Off-Nominal - 127 - Hot Moon Takes

Episode Date: October 13, 2023

Jason Davis of The Planetary Society makes his long-awaited return, to hang out with Jake and Anthony and talk about Psyche, OSIRIS-REx, solar eclipses, and surely a bunch of other stuff, too.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 127 - Hot Moon Takes (with Jason Davis) - YouTubeThe crew was never in any danger.Revealing the OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample (Official NASA Broadcast in 4K) - YouTubeTimestamp to Bill Nelson‘s Random ARM DefenseOSIRIS-REx returns sample from asteroid Bennu… | The Planetary SocietyThe Psyche launch and its journey to a metal… | The Planetary SocietyEclipse Path of Annular Solar Eclipse on October 14, 2023Nerd Alert: Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains the Lunar Eclipse - YouTubeFollow JasonJason Davis | The Planetary SocietyThe Planetary SocietyFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engine start. Hello, friends, happy Thursday. Hello. Hello. This is a long awaited return. I don't know that there's a return awaited longer than the beloved Jason Davis to this podcast here. Many people have been waiting for us talking about it. It's been, the hype's been unreal, like, just astronomical.

You wouldn't know from not being retired from posting, but boy, you're just. blowing up. It's like you're basically which one do you want to be? Taylor or Travis? I broke Jason already. This is great. Yes. That's how my life is for this. Yes. One of us is, Taylor, one of us

is Travis. That's how much the hype there is about us getting back to it. Yeah. Yeah. I listen to a lot of Taylor. That's cool. You can take Taylor as the person sitting in Philadelphia very close to her hometown. That's fine. Super cool. Yeah. You're not bitter.

Jake, do you understand this reference yet? I do, I do, yeah. I finally had the memes caught up to me. The memes caught up to. You don't have to waste time. Yeah. Hot takes coming out. I'm in my late 30s, which means the memes come to me on Instagram a week after they hit TikTok.

So it just takes a little. for me to catch up. Well, speaking of catching up, Jake, let's catch up to the rundown of this show. What did you bring to drink today? Man, who's very choppy right now. This is going to be great.

What did you bring? Yeah, sorry, guys, we're a little, I don't know, I don't know if it's a Starlink issue right now, but it's a little wonky. But it's Octoberfest here, so I had to get a beer, obviously. It's Octoberfest everywhere, I assume. Yeah. There's all the beer stuff happening around here.

So this is, yeah. Well, I guess what I mean by that is that they do it here. They like have a big thing about that here in the Yucatan Peninsula. For some reason, it's a big deal. So, yeah, I got a petio Belgian blonde. Jason, is it Octoberfest in Tucson? Are you still in Tucson? This looks like the same office the last time I talked to.

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Still here. It's still very hot. Actually, it's cooling down. It feels like October here. I also did an October fest. This is a non-alcoholic beer, actually,

because I have been sober for a couple years. So I love non-alcoholic year, though. So, yeah, this is a good stuff. This is a cracker open. It's from athletic brewing. I've got. Yeah, it's just Octoberfest. I've heard that non-acolic beers are getting

like really, really good now. Up in the game? They're just bringing the heat. Yeah, there's one company, in particular, Athletic, they're somewhere in the Northeast, U.S., forget where.

They just, they're like a cut above the rest of them, like, you know, they've gone a long way from like odules and, you know, cheap, crappy, non-alcoholic beer. So, yeah, it tastes like the real thing. I've definitely seen it around here.

Cool. Yeah. To check it out. Well, I don't have that, though. I have the old beloved stick wine, Jake. I think we've had the stick wine before. The Zachannini. It's got this little stick on it. So we call it the stick wine. It's just a nice cheap red wine. Yeah. I got my Philly fanatic in the background here. Things are really keyed up. At least it's in a bottle this time. That's true. The vessel is more respectable.

But listen, I haven't been putting a lot of time. Before it. Oh, I had a whole box here at least a couple times. Yeah. Boat a box, I think, black box, one of those. You know, you get a, it's a lot of wine in those boxes. They jam it, they jam it full with like more than you could imagine fit in the corner to corner. It's like Wendy's for wine, though.

That's basically what they're. Yeah. All right. Well, that bit won't get better than that. So I have a, Jason, I brought a surprise today. Jake doesn't know about this. I've been working on a new project for the last few days. And what I mean is I did this while eating lunch today because I thought of it the other day and forgot to do it last night and I did it at lunch today. You know, we had this issue this week on the ISS. The backup radiator started leaking. Here we go again with the leaks. So I purchased a domain called crew danger.com just to keep up with if the crew is in danger. And so this is a project that I think a lot of us can contribute to over time. I'm going to just put, I did a couple of Google searches already to just find the phrase, the crew was never in any danger across all NASA press releases that I've ever been. And I've only put six on here so far.

But what I'm thinking is we can just collect all the times the crew was never in any danger and highlight exactly how they were never in danger. So my favorite one so far was the Nauka ISS backflip in which if you look in this story here, this one really upgraded it. The crew was never and is not in any danger at the time of that post. That one took it to the next level. So crew danger.com, the new resource, Jake. How do you feel about this project? Is this an official off nominal product or what? This is amazing, yes. This is incredible.

Because every time, it's like clockwork, the crew is never in danger. I mean, they're in some danger. They're in space. They're always in danger. That's the thing, right? Like, they're always in a space station. Yeah. When things go wrong, they're even in a little more danger.

But, yeah. The baseline of danger when you're on the ISS is significantly higher than most things that people do in their life. Yeah. They did have a difficult to be more right now to me. By a lot.

