This Week in Space 111 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're talking about the huge telescope competition known as the Big Glass Wars, with John Mulcahy, director of the Carnegie Observatories. Stay with us 

00:15 - TWiT
Podcasts, you love. From people you trust. This is TWIT. 

00:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This is this Week in Space, episode number 111, recorded on May 17th 2024, the Big Glass Wars. Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the Big Glass Wars edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Ad Astra magazine, and I'm here, as always, with the delightful Tarek Malik, the inflexible EIC of Spacecom. How are you, sir, Trying?

00:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
to be more flexible so that I can make my kicks in Taekwondo Rod. That's how I'm doing. I'm doing good, I'm doing good. How are you today?

00:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Don't hurt yourself. I'm okay and we're going to be joined shortly by Dr John Mulcahy, the director of the Carnegie Observatories in my old hometown of Pasadena, california, to talk about the big telescope wars. But before we start, please don't forget to do us a solid. Make sure to like, subscribe and all the other podcast goodies. We're counting on you for that, because this doesn't follow necessarily. I have a space joke from my friends off at Griffith Observatory. I love it. Are you ready partner?

01:20 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I am ready, always ready, for your jokes, rod.

01:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This actually isn't a call and answer. This is just a read, all right. Hey, I've never owned a telescope before but I'm looking into it Now that I think on it.

01:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I was surprised by that one. That was good.

01:39 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Now that I think on it, however, I'd better reflect before spending that time. It got better, but heck, you know what? I'll just take the long view and go for it. Things are looking up. Okay, all right, nothing like sarcastic sound effects.

01:58 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, I tell you, I thought the joke was over. I thought the looking into it was it, but no, I kept going.

02:04 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So please save us from ourselves and yourselves and send us your best work or most of different space jokes, best or worst or most of different. We're waiting. I didn't get any last week. This is the first week I think in a year and a half where I haven't gotten any space jokes.

02:20 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I might have gotten one, but it was one we'd already used and I jokes I might have gotten one, but it was one we'd already used and I didn't figure it was uh time yet to recycle.

02:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So you know, and, and don't cheat and just look them up online, because I've already used all those. So you want to use ai, that's okay, but it doesn't have much of a sense of humor. Um, all right, let's, uh, let's do some headlines here yes, yes, right, so yes so. Oh, starliner. Yeah, I put this on Helium leak. So now, to be fair, helium is very slippery stuff, you know. It leaks more easily than anything else because it's the lightest element and hydrogen is the lightest element, oh hydrogen.

03:07
I'm sorry, you're right, helium is dex, so this was, you know, not unknown in the shuttle days and so forth. But what's the latest on Starliner?

03:16 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, so when we last talked, right when we last talked, boeing and NASA and ULA had delayed the launch of Starliner to no earlier than May 17th hey, that's recording day Because they had to fix and replace a helium relief valve on the upper stage of the Atlas V rocket and apparently, in the days since they were doing that, they have now delayed the mission further, to no earlier than May 21, due to a helium leak on the service module now of the Boeing capsule. So now we've got two different leaks on different parts of the launch system and we actually have not heard anything else. Heard anything else actually, as of we started as as we started recording this, I did check about what the next stage is going to be, because that delay was no earlier than the 21st. But there is some talk, uh, uh, you know around that they might in fact be delaying into, uh, memorial day weekend, which would be interesting, uh, but, uh, again, we're still waiting to hear something.

04:25
I suspect that after we get out of recording this episode, we are going to get some sort of update from NASA to say, hey, boeing needs more time to fix this leak or they need more time to check both the fixes for this leak and the fixes for the ULA leak, and then we'll figure out what's what. The reason I think they're got to say something is because it's Friday, the launch is no earlier than Tuesday and I think the crew is still in Houston right now, so they have to get back to KSC and then start all that final countdown. L-2, which is when NASA starts their big activities, would be on Sunday as we're recording this. So I'm not sure what's going on is what I'm trying to say, but the new leak, another delay, hopefully a launch next week, but it could slip into the holiday weekend.

05:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, not to sound suspicious, but the bad news press release or press conferences always seem to happen on Friday afternoons. At 4 o'clock or 5 o'clock or 6 o'clock or 7 o'clock Eastern time, all right, next up, blue Origin's at it again. Yeah, and this is a very special launch because somebody's going up. It should have gone up a long long time ago.

05:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
At least someone's launching this weekend right, that's right. Blue Origin actually, their New Shepard suborbital rocket not going to orbit is actually making a return to flight for the first time with an astronaut crew. For those who don't remember, back in 2022, and I think it was September of that year they had a failure of an uncrewed launch. There were no astronauts on it. Their last astronaut flight was in August of 2022. And then they returned to flight in December of last year, december 23, with an uncrewed launch. So this is their first return to form for passenger flight and they are launching a very interesting group.

06:12
Chief among them is Ed Dwight, a former US Air Force pilot, the first black astronaut candidate in 1961. He underwent training, was recommended by the Air Force as an astronaut candidate to NASA in 1963. And then he was never selected to fly and ended up leaving the Air Force for like business world, and he eventually became a sculptor in 1966. And so finally, he is getting that chance to fly. And, if you hadn't seen it, he is also the subject, or one of the subjects, of the Space Race documentary by National Geographic that came out earlier this year, in February. But he is one of six different passengers who are flying. The rest are either big entrepreneur investors like Mason Angel.

07:00
There's a French brewer, sylvain Chiron, as well as other entrepreneurs Gopi Thadakura, ken Hess and adventurer Carol Schaller and they will all be launching on the new Shepard rocket and I believe their RSS first step capsule, which is the one that they've been using for these crew flights, although I know they're building another one to get a few minutes of weightlessness. They'll bring the booster back and land it and hopefully kick off another slate of these, these crude flights, these space tourist flights. They get about four minutes of weightlessness up in on the flight itself. They have these giant windows, the biggest windows ever built for a spacecraft, and they can float about the cabin and apparently it's a great experience, as we've all heard William Shatner say, and it'll be very interesting. But that launch is Sunday, may 19th, at 9.30 am Eastern time, is the opening of the window. It could be a little bit later. They've usually targeted like a one to two hour window for that.

07:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And those two stories are on spacecom and I'll just add in Ed Astor. We just by happenstance did a story that included Ed Dwight the issue that's coming out in a couple of weeks on black astronauts and he was quoted as saying that he had a very difficult time at Edwards, primarily because of his relationship with Chuck Yeager. Really, chuck Yeager did not treat him well and Yeager's immediate assistant had written comments saying look, dwight's as qualified as anybody here, but it just didn't move forward. Interestingly, part of the motivation for this because this was 1960-61 after all, which was not the most inclusive time in the United States, but CBS newsman Edward Edward, edward R Murrow had written to James Webb in 1961 saying you need to fly somebody of color on this spacecraft because that's most of the world and you're you're. You know you're not including people.

