This Week in Space 139 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.

0:00:00 - Rod Pyle
On this episode of this Week in Space, we're talking to our old friend, og space reporter, Leonard David, about Trump's pick to run NASA, Elon Musk and UFOs, UAPs. Do aliens walk among us? Stay tuned.

This Is This Week in Space, episode 139. Recorded on Friday December 6th, 2024: Look to the Skies. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief at Ad Astra magazine. I'm joined, as always, by the knock knock Tariq Malik, editor-in-chief of space.com, who's having his house remodeled.

0:00:54 - Tariq Malik
Hello, sir hello rod, hello everybody, hello internets, hello space fans.

0:01:00 - Rod Pyle
So so you're sure you're having your house remodeled. It's not some relative that you walled up banging on the wall from the other side. No, you are. You are correct, you're having your house remodeled and it's not some relative that you walled up banging on the wall from the other side.

0:01:07 - Tariq Malik
No, you are correct. You know, six months ago my kitchen sink exploded and like ruined the floor in the kitchen and we are finally getting it repaired after jumping through all those insurance hoops. So I'm very excited, Although it's very cold because they have to keep coming in and out.

0:01:23 - Rod Pyle
So if you hear knocking dear listeners, that's what that is Just go with it. Yeah, but more importantly than either of us, today we're talking to Leonard David, the one and only OG space reporter, and we're going to be talking about a number of things Trump's pick to run NASA, Elon Musk and his well, let's call it influence for the sake of conversation, and an update on UAPs, because we all love us some UAPs. How are you, Leonard?

0:01:52 - Leonard David
Good to go. Yeah, I'm ready to discuss today, tomorrow and 2025, which is going to be really exciting. I hope so. Yeah, as long as I'm alive.

0:02:08 - Rod Pyle
I'm always. It may not be exactly what we're looking for, but it'll certainly be exciting.

0:02:13 - Leonard David
I'm hanging on the ledge. I'm hanging on the edge.

0:02:18 - Rod Pyle
All right. It's 2025.

0:02:21 - Leonard David
Let's move on. That's right. Roll those dice. Note to John.

0:02:25 - Rod Pyle
Ashley.

0:02:25 - Leonard David
I just upped my gain on.

0:02:25 - Rod Pyle
That's right, let's roll those dice. Note to John Ashley I just upped my gain a touch. All right, but before we start, please don't forget to do us a solid and make sure to like, subscribe and do all the other podcast things. Whether you're listening to audio or on YouTube, click the relevant buttons that do the same things, because we want your love, we love you, we need to know you love us back and we're counting on you. And now more space junk, otherwise known as our weekly ecclesiastical space joke from simon allen simon hey Tariq. Yes, rod, you hear about the little boy that went up to the priest and said did God invent gravity?

0:03:06 - Tariq Malik
No I didn't.

0:03:07 - Rod Pyle
What did he say? The priest said of course, that is why we celebrate mass.

0:03:15 - Leonard David
That's actually one of the better ones. That's a good one. That's pretty clever yeah.

0:03:18 - Rod Pyle
Thank you, simon. And Simon, feel free to send in your jokes anytime. Now I have heard that some folks want to run to confession when it's time for a space joke on this show. You can help send us your best, worst or most indifferent space joke at twist, at twist at twittv. Leonard, do you have any uh jokes for us today?

0:03:37 - Leonard David
other than I'm trying to be serious in the last month of the year and you know, I just had my birthday. I'm happy birthday, Leonard. Yeah, I just I just uh survived one more year of that spin around the sun and, uh, you know, it is really taking its toll on you no, the spin around the sun. I yeah, it's taken a toll. Man, I'm sitting here trying to gauge life. You know, you start to get philosophical.

0:04:14 - Rod Pyle
See, you're thinking too much. That is always a bad thing, by the way.

0:04:18 - Tariq Malik
I thought he was saying that his birthday took its toll on the spin around the earth.

0:04:22 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, I was trying to figure out how that would change, speaking of mass, its toll on the spin around the earth there. Yeah, I was trying to figure out how that would change speaking of mass. By the way, for anybody watching youtube, this background is because we're talking about UAPs and, as we know, they all dive into the ocean now so we have the ocean. All right, let's get on to some headlines while we're still thinking about it.

So, by gosh. The one for the week that has to stand out for me was the surprise announcement of Jared Isaacman as Trump's pick for the new NASA chief. That's right, because he wasn't on the short list that was going around for NASA administrator.

0:04:58 - Tariq Malik
Nor was he actually even on the long list. You didn't have billionaire entrepreneur, private astronaut, first private space walker on your bingo card for the next NASA administrator.

0:05:09 - Rod Pyle
Or a very, very sweet looking space Jesus that looks like he's actually 17 years old.

0:05:19 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, this was an interesting choice, as we're recording this uh, where trump announced uh through truth social and, of course, on twitter, that he picked uh jared isaacman as uh his nominee for uh for NASA administrator. Now they don't they all have to be confirmed, but this is one of the earliest I've seen an incoming administration name their pick five months NASA administrator, I mean when obama was first elected.

I think it took Five months For a NASA administrator, I mean, when Obama was first elected. I think it took nigh on a year, if memory serves, to get an actual one, because, well then, chris Gillespie was interim for a while. It was a long time. But this is an interesting pick in Jared Isaacman. It does sound like it's very much informed by Elon Musk and the advisory role he has with Trump right now.

Jared Isaacman is kind of SpaceX's tenant customer for private spaceflight. He's a lifElong space fan and pilot. He has his own kind of private air force that trains, I think, military pilots, if memory serves.

0:06:21 - Rod Pyle
And they do stunt flying.

0:06:25 - Tariq Malik
And of course, he's the CEO of Shift4, which is where I guess he made his mega billions and is also a noted philanthropist.

He's raised millions of dollars for pediatric cancer research through both his own private efforts and, of course, the inspiration for Polaris Dawn missions. There Our space listeners might recognize him most as the person that bought SpaceX's Dragon flight for Inspiration4 back in 2021, and who did the first private spacewalk in September of this year, as we're recording it, 2024. And he has actually two more private missions on the books under that Polaris program that SpaceX will fly for him, that he will fly, and one of them is supposed to be the first crewed flight of Starship 2. So what's really interesting is, first of all, is there an openness on Congress's part to confirm him? And then also, will he still go through with those flights over the next four years, if he is actually serving as NASA? Here's a person who is one of the chief private customers of NASA's primary contractor now in charge of NASA. It's kind of mind-boggling, like a big circle to try to wrap your head around, but that's going to be interesting to see how that shakes out.

0:07:47 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, it was a bit of a shocker, although, I have to say, along with most of the space community that I'm engaged with. Anyway, it was a pleasant surprise. If you know the guy, I don't know him well, I've had one-on-one with him twice I guess but he's kind, he's friendly. We had him at our conference and he of course accepted the award we were giving him and we had a lunch talk. But he also spent hours talking to the kids in attendance and was really engaged with them and happy to answer questions afterwards and so forth. So I'm not saying that other NASA administrators haven't been that way, but afterwards and so forth. So I'm not saying that other NASA administrators haven't been that way, but he's more that way than any that I know.

