Off-Nominal - 48 - The Abort Motor DLC

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

Jake and Anthony are joined by Dylan Taylor, Chairman & CEO of Voyager Space Holdings, founder of Space for Humanity, and commercial astronaut on Blue Origin’s New Shepard NS-19.DrinksZero Sugar & Handcrafted Craft Soda - Virgil's Brand SitePerpetual IPA - Tröegs Independent Brewing - UntappdLondon Porter - Söhnfeld BreweryHazelnut & Vanilla Ale - Söhnfeld BreweryTopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 48 - The Abort Motor DLC (with Dylan Taylor) - YouTubeHappy Hour - Off-NominalHappy Hour - YouTubeVoyager Space HoldingsSpace for Humanity • To Space, For EarthReplay: New Shepard Mission NS-19 Webcast - YouTubeRecap: New Shepard Mission NS-19 - YouTubePicksSpace Explorers on Oculus Quest 2 | OculusSpace Explorers | Board Game | BoardGameGeekDon’t Look Up | NetflixBreaking the Chains of Gravity by Amy Shira TeitelFollow DylanDylan TaylorDylan Taylor (@dylan) / 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

Hey everybody. We are terrible at remembering to do plugs for our own show that we're currently doing. We're good at doing the plugs for the other shows. Not good at doing the plugs for this show. Off nominal happy hour. It's a thing. You've heard about it once or twice. But we got a good one coming up this week, Jake. We do, yeah. So January 13th coming up here, 13th, right? Yes, 13th. We've got Marina Corrin returning to the show. So Marina was on, I want to say like two years ago, two to three years ago. I might have That's way, no, it's way more recent than that. Is it? I thought it was like, I think it was two years ago, man.

I think it was like right before, right, I think it was December 2019. You are right. You nailed it. Yeah, Nailed it. Episode 25. The SpaceX Cinematic Universe. That's where we came up with that. That's right.

Yeah, yeah. So Marina came on and hung out with that. So she's back now. We talked about Apollo 12, my favorite mission. That's right. How can I forget? Yeah, yeah, okay, they're shouting at us in the chat to focus, Anthony. Okay, so Marino's coming back because she has been deeply embedded in the James Webb Space Telescope Mission.

She has been writing about it for weeks and weeks and weeks in the lead up to the launch. She went to Kuru, to French Guiana, and watched the damn thing leave Earth. And so she has some good firsthand experience to share with us. And she's been following along through the whole, you know, the whole clenchy deployment period. So we're really excited to kind of pick her brain about what she learned. So that's coming up this Thursday, January 13th. I'm pumped to talk about JWST, but also I'm mostly pumped to talk about French Guiana. I can't wait.

I can't wait. Yeah, anyway, that's it. Welcome to space. Hello, anomalies and welcome to the very first episode of Off Nominal in 2022. This is a big year, I think, for us, at least, Anthony. I don't know what the rest of the world, but for us it's going to be a big year. doing lots of stuff and we're excited to kick off this year. We have an awesome guest today. This is Dylan Taylor from Voyager Space Holdings and many other things too. I think we're

going to talk about all the vast amounts of work that you are involved in. So yeah, we're really soaked about that. Dylan recently also from space bearing the lead. Also from space would be the from Voyager space right and space. And actual space. That really happened, right? I didn't dream that, did that actually occur? Well, we're going to find out today, I think. Yeah, if we went back in time, we're like, Dylan, in December 2021, both you and James Webb Space Telescope will go to space.

Would you have believed that or not? Which one was more believable? Certainly James Webb. And even that was a stretch, as we know. But yeah, no, I wouldn't have expected that, especially in 2021. Yeah, for sure. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Should we do some drinks? What do you think? Yeah. Dylan, you want to kick us off? What are you drinking tonight? You know, I'm drinking good old-fashioned Virgil's root beer.

Oh, nice. Yeah, the reason for that, I have a race tomorrow, so I've got to be fresh, but cheers. I'm not, what are you gentlemen drinking? Virgil's, okay, cool. Okay, did you go to the beer company? Yes, I did. I did. I did go to the beer company. Anthony's favorite store, the beer company. So I got a, this is a brewery in, oh, I better look now. I think it's in Mexico City. Yes, yes.

So it's called Schoenfeld brewery. So I got a London porter. I wanted to go dark today for some reason. I just wanted to get some darker beer. So I got a London porter and then as a backup hazelnut and vanilla ale. That label's great. I like that. Pretty cool, right?

It's probably hard to see if you have any. sort of colorblindness, but it's otherwise a great idea. Yeah, yeah. I thought you'd like it because it's just like plain square texts and nothing else. Oh, thanks. Yeah. And as you can see, that the Mexican condensation is all over this because it's been out of the fridge for four minutes. I've got a repeat, I think, because I had a logistics issue with my beer, but this is a perpetual IPA from Trokes, which is honest to goodness, real delicious beer. It's a, it's a, go-to lately of mine and I don't know Jake you would love this one I think I think you'd be into this one yeah there's not many IPAs that I don't like it's a really

tasty drinkable one so I think you dig it I wait for a label why is the label in why is the label in English I'm just curious well it's mostly not actually so the name of the beer but you see down below Cervesa Artisan I got That's how they get people like him to buy it. Exactly. Yeah. I mean, this is like a $5 beer, which means that most of locals would never ever get it because that's a highway robbery down here.

Makes sense. Yeah. Cheers, everybody. Cool. Cheers. Yeah. Your help. All right.

All right. We've got a, we've had one other person on the show ever that has went to space. And that was Richard Garriott. And that was very much of the OG era of space tourism. So I think this is cool to now jump all the way to the other end and be like the newest new of going to space. I should pull up some video here because, man, there's a lot to unpack here. I think Jake's got a long list of related topics here.

So I don't even really know where we want to start on like. Yeah, I mean, where do you start with that? The experiential side of it like. What stands out to you? What was like, you know, if I, if someone asked you, what was it like? What is the very first thing that jumps to your brain? Life changing. Life changing.

Okay. Life changing. Yeah, because of the, in particular, being at the window upside down, looking at the earth. I mean, that's really, I'll never forget that image. But, you know, you're showing some video here. I remember every second of this. I mean, this is like burned into my brain. And I remember Jeff's remarks here.

And, you know, the thing about Jeff, I got to spend a little bit time with is it's clear everyone who is went recently, especially on the Blue Shepherd, really has been impacted. I think you all heard William Chattner's remarks, which were beautiful. But pretty much everyone, you know, Chris, Bosnian, who I'm sure you guys know, and Audrey Powers and really everybody. Oh, there's us coming off the pad. I'll never forget that. That was cool. That was cool. Yeah, you know, the end.

The engine start is at T minus 2, but you don't lift off the pad till T plus 7. And in that nine seconds, you're rumbling and the cabin actually lights up bright orange because you've got the rocket plume coming up, swirling around the windows, which is just awesome. There's me upside down at the window. Yeah, you're the one crushing it at this part, right? Like, there's a couple things. I've had a lot of critiques of certain people flying on New Shepard because I feel like, and as a space nerd that you are, you probably have similar thoughts.

on like, what are the unique elements of this particular thing that I'm doing right now? And it's like, zero g's cool, but the view. You're there for the view. You know, if you want to do zero G, pay a couple less $1,000 and go on a zero G flight and have a couple parabolas. But like, I'm going up for the view, you know? And being upside down with the view is just a pretty great way to experience it. Well, that definitely ended up being a total pro move.

