This Week in Space 113 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 today's episode of this Week in Space, we're talking about China on the Moon with space ace reporter Mike Wall. Stay with us.

00:11 - TWiT
Podcasts, you love. From people you trust. This is TWIT. 

00:14 - Rod Pyle (Host)
This is this Week in Space, episode number 113, recorded on May 31st 2024. China's heavenly dream. Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, the China on the Moon edition. I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Bad Aster Magazine, and, as always, I'm saddled today. I mean, I'm here today with Tarek Malik, the impeccable editor-in-chief of Spacecom. How are you, sir? I'm doing well, rod. I'm doing today with Tarek Malik, the impeccable editor in ChiefofSpacecom. How are you, sir?

00:46 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
I'm doing well, rod, I'm doing well. I saw a giant hot dog in Times Square yesterday, so I feel like life is complete, wow we've entered the non sequitur zone.

00:57 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, I heard about that. That's rather disturbing because that particular hot dog, if you hit it at the right time of day, you can have it with a nice side of pigeon poop. But fortunately, to diffuse our mirth, we're joined by Mike Wall, a space reporter from spacecom. Hi, Mike.

01:15 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Hey Rod, How's it going?

01:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Good, nice to see you again. It's always fun to have you on. Before we start, please don't forget to do us a solid. Make sure to like, like, subscribe and other podcast goodies, because, frankly, we need you. And now a space joke from dale dietrich. Loyal listener dale dietrich. Well, I hope he's a loyal listener. Hey, tark. Yes, rod, what do aliens like to eat?

01:41 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
uh, I don't know what do aliens like to eat?

01:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
unidentified frying objects I love it because I identify with it. Solo, solo laugh. Okay, save the cosmos from our humor, please. So, though, that was a pretty good one, but just in general, send your best, worst, most indifferent space joke at twist at twittv. We would appreciate it very much. All right, let's get to some headlines Now. What this week in space would be of this week in space if we weren't able to start off with a Starliner update. Yes, and literally moments ago, an apologetic press conference began.

02:23
Moments ago, an apologetic press conference began, I mean a very confident press conference ended with Boeing and NASA, and you know they're trying. I have to say, though, you're watching these things go by. I remember SpaceX having a few press conferences about Dragon and Crew Dragon and so forth, conferences about dragon and crew dragon and so forth. I don't remember them having a tenth of as many space uh press conferences or as detailed conversation about well, you know, we got a good team and we're looking at that plunger, because you know plungers can be very delicate things. So, um, you guys please set me straight on this one. I heard a lot about parachute reefing, which they claim to have worked out, but there was some concern there, and, of course, helium leaks, because it's slippery stuff. Take it away guys.

03:14 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Well, I think Mike can probably bring a few extra points, because I was like I was saying offline, I was stuffing my face with lunch during that press conference. So it's so nice to know, I know, I know, but no, go ahead, mike.

03:30 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Well, I was gonna say I mean that the, yeah, the whole tl yeah, I mean tldr is that they are ready to launch tomorrow, on saturday 1st, at like 12 25, and there there like have been a series of issues in the last few months that have kept pushing things back. You know they originally supposed to launch on May 6th. That that was the first kind of firm date that we'd gotten after, after a series of delays with it, with with yeah, yeah, yeah, the parachute issue, that that, like you mentioned, rod. And then they had discovered previously that they wrapped most of their wiring in the capsule and the tape that they determined to be flammable. So they had to go through the capsule and either take the tape out or kind of kind of rewrap it and something else, so that that took a long time. But they, they like, fixed all that by a may 6th launch date.

04:17
And a couple hours before liftoff that day they noticed a weird valve in in the rocket that's that's going to launch the mission, which is like an Atlas V, but you know, launch alliance. So they had to replace that valve. And when they got that rocket into the assembly building to replace the valve. They also noticed that there was a little helium leak in Starliner and one of its small thrusters. That kind of controls how it's oriented in space. So then they took a few more weeks to sort of investigate that and figure out if it was a big deal. They decided ultimately it was not a big enough deal to keep delaying launch anymore. So we're all set for a launch tomorrow, june 1st, and we shall see.

04:54 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
I have a question for both of you.

04:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Go ahead, go ahead, ryan. Boeing's been building spacecraft since the 60s of one kind or another and have a lot of experience in this. They build airplanes. They are a defense contractor, was it and this is serious was it that SpaceX just talked less about their developmental issues over the years? Or were they just better at it Because we're hearing stuff from Boeing? The idea that you oops, I wrapped the tape in flammable material. You know, you'd think an aerospace contractor would have that stuff down by now after being in business for over a hundred years.

05:32 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
I would, I would think so. I I have two different minds of of that question, and then, I'm sure, mike, and a family member at Boeing, but we will. No, no, she's not at Boeing. Oh no, my my, no, my sister, I don't know, can I say she actually changed jobs.

05:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Now she's at Vast. Yeah, okay, good, I can feel unconstrained. Okay, sorry, go ahead.

05:54 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
It's very exciting. It's very exciting. But no, I feel that the fact that SpaceX, you know, was fully contained as a private company, you know, fully owned, building everything themselves from the ground up, that they were in, entrenched in that product mentality, right when they're going to build this thing, and then this is, these are the requirements that they're going to build, and meanwhile a Boeing with that historic kind of legacy as like being an aerospace contractor competing for cost plus contracts, that that kind of led it to embrace a bit more of a long, long I don't want to say long winded, that's not the word long, a long lead, I guess, is the word development approach that was so segmented that you know they weren't end-to-end testing for everything, whereas at SpaceX, because they were small and scrappy, they had to test everything at the same time and they also had a lot of input from NASA, of course, in those SpaceX agreements to get the expertise and whatnot there too. So I think that just because they were just funneling different companies, they approached the development very differently At SpaceX, very singularly controlled for one thing, whereas Boeing is, you know, they're doing military stuff, they're doing aerospace stuff, they're doing all that kind of things, and it was all spread out and just kind of got a little bit sidetracked, you know, there in the development, and segmented to the point where it kind of sabotaged that initial flight.

07:27
You know, if they had done end-to-end testing they might have been able to catch that software glitch before it really came up and bit them. And they said that if they had crew on board they would have probably been able to stop it too. But it just seems one thing after another, the tape. I just I don't have an explanation for that. Apparently nobody does.

07:46 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Mike, do you think there is the other seminal difference of Boeing being publicly traded and SpaceX being private? Does that make a difference in how and when you disclose things?

07:58 - Mike Wall (Guest)
I'm not like a. I don't know much about the ins and outs of space business. That's not my expertise. I don't really know. I don't really much about the kind of ins and outs of space business. That's not my expertise, so I don't really know. I don't really want to speculate about what kind of difference that makes. But I'll just say, on a larger level, I think we get spoiled by SpaceX just because they're so good at what they do. It's become so routine for them to launch rockets and then land the first stages on a ship at sea. That's become commonplace and it's really revolutionary. Still, I think that we just get. They've raised the bar so much.