0:08:32 - Leonard David
Anyhow, Leonard, what's your take on the Isaacman pick? What's that mean? It's fascinating. You know I was surprised myself, but you know the idea about him getting through the gauntlet in congress without uh, self-serving, uh spacex or you know that kind of thing. That's going to be interesting to watch how that plays out. And I, I met the guy, I like him, yeah he's a nice guy yeah, he's a great guy.

Yeah, but he's sharp too. Now let me back up. Because I'm old. I've met pretty much every administrator of NASA and he's definitely a different kind of guy. The only thing I can remember that would be comparable was Frosh, kind of an R&D guy. Dan Golden was probably the most bizarre uh administrator that NASA has ever had he's going to come up later by the way and he's going to come up all the time.

He's still going and he's a fascinating character in this you know, maybe it's time for that kind of guy to get in there with the quote new space umbrella that NASA has got to face, and so he may be the right guy at the right time. He may be the wrong guy at the wrong time, I don't know, but let's see if it gets confirmed and, you know, more power to him. I listened to Bill Nelson yesterday, and Bill Nelson's already talked to him, and they seem to be in some kind of mutual agreement about issues that NASA's going to face, which is significant, way beyond this guy's capability. Probably the thing to watch is a second in command deputy, yeah.

0:10:28 - Rod Pyle
Because they need somebody with some political bare knuckle skills. I think.

0:10:32 - Leonard David
Yeah, yeah.

0:10:32 - Rod Pyle
Because that I mean, if you look back over the administrators at least my take on it I think you probably have done more looking than I have, but it seems like, from James Webb on, the administrators who had some brass knuckle political experience were the ones that were really effective, like Bill Nelson and some of the others, particularly astronauts, love astronauts, but I don't know that they make the best administrators, because that's just not. You know, they understand the realm well, at least for human spaceflight, but in terms of really knowing how to knock heads in Congress and get things done, this doesn't seem like it goes as well. So I think Jared needs like a real thug in the deputy director role. Sorry, tyra, go ahead.

0:11:17 - Tariq Malik
Oh, I was going to say like one of the things that'll be really interesting to see how it develops. You know, let's say that he is confirmed and he does take charge as a private astronaut. Isaacman was really trying to push, as part of the Polaris Dawn flights with SpaceX, this potential of going back to Hubble, for example, and either giving it a boost to extend its life or something like that. It would be interesting to see if there's any wiggle room there again or if it is indeed because NASA decided to say thanks but no thanks, and we've talked about that on the show before. If that gets dusted off there and I would be very interested. And Leonard, maybe you might know I'm wondering if he even gets to do these other two flights that he has with SpaceX. Um, if, uh, if he's the NASA administrator, I mean is that a clear conflict of interest?

or is that I?

0:12:16 - Rod Pyle
don't know if it's a conflict of interest, but do you really want to be sending up your your? Prime guy on this rocket, that's a head scratcher.

0:12:24 - Tariq Malik
Well, I mean, the visuals of that are like they're unmistakable. You know people will look up and say whoa.

0:12:33 - Leonard David
I think you're right. I think there's something in there and you know we've had post-flight people, nelson included, bolden Truly, richard Truly you know our ex know our ex astronauts that ran, uh, NASA. So, but this collision between, okay, you've flown, so what, uh? And what's your administrative skills? Uh, yeah, I don't know enough about his entrepreneurial skills to know if he can dance between the different divisions at NASA, including space science and planetary exploration and a lot of other aeronautic issues. I mean, he may be great, but yeah, I'd say the second in command would be really important. But I'm not going to discount the guy. I liked him a lot. I'm with everybody else.

0:13:27 - Rod Pyle
He may be the right guy at the right time yeah well friend of the show, Greg Autry, was on the short list that's been traveling around for the last month or so and might end up being number two or number three, and if so, I think his brass knuckles are well polished. Let's jump to a break real fast and we'll be right back. Stand by for more.

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Okay now we had a press conference from NASA yesterday.

0:16:36 - Leonard David
We did.

0:16:38 - Rod Pyle
Now I have to tell you, things always start off the same, which is you're sitting on there, it's five minutes after the hour, it's five minutes after the hour, it's 10 minutes after the hour. You're listening to this cheesy elevator music and then finally it comes on and there's always a mic squeal or an echo or a please stand by, or something, and it's unkind to say, but it's like, guys, you know, the old joke stands you can send a man to the moon, but fill in the blank and me filling in the blank is but you guys can't get a press conference going with the same technology that even organizations like the nss use successfully multiple times a year.

I just don't get it. And a few years back I was at jpl I think it was for the um, the the death dive of Cassini, when it, when it was sent into Saturn, and I was sitting in von Kramer and auditorium at Jeff Bolson laboratory and they're having all these AV problems and I see the then director of the comms department, blame baggett, jump up and go stomping to the back of the room because he's going to have a piece of somebody and I just anyway. I'm sorry I took a real diversion there, but for people who don't.

0:17:51 - Tariq Malik
Who don't know what rod's talking about. The start of NASA's artemis 2 update press conference was plagued by audio and all sorts of delay issues and every other conference over the last decade. It sounded like it was underwater for like a while it was. Yeah, they had an echo and anyway.

0:18:09 - Rod Pyle
So, uh, yeah, they could talk to the moon, they can't talk to each, can't talk between a few buildings. Guys, chrism said so um yeah, so Tariq, what's the upshot here?

0:18:18 - Tariq Malik
we got delays again yes, yes, yes, surprising perhaps everyone, and yet no one at all. Nasa has pushed back the launch of Artemis to its next crew, its first crewed mission around the moon since well of the 21st century, you know, since the Apollo era, and this happened as Rod mentioned. It happened yesterday at NASA headquarters where you had Bill Nelson and all of the leaders talk about how and I'm going to quote space is demanding and that they need more time to make updates and whatnot to the Orion space reference Heatshield. One of the big issues here that we've seen from Artemis I was that the Heatshield had a lot of cracks on the way back down.

0:19:02 - Rod Pyle
Rod, I know you have thoughts about this.

Well, we saw it on the EFT flight too, back in 2014. And it took them 10 years at least as far as I could tell and somebody commented on this yesterday in the press it took them 10 years to talk about the fact, to talk about why the heat shield's a challenge, at least in some respects and yes, I do have something to say about that which is 10 years ago, I had a chance to have a short interview with the project manager for the heat shield. Now this heat shield's made from Avcoat, which is what they used on Apollo, but it's made differently. Two big differences. One is it's not a honeycomb structure over a substrate, it's just layered on there. As I understand it, made basically as a monoblock, and that's partly because it's cheaper, and this is another one of those false economies on Artemis, just like the SLS and the SRBs are. But also, the knowledge base from Apollo was gone and they really didn't know how to do it again and this is what they said yesterday and they just don't have the resources. They did back when NASA's budget was about 10 times what it is now.

However, more importantly to me and more insultingly, the EPA regulations now prevent NASA from using the original formulation for Avcoat and as the project manager and you guys have heard this before if you've been listening to the show as the project manager described to me, he said remember when you were a kid by the way, that was a really long time ago, I was a kid just a little after Leonard was.

He said remember when you were a kid and you used to use Krylon spray paint and it hardened up like a rock in about 15 minutes and I said yeah. He said now it takes about a day, right? And I said yeah. He said that's because we can't use those toxic chemicals that they used back in the 60s. And I said wait a minute, you can't get a waiver to have this made, like you know, five miles south of me in Mexico or something. And he said no, we can't, we have to do it the right way. So apparently part of the formulation problem is EPA regulations. Leonard, why the heck can't they get a waiver? You've been doing this longer than anybody, I don't know.