So, yeah. I thought of, I pulled a couple of the recent ones I could find on Google. It sucks because the last, the last, I could see you in the Google results

that there were a few, like this phrase has been around for a long time. This phrase, the crew was never in any danger. Worded like that has been around since somewhere in the shuttle program. because there are Google results for some of the late shuttle flights and spacewalks or something else.

But those pages don't exist. I don't know if that's because the NASA.gov is getting redesigned and they broke those links or what. But I don't know. I felt like I was doing a little NASA history. Maybe I should approach the history office. Ooh. You can file a four years. You can file all the major.

Yeah. Maybe you could. Oh, with that. I don't know how long they archive, if this has been since shuttle days, yeah. Anyway, to try to find the seminal, like, discussion at NASA on how they should phrase that the crew is not in danger. I find if there's, like, an Apollo 13 initial meeting. Like, we should clarify they're not in any danger because now they're huddled up in the Loua module and not on the way home, right? Half frozen to death.

And yeah, yeah, no, it's, they're not in any danger. Yeah. This one drives me nuts. I think this might have, this might be the phrase that has jumped above space is hard for me, like as in terms of my power ranking of phrases I hate in spaceflight. Yeah, it's good. Space is hard. The crew is never in danger.

Yeah. What are the other ones? It's probably a good one about safe mode, right? Like when safe mode clicks in and they're like, everything's fine. Like the spacecraft's in a stable configuration. There's probably something like that. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, the spacecraft was never in any danger. It could be one to when they go into safe mode. Yeah. Not sure. Not sure if they use it there, too. Well, I bought one domain. You can expand it out.

Yeah, we can do a robotic danger.com or something. That probably would go. You look up all the press releases for that thing that say that, and then the probe subsequently was dead. You have some data to back it up. Yeah. I just hate, a thing I hate about this phrase

to belabor this point a little bit is that like, the things that this phrase is used about, when they're in the middle of these scenarios, they're never not stressed. Like, they don't know at that point that the crew is not in danger. They are reacting as if the crew is in imminent danger.

If they get a fire alarm from the, a lot of these were about faulty fire alarms on the space station. at the time it went off, you didn't know that. You thought the crew's in danger, and you reacted as if you are in danger. And then they later say the crew was never in any danger. And it's like, what, you only now know that. And that's the thing that drives me nuts about it.

I mean, I'm alive today, so I've never been in danger, really, if you think. Yeah, it's turned out great every time. Every time, 100% success rate on life for me. Yeah. I've never died. that's that's another good that is a phrase i like whenever you read a united launch alliance press release involving atlas five it's like atlas five which has a hundred percent success rate it always they always squeeze that fact in there and the and they fudge the like um was it the

they started the streak of successful launches from like the merger day so that it excluded certain failures that happened before the merger. Exactly. So, yeah, that's a good one. Because if they just rebranded, if they're like, our name's now, you know, Vulcan launch services, they'd be like, Vulcan launch services has a 100% success rate after the second or third launch of Vulcan when it finally works right.

That's what they should do. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Anyway, Jake, it's a planetary stuff. I'm curious to pick your brains on. Yeah, it's been a bit of a little newsy thing for, It's been fun, Ontario. It's been fun. Lots of asteroid stuff.

That's why we wanted to get Jason on. We want to start. You want to do, I guess, OREX? We didn't get a psyche launch this morning. So maybe we'll talk about Cyrus Rex first, and they're pretty stoked about it, I guess. Anthony, you told me you had some questions. No, I just had,

so I watched this event yesterday, the unveil, which was, I thought for these kind of events, they did a really good job. They usually struggle towing the line of like we invited a ton of middle schoolers and the media, and it always feels lopsided one way or the other. And I thought this one was a good, maybe it's just the Osir's Rex team is really good at communicating, which they seem to be throughout. But I felt like it was the best one I've seen of these.

So I'm going to just give some props to NASA on it. Nice. Nice. Shout out to NASA. Yeah, having the administrator there, that always, you never know how that's going to go. They don't seem to go well. And that's the question I was actually going to end with, which is, who had on their bingo card for unveiling asteroid material? Bill Nelson shouts out the haters of the asteroid redirect mission at the very end of the meeting or the press event.

Did anyone watch this long into this event and catch? I don't think I got that. No, the last five minutes. Yes, the last five minutes of this event. He pauses, I forget who was talking at the time. Lori Gilles was up there, right? I think. and he says, oh, may I say like an additional thing?

And they're like, yeah, sure, whatever. And he tells the middle school kids, like, listen, 10 years ago, there was a lot of haters about going to an asteroid and look at us now. Like, we've got this asteroid, never stop believing in what you're doing. And he was just straight up, like, randomly shouting out Asteroid Redirect Mission haters, bringing up the space policy discussion of, you know, 10 or 15 years ago, as if it was relevant to Osiris Rex, and I found this a hilarious

diversion at the end. He's been stuck on this for this long, and this was the moment he wanted to, like, drop the mic on him. It was amazing. It was amazing. That is really funny. It's not like the asteroid redirect mission

was like in any way related what this is doing. Like, it was completely different, different thing altogether. Completely different, yeah. Yeah, no connection at all. Or if there was, it was very tenuous. Yeah.

It was astounding. I would highly recommend reviewing it and then, I mean, on that note, maybe we can have, maybe we should have softened our position on the asteroid redirect mission. Was Jason, is Bill Nelson right that we were hating too much on it and we should be nicer to it? I mean, did anyone like the asteroid redirect mission? Like, who liked, who thought that was a good idea? Who? No one did.

