This Week in Space 130 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, planetary scientist Jim Bell joins us to talk Mars sample return, viper and why we must better prepare for people to go to the moon and Mars. Join us. Podcasts you love From people you trust this is Tolt. This is this Week in Space, episode number 130, recorded on September 27th 2024. Dogs on Mars Snakes on the Moon. Hello and welcome to another episode of this Week in Space, episode number 130. We have come up upon yes, we're hitting bigger numbers that we like to call Dogs on Mars, mars snakes on the moon edition and yes, that's a bit of clickbait for me. I'm trying to I'm setting.

00:51
Tarik has set the bar high so I'm trying I do not clickbait.

00:56 - Tariq Malik (Host)
No, I don't understand. I didn't understand the title. When we first.

00:59 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, it's referring to to viper on the moon and the Mars rovers dog. Get it. Yeah, oh, yeah, now I know, see, pretty clever. So I, of course, I'm sorry to tell you I'm Rod Pyle, editor-in-chief of Bad Aster Magazine, and I'm joined and it warms my heart to say, as always, by the eclectic Tarek Malik, editor-in-chief of the Rosetta Zone of Space spacecom. How are you, sir?

01:28 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I'm doing well. I'm doing well. How are you Rod? How are you doing?

01:32 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I'm okay. You know I could probably come up with some complaints, but who would possibly care?

01:38 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's a nice gray day here on the East Coast. I like gray days so.

01:43 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You're a strange person, but okay. Um, but soon, to make things incredibly normal again, we'll be, uh, visited by dr jim bell, who's a planetary scientist, a professor at arizona state university and an indispensable member of nasa's mars rover teams, among other missions, to discuss the potential end of Mars sample return, maybe the same for the Viper rover mission to the moon, and why both these are critical to human exploration in these places and some other topics. But before we start, please don't forget to do us a solid Make sure to like, subscribe and do all the other things that support podcasts, because we want to keep bringing you this stuff and we need to show the world that you care. So give us a thumbs up or whatever the appropriate measure of value is. And now a space joke. I'm ready. From Martin Harris Martin, hey Tarek. Yes, rod, martin, hey tarik yes, rod, what did?

02:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
what prize did orion get when he came in last in the race? Uh, I don't know what.

02:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
What kind of prize, did he get a constellation prize?

02:56 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I thought you were gonna go like belt, right for that, like some kind of like like a belt because of his stars, but no, no, no, that's good, that's good, I like it.

03:05 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, you'll see stars once I built you.

03:08 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Now, now that was a bonus. I've heard I can't live that everybody.

03:13 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Believe me, I've heard that some folks want to send us to Mars to suffer a horrible, airless death when it's joke time on this show. But it doesn't have to be that way. You can time on this show, but it doesn't have to be that way. You can help save us from the cancellation of our own joke mission. Send your best, worst or most indifferent space joke to us at twis, at twittv, and we'll use it and we'll give you credit and everything and I'm gonna set turn off that phone call that I just got, um, so let's do some some headlines. Uh, we're a little tight on time this week headline news. So let's do some headlines. We're a little tight on time this week. Headline news.

03:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I like it.

03:51 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Isn't that snappy?

03:52 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, I feel so modern.

03:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Yeah well, that wouldn't fit me, so I'm just going to toss these to you because it'll save us some time. So, crew 9. Crew 9.

04:05 - Tariq Malik (Host)
The rescue mission not to be confused with canine the robot dog from doctor who crew nine spacex is launching, uh, two astronauts to the international space station this week. Kind of a weird month for them because initially, uh, this mission was supposed to launch four astronauts to the international space station. Now it's only launching to NASA astronaut Nick Hague and Russian cosmonaut Alexander I think I'm going to get this right Gorbunov are launching and then they're going to have, I guess, extra supplies and stuff in the other space, because this is now kind of a delivery slash rescue mission for Tim Ferriss. Well, it's a bring them home, tim Ferriss. Bring them home, tim Ferriss. We're not a delivery slash rescue mission for Well it's a bring-them-home mission.

04:47
Bring-them-home we're not calling it a rescue mission. We're not going to call it a rescue mission. I guarantee you you're going to see our launch as a rescue mission, oh yeah.

04:55
Not from spacecom Many, you know. We might mention the Boeing Starliner astronauts in the headline. I don't know, but we're probably not going to call it a rescue mission. But this is the mission that will launch two people up and bring four people back, so that Butch Wilmore and Sonny Williams, who launched on Starliner and then stayed behind as their spacecraft came back to Earth, will be able to come back after eight months. Eight months after their eight-day mission launched, they will come back to Earth. How about Mission Salvage? Yeah, well, I guess I could see that.

05:27
The sad part is that the two slots that were set aside that are now not going to be flying are rookie astronaut Zena Cardman she was actually in the command, I think the flight originally and three-time space shuttle flyer Stephanie Wilson, and that's kind of a little disappointment, I'm sure very disappointing to her, because she's a very veteran, senior astronaut and this could have been the last flight for her. Maybe they'll replace them. It seems like in the past, at least in the Apollo era, people got bumped. They would get to fly again. I hope they get that chance in the future, but at least this mission's getting off the ground delayed a few days because of Hurricane Helene, which delayed it from the 26th to the 28th. Now it's going to launch at 1.17 pm, saturday, the 28th, so you can watch it on spacecom 1.17 pm Eastern time 1.17 pm Eastern time Because remember, we do have other time zones.

06:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Oh yeah, I know you guys don't think so.

06:24 - Tariq Malik (Host)
There's other time zones than New York City, what no?

06:28 - Rod Pyle (Host)
yeah, gmt was invented 1517 GMT very uh 1117 in California.

06:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
There for you, rod. So I did some math.

06:39 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's good okay, and we have a new space plane to talk about yeah, this was this.

06:45 - Tariq Malik (Host)
One came from space news. Space news reported that this company, seattle-based uh company, iradian uh aerospace, has plans to build a new reusable orbital space plane and, from what I was reading on their description, this company uh, it's, they're, they're, they're ambitiously looking at single stage to orbit. Which who is looking at single stage to orbit anymore? It's so exciting. But they unveiled their scale prototype of the vehicle. It'll have a 15 meter, I believe, payload bay that's about the size of a school bus or so, and this scale one is doing taxi and hop tests, so it's not flying yet. And it'll be interesting because the idea for this single stage to orbit vehicle isn't like to take off on the runway and then rocket up. They're going to put it on a two mile long sled is what they say on a runway when worlds collide, right, how cool. Finally.

07:42
It's going to shoot it, slingshot it down, and then it goes up and then and then it takes off. It's gonna be really cool. I hope that it gets off the ground. The world could use more space planes, especially reusable.