0:21:18 - Leonard David
Yeah, I mean when you were talking I'm thinking you know this is well, let's see if I can glue this together I remember when a guy named Fred Singer and I were talking he was one of the first early space scientists that we could have the Singer radiation belts, not the Van Allen belts belts, not the van allen belts he pulled me to the side and he was so upset about the solid rocket motors and epa uh inclusion in there and uh, and he was trying to blame al gore, you know, for uh changing the epa rules or something.

And you know I, you know it's one something. The chemistry of space flight is really interesting and it's one of that. I'm frankly very paranoid about the reentry and some satellite debris and a lot of other things. I'm not answering your question because I have no clue about what, I'm just thinking of fragments. But you know, we do have a kind of an odd thing going on here with EPA and I think the FAA and a lot of government regulations that are that I think that the lawn and the Trump folks seem to be honing in on and the uh trump folks seem to be honing in on.

Yeah, you know because I think it gets to what I thought we were going to be doing the uap, ufo thing. You know what is. You know the government role in all this. You know what is the regulations? Are they over burdensome? Uh, are they protecting us? Are they overdoing it? So we're at a disadvantage globally. And all I know and I've been writing this for years china is coming. This is a a very interesting moment in time. This is a sputnik effect. This is nothing very much different in my mind between a beep, beep, beep of 184-pound satellite, a Sputnik 1, that shook the world up and China's coming. And you heard Nelson at the very beginning of his again we got to get there before China, you know?

I mean, you heard the plaintiff call. Well, yeah, china's using it as a you know, a card to play Can you explain why this time? There are things going on here that are way so fascinating for writers, right now.

0:24:04 - Tariq Malik
We actually forgot to mention, so what the delays actually are.

0:24:08 - Rod Pyle
We said just that artemis is delayed, but uh, no, actually we interrupted you, so I apologize, that's right rod all right, get on with it you know who's interrupting me?

0:24:16 - Tariq Malik
is man all this work going on downstairs. I don't know if you guys can hear it no, we're fine, it is okay.

0:24:21 - Rod Pyle
So what else? First lift your feet, yeah, yeah, so. So just just so, that first delay.

0:24:23 - Leonard David
Lift your feet.

0:24:24 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, yeah. So, just so that you know if you're marking your calendars like I was, I was already going to start the big Artemis 2 campaign for space.com. It was supposed to launch in September of 26, like next year, or 25, september 2025, with Artemis 3, the moon landing to follow in 2026. Both of those had already been delayed, uh, by like a year or so, uh, and now artemis ii won't launch until april of 2026 at the earliest. So let's hope it's around my birthday rod. That'd be fun, uh, we could, we could celebrate it in florida, uh, and artemis iii has been pushed out to sometime in mid-2027. That means that, for the second time in a row, if there are more delays, a Trump administration may not see a moon landing within its four-year term. You know mid-2027 is already pushing it for that.

0:25:21 - Rod Pyle
So we're going to have to wait. Yeah, donald's not going to be happy. Oh yeah, that's likeixon watching his glory evaporate, so I guess he'll probably push him so there's.

0:25:30 - Tariq Malik
There's two things, there's two things to watch on this, because they said some very interesting things. Bill nelson did and he was there with tom melroy with this new uh moon to mars office that they've got going on there too, and uh, and they said that they might try during art Artemis II to do a bunch of other things to check tests off the board. One of them could be a quote unquote parallel flight test around the Moon of not just Artemis and its Orion spacecraft and four astronauts, but possibly, like a SpaceX Starship flying in conjunction with it, as they do proximity operations around the moon. That could be something to see, right, that could be pretty amazing, but still it is yet another delay and pushing, you know, the moon and likely Mars just that much further out.

0:26:23 - Rod Pyle
Well, I guess we'll see what happens. We're going to jump to another ad break right now. We'll be right back with the next headline. Stand by.

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0:27:44 - Tariq Malik
I thought we were going to talk. Talk at length about all that stuff, unless you want to talk about it.

0:27:51 - Rod Pyle
No, we've got time, we can go where you want to go. I do have to, by the way, though, have a show note here. I got an email. We got an email from listener David Eckert. Did you see it? I saw it, David, David. So he takes exception to space headline, quote asteroid the size of three million elephants to pass close to earth, or whatever it was you said at the end. But the three million element part, I mean really. You know, as he said in his email, just tell me the diameter, you know, I will give you that you're at least going for volume here. I mean, come on seriously?

0:28:32 - Tariq Malik
no, it's fine, you know, god forbid we try something new at space.com, ron, it's not? No, no, wait, wait, wait wait, hold on.

0:28:40 - Rod Pyle
It's not new because Lori Garver, under Lori Garver's NASA, which he was deputy administrator, they had the I don't know what was it 200,000 elephant thrust of SLS or whatever.

0:28:52 - Tariq Malik
And they use it at ULA all the time too, which was goofy.

0:28:55 - Rod Pyle
But why would you guys pick it up for an asteroid instead of saying your usual is the size of a nuclear submarine or something?

0:29:02 - Tariq Malik
I think it was a size of a stadium actually.

0:29:06 - Rod Pyle
Well, that was what the responsible outlets said.

0:29:08 - Tariq Malik
We're I'm all open for when the writers like to try something new and I will stand behind it. You know, I think the original headline was something like 180 million capybaras. That's a little bit of a stretch perhaps Chupacabras.

0:29:24 - Rod Pyle
what Capybaras?

0:29:25 - Tariq Malik
you know what's million capybaras? That's a little bit of a stretch, perhaps. What capybaras? You know a capybara, the world's largest rodent right.

0:29:32 - Rod Pyle
Leonard, did you know that?

0:29:33 - Leonard David
No this is why I stay tuned to space.com.

0:29:37 - Tariq Malik
Wait, you've never seen a capybara Rod. I've seen a chupacabra. Oh, you have not. I saw Bigfoot, but other than that, All right. Well, you got to get yourself to San Diego, Go see the capybaras there. But no, I'll tell you, Asteroid flybys. People get really interested in them and my personal rule this is there's a capybara.

0:30:03 - Rod Pyle
There you go.

0:30:04 - Tariq Malik
Thank you, john. So my personal feeling is that if an asteroid isn't any closer than the moon, like when it flies by, I don't really give notice and I like to write about them. If it's going to be within the orbit than the moon, like when it flies by, I don't really give notice and I like to write about them. If it's going to be, you know, within the orbit of the moon, yeah, exactly, because then 11 million miles or something, it's like oh yawn and so these ones, like I don't, I don't really, I don't really like care to track.

however, this one was getting a lot of steam and and folks were doing so, so I was like, well, all right, let's try something new and see like what's what. And that's what we did. So, David, I take the criticism, I understand. Uh, I, I'll, I'll pick a larger animal, maybe like some whales or something. Next time.

Yeah, a giant blue whale would it be? There actually is a small asteroid that's going to fly by on Saturday, so tomorrow that's going to be like about 100,000 miles away. And so you know, we get by the way. We get flybys like that all the time, like at least once or twice a day, and we just don't talk about them. And people talk about them because NASA puts these flybys on a short list and they actually have a bigger list too, tells you, uh, when, when they're going to come through it, through their near-earth object detection thing, and there are sites that just like to run that and say that every single one that's going to come by, even if it's 11 million miles away and has no chance of intersecting with our planet, is going to kill us, all you know. And so just take all those headlines with a grain of salt too too.