It was a compromise, right? Yeah, yeah. It was like, try to find a mission for SLS and Orion to touch an asteroid because Obama said the word asteroid. It was all very, yeah, very confusing from the start and, you know, not surprising that it eventually went away. I mean, I mean, some of the. Some of the visuals from that thing, thinking back of, like, those giant nets and giant balloons they were using to grab an asteroid.

Just, like, I don't know who thought that was really going to be feasible, but, you know, don't know. If you cancel the moon program and you're not allowed to go to Mars anymore, there's not much left to do with Orion in, you know, 2012 or whatever that happened. Is this the thing that you're talking about? What a disaster. Oh, yeah, yeah. I mean, that one looks slightly more slick. You know, there's one that just really looks like just a bag. Like, you know, just throwing out a target bag of space to grab some material,

break back to the moon. I mean, the best thing that we got out of the asteroid redirect mission was the Kerbal space program DLC, right? That was the best legacy of that program, I would say. Yes, yes. There was a DLC specifically for Astroidset. It was tied right into the mission.

It was like the official Asteroid Redirect Mission DLC. Is this the thing you're talking about, Jason? Is this tractor beam thing, the one you're talking about? Let's see. Yeah, that one looks a little Oh, my, like, like, what?

How big is that supposed to be? And how did it get that big in space? Yeah, it's got, like, when have we, you know, deployable structures, what have we done? Like, we can do, like, big solar panels, and we've done some solar sales. What? And, but I mean, a giant bag like that, it's like, I don't know, half a mile across. That seems like a stretch. NASA working with the NRA.

on half a mile deployables. Yeah, yeah. Oh, dear. Yeah. Okay. Nice little nugget at the end of that. The middle schoolers had to be like, I don't know, I would love to talk to somebody

that was there from school if they were inspired by the like, F your haters ending that Bill Nelson applied to this. Because it was really incredible. Anyway, science-wise, anyone have any thoughts on the sample, stuff that they showed as admittedly quick as it was? It's cool to see it. Like, good photos of it, you know? Like the shots we've seen from space were all pretty, you know,

blurry or far away or whatever. So this is like nice to see some like crisp up front kind of like that really arbany black color that they have. That coal color is pretty cool. I think it's pretty. I don't know. I'm excited to see the actual bit. Yeah.

Yeah. So I don't know. There was not much to do in the science, I guess. They, like, just look at it, right? They're like, yep, hydrated minerals and carbon, and that's what we expected pretty much. So, like, yeah, okay. But I'm sure, you know, they haven't.

I think all they've done is just, that just came from, like, the material on the lid or something like that. I don't even know how deep they've analyzed some of it yet. Well, they haven't opened it, right? Like, they're still, they get, like, took the top, off and then there's all the stuff on top. They got to like really meticulously like get all the junk stuff that fell through the cracks and label it all and get it in bags up before you like take the thing off and pull it everywhere.

That's not a fun job. Yeah, I remember that wild picture right after they captured it where there's just material leaking all around it or all around the tag sam arm. Pretty cool. And now they're like, that's the. the highest priority thing in the world is like, do not drop any of that dust on the floor. When you're talking about categorizing, though, Jake, like, how each particle doesn't get in its own bag, right?

Is it like, this stuff looks like the same piece? Should I put it in that? How do you decide how to divide it up? I don't know. I'll be honestly. Like, I mean, I'm thinking about it from a collection standpoint, and they don't really have that precise of context for, like, where on the asteroid? Like all the sample comes from like that one point.

That's like all you can really be specific about. It's not like you can say like this side of the tag sample, that side of the tech. Like you can't you can't do that like precise of a geolocating on its location or anything. I don't even if it would matter even if you could. So I don't think they can like categorize it, but they do have to split it up into pieces to share. And then I don't know if there's like a grain size thing.

Sometimes they do they do grain size stuff. Like okay, here's it here's all the ones that are, size. You're all the ones that are small. Here's all the dust or something like that, right? I don't know. They said it's going to take two years. So that might tell you how precise they have to be. Oh my God. That sounds like hell. Just stay there with those gloves like oh my god going through piece by piece. I don't even have patience for like a 1,000 piece puzzle alone material from a master. We're supposed to like a couple hundred grams, right?

So that's like, that's like, you know, a small potato worth of this stuff, right? Like literally, like that one small potato is probably about that size. And so you've got that much sample you need to go through for two years. That's a lot of stuff. Jason's gone. Hopefully he comes back. I don't know what I've done. it's so explanatory that your couple hundred grams

reference point was a small potato that that's the thing that you thought of that was a couple hundred grams is incredible like I just add thanks to think so I coffee cup would be the one to go with because it's like a thing that's generally people it's common to have heard people talk about coffee in grams I never would like I wonder how I ever that potato is you know you just hold it and you're like this

this feels about right for that much potato I need for this. Look, I just had Thanksgiving. I made some potatoes. It's fresh in my mind, okay? That's true. I always forget about your schedule. Yeah, yeah. Sorry.

Yeah, I don't know. So I'm excited. It's going to be great to see this stuff, you know, good work. Because there's some good science to pull out of this, I'm pretty sure. And I can't wait to see what they do with it. They're obviously very excited. The scientists were like so jazz. So that's really good to see, right?

