#13 - Tim Dodd ”The Everyday Astronaut” on Space, Competition and the Dear Moon Mission

27:05It could be, who knows what it is and all that stuff, but the point being there is earthly value in space as well as space value in space. So these asteroids could be, metals could be used to create new spacecraft, create bases, create all these other things. Water can be used to create fuel and oxygen as well as just being water to live off of and all of these other things. So there's a lot of value out in space and especially as that space economy grows. I think another area that is underappreciated as well is the actual just value of aspiration, especially in, you know, it feels like the world is getting very hostile to itself.

27:46There's a lot of tension. Geopolitics is getting whacker and whacker every day. and people are getting despondent about the future. I don't know, maybe I'm just being excessively romantic here, but the idea of people looking up and seeing the moon and knowing that there are humans on that, especially if it's an actual base that is multinational, kind of like an ISS, but on the moon, and even more multinational, people from every continent on their living there. It's hard to try and quantify what that aspirational value is, but I think it could be exceptionally large. And often it's neglected. Have you ever read Andy Weir's book, Artemis, by any chance?

28:33No. It's phenomenal. And it deals with, basically, I won't spoil too much, but it's like humans live and work on the moon. And it's a realistic, that's what I love about Andy Weir's writing, it's set up in a reality-based situation where you actually are like, this could make sense. And I could actually imagine this happening. And it does sort of help paint that romantic version of there's people that live there and here and we're all the same species, yet we're separated by 238 ,000 miles or whatever. And there's something just beautiful about that. And then if you imagine humans going out and being able to walk on other planets and live on Mars and someday even further beyond that, it starts to be, wow, look at what we can collectively do as humans and look at what we've been able to figure out.

29:24I mean, it's incredible. At the root of it, humans are always meant to explore. As soon as literally crossing the stream or crossing the mountains and crossing the ocean and all of these things, we've always done this as a species, just spread out and push those boundaries, go to the deepest parts of the ocean, go to the highest parts of that. and space is obviously quite literally the next step. It's the final frontier. It is that for a reason. And then I love too that that does, once you leave Earth, you realize that is all of us right there on that little ball. There's no more borders. You don't see the border between the United States and Canada.

30:04You don't see the border between Iraq and Iran. It's just all land. It's all humans. We're all one species living on this little fragile little rock. And I just think the more people truly understand that and really live that or know someone that's lived that or that really sinks in, it helps the whole feeling of we're fighting over the thing that we're all on. We're all literally sharing this. Why are we killing each other over it? It just seems so barbaric in a sense. And also, for people who are, because there seems to be a correlation again between people who are like, well, going to Mars is wasteful and it's abandoning Earth.

30:45First of all, I think that's completely false. It's not abandoning Earth at all. It's not like everyone is going there. And if we did, Earth would be fine. By the way, Earth would be much better off if we all just went to Mars. Also, if you are wanting to preserve Earth and solve a lot of the problems, then by finding new space for people to actually go and exist and build new stuff and so on, And that is taking the pressure off Earth. Are you familiar? This is actually Jeff Bezos' big vision of space. I wish so bad that he actually spoke more about space or was just in the public light about space because his vision's actually incredible.

31:24Yeah, he's really quiet on it. Super quiet. And so is his company, Blue Origin, besides New Shepard, which no one seems to care about, which is fine. They're really quiet about what they do in general. But his vision for space is actually incredible. He really wants to move heavy industry off Earth and make it so anything that's polluting and all of those things are just done in space, and then Earth can be like a sanctuary. We start sitting in our own backyard. Let's do it where there's no life and it doesn't really matter. Exactly. Like, oh, if we have a bunch of toxic chemicals all over, just float, it doesn't matter.

31:57It doesn't matter at all. And here it matters. And you sit there and be like, wait a minute, that's actually a really good point. The more you start to think of Earth as a sanctuary and space as like a workplace almost, like an industrial workplace? So I imagine some people might feel sort of a repulsion to that idea because I think they associate, because of the pollution that humans create in our activities, we do tend to sully areas that are untouched. I think a lot of people therefore see, and I can identify with this, I don't like the idea of us going and now messing up Mars and to an extent, it would be very sad.

32:39But at the same time, I think what people don't appreciate, especially when they're like, oh, humans are going to go and colonize and spread their filth throughout the universe. It's like, okay, but if it's a dead planet, if there's literally no life on there, I understand if we get there and it turns out there's life, okay, shit, this is not where we do our industry either. But assume it's a dead planet. I don't know, what are we spoiling here? And Jeff's vision is to keep things in low meteor orbit, have space stations that are just factories. So you're not even having to go colonize anywhere or anything.

33:11You're building the stuff that's just kind of gross out where no one sees it, literally where no one sees it. It's not interfering with any biosystem. It's not interfering with anything. It just makes sense. We have to be careful. I do imagine a world where we land on Mars and we have diapers and stuff all over the place, literally. Because if you're doing UVAs, you'd be wearing a diaper and then you have hundreds of hundreds of diapers. It's not just a pile of diapers and that's what we did for Mars, yay. Some of that logistics is dumb and it sucks and it's just the reality of what it would actually be like if we went to Mars.

33:47But in the greater good of things, I think that's... Right, that's a drop in the ocean again. And it might force people to develop better waste disposal methods, which guess what, would then come back to Earth. Because information freely travels. Exactly. And when it's NASA specifically also, it's always public domain, which is great, that technology. So anything that NASA develops is not like ITAR, like International Treaty of Arm Regulations or whatever it is. So any non-weapon material is considered public domain. So anyone can use NASA research, use NASA developed products. So again, like memory foam, perfect example.

34:33There's also a, I think there's sometimes there are timelines on some of these things or something, but there's a rubber and like a Kevlar rubber mesh thing that they used to try to develop a space station or a Habitat module years ago. And it ended up like NASA never did it, but they developed it. And then, I don't know, probably six or seven years ago, Bigelow Aerospace, who no longer exists now, they actually just took that and they're like, well, NASA didn't do it, we'll build it. And they built it and sent it up to the ISS. So now the ISS has this expandable module that all of the work was actually developed by NASA originally and then they just built it.

35:09And it works great and it's now kind of the ISS's closet. But it's that type of thing where there's technology that's literally just sitting there that we can physically utilize. So this is a podcast about competition and I'd love to understand your thoughts a bit more on the role that competition has played within the space industry so far. Because we did have a fairly obviously huge competition, which was the space race between USA and Soviets that got people on the moon and kickstarted the space industry as a whole. But I suspect there are some rumblings of unhealthy competition starting to emerge.

35:50So I'm really curious to hear what your thoughts are. So yeah, there's always been competition, like you said. And frankly, I mean, we need to set the record straight, by the way, with the space race. The Soviets kicked our butts in absolutely everything until it came to landing on the moon. First person in space. Not just first person in space, first person in orbit. Yuri orbited on the first launch. First animal, first EVA, first multiple people in space, first, I think, three people in space. They kind of did the first rendezvous, although they didn't get quite like the Gemini program did, but they did technically both in the same orbit within visual line of distance, so I consider that a rendezvous.