08:30
I think that when other companies fail to meet that same level, it seems like a real failure and like, whereas you know it is, it's traditionally been really hard to develop like a new, like a brand new spacecraft, especially one that carries astronauts, and that's what Starliner is.

08:49
It's like it's a brand new spacecraft and when you put people on board you really do have to be extra careful about everything. And then I mean Boeing has gone through that in the public eye in the last few years and they are. I mean there is no way not to compare them to SpaceX, because they both got NASA contracts to do this. You know launch astronauts to the space station and back. So they are going to be compared with SpaceX and it is very stark that sort of difference with how fast SpaceX got up and running. You know, they're in the middle of their eighth operational astronaut mission for NASA, whereas Boeing is still trying to do its first crew test flight. So it is a big difference and it does make Boeing look kind of bad, but I think that may be more just because SpaceX has been so shockingly good than that Boeing has been so bad, I think.

09:30 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
We should also point out that there are fundamental differences between the approach that SpaceX took and what Boeing did take too, because SpaceX built an uncrewed cargo capsule yeah, true, cargo capsule, and they were able to crew rate the rocket for that which they also built.

09:50
So they control the whole launch system and they took that system and adapted it for crewed flight where, as Mike just mentioned, rod Boeing had to build the capsule from whole cloth without the experience of flying a version of it.

10:05
Uh, uh, you know, uncrewed, for you know however many years that they they did I think it was several years that they had been uh, designing and and and flying that one before they made the adaption. And that's how we got the crew dragon that we call now, or they used to call it dragon V2, uh before, uh, before they, they changed the name Uh, and so there is a bit of a more evolutionary approach that SpaceX was able to take because they had the cargo contract earlier and they were able to take everything that they learned in building that and put it into a new spacecraft with experience on both the vehicle itself, whereas Boeing did have to, you know, whole cloth, design that Starliner capsule and then ensure that the Atlas five was was created with the United Launch Alliance. Build those skirts, all those adapters and all of those systems. So they are very different development processes that can add a lot of extra challenges there.

10:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Which may be one reason why they got got almost twice as much money.

11:03 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Yeah.

11:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, design their capsule, which probably should have been.

11:06 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Well, Gwen Shotwell has said that if she knew how much Boeing was going to bid, she would have bid higher. So she's on the record for saying that for SpaceX.

11:14 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Too late now. All right, let's do a couple more stories before we have to go to our break. Speaking of SpaceX, we had Bits of the Dragon landing in North Carolina. We had some scales come down.

11:25 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
That's right. That's right. This is actually really exciting because my colleague, brett Tingley, lives in North Carolina and was able to actually drive the half an hour to go to go see it, so he got this. I mean, it's about like the size of, of, like a small kind of coffee table. This big piece of debris of, like a a small kind of coffee table. This big piece of of debris, uh and uh, as as brett put it, it smells a lot like uh ozone. It was discovered in canton, uh, north carolina, on the 22nd and apparently it just fell on like a hiking walking path, like just right out of the blue, like literally in the middle of the path right exactly so.

12:03
Thankfully that there was no one walking around, uh, during that, but it appears to be part of the, the trunk, basically the disposable part of a dragon spacecraft. Um, and they, uh, they suspect that it might have come from the crew seven uh mission, the, the previous crewed mission to the one that's on space station right now. And, uh, and it's just really, really wild that this, I mean it looks like just like a big chunk of like twisted, blackened uh metal. There's like these weird spacey circular discs all over it that give it a sci-fi feel and it's like that. It's at that TV show, dead like me, where the main character gets killed by the toilet from the mirror space station as it's reentering the Earth's atmosphere. It feels a lot like that because it just fell out and he was marveling that there's no crater, there's no nothing. It was just lying in the path there as if someone placed it there, but it did fall from the sky.

12:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But they don't have a lot of mass either. Right, I mean that's uh. I think that's all composite for the look.

13:03 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Yeah it's, it's composite material. Uh also like it cools off as it falls down, so it's not hot, it's not going to burn anything, um, and still you don't want to touch it. It has a lot of sharp, sharp edges.

13:14 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Uh to it because it did break apart on the way down I I would not be able to stop myself from touching. I know right, I probably wouldn't lick it, but I'd have to touch it. You got to bring your own? I'm not even sure about that.

13:27 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
You got to bring your own gloves in order to touch it. It's just, it looks really really clear, but it's on this trail. It's called the Glamping Collective. It's a 160 acre luxury camping property that lends itself to people to go on these panoramic mountaintop uh uh trips and whatnot, and it's about three feet by three feet, if that helps like envision how large it is. So you know, not not giant, but also it's not very. It's not like a small, you know piece of metal or anything like that Uh and uh and it. It's interesting because it comes as the FCC is putting out recommendations to avoid space debris explosions in orbit so that this stuff doesn't endanger other craft, fcc or FAA.

14:14
FAA pardon me for other vehicles in orbit or for coming back down to bring us over. And there was other space debris, another piece of the trunk. I think that they found in Canada, if memory serves right.

14:28 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Yeah, yeah, and like there was one that came down in Australia a few years back too, I think, so it's not the first time.

14:35 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Well, it just proves that what goes up must come down eventually, right? So that's very deep.

14:47 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I'm going to do an unprecedented thing here. We're going to run to a break real quick and then we're going to be back with a couple more headlines before we get into our main topic, which is China on the moon, go nowhere. Let's talk about Venus, that poor, maligned trailer park of a planet we have. Oh yeah, it's a sad place, but for a while now, the only active probe out there has been jack's venus probe called atkasuki, atkatsuki, atkatsuki. Probably, um and uh, they've lost contact with it, which is sad. But we have some other players coming into the game, which I'll elaborate as soon as, tarek, you've had your way with Akatsuki.

15:26 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Yeah well, akatsuki I mean it's kind of like Japan's Venus mission that could. It's a $300 million mission that launched in 2010. And unfortunately, when it was initially supposed to arrive around Venus, it had a main engine failure and it missed the planet like completely, and so they weren't able to do it. And yet still, jaxa, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, was able to basically swing around again in 2015 after five years of orbiting the sun and then save the mission. You know they were able to get a workaround in that time to enter orbit, and since then, akatsuki has been studying the atmosphere of Venus. It's a crazy kind of hellish planet, helping us understand how its climate evolved hopefully, how our climate won't mimic that and get super hot like it is there, as well as just help us understand a lot more about the composition of the atmosphere, how fast it is the winds are so strong and it's so hot on that. On that, on that planet also, akatsuki took this really interesting solar sail uh out into deep space too and deployed it akaros, uh, and that was a big success too when that happened, uh.