I had anticipated it would be helpful, but you can't really test it on the ground. But the reason I had assumed that was, even though in zero G, you don't really know up and down, just by virtue of the fact you're looking at the window and the seats below you, your brain went into it. That's up, that's down. So what I thought was if you invert, two things happen. One is you take the seat completely out of your field of view because you guys, I think, had been in the capsule, the windows actually sloped down.

So when you're upside down, you don't even see the seat, right? And so essentially what ends up happening is you're hovering over the earth, right? Your view is hovering. It's almost like you're skydiving or free falling over the earth. Of course, you're not. Well, you are, but you're, the feeling is you're floating. And then at the bottom you have the horizon and the black sky. So it's just a, it's the most mind-blowing feeling you can possibly imagine because nothing is in your field of view.

Nothing except for the earth. So it's pretty, it's pretty cool. Yeah. And that's, I didn't think about like the. the dimension there of the window and how you can get tucked up in it. You know, because we talked a lot about the SpaceX Playplace and that you just jam your face right up against the dome. But like, yeah, I mean, the window is,

I feel like that should have been a standard procedure. And if not, I feel like you should maybe insert this into Crew 20 and beyond because that's, I don't know, man, that's definitely. It's called it the Taylor maneuver now. The Taylor maneuver. Come on, his Twitter handles at Dill. It's the Dylan maneuver. The Dylan maneuver.

Yeah. Well, I tell you, you have to file a zero-g plan. Everyone does because they want you to coordinate on what you're going to do. And they want you to be aware of what your neighbors are doing. And so similar to NS18, we decided we're going to do a group photo and come together. We did the little football toss because Michael was going to be on Fox Sunday football later that day. Or no, I'm sorry, the next day. And so we plan that, but then you actually have to follow your own individual plan.

And mine was go to the window, turn upside down, and stay there. And so that's what I did. Now, this is a great future off-nominal episode, Jacob. What is our zero-g flight plan? Yeah, what is our zero-g flight plan? I had no idea. But that makes total sense because you have pretty limited time there, right? It is not eons of time.

So I guess you don't want all six people to be like, I'm going to jump across to the other side of the capsule. the same time. My zero-g plan is immediately go fuck with Jake is mine. Yeah, that's right. Give him on Nogi, then flip it. 100%. I think it's exactly what you guys just said, but I think it's also they want you to think through what you're going to do

because they don't want you to sort of lose your mind while you're up there. I had done zero-g before. Lane Bess and Cameron had done zero-g, but the other three passengers, well, actually, no, I think Evan had too. So Laura and Michael were the only two hadn't done it previously, zero-g. Yeah, it's funny. That is an interesting way to put it, that it's like, it's almost like, you know, when you get tech support and they ask you, I've never experienced this, but one may ask you

to blow on the plug, which is a nice way of making sure that you plug the machine in. I feel like this might be similar in that. They're like, we're not going to deny your zero-g plan, but we just want you to have thought about it beforehand. And this is like a thoughtful way of nudging you in the right direction. there. Are there any other aspects of the flight that have that same treatment? Yeah, quite a few. I mean, you have to, well, first of all, we rehearsed everything. You know, so one of the more common questions I get is, were you scared? Were you nervous? And

the answer truthfully is no. And I would have expected that I would have been nervous and scared. In fact, I told close friends of mine, I said, when it hits T minus 10, I know I'm going to, you know, my heart rate is going to be at 150 or something. And it simply wasn't. And it wasn't because the training really, you know, prepares you for that because you're, you're sort of tricking your brain. Everything you're doing that day, you've rehearsed many, many, many times. So it really feels familiar. And then when you're in the seat, that feels familiar. And frankly, the only thing I was worried about was getting scrubbed. Right. And I think Sion Proctor said this. I don't know Sion well, but I remember hearing her say, once I found out I was going to space, my big fear was someone

was going to take it away from me. And that's sort of where my head was at. I'm like, you know, what if we get scrubbed, you know, what if something goes wrong with the rocket and we can't launch for weeks or something. So, but yeah, the training, I can't say enough nice things or positive things about the training. It really is amazing. It really prepared us. Actually, I would love to hear about that because I know it's not like incredibly long training, but there's got to be, I mean, so if I'm putting on like my blue origin salesperson had my like, you know, It's my job to like push the experience. That that pre part is really important because it's 99.5% of your entire experience

with Blue Origin, right? So, you know, there's like a social area that you hang out in for those couple days and a whole bunch of stuff going on in that area. Like can you talk a little bit about what that was like? Yeah. I mean, honestly, I thought it was amazing. I mean, first of all, the experience itself is seven star. They hired the team from the Yellowstone Club up in Montana.

And I saw everything is just beyond deluxe. But the training itself, I really, really enjoyed it. In fact, you know, when we were pushed two days because of weather, I had friends, you know, texting me saying, oh, I'm so sorry, you must be so disappointed. I was like, I'm having the time of my life, right? This is like fantasy space camp. I'll be like, I'll stay here for a month. But it's really cool because once you do all the base training on the systems, then they

just do a bunch of sims, right? So you're in the capsule. You're going through the mission over and over and over and over again so that you know what happens in sequence, how long it happens, when within the T, you know, plus 12 and a half minutes, things occur, what it sounds like. You can't really simulate what it feels like, but what it sounds like. So we did a ton of Sims and they're fun because they'll throw the kitchen seeking at you and you have to figure out based upon your training what to do. So I loved it. I mean, it was one of the most enjoyable parts of the week for me.

Yeah, it can't be too bad sitting around a campfire and listening to Laura Shepherd tell stories, right? Yeah, no, she's, she's awesome. I flew down with, my wife and I flew down with the Shepherds church lease on the way down and on the way back because they live in Metro Dender as well and really got to know them. And actually got to know everybody on the crew over time. Just amazing people. And, yeah, and Strehend's got some good stories, too. I'm a big football fan, so he had some good, he had some good stories.

Stories that frustrated young Anthony many a times, as the Asian fan I am. It's funny to watch him, like, there was an aspect of the way that he talked about it after that sounded familiar to the space nerds that have heard a lot of people talk about going to space. but the fact that there was such, we discuss this all the time about, like, who's flying on these flights that blue picked to fly on these flights and is it good or bad that they're putting very notable people in a position that is dangerous.

