Off-Nominal - 42 - Bullish on the Moon

Episode Date: June 29, 2021

Jake is moving, and has left Anthony alone with the keys to the show. Chris Gebhardt of NASASpaceflight and Jason Davis of the Planetary Society return to the show to talk about our newest Venus armada, China’s new space station, and the space politics cold war of Artemis vs China & Russia’s International Lunar Research Station. And bizarrely, an entire segment about Ares I-X.DrinksTullamore D.E.W. - Triple Distilled Blended Irish WhiskeyMoonJuice Galactic Grapefruit IPA - SanTan Brewing Company - UntappdField Study IPA - Tröegs Independent Brewing - UntappdTopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 42 - Bullish on the Moon (with Chris Gebhardt and Jason Davis) - YouTubeNEW YORK TIMES COLUMBIA SPACE SHUTTLE WENDY'S DRINK GLASS EXCELLENT COND | eBayThe case for Venus | The Planetary SocietyDouble Venus missions: all the burning questions NASA hopes to answer | The Planetary SocietyESA - ESA selects revolutionary Venus mission EnVisionThe Quest for Life on Venus | The Planetary SocietyARES I-X Launch - YouTube[HD] Real Sound of Space Shuttle STS-117 Launch, 3 miles - YouTubeAndrew Jones on Twitter: “Here's a good thread on Tianhe activities with screenshots from CCTV, showing the chaos after getting supplies from Tianzhou-2, in EVA suits. There's even a soft toy cow (as it's Chinese year of the Ox)”Marcia Smith on Twitter: “Waltz: do you support the Wolf amendment? Nelson: it's the law and I support it. Waltz: do you support making it permanent? Nelson: yes, but also have to find places to work together like space debris. [story of LM5B reentry]”There’s an astronaut in a gorilla suit floating around the ISS - The VergeDownlink for MacArticles | The Planetary SocietyPicksDongfang Hour – The only English podcast discussing Chinese aerospace and technologyHomemade Documentaries - YouTubeThe Great Silence: Science and Philosophy of Fermi's Paradox: Ćirković, Milan M. - Amazon.com: BooksFollow JasonJason Davis (@jasonrdavis) / TwitterThe Planetary SocietyFollow ChrisNASASpaceFlight.comChris G - NSF (@ChrisG_NSF) | TwitterFollow 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 is go for main engine, start. Oh, Miko. Welcome to space. Is it focusing on me? We're here. It's a Jakeless episode. I'm trying to make the camera focus on a Medicine Hat Alberta bottle opener in honor of Jake, but it won't. Because this is it. We've never done one of these before. What is that? Medicine Hat Alberta. Jake will be thrilled that I'm shouting out Medicine Hat.

Is it working? Can you see it? Should I hit this button? By Medicine Had, do you mean the Leaf? That is a town. That is a town. Madison had as a town. Oh. Yes. That is where Jake Robbins hails from, to which he shall return for a few days.

And that is why I have my friends here. I've got Chris G of NASA Space Flight. How you doing, Chris? Doing fun. How's it going? Pretty good. Good to have you back. Your second appearance, I believe.

I think so, yes. And Jason Davis of the Planetary Society, your third appearance. Welcome back. Hello. Hello. This is going to be a fun time. I can tell, because we already had a really good bit before we were recording. Which is excellent.

It can only go downhill from here. You have to go to YouTube for that if you're listening still. Should watch us on YouTube. How are you guys doing? We're spreading the country here. We've got the Northeast. We've got Florida. We've got Arizona.

How's it been? Chris is back from vacation. So you're really in tune with things. Oh, I'm very in tune with things. I have no idea what happened this last week. So this will be fun. Did you go anywhere fun on vacation? Yeah, actually.

I'd never been to the southwestern part of Florida down toward the Everglades. And that was really fun to see and just kind of get lost in some of the islands down there. So it was really fun. It was nice to just like disconnect for a few days. Yeah, there's no service down there. No, there is not. No, so you didn't even, if you wanted to be connected, you were in the wrong spot entirely. Yeah, yeah.

And the weather prediction is awful. oh yeah it was 97 all the days that we were there 100% humidity yeah it could rain whenever that just would not move if you think about rain it'll rain yeah yeah pretty much much like today like that that was pretty much the theme of the last couple days of the vacation is it would just rain starting over me and not stop and that followed me home today where my home city got four inches of rain in two hours so it's been a wonderful weather week for me yes Should we kick it off with the drinks?

What are you drinking out there? Sure. So in honor of episode 42, I was really hoping to be able to make and drink a pan-galactic gargleaster. However, as luck would have it, I was all out of the pan-galactic part. So unfortunately, what we're left with today is a telemardew Irish risky for me. just so you were out of the pan-galactic but you had the gargle barker what was it i had the gargleaster

part gargle blaster plumb out of the pan-galactic is this a i don't get it like is this a type of liquor it uh it's uh it's uh it's the drink or is this a bit i don't know he's doing a bit he's doing a bit i'm doing a bit oh it's for hitchhikers guy okay yeah i'm sorry he tipped it off at the 42 thing yeah okay the 40 yeah yeah yeah Pretty slow on the uptake. Embarrassing. Is it because of a drink? Are you drinking something really heavy?

No, it's, I've got here a moon juice, Galactic IPA straight out of Chandler, Arizona, outside of Phoenix, so my neck of the woods. But when I went to the store, they only had the 24-ounceers. Sorry, I'm just moving it so you can keep it on the screen. and I don't think I should consume this whole thing while I'm sitting in one sitting I mean within an hour yeah I guess if we get an hour

you know it's it's it's doable somebody's got to do that Jake always has big beers so is the big boy beer yeah this is it yeah oh and I also so I also broke out because I was like this thing is huge I don't want to tackle a giant can the whole time so I class it up with a glass and check this glass out this is from Wendy's in like the 80s What? It's from Wendy's? The glasses from Wendy's. Yeah, like when McDonald's and Wendy's would

like give you like for a dollar a glass. So they had when I was a kid, they had these New York Times limited edition like famous headlines printed on glasses. And this one is the space shuttle landing, Columbia, which is so random. If you ever made me guess where you got that, I would never guess Wendy's ever. It's it's so, it's so random. But I love having it. Yeah, yeah. Do you have any others? Were you collecting them? Or was there really only one space related item? No, there was another one.

There was the moon landing one, like the classic men land on moon and giant font. Then there were some other random ones like America celebrates 200 and, what was 50? No, it would have been 200 years. Bycintennial? Yeah, it was like centennial or bicentennial. Yeah. It was probably a picture of Philadelphia, which is why I'm correcting you. It was.

It was like with tall ships. I wasn't alive, but we had a whole thing. We actually, the Sixers ripped off a logo from the Bicentennial celebration. If you look at the Bicentennial logo, it was a Liberty Bell with the 1976 and the 76 they now use as their logo. Now, that's a sports reference, right? That's a sports reference. Unfortunately, they were doing well, and now they are not, they are out.