16:41
But unfortunately, uh, when after venus express, uh, the european mission ended, uh several years ago, you know that left, uh, akatsuka, all by itself, uh, at venus, which, as you said, is kind of like the, the maligned planet it's, it's the. You know, we keep going to mars, which is the next planet out, but we don't go in to our next neighbor on the way, uh uh towards, and so it's just kind of on its own there. And sadly, after 14 years in space, jaxa has lost contact. So they're working to try to understand what's going on with it. Did it suffer some kind of radiation event, some other kind of equipment malfunction, et cetera? And then hopefully they'll be able to to resurrect it. Now we haven't heard much since we we confirmed that they lost our contact, but the hope is that they'll be able to figure something out. If they can rescue Voyager one Rod, hopefully these, these egghead scientists will be able to to do something for for Venus as well.

17:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I'm not surprised. You're a Venus apologist and I just want to say, when the time comes that we could travel these places, I'm going to Mars, I'm sending you to Venus and think how thin you'll be when you get down to the surface. That's right.

17:55 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
So, mike, I'll have to bring my mask, my filter mask.

17:58 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Want to throw this to you for a second. So we've got NASA heading back with Veritas, I think it is ESA going back, and even private space industry with Rocket Lab, maybe sending their little tiny plunger there which would I mean plunger, not dilatorial plunger, I mean like atmospheric sampler to, I guess, seek organic molecules on the way down towards the surface, although I don't think it will still be functioning when it gets there. You want to tell us a little bit about that yeah, we'll see.

18:28 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Yeah, I mean we're saying that that like, historically, venus has been pretty maligned. You know it's super hot, that there's um, like really high atmospheric pressure on the surface. It's just it's kind of a hellscape now but it was probably very different like a long time ago. You know there's a lot of evidence that there that there was a big ocean on venus and that it was much more earth-like in the distant past and I mean here on earth, you know, life got going really fast. So if, if, like venus like was pretty balmy and like pretty temperate for a few hundred million years, a billion years, maybe even longer, some scientists think there's a real chance that it actually could have hosted life and it it's probably not possible for any of that life, if it ever existed, to still survive on the surface. But up higher in the atmosphere, about 30 miles up or so, it's pretty temperate, it's not that hot, there's still clouds made of sulfuric acid, but there are a lot of tough microbes that could theoretically survive that and there have been a few intriguing hints that there might be something living in the skies. You know, I mean there was.

19:26
There was big news a couple years ago. Scientists reported that they discovered this intriguing chemical called phosphine. It's still, it's been disputed, you know. People think it might be an artifact or it's still. There's still a lot of back and forth about what it is and, if it's actually there, what it could mean.

19:42
But it sort of reignited this whole debate about well you know, why are we ignoring Venus? It could have been in a boat for life long ago and might still even be. So that's sort of what has why we're talking more about Venus these days and why that kind of private life hunting mission that, like you just mentioned, rocket Lab wants to launch in the next year or so has gotten a lot of support from the scientific community, from the scientific community. You know there are some there's some big time planetary scientists working on that mission. Sarah Seeger, who's who's like a pretty big name in in in sort of planetary science, exoplanet biology, that sort of thing. She's associated with that mission. So it's it's like a big deal, like a lot of scientists are taking that seriously. So yeah, venus is trying to kind of elbow its way back into the picture in the next few years or so and we'll see.

20:24 - Rod Pyle (Host)
As you can see, I've landed my spacecraft on Venus. The poor astronauts over here are trying to get back in For our listeners.

20:35 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Rod has these lovely windows behind him that he can change the appearance, and now we've gone from a serene space scene to a hellish fiery scene all right, okay, nice I would, I would. I would just point out, by the way, that akatsuki means dawn in japanese, and so the hope will be that dawn will rise again a new dawn, a new sunrise on venus, when we can all be incinerated.

21:02
And I'll point out that the mission entered an extended phase in 2018, which means that they did complete their primary mission goals. So what they're getting. Hopefully it will be extra gravy at Venus, yeah.

21:14 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You know, I don't know what your guys' schedule is, but I think we should go two hours today. We have so many things to talk about. Just kidding, just kidding, all right. The Aurora, about just kidding, just kidding, um, all right, uh, the aurora may be back, that's right. Like within days?

21:30 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
tell me everything because I want to see it this time. Yeah, yeah, well, so there was this giant sunspot uh, it was. It used to be called ar 13664, but after it, you know it was such style I know, right it.

21:43
It rotated away from the earth-facing of the sun and it takes about two weeks to cross the other side of the sun. And now it's come back again. It's survived. It's about it was. It was 17 times the size of our planet. Now it has a new name. It's called AR 13 697, because it's survived. So now we're seeing it and we give it a new name survive.

22:06
So now we're seeing it and we give it a new name, and the hope is that we will see the same intense activity. We've already seen some powerful X flares coming from this sunspot group and it's not facing the earth yet. So that's what we're waiting for to get kind of like the mid, the mid section of the sun, where any kind of solar storms and eruptions will pop off. Some of the storms that it's fired off recently have triggered radio blackouts on Earth, but not the geomagnetic storm levels that we saw during that frenetic early May time period. So you know, we've got a few more days before it really gets into center view and then we'll see how those eruptions affect our planet. Now hopefully it's just the more benign, like really powerful supercharged Aurora types, and not the really really bad fry all of our satellites and endanger astronauts in space type. So we're going to have to wait and see how that works.

23:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So not a character event, probably no. No, we don't want that, but it is exciting to see that you know all the telephone wires burst into flames.

23:08 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
And this was classed as a Carrington level sunspot. Like it is, it has the potential to unleash that type of thing, or at least it did the last time it was here. So we'll see if it still have that, if it still has that same strength coming up. But I also miss it. It rained in New Jersey the entire weekend of that thing and I'm really hoping for a repeat performance.

23:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and it was cloudy here the first night, so the second night I went racing out to the desert. You got to drive two and a half hours out of LA to get away from its lights Any direction you go. At that point you start picking up lights for the next big city in this case it was barstow, which isn't a big city but they have lights. That's kind of all barstow has except the mcdonald's on the way to las vegas and stood there for hours in the dark seeing nothing but, uh, hearing the a who's over on the next hill fire off their guns at the sky because it's california, you know. Um, so didn't see anything. But hopefully this time I may head up to Seattle. We'll see. So I just want to give a wrap-up on the International Space Development Conference which I attended for seven days. It ran for four, but I was there before and a little bit after for a board meeting Last week in Los Angeles at the Sheraton Gateway Hotel and, much to our surprise, we knew William Shatner was going to come pick up an award, but in our negotiations with him he had said look, I'm just going to drop by and get it and go.

24:32
Okay, I got stuff to do. He ended up talking for a half an hour and it was kind of he was riffing a bit, but he talked a lot about his Blue Origin flight and what space was like and his emotions and so forth. His Blue Origin flight and what space was like and his emotions and so forth, it was a real treat. We had Jose Hernandez there, thanks to this very podcast, stockton's own astronaut. Credit to you, credit to you for the hometown boy, yeah, and he was fantastic. We had Susan Kilrain, we had Daniel Suarez, the science fiction author, we had Alan Stern of New Horizons Mission and, of course, we had me. Had me, for better worse, doing eight presentations of four days and because I got so tired of being outclassed by mr malik, here's my space pioneer award with mars. You see, you can see valis marineris there and everything. Wow, rod.

