'm doing at the moment. Selfish. This better not be like you're like vacuuming your carpet. No, no. Hoovering, you know what?

We do spend a lot of time. I tell you what's funny is sometimes I do get a little bit bored with space because we're doing it all the time. I'm listening to all the podcasts. and we're sort of writing all these, writing the notes for the show and doing it. And last night, because I'd arrived in this rural little town,

I looked up into the night sky, and it was just full of stars. And I thought, how can I get bored of space? Genuinely, I had that thought and thought, oh my God, we just got to get out there, man. So, but while I was doing the pick, I was, it was, the thing that I'm watching at the moment.

I don't know if anyone else has seen this, is the Americans. Have you seen that? Is that the series about like the Soviet spies? Yeah, the Soviet spies, yeah, living in America as Americans. Have you seen that, Jamie? Oh, I haven't. It's really good.

It does have the occasional reference, of course, to the American and Russian space programs because they're sort of happening and there's sort of all these intelligence things. But it's kind of that Ronald Reagan era space. Space Shuttle era kind of backdrop that's really, really cool. And I'm just, I just really, really like the program and just no one else. I seem to be the only person watching it. It's really annoying.

What's kind of about space then? Yeah, there's little bits of space in there. A tenuous link, shall we say. It's a tenuous link. But I thought, you know, I thought I'd share it because it's what I'm massively into right now. Because it's the last of the season. All right. And the star is a well.

Welsh person pretending to be Russian, pretending to be American, which is quite cool. Oh, wow. Yeah. Is that the guy, right? Because the girl, is it Kerry Russell? Or is that what's her name? Yeah. Yeah.

So it's Matthew Reese and Kerry Russell. And if you combine the two, you get Matthew Russell. Oh, look at that. There we go. You've betrayed your real reason for loving this show. Yeah, that was it. That was it. So I could get that lame joke in right at the end.

Oh, wow. Yeah, I have seen a couple episodes of that, but I never, it didn't hook me in. So we're going to go off track here now. So do you know how like they're calling today like kind of like the golden age of television? Like there's just like a lot of really good shows. And it used to be that like I would, if there was a good show, I would watch it. And if it wasn't, then I wouldn't watch it. But today like there's such a finite amount of time and there's so much good television that like you have to like pick like here's a great show that I'm never going to watch.

Like, it's just not going to happen. There's better shows and I only have this many hours in a week. It's going to be the sacrificial lamb that I feel like this is one of those shows. Like, it's good enough that I would watch it, but it's not better than the other shows I need to watch. And so it's just like, see ya. Yeah, got it. See, that's like when people were recommending TV series to me after I'd finished, just after I'd finish Breaking Bad, which blew my mind. and then they were saying oh you know why don't you watch suits or i think there was one

you watch madmen and i just thought if there's not any um meth or um you know explosions or you know people's heads being blown up i don't want to know like it took me a good six weeks i think to to actually just come down off of that i'm uh so i'll i'll uh i'll uh freak everybody out here i'm like the only person in the entire world that didn't like break the bag. I didn't like it. What? And I tell people that and they go, well, like, how far did you get into it? I'm like, I stopped with it. I tried really hard. And everyone's like, you got to keep watching it. So I went like, was there five seasons, I think. Four? I think there was five. Yeah. So I got like, I finished season four and I started season five and then I just stopped.

And they're like, what? You can't stop after a season. Like you're in the last season. I was like, I just couldn't be bothered. I couldn't finish it. Wow. Really. That's interesting. Yeah, I have to say I was a big fan, but I can understand that. I can understand that. And we just lost a bunch of subscribers. Yeah, that's how I go. Including me. Well, that's the thing, isn't it?

People start, like, getting so attached to their favorite TV program that if you say you don't like breaking bad, you suddenly become a pariah. It's like when I say I don't like music that Matt likes. He actually says he hates me. venom in his voice. Yeah, but that's like saying you don't like a bacon sandwich. Yeah, it's true. Sorry to any vegans listening.

Okay, so I have a pick and I'm actually right now having a very slight moment of panic because I can't remember if I've already done this pick or not. It's possible I've done it, but we're going to do it again. So, and this came up just because of the Insight launch, but JPL does, a piece of software called eyes on the solar system. And so you download it for your computer and basically what you can do, you like, you can pick a planet or you can pick a spacecraft and it like zooms in on it.

And it loads real live telemetry into the software roughly. So you can actually see like where the spacecraft is right now, like in its orbit or in its trajectory or all those kind of things. And you can rewind and go forward and look at all these kind of things. So I fired it up after. site launch because it loaded in there pretty quick afterwards. And you can literally, you know, zoom in on the spacecraft and this visualization as it flies away from the earth.

