Off-Nominal - 227 - They Make the Rocket from One Factory (with Alastair Storm Browne)

Episode Date: February 5, 2026

Jake and Anthony are joined by author Alastair Storm Browne to talk about developing space, and his new book, Building the Space Infrastructure.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 227 - They Make the Rocket from One Factory (with Alastair Storm Browne) - YouTubeAmazon.com: Building the Space Infrastructure: Developing the Cis-Lunar Neighborhood eBook : Browne, Alastair: Kindle StoreAmazon.com: Cosmic Careers: Exploring the Universe of Opportunities in the Space Industries eBook : Browne, Alastair Storm, Karinch, Maryann: Kindle StoreWho owns the moon? One man's lunar claim | SpaceThe Space Review: US space resources law needs clarification by CongressFollow AlastairStorm Browne Enterprises, LLCAmazon.com: Alastair Storm Browne: books, biography, latest updateFollow 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. Well, Jake, you have another month of me saying our prime directive is to talk about only Artemis 2 until it launches. That's a bad directive. Yeah. I wore the shirt anticipation of the launch this weekend, and, yeah, didn't really work out. Bad luck, I guess. It didn't. It didn't.

But we've got to, it's a good moment to pause and talk about more generically the concept. of space infrastructure. That's a fair enough segue, right? Alastair, right? Yes. You have an E. I feel like I've seen her name a lot without an E at the end.

Yes, my last name ends with an E. Brown. There you go. Mm-hmm. There we go. There it is my name. The coolest name. It is a pretty intense name.

This is my first book called Cosmic Careers. It was released four years ago. But anyway, right around Artemis 1, yeah. We're talking about building the space infrastructure. It is my life's work. I started work on it in 1990 after I got my Master of Science degree in space studies from the University of North Dakota. And then with the first President Bush proposed a space exploration initiative, having a landing on the moon and having a base and then going to Mars. And Washington, D.C. requests that everybody

writes proposals to him. So I wrote a 100-page proposal. I sent it to them. And it did get published in a pamphlet called America at the threshold along with lots of other people, you know, a thousand other people. Parts of my proposal was published, not all of it. But then it got canceled because lack of interest, but I held on to my proposal and I even expanded upon from 100 to 500 pages. And I would sell it at the International Space Development Conferences and give presentations on it. One of my presentation has been filmed on my website, Stormbrown Enterprise LLC.org. And then I ran into an agent, Marianne Carrinch, in which she also contacted Harper Collins and took portions of my book

and made it into a career, cosmic career, saying what kind of jobs you can get in space and what the book says you can get anything, because the space is going to need everything that all skills, not just professional ones. And then the rest of my book, that left the rest of my book. Well, unfortunately, my first book didn't sell well. And so I was left with the rest of my manuscript. So I decided to, on advice from other people, self-publish it on Amazon. And so...

So this is a throwback. This is like... So this is the original... This is kind of the framework that you developed in the 90s. And then expanding upon it for the modern age, which is obviously every president since then has also said, we should go to the moon and then Mars. with small deviations within, but it's all variations of a theme for sure.

Of course, I kept up with the times discarded things that were obsolete and put in new ideas until I got my final book and I listened to the ideas of other people and such and used my own imagination, And so here it is with building the space infrastructure, which is, which is sort of like the main book anyway of my manuscript. Cosmic Careers has just spawned from it, except the spawn came first.

And the script on us. And anyway, I'm proud of it. It's all up to date. it doesn't have to be updated because basically it's a general, it's basically a general out, not, I wouldn't say outline, but a general description. Anybody can read this book. It's, it's supposed to be read, be able to be read by anybody, and they would get a good understanding of what we need to have. And incidentally, I left, I deliberately left Mars out, because if we're going to go, go to Mars, we need to have a good solid base in space

from low Earth orbit to the moon before we get to Mars because we just can't access Mars from the ground on Earth because of the gravity well. I found our spot where we're going to fight, Jake. You've already straight into the very controversial

stuff here. Can we skip the moon altogether? There's a battleground right there. A good thing to discuss on the one month, We've got it hard of us too, I guess, Jake. Yeah. All right, well, what did you, you had a mug earlier?

What did you bring to drink as we battle, I guess? I don't actually know how hardened Jake's opinions in Belt Mars are anymore, but... A mug of water. A mug of water. You got to love a mug of water. Yeah. I didn't, I didn't use any alcohol because I kind of wish, if I'm going to be on this podcast, I got to know what I'm talking about and not slip the tongue.

You know what? Well, I bring a beer because I like to drink. Yeah, I like to be a little drunk when I'm listening to Jake spout off about Mars. So I've got a ton of wood freshies. Look at that can. Alcohol can preserve anything except secrets. It can preserve Jake's Mars takes, I guess. What do you got, Jake?

You bring another mead? No, I got just a nice little cocktail today. That's a something sunrise or something. Yeah, a little orange juice, little greenery and a little rum. What is it? Is it a sunrise? Yeah. I don't know.

You made some other thing up once and they called it something. It's really easy. They just like, yeah, it just kind of happens. So it's nice. Maybe next time I'll bring a little something better to drink, you know. All right. Like maybe some beer. Yeah.