25:23
And I got another one but I it's still packed, so I haven't gotten it out yet. Wait, you received two awards. Yeah, well, the the space pioneer awards for me. The other one is from the space tourism society, and I think it was. It was presented to me for the nss, so I well, we need some cheers, john.

25:43 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Can we get some cheers for? For rod pile, the space pioneer, because that's amazing.

25:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Congratulations, rod you know, thank you. Well, it's not an emmy, but it'll it'll do. No, I was. I was very gratified great kids.

25:56
No, no, I wasn't making a joke, okay, and I wanted to point out tarik, credit to both of us. I I had three or four people come up and say I don't know anything about this conference. These people are kind of odd. But I heard you guys, the podcast, and you were so cool we had to come. So shout out to Don and Abigail Sparger uh, abigail is don's daughter. So don wrote me and and I said oh, please come, I'd love to meet your daughter. So abigail was not particularly interested in space, as I gather, started listening to the podcast and she's college age. She changed her major to a space-related field because of us. Oh, that's great. Now we're responsible to find her a seven-figure job when she graduates. Abigail, sensational, more power to you.

26:50 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
And then can you find one for me too, then?

26:54 - Rod Pyle (Host)
do you remember, uh, the hawking radiation joke? They set up a swap me by jupiter.

26:59 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
They're hawking radiation no, no, I don't think I.

27:03 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, that was one of my favorites. That came from Matthew McCormick, who was there. He's an MD urologist up in Reno with his lovely wife, came to say hello and we shared some more bad space jokes. So he's got a lot of plans for us and he's a loyal listener and delightful couple. I'll be on bated breath and way too good looking both of them to be at our space conference, but you know you take what you can get and of course I would be remiss if I did not relate that we had Melissa Navia, who's Lieutenant Ortegas on Star Trek Strange New Worlds there to host. Who was.

27:38
She's awesome isn't she Well, she is. You know, I've met a lot of Hollywood people over the years and I met a number of the Star Trek cast members and they're fun. Most of them are really great people. She was just a delight. She would stop and take pictures with anybody. She was talking to the artists, she was talking to the kids, she introduced everything we did, so it was just really really cool having her there.

28:03 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
And man hats off she was. She must really like space, because last year she was at the humans to mars conference too, uh, as well. So that's really exciting to see what she said was she's, she's very interested in it.

28:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
She hadn't had much exposure before the show, but now that she's uh, she's heard a little bit more about it. You know, uh simulates it on the bridge while they're shooting the show as meeting people that are into it. Now, in a lot of cases, when people meet space people, they start backing slowly away from you, right, because we're fanatics.

28:34 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
In her case, I thought that was the standard response I thought that was a sign of affection.

28:38 - Rod Pyle (Host)
No, no, exactly. Well, that explains a lot about both of us, honey. Why are you backing away? All right?

28:45 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Well, real quick, real quick. Star Trek segue, real quick. I just wanted to point out to everyone that the week that we're recording this episode was the finale of Star Trek Discovery on Paramount Plus, and I don't know how I missed it, but they swapped out their, they swapped out their, their helmsman during the series and their new one was Lieutenant Jemisin, as in May, jemisin, the NASA astronaut who was also on Star Trek Next Generation. It's all connected, rod.

29:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's all a conspiracy.

29:17 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Mike, are you a?

29:18 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Star Trek fan.

29:19 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Yeah, but I haven't kept up with the explosion of new shows. It's just a little intimidating. It's sort of like the Star Wars universe has just sort of gotten out of control. Yeah.

29:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well and you wonder?

29:33 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
I remember the first. Mike is like looking at us going nerds.

29:39 - Mike Wall (Guest)
I'm a nerd too, but I'm also a lazy nerd. I can't keep up.

29:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
He's a rational nerd. Well, the first times I went to Paramount, the person walking me in there said all right, this side of Paramount was built by Cheers and this side of Paramount was built by Star Trek, and I thought they were kidding. But when you look at the revenue from those two franchises and when they win a decision, it's jaw dropping. So Michael Doran showed up the conference as well. He's a war, that's right. Yeah, and I first met him, not on the set but years ago at a at air show where he flew in in his privately owned saber jet. Wow, you know it was a fighter aircraft from the fifties, they're expensive. But you know, aircraft from the 50s, they're expensive, but you know that's the kind of money you make once you're on one of these shows. That goes into syndication. It's just as cash the mailbox every week. So, tarik, well, all three of us, could we have gone into a more wrong career path to get wealthy than what we did? Although, mike, you tell me I hear tarik does pretty well well.

30:41 - Mike Wall (Guest)
no, I mean, you're on a spacecraft right now. Rod, You're doing pretty well for yourself. You're going high speed. I can see the windows.

30:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I'm a little cramped condo with a couple of green screen circles behind me, but I appreciate the fantasy, because my life is a fantasy. Okay, let's take another break and we will come back, and we will talk about China in space. Stand. Come back and we will talk about China in space. Stand by Tarek. Yes, rod, you're a space enthusiast of the purest stripe. So, without any undue nationalism, tell us what's going on with China and Chang'e 6.

31:17 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Well, this is great. I mean, I think that Mike, who's been leading the coverage for spacecom, can weigh in a little bit more, but just to set the stage we are on, well, a few years ago, china made history. When was it? In 2018? Is that? When they did it? They landed the Chang'e 4 moon lander and rover on the far side of the moon and that was like the first time we'd ever done that. Anyone, all humanity, has ever done it. So it was a big first for China. So now they're going to send their latest probe, the Chang'e 6 mission, also to the far side of the moon, but also to, like, the southern kind of polar area of the moon, and they're going to bring back samples. So it's these really ambitious lunar sample return mission to the moon's far side, and we think and I think Mike's going to correct this we think it's happening this weekend, right, mike? Is that it in a nutshell?

32:19 - Mike Wall (Guest)
That's what people think. You know, it's hard to tell a lot of times. I mean, china is not the most open about their spaceflight, their, their spaceflight plans, which is sort of in keeping with like a lot of of their announcements and so on. You know, nasa would have told us exactly what time landing is and there would be a live stream for it and all that stuff. But china you just they they tend to give us very little notice and so we kind of have to rely on kind of outside sources. And I mean, it seems like that's it's targeted for Saturday evening, um, and we'll see if that happens. Like, yeah, they're kind of know around 8, 8 PM, eastern time maybe, is what people think.

32:56 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
And that'll be.

