334: We Nailed the Math!

00:00SPEAKER- Hey guys, this is Kishore.

00:02SPEAKERIs this the tech pod IT hotline?

00:05SPEAKER- Yeah, what do you need help with?

00:07SPEAKER- I'm having a kind of unusual problem.

00:10SPEAKERI can't quite get Outlook to work up here.

00:14SPEAKER- You put that Outlook is not,

00:15SPEAKERit doesn't really work anymore.

00:16SPEAKERIt's not a thing people use, I'm sorry.

00:19SPEAKER- But I'm using a Surface Pro.

00:20SPEAKERShouldn't Outlook just work on a Microsoft product?

00:25SPEAKER- Which is it old Outlook or is it new Outlook?

00:28SPEAKER- Oh, how do you tell it's ugly?

00:31SPEAKERDoes that help?

00:32SPEAKER- No, that's just Outlook, that's how it's supposed to be.

00:36SPEAKERLet's see, how many copies of Outlook

00:38SPEAKERdo you have running at this moment?

00:39SPEAKER- I have two open and there's so many instances

00:44SPEAKERlisted in the task manager, I don't know what to do.

00:47SPEAKER- Let me call Brad over at the IT console,

00:50SPEAKERsee if he has a script you can run.

00:52SPEAKER- It says here that we don't support Outlook

00:54SPEAKERin low earth orbit, actually.

00:56SPEAKER- I heard that Outlook was to be used for entertainment

00:58SPEAKERpurposes only, it's like all Microsoft products.

01:01SPEAKERWe're just, Outlook is only for entertainment,

01:03SPEAKERnot for real use.

01:07SPEAKERYeah, Spaceman, the final frontier,

01:09SPEAKERthe IT channels of the Starship Intrepid.

01:15SPEAKERNo, that's not it.

01:16SPEAKERWhat is it, is it Intrepid?

01:17SPEAKER- I don't know what you're talking about.

01:19SPEAKER- What do they call, what's the name for the capsule?

01:21SPEAKER- Orion is the capsule.

01:22SPEAKER- Well, but that's the brand, they named it.

01:25SPEAKER- Oh, this specific one has a name?

01:27SPEAKER- Yeah.

01:28SPEAKER- I don't know.

01:29SPEAKER- Hold on, I can't believe, I've listened to this

01:32SPEAKERliterally a thousand times over the last week

01:34SPEAKERand I don't remember what they call it.

01:38SPEAKERIt's not on the website either.

01:40SPEAKER- It's almost like they might've relied on Copilot

01:43SPEAKERto build this website in addition to Outlook

01:46SPEAKERto send emails.

01:49SPEAKER- Yeah, so we're gonna talk about,

01:51SPEAKERwell, hold on, we'll do that in the intro.

01:53SPEAKERKishore, welcome to the show, it's good to have you here.

01:55SPEAKER- Yeah, it's great to be back and good to be back

01:58SPEAKERon Norman Will Make a Tech Pod.

02:01SPEAKER- Nope, that was last week.

02:02SPEAKER- Oh man.

02:03SPEAKER- Oh no, no, it's somebody else.

02:05SPEAKER- Replaced that quickly.

02:07SPEAKER- Oh, the dulcet tones are back, I feel at home.

02:11SPEAKER- Yeah, welcome back, Brad,

02:12SPEAKERbut it's good to have you back, I hope you feel better.

02:14SPEAKER- I'm here in slightly more cyber than when I left.

02:17SPEAKER- It's Integrity is the name of the capsule, just FYI,

02:20SPEAKERnot Intrepid, so yeah, the Integrity,

02:23SPEAKERbut we'll talk about it, but yeah,

02:26SPEAKERI mean, look, we have a lot of stuff to talk about.

02:29SPEAKERLet's just start the show.

02:30SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:53SPEAKER(upbeat music)

02:59SPEAKER- Welcome to Brad and Will Made a Tech Pod, I'm Will.

03:01SPEAKER- I'm Brad.

03:03SPEAKER- And joining us today as you guessed from the cold open

03:05SPEAKERis one Kishore Hari, welcome back to the show, Kishore.

03:07SPEAKER- It's great to be back and good to be back

03:09SPEAKERin a moment of scientific achievement.

03:14SPEAKER- Yeah, I think that's kind of what we said

03:15SPEAKERwhen we were like, should we do

03:16SPEAKERan Artemis episode this week?

03:17SPEAKERAnd like, I think it was, I actually was just like,

03:19SPEAKERyou know, it'd be nice to have a topic

03:20SPEAKERthat's just kind of uplifting for once.

03:23SPEAKER- Yeah, we, well, and Kishore, you were for a while

03:27SPEAKERthe harbinger of doom when you came on the show.

03:30SPEAKERSo it's exciting to have you here

03:32SPEAKERto talk about something fun for a change.

03:34SPEAKER- Hey, it's only early in the podcast.

03:36SPEAKERDoom might still come for us all before the end.

03:40SPEAKER- I managed to sneak a little bit of cynicism

03:42SPEAKERinto the show notes, so we'll see.

03:44SPEAKER- Yeah, so we're gonna talk about Artemis II today,

03:47SPEAKERyou know, and there's a lot around Artemis that's hinky,

03:51SPEAKERI guess, from a politics sense,

03:53SPEAKERlike we're defunding science

03:55SPEAKERacross the entire federal government

03:58SPEAKERand spending a ton of money going to the moon,

04:00SPEAKERwhich people have questions about.

04:01SPEAKERI'm excited about going back to the moon

04:04SPEAKERfor a whole multitude of reasons,

04:06SPEAKERmost of them not related to politics.

04:09SPEAKERBut yeah, I'm curious, kind of,

04:11SPEAKERlike this is the first crewed SLS flight,

04:15SPEAKERwhich I, if you'd asked me 10 years ago

04:17SPEAKERif I thought it was gonna happen,

04:17SPEAKERI would have probably said

04:18SPEAKERthey're never gonna launch an SLS rocket

04:20SPEAKERbecause it seemed like a congressionally created boondoggle

04:24SPEAKERdesigned to fail.

04:26SPEAKERSo like, I guess this is a victory.

04:28SPEAKERIt's like, this is US rockets taking astronauts to space,

04:32SPEAKERnot on private stuff, and going beyond low Earth orbit

04:35SPEAKERfor the first time in my lifetime,

04:36SPEAKERlike literally my lifetime.

04:38SPEAKERI walked out last Thursday night with my daughter

04:41SPEAKERand I looked up, and my wife,

04:42SPEAKERand I looked up at the stars and I said,

04:44SPEAKER"Hey, kiddo, you and I have something in common

04:47SPEAKERthat today is the first day we can look up

04:50SPEAKERat the moon and see people on the way to the moon

04:52SPEAKERin our lives."

04:53SPEAKERShe's like, "Wait, that's never happened

04:54SPEAKERfor you before either?"

04:55SPEAKERI was like, "No, they went in 1972, I wasn't born yet."

04:58SPEAKERSo yeah, it's wild.

05:01SPEAKER- I have to admit, I was caught off guard by this

05:04SPEAKERin the sense of how I reacted to it

05:07SPEAKERbecause I also shared some cynicism.

05:10SPEAKERLike Artemis has been plagued by delays and interference,

05:17SPEAKERlike technical delays with like the rocket design.

05:19SPEAKERThere's been a lot of issues

05:22SPEAKERwith the SLS rocket stage having hydrogen leaks.

05:26SPEAKERAnd it's been three years since there's really been launches

05:32SPEAKERand just really a giant rocket sitting on a pad

05:36SPEAKERfor a long time.

05:37SPEAKERAnd so it was hard to imagine getting here

05:40SPEAKERwhere we have some really amazing crewed flights,

05:44SPEAKERbut I was caught up in the emotion of it.

05:48SPEAKERAnd it's partially because I saw Project Hail Mary

05:54SPEAKERa week ago and I was caught up

05:56SPEAKERin the hope core of that moment.

05:58SPEAKERAnd then you hear the astronauts talk and you're like,

06:01SPEAKER"Damn, they are better than me.

06:03SPEAKERThey are so cool and they are so uplifting

06:07SPEAKERand they recognize just the wonder of the trip."

06:14SPEAKERNow, that isn't to say that this trip

06:16SPEAKERisn't fueled by politics, just like Apollo was.

06:19SPEAKERApollo was sent because of the space race

06:22SPEAKERand Yuri Gagarin making it to space

06:25SPEAKERand that fueled all of the resources

06:27SPEAKERthat poured into the Apollo mission.

06:30SPEAKERWe're not in a terribly different place here.

06:34SPEAKERArtemis is largely fueled in part by China and Russia

06:39SPEAKERmaking trips to the South Pole of the moon

06:43SPEAKERvia robotic landers.

06:44SPEAKERAnd in China's case,

06:46SPEAKERafter the success of the Chang'e mission

06:49SPEAKERa couple of years ago,

06:51SPEAKERactually having a plan in the next 15 years

06:54SPEAKERto land a crew in the South Pole of the moon.

07:00SPEAKERSo this is part of the politics of the space race

07:04SPEAKERthat was true in the Apollo mission

07:06SPEAKERand now here in Artemis.

07:09SPEAKERBut at the same time,

07:10SPEAKERit just feels incredible to see this kind of

07:14SPEAKERhuman achievement take hold.

07:16SPEAKEREven though it feels a little different than Apollo.

07:19SPEAKER- Like I've seen from earth to the moon.

07:21SPEAKERSo I assume that everybody is going to the South Pole

07:23SPEAKERof the moon because they're big fans, but is that it?

07:25SPEAKEROr is there some other reason

07:26SPEAKERthey want to be on the South Pole?

07:27SPEAKER- The South Pole of moon is the one that is the most shaded.

07:30SPEAKERSo you'll generally have two weeks of sunlight,

07:33SPEAKERtwo weeks of darkness at the South Pole.

07:36SPEAKERIt's the most likely spot

07:39SPEAKERand we have science to verify this

07:40SPEAKERwhere there'll be water ice.

07:42SPEAKERSo if you're looking to have a habitat on the moon

07:46SPEAKERand you need water to help sustain humans living there

07:51SPEAKERto split into hydrogen and oxygen

07:53SPEAKERto make fuel and a breathable atmosphere,

07:57SPEAKERthat's gonna be the place to go.

07:59SPEAKERThere's also indication from numerous probes

08:02SPEAKERthat that is where helium-3 exists on the moon.

08:06SPEAKERHelium-3 is not something that exists

08:11SPEAKERin significant supply here on earth and we can't make it

08:15SPEAKERand is a key component to things like medical imaging.

08:19SPEAKERAnd it is a tremendous resource

08:22SPEAKERthat many countries are interested in developing technology

08:26SPEAKERto mine and return to the earth.

08:28SPEAKER- You also need that to trigger the mass relay drives,

08:30SPEAKERthat's how I recall, right?

08:31SPEAKERThat's an important component of that.

08:33SPEAKER- That's why we have to get to Mars

08:34SPEAKERto get all that prothean tech

08:35SPEAKERso we can start doing faster.

08:36SPEAKERActually, I was gonna ask, I pulled up,

08:38SPEAKERthere's a Wikipedia page entitled

08:40SPEAKERSpace Policy of the First Trump Administration,

08:42SPEAKERwhich basically has the text

08:44SPEAKERof all the various space policy directives

08:46SPEAKERthat were issued several years ago.

08:48SPEAKERSo in addition to the kind of low-key saber rattling

08:51SPEAKERyou're talking about toward like China and Russia,

08:53SPEAKERthere's a lot of language in these directives

08:56SPEAKERabout investors, private industry, space commerce,

09:00SPEAKERet cetera, et cetera.

09:02SPEAKERPlus, you know, all the privatization going on around

09:05SPEAKERSpaceX and Blue Origin and all these companies,

09:07SPEAKERlike is extraction and like kind of paving the way

09:11SPEAKERfor private commercial interests,

09:13SPEAKERdo you think also maybe a secondary driving force here

09:17SPEAKERor is this where my cynicism is too much?

