Off-Nominal - 82 - Gatekeeping Hubble

Episode Date: October 27, 2022

With Jake away, Swapna Krishna and Caleb Henry join Anthony for a very Philadelphia-themed episode.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 82 - Gatekeeping Hubble (with Swapna Krishna and Caleb Henry) - YouTubeEccentric Orbits: The Iridium Story: Bloom, John + Free ShippingProject Artemis: Back to the Moon | Smithsonian ChannelChris G - NSF on Twitter: “OK. This is long-range GFS. Take this with a grain of salt for now. But models are starting to pick up on a potential(ly strong) tropical system near Florida around November 9th.”You searched for resiliency - SpaceNewsSatellites Can Do Even More - SpaceNewsAlbedo announces $48 million Series A funding round - SpaceNewsHow to see a rocket launch on the Space Coast – Lonely Planet - Lonely PlanetFollow SwapnaSwapna Krishna (@skrishna) / TwitterSwapna Krishna (@swapna_krishna) TikTok | Watch Swapna Krishna's Newest TikTok VideosSWAPNA KRISHNA — Bio SitePBS's Far Out - YouTubeFollow CalebCaleb Henry (@CHenry_QA) / TwitterQuilty AnalyticsFollow 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. Welcome to space. Thursday, friends, Philadelphia friends, even though Caleb's moving back soon and is not currently in the metro area. How's it going? Soon enough. Caleb, you've been here before,

so I've got you in the Jake slot since you know how the show works. And Swapna, you have not yet been on the show, but that's only our own fault of not booking you. So welcome aboard to the off-nominal train here. Very excited to be here. Before we start, we like to just talk about our drinks. I've got Philadelphia themed ones, as you can tell.

I'm in full Phillies mode here. I would be surprised if you had anything else. I got a victory brotherly love, which is great. And I've got an easy ringer as my backup. Just on the theme of ringing that bell. It's a nice focus there. That's what I brought. What you got, Caleb?

Oh, shoot. I put it just out of reach. Give me. Bye-bye. I'm going to go full frame. name Anthony for a second. While Caleb Yeah, do that. Do that. I'll just buy you some time because that would have been

problematic for everyone else to watch. Okay, all right, we're back. So I have an anthem here. This is actually from here in Baltimore, or no, yes, this is here in Baltimore where I currently am. And I have to adorn it an astronomy on tap glass. Nice. From a talk I gave a few years ago.

That's what's up. That's a good, that's a good, I love a good pint glass. That's a good one. So I don't know what you got over there. I am sadly drinking a prosciko today. Not sad, but like I'm a huge beer drinker. I'm not a wine fan. I'm not a cocktails person.

I like beer, but it does not agree with me these days. So I'm trying to expand a little bit. Yeah, except you can see it's in like a Game of Thrones, like a, let's see if I can get That sounds great. Like the brewery, oh my God. Like, it's almost,

it's almost, it's almost like you can see a little bit of the logo still and like the Game of Thrones glass from like back when they were doing that beer run. What the series first came out. Back in the good days. I don't know. I do have to admit,

I didn't watch Game of Thrones. So I'm without the baggage that the rest of society seems to be. Oh, I have a lot of baggage. We won't go into that. The problem was, once I started going, I feel like I should get into that.

Everyone was like, don't just don't do it and I was like yeah I wait a while and then I know I'm my my fear is that like I was in on lost back in the day when it was originally on and I feel like all the enjoyment of lost was being there when it was like you were doing the podcast and talking about the day after and doing theories and looking at like what tattoos sharks have and all that and I feel like without that I wouldn't be enjoyable so I feel like Game of Thrones might be the same but I'm sorry what tattoo shark has like I was deep deep and lost culture Yeah, it was like the Dharma thing, right?

I know, and I listened to like David Lindelof and Carlton Q's podcast. Like, I was like so deep in that. So you're like, you're like little monologue there. The transmission? Remember the transmission? That's like OG podcast stuff right there. I think it was. It was like some of the first podcast. We lost podcasts.

So I have a lot of nostalgia for that era. It's great. Yeah, me too. Me too. Anyway, I mean, we could totally turn this into the next 54 minutes of lost chat. But I don't know. That's a That's our content. I am curious.

So when we were talking about doing the show, I was like, there's like, we're in a weird lull at the moment. I feel like in like hot drama space news, there's a lot of things going on that are like longer lead stories. So I didn't come in with a very particular, we got to talk about thing. I'm curious, Caleb, your beat has been hot with a lot of satellite internet drama.

So maybe that's a fun one to start in on. and get like a little update from you. Now that OneWeb's back flying, like, what's your current take on what's going on in the satellite internet area? Sure. Well, let me give you a couple of topics that we could go into that includes satellite internet. I think as we near the end of the year, there's sort of three things that I'm thinking about. a lot. Two of them is because it's things that we're getting asked about. I and the rest of the Quilty analytics team are getting asked about a lot.

Those two, as you rightly guessed, Leo, internet mega constellations is one. The other is kind of this like surging interest in like direct to smartphone connectivity. Yes. Just like satellite straight to your phone. That's a big one. And the third, I would say is one of those, it's more of an omission. If you tallied at the beginning of this year. No. Not Artemis I.

