Off-Nominal - 52 - We Have All of Them

Episode Date: March 11, 2022

Anthony is joined by Tim Dodd, the Everyday Astronaut, and Roland Miller, a photographer who has spent years documenting space hardware of all varieties. We’ll talk about Roland’s work, and go behind the scenes on his two published books (Abandoned In Place, Interior Space) and his next book (Orbital Planes) coming out this spring.DrinksSlipknot No.9 ReserveGolden Spike Hefeweizen - Uinta Brewing Company - UntappdAlta Mora Etna Bianco 2019 | Wine.comTopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 52 - We Have All of Them (with Roland Miller and Tim Dodd) - YouTubeRoland Miller PhotographyAbandoned In Place — Roland Miller PhotographyInterior Space — Roland Miller PhotographyThe Space Shuttle — Roland Miller PhotographyBoeing: Santa Susana Field LaboratoryPhotographer Captures the Ruins of the Soviet Space Shuttle Program | PetaPixelLet’s make a deal: Entrepreneur wants to trade Buran shuttle for a skull | Ars TechnicaFollow RolandRoland Miller (@space_ranger) / TwitterRoland Miller PhotographyFollow TimEveryday AstronautEveryday Astronaut - YouTubeEveryday Astronaut (@Erdayastronaut) | TwitterFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine start. Welcome to space. Hello. Welcome to All Phnominal. I got the intro right. Last week I said main engine cutoff, which is the other show, and Jake was mad at me. He's not here this week, so I'm happy that I introduced the right show.

We've got another Jake this week because he's being a professional at a conference. So I've got my old friend Tim Dodd down there in the Jake box. How you doing, Tim? Hey, I'm great. Happy to be here. Happy to be talking rockets and photography. A nice... Nice blend.

Nice Tim Dodd topic list. Yes, and that's exactly why I was like, I need a co-host this week. I got to text Tim because we've got with us, Roland Miller, who is an incredible photographer. And look at this B-shot. I got set up to show off the books here. We're going to be talking about your books. How you doing, Roland? Good.

I'm doing good. Thanks for having me on. Yeah, so I got one of your books here, abandoned in place. I got as a birthday present one year from the last place I worked, Big Cartel. They sent it to me because I knew my. love for space. And then the other one, Jake actually sent, I had a baby a year and a half ago, and that was the present for the baby arrival. So I've been gifted both of your books. I'm excited to actually pay my own money for your third book, which we'll talk about in a second.

I've got a copy of it here, a pre-release copy. Oh, man. We might even get a little sneak peek. Well, Tim, you just, before this, you ran away because you realized you forgot a drink last time you're on the show, and I think you've rectified that this time. Listen, you know, last time you guys kind of made fun of me for, you know, drinking water and hydrating mid-afternoon for me. But, you know, today I decided it's Thursday. We're going for it. So I decided that I am representing Iowa and representing the, this is actually the band Slipknot. Remember those guys? Yeah. They're from Iowa. I'm an old metalhead. And I saw this in the store. It's Slipnots with Cedar Ridge Distillery

out of near Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It's actually quite good. But Cedar Ridge makes really, really good whiskey, so no surprise there. Slip-knot connection. I would never have guessed it. Right? You just never know.

Roland, did you bring something fun to drink today? You know, it's only 2 o'clock here in Utah, so I'm breaking my... I usually don't start drinking the 2.15, so I'm going to break my... I've got a... I don't you guys, but I'll see this. You went to...

Oh, yeah. The golden spike. In honor of... Well, now it's Northrop Grumman, previously, ATK, previously, Morton previously, or Morton Tycoll. The Golden Spike National Historic Park is like five miles from where they build a spatial bluster, so it's kind of an interesting connection there. Yeah, promontory.

Cocoa Beach, Brewing Company Glass, so... Perfect. Spanning the coast. too, that's awesome. You're taking us on the journey of the SRBs as you enjoy the smooth, tasty hops. I've been to both of the, I've been to the Uinta brewery and I've been to the Cocoa Beach joint. So that's, I've been to both of the locations that you're sourcing all your material from today, so I've popped about that. Yeah, I've been to the Cocoa Beach one, but never, yeah, never Uinta. Yeah, the Uintas.

Uintas. What about you? Oh yeah, I forgot. I'm also involved in this. I have a, white wine from Mount Etna. It just is literally called Etna Bianco. It's literally just on the back. Everyone says what kind of wine is it? It just says white wine. But it's delicious.

And I thought, you know, a little Italian tribute to your partner that we'll talk about Paulo Nespoli. All right, so I wanted to... So in the books, you've got like a lot of... You've got like an intro to some of them to talk about the work where it came from. So I feel like you've got some great stories for us that I'm excited to extract from you.

Let's go in chronological order. We'll start with abandon in place. Let me shuffle my B shot here so I can better feature abandoned in place. And you can see I've got too much stuff on my desk with the wines and whatnot. The timeline of this book is very interesting to me because as you might expect from the name of it,

I flipped to the one blank page, but it is a collection of photos of, I mean, not just Cape Canaveral. You've got, you know, test sites at Edwards here where they test the F1 and all that. It's all about, you know, the hardware that was kind of left over from the heyday of space. But I noticed that all of the dates on these are like 90s, early 2000s. And I just want to know where that idea came from in that era, because I look at these pictures from where we're at now.

And it's like, it's totally different to look back where we are in 2022 on these timelines. So I was teaching photography at Bavar Community College now, Eastern Florida State College. And I got a call one day at the college from an environmental engineer on Cape Canaveral. And he said, you know, we've got an old office building here on the Cape that we haven't used in about 10 years. And we're going to remodel it. And we went in there and he said, there's a photo lab in there. We didn't know it was there. And we've got some old chemicals.

He said, if there are any good, you can have them for the college. And if not, if you'd help me properly dispose of them. So I said, sure. So I went out there and I get there and he goes, you know, I got to run an errand. Do you mind? And go, I go, no. I'm Cape Canaver. I grew up watching all this stuff.

