This Week in Space 150 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 - Tariq Malik
Coming up on this Week in Space. We're all safe from that threatening asteroid. Also, Katy Perry's going to space and what's Buzz Aldrin like behind the scenes? It's your listener questions for our epic episode 150. Tune in.

0:00:13 - Rod Pyle
This is this Week in Space, episode number 150, recorded on February 28, 2025, our listener special. Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the listener special edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Bad Aster Magazine, and I'm joined by that Dapper Dan counterpart of mine, Tarek Malik, editor-in-chief at the great and wonderful space.com. How are you partner?

0:00:49 - Tariq Malik
Dapper Dan, doing well, doing well. I could use some Dapper Dan in my hair. You know, get some, get some pomade in there, get my curl going be great, be great. Well, I wasn't gonna say anything.

0:00:59 - Rod Pyle
but yeah, yeah, whoa, whoa. Actually, when you came on this morning my time, it encouraged me to go brush my hair, but it didn't help any because I have less of it every week.

0:01:09 - Tariq Malik
See I can sell ads right here. I did shave for you and all of those this Week in Space listeners out there today.

0:01:17 - Rod Pyle
Hold on. I feel so special and I want to welcome our new TD, John Ashley. John, was this assignment promotion or punishment for you?

0:01:29 - John Ashley
Depends on how you want to view things.

0:01:32 - Rod Pyle
Well, actually, it depends on how you want to view things. I'm going to plead the fifth on this one. Okay, well, that's encouraging. I feel like I'm in the federal government. Now, before we start, please don't forget to do us a solid and make sure to like, subscribe and do the other podcast things that keep us fat, happy and on the air, although we'd probably be fat anyway. Um, all right, shall we do jokes first or headlines first? What do you think tart?

0:02:01 - Tariq Malik
well, you, we. We usually always start with a joke, so let's do the joke?

0:02:06 - Rod Pyle
Okay, well, we have a joke melange today and we always introduce our jokes like this Wait, do we always. Oh, before I forget, I have a visual joke for people who are watching. I just got this off Temu, let's see if I can. It's my new.

0:02:32 - Tariq Malik
Oh too green Is it?

0:02:34 - Rod Pyle
green. Is that what it is? It's a green rocket.

0:02:37 - Tariq Malik
Oh my gosh, it's a lighter Watch out for that.

0:02:40 - Rod Pyle
Watch this. It keeps going even when you take your hand off the switch. Oh wow, watch this.

0:02:47 - Tariq Malik
It keeps going, even when you take your hand off the switch. Oh wow, don't hurt yourself, please, please, don't hurt yourself right now.

0:02:51 - Rod Pyle
Okay, don't burn your eye out kid, wow, okay. Well, anyway, for those listening, that was a a trivial moment of stupid john, we have 9-1-1 on speed dial right for rod, is that right?

0:02:57 - John Ashley
Uh, I have to check the budget on that actually.

0:03:02 - Rod Pyle
I have a live channel them all the time because of past activities. All right, tucker drake, tucker a joke. Actually it's not a joke, it's a punch line. This is for you, Tariq. Okay, the moon's in your eye like a big pizza pie. That's Amare.

0:03:26 - Tariq Malik
Amare. I'm not going to live down this whole Amare mayor thing, am I? I guess not. Thanks Tucker.

0:03:33 - Rod Pyle
We got another one from Bill Nelson. I don't think it's that Bill Nelson, the Bill Nelson Former. Nasa, administrator and senator who went to space. It was a Bill Nelson who knows hey Tarek.

0:03:45 - Tariq Malik
Yes, Bill. Well, I guess yes, Rod.

0:03:47 - Rod Pyle
Why do astronauts lift off at noon? I don't know why, because 12 o'clock is time for lunch. Okay, I would believe it. Yes, rod, also from Bill. An astronaut washes his car and then washes his wife's car. What do you call that?

0:04:07 - Tariq Malik
A double eclipse what?

0:04:10 - Rod Pyle
Extravehicular activity.

0:04:13 - Tariq Malik
I like that one. I like that one. That's my favorite, bill. That's my favorite From Paul Romaine hey.

0:04:19 - Rod Pyle
Tarek. Yes, rod Paul, where will I read about the ISS after it's gone?

0:04:26 - Tariq Malik
I don't know Well, space.com right, but where, but where?

0:04:29 - Rod Pyle
The obituaries.

0:04:32 - Tariq Malik
Is it too soon? Okay, I think it's too soon. I think it's too soon.

0:04:35 - Rod Pyle
Only a couple more From Michael Diamond hey, tarek, yes, michael and Rod.

0:04:40 - Tariq Malik
What does NASA stand for? Well, I know what does nasa stand for?

0:04:47 - Rod Pyle
uh, I well, I know, but I think you're going to tell me too, so not another space acronym.

0:04:50 - Tariq Malik
Okay, these are all new.

0:04:56 - Rod Pyle
This is the first time I'm hearing all these busy. Thank you, john from adam. Well, his, his screen name on discord is Adam Fent up. I don't know if that's his real last name or not hey Tarek, yes, yes, yes, adam, how? Does the?

0:05:14 - Tariq Malik
solar system keep its pants up? I don't know. Is it with the asteroid belt? Is that? Yes, I got that one. I got one.

0:05:26 - Rod Pyle
Now I've heard that some people want to whip us with an asteroid belt with a joke time of this show, but you can help. You can help Help. Send us your best, worst or most indifferent space joke at twist at twittv. That's T-W-I-S at twittv and we'll include you in the mayhem.

0:05:49 - Tariq Malik
I got tears today.

0:05:51 - Rod Pyle
Tarek, do you want to do headlines or get get a break done and then come back and just jam through?

0:05:56 - Tariq Malik
Well, let's get a breakdown and get jammed. We've got a lot of headlines. Yeah, let's take a break. Take a break, let's do a break.

0:06:00 - Rod Pyle
We'll be surprised. We're going to have a break. We didn't even telegraph that. We'll be right back standby.

0:06:09 - Tariq Malik
we're getting a lot of gifs today I know I can't, I can't see them all because I'm three, four, four in a row I like the betty I like. I like patrick's with his spaceship, that's fun. We're talking about our discord and, uh, in the, the, the twitterverse, everybody twit, tweet, twit. I don't know what you call it.

0:06:29 - Rod Pyle
Twittv, yours well, not the twitterverse, whatever you say. No, oh, asteroid 2024 yr4 how you do keep us on the move and now you're fading away. So that's right. Our favorite earth shattering, dangerous asteroid has become a mere blip in our memory. It's gone from slightly risky to highly hazardous to oh my god, is this really going to happen? And now been ground down, with further observation and calculation, to a one in 20 000 risk, which I don't know. What was it? At the worst, one in 32 or something.

0:07:07 - Tariq Malik
It was pretty it was like yeah, one, and it was like three percent, I think, is what it was 3.2 chance.

0:07:12 - Rod Pyle
So, but now, and we have the catalina sky survey and jpl to thank. As I understand it, we're able to find actually. So I say additional observation, but it was also pre-discovery data that went back and looked at imaging from well before we knew what it was and said oh there it is, it's not coming at us. So, barstow, you've been spared.