0:31:35 - Leonard David
Yeah, but you put. I saw the early headline of it's larger than 10,000 tarantulas, which is not.

0:31:42 - Rod Pyle
That doesn't help 10,000 tarantulas to fit in a beach ball.

0:31:47 - Tariq Malik
I thought we were going to talk about UFOs on this.

0:31:53 - Rod Pyle
Well, we should, but do we want it before Tail to tail, before we take our next break? Is there anything? Somebody pass a laughing gas. You better start laughing. Is there anything we want to cover about? Cause? I know we're going to do this in another episode, Tariq, but is there anything either you guys want to say about what we, you know, in the broader perspective, what we expect out of a Isaacman slash Musk cabal, possibly for 2025, at least?

0:32:29 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, I want to just say that I think that this combination of the Artemis delays and like a new administration, because we always expect when there's a new administration that the agency's priorities are going to get changed. Isaac Min himself has actually been pretty critical of the Space Launch System. I had actually expected NASA's big press conference to be a reminder that SLS was here to stay and no one should be worrying about it.

0:32:57 - Rod Pyle
You didn't think it was going to be a cancellation call. Yeah.

0:32:59 - Tariq Malik
Well, no, I didn't think it was going to be that at all. I had a delay on my bingo card for that one, but not the cancellation. But I think that you could see some serious discussions about how central do they want SLS to be now in that program, for it Could they put Orion on a different vehicle? It's built for SLS right now and SLS is built for that. But will Isaacman push and push to do it?

And I'm also very curious to see where the split and the line ends between Isaacman as a SpaceX customer and Isaacman as a NASA administrator. I think he can do it Right, and then we're SpaceX as a provider and then SpaceX as, like a, a client or whatnot of of the NASA administrator. So so I'm curious what's going to happen on those two pending Polaris Dawn flights that Isaacman has either contracted SpaceX for or has signed the letter of intent to buy? And do those get pushed out beyond this term now? Or what else happens with that? Does he forego them? Because I don't know what that means. I don't think we've ever been in a situation where a potential incoming new NASA administrator has a private spaceflight booked with a company that the agency now is their primary human spaceflight contractor.

0:34:26 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, or that clearly favors a company that could easily become a monopoly to some extent that North American aviation slash Rockwell was kind of becoming a monopoly during the shuttle years even though the SRBs and engines were built by other people, and we'll oversee SpaceX rivals for contracts and bids and that kind of thing.

But question for Leonard you know, if you've got Elon in the background, I don't know how to characterize it. I don't want to say, well, yeah, at least from what we've seen of him. Let's just say he has the potential to try and be a puppet master. I don't think he'd succeed at it, given the people involved. But you know, is he going to be smart enough to encourage NASA and others to continue supporting Blue Origin and so forth for competitive bids, or is it going to try and swing things? Spacex?

0:35:20 - Leonard David
No, those are great questions, but you know, in my view we've got a study that nobody paid attention to, which is the Academy of Science, Crossroads at NASA, NASA at a Crossroads.

0:35:36 - Rod Pyle
I saw that that was a huge study.

0:35:37 - Leonard David
And nobody paid attention to this report. This is another one of those early warning signs about the health of NASA and I recommend that study for people to look at because this guy's coming in in a NASA that is in trouble. The budget is not there. The infrastructure to do space is, you know, depending on if you believe what they put in the report uh, it's held together by velcro. You know we got problems and there are really serious issues about the governmental NASA that we all have loved over the decades. And you know we got J and you can comment on this run about the JPL layoffs and that round of those yeah.

I mean, you know we're, we're in a, you know in a government spiral down capability and you know I, I listened to nelson yesterday and if I got on there, you know which I couldn't. There was too many good reporters, you know, doing their stuff, but you know, you know, I don't care about delays. You, you got more fundamental problems, buddy, you got some NASA pains in the groin. I just don't know how this is going to resolve itself, given the budget dollars and the public interest in space, which we're missing totally.

Do they care about NASA? I mean in the federal in space, which we're missing totally. Do they care about NASA? I mean in the federal, in the big picture, you still have to ask whether or not you know NASA fits into what the public expects of it and can they deliver. And when you have delays like this and heat shield issues and all these other problems, you start wondering you know, ok, this is not. You know, certainly not my NASA, never mind my father's. Nasa, my NASA. I see a downward spiral.

0:37:54 - Tariq Malik
I think that the public's interest, though, is there. I mean, they fly their first helicopter on Mars, and people notice that.

0:38:03 - Rod Pyle
They talk about asteroids that are the size of three billion elephants.

0:38:06 - Tariq Malik
Oh my gosh.

0:38:08 - Rod Pyle
Okay. But so just to back up a step, and my context here is I'm writing a book with a senior NASA official a former senior NASA official right now, who you know, he's very polite but he's not pleased to see what NASA is becoming. Which is somewhat fossilized is a strong word, but organizations, you know, tend to stiffen up as they get older. Additional layers of bureaucracy and I think his main point is the decision making. Too much decision making has been, uh, moved up to headquarters as opposed to being at the field center level, which is what made apollo work so well.

And if we can back, you know, I can't stand the idea of the waste of, of giving up on what's already been spent on sls and that god-awful mobile launch tower which you know, billions really. But if you toss that you don't have to pay close to I think the last estimate I saw all in was about five billion, close to five billion a launch for SLS If instead Starship or New Glenn or Falcon Heavy. Obviously for New Glenn or Falcon Heavy, multiple launches Obviously. For Starship, you know, maybe 500 refueling launches or something, whatever it takes, but that's still cheaper than SLS, no matter how you slice it I mean, does that solve part of the budget problem?

0:39:39 - Leonard David
you're talking about Leonard. Well, how you slice it, is Alon showing that he can do these things. I think we got a NASA that is going to have to. What I thought I heard and I'm not sure I heard it right mean I I'd bank on blue origin. I'm not. I'm not sure Elon is going to be able to cough up the goods on getting us to the moon with with uh, with the uh starship.

You know it could have all kinds of developmental problems and I, at the same time, like everybody, I'm amazed at what he's done so far. So I can't discount that he can do that. But you know, if you're, you know, at the end of the day, I don't care how we get to the moon, we got to get to the moon. You know, if it's a giant rubber band that somebody comes up with and just shoots everybody there, I'm up for it. And you know, as long as they got helmets on and they can land and they got retro packs, it's fine. But you know, at the end of the day, you're talking about something much larger Government in the world political scene. You have China coming. You and watch Russia. I I'm not discounting Russia. They got a bunch of new things going on, sub-level it's. They're always an economic turmoil and Putin and all the other stuff that. But I keep an eye on those guys. India, india, coming on strong.

0:41:15 - Rod Pyle
And all those players have mostly lower labor rates. Don't have to worry about unions.

0:41:21 - Leonard David
Yeah, you know, again, the dynamo of the space exploration agenda for the 21st century as we turn the corner on this year is really going to be fascinating. I mean, it's just, it's just, uh. And then we have the clips and the NASA private landers on the moon, and what is that going good? I don't know. My guess is I don't know. My guess is I don't like it. Right now. I think it's been a two for two problem, yeah, and, and we'll see how they do with Firefly and intuitive machines, the next flight out, and. But you know, it's exciting. I mean, from a reporter standpoint, couldn't ask for more.

