This Week in Space 173 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.

Tariq Malik [00:00:00]:
Coming up on this Week in Space, the Vulcan rocket rides again. Should we send a Juno spacecraft to an interstellar visitor? And will we ever orbit Pluto? We'll find out on This Week in Space.

Rod Pyle [00:00:15]:
This is This Week in Space, episode number 173. Recorded on August 15, 2025: The Return of the Malik. Hello, and welcome to this Week in Space the Return of the Malik edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Ad Astra magazine. I'm here with that returning master of all he surveys, Tarik J. Malik.

Tariq Malik [00:00:42]:
Hello. Hello, Rod. I'm back. I'm back. Did you miss me? I missed you.

Rod Pyle [00:00:47]:
You know, when I put it as Return of the Malik, it sounds like an episode of Radar Men for the moon. Do you even know what that is?

Tariq Malik [00:00:53]:
I infer that it is a pulpy sci fi.

Rod Pyle [00:00:58]:
Yeah, it was a night film series that had Buck Rogers spaceships in about two shots for the entire 12 episodes. I think it was with sparks sputtering out the back. And then the rest of it was just guys in fedoras running around with snub nose 38s. Even as a kid, it was boring.

Tariq Malik [00:01:15]:
Oh, wow.

Rod Pyle [00:01:15]:
Wow. It was hard to do. Only three years out of the studio when I was born, so that tells you how old I am. All right, before we start, please, please, please, don't forget to do us a solid. Make sure to, like, subscribe and the other podcast things to let the world know that you love us so they'll listen to this show. Because we want to be. Well, we want to be like a contagion. We want to be like the new measles.

Rod Pyle [00:01:40]:
We want to be something that everybody just gets and has to have. John's giving me a dirty look, but hey, you know, that's what we want. So there you go. And now, ladies and gentlemen, another space joke. A reprise from last week by Scott Ulrich, who was a little bent that we didn't give him a rim shot for his joke. So here we go. Here's his response.

Tariq Malik [00:02:04]:
Scott.

Rod Pyle [00:02:05]:
Hey, Tarek.

Tariq Malik [00:02:06]:
Yes, Rod?

Rod Pyle [00:02:07]:
Tarek. Why did I say that? In the future, humans mine asteroids in a cluster of small space stations, all powered by nuclear fuel. One day, the nuclear fuel on station K is depleted and the nuclear rod has to be replaced for a new one. Not knowing what to do with the depleted rod, the engineer heads for the common refuse area and asks the clerk what to do. His response? Put it over there. See the big fat rod pile?

Tariq Malik [00:02:35]:
Oh, I got it. I got It.

Rod Pyle [00:02:39]:
The joke's on you, Scott, because I've lost £40 in the last year. But. But fine. There you've gotten even with.

Tariq Malik [00:02:46]:
I thought it was like rad pile, like. Like a. Like a radiation.

Rod Pyle [00:02:50]:
It's actually the. The rods are the control rods that you put in. Slow down the reaction. We got you, Scott. And it came from Tarek, not me. All right, Now, I've heard that some people want to thrust control rods into us when it's joke time on this show. Ow. But you can help send your best, worst or most different word salting space joke to us.

Rod Pyle [00:03:10]:
A twist that at TWiT TV, nuclear.

Tariq Malik [00:03:13]:
Rod should be your new band name, by the way.

Rod Pyle [00:03:17]:
Band? Me?

Tariq Malik [00:03:18]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:03:18]:
I don't think so. I had a. I had a rock band when I was 8, and the Beatles were the hottest thing, and we called ourselves the Rat Finks. Alas, it went nowhere. Okay, now on to headline news.

Tariq Malik [00:03:35]:
Headline news, Headline news.

Rod Pyle [00:03:41]:
Now, our first headline is Tarek's trip. He has just returned from the blustery. No. Strike that scorching equatorial region of Singapore. How was your trip, sir?

Tariq Malik [00:03:53]:
It was great. I come to you from the future, Rod, because.

Rod Pyle [00:03:57]:
That's right.

Tariq Malik [00:03:58]:
Yeah. Singapore is 12 hours ahead, so it's tomorrow over there right now. But no, it was great. I had a nice two weeks off. Didn't look at work at all.

Rod Pyle [00:04:08]:
Yeah, I noticed.

Tariq Malik [00:04:12]:
Rod was desperately waiting for me to get back. I listened to the podcast. I thought last episode was great. The one about Mars terraforming, that was really exciting. And then the Yunusa before that was also great. So I think you. You did. You did fine without me, Rod.

Tariq Malik [00:04:27]:
I was worried you wouldn't eat me when I came back, but it was nice. We celebrated National Day in Singapore while we were there.

Rod Pyle [00:04:34]:
Oh, that's a big deal, huh?

Tariq Malik [00:04:35]:
It was their 60th. Their 60th anniversary, and that was interesting to celebrate that kind of a holiday in another country. So it was really, really fun. We said there was fireworks. We had lots of food, lots of sales, too. I got some shoes for 60 bucks. It was great.

Rod Pyle [00:04:49]:
The last National Day type thing I did was in Norway, which is, you know, there were costumes and bands and all that, but because it's Norway, and I loved being in Norway, the people are a little more buttoned down than they are in a place like Singapore, I think. So it was kind of a very serious sort of holiday. At least that was my impression. I was only in Oslo, so who knows what it's like nationally. How was the weather in Lovely Singapore.

Tariq Malik [00:05:15]:
Oh, it's very hot. I mean Singapore is a tropical country. So you know, if you don't. I like I mentioned I said off, off screen earlier I went to the gym almost every day and if you don't go out to exercise before 7, it's too hot already because it's in the 90s like almost every day and almost 100% humidity. So got caught in the rain a few times. A lot of rainstorms, like thunderstorms around like the afternoons. But overall it was, it was, it was a lot of fun. And it cooled off a lot near the end of the trip which was very, very welcome after like a week and a half of sweltering temperatures.

Tariq Malik [00:05:50]:
But, but it was, it was a lot of fun. We saw a lot of history stuff and what I really like is when we go there, there's a lot of space themed stuff that you wouldn't expect. So you can go, there's like a credit card company and want you to sign up for them and it's all space, you know. Or there's like a local design artist house where they're selling really cool design stuff and then there's the Moon Juice kombucha machine right there. So that's always like a lot of fun is to see like where, where space falls in to different cultures and it's, it's, it comes up in some of the more surprising bits.

Rod Pyle [00:06:25]:
So they still have a Tiger bomb gardens there.

Tariq Malik [00:06:29]:
Tiger bomb. I'm, I'm not certain if I saw that there. Like if. Was it a sponsored gardens?

Rod Pyle [00:06:35]:
Well mind you, as I've mentioned before on this show, my last visit to Singapore was 19. So it may well may very well be gone. There was one there and I think one in Penang in Malaysia.

Tariq Malik [00:06:49]:
We went to the battle bunker on this trip which was a World War II British Command center built into the. One of the larger mountains in the bay. And that was where they used for.

Rod Pyle [00:07:00]:
About three hours before they were overrun.

Tariq Malik [00:07:02]:
Yeah, it was, it was, it was three days but, but yeah, I take the point. But it was very, very informative about what the fall of Singapore was like.

Rod Pyle [00:07:09]:
So, so that was a bad time.

Tariq Malik [00:07:12]:
I'm still waiting for the spaceport to come out of there. I wrote a story the first trip I ever went back in 2004 about how space Adventures was going to launch space tourist flights out of Changi Airport. And with that rocket plane they were building way back when, remember that everybody.

