Off-Nominal - 77 - Accidental Shareholder

Episode Date: September 16, 2022

Jake and Anthony are joined by Matthew Russell of the The Interplanetary Podcast to talk about his trip to French Guiana to commentate the first launch of Vega C.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 77 - Accidental Shareholder (with Matthew Russell) - YouTubeVega C - ArianespaceInterplanetary Podcast #281 - Vega C and James Webb Space TelescopeVega-C launch - YouTubeThe Interplanetary Podcast on Twitter: “Day 1 of commentary rehearsals for the inaugural flight of #VegaC what a total blast. Is everyone @esa a legend? ...yes. #VV21”The Interplanetary Podcast on Twitter: ”We have a new launch time 12h07 UTC or 13h07 UK time.”The Interplanetary Podcast on Twitter: “That was absolutely wild. The emotion at the launch was just incredible. Tears in the commentary booths. And the sound of the rocket when it hit Jupiter ...omg”Her Majesty The Queen's Lying-in-State | Queue Tracker - YouTubeFollow MatthewThe Interplanetary Podcast (@Interplanetypod) / TwitterThe Interplanetary Podcast | Twitter, Instagram, YouTube | LinktreeThe Interplanetary Podcast | UK | Space ExplorationRecovering Queen : The Queen PodcastFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterOff-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. Good afternoon or evening. It's evening. It's firmly evening where you are, Matt. Massively, sir. It's nearly tomorrow, I think. It's only 9 o'clock, although due to a complete mistiming of my dinner. I've had to abandon making it and going to have to go for afterwards. Oh, no.

I'll have a midnight snack, I'm afraid. So we're going to have a grumpy Matt Russell on this show. Big time. Either grumpy or really drunk is what it's going to be. Yeah. This can go two ways. I've got like a whole, a whole bottle, so I would get to go. Let's go right there, Matt, because we always forget to do that transition for too long.

We get right into it. The entire drink that you've brought along here. Okay, so I am currently drinking this. It's a pretty cheap gin, but it's, you know, it's actually quite nice. It seems to be there was a sort of trend for. craft beers a couple of years ago, or, you know, over the last sort of 10 years. It's in, in this country, it seems to be going. Craft gins.

Craft gins is where it's going here. So it's like, that's it, nonstop different gins. So I thought I'd try one. Look at that. Apparently, a local one went to space, but I couldn't, I couldn't find it. I think it's silent pool. They sent the recipe onto the ISS or something. And that's quite a local.

Did it come back yet? Can you drink it yet? No, I don't think so. Well, no, you can. I mean, you better be first in line when that happens. Like, that would be messed up as you weren't. It was just the recipe. It was just a piece of paper with the recipe.

It was just a piece of paper. It's like the Coke mess with me in a vault. I didn't really get it. It didn't seem like the greatest achievement. I mean, we drank that beer the one time that they shot the yeast into, on the suborbital rocket, right, Jake? Yeah, that's pretty good.

That was an early sponsorship, and that's dried up entirely. No one else has offered to sponsor a show like that ever again. No, no. It must have been bad all. R-LI. For the two beers I sent us, it was probably pretty good ROI, to be honest. Although they were expensive beers, but, yeah, yeah.

Oh, man. Yeah, yeah. Cool. Okay. The place I lived in B.C. did a lot of craft distillery stuff. There was like a place nearby that did gin, vodka, and whiskey, I guess. It was the other one. So, yeah, I think that's picking up in different places.

And it was like a total, like, you know, ramshackle operation, just some guys. in the mountain, like with a nice steel building that they threw up in 10 minutes, and they were just making, making booze. Well, I wonder if the queen drank gin. I'm sure that there must have been a queen. And, you know, obviously, Jake, I'm feeling sorry for you because you've lost your queen as of eye. Yeah, that's the secret reason we had you on here.

We booked you in September because they're like, she can't go that long. She's going to go soon. We did pretty good. Got it within a week or two, you know? Yeah, not that. I mean, I'm surprised you're not out in the queue there, Matt. Yeah. Yeah, well, yeah.

I should pull that up. Here, I got the tracker. Pull the tracker up. The tracker. There's a truck. This is five mile, I don't know how many kilometers it is. I do, but it's a joke. It's all the way out there.

Look at it. But if it was going the other way, it would actually stretch down to my house. So it would be, yeah, not much looking too bad. Yeah, I could look out the window and there they are. I could join the queue whenever I want. Jeez. Yeah, that's wild. That's wild.

I won't be the queue. I don't know. I loved Queen Elizabeth, but like, I'm not going to go look at a closed casket after a five mile lock. So if it was open viewing, would you? Well, no, I can't do open caskets, but. The Russian style is to keep them there for millennia at that point. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I've walked past Lenin. It's amazing. Have you done that? Have you done that? I haven't done Lenin, but there's a Pope in the Vatican from like, you know, before it was reasonable that we should have been able to keep people around that long. Yeah, there's the odd, you come across the odd church that keeps like the foot of a saint, like a bit of bone, don't you? Yeah, it's like bones in a box underneath the old. I think there's St. Catherine's head is in the church in Sienna.

I've seen that one. That's a weird one. Yeah. Galileo's finger is in a museum in Florence, and that is interesting. That's got to be working. Yeah. I'd probably have a picture. I can pull it up.

What's the wrong with this? Do we do this? Why do we do this? We thought that's the only one that actually impresses me. Galileo's finger touched the telescope that saw the Jupiter's moons. That's pretty cool, isn't it? Well, who knows? I can see that Jake.

very unimpressed. Matt, do you remember how I said we usually forget to do the drink segment for a while in this show? We've only done a third of it so far. There's the actual drink itself. Oh, look at that. I've been making. Nice.

Look at that. Yeah. That's how long this intro has been going, Jake. Yeah, yeah, yeah. What do you got? Jake's got a very novel thing over there. Yeah, I don't think I've ever done just straight wine before. So I have this, a friend brought this to me as like a, you know, a, a, a, you know, a,

party gift or whatever. So it's from Argentina. I'm not being a very good Mexican. I'm drinking Argentinian wine and tomorrow is the is the independence day for Mexico. So I should be having like some tequila or something or maybe at least a Mexican wine. But yeah, this is like a family wine. Los Haraldos. It's a mall back from 2018 and I'm trying it out today. So, you know, I had that there. We're going, we're going wine today. I never knew you would even consider drinking wine. Like, that's never been a thing that's come up in our relationship. So.

One of my favorite wine plays is, as I convince Amy that we should make risotto this week. Oh, yeah, I haven't a resort in a while. I'm like, great. So I buy a bottle of white wine and I pour the top bit of it into the risotto. And then while I'm cooking the risotto, I drink the rest of the bottle.

Amazing. So, yeah, that's my wine play. What do you got? I realized this morning, I went, oh, shit, this is a pretty Commonwealth rendition of Off nominal, the queen died, I should go to my nearest beer store and find whatever the hell they have that's from England.