And you can see the exact trajectory that it's on. It's super, super cool. You got to check it out if you haven't already. Wow. Sounds awesome. You can go back and look at Cassini's, you know, grand finale if you want. You can loop around through that and crash into the, the atmosphere of Saturn. You can, I can't remember how far back it goes.

but you can do new horizons. You can do all these different spacecraft that are all over the solar system. And you can zoom around and see where things are. It's really cool. And they have like really great models. And it was really funny as they had, um, the insight spacecraft was like, when it first loaded up, they had a negative, they had a mistake in the data. And so the, the attitude had like a negative sign on it when it wasn't supposed to.

So instead of facing the solar panels right at the sun, it was like flipped around. It was facing the heat shield right at the sun. and so they had to go on and fix it. Ouch. Yeah, it was interesting. That sounds mega. I'm definitely going to check that. Yeah, it's a really great piece of software.

I did a very similar one for Rosetta. I remember at the time with Rosetta, you could go in and see exactly where it was and rewind. And on the, as you rewound, whenever it came to a sort of a really important point of the mission, it would have a big dialogue box and tell you what it was at. actually doing at that time that was so important, like all those little engine burns and waking up from hibernation and all those sort of things. It was absolutely brilliant. The whole site,

in fact, I'd have completely forgotten, but I'm assuming it's a similar thing. What's called, eye on the solar system. Yeah, eyes on the solar system. NASA's eyes on the solar system. But it's really cool because it's like a full piece of software. You have to download and install it. It's not like a web app or anything. And so it's super robust. It's interactive. You can change your viewpoint. You can zoom. zoom in, zoom out, you can play at multiple speeds. You can do all sorts of kind of fun stuff with it. And it's a really great way to visualize space graph missions, for sure.

Yeah, that's really cool. The one thing that I've got on my computer is Stellarium. And whenever I'm looking up in the sky and I see a satellite and I think to myself, oh, I wonder what that satellite is. I quickly run in, boot up Stellarium and rewind the clock back. and see which satellite it was going through whatever Starfield I was looking at at the time and then going on Wikipedia or something like that

and actually trying to get Or Gunter's Space page is a great one for this where finding the satellite and finding a picture of the satellite that's just gone over and I think that like sort of makes you slightly closer to all these objects that are going overhead. That's one of my, and actually Matt, on a tangent, you know, I like watching YouTube chats with people who are talking to flat earthers

and I love their face when they always say that when they're showed an app that can show you when satellites or the space station is flying overhead a certain location it's like you're watching their brain actually melt it's brilliant

yeah it's just weird isn't it if you've got a self-contained flat earth brain then it doesn't really matter. You're never going to convince them. That's very true. Do you think anyone actually believes the earth is flat or is it like a, is it like a culture? I'm sure that I'm sure some people do. There's definitely a culture of it.

Like it's just like this is the group I hang out with. So I have to say this. Yeah. Yeah. There's a bit of that. But there are definitely some people that really believe it, which is, which is baffling. But then I read a book by Michael Shermer. Actually before a couple of weeks before we interviewed Marcus Allen, who was the guy who thought that, you know, man hadn't gone to the moon and it was all a conspiracy. And it's a brilliant book by Michael Sherman called Why People Believe Weird Things. And, you know, you've just got to check it out. And it's actually made me less angry about all these people because it just, it makes you kind of understand why they're doing it and the psychology behind it is fascinating.

Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. Yeah, that interview you guys did with that with that the hoax here. That was something else. Yeah, it was a good one. Yeah. It was fascinating. Yeah. I don't know how you guys got through it. It's it's funny. Do you know what? He's he's he's he just seems to be a nice guy. Oh yeah. That's the thing. He's a lovely guy. Yeah. This is in. I think once you've invested so much of your personal time and your sort of personal narrative, how are you going to stop believing in it? And if you think about it, so many, so many people have exactly the same thing about loads of different things. I've done the same thing about certain pathetic things and not really questioned myself and thought, oh, I'm just going to tell you. Matt's the most

stubborn when it comes to something he believes in. I mean, my God. But actually, you know what was funny, Jake, is that Marcus, about a week after we'd finished and put out the podcast, it was almost like he got his big brother to email Matt a load of facts about why we were wrong, and it just went on, and we just had to stop it in the end, didn't we, Matt? Oh, man, I had to do a spreadsheet to prove a point. That's how bad it got. Matt actually opened up Excel. I had to show him how, what, the thing is I knew the mistake that he'd made. So I kept feeding him bits of information saying, are you sure you want to keep going down here? And he was saying, yeah, there's not enough fuel

on the lunar lander for it to have landed. And I said, are you sure? And I kept showing him, I kept feeding him more and more information about the size of the tanks and all that kind of stuff. And then right at the end, I said, but it had this four tons of fuel on. And he was saying, oh, so you're disagreeing with NASA's figures about, you know, the density of, of whatever it was, hydrazine or something like hydrazine. I can't remember what it was now. And it was like, no, it's compressed, though. It's liquid.