And he was, well, have you ever seen any of the old pads? I'm like, I didn't know the old pads. In the Complix 19, which is the Gemini, all 10 crewed and other Gemini launches went off there. And we pulled up and immediately, I'm like, this is amazing. Because it was the Gemini Launch Tower was very unique. It was hinged at the bottom. laid it down right for the launch, but it would be up around the rocket. And after the last launch, they laid it down and they just left it there. So I thought, well, I got to figure out a way

to photograph this stuff. So I started checking around with public affairs and different things. Mind you, I started doing some of the real early work was with an 8x10 view camera, which I abandoned pretty quickly because there were so much stuff out there. I could do like five shots a day, and I'll never get what I need to get done. But the public, the public. Affairs people were kind of like, well, you know, yeah, we've got some other people. We'll go out there for half an hour someday. And I'm thinking, half an hour, it's going to take me a half an hour to set that camera up. So I just kept trying, you know, and, you know, after two years, anybody had met, I just, you know, it's a real lesson in perseverance.

And finally, I was getting my haircut in Cocoa Beach. And my barber goes, oh, he goes, so what do you do with your photography? And I just, you know, so I got this idea, photo out the old pads of the cape. And he goes, I'll get you out there. Mike. You know, I appreciate that, but I've been trying for two years, you know, I'm sure you know, but he was, no, no, I'll get you out there. I'm like, look, that's great. Of all people, your barber. Only your hairdresser knows for sure, as I say. You know, I'd heard that so many times, but he was dating someone in public affairs. And so he set up a meeting for us, and I explained what I wanted to do, and they got it.

And then once I'd gone out there a couple times and shot, I took the pictures in and showed him to Chuck Hollinghead. And he was like, oh, yeah, this is great. We want to support you and keep doing this. So that's, that was really how it all started. And then I had an exhibit of the work early on in Huntsville. and the curator there said, well, why don't you come up here and photograph some of our stuff, too? So then I realized, oh, I should go everywhere. And that's really how that all evolved.

You had access to the, I was just pulling up this page to the, the Edwards site where the F1 was tested, which I feel like I've only seen, like, legendary photos of, and I don't know anyone that has been to this place. So how did you start getting into, like, you know, you mentioned with Marshall, but is that how you started getting into these other sites as well that are, I mean, Edwards is tough to get, into in that regard. So that must have been a venture. You know, the thing is it's a big, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a pendulum. Sometimes it's real like right now, I'm actually having a hard time getting access to stuff because I haven't done a lot lately in the public affairs people have all changed and they've changed some of

the badging stuff. And, um, as Tim knows, from first time. Tim just got denied from the SLS rollout, I believe. Was that the tweet that is all? Did I get that story right? I did too. No one's allowed. No one comes. It was funny because at the end of the shuttle program they opened the floodgates. They were letting anybody there to do it.

And they were saying, literally the first people were saying, oh, we should, you know, we should have done this 10 years ago, you know, this is great. We're getting so much attention. It's like, yeah, that's a good idea. But apparently they haven't learned that lesson. I'm sure COVID is a big part of it and other things. But anyway, once I had relationships with some public affairs people, I could say, I would write to the other

places or call them and say, look, I'm working with this person. Here's what I'm doing. I could send them some, you know, some examples or something. And I really didn't have that much trouble at that point. Once I, you know, once I had proved what I was doing was worthwhile and I was serious about it, then they took me seriously. So I didn't know. I mean, to be honest, I didn't know. I've only been to Edwards at one time. I didn't know it was that tricky to get out there. So Santa Susanna is another one that's tricky to get out to. I'm sorry. I don't know where that.

I don't think I've ever heard that. Where is that? So Santa Susanna is a Boeing facility up. I'm trying to think originally if it was rocket-dine originally. Anyway, it's a Boeing facility. It's up in the mountains. It's like literally an hour from downtown LA. Oh, yeah.

They were testing. Like I got to see an Atlas engine test when I was there. and there was a lot of, they did some nuclear stuff and there were some bad contamination, but there's some really cool test stands there, which are slated to be demolished if they haven't been already. But it was really, it was really cool. And, you know, one of the neat things about this is oftentimes my escorts are volunteers, and like the gentleman that escorted me there, he'd worked out there for years, so he knew all

this stuff. And it's just, you know, it's like living history while you're photographing. It was just great. That is awesome. Did you have a sense for when you were doing all the stuff at the Cape that like, I mean, obviously it was mid to late 90s when you started the project and went for many years where you've got some in like 2005 or six in the book as well. That was like the 10 years of stagnation that then led to the explosion of activity.

And I think I got the book like in 2015 or 16 or something like that. So I had fresh eyes on like the revitalization. You know, that was when if you wanted to launch site at the Cape, you probably were able to get your name signed onto one and started redeveloping it. So I feel like you've got a great time. If you wanted a house in Titusville, you could have got one for like $25,000. A great deal. Yeah.

I mean, it was crazy. It was crazy. So did you like look at your bork differently than when everything happened and everything changed and there's like a new guard that is in the space industry taken over Cape Canaveral and it, I don't know, it just brings a different flavor to your images now. Well, you know, it kind of started when they built the Delta 4 heavy pad at 37, because 37, I'd photographed it when it was just abandoned. All that we're really left were two kind of cement superstructures for Pad A and B. And then they built this huge, amazing launch tower right next to Pad 34, which is, of course, the Apollo 7, the Apollo 1 fire.

You know, it was obvious that what was there was not going to last because it's right next to the ocean. and it was rusting away before ice. Complex 13, which is now landing zone 1 for SpaceX, it was almost completely intact as a launch site. I mean, I think it pretty much was. And so we could go up into the tower and walk around and really comb the whole thing. Yeah, there's the tower.

And what happened was those, back in the day when they were building all these towers, they were painting in with lead paint. For some reason, I think some of them, even had PCB in the paint. I'm not sure what the theory was with that. I'm sure there was some good things at the time. And they would oxidize and it was contaminating the soil.

