Off-Nominal - 188 - Barry Up the Street (with Jonathan McDowell)

Episode Date: March 14, 2025

Jake and Anthony are joined by Jonathan McDowell, astrophysicist at Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics and the namesake of the McDowell Line at 80 kilometers, to talk about his fundraiser to move his epic space library to a new, permanent home.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 188 - Barry Up the Street (with Jonathan McDowell) - YouTubeFundraiser by Jonathan McDowell : Fund Jonathan's Space Report Library TransitionJonathan's Space ReportThe edge of space: Revisiting the Karman Line - ScienceDirectFollow JonathanJonathan McDowell (@planet4589.bsky.social) — BlueskyJonathan McDowell (@planet4589) / XFollow 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. Hello, happy Thursday. Finally doing this, Jonathan. We've got you. We finally got you locked in. I'm excited to be here. You're excited to have to have you. You haven't been on the show for years, I think.

It's been a couple years. Yeah. That's one of those signs. We just had them on. It's got to be been recently. And then we go back through the logs and go, oh, no, it was like, yeah, a long time ago. Well, that happens.

Somewhere close to that. I'm losing track so much. Yeah, yeah. I just looked at the calendar. Today, the day that like the, was this the day for the U.S.? March 13th? 12th, 13th? It's one of those two days.

For what? You know, when everything, the NBA got canceled, everyone finally settled into realizing we're all staying there. Yeah, that's right. So, wow, it's five years. Wow. Yeah. Yeah. It's the right week, yeah.

Because I think the 18th was like the first day I had to not go, not leave the house. I think that was, if I remember, I think it was the 18th. So, yeah. Well, here we are. We've, we've, yeah, we, you know, I think, did we start doing video for the show before that? Or was that like, hey, we're, I feel like we started screwing out of video shortly before COVID sit in. You know what? I don't even remember.

It's all boring. I was going to credit COVID for the. distance of us doing video, but I'm pretty sure that's not true. No, I don't think it's true. Well, Jonathan, you're a handful of weeks on from the Space Report Library Transition Project, but we still, I'm sure it's like millennia of four-filt time for you. So we need to talk about where it's at. I want to just talk about the library generally because I feel like we've not talked about that in depth and it's pretty awesome. So I'm pumped about it. Yeah, well, I am too. It's, it's, you know, being my pride and joy for 50.

50 years now, slowly growing. And yeah, so I've had this. I've been, you know, I'm the space pack rat. I've been dumpster diving in space agencies and aerospace company libraries, discard trays for half a century. And as well as, you know, shelling out real money for stuff. And so I've accumulated, I think is a unique collection of documents and books on the history of the technical history of space, and particularly post-launch reports and, you know, what did this satellite actually do? And so I have about 200 bookcases covering about 1,200 square feet.

and or I did but they're now all in boxes and so you know I decided it's time for me to end my 35 years at the Center for Astrophysics as a working astronomer and go back to England and bring the library with me and find somewhere to put the library for the next 10 years at least as I continue to write the book and develop the website and get the stuff that's in the library out in some form or digital form. That's a big job. That is a non-trivial amount of work. It's a whole job.

It's why he's putting the other job and taking this on as a job. Right, exactly. Well, no, I'm thinking of the process of having decided in November that I was going to do this move, packing the library, selling my apartment, moving into temporary apartment, looking for property in the UK, which is still underway, and, you know, preparing for formal retirement from my extraordinary job. I mean, coordinating all of that at once, as well as continuing on my day job for now, is it's sort of been like a systems engineering problem comparable to the other.

Jake, I skipped the whole segment where I asked you if you were drinking anything, by the way. I just was realizing that. Right, right, right. Did you bring anything to drink, Jonathan? Well, I bought several things to drink. I brought some Irish breakfast tea to keep me going. And, uh, and, uh, strawberry yogurt juice shot. Look at that.

Your own shot. Love it. Keep the throat going. I get the probiotics. You got to come in there, you know? What do you got, Jake? You got something cooking. Did you make some fancy looking thing?

No, I found the cutest thing ever. Look at this. What's it? It's a penguin. What's he doing? It's called Igloop. Eklup. I think it's from Spain.

I think it's from Spain and it's like a white wine. It might be carbonated. Hold on. Let's find out of it. It might be carbonated. All right. Let's hear it. Put it up.

Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. A little bit. I felt like more for freshness than anything, but. Yeah. A gulp of refreshing macabayo white with a bubbly touch, it says. That's like a little bit of carbonage. Just a touch. I bought it because it had a penguin on it.

That's literally it. It's like penguin. It's drinking out the straw, too. The straw really does it for me. I just have, it's white wine season here again. We got the clock change. It's in six degrees. It's white wine season, Jake.