So I spared myself from lost. You guys were going on about that. That was more stressed than I needed in my life. Artemis is more stressed than I needed in my life. So I've generally ignored it. But yeah, if you follow Artemis and SLS and all of that, that could be it. I was going to say, we tallied, you know, I think they were around 16 new launch vehicles that we're supposed to have a maiden flight this year. And, you know, as we

enter the last two months of the year, I'm just thinking of this now. Otherwise, I would have done like a definite tally and I would have a number for you. I was going to be like how many have not. I know, I set this thing up. I know. Now I just shockingly close to 16. Yes, I agree. Because Firefly was last year, so that doesn't count. Right. Relativity is still sitting on the pad. Relativity is very close. That's still sitting on the pad, that small satellite launch vehicle right there, Caleb. That should have been in your tally. It's got some cube sets.

Did the SSLV from India? I think they had a launch this year, but that was a failure. Right, didn't work. Yeah, that counts, though, for what we're talking about. None of them were going to work. Yeah, Sky Rora had like a suborbital failure, and I think we're still waiting on, like, Relativity and ABL are the two big ones. that's, we didn't see if by the end of the year they deliver.

But, you know, it's very different from early 2022 to now. You know, everything got pushed to the right or blew up. Fair. Yeah. The direct-to-cell phone thing I'm curious to dig in on. Maybe Swapna, you have some thoughts on this after having, I've watched your wilderness imagery the last week or two when you're on vacation. Yeah, I mean. Oh, you probably had some thoughts on moments you would have.

I've liked that. Yes, I have a lot of thoughts. I was in Sedona and did a lot of like dark sky stuff while I was there, which is great. But also, and I did my first like phrase into dark sky photography, which was really cool. And I'm not a big photo person. So that was just, it was very, very cool because I was able to capture a picture of like galaxy Andromeda on my iPhone, which I care. I like, I got a picture of a galaxy that's two and a half million light years away. on my iPhone.

So like my mind is still blown by that. It's not the prettiest picture. I mean, it just looks like a smudge. But, um, oh yes, there it is.

Yeah. I mean, like, like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So like,

it was like on my, like it was just like, I found that fascinating. But yes, I was, I, I am, um,

very interested in this whole, like the T-Mobile, uh, the T-Mobile deal. I'm really interested in Caleb, like where you think this is going. Because, are we all going to,

it's like I'm fascinated by this. Yeah. So I think what's really interesting is that this was like a niche conversation that only a handful of like pretty techy startups were after before. I mean, this was like a conversation between AST space mobile and link. And it was two radically different approaches. One is like 5,000.

little, not CubeSats, but like much smaller spacecraft. And the other is like 168, I think, like big satellites, like some of the biggest. It's literally the, would you rather fight a horse-sized duck or a thousand duck-sized horses? Like, it's literally that conversation. Because I don't feel like when that AST mobile one deploys, I have expectations that whatever the Starlink meltdown was about like how visible they were. that thing's going to be like, holy shit, what have we done with ourselves that we've just deployed that in space? I'm a little terrified of that moment. Yeah, I think there's like two weeks maybe, a week or two away from deploying the antenna on their like big prototype. And I say big,

like the first one is a cute set. Yeah, yeah. This is even smaller than the real one, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. The real one is going to be much bigger. So you basically have these two that were going after it. And then in a very short period of time, you had the SpaceXT Mobile announcement, and then you have Apple and Global Star. You know, Apple's famous Global Star was like a not well-known company and wasn't even really that active in space industry circles. Now all of a sudden, like, thrown back into the spotlight. And then even, there's somewhere in between all of those. you've got like your big players, you've got your small startups, then you've got Eridium right in the middle,

and they say they're going to have something by the end of the year that can, like, connect everybody also through their phones and maybe other devices. And, yeah, I think it really boils down to the fact that the satellite industry is never, like the issue, and Anthony, we've talked about this a bunch of times, it's always the antennas. Like, antennas are so expensive, they're so complicated.

You know, Starlink, has made flat panel antennas much more widely accessible than they ever were before, but they're still losing money on them. And so I think what happened for the satellite industry is that they woke up and said, hey, if we can just connect people's cell phones, we don't have to build an antenna or a user terminal. Everybody already has them. And suddenly it became much, much more appealing.

And so now you've seen the shift. It's interesting, though, that Apple... ask a dumb question. Oh, do yours first. It's probably not as dumb as you think it is. The flat panel, the antennas are big, right? For starting and all that, yeah, I mean, it's like, bolt this still on top of your RV and then it work. Right, like, so how, how, like, I don't, like, is it, is it? You've got a plus over there. I see it. Right, yeah, I have, like, 14 pro max. I've got the giant one. But, like, exactly.

How does it work if, like, is it just like, is it piggybacking off the existing technology so that amplifies it or is it just like it's not as good? Yeah, so this is like what Anthony was saying where it's like, you know, do you want to fight a thousand little ones or like one humongous one? If you have the approach of putting up like really big satellites, then they'll beam a really loud signal down to your phone. And that'll trick on and thinking, hey, this is a tower. It's close enough. I can still talk to it in conversation, your phone won't basically have like an autoimmune response and be like, what is this thing that's not a cell tower? Or you have your thousands of little satellites

a la link and you just have so many collectively that it again is still loud enough for your phone to hear. Okay. Then you have the there's the approach by Arridium and I think Global Star, which is to actually use spectrum that satellite operators have, but either the signal is like really strong or it's close to cellular spectrum already. And so, yeah, the devil's in the details here. It's like you can get really into the weeds, but how they play with like the power level that they have on their spacecraft, how many spacecraft they have,

and what spectrum they choose is going to determine the quality of the service they can provide. It's a little weird, though, in the case of Apple, where the new phones have a specialized antenna, highly directional. And this is the interesting thing about this, is that, like, Apple's pushing this as upgrade to the iPhone 14, and then you won't die when you go out to the wilderness. But all these other companies are like, just keep your regular phone, and we'll be there in two years.