So they finally decided, and by the time they took 13 down, it was so badly rusted. The stairways had collapsed. I had a, one of my escorts was out there with a group. I wasn't there, but he told me, you know, they were out there, and one of the lights fell off one of the great big light poles about, you know, 50 old, so he wouldn't smash. So, you know, they put a big fence around it and it was gone. So it was out, that was one of the reasons I wanted to photograph it, because not that there weren't tons of photographs of these sites when they were active, but it seemed like, you know,

it was, to me, it's like, if you could go down to the dock where Columbus sailed and look at, look at what it looked like, you know, that's, it's literally that important. And I get why you can't save it all. It's mostly the environment and what these things are made of. of the steel and the salt water air there just and the Florida sun just. The park service apparently did a, I have no proof of this, but I heard tell. They did a research project to see about saving complex 13 and restoring it and then maintaining it. And to restore it, it was going to be $10 million.

And this was back in the 80s, I think. and to keep it up, it would be $2 million a year. Well, like the whole maintenance budget at that time for Cape Canaveral was like $1.2 million or something. So it was not practical. So I thought, well, I can do it photographically and Lisa will have some view of what it's like. Yeah, and that's exactly what I mean that, like,

you look at this, you know, you took this shot in 92 and you think today what's happening at this complex is, it's like an alternate universe. You know, you've got the falcon-heavy side boosters coming back and landing here. And I just think that's, no, you couldn't have predicted at the time you were taking these photos that it would be revitalized in the way that it was. You know, even if you imagined how it would come back, you'd write a totally different story than what we're seeing today. And that's, and then you get into, you know, some of these photos that you had in the blockhouses and things like that, these facilities that are like, were literally made to be indestructible. that in some way

this stuff is never going away because it was built to be it was built to survive you know like the craziest explosions on earth but what do you do with a room that looks like this other than stand in it and be like wow this looks incredible they took Complex 14's blockhouse

right before John Glenn's launch so Complex 14 I never got to photograph it up close early on because they had built a hypergolic fuel store George facility just east of the launch rep, literally like 30 feet or so east of the launch pad. So it was off limits. You know, there was nobody going.

And then I think it had something to do with John Glenn going back into space. They realized that that was a historic site. So that thing got moved out and then they opened it up. And Sam Beddingfield, who was one of the first NASA employees, actually worked for NACA originally, I think. He told me he hired Gus Grissom. Anyway, he was my escapade. Again, amazing, you know, just amazing stories. But they turned the, right about that same time,

they took the blockhouse and turned it into a conference center. So they, but they've taken some of those blockhouses down as well. The big, it's interesting, the big superstructure, like for Complex 37 and some of the, some of the real large concrete structures, they don't really have a good way to demonstrate. them, and it's not because they can't. I mean, they can blow stuff up, but they're actually worried that if they blow, and this is an engineer that told me this, if they blow, if they use enough explosives to blow some of them to demolish those, they might damage the aquifers underneath them. So, yeah, that's, you know, that's all just, and that's where the whole advantage and place thing comes from.

And it's such a, you know, it was such a metaphor for kind of our, we were on our way to the moon and, you know, and then that to moon and then on our way to we thought elsewhere. But the reality is that, you know, the space shuttle program was a real necessary step. You know, you can't, the difference between going to the moon and going to Mars is the difference between walking around the block and walking around the world and carrying everything you need. You know, it's a whole, it's just a whole different level. So I look at the, and I'm, you know, I have a very reductive view of the whole space program because I'm just not that smart, but I look at this arc of, you know, you look at the,

the pre-crued missions, you know, going all the way back to the captured V-2s, on up through Mercury Gem and Apollo shuttle, Skylab, through Skylab in there, ISS, and, you know, now SLS. And they're really, it's a very conscious set of steps. You have, they had to have the shuttle to build the space station. We have to have the space station to understand the effects of long-term exposure to weightnessness and radiation. You know, you, you can't, you.

have to learn those things and that's the way to do it. And so people get all, you know, I don't want to start wars, but people complain about the space show program and they oversold it and it costs more. And it took, you know, they didn't launch 24 a year. They launched nine, I think, the most in one year. But it did it. It served its purpose, you know, which the main thing was really to build the space station. They did a lot of other stuff.

But in, you know, in that arc, it has a place and it did its job. And an ISS is doing its job now. for how long we'll see. But, you know, it's, it's, so it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I'm, I, I, I, I, I've been able to see how all these things connect and that it's, you know, you can't just pick one program or one rocket and say, well, you know, this is not going to work, it doesn't matter. Look at the big, look at the overall arc. The arc is going in the right direction.

We're moving in the right direction. I have to say personally that's, it's the beer. I can't help it. That's what we're here for. I have to say for me personally, you know, my my personal arc of the space shuttle and my love for it or this, you know, dislike for it has gone from like, you know, admiration as a child, you know, the poster to getting, you know, angsty going, oh, it costs too much. And now I'm back to like, I just think it's just the most beautiful, you know, wonderful piece of engineering. And the more you learn about it, I mean, yes, it had its flaws, but, oh, it was so cool. did so many things. I just wish that we had an alternate history where they could have, you know,

iterated on it and had an option that wasn't trying to be built around the concept of the once around from Vandenberg. If it had, if that was not part of the shuttle's history at all, I mean, I think we would look back at the shuttle so much differently. But the stupid Vandenberg once around really altered and changed it for definitely the worst. Were they going to capture Russ and satellite or something crazy like that? Wasn't there some? Yeah, here it is. the now Delta 4 heavy and Delta 4 launch site that is still got the same structures in all, which is one of the coolest looking.

Yeah, I mean, the pictures from when they rolled the shuttle out there, it's just, it's so of an error that it's like amazing. Yeah. When I took that, we were up on a road looking kind of down into that basin. I had a lot of friends that worked out for the shuttle, and they were like, that little valley basin on the ocean, And they said, people were saying the reverberations of the SRBs are just going to tear everything apart. They were terrified that. So, but anyway, I remember looking at that launch site, I think, that looks like a space lot. I mean, it really looked like a super high tech.