0:07:32 - Tariq Malik
That's right. That's right, and the rest of us too. This was actually something that the scientists that we were talking to at space.com. They told us this was going to happen. The entire time they were like, oh look, the chances are going to go up, then they're going to go down and then it's all going to be fine. But I don't think they expected the chances to go to the record height of like 3.2% chance, which is the highest it's ever been for any object before getting, you know, not fully dismissed, like right now. The impact probability is zero, is like the quote that the scientists are putting out there, but it's not totally zero, right? One in um? Uh, what is it? One in uh 20 000 is that what you said? Uh, there it's, it's still. It's still there's still like a percentage chance. It's just like not one in 32 anymore. So it's a lot more of a comfort for the rest of us, who, you know, live and walk and breathe and eat and all the fun stuff.

0:08:29 - Rod Pyle
Except for those of us who were looking for the excitement of seeing a white dot in the sky, that didn't move anywhere, it just got bigger and bigger and bigger.

0:08:38 - Tariq Malik
Were you planning your Armageddon party? Is that what that was, Rod? Well, I was planning my Armageddon party for it to land somewhere in New Jersey.

0:08:42 - Rod Pyle
Oh, thanks, thanks, rod. You're going to have to return all that stuff. I was planning my Armageddon party. For it to land somewhere in New Jersey, oh thanks. Thanks, rod, you're welcome, well, you keep saying your house is falling apart. This would solve your problems.

0:08:53 - Tariq Malik
I still have a hole in my wall in my kitchen.

0:08:56 - Rod Pyle
It's almost been a year All right.

0:08:58 - Tariq Malik
Okay, it gets fixed next week. It's going to be great, but yeah, so we don't have to worry about the asteroid Cheers. One thing that is very exciting, though, is that now 2032 is on the calendar, let's plan an observation campaign, and I think there's enough time that someone could launch something to this as it flies by, like even if it's a CubeSat. So I challenge some entrepreneurs and 3D printers out there you people who are really smart with the machines and whatnot build something and get it on one of these rockets. Let's see if we can launch it to this asteroid. That'd be pretty cool.

0:09:31 - Rod Pyle
Okay, all you billionaires listening to this show, all right. Woe to SLS, the story that just won't go away.

0:09:41 - Tariq Malik
This is from Ars Etica right.

0:09:44 - Rod Pyle
I think it is yeah.

Oh, eric Berger. It kind of feels like the tide is turning and while there are those who still support SLS for the first few lunar landing missions including some very prominent people like a former NASA chief scientist and others even those people, some of them are beginning to falter. The latest about FACE was from Scott Pace, who was the secretary of the national space council under the last, the first trump administration and a leading voice in space policy, and, uh, he wrote for a congressional hearing. He had been championing sls for over a decade, now wants an off-ramp to commercial providers and also wants moon and Mars. Now, I know Scott some. I don't think he'd say that just to be in step with the administration, but that is basically. Well, what we're hearing from Elon is kill that rocket and buy mine. But what I think this is is look, let's use SLS for what we've got, for what it's good for, and move on.

0:10:47 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, this was really interesting because this came out of a House Science Subcommittee meeting this week on the Capitol. It was called Step-by-Step the Artemis Program and NASA's Path to Human Exploration of the Moon, mars and Beyond exploration of the moon, mars and beyond. And what it really was was the the new trump administration's like the first opportunity to kind of get um, what do you call it like? Uh, I was gonna say like the oil stick dip, but like the census, you know thing to see like where things are right. Does anyone do that anymore? Like they use the the oil stick to see.

0:11:19 - Rod Pyle
Like I don't know my jaguar. You can't. There's no way you have to do this electronic rigmarole.

0:11:24 - Tariq Malik
But I like dipsticks, yeah yeah, so it's like that, and it was Scott Pace and another expert, dan Dunbacher, at the Purdue University to really give their take on like where things are right now. And there was a lot of hand-wringing and complaining amongst the many members of the panel on both kind of ideological spectrums the Democrats and the Republicans there about where things were. Of course, the Democrats are really upset about the federal agencies, like NASA, being really under fire by the current administration, while the Republican representatives were really upset about what could happen in their states, because there's a lot of NASA assets for SLS in their states in Alabama, in Texas, in Florida, et cetera and yet also they're frustrated about where things are right now. We've launched one SLS rocket in the 18 years of its plus near 18 years of its designs, et cetera. So it was very interesting to kind of see where things are. In fact, one of the things that these lawmakers and these experts were saying is that they really need to have alternatives in hand and in mind right now, like you were saying, scott Pace, talking about how they really need to get an off-ramp from this system. They're halfway there with the Artemis III contract, but Starship still has a long way to go. In fact, I'm sure we're gonna talk about that later today too, and so I'm not really sure, like, where things are.

This really felt very much like a tone setting meeting, and Eric is right in that it really is a continuation of what's gonna happen with SLS. They keep pushing back the next one, and now it's 2026. Is it going to stay there? We don't know. There was also a lot of discussion from lawmakers about Orion or, as one lawmaker put it, orion, so it was weird, right, but there was talk about if that's going to be ready as well, because of the heat shield issues. So we're going to see how this develops. I think that this was the first salvo. I think that it's really weighing heavily, uh, but we should expect some significant changes in the near future all right, uh, and we got.

0:13:35 - Rod Pyle
We got a few more headlines to get through and a whole lot of questions so we can skip a couple.

I mean, we can just do a rapid fire if you want to do one lunar trailar Trailblazer lost and found Lunar Trailblazer, a new probe to orbit the moon, was launched on a Falcon 9. On Wednesday and this is from a JPL press release they said Caltech Mission Control which I thought was interesting, so they must have it now at the campus established a successful telemetry contract with the orbiter, whose core mission is to search for watery ice deposits on the moon. Finally, then on Thursday, it went quiet. Hours later needed comms for mission success came up again, but they're still trying to establish the actual links that they have to. I guess they got a heartbeat, but then you have to go and see if you can get everything else. So, notably, this is what's called a SimpleX mission, which they characterize as a class of low-cost rideshare missions that have a higher risk tolerance by design. And my question for you, my friend, is this a nervous step back towards the horrid, faster, better, cheaper era when we're losing Mars probes right and left?

0:14:46 - Tariq Malik
Well, I hope not. Simplex stands for Small, innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration, so it is another acronym, as our jokester so well put it earlier. But I think that this is an example of two things. Number one this was kind of a ride of convenience for NASA and for the lunar trailblazer people. They were looking for a ride to space and something that would be affordable, and Firefly Aerospace, it turned out, had bought an entire Falcon 9 to launch their not Firefly, pardon me Intuitive Machines, had bought an entire Falcon 9 to launch their IM2 mission to space through Athena. Lander Rover, slash Hopper it's got all the things on this one, and they had extra mass available on the rocket, so they were able to have space to then take NASA along there. Now, that being said, we've seen this kind of similar take on smaller and faster spacecraft before. We saw it during the SLS mission. We're talking about that too with their 10 different CubeSats, and of those 10 CubeSats, maybe a handful of them Like four.