36:31I mean, just so many things were just way ahead of us. And then we kind of leapfrogged when we built the Saturn V, and that worked out, whereas opposed to the Soviets, then one was kind of prone to fail from the very beginning, at least initially. But had it not failed, and had Sergei Karelyov not died, which he died right in the middle, it was like 1967 or 68, right in the middle of the N1's development, maybe it was even 69, in the middle of the N1's development. He was the lead engineer? Yeah, the lead. He was the head of the Soviet space program. And also the visionary behind the N1 rocket.

37:08And the N1 ended up flying four times. All of them failed. None of them made it through the first stage burn. But its future plans already that were already being worked on, I think they would have absolutely figured it out. And then they would have had a moon-capable rocket within 1972, 73, 74, very soon after us. I wonder if that hadn't failed. Would we still have been flying for a little bit longer to imagine if the Soviets had landed on the moon? And all of a sudden we're like, oh crap, they're there too now. Well, we better keep sending them up. We can't have them doing this too. Which by the way, their landing system was insane.

37:44It was only two people I think for the whole mission if I remember right. But one person orbits the moon and the other person goes out alone and lands on the moon alone. And they first were to fly like a beacon, basically like a little rover that is like a beacon to be able to land so they can land safely. It's been a while since I've thought about this. But if I remember right, they even were going to have a backup lander there. So in case the one failed, they had a lot of cool redundancies that the US didn't have. A ton of multiple engines, multiple motors for getting off the moon even. So it was totally different, like you're alone.

38:21And even to get between the capsule, Soyuz capsule, I don't remember if it actually is Soyuz or not, and the lunar lander, you had to do an EVA. There wasn't a way to dock between the two and actually transfer between the two. So they just docked and then they were just going to EVA to the other one and then go and land on the moon. It's just super different. So I always wondered if they had kept going and actually had success, would the Saturn V have stopped? Would we have developed that further? Would we have had a more efficient, better rocket after that in the United States? Would it have spurred more competition in communication and all of these other things that we're starting to see now, like Starlink and all these things?

39:00Because it does feel like space just took a pause for about 25 years or something. I would say it feels like it took a pause for about 40 years. Yeah, maybe. I mean, the shuttle program did a lot of cool stuff, but didn't really advance things. It kind of just plateaued it, in my opinion. Just kept it alive. A human hasn't been beyond medium Earth orbit in how long? 30, 40 years? 51 years. And the highest people have been so far since then, besides Hubble, wait, no, yes, Inspiration4, all private, privately funded mission with SpaceX in 2020, end of 2021, they went higher than the Hubble Space Telescope, which is the highest anyone had been since the moon program.

39:51And so private industry. So you think that's because basically the competitive force of the original Apollo missions died out? I mean, it was kind of been there, done that, And realistically, there wasn't a big reason to keep doing it. And there wasn't a motive of, there really wasn't an industry backing spaceflight yet. There wasn't the internet. There wasn't the communication necessary like we have now. We've had satellite relays for TVs and stuff for a while now. And once you do that, it's like, well, how many of those do you actually need? So maybe we needed the internet to have the economic reason.

40:36to go out there. The aspirational value alone wasn't sufficient. I would say, because it's always been so cost-perhative for a kilogram to orbit has just been astronomical. And now it's primarily SpaceX has lowered that cost by tenfold already and looking to not slow that down at all. And they're taking advantage of their own cost savings to put up a constellation of satellite internet so that anyone around the world can access the internet with a thing from a box, like a pizza-sized box. And you can have internet anywhere. And people don't seem to understand just how incredible that is. It's so funny how they're leaning on their own technology to give them an advantage, a competitive advantage in the world of satellite internet, which has, again, been a thing forever.

41:30It's always sucked. you have super high latency and low bandwidth. This is low latency, high bandwidth. So it's just like the ultimate, what it always should have been, but just had never been economically viable. And now it is, and now everyone wants to do it. Right, so it's really having the technological infrastructure to create sufficient economics incentives so that privatization, private companies could actually advance space. make their play into the space industry. Yes. It's kind of like, if you look at the first transcontinental railroad or something, it wasn't that any new technology really came about.

42:15It's not like, oh my gosh, we invented how to make railroad better, or whatever. It was a matter of like, make train go far, like new technology. It was really just, we finally just did it. We buckled down, we cleared all the land and did all the stuff and did it. And the space industry was kind of the same way, just kind of chugging along of like, eh, we're just kind of doing what's necessary. There just wasn't even a big enough piece of a pie for anyone to really sit there and go, hey, we're going to try and make this 10 times cheaper. Because it's like, well, people are paying$180 million to send this satellite up, and there's only about three a year anyway, so good luck with that pie.

42:54And for a little while, SpaceX wasn't getting these big contracts, because it's like, there just weren't any. There weren't enough flights. They had a cadence of a capability of what they, I mean, they just launched 80 Falcon 9s this year already, and it's only November. Yeah, last year they launched more mass to orbit than China. Than the whole rest of the world combined. Oh, really? Yes. And I think this year they're like, for mass to orbit, I think it's like two or three times. I mean, it's insane. But when they were first, I remember them fighting so hard to just get these occasional Department of Defense contracts and stuff.

43:31And it was like pulling teeth because there just weren't that many things. But now all of a sudden the price has come down so much and they're so much cheaper than all their competitors that they're getting not only all those Department of Defense contracts, but also all of the people trying to fly to space are basically doors open. So it's changed the game and now people can afford to develop satellites because instead of it being$180 million entry price, you can do ride share missions and get something up for a million dollars, which just simply was not possible. It feels like there's a portion of people who are still kind of dismissive or they dislike the idea that space is becoming privatized and they still think that it should be government-led.

44:16What would you say to that? I think they don't quite have a perspective of what that means. I think a lot of people think, oh, good, I'm glad that they sold NASA to Elon Musk. I literally will read a comment like that. I'm like, that doesn't compute. It's like, please restate your question because that doesn't even make sense. People are misunderstanding. The thing that right now SpaceX is doing is they're selling a launch service. They're the UPS or the FedEx truck. And previously, NASA was building their own truck and shipping things across country for 10 times the cost of just throwing it on a UPS truck.

44:54So it's kind of like if the DOT decided, hey, we're going to build cars. Everyone would be like, that's insane. You don't need to build cars. In the past, rocket technology was just so cutting edge, so hard, so big investment, that no one could feasibly build a large orbital rocket. And people tried and they couldn't. And then, now the floodgates have opened up, and guess what? Through competition and through privatization, again, the cost has come down so much that now it's way cheaper for NASA to just catch a ride with somebody then to develop their own rockets and manage their own fleet. And that's exactly when the space shuttle program ended.

