Off-Nominal - 148 - Keep the Meter Running

Episode Date: April 11, 2024

Jake and Anthony catch up after some travels, unfortunate events, clouds, news, and hijinks.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 148 - Keep the Meter Running - YouTubeJake Robins on X: "if you're about to have a bad eclipse experience like me, you can at least have a funny shirt"Nerd Alert: Neil deGrasse Tyson Explains the Lunar Eclipse - YouTubeSolar and Lunar Eclipses Worldwide – Next 10 YearsTotal Solar Eclipse on August 12, 2026Total Solar Eclipse on August 2, 2027NASA selects three companies to advance Artemis lunar rover designs - SpaceNewsJapanese astronauts to land on moon as part of new NASA partnership - SpaceNewsSpace Exploration Vehicle - WikipediaFollow 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

TLS and go for main engine, start. Hey, buddy. Hello. Oh, I didn't turn you up. Hold on. Now I turned you up. Oh, I had you turned down. He cut me off.

He cut me off. Out of practice. Clearly, Jake, listen, you know, we've been on a heater. We've been having a great run in life, in careers, and everything. And then the universe turned on us this week. It did, yes. Major ways. So we'll talk.

about it, I'm sure. We'll talk about it. Yeah. We've got a little medicine from the universe, I think. You need that. Just to be humble for yourself. Just to... Of course, correct, and not try to be bummed about it for a whole week.

Yeah. Yeah. You bring anything back from your trip? Did I bring anything back? I mean, I brought candy back, but I ate it already. So I don't have... We have to talk about the candy. I have a follow-up question about the candy.

Oh, okay. I think there was a story around the candy. Yes, there was, yes. No, I mean, I don't bring, if you're talking about beers, no, I don't bring those back. It's too much of a pain to import it into another country, especially when it's not my home country and they're a little finicky about stuff sometimes.

That's fair. I do have a fun one today. So this is Piedra Liza, a session IPA from. So, yeah, just. It's a nice chill. It's real hot this week, so a nice kind of refreshing. Chill beer is good. That's my plan, at least.

Also hot here, which is why people on the pre-show were gifted with me actively going out and buying white wine during the pre-show. The only one that was looking tasty and cold is this nobilo Solvignon Blanc, which I think is New Zealand. I kind of like it. It's one of those cheap ones, but it's delicious. It's refreshing. It's almost 80 here. Got to watch you rock that V-neck out there on the mean streets of Philadelphia. Black V-neck in South Philly.

Like I am really living up to my stereotype. Didn't really think about that all the way. And I'm living up to my personality here. Comic Sans, NASA, worm. Comic Sans, NASA, worm. Still, still a great shirt. Still funny. Yeah.

Well, let's talk about it. We blew it. collectively. We did blow it. Yeah. After our first eclipse experience was just so like knockout good for both of us. And then the exact opposite. Opposite.

I had a long run up. And I think yours had a less long run up. And I don't know which was more disappointing. Yeah. Yeah. Because I knew mine was coming along. Oh, so you got clouded out in somewhere near Niagara, right? Yeah, in St. Catharines, yeah.

Okay. And you picked this. Let's walk through your thought process. Let's just unpack. We're doing it. I figure we should do a post-mortem and a planning session for upcoming eclipses to help. Those of you out there who either did this trip or did not do this trip, but wanted to, we can help you with all of the process. Yeah.

Don't make the same mistakes. And then let's do better next time. So you go first. Okay. So my thought process was I have to travel for either way, right? So like right off the bat, if I'm seeing this eclipse, I'm getting on an airplane. Like there's no, there's no way around that for me. So I was like, I can fly anywhere.

You know, at that point, it's like, well, the cost is reasonably comparable. At first I was actually looking at Mazelan because I could fly domestically. And so it would be like, you know, not very expensive. And then, I don't know, it would be kind of cool to see it on a beach. Like that's a different environment to see it in. But they were on top of it. Like the tourism department of Mazelan was like, We got this eclipse coming up.

We're milking it, baby. And all the prices were way higher already, like a year ago when I was looking at. Even when you were planning. Yeah, which is usually. When I was planning, they were, they were out of control. Like it was, the flight was cheaper to Canada than it was to Mazelon. So that was kind of sucky. So yeah.

So my other choice then was to like play the cloud game and be like, what is the best optimal environmental prediction that I can make and go to that place? Or I was like, or I could just. like bypass the risk because there's always a risk it's not going to work out. I can bypass the risk by adding extra value to the trip. And I used to live in Niagara. So I, you know, with my trip back to Canada. I got to stay with my aunt and uncle.

I met up with all my old friends that I used to work with and play music with. And then we had a meetup. So like I combined the trip with a lot of stuff. So that is actually, I think, really important advice. Tip number one. Do not make, the eclipse cannot make or break your trip because it. If you're spending money on it, it needs to have extra value. So, like, find extra things to do and plot the value of the trip,

assuming the eclipse will fail. And if still worth it, then you've nailed it. Yes, especially, too, because it's a really fun way to plan travel, because you've got, like, a bit of happenstance picking your potentials for you. I find that when you're left to your own devices to plan your own travel. You have, like, everyone's out there's got, like, a couple trips in their head of, like, I would love to do X, Y, or Z. So if you have a slot, you try to figure out.

is the price is right? Can I do it? But this layers on like, you know, you've got these constraints. Yep. Look up Atlas Obscura, find some weird shit in the area. Like, what in there, you know, it's a Venn diagram problem. Like what else can round out your Venn diagram? So you went, you know, connections to old humans. I love that. Yeah. But you said, but you weren't going in with that knowing like, that's probably going to cloud out. Well, I went in knowing that I was not, picking the best cloud destination. Like, I knew that much.

