Off-Nominal - 43 - Aggressively Undocking

Episode Date: August 3, 2021

Jake and Anthony are joined by Chelsea Gohd from Space.com to talk about the rarest of space events: double hot drama! Nauka, after a tumultuous week of its own, almost destroyed the ISS, and Blue Origin wrote an open letter while simulatenously losing its protest.DrinksHaze Charmer - Tröegs Independent Brewing - UntappdMonte Fiorentine Soave Classico - Ca' RugateSpace Cadet - Pile O' Bones Brewing Company - UntappdChelsea’s Mango Green Tea HydrationTopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 43 - Aggressively Undocking (with Chelsea Gohd) - YouTubeBoeing Starliner OFT-2 launch to space station delayed following Russian module mishap | SpaceSpace station situation with Russian module misfire more serious than stated: report | SpaceBlue Origin | Open Letter to Administrator NelsonBlue Origin protest of NASA moon lander choice nixed by government agency | SpaceVirgin Galactic launches Richard Branson to space in 1st fully crewed flight of VSS Unity | SpaceSpace Traveler: Chelsea Goes to Mars - YouTubePicksSimeon Schmauß on Twitter: “Here is a look back at the 9th Flight of #MarsHelicopter It was the longest flight to date and took Ingenuity over a large dune-covered area called Séítah. I reconstructed the flight path with photogrammetry from the helicopters NAV images and animated it in @Blender (2x speed)”Foxanne | SpotifyKatya Pavlushchenko (@katlinegrey) / TwitterKatya Pavlushchenko on Twitter: “Today, we visited the Baikonur museum and the houses of Gagarin and Korolev! Will show you the photos a little bit later.”Follow ChelseaChelsea GohdChelsea "Foxanne" Gohd (@chelsea_gohd) / TwitterArticles by: Chelsea Gohd | SpaceFOXANNEFoxanne | SpotifyFollow 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

DLS and go for main engine, start. Miko, welcome to space. Well, Anthony, I'm back. I'm here. Thank you for taking care of the show while I was gone. It was moving. It was pretty generous description of what I did. Taking care of the show. I was moving, and it was the worst thing that I have ever done in my entire life,

because it was on June 29th or whatever was the day that the movers were all booked to come to my house in Vancouver. and this thing called the heat dome came. I don't know if you heard about it. Oh, I forgot that that was perfectly coinciding. Yeah, 45 degrees Celsius in Vancouver, which I'm just doing quick math is like 120 or so. Which is, it was like the hottest Canada had ever experienced in the history of Canada.

And I didn't have, I don't have air conditioning in that house because no one has air conditioning in Vancouver. That's just like, you don't need it. And so my bedroom on the top floor was like, I think it hit 39. So, like, you couldn't even sleep in it. We had, like, escaped to a hotel and there was air conditioning and stuff because our cats would have, like, died. And so the movers didn't show up, and it was a whole nightmare.

But I'm here. I made it. I got through it. We're in this. I'm in this, this is my summer abode. It's the temporary studio. You guys will see it today and maybe one more episode. And then we'll move on to the next thing.

So I'm really excited to do that. And you did, like, a series of meetups as you traveled across Canada. Yeah, I got to spend some time with some listeners in Vancouver. And then now I'm in Alberta and I got to see some people in Calgary, which was just lovely. It was great. It's been a while since meetups. Yeah, starting to wind them up again. But we have a guest with us today, Chelsea.

Chelsea Goad from space.com. Did I say that right? Goad? Yeah, you got it on the first try. Very rare. I think it's because I hear you say it on press conferences all the time. So it must stick with me well enough. But thanks for coming on the off novel.

Usually the PEOs at NASA just say, the one in the pink. And I'm like, you know my name. We just spoke. Come on. It's good to have a brand. I'm like, we're on air. Yeah, right. But thanks for having me on.

This is a lot of fun, guys. Yeah, yeah. We're really excited. There's a, I think we had just sort of plan this as like a regular episode. And it was going to be, okay, we have an episode every month or so. And then this week ended up being such a dramatic, chunky week of crazy space news that this ended up being awesome. timing, so I think we're going to have a lot of fun today.

I like that description. I like that. The best part is that, Chelsea, you're one of the guests that we have that's like, we're thinking about this thing now, like, let's have guests on that do really interesting work and then talk to them about their work. And then all the drama happened that everyone wants to talk about. So we're doing both. Yeah, it was like every day this week was like, oh, man, that was so crazy.

I'm so tired. But like, nothing could, nothing crazy could possibly happen now. Like, no. Yeah. I think I logged off when I read an article about a man with a jetpack flying over L.A. I'm like, I'm done. I'm out. Oh, he was back? The jetpack guy was back? Jackpack guy is back. And people are like emailing me like, there's aliens. And I'm like, it's just a dude with a jetpack. I'm sorry. I don't want to burst your bubble.

Sentences that if you said when you were like seven, you would be like, what? It's just a dude with a jetpack. It's just a do with the jet pack. You're going to shrug it off that easy? Yeah, like, of course. It's just like flying cars, do the jet pack. You know, when you're a kid and you're like, in 10 years, it's going to, be the Jetsons. It's been like that for a while. Jake, should we start with some drinks here?

I think we should do some drinks. Yeah, you want to kick us off? Yeah, I fully intended to drink this Troeg's Hazy Charmer. Is it going to focus? Which is a cool one?

Fancy lady. But I was in a, we had dinner in Rittenhouse Square. We had a pizza picnic. And we didn't quite finish this bottle of suave that I had poured into this Yeti that can hold an entire bottle of wine. So I'm going to finish this first and then we'll see it. That's a large

container. I wasn't I wasn't I wasn't the only one drinking this. Oh you don't don't you don't need to defend it. It's a yeah. I appreciate it thousand percent. This was one of my early pandemic purchases once like drinking outside was totally legal or what I don't know. I feel like we you know how you can do like citizens arrest. I think we did citizens legalization of drinking outdoors wherever you want. Yeah I remember I was living in New York until recently and a couple years ago the mayor just made some announcement. And it wasn't like public drinking was legal, but he basically made this public announcement like, we don't care anymore. We're not going to bother you anymore. Maybe we do. Maybe we don't, but we literally can't. Yeah, it's like it's not technically legal yet, but like we've,

we have too much to do. So have that it. Very, very funny. Yeah. So that's what I'm working with. White wine out of a Yeti. Cool. Very classy. So I am, as you, a, no now. I'm not in BC anymore. So you know what that means is that the traditional Jake-sized beers are kind of harder to find now. So Chelsea, usually I get these like giant 22-ounce bottles of like singles of special like craft beer and I was like, fancy. That's my thing. But they don't really have them here in Alberta as much. This is not a craft beer mecca the way Vancouver is. So I was going to get a craft brewery here in Medicine Hat where I am. You set up Medicine Hat so well on the last show, Anthony calling out my little hometown there.

So there's a couple of craft breweries here. So I was like, okay, I'll go get one of these. And I had like one in my fridge ready to go. But then I went on this road trip last week or this week. It was like a couple days ago. And I was stopped in a liquor store. And this thing caught my eye. And I had to get it to take the place of it.

So this is from pile of bones brewing company. Oh, nice. Yeah, it's Regina Saskatchewan. So it's a good prairie beer still. And it's got orange. Rocket is good on it. So Space Cadet IPA, I had to get it. It was like, obviously this is what I have to do. Wait, pull that up again. Let me see that. Oh, it does. It has solid rocket boosters. They're very faint. It's like kind of like a shuttle with a shuttle on it. Yeah, but it's like a shuttle. It's like if we did

the shuttle C where the cargo is attached. Exactly. It's more detailed than most like shuttles on merch is usually. It's, you know, it's appreciated. That's awesome. They have like the segments correct on the Hot Rockets. Impressive. Yeah, and you can kind of see like the, like the weird little seams and stuff under the bottom of the nozzle here. It's pretty good. I'm not,

I'm pretty impressive with it. It's nice. It's very clearly like done an illustrator by someone who's not a professional artist, though, but they just spent the time on it and got it right. Yeah. I identify with that. Yeah, it's totally me. I'm like, I can see the shapes that you use to make that.