Yeah, managed to survive, and that was something that they did set up because they were saying that they were going to try something different. This could be an evolution of that, where they were trying to do something a little bit more affordable, but perhaps faster, with less tolerance. However, I think that this is like a general hiccup. It wasn't like they were trying to cut corners and do it, but it was that they were going to do something new and they had a hiccup on their spacecraft, as we've seen from time to time with all of these, so it could be kind of like one parts of one and two of the other, that kind of a thing, but I hope it works out, to be honest, because this is going to look for some ice and study the ice distribution around the sun. I was going to say this the moon for good places for future bases.

Well, maybe if they go in winter to the sun, I don't know. There you go.

0:16:41 - Rod Pyle
I like that. All right, this one I'm just going to leave open for comment from you. Katy Perry, in space. I was so excited. What and why, and why should I?

0:16:52 - Tariq Malik
care Because, baby, she's a firework Rod, she's going to show us what she's worth and she's going to make us go. Oh, oh, oh, Right, no, no, this is awesome. This is actually. You didn't know. I know the words to that song right Is that what it is?

0:17:07 - Rod Pyle
No, I'm just laughing at you.

0:17:08 - Tariq Malik
You're weird, blue Origin. Actually, we had hints of John, I'm giving you gold here. All right, this is gold. Okay, move on. We got to go to an ad, all right. All right, all right.

So no, fresh on the heels of their last human space flight, blue Origin announced their next crew for what they're calling the NS-31 mission, and it turns out that it's actually going to make a bit of history, not just because one of the crew members is, in fact, pop sensation, super mega, award-winning singer, Katy Perry, but also because it's going to be the first all-female crew ever. In fact, I was talking to Robert Perlman, friend of the show and editor of Collect Space, when this story broke, and he confirmed to me that the last all-female crew was Valentina Tarascova's one-woman flight in the 60s. So this is the first to be an all-female crew, one-woman flight in the 60s. So this is the first to be an all-female crew and it's going to have a lot of celebrities and luminaries on it. It's organized by Lauren Sanchez, the fiancée of Jeff Bezos.

Who's flying who? Yeah, she's flying on the mission and also, you know, jeff Bezos is the owner of Blue Origin. So I guess there's a definite in there to get things moving, but it's also going to include several other people, so that's six women in all. You have the STEM board CEO and former NASA rocket scientist, aisha Bao, film producer Carrie-Anne Flynn, cbs Morning co-host Gail King I watch her on TV, that's exciting and then bioastronautics research scientist, amanda Nguyen.

So I think it's a really interesting concept and they're hoping to inspire other women, another generation of explorers, with this flight. It'll be interesting if there's any kind of different rollout for this human spaceflight from Blue Origin than there was from the last one, which was really just a very quiet. Here's five of the six people that we're going to launch who bought their tickets to space. We're not even going to tell you who the sixth person was, because they don't want all the publicity to what is now a very high publicity, high profile flight launching in the spring. So be on the lookout for that, and then we're going to see how Katy Perry and the rest of these celebrities do in space.

0:19:26 - Rod Pyle
I'm looking out. Okay, last and quickly Blue Ghost going to the moon. Where are we?

0:19:31 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, well, we're almost there. We're almost there. And if you keep asking, they're going to turn that moon lander around Rod. But no, blue Ghost is Firefly Aerospace's first moon lander and carrying a NASA payload. I think, if memory serves, a couple of them under the Eclipse program. But they are going to land on Sunday morning just, I guess, around like between 2 and 4 am is what the current target is, eastern time, and everything seems to be going well. In fact, they just captured some spectacular imagery of the moon's far side as they were soaring over it. So this spacecraft seems to be really on point as they're approaching it. So it should be pretty exciting and I think everyone, please, please, note that right now there are three count them one, two, three private landers headed to the moon.

We've got Blue Ghost landing on Sunday March 2nd headed to the moon. We've got Blue Ghost landing on Sunday March 2nd. We have the Intuitive Machines Athena lander landing around March 6th, march 7th, so like not even a week later. And then you have the iSpace Resilience lander, which is iSpace's second, from Japan attempt to try to land on the moon. That's going to land, I think, near the end of March, early April, that kind of thing. So that's really awesome that we've got this huge fleet all going at the same time, and a bit reminiscent of last year when we had a couple as well.

0:20:51 - Rod Pyle
Fingers crossed for commercial success. So we can get on with this. All right, let's go to a quick break and we'll be right back. Stand by with your questions. So stand by, all right. So number one my partner, roy Delcam, says what is the X-37B secretive space plane looking for on these long missions? Now, just to set some background here, it's been flying for about 15 years and of course there was an X-37, I guess you'd call it now X-37A, although it was just the X-37 at the time. That was used prior to this for testing and so forth. But they've got two x37bs that can stay up there for I don't know. I think this one's been up so far for what? A thousand nine hundred something, almost a thousand days, nine hundred and eight days. And it's interesting because normally they launch them on a falcon or, in the past, an Atlas or a Falcon 9. This one that's up now was launched on a Falcon Heavy because it was going to a highly elliptical, high altitude orbit that's actually further out than geosynchronous, which is what?

0:21:58 - Tariq Malik
25,000 miles, I think yeah about that 32.

0:22:01 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, so high, it's like a tenth of the weight of the moon. That 32, yeah, so so high. You know, it's like a tenth of the weight of the moon. Um, so this program was started in 1999 by nasa to fly in the shuttle payload bay.

0:22:11 - Tariq Malik
I'm glad they didn't do that, because it's not good to put things full of fuel in the shuttle payload bay just to put some perspective, you can fit two of these back to back in the space shuttle payload bay, which is like 60 feet long. So yeah, that's how small they are filled with hydrazine.

0:22:24 - Rod Pyle
That's how small.

0:22:24 - Tariq Malik
They are Filled with hydrazine. What a great idea. Exactly the bomb in the bay they used to call it.

0:22:31 - Rod Pyle
Transferred to DOD in 2004, and now it's part of Space Force, originally, at least stated to be intended for satellite repair, but the Air Force calls it an experimental test program to demonstrate technologies for reliable, reusable, uncrewed space test platform for the US Air Force, which means we're doing secrets and we're not going to tell you what we're doing. So it has tested well. Reputedly, it has tested such technology as Hall thrusters, which are ion engines, and the EM drive, which is supposed to be free energy from weird, spooky Andromedan physics and, of course, probably advanced spy techniques. So what do you?

0:23:11 - Tariq Malik
know? Well, I know two things. Number one these were built by Boeing. I think they call it their Skunk Works. Is that right what they called it? Their Phantom?

0:23:19 - Rod Pyle
Works.

0:23:19 - Tariq Malik
That was Lockheed, it might be Phantom Works, it was. Yeah, I think it was the Phantom Works. So they built these for NASA originally or at least one of them for NASA and then NASA wasn't going to use it and they were going to junk it. So they got the Air Force to buy it and then, of course, the Space Force adopted it. Overall, and to give our listeners who aren't watching the stream or checking out the link that we have there, an idea, the link that we have there an idea Imagine like a small space plane or maybe like a supersized guided missile that you might think, with some kind of pointy wings popping off the back and that black and white type of tiled look that the space shuttles have and just shrink it, shrink it all the way down.

