Off-Nominal - 94 - Let’s Do Some UFO Shit

Episode Date: February 10, 2023

Jake and Anthony talk about the Chinese balloons that floated over the Americas in the last few weeks, balloons in space history, UFO shit, and do a random follow-up news segment.TopicsOff-Nominal - YouTubeEpisode 94 - Let’s Do Some UFO Shit - YouTubeWhy Shooting Down China’s Spy Balloon Over The U.S. Is More Complicated Than It SeemsU-2 Spy Planes Snooped On Chinese Surveillance Balloon | The DriveAre Some Of The UFOs Navy Pilots Are Encountering Actually Airborne Radar Reflectors?Project Echo Documentary: The Big Bounce135 - A Farewell to InSight (feat. Bruce Banerdt)Virgin Orbit receives another small investment from Branson—and it’s worrisome | Ars TechnicaWhen will United Launch Alliance’s Vulcan rocket fly? | Ars TechnicaFollow Off-NominalSubscribe to the show! - Off-NominalSupport the show, join the DiscordOff-Nominal (@offnom) / TwitterOff-Nominal (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow JakeWeMartians Podcast - Follow Humanity's Journey to MarsWeMartians Podcast (@We_Martians) | TwitterJake Robins (@JakeOnOrbit) | TwitterJake Robins (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceFollow AnthonyMain Engine Cut OffMain Engine Cut Off (@WeHaveMECO) | TwitterMain Engine Cut Off (@[e-mail]) - Spacey SpaceAnthony Colangelo (@acolangelo) | TwitterAnthony Colangelo (@[e-mail]) - jawns.club 🐘Off-Nominal MerchandiseOff-Nominal Logo TeeWeMartians Shop | MECO Shop

TLS and go for main engine, start. I love when I do fill out of his songs. I was like, what is this? Oh, no, what crazy Philly fight song is this? Listen, I made it clear in the fall when the Phillies were in the World Series that we had a legitimate shot at going to three of the four next championships here in the U.S. And that's what's happening. Now we're two out of promised three championships on the way here, Jake.

Jake, you do know about football? I've heard it's a pretty important game. Do you know about the Super Bowl? That's the American football where you can use your hands. That's the American football where you use your hands. Do you know about Crisco? It's used mostly for baking, but also your people tend to like to rub it on poles. That's one way to put it, yes.

Yeah, so we're going to win the Super Bowl, and then the police department, probably today, maybe tomorrow, they'll start greasing the polls, as we call it, which they go out and they rob Crisco on all the polls, which doesn't stop any Philadelphian from climbing the poles. Because I'm not sure anyone, this is welcome to Off Nominal, by the way. So not only is this a thing we do after our sports teams win championships, it's a thing that happens like less than a mile from my house on the wreck in the Italian market. There is a greased pole climbing festival. So, yeah, see, you can see. You can see people. Oh, that's loud, isn't it?

No, it's only loud for me. So this is what happens. This is what happens here, Jake. we just climbed we climbed grease poles I'm hit the wrong about I don't know if there's a city that embodies leaning into the

off nominal spirit more than Philadelphia I really love it it's good there's a reason that half of this show is headquartered here like what other city where there's like we're going to grease the poles so you stop climbing in Philadelphia's like

we love this this this is now our thing we are owning this nobody nobody thinks it's to stop us anymore That was just like a required budget line item. Yeah, the city councilor got voted out because he didn't grease the polls enough. I just love it.

So like a couple years ago, we hired this new police commissioner from, she was from like Portland or something. And I just love that like at some moment, somebody had to sit her down and be like, all right, listen. The village is doing pretty well this year. We need to talk about the Crisco budget line item. Just like, what? Like, what are we doing? Do we do this? This is the thing that the police department does.

So I don't know who does it. I'm not sure what municipal thing does it. Parks and rec. Yeah. Anyway, Starship's about to do its static fire. So everyone's watching that. That's great. But what we're doing, Jake, is drinking.

Drinking. And talking about balloons, we think. Balloons. We're going in loose on this one. Yeah, yeah. We've got a little bit of a period. in our planning here that's a little more flexible, it's a little more Crisco, you know,

we don't really know what's going to go on here. So it's, but this crazy balloon has been kind of a funky story. And we have some stuff to talk about it. But what are you drinking? What do you got? Well, to be somewhat thematic, I have a couple of beers from a mix pack left that my brother-in-law,

Pat, I think he might listen to this show. I think he occasionally listens to this show. So hello, if you're, You're sponsoring the beer segment today. But this one is from a Vermont brewery called Zero Gravity that we were drinking the last time, the last Eagles game. This one's called Green State, which I feel like is a pretty thematic thing. There's a nice bird on it, too. Cool.

I dig it. I dig it. So the other ones, it was a mixed pack. They had some other ones. I guess Zero Gravity is pretty thematic. I didn't realize it has a gravity. But gravity is like, it's in all the names. Like comet and gravity galaxy hops are always running around.

Isn't gravity actually like a metric for beard? I don't like don't you read the gravity of the beard to churn how much alcohol is in it? Isn't that the word they use? I don't know. Brewers. Tweet us. Yeah, let us know.

Hit us up. I'm pretty sure gravity is a word you use in your brewer. This one's pretty refreshing, which is great because it is 60 degrees here today. Randomly. It was like 10 last week and now it's 60. So. Okay. Yeah, it's great.

So it's pretty refreshing. I got a new thing I'm trying. So I went to a, I went to an event. event this week and they had these things called tamarin margaritas. So it's a margarita, but it's got like, you know, like a tamron pola. So I made one. It's got a monkey in it. What, what's a monkey? What, what's a monkey? The kind of monkey or a lemur or something. Oh, it's like a vegetable of fruit or something. I think it's both, Jake. Okay. Well, whatever. Anyway, so it's not like it's tangy little little margarita, um, uh, uh,

thing going on with the tahine and the lime and yeah. Anyway, so I made one because they're really good. So I kind of fell in love. them. I might make these as just my normal margarita now. I don't know. Tamarin. Oh, tamarind. It's tamarind. Oh, okay. Excuse me. That looks good. That looks a little more involved than your recent ones have been. Yeah. I mean, I put it in a nice glass, which makes it look like you did hard work.

