This Week in Space 144 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 - Tariq Malik (Host)
On this episode of this Week in Space, we are going to the moon with the Great Private Lunar Armada to see who's going to the moon, when they're going to get there and when do we get to go.

00:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Podcasts you love From people you trust. This is Tolt. This is this Week in Space, episode number 144, recorded on January 17th 2025. The Great Lunar Armada. Hello and welcome to this Week in Space, the Great Lunar Armada edition. I am, of course, rod Pyle, editor-in-chief Bad Aster Magazine, and I'm joined by Tarek Malik, editoragrin, editor-in-chief at Spacecom.

00:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Hello sir, hello Rod, hello Rod, Happy Friday, happy podcast day this is actually the highlight of my week, I have to tell you. Oh, I'm getting all warm and fuzzy inside.

00:58 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's it.

01:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, what? Oh, it's the highlight of my week too, rod, there you go.

01:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Very well said. I've had three people write me in the last month saying that clearly it was the highlight of your week, so I'm taking that as gospel. All right, before we get cracking here, as always, I ask you to do us a solid Make sure to like, subscribe and do the other podcast things that will keep us feeling warm and loved and on the air. And also, anthony, is the audience survey still going? Yes, it is All right. That means it's time for you to take this last chance to take the 2025 TWIT audience survey. This is an annual survey that helps TWIT understand the audience that we're talking to, so we can improve your listening experience, which, believe it or not, despite what you hear on this show, we worry about all the time. It only takes a few minutes. It's it's quick and easy. If you go to twittv survey, you can take it, and please don't wait. Take before it closes at the end of this month, because it'll help make twit even better and that will make them come to us with torches and pitchforks and make us even better.

02:10
Speaking of getting better, it's time for the space joke. Hey, yeah, from this week's joke, armada. This week's groaner comes from Nate Tanner. Hey, tarek. Yes, rod, what did the gantry say to the SpaceX Starship booster as it took off?

02:28 - Tariq Malik (Host)
What did it say? Catch you later. Very appropriate. Did we use that one before?

02:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I don't know, I really did like that one If we did.

02:39 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I like it. Thank you, nate. Yeah, thank you, nate.

02:41 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That was definitely worth a revisit. Yeah, we should reserve the right to use it again too. So that was a good one. Well, probably end up cycling through all the good ones twice eventually. Yet I've heard that some jokes want to expose themselves to a lunar vacuum when they hear our jokes. But you can help send your best, worst or most joke to us at twist twittv. Now let's do some headlines. Headlines boy, headline news. I love it. Thank you, australian alice. Um, it's probably not hard for regular listeners to guess what our first headline would be. We had had an explosive display with Starship's test flight seven yesterday.

03:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right.

03:30 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And you know it was halfway good. They caught the booster.

03:35 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah Well, yeah Well, this was, this was. I think all of our news stories this week are from spacecom, but they were very widely covered by other folks. But just a day before our podcast recording, spacex launched their starship flight seven test flight. So this is your seventh test flight. It's also the first flight of a brand new starship vehicle. I don't think they're calling it v2, but, uh, they kind of had the pro and the con. You know.

03:59
They successfully caught the booster again, this time with really awesome camera views of the booster coming down from the gantry arm itself, which was crazy, uh, and that seemed to have go very, very well. But shortly after that, they lost contact with the ship itself and uh, and so the ship, they think, had a fuel leak. Uh, as of the the initial like what is that analysis from elon musk? And it started a fire that then blew up the vehicle, and we know it blew up because we've got video of the debris falling over Turks. And do you say cacao? Is that how you pronounce it? Caicos? I think Caicos, yeah, and I actually got called by a news writer from there last night to ask Wow, look at that video.

04:41 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I know.

04:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
In this video that people are seeing on our video stream it to ask video. I know isn't in this. In this video that people are seeing on our on our video stream, it's it's like cell phone video of the rocket going up and then it just explodes and then in another clip you see just this huge mass of fiery debris. I mean the starship is like a hundred and twenty feet tall. It's really big and it's just all coming down over these. This like a kind of palm tree area, really, really tropical, really tropical, really lush. Other videos I've seen are people where it's passing right over their house or over ships and boats that they're on.

05:13
So there is an FAA investigation into this now, because this is different than the standing FAA license approval for failures that they have, which means that there's no threat to loss, there's no threat to life. There's no threat to life, there's no threat to property. When you have debris passing over populated areas, there is that threat, I would assume. So we're going to have to see how this investigation goes. But it was a brand new version of Starship. Lots of different changes more propellant, 25% more propellant, new flight computer, different flap design, a lot of new re-entry, heat tile technology. Uh, somewhere, some you know something caught fire and um, and they're gonna have to figure it out well.

05:53 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, uh, the specifics I read at least these are the musings of musk was that the fuel leak was in the inner tank area, so it would be between the uh, methane and liquid oxygen tanks, and that they think it caught in there. So when asked what he would do, he said we're going to put a sensor and a fire suppressant system in there, which I guess that'll work. You know, you think you could just expose it to the vacuum. But whatever the case, uh, that's how he plans to deal with it. And there's been a certain amount of pushback from you know, on social media about oh, you know, elon takes a giant step backwards and look at, look at a new Glenn, and how well that flew, and it's like that's true. But you know, this was a brand, as you point out, a brand new version of starship. It's longer, it's got more fuel, it's more powerful, it's more capable, carry more payload, so on, so on. So you know, it's basically a new rocket with new systems in it. It's not. It not everything scales one to one right.

06:56 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So you have to give it a break here and I would just, I would just remind everyone and this is a company that lost a nasa payload rocket, you know. And then, six months later, you know, return to flight. Spacex has been building these ships at scale. It's not like they don't have another one, like already complete and ready to come out to test again or another five yeah, exactly, or five.

07:17
So they are going to come back, uh, from this. I think that the big question now is how uh much of a hit will the faa investigation into this because of the re-entry over, uh clearly populated or near populated areas? Uh, will that slow things down more than past failures you know have have done? And we'll have to see, because that is like a really big concern that the faa has had, since they are fairly close to a populated area where they launch from with the world's largest rocket, you know, and so we're gonna have to see how that all goes. But it's interesting you mentioned New Glenn because I think that's next on our list of big stories.

07:54 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So yeah, I'll just say, you know, once they start launching from Kennedy, I think they can avoid populated areas going in an equatorial trajectory. It's that weird texas launch site that sends them out, you know, over florida, of course. And then you know you have to make a decision. Do you go straight and go out through the caribbean, where all the friendly countries are, or do you arc south and say, oh, that's cuba, we don't care, which would be mean. But you know, this is mr musk.

08:25 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You never know what he's gonna do or say. I think rule number one is don't, you know, build your rocket so it doesn't blow up, and then you don't have to worry about a lot of that stuff, right, because it'll. It'll get to space pretty easy. So I'm just cold-hearted. I'm not trying to be mean. I mean, this is, this is the iterate right yeah they revel. They revel in their failures so that they can learn. I mean, pretty soon there's going to be a super cut of all the starship failures.

08:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, yeah, yeah and and that's okay, just don't do it over over occupied areas where people get hurt. That's all we're asking mr musk, because I, deep in his heart, I think he really does like humanity in some cold way.

09:03 - Tariq Malik (Host)
All right, um next up, watch yourself rod we're gonna get letters, so hey all pr is good pr.

09:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Next up is blue origin finally launches new glenn. Let me just preface this by reminding our, our lovely listeners, it's been, as of this month, 25 years since Blue Origin started, even earlier than SpaceX by a couple of years, and this is a long time in coming. Clearly, what they've done is taken the more established legacy aerospace approach to get everything perfect before the launch. So they started working with their little tourist rocket, the New Shepard. That's flown 40 times.