It doesn't look as much nowadays when you see what we have, but it really did look like a space launch complex. Yeah, I agree. I mean, those pictures to me are the epitome of, you know, like, I guess like on my childhood, you know, yeah, like right there, that image just feels like the Lego set I had as a kid. Totally, it's the Lego set. The Lego set, that's such a good one. I don't know what it is, but like, it just makes me. It's the red launch tower. The Red Launch Tower and the USAF on the vehicle assembly building thing.

And I don't know, it just does something to me. The worm is kicking around still. Like, yeah. Yeah. I do find a lot of resonance, though, between the way that you're talking about photographing these launch sites, too, Tim, what you have been up to in Boca Chica. The things have slowed down a little now in Boca Chica world. But, like, there's, it's hard to look at that and say, this isn't the modern day equivalent of all this infrastructure being built. Everyone's taking photos of every little detail of this thing.

And, you know, again, we're building a lot of steel structures right on the beach. Like that, that shit is not built for longevity unless they're going to. to upkeep it all, you know? Yeah. Right. They, you know, I'd be, I'd be photographing on the shuttle launch tower and they'd be a level of two below me painting. It was just constant, you know, I had a, I really wanted to get out to the launch pad

right after a launch. So I kept pressing finally one time I got to go out after SCS 125. It still was like 48 hours later, but that was as quick as they would let me out there. And they were already painting and doing something. stuff and I was up on the mobile launch platform and they and they were the the hold arms have those I call them flaps that that clothes they're called blast shields but they capture the frangible nuts that released the show so and they were taking those off and they're like you know they're like three by four feet or something and putting them on

pallets and haul them away and I was photographing that and I didn't know what they're I want to know what they were called and I always try to talk to the people at these places because they're great they you know they love them NASA people, you guys know, they'd love talking about their stuff. They just go into it. And so there's this tech, you know, this guy on a white cover all he's just hung on one away. I go, excuse me, can you tell me the technical name for that? He goes, these, he goes, these are slammer downs.

I don't think that was in the technical diagram, but it was a perfect description. It's way better than Blast Shield. slammer downs I love that I feel like I should share my a little like early days of me trying to do photography at Kennedy Space Center

and because some of it kind of reflects here and I think resonates with kind of what you've experienced and it's sort of on the back end of that stuff so for me the first launch I ever tried to go to was in 2014 was CRS3 so the third SpaceX mission to the International Space Station

the first time they put landing legs a rocket. And I happened, you know, I ended up getting media credentialed through Space Flight Now. And, you know, it was my first time out there, really, as an adult. And I, you know, went to the visitor center and I walked around. And honestly, I was, I was sad because at the time there were, the Constellation program had ended. They weren't quite, you know, they were kind of shy about like SLS and what's going to happen with the Ryan. It's just sort of a little bit still fumbling. So you still saw Constellation stuff. There's like, you could by constellation things.

And when you're looking around it, like, well, what's next? It almost was like, and it just felt like the whole place was this like graveyard of greatness of what had been, you know, there's like, look at all these things we have done. And it's like, well, what are we doing now? You know, and it was actually a really interesting time. And at the time, they were very sensitive to the idea of abandoned hardware and abandoned things. I was, you know, this is an obsession with mine, too.

I dream of doing what you've done here. This is just absolutely incredible, but they were really sensitive to the idea of portraying the launch site in Kennedy Space Center as this abandoned, you know, like a has-been almost, you know? And they were trying to sell it, especially as a modern-day commercial spaceport. And now I think they'd be a little bit less sensitive to that because it's, it is a modern-day spaceport now. But it's just interesting to see that story arc. But it's so cool that you got to be at these pads and do all the stuff at the time when you did, because I don't. I think that was a pretty small window of time where it was true to life like that, you know? Well, you know, and after 9-11, it changed, you know, like I said, there, you know, there were, generally we had pretty good, I had pretty good access, especially the early 90s from 90 to 93 had real good access.

I really did kind of the bulk of it then. And then I thought I was done, really. And then they started taking down, they took down 13. they took down 36 A and B. They took down 40. And so I got to go photograph all those before they took them down and be there for the demolition and go in and photograph right after like, what was it, 36.

I went in right after the demolition and we're walking around. And later on they found some undettonated ordinance still attached to it. Whoa. Yeah, but I... Yikes. Yeah, you know, I consider myself very lucky. And it was just, you know, as a kid, I was, you know, I was born right for the 60s, so I grew up with all this stuff.

And it was like magic, you know, it was like science fiction come to life. So getting to photograph and explore those areas. And sadly, you know, sadly, no one else can really do it. I mean, you think I might be happy about that, but I'm not, because it means I also can't go back. Most of pretty much all the steel structures are gone. And most things are gone. And it's a balance between, like, Lending Zone 1.

Do you want to just lock all these sites up? Because it's valuable real estate for launching rockets. And Complex 34 is a very special, I would call it almost a sacred place. And I hope they never do anything there. And I don't think they will. I don't think they will either. But have you guys had a chance to go out there ever? I have, yeah.

Yeah, it's just, you know, it's really a very moving site and just also really beautiful place. I mean, it's just a really right by the ocean. But, yeah, you know, it always, it's, it's, you're kind of, there's politics involved in where you get access and how you get access and when you get access and it changes constantly. And I've been lucky again, that's where the, you know, the perseverance comes in. you just got to keep trying and you can't be an obnoxious jerk about it you have to be polite but you don't give up you just keep pushing

and it works out hopefully so you uh let's talk about the next book too the the interior space uh this has a totally different story that I find completely amazing and the first couple pages of this book that you go into where this all came from I'd love to unpack

that a little bit uh you're at EFT1 is where this idea was born yeah yeah so well Well, yeah, so I had to back it up a little. I'd had some of the abandoned place work up in the crew quarters at the Operation Checkup building back in the late 90s. And I got a call at the college from Katie Coleman, NASA astronaut, and she'd said, oh, you know, she left a voice remote because I was at a conference, of course, the only time, at least I thought then that I would get a call from National, I'm not there to get it. And she'd gone to a lot of work to, like, track me down and, you know, call me. She said, just want to let you know how much, you know, I like this work.