Where are we starting, Jake? You've had some infrastructure thoughts recently, Jake. I'm curious if we get dragged down some of the rabbit holes that you've been doing. I think we will. Yeah. I think we will. Yeah. Well, maybe Al-Azerer, like, why don't you start by,

telling us a little bit of your background and like how do you how did you get to writing or maybe not necessarily writing the book because the book came later but how did you get to be interested in this topic you know what was your your master's and stuff you mentioned how did you get to that point in the 90s okay space has always been a lifelong interest to me ever since I was a baby I was fascinated with cartoons I was fascinated with books with space illustrations and it's sort of like evolved as I was growing up. And the first rocket launch I've seen was that of Jiminy 5. And the minute I saw that rocket launch, I was so thrilled about it that I went around my neighborhood describing it to everyone I see about what I saw. Five, four, three, two, one.

Just like that to everybody. And all the adults were smiling at me, you know, like a little kid. But I've always been interested in it. I took a big interest in it when I was in the sixth grade. I took an interest in it again when I was a junior in high school when they had Skylab. Of course, I saw Apollo Live, Apollo 11 live, and I've seen other Apollo moon landings also all the way up to Apollo 17. And then I saw Skylab on TV. and then the space shuttle launches. And there were times when I put space on the back burner,

but it always came back to me. And when I was at the universities, I majored in journalism because I wanted to be a writer. I tried to be a science fiction writer first, and I've written two complete books of sci-fi. They never got published, and I showed them to an agent, and she sent me a four-page letter on. These aren't really good, and she told me why.

But she also gave me some advice on what I should do, what courses I can take, and so on. Well, and then I worked for the Census Bureau for a year, but I also did volunteer work at the National Space Society in Washington, because I lived in Suitland, Maryland, just outside. And then after I left my job, I saw some ads articles about universities and courses in space world. And then someone gave me the address for space studies in North Dakota. So I applied to that. And lo and behold, I got accepted. And so I went to Grand Forks, North Dakota. and I did my work there, wrote a lot of essays,

and I realized that my talent in writing is in nonfiction, not science fiction. And it's better that way, nonfiction, because in a way I can just write it the way it is, the way space should be, instead of writing a plot line and just describing... Is he frozen for you, Jake? Yep.

Something like that. He's back. He's back. You were frozen for a sec, but... I just... I suppose that was the plot line. It was a failing satellite connection down to Jake. That was the plot line. I think you're back.

Are you back? Yeah. Okay. He's back. Yeah, I am back. What's it like doing space work in North Dakota? I loved it. I mean, when I was at the university, they had a space studies library, and whatever assignments they gave us,

I would just go and write it. And then I would, at night, in the evenings, I would go to the Christus Rex Lutheran Center, which is one of those campus ministries. And you could just go there and go into library and just do your work there, which is what I did. And I got to meet a lot of people there. Yeah, I love doing it. And I got to you. I remember Lauren Grush a couple years ago went and visited some lab that was making like a different

EVA suit. Do you remember this video, Jake? It was like, I thought it was up in North Dakota also. I think it was Montana. I think you're talking about, yeah, because it was, uh, who's the, the former associate administrator or, uh, deputy administrator, was it Davin Newman was a space suit person? And she was at, I think it was Montana. One of those states up there in that stretch, the, the prairie stretch against the ball area. I'll look it up. No, it was. It was university of North Dakota. Okay, was it? All right. So she was in North Dakota. Yes, that doesn't surprise me. UND, it's in Grand Forks, North Dakota, by the way.

It's on the Minnesota border, and it's separated by a river called Redwood River of the North. Just little geography for you. But anyway, it would be at UND because they've expanded the Space Studies program ever since I have been there, and they expanded it greatly. I have managed to be... What's happening? Do you hear this? Oh, I'm hearing Lauren Grush yelling about a spacesuit. I clicked the link and it was playing in the background. I was like, what is happening?

That is hilarious. Yeah. He told me about, he told us about the spacesuit, and then he said they're doing it at the University of North Dakota. And I'm just adding to it, saying that doesn't surprise me. They're doing a lot of new space things at U&D that they didn't do when I was there. I think, Anthony, our friend Elizabeth Howell also went to UND for space stuff, didn't she? Elizabeth Howell, that does ring a bell. Yeah, she's a Canadian space chair.

Yeah. She likes to be driving distance. Not too far away. Just got a stupid, just deeper, just deeper noses. North Dakota, the Canada of the U.S. Oh, yeah. To be on the hockey team at U.N.D, you have to have Canadian citizenship.

I mean, just baller jerseys, too. Like, some of the best jerseys in college hockey. But that's a different thing. Jake only knows about juniors. He's Canadian. He's truly, truly Canadian. He only knows about... He talks about the OHL, the WHL,

and the MJ, which one you're talking about here? It's the HL that you go and get other jobs, and that doesn't include playing hockey, if you're playing that one. Anyway. Yeah, just interesting. I guess we occasionally hear about them, but it doesn't feel like it has such a big force these days.

You know, I guess we can come up with a handful of things, but it is interesting with us. As we list off all the things. Yeah, I know. I guess it's kind of a lot. Are you talking about U and D at space studies? There is another space. There is the International Space University,

which is in, I think on the French, Dutch border, I believe it is. Yeah. Yeah. I've never been there, but they do have a space studies program there. It's complicated. It's, you have six different choices.

or six different fields that you pick, and then you get into that particular field of space right there. That's the last time I've heard about it. I'm reading about it. They do everything in English there. But I don't consider it a competitor. I think it complements. U&D and ISU complement each other.