45:31The whole point, and NASA did everything absolutely right. The shuttle was insanely expensive. It was relatively dangerous. And it was absolutely not getting cheaper. It is what it is. And they basically said, look, this is costing us way too much. If we ever want to go back to the moon, all of our budget is stuck on the shuttle. We're going to cancel the shuttle. We're going to open up the commercial resupply contracts. We're going to open up a commercial sector and we're going to basically let people bid. They're going to do cost plus contracting instead of fixed price contracting. So basically like, hey, we're going to pay you$200 million for the service.

46:06If you can't do it for$200 million, then that's your money, period. If you can't do it, you're going to lose money. And that's exactly what they did. And that's how the commercial resupply program came up. That's how the commercial astronaut crew program came up. and it's been a huge success, at least for SpaceX and at least for NASA. Are you concerned that there of, because it does feel like SpaceX have such market dominance that it could almost get to the point of a monopoly? Are you concerned about that? Do you think that anything could or should be done to mitigate that or it's just not a problem?

46:47Not yet. There's a lot of companies that are racing to catch up and of course the scary thing is SpaceX is so far ahead that it is easy you know it is easy to look at like how can anyone catch up frankly I mean it's insane like it's 80 launches a year and 200 landings in a row and boosters being reused 18 times now it's just absurd and that's not even talking about Starship which is like once that's online and operational game over then we might have to have a conversation in a few years when they've completely but I don't know what you do about it. Do we decentivize it because they're kicking so much butt and they're doing things so much cheaper?

47:27But the point is there's definitely, I think, Blue Origin when they finally wake up from sleeping giant mode and start launching New Glenn, which should be I'm going to say in the next six months. People might laugh at that. I think in the next six months there's a good chance we see New Glenn fly and it's orbital and it's already operational right away because they're kind of doing a little more And is that going to be like a Falcon 9 type? It's more capable than Falcon Heavy. Oh, wow. So they're leapfrogging. They're not going for, they're going from these little itty-bitty. It's seven meters wide versus Starship's nine meters wide.

47:57It's not going to be fully reusable from the get-go, but there are talks of it being fully reusable. And I think it's 45 metric tons to low-Earth orbit, which is what Falcon Heavy's capable of. I mean, it is, and the first stage is reusable. I mean, it's definitely like, we're talking about a massive rocket that they're developing, and people just don't understand that they're not doing the SpaceX approach of just building something, a minimum viable product, and then launching it and seeing what went wrong, try it again. But when it does go online, I think that will actually be proper competition for at least Falcon 9 and Falcon Heavy.

48:31But if they don't succeed and get that going online soon, I mean, yeah, back to the whole monopoly question, it's hard not to argue that SpaceX will have a complete monopoly on most of the market. I do think this might be one situation where that's okay. it doesn't feel it's not ideal but it's like we don't have another option and ultimately they are providing the infrastructure that no one else can provide that humanity urgently needs it's not like they're buying everyone else that was their competitors and that's why they're the monopoly it's just because they are simply better and it's like a new thing it's a new realm someone's going to get there first but what do you want them to do I guess we can't go there because no one else is also put up The Wright brothers are like, hey, you guys have a monopoly on flying for the first time.

49:18Don't take off. We've got to wait until someone else can do it. Better than you. They can't do it until I've shown them how to do it. Exactly. Yeah, it's just a false argument. For now, I could see where if it becomes anti-competitive and it comes to the point where it's hurting, I don't know. It seems silly. I can't imagine how that would happen currently. I mean, again, 20, 30, 40 years, the market might be totally different. And Rocket Lab is working on a Neutron, which is very similar to Falcon 9 capability. In my opinion, that's probably still two years away or so. But that's what's scary.

49:55And they're, in my opinion, one of the most likely to succeed because they've had such a good track record so far. And if they can't do it, besides them and then Jeff Bezos' billions of dollars with Blue Origin, where else, how can someone else do it at this point? it's scary because we're not talking about, there's so many people trying to do small set launchers that can launch hundreds or maybe 1 ,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit, where Falcon 9 can do 16 ,800 kilograms and be reusable. So we're not even talking about the same scale of rocket. And there's hundreds of these startups doing a small scale that are all looking at that$5,$10,$15 million price.

50:37It's like comparing a Jumbo Jet to a Cessna. 100%. Like no more Jumbo Jets, we're just going to use Cessna. Just use Cessnas. Right, what kind of, yeah. And now, obviously, there could be use cases for small sat launchers. I think there will be a market for small sat launchers, and especially as constellations grow and as you have satellites that are 200 kilograms. You're like, oh, we've got to replace that one. It's urgent. You're not going to hire a Falcon 9 to launch 200 kilograms. It'd be nice to have smaller, more dedicated, almost an Uber to space instead of a bus. But there's not room for 100 of those.

51:10I don't think many of those will be able to make a transition into a larger market and into the super heavy lift categories because there just isn't the margins, there's not the money, the investment to be able to do that. If Rocket Lab does succeed in going from a small launch provider to a medium and that is successful, then I think there'll be one of very few that's able to make that transition. Are you concerned about the militarization of space? If we wanted to blow ourselves up, we could do it right now. You know what I mean? We already use rocket technology to deliver nuclear weapons across anywhere in the world.

51:47Having them be in space doesn't really change the game too much, in my opinion. If some bad person hits the red button, we're all screwed, basically. Whether or not they're in space, I just really don't think changes that game too much. Hypersonics is a new realm that everyone's talking about. The reason is, from space, The problem is, say you park nuclear weapons in space, you don't necessarily know if they're going to de-orbit to intercept them. They don't leave a big trail of, look at me, I'm de-orbiting. Suddenly, you'd be like, wait, why is that one trajectory changing? You might not have time to intercept it.

52:22As opposed to an intercontinental ballistic missile, someone launches it, you see this big thermal trail, lobs it up, you know where it's going, it's math. And you can intercept it. And that's what our whole defense system is based on. Hypersonics do something else. They're not nearly as fast as rockets, as fast as an orbital rocket or an ICBM. But they might fly, I think it's like five to seven times the speed of sound. But they can stay low enough that you can't see them coming. I see, they're not actually following a ballistic trajectory. Right, they're flying in the atmosphere. They're staying within the atmosphere, and they are course-correcting.

52:57Yes, and they're so fast, you can't really shoot them. It's like a SR-71 times three. How do you shoot it down? and by the time it comes over the horizon it's too late so that's where to me and that's Russia and China already have hypersonic technologies that's going to fuck up MAD the Nash equilibrium of game theory it prevents you from having a defense retaliatory strike which is what keeps that equilibrium stable if you can't no longer do that now we're in a bad situation so is space am I worried about the weaponization of space in the same way I am about weaponization of anything bioweapons whatever we've got plenty of ways of killing ourselves at this point it's just another one is there some kind of competitive activity in space that you don't want to see I don't love light pollution Starlink initially was a big concern there I was not happy about that as like, now we're going to have 40 ,000 satellites that look like stars at night.