09:20SPEAKER- It's hard to tease it all out

09:23SPEAKERbecause we've seen a lot of plans from the administration

09:27SPEAKERaround what the next 10 years of Artemis will look like.

09:32SPEAKERBut those plans are really dynamic

09:35SPEAKERand they're clearly omitting, you know, elements of it.

09:39SPEAKERIt is, remember the South Park episode

09:42SPEAKERcalled "Underpants Gnomes"? - Oh, no.

09:45SPEAKER- Where it's like- - There's a big question mark

09:46SPEAKERin the middle and it's like land on the moon

09:48SPEAKERand then profit and there's like-

09:49SPEAKER- Aha, yes, of course. - Oh, no.

09:51SPEAKER- Exactly, and like the plans are much better than that.

09:53SPEAKERAnd, you know, I don't want you to think

09:54SPEAKERthere's nothing in that question mark space,

09:56SPEAKERbut there is a lot of question marks.

09:58SPEAKERSo just like really briefly,

10:00SPEAKERlike already Artemis is an example of public-private

10:03SPEAKERpartnership, like when you look at SLS,

10:06SPEAKERthat isn't something NASA just made.

10:07SPEAKERIt's like Boeing and Northrop Grumman

10:10SPEAKERand all of these defense contractors.

10:12SPEAKERThey have plans for a lunar landing module

10:15SPEAKERthat there's competing designs from Blue Origin and SpaceX.

10:20SPEAKERThey have designs for building a habitat on the moon

10:23SPEAKERand there's numerous companies all working together on that.

10:27SPEAKERThere's collaborations with the Canadian Space Agency

10:30SPEAKERon a robotic arm that's gonna be key

10:32SPEAKERto docking the lunar lander to the space module.

10:38SPEAKERThere is, the European Space Agency

10:41SPEAKERis making elements of the habitat.

10:43SPEAKERThe Japanese Space Agency is making elements of this.

10:46SPEAKERSo it's a really complicated weave

10:48SPEAKERthat's much more global in nature

10:49SPEAKERthan what we experienced with the Apollo.

10:53SPEAKERBut I think a key element of the through line

10:56SPEAKERof what we've heard from the administration

10:58SPEAKERis we have to go faster.

11:00SPEAKERWe have to do this much cheaper

11:02SPEAKERthan how NASA has approached these missions in the past.

11:06SPEAKERAnd we have to do it with the support

11:09SPEAKERof public-private partnerships,

11:11SPEAKERwhich opens up the door to what you're saying

11:13SPEAKERabout resource extraction.

11:15SPEAKERBut I think the main goal that I read is like,

11:18SPEAKERwe need to get boots on the ground in these places

11:22SPEAKERbecause to establish like US provenance,

11:28SPEAKERlack of a better term, on the area.

11:31SPEAKER- Okay, so good and bad mixed together,

11:33SPEAKERthat is the TLDR there.

11:35SPEAKER- Yeah, I think we could save this for later,

11:37SPEAKERbut the Scientific American ran a pretty good article

11:39SPEAKERabout some astronomical opportunities on the moon,

11:42SPEAKERwhich are kind of downstream of like,

11:45SPEAKERhey, there's a lot of money suddenly

11:46SPEAKERto get back to the moon on a regular basis.

11:48SPEAKERAnd so at least science will pay back

11:50SPEAKERonto these other interests as it always has,

11:53SPEAKERbut we can get to that toward the end.

11:55SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, if you watch the Artemis press conference

12:01SPEAKERfrom a few years ago, where the NASA administrator,

12:03SPEAKERor not a few years ago, last year,

12:05SPEAKERthat got up there and laid out the vision for this,

12:08SPEAKERit's permanent human settlement,

12:09SPEAKERwhere every six months there's a mission going up there.

12:13SPEAKERAnd with that is gonna open up all sorts of opportunities

12:16SPEAKERfor new kinds of science,

12:17SPEAKERbecause we'll be beyond the kind of atmospheric disturbance

12:21SPEAKERof the earth to do different kinds of radio

12:26SPEAKERand other kinds of astronomy.

12:28SPEAKERNow, it's not the only option,

12:31SPEAKERbut you can do some really cool stuff up there.

12:33SPEAKERBut the first step is like,

12:35SPEAKERwe have to be able to build a permanent sort of outputs there

12:40SPEAKERto fuel that kind of work.

12:43SPEAKER- Two things on the uplifting quality of this whole,

12:45SPEAKERlike what you just described,

12:48SPEAKERlike I just kind of put myself in the mental place

12:49SPEAKERof say three years from now,

12:52SPEAKERor maybe it's more than three years, but not too many years.

12:54SPEAKERLike the idea of a launch happening every six months

12:57SPEAKERand just knowing there are people up there all the time,

12:59SPEAKERlike just kind of filled me with a little sense

13:01SPEAKERof like, oh man, like good forward-looking things

13:04SPEAKERare still possible.

13:05SPEAKERLike I hope to live in a world like that.

13:08SPEAKER- It's, I mean, you think about how normal people

13:13SPEAKERliving on the ISS has become over the last 25 years,

13:16SPEAKERright, 26 years.

13:18SPEAKERLike people have lived constantly in space for 25 years,

13:22SPEAKERwhich is, when we were kids, when we were young,

13:25SPEAKERwas unthinkable.

13:26SPEAKERThey were doing three space shuttle launches a year,

13:29SPEAKERand there were a couple of Russian guys

13:30SPEAKERthat were stuck on Mir at any given time.

13:32SPEAKERAnd it was unusual to have space be constantly habituated,

13:40SPEAKERhabitated, it's too early for long words.

13:43SPEAKERShould we, so okay, so this is the second Artemis flight.

13:48SPEAKERThe first one was uncrewed.

13:49SPEAKERIt was just to go around, orbit the moon for a while,

13:52SPEAKERand then come back.

13:53SPEAKERAnd they were doing things like collecting radiation data

13:55SPEAKERand testing the ablative heat shields

13:57SPEAKERand like testing whether the rocket could get there and back.

14:00SPEAKERThis one is a different trajectory.

14:04SPEAKERThis one, they just did a free return.

14:06SPEAKERSo like I played enough Kerbal to understand how this works.

14:08SPEAKERYou fire a big rocket to leave Earth orbit.

14:11SPEAKERYou zoop around the planet, the moon once,

14:13SPEAKERand then you come back faster than you got there,

14:17SPEAKERthanks to the miracle of gravity wells.

14:21SPEAKERWe're recording this on Friday morning.

14:22SPEAKERIf everything goes well this evening

14:24SPEAKERat a predetermined 6.32 p.m. Pacific time, I think,

14:27SPEAKERthey're going to hit the atmosphere, absorb a lot of heat,

14:33SPEAKERand splash down off the coast of San Diego

14:38SPEAKERafter six minutes of radio blackout

14:41SPEAKERand burning off 20,000, sorry, 5,000 miles per hour of speed

14:46SPEAKERor something like that.

14:47SPEAKERI can't remember how fast they're going at the actual,

14:51SPEAKERwhen they hit the atmosphere.

14:52SPEAKERBut yeah, so there's a bunch of things that happened

14:58SPEAKERfor the first time on this.

14:59SPEAKEROne is that it's the first time,

15:01SPEAKERwell, A, it's the furthest people have been from Earth.

15:03SPEAKERThey broke the Apollo 13 record set

15:06SPEAKERby Jim Lovell and the crew there.

15:10SPEAKERIt's the first time we've sent people

15:11SPEAKERbeyond low Earth orbit in 52, 53 years, 54 years.

15:16SPEAKER- There's like a ton of firsts on the crew.

15:18SPEAKERIt's like first person of color, first woman,

15:20SPEAKERfirst non-American, and oldest person,

15:23SPEAKERall to, I mean, they didn't land on the moon,

15:26SPEAKERbut to orbit or be that far.

15:29SPEAKER- To go there, yeah.

15:30SPEAKER- Actually, real quick, if I could jump in,

15:31SPEAKERI meant to mention earlier with the crew.

15:33SPEAKERDo you have any sense of what their backgrounds are?

15:36SPEAKERBecause the Apollo missions were so uniformly

15:40SPEAKERtest pilots, kind of like rocket jockey,

15:43SPEAKERformer military types that...

15:45SPEAKERI mean, I guess we've got the space shuttle program

15:47SPEAKERto draw on already there for the types of candidates

15:51SPEAKERthey've looked for for space missions.

15:53SPEAKERSo this is not that unusual.

15:56SPEAKER- Yeah, a lot of them have backgrounds

15:57SPEAKERin systems and flight engineering on this.

16:01SPEAKERAnd Christina Koch, who became an astronaut

16:10SPEAKERI think I want to say like 10 years ago,

16:13SPEAKERand already holds the record

16:14SPEAKERfor longest single space flight by a woman.

16:18SPEAKERSo she's been on the ISS for a long period of time.

16:22SPEAKERJeremy Hansen's from the Canadian Space Agency,

16:26SPEAKERand he's a fighter pilot.

16:28SPEAKERVictor Glover is like a big aeronautical engineer background.

16:34SPEAKER- And a naval aviator.

16:35SPEAKERThree out of four of them were fighter pilots

16:38SPEAKERor space pilots still doing a fair amount of that.

16:40SPEAKER- So very similar to the early Apollo,

16:42SPEAKERbut this mission is, as Will kind of laid out,

16:46SPEAKERis the trial run.

16:48SPEAKERSo we're not gonna send like scientists

16:50SPEAKERnecessarily up for this.

16:51SPEAKERLike you want more of the engineering types

16:54SPEAKERthat are going to kind of put the systems

16:56SPEAKERthrough the paces.

17:00SPEAKERLike Will, to your kind of point on the timeline of this,

17:04SPEAKERlike this is really like an amazing feat

17:08SPEAKERin terms of it's a 10 day mission,

17:10SPEAKERwhich is like I knew it was a 10 day mission,

17:14SPEAKERbut the actual feeling of it being on earth

17:17SPEAKERand like getting updates every day for 10 days

17:19SPEAKERis pretty remarkable in terms of how like I experienced that

17:24SPEAKERbecause we weren't alive during Apollo

17:26SPEAKERto actually experience that kind of real time.

17:28SPEAKERWe always like learn about it in like a two hour documentary

17:32SPEAKERor in this condensed format.

17:34SPEAKERSo we're really getting that experience

17:35SPEAKERof what it actually feels like in real time

17:38SPEAKERto travel to the moon.

17:40SPEAKERAnd I think that's what Artemis II

17:43SPEAKERis really kind of conveying.

17:45SPEAKERAnd then Artemis III is actually not going back to the moon.

17:47SPEAKERIt's actually gonna do low earth orbit maneuvers

17:51SPEAKERwhere they're gonna actually dock modules together

17:53SPEAKERto see if we can actually have like a lunar module

17:57SPEAKERcome off and then land.

17:59SPEAKERAnd then Artemis IV, which is tentatively 28, maybe 29,

18:04SPEAKERis actually going to land a module on the moon.

18:09SPEAKERAnd then they're hoping like 2032, somewhere around there,

18:13SPEAKERis when we're gonna start to see those regular flights

18:17SPEAKERstarting every like six months to 12 months.

18:19SPEAKERBut all of that's really fungible.

18:21SPEAKERBut this is really the big marker that we can do this,

18:26SPEAKERthat we can make the flight there and back safely.

18:29SPEAKER- Hey, the rockets work.

18:31SPEAKERHow much juice is left in the SLS when it gets

18:34SPEAKERto that high earth orbit?

18:37SPEAKERThey were talking last night.

18:38SPEAKERThere was a press conference last night

18:39SPEAKERthat they broadcast.

18:40SPEAKERAnd somebody, it might've been Eric Berger from ours,

18:44SPEAKERasked about how much they think they're gonna be able

18:49SPEAKERto get out of the SLS first stage.