Like, that's, we'll just connect it. So my sense is that the vast majority of Apple customers will use this kind of service without knowing it before they actually get to the point when they're ready to upgrade to something that's iPhone 14 or higher, just because of timelines. Like, people keep their phones now for three, four, five years, and, like, how, how far,

far away do you think this is, and this is another aspect, like, the deals that these satellite companies have to make with different carriers, because it's not like you're going to sign up separately from 18T and Verizon to get access to Link. Like, that's going to have to make, there's going to be a deal between Link and AT&T or whatever. I don't know. I feel like they have a deal. I might have be, might be butchering this, so cut me off literally at any moment, Caleb. But that, oh, those deals have to be in place, and then you'll use it without knowing it, whereas it's like a special mode of the new iOS and iPhone duo. Yeah, I think a goal for the space industry is to make the service as seamless as possible.

Like, we all get excited because we're like, oh, it's space. Like, you're using something from space. But like the average person doesn't want to like, you don't have to go through your phone and be like, all right, switch it to space mode. Like, you want it to work. Although all of us would be pumped to switch it to space. Airplane or space mode, like we'd be really excited. I'd be really excited.

I recently bought, per the National Park and Wilderness conversation, so I feel like we should have a back end of this podcast discussion about Sedona, because that's what a magic place on Earth. I recently bought one of these Garmin in-reach devices. Do you know about these things? It says, actually, if I zoom in on the top here, it says Eridium on top. There's just like a little thing that can send messages and do tracking via Eridium, and you just use a little app on your phone,

connects Bluetooth to the thing, you can text with it and all that. Mostly because as one of the two parents on the show, once we started going to the wilderness with a child, we were like, oh, we should have some way to push a button in case something happens or if we see a grizzly bear and we need help. We probably should have a button that does that.

I've been super impressed by this thing, and it also feels cool to have like a very rugged, outdoorsy piece of hardware, but I will be thrilled to not carry it around all the time. But it's things like, I don't know, maybe it's just a nerd in me that wants new toys and things that connect to satellites. But I'm like, they're not sponsoring this show. I'm just quite thrilled by it. And to be able to like know what that experience is like before all these companies get there, I feel like is also good for me to understand. Not good enough for me to

try to write that off for tax purposes, but good to understand at a nerd level to some extent. So yeah if you want a if you want a book recommendation like something a book I read several years ago back when I like I really felt like I insecure about how much or how much I didn't know about the industry. It was eccentric orbits which is like the story of eridium and you know it's fun because it was basically like this big tech project like it was a bunch of engineers who were like we think we can do this. We think we can make phones talk to satellites and like no no one no one do that. And like, so they basically solve the engineering problem and everybody just talks about like it's magic. And then there is no business plan. And, you know, obviously the rest of the story is well documented. But just that story of being like really excited about being able to like do something from space.

That's a fun one. And if you want to like resonate even more with like being able to just use your iPhone or whatever smartphone you have, when you see like all the old tech they used to use. to try and connect, like, how some of the old sad phones were, let alone the modern, like, little device you had there, it'd be very grateful. Yeah. Have... I'm flashing back to, like, Zach Morris's giant

cell phone, like, like, the big one. Like a brick. That was just, like, a regular phone, though. That's the problem with that. I know. That was a cell phone. Like, that was what set phones look like. But at the same time, cell phones also looked like sat phones, which is even more depressing. Yes. Caleb, every time we talk on a podcast, I feel like I just say this to see what your reaction is.

Do you remember that photo that Greg Weiler posted once of a super cheap terminal? That was like in a pizza box or something. What? Nothing? Nothing ever happened, huh? You do. This is something we've revisited. Let me think.

I did hear like within the past two years that the company it was under a different name that they still existed but were basically looking for money after OneWeb went through their Chapter 11

process and I don't know if I said, excuse me, I don't know if I said that during the last podcast because I just don't remember where I haven't looked it up in a long time but last I heard they were still around but they were sort of relegated to the category of like 20 other flat panel antenna companies where it's like, we have this cool idea,

but we don't have any money. And so it just remains like a small R&D project that struggles to ever get scale. And now SpaceX is like, you want one that's shaped like a triangle? We got one of those. You got one that's a circle. We got one of those. I don't know. That's the other aspect of what you were asking swap.

No, like why are there so many different looking antennas? Yeah. And even the stuff that suddenly has been rolling. out of like different shapes and space at the same time. It's space mode. You got to have space mode for your RV and whatever shape your devices. So interesting times. Yeah.

Anyway, sorry, I got stuck looking at Greg Weiler pictures. But on the other side, Swabner, you just did a thing about space tourism. I'm curious to, I did. This week talked to the whole crew of Polaris Dawn. over the course of two different interviews. And I feel like we're at fun times in space tourism. I think so. It's a really interesting spot to talk about.