Rod Pyle [00:07:28]:
Was building rocket plane at one point.

Tariq Malik [00:07:30]:
Back in the early aughts, Shuttle's the.

Rod Pyle [00:07:32]:
Only one that really worked.

Tariq Malik [00:07:33]:
And equatorial space. I wasn't able to catch up with them. They were based out of Singapore. They may have moved to Australia, but I wasn't able to catch up with them on this trip. So it's too bad.

Rod Pyle [00:07:45]:
All right. Well, on a sad note, we have lost Jim Lovell, famed for Apollo 13, for his steady leadership, bringing it back from the moon, damaged and crippled, and for his duration, long duration flight on Gemini 7 with Frank Borman, where they sat in that little teeny tiny capsule for two weeks without being able to stretch their legs. And for a lot of other things and for just being a really, really pleasant fellow. I had the pleasure of spending an evening with him, gosh, probably a decade ago, close to it, at a conference. And, you know, he's one of those people where you start once you get the nerve. I'm always a little tongue tied around those guys once you get the nerve up to ask about, you know, some part of their mission and talk a little bit. But then he'd say, tell me about you. That moment for me is like, why the hell would you want to know about me? I didn't do anything.

Rod Pyle [00:08:36]:
But a really nice guy and just a big loss to the space community.

Tariq Malik [00:08:42]:
Yeah, I was really sad to hear that. I saw Buzz Aldrin's kind of In Memoriam post on social media and was really sad to hear of his passing. I don't think I've actually ever had the pleasure of meeting him in person ever. And so I did read Lost Moon in high school on a trip to Yosemite, which was absolutely riveting at that time. And of course before Apollo 13 came out. And I know a lot of like this generate my generation maybe of space reporters who cite that book and then the movie is something that really got them into wanting to write about this stuff going forward.

Rod Pyle [00:09:19]:
So here we go. I've been waiting for my, my rundown to update and it just fine. It's been reconnecting for the last 10 minutes. Okay. Yeah. What Buzz wrote was on Facebook, grieving the loss of one of my best friends, Jim Lovell. His extraordinary legacy is cemented by many space missions. Gemini 7, Gemini 12, Apollo 8 and Apollo 13.

Rod Pyle [00:09:43]:
Our mutual respect had no limits. The Gemini 7 mission we flew to. Sorry, Gemini 12 mission we flew together, paved the way for the Apollo missions. So that from. From Buzz and I think that was pretty touching.

Tariq Malik [00:09:55]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:09:57]:
Now onto something a little more hopeful. Vulcan rides high. Finally. Yeah, we've. We've had our third launch For United Launch Alliance's Vulcan rocket, the replacement for the Atlas V. This was their most powerful version yet, which, you know, being third out, we'd expect had a Centaur upper stage four solid rocket boosters carrying the first new naval positioning satellite for the US military in 48 years. And also with a wink and a nudge, it's carrying experimental hardware that's hardened against advanced spoofing and jamming techniques from the bad guys, quote, unquote. So basically they're testing some methods to try and make these things more robust in, in the event of attack, of jamming or what have you from our adversaries.

Tariq Malik [00:10:42]:
Yeah, that means they're Certified now fully 100 for National Reconnaissance mission, for military satellite flights. I mean, that's great. Especially after they, I mean they had that, that first test flight. What was that? Was that like last year now?

Rod Pyle [00:10:57]:
Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:10:57]:
Right. And then the second flight that had the big sputtering anomaly from the, the SRBS on the side and still managed to right itself and, and get to orbit with its dummy payload at that point, that was like the practice for the Sierra Nevada Dream, the Dream Chaser launch. And so I got a model of it right here. Right, right there. Of course you do. Behind, behind my desk.

Rod Pyle [00:11:21]:
Of the Vulcan.

Tariq Malik [00:11:22]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:11:22]:
And I'll bet that was given to you, right?

Tariq Malik [00:11:24]:
It was, it was.

Rod Pyle [00:11:25]:
Cuz you get all the cool stuff.

Tariq Malik [00:11:27]:
And I get, you know, ULA sent it to me before the first launch and I think it might have been during COVID is when they sent it. And you know, the, the Vulcan, this one that launched, I think had four boosters, right. Strap on and it can have up to six and so it can have up to six boosters. And when I opened the box, because I think they had repackaged it, the DHL or whoever delivered it, they were all like in pieces. They had all broken off the model. And you only offered to send me a new one and I'm like, that's fine, I just got some super glue. Next time.

Rod Pyle [00:12:08]:
Yes, send it courtesy of rod Pyle at 519 South. Yeah, okay, so.

Tariq Malik [00:12:14]:
So even my version had its hiccups going forward, but.

Rod Pyle [00:12:19]:
Oh, that's the segue you were looking.

Tariq Malik [00:12:20]:
There you go.

Rod Pyle [00:12:21]:
So this did allow Space Force. I think actually after the second flight they ordered up to SE24 new missions for Vulcan, which is good because it needs to start flying more often. So this finally gives it its, its place as the second US launch provider, which is good because we want dissimilar Systems in case one go.

Tariq Malik [00:12:40]:
You've got a backup SpaceX the other.

Rod Pyle [00:12:42]:
Yeah, SpaceX the other with the Falcon 9. I don't know if Vulcan can ever match that cadence. Can SpaceX, within probably two weeks will be up to 100 flights. Just this year, I think they've already.

Tariq Malik [00:12:54]:
Passed that big 98.

Rod Pyle [00:12:57]:
I know they were. They were at 100 with the Starship launches. But anyway, they're right in that ballpark. And. And ULA is still working on how they're going to recover those. Those engines that will pop out of the bottom of the Vulcan and parachute back to Earth and be grabbed by a helicopter or something. So they got a lot of work to do, but that will save them about 65% of the cost of a new booster. So that's good.

Rod Pyle [00:13:25]:
Yeah, and they're looking.

Tariq Malik [00:13:26]:
Kudos to Vulcan, by the way. You said this one had a Vulcan sent. A Centaur upper stage. It's called the Vulcan Centaur rocket. I think it's always going to have a Centaur upper stage, right? Because I think so. Because it's called the Vulcan Center.

Rod Pyle [00:13:41]:
You must be right because you own Space.com. all right, let's go to a quick break so I can bury my embarrassment. We'll be right back. Stand by. So, from Vulcans to aliens.

Tariq Malik [00:13:52]:
Aliens.

Rod Pyle [00:13:53]:
Other aliens.

Tariq Malik [00:13:54]:
Aliens from Jupiter.

Rod Pyle [00:13:55]:
I call this one Juno. Alien Hunter. So, our good friend and frequent source of entertainment on this show, Avi Loeb. And Avi, I don't mean to say that you're not serious. It's just you do bring robust conversations to us and others. Abby has proposed for 3i Atlas.

Tariq Malik [00:14:17]:
That's the new one.

Rod Pyle [00:14:19]:
That's the new interstellar object slinging through the solar system is proposed repurposing an existing NASA probe, perhaps Juno, which is now orbiting Jupiter, nearing the end of its life. Jupiter within what, I think a year, year and a half?

Tariq Malik [00:14:32]:
Well, if. I think if the budget goes through, it's on the chopping block. So. Yeah, so this is. It's. It's days are numbered one way or another because it's supposedly to be. To be shut down.