09:49 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think 20, right, they're not on 30s are they yeah? They're in the 20s.

09:53 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's flown a bunch of times, and let them work out some of the concepts here. Different engine, different design, but it is flying a rocket, so you learn a lot from doing that, and their first flight of this one was remarkable.

10:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yes, like 17 hours before SpaceX launched Starship. It was all on the same day. It was a really crazy, crazy day.

10:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And let me just add for SpaceX that was right after they launched a Falcon 9 with the two lunar payloads that we're going to be talking about a little later, that's right and other rocket activity this week. So they just, you know, spacex just really knows how to roll in volume.

10:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Sorry, go ahead. No, no, the. I would point out that Blue Origin hasn't been spending 25 years on like developing the New Glenn rocket. They announced New Glenn in like 2015, 2016, something like that, so it's been a good chunk of time, but-.

10:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
The same year, starship was announced.

10:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
yes, that's right. That's right. It was the same year Starship was announced, and so it's a larger rocket. This is a new heavy lift rocket for Blue Origin that has a seven meter diameter, so it's like 23 feet bigger than most everything else except for Starship. That's a seven meter diameter. So it's like 23 feet bigger than most everything else except for Starship that's out there right now. Starship's at nine meters, I believe.

11:12
And for all intents and purposes, aside from the fact that we got no views from the upper stage, the rocket got to orbit just fine on its debut flight. They did try to catch the booster. It's supposed to land on an offshore ship, just like SpaceX's rockets but they had some sort of issue on the way down and they lost the booster. So that attempt failed. But that was kind of gravy, as all rocket landings allegedly are for SpaceX too. They always say that that's not the core. But now they try to assure that it'll be successful before they launch and they'll delay. So that'll be the end game to help cut costs for this new rocket. But this will be really interesting to see how the next flight goes and if they're able to successfully land these huge rockets too. But big kudos, because it seems like it went completely fine all the way up with these brand new be4 engines, the be3u engines that there's two of them on the vacuum, says. Jeff bezos tweeted out a picture of the earth from the from the upper stage.

12:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's pretty cool so it's so interesting when you start looking at the numbers. So the be4 is about half a million pounds of thrust, which is about a third of what the Saturn V's F-1 engines were, depending on which version of those you're talking about and about the same as a new generation Raptor, I think the Raptor's actually more like 550 or 570,000 pounds of the rest.

12:36
And then you've got, of course, the rocket structure which, because it's going to be reusable, has to be a little more substantial than an expendable rocket, and you have to, of course, have enough fuel to fly back. So it's interesting trying to compare the, the numbers between these rockets. You really can't, because starship and new glenn are so different. Um, I do have a soft complaint, if I may, because we're media guys. Yes, and if you watch the, the first launch attempt, uh, the commentary was so lightweight and social media and, oh, this is so cool. And you know, tiffany and Amber, we're, we're going back and forth with their comments.

13:21
I realize I'm sounding like a grumpy old man and I, I have to confess, again going back to, to the apollo era, which I do all too frequently. You know, we had before launch and and right during launch, we had jack king who was the voice of launch control and it was just telling us how it was. You know, the arm is retracted, the crew says it feels good, doing the countdown, all engines running, all that stuff. I liked that. I did not like wait, wait, wait. I did not like when NASA started doing these paragraph-long commercials every time something launched, saying a new dawn for heavy industry in orbit, or whatever it was.

14:01
But now we've gone to this kind of third extreme, which is like the rocket wives of Orange County talking about. You know how cool the launch is. I take your point, I take your point. Okay, I'll stop on that, but let me just add You're getting close to digging yourself into a hole.

14:20 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I know, I know, all right, but let me just add.

14:23 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So that was one thing. Another thing was they kept cutting away to the rocket itself and then the voice circuit went dead and we just stared at it for three to seven minutes at a time with no voiceover, which was weird. And then the real strange one for me and they only did it on the first attempt. I don't think they did it on the second Instead of doing a launch hold like we were used to with nasa and spacex, everybody else, the numbers would just suddenly punch up. So it's like t minus five no wait, just kidding t minus 25.

14:54
so I I okay, defend my friend, I'm not gonna defend.

14:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think there's a. There's a lot that blue origin can learn about running an orbital class launch webcast right. They their Blue Origin New Shepard flights are very short 10, 15 minutes. The webcast from the launch point of view. They don't have to be that involved. I think that you raise some really valid points from the media and the public awareness side.

15:22
In the first half an hour of the live stream they kept talking about how it was launch day, launch night, launch night, and they did not give an actual launch time whatsoever and only Well, or any other facts. Really Exactly it was just about how exciting it was and again, I think that it's because it's the first one and so they really need to see like what's what. So it was a lot of commercial stuff about how great Blue Origin is, but there wasn't a all right. The rocket is on the pad, it's this tall, we're launching at this time. We're currently at 10 months. Here's the background of the audio loop from Mission Control going in the background, which I think would be very helpful for a lot of that.

16:00
They did have a separate clean feed that media could get by asking, but the public wasn't hearing it, but the public wasn't going to hear all of that and I think that would have gone a long way to do it, because then you would know when they call a hold, when they would do this, and I think it's a little bit more dynamic that way. But it is a private company and they might want to keep that kind of stuff internal, you know, to their uh, to their uh, employees or whatnot. Maybe they want to make sure that maybe they're really proprietary, but.

16:30 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But I take the point.

16:31 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I take the point and I just I think that it's beginner jitters and maybe it'll get better as things wear on.

16:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So okay, but but can you really claim beginner jitters when they've done at least a couple of dozen flights of the tourist rocket? And you know, and I've got issues with spacex, spacex's coverage as well, but at least I didn't see him the last time I watched. But they had that engineer on who, although he had kind of a funny voice for radio, you know, he gave you the technical aspects of okay, and here we're coming up on miko, and that's when the main engine's cut off because we're worried about Max Q and all that kind of stuff. I mean, he explained things and they kind of did. I shouldn't completely shortchange Blue Origin. I mean, the host did kind of explain some of that, but the giddy factor just really caught me on the back foot. And the last complaint, the guy they had down with the crowd on the beach.

17:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I mean Is that Cars Park right?

17:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, yeah, I was having serious hipster overload there.

17:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Cars Park is like a huge park near, like on Merritt Island on the way out to Cape Canaveral, whatever, where it's just a big public park. But I think that they rented that out or whatnot, for their own big event, because you couldn't get there the media site.

17:55
we had a writer out there for the first attempt and the media site was like 10 miles away at some hotel on the beach. You could get closer on your own to try to get it. So I think there was a lot to be desired there that they're going to have to probably look at. I know that there's Our writer that was there mentioned that there was no one there to talk to you to let them know what was happening, and he was finding out about new launch times by our launch updates in our internal chat that we were following. So I hope it gets a bit smoother going forward, because eventually they'll be launching payloads for customers, not just Amazon, and and they're hoping to launch, you know, a moon lander for nasa with this thing, uh, after like artemis four or five, something like that, and we'll have to see how it progresses and I think that I think that it will.

18:45
But it's a valid point. I think that you should have more cameras on the upper uh stage of the vehicle that are public. There might have been tracking station concerns where they don't get all the signal down all the time, because it did sound as if the people in mission control and other people watching a different feed were able to see a lot of the events that we couldn't see in the public broadcast, but we weren't able to see them there. I think that might have been some sort of tracking station like issue or or whatnot because they don't have starlink, maybe once they have their, their, their kuiper belt thing they'll have it.

19:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I, uh, we we talked about this a little bit on slack during the week, you and I, but I think it was space flight now I get them and nasa space flight mixed up, but I think it was space flight now that was given a very what's the word? I don't want to say constrained, but a very, um, objective, blow by blow.