But April, no one was really picking a good cloud situation this year. Well, I mean, if you're playing the odds, you go to the middle of Texas or whatever. Like, that was kind of like the year ago, if you looked at like long term forecasting, when Ray was on the show and we looked at their map, even historically where they picked was like north of 50% clouds on average. Yeah. So. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. It's spring. Right. Right. Kind of a bad, turns out it's a bad time for eclipses. Yeah. that's the shitty part. But yeah, yeah, so I agree with you. I think it's,

it's fun to have that as like a variable to like add a little chaos to your, because I don't know, like at my age, so I, you know, I'm pushing 40 next year. And I've traveled a lot. Like I, I am a traveling person. I like to travel is what, what we like to spend our money on. And so like I've gone a lot of places and I've done a lot of things. And at some point, like, it actually becomes hard to like pick things. Because like, you can, need to just go back to the same place over and Oregon because you know it is comfy or like you have to like keep coming up with new ideas and it's like a lot of work to like do that and so sometimes it's nice it's just to have you close be like this is where you're going at this time at this date figure it out figure it out and it's like great thank you thank you for like absolving this like you know a married couple of a decision that's anytime you can remove a decision from a married couple it makes their marriage longer so it's always it's always good to have that done for excellent that's advice for all the young people. Can we talk about the meetup?

I would love to hear about this. I've gotten no details other than sporadic Discord messages that I witnessed. So I understand you've been yelled at. You got nearly kicked out from what I can read in Discord. No, okay, so we went to this bar in St. Catherine. It's called the Merchant Dale House, which is an old hangout for me, like my old stomping ground. I've had shenanigans there lots of times and they have great beer and everything.

But it was all going fine. And so honestly, the first thing I thought was I didn't expect it to be very big. Like I thought it would be like me plus four or five people. That's kind of what I had in my head. I think we had 13 or so. So when I went in there, I showed up. I was there first. And I kind of went in and I was like, hey, can I get a table?

And they're like, how many? I was like, I don't know, like five or six or something. I like buffered it a little bit. And they're like, no problem. They sat me down. And then people just started showing up, right? And they keep moving us from like table to table as we grew and grew. Like we moved like three times or something.

And so like the staff was already mad at me because I just like came in and lied. There's slash mom in the middle. Yeah, yeah. And especially because later like as people started showing up and some people, this was a surprise to me, but some people only listened to the podcast. And so my assumption that they would walk in and immediately recognize me was false. Like that is not a thing that happened for everybody. And so some people.

stats. I know. The people looking at us is a vast, vast minority. I don't know. I just, I just feel like at some point someone will have seen my face and it makes sense. But that's not true. That's a me problem.

But, you know, so people are like walking into this bar. You and I would, if we were going to meet up, we would look up with the person we're going to meet up with. Like, we have that in us. Yes.

I guess it turns out not all of you do. So look at us up and Google us, you know. Exactly. Yeah. It's not hard to find this mug. Trust me. But so, it made it especially funny though because some people were walking in they're looking around and they

don't know what they're looking for so they go to the wait staff and they pull up our website and it says I'm here for this and it says meet up merchant alehouse right and their staff's like what what is this meetup no one told I didn't give them any heads up of it I just thought it was going to be like a handful people and they're like so so now there's me I've organized this enormous event did not give them any any heads up and then lied to them about how much table space like I was this off to a bad start with the waitstaff. And then I brought all this Mexican candy to share. I think it could do.

Like I can bring up weird shit that you've never had before. And so like we're waiting for our drinks and our food. And I'm pulling this candy out and it's like, you know, mango slices covered in chili and salt and tamarin chews with chili on it. Weird shit, right? And some of the waiters came over. She's like, no outside food. loud in this love.

I was like, oh, my God. That's amazing. It's like if I give you like a Halloween Mars bar and we got in trouble for it. So, yeah, they were really not impressed with me. Real quick, your mic just flipped in and out for a second and now you're lagging. So you might need to reboot this while I filibuster. Jake's having. This is something on.

Something's going on today. I'm going to blame Starlink, which I think is the only right thing that we should blame. So what I love about this story, by the way. is that for whoever showed up and showed them the website, is that like we're talking halfway through the full arrivals? Like, give us context for where that happens in the guest list. Can you hear me now? Am I good?

Yeah, yeah, I hear you. It don't sound as good, but it's fine. Yeah, okay. Yeah, no, I put the old, the old, I can move this out right now. Yeah, there you go. I put the old, the old lab mic on. Okay, yeah, it was like, I don't know, maybe an hour or two after I got there, that kind of thing, right?

So, like, after the initial rush, I would say people started doing that. But I don't know, a couple of people did for sure. Because I love from that, whoever it was that got showed that website to them, that's a terrible sentence. But whoever that, like, to them, they're like, man, there could be another 100 people showing up. Like, they don't know that. I don't know what to offer bound to us, right?

Like, at that point, they're like, the word obviously spread. This could be taking over the entire bar the rest of the night. and we did zero, we got zero heads up or planning for this. So there's at least like, there was at least 30 minutes where they're like talking about this. Like, man, I don't know. This could be a whole thing. Yeah. I love that.

That's great. And there was, um, there was this, the main bar was like on the main story. And then there was like stairs down to a basement where their bathrooms were. And there was like a bunch of extra tables down there. And they were empty. And it was quiet. And I was like, hey, we could, like, we should move down there. So I'm trying to convince the waitress to like move us down there so that we have our own space.

Into the basement? Yeah. Like, it was a new, it was another seating area. Like, it was, like, it was done. It was a real seating area. They just weren't using it. It's like, she's like, refused to seat it. They didn't have enough waitresses or whatever to go up and down the stairs.

I mean, whatever reason that they don't seat in some sections. So, I was as I was not earning any favors. So good. That's excellent. All right. That lived up to expectations. So, and then it was cloudy. I don't know if there's any more to the story.

Was it weird in the cloud still? Yeah, I mean, so it was like one of those frustrating cloud experiences because Saturday and Sunday was blue skies, like not a cloud anywhere and went to bed Sunday night, nothing. Like we were looking at stars. It was beautiful, you know. And then you woke up Monday and it was just like great, like a wall of gray. And that wall of gray persisted until like five minutes after the partial eclipse. And it was blue skies again the whole rest of the afternoon. I was like, you're kidding me? Like this. Like this one eight-hour window it had to put a giant thing in class. But actually it wasn't, it wasn't too bad. It was better than I thought it would be, like if I had imagined what a clouded eclipse would look like, it was better than that. Because we got a few gaps.

So like at certain points it would parse, you know, like the gap would pass over. And you could see the crescent. And you could, during the totality, we had about five, ten seconds where it did that. And so you got to see the actual thing like very good. I didn't realize this. I thought you didn't see any of that. A narrow, narrow, narrow window. So at least, you know, we got to see the actual parts.