Rod Pyle [00:14:44]:
This would be a way to repurpose it, but of course that's going to require money. But the idea would be to redirect it with whatever remaining fuel it has to go do the best intercept trajectory it could. So to get a closer look at three I ATLAS now, you got to have a certain amount of gas to match trajectories. I don't know if it can do that. I'm not sure anybody's worked that out yet, but it would be a whole new life for JunoCam. Yeah, but I wonder how much of the slim remaining, assuming that the bill goes through or the budget goes through as the White House attends, of these slim funds left for planetary science, how much would that eat up?

Tariq Malik [00:15:20]:
Well, you know, it's really an interesting thought experiment about what spacecraft do we have stationed throughout the solar system that we could target towards this. But I think I would love to see a slingshot by it. But it, it really does feel like a long shot. It's nice that they were even looking at it because as they point out in this Houston Chronicle article that you had found the three eye atlas is moving something like 37 miles a second really, really fast. So, you know, even, even catching up, you're talking about some kind of long distance flyby where you're going to have to be zooming in, get the camera ready and all of that. And you are right, that takes like a lot of money. And the fact that the agency is looking at shuttering it because of the cuts that they are facing on the planetary science side really don't bode well for that kind of mission. However, the European Space Agency is planning an interstellar probe, basically a mission where they would put a spacecraft in a sun synchronous orbit as like a, like.

Rod Pyle [00:16:22]:
A, like a reserve standby sentinel, right?

Tariq Malik [00:16:25]:
Yeah. And so, and so then if we have another one, they would be able to just send it at a moment's notice to start that, that type of a process. I think that's a better approach. But maybe you want more smaller versions of them so that you could have a bunch of them out there. So. Because you don't want to miss these opportunities when they pass by. But man, you'd have to, you'd have to launch something like 50 miles a second just to get there, you know.

Rod Pyle [00:16:50]:
Elon, step up. You came from an alien spacecraft and now you can by proxy at least return to an alien spacecraft. So, you know, that's my.

Tariq Malik [00:16:59]:
If anyone had like the, the, the potential to be able to launch that kind of mission, I would put it on SpaceX. You know, they just announced today, hours before we started recording, that they're going to launch their 10th Starship later this month, next weekend as we're recording August 24th. Mark your calendars. It's going to be a Sunday night launch. They're going to, they're lucky that Sunday Night Football is not running now because they'd have to fight for an audience, I guess.

Rod Pyle [00:17:19]:
So gosh I guess that means the lunar land is just around the corner. I will see. For me to, to criticize anybody who's done as much as he has and people in the industry in general, because it's very hard, it's very easy to criticize them. But does they really need to step up the pace?

Tariq Malik [00:17:37]:
There is a new story, by the way, in the New York Times today. It was the headline story this morning. I'm not sure if you saw it, about the fact that they're there me.

Rod Pyle [00:17:46]:
In New York Times.

Tariq Malik [00:17:47]:
Well, I'm just saying it's, it's all about SpaceX and their taxes and how, how because of recent legal shifts during the first Trump term where they removed the deadline about when you can, like when your losses, your financial losses as a company can be applied, that you can basically keep applying them in perpetuity. So the fact that SpaceX was able to cite $5 billion in losses prior to that, after that that cap was removed, means that they don't have to file any income taxes. Now, it's a very interesting read. I don't know how exact it is because SpaceX is a private company and all of their, like, you know, they don't have to report out like a normal public company would have to with their quarterly returns. But it's a very interesting story about, like, the financial side of how these companies work and how they have to pay taxes as well.

Rod Pyle [00:18:41]:
If only I could take a page from that playbook. All right, speaking of the outer solar system, that's a pretty cool segue. Back to Pluto. Question mark.

Tariq Malik [00:18:50]:
I Love this story.

Rod Pyle [00:18:51]:
NASA's pondering a new mission to the last planetoid in the solar system, called Persephone. Not the mission.

Tariq Malik [00:18:59]:
You called it a planetoid and not a planet.

Rod Pyle [00:19:01]:
Well, I shame I didn't call it a dwarf. Okay. I called it a planetoid. So that kind of covers everything. So Persephone, if funded and flown, which is, you know, that's a bit of a Hail Mary, would have to operate for up to 50 years to fulfill its, its full mission package. And unlike its predecessor, New Horizons, however, which is a quick flyby, Persephone would go into orbit around Pluto for about three years, which means they can map the entire planet. One of the key targets they have is to determine if there's possibly a warm subsurface surface ocean on Pluto, as we found on so many moons in the solar system. In the outer solar system.

Rod Pyle [00:19:41]:
Because Pluto's moon, Charon is so large, Stella is so large, that soft, that the tidal Forces in this might keep an inner ocean liquid enough and warm enough not just to be liquid, but maybe even possibly you have life in it. So there's, there's a lot of maybes and sortas and kindas and going on there. One of the things they have observed, well, two things they observed. One, there's a bit of a planetary bulge, which tells us, I guess that there could be an ocean down there. And also that the cratering is so light, there's been a lot of surface restructuring over the billions of years it's been out there. So that could have been from cryogenic volcanoes, cryovolcanoes shooting liquid up through the crust. Also, it'll be looking for hotspots and possible changes to the surface morphology. Since New Horizons went by in 2015, this flight would take 27 years just to reach Pluto.

Tariq Malik [00:20:42]:
Wow.

Rod Pyle [00:20:42]:
Which is. Would be the longest planned time for a single mission. The Voyagers of course, gone longer and require. So that's a challenge because keeping funding for anything for a decade is hard enough. And the last Capper would require five RTGs to power it. And we don't got that much plutonium.

Tariq Malik [00:21:05]:
So we got to make more, right, don't we? Didn't we just have someone on telling us how we need to make more right, how we restarted?

Rod Pyle [00:21:13]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:21:15]:
This was like a really interesting.

Rod Pyle [00:21:16]:
Russia. Still got a bunch. We could. Well, never mind, go ahead.

Tariq Malik [00:21:20]:
Well, we'd have to be partners again. No, this was an interesting study because this was written by my friend and colleague Nola. Partner, I was going to say Nola Taylor Tillman. And she actually went to the 10 year anniversary conference of the New Horizons mission, the, the Flyby back in 22,000. And man, it's hard to believe 2005 was when they did that 20 or 2015. I can't, I can't add 10 years, Malik. Sheesh. But, but it's hard to believe that it's.

Tariq Malik [00:21:57]:
It's only been 10 years since then or that it has been 10 years since we did that last. Because I remember being in the audience when they unveiled that first photo from, from the flyby, the first close up one. And on Instagram no less.

Rod Pyle [00:22:11]:
It was July 14, 2015.

Tariq Malik [00:22:13]:
2015.

Rod Pyle [00:22:14]:
Get your decades straight.

Tariq Malik [00:22:15]:
Get my decades right off. This is why I'm not an astronaut rod. Right.

Rod Pyle [00:22:21]:
This is why we aren't astronauts or scientists or engineers.

Tariq Malik [00:22:24]:
But it was really funny. Yeah. Because, you know, they actually, there were so many different studies about what they've learned from that mission, what we could learn and the fact that we have like you mentioned earlier, that baseline now, you know, being Pluto being explored from 2015 from the flyby, all the photos, the maps, the new areas that we have close up imagery of, then you can compare how that changes and evolves over time. I guess in 40 years, right. If another, I imagine it would take a decade to build as well. But Alan Stern, the PI of New New Horizons, we've had them on the show, friend of the show obviously has been talking about an orbiter almost immediately after that flyby. Like now we have to go do this. And Persephone, the Queen of the Underworld if you will, feels like that next logical step.

