This Week in Space 202 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, Jeff Bezos' Blue Origin wants to protect Earth from asteroids. Looks like Rocket Lab is getting some beaucoup bucks for some super fast missile tests for the US military. And what is the deal with Artemis II? The rocket's back on the pad. Is it going to fly? Mike Wall of Space.com joins Rod and I to figure it out. Tune in.

Leo Laporte [00:00:21]:
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Leo Laporte [00:01:03]:
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Rod Pyle [00:01:26]:
This is This Week in Space, episode number 202, recorded on March 20th, 2026: Artemis Imminent. Hello and welcome to another episode of This Week in Space, our Artemis imminent edition, episode number 202. And I'm going to give numbers now every week because I'm so proud we made it past 200. Because I think, uh, John, what is it, the average podcast lasts 5 episodes or something?

Tariq Malik [00:01:58]:
It's not much.

Rod Pyle [00:02:00]:
Uh, I think it's like maybe 20 is the average.

Tariq Malik [00:02:02]:
Oh, 20? We've done 10 times that many. Take that, internet.

Rod Pyle [00:02:07]:
I am Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief, Badass Magazine, and I'm— no, I'm not going to say what I worked on when I was in my television career, you snotty men. Um, and I'm with Tariq Malik of Space.com.

Tariq Malik [00:02:21]:
Yeah. Hello, Rod.

Rod Pyle [00:02:22]:
Hello, how are you doing?

Tariq Malik [00:02:23]:
How are you doing? How are things?

Rod Pyle [00:02:24]:
Oh, he has groupies.

Tariq Malik [00:02:26]:
I know, I know. So by the way, by the way, before we get started, Eid Mubarak to everybody out there. It's Eid as we're recording this. Very excited. End of Ramadan. Happy new renewal for the next year.

Rod Pyle [00:02:40]:
So I don't have any religious thing to hang on today. So I'll just have to have to roll with it. And speaking of rolling, we will be back in a few moments after we do our headlines with Mike Wall of Space.com. Because when we want to do a deep dive into Artemis or anything else space today, anything else breaking, really, we call Mike because he's smart and he's our, he's our crutch guy. And he's of course, TARC's—

Tariq Malik [00:03:03]:
He's a smart, smart guy.

Rod Pyle [00:03:04]:
Lead writer among many other things, because he is the spaceflight and tech editor for Space.com.

Tariq Malik [00:03:12]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:03:13]:
There, I got it right this time.

Tariq Malik [00:03:14]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:03:15]:
Even though that's not what's online. Before we start, of course, we would ask you to do us a solid, make sure to like our show, podcast, YouTube video, whichever you're watching. Subscribe, give us reviews, and support this podcast with all your might because it means the world and beyond to us. And speaking of beyond, I have a fresh space joke from Tom Monahan.

Tariq Malik [00:03:40]:
Tom, let's hear it.

Rod Pyle [00:03:42]:
Okay, we need you to pay attention.

Tariq Malik [00:03:44]:
Okay, wait, is it a long one?

Rod Pyle [00:03:46]:
It's a baseball joke.

Tariq Malik [00:03:48]:
Okay, okay.

Rod Pyle [00:03:48]:
Yeah, it's not long, but it took me a couple of passes.

Tariq Malik [00:03:52]:
Who's on first, right?

Rod Pyle [00:03:53]:
Because I'm not a sports guy. Okay, what did the Astros manager say to the batter when he was going up to the plate? The bottom of the 9th with 2 out and 2 men on base and down by 2 runs.

Tariq Malik [00:04:05]:
Okay. Okay. What?

Rod Pyle [00:04:08]:
All right, guys, we need a moonshot to win the game. If you Artemis, then it's 1, 2, 3, you're out.

Tariq Malik [00:04:16]:
Oh, it's so painful because it's so close to home.

Rod Pyle [00:04:23]:
He didn't have it. He didn't have the hyphens in it the way I wrote it. So I read it properly. So I had to write it back when he said it in and say, I hate to be thick, but I don't get it. But I'm also like, pay about as much attention to sports as I do to quantum physics. So yeah, I kind of missed that. But then once I got it, I thought, oh, that's good. So we got to use that.

Tariq Malik [00:04:42]:
So thank you, Artemis. You got 1 through 3 and then you're done. And it's a zinger. It comes in at the end and then you just actually got—

Rod Pyle [00:04:50]:
Yeah, it is pretty, pretty layered routine, isn't it?

Tariq Malik [00:04:54]:
Yeah, that's good.

Rod Pyle [00:04:55]:
Now, I found that some folks want to send us to the penalty box. It was joke time in this show. But you have the power to help by sending us your best, worst, or most indifferent space joke. We'll take anything, really. Twistedtwit.tv. And then we can blame it on you when we're on the air. Speaking of which, let's go to—

Tariq Malik [00:05:12]:
wait, there's no— there's no penalty box in baseball. It's the bench. You get benched.

Rod Pyle [00:05:17]:
There's no crying in baseball. Let's go to headline news.

Tariq Malik [00:05:23]:
Headline news.

Rod Pyle [00:05:28]:
That poor woman can't get the words out without being stepped on by you. So tell me about Amazon's asteroid hunter.

Tariq Malik [00:05:35]:
Yeah, yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:05:36]:
Well, this is really cool.

Tariq Malik [00:05:37]:
Well, this is fun. This is fun. And yeah, we found out that Blue Origin this week is teaming up with NASA on what they call the Near Earth Object Hunter mission. NEO? Is that how you would— what's the anagram for it? NEO Hunter, I guess? Not NEO. But they're gonna use this, their Blue Ring bus. So they have this spacecraft bus that they've been developing, kind of like a, like a standardized— yeah, yeah, propulsion that they would use for New Glenn. And then you could put your spacecraft on top of it. And now they want to build an asteroid hunting spacecraft to protect Earth from dangerous interlopers, which is very nice of Jeff Bezos that he wants to protect all of us on the planet by finding from asteroids so that we can consume more of Amazon Prime and stuff on the internet.

Tariq Malik [00:06:30]:
But, but they're starting— it's gonna be a pretty big thing. I mean, it's this— this bus can, can build up— it can carry up to like 8,800 pounds. So that's like 4 tons if they want to build like a really beefy, beefy spacecraft. And it seems like they're going to release a bunch of CubeSats. So it's not one like giant bus. It's going to be a bunch of these little ones that will go and wait and do things.

Rod Pyle [00:06:56]:
So it's one bus with a bunch of different attachments, you mean, right?

Tariq Malik [00:06:59]:
Yeah, yeah. Like with a bunch of different CubeSats, and it'll have like two different mission phases. So it'll, it'll, it'll, it'll release some of those. And, and then the, it'll be able to— it says here the spacecraft will be capable of shooting a ray of charged particles onto an asteroid to change that ray. Yeah. So they're going to like pew pew pew it, you know. And, and so it's kind of like a mothership that's going to carry these CubeSats out there, do some recon, and then zap zap zap it all. So it's—

Rod Pyle [00:07:28]:
well, so really sorry. Let's, let's be specific. So when you zap the asteroid, presumably that causes a reaction on the surface of the asteroid, which then causes a boost and eventually over time would cause it to change its trajectory, which is the whole point.

Tariq Malik [00:07:41]:
Yeah, very, very smart.

Rod Pyle [00:07:43]:
And they also, right, and they're also going to have a kinetic impactor like DART involved. So these are various things short of nuclear bombs aimed at, if you detect an asteroid on a collision course with Earth or at high risk of it anyway, If you get it early enough, you just have to go over and go blow on it a couple of times to make it move out of the way because of geometry. But if it's much closer, then you got to find something bigger and nastier to divert it.

Tariq Malik [00:08:11]:
Yeah. And so it uses this ion beam to do that, to do that initial one. But can I talk about the second phase of the mission, Rod, real quick?

Rod Pyle [00:08:19]:
It's your nickel, man.

Tariq Malik [00:08:20]:
Yeah. So if the asteroid is too big, so like Rod said, it has to be like a certain size. For this ion beam to either cook off or whatever, have the, the little limited reaction impact over time to deflect the asteroid. But if it's too big for that, then it will enter the robust kinetic disruption phase of the mission, which is they're going to just crash the thing into the asteroid. Like the DART mission itself. We know what we've seen. And in fact, this week, there was a new study that the DART mission, which NASA launched to asteroids Didymos and Dimorphos, and crashed a probe into Dimorphos to see how it could affect its orbit around its parent. That worked so well that it's changed both of the spacecraft's orbits around the Sun.

