This Week in Space 94 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

00:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
On this episode of this Week in Space, we'll be talking about Space 2024. This one's going to be a year for the history books. Stay with us.

00:08 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
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01:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This is this Week in Space, episode number 94, recorded on January 19th, 2024. 2024 in space. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the Space 2024 edition. I tried to make that sound like Space 1999, but I think I failed. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Adaster Magazine, and it's my enduring pleasure to be joined, as always, by the illustrious Tarak Malik, editor-in-chief of Spacecom.

01:35 - Tariq Malik (Host)
How are you, hello? Hello Rod, happy belated 2024. I know we talked a few weeks into it.

01:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, well, you know it's going to be 2024 for another 49 weeks, so you're in plenty of time. We are going to gab a bit about this coming year in spaceflight. Yeah, you're right. I mean, we're just far enough into the year that we should be doing that. So hold on to your hats because it's going to be a rocky ride, as we've seen already. Well, here we go.

02:06
A couple of housekeeping memos. First, our good friends at Twit need your help, want to keep our show in the air and Twitter available to all. So, as I will beg you again at the end of the show, please consider joining Club Twit for just $7 a month, because it'll help us all out and we'd appreciate it. And I'll give you the rest of the blurb at the end. Second, it's survey time. The annual Twit survey helps keep us informed of audience wants and thoughts and helps us to make your listening experience better, better. So, despite my lame dad's based jokes, please go to twittv slash survey 24. It'll only take you a few minutes.

02:42
I took it the other day just so I could make sure that that was true, and it really took me about six minutes. Your data stays private and the last day to take. It is January 31st, so you got a week and a half yeah, about 10 days, and of course there's a slot. You can tell them where you heard the blurb to prompt to take it. So make sure you tell them that you heard it on this week in space, because we might get a batch of cookies or something. Ooh, all right, it's time for my trademark bad dad's based joke. I was a good dad, but the jokes are usually bad. Again, from our increasingly good pal Tucker Drake, as he liberated from the Will Eisner book 101 Space Jokes. I got to get this book, I know, right, I actually kind of like this one. Okay, hey, tarek, yes, rod, what goes? Ha ha ha, thump, thump, thump I don't know what does a three headed Martian laughing his heads off.

03:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
All the audience like that one.

03:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, thank you, tucker, and, as always, we invite the rest of you get with it to send us your lame space joke, as as you will, and don't forget to do us a solid make sure to like, subscribe and all that good podcast stuff, because we love you, we want to know you love us. All right, let's get to some headlines. Yes, so hey, a half, a yay. One fifth up for Japan who made it to the moon? And that appears to be it.

04:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
This is like literally hot off the presses.

04:15
The press conference ended 15 minutes before we we sat down to record this episode, but Japan is officially the fifth country ever to soft land on the moon. They're, they're slim moon over they, if you've, and that's not a rover, it's a moon lander, and they call it a moon sniper because it was designed to test this like really super precise landing technology, where it would like scan and then touchdown within about 100 meters of a target zone, and it appears to have done that, you know, remarkably well. The only hiccup is that it's solar arrays stopped working after after it reached the surface, so it's not generating solar power. That being said, though, japan is declaring it like a successful landing at least, and I guess the hope is there that, over the as time passes and the moon moves in its orbit, that the angles of the sunlight might strike its solar panels again. It's unclear if it like landed upside down or what, but they know that they soft landed and ejected these tiny little micro probes too, and they sent back signals to that thing with your hands.

05:30 - Rod Pyle (Host)
again, I need a little micro, that's my micro probe.

05:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You look like a crab for a minute, but that's and so and so, a really big and exciting kind of day for JAXA, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration. Of course they would have liked a much longer time. It's working on battery power right now, but that battery supply is limited and it will run out.

05:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I mean it's like a matter of hours, yeah it was like.

05:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
only as of the start of the press conference they said a few more hours, and by that point Slim had already been on the surface of the moon for about an hour or so. And I should point out that Slim is, of course, in an acronym. It is short for surface. Oh, what is it? I have it here. Surface lander or smart lander for investigating the moon is what it's short for. And it took a long time to reach the moon, which is like the sad part. It took like six months because it launched in September. But at least it got there. It touched down. We expect to get some photos, before the battery dies, of its approach in landing. So there will be some stuff to study over time from this one.

06:38 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Now can I just take a moment here for us to all pat ourselves on the back those of us listening in the United States, because your tax dollars over the decades have allowed NASA and JPL and Goddard and the other centers and universities involved in robotic exploration to take huge strides and have massive successes, and I think we've taken a lot of those for granted. You know, opportunity crawled across Mars for 14 years. We landed Surveyor lunar landers in the mid 1960s and that was all a ramp up to Apollo. But they worked. And even the Rangers after the first six failed worked. Those were impactors, earliest Mars lander, the Vikings in 1976.

07:26
So not not to wax too philosophical about this, but it's astonishing what's been achieved by both the US and the former Soviet Union and of course now by China and India.

07:38
But this is just a demonstration of how hard it is and it's it's really valuable that different countries and now private companies are trying to learn how to do this for a lot less money, because we did chew up an appreciable number of tax dollars during the space race and beyond to do this. But I just, you know, my hats off to the people that have made it work, both here and in the former Soviet Union back in those old days when, let's remember, transistors were a new thing in the 1960s and computers were really stupid and all hard-coded and the ones that were actually able to record data did it on reel to reel tape and spacecraft like the voyagers. So the fact that that stuff worked as well and as long as it did and the landings were successful as they were as frequently as they were, is a really big deal. And again we're just being reminded once again of how hard it all is.

08:32 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Oh yeah, and and you know Japan, jaxa is is kind of declaring the landing itself a success. They said that the solar array problem is actually like a separate issue from the landing, at least at first blush. They're going to obviously look into it, but you know, I should point out that this isn't Japan's first attempt to land on the moon. There was a small, a small lander spacecraft on SLS for Artemis I when it flew. The company iSpace from Japan tried to land a private moon lander on the moon and that one did fail, and so so this has been kind of in the in the wings waiting to happen. And now that they've hit this milestone, they actually said that the head of JAXA that they will be building more landers for the moon to come. They're not going to stop just because of this, this issue, and you know, just kind of like a watch this space, if you will, for love for the future. And of course they're a, they're a partner with NASA too on the Artemis chords and whatnot.

09:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So well, and that is an interesting point, and I don't want to get straight too far from the headlines because we have other stuff to do today. But you know, if you're designing something today, especially for private industry, if you're designing a lunar lander or a lunar orbiter, a Mars lander, mars orbiter or even a crude spacecraft, you're not starting from zero like somebody did 60 years ago. You're looking at blueprints from a number of different countries, at least the ones you can get of their spacecraft. You're looking at their technology. Then you're trying to compare that out to current technology, especially if you can use off-the-shelf stuff and what that's capable of doing. So you'd think it would be a lot easier. But even NASA's having trouble reconstituting lunar capable heat shields.

10:19 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So well, and there's also a lot of partnership. You know I know we're going to talk about astrobotic in a little bit, but another thing that happened this week was, you know, india landed on the moon we talked about that with the Vikram lander, and NASA's lunar reconnaissance orbiter bounced their laser off of that, that lander, which has just been sitting there, you know, kind of dormant, and so that's because there's a NASA experiment on that Indian lander and they're able to still pull the science like out of it. This, you know, many months later on and that kind of partnership, I think, will also both spread a number of attempts that we're going to see coming forward. But also, you know, you get like some additional results out of a lot of these things that we weren't really looking for too.

11:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And Vikram landed in December, correct?

11:06 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Man I'd have to go back. How's it been that long? It feels like a million years.

11:09 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Like you said last week, but I think the last few months right, Because I think it landed in September, because it was only there for the lunar day with the Progion lander oh, you're right.

11:20 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And then it went silent. We were waiting for it to wake up in September and it didn't.

11:24 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So look at us, right on top of the moon, here, all right. Next up, peregrine lander, that's right. Speaking of the moon, the Vulcan ran well, did his job flawless, launch as near as we know but, and ejected Peregrine into a trans lunar trajectory. But that that didn't work.

11:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, well, you know, last week we talked about the challenges that astrobotics was having with the Peregrine lander. It had a fuel leak and whatnot, and it was they were trying to figure out if it would survive. As of the Thursday, january 18th RIP, because astrobotic has lost contact with Peregrine, it actually reentered the Earth's atmosphere, so it kind of did the big loop, you know, all the way out beyond. It went just a little bit past the orbit of the moon the moon wasn't there, of course, and and then it came all the way back. They were actually just they're having a press conference as we were starting this as well and talking about the Herculane efforts just to keep it going that long, because they were able to fire some thrusters and and point themselves at the sun to generate the power that you know Japan's lander doesn't have, and so so they're kind of counting it as kind of a mixed result.

12:42
You know this was their first mission. They made it out to lunar orbit. They didn't get a chance to land, but they did get to go. You know, they had a flight, like a good 10 day flight, to figure out what it's like to to fly one of these missions, and it is a little bit of a disappointment. There's a lot of NASA payloads on this five, at least 15 others for commercial, commercial payloads, including a lot of human ashes and remains for Celestus and Elysium space. Those have all burned up in the Earth's atmosphere over the South Pacific. But this isn't their first. There's their last lander, in fact. In just a few weeks Intuitive Machines and other private companies are going to launch and you can bet that they were watching this mission really closely to see like what they needed to double check when that launches on a Falcon Heavy rocket in February and SpaceX just put the call out for media to interested in covering that mission.

13:37
So so we're going to see how this this goes back and forth and see you know, if Intuitive Machines will will cross that finish line when, I believe, astrobotics next mission is the Griffin one, which will have the Viper moon rover on it. So what they're going to learn from that and if and hopefully we'll get off the ground.

13:56 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And let's just remind ourselves, this is all part of NASA's clips program, which stands for commercial lunar payload services, which is their way of helping these industries move along, besides sharing data and engineering understandings and so forth.

14:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
this money, and getting a getting a ride to the moon at a bit of a cheaper price too.

14:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Instead of yeah, because the Vulcan. So the average Falcon 9 launch now is, I think, between 52 and 670 million dollars roughly and Vulcans looking like it's going to be between 52 to 60.

14:31 - Tariq Malik (Host)
If it's a civilian flight, there's more for insurance and stuff. Yeah for Falcon 9.

14:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, vulcan is going to be at least 130 million Right Now. And if they address that in any of their press conferences about hey, here's where rocket costs so much more, I know that you LA's thing has always been ours, always launched perfectly. But SpaceX is kind of eating their heels on that one.

14:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you know that's a good question to ask if we can get them on the show.

14:58 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, I don't know if I'm brave enough to ask that one, but we'll see.

15:01 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
All right.

15:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Last up Axiom AX3 has launched. That's right.

15:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Big year for a big week for private, private missions. A lot of private stuff going on in space. But SpaceX has launched their third private mission with a flight to the space station with a crew for Axiom space AX3. They're calling this their all European mission, even though it's commanded by NASA astronaut, michael Lopez Aligria. And for folks who don't know, to be an astronaut for NASA you do have to be an American citizen. At least you did, for you know, for when Mike LA joined. But he is representing Spain on this flight, and so you've got Spain.

15:41
And then the pilot is Walter Villadae of the Italian Air Force and if that name sounds familiar, it's because he launched on Virgin Galactic's Italian Air Force flight recently and now he gets all the way to orbit.

15:55
And European Space Agency Reserve astronaut from Sweden, marcus Wont. And then Alper and I do apologize in advance if I get this wrong Alper Gezerravici from Turkey. Turkey's first astronaut has reached the internet, has reached orbit on this flight. They launched Thursday, january 18th, so the day before we're recording this, and they'll arrive at the space station over the weekend for at least a two week flight up there and then they'll come on back. But you know, it just kind of goes to show you that there is this really clear pipeline for these commercial flights and these aren't like the tourists that you would expect that would be flying on all of these missions. You know, you've got an ESA reserve astronaut here, which is an interesting arrangement in itself, that a European Space Agency astronaut can kind of do an end run around the normal process and get on one of these flights if you buy it privately, and so they're each doing actual missions for their respective countries and it'll be interesting to see how that model plays out.

17:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So it's a race to the finish to see whether or not we can have one of these headlines of he's the first person or she is the first person from country X to fly before I'm word worm food, so I can myself.

17:18 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I can be the first Mexican Pakistani astronaut, right, how about that?