So it's a sad playoffs, right? Yeah, not for us anymore. But not, ooh Yeah, sent home That's a bummer Listen, you let Jake off the hook One episode And we're talking about sports

This is how it goes here, apparently Oh, and the other thing that I can do Is I can drink a Philadelphia area beer Without him giving me shit about it So I've got a Troggs field study IPA Because if I did this, he would be like, Oh, you got another Trogg's thing, so Does he normally give you shit for drinking Philly beer?

Yeah. Is it what was? Oh, is Philly beer? I think it was just because it's a dunk on Philly? I think more of my effort

buying beer or my capacity to buy like cool beers because he's got this old beer store, there's always a space beer and I'm like, you have crap beer but it's never space related out here. He kind of lucked out there

in Surrey, right? It's just a little, yeah. So, but he's in, you know, it's fine. It's good beer though. It's good beer. So, field study. I thought it was relevant

because I thought field study we would talk about some like field science and then we're talking about Venus we've got like 800 new spacecraft going to Venus oh yeah how do you feel about this Jason because you've been writing all these all this like everybody hates Venus you've been writing these headlines I've seen for years there's a whole campaign against Venus

and then here we go all the sudden we're picking all these Venus missions I'm blaming it on you yeah I think I did try to drop a spicy Venus article and a couple years ago like why I know Venus like I think you know I thought I was making it up but apparently it's deep in my memory that you were

doing the spicy Venus take I think there was only one there was one about Venus but yeah no it's cool it's exciting it's weird that like no Venus missions for all this time and then they're like here's two Venus missions it's very random and surprising

and then ESA is like we got one too Yeah. Yeah, like the next week they dropped it out there. Yeah, that's cool. Like, I've become more fascinated in recent years with about like the whole timeline of the early solar system and like, find it fascinating that you had Venus, Earth, and Mars all potentially with water on the surface.

And then Earth's just like, woo, we'll create life and we'll evolve life. And then Mars is just like, ah, and loses its magnetic field and everything goes to shit there. And then Venus, something happens and there's a runaway greenhouse effect and all the water goes away. And only Earth, you know, persists. But yeah, it's cool. Like, I want to, we really don't know a lot about Venus. It's really weird. It's right next door.

And, yeah, it's kind of like there's going to, I bet there's going to be some really formative discoveries from me. these missions like, you know, kind of on the level of a flagship mission to the outer planet. It's just like, like, what? How did we didn't know that, you know, the certain very basic things about the planet. So it's cool. Stoked. That's my, that's the end of my sincere.

Back to the Venus spice. We can get back into the funny stuff. It is, it is, like you're saying, it is weird that we were like, meh about Venus for so long. You know? Yeah. Was this, I, like we just mentioned about the bicentennial, I was not alive back then, but there was, everyone was like all excited about everywhere else, it seems, based on, if you look at the historical missions to everywhere else in the solar system, everyone was like, like, what was it that made Venus seem so terrible back in the 70s and 80s? It's terrifying clouds. Is it just that?

Like, it was hard, and we couldn't do it, and we couldn't land stuff there as a country, so we were like, whatever, the Russians, Soviets at the time can do it. yeah the you know i i don't know well i don't know because i wasn't alive either but um i i get the people born after all the venous missions discuss why not but we're going to make our good shot of telling you why yeah hi i'm a man on the internet and i'm here to explain to you some things that i'm deeply unqualified to talk about um yeah you know what the one piece of uh actual knowledge i have from that is we did an article for the last magazine, our quarterly magazine. Actually, we, Nancy Atkinson wrote it. And it mentioned how, you know, there was this speculation before we sent space missions to Venus. Like, we just didn't know what the conditions were like. So, like, it was the

more alluring target in a lot of ways. Then we got there and, you know, there was just like this big disappointment like, oh, it's just this hellscape and nothing can survive on the surface. And so, like, it became uninteresting. And the community just kind of moved on like, well, you know, there's not not a lot of interesting stuff happening there. Whereas Mars, you know, you, it's the more benign of the two, you know, you can, it's slightly less or slightly more hospitable than Venus in that regard, I guess. So that's my uninformed take. yeah i mean i i think beyond the in the hellscape that that planet seems to be and like i mean what like the what what's the record it's like less than 30 minutes that something has survived

on the surface of it like it just bakes and like the sulfuric acid just dissolves it um yeah i mean i i'm curious i think it could have something to do with the fact that when when those first images of the surface came back and it was like very definitive like yeah no like life as we know it does not exist here that that was part of it that it was just like that drive to seek out the other places that that might

and and because a curious thing that I keep coming back to with all three Venus missions getting chosen across these agencies right now is just like yeah and I kind of remember a couple months ago this whole phosphine in Venus's atmosphere and of course Rocket Lab is very interested in it

do you think that was part of it? Or do you think people really, like the agencies really just had gotten to a point where it was just like, it's ridiculous at this point. Like, another Mars, another Jupiter mission as much as I wanted the Triton mission. Yeah, Triton mission would have been pretty cool. Yeah, I'll give up Triton for double Venus. Yeah, that's true. I haven't seen it in a reporting on this and we didn't really dig into it either. I didn't hear anything about like how much of it was.

was these two missions are, how much of it was we got to go back to Venus no matter what versus like, you know, they kind of score these missions when they're considering them. They look at all these different aspects of technical feasibility and the return on investment in science and everything. And, you know, it's impossible to say, I guess, without knowing, like, I don't know how did the other ones get bad grades? Like in terms of where they like, you know, technologically speaking, this is likely to run over budget or, um, the science return on the Venus missions is way higher than, you know, some of these other ones. I don't know. It is a good question. But, I mean, I think when the whole phosphine thing happened, Bridenstein was tweeting, like,

straight up like, we got to go back to Venus. Like, you know, which is kind of, that's a bold take for the NASA administration because these are like, you know, competitively selected missions. so to like say like Venus like was a pretty big like endorsement you know it was and you know like I I admit when I when the five of them first came out and we saw the list and I I admit that I was pulling for one of the Venus missions I didn't really have a like a preference for which but I was really pulling for that one and the Triton mission and kind of really hoping sorry Mars that it would finally be like yes there are other planets you know yeah

that Mars is bad, but, you know, I don't know, like, it kind of seems to me too, like, maybe this was the opportunity, perhaps for NASA to make a very bold statement of, yes, like, we have other companies, we have other entities out there thinking about the Mars puzzle, thinking about the moon puzzles, it's time to focus on, like, what would be the harder, what's the hard challenge after that one? Yeah. The timeline's pretty weird, though, on them, is that, that none of them, including the ESA mission, get there until early 2030s, you know? Yeah, I think what they were in 28 and 29, yeah.

Which like, it doesn't sound, like, maybe I'm just forgetting where we are at in the years, but it sounds forever away. It sounds like, it sounds like an outer planets mission away, you know? It does. Not the one next door. And it makes it so that I think Rocket Lab would do theirs before these got there. The, the, um,

I'm wondering also if, what may have played into it. You know, they're doing the Decadal survey right now to define, like, what the next 10 years of priorities are. And the last Decadal priorities were Mars sample return, Europa Klipper, and then Ice Giants. So, you know, we've got Clipper as well in hand that's happening. Mars sample return is pretty much happening.