54:09Scooting about. Scooting about. I don't know if you've seen Starland. It was during lockdown. I remember I was in the UK and my mom called me and she was like, go outside, there's something really weird happening. I was like, what? And I look up and then every 15 seconds there's this little, there's like another one and there's like a line of what looks like moving stars. I've seen plenty of satellites in my life. I was like, these look like satellites, but they're so regular. There's so many of them, and they're just in a line. And I was like, it's Elon. Yes, okay. They've just done a Starlink launch, and they're just slowly letting them out.

54:48So they're much more visible in the beginning because they haven't gotten to their final orbit. And I mean, honestly, it was really cool to see. But I can totally sympathize with astronomers who are just like, this is all sky. Yes. To set the record straight too, I don't think people understand. They imagine that the starling, because they see an image or two, they see a little TikTok of this string of lights. They're like, oh, this is what the night sky looks like now? No. It's only very certain conditions. Specifically, it's only visible to the naked eye an hour after sunset and an hour before sunrise or so.

55:24In the right conditions, before they're in their final altitude or they have a sunshade now. All of these conditions have to be met. It's not like you're just going to look up at the night sky and see 5 ,000 fake stars moving around ruining your visibility of the night sky. But it could have been. They did a lot of things, coated them with really dark paint, put these sunshades on, they reoriented them away so it doesn't reflect. Because again, once you're outside of that one hour after sunset and one hour before, you're in the shadow of the earth anyway. They don't create their own light. They only reflect the sunlight.

56:01So at some point, they're just in the shadow of the Earth. You can't see them anyway. You can't see them anyway. But it can still mess up ground-based observations. Even though they're not reflecting light anymore, they can still block light from an observation from a ground-based telescope. And I do see it as like, that sucks in the same way that it really sucks to me that cell phone adoption rate is higher than self-driving cars. This is a weird analogy. Sorry, I'll try to explain it. Oh, I love it. Go. So in the grand scheme of human history, it's going to be a shame that so many people died from distracted driving because everyone had cell phones and driving around not even looking and crashing and killing people, right?

56:41At the same time, we're also working on self-driving cars and someday that's going to be a solved thing. No one's going to be like, oh, it's just, you know, you can't imagine a world where you can't be in the car texting or being on your phone, right? but at the same time, Starlink, bear with me, Starlink has the ability to, and spaceflight has the ability to bring ground-based observations into space, where space observations, James Webb, Hubble Space Telescope, all these satellites are absolutely incredible because there's no optical distortion in space and blah, blah, blah. Spaceflight's getting cheaper, we can start sending more and more satellites up.

57:19Boom, astronomy's going to be a million times better because of space assets. But at the current moment... We're in that awkward transition. Yeah, we're in this awkward transition thing. We're like, the access to space is kind of ruining astronomy, but in the future... It's going to make it actually much better. It's going to make it way better. And that's not an excuse for it, but it is just the reality of where that will go. There's been some really cool treaties that inspire international collaboration coming out through the space industry. You know, you had the Outer Space Treaty in, what was that, 1967?

57:51Something like that. Treaties aren't right. I don't know. There was that one. There's the Artemis Accords. Yeah, that I'm familiar with, yes. Let's explain what the Artemis missions are, first of all. Sure, the Artemis missions are basically the follow-up to the Apollo program. It's basically our generation's version of returning to the moon, finally. And it's NASA-led, but it is internationally collaborated with ESA and the Canadians. I mean, basically everyone has hopped on this. I think we're at like 30-some countries now. who have agreed to take part in it. And by taking part, that's a little bit confusing to me, but a lot of people are literally providing, someone will help provide batteries, or someone will build a pressure vessel and all these things, and propulsion modules, and all these different pieces of what will first be the gateway, which is going to be a new space station that's in orbit around the moon.

58:46That's a big part of the Artemis program. And I think it's kind of an excuse to find a way to collaborate together. And then the other part is the Artemis program has the Orion capsule and the human landing system and the space launch system. And it has the ability to get humans on the surface of the moon for the first time again in 50 some years. Yeah, so I mean, this is a big deal, like getting 31 countries on board. Have China signed it? I'm pretty sure Russia has not and China has not. But I would actually love to see more international collaboration because I think it does. That's one of those things that will kind of make me cry.

59:21July 17th, 1975, when the United States and the Soviet Union, in the middle of the Cold War, docked two spacecraft together, shook hands, shared a meal, and literally had a joint mission together. And although it was the tiniest little bit of anything, it was the most collaboration the two countries had done since the start of the Cold War. And I don't know if that did anything in the real long term, and people will be cynical about it just being a fluff piece. I don't care. It really did represent some collaboration, some work together, and an opportunity to see each other eye to eye for the first time in, at that point, 30 years or whatever.

1:00:01I mean, if we can look at 1 ,000 runouts, let's say we are in a simulation, I'm not saying we are, but let's run 1 ,000 simulations of our history throughout the 20th century. I would bet greater than zero of those would have ended up in a much worse space from some kind of nuclear escalation had it not been for that. very well could have been that's a really big deal and that's I think a testament to science and engineering it bridges those gaps it's one of those few things I think because ultimately most humans at their core are nerds and we like to achieve and solve hard problems and you can a friend of mine he has this term nerd sniping you need to distract someone who's getting all wound up about something just throw them, nerd snipe them with a really hard problem that just happens to appeal to their particular flavor of nerdism.

1:00:59I think that's kind of what you have to do when these hostile countries get a little bit warmongery. Just give them a nerd snipe. And guess what, you can step out and work on this together. It's even better. It's such a win-win solution. So how do we nerd snipe China and Russia to get them to join the Artemis Accords? That's a great question because they're kind of going on, they're starting to become more buddy-buddy. Currently, China has never truly collaborated. They have their own space station that's growing and they're doing great. Although they did have a spacecraft tumble the other day.

1:01:36But I think, I guess I've actually heard now that everyone's fine. But they've been kicking butt and growing and doing things that they're catching up. And they have plans to go to the moon. They're becoming more and more friendly with Russia. In my opinion, those bonds are a good thing. It will accelerate both programs. And it'd be a shame to not work together on these things. It's just getting humans on the moon again. It's great. I mean, that's the thing. China and Russia get humans on the moon. Okay, good. Humans on the moon. Yeah, yeah. I would love that. Honestly, part of me is really sad that this didn't happen in the 80s or 90s, that China or Russia didn't already put humans on the moon.

1:02:20Just so it's like, humanity can still do this thing. It's not just a one-off thing that we threw all the money in the world at and now no one cares about it again. It just kind of would have been cool in the timeline if it kind of happened again and again and just until it became more normal or something. But the fact that it only happened on six missions with humans on the moon, 12 humans have walked on the surface of the moon, it just feels like it was so fleeting. and the fact that it stalled for so long after that. What other industry has done that? They achieved something huge. Done now. Done.