0:42:17 - Rod Pyle
You couldn't. That's a good point. But but your point also is taken that we have not had a lot of success with clips so far. No, and these are small operators and it may take I don't know five more years for them to get it right. If they get it right, I mean, it may just be I hate to say this because none of us want to see it happen but it may be at some point that they kind of have to find some kind of hybrid bridge between cost plus and fixed fee. But let's save that discussion for another time. I want to jump to a quick break and then I want to come back and talk to you about UAPs.

Oh, my god and stuff. See him overhead, all right stand by right back. So, Leonard, we've had some recent activity here um. First I thought that was, uh, the the carpenters at Tariq's house, while you transported me back to my childhood in the 60s. Here we go.

0:43:19 - Leonard David
We finally got to the topic that I was asked to do, that's right. Okay, I'll shut this off now Please do, I'm ready.

0:43:31 - Rod Pyle
All right, there it is. Kill it, kill it, kill it. Okay. Right, kill it, kill it, kill it, okay. So, uh, just up front, you know, we've moved from ufo, which which we're all familiar with from the 50s on, certainly, and, uh, now we call them UAPs. So at first they were unidentified aerial phenomena. Now that's been changed to unidentified anomalous phenomena. Is that right? Pick one, yeah, what does that really mean? And why the nomenclature change? Was that just to get away from the baggage that ufo carried from years of wild speculation?

0:44:07 - Leonard David
it seemed to be that, uh, you know I'm, you know I'm gonna go back and I'm gonna hold on, as things I maybe have said here before. But I I'm a little, I'm always annoyed a little bit and maybe I'm wrong, but I don't like ufo and uap glued together. We got two different kind of phenomenon that may be uh involved here and uh, you know, I I'm old enough to ufos to me were crashed flying saucers going overhead, things coming in uap. Okay, now we got a bunch of other uh kind of uh people that are experts or are they drones? Are they from another country? Are they ET? Is it us coming back in time? You know there's a lot of variation here and that is really aggravating to me as somebody that at the end of the line I I'm almost convinced and I'd say I'm pretty convinced, I probably am convinced that we've had some intrusion by a uh alien visitation. I only need one. If it was roswell, great, I don't need them coming here all the time. I don't want out of of control.

0:45:37 - Rod Pyle
You know people that didn't have the DMV license, you know running out of brake fluid, crashing all over the place and that's a good point, because we've talked about this before in the show, but it's like so you guys are thousands or tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands or millions of years in advance of us. You could travel interstellar distances or fold time and space or whatever, and yet you keep crashing into our planet. I mean, really, that reminds me of myself when I was 16 and drove around without a decent master cylinder in my car and kept running into things.

0:46:11 - Leonard David
I think you're still doing that, aren't you?

0:46:13 - Rod Pyle
Well, probably. Let me just shift the question a little bit. In one of your columns in the last few months you wrote about the Milligan study and I'll quote from that. It is increasingly clear Milligan feels that belief in alien visitation is no longer just fun speculation but something that has real and damaging consequences. So he's not, as I, real and damaging consequences. So he's not as I read what you wrote. He's not claiming one thing or the other, he's merely pointing out that this perception, which is fairly widespread and, I guess, increasing, of, uh, of actual alien visitations and possibly them being walking among us and all that has kind of knock on damaging effects to the public psyche. Is that what you took from that?

0:47:01 - Leonard David
Yeah, I think there are beginnings to be a lot of different people looking that, frankly, have a background to look at it, because there's a lot of extraneous people that seem to be sociologists all of a sudden, uh, giving us opinions about you know, uh, we're in good stead with ufos and you and et walking around. Um, yeah, that that's one point. I I am on the edge of sending uh space.com my new article. I wrote a piece that's going to come out. I ask really, the top five or six people that in are investigating ufo, uap, what has to happen in 2025 to make this more real?

That was the premise of the question and you should, you should listen. I mean, you're going to read on the article what these people came up with. It's pretty interesting because you know we've had several congressional hearings in the last month or so and you know and you know those are not making the difference there's got to be. If you're going to be a scientifically based investigator looking at this issue, it's got to move the needle into science, data. There's uniform agreement that we're not there yet and uh, this kind of hearsay.

0:48:43 - Rod Pyle
I, I knew a guy and and world war, I saw one and you know, I got a memo and that is not cutting it, you know well, and jumping in, but even some of the recent testimony from people that were widely regarded as being responsible actors you know military officers and so forth yeah, if I read correctly, even some of that was a friend of a friend of mine said x, and you know they're testifying before congress and congress is saying well, what about your direct experience? Well, I heard a thing. That's not helpful, is it?

0:49:19 - Leonard David
No, and let me just do. I hate to do this to you, but I spent some time doing this this morning because I woke up worried about this show. And I went back and looked at all my emails from all the people that I asked.

Oh, what a guy and you know it's about seven years ago that New York Times had a Leslie Keen article she co-authored. That really spun up a lot of this activity. I've got people going. It's a new modern era of UFO, of ufo, uap. What's needed is disclosure with a capital d skepticism. The dod all domain anomaly resolution office. This has to do with the government. Uh, that people now today don't trust. Everything points to we don't really believe the government telling us anything. This poor guy that just got this job, I like him. He's different than the first guy that ran the job and he's testifying before congress and and he's trying to explain a lot of these videos and all these other things. Anyway, he's doing his job. Uh, there's need for NASA and National Science Foundation funding on this topic. More congressional hearings will not be much help. The wild card is the Trump administration. They seem to have a bias toward declassification. Will they declassify UAP-related documents?

0:50:57 - Tariq Malik
Well, that's what Donald Trump said on the campaign trail, right? He said that if he was elected, he would declassify that. Well, no wonder he won. Yeah, I guess so.

0:51:07 - Rod Pyle
This brings up an interesting point. Just to wrap up on the Milliken study, he points out that much of it seems to be rooted in public mistrust of quote the elites and quote cabals. And that is certainly a theme with donald trump. Yeah, because he's anti-elite. Some might feel anti a lot of things, but but anti-elite, although he may be a cabal unto himself I don't know, I guess we'll find out. But whatever the case may be a cabal unto himself, I don't know, I guess we'll find out. But whatever the case may be, those play in together, don't they?

0:51:42 - Leonard David
Well, you know it's a secret government. You know, I mean there's so many. I mean just looking at Internet today I just went on and looked at before we got on. I look at you know what people are reporting on these websites Weird rotating UFO filmed over San, really capable software to mimic UFO sightings. I think one thing that we ought to get into is whether or not the government should find people that fake on purpose a UFO sighting. You know there has to be some you know kind of guidelines here If we really are trying to get to the bottom line and try to get the scientific foundation of something that we may not know about. I find those people guilty as charged. I find those people guilty as charged if they have faked you know imagery and it's pervasive on the Internet. And then you get the people that are criticizing. What do they call it? Well, you know we're all part of some kind of media. What is that thing with the general media or whatever it is, the mass media? Yeah, yeah, well, you know that, nobody trusts the media.