It's great. Yeah, so this is what I'm doing. I do have a backup though, just in case, uh, medicine, Habrewing Company. This is a blueberry vanilla. Ooh. Fancy. Which is like a sweeter, yeah. I don't normally like this stuff, but this one's really good and I'm pretty happy.

Those are two words. I don't need near my beer. I don't need beer. Yeah. Good ice cream, I guess. I've always liked specifically blueberry and raspberry and raspberry and beer. So this was like, this caught my eye and the vanilla just makes it. It's like not quite a stout,

but it's good. Very interesting. Yeah. Wow. Chelsea, what do you got? I've got, so I don't really drink very often. So I've got a very large, this is like my fifth of the day. It's like a mango green tea kind of thing.

Nice. Very hydrated. I'm exceptionally hydrated. Look, hydration is key. These are our queries. Yeah. Mango green tea. Okay.

There was so much anticipation. This is my fifth of the day. We're like, Like, you're good? Like, I'm in Pacific times. It's like, it's only 6 p.m. Like, are you good? Like, but yeah, I'm just very hydrated.

Yeah. Okay. That's great. Yeah. Well, you're going to need the hydration because there is some, there, this is an endurance week for, for news, I think. I feel like, like it's Friday. I should be like, take a deep breath, like relax.

And it's like, we're just getting going. It's cathartic. You got to get it out. Anthony, some of the people are begging for a hot drama alarm right now. I heard them, but I don't know which one to ring it for first. For a what? So which do you think was a hotter drama this week, Chelsea? The Russians almost destroying the ISS by ripping the solar panels off for Blue Origin being dunked on by the GAO while simultaneously offering $2 billion to undunk themselves.

Well, they offering it like, please, we'll give you $2 billion. And I was like, no, pass. Honestly, I feel like the Nauka Russian module is still way juicier. Because it's like, we expected Jeff Bezos to get shut down. You know, we've been seeing him get dunked on days on end. But, you know, the Russian module, the Nauka business was, I was not expecting it. I don't know, maybe other people were. But after over a decade developing that thing, working on that thing, getting it ready to launch.

Yeah, at least a couple. But like, oh my, it's been a long time. So yeah, that was nuts. Hot or drama. Hot or drama. Naoka. Russia. Hotest drama.

Hot drama. There it is. There it is. Nice. Yeah, that's a shock jockey as we get, hopefully. Nauka was, this kind of thing happens a lot in space where there's like a small failure that leads to another small failure and things snowball a bit. Like a little bit of a software glitch, you know,

things happen, whatever. It was a short-term software in which. A short-term software situation or whatever. But this one was the ultimate snowball from like, number one because like it wasn't like Starliner's previous attempt where we didn't, we like, we're like, well, this will go well. This was one that we all knew heading in that like already problematic. There was reports like two weeks before launch that they didn't install thermal shielding

in certain areas at all. No one really thought it was going to go. We were all like hoping. We're like, you know what? Things are going fine. It's a little bumpy on the way up, but it's docked, made it. Like, Oleg's on his way to the hatch. Like, we're going, we're going.

And all of a sudden, it starts firing its thrusters into the space station. I mean, what? I have to pull up the guy's title again on that Ross Cosmos webpage because his title was forever long. But apparently it was trying to undock. It was like aggressively undocked. Really? Yeah, I was trying to retreat.

I haven't seen that, but I'm not surprised. Which is why they were like, close the hatch. Now that I think about that, that's so much more terrifying than I thought earlier at like 4 p.m. today. Yeah. It was aggressively undocking and they just opened the hatch. They were in this Vesda module, so they must have had that hatch at least partially open or on it. And so they were like, so that would have been game over. Oh my God.

Jeez. Yeah. I thought this was really bad. And now I'm putting these pieces together, Jake. So this is crazy. Like this is like I so and the funny thing is how this like it launched and then it was like bad. It was like the propulsion system's broken. It's going to reenter in like 30 hours.

I was like oh my God. Jake made a shirt and merchandised it right off the bat. I made a shirt to merchandise this safe now. Hey, hey you got to make that coin where you can. I get it. Yeah. And then and then they saved it and it was kind of like, okay, well they got through that. It's fine now.

We know something was going to pay the storyline anymore. And I got up in the morning and I watched the docking and I was like. like awesome man and like I was a little there's like some you know uh red flags and that docking um the cosmonaut took over the manual thing which they do apparently he didn't apparently he didn't okay they say today that nope actually it was automated the whole way other than them yelling that it was on manual mode yeah they said a little back and forth on that I don't know what the final verdict on that is but does that mean that they meant to be in manual mode and it didn't work and that it just happened to dock automatically to be completely autonomous despite dunking on SpaceX

previously for docking on top. They're like, that's so dangerous. And they're like, we're going to do it. And it didn't go super well. But yeah. And then I did the thing that I do all the time that I shouldn't where like soft capture confirmed. We're good.

I'm like, see you. Close a laptop. I was like a way. So I just like went I went off to go see a friend. I was at a friend's house. You were meeting a go. You were meeting a go. It's never relax.

Never relax. Yeah. Yeah. I was in rural Alberta and like literally at a sheep farm. Like I was at a friend's sheep farm. That's sick, though. That's awesome. And the cell phone reception was like kind of spotty.

And I just like, we were talking and it's like, actually look at my phone. I look it up. And it was like, our Discord had like sounded the alarm. I was like, hot trauma, hot trauma. There was first trouble. And I'm like, what is happening? I couldn't believe it. So, yeah, this story is wild.

Like, this is just what a week. Oh, my God. Yeah, like at the time I was like literally on a Zoom call with Doug Wheelock. We were like doing like a Starliner interview. And I was like, oh, my coworkers, they got this module thing. It seems like it's going to be fine. And I'm like on this Zoom like with Doug and I'm like trying not to look down at my phone. I'm like, shit, shit.

Like, oh my God. And he's doing the same. He's like, oh, shit. I don't think he, I don't think he did yet. No, no. We were just, we're like, yeah, super pumped for Starliner. OFT2, going to be great. And you're like, yeah.

Doug was lovely though. So that, that was great. But yeah, it was a pretty chaotic morning. You know, and I'm in Pacific time. So it was like extra early. Yeah, yeah. Lots of fun. Lots of fun. Yeah. Okay. Oh, my God.

I'm like legitimately mad about this though. Yeah. You know? Well, this is the thing. And like NASA's doing their damage control, which they do, right? And like the funny quote was the crew is never in danger, right? Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Whoever it was in the Russian mission control yelling close the hatch, close the hatch. Yeah. Yeah. Close the hatch. The space station is literally spinning a football field side. And I know what's the side of.

football field. I was on the NASA always reminds me. Like that they were like emergency press call like quick like and and so I'm on it. And I asked, I was like, I was asked about any crew danger and any space station damage. And they were like, there was no immediate danger to that. Like no one, no one got injured or killed immediately. And we haven't confirmed any damage yet. I mean, it's, you know, they have to, they have to do it that way. You know, it's their jobs.

but it's like you know the other side of it is like one of the flight directors tweeting I'm never more happy to see the solar panels still connected to the station well that's maybe undermining

the crew is never in danger I love how like Twitter has undermined all like embargo just like or I could just like tweet about it it's fine that's a problematic tweet that one's going to be brought up next week yeah he's having a meeting with HR

that's getting brought up in a performance review for sure Although, I don't know. Here's the thing. I'm not to go full on, like, let's conspiracy this, but if you're NASA, you have to say publicly that everything's fine, totally. Oh, we're all good here. How are you? Right?