Ups it a little bit. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well. So. Um, yeah, why are we doing this show? Purely because I think your people failed us, Jake. My people.

You all people. This sailed right over your old house, this balloon. I didn't look at the trajectory, but I think it basically sailed over your, maybe either your childhood home or your previous place in the Vancouver area. Well, listen, but you didn't tell us about this balloon. As you know, buying. two governments that have had problems with the Chinese government lately. You're the one that's been snatching CEOs or whatever.

What was that storyline where they like kidnapped him to some lady who is a C-Walway's the Wally one? Yeah. So what the hell? You let this balloon slip by. Well, listen, we have a hard time buying fighter jets from you guys. It's been a whole thing. It's like a and apparently that's the only tool you can use to combat these balloons.

And so we were just, you know, all we really can do right now is kind of wrench your old like F-14s on the weekend. So we just, we just couldn't pull this one off. That's a good gig, though. That's a good gig. Yeah. Yeah. Look at this. Look at this thing, man. This is such a wild story. Like, I just, I, I, I, we were talking about this and it's just like, okay, is this a, is this a space story? Like, can we, should we even talk about this on off nominal? And it's like, because it's like this, it's not, it's not even like a, it's word stradalite. Is that what you say? Is it even that? Stratolite. I don't know. Is this is this. Just, just.

like a balloon it's like kind of high because like there's an F-22 there like it can't be that eye you know like I love that I love that you're like there's an F-22 it gave you that eye it's shooting a rocket out like I don't know I don't know how weapon systems work it's literally a rocket like you know literally my government's from trying to buy these things for like my entire adult life so I don't know well now we our sales listen I'm not you know I'm not you know I'm not I'm not a salesman for Lockheed. I'm more in their acquisitions department based on what I've been talking about lately

with Rocket Lab. But all I'll say is now we know that the F-22 can actually hit something air-to-air. Before this, we never knew that, other than training. This is the first time that anything has been hit air-to-air from an F-22, which I find hard to believe, yet very easy to believe.

I find that really hard to believe. Because, like, you've been flying these things for like 10 years or something, haven't you? Yeah. They're not brand-branded. Oh, way more than that. Yeah. 10 years ago, I was watching these things in air shows.

Okay. And so, like, has there really never been a time, like, across all of Afghanistan where, like, you haven't shot down a drone with an F-22? Like, how does this not happen yet? I don't, I don't get it. That's a real, that's a whole other conversation. If someone from the Air Force could send us a confirmation of that, that would be really great. Yeah, you're going to get the list of things the F-22 has been up to.

Go ahead. Yeah, there's just a Canadian here. You can send it to media at offnom.com. We'll accept your press statements there on the operational history of the F-22. All right. The real topic of the show is not, let's talk about the balloon, although that is a thing. The real topic is, is this a story that we should talk about on this show? That's what we want to get into.

Because there's a couple angles. Number one, the thing we always say about the Chinese space program is that they are speed running the space race era, right? That's their goal is to like do as many of the milestones that we did in the 60s and 70s. It's one of our listener that coined that. We have to give them credit. It was Jason who said that. He said they're speed running the Soviet space program is what they were doing.

And the thing they've been missing is let's do some UFO shit. Like, let's do it. Let's do some UFO shit. And now it's, this is, I think Marina had, Corrin had an article about this that was like, this is the quintessential UFO. Is that right? I think. that headline is great. Let me look this up. Sounds about right. I got a search. Now I'm going to search

the Atlantic for UFOs. Give me a second. There it is. Yes. Anthony's Googling stuff. Yeah. There it is. The Chinese balloon and the disappointing reality of UFOs. This is the perfect way to put it because

all this UAP shit. We tried to get Tom DeLong on this podcast when the UAP shit was hot. Right? Remember all that crazy stuff? Like all that was just mostly this kind of stuff. Yeah. That's what's going on here, Jake. Yeah, yeah.

Well, you know, we now know that the Chinese are all over this balloon spy thing. So I was throwing the other article that came out is they were like, you know, okay, there's this balloon. And it's like, where is it? Oh, it's over Montana. It's over. Illinois. It's over. And it just floated over.

And at some point, they were like, there was also another one in Latin America. Okay, thanks. Bye. And I, I, like, opened up the, like, where in Latin America? Like, Latin America is enormous. Like, it literally goes from San Diego to Antarctica. Like, where is? And it was like, it's in Latin America.

And I had to, like, go digging somewhere. I guess apparently it was Costa Rica. Costa Rica, yeah. But, yeah. Anyway, I thought that was funny. So we got, like, like, latitude and longitude for the American one. And then, like, a hemisphere. Yeah.

Did you look up the trajectory? Is it coming near your house? I don't know, man. They're not tracking that one that's hard. All right. Well, here's a couple things. I want to break down about this, because we clearly have no idea where to dig into this story.

Number one, I feel like this is generally exposed. It's like all of a sudden, the entire country had this like 1960s Sputnik moment mentality. Like, holy shit. Like there's a thing overflying my sovereignty. land, right? And you can get into the culture war aspect of this for sure. But, oh, the, the rocket's happening. Update, starship didn't blow up yet. It's doing a lot of fire. We'll get, I don't know, what is going on at the bottom there. That's a lot of stuff down there. I guess there's

birds from a long distance shot. Yeah. Anyway, it just like immediately flipped everyone into that Sputnik mentality, which may or may not have actually been the mentality, right? Like, this is one of the space race myths that you and I talk about of, like, isn't that actually what culture was like at the moment? Were people that freaked out about Sputnik? Did everyone actually hear it on radio signatures? Like, those kind of myths. But that's how everyone treated it.