Yeah, I think so. I think we're at a really cool point in space tourism where it's starting to be, it is, of course, still rich people going to space. I'm not trying to say it's not, but they're doing more than just looking out the window. They're doing experiments. They're trying to.

to make life on Earth a little better. And sure, there's going to be, you know, there's going to be issues with, you know, is the research private? Like anything NASA does, it's public. Like, everyone has access to it. If you're doing a privately funded mission is, you know, space tourist mission is the, you know,

research to be proprietary or is there going to be access to it? And of course, there's questions about that. But at the same time, my view, my very, personal view is like more people going to space is better. Maybe because if only because maybe it means that one day I will go to space. But generally speaking, I think, you know, I think we're at a really cool point. And like Polaris Dawn, I mean, obviously this is like utter speculation, but Polaris Dawn might fix the Hubble or like boost the Hubble Space Telescope. Like that is the coolest thing. Like that blew my mind. Yeah. Jared Isaacman's doing the billionaire thing best. Like, just

I mean, it was just so funny when I was watching that press conference because it was like, Jared Isaacman clearly wants to do this. And I'm like, that's a really cool thing to do, like from multiple angles. Like, I think any way you look at it pretty much, it's a win-win situation. It's hard to hate that. Like, I don't know. I think there's, you can argue over like the, you know, well, is it worth boosting? Is it still doing its thing?

is it still like a good telescope? Are we saving an old one? It's like, I don't know, man. It is still a good telescope. I'm not here to gatekeeper about Hubble. I'm not being a Hubble gatekeeper. Hill, I will die on. But I'm like, the failure scenario is we're closer to having Hubble in a space museum someday.

That is the worst case scenario if we were to boost it. Even if it was a brick. If it didn't work anymore, who cares? We're closer to gaining, you know, that in a, it does belong in museum, but we have to build the museum in space is the unfortunate part of that museum. Right. If they brought Hubble back and had it in a museum and Earth, I would be camped outside of that,

like it was the Halo 3 release or something. Like, I just live there. I would be emailing everybody I know. What if that's the first Starship mission? It wouldn't be the crude one, but maybe he also buys an uncrewd Starship mission and brings it back. this is yeah you're playing you're playing chess out here yeah no I think like and I think like something like boosting hubble it it's one of those things where everybody has a lot of opinions about space tourism and I understand why and I'm not I'm not saying you know I'm not trying to advocate for it one way or another but this is a situation that would make clear like the the like benefits to humanity of something like space tourism and I think I don't know I'm all for it I really want them to do it. We'll see, you know, NASA was very noncommittal during that press

conference, but, but I would love to see that happen. It's just a study had the same energy as it's not even a named storm. Like, okay, it's just a study for 10 minutes until you figure out that it's totally viable. Yeah, Artemis 1 might be the end of me. I'm not, I'm just, just, just, I got, I got an email today that I'm off the media wait list. Just the problem is I can't go in that week in November, so I don't know what I'm going to do about that. I can't go. Yeah. But I told them I was going because I didn't want to lose my spot for if it doesn't launch. Yeah, I'm looking at this, everything that's happening around it. I'm like, I don't know, man, this might be, might be a little Christmas present for everyone. So. Yeah, because somebody I think was

tweeting, I can't remember who, maybe Chris Gephardt was tweeting that there's, uh, there's another possible tropical storm. Yeah. Like November 9th or something. And it's like, oh, great. before we lose the plot on Polaris because I did you were getting into a territory that I thought was interesting to pick off that Polaris Dawn is like Polaris program overall went from space tourism to serious business like it has made that jump right Inspiration 4 I think you can put in the in the space tourism camp

but Polaris program they are like actively trying to develop space capabilities now it has a weird take to it right where it's like they've chosen SpaceX as a winner, obviously, rightly so in many cases. But they are focused on like developing capabilities. So but for that's a conversation that makes sense to us three. I don't know if that's a conversation that would hit with the audience that you've got on far out, right? That like that there is a delineation between these things. I think we need to start general, more generally talking about the difference between space tourism and privately funded space missions.

because there are two different things. It's fine that they both exist, but there is an increasingly big line, I think, between the two. And most people I have seen don't care and are just basically like, well, it's all just rich people going to space. And it's like, yes, yes. But like, it can be so much more than that. And that was kind of the point of that episode to just be like,

we can do more with space tourism as people define it, even though, like, I would argue, like an Axiom one, like Axiom one, I would argue that wasn't necessarily space tourism, but it's, it's, yeah, it's complicated. Yeah, but, like, there is a, so there's two things, right? Number one, it's like, I kind of equate Polaris Dawn being non-tourism to the same way that, like, a trip to Sedona to see dark skies is, like, astrotourism. But like, if you were to fund the construction of an observatory in Sedona, that's like you've just created an observatory to do serious business, right?

Right. There's a moment when it's like, okay, you've made the jump to like putting investment into developing capabilities, which is really in the vein of history of like the Zach Moore's cell phone we just talked about and satellite phones in that era. We're like stupidly expensive. And then enough people that had stupidly expensive money to spend bought them. And one day we have really cheap cell phones that all of a sudden connect satellites. that for a while only rich people were buying access to satellites.

And it's like, eventually these things, if they are useful enough and they have utility, they get down in cost. But that's the moment when I'm like, have we figured that out yet? We haven't figured out enough utility to drive down costs to an extraordinary degree. And even an example is like, we've had Richard Garriott on talking about going down to see the Titanic or Challenger Deep and stuff. And it's like, the thing we didn't get into it with him that I want to, to actually talk about is like, why are ocean-ocean nearing? Am I even in their ballpark on that word?

I don't know. Why are those trips still so expensive? Because if you're using this as an analog to like a new Shepard flight or Virgin Galactic flight that's like, you know, a quick stint into an unknown environment, I feel like submarine trips should have gotten a lot cheaper because they're easier to do than to some extent. They're kind of harder in some ways. but I feel like it's that utility thing that we're missing. So I don't know. No, I agree with that. That's a good point.

I admit, I haven't thought about that. But yeah, you're right. Like, why haven't they gone down in the way, like each, even just over the past few years,

the cost of access to space still very expensive by, you know, the standard of like if I want to buy a ticket to space, for example. But like, the cost of access to space has come down so far. since a lot, you know, mainly thanks to SpaceX, and it's really incredible. But they're not going to knock another zero off until some people start knocking things off Caleb's list, you know?