18:50SPEAKER'Cause it's a really huge rocket.

18:53SPEAKERIt's first stage to high orbit, it seems like,

18:56SPEAKERwhich is crazy.

18:58SPEAKERAnd it seems like there might be more possibility

19:02SPEAKERto use it even for more of like the higher,

19:05SPEAKERto boost the orbit before they cut it loose.

19:08SPEAKERJust to give people a sense of scale,

19:10SPEAKERISS is at 400 kilometers above the ground generally,

19:14SPEAKER400 to 420, I think is the kind of elliptical.

19:17SPEAKERThe moon is 384,400 kilometers away on average.

19:25SPEAKER- I've been struggling the last few days

19:27SPEAKERbecause I learned all of these distances

19:29SPEAKERin miles as a kid.

19:31SPEAKERLike I know 250,000 miles, 93 million miles.

19:33SPEAKERAnd now everybody is slowly converting to metric

19:36SPEAKERand I'm having to relearn all of my fancy numbers.

19:40SPEAKER- Brad, get with the program.

19:44SPEAKERCome on, we're a kilometer crew over here now.

19:46SPEAKERWe're talking about space.

19:49SPEAKER- I gotta learn the calculation in my head.

19:51SPEAKER- I do it in light nanoseconds.

19:53SPEAKERI don't work in, I work in universal speeds.

19:57SPEAKERAnyway, so, okay, so they went their other first toilet

20:03SPEAKERpast low earth orbit.

20:05SPEAKERThat's been kind of a mixed bag, it seems like.

20:06SPEAKER- Wait, I'm sorry, what did Apollo use?

20:09SPEAKER- They used bags and hoses.

20:10SPEAKER- Wow. - Yeah, they went in bags.

20:12SPEAKERSo full on camping effect.

20:14SPEAKERLet's talk about the toilet really briefly.

20:16SPEAKERI know we're still going through first.

20:18SPEAKERThe toilet thing, which has gotten a ton of press

20:21SPEAKERis kind of interesting to me

20:23SPEAKERbecause like they thought they knew the problem,

20:25SPEAKERbut now it's come out that they don't know

20:28SPEAKERwhat the situation is.

20:29SPEAKERSo like the toilets function, but they can't vent them.

20:33SPEAKERSo they're getting backed up.

20:35SPEAKERAnd so they initially thought that maybe some ice

20:37SPEAKERwas forming on the vent.

20:40SPEAKERAnd so they actually did a maneuver to turn the ship

20:43SPEAKERtowards the sun and they use some like heating elements

20:47SPEAKERon the outside to melt some ice.

20:50SPEAKERAnd they saw some signs of like, of some ice,

20:54SPEAKERprobably like urine coming out.

20:56SPEAKERBut now it continues to sort of be a problem.

20:59SPEAKERSo they're actually not sure what's happening.

21:01SPEAKERLike the latest theory is that there's some biofilms

21:05SPEAKERthat are developing that are actually clogging some filters

21:08SPEAKERin the toilet.

21:09SPEAKERSo space toilet still unsettled.

21:13SPEAKER- Mixed bag. - Science.

21:15SPEAKER- The fun thing about that is last night

21:17SPEAKERwhen they were packing things up,

21:18SPEAKERI heard them ask Mission Control,

21:21SPEAKER"Hey, how do you want us to leave the toilet?"

21:23SPEAKERAnd they were like, "Leave it as it is,

21:24SPEAKER'cause we want to be able to study it

21:25SPEAKERwhen you guys get back."

21:27SPEAKERAnyway, other first, let's see,

21:30SPEAKERthe first solar eclipse from space, I think,

21:34SPEAKERwhich those pictures are unbelievable.

21:35SPEAKERI want to see the high-reses of those.

21:40SPEAKERI think that's the high point.

21:41SPEAKERI think like the thing you hit this earlier,

21:44SPEAKERthe thing that I didn't expect out of this,

21:45SPEAKERwell, oh, it's the first mission they've live streamed

21:48SPEAKERalmost the entire thing.

21:49SPEAKER- Yeah, so that's the thing I really wanted to ask you guys.

21:52SPEAKERI mean, we don't have to do a ton on this

21:53SPEAKER'cause most everybody but me has followed this stuff.

21:56SPEAKERBut the launch happened like when I was being discharged

21:58SPEAKERfrom the hospital last week after this neck surgery.

22:03SPEAKERAnd I was like drugged for a couple of days.

22:05SPEAKERThe point is I totally missed the launch.

22:07SPEAKERI missed like all the fanfare around.

22:09SPEAKERAnd I'm really curious 'cause obviously the world of 1972

22:12SPEAKERwas extremely different in telecommunications terms from now.

22:16SPEAKERLike I know they live streamed the whole thing,

22:17SPEAKERbut I'm really curious, like what was the experience

22:19SPEAKERon the ground of following this

22:21SPEAKERin terms of what NASA made available

22:23SPEAKERand like cool leveraging of modern streaming tech

22:27SPEAKERand cameras and stuff like that?

22:28SPEAKER- It's been unbelievable.

22:30SPEAKERI mean, just to be clear, they live stream the launch.

22:32SPEAKERThey live stream almost all the launches.

22:33SPEAKEREverybody does that.

22:34SPEAKERThat's old hat.

22:35SPEAKERThe thing that I've never seen before

22:36SPEAKERis that they had a 24/7 live stream going on YouTube

22:40SPEAKERor maybe not 24/7.

22:41SPEAKERI think they take breaks when the crew's asleep at night.

22:43SPEAKERBut basically it's like the big brother house.

22:46SPEAKERLike they have a camera in the cabin.

22:50SPEAKERThey have cameras mounted on the solar,

22:52SPEAKERon the wings of the solar's GoPros.

22:54SPEAKERAnd they're giving you a feed of that or mission control

22:57SPEAKERor the inside of the cabin at any given moment

23:00SPEAKERthroughout the day.

23:01SPEAKERAnd they're overlaying the mission control,

23:04SPEAKERthe back and forth mission control on top of that,

23:07SPEAKERas well as occasionally having like the NASA,

23:10SPEAKERlike I don't know what their role is,

23:12SPEAKERbut they're essentially the NASA streamer.

23:14SPEAKERIt comes on as like, yo, what up chat?

23:16SPEAKERToday we're talking about solar heating

23:21SPEAKERon the left side of the panel.

23:22SPEAKERThey break down stuff like the toilet.

23:24SPEAKERThey run NASA promotional videos.

23:26SPEAKERLike sometimes during breaks last night,

23:28SPEAKERthey showed an older video of the crew tasting food.

23:33SPEAKERAnd they had a whole package about how food

23:35SPEAKERon the space station, on the Artemis and space station work

23:39SPEAKERand how they decide what meals to pack and stuff like that.

23:42SPEAKERBy the way, Kishore, you'll like this.

23:44SPEAKEROne of the more common breakfasts, vegetable quiche.

23:47SPEAKER- Oh, nice.

23:48SPEAKER- Yeah.

23:49SPEAKER- See, astronauts are just better than us.

23:51SPEAKERThey have good taste.

23:53SPEAKER- Yeah.

23:54SPEAKERBut it's something I've left on in the background all day

23:59SPEAKERwhile I'm sitting at my computer working,

24:00SPEAKERjust 'cause it's absolutely fascinating to get this glimpse.

24:04SPEAKERAnd it was, correct me if I'm wrong,

24:06SPEAKERbut I watched the launch.

24:08SPEAKERI didn't watch a lot of the stuff post launch.

24:10SPEAKERAnd then I tuned in when I realized

24:12SPEAKERthey were doing the lunar flyby and they were streaming it.

24:15SPEAKERAnd like there were 120,000 or 150,000 people

24:18SPEAKERwatching on Twitch that day.

24:21SPEAKERIt was incredible.

24:22SPEAKERLike we were getting incredible footage

24:24SPEAKERand you got to see how they actually worked

24:25SPEAKERrather than just the output of that work,

24:27SPEAKERwhich was the best part.

24:29SPEAKER- Yeah, I think the difference for me is sort of twofold.

24:32SPEAKERLike first, this is the first crude launch of this scale

24:38SPEAKERthat is in the kind of attention economy that we exist in.

24:41SPEAKERSo as much as there is the feeds that Will described

24:45SPEAKERfrom NASA itself and inside the ship,

24:48SPEAKERthere's also all like the influencers

24:51SPEAKERand the science communicators

24:53SPEAKERalso doing their kind of breakdown and reaction.

24:56SPEAKERSo no matter like where you go, there was a proliferation.

25:00SPEAKERWhereas I think in the sixties and seventies,

25:02SPEAKERyou watched like Walter Cronkite,

25:04SPEAKERlike talk about what was happening once a day.

25:09SPEAKERAnd so we're getting a real kind of intimate view

25:14SPEAKERwith voices that kind of resonate with you.

25:17SPEAKERSo it's sort of like a choose your own adventure

25:20SPEAKERof the communication.

25:21SPEAKERSo it's just more and like, and how you want it.

25:25SPEAKERI also think like the tech inside is dramatically different.

25:28SPEAKERWe're not dealing with like the camera,

25:31SPEAKERlike if you remember from the Apollo 13 movie,

25:34SPEAKERlike you saw the cameras that they had,

25:38SPEAKERthe old school kind of film-based kind of systems.

25:43SPEAKERWe have a lot of tech onboard this ship that is different.

25:48SPEAKERAnd maybe we should talk about that for a second.

25:50SPEAKER- Yeah, that's been getting the glimpse of that.

25:54SPEAKERWe joked about the cold open with the Outlook bit,

25:56SPEAKERbut like they had an IT call

25:57SPEAKER'cause somebody, one of their computers,

25:59SPEAKERI think they call them personal PTVs

26:05SPEAKERor personal communication systems or surface pros

26:08SPEAKERthat are seemingly tethered, hardwired,

26:11SPEAKERbut they also have wifi onboard, which is wild.

26:14SPEAKEROne of the wifi industry blogs that pops up my feed

26:19SPEAKERhad a yo, wifi has been on the other side of the moon.

26:22SPEAKERIt's been farther away than anybody else in history.

26:27SPEAKERThey use Y gig to communicate with the service module,

26:33SPEAKERthe ESA service module, presumably after it disconnects

26:36SPEAKERso that they can get feeds from it back onto the capsule

26:39SPEAKER'cause it obviously doesn't come back to earth.

26:41SPEAKERIt just burns up the atmosphere.

26:46SPEAKERLet's see, they have phones for the first time.

26:50SPEAKERThey gave them, NASA issued them iPhone 17 Pro Maxes

26:54SPEAKERa few months ago.

26:55SPEAKERThey did a speed qual on it.

26:59SPEAKERApple said they didn't work with them directly,

27:00SPEAKERbut presumably they have all sorts of rules

27:02SPEAKERabout batteries and stuff like that.

27:03SPEAKERSo when they test a batch of batteries,

27:05SPEAKERif they have one failure in a batch,

27:07SPEAKERthat entire batch gets canned

27:08SPEAKERand they go to a reliable batch.

27:12SPEAKER- Do you think they paid for the memory upgrade?

27:14SPEAKER- I would assume so, yeah.

27:16SPEAKERWell, they don't have cloud storage up there, so no clouds.

27:19SPEAKER- I am fine with my tax dollars being used for that.

27:23SPEAKER- But the phones aren't internet devices.

27:25SPEAKERThey're just using them for note-taking and photos,

27:29SPEAKERlike cabin photos and videos and stuff like that.

27:32SPEAKER- Right, like the cameras on, well, I mean,

27:33SPEAKERsay what you want about the amount of post-processing

27:36SPEAKERthat Apple does on the photos

27:37SPEAKERand how "real" the photos are,

27:39SPEAKERbut those things have amazing cameras on them, right?

27:41SPEAKERSo it seems like a good vehicle for documenting things.

27:45SPEAKER- And judging from listening, they've talked about,

27:48SPEAKERso to get the photos off of those,

27:50SPEAKERthey plug them into their Surface Pros.