But you see him go on the next day on Fox NFL Sunday, and they gave like 10 minutes of that slot to just talking about the flight, you know, and I just thought it was so cool to hear somebody that spent almost no time thinking about this in their life discuss it and and come a little closer to like why we all are in love with this stuff. It's just totally interesting. How quick, like from talking to them there, was that like an immediate thing that happened

to Strayhan and the others that maybe weren't super obsessed with space already? Or did you kind of notice over the course of training that they became more interested in it than they were? I think they were interested in it from the get-go, but I think the flight really is what impacted them. You know, and we get some time as a team or as a as a crew before they actually opened the door. And so you could look in people's eyes and kind of talk about the experience. And it was 100% sincere. And the thing about Michael, first of all, Michael is an extremely, extremely intelligent person. And I think was really knowledgeable about, you know, a lot of

things on the flight that other people wouldn't have been. He's very, very intuitive. He's a communication is genius. I mean, he really is. He knows how to communicate. And I told Michael, I said, you did more for the space industry in a week that we've probably done for ourselves in 30 years because he really expanded the tent. I mean, Good Morning America. You know, Fox Sports Sundays watched by 35 million people, I was told. I don't know if that's right, but I think it's the number one show on television. So just spreading that message to a large, you know, because we're all a little bit of an echo chamber, right? We're all for sure. Yeah. Yeah.

And yeah. Yeah. And certainly on, I think the power of space to transform, I think that's pretty universally believed within the community, more or less. But I think Michael did a great job. And Laura, Laura had a gift as well. She was very charming when she was interviewed. So I think if you look at the press coverage, I think it was almost universally positive

for this mission. So I think if I look at the NS19 mission and I say, okay, the purpose of this, this is to expand commercial spaceflight in the world and make people have a positive view of it, I think it was a huge success, huge. There were a couple of questions in the chat that I wanted to get to because they were really, really thoughtful. So Benjamin was asking how you came up with your zero-g plan, and then Psychonaut was asking after the fact, now that you've reflected on it, would you have changed anything about

the plan? Right. I wouldn't have changed anything about the plan. It was definitely the right plan. And I guess you could argue you cut out the team-based activity, but I would have never done that. I mean, we really were a crew. So, no, I wouldn't change anything. How did I come up with it?

You know, I was always imagining maximizing time at the window, you know, for the reasons you said earlier, Anthony. But then as I thought more about it and just thought about the three dimensions that you have to work with, you know, and I had all kinds of ideas. like maybe you're sideways at the window because there's like little handholds around the window sill. And then I thought to myself, well, that's not going to maximize. You're going to have lateral view in the window, but you're not going to take advantage of the big, you know, north-south of the window. So I just kind of in my mind came up with different scenarios. And I thought to myself, well, if I invert, and actually one other clue I had is Oliver, the 18-year-old who was on NS17, the first human flight, he took a selfie.

upside down, facing actually inward in the capsule, not outward, but he was hanging his feet on this little ridge at the top of the window. And I thought, okay, well, if there really are footholds up there, then maybe I can pull that off. Now, I didn't end up using those because I just got lucky and I got the right orientation right away. And then, you know, once you're in the right orientation, you don't have to move, right? So that's sort of, those were some of the clues. And, you know, As we were talking about earlier, I had done zero G. Actually, we did zero G back in May. My daughters and I and some friends.

So I'd sort of practice some of these maneuvers, not expecting to go to space, by the way. That wasn't even on the cards at that time. But yeah, so that's sort of how that all came about. Wow, yeah. I'm ahead of a weird tangent now. I'm thinking about taking a selfie upside down. Does your cameras auto rotate work in zero G? Because like, well, you know, it's funny.

So there aren't there are no cameras stuck in landscape mode, the whole flight. You're like, damn it, I can't text. Exactly. Yeah, you're actually not allowed to take your phones on. So these are all the installed cameras on Blue Origins. Okay. Okay.

And the funny thing is there are no cameras. So it's just basically continuously capturing video. And then they take stills from the video. That's pretty much how it got to get. Gotcha. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Nobody's wearing GoPro's yet. No, no GoPro's, but they tell you where all the cameras are. And that's actually part of your ZeroG plan as well as if you're going to do pictures like the team photo, which camera are you going to look at, right? Which makes sense, because if you spend all your time trying to figure out where to look, then you're wasting time. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, Cabin's not the biggest. So having selfie arms flying around might not be super helpful to pulling off any other. you know, maneuvers such as this.

Probably be harder with a selfie stick poking you. Yeah, no selfie sticks alone out of the capsule. That's right. Wow. Huh. Okay. So landing then, like, you start coming back down. You start to feel gravity.

There's always the question of like, what if you don't get to the seat in time? Like, is there a lot of talk around that? I'd love to hear that. Yeah, there is. They train you on that because that's really the, I don't want to say the only way you can get hurt, but it's the primary way that you can get hurt. Because if you're standing up when you hit the atmosphere and you're pulling, I think you go 2, 3, 4, 6, 5, 6, 5, 3, 2. So if you hit the atmosphere and you're pulling 4, you know, you might survive, but it's going to, you're going to hit the, it would be a bad day, right?

So what they tell you is if you can't get back to your seat, lay on the floor flat, they'll survive that. that totally, right? Because you're distributing the Gs throughout your entire body. So that's sort of a worst case scenario. And but it's it's pretty easy to get back in the seat. We practice at a ton of times. There's a specific maneuver where you grab the belt in a particular way and you roll into the seat and it's really pretty hard to mess up. And then once you're in the seat, even if you just get one, it's a, you know, it's a three buckle harness. Even if you just get one of the buckles harnessed, you're safe, right? Because you're not going to fall out of the seat. So it really is, I mean, you could mess it up, but you'd have to be, you'd have to be so disoriented

and so, you know, out of your mind in another way to, I think, really not, you know, and there's plenty of buffer time-wise. So it's, it's, yeah, but to answer your question, if you don't make the seat, then you should be on the floor or lean flat. Is this a big worry of yours, Jake? I just, I don't know. I just, these are like all, there's always like so much chatter around these flights, right? Like, what about this? What about this?

Because it's so different and new. And so I had a feeling that a lot of these questions, which would be like, now, it's fine. Like, whatever. Like, what if I don't get back? You'll get back to your seat. It's fine. But it's nice to hear it firsthand from an actual astronaut who did it, right? Yeah.

I mean, I thought it was safe going in. Otherwise, I wouldn't have flown. but the more training I had and the more I learned about the vehicle. And by the way, I thought I knew everything there was to know about New Shepherd. I've been following New Shepherd for eight years. I learned 25 new things during training week that I didn't know, like substantial things about the platform. But the more I learned, the more comfortable I got. I tell people I put my daughters on that rocket.

But, you know, they might not want to go, but I would sign off on that. Is there, can you give us some of the cool things that you learned or are they secret? Are they training things only? Well, no, I mean, a couple of things that I didn't know, perhaps others did. But like, for example, the ring around the top of the booster, that actually is a wing. It's actually a wing. So it just happens to be a curved wing around the top. And that's for stability and, you know, allows maneuverability.