It's not gaseous. But I knew that that's what it'd done right from the beginning. And it's just like, as soon as I've said it, you thought you would think that you would go, oh, yeah, I get it now. But no, he just wouldn't let it go, even though he was totally wrong. Well, and we discussed that, I mean, what it all came down to was vested interest. And this is what Michael Shermer talks about in his book, is that Marcus has spent most of his life being the leading figure for certain conspiracy theories. And he gets paid.

He gets paid to fly to Russia and talk on Russian TV, etc. And it would be almost impossible for him and his career and his livelihood to turn around and just say, you know what? Yeah, you're right and I'm wrong. That's it. That's me done. He just couldn't do it. I think there's a big part of him that doesn't believe himself. But he's just too deep into it.

It's actually quite sad. Yeah, yeah. I wonder about that. You know, I'm thinking to the interview I had with the Mars One guy with Ryan McDonald. And it's the same thing that you talk about, right? Like he's a lovely guy. He was awesome. He's, you know, he's a scientist.

He's super smart. He has all this great research going on. but when you kind of tie yourself to this this you know this goal or this you know idea after such a long time it's it would be it would be embarrassing to admit you're wrong right that's that's the other thing about it never mind the best interest it's embarrassing to say that you've made a mistake for that long right I mean something like the Mars one thing is I think about it and you think you know if you pulled out every single stop you could

possibly pull out and say, right, we're doing this. It might be possible, but you know that it's not going to happen. I mean, surely everyone going into that knew it couldn't possibly happen. I remember we invited someone who had been selected for Mars 1 to talk at the British Interplantery Society, and it was really, really unpopular with the society members because they didn't want to be associated with something so crackpotty as that. Which, which is. I thought was a real shame because I thought that there's something exciting about having projects like Mars 1. And it's not, you know, it's not like denying something. But, I mean, where do you fall on that, Jake, in terms of if you've got someone that's,

all they're trying to do is really sort of catapult interest. I mean, at the end of the day, Elon Musk almost hijacks those IAC things with, with his, with his, with his, with his, with his, with, quite frankly, they are. ridiculous timelines. You know, you know that he's not going to do it in that time frame. Oh yeah, they're awful. Yeah, I don't even listen to his timelines anymore. Like I just like that's not important information boom gone. But I mean, do you ever think that he'll do? I mean, in all seriousness, the sort of configurations that he brings in those last two presentations those last two years will it, will it, I mean, you don't, I don't think that that that's going

happen in those configurations, not even close in the next 20 years, maybe even 30 years. And I mean, maybe I'm wrong on that. But I actually love the fact that he comes and does it, because at the end of the day, he is injecting a whole new enthusiasm into something that otherwise wouldn't get done. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think what people maybe, they, with Elon Musk, people like really, really mince his words. Like every single movement and word that comes out of his mouth is like over analyzed. And they fail to step back a lot of times and say like this is a process. Like if you're inventing a new thing like a human transportation system to Mars, like it's a process.

And no one can predict the timeline. So he's just going to guess this is like this is a classic business move where you just make an aggressive. timeline you drive your people towards it you know you're not going to hit it but if you don't have it then you'll never ever get anything done so you just you make up a timeline it's it's a normal thing that almost every private company does and then just people need to recognize like this is a process they're going to they're going to make an idea they're going to explore it they're going to find out they have some mistakes in it they're going to refine the idea they're going to explore it again it's a cycle right and yeah until they're ready to fly like

it's going to keep changing for sure 100 percent I think the only thing that SpaceX is really consistently demonstrated is that they, like, they keep pushing. And so the timeline may not make sense. What they're going to do may not make sense, but they are going to keep pushing. And that's the only thing that I really depend on most of the time, I guess. Absolutely. Yeah. Yeah, I mean, listening to the last off-nominal, you were talking about decadal studies and all the things like that.