27:53SPEAKERSo presumably iTunes has been

27:54SPEAKERto the far side of the moon now,

27:56SPEAKERand they're dumping them over the wire

28:00SPEAKERand then they get picked up with the PTV dumps

28:02SPEAKERwhen that happens every once in a while.

28:04SPEAKER- I can jump in with a neat trick for you

28:08SPEAKERif you're on Windows and have Apple devices.

28:09SPEAKERThey have split out, there's an app on the Microsoft Store

28:12SPEAKERcalled Apple Devices now that splits out all the,

28:16SPEAKERlike here's what you need to plug an Apple device

28:18SPEAKERinto Windows to get things off of it functionality

28:21SPEAKERfrom iTunes, so.

28:22SPEAKER- Oh, that's fantastic.

28:23SPEAKER- There's a smaller app now called Apple Devices

28:25SPEAKERthat you can use just to do the phone stuff

28:27SPEAKERif you don't care about all the,

28:29SPEAKERso hopefully they've got that.

28:31SPEAKER- In case the astronauts are listening,

28:32SPEAKERI want them to make the IT call to being like,

28:35SPEAKERI wanna install this third-party app.

28:38SPEAKERWhat's the administrator password for my Surface Pro?

28:41SPEAKER- Can you read it out over the air, please?

28:44SPEAKERThey use, it seems like they use a lot of scripts.

28:46SPEAKERThey have a lot of scripting stuff set up

28:48SPEAKERto do the automated tasks

28:50SPEAKER'cause often the astronauts will ask,

28:52SPEAKERhey, we're having this problem, should we run this script?

28:55SPEAKERAnd then they'll say, let's, we're checking.

28:57SPEAKERThere's a fascinating tenor to the communication in general

29:01SPEAKERwhere there's one person they talk to at mission control,

29:04SPEAKERand then that person serves as the kind of,

29:07SPEAKERlike the many-armed octopus for whatever information

29:09SPEAKERthey need on the station, in the capsule,

29:13SPEAKERin a matter of moments sometimes.

29:16SPEAKERLike, they'll ask a question,

29:17SPEAKERand before the Capcom gets back to them and say,

29:20SPEAKERokay, we got the question, we're checking on it,

29:22SPEAKERthey'll be like, oh, okay, we got the answer,

29:24SPEAKERhere you go, do this.

29:27SPEAKERSo, okay, so computers, phones,

29:30SPEAKERthey, everything has Velcro,

29:32SPEAKER'cause their pants all have Velcro on them,

29:34SPEAKERthat's how they keep things close to them, obviously.

29:38SPEAKERThere's, they have a bunch of cameras, obviously.

29:40SPEAKERThey brought a bunch of digital cameras this time.

29:42SPEAKER- So there's 28 total cameras on board,

29:45SPEAKERwhich is just insane.

29:47SPEAKER15 of them are mounted on the actual Orion vehicle,

29:52SPEAKERand these are like, you know, the external cameras,

29:55SPEAKERthe ones that are focused on like monitoring their health.

29:59SPEAKERThere's a high-speed camera mounted to it,

30:02SPEAKERbut there's 13 cameras inside

30:05SPEAKERthat they have a lot more control of,

30:07SPEAKERwhich is really interesting.

30:08SPEAKERAnd like, you know, four of those are like

30:12SPEAKERthe actual personal computing devices

30:15SPEAKERthat we talked about that have webcams.

30:16SPEAKERAnd so like, I hesitate to call those cameras,

30:19SPEAKERbut they're, they're cameras.

30:22SPEAKERThere's four wireless cameras on board

30:25SPEAKERfor the Nat Geo Disney documentary

30:29SPEAKERthat they're doing on this.

30:32SPEAKERSo there's a lot of footage we haven't seen yet

30:34SPEAKERthat's gonna come out in the next year or so.

30:38SPEAKERBut I think what's interesting

30:39SPEAKERis they have two Nikon D5 DSLRs,

30:44SPEAKERwhich a lot of like the beautiful imagery

30:47SPEAKERthat we're seeing that's like

30:48SPEAKERclearly taken by the astronauts.

30:50SPEAKERThey're using the old D5,

30:52SPEAKERwhich I think came out a decade ago now.

30:54SPEAKER- 2016, yeah. - Yeah.

30:56SPEAKERNot even using a mirrorless.

30:57SPEAKERThey're going like for a full DSLR body for this,

31:01SPEAKERbecause that's what NASA approved.

31:03SPEAKER- It's been really fun.

31:04SPEAKERThis is definitely not my domain,

31:05SPEAKERbut it's been fun watching camera nerds on like Blue Sky

31:08SPEAKERtalk about like the Hasselblads

31:10SPEAKERthat were used on the Apollo, you know,

31:11SPEAKERand people kind of speaking in hushed tones

31:13SPEAKERabout all these like 50-year-old camera designs

31:15SPEAKERand what they're using now and stuff.

31:16SPEAKERIt's like a fun subset of this thing.

31:19SPEAKER- Well, so they used the Hasselblads

31:21SPEAKER'cause they were full frames.

31:22SPEAKERYou had a lot of resolution on the film.

31:24SPEAKERAnd, you know, there's still some Hasselblad photos,

31:28SPEAKERI believe, from the Apollo days

31:30SPEAKERthat haven't been developed yet

31:31SPEAKERor haven't been really treated yet.

31:34SPEAKERThere was some confusion.

31:36SPEAKERSo New York Times and ours said they're using D5s.

31:39SPEAKERI've seen a bunch of photo blogs

31:40SPEAKERsay they're using Z9s, which are mirrorless.

31:42SPEAKERI think the reason they use the D9s, sorry, the D5s

31:46SPEAKERis because they have that mirror.

31:48SPEAKERSo you actually are getting eyeballs

31:49SPEAKERon the thing that you're looking at through the viewfinder.

31:52SPEAKERLike that's the reason they use those.

31:56SPEAKER'Cause then they also essentially have with an 80,

31:58SPEAKERit seems like they like an 80 400 millimeter zoom

32:01SPEAKERfor the moonshots.

32:03SPEAKERAnd that gives them essentially a 400 mil telescope

32:05SPEAKERthat they can look through with their eyes

32:07SPEAKERthat's handheld, right?

32:10SPEAKER- I heard a much more kind of pedantic reason why

32:13SPEAKERis so NASA has an agreement with Nikon for the cameras.

32:17SPEAKERSo like they had to bring a Nikon camera aboard

32:20SPEAKERand I heard kind of behind the scenes,

32:23SPEAKERthey chose the D5 because they've flown with a D5 before.

32:27SPEAKERAnd so they're like, let's not mess around.

32:28SPEAKERLet's just take the D5 up.

32:30SPEAKERAnd so I think the Z9 might be in the future,

32:34SPEAKERbut they're using the D5 right.

32:36SPEAKER- Everybody who's flown on the space station,

32:38SPEAKERwhich I think is three of the four astronauts

32:40SPEAKERhas handled the D5 and knows how to use it

32:42SPEAKER'cause that's what they've had there for years and years.

32:45SPEAKERSo during the flyby, during the lunar flyby,

32:48SPEAKERthey got 4,000 kilometers from the surface of the moon

32:50SPEAKERand it was, they had a process set up.

32:54SPEAKERIt was, if you like, I think we'll put the schedule

32:56SPEAKERin the show notes, but the full like breakdown

32:58SPEAKERhour by hour of the schedule for the flight is in there.

33:01SPEAKERAnd they were doing two people on, two people off.

33:05SPEAKERSo essentially two people were card wrangling

33:07SPEAKERand dealing with spaceship and dealing with the,

33:10SPEAKERlike making sure the files came up

33:11SPEAKERand were annotated properly.

33:12SPEAKERAnd then two people were up by the windows

33:14SPEAKERwith a shroud behind them to keep glare off of their windows.

33:18SPEAKERAnd one was operating a camera aimed at the moon

33:21SPEAKERand describing physically what they saw with each shot.

33:25SPEAKERSo what their eyes saw versus what the camera was taking,

33:28SPEAKERthey're capturing the images

33:30SPEAKERand then they're talking through what they were able to see.

33:31SPEAKERThey're talking about things like colors

33:33SPEAKERon the rims of craters and things like that

33:36SPEAKERthat maybe don't come through in the photos.

33:38SPEAKERAnd the other person was there taking notes

33:39SPEAKERfor each shot that was taken and all constantly as they went.

33:42SPEAKERAnd it was absolutely fascinating to watch that process

33:47SPEAKER'cause it was a testament to a thing that,

33:52SPEAKERlike I know from working on Tested

33:54SPEAKERand I know from working on different things over the years

33:56SPEAKERthat the human, you're gonna capture stuff

34:00SPEAKERwith your human experience that you don't,

34:02SPEAKERthat it doesn't get captured in the recordings,

34:04SPEAKERit doesn't get captured in the photos.

34:06SPEAKERAnd they built NASA because their NASA built a process

34:09SPEAKERto capture that part of it too,

34:11SPEAKERwhich I don't recall ever hearing or seeing.

34:14SPEAKERLike during the Apollo,

34:15SPEAKERthe 50th anniversary of the Apollo missions,

34:17SPEAKERI loved watching the live streams of the mission control

34:23SPEAKERback and forth with the Apollo astronauts.

34:24SPEAKERThey just play the audio over stills from the images.

34:28SPEAKERAnd you get an experience of what it's like

34:31SPEAKERwhen Jim Lovell and Ben,

34:35SPEAKERI can't remember the guy whose name who shot Earthrise,

34:37SPEAKERbut when they realized they had a good photo there

34:39SPEAKERthat wasn't scheduled and he was like,

34:41SPEAKER"Hey, Jim, pass me some, I need some film, color film."

34:46SPEAKER'Cause he had black and white film loaded in the camera

34:48SPEAKERas the Earth is rising over the moon when they're in orbit.

34:51SPEAKERAnd he's like, "I gotta get a color shot."

34:53SPEAKERAnd you can see the first shot

34:54SPEAKERthat he took in black and white.

34:56SPEAKERAnd then you see about 15 seconds later, 20 seconds later,

34:59SPEAKERthe moon's risen a few degrees off of the horizon.

35:02SPEAKERAnd that's how long it took him to load the color film.

35:05SPEAKERAnd meanwhile, Jim Lovell's in the background going,

35:07SPEAKER"Hey man, you gotta go faster than this,

35:08SPEAKERyou're gonna miss this shot, this is an incredible shot.

35:10SPEAKERIt's out of that window,

35:11SPEAKERwe gotta find the other window with it."

35:13SPEAKERSo yeah, it's remarkable listening to him

35:18SPEAKERdo this work, I think.

35:20SPEAKER- Let's actually talk about that as a bridge,

35:23SPEAKERlike what have been your favorite moments?

35:26SPEAKERBecause there's been so many things that have gone viral,

35:31SPEAKERthat have like touched people because of the meaning,

35:36SPEAKERlike the true hope core stuff.

35:38SPEAKERI'm curious what both of you are taking away so far.

35:44SPEAKER- For me, it's watching how,

35:46SPEAKERlike I love seeing how people interact with process, right?

35:50SPEAKERLike just like, it's good for my brain.

35:52SPEAKERI, almost the mundanity of the day-to-day

35:57SPEAKERinterspersed with the wonder of seeing a solar eclipse

36:00SPEAKERfrom the far side of the moon.

36:02SPEAKERAnd like when they came back from the blackout period

36:06SPEAKERand were like, "Hey, we saw micrometeorite flashes

36:08SPEAKERon the back of the moon."

36:09SPEAKERLike while we were there, we saw those with our eyes,

36:11SPEAKERwhich is something that probably the cameras

36:13SPEAKERaren't gonna have picked up, right?

36:15SPEAKERIt's something that you had to have human eyes there to see.

36:18SPEAKERThat to me justifies the entire thing, right?

