Off-Nominal - 18 - Autogenously Pressurized Double Double

Episode Date: April 17, 2019

Kate Howells of the Planetary Society joins Jake and Anthony to talk all things Canadian space policy. Drinks White - Allagash Brewing Company - Untappd Collective Arts: Dry Hop Passion Fruit & Peach - Collective Arts Brewing - Untappd Diet Mountain Dew Topics Boosters, Breakthroughs and Budgets: Canada and the US Look Toward Space | The Planetary Society EXPLORATION IMAGINATION INNOVATION A New Space Strategy for Canada (PDF, 1.7MB) Welcome to The Ring Lord. - TheRingLord.com Chainmail Jump Rings jumprings Scalemail Jewelry Supplies and Wire Picks CelesTrak: Current NORAD Two-Line Element Sets Seveneves: A Novel Ben Mosher Faster, Better, Cheaper: A maligned era of NASA’s history — Elizabeth A. Frank Follow Kate Kate Howells | The Planetary Society Kate Howells (@SpaceKateH) | Twitter Space is Cool as Fuck - Lost The Plot Follow Jake WeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to Mars WeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | Twitter Jake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | Twitter Follow Anthony Main Engine Cut Off Main Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | Twitter Anthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | Twitter Off-Nominal Merchandise Off-Nominal Logo Tee Team CAESAR Tee Team Dragonfly Tee WeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

DLS and go for main engines, start. All my little off nominis. We need a better name for our listeners. Can't be the all nominees because that's the awards that we did at the end of the year. Yeah, and I was going to go maybe like off numbies or like, then it just got kind of weird. We need a better name. Listeners, what do you want to be called? What's your fun nickname?

What's your fun pet name? Send it in. This is a different start that I had in mind. Email it to Anthony at offnominable. dot space. Welcome, welcome to the Canadian edition of Offenomenal.

We've got a really special guest today. Kate Howells? Kate, how are you? Hello, I am well. How are you? We're excellent. We are stoked to have you on. There's been a lot of,

there's been a lot of news lately. And I think we went back and forth on what we were going to cover. It was going to be like NASA budget stuff or moon stuff. And I was like, well, if we have all this good stuff, we may as well just do Canada. That was my opinion.

Yes, this is Canada's, Canada hasn't been bigger in space news in the last 10 years, I would say. So now's the time. Yeah, definitely. I feel like though, between the time when we picked, oh, there's cool Canadian policy going on, we decided on that topic. And then everyone was like, oh, we're going to go in the moon in five years. Like, let's talk about that. But we're going to be a part of it, right?

It's going to be one of those things where, because of budget cuts and to make it fast, the Orion's only going to be able to dock with the help of Canada Arm 3, right? That's how it's going to work? I think that's a fair assessment, yeah. Three and four. It needs two of them. Yeah, because Orion's so big and powerful. Well, you guys know more about Orion than I do, so let's just go for four Canada Arms total.

That seems like the right number. How many do you need before, like, you have the... It's like how a chair stands most stable at like three legs, right? you need at least that many candidate arms I think well also so I was thinking about this recently because there's the canad arm two on the space station but then there's also Dexter which is like two arms that are grabbing on simultaneously

but it's not even called a canad arm but it's kind of like one double-handed arm or two arms so when you're trying to count the number of arms that you need it gets a bit complicated so that means the next one's got to be basically like Canadian Dr. Octopus, it's got to be like a giant. Yeah, you know what? I can't see why not. I'll do what I can to make that happen. This is our new lobbying effort. That's starting to I think we solved everything here, guys. I think we're pretty well productive on this podcast.

I'd do so. Anthony, what are you drinking? I was just going to say before we always get way to deep into the topic. We have a whole segment at the beginning of the show where we talk about what we're drinking because that was our schick at the beginning. And I had a, uh, I had a, bunch of beer in my fridge still from some people that were over last weekend. So this is another one of my leftover shows. But I feel like this is relevant because I have an Alighash White, which is from Maine, which is pretty much Canada. So there you go. Pretty much Canada. As close as I could get without paying like an import tax or something.

I'll go next. I've got a beer that I love right now that I was pretty excited to go get. Another reason that I'm glad that I didn't wind up doing the show on Sunday, originally planned is that I didn't have any exciting beer in my fridge. Yeah, you're just like a lot of water. I'm drinking a lot of water to get better. Yeah, it would have been a bad idea for me to have added beer to that terrible sickness. But today I have a sour beer because I've been just obsessed with sour beers since last summer, thinking it would just be a summer fling, but it actually kept going all through the winter. And so this one is new to me.

It's a peach passion fruit and raspberry sour, dry hopped ale from collective arts. Fruit in Hamilton, Ontario. Steeltown. Yeah. I just drove through there like a week or two ago. Drove right on through. Oh yeah, you would have. That's right.

Yeah. Over the skyway and everything. Did the whole thing. Rainbow Bridge on the way in. Yeah, you would have got double skyway coming from your neck of the woods. Look at that. This show is going to be so Canadian. going to be like 4% of the audience is going to be like, this is the best show you've ever done.

And the other 96 are not going to know what's happening. Wait, so just so I know, where do you each live? Oh, I'm in Philadelphia. So I'm the non-cadian here. Yes. Yeah, and I'm in Vancouver. Vancouver. I used to live in St. Catherine, so I know that neck of the woods pretty well.

Okay, cool. Good. Yeah. And you're in Guelph, right? I am in Guelph, yes. I recently came here, having been in Montreal for a long time. but we can get to that later. I need to know what you're drinking still.

Prepare. Prepare. Yeah, prepare. So I normally don't do this, but I had a really busy year last year and I kind of stopped taking care of myself for a little bit. And I needed to do a bit of a purge after I went to Houston because I, you know, you travel and you eat out and you drink a lot of beer because you're with people and everything. So I'm on a four-week stint right now.

I'm two days away from the end of a four-week stint where I'm not drinking any alcohol. Wait, so why are we doing the show today? Because the two days ends when I go away on vacation to a very far away place. But I found something that I think is appropriate, and I think the listeners will like this. And I had to go, this is the worst thing to get for the Canadian version of the podcast, but I had to go to the States to get Diet Mountain Dew, the chosen drink of our favorite NASA administrator, J.B., Jim Burr, Aridenstein.

And so I thought, yeah, have you ever seen the, like, the congressional, you know, hearings he does where he, like, sits in front of the Senate? He's always got one on his desk. He got to watch.

I have not noticed that. Oh, he literally brings a bottle of Mountain Dew into the floor of the Congress and puts it on the table in front of them. It's amazing. Every time. What has the world come to you? No, except for the one time,

like, last week, he was in one hearing, and he had a can of sugar-free Red Bull and everyone was like, what is happening? Things are momentous changes. Gaff is pivoting. Well, and am I right in thinking that in the U.S. Mountain Dew is crazy caffeinated, but in Canada it's not?

91 milligrams. Is that a lot? Oh. I think like Coke's like 50 or 60 or something, right? This might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that in Canada, clear beverages aren't allowed to have caffeine, only brown ones. They just changed that. That's like a new law. Yeah. What kind of law is this?