And I think there was a book that I read, which I could have done as a recommendation actually, was a book called Super Forecasting. And there was a section in that about how it was extremely hard to see over this five-year horizon in anything, because the world changes so drastically in a 10-year period. You know, five years ago, we wouldn't have seen Trump coming. We wouldn't have seen Brexit coming. And how much of a sort of massive effect will that both of those two, things have on on on on space let alone everything else you know so it's it's it's it's

it's really really hard to do those things that's that was the genius of the the the jfk you've got to do it by the end of the decade because it's actually it is giving an almost impossible timeline but one that's within a kind of time frame that that is is foreseeable if you see what I mean yeah I I think nowadays that a decade is too long. Someone at NASA needs to kind of, or someone somewhere has to say, we need to do this. And Elon Musk is the closest person that's kind of pushing that kind of agenda along. And to be fair, how much has he achieved?

I love the fact that everything he said he's going to do, he has actually gone on and done so far. What's really ironic is that like SpaceX is known for bringing that sort of Silicon Valley software development style of running a business to aerospace. And in software development, there's a project management style, which is called Agile. I don't know how much you guys know about this. But basically the idea with Agile is that instead of, you know, saying at the beginning of a project, oh, here's what we want to do. we want to go to Mars and send this middle and then like writing down everything you need to get done and then starting a project doing all the work and then delivering you know the system at the end

what you do is you iterate right so you say like what is the smallest increment of a value that I can provide in this product so we want to build a Mars architecture but okay first thing we got to do is we got to build an engine and the engine is the first thing you deliver that's because an engine is valuable to someone and then you take feedback after you deliver that you reincorporate that plan and you do the next iteration. And so the benefit is that you get, you get stuff sooner. Like you're delivering products sooner that have value, right? The bad part is it's messy and chaotic and changes all the time.

And the key thing is that no one has any idea how long anything is going to take. You only live in those iterations. Like I know that the next piece of value I'm going to deliver is next month, but after that I have no idea and I don't care. And so it's funny that he brings that agile style to, to aerospace, which has like, we don't care about timelines so much anymore. And then everyone like really focuses on his timelines all the time.

It's like really, it's really funny to me. I don't know why if that gets anybody else. Well, we're big fans, as you know, Jake. So long may he shake this industry up. Yeah, I mean, if you compare the time. I mean, I was looking at things, I mean, things like SLS. I mean, it seems to me that that's just the,

shuttle reconfigured yet it's taking forever it just it just is there's nothing new and there's nothing and there's nothing incremental in there there's no sort of there's no spinoffs of things like oh yeah and we've we've developed these new engines that but it's like hang a second these are just the engines off the space shuttle it's it's it's it's it's it's it's it you can definitely see that the Elon Musk way of working seems to be paying much better diffidence than that what that old fashioned way of working yeah there's a there's a There's many discussions to have over and over again about the SLS, but at the risk of relitigating it over and over again.

We should probably wrap up. We're over an hour here now. Oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. I was just about open my second bowl. It goes so quickly because we're having so much fun. I know. And if you get Matt talking about SpaceX, we will be here for the rest of May. All right.

So if listeners want to find your podcast or are you guys on the internet, where do they go? Where's the website? What's Twitter? What's going on? Well, Matt always says that I get this wrong, so I'm going to go for it, and I'm going to try. And remember, I believe it's www. Interplanetary.org.org.

Yeah, I think the easiest one, you are absolutely bang on. And the easiest way to find us is to literally just to literally just put the Interplanetary podcast into Google. Yeah, you'll find us. and it comes up all over the place. And if you put the Interplanatory podcast, Jake or We Martians, I think you'll probably get the episode that you were on. That's true, yeah. When I filled in for Jamie.

Yeah, when Jamie couldn't make it. Yeah, thanks for that. I was a bit worried that Matt was going to not invite me back the week after, but he did. I'm thinking now when I did that one, we did the same thing. We did it in the morning because of time zones, and I drank beer at that one too. What's going on with this?

What do you guys do to me? Jake, you need to talk to someone. Is everything all right at home? Everything's great. It's 11.30 and I've had two beers. I've got beer in the fridge. Just need some snacks. Great.

Well, thanks so much you guys for coming on covering for Anthony. It's been our pleasure. Thanks so much for inviting us on. The great thing is I've actually had a beer with Anthony in person. Yes, you have, yeah. So, yeah. But we've never had a beer. We've got to put that right.

The next Falcon Heavy launch, or the next massive launch. BFR. BFR, yeah, yeah. We're far away, which makes it difficult, but we'll figure it out for sure. All right, so with that, I guess we'll close the episode. We've got some quick closing music here, but again, thanks a lot, guys that really appreciate it. Thanks for having us on, Jake. Take care.

Bye, bye, podcats. See you.