This Week in Space 134 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.
00:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
On this episode of this Week in Space, we're talking about the world's only wooden space shuttle, with Ben Dickow of the Columbia Memorial Space Center. Stay with us. Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is TOTE. This is this Week in Space, episode number 134, recorded on October 25th 2024, the Spruce Space Shuttle. Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the Spruce Space Shuttle edition. Say that fast, five times. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Ad Astra magazine. I'm joined, as always, by my good friend, the endearing Tarek Malik, editor-in-chief at Spacecom. Now and forever. How are you, sir?

00:47 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Hello hello, hello, I'm doing well, rod Doing well, it's Friday, as we're recording this Friday, yes, Always is we do these. I woke up this morning I thought it was Wednesday and I was like I don't have two more days in me for this week.

01:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And then I realized it was Friday. That's more like what happens to guys my age, where you have to put a sign up over your bed saying it's Friday. Stupid, get up before 10. And today we'll be speaking with our friend Ben Dickow. The President and Executive Director of the Columbia Memorial Space Center Can't say that even once About their upcoming new exhibit, which is a wooden space shuttle. Now, we had an episode on this back in the 80s somewhere where we talked to one of the people working on the project. But since then it's been hauled out of storage and made its way towards a new building and it's being restored. So I'm excited to talk about that, because any full-size space shuttle is cool. One out of wood is certainly unique and I'm looking forward to learning more about that.

01:47
But before we start, please don't forget to do us a solid. Make sure to like, subscribe, push the button to make sure that everybody in the world knows that you love us and love our world, that you at least like us and enjoy our show. You don't have to love us, but we're counting on you. I need the love. I need the love. Wow, and now our space joke. Yes, from me this week.

02:09 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Oh, from Rod. All right, I'm ready, rod, lay it on me.

02:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Hey, tarek, yes, Rod, why don't we need to worry about Pluto hitting Neptune when it crosses this orbit in 2227? I don't know why. Why not?

02:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Because they only have a Plutonic relationship. I love it. I love it.

02:29 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It brings tears to my eyes. Now I've heard that some folks want to shut off their life support and drift out towards the Kuiper Belt when it's joke time on this show. But you can save us from ourselves. Send us your best, worst or most indifferent space joke at twisttv. I knew I'd get that right. A couple of quick show notes before we go to headlines.

02:52
We got some email on our last episode. A couple of people were not happy with it actually, and it was certainly not our intent to offend anyone. Tarek warned me we were straying into a political lane and we tried to keep from doing that too much. But really we wanted to talk about the state of human spaceflight and what might be done to accelerate US efforts in that area because, as regular listeners know, we're lagging a bit, especially on the human spaceflight side, with the race being essentially neck and neck with China, if you consider it a race. Regardless of my personal political opinions, I thought it was important to get input from both sides of the aisle about what our future plans are, especially for spaceflight, and at some point, probably after the election, we'll be hearing about what the plans are or were for the other side, as it were, but we'll revisit that issue when we're able to get somebody to come on Also from the mailbag.

03:48
We'd like to grab some of our multitudinous emails from time to time for the show. First one here is from Bob, and Bob please forgive me if I don't get your name right I think it's Harank, a retired systems engineer, who says hey, Rod, taking you up on your ad aster invite to drop a line about what space exploration development means to me. I don't consider exploitation to be a negative word in this context, as it implies both exploration and development at the same time. So my pet phrase is space exploitation gives hope for humanity, both technologically and for growth into an interplanetary species. Yes, we're right there with you. Thanks for writing. Interplanetary species yes, we're right there with you. Thanks for writing, Also from Bob Cornes, who wrote me about a different subject. And no, he hasn't located the alleged missing fortune of my great uncle, Horatio Pegleg Pyle, who was a legendary scourge of the coast of Nova Scotia until he discovered, after wrecking on the foggy shore, that there was no treasure in those cold northern climes. But that's a family story, bob did advise me.

04:47 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Is that true?

04:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
is that, is that not at all there's a story behind it, though I'll tell you another time. But he said hey, be sure to cut tarik a break now, and then you're so harsh on that guy well bob.

05:01
I don't have innumerable women of a certain age pining over their soy lattes for me, so I figured this is the only justice I'll get, Besides Tarek's very jolly, and his cat told me he secretly loves the attention. All right, let's get to some headlines here. First up, Crew 8 is back. Yes, Headline news Shut up, Rod until the finger plays. Okay.

05:25 - Tariq Malik (Host)
She wants to say it's headline news Tell us Well, yeah, we had an interesting story happen today, so the SpaceX's Crew-8 mission for NASA finally returned to Earth overnight, basically early in the morning on this recording day, which is great, and it wrapped up what is the longest Dragon mission ever, and so you know, that's kind of news in itself. We were wondering when they were gonna get back. And what was it? Hurricane Milton, is that the recent one?

05:53 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
That was the one that delayed it, I think.

05:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
so, yeah, the most, yeah, for a while, and they were having really bad offshore storms that were making the recovery a bit difficult and challenging to map out. That should change in the future, because they're going to start landing astronauts back in the Pacific. It should be easier for them. But after 235 days they're back on Earth. So they had a press conference a few hours after landing and they're like hey, everything's fine, crew's great, everyone's fine.

06:23
And then sent out a very cryptic email or a blog update that said that all three crew members were taken to a local hospital for additional medical checks. Nasa, in which they say that they went to an Ascension Sacred Heart Hospital in Pensacola, florida, and all three of them Matthew Dominick, michael Barrett and Jeanette Epps, you know, were there. Oh and, pardon me, roscosmos Alexander Grabenkin. So there's four of them that came back. We're there for those checks, but one of them remains in the hospital now for additional monitoring as a precautionary member. Nasa's not saying who of the four astronauts it is. The other three have since made their way back to Johnson Space Center in Houston and the astronaut that is at the Ascension Hospital is in stable condition under observation. So you know they're not dishing on who or what it is, you know, and what the issue is for this. It is definitely atypical and not nominal.

07:38
We've got a bit of video of them egressing. You can see they're being pulled out onto waiting stretchers because they've been in space for close to six months, or actually more than six months, so they're feeling gravity for the first time. They're kind of woozy and whatnot. Sometimes they need help to move around.