And my husband, Josh Simpson, is a glass artist and where visual arts are really important to us. And she went out, she left a really nice message. So when I got back, I called out there. She was gone. So, you know, didn't really think much more about it. And then in 2014, EFT1, they brought four astronauts out to meet with the press. And so she was there.

And so I went up to her and introduced myself. And I said, you're probably not going to remember my work. but she did and she said oh yeah and they said you know it'd be great if you could figure out a way to get your photographic approach your vision to the astronauts on the international space station you know think about how you how you do that and I said okay well the astronaut tells you something like that if anything involves getting something to the space station you're like I'm going to drop everything in my life and figure this out right now you know and it may have been very off the cuff for her but I took it seriously so I put together a proposal I sent it to her

and she liked it. And she said, you're going to, you know, we're going to need to hook you up with an astronaut if this is going to happen. And I, she said, I know the perfect person, Paolo and Espoli, who I was on the station with. And so she connected us, and he called me. And I was there to get the call, thankfully. And we talked for like 45 minutes. And he was great. He said, he goes, you know, before we started talking about the possibilities or anything, he said, this is so neat because we really should be sending artists and poets and philosophers and theologians. and to say, but, you know, we don't have the resources to do that now. It's just not practical, but someday we will. He said, but this is a way to get, kind of get there without doing that. And he said, you know, but what my proposal was to tether a DSLR to a laptop and have the, you know, cast that image back to Earth. And I'd be in like mission control or something

and directly asked from out where to, you know, how to photograph, which actually would be really cool. I would have been under tremendous pressure because I probably would have gone out, you know. he said, you know, he said, that's all doable. That's, you know, he said, but, you know, you need a com link and a data link and a video link and an astronaut time, which is, you know, really hard to get. And so my heart is sinking. And he goes, but I think it's such a good idea. I'd be willing to do it in my personal time. So, so he said, instead of, he said it very politely, but I would say, instead of the crazy complex method you want, why don't we just email images back and forth?

I'm like, oh, that's a good idea. So that's how we did it. And then I went down to photograph right before, right after he launched. I went down to photograph the mockup. So I had a feel for the space and the layout. And while I'm there, Dan Hewitt, who was in public affairs by escort me. He goes, you know, we're releasing a Google Street View map of the interior of the station in two days. And he goes, I can even give you access early.

really and so we did and and I realized because the mock up is there's really two mockups there's this space station training facility that's that's um really just bare bones it's really more about practicing escape and emergency procedures then there's one that has all the equipment that they actually learn how to operate the equipment but it's it's it's kind of laid out like you know roughly like the station but but it was going to be hard because the station is much more complex and changing. So those are really nothing like the station. Anyway, the Google, I could go into Google the street view and do screen captures and send those to Apollo. I'm going to make this closer to my B camera so that people can see if I know which way this

operates. There we go. Yeah. Yeah. So on the left is the Google Street View on the right is Paolo's image. So one of the cool things when I started getting images from them was how much they felt like my images, you know. And people have said, well, how can you take credit for those images, you didn't take the picture. I'm like, well, no, but I was, you know, I literally told him what to do. Now, Powell was a brilliant photographer to begin with. So, and he, you know, it was a, it was a truly, a truly collaborative process. So we both are credited with the images, but, yeah, so it ended up being this really amazing experience. And the goal was to document the interior in a way that wasn't being done. Most of the photographs that are taken are of

experiments or people. And if they're, you know, most of them are taken with a flash. Well, of course, the flash falls off over distance, so it's bright in the foreground and really dark in the background. I wanted to get photographs of what it would look like. If you were standing there looking at it. So he did almost everything with available light,

which meant I thought he would shoot at 3,200 film speed, a real high film speed. But he ended up figuring out a way to cobble two of the Manfredo arms together and lock the camera in place, like on a bipod, basically. And so the first image is I got back, we're at 100 ISO, and they were taxed shop. I'm like, how do you do this? You're like, well, space works totally differently than I thought in my end. Well, you know, people like, well, you can't use the tripod because it would just float up.

You know, there's no. Yeah. But does not work. So his experience and his knowledge in photography was just, you know, he really was the perfect person to do with it. That's amazing. Did you have any insight in that to like the training that astronauts get on photography? Because especially that the time at which this project is going on is before commercial

crew. So it wasn't like they had a, you know, a lot of extra astronauts float around the ISS. It was it was a handful astronauts at a time. But they all, they've got, I mean, you know, camera equipment that most of us would salivate over that is floating around the ISS up there. So like, what is the training like for them? And did you get to experience that at all to help inform the way to communicate with them on what to actually photograph? So I didn't have a lot of experience with that.

I actually sent, ironically, I look back and it's laughable. I put together like a little composition primer for Apollo just in case. I didn't know, because I knew he knew that he's an engineer. I knew the technical part wouldn't be hard. But he's actually a great photographer all on his own. The funny thing was I did contact the ISS imaging office and I said, can I get a list of all the lenses you have on the ISS so I can kind of plan. And the guy in charge, he writes back, he goes, well, yeah, I can do it.

He goes, we have all of them. And I'm like, you have all of them? He's like, yeah, we have all of them. So I'm like, oh, okay, well, then I said, I don't need the list. I can look that. We have all of them. Multiple, you know, sets of some of the more commonals. Yeah, they have literally.

I have every lens that Nikon made up there. Wow. By the way, are you a Nikon guy? Are you... A Canon guy. You know, only because I was Nikon film, and when I went digital, I switched to Canon, only because one of my friends was a Canon rep, and he, like, he loaned me an 800-millimeter lens for the, I, this is S-TS-133, which was great.