Tariq Malik [00:23:16]:
So I would like to see that happen because that's a really cool system like of its own. And it feels like if you have a spacecraft in orbit around Pluto that is now a bit something that you could repurpose to look a little bit deeper into the outer solar system too as like a station when it's not busy doing reconnaissance work on Pluto and its five moons.

Rod Pyle [00:23:38]:
Well, they did mention that after the three year prime mission, they would like to have the option to continue on to the outer solar system and look at some Kuiper Belt objects. So that's, that's there as well. All right, let's take one more quick break and we'll be right back. Stay, stay in your place. Here's one I like to call a regenerated Virgin.

Tariq Malik [00:24:00]:
Is that, Are you making a body joke there? Not me. This is a family show. My mom listens to this show. Rod, come on.

Rod Pyle [00:24:09]:
Well, what better Virgin Galactic may ride again in 2026. Construction of their Delta class space plane replacement for their previous space plane is proceeding apace. It was recently delayed from 2025-26. But you know, we really, I don't think know a whole lot about its status except that what they're saying, I guess the, the thing that leaves me scratching my head just looking at their, their business model, unless it's changed, is how they're ever going to get into profit with no tremendous backlog of, you know, they've got people paid up for flights, hundreds of them and so on and so forth. This thing's going to have to really, no pun intended, take off, fly frequently and spawn a bunch of twins. Right?

Tariq Malik [00:24:55]:
Well, I know that they're planning, they're building at least a couple of the ships and they're looking at again like you mentioned, like fall of next year, fall of 2026 for those, those first flights and the whole point of this new class of spaceship. They're called the Delta Classes. I like to think that they took a page from Star Trek Voyager which named their new shuttlecraft the Delta Clipper. But the reason that they're doing this is because they want to be able to fly more often with the vehicles that they have. And I guess they've kind of reached their limit with the first version of Spaceship 2. So they've, they've redesigned it or worked to rejigger it so that it is a bit more amenable to flying over and over and over again and it kills more passengers and it, I, I, does it, will it?

Rod Pyle [00:25:43]:
Actually?

Tariq Malik [00:25:43]:
Yeah, yeah, so, so they have to.

Rod Pyle [00:25:46]:
You know, you can't, you can't run down that backlog. What is it, six people plus the pilots? I think.

Tariq Malik [00:25:51]:
Yeah, yeah, but I don't think they were actually flying like all that many on, on the flights. They flew like one full, one or two full, full flights and then they were seating over some space racks for gear and, and experiments and that kind of thing. And.

Rod Pyle [00:26:05]:
Excuse me for, for jumping in here, but, you know, so that was the replacement for the original one that Bert Rutan built. Now we're replacing that. I mean, I've, I've heard slash seen nothing but do we assume that there were, they were starting to see bits of structural failure or cracking or something in the composites?

Tariq Malik [00:26:24]:
Well, I mean, I think that they were just realizing that maybe they didn't have the turnover like that. Like the space shuttle. Right. Supposed to fly what, twice, once every.

Rod Pyle [00:26:34]:
Two weeks, fly 54 times a year.

Tariq Malik [00:26:37]:
Yeah, right.

Rod Pyle [00:26:38]:
Which is like every five days.

Tariq Malik [00:26:40]:
And it turned out, it turned out that, that they needed a substantial time during, during, you know, redevelopment, what's it called, refurbishing, refurbishment, you know, for, for each flight. It may be that they needed like a lot more time to just go back and, and, and get everything refreshed, do the planning for the flights too, work with the FAA for those flights, etc. To make sure that they didn't have any, any issues on that one. Now this all was came out from their Aug. 6 conference call where they do their, their financial results. So they, because they were a public company, they do have to have those discussions and they said that a lot of the, the, the Delta ship systems and structures, like their wing assembly, like they're going to be complete by the end of this year. So, so it seems like they're, they're really making progress, but they're not flying. They're putting all of their effort into this new system to get it up as soon as possible rather than still be flying the old ones and getting the revenue in from there.

Tariq Malik [00:27:45]:
One of the interesting things that came out during an earlier update, and I'm not sure if we talked about this much on the show, but they're talking about changing their pricing structure for spaceship flights, that in January they're hoping to reopen the reservation process so that people can start making reservations again, but that they'll do it in, like, flight batches so that they can tailor either the pricing to the people that are interested in flying, which might, you know, say, you know, Rod, if you're a multi mega trillionaire, then, you know, it'll cost you $1 trillion. Whereas if, you know, I'm Joe Schmo on the street, but I raised a few hundred thousand dollars in capital, it'll cost, you know, $150,000. I don't know. I don't know exactly how. It sounded very vague when they had that call, but they're thinking about that while also finishing the ship, and we should be seeing some of those changes roll out as well. Having any kind of insight into pricing on the Virgin Galactic side is interesting because we don't have that on, on the blue origin side at all as to how much people pay. So.

Rod Pyle [00:28:59]:
All right. Helmets on Mars, because we love us some helmets on Mars. So a kind of weird hat like rock formation has been spotted and images taken by the Perseverance rover. It has a pointed peak and nodular texture, not. Not unlike medieval armor. Or maybe the wishing hat from Harry Potter. The lumps appear to be water.

Tariq Malik [00:29:21]:
Okay. Oh, you got to stop. We got to stop.

Rod Pyle [00:29:22]:
What?

Tariq Malik [00:29:23]:
There is not a wishing hat in Harry Potter. It is. It is the sorting hat. And it's. You put the hat on and it sorts you into your. Your. Your house at Hogwarts. Okay.

Rod Pyle [00:29:34]:
And it didn't look like this anyway, but it's.

Tariq Malik [00:29:36]:
Calling this rock a hat is extremely generous.

Rod Pyle [00:29:40]:
Yeah, but it is weird.

Tariq Malik [00:29:41]:
It's weird looking for. Sure.

Rod Pyle [00:29:43]:
They think. Geologists think that the lumps or water cause. Cause fearules like we saw on the Mars Exploration Rover missions where we saw these little concretions that were.

Tariq Malik [00:29:54]:
The blueberries.

Rod Pyle [00:29:55]:
Magnetite. Magnetite.

Tariq Malik [00:29:56]:
I thought they were hematite.

Rod Pyle [00:29:57]:
Hematite. Thank you. Which is formed in the presence of water. So this looks like, you know, the. The artifact from some standing body of water, but it is weird. Now, we've seen a lot of weird rocks on Mars, and they have been interpreted as everything from heavy artillery To, I kid you not. Bigfoot, doors, lizards, spiders, lizards, bunnies, you know, anything. Oh, the.

Rod Pyle [00:30:24]:
Well, the bunny was, the bunny was.

Tariq Malik [00:30:26]:
Like a piece of parachute material that.

Rod Pyle [00:30:27]:
Was a piece of insulation. Yeah, but, but nonetheless, you know, people see this stuff and of course it's, it's a natural human trait to interpret them as something familiar. And as I've gone on about way too long in the past, when I was up on Devon island at Pascal Lee's base up there, where there are no human artifacts except for the tents we were living in, you do you know, your brain starts getting hungry for seeing things that are familiar. But the people seeing this aren't on Mars. They're on Earth sitting in their living rooms, their Paris basements or wherever, and they're saying, look, something NASA's keeping a secret. What's going on? I want truth and clarity. So, you know, it's not a hat, it's a really weird looking rock. But you know, I guess it'll hopefully get a little closer and find more of theirs.