1:02:54Let's go back to what we're doing. It's so weird. It's almost like some kind of parasitic force just distracted us or something. Took us away from... Sadly, the promise of the space shuttle could have ushered in a new era. The idea was, the space shuttle, especially in its original concept is going to be fully reusable and therefore make spaceflight cheaper and more routine more airliner like that's the things they were claiming with the space shuttle and unfortunately because politics and the fact that it's designed by committee and half the time Congress ended up being like we think this one's better because it's cheaper it ended up and the big thing actually one of the biggest reasons the space shuttle is the way it is is because the Air Force had very specific missions planned for it where they were going to launch out of California.

1:03:47They wanted to be able to retrieve Soviet satellites from orbit within one orbit with the space shuttle. So 90 minutes, you had to launch, get out of the, like open up the thing, grab a satellite, bolt it in, close it up and land. And then because the earth is rotated, roughly by that point, roughly 1 ,500 miles or 2 ,500 kilometers or whatever to the east, has to have enough cross-range capability to be able to still come back and land on a runway back where it took off from near Vandenberg Space Force Base. And that's why the Delta wing, like the wings of the space shuttle were the size they were, is to literally be able to do this absurd mission that there's no chance it could have ever happened.

1:04:30Like, it was just so improbable. So it just had a design flaw from the outset. It just had a design flaw of like, well, we'll give you guys$400 million as long as you can get these satellites out of the sky. And like, it was just never going to happen. And if you look up pictures, even right before Challenger, so 1985-ish, they actually had the Space Shuttle Enterprise, which is the one that didn't fly. It was just a glider prototype, basically. They took that out to Vandenberg. They stacked it with boosters. They had it all out there, literally at Vandenberg, to start launching from Vandenberg, potentially.

1:05:04And it's the most beautiful images you'll ever see, because this is super... The Space Shuttle launches are always just from flat Florida with the ocean in the background. All of a sudden you have this picture of the mountains, the hills of California, and the space shuttle was sitting there. It just looks so wrong and beautiful and awesome. It has US Air Force, like USAF, on the side of one of the buildings. It just looks so alternate history because it kind of almost is. Then because the Challenger happened, they re-evaluated a lot of the space shuttle's design and said,

1:05:37half the stuff that we planned for this launch out of Vandenberg is infeasible and too dangerous. And so they canned the whole thing then. And then the space shuttle continued to fly with all of these flaws that were halfly inherited just from this one mission profile that was stupid from the get-go and then also was so inherently designed because they just wanted it to be the cheaper option when it could have been like... So was that the O-ring failure, a downstream effect of that, do you think? Yeah, well, that just led to a whole open investigation of all of the problems with the shuttle. So it just shed light on all of them.

1:06:11Yes, and they paused all operations for, I don't remember what it was, two years or whatever, and they just looked over all of these systems. And a lot of new things came about. They had to redesign a lot of things. Obviously, the O-ring system on the boosters was a big thing. But even things of, I don't even remember. Spacesuits were different, because before, basically wore crash helmets, non-pressurized and just like a jumpsuit. The Challenger crew, it's weird when you look at it now, because the first four missions had this really cool suit, the same space suit basically as the SR-71, a beautiful pumpkin suit.

1:06:45And then after that, the first operational space shuttle mission, they're just wearing blue jumpers and a white crash helmet. Because they just saw it as like, this is just an airplane for space. Right, specialized. Yep, and no big deal. And after Challenger, that's when a lot of that stuff got real. That's when they went to the new pumpkin suits and had just a lot more procedures and a lot more safety considerations that should have been there from the get-go with humans, but weren't. But it's a shame, though, because again, way back, sorry, had the space shuttle actually probably had the proper budget to work with and had NASA's budget not gone down in a quarter of what it was in the 60s to properly develop the space shuttle to be a fully reusable system, it could have been totally different.

1:07:35It could have opened doors instead of closing doors. What's your favorite rocket design? You had to pick one that you think is just beautiful. One? Just one. You can only have a look at that one for the rest of your life.

1:07:59I would almost have to say I'm going to get murdered for this. If I had to just stare at one and admire its engineering, the Soviet's shuttle. Ooh, spicy. Yeah. Why? The Buran and the Energia rocket. There's something about the way, and this is a video I'm working on, is the way they engineered their version of the shuttle, which was quite literally a knockoff of our shuttle. I mean, for all intents and purposes, they looked at our shuttle and said, let's do that, and let's match the capabilities. But they did it in a completely different way. And for instance, the main engines had four boosters instead of two, and instead of being solid rocket propellant, which you can't turn off, or you light those things, and they're going, no matter what.

1:08:46This had liquid-fueled rocket engines, so it had the RD-170, which is the most powerful liquid-fueled rocket engine ever developed. Everyone thinks of the F1 on the Saturn V. Nope, the RD-170. It's funny because it has four nozzles, but it's one engine. So it's one engine, they just split it up into four nozzles. So the main chambers don't have combustion instability. But it's more powerful and way more efficient than the F-1. Just this beautiful engine. They had four of those around this external fuel. The tank also, on the space shuttle, had the big orange fuel tank. The big orange fuel tank had no engines.

1:09:21The engines were attached to the orbiter, which is genius. I think that was the right move. But the Soviets just stuck four hydrolox engines that were almost identical, very similar, a little simpler than the RS-25, which was on the space shuttle. And the idea, though, was eventually, they're going to have the, the Bron was basically, so the shuttle itself from the Soviet Union was basically, at the end of the day, a reusable, giant, like, flying fairing, like, you know, payload fairing, where you can hide cold satellites and then a capsule, and then you can return it. All that's reusable, but the rest of the rocket initially was thrown away.

1:09:55Whereas opposed to the space shuttle, at least, you had that, but you also saved your main engines. But they had plans to make it so the... So for sure, if it got to the point of the Bron 2.0, where the whole thing would have been reusable, all four boosters would have extended wings after they detached and glided back down to the launch site. And the main core thing basically was a space shuttle of its own and was going to fly back down. It would have been the coolest thing in the world. And I just think it's so, I mean, yeah. I just think it's so cool. And the Buran had the option of having jet engines on the orbiter.

1:10:32So it could actually fly on its own. Right, in the atmosphere. In the atmosphere. So the main thing it would end up doing for space missions would, it could have had the possibility of extending its downrange. Especially when you're launching in Russia or Kazakhstan, and you're at such high latitude that your orbits might not always realign for your landing site, so you'd have to fly potentially hundreds or thousands of kilometers or whatever, potentially. I don't think it would have worked out as well as it could have, but it did have jet engines as a possibility, which I think is super cool.

1:11:03So they always say rocket science, you give that as an example of it's the hardest topic to understand. That and brain surgeons. That's right. Brain surgery, rocket science. And yet you have cracked it. So what's your secret? Is it as hard as people make out? And what is your secret? How have you successfully... Because you're one of the best explainers. You've made hour-long videos that managed to break down the engineering of these incredibly complex machines in very digestible ways. And to do that, I've done this myself trying to do explainer videos, you have to really internally understand it.