You know, they just need to actually commit to the final missions with ISA and get it all planned out, but it seems like it's on its way. And so then the next choice, you know, according to science community priorities, is ice giant. So I'm wondering if rather than pick a triton fly by, they're like, look, we're going to get a flagship mission to an ice giant next. And that's just going to like blow ice giant science out of the water. Again, I don't know. I don't know how much they consider that when making these decisions, but it seems like that might add something to do with it. I was kind of wondering about that too. because I know Da Vinci was up for,

one of the Venus missions was up for consideration in the last round, got passed over, and then came back in this one, and I was kind of wondering if maybe... They added the plus. They made it one better. Yes. They rebranded.

And I was kind of wondering in that regard, because we see this a lot on some missions, some pretty famous missions, you know, that get looked over the first time round and come back sort of more amped up and more capable in what they're proposing. So I'm wondering if we're going to see a Triton plus. Triton Plus, yeah.

Triton Plus. And not just fly it by, but find a way to get it into orbit around what. I think that's the other part about like punting the Ice Giants missions is that like we're only going to get bigger, better launch vehicles in the near future. Hypothetically by the time that was selected, one or multiple of them would be flying. And you could actually consider that they can use that at that point. You know, I still have no idea how Starship can fly things to the outer planets. I've yet to see anyone say, we're just going to waste the starship.

I guess that's planned. They're building a lot of them. They can just flying one out there, which is also kind of cool. But there's, like, that aspect matters as well. Right now, you'd be basing it on Falcon Heavy and Vulcan and things like that. But theoretically, in a few years, you can replan that. What was the Triton? The Trident, I don't know what the timing was on that.

like what, you know, did it require multiple flybys, like, because of current launch vehicle technology, you know, or were they like, you know, yeah, could something like Starship just blast at their direct in five, ten years, you know, I don't know. Yeah. I'm trying to Wikipedia as fast as I can. Here we go. Here's the whole roll call. Fly by of Earth in 2026.

Fly by of Venus, 27. Fly by of Earth, 2028. Fly by Earth, 20131. Fly by of Jupiter, 2032. And then it would get there in 2038. Yeah, we need a bigger. Yeah, we need a bigger launch. We need a bigger boat.

We're going to need a bigger rocket. Jake is probably losing his mind right now because all he wanted was his mission to be selected. And we're just going into it on the show where he's not here. He says in the comments for YouTube tried to launch in 20229, arrive in 2078, probably. Yeah, exactly. I just was, I don't know why I was weird.

Were any of you weirded out by the Venus timeline? Was I the only one that was like, wow, 2030s? Like, I don't know. Maybe I'm just being weird about it. I think the only thing that got me on them, but it's sort of very quickly settled into more of a, oh, oh, this is how complex they're making them. I was more envisioning them on like the dragonfly timeline,

on the Trident timeline, on something that we were going to be looking for in like the 2025 launch period. So to see 2028 and 2009 was a little like, oh, why, but I mean, it does speak to the complexity of what we're doing. I mean, because one of them is supposed to basically

balloon itself down to the surface. It's pretty wild. I mean, it's wild when you consider, like, that Venus is pretty similar to Earth in terms of, like, gravity and, you know, and ultimate size. So we're not talking about something that's small like Mars or Moon like Titan.

We're talking about trying to land something on basically Earth. So that's some intriguing technology development that's got to be packed into a really small package to fit into some of these existing launchers. Yeah, and you figured the last thing that touched the surface of Venus was generations of engineers ago. You know, there's not many people around that did that. Certainly not here. They were working on the mission. Yeah, because like the U.S.'s last experience was the Magellan orbiter.

It's crazy. The Bacab thing is curious, though, because they just won a contract. to fly two of their photons to Mars, 2024-ish. So they're going interplanetary within a couple of years here. And boy, does that pay down a lot of development costs that you need to go to Venus as well.

It really does. So it seems like they're going to be a launch window or two ahead, if not more, than these other missions, which would be pretty cool. Do we know the details of what they're sending to Mars in that 2024 window? Or is the idea of something, CubeSat or a small... mission, which is like kind of a great, of all the terrible backernames, Escapade is pretty good. It's like a dual mission.

Another, here, let's go more into Jake's territory on Off Nominal without Jake. Let's talk about Mars orbitors. Let's get it really wrong too. So he'll, his head looks forward. I think it's a selfie of Jake on one and then me waving to him on the other. And we're going to just fly around for a while. Yes. I mean, that's, yeah, I mean, like Escapade.

That's right. That works, right? That's good. Yeah, those are some escapades right there. Yeah. What does escapade stand for? I don't know if that does that. Escape thing that does other stuff. Yeah, yeah.

But I mean, that's cool that, like, you know, what's a rocket lab flight going for these days? Do we know what the- Oh, well, they're going to fly it on something else, they've said. Yeah. Oh, they are going to fly it. The electron's not powerful enough to get it there. No. I think they could do one, but not. It's a dual thing. It is the escape and plasma acceleration and dynamics explorers.

Clearly. Yeah. How did I forget that? Yeah. Yeah, but they're going to, I mean, that's the other thing is that they never said that they were going to fly those on other people's rockets. And now they're like, we'll figure it out. We'll get there. Because they were supposed to ride share with psyche and then they got kicked off that. Oh, yeah. Yeah. And now they're like, I don't know, we need a lift. It's like, who's flying to Mars in 2024?

It's a weird. It's a weird. It's a weird progression when a launch vehicle company is startup, like, and you know, Firefly is doing the same thing with one of their moonlanders. They're like, oh, we're going to build a moonlander. We'll fly on your rocket? No, no.

Even though that was our first, you know, I think. You know, I assume that smarter people than me have worked the numbers and figured this makes sense instead of deviant. developing your launch vehicle technology first. But yeah, it is, it is interesting. Aries 1X. Oh, excuse me, what? The one that got away.

I love Aries 1X. Such an awkward little mission. Oh, such a, such a darling. Were you there for that one by any chance? No. I was totally there. The one? You were there?

I was there. I was a young college student standing in Titusville. Like, look at this crazy thing. It's definitely canceled. You're like, this is the future. Yeah, there we go. That's our canceled future. That should be like a podcast.

God, the thing I remember about that mission, like just the sheer comedy of it was they had all these sensors up at the top of the fake launch abort tower. And they had a little rain cover over it, and they had to remove the rain cover. So they thought something simple, like just put a piece of string on it and pull it off before you evacuate the tower. what they didn't expect was that the cover would get stuck onto the top of the rocket and the hilarity that ensued of watching pull nothing and then you would hear them they were clearly talking and then pull nothing talk pull nothing that was the moment they were like well constellations cancelled we know it now yeah if it wasn't if the writing wasn't already on the wall

it might already have been cancelled at that point actually um yeah it's destroyed to pat it was like the thing that completely destroyed 39B on the way out too. Well, I hopped off the pad and then just immediately it's like, it's the only time like watching a rocket launch where like I had a small inhale moment of, oh God, it's going to hit the tower and explode. It went a little proton for a minute. Oh, God, yeah.