It's a shame that they don't get in contact with, with each other a lot more because I think they should do that you know to see what each other is doing and sort of like I wouldn't say give advice but take

some learn from each other take some hints from each other to do like for example what ISU does they could tell what you would they could tell it to you and D

saying this is what we do. Are you interested in imitating it or something like that? That's the word. And I hope that there are other space studies departments and other universities elsewhere. But both U&D and ISU seem to be pretty popular for space advocates. I don't know what other universities have that discipline. It's like a lot, you find a lot more, you know, engineering specific or science specific. But I guess the concept of space studies is that supposed to be more general in that it's not only those fields, but also more like the kind of architectures and infrastructure stuff that you've been focused on?

Yes. As I say, I'm a writer. So space studies is supposed to be for all this, any discipline. In any discipline, you can go in the space studies department and focus. what you're good at, apply what you're good at in space studies and whatever project you have, you could use your expertise in your field and apply it to space studies and how it can help the space field out. In my case, I found that I'm a writer, and so I write a lot, but I'm a writer and researcher. But I can also do a lot of research and scientific things related to science and engineering and analyze it and get it up. For example, highlighting a book, for example, of the best part in taking notes and writing an essay on that. I am good at that sort of thing.

Other people may be good at something else. mathematics, engineering, what else could apply? Logistics. It's all about logistics these days, like everyone's talking about how to get things places

is like the topic. And that's, I don't know, I feel like where the place to start on the equivalence to today from, you know, think about where you're writing in the 90s. You're writing this paper. And you've got the shuttle program kind of up and running.

it's sort of in the post-challender days in the midst of the DoD going back to, all right, we're going to do commercial launch again, not just only fly on the space shuttle. We started to have the, you know, ISS was a flicker in some people's eyes as we're coming out of, well, maybe we'll have space station freedom, maybe we'll end up working with what will come of the Russians beyond that. And it was a similar inflection point where you had a couple of pieces to play with, but what you actually do with them is majorly up for debate. And I feel like that's where we sit now, where we're like down this road enough on SLS

Orion that they are going to fly some people by the moon pretty soon. We are, you know, even the administrator that's most likely to cancel the program is saying, no, we've got to keep flying it through Artemis 5. And yet we've got these other landers being developed. So it's a similar moment where you've got a lot in the field and it's up to the people working there to organize, like, what are we actually going to do with this? Well, I think it's good for a show like Artemis 2 orbiting the moon and Artemis 3 landing on the moon, but I don't think we should put our chips on the Artemis program. Personally, the SLS space launch system, or as some of us jokingly say, Senate launch system, because a lot of U.S. senators want to keep that alive so they can stay in office.

the SLS system is like the Saturn 5. It was good in its day, but it costs so much to maintain. I mean, even today, there were hydrogen leaks that has postponed the launch for a month. And this has happened before. This is not an isolated incident. And they're going to, with any and every SLS rocket is made brand new, and they throw it all away after each launch, and it just runs up to money,

while millions of dollars, while you have something like SpaceX and Blue Origin with reusable rockets, first of all, they make the rocket from one factory instead of getting different factories and different companies to make different stages. That's one of the reasons why they're so expensive. So I think...

I've never heard it framed that way before. They used just one factory. And it's like obviously very true, but I've just never ever like worded it that way. And I'm just... How many factories does it take? Yeah, about maybe three or four. Well, if you make a rocket from a private company, it takes one. No kidding.

You know, no matter how big or small the rocket is. It is interesting, though, that they've started to open... more open. And I don't know if this is an Isaacman thing or what, but I feel like in the press conference after this most recent wet dress rehearsal, they've actually started to talk more openly about how every one of these core stages is unique and is a one-off thing and we're never, it's always going to be experimental. Like they actually said that on the press conference. Yeah. That was pretty remarkable. A kind of like low-key admission, but it is an interesting way that Jared Isaacman's communication around this is openly saying like, hey, this thing is really slow flight rate. We are going to have these problems because of that. So there's at least more open talk about it. Yeah. I find that kind of interesting, too. In the book, you make a lot of equivalences to railroads, canals,

infrastructure that has been developed throughout human history. And I wonder in how we look at the modern space environment and what you would put under the bucket of like, this is infrastructure that we are building that would lead forward versus this is kind of a one-off thing. And nothing about SLS, I don't really know if anyone. says like, oh, this is the reliable infrastructure that will exist for decades and decades. First of all, I deliberately did not mention SLS. First of all, if they were to cancel SLS tomorrow, I would not care one bit because, as I said, the private rockets, even up to heavy lift launch vehicles are made privately and they run better.

sure, SpaceX had a lot of problems with their, what's the name of that big rocket again? With Starship, yeah. Starship, yeah. They're having problems, but they're starting to iron things out. That's the way with every new rocket. Anyway, SLS is just, it's going to be a drain, and it's going to be a constant drain, and it's going to be expensive, and yes, costs do matter. Well, a private launch company could do it for a fraction of the cost, literally for a fraction.

So I wouldn't mind Artemis just for a couple of launches, just for sort of like cheering the space movement on. I'll say, we're going, we're getting moving. But then we should just at least give SLS to a private company and let them do what they want. NASA should just get out of the rocket business completely. The government should. and just let the private companies handle it. And two, what was I going to say? Yes, when it comes to building the infrastructure,

we're not going to build one thing at a time. Like we're not going to build, like first the way station, then we're going to build a space factory, then we're going to land on the moon. It's going to be different people doing different things all at once. And each company is going to focus their energy on their own particular project. But this time they'll go together like a jigsaw puzzle. I didn't mention that word in my book.