1:11:43So it's not like you're just blundering your way through. You get this stuff. So what has been your method of going about learning it? Well, first off, I'm far from an actual expert in rocket science. Like, truly. And I'm not saying that to be humble or anything. It's just, I finally think of it the point of the Dunning-Kruger effect of knowing how much I don't know. I think five years ago, I'd probably have been like, yeah, I know quite a bit about rockets. And finally, I get to the point where I'm like, I don't actually know any of the actual engineering principles, the mathematics, the actual metallurgy, all of the things that people spend a decade of their career working on a certain trade, I have no idea.

1:12:19That's well beyond me and I will never do that. But the thing that I always operate from is just pure curiosity of like, I want to know, you know when a little toddler just says, why? And then you're like, well, because grandpa and grandma are coming over at five o 'clock. You're like, why? Because that's how long it's going to take them to get here. Why? And they have the never-ending why. As I'm trying to learn a topic, I'm asking myself, why? Why? Why? And I'm visualizing it always because I'm a very visual learner. And now these days, as I'm maybe becoming more hard into it, I'm always trying to preemptively think of people's whys.

1:12:56Why? Hearing that constantly as I'm typing. In my voice, I'm like, it's almost maddening. But I like to try to preemptively think of those things. And then not say, here's the answer, now shut up. It's like, here's the answer now. we're going to make sure you actually understand the answer. Because right now, for instance, I actually just saw a comment. It was a great comment. The video topic is, why don't we launch from the equator or from mountains? And someone goes, this is something that could be answered in one sentence, but Tim will drag on for an hour. And I'm like, yeah, technically the answer is one sentence long.

1:13:31But to actually answer why, the real reason why, and have someone actually understand it and get it and tangibly take it home and not just get the little placard of this is what it is and why. The Cura, or however you say that, Q-U-O-R-A website, whatever it is. Cora, I've never, I've just always read it. Cora, instead of just the one little sentence answer, we're going to make it so you understand it. And what's that actually take to do that, even if you don't know what orbital mechanics are? You don't quite understand delta V or a nozzles expansion ratio, all of these things. Okay, we're going to explain those things.

1:14:08And then make sure that we can get you from point A. I always use my parents as an example. They're in their 60s and they don't have an interest in spaceflight. So I'm like, okay, I'm going to start with them and I'm going to get them to what I know. What do I have to do to get from point A to point B? So you have to go really down to first principles. Yeah, 100%. And I try not to ostracize. My audience can be fairly advanced at times, obviously. I have a lot of people that watch that are in the industry and things. So I try not to totally dumb every video down to the very, this is a rocket. But I also want someone to be able to watch every video from the first minute and not feel like they can't understand it.

1:14:48So I always do bring it back around. And I try not to do that thing of like, now if you don't know what this is, watch this video. Watch this video, watch this, because you know that's just going to turn people away. I always want to be that gateway of like, this is a cool topic. Be completely self-contained. self-contained, you might not know anything about this, but I want you to just fall into it and not even realize that you did. And all of a sudden you can't stop watching because you actually want to know the answer. And you're following along because the whole thing is actually storylined to your exact thoughts.

1:15:16And even the video, again, it's actually releasing it tomorrow morning. But I just had the review last night for all supporters, give feedback and all that stuff before it comes out. And so when we use frame.io, I don't know if we've ever used that. All the time. Yeah, where people can comment on a timestamp. So like six minutes in, someone's like, oh, you should have mentioned, it's too bad you didn't mention how the boosters land here and here. Then literally a minute later, oh, you did, you got it. I love that I was able to preemptively answer that question. Think that this is where someone's going to go.

1:15:47You're modeling your audience well enough. That's really the key, is just always thinking about where are other people at in their journey for knowledge or curiosity? Where am I at? How do I take them along for this ride? because I'm always still trying to learn and I'm always excited. I'm always thinking about, not always excited, sometimes it's grueling, but I am always curious. I know my holes of information and I have a long list, a never-ending list of things that I do want to make videos on because I want to learn them myself. Are you a perfectionist? Yeah. So how do you deal with that? Because that's the thing I struggle with.

1:16:23The good thing with this podcast is that it's just like, okay, I have an editor who helps me now and it's a conversation. how complex can we get in terms of the fiddling around in the post-production. But when I made my Moloch videos, my God, I'm still working on the AI Moloch one, which now, I don't know, that was meant to come out six months ago. And even the scripting, there's always a way to make it better and so on. So what's your process there where you're just like, slap yourself around the face and go, that's it, Tim, no more. I'm not the right one to ask for this because I'm very similar.

1:16:54I struggle with that so much and I don't have great output. I get a lot of criticism. I see every time I post on YouTube or Twitter, oh, you're still around? I thought you'd stop making videos or something. I actually produce almost a video once a month or once every two months, and they're long. A lot of videos are 10 minutes long. Mine are 30, 40, 50 minutes long. So I'm actually producing as much content as anyone else. It's just in these really long form, highly produced videos. But I struggle big time with the scripting. I care so much about making sure that every sentence is following that journey of curiosity and helping someone come along with it.

1:17:33I get stuck in it all the time. I did a video on all of the Soviet Union's rocket engines and it's an hour and 30 minutes long and it took me two years to complete. I get it. And actually, you're saying it's a podcast, it's easy. That's one of the reasons that I almost, I used to do a podcast with some friends and I miss it dearly. but I also kind of like one of the big pressures for me was I am a perfectionist and I hated when I said things wrong on air because I'm just talking freely and I'm like yeah you know 1981 and then I'll see in the comments I'm like I got that wrong and now I'm a carrier for misinformation there's someone out there that could have heard me say that that now is spreading that misinformation and that's what I'm most worried about that's my biggest pressure is I just really want my things to be correct the things that I say because I know how important it is for academic reasons to speak truth and not just spread, especially in aerospace, there's so many misconceptions and so many things that people say just a little bit wrong that is, I think, just not helping people understand how this stuff works.

1:18:37How big is your team for Everyday Astronaut? Are you the main editor or are you doing mostly the storyboarding? So it's me. And then I have one full-time employee, Mary Liz Bender, Shalinsky, Mary Liz Shalinsky, Mary Liz Bender was her old name, married to Ryan Shalinsky, who's also a videographer that does a lot of our work down at Starbase with us. The two of them started, their channel was called Cosmic Perspective and is some of the best, most gorgeous, high-speed, cinematic photography, videography of rocket launches that I've ever seen. And I've met them doing that too, like shooting launches.

1:19:20And I'm like, the best, the best people and the best at what they do. And so I've been working with them for years. And now as of this year, Mary Liz works for Everyday Astronaut full time. But we kind of are partnering now with Cosmic Perspective so that, it's almost like, I don't want Ryan to not do his work of his beautiful videos that he makes, but we have so much overlap in capturing content and capturing these launches. So we're partnered and that's really exciting. So I have the Chalinskys. I also have a co-editor who is doing a lot more of the actual animations now. I actually really like the animations.

