Off-Nominal - 192 - Accordion-Based ECLSS (with Chris Carberry and Sam Burbank)

Episode Date: April 10, 2025

Jake and Anthony are joined by Chris Carberry and Sam Burbank to talk about their first documentary film, Alcohol in Space - The Movie, their upcoming projects, and the 2025 Humans to the Moon & Mars Summit.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeWatch Alcohol in Space - The Movie | Prime VideoThe Music of Space: Scoring the Cosmos in Film and Television: Carberry, Chris: 9781476688978: Amazon.com: BooksAlcohol in Space: Past, Present and Future: Carberry, Chris: 9781476679242: Amazon.com: BooksSummit | Explore MarsDEMO: Bay Bridge (2021) - IMDbEP-32 The Show with Mike Rowe – Dan CarlinFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Hey, Jake. How you doing? Hello. That's an afternoon show for us. A matinee, yeah. Or maybe it's morning where you are. I guess it's still morning where you are.

Definitely is, definitely is. Yeah, we're doing a few of these pre-recorded shows because, I don't know, I guess we're busy. Everyone's busy, and we realize that if one of us is traveling, it was more fun to have us both on the show and not live than live without one of us. That's the real decision point that we made in our life. So, yeah. But listen, I'm rocking this four box here. We got Chris back with us. How's it going, Chris?

It's been a year since you were on the show? I think so, something like that. But thanks for having me back on. You brought a friend. Can you introduce your friend to the party here as well? Here's friend. Sam Verbeen. I've known Sam for over 20 years.

And Sam directed the documentary adaptation in my Alcohol in Spacebook, also called alcohol in space the movie the movie I love it did you at any point consider a different title and then decided yeah

decided no fuck it we're doing the movie it's funny you asked that we at every point discussed a different title because the title of this book and this movie is so in your face more or less everybody involved

including funders, including, it was kind of like, well, you'll probably have to change the title, right? It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, we're trying to think of a different title. But in fact, there was no better title, and it's a great title, and it catches people's attention. And it's hard because if you're just introducing the book or the film to like a super normie, it's like, it's a tough elevator pitch. You just have to sort of encourage them to tune in at five minutes. Yeah, the book does. job for itself very quickly because it's it jumps right into a very interesting topic which is humanity's

connection through the years with alcohol you could have gone with something like uh uh you know you could have targeted it up a bit you could have had like getting blasted in zero g or something getting blasted nice yeah we we consider sex drugs and rock and roll in space part one you know we we went through a number of iterations. Well, I'm pumped because I think we've got the full, we've got the full storyline here, right? We started with the book. Now we've got to get the story on the making of the movie. Speaking of drinking, though, Jake, we've missed the entire segment of the show in which we

always a drink. It always do. But it's the morning where you are. So what do you got? Did you make a margarita? I'm just rocking a cappuccino today. So can you get a shot of the cinnamon on top? Do you want?

Yeah, the Madge Lake. Look at that. Show us. It looks wonderful. Influence her hand. There you go. That's a lot. It's like a cinnamon challenge worth of cinnamon on top.

That's not that much. That's the kind of cinnamon serving my five-year-old puts in. Don't turn your back. You'll end up with a lot of whatever he's working with. I'm a big cinnamon fan. I will admit it. I can't do it. I can't do it in anything.

No? No, nothing. Oh, really? Yeah, if you wanted to kill me, Fireball would be the thing to kill me because I hate any brown liquor like that. that and cinnamon. So it's pretty much the worst. It's hard to fold space about it. That's true. It's a good point.

I have a coffee, Jake, but I did bring it in a SE space exploration engineering yetty. So they always like when I shot them out. Look at that. Producing main engine got off and sponsor the drinks. It's empty? That's not on brand. I'm not getting. The tariff, as you mentioned, are hitting your scotch hard. I do actually have a whiskey glass. I just don't have any whiskey in it.

It's getting pricing. At this hour, Chris, I think that's a good sign. Oh, yeah. It's either a good sign or a very bad sign that it's empty. Got anything fun, Sam? Yeah, I mean, you asked about where the movie came from. Chris wrote the book that has these three, in my mind, like three tremendously visual stories about champagne in space and aging whiskey in space. And then this maybe the best of all, which is sending yeast to space and then brewing beer with it.

all three of those participants wanted to be in the film. So that was when I knew we could do this. Because you need people to want to be in the movie and you need visual stuff. This was all visual and they had great archival footage of what they've been doing over the years. So that's when I knew we could probably turn the book into a film. And then I also had Chris. And Chris is a great storyteller. And he's exquisitely well-sucity.

suited to describing his own book. And so we put Chris in front of the camera for many hours and allowed him to kind of fill in. It's hard to consolidate a book that takes 12 or 15 hours to read into an hour-long documentary. But at that point, you're into, if you will, distillation and trying to figure out what you need to get in there. I'll allow it.

I'll allow it. I'll allow it. Yeah. Cool. So maybe I want to start with like, how and why did it like that, you know, so you wrote the book. Why was it, why was the project not done then? Like, you know, what made you want to do the next part of this and do a film?

Well, I mean, from my perspective, now, of course, I'm biased. I wrote the book. But as I was writing it, I was thinking actually, exactly that, meaning that the people that I was writing about, these stories would make a good documentary film. Now, once again, I was biased since it was my book. But, you know, I decided I started shopping it around and brought it to Sam and browbeat Sam a bit. They read the book and consider turning it into a documentary film. Luckily, Sam liked the book. Chris knew a guy, and I was the guy.

You were the guy, but you were talking about it, the second I was saying that, like, was there, from your end of things, right, the calculus of, is there the content for this? And that is a challenge because you can't go shoot new footage on location, right? There's this huge barrier, which is always the case with a lot of, you know, how many documentaries have been made about the Apollo era, and it's like they're reusing a lot of the same footage that we all know and love. And it's iconic to us because we've seen it in about 300 documentaries all cut up different ways. So that's part of the enforced creativity of it, but was there also any element of like, you know, a moment that you thought was insolvable through that?