32:57 - Mike Wall (Guest)
that'll actually be Sunday morning, uh Beijing time, uh yeah, uh, beijing time, uh, yeah, or, or yeah, or even like the afternoon or something. But, um, and so, yeah, it and, and kind of like you'd mentioned TARC, it's, it's like, uh, it's the next step for their moon, for, yeah, for their robotic moon program, they they've, like they've already landed on the far side of the moon. They did that in very early 2019. So, um, and then they've, they've, they've done a sample return mission from the near side of the moon. They did that in late 2020. And so this is like a combination of those two. They're going to do a sample return mission from the far side of the moon, which we haven't done before. Nobody's done that before, because nobody had had you had even landed on the far side of the moon until they did it in 2019. Forward in spaceflight, if they can pull it off and I certainly wouldn't doubt them They've pulled off a lot of impressive kind of spaceflight feats recently, and this is just the next, yeah, the next, escalation of that, and it's it's pretty interesting scientifically. You know, this is, I mean, I'm I'm sure part of the reason they're doing this is because it's never been done. So it's a it's a prestige thing for China, which is pretty important for them.

34:03
But also, you know, there are big differences between the near side and the far side of the moon which scientists don't really understand. There are a lot of those big kind of dark, dark seas on the moon. We call them, yeah, we call them seas, yeah. So there are a lot of those in the near side. We're sort of used to seeing them.

34:19
Those are old, yeah, I mean super old, kind of like volcanic flows that have hardened over time. There aren't, nearly there are very few of those on the far side, and scientists don't really understand why. It's the same body, why are there such big differences between how it looks in the near and how it looks in the far side? So I mean, getting some samples back from the far side and you can kind of look at them up close could theoretically help explain what went on geologically in the far side of the moon and why it's so different from the near side. I mean, and it'd just be cool to to like be able to look at something from a place that we, we really don't understand very well.

34:50 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I like, I like that he keeps calling it Rod the far side and not the dark side the dark side I can't stand it when you hear that, and even experienced people say that sometimes this guy, that's right ding dong. So I'll just add uh, we'll come back to to changi six, but I'll just add we have changi seven scheduled for 2026, which will also go to the south pole region, which has, I believe, an orbiter, a rover and a flyer which will be able to hop from place to place on the lunar surface, which is pretty cool. And then probably for 2028, changi eight, which will be an ISRU in situ resource utilization experiment. That will do attempt to do 3d printing with lunar regolith, which is challenging because you've got to, you've got to grab the dirt, you've got to sift it, sort it into the right size particle and then extrude it with some kind of binder. There's a number of ways to do it. You can also do sintering. If you're looking at metal, but since they're going to just probably be looking at, I assume, powdered basalt, wherever they land, they'll need some kind of binder.

36:00
But it's hard. You know, this is just a small demonstration. I mean, we're years away from seeing this on a big scale, but this is aggressive. I mean, that's the year we're supposed to be. That's past the time we're supposed to be landing astronauts with artemis and my prediction yes, rod, but you for that chair, not much, not much of a stretch. Is that china that you know? They say 20, early 2030 to early 2030s for human landing. It's going to be 2029 because that's the 80th anniversary of the communist party's uh conquest of china, when they um managed to miss to displace the uh government out to taiwan.

36:41
So you it's hard to imagine that anything short of certain death for the crew I don't think is going to stop them from trying to make that deadline.

36:50 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
We should recap just briefly. You talked about the next missions to come, but so the Chang'e 1 mission launched in 2007. That was the first orbiter that China launched to study the moon. Then they launched Chang'e 2 in 2010. And that was another orbiter that was very successful at imaging the moon, and I think they sent that to a Lagrange point. Is that right After it was over with Mike? So they have like.

37:18 - Mike Wall (Guest)
I believe they did. I'll have to look it up. That sounds right.

37:21 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
And then for Chang'e 3, they put the lander and then the Yutu rover on the Earth-facing side of the moon and did all their exploration. That was great. And then Chang'e 4 was the far side lander, correct, with a rover. And because it's on the far side, they also built relay satellites, the Kwee Kwee satellites, to be able to beam the signals back right.

37:51
And then they followed that up with the Chang'e 5 TI or ET, anyway, it was like a TI. Yeah, they launched a capsule around the moon and brought it back to prove that they could do sample return. Then they launched the Chang'e 5 sample return mission, which had the orbiter and the return vehicle and the lander and all of that fun stuff. And then now here we are, and that was in 2020. And then now here we are in 2024 with this Chang'e 6 mission. So like five, six years apart, between four and six years apart, each of these missions, you know, plop, plop, plop all the way up to here and then a bit more of a packed schedule going to Chang'e 7, chang'e 8, you know, every two years now going forward. So it's been a bit of a locomotive of building up to this point.

38:42 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Well, I'd wish to mention what it's building toward. If everything goes well for China, they've got this big plan to do a moon base near the South Pole called the ILRS, the International Lunar Research Station. They're partnering with Russia on that, theoretically, and a few other nations who have signed up for it. It's like kind of their version of the Artemis program and it doesn't have anything to do with Artemis. There's not going to be any cooperation between the two, but it's sort of like the new space race to the moon and they're basically hoping to set up like a crewed outpost kind of near the moon South Pole in the mid 2030s or kind of late 2030s, outposts near the Moon South Pole in the mid-2030s or late-2030s. So all of this stuff that they're doing with uncrewed Chang'e missions are to gain all the knowledge that they need and all the skills that they need to build up toward that, and NASA is obviously doing something similar.

39:37
Artemis aims to get a crewed moon outpost or more near the Moon South Pole kind of up and running by the late-2020s, early 2030s. We'll see if that happens. But yeah, so I mean China has like similar ambitions and and just like you said, rod, I'm sure they would want to beat NASA to the moon with, you know, with astronauts, if at all possible. So they, like might downplay that, but I'm sure that's a that's that's really important to them but I'm sure that's really important to them.

40:04 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
And of course, dear listeners, when we say crude outposts we don't mean like shanties on the moon. Crude with astronauts.

40:08 - Rod Pyle (Host)
C-R-E-W-E-D. It's not Venus, okay. So you know it's interesting you mention that because I mean, nationalism is such a part of this and on the one hand, they say, no, no, this is all meant in the spirit of peace, goodwill and Bobby Sherman and all that kind of stuff. But at the same time, if you read their white papers over the years, it's really clear, and they're not shy about it this is for a great national program, for goals. We're going to be world-beating all that kind of stuff. They just have been a little quieter about it recently, beating all that kind of stuff. They just have been a little quieter about it recently. It is worth noting, by the way, a couple of things. Then we've got one more break, that Artemis. I think just was that the 41st or 42nd when Peru signed a member.

40:55 - Mike Wall (Guest)
You guys remember oh, it's somewhere in there. 40, 40 plus yeah.

41:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, and I think it's 41 or 42. And I think the ILRS, which is also invited international signatories, is at eight.

41:14 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Now, what does that really?

41:15 - Rod Pyle (Host)
mean, and so Belarus are signed on to the ILRS, whereas you know Belarus shocking, yeah, come here, vassal puppy. But you know what these signatories really mean. I mean, I think china could get legitimate cooperation out of russia, because obviously russia's very experienced, seasoned space power. Um, you know, in our agreement with some of the smaller countries, you know what latvia or peru will contribute we don't really know those countries, don't really know at least the few I've talked to. So I think that's something we'll have to figure out. You know, is this just a gesture of goodwill from, you know, potentially non-aligned partners, or is it something more meaningful, and will they eventually travel to the moon? I did also want to mention China's done something very clever, I think you know they're a very old civilization. They have really wrapped this program. Very old civilization, they have really wrapped this program.