And I didn't mention exactly. A second edition coming out after that. Yeah. I didn't mention it exactly in my book the way I said it. But that's what I mean because you see all these different functions in the infrastructure. Who's going to build them all? Well, the government certainly isn't, and there isn't any reason why they should,

because it's going to be a drain on the taxpayer. And yes, in my book, I do get concerned with the taxpayer, with government money, even if it's a whole bunch of countries, pouring their resources in. They've got to get something out of it. but if you leave it to the private companies and other countries could be involved too if they want to get involved on a different project, that's fine. And even NASA, if they want to do one thing, that's fine. But it's going to be everybody doing everything at once, one entity at a time at the same time.

That's the way I could put it. I think I'm trying to figure out how you point at a thing and say, like, that's infrastructure, right? Because we have, we look historically and we're like, a canal, that's infrastructure, a railroad, that's infrastructure. But with space, it's companies that are trying to be vertically integrated and building their own launch, their own space. It's a capabilities approach. Yeah, I think that's my point, Jake. It's like, I don't, I don't know if anyone, we all say like, yes, we got to build the infrastructure for space, but I don't think anyone really has a good rubric to look at it and be like, yep, that looks like infrastructure to me. Like, does the Falcon 9 count as infrastructure?

It's a really good long vehicle, but... Infrastructure is just not one thing. Infrastructure is not just an interstate highway. That's part of the infrastructure. Bridges are part of the infrastructure. Railroads are part of the infrastructure. An infrastructure includes electrical systems, waterworks, utilities. The infrastructure includes every one of those things.

Everything. It's not just one thing. And that's how it would be with space. It wouldn't be just a way station. It would be a transportation system, a way space station, space factories, O'Neill Space Colonies, Bases on the Moon, habitats, all of that put together is infrastructure. Yeah. So I guess one way you could think of it then would be like, you know, the Falcon 9 isn't infrastructure. But we can now go to space within a certain amount of weeks for a certain amount of dollars.

And that's just a thing that is always available to us now. It's just like that is just always on the table. It's like a commodity. You just go to the store and you buy that. It's still expensive, but it's there. Like the thing exists. And you can go go to lower orbit whenever you want if you have the right amount of money. And, you know, a certain amount of time you want to wait.

If there's somewhere to go, of course, like the ISS now. The infrastructure we need. as something to do in space there'll always be there's a lot to do in space cleaning up space junk is part of the infrastructure it has to be

so everything that you see in space infrastructure is not singular it's plural it's infrastructure does not one is not one thing

it's everything put together. That's infrastructure. So you talk about the cis lunar space as being very important, right? That's like the critical kind of thing to build this. Can you talk a little bit? I want to segue into the Mars thing eventually, but maybe just talk first about like why is cis lunar space is like why is that so critical to, you know, moving forward and why do you see it that way?

All right. First of all, cis lunar space is from low Earth orbit. to the surface of the moon. That I'll just introduce you with the definition. Cis lunar space is important because that's, that is the nearest to us. As you go, as you leave your door of your house, you're in the street. Well, it's the same thing with space. When you go to low Earth orbit, that's cis lunar space.

And you have to build a neighborhood. you have to build some support for your ship or for your transport if you want to get anywhere. So cis-lunar space would consist of low-earth orbit, way stations, space factories. As you go to the moon, in between Earth and the Moon, geosynchronous orbit is just as necessary because that's where you're going to put solar power satellites, and that's a different, that's a separate topic altogether. space factories. Although we skipped over, everyone used to do math on whether or not those are going to be physically possible, and now everyone

just does data center math. So we've kind of like, I feel like that was, SSP was a hot topic for a minute there. Everyone doing math on like, is this physically possible? And now we're, now we're switched over. So maybe we'll come back to it, but maybe we'll talk about data. All right. You ask if it's physically possible.

I don't want to do the whole rabbit all. No, no, I'm not, this is anything in general. You've got to try it to find out. I mean, you just can't arrive to the conclusion. I mean, there's only one way to find out if it's possible, and that is just do it. Whatever it is. So you're on the board of spin launch, is what you're telling me. You're an advisor to spin launch, yeah.

I don't know what it's been. Don't look it up. It's fine. But maybe I've got to look that up. Look it up and then email me your opinion about it. Okay. I think you're right. Sorry, I totally derailed you.

Skip over SSP. Keep going. You're working your way out in CISL lunar. All right. Now, the Earth is in the middle of a shooting gallery with asteroids. I'm quite sure you hear about asteroids striking Earth like Chila Chalabes. I don't know how it's pronounced. It was hit recently in Siberia.

And it shattered a lot of buildings. It injured a lot of people. But fortunately, nobody was killed. and it was 60 miles above the earth's surface. Well, Tunguska struck in 1908 to a Siberian forest, and that leveled it to the ground, or like, I think, around 2,000 square miles, something like that. And it was like trees all over the places. If it was something pounded an entire forest.

And nobody was killed. Well, a lot of animals were killed, wildlife, but no humans were, to my knowledge. But the reason I'm bringing this up is because we're afraid of asteroids hitting the Earth. You've seen disaster movies of asteroids hitting the ocean, hitting the Earth, and what happens afterward. Well, that could happen in real life. And we are in the middle of a shooting gallery with asteroids between Earth and the Moon. They pass us all the time. And you read in the news, well, such and such an asteroid is going to pass.