I'm feeling good. I'm just pretty thrilled about this overall. So things are looking up. Things are looking up. I'm glad things are coming for you, yeah. Yeah, you've got too much going on. All right, this is a question I had. When you were on Miko around when this fundraiser starts it,

we should plug the fundraise at the beginning is what we should do. Because you've got, you've had generations of goals that I would like to hear about. Now, you know, I think I talked to you right before the initial one. You've had to up to like, what's the next to next stretch goal? are we at currently with the fundraiser? Right. So currently I've raised $107,000, which is incredible. And thank you, all of you who donated. It's just, it means so much to me that you feel like the work I've been doing is worth the support. And, but, you know, the, and I think, you know, I may have enough now to kind of pull it out, but it's not, it's, it's, it's tight. And so I am asking for more

for those who can afford because if I can get another 50K or so, that opens up a whole new set of properties that I can't currently quite afford. And so currently the leading candidate is a windowless basement. It's got a lot of space. It's enough space for the library. And it's going to need $200,000 worth of renovation to make it, even usable as office space. There's a nice Georgian house in a suburb that is also a possibility,

but it's, you know, it would need that extra 50K that I don't have. And, and so. But it has, it's above ground. It has windows. Get Jonathan above ground. That's the movement. Get Jonathan out of the basement. Buy Jonathan a window.

I mean, Windows are overrated. You know, it's sort of like being in a spacecraft going to Mars or something where you have the shielding. Yeah, you'd have to do like simulated space views out the on the walls if you don't have any real windows. I mean, the plan would be to put a webcam up on the street and then stream it to a TV. That's I can pretend that I have an outside. But, but yeah, it's not, you know, it's not the most elegant solution. So, so, but, you know, so, so, and it's not even. I mean, so I have to apply for planning permission and all those kinds of joyful things.

And so it's still a work in progress, still no definite location. But I feel like I'm close. And a little bit of extra donations could put me over the top there. So that's the real story. I promise not to raise the goal again. No, no. Wait, hold on. I'm here to lobby person.

for raising the goal, $282, because then you will have, your goal will be one U.S. dollar per mile per second that light travels. You're only 282 away. Okay, but I don't do miles, you see. I know you don't, but this is about your target market, Jonathan. All right, listen, you're speaking to an American audience right here. Right. Well, so the 180 kind of range was sort of like 100 for the Carmen line and 80 for the McDowell line.

I'm good. I'm upset. You're good. You're good. I'm back in. Don't raise the goal ever again. That's funny. All right, you mentioned dumpster diving when we talked on Miko.

You mentioned it here as well. The other question I have is, did you ever acquire through official or non-official means a document or book or something that then the institution was like, oh, shit, he can't have that one? Did you ever get into one of those situations where, like, that had this piece of info that we're not supposed to let out. Do you ever get with your hands on something juicy? I don't think they've, I mean, I have done, I don't think they've ever realized that I have what I have. But yeah, there's a few in the collection that maybe they would sort of think twice about if I, if they knew I had it, yeah. Is that going to be like a section from the Hogwarts library where like with the restricted section or whatever where you can't go unless you get special permission? Yeah, I might have to do that. I might have to be a few things. I mean, there's a film, and you know, there's a lot of,

stuff that is I mean that if it were in an if it were in government hands now they would now I tar it that back in the 80s they would

they didn't bother it was just like no that's fine have that right and so I think you know things have gotten tighter talking about the umbilicals for the space shuttle external tank is that the kind of thing that uh that maybe was allowed to be out there in the 80s and is now I'm that that kind of thing yeah and so so I think you know so yeah there's probably a lot of

stuff like that but I also have you know I mean one thing I have and I also have a lot of Russian documents that you know were published during the Yeltsin era that have all kinds of great details that now in the Putin era they they wouldn't put out anymore and and so So that's a pretty interesting collection, I think, of stuff on Russian rockets and satellites that some of it in English, some of it in Russian, that is pretty hard to find now. Yeah. So interesting, we maybe shouldn't talk about it too long on the show. That feels like, you know, might want to keep that one tucked behind, tucked in the windowless basement. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

So I don't want the guys with the poison umbrella is coming after me. And then, of course, there's all the declassified DOD stuff, but that's the easy stuff. At least they can't throw you out a window there, though, right? Well, that's true. We know his basement is looking good. Yeah, no, you know, there's definite advantages to being in the bunker. It's crazy you're buying the Churchill war rooms, but other than that, that, yeah.

Right. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. It's really, you know, real estate, it's really hard to find homes that are large, right? Turns out. Well, unless you have like five million, right? If I had, you know, if I had five million, I'd be in gravy.

It'd be no problem at all. But, you know, when I'm looking at more like half a million, it's, it's just not easy to find. and stuff that actually has things like, you know, a roof, at least the basement has a roof. That's better than some of the places I've been looking at. So, you know, you got to take the small favors, right? And so it's been, I mean, I'm just becoming such an expert on all the things I don't want to be an expert on, like UK real estate and planning permission and all these things that, you know, is invading the part of my brain that should be reserved for specific impulse and

normal dynamics and things like that. So hopefully it will be over soon. And then it's going to take me, I mean, if I go ahead and it's going to take me at least six months to get planning permission, get the contractors in, make it livable. And then a couple months to actually physically ship the 1,100 boxes from the US to the UK.

And so many adventures ahead of me in this project. When I'm done though, the hope is that I'll have a much better place to welcome people to do research in the library. And so my hope is to be able to say, you know, the McDowell Space Research Library is now open for business. By appointment, come and look at all this old obscure stuff if you're researching a book, for example. And I have had it already in the past here.