We're looking into it. It's stable and we're looking into it. If it happens to get tweeted by someone who's not officially NASA that Ross Cosmos really did a bad thing and should feel bad about themselves. you know, maybe not the worst thing. If I'm Bill Nelson, I'm not mad about it, is what I'm saying. I mean, yeah, fair enough. Because it's also, I mean, obviously NASA has a huge part in it,

but at the end of the day, it falls on Roscosmos. So I'm sure that while they kind of have to have a certain tone, show a certain face, I'm sure they're like, you know, they want people to know what's really going on as information trickles out, which honestly, at this point, there's so much. unknown and there's so much speculation, there's so much back and forth of like, what really happened? And I'm sure not everything will be revealed. Of course. Of course not everything will be revealed. But yeah, it's still in such a, I feel like it's still in such a weird place. It's like

it just happened, but it's already like moving on, we're done. We're over it. Yeah. I mean, I was like a Starliner. I'm sure it was like a, yeah, I'm sure it was like a scheduled tweet, but like right after it happened, they tweeted about like some other mission. And I'm like, Guys, like, some stuff's happening. You probably shouldn't be, like, tweeting about, like, we're excited to launch this other thing. Like, not the time. Not the time. And that's the right there is, like, if, if Roscosmos didn't spend, and I shouldn't put it on

Ross Cosmos, I should just put it on Rogozen. If he hadn't spent, like, the past five years rabble rousing and having all these snarky comments about trampolines and SpaceX docking and maybe we drove the hole in the Soyuz, like, all of that, you're just. Like, you are, NASA, by the nature of the partnership, has to have some reservoir of goodwill towards Ross Cosmos just to keep the thing running. Of course.

But that is drained at this point and then this happens, you know? Yeah. I'm sure things are, uh, and then, yeah, they're tweeting, hey, we're excited to add the next docking module on top of Nalka. And we're like, us too. Yeah, we're super pumped for that. Yes, super pumped whenever it's not like super critically dangerous to do that. Thanks.

Does this one not have thrusters? Because that would be cool if it didn't. Yeah, would love to be doing that as well. Yeah, can we have the arm grab this one? That would be really great. Yeah, new rule. So you'd grab it down Canada arm. Yeah.

Yeah, no, it's nuts. I mean, I was kind of thinking like this, this feels like it's a way bigger story than it's like getting credit for even. Like, I think space circles kind of have a, like they understand it. But like this should be way outside of space circles. Like, Russian. I mean, it should be like national news, like not just. like space outlet, space publications. Yeah, yeah.

It's a pretty big deal. We were looking today. We were looking like and it was like bottom, you know, way below the fold and on CNN or whatever. But like the Russians basically just crashed a ship into the space station. That's effectively what happened. You know, I mean, I guess like I could kind of see like because NASA's statement is so like passive and vague and the statement they have to make.

And because Roscosmos, like we don't know the exact details. I assume people are, I guess, just holding off until, you know, like don't want to cause a panic, don't want to raise alarm bells and then have to turn in your badge later with a big apology. But, yeah, I mean, it is. I mean, it's a huge deal. And it, yeah, I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. So it's happening. I'm like, oh, my God.

Like, what's happening? Actually, our editor-in-chief, who never takes a day off, like, ever, he had that. like one day off he was at a family wedding and whenever he leaves which is again very rarely he always says you know call me if something starts falling out of the sky and I'm like well you know what if it's

spinning out of the sky is that yeah like are we close are we close? Yeah no it's nuts I can't believe it nobody thinks Starliner's going on Tuesday right? I think it's possible I think it's possible did nothing happen to the ISS's

orbit from all this crazy I've played curvil and you start like leaning on the keyboard for a second and there's thrusters firing everywhere. You're going to nudge it a little bit. That's what I'm worried about. They claim to have somehow, like within 30 minutes, been like counteracting thrusters from other modules and allegedly gotten the correct attitude again pretty soon. I don't, I don't, I mean, it's a little sketchy, but I think by Tuesday, I would be surprised if that was still an issue.

I mean, now there's a million other constraints, got weather, you've got the Air Force launching classified missions. You've got, I mean, you've got a million other things going on. So who knows? But I wouldn't be, I wouldn't be shocked to see Starliner go up on Tuesday. It'd be a good cover if something happens. Yeah. Just feel like, well, things are a little weird still after Nalka and, you know, didn't quite make it this time.

I don't know. Boeing is not thrilled. They're like, we waited a year and a half. We did all those reviews. We did all those fixes. Unreal. Yeah. Yeah.

I think you're right, though. like we're not we're not going to learn the the full extent of this for a while it's it's not even going to be like a big thing NASA NASA's basically down with it though well because they of course want to minimize it as much as possible I mean even if it comes out like there was some malicious intent or some huge oversight or some you know something got ripped off that shouldn't get ripped off that they didn't mention before you know I'm sure they're going to try to minimize it as much as possible you know to not cause a panic not cause whatever um But we'll see.

I will be very curious to see what comes out about it. Whether that's, I don't know when we'll actually really know. Yeah, I kind of feel like this is going to fade away. The US side that's going to retire the soonest. And when is their book deal? Yeah. And then it's going to be a bunch of just space journalists in 10 years, like conspiracy theorizing in a circle like, no, they totally did this.

And it's like no one else cares at that point at all. It'll be some like Christian Davenport scoop in like 18 months from that. or something. He's got it. He's got it. He's on it. By the way, this happened, right? And it's like this huge expose, like all this information, all this data.

And it's like, people are like, all right, cool. Yeah, we already knew the Russians were bad. Yeah. It's like, come on. And to that point, again, I feel like I've mentioned it on the past four ofteninals in a row. If you're someone out there and you're a China hawk and you're scared about Russia working with China, why are you scared of that?

Is whatever to continue saying. That's all I'm saying. I wouldn't be that. scared of it. I would be filled because that means no more nauccas, I should say, on the Naukas, I should say, on the SS. Yeah, fair enough. Should we do the next spicy hot drama? All right, let's dig into it. One spicy hot drama

to the next this week, yeah. Is this a double alarm? Oh, I got a hot drama. I don't know how much we have to say about this one, because this one is this like We're talking about the Bezos spicy drama? The Bezos Hail Mary. Yeah. Yeah, they're like, please, please. I was actually like, so I'm, I'm the kind of guy who will like, who'll go to bat for Blue Origin because I think they get underserved in the,

in the Goodwill Department. And so, and I'm just, I'm a natural contrarian and a little bit of like a, I bring balance. I'll always try and bring up the underdog and take down the winter. That's how I, that's how I work. It's just like a brain problem for me. But I also, I'll normally go to bat for Blue Origin, but I was not super happy with this letter at all.

No. I was actually, I was kind of shocked about the letter, not just that it existed, but that it was like a open letter to Bill Nelson specifically from Jeff Bezos. And kind of how intense the wording was and how they were basically like, we're going to basically forego $2 billion. We're going to put all this on the line. We're going to self-fund this. We're going to cover any possible over costs, anything. and just all the wording around like it's unfair and we deserve it. And I don't know.

It felt like not the right call to me personally. It felt like they could have handled that in a much different way, especially with Bill Nelson out there, I mean, in a press conference the other day, but also he's been saying it constantly, like really into the competition aspect, really wants to return competition to HLS, like with New Zealand. Congress funding and it's like NASA's going to bat for you with Congress and like putting this letter out just kind of like makes NASA look bad. Yeah, wrong name on top. Yeah, exactly. Like you're

kind of coming after NASA in a way and like accusing them of like not treating you fairly. Meanwhile, they're asking Congress for the money to include you because I would just assume that they would most likely be the next, you know, runner up compared to Dienetics. I could be wrong. but yeah I was like guys like not the move I don't know send him a personal email I don't know well I mean it was it was very obviously like for Congress but I just yeah the thing that I took like the most like I guess I don't know offense I'm not really offended because it's it's your government not mine but like it just the the tone which was just very much like NASA is broke they can't do anything and only me Jeff Bezos with my giant checkbook can save the day

Congress, you know how to do, let me save NASA. That was the tone of the thing. I hate that. And we've seen that before. I mean, when SpaceX first started doing things, it was all these. I mean, you know, you still get people saying this like, NASA hasn't done anything since Apollo. And we need Elon Musk. And we need Jeff Bezos with all of their money to come and save us.