42:03
You know we name our spacecraft after, after Greek, greek gods and goddesses for representation, and some Americans may actually know what that means. A lot probably don't in China, though. They're really seeped in this whole national mythos and and so forth. So Changi is the goddess of the moon and wife of Hu Yi the great archer. She is renowned for her beauty and known for ascending to the moon with her pet rabbit, yutu, the moon rabbit, and living in the moon palace. She is one of the major goddesses in Chinese mythology, blah blah blah blah blah and their newer, their crude vehicle for sending people to their space station and the moon and their lander also have have uh sort of for names.

42:54
The space capsule, which looks a lot like the dragon one, is named menjiao, vessel of dreams, which I like that, yeah, you can lie in it and take a nap. And their lunar lander, which looks a bit like a cross between the lunar module and the former soviet unsuccessful lander, is called lan yue, which means embracing the moon. That even has a little rover. So, um, we got more to say about this, and we will do so just right after this ad break. Stay with us. So, mike, from your viewpoint as a, as an observer of all this, do you have anything to add about the significance of changi six and what they're doing? I mean, they're landing on a crater called apollo.

43:35 - Mike Wall (Guest)
For god's sakes yeah I would just say, yeah, I mean there's a real nationalist kind kind of part of this moon landing, that we're about to see China. But I mean we also have to mention that there's been a lot of patriotic, nationalist rhetoric coming out of the US about the Artemis program. You know why. What do you mean? So we yeah we as a nation are doing sort of the same thing. We've invested a lot of national pride in the whole Artemis program and I mean multiple NASA officials and kind of DOD officials in the US have mentioned, you know, it's really important that we beat China to the moon and there's a new space race and all this stuff. So I just think it's important to kind of state that all the nationalist stuff is not just coming from the Chinese side. There's a lot of it coming from the American side too.

44:25
And if you talk to a lot of NASA people, dod people here, they will say you know, this really does matter. Who puts boots on the moon kind of next. We obviously did it 50 years ago with the Apollo program. But what really matters now is who gets to set the sort of standards of good behavior on the moon with with an extensive human presence there, because it's kind of like a wild west. Whoever gets there first gets to sort of set the like norms of behavior, and it's important that that's the United States rather than an adversary nation. So those are the sorts of things that like people say to kind of back up or why it's so important or why there's all this nationalist rhetoric coming out. But yeah, I mean both, like both sides of this new space race are kind of coming at it from a similar angle, with the patriotism stuff.

45:11 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Yeah.

45:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, a fading boomer. I, you know kind of the last of the boomers, I guess due to my my birthday. You know I grew up during the space race, so I'm certainly as much of a nationalist as anybody on that side of things. But by the same token and I hear what you're saying and I've talked to the same people and read what they say you know they are signatory to the Outer Space Treaty China is which says you can't own that property.

45:36
There's a question as to how much of a claim can you stake to resources and so forth, how much of a claim can you take to resources and so forth? But unless they're really going to go rogue, it seems like the most likely thing is they're going to claim an exclusion zone wherever they are, and I guess the question is how big that is. You know, if I have an oil derrick out in the North Sea or an oil platform, I want to have an exclusion zone. You know requesting that foreign actors don't come too close and name their bazookas or their machetes at me, but it's a little different than saying, ok, they can base in the czars you know, stay out.

46:14 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Well, and that's a point that Bill Nelson, the NASA administrator, actually made as recently as last week during an appropriations subcommittee hearing on Capitol Hill where he was speaking, he actually said and I quote because I wrote this down at the time he said we are in a space race If we let China get their first mindful of what China has done on terra firma, mainly going through the South China Sea he was talking about the Spratly Islands saying this is all ours, stay out. Nelson says I'm concerned. You can tell where a fellow's going by, where he's been. So they're worried about that because both of these initiatives are targeting kind of the same area, largely because that's where all the ice and water resources are that they want to use for all of these other things, or where they think they can get it easily. And so you know there's no police, there's no UN on the moon right now that can swoop in.

47:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I have a solution for that. So there's that little island. I think it's a Spratly, so I think it's another one. It's basically a sandbar near the Philippines that the Philippines, that the Philippines claims and China claims. So the Philippines that have very kind of smart, took this old derelict freighter they were using and towed it and rammed it onto the sandbar and then put four commandos on it and they rotate these guys off every few months.

47:34
But you know, this thing's a rusting Hulk. I mean, if you're walking across the hull plates, first of all it's slanted and tilted so you've got to watch it. And there's actually holes rusted in the main deck. But these guys basically camp there. They take sleeping bags and side arms and some fritos and mountain dew and monster, and they hang out there for a week and every now and then, you know the the chinese will drive by and one of their destroyers or frigates, and all their sailors line up on the edge and you know, growl and gnash their teeth and put their claws out. The Filipinos kind of wave back hey, how's it going? Stay off our island. So maybe we need to do that on the moon, tarek, you and you and me and Mike, we'll get ourselves a dragon capsule and we'll crash down the South Pole Lake and Basin and we'll just camp out until Artemis comes to save us, but in the meantime we'll growl at the Chinese when they land. Do I not come up with the best ideas? Yeah.

48:27 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Yeah, I'd just like to know what your plan is when they come in, when they come and push you over. You know?

48:34 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I'm hard to push over. Okay, just saying uh, mike, you're being uh suspiciously quiet to this whole thing.

48:41 - Mike Wall (Guest)
No, I'm, I'm.

48:43 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
I don't think Mike wants to go to the moon to keep everybody off.

48:47 - Mike Wall (Guest)
No, I'm going to wait for Starship maybe to have, like I don't know, a thousand flights under its belt before I would ride it to the moon. Yeah, we'll see how it goes.

48:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Really A thousand. You'd wait that long, we should.

49:02 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
I think it takes that many to refuel the Starship right.

49:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh Ow SpaceX that was Tarek Malik over in the other window.

49:18 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
So I wanted to ask real quick, mike, because we were talking a lot about what space races and whatnot. We haven't talked a lot about the science for China 6. And this is a little bit different, it seems like from reading some of the stories that you've been commissioning and getting up on space, than some of the past ones that we've seen, where it was wholly overseen by China's space program. This one seems to have at least some contributions right on it. Can you talk about a few of those at all?

49:50 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Well, yeah, I mean, there is like European Space Agency, I believe, does have like an instrument, or, if it's not an instrument, it's like a collaboration involved with some of the science going on, and there'll be, yeah, there are a number of science instruments I think there might be four on on it and did all um, it's. It's like not China only. Uh, they, they have been like a little more collaborative with the science projects on this mission and so, yeah, that'll that, like that'll be interesting. We're. There's still no substantive kind of us China collaboration.