Exactly. They need some pressure. So, do you have any bets, Caleb, on the list that you made of those launch vehicles? Like, maybe from, even from like an industry side, which of those feel like viable launch vehicles for the companies that you're doing analytics on any given day? Because like Astro wasn't. Like who's going to make it to orbit first? Like are they going to be useful? Because Astro was like, okay.

That's good. That's a good point. I don't know. Yeah. So I have thought a lot about this lately because we're actually, this is a shameless plug, we are close to issuing a report on the small launch sector here. We're just like wrapping one up.

And it's been really interesting to watch like the evolution. of this part of the space industry where, like, you had so many people who were inspired by, like, the dawn of the Cube sat and Planet Labs and Musk and SpaceX, and, like, it just went and created all these companies the world over. And then you watch them, like, continually, even before their vehicles ever reached the launch pad, like, they just kept changing them. They kept trying to make them bigger, maybe trying to make them usable, or trying to evolve the rocket in some way. And then in some cases, actually in a lot of the cases now, you're seeing companies branch out from launch. Like, you know, you look at Rocket Lab and like more of their money comes

from space systems, building hardware and software, and then it does actually launching rockets. And that's not unique at all. So there is a reckoning that is happening for any company that has sought to create a small launch vehicle, especially anything under a thousand kilograms to lower Earth orbit. I think the rate at which spacecraft themselves have gotten bigger and the competition that they face from heavy rockets, like the transporter missions, has really changed the game, and it's actually forced a lot of companies that were fixated previously on small to go for much larger rockets now.

It's unclear if the one-ton thing is even going to work out as a market. I feel good about it, knowing that there's things they can launch, but the more that those companies say we're great for constellations, I'm like, nah, you've lost. I feel like you say that so that in your investor PDF, you can put, we're going to launch 80 million times a year, because look at all these satellites need to go. And it's not, none of the constellations are going to use a one-ton vehicle.

Unless it's free, I guess. Yeah. The only constellations with, like, decent-sized spacecraft that could maybe use one would have been the Gen 1-1-Web, because those are 150 kilograms of satellite. And then maybe the space development agency, like their Leo constellation. But I think they've put most of that in Congress that they have to use, like, National Security Space Launch, which. which means, like, it's just that there's not even a question anymore. Like, you will go launch on big rockets because of your U.S. government program and we paid for them. And they said, okay, great, you paid for them. That's wonderful.

It's a hard question to answer. I think every launch company, regardless of rocket size, is chasing mega constellations right now. I mean, Amazon has bought up so much launch capacity that I'm wondering if that's going to trigger like a whole other wave. of like either investor rounds into launch companies or entrepreneurs that want to get into it. And I'm not giving an opinion on whether or not that's a good idea. I think that there was a wave we saw after. Because you have to pay for the report for that. Yeah, stay tuned.

But somebody got started after like the first big like megaconsolation push. And like 2015, 2016, we're like, holy smokes, there's thousands of satellites that don't need to get launched. and now we actually have contracts that are out there for like thousands of satellites, but it's like a bet the farm kind of thing. Like if you don't get one of those contracts, either you're launching like crazy or you've got nothing to do. And that's kind of a scary business. That's kind of a scary place to be as a business.

That's rough. I do think they've got a, like there's been so many NASA science satellites in the last five years that have went up on like a Falcon 9, and they looked tiny in the faring and they were like a thousand kilograms or something. So I feel like there's NASA science missions that they might be able to get. But that also requires them flying soon

so they can bid on those. And until then, SpaceX has all the NASA science contracts, like until 2026, I think. Right. And didn't Amazon say this morning that they'd consider SpaceX to launch their stuff? Which I thought makes sense. but it was interesting at the same time.

Yeah, like if, I mean, you know, the people that are book on those launches, they don't care. As if it's a good price and it's going to get there. They don't care. Yeah. Like, let's do it. Yeah. Space X is the best track record. Like, of course, you should convince, you should consider them. But, like, I wasn't, I wasn't sure how that would go. I think there's less angst than people assume, generally. Like, I don't know. maybe there is some angst in a certain individual that all of their satellites won't fly on their launch vehicle,

but I don't know, at the end of the day, with the numbers that are going into these space projects, both in investment and years, and like, it doesn't matter at a certain point, you know? You've got to pick the winner, and you've got to pick, and to your point about Amazon buying up the rest of the launch capacity, like, if there's launch capacity to scoop up, then take it,

which in one web's case, right, they got a couple of flights on GSLV. That was pretty cool to see them chipping in. Now, is that like a little thank you to India for stepping in with some Barty Global funding? Like, what's the deal? Or is it just like, oh, it was available and they don't have anyone to fly on that GSLV flight, so let's do it. Yeah, I have to imagine that their close connections to India, you know, through Barty and through Sunil, definitely helped. And, you know, just the urgency of their situation.

Like, you know, they're, I was reading an article in Breaking Defense, like, just earlier this week, and they were talking about why Starlink is being used so much in Ukraine. And, like, when one web got paused, like, you know, they're building out from the polls, they got paused like just before, like, 50 degrees. Like, Ukraine is just out of reach, you know. They could have been one of the companies. Definitely was not part of the equation. We got these 36 in our factory in Vicanor. Do it.

I don't think that's it. Whatever the timing was, for one web, like the urgency, they obviously wished that they were in orbit, like, well before now. And so getting access to that rocket. And one that if memory serves me, right, has had a number of issues with its cryogenic upper stage that kind of made it a risky back. So kudos to them for doing successfully.