I knew I'd be able to get camera gear. You know, I always tell people, you can't tell which camera took which picture. So it's really more your personal preference, whatever you like. You know, I'm very happy with the canon. Once you get your muscle memory, you know, honed in, it's kind of hard to switch. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's like I was futzed around with cannons and I was, you know, 12. So it's just, I guess I get a canon next time too.

Yeah, you get a new brand loyalty and all those things. And I was a very loyal canon film shooter for, you know, decades. But it just happened to be that I knew I'd have access to some great lenses. It was a good way to go. I'm cheap if you can't tell. That's my bottom one on that stuff. The detail shots in this book are my favorite ones, the ones of like actual work spaces.

And there's, I've got to find them in the book. There's like one of all the valves and everything that is in some of the eclipse systems on board. And I love those shots because those aren't the ones that are going to get posted to Flickr of like, here's the ISS flying over, you know, the Sinai Peninsula. And it's beautiful. with the sand and the ocean and the stuff that we like to see also.

But as space nerds, you're like, yeah, but what is the workspace like? How does it arrange when there is no gravity? And even like this one here, you've got all these pens and sharpies lined up on, you know, like Velcro to the wall. It's just kind of interesting to see the mechanics of their workspace. I was wondering if any of these, did Paolo say, hey, I noticed you didn't ask me to photograph this area of the station that looks particularly interesting. Did he have any of those kind of things for you when he was up there?

He didn't. I think he took a couple. I've never really gone back and checked. I think there are a couple he took that may not have been specifically what I was asking for, but that one, that one I'm pretty sure. Yeah, you know, trying to show, again, the stuff you don't normally see, that was really the goal and to get a feel for what would be like up there. I like that picture because I have that same label maker at home here.

So I feel like space worthy product in my house. And you've got an original iPad. Or maybe this is like, I don't know, it's a 30-pin connector I'm looking at on here. So that's some pretty old iPad hardware. Yeah, yeah, they're high tech in it there. Well, you know, that's the thing. So speaking of cameras, so I'm going to get the numbers wrong. But I think they had to, I think when Paolo went up,

They had the D4s and then they got the D5s. And it was funny because he said, yeah, the D5s came, but we were doing other stuff and they didn't have prioritized this. So he goes, we all volunteered to, you know, they have to set them up to work on the station. He said, we all volunteered to get those out and set them up on our own time because we wanted to use the high-resolution campus. So, you know, those are all, most of those are 17-migbit pictures.

They're not real, you know, they're not, that's big compared to a lot of things, but they're not as big as I shoot with a 50, you know, camera. So it, it's, but they were all, you know, they were, so they were into the photography. They're all really, I think, into the photography. And Palo did all that stuff at night, so nobody would be in the shot, you know, he'd stay up and get that done. So he did yeoman's work. He, you know, because it was so complex to set it up on that thing, very, the last batch he shot, literally some of the last hours, the last day he was on the station, he did go and shoot some stuff at higher eyes, so without, without a tripod.

Yeah, that's amazing. You also have some shots, like this one, the fit test. Was this the actual hardware that they were checking out before launch? Yeah, that's in the high bay, yeah. So I, you know, whenever I get a chance to shoot anything, I had no idea. This was, you know, what, almost, this was like almost 20 years before I did the project with Powell. So I was able to get into the high bay and photograph some of the equipment. And it just, I thought it worked out, you know, great that I could show that.

I mean, I'd really love to do a, can you imagine doing a project what I did on the outside of the station? How amazing that would be. Now, obviously, that's not going to happen. But, you know, that would be just a tremendous, tremendous, you know, document of what the exterior of the station to play. You might be able to convince some future private astronauts to do a couple extra EVAs and go out. Yeah, I'll have to work on that, you know. Maybe yourself, you know, they start offering it.

You guys going to say, get invited, you know, talk to Jared Isaacman. They're sending me to the space station. I'd go if they said, I'm pretty sure that's not in the cards right now. People will say, oh, did you go up to the space station? I'm like, no, I didn't. I work with the guy who was up there. They can send the interstation. I'll just continue to look at some of this stuff.

I mean, the amount of things that they have in the mock-up center, they have like the plant habitat, you know, in the mock-up center as well. Just some stuff that is like, I wonder why they're mocking up this with plants actually growing in these things. But they're plastic. Those are plastic plants. Plastic plants. It's like IKEA. They went to IKEA.

Got a couple of those feds and throw them in there. I think it's going to the feel of that there are plants. So, hey, what's in here? There'll be plants in there. You did have one photo that was kind of bizarre. I think it was this one, is the... This one? Yeah, yeah.

This one is the training mock-up, which you also have a photo of the outside here. That is a cupola built with like monitors plugged into where the windows go. And I want to build one of these in my house. Yeah, it's really cool. It's really cool. So did you got to go in this and poke around? Did you like play with the arm or anything? They were doing some testing stuff.

I didn't get, they don't let me play with the, you know, I try not to touch anything when I'm in these things. They frown upon that, but yeah, but it was cool just to be, just to be in there. Yeah, so yeah, they just have monitors mounted like that, you know, and who writes the software for that? That's why I keep thinking, how does somebody know how to do that? Because it's a one-off, you know, it's not like there's, so maybe you should sell those because soles.

VR goggles are cheaper now, though. Yeah. Yeah, that's probably less distracting. That'd be amazing. Yeah, that's so cool. I want to kind of go back to the abandoned stuff because I want to bring up a topic, if you don't mind,

that I think would be blending of some worlds right now because the abandon and play stuff is just like, I love that. I love that. I also love Soviet space history. And unfortunately right now,

I mean, I don't know when the next time anybody's going to be able to be anywhere near some of that stuff, you know, and Rosecosmos and, you know, in Kazakhstan and stuff. And that makes me really sad because you know they have probably way more than we do. You know, they abandoned a lot more stuff than we did. And I don't think they would, they demolish much of their stuff. So I can't, can you imagine going to Bikinor and just, you know, having the access that you had at Kennedy Space Center? I bet you there's images galore that would just be absolutely incredible, you know? Well, trust me, I've had a list of several things I want, like five things since the, well, I've really had it since I started that project probably for nearly 30 years.