Yeah. So can they, Jake, me you can answer this. Are they able to like do the isotopic like investigation of the material and determine like, okay, this is a match for Earth's water or is that like not possible? Do you know? I don't know. That's, that's, that's, you're above my pay grade on that one. I don't know how you figure that out.

Yeah, yeah. Like you could, and there's probably something to do with, like, the isotopes of carbon. Like, it's almost like carbon dating. You can't actually carbon date it because carbon dating is based on Earth's, whatever, like, it's positioned in the solar system and the irradiation it gets and stuff. But you can probably do something with the carbon to figure out some sort of, you know, traits origin of it or something.

but I don't know. I am not good at that stuff. That's an astro-bio job, and we're going to let them figure that one. Jason's like a lobbyist for like the bottled water industry right now. Like, am I going to be able to tell that I could use this as a new marketing piece here? Who do you work for? Are you an asteroid water? Who are you?

Are you a, you know, like a Fiji water, Evian. What are you working with out there? All the big ones I get paid so much. Can't even say. The ones that are all the same bottle. company but gets rebranded like Poland Spring or Arrowhead or whatever because it's all the same bottles. Yeah.

And in the corner there's just somebody turning on tap, you know, to fill them up. It's asteroid water right there. That's fresh off of Benu. It's Asteroid water. One of the kids in the event did ask, where did Benu come from? And the people on stage were completely flummoxed to how to answer that question because they were like, I mean, you just nailed why we did. did the mission, so that's great that you're on the same beat as us.

I don't know, I was expecting one of them would be like, uh, same place everywhere, everything else did, and then totally undermine the reason for going to find out about it. It came from everything else. Yeah. Oh, wow. When two asteroids love each other very much, we're switching to each other, and for a new nestroids.

it's like pretty accurate yeah but what if psyche hit it it if psyche really metallic our Jason our a couple weeks ago we were discussing how heading into psyche after the experiences that we had at Benu and Ryugu over the last couple years do you think some members on the psyche team, we're like, ah, like, how confident are we in the whole metallic thing at this point that these two asteroids are just super squishy and weird and strange shape? Do you think any of them had reservations about continuing to pump the, we're going to basically see a solid piece of metal when we get there? I would imagine, yes, even if they're not saying so.

It's crossed my mind. I'm like, what if we get there and it's just really boring actually? point. And, you know, I think they've revised down the estimate of the metal content was 40 to 60 percent maybe. So yeah, I think that I would be slightly nervous if I was on the psyche team. But, you know, better than me. What if it's like, just like a big, dense metal ball in the middle surrounded by really fluffy, like debris, you can never, ever get to the metal. That's going to be a bummer.

It's right there. It's just the core is like maybe 10 meters we can't get to it. Yeah. Happy a bummer. I don't know. I've gotten so used to looking at their asteroids concept, their asteroid concept, artist concept that, you know,

I'm just in my mind, I'm like, well, yeah, part of it's going to have the core exposed. There's getting metal spires sticking up off the side. It'd be great. I've been wondering about the, like the whole concept of doing the artist concept makes a lot of sense when you're trying to communicate the exoplanet stuff where we're like nowhere close to being able to image this thing.

But putting so many high fidelity concepts out about the asteroid you're about to fly right next to, felt like a weird move overall. I don't know. Because then I think about the Google image results in the years ahead when we actually have pictures of it and half of them are a drawing of it that probably will look nothing like it. Yeah. I mean, that's the risk, right? Other missions. Yeah.

Do we have like a, like, a concept art as far as I went here? I think we, I think it was close, but they might have had really good shape models of it from, you know, radar and stuff like that to where they were. were very confident in what it would probably look like. But I don't remember what the artist's concepts look like. I'll pull it up because I was just looking at it and everybody. Yeah, I'm trying to see. I mean, it's pretty like, I don't know, that's pretty. I think it was pretty close.

That's pretty detailed, you know? Oh, wait, you're talking about the concepts for like other ones, Benu and stuff that we've been to? Yeah, because Benu, we can compare. Sorry, I logged my brain out for a second because I was trying to find, shortly after we talked about this two or three weeks ago, Jake, I saw, like, the next day there was a news story about the latest round of radar imaging that they did on Psyche, and there were, like, a couple of hints of the shape of it in there.

And I was like, oh, I wonder if we shook someone loose and post this blog post. But really, they just already had it queued up to come out, like right around launch. Oh, yeah. You got to do the search by time on here, though. That's going to be the tough part. Anytime. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know.

I guess it's like your... And all the concepts. Yeah, it was more rubbly, right? That was the big thing. I'm not sure. I mean, it's kind of the bet you make, right? It's like you're, it's the asteroid community's prediction bot, you know? They make a little guess on what it's going to look like.

They log it down and then they wait a few years to find out what happened and see how books they were, right? Pretty much. I mean, you can probably. either way, because you go, yeah, you go like, man, all the research we did leading up to this launch, like look how good we are, we knew about this thing before we got there, or you go, this is why we got to keep flying to these places and explore, because, like, what we can tell from the ground is nothing like what we find. So you can definitely get a win out of it either direction. Yeah.

Well, a lot of pomp around Falcon Heavy being the thing that's going to ride on, but. it was in the lead up to. But now I feel like there's not that much pomp about it on the verge of the launch. Yeah. That's because now it's a spooky October Friday the 13th launch before Solar Eclipse. Like this thing is going to be like touching every chord of superstition that you can imagine right now. That's pretty solid. I didn't think about all those things.