Tariq Malik [00:09:07]:
So, so they know that it works. And so this is like another phase of the mission. So if the ion beam to cook the asteroid to change trajectory doesn't work, they can crash it into it. And, and it just, it just, it's really exciting. You know, to have this kind of a mission going out there. So it's not just looking for stuff, but it's just going to go out there and smack it all around in the solar system.

Rod Pyle [00:09:30]:
So, so I'll get on to whichever other headlines you want to do. But I did want to mention something that I don't have on the notes here. I was doing a radio hit the other day. And we were talking about— I forget the name of the company, Sunray, Solar Ray, something like that. So this company that wants to launch enormous unfolding reflective satellites to reflect sunlight down the Earth. And as they claim, this would be for polar orbits, I guess, as you claim, as they claim, it would light construction sites or battle zones or crops or this and that. And basically they're big sun guns. So you have a big mirror in orbit that you'd be able to redirect at a customer request, which you, of course, pay handsomely for.

Rod Pyle [00:10:14]:
And we've seen this before. The Germans were planning this in the 1930s.

Tariq Malik [00:10:19]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:10:19]:
And it was the same thing. They said, yeah, we can, we can light harbors with it. We can make cities safer. And oh, by the way, we can also use it as a death ray to burn down New York.

Tariq Malik [00:10:30]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:10:30]:
In the event of war, which is why they called it the Sun Gun. So we have a new Sun Gun coming. If this company goes, they don't have much money. I think they got, I don't know, $20 million or something, but they're going to need more than that. Oh, yes. Because we're talking You know, to really be effective, these things would have to be from many, many hundreds of feet to thousands of square feet.

Tariq Malik [00:10:52]:
Yeah, you should read Ben Bova's PowerSat, that they turn a solar satellite into a sun gun, as you call it.

Rod Pyle [00:11:00]:
Death ray. Death ray.

Tariq Malik [00:11:02]:
Also, that's the plot of Die Another Day. That's what the evil baddie in that James Bond movie does.

Rod Pyle [00:11:08]:
So stupid, those movies got so awful. Pick a story.

Tariq Malik [00:11:12]:
All right, well, let's just do Rocket Lab then.

Rod Pyle [00:11:14]:
Let's just do—

Tariq Malik [00:11:14]:
okay, so yeah, but this, this one, this is another one. Actually, Mike found this story, our guest later, but Rocket Lab has secured a $190 million launch deal from the US government, from the military basically, for— get this— not one, not two, but 20— 2-0— hypersonic rocket launches using their Haste rocket system. Their Haste rocket launches are essentially just the Electron rocket, their primary workhorse rocket that they launch on a suborbital trajectory to reach hypersonic speeds to test what I assume, because they're not going to say, are hypersonic missiles that NASA— that not NASA, that the Defense Department has been trying to develop over time. We know that Russia has built one and allegedly has used some of them against Ukraine. We know that China is developing one and may have actually tested them as well. And so the US does, you know, has said that they feel that the military is a bit behind in that race for hypersonic weapons. And so this is what we've been seeing. I think they've, they've launched, I think, 4, if memory serves, or 7 of these, these Haste launches so far for the US military.

Tariq Malik [00:12:30]:
And now this is like a batch buy. And I just want to point out, that's 20 launches for $190 million. That's less than $1 million a launch rod. Less than $1 million a launch, uh, that the, the military is getting this at. And that should say something about what Rocket Lab can do at scale, and, uh, and at least for the cost of their, of their missions overall.

Rod Pyle [00:12:52]:
So, so if we sell your house, we could probably launch some part of both of us into space.

Tariq Malik [00:12:58]:
Well, I think we have to sell your house too. I don't think, I don't think that— are you not up to it? We might get like a third of the rocket stages.

Rod Pyle [00:13:06]:
Oh my God, it is so— I Anyway, I won't go into it, but we live in a condo which is not of the highest caliber of construction, I would say. You know, it's nice enough, but it's climbing up towards $1 million because Los Angeles. Yeah, it's crazy. Why don't you give us just a quick blast on spring equinox since you love it?

Tariq Malik [00:13:26]:
Oh, yeah. Well, spring is in the air at last. And so the—

Rod Pyle [00:13:30]:
I feel like singing.

Tariq Malik [00:13:32]:
I know the equinox is coming. And the only reason I added this is because I'm just so tired here in New Jersey of how cold it's been with the freezing the freezing, uh, uh, uh, uh, weather. And we had like this, like nearly 2 feet of snow so far. Uh, but March 21st and March 20th, so that's like today and tomorrow, this weekend as we're recording, uh, we're gonna get hit by, uh, some geomagnetic storms from the sun. A series of solar eruptions and fast solar wind streams are going to hit us just in time, uh, for the, the switchover into spring on the 24th, on the, uh, the 20th. That's today. Today is the equinox. Huzzah! Right.

Tariq Malik [00:14:11]:
It's spring. Sorry, everybody in the southern hemisphere where it turns to fall. I know that you got winter coming, but at least now my daffodils can be safe and maybe we'll get some northern lights as well, visible across like 18 different states. It's going to be great.

Rod Pyle [00:14:26]:
Wow. Okay. That is very cool. And speaking of cool, we will soon have the ultra cool Mike Wall with us. So stand by. Hold on to your seats. Don't pull the ejection handle. We'll be right back.

Rod Pyle [00:14:38]:
And we are back with Mike Wall, who is widely known as the spaceflight and tech editor at space.com, the original old space dog, senior news reporter. How's that?

Tariq Malik [00:14:49]:
Yeah, that's good. That's great. That's great.

Rod Pyle [00:14:52]:
He's the man. He's the dude. He's the boss. He's our spaceman. Hi, Mike.

Mike Wall [00:14:57]:
Hey, boss. I'm not so sure. Tariq's the boss.

Tariq Malik [00:15:01]:
I wasn't going to say anything. So thanks, Mike.

Rod Pyle [00:15:03]:
For the conversations I have with Tariq every midweek. I don't think you want to be the boss.

Mike Wall [00:15:08]:
Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:15:10]:
Thank you for coming back.

Rod Pyle [00:15:11]:
We're going to talk about Artemis today because it's the topic du jour. But first, I believe Tariq has a question.

Tariq Malik [00:15:20]:
Oh, yeah. You know, Mike, you know, I think you answered this the first time, but we try to reintroduce everybody to our new guests who have stumbled across us in the internet and taken a chance at This Week in Space to find out what happened This Week in Space, I guess. So could you just remind everybody kind of who you are and, and then what, what you do and all how you got to space and everything?

Mike Wall [00:15:46]:
Yeah, sure. I've been here for since 2010, um, in various roles. And yeah, I've been reporting on, on spaceflight and astronomy and the search for life and stuff over the course of that decade and a half. And, um, yeah, now I'm in charge of sort of the, the, like, spaceflight and tech stories that we report on and research and post. And, um, yeah, so I've been doing— I've been in that role for a little while, but before that I was more of a writer and just kind of— yeah, but yeah, I mean, I've been here for a long time, so I've seen the space industry change and I've seen the science change as we've learned more about exoplanets and about Mars and all that. It's just like a lot's happened since the time I started reporting on this stuff in 2010.

Tariq Malik [00:16:28]:
And you've written a book. You, uh, you have a doctorate in lizards if I understand that right.

Mike Wall [00:16:34]:
So yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I was a biologist for a number of years before I decided to go into writing. And yeah, like, I specialized in, in like lizards and snakes because they're really fun. And I grew up in Arizona and I used to go out into the desert and catch them, and it was really fun to do. So I have— still have a lifelong fascination with those sorts of critters. So yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:16:55]:
So Tariq, can you imagine being that that you and I bombed out of the sciences halfway through our bachelor's degree, finishing a doctorate and then deciding, oh, that was kind of fun, but I think I'll just restart and do something completely different.

Tariq Malik [00:17:10]:
I'll do space.

Rod Pyle [00:17:11]:
That takes a certain kind of moxie, you know.