19:38 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, very matter of fact there's guys are great happening next yeah, and I thought, okay, that's, that's how it's done.

19:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And these are people you know they're, they're entrepreneurs that are doing this. They're not funded by anybody except their, their viewers. So I was very, very impressed by that. Uh, we got to go to break in a second, but just to whine about this one more time.

19:57
I know I've done it on the air before, but I was at a launch out at vandenberg, out on this windswept, rocky bluff in the freezing cold, waiting for a falcon 9 to take off, and there was like nothing. It was just a dirt bluff. There was no speakers, no monitors, no countdown, no, nothing. We're just sitting there, you know, trying to listen on our. We couldn't get cell signals, so, you know, if you didn't have a radio station covering it, you were sort of done.

20:24
So finally this air force, this beat up old air force truck, shows up and some young, young people in uniforms get out and they start laying out cable.

20:32
I mean, mean, it looked like something from World War II, you know, they're rolling out cable and they bring out this big speaker on casters and stuff. So we finally are getting the voiceover, but it's the sorry, the narrative, but it's like one channel from Mission Control that had, like you know, valve updates every two minutes or something, so that wasn't helpful. Updates every every two minutes or something, so that wasn't helpful. So finally, the young lady who's the uh PR liaison gets out and starts giving a talk. So all the cameras swing that way and as she's still talking, I hear this gasp and turn around and the Rockets take it off and we all miss it because she was jabbering in the middle of it and it's like well, lesson learned, don't let them handle it one thing, one thing that I would point out is that there is a trade-off when private companies are running their own launches and technically, they don't have to provide any of this stuff if it's not in their agreement.

21:22
That's true, they can just push the Go button.

21:24 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Right. So I am just grateful that we have these launch webcasts. Whatever gripes we might have about picture or whatever, let's just make sure that we let everyone know we don't want them to stop, otherwise we won't ever know what's going on. We'll have to see how that goes, because that's what Virgin Galactic did they stopped webcasting. You just find out about it when they tweet about it.

21:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Soon they may stop flying altogether, but we'll see. All right, we're going to go to a break, so everybody go in standby mode. We're on a launch hold for the next number of seconds. I see what you did there, rod. You like that, okay?

22:02 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Very appreciated.

22:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So India's doing it now, man, they've re-entered the competition.

22:09 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and this will be really important for our talk about the moon missions coming up. But this week, actually, india became the fourth country to successfully perform a docking in space with their SPODX mission. Spodx actually is an acronym that is short for Space Docking Experiment, and this was their first attempt at an uncrewed automated docking system. So you've got a target vehicle, a chaser vehicle, and they the chaser just over over time approaches, gets closer, doesn't automated rendezvous. This is something that SpaceX does with their dragon, it's what Russia does with Progress and Soyuz and it's kind of the approach du jour for future missions.

22:55
And for a country like India, this is going to be a key independent technology that they need for the future of their space ambitions.

23:02
They want to build an astronaut space station around the moon, they want to do a sample return mission that we'll talk about later from the moon, and to do that they need this technology about later from the moon, and to do that they need this technology. And there's a bit of a slow go of it after launch because it was only supposed to take a few days before they did it, but they saw that they were seeing higher than anticipated movement rates after it finished its maneuvers, like it would keep moving when they thought it would stop. They had to study that for a little bit, but it seems like they got all of that dead to rights and they were able to make this happen pretty smoothly, so that's really exciting. They will have more approaches and more tests over time and they also have a whole separate free flying science platform on their poem for module that is testing robotic arm work and inchworm like arm, like on the space International Space Station, a space to recapture arm.

23:54 - Rod Pyle (Host)
A lot of really crazy stuff that they're going to want to use on future missions so if they're interested in a lunar station I I can make them a great deal on a not yet used but slightly aging lunar gateway, that's what you think should you sell it? Because it doesn't appear to be going anywhere and I'm I can't believe assuming that the incoming administration gets its way with uh. Human space flight I I they won't want to wait.

24:22 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's going to go away for gateway before they go there. Yeah, we'll have to see. They've already sold uh services though, for they've already bought services. Spacex is is is, you know, building the, the cargo thing for that, and and Northrop Grumman is building all that part. So, it'll be interesting to see how those agreements go forward.

24:39 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I wonder how much they've spent on that, because we know how much they've spent on SLS, but I haven't seen the expenditures of Gateway yet.

24:44 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I do not know. We'll have to figure that out. We should do another episode on Gateway.

24:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Right there we go oh, who are we? We gonna get to come on and talk about that. We'll have to take somebody hostage?

24:56 - Tariq Malik (Host)
um, but yeah, all right. Uh, tip of the hat to india space research organization yeah, well done. Look forward to, uh, bigger and better things in the future. Well, and their crewed flights are picking up pace yeah, we should. We should be getting, hopefully, a potential prototype of a, an astronaut vehicle launch, by the end of the year, that's.

25:15 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's a goal, uh, with the first flight next year or so, so all right, and and now, uh, coming down from the heights of new space to the misery of living on earth, uh, need to talk a little bit about the fires in la. Of course we talked about this last week. Um, probably I think the closest fire line got to me was about five miles, but I'm unfortunately, a lot of people at jpl can't say the same. Jpl emerged unscathed, except possibly for some smoke, some residual smoke damage, but the neighborhood around it, it's incalculable. So I drove up to that area we're seeing an aerial on the video now from KBC News 7, chopper. I drove up to try and deliver some supplies to a friend of mine who stayed put and kept like a fool and was hosing down his roof. He did manage to save his house. Many in his neighborhood were not saved, but of course then the water pressure went flat and it was just sheer luck that he didn't get taken away anyway. Um, that whole area, I was trying to take some food and water up to him because they have no services at all and pass it over the the barricades set up by the national guard and I expected them to be up in altadena but they were not. They were like three miles south of there and that's how big an area they were afraid was going to burn.

26:40
But at this point it looks like it's somewhere between seven and nine thousand structures destroyed, most of which are single family homes. Most of those are turn of the century, early 20th century houses. It's a fairly old neighborhood. So, besides the absolute staggering loss of that, we've got what effectively is the world's largest superfund site, um, because there's a ton of toxins there. There's asbestos, there's arsenic, there's um there was a lithium battery storage yard that burned out there's lead pipes, there's all this stuff. So just the air we're breathing is terrible. So it's just a big mess all the way around. But, more to the point, caltech and JPL set up a disaster relief fund, and we'll put the URL in the show notes because it's pretty long, but it's a reputable effort.

27:35
And let me just look at the URL here. Come on, come on up.

27:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I would say that should end with gov so much felt where I was at the National Harbor meeting of the American Astronomical Society, because many of the scientists, of the engineers, of the researchers from the Southern California area were supposed to actually present you know their career defining research at this conference and that is something that they build their whole work, their whole lives around being able to present and show what they've done in their field as experts, as thought leaders. And there was a very noticeable absence because those people have been affected by by the fire, they don't have homes to go to or they're trying to just, you know, sort things out there. It came up during the NASA town hall where they were talking about the deep space network. We talked about that last week with with Leonard, first time in 60 years, that there's no one in Mission Control at JPL. They're doing it out of Monrovia, apparently a backup site right now, which they didn't have before.

28:53
So, yeah, so it's just, it's just a tragedy across now, but for the people that were affected by that were that hope to go to AAS they gave they at least gave them some refunds and so they don't have to worry about that. Nasa has relaxed their deadlines for funding research. So that's future career work that these people who have, you know, don't have homes or have lost everything. They want to ease the stress of that kind of professional deadline too. They're going to give them some consideration for the future. So at least there's like small things that people were able to do to help the careers of these people that are imperiled by the fire. But this funding is this fundraiser is very helpful just to get them some basic things that they need for life.

29:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And so to make sure you're on the right website for giving, the prefix section is givingcaltechedu, and then slash areas to support relief and so forth. But just make sure you're on the caltechedu uh server when you're doing that so you're not given to the wrong folks. Um, you know the one thing that really this isn't space news, but but it's frustrating to me anyway. Besides, all the things that usually happen in this kind of a crisis is the state came out and said hey, you know, we're, we're not going to take I guess it's county we're not going to take full property tax from you if your house burned down. So the people went oh, that's a relief. But then they continued to say we'll remove the value of the structure and you just have to pay on the property.

30:27
Well, in Southern California, your property value is about 80% of the value of the entire shebang. Your property value is about 80% of the value of the entire shebang. So here are all these people that have had their entire lives taken from them in some cases and who have to find another place to live in an already overheated market and the prices are going up because people are gouging, even though it's not legal to do so, and they're still going to have to pay tax on the dirt and ashes where their house used to be While FEMA comes in and tries to figure out. It's probably got to take between a year and 18 months to bulldoze and take all this stuff out. So to me that just adds misery to tragedy. You know, I think it's really a shameful thing, but that's the County for you. All right, anthony, do you want me to take a break before we move on? Yeah, okay, so we'll be right back after this short break. Don't go anywhere, because the excitement's about to begin. Stand by. The Great Moon Armada is embarking.

31:24 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right Again, right, well we had that last year too. We had a fleet of them go out last year too, but now it's now. It's really going to happen now, this well you know, fingers crossed.

31:34 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This is the the age of of commercial ventures, and I really, really, really would like to see a completely successful landing this year. Yeah, so we've got two tries going off, one from a private company and one from japan that left last week, earlier this week, excuse me, on the same rocket they On the same rocket.

31:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They left on the same rocket.

31:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
On the same Falcon 9. So that's exciting.

32:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah Right, yeah Well, do we want to talk about, like, what actually happened before we start putting it into concept Context? I got there.

32:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I got there in the end, woo All right, we could do that, or we could sort of give a background or of how all this commercial stuff kicked off really, really, really quickly.

32:20 - Tariq Malik (Host)
The reason we're talking about the lunar armada is because this week spacex's falcon 9 rocket launched two, count them two, two, uh, the two private uh missions to the moon. Uh, one of them is a firefly, aerospace is blue ghost, which is supposed to arrive, I think, in March 2nd, memory serves, and the other one is the resilience lander by ice base from Japan, and we're going to talk a little bit more about those two in a bit, but that's the background. That's why we want to talk about that, cause they are not the only ones going to the moon, uh, this year and uh, not by a long shot. So, all right, where did these missions come from?

33:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
uh, leonard leonard wow, wow let me put on my, my mountain mad beard um oh, I mean rod, I mean I'm sorry.

33:15
What's that, mortimer? Um, so, years back, yeah, years back, uh, google in their, in their vision and I give them credit for this set up the google lunar x prize. So they were gonna gonna give, I think, $20 million, and then it expanded to $30 million to the first private entity that landed on the moon with hardware and was able to traverse 500 meters, and whether that was done on wheels or jets or whatever was up to you. Did it have to pick up a sample? I don't think so.

33:52 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, it was just.

33:53 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You had to move, yeah, and you had to have pictures so you know, a lot of people jumped in on this from all over the world and a lot of progress was made, but nobody actually got off the ground in time and finally google ended the thing and I think 2019 yeah, yeah, they, they just they closed it.

34:12
Nobody won, nobody got the money and they got to save their 30 million bucks. However, a number of other contenders continued and did manage. Some of them got money from their respective governments. Some just continued plotting away. A lot of them folded up shop and gave it up because there was no, no golden pot at the end of the rainbow, but that was the genesis of um. Was it one or both of the ones that went off this week? I don't think that's what started, uh, ice base? Maybe it was, but certainly uh the uh.

34:47
The other one was uh with the fireflies yeah, I thought ispace was a, a, a progenitor from there so it might be see, I get ispace and I capital s space mixed up. They're chinese. Yeah, definitely, they weren't part of it, so I guess the japanese one may have been.

35:04 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, because I know that space il was, uh, and that astrobotic was a big contender, uh for their. We'll talk about them in a little bit too. Yeah, and then blue ghost came, uh as firefly, solidified their, their spacecraft approach, uh, beyond their rocket approach.

35:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So so, as long as you brought it up, why don't we talk about those two missions? Yeah, what are they gonna do? And, by the way, I just discovered yesterday our friend of the show, steve jervitson, actually has a payload on the blue ghost lander. Oh wow, he like made his own payload.

35:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I don't know how you do that, but he did it so so yeah, so uh, which one do you want to start with first, firefly or blue ghost? Blue space ghost they should have called it space ghost. Right, take your pick. Oh well, let's start with firefly aerospace, just because because it's called Firefly and Blue Ghost. I think that that's a lot of fun. But this is an evolution from that. Google Lunar XPRIZE is the lunar commercial payloads program that NASA runs. They're CLIPS Commercial Lunar Payloads, pardon me.

36:06
They're CLIPS program, and last year, in 2024, we saw a few missions launch under that guise, and this is the first of this year to launch there. So Firefly has a contract with NASA to land a probe on the moon that has carrying a bunch of payloads for customers. Of them are a lot of NASA experiments as part of their Artemis program. So that's what's happened. This is the Blue Ghost Mission 1. Blue Ghost is the spacecraft, the lander that they've developed, and their mission for this one is called Ghost Riders in the Sky, because I guess that's how we're naming missions. Now. I'm not against it, by the way.

36:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I think it's really great that we're getting them.

36:48 - Tariq Malik (Host)
But, as Rod said, it's one of two missions that are on board that were on board the Falcon 9 to launch, and this one it's one of two missions that are on board that were on board the Falcon 9 to launch. And this one it's going to test, it's going to measure solar wind particles in Earth's magnetic field. It's going to test radiation resistant computer hardware, use GPS systems for navigation around the moon and then, once it actually gets on the surface, it's going to study the regolith, the heat flow on the moon, electrical conductivity under the surface. It's going to study the regolith, the heat flow on the moon, electrical conductivity under the surface, things like that.

37:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
so it's pretty, pretty slick all of the, the things that they're going to do excuse me, but if they're studying heat flow, that means they've got to make that drill work right yeah, that, that's that's right because we've been trying to study lunar heat flow since apollo or 15, I think yeah, yeah, I mean, and they've got reflectors on there too.

37:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Uh, there's, there's quite, quite a bit on on on this mission. It seems like and they're hoping that this is going to set the stage for it they've got, like, how many different experiments are on board? I've got this, this big roundup that we have here, and it's, it's a lot. It's too many for me to count right now. And so this, you know, the hope is that this is going to defy maybe some of the previous commercial attempts and actually land fully successfully. You know, we talked about a couple of that in the past and hopefully this will set the stage for what's coming up later this year. So, uh, resilience, which is a lot, yeah, yeah, there's a lot.

38:17
Resilience is a separate effort, though, like it's, they have, uh, some experiments on there which I think I think nasa has one or two, if memory serves, but it's primarily like an ispace, uh, a full, full mission, and this one is really interesting because I space did try to fly to the moon with their a kudo, our rover or platform. Before that was that one failed, and so this is kind of their, their return to it. So it's a landing platform and then it has a little rover on it that's going to do things. They want to collect moon samples as well of the regolith, and I think they're developing a program like as NASA has asked for. Nasa wants to buy lunar regolith samples of that. So I think that this sample collection is going to be part of testing the hardware to be able to eventually bring it back and then sell it to NASA or whoever wants to buy, I guess, some lunar regolith for science instead of getting there.