It used to be just colas. Cola is the only thing is the only thing is the only thing is the only things they could have caffeine for pops. Why? Who gets a shit? Because we don't want to trick people into drinking what's not. I don't know. Coffee is brown, so pop has to be brown. It's a color-based thing? Like, what if the bottles not see-through? This is the socialist world we live in up here. I just got back from a week in Utah, which I thought has weird laws about what you

can and can't drink, but man, this whole thing is very odd. And what's like, what's the albedo you need to have high levels of caffeine? The albedo. I think even when that law has been gone for decades, I'm still going to talk about it, because I think it's so funny that we have that as a law. Yeah. So this tastes weird. I don't know.

Maybe I just haven't had a mountain dew. Is this the first time you've ever had this? Diet, yes. I used to drink a lot of Mountain Dew when I was a teenager, like, because I was like, I don't know, I love the coat red mountain dew. Yeah. But I stopped drinking it a long time ago. And this, and okay, this is also weird.

So it's a diet Mountain Dew, which to me means it should have zero calories. And this has 10. So, like, I don't know what the 10 calories are. Like, what is that? Maybe you just can't get away from calories. It would just be water. I don't know anything about how diet. It says it has orange juice in it.

That must be it. Huh. Well, there goes your diet. It also says... It's clear, by the way. So that I would probably qualify as a non-clear liquid. But it's not brown. It's not brown.

It has to be brown? I think that was the rule. I don't know what it was. No, no. This is... Adam's saying that must be Canadian. This is American Mountain Dew. I had to go to Bellingham, Washington, to buy it.

Oh, right. You went across the border for this. This is ridiculous. Yeah, because, like, we don't have diet. in Canada. It's only just regular. What did you declare on your way back across? One bottle of pop and a tank of gas.

Always fill up the tank of gas when you cross the border at 100% of the time. Okay, I think we've filled the airway with a sufficient amount of Mountain Dew trivia. Wait, not quite. We can move on, I'm just joking.

I thought you had something like some little trivia fact for us. No, I just want to keep be going on that topic before we get too serious. Yeah, before it gets really heavy. So, Kate, I have this thing on my desk here. It is very, very large, far larger than I thought it would be, and it is heavy. And it has a curse word on the front. I don't know if you've seen this before.

Yes. It has a curse word very close to your name. It says space, oh, hold on. So we're going to have to put the little E next to this episode for sure. I don't we have that on all of them? I don't know, maybe. That was the point of the show. I think one of you already cursed, so.

It's the point of the show, literally. Ah, shit, okay. So, uh, this book says, Space is Cool as Fuck, and by Kate Howells and Friends, and I think that means you wrote it. Yes, well, I had some friends contribute bits and pieces to it. But yes, it is also much larger and heavier than I was expecting it to be.

I was completely shocked when I first got my first copy. We're working on a lighter version. Yes, yes, it's a collection of all of the things that I think are the coolest about space and I curse a lot in it because we figured, me and my publisher figured that you can kind of attract people using the magic of the F word and they'll think that, oh, this must be not just for nerds, this is for me, I love to curse and then you trick them into learning about space. And so far it's working. It's an awesome book.

It's like, so it's kind of like a coffee table book, I guess, because there's like an incredible amount of amazing art in here. So I really like it. So my favorite part, I want to share my favorite part. So there's somewhere in the middle here, it says, why being an astronaut in space sucks. A made-up interview with an astronaut. And it's like straight up, it's like not a not real interview.

And I thought that was hilarious. That's actually one of the pieces that a friend of mine, actually my publisher, Marty, wrote that piece. So your favorite one, I didn't even do it. So thank. Nailed it. Suck the landing. Well, and then a few pages later, it says, it's a new section. It says why being an astronaut in space is fucking dope.

And then it says another made-up interview with an astronaut. And I love the first question. It says, it's great to see you again. And the made-up astronaut says, thank you, you too. You're real and I'm real. is all real. Yes. Yes.

My concern with those pieces was always that people wouldn't get that it wasn't real, that it was 100% not real. My publisher friend who wrote that piece is Australian, and I was like, is this some kind of Australian sense of humor

where it's just buried, buried deep under layers of pretense? But so far, no, Nobody's written in saying this must be lies, they seem to understand. Here, read this one, Anthony. Matter. Big text.

Tiny text. What the fuck is all this shit? Listen, I'm just saying that I think we need to take your advice to heart when we're talking about all this policy stuff. And there needs to be a new, like, we choose to go to the fucking moon speech. Yes. Let's just test the theory, because I really do like the theory. The closest I've seen with that is Buzz Aldrin, I think he led or at least actively participated in this campaign where the slogan was, I think it was get your ass to Mars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He certainly wore a lot of those shirts.

Yes, yes, exactly. Enthusiastic participant or leader of that campaign. But yeah, I mean, I try to keep my, well, what I wrote the book, I thought, oh, nobody's even going to see this. and it's not going to interfere with my, you know, super professional policy work. And so far there hasn't, there haven't been any problems, but it certainly has overlapped a lot more than I expected it to. But I genuinely did not think that anyone would see or read this book when I wrote it, because that seemed too crazy.

But here we are talking about it. Super good that we led the interview with it then. No, it's good. I mean, now I'm used to it being a real thing that people own and read and talk about. and I love it. It was so much fun to do. And I'm really proud of the people that I worked with to make it happen, especially all the artists.

I mean, they're so much more talented than I am. I just swear about space. But yeah, it's awesome. It's one of my favorite things that I've ever done. I want to do more. Every time I turn the page to a new section, I just laughed myself because this one says the Apollo turd transcript. The Apollo turd transcript is hilarious.

Yes, my colleague at the Planetary Society, Casey Dreyer, told me about that one night over drink. And I was like, hold on, I have to look this stuff right now. I have to include it in the book because it was right in the middle of when I... I think it was actually I'd finished writing it. I had sent the last draft to my editor and I said, wait, wait, I have to add something. I just learned about this. It's hilarious. For those who don't know, the Apollo Terts transcript is an actual transcript from one of the Apollo missions.

I can't remember which one. And they are, I think it's pre-landing. I think it's 10. Okay. Because it's John Young is one of the ones, the conspirators of this turret incident. Yes. I lost the page already.

I can't remember names or numbers ever, but I remember the gist of things, and the gist of this is that they're talking about things that astronauts would normally talk about, you know, how things are working in the ship, et cetera. And then one of them says, wait, what's that flying by? There's a turd flying by.

Is that one of yours? And someone else says, no, that's not one of mine. Mine were, what is it? Mine were nicer than that. Yeah. And then they just go back to their astronaut business. And it's just this little nugget, if you will, of space history that I absolutely love. And everybody has to know about it.

Oh, wow. How rockets work and why they suck. Yeah. Yes. This is good. Yeah. Cool. Yeah.

Well, I love the book. I think it's beautiful. This is going to be, so I just renovated my office and it's all like a space theme studio office now, and this is like perfect little thing to have like on the desk and stuff. So thank you for making it. Yes. You're welcome. My parents have a copy.

They were one of the first people to get a copy and they would proudly display it. But they are both Anglican priests and they would have like people from their churches come over and like see the book And I'd be like, Mom, Dad, you can't have that out. Like, you have to hide it. It's not okay, but they're proud parents. They're really nice, and so they want to show it off. But it's like, what are you doing? And people who have kids will come over and then they hide it.