Like shook out the bad weather today. Oh yeah, real likely. I think that's just just, it's just like a Saturnalia curse. I'm thinking, you know. I didn't really think about the solar eclipse aspect. But this is like we were just talking about right before the show, Jake, in our newfangled pre-show segment that we were doing on Discord, which we should plug, that we're going to hang out before the show every week on Discord

while we get our stuff in order. We were talking about how planning any event on the same day as a solar eclipse. clips is a really, you're making your way down the workflow of starting a cult. Like, you're halfway there at that point. Just takes a couple other adjustments to your plan for the day and you're, you're there, you know. Annular may be a little less than total, but. Yeah. Or either if you got a cult or starting.

Yeah, I'm going. I don't mean to interrupt you, but. No, no, it's good. I'm going tomorrow. So, yeah, I'm going to leave tomorrow to go. because it passes down through Yucatan, so I get to drive about two hours south to Campetia, and I'll be able to see it there.

So I'm going to spend the weekend there. It's going to be fun. You're pretty close, too. Jason, you don't have to drive a few hours at least, but. It's like eight. So I'm not going to, actually. If it was a total, you'd put in the effort. But annular, you're like, hey.

If it was a total, yes. I'm going to see the total, and we're going to Texas for that one. But, yeah, the annual, it's like you go up to four corners where, like, Arizona and Mexico and whatever the other states are, Utah. Shout out to the corner states. And I'm like, shout out to the other one. The one that's probably the most populated, yes. Yeah, Colorado.

Yeah, that's where I was thinking of. No, no, I can't be cool. No, it's Colorado. You got it. All right, all right. Thank you. Yeah. But I'm going to try.

You know, I'll still watch it here. It'll be like a crescent here. So that's cool. That's good enough for Annulae, honestly. Like, you know. Yeah. I guess the ring's cool. People really love that, though, huh?

I'm curious to see how different it is. Like, I don't really know what to expect with it. Because, you know, obviously it's not as good as a total. but still feels like it would be a pretty cool thing and it's still going to have some of the other effects, right? Like the lighting dim and all that kind of thing, right? What's the percentage of coverage? I haven't looked into this a lot

because it was not relevant to my life at the moment. I mean, it's a lot. It's most of the way, right? 90-something? Yeah, I don't know. I'm going to pull up the thing here. But, I mean, isn't it got pretty close to the old 90s something, right? High 90s?

Yeah. High 90s. isn't it could be a high 90s I know that's I'm trying to find it because I mean one of the cool parts of the actual total experience is that the time right before and right after

totality you get the weird like the bugs don't know what's going on so they just start chirping and the birds are going nuts because it's like I guess it's nighttime now like get your shit in order because we're going to bed and like everything freaks out for those couple minutes so if it's a really long version of that that's also kind of interesting

that's actually one of the reasons I would never want to see one of these on a plane I know people like going flying with the shadow but I feel like the earth effects are are too cool to miss yeah yeah so it's 90.6% where I am so not high 90s low 90s low 90s hmm Jason's got like 70% crescent or what you got down there what do I got let's see I'm on the time and date dot com where's two something Yeah, this website's great. I never remember Tucson. I'm at 77.46.

A C, a solid C. Yeah, you're passing. You've passed the annual eclipse. Scooting, skating by on that. Yeah, I'm going to use it as a chance to try to take pictures with solar filters and learn how to do that before the total. But, yeah. That's a good call.

practice run, right? A dry run. Damn. Practice run, yeah. That's good. Where does, I'm looking up the other one now. Does that go closer to you, Jason? Oh, not quite yet.

Yeah, you got to go to Texas. Gotta go to Texas. Guys, I'm realizing that I just like totally forgot that I'm going away this weekend for a family thing and I totally didn't realize I'm going to be like north of 50% because I'm going south. So this is, I'm at least halfway there. I'm not, I'm not passing, like Jason, but, you know, I'm not as much of a failure as I would have been if I stayed home. So I am traveling for the eclipse.

So I update my answer to you, Jason. I am actually traveling for the eclipse, yes. I forgot until right now. So this is great. Gotta get my glasses back out. I was so jazz because I was like, oh, man, do I have my eclipse glasses? I bought them in 2017 for the other one, and then I moved to Mexico.

I'm like, I bring them. And so I went looking at them. And we had them like stuffed away in a plastic bag with like a little folder that was like, because we don't ever want to have to go through the shit show of trying to buy the eclipse glasses on Amazon two weeks before. Like we put them in a special place and they made it here. They were like with all of our like, you know,

important documents that we carried with us like in a little folder they were in there. The important documents folder is where you kept it? That's amazing. One day someone will find your report documents be like, is this like an invisible ink kind of thing? Like if I put these on, do I get access to the secret code on these documents? It's like a national treasure situation. So, I don't know. I'm glad I did, though, because I would not want to go try and find them in Mexico.

Yeah, that would be problematic. Yeah. Yeah. Do you expect it to be pretty... I probably would have been so bad if I started looking like it. Do you think it's going to be busy where you're going to? I don't know because I booked a hotel four days ago. So maybe not, you know.

Should be fine. I mean, there's a lot of, there's a lot chatter about it, like on the local news and social media. It's like they're talking about it and where all of the ability times are coming up everywhere and stuff. This is the only one Peninsula's going to get for like seven years. years or something. You know, it's a pretty rare thing. So, yeah, we'll find out. Are they going to do some Mayan shit for it?

Like find the old Mayan rituals around eclipses and do some of the stuff? Well, because there's a big site, south of Merida, called Ushmol, that's in the path. And so it's like, everyone knows Chichenita. That's the big Mayan site, you know, over on the other side. But the X best one, and not actually I think is. the best one is a small and that's in the path. So I think there's going to be a whole big hullabaloo there for sure. I just don't know.