Dave Stubf, who wrote the great book on the Minuteman Missile, came here for like three or four days to do research in Xerox. and scan to find relevant documents for its book. So there's been a few visitors like that that have actually made use of the library. But I'd like to get it out there a bit more. Yeah, yeah. So can you tell me a bit like how this collection started? Like was this sort of an organic, like as a personal interest, you just would pick up these books?

And then at what point did you realize like, hey, I actually have enough here. This is actually a library, not just like some. not just my personal bookshelf in that room. Great question that no one's asked me. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, yeah, it kind of was organic. I mean, the beginning was really, there were, there was this comic that I got as a kid

that had, you know, Doctor Who comic scripts, but also articles about spaceflight. And I would pick them out and make a scratch. rap book. This is the Domino meme with the Jonathan likes comics and it's like all of a library shipping it across the Atlantic.

And I found there was then the other important thing was there was this book called James Old World's Aircraft that some people may be familiar with that had in the back a space flight section and they had a list of you know this year's space

launches which I copied down right and I realized that it was a crappy list. Sorry, James. And that, you know, it would be possible to make a better list. And so I was, I was, I think, 12 at the time, and I started making the better list. And so 50 years later, I have the better list.

And part of that process was, you know, finding obscure documents to fill in launch times that I didn't have or probably could be a big list. that I didn't have. And so that was really the genesis of really collecting these more obscure documents. And another key moment was my visit to the US in 1985 as a graduate student where I waltzed into NASA Goddard and Sweet talked the people in the World Data Center for Rockets and satellites to give me the big, massive line printer printout of all the sounding rocket launches in their database. And I'm so glad I did that because a few years later, they transitioned systems and lost

that data and or just straight up through it out. And so that data would no longer exist if I hadn't taken away that printout and now I've entered it. And that's sort of in the general catalog of space objects on my website, the launches that were only in that. So and so it's been a question, you know, there was the time I visited the French Space Agency in

Toulouse, super nice people, very helpful. They did a nice job of showing around the Glitzy Control Center. I went, yeah, this is awesome. Can I just have half an hour in your basement with a Xerox machine? And I went down and copied the microfilm of all this French sounding rocket launches.

And so, so. They were like, yeah, sure. Like, that's a weird. Yeah, yeah. Did they have to ask anyone else to say, all right? Yeah, whatever floats your boat, Jonathan, right? And so I've sort of, you know, done that over the years. And there have been some amazing places I've got to visit.

I mean, it's a great excuse to go and visit strange places, right? And so I got to visit the Indian sounding rocket launch site at Trivantraum. There was a Tramundrum, is the short form, in Kerala, on the beach, in the south of India. Fabulous place, if you ever get a chance to go there. And that was the birthplace of the Indian space program in an abandoned, Jesuit Church on the beach and Israel took it over and that was their first headquarters and they launched standing rockets off the beach so there's the I shout I want to give a shout out to my new British colleagues the Science Museum in London is a fabulous

place if anyone's ever visited that what you probably don't know is that the Science Museum has an off, like many museums, right, have a lot of their stuff in off-site storage. They can't display everything that they have. The Science Museum has an aircraft hangar in an old Royal Navy aircraft hangar in the middle of Wiltshire, not far from Stonehenge. And it's this enormous abandoned Navy base in the middle, far from the sea, so I don't ask. It was a Navy airfield for some I you know We were getting into a lot back then

Jonathan you know Things were a little busy We just needed space As you know real estate's hard in England's you know This hangar is just chock full Of as an enormous building It's chock full of these sort of trestle Storage units

Like stacked five or six high Long corridors of them So I want you to imagine the scene In Raiders of the Lost Ark with the Helly Grail, you know, being put in that. Everyone knows that scene, right? It's that. It's amazing.

And you walk along the corridors there and, like, this little trestle area has a collection of 1950s typewriters. Against the day when that will be an interesting historical exhibit, you know. I mean, they are, I think I'm a pack rat. Oh, my. These folks just blow me out more. And that they've all this, you know, everything from the Industrial Revolutional, you know, Industrial Revolution steam machines, down to, you know, 19th set to early Apple Macs. And then there's this one place which has the cartons of files of the early British space program. So that was what I was there for.

But, you know, and so just... I'm trying to find a picture of this place. Are there pictures of this place? It sounds wild. That's wild. I should have taken, I don't know if I was allowed to take pictures or not. I didn't take pictures. That was an error.

But yeah, and so you get the opportunity to explore these fantastic, you know, weird experiences. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I could get lost in a place like that. No problem. Right. You have to excavate me from that place, I think. And then there are the other spaces at the Energia Museum in Moscow. where they have, you know, Gagarin's capsule and Terescova's capsule and things like that.

Have you gotten, like, stuff out of China or what is the current? Because it's like, you know, I feel like you're trying to smuggle the same stuff out, but it's like modern era being stifled, right? So it's like just impenishable a lot of ways. They used to be. And they do have some really nice, you know, they publish some really nice books, unfortunately in Chinese, on their early space program. So they're much more open now about the stuff they did in the 70s and the 80s.