That's a deep cut. That's a deep cut. That is a deep, but yeah, I appreciate that. Yeah, the cartwheel. And then another thing about Ares I one X that I love is the moment of separation when they popped off that second stage. And they both just, they're just tumbling. And then like, that's over. And then that, you know, the public address person's like, all right, that's a successful, you know, launch.

And it looks like the stages are about to hit each other. And it's just so awkward. It turned into an NRO webcast real quick. Well, that was all we could show you. Our customer requested that we end this early. It did. I mean, just between that and then the fact that, like, the first picture of it in the water was just like it had the 45-degree dent in the side of it.

And it was like, okay. Did one of the parachutes not open? Was that one of you? I believe that's accurate. Yeah. The parachutes didn't open. And, yeah, like the dummy section just kind of crumpled when it hit. Yeah.

So sad. Oh, yeah. I will forever, that was one of the most interesting answers. I think we got at a presser where somebody asked the question, like, was it supposed to do that? Would like just kind of go boop and like reconnect there. And their answer was literally, we knew it would do something. The hallmarks of an excellently proceeding program. Definitely had a great future in front of it.

I don't know. I mean, they were kind of ahead of their time. You know, it's like when Elon Musk tweets, like, when they did the launch abort thing and they were like, will the first stage explode from this year? And he's like, fun guaranteed or excitement guaranteed. And yeah. But to see NASA doing it is a little bit jarring. Like, I don't know.

Especially when it wasn't like a new item that was launching into the sky, right? It was like, well, basically, we've been doing this for a while. Not alone, granted, but, you know, we've been doing a thing. We know it worked, so it's fine. But I think that from the ground, the kind of sad part is that you could see all of that,

even in person, because it's, you know, on a good day, you can see the solid rocket booster separation on a shuttle launch. And it was a pretty nice day from where I was watching anyway. And you could see, you know, pretty much a whole thing. And I was like, oh, that's the whole mission right there. And without the excitement of the abortes. Because those were all epic.

You know? The New Shepherd one was pretty great. I'm going right through this thing. Well, I was going to say, the SpaceX In Flight Abort was epic if you were anywhere but the press site. Where for eight of two seconds, it was visible and you never lost sight of it. And one second before the abort triggers, cloud. every eclipse chaser's worst nightmare the one cloud you know yeah you can hear on a lot of the video you can hear that no

dropped across the press site yeah everyone runs to look at the multi-digital display device that's also a clock what a name is that what they call the the fancy scoreboard now or the new the jumbo-tron. The jumbo-tron? Yeah, I don't know if that's what they actually call it, but one of my good former buddies down here, he called it that, and oh, man, I have never been able to not call it that again.

Chris, are you excited for, speaking of solid rocket boosters, are you excited for space launch system first launch? I mean, you know, I know, I know whenever the phrase space launch system is uttered, like, immediately people have to have takes on. But like, everything else is. Everything else aside, like, are you excited just for the sheer monstrosity of that thing launching for the first? Because I am. I would go see it. We're all going. Who are you kidding? You're all going to be there.

Come on. I want to see that thing fly. I can't, I can't wait. It's been interesting because like Orion was built here. So like there wasn't a spacecraft arrival thing. Right. For this one. So it's been cool following like the. arrival of the ICPS, which was six years ago at this point, I think. And then the solid rockets. He was not bitter about that at all. No, no, no. He was totally happy that it was six years ago. Six years ago.

Something like that. It's been here a while. I remember I came back from California for like a week-long visit and I thought I was going to get to see it. And it was already like in its storage container. So it was just come see the storage container. That's very disappointing. It's been fun watching all the constituent components arrive.

And it really became real watching the corsage come off the barge. I'm really looking forward to it. I can't wait to see this thing roll out for its wet dress. I think that's going to be a big thing. And I hope NASA does a really good job of covering it or lets us in there to cover that too because that's a really good moment. would be, I can't wait to feel 8 million pounds of thrust

leaving the, leaving the, leaving the planet. And it's a total, like, this is one of those things that doesn't matter, but I'm also really stoked that they redesigned the flame trench to send everything to the north, so that there's no obstructed view at the press site when they light the main engines.

Yeah. Yeah, that would be cool. I, yeah, like, yeah, they better. have like a little robot that like DOS can drive with a remote control from a studio because I don't think I'm taking my eyes off of that thing when it lifts off. There's a whole generation of space fans that never got to see shuttle that I'm really excited to for them to experience what that was like plus an engine. This is Space Shuttle Plus in the rebranding department. Oh gosh, yeah. Like by like a million and a half pounds of thrust at

lift off. Right. Bigger solid rock boosters, one more engine. because it's hard to... I lived in Orlando for a while when there was a very late shuttle launch. Sometimes I wouldn't drive all the way out to the Cape. And if it was like 4 a.m., the ground would shake, 40 miles away. You know?

And that's like... That doesn't make sense to... The ground is shaking. It's 40 miles away. A solid commute away. And this thing's shaking the ground that I'm standing on. And SLS is bigger. That is going to be pretty good for people to experience.

Yeah. And what's mind-blowing to me, though, is like, so SLS is more than shuttle and SLS comes in right around 8 million pounds at Lyftoff. And Starships double that. Oh, God. Yeah. There is a difference, though. There's been some good times ahead. Solids are weird, though.

Solids are different. Oh, they are because, yeah, I can almost guarantee you this. Starship is more powerful at liftoff. SLS is. will be louder by several magnitudes. It just sounds like it's ripping the sky apart in a totally different way. There's a particular sound about it that I am obsessed with. Sometimes I go pull up on YouTube,

like the real audio from space shuttle launches where people recorded it with these epic rigs and I turn it all the way up and it's like a very addictive sound. It is. It's like a combination of like the crackling and the popping, but it almost sounds like the air is just being ripped. Yeah, it's ripping through the sky. is the only way to describe it. Yeah, I never saw one.

So I'm definitely looking forward to it. Yeah, I got it. I got a show. We've been working. This moment is big, man. We've been building up to this for a while because we can do a whole like, and I can guarantee you. I can't drink around the world off a nominal meet up.

I will pick one week in the winter months to take a vacation. Yeah, let us know. That is when SLS will launch. Just keep us abreast of when you're going away. Yeah. You leave the area. That's when it will fly. Yeah.

It's taken off from MCO and he's looking. out his window and it's like, there it goes. Exactly. Oh, no, no, no. I wouldn't even be able to see it from MCO. Trust me, I would be on the opposite side of the country because that's what happened with Demo 1. Not that I'm bitter. But it's good, but what about you, Jason?

Are you looking forward to that? Are you looking forward to, like, what are you looking forward to with the, like, the gateway, the lunar programs and everything that have come up, including China and Russia's? Yeah, I'm definitely looking forward to SLS. Yeah, to keep it on that for a second. Yeah, I mean, I grew, I think it's because I have an irrational love of Shuttle. Like, the generation slightly older than me, you know, they got Apollo and they got to see, you know, they get to be nostalgic about the Saturn 5 and all that stuff.