It was like, I can't believe this is happening, which to me is just a good example that whether or not the imaging satellites that China's been launching recently are even close to the resolution of, like, the National Reconnaissance Office satellites, people have not consumed the fact that satellites still exist and it could take pictures of your house. Like that has not made its way into Jen Pop's mind. You know, they have Google Earth, but there's not like, but that's only Google, right? Certainly China doesn't have that. And that was bizarre to me. Yeah, that was a little weird, I guess. It is, it is hilariously, like, reminiscent of, of the past. And I, you know, I was doing a bunch of research.

on this guy. I was like, well, let's talk about balloons. And so I was looking up like old balloon missions and stuff. And there is like, I don't know. I felt like I was in the 1960s and also right now when I was like researching this stuff and watching these videos and stuff, it's, it's pretty wild. So I have some stuff to show you. I don't know what we want to do it in this episode. Yeah, yeah.

Well, no, because I got a couple more topical things. Okay, okay. Bring it on. Yeah. So I am interested in it as a space story because I find like there's, you know, the worldview hype. of previous era, what were they called originally orbital perspective or something, and they were going to take a dinner party up.

This is the, the off-nom booze cruise was going to be, right, right, right, right. We buy dinner in a balloon or whatever, and it goes up. No worldview, wasn't it one of those? Yeah, but I think it was called something different at the time. Yeah, it had like, it was basically a floating bar is what the thing was. Yeah. So they've kind of drifted away from space tours.

It's still listed on their site, but they've added more of like remote sensing imagery kind of stuff to that. And that's what I find interesting is that this is not titularly a space story, but it is like the thing that, you know, and assuming we don't actually fully know what the deal is with this balloon yet, we don't know exactly what the payload was, but assuming it was like imagery and stuff, this is an area where a non-space thing is doing the same activities as satellites and could have like better resolution or different kind of sensor package that it can support. So I do find it interesting that, you know, maybe there's areas where the hype around

planet or any given company is like, I don't know, is it the best imagery? Is it the most convenient way to do this? Is it worth launching that many satellites for however much money if you can just put a similar package up on a very cheap balloon and float it there? Like, I find that part curious to think about, you know? Or is this literally like, all right, well, our satellites are really good so we don't have to waste time like dealing with winds. So we're just rather launch a couple more satellites. And China's still like, I don't know, we haven't really gotten that payload totally dialed in yet. So let's float this sucker over there.

They haven't taken the American government approach, which is spare no expense, like whatever the best one is. This is one way to put it. This is the Chinese space program equivalent of American spent a billion dollars on a space pen and the Russians used a pencil. That was like, it's that one. Yeah. total.

It could be, I guess. I don't know. I mean, there's some more fun stuff, too. Like, they've been, I got to pull up this site or this article from the drive that was talking about, like, last year or two years ago, there was somebody in the Philippines that was taking pictures of, like, a zeppelin that China was testing over the South China Sea. So, like, zeppelins are back.

I don't know. I just feel all the sun we're like mid-century again, you know. It's all steampunking now, man. Steam buggy. Yeah, totally. That did lead me to looking up, like, have you ever looked at the pictures of the Hindenburg over New York City?

I think I've seen, like, the... It's a man in the High Castle shit. Yeah, the classic photo, right? Like, the Empire State Building and stuff. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, like, go look at that again, because that's just not...

It's a thing that you would never think is like a legitimate... Like, this is a legitimate photo, you know? Like... All we get now is good year blimps over the... The handball stadiums. Not just straight up the swastika over New York City.

Like, this is the most ominous. And honestly, is one of New Jersey's crowning achievements of destroying the airship era by blowing up the Hindenburg by accident. So, Lakehurst, New Jersey. Yeah. Yeah. That's it. That's what we got. No.

You have no thoughts about this balloon thing. No, I do. I do. I just, it's what's really funny is that, like, so I did this prep work for this project echo thing. And you are like setting up every single thing. This is, this is going to sound like we actually got together and planned this episode.

Because we did not. I have one last part. I have one last part. I have one last part. New Jersey. Oh my can't. Anyway, keep going. Yeah.

Okay. I mean, listen, home state, baby. I live in Philly now, but you can take the boy out of Jersey. But you can't take the jersey out of the crowd. You can't. You can't. You can't. That's Frankie Valley said that best, I think.

Where was I even going, Jake? Oh, the whole UFO aspect to this all. Number one, so the drive is a site that I have been telling you about, right? Because they've got some, they do like car stuff and whatnot, but they have this whole defense section of the site that has been doing the best reporting on all of this kind of stuff. And when the UAP mania was happening, they were writing articles like this. This was 2019, like, during Tom DeLong getting CIA contracts or whatever the hell was going on. Robert Bigelow was like using it to get out of bankruptcy or whatever. They were doing these excellent breakdowns of like, oh, it's like radar reflectors in a balloon.

So there's like a square in a balloon and it's floating over the ocean and this imagery was taken by that thing. And it's probably just some regular old stuff, right? Which all UFO stories turn out to be regular old stuff. And now after this whole incident, they've like looked back through the other times that these were like, because now the U.S. government is like, we've seen, you know, five of these over the last two years, and they floated over Florida and Hawaii and areas, or off the coast of Virginia was one, like areas where the UAP craze hit big time. So, like, it's just turning out exactly what we thought.

Like, 1960s was Soviet balloons and, like, balloons that we were using to spy on the Soviets. 2020s, like Chinese balloons are the UFOs. It's the same thing. Even so much, so I'm planning this trip to New Mexico, right? In May, we're going to go New Mexico, do some national parks. and Katie was like, do you want to, like, I know you're into space stuff, do you want to go to Roswell? And I was like, hell no, there's no reason to go to Roswell. Nothing happened there.

There is nothing of interest there to my sensibilities. It's literally like, they immediately knew what it was. It was this balloon that we were using to sense radiation from nuclear testing. It was just aluminum that some guy found not even close to Roswell, by the way. You can tell how annoyed I am at the whole UAP, UFO. like if you look up the Roswell story this is the Joshua National Park of Bay stories right now that's funny I'm just saying like go look at the Roswell story again nothing happened near Roswell the guy lived like hours away from

Roswell and that was the nearest town he drove in was like yeah I found a piece of the balloon you're looking for and and then somebody in the 90s was like we should make this a thing so all I'm saying is maybe Myrtle Beach is the new Roswell All right. Yeah. I'm digging it. Or Billings, Montana. I can tell that you, I can tell you've lived this story.