It's harder to get the stuff they're doing now. But there is stuff that you can find. And so, yeah, not smuggling, but, you know, I have contacts and I get some stuff. Not that much. If you say I have contacts, it sounds like you're smuggling. It's really hard to separate those two vibes, to be honest. No, no, no, no. I have context.

People on the Internet, you know, who post things for everyone. It's just that I'm the only one who can read them. And whereas I think, you know, and then at the extreme, right, there's Japan, and Japan there's like so much documentation. Again, all in Japanese, but fortunately I have a Japanese friend who can help me translate.

And so there I have stacks of material on their early program. They've done a really nice job of documenting. what they did. And so, except for that one, there's this fascinating mission in 1990 that was one of the first to do really complicated orbital maneuvers, and they had a printout of the orbital ephemorous, but they decided it was too much trouble to let me copy it. So that's probably lost now. I really regret that because it would be nice to be able to reconstruct that mission, and its maneuvers. So, you know, there's a few, there's the one that got away here and there.

But overall, I think I've done a pretty good job in, in, I treated like a big, you know, Sudoku puzzle, the list of launches and all the metadata for them. And so, so I'm pretty pleased with having, and really, though, the motivation was, was a thousand years from now when people, when most, Most people are no longer living on Earth. And they want to look back and go, how did this all start? They're going to want to know the details. And I want to try and preserve those details.

That's the audience I'm running for. That is a, that's an ambitious objective. I like it's, you know, there's like people on Mars that are like, I found, I was digging the other day. I found this screw. Like, how did this screw get here? And it's like, well, let's check Jonathan's list because we probably. exactly when that screw was ejected from the back hatch, you know. Exactly.

Yeah. Huh. Yeah. Future archaeologists. That's great. So good. That's fantastic. Yeah.

Okay. All right. So that makes me, but the thing that makes me nervous is you're about to put all these books on a boat and ship it to England. Yeah. That's exactly where I was going. You're going to dole it out one at a time?

Like, what's the plan? They're going to fill three large shipping containers. It's going to cost 50,000 just to ship them. Oh. Oh, God. Them and the bookcases themselves. One of the tariffs on book exports these days. How are we looking?

How are we looking? Okay, I haven't looked at that lately. That's a good question. So, yeah, I mean, I think it's personal property and so it's okay. Should be all right. Yeah. Should you tell you it's ITAR material. You know?

Okay, all right. But, you know, technically I don't think it is. And just, you know. It's not. It's definitely totally not. the jokes, all parody and satire. Yeah. And so, yeah, so that's a worry for sure.

That is one of many things that are making it hard for me to sleep right now. It's, so, so yeah, we'll see. We'll see how that goes. And the worst thing is, right, at some point I'm going to have to put my computers on the ship and ship them. And that means, and it's going to take like two months for them to get, you know, to the other end. And maybe I can FedEx a whole computer, a whole big desk. I mean, I don't know if you've seen my setup, right?

Your monitors are crazy. They're going to need a shipping container of their own. Right, exactly. And so it can't exactly take all this on carry on. And so what does that mean? You know, how is Jonathan's Space Report going to operate for those two months? right? I need the big monitors to do the job. And so I'm sort of stressing about, well, I may just have to shut down for two months and spend several months catching up with all the

launches. So, you know, it's like, no one's allowed to launch anything in October or November because Jonathan's in transit. Like waiting for the next Falcon 9 upper stage failure. Like right now, now's the moment. Ship it. You know? Yeah, yeah. I got at least two weeks. Yeah, man, that's a lot of stuff. So I, when I came to Mexico, I brought this monitor with me here.

And it's a, it's a 38 inch ultra wide. And now the one one big monitor, it was, it was like a significant proportion of my effort to move went into that monitor. So I don't think you could bring, you know, I'd like get a special box for it and pack it up all nice and bring it on the airplane. Now I'm the fucking weirdo at the Applevision Pro where I'm like, this is my mom. Because guess what? I just put it in a backpack and it's my whole monitor. Yeah, yep, yep. Well, you can do a huge wrap around display now, Jonathan. It's pretty epic. Uh-huh, uh-huh. And then other windows around it. Maybe that's the route. I'll have to see. I think I'm too old to learn how to use that stuff.

I'm too old to learn how to use that stuff. Yeah, so I don't know, that's, that's, that's, it's, uh, yeah. Moving is a challenge. And unpacking is going to be real fun, though. I'm looking forward to that. And so once I actually have a specific place that I've actually, you know, signed money for and things like that, I think my stress level will go down because then at least the plan will be specific.

Whereas now the plan is just get the hell out of here. Yeah. Are you like a thousand percent, I'm crowdfunding this whole thing, like, you know, individuals doing this? Or are you also thinking, like, I should, you know, hit the industry up to see if there wants to be some, like, gold level sponsors to this project? Well, there have been a couple contributors to the GoFundMe that have been, you know, at the $10,000 level that are, you know, either very rich or associated with industry. and I think that I want to call out again Comspok who are you know who who have a mission that's very aligned with the mission of the Johnson Space Report and so I feel comfortable with with taking their money and and so um but you know I mean so first I just say I'm putting like you know my entire wealth into this as well right so I just sold my condo I've transferred the money to the UK that's sitting in the bank account waiting to buy the new house. And so the GoFundMe is the on top of that to make, because that money won't cover in the English real estate market, a place big enough to hold the library.