07:53 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, so wait a minute though so this is a rocket powered sled that takes it up and then falls off the end of the track as the thing continues.

08:01 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know, I actually I actually didn't get so far to see how they were going to power the sled itself, like I didn't see rockets on the design of it, so maybe they've got some other uh issue. That seems like a big technical hurdle that they're not thinking about right now.

08:15 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's just the concept design hey, eugen sanger was thinking of it in the 1930s in germany, before he decided to use it try and bomb New York from orbital skip bomber. So it's been thought of, but yeah sorry, I'm getting carried away.

08:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
They unveiled this in Abu Dhabi, so in the UAE, so clearly there's like the testing is going on over there, uh, for the Seattle company. So very interesting, very interesting was there? Oh, we, we have yeah, so this, this, yeah, this video looks like it. Yeah, it does, yeah, it is yeah that is cool.

08:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
The only thing that that it doesn't have is the track going up like it did in the movies. But yeah, that would be a big build.

08:50 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, that's a pretty cool looking space plane I think it'll be nice and this one, uh, in terms of like commercial space planes, seems a little bit more down to earth than do you remember that skylon space plane?

09:00 - Rod Pyle (Host)
that was like this it skylon and yeah, hotel which looked like a whale with a fin on its head yeah, so british.

09:08 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So and and, uh, so we'll see.

09:10 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Though we'll see, you know, we'll, I mean so many planned space planes and the only one that ever flew successfully for any length of time with people on it was the american shuttle and brand flew uncrewed a couple of times, the soviet I think one time, and then it bent the airframe and then that was it right, I was like yeah, you're right, it launched into space one time, but I think, yeah, I think they were approaching landing tests before that or something, and it's gone.

09:33 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's gone forever, yeah well, and it's gone.

09:36 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Gone, I mean, one of the fuselages got the shed crashed on it because they weren't, uh, taken care of it.

09:43 - Tariq Malik (Host)
All right, um, and finally, yes, your third story, please my third story is about moon, the new moon that earth will get this weekend, and this is very exciting. You might have all heard about this and I think we've talked about it at least once before on the show. But, uh, there is a new, uh, second moon Earth that we're going to get. We don't get it to keep it's like a lender's library of moons, apparently but a small asteroid is going to get captured by Earth's gravity temporarily on Sunday, september 29th. As we're recording it, it's the Asteroid 2024 PTS, which is probably how everyone is feeling at the end of this episode.

10:27
But no, it's this asteroid and it's going to be captured in Earth's orbit at 3.54 Eastern time on Sunday, and then it's going to hang around until about Thanksgiving, november 25th, and then it escapes our gravity, goes off on its merry way. Hopefully it doesn't come back and smack us. It's very small, but it's really exciting. This gives scientists a chance to see a near-Earth asteroid up close for a little while. They look at it with telescopes, with those radar things that they do when they ping them to see how they look like peanuts, because they always look like peanuts. And it's a brand new asteroid, as its name suggests 2024 PTS, that's always. It's the year it was discovered, so it was discovered this year.

11:11 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So I was going to watch the orbital plot on spacecom, as we are seeing now for those of you watching video, but I think I fell asleep and aged another two years while I was waiting to see what the orbit actually became. So this is a great big, I assume very weak elliptical orbit that it will be in briefly and then depart, right. Essentially an orbiting flyby kind of thing almost it is.

11:34 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's what's called an I think I'm going to pronounce this correctly Arjuna or Arjuna asteroid. There's an Arjuna asteroid belt, which is a secondary asteroid belt in our solar system, made up of objects that follow orbits that are very, very similar to Earth at about 93 million miles away. So we're all kind of like, let's say, we're all on the same highway, as we're going in a circle around or an ellipse, pardon me around the sun, and every now and then, by changing lanes, we end up in the same lane. That's kind of what this seems to be to me, and some of them can get real close 2.8 million miles or so, going about 2,200 miles an hour. Asteroid 2024, it's not going to do a full orbit around Earth, even though it's going to be here for a couple of months. It's just going to be hanging around a bit and then be on its merry way.

12:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So, okay, so it really is a flyby. Yeah, all right. Well, that's very cool, but what's even cooler is we're about to spend some time talking to jim bell, so stand by for this brief break and we'll be right back. And we are back with jim bell, who's a professor, award-winning author, keynote speaker, and the list goes on and on from there. So, jim, I'm gonna do you a solid and ask you to tell us about yourself, because you have a very a long and winning resume. You know, I I often have gotten it's been mentioned to me in the past, but mostly by people from the East Coast talking me up so many hyphens and slashes in your resume and my usual answer is because I worked in hollywood, but the truth is because I had adhd. What's your excuse?

13:13 - Jim Bell (Guest)
that's a wow. That's a great lead-in surprise I appreciate, uh, rod tarrick.

13:22
I appreciate you guys having me on the show. So yes, I'm a professor at arizona state university. I a planetary scientist. I'm trained in geology and astronomy and study planetary surfaces, surfaces of planets, moons, asteroids, comets, any solid surface in the solar system. I'm interested and I've had the.

13:43
I started out in the telescope world because back when I was a graduate student there weren't all these nasa missions going on, we didn't have rovers on mars and all that kind of stuff, so telescopes were still the way to go. And I've been fortunate enough to be able to take the those skills with telescope instruments and apply them to spacecraft, rovers and orbiters, landers and stuff like that. So that's my day job. I also work very heavily with Planetary Society. I was president of Planetary Society for a dozen years. I'm still on the board, work a lot on our advocacy and education, really trying to promote planetary and space science broadly across the world. That's kind of fun and cool. And you know I write books, mostly picture books of late, but just trying to share the visual joy of space exploration in astronomy and planetary science with the public. So yeah, I guess I don't sleep much. Maybe that's it.

14:52 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, if you're managing to get picture books commissioned in this publishing environment, my hat's off to you, because the last few times that came up I think the last one I did was 2019, and we revisited the subject in 22 or 23, and the publishers were like no, no, never again.

15:08 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Right, we can't afford ink, ink it did take a long time to break in and I just I talked to a lot of uh, would-be authors and I just say persevere, persevere, try hard, keep going. Approach many, many different companies. Um, and the key to in my experience, the key is finding an editor who's a space nerd, like we are, and they get excited about your project and because, of course, they have to pitch it in the company and all that kind of stuff. So, but keep trying, don't give up although it's interesting as an aside.

15:42 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Uh, I'll just mention I did a book called space 2.0 in 2019. First edition did okay and you know, because it was a current thing, not a history thing. Primarily it was time for a second edition. A year or two ago and I talked to the publisher, a company called Ben Bella, who's a really wonderful company to work with. So the book has been selling for $20 for a number of years. It's got color plates and it's all chrome coat stock and all that. They came back and said with the price increases since covet, it would now cost, have to retail for 50, oh, because of ink, paper and transport, and I thought, well, that's the end of that all right, but more interestingly yeah, more interestingly I noted that you went from beautiful caltech, which I used to live about three blocks away from, to Hawaii for your grad school.