But I didn't get to, you know, we didn't get to do any of that. But like growing up, like shuttle was the thing. That was like the only game in town. And it's like, I just developed such a deep appreciation and love for that shuttle. Even though, you know, it's a, you know, flawed program, flawed vehicle in so many ways. But, boy, I just, I just loved it. And I still, just watching old, you know, videos of it, just love to watch it. It's such a unique, ungainly vehicle.

So to see, so when SLS was first announced, you know, I was like, this is, you know, this will be my, you know, generations version of that. Now that was before, like, you know, when did SLS actually get announced 2011 maybe? And before that, the whole Aries thing. So, you know, to think that's... Only orange. Like, yeah.

So to think, so like back then it wasn't at all clear that like SpaceX, at least, you know, some visionary people thought that. But, you know, to me that wasn't, it wasn't like a certainty like, well, there's also going to be this awesome thing to watch happen. you know and so um so yeah i'm still stuck on it slightly for the nostalgia purposes even if i know that it's you know um programmatically uh that's a more epic areas one x you mean yeah yeah yeah and it's you know uh hopefully i mean geez oh gosh you you wouldn't say it their money word you wouldn't say at least two is guaranteed at this point i would go i think so yeah yeah yeah i mean

they're already building hardware at Mishu. Like, NASA's not just going to scrap flight hardware for this thing and not fly. I think the boosters are actually done for flight too as well. Just sitting in Utah. They're probably on to flight four at this point. Yeah, they've got a whole, it's like an obstacle course of segments out there.

Yeah. Yeah. No, to answer your question, though, about like Artemis and stuff. Yeah, it's super exciting. I mean, again, Like we, it stinks. Like we missed out on like people walking on the freaking moon. Like, you know, so I'm excited to see that happen.

Like it doesn't matter to me what, you know, who actually does it and what the, you know, arrangement is just to see it happen is just, yeah, that's so exciting to look forward to. There's a lot of cool science that could come out of Artemis as well. Like Apollo for all of the, you know, the association with like this was you know America's big moment where we did this huge accomplishment we walked on the moon like there was a such great science that came out of Apollo just bringing all those freaking moon rocks back

and you know there's a lot of cool things you can learn from sample return especially at the moon so yeah I I am looking forward to that as well hopefully a lot of cool questions will get answered about you know, like the moon is kind of linked to Earth, our origin story. You know, it kind of preserves this history of all the stuff that happened to Earth. A lot of it happened to the moon, too, like bombardment in the early days of the, you know, comets and asteroids.

And, but like, you know, the moon's just been preserved much better than Earth. So, yeah, it's super cool. Excited. I'm bullish. On the moon. Bullish. Bold take by Jason. Bullish.

on the moon. You mentioned the China and Russia stuff that's happening. And now that we see some people hanging out and their space station up there, I want to circle back to a previous take of mine and just check in with you two on how exactly, how big of a mistake China is making by getting stuck in low Earth orbit just like we did. Because this has been my take all along. They're going to get very sidetracked by low Earth orbit for like 10 years. by building out a space station. And I'm watching these videos of them unpacking, and if you watch the unpacking videos,

like maybe NASA doesn't post the videos when cargo ships arrive, and we, like, bring all the bags into the station and stuff, but they looked very unorganized on... It looked like when you go on a trip and you pack the car once, and then you're like, ah, shit, we didn't fit the one thing we need,

like, let's repack the car again. It had that vibe where there was just bags everywhere, and they were pointing at stuff. Like, you could see them on the video like talking to each other and pointing that thing. Like, maybe that bag should go over there. Anyway, I just feel like they're going to get stuck.

Do either of you have this feeling? I'm fascinated if we're going to agree or not here, because that's a fascinating take. I don't. And I don't for the sole reason because their lunar program is already underway. They've got pretty expressly stated goals on that one. They're starting in on the Mars endeavors with everyone else. well, not with everyone else, but on their own,

with a whole bunch of other people, but not the U.S. I don't feel like they're going to get stuck the way the way we got stuck in Lower Earth orbit. Because I think they had a very clear. Because we got stuck for 30 years and they got stuck for 10? Well, because I think they, I don't see them following the same path. We got stuck because we are very, because until now, we've been very singular focused on like, okay, we're going to do this.

and then we're going to do that and then we're going to do that. But you're not planning point C while you're doing thing A. So yeah, that's how we got stuff. We did the shuttle and then we're like, well now we need the space station.

So we'll do that. And then next we need to retire the shuttle so we'll do that. And then next, yeah, we have the funding wedge. Exactly. That, exactly that. Exactly that. And one thing that I've been very happy to

to see is that China doesn't appear to have that. They appear to have a multi-pronged approach going on. They've said that lunar exploration is a goal. They have a partner with Russia now. And I don't know about the two of you, but man, that video that they released the other week, it just gave

me good space race vibes, like not the crappy part of the Cold War, but good space race vibes of like, man, if we can get into a who does the moon better race, there's only a benefit to that. you know, for us.

So I'm excited in that way, and I think in that regard, I don't foresee them getting stuck the way we did. Just long timelines, you know. It is, yeah. Well, was there, I mean, they're thinking 2030s. People 2030s, maybe some stuff before that. Robotic setup and stuff. I mean, you know, by the time NASA's,

by the time Artemis gets around to landing people on the moon, I'm like, well, is 23rd? that slow. Maybe they're just realistic? Maybe. They don't have to play politics for one thing. So maybe they just say we're going to do

where we have to like do elections and stuff. You know, if you shed the whole elections thing, you can kind of. Yeah, I think I lean towards Chris's opinion there a little more because yeah, and actually that is a really good point, the elections thing.

Like, you think of the U.S., you have this representative democracy where NASA has all these constituent influences that go into like, it's never about what is the most efficient solution to get to this one singular goal that we have. It's a democracy.

So there's all this input and there's all these people, you know, like in Alabama, for instance, who are like the space launch system must go on. Yeah, to name one. so so you know China their system of being they're like we'll do long March 9

we'll do a different long March 9 we'll do this other crazy thing it's probably to their advantage when it comes to this yeah yes try to be yes coming from a space non-profit

yes I try to maintain the diplomacy like yeah right yes It's not lobbying. It's not lobbying. It's hard to tell whether, I mean, it sounds like their space station almost has a finite period to it as well.

Whereas when we built the ISS, I don't know that anyone was saying like, this is a thing we're doing for X years and it's done. Whereas I think China's more like we're going to do a couple modules. That's going to be our thing for, you know, 10 years perhaps. And then we're probably done. I don't know. I could be wrong. Yeah. I think what I've been fascinating with, what I was fascinated about is like you had this like,

okay, so the first module of China station launches and then Russia sort of drops that bomb that, well, we're out of the ISS by 2025. We'll see. Stay tuned. And we're going to do this raw space station, but then there were those reports that like at the last minute they tried to get China to launch the new station into a 51.6 degree inclination orbit.