And what... Don't say, if it's Newcastle Brown, I'll be very disappointed. I feel like, when I was buying this, I was like, what's the only option? I'm pretty sure Matt's going to be like, what the, why am I even on this show? I've got a couple of London prides here. So...

Well, to be honest, that really, that brewery is very near where I am. I have to go past it. And they own all like the pubs with the two names, you know. It's all the pubs, they only have two nouns. You know, it's like, poster and shingles is like all the pub in England. The Red Dragon, that's the one. That's the one that's the one that you can call it.

It's always like, I think the one I'm thinking of is like the lamb and flag and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah, there's the leg of mutton and lamb and things like. Yeah. It's like this and that. Yeah. And some of them are those like that, that Cockney slang where they swap out the words. Like it's like a code language, right? Right.

I have all the Americans saying it. Instead of saying upstairs, you say it's apples and pears like that one, you know. Yeah, yeah. It's a rhyming slang. Apples and pears, that's the name of my next pub. Yeah, I think you'd be booed out of the pub for, you know, it's a pub game for doing that. It's too cheesy.

I think there's probably the odd American or Canadian that started a pub in England with a with a Cockney rhyming slang thinking they're being clever, but it just won't wash. And they're the only one that Follors hasn't bought yet. Yeah, London Pride, to be fair, is a decent tipple if you buy it on draft around these parts. It wasn't too bad. It's only like four bucks in the craft beer store. So not man.

Yeah. It will do. A bit of an old man's pint. You have an old man's pint. But you must be heading up to the old man category now. Ouch. Yeah, well, I mean, only because I'm way past it. But you still get really sweet gigs.

Oh, yeah, big time. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely. You were, I got to pull up the whole launch feed here, Matt, because... Oh, yes. You know, this is our boy shouting over the launch. I was very pleased how it turned out. Yeah. I didn't do the countdown, though.

No, you didn't do that. for you now if you like yeah you well you have in the past done it but not when anyone was launching anything so this is uh there he is an inaugural flight to clipping the mast like you said in a blink of live just see it through the cloud ah it's a technology high on the leading end of life there i love it you are not joking it's like george russell in a racing car it's the best it's the best Now, you know the reason why I did that, don't you? There's a couple of... Because George Russell is your dad?

No, George Russell is my son. I know he is. But he's also doing really well in the Formula One, which I was, which Dante, my Italian coat, the guy doing the Italian feed, not Dante, sorry, Emilio who was doing the, the Italian feed. He was a big Formula One fan.

And we were chatting about, George Russell and I thought this is the only way I'm going to get my kids name in. A split second, Jake was like, your son is a Formula One driver? I think that was the... I was trying to put the thought of him like, is he in like a Formula One like pool? Like he's doing really good in Fantasy Formula One. Is that what you mean by then? No, he really is my son. No, no, the George, they're two separate George Russell's. He's also not the George Russell invented jazz or, you know, the birth of cool. Any of those. Great pick.

Tough for Google. Tough for Google credit for your son. And I'll give you, I'll give you points if you can, if you can tell me what Canadian band I was quoting at the start of that little clip there. I missed the clip. What was the, what was the sound? The high on the leading edge of life? Is that the part? Yeah.

Yeah, that is it. Technology high. You should know it because it's, it's, but it's rushing. And a bad Canadian today. Yeah, it's a rush song called Countdown about the Spathell. Oh, yeah, that's right. Great. Where's my name?

Homage to rush. I managed to get a rush lyric in there. Yeah, you'd be surprised. I was sneaking things in left, right and center. A couple of seconds there. Yeah, that was amazing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So did you rehearse that?

Did you have those written down? Like, this is exactly what I'm going to say when I shoot there. when I say it was rehearsed, this was, it was intense rehearsals. I'm not joking. This went on for like we'd rehearse that six solid days. I mean, sodded, like getting to the Jupiter control room at 8 o'clock in the morning and leaving at 8 o'clock at night with like it being full on all day long, like rehearsing the launch.

It was, it was pretty, yeah, it was really intense. And when I first started, I was absolutely terrible. And I was thinking, oh, my God, they're going to be panicking so hard down in the mixing room. And Emilio was just absolutely brilliant, of course. And I could hear the Italian commentary in the other booth going, oh, no, oh, no, it's so good. But Dante, Dante Garley, who was my sort of Italian expert who stood who was next to me, he had COVID. So he couldn't fly to do the rehearsal. So I was doing it without him.

and so there's loads of there's loads I've got a recording of me pretending to be Italian talking to myself is quite good so it was really stressful and I actually you know I was so much better on the real thing than any of the rehearsals that's the only thing

and I have to say it was I was absolutely buzzing it was so exciting particularly considering it's scrubbed two times which is, by the way, the first time that's ever happened to Vega as well. They've never had a scrub of any description. It always goes when it goes.

So everyone was a little bit surprised by it. So, yeah, it was. New rockets, you know. New rockets were the worst. There was so much stress in that for me because if it had scrubbed, we'd have had to have done it the next day. And if we did it the next day, because of some kind of French bank holiday or some holiday that they were having.

I wouldn't have been able to get back to England until Tuesday, which meant I was going to get the sack because there's no way I could get that time off work. I'd already been cheeky as it was. So it was really stressful. So it had to go at that time. So, yeah, it was, it was, there was something extraordinary about it was like 13, 13, 13. So it was on the 13th, on the 13th hour and on the 30. So it's so it was like,

the 13th month, yeah. 13th month. Well, what was it? It's 13th day. Yeah, July 13th. Yeah, 307. Yeah. Yeah.

And so it was, July, that was the Italian, that was gonna. No, that's a 14th. So it was, yeah,

it was the Italians. The Italians love 13. That would have gotten mad fired. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. 14 would have got me fired.

13 was lucky, was lucky for, everyone. And yeah, it's Italian, it's the Italian's lucky number. So they, it almost like they'd done it on purpose. But yeah, it was it was epically exciting. I cannot tell you how what, what, how much I was buzzing immediately after launch. It was incredible. Can you give us some background in like how this came about? Because you were, you went down for, when did you go to French Guiana the first time? You had that trip down. Yeah. So the first time was yeah, the first time was to see the P1 20 be fired up. So it was almost exactly, I mean, to the week almost, four years before.

And Eric was there, and Eric Berger was there and a few others, like a lot of Italian press. Because it was a big, I mean, obviously for the Italians, this is a much bigger deal than it is for everyone else. But the, yes, and the French, of course, as well. But it's mainly in a kind of Italian endeavor. But the P-120, yeah, I went down for the firing of that, but it never. fired. It fired a week later so that even like the firing of a booster gets delayed. You know, there's no launch windows to worry about, but even that got delayed. So I didn't, I didn't actually get to see that. But of course, Julio, who is often a co-host, is also works for ESA in their space transportation.