But all the lighting still works, right? And so, like, it became nighttime. And this was way different than 2017 because this is, like, closer. Like, I forget the geometry, but the moon was closer. So the shadow was bigger and dark. Like, it was darker. And, like, it literally felt like night. time. There was a sunset that happened in 10 seconds. It was like, just everything turned off. It was

pretty spooky. So maybe the clouds enhanced that. I don't know. I think it did. Based on the pictures I saw from my friends in Austin that got super clouded out, it looked like very night. But the videos in all that I saw from, you know, the middle of the country where there's no clouds looked like, you know, what my memory from Nashville is. Yeah. And it's hard with videos because like nothing ever ever matches exactly at all. But I guess. It felt, it felt notes. The difference in pictures of, I remember after 2017, like, I was, I was trying to, like, find someone whose picture looked the most like my memory.

And I eventually did find, I think it was one of the NASA photos, like, there's a certain quality to the purple and blue around, around the sun at that point that is not captured by the pictures that are fully, like, almost black and white. And even the ones that are overexposed are, like, two, there's just not, you can't get the exact thing that your eye sees. It's such a bizarre thing. I think eyes must have like some sort of like amazing biological dynamic range that just like doesn't make sense for cameras to have for whatever reason.

You know, like there's just, they serve different roles. And so like cameras are just never quite made to match them exactly right. But anyway. But yeah. So I enjoyed it still. And I'm glad I went. But it was definitely a bummer because like, yeah. Even like Niagara Falls like 30 minutes away, they were like, this looks pretty good.

And like Hamilton, 30 minutes got away, clear skies. I was kidding me? Like it was localized like rate. If you must have looked at like a, you know, if you look like the goes west map, it was probably just this stupid cloud just hovering over Niagara. You never know though, because even I remember from 2017, I went north of Nashville into Gallatin, Tennessee. And I remember Lauren Grush was in Nashville and had to like run down the river. to find the not cloud. Like she dodged a cloud with her feet

to take a picture of totality. So, you know, even like, it, you just, I don't think I appreciated this many years on how lucky I was. Like, it felt like, it was just, you know, and it saw the eclipse. But I remember, like, I went back and listened to the show that I did right after that eclipse.

And actually, the wait-but-why guy posted a Twitter thread about seeing this eclipse, very similar to what my thoughts were, where it's not, like, I'm blown away, by the solar corona for sure. But there's that aspect of when you have a completely clear sky and you can see the other planets and you feel like you're looking at the solar system. You're not on Earth.

You're in the solar system for two minutes or four minutes. That feeling was what I had in 2017 of like, oh shit, I've zoomed out. Like I've got like Earth overview, but looking out at this point, right? But I don't even think I really thought about how my experience was different in even a partially cloudy. Like, if I had just a hole around the sun, like, that would be really incredible. But there was an aspect to the completely clear sky that I had that I didn't fully, I didn't really think about the difference. So that made me like, that made me even more like, oh shit, like, this is a really, like, I don't

know how many times in my life I will get totality and have that experience as well. Yeah. You know, that's, so that's trickier than, that complicates my future planning. So, but this planning went, arrive. from like, this is a slow creep of like, oh, I don't know what's going to happen. Now you're going to tell your non-experienced, right? So my plan was to drive to Dayton, as we talked about. I've really have been, I've always wanted to go to the U.S. Air Force Museum because it's got

the XB70 Valkyry. It's got an entire Titan 4 in there. They've got everything ever. I think it's been all day in there. But I never really have a reason to drive to Dayton, I'll be honest. Like, it's not, it's a really long-ass drive from where I live. It's a stupid flight to take from where I live. It's like, I got to have, you know, Coyahoga National Park.

It's probably when this is going to happen, if not for this clip strip. But I was like, you know, what the hell? It's going to be me, my son, my brother, my dad was the plan, right? Because I brought my brother and my dad to Nashville in 2017. That was the plan. Things happened. My brother and dad kind of like, not last minute, but they couldn't go. And this was like, you know, a week or two before.

And I was like, all right, like, I got to figure out. So I went through my roll decks of, like, texting friends and old work buddies, my wife's uncle because he's really in the space stuff. Like, I just kind of went through the list of like, who else would ride with me? And I should have known when like no one was quite available. Like, something's going on here, right? And then we get back from the trip. We were in France the week that I've missed in this show.

And then like just at the wrong moment, Will's not in shape to drive what would have been a solo drive like eight hours through a lot of traffic with the three and a half year old who's very jumpy. I was like, this whole thing kind of just like imploded. And it's not happening. So we still, he was. bounced back enough to partake in the partial solar eclipse, which he still thought was very cool, which I enjoyed, right? I have a big memory from, uh, was it Hale Bop in the 90s, that comet

of like, I realized, like, that was probably one of my early space moments of like getting my dad's telescope out and looking at that. So I'm like, this is probably a little early for Will's, he's three and a half, like, probably a little early for, I remember going to see the solar eclipse, but maybe if he saw totality, that wouldn't have been the case. But he still thought partial was cool. I do have some funny stories from what my partial solar eclipse experience turned into which was... Sure.

I picked, or I got Will down for a nap. He's like afternoon nap. Usually a little after lunch, so I'm like, all right, partiality will start while he's sleeping. I'll take the telescope out to the stoop. You know, I've got the little monitor run-ins. I can still see him inside. I'm just on my front, next to my front steps, on the sidewalk. Like, I can't

express to you how on the sidewalk my front... You've walked by my house before I owned this house. So you may remember the street that I'm on. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's just like a sidewalk. All the houses there is very, yeah, it's very like. There's four feet between you and the street. And the septibus going by at like 40 miles an hour.

Yeah, it's like no room. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I take out the little, I got a Celestron C90. We've talked about on the show before. I take it out. I got a new solar filter in the run-up to this for this. I only had a solar filter on my big Dobsonian before, but I was like, I should get one for the small telescope.

So I got one of those, put that on. I've got the little tracking mount set up. just on the sidewalk, like, people have to walk around me to get by me. I'm like, I'm just going to set up because clouds are supposed to come in later. So, you know, now's the good time. So I set up there for probably like an hour, hour and a half with pretty good viewing, clouds off and on. And I'm just like harassing people that walk by to look at the telescope.