Rod Pyle [00:31:13]:
Yeah, there's our graphic up there that shows its very vague resemblance to, to a medieval battle helmet. I, I don't know. I'm trying to figure out what it actually does remind me of. It's like somebody took a bunch of tissue paper, soaked it oatmeal and stuck their fist in it or something.

Tariq Malik [00:31:31]:
It reminds me of a Horta. Remember the Hortas from Star Trek? No, it's like a. Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:31:39]:
Sorry, I'm giving away my age here.

Tariq Malik [00:31:42]:
Yeah, I had a screensaver that had a hoarder that would eat holes into your screen. A Star Trek that was almost as.

Rod Pyle [00:31:48]:
Good as the Barney blaster screen saver I had where you got, they had a shotgun and you could shoot Barney over and over.

Tariq Malik [00:31:54]:
I still, I still have that Star Trek screensaver. I paid $7 for it and it was on floppy disk, so that's how old it was.

Rod Pyle [00:32:02]:
So John Ashley has a very strange look on his face.

Tariq Malik [00:32:06]:
I think I'm looking at the Horta. I was like, oh, that's. Yeah, we should, we, we should mention that Hortas are like, they're silicone based rock creatures that lived inside caves on an alien planet in the original series. And they were like lumps of living rock, so.

Rod Pyle [00:32:23]:
Or it was a stuntman under a carpet covered with latex, which is what it actually was, crawling back and forth. And apparently William Shatner, who was a practical joker back in the day, especially in the 60s when Spock had to do his pain pain scene where he Touches the hoarder and channels his pain. There it is, looking like a bucket of snot on the.

Tariq Malik [00:32:44]:
This looks exactly like this Rockman. I tell you, life on Mars.

Rod Pyle [00:32:48]:
Sure thing.

Tariq Malik [00:32:48]:
Confirmed.

Rod Pyle [00:32:49]:
So anyway, as I was saying, so Shatner was up in the rafters, they cleared the stage. This is the way the story goes anyway, because Nimoy, you know, didn't want a bunch of chuckling while he's doing it. Just as he was about to do the line, Shatner up on the rafters goes, pain. Pain is the only way of. Shatner can. And apparently Nimoy was not thrilled by that. Or he was either up in the rafters or riding his bicycle. He loved to ride bicycles on stage.

Rod Pyle [00:33:12]:
Riding his bicycle. Anyway, not really a story worth spending a lot of time on, but, yeah, I think, I mean, the moment we're waiting for, and this was told to me by none other than the chief scientist on the Curiosity mission, John Grassinger. He said, look, it's fun to look at this stuff, it's fun to come to your conclusions. We welcome any publicity we can get. But we're all waiting for that, that dinosaur femur moment.

Tariq Malik [00:33:39]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:33:39]:
Because what happens to space budgets if you discover a big fossilized bone up on Mars? Now, in the current administration, I don't know what would happen. We'd probably, you know, have to figure out how to name it after somebody. But in general terms, suddenly you get a bunch of money and maybe even astronauts up there. So, yeah, let's find more.

Tariq Malik [00:33:59]:
Can I. Like, what? If, if, if, if instead of an astronaut or astronaut. A dinosaur bone, right. A Mars. A sore or whatever. Yeah, they found like a tuft of grass, like, just like growing. Maybe it's like red grass or whatever because of the eye.

Rod Pyle [00:34:15]:
I bought a rose, a red, red.

Tariq Malik [00:34:17]:
Rose, like they, they found, like, with the little prince on his little asteroid.

Rod Pyle [00:34:22]:
So, no, what, did you put your coffee this morning?

Tariq Malik [00:34:26]:
No, like, if they found, if they found that, like, would it have the same effect? I mean, for us it would, Right? It's life on another planet. Yeah, we'd all be freaking out. But would there be a race to go get that. That grass?

Rod Pyle [00:34:38]:
Would people really freak out? Back on April Fool's Day, And I think 1993, America Online, which was at that time the premier online service, posted a story saying life found an atmosphere of Jupiter and I was over the moon. I was elated. I was 23 skidoo. I was like, oh, my God, it finally happened. They finally did it. And I thought, wait a minute, it's April 1st. And sure enough the next day they said April Fool's joke. And I wrote one of my very rare angry letters to Steve Case saying that was not cool.

Rod Pyle [00:35:14]:
But you know, there was very little public reaction and at that point they were like a major news source for people.

Tariq Malik [00:35:20]:
Yeah. So by the way, RIP America Online dial up connection, they shut the doors on it this month. That's the end of it.

Rod Pyle [00:35:27]:
No. Yeah. And actually a lot of us kind of went snicker snicker, but I guess there was still a number of rural. Not a number, a bunch of rural people still using it because they don't.

Tariq Malik [00:35:37]:
Have access to DSL. 1%, 0.1% of Internet users like relied on that service. So hopefully they'll be able to find some other way to, to get access to get whatever information they need.

Rod Pyle [00:35:48]:
And taxpayer took away my landline, which I didn't really want. But a couple of radio stations I work with used to insist on you having a landline primarily coastal to coast am. There's a show and you know, I called Pac Bell and I said look, I can see the wires going from my house to the pole. They said, yep, too bad not doing it. Okay. To the moon, Alice. Maybe to the moon. The Orion capsule for Artemis 2 has completed initial fueling and is now being outfitted with its launch abort system.

Rod Pyle [00:36:21]:
So now it's not only full of dangerous chemicals, but soon will be packed with explosives.

Tariq Malik [00:36:27]:
Rocket explosives. That sounds really dangerous termination system, but.

Rod Pyle [00:36:31]:
I mean like things that go bang up in the rocket if the nozzle clogs. So the capsule will soon be a fully loaded hot potato primed to launch sometime no earlier, as they like to say, than February 2026 and no later. John.

John Ashley [00:36:48]:
I think maybe it's time for a break first.

Rod Pyle [00:36:51]:
Oh, okay, let's break right in. Stand by for the rest of this amazing story. Go nowhere.

AS I WAS SAYING: So the capsule is, is getting ready to go and, and will fly no earlier than February 2026 and they say no later than, than April, but we'll see. Yeah, that's. And you know, remembering the first Apollo program, these delays were, were constant. So this isn't a big surprise, especially with the much lower funding this has.

Rod Pyle [00:37:24]:
So my question is, do we think China will attempt a flyby, a crude flyby in the same time frame, very quietly prepared to beat this mission? Given that they've said for many months their craft are ready to go. Recently hot fired their lunar module. They've already tested their, their crew module in any case this would be the first crewed mission to fly beyond Earth orbit since Apollo 17, 1972. The next step forward is a move to the vehicle assembly building or BAB will join the now being prepared. SLS go Tarek.

Tariq Malik [00:37:58]:
Well, no, I mean it is interesting now as we are recording in fact today China conducted a static fire. It's their first one of the seven engine long March 10th rocket that will launch astronauts to the moon. So I mean, I think it's an open question now whether or not they're fully ready for that kind of a crude trip. I don't know. I don't know. But now, you know, NASA's given themselves a good two months of wiggle room for Artemis 2. Now remember, Artemis 2 is supposed to launch at the end of last year and then in September of this year and now it's February, April of next year. So you know, hopefully, like that's a really reliable target and it does seem like the pieces are coming together for that.