They put a payload bay in it that opens, much like the ones that you see on the space shuttle, but inside that is a solar array that deploys and it fans out to build power. That's what they did for this vehicle and it's a fully autonomous space plane. They can land it. I think they've landed it both at.

0:24:21 - Rod Pyle
Kennedy Space.

0:24:22 - Tariq Malik
Center. It was at Mojave, though, right At Edwards. That's where they landed.

0:24:27 - Rod Pyle
So Edwards and Vandenberg and the shuttle runway at Kennedy were all identified as landing zones. I thought they might have landed at Vandenberg, but for sure in.

0:24:35 - Tariq Malik
Mojave. I could be wrong. Yeah, I know they did at Mojave. So the missions have just been getting longer and longer. I think the first one was in the early 2010s or so and it lasted a good six to eight months, then they went to a year, then they went to two years, and now this one at 900 days is just really stretching that envelope.

They have two, like you said, you call this one 30, I think X-ray 7A. There is another one, and together they call them I think they call them otvs, right, orbital test vehicles and um, and so they do all sorts of things. What they do in particular on a regular day-to-day, we don't know. Uh, they think that they're reconnaissance platforms. They think that they test some technology. We have heard that they have, uh, deployed a couple of small satellites and tests in the past, and we just recently.

In fact, we have a picture of it on space.com. I forgot to grab it, but we got our first picture from this spacecraft of the Earth like way far below. It was the first declassified one while it's going on and that was really exciting to see here. We've got this picture of it now that John is showing on screen. This is an image from the payload bay of the X-37B on this super high elliptical orbit, showing kind of like a three quarters Earth below with a little bit of the solar away there. This is just absolutely spectacular because the last time we saw a spacecraft like this was within like two seconds of spacecraft separation Again a very rarity. When this one launched We'd never seen that before, and maybe they forgot to cut off the feed. Maybe they did that to give us all a bit of a thrill. But those are the glimpses that we get of it in space. We won't see it again unless they declassify more, until it flies itself back to Earth and lands either at KSC or Edwards or wherever the Space Force wants to land it.

So it's doing some kind of technology test for the middle area.

0:26:29 - Rod Pyle
Go ahead, Ron. On YouTube Eric Duckman mentions it did land a couple of Vandenbergs, so thank you for looking that up for us.

0:26:37 - Tariq Malik
Thank you, Eric.

0:26:38 - Rod Pyle
We obviously didn't do our homework. Okay, are we ready for the next one?

0:26:42 - Tariq Malik
I would just point out that I think that that the x37b is pretty exciting and I have a x37b cozy in my car to keep my drinks warm, so now I'm ready for the next one.

0:26:52 - Rod Pyle
Never cease to amaze, and of course now the chinese have one too yeah, shenlong, it's called shenlong looks kind of like the x37b, because everything they do looks like everything we do. Okay, hey, try doing this one without getting political Elon Musk versus Andreas Morgensen. Oh, you saw that huh yeah, just beat me with an asteroid belt. You know so, Musk, you know, bless his dark soul.

0:27:21 - Tariq Malik
So this is from Jim Reed. Is that who this is from?

0:27:24 - Rod Pyle
Yes, sorry, I should have said that. Um, you know, musk joining the administration, presidential administration tweeting out the astronauts. You know, the sunny and butch have been abandoned on the space station and they were left there for political reasons and so on and so forth. And I mean, you know, something else may come out about this that we don't know, but at this point, as far as we could tell, they were left there because we were concerned about the risks in starliner and they hadn't been brought yet back yet, principally because spacex wasn't ready to do so. Well, although there is a capsule up there, but you'd have to completely reshuffle the seating arrangements and stuff to make it work yeah, so I let me just finish the thought.

So the issue here is not so much what's being said by the administration and Musk, but the fact that when an astronaut on the space station came on the air and said, hey, that's not how it is, musk shouted him down in a pretty irresponsible way, in my opinion.

0:28:27 - Tariq Malik
Well, yeah, this is really strange and it's, it's. It's kind of in the arena. I don't like to get that political, but it's in the arena. I wish everyone would just go ahead and do the work and and and like, let's, like, let's, let's focus on the task at hand.

But when this came up, uh, the astronauts on the space station, sonny and Butch, had just given TV interviews saying that they didn't feel stranded, that they thought that a lot of the characters, some of them by people in power In fact, sonny Morgan mentioned that she felt that President Trump's assessment that they had been abandoned was not fully accurate. She told that to CBS News and so right after that is when you get Elon's comments about how they were left there for political reasons. And then a lot of the blowback came back from that, with astronauts saying you know, actual astronauts like Andreas Morgensen of ESA, saying no, that's not the case, you know it wasn't political reasons. And then it just got really, really nasty. Elon was calling them names. A lot of other astronauts like the Kelly brothers, scott Kelly and Senator Mark Kelly, came in over the weekend to also kind of blast back and it got very personal and it's just very sad to see that kind of an altercation, especially from people that are ostensibly in charge of a personal human spaceflight program, because you'd think that there would be a bit more professionalism. You know amongst everybody there, so you know where are we.

Is that whole what am I going to call it? I don't want to call it a tempest. That whole occurrence, that whole situation happened and we were getting ready on the media side to get NASA's take on what the next crewed mission is going to be Crew 10 launching on the SpaceX Dragon that is going to relieve the Crew 9 astronauts and let Butch and Sonny come back to Earth on their own Crew 9 Dragon currently at the space station, which has been there for many months. They have not been left without a ride home. It's been up there for a while and NASA canceled it, probably because they don't want reporters asking the heads of their programs. Was it really for political reasons? Or the astronauts who are going to be on the flight? What do they think about the person that builds their spacecraft calling out astronauts like that? And so it's just a very unfortunate situation to be in. That isn't about the actual work itself if that makes sense right.

0:30:52 - Rod Pyle
Well, it's really about Elon having a short circuit between his brain and his mouth. I don't mean to be insulting, but the guy severely lacks filtration. Now, when he first started coming to the public eye in the mid-2010s you know, 2014, 2015, 2016, it was kind of adorable in a way. It's like oh, here's this guy giving his first fifth grade book report. He's shining his shoes on the back of his pant cuffs and stuff like that. And so you went okay. You know this is somebody who's obviously extremely intelligent, has a little bit of a communications challenge perhaps, but he's brilliant. Now, I still believe he's brilliant, which doesn't mean I like a lot of what he does, but I do think he's a very smart man. What's puzzling is with that intellect comes this kind of barbed tongue, you know that lashes out continually and it really does feel like kind of free association and it seems like it's not necessary.

0:31:49 - Tariq Malik
That's the thing to me is it doesn't seem like it's necessary to go that that route when extra necessary yeah, yeah, uh, okay, well, let's uh.