This, Anthony, I can tell that you felt it in your heart. Whatever. I just, I was like, yeah, I went through various, like, I just, the whole time felt like, is this that, like, this is that big of a story? Everyone's freaking out. We're doing Sputnik mania again over this. Like, yeah. I don't know.

It'll be interesting to find out, like, what they were trying to get at with, this, right? And then that's the whole thing, was like, we flew U-2s over it to see what it was sending out and eventually recovering the hardware that after it was shot down. Like, there's pictures now of the recovery. So it'll be fun. And I'm curious mostly, like, some of these satellite companies that have said, we're going to put up 18 more satellites so we can have revisit times of interesting areas every two hours or whatever. maybe just float some balloons too if you want persistent imagery right there's creepy there's creepy aspect to persistent imagery but it does cut into the market something i mean i guess it depends

how many balloons china flew out and and one of them happened to go on the exact path that they wanted yeah like you just put it in the jet stream and see where where nature takes it like that's kind of i don't know i don't really know how these work but i think it's more about finding the level i've never flown a balloon, but I think you can find the right level to float the direction you want. Just go up and down and go to the wind you want. Right. That's kind of, I've read a little bit about that, and that's kind of what it sounds like.

I have no idea. Yeah. But like Project Loom, the Google thing, they did have problems. Was it Puerto Rico when they were trying to like loiter long term at Puerto Rico? and they kept like, they were struggling at that for a bit. I don't know if that has anything to do with just the positioning of it.

It's like in the tropics, like just getting sucked right up the coast and all that. But I don't know. Balloons. Yeah. I'm just curious of the areas in which, like, a market can be eaten into that you would think is a satellite company area, right?

And then, like, could you do it with cheap balloons? That's curious. Yeah, yeah. At some point, like, I guess there's got, to be like an altitude where it stops being okay. I don't that that's what's really kind of interesting to me where because like if I fly a drone like outside your bedroom window and take a picture of you like I'm breaking laws. But if I just if I go up 10 feet, am I still breaking another lot? Like if I go up 100 feet at that like where is where is it stop being like creepy and just

be like normal? Like I don't I don't know where that is. Even legally right. Like don't I if I own this plot of land which I do like I. Like I, to a certain altitude, I own the airspace, but it's not very high, I don't think. I have no idea. I never looked into this, but I think that might be true. I don't think I own up to like Chinese balloon territory, but that was, um, that movie, one of the oceans movies was about that. I think it was oceans 13 and one of the, they had to like fake being a rich person.

And the claim, like, why is this guy rich was that he, he bought all the air. Like, so like he would buy the air above everyone's houses. He was in real estate because he owned all air. That was like the story of that rich person. They were just a little early on the whole like FCC orbital slot ownership of craze. Yeah. Oh, man. All right.

What's up with these other balloons? You were looking into some balloons. Yeah. I mean, there's not really like a like a content story here. I was just like I was curious about balloons and I knew that there was these old ones called Project Echo from way. back in the day. And I was like,

I'm going to go read up on these and refresh my memory. And it's like actually surprisingly topical. There is like a lot of stuff in here that I was like, oh man, I'm really glad I watched this. It's pretty good. So yeah, so there's like this project echo.

This is like 19. It's right at the start of NASA. It's like literally like 1958. They're putting this thing together. And hearkening back to this recent We Martians episode I did about the founding of JPL. This is like literally JPL's first project. Not the one that just came back from the grave. No, no, no, we'll talk about that later.

But no, so the founding of JPL, like JPL was part of Caltech and part of the army. And then in 1958, NASA happened. And then they took control of JPL and they said, you're part of NASA now. Please make this giant balloon satellite for us. And then they went to work on Project Echo. So that's kind of funny how that worked out. But I mean, this is not like a crazy, interesting piece of technology. I mean, I'm sure it was at the time.

But like it's like a hundred foot metallicized balloon. and they put it into orbit and on my favorite ugly rocket, the Thor or whatever one it is. And then they did a test where they just sent a message from Goldstone, California, to your home state of New Jersey. That was the test. Oh, really? Yeah.

So there's the silly balloon. Using it to see if they could kill more airships? What was the plan? They were just sending a phone call. This is literally like a tech demo. this is like the most hilarious thing. So they would just literally fire a radio signal at it and it would bounce back down. So they were just bouncing it off the balloon?

Literally, it's like a mirror in space. And so they would send a phone call. They started with like an Eisenhower message and then sent it back down and then they actually made a phone call, I guess. But yeah. Sounds super secure. Yeah. Some presidential messages over reflective balloons. This will work.

This will get them. You have to go to the start of this documentary, like the very opening scene, and put the audio one. I was just, I just made me laugh because we need to start more documentaries like this. This is like so fun. Let me crank it. Let me crank it. I got no sound. I don't know if you got sound coming through.

I thought I did. Oh, you know what? Hold on. The big bounce. Hold on. Hold on. Let me work the issue. Listen, folks, what Jake provided me with was an Ogvorbus.

Okay. And so what I need to do is now get a new browser that's not hooked into my current flow here. So let's give me a second. I watched it in Safari. So I don't know what you're a big problem. I don't know what's going on. This should work though. The big bounce.

Here we go. The big bounce. Is this working now? Yeah. Listen to that music. We need to start more documentaries like this. This is what I'm saying. We need more things narrated by Larry Thor, too, by the way.

That's amazing name. And it's like two minutes of credits before anything starts. I was going to ask how long we're going to watch this spooky credit. No, that's fine for that. I just wanted to jump. And this guy walking into frame. Yeah, the title of an is also just great. The big bounce.

Like they were just, I don't know. I love that. Wait, where did he, so he just said where it was. Let's see where it was. Somewhere in New Jersey. That's the one. That's the one in New Jersey now. I want to know what town, Jake. Helms Deep or Helmsdale?

Oh, yeah, twiddle those knobs. Look at that. Right, right? So did you watch this whole thing? I did watch this whole thing, yes. The big bounce. The big bounce. It was in Holmdel.

Oh, Hombel? Oh, Hondo? Oh, okay. So did it work? It did work. And if you want to see some great acting, demonstrating how it works, go to 1017 on the track.