Like, hey, literally was just... It's the only way to have a telescope, man. If you have a telescope out, it's like your moral duty to, like, make other people look in it. It's funny watching the social interaction of that because there were some people on the other side of my street is a park. So there's a lot of traffic in and out. And I'd see a couple of people like, you know, kind of doing that thing where they're looking at me in a way that they want me to see that they're looking at me. And I would just yell, like, you can come look if you want? And they're like, can I? All right, yeah, cool. So there's some people really excited. Or I'd see people walking

walking with their glasses in their hand and I would like rope them into it. The best, best moment was this lady coming home from work. She was in scrubs coming home from one of the hospitals that I live near walking by. She like looks at me, walks by. And then does like a comedic back pedal, like walks backwards to get back to me. And it's like, you wouldn't happen to have any eclipse glasses that I could use. Would you? Like, I tried to go to the Franken Institute, but they were out. Do you have extras?

And I was like, oh, yeah, of course I do. And she goes, this is the money shot. She goes, but are they like the legit ones? Or are they, you know, and I looked at her. I'm wearing my Apollo National Park shirt. I've got this motorized telescope of the solar filter. And I said to her, do I look? like someone that would have not legit ones.

She's like, no, you look pretty into it. But I figured I should ask. I'm like, no, it's fine. So I'm handing out these glasses. Yeah, Will wakes up. We go into the park. I take the telescope over there and then harass more. I probably had like 100 people look into this thing by the end of day.

So I felt like I at least successfully did my part in doing my own local Bill Nye version of this clips. That's good. I do. There was, you know, five, 10% of me that that is the Neil deGrasse Tyson of partial solar eclipses as someone who has seen totality. Yeah.

Boring. But it is much cooler than a lunar eclipse. So, you know, it's still pretty cool. Yeah. Here's what we'll transition talking about future stuff, because I have successfully convinced my wife of the two trips that we're going to take for 26 and 27, and we can unpack the planning around this. All right.

Right, right. Are you also, are you, did you do any homework? I did, yes. So, uh, yeah, so the 26, 27 are the next two totals, right? Is there one, there's not one before that, right? There's not. What is that? There might be like a one or a ocean or something.

How did I make this snake comment appear on our chat, Jake? What did I do? I don't know. I don't know what I did. Dr. Bone's snake facts. I think there's some parcels or something between then and now. Let's see. Either way.

The next two that are relevant are... Well, we've got a partial lunar eclipse coming up, Jake. Some... Partial lunar. Get pumped. Don't tell Dr. Tyson that one. He will not be interested in there. So we've got an annual coming up in South America.

Okay. Just no one will see that. It's like, let's draw an eclipse map that the least people will see. Where's Santiago? That's pretty close. Yeah, that's close enough, I guess. A little far away. Yeah, it's up there, right?

Anyway. I don't know. So, yeah, so that's fine. But that's an annular, right? And I've seen an annular now? You know how they say that the difference between 99 and 100% is like night and day, literally? Difference between annular and total, night and day, literally. Yeah, it's not the same thing.

All different thing, all different thing. All the other things. Annular is just a cooler version of a partial solar eclipse. There's nothing. It's whatever. It's a partial one where the moon is fully visible. Like, you know, just the side of it, right? It doesn't cover up the whole side of it.

I've never been motivated by annular solar eclipses. It was real close to me. Cool photos, the ring. Yeah, yeah. Fun experience. Yeah. Okay, no, there is one in total. Oh, total lunar.

Yeah, total lunar. There we go. That's what you want. Nope. Yeah, 26. and 27. Those are the next two. Cool. All right. So I looked at both of these so far. And I'm thinking the 26 one is a skip.

Maybe you have a different idea, but I do have a different idea. It's, yeah, you would look at this map and you would go, Spain sounds cool, it seems sunny, right? And that's probably where you started also. Yeah. But it's bad on both ends of Spain for this one. Right? On the extreme end of the eclipse, if you're like, I'm going to be Ritzie as all hell and go to Mallorca and spend a bazillion dollars on a hotel. Have fun.

Spending a lot of money. But this is at sunset. It's a very mountainous place. And there's about 30% clouds on average. Yeah. And it's one and a half minute. So it's short totality. Super short.

And when you say sunset, like this is low. So sunset. Like, look at it. So partial ends on there. It says sun below horizon. Right. So the sun is actually gone. before the end of the eclipse.

Yeah, I think I read that it was... Full ends at 832 and sunset is at 849. Yeah, so you have, like, it's going to be something like four degrees above the horizon. Yeah. Okay, so, you know, like, that's basically horizontal. And if you look at a geography map of Majorca, all the mountains are on the west side. So, like, if you're where the people are or the hotels are, like, you're going to be, there's a mountain range between you and the eclipse. Yeah, you'll not see it.

I don't think anyone, you have to be on top of the mountains to see it there, I think. Yeah, and even over on like Spanish mainland, it's kind of the same situation. It's pretty hilly all throughout there. Five minutes better. Yeah, and I think if you go to the other side of Spain, like, we're from four, four degrees up to like maybe 10 degrees. Like, it's still low. And at least you have like ocean there.

But that's the top north coast of Spain there is all cloud and rains. That's their, that's their wet area, right? So I'm going to instead do the trip I've been waiting to do to Iceland because Reikivik is in the path of totality, though again, very short, one minute, and it's like a thousand percent going to be cloudy. There's no way we're seeing this from Iceland, right? But there is a, on this little extent over here, God help me if I can never pronounce anything in Iceland. I will never pronounce any of this, but there's this cool looking volcano national park. And so you'll get, you know, two minutes there. And I mean, if you're, if you happen to see

totality on top of a volcano, I didn't see that it was two minutes there. I thought it was still a in it out there. That's better. And I mean, again, 78% average cloud cover. But like, if you could see totality on top of a fucking volcano, like, I don't know. I don't know. Man, that might be it. That's the one, right? And there's

possible you'll see Northern Lights String Totality too. Possibility, right? Everyone keeps talking about that. I don't know. We should have a scientist on to ask that question. Yeah, I don't know. Because it gets dark, but not like that dark. That's the thing. So, like, the problem with Iceland dark, like is, like the sun never, it stays high a lot, right?