I think that's enough of that one by the way, just a side note, an observation that I realized this morning as I was thinking about. Uh, well, you know, billionaires, as one does is, I just realized that elon is the only billionaire so far who has built his own space program but not ridden on his rocket. Because jeff bezos flew on the first crewed flight of new shepherd, not to orbit. Uh, richard branson flew on the first crewed flight of, or like not the first crewed flight, but the first passenger flight, I guess, because they had done other test ones on was it on? Spaceship Two? But Elon has this private orbital rocket and he hasn't ridden on it. And it just reminded me that when I interviewed him years and years and years ago, he said that he wasn't interested in actually riding on the rocket, like being among the first for it He'd like to make sure that it worked properly and would go and do the other things, like make sure that the infrastructure was there to get to Mars.

I just thought that was interesting. I thought that he's kind of a departure from the billionaire.

0:32:59 - Rod Pyle
It's kind of like would you want to fly in a plane designed by Howard Hughes if he?

0:33:03 - Tariq Malik
wouldn't. Or if you were Mark Zuckerberg and you built your whole meta VR and decided not to use it because you were going to go live on a farm somewhere, I don't know.

0:33:11 - Rod Pyle
All right, let's go to another break and we'll be right back. Go nowhere, uh. Last one from jim reed you covered potential. No, sorry, that was not the one. Um, if the mission is cut short for the iss and impacts the boeing starliner, would the government get any money from starliner program back? My answer is with them about two billion in the hole. I doubt it. Plus, they're trying to sell that division. I think they want to get away from it as fast as possible.

0:33:42 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, good luck, good luck. It's like the time I had all those coupons at Sports Center and then they went out of business and I couldn't use them, you know. No, they're not going to get that money back. I don't know if they'd actually get credit for future flights to another space station destination that was. That would be interesting to know.

I think that's what one of the things jim is like asking about if they retire, because I don't think we talked about this too much. But elon said, uh last week that he wants to retire it by 2027 three years early than the plan. Uh, and ostensibly I think boeing is on the hook for four or five crude flights of starliner. Is that right? Something like that? It's in single digits, um, and so we'll we'd have to see if they're going to parlay that need to a commercial station like vast is getting ready to launch their first one next year. So we'll have to see if they're going to try to make that switch or if, as you said, they just shut it down when the space station shuts down all right.

0:34:38 - Rod Pyle
Uh, I'm from martin lawler, my good friend Martin Lawler, one of two members of the private Space Thugs Club Space.

0:34:46 - Tariq Malik
Thugs. Wow, you have to tell me about that.

0:34:48 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, we have T-shirts and everything. Wow, he says Rod, what was your impression of Gene Kranz and assessment of his impact in the Apollo years? That's actually a really good question. I met Gene once. I interviewed him for a couple of hours.

0:35:04 - Tariq Malik
Before you go tell people who Gene Kranz is. Oh sorry.

0:35:06 - Rod Pyle
Gene Kranz was one of the early flight directors during the Apollo era and Gemini era. Actually, yeah, he was a controller in Mercury and then, I think, he became a director on Gemini and, of course course, made famous by the movie apollo 13.

failure is not an option which he never portrayed by ed harris portrayed by the uh, every irascible ed harris, who did a great job, um, and that was kind of gene. Then he was an air force, air force veteran, very capable, I wouldn't say forceful, but disciplined, yeah, and I think one of his his most outstanding moments to me and, uh, I'm working on a project with jerry griffin, who was another flight director of the apollo era and he we talked about this quite a bit was after the apollo one fire, which killed three astronauts in 1967. Mission Control came back a couple of days later and everything had basically been locked down after the fire because it was a disaster and they needed to know what happened and preserve data and all that. So it was either a day or two after that. Kranz called everybody together, including backroom folks and some other people, into Mission Control and he gave a talk that is now called the Kranz dictum, I think, which basically said you know, from now on, mission Control will be perfect. You will write this on your boards, you will do this every day, you will look at this, we will never make a mistake again. People's lives are at stake, and so on and so forth. It was a very moving speech. It was not recorded, it was not written down but people have tried to recall it over the years enough to repeat it. So we know generally what he said and apparently it was quite moving for everyone involved after this horrible tragedy which killed three astronauts on the ground.

They weren't even in launch mode, they were just testing so and by the time I met him, which is 2005, he had mellowed quite a bit. He was very kind, he was very reflective, as a lot of these guys are later in life. He had spent a lot of time kind of in introspection about what it all meant, and a real gentleman. Now, after him, I interviewed Chris Kraft, who was one of the very first people to establish Mission Control and he came out of NASA's predecessor and Chris was, I don't want to say bitter, but he was definitely edgy about the whole thing, was not happy about the direction NASA was going in 2005. So it was quite a contrast. But Kranz was a very gentle soul and I really enjoyed interviewing him, and obviously a smart guy and he's kind of the living handbook for mission control during the space race. Did you ever meet him, tarek?

0:37:56 - Tariq Malik
No, I have a feeling that I may have interviewed him one time, one time only. You know, I know I have his book.

0:38:07 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, everybody has it.

0:38:08 - Tariq Malik
They're into it, yeah I think I only interviewed him like maybe once or twice in an anniversary kind of type setting, you know, to kind of get his take on the whole legacy of Apollo etc. So but you know, but I'm not the historian who would have had that chance to talk to him as much as you might have had. So I would defer to your judgment about all of that. But you know, in my recollection from the interview I remember just being a very, very calm and collected person.

0:38:38 - Rod Pyle
So yeah, um, and coincidentally, jim lewis wrote in and said hey, what's buzz aldrin like? So I get to answer two questions now. Yeah, so buzz. If you saw first man, you saw a kind of a compacted version, an abbreviated version of Buzz.

0:39:04 - Tariq Malik
First man is the Neil Armstrong biopic.

0:39:07 - Rod Pyle
Biopic. Yeah, and Buzz was not portrayed in a terribly flattering way. So I called Joe Engel, who was also an Apollo astronaut later shuttle astronaut Joe didn't fly on Apollo, but he trained for it and said you, you know, you worked with buzz for years. He goes yep. And I said you know, does this movie portrayal make any sense to you? And he said, oh, yeah, like exactly so. Now, I didn't know buzz then, obviously because I was a kid knowing him later in life.

Um, he's a person who says exactly what he thinks. Um, and you get the sense that there's five billion brains trying to get through one mouth. You know, when he talks to you it comes fast and furious and highly technical, but he's very passionate about space exploration. He's very passionate about internationalism. He's very passionate about working with China if we can do it in a way that's constructive for both countries and he's really, really, really driven to get things moving to. As he likes to put it get your a beep, beep to mars I think we can say that I think we're allowed, right, I never I never, you know a dollar, A dollar sign.

Dollar sign to Mars.

He sells t-shirts that say that by the way, but he spends a lot of time designing these things. So I just was writing something recently about the Aldrin Cycler working with him, and this is a large spacecraft that would be on a permanent orbit between Earth and Mars. So it's a low energy thing. You don't have to put much propellant into it, you just have to adjust it every now and then. Now you'd have to have a shuttle from the Earth or the moon up to the cycler and then when the cycler reaches Mars much faster than a traditional rocket you have to have another shuttle either down to Phobos or down the surface of Mars. But you've got this kind of permanent space liner going in this big loop between these two worlds, which means if you have a couple of them, let's say every year, you can load up cargo and people and send them out there, and it guarantees this continuous flow of stuff to Mars, assuming that you want to have a long-term settlement there. So I've got to give him a lot of credit. That feels like something we should build.