Yeah, there is no mass media. Are you kidding? There hasn't been for 20 years well, you know, and you know, you know, and so it's feeding on itself and it's a. It's a, it's a cottage industry. There's a lot of people that want to believe in this phenomenon that we're visiting all the time, and that's fine, but there are people making money on this. You know, rightly or wrongly, and you know podcasts every which way Everybody's got new videos and all this. Oh my god an alien con.

0:53:59 - Rod Pyle
I mean. I've mentioned this before but, you've been there.

I was invited because I had done, uh, ancient aliens and william shatner's, unexplained. So I said, oh, come give a talk at alien con. So I go to alien con and I'm used to both going to conferences and planning conferences, as I do every year, and you know, we're lucky if we get 900 or 1,100 people, 10,000 people plus show up at Pasadena Convention Center walking around with the little springy balls on their heads and green makeup and all this stuff and they're selling keychains and, you know, alien sound makers and things.

0:54:37 - Tariq Malik
I'm like wow I mean I don't know. It sounds like you're part of the system. Rod, sounds like you're part of the system.

0:54:43 - Rod Pyle
It's beyond well, it's beyond a cottage industry. So I gave a talk on planetary science which actually was fairly well attended and the people were really normal. But then I went into the keynote, which is what's left of Eric Von Donaghan being rolled up to a table, and there were 3,300 people in that one. The auditorium was packed. There were people hanging off the balcony, standing by the doors and you know, I read Von Donica's books in the 60s, but even as a kid I thought this guy's a loon, you know. But that's just me. You know the whole Ezekiel. Oh my God, it's aliens. Yeah, sorry, go ahead.

0:55:23 - Tariq Malik
I was going to say can, can I ask it is? I mean, it's, it's? It's just crazy. It's 2024 and there's government commissions about ufos and UAPs and yeah and yet and, and, and, yet, and, and.

I. It's like there's two things that always come to mind when we talk about this on the show, and number one is like what's stopping anyone from just setting up like an actual scientific network that just tracks the sky and then everyone can see it publicly? Because we have this cloud, you know, and everyone has a phone, you know and then using an AI to sift it, because it seems like that that that's just just keeping an eye on things will solve everything once and for all.

0:56:02 - Rod Pyle
But isn't that what Avi Loeb's trying to do with the project Gemini or Galileo.

0:56:06 - Leonard David
He's one of them and you know Avi is doing it and I kind of keep in touch with him and how he's doing. There are other networks that are being set up, including the DOD-AARO. They have their own sensor network that they've established. Oh, is that Gremlin or whatever it's called Gremlin exactly? And it's being set up in a classified area to look at the sky, and you know.

0:56:35 - Tariq Malik
But no one's going to listen to that because it's in a classified area, and then you know it should be a network that is just live streaming for everyone to see, but even then, no one's going to listen.

0:56:46 - Rod Pyle
I think they have that already Right right, we have billions of smartphones on the planet.

0:56:54 - Tariq Malik
Exactly.

0:56:55 - Rod Pyle
And yet the images and movies of UFOs, UAPs, have not gotten any better, since they were in the 60s, when we had brownie cameras with film.

0:57:03 - Tariq Malik
I don't know. These drones in New Jersey are putting the fear of god and everyone over here, but I mean, where's the imagery?

0:57:10 - Rod Pyle
where's the proof? Where's the hey? I saw an alien walking down the street the other day. I mean, it reminds me a little bit of a movie which I sort of hated to love, which was, uh, they live starring rowdy roddy piper, who is here to kick butt and chew bubblegum.

0:57:28 - Leonard David
Yeah, but it was great.

I listened to a guy today which I like a very good journalist, a very interesting character. In this whole scene it's almost like we're under attack. And if you listen to some of these things and the amount of reporting and you know drones and people seeing things, we must be under attack. And there is a sub theme of you know that the government is afraid to let you know that we're not under attack and, uh, you know whether it's pervasive UAPs coming in. There are drones from other countries. Are they et lobbed in? I don't know. But I mean, you've got a paranoia level in the UFO community that's building and the whole black government and you know the super secret thing and and uh, it it really is pervasive and, uh, fascinating. But there is a sociological hook here that I'm really trying to follow.

Meanwhile, you've got exoplanet detection. You've got James Webb Space Telescope, hubble. You've got new online ground telescopes that are going to give us a whole new view of the universe as a crowded place. It's not that we're alone, it's crowded out there. There are civilizations out there now you got to parse that away from. Are they here? Is it because we're so special? They're pervasive out there. There's so many civilization that people are flying everywhere can't be just one kind of alien coming in. Probably. Multiple things are happening and so it's a great time to to uh be a movie maker and and try to do a really solid uh movie about. Uh, we're here. We're here, we're Spielberg when I need him.

0:59:51 - Rod Pyle
He's still around.

0:59:54 - Tariq Malik
Oh man, oh man.

0:59:56 - Rod Pyle
Well, can you talk a?

0:59:57 - Tariq Malik
ramble.

0:59:58 - Rod Pyle
Sorry, Tariq, do you have a question, or should I move on?

1:00:02 - Tariq Malik
No, we can move on. We can move on. I just I don't. I don't see a way that this whole conversation advances the way that it's going, you know, with all of these hearings and whatnot, unless there's some kind of fully transparent and, as Leonard you say, scientific monitoring that everyone can see and everyone trusts it. Because, like doing all the stuff with classified programs or in classified areas, like there's always this air of deniability where they're just still hiding something or someone, they're not telling us the truth or whatever, and I don't know if there's actual aliens out there or not. I think the universe is too big for us to be all by ourselves. But I also think that we might just be like a little bit of back whiter out here in the orion arm, you know, and and that and that we're far away and we're pretty young.

1:00:54 - Rod Pyle
We're pretty young, exactly. But wasn't this the whole point of global disclosure day was to bring some transparency and, as they were quoted at this point, it switched around. In their opinion, instead of the true believers having to prove they're real, it's up to the government to prove they are not real. What's that mean? Yeah, what was Global Disclosure Day?

1:01:22 - Leonard David
I just I looked at that and I love those guys. I loved looking at their website. It's a great thing. We should begin now to establish clear definitions of near-earth techno signatures, communication protocols and responsible and ethical sharing of knowledge gained from such contact. You know, I mean everybody's sort of moving toward that direction, but I'm not sure we're ready, you know. You know we're living on the planet. What we got? 10 billion of us on this damn thing, 11. How many people are on this?

1:01:59 - Rod Pyle
damn thing. I think it was uh eight I thought it was still eight maybe somebody got busy, I don't know. Oh, it's all the aliens, it's the extra they're in a mingling.

1:02:10 - Leonard David
There's more than we thought. But you know we can't get along with each other. I mean, just in our cultures, our societies are. You know. It's amazing to me that you know we kill life to go look for it out in the universe and try to be profound about it. You know, on this planet we're doing nothing but killing each other and we have the audacity to want to go look for life elsewhere that there's something wrong there. I think I don't know, I'm just getting old. But you know it's heavy.

1:02:49 - Rod Pyle
I don't have white robes on yet, but I mean I'm getting there, klaatu tried to tell us how to live our lives and threatened us with annihilation if we couldn't get along with the interstellar community. Back in the day, the Earth stood still.