17:23 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And Zady, my daughter, Chinese, Mexican, Pakistani have a scalp of the slice that's sufficiently thin. Okay, we're about to go to break here, but before we do I want to announce because it's kind of a big deal for us, that the National Space Society and their International Space Development Conference coming up this May, has secured William Shatner oh, the shot. Join us. Yes, he's going to be picking up an award and saying a few words, and of course we have Jose Hernandez and a bunch of other luminaries coming. But getting the shot was a big deal, just had to pass on long so honored for this award.

18:02 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's my, that's my, that's my character person, each to walk on.

18:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, we will be right back after this short break, go nowhere. Let's talk about 2024 in space specifically. So first, up and boy. We got a lot of stories here. We'll get through as many as we can.

18:20
I think the big one that you and I've been talking about is the delay of Artemis, and we'll be having Pam Melroy on soon, deputy Administrator of NASA, to talk about that. It's supposed to be here this week but they got weathered out in Washington. So here we are, your consolation prize, but this is, in a sense, a good thing because we could talk about this a little bit of advance. So yeah, you know it's a little frustrating. I just want to say up front I was, I was online commenting somebody the other day. They were saying oh, when's it? What's it going to fly and why is it taking so long?

18:50
And if you were around during the space race years which I was, as a young lad not that young, but young enough you were used to delays that there were a lot of them that were the constant delays, largely with the lunar module, but but with also the Apollo caps left, the Apollo one fire and so forth. This is just part of it, the differences. There's a number of differences. The big difference, experientially, is that these delays we're seeing now are a lot longer, on the matter of years instead of months. But let's all bear in mind before we launch into this that we're still not sure what the exact margins are. At one point I could have said Artemis is only going to cost 25% of what Apollo costs. But you know as even adjusted it's, it's narrowing down a bit and I think it's going to be closer to half or perhaps more, but it appears to be working slowly. So the core of this long diatribe is the fact that NASA, in the last two weeks, has announced that Artemis II is delayed to at least December 2025 and Artemis III, the first lunar landing, to 2026. I think we're all still a little queasy with that date, given what's going on with SpaceX's lunar lander version of the Starship.

20:10
And I just want to add, before I turn it over to you, dr, that Representative Frank Lucas, a Republican from the state of Oklahoma, recently complained we're not the only ones going to the moon. Oh no, he didn't. Wink, wink, snarl, snarl, of course implicating China. But you know we want to make sure these guys get back, so we have heat shield issues to worry about, we have battery problems. Apparently there's some issues with the ventilation and temperature controls, although I'm not sure that would actually hold them back unless they're pretty severe. And of course, the biggies, the extra activity moon suits that we haven't built since the 70s and that great big lander that we need. Yeah.

20:56 - Tariq Malik (Host)
What's the lander? It's interesting that you mentioned the moon suits, because Axeem Space is actually building those suits right now and they actually touched a little bit on that during their AX3 launch, saying that they're making progress but they're not done yet, they're not finished. But yeah, it's weird that we're starting kind of our look ahead belatedly for the year for something that's not happening this year, because we were really looking forward to it. The original plan, well, the original plan was for Artemis II to launch last year and actually maybe even a year or so earlier, and it just keeps getting pushed to the right and before this recent change it was kind of in the November December period for 2024.

21:46
And so all of those issues the heat shield issues, the Eclis stuff, artemis I did not have that life support system fully tested out on it because they were trying to just do the basic flight around the moon and they have to get all of that stuff done and that's something you do not want going wrong on your very first crewed flight on the new ship. And so they do have to kind of close all those boxes and it is frustrating to see it, but it's, I think, a little bit easier to have the delay this far up front right Then to have NASA be playing, you know, hunky Dory for the entire year and then kind of pull that rug out later on. And of course they wouldn't be able to do that because there's like milestones that you have to have in hand.

22:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And excuse me, but just in terms of timeline, I think it's important to remember that I hope I get these dates right that we were originally we being NASA and the planners were originally aiming for later launch dates for all this stuff. It was the Trump administration that said no, no.

22:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I want it by this date 2028.

22:53
And that sent it back by a couple of years 2028 was kind of the target 2026 to 2028 for Artemis flights to the moon and of course it wasn't Artemis. Then it was, you know, just the moon plan and when the Trump administration accelerated that plan, that's when they pushed it up to 2024, then we saw the slip 2025. And then now 2026 for the Artemis III mission. Now what NASA did say and we kind of touched on this in our last episode too about Artemis plans for the moon is that that fourth mission, which is the one that would start kind of building out that architecture for the gateway bases and beyond, still is on track for 2028. So NASA is kind of targeting these annual flights in the fall, like late summer fall September 2025 for Artemis II, september 2026 for Artemis III and then September 2028. Now that's a two-year jump for Artemis IV and then the missions would be annual, pardon me, after that. And budget-wise you were talking about that these are supposed to cost on comparative levels to the space shuttle program, those flights of a few billion dollars a trip, if you will.

24:12
Going forward, nasa has plans to fund or at least to order enough SLS boosters through Artemis X at this point, right now is what they were looking at, in fact, the second booster core is under kind of final construction in Michoud as we speak.

24:29
We've seen some of the photos of it already, so this does seem a lot more feasible. And of course it's a new administration now which is probably a little bit more amenable to delays of this sort. But hopefully this will allow the commercial partners to kind of get to catch up at this point, which is weird that we're saying that that they have to catch up with the work that NASA is working on so that they can have all of these things. But you don't want to have the way to get there and then nothing that you need to arrive. But the big tent for any of these landings that you're talking about is the human landing system, the SpaceX Starship, at least at this point, because they have to fly not one but at least two flights to support an Artemis III landing. One is an uncrewed moon landing with a Starship, and then of course, the crewed landing with the Starship as well. Each of those Starship flights needs 10 flights to refuel the thing, a minimum of 10.

25:29 - Rod Pyle (Host)
A minimum. Yeah, and let us point out, we both suffered through our press conference last week where they talked about this and, to his credit, mr Bill Nelson said sorry. So let me back up. So somebody asked the SpaceX rep. I don't remember her name. It sounded like a nice enough lady as often happens with SpaceX very young, maybe new to that job, I don't know and so they asked so hey, who was it? Do you remember which journalist it was, was it?