Yeah, not just for being smart. He was the first person at MIT to get a doctorate in orbital dynamics, which even today makes my brain hurt, but he kind of invented some of that field of study, but he was also one of the few people from the Apollo era and the astronaut corps that really, you know, kept on this campaign to get it moving, get back beyond Earth orbit, get back to the moon, move things along for the rest of his life. And you know, most of the other astronauts are believers. But they went off to other things. They ran airlines, they ran liquor distribution companies. You know all kinds of different stuff. So I got to give Buzz a lot of credit. You know he probably could have made more money going into private industry that way, but he chose to kind of go his own way and, of course, was on Dancing with the Stars, yeah, so he does have a bit of a thespian limelight streak in him as well.

0:42:15 - Tariq Malik
Well, there's also I mean there's very, very public history. I think that we don't see a lot of in astronauts. You know astronauts are American heroes or not American right, depending on where they're from, and that's the pedestal that they're on. But you know, as we've seen with Lisa Nowak and maybe some other astronauts that have had struggled and had problems afterward, you know it's not all rockets and roses and all of that stuff. It's a hard job and it can take its toll. And he has been very public in both his books and outright about his challenges with alcohol. You know, later on Depression and depression and the turnaround that that was, and I think that that is also like a really important part of that legacy is to show kind of all of the dimensions. I have a Buzz Aldrin story, if you don't mind, that I wanted to share.

0:43:03 - Rod Pyle
Can I just touch on one thing before you do? Yeah?

0:43:05 - Tariq Malik
go ahead.

0:43:06 - Rod Pyle
I'm really glad you mentioned that, because I omitted it. He wrote in a book I think it was two or three years after he got back about that depression, and this was in a time in the early 70s.

Test pilots didn't talk about no, they didn't talk about that. They still don't talk about this kind of stuff. But he came right out and said look, I can only speak for myself, but here's what I went through. That was courageous, and you know, I mean, at that point he wasn't still an astronaut, so there wasn't a risk to his career in that sense, but he could have been ridiculed, he could have have been frozen out by his brother, pilots and astronauts. So that was, you're right, that was a very big deal.

0:43:46 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, and I just it's really important that you get the whole measure. I think of that there. Buzz Aldrin was the subject of the very first space story I ever wrote as a professional journalist. Did I ever tell you that? I'm telling everybody now, right, yeah, In fact, also in 1999, which is the same year Spacecom was founded I wasn't here, I was working for the Los Angeles Times.

0:44:11 - Rod Pyle
As a child, as a child employee.

0:44:13 - Tariq Malik
That's right, that's right. I was still in my 20s but Buzz Ald, buzz aldrin, was there at the uh, yorba linda presidential, nixon presidential library with some big, the biggest cartoonish, plushy moon boots I've ever seen, because they provided them to him to put his moon boots prints in concrete at the um, at the library, for the 30th anniversary of the apollo 11 moon landing and they said, hey, you like space tark and I'm like you bet you're, you know, keister. They said why don't you go write this thing about, about buzz aldrin? And I was like all right, and I was like an intern, I think, back then at the, at the newspaper and um, uh, and, and I did, I got to see him, I got to meet him and actually he signed his portrait right here. Can you see that? I can't believe you had that ready and you know he signed it right here.

You know what?

0:45:11 - Rod Pyle
that signature cost at his peak of fame.

0:45:15 - Tariq Malik
Well, this one in 1999 cost me $10 because it was not free in the 2000s.

0:45:19 - Rod Pyle
It was $700 and because it was not free, In the 2000s it was $700. Wow, wow and if it was a 3D object like an Omega watch box or something, it was $1,200 or $1,300.

0:45:29 - Tariq Malik
Wow, wow, so I got a bargain. Is what you're saying?

0:45:31 - Rod Pyle
Yeah, so hang on to that. So let's go to a quick break and come back with our last few. Don't go anywhere, okay, um, let's go to and I think this is a Tariq one, yes, uh, birin aman md, who says he was bitten by the space bug in ninth grade when he read a book called red giants and white dwarves. You know, I think my first. I was first bitten by a book called the big golden book of rockets so that's pretty impressive.

He says what are your thoughts on the solar sail from the planetary society? I think they did too, Didn't they?

0:46:10 - Tariq Malik
They did light sail Right and then there was another one that didn't, that didn't make it Okay yeah.

0:46:15 - Rod Pyle
But, but it says in testing and a couple of launches. We would love to hear your perspective on long-term future, with photons being a propulsion for the exploration of our cosmos.

0:46:28 - Tariq Malik
I'm actually I mean, I'm of the mind that we don't use solar sails like enough. It must be trickier than I understand it to be, because we have the Planetary Society with LightSail, and I think LightSail 2 was the one that succeeded. The first one it launched on one of those converted ICBMs that Russia used to launch and it had some issues. But LightSail 2 was amazing and you could even track it from the ground and see it fly overhead, and after that we saw NASA have their own, they had NanoCLD. We saw Japan launch the Akatsuki Not Akatsuki, akatsuki was a probe, it was called Icarus, that was the name of it. And not only that, but they included like a little lipstick camera that took a picture of it after it was fully unfurled, which was spectacular, and I just think that they're awesome. Of course, in sci-fi they're amazing.

0:47:24 - Rod Pyle
They're these giant gossamer ocean liners of the cosmos. Well, in sci-fi you can get from the Earth to Mars in about eight hours with a solar sail.

0:47:28 - Tariq Malik
Yeah, I know, which is not quite the case they're slow, but I think that we haven't really maximized the use for them.

We haven't done a Aside from Japan, which deployed the Icarus satellite, the solar sail, on the way to Venus, and then flew by Venus with it, which is pretty cool we haven't tried to do deep, deep, deep, ultra deep space testing with these sails, and I think that I would like to see something like that. Now, of course, we do need to get better at using them in orbit, and you know we haven't seen too many of those types of missions. But I think that, from a concept proof standpoint, that the light sail one was really really cool and successful, because they were able to keep it flying and maneuver it for a good long time longer than I think they initially planned and I think that that's something that, for a nonprofit like the Planetary Society, should be hailed and lauded, because that is like the heights of civilian science right there. And I just wonder how high they could go If Elon wrote them a check or Jeff Bezos wrote them a check for like a bajillion dollars. What kind of light sail craft could they make?

0:48:39 - Rod Pyle
So by the way, there is a book that's unlikely.

0:48:41 - Tariq Malik
There is a book by Michael Flynn called the Wreck of the Rivers of Stars and it is all about a commercial solar sail liner that is far past its prime the heyday has gone so it's like an opulent Titanic type style, but it's in a time where there's a faster engine so they don't use it anymore, and it's all about the final voyage and how disastrous it is and it is absolutely gripping from like a, if you like, sail type of spacecraft. The Wreck of the River Stars by Michael Flynn is a great sci-fi book to read.