08:00
There is a long adaptation period where they get their strength back and get their what is it earth legs that you need Rod, yeah Right, because they get used to living in space and just what that's like, where you could just put stuff in the air and leave it there. And of course, they're back on Earth and they have to get readapted. So I suspect that the issue, or the medical issue, is some kind of adaptation thing to, you know, just being back on Earth with gravity, and that after months in space. We're not going to find out anytime soon, I think. But at least they're back now and now, instead of there being kind of a crowded situation on the space station, they're kind of back to that static. What is it? Seven, eight, nine person size right now.

08:47 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and if anyone has ever spent a lot of time on a smaller boat in anything other than smooth seas and then gone ashore, you have an idea of what it's like when you've been suffering just in that dimensionality. So I can only imagine coming back to space must be much more challenging. Yeah, yeah, that's got to hurt, all right. Oh, poor Boeing, you know where I'm going. Yes, it'll. Satcom set breaks up and we still don't know why do we?

09:15 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I don't think so. I think. I mean, there's a lot of reasons that it could, but I just I think that the primary story here is that we've got this old satellite. It broke up and now there's more debris. It's a total loss 5,000 pieces. That's right, that's right, and the Space Force is tracking about 20 of them after the incident and I guess they're looking for more. But it is kind of another blow to Boeing and a big blow for the space debris watchers out there, because this just makes the problem that much bigger, and they could say it could be anything from a debris fragment event, like where it gets hit by other debris in orbit and then that begets more debris, which is what the Kessler syndrome is supposed to be all about. It could be a propellant tank rupture that then leads to a fragment event for it or some other kind of hardware failure. On that side. It is really difficult to tell because Intel's at 33E, not a new satellite. It's been in space since 2016,. But it's not old. It's not ancient either, not by those standards.

10:32
No, no, but normally they have like a 10 to 15-year lifespan for use. So this is kind of still like in its livable market. But it is up there in geosynchronous orbit. So you have a Frank which is about 22,000 miles plus orbit. You know where a lot of the static communication satellites are. You don't really want to populate that with fragments in debris over time.

10:58
So we know that the Space Force is tracking some debris. There's other private companies that are tracking more and the numbers are ranging from that 20 that the Space Force is tracking some debris. There's other private companies that are tracking more and the numbers are ranging from that 20 that the Space Force is looking at to like 57 pieces that Exo Analytica, a US company, is looking at too. So we'll have to see how this evolves over time and if it becomes one of those persistent threats that other vehicles that launch have to go through or other satellites have to deal with over time, like we saw with the China anti-satellite test and the Cosmos. Was that also an Intel set? No, the Cosmos Iridium satellite crash back in what 2000,. Was that 2007? Is that right? Yeah, so those, those streams, those debris streams, are still out there.

11:47 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So yeah, do you? Do you happen to recall what the altitude of this thing was?

11:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
well, it was geosynchronous orbit, so 22 236 uh miles, that's 35 786 kilometers if you are, so I guess using metric that being the case, the debris spread would be less of a threat than it would be in LEO right.

12:07
Less of a threat because it's moving slower, but also there's not a lot of geosynchronous slots they're not infinite Whereas in low Earth orbit the satellites are moving faster and they're moving around, so it's a bigger tracking problem here. It could pose an issue just for that belt of really vital satellites that we rely on every day for communications, for other types of services, and then if they can't clean it up or if it's not spread out enough, then it means that that position is unavailable now for additional satellites that we might need to replace it over time.

12:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and I guess the point about geosynchronous is there's only so many parking spots up there that are of an advantage for a specific country, right? Yeah, exactly, there's a few for the US, but I don't know how many actually, because it never occurred to me to ask, but it's a place where you want to put it, so it's always dead nuts in the same spot overhead.

13:09 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Right. So so I mean, the Intel set, you know, has said that this was serving customers in Europe, africa and and the Asia Pacific region. So some of them apparently have been affected, you know, because they don't have the services from this communication satellite right now and they're talking with those people as well, so, and we'll have to see if they're going to replace that satellite.

13:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So there's an article I don't know if you saw it, I think it was in Space News about the current state of Boeing and the talk the new CEO recently gave about their status and man, financially they are just taking a bath on the space side. It's been brutal.

13:48 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I saw that they had like what a $6 billion loss Overall.

13:51 - Rod Pyle (Host)
yeah, which is a lot, yeah, especially when you have shareholders glaring at you, you know, from the other side of the table, yeah, so I hadn't seen it in particular, but I did see the report out for Boeing overall and how dire things are there.

14:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So you know.

14:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, and they canceled or postponed construction of a new model of airliner right 767,. I think.

14:20 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's very possible. Again, I didn't see the whole report, as you did there, so I do know that we did hear that they're still evaluating the Starliner data. In fact that was discussed during the post landing conference today. They don't have anything set. They don't know when Starliner 1 is going to fly or not once they get through all of the information that they have to figure out on the thruster issues that they saw, as well as everything else from that flight.

14:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It'll be interesting to see if they end up spinning off some of their space properties. Since we're going a little long on headlines here, let's go ahead and take an ad break. So hold on to your seats, we'll be right back. Don't pull that ejection handle yet. Stand by.

15:02
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17:19
Visit uscloudcom and book a call today to find out how much your team can save. That's uscloudcom. To book a call today to find out how much your team can save. That's uscloudcom. To book a call today and get faster. Microsoft support for less. All right, india is at it again. These, these folks are busy, so, uh, they've been to the moon a number of times. They've orbited, they've landed, and now they're aiming for the south pole for a sample return mission, which is a whole new level of complexity I'd say something snarky about I wish we could do it, but Mars is a lot harder the moon's pretty simple cheese compared to Mars. But tell us about Chandrayaan-4, will you?

17:57 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, this came out of the International Astronautical Congress meeting in Milan, which, of course, we know that I didn't go to that because I'm too sexy from Milan right.

18:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But it's okay, I'm not sure if I said that joke last time or not. Oh my God. Yeah, that should have been the joke of the week. It would be me getting slammed like I am in Discord for just being funny.

18:18 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So Chandra Yen's lunar sample return mission they talked about will launch maybe in the 2027, 2028 timeframe to the southern hemisphere of the moon, they say and this is, by the way, this is from Space News by Andrew Jones, who actually was writing about IEC for us as well while he was there but they're going to target like a location between 85 and 90 degrees latitude in the southern hemisphere. And actually it's not just an India mission, it's a joint lander rover mission with Japan, which is really exciting, so that would be a Now wait, isn't that Chandrayaan-5?

18:55
Oh, pardon me, no, yeah, you're right, you're right.

18:58 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, I think that's just a lander scooping a drill or something.