And so you're not going to be too, like, even the darkness is still pretty bright, right? That's kind of the issue with it. So the coolest one on this clip would be if you could find your way to Greenland, but I don't know, there's nothing in this path. I don't know how to get to the uninhabited ice sheet that is this part of Greenland. I guess hope Nat Geo organizes a trip. Like, I don't know what the plan is there. But I kind of feel like if you're going to do 2026, be in Reykjavik, because if traffic sucks, at least you'll still be in Reykjavik, and there's a minute of totality that you might see it.

But if you can find a place to stay up closer to this volcano, you can get a little longer and be on a volcano. And all of these sound like epic failure modes. If you don't see the eclipse, that sounds great. So that's that one. Iceland, also very expensive, though, talking about. Majorca, yeah, it's not a lot different. I priced out an Iceland trap this year and we bailed on it because

it was like the cheap hotels were 450 a night, you know? So let's look at the August 2027 eclipse because this is, this one is a real, I'm already zooming in where I looked at, but maybe you looked at, I mean this is a lot of desert that this shit's

flying over. So if you're looking for no coast. It's all coastal though, right? So it's like kind of a nice mix of clear skies but also in habitation and not terrible weather. Now it's August, right? And so if you're going to die in the middle of this map. The Africa side or the Middle East side is going to be real toasty, real, real testing.

So I zoomed in and looked at Spain as well. Yeah. I got friends in Malaga. That's an area I want to visit a lot, like all that kind of Gibraltar area and stuff. Man, there's some. And this is another one that's pretty lengthy at the, you know, Towards the center line, you're pushing four minutes. Towards the center line, yeah, yeah.

I think you're even pushing five minutes if you're dead on the center line. Go click on the center line in Egypt. Yeah, is it seven? Is it the seven minute? It's pretty long, man. It's pretty long. This is a great episode of the show. 624.

That's about as long as they get. Yeah. It's about as long as eclipses get if you're not on the Concord. And I didn't do that when I was in the Concord. I did not do the Eclipse. So what I like on this one, Gene. is this area west of Gibraltar. This stretch has like between 7 and 15% clouds

if you're on the coast here. So I'm kind of digging southern coastal Spain. I was just in Cadiz at the top of that little stretch there. Yes, you were. And? That is a lovely little town. I loved it. 13% average clouds?

15% if you get this way or 25% of you? get that way but there's a beach there you can go watch it at it pretty great three minutes it's a solid amount all right so that's where the beach with a barbedette got he's 2027 yeah i've heard this is this tarifa i've heard this is pretty sick and that's 440 so that's pretty good that's good it's real good apparently this is the wind sport capital of the world we can do like kite surfing during totality all right all right yeah we could we could kite surf out to the centerland. Very close to Africa, too.

You can take a little ferry across, go do a little. A little jaunt. That's actually, there's a ferry that goes right there. It says on this map. We've solved it. Is that, uh, Tarifa? What city is on the, on the, on the, is that baraco there? What is that?

No. Yeah, yeah, Tangiers. Tangiers. Yeah. Yeah. Five minutes over there. We solved it. We've solved it.

2027. We'll see you. August. Well, I'm going to see in Iceland. I'm going to figure this. out. You're going to do it? Yeah.

So. Yeah, I might buy out of that one. I think that's, we'll see. Unless I have, unless the difference between me now and me then is a whole different wealth situation. I might, I see how Bitcoin goes for you. Yeah, we'll see how Bitcoin goes. But well, you know, we'll see.

I, uh, I was super like, I almost, we were almost went to Iceland this year, man. And it was just like, the price just shocked me. I just couldn't. Well, this year is still. kind of screwed up for traveling. I'll be honest. A little bit, but. It's still pretty screwy. This is the, so the trip that I just went on to France

was a trip I had booked in April 2020 and clearly did not go. And we've waited this long because flights are still terrible. And I ended up flying out of Newark instead of Philly because flights are still terrible. So, but I don't know if anyone else has ever been a member of, used to be called Scott's

Sheep flights, and now it's called Going. I don't know if anyone is aware of this, but they track like good deals for flights and stuff and they're the the rate that I'm seeing like Europe deals from Newark and Philly and JFK is coming back to what it was so good I think I think within a year maybe we can start doing some Iceland planning once the hotels open up and stuff and get on it before all the Normies realize there's an eclipse that's also key right yeah yeah I feel like we've shared our tips for people out there

I mean, chances are if you're listening to this show, you are oriented to the religiosity of totality. But maybe you're not. I cannot express to you. It is like, if you've ever wondered how and when were religions invented, see totality. Because that's like, that's a moment. It's God speaking to you, really, if you really get down to it. It is, yeah. There's always that story of that one war, right?

Middle East. And like, that has to be bullshit, right? No, it's, it's real. Like that's, okay.

Well, so it's one of the, it's such an important historical event. So, okay, so context is there was two like armies in a war, like on some day. Do it with Dan Carlin impression after this. It was like,

you know, Babylon versus Assyria or some, one of these antiquity. What would you do if? Yeah. Yeah. It's the range of human relations. We're never having them on this show.

But so in the middle of this fight, a total solar eclipse happened. And they were like, we have to stop this fight. The God's telling us this war is dumb. And they like cancel the war. And it's such an important part of history because they can read about them experiencing the eclipse. And then they just wind the physics clock back and they can pinpoint it to an exact minute and location. It's like one of the rest of their historical stuff. It's like exactly. It's like one of the few times you can pinpoint a historical event like to that level of specificity from like thousands and thousands of years ago. It's like it's gorgeous. What a great is those and Haley's Comet. That's like the two things. You can just wind every 75 years you can pinpoint an event. But yeah, it's important. So anyway, eclipses will start religions and stop wars. Even when you know what's happening, it's still like absolutely mind blowing. It's not.

Yeah. I watched the video back of like, I took a like a wide angle video of totality. Like I just put it somewhere and like let it record. And hearing me and my brother, my dad reacting, I'm like, oh, my God, yeah, that's still, that's like burned into my memory because it's just, you're not, as space nerd as you can be, you're not ready for it, you know, at all. Yeah. So, yeah.