1:03:02 - Leonard David
But there is a the original, not the not. There is a scene that runs through a lot of these ufo, uap groups that you know they're peace now, world peace. You know, somehow we're going to hunker down with the aliens and and we're going to be calm. You know it'll. You know they're obviously looking at our nuclear weapon sites and their's drones are flying over or UAPs are doing something and looking in on you know it's. You know benevolent aliens coming in to help us out. You know, I don't know, I didn't have a really long conversation with Frank Drake before he died.

Um, and you know, know he was, he was one of my go-to people.

I it was amazing character in this and you know his whole life was, you know, wondering about alien intelligence and you know the benevolence of it all. You know who was out there, what was coming, benevolence of it all. You know who was out there, what was coming, and uh, and then you kind of balance that with uh, steve hawking, stephen hawking, you know, don't? You know we don't want to be in, you know engaged, and uh, so somewhere in there the star war bar exists and there's going to be a lot of different kind of alien intelligences and uh, how this meshes up with our society and uh, as a group on this planet that uh has been broken up by, uh, uh, continents and uh, you know, and we have cultures that are in disarray, governments that are out of kilter. Uh, you know, I I don't know how that fits in. I I just I am a little worried about how that, what this means to society, and will you know whether or not we can even adapt or adopt it? Adapt or adopt, you know?

1:05:11 - Rod Pyle
all right. Well, that was certainly more profound than I was prepared for, so sorry speaking of being profound, let's uh cut to one of our beloved sponsors and we'll be right back.

1:05:22 - Tariq Malik
Stand by you know we've been talking about stuff in the air and like talking about my drones in New Jersey. You know it's not me, by the way, I'm not behind it, I promise, right. So, but you know, rod, you mentioned this earlier. And Leonard, I'm very curious what you think about like this other part of the earth that people should be looking at, which is, of course, like the oceans, part of the earth that people should be looking at, which is, of course, like the oceans. Now, NASA, like they had their whole big uap committee, look, you know, primarily for aerial stuff, and I think that's before they even changed it to anomalous instead of aerial, right? Um, but I'm very curious, um, what, uh, what your take is, Leonard, on, like this push to open up, I guess, the the ocean. If anyone's seen that movie cocoon, that's like the whole point. Like the aliens come and they drop little people in cocoons in the ocean and then go on off.

1:06:17 - Rod Pyle
but I mean, this is something that people were talking about. Wait cocoon wasn't cocoon.

1:06:20 - Tariq Malik
About the old people and the yes wait wait, oh my gosh, I just dropped more stuff.

1:06:25 - Rod Pyle
Yes, but they think, you're day of the triffids or something no, no, it's about like.

1:06:29 - Tariq Malik
It's about aliens that come to the earth, go out on the ocean, collect their, their, their cocoons, bring them to an abandoned uh pool, leave them there, and then the old people find it there and then get all rejuvenated. That's right. Then they all go back out into the ocean and go up into the, but then of course you have the abyss by james cameron.

1:06:47 - Leonard David
That was a big one where. That's the one and so.

1:06:50 - Tariq Malik
So I'm really curious, like if we're limiting our imagination and ourselves and like thinking like uh, uh, that it all has to be from off the planet, you know, and and coming around where well, the military is not limiting themselves.

1:07:05 - Rod Pyle
I mean, they're the ones that have been talking about this. Transmedium objects.

1:07:09 - Tariq Malik
Now right, yeah, well, you have a whole thing here, rod you. I don't know if you want to to ask. Ask about the the puerto rico event from 2013.

1:07:17 - Rod Pyle
So well, so, uh, yeah, so, Leonard, there was.

I'm sure you saw some recent stuff.

Well, actually, I know you saw because you're you had written about it.

So there's a 2017 go-fast incident, which is the thing that was moving, you know, 10 billion miles an hour over the ocean as they were doing a look down with their fler and at the time, timothy somebody whose last name I can't remember said within the first week look, this kind of instrumentation doesn't give you all the information you need to know about distance and speed, and parallax is a very tricky thing, which is the apparent shift of objects away from you if they're contrasted against each other at close range or great range. His evaluation and the military's evaluation was, I guess, this less familiar with the puerto rico event, quote unquote, which is a transmedium event, where correct me if I'm wrong an object appears to fly into the ocean, then out of the ocean, after splitting into two, and their explanation was look, this is an artifact of the fact that it's the thermal imaging system and a an ocean and air temperature that was close enough that it conflicted, caused conflicting observations, and it was maybe a balloon or a plastic bag. I mean. What do you think?

1:08:55 - Leonard David
Well, I think you're talking about Mick West. He's done a lot of video analysis, a former game designer and he's pretty sharp and people hate him because he tried to discount a lot of these.

Uh, videos and right turns out that he was pretty accurate on that particular one. I think I think a aro. But again you get back to uh, you know, do we believe the government? You know, kind of thing. But yeah, okay, they're coming out of, they're going down in the water. You know, I don't. You know why and what, what's going on down below. I mean the earth is 75 percent water. I mean, you know we got a lot of our terrain is water, you know it's right, it's immersible.

So if they, if they're flying in the water, I don't know. You know that to me is not the uh, I'm not too concerned about the underwater people. Uh, you know, we'll see. I hope they have aqua lungs and they can dive around and have a good time. But uh, you know, if there's something about us wanting to believe all this that I get back to, why is it? And I think it has a kernel of truth. That's the thing. Something is going on here that is probably extraterrestrial or some kind of uh, you know, extraterrestrial or some kind of, you know, sprite, kind of some kind of other phenomenon that we're not aware of, and our time machines. I'm still fascinated about us coming back in time. You know, I don't know. I think that's something that we ought to be paying attention to. I don't know how you get pay attention to it, but something is really awry here and I just see it, or is it just that we want to feel better about the vastness, you know, of the void?

1:11:03 - Rod Pyle
So we need to have something that's tangible, that's why we need to have Pascal lee come back on to give us his drake. Equation n equals one talk where he says, basically we're it, so don't get your homes up. I mean you just you want to end up sticking a poker in your right eye every time you hear him give that talk. It's a good talk, but it's like oh so we're it right, right, thanks.

1:11:24 - Leonard David
Well, it doesn't look that way to me. Rare Earth, you know, that book kind of skewed us a lot, you know. I think we know more now about exoplanet evolution and what's going on out there. It just doesn't make sense. What's, what's coming, the trend? You know of more. You know more observations of exoplanets, variations on the theme, uh, ocean worlds I just wrote about uranus the other day. You know whether or not their moons are icy. Are we talking about europa, like I mean, you know, not finding life in our own solar system?

1:12:08 - Rod Pyle
it would be bizarre, I think it is going to be, but even if we don't, it's a tiny, tiny sample yeah right, it's there.

1:12:17 - Leonard David
It's there, I'm convinced it's on Mars, it's everywhere. It's pervasive. We'll probably find organic material and life promissory notes on the moon. So you know it's going to be pervasive. And you know, to really consider us as some kind of specialized case is a little moronic. It would be kind of stupid and everybody Sagan, including everybody you know has always said that. But so you know, but it is. You know what it is and what it is is. You know us adapting or adopting that we're not alone, it's very crowded out there and how we accept that.

1:13:07 - Tariq Malik
But who has to accept it is it, is it me, you as like accepting it personally, Leonard, or does not? Maybe not the government but some other trusted agency have to be the police makers. I guess, of that, the, the, the gatekeepers, to say who would that be?