19:01 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's the follow-up mission, but it'll have two different stacks on two different rockets, the Chandrayaan-4. You have the lander itself and then of course, the return vehicle, which was what we saw kind of in a big one stack version with China. They have the big orbiter thing and then the lander. Then it comes back up again here. They'll do it in two different vehicles and look for water ice.

19:29
They want to collect three kilograms of samples from near the South Pole of the Moon and that'll be interesting to see how they perfect the technology for scooping stuff and drilling down. They want to drill down two meters into the ground. So that would be pretty exciting there. And of course India wants to land a person, an astronaut, on the Moon by 2040. So this is all kind of in preparation for that too, and it'll be interesting to see if they can pull it off. They've been trying to get to the Moon with the other Chandrayaan missions pretty regularly, I think, over time, and Chandrayaan-1 was that pivotal one that helped prove that there was in fact water ice on the moon. So a big legacy that they have in terms of discovery too.

20:15 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and drilling in the moon?

20:17
You know it sounds simple, although we saw what happened with the InSight mission trying to drill on Mars, they discovered that Martian soil dynamics are a little different than they thought and, of course, since we haven't had boots on the ground there, that's a noteworthy discovery and one that you can't expect people to know before they go. But, as I recall, something about the nature of the regolith caused it to start falling into the drill hole and just gum up the works. And anybody who's watched the apollo the downlink from the apollo missions once we had video on the rover saw how hard it was for those guys to drill. I mean, they would set up it was a manual drilling machine with an electric head on it and they'd set up these tubes and put them in one after the other, and these guys were bearing down with all their weight on this drill, you know, hammering down as hard as they could, and still had trouble getting more than a couple of feet down. So for a lander without human assistance, that's gonna be quite a feat if it works.

21:14 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and there were other which I think. Doesn't Viper have a drill? Or wasn't Viper supposed to drill?

21:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
into the moon, didn't you mean? Didn't Viper have a drill? The now-gone Viper, I believe so, and as far as I know, it was very, very capable. All right, let's hit one more and then we'll switch over to Ben Chinese company Deep Blue to start space tourist flights. And gosh, you know these spacecraft that they're building for these things all look familiar to me.

21:47 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, the Deep Blue Aerospace this is from spacecom, but others also covered. It is building a vehicle that looks like some kind of Frankenstein hybrid of SpaceX's Dragon and Blue Origin's New Shepard, and it's a suborbital rocket and capsule combination, which is what New Shepard is to launch people on suborbital rides, starting soon, in what 2027, I think, is what they're saying, and tickets are going to go for $210,000 USD which is pretty cheap.

22:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, that's half of what Blue Origin is charging. But if I got to go on one of them right now, I'd probably pick Blue Origin.

22:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's about a quarter of what Virgin Galactic is charging right now, which is about close to half a million $450,000 as well, and so they said that they're going to try to get that much more, and I say quote. The customers are going to get much more than a brief waitlist experience. They're going to experience the vastness and mystery of the universe and witness the magnificent landscape beyond the Earth, and it'll be an all around multi-sensory space journey that will be unforgettable for a lifetime.

22:59 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
But the rocket itself the rocket itself.

23:03 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It has those re-entry guidance fins that we know so well from SpaceX Falcon 9 rockets. It has rocket landing legs, which again we also see from Falcon 9 missions and Blue Origin missions. The top that would very much resembles a, like a mashup of a of a falcon dragon combo and a new shepherd, with the number of windows it has. So they're clearly kind of mushing up everything that they've seen and are trying to jump into the market now. Uh, for this and whether they pull it off will be interesting. Uh, because if they start launching more often than, say, virgin Galactic or Blue Origin, then they might be able to open a new market in this space tourism market for a new effort in this space tourism market for competition. And they call their reusable rocket the Nebula One, by the way, which is a really nice sci-fi vehicle.

24:04 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right. Well, ben has joined us, so we're going to go to a quick ad break and we'll be right back. Stand by, all right, we're back with Ben Dickow, president and executive director at the Columbia Memorial Space Center, which is a museum that not enough people know about in Los Angeles County, down in Downey, california, which is sort of headed down towards Long Beach Harbor area, which used to be the center of aerospace for Southern California, if not for the country, and it was huge. North American aviation was there later, but claim Rockwell later became Rockwell international, eventually became part of Boeing, but unfortunately the facility itself didn't survive that transition and, after being the huge hangers and assembly facilities, being converted into movie studios finally I think it was 2012.

24:56 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
They ended up tearing it down 2014,. Actually, I started in September of 14, and that spring, before I started, they started tearing it all down.

25:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And a lot of. I remember at the time there were people going nuts because so many documents were being thrown away from the shuttle program, if not Apollo. So just as a background of people, north American Aviation, besides building the P-51 and a lot of other airplanes, also designed and built the S-2 stage for the Saturn V, for the Apollo program. They built the command and service modules for the Apollo program and all the space shuttles. So they were a big deal, yeah, fast and mostly on price and everything and and back in that time with aerospace contractors being more or less on price was kind of a rarity. So so kudos to them, so um, you also have.

25:49 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Yeah, I was going to also add that you know, rocketdyne started on our site as a division of north american and they kind of spun off and went to canoga park in the mid 50s.

25:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Uh, autonetics started as a division of the downey facility, um, general atomics, um all that stuff happened here and then they all kind of spun around to other places in southern california so for people who are fans of the space race era, those names are legendary, especially rocket dine to me, because they built the Saturn V engine, the F-1 first-age engine, with great pain, I might add A lot of explosions, and I think there's still some of the test stand facility out in Santa Susana Pass right, yeah, exactly, I saw it years ago. That was really, really something. So can you tell us a little bit about the Columbia Memorial Space Center and your role there?

26:45 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Sure, well, first of all, thanks for having me, rod it's always nice to see you and thanks for reaching out. So yeah, I'm Ben Dicko. I'm the president of the Columbia Memorial Space Center. We're a full-on space museum and hands-on science or STEM learning center. You're based in Downey. We've been around since 2009. In fact, this week we're celebrating our 15th anniversary. This week we're celebrating our 15th anniversary and we have a modest footprint museum, but it's about to get larger, as we can see on the screen. We're building basically the same amount of square, a little bit more square footage about 30,000 square feet just south of us to house our shuttle, and more space for hands-on exhibits. We're going to have a. That's the Quinceañera. That's happening. It's our 15th birthday, so why not theme it as a Quinceañera?

27:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
There won't be a tiara on the building on Saturday, but I was going to say are we going to dress it in a big white dress?

27:52 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
We thought about it. But what we're doing, we have a? Um, a shuttle space suit that we're putting in a white dress and we've got all kinds of other things. That's cute, yeah, there's lots, there's cake and all kinds of stuff like that, anyway. So we're we've got our facility, we've got our space, we've got exhibits and we have LA's only public robotics lab. We have Southern California's uh only challenger Learning Center inside where you can go on a two hour mission to Mars or to the moon.

28:17
But then we also do a ton of outreach activities. So we're all over the LA area, either in classes or after school programs or something like that, and then we do these big events. Our mission is to ignite communities of creative and critical thinkers, and one of the ways we do that is by actually getting out into communities and having a presence. And this behind me City of STEM that's LA's largest STEM program. We produce it and it's the. Basically it's the LA Science Festival. It happens the whole month of April and we have towards the beginning of the month. We always have a huge festival somewhere in central LA, and this year we're going to be on April 12th to Saturday at Exposition Park, right next to the Natural History Museum and last year we saw about 30,000 people that day and this year we're anticipating about the same. So anyway, we've got a home base. We do educational programs as outreach programs all over the place, and then we do these big community events throughout LA County.

29:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, as I think I commented last time, I saw you or maybe it was the first time I met you you're also the only local executive director and president. I know that looks like he should have been a movie star, but that's just an aside. Just an aside, thanks, especially when you're in this lineup, right?

29:34 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Stop side, especially when you're in this lineup right, stop, stop, Stop it. That's super nice, but I was going to say, though I thought where you were going with that is, I also serve as the library director for the city of Downey, so I basically oversee two departments.

29:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, you still do that yeah. Oh I thought that was a previous thing.

29:52 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
I mean Rod. I am a cost savings for the city of Downey.

29:56 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Mr. Efficiency.

29:57 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Exactly, well, okay.

29:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So Tarek has his traditional burning question to ask you. So go for it. I didn't forget this time. Go for it.

30:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah Well, I just wanted to ask Ben what your role or your path to space actually was. Is it something that bit you when you were a kid and then you you could never shake it? Is it something that you found later in life, like while doing other things? Uh, what, what was like the, the space grabbing moment for you?

30:24 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
so definitely when I was a kid, um, I think, well, it was two things that kind of came together and it was well three things actually that came together. Um, star wars the first, a New Hope I saw that when I was a little kid. Carl Sagan's Cosmos, that was a huge thing for me, it was. I think I was. I'm going to totally. I don't know if I want to age myself or not, but especially based on your other comment, rod, but anyway, I saw that Go for it.

30:55
I saw that when I was young, um, and I got my parents let me, cause it came on about an hour after my bedtime and my parents would let me stay up and my, but my sister had to go to sleep on time. So it was a really great like, uh, like being a rebel, so that totally transfixed me. And then I grew up in Chicago and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago is one of the greatest places on earth. It's so fantastic. When I was a high school twice I think, my sophomore and junior year, and that was really my path I got into physics pretty hard.

31:45
Joseph P Allen's book Entering Space when I read his bio and that he was a physicist and was in the space shuttle, that was, that was great. I'm like, oh, you know, I could be, I could study physics and be an astronaut, um, so, so, yeah, so that's, I've been a space nut. I feel like. I feel like, well, for one, I feel super lucky that I am where I am, um, because I remember reading about the downy site when I was a kid, you know, about what they did for Apollo and obviously what they were doing for Shuttle in the eighties. So it's, it's.

32:21
It was great to come here, but yeah, I've been. I've been into this stuff for a long time Now. I took a detour. I didn't obviously become an astronaut. I did study physics in college. But I went to school at the University of Chicago for undergrad, and that's just a few blocks from the Museum of Science and Industry and so I started working writing science books for them when I was in college and just fell in love with museums and education and all that kind of stuff, and that's why I've stuck with it.

32:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, now that you mention it, you look like you should have been an astronaut too.

32:53 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Back from the heroic age. Thanks. I'm 6'2", so that's kind of one of the things that was like oh, I have this growth spurt and it's going to be hard for me to get into the shuttle or wherever.

33:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Have you ever had a chance to get in a space capsule? Only mock-ups not real ones. I mean, you still know how small they are right. Oh God, yeah For a ones. You still know how small they are right. Then you add a helmet. I sat in a Gemini capsule once and I at best I was five, 10 and they put the hatch down just so I could see what it's like and besides breaking into a cold sweat from the small space, I realized you know it's right there.

33:27
It was good that those guys in the Gemini program were pretty short for the most part, although Ed White was tall, I just two weeks in there. Let's go to a quick ad break and we'll be right back with our next burning question. Stand by. Okay, we're back and I have a question about my space alien. So only interesting to me, probably. But the head there I bought in hollywood when I was probably I don't know 10 or 12 years old, for then the staggering price of 30, so you can imagine, as old as I am, how well that thing's held up for the last few decades. The suit we bought for I think it was for a history channel show I was doing and ended up not using it. That was a little more. That was about 500 bucks. But from you know, from a distance, with your eyes squinted, it looks pretty good, although it does. It's kind of an apollo suit with a space shuttle patch, but what?

34:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
can you do? You know what alien is right, it's zorak ben zorak from space. Ghost, got it, got it, got it, yes wow, you remember space ghost? At it. Yes, wow, you remember space ghost I, I saw that in first run, but it was I didn't? It's kind of a lame show with the monkey and the kids and also calm down, brother, calm down.

34:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Uh. So we ben. We had jared head on here, as I was mentioning earlier, probably about a year ago and he told me 22.

34:51
I checked it thank you, it was dr accuracy. Okay, so two years ago oh there, I am being mean to tarik again. Um, so, we talked about the status of your shuttle then, but I think we could use a refresher on what it is, how it came to be, which is a pretty interesting story with with kind of a lot of layers as far as what Rockwell's motivations were. But then we'll talk about what's happening now. So take it away.

35:18 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Sure, and honestly, the guru of all this is Jared. I mean, I'm sure your listeners know, but so Jared is on staff here at the Space Center. So, given what we've just gone through in the past week, he is. I think I can say that he's pretty darn excited about being here. So our shuttle, which we've christened Inspiration which you also know that there are some other ones that have been christened that too. So Inspiration is the first we call it the first space shuttle ever built. It's the full scale engineering mockup that was built here on site back in 1972. It's gone through a couple of iterations. This is an early one. With that color scheme it looks a lot more like the shuttle that went into production now as far as paint and stuff like that. But yeah, so our shuttle, like I said, it's the full 1972, full scale mockup.