I think there was certainly some urgency that was a motivating factor there. And, you know, for Kuiper, Kuiper is interesting, you know, because they also, well, they're being driven very much by, like, their regulatory deadlines from, like, the ITU at the global level and then the FCC at the American level. like they've got to have half their satellites up by like mid-20206 I think it is so like 1,600 satellites up in that period of time if you don't own your own rocket like SpaceX you know you you have to go and talk with companies where you know launching more than like 10 times a year you know launching like 10 to 15 times a year was a great launch rate um but now like that's going to be too

little, you know. So it's kind of wild. Now, that division doesn't get any easier as the months tick away and there's still no flights, right? They moved some of their initial satellites over to the first launch of Vulcan, which

has a whole other side tangent, is like, okay, is that soon? I don't know. Yeah, if they moved it from one rocket that hadn't flown to one that had, it would make more sense in my head.

I have been kind of scratching my head wondering, like, I don't know. I don't get it. It's like it's only useful if they were able to get that off with ABL this year. And otherwise, it's like, eh, just get on a Vulcan train as soon as we can. And we'll start talking to the OLA people closer. So, I don't know, unless my vibe on Vulcan is totally off. But my bet is that it's like May still when that's going to fly. I will see.

I'll see. on this recent astrobotic trip where I've got the astrobotic vibes running through my veins here. And I'm like, I don't know, no one really seems ready because there's a lot of engines missing from this whole set of people here. Yes. Yep. What else we got cooking around here? Did we get through your whole to-do list, Caleb? I feel like we did.

Sout of the Internet, cell phones, launch vehicles. So now we can talk about lost. Yeah. I've done my part. Yeah. Was it Penny's boat is my question. Oh, God. What are the things that you're tracking, Swabna, for the show?

Is there you got a hit list of things you're curious about? Or maybe we can hear a little bit about the show overall if people have not experienced it yet? Yeah, the show's called Far Out. It's on PBS's YouTube channel. And it's basically about the next, the future of science and technology. So I definitely push to do a space episode. We don't focus on space as part of why I've kind of gotten into a little bit of content creation for space, doing videos and stuff like that on TikTok

because I didn't want to lose my connection to like as like a I'm like a I when I talk about what I do I always say I write I'm like space science and technology person and I do it. This is like science and technology but like space I feel like is the most important part of that for me personally. So I don't want to lose my connection to space

which is you know why I started doing the videos and stuff. But yeah, no, I'm really. really enjoying the show. It's very interesting, very different. I'm not used to being like on camera talent. So it's very weird and odd. I'm used to just like sitting hunched over my computer very like very non- ergonomically and like typing. So so being like on camera and talking is very weird but interesting. And working with like a whole production team where I don't have to do everything by myself. And like if I want something I can just ask for.

it instead of being like how do I create this graphic with my terrible Photoshop skills. It's very new. We have like a whole graphics, like we have a whole graphics team and a graphics person. And so that's amazing. I'm just used to being like the one, you know, as a freelancer, I'm used to being the person who does everything. But yeah, I hope we have more space episodes coming up. Mostly we're doing a lot of climate stuff, environment and I think infrastructure, which I I find infrastructure stories very interesting. One thing I've realized as I'm working on the show is how much and how big spaces in terms of like it's not, it's hard to focus on, it's hard to be a person who covers space and cover

every aspect of it. I don't think you can anymore. I think it's too big because there's like the business side. There's the like the small satellite, I feel like satellite like constellations small satellite. That's its own, that's like its own entire thing at this point, one that I'm not super well versed in, but like I focus more on like human spaceflight and then like space science and like spacecraft that do science. And so like it's, that side. Yeah. Like it's just it's so big. I don't know any and I know a lot of people who only focus on science and know nothing about like

the tech side of things. I do a little bit of both. But yeah, I think it's fascinating. to that space, I feel like, has, like, within the last, like, five or ten years has become this big. Like, it touches literally every part of what we do. Like, one of the things I was in a documentary on Artemis one that is on the Smithsonian channel, I think, called Artemis Back to the Moon. And one of the things, like, they wanted me to emphasize and they asked me to talk more about and elaborate is how like whether you think about it or not space is an everyday part of our lives not just in the way that we live in space as on a planet but like the technology and that sort of thing is part of everyday lives and I think that's really interesting and that's I'm trying

to bring that energy to my show so even when we're not talking about space I'm really talking about space the climate stuff is interesting for that too right with how many like there was an initial round of imaging companies that were like, better Google Earth. Let's do that. Great. And then there's this whole new round where it's like very specialized use cases of imaging. And now I'm going to blank on this. But I think that's this company called. Yeah, you got carbon mapper from planet. Yeah, but what's this new company that I'm, I actually know the founder of because he was like friends with my wife's cousin. It was really weird at the connection. But it's like, their imaging, it's like, oh my God, I got to look this up. He's going to kill me.

It's going to kill me. Got to look it up. You can carry on with your life. I'm going to find this. You're going to look it up. Yeah. I think it's cool. I love it.