I don't know, I don't know. So NASA that's. This is like. You know, in like the and like all those old sci-fi movies, in like the 50s and like the 60s, you know, the ufo lands and the army is there and they're like, yeah, we're not alone, and everyone's like, yeah, okay, you know what. What's the next? What's the next thing?

1:13:43 - Leonard David
I know that's the first thing we do. We shoot the guy. But you know we shot, you know we we try to board up gort before he ran around and mock. You know we try to do a lot of stuff and that that george powell movie was pretty powerful for its time, if you ever hear george powell talk about how he made that movie which movie, uh days, yeah, that was robert oh man, it's really telling.

And uh, you know, I love the fact that gort was the uh a guy that they hired from grumman's chinese theater. That was like seven foot tall or something.

1:14:22 - Rod Pyle
Lock martin was his name, but he couldn't lift up Patricia Neal, so they had to put her on a slide wire and they didn't want to show the seams in the back of his uniform or his suit.

1:14:35 - Leonard David
But it's a great. That was an early. If you were a super government and you were trying to coax the public into starting to appreciate where we are with this. We're not alone. They must have footed the bill on a lot of those movies because they kind of pushed us down the road. You know particularly spielberg you got, you know the et movie and I, I and all that I just I don't.

1:15:07 - Tariq Malik
I don't understand how anyone will trust any message one way or another if like, yeah, if like the government, the, you know, the National Science Foundation or NASA, come out and say we can say definitively no UFOs have ever come to Earth like flown by aliens or if they say what or or if they say that they, that, that, that, that they can prove it.

You know there are going to be people that just do not believe it one way or another. We've seen that just with elections here. You know, people watch things live on tv and then say it didn't happen.

1:15:42 - Rod Pyle
You know, maybe that's why the time travelers are coming back to this period of time? Because 500 years from now they can't believe we were that screwed up what?

1:15:50 - Tariq Malik
what if someone threw that time traveler party? You know they advertise it and then they go there and like no one shows up, like what happened, but like they just they were really there, but they were invisible, just trying to like mess around with everyone. I mean that would be awful, right.

1:16:02 - Rod Pyle
So article I have Sounds like an article I have a wrap-up question here, Leonard. I get asked this all the time and I'm hoping you know, because I haven't found a whole lot on it. But people ask about do world governments have a plan for first contact? And I know that there are some primarily military plans that include notions like that, but I have yet to find anything at in the united states that says, okay, if we meet aliens or if we're contacted by aliens or if we know they're coming, uh, here's what we'll do a, b and c anything.

1:16:40 - Leonard David
I think there has been some by some groups to uh, to uh signal the united nations to start considering this possibility and so, and it, it has been breached at the un numbers of years ago, I think even gordon cooper, uh, mercury astronaut, uh, actually kind of moved that forward. Yeah, if I remember right I'm maybe gluing stuff wrong here, but uh, so, yeah, the un, you know, and then, okay, you know, it's like everything else, you know who's going to believe the un?

now who's going to take the un's word? We've got enough problems. You know, people don't like the un. Some people love it, you know, and so you, you're back to square one. So it's a public attitude about this. And uh, this, you know, home alone philosophy is not going to hold. We're not there. You know, it's a crowded. It's a crowded universe, and how we accept this or adopt it or whatever it's going to happen, it's coming, I hope. What if?

1:17:57 - Tariq Malik
the world just rolls their eyes I have the solution, you guys.

1:18:01 - Rod Pyle
It has to be announced by tom hanks okay, everybody will say there you go okay he's the trusted dude. We love him. Yeah, uh, all right. Well, we've solved so for Tariq. For the first time in 100 and almost 140 episodes, we've solved the global problem there we go, we figured.

1:18:20 - Tariq Malik
So you're right, we found the national, we found the global spokesperson all right.

1:18:24 - Rod Pyle
So I want to thank everybody for joining us, especially you, Leonard, for episode 139, known as Look to the Skies with Leonard. David Leonard, where's the best place for us to keep up with what you're doing?

1:18:36 - Leonard David
Leonard David inside outer space.

1:18:40 - Tariq Malik
Okay, he's got sound effects.

1:18:45 - Rod Pyle
Tarek, where can we find you transubstantiating these days?

1:18:47 - Tariq Malik
Well, you can find me at space.com, as always, also on the Twitter at Tarek J Malik. If you like watching video games, you can watch me on YouTube at SpaceDrawnPlays. Fortnite OG comes back. I'm hoping for some OG astronauts. That'll be really exciting and I guess this weekend I'll be on the hunt for these drones over new jersey. You got to find out what's going on.

1:19:08 - Rod Pyle
They're buzzing our reservoirs, man you know, there are times in my life where I look at myself and think, dude, you really should have stepped it up a couple decades earlier. That would just become worse if I started watching you play video games online.

1:19:21 - Tariq Malik
So you can play, you should play. We'll do a duo man. It'll be fun, be fun.

1:19:25 - Rod Pyle
I could barely do a crossword puzzle at this point. And of course you can find me at pilebooks.com or at astramagazine.com, the National Space Society's quality quarterly print and digital magazine, which Leonard occasionally writes for, but Tarek doesn't because he's a snob. Remember, you can always drop us a line at twis@twit.tv.

That's twis@twit.v. We love hearing from you and we answer our emails and send a space joke, darn it. I've actually got a little bit of a surplus for the first time in a year living large rod, living large yeah but we always like new ones, new episodes.

This podcast published every Friday on your favorite podcatcher, so make sure to subscribe, tell your friends and give us reviews. We'll take five stars or a thumbs up or three little alien heads, or whatever you want to give us, as long as you say you love us. And don't forget, we're counting on you to join Club Twit this holiday season. Represent, besides supporting Twit, you'll help keep us on the air if that's a good thing in your estimation, um, and bringing you great guests like Leonard David and my horror jokes. And, of course, you can get all the great programming with video streams on the twit network ad free on club twit uh, which is great, and some extras that are only available there. I won't mention my favorite for just seven dollars a month, and you know honestly. I won't mention my favorite for just $7 a month, and you know honestly. What else can you do that's legal for $7 a month? This is as much fun as sitting through this show and for a limited time you can refer new subscribers and get free time for your own Club TWiT subscription. So it's a win-win all the way around.

You've heard Leo talk about tough times facing podcasters, so step up and be our Santa tough times facing podcasters. So step up and be our Santa and that's right and help cover John Ashley's uh lavish lifestyle and yeah, well, he's got it. You have a very nice christmas tree behind you, so clearly things are working okay. But that wasn't club twit money, that was your own. Finally, you can follow the TWiT Tech Podcast Network at twit.tv, on Twitter and on Facebook, at twit.tv on Instagram. Gentlemen, I thank you for your time today, Tariq. Go have your meeting. Thank you, and Leonard. We'll catch up again soon because we're going to have you back on early in the new year to talk about China. And what was the other thing you want to talk about, Tariq?

1:21:48 - Tariq Malik
I thought we were talking about Starship or the new. I don't know what we're going to talk about now. That's like that's so 2025, Rod.

1:21:55 - Rod Pyle
I think it was actually China and Starship, but we'll tease that out.

1:22:00 - Tariq Malik
Or maybe it was UFOs then with Trump, I don't know. We're going to talk about that. All right, rolling on.

1:22:03 - Rod Pyle
I don't know we're gonna talk about that. All right, rolling on. See you guys later. Take care everybody. Bye.