50:20
In lots of ways, that's still like expressly forbidden by a 2011 amendment.

50:28
You would have to get express written permission from Congress before you work substantially with China on a space project, basically if you're on the US side. So that's why China, for instance, is not a member of the International Space Station Coalition and so on, and why you won't see Chinese astronauts going there anytime soon. Probably they've got their own space station now anyway, so they're probably not clamoring to do that. But, yeah, it's sort of interesting that there is more international collaboration on this mission and as China becomes a bigger and bigger player in spaceflight as it is, as we see it becoming right before our eyes and, like you were saying, rod, they do have big ambitions. They have scarcely kind of disguised their ambitions to be the number one space power in the world and they're definitely closing that gap that exists between us and China. We're probably going to see more folks want to work with them as they launch more and more things, and it'll be interesting to see how space partnerships evolve over the next few years.

51:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, since you brought it up, so their partners on Changi six are France, italy, sweden and Sweden are giving them a Lander, science packages and Pakistan, interestingly, is contributing an optical imaging cube set.

51:41 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Yeah, it took pictures. It took pictures of the moon and the sun. Yeah, it's pretty cool, and according to Leonard David too.

51:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh sorry, go ahead. Well, we need to take one more break.

51:51 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Oh, sure, sure. I got one more thing then after the break.

51:54 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, leonard's old, he can wait one more minute. All right, stand by, we'll be right back and I'm almost as old as Leonard, so I can't. And it all depends on how it shows on you.

52:14 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
So Leonard Leonard actually wrote a story for space dot com about this mission, about how they're getting ready to do it, and he actually spoke to James Head, who is the head of the Department of Earth Environment and Planetary Science at Brown University the Department of Earth Environment and Planetary Science at Brown University and he's also working with lunar exploration planners with the China National Space Agency on this mission and others. So there is James Head.

52:36 - Mike Wall (Guest)
This astronomer there.

52:39 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
So there are researchers in the US that are also kind of participating in one form or another. It may not be like a straight up NASA cooperation.

52:53 - Mike Wall (Guest)
I just need to clarify, Tarek. It's for NASA to sort of collaborate or like US government entity can't collaborate with the Chinese National Space Agency in any big way unless they get express written consent from Congress.

53:06 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
And one kind of you know that kind of dire picture that Bill Nelson painted about one country going to one part of the moon and saying this is all mine and no one else gets it. We actually saw that get dispelled a little bit with the Chang'e 5 samples that China collected, because they are now sharing those and making them available. It's been several years since after their mission, scientists have had their experiments done, but they're coming up with a plan to share those samples as well up with a plan to share those samples as well, so there is some access being granted on an international stage to share the data for these missions. That has some promise for what that might mean for the future and potential future collaborations across all of the partner nations for all of these projects themselves.

53:56 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I wonder. So there was this country that went to the moon 50 years ago and landed six times and planted flags six times, and they're probably bleached white by this point, but they're still there. Could this country, should it deem it necessary for national security issues, retroactively say by the way, we changed our mind and we didn't go for all mankind, we went for us, and that's our exclusion zone, and it runs from the South pole to the North pole? I realize I'm being a bit fanciful here, but um, wait, which country are you referring to?

54:30 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Right Well?

54:34 - Rod Pyle (Host)
and at this point I mean the Soviet union has been there as, as you know, before they were the Russian federation. So I guess what I'm saying is in theory, I would guess anybody who's actually been there and landed an object could make some rational claim of territory. If they were concerned, the Chinese were going to do so, unless there's some legal argument that says no, no, you have to be in the process of utilizing something or creating something new to do that, which I don't think is the case. Do you guys have any thoughts about that?

55:07 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Well, Mike, isn't that the treaty for the peaceful use of outer space says we can't claim parts of the moon?

55:12 - Rod Pyle (Host)
We can't just say well, it says that, but that doesn't mean it'll stop anybody. Well, that's that's.

55:17 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
that's the thing there's. Like I was saying, there's no UN force on the moon, there's no.

55:21 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Yeah, there is no enforcement mechanism in place, I guess, for these treaties. So if somebody wanted to flout those treaties, then that's the big question what would happen? What would the consequences be? And I don't think anybody knows.

55:35 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, I do know, as I may have said once or twice on this show, that in 1964, the Rock Island, was it Rock island armory, that big military? No, the arsenal, whichever the, the big uh firearms weapons arsenal is out in in your end of the of the uh country tarik, I can't remember what it is. Do you remember what I'm talking?

55:57 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
about it's the raa? I do not know.

55:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
No, it's the rock island arsenal. Anyway, it's a weapons facility active since gosh, I think before 1900. Issued a report called the Meanderings of a Weapons-Oriented Mind in a Vacuum, and I think he meant the weapons in a vacuum, not the mind in the vacuum, but it's 20 pages or something. But it looks at about 12 different designs for handheld space weapons. So we already know.

56:27 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
How did we get to space weapons from Lunar Sample Return?

56:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Because we watched For All Mankind, right. So you know they were using M16s. Big problem you know lubrication unless you have figured out something better could dry out in a vacuum, especially at those temperatures. And then you know the metal like welds itself and your weapon blows up. So these were mostly air rifles and air pistols or spring-powered. So they were either gas-powered or spring-powered or rocket-powered, so they actually had a handheld rocket gun, the idea being that you know you don't need a lot of firepower because you don't need to kill the bad guy, you just need to puncture his space suit and watch him lie there and flop around and that'll cause two of his friends to come out and get him, and then you've tied up three people. It was very dark thinking back in those days, but not nearly as dark as von Braun's Project horizon moon base, for which they develop lunar claymores and a lunar backpack carried nuclear bazooka with, I think, about a half a kiloton yield, yeah, which they tested. So we have footage of that somewhere we're making a lot of.

57:35 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
We're making a lot of leaps.

57:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Uh, I do I do, I do believe I do.

57:39 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
I'm the bad guy I, I do feel that we should at least give some credit where credit is due, because while we can hem and haw and NASA's chief, bill Nelson, can hand-ring and kind of rattle the sabers a bit about the supposed space race, I will point out one thing Dean Chang, the Chinese space program expert in the US, he was actually at the Humans to Mars conference earlier this month and he actually mentioned something that was very telling about are we in a space race or not? And you know he pointed out that in the white papers that outlined not just the sample return mission that we're talking about with Chang'e 6, just the sample return mission that we're talking about with Chang'e 6, but also all of the missions that preceded it and the plans that China has for future lunar exploration, that they've all been listed out with very achievable dates, that they're largely on track meeting, whereas at least in the US, you know, the targets were we're going to land people back on the moon by 2020. Then we missed that from, you know, under the Constellation program. Then it's 2024. Hey, it's 2024, right, now, right, and we're not going to make it. And now it's 2026. And those delays keep getting pushed and there's no repercussions, right, spacex hasn't lost a contract because they don't have a lander yet. And the same is true for, you know, we don't have a fleet of SLS rockets waiting to go there, but no one's getting you know, punished or whatever for that.