36:20SPEAKERLike that feels really good and is something that,

36:24SPEAKERlike that is the reason that we send people to space.

36:26SPEAKERThat's why we ask people to risk their lives.

36:29SPEAKERThat's why we spend incredible amounts of money.

36:30SPEAKERIt's why we do all the work that we do

36:32SPEAKERand have a hundred thousand people on the ground

36:34SPEAKERbuilding these rockets and spacecraft and all that.

36:37SPEAKERAnd that to me is exciting.

36:39SPEAKERAlso the Nutella was good.

36:41SPEAKERWe'll get to Nutella in a second.

36:42SPEAKERI just really quickly on the micrometeorites.

36:45SPEAKERThe thing that got me about that is when they radioed in

36:50SPEAKERthat they saw like, I can't remember.

36:52SPEAKERI think it was like five of those they saw.

36:54SPEAKER- Five flashes, yeah.

36:57SPEAKER- There was a geologist in mission control

37:00SPEAKERand they had a camera like trained towards her

37:03SPEAKERand you could just see her mouth just go open.

37:06SPEAKERJust be like, "Oh my God, they saw it."

37:09SPEAKERAnd just like the excitement and the enthusiasm

37:12SPEAKERfor this thing that like is so wondrous,

37:16SPEAKERbut it like in the grand scheme of this mission is small.

37:20SPEAKERBut we got to see it for the first time.

37:22SPEAKERI love the humanity of that moment.

37:25SPEAKERHow about you, Brad, what did you see?

37:28SPEAKER- Like I said, I have not followed a ton of this stuff

37:30SPEAKERas I've been recuperating,

37:31SPEAKERbut we certainly didn't need to send people

37:33SPEAKERto the moon for this,

37:34SPEAKERbut the Carol Crater stuff was pretty touching, of course.

37:37SPEAKER- Yeah.

37:39SPEAKER- Like, I don't know, I enjoyed the breadth of ability

37:42SPEAKERto name things after people like to pay tribute in space.

37:45SPEAKERYou know what I mean?

37:46SPEAKERLike there are so many craters on the moon.

37:47SPEAKERThere are so many asteroids and comets and stars.

37:49SPEAKERLike you can, there's a much broader capacity

37:53SPEAKERto like honor people, different people

37:55SPEAKERand different walks of life and that sort of thing.

37:58SPEAKER- I think most people probably know the story,

38:00SPEAKERbut in case somebody doesn't.

38:02SPEAKERThe commander of the ship,

38:06SPEAKERwhen they're going on the far side of the moon,

38:09SPEAKERthey saw a crater and he radioed in

38:13SPEAKERthat the crew had decided they would like to name it

38:16SPEAKERafter his wife who died from cancer a few years prior.

38:21SPEAKERAnd the moment that got me is when they radioed in,

38:25SPEAKERhe spelled her name and then all the astronauts came in

38:29SPEAKERand hugged him.

38:30SPEAKERAnd it's come out later that they had a meeting

38:34SPEAKERand they talked about this, just the four of them.

38:37SPEAKERAnd there's something really precious about that.

38:39SPEAKERLike that they talked like, you know,

38:41SPEAKERessentially a week ago and it was like, we wanna do this.

38:46SPEAKERAnd that the commander like kind of let that happen.

38:49SPEAKERThat was such a moment of humanity and beauty.

38:54SPEAKERAnd now like, can you imagine if you're their kid,

38:59SPEAKERyou can like, when he gets back,

39:02SPEAKERhe's gonna be able to look at the moon

39:03SPEAKERand remember their mom together, that's just,

39:07SPEAKERthat's the best. - That's rad.

39:10SPEAKERReally good.

39:11SPEAKER- Mine was, I didn't expect this.

39:15SPEAKERThey have a wake up playlist

39:16SPEAKERand you can actually listen to it on Spotify.

39:19SPEAKERThere's a lot of like kind of funny songs on it.

39:22SPEAKERLike, you know, like Pink Pony Club by Chappell Rhone

39:25SPEAKERis, you know, one of their wake up songs.

39:28SPEAKERBut the wake up song that got me was,

39:31SPEAKERthey woke up when they were passing the furthest distance

39:36SPEAKERthat any human had ever traveled.

39:39SPEAKERThey got a posthumous message from Jim Lovell.

39:44SPEAKERAnd that was their wake up message.

39:46SPEAKERAnd he talked about, and he passed away last year.

39:50SPEAKER- Jim Lovell was the commander of Apollo 13

39:52SPEAKERand Apollo 8, I think, right?

39:54SPEAKER- Yeah, and you know, so Tom Hanks played him in the movie.

40:01SPEAKERAnd he's actually in the movie at the end.

40:04SPEAKERHe salutes Tom Hanks on the aircraft carrier.

40:08SPEAKERAnd Jim Lovell like speaks in that kind of astronaut way

40:15SPEAKERwhere he has seen, he has experienced the overview effect

40:20SPEAKERof seeing Earth from space.

40:22SPEAKERAnd he gave them a message that like reinforced that.

40:26SPEAKERAnd it's just, it's so note perfect that he talked about

40:32SPEAKERthe achievement, but also the ability to like turn around

40:35SPEAKERand look back towards Earth in that time.

40:39SPEAKERSo I encourage people to actually like listen to that

40:42SPEAKERbecause I think that paired with the Earth set photo,

40:46SPEAKERwhich is basically they did an analog

40:48SPEAKERof the Earthrise photo,

40:49SPEAKERprobably the most famous photo shot of Earth.

40:54SPEAKERThey did an analog of it called Earth set

40:57SPEAKERwhere the Earth is setting across the moon.

41:01SPEAKERI think those two pair and I was not expecting that.

41:07SPEAKER- No, it's been kind of remarkable.

41:11SPEAKERI mean, it's been incredibly remarkable, the entire thing.

41:14SPEAKERSo, and I didn't expect to feel this way

41:17SPEAKERand I didn't expect to feel this way

41:19SPEAKERfrom watching people work on computers.

41:22SPEAKERAnd like, you know, to me it's the fact that we're humans

41:27SPEAKERand we're doing stuff, but we're also doing human stuff

41:29SPEAKERand the toilet breaks in space

41:30SPEAKERand you still have to eat lunch

41:32SPEAKERand you have to build in all this stuff and to eat.

41:35SPEAKERLike even with, there's a timeline that NASA released.

41:40SPEAKERThere's like the one that they give school kids,

41:42SPEAKERbut then they actually posted what looks like the real one

41:44SPEAKERwith like blocks set aside

41:46SPEAKERfor the National Geographic documentary every day

41:48SPEAKERand blocks set aside to talk to the premier of Canada

41:52SPEAKERand senators and house members

41:54SPEAKERand all sorts of other different stuff and school children

41:56SPEAKERand all the stuff that astronauts do.

41:59SPEAKERAnd they still have like a block of time in there

42:01SPEAKERfor them to eat lunch and for them to have some free time

42:05SPEAKERand for them to wind down after the long day

42:08SPEAKERon the lunar flyby when they're on the way back

42:10SPEAKERso they can like be ready for the hustle

42:12SPEAKERand bustle of the thing.

42:13SPEAKERAnd just to be clear, astronauts coming back from the moon,

42:18SPEAKERpack their capsule back up just like college kids do.

42:21SPEAKERThey had a whole bunch of big,

42:22SPEAKERgiant thick hefty bags last night.

42:24SPEAKERThey were jamming all the crap that they'd gotten out

42:26SPEAKERover the last 10 days back into those.

42:28SPEAKERAnd they were like, "Hey NASA, where do you want this stowed?"

42:30SPEAKERAnd it's like, just put it behind the cargo net on C7

42:33SPEAKERand we'll figure it out when you get back.

42:37SPEAKERIt's been really, really wild

42:41SPEAKERto be able to watch the whole thing at that level.

42:44SPEAKER- One other quick question

42:45SPEAKERabout their daily rhythm or schedule.

42:47SPEAKERIs there a concept of like a watch at night?

42:49SPEAKERLike do they all four sleep at the same time?

42:51SPEAKER- Everybody sleeps.

42:52SPEAKER- There are periods where nobody is awake

42:54SPEAKERto keep an eye on things?

42:55SPEAKER- Not only are there periods where nobody's awake

42:57SPEAKERto keep an eye on everything,

42:58SPEAKERthere's also periods where the capsule rotates

43:01SPEAKERto maximize sun capture at different times.

43:05SPEAKERAnd that can result in situations where, let's see,

43:08SPEAKERthey can broadcast to Earth,

43:10SPEAKERbut Earth can't broadcast back to them or I think vice versa.

43:13SPEAKERI'm not sure if it happens the other way.

43:14SPEAKERI've only seen it the one way.

43:16SPEAKERBut like last night after they went to bed,

43:18SPEAKERthey were like, you're gonna be

43:19SPEAKERin a one-way communication period for a while.

43:21SPEAKERSo like, we won't be able to talk to you all.

43:23SPEAKERBut like the alarms go off.

43:25SPEAKERYou know, like the smoke alarm went off yesterday

43:27SPEAKERwhen they were packing stuff up

43:28SPEAKERand it knocked up some dust apparently.

43:30SPEAKERAnd I don't think you would have missed

43:33SPEAKERthe smoke alarm going off, it turns out.

43:35SPEAKER- Fair. - Even if you were asleep.

43:37SPEAKER- My two like kind of like small moments

43:40SPEAKERthat are gonna stick with me is yesterday,

43:43SPEAKERthey reported a burning smell coming from the toilet

43:47SPEAKERand no one knows what that is.

43:49SPEAKERAnd I just think, like there was nothing more relatable

43:53SPEAKERto being like, there's a weird smell coming from the toilet

43:55SPEAKERto like a normie like me.

44:00SPEAKER- God, I can't imagine like, hey,

44:05SPEAKERhey guys, we invented a new way to make toilets bad.

44:11SPEAKER- I like those like small moments.

44:12SPEAKERAnd then the other thing, and this is like super nerdy me,

44:16SPEAKERis so like when you launch a ship like this,

44:18SPEAKERyou obviously have these like intricately plotted,

44:22SPEAKERyou know, math equations around the orbital diagrams,

44:25SPEAKERbut you obviously have the ability to do some like

44:28SPEAKERcontrol burns to do like, you know, trajectory correction.

44:31SPEAKERSo they've only had to do two burns

44:35SPEAKERto correct the trajectory this entire mission.

44:38SPEAKERThat's how good we got the math.

44:40SPEAKERAnd I'm like, I wanna go like find like

44:42SPEAKERthe orbital trajectory guys and like shake their hand.

44:45SPEAKERI'm like, that is awesome.

44:47SPEAKERLike we got the math so right.

44:50SPEAKERI don't know, maybe I'm too Andy weird up in this moment,

44:54SPEAKERbut I was like, we nailed the math.

44:55SPEAKER- Well, you know, there's also the other thing

44:58SPEAKERthat I've been trying to think about why this interaction,

45:01SPEAKERwhy getting to watch these interactions

45:02SPEAKERis so meaningful to me.

45:04SPEAKERAnd I think for me, that comes back to it's, you know,

45:09SPEAKERthe Gene Roddenberry vision of Star Trek is that

45:11SPEAKERthere's no interpersonal conflict on the enterprise, right?

45:15SPEAKERLike everybody's working toward a common goal

45:16SPEAKERand they get to get along

45:17SPEAKER'cause we've worked that part of humanity out,

45:19SPEAKERwe don't do that anymore.

45:22SPEAKERAnd like these four people

45:25SPEAKERand the people on the ground at home and all that are,

45:28SPEAKERlike it comes through.

45:30SPEAKERLike it shows a way to work with other people

45:31SPEAKERthat doesn't involve conflict

45:33SPEAKERand doesn't involve getting upset with everybody

45:35SPEAKERand trusting the people on your team to know

45:39SPEAKERthat the thing that they're telling you

45:40SPEAKERis the right thing to do.