08:56
So I thought that was an interesting tidbit. All right, private mission to save the Hubble space telescope raises, raises concerns at NASA. Now I just have to say when I heard this I thought what a cool idea. You know, a year or two ago, whenever it was, that it was first brought up by the Polaris Dawn team in the neutral buoyancy tank and other facilities to work on the Hubble with a shuttle standing on the end of a robotic arm, or at least having the Hubble grabbed and brought into the shuttle and fixed there while they were working on it. That's very different than getting near it with a SpaceX capsule and then drifting over in a brand new, untried EVA suit and trying to do basic repairs. But it sounds like it might be kind of a plug and play thing. What do you know?

09:47 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, also, it's very interesting that you say that and, by the way, it wouldn't be, hopefully, an unproven crew suit, because the next Polaris Dawn mission is supposed to prove that space suit coming up. But this is a story from NPR by the very talented Nell Greenfeld-Boyce, who saved my bacon once at the KSC when I locked my keys in the car during a shuttle mission. So you know, I can't thank her enough for everything, plus her amazing work as a science writer. But she has this great story about the Polaris Dawn mission that you mentioned in there, which is actually a set of three different missions that are being financed by billionaire Jared Isaacman. He was also the person that bought SpaceX's first private Inspiration 1 flight and flew for civilians on that mission to make some history for the first private orbital flight fully on its own spaceship. Now he's going to launch and do the first private spacewalk on his next flight, which is sometime this summer, and after that the second Polaris Dawn mission that he wants to do. He has floated the idea of rescuing the Hubble Space Telescope.

10:57
Now Hubble, actually, it's been five years since. Five years, ten years, ten, 15. Oh my gosh, I forgot where time went. It's been 15 years since, since the last servicing mission to the uh, the Hubble space telescope and I realized that because my daughter was born that year, so I should really remember. Uh, and and you know the the, the systems are designed to be upgraded over time. Nasa went like every five or six years during the shuttle missions to upgrade it, and the one in 20, what was that? 2009 was supposed to be the last. And so he has said, hey, we could go there, we could dock or rendezvous with it. It does have like that kind of like universal adapter, I believe, for that kind of a thing and we could upgrade whatever you want. You just got to help us figure it out. And initially it seems like, hey, yeah, free servicing mission, let's do it, let's figure out, let's find the way to get to. Yes, but what Nell's investigation shows and she actually had to FOIA emails and discussions about the mission, because Jared Isaac has been saying, you know, publicly, hey, we really want to get there. You know, we think that we could. It's an easy decision. You know it's a no brainer. He's quoted as saying but NASA has been saying that you know, maybe we'll give you an update in spring or early summer. And now it's as of this this week, in this story, you know, they're saying that, hey, maybe they'll share something this week.

12:28
The concern that came up through these emails is not that, you know, spacex and Isaacman and his team couldn't do it. It's that they're worried that this 30-plus-year-old space telescope, which is kind of near the end of its life it actually went into safe mode earlier because of a gyroscope failure that it is still performing science as it is. So if it's not broke, we, you know we we don't need to fix it, and and and. So what if this, this, you know, quote unquote, untrained team of private astronauts, what if they broke something? Like what happens then? Like, we could get maybe like a couple more years, 20, 34 maybe, I think, is where they think it's gonna, it's gonna die. Um, they could, they could last through there, and if they, if they do everything perfectly well, then hey, they could get another 10 years out of it. But if they break something critical, uh, then then that's it. Right shows over.

13:23
And I should point out that in 2009, during the STS-125 mission, there was a really there were two scary moments. Number one was there was a stuck bolt and they couldn't get the wide field camera out the old one to put the new wide field camera three in. And it took quite some doing on I think, the first EVA for them to get that one done and that was like one of the critical success measures of that mission. You know, if they couldn't get that thing open, what are they going to do? And you had a whole back room to figure out. They got to get that bolt open. They replaced the camera and it was great.

13:56
Will a private mission like this have that kind of support? Will they be ready to deal with that kind of stuff on the fly? Those are the concerns that they're talking about, and John Grunsfeld himself, the Hubble hugger you know, is quoted in these emails as kind of being a bit opposite of this effort right now until they could figure out if they could actually do it. I think that's the big concern here. It doesn't sound like it's done, like the discussions are done. It just seems like there's opposition to or resistance, which we've seen a lot in the past when it comes to private missions. But this is kind of an extra type of a thing. It's not NASA soliciting out ideas for a commercial company to come up with ways to service Hubble. It's someone saying hey, we're going to fly a mission. Do you want us to go to our expense? Exactly? Hey, we're going to fly a mission, do you? want us to go to our expense Exactly.

14:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, we're going to fly a mission, I'm going to pay for it. Do you want us to go do this thing? If so, how could we do that? So it's going to be interesting to watch how it comes up. You know, we've seen similar situations when the NRO just gave NASA some space telescopes that they had lying around and then it was like, well, what are we going to do with them? And then they almost canceled those missions until they named it, the Nancy Crase Roman Space Telescope. And now it's going to fly those W-1st observatories.

15:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So that's kind of where. What a tortured story. W-1st was yeah, by the way. I want to mention, for the fourth servicing mission, they did develop the soft capture and rendezvous mechanism which was installed on the back end of the Hubble. So you're right, they do have a capture ring.

15:37 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They could dock and then boost it. That's like very limited. Spacex has a lot of things. Isaac, he says that he's worried about the amount of time being taken just to discuss this. Cause they do have to. If they're going to do it, if NASA wants them to do it, they have to start talking about it now. And he said in this piece I am a bit concerned that the clock is being run out on the game so that there's not going to be a Hubble will say it. Basically, they'll spend so much time hemming and hawing that you know it's too late. It's too late, you know the sale's over and you don't get your free mission, so we'll have to see. This isn't the first time it's happened either. When SpaceX launched the first Falcon Heavy, spacex and Elon Musk offered to fly anything for free for NASA.

16:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Instead of his car. Yeah, yeah, so we ended up launching his car. Yeah, yeah, so we ended up launching his car. So, uh, final item from spacecom solar storms and aurora. I missed the first night of that because it was cloudy here. Then I went out the next night and drove two hours to try and get away from the lights of los angeles, and by the time you do that, of course you're picking up the lights of las vegas, but nothing.

16:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You didn't see anything, missed it entirely it was pouring rain and cloudy all weekend long in New Jersey. I am really salty about it. But basically this was a very interesting weekend for Northern Lights Huggers because there was this massive sunspot called AR3664 that was 17 times the size of our planet and it was firing off X flares these most powerful solar storms that the sun can produce left and right all through last week. And it kind of kicked off in the evening in a G5 geomagnetic storm. That's one of the strongest, that's the strongest type that NOAA puts out, and it sparked auroras I mean this wave after wave of flares and coronal mass ejections from this sunspot around the world, as far south as Alabama, according to NOAA. I actually heard reports of folks seeing them in the Bahamas through news reports too, and that is just absolutely crazy. Unfortunately we couldn't see them here because you need clear skies for it, but a lot of my team in Indiana and in the UK and across the board saw them as far south as North Carolina at a music festival. They were and it turned the sky purple. Normally the auroras they're like that kind of green color, right, that's the traditional one, that's the interaction of the solar particles in the upper atmosphere, but they turn red when they're higher energetic reactions higher up in the atmosphere. And there was, like some, views from the southern lights too, because it's not just the northern lights, it's the southern lights as well.

18:24
Where in New Zealand and Tasmania it turned the sky orange Can you imagine that? Like an orange lit up sky at night. It was truly spectacular to see and it lasted for several days through the weekend and sadly this sunspot is gone. But it takes two weeks for the sunspots to go all the way across the face of the sun, so it could come back. It's a massive complex. Meanwhile, rod. Meanwhile, there's another sunspot that just came over the limb of the sun on the other side and it's been popping off X-flares too. It's not facing Earth yet, not facing Earth yet, but I think we're going to want to watch this one over the next week and maybe by the time you and I talk next week.

19:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Next episode we talk next week. Next episode, we'll have something else to say about that one, or we'll all be dead of a gamma ray exposure. No, no, Well, stand by. We'll be right back with John Mulcahy, the director of the Carnegie Observatory. Stay with us.

19:15
This episode of this Week in Space is brought to you by Wix Studio. You know, instead of reading another boring ad script, I'm going to show you what Wix Studio just sent me, this wild looking website to scroll through and tell you about. Of course, I'm already excited, because it's space themed. I think they might've made this just for us. Okay, let's see what this scrolling telling is all about. There's an astronaut falling through the clouds and we've got two planets crashing into each other. I always enjoy that. Text is popping up as I scroll and it's telling you about the search for other species. And now we're talking. We've got a spaceship. This is what I've been waiting for. That's amazing. I feel like I'm in space myself, a place most of you probably want me to be. It's wild how you could do all this without code so easily with Wix Studio. Now it's your turn to lift off.

20:01
Build your next web project on Wix Studio, the platform for agencies and enterprises. Go to wixcom slash studio wixcom slash studio or click on the link in the show page to find out more. John, thanks for coming to visit with us today. Really appreciate it. This is a treat and, as I told you before we came on, I first noticed the Carnegie Observatory's building in Pasadena when I was about 11, throwing newspapers on Santa Barbara Street. I rode by about 5 in the morning and thought I got to go meet those people. That looks cool. Oh, they won't want to talk to me and I never did knock on the door. Can you tell us about your job there and what exactly is the Carnegie Observatories?

20:44 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Sure, I think that's a good place to start. So the Carnegie Observatories was founded way back in 1904 by our director. Original director was George L Rahal, a very famous astronomer. He was responsible for starting the Astrophysical Journal, the AAS, the American Astronomical Society, a whole bunch of things. But he read in the newspaper that Andrew Carnegie was giving away his vast fortune and he convinced Carnegie to fund an observatory in Southern California, in the hills above us, known as Mount Wilson, and that observatory really changed the trajectory of astronomy, with many very famous astronomers Harlow, shapley, edwin Hubble being certainly our most famous astronomer, and so really kind of all I always argue all of modern astronomy kind of happened up at Mount Wilson in the first half of the last century and then, as Los Angeles grew unfortunately of course light pollution is an issue, so we can't really use Mount Wilson anymore.

21:39
So, starting in the 60s, our institution moved our operations, our actual telescopes, to South America. So we have a huge observatory there called Las Capanas that will be the site of the future giant Magellan telescope. It has a bunch of telescopes right now, but we remain here in Pasadena giant Magellan telescope and has a bunch of telescopes right now, and so, but we remain here in Pasadena and we're probably the only one I can think of, the only kind of pure research institution for observational astronomers. There are places, of course, like the Institute for Advanced Study where it's more theoretical based, but we really emphasize using telescopes where we are kind of one of the leaders in building telescopes around the world, emphasize using telescopes where we are kind of the one of the leaders in building telescopes around the world.

22:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So you mentioned Mount Willis Observatory. That's the hundred inch hooker telescope which looks like something that was designed by Jules Verne, which always intrigued me. It's so cool yeah it is and then you have two other instruments there, a 60 inch and something else. Is that right?

22:30 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah, there's a 60 inch. There's also a bunch of solar telescopes which, so I should say, we started as a solar observatory, but that didn't last long. For about four years we were a solar observatory, but we had some of the most amazing solar telescopes in the world for the last century as well. So, with all you know, this is I keep saying that 2024 is, of course, turned out to be the year of the sun. Between the eclipse and now all this activity in the Northern lights, everybody's excited about the sun. So, uh, we've been, we've been. We, in fact, are still tracking the sun every day through the 150 foot tower telescope at Matt Wilson. Every day, um, you can see it there. It's the front thing and the picture, and that is um, that every day, somebody since 1917 has drawn a picture of the sun. So the telescope projects the sun and somebody does a hand drawing of the sunspots, and so we have the longest continuous record of sunspots on the sun from that telescope of Matt Wilson. Yeah, it's crazy.

23:25 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's incredible. I used to work up at Griff Observatory where we had our comparatively tiny 12-inch refractor up there, but a lot of the guys who worked that telescope used to go up and mine the 100-inch as well, so I always envied them. So, tarek, you have a question.

23:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, I was going to I have one fun one, but I did want to let you know, John, that I actually studied under Ed Rhodes at USC.

23:52 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Oh, yes, my old buddy. Yes, yes, I know Ed very well.

23:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yes, at USC. Yes, I know Ed very well who used that to the solar telescope for his helioseismology research to study sunquakes, and I have the glorious honor of being probably the only intern who just did not know how to use the computer system and wrote an entire weeks of data and observations of the telescope and thank God they had a backup because I was so embarrassed. And therein began and ended my very short career as an astronomer.

24:26 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
That's pretty funny. I actually I've written one paper on the sun myself and it was my very first paper as an undergraduate at Berkeley. I wrote in 1989. So I consider myself a solar astronomer based on that one paper. That's right. You know, the sun is a pretty interesting object and you know right now we're all very excited about it. It's doing a lot of really interesting things.

24:46 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, I wanted to ask you just about the sky in general, because you know, I think a lot of people, rod and I included, have very different paths. You know that got us interested in space research and science. And here you are, you know, doing an amazing job, you know peering into the heavens with these telescopes. But I'm just curious, what was that one hook that kind of put you on the path to where you are now at Carnegie and the research that you've done?