Tariq Malik [00:38:42]:
So, you know, hopefully we'll be all set. And as you as we're recording this, we're about six months out from that opening of the window in February. Like if you target mid February as a good launch target for Artemis 2, we're about a half a year out from that. A lot can happen in that half year. A lot of stuff can come together. You know, hopefully you're rocket right for one will come together.

Rod Pyle [00:39:06]:
I think it's been mostly ready for a while.

Tariq Malik [00:39:09]:
Yeah, well I think the boosters are stacked and everything so yeah, that'd be great.

Rod Pyle [00:39:12]:
And the solids are ready. Okay, so I have another moon question for you. Yes, we talked about the 100 kilowatt nuclear reactor that was recently announced by.

Tariq Malik [00:39:23]:
Acting administrator Sean Duffy.

Rod Pyle [00:39:24]:
Yes.

Tariq Malik [00:39:25]:
About must do it and, and claim that for the moon, I think for.

Rod Pyle [00:39:30]:
The U.S. so here's my question. So. So just a few months after the Chinese announced theirs in May, we go, yeah, we're going to do one too. Now we were already working on one with the Draco project out of DARPA that was 40 kilowatts and that got scrapped. And I do have not. I've been querying people, you know, is that technology moving forward to speed up the 100 kilowatt reactor? Nobody seems to know. So my question is, I mean we know that we're probably going to need nukes to do things, especially down on the south end of the moon, but anywhere on the moon, because you've got two week nights and batteries only go so far.

Rod Pyle [00:40:06]:
Right. So you need nuclear Power and at this point that would come from efficient reactor because RTG is don't make enough energy. That's fine. I'm also wondering if one of the two, two following things is a possibility. One, might this be an attempt to lay the groundwork for what happens if slash when the Chinese actually beat us returning people to the moon or in their case reaching the moon with, with a human crew. And then we could say, well you know, we, we're really planning for the long term and that's why we have a nuclear reactor. So it's, it's good for you. You got there, we've already been there.

Rod Pyle [00:40:44]:
We're going back for the long stay. A and or B does putting nuclear reactor, fission reactor in the right part of the moon, let's say Shackleton Crater, give if you get there first, do you get to do declare the first big exclusion zone since the Outer Space Treaty prevents you from grabbing property. And I was talking to Rick, Janet about this the other week. So yeah, he had his thoughts. But you know, doesn't this give you a chance to say, okay, here's an exclusion zone, a danger zone, whatever you want to call it, don't come in this radius because it's a only vaguely shielded reactor. I'm just spitballing here and if it goes boom, it would be very bad for you. You know, that way we are de facto claiming territory. What do you think?

Tariq Malik [00:41:28]:
Well, I mean it's a good argument. I mean I think that the argument on the other side is, look, hey, why, why are you putting this there if you think it's so dangerous, how are your astronauts going to go and plug into it? Right. If it's so dangerous to come within. I think you said like 100 miles, I think on that when you were talking to Rick about that. So I think that it does. I mean the knowledge or the party, the interest is certainly there. I mean you saw from Duffy's statement about having to go and claim this for the United States or the American conquest.

Rod Pyle [00:42:05]:
Yeah, it's conquest of space.

Tariq Malik [00:42:07]:
That is, that is, that is welcome to 1950. The effort is to put this on there so that they can just say this is our space now because we have this thing here and you can't use it. So but if they're really going to back it up with money, the question for all of this is are they really going to back it up with money? Yeah, it's one thing for him to say it for, for them to put it in a letter to say go do this Thing, but are they really going to pay for it? And I have doubts. I have doubts because between now and, and when they can actually get something that they could put on a rocket, that's probably how many funding rounds that Congress has to go through that, how many continuing resolutions. Exactly. So, and is that something that, that this kind of project can survive? I don't know. I don't know.

Rod Pyle [00:42:54]:
All right, so we had, I don't know how much chance you've had to catch up with stuff since you got back, but we had an executive order recently that also talked about space stations. We need more commercial space stations. Hurry up.

Tariq Malik [00:43:09]:
That's right. So I did see that.

Rod Pyle [00:43:11]:
Yeah, it's a bit of a head scratcher because we already have the, the not cld. What's the program for space stations?

Tariq Malik [00:43:20]:
Commercial like destinations.

Rod Pyle [00:43:22]:
Right, destinations. Something like that. Cd. Anyway, we, we have a NASA sponsored program for Axiom and Voyager. Is there a third?

Tariq Malik [00:43:35]:
Well, it was, it was, it was Axiom Voyager and then there's the orbital reef that Blue Origin was, was, was working with folks on. And then you've got Vast in the wings building their own thing.

Rod Pyle [00:43:46]:
So, so this, this new order, as I read it anyway says okay, we're going to reassess that and then eventually down select to one or more ideally two providers. So Rick Janay brought up the idea which I thought was interesting. Is this a way to no knock on the people doing it, but separate the wheat from the chaff and give money to vast since they seem to have run from what limited data we get the foot race to actually have their prototype ready and pressure tested and all that. And I thought it was interesting. I mean, I, I, it's hard to believe that they would abandon Axiom since they're so integral to the Artemis landing and Voyager, you know, just went public and has spent a bunch of money on this. But I don't know. Do you have any additional thoughts on this?

Tariq Malik [00:44:35]:
I think that it's, it's a lot of talk this, this suggested when I, when I saw the headline for this that was like, I guess they're trying to show that they're serious and like that they're planning for, for the future. It could be that they're trying to put another by any means necessary moment behind the destination plan because it's, it's pretty clear that the space station, the International Space Station at least has an expiration date. You know, NASA's been talking about deorbiting it by the end of the decade. I think it's still a bit unclear exactly when that's going to be.

Rod Pyle [00:45:07]:
You know, it's kind of a, it's a bit of a gooey expiration date because it doesn't have to be then.

Tariq Malik [00:45:14]:
It doesn't have to be. No. But you also don't want to have a blowout or some other like, like, like age generated thing when they're, yeah. When they're clearly seeing some warning signs. I think there was that like the leak stuff that was going on on the Russian segment in the last month or so. So, you know, this, this suggests that like in the absence of having definitive leadership at the agency of saying this is who's going to be in charge for good. Because, you know, Sean Duffy is acting administrator for, for now and you know, as after the, the, the dropping Jared Isaacman, it hasn't seemed like the, there, the current Trump administration is really, really.

Rod Pyle [00:45:57]:
Doesn'T seem to be a fire under that.

Tariq Malik [00:45:59]:
Yeah, exactly. They're not really, they're not really, really, really running full strength to try to figure out who's going to lead the agency permanently during the administration. That this is a way to say go do this, here's something to go and set some rules on and then they can, they can make it. But to your point, they've had these funding rounds with, not, with, not, not little to show for, but we haven't seen anything get launched. I'm going to say, right, like there hasn't been a genesis moment like with Bigelow Aerospace where they just went and launched their own, their own module, you know, for, for testing sake. And then they went and did it again, right, to really stand out. And then they built an inflatable, an inflatable room that is now a permanent part of the International Space Station. Now they backed off from that whole project and then, you know, Bigelow, you know.

Tariq Malik [00:46:51]:
Exactly. So this could be a way of recrystallizing the effort to say, hey, we are going to just fund whoever's ready now. And if vast isn't part of it, but they're ready, then we can, we can have this order behind us to say we'll go buy your station or access to your station, whatever the new model is going to be.

Rod Pyle [00:47:08]:
And it's weird that none of these contenders are expandables. Well, they're all rigid. If Bigelow was making great progress, it worked. Clearly worked. Anyway, we have to go to break. Sorry, John. Let's go to a break.