45:41SPEAKERAnd you see that both in the communications

45:44SPEAKERand how the astronauts are interacting with each other.

45:47SPEAKERSo you don't get a lot of voice from the capsule.

45:50SPEAKERYou get a lot of voice

45:51SPEAKERwhen they're talking back and forth to mission and control,

45:53SPEAKERbut we don't hear a lot of their interpersonal stuff.

45:54SPEAKERBut clearly, like these folks have trained together

45:57SPEAKERfor two or three years at this point.

45:59SPEAKERThey've known each other for a long time.

46:01SPEAKERI think Jeremy and Christina are in the same astronaut class.

46:04SPEAKERSo they went through like initial astronaut training

46:06SPEAKERtogether and like as a result,

46:11SPEAKERthey have the kind of working rapport

46:14SPEAKERthat is just, it's just incredible.

46:16SPEAKERYou know, they have in-jokes, they know each other,

46:18SPEAKERthey finish their sandwiches, right?

46:20SPEAKERIt's good stuff all the way around.

46:23SPEAKERShould we talk about the communication?

46:25SPEAKER'Cause this is interesting.

46:25SPEAKERI didn't realize that we were doing this yet,

46:27SPEAKERbut you know, they're using DSN, the Deep Space Network,

46:30SPEAKERto talk to the land, to the orbiter, to the capsule.

46:33SPEAKER'Cause once you get beyond low earth orbit,

46:35SPEAKERwe have to have different communication systems.

46:37SPEAKERSo they're tasked a bunch of those big antennas

46:39SPEAKERthat talk to things like Voyager and Curiosity

46:41SPEAKERand Perseverance and all the rovers around the solar system

46:45SPEAKERare being used to talk to Artemis now.

46:50SPEAKERBut they also have this new thing called the O2O,

46:52SPEAKERwhich is a infrared laser-based array

46:56SPEAKERof transmitters and satellites and receivers.

47:00SPEAKERAnd they're able to get really high throughputs with that,

47:04SPEAKERunlike anything we've really ever seen before from space.

47:07SPEAKER- I mean, like a really high,

47:09SPEAKERit's 100 gigabits per second max.

47:12SPEAKER- I think that's the theoretical maximum.

47:13SPEAKERI don't think they're actually doing that.

47:14SPEAKERYeah, yeah.

47:16SPEAKERBut it seems like they're using that to dump

47:18SPEAKERsome of the big images and like do those,

47:21SPEAKERbasically it seems like they have a way to dump data

47:23SPEAKERfrom their laptops or from their surfaces

47:26SPEAKERback to earth really quickly.

47:27SPEAKER- Is that bi-directional, do you know?

47:29SPEAKEROr I assume that's probably one way.

47:32SPEAKER- I think it's bi-directional.

47:33SPEAKER- Oh. - It is bi-directional.

47:35SPEAKERThere's two ground stations.

47:37SPEAKEROne's in Las Cruces, New Mexico,

47:39SPEAKERand one's somewhere in the desert of California.

47:43SPEAKERI can't remember exactly where,

47:44SPEAKERbut they have like minimal cloud coverage

47:46SPEAKERso that the lasers have the best kind of least interfered

47:51SPEAKERwith kind of line of sight to those areas.

47:56SPEAKERFirst of all, we have to start calling this system

47:58SPEAKERthe space laser system.

48:00SPEAKERI know like- - Frickin' space lasers, man.

48:02SPEAKER- The FSL.

48:03SPEAKER- But what's amazing is like, it is truly like a network.

48:06SPEAKERI think there's six different satellites

48:09SPEAKERthat are coordinated to actually link up this delivery.

48:12SPEAKERThere's the O2O, there's the,

48:17SPEAKERI think it's called the TBIRD, the LCRD.

48:20SPEAKERI think there's another like LLCD.

48:23SPEAKERLike, so there's a bunch of different relays

48:26SPEAKERhappening up there too.

48:28SPEAKERSo we have somehow like taken the lessons

48:31SPEAKERof like Cisco networking and applied it to space

48:34SPEAKERby like having things route through multiple systems

48:39SPEAKERbefore landing to their intended target.

48:41SPEAKER- Yeah, I should say real quick,

48:42SPEAKERI looked at the NASA site.

48:43SPEAKERLike I guess currently they are getting

48:45SPEAKERabout 260 megabits per second,

48:47SPEAKERwhich not quite 100 gigabits,

48:49SPEAKERbut that's still faster than a lot of people's home internet.

48:52SPEAKER- 260 megabits is an order of magnitude faster

48:55SPEAKERthan what they had before.

48:56SPEAKERIt's like, the TLDR in this is that you're getting

48:59SPEAKERa lot more speed than they've ever had before,

49:00SPEAKERespecially out of the DSN,

49:01SPEAKERwhich is like optimized for distance, not speed.

49:05SPEAKER- And this is the thing they tested on Artemis 1.

49:10SPEAKERAnd so this is sort of like the thing they knew

49:13SPEAKERwas expecting to work really well.

49:17SPEAKERBut this is like our first experience

49:19SPEAKERof the outputs of that in a kind of human way.

49:24SPEAKERSo this is the,

49:25SPEAKERall these missions kind of build on each other in that way.

49:28SPEAKER- Okay, I have a question I've been waiting to ask you guys

49:30SPEAKERand this is just a gut feeling.

49:31SPEAKERWhat do you think will happen?

49:33SPEAKERBut this brings a bunch of threads together

49:34SPEAKERfrom this discussion on the subject of cameras

49:39SPEAKERand communications back with Earth

49:40SPEAKERand building on subsequent missions.

49:42SPEAKERBy the time we get to Artemis 4,

49:45SPEAKERdo you think we get head mount live streaming of a moonwalk?

49:49SPEAKER- Oh, I guarantee we have live streaming of the moonwalk.

49:52SPEAKER- From a suit though, like for like,

49:54SPEAKERor even like a chest would be my guess.

49:55SPEAKER- I think there's cameras on the suits for sure.

49:58SPEAKERBut like the live stream, like I think it like,

50:02SPEAKERif I don't know if there's like a, like we're like,

50:06SPEAKERyeah, there would be, right?

50:08SPEAKER- Yeah, 'cause the moon is,

50:09SPEAKERthe moon never sets on the near side of the moon.

50:11SPEAKERThe Earth never sets on the near side of the moon.

50:14SPEAKER- Yeah, they're high, 100% that's what it's gonna be.

50:17SPEAKER- That's exciting.

50:18SPEAKER- I mean, look, here's the thing.

50:21SPEAKERThe excitement that normal people have had,

50:25SPEAKERlike I put this on the other night

50:28SPEAKERand my wife was like, why am I watching?

50:29SPEAKERLike, this is a weird thing to watch, right?

50:30SPEAKERAnd I was like, no, just trust me,

50:32SPEAKERyou're gonna enjoy this.

50:33SPEAKERAnd she's like, do they ever, you know,

50:36SPEAKERjust the kind of questions you get about how this works,

50:39SPEAKERright, how do they do this is fascinating

50:42SPEAKERfor somebody who doesn't really pay attention to it.

50:44SPEAKERSo yeah, they're absolutely gonna live stream the moonwalks.

50:47SPEAKERI mean, there's no like argument for doing it for privacy.

50:54SPEAKERNASA has to publish stuff within X number of hours

50:56SPEAKERafter they receive it, outside of a few things

50:59SPEAKERlike the National Geographic documentary.

51:04SPEAKERThere's no safety, like in terms of danger, it's not,

51:08SPEAKERI mean, yes, it's incredibly dangerous to do that.

51:10SPEAKERIt's not any more dangerous than, you know,

51:12SPEAKERlive streaming the launch or the landing.

51:14SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, I meant mainly just from the standpoint

51:16SPEAKERof are there any more technical limitations to overcome?

51:19SPEAKERAnd I guess not, I mean, actually like getting the video

51:22SPEAKERfrom the suit back to the lander might actually,

51:26SPEAKERI mean, if you tethered it with a cable,

51:27SPEAKERyou'd be fine, I guess, I don't know about a wireless.

51:29SPEAKER- Just do wifi.

51:30SPEAKER- I guess, I guess wifi would work fine, I don't know.

51:31SPEAKER- There's no interference there, man.

51:32SPEAKERYou can do wifi seven, you get really 300 meters full range.

51:35SPEAKERIt's perfect.

51:36SPEAKER- Is that the first view you want?

51:38SPEAKERDo you want like the kind of front facing view

51:42SPEAKERor do you want like the Apollo 11 view

51:46SPEAKERof Neil Armstrong coming down the ladder?

51:52SPEAKER- Look, all I know, yeah, I want the view

51:56SPEAKERof the person coming down the ladder.

51:57SPEAKERI want to see, I want to see the,

52:00SPEAKERI want to see the mundanity.

52:01SPEAKERI want to see the work.

52:02SPEAKERI want to see them do the work on the moon.

52:03SPEAKERThat's the thing I want to see.

52:05SPEAKER- You want the like full on like terraforming Mars,

52:08SPEAKERlike video game, like resource allocation

52:12SPEAKERand building kind of aspect of this.

52:15SPEAKERLike this is like a worker engine game.

52:17SPEAKERLike if things go well in like 10 years.

52:22SPEAKER- I mean, yeah, like do I,

52:24SPEAKERam I going to watch the live feed of the landers

52:26SPEAKERcoming down with the habitats that are unbuilt,

52:28SPEAKERbut have to be assembled by people?

52:30SPEAKERProbably not.

52:31SPEAKERBut will I watch the people assemble them?

52:32SPEAKERYeah, you're damn right I will.

52:34SPEAKERThat's good.

52:34SPEAKERI'm gonna put that on the wall TV when that's a thing.

52:36SPEAKER- I just, I want the heightened feeling of opening Twitch

52:38SPEAKERand just being able to watch the perspective

52:40SPEAKERof somebody live walking around on another celestial body.

52:43SPEAKERI mean, that's, you know, that kind of speaks for itself.

52:48SPEAKER- So I kind of have like a wrap up question.

52:51SPEAKERLike I initially came to Artemis very skeptically,

52:55SPEAKERnot just this mission, the whole program.

52:57SPEAKERIt's like, I think estimates are-

52:59SPEAKER- It's all been goofy.

53:00SPEAKERLike the, hey, we're going to use space shuttle engines,

53:02SPEAKERwhich are incredibly expensive and over engineered

53:05SPEAKERto be reused.

53:06SPEAKERAnd we're going to put them on these disposable boosters.

53:08SPEAKERIt's like, it starts with bad ideas.

53:10SPEAKER- Yeah, I think the estimates are like,

53:12SPEAKERit's like $93 billion to do this program,

53:15SPEAKEReven though they think the next steps

53:16SPEAKERcan be done for 20 billion.

53:18SPEAKERThese are, you know, insane numbers.

53:21SPEAKERWe, the timeline is questionable.

53:24SPEAKERLike there's still the-

53:26SPEAKER- The landers are still iffy, like, yeah.

53:29SPEAKER- As much as we talked about the motivations,

53:30SPEAKERlike I think one can question the motivations of like,

53:33SPEAKERdo we really need this to practically?

53:37SPEAKERHas things shifted for you after this mission?

53:42SPEAKER- For me personally, I would feel a lot better about this

53:46SPEAKERif it wasn't timed with a defunding of NASA's earth science

53:51SPEAKERand climate observatory kind of requirements

53:55SPEAKERand a larger defunding of science

53:58SPEAKERacross the entire United States government.

54:01SPEAKERLike in the Apollo era,

54:06SPEAKERwe as both parties, everyone involved seem to view

54:10SPEAKERspending money on expanding human knowledge of the world,

54:13SPEAKERwhether it's medical or biological or earth sciences

54:17SPEAKERor geology or physics, whatever,

54:20SPEAKERas a way to succeed on the global political stage.

54:24SPEAKERAnd the modern conservative agenda

54:28SPEAKERdoes not seem to align with that anymore,

54:31SPEAKERwhich I think is a real enormous mistake on multiple levels.