And it's like, guys, what? What are you talking about? I said this on a podcast today, but I was like, guys, if Congress wants to fund a hundred billion dollars worth of Moonlanders, they'll do it. They just don't want them to do. And that's different from not being able to. It's very different. Yeah. I have or we'll invent the money. They're like, we have one. We like it better for a myriad of reasons. We're not going to shell out billions of dollars so you can feel included. Sorry. It's also just tough. It's an impossible spot for Blue Origin because there's two times to say we'll spend two billion dollars and it was three months ago or

is three months from now, right? Either the previous round where you, per the math, SpaceX and Blue Origin's bids were exactly the same price. Because Blue Origin said $6 billion from NASA, $1 billion from us, and SpaceX said $3 billion from NASA and more than that from us.

Pretty quickly gets to $7 billion apiece. So could have done $2 billion back then, or NASA has been putting the pressure on the last month saying, hey, we're going to do this next round where, like, admittedly, you're going to have to self-fund a lot of it, but if you want to, then do it and we'll buy some services from you. So the origin's kind of there just saying like, here's two billion. And NASA's like, great, put it either direction, but why are you talking to us about that? Like, yeah, I don't really

understand why they did it that way and why, you know, I guess they were like they didn't think that they had to. Yeah. So my theory is that, is that, I mean, they were banking on two selections and they knew we don't have to beat SpaceX. We just have to beat everybody else and come in second place. I guess. I mean, that's definitely the most likely explanation, but I mean, you can't, you know, it wasn't a sure thing. Like, that is what everyone expected, but it wasn't a short thing at the end of the day. And you can't, you can't tell NASA it's like legally wrong somehow that they didn't also choose you. Because it's not. At the end of the day, it's just not. They could have chosen none of them. And it would have been. And the GAO agrees with you. And the GAO is like,

yeah, you're fine. Here's the other part that. I've been thinking about. This is going to be the moment that either the origin looks really stupid or passable. Because if they do not continue for the next three years to spend $2 billion on Blue Moon, like, what are you doing? Because you just said, I'm ready to spend $2 billion on Blue Moon. Presumably, given the trend, that would put them in a good spot to win something from NASA later. So do it.

and then keep working it while you're doing it. But if they swing and miss on this, like session of Congress for the extra money and NASA accepting this and whatever, I don't even think half this is legal, but that's another factor. But if they swing in the miss on this congressional NASA wrangling and then they don't spend the money on Blue Moon,

why would you trust them again that they're going to invest in anything themselves? Agreed, because if that does happen... If that does happen... Yeah. Yeah, if that's how it shakes out, then I think that what it would kind of show, not just Congress, but NASA, that Blue Origin cared more about the competition aspect than actually contributing and actually being a part of it

and actually innovating. It's like at that point, it's just like we wanted to win and we wanted to win the big contract. And it's, I think that would be kind of distasteful and also just a massive waste of resources and energy. And so I hope that that's not the case. I hope that, you know, if things shake out that way, that they continue to pursue it. I'd love to see what comes of it. I'd love to see what they put together.

But, yeah, that would be really weird. That would be very strange. That'd be kind of embarrassing. And maybe it said Blue Origin is fine paying for themselves, but they don't feel like hiring Lockheed directly. Yeah. I mean, I guess, but, you know, that's an angle. Two billion versus seven billion.

That's five extra billion dollars in there. I have a feeling that, you know, despite Bezos's personal wealth, I don't know how feasible that would be and how sustainable that would be for them to actually pull off unless he makes it some kind of personal project, which I don't know. I guess it's possible, but I don't know. Yeah. It feels like a turning point for Blue Origin for sure because like I really am excited about the idea of them deciding to fund things that they believe in regardless of why they get the contract. Like that's really good sign. okay, you finally are like committing to something that you love.

And like, if you can make it happen, make it happen. Absolutely. If you want to land on the moon, then land on the moon. You don't need. Like I'd love to see you do it. That'd be awesome. Like I'd like, you know, go to the moon. Do it. I love it. But yeah, I know, it's still, they got a, they got to, they're like one foot in the water now and they got to take the full plunge now. So it's like, all right, well, we're all waiting and hoping. So, yeah, it's like, you know, I mean, that letter was really like a, well, I guess now you got to put your money where your mouth is. If you're going to, if you're going to make some bold claims like that, you really just, you've kind of, you know, worked yourself into a corner where there's really only a number of things that you can do without really damaging kind of how you're looking at just, you know, publicly. But maybe, maybe they know that. And they have a, they have a plan. They have a backup plan. They have a work around where they're going to sell funder, find funding elsewhere. I don't know. But yeah, that letter definitely a, uh, set a precedent to put it very politely.

Open letters also are just the worst. I hate over there. There's a good comment. It's so passive aggressive, I feel like. I don't know. Maybe I just feel like it's passive aggressive. Maybe that's just me. I don't know.

Yeah. There's a good point in our Discord here where they're saying, Chase is saying that like you want to know what kind of damage this letter did. Blue Origin flew people to space for the first time like two weeks ago. And we're not talking about that. We're talking about this, right? And so the way to throw away a lot of the, the goodwill for that actual accomplishment.

Maybe he had an epiphany when he was up there. And it was like, oh shit, I could do this. I mean, he already kind of started that with, unfortunately, some of his post-launch remarks kind of, everyone was so excited. And then he started talking and people started getting a hell angry, you know. And it was like, dude, you just knew his face. Admittedly, they were angry before that. Fair enough, fair enough.

But I'm like, you know, give people a chance to be excited for you for like a minute. Like they want to be excited for you You're making it really difficult He should have had Mark write the letter Maybe he did, I don't know Maybe Mark's his ghost writer Mark's like hey I got an idea Yeah I've never met Mark

An open letter, that'll do it Who knows? Who knows? Open letter, you're right about the passive aggressive thing Because it's like I would like to make a point at you not to you. I don't want to talk with you. I want to make a point directed at you so everyone else can read it. Yeah.

I want to make a point to you with an audience. Right. I'm not going to say expressly who it is, but I'm going to heavily imply that it's like Alabama. Yeah. Though he did was like, this is for you, Bill. Specific, not NASA as an agency. This is for you, Bill.

And it's like, you know, at least he's being direct with who was intended for. But yeah, I felt like there were there were just other ways they could have handled it with regard to just, even just tone how it was written, the fact that it was an open letter. I mean, it was written well. They got a, you know, it wasn't a bad offer to NASA, came a little late slash a little early. It wasn't great timing. But I just felt like they could have handled it so much, so much better in a way where, you know, because then at that point, that puts NASA in a position where if NASA had said yes, and not that even if they were even a position to, able to legally, but NASA saying yes would have kind of made them look bad in some ways.

And so it's like you put them in a position where it was very hard for them to say yes to you. You know, you should have done it in a way where it wouldn't have put them on such a public platform. You know, this seems like something that should have happened either behind closed doors or with a lot more discretion in my opinion. Yep. to bold strategy yeah if they have a really

shitty proposal to the let's thing that lunar what is it lunar exploration transportation services

yeah I think you're right if they have a really shitty proposal that's like we're going to spend ten dollars and do we're going to have our nephews color a picture

for you that's going to be really sad but very interesting how interesting would that be I guess it would give us some content It was literally their proposal. I would write about it in a heartbeat. In a heartbeat.

We're going to have everyone draw pictures of the lander and we're going to fly them on New Shepherd to space. And then we're going to send them to Bill Nelson's grandparents who had the homestead. Look, I'll give you a lander for free. However. They might do that. Yeah. Should we move on to some new topics?

Yeah, I was going to say we have a list of Chelsea topics as well. Yeah, yeah. Sure. You guys run the show. I'm just here to ramble and sit my green tea. And say potentially incorrect things because, you know, who knows? It's after hours. This show is the home base for incorrect things.

Yeah, so we had this show set up long before all of this drama this week. So we actually had a different structure to talk about. But Chelsea, we wanted to bring you on because you're doing some, well, first of all, you are hustling at space.com. It seems like you write about everything there is in space. Like, you know, Anthony narrows into his little segment for his podcast. I have a slightly different narrow segment that I go in on. And you seem to be writing about everything.