Also on an anomaly. Yes. He's always buzzing around the Discord. So. well yeah and he's a really useful person don't very very kind of up on on stuff he loves it when i tell him rocketry stuff when i school him that's his fate i think that's his favorite thing any any of your favorite trivia that he's just been blown away by oh yeah he loves it when no the one thing is quite good to see hulio in his natural environment bear in mind that Julio was, it was a big deal for Julio this launch. Because one of the things that made it different, because it's an inaugural launch, of course, instead of being looked after by Ariane Spass, it's looked after by Issa. So he was actually suddenly the person, he's not normally the person

that's in charge of like, you know, the way that the press see those launches, but for this one he was. So which is, which is, he goes, we need more exciting hosts who, or hosts that, there are at least interested in rocketry. And so he invited me and Emilio and that. And I think it worked. I think I really enjoyed it. But God, they took a gamble.

And it was definitely good that they did all the rehearsals as well because we really needed it. Because there was so much going on. And so many things where you could easily trip up. You could do that thing where you just try and speculate on something. And like, I would joke about it. and I could see their faces go white every time I'd say it.

Like, you know, I'm just going to, it was, it was very funny. But the, um, it's going to be on this a little bit. It's like, no, you're not, you're not allowed to do any, you're not like no speculation. Yeah. In a super low stress environment, new launch vehicle, launch market that got totally upended by the war in Ukraine, you know, Vega has had a failure in the past and this is a new one. It's also the side booster for the Aryan 6. It's just low stress. all around. Very low stress. I tried to start some conspiracy theory around the Avum and things

like that. And it was one of those jokes that didn't seem to be going down well. So I kind of stopped it. But yeah, there was a lot of avoiding. The joke gets funnier. The less you know about what's going on behind the scenes, it gets funnier. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Absolutely. So it was good. But yeah, there were some really amazing moments. Like we, you know, we would sit around. together and script it. So there were certain things where we would agree on how we were going to express the important bits that ESA wanted to get across, you know, like this whole idea of independent access to space.

But without sounding too militaristic or money grabbing or any of those things, it had to be sort of more about Europe's scientific endeavors and things like that. So we kind of sat around and did all that kind of getting that stuff right. and we also sat around with people like the flight director, the DDO. We had to sit around with him and discuss what would happen in the DDIDAO. And we had to sit around with him and sort of ask questions about what would happen in all the different scenarios. Because remember, there's like about a thousand different ways it could have panned out. So we had to rehearse all of those as well.

So yeah. Did you have on the launch day itself, did you have a person that you could talk to that was in the mission control room or did you just have to listen in the loop and hope you could grab whatever info was worth putting along? No, no. Absolutely, thank God. There was, there was Kelsey who's who's, I mean, one thing I will say that the team of Julio Kelsey and Eladie who were the who was who were there were just the most professional team of people I've ever worked with. They were fun, super fun. We had an absolute ace laugh. We worked really hard but they were but they really knew what they were doing and Kelsey would be shouting not shouting but sort of guiding in the

loop dante was listening to the engineering loop which obviously is very impressive he's he's commentating with me he's got English person in one ear he's got a French person in another ear he's Italian and he's doing it all at the same time yeah it's amazing he is operating on another level that guy and he was just so impressive and he didn't get all the rehearsing either. So it was just brilliant working with people like that. They were just like insanely epic. And of course, how emotional anyone who works on Vega or anything related to Vega was about the project. It was, you could see that they were almost all in tears when it was flying. So, you know, it was amazing. You can tell you had a good time based on these

picks as well. Yeah, it was really good. There was Miss France. There was, there as well. You might not see her in the picture there, but yeah, there was Miss France and Miss French Guiana. So there was quite a few know celebrities there. Lots of military people as well. This is interesting. It's a really interesting moment too, right? Like, it's funny that you said that they had to couch like the independent access thing. Because if, if there's ever a time to be like, no, man, like we can we can talk about how important this is as a geopolitical situation. Like, now is the moment to do that. Yeah.

Yeah, but we kind of, I mean, that was the thing I was sitting there going, yeah, and we couldn't of course say oh, isn't it lucky that Avon switched its, you know, because they had fuel tanks that were made in Russia and then they switched them to Germany on the Avon Plus. And it's like, oh, why don't we talk about how lucky

that was? And it's like, no, we just cannot touch that object at all. Because of course, there's still the Ukrainian engine. The engines, right? Yeah. Yeah. And it's also still all up in the air, right? Like, like, even at a high, high level, even though everyone's pissed at Russia, you still, like, you still want to hold on to a small strut of hope that you can, like, make things better than they are now. And you do not get there by just throwing

the entire thing under the bus, right? So. Let's do the head of Issa. Yeah, I get that. And you're just, Yosef Achbacher, he's going out talking some hot shit lately. So. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. Yeah. But they have to follow orders though, right? Like Yosef Ackbacher is not going to do like, like, I guess, I guess Issa's kind of independent. But the, where the money comes from, you have to follow the lead with, you know, with the European Union and the council and all that kind of stuff, right?

So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, remember, it's not just the European Union, is it? It's literally outside of the European Union. That's the kind of, that's the hard thing. I think to get your head around is that, yeah,

ESA's got nothing, it hasn't really got anything to do with the European Union because they, you know, we've got loads of people who aren't in the European Union, including now Britain, of course, which is a bit irritating. But there we can. Canada. And Canada and, yeah, and Switzerland. You know, Switzerland had a big part in this and they're outside. The Venn diagram of ESA and the EU is like almost a circle, but not.

Yeah, there's still little parts on the edge there. Yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah. I mean, in terms of like not so much rocketry, because Britain has kind of completely out of that loop completely. I mean, there's, there's, uh, Southern Ireland. Yeah. But we're very good at satellites, particularly in this town. And I mean, I'm in, I mean, Gilford, which is, which is pretty hot on satellites, yeah. You could use some work on who you choose to launch them, but yes, you're good at Saturday. Yeah. I know. Well, that, what that would, I mean, that was some of the things like hearing some of the rumors about what happened with the one web, lights and stuff like that. I mean, it was like, it's wild. Can we tell us? They're never getting them back. I wouldn't think so. Yeah. I don't think they are. No, it was just like literally, we're having these. And then you think, I presumably it's to nick intellectual property off them as well. It's just like, well, we're just dismantling. I'm thinking that the new, the new, um, cosmonaut routine,

instead of getting out of the bus and peeing on the wheel, they're going to pull a one web satellite out there and pee on the one web satellite. Smash it up with a sledgehammer. It's seen from office space, but it's instead of the printer, it's the one-web satellites. Yeah. It's like, yeah, I mean, it's, well, and the annoying thing, of course, you're talking to a shareholder of one web, an accidental share. You know, I own, you know, I own. Accidental shareholder, yeah.

Yeah, as a British citizen. Do you own more of one web than I own of SLS? Like, we need to figure out how the math shakes out on this. See who's a bigger shareholder and what? I bet you spent more money on SLS. I mean, Jake's the biggest shareholder in the Canada arm, like, just because how division works, you know, like. And is your share, is Anthony's share of SLS more than Matt's share of OneWeb and Matt's share of SLS? Yeah, that's true.