36:14
And why was it built? A couple of reasons. One you know it is it is a tool that was used by the engineers and the employees here at what, by that time, had been become Rockwell International. It was a tool to figure out how do you build a space shuttle and how do you fit things into this space, what's the what's the crew compartment going to look like how much space do you have in the, how much real space do you have in the cargo bay? And because this was, you know, really before CAD, so you know, kind of like they did for Apollo, where there were all those you know wooden and steel mock-ups and stuff like that, they basically did the same thing.

36:53
So that was one it was. It was definitely used as a, as a, as a, you know, a tool of the engineering process, which obviously we, we talk about a lot because you know, if we're, we are an educational institution and getting to know the process of how do you build things is really important to us. But it was also used as a way to sort of solidify the contract. So we have the pen. It's encased in Lucite, with a model, a really nice model, of one of the early designs of the shuttle on top of it, and it's the pen that was used to sign the contract here at Rockwell to get the shuttle program and I think it's, if memory serves correctly, I think it was $12.5 billion, that first iteration of the contract, which was real money back then I mean serious, yeah.

37:49
So the reason why I bring that up, though, is because there's a little plaque on it that says 1972. But earlier that year, in the sort of race to get this contract, um, rockwell was like, well, if we're going to get this thing, let's just build the shuttle and then we'll have the feds, we'll have nasa come in and see it. So they did, and I think it was took them about eight weeks to pull this thing together. That's it. And yeah, I mean it was really fast and and it was.

38:23
You know it's so obviously, you know NASA always it's could go off on a tangent about Disney, but NASA always talks about, or, you know, they always kind of do the concept design right, but it's up to the, it's up to the, the real designers, to kind of figure out how this thing is so. So Rockwell had, you know, had gotten the basic specs from NASA, and they had kind of figured out what, what they, what their solution was going to be like take an airframe and, you know, put the thermal protection on it and stuff like that. So these guys, like I said, in about two months, took it from this sort of spacey idea and built this thing out of. You know, there's aluminum frame, there's wood, there's plastic, there's glass, you know, everything kind of cludes together into this full-scale mock-up. And the story is that they finished this thing and about a week later they knew that NASA was coming in to kind of have the final interviews and the you know to responding to the RFP process.

39:23
And they come to Rockwell and they hadn't said anything to NASA yet and they're like, oh, you know what? You know, we're not going to go out to lunch today, we're going to have lunch here on site. And they're like, oh, okay, you know, we're not going to go out to lunch today, we're going to have lunch here on site. And they're like, oh, okay. So they took them over to the DEI room and they actually had lunch in the cargo bay.

39:42
And basically like I mean, I don't know if it happened quite this fast, but almost like they got a phone call that night and said all right, you guys got the thing because you already built this.

39:50 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And it's got high fidelity interior too. Oh God, yeah, it's just a hollow thing. You've got a cockpit and seat, absolutely, control surfaces and everything.

39:58 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Yeah, so well, actually I should have showed you it. So so fast forward, right? So this thing is there, it gets the contract. It then becomes this tool. This you know again it was. You know again it was. This isn't just for show, this was a real, real deal, part of the design process. That's why we call it the first shuttle. Um, you know so.

40:21
Then you know they start producing the, the flying shuttles, in the early or late seventies and then into the early eighties, and this thing ceases to be a needed part, a needed tool. But they park it in this place called the DEI room and it becomes this real sort of you know magnet in this place called the dei room and it becomes this real sort of you know magnet for showing off what southern california can do and is doing. So, um, you know, all the governors have been sitting in the deck, all the governors from, like you know, the mid 70s through, um, probably the mid 90s. Um, queen elizabeth we have pictures of her sitting in our shuttle. You know, presidents like you know the whole gamut of VIPs who would come through Southern California and would sit in this thing, and it became a place for, you know, for press conferences and stuff. But then, when you know, boeing bought our site in 96 and in December of 99 is when they spun down this place and closed it up and there was not a lot of planning for what the heck else is going to happen.

41:26
The facility here had become federal property back in the late 40s after World War II, and then North American and Rockwell they were all leasing it. War II, and then North American and Rockwell, they were all leasing it. So when Boeing left, basically all the land, all the buildings and everything left in the buildings was deeded to the city of Downey. So think about this You've got twice the size of Disneyland as far as acreage goes, you have 37 buildings and you've got like coffee mugs on engineers' desks still just stuffed everywhere, and you have a full-size space shuttle sitting in a room getting dusty. So the city was like holy crap, what are we going to do with this thing?

42:08
It sat in that room for a while and then when, just so your listeners know, basically the entire property, actually probably 75% of the property right now is all shopping center retail. But those buildings in the shuttle stayed in that building up until 2014 or until 2012 when they started to make plans for the shopping center and started to make plans for raising the buildings. Make plans for, you know, raising the buildings. So at that point in 2012, it came out, it was on display for a few months for the public and then they it was built modularly, so they took it apart into seven pieces, wrapped it in really heavy duty roofing material and then parked it outside in a public works yard. And it was there ever since, until last week, um, and we unwrapped the crew. So this is all getting back to what you'd said, probably like three days ago or this conversation.

43:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I kind of went on a tangent, but I'm coming back around.

43:05 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
uh, you were saying the fidelity of this thing, right? So, basically, early last week we uh unwrapped the crew cabin and crew cabin and the engine section, the aft compartment, and it was the first time it had been opened in over a decade and it's amazing Like it's dusty but nothing was living in there no termite damage, no, nothing like that. And there's a picture of me sitting in the command seat and there's a picture of me sitting in the command seat. There's a full what is it? I guess the aft portion of the crew cabin that overlooks the cargo bay. That is fully functional, you know toggles and switches and joystick for the arm and all that kind of stuff. The command sort of the flight, you know where the pilot and all that kind of stuff. Um, the, the command sort of the flight, you know where the pilot and the, the commander are. Um, it's 2d printed representation of the sort of middle iteration of the control system. Um, with some 3d elements and the joysticks and all that kind of stuff. I mean it is they tried to just basically. I mean that's kind of how that was worked, like they would, they would make a change and they would fit it in here to see if it fit and it worked.