It's epic. Yeah. All right. Yeah. We crush that. Now we've got all the news we could ever imagine. fit in 22 minutes of catching up, Jake. Jeez.

We're going to speed run some great, great news stories. All right, where do you want to start? You've been hot to talk about these rovers. I think it's interesting. There's a lot of rover news this week. A lot of rover news. Well, I guess the last two weeks because the other one was earlier, right? Yeah.

But yeah, so we have non-pressurized LTV task orders, I guess. is this, but this is like another clip style thing, right? Like it's three companies that are kind of onboarded, but, uh, it's different. It's actually different in a way that you might like. It's, it's, uh, funny part is this one makes the most sense to me to be services based, and it's the least services structured. So it's, they're actually going to fund development of one of these companies. So they've picked three, three teams led by a prime.

and there's a little bit of design money now. They will then pick one to go into development. Well, they said maybe more than one if they get the right funding level, but pick one to go into development and then proceed to services contract beyond that for 10 years on the lunar service. So five years development, 10 years of operations. But, yeah, I'm confused about like the service aspect, which I will unpack in a second.

So we've got intuitive machines, lunar outposts, and then Venturi Astrolab. I don't know why it's not just Astrolab. Did I miss a news release on this? We were talking about this earlier. I cannot keep any of these companies straight because they all have the same name and the same product name

and the same sandbox that they're playing in. So I will screw this up on this show I'm going to screw it up and then for the next two or three years I'm going to screw up all these company names. I'm going to call it the Voyager Starship Lab Flex Rover for a while and you'll have to just kind of figure it out. But I have one note on this. I just went to the Astrolab website.

This is a follow up to our website bit that we did a couple weeks ago about how all the websites is the same. This one is like a 1990s fricking website, man. I got to click a continue to website button, Jake, before I get to the website. Well, hey, I mean, it's got Chris Hadfield in it. Anyway, so those are the three teams. Now, here's why I say this one makes the most sense to be services. Like, they want these rovers to, to take the astronauts around when they're on the lunar surface,

but they want them to also do robotic stuff when the astronauts are not there. That was a cool part. It was like they're going to be RTC cars too. Right. So if you're in that model of like, we want to do services and we need rovers that can autonomously operate and sometimes take astronauts,

isn't this the most set up for like, we literally want Uber on the lunar surface and we will like request ride and then you bid for, oh, it'll, to take you from here to that crazy, I will give you this fair this is this makes the most sense for it and they're only gonna pick one team to do it the taxi cab like meter running on the other river instead of going up 25 cents every like mile it's like really like 25 million dollars every every mile or whatever god forsaken number it's gonna be

it's a fixed fair between Shackleton and base but you know other than that we run the meter yeah but it makes the most sense for like services to be competed like that, but they're, they're, I don't understand why they're going to pick a team and fund development and then service base it for the 10 years, or for each mission of the 10 years. This is, this is what I'm talking about. When I give this Johnson Space Center conspiracy theory, this is what I'm talking about. Yeah.

This is, this is fixed price commercial space in a trench code. I mean, all right, let me, let me be the Johnson defense attorney here. All right. Like, presumably there's a few scenarios where maybe somebody swaps in on like the fourth mission. Maybe the rover, the previous rover broke down at the third mission and Astrolab planted another one on the surface and they can bid out Intuitive machines for that fourth mission. But what's strange is then like there's that, the thing that makes that a sticky point is that they're going to fund a development phase for whoever they pick. It didn't sound like they're going to fund the development for all of them and then pick one to go operate. They're going to pick a winner and fund their development.

So then you just have to, if you're NASA, hope that you can exercise the services-based situation if somebody else happens to get through all the development. Yeah, yeah. And that's the part that's kind of strange. It is weird, yeah. And I guess, like, from a services standpoint, it would make more sense to me. Like, I don't know if this is possible, but like, can they combine the same hardware for different missions? Like, are the Artemis mission is going to land close enough to each other that,

that, you know, after Artemis 4 leaves, they can drive the rover over to the Artemis 5 spot and then keep billing them on services for the next mission? Like, is that going to be possible or are they going to be too far apart? I don't know, right? How do I know? Because, like, here's the thing. If it's a rover that they launch and land next to an Artemis 3 land or Artis 4, whatever Artemis landing it's going to be, and it only ever gets used for that mission,

like it is not a service, it's not, it's not what that is. Like, that's just a different way to structure the payment for a thing you buy and use once. Like, a sole sort of a single customer, single products. Like, that's all that is just with a different label of the top of the contract, right? I mean, that's got to be why the autonomous thing is like a requirement, right? That they can drive it then to the next location. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Or at least like the- But the idea also with Ordomis is that we're aggregating stuff at a spot on the moon that we like. Yes. But again, I don't know. Is that within 500 meters or within. five kilometers or within 50 kilometers. Like what is what is close right? And and is the rover going to have that kind of capability?

I'm not sure yet. And I guess you could like land it with payloads so that it's like its own mission on its own. And that would like help you spread some costs around things like that. Like I don't know. Does it become a clips mission as well? Yeah. Right. That's possible.

Right. So I got to learn more about it. And yeah, maybe maybe they're structuring it in a way like you said that they hope to be able to onboard, you know, kind of like commercial crew where they had an initial batch and then they started to bring in Dream Chaser to write kind of like, okay, let's add some more, or sorry, commercial cargo, right? You know, bring in Dream Chaser to add some actual capability later. Like, maybe that's the idea.

I don't know. Yeah. It's weird. It's definitely weird. It's a similar vibe as the spacesuit. Like, I think it's better. The space suit one is the worst one. That's the worst one.

Because it's like, yeah, these are modular, but it's pretty freaking custom. You know, maybe you can, you know, goodwill this out to Jared Isaacman after you're done with it. But, like, I don't know what the market is beyond that, you know. Or, you know, like, the other way would be like, can you sell it to someone else after it's gotten there? You know, NASA leaves. Like, does someone else show up? And they're like, here's a rover for you to use trying to meter on, you know, like, I don't know. We'll see.