16:33
That strikes me as being a little hedonistic. You want to explain that Well?

16:36 - Tariq Malik (Host)
that's pretty cool, or smart? Yeah, very smart.

16:39 - Jim Bell (Guest)
I mean, it was mostly because of the amazing telescopes at Mauna Kea right. University of Hawaii has access to those facilities. The University of Hawaii has access to those facilities. Students at the University of Hawaii have preference on some of those facilities if they're doing their thesis work. So, yes, I went to Hawaii, but I was the only guy on the plane with a snow parka, boots and gloves Because I was working at 14,000 feet and even in August we had blizzards Because you're basically in a lower stratosphere. But great experience. Great university for geology as well. I actually majored in geology there, but I was doing my geology through the tools of astronomy available to University of Hawaii astronomers.

17:27 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, tim, you and I I first came, I think, met you. We were talking about I'm sure it was some Mars discovery or rover mission and I'm sure we're going to get into that in a bit. But I kind of want to go at this point kind of way way back to ask if there was a moment with young Jim Bell where, like, the space bug bit you and that's what sets you on this planetary science path. Or was it something which has happened that people find later in life that you know they were doing something altogether different and then you know that something tips the scales and they, they discover a new passion.

18:06 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Yeah, man, that's a great question, I guess. Two moments for me, one very young and one sort of teenager, the very young thing that I remember, I remember watching on TV, watching these guys drive a car around on the moon, and it's like, omg, I want to do that. Look at that. Look at that, these guys are driving a car on the moon and it's on TV. It's like amazing, this is Apollo 15, 16, 17. They're driving around and kicking up rooster tails and just, it was incredible, just the fact that, uh, you know, there are people walking around on the moon and big rockets and just as a little kid, uh, just, uh, super exciting and uh, you know, of course it was big national news and all that kind of stuff. So there was that and uh, but then as a teenager, you know it, it was, it was great, to great to nerd out and learn math and all that kind of stuff, physics, but I didn't realize that people could make a career out of this without being an astronaut, really until Cosmos, sagan's Cosmos series, which, if you guys will recall and people will have a hard time dealing with this, but remember, the world was three networks and PBS right, that's right and there was almost no science on television and on PBS there was Nova still around, right, a spectacular show, and Nova would be space one time out of five, right, and so it was just so, so rare to have the space show.

19:51
And then sagan comes on and it's like for 13 weeks or however long it was, every monday night or whatever it was. It's like here's an an hour of this uh guy with a funny brooklyn accent, you know, and and the tweed jacket and he's, he's talking science, he's talking astronomy, he's talking space, he's talking planetary science in english, in a language that I can understand my mom could understand, you know, and this was like holy cow, this was just eye-opening. Of course, at the time the special effects were great, the graphics that were coming out of that show were cutting edge, uh, and all of the pictures of the voyager and viking mariner, you know all that. All the classic missions of the 60s and and 70s were featured.

20:38
Because he was personally involved and and it was just, it was a, it was a seminal moment in my early life and, ultimately, career, and it's been so many people in sort of my generation I mean in my 50s, my generation were so influenced by that show, yeah, and the accessibility of it. The realization is that you know you can. You can do this for a living and it's okay to communicate with the public and want to share your excitement and passion with the public and, of course, sagan was vilified for that by his professional colleagues at the time, but now it's just a part of the field, now it's expected.

21:19 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, for the uninitiated folks who may not know who the Sagan is and what the Cosmos is, we're talking about, of course. Carl Sagan and his show cosmos, a personal voyage was 13 part series that was on pbs in 1980 to 1981. I watched that show. I felt like he was talking to me.

21:38
Yes, not to like everyone, but like exactly exactly about like what was out there, you know, and it was, it was brand new, as like a feeling. I mean, I was also kind of very, quite small, uh, when that show was out 1980 yeah, well, but I watched, it was in reruns too like on.

21:56 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Yeah, they would show it on pbs over and over again yeah, so it's it's very interesting, just the path and then I had I had just an amazing thrill to be able to you know, fanboy overlap with him, uh-huh, uh. When I started my career, uh at cornell oh, that's awesome on the uh as a, as a postdoc initially at cornell and that was just what a treat so so did.

22:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Did you meet pascal lee back then?

22:22 - Jim Bell (Guest)
oh, yes, no, I know pascal very well. We go back to grad school days.

22:26 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Okay, his, his grad school days, yeah, yeah, my postdoc days and yep yeah, because I I didn't realize till he he told me about a year ago that he was sagan's last ta and I thought, wow, what a distinction. Yeah, um, all right, let's uh jump to a quick break and we'll be right back to talk more space, standby space. So let's talk mars for a few minutes, if we, if we can. Uh did you came in, uh, during the mars exploration rover missions or pathfinder pathfinder, so you're part of the pathfinder team.

22:59 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Yeah, now, so I've known, today's the anniversary of the last signal from pathfinder in 1997.

23:07 - Rod Pyle (Host)
so I've known rob manning for about 10 years that I I've told him more than once, being a bit of a fan boy, that watching those videos of his team and all of you collectively working on pathfinder, and besides the fact that we were all younger then, but the enthusiasm and the just the joy you guys had for something that was pretty low budget, fast, you know, kind of a mars robot direct, if you will, I mean, that must have been a really incredible time.

23:42 - Jim Bell (Guest)
It was spectacular right because there was.

23:46
There was no such thing as better, faster, cheaper, because there was no such thing as better, faster, cheaper.

23:50
Pathfinder and the NEAR mission to the asteroid Eros, which were both happening right around the same time in the mid to late 90s, were intended as the first demonstration that NASA, as this big bureaucratic government agency that does billion-dollar flagship missions, can do it a different way, can do it for a fraction of the cost 10%, 20% of the cost of a typical previous mission, a fraction of the development time, you know, and a bunch of generally early career people who were more willing to take risks to push the frontier of Mars. So, and planetary science in general. So, yes, it was, it was thrilling and you know, I was a relatively junior science team member, worked with peter smith and his team on the cameras for the, the lander, and so that was very exciting. Cutting edge technology, ccd technology at the time was still pretty novel and, of course, being able to work real time on Mars time for nearly three months was both exciting and physiologically exhausting. But like you said, rod, we were all young, so it was worth it.

25:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
We should remind people that Pathfinder in 1997 was the first rover ever that we landed on Mars with the Sojourner rover and it had a ground station as well and you got all these awesome photos First time ever done, in fact, in Sacramento they set off fireworks in the daytime for the landing on july 4th yes, it was at the time the largest uh event in this new thing called the internet.