But it's a very bizarre. It's a very bizarre thing to, like, tell my parents' friends about stuff like that. All right. Well, off nummies, go by this. Yeah, my wife was going. into the bookstore. She's like, do you need anything? I was like, oh, you got to get, you got to get the book for me. And she spent like 20 minutes trying to find it because she also didn't expect it to be so big. And she walked by it like 12 times, not knowing that was it.

Well, my question for you is, was it on display at the bookstore? Because so far, people have told me that you have to like ask a manager to go get it out of the back because they don't display swear words in the store. It's like that. Back in the day, you had to go to the movie store and there was that little room in the back with the curtain for the... Yes, exactly. All the books with curse words in them. Space is what?

What is space? I can't see it. It's blocked by this black sheet of paper. Oh, that's man. Okay, that's good. So let's talk about Canada. Let's talk about space. Canada space.

Maybe... So, okay, I'm going to fully admit. I am not very well versed in the details of Canadian Space Agency, which is like a betrayal to my home country. I may be tried for treason, but could you help me and also the rest of the listeners understand what's going on with this new space strategy? Like, what was announced and why is everyone all excited about it?

And, you know, what's the historical context for it? Yes, so basically Canada hadn't had really a plan or a vision or a strategy for space for a really long time. we had been kind of chugging along as a partner in the ISS and we had projects that were relevant to Canada's needs as a big huge country with a small population spread out over a large landmass we need communications, we need earth monitoring and that kind of stuff and we were doing that but we didn't really do a lot of space science and we didn't really have much of a vision of our own for what we wanted to do

you know, big picture in the future for space. And that had a bunch of bad repercussions, including just the sort of atrophy of the space industry in Canada. So part of the problem, too, was that our budget was stable over many, many years and not even increasing with inflation. So basically just going nowhere. So the Canadian space community rallied together

and got our message to government saying, We need to know where we're going. We need to know what we're doing because otherwise companies aren't going to invest in space business in Canada because they're not going to know what's happening five, ten years from now. You can't plan a business around that. Students aren't able to get jobs coming out of university. Like Canada is pumping money into university programs for students in science and engineering and that kind of thing. But we don't have jobs ready for them. And so they're all moving away to the U.S. or to Europe or whatever. And so all of that was very bad. And everyone started making a lot of a noise about it and the sort of climax of all of that was recently the U.S. made all these announcements that they were going to build the lunar gateway and they were looking for international partners, mostly looking to the countries who had been partners on the ISS. So it was kind of like Canada's moment to either say, yeah, we're going to participate in this or we're basically going to be saying, no, we're not interested in having an astronaut program anymore. we're not interested in doing ambitious exploration.

We're just going to let our space program shut down. And luckily, it's not very politically attractive to end a country's astronaut program. So that kind of saved our whole industry, the fact that to get astronauts on Gateway, we would need to contribute something. So some kind of, what were we calling it, a robotic doctor, doctor, I like Dr. Octagon better than Dr. Octopus. I think that guy's way cooler. Anywho, we're going to contribute something like that. We've agreed to make a major robotic contribution to the Lunar Gateway. So that gets us, well, it's likely going to get us

astronauts in the distant future on that space station. And it'll be a huge, in, yeah, well, I haven't seen, I don't know, I haven't seen paperwork, yeah, also, the whole fragility of space policy in the long term in the U.S. as well as in Canada and everywhere else, I mean, this is a whole other discussion that we could have, and maybe we will, I don't know how that you guys like to get, but assuming

that nothing changes for the next 20 years politically, which, you know, it's very safe bet, I'm sure, we will have this lunar gateway, we will have astronauts on it. Some of them will be Canadian. Most will be American. There will be some Russians, some Japanese, et cetera. So that was the big investment,

and that's like the centerpiece of the space strategy. But then one of the other things that the space community was really rallying around was that we needed to have not just one big project that would go to one company, like probably MDA, McDonald-Datweiler and Associates, which is now owned by an American company, et cetera, blah, blah, They get all the big contracts, but there was small businesses, medium businesses that wanted to get involved in space.

So the strategy is kind of promising there's going to be money for them. There's going to be a bunch of youth outreach. And we're also looking for some sort of regulatory reform to make it easier for companies to do stuff in space. So basically, the government gave us what we've asked for in broad strokes. there's still a lot of detail to be worked out. And I mean, me personally, I will believe that this whole project is actually going to happen when I see it sustained through whoever the next president in the U.S. is, because it's very popular for presidents to discard the former administration's space plans.

So we'll see. But if all goes well, we'll have Canadians in space. again. That's awesome. Yeah. And I think so one of the rules that Canadians know well is this sort of 10 to 1 ratio between the United States and Canada. If you ever want to know, if you want to compare things, you just use this 10 to 1 rule, right? If it's this big in the United States, it should be 1 tenth the size in Canada. Population, budgets, all this kind of stuff.

But the Canadian Space Agency budget does not line up with that. It is very, very, very wrong. So like, NASA is what, 21 in that. half billion this year. What did we get last year? 400 million, I think. Yeah, about that. But I will say that no country compares to the U.S. in terms of space budgets. Like, isn't the U.S. space budget bigger than all the others? We're just going to go with budgets. We know how to spend money. Right. Right. But I think space in particular has a weirdly giant budget in the U.S. Not saying that it's too high. I think it's awesome, but it is bizarrely high. And it's part of

partly this US mentality of, you know, we have to be the leaders, we have to be number one and everything, et cetera. So you guys are really trying to go do everything yourselves in space. And that's great because I'm glad that it's happening. But everybody else is like, okay, we'll let them do that with their crazy, crazy, crazy budget. And we'll, you know, send one spacecraft to a distant world every once in a while and do a bunch of stuff that's, practical for the country in the meantime. But I'm not dissing the U.S. on that. I think it's great.

I'm just kind of semi-defending Canada. That's the one comparison. However, even when you look at all other comparisons with other space-faring nations, Canada has always been way lower than everybody else that should be at our level. So, yeah, it was really time for us to pick up the pace. And I think part of the reason that we didn't do this for the last 10 plus years is that we've had astronauts.

We've got the Canada arm very visible. You know, that Canada flag on the Canada arm is great branding. And Canadians, you know, we still get to use GPS. We still have like weather satellites. We see Chris Hadfield playing guitar in space. Canadians think, yeah, the space program's great. I'm sure we invest tons of money in it. and the government therefore doesn't really have any political incentive to put more money into it.

So the politics of space is super interesting to me, and I think it really did take the potential of the political sort of consequences of losing the astronaut program to actually get the government to really take the space program seriously again, because it's just been taking it for granted for so long. So the question I have from somebody who's down this way that doesn't necessarily get, I mean, I read everything that the planetary society is putting out on this, but I'm not in the weeds on all this Canadian policy discussion. It was, you know, my reading of it was that the gateway stuff was a portion of the budget, but you're making it sound like this was the driving force behind the entire initiative itself. Is that accurate? Yeah. I think so. I think without gateway, it would. have been really hard to get the Canadian government to increase the space budget or make any kind of big future plans. Like the investment that they promised for Gateway is over the course of 20 years. That's a big commitment. Yeah, we haven't even done that.