I was in my office this morning by myself. It's like dying of laughter because they recreate. I don't think this is the real test. It can't be. So they brought in a film crew and like recreated the successful message. And these are just like engineering dudes in the 1960. And they don't know how to act. Oh, these guys from the intro?

This is great content. Jake. Oh, I look good. No emotion. We have it now, Bill. Good. Let's hope we can keep it. The quick cut.

Tracking looks good, too. Jake, I don't want to stop watching this. This is incredible content. It's really good. It was released by the United States government in a very special period of time, where it becomes public domain so we can air it on our channel. Oh, that's great.

It's fantastic. So we might just post the whole video to YouTube just for fun as we can, and that's how copyright law works. That was the original version of, like, do you ever watch the movie Miracle? I'm sure you have. Miracle. I probably have watched the hockey movie Miracle. Oh my Lord.

Yeah, I might be failing here. It might be revoking my passport here. Jesus. Miracle. I don't watch it. I don't like sports movies. That's a good one. Anyway, when they were doing that,

they were, this is about the 1980 game, the US beat the Red Army, you know? Yeah, yeah. But they were like, should we teach actors to play hockey or hockey players to act? And they determined that hockey players to act was way better because it would take too long to teach a hockey stop, basically. You know, like Paul Rudd's never going to figure out a hockey stop.

We can't do that. We've got to go this other way. So they actually went the correct way as opposed to Army. again that chose to turn drillers into astronauts is what you're saying. Totally. Okay. Yeah.

So balloons. Certifiedly not a space story. Well, okay. So we're learning. Here's what's really funny, but I was reading the the objectives of this mission, like what they were trying to accomplish with it. And it's like just like simple tech demo stuff.

But look at this. There's like a list of all these things. And I'll read this from the Wikipedia. This is the last mission objective of Project Echo. So this is 1916. see they flew this, okay? The, and put yourself now back into 2023. Provide precedent for the overflight of other nations by surveillance satellites.

Nailed it. So they were, they were trying to say that we can do this. We're allowed to overfly other nations with balloons and look at yours. Yeah. And here we are worried about the Chinese. It's the whole thing. It's perfect. It's perfect.

Yeah, it's old as new again. Yeah. Yeah. So. I mean, look, if you want to watch another movie that you, you've never watched. I think it was called Bridge of Spies about Gary Powers.

Is that the one with Torn H? Shotdown. Yeah, he's the negotiator in it. Yeah, yeah, I've seen that. Yeah, I've seen that. That's a good one. But that, I mean, that was the same deal, right? Like, we're gonna fly over places

and take pictures with the camera suite. It's like the same thing that we've always been doing. That was like you two stuff, right? So it's like really high and then, yeah. Well, it was Blackbird. It was Blackbird, right? No, that was you two? I thought it was you too.

I thought it was you too. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You too. I was thinking about a blackbird because I was thinking about how that was the funniest one because it was just like, well, we're going to make a plane that goes faster than you can shoot it down. So, see ya. You know? I was like the one mission of it was we're still going to do overflights.

We just need to haul ass when we do them. And it's like, all right, great. We got it. Like, we can do this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Blackbird, that's the S-E-S-R-71, right? Yeah. What's the one?

It's the nighthawk. That's the other stealth one. the little bomber, right? It's a F117, night one 17? Yeah, yeah. That one is, I was really disappointed when I grew up and, and learned that that is not a fighter jet, it's a bomber.

As a kid, it was like, this is like, it's got this like Darth Vader looking like nimble, tiny little fighter thing and it's like, no, it's a bomber. Okay. Yeah, a couple things. So the only reason to go in the general area of Joshua Tree National Park

is so that you can see the Nighthawk that is at the Air and Space Museum in Palm Springs. There's one sitting there. There's no more black finish on it. It's scrubbed down in all the stealth coating that's like nasty stuff is scrubbed off of it. So it's just gray. Yeah, it looks pretty sweet.

I probably have a picture of it. Looks like a space Xkeeper having. You want to see the picture I took of it? Maybe I take a picture. Oh, yeah. I don't know. I can't get a take down request for that. That's true.

For anyone who wants to know what it's like to be on YouTube, it's mostly just trying not to get taped out. The other fun thing about the Nighthawk was the, that was the one that no one knew about until, like, one morning, there were bombs that hit Baghdad. And the U.S. was like, yeah, that was us. We did it. You didn't even know we were there.

Like, we were in and out. Nothing was tracked. Like, we have a plane that can do that now. And I was like, what the hell? Yeah. There is a great book. So if you, I don't know, if I have a podcast. picture that I took. I might not have taken a picture of it.

Okay. There is a great book that is, uh, what's it called? It's, I guess it might just be called skunk works. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. The Ben Rich one. It's the guy that, yeah, skunk works,

personal memoir of my years at Lockheed. Uh, so Ben Rich was like the early, he eventually ran skunk works. He was lower level when they were doing night hawk and stuff. or when they're doing earlier ones in that. But that's an awesome, awesome book about the founding of it, how it all worked. I think if you're interested in aerospace stuff, that's like a really sweet look into how some of these projects went.

So there's some really cool anecdotes in there. You're bringing back picks. Apparently, this is a show of balloons and picks. No, honestly, that was one of my favorite books I've read in the last couple years. Cool. Okay, I'll take a look. Do you want to see one more fun clip from that document? want to see one more phone.

Okay. If you go to 423, this is less funny and more prescient. So well, prescient and also like kind of innocently naive or maybe, I don't know, it just, we'll just watch it. And it's good. And decide later what this is. So this is their look at the, look at the future of satellites and what they can do with that.

Because this is 1960, right? They're trying to like convince the public wise. satellite for good. Yeah, totally. So. Wow. Cool. That looks familiar.

Been outlined by the Bell system. The plan envisions several strings of equipped satellites, altogether about 50 of them. Oh, interesting. The laser link idea, though. So close. So close. So close.