Yeah, yeah. In the rabbit hole. Accidental channel is really funny. Yeah, I don't know. I've got so many ways to take this. I'm just curious how that's feeling these days. Like, you know. Well, yeah, I mean, it just like one web just seems to be catastrophe after catastrophe, doesn't it?

It's like it's you kind of. Do you feel better about one web or the monarchy? Which one right now? Well, one one. Yeah. Do you know what? In all seriousness, it's like I can't, what I can't believe about the queen is that I, Obviously, I'm a, I'm a Republican, but the, the Queens just was so good.

She was really good at her job. She kind of put, she's just a really great head of state. I can't, I can't see the next one repeating the trick. So it's kind of doom, isn't it really? I'm like, only like, that's really following it. But like, isn't he already, like, hasn't Chuck already been caught on camera? Like, uh, yeah, I'm berating the servants and like weird stuff. Oh, yeah.

I know almost nothing about this. None of my life has spent tracking any of this, so anything is news to be. Maybe I should pay more attention. This sounds fun. Well, it's definitely fun. And I've been rewatching the Crown because it definitely does. It's quite nice to stick it all into some kind of perspective. It's a good show.

Yeah. Yeah. But I mean, like the Queen was there. I saw Scott Manley's thing and it's like, yeah, the Queen, bear in mind, the Queen has seen the entire space race whilst, you know, on the throne. You know, it's like, it's just incredible. I tweeted that every day. The last time we changed heads of state, NASA didn't exist.

So, you know, that's how long ago it was. It's insane, isn't it? NASA by like many years. Yeah, yeah. Does the king know he's now also one of the largest satellite constellation operators ever in existence in addition to the head of the church and all that? Does anyone tell them? They have a bunch of secret money, so he probably already owned it.

And then it's probably, you probably, I don't. on-purpose shareholder yeah yeah well he's yeah he's he's he's a bit of an environmentalist so i don't know how that goes down either because he's environmentalist in a weird environmentalist way if you know what i mean i have no i won't unpack that it's just too it's a lot of nature reserves we don't have to dig up cable for anymore that's what i'm just saying here well yes exactly exactly yeah that's a solid point i got a lot of homework to do after this Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's our satellites.

Environmental. I'm so confused. Does the king have shares in one web? Okay. Yeah. What's the king's take on how the collision avoidance system should get integrated into the one web satellites? Well, if I, yeah, well, if I bump into him, maybe that can be my next interview

on the international podcast is to get, is to get the king on. The direction one web is going under new ownership. Yeah. How do we feel now that the throne's been passed down? Absolutely. Did you know, I'm getting one last point on the monarchy and then you can go on? I'm getting news like, you know, algorithmic news feeds stuff handed to me, but I'm in Mexico. So it's giving me Spanish news.

And fun fact, in Spanish, it's Carlos. So that's, I'm really chorn now if I want to call him Chuck or Carlos as like a pet. name. I'm really going back and forth on it. I don't have to make a decision. So anyway, King Carlos. Yeah, I like it. Carlos. King Carlos. There probably has been a King Carlos at some point in history and I don't know that there's been a King Chuck. King Chuck, King Chuck the first. Well, I mean, in some ways, Chuck Norris is king. And you wouldn't, and you wouldn't argue with him about it. This segment is over.

Amazing. Let's talk about, Matt, you went to Kauru separated by however many years. Were there notable differences? Four years, exactly, and a whole pandemic. Where there notable differences when you got there this time that you were like, oh, wow, like this whole thing's turning around? Or is the existence now of new launchers, Arian 6, and all kind of just looks the same? annoyingly because of the delays

I didn't get to go down to see the Ariane 6 launch pad and they had a dummy Ariane 6 in the building but the in the mobile gantry and so I didn't get to see it which was a bit annoying because obviously I went when it was a building site they'd got the metal framework of the Ariane 6

building but not sort of all the outside cladding and they'd built the frame trench hadn't quite finished it. So apparently, obviously, all that looks amazing. But there's, you get to a lot, you get to see quite a lot of aerial footage of that, don't you? But everything else looked exactly the same. I think the cafe had moved.

I think they got a new cafe called Gaia. Does the jungle encroaching on the Lyspace more or less? No juggling. But I tell you, it was very, very funny because that when we arrived as we were driving down there, this is a sad story, actually. And we almost, if we'd had time, we would have. put in memory of the iguana that Emilio ran over on the... No, it was...

We were literally driving towards the space station and... Space station. What is it? Space center, center. Port. And space port, yeah, and space port, yeah. And we were sort of driving along and this massive iguana started running across the road. And there was like no way of avoid.

it and you could hear it bumping up against the bottom of the car. Yeah. Should have put a little detail on the rocket for him. Yeah, wildlife was wild. This story would be a lot more shocking to me a year ago, but now there's like, I got, I got, I'm, I'm crushing lizards and iguanas in every random. I open a door and a lizard guy is sometimes here. So it's, yeah. I made the mistake of putting my shoes on without looking in there first, and I had a massive long gecko in.

my shoe and it was just like oh what is my lace and then i took it off and it was like yeah the length of my foot but somehow it wasn't hurt but it was like i had it in my shoe for quite some time going that's really uncomfortable yeah we do the shoe check here or something yeah we do we do the shoe check for scorpions not not yeah yeah well well that's what everyone said they said you should have been checking for scorpions and spiders i mean like it you walk out in the jungle and it and it's you know there is it's pretty dangerous There's Jaguars, Damon, there's spiders,

you know, it's not a great place to hang out, I don't think. That is pretty wild to think about, like the most advanced tech ever, and then a jaguar, like looking at you, waiting to find you in a weak moment,

you know. The road, the road's around, there's quite a few sort of dead bodies of poor sloths that have kind of accidentally not made it across the road. So, you know,

there's, yeah, I mean, it really is just right on the of the jungle there it's the yeah that whatever it's the the something shield isn't it i can't remember what the the full title of that area is but yeah it's proper my south american geography is rubbish so yeah yeah it's but it's the yeah i mean it we went into the jungle and there's still the massive there's a there's a hide that looks over the spaceport and it's and it's a brilliant view of the

space port you can you can see all the various launch pads the you know the aryan six one the Ariane 5, the Vega one and the Soyuz one is sort of nipped in the corner. But the whole hide is just covered in ginormous spiders. They are absolutely enormous. And it's like it's covered. I mean, it's absolutely covered in it. So you're sitting there and you're going, surely this isn't safe, but it's like a horror film. Any three of these can kill me. Yeah. Any three of them can kill me, but there's at least a thousand. And they're all bigger than my hand, bigger than my face. The nice thing is the bigger the spider is, the less likelihood it's going to be dangerous. So those big, we have the, I'm sitting that one out.

We have tarantulas here. And then tarantulas are like the most benign ones. They're like, I just want to sit in a hole and wait for bugs to fall in so I can eat them. That's like all they do. You know, it's like, you're lovely. That's that you can cuddle it. You can stroke them. Yeah, yeah.