0:49:15 - Rod Pyle
Hey, Quippy put a link to a Wikipedia article and a very nice graphic of solar sails up on Discord and if you were in club twit you'd be on discord too and seeing all this great stuff although we also get great things from the other platforms but had to throw a little little ping in there for club twit because it helps us and it helps you and it helps everybody but I'm just gonna have one one correction that the quippy shows the icarus, uh solar sail, not not light seal to from from JAXA, because that's Venus in the background there.

0:49:45 - Tariq Malik
You just had to say it's not my solar sail.

0:49:48 - Rod Pyle
it's somebody else's solar sail, but it's still an awesome one.

0:49:51 - Tariq Malik
Everyone should like it. John is waving his hands. He's like I can't even with these people. He's like get over yourself you guys.

0:49:57 - Rod Pyle
I would like to give a shout out to JPL guy and former associate, rob rob staley, who put together a group called the world space foundation, I think in the 80s. I was working with them in the 90s and they did a lot of work on solar sails there, a lot of early work with deployment mechanisms and, uh, you know, it was this spindle that had like tape measure type material that went out and actually tested it in 1g. Of course it worked very well, unable toable to fly it ultimately, but they were early pioneers in solar sail stuff and, I suspect, probably worked with the Planetary Society at some point. But you know, let me just add one more thing. There is another type of solar sail I was going to say yeah which would be interplanetary, excuse me, interstellar.

0:50:42 - Tariq Malik
There's two other kinds, then there's two other kinds, then there's two other kinds, so there's this one, you talk about this one, you talk about this one, just hush and let me say what it is Golly.

0:50:50 - Rod Pyle
That's the first time I've said golly in about 10 years. It's the first time in the air ever which is a large depending on which design. It is either very small or very large solar sail. But it would basically be powered by a laser or a stream of high energy particles coming from Earth or somewhere near Earth. Now we're talking about a Godzilla watt kind of laser. So because if you're going to send it that far, that at the speed you want, it has to be very powerful. But the nice thing is the solar sail has to carry no propellant. The sun helps push it out of the solar system. It continues accelerating continuously and then when you turn on this, this power supply on earth, basically what it means is you've got this, this transport system that doesn't have to carry its fuel.

You know so its mass is very low, and so it goes faster, faster, faster, faster and you can start getting in the percentage of speed of light zone without too much drama.

0:51:50 - Tariq Malik
In fact, if you watch the three-body problem on Netflix, that laser sail concept was what they used to try to propel the human brain off to the alien solar system, and that interstellar concept has been come up with. What is it they called? It's the nonprofit Breakthrough Starshot.

0:52:03 - Rod Pyle
Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

0:52:03 - Tariq Malik
That's. The whole concept of that is to send a bunch of little chips with solar cells all the way out to alva centauri also. And mag sales is the other one that said it doesn't use sales, it uses magnetic field lines and electrical lines. Uh, to tack using the magnetic fields of the solar system.

0:52:19 - Rod Pyle
That's the other one um, I guess it's quippy noted. That's super cool, but they better clear the airspace before they fire up the laser. That's probably a good idea. It would be a very quick death at any rate.

0:52:35 - Tariq Malik
I was going to say someone warned Alva Centauri, because whatever we send with that laser, it's not stopping when it gets there. It's going to keep going.

0:52:41 - Rod Pyle
Well, that's a sad thing. There's really no way to tack effectively, to slow down and either go into orbit or at least do a slow flyby, which is why you want to send a whole flock of these things, because then you can stagger them and it's actually like slowing down. If you have, you know, a couple hundred of them and they're strung out, you get this longer view. Okay, this is kind of stepping off the side. This is lily stromberg. Thank you, lily. Um, what's the best meteor shower to go and see?

oh now best meteor shower and then I'm going to turn over to you. So the orionids, the perseids are the two big ones every year. Perseids are in the summer, in august, orionids are in december, in the winter time, depending on where you live. The orionids could be a real chore because it gets cold. But the leonid shower, when it peaks, which is supposed to be every 30 years, but it's kind of unpredictable is the most spectacular ever and I, I, uh, we have a graphic of it that we can put up.

Um, in 1833 it was like I don't know, thousands and thousands per hour. So the sky and of course it was a lot darker in 1833, right, because people were using oil lamps and stuff, but the sky was just like on fire with these things. Yeah, I saw it, as I've repeated on the show, ad nauseum, so I'll keep it short. And I saw it, as I've repeated on this show, ad nauseum, so I'll keep it short. But I saw it in 1966, completely by accident, from a backyard in Pasadena which had a lot of light pollution. But that year it also really fired up and it was for a kid, my age, terrifying and really exciting because again, it looked like God was just using a salt shaker in the sky and the stuff was burning up again. It looked like God was just using a salt shaker in the sky and the stuff was burning up.

0:54:26 - Tariq Malik
Haven't really seen that since. So I'd say In 2002,. The Leonids were quite good as well, because Jasmine and I saw them from the top of her apartment building in New York City and there were quite a lot of them, so that was great. But no, those are good picks.

The Orionids are one of my favorites, Lily, because they're in October, so it's always like Halloween time. I thought they were in December. No, the December is Geminids and that's actually the better one for the year. So, according to Joe Rao and Bill Cook at NASA Lily he's with the NASA Meteoroid. Obviously we check with them every year to find out what the best ones are. The Geminids are in December and they're usually the best because it's the darkest time of year, the nights are longer and the air is still, and they're one of the most promising ones.

But Rod is right in that the Orionids can be very cool in October and they're also pieces of Halley's Comet, which I think is really exciting. Halley's Comet, Halley's comet, Halley's comet, comet Halley, as you will. So is the Eta Aquarid meteor shower, and that is in May. It's like a twofer that you get from comet Halley, with these two meteor showers the Leonids, though, in November and the Perseids in August are typically what we usually like bank on because they're the most accessible for people. They're in parts of the year where people either are taking some time off because the ones around Thanksgiving, ones in the summer and you can really observe them. In April you get the Lyrids, but they're not the greatest, because it's the middle of spring, there's stormy weather, it's hard to see. But one thing that Rod pointed out is really clear. You asked me my point. I was singing to you.

One thing that is really important is that you really want to be in a dark place. The darker your skies, the better the chances are for what you can see, for any of these meteor showers, because I have a street light right in front of my house and it really it can cut down the number of meteors by at least half, if not more, just from the one street light, or from city lights as well. So getting out there in the country or a dark sky site very, very good if you can do it, which is why the winter ones are great, because it's dark earlier, so you have more time to go out and do things that's true, although it's really not worth going out too far before midnight, because midnight is when the Earth rotates into its direction of orbit around the Sun.

Exactly, yeah, I almost.

0:56:52 - Rod Pyle
Yes, no, no, go ahead, go ahead, no, go ahead, because we're basically impacting a gravel bank of what's left over from this comet orbit. Yeah, after midnight you turn into it and they really accelerate.

0:57:02 - Tariq Malik
I will add Would you say that after midnight the universe lets it all hang out? Is that?