26:01 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
I think it was Irene right.

26:03 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think it was Irene. Yeah, irene Klotz aviation, I believe.

26:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Said hey, thanks for taking my question how many flights is it going to take to refuel this lunar lander, to make it out to the moon and down and back? And there was on SpaceX's side a little bit of shuffling and muffling and well, you know, it's a few and I'm not a little lot. But finally Bill Nelson, in a very uncharacteristic moment, said, I believe the question was exactly how many flights is it going to take to refuel this thing? Well, we think about 10, but they're not. They're not near that number. I've heard as much as 16.

26:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, and it's not. It's going. I mean it's going back and forth. I heard 18.

26:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I heard five gallon pail at a time. You know, I know it's big, I know it's new, I know this is different, but we've only had two test flights of this thing, both of which ended in less than optimum circumstances. And you know, every time you see images of Boca Chica, there's all these starships lined up like soldiers waiting to take their turn at the charge. And I know that there are problems with Fish and Wildlife and FAA and they got a lot of boxes to check. But man, they better. They better hurry up.

27:15 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, and it was interesting because that's a number that that we've wanted to know for a while and both NASA's own representative that was initially asked the question and SpaceX did kind of hem and haw. I think that Bill Nelson wanted to know as well. That's why we heard that.

27:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, I've got this on my scratch pad here. Well, and it's like asking about the life support system of Starship. Hey, how's that coming? Well, we have one in Crew Dragon. Yeah, and what are you going to put 10 of those in Starship? What are you going to do?

27:49 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's exactly what Elon Musk told me in 2019. That's exactly what he said We've got it. We've got it. We've got it pegged out on on on Dragon. So I think it'll be fine. Now, maybe it will be because I think that the interior of Starship is going to be very different than what the, the, the artist, you know, renderings had been where we see like a battle, you know, floating, you know, and whatnot. I don't know if they're going to still cram 100 people in there.

28:15 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Let's remember that a lot of those renderings came from third parties. Spacex has delivered precious few things that would show us, other than in whimsical terms, how that thing would be configured at all, and it would make a lot of sense, I think, to have you know how many people are heading down the lunar surface three or four.

28:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, they'll have two people for the initial ones, right, and then the four-person mission. It could be all four of them. You know, we don't know, we don't know.

28:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But the point is, you know, if you take the Orion capsule and put it up against the very top of Starship, you don't need much pressurized volume for that.

28:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, exactly and it depends on how much cargo you want to bring to Now they will have this giant elevator. In fact, the astronauts are testing that now the towering elevator is going to pop out the crew compartment and then lower the astronauts all the way down, which you know excuse me, but I had seen that in one of those awful Japanese sci-fi movies for my childhood.

29:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
They had a couple of those movies that had a big rocket with a little elevator and a couple of you know, three inch high figurines on it going and jerkly down the side and I remember laughing going, ha, they'll never do that, I know.

29:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah.

29:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, john just wrote in. John Sunita wrote in. I'm sorry we're supposed to use his call sign. How many refuelings to get to Mars?

29:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well it's an interesting question 10, 10, 10, just to get to the moon, you know. So what's the distance comparison.

29:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, but you can only fill it right. Yeah, I mean, if you've got one Starship headed to Mars, you can only fill it once. So probably about the same number. They just do their flight trajectory a little differently. Yeah Well, gosh. Oh. And in a final little tagline, Mike Griffin recently came out and said hey, artemis is too complex, maybe even dangerous. I don't think it's going to work.

30:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And you know Mike Griffin.

30:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Mike Griffin, former former NASA administrator an engineer, which not all administrators are. So I appreciate that he can be a little little sticky at times, but I don't know. You know the part of me that's not rational says dude, this isn't the time.

30:28 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah Well, so Mike Griffin spoke and actually you mentioned the Congress as well during a hearing scheduled just after the delays announcements last week, scheduled for this week, about how to keep Artemis on track. That was the science subcommittee of the house's meeting. That's what it was called how to keep Artemis on track. And Mike Griffin said Artemis needs to be restarted, not kept on track, you know, because of kind of where it is now, and so there is definitely kind of a lot of a lot of eyes, and you see this. You know the Congressional, not the Congressional the budget office.

31:06
You know the watchdogs. You know they've been taken a real close eye on kind of all the different components. You know. You know letting NASA know where the challenges are for SLS, why the limiting factor for the landing system isn't just SpaceX but also, you know, the suits and whatnot there, because you need to have all of that stuff in place before the astronauts can fly. And so you know it's a bit of a pickle right now with all of these different programs, but at some point they're going to have to converge in the next couple of years to make a 2026 landing possible. I think it's doable, you know, I think it's doable. It seems like there's just a lot of a lot of dots to, to to dot and eyes to dot and a lot of T's across.

31:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, but it's a. You said it's a pickle, yeah, well, really.

31:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I like pickles right.

31:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, okay, you weirdo, we will be back in just a moment, after this quick break, with our next exciting story. Stay with us. Do you mind if I go out of sequence on this next one, because I just saw it before we started?

32:08 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's all. It's what. This is all up to you. You know there's a Blue.

32:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Origin rocket in the wild. I couldn't believe it. So, yeah, years of constipation. I mean we've seen all this stuff go in the front end of the Blue Origin factories and foundries and offices, supplies and people and hardware and all this stuff. And then it's like his little kid, you want to run around the back of the circus tent and watch the elephants leave. We waited and we waited and we waited and okay, we saw the new shepherd. I give him that. But we kept waiting for the big rockets to come out. Why, the door is still closed. It's been 24 years. It's been 24 years since this company started and they've done a lot of cool things, but at a much slower space than the Pace X, slower pace than Space X.

32:54
But I'm wondering if maybe and you know we still don't know this answer, I don't think if maybe they're taking a little more of a ULA type approach to you know, we don't want to just toss them up and see if they explode, we want to apply properly first time. So this is a long, roundabout way of saying that a new Glenn core booster core was seen headed towards Launchpad. What is it? Lc 36 last week, and you know, it looks like a rocket. It smells like a rocket, it rolls like a rocket, but apparently the interstage and possibly the rear engine cluster are not flight hardware. So this could be. They do mating tests with the launch complex and so forth, so we just don't know.

33:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, it's hard to tell For John. For John, that's line 36. There's like a nice link there for the folks that might watch the video for Twitter there where you can see 36 or 39?, 39. Pardon me, oh my gosh, I can't even read today. It's okay, pops, don't worry.

34:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I'll take it, I'll take it.

34:01 - Tariq Malik (Host)
But yeah, yeah, this is actually. I have to apologize because we actually haven't written a story yet about these photos. I was stunned and I know we've been so distracted with everything happening at and around the moon this week that we haven't actually jumped on this, and I have to tell you, I was hoping that we would also see some photos from Launch Complex 36 of whatever is going on there, but for folks that are listening, on January 10th, so this is actually you know it's.

34:35 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It was last week, nine days old, I know, I know Hourly news source.

34:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Come on. But Blue Origin rolled out the first stage of New Glenn, this brand new rocket, to the launch Launch Complex 36, which is over at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station. That they've. They've got a. What do you call it? Like a lease for no. Is that NASA? Is it at KSC or is it at NASA?

35:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's at. I think 36 is on the Canaveral side.

35:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's on the Canaveral side. That's what I thought, and and they they moved it there for well, what I think are most likely like fit checks right to show that they can make the drive from, if you've never been, to the Kennedy Space Center visitors complex. As you drive there from what? From Merritt Island, you pass by this sprawling Blue Origin complex, this huge white buildings with the big blue Blue Origin logo on them. There's also like a mini VAB that they have there for what I think are vertical, vertical assembly and tests that you can see, with big doors and everything is really cool, but they have to get the boosters from there to to the Space Force Station and their launch site, and what I suspect is that this was like a rollover to show you know all the processes that they know, that they know how to load the booster on the thing and get it to what I assume is a hanger over there.

35:59
I haven't been at the site since they. They made the initial announcement, you know, when Jeff Bezos was there with his shovel to say, yeah, we're going to, we're going to build it here. So so I haven't seen. I haven't seen what it, what it looks like now, and we didn't hear anything after which is so Blue Origin right, the North Korean Space.

36:21 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Company? We didn't, we didn't?

36:22 - Tariq Malik (Host)
we didn't hear that it got to the pad, okay, or that it got to their complex, okay. And what are they doing there? And you know it's a commercial company, they don't have to tell us anything, right? And in fact we've had I told you this the story before, but we've had Leonard David on the on the show several times, and when I first became the Space Flight Reporter, I called Blue Origin to introduce myself to them and and to ask them the status of their programs, and this is like early 2000s, right? And they told me to give Leonard David a call. He seems to know what we're up to.

36:54 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I always thought that was really funny. So the question is you know, were they being obfuscatory or did they really not know?

37:00 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think at that time they were just, you know, they were working very quietly to make sure that the stuff worked, because when they did release the, the initial hopper tests, it was fantastic and it was, it was stunning.

37:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And I suspect that a lot of you talk about SpaceX or Blue Origin.

37:16 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, this is Blue Origin. They have like a hopper that came out before New Shepard like a prototype. Okay, so it's kind of casually slipped out the announcement that they had done the test weeks and months earlier and how amazing it was. But it's interesting because we talked about this with the Vulcan launch recently. That was great success for United Launch Alliance. Amazing, right, but not a lot of people were talking about what a success it was for Blue Origin, because they're the ones that built those first stage BE4 engines and they're going to use a cluster of those engines on this rocket.

37:53
So now we know that the engines work and now we know that they've got the infrastructure, that they're rolling stuff out to the launch pad. So they're supposed to be launching their first new Glenn rocket sometime this year, in 2024, which we'll have, I believe I think on our list later on is a mission to the Mars that's built by Rocket Lab and flying on New Glenn. So a lot of that on this. And then they have all sorts of plans for their Kuiper satellite system, amazon's Kuiper satellite system, to fly on these rockets themselves too. So this is a really big rocket. The diameter is bigger than anything out there right now.

38:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, that's what's so interesting. People are, of course, jumping into the numbers game. So New Glenn is 322 feet, Falcon Heavy is 230 feet, but of course it's a triple cluster instead of a single tube. New Glenn is 23 feet in diameter. Falcon Heavy at least the cores is 12 feet. Is that right?

38:56 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, yeah. But, of course the core is a little bit bigger than the Falcon 9.

39:02 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and the faring could be larger than the core. So that's a little flexible. But here's the big one, and these are the most recent numbers I saw. They're probably out of date already. It's been 15 minutes Road for New Glenn to orbit. To lower throar of it is 100,000 pounds roughly and Falcon Heavy is 141,000 pounds. So a lot of people are asking well, why the disparity? And is this an expendable or in recovery mode? And those things I could not find. Do you happen to know?

39:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I don't, you know, but I know that the whole goal for New Glenn is for it to be fully, fully, fully reusable, not like Falcon Heavy itself. They do have an ocean barge kind of landing profile, similar to what we've seen SpaceX do with their Falcon 9 and their Falcon Heavies. But one of the things that they do tout is just the sheer size of their payload faring. It is the biggest that out there Well, not including, I guess, starship, for whatever they're going to do to carry payloads on that thing. And that will be very, very interesting to see how it changes, what types of things you can launch in one big go on that one, and so it'll be interesting to see how that all shakes out. And they have been testing those ferrying separations as well at the Kennedy, at the Cape Canary Whale staging grounds and whatnot.

40:35
But I think it's going to be a really big year for Blue Origin. They recently returned to flight with the New Shepherd, so they've got that revenue pipeline started, at least for uncrewed flights, and so we'll see how that goes on the tourism side of things. And then meanwhile they've got BE4 to deliver for the next Vulcan flights, which might even happen later this year. We'll have to wait and see. And then of course their own New Glenn flights and hopefully we'll be able to get down there together, rod to go see that one again off the ground.

41:09 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All I need is for spacecom to pay for it, and I am so there.

41:12
So you bring up a good point which we've hardly ever talked about on the show, which is the diameter of the payload. Ferrying for these rockets of course determines what can fly. And why is that a big deal? Well, if you're doing something that has to deploy in a substantial way on orbit, like something like the web, the smaller that ferrying, the harder it is to jam that spacecraft in there, and then, with the diameter ferrying, you've got a lot less engineering to do to get these things to deploy and be able to work properly. So this would apply to space telescopes, private space station elements. If we ever get space solar power going as a serious concern we're going to guest on a couple of weeks talking about that that's going to be huge because of course it's multi-deployable structures all kinds of origami you have to do to accomplish that. So bigger ferrings will be a big deal, which is, of course, why we've all been lusting after Starship, but we still don't know how Starship's going to deploy payloads.

42:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And if folks are wondering what we're talking about in terms of, like, the bigger payloads, the New Glenn ferrying is a seven-meter diameter ferrying and Blue Origin touts it as twice the volume of the more typical five-meter diameter payloads, which are a little bit more complicated than the big ones.

42:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, stop talking like a snot of European or no.

42:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I'm just Well.

42:34 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I go by meters. Give it to me you know why I say meters?

42:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Because I can't do the math in my head, right, okay?

42:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I just treat it like yards. You'll be close, man, that's right. Let's take a break here and we'll be right back with a couple more stories. And once again, we're not going to get through the list, but we'll be right back with you Someday. Someday, I declare we're going to make it through our whole rundown, but not this week.

43:01 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think we just have Our eyes are bigger than our stomachs when we want to talk about space as well. I don't know.

43:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
My eyes are very big and my tummy certainly is Anyway is big enough to fit in the New Glenn payload ferrying, so let's just take a quick look. You put a bunch of stuff in here too, but I just want to talk briefly about JPL and NASA's robotic plans for 2024. We got Europa Clipping Clipper launch in October, which is a big, long ramp up flagship mission. That's going to be very exciting.

43:38 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I actually got a chance to see Europa Clipper in October when I saw you Rod. I saw it under construction. In fact, everyone else can too. If you go to the Europa Clipper NASA website, europanasagov, you can see the Clipper Cam.

43:53 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, but you saw it through a pane of glass.

43:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right. That's right. This is really exciting, because Europa Actually Europa was the first thing I wrote about when I started as an intern at spacecom too, and the story back then was does it really have an ocean underneath? And this is the mission to find out what that ocean is like and how deep does it go. How big is it? How warm is it? What's going on with this person?

44:20 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, all from orbit. What's just before? Yeah, from orbit. It's not like we're landing and drilling or anything that's all, but we're going there's going to be a lot of intuition going on.

44:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
We're going to Europa, Rod, yes, this year and this icy moon of Jupiter one of the best chances to find the conditions at least to support alien life, even if it's just microbial. I don't know if the real aliens are going to come after us, because the film 2010 told us I was just going to say Stay away. All the worlds were ours except Europa. Attempt no landing there and Arthur.

44:57 - Rod Pyle (Host)
C Clarke is no longer with us, to ask wait, is it okay? Or did you really mean that? Because we don't know.

45:03 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Although, wasn't it the Apodos at Saturn in the original book?

45:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I didn't read the original book. Yeah, certainly Europa in the movie, but we're not landing. It said. Do not attempt the landing, that's right. Not say, as I recall, you can't orbit, but it's interesting when you start looking at the instrumentation. So I haven't actually kept up with the story. It's a couple years old. But there was a story I wrote for the JPL technical annual. I was doing about how you sample stuff coming out of Europa from those plumes, the orbit, and apparently these water plumes that we've seen through, like Hubble telescopes and stuff other things.

45:40
yes, yeah, the second they exit the planet, they turn to ice crystals, right. So you've got to scoop these things up if you're going to evaluate them. Well, you're going really fast because you're orbiting and you're dropping a scoop and these are ice particles, so they're going to do various things when they hit the metal or the composite of the scoop. Yeah, and holy Moses, you start reading what these guys have to test and think about. Well, at these speeds, an ice crystal will instantly vaporize into water. So we have to make sure that we and here's what the molecules do and we have to make sure we do this to capture them.

46:17
And then this part of it is is the integrity is damaged as far as testing goes, and it's like wait a minute, I thought you were just going to stick out a vacuum cleaner hose and grab some ice and go hey, look, here's what's in it. But oh no, like everything else in spaceflight, it is unbelievably complicated, and that's just one little aspect of the mission. They've got to worry about spectroscopy. They've got to worry about magnetometers. You have to keep them far enough away from the spacecraft. They can do their thing without interference. You have to worry about propulsion and attitude control and whatever kind of AI implementation they're going to have on board, if any, and data and I don't know how they do it, and you got to get there too.

46:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You mean, this is launching on a spacex stock and heavy rocket, and I think that was a change because initially they might have wanted to launch it on.

47:04 - Rod Pyle (Host)
They're going to go on SLS.

47:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And so that's added a lot of extra complexity. They got to make sure that the heavy will be able to do what it can. Obviously it can. They wouldn't be doing it, and they've got about 50 flybys of Europa planned for this mission, really close ones. I mean like 16 miles away that's about the distance between my house and New York right now, so maybe a little bit more. We're going to get that close to the moon to fly over its surface and from different areas to scan almost the entire thing, and I think it's going to be just amazing.

47:48
And of course, they'll do some other stuff because they're flying around the radiation environment for Jupiter. They can measure all of that as well over time. And it's not small. It's not small. It's going to be what it's going to be high, with the largest, with these huge solar arrays. Nasa says that it's the largest spacecraft they've ever developed for a planetary mission, and so that makes it like a record breaker across the board. This comes after they flew Juno to Jupiter, which has the biggest solar arrays they ever built for planetary missions, because it's dark there.

48:24 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, it's dark out there Now we're used to. Probably every time, I see these things from the high bay, which isn't very often the last one was, I think, the web, but it's always kind of astonishing how large they are. Oh yeah, you see pictures of them and you see people stand next to me and go, oh, that's kind of big. But then you go and you see yourself and of course, jpl stages these things cleverly, so they always have, I think, they go out and get the short people to put in the big spot and walk her out if you're there with the media, but it looks like a great, big, huge thing and yeah, well, you know, good luck to them.

48:59
This is a mission we've been waiting for a long time. It could be really exciting.

49:04 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, well, it will be, and we're going to be spoiled for choice when it comes to it, because Juno will still be at Jupiter, hopefully doing its thing and capturing amazing images. You've got juice, he says. Juice is on the way too. So when they all converge and they're all hopefully working at the same time, that would be really, really cool to have three spacecraft doing three different missions in the Jupiter system.