25:15 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah, I think that's a great question. I've been saying a lot lately that I was kind of a born astronomer. I started very, very young. One of my first memories is in kindergarten. You know they used to hang those solar system models I don't know if they still do it in kindergarten across the classroom, you know, with the planets, and I was very fascinated by that.

25:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They do, but they have fewer planets now apparently. Yeah, we got rid of one.

25:36 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah Well, we could add a bunch of minor ones if we really want to. But so that was one of the first things I remember in kindergarten and my mom, who was a teacher, recognized really early on that I was interested in astronomy and so she bought me books because, you know, internet didn't exist back in those days and so I got a bunch of books and by the time I was seven my parents bought me a telescope and I was kind of crazy. I mean, I was out there every night looking at the sky. And then when I was 12, I built a telescope. I actually ground the mirror and built the whole structure, and so I was kind of pretty hardcore amateur astronomer, right. And then it wasn't clear to me that I was going to be a professional astronomer. But I went to UC Berkeley and I was looking at doing other things and then I took an astronomy class and kind of fell in love with it, yet again from a different angle. And of course an amateur and a professional astronomy is very different. As a professional astronomer I had to do tons of physics and math and all that, but I happened to be good at that. So that worked out okay.

26:33
But now I get to use the biggest telescopes in the world, which is super exciting, I should say. I think most people know you know, we don't really look through the telescopes very often, and so this year is my 30th anniversary at Carnegie. I came here in 94 as a postdoc right out of grad school and for the first 20 years I used those telescopes all the time I was going to Chile. I've used Palomar, mount Wilson, I've gone to Keck, so I've used pretty much all the big telescopes in the world. But you know, we're always everything's digital right. We sit on a computer and collect the data and take it back home and work on it. But now, as director, I actually get to take special people special people being donors down to our observatory and with the donors we get to actually look through the telescopes and so.

27:15
I now have gotten to look through the 100-inch of Mount Wilson many, many times. It's spectacular to see. You can see amazing things with your naked eye on it with the 100-inch telescope, even with the lights of Los Angeles and our 6.5-meter Magellan telescopes, which you know is pretty remarkable. So now I'm using the biggest telescopes in the world. So now as director I get to kind of go back to that, what I did when I was a kid. It's kind of fun.

27:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and there is. I've never done digital astronomy. I was an astronomy major, briefly, but we had a parting of the ways when I hit differential equations and that was that. Oh yeah, see, there you go. There is a difference, I would imagine, especially for somebody that's had a career like yours, in actually going back and dropping that eyepiece in the mount and looking as opposed to staring at a screen, isn't there?

28:01 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Absolutely. And the one thing I'll say is you know we sit at the screen, sarah, for hours. There's many nights when I'm observing. I don't even go outside really, but every time I go to Chile and I've been 135 times, so that's quite a lot of trips to Chile. You know, I still go four or five times a year and have done that since the late 80s.

28:23
When I go that first night, I always arrive at night before I start working and observing, and I always then have a chance to walk around and look at the night sky. And every single time you've got to get rekindled to the amazing night sky. I mean there it's so dark, and time you got to get rekindled to that the amazing night sky. I mean there it's so dark, and of course, and the Milky Way is just spectacular. I always tell people you can kind of walk around without a flashlight, because the Milky Way almost cast a shadow at our observatory in Chile. It's just remarkable. I mean you just haven't, you don't see it. I should say the southern sky is more interesting than the northern sky and the Milky Way just looks more spectacular because the center of the galaxy is in the southern sky. And then you have, of course, the large and small modular clouds, but every time I go there it gets me back to that component, you know. But it is a very different thing and I think you know there.

29:05
So I should say astronomers I of course know many, and there are a few that followed my path, that they were kind of the born astronomers who were always into it and started as amateurs. I would say the vast majority are not that. They're people who just were good at physics and math and you know, and they just kind of it. Let's be honest, astronomy is the I shouldn't say this, I'm going to get in trouble. My boss is a physicist, but the most you know, the most exciting physics is astronomy right now is astrophysics, and so I think that you know people who are really good at math and physics kind of discover it in college and that's their path. So but for me, I was a born astronomer. It was meant to be, I think, for some reason.

29:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I'm Rosenbaum, are you listening OK?

29:45 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Oh, yes, I know I'm in trouble with my friend Tom too.

29:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Let's get to the main story, and we will do so right after the short break. Stay with us. And we will do so right after the short break. Stay with us. So I began this journey towards meeting with you by being steered by Kristen to the LA Times, op ed by Eric Isaacs and Tom Rosenbaum. Just a side note I interviewed Tom once and I was writing for Caltech for about a year about one of his fundamental discoveries that he had just wrapped up University of Chicago and I was sitting at this huge board table for a friendly chat, I guess, and after about the first three words that came out, of his mouth the rest of it just he said I'll let you know if this is too basic for you, and the rest of it just flew over my head and I took a lot of notes.

30:29
But it's an interesting story and they're calling it the Big Glass Wars, which is a great title. Can you tell us what that is and why it's important?

30:39 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Sure. So you know, in the 90s and the early part of this century, you know, astronomers around the world, places like Carnegie and Caltech, completed kind of the first big generation of telescopes since really Palomar and things from like the 50s, 40s, 50s and 60s, so things like keck and our magellan telescopes and it became very apparent we learned a lot from these telescopes. They're amazing facilities, um, and but it became apparent right away that you know bigger glasses needed. You know astronomy is all about collecting light. I always tell people, you know, if you're, uh, if you're going to collect rain, you, you want a bigger bucket. And same thing with light, right, we need a bigger bucket always to really get the fainter things in the sky. And so, you know, at Carnegie we started planning the next generation telescope for our Las Gapanas in the early part of this century. Similarly, our colleagues at Caltech and UC had started their 30-meter telescope which is supposed to be a Mauna Kea. And so these telescopes have kind of been chugging along for over 20 years now and have built up some really kind of big private partnerships. In the case of the Giant Magellan Telescope, we have a bunch of universities University of Arizona, texas, chicago, harvard, those sorts of places, plus countries like South Korea and Australia for us, brazil, and then of course, the TMT. On the other side, caltech has partners in Japan, canada and India, and so we've raised huge amounts of money for these telescopes. These new next generation of beasts are so expensive because they're really huge. I mean, the 30 meter, as you can guess, is a 30 meter telescope. The GMT is a 25 meter telescope. These are tremendously large facilities and the engineering behind them is incredible. So we've been kind of chugging along for a while on our own.

32:28
But it's, you know, become apparent at some point that simultaneously, I should say, the Europeans have been building the EELT, which is a 39-meter telescope, and that telescope will be located in Chile. So it became apparent I don't know, maybe about 10 years ago, that for us to complete these telescopes, we really did need help from the NSF, from the National Science Foundation, to help make them happen. In other words, we needed the US government to participate in some way. As I just mentioned, you know, both TMT and GMT have huge international partners and in those cases the countries like Australia and South Korea are participating, but up until this point the US has not, it's really just been the private institutions, but up until this point the US has not, it's really just been the private institutions, so anyhow.