25:39 - Jim Bell (Guest)
it was the largest public event that had ever happened and it was great to be able to share that, that kind of stuff, in real time, because, of course course for like Voyager and Viking, you'd get little snippets of things in the evening news, right it was no way to follow that stuff live and to see the fact that it's really it's people who are doing this and that people have so much invested in it. And that's why there's so much joy when it actually works and so much despair when it doesn't. And I've been involved on the other side in a couple of missions that didn't work and I assure you the joy is much more worth it.

26:19 - Rod Pyle (Host)
That's pretty amazing and, if I recall correctly and correct me if I'm wrong it was also the first and last time that the geologists were able to name features on the surface of Mars, after what the NASA General Council later realized were copyrighted icons.

26:38 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Like Yogi Bear.

26:39 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Came back and said don't do that. Name them after geological features in Canada. We'd much prefer that or something of that nature.

26:46 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Yeah, like you know, we were making it up as we went along and we did have themes and all that. But yeah it's, you know you get a bunch of tired people and you get kind of a little loopy, but you know it's all in good fun, well you know I was gonna ask because you know you mentioned that that was like the first of its kind, but we've seen a lot of rovers since then.

27:12 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think I did a count today because it was our quiz in our newsletter that we've sent, as a species, six rovers to Mars, if my count is right.

27:20 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Someone please yeah.

27:24 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So that's, and of course I know that there's a lot of other planetary science that you've done there. But we had the Mars explorationoration Rovers with Spirit and Opportunity, and then you mentioned one in your Persevere pep talk. But Perseverance, of course, and Curiosity are there now. But I think Rod and I did want to ask about just the general science that Mars and other things do promise in I I guess the years to come Like. Well, you mentioned some science that we lost, like the Viper rover as well, and then the science that we want, like Mars sample return and whatnot too.

28:07
And I'm just kind of curious looking back, because this is kind of an anniversary. We did our honesty in space today. That's how I know about the pathfinder anniversary. Uh, I'm curious if you had hoped that the progress of planetary science from that kind of on the ground exploration, would have been farther than it is now. Or is it at the pace that you expected, or did it even advance? I mean, you got nuclear cars on Mars now faster than you could have thought when you were working on those earlier missions there.

28:40 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Yeah, that's a great question. I think everybody you ask would have a different answer to that question, but I'll share mine. I think that the pace has been great for robotic exploration of Mars and other planets, the entire solar system, the universe. Let's not stop there, right? I think the pace has been great partly because of the change in philosophy and the idea of, backed by decadal surveys, by surveying the community National Academy of Sciences every decade on. How should NASA advance the exploration of space and keeping this balance between the giant missions that cost billions of dollars the Voyagers, the Vikings, the Cassinis, the Galileos, and having other categories of medium class missions, and then smaller missions and then really tiny missions that use up much less of the budget wedge? The budget wedge is finite and ultimately, everything that we do with NASA is funded by all of us as taxpayers and all of you out there in the audience as taxpayers. That budget wedge, that's what we live or die by. We're very fortunate in that the American people support NASA at a level greater than all of the other people in the world combined, support their space agencies for civilian space. We're very lucky with that, but it is a finite box. If you're just going to do big missions. You can only do so many of them.

30:11
But the failure of Mars Observer the last big giant, mars flagship of the 70s and 80s era that failure really sent a harsh message to NASA that the then administrator, dan Golden, turned into this better, faster, cheaper idea. Let's break that science up into smaller missions. Let's have more opportunities. Let's try to launch to Mars every two years when the planets line up right. That has just turned into this series of very successful missions that you've mentioned that have been advancing robotically the exploration of the planet at just a wonderful pace, supporting a vibrant community of senior, mid-level, junior student researchers who are trying to pull every ounce of information out of these datasets. That's been great. What's not been so great, in my opinion, is the sort of idea of getting people there. Let's get humans to Mars has been decades away for decades.

31:17 - Tariq Malik (Host)
It's always 20 years, jim, always 20 years, 30., 30.

31:21 - Jim Bell (Guest)
And NASA.

31:23
Always their siren song is humans to Mars, humans to moon to Mars, humans to Mars.

31:31
You know siren song is humans to Mars, humans, moon to Mars, humans to Mars, and and uh, and it's great that we're on the edge of getting people back to the moon and that's I think it's.

31:37
We'll learn a lot from that. But it's certainly has been frustrating because a lot of what the robotic program is doing is paving the way for people to go there. Let's understand the environment, that people and equipment that's with people and life support systems. All that are going to be dealing with. And that's partly what the robotics program is doing. And partly what the robotics program is doing from orbiters, landers and rovers is figuring out where to go. Where should they go, where they can access ice, for example, in the shallow subsurface, other resources to help live off the land as much as possible. So a lot of the robotic effort has been in support of eventual human exploration. But it's been frustrating for me personally and many of my colleagues to not see the human program make the advances over the past 50 years that maybe we had hoped at the end of, say, apollo 17 in 72.

32:37 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Boy, there's so much to unpack there, but we got to go to another break, so standby, we'll be right back and we're back. So, jim, you brought up some really good points there. Uh, one thing I I'd love to do, which is kind of masochistic really, is look at uh, at uh polls over the years of nasa's popularity and, starting with uh, some of the gallops and others that were done in the 60s and then continuing on through till yesterday. You're right, I mean, nasa has this incredible brand. It's got world recognition. It's like, I don't know, it's's up there with Coke and Nike and a handful of others. Taylor Swift.

33:13 - Jim Bell (Guest)
You see people walk around the world with NASA t-shirts. You don't see them with FDA t-shirts or IRS t-shirts. No, it's NASA.

33:22 - Rod Pyle (Host)
And the taxpayers don't get any cost relief from those logos because nobody ever pays NASA for their use, from those logos, because nobody ever pays NASA for their use. But interestingly though, from those earlier polls forward, the more specific the questions, the lower the support. So when you say, do you support NASA yeah, NASA's great 70%. Do you support the United States being a leadership in space through NASA? You bet 50%. Do you support going back to the moon with human beings in the 21st century Crickets? 17%, bet 50. Do you support going back to the moon with human beings? The 21st century crickets 17.

33:55
You know, and I remember these, these numbers very generally. So what I'm getting at here, what I'm steering towards, is mars sample return. For the first time in quite a while that I remember. Anyway, we have a real sudden left turn on a robotic mars program which went from hey, this is great, we can do it. We've been talking about it 50 years, let's go to no golly, this isn't going to cost too much. Let's slam on the brakes and ask private industry to see what they can come up with. Which was kind of a. I mean, the NASA administrator has done a couple of things in this term. Generally, I think he's been quite good, but he's done a couple of things that were sort of a head scratcher. This one was a what, and it was one of those. I think it was a TARC, wasn't it? One of those Friday afternoon oh yeah, let's kind of hide this behind the curtain. Press conferences it's like, oh, this is really weird.