Tariq Malik [00:17:14]:
I think you were at— Mike was at one of the national labs doing writing there too. I mean, that's not—

Mike Wall [00:17:19]:
Yeah, yeah, I was at— yet I was at like Idaho National Laboratory. I got a scholarship from them to do a grad writing program at UC Santa Cruz. So part of the deal for that scholarship was I would, I would intern for them for a spell. So, so yeah, so I did that and they're, they're like the nation's premier sort of like nuclear energy research lab. So yeah. So I, I went up there and did that and learned a lot about that, which I knew almost nothing about before. So that also was fun.

Rod Pyle [00:17:43]:
So not, not to overcook this topic, but I think what I'm hearing you saying is you finished your doctorate, you went and did some work in that, got interested in writing, and then went back to grad school.

Mike Wall [00:17:52]:
Yeah. But it was, it was only a grad writing certificate at, at UC Santa Cruz. So it was, it was only one year. It was not like multiple years.

Tariq Malik [00:17:58]:
So what a grad writing certificate. This changes everything. And I'm gonna I'm sorry.

Mike Wall [00:18:03]:
No, I can leave it.

Rod Pyle [00:18:05]:
You know what, don't get too carried away, Tariq, because if you ever spent time at UC Santa Cruz, there is no way you could walk from one campus building to another without becoming stoned just by the ambiance. All right, well, I think we've exercised that one to its fruitful end. So suffice it to say, Mike's a very impressive guy and smarter than Tariq and myself put together. So what's going on with Artemis? They rolled back to the pad, is that correct?

Mike Wall [00:18:31]:
Yeah, they, they rolled back to the pad today, Friday, March 20th, um, and it's the second trip to the launch pad for the Artemis II rocket, um, and hopefully it'll stay there this time and they won't find any other problems with it like they did the first time it was on the pad. And if everything goes well, then it could actually launch just a couple weeks from now.

Rod Pyle [00:18:51]:
So, well, and that's always the question mark, isn't it? Which, which window? So what are the, what are the, uh the windows they have up now, the, the, for possible launch dates?

Mike Wall [00:19:02]:
They have said they are aiming for the earliest possible window in, in April, which runs from April 1st to April 6th. So theoretically, that means they're still targeting April 1st for the launch of Artemis II. And then if, if they can't get off the ground in that kind of 6-day span, then there's another window that opens on April 30th. So they would have to stand down for the rest of the month, um, if they can't get off the ground in the first week of April.

Tariq Malik [00:19:26]:
So that kind of means, Mike, that we're like right now as we're talking, we're just, just under— we're about just under 2 weeks, right? 2 weeks away from, from launch. And why are we back at the pad again though? Like, weren't we at the pad already like 2 months ago?

Mike Wall [00:19:42]:
Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:19:42]:
And ready to go. So what, what, what, what happened for folks who maybe weren't following it?

Mike Wall [00:19:46]:
So they first— so they first went out to the pad on January 17th, and they did that to kind of start the pre-launch campaign on the pad to make sure that the rocket is in good shape and everything is working with the Orion crew capsule and the ground systems that support them at the launch pad. And part of that was doing what's like this 2-week or this, this sort of 2-day-long test called a wet dress rehearsal, which is basically like a countdown simulation that goes through all the activities in the last 2 days leading up to launch. And they kind of, the kind of centerpiece of that is the fueling test where they load the, the moon rocket with all of the, the like propellant that it would use on launch day. So that's like 700,000 gallons of super cold liquid hydrogen and like liquid oxygen. And so they did that at first and had like a little— they like they got through most of the wet dress rehearsal on the first try, but then had a leak of liquid hydrogen. So they stood down a little bit, but then they did a little tweak on the pad and they actually fixed it and got, got through a successful wet dress rehearsal. With all the fueling and there were no big leaks. And so it seemed like it was on track to launch potentially as early as like March 6th, which is what they were going for.

Mike Wall [00:20:56]:
But then like just after that successful fueling test, so on like February 20th, like I believe it was, they noticed another problem with the Space Launch System rocket. There was like a flow of like helium issue in the upper stage of the rocket and it was like interrupted by some weird thing they didn't understand and they couldn't fix on the pad. So that's why they rolled back off the pad. They rolled off the pad in like late February, went back to the Vehicle Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center, which is 4 miles away from the launch pad and is where they do all the work on the rocket. And, um, that's where it had been until like the rollout today.

Rod Pyle [00:21:29]:
And so that, that issue was actually a blockage, if I understand correctly, in one of the, one of the check valve bodies, right? Something—

Mike Wall [00:21:38]:
yeah, there was an issue with one of the seals in the, in the upper stage, and they, they went in and they, they figured it out and like replaced it, and they, they say it should be on target and everything should work. And we, we shall see. They also— what's like, what's interesting is that they have said that they're not going to do another wet dress rehearsal now that it's back at the pad, because they, they, they got through all of those milestones back in February. So it's at the pad now and we don't have to wait to see if it passes the fueling test, if there are any more leaks or anything like that. But there are other checks that they're going through, and it's possible something else could pop up like that helium issue that, that they found after the fueling test. So we just It'll be, yeah, we'll just have to wait and see what, what they, yeah, what they determine on the pad. 'Cause a giant, a 320-foot-tall rocket is a really complicated piece of machinery. And if any single thing is wrong, then they'll have to deal with it.

Mike Wall [00:22:25]:
And it's not a simple thing to deal with a problem with a giant rocket like that. So yeah, we'll just wait and see.

Tariq Malik [00:22:31]:
I think Lori Glaze said that if they're gonna fuel the rocket up the next time and if it's fine, she just wants it to go push the button.

Rod Pyle [00:22:39]:
Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:22:39]:
Yeah.

Mike Wall [00:22:40]:
Yeah. Yeah. Well, and that's, that's the thing too, you know, this is the, it's the second Artemis mission, but it's the first one with astronauts. Astronauts on board. So you, you would have to assume that they're gonna be extra careful with this cuz there are 4 people riding on the rocket this time. When it, when it, when, when the first Space Launch System rocket launched back in November '22, there was nobody on board. You know, it sent like an uncrewed Orion to, to lunar orbit and back and it was successful, but there was nobody on board. So the stakes weren't quite as high.

Mike Wall [00:23:03]:
Now there'll be 4 people on the top of that rocket. So they're gonna make sure every box is checked, every T is crossed and so on because you can't, yeah, you can't take human lives lightly.

Rod Pyle [00:23:13]:
Yeah, yeah, you're up next.

Tariq Malik [00:23:17]:
I thought, I thought you were gonna go to your pool. Did you not want to go to your pool?

Rod Pyle [00:23:20]:
Oh well, I think we should. Yeah, we should warm up.

Tariq Malik [00:23:23]:
Well, before that, I just, I just, I was talking about Apollo 8 the other day, and as one does, right? And, and, and how bold of a decision that was to just decide to put the crew on the Saturn V for the first time, you know? Um, and, and then instead of just going to orbit to do a shakedown to just go all the way around the moon because, well, why not, you know?

Rod Pyle [00:23:48]:
And can I add something to that?

Tariq Malik [00:23:49]:
Because yeah, go ahead.

Rod Pyle [00:23:50]:
I did my talk at the, at the Bowers Museum yesterday on this exact subject. So here's Apollo 8, they're ready to do this, the second orbital mission, as you point out, after Apollo 7. And this decision to, uh, go for the moon was made because, at least from the, uh, material I've, I've seen or researched the CIA sent two reports over NASA headquarters. One was, hey, we think that the Russians might try for a loop-the-moon exercise, much like Artemis II, actually, just to steal Apollo's thunder. And then a couple of months later, hey, look, there's this enormous moon rocket out at the Russian launch site. This is not good. So the decision was made when the crew had four— count them, four— my finger— count my fingers—

Tariq Malik [00:24:36]:
four months, four months to prepare.

Rod Pyle [00:24:39]:
And so, yeah, so you've got the risk of, of a relatively untried Saturn V rocket. You know, it had flunked at least parts of both flight tests before this flight.

Tariq Malik [00:24:51]:
So they lost some engines on Apollo 6, right?