So, I mean, and it's a promise that, I don't know, can Trudeau honor that, if you hear like how much, say he's going to have 15 years from now. I actually honestly don't fully understand how that works, but I mean, I shouldn't have said that on a live podcast. Should I? I'm going to lose my job. But anyway, yeah, I think politically it would have been really hard to get the kind of investment that we needed to really reinvigorate the Canadian space industry. but one of the things that we really, really did hammer on was the idea that you can't just make this big, one big investment in, you know, a finance Canada arm. We need more than that to keep the industry afloat. And so we're seeing, we are seeing that.

So that it's, you know, I don't mean to belittle the investment that the Canadian government did make. I think that the strategy and the budget includes a lot more than just the gateway component, but, or then just the Canada Arm component, but there is, I think that that's what carried it through, was the kind of political support for that. Yeah, and the other big stuff is, I think there's somebody heading towards Telesat

to establish their constellation and those other kind of projects that we're looking into the future. Is there any other main ones that you would pick out as like things that people should pay attention to? Yeah, so the lunar exploration accelerator program, I think is the acronym leap. And that's the, I think it's a $100 million allocated

specifically to small and medium enterprises. You know, these are the up-and-coming companies in space. This is what is going to keep the space industry honest, you know, and not just have monopolies. So looking at how that's actually going to play out and what kind of companies actually take advantage of that money. So this is people who are going to be granted money from the government to do.

research and development for science that would take advantage of the gateway program or also business opportunities, so things that could be profitable or could help us understand nature better. So that's going to be interesting, I think, especially for those of us within the space community, it's going to be particularly interesting because it's like, okay, this can allow for smaller and new emerging companies to flourish. From the outside perspective, I mean, you guys down south are probably just going to be interested in seeing the next Canada arm and whatever cool moustachioed astronauts we send up. Although the leaf thing was interesting because it felt like something that could hook into

our like small lander initiative where we have this program that's supposed to be small and fast and be able to pepper the moon with payloads. And I feel like, you know, these other kind of small, more agile thinking initiatives could be something that maybe we work together on that sort of thing. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, and from what I understand, part of the whole Lunar Gateway vision is that smaller countries or countries with budget smaller than that of the U.S. can kind of take advantage of that infrastructure to do research or commercial ventures that kind of take advantage of that. can access the moon or can just be out in deep space or in microgravity or whatever. So, yeah, Canada will be a part of that. It'll be cool to see what other countries are able to take advantage of this.

I mean, countries and companies, you know, it's not necessarily just national space programs anymore. And it'll be really, yeah, it'll be really cool to see what happens there. I am still, like, not 100% certain that it's all going to happen just because of the, sort of the political delicacy of space programs. but we'll see. I'm skeptical. Both our governments are a little tenuous right now, right? Yeah, it was actually such a shame.

The day that Trudeau announced this big new investment in space, he was in the midst of this political scandal. And I actually got to be there at the Canadian Space Agency when he made this announcement, and there's this room full of space people who are all so excited. it to finally hear what we've been fighting for. And the press are there and all they asked, Trudeau gives this big inspiring speech about Canada's future in space

and then hands it over to the media and all they want to ask are questions about this other political scandal. And it's like, yeah, that's, and it's what's maybe dragging his party down. He's like, SNC,

you mean Sierra Nevada Corporation. Oh, very good. Yeah, that was a bummer. I'm actually surprised he, like, because that was right in the thick of it. I'm surprised he even took questions or frankly even showed up. Like that feels like something you made. That would be a great spot to roll out, you know, like Mark Garnow or Julie Payette or something and say like, here, you can help with this.

Yeah, I was surprised too. I had flown out to Montreal the night before the announcement and I was, and I, you know, I had just come from living there a few months prior. So I was reunited with a bunch of friends and I was having a beer and got a text saying, like, have you heard the news? And I looked in it, this is when the S&C Labland scandal had exploded. And I was like, maybe I'm not going to have to get up early tomorrow. I'm wanting to go to this announcement. Like, maybe I can hang out a bit longer.

But no, of course he did wind up making the essence. And I think it was an attempt to distract a little bit from the scandal. It did not work. No, no, no, no. We love a liberal scandal here in Canada, that's for sure. It's also funny to talk, like I was talking, to my American colleagues at the Planetary Society after this, you know, kind of recapping everything that had gone down over this intense 24 hours with the gateway announcement. And they were kind of

asking about the scandal. And I explained the gist of it and just the American take on the Canadian scandal that is rocking the nation up here. It's so small potatoes compared to what you guys deal with them there, but... Yeah, we're like 30 grand. Like, we sneeze that. We don't care about 30 grand. Yeah, yeah. I think I was trying to explain to someone that Discord, too, and the same thing.

And it's just like, no, you've got to understand. Because, like, he was like, really, really assertive in this meeting. And you're like, oh, my God. Yeah. Well, we have to have something, I guess. Let me ask you, too, about the... Sorry, I keep stepping my questions, Jake.

But I'm very curious to... This is like, Ask a Canadian. idiot. This is my chance. Yeah, you go ahead. You go ahead. I'm curious, you know, we, we look at, we look to Canada for robotic arms. Like, that's just the thing we assume. We're like curling, hockey, robotic arms, and they apologize a bunch. It's like, that's definitely in people's minds as robotic arms is the thing. If you were, is that, are you cool with that? Are you cool with being the masters of robotics?

Do you want something else out of that? Like, what else would you like to see Canada work on? Or are you happy being the robotic experts considering the fact that robotics are only getting more important in space? Well, I got two answers to that. First, yeah, it's great to be the masters of robotics. Robotics are always going to be super important in space, and that's great. But I will also say that Canada does do a lot more. We have a lot more specialties in space than just robotics. Like, for example, the Osiris Rex spacecraft that just got to Benu not long ago, the tool that it used to map Benu to decide where to touch down. That was an American, I mean, I started a Canadian instrument. Like we do have a lot of other expertise. We are known by Americans for, like

you said, hockey, curling, robotics, and being polite, we are never going to be fully respected by America. And we're fine with that. We know that we've got it going on. how we're seen from the U.S. is never going to really reflect our full potential, right? So being known for robotics is great. I would also say when Chris Hadfield was on the space station, Canadians were all about that, but Americans were also all about that. And I don't think many Americans can even name an American astronaut since Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. So I think we did pretty well in the eyes of Americans.

He was the model for this era of astronauts and their outreach. Everybody is just doing their best had field at this point. Yeah, and they're not even coming close. Do you want to hear a funny story about that Osiris Threx slider? Yeah, of course I do. I was at the down in Houston for the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference and we had a Canada meetup. So we like booked a bar across the street and everyone who was Canadian showed up there.