And it's one of the key reasons they were able to relan that booster before. even I think I think they stuck that booster re-landing before even SpaceX stuck their first one I believe so things like that the club we'll never go away that's wean yeah yeah exactly and I think you're right I remember that now right exactly but you know there there were other things about yeah just you know all the redundancy in the vehicle so for

example you know we were talking about landing and a lot of people said well you're Andy was really rough. I mean, it really wasn't. But you have the reverse, it's just because you have the dust kick up with the reverse rockets firing. But if for some reason you're coming in hot, let's say you have two parachutes instead of three, those rockets will fire even more dramatically, right, to balance that extra speed. If for some reason that can't compensate, then you will crush the bottom of the capsule, which is essentially a honeycomb and collapse that and take a lot of the energy out of the system, just like a fender, you know, on a car. And then if that doesn't capture all the energy, the seats that everyone are on are scissored and they'll collapse down and take

additional energy. So things like that where it's like, in fact, I think the physics would be even with one shoot, you would land safely because those backup mechanisms essentially would absorb all the excess energy. So I just, I find that fascinating. Yeah, that's actually really interesting because it kind of highlights sort of one of the differences that you have with, say, a professional NASA astronaut flying in like an Apollo capsule versus selling the flight as a service because like if you have a hard landing with, you know, who had hard landing?

So Apollo 12 had a hard landing in the ocean, right? They had all the stuff followed. Yeah. Okay. So an astronaut bumps his head. a cut, that's part of the job, no big deal. They got home safe, that's how it is, right? But like as a service, you don't want to even hurt yourself a little bit because that makes

a negative experience, right? So you want to make it as cushy. So those like five layers of redundancy, that kind of makes sense to me in terms of thinking this more as an experience than it is about, you know, traditional space. Right. The other, just quickly, one other thing you had asked me what's unique. quickly, I had not expected this, but the ride up was amazing. And I got permission from Blue to actually turn my head in the seat, right? Because safe is you have to have your head back in the seat

rest. And I said, well, can I turn my head? And they said, yeah, you can as long as you're flat on the headrest. So I did that. Well, because the windows are so large and angled like that, the entire ride up, you can see the earth fall away from you. You can't do that. You know, if you're going to the ISS or on any other vehicle. First of all, the window is not right there. The window's not right there. And secondly, you can't orient yourself in that direction. So I think it's a massive, you know, selling point for that particular vehicle because that was one of the coolest things I've ever seen because I saw the entire, you know, earth falling away, you know, the sky getting purple. And then, you know, it was just, it was amazing. Plus, you get a sense for how fast you're going, right?

I mean, it's, and you're going, you know, ridiculously fast. But anyway, I thought that was really cool. So is that something, I'm surprised, I mean, it's, I'm not surprised that you had to ask that, but no one else would, this is, again, you're coming at this from like an extraordinarily thoughtful space nerd perspective, thinking to ask that. I guess I'm just confused as to like, was it a written rule that you have to look directly straight up? And you were like, well, but do I? Because damn, those windows are cool. Like, again, another thing, write this down. Everyone look slightly to your side and watch the earth.

You got to do like a Dylan Tips book and you sell it to all the people. You stand outside the astronaut village and you're just like selling $5 books as people come in. Yeah. Well, it's exactly what you just said, though. I was thinking there and I was thinking to myself, yeah, I mean, the energy of the rocket is great. But to your point, why look straight up? And so I'm going to, and actually, I talked to the human factors. group after the flight and I said my recommendation would be to rotate the seat just one degree

because I don't think the physics of the G forces would change much but that one degree would make a difference in terms of seeing the earth fall away and they you know they scribbled that down but but I think that's totally underrated and it didn't occur to me until I asked for that and then saw how cool it was doing it that I you know I might be the only person ever who is actually seen or, you know, seeing the Carmen line in one fell swoop because I don't think anyone else either had the opportunity or had the idea to do it. So that's kind of cool. And it was one of the best parts of the flight, honestly. Yeah, that's super interesting. Yeah. So it's kind of reminds me of like, we're talking to a past guess about whether you would take a zero G flight or a fighter jet

flight, which would you choose as a space fan? And I picked the fighter jet just because like the zero G is like it's gimmicky and cool, but I think that the views. And to me like that's like the maybe it's kind of the same thing is that like you're thinking of some of the more iconic moments that are not about spinning in circles, but the views and the perspectives and the changes and all those kind of things. Right. So you went on New Shepherd.

Was this something that you or, interested when they began selling tickets and you started inquiring then. Are you curious about the other options that are out there? I know your space for humanity, I think, is involved in the giveaway that Virgin Galactic just did. Do I have that totally wrong? Is that an accurate fact? Yeah, they were the beneficiary of that giveaway. Yeah, a very kind of Virgin to do that. So you have a relationship there as well. I'm curious if that's, if Spaceship 2 or 3 or whatever they're going to name them all, which I won't get on my soapbox, Jake, about my dislike of the Virgin Galactic naming, but how do you feel about that experience comparatively in terms of

the different flight dynamics and windows and all that kind of thing? Yeah, great question. I haven't been inside the Virgin plane, any iteration of it. So I don't really have a good feeling for kind of what that might be like. I did talk to Sirisha, and she had a great, great experience. I am a ticket holder on Virgin. I think I'm 634 or something. I think I was ticket number two on this last sale that they just did.

So I think I'm 634, something like that. So, you know, I'll fly, you know, in a while, right? It'll take them a while to clear out the queue. And I'm a holder on space perspectives and worldview. And I'd like to go orbital, you know, sometime in the future and, you know, continue to talk to people about that. Yeah, I would love to do it all, frankly. I've been a fan of New Shepherd for a long time because, you know, part of my passion around space, as you guys well know, and I know it's the same for you guys as well, is space as a tool for transformation. So I wanted to make sure I could maximize that perspective.

And I just thought the platform with the New Shepherd in the Windows would maximize my ability to do that. So I had inquired, yeah, pretty much from day one. And, you know, like you guys, I have friends there. And I would always kind of say, you know, winter, winter ticket's going to go on sale. And then when they did the auction, I immediately signed up for that and participated in that. And I didn't win, but I was one of that, I think the final 20 or so people who ended up on the phone bidding piece of it. And then after that, I got a call from him saying, you know, sorry you didn't win, but would you like to fly with. to fly with us in the future.

And I'm like, you know, it took me about a nanosecond to say yes. But then again, you know, again, I was, I was thinking, okay, I'll fly in, you know, 2023, 2024, something like that. I would have never in a million years thought 2021. So that was a really nice surprise. Did you talk to the person that paid $28 million and were like, I don't know if you heard about Space Adventures fairs, but like you might want to rethink this particular one? Yeah, I didn't personally speak to him, but yeah, I mean, 28's, you know, now it ended up benefiting a lot of space charities, including space for humanity.

Space for humanity got a million bucks from Blue on that, which was very kind. And Brooke Owens Fellowship and a lot of great charities, I believe in. So at the end of the day, I'm glad he did, you know, quote unquote, overpay for it. They weren't trying to find a deal. It was not the concern there. The $20 million. I figured when I was participating in the auction, I figured. or someone would, you know, some...

Blowed out of the water. Somewhere in the world. But I was thinking, you know, the number I had in my mind was 12 to 15. I thought that's where it would trade. And so I was surprised when I went 20... We didn't properly consider crypto. That was our issue. We didn't think of the crypto.

Right. Right. It slipped all of our mind. That's right. It wasn't on my radar screen either. Yeah, exactly. Jake, we are... Do you have more... new Shepard stuff or should we talk about Voyager?