Rod Pyle [00:24:53]:
So, yeah. So it had pogo going on where it was surging. It lost a couple of engines. And crucially, the S-IVB stage didn't reignite once it was in space to push them into TLI. Were that a manned mission. So it had all kinds of problems. You, you have tested the command module, the capsule, once in orbit to this length of time. But of course, if you have a failure on the way to the moon and you don't have that lunar module as a lifeboat, then the crew's going to do a free return trajectory and come back to Earth dead, which is not good.

Rod Pyle [00:25:27]:
And you have that service propulsion system engine, which has been tested a couple of times, This is the engine on the back of the Apollo command module/service module, but it's just one engine, right? So if that thing doesn't fire to get them out of lunar orbit, it's hasta la vista, baby. And so on and so on and so on. So when you look back at it now, you know, at the time they were caught up in the Cold War. And even though Apollo 1 had been a disaster, there was still a little bit of go fever, I think, and everything else. When you look back on this today, It's like, you did what?

Tariq Malik [00:26:01]:
It sounds horrifying.

Rod Pyle [00:26:02]:
With this 1950s, early 1960s, we just got off of vacuum tubes technology. So I'm sorry, I really kind of jumped in there, but yeah, this was a big deal.

Mike Wall [00:26:13]:
No, it is really astounding to think about the sort of risks NASA took during Apollo and what risks they were willing to live with. And that just shows you it was such a different time. It was like a national security priority to beat beat the Soviets to the moon, right? It was a show of technological dominance, and it was, it was viewed as like hugely important to the nation and to, to our image abroad and to our technological supremacy and all this to do this. And they were willing to take risks like that. It's a totally different environment now. I mean, we are trying to beat China back to the moon. I mean, you hear that a lot from U.S. officials, but yeah, it's not the sort of go, go, go, this is, this is do or die, we have to do this, we have to beat them to the moon, so we're gonna throw caution to the wind sort of thing.

Mike Wall [00:26:51]:
They're, they're doing it in a much Yeah, in a much more kind of like reserved, cautious way than we saw during Apollo.

Rod Pyle [00:26:59]:
Well, and just a reminder, as I say often, you know, this is a NASA that's doing easily 10 times as much as they were in the 1960s on 1/10 of the budget. So the lines on the graph meet in the wrong place. Speaking of which, let's go meet with a quick ad break and we'll be right back. So stand by.

Tariq Malik [00:27:14]:
All right, Mike, well, you just said that Artemis 1 launched in 2022. So that was the uncrewed test. And this is the crewed test now, 4 years later. Rod, 4 years. 4 years.

Rod Pyle [00:27:26]:
Count them.

Tariq Malik [00:27:26]:
4, right? How many, how many years were there from between Apollo— what, Apollo 6 and Apollo 8? 1, maybe.

Rod Pyle [00:27:35]:
And once they got the cadence of the crewed missions going, it was a matter of every 2 months or so.

Tariq Malik [00:27:39]:
I know. Can you imagine? Anyway, anyway, I digress. I digress. But the reason I bring up that it's been 4 years since Artemis 1 is because people may have forgotten who is actually riding on Artemis II. And I did see your note earlier this week that the crew is in quarantine, I assume again, because they most likely were in quarantine for the first, uh, uh, the first run-up. But, uh, but who are these folks that are launching on the mission? And, and what is the deal with quarantine? Do we, do we know what they're doing? Do they just twiddle their thumbs for 2 weeks?

Mike Wall [00:28:11]:
Yeah, so this is the second entry into quarantine for them, although the, the like first one, I think they were only in it for like a day or so before we heard that NASA had to roll off the pad and stuff like that. So yeah, there are 4 astronauts on the Artemis II mission. 3 of them are from NASA. Like you have the commander Reed Wiseman, there's the pilot Victor Glover, 2 mission specialists. One is from NASA, Christina Koch, and the other is a Canadian Space Agency astronaut named Jeremy Hansen. And yeah, so they're currently in quarantine at Johnson Space Center in, you know, down in Houston, which is sort of NASA mission control human spaceflight missions. And the, like, the main purpose is just so they stay healthy enough to launch, so nobody gets sick right before launch. You know, they aren't going— they're coming into contact with kids and stuff like that who can get sick at school and then give their parents a bug, which is what happened to me recently because I'm going over the weather.

Mike Wall [00:29:03]:
Um, but yeah, so it's just— it's a safety measure for the astronauts and, and for the mission to stay on track, because you don't want to launch people around the moon if they're sick, if they're not feeling well. And what if they get really sick on the flight and they, they can't let— you know, they can't fulfill any of their duties and stuff like that? It's just, it's a bad situation. So this is a preventative measure to make sure everybody is healthy enough to launch. Um, they'll stay in quarantine even after they come to the launch site. They're supposed to get to Kennedy Space Center, which is a launch site, about 5 days before launch. They'll stay in quarantine there at KSC, and then they go out and get on the rocket and, and fly to the moon, hopefully.

Tariq Malik [00:29:37]:
5 days, that's like, um March 26th as we're recording this right now, if it's—

Mike Wall [00:29:41]:
I believe so. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So yeah, that'll, like, that'll depend on if they stick with April 1st as the target date and, and all that, of course.

Tariq Malik [00:29:49]:
But yeah, and I know that, uh, Reid Wiseman was a former chief astronaut. Uh, Christina Koch spent nearly a year in space on the, on the station. Victor Glover, obviously, I think he was on Crew— he's on Crew-1, right? It was on the first operational Dragon flight. And is this Hansen's first flight, or has he flown before?

Mike Wall [00:30:06]:
No, this is—

Tariq Malik [00:30:06]:
he's the rookie.

Mike Wall [00:30:07]:
First flight. Yeah, that's right. It's a pretty nice first flight.

Tariq Malik [00:30:11]:
It's a cherry assignment, right?

Mike Wall [00:30:13]:
Yeah. Yeah, it is one of, it's part of the agreement, you know, I mean, Canada is a partner on the International Space Station and they're a partner on the Artemis program. They have agreed to supply like Canada Arm 3 to Gateway, which is the planned kind of moon-orbiting space station that the Artemis program has, it's like been a part of that architecture for a while, although that may have changed.

Tariq Malik [00:30:34]:
We're gonna ask you about that later. Yeah.

Mike Wall [00:30:35]:
Yeah, it like seems like it might not be a part of it anymore, although that hasn't been officially confirmed. So, so yeah, so Jeremy Hansen is officially flying as part of the— it's to kind of reward Canada for their contributions to the Artemis program via Canadarm3. And yeah, yeah, I mean, Canadarm2 on the International Space Station is obviously Canadian too, and that's helped them get some, some astronauts up to the space station like once every 5 years or so, something like that. I'm not sure the exact numbers, but yeah, great.

Rod Pyle [00:31:02]:
And speaking of Jeremy Hansen, I will note that at Astro Magazine, the issue coming out in in about 2 weeks, about 10 days, has an exclusive, exclusive, I tell you, interview with Jeremy Hansen.

Mike Wall [00:31:15]:
Cool.

Rod Pyle [00:31:16]:
Oh, there.

Tariq Malik [00:31:17]:
Yeah. Plug. Cough, cough. Slight product placement. Cough, cough. ReadSpace.com. Also cough, cough.

Rod Pyle [00:31:24]:
Hey, I need all the readers I can get. So maybe you could kind of walk us through the mission Apollo 8 and then read us in on Artemis To walk us through Apollo 8? Yeah, it's sort of a compare and contrast. Sorry, I didn't phrase that very well, but Apollo 8, you know, very different mission trajectory and set of timings than we've got coming up.

Mike Wall [00:31:52]:
Yeah. Do you want me or do you want Tariq to do that?

Rod Pyle [00:31:54]:
Are you kidding? I want you to do it.

Mike Wall [00:31:56]:
That's why you're here. Jeez. Wow.

Rod Pyle [00:31:59]:
So demanding. You know what? You guys can share. How's that?

Tariq Malik [00:32:02]:
This question wasn't on the rundown. So that's what—

Mike Wall [00:32:05]:
yeah, yeah. Do you want to do Apollo 8 and I'll do Artemis 2?

Tariq Malik [00:32:08]:
Well, I mean, I could say that Apollo— we were just talking about Apollo 8, so I spent like a whole evening talking about Apollo 8. But that sent 3 astronauts, not 4, around the moon. They actually entered lunar orbit for a time, right? And so that is—

Mike Wall [00:32:22]:
yeah, that's a famous photo.