39:16
And then it has a little micro moon rover that's going to jump. It's called Tenacious. It's going to drive around with a little shovel to collect those samples and then take pictures of them with this camera. So it's pretty cool. It's got a water experiment to see if it's feasible to make oxygen and hydrogen from lunar water resources. It's going to an algae food production module. On it and other things. There's a plate, a commemorative plate. We too came here, you know, from Earth, and I think it has a charter of universal century from Gundam right, which is a Japanese anime cartoon, which is good and I think the blue ghost has a hopper, if I remember correctly you know, it's possible.

39:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
There's a lot on this, which is interesting because I I thought that a hopper would be nitrogen powered, but it's, at least the one I read about is hydrazine, using nasty old hydrazine, which we've been using for, you know, no ignition required reaction rockets since, well, since before mercury, I think. Uh, the thrusters on some of those early moon probes are hydrazine, not stuff you want to mess with. Very bad for you, no, but um, but yeah so they. They got at least one hopper going up too. Um, let's see, let me look at the count here. I guess we should throw it another break, cause I want to come back and talk about the beginning of all this, cause I think the first one was bearer sheet, correct?

40:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, bearer sheet is is was the space IL one.

40:46 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, so after the break.

40:48 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I should point out there's a vacuum on on on blue, on Blue Ghost too. They're going to use compressed air to try to collect moon samples. I think that's going to be really fun to watch. It's called a Lunar Planet Vac.

40:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Is that direct deployment from the lander or on the rover?

41:02 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's on the lander. It's on the lander, yeah, oh that'll be cool.

41:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right, standby, we'll be right back. So this Armada, the tip of the spear, as it were, was the israeli company space ils to set up bear sheet lander. The bear sheet lander, which was another google lunar x prize venture in april 2019, and it was pretty simple. It's mainly a time capsule with a bunch of cultural stuff on it, did have a magnetometer and a laser retroreflector, because, gee, I guess we need another retroreflector on the moon to see how far away it is. I mean, there's about seven of them now we know how far it is, but of course, the controversy was we know how far it is for now.

41:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Right, it's going to leave us alone.

41:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
The retroreflector still worked just fine and they're like two feet by two feet instead of these little things three inches across, easier to hit, anyway. But the controversy came up when it was made public that at the last minute they had included tardigrades and I just read the other day. Yeah, and of course the concern about tardigrades is they can sit there for we don't know how long, thousands of years anyway, in basically an inert, freeze-dried state like brine shrimp that you feed your fish, don't?

42:18 - Tariq Malik (Host)
you mean water monkeys, sea monkeys?

42:21 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And then you add water a million years later and they kind of stretch and wake up and go, oh, what's up? So there was concern about that. But they're encased in a block of leucite, so it's hard to imagine how that would happen. You know a and b. Of course.

42:37
Whenever we talk about planetary protection protocols, it's the moon I have not yet not yet talked to a scientist that has said anything other than don't worry about it because it's in a pretty inert state. I, I mean, the best thing that ever happens on an afternoon on the moon is that it turns to night, or vice versa, and you get micrometeoroid impacts and radiation and that's kind of your day.

43:02 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know you seem team tardigrade rod like, as opposed to team preserve the moon. Is that the case?

43:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
No, I'm team. Let's get on with it and stop worrying quite so much about I don't know in apollo 18, they had those moon spiders, you know.

43:19 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So, uh, which I find absolutely horrifying.

43:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But uh, if, if, true yeah, that was a dumb movie okay I tried to like. I highly disagree but yeah, but you probably liked Iron Sky too, right? I thought Iron.

43:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Sky was pretty funny.

43:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yes. So a friend of mine who I hired early on in my producing days at Disney Educational, wrote that and I suffered through it and wrote him a note saying Mike, what happened? He said I lost control. I said you lost control of, lost control of yourself. He said no, I lost control of the script and it just went because, as you saw, you know, it goes in this wacko direction of what's her name, from alaska is now the president and she's got this force of dirigibles they're gonna go up and shoot down the German Nazi planes coming.

44:15 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think you're assuming that everyone knows what Iron Sky is Sorry and I don't know. I don't know if you want to really get into that it's not worth going into.

44:21 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It is moon related, though I mean it is so.

44:24 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I could see like how that could be part of it.

44:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
They made a sequel to that too, by the way, yeah, which was no better than the first, anyway, sorry, so bear a sheet. So we've got tardigrades on the moon that we have to worry about coming to life and, you know, growing 10 times their size, no, sorry, a million times their size because of lunar radiation and attacking the first settlers. But we'll worry about that when we get there.

44:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That is a plot of Star Trek Discovery. They have a giant tardigrade that powers their warp core in that one.

44:54 - Rod Pyle (Host)
There you go, but I mainly I bring it up because it was an offshoot of the google lunar x prize, so that's as close as it came to succeeding, and that one unfortunately crashed and it did, but they, it was a really novel attempt.

45:04 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I mean, they were actually able to get off the ground and approach the moon before they had that. That failure, uh, and that was you're talking about private missions they had their own big press conference ahead of the launch, fully independent, you know, like having experts available. Uh, I remember that, um, uh, hanukkah white ring was writing for us at that time and she went down there and like covered the whole thing, souped the nuts. When they got off the ground, um, and so you know, at least they were able to, uh, to make the attempt. They were trying, hopefully, to come back from that, but they're not the only ones. They didn't stop there, so that's good.

45:40 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and then next we have Astrobotics Peregrine which went up last year Peregrine, and unfortunately suffered a propellant leak on the way and I guess I'm trying to remember the details of that. These are a lot of the subsystems they're using are commercial buys and I think that was one of the concerns about perhaps how that propellant leak started yeah, you know the I man, you have to do mental gymnastics to try to remember as well.

46:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know I. I think that this was, this was really uh, something that it was a new vehicle. They thought they had tested it all the way through. They got it up into space and conditions were a little bit different. You know, it gets all shaken around during launch and things can happen. They had the thruster leak and then they were able to control the vehicle because of it and they were able to restore some control, but by that point they had used so much propellant that they weren't going to be able to do the finer control that they were going to need for the landing itself.

46:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, to be good custodians of the cosmos, they let it come back to earth and re-enter.

46:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right. So it did decide to come back home and say you know what?

46:50 - Rod Pyle (Host)
it's not worth it this trip, you know so then, you already talked a bit about intuitive machines. I am one mission which launched well, that was very 2024 I think you mentioned it earlier.

47:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, uh, because we we talked a bit about how 2024 was like the first Vanguard. These were all Clips missions these were the first ones to fly and Intuitive Machines I think also their Odysseus probe launched on a Falcon 9, correct, right, yeah, I think so I think so Everybody knows, it's easy and apparently as one does, and intuitive machines got farther than most.

47:30
In terms of these commercial missions, japan also had a separate mission too Slim, the slim one, and that one has its own, but that was a Jackson mission. It wasn't a commercial mission, but intuitive machines got close, got close, they landed a bit harder than they thought and then the rover tipped over, so it was stuck in the lander tipped over.

47:50
The lander. Yeah, pardon me, the lander tipped over. And this one was a little bit sad because I was just at AAS and there was a radio telescope experiment on this one with five different antennas On the way out there they got stuck, they didn't roll enough that barbecue roll and apparently because it got so hot, one of their antennas just popped out on its own and they were like wow, that's interesting. We deployed early and they were able to do extra science because of that, but they were able to get five minutes of data at least for that experiment, despite having this rover tipped on its side. There's a picture of it here. I keep saying rover.

48:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Man. I think I really want to see more rovers on the moon. It had a mini rover. It did. They just couldn't deploy it.

48:39 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It did it just couldn't because it was tipped over. I think one of the legs got caught on a rock and it was like one of the legs was sticking up, because one of the photos showed the leg sticking up.

48:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So did they actually quantify that? Because last time I looked at it they were still kind of scratching their heads over exactly what happened. But when you look at and I'm not an engineer, fully admit, but having looked at an awful lot of landers, both in photographs and in person, mostly nasa stuff, um, all robotic, I'll add, except for the limb, looking at the leg structure of the intuitive machines, for that tall vertical body it looked like tinker toys. Yeah, with them, I'm sure they're strong but they weren't strong enough, I think.

49:19 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think that was that was part of it, right, because they landed harder than they thought. Then you have these legs that were built um, a bit, a bit spindly. Again they they were confident that this was going to work. So maybe one of them crumpled a bit and then, because it crumpled and the whole thing tips over, maybe it landed. You know it had a lot of stress on it but it hit a rock because they were coming in a little bit sideways that's very possible too and then you pitch over a bit. Uh, they could see that the legs were sticking up in the air. So they knew that it was on an angle. One of the five antennas of the experiment that I was in a session at AAS about was crushed because it was facing the ground now, and a few others did pop out and they were able to get, like as I mentioned that, five minutes of data from the moon.

49:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I hate to interrupt, but Anthony gave us both a little reminder in the Discord, so we have maybe 10 or 15 minutes left here and we have to get to the topic at hand, which is what's coming up. So why don't we start off with? You've talked about Blue Ghost a bit. Is there more to say about?

50:20 - Tariq Malik (Host)
that Blue Ghost a bit. Is there more to say about that? Well, I think that this is going to be very interesting to see how Blue Ghost goes, because this is actually the first of what they hope are going to be a series of moon landers and other missions by Firefly. And I think I'm a little bit excited to see their sample collection stuff, because if they can demonstrate that they can successfully collect the lunar regolith with this vacuum thing, then that'll be another kind of economy, another kind of opportunity that they'll be able to open up going forward. So now it is gonna try to catch the lunar dust to that level. You know what Cernan talked about, that glow on the moon horizon. They're going to try to use a 360 degree camera to see that, that weird stuff too on the on the surface. But they only get two weeks there. It's a lunar day. That's the. That's the length of this mission. So we're gonna have to hopefully see how long they're going to be able to last.

51:25 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and just just got a comment. You know we're still struggling and I get that these are early, early efforts, but we're still struggling with something that can last lunar night, when we had ALSEP experimental packages up there. Admittedly, they were deployed by astronauts in the sixties and seventies. Some of those AL, those outset packages, lasted, I think, four to five months, if not more, because they were powered by, because then we would just throw plutonium chunks anywhere to power these things. It's unfortunate we don't have very much left.

51:54
All right, and before we go to our last break, let's talk about whatever else you've got on iSpace. Just a quick history of them they're part of a company called White Label Space which I guess was originally out of the Netherlands, and again, this was founded to respond to the Google Lunar XPRIZE. But they closed out the Netherlands side and the whole thing went over to Japan. So Hakuto R1 launched in 2022. That was a soft crash you talked about. And then hakuto r2 resilience just launched with blue ghost on january 15th. But that's going to take five months to get there.

52:32 - Tariq Malik (Host)
yeah, yeah, long, slow cruise yeah, that that one gets there uh later in the year. Uh, by the way, we didn't say, but I think march 2nd is the targeted landing date for blue march 2nd yeah, so uh, but. Yeah, so, but this Resilience is what this one is called, this lander, and it's a bit more arty than Blue Ghost because it has-.

52:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Arty.

52:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know like it. For example, we talked about the fact that it has a commemorative plate for the Gundam anime right it has from Bandai Namco Research Institute.

53:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So right, uh, it has so for for from bandai namco research institute. Uh, so that, how could they bypass god, god, zero sun for that you know well.

53:09 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, I mean, it's, it's, it's. I think there's a moon base. Uh, there's a big base on the moon in that anime.

53:14
I just started watching it, but uh, uh but they also have like like the, the the rover is carrying, uh, this small red house framed all in white by Swedish artist Mikael Genberg. It's called the Moon House and it's an art installation and it's going to be riding a tiny rover that is about a foot wide, 10 inches tall and about 21 inches long, so it's a. I think it's about two-thirds the size of Pathfinder.

53:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and this little house is like right down front right, and about 21 inches long you know.

53:44 - Tariq Malik (Host)
so it's a. I think it's about two-thirds the size of Pathfinder.

53:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, yeah, and this little house is like right down front, right, yeah, it's like right on top of it. Yeah, it's really wild.

53:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And so it's going to be very interesting to see how all of that ties in to the science mission too, because you have this test to produce food from algae, to make air and stuff from water, and then you have this little rover that's going to drive around with its little camera to try to scoop up samples, and then you've got the house, you've got this commemorative plaque, so there's a bit more of an ethereal tie that I think is really fun for that mission itself. And then part of it is that they're also going to do a deep space radiation experiment to monitor radiation levels on the Earth to moon trip, which is really valuable to know, both about the health of your spacecraft, which you have to safeguard them, as well as your astronauts themselves too.

54:40 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, anthony, do I have permission to go one more story before we break?

54:45
Sure, a shrug's better than a thumbs down, okay, so IM2, intuitive Machines, im2, will be launched in February, and this one's exciting because they have a, I think, meter-deep drill, a mass spectrometer, and they're aiming at Marsden crater near the lunar South pole, where a lot of these things intend to aim eventually. This is the one, I'm sorry, this is the one that has a gas powered hopper which carries a neutron spectrometer, so specifically, that can look for hydrogen signatures that may be indicative of water ice. Yeah, and excitingly, although the Chinese beat us to it, it also has a small lunar orbiter called trailblazer to act, I think, as a relay but also, to, uh, search for water signatures on the surface. So this is kind of a a whole bunch of things in one. This is kind of a potpourri project, um, and it's an interesting combination of lockheed Martin and JPL putting this together, and so it's more of a government project than private industry, but because Intuitive Machines involved, it's kind of a conglomeration of all three, so it's still a close mission.

55:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And that drill. That's the Prime 1 drill that NASA's really interested in and they really want to see it. By the way, the Intuitive Machines landers are called Nova C, isn't that cool? Yeah, want to see it. By the way, the the intuitive machines landers are called nova c, isn't that cool. But no, nokia. Nokia also has a 4g terminal. They want to test, like moon cell service on that, on that mission. That'll be uh, pretty interesting to see how, uh, communications evolve on the moon as well, and uh, and that's a a neat kind of thing to look at, I think, as well and uh.

56:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Finally, they have a japanese mini rover called yaoki, I think, if I'm pronouncing it right, and a device from mit called micro ant uh. So let's go to our last break and then we'll come back and wrap this up with all the other cool stuff that'll be happening later in 2025. Stay with us.

56:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Blue moon pathfinder mark one that's right, that's right, you know finally, we were just talking about new glenn and its success and so kind of on the docket, and that's, if they're going to progress, is their, their mark. One pathfinder, uh, lander which origins yeah yeah, this is blue origin, pardon me uh, which is supposed to be their big push to do moon services, and this is a big lander that can deliver up to like 3,000 pounds of stuff or mass.

57:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So it's bigger than everything we've talked about, but very small compared to what they're ultimately going to do, right?

57:16 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Exactly.

57:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
About 10 times the capacity Exactly yeah, this is kind of the proving ground for their lander contract, because they are getting NASA money to do this.

57:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, and the goal is to see if this works and then some of the other renderings of future giant versions of the lander can carry a rover on a little hinge thing that'll be able to swivel it down after it gets down there. And of course, blue Origin wants to build a crewed lander as well as a second option to Starship in the Artemis 4 or 5 timeframe and they're working on that. They would need this technology to be able to do it.

57:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and it's cool looking. It's kind of a I don't know it kind of harkens back to the lunar module a bit, I guess without the pressurized volume above. But know, it kind of harkens back to the lunar module a bit, I guess without the the pressurized volume above. But uh, I think what's interesting is, you know, on the spacex side. So spacex and blue origin are the two contractors that nasa's made deals with to ultimately land artemis cruise on the moon. You know, spacex is all in with the lunar version of their starship. From blue origin I think I've seen at least three, maybe four different designs the small one to the early blue moon, with which sadly I don't know if it was before or after their original unveiling. But you see the pictures I think you ran them on spacecom. You know it had that glorious big cylinder or a spherical fuel tank up front, yeah, and then a few hours later it was deflated and hanging there like a piece of rock.

58:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, I saw it at the International Astronautical Congress way back when in 2019.

58:50 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, name drop, Go ahead.

58:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, they had a life-size version there. Yeah, but it wasn't deflated when you saw it right, it was not. No, it still looked cool.

58:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But it was spherical. But I guess my point is, you know, they seem to be looking at a variety of platforms and configurations to best suit the needs of that mission or that era of missions, which I think is is very smart. It's still scratching my head over lunar starship, you know, yeah, very tall, very tippy, uh, on a very uncertain surface, and it's almost like you want to say, hey, uh, blue origin, you go first and build a landing pad and then we'll, we'll bring this thing down. Yeah, I mean surface, and it's almost like you want to say, hey, uh, blue origin, you go first and build a landing pad and then we'll, we'll bring this thing down yeah, I mean, I think it's like 126 feet, I guess more depending on what they they're I mean which version they're flying.

59:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, it depends on what version they're going to finally fight, because glenn uh shotwell has uh has said that it's going to get bigger. But, um, but they they're already testing the elevator that the astronauts are gonna have to use to to take down, like the side of it. So that'll be it.

59:47 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I grew up with the whole elevator out the side of the tall banana shaped rocket thing in the 50s and we all know you just throw out a rope with knots in it, right yeah astronauts climb down, because that's what they did.

01:00:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I thought that there's like a little hatch is supposed to open up from the bottom of the rocket. Isn't that like the sci-fi thing?

01:00:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
yeah, it was climbing down the ladder next to all the fuel tanks exactly because the great thing about sci-fi rockets of those days was, you know, 80 of it was crew capacity. And then they had these little fuel tanks in the back and you're thinking that would not even get you to glendale. Um, all right, so that that will be flying. Uh, we're supposed to have a starship human landing system lunar demo this year.

01:00:30 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I don't, I don't know, man, you know I don't know, because that that is the one that would require multiple, many multiples of re-tankings, right yeah, because to get to the moon you need 15 plus right flights and you need to be able to refuel 16 to 24, by the way, is the estimate. I like saying 15, just to be optimistic, but I guess I guess yeah, but in order to. I mean, they only want to fly 25 times, maybe this year, and they haven't done the refueling test yet. They haven't done any of that stuff, they haven't even flown in orbit yet.

01:01:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I don't think we're going to see that this year is, I think, what I'm trying to say. So well, and I hope to to good graces, that the faa does not decide to rewrite their license agreement for the year because of a failure with no impact on on property or people or life.

01:01:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know then, they, they can, they can keep flying. So this may be just a one-off and not for the, you know, for every other other thing. Maybe spacex, like you said earlier, changes what they fly over. Uh, for the next flight, as, a way to avoid it love the sea let's find a way to launch over russia.

01:01:48
Um astrobotic will soon be flying the griffin, which is their next generation larger landing platform this is the one that was going to take viper to the moon and then it didn't, and I'm salty about it stabbing my heart.

01:02:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, there's a lot of people that are salty about yeah yeah.

01:02:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So I mean, hopefully they'll be able to get off that they were looking. They're looking for other payloads to get there. They're gonna need that uh as well, and then they're gonna have to see where they're gonna be in the in the ride uh schedule for SpaceX for that can I be childish for a moment? Like that's different.

01:02:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Go ahead you. The delays on this land are probably what cost us the Viper mission. Now I have since been informed off the record that there was not as much support for Viper at NASA as one might have thought and that it was actually. It may very well actually have been a case of oh good, we can finally get rid of this thing.

01:02:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Which.

01:02:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I find very unfortunate, especially after spending half a billion dollars on it. But yeah, I mean at least ostensibly. The excuse that was given was oh well, the lander's not ready, let's just cancel it. And of course we all know they could have kept it. It would have cost money to keep it in mothballs and keep staff on for another year or so. But again, this happens a lot with NASA missions and it's always a head-scratcher. Compared to the loss and waste of junking it, the continuation costs are minor. It's going to be, I think, the same discussion around SLS. It's not a good value to launch, but we got a couple of them in the making and we spent, I think last I saw $25 billion on that thing over the last 20 years. So maybe you just use them for something.

01:03:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, because they're there. Or don't cut it for scrap at least. At least find someone that wants it.

01:03:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Hey, this podcast could buy it well, yeah, hey yeah, I've flown rockets. How hard could it be? Donate to www? No, no, no, no, no, not in this, not in this climate. All right, china, all right. Yeah, yeah. So so, of the, the lunar armada, china stands out as having really astonishing successes since 2007, with their first impactor.

01:04:11 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Very, very steady.

01:04:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You know they followed this, as they will do. They followed this tried and true model that the Soviet Union and the US did in the 1950s and 60s, which is look, let's just start by throwing a mass at the moon and see if we can hit it. So they did that in 2007, and then, since then, they've had orbiters, landers, rovers, sample return landing on the far side, core co-orbited relay satellites and a lot of other stuff. That much of what we did, and some of which we didn't. We never did a robotic sample return, we being the us, and we never managed to get relay satellites up because we never landed on the far side. So kudos to them. They have stayed a course, steady and true, and in the next couple of years, I think they're going to be setting up their first kind of little mini foundry operation, aren't they?

01:04:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, they have. I believe Chang'e 7 is coming up. That's the next one and that's the one that's supposed to go to the south pole of the Moon. Then they're planning Chang'e 8, which is, I believe, a far side sample return mission. If memory serves, they're all based on this lander rover orbiter trio setup that they've really perfected with these latest series of missions, and then from that they're going to be able to do some ever more ambitious in-situ resource discussions, like you're talking about. There. They're going to look for water with a drill on, I think, chang'e 7. And so it's going to be very interesting to see how that evolves.

01:05:46 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and ultimately, unless they've changed their plan the last year, the last report I read, this all is aimed towards eventually putting together the International Lunar Research Station, which they're doing nominally with Russia, if Russia actually contributes anything which will first be a robotic complex on this on lunar south pole and then eventually a a crude complex on the lunar south pole. So we'll see. You know, I mean, that does bring us down the next line, which is russia still planning luna 25. Oh, no wait. Oh, luna 25 was the one that, uh, they lost contact with but did impact, you know, and their budget now is so small I think the last thing I read it was down to something like the equivalent of $2 billion US. It had been at its height about $11.

01:06:36
Yeah, and they're not building anything. You know, they're talking about flying more crewed missions, talking about this flying more, uh, crude missions. But a lot of what they talk about is either the uh production on it has been held up because of everything that's going on with ukraine and so forth, or it's old hardware that has been sitting around, like how we started the space station. You know that main module was, yeah, built in 1985 and not flown until almost 2000 or it's stuff that just exists on paper, but they haven't had a good record lately no, and they've tried to get to the moon.