34:52 - Jim Bell (Guest)
So I've given you a lot of things to sort of unpack here. But what's your sense on MSR at this point? Well, it's interesting because we are both closer to MSR than we've ever been and just as far as we've ever been and we're closer because we are collecting the samples. We actually know what most of them are. We still have a bunch to collect with Perseverance samples. We actually know what most of them are. We still have a bunch to collect with Perseverance, but most of the sample cache has been completed and we're going to continue over the next few years to collect an even better set of them.

35:21
Perseverance and the Mars 2020 mission in Jezero Crater is part of Mars Sample Return. It's the first part. We're actually doing it. That's exciting, right? The frustrating part is that getting them back is going to be the hardest part robotic thing that NASA or any space agency or combination space agencies have ever done. And maybe the hardest part is launching off of this surface robotically. You know that's something that's never, never been done. It's a difficult place to land on. It's a difficult place to launch from, so it's a really hard thing. So it's not surprising that it's going to cost a lot of money. You know it was unfortunate timing that you know we're going through a big squeeze in federal spending right now. The economy is not doing so well. So federal spending for non-discretionary things that we choose to fund, not that we have to fund it's a tough time and Congress makes all these decisions and Congress is squeezing the budgets of all the agencies, including NASA, which makes it really hard to do expensive and difficult things. So the variable that you can control if you can't get more money, you can stretch out more time right, and so that's sort of the way it's worked out.

36:45
I'll tell you, I'll just share with you the you know I guess it's not surprising to see NASA reach out to the commercial world for ideas and support. I mean, nasa is doing that with lunar exploration. Commercial lunar payload services and other programs are involving a lot of non-traditional companies. It's not just the big aerospace companies that NASA has relied on in the past but a lot of smaller nimble companies. And the jury's still out on how that program really is going to come down. But you take a little bit more risk, but you have more out on how that program really is going to come down.

37:18
But it's you know, you take a little bit more risk but you have more opportunities and that's exciting. And we here at ASU we work with a number of those companies helping on the science side and you know operations and that kind of stuff. So that's exciting and so it's not surprising to see them reach out to similar kinds of companies and the big aerospace companies and ask hey, have you got any ideas that can help us with this? But what was just disappointing to me personally was for NASA to go out in public and say we can't do this. It's like I don't want NASA saying that. I don't want NASA saying you can't do it. It's near NASA, come on.

37:58 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Trevor Burrus. Well, and where did this $11 billion number suddenly come from?

38:03 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Well, I mean, that was the high end of the range of studies. A number of studies came out, there were a number of them, and you know the administrator and others at the senior levels chose to focus on worst case and so that takes you to the high end. And if you want to set expectations with Congress and the administration on worst possible case, you got to go to the high end and that's comparable to the cost of James Webb. Ultimately, Trevor.

38:34 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Burrus Right or in today's dollars, viking or any of the other big flexion firms.

38:38 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Mike Higgins yeah, and so it just doesn't seem to be the case that the government can afford that right now, and so they're looking for ideas. Hopefully commercial will help, but in the end it's got to be NASA's going to solve this problem. I'm a ridiculous optimist. I think they will solve the problem. I think they'll come up with some ideas, maybe with some commercial input. But the centers are all working on their own studies, as well as the commercial companies, and so it'll be a combination.

39:08
Of course, those studies aren't due till next month, sometime. We've got an election coming up. There's going to be a change of administration. There's going to be a change of Congress, potentially likely a change of administrator, just going with how things have gone in the past, with change of administration right. So I wouldn't expect NASA to be able to make a decision, a real decision, on this until spring, summer of next year, and by that time, you know, we'll know more about what the Congress is like, what their appetite is for spending, what the administration is like, what their appetite is for space spending, what the economy is like. So all these things, you know this is something that I didn't realize as a young person early in my career. How much of what NASA does is tied to the economy and geopolitics, to the economy and geopolitics?

39:58 - Tariq Malik (Host)
And I think, just for some perspective, the fiscal year 2024 budget for NASA was something on the order of like $24.8 billion, which sounds like a lot, but it was a 2% cut from 2023. And, of course, there's talks about the budget for the next fiscal year. In fact, I think the NASA Authorization Act just got cleared through the House and, when it comes to space science spending, the part that flagged our team, my colleague Brett Tingley, was that there is a little passage in there that specifically says that the decadal survey primary targets now need to be really weighed against budgetary realities, which is different, I think, as an approach to say, as a decadal survey for science. These things Mars, alpha Return, et cetera, grace, roman or the Roman Space Telescope these are our priorities overall for science, rather than a priority for science, maybe, if we have the nickels and dimes to pay for it.

41:04
It's that's not again, that that's not final, it has to go to the senate and, uh, we'll see. And it's just one small part of the whole thing, but it was a. It was a part that affected science that I thought you know. It's kind of that trend that you were talking about, jim about, about what are we going to pay for versus what do we want to do for the science itself.

41:23 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Yeah, and look that 20 plus billion. That is a lot of money, but it's less than a half a percent of the entire federal budget. And so I often you know I give a lot of public talks and often someone will rightly ask why are we doing this? There are people, there are homeless people, we need to cure cancer, and it's like, yes, we need to do all those things. But the reality is, if you completely eliminate the NASA budget, zero it out, you know, do any of those things. We're not going to cure cancer with that money. We're not going to solve homelessness and hunger with that money. Of course we have to try to work towards those bigger societal issues, but in its own way, nasa is providing societal impact.

42:01 - Tariq Malik (Host)
right, it's STEM education, it's motivation, it's inspiration, it's national pride and technology development by the way, darrell Bock Okay, tarek, before we Mark Leary, and they are researching cancer too. There is that, darrell Bock. Yes, yes, of course.

42:14 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Mark Leary Tarek. We got to go to an ad. Sorry, tarek gets carried away here. Um, we'll be right back.

42:20
And I want to ask you, uh, to talk a little more about the decadal survey. So stand by, sure? So during the apollo years, as as we all talk about here, um, the about 4.5, 4.7 percent of the of the federal budget was going to nasa's expenditures, at least during their, their wartime years, which was 1964 through 66. Now it's about a tenth of that and you know you were talking about the NASA budget. But it's also important to point out that planetary and robotic science and, you know, associated things like astronomy and so forth, get like, if that's the NASA fire, fire hose, you guys get the soda straws worth and this is dribble that comes out the other end for for planetary science and um. But I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about what the decadal survey is, how that controls what we're doing and how that does relate to budgets, because I don't think most people know that much about it yeah, and sort of the bigger, the bigger picture.