I don't know what it's going to be. I didn't want to risk that because they get real jimmed for those. There's a site close to me that's like a little tiny mine site. And I always wanted to go there for the equinox because they lined up with the thing or whatever. But like every time I see photos, I'm like, oh, I'm glad I didn't go because there's just like 100,000 people there. So I don't want to do that. I know. Yeah, yeah.

We're all pumped for the annual eclipse, obviously. We're just super pumped about this. I'm sure the enthusiasm is infectious through the radio waves here. Like, we're just thrilled about annual eclipses. We're the Neil deGrasse Tyson of annular eclipses apparently. Like, we're, you remember his clip about lunar eclipses? Boring. Boring.

Just like a moon is going on a row every 28 day, whatever. But wait, all right, let's just do a battle. Jason, if you had to pick, you could either see a lunar eclipse or an annular solar eclipse. Which one would you pick? I think I'd have picked the annular solar eclipse. Yeah. Because Neil deGrasse Tyson is right, that lunar eclipses are boring. He's totally right about this one take.

They're super boring. They're so boring. What, the moon becomes red? It happens if you go out at the right time at moonrise, you know? Like, come on. I'm with him. I'm with him. That's going to be really serious at this.

I'll ask you, how late, well, since you're a lunar eclipse hater, how late would you stay up to watch one? Say there's one happening and you're like, I don't know, maybe I'll go outside and look at it. What kind of 11 o'clock's the cut off? Yeah, I'm thinking if it's, I think even, I mean, yeah, 11 would be pushing it. I'm like, eh.

11 would be pushing. Yeah. I don't think it, you know, I would have, like, if I've never seen one before, I'll stay up for it. I'll watch it one time, and then I'll go, you know what? Like, I'm good. I'm all right with that. That was fun. It was kind of interesting.

Actually, I think the annular phase of the lunar eclipse or whatever the other phase are called, what's it, the penumbral stage or whatever, when it's not full, not in totality. I think those are way more interesting than totality of a lunar eclipse. Why is that? Because it acted like obscures, right? Yeah, you get a sense for like, oh, that's the curve of the earth and like that's, that's how big the earth is. And there's a little bit of, I think it's actually why totality of a solar eclipse is so crazy is that you get like a completely different perspective on the solar system at that moment. Like that's the moment that stood out of watching totality from the 2017 one was like all of a sudden you can see the corona and all the other. planets that are up there that you couldn't see during daylight and you feel like you're

just looking at the solar system from the solar system, not that you're in daylight. And I feel like the totality of lunar eclipse is like, okay, now it's a darker moon, but before that and after that, you get a perspective of the Earth and the moon that's interesting. So I'll stand for the penumbral stage of a lunar eclipse, but I'll go to bed before totality. So, there you go. What's that? Hot wound takes.

Hot moon takes. Hot moon takes. Hot moon takes. What's the official stance of the Planetary Society on lunar eclipses? I think the official stance is that they're great. So I could be in big trouble for dissing lunar eclipse is here, so I should be careful. Let me ask you this. We're about meteor showers.

You're going outside at like say, I don't know. You wander out at like 10 and go, I saw one. You ever stay up late for one? Really getting a look at sea. I have not. I always like struggle with those because they're so sparse. You know, like sometimes you go out and it's like you get one every minute or two minutes or something. And then it's kind of like it's like a little boring sometimes like waiting.

and then you finally see me and like, oh, it's gone. And then I don't know, it's tough. I struggle with those ones. If there was like a, if there was actually a meteor shower, like it was like, I'd be all over that, but that's not what it is. What kind of scenario is this? I don't know. That's happened.

Well, that's like an extreme. I don't know. What's that scene from the New Star Wars show like indoor they do that? Are you? So like in a scenario where. Is it the Japan Olympics that we're going to do the, what was that company that launched the satellite that was going to do like something crazy in the opening ceremony? The orbital fireworks, yeah. Yeah, like that.

You're talking about that. Like, you're there for that. Yeah. I'm all for that. Yeah. Yeah, I've never. Well, so the only one that I've like went out at a certain time for was kind of a bonus because I was in Bryce Canyon National Park. and I went out stargazing one night.

And it was a new moon and a meteor shower. He's gone. He doesn't even like my story, Jake. It was a new moon and a meteor shower. And I'm at the National Park. And so that was like a, you know, if I didn't do that, I mean, I was, it was the third, it was the third thing I was interested in at that month, or I guess second, because the new moon was not a thing

to be interested in. It was gone. But it was great night for stargazing. And it was a meteor shower. And I was in incredibly dark skies. so I was there for like that one but you know to Jake's point about how sparse they are is it is a thing where if you've never friends that have never seen a meteor

should go out for a media shower because they're likely to see one then whereas since I'm interested enough in space I've spent enough time out at a telescope that I've seen them randomly like just happened to catch one at the right time and have seen some meter showers so it's kind of like you know I don't know, I've casted a wide enough net already So I'm not gonna screw up my sleep today

Yeah, I guess I guess we're just not motivated to stay up for stuff So well and and to add to that once you've once you've seen Yeah, that too once you've seen dragon come home no other thing else compares to it So yeah you're you're that's I mean that's more relevant to your other scenario. Yeah Yeah yeah because when they come they come to When they land in Florida, they can right over my house. Like I'm talking like, I have to look straight up to see it. So I know, wow.