As a space person, like, I absolutely love that the industry as a whole is too big for me to cover at this point. Like, I think that's amazing. Like, I know it stresses some people out. For me,

it is, you know, it's amazing. Like, it's like, it's hilarious. Like, we all became like,

like, leading up to, launch of Artemis one, we all became like weather forecasters. That's how you know we made it when we randomly happened upon expertise. So like over the one day that everyone became, you know, shipping canal experts when that ship got stuck and we're like, well, the traffic patterns in that part of the Gulf. It's just unreal. Albedo is the company I'm thinking of. They were like the first ones to get a license for 10 centimeter imagery and I don't think I've even heard of them. So there was something else that

was they do 10 centimeters per pixel and it's like thermal image. for red imagery. And when I was talking to this group of people about like what they're actually doing with that, there's some really interesting applications of thermal imagery that matter for different industries, different investment types, like environmental monitoring. And there's like these small commercial companies that are starting up with a take on imagery. You know, not to mention the whole synthetic aperture radar satellite imagery. Like there's just so much that even like to your point of the

little areas of the industry that have exploded into insane complexity, imagery has gotten unreal, and then you have an incident with the war in Ukraine where you realize how useful having that many companies that do it in such a distributed way, and you've got rush out here, like, we're going to shoot down U.S. commercial satellites. And it's like, have at it, man. I hope you have 15,000 launch vehicles that you can do that with. Like, good luck with that. Because it's just, not only is it showing the worth of those things when you have like real-time imagery of these you know convoys going into ukraine but then to like the space forces uh point about resiliency like you can't shoot those things down and they're all commercial companies and like the u.s government that's the

thing a couple of spy satellites that are really good but there's just a few of them and we have all these other ones that are just as good in some cases uh for what you're actually trying to accomplish with it but to get to that point of complexity with anyone to understand that's what's going on in space is like a whole conversation. So, I think that's good. I think that's healthy. Yeah, that comment about like how the, it's like the military term that they like always uses resiliency.

I think it's interesting that like DOD sort of obtained that through the commercial sector before they did it with any of their own assets. Because like, I mean, I didn't. By like five years. There's very, very much not there yet. Yeah, they're always talking about, like, oh, we've got too many high value, like, whatever, you know, the classified satellites or just like the handful of like, you know, like civers or SB, like whatever, the advanced DHF, those kinds of things. But now between like Starlink and Black Sky and like Planet and all these guys, like there are hundreds of imaging satellites, hundreds of communication satellites, and it would cost a ton to try and shoot them all down, like you said, like it becomes a, I don't know, it becomes an economic thing. To throw back to your former employer, there are 263 search results for resiliency in Space News'

archive. And I can probably do this by date order until they were talking about it in 2004 is when it was being talked about. And here we are almost 20 years later. And they've stumbled into success by not building it for so long. So it's good. So actually, I'll let you in on a little, I don't think it's that secret, but I feel like it's not really talked about. So the Space News website has a little glitch where several articles are frozen on a specific date in 2004.

If you click on that article, it's going to have a different date. It's something about the conversion. Something about the conversion from Prince of Digital or like the old website to a new website. A lot of stuff is stuck on that date. Well, at least this was only then turned into October 2005. So don't worry. This page is really screwed up. They really need to look at this.

They really need to look at this page. That's hilarious. Wow, that is a fun, a little fun space news fact. There's a little trivia for you. That's like a nerd. When I had downtime. Nerdy. That's a great bar trivia.

I used to go and fix them from time to time. If I had downtime, I would go and try to fix these pages, but you had to do it manually, and it's such a pain, and there's thousands. Like, you just, you couldn't win. So, do you miss journalism? That part now. Do you miss the rest of it? Are you happily plodden away? Maybe we can hear more about we were working on. You said this report's coming up. Tell us more about what you've been doing. Yeah, I, uh, I am happily continuing to talk with companies all

over the industry and do a lot of the same kind of journalism style information gathering to just share it in a different way. So, oh, don't look at our website. We are doing a website overhaul. Ours is in sore need of some fixing. But yeah, you know, I think this year has been an interesting one, at least for us, like one of the things that we did a little bit different is I think we tried to do a lot more, like analysis pieces of news, which does make like shifting from journalism of this kind of interesting, even like surreal. I don't know what word I'm looking for, but it's like instead of writing the headlines, we'll take them and then try to like figure out, what does this mean?

Like who wins, who loses, who's most impacted, who's least impacted? And try to answer some questions that like our subscribers have had a lot of of interest in knowing. And so I think if I was going to like say a takeaway from the past year is that people often don't actually know what a headline means or an article means. And that's a little frustrating because as a journalist, yeah. As a journalist, you're always trying to make things straightforward as you can for the reader. You know, you're trying to explain it. You're trying to do it in as few words as possible so that they don't scroll off and read something else. And it's like, all right, you put in all that effort and then people still don't

get it. So now my job is writing even longer things, explaining what it means. And it's a, you know, the transfer of information is sort of a, it's a tricky subject. Yeah, did you, so did you write your own headlines at Space News? Did you get to do that? For the most part, yeah. Is this your experience swap-da? Where the various places you've written? Never. Never. What's your favorite one where you read it and you were like, oh, that's not what the article's about? Do you have any of those? Oh, God, yes. Many.

Unless you want to. Yeah, no. I have a lot of those. At least at NGadgett, it was a workshopping situation. So basically, I would come in to Slack with the headline I wanted. And I almost never got the headline I wanted. But I could always say, like, nobody would put a headline on something that I wasn't okay with. So that was actually really great.

And actually made me much better at writing headlines. Because as you can imagine, like a new person going into the Slack and having like, all like the senior people. It was an intimidating process until like I got to know them and I got better at writing headlines. But yeah, no, for the most part, I do not. I do not. Oh yeah.

No, the worst one was I wrote a thing for Lonely Planet. Yeah, the travel website on like touring like launch pad like space coast tourism, like what to go see. And it was like probably 28. I probably wrote it in like 2018-ish. And they definitely put something about if you want to see the space shuttle launch, go visit this stuff. And I was like, the space shuttle.