Or were you always like, nah, I think we can, I think we got it? Really, honestly, no. I mean, I am such a lover of people talking about stuff they're passionate about and interested in. I mean, I'll give an example. I, there's always something to learn about any subject. And so I've been interested in space exploration since I was a kid. And I would say that I thought I knew just about everything about the Apollo missions, but it turns out it didn't know much about the spacesuit designs and the procurement of the space suits for Apollo. And I learned about that through an interview with Octab de Gaulle, who's one of the characters in the film Alcohol in Space, who told me the story of how this actually was not procured. through normal sources, but in fact was they went to American industry of women who knew how to sew things and went through a process of trial and error that came up with, and I can't remember

the name of the suit. It's like a household name in that world. But yeah, there's always something new to learn. And I tend to do really long interviews with people just because I love to talk and most people have a story to tell. And it's not uncommon for me to feel in the middle of an interview that this would just be a good podcast. All the interviews would be a good podcast because people are talking about stuff they know. And yeah, we'll get out into weird subjects sometimes, you know. And then you try to rein it in in the editing process.

How are you going to make this coherent? But I'll give you a little example in the middle of the film, and I wasn't sure. Sometimes you'll leave something in a film early on that you figure later on somebody's going to flag it and be like, you know, you kind of went a little out and left field on this one. The man named Dr. Bill Lumsden,

who was the, who is the brainchild behind Ardbeg's Scotch. He is their brewer. He's their vintner. The distiller, the master distiller. It turns out that he loves jazz, and it turned out that he and I love, we both love Artie Shaw,

among other jazz musicians, but Artie Shaw is a particularly interesting character. He was possibly the greatest clarinet player in American history. the big rival with Benny Goodman. And when he retired, he became one of the world's greatest marksmen. Just this kind of perfectionist person.

Like, I'm done playing clarinet. And I think at one point, he was the third ranked marksman in America. During a time with that was really a popular sport. So we were talking about jazz, you know, and you just go out into left field. We're talking about jazz for like way too much time, right? But then I got this bite from him of why does Bill Lumsden love jazz? And that made the movie.

Like that was a perfect segue from one of the stories back into their story. Because we kind of jump back and forth between these three stories throughout the hour. And at one point, we're back to Bill, and he's talking about why he loves jazz. And you'll have to watch the movie to find out. But the reason he loves jazz is sort of wonderful and very quirky. And it helps us immediately understand who this guy is. And so, yeah, that's a long answer to your question. See, I like to talk to it.

And the reason he felt like jazz, the same reason it kind of really feeds into his whole work style, the way he approaches his work. Yeah. I feel like maybe Artie Shaw would have been an astronaut if he had been born maybe one or two generations later. That's a real astronaut move. Like you see all those new astronauts come in. They're like, yeah, I went to medical school and became a, you know, a brain surgeon.

and then I got tired of that. So I got my master's degree in engineering. And then I designed airplanes. And then I got tired of that. And so I went in the military and became a general and commanded armies. And I got tired of that. I was like, I'll be a mastermind. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, Artie was a perfectionist. He was alive during Ken Burns jazz. And so they interviewed him. And at one point, my wife and I had for many years, there had been an issue in the house about which way the toilet paper roll goes. It's not a settled dispute. And I thought it was one way and she thought it was the other and it was just one of those husband-wife things.

But fortunately, we had already shot assorted out for us. So in the middle of Ken Burns Jazz, and again, this is a great example of why you do a long interview. He's talking about being a perfectionist and he says, look, it affects your whole life. It affects, there's only one right way to put the toilet paper roll on the toilet paper holder. And of course, to my wife's great pleasure, it was her way. And so if I ever put it on the wrong way at this point, she calls me Artie Shaw. She's also a great lover of jazz. But yeah, to your point, like Jimmy Stewart, right?

The movie star Jimmy Stewart, famous, you know, a leading man in Hollywood, until World War II came, at which point he became a very high-level member of of the air support in Europe and did this for like three or four years, you know, was really a, I don't want to say war hero, because he was, but he was running air operations. And then he came back and became an actor again and had a series of years where he just made cruddy westerns and then became Alfred Hitchcock's leading man and some of those films we left so much like rope and rear window and so on. could have gone on and become president too.

Yeah. 100% yeah. The natural progression, Jake. Yeah. Outlars are funny because you, you know, I always think about I'm very short. So I'm always like, well, I had no shot at playing basketball of any successful level, right? And I'm like, well, some people's like height is their thing. And then other people's brains work totally different.

And then you find these people. I always think about Wayne Gretzky was like the goat at hockey, but he almost was just a lacrosse player. because he was also really good at that and he would have been like the best the cross player ever and no one would have ever heard of him. You know what I mean? It's crazy. I mean,

we talked about astronauts recently of like the fact that they are pretty reserved but like deep down they all think they're the best like at every because they're the best at everything that they ever encountered until they were all astronauts together. They were the best at all the things they tried. And now they're all in the same core. A candidate pool down from 20,000 to 12.

You'd get some pretty remarkable people. You're just like picking the, picking the edges there and you're like, all right. This is a great crew. But then there's the ones that smuggle the alcohol up to space. And those are the ones that we love on this show. There are. Yeah.

That happened quite a bit of quite a few times. And as I mentioned probably on a previous time on the show, yeah, it usually happened through the Russian side, but not entirely. You know, Americans have brought it up for various reasons, you know, early on on the space age. We don't cover this too much in the film. We do talk about Basaldron, but even before then, they were smuggling up more as a joke, you know, little bottles of spirits and mostly as jokes, but they didn't consume them.