So first of all, what is wrong with you? Are you okay? Do you need a life jacket or? Yeah, I mean, like, you know, I try to have, I try to have the niche of just science. And I love to write about climate specifically. My background's in biological science. And so anytime I get to do science-driven or climate-driven stories is always my favorite. But, I mean, we just put out so many stories and so, like, I mean, even just in the last

year compared to previously, there's just so much happening all the time that it's like, I've got a niche that I would like to stick to, but there's a lot to talk about. You know, and it's like you've got articles to write, videos to film, places to go, people to see, except in the last year. Yeah, yeah. Well, here's all the stuff. Oh, my God. It's like literally every several hours.

It's a lot. It's a lot. Cool-ass red moon, though, that one night. Yeah, it bounces from like astronomy to planetary science to business. It's a sick red moon, right? It was really cool. Look at all this stuff. Yeah.

Actually, fun fact, I couldn't find a good photo of the red moon. And my, I guess, future father-in-law, my fiancé's father is like an amateur astrophographer. And I was just like talking to my partner about like, oh man, I can't find a good photo over the red moon. And he was like, let me ask my dad if he has any. And he just sends that over. And I was like, thank you. Oh, my God.

And it was perfect. It was fantastic. And he was happy to let me use it. So that was just a, you know, things like that don't work out so easily that often. That was a nice thing. That's awesome. Can I tell you about this day on the East Coast though? Oh, yes.

It was insanely hot and humid here and also wildfire. and it was the worst of all the coasts that our country has to offer at the same time. And it was like, this is truly something special. Californians will never understand this. I was actually in New Jersey recently around that time. And I grew up in New Jersey. As did I. Welcome, Jake, to the Jersey show.

I got so spoiled by the L.A. no humidity. I'm like, it is 98% humidity. It is 100 degrees and the sky is full of smoke and the sun is blood red. Like, can I be? Like, why, why am I here right now? Anyway, continue on. We don't have thought about humidity. Yeah, because we talk about this a lot, whereas it's just like space is getting busy

enough. And we started our podcast like five years ago. And like you could five years ago, you could like be just like a space podcast or just cover space or just space journalist cover space. And it's like pretty hard now. Like it's, when Anthony and I are looking at things and we're just like, you know what, this story, I just got to let that one roll on. buy. I don't have time to get into that and talk about it with any kind of authority. So that's,

I always just like, I like to, I don't know, I noticed that you were doing a lot and I will make sure someone, someone would thank you for it. I appreciate it. Yeah, it's like, I, you know, I feel like people, at least, I mean, when I first started writing for space.com, I just assumed it was this huge team of people. There's like five of us and like a little pool of freelancers. and everyone is writing that much like every day. And we, yeah, it's wild. It's totally wild. And it's like, you know, and we have a team and it's like, even still,

it's hard to keep up just day to day with what's been happening, especially recently. It's like, holy cow, could you, could you not? Could space take a week off, you know? Yeah. No, we don't get those weeks anymore. We used to get them. Sometimes in the summer we could just like kind of.

chill out for three or four weeks and nothing would go long. Like in between launches, like something big just happened, like settle down for a little while. And it's like I was at the Virgin Galactic launch in person. And as soon as I landed and flew back, it was like, all right, time for blue origin, time for starliner, time for Nalka, hmm, you know. What was that Virgin event like? Oh, it was. Because it looked like number one, if you were in the media area, you were like way off to the side.

And I would like to hear about that. So it was different. So I had never... You looked like you were where Jake and I normally are during the media events. It was different. So I had never been to a Virgin Galactic event before. I mean, obviously, the first event of its kind for them in a lot of ways. But yeah, it was different.

So they basically, they had like two temporary tents next to Space Port America. and there was a guest tent for like guests of the passengers, astronauts, you know, future flyers with them, people who bought tickets. Celebrities. And I guess celebrities assorted, I saw a TikTok influencer I follow there. I didn't say hello. I would not have recognized them, I don't think. I'm like, I'm a millennial, but I've got a younger sibling to keep me in the know about

Gen Zip. Were you like just excited? so tired. I was like, is that that person? Then I looked it up later and I was like, oh my God, that was that person. Like, I hope it was super weird. And then there was the media tent right next to it. And so the guest tent had like the big stage where a college performed. They had the stage with the astronaut wing ceremony. They had the astronaut walkout. They had, you know, they rolled unity over there after the flight so everyone could take a look at it. And we were kind of next to that.

And the front of our section had the broadcast bleachers. So we're all like trying to sneak around the bleachers to like get a peek over the fence, because people also had sun umbrellas on the guest side. We didn't have sun umbrellas. Sunbrillas, I think. Sunbrillas.

He's like big white umbrellas. And I'm like, I can't. It was very difficult to see. So that was a challenge. And we're all like baking in the sun. And no tea, no shade of Virgin Galactic. but they only had sunscreen in the guest tent, and I am very pasty. You were asking a TikTok influencer?

Like, hey, could you, between those TikToks, could you hook me up? I'm cooking out. Could you just spray my arm real quick, like over the fence? But I mean, you know, so that was, I mean, there were some challenges in because, you know, we're there as media. I want to photograph things. I've got my nice camera out. I want to take nice photographs for the articles I'm writing.

I want to really see what's going on. I want to see the walkout, et cetera. So that was definitely challenging. But the experience overall, it was a good experience. You know, it was so unlike anything I'd seen before because it, you know, it is a space plane. And, you know, it's suborbital. They're up and they're down. You know, as soon as you go inside, plug in your laptop and start writing about the lodge,

they're landing and you've got to run outside, which was just wild. So it was very, it was fast-paced. It was chaotic. but yeah, it was interesting. But I will say that the entire crew was very kind of gracious with their time and answers. They didn't land and showboat. You know, they were pretty respectful. And, you know, it wasn't bad.

It wasn't bad. It was interesting. I was really glad to have been there. I'll say that. What was it like watching the launch part? Because were you looking like, was it straight up? Like, what's going on with that? They got to fix that.

I think they would need to go back quite a few years to fix that, to be honest. Yeah. So they, I mean, they, I think it may have had, they may have had some audio issues going on. You know, Branson's microphone on the, on the craft didn't work. And so we didn't hear a countdown. There was no countdown. There were like these big speakers blaring like, it was like 80s pop music. I think it was some blondey blasting. There was like some white snake at one point in time, I think, Bon Jovi. and and then all of a sudden... Did you get pumped at the Bon Jovi part? You were like, yes.

Oh, yeah. I mean, I was born in Trenton, New Jersey. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Legally... You had to get to... Yeah, it's not up to me at that point. Trenton makes the world takes, Jake. See, you get it.

He gets it. But so it cuts the music and all of a sudden the DJ who was the... It wasn't mission control on the loudspeakers. It was the DJ who was running the event in the tent next. door, get them allowed to see because, and it's like, and just goes, oh, we're taking off. And I just, and it's not like in front of us. It's like, so we're, you know, there's a tense, there's a stage. And then we're looking kind of like out into the desert. And it's not straight out. It's like kind of far into the right, which was on our side, which was nice. But all of a sudden, you see just kind

of far, far in the distance, like start to roll and, and pick up speed. And it was like, And it was just so, it was smooth. There was no sound. It's like, you know, you're used to rocket launches. And it's like, your whole body shakes and you can like feel it in your toes. And it's like, it's just regular airplane. So, you know, I'm just taking off. What about the drop?

Was the drop more exciting? Oh, I mean, definitely. I think the most, like, viscerally exciting part was just the sonic boom, you know, breaking that sound barrier. That was sick. But, you know, I'm sound driven. Have you been to, like, comparison. Have you been to like Falcon 9 landings?

I have never gotten to go to a Falcon 9 landing. I would love to. Yeah, unfortunately I've never been able to. Why don't they break the sound barrier? They're probably a solid 50 or 60,000 feet, right? It was pretty quick after ignition, I guess. And that's, I guess, when the last shuttle Sonic boom was. So it could be pretty solid at that height.