So they could reach it out of Bikonor. And then when China said no, now we have this conversation going on about maybe we'll have crude Soyuz launches out of French Guiana and everything. I think what the Chinese space station becomes is like this is like China and Russia's little leaping pad to figure out what they need to do together in a practical working sense to get this lunar architecture that you're seeing from them. If I were a betting man, we'll never see the Ross Space Station. I was going to say the thing that China and Russia should do is what I would recommend to any couple which is just sit down and talk about finances

for a couple of minutes I think that's like that's the real thing they need to do China's like look we got all this money Russia what do you have Russia's like yeah we're trying to try You have a delayed ISS module we're still trying to figure out

we got a spare I don't know if you want it but it's been sitting around for a while maybe the 70s. It's pretty old, but it's the same thing, really, that we're doing now. So, I don't know, this one's not making it at the ISS.

Would you like it? I was talking about this with Andrew Jones on Twitter the other day, that a lot of, like, the nationalistic sentiment in the U.S. about China and Russia, like, getting together and doing things in space

is a threat to U.S. space supremacy or whatever. And I'm like, I don't know, like, looking at what Russian hardware has been up to lately, if you're a China Hawk, what you would want is them to use as much Russian hardware as possible. Because it hasn't been going that well for us lately.

In the last couple of years, we've had a crazy in-flight abort where somebody like hammered a Soyuz booster in weird. A hole drilled on the ISS that they then blamed our astronauts for. Yeah, the Soyuz. The Svezda's, is it Zvezda?

That's leaking like crazy right now? like if you're if you're like rooting for china to not do great more Russian hardware not less would be my suggestion I wonder if it's more political though if if China knows I mean you know they're pretty savvy when it comes to this stuff so I figure they are not they don't have lofty expectations when it comes to how much Russia is going to participate and so it might be more of like a political thing like look we will welcome in Russia that the you know that you have so spurned, you know, not in the space program, but other political, in other political ways. One of the great space nations of all time.

Even if it's more like the end product ends up being like China, 80% Russia, 20% or something. Oh, yeah, yeah, I'd agree with that totally. Yeah, I don't think China did this for the financial gain or the technological gain. in fact, like, it kind of struck me because, like, I, and I, I hand it to China, you know, like, for the flag that we give them for not covering some missions, they did a good job on that crew launch. And they've done a, they've done a really fantastic job, I think so far with the first crew mission up there. Because like you were saying, Anthony, like, when you say, like, I don't know, maybe NASA just doesn't show this. I mean, like, I had the same thought when I saw them unpacking everything, I thought, oh, that's what it must look like on unpacking day on the ISS. looked very regular and you could imagine it. Exactly. Exactly. And also in many ways, kudos to China for showing like that disorganization because that's not something that you would normally expect.

So the whole point of that slight tangent was to say that one thing I really noticed in the onboard views more so than they've done before is how much roomier Shenzhou is to Soyuz. And I always used to think, because you look at the outside of them and you're like, well, they clearly just took the Soyuz design and modified it, which is exactly what they did. but they really made some substantial improvements to that vehicle. So, yeah, I think this is more, like you said, Jason, the show of, especially the line they had in that video, it was something along the lines of,

we welcome anyone who's willing. And it was like, oh, that was like, I have to give them that. That was a really. Twisting the knife. Yeah. As our head of our space agency is like, I don't know, the Wolf Amendment seems pretty good. We could make that permanent forever in all of eternity.

It was a weird vibe. Yeah, what were we talking about before we went live? About being underwhelmed? Yeah, so that was a weird statement this week. I don't know if people caught that, but he... I don't even know if he meant to say that, but he was in this congressional hearing, and somebody asked about making the Wolf Amendment,

which is what prevents NASA from talking to China officially about space. And he was like, yeah, we'll make it permanent. Which is a weird take. Even if you're like, we shouldn't do things in space, to China permanent is a weird do you want anything ever permanent ever like that's never a good thing yeah

I'd be interested to know like the influences behind that like who congressionally is really pushing for something like that you know because of every chasse he's doing 4D chess he is from the Senate yeah I don't know if he's doing 4D chess

it's more like actually the fact that you said 4D chess and Senate in like the same sentence makes me want to send you back to a civics lesson. It's like more like one D chess. One D chess. A lot of these people. Checkers.

It's all the same color. I feel like Bridenstine saw some of the dimensions. He kind of got some of the games of it. Yeah, yeah. It's hard to tell. Like who, who, well, I mean, Nelson was a Democrat. So, but I, but again, like, I don't know. I don't know who the big

Who stands where When it comes to China relations For something like the Wolf Amendment I don't know like what does Is that bipartisan? Are there just a few people who feel really strongly about that? And largely other people don't really care or yeah I don't I don't know

Yeah I mean I guess what I struggle with more is is like I And I get that there are things that right like Are classified that we don't know about you know, in terms of U.S.-China relations and what people are concerned about. But I just, I can't get over, I can't move past the fact that like, the U.S. and Russia found a way to work together. Like, the bitterest of enemies found a way to do this where we're not concerned with,

oh my God, did the Russians see what was in the destiny module today? Like, no. Yeah, we post insanely high-res imagery of everything. I have a thing about the Russian film crew can't go to the U.S. I have a book somewhere that Jake got me. That is like unreal detail of everything on the ISS. Yes. That's cool.

That's why it just cracks me up when they're like, ooh, the Russian film crew can't go to the U.S. side. Anyway. Like this is this great technological advantage. Like, did you see the way they screwed this panel into the wall? Like, mm-hmm. Yeah. Take that, America.

Like, we've got you now. Yeah. Yeah. And like I said, I know we don't know everything. I know there's classified stuff. We're not privy to that might play into this. I know there's lobbying. There's all those sorts of political stuff.

But it's just like, how can we not find a way to do this that doesn't... Yeah. You can read the typography that they used on the ISS stuff. Yeah. Yeah. We're not that secretive. When I first saw... It's funny, when I first saw pictures of China's module, and I think this was right

after it, you know, the core one launched, and they had onboard cameras and showed them like, ooh, it's, it looks a lot like the ISS, but on the other hand, it's, it's much cleaner and, you know, tidier. But I realize that's also what the ISS modules looked like when they first launched them, like very, you see like the ground photos of them. They're like very slick, you know, a nice tucked away. And you see it now and it's just like bungee cords strapping. years. It's what the backside of your desk looks like after you've worked for like two months at a new desk.

Just like, I kept adding wires and stuff. Yeah. It is funny. I would love to talk to one of the ISS astronauts of like, is there like a particular area where like, I cannot believe this old cable run is still here and it was installed in like 99 or something. And it's like cat one and you're just annoyed that it's there every day.