You can. Some people do. Some people do. So, yeah. If they've gone insane. I mean, the one thing that the jungle does do to all those buildings is that they do look a bit crap from the outside. Like, as in that the humid hellhole that is the weather that keeps coming through all the time, just obliterates the building. So they all do look a little bit kind of knackered.

But then as soon as you go inside, they're obviously amazing, like pristine white, shiny buildings. I kind of get down there sometime. It seems like such a cool place. you have to get down there I think you have to go via France I do I have to fly to Paris and then there Isn't that wow even even I would have to do that Like from Mexico I would have to go to the United States

And then to France and then back It's like wow Is this like some weird protectionist stuff That France has going on? Like we can only fly From France to France I did I did when I flew back I flew via

Fort France, which is in the, not the Caribbean, the other one. Oh, what is it? The other one. I can't wait to find out what this is. But so presumably as an American, you could fly there, sort of like down to the, oh, what are they called that group at the archipelago that's not the Caribbean? I'm pretty sure it is. Like, you're talking like the island chain down there, like,

yeah, yeah, yeah, the Caribbean islands. You're thinking of the Bahamas, but that's not the Bahamas anymore. No, no, maybe it is the Caribbean then. But yeah, it's so, I mean, like, there's like a French West Indies, right? Like, if you go through. Oh, you can get there from there? That's convenient. Yeah, so you can, you could do it from there.

No, I'm serious. Like, that's way more convenient. Yeah. Yeah. At least I'm heading the right direction most of the time. Like, that's really great. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But you've got to remember French Guiana is France.

It's, it's, it's, so, you know, so it is, you haven't flown out of France. and landed somewhere else. You're still in, it's an internal flight. No passport control, nothing. No passport, no. The only thing I check is your yellow, is your yellow fever document. That's it.

That's wild. A domestic flight that crosses the Atlantic. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's wild, isn't it? There's those countries in South America that have a French border. But it's by far, in a way, Europe's most westerly border. They also have Now that England has left Europe, yes.

Actually, it might not be, it might not be the most westerly border of France because they also have St. Pierre and Michelin, which is in the east coast of Canada. They have a couple islands over there, like off of Prince Edward. No, it's off of Newfoundland. Just south of Newfoundland. Yeah, but are they actually, are they still actual French territory, though? Yeah, yeah, they are.

They use you from, you catch a ferry from Newfoundland. you have to do passport control, I think. So, um, yeah, I'm looking it up now. It's the weird part of Canada. It's like this little thing off of, yeah, country, France. Well, I tell you what annoyed me the most was that obviously my mobile phone was fine. So I get, I get to French Guiana. My mobile phone works fine on my same tariff.

I don't have to pay anything. But when I fly to Guernsey, which is part of the UK, no, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. It's a different thing. I have to have to have roaming charges. It's like, are you absolutely kidding me? That is incredible. Yeah, it was incredible.

It was such a juxtaposition because I did it a week later going to Guernsey, and it seemed harder. Everything was harder. Like, I just traveled a quarter of the way around the planet, and everything was totally fine. Yeah, and no, no, sorry, you're going to have to, I couldn't even get data. It was like one of those things.

Yeah, there is no way that the Guernsey's. If you had one web, you would have been fine everywhere. Exactly. That's why I'm rooting for them. You know, it's funny because there's a, there must be some sort of lesson we can draw from like orbit mechanics on that that like France thinks it is worth it to build their spaceport across an ocean on a way different continent in the jungle. Like it's like the worst.

Like besides from the latitude, it is the worst place they could all possibly pick to put a spaceport. And so the fact. that it's how good geography is. It's not like whatever, is it two degrees or something, Carouse out. Like, it's almost like that is right. There's got to be 10 different reasons, though, because the other one is that the weather's actually fairly clement out there.

So it's like, as in it doesn't change. Plus, you're going over the ocean. You can, you can do a dog leg north. You can go straight out into the sea. You got the whole, you got everything you need. You've got the whole, yeah, you got the whole package. Probably 100 degrees of azimuth. Yeah.

You could, even if you want it, if you want to be sporty, you could fly road over the beach in Kauru and no one gives you trouble. Do you know what? That was the most interesting fact that I learned about the whole weather balloon thing. What I thought about the weather was that it affects the rocket's flight path. But it's not about that at all. So high winds, they send up weather balloons and then they measure the high winds. And it's because if they blow the rocket up, you know, obviously if there's a, you know,

it starts to go out of its flight corridor, they have to be sure that the wind won't blow all the broken bits of rocket down onto the beach. And if it's flying over the beach but going, all right, then just keep your hands off. Yeah, that's okay. Let it keep going.

The other really ace part about that whole part of the world is, do you know the book Papillon or the film Papillon, which is about, it's a great film. I can't remember that this, it's a really good film, but it's about Devil's Island and the French used to have a horrible prison there.

And it's a really good book, really good film. And that's like part of the flight path. So they have to clear Devil's Island off. But it's like a really cool part of the history. So like there's the spaceport and Devil's Island right in the same place. So it's like a really cool place to go.

You know, other than the fact that, you know, you're in the jungle and it's still France. So you still can get some good food and wine. But you can. cannot get a good cup of tea. It really pisses me. In France, or anywhere, you cannot get a good cup of tea. In fact, I should have had a cup of tea here because I'm so annoyed by it. Yeah, it's very hard being English and traveling around the world. Yeah. Yeah. That's why you guys tried to own it all at one point, right? Yeah, exactly. It's a lot easier if our self-coverage just

worked everywhere. It is. It's a bit like internet access. is now. The Romans had wine and olives. The British had tea. It's got to be able to have tea. It's like... But it's like the only thing you all put on the boats. Like you didn't take any of the good spices or the good food or just nothing,

nothing but the tea leaves. That's it. All we give a shit about is tea. Yeah. Which is what... Because you go, you take a short cruise over. That's why it was such an offence to you. It was so offensive.

I still, I'm still offended now. I'm now imagining these British sailors arriving in Sri Lanka and like give us all the Ceylon tea and we also have like gotta masala and they're like no we don't want any of that. We got potatoes we got sausage we got tea

that's all we want but that's what's confusing me you go just a little bit of a short cruise over to Ireland and the food is delicious like everywhere you go the food is delicious there and it's like you're in the just you're the same You're the same thing up here. Why are you guys doing the not good version of what Ireland's doing over there? I don't understand how.