It's not insanely high for that. It's not going to be like totally overpowering. It didn't break all the windows that are very expensive. It's baseball to be. America, which is good. That would have been a real day record. The first time they launch, it shatters all of the state's money that they spent on that thing. A real Apollo 4 moment, right? Yeah. Oh, my God. Yeah, thankfully, no windows were shattered. I think everyone made it out of there in one piece. I'm pretty sure. You know, I didn't, I didn't check with everyone in the

main building. Maybe they, who knows. I don't know, I'm honest. I don't know if I'm ever going to go see a virtual galactic launch. Doesn't seem like a thing that I'll get around to. It's just not drawing you to it. I mean, you know, I get it. Because it's like, I'm sure for the people going up and down, it's thrilling, it's exciting, you know, it's a whole thing. But to watch it because it's not a rocket taking off, it's cool. It's definitely cool.

And for it to have been the first one like that, it was cool. It was, you know, it was interesting, seeing if it works, all that good stuff. But it's not like a very, like, visceral experience, like a traditional rocket launch really is. Yeah. Yeah. You might be into a check though because you like going to listen to launches rather than see them. I mean, the desert is also amazing. Truth or consequences, I would take any excuse to go back out there.

It's just and to be there like we arrived in like the middle of the night and like seeing it go from like pitch black freezing desert like sunrise. It was very, you know, completely unrelated to any space or science. Yeah, I rode my bike in. I rode my bike all the way there barefoot with Elon Musk, barefoot on the back of the bike. I didn't even talk about that. My God, there's so many things. It was like five in the morning there and someone just hands me their phone

and it's Twitter and it's a picture of barefoot Elon Musk and I'm just like... Yeah, nobody needed that. Like, what, like, did you Photoshop that? Like, what's happening? And apparently, I mean, I don't know if it's true but Branson said in the press or after that allegedly, I don't know,

according to him, Elon Musk showed up unannounced, didn't tell him he was coming, to Branson's like I guess wherever he stays when he's there at three in the morning let himself in and was just standing in the kitchen barefoot. I was like, hey, good morning. Is that literally not the most believable thing you've ever heard in your life? Because it totally is to me.

To be fair, I wouldn't believe anyone else doing it. Elon had not been to sleep yet and Branson was waking up. And that's when I knew it was true. Yeah, that's fair. That's true. That's a true. Elon had to do a surprise 1 a.m. inspection at the Nevada Tesla plan. and then he was really feeling pretty good about it

so he hopped on the plane and decided to go see a launch. A barefoot thing is funny. Maybe we've just found out that Elon is a guy who thinks that you should never wear shoes in the house. Maybe, yeah. I mean, secretly, I was hoping that Grimes

would make an appearance, maybe open for Khalid. I was like, come on. Like, you know, we didn't get to see Elon. He's probably long gone by now, but where's Grimes? Come on. Make it happen.

Oh, my goodness. Okay. Where are we, Jake? We're descending. We're descending. I told you, don't say, go out of tangent. It's a mistake. It's a mistake to encourage that from me.

So let's briefly, I wanted to just bring up this high seas documentary that you just put out. I suggest it was actually probably like a couple months ago now. Time isn't real. It's fine. Yeah. But you were in the high seas habitat, which is way up my alley. I love space analogs. And I did, so I did a big.

feature on the one-year mission they did with the six of them back in the day. But I've been trying to follow along with it because there were some interesting stories coming into that habitat for a while. And then I saw that you were on a little video documentary, which is totally worth watching. So we'll put that in the show notes and stuff. But maybe you want to just tell us a little bit about your experience and then, you know, what you learned making the documentary and stuff.

Definitely. So it was, I mean, it was an amazing experience. And I would do it again in a heartbeat. High Seas is amazing, but of course there's a million analogs. Actually, a lot of my crew members are right now at Lunaris in Poland doing a mission. I'm very jealous of them. But I did a two-week mission at High Seas, which for those who don't know, who might be watching or listening, is an analog, Mars or Moon, depending on the mission, Habitat. And it's located on the side of the volcano, Mount Aloha in Hawaii.

And we were there for two weeks, and it was insane in every year. possible way. It was, I mean, everyone on my crew was really incredible. It was an all-woman crew. Everyone had like a completely different background. We had three fish come in with us, only two left. You know, things happened on Mars. Had to eat one? Yeah, you can't flush them on that toilet, I don't think either. We were getting close. We were pretty low on food, which was one of the things that was happening. But so we were there during the 2020 president. election. That was our second day there. We were there during crew one and we had just during the end of the 2020 election. Yes. A couple weeks later. You were still there. We were like

we were there for the entire duration of the election process, which was when you when your only communication with earth is email and there's a 40 minute each way communication delay is very frustrating. And it was funny at mission. Oh, oh. Cliffhanger. Jake, what happened? The deep state is blocking this story. Oh, no.

You're back. You're back. Can you see and hear me? What happened? Yeah, yeah, you're back. The deep stay was blocking you for a minute. You were telling the story about the election. The 40 minute thing, they cut you off right at the 40 minute delay part.

Rude. So rude. But yeah, we have to. volunteers and mission control who were, you know, helping us, you know, we'd email them if we, like, needed data, needed information. We would submit our daily mission logs and reports, which we had to write up for them. But the guy that was kind of giving us the information about the election, because we'd be emailing him like, hey, like, please tell us anything that's going on. He was German. And so he's like, I, your election system, like, these emails were so sweet. He's like,

Here's the information. I'm just copying and pasting it. Your system makes no sense, and I can't explain it to you. Like, that's fair. That's fair. But yeah, it was wild. And it was interesting filming a documentary there as well because I, you know, I've been doing, you know, some off and on videos for space.com.

I really love, love doing science and space videos. And, you know, clearly I could, talking for a long time is not difficult. So I really enjoy it. And it was a unique opportunity to spend two weeks just filming what this experience is like. But I'd never filmed a documentary before. I'd never used a camera that fancy before, et cetera. And so it was very challenging, but went down into a lava tube a couple times. That was probably the most amazing thing that's ever happened.

Full space suit, full helmet, life support backpack, everything. Hiking over crumbling, sharp, very sharp. lava rocks descending down at this lava tube crawling on our hands and knees. Like, if you're claustrophobic, do not, don't do that. It was totally wild, like pitch black, like the ceiling's dripping, got slagite, slagmites, totally wild. But COVID made things a little challenging. And one of the ways that it did that was, you know, obviously we all quarantined beforehand,

but so they have to order food for the habitat. And, you know, shelf stable, basically Mars, food. Shelft stable, either freeze-dried or dehydrated food. You know, most of it lasts 20 to 30 years on a shell. But because of COVID, a lot of that food did not arrive in time and they couldn't have predicted that. And so we're like, we're like, all right, well, make it work. It's fine. You know, we got kind of basic food, but Mark Watney survived on just potatoes. We've got so much instant mashed potatoes, so much. And then our water broke. That was a weird way to phrase that. But we woke up one morning and there was no water.

Yeah, there was a baby. We were there for two weeks. Somehow there was a baby. And the sink, all of the faucets, there was no water. And our remote drones from the main island kind of visited outside to see if they could fix the pipe. And they were like, we got it. We fixed it. You know, still nothing.

And it turns out that there was just like an issue with the pipe. pipe. And so for like a couple days, the only water that we had was these remote drones, these robots, aka our very, yeah, wink, like our very helpful friends from Mission Control, we're leaving these just like five to 10 gallon jugs of water in our airlock where we could get to them. And, you know, all of our food is dehydrated. So it's like we're starting out with like, you know, not as much food as we normally would. And then we can't really rehydrate most of it. And then our power went out.

Wait, was this the mission with the drama? I thought he fixed the habitat after the last. Was this pre or post the like electrical arcing drama? This was post. This was the one after. Okay, okay. This was post. So, you know, there was an issue.