I mean, I do, but you can keep asking that question and I'll keep asking. Yeah, Dylan does have to make his race tomorrow. Yeah, so we should, we should, there's lots to talk about. We should move on another thing. So you've been, you've been busy at Voyager. I had you on Miko years ago at this point, I feel like, right, right where you started Voyager. I think you were three acquisitions in. And I forget the number that you're up to now.

Was it eight? Seven, nine? Seven. Okay. Yeah, seven. Yeah. So the thing I'm curious to start with is the, you want to talk all about the space entrepreneurs, right? Everyone's paired up with their vision statement that everyone kind of knows.

Elon's and Jeffs and stuff like that. But I'd love to hear, now that you're a couple of acquisitions into this, what your vision currently is with what you're trying to build. Because the companies within Voyager are very diverse. companies like nanorax are now in the fold. It's getting pretty awesome over there. So what is the overarching vision there? Yeah, it's to enable space-based infrastructure to benefit Earth and space, right?

We call it the Earth Space Expanse. That's a term we came up with. It's like you're just missing a cease and desist by like an inch. Yeah, I know. Exactly. Exactly. I'm sure we'll get a letter on that one. But yeah, so it really is, it really, you know, and Jeff Maher says this, well, if the last 10 years were about access to space, the next 10 years are about destinations, right? And so we kind of pulled the, you know, the, the sheet off the surprise here recently when we won the CLD ISS Space Station contract. Because point of fact, even though it seems diverse in terms of what we've acquired, it really has been to this master plan.

in order to compete and win these large infrastructure projects. And so, for example, we just closed on Space Micro, which you might know, LaserCom and Avionics Company in San Diego. We did this propulsion acquisition, VTS in Nevada a while back, and people were like, I don't get that. Why are you doing that? Well, they happen to have the only technology to relight solid fuels, right? Solid-based propulsion, which has kind of been the holy grail for years and years and years,

right? Because typically solid fuels, once you light it, it'll extinguish, right? It just burns itself out. So to be able to modulate solid fuels is really, really, really interesting if you have space-based free flyers, right? Things like that. So long story short, we're building to space-based infrastructure, starting with infrastructure and Leo, and then ultimately cis lunar is where we want to also go from here. And then, of course, with the business, the Altius business and some of the other technologies, we have big ESG focus on orbital servicing, space debris, making space sustainable. You know, I'm sure you guys covered or thought about the Russian satellite that they blew up. I mean, this is a real issue. Classic tragedy of the commons. And if we don't, we, the royal, we don't get our arms around this.

We can, you know, we can really pollute a couple of these orbits and really dramatically set our industry back. So, so those are the areas we're focused on. And we've got a kind of new, you know, I won't steal all the thunder for this because we have really a new, what I don't want to call it a marketing plan because it sounds, you know, too contrived. But basically new branding that we're going to be rolling out that I think will kind of unveil all these things we've been building behind the scenes. which should be out of the market in the next couple few weeks. Yeah, there's our ESG. So, you know, you guys know this, I think, about us and Jeff Nammer and other people involved in the company.

ESG is not a check the box for us. We really, really, really believe in this. And I think our industry, unfortunately, just does a, it's a low bar, you know, whether it's diversity or whether it's, you know, space sustainability, some of these ag tech projects we're working on. I just think our industry needs to do a much, much better job. of being more humanistic, more empathetic, more focused on earth-based problems. And even if you don't believe in any of that stuff, which I know we all believe in it,

even if you're just a cold-hard capitalist, if we don't do that, then all the politics of space is going to come back and buy us on the backside, right? So whether you're a cold-hearted capitalist who doesn't give two craps about people or not, it's good business. You know, I happen to care about people, and I know you guys do as well, but it's just we're not doing ourselves any favors, right? So that's how I feel about it. And I'm sorry to be on my soapbox on that, but I'm really, I'm really passionate about it. And, you know, diversity, it just drives me bonkers. It's like, okay, we're trying to solve some of the hardest engineering problems in the world. And we want to do that with like two thirds of society, like not involved. It's like, it's just idiotic. It makes no sense. Yeah, leaving a lot of ideas in the table that way, right? Yeah, and genius. I mean, there's genius people everywhere in every nook and cranny of the globe, right?

So I just think as an industry, we've got to do a better job. And I think, frankly, we've got to call people out who aren't taking this seriously because it really does hurt us. And it makes us very vulnerable to these arguments that, you know, it's escaped from Earth and billionaire boys club and things like that. Yeah. So which doesn't do any of us any favors. So anyway, it's a big focus of ours, and we really want to provide leadership in that.

I think it's really, really, really important. A lot of that stuff is, like, you're going to have to, someone's going to have to get involved in the policy side of that as well, right? There's a huge geopolitical aspect to talking about orbital debris. Do you see, you know, there's companies that see themselves as like, well, we're going to build all this stuff and then policy will adapt to us. And then there's others that try to shape it in advance of what they're building. How do you see that, how do you see them managing that aspect where it's like not just, you don't need to convince just me and Jake, but you need to like figure out how to deal with countries that don't exist anymore

that have a lot of rocket bodies in orbit that need to be taken care of. That's a really strange situation. Yeah, it's a brilliant question. I'm typically not one to push for a lot of regulation because I'm more of a free market thinker in general, but I think this is one area where it's underregulated. I credit ESA, European Union has been leaders in this. And I think where we're likely headed is EU could say something like if you're launching hardware from our soil, it has to have a deorbit technology on it. I think that's a reasonable request. We're part of a working group with the World Economic Forum,

which includes a lot of other, you know, large companies like Lockheed and SpaceX is involved and others, where we're trying to master this space sustainability index. So we're trying to basically, it's almost like lead in commercial real estate where you sort of certify what green level the building's at, you know, gold, platinum. So that's the idea with space sustainability indexes. You can sort of certify the hardware and how sustainable it is. That's a good, you know, that's a good step. The benefit of World Economic Forum is it's one of the only multi-stakeholder communities where you can have those conversations.

Ideally, you would do it at the UN, but that's, it's just politically difficult to do it. Yeah. And space is tough because of the national security issues and SIFIUS and things like that. So it's always been pretty parochial. So we've chosen to focus on World Economic Forum. And then Eric Stalmer, who you all know, runs our government affairs is, you know, spending some time, you know, with people like Brian Whedon and other people, you know, get charity ween for that matter, you know, talking about how we draw more attention to space debris. Because this isn't really a competitive area in the sense that I think we're all in this together, right? We all benefit from clean orbits and clean space.

Just one quick thing, guys, I heard from someone yesterday. I haven't validated this, but it's a crypto guy who's got a space sustainability crypto. And the idea is for every successful satellite launch and for every successful astronaut by the Carmen line, they mine new, you know, coins. And those go, a third of them go into a space sustainability fund to pay for space to bring cleanup. So the idea is as we launch more, we fund the cleanup. I thought it was an interesting concept. I don't know if it's a legit project.

I don't know if it's a jacconi's ticket onto New Shepherd. No, I don't know. Yeah. I think you need to go as the first podcasters to podcasts from the common line. We're working. This is what we keep saying. This is what we keep saying. First step off.