59:15
And he used that as an example to say if that feels like an actual race that we're actually trying to run, then it's a very different definition of race that people might have. You know about being in. We're not acting like we're actually in a race at all, but there is a lot of science that this Chang'e 6 mission is going to be able to do new stuff. Like Mike, you were talking about these kind of really weird pristine kind of rocks from a very different environment, and I think that's going to be really exciting. And I mean, mike, I assume you haven't heard either. You know we don't know if they're going to broadcast the landing live, like they might have in the past. They usually make those announcements very late in the game. Yeah, that could be a sign of opening up. You know their program a little bit more, if they're going to give public access to that kind of thing.

01:00:04 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Yeah, I'm like I'm not sure if, like, I haven't checked recently. I mean maybe they already have posted something, but I'm not sure. Yeah, and it's possible they will. But even I mean, like I think it's important just to stress that, like all the hand-wringing aside and everything that we're talking about, with like all the rhetoric about the space race, I mean I think it's important just to take a step back and acknowledge the accomplishments of these moon missions.

01:00:28
China has really done some amazing things with the Chang'e program and so far it's all been for science. There hasn't been anything nefarious about any of this stuff, you know. So I think it's important, just from, if you're a space enthusiast and you care about planetary science and so on, you know China has done some amazing things in the past 15 years that they grew a plant on the moon and then to Mars, you know. I mean like a lot of it. A lot of exciting things are actually happening in that regard, and they aren't all from the US side. So that's an interesting development and we will see where it goes.

01:01:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, you know, people working on space programs domestically could be a lot more motivated if they knew, upon failure, that a black van would pull up to their home and do organ harvesting or something Just yeah, just rumors just rumors but you know that was also mentioned during the panel on China's moon exploration, was it?

01:01:34 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Well you know that that the the price of failure is substantially higher. It can be.

01:01:39 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Conversations to be had about a command and control economy and how much faster you can move when you don't have to go through Congress and get get things up for public debate.

01:01:48 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, that's all or when your president serves for life. Right, right, no more of these messy party changes yeah.

01:01:54 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Yeah, no, that that's. That's another like discussion. I mean just yeah, I mean saying China has done really amazing things in spaces. It's not like an endorsement of their political system, it's just an observation that kind of stands on its own.

01:02:07 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Mike should be a professor don't you think he is Dr Mike Wall?

01:02:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, he is, and you know, you have that kind of quality to your speech, which is a good contrast to my slovenly behavior. No, no, it's good, it keeps us on track. So I don't just say america first, um, all right. Well, this has been a pleasure, guys, and uh, we should revisit this again after we uh find out what, what changi six is able to pull off. Uh. So, everybody, thanks again for joining us for this time. Episode 113, lucky 13, of this week in space china on the moon. Don't forget to check out spacecom, where you can find both these fine gentlemen, because that's where they hang their hats websites in the name and, of course, the national space society at nssorg. Both are good places to hang out, because what more do you need? We're there, I mean, come on, what could you? What more could you want? Tarts're there, I mean, come on, what more could you want? Tarek's looking sick to his stomach. Mike, where's the best place to follow your misadventures?

01:03:08 - Mike Wall (Guest)
Yeah, you can just find me at spacecom and, if you're interested, in my Twitter, account, which I almost never use.

01:03:16 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Then, and let us not forget, my friend, you have a book that is still in print.

01:03:20 - Mike Wall (Guest)
I do. I do have a book that is still in print. I do. I do have a book out there. It's about it's published like almost five years ago now about, yeah, about the search for alien life and what. What we're kind of looking at in that for the next few years and what, what the prospect is of actually finding something out there, and that's another. Yeah, that's an exciting conversation that's going to get more exciting as the next few years progress and maybe we launched atmospheric probe to venus and we set we get a mars sample return mission, hopefully, hopefully at some point, or actually maybe china will do that first too it's.

01:03:49 - Rod Pyle (Host)
It's looking very promising for them and I like the fact that you have a book out there called out there that was probably major. Uh, your, your, your news conference is confusing, tarik. Where can we continue to track? Your playstation lifestyle news conference is confusing, tarek. Where can we continue to track?

01:04:03 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
your PlayStation lifestyle. Well, I mean PlayStation. No, I'm a PC person, rod. You know, if you really knew me, you would know that by now. But okay, I know you better than. I need to my friend. You can find me. We shared a boat together, rod right.

01:04:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You don't have to make it sound scary. It wasn't that bad, that's Right. You don't have to make it sound scary.

01:04:25 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
It wasn't that bad.

01:04:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's true.

01:04:27 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
It wasn't overnight, though, that you mentioned. No, you can find me at spacecom, as always, trying to fight that good fight and chronicle the ins and outs of our ventures across the cosmos, and on the Twitter at Tarek J Malik. Well, I guess that's what it is at Tarek J Malik, and this weekend you will find me watching. Let's see, let's count them down Progress 88 dock at the International Space Station on Saturday morning, the Starliner launch on Saturday afternoon, the Chang'e 6 landing on Saturday evening, the Starliner docking, hopefully, on Sunday afternoon, and then NASA's big victory lap with Boeing. You know where they can say that their astronauts finally got there. So it's going to be a very, very busy weekend. Oh, and Rocket Lab is going to launch the pre-fire mission, the second satellite for NASA, late late Friday night. So big weekend in space, and you'll find us all at spacecom.

01:05:25 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And when's the period of date for Starship?

01:05:28 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
June 6th hey next week, Next week.

01:05:33 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah, crossing fingers.

01:05:35 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Before we speak next, starship Flight 4 may have made it all the way to Hawaii or the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean, yeah, starship Flight 4 may have made it all the way to Hawaii or the Indian Ocean. The Indian Ocean, yeah.

01:05:49 - Mike Wall (Guest)
June 5th, I think. Right, that's the target date.

01:05:51 - Tariq Malik (Guest)
Oh, the 5th, not the 6th, june 5th.

01:05:54 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Guys, get your story straight, All right, remember to drop us a line at twistv that's T-W-I-S-T-W-I-T-T-V. Welcome to comment suggestions, ideas. We do answer our emails, as our folks that showed up at the ISTC can attest New episodes of this podcast, published every Friday on your favorite podcatchers. So make sure to subscribe, tell your friends, give us reviews, thumbs up. Five stars, three little hearts, a unicorn or my favorite pony will do, don't't forget. You can get all the great programming that is offered by the twit network ad free on club twit, as well as some extras that are only found there. And we do have a constant running loop of tarik falling out of his chair, just so you know for just seven dollars a month, which is a bargain, and, uh, we're counting on you, so don't let us down.

01:06:43
You can follow the TwitTech Podcast Network on Twitter and on Facebook and Twittv on Instagram. Gentlemen, I thank you, and, tarek, I'll see you next week, and Mike, I hope to see you soon. Yep, I'm sure I'll be back. Hey, everybody, oh you will. You can count, I'll be back, you'll have me, oh, you will.