43:20 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Nasa is funded as a federal agency by Congress which takes in taxes and distributes accordingly, and members of Congress are not rocket scientists generally. There's a few astronauts that have been in Congress and that kind of stuff, a few physicists here and there, but so they're not in a position and they acknowledge they're not in a position to tell NASA what to work on. So they, for the past few decades, have been reaching out to the National Academies of Science and Engineering and saying hey, national Academies, could you convene a panel of experts and tell us what should this agency be working on that's best for the country, that's best for science, that's best for the world, whatever. The National Academies, then, has conducted these surveys, called decadal surveys, one for every decade for each of the four major areas of NASA science. There's planetary science that I work in, there's astrophysics and astronomy, which many of my colleagues work in, there's earth science and there's heliophysics, the study of the sun, and so for each of those areas the National Academy convenes a panel of 50 to 100 experts to be like the main committee, and then they reach out to the communities of hundreds to thousands of researchers around the world and basically do a survey.

44:44
What do you think is the most important thing? Send us your information, send us your ideas, and they get hundreds and hundreds of what they call white papers two, three, four pages. Here's why we need to study the atmosphere of Neptune. Here's why we need to go back to Venus. Here's why we need basic fundamental research and meteorites, whatever right.

45:03
They get hundreds and hundreds of papers from around the world and then this steering committee then has to kind of sort through it all. They have town hall meetings and it takes several years, but eventually they come out with the document at the end that is as close to a consensus as they can on what the community believes NASA should be working on in the next 10 years. Those are called decadal surveys. Congress looks at that and says great. Then they turn to NASA and say NASA, are you doing this? Nasa had better say, yeah, we're doing this because that's what Congress asked to be done.

45:42
And so there's a direct alignment between what the community broadly thinks is most important to be working on and what ultimately gets funded. I think that's great. I'd rather have it done that way, even though it's a clunky and slow process and eight years in might not really be the same set of priorities, as you know, 10 years ago when the survey started, but but I'd much rather have it be done from the ground up that way than have, you know, a small number of bureaucrats high in the government be telling everybody what should be done, or members of congress who aren't rocket scientists does that, that process, though, like you know, we were talking about perseverance earlier and how it's cashed these samples.

46:25 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You know hopes to collect more, but we still don't have that capability to bring it back, and sample return was like a high science capability. I'm curious how that kind of situation comes up then. Is that a matter of like? We made these decisions because we thought that the financing, the, the funding and the support on that, on that, uh, uh, that directional level would be there, and then it changes. Or is it, yes, a technical hurdle as well, or is it kind of all of that stuff, yeah, yeah, I mean it's true, it's, yeah, great question.

46:54 - Jim Bell (Guest)
It's driven by the science. Like bringing samples back, uh will tell us so much about Mars and the history of Mars as a planet and how we will interact with Mars when we go there as people, just like the Apollo samples did. Apollo samples weren't acquired for science, it was to beat the commies. That's why they went to the moon. Those samples have revolutionized our understanding of the Earth and the Earth-Moon system fundamentally Huge impact of planetary science. Same thing will happen when we bring some of these rock and soil samples back from Mars. But the survey. So it has to be driven by the science.

47:28
But there's a pragmatic side to it as well. Any idea that's posed as a hey, we should do a mission to do this is studied and made sure that it's not going to cost $100 billion or some ridiculous number. It has to be pragmatically within that envelope of typical NASA funding, or what you could expect over the next five to 10 years might be typical NASA funding, taking into account inflation and projections about what the economy is going to be like. There is a pragmatic, logistical aspect to the decadals as well that we'll study, especially the big missions like MSR, Europa, clipper, others, but also medium and small missions. Can these reasonably be fit into the budget? If the answer is yes, they'll survive the process. Then it becomes a policy issue at the highest levels of the administration Congress, nasa, administration. Among these choices, which have been ranked by the scientific community, which can we really fit in? Which one does the president like best? Whatever, just lots of other sort of programmatic and policy issues will then come into play.

48:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So so how can I phrase this? This is a big generalization. But as with MSR, so goes Viper A little different. I mean, that seems to be at least trying to become an outright cancellation. I'm not sure it's there yet, because I know there are still parties kind of grinding on it.

49:02 - Jim Bell (Guest)
It's not dead, yet he's dead Jim.

49:06 - Rod Pyle (Host)
But we have the Viper, which is. So Mars sample return obviously, is bringing back rocks from Mars that were collected by the Perseverance rover, which I thought was a very daring move, considering all that was designed long before they had an actual budget from our sample returns. That was pretty cool. And then viper, which is a rover to land in the south polar regions of the moon and go sniff out so-called volatiles, which include water and other things, um, which is, you know, at least as far as most of us who are non-scientists can see, a critical step in the path of getting humans back to the moon, assessably, sustainably. If we just want to go do another Apollo 11, that's one thing, oh, beat China. But in terms of doing it for the long term, you need to really sniff out what's there and understand it. So Pfeiffer.

49:58 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Yeah, tell us the story I mean a lot of us in the planetary science world have been having a lot of what were they thinking moments about this, and now a lot of people in Congress are having the same thoughts. Congress wants more details which haven't really been forthcoming on why NASA made that decision. The community is looking for more details. Why was that the necessary path? Were there other options that were explored and discarded for perfectly valid reasons that just haven't been discussed? I think there's more information coming on that. But it would be fairly unprecedented to have a mission that far along where that much money has been spent. I mean, for goodness sakes, they're in thermal vacuum with the spacecraft to cancel it outright. So I don't I'm not privity what happens on the upper floors of NASA headquarters. Don't know all the details.

51:01
Again, I'm an optimist, so I'm hoping that there is a logical story that'll come out. Might have to be dragged out by Congress, or that they will say you know what, Maybe we made a mistake. It's not so bad to say you make mistakes. It's not so bad to make mistakes. It's a space program. It's a hard thing to do, Given that the community and Congress find this so important. We need to figure out another way to do it. This is, of course, what's happening with MSR. It's the community and Congress. This is important to do. The decadal says do it, and so we're trying to find another way to do it. So my hope is that we'll get back onto that path with Viper. Nothing's been, you know, as far as I know, nothing's been unscrewed and taken apart yet.

51:53 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So I think there's still time, but maybe not an optimal process for sure can I as a scientist Jim I'm, because I again I have a lot of like questions and concerns and some of like the decisions I've seen gonna come out over the last like six months, and and I but I'm not in like the science trenches watching it all unfurl and I was a bit alarmed.

52:21 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Thank God for NASA that we were both excluded from that.

52:24 - Tariq Malik (Host)
That's right. Well, I mean, jim was talking about the math earlier and I almost tipped my hat to your successful about with differential equations. The Bain to Rod and I.