Tariq Malik [00:47:20]:
I have a quick question for you, Rod, about recent news. So this is Very off the cuff. Like Rod doesn't know. I'm going to ask this, but I'm very curious what you think about the, the recent announcement of some new spaceports beyond the United States that are coming up. Because we had a story at space about the, the new Canadian spaceport up in the far north.

Rod Pyle [00:47:44]:
Looking at it. Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:47:45]:
And, and then I believe that Saxavoord in Scotland is making, making a lot of progress.

Rod Pyle [00:47:52]:
I edited a story on that.

Tariq Malik [00:47:54]:
And so that'll be like allegedly the first vertical launch for commercial flights. And then you have Portugal apparently licensing their, their first spaceport. I just saw this today, so I don't know too much about their, their effort too. But I'm very curious what you think about the rise of the, of new European spaceports given the, the, the, the, I guess the, the push for commercial stuff in the United States.

Rod Pyle [00:48:20]:
Well, I, you know, I look at Spaceport America and every, every contemporary picture I see of it is a building standing with naked tarmac in front of it and nothing going on. And I just wonder is, is there enough business to support these things? Of course the notable emissions are places like Guyana in South America, which is coastal to the east coast and the east coast of Africa equatorially, which is a brilliant place to launch rockets. But of course, you know, you have to work out things, the local governments and all that. But so the, the executive, was it the executive order that also talked about spaceport construction?

Tariq Malik [00:48:59]:
I think, oh, I could be wrong about that. I didn't see too much about that. I only knew about the space station.

Rod Pyle [00:49:04]:
I think that was part of it. No, it was, yeah, it was another recent document that is trying to streamline. They want to move the Office of Space Commerce in away from NOAA and under transportation or something. I've got all the stats around here somewhere. But anyway, it's, hey, let's, let's speed up the space force because spaceports, because not only does that let you launch rockets and there's business in that, but it also helps support the businesses that do that and they tend to cluster in those areas and more people, people get jobs and it's all good for everybody. But this feels a little bit like that sucking sound that will be created when starship starts flying multiple times a day and they gotta find cargo to fill up that thing that's the size of the International Space Station inside. So you know, do you have enough business? I mean we've seen what Europe is doing in terms of launch. It isn't much.

Rod Pyle [00:49:57]:
There are small, small companies Lining up to join the cube. But I don't know. What do you think about the pipeline?

Tariq Malik [00:50:05]:
I think it's exciting. I mean having more players might give smaller companies more access. Right. I know that like equatorial space, for example. I mentioned them earlier on the show out of Singapore when I went to go meet them. They were working in an industrial park in Singapore and hoping to have a launch site somewhere. Now I believe that they found a place in Australia and that that's what they're. They're working for.

Tariq Malik [00:50:33]:
But I know that they were like trying to figure out where in Singapore or like the nearby area could we find a place to do it. And the, you know, the more companies like that having a place that's closer to them rather than shipping something all the way to South America to like the Guiana Space center or all the way up to. In terms of sounding rockets to Sweden. Right.

Rod Pyle [00:50:55]:
For.

Tariq Malik [00:50:56]:
For their, for their spaceport up there or Alaska, you know, would probably be very, very helpful. So, you know, and maybe that there's some companies that will just really be able to stick. But we, we saw for example, with. What was the other one? It was, it was it the one that was in Cardiff, Cornwall with the Cornwall spaceport where their anchor customer was Virgin Orbit and then that they shut down after the first failed launch. Right. Or second failed launch. And so, so they weren't able to. To make that work.

Tariq Malik [00:51:28]:
And to your point, like Spaceport America put a lot of stock in Virgin Galactic a lot as being a flagship customer. And, and, and I don't think it's really turned out the way that they had hoped that it would. Now they still have spin launch and they also do a lot of sounding rocket work out of their.

Rod Pyle [00:51:49]:
Went away.

Tariq Malik [00:51:50]:
The one that the. With the big spinny. Spinny thing that does. Yeah, the centrifuge.

Rod Pyle [00:51:54]:
I just done an article on them and then I read about a month later that they were shutting down.

Tariq Malik [00:51:58]:
No. Oh, that breaks my heart.

Rod Pyle [00:52:00]:
So no more fastballs into space. Hey, before I forget, I would be remiss if I didn't mention that Moose espionage on discord questions are 0.1% quote about dial up. He says with 100 million households in the US has still 100k households. No, this article in the Guardian states there is still 175,000 dialogue.

Tariq Malik [00:52:23]:
I wasn't trying to Moose. I wasn't trying to belittle or say that's that it wasn't that many people. I was just. That was what the. I think the article had said was that there was 0.1% of people still. But it was, to Moose's point, it's still like thousands and thousands of people. Hundreds of thousands of people. So.

Rod Pyle [00:52:43]:
Okay, Moose, you got your on air apology.

Tariq Malik [00:52:46]:
I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I. I have fond memories of the dial up noise, you know, of all of that. And then getting in trouble when people call your house and they either kick you off the Internet or. Or they. My father once called the house from overseas and couldn't get through because I was like, on america online for $6 an hour. I don't remember how much it was.

Tariq Malik [00:53:10]:
I thought it was 20 bucks.

Rod Pyle [00:53:12]:
It was either six or eight bucks an hour. And you got floppy disks in everything from your local newspaper to a bag of tomatoes at the market. I mean, they were constantly showing up. And then, small aside, then I got my floppy disk set for E World, which was Apple's attempt at having their own online community. They basically licensed the back end of the aol, but they put this very cool kind of cartoonish front end on it. And they put bots in all the chat rooms and so forth. And I really liked it. The problem was the only thing in the chat rooms besides you was a.

Tariq Malik [00:53:49]:
Bot most of the time.

Rod Pyle [00:53:50]:
And it just never really took off. And I miss eworld, so. Ashley, hello. We have never asked you if you would fly on Virgin Galactic or Blue Origin.

Tariq Malik [00:54:01]:
God, no.

Rod Pyle [00:54:02]:
Wow. Wow. Want to think about that for a second?

Tariq Malik [00:54:06]:
Yeah, I did.

Rod Pyle [00:54:08]:
God, no. Okay. Because Tarik and I would both. Would both take Blue Origins rocket. Right?

Tariq Malik [00:54:13]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:54:13]:
Well, we take either, but, yeah. However, I would not want to be on the first flight of the Delta.

Tariq Malik [00:54:19]:
I would like to have my own personal spacesuit, though. Like an orange one. I think it'd be cool to have an orange one instead of a blue one because they're both blue. Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. I think they're both blue. They're jumpsuits.

Rod Pyle [00:54:30]:
You're such a contrarian. Well, yours would be patterned after some video game character, right?

Tariq Malik [00:54:37]:
Well, no, I think it's the nice orange one. Although there are nice orange spacesuits in Fallout 76. I think a fluorescent pink starfield. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:54:47]:
I could see there's been orange ones. The shuttle had orange ones. You need something different.

Tariq Malik [00:54:51]:
Yeah, I can see that.

Rod Pyle [00:54:52]:
I want an Apollo Al 7 EVA suit. Be the clunkiest thing in the room, but it would look cool. Well, do we have anything else?

Tariq Malik [00:55:02]:
I have, like, an aside. I just. I was thinking we were talking about Internet access, and I'm just I'm just like remembering the days you had to have a service provider before you could actually access the Internet. Remember, you would have your dial up connection and your dsl, but you also had to have a service provider like America Online or Net. Net. Oh my gosh, the first, the first big one that Net something. Netscape. Judy on.