33:34
So it became very clear that to finish these telescopes and Carnegie, for instance, to have access to these telescopes Because there are many places that, of course, where there are young astronomers trying to get their PhDs or even undergraduate degrees and you know, if they don't have access to these telescopes, they really cannot do the cutting edge astronomy that people can do at a place like Caltech or UC Berkeley or a place like that. And so, with the NSF coming in, the idea is that this would open the facility up to astronomers throughout the country. So that's pretty exciting. The US community does its every 10 year, its decadal survey, where we rank, kind of what are the top priorities in astronomy, and in the 2021, these two telescopes came out number one and they decided that for the US to remain competitive, the NSF has to help fund these. We have to finish these, particularly with Europe moving very fast on theirs. So that's the Go ahead, go ahead.

34:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You go ahead.

34:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Just going to ask a quick question to make sure I've got this right, because it's kind of hard to believe, because I grew up, you know, hearing about the massive 200 inch telescope Palomar and what amazing engineering achievement that was. A 30 meter telescope is 3540 inches. Is that right?

34:49 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah, that sounds right. Yeah, it's crazy. These things are, yes, these things. These things are, yes, these things. Our current telescope, so the GMT, has seven very large mirrors, each about 25 feet across. So each mirror for the GMT is already kind of the size of the biggest telescopes we have in the world, I mean, and there's seven of them. So I mean you think of the collecting area, remember, is the area of all that. I mean, we are making a huge leap here to do these sorts of things and so well, in the case of, like the GMT, if I remember correctly, the dome is, I think, 24 stories high. I mean, to give you an idea of the scale, it's incredible. The hole in the middle mirror for the GMT is the size of the Hubble Space Telescope. It's just the hole in the lake. So I mean there's all these sorts of things. Yeah, it's like it's a little crazy how these things go. So these are amazing facilities and let me just also take a second to say why we need them. I mean I think we've made a lot of progress in the last 20 years. It really has been kind of the golden ages of astronomy and in addition to the ground-based telescopes you know, of course we have the amazing Hubble Space Telescope and now the James Webb. We should probably talk about that, because people often ask me why not do everything in space, and the answer is pretty easy it's hard and expensive, but space would be great if you could do it always. But you know, to get to this next level, to really do some of the most fundamental questions we're interested in, you really need this big glass, and I'll just give two examples.

36:22
The one that I think is the primary driver for many people right now is the search for Earth-like planets. You hear on the news all the time. In fact, there was just a story yesterday. You know planet-like Earth. Well, we had to be really careful. Those aren't really Earth-like planets. Those are planets that might be the size of the Earth. They're around very low-mass stars, red stars, which tend to be very unstable. They're not like. It's not a situation with a star like the sun and an Earth at the right distance for life to happen, to see those planets, the really Earth-like planets around stars like the sun. None of the current telescopes can do that. This is something this next generation will be necessary for, and we're really interested, of course, in studying the atmospheres of those planets to look for evidence of life, biosignatures, and that's the other thing that is probably the primary driver, I think, for the big telescopes right now.

37:12
I'm a galaxy guy. I like to study galaxies. It's pretty much been my career since my one solar paper back in 1989. And so of course James Webb is finding these amazing first kind of the very first galaxies we're seeing, and James Webb can detect them and we can learn a little bit about them. But to really understand what they're made of, what the stars are made of, it's just not a big enough telescope. And so these telescopes that's the other area. I think those two areas kind of nearby would be looking for those Earth-like planets and then looking at the very, very distant universe to understand the first stars and galaxies. It's super exciting, I think, but you really need the big glass to do that.

37:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And I did some math while you were giving us that Wow. By doing that, I typed into Google how many feet are these? And just to put it into perspective for folks that maybe aren't on metric, so GMT is 25.4 meters for your mirror. That's like more than just over 83 feet and, of course, the 30-meter telescope is just under 100 feet, which is absolutely crazy. The Keck telescopes are what? 10 meters?

38:23 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
right, they're 10 meters, yeah, for comparison, but these are segmented mirrors.

38:27 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Right, it's not one big piece of glass like that In both cases they're segmented.

38:31 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
So the telescopes are a little different in style. The 30-meter uses it's basically uses the Keck technology, which is a bunch of small mirrors. The GMT, our Giant Magellan Telescope, uses seven very big mirrors. But they are, you have to be segmented. There's just no way to build an 80-foot mirror. And so you know you can do it with lots of little mirrors or some big mirrors, and there's advantages and disadvantages to both, which is one reason why having both would be super exciting, because there's things that the GMT will be able to do, there's things that the TMT will be able to do If the U? S community had access to both. This really gives us an upper edge on on, you know, the competition from around the world.

39:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And by having multiple segments you're able to tweak them a bit to better cancel out the atmospheric expect. Is that the goal, or is it just just to get the biggest light collecting surface area that you're trying Well?

39:25 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
yeah, so the primary thing is to get the collecting area, just to get the big but. But you're right, by having the mirrors. You know the mirrors are deformable, which means they move. This is something even our current telescopes do. I don't think people realize. The technology is amazing. There's all this pressure being put on on the underside of the mirror so that the mirrors aren't really just a surface like this. They actually are moving little bits and pieces to basically work as the atmosphere changes. We're correcting for that in real time, and so that's why you can deliver really good images.

39:54 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And I apologize if these sound really like bonehead deliver really good images. And then just I guess and I apologize if these sound like really bonehead questions but is it just? You know the fact that bigger is better and that with more surface area for these mirrors you get to see sharper than Keck images, you get to see farther planets or satellites? I mean, that's the depth, that's the advantage, the leap that you and Carnegie are looking to achieve with these next generation telescopes themselves.

40:26 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah, so both factors in fact. So the collecting area is literally just the size, and so you know, an 80-foot telescope is a lot better than a 10-foot telescope, for instance, right, so there, you're just collecting more rain. In our case that rain is light or photons. But it turns out that the bigger the mirror is, the higher resolution you get, and so in fact you also get higher, you're getting a sharper image in a sense. So in fact, these telescopes, when you correct for the atmosphere, actually get better image quality than James Webb or Hubble. So the key is you have to correct for the atmosphere, because even though the mirrors would give you better quality, the atmosphere blurs that and so, but we, by correcting for that, we actually will get better quality images than we can get from space, which is really remarkable, and I do you want to?

41:16 - Tariq Malik (Host)
do you want to ask? I was going to ask a quick one about cost, just because I feel like that's going to be a really important thing for our next section.

41:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's a good one.

41:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Rod and I have talked a lot about the human spaceflight side of things, john, and how you know we could have been at the moon with, like NASA's old plan when it was going to cost a hundred billion, this old plan when it was going to cost $100 billion, but no one wanted to pay for it, even though they knew what the price tag was and they said it was going to take 10 years and you've got to spend the money. The government never actually put that money in and then everyone's surprised when we don't have a spaceship. You know how could we see this coming? But for your project, for GMT, for the 30-meter telescope, the price, the tags have been, the funding was pretty much up front $2.5 billion for a giant Magellan telescope, $3.9 billion for a 30-meter telescope. It's a national priority from the National Academy of Sciences and after 2020, yes, it's number one let's go and fund it.

42:12
And then now, kind of the big thing is the National Science Foundation is saying, well, we've got 1.6 billion, that's it, that's all we've got to spend, that's the pot. So that's where we find ourselves in and I'm just wondering how much of a shock that is, when clearly it's been no secret how much and why you require that type of funding, because these are not like backyard telescopes or anywhere close to it. These are really precision machines. I mean, this is your space shuttle or whatnot. I don't know if I want to put words in your mouth or whatnot, but I mean I'm just curious, you know, when they say, well, how much is it going to cost what you tell people about what they're getting from that?

42:58 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah, no, I think that that's a really great question, because they're not cheap. I'm not going to say they're cheap, but they are a bargain. And the reason I feel they're a bargain is because we already have private. We've privately raised, you know, about half the money in both cases. That's an amazing contribution Usually a lot of NSF projects. You know we expect the federal government to pay for the whole thing. That was the case, for instance, for Alma or the Vera Rubin Observatory. In those cases, almost all that money has come from federal agencies and those were in the billion dollar plus range as individual facilities and of course they've been. You know, in the case of Alma, it's been online for over a decade, so you know that would end up being a $1.5 or $2 billion project. Now, in this case, the partnerships here are really bringing forward a lot of money. I mean it ends up being, you know, I don't know $2.5 billion or something. So that's why they're a bargain.

43:49
They are expensive. I mean these are, you know, you said those numbers and those are the numbers. Um, the one thing I'll say is that these telescopes, of course, once you build them last, you know, I mean this these things are going to be operating 50, 60 years. So it is kind of a big, big upfront expense of one time, but, um, they're expensive.

44:06
But um, if you want to do exciting things, you know you have to invest in them and I and I think it's all relative, of course, right, right, compared to, you know, something the military does or something, this is pretty small money. And the other thing I'll point out is that, compared to space, it's very small money. So, you know, people are probably familiar with the James Webb Space Telescope, which I'd say anything bad about it because it is an amazing facility and all I've talked about. I've been giving talks around town for the last two years, all about James Webb. It is so exciting, but it was $10 billion of federal money. So what we're talking here is a small fraction, even if you funded both of that. And you know, I think there's a great case for the James Webb Space Telescope and it's doing amazing things.

44:51 - Tariq Malik (Host)
But these ground-based telescopes there is now that it's working in space, John.

44:54 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Well, that's right, that's right, and I'll remind people that way. I don't know if people know, but you know when it was, when we were first talking about James Webb early part of the century, it was quoted to be a half a billion dollars and all of us were like there is no way this is going to be a half a billion dollars, and you know. So it ended up being closer to 10 and even and operating it, of course, is also an additional expense, much more severe than than what we have. The advantage the ground-based telescopes have is that we can change the instrumentation, and so we'll be continually updating them.

45:24
The telescopes you know, tell, I always tell you the telescopes, really, if you are, if you take care of them, really last forever. Those telescopes at mount wilson you know some of them, they're over 100 years now. If they were not at mount wil Wilson, which is in Los Angeles, you, in fact you still can do things with them, right, but I mean, really, you could be changing the instrumentation. One of the challenges with space is that, you know, the Hubble Space Telescope now has technology that's almost 20 years old in terms of its detectors and things of that sort. We can do much better. So on the ground, we can continually update our instrumentation, and that is one of the real advantages of being on the ground.

46:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right, we'll be back with my next decisive question in just a moment, stay tuned. So it occurs to me, in the era that we're possibly considering letting a private space mission flown by SpaceX service, the Hubble and, of course, the Webb, will probably never be serviced because of where it is, not beyond the moon, moon's orbit, that, if you have to do one of these changes or updates you're talking about and this is going to be very simplistic, but with an Earth-based telescope, john drags out a ladder and goes over and replaces a component, or the service guys go up and bang on it with a hammer or whatever. And also, viewing time, you know, is something that you have to allocate by the minute or by the hour and it's got to cost just a fraction of what it does on a space telescope, right?

46:46 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
now, that's right, absolutely. I mean, I think this is one of the dangers for, for instance, the Hubble Space Telescope. I mean, I'm kind of it's remarkable that we're still. It's been great and, of course, it's a huge publicity winner, so that's one reason why it's still around. But but you know, we were talking about stopping the mission in 2017 or 2018, and it was primarily because of the cost of running it every year, which is I can't remember, but it's tens, it's hundreds of millions a year to run something like Hubble. Yeah, it's hundreds of millions a year to run something like Hubble. Hubble and James Webb is probably more, and so I mean they're very, very expensive. I can't remember an hour on Hubble. At one point I had done the calculation. It's a lot an hour of telescope time. I mean these and once again, I'm not arguing that these telescopes are cheap. They're not and even our current telescopes, there's a substantial cost, of course, to run them, but compared to space, there is really no comparison. The ground-based facilities are just significantly cheaper.

47:40 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I wanted to follow up on something that you mentioned, john. You said about the importance of having these instruments as a national science priority, because there are other projects underway. You mentioned the European Extremely Large Telescope that is in development and one of the things that really comes to my mind a bit tragically and this isn't on the optical side with telescopes, but I think about the Arecibo radio telescope and how that has long been like a jewel not just of astronomy but of Hollywood too, because we saw it in contact. We saw James.

48:21
Bond, you know we. And then of course it tragically it collapsed and now we don't have it and a decision was made by the national science foundation not to rebuild that capability and that instrument. And yet, at the same time, you have other countries that have really invested, like China with their fast radio telescope, and they're building an even larger one with plans to now to really push the frontiers of that science. And you know, just beyond the kind of like the academic competition, is there a concern about losing, you know, not just key research, but key I don't know brainpower researchers, you know that sort of thing to these other competing agencies where, if you don't have a capability, those scientists, those expertise, you know they're going to go someplace else to do the science and maybe we don't. It's with the country that we don't have these partnerships to share data and findings as openly or as freely as we've seen today.