52:35 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, and that he liked it.

52:36 - Jim Bell (Guest)
He said he liked it. I never said that. I never said that. Well, and that he liked it. He said he liked it. I never said that, I never said that. Oh, okay, I thought you said it was fun.

52:42 - Tariq Malik (Host)
So, I've been very confused because over the last six months we've seen budget zero outs for things like Chandra, x-ray Space Telescope. You see the Viper cancellation. You see a forced delay for the Escapade mission from October of 20, the, the escapade mission from october of 20, um, the escapade mars mission, nasa sending two missions to mars on, uh, uh, on blue origins, first, new glenn rocket because they're, I guess, not confident that that rocket's going to be ready. So then they, they slip to, uh, the end of that window in spring of 2025, which feels like pushing it. And you've got this ripple of. You know, if I'm a lay person, it just seems like they're choosing not to do the science, choosing not to do it.

53:28
The Chandra one hurts in particular because it brings back memories of initial attempts to kind of close down spirit and opportunity when they were still working fine, they weren't stuck or anything and that attempt, which was an attempt just to save money for other projects and moving around, uh, at the expense of science. We saw that again with new horizons, right rod, we talked about that on the show where they were gonna, just, you know, do that. And and it just seems to me that in the last six to eight months. We have seen a trend, um, uh, that that could be really worrying on the financial side of things and I'm wondering if that's if, if you know, the people that are doing the science are are concerned, or if it's just like a an appearance issue, or maybe I'm just like a panicky person. I mean, I'm not calm at all, jim.

54:19 - Jim Bell (Guest)
You could say that again, chill out, chill out a little bit. So, yes, very concerned and in my one of my hats, with the Planetary Society, we express our concerns, we write if you guys know Casey Dreyer and what he writes about is very frank and honest and we're very concerned. The community is very concerned about the future of science within NASA and I think what you're seeing I think it's actually personally, quite simple. Right, it's good people dealing with a very difficult problem and that is a shrinking budget, and within that environment you have to make priorities and in some cases priorities have been made through documents like the decadal survey. In other cases there are programs and missions that weren't in the decadal, that weren't imagined in the last decadal, which is sort of we're coming to the end of here, the last decadal, which is sort of we're coming to the end of here, and so they don't know what the priority is and there's not enough time because decisions have to be made, because Congress says give us your budget, and so decisions are made high up in the NASA administration and in a way that maybe not effectively communicated as it should be with the stakeholders. But I think it's good people with a difficult problem of a shrinking budget and somewhat uncertain priorities. One priority that is very clear, at least with the current leadership in NASA, is that Artemis is the top priority.

55:55
Artemis is mostly not science. The money that goes into artemis is rockets and hardware and life support and lander. You know it's, it's a lot of technical, it's a difficult problem getting people to the moon, bringing them back, making them safe and, by the way, we want to try to do some science there, which is where viper comes in. Um, but uh, it's just not. Science within artemis doesn't have the priority that science within the science division of NASA has.

56:25
And so I think there's where policy comes into play. There's where, if science were truly regarded as a critical to the success of Artemis or the success of Moon to Mars, then the human program would play a bigger role in supporting the robotic support for the human program. But, as Rod and I have talked about in the past, there's kind of this wall, this bureaucratic wall, between the human part of NASA exploration and the science robotic part of NASA exploration. So I think decisions have to be made in a realm of a shrinking budget where priorities are not maximized for science. I think it's really good people in a tough situation making those decisions.

57:17 - Rod Pyle (Host)
If only we could get some of that, that black budget from Space Force, to roll over to science, but that's a silly thought. You talked a little bit about the, the entry of commercial players into non-human space flight, which is, I mean, landers and rovers have often been built by, uh, private contract, by sorry, by commercial contractors working for nasa, but now with fixed price and all that kind of thing, it's a whole different world. We've talked about that a lot, but, um, you know you were mentioning a lot, but um, you know you're mentioning both msr and possibly viper, uh going out to different bids in the commercial, in the commercial realm, and yet in terms of commercial, non-human space flight so pulling spacex out of the equation we haven't seen much success. So what kind of milestones do we have to pass before and I'm asking this as a lay person, obviously from the outside the peanut gallery when do I trust these guys to be able to do something like land, land on the moon, for instance?

58:21 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Yeah, well, well, look, I mean we haven't seen much complete success, right. But don't forget, how many times did it take NASA, with the full backing of the federal government, to hit the moon, not to land on it, but just to hit the moon with the Ranger program, ranger eight, nine, right, that's that. They even, they even hit the moon, right. And so now you've got these smaller companies, many of them startups, uh, working on shoestring budgets compared to what the government had when they were trying to solve these problems. And not only did they the initial ones, they could hit the moon, but they almost landed, right, you know. I mean, you know the Japanese one kind of got it on its side, but they did a bunch of work, science, anyway. The IM one landed on its side, but okay, but it was a soft landing, right, and that's, you know, for a small company on a low budget and a high risk program. I think there's plenty of successes to point to have any of them reached full mission success. Yet no, what does it take to meet full mission success? All of the mission assurance, all the redundancy, all that stuff that NASA does? Hundreds of millions, billions of dollars it takes to do that.

59:38
So NASA has accepted more risk because the cost is lower, more opportunities. So we've got a couple more of them coming up late this year, early next year. A few more attempts. A couple more of them coming up late this year, early next year, a few more attempts. We saw SpaceX didn't launch their first Falcon 9 successfully. I mean, it took them a while. Now it's like routine. We don't even notice them anymore, and so I think the more of these that the commercial world gets under their belts, the better they get at launch and landing and operations. I have confidence in the program and I hope that the key stakeholders, the public, members of Congress, have the patience to realize this is hard, the risk is higher, but we've got a lot of opportunities here and they're going to learn In the meantime that money is not being sent up in bags and blown up in space.

01:00:34
The money is being spent here on Earth in companies and universities and labs. It's people. Most of the money is people. It's smart people, it's people who push the limits of technology and the frontier of science and exploration, and it's happening, you know, here in america. So I think those are all good thing, good aspects of this.

01:00:55 - Rod Pyle (Host)
So maybe I'm not as pessimistic as you, ron so well, that's the answer we were hoping to hear and, by the way, everybody that was completely unprompted, other than me asking the question. So this is straight from him and we got to make sure to get that in social media. Okay, tarik, tarek, go for your last one.

01:01:09 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I was going to say. I think that Jim just said that every dollar spent in space is spent on Earth. Right there, right Is what he said I want to. I just wanted to ask because we've been talking a lot about the moon, but I know that Rocket Lab wants to go to Venus and they're building their own Venus mission.