Maybe you want to sponsor the Offnom VOMCOM. That's the thing that we're trying to get going first. That'll be our training regiment. We'll have you come in as a speaker to give us tip. on what to do and then we haven't really come up with the catchy name for the orbital flight yet oh no the booze cruise right we're doing the booze cruise and we're going to go find zuma that's what it is so go find zuma we're going on a on a ghost tour and find zuma so let us know if you want to come i mean we're we don't know we don't really have a date might be before your virgin flight

based on how things are going but yeah it's a chance we should we should also talk about space for humanity because this is you started getting into a little bit, right? Like, this is another piece of going to space. And even, we didn't even mention with your flight, the, what did you call it, the buy one, give one? Do you talk about this a little bit? Because this was super cool. Yeah. So the idea there was, you know, again, trying, trying to convince people that space nerds, as you call them, which I like that term, recognize and believe that we have problems here on Earth and that we're empathetic, humanistic, kind people. Now, there are exceptions, but for the most part, that's, I think, what our community

is embodied by. But that message hasn't really been told, right? It's, you know, it's sort of been characterized as the opposite. So my thought was, I'm not going to tell people what to donate to, but just take whatever you spend on your ticket, which is undisclosed, and just find worthy the earth-based charities to donate the equivalent amount. So that was my call to action. And so I chose four Brooke Owens Fellowship, Patty Gravesmiths Fellowship, Astro Access, and Adesia, which is a global malnutrition. Yeah, we've got it up on the screen there.

And these are amazing organizations. I think you know all the principles involved here except for maybe Adesia. And yeah, so that's what I did. And it gave me a chance to talk about the importance of, you know, addressing problems here on Earth. It gave me a chance to talk about some of the gaps I see in our industry as it relates to diversity and inclusion. And hopefully it's a call to action where, you know, presumably if you're going to space, it's not your last nickel that you're spending on your ticket, right? Unless crypto crashes. Who knows? Right. Yeah, you could get upside down on crypto, I suppose.

But so that was the idea. And so if we're going to spend a few hundred million dollars on space over the next couple few years, which is probably the number, you know, can we generate that equivalent amount of donations here on Earth? So that was the idea behind it. And yeah, it was great. I mean, it gave me a chance to talk about some really good causes. And I think hopefully it raised awareness for those organizations.

And they were able to get some funding as well. Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan of like Brooke Owens Fellowship, especially, is something I've been following for a while. We need to get them on this. Yeah, we keep saying that. We got to make sure we do that this year. Yeah.

They're amazing people. And so what I was thinking about with Brooke Owens is I'm like, it's an amazing organization. How do we make sure it's sustainable? So what we ended up doing, you know how professorships at colleges can be endowed, you know, we have an endowed professor or whatnot. I thought, okay, why can't you endow the executive director position or, you know, whatever they want to call it. They don't have to call it executive director.

And then that way you have sort of a permanent. staff member. So that's what we ended up doing was sort of endowing their, because it's been all volunteer organization to this point. So anyway, that's, you know, that's, that's great. And, you know, Brooke Owens, the people involved are amazing. It's Will and Lori and Cassie and all these and Emily, you know, just they've got a total all-star team there. Yeah, so that's, that's all good. And then, yeah, space for humanity. I think you guys know it's run by Rachel Lyons, total superstar. They had, I mean, probably the best year for any nonprofit I can never think of, right?

They got close to $2 million from Virgin, a million dollars from Blue. They were really, I think, in the conversation. You know, when Richard Branson got off his flight, he was talking about space for humanity and democratization of space. So it ended up being, you know, it's interesting. Guys, I don't know if you believe in this sort of thing or not, but when I found a space for humanity back in 2014 or 15, this is exactly what I had imagined, right? The speech that Richard gave was exactly the speech I hoped someone would give, right? They'd get off their, you know,

a space rocket or space plane and talk about these things and how important they were. So it was a great year for space for humanity and I expect big things. Hopefully they can select a crew soon. Their next step is to fly, but they need a seat to fly, right? Or actually, you know, you know, multiple seats to fly. Now, the good news is Virgin, as part of that raffle, selected a wonderful young woman from Central America. And so she presumably will fly next or this year or maybe early next year. So that's a great, you know, democratization move, I think.

She'll be the first, I think she's from Belize, if I'm not mistaken. So I think she'll be the first Astra from Belize. That's going to be cool because we don't have any. non-Virgin Galactic related people flying on that yet, right? That are going to have the completely like untamed pouring out of what their experience was after the fact. And I'm just excited. It's so different.

Yeah, yeah. It's just so different though. You're landing back at an airport. There's going to be a bunch of people there. I'm sure there's going to be several rock bands or something. And Branson might be riding in a bike race or something. Like it'll be totally different. It's going to be really cool to see.

How do you guys feel about, oh, and by the way, we, NS19 got our FAA wings. I'm not sure if I told you guys that. So there was a question in the chat. There was a question in the chat about the whole astronaut or astronaut thing. If you want to, if you want to delve. We haven't really delved into this on Off Nominal yet. Yeah, yeah. Let's cover that.

And then I'm curious your opinion on, you know, Carmen Line versus non-Carmon line. I have a view, but I love your view. So if the question is, am I an Asher? astronaut is or people who fly on NS19 astronauts. My answer is yes with an asterisk next to it. So to me, we need probably a term for a human being that crosses the Carmen line, right? And if it's not astronaut, then we should come up with the term.

I like private astronaut or commercial astronaut. I think for someone to say, I am an astronaut with no qualification is kind of like saying, saying, you know, I'm a doctor when they're a PhD and not an MD, right? It's like it's sort of not accurate by, you know, the fact that you're not revealing all the details, right? But in terms of, you know, to me, I'm in the club that says if you cross the Carmen line, you are an astronaut. But I think it's misleading if that's all you say, right? Then they think, well, okay, you were part of the NASA program or something like that.

So I think it's an astronaut with an asterisk. But at the end of the day, if you strap yourself to a rocket and you fly above the carbon line, I think I think that counts. On the FAA wings, just quickly on that, my understanding is they didn't want to get into the politics of sort of who qualifies, who doesn't. There's going to be hundreds of people going in the next five years, 10 years. It became an urgent problem this year. That's the one to me. It's like, I'm looking around this office.

We don't have a lot of employees, and I don't know who's going to be given out 600 wings a year, but I ain't doing it. So maybe we should next this. And, you know, we, we meaning our crew, squeaked in. I got to tell you, it's important to me. And I don't know why. So I was talking to some close friends. I'm like, I don't know why this is important to me because typically I'm not, things like that aren't important to me.

But for some reason, it was really important. And then I was reflecting on it. I think what it was or is is being recognized. of being a pioneer, being an early goer, right? And, you know, because there's a higher degree of risk theoretically and there's higher unknown. And so I think that's why it was important to me. And I'm glad we're getting them. But I also understand why the FAA would get out of the business of doing it. And then you have the whole other controversy of, you know, is virgin in, you know, if you don't cross the Carmen line, is that space or not? But anyway, so those are my thoughts.

I'd love to hear you guys as views, but that's how I think about it. I'm a strict McDowell line believer. Jonathan McDowell convinced me entirely that the line is closer to 80, and it's approximate. So I'm all on board on that. That's where I'm at. Astronaut thing, I don't really get too hot and bothered about. I think like, whatever, whatever you want to call yourself, it's fine by me. Sometimes I've said professional astronaut when I've wanted to specify if I need that level of specificity.