And it's like, we didn't have any room but for tea. That's all you had. That's all you had. Anthony's just throwing down. No good food in the UK. Except with the Shume. The Shume is like the greatest culinary experience of all time. Well,

this was an interesting point that Elodie, who of course is French. And of course I was with French and Italians all the time. And of course, they think that they're the greatest. No opinions flying around that trip at all. No. So, and obviously I'm not going to pretend that English cuisine is as good as French and Italian cuisine, right? But Elodie did make a really good point. She sort of said that, you know, when you're in Britain, because we're not obsessed with our own cuisine,

you can get everyone else's cuisine and it's really good. So like in London, obviously, you've got access to every kind of cuisine that you want and every type of wine. You know, you can get French wines, Italian wines, South American wines, you know, Australian wines. We're just not snobby about it because we don't really. have our own. Even fish and chips is Jewish. No, it's very true. And like, you know, Canada, United States probably very, very similar, right? Like, you know, what is, there are very few, like, things that are Canadian food. Like, you know,

you can say some of the stereotypes. You can say puttin or, you know, beaver tails or whatever you want to say. But the, the big thing is that we can get all sorts of crap. Like, I get the, like, the best Indian food I've ever had in Surrey and things like that, right? Yeah. It's the same. Well, what restaurant would we need to open if we move to French Guiana is all I'm wonder now? Because now I feel like we've got a market here, Jake. A tea shop. I think a tea shop to start apparently is what we need. T-shop is probably an offensive term, too. What would you call that?

Now, a tea shop's fine. Okay. I figured there was some crazy word for it. It's not like a tea stillery or something. A tea stillery. A tea stout. In fact, in fact, if anything, you want to be as unpretentious as possible when it comes to tea. Like there's a brand Yorkshire tea. Just have like, we just have orange pico and London fog and nothing else. Like that's it just.

No, no, no, no. Just Yorkshire tea. And then that's it. And then maybe PG tips is a sort of acceptable alternative to, to you. But not Lipton's yellow. Don't ever, if you ever get me lip to the yellow. Big sign of the wall. It just says tea and big tea.

And it's like, that's the two products that we sell, right? That's it. That's it. It's so much so. That's what Tim Peake took to the International Space Station was Yorkshire tea. That's the real sign right there. Yeah. Yeah.

That's it. So that's how important tea is to the British that literally he's the only person that's took proper tea up there. Honestly, you can. You cannot survive without it if you're British. Honestly, it's horrible. It's like an addiction. So few British astronauts?

Is that what the... There's just no tea bags on the International Space Station. That's the trick. So the next round, East is supposed to announce another round, right? Like in a couple of weeks or something. So we'll know, like, how tea futures are looking based on whether there's a couple of Brits in there or not. Exactly. Exactly.

What do you think that's going to be like? Because like there's not that many European astronauts active right now, right? There's like seven? No. It's not many. Yeah. Yeah. No.

Are you excited? You're going to have some new astronauts. Yeah. I've heard that like you don't care about, I mean, you personally probably do, but like your country folk don't care about Samantha Cristoforetti or the real crime to humanity. Don't care about Tomapeskei, who is the greatest astronaut of all time. Well, he certainly thinks he is. But the...

But he hasn't met Victor Glover, is what you're saying? No, yeah, yeah. Well, he's certainly the sort of... He's quite funny because there's like video screens when you arrive at French Guiana and lots of adverts going and lots of them are Thomas Baskay. And he's looking very kind of like cool at the camera. And it's like, man, I think he does have a... bit of a, it's hard, I suppose, if you're Thomas Baskay, not to have a bit of a raging ego.

Yeah. But yeah, no, if I walked around, if I walked around the streets of England, no one would have heard of Sam or, or any of them. It's kind of weird. That's it. Yeah. Well, yeah, it's because they don't, you know, I guess they don't fly out of Europe. There's no European sort of human space program.

You know, Tim Peake was a big deal. There was a big deal. But no one's heard of Michael Fole either. You know, Michael Foll went to the, you know, five times into space and he's British, went to school with Stephen Fryan. But no, no one's really heard of him. You know, if Michael Foll gives a talk in London,

there's about 20 people there. And his spacecraft's not sitting in the Science Museum, right? No, exactly. His peaks are still there, I think. So you're like pretty, you're peak fanatics out there. Yeah, I don't know where the peak one is now at the moment. Oh, I thought it was still not. It wasn't science.

No, no, no. went to the science museum, then it went up to Scotland, and then now I don't know where it is. It might have just been on, because it was on loan from Russia, so it may have gone back. You should keep it and try to trade it for the one web satellites. There we go.

Maybe that is the way to go. I suspect ones not quite well. Spresner swap of spacecraft. I mean, for them museums have a bit of a lot of stuff they've stolen from places. There must be something Russian in there that you could trade back, right? Oh, my God.

the Rosetta Stone? I don't know, the spires of Alexandria? Would you like the Half of Babylon is at the museum? You're like, you must want some of them. The Parthenon or whatever, right? Aren't they all the statues in there as well? Yeah, the elegant, the elgin marbles, yep, we've got them all. I'm surprised Catherine the great bones aren't in the museum there somewhere, you know. It's just sort of one finger. It's just they only have the one finger left. Is that a good trade? Catherine that Grades' finger for one web satellites?

I mean, it's just about what the other person values, you know? This is what I'm asking. How much is a finger worth? Yeah, this show and the last show has to be the least space-related shows we've ever done. We've really gone off the rails. We must be burnt out on all the space news. and I've tried to bring it. I've tried to bring it back to space as well.

Try as you might. We are not there right now, Matt. SLS took part of us. It took a part of us. And it's never coming back. Let's get Matt's opinion on SLS because I think we are maybe too close to it. We're too close. We're too close.

What do you make of this situation, Matt? It's bizarre, isn't it? I mean, what's really weird is, considering how right ridiculous a rocket is, how massive it is, there just isn't that much excitement about it anyway in the first place. And then to the point where I kind of knew that it wasn't going to, I just, you know, it's one of those things. You kind of, didn't you feel like it was going to get scrubbed anyway?

Or did you actually think it was going to fly? I was hopeful that the first day was going to work. And then once they scrubbed that day, I'm like, this isn't flying until 2023. Like there was an instant switch. So yeah. Yeah, where are we at the moment? Does it have to roll back or are they actually going to keep it on the launch pad? Because it's all up to the Space Force now.

Yeah. Well, they used to do it's testing. They're doing all this. They're doing these fixes. They scrubbed it again. They were going to tank it this weekend. Now they're not going to tank it until next week. And then try to launch it on the 27th.

Yeah, I tell you, it's all about batteries as well, isn't it? It's like, that was the same with Vega as well if something, if a scrub was all about having to get it back into the mobile gantry to change the batteries again. It just seems really weird that these batteries are the things that's the most kind of problematic. And they're only there to blow it up as well, aren't they? To be fair, they're not the most problematic. If they were the most problematic, the launch work. Oh, yeah, true.

Yeah, but. Yeah, that is true. That is true. But yeah, I mean. In terms of a planning perspective, they are the most problematic. But yeah. Yeah, considering the delay between that scrub of Starliner and when it actually went up again, it doesn't bode well, does it? It's got that written all over it.