Turn the meter on. I don't know what that customer is, but. Well, so this is all then related to the pressurized rover that finally has a real announcement. we knew this for a long time that Japan is working on a pressurized rover Jacks at Toyota whatever official announcement

Big State dinner don't know if you saw these pictures they really blew the doors off the place last night I sure Bill Nelson was there I didn't know I don't see any picture but I'm sure he was there definitely

no that's cool it's exciting so the one thing that stood out to me is like really fun to think about was it like the requirement the rover is like 30 days of life support which is like pretty wild They're going to be able to get in this rover, take their spaces off, and camp for a month.

That's cool. Like, that's, like, more capable than the Apollo landers and it's got wheels, you know? I thought you're saying like an airstream, you know? Or that, yeah, it is more capable than an airstream, right? 30 days of life support is not nothing. It's a really cool spaceship. Like, this is a really futuristic. It is definitely a spaceship.

spaceship. And it's the first piece of lunar surface infrastructure of this degree. And that's very important because when you're asking how far apart our Artemis mission is going to be, it's probably the distance that this thing can drive without being resupplied. Yeah. Right? So that they can take this between outposts or whatever. But it's the first step.

As much as you care about any piece of the Artemis program, I think this is the one that you should care the most about. if you're interested in like long-term plans because we don't have any other plans for lunar habs outside of the landers that are like temporary habs we don't have any plans for you know there's the lead-on projects like the kilopower whatever for power infrastructure and there's plans from astrobotic and stuff but none of them have the the like date and time set on them yet or money committed to it yet and this one does so this should be as focused on as the gateway hardware in my view over the next five years of like how is this thing coming because this is the first lunar surface infrastructure that we should care about and that's awesome

yeah yeah no it's it's rad like just and we're both jacks a fan boys let's be real about this we are yeah we just you know I was just like I was reading it again and I kind of just sat back and went like 30 30 days like I don't know if anyone's internalized what that means like you know just the kinds of missions you can do with that capability, 10 X's with compared to what you had before. And the cross mission functionality, like you talked about, you know, how does one impact the next, moving these things around, being able to go on like a week-long field trip to whatever magic crater is just, just out of reach. And just it's exploring. It's like driving across the damn moon.

Like it's going somewhere, right? Like, it's actually exploring. It's the same way that we have the Mars rovers and we get to like explore new terrains. It's not going to be just like standing up on top of the Apollo Lander and doing a 360 go, these are all the rocks that we'll see here. Like, that's it. Right.

So it's super cool. The only thing I'm worried about is just like, are we going to be able to take advantage of that? Like, what's the, okay, now we're going to, that's a capability coming down the pipe. What are you going to do with it? Like, where's that idea, right? And I know that's got to come later. We had Dr. Oz in the show.

He'll be fine. Yeah, I have no problem. The scientists will have no problem figuring out something to do. The problem is going to be, you know, like, will the Artemis mission planners in all the horrible constraints that they have to work in, like, are they going to be able to actually do anything really inspiring with that? Or is it going to be like some sort of like good idea that gets de-scoped to a mediocre idea that gets de-scoped to a kind of crap idea and it gets pushed 10 years out because SLF isn't ready or whatever, right? well that's that's my that's my that's my pessimistic view of the whole damn thing but i was so excited hold on hold on cool your jets this is the first big-ass piece of infrastructure that does not even talk about sls at all that's notable that this is going to be they said

either landed on a cargo version of hLS so they're blue moon cargo thing or starship it's this is going to come out of a starship airlock and get that's just getting it there that's right? You know, like... But that's important. All of the other big Artemis infrastructure requires SLS right now. All of Gateway requires being manifest in SLS.

It's tied to when the exploration upper stage is going to be ready. It's tied to Orion being ready for that flight. Everything outside of Starship HLS requires SLS to fly right now. And this does not. And that's interesting because this could get to the moon and nothing else could fly on SLS and this thing's still on the moon. That's true. So that's important.

I agree, I agree. They just officially committed and the president had a big ass dinner because we're going to fly this giant freaking airstream to the moon. I'm very excited about it. I'm very excited about it. It's the nagging pessimist that lives in the back of my brain, the same one that does those bad monologue podcasts when I'm upset about something. Like that guy is talking to me right now being like,

sounds great, man. And I can't wait to see what they don't do with it. you know like yeah yeah it's gonna land on the moon and beat sls there and then no one's ever going to come to it because it'd be like well we got a

we don't have the capability to land but wouldn't that still be a success for pushing the situation forward no hear me out you did a crazy angara a 5 theory and free show about how it's not it's actually the most underrated rocket of all time

so if you want some crazy shit like that all if notcoms like discord but let me try one Let me try one on for size. If this gigantic rover that is capable of being a base for 30 days on the moon, the first, like, other than the ISS and mirror, the first long-term habitat that we put in space, if that lands on the moon and we're unable to do anything of it because we've tied ourselves to whatever the hell SLS schedule is at the moment, it's just sitting there waiting to be used.

Like that will bring into such stark relief what decisions need to be made to fix that situation. It's the same. I feel the same as I did. Worsing function. Remember that like 5% of me that was like, I kind of hope JWST is broken so that we have to mobilize the entire human spaceflight infrastructure to fix it?

I kind of have that same like that devil on my shoulder of like, what if the worst case scenario promotes more development in the way that it would be good for the industry? It would then be a monument to like what could be if we fixed the way that we get to the moon. And also if you're able to,

I'm going to keep. going Jake I'm filibuster right now. If you can land this thing on the moon with starship, you could probably fly humans from the earth to the moon on starship. Like that's, or blue moon, whatever. Take your pick. One of these things lands this crazy rover on the moon. It parties on in my eye. Go ahead. I'm done. I mean, I think you're, you're not, you're not wrong. Like, it definitely could be a forcing function that like, you know, whatever. It needs, because it would look freaking embarrassing if they launched there and they can't do anything with it.

And it also would be embarrassing if they launch it there and they can't do anything with it. And so Elon Musk sends people there to do stuff with it. Yeah, yeah. Polaris Stone is like, Polaris, whatever. Peraris sunrise is like, we're going to go drive this thing around. If freaking Jared Isaac Min gets this thing at a discount because it's sitting there in the Kmart bin on the moon because no one can

and then Isaac Min will be driving it. Yeah, that's the most depressing future for me. but what was I going to say? That's a nice like consolation prize to me. Like, oh, we have like a shitty space program and then we send this rover and it's a forcing function. And so the shitty space program has to like throw something together to use it. Like I don't like that. Like that's not a sustainable funding model to me.