Rod Pyle [00:32:24]:
10 orbits.

Mike Wall [00:32:25]:
Yeah, yeah. That— yeah, like the Earthrise photo, come— that the really famous one comes from Apollo 8.

Tariq Malik [00:32:29]:
But, but so that, that was probably one of the biggest departures from, from what Artemis II is like, because Artemis II is a lot like Apollo 13 with that free return around the moon. I'm sure Mike's going to talk about that. But, but so they launched in December of '68, got to the moon in a few days, entered orbit with that harrowing burn. Christmas Eve. That's right. That harrowing burn on the far side of the moon when no one knew what was going on until they came back around and said that the burn was complete and everything was fine. And then like, like Rod said, they spent the day in orbit. They read Genesis.

Tariq Malik [00:33:03]:
On Christmas from, from the moon.

Rod Pyle [00:33:07]:
NASA got sued by the— yeah, whatever they were.

Tariq Malik [00:33:11]:
I don't know if that would ever happen again if they did it that way or not. And, and they took all sorts of great pictures. They proved that it could be done. They set the stage for Apollo 9, 10, and then of course 11 a year later. A year, like within a year later, they launched, they launched 3 more missions. And landed on the moon. Uh, that is just crazy how, how fast that pace was back then. But, uh, and then they came back and they land safely in the, in the, in the, in the ocean with a smooth splashdown.

Tariq Malik [00:33:41]:
So, so very, very slick, uh, of a mission. And, and like we talked about earlier, just, just, it's unbelievable now the amount of risk that was just built into that mission that everyone accepted because they were that confident in the hardware after all the tests that they had done. So.

Rod Pyle [00:33:56]:
Yeah, well, after the very few tests they had done. So yeah, sorry, Mike, go ahead.

Mike Wall [00:34:00]:
No, I was going to say, so to contrast that with what we're going to see on this upcoming, like, Artemis II mission, it's, it's, it's a free return around the moon, um, so it's not going to enter orbit around the moon like a lot of the Apollo missions and that we've been talking about. So what it's basically going to do is just, like, go out far beyond the moon and then come back, kind of slingshotted back by the moon's gravity to come back to Earth. That's all going to take place over the course of about 10 days. Um, and this is sort of a lower risk trajectory than going into lunar orbit because it doesn't require engine burns for the return trip. Theoretically, if like everything goes well on the burn to the moon, it'll put them on a precise trajectory where they'll just like loop around the moon naturally and come back kind of slingshotted by lunar gravity, and they won't have to fire engines to, to make that burn to come home. It'll just happen naturally. So that's sort of like a risk-reducing thing that's built into the mission. And And it's kind of similar, as Tariq mentioned, to Apollo 13, which was supposed to go to the moon and land on the moon, but had a problem on the way.

Mike Wall [00:34:58]:
And they improvised like a free return trajectory to get themselves home safely in one of the sort of best like spaceflight kind of survival stories ever told. That turned into a free return trajectory, but that was just because that's how they handled that emergency that cropped up on the way to the moon. And yeah, so this is going to be quick. It's going to be over within 10 days. They're going to spend like the first day of the mission, if all goes to plan, in Earth orbit, basically checking out their Orion spacecraft, making sure everything's going well. And yeah, and then they'll, they'll get a translunar injection burn and send them on the way to the moon. And I think they'll actually go farther away from the moon than any other people before them. I think if all goes to plan, they'll actually get farther away from the moon than Apollo 13 did.

Mike Wall [00:35:41]:
So they'll, they'll set they'll, yeah, they'll set some like records on, on this mission coming up.

Tariq Malik [00:35:46]:
It's a prime time launch too, right?

Mike Wall [00:35:48]:
If they launch on the 1st of April, it's like, uh, it's like 6:30 AM or something.

Tariq Malik [00:35:52]:
Yeah, yeah, that's like the nightly news slot.

Mike Wall [00:35:54]:
Oh yeah, yeah. And it's, it's, it's nice for us. I'm used to it. It seems like most launches these days are like 3 in the morning, but yeah, it's like nice to actually have something. And maybe it'll be like a sunset launch or something. It'll be like visually really, really nice if, if it all goes off on on time anyway.

Tariq Malik [00:36:09]:
Yeah, well, let's hope.

Rod Pyle [00:36:10]:
And depending on the previous set of launch windows, I haven't seen it recalculated since then, depending when they go, the flyby could occur at anywhere from roughly 4,500 miles to almost 9,000 miles in altitude.

Mike Wall [00:36:23]:
Yeah, so that's the sort of range we're looking at. I mean, it isn't going to go like 100,000 miles beyond the Moon. It'll go like, I don't know, 5,000 to 10,000 is the sort of range. So not that far, but still farther than any Apollo mission did.

Rod Pyle [00:36:35]:
I just realized Apollo's were like 70 60 nautical miles or 70 regular miles. I mean, they were really close.

Mike Wall [00:36:42]:
Yeah.

Rod Pyle [00:36:42]:
Okay.

Tariq Malik [00:36:43]:
Make a quick tarp because I was just saying, I just realized I haven't seen a crewed launch since STS-135 in 2011 with Mike, actually.

Mike Wall [00:36:50]:
I think that's the last one for me too. Yeah. That's been a while.

Tariq Malik [00:36:54]:
All right.

Rod Pyle [00:36:55]:
We got to go to break. So standby. Don't go anywhere. We'll be right back. So, Mike, you know, as we've been talking about launch dates sliding further and further into the year, there's been some questions raised by a group of academics primarily about, hey, you know, we're reaching a kind of high point and slightly unstable point in the solar cycle in terms of solar activity, which of course is a risk for the astronauts if we do have a coronal mass ejection or a flare or something while they're out there. They don't have a lot of protection against radiation. Is this a valid concern? And is NASA taking into account?

Mike Wall [00:37:32]:
Yeah, I think it is a valid concern. You know, I mean, it's not a long space mission, so you don't have to worry a ton about the accumulated dose, I guess, if they're only going to be gone for 10 days. But still, if there is like a mega eruption or something from the sun, it could, it like could affect their, their, their health over the long haul, at least a little bit. And that's, that's the thing, it's just the uncertainty involved that we don't really know. And that, so, so for this reason, you know, like I've been saying, we are at like a relatively active time in the sun's like 11-year activity cycle. And yeah, I believe there was a paper that came out maybe last month saying that it would be more prudent to sort of wait to launch this mission maybe for a couple years and when the sun is more quiescent. And that obviously doesn't jive with NASA and the US government's goal to beat China to the moon and get Artemis cadence up and running. So it just goes into what we were talking about earlier.

Mike Wall [00:38:21]:
Like, I mean, how much risk are you willing to accept? This is one of the risks. There are other risks involved, like getting on a giant rocket in the first place, going into deep space on a spacecraft that has never carried people before. That's a risk that they're taking. So it's just part of the risk matrix. And they— I'm sure they've looked at this. I'm sure they have analyses about space weather and what they can reasonably expect based on the point in the solar cycle. And they're deciding that it's worth going ahead with.

Tariq Malik [00:38:47]:
Have you read James Michener's Space, Rod? Did you read that?

Rod Pyle [00:38:51]:
No, my life is too short to read Michener books.

Tariq Malik [00:38:53]:
I don't have enough time A big, big spoiler for anyone that ever wants to read it, because like Rod says, it's been out for like 70 years or whatever it is, and, and, or 50 years, and it's, it's, it is super thick. But that is, that is like the big scenario that happens to their Apollo mission is the, is the, is the solar flare, you know, and yeah, well, and everything, and we deal with that.

Rod Pyle [00:39:16]:
We hear them talk about human tissue, but I didn't hear any specific references to electronics on board. So are they sufficiently hardened or is that just not something they chose to mention?

Mike Wall [00:39:26]:
I, I would, I would assume that they are, you know, that's, that goes into the building of any deep space spacecraft, right? There are margins for that. I would imagine all, like all the critical electronics must have a margin that would take into account a big space weather event.

Tariq Malik [00:39:39]:
Yeah. And they are on the cruise out to the moon. They're doing these tests cuz they have these little equipment bays in the back of Orion. Yeah. And they're, they're doing these tests to like make a makeshift shelter for the crew. There to see what it would take for them to, like, I guess, kind of bury themselves.