And so I think, you know, between my own money and the GoFundMe, it should be enough. I'd rather not take on a huge amount of corporate sponsorship because I do want to keep the independence of this. I think that's an important part of my brand is that, you know, I'm not beholden to people. And so I can, you know, even the people that I love, I can cool them out when I think they're,

they're, you know, doing space littering or, you know, something that they shouldn't be doing. So I want to be able to still do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because if I can't do that, then the whole point of keeping the library alive is sort of lost of it. And so, yeah, but we'll see. We'll see how desperate I get.

Well, we talked about this. I think when we stopped recording Miko last time we talked, I mentioned this not recorded, so I'm going to do it in a recorded manner so as to bully you into doing this. but I thought I've had friends that have done similar projects like building a new studio, new headquarters or something, and they would sell bricks to people, right, that you could buy either a regular size brick or bigger bricks and then your name gets engraved on that

and becomes an element of the new place, whether that's in a wall or a feature wall or a nice floor or something. And I feel like people would dig that of like, I've got contributing more money and I've got a physical thing. It's part of the library. So you should do the brick thing. That's all my point.

I will figure out. Maybe a bookcase. Maybe a particular bookcase would have your name on it. There you go. Yes. How do Jake and I get on the restricted section one? We want the I-TAR one. Yeah, yeah.

I have these beautiful, I want to give another shout out to my friend Barry up the street. Barry builds my bookcases. They're five bookcases, stained, dark-ahoney. They're custom-built, you know, to be the right size. to hold all my binders and things like that. And over the past 30 years that I've been buying from him, you know, he's done a really nice job. And so I'm taking his bookcases with me.

And so they'll be a part of the new library. Love it. What is your method for determining when you should add a book to the collection? Is this purely looking at historical stuff that is contributing to the existence of the list or like when new books come out you're like I'll buy a copy and throw it in the library i mean it varies yeah mostly mostly the latter mostly it's like um uh yeah i i just i just see some i hear about something and i i sometimes i'm you know i'm diving on one of the sites like a b books trying to find a book on a particular topic that's that's out of print and

and Nationbet, but also, yeah, if I see something that comes out that's relevant, in a very broad sense of relevant, I'll get it. And, you know, that's, you know, historical, but includes things that are going to be historical 10 years from now, right? So I guess my preferences for things that have data and numbers in them. rather than I don't do so much of the sociological stuff even though it's interesting right because it's just not my specialty but there's that but still I'll get sometimes I will because I'll get I mean there's the stuff that is like that I use for for what I do and then there's the stuff that's just interesting to read as background you know and and so I'm not above doing that but I don't feel like those are must haves for me whereas I think if someone comes out with with a, you know, a data book on, you know, the Naval Research Laboratory satellite program of the 1970s, then then I'm going to go, okay, that one I have to have, right? Yeah, yeah.

There's such an interesting, like, crossover between those two things, right? And this is, like, not a problem specific to what you're doing. This is a general human problem, right, numbers versus kind of feelings. This is what we're going with that. There's always like such an interesting crossover with that because you can have things that are like, you know, you can have the pure data and sometimes that psychological part of it adds important context, right? You know, like one thing that I would think about, you know, the, the Mars missions that that crashed because of the units mixed up, right? You know, so you can get the data. You can get the numbers that this is how much fuel they thought they needed and how much they put in.

But like the story behind why those numbers were the way they are is like, is, is, is, is, the name of the game, right? Oh, absolutely. And it's important for me to know all that stuff, right? And to add that context where I can, I'd say it's, but what I feel is like there are other people who can talk about that better than I can, right? And they need some of the technical data in order to write that, write the book to talk about that.

And where are they going to find that technical data? They're going to get it from me. Right. And so in a way, I see my role there as being the source for the people who are better than me and the softer stuff. And that's what I'm best at contributing. And I'll try and write some of the broader stuff as well. And I certainly have written polemics about the,

that kind of stuff in the past, but, but, uh, but it's not, I think it's not what I'm best at. And so, uh, so I think you have to, you know, you have to know, you have to know your limitations, right. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Is there any, um, do you have any plans to like digitize any of this in any way? Like I know, I know, there's some things you can't, you know, you can't just take a book and publish it, but. Right, right, right. Well, that's right. And it's, I mean, even, you know, digitizing things, even today, I mean, now, scound. something the digital product you get is so much closer to the original than it was even 10 years ago I would say I mean 10 years ago there's so many so much scan stuff now on the web where like yeah but the photographs are horrible

yeah right and and I see that a lot of the old like um because some of the declassified spy satellite stuff right they have these histories and you can't make anything out in the photographs they scan only they kept the original books, they could have done a proper scan today and left it. So I am of the opinion that the artifacts... I just usually wait for the president to tweet the pictures from this class of one. Yes, that's another approach. That's what I usually do.