Because there's probably some people that have like severe like need for. things to be so tidy on the ISS and they just can never get it there and it probably annoys them and I need to find that person. You know, that or like I wonder if anyone had, like that Jake, like what you just said like, I wonder if anyone has ever felt a compulsive need to like

clean the ISS on a set of Saturday off but they were like I'm reorganizing everything. What are you doing? I'm reorganizing a destiny module. Yeah. Oh gosh. Or to talk to them and go like what's the thing on the ISS that everyone really wants to update but everyone

is like, no, it works, don't touch it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, there's got to be a lot of old tech that everyone's just like, I don't know, that laptop in the corner controls some weird thing, don't touch it, like. I don't know what it does, but Hadfield told me don't touch the laptop, and I've told everyone else

that has come in the ISS since. Yeah, well, I mean, Marshall has a whole office. Imagine if it was just a prank by crew one. That is the best. Yeah, it makes sense. some weird thing that no one knows about. It's a brilliant Frank. Yeah, Marshall has a whole office that's dedicated just to tracking stuff on the ISS.

Like a whole inventory, like there's people there who are like, oh, yeah, you need, you know, the Phillips head screwdriver or whatever. It's here, according to our records, which have not been updated in like years probably. But yeah. Well, that was the crew two launch when they, I think it was crew two that when they were trying to find the like sweaters or something and nobody can find where they put it on the capsule. And there was like an hour long segment of the live stream of them like check Cabbit 2D or whatever.

And it wasn't there. And then they like went back to Hawthorne and they were trying to figure out where, who put the sweaters wear. And it was this whole segment of this live stream. It was amazing. Someone actually just posted it up in the live chat section for the off nominal discord because I was going to say the prank that I love the most on the ISS is when someone smuggled the gorilla suit up.

Yeah. Yeah. That was real random and weird. And it just had whips of like Scott Kelly being like, you know what? I'm retiring when I get home. I don't care. I'm doing a bit. I'm doing a gorilla bit.

People at NASA be like a year long mission so they don't think it's space madness. Right. I got to find a link for that. There's some pretty good pranks. Like Skylab crew had some good ones too. the shuttle cruise had had a couple good ones as well. Yeah.

Do they ever have cross-border pranks? Like, do the NASA astronauts ever prank the Russian astronauts because that would be blaze? There was one time where I think it was that, it was like when everyone was sleeping, we went in and drilled a hole in the Soyuz. Best all-time prank. Great prank.

They made them do a spacewalk to find where it was. Like, they really got them good on that one. I hear one day, too, like the Russians came over and just installed a bunch of trampolines on our side. The little workout ones, though, the tiny ones, you know, from the 80s. Yeah, from the 80s, exactly. Same era as Vezda and all that. They had the trampoline right on there. I'm, I'm, uh, Jake's not here to keep me on time.

so I missed our entire segment where we do picks. Does anyone have picks? Did you bring any picks? Things that you would like people to experience. I can go first because it seems top of it. Yeah, you go. I've finally, after I've seen many recommendations for it, finally started listening to the Dong Feng hour,

which is a podcast about Chinese aerospace, which is like basically Andrew Jones is my China source right now. and I've expanded it by one, but they also reference Andrew drones. So I'm like, well, at least somebody else is reading all this stuff that he writes also.

I think you're right, Jason, the world's China so. Exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's great.

It's, you know, if you want to, it's hard to figure things out a lot of times, but they, uh, they do a great job running through everything that you need to know. Is it out of China?

They both live in or near one. They're like kind of sometimes in China, sometimes not, sometimes in Hong Kong, sometimes not. Like, I think they tend to bounce around. I think they're like, I don't know, the full backstory of everyone. But it's great.

If you need a thing to listen to, to keep you up to date, I'll put a link in the show notes, obviously, but I think it's just dongfong hour.com. Yes. And it's D-O-N-G-F-A-N-G-Hour.com. That's what I got. Am I right?

So I think that might have been a pick by somebody before on the show, but I finally started listening. Sweet. I'll have to give it to listen. What was it again? Dong Fong Hour. What do you got, Chris? Yeah, mine is,

I came across a YouTube channel a couple of weeks ago. It's called homemade documentaries. And it's all documentaries about different space missions. They cover all of Mercury, they've got like all of Mercury and Gemini up there, some shuttles,

some almost all, the Apollos, but what really captivated me about it is they have like two and a half hour long, a two and a half hour long documentary just on the entirety of Project Mercury. They ended up splitting Project Gemini up into two parts, but they're really, really in-depth documentaries and really, really awesome work by whoever is behind it. So yeah, homemade documentaries on YouTube. It looks like they got the Apollo missions as well, which I've always wanted. where is a spot to look at like all of the footage from EVAs and things.

Oh, gosh. All in one spot because it's all spread out through various sources and I would love to watch these. Well, there were things in there. Like I mean, like you kind of hear, oh, you know, like the Gemini program was all the precursors. But like some of the things they did in the Gemini program was like really eye opening for how it worked. So yeah, really recommend that one. Yeah, I mean, in Gemini, that was when, like, isn't it like, Buzz Aldrin was like, look, we got to rethink spacewalks

because we're just, we're dying out here. Like, it's way harder than you would think. We got to, like, get the pool and, you know, practice this stuff. Yeah. Yeah, he was like, I've been scuba diving and I know what it's like. Yeah, yeah. He's like, what we need is cyclers. We need cyclers.

It sounds like one of the, I mean, it sounds on the surface like one of those, oh, crazy buzz stories, you know, and he just like happens to happen to nail it. But like, I really appreciated what they did in the documentaries because they did really touch upon like what always gets overlooked about him is he was the first astronaut that had a doctorate in orbital mechanics. Like he wasn't just some crazy dude with weird ideas that worked. Like he put his degree to work and that's what got us to the moon.

They called him Dr. Rondevue. I think that's why he was on Apollo 11 because it was all of his work that did it. But yeah, it was. it was yeah because it was it was pretty weird interesting to to look at them because yeah Gemini like second to last flight like we were still like over-exerting ourselves on EVAs and they were so complicated and buzzed just on the final flight of Gemini just boom boom boom nailed it yeah here's how it's done boys yeah yeah all right uh for my pick uh let's see it's back here that's somewhere um he's going to the show i like that yeah i'm doing a um i'm putting an asterisk beside this my colleague, Casey Dreyer, recommended this to me. And I have not finished it yet. So that's my person.

If it sucks, Blame Casey. But this book he recommended to me called The Great Silence. It's a somewhat academic feeling in nature. But it looks at Fermi's paradox and talks about like the whole search for life. And like it revisits some of these really early assumptions we have. and about search for life and like what's the probability that there's other civilizations out there at like ours. And it's essentially like a literature review kind of like what do we know now that we didn't

know like in the 70s when like Frank Drake and these people were coming up with these like big ideas of like what are the odds that there are other alien civilizations. So it's cool so far. So I'm recommending it. Yeah. if it sucks, like I said, blame Casey. It's a great cover, too. I really enjoy that.

Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it's neat. That's really nice. That's good stuff. Well, I also like to hear about what you two are working on. And Jason, I don't know if we've had you on since I would like to open a copyright dispute with you. That I have an app called Downlink, and then you made the Downlink.

I think we talked about that. this last time, didn't me? Oh, maybe we did. Yeah. Well, I remembered it again. And the Court of Appeals already ruled that your app is shit. Okay, nice. My newsletter is... Amazing. I'm putting that

on the website. I forget about what, I forget what your app, what was you down like app, what was it? You know, I can't answer this because it's actually what I use. I'm not lying. I actually use this. It pulls the goes weather data and it's the desk and it can be your desktop background.