And if you wanted to send, say, and then watch this here. program to some area not covered by any single satellite the signals might be bounced from transmitter to satellite back to earth up to a second satellite and down to the destination perhaps that way you could maintain continuous transmission of telephone calls and television programs to various parts of the earth but scientists have conjectured even far beyond this perhaps someday it will be possible while to put up a precisely position is at best far in the future at best is at best far in the future so I like that this whoever this well you said this is 1960s release so it could have been produced a couple years before that I just love if this when they flew I don't know like nothing was made yeah okay well I just love that this narrator was doubting that satellites would have worked even in the era where

there were satellites yeah yeah yeah yeah spot make had happened if it became possible to launch something, then maybe we could put up a satellite. Like the United States had already like retired an herbal rocket at this point. They're all like, ah, we're done with that one. We don't need the, we don't need the Vanguard rocket anymore. Let's try something different. Man, that's so funny. Tupper in the chat is talking about there's an Air Force base where an aircraft on display.

I had a big pedestal that had been removed for repainting. So just the pedestal is there. And somebody put an F-117 Nighthawk sign on it. And I think I have a photo of that in particular. I think because I, there was one of those at the airplane bone yard that is in Tucson. And maybe I didn't get a picture. It's like, just like a giant field full of dead airplanes. Yeah, I drove by the Nighthawk sign.

Maybe I didn't, I was on the bus when we did it. So I didn't, I don't think I got a picture of it. But yeah, there's a. that place is oh no I don't know I took a picture of a vomit comment but that's totally a good joke that works out there

anyway so yeah Project Echo balloons they've always been around it's always been balloons it's always been a thing it's the Ohio meme it's just it's just balloons always has been it is funny because it makes you think

like if we're almost doing it the inverse, right, where we have satellites and it's like, I guess you could just put a satellite on a balloon, that's cool. And I like to imagine that, like, in the 50s, it was like, what if we put, what if we didn't need the balloon? What if we just took that thing that's on the balloon

and then flung it into space? It's like almost the exact opposite you could picture, you know. In this economy? But that's what I was getting at earlier, is that, like, how expensive is this balloon? I mean, the helium inside it is probably the most expensive thing. So maybe this is breaking the budget a little bit. No, didn't they solve the helium crisis, though?

Didn't they're like, we were running on a helium? We did. And then someone found like an enormous big pocket of it in Africa or something. And now we're like, we're good for helium forever. I thought that was a story that it happened. I don't. I didn't follow that. A few years ago, there was like a little bit of like a concern, right?

Yeah. Because you can't make helium. Like, it's just helium. It's like. Stars make it. Yes. Yeah. Stars make it.

And then it is. And it doesn't react with anything. That's like the whole point of it. Right. So it's just kind of, it's there or it's not there. If you want to have helium, you need to go find helium. But yeah, there was like some big giant like, I guess these are like, this is wild. They're just like caves underground that are full of helium.

That's like where you get helium from. Man, nature's weird. What a place. What a place we live in. Helium caves. Yeah. Should we kick around any other topics that have been on your mind or Should we talk about how Wee Martians back from the grave?

We can talk about We Martians if you want. Yeah, this is a really funny story. So I put an episode out today. I was laughing as I'm like hitting the publish button. I'm like, no, I got to go explain this. After all the freaking drama that I've been right. But so as I was like setting this all up, I actually had talked to Bruce, who's the PI of Insight, the principal investigator of insight.

Like, I've been trying to get him on the show since. October, I think, is when I first reached out to him last, because at that point, it was like looking like Insights mission was maybe winding down a little bit. Things were looking a little tight. I was like, I should get Bruce on. We could talk about these last days. And then he's like, yeah, I'd love to come on. And they had a conference we had to deal with. And then there were some illnesses. And then there was another conference. And then there was Christmas. And it just like, it never happened. And we couldn't get it all lined up. And so I went ahead with, you know, ending the show. And then I think like as soon as I like published like, I'm done and like hit

all the publish buttons is like reading right in my email. Hey, I'm ready to do the show now. Right. I was like, oh man. So yeah. Anyway, I couldn't say no to it. I insight is, I don't know, it's like a super special mission to me. Maybe more than it deserves to be, but I have to go, you know, watch. Be there. Be there. Be near it. And I got to go hear the launch. And it's the only Mars mission, only any mission that I covered start to finish. So that's kind of cool, right? I just love that now your site reads like all the times that Elon Musk said he was leaving Twitter before where he was like, yeah, I'm done tweeting for a while. And then like 10 minutes later, he was tweeting. An hour and 15 minutes later. Yeah, he's like 10 days ago, six hours ago.

I love that. Yeah. Yeah, I know, I know. So it's not coming back. I just, I did that one. That's on the house. That's for free. Just, I am, it felt very self-indulgent, so I don't feel like a very, I just like, just turned the microphone on and let Bruce talk to me for an hour. And it was like, great. I loved it.

It probably was the most relaxing show you've done because you didn't have to worry about, like, who do I have lined up next and what's going on? Yeah, a little bit, a little bit. Yeah. And, you know, and he's a great talker. He didn't require a lot of editing. So I just got to listen back to it. and take out like a cough here and there and that was fine, you know, and it was good.

So, yeah, it was a lot of fun. So it's, that's just, it'll be probably a pretty good episode. I think so. And I'm happy to get it out there. Well, you want to do a little lining round? I got, I have some news topics that I brought, Jake. Oh, okay. All right.

This is more of a follow up segment more than a terminal account. More of, okay. We have some recent storylines we've been following. And I thought we maybe should just check in on these things. Okay. Sure. Yeah. Virgin orbit almost definitely going out of business.

Story number one, right? I saw those tweets. Was it last week? Was it Eric was tweeting about it? Yeah. Yeah. He's like, this is not the kind of thing you do

when you're like really good shape. So virgin something or other. What's the name of the thing? Like there's a virgin. Vox Media. No, no, that's totally different. Doesn't it Vox? Isn't it Vox?

Or is it? No, well, yes, that's their like DOD arm. Yes, Fox Media is the blog. I guess it's just the Virgin Group, right? Invested. Virgin Group. 10 million. Oh, from Virgin Investments Limited.

That's what I'm looking at. They invested 10 million into Virgin orbit, and as a stipulation on that, they get all of the assets of Virgin orbit if and when they go out of business first. So they basically invested 10 million to get a 747, which has to be. the best deal for a 747 of all time. That's what I'm thinking. So that, I just wanted to comment on that. It does seem like Virgin might have the plans to put the Boeing's together.