44:18
I was told by one of the retirees that our shuttle is kind of stuck in amber of like the 1985, 86 configuration right before they went to the. You know the, the, the screens, basically the. You know the flyby, the glass cockpit exactly, and that that was planned. They were going to put a glass cockpit mock-up inside our mock-up but then they realized what, why are we doing this? That's just more expense, whatever, Um, but yeah, it's the, the um, so that the, the command deck or the flight deck is looks great. The mid deck is awesome. There's a model of the toilet right there when you enter. I mean it's all the lockers open. You can see where they were using it to try to fit in compartments of whatever was going to go up in the first few years of the shuttle. It's a really amazing piece, yeah, and we're excited to have it.

45:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, next time you do a big fundraiser, I want to bid on an overnight stay so I can live out my astronaut fantasies. Absolutely, we're going to run to a break real quick, and then you're up, tarek, and we're back. Go for it, my friend.

45:28 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah. So, ben, like you were saying, this was kind of like a twofer. This was like a dog and pony space shuttle to show off to the powers that be to say, hey look, look what we can build. I think it's a good lesson, for if you build it, they will come approach right your contracts by actually building out hardware, as opposed to some companies who won't be named, who complain and complain when they don't get a contract.

45:59
And then that wasn't very cautious, no, was it? I'm just saying so, but I did want to ask about like, about the value that you see, because we have seen versions of the story that you have just described with space hardware, like through the history of the space age, and the two kind of tragic ones that come to mind are the losses, at least on the Russian side, of their space shuttle, the Buran, which was justan, which was mothballed in an abandoned hangar until the ceiling collapsed and destroyed it.

46:41
And then more recently, their space shuttle carrier plane, which was built in Ukraine. That was destroyed through the conflict that's going on there and with the end of the space shuttle program we've seen the exodus of all of the hardware to different places. I'm here in New York. We have the Enterprise. Discovery is in DC, Atlantis is in Kennedy and Endeavour is at the california uh science center, yeah, and there's a few other ones, uh, uh, there's a few other ones here too loudly rod.

47:17 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
I'm here, I'm in the room. Well, I'm gonna point out.

47:21 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I'm gonna point out that in the rendering that in the rendering that ben showed of the inspiration center. It is all in wrap around glass so you can see the shuttle, yeah, from the outside, and that is, uh a a delicious standout from all of the other exhibits. Some of them were supposed to have that so that you could see it.

47:42
And and then uh, even endeavor, which was supposed to be all covered in glass, and it's still all wrapped around in that that wall that they're building uh around it. So you have to be inside.

47:51 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So that's a big plus if I can just amplify that for a second. For so for years we saw endeavor in a big generic metal shed, sure, so it's cool to walk under it because you've got a sense of the immensity of this thing. But now it's being moved to launch configuration, which is cool in a whole other way, Although that building's awful small. I don't know what the eye lines will be like, but we'll see. But now in Southern California you'd be able to go see one standing up on what looks like a launch pad and then drive the quick trip over to Downey and see it down on the landing gear, which is going to be sensational and, if I read correctly, there will be the ability to actually see inside the cockpit on that one, yeah, which is rare, yeah.

48:37 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
So, tariq, I don't want to get off from whatever your question was going to be, but really fast, now that Tom brought this up, sorry, no, no, no, it's not a criticism. No, we're going to be super lucky in Southern California to have the first space shuttle ever built and the last space shuttle ever built on display for people to enjoy. That's it's, and it makes sense, because this is where this is its birthplace, this is where it came from. Yeah, I mean, when we were designing the building, we wanted to make sure so I want to be really clear that this new building you know, we're not the largest place in the world, we don't have tons of funds, right so our building had to serve several purposes. We knew that we wanted to preserve this amazing artifact. We wanted to put it on display for the public. We are very community minded, so we wanted to make sure that people could see it even if they didn't enter the building, um, so that. So we did build the sort of a jewel box for this thing, but, um, it's, it's a large enough building that we will be able to have hands on ex exhibits. There's a mezzanine that um will tell the sort of southern california aerospace story, especially downey, because, um, what I think is another compliment to what we have here in LA is that there's a lot of talk and for some good reason about the astronauts, but they're the end users.

49:59
There were hundreds of thousands of people in Southern California who worked on these things, and worked on the Apollo program and the shuttle program, and that's where we come in, because we're um, we're a manufacturing facility. At the end of the day, we are the ultimate maker. Space for, like, nobody knew how to build a spaceship to the moon, nobody knew how to build a spaceship that could go up and come down and be reused, like it all had to be. Um, you know, spun out a whole cloth here in downey. So we really re lean into the activity of how do you, how do you build things to get into space in these environments? So, yeah, so that'll be the, that'll be the storyline on the second floor.

50:39
But this building is also can be converted into an amazing event space for 300 people. Like you know, you can have parties next to the shuttle, similar to what was what the California Science Center had been doing in their barn. Similar to what the California Science Center had been doing in their barn. So yeah, I mean, I'm glad that you picked up on that for the building, because we did consciously want to make sure that people could enjoy it without necessarily having to step in at night. You know, think of the backlit shuttle taking a picture, you know, right there. So those are all conscious decisions and then really quick to follow up. The last thing you said, rod. So yes, we.

51:14
So our shuttle, because it was left on site, became property of the city of downey, not the smithsonian. So we kind of can do whatever the heck we want to do with this thing. So we are going to make sure that people will be able to get into it. So the plan right now is we'll have an experience in the cargo bay. So you'll actually be able to walk into the cargo bay There'll be some exhibitry there and a multimedia thing but then be able to see into the mid deck and the flight deck. Obviously, the best way to enter that is through the hatch, which we can't have a bunch of, you know, a hundred thousand visitors a year kind of crawling into that thing, and it's not ADA or anything like that. But we will figure out a way to be able to get people to see right into that, and it likely has to do with removing part of that bulkhead and putting glass there so that you can just literally see the cross section of the thing.

52:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I want to sit inside it. They never let me touch anything. Ben, I never got to touch anything.

52:24 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
It's not like we're sealing that part off either. I think that I think we can make your dreams come true Both of you guys, I can stay overnight you can sit upstairs in the flight deck. That'll be great.

52:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I spent a half hour in the pilot seat on Discovery, so I have Tarek beating that one because he always gets all the goodies. As I recall, tarek, a certain zero G flight. Anyway, I won't go off on that. Hey, you were hired to do a job Rod you were hired to do a job.

52:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I was game.

52:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You swept in and took the ticket.