And we were talking about this exact thing about like all the things that Canada are known for. And I was making the point that we do a really real poor job of like broadcasting it. So like there's all these these amazing things that we're doing, but we're not shouting it out to the world. And so I was talking to this guy. And there's like a whole table you're at a bar. You don't really know everyone. I'm just like, yeah. And you know, here's a good example is that Osiris Rex has this LIDAR.

thing and it's mapping the whole asteroid and that's a Canadian instrument and we're not and I'm going on and on about how cool this instrument is and he's like uh-huh yeah uh-huh uh-huh and then I kind of finished and he says yeah I work on that instrument I was like oh yeah he's like yeah I'm Mike Daley and he's like the PI of the life yeah did you double down and go well speak up why aren't you talking about this you get like real heated or did you step back no no for Canadians that's not how we operate yeah I was like oh cool welcome to the table sorry about that but yeah I know it was really funny because he was so patient he's like yeah yeah the lighter okay yeah what does it do uh-huh uh-huh right and then he like pulled out he pulls out his phone he pulls out the phone and

he's like showing me that that that that 3d image that it just came out of like the whole mapping it was like a few days before that and so he's showing me that on his phone he's like we just did this i was like oh that's cool uh thanks for humor in me so yeah yeah he's a he's a gulf guy like you i think right isn't that he's not he's nearby he's like maybe um London or Burlington or something. He's nearby. I met him at an outreach event for Osiris Rex, and he was saying that he cycles up to Guelph from time to time.

So he's nearby enough to cycle. But yeah, that was my first time meeting him. Super nice guy. Yeah, he's really nice. But yeah, when I was in talks with the Canadian government a couple years ago about sort of, you know, how are we going to go about getting space into the budget, getting a space strategy, et cetera.

And I was kind of talking about the outreach to the public angle, because that's kind of my background. And someone was saying, well, you know, Canadians know all about everything we're doing in space. You know, Canadians are so proud, so proud of the radar sat mission. Like, they're so stoked on that. I was saying, like, nobody knows what that is. Nobody knows or thinks that it's cool.

We think that the Canada arm is cool because it's on our $5 bill and because it's an easy to say word. and we know that Chris Hadfield is cool because he played space audity and that's about it. But the Canadian government does do a bad job of promoting what it does. But it's also hard to promote what you're doing when it's sort of pragmatic space applications and not cool explorations. Like NASA doesn't have to worry about getting the American public on board with like its latest weather satellite or something like that. because you guys do cool stuff out there that's like sending back pictures of Pluto and that kind of thing. So Canada does have like a tough time kind of getting the public excited about the stuff that we're doing.

But that's why we've got to also have astronauts. I mean, I personally think a big part of the reason that you have an astronaut program is so that you can get public support for the rest of your space program that's actually making the big strides in exploration. I'd rather have probes out in the distant reaches of the solar system than have boots on Mars, but I think you get those probes through having people all excited about boots on Mars. But that's just me. I'm just not super excited about human spaceflight. I know that's an unpopular opinion. It's one of those things that it's like, whether you like it or not, you kind of have to.

Yeah. But, yeah. So one of the listeners was sending me questions when he found out that you were going to be on. And one of them I wanted to ask you about it. So Canada is a pretty well-known mining industry in the world. Like we're good at mining. For better for worse, mining's kind of bad for the Earth sometimes. But for better for worse, we're good at it.

Why aren't we like Luxembourg? Why don't we have, you know, why aren't we the pioneers in space mining? What do you think? Yeah, I think it's because of the total lack of vision at the federal level for the space program over the last 10 years. I think now, if we can get the federal government to actually realize that investing in space is a high value thing, like you can make a lot of money by investing in space and seeing it as investing, not just spending, I think then we could get, yeah, like our resource extraction skills applied to space mining, that kind of thing. But I really do think that the government just hasn't given it serious enough thought over the past decade

because of this thing I was describing earlier where we're just taking our program for granted and we've got bigger fish to fry and small-ish budgets. So I think it's really just a lack of vision on the federal level. Like there are Canadian mining companies and Canadian researchers who are advocating for Canada investing in space mining, but it's just not a message that's really being heard yet, which is a damn shame. Yeah. Jake is so sad right now. He's just sitting there. Yeah. I really bump you up.

I'm just, I'm dreaming of a world where there's like this cool, like, huge space mining rig clutching on Onaster. an asteroid with like, I don't know. Yeah, eight arms. Like, pulling it in. It's Dr. Octagon, man. He's the greatest space miner that has ever existed. And the front. Instead of the canadarm, it's the octagon.

Is I ruin it? There's the title of the show right there. But, you know, I'm imagining like this like, you know, that big, like the front of a crane where you have like the seat and the glass and there's like some operator in there and he's got a space cup of Tim Hortons and he's pulling up, you know, oodles and oodles. Space cup. Like those zero gene espresso things or whatever.

It's autogynously pressurized Tim Hortens? Yeah. Yeah. Autogynously pressurized double, double. I mean, the thing is it's still possible for that to be the future. It's just, we're not seeing that yet. But, I mean, yeah, maybe it's the kind of thing that Luxembourg's going to take that whole market because they had enough foresight to get in on it early, or maybe it's a big

enough market that a bunch of countries and companies can profit from it. It might also be something that the federal government doesn't have the vision to really get done, but that a Canadian company will just go and do, especially if we do get the kind of regulatory reform that allows Canadian companies to thrive in the space environment in a better way and not be so roped in by red tape. Yeah. It's possible. You're vision.

They just kind of said, oh, wow, there's a lot of momentum in this way, and people are putting money into it. So let's just write the laws so that the money comes here. They're not like making initiatives to develop technology. You know what I mean? They're setting up an environment. They're not developing technology. So I think there's still, regardless of Luxembourg, you could work with the companies

that are set up there, but there's still a ton of room for development. Yeah. Yeah. Totally. So if there's some Canadian listeners who want to lobby the government and they need a little help, you do some work with Planetary Society and stuff. Do you want to talk a little bit about your job? Yeah, sure, sure.

So, yeah, I work with the Planetary Society. You guys have interviewed Jason Davis before, right? So maybe your listeners have heard about us, but I'll do a recap anyways. We are a nonprofit based in the U.S., founded by Carl Sagan, who most people probably know, and Bruce Murray and Louis Friedman, who real space heads will know.

And we exist to connect the general public to space through public education and through advocacy. So we rally people to make their voices heard in government, translate public support for space into political, support for space, specifically looking at planetary science and exploration. So my job, well, I have a few jobs at the Planetary Society, but the relevant one is National Coordinator for Canada. So they hired me about five years ago to start figuring out what an organization like this

could do in Canada, because in the U.S., it's very straightforward. You've got members of Congress who vote on things, so you get people in their districts to write to them or sign petitions. convince them individually that space is worth doing. So, and then, you know, there's other things like that, but that's the basic mechanism. In Canada, it's different. We have a different political system,

and we've got different challenges, and it's not, oh, make sure that Canada's independent mission to Pluto gets funded, it's try to get Canada to not totally lose its whole space program. So my job is kind of figuring out what the Planetary Society can do in Canada and helping our Canadian members, participate in that. So

our website is about to be overhauled sometime in the next year. So currently there is not a whole page on Canada because we're trying not to make changes before we do this massive overhaul. But in the future there will be. But in the meantime, if you go to planetary dot org and you just type into the search

box, Canada or my name Kate Howells, you will see everything that I've written or said about our Canadian Space Program. and yeah, basically, if you want to get involved in advocacy in support of space science and exploration in Canada, excuse me, I'm drinking a beer, so I have a small burp. Good thing you can edit.