0:57:08 - Rod Pyle
That's another song, right? No, I probably wouldn't say that that's a song, right? Yeah, you can sing it to us. I would add of the major fireballs and bolides. I've seen bolides is just a big fireball have been the Perseids and I did go up in the mountains where it used to be dark, the mountains north of San Gabriel Valley. It's not anymore and depending where you live, you can look up. Is it darkskyorg? I think Darkskyorg. It'll help you find some dark skies. Yeah, it'll help you find somewhere nearby From the LA County. By the time I go north far enough for it to get dark, I'm basically picking up lights from Ventura. If I go northeast, by the time it gets dark, I'm picking up lights from Barstow and Las Vegas. If I go due east, by the time it gets really dark, I start getting into the big light cone from Phoenix. So the only place I can go here is way offshore, which is a great place to watch meteorites, but it's a bit of a commitment going out there.

0:58:06 - Tariq Malik
I would point out that February and early March is fireball season, also according to NASA, when you get a lot of bolides and whatnot. We've actually seen a few of them in recent weeks too, but they're not something that you can plan on very much. It's just not uncommon to get fire fireball displays during that period yeah, um, okay, uh, I think it's about time to wrap up.

0:58:33 - Rod Pyle
Let's have one more. Uh, oh, I think we've done them all. You don't want to do 56?.

0:58:42 - Tariq Malik
How do you? Yeah, okay.

0:58:48 - Rod Pyle
Rhonda Chang. How do you convince a moon landing denier that we actually did it? We've talked about this a bit on this show. Punch him in the face if you're.

0:58:55 - Tariq Malik
Buzz Aldrin right no.

0:58:58 - Rod Pyle
He wasn't a denier, he was a stalker. Yeah, he was the denier, he was a stalker. Yeah, so Tarek's referring to Bart Seibel, who was a moon landing denier who stalked Buzz Aldrin, among others, incessantly, and actually one time I think it was in New York Buzz was at some kind of an event and this guy is like getting in his face, blocking his way into this building, saying, well, you swear on a Bible that you never went to. Blah, blah, blah, blah. And Buzz, to his credit, said no comment and kept turning away and trying to get around this guy. And Cyber was being a dick and I think he reached out and touched him and finally Buzz hauled off a punch, him in the face and most people in the space community went yeah, good on you, but Bart's an exception.

But there is a large percentage of the population globally and in the us, sadly, that think it didn't happen. And this got worse in the social media era when people like joe rogan and uh, steph curry boy those are two people whose intellect you want to respect for scientific accuracy although rogan's smart, he's just not not my cup of tea but said oh, you know, I don't think it happened. And I'm summarizing there, it was a lot more complex than that with Rogan. But you know, how do you talk? I shouldn't say talk sense, that's judgmental how, if you're going to try and convince these people, how do you do it? Well, on the one hand, sometimes it's not worth it because people get a lot of personal what's the word I'm looking for? They get like affirmation for being a denier, because you don't have to go get a PhD in astronomy or planetary science or herbal dynamics to be smart in that. All you have to do is get on a couple of wacko websites and say, look, I'm an expert, we didn't go.

How about them? Ufos and lizard people in los, underneath los angeles? But, and, and again, this is a repeat from before, but because she asked in the past when I went on something like coast to coast am with george nuri, um, and people would ask this question, I'd say you know, talk to the moonwalkers, as I have see. If you think they're lying. Look at NASA, almost half a million people working together on the Apollo program. You're telling me they all kept the big secret. You know, analyze the footage, the photographs people keep calling out. There's reasons for all the things they ask about, like waving flags and so forth.

1:01:20 - Tariq Malik
I was going to say the flag was waving and there's no stars. Rod, there's no stars and the flag is waving and it's on the moon. What's going on?

1:01:27 - Rod Pyle
Because the astronaut walked right next to it, charged the static electricity. It was a crappy little nylon flag and so on and so on. Go to the museum, look at the Saturn Vs, all that stuff. Now it's much simpler because after the fall of the Soviet Union they said yeah, we tracked everything you guys did. We used radar, we measured the Doppler of the spacecraft coming around the moon, we listened to all your radio transitions. Of course you went to the moon and of course, in the 21st century, india, china who is not our biggest fan and others have photographed the Apollo landing sites in orbit. So something landed there and something left footprints and something left rover tracks. So something landed there and something left footprints and something left rover, rover tracks. So it's kind of open and shut.

1:02:07 - Tariq Malik
But I'll just wrap up by saying if somebody really wants to be a mood denier, they're not going to believe that either, because it's all photoshop and it's I think our guest, mick west, a few episodes back, talked a little bit about that and the about the state, the state of where things are and how siloed off people are. So that's a good. That's a good episode to go back and revisit, by the way yeah, actually that episode got a lot of good feedback.

1:02:31 - Rod Pyle
Well, Tariq rod, I want to thank everybody, and you, of course, partner, and john ashley, our new man on the on the board, for joining us today for episode 150.

1:02:44 - Tariq Malik
Sasquatch Centennial. We should have led with that at the start.

1:02:48 - Rod Pyle
We forgot Our listener special edition and thank you listeners for sending in your comments and questions. We love you to death. Never be shy about contacting us. Send us more.

1:02:59 - Tariq Malik
We have episode 200 to plan for.

1:03:01 - Rod Pyle
That's right, and thank you for our live viewers. We're tracking your comments as we can on Facebook Live, youtube, twitch X, tiktok, linkedin, kik and, of course, on the Club Twitter Discord. I think I said that even faster than Leo does.

1:03:13 - Tariq Malik
Tarek.

1:03:14 - Rod Pyle
Yes, where can we find you answering more space questions these days?

1:03:22 - Tariq Malik
Well, you can find me at space.com rod and everybody. Like always this weekend, I'm actually going to see all of the new space products that are going to come out for consumers at the toy fair in New York, as well as watching firefly aerospace land on the moon. So be sure to come back. We're going to have live video of that attempt and then on Monday we're going to watch starship launch. We forgot to talk about starship, but starship flight eight launches on Monday and I Flight 8 launches on Monday, and I guess we'll talk about that next episode. And then, of course, on the Twitter pardon me X at Tariq J Malik, also on Blue Sky and on YouTube, as Rod likes to point out, @spacetronplays, where I found a telescope and a glowing moon globe in Fortnite in the new season, and you can find out all about it.

1:03:58 - Rod Pyle
They're just pixels, okay. And of course, you can find me at places that actually matter, like rodpilebooks.com or anastromagazine.com I'm just kidding. Space.com matters more than either of those. And you can find the national space society, which is my primary gig, at nss.org. Membership includes a full subscription of the print digital editions of Ad Astra magaine, which I am the editor-in-chief of, with a much smaller circulation than you have. Please remember.

You can always drop us a line at twis@twit.tv. twis@twit.tv. We welcome your comments, suggestions, ideas and we answer all our emails. New episodes of this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcaster, so make sure to subscribe, tell your friends and give us reviews. We'll take five thumbs up or whatever you got. And don't forget, we're counting on you to join Club Twit. Help keep us on the air, keep the electrons hot and happy, and you're helping out a good cause for all the shows that Twit does. Finally, you can follow the Twit Tech Podcast Network @twit on Twitter/X and on Facebook and twit.tv on Instagram. Thank you stream viewers and listeners. Thank you everybody else. Thank you, tarek, and thank you and welcome John. We will see you all next week. Bye.