Yes, and I love it. It's actually my desktop background. Yeah. Can you put that in your show notes or something? Yeah, I'm like, yeah. Right now I got Microsoft. I'll send you one more. I'll send you a free copy of it.

I'll pay for it. It's a free app. I support content creators. Okay. Well, yeah. Your app is shit is probably the title of this episode as well. You're out of shit, son. Tell you about your app.

Wait, what do you do? Jason, other than the downlink, or maybe the downlink is what you want to talk about, what have you been working on? I would like to hear about it. Honestly, like, I'm a good friend who really wants to hear about your work that I value highly. And I mean that. Well, the downlink is running pretty smoothly these days, which is a great. Because we have a deep bench, and whereas early downlinks were largely the product of just a couple people.

No, we've got a new staff writer, Ray Paletta. She's crushing it. Just awesome and has been able to take some of the burden off of me doing, like, a lot of our content work. So Downlink is pretty solid at this point, just a weekly task that we do. Let's see, though. What would have pretty more accurate to talk about what the planetary society is doing. Yeah, we got some fun stuff coming up later this year. It's stuff that I'm not as directly involved in,

but we started a grant program, a new grant program a while back for new SITEC ideas. It's called step grants. And it was kind of like the follow-up to light sale, like our next crowdfunded efforts. We essentially went out and asked the community, like, what do you got? What do you got to say, a great idea that needs a little cash that's in line with our interests. And so I know the proposal window closed for that, and they're reviewing them right now.

So hopefully some cool stuff to come out of that. And our communications team is later this year, they're going to launch a couple new programs. There's one that will be something for kids where, I think the concept is like kids get these little activity boxes in the mail. And, you know, of course, they're all oriented towards space science and stuff like that. I have one that I do for my 8-year-old that's pretty cool. It's this company called KiwiCrate and they send you like needo science experiment oriented stuff to build. Yeah.

And it's good for parents because it's not screen-based and you can just hand it to them and be like, This will keep you occupied for a couple hours. Does not work for 10-month-olds, unfortunately. I'm still trying to figure that one out. Yeah, no, you're kind of, you're on a different level there. I'm sorry. But yeah, so we got some cool stuff like that coming up as well. Yeah.

Chris, you're back from vacation? I'm back from vacation, yes. So I guess the real answer for what I'm doing right now is catching up on everything I missed. on vacation. No, I guess it's kind of on the work side. I am striving to learn Russian, which is

challenging, but I'm trying to do that for all the Russian broadcasts that are out there. And I'm also going, I haven't started it yet, but I want to go back and I want to take, again, I want to audit a lot of astrophysics courses. because that's originally what I wanted to study in college, and I hit a math wall at calculus in high school,

only to discover the last semester of my senior year when I took the throwaway astronomy elective that when calculus is applied to something, I understand it. So I kind of want to go back and do that because not having that background kind of irks me because I really love a lot of reporting and communicating about a lot of the astrophysics stuff that and discoveries that are going on.

Yeah, so I just kind of wanted to do that for myself. Yeah, and then NSF is absolutely plugging away. Bringing you all those sweet, sweet tower lift live streams from Bocahika as we await Starship stuff. No, we're plugging along. We've got some things in work that I can't talk about just yet, but some more expansion opportunities and stuff that we're looking at to help us with our coverage of all the really cool stuff

that's going on and in what seems like every corner of the world now. So yeah, right? Yeah, things are definitely good. Yeah. It's good to me every day when I turn around and someone goes, well, what about this? And I'm like, I have no idea what you're talking about because there's too much to keep track of. Man, I'm glad that you feel that too, because Jake and I always talk about that and we're

always unsure if it's because, like, now we're, now we're like in it and we are able to get deeper into like different news topics that our ability to delve into the depths have has been better or if there is actually more news so it's always reassuring when people are like yeah there's a lot going on that's yeah i get i get friends all the time um who are like i wonder what those friends were like man i don't know hey back you're back you froze right as you said you got friends and it was a major cliffhanger what are your friends like they're all you're all you asking me space questions that I can't answer because I can't, you know, I don't know everything

that's going on. Is there about UAPs and UFOs and stuff? Did that report come out? Did it come out? It came out today. And then, what to say? I mean, nothing earth shattering that, I mean, I read it, it was nothing earth shattering. I mean, if people were expecting the government to unclassified go, oh yeah, it's totally alien's dude and Roswell

was like cork rob and knock, you know, from DS9. It was a true gargle blaster is what it was. It was a true gargle blaster, yes. Yes, it even had the pan-galactic in it this time. No, my first impression on it was that I thought it was a really good first step in terms of starting to remove the stigma of reporting these things. Because for so long, right, if you saw something that was unidentified, which I mean, literally like, I don't think it would say,

I saw something I couldn't explain that I was like, who a UFO? Like, I don't have, I have long hair, but it doesn't stand up like that guy on the History Channel. But, no, like, because I think that's very good. And like, for the, I thought the other good admission was that they did say that some of them could

be explained by U.S. government, aerospace technology development things that are ongoing. But then they also have this category called other, which they don't seek to explain. They just say, we can't explain it as a technology issue, a sensor glitch, or something that we're working on. I think that's a very important step for people to feel like they won't be treated as

insane if they come forward because they see something weird in the sky. Even if it turns out to be nothing, we need to start documenting these things. Because I think part of what they were saying in it is that we don't know enough to be able to correctly assess the threat to domestic air travel and things like that. So I overall thought it was a good first step. Also, if you're the U.S. military and you get a bunch of reports about, like, a crazy flying thing, and then you check your records, you're like, well, it wasn't us. Someone's done something. Like, that's a thing you'd want to know. That would be very useful intel. It's like a thing flew over this part of Texas. I'd love to know about that because that's pretty close to a nuclear power plant or whatever. You know, like that seems like good intel. And NORAD didn't light up. Right, exactly.

Yeah, you're like, oh, wow, maybe, you know, there's some new stealth something going on. Yeah. Well, anyway, that was the UFO corner of nominal. New segment. The thing everyone wanted to talk about it. Jake doesn't, is not interested at all in the UFO thing either. So it's...

Oh, I'll talk Mulder Scully with you. Yeah, I would love to talk more about UFOs, but Jake doesn't want to. So I just kick him off the show for a week, and I get to talk about it. You get to talk about it. So you, why they released it at like 4 o'clock on a Friday.

Exactly. The old Friday news dump. The classic area where you want people to read what you wrote is Friday at 4 on a summer weekend. Oof. Yeah. Well, that's all we got here, everybody. Thank you both for coming on, for filling in, for being epic friends.

It's, uh, well, I guess we'll see soon for SLS. Yeah. Sounds good. Soonish. Just do it. Will you come to our epic. meetup? Why isn't it upcott just because it's the

funnest place on earth? Just a drink around the world, yeah. Yeah, okay, all right, that's cool. Okay, great. That works. I'm down. I'll see you there. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, end of death.