Well, and that's what you said, Dylan, is exactly right. Like there is an importance to expressing what has happened. And if you need different words for that, then find some different words. But I find that I tend to like get away from this argument because 80 to 90% of the time that I see that argument happening in the wild. It's like some sort of like someone's guarding what was important to them as if like you going to space has somehow invalidated what Chris Hadfield did, which it had. It hasn't. It has no way affects what a professional NASA astronaut on the ISS did. It doesn't change their life at all. They're still great people who worked hard and then accomplished things. But that's a great point. That's why I don't care about it. Because I'm like,

all of this is cool. I'm here for all of this. I really don't care. I couldn't agree more. And the astronauts professional, I like that term, professional astronauts, I know who are friends of mine, they all call me astro and they all you know they go out of their way to make me feel appreciated in that regard and i think it's their way of saying you know again if you if you're wanting to strap yourself to a rocket and fly over the carmen line you know you deserve a little bit of a pat on the back i just don't where i get where i bristle you know if people promote themselves i am an astronaut and they don't qualify it in terms of what the mission was what the circumstances were i think it's a little bit disingenuous That's my only gripe.

But I'm not offended by the term. I just qualify it with private or commercial or, you know, just some caveat so that you're not, you're not misrepresenting yourself. That's the only, that's the only thing for me. Yeah. You never said where you're up on the McDowell line. Oh, okay. Well, I think I'm on the McDowell line side too.

Okay. But I want to know what Dylan thinks. Yeah. Well, just point of fact, people quote the car. line, but, you know, Carmen did not specify 100 kilometers. Carmen specified that it's the point where you don't get aerodynamic lift, right? And at that time, hugely dynamic, isn't it? Well, I mean, that's, that's, it depends on temperature and everything else.

But that's why it's around this 80 kilometer mark. But the point is when people save, you know, Carmen, they see, I think it was Vaughn Carmen, was his name, actually. But when Carmen was pounding the table on this, the 100 kilometers. was actually just convenience. What he came up with, my understanding, is just this concept that there being a line that you can't fly a plane above that line, essentially, right? Because you have no aerodynamic lift. And I was talking to Chris about this, he was on NS 18. You know, he said, if I didn't go to space, what was it that I hit on the way down? Well, of course, what he hit on

the way down was the atmosphere, right? So if you're above the atmosphere, by definition, you're in space, right? I mean, that's what space is. See, I have the same problem with this argument too, because 90% of the time that I see this argument in the wild, it's someone who says that they want New Shepherd to be a real spaceship and Virgin to not be a real spaceship. That's the agenda behind it. And it's like, okay, well, what are we talking about here? Do we actually have like an idea, do we have some ideas about where we should define space or are you just picking your favorites and then drawing the line, right? Like, I don't, that's the same thing. I don't like getting into that.

Yeah. And to your point, it's really, it's political at that point. And it's like this is either, this is science, right? It's not politics. It's like, what is the science behind where space starts? So I'm with you. I think it's when you don't have an atmosphere. And it is variable.

It depends on what part of the world you're in and whether the sun's on that side of the planet or not. Because it's all temperature dependent to a certain extent. But it's around 80 kilometers, right? That's roughly where it is. And New Shepherd blows through that. I think we hit 116 actually. So it goes quite a bit above the carmline actually even Or no, maybe 106.

106 sounds right, yeah. Yeah, 106. 106. Yeah, 106. Yeah, 106. That sounds right. Wow. Okay.

Yeah. Well, Anthony. I've got a kicker. I got a kicker question I just thought of because I looked over and I saw a mission patch here that made you think of this. If there was an option that you could pay extra to hit the abort motor at Apagee, would you have paid for that option? No way.

No way. You're going to pull. No way. Because it's going to, it's going to, it's going to, you're going to pull 25 Gs. That's a bad day and you can hurt yourself now. Your back's definitely going to hurt the next morning. Yeah, no, I wouldn't, I wouldn't do that. This was enough adventure for me. You know, the 5.8 Gs we hit on the way down was, was legit. I mean, I, I struggle with that. You know, Evan Dick, who's a pilot. He's like, Dylan, that was nothing. He's like, you're a baby. But I, I thought it was rough. So 5.8 is my I don't think I want to go past that. We had this like totally, you know, middle of the Saturday night at a bar idea that it was,

that if you got through the main part of flight and you knew, okay, we don't need the abort motor anymore, just turn it on and get those extra kilometers, you know, just like take that extra mile. Yeah, I, I know. I mean, it sounds, when you put it that way, it sounds doable and cool and interesting. That's right. That's right. I want a nominal flight. I know this is off nominal,

but I want a nominal flight. All right, I want it to be known. I'm just saying it was doable. I'm just saying there's a Wikipedia page for like astronauts who flew and had their abort motors go off and you could be on that for just a little bit extra dough.

And you could be in there with, who was it, Nick Haig, Alexander Merzirkin. I think they're on that list. There's some recent additions. You're probably in a lifetime ban, don't you? Yeah, I think that's, you might not be going to space.

Yeah, exactly. Oh, that's funny. Oh, man. Should we do some picks, Jake? I think we should do some picks. I think it's about that time. About that time, eh? Yeah.

I have a very unique pick set up this month, Jake. I have two picks that are named the same thing and are totally different. Wow. This is excellent. And I liked both of them, and I was like, oh, maybe I'll make these both picks in the future. And then I thought I should make them picks together. The pick is space explorers. There are two things called space explorers.

Well, I rented an Oculus over a little Christmas time off, just because I felt like I didn't need to buy an Oculus. I don't need that in my life at this current moment in time. I just wanted to screw around with one for a little bit. So this is not an ad, but there's a site called LensRentals.com where I've rented a bunch of camera gear in the past. And they rent Oculus for like, it's like 40 bucks for a week. And you can just screw around with it and then still get work done when you have to send it back at the end of the week. Not just be playing like Star Wars lightsaber forever. but Space Explorers is they've been shooting

I've been noticing this in the ISS blog post for the past like two years they've been shooting VR footage in the ISS and it's it's like footage within the ISS but the astronauts are talking to you they're talking it's like narrative kind of in a way where they're talking about different aspects of flying on the space station there are times when I think the scenes are like a little too quick because basically they put the camera up somewhere and

Nick Hague's actually in it a couple of times. They're talking to you, and I'm like off looking around the Kibo module. I'm checking out stuff. And then it fades out. I'm like, no, wait, I wanted to look what was in that rack. But there's a special episode in there just called The Home Planet, where you're just in the cupola. And it's like, it's pretty awesome.