1:19:55I like doing After Effects and stuff but he's just way better at it, way faster too. And we're starting to do way more and more 3D work and his name's Spencer, he's awesome. And because my video content is not so frequent it's like these people are just kind of on call almost. So Spencer, someday, he might have a month of twiddling his thumbs and all of a sudden two weeks of scrambling, working I'm sure 40 extra hours on top of his other job to do video production. Then there's Casper Stanley, who also does 3D work. And then that's pretty much it for the production side. We also have a team of writers that contribute to the website because we do launch articles and stuff at everydayastronaut.com.

1:20:35and that's about seven or eight or nine people that contribute that are paid contributors. So that's the team. And my girlfriend Allie is the graphic design. So she does all of everything. The reason that I think the branding of Everyday Astronaut she should be top because I think she's actually the reason that Everyday Astronaut is cool in my opinion instead of just nerdy. Actually I think has coolness to it is because of her artwork and her guidance in that realm. Yeah, that's the whole crew. Would you describe yourself as a competitive person? Yeah, I'm pretty competitive, yeah. What are the things that bring out your competitiveness?

1:21:12Does YouTube bring it out? Yeah, I'd be wrong to say it doesn't because I've always played this in my mind. I really genuinely do think the more channels we have, the better of spaceflight. I think that just really helps raise awareness, helps make everyone excited about the stuff, provides coverage. But of course, when there's other live streams with Starship, Some of my best friends work at NASA Spaceflight, which is one of the 24-7 amazing live coverage of every launch and LabPadre and other YouTube channels that are space channels. In a way, we're competitors, of course, just by nature. And of course, sometimes I have to look at, how did their stream do?

1:21:54And I'm like, crap, they kicked our butt. They absolutely dominated. And all that does for me, though, I am fortunately one of those people that I see that. And sometimes, okay, those around me will say it's not always true. But in general, after it soaks in and after I'm like, I want to quit and never do this again because our stream crashed in the middle of it. And blah, blah, blah, and all of our stuff failed. And I just spent three weeks setting this thing up and$500 ,000 or whatever it is. Not that much. But trying to capture this launch, then we failed and it sucks. And everyone's yelling at me, I want to quit.

1:22:27And then I see the success of what other people are doing. and I'm like, well, if they can do it, I can do it. Come on, we're this close, let's go. I kind of pick myself back up, usually. So yeah, I am very competitive with that, but I like games and stuff too. In 30 years' time, no, what do you think the world will look like, assuming we don't do something really stupid with AI or nuclear weapons? It's going to be, 30 years' time will be 20, 53, where do you think we will be at in terms of space exploration?

1:23:09I know based on the trends that access to space will be way cheaper way more attainable there will be hundreds or thousands of people who live and work in space I just think that would be normal even in 30 years time I think in 30 years time we'll definitely have hundreds of people in space at a time. And maybe not staying there at all times, but between... Will we have a permanent moon base? Maybe a small one. Small permanent moon base, but permanent to the point of it being not self-sustaining or anything like that. Really? But more or less constantly inhabited and or there might be months stint before another crew arrives or something.

1:23:51But I think there would be some kind of permanent thing, like maybe a small habitat or something, but a place where they continually go and not just land on the moon in one spot and then take off and never go there again. But a spot on the south pole of the moon seems like the most where we're going with everything. But I think we'll have multiple commercial space stations. I mean, they're already coming online. I know of three or four companies that are literally building hardware to build private. Like Axiom. Axiom, Vast. I mean, I'm blanking right now, but there's like four that are building and bending metal right now to launch on rockets to put up commercial space stations.

1:24:32And of course, if Starship becomes what Starship could be, even in 10 or 15 years, flying to space will be way cheaper. Putting things in space will be way cheaper. 100 plus metric tons in one launch for$5 or$10 million. And we're talking space hotels. We're talking space tourism. All of a sudden, you have the capability. People forget the inside of Starship. And this is Starship as it is now, let alone as it gets evolved and tweaked and grows inevitably. Whatever physics deems is more efficient and better use of the launch location, the launch licenses and the airspace, all of that. At some point, it's just like, how much can we put up in the single stick, basically?

1:25:18And Starship will grow. But right now, as it stands, the habitable or the space, the pressurized space in Starship is over 1 ,000 cubic meters, right about 1 ,000 cubic meters. And that's more pressurized volume than what's on a 747. And most of us have probably at least have a sense of how big a 747 is. It's like an apartment building. It's a flying condo. It's huge already. It could easily, if you just crammed at full seats, it could easily hold 500 people comfortably. So the thought of If that thing's flying regularly, if that thing is doing what it's designed to do, and if it continues to evolve, the thought of 400 people getting on a rocket and going to a giant space hotel is not at all unfeasible.

1:26:04And do you think people will be on Mars 30 years time? Because I was actually just talking about this with Jared Isaacman and Jack from NASA Spaceflight on a podcast last week. Boots on Mars will look so much different than boots on the moon, because the moon is like, a week can get you to the moon and back, and walking around on the moon and back. You know what I mean? Mars, because of planetary alignments and because of how far away it is, is just, no matter what, it's about a two-year journey. And a good year of that will be on the surface of Mars. So you have to be able, you can't just land and go, whoop, let's go back.

1:26:42You have to be able to live and sustain life on Mars. You need to send a bunch of infrastructure out first. There has to be infrastructure. Or, like, in the case of Starship, you know, again, if we land something the size of Starship, 1 ,000 cubic meters, a small skeleton crew, five people, could live inside that thing quite comfortably. It would be its own habitat. Now, the problem with Starship is now you're landing a giant, huge thing that takes an insane amount of propellant. Thousands of tons of propellant. And yes, we've developed, NASA actually has already shown that we can produce oxygen out of using the Sabatier process on the surface of Mars.

1:27:20They have produced oxygen, which is a great step in the direction of being able to sustain life. Where you get the methane from. So methane, yeah, they use the Battier process to take ice water and water and CO2 in the air to combine to split off into oxygen and liquid methane. And assuming there's a water source or ice water or brine water or whatever it is, and the slopes of Mars, yeah, you can refuel Starship. but that's a huge undertaking. That's insane. So you'd probably want to land some before then with specialized equipment and start doing all that stuff. And then by the time humans land there, there's already one sitting there fueled up, literally ready to go even, would be the way I'd want to do it.

1:28:02Which I don't want to do. I do not want to go to Mars. But if I were designing the system, I would not send a human crew until there was literally a fueled up, ready to go Starship. And have demonstrated that already. So right there, just in logistics there, If you think about a timeline. That's like eight years? Literally eight years. Yeah, great estimate. Just in proving out this technology. But regardless, yes, I think in 30 years, there's a chance we'll have had humans on Mars. I actually think by 2040, we should hopefully have humans heading to Mars. The future's bright either way when it comes to space.

1:28:38I think so. If you look at the trends of spaceflight and mass to orbit and number of launches per year, It's going exponential. Exponential. And satellites in orbit, that's like exponential times 10. It's insane. It's hard to keep up with how often SpaceX is launching already. And SpaceX is only one player doing this now, but there will be others. Then the future looks bright as long as we don't have what's that called? Oh my God, I'm blanking on it. Where all the satellites... Or like the cascade? Yeah. Well, yeah, like debris explosion. Yeah, what's it called? Kessler syndrome. As long as you don't have Kessler syndrome.