That's actually the subtitle of the podcast name, so it's okay. I think this is going to happen when I started. Like before I even rang on, I was like, I'm going to burp. Octagarm, small burp. It's all right, you can leave it in, this is fine. Oh yeah, it's not going anywhere now. Anyways, yeah, join the planetary society. We're all being here.

Great plug. Yeah. The other thing I won't say is that I've been talking a bit today about the sort of the Canadian space community rallying the Canadian government, and a lot of that is done through the Space Advisory Board, which is a government-initiated and supported group of people. We're not paid or anything, but I'm on that board, along with a few other really, really, really smart, much smarter to meet people who understand the various facets of the space program. So I encourage people to, if you want to know more about that, to look up the Space Advisory Board of Canada to see kind of what we've been up to.

And one of the things that we've done in the past is consult with the public. And I would like to see more of that happen to get a sense of what Canadians, especially, when, you know, the political element of space funding is so important, I think it is really important to get a sense of how Canadians feel about these things and how, sort of what the, what the level of support is. So connect with your government, connect with the planetary society, if you want to see more space happen in Canada. Yeah, that board is really cool. I got to, I got to interview Dr. Arsinski at LTC. So he's definitely one of those super cool, super-smobile, super smart guys.

Yeah. And it's so nice. So nice. Like, yeah, off the chart's nice. I mean, we all are, but. Cool. Okay. Anthony, you want to do, oh, we should do lightning round first?

What do you think? Yeah, it's one terminal count now. Terminal count. Oh, my God. We changed the name, Kate, and we never can remember it. We've been trying to change the name for about four episodes now or something. The terminal count. Okay, so this is 10 questions for you, Kate, and you have to

answer really quickly, just got reaction. If this is, if you're asking me for names and dates, you were going to be disturbed. No, no, they're way more, they're way more fun than that. Okay, good, thank God. All right, okay, so T minus 10, we always start with the calibration question. Okay. Just to make sure that you've got your, uh, your juices flowing, you're good to go.

So, so. Yeah, fuel up. Liquid courage. Burt ready. Get that burp ready. Okay, T-minus 10, what is the best province in Canada? God, that's hard. I'm going to make people angry. Quebec, because it doesn't even really want to be part of Canada, and that's badass.

It's a good answer, but... That kind of thing is really hot right now. Unfortunately, the correct answer was British Columbia, but we'll give you a pass on that. I knew it wasn't Ontario. I live in Ontario. I love Ontario, but I can tell you right now that Ontario is not the best one, way down there. Not a lot of people actually like Ontario.

They just have to live there. We call it Ontario for a reason. Then there's also New Brunswick, which is called No Funzwinswick. So this is a lesson for the American listeners. No, I haven't heard of No Funzwick before. I heard it from someone from New Brunswick, so I know it's legit. Okay, good. All right, T-minus 9, favorite Canadian astronaut?

Julie Piette, hands down. Nice. Nice. Do I have, I mean, is this how lightning round is this? Can I explain my answer? I like the exposition. Yeah. So what really won me over for her was that I went to a astronaut, like a panel of all female astronauts at an event in Montreal. And there was astronauts from around the world.

Julie Paiet was there. All of these astronauts are sitting so straight up in their chairs and giving really proper answers. and Julie Pallette is lounged deep in this armchair, legs crossed, so relaxed, just talking about how she wanted to be an astronaut because she saw the jeeps riding around on the moon when she was a little kid. And she never got to go to the moon, but now she has a Jeep. And I was like, this woman is cool. She is a star-stop, but she's cool. So, yes. And I met her very briefly after that event, but I was too shy to really say hello because I was so starstruck by how cool she was.

I'm really excited for her as a governor general. I think that's a really cool position for her to have. For sure. I'm so interested. I don't know where the governor general is. Basically, she's like the queen is really what it is. But yeah, I know because she gets to kind of just travel around and just sort of like have opinions about stuff, which is like it's fun. She's a public figure that also can dissolve parliament if she wants to.

Yeah, that's true. Weird power. Call elections and stuff. Yeah. Doesn't you have to sign every bill too? That's how that works. You know, I should know, I don't know. I'm a bad Canadian. Yeah. Cool. T-minus 8, favorite Canada arm? Can I say Dexter? Because it's not called Canada Arm, but it's cooler than the Canada arm, because it's got two hands and it walks around the station.

It walks around. I don't think people know that. It literally like clambers around the station. Yeah. I just found that out like a year ago, and it blew my mind apart. And I think it's so cool, but we don't really know that much about it because it doesn't have a... I mean, Dexter is a cool name, but it's not as cool as Canada Arm. T-M-7, favorite Canadian space mission or instrument? Okay. A lot of latitude there. Yeah, this is...

Just trying to broaden the selection she has, okay? I'm going to give a weird answer, because I think it's the one that I find the most delightful. So on the Insight Marslander, did you know that at the bottom of it there's a section of chain mail that has some function? I can't remember what it is. That chain mail was made in Canada by, oh God, the company has a hilarious name. Hold on. It's so funny. Oh, do you remember it?

I can't remember the name of it, but I know I visited it. It's like... Insight chain mail. It's in Saskatchewan. Oh, the Ringlord. It's a company. Yeah, Saskatchewan-based company called the Ringlord that made the chain mail that goes at the bottom of Insight, which I just think is so funny.

And so that's my favorite for all time. That is a really, really good answer. That's a really good answer with a great reason behind it. Yeah, it's just like, in like a regina or something i can't oh oh did i lose him i think i lost our canadian friends are our Canadian friends back

me or him yep everyone's back now did you guys get that little weird little thing that said no no just you just america Skype yeah just the quick cutoff we're back we're back all I heard was vagina and then you got cut off

it was that censorship it was a curse word filter talking about the ring lord okay T minus 6 by the way quick pause this is an incredible website

it's like geo cities right I know I look this up now this is unbelievable Googling well this is required Kate we don't we do not advance the episode until you see this website oh my god they have scale

bra kits apparently wow this is unreal wow there's actually a lot of like sexy chain mail. Yeah, I didn't stroll that part now. I'm just looking at the general HTML tables elements going on here. We got the contract for the insight. That makes it.

It's a lot. It's a lot of face company. Yeah. All right. Now you know. All right. So that's going on the show notes, I guess. Yeah, for sure. It's actually my pick. Anyway, it's on T minus, what are we on? 7.6. D minus 6. K, what was the best or easiest part about writing a book? the best part was definitely getting to just

really go in depth into all the things that I thought were coolest I got to pick the topics that I liked there was some that the publishers said they wanted me to add but oh actually no I have another answer well he did do best or most fun or whatever so he gave you like two parts so you can pick one each okay so best was just yeah getting to explore topics that I knew were awesome but getting to really dive into them and find out more and more layers of why they were awesome. That was the best part. The easiest part, and I haven't acknowledged this on many podcast interviews yet,

but I do have half of a tall can of beer in me now, so here it goes. They hired a ghost writer to write a couple of chapters of topics that they wanted me to cover, but I didn't know enough about to really feel confident talking about them. and it was, I guess, the easiest because I didn't have to do it, but it was also the best because reading this guy's writing, it was like reading my own writing, and I didn't even know that I had a particular style until I saw that how well he mimicked my style.