52:58 - Tariq Malik (Host)
For people listening. Rod did a video piece for us about a team from UC San Diego that did microgravity fires on a trip, and so he did the prep work and the prep story and interviewed them all, and then I actually went on the trip to document the actual flight itself.

53:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Which normally you'd use the same writer for both. But let's stay focused on Ben. He's still talking about it.

53:26 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, I was rudely interrupted in my question earlier.

53:39 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Just side note, though I want to be the first space museum director in space, so if anybody's listening out there that's looking to make a splash, get me up there, make my dreams come true.

53:46 - Rod Pyle (Host)
There you go.

53:47 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, I was going to ask about the teachable moment, about how valuable it is to have and I think that you touched on a lot of it in the answer to Rod there as well because, about the idea of being able to preserve the hands-on thing, I like the point that you just raised about it being downy property so you get to do what you want, as opposed to it being donated to the Smithsonian, where then they have all those rules about, like, leaving it as it is. So I guess there's some salvage laws in work there. Rod for possession is nine tenths of the. That's right. I'll tell Uncle.

54:21
Horatio Pull it out of my cold dead hands.

54:28
I'll tell you. And so I guess the primary thing I was trying to ask about is just how valuable of a tool do you see it to give future engineers, because you were highlighting that it was the people that built it, not the people that flew on it, of which there were many, and then there was also many support personnel there, sure, but you have to design and envision something first, and this inspiration shuttle seems to embody that design aspect, that engineering aspect, more than perhaps these actual flown models, these actual prototype models that flew in the air, like Enterprise, actually do, because this is, like you know, it never been done before, you know. And then they went and they put this thing together just to see what was possible, and so I'm curious how valuable that is as a teaching tool to these students and these people that are going to come see it. At the same, time.

55:25 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Yeah, I mean, that's our A story, right? Or that's the educational story that we'll try to get across from this Absolutely. I mean, this is like you guys have seen these shuttles before. They are huge machines, they're ridiculously huge objects. They're also very delicate. It is a marvel of engineering and I'm trying not to use a cliche, but it's true, right and like, just, it is a marvel of engineering, and I'm trying not to use a cliche, but it's true, right, um, to be able to see how that was done 50 years ago, to like again, before a lot of advancements and your computer technology and all that kind of stuff, um it actually the homespunness of our shuttle really hits home, the fact that these are just a bunch of people, human beings just like you and me, who are just trying to figure out how to do this thing, and they're doing it with the materials that all of us know. Again, like there's some aluminum in there, wood, plastic, stuff like that. It's an amazing tool to kind of to fill out that part of. How do you go from napkin sketch to an orbiter, you know? So that's that's absolutely.

56:35
I mean, this thing, I think, is invaluable when it comes to to that kind of thing, and you know, we know that everybody's going to ask did this go into space? You know that's the first thing, and we're going to figure out an answer that basically says yeah, the spirit of it did you know all of its progeny went into space. And this is how you start, this is how you start the journey, but so that's one. So that's definitely one level. The other value, though, I have to say, is you know as much as we are very much an experiential museum. I think that you know, as a science educator, the best way to teach science is to do science. So it's not about facts, it's not about static objects necessarily. It's about interacting with phenomena and getting people to exercise their creative and critical thinking. That said, I also know that there are sometimes objects that just really capture the imagination.

57:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And.

57:29 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
I think that I know for a fact that there's going to be at least one kid, but probably many, who walk into the shuttle and it's going to just totally blow their mind and spark something, whether they go into science and engineering or not. But I think these kind of objects have the power to push people to think bigger about themselves and to think about what their futures can be like and what they can do Really, trying to think about the human aspect, the really basic human aspect, of why I got into space in the first place, why you guys got into space in the first place. That's what we're trying to do Again, totally agnostic of what the outcome is. They could go on to be a poet or a lawyer or an accountant or whatever the heck it is, but just, we know that there's a lot of emotional power in these things and that's we want to make sure that gets across.

58:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, I wanted to ask about that part too, because it's not every day that you see a space shuttle roll down like your local streets, or or, or, or, whatever, let alone one that's like chopped up into bits, and we should, we should, we should let people know. You know the space shuttles, they're not. They're not. It's not like a a little plane type of a thing.

58:43 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
These are like a few feet long they're 122 feet long.

58:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They got a 60 foot payload bay. They stand like what? Like 35 feet tall with the 35 feet tall, the f, the f stabilizer, um and uh.

58:53
And then of course you've got the wings which were detached, obviously, for the trip. Yeah, yeah, uh, that, uh, that are there too, and I remember being struck when I saw atlantis roll out or discovery roll out for the first time about how large they actually were. And then we've got, we've got some photos here from Collect Space and the city of Downey where you can see the little bits being moved around almost like a crazy. You know, rose Parade float.

59:19
Yes exactly With all these bits, not just for you and the team at the center, but for people that were just out and about watching this thing go by between the buildings themselves. I mean, did you get a lot of gawkers for that?

59:39 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Oh, absolutely, we got several hundred people up and I mean to put all cards on the table. We just moved this thing like two and a half blocks down the street. We made it. I am a firm believer in making the biggest deal out of everything that's important. So, um, so we, you know, I pulled the semi, that's me and the city council of Downey pulling the semi, pulling the space shuttle in a little golf cart. We had a police escort in front of us. You know all that kind of stuff. The move didn't take more than a half hour but we milked that half hour as much as we could and it was great because there were several other hundred people along that two and a half block stretch that were just like cheering us on and taking pictures. Parents took kids out of school to watch this thing.

01:00:25
Everybody was talking about how this is a historic moment, not just for Downey, but just in general. Like this is historic moment, not just for Downey, but just in general. Like this is, you know, again, how often do you get to see one of these things go down the street? And we had to. We had to close the street anyway. So it's, it is a big deal.

01:00:39
But yeah, I mean, I mean I can't speak for everybody but I can. The people that I talked to to a tee. We're just ecstatic and just super happy. When the, when the crew cabin came around the corner cause it was kind of hidden along the in this little alleyway and then we pulled it around you could hear people like, oh, you could hear that sort of gasp. And then when the aft, the, the engine module, came around, that thing I mean the crew cabin is big, the whole thing is big, but that is really big and um, and just just see that thing right in front of your face is is pretty amazing it gave me like a macy's thanksgiving day parade vibe, yeah, looking at the pf, where you see like the balloons come around the corner, you know, and whatnot, and whatnot.