49:23 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah, no, I think that that is in fact, the big argument we're making right now. I mean there's really no question that the US has been the leader in astronomy, certainly over the last 150 years. I mean starting with the private observatories like Mount Wilson, but also federal facilities. I mean the US has been, it has been the leader and there's actually in my mind no question we still are the leaders. But that is, we are getting very, very close to handing that off. If we don't invest in these facilities, because if I'm a young astronomer and I have a job offer from Carnegie or Caltech, right, and I don't have access to a big telescope but the Europeans do, am I going to go to Europe? And the answer is a lot of people will, and so certainly Europe is catching up fast.

50:05
I think there's a lot of concern now about China. China is not competitive at the moment in a major way, but they are throwing money at the problem and you mentioned the FAST is actually probably the biggest success for them at the moment but they are throwing money and they're looking at optical telescopes as well, and so at some point we're going to have competition from both Europe and China and I should say people may not realize this US facilities, actually we open them up to everybody in the world and so, even though it's primarily US facilities, actually we open them up to everybody in the world and so, even though it's primarily US astronomers who dominate, because there's a lot of us if you are in China or Japan or somewhere else, you can apply and get time on US facilities. That is not the case for the European facilities. That facility is limited to the European astronomers. The Chinese will be limited to the Chinese astronomers.

50:52
The US is very generous, I mean in that, in that sense, and so you're right, if we don't build these telescopes, we won't have access to those telescopes. The only way you'll get access to europe or china is if you can collaborate with somebody there, but then you won't, will not be the primary driver. Um, but I think there's a real concern. We're going to lose a lot of talent because people are going to pick, to go where they have the best facilities, and that won't be here if we don't move forward with this.

51:18 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, speaking of moving forward with this and I hope I get this right if I understand correctly, if both instruments are built, you'll essentially have a massive capability to do, essentially simultaneous, all sky astronomy. Is that correct?

51:32 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah, so that's I think. The other exciting thing about it is the GMT. Our telescope is in Chile at our site, carnegie site. The TMT will hopefully be in Mauna Kea. People may know, you know, there's been a lot of issues on Mauna Kea, but we're hoping that that will work. So it'll be the northern sky through Hawaii, and that is important. I do think all-sky coverage is important. The Europeans will have just the south, but the reason why off-sky is important is there will be very rare events and you would want to make sure you have telescopes.

52:01
So, to give you an example, you may remember the huge 2017 gravitational wave, the neutron-neutron star merger. This was really the most exciting science magazine, I think named it the top science result of 2017. Most exciting science magazine, I think named it the top science results of 2017. That particular event wasn't really visible in the northern hemisphere. So, in fact, my colleagues at Caltech who work on that field were kind of stuck trying to follow this thing, but they couldn't really reach it because Hawaii was just too far north. In Chile, we had amazing access to it because it was in the southern sky, and so this will happen. Of course, it could happen in the north and if it happens in the north and we don't have a telescope in the north, you won't be able to follow it up.

52:42
So there's things like that, like rare events, like, imagine if we have our first supernova in the Milky Way and that's visible, you know, to the naked eye in four or five hundred years and we don't have a telescope, if it's far in the far north, we're going to really that's going to be very, very disappointing. So that's one reason why you want the all-sky coverage. Um, there are also certain things, like the earth-like planets I mentioned earlier are going to be exceptionally rare. The plants themselves will not be, but the ones that you can study in detail. I mean, it may be that we have five or six of them, maybe ten, and so having the full sky will, of course, give you a sample, as opposed to, you know, being stuck in one hemisphere. So this will give us a significant advantage. To have both hemispheres and, of course, both telescopes operating simultaneously means you're on the sky twice as much, so you're doing twice as much science. I think that's very exciting, that is exciting.

53:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
All right, we're going to take one more break and we'll be right back, stand by. We're going to take one more break and we'll be right back, stand by. So was it ever considered a building twin instruments North and Southern hemisphere or is this way of getting more bang for your buck? Because they can do that, but also different things?

53:43 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah, that's a really interesting question. I think what happened here was largely historic and also also expertise of the various partners. So the TMT is really is a scaled up version, in some sense, of a Keck telescope. So it uses the many small mirrors. This is exactly the technique that was developed at Keck and UC Santa Cruz and Caltech, and so when they came to build their telescope, that was the direction they naturally went. At Carnegie, our facilities, our current telescopes, are all single mirrors, much larger mirrors, and so our kind of technical expertise went in the direction of fewer big mirrors, and so I think that that's kind of what sent them off on different direction.

54:23
Through the years there's been many talks of well, let's see if we can combine the projects. The challenge is, the technology is so different that it's very, very tough, and in the case of our telescope we now have seven mirrors that are in process, three are done. We have also the structure for the telescopes being built, and so I think it would be very hard to kind of do a hybrid. There's been lots of talk of that. Let's try to merge them. There's no technical way to do that. I think you're right. In retrospect one could have said, well, if the US community had come forward and maybe was a little more united at that time, one might have said let's just build two twins and have them in the north and south.

55:02
I should say there are other projects that we're doing at Carnegie that are just like that. So we have a very exciting project called VIAspec, which is an instrument that's going to go on our Magellan telescopes and there's an equivalent one that's going to go on the MMT, which is a six and a half meter, basically identical to Magellan in Arizona, and this instrument will do all sky. This instrument is going to be studying stars in the halo of the Milky Way to try to probe dark matter by looking at perturbations in the stars. It's a super interesting project and it is all sky by having identical instruments. So I think it's an interesting idea. I think it's just we went too far down the path to really make it happen. That was, I think, the challenge.

55:39 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know, my colleague, mike Wall, at Spacecom, john, was there to watch some of the first of those mirrors kind of come off the assembly line and it's been really exciting to watch them come in because they're just so big over time. And you know, I was curious about what the next steps are for you as a team. You know where you're facing you and your TMT counterparts. You're facing the budget realities of what your project costs. And then this recommendation from the NSF board to say, well, we've only got this much to spend.

56:16
And yet at the same time, you know there's this Congress, this congressional fiscal year, you know plan, that says no, we, we need two observatories. You know, as, as a footprint to to compete with the, the, the ELT under this, this U S extremely large telescope program. And you know, and they're saying that it's a priority to have to. So it sounds like there's like a lot of uncertainty. But you have to make decisions. You've got three mirrors built, you've got four more to build, and, and, and I'm wondering what, the, the, what the challenge is there and how you manage that, because you want your project to succeed. I think we want both of them to succeed, that's right. But you have to make decisions. You know now when the government's not making their decisions, right now.

57:02 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Well, yeah, so I think this has been a big challenge for us and in fact, I'll say that the cost of the projects have escalated because we've been waiting for NSF for a while. Originally, our hope was that we would have construction money, because we've been waiting for NSF for a while. Originally, our hope was that we would have construction money this current year, this fiscal year that we're in right now, and likely, even if this goes forward in a positive way, it's going to be two to three years down the line. And so you know, every year you delay, you have a marching army that's waiting around. Right, we're waiting. Everything gets more expensive, of course inflation, and so I mean the pause, and so I mean the pause.