Like, it's unbelievable. That's why you're into this whole, like, if there was a orbital fireworks thing, because that's very similar. That's like the point of it. B-SAR. Is this what we're getting gator bait in the chat saying B-Sar 8K video. Is this what it is? Yeah.

I think it didn't work, right? Didn't the thing not work? I don't remember this at all. Let me see. But yeah, no, they launched it and then it was like supposed to reenter over the Olympics, right? That was the idea. I see. Which is like an idea that could go really wrong hype-wise.

Like that's a recipe for some real bad PR. We're moving the opening ceremony back one hour. Yeah. Oh, no, guys, this is what it was. Sorry, it was the 2020 Olympics, so COVID happened, and then the satellite was up there, and then I guess it didn't happen, because it was delayed a year. Jake, your joke was right, but it was a year.

It wasn't an hour. I didn't play a joke was too accurate. And a satellite couldn't wait, it had to re-enter before then. Yeah, they were like, well, we didn't plan enough reserve for a full year, so. Yeah. It went. That's what we call pulling a humanity star right there. Total fizzle.

Like, that's just, wharf. Humanities. Jason, how late would you stay up for the humanity star? What the hell is this reflective, passive satellite designed to produce visible pulsing flares? Where was I? Why didn't I hear about this? You missed out on the humanity star thing? You did not miss out on the humanity star thing.

You were all over. Yeah, you did not. Yeah. It was like, it was the genesis of the astronomer, Starlink Hate. It was like the first, it was like a trial run for that. It was like a rich guy, what a thing in space that made a lot of light and everyone was very upset about it for four days. But it didn't. That's the best part.

It didn't. It was like really, like, no one saw it and it reentered immediately. It was not at all. the effect that it was intended. This was rocket lab did this. Yeah. Peter Beck. Yeah.

Peter Beck. All right. Yeah. Did it? Yeah. All right. So we've established that none of us are staying up for anything. I mean, thank God told us solar eclipses aren't during nighttime because we would be screwed.

If so. Exactly. Thank God that they are by definition during the day. Yeah. Yeah. that would be hard yeah Jason what else have you been working on

we haven't heard from you for so long we're curious to hear what you've been working on what we should know because you're retired from posting and we need some Jason updates here yeah I'm only retired from boxing on X I mean these days

just laugh when we say the name. X. Yeah, yeah. Well, I don't post on any other social media, too. So I just really don't post. I do write, but I don't post. Yeah. No, I just, I basically settled into a writing gig at the Planetary Society now

where I'm just kind of, just writing content just putting out that content so nothing no crazy projects just psyche you want an article about what it's going to do

I think I got you covered write that that kind of stuff yeah with the artist's conceptions and these crazy spires that are coming out look at that like

yes oh boy with the wild That's the most optimistic thing about it. Yeah, look at those. I mean, if we really saw those, that would be freaking sweet. But, you know, that would be awesome, yeah. Is that supposed to be, like, like, ejecta that froze after it melted?

Is that being what it is? Yeah, yeah. Metal-rich ejecta. So, I mean, it seems unlikely. It seems unlikely. It actually ends. Shut it down. Doubt.

Doubt. I got to make a prediction about that. How are we feeling about Psyche generally right now? Because we're what, halfway into the launch window at this point, right? It's fine. You think it's fine? Okay. I'm just checking.

I want a V-check. Everyone's cool. Talking heavy spotless record is we'll continue. Everyone's fine. Yeah. Yeah. I don't think there's anything to worry about people. People are a little freaked out about it, like being pushed back, you know, where they did

like a week first and then they did another day and it's like only a 20-something-day window. I don't know, I think it's fine. That's why you have a window. What about the reason that was pushed back a week? You know, needing to update thruster software? That seems like a thing maybe you should have done a week before the week. I know I work in software, so I'm not criticizing anyone for pushing a patch that soon to production because like I've done that. I've been there, but what, do we know anything about this?

Was this part of your what to expect, Jason? Warmer temperatures than anticipated? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So the thrusters were running hotter than they had expected them to. And that's important because, like, there's design, life, there's lifetime limitations on how long you can run them at certain temperatures. So it was a problem with one of the vendors, the vendor of the thruster, the vendor, the software, I can't remember which now. So essentially, the fixes, they're not going to run the thrusters as hard. And that means they can't turn. and fast. They can't point as fast, but in the grand scheme of things, it really won't impact the mission. You can put that on your page. It will not impact the mission. Because I think they've said that kind of, that is a common one. Like, um, what Lucy's solar panel didn't quite get

out or something? They're like, I won't impact the mission. It won't, no impact. The Juno, Juno main thruster. Like, we can still do it. We're fine. We're fine. We're fine. We're nowhere close to the final orbit. It's never in danger. It's actually better because now, you know, let's say, I'm going to search that for my for my spinoff.

Yeah, for the spin-off. I do need to, I do need people to send me you know, with their ideas of what else the crew was never in danger for because I'm sure we can find it. Google's probably not the best search. engine for the crew was never in any danger. But my plan is to just keep this updated as frequently as the crew was never in any danger. I'm just going to post a new update.

So I still got to go back like the whole 2018 to 2021 period of Soyuz failures. I'm sure they didn't say it about Nick Haig and his in-flight abort, but I wouldn't be shocked if it was also said about that because the abort system worked that they were never in danger. Totally wouldn't be shocked about that. I'm going to put some of that stuff on here. So, yeah, I forgot about that. That was good. That was the good run of Soyuz.