That is not really much different than like, oh, there's a Cold War, invent a space program. I was like, oh, this is good for the space program. It's like now the Cold War's over and everything disappears. It's like, okay, that wasn't actually good for the space program. You know, like, it's the same thing to me where it's just like, it's fake. It's a fake reason to go. But, yeah. Anyway, it's a cool rover.

Could be a good ass rover. Yeah. It is cool. It is very, very cool. Yeah. Yeah. Is it, are we too optimistic for the rover, though? Maybe.

Maybe. I don't know. Jack's is cool as hell, man. underlux cool. I just watched a Star Wars show that basically had that as a vehicle. So, you know, I just watched the Bad Batch episode last night. Same thing, man. It's like that like tall like tank looking thing with the six wheels underneath it. Like that's what it looked like. It was that beautiful. I'm trying to pull up another picture of this thing. Let's see.

It's pretty, uh, pretty funky looking. It's an enormous capability though. Like I, that's, if you ask me what I spend the most time thinking about when I read that, It was like, wow, the shit we can do with that. And now I want to know what the interior looks like. Are there like living quarters then? Like, is it like a, is it really just like a base on wheels? You know, like. What do you think Bill Nelson was saying in this, in this photo?

Well, I'd really like the little rover. This little rover could, you know. I don't know. Bill Clinton, apparently in my accent. You know, we had something. like this over on farm in Florida and little

rovers you're wondering if we'll ever have Bill Nelson on this show there's a guess is your answer zero zero percent chance now do you like this rover design more or less than the what I would classify as the stupid one

with the backpack mountable space suit thing you didn't like that you didn't like the backpack I'm going to find that. What is the name of that one? It looks fine. I don't know. It was like the, yeah, because the space suits always stayed outside, right? That was the idea. So the dust never came in and you like entered it. Yeah, this one.

The suits were airlocks, basically. This one, right? Yeah. The suits were airlocks is a good way to put it. Yeah. I'm trying to find one of the back of the, the back of the shot. They don't really want to show you that. do they? That's ITAR. Is this it?

Is it? Oh yeah, that was just a, that says, no, no good picks of this. L-E-R. Is that what it is? The lunar electric rover?

Is that what that's actually called? The space exploration vehicle. That's what its name was. That's what cracks you have so much. The space exploration vehicle. Oh, because it was going to be the asteroid thing. Yeah.

If we ever do a space consulting business, it has to be about always, like we have to have a name vetting. service and if you call your thing the space exploration vehicle or the space launch system or the space transportation system or the like you just get out we're just not even going to allow that we're going to charge you twice as much and make you ditch the name confirmed consulting at offline dot com hit us up yeah i've found the photo jake i've found the photo of the of the uh space suits as the yeah there they are there they are with a little

platform at the back there to step off on. Yeah. I don't know. This is kind of an interesting idea. Do you think you could get in one of those if you tried? No, no. As I said, I'm pushing 40 now and so I would hurt my back getting into that. I'm pushing 5'5, so I bet I can fit fine.

Yeah. I bet I would be just fine. That would be like those days when I get out of bed there myself. I happen sometimes. I just always wonder like, all right, you put it, so I'm pulling up again. So my theory is you put your feet out. in first and then you try to like tuck into it. Yeah, you know when you watch people like in submarines like hop through the little

hatches and they like grab the bar? Yeah, it's like that swing. Yeah. Yeah. You grab the bar, jump up, grab the bar and your leg swing in and then you fall through. No, we gotta figure it. All right. I mean, at the off-dominal meetup in Tarifa 2027, we will both try to get into these spacesuits. We're gonna go.

I think this rover still exists in that building nine in just. building nine in JSC. Definitely. Yeah, those don't go anywhere. Yeah. I'll bring it to Spain and then we're going to go and it'll get repurposed. It'll get repurposed as a training vessel for this new contract for sure, like 100%. Do you think it's possible? I'm going to speak this into existence that we could go to Houston and someone we know would let us try to get into those suits in that particular vehicle in building nine. There's a strong chance. Whoever could make that happen is listening to us right now. And I would like you'd reach out to us because Jake and I would both like to climb into that

space suit thing. After all my Johnson Space Center conspiracy theories, though, I may not be allowed on the premises anymore. You're out. That might be unfortunately true. What do we got coming up, Jake? We've got some good stuff on the schedule. We do, yeah.

So after a little bit of a break, we have good stuff lined up. So next week, we have a journalist coming on. Let's see if I can get, I haven't cleared her through how to pronounce her name yet. Godspeed, baby. I'm making it go with this. Aria Alma Hodei. I feel like that was a strong shot. Yeah.

We recently posted this video of the Asteroctin blowing up, which is excellent. Which is great. Yeah. And we booked her before this, but this is good content either way. But we honestly, we booked her because she wrote an article a few weeks ago, maybe a couple months ago now, on valves, space valves, like literally like why they're so hard and they always break and they cause every mission to fail. It's always valves. So there you go. My valves are a spacecraft engineer's worst nightmare. So this article caught our attention.

She's been publishing a lot, lots of stuff. So we're excited to have her on. I cannot wait. That's going to be great. What else do we have to plug, Jake? Anything in particular? The Discord? You could hear Jake's crazy theory that Angara A5 is the most underrated rocket of all time.

And I might not think he's wrong. That's the beauty of my overrated or underrated rocket takes. Is they're like hilarious, extreme, and kind of right. So if you want that and to support the show, you can join us. Yes. It'll be great. Offnom.com slash Discord.

As little as five bucks a month, it helps us do what we do. And we appreciate everybody who does that. And you could always never fly ride share and get the same thing for five times a price and be directly inserted into the place that you would love to hang out, which is the discord. Exactly. You'd be like that rocket land, 14.4 million. Yeah, we should raise the price by 40%, I think. It's going up.

After today, it's going to be, you know, $35. 42.50. So get in there. Get in there now. That'll play well with our guests in two weeks. Yes, they'll well. Yes, it'll be great. we've done enough damage for today

I'll see you in Iceland in 26 Jake we'll see you in Spain in 27 that's all I got bye see it folks bye bye bye peace one two three four five five four three two one into death