Yeah. Yeah, because all of this depends. Like, there's two huge things hanging over that September 27th launch date, right? One, they swap the seals and it works. Yeah. Right. not a guarantee. Two, they somehow get a extension from 25 to like 50 days of FTS, which like, they only, they got an extension from 20 to 25. They got a five day extension. Now they're

asking for a 25 day additionally. I don't know. I have big question. If they get this waiver, and I don't know, they're asking for it, they must think they have a chance. If they get it, I got big questions about what the heck any of this means. I don't know. It seems like all made up to me at this point. And the question would be like, why did they have such a small, why were they cleared for such a small timeline in the first place? This is what I'm saying. If 50 was possible, why did you ask for 20 to start with? Yeah, it's weird about things like that.

Because when you ask someone sort of down the line and they'll say, I can tell you, but please don't tell anyone else. There's always like a sort of really rational explanation for it. But then it's like, oh, I see, I get it. But then for some reason, you're not allowed to tell anyone about it because it will be some, you know, it might offend the client. Yeah, it's it's really weird, stuff like that. But there will be a reason for it. It's not like just bloody-mindedness that they decided to go with a, you never is. But it's just like, it's weird, isn't it?

But yeah. Yeah, I don't hold high hopes that we're going to see that we're going to see. it launch any time soon, unfortunately. I'm not staying up late on September 27th, if that's what it is. I mean, at the beginning, at the beginning of this year, it was looking like a kind of like super epic, like launch vehicle year, right?

You know, it's wild at the beginning of the year, they were still talking about March, weren't they? Hmm. I'm scarred from the time that we went on interplanetary in like 2018, and I was just gushing about how excited I was for the green run that year. So. Yeah. Yes.

Yeah. That hasn't left my mind. Yeah. I have one of those too because I did a podcast in 20. It was the first year. So it was 2016. And you were like it's launching about the green run. Yeah.

No, we were like the green runs next year. It's going to be great. Yeah. Yeah. 2016. I mean, sometimes in you're like, how could it have taken this long? Sometimes it just feels like that, you know? And it's distressing.

It's taken for ages. Well, I tell you what is distressing is that, like if you're trying to explain to someone, like someone says, I say, oh my God, I've got to go off now and watch the SLS launch. And someone's going, what's that? And I'll explain it to them. And I say, yeah, it's taking a space capsule around the moon. It's like, well, didn't we do that like 55 years ago? Yeah, you are actually right.

We did do that, except this one's not quite as good because you can't land on the moon. So it's really hard. It's actually like a sort of, it's like a rocket fan psychom nightmare where you're trying to explain to someone how exciting something is while simultaneously knowing that it's not that great. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, compared to Apollo, garbage. Compared to what we had 20 years ago. Pretty good. Arguable.

Pretty good. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. our whole life now is just like seeing what we can get in exchange for not having Apollo anymore. And at this point, we're ready to give anything. Just like, yeah, just like give me any rocket. I just want to relive the glory.

Just whatever you got, I'll take 5% of what we had. Please, just anything. I'm also just like, I really want to be done with this part of SLS. Like, I don't want to be talking about this anymore. I'm just tired of talking about when's it going to launch. Is it going to launch? How many times it's going to launch? I'm really excited for like right when this mission lands because then it's like,

a new era then, you know. Well, this is the awesome thing that when we were doing, when we were scripting the Vega C launch, when we got to the end, it was like, do we say that that was a nominal launch, right? And it was like, no, you don't. Because until you've got all the data down, you won't know whether it was a nominal launch. So we called it a successful launch.

Or a picture perfect launch, I think, was the wording that I came up with, which I think excited Dante because he'd never heard that phrase before. So he added it into his vast knowledge of English. But it was the, yeah, so I guess after SLS has actually done this mission, they're going to be pouring over like tons of data. And then who knows how long it will be until they launched the next one. If you're considering how much happened to STS-1. This is exactly the thing, right? This is like what we're all, I think Anthony and I, both are just like, we need to get this launch off because there is such a huge conversation that needs to follow on 24 hours later. Like, like, as soon as that Orion splashes down and we just go,

okay, that was great. Uh, now. Now what? That's like, yeah, it's like such a giant question. And the cycles, the timelines of this vehicle, right? If you go back to, you know, four years ago when we were on each other's podcast, then listen to the conversations we were having about SLS and the industry that we were comparing it to and then compare it to the industry that exists. today and know that when Artemis 2 flies, it will be, you know, three or four years down the line, because I'm not believing the two-year thing. I'm thinking it's three years, right? Where are we at that point? Like, the gravity of the world changes between each SLS, you know, launch or even like major event because the cycles are so long, and that's the part that I feel like

is, and more so than all the political decisions and the weird decisions that went into SLS existing, the thing that dooms it is the cycles are so long that it just does not work with the speed the world moves today. No, particularly if you think since we were on each other's podcast talking about it, we've had COVID, Ukraine, Brexit. It's like there's so many, and Trump. A king.

A king now exists. Yeah, and now a king, now the queen. Yeah, so it's like, yeah, it's going to change all our money, Matt. Like, that's so much work. We're not going to be all the focus on it. I know. Exactly. So that's the Canadians and the Brits.

We can't think about anything for at least two years now. Oh, my God. Yeah, the thing I can't get my head around is that the landing on the moon thing, which still seems to be no one's that excited about, just has so many unanswered questions for me. I just can't, you know, the thought that they could have done it in 2024 now looks absolutely ridiculous, right? I mean, that just clearly is, that's just mental talk.

But even 28 seems pretty mental talk to me. If, if there's only one way of landing the moon. The 24 one was always mental, though. It was like, like Jim Rice and my fans went up there. And like the second they said at 2024, every single space journalist was like, this is not going to happen. Publish. Oh, yeah. Like immediately like it was no question.

There wasn't any deliberation. There wasn't like, well, maybe if, blah, blah, but, no, nothing. It was like, you're not going to. Even the most ardent, ardent optimists were just like, this is impossible. Even Jamie called it. But it's, yeah, Jamie was the co-host of your pleasure. That's how long it's been. Yeah.

And it's just, it's nuts. But there's too many things. There's too many things. Have we, you must have answered this question. a million times before. Who's going to put their feet on the moon first next? Is it going to be the Chinese or the Americans? Or Jeff Bezos personally? Or Jeff Bezos personally? I think the odds of Jeff Bezos personally are better than you would imagine. Non-zero, yeah. I would think that's a better. That's like if you're going to put a bet,

that's the one that would pay off the best because it's the most likely and probably the highest odds of the most likely ones. It's the highest odds of the possible. Can you imagine? It's the highest odds of the possible. Maybe Jamie. Could be Jamie. Could be Jamie. It'd be good if it was William Shatner. That would be my personal choice.

He would be totally blown away by the experience. Yeah. While Jeff Bezos isn't listening to him. Spraying champagne on him, yes. I can't relive that. Please, I can't relive that. No, no, it's too horrible. It's too horrible.

But that would be Jeff Bezos paying him back and saying, I'm really sorry about what happened before. Yeah. I'm going to put you on the moon. Please go to the moon. Okay. Matt, can you tell people about the interplanetary podcast where you, in fact, do put the ace back into space? Yes, I can tell you about the interdisciplinary podcast.