You know, it was just really stormy. We had really bad storms for a lot of it. We were stuck inside, unfortunately, for a lot of our mission. Really, really terrible storms was freezing, freezing. cold, you know, Hawaii, you know, everyone's like, oh, going to Hawaii. It's like, I'm packing sweatpants. Not that altitude. Not a thousand feet less than the death zone. Yeah. I've made that mistake too, because I went on a vacation to Hawaii once and I was on Maui and I was, you know, it's like whatever, it's Hawaii beach is lovely. And then we hiked up, not hiked up. We drove up to

Haleakala and hiked down in the valley there. And that's at 10,000 feet or something. I had, I had the wrong clothes and it was freezing cold. And I was like, Oh my goodness. Like, how am I going to get frostbite in Hawaii on my vacation? Fade and suit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I had shoes, thankfully, but it was not the ballpark. That's good. I'm glad you had shoes. Oh, my God. Chelsea, how long into the pipe breakage? Was there any time where you were like, maybe this is the study? Like, maybe this is part of the mission? Well, actually, we had the director of high seas, Michaela.

She was the commander of our mission. And she told us, she was like, usually I actually, she'll add like fake issues. for a crew. Because, you know, part of the experiences you really have to learn because, you know, any off-earth mission, there's going to be things that you don't expect and problems you have to work through. And she tries to encourage working together, problem solving, all of that. And she was like, I didn't, I didn't have to do that for you guys. Um, because at first we were like, are you doing this? Like, are you testing us? Um, but she was not by, I mean, we really did kind of band together as a crew. is what she usually does.

She does the Russian role to this. Oh, yeah. You know, got to keep a tight ship. But, yeah, I mean, it did bring us together. We bonded pretty, pretty hardcore. We watched a couple Star Wars movies when we had a little bit of power that someone had saved on a hard drive. We, one of our crew members, Beth Munn, she was her communications officer.

She's at Lunaris right now. It was her birthday, one of the days. And we scraped together some weird ingredients and made her like a cake. You know, we put some blue algae in powdered sugar and water and made icing, you know. We made the best of it. And honestly, I mean, I think it was good that it was such a challenging experience because people were like, oh, like, you just did some fake Mars mission. And I was like, yeah, but it was tough as hell. It was sick.

I mean, even if it was, you know, the same number of an hour, I'd do it again tomorrow. It was awesome. Yeah, 100%. Okay. Yeah, well, we'll put the video in the show notes because it's a, it's not that long of it. The show was like maybe eight or ten or ten or something. Yeah, yeah, okay. Yeah.

So it's definitely fun to watch and get a nice little tour of the inside and stuff. I do hope that they change the bathroom set up, though. It's not great. No. It's bad. It's not great. It's not set up to be particularly friendly to women. Oh, okay.

Yeah. So they got to make an upgrade like the ISS made recently. Yeah, yeah. The ISS is stirring the trend. It's just a urinal or like, way? Yeah. Oh, it's an all-gender urinal. Swear to God.

All gender urinal. Sounds like I'm going out on an EVA. Yeah. Based with that. Oh, my God. Yikes. Oh, my God. Probably, probably way too much information about the entire mission than you probably

ever needed. That's what we're. That's precisely. Surprisingly enough, Chelsea, this is not the first time the toilets have come up on this podcast. I went to the launch of the new space toilet. And not just because it was the toilet launching, but our editor-in-chief always wants to know what's new with space toilets. You know, people, apparently, people just want to know. People are, you know, some people got to know.

Is your editor-in-chief, Brendan Byrne? I was going to ask about it. Oh, my God. Look, I mean, you know, maybe they just know that that's what the general public audience wants to hear about, space toilets. They're not wrong. In the chat, we've got Kevin who said, let's have an all woman mission, but not prepare at all. Well, it's like they have a composting toilet. However, it's not set up in a way.

I'm not going to go to details. Is that a fancy term for just a hole in the ground? It's like a paper bag. actually. It's like so tall that because we're all relatively short, we all had to go on step stools to even reach it. And you have to feed it hamster bedding and microbes. Because I go hiking a lot and we have toilets out there that are composting toilets, i.e. it all just goes down into the ground and then goes off into the nether into the system. No, I don't think we perfected. Because then, you know, you'd have to have to go outside without the full suit on and break

Sim and it's like, because no one, no one is going out sand space suit onto the surface of Mars to use the restroom. That's not going to happen. No one's doing that. We need an airlock outhouse. That's what we need, right? We did have a little airlock. It was pretty nice. It was pretty nice. Our little pressure meter will gauge. Let us know which planet we were on, which one we could enter, which door we could go through. Never press the red

button kind of a thing. That's cool. It's pretty intense. Yeah. Oh, I mean, it's like, it's very, It's very full sim. I mean, yeah, there are very few aspects that were not like fully immersed, detached from the world. Is Kim Binstead still running that? Is that she still? No. Michaela Musilofa, I think, is still, is still, she's director of the habitat.

I don't know if she works with Kim. I know that they have like a pretty small staff there at Mission Control. I did not meet Kim though. Okay. Interesting. Jake, we've got to do one of these. Yeah, we totally do. We got to do one of this.

We do. We do it off nominal. That's what I mean. We got to do one of these. Beth. Beth, she recorded her podcast in the habitat. She interviewed all of us for her podcast while on Mars.

It was great. Oh, yeah. She does do the podcast, doesn't she? Yeah, casual space. All right. Okay. You're very casual at the time. Should we get to some picks?

We're running over as per usual. There's a lot going on, man. There is so much going on. I know. It's true. Do you want to kick us off, Jake? Yeah, I can kick us off. So I have a, I guess it's a joint Twitter account slash YouTube channel to share.

But this gentleman who I'm going to share with you, his name is, I'll see if I pronounce it right, because I think it's German, Simeon Schmouse. Hmm. And he does a bunch of work with the perseverance, so specifically with ingenuity. And so, you know, they just, they had a couple of flights. recently with ingenuity, the little helicopter flying on Mars. And he took all the photogrammetry from the images that came down, like the down facing images and extracted them into curves.

And then like rebuilt the trajectory inside of Blender using all the 3D terrain and everything. And so it's the like it's the best view of this flight that it has ever been published for it. Did you send me a thing? Because I've, there was more suave left than I thought and I can't spell what you said. No. Let me see. if I can bring it up for you here. And then there's a good thread.

Yeah, this is the one here. If you show, yeah, so we're, this movie magic happening behind the scenes here. I'll send you a tweet. Put it in the other thing. Put it in the other thing. What's the other thing?

I know. That's a one. I got a universal clipboard. So this is like, yeah, it's like a blender thing that he re-did with it. And yeah, there it is right there. And he's got a YouTube channel so you can watch this and like FlitD if you want.

But yeah, so they like recreate the whole thing. And then even down the thread here, you can see a little bit. He like redos the, he extrapolates the images and then like fills in the gaps between the images. So there's like this very smooth like 60 frame per second like shot of the whole flight and everything. So this is awesome, awesome work. And it's like way better than all the stuff that NASA puts out with it. So that's amazing. It's tough work because it's like pretty good.

And there's like, you can, he shows. all the curve graphs and everything. Yeah, this should be like an official thing. This is what they should be doing the whole time. If you just send this to me like no, I would just be like, oh, NASA put out a new thing. That's really cool. Like, yeah, 100%. Yeah, so this guy's great.

Wait, so where does all this data come from? So the, it's photogrammetry. So it's like, that's basically how the helicopter navigates. It takes a picture of the ground. So he's using all the raw images. Yeah, he takes the raw images and there's, I guess there's like metadata with it. and then he reconstructs the trajectory there. So you can see all the ups and downs.

There's a lot more variability than you would be. Because it follows the topography, right? Yeah, right. Yeah, so it's really interesting. I feel like it shouldn't to this extent, but I understand why it does that. So if you scroll down the tweet thread, there's a couple other videos.

Maybe go to like the, not that first one, but that second one there, the colored one. Yeah, this one's really beautiful. So this is basically, Like, now that he's reconstructed the trajectory, he can, like, put his own camera wherever he wants and then to show you what it looks like. So you can see what the helicopter would be viewing were it to fly, right?