Oh, no. Oh, that's got to be the worst. I had to email my editor and be like. There's a time machine in the space coast? Where can I go to see that? Yeah, I was like, the space shuttle last launched in 2011. Can we change that headline? That was definitely the worst.

You're like, didn't you hear NASA closed up? they don't do anything anymore. I know. I know. It was bad. It's going to be big times down there the next couple weeks, right? We got Falcon Heavy pretty soon. We've got maybe our miss night launch though.

That's just awful. That's not fun. Yeah. I was not, I'm not, I'm sad to miss, obviously. Like, I really, really, like, wanted to go. But I have, like, a far out shoot the next day and we can't really move those around much. No, I think, like, the day of the first launch is the shoot. but launch attempt

but I'm not like I wouldn't Night launches are very cool but I prefer day launches for like a first time seeing a vehicle launch so I can see what's happening I'm surprised they're going to go for it

because they talked up how much they want like the imagery off of it for daytime launches which part of me was like they're just saying that's the date are they just saying that's the date but I seem to be legitimately going for it so yeah I mean they're going to roll it back

Thanksgiving dinner without the launch so Oh my God. I mean, I would too, to be fair. I feel really bad for some of the people who I know have worked really hard on this because it's becoming a little bit of a joke. And like even I'm making jokes and I'm usually not that person. But oh my God. It's bad.

I just really want to be done with this part of Artemis 1. Yes. I'm very excited for that. Yes. Yeah. Caleb doesn't care. He's checked out on Artemis a long time ago. Yeah.

Oh. It's going to be a spectacular launch though. The small satellites. This is going to be the one new small satellite launcher to launch it in 20, 22 for you. So put that in your report. Yeah, that's what I'm saying. Put it in your report. Yeah, I should look up. I should look up who the latest cut sets are because I remember pre-space news when I was at via satellite back when SLS was also close to launching. We did an article about like the 13 kubats that were on it and I don't remember the numbers

anymore, but like, it was our single most popular article for like a week. And I think people were angry reading it because they were upset of the delays then. And they were like, how dare you talk about those cubes sets on this thing? Just launch it. And like, that's what I remember. I was like, I don't think we've written anything that's made our readers mad before this. But like, I sense some frustration. for them and the people that built the satellites themselves that have been sitting around

yes yes yeah I'm sure well if people have not partaken in the Caleb Henry cinematic universe where would you like to send them your illustrious Twitter account C Henry underscore QA is this where we should send them yeah I mean I have my usual disclaimer which is that I don't tweet nearly as much as I should. I kind of think about things that would be cool to tweet and then it just doesn't happen. Also, fun fact, maybe for Swapna, the picture up there is one that I took in college.

It is a blurry image of a open star cluster called M67. And it is the only picture that I still have that I took back when I was in college. So I like it a lot, even though it's not really anything. It's cool. You deleted all the other pictures from college. I wasn't good at taking at documenting college. There's probably four pictures of me from college. But I like that one the best anyway, and I'm not in it.

It's pretty good. So I'm the hot off the Sedona trip. People should go to your Twitter account to get the Sedona picks. Unlike Caleb, I tweet way too often. All the time. So I am usually, if I'm tweeting a lot, I'm procrastinating on something. I'm at S. Krishna. Twitter. I'm at

underscore Krishna on TikTok if anybody's into that. I am personally feel that I am too old on TikTok, but apparently I do well there, so I keep doing it. And yeah, far out is on PBS Terra's YouTube channel. I got links in the show notes for that.

Next week, I got a good one next week, guys. Jake's coming back and then, do you know the photographer Roland Miller? Have you experienced any of Roland Miller's work? Neither of you. Maybe not. I am thinking. The name's familiar. I've got a couple books back behind me.

He did one called Abandon in Place that was in that weird era, right when that headline was written, that the space shuttle was still flying. When no one had revitalized any of the launch pads at Cape Canaveral, he went, well, I think it's pictures from his career, but it was of all these launch pads that were just falling apart that have now been redeveloped into, like, commercial space. So it captures a really interesting time in the space coast where nothing was happening on these launch pads, and there was no future. hope for them and then all these companies started up. And then he did one with Paulo Nespoly on the space station. He was on the show recently talking about this, where he, like, use this ISS visualizer to show Paulo what pictures he wanted taken on the ISS, and then Paulo would take the pictures and they made this book together.

And then his new book's coming out called The Space Shuttle, and it's a mission-by-mission, In celebration of NASA's extraordinary space play program, I've saved it. I'm going to all this week read this book. I haven't yet to open it, but Bruce McAnnes is on the cover, so I'm pumped about that. So he's coming back to talk about this, and I don't know. It's going to be pretty sweet to talk about some space shuttle photography. Still flying if you want to go to the space coast. Check out Swabnas article from 2018.

Oh, my God. Where to go see it. I was mortified. Mortified. But it's out there. So if you need that information, then that's where you've got to go check it. I'll find that and put in the show notes in case people want to read it. I hope the headlines updated.

Oh, my God. Thank you both for hanging out. We didn't even talk about Philadelphia at all. Caleb's moving back in Philadelphia next month-ish. Is that correct, Caleb? Yeah. So we'll have to do an actual thing in person. So maybe for the World Series parade, we can hang out.

So that'll happen. Swapnod. I recommend watching the Phillies this week. It should be good. I will do that. I will partake in sports ball. Yeah, you got to do it. All right, everybody, thanks for hanging out.

Talk to you next week.