54:35SPEAKERAnd that's the thing that leaves me feeling bad after this

54:38SPEAKERis that, yeah, it's great we're spending money here.

54:40SPEAKERThere's defunding, funding this

54:43SPEAKERand defunding all the other science is,

54:46SPEAKERit feels a little stunty to me.

54:48SPEAKER- Stunty, or like I said earlier,

54:50SPEAKERperhaps certain interests see a lot of money to be made

54:52SPEAKERin the wake of these breakthroughs.

54:56SPEAKER- So I feel differently, and I'm surprised to say that,

55:00SPEAKERand I'm caught up in the moment,

55:01SPEAKERand I think I'm caught up in the emotion of this right now.

55:04SPEAKERAnd so maybe a couple of weeks from now,

55:06SPEAKERI'll gain some perspective, but I think this is awesome.

55:10SPEAKERLike, and I know we're all saying it's awesome,

55:13SPEAKERbut I think the awesome part of this

55:16SPEAKERis it illustrates like a really clear,

55:18SPEAKERsimple vision of what comes next

55:22SPEAKERthat people can really like grab onto and hold onto.

55:26SPEAKERAnd there's such like a element of communication

55:30SPEAKERand access embedded in this that I think people crave

55:35SPEAKERthat we've seen in this last week.

55:38SPEAKERNow, I think that'll turn to something much more mundane

55:41SPEAKERthat like what Brad, you were saying,

55:43SPEAKERlike we're gonna turn on a Twitch stream

55:45SPEAKERand see some guy bolting an element of a hab together

55:49SPEAKERin a few years, and we'll be like,

55:51SPEAKER"Eh, I'm gonna go watch the guy playing Arc Raiders instead."

55:53SPEAKERLike, but I don't know, there's something exciting

55:58SPEAKERabout the potential unity that we saw come out of this moment

56:02SPEAKERof people all turning towards this kind of positive,

56:07SPEAKERcollaborative endeavor that gets me excited

56:11SPEAKERabout the return in a way that I wasn't just a week ago.

56:16SPEAKER- 100%.

56:17SPEAKER- I reserve the right to change my mind on that

56:19SPEAKERfor all the reasons you laid out Will and more.

56:24SPEAKERBut you know, I think as the Grinch so wisely said,

56:30SPEAKERmy heart grew three sizes.

56:32SPEAKER- I mean, they're not mutually exclusive, right?

56:34SPEAKERLike you can still be skeptical of the motives

56:37SPEAKERand the execution and the context

56:39SPEAKERin which the mission is being launched

56:40SPEAKERand still think the ultimate outcome of it

56:43SPEAKERis a net good for humanity, right?

56:45SPEAKER- Yeah, 100%.

56:47SPEAKER- I could just real quick jump in

56:48SPEAKERwith this Scientific American piece.

56:51SPEAKER- Yeah, it was really good.

56:52SPEAKERIt was super interesting.

56:53SPEAKERSpeaking of some positive, universally positive

56:56SPEAKERkind of downstream effects of this,

56:58SPEAKERthey all put it in the show notes.

56:59SPEAKERThey ran a piece where again,

57:02SPEAKERthey talked to some astronomers who were just like,

57:04SPEAKERwow, money just appeared out of nowhere for projects

57:07SPEAKERthat leverage being on the moon all of a sudden,

57:09SPEAKERweird, like this does not happen in space exploration.

57:13SPEAKERBut some of the projects that are in the works

57:15SPEAKERor close to even launch in one case, there is a,

57:19SPEAKERI don't have any of the names in front of me.

57:20SPEAKERThese projects are all named in the article,

57:22SPEAKERbut there is a very large radio telescope

57:25SPEAKERthat's being readied for launch.

57:26SPEAKERMaybe Kishore, you're nodding.

57:27SPEAKERYou might know more about this than I do

57:28SPEAKERfor potentially even as soon as December

57:32SPEAKERto be installed on the far side of the moon.

57:35SPEAKERIn fact, I think all these projects

57:36SPEAKERare targeted for the far side

57:37SPEAKERbecause for the same reason that the spacecraft

57:40SPEAKERlose communications on the far side,

57:43SPEAKERit turns out that's a really great place

57:45SPEAKERto shield instruments from the,

57:47SPEAKERall the cacophonous radio chatter coming from earth.

57:50SPEAKERAlso, the sheer distance gives us some ability

57:54SPEAKERto do triangulation in a different way.

57:56SPEAKERSo one of the projects is an extension of the LIGO project

58:00SPEAKERthat saw the two kind of,

58:04SPEAKERthat kind of witnessed gravitational waves

58:06SPEAKERand put sound to it.

58:08SPEAKERAnd we can essentially extend that array

58:11SPEAKERby the sheer distance and having a larger bell to ring,

58:15SPEAKERessentially for gravitational waves from across the universe.

58:18SPEAKERSo we get advantages from the being on the far side

58:24SPEAKERfrom the radiation and getting away from the atmosphere,

58:27SPEAKERbut also just from the distance.

58:29SPEAKER- Sure, so yeah, that's the second project on here.

58:32SPEAKERI think they said that will give them the ability

58:34SPEAKERto detect more mid-range gravitational waves

58:37SPEAKERthat they would never have a prayer of seeing from earth.

58:41SPEAKER- The benefit of doing the radio telescope on the moon

58:43SPEAKERis that you don't have atmospheric ionization,

58:47SPEAKERwhich blocks out certain radio frequencies.

58:50SPEAKERSo they can see things that we can't see normally

58:52SPEAKERwith the radios.

58:53SPEAKER- So the use of that radio telescope would be to see,

58:56SPEAKERbasically we can see the cosmic microwave background,

58:59SPEAKERwhich happened right after like the plasma started,

59:04SPEAKERallowing light to bounce around.

59:06SPEAKERBut as soon as everything turned into like a giant volume

59:08SPEAKERof hydrogen, there's some huge period of time

59:11SPEAKERwhere we just can't see anything

59:12SPEAKERbefore stars and galaxies started forming.

59:15SPEAKERAnd this would potentially allow us to see

59:17SPEAKERthe very, very faint light that existed in,

59:20SPEAKERI think they kind of call it like the dark age.

59:22SPEAKER- Like a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away, Brad.

59:24SPEAKER- The kind of dark age after the Big Bang

59:26SPEAKERwhere there was not much light bouncing around.

59:28SPEAKER- It's one of my favorite terms, the quark blue on plasma.

59:32SPEAKERAnd this would be a nice compliment

59:35SPEAKERto the James Webb Space Telescope

59:37SPEAKERthat's also looking at similar things.

59:39SPEAKER- Yeah, and so the last one,

59:41SPEAKERand again, I don't have the name here,

59:42SPEAKERbut the last project they talked about in that article

59:44SPEAKERis a basically kind of moon scale,

59:48SPEAKERoptical interferometry telescope,

59:50SPEAKERwhich is the thing where you have telescopes

59:53SPEAKERin different parts of the world

59:55SPEAKERthat all triangulate together,

59:56SPEAKERthat kind of focused all of their observations together

59:59SPEAKERto make one image.

1:00:01SPEAKERThis would apparently be like a rover mounted version

1:00:03SPEAKERof that where they would be able to move the mirrors around

1:00:07SPEAKERon the surface of the moon.

1:00:09SPEAKERSo they kind of focus on different spots.

1:00:12SPEAKER- That one seems wild to me.

1:00:13SPEAKER- Yeah, that one sounds very more theoretical.

1:00:15SPEAKERI think that one, I'd have to pull the article back.

1:00:17SPEAKERI think that was the one that's the farthest out

1:00:19SPEAKERand maybe in the earliest theoretical stages of planning.

1:00:23SPEAKER- Just to be clear, the LIGO one is also wild

1:00:26SPEAKERbecause the plan for that is to drop a lander on the moon

1:00:28SPEAKERand that has two rovers in it

1:00:30SPEAKERand send the rovers out in like 45 degree angle

1:00:33SPEAKERoff of each other on the edge of a crater

1:00:35SPEAKERand then shoot lasers five kilometers back to the rover

1:00:37SPEAKERso you have a triangle of lasers.

1:00:39SPEAKERAnd because the moon is seismically inert

1:00:43SPEAKERand there's no atmosphere, that'll just work.

1:00:46SPEAKERThey don't have to build an enormous underground complex

1:00:49SPEAKERor anything like that like they did with LIGO here on earth.

1:00:52SPEAKER- So there's a lot of weirdly beneficial qualities

1:00:54SPEAKERabout the moon, it feels like.

1:00:57SPEAKER- Yeah, I mean, it's definitely a hostile place,

1:00:59SPEAKERbut there are some really interesting problems

1:01:03SPEAKERthat I think are more in the engineering world

1:01:06SPEAKERthan the science world.

1:01:07SPEAKERThere's this really great video NASA did

1:01:12SPEAKERon like the future of building the kind of hub on the moon

1:01:20SPEAKERand they talked about things like power.

1:01:23SPEAKERSo we're gonna have to have nuclear power sources up there

1:01:26SPEAKERbecause there isn't enough light,

1:01:28SPEAKERthey're gonna have to have some element of solar

1:01:30SPEAKERand the battery storage and what that looks like.

1:01:33SPEAKERThey're even talking about using the moon regolith

1:01:36SPEAKERand potentially building something that would be akin

1:01:40SPEAKERto a 3D printer where you'd actually be able to center

1:01:43SPEAKERsome of the material together

1:01:45SPEAKERand use that to help form structures.

1:01:49SPEAKERSo there's some really wild engineering

1:01:52SPEAKERthat is ahead of all of this.

1:01:55SPEAKERAnd they're actually building a lunar rover

1:01:59SPEAKERthat is very much out of the Martian

1:02:02SPEAKERthat will have atmosphere in it

1:02:04SPEAKERat normal ambient temperatures.

1:02:06SPEAKERSo you could just be out of a suit in your t-shirt

1:02:10SPEAKERand hang out in it.

1:02:11SPEAKERAnd so none of this stuff has been built yet.

1:02:14SPEAKERSo it's still science fiction, but it's all possible

1:02:18SPEAKERbecause it's in the world of engineering.

1:02:20SPEAKERIt's not in the world of scientific research.

1:02:22SPEAKER- There's nothing needed to make it happen

1:02:24SPEAKERbeyond the will and the money.

1:02:27SPEAKERIt's interesting.

1:02:28SPEAKERThe other thing that's interesting about the moon

1:02:30SPEAKERis that it is, like it seems like a phenomenally

1:02:33SPEAKERfar distance from us 'cause we're used to earth scale

1:02:37SPEAKERwhere 25,000 miles is the circumference of the planet.

1:02:42SPEAKERThe moon is 250,000 kilometers away.

1:02:46SPEAKERMars average is 20-- - Miles away.

1:02:48SPEAKER- Sorry, miles away, sorry.

1:02:52SPEAKERMars average is 140 million miles away.

1:02:55SPEAKERSo it's significantly further.

1:02:58SPEAKERIt's an 18-month trip instead of a 10-day trip, round trip.

1:03:02SPEAKER18-month one-way trip, just to be clear.

1:03:04SPEAKERSo yeah, the idea of using it as a stepping stone

1:03:09SPEAKERand learning how to do the hard part

1:03:10SPEAKERof living in this hostile environment,

1:03:13SPEAKERsomeplace that's only 10 days away,

1:03:15SPEAKERseems like it makes sense to me.

1:03:16SPEAKERI don't know, I'm not a scientist.

1:03:18SPEAKER- I will give one piece of advice,

1:03:21SPEAKERand this is my pushback.

1:03:22SPEAKERI know it's natural to think

1:03:23SPEAKERthat this is a stepping stone to Mars.

1:03:26SPEAKERI don't believe that for a second.

1:03:28SPEAKERI understand there's elements of radiation shielding

1:03:32SPEAKERand building structures and power

1:03:35SPEAKERand all this kind of stuff that would help us.