Tariq Malik [00:55:33]:
So no, but you, you. I think I remember signing up for Netscape for a while, but then my friend gave me like a free one. But you had to have their ads in the browser, in the browser at the top to be able to get your extra minutes or whatever it was online. So. And then that all went away. That all went away when we got the first wireless connection or whatever. So.

Rod Pyle [00:55:54]:
WI Fi. Yeah, dsl. Thank God. All right, well. Oh, imagine.

Tariq Malik [00:56:00]:
Imagine how that, that frontier in space, right? You're on a moon base, but now you have to like choose between Starlink and whatever the other Starlinks are going to be.

Rod Pyle [00:56:09]:
You know, it would be 15k dial up. Actually on Discord, they're saying it's net zero and netcom.

Tariq Malik [00:56:19]:
That might have been net zero. Remember the ads on the top of the bar and you can never get rid of it.

Rod Pyle [00:56:24]:
So for you people that wouldn't spend real money.

Tariq Malik [00:56:25]:
All right, some of us were like baby reporters living in a studio apartment with a fold down bed out of the wall. Right. And bars on the window in Long beach when we were kids. So young. Young and starting out.

Rod Pyle [00:56:38]:
So yeah, that may have something to do with the place you choose to go to school, whether or not you need bars on the window, but that's a different discussion. Actually. I'll be welcoming a student who's coming here from overseas tomorrow to attend usc.

Tariq Malik [00:56:54]:
Yay.

Rod Pyle [00:56:55]:
Escorting her to her new apartment where my girlfriend's daughter is going to help her get established and so forth and tell her where to walk and where not to walk around usc, because that matters.

Tariq Malik [00:57:08]:
Yeah, yeah. Don't, don't, don't, don't, don't, don't. Don't walk all the way to Compton like I did. That was a bad idea.

Rod Pyle [00:57:15]:
So when the streets start having three digit numbers, it's time to turn around and go home. Speaking of three digit numbers, I want to thank everybody for joining us today for episode 173 that we like to recall. Return of the Malik. Speaking of the Malik Tarek, where can we refresh our memory of what you're up to?

Tariq Malik [00:57:32]:
Well, you can find me@space.com where I'm trying to get my feet back in order as always on the Twitter and or pardon me, on the social media, back in order. Well, yeah, I realized how weird that sounded the minute I said it. And I mean, my feet back under me, right? Or get my order my things back.

Rod Pyle [00:57:51]:
Your feet back under all £215 of you. Very good.

Tariq Malik [00:57:54]:
I'm still jet lag, man. Like it was a long flight, but you can find me on the social media. Tariq J. Malik and this weekend I'm making a costume for my daughter for a convention. So I'll be doing that for a long time.

Rod Pyle [00:58:09]:
Costume of what?

Tariq Malik [00:58:11]:
She wants to be a character from some anime cartoon show. So like a steampunk thing with giant pink hair. So I'm making a foam wig that I can spray paint pink so that she will look awesome. But I've never done it before. So everyone wish me luck because I just watched a lot of YouTube to do it.

Rod Pyle [00:58:28]:
I remember very specifically making costumes for my kid. I made this fantastic Buzz Lightyear costume once with a backpack with lights and sound makers and the little wings folded back with elastic just in case he ran into things and all that. And then about four years after that, I made him a beautiful costume. He looked at me and said, voice having recently dropped because I clung to his youth a little too long. Dad? Yeah, I don't want to wear this, but. Oh, Judy C. Wants to know what time is it for you now?

Tariq Malik [00:59:00]:
Well, Judy, we're based out of New York, so. So it's eastern time.

Rod Pyle [00:59:04]:
So what she means is it's by Singapore time. You're in.

Tariq Malik [00:59:09]:
Oh, by Singapore time. Oh, yeah, yeah, it would be 3am for me like right now. But we did get back about look more than a day ago, so I'm. I slept a lot of yesterday, so no more whining.

Rod Pyle [00:59:21]:
All right? And you can of course find me at pilebooks.com or@aster magazine.com and I did actually look at my website the other day and thought, huh, I haven't updated this a couple of years. I probably ought to get around to that. Speaking of updates, you can always drop us a line at twistattwit tv. I'm just banging through the segues this week.

Tariq Malik [00:59:39]:
I was gonna say, is it as.

Rod Pyle [00:59:40]:
Old as dial up twit tv? Bing.

Tariq Malik [00:59:43]:
Bing.

Rod Pyle [00:59:44]:
We welcome your comments, suggestions and ideas by whatever venue, whether it's dial up, DSL or fiber, and we will answer all our emails. New episodes of this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher. So make sure to subscribe, like tell your friends, give us reviews, say it to the world, say it to the mountain. We'll take five stars or five of whatever currency they. They prefer. And finally, as I say every week, don't forget, we're counting on you to at least consider joining Club Twit this year. Besides supporting the network in general, it helps keep us on the air, and it helps keep our bosses there happy. And it helps keep the whole operation running.

Rod Pyle [01:00:24]:
I think last I heard, 25% of the revenue was coming from Club Twit. We can do better. Tarek and I are members. You could be a member, too. Sign up, send us your shekels. And what. What more, Tarek, I ask you. Actually, I asked both of you.

Rod Pyle [01:00:41]:
What better entertainment can you get for $10 a month than this show? Yeah, other than maybe pounding a nail into your foot or something.

Tariq Malik [01:00:49]:
Well, I don't know about that. I mean, if you like that sort of thing, Rod, maybe get help. But. But. But you make a good deal because you can't even get a movie for $10 a month.

Rod Pyle [01:01:00]:
Oh, my God. No. It's like 30 bucks. Okay, John, you're making a bunch of faces. What. What can you get for $10 a month that's more fun than doing this show?

John Ashley [01:01:09]:
Two cups of coffee.

Rod Pyle [01:01:11]:
You and your coffee. So for those who you can't get.

Tariq Malik [01:01:15]:
Two cups of coffee. Not good cups of coffee.

Rod Pyle [01:01:19]:
Yeah, you can.

Tariq Malik [01:01:21]:
You can.

Rod Pyle [01:01:22]:
He's probably a McDonald's coffee drink. Some people swear by that swill. Oh, no, Duncan. That's the one I don't get.

Tariq Malik [01:01:29]:
Oh, I'm not gonna make a brand.

Rod Pyle [01:01:31]:
Study out of it. And I finally went to a Dunkin Donuts. I thought, this just tastes like the regular swill. You get any of these places. Oh, we're gonna get hate mail now. Anyway, let's face it, $10 a month isn't much. So drop all those other subscriptions and give us one. All right, thank you, everybody. It's been a real pleasure. Keep those cards and letters coming and we will see you in just seven days. Stay spacey.

Leo Laporte [01:01:55]:
Get tech news at your pace with twit.tv's perfect pair of shows for quick, focused insights. Tech News Weekly brings you essential interviews with journalists breaking today's biggest stories. But maybe you need more. That's why I'm here. Dive deep with me on this week in Tech, your first podcast of the week, and the last word in tech industry. Insiders dissect everything from AI to privacy to cybersecurity in tech's most influential and longest running roundtable discussion. Short or long streamlined or comprehensive Twit TV keeps you well informed. Subscribe to both shows wherever you get your podcasts, and head over to our website twit.tv's for even more independent tech journalism.