Because once I started doing the other launch sites and test sites in the U.S., I thought, I need to go to Russia. That has been on my list, but it's so, A, it's going to be very expensive in the politics of it, you know, getting the access. And the funny thing is when abandoned place came out, I was getting contacted by RTV. They wanted to do pieces on it. And I kind of put them off because I figured they were trying to, you know, they would use it as propaganda. Oh, look at the Americans. And then I talked to somebody who'd been over quite a bit. He said, oh, he said, our stuff looks like it's 50 years old.

He goes, their stuff looks like it's 200 years old. So it would be, yeah, this, you know. Yeah. The Buran photos. Yeah. This one was a weird story, right? Where the, like, this was, they acted like this was not officially commissioned, but I'm like, I don't know, man.

Like, did they allow someone to go in with full access and just say, go crazy in here? And then they wanted to make it seem like they snuck in because it's still under guard. I don't know. There was, I think it was a French photographer, maybe wrong, but who, like, hired some guide and they came in from the desert side and literally spent three days in there. They had somebody, you know, they patrol it, but very randomly. And they had somebody like literally just watching for the guard. So they shut everything down and they were in there.

I think they had lights and stuff. Yeah, Ralph Myrebs, if I remember right, was the photographer that did that or one of the ones. But yeah, those images are incredible. I mean, yeah. Scary. Yeah, to photograph Gagarin's launch pad, which they were still using. You know, that would be just amazing. The Baran stuff.

that's been a even more bizarre story now, right? Like it's owned by a private individual who's trying to sell it back to Roscosmos or something? What's the... First skulls. He wants the skull of something. And this is dead series. He will give them back to Russia if...

Or in Roscosmos, if he gets the skull of something, something. I don't even know what this is. Yeah, here. I've pulled up an article on it. Okay, that's what he wants in return. And this is genuine. And the two Barans, by the way, I just learned this the other day, because I thought they're both potentially future orbital.

Only one of them is actually like basically the second Buran that was supposed to go orbital. The other one was a flight test article. And so it wasn't orbital. But there's one that's being transported right now outside of Moscow that kind of made the rounds on Twitter the other day. But that's not one of these, unfortunately. In exchange for the skull of the last Kazakana, a man named, I'm not even going to attempt it. Kenissari Kazimov.

Yeah, this is incredible. So it is a who is this that owns it? A businessman, Darian Musa. What a bizarre... Claims ownership. Did it just conquer it? Like, did he just put a flag down and say, this is mine? Trust me. I have an

NFT of it. At least Richard Garriott legitimately bought a rover at an auction, right? Or maybe he bought an NFT, too. I don't know. Seriously. It is sad though, man, because the Baran stuff in particular is, you know, you often see abandoned stuff after programs finished or, you know, it's been decades after it shut down.

But Baran was like, you know, flew once and then everything collapsed for them. And then it was like, have you ever been to, if you've ever been to London, there's the Imperial War Museum and they also have the Churchill Warrooms section of this museum, which was, a bunker in the basement of like the treasury department or something that they operated the entire World War II effort out of for the British Army.

But when the war ended, they just left and forgot about it. Legitimately forgot about this place. Founded in the 70s, completely intact from the last day of World War II. And so you can tour through this. They have like plastic up on the walls and stuff that you can't like go into the rooms, but you can see the maps with like all the actual, you know, the little tokens of which battalions where and all that. And Baran is such a similar thing where it was like,

they didn't intend to stop the program right then. It just stopped because of external forces and everything was left as is. And it's sad that that is the state, you know, that people have snuck in there and stole stuff out of it and they're not complete and they never will be and they're probably going to be destroyed when that thing collapses on them much as the original Baran was, you know. It's just depressing when you look at it, you know. And hell, I mean, now the war has taken things like the AN-225.

Yeah, that's a rough time. There was one of the public affairs people on the Cape wanted them to chain the doors to Complex 36 shut and just leave it when they were done. And, you know, of course, they didn't do that. I photographed it. They were dismantling it. They were going to the, I can't remember who the contractor was that had it, but they were going. they were going through pulling all their stuff out and throwing it in the dumpster

because they thought somebody else would come in and have access to their stuff. So they just trashed all this, you know, all this computer gear and data gear was, you know, sad because they could put it in a museum or something would have been really amazing. They left all the government stuff. So there would be racks and half stuff would be gone

and in the dumpster. Well, that reminds me too, of the, you know, kind of when they were dismaling 39, I remember so again going out there in the 2014 I think it went like three or four times in 2015 for a little while there was a whole like scrap yard kind of near where blue origin is now across the street from where blue origin is now there's a whole scrap yard and there was an old the hydrogen that would sit on top of the hydrogen tank there's one sitting out there I think it ended up actually in the museum but there was talks about just being full blown scrapped and it was like oh please don't scrap this I think there's one in the GANES display now, but hopefully that's it. Yeah. You know, you can't save everything. And it's just a matter of fact.

You know, you just, you have to find a balance between saving what you can. You know, for a long time they had the Apollo launch and biblical tower cut up in huge sections out behind the headquarters building at KSC. And there was a group trying to raise money to restore it and all this. And they never could get an. enough money because it was astronomical, no pun intended. And they eventually said, you know, now the top level and the crane are in the Saturn 5 center. And the white room, the Kansas Cosmature got that restored it and it's in place.

And the rest of it, I believe, just got scrapped, you know, just gone. I know that NASA and, and I guess modern day now like SpaceX isn't in the, you know, the career of selling souvenirs. but I feel like genuinely like if you hire just a contractor or you know a couple people to say hey take this and just cut it up in bits give put a little plaque that says this is this launch pad from blah or nowadays with some starships leftovers if someone just went out and cut out stamps of some of the starships and sold it I mean yeah exactly uh I mean you could make someone could make like literally millions of dollars there I mean Harvesting our nostalgia. You're basically Ray from Star Wars, right? Go in and harvest the Star Destroyer and sell it for parts.