Rod Pyle [00:39:57]:
Oh, when you say equipment bay, you're not talking about where they used to have the sim bay on Apollo. You're talking about the actual back of the—

Tariq Malik [00:40:03]:
in the back, under the seats, you know, under the seats in the Orion spacecraft. They're going to do like a test.

Rod Pyle [00:40:09]:
So you stack all your junk in there and then you go heat shield first towards the sun and hide.

Tariq Malik [00:40:15]:
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And that'll be interesting to see how that works. And if it— because they didn't do that on Apollo.

Mike Wall [00:40:20]:
So, well, and they've got some data from, from, yeah, from Artemis 1. Keep in mind that was like a 25-day mission to lunar orbit. It spent most of its time in lunar orbit, and they, they had, they had one full-size kind of dummy mannequin, and they had two kind of torso mannequins that had all these radiation sensors embedded in them and stuff like that. So they got, they got radiation dose data from those three mannequins basically on a 25-day moon mission. And I'm sure they obviously took that into account when designing this mission and deciding what was worth the risk and what was not. Cotton. So that's all been baked into this mission too.

Tariq Malik [00:40:52]:
What's that vest that they— that there's that, that Israeli company that built that AstroRad? Yeah, built that vest that they can wear. I've worn it. It's like wearing a really heavy life jacket. Yeah, yeah, it's like, it's like wearing a bulletproof life—

Rod Pyle [00:41:04]:
like, it's like a radiation—

Tariq Malik [00:41:05]:
but it's also a life jacket.

Mike Wall [00:41:06]:
It's like the dentist chair. They, they put you— they give you that apron when you—

Rod Pyle [00:41:11]:
they put that little apron on you and then they run from the room and push the button from far far away. Tariq, you're up.

Tariq Malik [00:41:18]:
Well, yeah, well, you know, I guess one of the things that has happened since the last time Rod and I had a big Artemis discussion, since you joined us, is that the path beyond Artemis II— and I saw that was a headline on Space.com this week, so, by Leonard— looks a bit different than before because this mission, like you said, is really going to go all the way around the moon. And, uh, and do that free return. And then of course we all expected, you know, next year or in 2 years to land on the moon with Artemis III. But it, you know, we found out from Jared Isaacman that that's not the case anymore. And, and I was wondering if you can kind of give people like an update about like how big of a shake-up NASA did earlier this year to its plans for Artemis after this mission. Because, you know, after Apollo 8, Apollo 9 launched like within that year. but that's not gonna be the case for this one.

Mike Wall [00:42:12]:
So, well, this is sort of this, the shakeup that you're talking about. And you know, we, we thought for a long time that the first kind of, yeah, like the first Artemis landing mission with astronauts would be Artemis III in like 2027-ish. Um, you know, it kept like getting pushed back. Like the original date was, was hopefully gonna be 2024 or so, but it's been pushed back, but it was still Artemis III and they were gonna do it after Artemis II. But then just about 3 weeks ago, you know, in like late February, Jared Isaacman announced that actually, no, we're shaking up the Artemis architecture. And we're going to change Artemis 3. Artemis 3 is not going to the moon at all, it's going to Earth orbit. So it'll be like an Apollo 9, which was basically testing docking procedures and stuff like that with different moon hardware.

Mike Wall [00:42:51]:
And that's what, um, like, that's what Artemis 3 is going to be now. So they're going to— it'll, it'll carry astronauts and they'll do a bunch of tests, but they'll stay in Earth orbit. What they're going to do is basically practice docking with the Orion spacecraft and one or both of the private crewed moon landers that NASA has tasked with, with getting Artemis astronauts down on the lunar surface, one by SpaceX, one by Blue Origin. And they've, they've said, you know, like, whichever one is ready will do these practice docking maneuvers on Artemis III with them. If both are ready, then we may do it with both of them. So there's still— yeah, so there's still a lot of open-endedness about that.

Tariq Malik [00:43:26]:
What's the ha? Wait, you don't, you don't, you don't hold the belief, Rod, that, that two companies could independently have their moon landers ready to go?

Rod Pyle [00:43:34]:
Oh, well, nice, nice way to sterilize the question. You know, when SpaceX first got that award, I was sort of, oh, you go, guys, you know, because it was a much lower bid than—

Mike Wall [00:43:46]:
2021, too. I think it's important that it was like 5 years ago when they won that NASA contract.

Rod Pyle [00:43:51]:
Yeah. And we still thought Starship might mature on a linear scale. And since then, however, and, you know, not throwing shade at SpaceX, but it's like, tick tock, you know, you guys really got to get this thing going. And we haven't seen seen, at least I haven't seen any tangible evidence of a lot of work going on the lunar lander. They're still fiddling around with, with, you know, getting into orbit and making a fully complete test of the Starship system. So, Mike, polish your crystal ball for a moment and tell us what you expect. I know this is hateful. Tell us what you expect in terms of what's going to happen for Artemis 3 if it's on time.

Rod Pyle [00:44:27]:
Who, if anybody, do they actually meet up with in orbit?

Mike Wall [00:44:30]:
Yeah, it's, um, it's, it could go either way, I think. I know that's wishy-washy, but I mean, keep in mind, you know, we've, we've seen Starship under development for a long time. It launched for the first time in, in April 2023, so just about 3 years ago. They're gearing up for the 12th test flight, which is with this new V3 Starship, which is the version that will be capable of going to the moon and to Mars. So theoretically, and they have this huge kind of manufacturing complex system going down at Starbase in South Texas where they're churning out lots of Starship Super Heavy boosters and Ship upper stages. And SpaceX's history with the Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy, you like have to give them the benefit of the doubt that once they figure some basic things out with Starship, that they will be able to ratchet up pretty quickly. There's still a lot of complicating things they need to do. Like, yeah, just, just like you mentioned, they, they still haven't reached orbit.

Mike Wall [00:45:19]:
All their test flights have been suborbital. So they, they, they need to demonstrate getting to Earth orbit. They also need to demonstrate off-Earth refueling. There's a bit of controversy or kind of debate about how many times, how many missions you'll have to launch to a Starship upper stage that's going to the moon to fuel it up to get there. Some people say it could be like a dozen or so. So every single moonbound Starship lander would need 12, like, additional launches to dock with it and fuel it up. I mean, some of the SpaceX people say it's less than that, but it's kind of up in the air as far as we know. And there's a life support stuff, like, obviously they have a lot of experience with life support with their Crew Dragon which has flown multiple missions to the space station and free-flying in Earth orbit.

Mike Wall [00:45:57]:
But Starship has never been outfitted with any kind of semblance of life support. So that would have to— it's a much bigger scale, it's a much bigger vehicle. So that remains to be, to be done as well. And then, but there's still more flight heritage with Starship than with Blue Moon, which is the, the Blue Origin lander. But you, you've seen a real push by Blue Origin to like ratchet up the Blue Moon work. They, they recently said they're standing down from their New Shepard kind of space tourism flights to suborbital space. For at least the next 2 years while they devote more resources to getting Blue Moon up and running. And they're supposed to launch like the first uncrewed kind of test flight of that thing in the next, I don't know, few months maybe, or next by the end of the year anyway.

Mike Wall [00:46:38]:
So they're, they're going like full out. And, um, these are very difficult things. I, I don't know. I think it could go either way. I think it's possible one of them is ready. I think it's possible they both could be ready. I'm not going to bet on which one because both of them have immense resources, and I think they're both very committed to this. Like, I think SpaceX is already smarting a little bit from some of these— they've taken a few black eyes with— it was publicly stated by, by the previous NASA administrator, Bill Nelson, that, you know, that the, the sort of delays with Starship have affected the Artemis timeline.

Mike Wall [00:47:06]:
And in, in fact, like, the, the kind of NASA— the, the, like, acting NASA administrator who, who was leading the agency before Jared Isaacman, yeah, Sean Duffy, had said he was opening up the Artemis 3 landing contract to other players because SpaceX's development was too slow with Starship. So I think they're obviously very motivated to do this and do this fast, and their track record suggests you should take that seriously. But it's a very difficult thing, so it's just really hard to know.