1:29:21Whereas there's an impact and it creates a bunch of debris and then there's a chain reaction. That debris creates more debris, yes. Yeah, that would suck. That could absolutely halt all spaceflight for decades. And that's actually an example of, you know, a thing I talk about a lot on this channel is like tragedy of the commons, these Moloch-type problems where it's like short-term incentives are, yeah, we're getting incentivized to put as many satellites up or launch things into space, but no one's thinking about the long-term effects if everyone is doing this and don't have the sufficient infrastructure to make sure that these items have the ability to return to Earth when they need to, decay out of their orbits, not in a haphazard, chaotic way.

1:30:03So it's essentially, this area of space in low Earth orbit is extremely valuable and yet humans haven't got a good history of taking care of the commons, essentially, like all the plastic in the ocean or trash in a city center or whatever. It's like we need to develop some kind of regulations or systems at least and incentive structures so that this very valuable patch of space is taken care of. Yeah, I 100 % agree. And it is scary when you start thinking about like, luckily we are doing, there are talks, there are people actively working on, like as a matter of fact, there's a first fine for having space debris.

1:30:54I don't remember who it was now, but just about a month ago, I was one of the like old school, I don't remember, got like a$175 ,000 fine for having a satellite that they couldn't send out into the graveyard orbit from geostationary orbit. So normally at the end of a geostationary orbit it's like 38 ,000 kilometers away or whatever. It's way out there. And the satellites are all basically always orbiting with the Earth. And it's too hard to bring them back from there because it would take a lot of energy to be able to reduce the orbit back down to Earth. So instead, they actually just kick them out in a graveyard orbit and they just know that they won't run into anything else out there because who cares?

1:31:31And this company, I wish I remembered who it was. Like DirecTV, I think is actually who it was. and they had a satellite. Totally, they couldn't, they didn't fulfill the duty of getting it into a graveyard orbit and they got the first fine in history of like creating space debris. So who's the body that is making these, you know. Great question. Because that's the thing we need to have. Like we'll need some kind of, you know, again, I hate the idea of like centralized power. I hate the idea of bureaucracy and unnecessary rules and we don't need them. But this is an example. Like if you don't have these rules to protect this shared space, this is very shared resource.

1:32:05It's a very valuable thing that if we pollute it too much and get this Kessler effect, we won't be able to leave the damn planet. That's it, we'll lose. It's not like, oh, you ruined your access to space. It's like you ruined everyone's access to space. Classic tragedy of the commons type situation. So yeah, we'll need some kind of, and society plays cat and mouse as a new technology emerges that makes this new problem come along. We'll create some kind of governing body or some kind of incentive structure. But we don't have it right now and we need to do that. But I think there's talks on that.

1:32:42And again, this is this type of stuff. I don't often like, and my channel is generally like, so like, figure out the physics and make it fun. And I don't like to think about these existential things that are like crises and also just, I don't love like politics slash, I don't know, what would you consider that? Well, it's like a governance thing. Yeah, that's not the type of thing that gets me excited every day. So I generally don't learn a lot about those topics, but they are extremely important. And I'm glad there are people that are thinking ahead and thinking about that stuff before it's too late, hopefully.

1:33:18Are there any cool everyday astronaut projects on the horizon that people might not know about? There's always, always things we're working on. There's so many things behind the scenes, and I'm really excited. There's one in particular, as an Austin, a member of Austin, Texas, and a member of the world, because this is an open invite to anyone, not just those in Austin, but it will happen in Austin. We're doing our first Astro Awards here in Austin, Texas next year in 2024. And the Astro Awards, it's been almost like a gimmick or a joke on the channel. Every year, January 1st, we give out an award.

1:33:53It's not a physical award, but we should have done it as a physical award forever. But we do 10 nominations of really cool spaceflight things. Like we, you know, just basically we want to cheer on and celebrate exciting things that happened in spaceflight and in space science throughout the year. So I've always said since literally the first time we did it in 2018 that, hey, someday this will be an in-person award ceremony. And we're going to bring the people from these missions up on stage and cheer for them and be excited about the work that they did. And we're finally making that happen. This is such a good idea.

1:34:24Because it doesn't, like the industry deserves that. There's so many unsung heroes. Yes. And again, it's the spirit of healthy competition. 100%. I don't know how much of a competitive process it'll be for the awards, but essentially it is. It's giving something for people to aspire to and get recognition beyond just actually getting the job done. Right. And I don't think there's going to be a single person out there in the world that's like, I hope this deserves an astro. Maybe this mission I'm creating is going to be an astro award. I don't think it's ever that. But I do really just believe that there's an opportunity.

1:34:55And the biggest thing for me is to get the public involved in spaceflight. I think there's never really been a good opportunity to have conferences that are public and industry people coming together where the public can ask people questions and see these people that they've maybe seen on the internet or they know their work and they're just excited to see these people in person. Again, I know that the people aren't necessarily doing these things for the recognition, but there's so much incredible things that are advancing humanity, advancing our knowledge and advancing our species that I would love to get them up on a stage And not only them, but also what we've always done is a two, three, four, five minute rundown on what the mission is.

1:35:35So people just get a chance to have their programs heard, maybe sometimes for the first time. But to be able to do that in person, I think will be really, really fun. The date's not official yet. We're still nailing down. We had some follies when trying to book things, but we're getting really close. And it will be a Sunday matinee thing. So it will be hopefully something that people can fly into for the weekend, make a weekend out of it, and still get home at it. Sometime early next year? Sometime in January 2024, hopefully. We'll hopefully know more by the end of this week. And what can people do to sign up or come home?

1:36:12Hopefully by next week. As soon as we have the venues actually officially nailed down, signed and deposited, and it's in the books for sure, because we've had rugs pulled out from us. But as soon as it's done, we will have everydayastronaut.com will be live on our website and we'll have a way to be able to get more information and eventually get tickets and stuff. But it's coming up. We're only two months away, so expect that stuff very soon. Yes, you have to come. You don't have a choice. As soon as I know the dates, it's in your calendar and you have to come. It's going to be really fun and it's going to be awesome.

1:36:47We're also going to do a pre-party on Saturday night where it's going to be live music and people are going to get a chance to mingle and party and have fun. Love it. So there we go, folks. Thanks for listening. And huge thanks to Tim for joining me. Oh, my brain is just overflowing right now. We deserve to be among the stars. Come on. It's the way. There's just so much, there's going to be so much good stuff out there. We should be living in a sci-fi future. And I think we're going to. Do check out Tim's channel, The Everyday Astronaut. It's so good. I've linked to some of my favorite videos below in the show notes.

1:37:23And of course, if you enjoyed this, you know the drill. Please like, share, subscribe. Until next time, keep on win-winning.