Yes, exactly. Exactly. It's exactly right. But honestly, that's why you two in particular are excellent examples of this, of like, we can't go back to these launch sites, but we have high-res photos of every bit of this infrastructure. We in the future are not going to go back to Starbase when it was in, you know, 2021 time frame, but we have how many hours of you walking around with Elon looking at every little detail in this facility, you know? And like, you two won't say it because you're both you and you're

very humble and stuff. But like, people in 100 and 200 years are going to go back to some of your work and look at this stuff and look at things from a different era. The way that we do, you know, we just found Ernest Shackleton's boat at the bottom of the Antarctic and we're going down to look at that now. Like some of the work that you're doing is that. In a century or two. And I don't know if either if you have thought about that or are even considering that or if you just put it out of your mind because it's a weird thought. I hope they don't wait a hundred years. I mean, it's right there not. They should buy it now. Yeah. So you've got another book coming out. I saw spring. What's what's going on with orbital planes here? So this is, yeah, this is called orbital planes. Here's the cover little detail shot discovery. the spine there.

It's coming out in, it was supposed to be April 19th. I just saw it listed on Amazon. That was May 24th. So sometime this spring, it's funny because I know what boat it's on. I've been tracking it. It made it through the Panama Canal.

It's headed to Porta Long Beach or Los Angeles. I'm not sure which one. So it's, I'm too cheap to pay for the tracker, so I only get an update like once a week, but it's somewhere off the coast. The coast of South America, Mexico right now. It's on its way.

Yeah, so I've been photographing the space shuttle off and on for, I actually started doing some work with our, with the College's Planetarium back in 1988, right around the return to flight. And had been doing stuff. And then in 2000, Nate, I put in a proposal to NASA to do a more concentrated effort on the last, what I thought would be three years, which ended up being five years of the program. and it is resulted in this book, which I'm real happy with. It's another publication by Damiani, who did Interior Space. They do a really beautiful job publishing.

I got to ask you, who does the layouts and all the graphic design work on it, too? They do. I mean, I lay out the image sequence to a great extent, really in all these books, then it's,

then they do the font and kind of that stuff. But the rough way out is mine, the detail stuff is down. I love it all. It's so clean and cool. Yeah, it's, you know, it's, I call it a personal vision, overall planes, a personal vision of the space shuttle because it's, you know, I'm not a launch photographer and I have photograph launches, but I've never had the gear.

You know, I have friends like Mike Brown from Florida today who'd let me tap into his trigger system and stuff. once in a while, but, you know, there's such, you know, you've got John Krauss and Ben Cooper and these people that are just, I mean, it's their thing and they're, they're awesome. So I'm not going to try to compete with that. But so this is more detailed shots. It's very similar to, you know, kind of a combination of abandoned place and interior space that same. I call it a documentary abstract approach where I'm documenting it, but I do more of these abstract images at the same time. And I talk about, it's really a lot of stories about my experience is photographing the shuttle and going through the Challenger accident.

And that was a big impact on my life. So, you know, there's a little bit of writing in it and a lot of photographs. If you like space stuff, I think I like it. Where should they follow along to, what's the situation? Because I know you did Kickstarter around it. Now it's in the Panama Canal or something. So what's the situation with people that want to buy it? You have to go to Panama.

You have to do a heist on the high seas if you want the book. Pirate that cargo ship and find that container. You can get it on Amazon. You can get it through Damiani. You know, there's a number of different ways. Contact me through my website. I can hook you up with a signed copy if you want to. I'm working on.

I will plug one more thing. I'm working on another book with a different publisher. space shuttle as well. It's photographs of by NASA, mostly a few other photographers. And it's kind of a mission by mission look at the space shuttle program starting with the free flights. So I'm kind of reprocessing those images trying to pull out what I can. And then a lot of writing about each mission. So that's coming out in September, I believe. Oh, wow. All right. I'll have to have be back on to talk about orbital planes and then that one later in this year. Yeah, it's called the space shuttle, a mission by mission celebration of NASA's

extraordinary spaceflight program. So it's a mouthful, but that's it. Tim, what are you working on these days? What you got cooking? I am, we have been working on a video doing just the engine cycles. Like almost, you know, for the Raptor video, I had this little section that was kind of explaining different power cycles of rocket engines. And so I'm kind of trying to do these more like,

I don't want to say entry level, but kind of the basics of rocket science, the basics of things. So we did the why don't rocket engines melt. We're working on the engine cycles. Then like we'll do injectors and how to start a rocket engine. Kind of all these like, you know, I think overall topic things that I think are a little more evergreen

and a little, I think kind of valuable for the spaceflight community, hopefully. But this one's really, the graphics on it are incredible. The team's been doing an amazing job and we're just kind of plugging away at it one day. at a time. So, yeah, that's what we're working on. And then SLS rollout next week. So, yeah. That's crazy. That's next week. I know. Finally. It can be great.

What do we got next week? Jake's at LPSC this week, which is a fun conference. As always, he goes to nerd out about planetary science. So he's coming back next week. And I think we're going to, he might bring some friends from LPSC, which will be fun to talk about what he got into down there. And I think that's it. Oh, we have YouTube memberships turned on for OffNominal. If anyone likes to support the show, get into the Offenomenal Discord, which is a very rad place. Check that out. YouTube.com slash Offnominal. If you are an audio person listening to this on the podcast, you should definitely go back and watch this one on video because we were showing off photography this whole time.

And so this is probably not the best audio episode that you've ever heard. So maybe try out the video on this one. And buy Rowland's books. Watch Tim's videos that may or may not kill him with how much. time has put into these suckers considering what happened with the Soviet engine idea. Never again.

Yeah, okay, good. All right, thank you both so much for hanging out with me. It's been awesome to chat about space photography and whatnot. It's, I've enjoyed this thoroughly. So if no one else did, then, you know, get screwed, I guess. I don't know. Yeah, it's a pleasure meeting you too, Roland. This is great.

I'm a big fan, so it's awesome. You too. Ditto, yeah. All right, everybody. See you later. All right. All right.