01:01:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So, um, no, that that's amazing. You know, we don't. We don't have a lot of these kinds of big moves like this for, uh, all that often, and it gives a lot of 2014 vibes, when Endeavor went through all the streets and watching that. So I think it was amazing to see.

01:01:43 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
So oh yeah, thank you, thank you, and yeah, I mean, listen props to props to those guys is 2012 when they came through?

01:01:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
uh, came through, la, and really that was the they kind of wrote the book on how do you present a space shuttle to the public so well, and I wanted to mention something specific to that. So I was down in one of the more dangerous parts of los angeles, covering that for tarik and his team, when endeavor was being moved and I was down. Endeavor was being moved and I was down, gosh, it was Normandy and 144th or something.

01:02:14
Anyway, the route between the airport and the museum, and there was this guy standing next to me while I was shooting the thing and you know he had gang tats and the whole thing going Kind of guy get nervous, you know, if he walked into my 711. But he was, but he was standing there and I said what do you think? And he turned around he had tears streaming down his face and he said I don't know. I don't really know what this is, I don't know anything about it, I just know it's been to space and it's beautiful. And I thought that's how this is all supposed to work. In terms of inspiration. And as I often lecture my colleagues in an organization I work for, you know, because they're mostly engineers, they love to talk to people's brains and that's fine for certain things. But when you're talking about this big picture of education, inspiration, stem and everything else, if you could talk to the heart, the brain will follow.

01:03:06 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
If you just talk to the brain, not so much you know, honestly, right, that's the secret to all of this stuff, whether it's a space museum or a piece of art or whatever the heck it is, we can't get through. We don't do original research at the Space Center. They don't do original research at the Science Center. We are all about communication, right, and the only way to tell a good story is to hook your emotions, and that's a number one.

01:03:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
we have to think through that a lot before we get, before we ever talk about the science process so before we close, I just wanted to give a nod you already sort of did to the volunteers I know jared head was a big part of this, jerry blackburn's name comes up quite a bit, I'm sure there are others and, of course, to the city of downey for staying on this, because they easily just turned their back and said we can't afford it. Yeah, no, I I you, by the way, for keeping all those people inspired and going I'm doing my best.

01:04:02 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
I'm doing my best. We have a long road ahead. This was just. I had a board meeting last night and, um, you know, everybody was happy.

01:04:09
Uh, we had a great event last, you know, we got, we got wall-to-wall press coverage. I was getting calls from east coast friends and stuff like that. Um, but then pretty quickly the board was like oh so now this has to happen because everybody knows about it. Right, it's, you know, it's here, we're, we're pregnant with this project. This is going to have to happen and this was just the first part of it. And you know, if I can say, before we break, you know we had, in addition to Jerry, we had several of the people who worked on that, not just the shuttle program, but on our mock-up there.

01:04:50
One of the things that is really a joy about my particular job is that the group who designed and built Apollo and designed and built shuttle are still mostly I mean those who are still with us, still live in the area and still come to the Space Center.

01:05:09
I don't even think to enjoy the museum, but just to be back where, where they talk about their greatest, the greatest part of their career happen and it's been super wonderful.

01:05:19
Um, you know we had pete magosky out there who was basically the number two to the chief engineer, um in apollo and shuttle, and pete, it actually was the guy who in the eight weeks managed to get that thing built like he was.

01:05:33
He had his hands on it, he managed the team, he figured out how to do it. He has original documents of of, you know, not just the shuttles but also of our particular um inspiration shuttle. So that relationship and you know they kind of self-congregated into a task force to help us kind of think through how we're going to do, how we're going to display the shuttle, how we're going to interpret it, all that kind of stuff. So you know, we're working with 90-year-olds and you know upper 80-year-olds to kind of figure out how we're going to do this and they talk about how it's their last mission. This is like their last kind of thing out there, their last kind of thing out there. And I mean, I don't know, I've been doing museum work for a long time and I can't think of another project that has that kind of investment from the people who are actually living the history that we're going to get out there.

01:06:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's pretty amazing. Well, I want to thank everyone for joining us for Episode 134, the Spruce Shuttle. Ben, where's the best place to keep up with your roadworthy shuttle and the museum?

01:06:31 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
overall the Columbia Memorial Space Center website, which is columbiaspacescienceorg.

01:06:38 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right, and can we track your activities there as well?

01:06:43 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, and also, and honestly, really, our Instagram page is probably the best way too. That's at columbiaspace. The website will kind of give sort of overview of what's going on with. Instagram page is probably the best way to. That's at Columbia space, that you know. The website will kind of give sort of overview of what's going on with the project, but the Instagram is always up to date.

01:06:58 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Excellent, Tarek. Where can we find you winning your space pioneer awards these days?

01:07:03 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you can find me at again, thank you. Thank you very much. It's an honor just to be nominated, rod, let alone. But yeah, you can find me at spacecom, as always, also on the Twitters, at Tarek J Malik, and this weekend at the optometrist. I'm going to get myself some new glasses so that I can see all you fine folks with much more clarity and perhaps into the glorious space future that we all have awaiting us. I'll just point out that in three years you'll find me turning 50. So if inspiration is available for a birthday party, oh, absolutely In two years I'm turning 70.

01:07:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
There you go, I've got dibs on you, my friend.

01:07:48 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
We offer nice birthday party packages. We put together little goodie bags.

01:07:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We'll do it up for you guys, no problem, we should do an episode down there, and of course you can find me at pilebookscom or at astromagazinecom. That's where I hang out, remember. You can drop us a line at twist at twittv. We welcome your comments, suggestions and ideas. That's twis at twittv. New episodes of this podcast publish every Friday, as you know, and your favorite podcatcher, so make sure to subscribe, tell your friends and give us reviews. We'll take five stars or five pies in the face or whatever you got, don't forget. You can get all the great programming with video streams on the Twit Network ad-free, on Club Twit, as well as some extras that are only available there, like tarik falling out of his chair for just seven dollars per month you heard leo talk about the tough times facing podcasters, so this is your chance to stand up, be counted.

01:08:42
We appreciate it. Finally, you can follow the twit tech podcast network at twit on twitter and on facebook and twittv on instagram. Ben. Thank you very much, it's been a real pleasure same here.

01:08:54 - Ben Dickow (Guest)
Thank you guys very much and I really appreciate you connecting with me. This is fantastic. I'll be on again if you'll have me absolutely are you kidding?

01:09:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
and uh, thanks to our audience for listening and thanks to everybody in the club discord. It's been fun watching your comments and we will see you next week. Take care.