It's a great, it's a great experience. I think it was, I think it was free on Oculus. But highly recommend, like, if you're listening to this show and you have $40 to spare, 100% worth renting an Oculus. for a week and watching this like every night because it's great. The second one called Space Explorers is a board game that

I think we found at Barnes & Noble or something. And you, it's like a card drafting game where you were trying to build a little team of engineers and astronauts and test people and all this other stuff and you have to complete different space

projects to win. It's actually really fun, pretty quick to pick up and it's it was really fun to play. I only played it with me and my wife. It was just two people, which apparently is a great way to play it because of some of the mechanics at play here. Because you're not, you don't have like money that you spend. You actually have research tokens, but when you spend them, you give them to the other person. So, because there's like some tenants in the rulebook that's like research benefits all. So when you do research, you give it to

someone else. I thought it was pretty thoughtful. So space explorers. Buy everything named Space Explores. You should check out. Love it. All right. There you go. So I am going to pick the Netflix special that everyone is talking about this week. Don't look up. This is a movie called on.

It's playing audio. I didn't want to watch the trailer. We might get taken down off YouTube or something. Yeah. So this, like this, I mean, this is a movie about an asteroid impact. That's not really a spoiler. And then these scientists try to convince the world that we should do something about it. And so it's very controversial because the takes I've seen are like 50-50.

Some people are like, oh my God, like I'm a climate scientist and I feel seen. This is exactly what it feels like. This is this movie is a documentary. It should be shown in classrooms. And then you hear some other people that are just like, this is a stupid silly caricature that is not realistic and why would do we say. It's a whole big thing. So I'm sure the listeners are all thinking one or the other of those things.

But I kind of like it. I thought it was I thought it was funny. And I thought it was startlingly accurate to what our life is like these days. The cool fact I have about it. So one of the themes, of course, is no one listens to the scientists. And a lot of the reviews about it are like drawing the analogs between this and the pandemic. Like here are a lot of doctors talking about how the pandemic works and, you know, people are fighting them. But the fact about this movie is it was written way before the pandemic.

and it is not about the pandemic at all. It is about climate science, about climate change, and not listening to those scientists. And it happened to come out and be completely relevant about to everything that we're seeing today. So it's quite a trip when you look at it that way. That's how you know they nailed the thought behind the plot. They nailed that, right?

If you can come in and drop your own, oh, this is about, that's how you like how you write a good song, is you write a good song and everyone applies it to their own personal situation. Exactly. Right. You write this movie and it applies to whatever the current scientific dilemma is of our time. I haven't watched it yet, but I've been, as I hear everyone talking about it, we were talking about this pre-show. Like, I started to get sad because it was the first time I realized, like, maybe people wouldn't believe that we were going to get hit with an asteroid.

And I always thought that was the sure thing that like, no, we'll straighten it out by that point. But I don't know. Have you watched it, Dylan? Yeah, that's good. I haven't. I've heard a lot about it, but I haven't. watched it yet now. Okay, well now it's on your list.

So this doesn't rank in your, in your shitty space movies, Jake. This is not, because that's your beating. No, no. You're beating is shitty space movies. I know, I know. I'm like big about the bad space movies. Like Geostorm was one of that pick, I think, last month, right?

But this is not that kind of terrible natural disaster movie. This is a whole different thing. Yeah. Love it. Yeah, so I had a pick for you guys, if it's appropriate. I just read Amy Shira Taitel's book, Breaking the Chains of Gravity. Have you read that? I have not read it yet, but I know to.

It's really interesting because it's all pre-NASA history. So how was NASA formed? And I knew none of it. I mean, literally none of it. But it starts all the way back in basically World War I and then into World War II and ARPA and all the predecessors of NASA and sort of how it all came together. And it's very well written. It's not dry, keeps moving, you know, a lot of sort of forward action. Extremely well written and very dense. I mean, I'll probably have to read it again because there were a lot of things in there that I'm sure I missed.

But highly recommend it. And I think it gives you a better understanding of how the 60s were formed and why NASA did what they did. and it's good context, I think, for where we're at. So recommend reading that. Yeah, I got a long reading list. Yeah, I know Amy is Canadian too, so that's a big, throw that show out there, just want to everybody know that. She is, yep. I think she's a great writer.

She's a, yeah, she does a really nice job. Yeah, another one on the guest list, Anthony. Another one on the list. I think we, wouldn't she also on the stream that we co-hosted for a hot minute? Remember we were on that around DM2? Yeah, maybe. I think she was also on that at some point.

So we had a near miss, but didn't quite have the total collision. Dylan, you talked about a lot of stuff you were working on these days. But if somebody out there, if this is their first Dylan experience, where would you send them to follow along with all of your prolific work? I probably my personal website which is dillentaylor.org typically everything I'm working on is there there are links to different things I'm working on so I would I would send them there and your epic Twitter handle at Dylan how'd you get that Dylan yes let's get into this real quick yeah it's funny that there's a story behind this would blow your mind

Anthony but I did negotiate getting that handle. Crypto, did you use crypto? Did you use that space crypto? No, no. But the funny, it's true story. When we were transferring the handle, literally a hacker came in and stole it on the transfer.

So not only to have to buy it once, I had to buy it twice. And come to find out, the hacker, I ended up forming a relationship, you know, like friendship with. It's now your personal hacker. Just in case you have any needs. Well, it's come to find out.

like a 17-year-old high school student. Anyway, it's a long story. And so, yeah, anyway, it was, but it's worth it. I kind of like having the handle and it makes it easier to have people tag in all that jazz. So anyway, story for another show, perhaps. Yeah, seriously. There's a good story behind it. Yeah.

Incredible. All right. Yeah. Great being with you guys. I really enjoyed it. This is fun. It's always fun. Jake, you didn't mention on this show yet, on the main titular Offenometer, off nominal.

You're doing more than just Mars these days. That's right. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. So I have this We Marsh this podcast that I've been doing for a while. And I just felt like, you know, changing it up a little bit this year. Just tossing a little bit of chaos into my world. And so I've taken the leash off and Mars is no longer the only place.

planet that I'll be exploring there. So it's very exciting. I got to dig into some moon stuff this week and explore the Chinese rover, which is doing some cool stuff. We found a spicy rock to look at. Totally not. That was a really great lesson of how terrible our depth perception is on the moon. It really is. Yeah, yeah, because there's no atmosphere, man. So like, it's just, is it small and close or big and far? Nobody knows. So yeah, so I'm doing a lot of that. That's going to be mostly my year is trying to understand what the heck is going on in all the other planets, which is not an easy endeavor. As I said, I made a little podcast like five-minute explainer about what I was doing on the show. And I said, this is going to take me a while because I have not been secretly studying all the other planets for the last five years.

And I can just ready, just flip the switch and start talking about it. It doesn't like that way. So I got to learn too, but it's fun that way. I'm pumped for it. This is what I've been personally excited for for a while. You've been trying to give me to do it for like three years. Yeah, yeah. I'm like real pumped on it for my own personal gain. You're going to have a great time at LPSC. You're going to be more tired than you were last year. And I'm excited to hear about that. Maybe I'll fly down for moral support or something. Maybe. I should see about doing that. I just need you to take care of like food and water for me so that I can just go look or go. I can do that for your water boy. Yeah, yeah. Why has my phone going off? That was weird. Wow. That's a great way to end the show.

That's awesome. I should just hit this. Yeah, I got nothing to plug because I barely started work yet this year, so that's all I got. Dylan, you're awesome. Thanks for being here. This was so great having you. My pleasure. Yeah, thank you guys. Great to be with you. Take care. Bye, everybody. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one. End of death.