49:27 - Rod Pyle (Host)
When you say ESA's juice is on the way. If somebody was just now tuning in at the next context, that sounds kind of weird.

49:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
The European space. Explain that, please. Jupiter icy moons explorer. Thank you, sorry, sorry. Another spacecraft which also launched in April, I think of last year, well, 2023.

49:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So let's talk about ESA, because we've got limited time and a lot left to look at. But so juice is heading out. That's a European space agency mission, yes, hera which was, if I remember correctly, originally supposed to go out coincident with the Dart mission.

50:02 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
Yes.

50:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Asteroid redirect. Sorry, asteroid redirect brings back uncomfortable thoughts.

50:08 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Double asteroid redirect. Double asteroid redirect.

50:10 - Rod Pyle (Host)
On a basically On a basically Nudging a moonlet of Deimos. Hera was supposed to go along as an observer or something was, and that didn't happen. But now it's heading out much later and in a way there's an advantage, because we can look at the alteration of Diddy Moon's. What's the proper name for it? It's not Diddy Moon, that's what we're calling it Dymorphous Dymorphous, thank you. The moonlet around Diddymos that was actually impacted by the Dart mission. We can look at the changes over some range of time and really see, by doing the math backwards, how much effect that thing had and as it turns out. You know from my basic physics class and very basic stuff about space flight in college when you looked at this thing the size of a golf cart running into a 500 foot diameter rock Wait, was that about right? What was the score in that?

51:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think it was kind of man. This is September.

51:15 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I know we have to look up the numbers. Anyway, running into this much bigger rock, I thought I ain't going to do nothing, my layman's brain. But as it turns out it had about double or triple the effect that they expected. So it's going to be really exciting when Hera gets there and says hey, it's gone. We don't know where it went. You knocked it out of orbit or whatever. So that'll be exciting. But that's not all that ESA's got coming. There's more.

51:40 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, yeah, you pointed out that the ESA teamed up with China to launch their Einstein probe, which is this X-ray telescope to look at black holes and whatnot. They call it a lobster eye space telescope because it has all these different kind of cameras that looks really, really freaky and sci-fi. But that actually did launch this month Orion 6.

52:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And which of them actually built the hardware? Oh, man.

52:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think that China built primarily the telescope and then ESA built a lot of the guts and stuff inside it, if I understand correctly and I don't follow them that closely because I mostly like to keep listening, ladies and gentlemen, we're the experts, we are, we are. But if you want to know about rockets, the Orion 6 is supposed to resume its testing after they had a lot of challenges on the development side for that, and so hopefully we'll be able to see that one get off the ground a little bit quicker than we've seen some of the other stuff. Can I be obnoxious for?

52:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
a moment.

52:44 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You never have to ask.

52:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Rod, I never do, and not that it's unusual, but it astonishes me.

52:53
So decades ago, orion from Europe was kind of this upstart Wait a minute. So rockets, what's going on here, are primarily French effort and I think that the traditional old school aerospace contractors of the US were nervous about it and possibly still are. But at this point, having watched the ascendancy of SpaceX over the last two decades, and particularly the last 10 years, basically owning global launch to a large extent, you look at Orion and part of my brain pardon me for this ESA but part of my brain goes why you are you bothering? I know you have to right, I mean, it's national pride, it's keeping industry going and all that. But it's almost like you want to go to all these other rocket companies which I would definitely never do with ULA and say why would you do this? It's like just let Chevrolet make all the cars in the world. Not the way to do it. You want competition. You want to have a second supplier, as we do in the US, in case something happens to the first one, especially when it's owned by Elon.

53:56 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Musk, it's a painful lesson. I mean, we only have to look to our own backyard to know what. Not having your own, your own dependable access to space, you know, are we? We have a rocket in your backyard, I don't know. Well, I mean, like the, the, the national back yard the national backyard, right, where, where?

54:14
between 2011 and 2000 and what? 20, we had no ability to launch our own astronauts because we didn't have a vehicle that could do it. Now that's one example, right, I, I, I on space, the, the, the French airspace giant that that, you know, does build these rockets, for the European space agency is retiring their ion fly rocket and I, on six, is the next heavy lift that's going to do it. Right now, it's four years behind schedule. Four years compared to SLS is like a drop in the bucket, right, oh, but oh, your arms. But it's not going to launch people, at least at this point in time. And it does have a fairly firm date. It's like it's targeted right now for June 15th at 2024.

54:56
If they make that date or not, you know it remains to be seen. But you know there's a lot riding on it, because this is kind of the first of their new Vanguard. They they're also developing reusable rockets, a little bit belatedly, like everyone else who's not SpaceX. They're looking at ways to do vertical landings and all of that stuff, and but first they have to make sure that they have that continuity going forward. And this would be it. So you know, I. It wouldn't surprise me if they if they got there by the end of the year and June is still a long way away, and they announced that in November, which sounds like a very conservative number. So we'll have to wait and see if they get there.

55:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So we have about 14 items left. Yeah, I'm going to let you wait, wait, wait. I'm going to let you pick the last story because you're a Mr International, so that'll be on you. But I just want to say you mentioned, you know, look on our own backyard. I almost had a rocket in my own backyard. Yeah, I still had a house before I let go of it.

55:53
I was teaching an executive education program at the Johnson Space Center in 2009, 2010. And we were driving out the West exit of JSC, through the fields there with the law, all the Longhorn Cadillac, you know out adjacent to the, the Saturn 5 building and all that. And I'm looking over the left and there's this Titan rocket sitting there with a boiler plate Gemini capsule on top. I said, excuse me, can you stop for a second? And we had the, the chief knowledge retention officer, there, a lovely lady named Jeannie Angle, and I said what? What is that, you know? She said, oh, I think it's an old mating test item. So it looked like a Titan, but it didn't have tankage aside, it was empty, with, you know, some cruciform braces in it and stuff, and it was a little oblong from having sat there over time, but it was a Titan and I said, well, who owns the property? She said, well, let's just see, but it's leased out for for cattle grazing, and all that Bottom line is that thing was up for grabs.

56:53
And I have to tell you there was a moment there after I got home back to Pasadena for that particular trip and thought I wonder if the city has a limit on how tall I could put something in my backyard, cause how cool would it be to have a Gemini Titan sitting in your backyard. When your guests come over and say, hey, I got something to show you, but I got a model rocket in the backyard, you're going to expect something. Three feet tall and wow.