But you know, I'm not saying that there's, I do think there's value to the artifacts. When I'm dealing with this stuff, even if I have it digitized, I'll often go and get the actual books from the shelf and open that because there's something in the interface that works better for. me. But nevertheless, yes, the long-term plan is to digitize as much of the library as possible and make whatever I can available digitally. That's a 10-year project, not a one-year project.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's once you get it there. And so once I'm unpacked, that will be the next step is to start, is to work on digitizing that. And to work on completing version two of the general catalog of space objects, which has a whole bunch of stuff in it that I have all of this stuff that I want to get out, you know, that I think people are going to really love. And it just isn't quite there yet. I need a year or two to pull it together. And so all of these projects, there are obvious things to do are,

are backed up right now waiting for the move. Right, right, right, yeah. I was even thinking, like, you don't even necessarily need to, like, digitize the actual content, but, like, even, like, digitizing sort of, like, an index of the library, like, these are all the volumes we have, and, like, here's how many pages they are

and the author and the year. And, like, here, you know, you can even index the indices, you know? Like, here's all the topics inside that book. Yeah, I mean, a lot of it is, a lot of the most valuable stuff is not like books so much but like I have the binders

of each launch vehicle and in the binder I have pro launch here are all the documents from many different sources that are about that rule right and so there I think you got your own meta books

yeah they're already meta books so you know we can go deeper we can index the indices of the indices yeah the Jonathan LLM is going to slap

that thing's going to be awesome yeah so so I think Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. That's true. That's a very brandable thing, McDowellum. McDowell. It's going to be a mixture of incredibly tedious numbers and snarkiness.

What LLMs are the best at. So, yeah, geez. I mean, so there's so much to do that I want to do to get out to the public and preserve this information for the longer term. And one of the important thing, I think, also on the 10-year time scale, the question is, how do I, you know, how does this go forward when I'm not around anymore? Which hopefully is several decades down the road, but, you know, it's time to start thinking about it.

And so I do want to start building a cadre of an open-source community. that would be sort of the editorial and governance body of going forward with the general catalog of space objects, you know, without me and sort of start distributing tasks. I think I need to get my software in a better state before I do that so that I can open source it and share it out. And so that's again another five-year project probably there. But in the long term, that's the vision is to take what I've done, which people seem to find useful, and make it available in that broad context and make it, make it sustainable. And it's not going, I can't be, you know, I do think that there probably isn't anyone with the right mix of skills and insanity to repeat. to replace me wholesale. And so I think it's going to have to be a consortium.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, you are talking to two software developers, so, you know. You know what I'm saying, yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm just saying we're also probably on your shortlist to ask for help. Super game. When you do get to the point where you want to robustify the digital part of this,

yeah. I was going to ask about that with, like, especially with, in relation to the McDonald's, line, right? How much of this cataloging historically? Do you think you would have written that paper is 2018, I think it was, right, when that was published? The 2018 paper, but I started thinking about it in 1994. But that's what I'm saying. Would you have done that if you weren't gathering all this intel all along? Like, did that database? The reason I did that was that when I was making my database, I was making lists of things in space. And therefore, I needed to decide what is in the in the list and what is not in the list.

And so that immediately takes you to how do you define space? And so that whole thing about the deadline was for those who don't know is I made this argument that the right place to put the boundary of space is at 80 kilometers and not 100 kilometers like some people do. And that was a decision I came to when making the catalog and what goes in the list of things in space. and so and really this is like just my weird demented mind you know ask these questions right and one one question I always ask is okay here's a definition what happens if you push the definition one way or the other a little bit do you get in a few extra interesting things or do you get in you know a hundred thousand pieces of direct that you clearly don't want right and so it became clear to me that, for example, just on the, if we take the specific case of astronauts, if you move the boundary from 100 to 80, what you get it, you don't get 500 extra astronauts.

You get, at least not until recently. You get like in 1990, you got like 13 extra astronauts who are like the X15 pilots and a couple other cases, right? And it's like, oh. I know. We lost Jonathan. That's the whole thing. Don't worry about it. I'm fixing it. We're fixing it. Yeah. I, you know, and so it's like, well, those are really interesting. And, you know, I want to know about them. And so by picking that lower boundary, you add, you don't add a lot of noise, you add a lot of interest. I love this. Right. And, and so that is not why I've settled on 80. I settled on 80 because of the other arguments. But I was very hard. But that's why I asked the question. Right. And so in all of the, you know, is this, you know, for every column in the database, right, you can ask that question almost of like, you know, what is, what are the boundaries?

And what happens if you tweak the boundaries a little is that an interesting thing to do or not? And so, and that comes from my training as an undergraduate mathematician, right, when it's all about definitions and where it's fine to have different definitions. as long as you say what your axiom set is. Yeah, yeah. I love that, um, that definition. So it makes me think of the like the planet debate, right? You know, what is a planet? And, uh, that kind of happens as well where like if you, you can try to come at it from like

a top down kind of thing where it's like, well, if we, you know, if we define it by shape or composition or all these kind of things, whatever, um, you can, you can move the line in different ways depending on how you want to carve that up. But if you actually just kind of like step back and, and put them all on like a spectrum, all the different natural bodies and space, they kind of naturally group into these areas just because of the way physics work, right?