01:01:26
And yes, and Elon Musk, you know, in SpaceX, said that you know, in the next window, in 2026, they're gonna launch a starship to Mars come hell or high water and then, if that goes well, they're gonna launch people there to your center.

01:01:38
Of course they're known, because how hard can it be? Right? Well, they're known for like wildly ambitious timelines. But but the the concept of a commercial science mission, fully private, you know, I find very compelling because that's the sci-fi life that we were all sold by Arthur C Clarke and the rest of them, the heroic age, right, and you know, I think I know where you stand on this from what you just said about all of these moon missions that we saw launch and achieve partial results, or some of them like astrobotic, going, you know, full bigger with the next one, for that more ambitious commercial science there. Is it the cachet of the private program or is it an opportunity for different types of scientists like yourself, or with different, even specialists, special, different expertise niches? I guess is the word to answer a different question that maybe wouldn't get all the way up through the echelons of a decadal survey, but you know, peter Beck and his rocket, you know can get it there can get the instrument there.

01:03:02 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Look, guys, it's really simple, right. Why do companies exist? They don't exist to do wonderful things for humanity and explore space. They exist to make money, right, that's why companies exist. And so what it all comes down to in my mind is is there a business model that closes to do commercially focused science and exploration? And in order to prove that, you have to take some risks. Initially, you got to find some investors who might be more philanthropic than others To get to try to like what Rocket Lab is trying to do, that's privately funded by visionary people and institutions who are trying to make the case that, look, we can do this, look how it's going to pay off.

01:03:48
We're going to learn new things about the Venus atmosphere or the surface of the moon, whatever, but they have to sustain that. They're going to have to show that they can close a business model. For example, one of the things that we're working on here at ASU is working with the future providers of the lunar rover that will be for the Artemis astronauts, where NASA is procuring that as a service. It'd be like a rental car on the moon when our astronauts are there, they get on the gold board and they got priority, and then, when the astronauts aren't there. You can use this as a rover robotic rover, just like a Mars rover and explore the moon, and we're going to pay for this.

01:04:27
But we know we're not going to give you enough money to close your business model. So they need other payloads. They need other institutions, organizations, space agencies who want to go to the moon to do science, but they're going to have to pay for it. The company's not going to do it for free. It's not going to get donated. There aren't a line of philanthropists and billionaires out there waiting to fund this out of pocket, sadly, but that would be great. So it just comes down to being able to close that business model, and every organization, nasa included, who could pay for some of this has to make that case that ROI case. Here's what we're going to gain from that. And to date, most of the funding for this kind of stuff has been by governments because there is no profit in it, right? What's the profit in knowing what the composition of these rocks behind me are in Jezero Crater? There's nothing a business can point to and say to their stakeholders. We made money off of that.

01:05:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Someone would pay top dollar to have that rock, though from Mars, on their desk To have Not enough to fly it home, my friend? I'm just saying Will they pay rock, though, from mars, on their desk? They have not enough to fly at home.

01:05:30 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Will they just say, yeah, will they pay? Will they write the check up front? Yeah, they write the check 10 years in advance to do it all. It's a hard, hard to find those kind of folks. They're out there, but they're very difficult to find. Well, and speaking of that.

01:05:44 - Rod Pyle (Host)
uh elon, if you're listening, you know instead of uh burning 20 billion dollars on twitter, next time, how about just taking over the space program? You can do it Okay that's 40.

01:05:55 - Tariq Malik (Host)
I think that's 40 billion.

01:05:56 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Well, that's what he spent, but I'm talking about how much he's actually ground up and probably lost, but I know that's a big estimate. Jim, before we wrap up here, I'd love to hear about any future books you have coming up, any big talks you might have coming up that people could see your next efforts.

01:06:16 - Jim Bell (Guest)
And finally, if you could just touch on your work with the Milo Institute for a moment. Yeah, so yeah, I've been giving talks, book talks my latest book, the Art of the Cosmos, and then before that, hubble Heritage just some spectacular picture books, coffee table picture books, with lots of great stories. John Grunsfeld, the Hubble repair astronaut, wrote a great forward for the Hubble books. I've been giving talks about those. I'm trying to. I'm pitching a new book about sort of why do we have to get off this planet? I claim we have to get off this planet. I mean that slowly, metaphorically, as a species, but also tomorrow and the next day. There are lots of ways that space in near Earth orbit and beyond affect us and affect our future. I'm pitching an idea for that.

01:07:01 - Rod Pyle (Host)
You have a good TED talk that people can see on that very subject.

01:07:04 - Jim Bell (Guest)
Exactly, the book would be based on that talk. That's kind of what I'm up to, of course, trying to work with the Planetary Society to make sure that our members of Congress and the public get what they want out of the space program and understand how it impacts kids and their teachers and jobs around the country and the national prestige that NASA enjoys as the leader of the world and space and all that. So that work is just going to continue.

01:07:39 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Fabulous Tarek. Yes, rod, where can we track what you're up to these days?

01:07:47 - Tariq Malik (Host)
Well, you can find me at spacecom as always on the Twitters, I guess the X now at Tarek J Malik this weekend. You will find me glued to my computer as we watch Crew 9 launch not four, but only two astronauts to the International Space Station so that they can leave some room for Butch and Sonny to come back to Earth back in February. And that is set for lunchtime Eastern time on Saturday, with docking on Sunday. So it's the full weekend for that. So it's going to be really exciting. Oh, ps, there's space rewards in Fortnite until October 1st. You should look for that.

01:08:21 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I was waiting. I was waiting for something gaming.

01:08:23 - Tariq Malik (Host)
You get a space cake.

01:08:25 - Rod Pyle (Host)
Because you are gaming, all right. And of course, you can always find me at pilebookscom or at astromagazinecom, where I hang out. Please remember you can always drop us a line at twisttv. That's T-W-I-S. At twittv, we welcome your comments, suggestions and most of your thoughts, and I will answer your email. I always do.

01:08:43
New episodes of this podcast publish every Friday on your favorite podcatcher. So please make sure to subscribe, tell your friends and give us five thumbs up, and if you don't do it for us, do it for Jim, because he's really good. He's a consummate space communicator. You can also head to our website at twittv, slash twist Also, don't forget. Don't forget. You can get all this great programming ad free and a lot more other cool stuff if you join club twit for just seven dollars a month. Can't bring back a rock from mars for seven dollars a month, but you can join club twit and help us stay here to serve you better. And you can also also follow the twit tech podcast network at twit on twitter and on facebook and twittv on instagram. Thank you very much, jim. Thank you so much for coming today.

01:09:29 - Tariq Malik (Host)
This is a real treat.

01:09:31 - Rod Pyle (Host)
I could have gone twice as long, but next time so we'll have you back if you're willing. Sounds good, okay, thanks everybody.