Maybe they're going to sell this all up as a package deal to Boeing. What do you think? Yeah, I mean, Boeing's the buyer that makes the most sense from a comedy content standpoint for us. So we're really rooting for that one. You know, couldn't ask for much more over here at the off-nominal media corporation for a blowing buyout of a 747 rocket company. And to keep it Eric Burger themed on our second follow-up item, he had a nice report about Vulcan that is he is putting at the end of this, Jake. Let's just zoom in real quick. Let's zoom in.

You can go ahead and read that. You read that out loud. if you want. Is this the last one here? This very likely pushes the debut of Vulcan into May, May, the readiness of Peregrine. That's what we're looking at. I'm sorry, were you still in? I was, but it's fine.

Readiness of Peregrin in progress, majoring Vulcan testing. Wasn't there even a line in there? Wasn't there a line for you in there talking about the engines not being ready? I felt like that was an end in line. Some would say, some would say it might be. Yeah, I don't know. after your whole thing about counting engines at Astrobotic HQ. I was, and I think the count is still on, unfortunately.

Okay, all right. So Eric will be coming on next week to kick that story around a little bit. He will. Just wanted to update everyone that even though Jake lost me a day point in the Nostradam bot betting by betting that the Starship static fire would not happen today, I still have like $27,000, so it's fine. Actually, it turns out I may not have lost that point. Why?

Because I think I stipulated that it was 33 engines, and it sounds like maybe one or two didn't fire. Okay, I was going to say, should we use the last couple minutes to check in on this and discuss? Probably, probably, but I don't know where to check on that. You have some sort of live content over there. What's going on? I just saw it.

No, I saw it in our own YouTube comments here. Oh, it's in here? Okay. Yeah, yeah. You know, I think I think I might be okay here. apparently there was an Elon tweet that'll do it I don't know what that means

team turned off one engine just before start and stopped itself so 31 engines fired overall well what happened to the other one then no one one turned itself off and the team turned the other one off yeah so one on purpose and one by accident

ah okay 31's pretty good 31's great that's a pretty good pretty good I mean, this is actually best of both worlds for me because I win the prediction and I get to have a static fire. Totally. And good progress is made.

Yeah, yeah. Like, this is great news. Yeah, this is the best news. Yeah, we both get a day point and it seems like things are moving in the right direction. So is this going to, Jake, it's getting pretty close here, man. It is getting close. I'm starting to feel a little nervous about my September tweet. Yeah, I'm feeling a little.

What did I put? Same. A little hot under the collar on that one there. I don't know, we're all kind of in the end there, I think, between me and, was that Lauren that was on this year? I felt that, and then there was an Elon tweet like yesterday or something where he was like, hopefully it'll fly this year, yeah. But as, I think it was Nakara in the, I actually have no idea how to pronounce his

username, but I think I got it. Is that the correct pronunciation he can let us know. One of those words you only ever read. Yeah. As he put, once Elon starts like putting some fud into the air, then that means. it's close, right? Like, talking heavy was going to blow up one day before it took off.

So if it's like doom and gloom, that means things are moving in the right direction. It's almost there. So that is a great sign. Yeah. I almost think that's just, that's just him trolling us. Like Elon just being like,

maybe. It's actually called, I can do whatever I want. Big Silver Rocket now is what the name is. Yeah. You call it Big Silve. It's actually called Big Weiner. Big Weiner Rocket.

It's called Woke Illuminati Rocket. It's more like what he would rename it these days. The free speech one, it's called Mark 1. We're off the rails. We're really off the rails, yeah. Oh, man. How are you working on there? What's going on in your role?

How did we get here? I'm sorry for this. How did we get here? I'm sorry about this. It's all good. They can't all be bangers, Anthony. Here, well, I've got some good news for people. Nobody's watching us anyway.

They're all watching. they're all watching start shaking. All right, listen, we mentioned, we mentioned that Eric Berger's coming on next week. Week after that, fan favorite and our favorite, Lori Garver returns to the show. Lori Garver's coming back. She's been doing some new stuff in the Brooke Owens world,

and they've got a whole new set of recruits. I'm sure we'll get into some other topics. And then also, she's going to be on Miko. So her and I are scheduled to chat tomorrow, so I feel good about pre-announcing this one. but this will be a fun one, Jake. Maybe we can brainstorm some things while I'm talking here. Because what I proposed to her was we talk that she just spent all this time and all these interviews talking about NASA history and policy.

I want to know, like, if she was back there today, what would she do about all these policy topics? How would she handle commercial Leo? How would she handle the Russian ISS segment situation? The human landing system. There's all these interesting space policy topics that because everyone wanted to do. to talk about the book, right? So, great book. I feel like it hasn't been a lot of content about, like, what would you do with policy, X, Y, or Z? And that's pretty good. So what do you got any hot button items? You got to grill her on, on sort of like, we got to give her some pushback here

and make her, I mean, you know, Lori is obviously won our hearts and sort of what what her stance was, you know, in the 2000s and the 2010s. Like, I think we're all on board the Lori train for for that that policy decision process. But, you know, I think it would be fun to put her on the spot a little bit and try and poke some holes in the strategy, right? Because that's somehow, sometimes how you can get some really good details is where you're like, no, prove it. Like, let's, you know, bring your receipts.

What's going on here? So what do you got? I would love to ask her. And you kind of alluded this to, so I'm way behind on your podcast, by the way. So I'm going to like dredge up stuff. But I just listened to the Casey Dreyer episode from the midterm. and you know he loves this this topic of of SpaceX as you know policy by outlier right like do you do do you do a program around what SpaceX can do when only SpaceX can do it no one else can like come

close to that right so I would love to hear her stance on that like what do you do if you're NASA what the hell do you do with SpaceX like how do you how do you use them but also like keep yourself you know secure and that is a yeah I wasn't even thinking about bringing that up but that's a great way to put it because when her time at NASA, right, like the thing she was pushing for was, let's do these because what we might get out of it is one of these breakout outliers. But we only got one breakout outlier.