57:16 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I'll tell you I'd I'd go see it. I charged tickets man.

57:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I'd pay for tickets. Yeah, absolutely All right. So sorry Last story's on you All right.

57:22 - Tariq Malik (Host)
There's a lot that we thought that there's a lot more to look forward to in the year. You've got Polaris Dawn for SpaceX, with private the first private spacewalk. You've got the first dream chaser. I would say, though, that for me, the most exciting story that we've been following will be the final development, possibly, of India's India's first crew capsule.

57:44
You know, the Indian space research organization, you know, has has said, like many other countries, that they want to launch their own astronauts into space, but what we've seen in recent years is a trajectory of testing and vehicle hardware development that says that they're really serious about doing it themselves. You know they have this GSLV three mark three launch vehicle that they're going to adapt for for human spaceflight, and they've they've, you know they've had some challenges with it, and they've returned it to flight and it's doing quite well. And at the same time, last year in 2023, they did test a prototype capsule for the I hope I pronounced right the gang, gang and young human spaceflight program. I think it's Gogganon, but yeah, gogganon Is that? Yeah, and they've been developing their own spacesuits on, and they actually announced the spacesuits quite early, a few years ago.

58:40 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Can they make some for us?

58:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I know right, and so so this this year, this year, they're expecting to do at least three more abort missions, because they've already launched one for this, this capsule to prove it out, with the goal of having it ready for flight and operations, if at least an uncrew test, in 2025, that's a that would be a test, a test into space, and and I just think that that's really interesting to follow because while while it is informed by a lot of the other programs, it is different.

59:11
You know, china launches on Shenzhou spacecraft that are very much informed and developed on Soyuz spacecraft. They're modeled after that and this new one is it looks a squat and wide. It's made for a completely different rocket. It does seem very much homegrown and it'll be very interesting to see how, how that develops over time. And I believe that you know India and has had some some cooperation with China and with with Russia in the in the past, but also a lot of cooperation that we were just talking about with NASA as well, and seeing how that that partnership evolves will be very interesting in terms of like not just orbital cooperation but also possibly lunar cooperation in the future. Very excited about that.

01:00:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Me too, and once again, we've reached the end of our hour, and I hate to keep saying this, cause I never stopped, but I think we need a part two.

01:00:10 - Tariq Malik (Host)
There's so much more to come. Starliner we didn't talk about Starliner.

01:00:14 - Rod Pyle (Host)
April 2024. Maybe what's a Starliner? I've never seen one before. Oh, the mythical.

01:00:20 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Starliner yeah, Sunny Williams. Astronaut Sunny Williams has been waiting years for that flight, so let's hope that it gets off the ground.

01:00:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
The Loch Ness spacecraft. Okay, fair enough, it'll. It'll fly someday, but maybe when we, when we have Isaac, come with us, we could talk about more of this stuff, cause I'm sure, yeah, I'll have things to say, but of course that'll be 300 years in the future, cause that's where his, where his brain lives. Well, we've done it again. You spent another hour with us this week talking about space for 2024. What we know is happening, what we hope is happening and what we're pretty sure isn't happening, which has anything to do with the NASA's human landings on the moon. But there we go. If you have comments, please feel free to send them along. We're always here to to listen and respond nicely. Most of the time at twist at twittv, that's T W I S at twittv, tariq. Where can we keep an eye on your incessant video gaming?

01:01:13 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you can see me at spacecom, as always, and on the Twitter at Tariq J Malik. I am trying desperately in 2024 to finish Star Trek. Resurgence at SpaceDrawnPlays on YouTube. Is that?

01:01:25 - Leo Laporte (Announcement)
a game.

01:01:26 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's a game, yeah, and I died for the first time and it was horrifying this weekend this weekend, but you can find the latest there. And one thing we didn't talk about was sky watching April 8th 2024. Big total solar eclipse we were just talking about spaceflight, but I would be remiss if I didn't say I'm planning this weekend to do all the travel for that. You should be too, if you want to go see it.

01:01:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Please don't go to Texas, because that's where we're going to be and we don't want the competition, and I am told that hotel rooms in the area are going for as much as $800 a night. Oh my gosh, it can be for a budget in or a Motel 6, not anything fancy. So if you haven't made your plans, you're probably going to be way off the path of totality, and then you can be part of the traffic jam heading in. I, of course, have made my plans.

01:02:12
Well, you're so far ahead of me, but I well, I don't have airline tickets yet, I just have a place to stay. But yeah, it's going to be. It's going to be a zoo. But, having you know years past, I would say, oh, I got to go see an eclipse someday. And then, when 2017 came, I looked at my watch and realized that my my death timer was counting down and I said, hey, this is not good, so let's see it. And once you've seen one, you're addicted. You want to go back and see it all. It's like nicotine, you know. You say suddenly, oh, I got to do this, so where, where are you headed?

01:02:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I'm probably going to be somewhere in New York state, somewhere I can drive to, to be honest. So, okay, so you're going to go to Texas. No, no, no, I'm likely going to be spending it.

01:02:50 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I don't care about actually seeing the sun, right.

01:02:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, fingers crossed, we're going to have a nice day. We'll have to make the clouds getting dark.

01:02:58 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That is all right. Don't forget to check out spacecom, the websites and the name of the national space society and SS NSSorg. Both are good places to satisfy your space fight cravings. And I forgot to say that you can find me at pilebookscom and at astromagazinecom and increasingly in other places. New episodes published every Friday, so look for us on your favorite podcatcher. Make sure to subscribe so you don't miss any. That makes it much easier than searching us out.

01:03:27
Tell your friends to give us reviews. We'll take anything we can get. The more thumbs you give us, the better. That sounded kind of off, but you can have saying and you can head to our website at twittv slash TWIS, don't forget. You can get all the great programming on the twit network and free on club twit, as well as some special stuff that you can only find there, which is very cool. Extras, where I give a tariff, particularly hard time off air because I can, for just $7 per month. You've heard Leo talk about the challenges facing the podcasting industry. This is your time to step up and be counted, so join us in club twit. You can also follow the twit tech podcast network at twit on Twitter and on Facebook, and twittv on Instagram. Thanks everybody. See you guys next week, take care Bye.