Rod Pyle [00:47:33]:
Yeah, he's not taking the bet. Okay, wait, wait a second, Tariq, we got to go to a break. But before we do, I keep seeing, Mike, thumbnails on YouTube with stories about SpaceX's new design doesn't need refueling to land on the moon, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It's this short stumpy thing on 4 landing legs like an eagle out of space, 1999. Is there any credence to any of this or is it all just dreamland?

Mike Wall [00:47:58]:
Not that I've seen. As far as I know, Starship is their vehicle, right? I mean, there was back in the early days when they were talking about going to the moon, they had this like red or going to Mars. They had this Red Dragon mission concept where they'd send a version of Crew Dragon, but that's that's been off the table for years, you know, ever since they started developing Starship. It was like, this is the, the thing, this is the thing that's going to open up the solar system, Starship or bust.

Rod Pyle [00:48:21]:
So, so this was supposedly a shorter Starship that would either land on much wider landing legs, much closer to the lunar surface, or as one illustration had it, landing sideways on landing legs. But that would be kind of a major departure from the design.

Mike Wall [00:48:35]:
Yeah, I mean, I mean, I guess we'll see. I haven't seen anything official. From SpaceX or from Elon Musk, but like, I don't know.

Rod Pyle [00:48:42]:
Yeah, well, they, they do pivot faster than most. Okay, let's pivot to a break and we'll be right back with Tariq's next burning question.

Tariq Malik [00:48:49]:
So I just had one more question, Mike, to kind of close out the, the lunar lander thing, uh, especially for that test for Artemis 3 that's coming out. Is— could we see— do you think, do you think this is possible that let's say that these landers actually aren't ready but either Blue Origin or SpaceX or both have a docking system that they can just slap on a, like, a shell, and that they could say, okay, this is what you're going to go rendezvous with, is like this, this, this docking system shell thing? Or would that not be acceptable, do you think, to NASA? I know it's kind of like an out-there question, but I was just thinking about it this morning.

Mike Wall [00:49:29]:
I mean, it's, it's, it's hard to say. Like, I think— I mean, Jared Isaacman has said, has shown since he came into the top job that he's not afraid to shake things up and to do things. You know, he comes from the private sector. He's a tech billionaire and he's used to working fast. And he's a private astronaut himself. He's booked two flights with SpaceX, so he has experience actually being an astronaut and doing things in space. And I wouldn't be shocked if he decides that something new, a radical new approach is needed. You know, he did shake up Artemis III and like Artemis IV, the entire Artemis architecture.

Mike Wall [00:50:04]:
Be totally different than it had been for years, right? So I don't know about the specific that you're talking about, but I mean, I would not be shocked if he decided that, well, this is not the approach that's gonna get us to the moon before China, or that's gonna be what we need for a sustainable kind of human development on the moon, which is what Artemis is all about. And we need to go quicker now and then kind of fill it out later with more sustainable. It like wouldn't be surprising to me if he did come to some kind of decision like that, because that's the kind of guy he's shown himself to be, is to be willing to, to make big decisions and big, big changes.

Tariq Malik [00:50:38]:
I could see like both sides of the coin, you know, I could see like, okay, you're gonna send up the bare bones lander that can do the job, but it can also dock and that's good. Or I could see them saying, hey, look what Boeing did with Starliner where they kept doing a test flight without entire vehicle fully done.

Mike Wall [00:50:55]:
Yeah. Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:50:55]:
And then look how well that turned out. I'm being sarcastic.

Mike Wall [00:50:59]:
Yeah.

Tariq Malik [00:50:59]:
People who are listening, I'm making a big face and everything. Something, uh, that, you know, it didn't turn out. And so if you don't have it like full up ready to go, you're not going, and we're gonna find something else.

Rod Pyle [00:51:09]:
Like, but it's interesting, there is a historical context for this. In the Gemini days, they used to launch, uh, an Agena. Yeah, yeah, which was just basically a rocket engine with a docking collar on the front, and then the Gemini capsule with two astronauts that it could dock with that, and they could blast themselves to higher orbits and all that kind of stuff.

Tariq Malik [00:51:29]:
Almost killed Neil Armstrong, right?

Rod Pyle [00:51:30]:
One flight where the Agena didn't work because the, um, the, uh, it blew up on launch. Then they launched an Augmented Target Docking Adapter, the ATDA, which was just basically a rocket stage with maneuvering jets. It didn't have a big engine to move anywhere. But then the, um, the nose cone got all hung up, so they couldn't even dock with that. So they did—

Tariq Malik [00:51:54]:
angry alligator—

Rod Pyle [00:51:55]:
instead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there is some precedent for that, I guess. But yeah, you think given Given the paucity of budget these days in terms of at least comparing this to the Apollo program and what we're up against, you'd think, you'd hope that he'd say, okay, look, let's just either hold off until you're ready to send up your lunar lander, or maybe they'll put landing legs on a Dragon capsule and call it a day.

Tariq Malik [00:52:19]:
Who knows?

Rod Pyle [00:52:20]:
I mean, all kinds of things could happen. Where are we? This was a long-running story that kind of disappeared a while ago. Axiom's supposed to be developing our lunar EVA suit so that we actually have something to walk around on the moon in, which we haven't done since the '60s, either done the walking or done the suit design. Where are we with the EVA suits?

Mike Wall [00:52:41]:
Yeah, that's another kind of hurdle that needs to be cleared before we can start doing things on the moon. I mean, they're continuing to be developed, and I think the plan is to give them a test on Artemis III. I I think the plan is to have them ready by Artemis 3, and I guess 2027, we shall see.

Rod Pyle [00:53:02]:
Huh.

Tariq Malik [00:53:04]:
Wow. With Prada, no doubt, right?

Rod Pyle [00:53:07]:
So, so Mike, what the heck is happening with, with Lunar Gateway? It comes, it goes.

Tariq Malik [00:53:14]:
Yeah, we said we're gonna talk about that gateway. You said, you said they're still doing it, Mike, but maybe are they still doing it?

Mike Wall [00:53:20]:
I think the writing is on the wall. All that it's not gonna— probably not gonna happen. You know, there's, there's not a lot of mention of the Gateway, you know, when, when Jared Isaacman announced the big reshuffle for—

Rod Pyle [00:53:29]:
everybody kind of looks at their shoes, right?

Mike Wall [00:53:31]:
Yeah, nobody— I mean, there's, there's not really a mention of Gateway, and people have asked, have asked NASA officials about that, like, explicitly during a few press conferences. So what does this mean for Gateway? And the basic answer is, well, you know, we're keeping everything in mind and we have an open mind, and we're just— we'll talk about that later when we make a decision. So it does— it doesn't seem great, like, this thing that was for a long time like a core part of the Artemis architecture apparently is no longer regarded as such. Doesn't mean it's definitely out of the picture, but it seems like it's not on as firm a ground as it used to be. So I, I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's, if it's canceled.

Tariq Malik [00:54:04]:
That's, that's such a ripple effect because I'm pretty sure that like Lockheed or Northrop Grumman have already built like a power, a propulsion module thing already for that. Uh, like you mentioned earlier, uh, Canada is on the hook for Canada Arm 3. SpaceX has the contract for some kind of supply tug that's supposed to go there. But the whole thing, like, Station Gateway was built to be in that near rectilinear orbit thing, that halo orbit. And then it was all supposed to be the big next thing after, I guess, the ISS retired, and to give space station people, I guess, something to do until the commercial space station stuff comes up and running. So That'd be weird. Apollo didn't have a space station. I think we would have liked to have had one, but, uh, but that's sort of the argument of the people who want us to see it axed.

Mike Wall [00:54:54]:
It's like, what, what purpose does it serve if we want to go to the surface? Why are we kind of putzing around in lunar orbit? Like, why not just go to the moon, go to the surface, build a base if that's the plan, just do that. So yeah, that's, that's the argument that it would be kind of extraneous to the whole moon base project, which Artemis is supposedly all about.

Tariq Malik [00:55:12]:
Maybe you could cut down on the amount of Starship launches that you would need because you've already got the lunar lander all the way at the moon and you can just fill it back up again with whatever. I don't know if that even cuts down the amount of launches you would have to do. So we got to do the Starship math on that, figure it out.

Mike Wall [00:55:29]:
Well, I don't think anybody knows the Starship math about how many refueling efforts are needed and all that stuff. It's still kind of hazy, right?