And now, when I go back and I look at the book, I genuinely can't remember whether I wrote this, like, you know, a certain chapter or whether he wrote it. It was just such a bizarre experience, and I loved it. It was really fun. It was the chapter about chain mail, right? Oh no, that's going in the sequel. That's definitely getting in there.

Canadian space is weird as fuck. Yeah. Oh, man. Okay. T-mi-5, worst hardest part about writing a book. Consistently working on it. Yeah, it took a long time, and I would just lose, not even lose motivation because it was really fun to do,

but I would just forget or procrastinate or whatever. So my publisher had this, we agreed on this system where, am I going to, is it totally not cool for me to talk, mention something about politics on this podcast? Or is that okay? You spent a half hour talking about politics. Policy. I'm talking about policy.

So this was around the time of the last federal election, Canada and I hate the conservative party and so my publisher said that if every week I didn't send him three chapters, I would have to donate $10 to the conservative party in Canada. So it was like a deterrent to make me work and it actually worked quite well. I don't think I gave them a dime. So, and I finished the book. That's the best story. We just got two amazing stories out of your book. Yeah, there's so many good stories, you guys. You heard it here first. This is a great exclusive.

Off nominal scoop. T-minus four, what is the most Canadian planet? I feel like this is an obvious, obvious answer. Neptune, because it's cold and nobody thinks about it. Right? So I think the most Canadian part about this episode is just the two of us is like kind of quietly bashing ourselves. Yeah, we are a self-deprecating nation, absolutely. But yeah, think about it.

Every planet has something going for. I mean, nobody really thinks about Mercury either. No, because Mercury in retrograde is like a whole thing. Right, okay, so astrologers think about Mercury. That's like a meme now, you know? Yeah, and then, I mean, Pluto recently got all this hype. I mean, it's had a lot of hype for a long time since it got kicked out of the club. but and then uranus people like to pronounce it the other way and laugh so you know that's not

but Neptune really is like the forgotten planet and I don't think people really pay that much attention to Canada so there you go I guess that joke didn't need to be explained but I did it anyways I liked I liked walking through it I just like that kind of joke because it's one of those ones if I said it it would be really mean but you're you went right into it I love Well, that's the thing. Canadians here, Americans make fun of us all the time, and we just have to roll with it and get better at it than they are. Or else we just get sad. But here's the thing about this is the longest lighting around in the world,

but I feel like there's not a lot of Americans that make fun of Canada that really mean it, you know? No, but I've met very few that are like, I hate Canada. I'm really going to take them to task here. They don't hate us, but they don't respect us either. It's like when you're at a family function and one of your extended family members brings their like annoying little kid and you're like, oh. Oh, nice kid. Oh, yeah. T-minus three, if Canada's budget was one-tenth of NASA, call it a cool to be.

Oh, my God. What's the first thing you'd fund? I would want to fund an independent interplanetary mission. a Canadian spacecraft all our own to go somewhere, somewhere cool. Neptune, maybe. Like, no, I mean, it would be poetic for us to go to Neptune. Okay, how about Triton? It seems more interesting than Neptune, and it's right there.

Ontario of Neptune. It's more like the BC of Neptune because it's beautiful, and like Neptune is kind of boring, but Triton is so beautiful and so is British Columbia So yeah Yeah that's what I do Mission to Triton Or Titan

I'd also like to do that Beat America To its dragonfly idea Do you guys know about the dragonfly? Oh we know about it I think you would Yeah that seems like the coolest thing in the world And yeah NASA's like considering it

But let's just go there first Surprise the world Let's take it a lot of stuff restraint take. To not dive in on this dragonfly thing. Oh, you don't like it? Oh, no. Okay, so we did an episode on the new Frontiers candidates, and we both

took one and then deep dived it and then presented it back to each other as an episode. So Anthony's on team dragonfly, and I'm on team Caesar. Oh, okay. And we started it, it's just like, we started it as just as like, you know, let's teach each other up with these missions, but now we're like, we're like

dug in. And we made shirts and everything, and it's like, yeah, Okay, I'll go listen to that episode because I'm definitely on Team Dragon flight, but I don't know. It was a really good episode as much as we've turned it into this really contentious thing at this point. Yeah, I wore the shirt to LPSC and went and found the Caesar people with their posters and I was like, look at my shirt. And they were taking pictures of it and sending it to Steve Squire. So I hope. Is that real?

Yeah, I've never heard this story. Yeah. That's the good thing about like space celebrities or like, you know, especially just, the scientists or engineers of the space celebrities, like they're not big enough. So they will still definitely love it if you show them the shirt that you made. They're not over yet.

Okay, T-minus 2, we're going to get real Canadian for these last two. This is a very contentious question for all Canadians. Butter tarts. Raisins or not? Raisins. Yes. Yeah. Eat. Yeah. I also love raisins in like

cookies and stuff like that. And I know a lot of people don't, but yeah, I'm all about that. If it doesn't have any raisins, it doesn't have anything to, like, hold it together, and the gooey inside will just all slide right out when you eat it if it's a decent butter tart. It's just a, yeah, it's stupid. Is that a Canadian thing? Yeah, there's like, there's like, butter charts are very Canadian, and there's, like, a fierce divide. It's, like, pro-raison or anti-raison.

I thought raisins in butter tarts was Canadian, but butter tarts are Canadian? Correct, yeah. Oh, what? You guys. You guys are missing out. You got a lot of snacks that they don't have. All-Dressed chips, Nanaimo bars.

Correct smarties. Shreddies? Yeah, yeah. They don't even have shreddy. Shreddies? We got dying down and do. We don't need anything else. And as much caffeine as we want in clear liquids.

That's American, yeah. Okay, so last question. T-M-1. Does Justin Trudeau smell good? You know, okay, are you asking me that because I have mentioned on other podcasts that everybody asks me that? Maybe. He's done deep researcher. Okay, I appreciate how much you researched me.

That's a nice, I respect that. I will have, yeah, I don't know, he smelled, I don't know, not overpowering. He didn't smell like anything enough for me to notice how he smelled. I smelled the rich mahogany of his office. He does have soft hands. He does have that sort of sheen of a rich person, you know, where like you can tell that they use expensive skincare products, that kind of thing.

But I don't remember his smell. Everybody wants to know. I'm okay. You filled that answer out just fine. I sure did. Oh, wow. Okay, good one. That's a good lightning round. What's it called now? Terminal count. Terminal count. Terminal count. Lift off. There we're done. Let's do some picks. Anthony, do you want to go first?

Sure. Mine is super nerdy. There's a website called Celeste Track. It's C-E-L-E-S-T-R-A-K.com. It's a site by this guy named T-S-C-C-S-Kelso, and he's like a satellite tracker. And you can go on and you can click like different, there's a whole list of like,

here's all these satellites that are up in space. And then there's a little, and most of the site just looks like really fancy text files. But there's this little globe icon that he added last week or something. And when you tap on the globe icon, there's this insanely detailed 3D visualization of Earth with all the satellites in orbit, and you can see their orbits,

and you can zoom and pan and rotate and actually see where stuff is in space, and you can see what kind of orbits it's got. And it is incredible, and if you're ever, like, wondering where a satellite is or what kind of orbit it's in, or if you want to, if you've heard about a particular type of orbit, and you're like, I wonder what that actually looks like.