And then he straps the actual images in there. It's just beautiful. Yeah. Wow. This is crazy. That's amazing. Yeah. Dang.

I do have to run in a couple minutes if that's okay. Yeah, we're at the end. Do you have a pick? Right. Yeah. Because you can go and you can bounce. I'm going to very shamelessly fully zero shame

pick the album that I put out this past year because there's a lot of space stuff on it I've got launch audio that I recorded from OA-9 I've got a Mars Opportunity song there's some little space gems hidden on there again fully shameless I welcome I welcome ridicule for that but I had to do it.

We're about plugging yourself here. This is what we do. It's kind of like a, you know, it's a had-to-do-it-to-em kind of situation. You understand. Yeah, we wanted to get to music. But yeah, it's called, I mean, you can look up any of the music under my artist name, Foxanne, which is kind of like my stage name on pretty much any music listening place. And it's the only album I've got out. It's called It's Real.

I knew it. It's a Galaxy Quest reference. I'm insufferable, but there you go. No, that's great. It's awesome. Yeah, I saw, I know when you released, was it when opportunity died or something, or you put out a thing for opportunity, didn't you? I think this is. Yeah, I have an opportunity. Oh, it's loud. It's loud. I'm trying to find the it. It was, it was long after it had actually happened. Right, right. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And then you did, um, you, you, you very quickly put out something for, uh, when the perseverance audio

came out, right? You had like a song. Yes. Um, Dr. Tuff. Ms. Zerbukin basically put out a call for people to be like, hey, first audio from the surface of Mars make something. And I was like, cool. Let me immediately like plug in my microphone or an open logic. And I made it within like 12-ish hours. I don't know. But yeah, that was a lot of fun. It actually has more plays than any of my other songs, which is very, very nice.

Dr. Z's just loving it. He plays it every day. Every morning. Every morning he wakes up to it. Yeah. Yeah. Awesome. Okay.

Well, we won't hold you any longer if you need to bounce. We really appreciate you coming on. Thank you guys so much for having me. This has been a total blast. And we've got some Twitter stuff in the show notes for people. If you want to follow Chelsea, we've got the long list of space.com articles that you need to read every few hours. You should check back in. Yeah.

Every like three hours, refresh. But thank you guys so much for having me. I hope this wasn't too chaotic for people, and I hope that they had fun watching it. And maybe we'll do this again sometime. Yeah, absolutely. See you later, Chelsea. Take care.

Bye, Chelsea. Jake. All right. I have a pick. You do have a pick, right? We've got to get your pick done. Do you remember how I did Andrew Jones a couple of weeks ago? Are you all right?

No, you got to go the other way. This is where I was sitting. Do you want me to move you? I can do it real quick. I didn't realize you would want me to do things on the fly, but it's fine. You want me to scoot this? Live production. Live production.

Now you're over there. A couple of weeks ago, I did Andrew Jones for following China things. Yep. I have a Russian analog at this point. And I feel like I should have done this pre-Nauka. But Katya Pavichchenko, do you follow Katya on Twitter? I do, yeah. Okay.

So specifically, try to pull this up. Kaly was at the launch of, where's Jake on this shot? Everything's off the rails, Jake. I'm gone. Oh, no. Kaly was at the launch of Naoka, Nauka. I never remember how to say it. I think it's Nauka.

So regular space and things. I got to hit this button and then you'll be here. I promise. There it is. Like, imagine if we were Russian, the kind of things that we'd be into, right? Yeah. This is what this threat is, because I think a bunch, a group of people were at the, at the Naoka launch and went to all of the, like, museums and various Soviet things that you need to see when you're there, all the artifacts and stuff.

And these photos are kind of amazing because it's the stuff that, like, reporters don't go to in Bikonar, right? You got to go through this whole thread because it's amazing. There's like so many weird little artifacts in this museum. I think it's all on this one thread.

But there's just like so much in this that is old and Soviet and amazing to look through. You got to check this out. So Katya has a great follow for all things Russian space. I just appreciate the perspective

because you don't often find it, you know. Yeah, she's been giving a lot of really good coverage of some of the wacky stuff going on. It's been super helpful. Yeah, and there's, you know, there's like Anatoly Zach does a lot of coverage. Yeah, yeah. I don't, I find that Anatoly is more swept up

in the like, here's the newest launch vehicle that Ross Cosmos is going to do. Yeah, yeah, a little bit. You know, but I appreciate both. So I'll do a dual pick for the Russian, the Russian space. perspective. Okay.

That's good. Very valuable, especially this week. Yeah. God. Oh, man. Jake, other than the Naoka shirt, what are you working on these days? Other than the Naoka shirt. So, you know, it has been a bit of a challenge for me because I've got so much stuff

going on in my life. I haven't spent a ton of time on, like, moving projects ahead. So I'll fully admit that I'm, I feel behind. schedule. What's actually happening is I'm just taking time off like a normal person and I don't like to admit that. So I feel I'm described being as behind schedule. But really, you know, I've been pet and sheep and you've been sitting at lakes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So I mean, I'm, I'm in Alberta where where I grew up and I haven't seen anyone in my family since the pandemic started. And there have been births and deaths and like the family composition is literally different from the last time that I was here.

So we're just trying to take the, take the summer to reconnect with some people. Taking these antibodies out for a spin and, you know, spending some time. So it's been really nice. So I guess the project, what have I been working on? Well, myself. You need it, man. You totally need it. Yeah.

That's good stuff. Just that one Nauka shirt that I made in 31 minutes. Yeah, that was like requested. And people bought a few of them. So that's been nice. You do need to do a save iOS. variety of the save now shirt.

Save ISS from Nauka shirt. Oh man. What are you working on, man? Well, I've been in interview mode lately. And just been having

a ton of people on that I've been meaning to talk to or love talking to. It's not done yet. I've got a couple more that I'm working on. Good. I ranted about

suborbital tourism on a recent episode. A monologue on that. I haven't checked in a while. I realize that like the stuff that I thought I cared about, I don't anymore. I don't care if it's a viable business model. I don't care if they're going to make money on it. I don't care if they're going to survive 20 years.

They probably won't and that's okay. And I'm coming to grips with that. So you can hear a rant if you would like. It was a good podcast. I liked it. Yeah. Thanks. Thanks.

There have been some very narrow takes on sub-overl tourism recently. It was really nice to get a 80-class. a lot of review. Oh, Jesus. Yeah, we didn't even talk about the whole astronaut or not astronaut thing. No. Who cares? Who cares?

I do like, are you the one with the take that astronaut is a job, job description? Did you say that somewhere? I didn't say that. No, that was someone else. I thought you said it, but I do like that. It's, I mean, it's fine. I just, it's a word. Who's keeping track?

Like, who cares? My opinion of people will just fit whatever definition you want to give it. Like, I'm not really cared about what the label is, you know? It's like, it's not like if Wally Funk is no longer an asteroid, I'm like, oh, well, she sucks now. Like, that's not what's going to happen. Totally accurate. And if it does become, you know, if Jeff Bezos is an astronaut, I'm like, well, now I think he's a lot better than I thought he was before. Like that's just.

It's not going to drastically change your opinion on. doesn't do anything. It makes no difference to me. Like, I don't know. My line was whenever you go on one of these flights and your elementary school doesn't care, that's the line. That's when we've made it. That's when we've made it. That's what I'm looking at for these days. There's some fun. There are some fun stuff going on there, but.

Well, Jake, the next time we talk to you, well, you still be in this same room. Yeah. I think one more episode here, depending on when we do it, we're still trying to figure out our schedule. But presumably, if we have an August episode, it will be in this room with this Broadway curtain here, blocking the window with cardboard in it. You really took the soundproofing to another level. Well, I'm trying to make the podcast not sound awful, you know. Benjamin is asking me to credit him for the astronaut as a job description. Okay. Benjamin did it. All right. Thank you for your contribution, Benjamin.