So like you have some sort of differentiation. And there's a whole area of math called clustering analysis. Yes, yeah, yeah. How you define, how you find essentially islands in multi-parameter, multidimensional spaces. Yeah, exactly that, yeah. And that and that's sort of like a semi-objective way of trying, to do this. We do this a lot in astronomy. For example, how do you decide what is and isn't

in a particular cluster of galaxies, things like that, right? And so, yeah, and so that kind of way of thinking is absolutely, I think, very, very productive. And so some people are right. Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. You need to, you know, you need to make these cuts. And I think, again, the mathematician's way of doing it's saying you make a cut it doesn't have to be the same cut everyone else makes as long as you define what cut you're making yeah and you know and describe that um so and and as long as it's and then the question you ask is is this a useful cut it is this a cut that gives you insight that you didn't have when you did it the other way yeah yeah yeah yeah it's the same thing with the planet's just like you can you can decide that you have to clear your orbit and so pluto's not

included or you can decide that you don't and so Pluto is included but like at the end of the day if you're studying planets Pluto is interesting and you want to include it in your data set and so like there that's you know like take the the science part of it just say the practicality but but but the other thing is you also don't want to gerrymander so my argument if you include Pluto you also have to include 200 other transneptunei in object absolutely we can't make the kids learn a list of 200 objects. Right?

That is the baloney argument. I hate the kids learning and memorizing. I don't like that one. I'll fight that one. Okay. Because so I feel like I'm fine with having a category of major planets that's just the eight. And then I think for me, the interesting thing is a category of worlds. And for me, worlds are used.

the self-gravidating round Craterian, right? That includes Pluto and Aris and Inhamea and also Titan and Ganymede and other things that are like moods. As long as Titans in there, I'm good.

I'm good. Titans to go. Oh, yeah. Look at this. We've got an intern, Colin. I think it's intern day. So I turn it down? It's either a prank call or it's an intern. I think it was spam.

Right, right, right. Yeah. So, yeah. Titan, you were singing the praises of Titan, which was up my alley. That going with, picking that definition, suddenly you have these really interesting places like Titan and Ganymede and Europa and so on

as first class objects and not as second class things, right? And whereas if you do the planet moon thing, right, then you're saying Titan is the same kind of thing as Demos. And I'm sorry, Demos is just a Yeah, right? You know, and

And these 200 extra moons of Saturn that just got cataloged last week. And, and if you hadn't heard about that, maybe a couple of days. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, yeah, they're, they're, they're, they're not the same thing.

They're not interesting in the same way. And so you kind of pick the definitions that are both interesting and practical. And so I think the world one is an interesting one, and the major planet one is a practical one for the kids. And then we get as a fresh one, it's the world's one, because I care much more about what the object is than about whether it's orbiting one thing or another. right and so that distinction between planet and moon is just is a very old way of thinking that goes back to all we knew about them as how they were moving and not how big they are what they were made of and so on and so and so that's why we need to revisit these definitions and have the arguments um because and there are there are scientists who like poo-poo all this semantic stuff and go we don't care about these definitions but actually it affects what questions questions you ask.

And when you do statistical studies, it affects what's in your sample, what isn't in your sample. Yeah. And so it is important. Yeah. Taxonomy is a real thing. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah.

I just want to, I want to jump on the kids memorizing because it's a bad argument. So I just want to put this out into the world because I was thinking about this like literally this morning. It doesn't matter if the kids can't remember all the planets because you know what else? don't memorize all the cities and states and countries and lakes and rivers and mountains and mountain ranges and galaxies and universes and stars. They don't memorize all that either. So like, I don't know what there is. More Star Wars planets than our planets.

And I remember those fine. Well, and I think my son does too. Maybe they don't memorize it in the U.S. I mean, I certainly, I learned geography in school in England. And I memorized all the capitals of all the countries that were. around at that time. Yeah, but you're a professional astronomer, and I bet you can't name all the stars either.

Not all of the stars. I can name all of the ones in the HD catalog, right? There's 81, HD2, HG3. I like to do that your internet handle is hooked to a planet being named after you that you would exclude from this planet list. That's true. My planet, I'm really minor planet, 4589. You know, and that's, that's, that's, that's, that's how it goes.

But yeah. I just, I didn't enjoy that. I was able to say major planet, you know, major. Yeah, 4589 is not a major planet. No question. It's only about a mile across. But it's close to my heart. That's really good.

Too good. Love it. Are you, the one, I have a McDowell question to round us out, a McDow line question of this, this many years on, are you, like, where are you at with number one calling it the McDow line? I feel like you were like, I don't kind of dig it in the early days. I don't know if that's touch and go. Did you expect anyone else to like, because I don't know, has there been like major classification flips? I mean, that internationally the FAU, right, is still doing their thing. Yeah, right, exactly.

I mean, I think there hasn't been, I mean, you know, which I wasn't expecting really. But I would say it reopened the debate. And so people now, I think when the topic comes up, instead of going, oh, of course it's 100, they go, well, maybe it's 100. Maybe some people think it's 80, you know. And so I think that the debate is going to carry on for, you know, decades to come probably. And, you know, I've, what I haven't seen is anyone come back with, you know, and here's why 100 is really a better choice, right?