It used to be a weekly podcast, but due to my life being incredibly hectic at the moment, it's now, it is now monthly. I will try and get it back to weekly once my life stops being hectic. I have a new co-host, Lynn, who is a budding PhD student in exoplanet. So it's really super awesome having Lynn on. And I occasionally have co-hosts who are from the patrons as well, but like I did last time, which was about the Martian House in Bristol. So that was really cool.

But yeah, interplantery.org. com is the place to go, or just find me on Twitter or just put in the Interplanatory podcast. It's been around long enough now for it to come off. On a Google search. But yeah, I tell you what, there's a lot of, There's a lot of back. There's a lot of back catalog to get through.

I didn't realize just how many episodes I've managed to sort of get out there. So there's some, there's good, good ones like Mattias Maurer is always a good one to go back and listen to. Oh, yeah. Because he's a genuinely awesome astronaut and like really, really, you've had some great astronauts on there. Like, it's a,

talking about back catalog, you've had an awesome repertoire of astronaut interviews. So yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, well, Kathy Sullivan,

I think is possibly the favorite. my favorite person I've ever met. But yeah, I mean, talk about an awesome astronaut. That's just off the book. And you got Helen Charman. And then Charmin on a couple of times. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Did you have, you had one of the, well, that's Matias. I'm thinking of one of the German ones, right? But you've had a bunch. I mean, it's great. Yeah. And then people, even people have trained the astronauts. You've got a bunch of the cool facility tours.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's good because obviously there was some really good access to some of the European some of the European dudes. And obviously all the people that work on on the projects as well,

like Space Rider and Vega and Arianne, we've had, you know, we had that really good, the really good episode about the Arian James Webb launch and why it got into such a great orbit. And I thought that that was so interesting how many sort of kind of little nuggets of information

came out of that one. It was just mind-blowing. So, yeah. I mean, the guests, it's all of, about the guests. I've got a really good guest. I don't know if you know, do you know, Becky Smithhurst? She's got a fantastic, like, YouTube channel that's like pretty big. It's like 500,000 subscribers. Sounds very familiar. I feel like I've stumbled on it. Yeah, she does a lot of sort of black hole

stuff. And when she's, I have to say, she's my sort of go-to person when people are talking about James Webb images and things like that. She seems to, she's on it. So she's a, you know, She's a proper research, black old research scientist. And so that's the next interview that's coming out next. So that's awesome. Nice. Cool. Jake, what you got cooking?

Dude, I'm in like writers block with talking about SLS, man. I have an episode like, it's mostly written. And I just like I'm not, I don't like it. And so I'm trying to, I've just been going back and forth. So it'll be out soon, but I got to, I have to get over myself and figure out. Anyway. You do like I did on the SLS one. I went in no notes and I just talked for 40 minutes and looked at what happened.

Yeah, yeah. That's good. Yeah. And it's funny because I listened to yours about it. And it's like we nail a lot of the same points like by compare what I wrote down. And of course, you're going to get all the credit. Only because I was waiting for you to put yours out. I was like, ah, screw it.

I know. We were both waiting for it. But I just like, anyway, we talked about this a week ago. I'm in the same place. Okay. That we talked about. The thing is you should have been like all the people that. wrote the obituary for the queen, you knew it was coming. You should have written it.

You should have written everything that you wrote beforehand and just instantly like pressed go. And so I thought of that. I thought of doing that. But there's just been so much ink spilled about SELF. Like there is so much talk. And there's this. Yeah. If I had pre-written it ahead of time, it would have had zero original thought. I'm like, the only way I can do something interesting is if I actually write about my experiences on the trip. So that's where I am right now. like it's not really about SLS. It's about what I experienced when I went to floor around. And so.

Yeah. It's when you were tripping. Yeah. When I was like in the manatees between like three, four, five days it took between lunch attempts. Manities are cool though. They are cool. They're quite like to see a manatee.

That's not fair. It's good. Jake, I got some good ones out. I put out this one about space insurance, which sounds boring. Yes. And I promise it's not. I have not listened to it yet. but it's, I'm excited for it.

The feedback is really good. Yeah, I've got like five different notes of like, I thought this show was going to suck and I almost didn't listen to it. I listened to it and it was a lot of fun and very insightful. So exactly how I felt, because I don't know anything about space insurance because no one will tell you anything about space insurance

and I finally found people to talk to. And then this morning, I talked to Bob Pierce, who's the associate administrator for NASA's aeronautics mission directorate, which is quite interesting. It's the side of NASA, So everyone forgets about in our circles. So we talked about planes.

There's an Anthony fun fact in the episode that Jake knows that I have never talked about publicly. And I thought this was the right person to tell this Anthony fun fact. How don't you talked about it publicly? I have not. I have not. I feel like it came out in an off nominal somewhere. I have not talked about it anywhere publicly before because I feel a little bit weird about it. And yet I spilled the beans.

You're going to do it now? To Bob Pierce. I can do it now. Or do we have to listen to your podcast. this late into the show. They deserve a little treat. Bob Pierce is in charge of the aeronautics department. I feel like I should go get a prop for this. Should I get a prop?

Do you have a prop? I got a prop. Are you that much of a superfan of this thing that you have a prop? That's like pretty wild that you have something that you can show for this story. We're filling air. Me and Matt, just drinking. Yes. Do you know what?

This gin is lovely. So this was the 24th of April 2000. And it's a long story. And how old were you at that point? Nine. I was nine years old. This may or may not be the origin of Anthony Aerospace Nerd. It was probably before that, but this was a key moment in my life.

I flew on Air France Zero, one, which in fact was a Concord flight. So yeah Anyway I talked to Bob Pierce about flying on a super sonic plane and it was very cool It's a cool moment That is that is to be fair concord is probably peak Britain It's pretty peak yeah Yeah my dad had the brilliant insight that this plane was not long for the world and I would be less mad of myself for paying a lot of money to fly on a thing That I would be for not flying on a thing when I'm old and he did it and then

and I got, it was pre-9-11, and I was the youngest one on a plane by about several decades, and they came back to our row, and they asked my dad and I if we would like to go into the cockpit, and we did at 60,000 feet at Mach 2 over the Atlantic, which is high enough to see the curve when you're in the cockpit because you have a wide view. So, mind-blowing.

Too long content for the end, so this is in the topic of France, This is a very French goodbye if we're still allowed to say that. Arovois. Did you, before you go, did you put your hand on the side of the plane and feel how hot it was? Did you get that chance? Yeah, it's a little warm. It cooled down a little bit.

Apparently on the up. Oh, from the inside. Yeah. I was too busy looking out the tiny windows. Oh, God. He was nine, Matt. He wasn't going through a checklist. Geez.

Come on. Come on. Anyway. So there's a one of a send off. Matt, thanks for hanging. out with us for so long. You're the best. I'm jealous. I'm so jealous. No, you guys are the best.

You're the best. You are the best. That's it. That's where I'm calling, Jake. See you, everybody. Cheers. That's great. Oh, yes. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 4, 2, 2, 1,000, and the best.