That was Soyuz MS-O-9 with a hole drilled in it, and Soyuz MS-10 with the faulty booster that got hammered in, and an inflate abort trigger. Great year, great year for Soyuz. Good year for Soyuz. I remember that morning. I didn't stay up for that launch. Per the theme of this show.

All right, wait, that's a good one. Which launches would you stay up for? Yeah. For me, it's basically only like really important planetary ones. That's it. A moon launch. I think the first launch of SLO. I'd stay up for.

Yeah. One of those I watched on my phone in bed. Like I was ready to turn the light out and just like, come on, get to orbit already. Hurry up. But it did. And I was like, all right. great we're good it was

artem swan you had a better time what time was that that was like way late for us it wasn't as late for me it was like one for East Coast yeah yeah yeah yeah it was like one mountain time or something like that right so like through the three eastern something like that

it was late it was super late yeah they better not make that mistake with Artemis too plan the launchment does better come on jeez that's kind of come up on us pretty hot i'll tell you that like it is yeah it is hopefully hopefully it does hopefully that'll be awesome that'll be super cool yeah yeah it would if it's like within a year yeah yeah it seems like every day i'm getting a notification from nascent like we shipped the tank we shipped this we shipped whatever and i'm like oh really cool jason's about to do another rocket road trip to check in on that though he's gonna be like have you really though

They show up It's And they're like It's still representing the rocking road I love it It doesn't come here That was the last time Yeah we were past that part

But it should You take a hard stand That they should have done Another green run on this thing Man More green runs Jake we're a year away From debating

Whether they should have done Another wet dress rehearsal On Artemis 2 or not That's like What we're a year away From a show Yeah, we can't wait for that, Eric Berger, our episode. That's right.

We should do predictions for next year when we do that part of, like, what SLS stories will be written that year, you know, and just see which ones we get right. And then obviously the new one we'll do is the over-underlines on the crew is never in any danger. How many times that gets posted on the website? How many updates will have in each calendar year? Oh, man. Anyway.

We got a good lineup. Yes, we do. We're running at a time. So we should talk about two things, Jake. The Discord. Yes. You do that part. Discord.

So if you want to support us, you should pop in and help us out on the Discord for as little as five bucks a month or at a baller level of 25 bucks a month. If you are the kind of person that doesn't fly a ride share, you can help us do what we do. And you to join the Discord, which is a really fun place. to be and we have a whole new thing that we're trying with it. So every show now there's a pre-game show, pre-show. It's in the Discord only. So it's exclusive to Discord folks.

And you can hang out with us as you get ready for the show. And we'll interact with you as much as we can and get questions in and things like that. Today it was exclusive to one person because we posted it very soon before we started it. And Ari was there. Very little notice. We did a Philadelphia area pronunciation quiz. of Jake to see if he could pronounce our words. He didn't, he failed poorly.

Yeah. But it was very exclusive today. So, yes, next week should be good. So you should be a part of that. And next week, I'm pretty pumped about this, Jason. We're doing a terrible sci-fi space movie review show with Stephen Hackett of Relay FM. They ran a, actually, we should check in on this, Jake, because we were pretty high up this friggin, leaderboard here for the St. Jude fundraiser that RIAFM was running.

We did a little sub-campaign on there. And we were, once again, I will mention, of these people on the top list, were sitting number four, over five grand, and we're the only one of these people that wasn't, like, 99% funded by a single person. So that's great. All these other ones were, like, one guy who contributed $8,000, and there was one other guy who put $100 in his thing and this other person had like 12 grand they put it in their own. So I feel like we're the number one legitimate crowd sourced funding thing on there.

So I will heckle Stephen about that next week. But we're going to be reviewing some terrible movies. I love you the goalpost moving you're doing. Oh, I'm doing this. Yeah. What is an astronaut? You know, like, come on. I'm doing the Carmen line. Where's the Carmen line? It's below those people that only had one donor to their thing. Jason, have you seen any of these movies? at Astra Solar Crisis Star Flight

What's the subtitle of Star Flight Jake Star Flight The plane that never stopped going or something What is it? The plane that couldn't land The plane that couldn't land Yeah And you had another movie too right Jake

What was the other one that you had picked out? Was it the moonfall one? Moonfall. Yeah, have you seen any of these movies? I feel like I've seen Moonfall or maybe I just saw lots of previews for it so it felt like I saw it. I can't remember.

He saw enough of it. I don't think I've seen any of it. Ad Astra? Did not see Ad Astra? The Brad Pitt one? Is that Brad Pitt? I haven't watched that one yet. Brad Pitt.

Wait, is that the one where he goes all the way to Neptune and somebody's dad or something? I've heard of her doing it. And that's the one I'm watching this week. So yes, I assume that's what you're right on that. Yeah. Have you seen it? Somebody's dad or something.

No, I mean, that's, we've included it because we feel like we should have seen it. I think maybe I did see it at Astra. Yes. Forgettable, clearly. Yes. Tom Milly Jones. That's the theater. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I saw it. In the theaters. Like, I paid good money to that. Wow. Yes. You won't stay up for a meteor shower, but you'll pay money to go see at Astra. Yeah. I think we went to one of those places, you know, where you sit in a recliner and they bring you food and drinks.

So, you know, it wasn't a total loss. You were paying for the experience, not just the content. Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's next week. So that should be good. That's next week. Jason, thank you so much for hanging out.

It's been way too long since we've chatted. And let's make it not another two years before we do again. Sounds good, guys. Thank you for having me. One, two, three, four, five.