1:03:39SPEAKERI think they're fundamentally

1:03:40SPEAKERreally different problem spaces

1:03:42SPEAKERthat while some of the learning will help,

1:03:45SPEAKERI think our imagination naturally goes there,

1:03:47SPEAKERand I am really resisting that

1:03:50SPEAKER'cause I think the problem space

1:03:51SPEAKERis pretty dynamically different.

1:03:54SPEAKER- Like just in terms of scale and scope?

1:03:55SPEAKER- Temperature, atmosphere, distance, radiation.

1:04:01SPEAKERThere's some real things on the table

1:04:03SPEAKERthat make the journey, let alone the landing,

1:04:11SPEAKERmuch more different problem spaces.

1:04:14SPEAKER- Okay, so I mean, I think that's as good a place

1:04:18SPEAKERas any to wrap it up.

1:04:21SPEAKERHold on, we gotta talk about Nutella.

1:04:22SPEAKERWe promised we'd talk about Nutella.

1:04:23SPEAKERThere were a couple of meme-worthy moments early on

1:04:26SPEAKERin the flight, and one of them was when,

1:04:29SPEAKERI think Christina Koch was packing up a lunch,

1:04:32SPEAKERlike she was packing up stuff after they had a shared meal

1:04:35SPEAKER'cause they do book them most days as shared lunch

1:04:37SPEAKERwhere they can all sit down and eat together

1:04:39SPEAKERand have a moment to kind of chat,

1:04:41SPEAKERand conference is what NASA says

1:04:43SPEAKERwhenever people need to talk to each other.

1:04:47SPEAKERAnd as she was packing up a jar

1:04:49SPEAKERof what just looked like normal-ass Nutella broke loose

1:04:53SPEAKERand floated across the cabin and went into the other side.

1:04:55SPEAKERAnd then a little while later,

1:04:56SPEAKERI think mission control had to tell them,

1:04:58SPEAKERhey, go get the Nutella from over on such and such

1:05:00SPEAKERpart of the cabin.

1:05:02SPEAKERBut the internet, like what did we learn

1:05:06SPEAKERwhen we went to Houston to eat space food

1:05:09SPEAKERa long time ago with Tested?

1:05:12SPEAKERThey do a lot of like flatbreads and tortillas

1:05:14SPEAKERand pitas and stuff like that

1:05:17SPEAKERwith some sort of food-based goo smeared on them

1:05:19SPEAKERso they can stick stuff into it.

1:05:21SPEAKERSome kind of cohesion, I guess like rice is maybe

1:05:23SPEAKERnot the best idea.

1:05:25SPEAKER- I think they said rice pilaf

1:05:27SPEAKERis one of the more common things that they eat.

1:05:28SPEAKERI kind of wonder-

1:05:30SPEAKER- If it's sticky enough, sure.

1:05:31SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah.

1:05:32SPEAKEREverything has to be a certain amount of goopy.

1:05:35SPEAKERBut they do a lot of sandwiches

1:05:36SPEAKERwhere they take a piece of flatbread

1:05:39SPEAKERand smear something on it

1:05:40SPEAKERand then stick something else in that something.

1:05:42SPEAKERSo apparently the Nutella is a popular item for that

1:05:45SPEAKER'cause who doesn't love Nutella?

1:05:48SPEAKER- I think we heard from Chris Hadfield a bunch of times

1:05:50SPEAKERthe Canadian astronaut about how much things smell

1:05:54SPEAKERand taste different aboard

1:05:58SPEAKERjust because of the confined space

1:05:59SPEAKERand the way that things work.

1:06:02SPEAKER- Reduced pressure and all that stuff, yeah.

1:06:04SPEAKER- Yeah, there's a lot of different factors.

1:06:06SPEAKERBut I think the funny thing is Nutella,

1:06:10SPEAKERthe company immediately took to Instagram

1:06:13SPEAKERand rebranded now enjoyed in space.

1:06:16SPEAKERAnd then people have been calculating

1:06:18SPEAKERthe cost of that jar of Nutella

1:06:20SPEAKERbased on how much fuel we're spending per kilogram.

1:06:24SPEAKERAnd so it's probably like a $1,000 jar of Nutella.

1:06:29SPEAKERNot that we should calculate it that way, but yeah.

1:06:33SPEAKERNutella is good everywhere is my takeaway.

1:06:36SPEAKER- They learned in the Skylab days

1:06:37SPEAKERwhat happens if you don't give the astronauts good food.

1:06:41SPEAKERI don't know if you've ever seen,

1:06:43SPEAKERif you've ever been to the Air and Space Museum in DC

1:06:45SPEAKERand have seen the exhibit of foods served on Skylab,

1:06:50SPEAKERit was grim to the point that like three of the astronauts

1:06:53SPEAKERthere at one point went on strike

1:06:54SPEAKERbecause they were sick of working seven days a week

1:06:57SPEAKERand eating garbage food.

1:07:00SPEAKERThose folks never flew again weirdly,

1:07:02SPEAKERbut they just turned off the radio one day,

1:07:04SPEAKERa couple of days apparently.

1:07:05SPEAKER- Wow.

1:07:09SPEAKER- Yeah, the food stuff is fascinating.

1:07:11SPEAKERThere was a good video on the live stream last night

1:07:14SPEAKERduring one of the downtimes

1:07:15SPEAKERwhere they went to the food lab

1:07:17SPEAKERand they showed them astronauts tasting

1:07:19SPEAKERall the different foods and deciding which stuff they liked,

1:07:22SPEAKERwhich stuff they'd eat if they were told they had to

1:07:24SPEAKERand which stuff they would never eat no matter what.

1:07:27SPEAKERAnd I think they said there are 189 unique menu items

1:07:30SPEAKERand 10 different beverages on this flight.

1:07:33SPEAKERSo there's a lot of food and a lot of food variety.

1:07:36SPEAKERThey're not just eating space gruel.

1:07:39SPEAKER- That's like a cheesecake factory size menu.

1:07:41SPEAKERThat's too much, that's too much food.

1:07:44SPEAKERAnd on that note, I guess that's it.

1:07:47SPEAKEROh, let's see, anything else?

1:07:51SPEAKERThe Lander systems update,

1:07:53SPEAKERours had a really good article

1:07:54SPEAKERthat went up the second day of this mission

1:07:56SPEAKERwhere Eric Berger interviewed Lori Glaze,

1:07:59SPEAKERwho's a director, associate director, I guess,

1:08:02SPEAKERassistant director, I can't remember,

1:08:04SPEAKERabout what's going on with the Landers.

1:08:06SPEAKERThere's two competing initiatives,

1:08:08SPEAKERone from SpaceX and one from Blue about how to,

1:08:12SPEAKERBlue Origin, about building Landers

1:08:15SPEAKERand they're both racing for the Artemis 3

1:08:19SPEAKERin space docking.

1:08:21SPEAKERIt's unclear to me what happens

1:08:22SPEAKERif they both are ready in time for that.

1:08:24SPEAKERAre they gonna fire both of them up there

1:08:25SPEAKERand then do a double docking?

1:08:27SPEAKER- I guess it's naive of me to think that.

1:08:28SPEAKERI assume the Lander was just kind of solved already,

1:08:30SPEAKERbut I guess definitely not.

1:08:33SPEAKER- No, definitely not.

1:08:34SPEAKERAnd the indications are that whoever wins that race

1:08:39SPEAKERwill get the contract for the next 10 years of flight.

1:08:43SPEAKERSo it's a pretty high-stakes situation

1:08:46SPEAKERbetween those two companies right now.

1:08:48SPEAKER- There was a little bit of shade in there

1:08:51SPEAKERabout SpaceX not responding to PR requests from ours.

1:08:56SPEAKERAnd the NASA administrator was like, "Yeah, we know.

1:09:00SPEAKERIt's like, you just gotta deal with it."

1:09:04SPEAKERAnyway, I guess that's it for us.

1:09:06SPEAKERKishore, thank you, as always, for coming by.

1:09:07SPEAKERYou got anything to plug?

1:09:08SPEAKERAre you...

1:09:11SPEAKER- I have nothing to plug,

1:09:12SPEAKERand I couldn't be happier that I have nothing to plug.

1:09:14SPEAKER(laughing)

1:09:18SPEAKER- Well, it's always a pleasure to have you, my friend,

1:09:19SPEAKERand thank you for coming by.

1:09:21SPEAKERWe will have to have you on again sometime soon.

1:09:24SPEAKERIt's always great to talk science with you.

1:09:26SPEAKER- Yeah, thank you.

1:09:26SPEAKER- Yeah, and best of luck to the astronauts as they return.

1:09:31SPEAKERAnd I look forward to that picture of them

1:09:33SPEAKERemerging from the capsule in a day or two.

1:09:36SPEAKER- Yeah, yeah, hopefully everything goes well on the landing.

1:09:41SPEAKERThat's the last scary bit.

1:09:43SPEAKERSplashdown, sorry, it's not a landing.

1:09:45SPEAKERGotta use the proper terms.

1:09:49SPEAKERThank you so much, Kishore, for coming by.

1:09:51SPEAKERIt's wonderful to see you.

1:09:52SPEAKERBrad, this is the time of the show

1:09:54SPEAKERwhere we thank our patrons

1:09:56SPEAKERand encourage everyone to go to patreon.com/techpod

1:10:00SPEAKERand sign up to support the show.

1:10:02SPEAKERWe do this ad-free, so that means if you guys

1:10:05SPEAKERdon't think we're worth five bucks a month,

1:10:07SPEAKERthen we don't see any money from it.

1:10:08SPEAKERSo, you know, it's nice to get paid, it turns out.

1:10:11SPEAKER- That's right, that's right.

1:10:13SPEAKER- Patreon.com/techpod is the URL.

1:10:16SPEAKERAnd I used to say it was like a cup of coffee,

1:10:18SPEAKERbut I went to Starbucks the other day

1:10:20SPEAKERand got a cup of coffee,

1:10:21SPEAKERand it's less than a cup of coffee now.

1:10:23SPEAKER- That's right.

1:10:24SPEAKER- Significantly so.

1:10:25SPEAKER- Yes, and unlike Artemis, we are not taxpayer funded, so.

1:10:28SPEAKER- No, I mean, we're open to that, I guess.

1:10:30SPEAKER- That's true, the government grants anybody listening.

1:10:33SPEAKER- Yeah, but we wanna thank everybody who supports the show.

1:10:37SPEAKERWe appreciate each and every one of you,

1:10:38SPEAKERbut we especially appreciate our executive producer

1:10:41SPEAKERto your patrons, including OpenAI Delenda Est,

1:10:44SPEAKERAndrew Slosky, Jordan Lippett, Octothorpe Bunny Jerk,

1:10:48SPEAKERDavid Allen, James Kamik, and Pantheon,

1:10:51SPEAKERmakers of the HS3 high-speed 3D printer.

1:10:53SPEAKERThank you also so much.

1:10:54SPEAKER- Yes, thank you.

1:10:56SPEAKER- Brad, that'll do it for us this week.

1:10:57SPEAKERI hope your recovery continues at pace, and you sound great.

1:11:01SPEAKERYou look good, you look reasonably comfortable.

1:11:04SPEAKER- Yeah, I've debated.

1:11:05SPEAKERI mean, I thought about not wearing this brace

1:11:07SPEAKERon livestreams, but.

1:11:09SPEAKER- No, you should wear the brace on livestreams.

1:11:10SPEAKER- Might as well just embrace it.

1:11:12SPEAKER- Yeah, embrace the brace, that's what we say here.

1:11:14SPEAKER- That's right. - I've tested.

1:11:15SPEAKER- That's right.

1:11:16SPEAKER- And that'll do it for us this week.

1:11:16SPEAKERWe'll be back next week with another edition of the Tech Pod.

1:11:19SPEAKERAs always, please consider the environment

1:11:22SPEAKERbefore printing this podcast.

1:11:23SPEAKER(upbeat music)