I think Buzz was the first one, certainly the only person who was consumed, as far as I know, alcohol and another planetary body. And this was more, it was not really for the sake of getting inebriated. it was part of a religious ceremony. He was doing a prayer. They were supposed to be part of his opening words on the surface of the moon. And so we brought some communion wine and this goblet from the Webster Presbyterian Church in Houston. And originally it was supposed to be part of his public statements. But they told him NASA told him they didn't want him to do that because just a few months earlier, as you recall, during, Apollo 8 around the holidays, they read from the book of Genesis. And there was a big outcry about reading from the book of Genesis from some famous atheists. You know, they're talking about they are violating church and state and things like that. So NASA was already sensitive and they thought if you added alcohol to it, so there was a prayer and alcohol that were really crazy.

such all the third rails at once. They made him wait until the radio was off to do that. Yeah, I just had to layer in. Then our little talk about communism when we could have just hit the trifectad. Freak everyone out in the 60s. Yeah, totally. Yikes. What was the best in terms of, so you had two kind of classes of content you're talking about there, Sam.

like the long-form interviews and then, you know, the content of the activities that you're talking about at the time in those interviews, right? That there's, there is stuff out there that is being shot all the time. I think a lot of times people that are flying in space, I mean, it's different now in the era we're at. You know, we've got Fram 2 up there right now as we record this. So now you know when we recorded this. But getting to the era where, like, people are just shooting footage with their iPhones and it looks like, you know, anything that you're just taking around in your daily life or on a plane yourself. that that might be a new era for filmmakers to have like found footage quality content, but archival stuff has, has, you know, are there issues in terms of sorting through what you've

got in terms of formats and how to get access to what you need and trying to get them into usable formats for what you're actually working on? Like, because we're spending like 10 different eras of filmmaking in that time. That's a great question. I mean, the key thing is always frame rate, right? That's like a starting point. People are really, forgiving regarding resolution. In fact, you could say almost the opposite that there's a value in having... I'll take it back a sec.

One of my mentors is a filmmaker named Mark Jones, and he, I once mentioned, we were talking about an edit that we were doing something together, and I mentioned, oh, I only have a still photo for that, for that shot, as if that was worse than having footage. And he said, oh, no, a still is almost always better. than footage. And I was like, wow, interesting.

It's like, yeah, we're watching the movie, almost the entire film we're watching 24 frame a second or 2997 frames a second video. So it still shakes it up. It changes the perspective of the viewer. It changes your brain in some way. And grainy footage does that. Watching footage of 16 millimeter footage

of the moon buggy driving around. Like, it doesn't matter how many, like, crazy lens flares are happening or how rainy that is. Like, it's utterly forgiven because watching dudes in a freaking metal wheel buggy driving around on the moon and having way too much fun. So, like, yeah, it's like 320, you know, 320 by 180. Yeah, yeah. It's got a vibe to it that is, you know, you can't fully describe, but everyone knows it when they see it. And, like, I mean, it's like your, it's like accents, right? Like, you think you don't have an accent.

Everyone else does. It's kind of how it feels when you're, you know, well, the footage I shoot, like, that's normal and everything else has this different historical vibe to it. And then, of course, you know, 10 or 20 years from now, our shit will look historical to those people then. But that's, I'm kind of interested about that of like, you know, thinking about yourself 30 years on making a movie and all of a sudden, all the footage from space is like, shot portrait from iPhones.

And you're like, what, what am I going to do with this? Yeah. Yeah, I mean, and we're also entering such a weird time right now with AI. So because I have an interest in it, the algorithm is always feeding me new AI short films, you know, whatever people did today and yesterday the day before. And even weekly right now, the AI is just getting insanely good and we'll be changing, you know, certain issues. Now, I'm a documentary filmmaker. And sometimes we will use, Actually, in the film, Alcohol in Space, we have five or six scene vignettes between scenes where we use a little AI-generated art image to bring us to cleanse the palate. So it's already being useful for me. But I think we're in time right now where the stuff

is starting to look so real now that we're going to have to have some way of knowing the difference between AI-generated. footage and real footage. And I think the whole idea of image content procurement, stuff you do with your iPhone versus a real camera, it's all changing crazily quickly right now. I have a couple of great friends who do visual effects for a living,

and they're just freaking out. I mean, it's such a crazy time for any content creation. with images and moving pictures. It'll be grainy and low resolution. That's how we'll know. Right. I mean, that's it. I guess that's what I was trying to say is like,

give me like the crappiest looking like, you know, flip phone video from, you know, 2007 that I know is real. And that's going to be more interesting to me than something where I'm like, wait, is this AI? So, Jake, before we start recording, I was asking if you listen to the, recent hardcore history addendum that Dan Carlin did with Mike Roe. Number one, because Mike

Roe's voice is astoundingly amazing. It's like, the fact that anyone has a voice like that is terrifying. But they were talking about something that felt relevant, which was like, we went from the age of authority to the age of authenticity, and that authenticity is the thing that is the king of our current era, that if you're a surreal person and people can tell that, and people know it. Like, people can sniff out who's not authentic in a second. And much the same way with the film that you're talking about, right? That there's an authenticity to the Apollo era footage. Apollo 11, that documentary that was made around the Falcon,

they were shooting up Falcon Heavy. So that was probably what, 2019, 2020 when that came out? And it's, you know, no voiceover, no nothing. It's just the footage of Apollo 11. And every one of those shots, you feel like you're living there because it is authentic and it isn't trying to be something that it's not. And I always find that with space. Space is weird, though, because there isn't,

I almost feel like the tech cycles synced up with the eras of spaceflight in a way that is instantly recognizable. So the 60s footage looks like that. And then the early space shuttle era is like a totally different thing. And it's cool that we're not like our era, we already know it's going to look like iPhone shots. And it's, there aren't really like smooth. The overlaps between these errors.