01:07:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They tried to get to mars as well, and oh my god, how many times yeah, and, and each time it's, it's so, you know. I do hope that that they will be able to get back into that flow, because you do want to see that science continue at least one way or another uh, out of sync on discord, did mention that the the failure of the spacex launch did disrupt a lot of commercial flights.

01:07:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Uh, for that afternoon, which is oh wow, I'd forgotten about you I hadn't, I hadn't seen that, I hadn't seen that.

01:07:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So yeah, again I've been technically like on vacation the last two days.

01:07:46 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I mean oh you're always halfway on vacation. But somebody put up on social media I can't remember where I saw it, but it was a map of how many flights diverted. You know, because if you look at a flight map for a given day, there's lines covering the planet planet. You can barely even see the planet underneath, but there's this big eye-shaped diversion around this fallout zone.

01:08:07 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Oh man, thank you. Thank you Out of Sync. That's very helpful to know.

01:08:09 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah probably more than they needed to do, but always good to be safe. India you already talked about, but they have plans for a robotic lunar sample return again.

01:08:18 - Tariq Malik (Host)
In 2028,.

01:08:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
yeah, this is a country that's been making great strides. I think this year they're going to fly their Pathfinder crewed orbital flight.

01:08:26 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, that's the plan, that they're going to launch an initial version of the module. But the reason that we talked a little bit earlier about Chandrayaan in India for their moon mission is because this docking technology is vital for their moon sample return mission. They will need to launch a return capsule off the surface of the moon, dock it to a return vehicle, bring that back and then undock it and toss it back so it'll land where they want to go retrieve it. So very good to have that technology now under it. Now they can go focus on the other technologies that they're all gonna need for that mission, which are pretty substantial.

01:09:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And do they have a? Have they published a big picture lunar vision like everybody else? Because they're not part of, they're part of Artemis. But I mean, do they have a separate?

01:09:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So I do believe that the lunar exploration plan includes not just this Chandrayaan-4, but additional robotic missions and then their space station and I'm not even going to try to pronounce it because I know I'm going to butcher it um, but their their space station. They want, they want to build that around, like in lunar orbit, by 2040, so that's like a timeline that they're shooting towards. Uh, with this, uh with this assembly of a space station for astronauts to use to explore the moon and last but not least, bear sheet returns.

01:09:47
We've got bears, maybe, maybe I just I put it here because we were talking about it earlier yeah, yeah but maybe you know, as of 2023, it was facing funding concerns, according to space news, and so we're not sure like if it's actually going to happen or not, but there were science agreements at least in place about how to how to do the follow-up. Uh, that they would. They would do some experiments on it, but, uh, the last I heard, they're still trying to figure out how to get it funded, so I think we ought to take up a collection dish for all of these all these, or for a twist, a twist moon mission yeah, hey, if steve jervison could do it, why can't we?

01:10:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
he only has a billion on us. How hard can that be? So, um, and we've left off some some that were beyond 2025, and we did mention some that were beyond 2025. So this is a bit of a potpourri, but there just isn't time to discuss everything that's in the planning by all the companies that are doing so, and there's a lot of steps that need to be taken before most of these programs are really played out successfully. And that's all I've got. Do you have anything else? Partner?

01:10:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I just think it is like a really, really exciting time to be a space fan, you know, because you have all of these different things happening all at the same time and like, no matter where you look, we're going to get something new on the moon this year one way or another, right, and and I just I just think it's really exciting and they're all different ships and they're all different vehicles and we're gonna get new photos and all sorts of fun stuff.

01:11:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So Tim Grahl well, and more subjectively, it's so thrilling again because, because I watched the great slowdown after the end of the Apollo program, it is so thrilling. It's a, it's a very small thing in a way, but any given week, if I stay up to the right hour, I can watch a SpaceX rocket take off from Vandenberg, and that's just Vandenberg. That's maybe I don't know, 40 of their launch activity, the rest happening at the cape or down in Texas. And it's astonishing because if it was back to the ULA days we might see well, especially now, what one or two launches a year.

01:11:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah. Someone told me at AAS how much they really wanted to go see a rocket launch. I really wanted to see one. I just want to see one. I said, man, go to Florida any given week. You stay there more than three days. You're going to see at least two different SpaceX launches.

01:12:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, if you time it right, you can see two in the same day, like I did, which is pretty amazing, but at this point I have to admit, as thrilling as they are, it's like, oh, another Falcon 9 launch.

01:12:24 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I want to see a Falcon Heavy launch or a Starship launch or new glenn launch. Now, oh, that's funny, I've seen a falcon nine launch, a starship uh launch and and a falcon heavy launch, uh rod. I've got three out of four that ain't bad.

01:12:30 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So have I told you how much I hate you recently?

01:12:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
all right, we should go, we'll go. We'll go for new glenn, that'd be fun okay, uh.

01:12:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So you keep saying, mr junket. Thanks everybody for joining us today for episode 144, the Great Lunar Armada. Tarek, where can we find you mooning these days?

01:12:48 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you can find me at spacecom, as always on X, at Tarek J Malik, also on the blue sky, and on Saturday and I don't know if we're able to bring this link up, anthony, I put it in the Slack chat but on Saturday at 8.30 pm I will be giving a talk about these giant rockets for the Astronomical League of the Philippines. Alan Hale is going to talk about comets too, and that's totally free. That's Alan Hale of HaleBop. Yeah, that, alan Hale. That's right. If we keep scrolling down, you'll see him there too. So If we keep scrolling down, you'll see him there too. So they're going to talk. He's going to talk about comets and other things to see in the sky this year, and I invite everyone to go ahead and come and talk about it so we can talk about giant rockets.

01:13:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I dig it, I dig it. You got your slide deck done yet.

01:13:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, I don't, I don't. I'm almost done. I got to the Vulcans. Now I'm talking about Vulcan rockets and then SLS, and I'll be done.

01:13:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right, talk about Vulcan rockets and not Vulcans. And, of course, you can find me at pilebookscom or at astromagazinecom. And please, in your copious spare time when you're not listening to us, be sure to check out the National Space Society at nssorg. There, nss guys, did you hear me say it? Guys, did you hear me say it? Go to the website, nssorg and remember you can always drop us a line at twisttwittv.

01:14:07
We welcome your comments, suggestions and ideas, and we do respond to all our emails. Eventually, new episodes of the podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher. So to make sure to subscribe, tell your friends and give us reviews. We'll take whatever you got. And don't forget, of course, course we're counting on you to join club twit in 2025. Besides supporting twit in general, you'll help us stay on the air and forever bringing you great guests and horror jokes, because everybody has to have a specialty and that's mine. You can get the great programming with video streams on the twit network ad free if you're in club twit, as well as some extras that are only found there for $7.99.

01:14:48
$7.99 no, $7 a month I spaced out there for a minute wow, I just want to see if you're away, and we really appreciate it, and it helps keep the processes warm, the electrons flowing over here and you've heard leo talk about it enough, so I don't need to tell you all the things that he does so eloquently, but this is really a time of need. Advertising is falling and, uh, unfortunately they can't run this the way I run at astor magazine, which is definitely not a profit. Finally, you can follow the twit tech podcast network at twit on twitter and on facebook and twittv on instagram, so make sure to click that thumbs up and subscribe button wherever you happen to be. Thanks, guys, it's been a slice yes, thank you also.

01:15:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Happy birthday to my sister, yasmine. It was her birthday this week, but I'll call you later. I'm wearing a vast t-shirt in her honor do you think? She's actually listens to this thing.

01:15:41 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, we're gonna find out right, I right, I guess we will. There we go, all right, thanks everybody. See you next week.