Earth within like maybe a thousand miles. The best thing to do is to get those asteroids. If we don't want them to hit Earth, we can get a hold of them and we can mine them for their valuable minerals. So mining asteroids will be a very important thing. It would also, space factories would be built, manufacture a lot of products, semiconductors, all sorts of all sorts of devices and habitats that made of metal

alloys you can get them from these asteroids and besides you could save the earth by not having to mine these minerals down there because the moon and asteroids have the same amount have the same minerals as we do here but it's you don't have to pollute the earth to do it like you don't have to pollute greenland for example that has minerals, but anyway, there's a lot of asteroids. The asteroids. Yes.

By force, take the asteroids, yes. We could take the asteroids to keep them from hitting Earth, and that's between cis-luner space right there. There will be space, there will be solar power satellites. I've mentioned that. There'd be space habitats going all the way to lunar orbit. And then when you land on the moon, you establish settlements, on the moon, you establish mining colonies, scientific laboratories, astronomical laboratories,

and such. And so, cis-luner space would be the first place where we would expand human civilization altogether, taking our industries with us. And we would live out there. that's a complicated thing right there living out there but living and working out there and a lot is mentioned in that book also so so is the thesis there then basically just it's because it's close that's why it's important yes yeah i mean if you're going to go out there you've got to go to the close things first it's like uh when we when europe colonized the rest of the world

They went to the farthest things first, and they went farther out and farther out and farther out. But they had a base behind them. And that's how it will be in space. We will go to the closest places first, established bases, whatever you want to call them, whether they're factories or way stations. It's frozen. Big Mars has got to him, Jake. Robert Zubran. The Mars Direct.

society, Mars society has gotten to him. No stopping at the moon, they say. I don't know. He might be gone. I don't know what happened. He's totally frozen. We'll see if he comes back.

Do you feel like going to Mars, man? I feel like it's all we talked about when we started these podcasts. Yeah. Things have changed. Yeah. It's gone. Like, nobody talks about it, including SpaceX now. Isn't that weird, though?

Like, because that was, honestly, it felt. like it was dominating conversation for half a decade. But I don't know. We're discussing how everyone used to debate going straight to Mars versus do we need other staging areas before Mars. And now barely anyone talks about humans to Mars. It's very, it comes up once in a while. But it's not as dominating as it used to be in like the 2015 era.

I would favor going to Mars. I may not see it in my lifetime. I know Bob Zubrin personally, by the way. I've met him many times. I've been to many of his lectures. And he does... I mean, he still talks about it, for sure. He's not off the soapbox.

He's still rolling on that front. But he's like a lone holdout, I feel like. The thing about it is, is that you just can't have Earth with nothing in Earth orbit, nothing onto moon, to back it up. Because let's say you're on a ship going to Mars and maybe something happens. something bad happens and you need something you need someone to come to your rescue right away well if you're just on earth and the low gravity on earth it's you're just going to have to take a rocket bashing it uh refurbish it and it's going to take maybe a month and by then it'll be too late

while if you're in space you can send something right away you know from the moon oh there's an emergency okay, we'll send something right away and they just do it while on Earth. The old adage of low Earth orbit is halfway to anywhere, right? Yes, it is. And I think that's true. Maybe not literally, but there's a lot of truth in that. I've always thought that like the discussion between, you know, should we go to the moon first or should we go to Mars first has always been like a little

presumptuous. I think that like ultimately we're going to like go where there are actionable. business cases. Like that's what's going to, it's like where, where is their political or economic, you know, support to do something somewhere? And I think just by nature of physics, that's going to end up giving us lots of moon and and cis lunar stuff first just because it's cheaper. Like, like, just get down to the.

And the generation cycles are so much quicker. Like, you can, you know, a lot of this, I mean, our criticism to the SLS was it takes so long to get to the next version of it. And it's like, yeah, the Mars launch windows are really constraining on. that those early days where you're developing stuff that you need the shots on goal approach take you need a lot of them and yeah mars doesn't give you a ton in cis lunar space first of all you can make a lot of money from doing these things from mining the asteroids mining the moon and uh and then you can build the civilization from that money and that'd be profits you could pay off the national debt

strange as it may sound but you can do that uh but while if you take you take you just do Mars direct, somebody is just going to have to pay for everything and not get a return. Oh yes, a teacher of mine, one of my teachers once said to me, Joanne Gabrinowitz, great woman, big in the space law. One said to me that people aren't going to invest in space unless they can get a profit or return from it. if we just decide to do Mars direct, we're not going to get a return. While if we do the moon first and cis lunar space, you're going to get a big return. And you'll be able to go anywhere you want after that. You could go to Mars after that.

And I'm quite sure that as we build our infrastructure, there will be private expeditions that will decide to go to Mars that may have nothing to do with us, but they just might decide to do that on their own. And I say fine. Nope. Uh-oh. Zuberin's outside his apartment. I still say fine.

One corollary is like... Zuber's here? I think he's hacking your internet connection and trying to shut you down by throwing shade on the Mars direct ROI case, which he's always pushing. I think licensing patents he's hot all about, but... Is that why I see my face freezing all the time? Yeah, it's something a little shoddy, but... One aspect is like, you know, to use railroads as the example, right?

It's like, first people in Utah weren't the ones like building railroads and driving the golden spike. You know, like that happened eventually, but there was a shitload of people in Utah before that. Yeah, there were. And I think like these conversations with the Mars or Mars or Moon first, it's like, yeah, I don't, I don't think it's a clean, all right, well, we should we should build our infrastructure as we go. And that will be the furthest extent of humans in space. where it's both things, right? You're actually building underlying infrastructure at the same time as you're probably stretching

how far humans have been as on these kind of one-off journeys or exploration or whatever the case is. I think where it gets weird is that there's a lot, I mean, Starship itself and others have similar visions that the hardware that you need to build that cis-luner infrastructure that you're talking about has a lot in common with what it would take

to do these, you know, either singular or every couple of months, every launch window, you've got a couple of missions going, those are very similar to get you off of earth. And so, you know, building hardware that could do both lets you work on both things simultaneously. And it's not really a decision point. But I don't know. I feel like it's, I don't really know if it's, I never really get involved in those arguments because I'm like, I don't really understand the value of this because like, Jake, I'm like,

I don't know. Who's doing what? Where are you all going? It's not like there's some like governing body that if we just convince them, they'll just, they'll, like, decree that's what we're doing. And then that's the only thing we can. And there is. You know, we're not, like, bound to some, like, overarching decision. Yeah, one, one main decision. People are just going to do it. We also can't just wait really hard. And then one of them will happen, you know. Well, as I said earlier, I mean, there's not going to be

one group of people building the whole infrastructure or there's, we're not going to do it one thing at a time. Uh, there's going to be different, uh, group. Uh, uh, there's going to be different, uh, groups, different industries, different countries building different things at the same time. And as I said before, if someone decides to say, I want to go to Mars now, you know, and I've got the rocket, okay, go ahead. I mean, who's going to stop them? Like you said in Utah, when they were building the transcontinental rare world west, there was people out west. The only thing was to get more people out there. you know, rather than going in covered wagons, they could just go on a train.

In other words, do it the easy way. Yeah. Yeah, even the internet started out as just one line between two universities or whatever it was, right? So you build for what you are trying to do and then you'll eventually have something that you can all the one day you'll just realize I can invent Amazon now, right? Because the internet has reached a certain critical mass, right? So, yeah. Alster, I want to talk about the later stages of this, so the idea of space settlement. So there's an interesting idea in your book about this space settlement act.

And I want to maybe talk about like what role the idea of settlement plays in your ideas and what this idea for a legal structure to support it looks like. Okay. The space settlement act, by the way, it's an appendix. A, in my first appendix, I have it right here. Here it is. It's the draft of an act. I did not write this act.

It was given to me. This was done by someone in the government. I think it was drafted in the late 1990s, and then I think it was resubmitted recently. I don't know when, but what it is is that have the U.S. or some entity, some international entity, grant something like 6 million acres or several, 3,000 square miles of the moon to somebody, but they have to use it. If they don't use it after a period of like three or four years, it reverts back, you lose it.

and they don't, what they have in mind would be someone just using a small part of it and then selling the rest of the land to somebody else so they could develop it. And then someone else who owns some spare land would sell it to somebody else for development and so on. What it is is not really to create a plantation, but to give people the incentive to set up a settlement or an industry. history within that land grant. This one is always interesting to me because there's so many weird roadblocks to an idea like that that, like, first of all, I mean, I guess technically by law today, that would probably be illegal, right, because it would violate the outer space treaty because it doesn't then have like something about.

No, no. I thought of that. As a matter of fact, I looked into that. It doesn't violate the outer space treaty. The outer space treaty says, no land on the moon or any other heavenly body shall be subject to ownership by a nation. In other words, you can't go and colonize the moon in the name of the United States or in the name of China or whatever. You'd have to have some sort of like international body agree to take a piece of this land and give it away. right? It couldn't be one country, you know, offering those as, as, you know, tracks of land or whatever, right?

Yes. Yes. Okay. Okay. And then I guess the other thing I question I have with that would be like that I've heard that idea before in various incarnations and I think until you have like access to it, you know, like the infrastructure of being able to go to that land and do something with it until that is like available equitably. I don't know if it ends up. being, like, you know, okay, well, who's going to get this land? Is this one, well, whoever can afford to, like, fly rockets there and do something with it, right? They're going to get it all. And regular people are not going to get any, right? And so how do you manage that in a way that doesn't just, like, exacerbate wealth inequality to turn into the end's degree? Yeah.

I think what you're saying is get people to claim, get some land and not argue over it. Is that it? Well, just be like, like, if, if, if, if, you're saying, if, if, you get people to claim, get some land and not argue over it, is that it? If I have a piece of land and Jeff Bezos has a piece of land, he's going to be able to do a lot. Both equally likely scenarios. I can't do. The only thing I can really do with that is sell it to him. Really, like, let's be the end of the day.

That's what's going to happen. And so then you're going to have this issue where the only people that are actually like utilizing these pieces of land are going to be like the ultimately very powerful or wealthy people, right? that depends on what you're going to do with the land. Unfortunately, going into space is going to take a lot of money. It's going to cost a lot of money. However, I am not anti-rich or anti-wealth. I'm against them taking it from other people. That's another story, and I'm against what they're doing with it,

and I'm against using it for their own selfish purposes. But I think what you're saying is that if you have, a piece of land and let's say Jeff Bezos have a piece of land. Jeff Bezos land is his land and your land is your land. And if you do, what you do with it, what each of you do, what either of you do with your land is your business. If you choose to have a farm on that land and he chooses to mine minerals, that's, that's quite, all right. Now, he could help you because lunar land contains a lot of minerals in the soil that you should take out before you decide to farm it. And if you can get him to do you a favor, maybe you can have these minerals and we'll pay us and then we would like to farm it. And if you reach an agreement of some sort, yes, I am against conflicts in space. I am against... There is space law, and there is the enforcement of space law. Space law already exists on the books. So...

Yeah, no, I... So do you recognize Richard Garriott's claim to the Lunacod II rover path? That's a fun question. Jake, would you recognize that? A rover path? So Richard Garriott bought the Soviet rover. He bought it in like 93 or something, right? Yeah, yeah.

He bought the rover at an auction. Yes. And then has since speculated that under, as you defined, right, the outer space treaty bounds finds nations and not private individuals. So I think his claim, if I remember correctly, off top my head from something I have not read for like 10 years, he says he has a legitimate claim to the area that the rover has surveyed, which was like a 25-mile path plus what was visible within its camera site.

He bought that rover and he has a legal claim to that territory. I don't think so, actually. I want to do something. I want to revert to history. During the Alaska Gold Rush, for example, and Gold Rush is before that. if you found some gold on a piece of land, you have to claim it, and then you have to file that claim.

So I think, what's his name? Richard Garriott. Garriott? Yeah. If he wants to claim that piece of land simply because his rover drove on it, I doubt very seriously that he can. He would have to check an international organization

to see. I'd like to claim this land and I'd like to file this claim. I think he would have to go through that. You just cannot take something a rover, for example, and put it on the moon

and decide to run it and say, this is my piece of land. I never even moved after he bought it. That's the fun part about this. Yeah. Yeah. I wonder where those forms are. I'd like to see those forms to fill out. Well, that's the funny thing, right?

I claim this land. No, you can't. Who tells me, who tells me that? Like, I think that's his whole thing. Is that, like, he brought this into discussion because he's like, we have no framework for any of this. No. You know. Right now, nobody can just say, I claim this land, this land is mine, and you're not allowed on it.

No. Yeah, we have resource. So if you go and you get resources out of areas, that's the, was that in the, I forget what act that was in? But, you know, the U.S. and, was it like Lichten's? Somebody was really hot about it. Netherlands was, right? Or Belgium? There was a couple of different countries in that area of Europe that were like all in on this.

But there's, you know, so the resources he could, if he went and he took, you know, some resources out of Lunakad II's track, then he has a legal claim to the resources mined from that area, but not the land itself. Yes. Yeah, you can, if you take some resources, you can keep the resources and do whatever you want with it. but you don't have rights to the land. Unless he does, unless it turns out. I mean, I think kind of, I kind of think the way he went about this, and again, this was like 30 years ago that he surfed,

or 30 years ago he bought it. I don't know when he started talking about this, but I kind of feel like the pathway he has shown us is the only way that this is going to happen in the future, which is like, all right, now you all figure out if I own this land or not. I've set up a lunar habitat here. Like, I say I do.

You all say I don't. Like, I guess we got to figure this out on an international scale. You got a force issue right. Something like that, like the Moon Treaty, came out in 1975. The U.S. never signed it. I don't favor it. What you just said, I don't know if that's part of the Outer Space Treaty or the Moon Treaty. I can look it up, but the Moon Treaty doesn't apply right now.

Yeah. But from what I understand, and I do remember reading it, and he does have a right, he can take the resources, but not the land. That's what I understand about it now. If you want the land, I think you are going to have to go through some international organization evolving the UN. That might not be set up yet. If it is set up, there are probably very small offices. Well, I think that's not there. The point is that the law doesn't exist.

There is no office where you submit a form to say you claim. That's not real. So, and we, we have like very real examples of that now, which I would say that planetary protection is like, that's like one that really sticks out right now as, as like very tenuous. And it's like, here's what happens when you have a policy built on a law built on a on a international framework that no one is regulating or enforcing. And because like if today, if me and Anthony pulled her money and flew to Mars and then landed there and just dumped a big pile of garbage there, like that would violate the, the planetary protection guidelines. but there's no penalty. Like, nothing bad would happen to us. You can't go to jail for it.

And so, like, that would be a forcing function, too. I imagine some legislators would get together and be like, okay, we need to actually decide what we're going to do about this because this is not working, right? We would be denounced, but. Yeah, we would be. Is there a more off-nominal mission that we could undertake, Jake? Fly to Mars and dump a big truck of garbage, yeah. We left a long.

Big, just like a Coke can, you know, like one thing. No, I'm thinking full dumb truck, like a whole, We left a lot of stuff on the moon. I don't know if that's considered garbage, but those are going to be historical pieces that nobody's going to be allowed to touch. In the words of Jim Carrey's Grinch, one man's garbage is another man's po' paris.

Those poops will be museum pieces. But let me tell you something. There is space law. Space law does exist, and there are laws about space that are on the books, starting with the Outer Space Treaties. There are other treaties that have been ratified that are also on the books.

And then there's a quasi sort of treaties, not treaties, but quasi sort of agreements of the Artem's Accords and being chief among them that these are sets of principles that everyone adheres to, that everyone that's signatories, which are up the 60-some now. And I think the space resources are mentioned in there as well

on the back of the other legislation that passed here in the U.S. and elsewhere. Sure. Yeah. And what's really interesting about that to me is that we highlight that sometimes is like, oh, this is like a gap in our law and that's true. But also that's just how all laws work. You just have enough people agree to them and then it's true, right?

Like a law is only ever like an agreement. It's the edizard. Do you have a flag? Yeah, it depends on everyone buying into it, right? So like the only way it would become illegal is that everyone got together and said, we don't want this to happen anymore, right? Yeah, yeah. Like, sealand is still a thing, you know, and they're like, I guess, sure. Yeah.

Yeah. One thing I don't want to have on the moon are nations or countries on the moon, different countries on the moon. Different countries on different parts. I don't want that. Or any other heavenly body. What would they be, though? That's interesting to think about. Anyone ever draw the maps on how that would go? No. You ever heard of Galtz Gulch? Gold Sculch. Yes, I have. I've read the book. Yeah. I don't know. I don't know what it looks like. We haven't invented that part of our history yet. No. Where we don't have nation states. But the off-nominal garbage dump mission to Mars is part of this.

Show's canon now, Jake. So thank you for that. I appreciate that. And if you want to support the mission, you should hit to Offnome.com slash Discord and sign up for We promise to put garbage on the moon. But just to let you know, Mars is mentioned in my book. There isn't, but there isn't any chapter on it. I have written chapters on Mars in the past on what to do, but by the time we do reach it, we may end up doing things that we can't even imagine right now. That's beyond anything we can imagine right now.

but the people who have reached Mars can think of it because they'll be there and they'll just look at it to say we got to do things a certain way here because of what's going on you know we have too much radiation to soil is poisonous all true the air is a little is too thin so we we and they're going to think of ways to they're going to have to deal with that situation it'll probably be ways that we're not even imagining right now. And so that's why I stopped writing it. That's another reason why I stopped writing about Mars. I'll let someone who's... Yeah. Yeah. Who knows more who could deal with it.

The Martian War for Independence is going to be lit, though. That's going to be... That's the one part of the expanse I wish was longer. Because I thought that was the most realistic vision of what's in front of us. like, yeah, that's going to be a thing. I don't see any way around it. Even if their states are not, I feel like at some point, they're going to be like, get off of our throats, Earth.

We would rather dump our garbage over where Jake first dumped his garbage. Jake, where would you dump garbage, though, knowing Mars as you do? Do you have a spot on Mars that you would put the garbage? Ooh. Least favorite crater? Somewhere, somewhere high, I think. Out on Tharsus? Yeah.

Yeah. Why high? Try to get it out of the air so you don't smell it. Well, it's just because the livable areas are going to be down low, right? All right. Nice. It's like Mount Crumpet to reference the Grinch twice in one show. Man. It's good stuff, Jake.

Alastair, if someone wants to buy your book, where do they go and find it? Amazon. I would say, let's see, could I? you could go to amazon.com and look up building the space infrastructure you know by alister storm brown uh i've got the uh i've got the link for it if uh you you want me to put it if you want to get it in the show notes for everybody they can drop they can hit it right there yeah we'll get it there yeah you already have the link i got it do you have it yeah i got it. Okay, good.

Okay, good. Give them the link. They'll click it. It'll come right on. And you can buy it in paperback, hardback, audio. And what's the last one? Just regular Kindle. Yeah, Kendall. Straight evil. Mm-hmm. So just get it on Amazon. And I'm going to do a press. presentation also. You got to support Jeff Bezos' moon mine. So. Yeah.

Jake, you're too much. Yeah. Do we know what we're doing here next week, Jake? We got a, uh, we catching up on, uh, whatever hell. I think we probably talk about Artemis 2 a lot. Yeah. I mean, you think anything else is going on, Jake? Any other SpaceX news going on lately?

Yeah. Yeah. We, we got some, we have some news catch up. I'm sure that's going to be up. My prediction. for SpaceX is that next they're going to start a health care company so that they can have the triumvirate of most hated things that consumers loathe, the ISP, a social network, and a health care insurance company. That's what I think they're going for next, collecting the most hateable entities in America. Just to let you know, SpaceX is going to go on the stock market pretty soon. They're going to have the initial public offering. I'm still like, I'm actually not going to believe that until the day that they ring the bell.

I like, I will refuse. I believe all of our friends that are reporting this, Jake, and I will refuse to believe that this is a true story until they ring the bell. That's where I'm at on the matter. But Alistair, thank you so much. Jake, we got anything else to plug? I don't think so. I don't think so.

We've talked about so much that I just don't know what else to bring up. We got down some rabbit holes that I did not expect to go down. I didn't think space law would come up, but I thought it was great. Yeah. I read, I went over this book. getting ready for this podcast and I also read

at Astra the latest issue and it turns out that we didn't cover any of that I didn't have to any of it that's what it's like

interviewing with us out that's how we do it I love it I'm looking forward to the two our next interview whenever that will be and I would are you going to

me a recording of this? Yeah, it'll be out. I'd love to put it. I'd love to... We'll send you the links. I'll send you the links. Everyone out there's got the links to your books. Okay. That's what we got, y'all. All right. Thank you very much. See y'all.

Okay. And I'm going to put it on my webpage. Sweet. Okay. Bye. Sounds good. Bye, everybody. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, end of death.