57:32
The slowness of the federal government to react to this has not been helpful. But you're 100 percent right. I think right now we're spending a lot of time talking to Congress, because Congress, of course, is the ultimate play here. If they think this is exciting and they want to be competitive in this field, they can make the decision to do the funding. I mean NSF would be happy, I'm sure, if Congress came in and said, okay, here's some money, well, we're going to make your life easy. I mean NSF is working within the realm of what they have, you know, and so I understand their hesitation. And so I should say that, even though the National Science Board has come out and said we recommend going forward with this 1.6 and one telescope, it's not even clear that would happen right. I mean NSF itself could still decide to do zero telescopes, which is, I think, my biggest worry. There's no question that having two is the right decision, but having zero would be really terrible for the US community and I think there's a danger of that. Still, it's remarkable.

58:32 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's the same argument. It's the same. This is how much it's going to cost if you want it, and then waiting for people to decide that they don't want to spend it and then throw their hands up when they don't have the capability when they feel like they want it.

58:45 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh, I feel your pain and it's also this notion that if this doesn't happen and I'm thinking of this in particular in relation to something like Mars Sample Return or the Artemis program where, if it doesn't happen, or if we get beaten returning to the moon by China or Russia or somebody there's that moment where a congressman turns to the NASA administrator and says how could you let this happen?

59:10 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
That's right and that's the wrong you.

59:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But in relation to that and I want to make sure I have time to give you the final word here but you know, when we talk about leadership, so I guess, in an indirect way at least, you're competing with the funding requirements for Artemis and Mars, sample return and the biggest possible picture. But what it seems you're talking about, in terms of why this matters, is not just being first to the plate with science, but it's about all those things that come along with having this kind of capability. So it's, you know, it starts with leadership and that creates especially with young people inspiration. Then that feeds the STEM pipeline and then you get people that come out who may not become astronomers, but they're innovators, they're technologists. Those young people are the ones that are going to keep us at the fore of not just astronomy, but science and engineering in the biggest sense. Would you agree with that?

01:00:03 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
You are speaking my language right there. What you just said. You know I did a whole bunch of interviews around the eclipse. I was on radio stations and TV all across the country talking about the excitement for the eclipse, because one of the amazing things about the eclipse rise is a chance for I don't know 10 million young children to get excited about astronomy. Imagine if we don't actually provide them the tools in the future. I mean that's terrible, but it is like I said, an event like the eclipse it's clear people were super excited about astronomy. You might get kids excited.

01:00:35
We don't need a billion astronomers, so the vast majority of them won't go on to be astronomers Like you guys. Right, they'll go do something different related. That's super helpful, and so we need those engineers, we need the computer folks, we need all these other technical fields. That stuff will have a huge impact on the US productivity and our financial future and I mean we want to be the one designing things of the future right and building things of the future. We don't really want to send that expertise off to Europe and China. I think that's and that is a very important message Not everybody, but if these telescopes and things like them are going to be inspiring the next generation of technical folks that this country needs.

01:01:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and one of the hardest things I think and it's pretty clear you get it how to communicate this because you've been doing it for the last 40 minutes and you do it very well. But I work with a lot of engineers, aerospace people mostly and one of the conversations that we have a lot that kind of falls on deaf ears is you know, you could speak to people's minds, but if you talk to their hearts first, their minds will follow. It doesn't work the other way around. Very well, you know, rattling off facts and figures and we made this discovery this year but if you really talk about I don't want to say more emotional, but the less quantitative aspects of it first, then you can get into the other conversation about why it matters. Okay, so over to you your big wrap-up statement. Tell the world what you do.

01:02:01 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Well, Congress and NSF, you better fund these telescopes. The US really cannot afford to give up our leadership in astronomy. I think it would be hugely disastrous. We've done it in other fields. I think people don't appreciate just how close we are to giving up on something that is important when we find life in the universe. I hope it's somebody using one of these telescopes that does it, and without them we're not going to get that question. It's going to be somebody in Europe or eventually China, and that would be really terrible. So step up. I'm saying Congress step up and NSF step up, and that would be really terrible. So so step up. I'm saying Congress step up, and and NSF step up, and we're ready to go. We just, we just need that. We just need them to sign on.

01:02:41 - Tariq Malik (Host)
One of the big things that comes to mind is that the rest of us can all play a part in what happens to. You know you've got your GMT team and the TMT teams waiting to hear about, you know funding while you're trying to figure out what your next steps are. But the rest of us, who elect the people in Congress that make these decisions on what they're going to fund, can write in, can call and write letters and I do encourage folks to do that if you feel strongly, because you can find their information you know fairly easily, and if enough people do write in over time, they do have to listen because you're in charge of putting them back in there and keeping them in those offices every election cycle. So that is something to think about A little bit of citizen responsibility and interactivity to help these projects succeed.

01:03:25 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah.

01:03:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, john, this has been a real pleasure. I want to thank you for joining us. This has been Episode 111 of this Week in Space the Big Glass Wars. Don't forget to check out spacecom the website and the name and the National Space Society at nssorg, which we'll be having its annual International Space Development Convention in Los Angeles next week. So if you're in town, please come see us. It starts on Thursday. I'll be doing six talks, much to my chagrin, and John, where's the best place online to learn more about Carnegie Observatories and your mission?

01:03:58 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
You can just go to Carnegie Science and you'll find out all about us CarnegieScienceedu.

01:04:04 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Do you have a page there as well?

01:04:06 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Yeah, you can find all of the science we do, but you'll see astronomy and that's where we're at.

01:04:10 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, because you look like you'd have a very cool webpage somewhere.

01:04:14 - John Mulchaey (Guest)
Oh yeah, it's not as good as it should be, but yes, you can find me on there for sure, Okay.

01:04:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Tarek, where can we continue to track your errant lifestyle?

01:04:22 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you can find me at spacecom, as always, and on the Twitters, or I guess we call it the X now at Tarek J Malik and this Malik, and this weekend you'll catch me, hopefully, keeping an eye on Starliner still yet again, week after week, and the Blue Origin crew launch, and that'll be something to watch their first crew launch since 2022. That'll be something that we really want to see how it goes so great.

01:04:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And, as always, you can find me at pilebookscom or at astromagazinecom I meant to say Always, remember you can drop us a line at twist at twittv. We welcome your comments, suggestions and ideas and we respond to them at least I do and new episodes of this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher. So make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, Give us reviews, please. Five stars or thumbs up will do. Don't forget, you can get all the great programming with video streams on the Twit Network ad-free at Club Twit, as well as some extras that are only available there for just $7 a month, and that's a raw bargain. You can follow the Twit Tech Podcast Network at Twit on Twitter and on Facebook, and twittv on Instagram. Thank you, everybody, and we'll see you next week.