I could show all of us on this call right now, like any, any shot from any particular flight. And you could probably pin it down within like a couple years just based on the quality. and like two design elements in there. When I think authenticity, I think two words. And it's their Chris Carberry. So I'm going to pass this question. Nice. Stuff for landing.

Well, on the stuff that you write about, Chris, I feel like the authenticity is key to that too, right? That like you said, Buzz Aldrin wasn't taking wine to the moon as a stunt, right? It was a thing that he really cared about and wanted to make part of the mission. Well, I think that's why the film works, I think, why the book work, hopefully for the next book, I mean, the current one out, I'll say which we're turning into a film next. I think it's because of those stories, you know, those authentic stories, real people with real passion, pursuing their passions. And I think that's what it is. You know, if it's, you know,

I don't want to write about somebody who is, frankly, full of crap. You know, You know, who's not really, they're not really there. They're not really achieving anything. They're more ego than actual product of actual achievements. And most of the people in the film, well, they all have certain levels of ego, as all of us do. That's not their driving force. Their passion is their driving force. And that passion is their authenticity because they're truly trying to do something, have fun, engage in the space industry, and pursue just their overall passion, whether it be.

alcohol production, space exploration, innovation, or something else. Or for the new book, the one, well, not two to new now, the one we do hope to make the next film on my current book, The Music of Space, and all these people who have, you know, whether being in the film, you know, film industry, composition, now that passion for trying to create music that's going to be able to bring out a film, bring out kind of the passion, the emotions, manipulate people's emotions and film, or astronauts, you know, up in space, you know, joining this rare club of people who performed in space, things like that.

So I think that's where the authenticity comes from, just following passionate people. Yeah. So this is a great pivot to the other book because I want to talk about this a lot as well. music alcohol to my favorite hobbies. So it's a good double header for me. But yeah, so this one,

explain this book. This is all about like film scoring in like space and sci-fi movies. Is that kind of where you went with it? First, most of it is the last chapter is actually music in real space. And so I'll start with the last chapter

talking about people like Chris Hadfield, you know, the Canadian astronaut who performed, did a lot of, videos in space, including David Bowie's Space Oddity, which got like three or 400 million views on YouTube, and other astronauts like Katie Coleman, who played the flute, and telling all these stories of people who performed in space, the role of music in space, and how the role it will play in the future, you know, is one of these parts of human culture that's coming

with us and plays a real significant role in our lives, you know, throughout human culture. and it's continuing in space. But, you know, as you mentioned, most of the book is looking at the role of music in how we perceived space through film and television and how that sound of space music changed from the decades to decades. I started off early on, like back in silent films.

There were a lot of original scores that were actually written for silent films. Most people don't know them because most of the scores were lost. But, you know, most of them didn't, but a lot of them, you know, quite a few of them did have original scores by from real composers that would, that higher orchestras to play in the background. And, you know, they pretty much created the whole art of film scoring with these. But then I follow it, you know, in obviously into the sound era. And then you get to the 50s where we're all familiar with kind of that electronic theremin sound that. that it kind of was taken over by B movies, awful B movies,

but really started by, you know, Bernard Herman when he wrote the score for the day the earth stood still. And it was a really innovative score and different from a lot of the other Bernard Herman scores, you may, if you're not familiar with Bernard Herman, I know Sam is, you know, he did a lot of the best Alpertichcott scores like Vertigo and North by Northwest, et cetera, and Psycho, of course.

And so, you know, but that day to the Earth stood still sound with the Theromans kind of took over its electronic sound of the 50s for space and horror movies. But then, you know, all that change as you're getting close to, you know, into the 70s, late 60s with 2001 Space Odyssey, you know, with the classical pieces that Stanley Kubrick used. But then particularly when Star Wars came in with John Williams's score, everybody needed to do a. big orchestral score. And so our perception of space, you know, space music changed dramatically from the 50s to the 70s and 80s based on, well, how they were approaching it. You know, it was, you know, if they thought in the 50s it had to be weird, mysterious, and creepy, whereas when you got to John Williams, he was actually, his sound was more

retro really because he was going back to the classic days ocean pictures you know the uh eric wolfgang gold who did like captain blood and robin hood and kind of the swashbuckling films and that that harkened back to late romantic classical music like wagner and others yeah there's actually a really interesting kind of like uh uh twin narrative with that kind of music right like you said the the the futuristic stuff and the retro stuff. And I feel like that is kind of like has come together in the long run. Like, you know, if I think of something like a newer sci-fi, like interstellar, interstellar, to me, feels like it's got both of those, right?

It has the kind of classical, you know, John William style, big, big, big, you know, in-your-face kind of music. But it's also got those kind of twangy, futuristic, you know, like, wee, kind of stuff that you get that it kind of went through, yeah, through. Just killed it. Exactly. Murdered that description. Yeah.

I was trying to doing a theramine there. Is that the sermon fingers? Yeah, you got to pinch it. You know, use both. And even including a giant organ at one point. Actually from the, oh,

the Templar, the church in London, the Temple Church in London. Okay. I didn't do that last summer. And it's just enormous one. And, you know, Han Zimmer, you know, is really anxious to use that because it, because it had multiple meanings to it, even using the organ. The organ represented, of course, wind, sound, you know, air being, you know, air being used to create music.

But it was also that breathing and the air played a role in the film as well. But he also pointed to the fact that at the time, you know, when organs really became, you know, popular, it was the most. most complicated piece of machinery ever made because of all the moving parts. So it was also the epitome of technology in its age. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so with space and with sci-fi, you, I mean, this is so well put that, you're always on the cutting edge with space exploration. trying to do something that probably shouldn't be attempted and you're just right on the edge of what humans can do.

And yeah, you couldn't be more right, Chris. Like with, and you can say the same thing. I mean, one of my hobbies, I mean, I still play music myself and the algorithm frequently feeds me stories about like the invention of the profit five synthesizer or the early moogs. And the people involved in that are almost exactly the same kind of people who are involved in spaceflight. and there's even some crossover there. But for me, life needs a soundtrack. And we, I think back to when I was a kid, I loved to ski. And this would date me a little bit, but that was we had Walkmans, you know, we had cassettes.

So we get out, get out like on a perfect, you know, fresh, fresh powder day. You're geared up. You got your skis. But you need a soundtrack. And I had, of course, I was geared up with my Walkman with, the 007 theme, you know? So headphones on, click, and we're ready to go down this mountain. And I think it's, I think if you asked a lot of, a lot of astronauts,

people involved in space, like, yeah, that rocket launch is pretty cool, but watch this. Music theme, and now we're crying and we're really emotional and very excited about this stuff. All of Life needs a soundtrack. Hard agree. So would W.07 be your wake-up track if you were flying a space mission today? Would that be the thing that you choose to play in spacecraft? Just get you going? Well, people sometimes play the worst music in spacecrafts.

I mean, you don't know what your crew members are going to play. I had one simulation crew member who just insisted on playing Madonna. You know, you have six crew members, and so you're, like, each of you is getting, you know, 17, 18 percent of the playing time. And, yeah, you'd think it would be something awesome. Shot fired. Madonna. You cannot necessarily know what's going to be playing in your spaceship.

I can't wait until Madonna books a New Shepherd flight or something. And you've got to watch her fly to space. They can't all be early. I just saw this this morning. There's going to be this all-female crew with what's her name, Katie. Lauren Sanchez. Girls trip, yeah. Katie Perry, yeah.

So that's its own kind of like. My son loves Katie Perry. He's a lot of listening. You probably have to listen to Katie Perry music. Why not? There's some jams in there, man. I like Katie Ferry. There's a jams. I'm trying to think the one I really love.

Yeah, she's got a few good ones. She's got a couple of bangers. She's part of the milieu for young people. Like, been doing it for a while now. Started with I kissed a girl, right? That's the one, yeah. That song was my ringtone on my very first cell phone. I like that.

The fact that you remember that too is also incredible. Well, I mean, I had to buy it. That's how long ago this was. It's true from the ringtone store or whatever. What was the thing called? From the ringtone marketplace. Yeah, the ringtone marketplace. I forgot about that.

You're talking about a wake-up call. I think a wake-up, I think, you know, your ringtone, you know, your wake-up, it's got to be simple. I would think close encounters, right? Or something simple that just, like, is evocative. or maybe the little penny whistle flute from the Inner Light, episode five, excuse me, episode 25,

season five, Star Trek Next Generation. There you go. Now we got somewhere. Something simple, you know, something that has, you know,

less than seven notes. That's so specific. I love how specific that criteria. Something with a strong motif. Yeah. With a motif, yeah, like this is what,

huh? I was going to say, those are sometimes the most difficult, you know, hearing, hearing the stories of how, you know, the most simple,

what sound like, the most simple little motifs, the short, like close encounters. John Williams and Stephen Spielberg went through, I think, over 200 variations, trying to find the perfect five notes, you know, to be the doorbell. Something that would grab somebody's hand in. It reminds me of that cliche, you know, I was going to write you a short letter, but I didn't have time, so I wrote you a long one. the story of email

yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah good motif I don't know what my wake-up song I know we never how would we never picked this as our we've never even discussed this as a bit yeah I think Katie Perry would be your wake-up song

now it has to be yeah it's got to be that or Steve Aoki I think is the other option that you have Jake in front of you you got to remember who that is and then look up a song that he's done.

And hope that the music is good because I have no idea. Man, what a shame. Oh, wow. All right. I feel like this is similar to, you know, this is relevant to the baseball fans in the audience, but you get to, you know, pick your walk-up song when you're coming up to plate. And there's some, there's some gray ones. One of the Phillies, Bryson Stott, has A-OK by Ty Verdes, and it's amazing.

And the whole stadium loves it. And I'm like, I might. just picked that because it's a jam and it makes me think of the Phillies, you know. Maybe my wake-up song would be that 76ers tune. I like that one. You do love the Sixers song. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good one.

Shit, man, that might be mine. That's really good. I'll play that as a theater. I always remind, it reminds me, though, there's this song. I can see if I can remember my memory is just so bad. But I went to Boston once and I went to the Sam Adams brewery tour. and they they picked you up in this like party bus basically right they had like it had like shocks that did this and you're driving down the road you know bouncing up and down and they they had a huge

like the loudest stereo in this bus and like no way like open open windows like everything it's like the whole the whole neighborhood her is drive by but it was that it's like uh it's like uh honestly it's like Hall notes or something, but it's just like, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Does ever know this one? I think I can tell what song you're singing out. I don't know. Oh, what a now.

Can you give us another 30 seconds? Okay. Somebody shazam this. Anyway, I always think of that song. I know what we're talking about. I've been to a wedding before, Jake. I don't know. I think Mario Rivera, inter-sand-man, that's a good one.

This, again, in a really simple theme that just kind of puts the hair. That's a wake-up song in space, though, dude. That's a really, that's a bad day in space. Do do, do, do. Oh, copyright stuff. You know, we'll get in trouble. Here's an oddball question that I feel like you two have explored a lot of this, I mean, as a name as, culture in space, right?

Everything that you're talking about has flown in, for what I hope is the long tale of history, tiny-ass spaceships. Do you, did you ever think about, like, all right, how's this going to change when we have so much more volume? on Starship, you could just straight up fly like a grand piano to orbit. Like, is every, given this some consideration? Chris, if you don't, I'll go for two seconds here.

I always think of this with Skylab because Skylab was so crazy big, right? You've seen footage of that. Like, they're doing like aerial gymnastics in it. It was such a big space. Like, you could have had like a whole band in Skylab and rehearsed, like the drums over here and Marshall Stacks over here. I mean, it was massive.

So we haven't had a lot of that, but that was the one time there was a space where you could imagine, like, oh, we could have a party in here or we could sit the dining room over here and the kitchen. Like, it was just a giant space. Yeah. We only did that one time. Tell me about it. Well, this is, you know, really with culture and space, as you mentioned, that's the name of the production company. And we want to tell these stories. It's not just in little space capsules or even on ISS, which is bigger, but it's still contained.

you know, if we go to the moon or Mars and human culture goes with them and human culture changes when you're there, and you look at all these things. A lot of people have speculated about sports, sports, whether it be in like one-sixth gravity of the moon, and what kind of sports can you play and what are you able to do? People talk about, for instance, if you put like a big dome over one of the craters, and, you know, with one-six-degree, theoretically, if you made, like any kid has made wings and tried to fly, but on the moon, you actually theoretically could make wings and fly, you know, in this environment. And so what sort of things could you do in this lower gravity level, you know, whether it be sports or other things? You get so many different things would change.

Music, you know, as I mentioned in the book, you know, the physics of music is really interesting. Now, of course, they've only done it in microgravity as opposed to 1G. But, you know, and like I interviewed Chris Adfield, and he was talking about the physics of playing the guitar in space, you know, like as we all have heard, for every reaction, there's an equal and opposite reaction. When you're strumming a guitar, yes, physics comes into play when you're, you know, floating in the air. And so you have to either strap yourself in or be prepared for the, you know,

the opposite reaction happening or playing a, flute, which is you wouldn't think would be as much of an impact, but Katie Coleman explained that, yes, even when you're playing a flute, it's designed for 1G, and the physics are different in space, and so you have to adjust to that, and how is that going to change? Like if all of a sudden you have a thriving population, settlement on the moon, and you have musicians, and how will that change? Will you create new instruments to accommodate the different gravity. So they're designed so you can play them more efficiently in 16G as opposed to, you know, 1G.

And so I think all these things come into play and they all relate to human culture because people will adjust. People will make, things will change based on the new environments. And I think that's fascinating that, you know, thinking about our current culture as it moves in the space, but how how human culture changes, you know, from, you know, whether it be because of distance from Earth, different environments like different gravity, different atmospheric pressure, and all these, and frankly, what's in the soil as well, like if you're, you know, if you're growing food or, you know, or doing, you know, making alcohol that's coming from crops that come from like Martian Regalith. You know, that impacts things as well. So all these things are things with love,

to talk about with this film company, the things, you know, things that make us human, but how this evolves over time when you're in a dramatically different environment. The tubas are going to get really big. I'm just trying to figure out if you could calculate the delta V of various songs that are you play on the trumpet. Figure out like how far you would, how far you would change your position based on how long the song is and how forceful you are playing it. That's a good point.

could already saw launch himself from Phobos with a cornet. It's a lot of propulsion, man, you know? I think Woodwind's different, though, right? I'm talking, you probably need to be more in the brass to get some good propulsion. Well, I think with a tuba, it's a no-brainer. Huge. Monster impulse, yeah. A lot of momentum that you need to get that going, though.

It's a lot of mass, right? What's the most efficient brass, one of the little pocket trunk bits? Maybe that's the best one. It's got just a couple turns and it's got a nice big bell. You get into the physics of it and you realize that the most efficient one is just singing. Just singing. Listen. Take out all the curves, man.

Just get direct air pressure. I don't know. Maybe there's, you know, some of the bell is, it's got a nice expansion ratio. Bagpipe. Bagpipe. You can pressurize it. There is bagpipe. I say bagpipe.

So we're pressure. And there has been a bagpipe in space. Now, listen. Chris. I can't remember. But somebody did bring a bagpipe. All right, we got a Sam. We got a Sam.

Madonna or bagpipe? What are you picking? Well, you know, Chris knows. We've talked about this before. I'm launching sort of a one-man campaign to keep accordions out of space. So that's where I've sort of planted my flag. Amazing. I think as the representative of the great country of Mexico on this call, I have to fight that one.

Because that's a big part of Nortania music. good. That's really good. I'm to defend the accordion. I like the mission. I like the negative mission there. Listen, in your defense, they would suck a lot of air out of the spacecraft. Okay, I don't know what the whole...

Maybe you could, like, integrate some CO2 scrubbers as you expand and contract. It's like cycling the air. You know, it's like a human-powered CO2 scrubber. So maybe we should do all accordions, Sam. Oh, I see where you're going with this. Yeah, that's a great... Yeah, kind of both I use. The Eclipse system, yeah.

Yeah, Orion could use the help. Take up a couple of extra accordions. You got to work out two hours a day and play three hours of a cordian or else you can't breathe. Yeah. Yeah. As always, if you work for a space company and you want to hire us as consultants, we are. Yeah, just brainstorming it first. Unofficial.

He's avoiding a culture. He's avoiding Madonna or. bagpipe. He's avoiding the question. You know, it's this question of, I'll take the bagpipes. Okay. I would as well. Donna, take a shot. Well, it depends on the player, I suppose. If it's just somebody has no idea how to play a bagpipe,

so I don't know if that would be better, but. Can we choose the player? I'll take Bond Scott from ACDC if I can choose one. Yeah. It's bagpipes, but it's free bird. Yeah. So this question of, so our production company is culture and space productions. We have one film out now. That's Alcohol and Space, the movie, available on Amazon Prime.

And we are planning, we have a couple more productions in the Hopper. We're kind of in pre-production for the music of space, which is really fun. It's fun to talk to, it's fun to talk to people whose music has positively changed your life. You know, I mean, the soundtrack work on Asoka or the Clone Wars, you know, especially the later Clone Wars season, season seven, just incredible stuff. And we're, yeah. So, but this question of culture, what, what is, this is a question I keep coming back to when we have conversations like this.

What does the word culture mean? We could look it up in the dictionary, but I keep thinking about what, what is culture? To me, culture, almost by definition, is everything in your life. that's not you at work. It's the stuff that surrounds your life that you personally care about. Almost by definition, we don't want people at work to be expression culture. We want them to be doing what we're paying them to do and not expressing themselves. And then the second we're done, we're back to the stuff we care about.

So it's a really broad term, right, human culture. and Chris and I often describe it as being, you know, everything that's not, regarding space, everything that's not a rocket or a space station, you know, not the actual place where you live up there or on the moon, not the space suit, but everything else. And that's the books you bring, the books you write, the music you bring, the music you make,

the food and more that you consume, the sex you have, all of the things that are normal lives on Earth that we really care about. And there's no way around it. You're bringing all that when you go to space. And we've sort of, as a society,

done our very best to pretend that we're not going to bring all that stuff with us, but we will every bit of it. It's interesting because of the fact that the limitations of space travel thus far is that all of this is existing on the margins. So we're like, there is a little extra volume or a little extra

mass it sneaks in right somebody smuggles it in they leave something behind they bring that's dead yeah the cornbee sandwich right so like but it seems like we're on the cusp of the next era where you can actually allocate a portion of the mass to bring in a couple instruments up to the moon base because yeah we need to survive on the moon for a longer period of time and people need these outlets and we're almost at the moment where it shifts to being actual payload space as given to culture versus it's sneaking in and being like, oh shit, they brought, what did they bring to space? How did they sneak it up there? Yeah, that's a good point because I mentioned the book.

We don't mention this in the, I don't think we do, in the film. You know, like some of these early cosmonauts bringing the alcohol up because they had, of course, they could bring a certain amount of weight, their own weight, plus there was a, you know, a certain amount that could be brought up, you know, in the capsule. And it had to be exact or exact-ish. And so they would literally lose the amount of weight that they wanted to bring out, bring an alcohol before. Like, if they wanted to bring two pounds, you know, they would be able to bring that up, sneak that in their space. Is this actually where the whole peeing on the bus wheel came from?

That like, well, I think I could probably pee about eight ounces right now and bring that much vodka up and sneak it up there. Yeah, that was Yerigigaran. You know, because you're a Gagarin, you know, they go through this experience. extraordinary ritual, superstition of following Yerga Garan's path, and being on the back tire of the bus is part of it. But that's not the only thing. They follow this whole regiment, you know, of what Yuri did before his flight, including like signing the door of a hotel. I think they sip some champagne. And of course, they watch the same spaghetti Western on the bus.

And then, of course, Yuri had to urinate halfway to the launch pad. It gets off on zips and peas on the back tire. And so everybody does that now, you know, whether they simulate it or do it for real. And that's just following his ritual. And the Russians, of course, are very superstitious. And so they want to follow this. Yeah, well, it is culture. And frankly, it may have been also one of the reasons why they bring cognac up and not vodka.

I think I may have mentioned this before. Going back to kind of how ritual and culture interconnect that story, I mean, it may relate to this because I'd heard two reasons why they bring cognac rather than vodka. They brought vodka, I pretty sure, but cognac's a drink of choice. One is that cognac's a special drink and vodka is an everyday drink and every day drink and every day in space is special. The other one, which I don't have verification for, is that Yurgaaran brought cognac out. And if Uruggar and brought Konyaic up, that would absolutely explain it. That would, they would absolutely bring it up every time because they are so superstitious about following the steps of Yurigigar. That's crazy.

He was the guy. He was the guy. We should do, we should do five minutes on the humans to Mars. Before we do that, I need one promise. I need one promise. That when you make the music of space, the movie, you also release music of space, the movie, the soundtrack. I need that title in my life. Well, that brings up another question for us is this is the most challenging part of the film.

With alcohol and space, they weren't an issue. They weren't really copyright issues. That's not provided film, but with the music of space, we have to now kind of figure out. out, navigate this challenging environment of getting rights for things we play. And so that's going to be an interesting thing. What will the soundtrack of the music space be? And we are certainly talking to a lot of key people about that. And, you know, but of course, usually the composers who are speaking to don't have the rights

to their own music. Of course, the studio does. And so I'm trying to see if we can figure out the way at least to get enough, get the rights to enough of the stuff, whereas it'll work as well as using similar things. And of course, like for 2,000-wise Space Odyssey, no problem. But there are other things we can use. But it'll be a very interesting thing. And I think the most, I think Sam will agree, maybe the most challenging thing about the film, will be that soundtrack.

Well, listen, kickstart the album, Music of Space, the movie, the soundtrack, and then it'll all be good. You'll have enough cash and we'll be set. So, all right, Jake, you can talk about Mars now. Yeah, yeah. I will allow it. Well, no, I want Chris to talk about Mars because he's got the coming up. We got, we got the he missed to Mars. I know, actually, I'm looking at the website now and it's you've added a, you've added a, you know.

The vibe shift is real. I don't know where they go. We've acknowledged the moon. The moon exists. Why did my screen? Dude. Even this summit is following the other political, political wins. ExploreMosDorg.

You'll see it. It's great. The vibe shift. Tell us about the vibe shift. So, what? Just, I want to hear about the vibe shift. And where's your emotional, how you dialed in emotionally for going into this summit with the political vibe shift at the moment? It's challenging.

This is by far the most challenging coming into it because we don't know where anything's going. Everything is a little bit in flux. And so trying to build the conference in this environment, you know, as I said, is challenging, but it's also great opportunity, and the timing might be really good. Finally, after a couple months awaiting, Jared Isaac, as you probably know, was nominated as NASA administrator, is finally going to have his hearing next week with the Senate. So hopefully that means that it'll be a speedy hearing, and it'll get confirmed fairly quickly. I'm assuming since I've gotten here, it's probably he's likely to get in. It was just getting there with some of the bird blog.

So obviously, we're going to hopefully we'll have him or somebody else senior at NASA. I mean, you know, like the administrator or deputy, who we've often had in most previous conferences. But it'll be really interesting to be able to now reflect which direction the administration's going. How will the direction change from, you know, what we've been having for the last several years and several administrations? And we're still not clear about that. So obviously that'll play a big role in the conference, but also things that are important regardless of that. All of things, you know, basically things that we're talking about with culture and space. You know, there's other parts of it that are separate from the rockets and the crew vehicles, like how we're going to breathe, how we're going to eat, innovation, how that's going to benefit us here on Earth, topics like that.

And we also have a new panel called looking at logistics. Not something that generally people talk about, have talked about these space conferences, but just the whole logistics of managing lunar and Mars missions. And that's a lot of logistics. Not, you know, on the surface of those, you know, planetary bodies, you know, in transit and preparing here on Earth. You know, all the different parts it takes to enable this that you don't generally see.

And of course, we're talking things like, you know, the Mortons of international partnerships, which is a challenging topic these days. So we'll be on the Artemis Accords. You know, and basically human health as well. So all these important topics, trying not just to focus on launch vehicles and crew vehicles, but look at the big picture on all these different pieces throughout our society, throughout culture that have to come together and make this possible. and hopefully enable us to get back to the surface of the moon this decade

and to the surface of Mars by the mid-2030s. But go to storemars.org and register. It's in Washington, D.C., May 28th and 29th, at the Jack Morton Auditorium at George Washington University. The humans to Mars, some are absolutely fantastic. Chris's explore Mars in general. And I just want to say there will be at this year's conference some particularly interesting panels.

Chris and crew have done an amazing job focusing on blue collar work in space, what we call blue collar work, the trades, trying to figure out what will be the pathway, the pipeline, to find the equivalent of the PhDs of the world of welding, of the world of construction, of the world of HVAC, people who don't have a normal pipeline into establishing the upper echelon of these fields because it's people in those fields know who's the best welder, but we need to figure out how to get that knowledge transferred to the people who are flying missions and have a need for them. And then we'll also be doing a panel on, and this is where I think Chris is just the work

he and ExplorMars do is just invaluable. a panel on the concept of doing work in microgravity, extended work, letting the body atrophy, experiencing the effects of microgravity, and then landing people on Earth and immediately putting them in a Mars analog environment with the idea of mimicking the first humans landing on Mars after a six or seven month journey and needing to immediately get to work. So these are things that come out of the Mars Society. back in the day. The Mars analog stuff looked so weird and corny at first. And now it turns out maybe that was a good idea. And it's good that we started doing this stuff sort of without

permission and the powers that be are now recognizing it. And the conferences are just fun. You'll, every time I go, there's some talk, there's some presentation that just something I didn't, I'd never thought of that just blows my mind, like life support on ISS, for example. And how, how just continuously close the astronauts on ISS are to having a problem, but yet they're close to Earth and how that changes when you leave and go to the moon or much different at Mars.

So come on out. You should check out. I'm going to do a live demo of my accordion-based eclis system at the conference, so you should just swing over. Check that out. I think that falls in the age, back.

Yeah. Hey, all right. Yeah, that's another. Listen, I said Mike Rowe earlier on the show, I didn't realize we were going to get such a micro-centric episode here. It feels like a thing that he's such a great guy. My last big documentary was about the dismantling

of the Bay Bridge. And I actually worked with Mike a little bit. He'd voiced the trailer for us. He's like a hero of mine. I was working for Discovery Channel at the same time that he doing some work for them at the same time he was at his apex.

The king of discovery, yeah. It was such a trip to have him and we ended up doing the documentary with no narration. So it's just, and that documentary, by the way, is called Demo Bay Bridge, D-E-M-O-Colon Bay Bridge, and it's about the demo of the San Francisco Bay Bridge. But, yeah, amazing guy. I mean, I think he has done and continues to do just extraordinary work

in shining a light on people whose capability and intelligence is just not seen in general by society, and that's the people who do labor. It's a lot of shit to build a space. We finally got to comment. Nailed it. Got it. That's it. I don't know if we find a better planning spot than that. So the movie is on

Prime Video. Is that the best place to get it? What's the deal? And then what else do you want to shout out that people should check out? Yeah, yeah. I mean, check out our website. Go to culture and space.org. Obviously, go to explore Mars and humans. What's the new conference called?

Humans to the moon and Mars. No, help me. It's a little more of a mouthful, but we do it, H2M2. It was H2M before now. It's H2M2. I like that H2M2. Or if you want to say H2M squared, but I've got to bounce back and forth, but H2M2 is easier to say still.

So, at least for me. It's great. I mean, for all of us who are nuts about space, it's just a crazy time right now. I mean, this polar orbit that's happening as we speak, sorry, I want to keep this ever green, but that's just such an amazing moment, right? A new view of planet Earth that we haven't seen before. And then we're just on the verge of getting back to the moon. It's, yeah, it's almost too much.

It's just so exciting. Yeah, it's a fun time. Well, Jake, I don't know if we know what next week is yet because we're working two weeks out. No, we're, we're too far ahead. We're too far in the past to know the future. Instead, I'm just going to play a Sixers song, we'll see you next week because this is Jake's favorite song. Bye, everybody.

1, 2, 3, 4, 3, 2, 1,000. End of death.