So then what? Yeah, now what is a really interesting way to put, especially with Starliner doing its thing. Like it's only going to fly six flights at the ISS, and that's probably it. Yeah, maybe if, If all the cards play out nice, it'll get to go to the Blue Origin Space Station. But, like, there's a lot of ifs and Roblox on that path, right?

I doubt it. So, yeah, I don't know. That's an interesting thing to me. It's just like, I almost want to hear, like, a panel with her and Casey on it. That's what we got to get to gone. There we go. I'll follow that one way because there's a place I should use that idea. Yes.

Yes, it is. As you may know. So that's going to be a fun one. let's talk about one other thing, Jake, before we're out of here, because I would like to just give a quick shout out to Freddie. Yeah, Freddie. Freddie is somebody who said, I never fly ride share. So people have been diving in the Discord. Yes, yes.

Freddie is a dedicated launch kind of guy. He decided that he wanted to enter the Discord on his own terms, at his own schedule, on his own orbit. And he didn't care what the price was. Nope. So shout out to Freddie. So if you're somebody out there that feels the same that you would never fly ride share, you got to get in this. So, no, but seriously, the Discord.

Remind people how this works, Jake. Yes, yes. So if you go to Offnom.com slash Discord, you can see how you can support the show. Our Discord is awesome. It's been popping lately. There's been lots of new people coming in and changing the dynamic. You know, whenever you get someone new, you always get to kind of experience some new perspectives and stuff, which has been really fun.

I love it when new people. join. We had some great conversations. There was a very hilariously pedantic argument about whether the space shuttle was a rocket or not. And so if you have an opinion about that, we want to know what you think. I am staunchly in the, yes, it's a rocket camp. But I face some very, very stiff resistance to that one. So that was kind of fun. We have weird conversations like this all the time. Like this is what it's like to be. Sometimes they're space related. Sometimes they're about macaroni and cheese, but it's a lot of fun. All valuable debates that are better than the debates that you're having elsewhere on the

internet. Yes, yeah. Hands down, get out of Twitter replies. That's garbage. Garbage land. You don't want to engage with people in Twitter replies. Get into this Discord. Come talk to some smart people who, you know, they have, they got skin in the game.

They're paying five bucks a month just like you can. So they want to be there. Or more if you're into never flying ride share. 25 bucks if you're never flying ride share. Last order of business, since we're going to be busy the next two weeks with guests, so I thought we should get some homework out of the way here. I had pitched a few times that you should go to Offnom.com slash feud, put in your response to what we'll play as Family Feud.

144 of you have done that, which is an excellent number. We could use a couple more if you haven't yet. Put your answers in. But I'm also going to start, so the trouble that I've put myself in, Jake, is that I've developed the great idea for a game show that I'm going to play. and I have nobody to help sort out the data so that I don't see it and cheat. So I'm accepting applications if you would like to help collate these answers. And I just have to warn you, again, I can't not remind you how terribly you all did at the prompts that I asked for newlyweds questions.

You all did so bad at that. So just be fully aware if you're going to try to help out with this idea, be aware of what people. people will have put on you in this Google sheet. I haven't looked at it. I'd only looked at how many rows there are. I have not looked at the answers. It's probably a hot mess. And I guess you should also know, you know, potential candidates should also know that Anthony apparently has very high standards for the work you do for us. So bring your A game or he will bring you through the mud every episode going in. Listen, here's the job description. Go through this horribly formatted input in Google form that you all probably screwed up.

and then organize that, just condense the answers a little bit so that we have a viable percentile ranking, right? Have you ever, number one requirement? You've watched an episode of Family Feud. That is a number one requirement. None of you watched the newlyweds. I need somebody that's watched Family Feud. So how that's going to result is there's going to be answers to these questions.

Jake and I are going to guess what your answers were. We will get points based on the percentage of the audience that answered that answer. Right. So if 99% of you said Falcon 9 was your favorite, a rocket, which probably was the answer, we would get 99 points, right? That's how family feed works. So I just need somebody to help coelate these answers, do some percentage math, and then we'll figure it out from there. I haven't, that's the only step I figured out so far. Yeah, and you'll have to, you'll have to do like some of the work of like, you know,

if the answer is our rockets and someone puts Falcon and someone puts Falcon 9 and someone puts Falcon rockets, like you got to, you got to bundle this together. and sort of like, you got to put together in sort of like interesting ways, you know? Right. Two requirements. You've watched Family Feud

and you have some degree of space knowledge and taste that you can merge these in the right way. Reading company. Yeah. Yeah. Because we have people in our life we could ask the help that have, would not know which things to merge.

So. No, no, no. That's the real trouble there. Yeah. Yeah. So that's what I got, Jake.

You got anything else? That's going to be fun. I can't wait. No, you know, I'm just sort of wrapping stuff up. So it's been, it's been an admin kind of week for me,

cleaning things out and getting the last episode done. But yeah, it's been good. I just been working out so that I can climb the polls on Sunday night. Yeah, okay, good. That's been my primary thing. Is the superb owl this weekend? The superb owl is this weekend? I just, hey, fun fact, five years ago,

Falcon Heavy launched the two days after the Eagles won the Super Bowl Best week ever I won the Super Bowl I was on Broad Street until too late I woke up three hours later to go to the flight to meet you in Florida

to go to Falcon Heavy to watch it launch to get on a plane immediately and land and go right to the Super Bowl parade so like that was an excellent week five years ago I recently saw a rocket launch

in person again for the first time of five years because of the pandemic plus having a child really put things in a weird spot and what do you know it the Eagles are going to win the Super Bowl again. So, now you have it, Jake.

Now you're up to news on sports. This is the sports section of Off-N-N-L-L-I-L-Wish you and your your Criscoe Crusaders well in their endeavors this weekend. May you kick many balls and hold them with your hands and whatever you do for, yeah. All right. And if you want Jake's live toots on the matter, Spacie. Got space is where we're at on mass. Yeah, yeah.

I will live tweet the Eagles game. How's that? No, I will not. That's not a, that's not a good thing. See later, everybody. Bye. One, two, three, four, five, four, three, two, one, into death.