And so, so I feel pretty happy that, you know, I've drawn my line in the sand. And what I was saying, you can use definition, right, as long as you say what you're using. So I've now explained to the world why my website uses 80, why my list of astronauts use 80, right? I've got my justification. That's because you're paid off by the U.S. Air Force and Virgin Galactic specifically, right? You're only.

You're gold sponsors to the brick in the library. You walk in, it's like the Space Force wings and a picture of Richard Branson. Actually, you know, no, not not actually. And if you look at the company, neither of those have, have, have, have, uh, Hey up, boys, come on. Richard, if you're listening, yo me big.

Huge, huge. So, yeah. And just to say, what I want to make care is, I mean, for the Virgin Galactic thing, right, I was arguing for 80 back in 1994 before Virgin Galactic was even a thing, right? When they were still living for 100, we're arguing for 80.

Right, exactly. And so, so, but, but yeah, how do we go into this? Yeah.

Yeah. It's the McDowline. The McDowell, I'm happy with it. And not everyone agrees, but at least they know where I stand and why I'm doing what I'm doing, right?

And if you find that a better, a different definition is better for what you're doing, good on you. But if you come as, you know, and then ask, oh, please give me a list of people in space. And I want you to use 100. I'm going, no, you make your own list if you want to use 100. I'm going to give you the list. If you want some data for me, I'm going to give you the list that uses 80.

There we go. I love that. I'm a full on convert. So no arguments here. Yeah. Cool. Okay. So we got this fundraiser is rounding out.

Like what is the timeline for the fundraiser? How to, is there a, you're a, you can you can or post a link obviously but me say it up if you just go to go fund me and look for yeah jonathan's face report that you'll easily find it um and uh and yeah i i i'm going to keep it going for probably another couple months and then wrap it up um uh i think that but really it's in the next month or so i think that i will actually start to you know be spending this money big time and so uh unless unless unless the two places as I'm looking at, neither of them pans out,

and then I'm still back to square one with looking for properties. So we'll see. But yeah, I think the next couple months are going to be the key moment in finding the property, finding the new home for the library, arguing with planning councils. And then, you know, I will once, I'm not sharing. a lot about those details of the specific properties at the moment because I don't think that's smart given that I don't actually own them yet. But once I actually own something, then I will give out a lot more details and we'll have pictures and like, here's the crappy place that it is now,

and here's the plan for what it's going to be. I love it. Yeah, I want to see the time lapse renovation. Yeah, yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. And then when it's all done, Anthony, I will come by and we'll do a live off nominal in the library. It'll be awesome.

That would be awesome. Yeah. And this is why, you know, so there's another property that I was sort of looking at online that's like absolutely fabulous and would be perfect. It's a beautiful building and it's huge. And it's all the space I need. And it's like three hours from anywhere. And I'm like,

No. So I'm trying to find a place near London that's that's like commutable within an hour of London so that when you'll, you know, fly into Heathrow, you can get there and come and do your off-nominal without having to take extreme measures. Yeah. You don't need to worry about me. I'm, I'm from Western Canada where a four-hour drive is what you do for lunch. So, you know, we'll... Yeah, no, on the East Coast, nitwit. Yeah. It's like, it's probably 20 minutes. or I'll fly. I'm a city kid. You know, I grew up in the London area. I've lived in Boston. I'm used to public transport.

Then I must take an airplane. I have to buy a plane flight, I guess. Exactly. Those are the two choices, walking distance and airplane. Oh, shit. This is great. Jonathan, you're the best. Oh, I just knocked my chair down.

Now I'm shorter than I usually am Jake. Oh, dear. Close this out. You do the outro. You do it, Jake. Come on. This is great. Like you said, this is such a cool project. I mean, your data is so, it's just great.

It's just so useful in all these different kind of ways. And I know that the rest of the community thinks so too. We always refer to, you're like the ultimate source for us. We're like, well, what about this? What about this? Let's just go find out what John McDell says in his numbers. And then we'll use that. So I hope that all of the listeners are going to help you out and get this library,

a good spot because it deserves one. Thank you. Thank you for giving me the opportunity to beg on air. Yeah. Do the brick thing. Sell the bricks. Yeah. All the bookshelts.

Yeah. And all anomalies out there. Come on. Get some bookshelves in your life. Come on. Pay out, peeps. Come on. Get Jonathan out of the basement.

Get them a window for Christ's sake. So next week, we have a pre-recorded show. We have a waste from Pixel coming on. Pixel is a hyperspectral imaging satellite company, and they're doing some really cool stuff. And so I'll look forward to that. Jake, I forgot what the next dimension of imagery is.

He doesn't understand this whole spectrum thing. No, no, no. Different spectrums and imagery. It melts my brain and I struggle with it. So I'll have to get out of people. I'll have to get out of people. Okay, great. Good, because I don't know if Jake's is to go deep enough

when we're talking about like satellite business models and shit too. So we're going to have to have like a whole episode with charts, I think. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What is a wavelength? That's what we'll start. How does light even work anyway? Those are good and surprisingly deep questions, yeah. One episode on wavelength and we'll go from there.

Okay, all right. All right, y'all. Thanks, everybody. We will see you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye.