Off-Nominal - 30 - There’s Always Money in the VAB

Episode Date: May 19, 2020

Jake and Anthony are joined by Jason Davis of The Planetary Society to talk about NASA’s human landing systems, SpaceX’s upcoming DM-2 launch, and to debate whether or not Tom Cruise will make a cool movie on the ISS.DrinksValhalla Hazy Pale Ale - Nelson Brewing Company - UntappdHopShock - SanTan Brewing Company - UntappdCa’ Rugate winery - Wine DOC VenetoTopicsOffNominal - TwitchOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 30 - There’s Always Money in the VAB - YouTubeOff-Nominal 09 - Randomly Throwing Money Out Into the Cosmos | Off-NominalOff-Nominal 24 - Jim-Adjacent | Off-NominalThe Jim Bridenstine Fan ClubConnect - The Planetary SocietyThe Downlink | The Planetary SocietyDownlink for MacPlanetfest ‘81 for Planetary Society – chopshopstoreNASA Selects Blue Origin, Dynetics, SpaceX for Artemis Human LandersJoin The Planetary Society on social media for an epic #RocketRoadTrip | The Planetary SocietyNASA advisers skeptical of agency’s ability to meet 2024 lunar landing goal - SpaceNews.comNASA Artemis AccordsIf Rockets were Transparent - YouTubeTom Cruise will work with NASA on first movie filmed in space, NASA says - The VergeRichard Garriott - Man on a Mission | Film 2010 | SXSW - YouTubeOSIRIS-REx Buzzes Sample Site Nightingale - OSIRIS-REx MissionPicksSpaceX - ISS Docking SimulatorBuy a telescope! Maybe one of these? Or whatever fits your budget!Dragon Worm Shirt, WeMartians Shop: Mens, Womens, Youth, ToddlerFollow JasonJason Davis (@jasonrdavis) / TwitterThe Planetary SocietyFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. I'm to space. Hello, welcome back to the show. We're here. Another off-nominal. Every time it comes up, I'm like, holy crap, it's been a month. This is insane. This is like, off-nominal always ends up being, it should not be, but it always ends up

being like an afterthought to all the other pot. It's like, this is one day I'll be like, um, we're due. We need to do this now. And it's like, oh, shit, let's, uh, let's get some friends and, uh, what's our topic? news news get somebody agreeable like Jason Davis from the Planetary Society how you doing Jason

Hey guys I'm doing just wonderful That sounded more I don't think I sounded very convincing I was good it was good Good days and bad days We'll say Hey that's kind of all you can hope for nowadays

It really is It's all about the batting average Oh man yeah That's a baseball reference Jake It's a thing we used to have in the States I guess they got in Canada also Yeah we have a team This is Jason's second appearance here right

Yeah Sorry I cut off the whole baseball talk We should have kept that rolling We wanted to do baseball bits I'm glad it was moving on Because I don't know any baseball stuff So there's like a I think there's like a circuit you do in baseball

I don't know Yeah you you um you score goals and you run. There's like a big baseball stick. Yes. There's a circuit. I like the idea of a circuit. Like they're running between the bases and they're like,

here's 20 pushups over there, there's 20 burpees. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And if you can make it all the way through the circuit, you score a goal. So it's good. Yeah, yeah. Got some metal noises for you over there.

Metal noises. Jake, what are you drinking over there? It's early. This is a matinee edition for the Europeans. We decided to be nice. We got a good turnout last time for the matinee. It's quarantine time anyway. so we figure why not.

Yeah. Yeah, it is. Yeah, I love including the Europeans because they're very kind to us. They treat us pretty well. I like them. There's some good Europeans in our Discord. There's some good Europeans on Twitter.

On the Space Station occasionally? Space Station, some good Europeans. It's good stuff. I like the way you're describing them, like the majority of Europeans, awful people. But there are some good ones out there that we're aware of. And they all listen to this show. It's like a very specific, the Venn diagram of code Europeans and off-normal listeners, basically a circle.

That's great. So I have a new one. So straight up, I have a liquor store across street from my house. It's like a very famous story on the show. So I just like stroll over there and get beer whenever I want. But they're legit, like starting to run out of like selection. I don't know what it is. Like just because of the quarantine.

Like there still have lots of beer, but like the quantity of types is like reducing and reducing. There used to be this whole like freezer full of different craft beers and like every week one of the rows is like gone and they consolidate up and just like fill it up with like Coors Light and it's just like it's like breaking my heart. So I'm running out of things to do and the ones they had yesterday were not good. So I ended up switching to the cans, which I don't normally do. Wow. That's a big day right there. It is. A new low.

So this is from Nelson Brewing. Nelson's in the interior of BC. It's called Valhalla hazy pale ale. and it's got this mountain climber guy on the top there which is a I think it's a mountain climber what is it's a wilderness British Columbia trees you know it is

Pacific Southwest stuff Now is that a big boy is that a How many ounces is that sucker? 473 milliliters It's like a pint isn't it Is European millilators? 20 ounces I think It's like bigger than normal can

It really rolls off the tongue When you sing about it in like A hip-hop song or something 437 millimeters. Right, I just said millimeters. Millimetres. Jason cracked his open early, turns out.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you got over there? I've been drunk all day. I have a, really, I'm not doing anything fancy. It's just whatever Trader Joe's has in stock at this point, because, yeah, every little errand seems like such a monumental task at this point.

So just going to the grocery store and see. whatever they have. So this is a sand tan hop shock IPA. It's a local beer out of Phoenix, and they're kind of everywhere here. That's a nice color to that can. It is lovely. Phoenix gets to do, the city of Phoenix gets to do a lot of cool stuff with their, you know, they got the bird, the flames, the bird and the flames. Yeah. You can talk about something else. He's like, that's all, apparently, he's got nothing on Philly, nothing on Phoenix.

You got nothing. It's good. You activated the Phoenix contingent of the listeners on the chat there. They're like, hey, oh, Phoenix has never come up. Now, Anthony's the one that's going to turn this on its side here. Yeah, I've got, I broke out some wine. So I don't know, I got a much like we've been talking about, going to the stores, a whole thing.

So I got a coupon to order some wine online. also a whole thing because I live in Pennsylvania where they're very touchy about that so I had to deliver it to someone in Jersey and then pick it up from their house I just ordered a whole box figured this would get us through a couple of weeks so I've got a little suave here

it's a white wine from the Veneto region tried out a couple of them I bought a much different kinds but it's pretty good Monte Fiorentine figured I'd take it a little Italian I like a nice you know this time of year very refreshing Sunday afternoon white wine drinking

I feel like it just fits the whole it's been nice out been sitting in my deck here right off the edge of the studio. So I figured I need some of this. Class it up here for our off nominal. Are you a... Go ahead, Jason. I was just going to say, are you a wine guy...

Do you know your wines? Are you a wine knower as you... No, not really. You know, like I'm going to like... I like trying stuff, but I can't like tell you what notes there are and things like that. Yeah. Are you a sangria guys? No, it's too sweet.

Oh, I love sangria. That's too sweet. A good summer wine is, oh, I know I'm going to pronounce it wrong, it's Beaujolet or Beaujolet. Bojolet, yeah. It's like a red wine, you can just chill it a little bit,

and then it's just very easy drinking. I don't know that much about wine, but. No, that sounds like we're on the same level, so we should maybe. Somebody told me that at a store once, and I immediately internalize it like, yes. He's like, it was some winery. Turns out there's a winery in Phoenix.

It had a bird and a flame on it. It's weird, this whole thing. Look at this. This bottle. All right. Well, cheers, guys. It's good to be here.

Cheers. Happy quarantine. It's been, I feel like the last couple of off-nominals because we've been on these teens weekends. So the one that we did in March was like right after everything shut down over here, right? We do it right before or after that.

I forget. It was right around that. And then the next one, we've kind of been settling in. There was really no space news. So we talked all about the NASA Worm last time. Oh, by the way, I have corrected my, I did not have a NASA Worm shirt last time that we were talking about the

NASA Worm and then I saw a link in the Discord come by and I was like, well, I got to rectify that issue. So I bought one of these. That's a nice NASA Worm shirt. Yeah, pretty comfortable, you know. But then we got some space news now. We do have some space news, yeah. Yeah. It's good times to be a J.B. fan.

It is a great time to be a J.B. fan. I see that. Yeah, yeah. And so, you know, so Jason, we had you on episode nine, I think. So this is episode 30, episode nine, 21 episodes ago. We actually have something that we need to confess to you. In addition to just the fact that we love hanging out with you and drinking beers and talking about space, we have a super secret reason for bringing you on the show. Okay.

All right. So I know we talked about how we just throw these together very randomly. And in most cases, that's true. But there is a plan here. Is this some kind of gotcha? journalism? Are you going to bring up a take that I had and show me how wrong it was? Hope you liked that new job that you had for a little while. No, actually, I've been, all right, so I pulled a clip from your appearance.

Okay. And I listened back. It's about a minute long. I'll play it here. We'll take a trip back in time. And it held up, like, shockingly well. Like, we could drop this minute in without mentioning it to this conversation, and it would be fine. Like, it's shock. All right. Do you have music you can play? Here we go. I'm going to, here, we got some. multimedia experience. I'll show people this nice tweet that we had. I don't know if you can hear this. It probably depends on, you know, in this hypothetical situation where a Democrat wins in 2020, it depends on whether that Democrat runs on, I'm not Trump or if they run on, here's my new idea

and just pick me over Trump, right? Like, because that seems to be the challenge right now that in candidates that we see, right? Are they just a not Trump or are they actually the wrong person, right? we're going to change it to the lunar orbital platform gateway, even though it's the same damn thing. Totally not the same thing. Totally not. Well, it could be, right? Maybe they'll just keep Rydenstein,

but they'll change his name, right? They start calling him, they rebrand him. He's like, J.B. Yo, J.B. That sounds so much better. To connect with the youth, the millennials. How do you do fellow kids? skateboarding through, you know, building nine.

This is a, see, this held up shockingly well. We're back in real time now. We're back in 2020. Yeah. That's so good. Jake really had the debt, like the political take there. He's like, guys, let me lay it out. Pretty good, right?

Yeah. And yeah. I don't want to brag, but I've listened to a couple of 538 podcasts before. So I know what I'm talking about here. I just am shocked at how that was June 2018. And it feels like so much has changed. And yet. Yeah.

How much has? Yeah. I don't know. That's depressing as hell. But. No, it's good, though. It's good. You were the progenitor of J.B., which has stuck throughout. You said you wanted to spawn a meme while you did.

Okay. Yeah. I mean, I'm honored that the J.B. thing held up. And I'm also, congratulations, by the way that you all got your J.B. Interview for our Off Nominal, right? You had him on the show. We didn't have one show. We met with him.

told him about the show. And we gave him the pin. He was pumped to hear about it. No, but I thought you were, you turned around and came back for the interview and everything. Turns out we just have you. What a shitty consolation prize. But what we do have, Jake, you want to do this on bail here?

Yeah, we did something good here. So you spawned the meme, J.B. became a thing. You know, we've told the whole story here lots of episode 24 is the story of the pins. our listener Kevin got us these pins, these lovely pins that we're wearing here today. We took them to IAC, you were there, we got one to Jim. It was a whole big thing, very exciting. But we've gotten a lot of requests to get more pins. How do I get a pin?

How do you get a pin? And we kind of just had a few of them because Kevin made him for this and they were gone. And then we kind of ran out. They were gone at IAC. So we dragged our heels a little bit. We talked about it. Should we get more pins? and you know

we should get more pins but we didn't want to just print another run and just you know we wanted to make a splash with it we want to do something exciting so Anthony do you want to like load up a web browser

can we show a web browser I've got it pulled up here okay so and listeners you can do this along with us just head over to Jim Bridensteinfan.com club

this is extraordinarily professional that up. Wait, I got to do this. This is a shockingly professional website, I would say. You might say that I've learned a couple things. Scroll through it, Jake, this is made by a real professional.

Fan. Dot club. So it's Jim Brydenstein fan.club. That's the one. I nab that dot club domain. Dot club. So you navigate to this website and you're going to see the refresh

Excished, exciting Jim Brianstein fan club crest. The official Jim Brianstein fan club crest. We've got the whole origin story on there so you can peruse it and learn about the history. And you can now buy a membership to the JBC. Not only does it come with a pin. This is the pin here. So I'll show this on the, I don't know if you're showing me here. Yeah, they can see you.

Here I'll make you full screen there. Okay. So there's the lovely pins. They're a little bit bigger than this. the old ones. So you can see, here's a side-by-side comparison. I'm showing off your website here

because people love it. This is dope. You gotta get those in focus, Jake. Oh, I'm sorry. It's really hard to... It's a serious crest. And you can get your own membership card, which looks like this.

And on the back, it's got your unique membership number. So, yeah, that's what we wanted to do. You have a picture of Tori holding the pin. It's so great. Oh, my God. IAC was very good to us. So good. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Question. I've always been curious about when you sell t-shirts like this. Do you, are these like photoshopped onto models, like stock models? Or do you actually get people to wear your shirt and get photographed? We found these two very in-shaped people and we're like, please wear this shirt. No, no, these are programmatically generated, I guess. Okay, okay.

Which, by the way, if you're going to be one of those people that gets anything Photoshopped onto them, you better have a really good contract. I can design anything and put that on there. For instance, you could be JVFC member here. Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you can get shirts. As you can see in my reveal here, I am wearing one of the shirts.

They're great. Nice crest here. and probably my favorite thing that you can get is the mug. It's a good mug. This is the Jim Brinstein fan club official mug, which is good for coffee. It's good for tea. It's good for, I don't know, Mountain Dew, probably. He's got so many props.

Whatever you want to put in it. It's good to go. He came ready with the props, Jason. I love props. Has Jim seen this? That is the big question. Well, we just launched it literally five seconds ago. He saw the original, the original pin.

He has a couple of those. Yeah. But I don't know if Jake, maybe fire off a tweet, tag him in that. Did it weird him out? Or was he like, this is cool. These guys are like, you know, fans. Or was he like, what the hell is this? Kind of hard to tell, maybe a mix of each.

I think it would oscillated. Yeah, it was definitely, I mean, he didn't seem to mind hanging out. It seemed like he was down with it. So, yeah. He's a nice, personable man. That's why he has a little fan club. I don't know how pumped Christian Davenport was when we walked out. of hanging out with J.B.

And he was like, I'm getting held up for these two jokers. What the hell's going on here? So he looked a little confused. But other than that, seems okay. Jake, we're going to cut some comments in the Twitch chat here that's saying that they're glad that your boot camp is paying off. Yeah. We spent all of that time in boot camp to make the JVFC launch.

Whether it pays off really depends on them, I guess, right? It's a good point, yes. Always be closing. Always be closing. So that's why we brought here, Jason. Hope you enjoyed the appearance on the podcast. We'll have you back some other time. All right.

It's been real. What are we talking about here, Nick? Well, we can kind of talk whatever we want, but I thought maybe we'd start with a little bit from Jason. So, Jason, you've been doing some different kind of work at Planetary Society. I'd love to hear like an update. What are you doing now? What's on your burner here?

What is on the burner? Yeah. I like to check my email. I'm very good at checking my email. I will reply to your email. No, that's what a friend used to joke. It's not a very good joke. In IT, he would say, I'm very good at checking my email.

Yeah, so what do I do with Planetary Society now? Let's see, when was this? This was like in October of last year. Our comms director, Danielle Gunn, came to me and convinced me to become our editorial director and oversee a new content strategy for the Planetary Society. So that sounds terribly boring and marketing eased and everything. But basically we have this new strategic plan.

It's like a five-year plan that businesses or nonprofits do. And we're going to try to grow to like 75,000 members. That's a significant increase from what we have now. and really try to embrace this theme of space for everyone. So traditionally, if you follow the Planetary Society, you know, we're more of the expert-type content. You know, you've got to sometimes know your way around planetary science when you come in and have that knowledge base already.

But we're going to try to make it more welcoming to people who have not had any experience. planetary missions or planetary science and kind of cater to both audiences. And that's part of the strategic plan to kind of grow our membership. So that and yeah, long story short, that's what led to kind of me implementing some of that, doing our content. And we're getting a new website that's rolling out later this year.

Terribly painful process for anyone who's been through website migration probably knows, a new backend content management system. So, yeah, just a lot going on. And, yeah, I've been busy. Quarantine has been a busy time for me. Are you the man behind the Downlink and the naming of the Downlink? I am, yeah. Do you buy any chance to use a fantastic Mac app called Downlink?

No. There's copyright infringement. Yeah, me and you are going to personally fight about it. this. I'm just kidding. Do you have, do you have an app called Downlink? And then the Downlink came out and I was like, well, shit, this is some good marketing opportunity. Did you copyright that? No.

There's where you weren't wrong, man. I have a hard time thinking that I would get the Planetary Society, nor would I want to pursue a takedown of the Downlink because of my tiny Mac app downlink that is free on the Mac app store. What does Downlink do on the Mac?

It's actually pretty rad. You might like it if you have a Mac, it is a thing that runs in the background, and it pulls imagery off of the Go's satellites. Live imagery right down to your desktop. Mix it your desktop background. You can choose different views. It's pretty rad. I would check it out.

I would recommend it to you, the maker of the Downlink. Let's see, I have the in front of my name. And yeah. Huge difference. The story behind the downlink, so we did have, so as part of this transition, right, We decided, like, where, what's the planetary society unique in? And the one thing we realize we cannot do is Chase,

sorry, this is like terribly, like, this might be terribly boring to some of the people listening to, like, talk, hear me talk about, like, nonprofits, you know, marketing strategies and communication strategies. But anyway, we decided, like, well, what do we have to offer that is unique in the space media landscape? And we have all this, like, expert perspective. We have Emily Lockdala who can drop 5,000 words on you on what curiosity's been up to or something like that.

And then we had me kind of doing these weird, like little unfocused pieces. Like I would write something like I would cover Hayabusa just because like nobody else covers Hayabusa. You have Casey Dreyer who does our space policy stuff. And so like there was always this assumption like should we compete with like the space stuff? coms of the world, that, you know, the people who are out there on the front line putting out content on every piece of news. And the answer was, no, we shouldn't and we can't. You know, there's no reason to do that. So that kind of, but we still care. We want to show people that we're paying attention because we are. If we talk about all this stuff internally, our Slack channel's

like, hey, check it, you know, this random planetary thing happened. And so we came up with the downlink as a way to like, okay, we'll have, we'll just have succinct news items, you know, a newsletter. Everyone's doing newsletters these days. And so I had started that first, and then the rest of our comms team, like, turn that into, like, a more broad, like, you know, it's got, like, pretty pictures and actions you can take and get involved type stuff. And we needed a name for it, and we were brain, like, God, and if you've ever been, you know, any organization, you know how painful something like brainstorming a name for.

for a new product can be. This literally, like, and we use base camp, like the base camp thread was like 50 comments long. You know, and every time we thought we had one, somebody would be like, oh, well, you know, and point out a reason why it was shit, you know. And we'd be like, oh, my God, no, we got to start over. And so finally, I came up with the downlink,

and then we started looking, and National Space Society uses it, and one of the things they do, but they just call it downlink, and it's like a member thing they do, slightly different. And I'm really splitting hairs here. And Space News for a while, like many years ago, they decided to try a thing with Jeff Fowse called The Downlink that we found when we were searching.

But they only did it like once and they like retired it. And we were like, and it had been five years and we were like, okay, if they wanted the name downlink, then we... And they got first up now. Fals was like, man, I love it. Baseball. We got to get a baseball reference in on this thing. Right, right, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, so that's where all that came from.

So that's the really boring long story behind all that. I just thought it sounded good, and it made sense for my app, and I picked it. I didn't have a base clamp thread, so. You didn't have anybody to challenge your, you know. I didn't even ask Jake about it. You didn't have a committee. No. Jake and I did struggle for a long time over Jim Brynsteinfan.com.combe.

Yeah. Do you do JbFC.Space? Do you do Jim Brynstein? whatever else pizza who knows i forget what we went through a lot of them though pizza there's limo that i hear people using a lot limo what a terrible yeah uh jason so that sounds like um all that what you just said kind of sounds like a really nice way to say are you basically like the boss of the planetary society now like do you just have yeah yeah higher than bill it's definitely like bill checks in with me every morning ask me what his date no uh no no no just

Just in charge of the content. Just the content. Just the content. Just the content. Just the content. Just most of the work that's going on day to day. Just a small. No, it's just a very small team.

Yeah. And we've been hiring some freelancers too, which has been a lot of fun. I grossly overestimated, like we brought on a bunch of freelance writers, and I grossly overestimated how much editing. work I would be able to do during quarantine because like having a kid at home just shoots half the day. Like my wife and I do like ships where, you know, one of us is like fully immersed working for half the day and then the other one's on duty. And yeah, then so like all these freelancers started sending me these pieces. We're building all these new missions and worlds pages for our sites.

And I just felt terrible because they kept all these drafts just kept rolling in. And I'm like, oh, oh shit. Sorry, like, I'll get to that in like a week or two because I'm way behind. Yeah. So, yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, go ahead. I'll say congratulations then.

That sounds like a pretty cool update to your career. I remember the last time you were on, I think we talked about like, what happens after light sale? Because that's a thing that's, I have to figure out. So I'm glad that we're like bookending this is, I figured it out. No problem. Yes. The stories, yeah, the stories.

The story's been completed. That's great. Can we do a quick sidebar as a follow-up from our last show where we talked about logos and all this? It looks like Jason is wearing a super rad space shirt with an awesome logo. I would like to see that shirt. Let me show it off.

This is actually another, this is a Planetary Society original. It's Planet Fest 81. You're always born, so I like the shirt because of that. But we used to do these things as Planetary Society, back in the Carl days called Planet Fest. And, well, they started when the Voyagers were approaching the outer planets. So I think Planet Fest 81 was, gosh, embarrassing. I don't remember.

Is that Uranus or Neptune? I think that's Uranus. It might have been, yeah. So they had this whole thing at, like, JPL and Pasadena near our headquarters and, like, this big celebration. And Chuck Berry was there and, like, played. Carl's up on stage dancing with him and yeah.

So that was a good year. That's a good year. Good year. Yeah. Good year. Damn. It's a nice shirt too. I would love if those are still a thing that you can buy.

Yeah, you can buy them from my store. Oh, nice. I got to get one. Go check them out. That's great. Is there a Planet Fest 85? I don't know.

I just want to copy you on the Euroborn thing. Yeah. Planet Fest 91 would have sucked. I'll tell you that much. There's nothing going on there. There is nothing. No. When was Neptune?

Neptune would have been 80, maybe 86. We're all just fishing as Jaws. I don't know. I wasn't alive, so I can just claim. None of us have the internet in front of us. Negligence on this. Should we talk about what might happen in Planet Fest, 2024? 2024 Planet Fest.

Yeah. Like landing Artemis? Yeah, maybe. What time of the year was Planet Fest? Can we do like December? Because that's going to be late in 2024 if this works out. Like December 31st. Yeah, it'll basically be a New Year's party as well.

It ain't going to be early, that's for sure. We were going to do a Planet Fest for the Mars Rovers, all the Mars missions this year. And it's our 40th anniversary, but then like the world ended. So they were like, man, it's not going to happen. I'm saying let's do Planet Fest 2024. How are you feeling about these moonlanders, Jason? I mean, it's cool, right?

If it works out. I can't, I can't poop. on any of the concepts, right? How can you got Starship? That's cool. The Blue Origin National Team. That's cool. Great.

Good for them. And traditional aerospace working together. And then the random one. What was it? Dynetics. Yeah. Not Dianetics. Just Dynetics.

Dynetics and all the other space companies that weren't included in the previous. Yeah, basically. It's 25 subcontractors. It's like, I don't know. Can you make us a bolt? Sure. Is Dianetics the same?

company, not Dynex, sorry, not Elron Hubbard's teachings. Sorry, I don't want to get us all sued. No, Dynetics is, they do stuff for like, they built like the inner stage and the SLS, right? Yep, they're doing that adapter, and I think they, they were working on some other component like that as well. Well, maybe both. Maybe the one for ICPS and then the one for EUS. They would also have that deal. Yeah, so Dianetics, I've actually been there. And funny story behind that, we did like three years ago when we were kind of doing like more, that's like five years ago, more at the planetary society. We didn't really have a very strategic framework.

So it was just like everyone's best idea. Like it was very like, yeah, sure, do that, try that. So we did this thing called the Rocket Road Trip where Casey and I went to all these NASA centers. That was awesome. I love that. It was fun. That was the year SLS was going to launch. Yeah.

Yeah, we went and we saw, like, they had just, when we saw SLS at Meshud, they had just put it up in the vertical stand. They had finished, like, the liquid hydrogen tank or something. And I was sold. I was like, well, it looks like it's coming along pretty nicely, right? It can't be much longer, right? And you were, as you were walking out, the facility, you heard a big metal bang and they dropped the dome. Yeah, they dropped something. So we visited, we wanted to visit a supplier, and we went to Dan Atticx in Huntsville while we were there.

And it was a bizarre experience. Like there were, you know, because we just came in like very schleppy, you know, well, Casey always wears his suit. But like, you know, me and Merck, our videographer, it just kind of rolled in. And they were all like, you know, this is like Von Braun, Von Braun Symposium formal, you know, where all the engineers are like all the aerospace companies wear it everybody's wearing suits and there was like a room with like 10 people in it to like interview to do for our filming and stuff and I was just like it was just very uh it was over one yeah we were like we're like this is I this is weird we're here for Planet Fest not business fest yeah yeah yeah yeah but they were cool they showed us around

and um all their stuff I think yeah Their thing looks sweet. Their lander looks, it looks like one that I would have, like, that would show up in the design reference missions, like the PDFs that NASA put it all every couple years during the Ares program. It looks like a lander that would be drawn up as like an insert moonlander here kind of thing. You know, very low to the surface. Pretty rad looking, I think, overall. It's hard when you're sitting next to Starship, but. It also kind of looks like if you, like, built a lander in Kerbal Space program and then you tried it and you didn't have enough fuel, so you took it back.

you didn't want to change the design, so you just kept strapping fuel tanks to the outside of it until you had enough fuel. And then you're like, perfect, now it works. That is kind of the, I feel like, that's one that is interesting because you can be like, oh, it's refuelable. You just got to dock fuel tanks to the side of it. Like, I feel like it's missing a component that I need to see, which is like the tug that would attach these fuel tanks from distant orbits to wherever they are in near rectalinear, there's a new one now. What is it? Did you remember that one? Posit grade.

I don't know. Yeah, it's another weird one. It's slightly lower. LLO is just not cool anymore. Well, you can't get there with Orion, man. My plan was to have Starship Doc with Orion, which looks hilarious, spin up Starship and then fling it like a momentum exchange tether to a lower orbit. This is a great plan to get it in and out of low lunar orbit.

How do you feel like? this. Artificial gravity test on the way down. Maybe an issue after release, but what are you going to do? Yeah. What's the delta V on a spinning starship flinging a small horizon towards low lunar orbit? Somebody do that study and it'll be in the down lake next week. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, it comes off there, what, a few meters per second? Hey, that's not trivial. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, so what do you guys say? think, are any of these 2024 concepts actually going to make it to the surface in 2024 with people? All right, so I like, I think, I like there was this NASA advisory committee beating this week where they talked about all this. It was the Human Exploration subcommittee.

And one of the things they said was, we like your plan, but please don't do too many trade studies. And they were saying, like, if you get locked in this, like, a year-long cycle of trade study and, decision points and trade study and decision point, you just get, that just keeps pushing, pushing, pushing. So if they end up making a decision, like, right when they need to, you know, in the seven or ten month mark, whatever it is with these things, it's plausible there will be hardware. But the problem is, we were chatting about this in the Discord the other day, is like, everything requires a launch vehicle that hasn't flown yet. Every single piece. No matter which lander you pick, no matter how the crew get there, every single thing requires

New Glenn, Vulcan, SLS, or Starship super heavy. So it's like major, that's a major, and they're all already slipping dates, right? Starship, not so, because it's kind of like, who knows what the date is. But the other two, the other three have already pushed years on end. But they all seem technically feasible. Who is it that said that in the Discord? I can't remember, so I'm going to fail to give credit. I think it was Adam.

Someone, that's what you're thinking about. Adam was like any program that depends on a. a new launch vehicle effectively becomes a launch vehicle program. Oh, I think, yeah, that was a couple. Maybe that was Lars, I think. Lars, maybe, yeah. A little bit of advice. It's true, though, but...

Lars is typing. Yeah, like them. I think there's, it's cool to see the breadth of strategy that NASA is taken on this, because it's like, oh, 130 million. Why would you not give that to SpaceX to see what happens with Starship? It basically keeps NASA as a stakeholder in Starship for the next 10 months. The other two asked for a lot more money, and they both seem like things

that I think NASA would be comfortable with as 2024. I think the difference is the Dynetics one, like you were talking about with your anecdote there, feels like it would be the NASA lander. And the other one would have to track

three different companies that they're all comfortable with, but it would track three different companies building three different pieces of hardware. Whereas the Dynetics is this single thing. So that's kind of the toss-up to me, which one they pick of those two. You think they'll do two?

They'll end up doing two on a down select. I think they'll do similar thing where they'll pick one Dynetics or the Blue Origin team as the 2024 lander and keep the other one on contract for the future and then they'll give Starship some more money to keep developing.

My worry with Starship is everyone's worry is that boy do they need to refuel a lot of starships to make that thing happen in 2024. And I don't think NASA is going to be comfortable let alone saying super heavy in Starship will be flying by then, but flying

enough to refuel these tankers and storage units and this like this lunar version is like you got to launch a lander to earth orbit fuel it up however many times get it to moon orbit then file put another tanker in lunar orbit or earth orbit fuel that up send it to the lander transfer the fuel over like it's like there's like series of starships all in a row so they have to have like something sitting in lunar orbit there's just the fuel deep buzz aldrin is just like Cyglers. Yeah, they're going to need like 35 starships to make this thing happen. And it's like...

They got them. And I know they're working on that whole production thing. Every time they blow on up, they're like, oh, there's another one. Yeah, they're just all in a queue ready to... It's like a slaughterhouse. But, yeah, so there's like a lot going on there that that's my way too. It's just like there's so much unknowns in how to operate this like conga line of refueling. I don't know.

Yeah. Congoline of refueling. I hope that shows up in like the source selection document from NASA. Major risk success, the conga line of refueling. Now you laugh, but that's the minute clip that we're going to take out of this show and play back in a year and a half when Jason's back on and we hear the selection of the lander and they're worried about the refueling congelon. Man, we've done it again.

We've done it. Oh, man. so Anthony or maybe Jason I don't know either one of you I have not been paying attention much this week

what's this whole thing with like the Artemis Accords and all this soft power stuff what's going on here I haven't paid attention I read about it this morning well then you're probably

the most education I mean yeah you you nailed it the small it's the soft power accords it's like hey we're going to do some moon landings

if you want to come on board please sign this line that says we can we can mine the moon that's pretty much as straightforward as it is so saying the u.s is saying that that if you want to if you want to be on board say that we can mind the moon with restrictions or like anywhere we want to like where we land or where you land or any of that build into it yeah basically it's it's every every like international policy plus safety zones around landers and exclusion zones and the ability to do in-situ resource utilization on the moon. And they're keeping the gateway as the same

international, international, what is it, intergovernmental agreement that governs the ISS, that governs gateway. But everything going to the surface, if you want to come to the surface as part of the Artemis program, sign this line. So put in China and Russia on the spot to say, are you good with this or not.

And that seems to be the thing, right? Russia's already in on the gateway, so they're going to keep that as the ISS agreement. But if Russia gets on board with the landings, then they have to agree that collectively we can all dig stuff out of the lunar surface, make water or rocket prevailing out of it. To what extent is Russia in the gateway at this point? You know, because I know there were grand plans at first,

like the big old gateway, and then that, you know, turned into the like, Not so big old gateway. The big old gateway. Like the big old gateway, it was like, Japan's adding a module, Europe's adding a module, we're going to have so many modules. It's going to be terrific modules, so many modules. And then it was like, actually it's just going to be a little power unit in Orion.

And then we're not even going to dock there. It's just going to be there. And maybe a Cygnus cargo ship that just adds a little extra space. That's it. Russia says that they're in on an airlock. That's their... You're in on a... Yeah.

That's what they say, but... That was true. I would believe that more if they haven't... They've built that one, a new module that's been sitting on the ground with particulate in its fuel lines and then something else happened. What's that like NACA or something? Yeah. And it still is nowhere near the launch pad. Yikes.

So... Yeah. And like, that's fine. Airlock, you know. Sure. Best part of it on airlock is if it sucks, you just keep the hatch closed. Yeah. This is true.

I mean, how else would you get outside the station? It would put down in there, like, uh, decompress to Ryan and pop out that way. Full on Gemini. Full on Gemini. Everybody has to suit up for when someone's on Facebook. The bog fog. The big old gateway full on Gemini. I'm having these like manned orbital laboratory like flashbacks.

Yeah. Like this is basically what this is now, isn't it? We can just revitalize. bring a Titan out of commission. There's one sitting in Ohio. A Titan? Yeah. I haven't went yet, but the Air Force Museum has a big old Titan on it.

Like the Titan 2 or the original Titan? Four. Solids and all, yeah. Oh, gosh. I got to go there. That's cool. Huh. That's a big rocket.

Those are big solids. Yeah, they're basically a shuttle, you know? They're not nothing. Yeah. That's a cool rocket to watch launch. you watch the Voyager, look at the still photos of that thing, lifting off. I mean, that's pretty dope. Yeah.

Hypergolic and solids. Yeah. It looks horrible. But it also looks awesome. Weird little tanks on the side that are like a different fuel that do the thrust vectoring for them so it can turn. Yeah, the little vernier. Yeah, the bizarre little rocket.

Is it the one that does, does the core stage not light it lift off for the Titan Centaur? Is that what its deal was? There was a rocket like that. that. Oh, the one that only lifted off with the boosters and then air lit the core? Yeah, yeah. I think it did light at launch, but...

Maybe not full thrust or something. Yeah, I mean, that was pretty weird rocket. Yeah. The Titan was one that they just kept adding onto. Like, kind of Arian 4 in that way, where they were just kept slapping other parts on and new boosters and other verni... We need more control. Put another rocket on it.

Like, it was definitely full curable. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, the Discord is saying it is the one that does airlight. So, cool. It ignites at T plus 9 seconds or minutes? That's pretty weird. Nine seconds? That's like, why even...

Oh, nine seconds? That's very weird. That's pretty random. Well, maybe they were worried about it, like, the shot, you know, the acoustics coming off of it. Like they were going to blow the launch pad apart? Yeah, yeah. Kind of like with the RS-25, they had a... Remember on...

God, we're really going down rocket. rabbit holes here. But there was an original plan for Aries 1, I think. Like my knowledge of nerdy rocket things is all from like that era. And I think Aries 1, they were, they originally, for a while, they were like, you know, what if the upper stage used an RS-25? And then like someone pointed out like that you'd have to light it in a vacuum and that had never been done essentially. And, yeah, yeah. Anyway. And they were worried about that?

Random rocket fact, random rocket fact of the day. Well, I would imagine that if your rocket engine normally lights on the ground, that doing it in vacuum is a way different thing. Yeah, I'm just thinking, so shuttle never ever lit it anywhere besides right on the ground. Yeah. Yeah, and then just burned it all the way. What a powerhouse engine. It's just like, you know what?

We're lighting it on the ground. We're taking it all the way to orbit. That's how it's going to be. People talk about the core stage of SLS sometimes, about like it's a like at the first stage but like really when you get down to it sLS is like a really big upper stage with two solid strap-ons like yeah the liftoff thrust like is like 80-90 of it comes from the solids and then the you just take the the core stage almost all the way to orbit right so yeah yeah basically that that animation was going around for a while uh last week did you see that

they're comparing it was like transparent rockets it had falcon heavy it had space shuttle and yeah, that was cool. That was rad. Somebody should build one. A transparent rocket. It looked sweet. It was a great visualization. I'll post it in the show notes because that's worth a watch.

Elon, please. He's had a couple of weeks. I don't want to talk about Elon personally. Yeah, no, don't strain the Elon territory. Cool down period. Jason, you love the RS-25. What would you be willing to pay for it? For an RS-25?

I'm trying to think how big. I'm trying to think how big one is. Big enough. They're pretty big. It could fit. I don't think it could fit in any room in the house. We'd have to have a whole room. Yeah, I like, I'm imagining the discussion with my wife.

So, hon, the spare room, it's going to be the RS 25 room. She'll be like, Jason, I swear to God, if you have $146 million laying around that I don't know about, I'm going to be pissed. Yeah, I've been secretly laundering money for the, uh, Mexican cartel. Sorry, I've been watching a lot of Ozark lately, so that's like on the top of my brain. You guys want to launder money, perhaps? Inside an RS-25. Maybe that's what they're doing with it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just tumbles the dollars around inside. They ship it around all these conventions, and they just... It's the number one transport mechanism. They haven't taken it off of that, like, the forklift thing that it sits on in 40 years. They've just been driving it around with drugs on it. All the internals of that structure are just full of fat stacks. Dynetics.

I think Dynetics does like the engine controller or something. You know what I mean? Oh yeah, they're a vital part of the supply chain. Yeah. Now we figured it out. If that was true, I feel like NASA's budget would be way bigger. Yeah, you would think. Huge.

Way bigger. Yeah. We got a plan at least. The VAB, the walls of the VAB are just lined with... There's always money in the VAB. There were $250 million lining the walls of the VAB. Bob Caban is out there under, like a ninja suit on, like, peeling a panel off, taking some stacks out of this under the NASA logo. Yeah, this has really gone off the rails.

We have lost it in quarantine. Oh, my God. We need space news. There's two stories that we covered already. So now we're onto this. I feel like we could get it. Netflix funding though. If Space Force Netflix goes well, I feel like we have a good like Arrested Development, a Kennedy Space Center kind of situation. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. We got a lot of titles to choose from. We do a lot of titles to choose from. That's always a good show when you have a lot of time. Where are we in the show? Are we at picks yet? Did you do a lightning round for Jason? I did not do a lightning round. I haven't done a lighting round. Oh, yeah. We have lightning? I don't know if I remember a lightning round. Terminal count before Kurt jumps in the chat to tie me for calling. Every once in a while, Jake gets kind of snarky, writes 10 questions. There's always some Mars propaganda in it. Yeah.

Let's do it. We don't have one. I do not prepare one. No. You don't have one? No. This has been a huge discipline. I know.

I spent all my extra off nominal time getting that site wet ready. Yeah, he's been sourcing stuff for the JBFC since. Now I have just like. bag of pins I got to deal with so yeah are those the original pins so those are really going to be collector's items yeah the original ones are are one of the kind they were like you gotta get can I sell this on eBay for like probably yeah 50 bucks yeah probably probably but the limited edition one of 100 good to go so one of 100 yeah well there's space news should we talk about or is there is there anything else I don't know what your time do you really do you

DM2? Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah, the biggest story. Are you guys nervous for that? Is it, like, are you excited or are you more nervous? I'm a little nervous. I'm more excited, but I'm a little nervous.

I'm pumped, man. Are you not nervous at all? No, they've been assigned crew to crew one. Listen, here's the thing that gives it away. They're scheduling crew one, which is the first rotation flight with Crew Dragon. or they're scheduling the return of DM2 based on the schedule of crew 1, which means they are so confident in DM2

that they are willing to let DM2 be up on the space station, Bob and Doug Joy Ride in the ISS until a month before everyone else is ready to launch and then they'll bring them home. So, you know, there's an outside chance that things go crazy, but...

Yeah. I don't think they'll go full starliner. God, I hope they don't go full star liner. Well, then they could hit the button and like uh yeah that's right we can really prove out that whole the astros would have fixed it thing astros in the loop yeah yeah i'm excited i took the day off too and uh yeah i'm gonna do uh good we gotta we gotta figure what we're gonna do anthony i know we've been talking about something we're gonna do it's like 10 days out yeah man it's coming up it's coming up it's prime time too 430 eastern

oh yeah it's perfect time that's so good they want full good lighting right in the middle the day for that thing, I assume. Just past noon, so it's lit, you know, the rocket's lit as it heads down range. Yeah, yeah. That's good stuff. Yeah. Now, Bob and Doug, that's an interesting thing.

If they're scheduled for such a long period of time, how would you plan your time on the space station if you knew you were going to be there between one and four months or whatever it is? Like planet, um, from a recreational standpoint? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. How many weekends on the ISS do you got to plan for here? Let's see. Well, that's a good question.

Like, how much... How do you psychologically prepare yourself for a lot? How much free time do they get? Like, they get off days, I know, but like, can you just... You know, because it seems like mission control schedules them to, like, the minute. Like, it's crazy how intensely scheduled they are. And, you know, so I'm wondering, like, you know, can you just pop off to... Can you, you, you know, take a mental health day and say, you know what?

I'm just going to go hang out in the cupola because this is bullshit, you guys. That's a great question, though. Are there sick days? Yeah, are there sick days? That's such a good question I've ever heard, Anst. Answer, I don't know what Anst is. They're like, ah, we know you didn't catch a cold. Yeah, right?

Yeah, what if you just like, you didn't sleep well, you're just behind on your task list? Can you be like, you know what? I've got the off day on Saturday. I'm going to swap that with Tuesday. Yeah. It's a great question, Jason. I get the feeling they can. I get the feeling, or if they can, it's very, they would feel pressured to do that.

That's just my guess. Because, you know, the astronaut course, you know, astronauts just seem like this whole different breed of person to me where they're like, you know, like the best nonviolent, nonvolatile. And violent. Yeah, astronauts notoriously violent. We'll punch you in the face. The slightest transgression. No, they just, you know, it's just, they're so straight and narrow. It just seems like they would just go from day to day,

getting their tasks done, and not, you know, not experience the ups and downs of life that the rest of us do. Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe now, you know, that's more dynamic. I don't know. Yeah. It will change drastically. This is actually the most interesting part of commercial crew when it comes to the ISS

is it's going to change drastically next. year when there's way more astronauts on station because we're going to have we're going to go from two to four NASA-isa jacks a astronauts per year on the ISS to that many per flight you know do you think there can there be hijinks can there be shenanigans definitely I would like to see more hijinks there's already there's going to be a lot more time in the schedule for hijinks and yeah there's already what there's already dudes and gorilla suits up there so I didn't see that Mark Kelly, or no, Scott Kelly. Oh, I thought this was a recent story.

I was like, shit, I just did headlines today. Did I miss this? This is old. Oh, the Tom Cruise thing. That's a really good, Tom Cruise. What do you make of the Tom Cruise thing? So is he going to bring up a photo, like, are they going to bring a camera person with him? Is that, like, could be a whole flight of axiom.

It could be an axiom entire flight. That's Anthony's theory, is that they're going to reuse a dragon on an axiom flight. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how do I feel about it personally is, I mean, I'm fine with it. I'm just like, you're just fine with it? You're not pumped? You're not like jazz?

You're not just over the moon with this? Not really. I mean, you know, I'll be honest, I haven't seen like, so Tom Cruise for me, there was like, you know, early Tom Cruise, where you're like, oh, yeah, this is Mr. Cool. And then, you know, the whole Scientology thing and Katie Holmes happened. And so, like, Tom Cruise was kind of like, boo, down on the, you know, like, I don't know about Tom Cruise. But then, like, lately, I feel like he's been kind of on the, you know,

upswing because they're like, this guy still does all of his own stunts. He's like, in his late, I don't know, how old is he now, like late 50s? Yeah, he's getting up there, right? Yeah, he's like, he jumps off of airplanes and helicopters and trains. And he's strapped to the side of the C-130 and take off or whatever it was, airbus thing. He's a cool guy. And, you know, and I feel like we've largely forgotten about his Scientology crazy. and everything.

Please don't sue me. Scientology. It's the second time you brought that up today. It's really on your mind. What the hell? It's a very subconscious thing. Yeah. So I guess when the news came, I was like,

all right, cool. But not like super pumped. I mean, I'll be happy to see it when it comes out. Yeah, the reason I'm pumped is that the Top Gun 2 trailer seems to show him in some sort of flight suit at the end, and I'm wondering if, like, Top Gun 3 is going to be that badass. like Top Gun Top Gun 2 end of Top Gun 2 they're like we got a new mission like a DM mission for you here

and then he hops in some sort of space vehicle and then next Top Gun 3 is like now he's an astronaut Yeah what could they possibly do though aboard the ISS that would be that cool from a movie making standpoint Oh my God now this is the clip that I'm going to play back as Jason's bad take in a year and a half when he comes down

What could they possibly do the movie in space. Yeah, but it's like with special effects and everything, like, you know, there's nothing aboard the ISS other than the weightlessness. I say that like it's the most trivial thing. Like, other than the weightless, other than the gigantic laboratory with several windows and airlocks

and space vehicles that come and go at any time. Yeah, yeah, it's seven kilometers a second around the world. And no, I don't know. I don't know. Yeah, I guess I looked, I scrolled briefly, through um uh

is it um David garritt garyett Owen yeah his because he made a movie yes he did

when he did his tourist flight and um I think that was like a corny low budget thing if I'm not mistaken

that's like kind of saying that Chris Hadfield made a couple of movies and it was like it's a YouTube video yeah yeah okay

yeah no disrespect I'd love to have Owen on the show I stand I stand waiting to be corrected on

the Tom Cruise amazing movie in space. Listen, when it comes out, we're going to figure out, I hope the pandemic's over, we're going to all go to the movies together. And whatever it is, I don't care what movie it is. We're going to see it. I wonder if you'll be able to convince someone to let him do an EVA. It's got to be. Yeah.

Why not? Will the axiom module have an airlock? Eventually. Eventually, yeah. Full on Gemini. Go full on Gemini. Ph.O.G. Phase something of it, yeah.

Hmm. Okay. All right, well, I'm excited for, as our Discord is now calling it, Topest Gun. Top Gun 3, Topest Gun. Instead of Russians or Iranian planes, it's just Starlink satellites that he's got to fight off. An evil genius has taken over SpaceX and is commanding all the Starlink's to go straight for the ISS, and only one man can save them. Like Starlink actually did a complete inclination change maneuver, and they're like, how would you know? know that, you were above it. And he's like, I was inverted.

God, I love Top Gun. There's some terrorist who is like, you know, really feels strongly about the whole night sky astronomy issue. And it's like, they're going to render low Earth orbit useless for years. So he's like, now I'm going to the station. Yeah, that could be a good premise for the movie to stop this. That's some red Mars shit right there. Yeah, yeah.

That is some red Mars. Oh, man. Goes rogue with a bunch of fans of Ramars blowing bacteria around. Should we do picks, Jake? Do we tell Jason about picks? I feel like we didn't tell Jason about picks. We were all secretly hoping he'd remember from two years ago. I remember.

Yeah, yeah. I got a pick, yeah. Okay. What's your pick? Hit us up. I'm just going, it's a very easy straight down the middle pick, but SpaceX is docking simulator. Oh, yes.

I cannot stop playing that thing. Just randomly at different times, since it's come out, I'll just kind of sit down and be like, I'm going to dock the dragon and just start playing. And sometimes I actually do it. I do it full on, and I'm like, all right, and see how fast I can do it. Yeah, because you can do it so many different ways.

You can do like a speed run, you know, and just slow down at the last minute. Or you can just ram the ISS as hard as you want. You can fly around it. And yeah, it's a lot of fun. I really like that docking simulator. We had someone in the Discord trying to do it backwards. That was the challenge we had.

It's such like... Ooh. Yeah. I have really bad news. I haven't played it yet. Oh, my goodness. Anthony. Well, here's what happened.

I pulled it up. I was on my Mac. I pulled it up and I was like, wow, this isn't made for a keyboard and mouse situation from what I could tell because there's no help documentation on this sucker. No, no. I figure I have to... Should probably pull it up my iPad? What do you've been doing on?

You did like a two-handed maneuver, Jason. I feel like you've been playing it on like a... Phone or iPad or something? Yeah, well, my gestures don't match reality. You're just doing stuff. I just do it on the PC or my Mac. Are there keyboard things? They're apparently keyboard shortcuts.

People are saying WASD and arrow keys? Yeah, I thought I had tried that and they didn't work. And so I was like, there are no keyboard shortcuts. And then someone's like, no, dude, it's the normal keyboard. There is nothing more disappointing to me than the fact that there's not a KSP control mode. Like the weird, you know. that bums me out HJKL or whatever

Yeah Because if that was the case It wouldn't even be fun It would just be I would be right in on it Yeah It was fun to play I'm really glad they made that

It was pretty neat What a great way to Do some outreach though It was like Yeah I think Anthony we should probably Just make you Just keep working on that wine

And do it live on Twitch Is what we need to do Well on the way there Yeah Yeah we got this video power If only there was a platform designed to stream someone playing video games on the internet. Well, hilariously drunk.

Anthony, what do your pick? Sure. I, you know, we're at a good time of the year here. It's starting to get springtime in most places that listen to this show, which means the Northern Hemisphere, weather's nice. You're at home, probably not doing much travel because the pandemic. Probably got kids at home like Jason was saying. homeschooling. This is a fantastic time to buy a telescope. If you are out there listening to

this show and you have the means to buy a cheap telescope, you don't even need an expensive telescope. A couple hundred bucks will do, even less if you want. Depends what kind. You get a big eight-inch dobsonian like I've got. It's pretty cheap. It's just a steel tube with a mirror at the back. Get a couple of eyepieces and you're good to go. It's going to be a great summer. We've got Mars coming up. Towards the end of the summer, it'll be good nighttime viewing because of the Mars transfer window. We've got Jupiter and Saturn that are going to be up all summer long. So it's going to be a really good planetary summer, because that's the best part.

You don't even need to be doing the pillars of creation and, like, you know, you don't need to be Hubble about it. Do some planetary stuff. Get the kids out back. It's a nice astronomy class. It's part of homeschooling. Like, this is a fantastic time to just buy a telescope. So that's my recommendation.

Yeah. That's a good pitch, man. That's well done. It's the perfect time. Spring to summer. You're going to be at home. Probably working from home so you don't need to wake up early to commute. So you can stay up a little later.

Shift the schedule around. You got homemade class there. Your spouse won't even be mad at you for taking the kids out late because you're telling them it's educational, blow their little minds with the rings of Saturn. And I'll echo too. Like an $80 telescope, you can see the moons of Jupiter. Yeah.

You do not need a lot to get started. I'm going to say don't get a lot. Just get something simple. look at the planets, look at the moon. It's amazing. Yeah, the best one, this is a cliche, but it's very true. The best telescope is the one that you use.

Like, you know, you get a giant one that's too complicated and you're not going to want to get it out. So, yeah. Everybody knows the person that has, like, I got to buy all the attachments and the accessories and 18 different eyepieces, which I admit I am that guy as well sometimes. Simple stuff with it.

I've got a little an 8-inch reflector. So it's kind of a hassle to get out. Like it's so heavy, you got to plug it around. That's what I got to, but it's fun. Yeah, but once you get it out, it's really cool. And I've discovered with mine, you can get, like, if you want to take the next step, which you were just recommending not to. But if you do, if you want to go, like, all nerdy astrophotography,

like, I got a mount for my phone. And the night mode on both Android and iPhone these days is just amazing. Like, what it can do, you can line the eyepiece of your phone. up and I was taking Orion pictures and you know just with just like a 25 millimeter eyepiece on it or what made 35 I can't remember but um yeah and you can bring out the some color and everything with just the standard uh iPhone or uh Android yeah it's cool stuff 100% uh so I'm gonna do a shameless shameless shameless plug yes for uh for a pick um I have a new shirt design up so um well

you're on the site buying your Jim Brianstein fan club membership. You can also add in a new Dragon Worm T-shirt for DM2. Anthony, can you bring it up and show? I'm pulling it up for everybody. Oh, yes. Because I've already ordered mine. It's on the way. I'm pretty excited about this design.

I took an Adobe Illustrator course. And you can tell. He's got JBFCs and NASA Wormers shirt. So I made this an illustrator. It's a real SVG and everything. But it's got the NASA worm on it, the logo type. Everyone's favorite new logo. And so, yeah, you can grab it for DM2 if you want to participate.

Oh, I think I linked the Twitch to the youth version, but buy it for your kids as well. Yeah, that's right. I have kids. You put kids' shirts up. Yeah, it's the first time I'm trying that. So I'm seeing how they turn out. But you can get kids versions of Dragon Worm 2, all the down to your little toddlers. This is cool.

You guys got a lot of cool shirts on here. We're trying. We're trying. Yeah. Some of them just look cool and don't actually sell any, though. I'll straight up admit it. You just have such handsome models, like, just to, you know, promote these, yeah. Jason's loving the printful models, man. I am really loving the models.

Listen, they're not too far from you, so you could probably, if you want an extra gig, drive out to L.A., do some modeling for the printful folks. Oh, that'd be hilarious. I think you got it. I'm looking at you in this planetary vest shirt. I think you got what it takes. They need the like middle-aged dad model on here. Rando dude.

They've been doing a good job of diversifying their models too. It used to be there as like a couple white guys you could pick. And then now they have a whole assortment of different shapes and sizes. That's good. Yeah. I don't do any models on my site because of what I mentioned earlier that I feel like weird about them having to have signed a release. that they can put anything they want on them. Even though they agree to it, you don't want to take it to you.

Yeah, I want to see the agreement before I'll put them on my side, essentially. I'd like to see what they signed. I like the one picture here. There's a dude wearing your 27 Falcon Heavy shirt, and he appears to be in this picture standing in like Times Square in New York. I'll pull this up. Which is pretty cool. You know, your shirt has made the rounds.

Yeah, that one. is, uh, uh, uh, where's this picture at? It's like one of the, one of the,

the, the, the last, the hero images of the top. Oh, okay. Okay. They,

they, they made that shirt, um, like, that model you just cut out on a transparent background. And so I just, like, I wanted something interesting,

so I just grabbed a picture. I think it is Times Square. Uh, it's amazing. Yeah, some stock photo. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Anyway, they're cool shirts. I, I endorse these shirts. Thanks. That's it. That's my plug. That's my pick.

All right. Jason, I would love you for you to tell people where they can find you and all the things that you're a part of if they have not partaken in the wonderful bounty of content from the Planetary Society. How do we sound up for the downlink? You can go to planetary.org slash connect. And you see that? You see some hand motions there again. Slash connect. It even did a slash.

I believe that is the proper link. I better make sure that actually works. I think it's... I'd love if it's not... It does. It does. Yeah. Yeah, you can sign up there for the downlink. You'll get our... On our newsletter.

And yeah. And planetary.org, we got all your sweet content there, or at least what we have to offer. I can't guarantee it's sweet. I've been reading it, man. It's a great one. It could be sour. Goes in the RSS feed.

Check that out. I love the little roundup of all the missions. because there's been a lot of planetary missions that are actively doing stuff these days. Yeah, it's really hard to separate that from all the other stuff that's happening. Like, sometimes I find it just randomly, I stumble across it and be like, oh, wow,

JWST did a cool thing. Or, you know, there was some random Europa finding from old Galileo data that I didn't know about. And yeah, it's pretty cool. We've got a couple sample returns coming home soon pretty soon too right i mean high boost is going to be on its way back Cyrus Rex will leave

I think they leave at the end of the year right because they sample this summer and then like fall or winter they head back yeah they don't get back for a while though yeah yeah they're they're really long I'm not sure what the reasoning is if there's some difference in

trajectories from Benu and Ryugu or yeah but wild anyway I love these little asteroid missions like these asteroids are just so cool. And they get those horizon like off Nader shots where it just feels like you're standing

on them. Just so cool. Like, yeah, boulders. Boulders are cool, man. The scale is always hard of those, to understand of those ones. Because they always give you that helpful thing that's like, the boulder in the bottom is the size of a hummer.

And you're like, oh, okay, that's gigantic. I didn't realize that was that big. I thought this was like rocks I was looking at. It looked like a pebble, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. It's always way bigger than I thought. They're always way less zoomed in.

Yeah. Pro tip. Yeah, they never get that close. Jake? I think that's a show. That's the show. Yeah. Bye, Jason.

All right. See you guys late. See you guys late. All right. Always abrupt. Always abrupt. That's how we do it. I love it.