You can go on there and explore. It's basically Google Earth for satellites, and it's amazing. Wow. That's crazy. My pick was just going to be Google Earth. Is that a little happy? This is nuts, though. Like, you can really get in here and look at some stuff.

Cool. Okay. Kate, is your pick really Google Earth? No. that was a joke. Okay. He's like, I don't want to be mean, but... Like, we can pause, like, go find a new one.

I did struggle. Okay, so I struggled because I figured that your listeners probably already know way more about sort of the latest cool space stuff than I do. Because I'm, I don't know, I'm slow at picking up cultural things. But, so I pick two different things. One of them is old enough that people probably are. already know about it, but I'm going to mention it anyways because I love it. And the other one is so new that I don't even think you can find it online yet, but I'll just mention it to be cool and

obscure, just to counterbalance the other one. So the first thing is a book that I love that I just want to read over and over again, and that you actually reminded me of when you were talking about your dream of the octagon, where you're specifically the one that is mining asteroids, you're of it being kind of like gripped on to an asteroid with a little control room, reminded me of the book Seven Eves by Neil Stevenson that I love, that you guys, I'm sure, have read because you're into this kind of stuff. But for anybody who hasn't heard of it, it's just a very satisfyingly well-researched and accurate,

or accurate enough depiction of how a society would react if we found out that our planet was going to get bombarded by fragments of the moon and how the sort of politics of it might work out, and then also the technological challenges of getting a sort of arc built in space, sort of built off of an existing space station. And it goes completely bananas in the final third. But the first two parts, as a person who kind of has learned enough about the details of spaceflight to get really annoyed when movies and books get it wrong, this book was super satisfying.

So that's the first one. But it came out in 2015, so people have probably read it. Anywho, the second one to counterbalance that is a thing that I just heard about from a friend who met a artist at a conference. And this artist named Ben Mosher, or Mosher possibly, is doing a project where he takes data from NASA from black holes and sonifies them using Autotune. to make the sounds of black holes. And given the recent image of the black hole, I think it's very cool. There are the sounds of black hole.

I wonder if I could get it to play so you can hear a second of it. I also wonder if I'd get in trouble from this artist. But I'm going to talk. And we'll call it fair use. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to unplug my headphones for a second.

So you can hear maybe this shot. Can you hear that? Yep. Doesn't that sound like a black hole? I don't know. Anyways, I'll stop that now. But that's the other thing that I'm obsessed with right now, where if you look at the image of the black hole that recently came out

and you listen to these sounds, knowing that it's sonified data from a black hole, it's just a very cool experience. So there you go. Ben Mosher, M-O-S-H-E-R. He has a website, ben-Mashor.ca, he's Canadian. But that project isn't on the website yet, but it will be soon. Awesome.

That's really cool. What do I have? So I have, I'm going to plug a blog from a new friend of mine. So I met Elizabeth Frank at a couple different conferences now. And she is based out of Seattle. She's at a new space company, but she's actually a, She's a scientist by trade, or by training, I guess. And so her big thing is about promoting careers for scientists outside of academia.

So, you know, trying to break down the barrier of the idea that a scientist with a PhD can't go and work for a space company and have a career that way. But she has a website with a great blog on it. And she doesn't post that often. There's, you know, I'm looking here. It's like every few weeks there might be something. So there's some pretty cool blogs that she has. And the best part about them is that, well, what I wanted to really show people was one about faster, better, cheaper,

which is kind of an era in NASA's history that for better or for worse, you know, had to end. And so she makes a case that it was a little bit hard done by and we should be thinking about doing it all over again. And so the cool thing about having a scientist write a blog post is that she has citations in it, which is really awesome. and yeah so it's a good blog about sort of what happened with the faster, better, cheaper, and why it didn't work out and then what we should think about doing for the future with it. So I thought it was very, very interesting and the rest of her blog is pretty good.

She's an awesome person. She does a lot of panel discussions and just, you know, it works hard to further this idea that scientists can have jobs too. I love it. So that's it, yeah, she wanted to plug her blog. Very cool. Elizabethafranc.com. As I read out a word, one letter at the time.

Elizabeth A. Frank. How do you spell Elizabeth? I'm just kidding. I think that's it. What else do we got on the docket here, Jake? Is that the end of the agenda? I think that might be the end of the agenda. No, is there anything you...

Kate to plug all of her stuff. Yeah, you want to... Yeah, look up. Space is cool as fuck on the internet and buy my book, please, and enjoy it. I think if you listen to this podcast, you'll probably like it. It's right up your alley. They made it this far.

Yes. Yeah, unfortunately, the book doesn't focus quite as much on Canada as this interview did, but, you know, you can just email me. I'll tell you more Canadian stuff. And, yeah, you can check out the Planetary Society at planetary.org. I don't even think I have anything else to plug. I have a Twitter account, but I don't use it. it enough to even bother

mentioning it. Just a little tease. I basically just use it to promote my book because my publisher was like, Kate, you have to get a Twitter account. There it is. I'll put this interview link on it

when it comes out. Get a Twitter account or you have to buy a membership in the conservative party. Oh, God. Never again. Couldn't send it. And yeah, I guess, yeah, I guess that's all I have to plug.

Cool. Thank you guys for having me. This has been really fun. I have to plug one thing too, though. Okay. I made mission patches. So if you're a We Martians listener from our other podcast, these are cool little patches that I made. They're embroidered.

They're really nice. I had an artist make them. Her name is Beth Kerner, and she's, amazing. Oh, Anthony's got his there. Got it. Look at that. And so it's got kind of, it's like our season three for the Wee Martians podcast. So it's got little features of insight and opportunity and the Falcon Heavy launch, which were big themes in our show last year.

And there are 17 bucks on shop.com free shipping anywhere on earth. How's that for a deal? Challenge accepted. Whoever's listening at McMurdo. I'm honestly, if someone from McMurdo bought this, I would find a way. I don't care how much money I had this on it. That'd be so cool. I want to know what McMurdo is. Oh, then you don't have that.

Oh, okay. Yeah, the Canada of Antarctica. Do you guys know about... What was the reference I was making? The Neptune of Antarctica. Do you guys know about Sealand? This is totally way too much of the tangent. Oh, yeah, Sealand.

Yeah, if you haven't, listeners, if you haven't heard about Sealand, Google that and think about what hilarious thing it would be if they had to ship a mission patch all the way to Sealand. Man, that took a hard left. I was so into that sea-steading thing right there. There could be some MPs from Sealand listening to this for all we know. They have MPs, don't they? Is it a parliamentary government?

Well, isn't it off the coast of Britain? So I'm pretty sure it's like all ex-pats, yeah. It's independent, though. Anyways, I need to refresh my memory on Sealand. Obviously, is I going to do any more space interviews in the future? Yeah, because they all include that old Sealand reference right at the end. I try to work it in when I can. that and the no

caffeine and clear sodas in Canada thing those are my favorite bits to include it yeah this interview is done I think I think we're I'm heading the button I'm heading the bug

I'm heading the box I'm headed one two three four five five four three two one and the death