Rod Pyle [00:55:35]:
So I will never forget that press conference where that reporter said, how many will there be exactly? And the SpaceX rep, Tiffany or Amber or whatever her name was, kind of went, well, 'What do you think it'll be about the blah blah blah?' And Nelson, in a rare moment—

Tariq Malik [00:55:48]:
No, they didn't say. They didn't want to say how many. That's what I'm saying.

Rod Pyle [00:55:50]:
Well, she was flubbering around. 'Maybe, you know, 6, 11, 100.' And Nelson said, 'I do believe the reporter asked you exactly how many refueling flights.' And so she still wouldn't be pinned down to a number. So, Mike—

Tariq Malik [00:56:05]:
No, I think she said 15 to 19 or something like that.

Rod Pyle [00:56:08]:
Well, she kind of muddled. She kind of trailed off. 'I think about blah blah blah.

Tariq Malik [00:56:12]:
I can't hear you.' Oh, we'll find that again.

Rod Pyle [00:56:13]:
I gotta go put a bird outside the window.

Tariq Malik [00:56:14]:
Great moment.

Rod Pyle [00:56:15]:
Okay, hush. So Mike, you mentioned the word moon base, and maybe we can end on this. We recently read that there's some legislation heading, finally, years later, to talk about the moon base that Artemis was supposed to be building towards from the very beginning. Have I got that right?

Mike Wall [00:56:33]:
Yeah, I think so. It's just like buy-in from Congress, like officially. I think that's not surprising though. Congress has been on board with the broad push to beat China back to the moon. It's sort of a bipartisan support as an issue. And, um, yeah, it's not surprising that they're sort of coming to show their support for this, for this project. Um, we'll, we'll see if it means there'll be more money for it, you know. I mean, like you were talking about, a big, like, a big difference between what we saw during Apollo and what we see now.

Mike Wall [00:57:01]:
I mean, why Apollo could happen so fast is because of the money, you know. Each, each year during the height of Apollo, like, like, yeah, NASA got about 4% of the federal budget, and now it's like 0.25% of the federal budget, something like that. In that rate, it's, it's, yeah, it's like an order of magnitude less as a share of the federal budget.

Rod Pyle [00:57:19]:
Almost exactly.

Mike Wall [00:57:20]:
Yeah. So it's like, it's like really, that's a big difference in why we could do so much stuff during Apollo and why we can't do as much stuff today. And, and also NASA's doing a lot more things, like a lot more science missions.

Rod Pyle [00:57:29]:
Exactly. I was going to say, you know, back, back then we had Gemini, Mariner Mars, Mariner Venus, and a couple lunar things and a handful of Earth satellites. And now we got We've got stuff all over the solar system by the dozens. So yeah.

Mike Wall [00:57:43]:
So when people ask why can't NASA do what it did 60 years ago or whatever, that's a big part of the answer is they don't have the money and they're spread more thinly. If Congress's endorsement of the moon base comes with extra money, I'm sure NASA would very much appreciate that, but we shall see.

Rod Pyle [00:58:00]:
That would show unusual courage.

Mike Wall [00:58:03]:
Yeah. Well, yeah. The, like, the war in Iran might get an extra $200 billion. I'm sure NASA would, would be happy for a slice of that pie.

Tariq Malik [00:58:13]:
Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, so I'm glad that you said it. So, well, I guess we can end just because we have to get to the moon first, at least to circle it, before we can think about moon bases and moon rovers, which we didn't talk about this episode. But yeah, but that's definitely something that's in the drawing books as well. What are the next immediate things that people should be looking for to know if Artemis II is going to actually get off the ground? No joke, on April Fool's Day. So, and on April 1st, is— are there other key tests that NASA is going to do or announcements? So obviously the crew has to get to Florida. That's one thing, right? But what else?

Mike Wall [00:58:56]:
Yeah, well, it's kind of hard to say because there's not going to be another wet dress rehearsal. So that was always the big kind of gating moment is like, did it pass the wet dress? Did the fueling— like, were Were there any leaks during the fueling? So I'm not sure what the milestones are gonna be. NASA hasn't been super forthcoming about the exact plan between now and launch. We'll just have to wait for some updates. They'll do all their systems checks on the pad, just check the batteries, all that stuff, check the seals, all the stuff that they do in the lead up to launch. And yeah, we'll just have to see if those go well. But with no wet dress rehearsal, there isn't like this huge milestone thing. Have to pass.

Tariq Malik [00:59:31]:
If the crew gets to Florida and NASA schedules a launch readiness review briefing at L-3, then maybe they'll be ready to go. Okay.

Mike Wall [00:59:40]:
It's like getting real for sure.

Tariq Malik [00:59:42]:
That's right. That's right. So, um, you guys got to get serious about getting on airplanes. You know, by the way, if they delay— because the window Mike said is the April 1st to April 6th right now, and then April 30th— and if they delay to April 6th and get off the ground, that means that these astronauts are going to be around the moon on Tax Day. Apollo 13, and I hope they've all paid their taxes already, or at least gotten exempt status. I'm gonna—

Mike Wall [01:00:06]:
then we can write a story about it.

Tariq Malik [01:00:08]:
Then we can write a story about it. That's right, only at space.com. Please, please go read, everybody.

Rod Pyle [01:00:13]:
So for the low-hanging fruit, well, I want to thank everybody for joining us today for episode number 202, 202, to call Artemis Imminent, uh, with Space Jock Mike Wallach. Mike, remind us where we might best stalk you online.

Mike Wall [01:00:30]:
Uh, I'm on—

Rod Pyle [01:00:30]:
Or follow, follow.

Tariq Malik [01:00:32]:
Stalk, he said.

Mike Wall [01:00:34]:
I'm, I'm like, I'm on X, Michael D. Wall, but I don't post very often there, if at all. So I would just go to space.com to the homepage and you can, you can find me there in our search bar and see all the stuff I've been working on or just, yeah, yeah. I mean, just like see our spaceflight and tech sections and see all the stories that we're churning out.

Tariq Malik [01:00:53]:
Buy his book.

Mike Wall [01:00:55]:
There, there, like, will be a lot of Artemis stories coming in the next couple weeks, that's for sure.

Rod Pyle [01:00:58]:
Yes, buy his book, which is called—

Mike Wall [01:01:00]:
it is called Out There. It's like, uh, it came out in 2018, I believe. It's like talking about the search for alien life and what it might mean, how, how that search is proceeding or was proceeding, and how— what, what it might mean if we actually find alien life, what it might look like, and all that sort of stuff.

Rod Pyle [01:01:16]:
So yeah, that puts you one book above Well, anyway, Tariq, where should we look for you?

Tariq Malik [01:01:24]:
I wonder where you were going with that statement, Rod.

Rod Pyle [01:01:28]:
Where do we find you?

Tariq Malik [01:01:30]:
Well, you can find me at space.com as always. In 2 weeks, maybe you'll find me in Florida. In 3 weeks, maybe Rod will be together in Houston. And of course, on all the socials @tariqjmalik, on YouTube @spacetronplays. And this weekend we're celebrating Eid and a new season for Fortnite, new season for Marvel Rivals, a lot of good stuff for video games. So if you like video games, come find me there.

Rod Pyle [01:01:55]:
Because why wouldn't you? And of course you can find me at pylebooks.com or at adastramagazine.com or probably in a couple of weeks in Houston at a Roadway Inn or a Motel 6 because I'm sure that's where I'll end up having to stay.

Tariq Malik [01:02:08]:
And remember, leave the light on for you, Rod.

Rod Pyle [01:02:10]:
Yeah, please. You can always drop us a line at twist@twit.tv. We do welcome your comments, suggestions, ideas, and space jokes. That's twis@twit.tv. New episodes publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher, so make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, and give us reviews. We'll take whatever, whatever denomination that they have, whether it's thumbs up or stars or other things. And you can also follow the Twit Tech Podcast Network @twit on Twitter and on Facebook at TWiTTV and on Instagram.

Rod Pyle [01:02:41]:
And we thank you for being with us for 202— count them— 202 blazingly fun, blindingly entertaining episodes. And we will be back next week with number 203. See you then. Thanks, Mike.

Tariq Malik [01:02:55]:
Thank you.

Mike Wall [01:02:56]:
Thank you.